Ian Murton, 53, Hertfordshire, was made redundant six years ago. Without a steady job, he feared for his future – now his business will fund his retirement.
In 2020, Ian Murton was in a dark place. He’d been made redundant from his primary school PE teacher role, and at the age of 48, he found it impossible to get another job. Depression and anxiety set in; how would he support his three children, aged 15, seven and four? Up until this point, he had been the family’s sole breadwinner, as his wife ran a primary school tutoring business with just a few clients.
“My anxiety was going through the roof. My insomnia was pretty bad. I was drinking my way through it – about five or six times a week. I was just waking up feeling like I had no energy, thinking, ‘I’m screwed. I’ll never be able to get another job’,” he recalls.
Ian dutifully applied for more teaching jobs, but earning a salary of £38,000, he was already at the highest level of his pay grade, and found himself overlooked for more junior teachers who would be cheaper to hire. He felt demoralised and at his wit’s end. Thoughts for his now jeopardised future ran wild, as his £12,000 redundancy payout would only last so long.
“I thought, ‘What do I do? What skillset have I got? I can see that teaching’s done, but what else can I do? I’m nearly 50 – who the hell’s going to employ me? Where am I going to go?” says Ian.
Having previously been a personal trainer, Ian contemplated setting up an online programme covering fitness, nutrition and weight loss. But a chance conversation with his father saw him go in an entirely different direction.
A lightbulb moment
“The main problem with people with weight loss is the mindset. They’ll lose a load of weight and then they put it all back on again. My dad mentioned hypnotherapy and reminded me how I’d used that to quit smoking,” he says.
Before Ian got married in 2010, he had smoked for about 12 years. He had decided he didn’t want to start his marriage as a smoker. Having made many attempts to quit smoking – using nicotine gum, inhalators and NHS programmes – the only thing that worked had been hypnotherapy.
Ian promptly enrolled in a 10-month level four hypnotherapy diploma through the Clifton Hypnotherapy Practice, taking a part-time role as a school sports coach to keep money coming. A year after being made redundant, he officially set up on his own in 2021.
He initially worked with hypnotherapy clients for free to build his experience and reputation, taking on friends and family, and advertising on local Facebook groups. He then moved on to charging half price, then eventually, the full price of £75 for an hour-long consultation.
While Ian achieved his initial goal of helping people lose weight through hypnotherapy, he still felt something was missing. His real breakthrough came in 2023, when he helped someone overcome their fear of driving through hypnotherapy.
“Somebody contacted me about driving anxiety, and I drove over to them because they didn’t feel comfortable driving to me. They had a holiday cottage business which was a two-hour drive away in Norfolk, and they couldn’t travel there,” says Ian.
“So I helped them to overcome their anxiety so they could make the drive. They could then grow their business, and it made me think, ‘There’s something in this’.”
‘When you start off, you think you can help everybody, but most people that know anything about marketing know that it’s all about finding a niche,’ says IanProfiting from a niche
Ian realised he could develop a specialised offering completely focused on helping people with driving anxiety, that would earn him a stronger reputation, and justify charging a premium price point for a 90-day programme.
That’s when things really clicked for Ian. He did a skills exchange with a Google search and advertising specialist – free hypnotherapy in exchange for getting Ian’s driving anxiety hypnotherapy practice to be pushed to the top of Google’s search results.
Ian became known both locally and online as a driving anxiety expert – and business was booming. “That was quite a brave decision, just to niche down into driving anxiety. Because when you start off, you think you can help everybody, but most people that know anything about marketing know that it’s all about finding a niche,” says Ian.
“If someone’s life is on hold because they can’t drive on the motorway, and you can help them, then you’re certainly opening yourself up to being able to create a programme and to charge more.”
Last year, Ian’s hypnotherapy business brought in over £178,000 – nearly five times his old teaching salary. He now employs two other hypnotherapists so he can focus more on the business and marketing strategy.
His wife and daughter, now 21, also help, with accounting and social media. After staff and marketing costs, Ian says his own earnings come to around £100,000.
While the additional money has meant Ian could clear a chunk of his mortgage, buy new cars for himself and his wife, and put his daughter through university, he believes the flexibility of his new lifestyle is just as important.
“I’ve got nobody telling me what to do. I sometimes work only three hours a day – I have time to go to the gym, go for a walk, or go for a game of squash. Most people have holidays to recover from their day‑to‑day work stress, but I don’t have that now,” he says.
“I love what I do, so it’s not painful for me to only maybe get a couple of weeks’ holiday a year. It really doesn’t matter because for most of the day I’m relaxed and doing what I love to do.”
Ian is grateful he was forced to rethink his career, as he had once thought he’d continue with teaching until he could retire at 68. But now, he questions how much he actually enjoyed his old job.
“It would be pouring rain in January, and I’d think, ‘Not again’. So I wouldn’t have been happy. I never got the warm glow from teaching a class of 30 kids that I do from helping someone overcome their driving anxiety,” he says.
Ian hopes he can increase his business revenue to £250,000 in the next five years, and potentially sell it to fund his retirement. He has trademarked his CALMS programme – standing for “Control, Avert, Learn, Mindset, Support” – and has amassed hundreds of five-star reviews.
For now though, Ian is enjoying his success. “My life is far better now than it ever was when I’m teaching,” he says. “I now feel I’m in control.”
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