Life on Saturn: The Space to Become

My favourite quote is ‘To achieve something you never have, you have to do things you’ve never done.”

That line has been a quiet mantra for me since before I joined Saturn. But it’s only now I that get to live it.

When I joined, Saturn was five people, laptops on knees, chasing momentum with sheer hunger, speed and borderline delusional ambition. We had no real structure, but we had belief. We weren’t pretending to be perfect but we were committed to building something that mattered. Disrupting an old boys industry and making financial advice accessible to all. That’s big picture stuff but this is also a story about personal change, about what happens when you’re given the space, and the pressure, to discover who you really are.

Since then, we’ve become a 40-person company, leading the market, trusted by some of the most ambitious advice firms in the country. But growth like that isn’t smooth. It stretches you. And it’s forced me to confront something personal: to keep up with the company I believe in, I can’t stay the same.

To grow with Saturn, I’ve had to change, and change quick. In how I think, how I lead, how I carry myself. That hasn’t always been easy. I’ve felt the discomfort of not knowing enough. I’ve had moments of doubt, of falling short, of having to look hard at where I need to level up. But growth lives in that space. Pain isn’t the lesson, it’s the teacher.

Saturn continues to be the hardest and most transformative chapter of my life. It’s not just taught me new skills, it’s revealed parts of me I hadn’t fully understood before. My strengths, my shortfalls, the stories I’d been telling myself about who I was, and who I could be.

What makes Saturn different is that I’m not growing alone. That pressure is shared. It’s intentional. It’s cultural. We don’t coast here. We orbit.

But orbiting isn’t just collaboration. It’s a decision. A decision to show up, to be counted on, to do the 1% that no one sees because you know it matters. Orbit isn’t a state of rest, it’s a state of discipline. And it’s what’s carried us forward.

We push each other more than I’ve ever experienced in any environment. But it’s not ego-driven, it’s fuelled by care, by ambition, by an agreement that we’re here to evolve, not just individually, but together. That’s what makes this culture so rare. It’s not comfort. It’s commitment.

And I’ve come to love that. Because every time Saturn takes a step forward, it invites me to do the same. There are more experienced people out there than me. But few will have the same hunger. The same belief in what we’re building. The same obsession with becoming the person this company will need in the future.

That’s the opportunity. That’s the privilege.

To grow with the thing you’re helping build.

To keep earning your place, every single day.

To become someone you’ve never been, because that’s what the mission demands.

This is a journey of self-discovery. And I wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else.

Tom x