Discover what is holding you back
What would you do if that voice stopped deciding for you?
Two minutes to find out what it is, and where to start.
Show me what is holding itI thought I would always be this way. I was wrong.
I am James Hazlett-Beard. I run expansion works®. Most people who find me have already tried a lot. They can name the pattern, explain where it came from, and describe it accurately. And they still do it anyway. That gap is what this work is for.
For fifteen years I brought people together at names like Prada, Google, Maison Margiela and Vogue. Now I bring all of it to the work with you.
Founder · certified neurocoach
Because I lived it.
I did not read it in a book, or take some online course, and decide I could guide other people through it. I was the one having anxiety attacks, carrying beliefs I could not shift no matter what I tried.
I had settled for it, in fact. I had decided this was simply who I was, and that I would go on living a life run by worry, self-judgment and feeling unworthy, while everything looked fine from the outside.
Before any of that, there was a man in a pub.
I met him in a pub in Stoke Newington. He saw something in me. That pain. And he took me under his wing. He showed me that change was possible, and he took me on the path of personal development. I explored all the different types of therapies, alternatives and coaching, and slowly the anger and the hurt started to settle.
What I was carrying still did not go away. It sat in a place I could not reach.
What made me try it?
I was burnt out. I had left London because I was completely consumed by the rat race, and I stopped working for three months. A lot had changed. And I was still repeating the same beliefs, the same cycles, the same patterns. It felt like an invisible cage. I know now that the cage was my own perception.
When I was a bit stronger I went looking for a local hypnotist. She said she was training in a new method and I should try it, and she offered me a discount. I had not worked in three months. I thought: f**k it.
I thought it was bollocks.
We started with something small, which is how I still start with everyone. Somebody had run their car down the side of mine. The car was a week old and it was the first one I had ever owned. By the end of the session it felt distant. I still cared. The anger stopped, and so did everything my mind had been spiralling into. I could just look at it for what it was.
So the next session I brought the real one. I am unworthy. The one I had spent a career trying to disprove, and the one that kept burning me out.
Memories, judgements, beliefs, all of it came up in front of me like a file of facts. I observed it. And it faded. Not just the belief, but everything sitting around it. I had tried hypnotherapy before, to quit smoking, to install new beliefs. It always faded back. This did not.
“I never even thought that these changes were possible after a decade of trying to move on.”
I had all of it. So why leave?
Because it belonged to an old identity, and I had finished it. When I started my agency, Art Engine, I wrote down that I wanted to turn over seven figures, and I wrote the names: Prada, Google, Pop, De Beers. We did all of it.
You can have the career, the names and the money. They are nice. They did not touch what was underneath.
I am still the same person.
What once made it feel unsafe to be visible now puts me in front of cameras. What once put me on the floor with anxiety now excites me. They are the same situations. What they do to me is not.
Now I make a decision and it is quiet. No committee, no rehearsal, no aftermath. I just do it.
Three things, and the order matters.
- The trainingI am a certified neurocoach.
- Fifteen years of peopleFifteen years in the creative industry, running my own business and, for most of it, developing talent and building leaders. There is no certificate for that part.
- I did the work myself firstThe framework you meet here is built from every course, coach, therapy session and mistake of my own. It is the one that finally moved mine.
What they share is the spark.
People who can feel something holding them back and cannot quite name it. People who are not sure change is even possible for them. My clients tend to be creative, entrepreneurial, often neurodivergent, often queer, often people who have never fitted the mould. I like the quirky and the difficult and the people with a story.
Anyone looking to get rich quick, or anyone who wants to be handed a fix. It is not for the bros or the hype men. Nothing wrong with them. Just not me.
I am not your guru. Nobody should be. If a coach makes you feel small, leave.
What clients say.
“This work has changed my life. I am making my way forward as the person I always thought I could be.”
Phie M · Founder“My resistance at the start was 10/10, if not 12/10. After an hour, more like 2/10.”
“James inspires the trust a real shift needs.”
Real clients, used with their permission. Experiences shared here are individual. Results vary from person to person.
The questions I get asked most.
There is a longer version, where I answer all eleven of the questions people actually ask me, including the ones about what was rubbish and how you know when something has really cleared.
Read the whole conversationWhere it started, the agency years, the day in the snow with Daniel Lismore, and the honest limits.
Read my whole storyAre you a therapist?
No. I am a certified neurocoach. Neurocoaching is not therapy, crisis support, or mental health treatment: therapy helps you understand a pattern, and this work helps your mind release it. Plenty of people do both, and if you are in crisis or managing a serious condition, your GP or a qualified mental health professional comes first.
Will one session change everything?
You will not clear a lifetime in a single session, and I would be wary of anyone who promised you would. Each session clears a little more, and it builds.
What happens after a session?
The session itself is often calm to the point of feeling anticlimactic. Then you go back to your week and meet the thing that always used to catch you. Judge it there, at the next trigger, not at the end of the session.
Whenever you are ready, the door is open.
Start with why it stays, and find the number for yours.
Complimentary mini course. No credit card needed. Coaching, not therapy or crisis support.