Wisepreneurs | Independent Professionals Building Practice on Their Own Terms

Valentine Gitard spent nearly 15 years self-employed in Paris researching the future of work, completing a master's in organisational studies at La Sorbonne and building a practice around speaking, coaching and hosting the Work Narratives podcast. Valentine explains why French professionals increasingly refuse management roles, how two team members fought because collaboration meant 'res...

Alisha Hook spent 25 years in talent acquisition and HR across Australia and the UK before founding Your Career Edge, a career coaching and fractional talent consultancy based in Melbourne. Alisha explains why professional reputation carries more weight than a polished resume in the current job market, where AI-generated applications have made candidates harder to differentiate.  She covers three...

Johanna Rothman has worked as an independent consultant since 1994 and written 21 books on management, consulting, and professional writing, including Successful Independent Consulting. Johanna uses the Consulting Role Grid from Champion, Kiel and McLendon (1990) to draw a distinction that matters for every experienced professional: hands-on experts who take no responsibility for client growth are...

Bex Thomas spent 20 years in recruitment before an intentional career break became the catalyst for a portfolio career as a career transition coach, sabbatical coach, and podcast host of Sabbatical Stories. Bex explains her five-question framework for planning intentional career breaks: why you are taking the break, when to take it, where to go, who to spend time with, and who you want to become a...

Margareta Křížová offers freelance advice for professional reinvention, sharing six questions that replace the business plan. After co-founding a boutique M&A advisory firm in Prague in 1993, Margareta spent almost 30 years in dealmaking before selling her equity stake at 53 to rebuild as an independent freelancer.  She now combines selective advisory work with entrepreneurship mentoring and r...

Janine Garner helps women entrepreneurs over 50 turn accumulated expertise into independent consulting practices that charge what professional judgment is worth. After 20 years in corporate marketing, finishing as group marketing director for the Oroton Group overseeing Oroton and Ralph Lauren brands across Australia and Asia, Janine built a seven-figure mentoring business focused on expertise mon...

Ella Zhang helps experienced professionals monetise hard-won expertise through inner operating systems that rebuild leadership capability from the inside out.  From her Sydney consulting practice, she draws on neuroscience and Chinese medicine to design micro habits that make capability stick where one-off training programs fail. Ella explains how four inner operating systems, mental, emotional, s...

Ben Legg helps experienced professionals monetise expertise as co-founder of The Portfolio Collective, a 16,000-member community for portfolio careers.  Before that he was COO of Google Europe, led Coca-Cola's India turnaround, worked at McKinsey, and served in the British Army's Royal Engineers. Ben explains why experienced professionals are leaving corporate careers for portfolio work,...

Michael Zipursky studied 1,300 coaching engagements to show how experienced consultants build expertise-driven practices. Building a consulting practice through relationships and conversations rather than marketing systems requires a specific set of mindset shifts that corporate experience does not prepare you for.  For experienced independent professionals navigating this transition, Michael Zipu...

Experienced independent professionals building portfolio practices will find a practical operating model in this conversation with Dante St James.  For generalists juggling multiple ventures, this episode maps the daily discipline and systemisation that lets diverse expertise run without you at the centre. Dante traces how a failed startup, a pandemic-era cafe purchase, and a digital marketing exi...

Dr Miklós Pohl OAM at 78 shows how expertise sustains professional longevity across medicine, chamber music, and publishing His Wisepreneurs conversation explores how sustained creative engagement supports professional longevity and cognitive vitality for experienced professionals who have no intention of retiring. A Melbourne-based plastic surgeon, violinist, and founder of the Australian Doctors...

Darren Waldron, a Zurich carpenter-turned-solopreneur, built an independent AI automation practice with no coding background.  A carpenter by trade, now based in Zurich, he developed AI-powered lead management systems after experiencing firsthand how slowly businesses follow up with potential customers. His company DS Walden specialises in two services that independent professionals and small busi...

Systematic business development for independent consultants who want predictable revenue without employees or feast-famine cycles. Melisa Liberman coaches experienced professionals to build consulting practices generating $500,000+ using quantifiable metrics rather than hope-based pipeline management. A consultant for 13 years and now a coach for independent professionals, Melisa explains why cons...

Experienced professionals who think deeply often feel invisible in workplaces that reward rapid responses over considered insight. Now retired as a psychologist Meredith Fuller OAM, returns for her fourth Wisepreneurs conversation, drawing on over 45 years counselling professionals who don't quite fit to explain why this happens and what to do about it. Meredith introduces the concept of limi...

Thirty years of full-time independent practice, booked 18 months ahead, with no formal business training. Artist Mark Trinham offers one of the most practical case studies on the Wisepreneurs Podcast for how accumulated expertise becomes sustainable revenue when you learn to position it as premium capability. Mark moved from illustration and graphic design into public art and large-scale sculpture...

Positioning accumulated professional judgment when younger consultants cost less and AI handles routine knowledge work. Jon Younger has spent five decades understanding how talent evolves — from HR executive to independent advisor on the future of work and AI.  At 73, he addresses the challenge experienced professionals rarely voice: how do you justify premium rates in an era of automation?  Jon e...

Forest therapy as cognitive restoration for over-connected professionals who keep optimising when they need to stop. Mayumi Kataoka is a certified forest therapy guide in Sydney who takes professionals on three-hour walks covering barely 1.2 kilometres. Participants consistently report losing track of time and finding clarity they did not know they were missing. Mayumi's path from IT professi...

Anna Burgess Yang helps experienced solopreneurs build automation systems that keep an independent practice running when the founder cannot work. Her FinTech writing business ran for two months while she recovered from brain tumour surgery, proving her operational frameworks worked under the hardest possible test. Anna walks through the specific tools and workflows that made this possible, from Za...

Career reinvention at 80, mastering AI tools, Obsidian, and Zotero to write a scientific book he never planned.  Dr Michael Best practised medicine for 50 years before a routine phone call during COVID introduced him to the endocannabinoid system — a biological network in every human body that he'd never learned about in medical school.  Now he's deep into original research, proving that...

Professional reputation built through decades of relationships beats personal branding built through content marketing.  Robert Vlach leads Europe's largest freelance community, supporting over 250,000 professionals.  In this three-hour conversation, our longest episode, he explains why experienced independent professionals should stop competing with younger workers on their terms.  Robert co...

Menopause and cognitive performance for professional women: when brain fog, fatigue, and memory loss threaten your career edge, the problem is medical science, not you.  Amy Alkon is an award-winning investigative science writer and author of Going Menopostal. She exposes the gap between what medical research knows about menopausal care and what most doctors actually provide, leaving accomplished...

Sönke Ahrens helps experienced professionals turn accumulated expertise into structured knowledge systems that support writing, consulting, and thought leadership.  He wrote How to Take Smart Notes and uses tools like Obsidian, Readwise, and Zotero to make decades of professional learning retrievable and useful rather than forgotten. Sönke explains how externalising expertise into structured notes...

Starting a business after 60 using LinkedIn, relationships, and minimal cost strategies for financial security during career transition.  Sue Ellson has been an independent consultant since 1994 and joined LinkedIn in 2003.  She's authored five books including Gigsters and is recognised internationally as a leading expert on the platform.  In this conversation, Sue offers a practical roadmap...

Episode Overview Career reinvention after 60 using your professional relationships as startup capital rather than cash, savings, or business loans.  Laetitia Vitaud is a feminist and work-revolution thinker returning for her third Wisepreneurs appearance.  She explains why the 150 trusted connections you've nurtured across your career are the most valuable business asset you own How seasonal...

Laurie Smale left school at 13 to work in a junkyard and at 79 produces his own Magic Minutes YouTube series after learning digital tools from scratch with LinkedIn specialist Sue Ellson. Between the junkyard and YouTube, Laurie worked in an Italian glass factory at Frankston (sleeping beside the furnace at 13), returned to education at 37, graduated from Melbourne University with honours in Itali...