Relational Enterprise Episodes

Janine Garner arrived in Australia at 29 with a backpack, a resume, and a permanent residency visa — and rebuilt her career from nothing. After 20 years as Group Marketing Director for Oroton and Ralph Lauren, she walked away because, as she puts it, she had lost herself despite being awesome at her job. What started as dinner conversations with women she admired became the LBD Group, a women's network, then five bestselling books tracing a single thread: From Me to We (real collaboration), It's Who You Know (intentional networking over transactional networking), and Be Brilliant (the four laws that shift you from striving to thriving). Janine now mentors women consultants and advisors in their 40s and beyond — many exiting corporate through redundancy or burnout — to turn decades of experience into commercial businesses of their own. She believes that when women become financially independent, they give back to their teams, their communities, and the world. The conversation covers …

Michael Zipursky is the co-founder of Consulting Success, where he and his team have coached over 1,300 consulting business owners across 75 industries. His core argument is that conversations beat marketing: the most important activity for any consultant is not polishing a website or refining a lead magnet, but getting into direct dialogue with potential clients. Michael built his first consulting business in Japan by sending cold emails to design firms in Osaka, showing up, and listening. The relationships that followed — through late-night izakaya conversations with senior executives — taught him that curiosity and genuine presence are the foundation of consulting success. He later co-founded Consulting Success with his cousin Sam, starting with a blog and a course before building the coaching business that now serves consultants from six figures to mid-seven figures. The conversation covers the stages of consulting growth, from early-stage positioning struggles through to the sh…

Dante St James left Sydney for Darwin because he dislikes crowds and long commutes. He has worked across print media, radio, digital marketing, training, and business advisory over a career that defies narrow specialisation, and he argues that this is precisely the advantage: generalists who can connect dots across domains are more valuable than specialists in a world where AI handles narrow expertise. Dante now runs a practice helping small businesses systemise their operations so the business does not depend on any single person. He has built his own business around documented processes and AI-assisted workflows, and he brings that same thinking to his clients — teaching them to capture what they know in repeatable form rather than carrying it around in their heads. The conversation covers why Darwin suits his temperament, the role of Meta's platforms in his marketing stack, how AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude fit into his daily workflow, and his view that positioning as a genera…

Robert Vlach returns to Wisepreneurs for a second appearance. He leads Europe's largest freelance community, supporting over 250,000 Czech professionals through the country's biggest open directory of freelancers, and wrote The Freelance Way — now published in English and used as the foundation for a university course at Masaryk University in Brno. Robert draws a sharp distinction between personal branding and a good name. Personal branding is a marketing discipline, borrowed from show business and often used to manufacture an image. A good name is something ancient and robust: it is created by other people talking about you behind your back, built over five to ten years of consistent, high-quality work, and cannot be faked. He quotes Charlie Munger: the peak of civilisation is not complicated bureaucratic systems but a collaboration of completely trustworthy individuals who rightly trust each other. The conversation covers why older professionals have an undervalued advantage — the…

Sue Ellson has worked as an independent consultant since 1994, building a practice around LinkedIn, networking, and low-cost business development. She joined LinkedIn in 2003 and has grown her network to over 26,000 connections and 30,000 followers, all through the policy of connecting with everyone she meets and maintaining those relationships through consistent posting and engagement. Sue explains her Geekster identity — using technology to attract aligned gigs rather than a single career path — and her job for now strategy for maintaining financial security during the transition from employment to independent practice. She argues that the confidence gap is the biggest barrier for professionals considering self-employment, and that a part-time bridge role protects against the psychological spiral that can come from working alone without income certainty. The conversation covers the three networks every professional needs (personal, professional, and community), why word of mouth s…

Laetitia Vitaud returns for her third appearance on Wisepreneurs. Half French, half German, and now back in Paris after years in London and Munich, she writes the Laetitia@Work newsletter on Substack and is one of the clearest voices on the future of work from a European perspective. Laetitia frames the current moment as an age of individuation and networks, where the most important asset for starting a business is not capital but relationships — specifically, the 150 or so people in your Dunbar circle whom you know well enough to stop for a drink if you bumped into them on the street. For professionals over 60 considering independent work, she argues that the network built over decades of career and community life is the startup capital, and that maintaining it deliberately — through birthday messages, direct messages, and genuine check-ins — is the most leveraged form of business development. The conversation covers the multi-stage life (from Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott's The 1…

Anna Burgess Yang shares her solopreneur workflow for building independent professional practice with lean thinking, automation, and AI. After leaving a FinTech executive career, Anna built a content writing business around Zapier, Airtable, and ChatGPT Pro. She explains why operations is the part of solopreneur practice nobody talks about and how authenticity beats generic AI content. Wisepreneurs explores how independent professionals turn accumulated expertise into sustainable practice.

Tonianne DeMaria cut her teeth as a fashion buyer in New York City, spent a year in a medieval farming town in Germany, and retrained as a public historian before co-authoring Personal Kanban with Jim Benson. The book applies the visual workflow system born on Toyota's factory floor to the messy, invisible work of knowledge professionals — and its central argument is that you cannot improve what you cannot see. Personal Kanban has two rules: visualise your work, and limit your work in progress. Tonianne explains why knowledge workers resist the second rule harder than the first. We carry invisible inventory in our heads, and the cognitive load of too many half-finished projects is what produces burnout, not the volume of work itself. The board makes the invisible visible, and the WIP limit forces choices — which means it also forces important conversations about what actually matters. The conversation covers the emotional dimension of workflow that most productivity systems ignore: …

Peter Compo spent 25 years at DuPont as a chemical engineer and business leader before leaving to write The Emergent Approach to Strategy — a book that argues the word 'strategic' should be struck from business language and that strategy is not a plan but a central rule for busting the one bottleneck standing between you and your aspiration. Peter grew up in a musical family in New York City and sees the same underlying patterns in music, science, and business: all creative endeavours follow the laws of emergence. The future cannot be planned, but it can be shaped. His framework is built on a triad: aspiration (what you want to achieve), bottleneck (what is in the way), and strategy (the central rule that directs all resources toward busting that bottleneck). The influence diagram — a V-shape with the aspiration at the narrow point and all possible actions fanning out to the left — makes visible what most strategy documents obscure: that you cannot do everything, and that without a r…

Cedric Chin runs Commoncog, a publication about accelerating business expertise. Born in Borneo and now based in Singapore, he writes about one question: how do you get good at business, and how do you get good at it faster than the traditional trial-and-error timeline allows? Cedric's framework draws on the science of expertise, particularly the concept of tacit knowledge — the kind of know-how that experts carry in their heads but cannot easily articulate, and that cannot be learned from books or courses alone. The most valuable business skills, he argues, are tacit: recognising patterns in incomplete data, making judgment calls under uncertainty, knowing which customers to walk away from. The problem is that most business education teaches explicit knowledge (frameworks, models, checklists) and leaves people thinking they understand something they have never actually practised. The conversation covers the Cognitive Flexibility Theory approach to learning complex domains — studyin…

Karen Wickre shows experienced professionals how career independence works well beyond conventional retirement age, drawing on senior roles at Google and Twitter and decades of authentic relationship-building across Silicon Valley. She explains why genuine, mutually beneficial connections matter more than transactional networking, and how continuous adaptability sustains an independent career into your 70s. Wisepreneurs explores how independent professionals turn accumulated expertise into sustainable practice.

Anna Molnar helps women entrepreneurs over 50 navigate pricing for freelancers and charge what their expertise is worth. Based in The Hague, she left embassy work at 40 to build an independent coaching practice focused on expertise monetisation for women solopreneurs. She explains why undercharging is the most consistent problem among women entrepreneurs and the connection between professional self-perception and appropriate fees. Wisepreneurs explores how women over 50 monetise expertise and build sustainable solopreneur practice.

Úna Herlihy left advertising in 2005 when the industry proved unwelcoming to women with young children. A LinkedIn post during COVID became a business: The Indie List, a high-touch marketplace connecting approximately 7,000 freelance marketing professionals with Irish clients. The Indie List's earn-learn-connect model addresses the three things freelancers struggle with most: isolation, cashflow uncertainty, and the admin burden of working alone. Úna covers ageism in advertising for senior creatives, the in-demand skills shifting fastest in digital marketing, and what happens when a community of independent professionals starts negotiating collectively rather than individually. Wisepreneurs explores how experienced independent professionals position accumulated expertise and build sustainable practice.

Robert Vlach wrote The Freelance Way and founded Freelancing.eu to help independent professionals develop pricing strategies that match their actual expertise rather than competing on cost. He explains how experienced freelancers and consultants can move beyond industry-standard rates to pricing that reflects decades of accumulated skill. The conversation covers the specific challenges independent professionals face in defining their roles, navigating pricing norms that were set for younger or less experienced workers, and building financial structures that support lifelong independent careers. Drawing from his work with the European freelance community, he makes clear that underpricing is not a beginner problem — it is a systemic one that follows professionals through their entire career unless they actively unpick it. Wisepreneurs explores how experienced independent professionals position accumulated expertise and build sustainable practice.

Tash Menon Verheul founded MASH, a creative technology company that curates teams of independent professionals across 31 countries for branding and marketing projects. She shares how she built the business from Melbourne with no local network, the referral-only recruitment model, and why demonstrating impact matters more than agency credentials for freelancers going independent.

Amanda Reeves has worked in administrative support for over 40 years, building an independent practice in Melbourne entirely through referrals. She provides executive-level support to solopreneurs and independent consultants, from annual reports and conference materials to websites and social media. Amanda explains how she built a freelance practice without marketing, the practical realities of freelancing after 50, and how one client recommendation led to international work in Switzerland.

Elina Jutelyte explains pricing for freelancers through a first-of-its-kind global study across 13 independent communities. Her survey of 400 freelancers found that 90 per cent find work through personal networks, while only 14 per cent rely on platforms. The conversation covers trending freelancer topics from LinkedIn strategy to AI, plus Elina's ambition to build an MBA-style programme for independent professionals. Wisepreneurs explores how independent professionals turn accumulated expertise into sustainable practice.

Alison Grade wrote The Freelance Bible, published by Penguin, drawing on years as a freelancer and producer in film and TV alongside running her own motorbike training company. She covers the practical mechanics of starting and running a freelance business: pricing, finding clients, managing the feast-famine cycle, and the mindset shifts that separate freelancers who build lasting practices from those who drift between gigs. Her own career path — from creative production to teaching to entrepreneurship — demonstrates that freelance skills are portable across industries, and that the principles of running a sustainable independent practice apply whether you are on a film set or a training course. Wisepreneurs explores how experienced independent professionals position accumulated expertise and build sustainable practice.

Matt Dowling founded the Freelancer Club, a 60,000-member community that helps independent professionals build sustainable freelance careers, after an unpaid invoice nearly ended his own. Early in his freelance photography career in London, a client went bankrupt owing him 11,000 pounds. With no contract, no legal protection, and months of debt, he discovered thousands of other freelancers were going through the same thing with no resources to draw on. That experience became the foundation for the Freelancer Club and its #NoFreeWork campaign against exploitative unpaid work in the creative industries. The conversation covers the practical realities of freelancing — contracts, payment terms, client selection — and how community makes the difference between surviving and building something sustainable. Wisepreneurs explores how experienced independent professionals position accumulated expertise and build sustainable practice.

Jon Younger helps experienced professionals understand the freelance economy through his Forbes column and his book Agile Talent: How to Source and Manage Outside Experts. A management consultant for decades, he explains why freelancing is lumpy, how experienced professionals can future-proof their skills, why companies need to adapt to agile talent, and what freelancing looks like as you age. Wisepreneurs explores how independent professionals turn accumulated expertise into sustainable practice.

Suzanne Noble has reinvented her career more times than most people manage in a lifetime: from singer with The Dirty Blondes, to Channel 4 TV producer, to co-founding a PR agency that grew to 1.4 million pounds in revenue with 12 staff, to global PR and marketing director for Lazy Town, to launching a baby sling company, to building a TikTok channel with 50,000 followers, to co-founding Startup School for Seniors helping people over 50 start businesses. Each reinvention taught her something different about finding a niche, understanding a customer, and building a sustainable income stream. She covers what transfers across industries and what you have to learn from scratch each time, and why starting a business at 60 is not a retreat from work but a different kind of ambition. Wisepreneurs explores how experienced independent professionals position accumulated expertise and build sustainable practice.

Lisa-Marie Cabrelli turned corporate expertise into a location-independent eCommerce company in 2006, starting with $500 and a book on building a Yahoo Store, then retiring young when she sold the multi-million dollar business. She built it through early Google SEO, identifying an underserved niche in American Girl doll accessories, drawing on her corporate background as a business systems analyst to develop a process engineering approach for solopreneurs. The conversation also covers her seven published novels, PhD in Literature, and coaching work helping women start location-independent businesses. Wisepreneurs explores how women over 50 monetise expertise and build sustainable solopreneur practice.

Karen Wickre worked at Google and Twitter before writing Taking the Work out of Networking, her guide to building genuine connections without transactional pressure. She explains why networking does not have to feel like work. Drawing from her Silicon Valley career and her current life as a self-employed corporate editor and writer in her 70s, she shares practical approaches to maintaining loose-touch relationships that serve personal and professional needs alike. Her framework treats networking as connecting for a whole range of human needs, not just career advancement — and the people who do it best are the ones who do not treat it as a strategy at all. Wisepreneurs explores how experienced independent professionals position accumulated expertise and build sustainable practice.