Episodes

Kay Sargent leads neuroinclusive workplace design at HOK and wrote Designing Neuroinclusive Workplaces, the field's first comprehensive guide to sensory processing in the built environment. She explains the six modalities of work, why most open offices fail on execution, and what to change first when you work from home. Wisepreneurs explores how independent professionals turn accumulated expertise into sustainable practice.

the Work Narratives podcast. She explains why French professionals refuse management roles, why human agency matters more as AI takes over routine work, and why community is the most important resource an independent professional has. Wisepreneurs explores how experienced independent professionals position accumulated expertise and build sustainable practice.

Career coaching for experienced professionals requires understanding what happens on both sides of the hiring process. Alisha Hook spent 25 years in talent acquisition and HR across Australia and the UK before founding Your Career Edge, a consultancy offering fractional talent services and career coaching. For independent professionals and career changers, this episode maps the practical mechanics of navigating a job market that has shifted significantly since the pandemic. Alisha introduces three trends reshaping the employment landscape: job hugging, where employees cling to roles out of fear rather than satisfaction; peek-a-boo jobs, where high applicant volumes cause listings to disappear within days; and anti-perks, the hidden downsides that make otherwise attractive roles problematic. She discusses the growing impact of AI on hiring, including employer hesitation to fill roles and rising distrust as AI-generated resumes become indistinguishable. The conversation covers pra…

Successful independent consulting depends on understanding your expertise and choosing the right consulting role for each engagement. Johanna Rothman, independent consultant since 1994 and author of 21 books including Successful Independent Consulting, uses the Consulting Role Grid from Champion, Kiel and McLendon (1990) to draw a sharp distinction between consultants and contractors: hands-on experts who take no responsibility for client growth are really contractors, not consultants. For experienced professionals building independent practice, this episode maps the practical mechanics of moving from hands-on work to trusted advisor engagements, structuring project-based pricing, and using content marketing through speaking and writing to attract clients who value what you know. Johanna argues that the brand new thing is usually a tactic, not a principle, and that a consultant's real value lies in framing problems and converging on unique solutions, not in processing speed or informa…

Bex Thomas spent 20 years in recruitment, earned a director-level promotion at a global firm, and realised the achievement felt hollow. That moment of anti-climax led to an eight-month sabbatical that became the catalyst for designing 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 afterwards. She describes the financial planning behind extended breaks, including the currency hack of spending time in Asia on Australian dollars. For experienced professionals sensing their current role no longer fits, Bex shares why the integration period after a sabbatical determines whether the break transforms your career or fades into a distant memory. She also covers how to negotiate leave when your company has no formal sabbatical policy, the p…

Margareta Krizova offers freelance advice for professional reinvention, sharing six questions that replace the business plan. After almost 30 years in M&A dealmaking, she sold her equity stake at 53 to rebuild as an independent freelancer. The conversation covers her six questions framework, invisible work (where freelancers fail to count their own hours), and why side hustles work as a low-risk transition from corporate employment. Wisepreneurs explores how independent professionals turn accumulated expertise into sustainable practice.

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 monetisation for experienced women leaving corporate careers. In this conversation, Janine explains ...

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 covers four inner operating systems for sustainable performance, diagnosing organisational issues by root cause, and why her book Upgrade maps the path from burnout to aligned practice. Wisepreneurs explores how independent professionals turn accumulated expertise into sustainable practice.

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, covering the practical mechanics of building advisory practices, keynote speaking, and consulting across...

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 Zipursky maps the precise patterns he has observed across 1,300 coaching engagements in 75 industri...

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 exit became a self-running portfolio spanning hospitality, executive education, and AI-powered softwar...

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 Orchestra, Miklós Pohl arrived in Australia as a nine-year-old refugee from Hungary during the 195...

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 businesses can learn from. Database reactivation uses custom AI trained on a business's products, servi...

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 consultants who think like CEOs rather than subject matter experts scale faster. Her Business Developme...

Experienced professionals who think deeply often feel invisible in workplaces that reward rapid responses over considered insight. Psychologist Meredith Fuller OAM, returning for her fourth Wisepreneurs conversation, draws 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 liminal space, the uncomfortable transition between who you were and who you are becoming, and reframes it as productive te...

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, developing a business model through trial and decades of learning when to say yes and when to say...

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 explains why diagnostic capabilities built over decades remain valuable despite AI How the tr...

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 professional and martial arts instructor to nature photographer to forest therapy guide built the observational...

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 Zapier automations generating social media content to the financial buffers that eliminated money str...

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 intellectual challenge sustains cognitive vitality rather than diminishing it. Michael reveals why mainstrea...

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 covers why pattern recognition from 20+ years of practice creates unbeatable market advantages, How career...

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 women to mistake a solvable physiological issue for burnout or professional decline. Amy explains w...

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 supports cognitive vitality and sustained professional output over a long independent career. ...

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 for professional women considering entrepreneurship after 60. She explains her 'job for now' concept for ...