Episodes

Krystal Hille founded Hille House Publishing to help experienced professionals turn expert positioning into a book. For a professional who has spent decades accumulating expertise, writing the book only they could write is one of the strongest ways to make that expertise visible and findable. A former theatre director, Krystal reads authors the way she once read actors, through the body, the breath and the story. In this episode she walks through how she draws out an author's onlyness, the one thing only they can write, using the void to value exercise and stream-of-consciousness prompts, and how she maps authors to the four elements of earth, water, fire and air. She also takes a clear position on AI: she uses it to structure and summarise, but never to write, because what a reader wants is the human signal, the lived experience and unpredictable rhythm a machine cannot have. She covers the difference between done-for-you self-publishing and a traditional deal, and what changes…

Sarah Duran is a fractional COO who helps solo business owners extract their business from their own head and turn it into systems that actually work. She never planned to run her own business — she watched her parents do it and wanted none of the employee-shaped stress — but ten years in, she has built a practice she runs in under 40 hours a week and helps other solos do the same. This conversation covers the six-point audit framework she uses, why most capacity problems are actually clients-and-services problems in disguise, and what she means when she says the business advice that got you to six figures will bankrupt you at seven. Wisepreneurs explores how experienced independent professionals position accumulated expertise and build sustainable practice.

Liz Micik shows independent professionals what AI agents see when they read a website. I ran my own site through her free Signal Check and two of the four tools could not state a single checkable fact about what I do. Liz has spent 28 years on the structural side of websites, and she is clear that this is an evolution of that work rather than a new career. If you have a small site and assume it is fine, this is the conversation that will make you check.

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. Valentine Gatard argues that human agency becomes more valuable, not less, as AI takes over routine work — and that independent professionals who build community are building the single most important resource they have. A researcher, speaker, and host of the Work Narratives podcast, Valentine explains why French professionals refuse management roles (it's not about pay), why the future of work is about agency rather than automation, and why career independence is structural protection against commoditisation. 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 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 …

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 thinks in decades. His first was in the British Army as a Royal Engineer, building and blowing things up around the world while earning a civil engineering degree. His second was in big business: McKinsey strategy consultant, then Coca-Cola in Greece, Poland, and India, where he ended up running the entire India operation through a major turnaround. His third decade was big tech: COO of Google Europe, followed by CEO roles at several ad-tech companies. Now he runs The Portfolio Collective, a community helping professionals build portfolio careers combining multiple revenue streams. Ben argues that the future of work is portfolio-based, and that the infrastructure which corporations once provided — professional development, peer support, opportunity discovery — now needs to be rebuilt by independent professionals themselves. The Portfolio Collective provides that infrastructure through community, training, and a marketplace that connects portfolio professionals with opportuni…

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…

Dr Miklós Pohl OAM fled Hungary during the 1956 revolution at the age of nine, arrived in Australia speaking no English, and went on to become a plastic surgeon and the founder of the Australian Doctor's Orchestra. Now 78, he still practises medicine part-time at the Skin Health Institute in Melbourne and plays violin and viola daily. Miklós started the Australian Doctor's Orchestra in 1993 after noticing how many medical professionals at a music camp were also string players. The orchestra performs twice a year for medical charities, and the experience of working towards a concert has brought many doctors back to playing after decades away from their instruments. His book Music Is Medicine profiles 28 doctor-musicians and explores what amateur music making gives to people whose day jobs involve life-and-death decisions. The conversation covers his escape from Hungary, the instant community that music provides when travelling — he has played chamber music on four continents through …

Darren Waldron grew up on a farm near Hamilton, Victoria, qualified as a carpenter and joiner, and built a successful trade business before meeting his wife in Hawaii and eventually settling in Switzerland. He still works full-time as a senior construction manager while running his own AI automation company on the side, building custom chatbots that re-engage cold leads through SMS and WhatsApp. Darren's core insight came from being a frustrated customer: he would submit enquiry forms and never hear back, or receive three quotes and never get a follow-up call. He realised that businesses spend heavily on lead generation and then let those leads sit untouched in a database. His service, which he delivers on a pure performance basis — no results, no fee — mines that dormant database and converts forgotten contacts into qualified sales meetings. The conversation covers his two main offerings: database reactivation campaigns and speed-to-lead automation that engages new enquiries within…

Melisa Liberman returns to Wisepreneurs a year after episode 39. She is a coach for independent consultants, helping them build businesses that are sustainable rather than accidental — the distinction matters because most consultants are excellent at delivery and terrible at treating their own practice like a business. Melisa's core framework distinguishes working in the business (client delivery) from working on the business (lead generation, pricing, pipeline). She introduces her MAP process for lead generation — meet, add value, propose — and explains why the most effective path to new clients is not cold outreach but conversations sparked through speaking, channel partnerships, and diagnostic conversations that reveal blind spots the prospect did not know they had. She calls these get-your-foot-in-the-door offers: no charge, high value, and structured to turn a conversation into a next step. The conversation covers the business development formula she uses with clients to turn v…

Meredith Fuller has been a psychologist for over 45 years, and her focus has always been the person who feels different — what she calls the Martian standing in a field of earthlings. She runs salons and discussion groups for people who are introverted, sensitive, and think in symbols rather than bullet points. These are the people organisations overlook: the ones who need space to reflect, who feel what is happening in a room before they can name it, and whose best ideas arrive in the stillness after everyone else has stopped talking. Her message is direct — stop trying to be someone else. Learn to articulate what you bring, and teach the people around you how to get the best out of you. The conversation covers why the workplace still rewards the loudest and fastest, how introverts can name their invisible contribution without apologising for it, and why the rush to adopt AI without asking deeper questions mirrors every other bright-shiny-toy mistake organisations make. Meredith's …

Mark Trinham has made his living as a full-time artist for 30 years, starting with hand-drawn illustration before computers arrived in design studios, founding an environmental clothing company at 21, and eventually building a public art practice with collaborator Glen Romanis that has produced large-scale sculptures, nature play spaces, and an 80-metre artwork on the edge of the Simpson Desert. He has never had formal business training. Mark's work is driven by a deep connection to the natural environment. Growing up on a farm and spending childhood hours in the bush gave him a love of indigenous landscapes that now shapes every commission. His public artworks integrate into parks and housing developments through close collaboration with landscape architects, engineers, councils, and Traditional Owner groups — projects that can run for two to three years and span multiple stages over a decade. Beyond sculpture, Mark illustrates children's books, paints wildlife collector cards, pla…

Jon Younger returns to Wisepreneurs for his second appearance, three years after episode 12. Based in New York, Jon has spent decades studying the freelance revolution and the rise of independent work. He is the author of several books on the topic and writes the regular freelance revolution column for Forbes. Jon argues that the future of work is not about whether AI will replace professionals, but about how experienced professionals position what only they bring: pattern recognition built over decades, judgment that cannot be extracted from training data, and the ability to ask the question the client does not know they need answered. The conversation covers the talent and wisdom framework Jon uses to advise experienced independents on staying relevant, why the word "retirement" increasingly does not fit, and the structural shift in how organisations access expertise — moving from full-time hires to fractional engagements. Jon also shares his personal practices for sustaining inte…

Mayumi Kataoka moved from Japan to Australia on a working holiday visa in 1997, worked in IT sales, ran a martial arts school, and spent a decade photographing Australian eucalypts before discovering the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku — forest bathing — and recognising it as her life's work. She is now a certified forest therapy guide based in Sydney, taking individuals and corporate groups into the bush for three-hour walks that cover barely a kilometre and a half. Mayumi explains the science behind forest therapy, which originated in Japan in the 1990s with studies measuring cortisol reduction through saliva tests. The Japanese Forest Therapy Society has since built a body of research linking time in natural environments to improved immune function, reduced stress, and greater cognitive clarity. She describes her guided walks as a rhythm of slow movement, sensory exercises, and stillness — starting with eyes-closed sensory tuning, moving through invitations to notice light on le…

Anna Burgess Yang returned to the podcast after a summer that changed everything: she was diagnosed with a benign brain tumour and underwent surgery in July 2025, pausing her business for two months. She had prepared for this without knowing it — years of financial discipline, a deeply systemised workflow, and a network of friends and colleagues who stepped in with guest posts and logistical support. Anna is a FinTech writer and solopreneur operations expert who builds automation pipelines connecting ChatGPT, Zapier, Airtable, Trello, and Buffer. Her blog posts feed into a system that generates LinkedIn drafts, categorises content, and pre-schedules social media — all with her editing touch at the end. During recovery she used dictation-to-blog automation so that all she had to do was speak into her phone and the rest happened through a chain of tools and people. The conversation covers what a resilient solo business actually looks like: cash reserves, critical-vs-non-critical tool …

Dr Michael Best practised medicine for over 50 years — first in medical administration, then as a GP in Melbourne — before a routine phone call during COVID introduced him to the endocannabinoid system, a biological network present in every human body that he had never learned about in medical school. He was 75. He has now spent five years researching medicinal cannabis, worked in the field for three and a half years, and is writing a book called The Science Beneath Medicinal Cannabis under the mentorship of Hazel Edwards. Michael explains why an internal system discovered only in 1988 — one that regulates pain, sleep, anxiety, and immune function — remains largely unknown to most doctors. The endocannabinoid system is ancient, present in every animal with a backbone and likely in every dinosaur that walked the earth. Medicinal cannabis acts on this system, but because the plant cannot be patented and the multi-million-dollar trials required for formal regulatory approval have not be…

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…