Wisepreneurs | Independent Professionals Building Practice on Their Own Terms
Wisepreneurs is a podcast for experienced independent professionals building practice on their own terms.
Working lives now extend far beyond what anyone predicted.
Organisations need people who can navigate complexity and ambiguity — and increasingly, experienced professionals are choosing independent practice over employment.
Real conversations with experienced professionals — particularly women — about what that transition actually takes.
What we explore
- Positioning accumulated expertise as visible market presence
- Building independent practice through partnerships and collaborative networks
- AI tools that amplify rather than replace experienced professional judgment
- Navigating the transition from employment to independent practice
- Sustaining cognitive vitality for the long term
90+ episodes. Real conversations. No motivational fluff.
Your accumulated expertise is your competitive advantage. This podcast shows you how to systematically position it.
Hosted by Nigel Rawlins Find transcripts and more: wisepreneurs.au
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nigelrawlins/
Subscribe to The Wisepreneur newsletter: wisepreneurs.com.au/newsletter/
Episodes
93 episodes
Alisha Hook Career Coaching: Networks and Reputation in a Shifting Job Market
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 carr...
Johanna Rothman Independent Consulting: Principles That Outlast Every Trend
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...
Bex Thomas Intentional Career Breaks: Sabbaticals That Lead to Real Change
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 ...
Margareta Krizova Freelance Advice: Six Questions for Professional Reinvention
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 dealmak...
Janine Garner Expertise Monetisation: How Women Build Independent Consulting Practices
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 t...
Ella Zhang Expertise Building: Micro Habits for Experienced Consultants
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 Chines...
Ben Legg Portfolio Careers and Expertise Monetisation: From Google COO to Solopreneur
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, worke...
Michael Zipursky Consulting Success: Why Conversations Beat Marketing for Independent Consultants
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 spec...
Dante St James The Generalist Advantage: Building Systemised Independent Practices
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 a...
Miklós Pohl OAM Professional Longevity: Music, Medicine, and Sustained Practice Beyond 70
Dr Miklós Pohl OAM at 78 shows how expertise sustains professional longevity across medicine, chamber music, and publishingHis Wisepreneurs conversation explores how sustained creative engagement supports professional longevity an...
Darren Waldron Solopreneur AI Automation: How a Carpenter Built an Independent Technology Practice
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 experienc...
Melisa Liberman Solopreneur Business Development for Experienced Consultants
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 quanti...
Meredith Fuller OAM Invisible Expertise: How Introverted Professionals Articulate What They Know
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 o...
Mark Trinham Sustainable Creative Practice: 30 Years of Independent Work Without Business Training
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 sustai...
Jon Younger Professional Relevance: Positioning Expertise When AI Does the Routine Work
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...
Mayumi Kataoka Forest Therapy: Cognitive Recovery for Independent Professionals
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 ki...
Anna Burgess Yang Business Automation for Independent Solopreneur Practice
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, pro...
Michael Best Career Reinvention at 80: Complex Research and AI Tools After Five Decades in Medicine
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 endocanna...
Robert Vlach Professional Reputation: Why Your Good Name Beats Personal Branding
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 t...
Amy Alkon Menopause and Cognitive Performance: Protecting Your Professional Edge Through Science
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 ...
Sönke Ahrens Turning Professional Experience Into Lasting Insight with Smart Notes
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, Readw...
Sue Ellson Starting a Business After 60: LinkedIn, Financial Security, and Career Reinvention
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. ...
Laetitia Vitaud Career Reinvention After 60: Why Your 150 Relationships Beat Startup Capital
Episode OverviewCareer 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...
Laurie Smale Career Change After 50: From Junkyard to YouTube Creator at 79
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...
Tomáš Baránek Deep Reading as Professional Edge: Why Books Still Build Expertise in the AI Era
Deep reading as cognitive investment for independent professionals building expertise when AI floods the world with shallow content. Tomáš Baránek runs Melvil Publishing in Czechia, selecting nonfiction titles with long-term value f...