Ep 36. The come-back episode: Why I’m Back, What Changed, and What’s Next

After a six-month pause, the Career-Integrated Entrepreneur™  podcast is back.

In this episode, I’m sharing why I stepped away, what shifted during that season, and why Career-Integrated Entrepreneur™ is returning exactly as it is - just more grounded.

We’re talking about career optionality, income security, and what it really means to build something of your own without burning out, blowing things up, or buying into the “escape the 9-5” narrative.

This conversation sets the tone for the year ahead and the direction of this podcast moving forward.

If you’re a mid-career corporate woman who wants income options beyond a paycheck, then you’re in the right place.

Private Accelerator 1:1 coaching spots are now open. Details below 👇

Links + Resources:

➡️ The Corporate-Integrated Entrepreneur™ Private Accelerator: A 90-day private coaching experience to turn your expertise into a clear, sellable 1:1 Offer & repeatable sales system that is built alongside your corporate career.

➡️ 90-Minute Side Business Strategy Intensive: A focused 1:1 session to help you work through obstacles, refine your approach, and move your side business forward.

➡️ The Side Business Idea Finder: A mini-course with videos and a step-by-step workbook to help you solidify a side business idea that fits your career, time, and energy. Join the waitlist for early access at the founding member price.

➡️ FREE Side Business Decision Filter: A FREE practical self-assessment tool for mid-career corporate women to decide if an online coaching side business actually makes sense – before choosing the wrong one.

➡️ Subscribe to the Corporate-Integrated Entrepreneur™ Sunday Newsletter: Get practical, corporate-safe strategies to turn your expertise into a second income stream, in 5-10 hours/week, without burnout or hustle culture, delivered to your inbox.

➡️ Connect with me on LinkedIn

Transcript

 Welcome to the Career Integrated Entrepreneur podcast. Lead podcast for corporate women building a side hustle coaching business with intention and creating that financial runway while still thriving in the nine to five. I'm your host, Cindy Excell. Each week we talk strategy, mindset, and the real behind the scenes of what it takes to grow a business in the margins without burning out or blowing up your career.

Now let's dive in. Hi friend. Happy 2026. If you are brand new here, a big warm welcome and if you have been a long-term listener and also a big welcome back. It's really good to be here again. Now, if you have been listening to my podcast for a while, you might have noticed that I've gone quiet for some time.

The last episode of this podcast was published on the 30th of July and the last six months I took a break from this podcast. The second half of last year, 2025 brought a lot of life and career shifts for me. Some planned some. Unexpected and I needed some space to think, to reflect and then to get really honest with myself in terms of what business model I want to continue with and what I wanted the next chapter of my business look like.

The last six months were a life and a career recalibration for me. And in today's episode, I want to have a heart-to-heart chat with my audience, and I want to take you behind the scene of what's changed, what didn't, and why this podcast is coming back now in this way because after six months away from this podcast.

I realized that I don't actually need a rebrand of this podcast because I am fully stunned by the career integrated entrepreneur brand, but what I needed was a regrounding. I needed to get it clear again. I needed a space to reground so that I can speak clearly and, uh, share my journey with my audience again here.

So back in July, I shared on LinkedIn and on this podcast that I was wrapping up my 19 years corporate career in financial services, and I was going all in in my business. And at that time that was true. Back then, there were no roles in the industry. If you knew my corporate background, I am a certified financial planner and a senior financial advisor, private wealth manager, et cetera.

So back then there was no roles in this industry I was interested in. I turned down. I think three, maybe even four job opportunities because nothing felt aligned. I have been in the industry for over 19 years, nearly 20, and I've been doing the same role for very long, and pretty much I closed my eyes. I knew how to do my job.

If you can resonate. So back then, it was true. That I was going to go all in because there was nothing on the market that I was interested. And then there was this one opportunity came up. I, in fact, this is probably a story for another day. I nearly missed this opportunity. When this opportunity came up, it felt different.

It wasn't just a job because I knew exactly what a type of corporate job I would've said yes to. In order for me to stay in corporate, it was actually the business model, business structure, the long-term pathway in the firm, and for things that matter to me to stay in corporate. This role seems to have all that factors that I would say yes to in order for me to stay in corporate.

And not only that, before I started this new job, I spoke to the CEO of the business and I had a number of interactions with the senior leader, um, in this business and the passion they have about this business even after 10, 20, nearly 30 years, building this business is just contagious. Now, I'm not going to go into all the details here about this job because that's not the point of this episode, but what I do want to say is this.

I choose to accept the role because it brought me back into alignment with what I actually believe. It didn't actually take me away from my coaching business. I was very transparent at, um, upfront, and they were also very acceptable of my coaching business, my side of business as well. So this actually brought me back into the career integrated entrepreneurship.

It put me back into this land, and this is important to talk about because in the current online business world, there are so many, so many anti corporate noises out there. You will hear all these big culture talk about, you know, quit nine to five, escaping your corporate job, go all in in your business, bet on yourself, burn the boat, et cetera.

If you are early on in your career, if you are in your twenties or even early thirties, for example, if you have no financial commitments, you have no people in your life who are dependent on you financially, maybe that device works because while you are young, you basically. Can't afford to taking some level of risk with your career to test out, you know, what works, what doesn't.

But if you are a mid-career corporate woman, in my opinion, this kind of advice is actually quite irresponsible because at this stage of our lives, our decisions don't just impact ourselves anymore. The impact our family, the impact of financial stability, the impact that either impact our nervous system.

And in addition, if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you are already driven, capable, and ambitious with your career, you probably already highly likely build something meaningful. Your career. Your career, and you might not even want to quit your job because it has taken you years of years of hard work of, um, you know, building up your accreditation, your credibility in the industry so that you get where you are today in your career.

So you might not just want to throw everything away, but you also want to build something of your own. You might just want start with having some options, or you may not be. Ready to scale a business aggressively, and that is completely okay this last six months, although I took a break from the podcast, but.

I have been still very active on LinkedIn and I had many, many conversations with many women who already have a successful career. Throughout these conversations, one thing has become more and more clear to me, which was for many of mid-career corporate women. It's not that they outgrew that corporate role, it's more like they have outgrown depending on where income stream, depending on where employers, depending on getting the paycheck from their employer.

Now looking back on my own business journey for the last five, nearly six years, I have been wearing these two hats working full-time as a senior financial advisor and building a startup business online. That experience has actually changed how I see security, career ambition, and a career success during these last five, six years.

There was a period of time that I did want to. Escape corporate or replace my corporate income for, you know, what are the reasons that I had back then. When I operate a business from that way, when I built my business from that mindset, it didn't feel good. It actually felt a lot more pressure. I felt a deadline.

I felt a rush. I felt that if I haven't reached a certain point in the set timeframe, it felt like a failure. That didn't feel good. So this last six month break, this season, I would say it has clarified what I don't want to build. I don't want to build a business that is based on urgency, if that makes sense.

I don't want to build a brand based on resentment towards corporate life or a life slash business that requires constant proving and it actually clarified what I do wanna stand for. Which is career optionality, income, stability, and personal growth. So I want to build a business not from the angle of escaping nine to five, but from a point from the perspective of future proving my life and my career.

I start my online coaching business in fitness coaching in 2020. So over the last five, nearly coming up six years, my business has also evolved a lot. In the beginning, I had tried everything. I tried one-on-one private coaching. I tried group coaching. I tried all sorts of business models, even digital courses, et cetera.

Back then, each of these business models seems to be natural. So one step leads to the next. On paper it looks logical, and also that's what the online business world and those business coaches, you know, tells you to do. Those days. The problem wasn't the ideas, it wasn't those business model itself. The problem was that back then I was literally trying to do.

All of these things all at once whilst still working full time. I was try to build a business like someone else who had unlimited time and energy, like who did not have a full-time job and did not even have a family commitment. So those multiple offers, those multiple business models, those multiple.

Marketing platforms and the strategies, honestly, while you are working full-time, it just doesn't work. It's not because of those model doesn't work itself. It was because my reality, because when you try to do all of those things at once, it just didn't match my reality. And over time I realized something that is actually, you know, really important.

Just because a strategy works for somewhere else, it does not necessarily mean that it works for this season of your life because when you have a full-time job, when you have, you know, family commitments, when you have to drive your kids around for the activities on the weekends after school, et cetera.

You can't just build a business as if somebody who didn't have any of these commitments, because where your focus, where your time, where your energy you can actually give to your business is very, very different from somebody who did not have any of these commitments. That's why for the last about time months or so, I had been really, really try to come up with a business model that works for someone like me.

So my business these days look very different now. I strip off a lot of noise. I strip off a lot of complexity, and I only focus on one offer at this stage, which is my high ticket, one-on-one private coaching offer. I'm actually relaunching that. I call that as a private accelerator at the moment in January.

And I also reduced my platform to LinkedIn only, and I'm also testing out different marketing strategies in this new year, 2026 is that I used to post five days a week on LinkedIn and I used to do a lot of comments on people's posts. So I'm also try different strategy and I'll come back share with you in due course about how that's working with me because I'm not doing any of those at the moment.

I also limit to only doing two things in my marketing. Right now, I'm sticking to my podcast. I'm sticking to less posting on LinkedIn and having more conversations instead. And because this shift of the focus and the shift of the business model, I feel that now when I work on my business, I actually feel energized again.

It, I'm not dragging. At nighttime and force myself to sit in front of a computer to write content to, you know, do whatever I need to do with my business. I don't do that anymore. Instead, I'm intentionally planning out every week what I need to do and every day what I need to do so that I don't have to spend many, many hours every day on my business.

That's why I'm very passionate about teaching mid-career corporate women to do what I do. I'm not teaching them how to create. I am teaching them how to build career options with limited time they have and do it in a way that feels good and is sustainable. If there's one takeaway I want you to remember from this part is that stop believing more is better.

It's actually quite opposite. Simplicity is the winning formula to build a start business while you're working in your full-time job and with family commitments. I also want to spend a few minutes talking about something that sits in my heart. And, uh, something I truly believe and something that sits at the core of this podcast as well, which is what Career Integrated Entrepreneur really means.

Being a career-integrated entrepreneur means that you build a business alongside your career, not instead of it, so you are not actually waiting for the day you quit, to start thinking differently. You also not building this business from the angle as if your current career is a mistake that you need to escape from.

That's not what we do here. Instead, you use your skills, your experience, and the personal transformation you have had, and you turn them into a online business that can create income options without blowing up your reputation, your accreditation at your career. This is about building a business that works with your professional identity, not against it.

And I also want to be very clear that what career integrated entrepreneur is not. It is not endless hustle culture, although I call my business as hustle with heels. But in this context, the hustle means hustle with intention. That means you might to spend an hour per day on your business, but it's not like, you know, working 20, 40 hours a week.

That's not the type of household culture we talk about here. It is also not building business in secrecy. If you have been following me for a while, you would have known that I'm very against building a set of business behind your employee's back. So this is not what a career-integrated entrepreneurship is about.

It is absolutely not building a business at 2:00 AM in the morning, feeling exhausted and burning out because that's not the right strategy and that's not. Building business with the intention. So career integrated entrepreneurship is really about integration. There is this misconception I hear from people from time to time that they think job security equals income security.

In my view, these are two completely different concepts. You can't have a very good salary, a senior title, a respect role in corporate, but still the income is ultimately linked to decisions that are made by other people. The decisions that you can't fully control and the decisions may not even be controlled by other people in your company either.

That's just reality, and our careers are changing faster than most people realize. Our roles evolve, the company structure shift and the business model change, and the idea of completely depend on what income from what employer, one title will carry you for the next 20, 30, 40 years. That just don't exist.

And for most people, that's not realistic anymore. That's why I'm so passionate about why I believe every corporate woman. Every corporate man and a woman should consider a second income stream because you absolutely do not need to feel unhappy in your job in order to start building a second income stream.

Again, this is not about escaping nine to five. This is not about you dissatisfied with your corporate job. It is definitely not about hitting your corporate life because the reality is where your entire sense of income security is tied to one pay sleep. You actually don't have as much power as you think, even if you are top performer in your job.

Even if you love your job, even if your salary is high. And your job is, you know, in whatever context you believe is secure. Because when something is not fully in your control, you lose the power. That's why a second income stream changes something fundamental. It actually, in my experience and in my client's experience, it actually creates confidence that isn't attached to one employer, one title and one decision cycle that you don't control.

The biggest shift in my view, isn't just a financial, it's actually psychological because when you have options, you show up differently in your career, in your corporate role, you are more grounded, you are less reactive, and you make clearer decisions. Not because you plan to leave anytime soon, but because you could if you needed to or if you wanted to.

That changes how you negotiate, how you show up, how you speak up, how you lead. And you are no longer operating from fear or you know, pure dependency. And this is where I think conversations often get misunderstood. A second income stream isn't actually any emergency exit. It is not some panic button you press to leave your copy job.

It is actually like a strategic buffer, if that makes sense because. It's something that you build, that you have a hundred percent ownership of, and you build on the background while you're still performing well, because that's your job in your career. But all it does is that it gives you flexibility, it gives you space, not pressure.

When you look back your career over the longer term, that actually matters more than any single promotion or pay rise, in my opinion. Because the most powerful decision you can make in your career is choice. And that choice, it does not come from any employer. It actually comes from you, and you have the power to create that choice for yourself.

Now, let me wrap up this episode by. Sharing what this podcast is going to be moving forward. This podcast is for corporate women who are established in their careers, who are also thoughtful about their future. It's for me, career corporate women who don't want to blow things up, but they also don't want to drift.

Here we are going to continue talking about building income options, create second income stream alongside a demanding professional corporate life. Not one day, not after you quit, but in the seasons you are in right now. We will continue to talk about how to think differently about job security, income security.

And how to build your career options without burning bridges and how to create something of your own without losing your credibility or stability. And this podcast isn't here to tell you to leave your job quite opposite. It is here to show you how to expand beyond it. It's here to help you make decisions from a position of strength, not panic, not urgency.

So if you have been feeling that a quiet pool, you are exactly where you are meant to be. Starting this month in January, I am taking on a few private coaching spot and I have the link of the details in the show, not below. If you're interested, click on the link. It is a upgrade application. I'm only taking on the private coaching clients via application only if this is something you are interested or even just find out what this about and how this is going to work.

Feel free to send through the application or DM me on LinkedIn at Cindy Excell, and I would love to hear from you. I'm looking forward to what we are going to build this year with intention, with strategy, and on our own terms. I'll see you in the next episode.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Career Integrated Entrepreneur Podcast. If this episode sparked something in you or gave you the little push you needed, I'd love for you to hit follow, leave a quick review. Or shared with a friend who's also interested in building an online business on their terms.

Your financial runway starts now, and I'm so glad you are here. I will catch you next week.