Blog Posts

Is your inner entrepreneur getting louder?

There’s a type of executive I keep meeting in corporate.

High capability. Strong commercial brain. Good operator. Calm under pressure.

And quietly, they’re getting restless.

Not because they resent their boss.
Not because they can’t handle the job.
Not because they want to disappear to a beach somewhere.

It’s usually something more specific than that.

They want to build something for themselves.

They want more control over the direction.
More control over the decisions.
More control over how much of their life the job gets to take.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

In a lot of cases, you haven’t lost motivation. You’ve just outgrown the box someone else put you in.

The word that puts people off

The word entrepreneur can send people in the wrong direction.

A lot of people hear it and think it means reckless.
Jumping in with no plan.
Throwing away a good career to take a wild swing.

That’s not how I see it.

The executives who make this shift well are not careless. They’re usually the opposite. They’re thoughtful. Commercial. Measured. They’re willing to take a calculated risk for a better outcome.

And here’s the obvious truth that often gets missed.

You’re already taking a risk in your career.

A restructure you can’t control is a risk.
Politics that change things overnight is a risk.
A ceiling you can’t move beyond, no matter how good you are, is a risk.

So the real question is not whether staying is safe and leaving is risky.

The real question is this:

Which risk gives you more control?

Most people ask the wrong question

When someone starts thinking about leaving employment, they often get stuck on the wrong question.

They ask:

Could I build my own business as a professional advisor?

That’s not really the question.

Of course you could.

If you’ve led teams, solved commercial problems, influenced stakeholders, made decisions under pressure, and delivered outcomes, then yes, you could do the work.

That part is not the mystery.

The better question is more practical:

How would I manage the risk of starting from scratch and getting my first few clients on board?

That’s the question worth answering.

Because once you ask that, the whole thing gets clearer.

An advisory business is not a gamble. It’s a process.

A lot of experienced executives look at advisory and treat it like a leap.

I don’t think that’s the right frame.

An advisory business is not a risk. It’s a process.

And in plain English, that process has three parts.

1. Connect

You need to start the right conversations with the right people.

Without conversations, nothing else matters.

This is the engine room of the whole thing.

A lot of people overcomplicate this part because they imagine they need a big audience, a huge brand, or some polished personal profile before they begin.

They don’t.

What they need is a reliable way to get into conversation with people they can actually help.

That is where traction starts.

2. Convert

You need to turn some of those conversations into paid work.

This is where many experienced executives feel awkward at first.

Not because they can’t do it.
Because they label it as sales.

And once they label it as sales, they start imagining pressure, scripts, persuasion tactics, and all the usual nonsense.

But conversion in advisory is much simpler than that.

It’s not high-pressure selling.

It’s presenting a business case.

It’s being able to say:

Here’s the problem.
Here’s what it’s costing.
Here’s the opportunity.
Here’s how I’d help solve it.
And here’s why the upside is worth far more than my fee.

That’s it.

When you can explain your value clearly, and tie it to commercial outcomes, conversion becomes a lot less uncomfortable.

3. Consult and retain

Then comes delivery.

This is the part most senior people are already built for.

Diagnosing issues.
Building plans.
Leading execution.
Managing stakeholders.
Keeping things moving.
Helping clients make better decisions.

That is already in your wheelhouse.

In most cases, delivery is the easiest part.

The challenge is not whether you can do the work.

The challenge is whether you have a process to create the conversations and convert the opportunities that let you do the work consistently.

That’s the whole game.

Connect.
Convert.
Consult and retain.

The mistake people make about income risk

A lot of good people stop here because they tell themselves, I don’t want to gamble my income.

Fair enough.

I don’t think you have to.

The mistake is thinking there are only two options:

• Stay employed forever
• Quit and have a go

There’s a third option.

Research the process that reduces the risk.

If you can create a consistent flow of the right conversations each week, you can improve conversion.

If you improve conversion, you can build your first few clients.

If you deliver well, you can retain them and grow.

That is not reckless.

That is not romantic.

That is not blind risk.

That is learning how the model works before you make a bigger move.

A practical self-check

If you’ve been doing some quiet research and thinking about advisory, here are three questions worth asking yourself.

1. Do I want more control, or do I just want a different job?

This matters.

Advisory suits people who want ownership, not just novelty.

If all you want is a change of scenery, then a new executive role may be enough.

If what you really want is more say over the work, the direction, the upside, and the shape of your week, that’s different.

2. Am I willing to be consistent before I feel confident?

This is where people get caught.

They wait to feel confident before they act.

But in the early stages of any business, confidence usually comes after consistency, not before it.

You do the work.
You build the rhythm.
You learn the process.
Then confidence starts to show up.

3. Do I want to work with interesting clients and solve meaningful problems?

Because that’s the real appeal for a lot of people.

Not status.
Not titles.
Not more meetings.

Real work.
Real problems.
Real impact.

If your answer is yes, advisory can be a very strong fit.

If your answer is no, staying where you are may be the better move.

You do not need to become someone else

This is the part I think matters most.

You do not need to become more entrepreneurial.

If you’ve already led at a high level, you’ve already got the goods.

You already know how to think commercially.
You already know how to make decisions.
You already know how to carry responsibility.
You already know how to create outcomes.

The shift is not about becoming a different person.

It’s about changing the lane you’re playing in.

From employee outcomes to owner outcomes.
From someone else’s priorities to your own priorities.
From someone else’s call to your call.

And you can take that as far as you want to take it.

Don’t ignore the itch. Don’t romanticise it either.

If that entrepreneurial itch has been getting louder, pay attention to it.

But don’t turn it into fantasy.

And don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

Treat it properly.

Get clear on the process.
Understand how to manage the risk.
Work out whether the model fits how you want to work and live.

That is a much better way to think about the move than asking whether you were “born to be an entrepreneur”.

You don’t need a personality transplant.

You need a clear process.

If you’re still in corporate and you’re feeling a bit flat, it’s probably worth thinking about why.

A lot of really capable executives aren’t bored because they don’t care. They’re flat because they’re too far from the outcomes.

You can do great work. Make smart calls. Lead great people. And still not feel the payoff.

The system adds distance.

Process. Stakeholders. Shifting priorities. And the result becomes delayed, diluted, or worst case, handed off.

If you genuinely love business, that distance kills the best part: cause and effect.

That’s why business advisory is so much fun.

Advisory removes the distance. You’re sitting with the decision making. You’re working on real constraints. And the work becomes simple in the best way.

You find the constraint. Pull the lever. Sequence the moves. Make sure they follow through.

It’s not motivation. It’s applied judgment.

The levers that move most businesses

Different industries, but the same mechanics.

1) Pricing and margins Busy doesn’t pay. Margins pay. Fix margins and the pressure changes completely.

2) Follow-up and conversion Most leads aren’t lost to competitors. They’re lost to silence.

3) Roles and accountability If the owner is a bottleneck, the system stays fragile.

4) Delivery standards Rework and scope creep quietly destroy profit and morale.

5) Cash flow timing Profit on paper doesn’t always cover wages on Friday.

A strong advisor doesn’t try to fix all five at the same time. They pick the first lever that makes everything else easier – and then sequence the rest.

Why it stays meaningful

The outcomes aren’t theoretical.

You see them land in real time.

The cash account stabilises. The week becomes manageable. The team starts performing better. The client stops carrying everything alone.

That visible change is why this work stays interesting.

Paul, who’s in our network, told me about a client who was struggling. They worked on margin control and driving sales. He had a record month in January, but that’s not the best part. The best part is every month of financial year 2026 has been their best month ever. The client isn’t weighed down by financial pressure anymore.

Or Tony in our network. He worked with a builder who was doing big hours and never home. They worked on team and culture and cost controls. It freed up so much time the guy took a couple of months off and did a long caravan trip around Australia with his family. That’s from someone who couldn’t get home because he was always on the tools.

If you’re still in corporate and you’re built for outcomes, working with clients isn’t a wild pivot.

It’s the same core skills you already have. It’s just more personal when you fix things by doing what you do best.

Leaving corporate is sold as a clean break.

Walk out. Exhale. Start the next chapter.

In real life, it rarely looks like that.

It’s more like this:

The job ends. But the rhythm doesn’t. And your brain doesn’t get the memo.

That in-between phase is what I call the corporate afterlife.

Not because it’s dramatic. Because it’s weirdly normal. And if you don’t expect it, you’ll misread it.

Phase 1: Relief

At first it feels amazing.

You sleep. Your shoulders drop. You stop checking your phone like it owes you money.

It’s the holiday you didn’t know you needed.

And it’s real. You earned it.

Phase 2: Silence

Then comes the part no one warns you about.

Silence.

Not “no meetings” silence. Identity silence.

You realise your calendar wasn’t just logistics. It was structure. Routine. Relevance.

In corporate, problems came to you. People needed you. Decisions found their way onto your desk.

Then you leave… and none of that happens automatically anymore.

And a quiet question shows up:

Am I still useful?

Phase 3: The wobble (weeks 6–12)

This is where smart people do dumb things.

Not because they’re reckless. Because they hate the feeling of flat ground.

Confidence dips. You feel out of the loop. You miss being needed (even if you don’t miss the politics).

So you do what humans do when they don’t like uncertainty:

You chase momentum.

You say yes to things that feel like movement. Not because they’re right. Because they’re loud.

And the two default moves are predictable:

Run back to corporate (even though you left for a reason)
Reinvent yourself completely (even though you don’t need to)

Here’s the truth.

Most people don’t need a dramatic reinvention. They need a new outlet.

Why advisory fits (so often)

If you spent 15–20 years in senior roles, your asset isn’t your title.

It’s judgement. It’s pattern recognition. It’s simplifying messy situations. It’s having calm, honest conversations. It’s helping people act on what they already know.

That’s advisory.

And it’s getting more valuable, not less.

Because AI is speeding up admin and analysis.

Drafting. Summaries. Research. Organisation. All improving.

But it can’t replace:

Trust. Accountability. Hard conversations. Context. Reading the room. Helping someone make the call when it’s not clear.

That part stays human.

The other myth: “I need a big online brand”

A lot of post-corporate people assume the next step requires:

Personal branding. Content every day. A complicated marketing machine.

Not true.

Advisory doesn’t start with content.

It starts with relationships.

The best early wins I’ve seen don’t come from a big splash.

They come from quiet starts:

A coffee. A catch-up. A simple question:

“How’s business? Are you up or down on last year?”

That’s it.

A simple self-check

If you’re in the corporate afterlife, ask yourself:

Do I still want to use my business skills?
Do I want a relationship-based profession?
Do I want more freedom without disconnecting from meaningful work?

If yes, advisory isn’t a left-field pivot.

It’s often the most logical continuation of what you’ve been doing for years.

Just with a better week. And a clearer purpose.

The corporate afterlife is normal. The silence is normal. The wobble is normal.

The goal isn’t to stop working.

It’s to keep contributing — in a way that actually fits.

Freedom is one of the most over used words in the world of Coaching.

Most people selling “freedom” are actually selling escape.

No boss. Work from anywhere. Big income fast.
And usually, no plan.

If you’re a capable person. If you’re in a senior role.
That pitch shouldn’t tempt you at all.

Because you’re not trying to stop working.

You’re trying to stop burning time in a job that’s building somebody else’s business, not your own.

You want out of the long hours.
Out of the politics.
Out of targets that shift depending on who’s having a week.

So when I say freedom, I’m not talking about “no work”.

I’m talking about clean work.

A week you can protect.
A role you can hold.
An income you can plan around.

And in advisory, freedom shows up in four flavours.

—

### 1) Time freedom (and it only comes from structure)

Time freedom is the obvious one.

It’s work that doesn’t come at the expense of family, fishing, golf, the school run, or your life.

But time freedom doesn’t come from motivation.

It comes from structure.

When delivery runs on a cadence, your week has shape.

Fortnightly sessions.
Ninety minutes.
Focused.

That one detail matters because it kills the “always on” trap.

If the model requires constant availability, that’s not freedom.

That’s self-employed stress.

—

### 2) Role freedom (the line most smart people cross without noticing)

Role freedom is where smart people get burnt.

They leave corporate. They start helping businesses.
And within six months they’re doing all the implementation.

Chasing tasks. Fixing the mess. Becoming extra staff.

That’s not advisory.

That’s a job that will chew you up.

In this model you stay in the advisor seat.

You diagnose.
You advise.
You coach.
You drive accountability.

The client is shown how to implement using worksheets and templates.
Then you coach them to complete it.

That line protects your headspace.
And it protects your week.

—

### 3) Location freedom (not travel photos, actual choice)

Location freedom isn’t about looking busy from a beach.

It’s about choice.

Face-to-face or online.
Local clients or anywhere in the world.

It means you can live where you want to live.
And when life changes, your business doesn’t collapse.

Lana’s a real example.

She runs her advisory business online and works between Australia and Canada depending on the time of year.

When she’s around, she works face-to-face as well.

Same work. Same delivery. No drama.

That’s a model that isn’t tied to a building.

—

### 4) Financial freedom (stability, not a “big month”)

Let’s not pretend money doesn’t matter.

Financial freedom isn’t one big month.

It’s stability.

It’s knowing there’s a base.
It’s being able to plan your life like an adult.

Not being held hostage by one employer, one bonus cycle, or the next restructure you can’t control.

That’s why the retainer model matters.

Clients pay a monthly retainer based on level of service.

Average ongoing fees sit around $1,500 to $3,500 a month.
Roughly $25,000 a year per client.

Those numbers aren’t to impress you.

They’re to make the model real.

Because once you can see what a client is worth annually, you can see how many you actually need.
And what that means for your week.

Now here’s the honest part most people avoid:

Year one isn’t high income for low effort.

Year two might be.
But year one isn’t.

Year one requires confidence, self-reliance, and following a system.

But once you build the base, it gets easier — because you’re no longer starting from zero every month.

—

### The freedom test

If you’re considering advisory, ask yourself four questions:

1. Can I protect my week, or will this demand constant availability?
2. Can I hold the advisor role, or will I slip into over-servicing and become their staff?
3. Can I build delivery that works online and in-person, or will I be trapped in one location?
4. Can I build stable income, or am I swapping one kind of stress for another?

That’s freedom that holds.

Not a feeling.
Not a fantasy.

A model.

Business consulting often gets overcomplicated.

And complexity doesn’t help business owners – it slows them down.

Our job?

Make the complex simple. And the simple compelling.

That’s why we use models. Visual tools that cut through the fog.

Take leadership and culture.

Most owners think their team’s the problem – slack, lazy, hard work to manage.

But the truth is, teams usually reflect the leadership.

And that’s confronting.

We see four types of teams:

1. Compliant – do what’s asked, nothing more.

2. Complacent – social club vibes.

3. Combative – not happy to be there, and everyone knows it.

4. Collaborative – the goal.

What makes the difference?

Two levers: performance measures and engagement.

No measures, no engagement – you get complacency or combat.

Clear measures without engagement – you get compliance.

Put both in place – you build collaboration.

That’s how culture changes.

That’s how leadership improves.

Every job has its highs and lows. But how do you tell the difference if a low is something deeper that means it’s time for a change?

So here are 5 red flags that I’ve seen and experienced that are signs that it might be time to think about leaving your current job and doing something new…

First one’s obvious…

1. You’re married to the job
   It feels like you spend every waking minute working, or thinking about work. It’s your number one excuse for everything… “I’ve got work” so you’re missing out on family and friends and life because you’re basically married to your job. When your job basically owns you, it’s time to think about what you’re missing out on…
2. You’re not challenged in your role
   You’ve climbed the ladder and you’re well established and any crisis is the same crisis that you’ve managed to get through many times before so you know it’s not really a crisis and you look at others with less experience and understanding of how things work and know that you can run rings around the whole system. It’s just not a challenge any more. You’re bored…
3. You’ve stopped thinking big
   When you started your career you knew you had high capability and could go all the way with your ideas and passion. But at some point you lost that ability to think big because of all the hurdles people put up who don’t have your vision. You figured out they’d rather block you than support you so you’ve stopped with the big ideas…
4. You dread going to work
   You know your heart’s not in it and you’re basically doing it for the money which feels a bit shallow… but you justify it by saying things like “I’m doing it for my family” which means you’re being a martyr… and somehow that it makes it ok stay in a career that you resent and the reason you stay in it is because you’ve convinced yourself that you have no other options. So you dread going to work.
5. You’ve made it to number 5
   You wouldn’t have listened to this if you weren’t looking for reasons why what you’re doing at the moment is not giving you what you want. Your business skills are valuable and there’s a whole other world of how to make money in a career that doesn’t mean what you’re doing at the moment is the only option…

So, if you feel like it’s time to think about options, check out an info pack on what being a business advisor to small businesses is all about… you might hate it, but at least you’ve made a start… and there’s always the possibility that you might love it too!

Simple.

You don’t show up empty-handed.

At Trusted Advisor Network, we’ve built a complete library of tools, training, templates and ready-to-use presentations – so our advisors walk in with the gear to deliver real wins, right from day one.

Think of it like a business performance system that covers everything:

1. Profit margins and cashflow

2. Hiring, leading and keeping great people

3. Sales systems and follow-up

4. Marketing strategies that actually convert

5. Quarterly planning and tracking results

Every session comes with a proven workbook.

Every workbook comes with a structured path to action.

You don’t have to start from scratch and your clients don’t either.

It’s the difference between “knowing your stuff” and being able to prove it in front of a client.

That’s what gives our advisors the confidence to grow fast and get results that stick.

So if you’ve ever thought about taking your business background and turning it into something bigger – this is how you make it real.

Take a look and ask yourself: what could you do with this in your hands?

What Happens When You Leave Corporate?

Especially after you’ve been with a place for a long time… what’s different, what’s noticeable?

Let me tell you what I noticed in myself that I’ve seen in other who have left corporate to become a self-employed business advisor…

First thing is FORMALITY… the way you communicate changes. When people quit the office, they realise there’s no need for being so measured and “on point” the whole time.

That’s a realisation that I hear a lot is that people realise how uptight they’d been and how much more relaxed their communication style can be when they’re not trying to match the behaviour that their role or their company seem to expect.

It’s like there’s a lot less processing and filtering of what they say… so that’s the 1st thing I’ve noticed. Formality, not really any need for it any more.

Second thing is people talk about the FLEXIBILITY of being in control of your own time.

And the way they talk about it is with a sense of awe and wonder and disbelief.

They’re like, “I dropped the kids at school and then I went to the hardware store to get something for the house and I didn’t even feel guilty”.

They simply can’t believe that these simple day-to-day things were completely unavailable to them for so long…

They are literally amazed at how entrenched they let themselves get to in their corporate life while this whole other life existed outside the bubble that they’d put themselves in!

Third thing I’ve noticed is CONFIDENCE… it’s like they rediscover who they are as a person.

I think what it is comes from once the status of their role falls away, they see themselves as a person again that can completely be themselves.

It doesn’t happen straight away, but we have conferences every 6 months and I literally see a happier, more energetic and brighter person when they discover that they can reinvent themselves as the person they were before their personas got machined into the corporate warriors that they’d turned themselves into.

I’ve heard it said a few times people calling it “shedding their corporate skin”.

So, my question to you is, what would shedding your corporate skin be like for you?

Who would you be without the pressure and the status of your role?

What would you be able to do more of and who would you spend more time with if you didn’t have the demands of being in an office all week.

Would you be more energetic, more relaxed, more present?

Have a think about the corporate you and the you that you’d be without the expectation of your role.

If you could earn the same or more outside of the bubble, which version of yourself would you be happier with.

Not always an obvious answer, but definitely one to think about…

So, I got asked this week what’s the difference between TAN and anyone else… what’s your point of difference.

Fair question! When it comes to a POD, I think there’s a philosophical POD which is basically what drives me to run TAN as a business owner… maybe that’s interesting to you…

But I think operational PODs are probably more practical/tactical that you’d find more useful. So, let’s talk about how we do marketing vs everyone else.

Our target market is local business owners, not specific niches or from all over the country or globally. It’s just local business owners of between 3-30 staff that are all right under your nose.

I mean why build massive databases with endless lead magnets when in reality you only need 8-10 clients at $2K a month to have a $200K+ income.

And you drive past hundreds of local businesses every day so why would you need complicated online funnels and endless tech to find leads… they’re right in front of you!

I mean local might be seen as boring, so maybe boring is our point of difference?! Here’s another marketing reality… have you noticed that AI has completely clogged online ads and content with such a volume of noise that it’s hard to hear anything at all?

Given that we’re targeting local, why would we join that online noise when we can run small workshops for local business owners to come to where they can experience our content helping them first hand.

When business owners experience our people and our programs, they don’t need ad campaigns to explain what we do, they just get it.

Experience beats explanation. So that’s another POD, we do in-person mini-workshops rather than trying to compete with all the AI driven on-line noise.

Sounds old-school, it is!

Apart from the marketing angles, our client onboarding process is different too.

I talked to one of our newer members on the phone just yesterday.

He said, “Will you need to hear this… my last 2 clients both said our signup process gave them so much value BEFORE we even asked for any money that they were HAPPY to pay us… they literally said, thank you when he showed them the program that we were going to work on with them”.

He told me he’s never experienced a sales process like it. We give a tonne of value to business owners… and it works because it’s not a super-slick sales tactic, it’s because we’re providing genuinely helpful business insights.

Our sales and marketing process is working better now than ever and AI has helped that. Because the business owners we’re marketing to can smell cookie-cutter content a mile off… and they avoid it.

So, what’s our point of difference… well it seems to me while other outfits are marketing themselves as Ferrari’s, we’re more Mark 2 Cortina… you’re never going to see me in a video driving some fancy car talking about how rich I am and how you can be just like me if you buy my stuff… T

AN is the Cortina of advisory.

That’s our point of difference. Low glam, low tech, locally based, high service, solid results. Boring.

And if you’re wondering what my philosophical POD is, my role in life is to professionalise business advisory because business owners need real help from real people with actual business backgrounds that produce bankable results.

No fluff, no Ferraris, just a trusted advisor to help them run their businesses professionally. It’s a lifelong goal and I’m just getting stated.

What happens when you’re decades into your corporate role, but it’s lost its shine

• You’ve given it 100% of your energy for years
• You know they’d drop the ball without you
• You know it’s not being run with the same ethics

BUT The job’s been your identity for so long and maybe you can’t imagine doing anything new

SO Have a think about what you loved about your job…

• Travelling around and meeting with new people
• Building a team and working on ambitious projects
• Seeing the results of decisions you’ve made
• Being acknowledged for success

BUT What couldn’t you do with your job…

• Spending time with family
• Watching kids play sports
• Being able to take time off, and…
• Always thinking about work even when you’re home

SO What would your ideal situation be…

• Flexibility so you didn’t have to be at the office all the time
• Using the business skills you have to make a difference to peoples’ lives
• Being in charge of the way you run things with the kind of ethics you believe in

POSSIBLE?

• We’ve got a couple in our network who love what they do and make a very big income that they’re able to run from their boat! Or…
• Another one wanted to make enough income so his wife didn’t have to work… that’s a box that’s also been ticked.

If you’re wondering what’s possible, you owe it to yourself to at least explore other possibilities outside of what you’re doing right now…

do a bit of due diligence and see what else is out there.

Being your own boss is awesome… see what it’s all about!