In the last post, I spoke about the moment of decision, the internal tipping point where I knew I was going to leave. It was not a moment I took lightly, and as I mentioned, it was the most critical part of the entire process. Once the decision was made, everything else that followed became a matter of execution.
But that doesn’t mean what came next was easy.
If anything, the difficulty was only beginning.
Because once the resignation is submitted, the flights home are booked, the furniture is shipped, and the farewell lunches are done, the real work begins. There’s no more inertia to carry you forward. No more automatic paycheck. No calendar of standing meetings. No IT support desk. You’re on your own.
This is where Part 3 begins.
The Fog After the Jump
What they don’t tell you is that even when you’re excited about a new chapter, the emotional turbulence doesn’t end when you hit “send” on your resignation email. There’s an initial rush of clarity and movement, but once the action slows down, it leaves a gap. You can feel both free and destabilised at the same time.
You’ve exited the machine, but you’re not yet running your own.
And in that in-between space, you have to stabilise yourself, not just financially, but mentally.
For me, that took longer than I expected. After years of operating at a high tempo, this new rhythm, or lack thereof, was unnerving. I wasn’t confused about my decision, but I was disoriented by the absence of structure. My calendar was mine again, but I didn’t yet know how to fill it with something meaningful.
I needed to rebuild my centre. And I needed to earn.
Getting Paid Again
The next practical milestone was clear: generate income.
At that stage, I didn’t have a company. I didn’t have a brand. I didn’t have a service line or go-to-market strategy. What I had was a skill set. So I did the most logical thing available to me: I sold my time.
That’s not glamorous. It’s not scalable. But it works.
I began offering my services as an independent consultant. The work wasn’t wildly different from what I’d done before, but the conditions were entirely different. This time, I wasn’t doing it with the backing of a global brand or a corporate safety net. I was quoting, scoping, selling, invoicing, and delivering. End to end.
And this step, while seemingly small, is critical for anyone exiting corporate life.
Because it marks the first time you’re selling without a brand behind you. It’s just you, your name, your capability, and the trust you’re able to build. If you can’t move someone from interest to invoice based on those factors alone, you’re not ready for business.
The Transitional Path That Most Ignore
There’s a tendency to skip this step in stories about entrepreneurship. People love to talk about the idea that became a product, the product that became a business, and the business that scaled.
But what most people actually do, especially those exiting senior corporate roles, is begin by selling their time in a more independent format. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s repeatable. And it gives you enough momentum to stay upright while you figure out the rest.
In my case, this step became my first practical lesson in productisation.
Because it’s one thing to say “I’m a consultant” and send someone a proposal. It’s another thing entirely to figure out what you’re actually offering, how to package it, how to price it, and how to deliver it efficiently while also running the business around it.
This is where the real work begins.
The Productisation Trap
Let me say this plainly: if you’ve spent your career as a full-time employee, you don’t know how to productise.
You might be brilliant at your craft. You might be recognised as a top performer in your company. But none of that forces you to extract, package, and sell your value in the open market.
That’s what productisation is.
It’s the process of taking something you know how to do and turning it into a structured, transferable, and chargeable unit of value.
This is not something you can outsource or guess your way through. You have to do the hard thinking yourself. You have to sit down and ask, with complete honesty: What can I do that others are willing to pay for, and how can I deliver it in a way that doesn’t rely on a company infrastructure to support it?
That process alone is confronting. And necessary.
The Practical Path to Productisation
I began by reflecting on my own experience.
What had I done that others might value enough to pay for, not just once, but repeatedly? I didn’t start with abstract notions like “strategy” or “leadership” or “growth.” I forced myself to get specific.
What had I delivered in my previous role?
What outcomes did I produce?
What patterns or methodologies had I built that others might benefit from?
These questions helped eliminate the noise and exposed what I actually had to offer.
If you’re an in-house counsel, an engineer, an operations lead, or a marketing executive, you might assume the answer is obvious. But when you’re suddenly outside the system, you’ll realise how much your old value depended on context: tools, teams, frameworks, and expectations that no longer exist.
You have to strip it all back.
You have to isolate the thing you do that others can use without the ecosystem around you.
That’s your starting point.
The Commercial Reality
Even once you identify what you can sell, the next challenge is how to charge for it.
Pricing is not philosophical. It’s practical. You have to define units of value, understand delivery effort, and make sure the numbers support your viability level.
In my early days, I fumbled through this part. I priced based on instinct. I didn’t account properly for time spent in sales, in admin, in delivery. I had no rhythm. No clear sales funnel. And I was still trying to deliver everything personally, with no sense of repeatability.
The business wasn’t structured yet. It was just me, running fast. But in that scramble, I was learning. I was learning how to package. How to contract. How to invoice. How to manage scope creep. How to say no.
All of that came from direct contact with customers. And that’s the part most people delay too long.
Splitting Yourself Into Roles
One of the harder lessons came from realising that I wasn’t just doing the work; I was also responsible for selling it.
That may sound obvious, but it hits you differently in practice.
You spend a day on delivery, and your pipeline dries up.
You spend a day selling, and you fall behind on execution.
No one trains you for that balance. You have to work it out as you go. I eventually learned that I needed to split my time between sales and delivery, with clear boundaries. But in those early days, it all bled together. It made me inefficient, overwhelmed, and reactive.
It was frustrating, but also necessary. Because that was the beginning of learning how to run a business.
Why I’m Sharing This
This part of the journey isn’t glamorous. You’re not launching anything groundbreaking. You’re not writing your founder story. You’re just trying to stay in motion without falling apart.
But it’s also the most real part of the transition.
If you skip this, or if you pretend it’s just a temporary inconvenience, you miss the foundation. And foundations, as it turns out, are hard to rebuild later. That’s why I’m including this chapter.
Because this isn’t a story about success in hindsight. It’s a story about what actually happens in those early months and what they teach you about yourself and your business.
Next Week
In Part 4, I’ll walk through the step that came after this: how I moved from selling time to building something repeatable. What that looked like. What I got right. And what I completely missed.
But for now, if you’re in that early phase, selling what you can, trying to stay above water, know this: you’re already in the game. You’re learning the pieces you’ll later need to scale.
Stay with it.
And make it rAIn,
KG
It’s nice to see the thoughts I’ve been having actually written out in a clear and concise manner. Thanks.