Why We Created Beyond Employment

What is Beyond Employment?

Beyond Employment is a community and resource for experienced professionals who are starting to ask what comes next. Not the people who have already made the leap, but the ones sitting in the thinking stage. Wondering whether their skills could work for them outside a traditional role. Carrying the question quietly, often for longer than they'd like to admit, without a clear or safe place to explore it properly.

It starts with a free webinar for anyone curious enough to want an honest, informed overview of what working for yourself actually looks like. Beyond that, there is a structured programme designed specifically for experienced professionals who want to explore the possibility of starting their own business or moving into freelancing, and who want to make that decision with real confidence rather than a leap of faith. The programme covers the practical, the psychological and the financial, and gives people the space and the tools to figure out whether this is genuinely right for them before they commit to anything.

Beyond Employment is a collaboration between Good Company Consulting and Create Flow, brought together by Fran Stobart, Gary King and Jill Chapman. Between them, they bring business coaching, business psychology and chartered coaching psychology to a space that most people in this position have never had access to before.

The landscape has shifted

The job market for senior and experienced professionals looks very different from how it did a decade ago. Restructuring, AI-driven transformation and sustained economic pressure have created conditions where even capable, established people find themselves questioning their security in ways they never expected to.

52% of workers now expect nationwide layoffs to increase, according to Monster's 2026 WorkWatch Report Monster, with 40% expecting the job market to worsen and another 40% expecting no improvement. This isn't abstract anxiety. Tangible job security has overtaken personal fulfilment as the top retention factor for workers, according to Adecco's 2026 workplace trends report HR Dive covering 37,500 workers across 31 countries.

For those in more senior roles, the picture is particularly stark. 43% of senior executives now doubt their ability to fulfil their responsibilities Boardmember, while CEO exits have dropped as job cuts have risen compared to 2024, signalling that companies have lowered their tolerance for change HR Dive, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The recruitment market offers little comfort. The great resignation is officially over. Workers want stable income, job certainty and robust employer support, and for the first time in three years, white-collar workers are less confident than blue-collar workers about the fairness of their pay.

What we heard from people

Before creating Beyond Employment, we ran a survey of experienced professionals to understand what was really going on beneath the surface. What came back wasn't dramatic. It was quieter than that.

People described feeling well paid but running on low energy. Secure, but constrained. Aware that something needed to change, but genuinely unsure what a realistic alternative looked like. The biggest barriers weren't laziness or lack of ambition. They were financial risk, not knowing where to start, fear of getting it wrong, and a creeping sense that their experience might not translate into something they could build for themselves.

Many had thought seriously about self-employment, consulting or starting something. Most had shelved it. Not because the idea was bad, but because they had no safe space to think it through properly.

Where the gap was

There is plenty of support for people who have already made the leap, business coaches, startup communities, accelerators. And there is plenty of support for people at the very beginning of their careers. But for experienced professionals sitting in that uncertain middle ground, capable, credentialled and quietly wondering, there was very little.

Nobody was holding space for the thinking stage. For the questions that come before the decision.

Why the three of us

Beyond Employment is a collaboration between Good Company Consulting and Create Flow, brought together because between us we cover the ground that people at this stage actually need.

Jill Chapman is a Chartered Coaching Psychologist with 25 years of experience helping people navigate major transitions in work and life. Gary King is a business psychologist who works with senior professionals on the fear and identity questions that sit underneath big career decisions. Fran Stobart built her own business from the kitchen table to a £2m exit, and now helps people translate their experience into something that works for them.

The psychology of transition and the practical reality of self-employment are both part of this. You need both.

What we want this to be

Beyond Employment is a space for honest, informed thinking. The free webinar is where the conversation starts. The programme is where people who are ready to go further can do the work properly, at their own pace, with the right support around them.

If you're sitting with this question, you're in exactly the right place.

Join the free webinar: goodcompanyconsulting.co.uk/webinar-registration