Built to Thrive: Life After Corporate
Name
Built to Thrive: Life After Corporate
Created 1 month 1 week ago
Organizer Vicki James
Built to Thrive: Life After Corporate
Business Areas
Business
Topics
Entrepreneurship Small Business Starting Over Startup Support
Timezone
Timezone: Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Event date(s): -

Registration ends: Thu, Oct 15, 2026 4:00 PM (1 month 2 days from now)

Open: Accepting Speaker Applications Until Tuesday, 15 September, 4:00 PM
Description

Built to Thrive: Life After Corporate is a 3-day live virtual summit for people standing at the edge of a decision — stay in corporate, or finally build the thing they keep thinking about. Or they've already jumped, and they're realizing nobody handed them a map for what comes next.

We're bringing together speakers who've actually lived this transition — corporate exits, identity shifts, client acquisition, the unglamorous work of building something real — across three focused days: Deciding to Take the Leap (Day 1), Getting Started (Day 2), and Building a Sustainable Business (Day 3).

If you've built a life and business after leaving corporate — or helped others do it — this is a stage built for exactly that story. October 13–15, live virtual, reaching an audience actively looking for their next step.

What You Get as a Speaker

  • Your session video — yours to keep and use however you'd like, it's your content, your IP.
  • The attendee roster from your session, so you can follow up directly with the people you connected with.
  • A curated, engaged audience of solopreneurs and corporate transitioners — quality over headcount.

What We're Asking For

  • A 25-minute session (plus a 5-minute buffer) that fits your topic on one of our three days.
  • Help spreading the word — please target 25 registrations. You're speaking to help the collective, and a strong turnout is part of what makes that worth everyone's time.

Details are still coming together as we build this out, but these two things are locked in: your video is yours, and you'll get the roster.

Speakers
Clone Yourself: Get More Done with Less Energy (and Zero Burnout)
Brandi Cox Gamifying Business Growth

Leaving corporate life to build a business can create a new kind of overwhelm: suddenly, you’re responsible for everything. In this presentation, Tech Systems Strategist and Architect Brandi Cox helps entrepreneurs identify and offload the tasks keeping them stuck without sacrificing control or quality. Drawing from her expertise in automation, delegation, and implementation, Brandi shows how sustainable business systems can help founders reclaim their time and energy while creating the structure needed for growth. Attendees will gain practical insights for automating, delegating, and structuring their businesses without burnout or tech overwhelm—so they can stop surviving like technicians and start leading like CEOs.

Build Instant Trust and Credibility through Speaking
Danielle Benzon Voice, Speaking, and Presence Coach

In a world where trust is at an all time low and your image and voice can be copied, what have we got left?

Our humanity. Our real, unpredictable, messy, humanness. Connection.

Nothing is going to build trust with your audience better than being present and connected and honest with them. Not just on a supericial level, but with your whole body and soul, down to your bones.

Voice, speaking, and presence coach Danielle Benzon will walk you through how to show up on stage and on camera in a way that creates immediate know, like, and trust with your ideal audience. Create immediate differentiation from your competition and cut that "awareness to decision" time down by half to build real, long-lasting relationships with clients who know, like, and trust you.

Leadership Marketing +2
Persuasive Personal Development +16
Before You Can Do The Work, You Must Win the Work
Dave Seaton Consultant & Community Host

To succeed as an independent consultant, you must become just as good at winning the work as you are at doing the work.

The biggest struggle for new consultants isn't a lack of expertise. It's building a predictable pipeline of work so they can actually enjoy the independence they've created...and still pay the mortgage.

Many consultants leave accomplished professional careers and suddenly feel invisible. The opportunities fizzle out. The referrals dry up. The phone stops ringing.

In this session, Dave Seaton introduces the Five Disciplines of Client Development: the framework that helps independent consultants create clarity, build credibility, make connections, navigate client conversations, and sustain momentum through times of feast and famine.

You'll leave with a practical scorecard that reveals the hidden constraints in your client development system so you can position yourself as the obvious, low-risk choice and guide potential clients from first contact to signed contract.

Business
Client Attraction Sales
From Corporate Casualty to Founder on Purpose: How I Turned Getting Let Go Into the Business I Was Always Meant to Build
Erica Wood Client Experience & Retention Strategist

Erica Wood didn't plan to become a founder. After nearly 20 years in corporate, she was let go twice and lost her husband to cancer. What came next wasn't just a pivot. It was a purpose.

In this session, Erica shares the real story behind founding Client Journey Advisors and how those hard seasons became the foundation for her Compass Clarity Method. Because the same principle that helps founders retain clients and build sustainable businesses is the one that helped her rebuild her life. When everything feels reactive and foggy, what you need most is direction.

Attendees will leave with a clearer sense of their unique value, what's been keeping them stuck, and how to start building something intentional from exactly where they are.

Crucial Elements of a Productive First Meeting
Patrick Seaton Owner/Founder

Most first meetings fall apart before they begin. Not from a lack of knowledge, but from a missing mindset and no framework for reading the room.

In this session, you will learn the PIM, a structured qualification model that tells you in real time whether a real opportunity is sitting across the table. You will also explore HEC: Humility, Empathy, and Curiosity. These three qualities allow a seller to listen well, ask the right questions, and let the buyer tell you what matters most.

Research on buyer behavior points to a consistent pattern: most deals stall because sellers diagnose too late. PIM moves that diagnosis to the front of the conversation. HEC makes that possible.

AskAlex, a neuroscience-based sales thought partner, supports this kind of structured, buyer-first approach around the clock.

Walk in prepared. Walk out with clarity.

Business
Client Attraction Sales +1
The Gold Is in the Gap: Why Your Next Chapter Isn't a Second Act
Paula Washington Strategist · Author · Speaker

Most people leaving corporate spend months waiting to feel ready before they trust the decision. This talk reframes that waiting period entirely, showing why the discomfort of the crossing isn't a warning sign, it's evidence of growth. Attendees will learn how to recognize when they're standing at a real inflection point (not just a bad week), how to separate the noise of other people's timelines from their own readiness, and why everything they've already built — including the setbacks — is the actual asset they're bringing into what's next.

Bet on Yourself, Build to Last: The Sustainability Gap in New Ventures
Paula Washington Strategist | Author | Speaker

Starting a business after corporate is the easy part — sustaining it is where most new ventures quietly stall. Drawing from decades of building her own practice and advising entrepreneurs through the Bet On Yourself & Win™ Business Foundation Series, this talk gives attendees the practical foundation most new business owners skip: how to build systems before you need them, price for longevity instead of survival, and create client relationships that compound instead of resetting to zero every quarter.

Should You Take the Leap... and if so, how?
Sheryl Scott Small Business Consultant

Thinking about leaving a job to start a business can be exhilarating, but jumping without a realistic map is dangerous. In this session, former Career Coach turned Entrepreneur, Sheryl Scott delivers a reality check for anyone thinking of making that leap. Stripping away the generic "hustle" advice, Sheryl helps you objectively evaluate whether entrepreneurship is a good path for you, consider options that don’t require you to reinvent the wheel, and narrow your focus to win your first clients. You will learn why the secret to building a business that lasts and aligns with your goals is focusing on your strengths and allowing others to assist you. This session, and the entire event is all about trading overwhelm for a clear strategy, kickstarting the practical roadmap, and launching you confidently into the next phase of your journey.

Business Law / Legal +2
Legal Services Business Vision +13
Built to Thrive: How Solopreneurs Get to Clarity and Clients Faster
Vicki James Founder & Solopreneur Mentor

Nobody handed you a guide to the missing pieces when you started. So you figured it out as you went — and the gaps you didn't know existed quietly added up in time, money, and momentum.

Most solopreneurs don't stall because their idea is bad. They stall because they're piecing together foundational decisions alone, without anyone who's already walked that terrain to tell them what they're missing.

Vicki James, founder of Thrive Hive, shares real stories and hard-won lessons from watching solopreneurs get stuck in the same places — and get unstuck the moment they stopped building alone.

You'll leave knowing which pieces are missing from your business, what to put in place first, and what becomes possible once you have the right support at the right time.

Clarity and clients, sooner. That's what this session is about.