BLAXLAND CONSULTING LIMITED

𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝗼𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗖𝗣 – 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗶𝗱-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗲-𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 

Diane is a senior adviser to private equity portfolio companies.  She helps investors and portcos to deliver robust growth against value creation plans - including via post-merger integration.  She has a sweet spot in Tech-enabled B2B Services including Professional Services in the UK and EMEA.

Her experience includes:

- pre-deal MDD and post-deal operating reviews of portcos - eg for Blackstone, Mercia, Silverfleet, LDC, Rockpool, Foresight
- rapid recovery of post-merger integration and transformation, ahead of an IPO (backed by TPG)
- commercial risk analysis for a PE portco, triggering an exit via secondary buyout (backed by ICG)
- recovery of an off-shore proposition, re-positioning for growth ahead of a merger
- design and global rollout of a post-merger data integration model.

Her skills include P&L management, business strategy, sales, operations, business transformation, and change management – drawing on her experience in startups, scaleups and global business.

Founder

Career Coaching by Diane Blaxland

🚩 How will you know if my Career Coaching is right for you? Five quick signs: 

•	there is a gap emerging between your career and your satisfaction level 
•	addressing the gap is increasingly important to you 
•	there are risks if you do something, and risks if you do nothing 
•	you have some advice, but you want to take a wider, longer term view 
•	talking it through with an experienced executive feels like a good place to start 

#ExpertLeaders #Careers #PersonalDevelopment

Catalysis Advisory Ltd

𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗘 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝗼 𝗕𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲𝘀:
🔺 𝗽𝗿𝗲-𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 - 𝗕𝟮𝗕𝟮𝗖 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 (𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲)
🔺 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁-𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗶𝗱-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 - 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀
🔺 𝗽𝗿𝗲-𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵, 𝗕𝟮𝗚𝟮𝗖 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵, 𝗕𝟮𝗕𝟮𝗖 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵, 𝗕𝟮𝗕𝟮𝗖 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗕𝟮𝗚 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵

Business Advisor

Johnson Controls Inc

$5b EMEA region of $20b Business Services division of $40b Fortune100 listed company

Director Change Management, EMEA

Blaxland Consulting

Advising clients on operational and commercial change.

CPA Global

£100m global Business Services company, backed by Private Equity

Director Strategy

Williams Lea

£20m Division of this £1b global Business Services company, part of DAX30 company DeutschePost

Managing Director 

Clifford Chance LLP

£100m+ M&A practice of this £1bn global Professional Services firm

Head Business Development Operations

Blake Dawson Waldron

A$350m international Professional Services firm (now part of £1b Ashurst LLP)

Business Development, Sales & Marketing management

CEO & Founder Expert Leaders™ | Career Direction & CV Coaching | £1B PSF | $40B Fortune100 | PE scaleups | London Business School

I help professionals step into clarity, confidence, and growth - especially when navigating complex career transitions in challenging or unfamiliar markets.

My clients are technically brilliant, ambitious … and many are internationally experienced. They’re often MBAs, engineers, M&A/finance experts, consultants, lawyers, or technology & data/AI specialists. 

They're ready to step into senior leadership, but something isn’t landing. Their pitch isn’t quite resonating. The growth opportunities they seek feel just out of reach.

That’s where I come in.

With more than 10 years in senior leadership - including as Managing Director responsible for 550 people - I’ve led growth, transformation, and turnaround across organisations from under £10m to over $5Bn. 

I’ve advised private equity investors and portfolio companies on operations, building robust solutions to complex problems. 

And I bring that same level of focus, clarity, and strategic thinking into my coaching practice.

My sweet spot lies in tech-enabled B2B services - including engineering, data/AI, finance, legal, and consulting. 

Highlights of my work include: 

▪️Steering post-merger integration for a $6Bn PE-backed global professional services firm, resolving operational failures, client complaints, and transformation across 15 countries.
▪️Leading the recovery of a £1bn NHS Trust’s lab project post-dispute, bringing together investors, clinicians, scientists, suppliers, and engineers to co-create a viable solution.
▪️Delivering commercial risk analysis that identified a -70% risk to a target exit valuation for a PE-backed £100m B2B services firm, unlocking a £1Bn exit in under three months.
▪️Repositioning a struggling new BPO offshore (India) proposition for profitable growth, delivering 50% savings to the client in a new £3m contract while also tripling profit margins.
▪️Rolling out a post-merger Sales/Marketing/Finance integration model for a £1Bn global professional services firm across 30 offices in 20 countries, deployed to 4,000+ staff.

All of that senior experience now feeds directly into my career coaching.

Many of my clients are mid-career or post-MBA, and sense a need to reframe their narrative, sharpen their presence, and navigate a system that may not easily understand their value. 

We don’t just talk. We rehearse. We edit. We test. We build influence from the inside out.

Whether you're preparing for interview, pitching for promotion, or making a full pivot, I’ll help you to tailor your story, build trust, and move forward with strategic clarity.

🎯 Diane Blaxland

Freelance Cake

Freelancers want to grow, but with so many things competing for your attention, focusing is a struggle.

Marketing? Messaging? Offers? Pricing? Systems?

Once you pick the next thing to fix or build, you have to find the time to actually do it. (Client projects have a way of monopolizing our attention.)

The Freelance Cake Community helps advanced freelancers stay focused and prioritize their own biz dev in 3 specific ways:

1. Access to high-caliber people, ideas, and advice—behind a paywall

This barrier to entry ensures that you get solid advice quickly when you have issues, as well as encouragement and good ideas from a cross-disciplinary gathering of folks at your level.

2. Smaller group with narrow focus

We talk a lot about the Big Three: marketing, sales, and systems. Why? We need the first two to grow our businesses, and we need the third to enjoy our lives outside of work.

3. Emphasis on honesty and psychological safety

Working remotely and solo can be isolating and lonely. Our 9-to-5 friends don’t understand the challenges we face building our businesses. We want freelance friends who do.

The Freelance Cake Community connects you with like-minded people and provides the structure and tools you need to execute.

It’s for you if you want to keep growing without burning out.

Each week, we do coworking sessions. Each month, we also do Office Hours for questions and Hot Seat Sessions for live coaching around more acute problems and opportunities.

We also have a theme each month. For example, January 2025’s focus was a Rejection Challenge, which helped members reach out to 100 new prospects without worrying about rejection because rejection was the goal. It. Was. Amazing. 

There’s other really valuable stuff that members get, including access to the Resource Library and Business Redesign playbooks.

So you make measurable progress on your top priorities and build the business you really want for $79 per month.

Visit freelancecake.com/community to apply.

Freelance Cake Community

You know how freelance income can be unpredictable? You’re either in a feast or a famine. You’re either too busy and stressed, or you don’t have enough work and money coming in. 

Many freelancers resign themselves to riding the rollercoaster. “That’s just the way this business is,” they say with a sigh. 

If that answer isn’t good enough for you, then you’re my kind of people. 

I don’t mind the occasional roller coaster, but we don’t catch what we don’t pursue. 

I show ambitious freelancers how to become smooth operators. The right levers, habits, and beliefs help you accomplish the following with less time and effort wasted:

✅  Zeroing in on what makes you special
✅  Doubling-down in the work that brings you joy
✅  Charging more, more confidently

Really, making great money as a freelancer comes down to CLARITY, CONSISTENCY, and FOCUS. 

How consistent are you with your marketing and follow-up?

We can’t outperform our habits, and I have helped dozens of freelancers log their first-biggest-best evers by teaching them what six-figure freelancers already know and do. 

The first time I cracked six figures I did it the WRONG WAY—by feeding more and more hours into the machine. 

After recovering from burnout, I did it again the RIGHT WAY—by collecting what I call “repeatable, transferable advantages” and using them. 

With the right levers a little effort produces outsized results. 

A Nice Niche is one such lever. A positioning cheat code and juicy offers are two mores. 

You can make the freelance game easier on yourself. But you have to first believe the roller coaster isn’t the only option. 

📞 Schedule a 20-minute call with me today. Let’s chat about what you want. 

Email me at hello@freelancecake.com with the subject line “advantages” or DM me here on LinkedIn. ⬆

1-on-1 Business Coaching for Advanced Freelancers

Outfit

Fractional CMO

Balernum

What is your brand and brand strategy?

We all have brands we love and loathe, ones we find irresistible and irritating.

Yet, when it comes time to create our own, most DTC and e-commerce founders struggle to straighten out the many tangles of problem and solution, values and culture, where you’ve come from and where you’re going.

It’s no surprise that an Olympic champion turned consultant once confided to me: “I have my MBA, and I still don't know how to build my brand."

Good news: The branding process can be fun and deeply moving.

I watched one founder teary-eyed and excited as he reconnected with their company’s deeper purpose. 

And another client told me later he had closed over $1m in new business because he could finally communicate his team’s full value.

In practical terms, here’s what we do together:

✅  Define your brand’s 7 essential parts 
✅  Pinpoint the small commitments you must make to grow it
✅  Decide in advance how you’ll protect your brand’s integrity

Then, we put all that clarity into a handy guide. 

You’ll use the guide to steer your design, messaging, and hiring.

You’ll show it to potential hires and ask, “Is this something you want to be a part of?”

You’ll use it to get everyone on the same page and stay consistent. 

Brands derive their power from simplicity and consistency, and you build your brand the same way you build your reputation: by showing up in the same way.

Do you want help with that? 

📞 Schedule a 20-minute call with me today. Let’s chat about what you want. 

Email me at austin@balernum.com with the subject line “brand development” or DM me here on LinkedIn. ⬆

Fractional CMO & Brand Strategist

Moxie

Canvas / ShopCanvas.co

Wunderbar LLC

Wunderbar LLC helps businesses grow and make problems go away. To that end, we help clients gain clarity, set direction, and identify next steps. We then use blogging and content marketing to get our clients more customers. Right now, we work primarily with SaaS companies, tech firms, and consultants.

http://wunderbarworks.com/

Founder & Lead Consultant

Closeup.fm

Closeup.fm helps artists, influencers, and brands reward their most loyal fans and make more money in the process. Think MailChimp meets text messaging meets Taylor Swift baking cookies for her superfans.

Co-Founder & COO

Bright Newt

Ridiculous photo apps. Addictive games. High-quality source codes. Fun.

Morris Creative Group

· Copywriting and editing
· Account support and management
· Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, Technorati, et al)  
· Publication relations

Writer | Social Media

University of Tennessee

• Taught two First-Year Composition 101 courses in the Fall and two First-Year Composition 102 courses in the Spring that explored rhetoric, the writing process, and research 
• Managed a variety of responsibilities from choosing curriculum and generating syllabi to developing assignment sequences and submitting grades

Graduate Teaching Associate

Every advanced freelancer I talk to wants the same thing…

Growth.

They want to keep growing their income without more stress, long hours, or burnout.

Of course, growth is never just about more money. What’s the point of the surplus if you’re too busy to enjoy it?

It’s really about creating more freedom and options.

These seasoned, focused pros want to build a strategic, future-proof business where they’re highly sought after and delivering maximum value to clients at a premium price.

They want to systematize everything to minimize work time and maximize personal time. 

The trouble is, the more driven you are, the more susceptible you are to maxing out the hours you can work.

Talented solopreneurs run into roadblocks:

- Being overcommitted and unfocused
- Overthinking & second-guessing
- Overwhelm

Eventually, you’re just over, over, over it, you know?

Symptoms like unpredictable income, complexity, and burnout have the same root cause:

**Weak or nonexistent systems and processes.**

Therein lies your opportunity:

1. Get clear on the life you want and the business that can get you there.
2. Position yourself as the obvious choice for dream clients.
3. Create juicy offers tied to their desired outcomes.
4. Build a system for getting predictable leads.
5. Give clients what they want and need.

Once you get all the pieces working together, you start earning more while working less. You’re on your way to having a $300K Flywheel. You 

That’s what happened to me. After I taking a more methodical and process-oriented approach to growth, I cracked $300,000 for the first time.

But again, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and options.

Because I had time to focus on my own passion projects, I finished and published my book, Free Money. I improved my health.

My wife and I started traveling more with our kids.

What I’ve learned over 15+ years of freelancing is that advanced freelancers don’t have unique problems. But they do have unique situations.

Do you want help building the lifestyle you really want and the strategic, future-proof business that supports it?

Apply to join the private Freelance Cake community: https://bit.ly/FreelanceCakeCommunityLI.

It’s for advanced freelancers focused on strategic growth through strong systems and processes.

Austin L. Church

Serious question: If the LinkedIn algorithm were a real person, who would it be?

During yesterday’s group coaching session, I said Ben Affleck. Has done some good work but has made some mistakes recently. 

I was told Ben (may I call you Ben?) wasn’t irritating enough. 

Lauren McGill said her eleventh grade Biology teacher. Weird and nerdy. Mixed feelings about him but you need him to like you if you want an A. 

I need answers please. 

Bonus points if you tell me what you’d say or do to this real person right away.

Founder of Freelance Cake — Coaching, coworking, and community for advanced freelancers who want the growth without the burnout | Details in About ↓

By the time I reach mid-November each year, I feel pulled in two directions: Should I unplug in December or hustle to tie up loose ends?

That predictable tension eventually led to “December Zero,” a simple practice that seems obvious now:

- Identify all open projects, loose ends, and sources of heartburn.
- Ask, “What must be true in order for me to end the year with a quiet mind?”
- Do a focused two-week sprint in the first half of December.

Instead of ignoring the low-grade stress humming in the background, I use this exercise to turn it into a magnifying lens.

Stress, show me what to focus on. Show me what to do, delete, or defer.

It’s imperfect because, let’s be honest, there’s always more work to be done.

However, the intentional acts of mental decluttering and making conscious decisions about each task do give me more of the space, lightness, and quietude I want as the year comes to a close. 

While I’m with my family, my mind isn’t jerked back to what’s unfinished because I've cut loose the sandbags.

And when January rolls around it feels like a clean slate, not Month 13.

I’m doing my December Zero practice on Thursday, Nov. 20 at 11:00am ET. It takes about 45 minutes.

Want to join me?

This is part of a two-workshop sprint I’m doing in partnership with Lettuce Financial. The second workshop is on December 4 (2026 Year in Preview).

Use code Lettuce to drop the price from $79 to $33.

Here’s the sign-up link: https://luma.com/s1h2vf01.

…

Will you be doing any year-end strategic planning, and if so, what’s your favorite question to ask?

Gaining momentum feels easier around the right people. Consistency is easier, too. Why is that?

One reason is that some of us are hesitant to try something until we see it working for someone else. 

Maybe you had that one crazy friend who always volunteered to try this could-be-stupid thing first: skipping class, going blond, cliff jumping. 

When you see her head break the surface of the lake, you exhale in relief and then you throw yourself off. 

When we're younger, it's easier to find the mix of pre-validated courage, inspiration, camaraderie, and good mischief because it's part of the groups we find ourselves in, like schools, teams, and camps.

When we're older, we have to seek it out. We have to deliberately surround ourselves with people who remind us to take risks.

Another reason is simply knowledge and ideas. 

The right people know how to remove our roadblocks:

- I'm a member of Jay Clouse's Creator Science Lab community. 
- I'm a member of a mastermind group.
- I'm a member of the Freelance Cake Community.

If you want to give yourself another advantage, join a paid, private community.

Check out the most recent episode of the Freelance Cake podcast where I go in-depth on this. 

Have a listen, and if you're game, tell me what risk you need to take next.

A new Freelance Cake podcast episode just dropped. In it, I make a case for community as an advantage for advanced freelancers. Research backs it up —

Open article: the splash zone effect by Austin L. Church • 3 min read

January used to feel like Month 13 to me. I'd try to remember where I'd left off before Christmas and then tie up loose ends as quickly as possible.

That meant the implementation of any strategic planning I'd done in December got pushed to late in the month. I didn't like that. 

A couple of years ago, I decided to try something new: a simple year-end business decluttering exercise. It worked!

By "worked" I mean that I had less rattling around in my gourd during the second half of December and I felt more momentum going into January.

Check out this week's LinkedIn newsletter. 

In it, I share the step-by-step process I follow and my GSheet template, which you can copy.

Perhaps my weird brain can help yours this year. I hope so.

As much as I love my work, I don’t like how it can bleed into the rest of my life, especially during the holidays. Those of us who are self-employed d

Open article: year-end business decluttering by Austin L. Church • 2 min read

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🎯 Diane Blaxland

Austin L. Church

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Austin L. Church

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