Linda is 54 now. When she finally launched her consulting practice — the thing she had been “almost ready” to do since her late 30s — she was 52, in the thick of menopause, sleeping terribly, and, by her own account, completely done with waiting to feel ready.

“I thought I was going to feel ready and then do it,” she says. “That’s how I’d always imagined it. The fear would lift at some point, and then I’d know it was time.”

It didn’t lift. She did it anyway.

The thing about “not yet”

Linda spent her 30s building expertise in operations and change management at a mid-size firm. She was good at it. She was valued. And for years, she had an idea in the back of her head about doing her own thing — a consultancy focused specifically on the operational chaos of scaling businesses — that she kept making slightly more ready for a future version of herself.

“I was always one more credential away from being ready. One more year of experience. One more thing I needed to learn. And then I’d be 45, 46, 47 — and the goalpost was still moving.”

The pandemic shifted something. Her company went through restructuring. She survived the round of cuts, but the experience of watching colleagues lose jobs they had given decades to crystallised something she had been avoiding.

“I thought: if I’m going to get pushed out eventually anyway, I’d rather it be by my own decision. I’d rather be the one who chose.”

Starting at 52, in menopause, not sleeping

The timing was imperfect. She was in menopause. Sleep was terrible. Brain fog was real — she describes a particular period of about eight months where she doubted her own competence for the first time in her career.

“I genuinely thought maybe I’d waited too long. Maybe the sharpness was just gone.”

It wasn’t. Once she got HRT sorted — which took three doctors and about six months of being dismissed before she found one who actually listened — her sleep improved, her thinking cleared, and the project of building something finally felt navigable.

“I wish I hadn’t waited so long to be aggressive about getting help with the menopause stuff. I was trying to push through it. You can’t push through it. You have to address it.”

Two years in

Her consultancy has twelve clients. She works four days a week by choice. She took on a partner last year — someone she’d admired for years who reached out after seeing her work.

“The work is better than it’s ever been. I’m better at it than I was at 40 because I actually know what I’m doing now. I’m not performing expertise. I have it.”

What she’d tell the woman who keeps waiting

“The timing is never going to be right. That’s not how it works. You do not get a season where everything is lined up and calm and you feel completely ready. You get a normal Tuesday with everything slightly unresolved and the choice of whether to begin or not.”

She pauses.

“Tuesday is the timing. It’s always been Tuesday.”

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