A defined plan, a date, and a business on the other side.
Exit coaching helps senior corporate leaders leave and build something of their own. Not the next VP role. Not a longer runway inside the same org chart.
You’re not looking for a career coach. You’re looking for a strategist who has made this exact move and can tell you what the numbers have to say before you make it.
Schedule a Chemistry CallSenior corporate professionals at Director, VP or C-suite level, with 15 or more years behind them, planning a move into independent coaching, consulting, or a portfolio career.
Clients often arrive depleted. They describe Sunday-night dread, working three jobs in one day, and losing track of who they are inside the role.
That’s the starting condition, not the subject. The subject is the plan.
Clients describe feeling like themselves again, and moving from reactive to strategic. They set boundaries without guilt and walk into rooms with composure they had lost.
One client went from “should I quit today?” to a clear 12-month plan and the confidence to execute it.
Another finally gave herself permission to give less than 125 percent at work. That kind of shift isn’t soft. It’s what makes a sustainable exit possible.
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I spent two decades in Fortune 100 risk management before pivoting to coaching, most recently as chief product officer of a $4 billion insurance company. That lens shapes everything.
We don’t plan exits on adrenaline. Every decision gets pressure-tested against four dimensions: financial, professional, psychological, and life obligations. That’s the Four Pillars of Entrepreneur Risk framework, and it’s what makes the plan hold up on the bad weeks.
Most career coaches help you find the next employer. Most exit coaches help you process. This is the calculation, run with operating discipline learned in corporate and sharpened as an entrepreneur.
I’d been making myself small to protect something I wasn’t sure was worth protecting. Then I did the math. Net worth, the stock refresh, the bonus dates, what I’d actually be walking away from. I’m now a woman who knows her literal net worth, and what that math told me is that I have options. What I needed intact before I left was my integrity and a bet on myself. I have both.
Tech Executive, CaliforniaAs I transitioned from corporate life to launching my own consulting firm, Elissa was instrumental in helping me break down challenges into manageable steps. She provided the accountability I needed, helping me identify and take the next steps that I wanted to take, keeping me focused and moving forward. Most importantly, she helped me work through the natural anxiety that comes with starting anew, ensuring I approached this next chapter with confidence and purpose.
Insurance Executive, OhioTen 60-minute sessions, scheduled weekly or biweekly across three to five months. Email access between sessions for the questions that can’t wait until the next one.
Scope and investment get settled on the chemistry call, once there’s a clear picture of your timeline and what you’re building. Custom scopes are available.
Schedule a Chemistry CallIf you want the full curriculum with a live peer group and accredited ICF CCE credits, Corporate to Coach® is the better fit. It runs six weeks, twice a year from 2027 forward.
If you’re already out and building the business, Corporate to Coach® Private Advisory is the closer match. Same content as the cohort, one on one, and you finish with a business plan.
If you want the material without the cohort calendar or the cohort price, the Solopreneur Insider Circle™ carries the full Corporate to Coach® digital content plus the community, at $99 a month. It isn’t a cohort, so there’s no live facilitation and no cohort peer group.
These also sequence. Plenty of clients start with exit coaching, then move into the cohort or Private Advisory once the departure date is set.
Learn About Corporate to Coach®Learn About Private AdvisoryJoin the Insider CircleAn exit coach helps senior corporate professionals plan and execute the transition out of corporate and into work of their own. Most clients are heading toward independent coaching, consulting, or a portfolio career. The work covers the financial, professional, psychological, and life-stage dimensions of the move.
Career coaching helps you find your next employer, and exit coaching helps you leave employment altogether and build something of your own. Different destinations, different methods. A career coach optimizes your candidacy. An exit coach pressure-tests a business plan and a departure date.
Twelve to eighteen months before the date you have in mind is the most common starting point, and earlier is easier than later. Starting while you’re still employed means the financial modeling happens while you still have income to model against. Clients who wait until after they’ve resigned spend the first month solving problems that were solvable in advance.
Start by naming your runway in months, then work backward to the revenue the business has to produce by the end of it. That means a real number for monthly personal expenses, a real number for what leaves with the paycheck in benefits and equity, and a dated view of what’s vesting. Financial scenario planning is a core piece of every engagement, and it’s usually the piece that changes the timeline.
Yes, and most clients do. Building the business while the paycheck is still arriving is the version of this that works, and it’s the bridge strategy rather than the burn-bridges one. Sessions are 60 minutes and get scheduled around a working calendar.
That’s a normal place to start and it’s a reasonable thing to bring to a chemistry call. Some clients finish the work with a departure date and some finish it with a clear-eyed decision to stay and renegotiate the role. Uncertainty isn’t a disqualifier. It’s data you haven’t organized yet.
Ten 60-minute sessions across three to five months, scheduled weekly or biweekly. Email access is included between sessions for questions that can’t wait. Scope and investment get settled on the chemistry call.
Elissa Kelly holds the ICF PCC credential and completed coaching certifications at the Hudson Institute of Coaching in Santa Barbara and the Team Coaching Studio in the U.K. She also holds an MBA from Arizona State University. Hudson Coach Certification students sourcing their required coaching hours can read about that engagement here.
Start with exit coaching if the departure itself is the open question, and start with Corporate to Coach® if the date is already set and the business is what’s unbuilt. Exit coaching is personalized from day one and wraps around your specific timeline. Corporate to Coach® gives you curriculum, a cohort, and ICF CCE credits. The two sequence well in either order.
Elissa Kelly is a PCC-credentialed executive coach and former Fortune 100 executive. She spent two decades in corporate risk management, most recently as chief product officer of a $4 billion insurance company, before pivoting to coaching. She earned her MBA from Arizona State University, along with coaching certificates from the Hudson Institute of Coaching in Santa Barbara and the Team Coaching Studio in the U.K.
She built her own coaching practice to six figures in year one and doubled revenue in years two and three. Today she runs exit coaching alongside Corporate to Coach® and the Solopreneur Insider Circle™.
She coaches the way she ran her P&L: with strategy, accountability, and a clear-eyed read on risk.
A 30-minute chemistry call is free. We’ll talk about where you are, what you’re planning, and whether exit coaching is the right next step. If it isn’t, I’ll tell you that and point you somewhere better.
