Jamie Sylvian, founder
I question the terms before I accept them.
I’ve spent much of my working life questioning arrangements other people seem willing to accept. Who decided that earning a living should mean surrendering control over where you live, how you spend your time, what you wear and how you think?
I’m Jamie Sylvian, founder of Executive Nomad: a strategist, entrepreneur, communications adviser and self-styled maverick. I’ve worked independently since 1991 and lived and worked in thirteen countries. I’ve spent decades around corporate leaders, founders, government and institutions. I understand those environments. I’ve also spent decades building a life in which they don’t get the final say.
- Independent since 1991
- 13 countries
- Founder, author, podcaster
Where it started
In the early 1990s I was a researcher at Brent Council in London. Each morning meant an hour on the Bakerloo line, then a day in an office that usually felt dreary, then another hour home. Five days a week. I was dedicated and hardworking, but I was grinding away and feeling stressed.
I hated wearing suits every day. I hated the formality. What interested me was solving problems, particularly through communication strategy. I could see work I enjoyed buried inside conditions I disliked, and that distinction mattered. It meant I could take the valuable part with me, rather than tolerating the whole arrangement.
I started The Information Marketing Bureau, using a postbox address on Regent Street. The name was rather grand. The infrastructure was rather less grand. I offered services to local authorities, including managing teams visiting households about poll tax nonpayment. It was practical work, and it gave me a route into earning on my own initiative.
A contract took me to Exeter, where I came across an advertisement in a printed newsletter called The Mouse Monitor. The book it advertised was Perpetual Traveller by W. G. Hill, and it introduced a way of thinking that stayed with me: your home, your company and your clients didn’t all have to occupy the same place.
This was long before digital nomads. Business meant telephones, fax machines and considerably more logistical patience. But the principle was clear. I could build an income that travelled with me, and geography could become a choice rather than a condition set by whoever employed me.
I still own those original books. They remind me how much of my life began with questioning something that seemed fixed. I didn’t have every answer. I had a different question: how could I organise my work so that it supported the life I wanted? I’ve been exploring it ever since.
What the work taught me
Over the following decades my work took me across sectors and countries: strategy, communications, utilities, digital business, corporate advisory and government. I worked at board level with British Gas and London Electricity in 1998 and 1999, and from 2000 I was contracted to build a 250-person door-to-door sales team for British Gas. I’ve worked at board level with 13 UK government departments, and as a consultant I advised local authorities at executive level, from Westminster City Council to Nottingham and Exeter. Other work brought me into the House of Lords, with Lord Molloy, Lord Carrington and Lord Winterbottom, and into the Royal Household. In 2017 I worked at board level with BetVictor in Gibraltar. I’ve also worked at C-suite level with Casey Research in the United States, and with London private equity firm Quadra Private Capital.
In 1997 I co-founded SIRA Utilities, in partnership with Lord George Mountbatten. It became uSwitch.com, which was sold for £210 million in 2006. I’m proud of the connection. It doesn’t mean I personally received £210 million. A decent biography ought to survive someone checking it.
Those years taught me how decisions really happen inside organisations. People have competing interests, budgets, reputations and pressures. A good idea can fail because nobody understands it, nobody owns it or nobody wants the consequences. Strategy matters because activity can look impressive while taking a business absolutely nowhere.
I like commercial reality. If an idea can’t explain who will pay for it and why, it needs more work. Equally, a profitable arrangement can still be wrong for the person running it. I ask both questions. Does this make economic sense? Does this support a life worth having?
What I stand against
Calling employees family.
My first enemy is the corporate habit of calling employees family while their usefulness lasts. Then a restructure arrives, and someone who gave years of their life becomes a cost to remove. Businesses have to make difficult decisions. That doesn’t excuse dressing up conditional employment as unconditional belonging. People organise families, finances and identities around those promises, and the consequences don’t disappear when their access pass stops working.
Workplace ageism.
I find it absurd that years spent developing judgment can become a disadvantage precisely when that judgment has become most useful. Experience means knowing what fails, spotting patterns and handling difficult conversations. It does need translating: nobody owes me a living because I’ve been around a long time. But being dismissed because of age is something else. Experienced people deserve a credible way of earning from what they know.
Confinement.
As children we’re shown an approved route: behave, qualify, get a respectable job, settle down, follow the rules. Much of that advice is well intended, but it can become so embedded that we stop asking whether the life it produces is actually ours. Being tied to one place because an income requires it has never suited me. Having a base does. What matters is having a choice about staying, leaving and returning.
How I work
I dress as I want. A cap, distinctive glasses or beads don’t diminish my ability to think. I’ve worn enough suits to know that fabric doesn’t confer judgment, and performing respectability now would be a rather tedious use of time.
My voice is direct, curious and occasionally cheeky. I like ordinary language, a sharp question and humour that punctures pomposity. I take the work seriously, though. Automatic agreement is useless to me. If an argument is weak, I’d rather discover that before anyone spends money on it.
My strongest contribution is seeing possibilities and connecting them to commercial structures. I find the overlooked asset, especially when someone has used it for so long they’ve stopped noticing its value.
Why Executive Nomad
I founded Executive Nomad to help experienced people turn what they know into a flexible, location-independent business: executives leaving corporate life, public service leaders, and owners deciding what comes after selling a business.
The word executive reflects accumulated capability: judgment, responsibility, leadership. The word nomad reflects portability and choice. You can become an Executive Nomad while staying in the home you love. The aim is that your income stops dictating your geography.
It starts with honest questions. What have you learned? Who needs it? How could you deliver it in a way that suits you? Enjoying something doesn’t establish demand, and an impressive history doesn’t automatically produce an offer. That commercial work is what Rewire, Repackage and Repurpose are for: freeing your value from the old title, turning it into an offer and choosing the vehicle.
I don’t feel obliged to become smaller, quieter or more conventional because of age. I’ve worked with institutions, built businesses and lived across borders, and I’ve made a habit of questioning the terms before accepting them. That’s what I want to carry forward: doing useful work, earning honestly, choosing my surroundings, and helping other experienced people create options of their own.
Sit down with me for an hour.
The Compass Call is sixty minutes on Zoom, one to one, peer to peer. Bring a coffee and the terms you’re ready to question.