Ideas Are Free. The Pain Is in the Execution.

Taryn Williams started modelling at fifteen and, without really naming it as such, ran her own career like a small business — managing her own diary, chasing her own invoices. By twenty-one she was fed up with agencies paying talent on ninety-day terms and decided to build her own: Wink Models, launched in 2006 with $30,000 and no real roadmap, paying its talent within seven days. "I look back on it now and think it was pretty crazy," she says. "I was twenty-one when I started Wink."

Wink is still running today, close to 380 models across Australia, clients including Qantas, The Iconic and David Jones. It's also just the first of six companies she's built since.

Six companies, one thesis

The pattern repeats: Williams keeps building the tool she wished existed inside the business she already had. The Right Fit, a talent marketplace backed by Airtree Ventures, scaled to 17,000 talent and 11,000 clients across the Asia-Pacific region. The Influencers Agency spun out of demand The Right Fit couldn't service. #Gifted, a platform connecting brands and creators for unpaid collaborations, came next; she recently stepped back from running it day-to-day into her first chair role. Notable Co grew out of her own experience as an in-demand speaker. An Online Model Academy followed in 2025.

"The pain is in the execution, right? Like, ideas are free."

The exit that didn't bring the break she wanted

In 2023, at thirty-seven, Williams sold The Influencers Agency and The Right Fit to an international acquirer, after roughly three years of on-again, off-again approaches that kept stalling on price and terms. She deliberately structured the deal to avoid a year-long earn-out, wanting time off on the other side of it.

She never really got it. Shortly after the sale closed, her co-founder at #Gifted stepped away, and Williams found herself pulled straight back into full operator mode to keep the business alive — "I sort of came back to Australia and brute-forced that thing into existence," is how she puts it. Asked how much real space she got to process two exits and reflect on what she wanted next, her answer is blunt: "Not enough. Not enough, I think."

The cost no one talks about

Williams says running the businesses meant she was never fully off. Even on holiday, she was still answering Slack messages, still dialling into weekly product meetings. "You're technically away, but you're never not working," she says. "You're never fully disconnected."

Never quite satisfied

A mentor used to ask her a pointed question: when is enough enough? He'd probe for the usual explanation — an unsupportive parent, a teacher who made her feel not good enough. Neither applies to Williams, who describes a stable, ordinary middle-class upbringing and doing well at school. Her honest answer is stranger and harder to fix with therapy: "I guess I just never feel satisfied or satiated, like there's so much more to do and so much more to learn. I think it's a blessing and a curse in many ways."

It's why, she says, she's started deliberately talking about the unglamorous parts rather than only the exits. "I don't want to compartmentalise my life into intersections," she says. "I want to have a really good, holistically happy life that's rich and deep, and isn't just narrow and deep in one particular area."