Who is your mentor and chief pilot to see that you are carrying out your operations safely, making good judgement calls and learning from your mistakes?
I have no idea what environment you came through but you are your own mentor in GA. Noone is holding your hand, anyone in any position of authority is running scared of CASA and will throw you under the bus at any opportunity. To be quite honest being a one man band with an aircraft is actually probably "safer" than being in a small operation as there is reduced commercial pressure on you to go.
In this scenario proposed here I would be more concerned about the insurance & legal aspect of it than having someone to hold your hand.
And in relation to the original question it is a private op as long as you fly company employees and you aren't carrying goods that are later sold on as part of the job. Whether this is legal or not is questionable but that is how CASA has seen it in the past and they have threatened pilots with their license in such operations even though they were legal grey areas.