EXECUTIVE ADVISORY
The Threshold
Twelve weeks with someone who has been where you are.
You already know what you're circling.
You've been turning the same question over for months. Maybe longer.
Everyone you'd normally ask has a stake in the answer. You've read the things everyone reads. You've made a list of options and moved the items around.
And it's still there, most nights, in the same place.
What you don't have is someone who cares what happens to you and doesn't care which way it goes.
It might sound like any of these:
You're the one people call. You still wonder whether you're the right person to call.
Every decision still comes to you. You haven't had room to think past the next thing in a long time, and part of you believes that's safer.
You built the business, and lately you've been asking yourself whether you still want to be the person running it.
You're leading something, and carrying a version of it you can't say out loud at work.
The subject changes. The situation doesn't.
You're standing at a threshold, and the deciding is the hard part.
WHO I WORK WITH
I work with a small number of people at a time, on purpose.
They're senior. Executives, founders, independents who have been at this long enough to be good at it. They're the person everyone brings everything to. For some that's the role. For others it's a business they built and never stopped carrying.
They're not short of ideas and opinions. What they don't have is one person in the room who isn't affected by the outcome.
Two things this isn't:
A standing sounding board with no particular destination.
A place to keep circling.
TWELVE WEEKS · EIGHT CONVERSATIONS
Front-loaded, on purpose.
Most people can't name the real question when they start. Finding it is the first piece of work.
04
WEEKS 1 TO 4 · WEEKLY
Find the real question.
Four conversations in four weeks. Enough continuity to get past the thing you arrived with and find what's actually underneath it. What's really in play, what it costs either way, and what you've been assuming without checking.
03
WEEKS 6, 8, 10 · EVERY OTHER WEEK
Pressure-test the direction.
A direction takes shape, and then we push on it. Against new information, against the people it affects, against what happens once you start to move. The space between conversations is where the direction meets reality.
01
WEEK 12
Land it.
What held under pressure, what changed, and what's still unresolved. Then what you're actually going to do, and when.
The cadence changes as the work changes.
WHAT’S DIFFERENT AT THE END
From circling to deciding. You've tested the assumptions, faced the trade-offs, and made the call.
From carrying it alone to having somewhere to put it. A confidential place to say the unfinished thing out loud and hear what people around you won't say.
From intention to evidence. Something actually moved. You can point at it.
Eight conversations across twelve weeks. The first and last run longer.
After each one, I'll send you something in writing. What we decided and what you said you'd do. Not a report. It's so you're not relying on memory, and so nothing quietly disappears between sessions.
You'll have decided something, rather than thought about it for another year.
“When I started, I felt stuck in my career and had allowed fear and complacency to drive many of my decisions, or lack of decisions. If someone had told me at the beginning the decisions I would make during it, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. Ultimately, I made a very difficult but right career change for that season of my life, and I did it with confidence, because she empowered me to come to that decision for myself.”
Tracey Seward
The hardest decisions aren't the ones you don't understand. They're the ones where every option costs something.
I've spent much of my career inside those moments. Investment calls, partnerships, reorganizations, global teams across cultures and geographies, and a long run of decisions made on incomplete information with a great deal riding on them.
Most of it was at Accenture, where I served as a Managing Director. I founded the global unit that defined what the firm sold worldwide and secured $122 million a year to build it. I built the firm's first knowledge operation, connecting 700,000 people to what the company knew. And with colleagues across four practices, I built partnerships that generated $1.1 billion in qualified pipeline. Those numbers matter for one reason: they describe the environment I know from the inside. Scale, competing interests, incomplete information, and decisions that land on far more people than the one making them.
I've faced consequential decisions in my own life too, including walking away from a career that was working to build something of my own. That gives me perspective. It does not give me your answer. My role is to help you see the situation clearly, test the assumptions underneath it, and surface the trade-offs. I'll tell you what I think. The decision stays yours.
I've summited Kilimanjaro multiple times and led groups on expeditions across four continents, including the Peruvian Andes, Iceland, Alaska and the Camino de Santiago. I'm CPCC and ICF-credentialed, and NOLS Wilderness First Aid and CPR/AED certified.
Different venues. The job in both is the same: I don't replace your judgment. I change the conditions so you can use it.
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE
Twelve Weeks.
The Threshold is where many relationships with Aretia begin. Some become longer. Six or twelve months of sustained advisory, or work with the leadership team around you. Those are designed individually.
HOW IT STARTS
Book your complimentary conversation
We’ll talk about what you're carrying and whether The Threshold is the right shape for it. If it is, we’ll get started as soon as calendars align. If it isn't, I'll tell you that, and point you somewhere better.