Turn a public record into the next appointment.
Visibility without direction produces attention you cannot use. Career strategy decides which of the available routes, advisory, board, speaking, consultancy, industry or spin-out, is closest to reach for you now, and then converts the record into it.
Hi Professor,
What career strategy has produced for academics and researchers like you:
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Why academics take the wrong opportunities.
The first offer arrives, it is flattering, and it is accepted before it is priced.
Free advice becomes a habit, and the market prices you at what you have been charging.
Nobody has decided which route is actually being pursued, so effort is spread across four of them.
There is no rate card, so every negotiation starts from a guess.
Opportunities are judged one at a time, instead of against a portfolio that should fit together.
Hourly range for expert witness and legal review work, the highest hourly rate available to most academics.
Range for national keynote fees, once a speaking record exists.
Typical time from starting the work to the first paid non-academic engagement.
Career strategy, step by step.
Route selection
We map the realistic routes against your field, market, appetite for visibility and the time you actually have. One primary route is chosen, with one secondary.
Portfolio design
What the next twelve to twenty four months should contain: how many retainers, seats, talks or consulting days, and what each is worth.
Pricing
A written rate card with hourly, day, retainer and speaking rates, plus the floor below which you decline. This alone changes most academics' income.
Materials
Advisor one pager, speaker pack, consulting scope templates, board biography and the proof documents a selector will ask for.
Conversion coaching
How to run the first call, when to name a number, how to handle 'we do not usually pay for this', and how to decline without closing the door.
Quarterly review
What arrived, what was accepted, what was declined and whether the portfolio still matches the goal.
Deliverables, not adjectives.
Around four hours across the first month, then a one hour quarterly review and short preparation calls before live conversations.
Academics looking for a coach to discuss ambitions in general. This is a commercial planning exercise with numbers, materials and decisions attached.
- Route selection with a written rationale
- Twelve to twenty four month portfolio plan
- Rate card covering hourly, day, retainer and speaking
- Advisor one pager and speaker pack
- Board biography and governance-ready proof documents
- Consulting scope and contract templates
- Negotiation preparation for named conversations
- Quarterly review against the plan
An honest sequence.
Route selection and portfolio design.
Pricing and materials completed.
Conversion coaching applied to live conversations.
Review, reprice and adjust the portfolio.
A group leader giving away four advisory calls a month
Regular requests from founders and former collaborators, all unpaid, all described as a quick chat, none converting into anything.
A defined scope, a published rate, an advisor one pager and a script for the moment the request arrives.
Two of the existing relationships converted to paid retainers, the rest declined, and the time freed went to a board conversation that mattered.
The questions academics and researchers ask first.
Partly. Pricing and materials help immediately. But most routes require some public record, because selectors verify before they invite.
Positioning and Narrative
Why an excellent CV still gets skipped.
Authority Building
Why doctors stop publishing after three weeks.
Press and Recognition
Why good doctors never get quoted.
From health to tech
Why the move stalls for capable doctors.
Client acquisition
Being known is not the same as being booked.
Ready to make career strategy work for you?
Pick a time below. Fifteen minutes, private, no pitch. We'll tell you where we think your expertise has the greatest commercial value.
required
24 hours
worldwide
