What’s out of date isn’t you. It’s how you’re being read.
Applications into a void. Roles pulled the week before interview. A polite “we’ve gone another way” from someone half your age.
Look at what’s in the queue: a CV that reads like a menu, a profile describing a job you no longer have, an application in a stack of two hundred where the first reader is a machine. That’s the format, and it’s the format that’s failing.
The advertised route is the crowded one. It’s also the only route where your age is visible before you are. The other routes — through people you know, and increasingly into fractional work — are the ones growing, and nobody on them is counting your birthdays.
A test you can run tonight
Ask an AI.
It will agree with you.
You don’t have to guess how you’re being read. You can watch it happen. Paste your LinkedIn About into whatever AI you already use — most of the senior people we work with use one daily — and ask it to argue the case against hiring you. Bluntly.
It will, competently: generic claims, no clear specialism, could be any of a thousand senior people. That’s the market’s case against you, and it’s useful to see it written down.
Now ask it for a better version. It’ll give you ten in a minute. Every one plausible. Not one of them yours. It can generate; it can’t decide. It doesn’t know which sentence you’d be proud to say in a room — and neither does anyone who hasn’t sat across from you and asked.
Ask it for a better headline. This is what comes back.
01
Experienced commercial leader
02
Transformational growth executive
03
Strategic advisor to leadership
04
Results-driven B2B operator
05
Helping ambitious businesses scale
06
Senior leader, people and culture
07
Trusted partner to founders
08
Commercially minded change agent
09
Turning vision into outcomes
10
Driving growth at scale
Ten in a minute. Every one plausible. None of them yours.
“It doesn’t know which sentence you’d be proud to say in a room.”
That’s the audit. Thirty minutes with someone who’s spent six years deciding which senior people to put in front of a board, deciding which sentence is yours. Bring what the machine said. It’s the first ten minutes of the work.
The day-0 instrument · Ten questions
Score yourself before we do.
The same ten questions we score at stage 1, and again at stage 6. It won’t tell you what to do about the answer. It will tell you which part is missing.
Score each 1–5. Don’t overthink; first answer.
Step 1 of 5 · Proposition
0 / 10 answered
Proposition
1 = not at all true · 5 = completely true
1. I can say what I do, and for whom, in one sentence without using my old title
2. Someone has argued the case against hiring me, and I have an answer
What ninety days produces.
Six stages, roughly a fortnight apart, and homework every Friday between them. Nothing on this list gets done in the room. It gets done on Fridays, and Ross has read it before you sit down again.
1
Diagnosis
You learn
How to read your own history for what you’re actually good at, and how to set a floor you won’t negotiate below.
You leave with
A strengths inventory that isn’t a CV, and your financial floor to the euro.
2
Proposition
You learn
The one-sentence test, and how to have your idea argued against properly rather than politely.
You leave with
A sentence you can say out loud that survived it.
3
Positioning
You learn
How a stranger reads a profile in eight seconds, and what makes a mixed career legible instead of scattered.
You leave with
Your profile rebuilt, a portfolio shape chosen, and the thread that connects them.
4
Routes
You learn
Where senior work actually comes from, and the opener that isn’t “do you have a job”.
You leave with
Three channels picked from twenty, and thirty named people.
5
Conversion
You learn
How a discovery call runs, and how to price a package rather than a day.
You leave with
A discovery-call script and a priced offer you’re not embarrassed to send.
6
Retro
You learn
What changed and what didn’t: the same ten questions you scored at stage 1, scored again, with the evidence beside them.
You leave with
Where you started and where you are, in numbers.
Run by Ross. Built by Negar.
Ross Lauder · runs it
Twenty years taking B2B companies to market. Sales at Dell and Quest, HubSpot early, an agency built and sold, six years hiring go-to-market leaders for companies moving into Europe. I know a pitch that lands from one that doesn’t, and the difference is rarely the person. It’s whether they’ve decided what they’re selling.
I’ll tell you at the audit whether this is right for you. It isn’t for everyone, and I’d rather say so in thirty minutes than six weeks in.
Negar Farahmand · built it
I built this method over nine years of senior exits — Big Four partners, public sector, scale-ups — and I teach it to a room every week in the Collective. A room can’t sit with one person’s thirty years and decide what they’re selling. Ross can, and that’s what I’ve asked him to do.
What €5,000 buys.
Ninety days, one-to-one with Ross. The audit before you decide, six stages, homework every Friday and read before the next one, and the scorecard at the start and the end so you can see the distance. Nothing else to buy. No upsell at stage four, no specials.
If you want the method without the person, the Collective teaches it to a room for €97 a month, and for a lot of people that’s enough. This is for the person whose work needs someone to read it — the bit that can’t happen in a room.
Start with the audit. It’s free, and Ross will tell you in thirty minutes whether this is right for you. The price only matters after that.
We don’t name clients. We’ll put you in touch with past clients who’ve volunteered as references.
Each stage teaches a capability and leaves you holding something you built with it.
1
Diagnosis
a floor and an inventory
2
Proposition
a sentence that survived
3
Positioning
a profile that reads
4
Routes
three channels, thirty names
5
Conversion
a script and a price
6
Retro
where you started, in numbers
Four questions.
Is the audit a sales call?
No. Thirty minutes on how you're being read, live, in the order a stranger reads it. You leave with an action plan whether or not you go further.
How much time does the homework take?
Friday. Two to three hours, on work you’d arguably be doing anyway. If you haven’t got a Friday in you, say so at the audit. This isn’t the right thing.
I’m still employed. Too early?
It’s the best time. You have money, time and no panic. If you’re staying and want to get faster where you are, that’s a different programme →
What if it’s not now?
Say so. Nothing changes. We’ll ask once more, in a few months, and not before.
Start with the audit.
Thirty minutes with Ross, live, free. How the market reads you, and what to change first, in order. You leave with the plan, not advice. Ten a month.
Not this, not yet? The Collective teaches the method to a room for €97 a month →