Douty Consulting Book a 15-minute call

For experienced professionals, 50 and over

If the job applications aren’t working, the problem may be the channel, not the experience.

Many people with 25 or 30 years of senior experience are applying for jobs and hearing very little back. In my experience, a lot of them are solving the wrong problem. They’re trying to get hired. The better market is usually a company with a problem it can’t solve on its own, which pays someone to solve it.

I work one-on-one with people who want to make that switch. Together we define what they sell, who buys it, and what to charge.

Book a 15-minute call Watch the videos first

§ 01 – The job market

Inside a hiring process, experience gets priced as a cost

The salary band

Each role has a salary band set before anyone reads a résumé. A candidate with three decades behind them looks expensive against that band, whether or not they’d ask for more.

“Overqualified”

It usually means something narrower than it sounds. The hiring manager expects that person to leave when something better turns up, and a replacement search costs months.

None of this is about the work the person can do. It’s a property of the channel, and for this group the job application is often the wrong door.

§ 02 – The other door

Companies regularly buy senior experience without hiring anyone

They pay for a defined result over a defined period, from someone who has solved that problem before. In practice it usually takes one of four shapes.

01 / Project

A fixed scope, with a start and an end

A pricing overhaul or a rebuilt sales process would be typical.

02 / Advisory retainer

A few hours a month

Working with a CEO or leadership team on one specific area.

03 / Fractional

An executive function, part-time

For a company that doesn’t need, or can’t yet afford, a full-time hire.

04 / Interim

A gap filled for a few months

Full-time, while the company recruits or reorganizes.

The buyer is judging whether their problem gets solved, not comparing a candidate against a salary band. In my experience the work itself is the easy part. People get stuck describing it so that a buyer recognizes their own problem in it, and then finding the first few buyers.

87%

of the people doing this kind of work have more than 11 years of experience, according to one survey. The thing that counts against someone in a hiring process tends to count in their favour here.

72%

of independent professionals found their first client through someone they already knew. Finding buyers is less mysterious than it sounds.

§ 03 – Are you right for this?

Who this is for, and who it isn’t

It’s likely a fit if

  • You have 20 or more years of experience, including senior responsibility in a function such as operations, sales, finance, product, engineering, marketing or general management.
  • You want to keep working, and to be paid properly for it.
  • You’d rather sell a defined result than go back to applying for jobs.
  • You’re willing to contact people you already know, since that’s where most first clients come from.

It probably isn’t a fit if

  • You want help with a job search. Résumés and interview prep are a different service, and other people do them well.
  • You’re looking for passive income. This is work, sold one engagement at a time.
  • You want an income guarantee. I can help shape the offer and get the conversations started, but the market makes the decision.
  • You haven’t had senior responsibility yet. The model depends on having solved expensive problems before.

§ 04 – What we work on

Five pieces, roughly in this order

Most people arrive with one or two of these further along than the others, so we start wherever the gap is. The sprint covers all five.

§ 05 – About me

I do this work myself

Steve Douty

I’m Steve Douty, and I’m 65. I’ve worked in nine startups and been CEO of four of them. Before that I was COO at Hotmail, a director at MSN, an SVP at Yahoo!, co-founder and CMO at Moxie Software, and EVP at LivePerson.

4×
CEO
9
Startups
25+
Startups advised
$900M
3 exits, on $120M raised

These days I run an independent consulting practice. I work with several clients on a recurring basis and I’m not an employee of any of them, which is the arrangement this page describes.

See the consulting practice

§ 06 – How it works

A short call, then a three-week sprint

Step 1

A 15-minute introductory call

Free

You tell me what you’ve done and what you’d like to be paid for next, and I’ll tell you whether I think the sprint would help. If I don’t think it would, I’ll say so. One introductory call per person.

Step 2 · The main offer

The Offer Sprint

$900

Three 60-minute sessions by video over about three weeks. Between sessions I review your drafts and send written comments, so each session starts from your material rather than a blank page. Paid when you book the first session.

After the sprint

Follow-on sessions

$250 an hour

For sprint clients who want help with what comes next, such as preparing for a first buyer conversation or pricing a specific proposal.

What you walk away with at the end of the sprint

  • Your offer, written as one sentence a buyer would recognize
  • A defined first engagement, with a price
  • A rewritten LinkedIn headline and About section
  • A target list of 20 people and companies to contact first

§ 07 – Questions

Common questions

§ 08 – The videos

The full argument is on the channel

Start with the 15-minute call

Pick a time that suits you. A line or two about what you’ve done when you book means the 15 minutes go to your situation rather than background. One introductory call per person.

Book a 15-minute call

Already sure the sprint is what you want? Book it here for $900, and you can pick your first session straight afterwards.