You can sell a nine figure deal for them
but freeze when the product is you.
Dave Ray.Portfolio Leadership Accelerator
The Portfolio Leadership Accelerator · November cohort
The November Accelerator
Every month I take four C-level executives through a 90 day build and land them their first or next paid advisory engagement.
Four spots. We kick off Tuesday 3 November. I'm choosing people this week and next.
Doors close Friday 30 October, 30 days from now.
This is not a DIY course. It's not just a community. Two of us in your corner, plus our team, done with you, towards one outcome.
And if you don't land an engagement in that time, we keep working with you for free until you do.
This page is everything you need to decide whether it's for you. Read it, and if it is, apply at the bottom. There's no pitch call afterwards. There's a 15 minute conversation and a yes or no from both sides.
The problem isn't your expertise
You've spent 20 years being excellent inside someone else's organisation.
You have hundreds of contacts
but no reliable way to create opportunities.
Your expertise is real,
it just isn't packaged, positioned or priced in a way a CEO can buy.
The real cost of doing it alone
You could work this out on your own. Most people try. They spend six months going around in circles, rewriting the LinkedIn profile, asking ChatGPT what their value proposition is and getting a different answer every time, having coffee chats that go nowhere. Six months later there's an "Open to work" banner on the profile and still no role. That's the real cost, not the fee.
Do the maths on it. What does six months of not working cost you?
If you were on £180,000, that's
£90,000
gone before you've even started.
That's 12 times the programme fee.
What does it cost you to walk into your next negotiation without a positioned profile and take the rate or deal they suggest, instead of the one you're worth? Over a two year engagement that gap is worth many times the fee. Six months chasing around is the most expensive thing you can do right now, and it's the default.
People pay us because they don't want to spend a year working out what they're worth and how to sell it. They want it done, properly, with someone who has done it a hundred times, and then they want to go and get paid.
Here's what we're doing
So over 90 days we build the assets, and then we take them to market with you.
By the end you'll have a positioned advisory practice you own, a pipeline of live conversations with decision-makers, and a paid engagement signed. Most people are in real advisory conversations inside six to eight weeks.
What I mean by an advisory engagement
Any paid arrangement where a business buys your judgement rather than your time in a job. In practice it's one of five shapes:
Interim
Full time for a fixed period, to run a transformation or hold a seat while they hire.
Fractional
Two or three days a week as their CTO, CFO, COO or equivalent, usually on a monthly retainer.
Advisory retainer
A set number of days a month advising the CEO or the board.
Non executive or board seat
A formal seat on a board, paid for your judgement and oversight.
Scoped project
A consulting piece with a defined outcome and a price.
We often aim for interim first because it pays well and it's the natural base a portfolio grows from. Whichever shape fits you, that's the one we go and land.
Two of us in your corner, plus our team
And all the insight from working with thousands of executives like you.
Dave Ray
6,000+ coaching sessionsFTSE 100 to scale-ups
Me, I built the method. I've run over 6,000 coaching sessions with senior leaders around the world, from FTSE 100 companies to scale-ups, and I've made this move myself.
Malcolm Lambell
100+ leaders mentored99% success rate20 years as a CIO
Malcolm spent twenty years as a CIO and technology executive at RBS, Lloyds, HBOS and AXA, then ten years in interim and portfolio work. In that time he has mentored more than a hundred senior leaders through exactly this transition, into new roles, first interim contracts and portfolio careers, with a 99% success rate. He has sat on the buyer's side of the table for two decades. He knows what a board will pay for and what it won't, and he'll tell you before we build anything. Then he opens his network.
The plan is simple
Clarity
The Advisory Audit
The outcome
Know exactly what to sell, to whom and for how much, confirmed by someone who has bought it.
- Onboarding assessment
- Forensic LinkedIn and CV audit
- A strategy interview to find the commercial moments in your history
- A 1:1 debrief with me
- A positioning pressure test with Malcolm, before anything gets built
You leave this month with a diagnosis you can point to.
Foundation
The Advisory Asset Sprint
The outcome
A deployable advisory identity, ready to go to market, all yours to keep.
- Full CV and LinkedIn rewrite (headline, about, every experience entry), built to position an authority, not a candidate
- Case studies extracted from your track record
- Your engagement approach: the way you diagnose problems and the outcome you can stand by
- A deal structure or pricing model you can say out loud with confidence
- Malcolm reads the finished artefacts the way a board or a recruiter would, and we sharpen anything that wouldn't survive that room
- A mock interview with our independent interviewer, with feedback on your CV and LinkedIn
Activation
The Portfolio Accelerator
The outcome
A paid engagement, signed.
- A go to market plan built with me: target list, outreach rhythm, the pitch
- Warm introductions from Malcolm's network into recruiters, CIOs and boards
- A weekly 1:1 with me while the conversations get real
- Pricing, scoping and proposal support when the first opportunity lands
- We stay with you until it's signed and paid
- Lifetime access to every update to the method
If everything stopped at day 60 you'd walk away with a practice you could deploy in front of any CEO. The last 30 days turn it into money.
Proof
He does what he says he will do.
Jesse Shearin
Interim and Fractional COO, formerly COO at Tozaro
Jesse came in with a lot done and no clear message for it. Through the Audit and Sprint he found where he adds the most value and how to say it, and the inbound interim enquiries started before we'd even finished.
We sharpened the pitch and moved from passive to promotion. I launched and had 5 really quick prospects and secured a role.
John Hancock
Formerly Group COO at Wolseley
Recently out of a C-suite role, proud of the CV, no idea how to market himself or to whom. Rebuilt the brand around certainty of results, learned to sell again, launched, and landed.
Who this is not for
You're just starting out, or you're VP level and under. This is built for people at C-suite or equivalent, with 10 to 25 years of senior experience and a P&L, a team or a transformation behind them.
You want a recruiter to do it for you. I'll write the messages with you, Malcolm will open doors, and you'll send them, take the calls and have the conversations. If the conversations are the part you want to avoid, no programme can fix that.
You can't name a lane. You've done 25 years of "lots of things, mostly people related". The build sharpens what you offer, it doesn't manufacture it. A CFO who ran pre IPO finance, a CTO who scaled a platform through hypergrowth, a COO who took a business through a PE exit, those are lanes.
You just want another permanent role, similar to the one you had. This isn't a job search. If what you actually want is the same title at a different company, the fastest route is a recruiter, not a rebuild.
You've worked with seven other coaches and they were all the problem.
Who it is for
You've got real expertise and you can point to results.
You're either still in role and building the bridge, or you've left and six to twelve months of doing it alone hasn't worked.
You take direction well and you'll follow a plan you didn't write.
You want to be bought for outcomes, not hired by the day.
QuickFacts
Investment
£7,500
£4,000 when you join, £3,500 when you land a paid engagement. Not before.
Spots
Four a month
When they're gone they're gone. You can join the next cohort early so you don't miss out twice.
Kickoff
Tuesday 3 November
The first Tuesday of the month. Doors close Friday 30 October.
Time
One 1:1 a week
With me, plus one session with Malcolm in each stage, and the outreach itself, a few hours a week from week six.
Format
Online and 1:1
With a small cohort of four alongside you. Two of us in your corner, plus our team, for 90 days.
The guarantee
Two parts.
Day 30
The Audit refund
If at the end of the first month you don't have a diagnosis you'd put money behind, tell me and I refund the £4,000. You keep the work. No process, no negotiation.
Day 90
The £3,500
You only pay it when you land a paid engagement. If you do the work (the weekly sessions, the calls, the outreach) and we reach day 90 without one, we keep going at no extra cost until you do. That's the deal. You pay the second half out of revenue you've already earned, not out of savings.
How to apply
1
Fill in the application. Eight questions, about ten minutes. It tells me whether the lane is clear, whether the timing works and whether one of the four spots fits you.
2
If it reads like a fit, we book a 15 minute Portfolio Read. It's not a sales call. I'll tell you plainly what I'd fix first and whether I think the Accelerator is right for you. You'll tell me whether you want in. Either of us can say no.
3
Yes from both sides? I send the agreement and the first invoice, and we book your kickoff.
Apply for the November Accelerator
I reply to every application within 72 hours. If it's not a fit, I'll tell you why and where to look instead.
Dave
P.S. Everyone in the November cohort gets the Portfolio Executive AI Operating System, the full setup I run my own business on, installed for you as part of the build. It's the thing clients tell me they'd have paid for on its own, and it means the practice we build keeps running after we're done.