From first call to placement

The first call

The first call is with John. Fifteen to 30 minutes, by phone. The aim is to find out enough about your business and your problem to know whether the model fits, and to give you enough about the model to know whether you want to take the next step. There's no slide deck. No sales script. No follow-up sequence if you decide it's not for you.

What John listens for on the first call: the size and stage of your business, who owns it, what's prompted you to look for a mentor now, the area you most need help with, and your awareness of what an engagement of this kind costs. Some buyers know exactly what kind of mentor they want. Others have a problem and no clear view of who could help with it. Either is fine.

The service is built for owner-managed businesses in Sydney with annual turnover between $1 million and $20 million. If your business sits well outside that band, or if what you actually need is a coach, a consultant, or someone to run a project for you rather than mentor you, John will say so. We'd rather lose the call than take work the model isn't built for.

Up to three pre-engagement calls are available, free of charge, if the brief needs more shaping. Some clients sign after one call. Some need two. After the third call, we'll usually ask for the engagement letter and deposit before we keep going. None of this time is billable. The paid work begins when the engagement letter is signed.

The engagement letter and deposit

The engagement letter is between you and Managers & Directors Pty Ltd. It's a short document, modelled on the executive search engagement letters John has used for 30 years, with the additions specific to this model. We send it by email. You sign it however suits you, by clickable signature, typed name, or DocuSign.

The engagement letter sets out what you're paying for and what you're getting. The fee is for the search, the briefing, and the shortlist. It is not a fee for any particular business outcome. We make clear that the mentor advice you receive after the introduction is not supervised by us, that the mentor invoices you directly, and that we step out of the mentoring relationship once the introduction is made.

Payment is 50% on signing, 50% on shortlist presentation. Payment terms and the full fee detail sit on the Fees page. The search begins when we have both the signed engagement letter and the deposit. Either alone is not enough to start. If the deposit doesn't arrive within 14 days of signing, we treat the engagement as not started and pause until you're ready.

The letter also commits the things that protect you if something goes wrong: the shortlist fallback within the early sessions of the engagement, a clear dispute process, and a reasonable timeframe (10 business days from shortlist presentation) for you to indicate which mentors you'd like to meet. Senior mentor availability can move week to week. The 10-day window keeps the search and the mentors aligned.

The brief

Once the engagement letter is signed and the deposit has cleared, John writes the brief. The brief is a written document, two to three pages, that captures what we're searching for and why. It draws on what we discussed in the pre-engagement calls and turns those conversations into a specification we can run a search against.

The brief covers the company in plain terms (size, sector, ownership, what makes it tick), the situation that's prompted you to look for a mentor, the kind of mentor we're looking for (operating background, experience level, sector exposure, the specific problem they need to have lived through), and the constraints around the search (timeframe, geography, anything we should avoid). Nothing in it is generic. If two clients had the same problem on paper, their briefs would still read differently because the underlying businesses are different.

You see the brief before the search starts. We send it by email and ask you to confirm it, again by email. The confirmation locks it. From that point, every mentor approached is approached against this document. If something material changes mid-search (a new constraint, a fundamentally different problem) we'll tell you and we'll have a conversation about whether it's a clarification or a fresh engagement. Most changes are clarifications.

The brief is the first deliverable of the paid work. It's also the document a dispute would be judged against if one ever arose. We take it seriously for both reasons. A clean brief makes the search faster, the shortlist sharper, and the placement more likely to fit.

The search

The search runs to a two-week timeline from the day the brief is confirmed. John runs it personally. There is no junior search consultant, no offshore researcher, no panel of associates. What you paid for is John's judgement applied to your brief, and that's what runs the search.

We start with the existing Sydney pool. The pool is built and maintained through John's network and direct referral, not through public recruitment. The mentors in it are senior Sydney operators: current or former CEOs, managing directors, and chairmen, alongside people with specific skill sets and operating experience the brief calls for. The scale jump matters. A mentor on the pool will typically have run or chaired organisations up to ten times the size of yours. That's a deliberate gap. If a mentor has only run businesses at your scale, they don't have the perspective the engagement is meant to add.

If the pool doesn't have a fit for your brief, we go wider. Fresh sourcing draws on John's broader network, LinkedIn, referrals from mentors already in the pool, and where appropriate a paid search. Every mentor approached is Sydney-based. We don't substitute a remote mentor for a Sydney brief, regardless of how strong the candidate looks on paper. The local-only rule is what makes the "Sydney mentor" claim accurate.

A mentor approached for your brief sees the headline shape of the search first (sector, problem area, indicative session fee) without your company name or any sensitive detail. If they're interested, they sign a confidentiality agreement. Only then do they see the full written brief. The vetting that follows covers their relevant operating experience, conflicts of interest, and whether their style fits the kind of business you run. A mentor who clears the vetting is ready for the shortlist. A mentor who doesn't, isn't.

Throughout the two weeks you don't usually hear from us. The work is happening. We come back to you when there's a shortlist worth presenting, not before.

The shortlist and the second 50%

The shortlist is three vetted Sydney-based mentors as standard, sometimes two for a genuinely specialist brief, presented to you in a written pack. We send the pack by email and walk through it with you on a call. Each mentor in the pack is covered in enough depth to prepare you for an interview: a photo, a briefing bio John has written (not the raw CV), the operating experience that connects to your brief, industry exposure, working style, and an indicative session fee range the mentor charges for engagements at this level. The pack also carries John's view on which of the three is the strongest fit for your brief and why.

You decide which mentors you want to meet. You can interview one, two, or all three. The fee covers our commitment to make all three available; whether you meet two or three is your call. We arrange the introductions by email and let you and the mentor schedule the interview directly. The mentors at this tier are senior enough to run the interview themselves. John doesn't usually attend, but he's available if you or the mentor would prefer he were there.

Once the pack is delivered, you have 10 business days to indicate which mentors you'd like to meet. Senior mentors hold their availability for a reasonable window but not indefinitely. Inside the 10 days we can move quickly. Beyond it, we may need to substitute, extend, or proceed with a smaller shortlist depending on what the mentors' calendars allow. The 10-day window protects the search timeline for both sides.

The second 50% is invoiced at the time the shortlist is presented. Net 7. The fee covers the search, the briefing, the vetting, the writing, and the presentation of three suitable mentors aligned to your agreed brief. By the time the pack is in your inbox, that work is done. Whether you proceed to placement with one of the three is a separate decision, and the engagement letter sets out the terms either way.

The interviews and placement

Interviews happen in the week after shortlist presentation, on whatever schedule suits you and the mentor. Most clients meet two or three of the shortlisted mentors. Some meet only one (the strongest fit on paper) and decide on that basis. Either approach is fine. The interviews are usually 45 to 60 minutes, in person or by video, your call.

The interview is a fit conversation, not an advisory session. You're working out whether you can spend time with this person every month for the next year. They're working out the same about you. Bring your real situation, ask about their experience with problems like yours, and watch how they think. What you don't ask for is solutions. Mentors at this tier give those generously once they're engaged. In the interview, the value is in the conversation, not in extracting advice for free.

Once you've decided, you tell us. We confirm with the mentor and make the formal introduction. The mentor sends you their own engagement letter (we provide a standard template as a courtesy if they don't have one). They agree session terms, frequency, and fees with you directly. Their letter is between you and them. We don't sign it, supervise it, or hold a copy.

At the placement, our work is done. We step out of the mentoring relationship and the mentor and client run the engagement directly. We don't sit in on sessions, we don't take notes from the mentor, we don't take a cut of session fees. There's a light early-stage check-in once the engagement is underway (covered below) and a standing relationship for future searches if you want one (also below). Otherwise, the introduction is the end of the search engagement.

The early-stage fit check-in and the shortlist fallback

A few weeks into the engagement, John will check in with you. Usually a phone call, sometimes an email. Open question, no agenda: how is it going with the mentor. The check-in is a fit conversation, not an outcome review. We don't ask whether the mentoring is "working" because we're not in a position to judge mentor advice quality. We ask whether the relationship is one you want to keep building.

If you tell John the fit isn't working, the shortlist fallback covers what happens next. Within the first three sessions of the engagement, you can move to another mentor from the original shortlist of three at no further engagement fee. We approach the new mentor, make the introduction, and step out again. The original mentor is told honestly and briefly that the fit wasn't right. They stay in the pool for future briefs. There's no awkward conversation for you to manage and no financial obligation either way.

The fallback applies to your original shortlist. If you and John conclude that none of the three mentors on that shortlist is the right fit, that's a different situation. A fresh search outside the original shortlist is treated as a new engagement. The engagement letter spells out how the fee is handled in that case, including the room for John to use his judgement where the original shortlist quality is in question. In practice, this is rare. The vetting catches most fit issues before a mentor reaches the shortlist.

If the engagement is going well, the check-in is brief and we leave you to it. The mentoring relationship between you and the mentor doesn't need our involvement, and we don't manufacture it.

After the placement

The mentoring relationship is yours and the mentor's to run. Most engagements continue past the first few months because the value is real, not because of any contractual lock-in. Some run for a year, some for several years. The mentor sets the cadence with you, invoices you directly, and adjusts the relationship as your business changes. We don't get involved in any of that.

If you need another mentor at some point (a different problem, a different stage of the business, a second mentor alongside the first), you can come back to us and run a fresh search. Standard Match terms apply. The brief and shortlist process starts again from the beginning, because each search is built around what's needed at the time, not lifted from the last one.

After a successful placement, an optional ongoing arrangement may be offered to clients who want priority access for future searches. It's discussed at the time, not pitched up front. If it suits how you're using the service, John will raise it. If not, he won't.