Australian Men Over 50 · Steering Businesses Anywhere On Earth

He Doesn’t Steady The Ship.
He Changes Where It’s Going.

What Needs Turning Around?

Pick one. He is already out there.

What A Skipper Brings

Hard-Won Judgement.
Live Ideas.
No Fear Left.

He has been through a recession, a bad partner, a product that failed and a year he does not talk about. What is left is a man who cannot be rattled and has stopped needing the credit. There is nothing in business more useful than that, and no job advertisement has ever known how to ask for it.

Nobody Here Writes A Job Advertisement

Introducing The Skipper Atelier™.

Seven questions, and what comes out is a brief one man reads and says I have had that exact year. Not a role a hundred people apply for.

One Business That Knows What It Needs.

One Man Who Has Already Had That Year.

One Brief Written For Him Alone.

01
The Turn You Need
What has to be different, and by when?
And what you have stopped saying out loud The quarter everybody can see coming and nobody has named in a meeting.
02
What Has Already Been Tried
Who has looked at this before him, and what happened?
Including the one that did not work A man who knows what failed here starts in week one rather than week six.
03
The Shape Of It
Steer · Build · Steady · Rescue · Open · Hand Over.
Naming it is half the work Most briefs go wrong here — a business asks for help and gets a shape it never needed.
04
How Much Of Him
An hour on a Thursday, two days a week, or a whole quarter?
Say the smaller number if it is true Men here sell by the hour. You do not have to commit to a year to find out.
05
What He Can Actually Decide
What may he change without asking anybody?
And exactly where it stops He would rather know in March than find out in June. So would you.
06
The Room He Is Walking Into
What is tender here, and who is watching?
Who will be difficult about this Name them. He has met them before and he is not frightened of them.
07
The Handover
What has to be true on the day he leaves?
The part every other board forgets He writes you a record of what he did and where the bodies are. It is yours for good.

See It For Yourself

One Of These Gets You A Shortlist. The Other Gets You The Man.

How It Is Asked For Today

Written Once, Posted Everywhere, Answered By Anybody

Interim Operations Consultant

6 month contract · Melbourne · Day rate negotiable

Our client, a leading manufacturer, is seeking an experienced interim operations professional to drive transformation across the business during a period of change.

The successful candidate will have 15+ years’ experience, strong stakeholder management skills and a proven track record of delivering results in fast-paced environments.

Excellent communicator. Commercially astute. Immediate start preferred. Applications close Friday.

Written In The Atelier

Built Question By Question, Never Posted As An Advertisement

Hartwell & Co · 90 people · Dandenong

Steer Us Through The Next Eleven Months

Steer Two days a week From 1 November $1,800 a day

The Turn We Need

We have eleven months of runway and a founder who still signs every purchase order. By June somebody other than him has to be able to say no.

What we have stopped saying out loud

That we will fix it after this next contract. We have said that twice and lost two good people waiting.

What Has Already Been Tried

A consultant in 2024 wrote us a ninety-page operating model. It is in a drawer and nobody here has opened it since.

Why it did not take

He never came back to watch anybody try to use it. We need somebody in the building, not a document.

What You Can Decide

You own the production schedule and the supplier list from day one, and you can change any process you inherit without asking.

And exactly where it stops

Pricing stays with our founder until you have shown him why it should not. We would rather say that now than in March.

The Room You Are Walking Into

Ninety people, two sites, and a floor that has watched three managers come and go in four years.

Who will be difficult about this

Our production lead has been here nineteen years and has been right more often than any of us. Win him and the rest follows.

The Deal

Rate: $1,800 a day, invoiced to us directly
Rhythm: Two days a week, Tuesdays always
Length: Eleven months, reviewed at five
On the day you leave: Two people here can run the week without ringing you, written down

What is demanding

Stocktake weeks run hot, four a year, and we say so before you ask.

Both are written to show the shape. Hartwell & Co is not a real business and nobody in either column exists.

What He Actually Did

Some Of The Turns.

A manufacturer with 90 people, eleven months from the wall, and a founder who could not say the word out loud.

He said it in the first week. They kept 74 of the 90 and the business is still there.
A family business where two brothers had stopped speaking to each other in the car park.

One bought the other out in March. They had Christmas together.
A founder who had never let anybody go in nine years, carrying four people he could not afford.

Four conversations, done properly. Three of them stayed, and the fourth sends him work now.
A board that had agreed the same number twice, and a year that would not come out right.

He said it was wrong in front of all nine of them and put the working on the table. They re-cut it and made the year.
A company that had won a contract in a country where nobody there had ever opened a door.

Open in five months. The second one took them nine weeks on their own.

The five above are written to show the shape of the work. Real turns go up here as the men arrive, in their own words and with the businesses who were there saying so.

Businesses

Give Him The Wheel

A day a week. A hard quarter. One call you cannot afford to get wrong.

Find Your Skipper

The Men

You Are The One They Are Looking For

Decades of knowing how it goes, and a head full of ideas a business is about to pay for.

Come Aboard

Recruiters & Agencies

Place Men Who Have Actually Done It

The experience your clients keep asking you for and cannot find.

Work With Us

Why He Is Called A Skipper

The Captain Is Not The Oldest One On The Boat. He Is The One Who Has Sailed It Before.

He has read this weather. He knows which noises are nothing and which one means stop everything. That is not seniority. It is a shortcut nobody can sell you — and it is worth the year inside the first ten minutes.

And yes: Skippy is what the rest of the world calls an Australian. We have decided to take it as a compliment, and to send them everywhere.

The Skipper Atelier

A New Kind Of Man.
A New Kind Of Role.
A New Kind Of Invitation.

Nobody here writes a job advertisement, because none of them have ever known how to ask for this. A business is drawn out instead — seven questions, and what comes out is an invitation a man would actually want to answer.

01The TurnWhat has to change, and by when?
02The Difference He MakesSix months from now, what feels different?
03The Shape Of ItSteer. Build. Steady. Rescue. Open. Hand over.
04The WheelWhat can he actually decide without asking?
05The DealMoney, days, rhythm and the truth about the hours.
06The CrewWho is already here, and what is still being built?
07The InvitationWritten to one man, not to a market.

Give A Man A Wheel To Take, And Watch What Else Changes.

He is different at his own dinner table. Different in his own street. A man using everything he knows does not keep it at work — and that is why Skipper sits inside Lamoureux Lane, the Path to Love and the potential of humanity fully realised. One business gets a quarter turned around. Everybody near him gets the rest.

Hard-Won Judgement.Live Ideas.No Fear Left.