PRIVATE ADVISORY
WHEN THE DECISION ISN'T JUST BUSINESS
The most consequential decisions in life rarely belong entirely to one category.
A business decision may carry implications for your family. A relationship may influence how you lead. An exit can change your financial reality, your identity, and what you want from the next chapter. Sometimes the decision itself is clear—but what it means for the rest of your life is not.
CEO on Fire provides confidential private advisory for CEOs, founders, executives, and other accomplished individuals navigating situations where professional and personal considerations intersect.
WHAT BRINGS SOMEONE TO PRIVATE ADVISORY?
There is rarely one reason.
Sometimes there is a specific decision to make. Other times, something has changed—a business, a relationship, a family dynamic, a financial reality, or simply your understanding of what you want.
Private advisory becomes particularly valuable when the situation is consequential, multiple parts of life are involved, and there is no obvious person with whom to think through the whole picture.
A consequential decision
A choice involving your company, career, relationship, family, or future where what is at stake extends well beyond the immediate choice.
A TRANSITION
An acquisition, exit, succession, changing role, relationship shift, family transition, or new chapter that raises questions about what comes next—and who you are within it.
RELATIONSHIPS & FAMILY
Marriage, partnership, children, aging parents, family businesses, or the ways ambition, wealth, and demanding careers affect the people closest to you.
WEALTH, ACHIEVEMENT & IDENTITY
The questions that can emerge around success itself—trust, responsibility, expectations, lifestyle, purpose, identity, and what you want achievement to make possible in your life.
A PRIVATE SITUATION WITH NO OBVIOUS ADVISOR
Something too personal for the board, outside the role of your attorney or wealth advisor, inappropriate to discuss casually, or simply too interconnected to fit neatly within one professional discipline.
And sometimes there is no crisis, transition, or decision at all.
There is simply a sense that an important part of your life deserves more thought than it has been given.
A PLACE TO THINK DIFFERENTLY.
Private advisory begins with understanding the full context—not only what is happening, but who is involved, what matters to you, what may be influencing the situation, and what different choices could mean for the rest of your life.
Sarrah listens for what is being said and what may be harder to articulate. She asks direct questions, challenges assumptions, identifies patterns and dynamics that may be shaping the situation, and offers perspective informed by more than a decade of working closely with accomplished people.
Sometimes the work is highly practical: preparing for a difficult conversation, thinking through a decision, weighing competing priorities, or determining what to do next.
Other times, it goes deeper: understanding why a situation keeps repeating, examining what may be influencing your choices, reconsidering what success means to you, or confronting something that has been easier not to examine.
A conversation about business may become a conversation about family. A relationship issue may reveal something about leadership. A decision about the future may raise a larger question about identity.=
The subject can change. The relationship—and the context Sarrah brings to it—doesn’t.
CONSISTENCY. CONTEXT. ACCESS.
The value of private advisory is not simply having someone to speak with.
It is having someone who already understands.
CONSISTENCY CREATES CONTEXT. CONTEXT MAKES ACCESS VALUABLE.
CONSISTENCY
Private Advisory includes a consistent weekly conversation with Sarrah.
That regularity allows the relationship to develop beyond the immediate problem. Over time, Sarrah comes to understand the people, history, pressures, ambitions, relationships, and patterns surrounding your life.
There is no predetermined agenda. What matters most that week determines where the conversation goes.
Scheduling is intentionally flexible around the realities of demanding lives, including business, travel, family, and unexpected circumstances.
CONTEXT
The longer an advisory relationship develops, the less that needs to be explained.
When something happens, Sarrah already understands much of what came before, who is involved, what may be influencing the situation, and why a seemingly straightforward decision may have implications elsewhere in your life.
That accumulated context allows conversations to move more quickly when necessary—and go deeper when the situation requires it.
ACCESS
Important situations don’t wait for scheduled conversations.
Private Advisory includes direct access to Sarrah between weekly conversations by text and email, with brief calls when circumstances warrant.
A decision may need to be made. A difficult conversation may be about to happen. Something unexpected may change the situation entirely.
The purpose isn’t constant communication.
It’s knowing that when something important happens, you have someone who already understands the context and is available to you.
A RELATIONSHIP BUILT OVER TIME
The real value of private advisory compounds.
Over time, Sarrah develops an increasingly nuanced understanding of your life—not only the decisions you make, but the people who matter to you, the history surrounding particular situations, the ambitions and responsibilities you carry, the patterns that recur, and the things you may find difficult to say elsewhere.
That context cannot be created in a single conversation.
It is built through continuity, candor, and trust.
And when something consequential happens, you aren’t beginning with someone new.
You’re speaking with someone who already knows the story.
HIGHLY PERSONAL. ENTIRELY CONFIDENTIAL.
For people carrying significant responsibility, there are often fewer places where complete candor is possible.
Private Advisory provides a confidential space to speak openly about what is actually happening—without needing to manage how it will be perceived by employees, investors, a board, colleagues, friends, or family.
Nothing needs to be positioned, performed, or withheld.
The conversation can begin with the situation as it actually is.
INTENTIONALLY LIMITED.
The depth of Private Advisory depends on Sarrah having the time and availability to know her clients well and respond when circumstances require it.
For that reason, Sarrah works with no more than 10 Private Advisory clients at a time.
New advisory relationships begin with an initial period designed to establish context, work together through situations as they arise, and determine whether an ongoing advisory relationship makes sense.
Longer-term relationships provide continued weekly advisory, direct access between conversations, and extended private advisory meetings with Sarrah in New York.
Continuation is based on mutual fit.
THE RIGHT ADVISORY RELATIONSHIP MATTERS.
CEO on Fire is designed for accomplished people who value candor, discretion, depth, and a relationship that develops over time.
The work is most valuable when you are willing to speak openly, examine assumptions, consider perspectives that may challenge your own, and look beyond the immediate problem to understand what may actually be influencing it.
Sarrah will offer perspective, ask difficult questions, and tell you what she sees—even when it may not be what you want to hear.
The goal isn’t to have someone make your decisions for you.
It’s to have someone you trust beside you while you make them.
begin with a
private conversation
You may be facing a specific decision.
Something in your life may have changed.
Or you may simply recognize the value of having a trusted advisor who understands the broader context of your life.
The first conversation is an opportunity to understand what is bringing you here and for both of you to determine whether working together makes sense.