Lisa Mayer · Next Position Advisory · Zürich

What I do, and what it costs

I help experienced corporate leaders build their own solo consulting or advisory practice, complete with a supporting AI workforce and the automations to keep it running.

You have left, or you are close to it. Everything I offer is below, with what it is and what it costs. The argument for why any of it matters is further down, and you do not have to read it to see the prices.

Building your practice

WhatShapeCHF
Soundcheck20 days, email, 15 minutes a day200
Decision Call60 minutes, written read after550
The Practice RoomSelf-paced, twelve weeks750
The Solo TrackFour weeks, one to one2,950
The 12-Week Studio12 weeks, eight seats, Tuesdays and Thursdays7,500

Running your practice

WhatShapeCHF
Build Your AI Workforce in Six HoursSelf-paced, six hours, alone295
Session ZeroTwo hours, live, only if you need it, the foundations of setting up your AI workforce500
The Rig12 weeks, group of up to twelve, done with you2,500
The InstallOne to one, done for youfrom 4,000

Start at the top if you are not sure. Most people should, and Soundcheck is built to be able to tell you no.

Who this is not for

Anyone who wants the next role. That is a real problem and it is a different one. I no longer work on it, and I would rather say so now than take your money and be the wrong person.

Anyone with no depth to sell. The whole method is positioning what you know against the alternatives. Under about ten years, or breadth with nothing you are known for, and there is nothing to work with.

Anyone who needs this to work by next month. A practice built under that much pressure makes bad decisions and takes the first client who says yes. I will tell you to go and get a contract role first, and mean it.

Why me

I was Head of Technology HR at Credit Suisse, working to a Chief Technology Officer who sat on the Executive Board, when the merger with UBS was announced. I moved to UBS in 2024 as Global Technology Reward Lead, while the two banks were being integrated. Thirteen years at Credit Suisse in total, sixteen across the two banks. The work was global rather than Swiss: technology teams in Poland, India, Singapore and New York as well as Zürich.

That is the qualification. Here is the reason.

I spent the integration in the room where it was decided, about people who were not. The technology workforce in the Credit Suisse remit was 13,000. Two lists were being drawn at the same time: who goes, and who must not go under any circumstances.

“Excellent. Highly capable. Strong leader.”

Those are compliments. Not one of them tells you what breaks if she leaves.

The second list was written differently. She holds the relationship with the regulator. He is the only one who understands the migration sequence. One line each, concrete, and the room could see exactly what would break.

Nobody protects a compliment. They protect a dependency.

I was not the one making those calls. I was in the room while they were made.

Then I walked out and could not write my own line either. I had watched it from the inside and I still described myself in adjectives for months. If it took me that long, the question is not whether you are clever enough. Nobody gets there alone, because the whole difficulty is that you cannot see yourself from outside.

And I did not start with the full strategy. I did not spend twelve months mapping my runway before I began. I did not start by building an email list. I started, and I learned the rest by doing it.

What it costs to leave the question open

Twenty years inside a building trains you to be described rather than to describe. The job architecture did it for you. So did the org chart, and every person who ever introduced you in a meeting.

A hiring manager can still read a title and infer the rest. A client has no such model. A client is buying one specific thing, and if you cannot name it there is nothing there to buy.

Nothing dramatic happens. That is the problem with this particular cost. Nobody tells you that you have got it wrong, because nobody outside your own head is tracking it.

You spend the money on the wrong thing first. A website, a brand identity, a LinkedIn refresh, a photographer. All of it is work you can start on a Tuesday without deciding anything, and none of it survives finding out what you actually sell. It is expensive procrastination because it feels like progress.

You spend the runway on conversations that were never going to convert. A wide description gets you meetings with people who are being polite. They are polite because there is nothing specific enough to say no to. Six of those and you have lost a quarter and learned nothing you could act on.

Then, somewhere around month seven, you take the first client who says yes. Not the right one. The first one. And that client sets your price, your scope and your reputation for the next two years, because you had nothing else and they knew it.

The last cost is the one nobody says out loud. You go back. Not because the practice could not have worked, but because you never got far enough to find out, and a salary is a very reasonable answer to a question you have run out of money to keep asking.

The expensive part is not getting it wrong. It is taking a year to find out.

Each one, in detail

It is not a website and it is not a LinkedIn refresh. It is deciding what you sell, who to, against which alternatives and at what price, then saying it out loud to real people and finding out what comes back.

Two ways in

Soundcheck

CHF 200

20 days · 2 to 27 November 2026 · email · 15 minutes a day

You play to the empty room before anybody has paid to hear you. Twenty days to find out whether there is a practice in what you know, before you spend real money building one.

  • Week 1 what you actually know, recovered from your own history rather than your CV
  • Week 2 whether it exists outside your building. The hard week, and the one that decides it
  • Week 3 what it would cost you, named flatly
  • Week 4 say it out loud to five people who have the problem

You finish with one page on yourself and a verdict. It is built to be able to tell you no, and some people should hear that for CHF 200 rather than find out in month seven.

Fifteen minutes a day, by email, and no session you have to be free for.

Decision Call

CHF 550

60 minutes · written observations after · available now

One decision you cannot afford to get wrong. An offer on the table, a package to weigh, or whether the thing you keep describing at dinner parties is a business or an expensive hobby.

I will tell you which. That is what the hour is for. You get a written read afterwards, so you are not reconstructing it from memory a fortnight later.

The main thing

The 12-Week Studio

CHF 7,500

12 weeks · eight seats · Cohort 1 begins Monday 11 January 2027

Twelve weeks, eight people, two sessions a week and real work in between. Eight is small enough that nobody hides, which some people discover they were counting on.

  • The Deep Dive, Tuesdays 09:00 to 10:30 CET. One theme taught properly, one decision made live. Twelve of them, and attendance is not optional
  • The Build, Thursdays 15:30 to 16:30 CET. Your AI workforce built in the room rather than described, then time for your questions. Also mandatory
  • Six sessions with me. The Welcome Check before it starts, a written read on your positioning in week 3, the Offer Architecture Check in week 4, two check-ins you claim whenever you need them, and The Review in week 14
  • Working AI agents you keep, installed one at a time in the week each has a job to do, and your first automations running on your own data
  • The Practice Room, the self-paced course, included in full. It is also what you read before each week
  • Build Your AI Workforce in Six Hours, included in full
  • The room itself, and the alumni group afterwards

Enrolment closes Friday 18 December. Three cohorts a year, and I do not run two at once, which is the reason the seats are the number they are.

Read the two session times before anything else. Tuesdays 09:00 to 10:30 and Thursdays 15:30 to 16:30 CET. Both mandatory, twelve weeks, and both inside the working day on purpose. If you are still in a full-time corporate role you cannot make them, and one person who cannot make the room damages the cohort for the other seven.

That is why Soundcheck exists in November and the Studio starts in January. Do the first while you are employed. Do the second once you are not.

If twelve weeks is not the shape

The Solo Track

CHF 2,950

Four weeks · one to one

Four weeks, one to one, with work between every session, focused on whatever is actually in your way. Most people start with positioning, done properly and quickly, for somebody who is not going to wait for a cohort and knows it.

You finish able to say what you do, who for and what it costs, in one sentence, having said it to real people and heard what came back. CHF 500 of it credits into the Studio if you go on.

The Practice Room

CHF 750

Self-paced · twelve weeks · opens soon

Building your AI-enabled solo practice. On your own.

Credited in full against a seat in the 12-Week Studio if you go on to it, so buying it first costs you nothing.

Afterwards, when the problem is capacity

These are not a ladder you climb. They are the same problem three ways, and which one you want depends on whether you would rather buy the result, build it with somebody, or build it alone. None of them is worth anything until you know what you sell.

The Rig

CHF 2,500

Six fortnightly sessions over twelve weeks · Thursdays 13:00 to 15:00 CET · twelve seats, runs with at least four · from late April 2027

Hour one is an agent. Hour two is the plumbing. Every session is one job seen from both sides: what happens when somebody books, when somebody pays, when a session ends.

It does not hand you a set of finished flows. It teaches you the standard underneath them: configuration read from one place, every outcome logged, and an error handler that tells you before a client does. Then you build the ones your practice actually needs.

And you can fix them when they break. That is the whole point, and it is the part somebody else's install cannot give you.

Session Zero

CHF 500

Two hours · before the Rig starts · only if you need it

Most people arriving at the Rig from the Studio already have an AI workforce. If you are coming in cold, this gets you to the same floor: what an agent is, what a skill is, where the knowledge lives, and your Chief of Staff installed and running by the end of it.

If you would rather do it alone, the six-hour course below covers the same ground at your own pace for CHF 295.

The Install

starting from CHF 4,000

One to one · rolling · done for you

Your operations built for you, then handed over. The flows that stop a solo practice capping out: a payment that files itself, a booking that creates its own session record and prep brief, a session that files its own summary.

You never give me a password. You create the accounts and you stay the owner and the billing holder. Everything runs on keys that are scoped to one job and revocable without touching your login, and at handover you rotate anything I have touched and I tell you exactly which ones those are.

Every practice is different, so it is scoped on a call before it is priced. Starting from CHF 4,000, because somebody with clean data in a Notion they already use is not the same job as somebody with four years of client records in email.

Build Your AI Workforce in Six Hours

CHF 295

Self-paced · six hours · yours to keep · done alone

A self-paced build rather than a course about AI: something working at the end of every hour. Included in full with a Studio seat.

What people say

“She brought an independent, outside read on my experience and how it holds up in the market, a well-benchmarked perspective that's hard to get from inside your own network. She was also a sharp sounding board, pressure-testing my thinking and sharpening how I frame my work. Structured sessions, clear written follow-ups, and direct, practical advice throughout.”
Peter Bozsoki · AI and quantitative leader · PhD Physics, Oxford MathFin

The two below are from people I helped into a next role, which is work I no longer take. I have left them here because what they are describing is the method, and the method is the same whoever is buying.

“I initially connected with Lisa because her insights on the challenges of the modern workplace resonated deeply with my own experience. After decades in senior leadership, returning to the job market felt like navigating an entirely different world. Lisa's guidance has been pivotal for me. She provided the frank, honest feedback I needed to successfully re-position my executive profile. Her ability to challenge conventional thinking while offering practical and modern strategies is a rare find.”
Ather Islam · Global Technology and Infrastructure Leader · CIO, CTO, IT Director
“Her previous corporate experience combined with excellent coaching and mentoring skills add huge value for anyone taking and acting on a major career decision. I will also continue working with Lisa in my new role.”
Gemma Jackson · Head of Observability, London Stock Exchange Group

One thing I am not

I am a chartered management accountant. I am not a tax adviser, I am not a lawyer, and I am not a financial adviser. How you constitute a business, GmbH or payroll company or something else entirely, sits on top of tax, social contributions and liability, and the answer is different in every country.

I will show you what the fork is and what each side costs you in admin, in cash, and in how you look to a corporate buyer. This is your arithmetic on your own numbers, and I will not tell you what your number should be. If the answer needs somebody who knows your country's rules, get one, and I will say so at the point it matters rather than letting you assume otherwise.

How to start

Book a thirty-minute call, or email me. Tell me where you are and what you are weighing. Two or three lines is plenty if you write. I answer these myself, and I will tell you if I am the wrong person.

Book a 30-minute call Email Lisa

  • If you want the January cohort, say January and I will put you on the list. Eight seats, enrolment closes Friday 18 December, and the list gets first refusal
  • If you have one decision that will not wait, say so and I will send you a time. Sixty minutes, CHF 550, written observations afterwards
  • If you are not sure any of this is for you, Soundcheck is CHF 200 and is designed to answer exactly that, including in the negative

Lisa Mayer · Next Position Advisory · Zürich, Switzerland

16 years in banking. Head of Technology HR at Credit Suisse, then Global Technology Reward Lead at UBS during the integration.

Prices in Swiss francs, current as at August 2026.