My daughter once asked me something I didn’t have a good answer for: how do you tell someone they’re being a dickhead, and they thank you for it? It’s a fair question. That matter-of-fact way of speaking — no softening, no managing how it lands — has been with me since before any of this had a name. It’s part of what made the early businesses work.
People kept telling me they’d never experienced a conversation like it. Eventually I asked a coach I respected — someone who had worked with over 3,000 coaches professionally — whether what I had was actually unusual, or whether I was imagining it. She told me she’d never experienced anything like it, that the conversation was life-changing. She then asked me to have the same conversation with a friend of hers, also a coach. Her friend was blown away too.
That’s when the calls stopped being something I did on the side and became something worth building properly.
Nathan Aherne
I am attracted to industries where the stakes are high, the systems are complex, and conventional thinking has stopped producing exceptional results.
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I speak internationally on judgement, leadership, and decision-making — to boards, founders, and leadership teams facing decisions where the cost of being wrong is enormous.
I accept a limited number of advisory engagements each year. Most begin through referrals or direct introductions.