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David NagtzaamFrontier CoachingHome

The conversations that decide things are not the ones you are having with your coach.

Private counsel for chief executives and founders working past the edge of their own playbook.

Eighteen years across

  • Google
  • Philip Morris International
  • OpenAI
  • McCann
David Nagtzaam
Commitment
Twelve months
Held at a time
Eight relationships
Open for 2026
Two
Apply for a placeSee how it works first

Peers give you perspective, but you owe them one back. A coach gives you process, but has never sat in your chair. I give you both, with neither.

By the time it reaches you, nobody in the room is neutral.

You are not short of advice. There is a board, an executive team, investors, and a phone full of people who would take the call tonight. What you are short of is one person in the conversation who wants nothing from the outcome.

So the real questions go to your peers, and most of the time that works. It stops working on exactly the ones that matter: the questions that touch their market, their quarter, or their opinion of you. Those calls get shorter. Some of them never get made, and you end up deciding alone at the moment you would least like to.

What I do is hold the other side of that conversation, every month, for a year, with no agenda of my own and nothing owed in either direction.

Who this is for.

  • Chief executives and founders of companies between roughly one hundred and two thousand people.
  • People a year or two into the C-suite, discovering that the job is not the last job with more scope.
  • Leaders in the middle of a transition they did not choose. A sale, a new board, a market that moved without asking.

And who it is not

If what you need is more execution capacity, this is not that, and I will tell you so in the first conversation rather than the fourth month.

If your board has told you to get a coach and you do not agree with them, keep your money. This only works when you want it.

If you want someone senior to agree with you, I am the wrong person and an expensive way to find that out.

What we actually work on.

Not competencies, and not a curriculum. In practice it looks more like this.

  • Decisions where both options are defensible and you have to pick one this quarter.
  • How to think about a shift in your industry without having to become a technologist first.
  • The person you have been avoiding dealing with for eleven months.
  • Holding a position while the board is still somewhere behind you.
  • What you are avoiding. This one usually surfaces around month four, and it is usually why the rest of the list exists.

The shape of it.

Frontier Counsel

Twelve months

A standing relationship with one person who has no stake in the answer, for the decisions you cannot take to your board, your team or the people you usually call.

  • A monthly private session, three hours, in your diary for the year.
  • Access between sessions when something moves and you need to think out loud before you act.
  • Two longer sessions a year, held away from your office, for the questions that need a day rather than an hour.
  • A written note after each session, kept by you, never stored by me.

€18,000 to €24,000 a year

The founding rate, held for the life of the relationship.

A twelve month commitment. I hold eight of these at a time.

The fee is not an hourly rate with a year wrapped around it. Divided by the sessions it would look like a large number for a morning, and that is the wrong way to read it. What you are paying for is that the line stays open: that in March, when something breaks on a Tuesday, the person you call already has the context and owes you nothing. Continuity is the part that is genuinely hard to buy.

The sessions are three hours because two is not enough to get past the update and into the actual question. They are in your diary for the year, which is the point. The value is not in any one of them. It is in the fact that by March I already have the context, and you do not have to explain the situation before you can use the hour.

Between sessions you can reach me. Most people use it three or four times a year, always at the moment something has moved and they want to think out loud before they act.

Confidentiality is a policy here, not a promise. The specifics are written down.

If a year is too much to start with.

Frontier Session

One or two days

One decision, prepared properly, worked through in a room, and written up while it is still fresh. For people who are not ready to commit a year, and should not have to.

  • A briefing call and my own preparation before the day.
  • One or two full days on the decision itself.
  • A written summary of what we concluded, what we ruled out, and why.

€4,500 to €7,500 fixed for the engagement

Nobody should sign a twelve month private relationship as their first transaction with someone they have met twice. Take a day instead. If it works, we talk about the year. If it does not, you still leave with the decision made, which was the thing you came for.

Why me.

If you are reading this, someone probably told you to. That is how this practice fills, and it is the only marketing it has ever had.

Which leaves you two things to judge me on. The person who sent you, and this.

Philip Morris International2017 to 2022
Sat with senior leadership through a four-year transformation as Entrepreneur in Residence, across three roles in Benelux, Global and Europe. Launched a new product category online, built the first regional digital hub spanning 28 markets, ran a €21M budget and a team of 19.
Seventh Media2014 to 2017
Built it from three people to eleven, then sold it to McCann in 2017. I have been on both sides of an acquisition conversation, including the part nobody writes about afterwards.
McCann Worldgroup2014 to 2016
Change management inside a creative organisation that did not especially want changing.
Google2008 to 2010
Search quality in the Netherlands, and a team of six. Recruited after a white-hat hack on a large forum was pointed out to the wrong person.
Independent practicesince 2022
Advisory and interim leadership inside companies going through fast technical change, in Europe, the United States and the Gulf. Recent work includes OpenAI, Mercor, Revpanda and Leaders In Digital.

Eighteen years of it. I have been on the wrong side of enough of these decisions to know what they cost.

David has one of the most broad-based minds I have ever seen, seamlessly able to switch between the geek world and the high-level strategic world, without a missing beat.
Michael SmolensChairman and Founder, DotSub

Quoted in

  • Rest of World
  • Altalex, Wolters Kluwer

The longer version, and why I moved to this work

Questions people ask.

Yes. I hold the Professional Certified Coach credential from the International Coaching Federation, which means assessed training, several hundred logged hours and a recorded performance evaluation. I would not choose it as the reason to work with me. Certification tells you I have been trained and measured against a standard. It does not tell you whether I have ever had to make the decision you are about to make. The record on the about page is the part I would check if I were you.

Your peers are good, and most of them are free. What they cannot give you is continuity or neutrality. A peer is available when they are available, they have their own quarter and their own board, and sometimes they are in your market. Every piece of advice you take from them puts you one favour down, which is why most leaders ration what they ask. I have no quarter of my own, no board to protect and nothing to be repaid.

Most coaching is a method applied to whatever you bring. The method is real and it works, and it is also the whole of what many coaches have, because they have never run anything. I have. Eighteen years of carrying a number, shipping the work and living with the decisions afterwards. That means we can spend the hour on the actual problem rather than on the shape of the problem, and it means I will sometimes tell you plainly that you are wrong.

Because the useful conversations are the ones you have before you know they matter. Six weeks of sessions produces a plan. A year produces the thing you actually want, which is someone who already has the context when the call is urgent and you have twenty minutes. It also protects you from me. A year is long enough that I have to be useful repeatedly rather than impressive once.

Yes, and most people should. The Frontier Session is one or two days on a single decision, prepared beforehand and written up afterwards, at a fixed fee. Nobody should sign a twelve month private relationship as their first transaction with someone they have met twice. If the day works and the fit is right, we talk about the year. If it does not, you still leave with the decision made.

Nothing leaves the room. I keep no client files, no recordings and no notes of my own beyond a working page I destroy after each session. The written summary belongs to you and I do not retain a copy. I will not confirm to anyone that we work together, including on this website, unless you have told me in writing that I may. If you want that in a signed agreement before we start, say so and I will send one.

I tell you at the point it arises, before it becomes a question you have to ask me. You then decide what happens next, and if that means ending the relationship I will refund the balance without a conversation about it. Nobody should be paying for independent counsel from someone with a quiet interest in the answer, and the moment you have to wonder about that, the value of the whole arrangement is gone.

You tell me and we stop. I invoice for the months we have used and refund the balance, and I will not ask you to sit through a conversation about why. If I am the one who thinks it is not working, I will say so at the six month point rather than quietly running out the year. A relationship that has stopped being useful is worse than no relationship, because it occupies the slot the right person should be in.

Start with a conversation.

Chief executive, founder, board member.

The name, and roughly how many people.

A sentence is enough. It stays between us either way.

No list, no follow up sequence.