Anna Russo is the most expensive consultant I know. She charges by the year and only accepts six clients at a time. We met for coffee in Athens last March; what follows is an edited version of a conversation that lasted, by my notes, four hours and a long walk.
I don't sell projects. I sell decades. If a founder isn't willing to think on a ten-year horizon, I'm the wrong instrument. I'd be expensive without being useful.
The hardest sentence I learned to say in my thirties was "this isn't a fit." It sounds dismissive. It's actually the kindest thing — the client saves their money, and I get to take on the work I'm actually best at.
I noticed something. Every founder I'd ever helped — the engagements that actually moved something — those took 36 months minimum. Strategy isn't a deck. It's a habit a company learns. You can't teach a habit in six weeks.
"Most ideas die in the second meeting. The ones worth pursuing survive the seventh."
Quieter. People stop trying to impress each other. They've already heard each other's good lines twice. The third or fourth meeting is mostly the founder repeating what they wish were true.
The seventh is the one where someone finally says the thing they've been avoiding. That's the meeting I'm hired to be in.
Walk. Read very slowly. Buy nothing. Decline things.
Charge twice what you think is reasonable. Take half as much work. Walk for an hour every afternoon.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Anna Russo is a strategy consultant in Athens and Bordeaux. Jules Marchand writes The Quarter from Lisbon.