Physical goods · cross-border
Physical commodities, oil and marine fuel, across the Americas and the Caribbean. My rate is $1,500 a day with a three-day minimum, and we agree how many days the work needs before I start. When your deal is live you are not third in a queue, I am reachable while it is happening, and I stay with it until it is signed.
Who this is for
Read this first
Commodities, fuel, cargo, agricultural product, or the vessels that carry them. You are buying it, selling it or moving it across a border, and the language, the rules and the way business actually gets done are all different from home. That is the situation I have spent my career inside. Mine was oil and marine fuel. The cargo changes and the work does not, because a counterparty in another country, a contract under another legal system and a price that has to hold behave the same way whichever product is moving.
You want someone who will sit across from a chief executive, a legal team or a state buyer and hold the line calmly, without needing to be briefed on how the room works.
You would rather someone did the work instead of sending you a deck. I will get on the plane when it matters, I am reachable while a deal is live, and I stay with it until it is signed.
You would rather be told the truth about a deal than be told what you hoped to hear. That is the whole reason I work on a fee and not on commission.
Work with me
When the language, the country and the counterparty are all different, that is a different job entirely. It is the work I did for fifteen years.
You are buying the person who sat on one side of the table alone, while the other side brought their legal team, their operations lead, their back office and their chief executive. And closed anyway. That is how the broker side works: one person carries the account end to end. Fifteen years of that, in physical commodities.
September 2009 to June 2025 at OceanConnect Marine (since merged into KPI OceanConnect) and then Hartree Marine. The first year I was a broker in oil options. From 2010 I was selling barrels of oil to power plants and energy majors across the Caribbean and the Americas, carrying those accounts from first approach through to signature. Both firms are easy to look up, and the dates are on my LinkedIn. They are named here for the record only. Neither is affiliated with this work and neither endorses it.
Every consultant says they opened markets. Here are mine, with the dates and what "opened" actually meant.
What was mine and what was the firm's. The balance sheet, the credit lines and the back office were theirs, and no supplier signs without them. What was mine was the judgment about which counterparties were worth it, the first call, the way the room was handled. If you already have the first part and you are missing the second, that is the gap I fill.
Physical commodity trade runs in English. That is how South America was opened and it is the language the contracts were signed in, because in fuel supply the counterparty's commercial team speaks English. I also negotiate in French and Italian, and French is what opened the Caribbean and kept it open for eleven years. My Spanish is good enough to hear what is actually being said in the room but not yet good enough to take a large contract to signature. If your market needs the first call made in Spanish, tell me on the first email and I will let you know right away whether you want me, someone alongside me, or someone else.
Work out which country, which segment and which counterparties are actually worth your money, then do the groundwork that turns a plan on a slide into a real business.
Find, qualify and sign the suppliers, distributors or partners for a new market. In South America I went from a standing start to the first signed supplier in under three months.
Negotiate and close complex international deals, often in a second or third language, with jurisdiction and counterparty risk in play at the same time.
Your person on either side of the Atlantic, free to work with both EU and US citizenship, and fluent in the culture on each side.
Build or scale a sales and business development operation from its early days, then hand it to your own people with a process they can actually run.
Logistics, jurisdictions, payment terms and delivery windows, learned on oil cargoes and marine fuel supply. It applies wherever goods have to move, whatever they are.
One rate, whatever the work is
There is one price and there are no packages to choose between. You tell me what you are trying to do, we agree how many days it will take before I start, and that is the fee. If the work turns out to need more days than we agreed, we agree those in advance as well, rather than settling it on an invoice afterwards.
What you put the days on is up to you. The six things above are the work I take on, and most projects need more than one of them. Bring me a deal, a market you are working on, or a market you want to open over the next year, and we will work out how many days that takes.
A deal. I read the contracts and the correspondence properly, we build your position together and put it on a single page, we do a dry run where I argue their side as hard as I can, and I stay reachable while the negotiation is live.
A market. How the trade actually gets done there, what a counterparty worth signing looks like, where your plan is wishful, what it will cost you in time before it pays, and what the first ninety days should be. You get it written down and argued through with you, not handed over as a deck.
Something that keeps running. Opening a market takes longer than a few days, so for that kind of project I can hold a standing day each week at the same rate. It runs to a date we agree, and it does not renew on its own.
Why there is a minimum. The first day of any project goes on reading the contracts, the correspondence, the market and the plan you already have. Three days is the shortest block where you get the reading, the position built with you, and me still there when it is tested.
A day we have not booked. If you need me on a day that is not already yours, it is billed as half a day at $750, and for that half day I am available to you. It is not a charge for each phone call. Call twice inside that window and it is still half a day. What I am protecting is the shape of my week rather than the length of your calls.
How the days get scheduled. Because I hold to two clients, your days are blocked when we agree the work rather than when you come to need them. If the days you want are days I cannot cover, I will tell you at the start instead of halfway through, and you can decide whether that still works for you.
Compare the fee to the decision in front of you rather than to a salary. Hiring for this is a recruiter's fee paid before anyone knows anything, three to six months before you find out whether you got the right person, and a severance conversation if you did not. A consultancy hands you a report and is not in the room when it is negotiated. You will sign with me and work with me, and you will not be handed to a junior associate.
If the deal or the market is not worth several multiples of the fee, you do not need me for it, and I will tell you so on the first call.
The rate is for remote work. That is how most of this gets done and it is what $1,500 a day buys. If you want me in the room, we agree that separately and in advance, and you cover the flights and the hotel. Nothing gets booked until that part is settled.
I take two clients at a time, so the days you book are days I genuinely have. For fifteen years this was full-time work for one company, all week.
Tell me what you are working onA fee, never commission. A commission adviser is paid when a deal closes, which means their incentive and yours part company at the exact moment the right answer is no. That moment is most of what you are hiring me for. You pay me whether or not you sign, and that is the point.
Ask for references before you buy anything. I will give you references on request, and I check with them first, so nobody is contacted cold.
I will tell you about a conflict before you have to ask. If a piece of work would put me opposite a former employer, or a counterparty I still owe a duty to, I will say so on the first call and turn it down.
I remain bound by confidentiality and non-solicitation obligations to prior employers, and I honor them in full.
I answer the first email within two working days, and usually the same day. After that we work to your deadline, not mine. Some deals want two weeks of preparation. Some want a call tomorrow morning, and that is fine too: if you are on a deadline, book thirty minutes rather than waiting on the email.
I left a career that ran at eighty hours a week, and I keep my week deliberately short now. That is a decision about what I work on, not about how hard I work. While your work is live, whether that is a negotiation or a market you are deciding on, the time is yours. I answer the same working day, I take the call in whatever time zone the other side is sitting in, and I stay on it until it is done or you decide to walk away. Fifteen years in this industry taught me exactly what a lost day costs, and I do not intend to be the reason you lose one.
Get in touch
Whether it is an engagement, a deal you want prepared properly, a market you are working on, or an opportunity worth a real conversation, this is the fastest way to reach me. I read every message myself and I answer every one, within two working days at the outside.
Deal on a deadline? Do not wait on email. Book thirty minutes and take me through it, or call me on +1 330 257 8958.
Book a 30-minute callOr write to me directly at david@davidjfearn.com. Prefer to check the record first? It is on LinkedIn.
The rest of the week
I left a career that ran at eighty hours a week, and now I am working on a better work-life balance. Two clients at a time is an arrangement I chose deliberately, and the rest of the week belongs to my family and to the other things I am pursuing. Because I am not trying to fill the week, I have no reason to hold on to a client I am not actually helping.