Third30 | Karen Elaine Lewis
Client Third30
Sector Women’s leadership coaching / career transition
Engagement 6+ months
Role Brand strategist and marketing consultant

A bootstrap startup with a founder, a mission, and nothing else

Heidi Hutchison had lived the problem. A senior marketing executive with more than 25 years of experience, she found herself pushed out of the market by ageism at the peak of her capability. The insight was sharp and the audience was real, but Third30 was a bootstrap startup: no brand, no name, no budget infrastructure, no team, and no existing market presence to build from.

The brief: shape the concept from first principles, develop the research base, build the full website from scratch, create the content architecture across every hub, write all copy, design and develop the proprietary career assessment tool, and produce the presentations that would support the launch and the founder’s public story.

Zero infrastructure
A bootstrap startup with no brand, no name, no positioning, and no budget for agency support. Everything had to be built from first principles with limited resources.
Audience navigating a stigmatized problem
Women over 50 experiencing ageism rarely name it that way. The platform needed language that met them where they were, not where the problem was labeled.
Full platform to deliver
No site, no content, no tools, no conversion architecture. Every element, from hub structure and article copy to CTAs and assessment logic, had to be conceived and built from scratch.

A complete platform built from first principles

Every element of the Third30 platform was developed end to end: concept shaping and research, brand positioning, full website architecture and copy, content hub strategy, articles, resources, conversion flows, and a proprietary career assessment tool licensed from Karen Elaine Lewis LLC.

01
Concept development, research, and brand positioning
02
Full website from scratch: all pages, navigation, and user journeys
03
Career Transitions Hub with six structured sub-hubs
04
Wellness Hub, Resources, and blog article suite
05
CAP: Career Archetype Profiling Method (proprietary tool, licensed to Third30)
06
All CTAs, forms, subscribe flows, and discovery call conversion architecture
07
T30 Blueprint Assessment framework and methodology copy
08
Presentations supporting the launch and founder narrative
6+
months end to end
6
structured content sub-hubs
30+
pages of original copy
1
proprietary assessment tool created and licensed

The work that gave the platform its foundation

CAP: Career Archetype Profiling Method

Designed, developed, and licensed as proprietary IP through Karen Elaine Lewis LLC, CAP is the assessment engine at the center of the Third30 platform. The Career Archetype Quiz gives women over 50 a structured, research-grounded way to identify their professional evolution style, core strengths, and potential paths forward in five minutes, with immediate personalized results. It anchors the How It Works journey and drives discovery call conversion throughout the site.

Career Transitions Hub

The hub architecture organizes a complex, emotionally charged subject into six clear, actionable sub-hubs: transitioning at 50-plus, assessing skills and strengths, exploring career options, job search and interview strategies, preparing for success, and reinventing your career. Each hub functions as a standalone resource and a step in a larger guided journey, building the kind of depth that earns trust before a coaching conversation begins.

The Third30 concept and name

The name came from a simple but precise reframe: the decades after 50 are not a decline, they are a third chapter of thirty years. The concept transformed a stigmatized conversation about ageism into an affirmative identity and a movement. Every word on the site, from the homepage headline to the FAQ copy, was written to carry that reframe without overexplaining it.

T30 Blueprint Assessment framework

The methodology copy for Third30’s core coaching assessment covers four structured dimensions: professional identity and experience, values and purpose alignment, future vision and opportunities, and action planning. Written to be rigorous enough to justify a 90-minute engagement and warm enough to feel like a conversation, not a questionnaire.

From the site

What if these next thirty years weren’t an afterthought? What if they were the chapter where everything comes together. Where wisdom meets opportunity. Where experience meets purpose.

Welcome to your Third30.

The platform live and the founder on stage

Third30 launched as a fully operational platform, with the complete site, content architecture, assessment tool, and conversion flows in place. Founder Heidi Hutchison subsequently delivered a TEDxSanDiego talk, “Midlife Is Your Power Move,” using the positioning and narrative built through the engagement.

6
structured career transition sub-hubs live on site
TEDx
founder delivered TEDxSanDiego talk on the Third30 mission
CAP
proprietary assessment tool live and driving discovery call pipeline

Let’s work together

If you are looking for a senior marketing and communications professional with a track record of building market leadership and pipeline in complex B2B environments, get in touch.

Get in touch