A few things you should probably know.

Q: Is it true you used to be a professional mind reader?

Yeah. Twenty+ years. I've performed in 48 states, done corporate events for Fortune 500 companies, entertained troops across 12 military bases in South Korea, filmed on America's Got Talent. Howard Stern, Heidi Klum, and Mel B all said yes. Howie Mandel said no. (Howie was wrong.) And a whole lot of other cool stuff we can talk about later.

Q: How does someone become a professional mind reader?

Pure luck. I grew up in a trailer park in the NC mountains. Dad worked factory jobs my whole life. Mom was a secretary. I started doing magic at 5, got my first paid gig at 13, and just never stopped. There was no plan. I kept saying yes to interesting things (like working with Criss Angel for a TV project) until one day I look back and realize I have a career.

Q: What does a mentalist actually do?

I stand in front of strangers and tell them things about themselves they haven't told anyone else. I can share what they're thinking. What they're feeling. What they're afraid of. The audience sees it as a trick. What it actually is? Thirty years of learning how thinking works, how decisions get made, and what's really driving someone's behavior better than they know it, themselves.

Q: And somehow that became executive advisory work?

I kept getting hired by companies for events, and after the show, executives would pull me aside. Not to ask how I did it. To ask if they could do it. Read a room. See what their team wasn't saying. Understand why their message wasn't landing. Get clients to recognize that they should be paying top dollar.

At first I thought they were being polite. Then I realized they were serious.

Then I started charging for it.

Q: What do you actually do for executives?

I find the hidden issues that are costing them massive opportunities. Every company I walk into has the same surface problem: something isn't working and everyone's working harder to compensate for it. Sales is grinding harder. Leadership is repeating itself (LOUDER THIS TIME). Effort keeps going up across every department but results stay flat.

The instinct is to fix the thing that's visibly broken. That's usually not the thing. There's something further back; a framing issue that went wrong, an assumption that nobody's thought to question, a decision that made sense two years ago and is now the source of everything grinding along.

I find that thing, whatever it is. Put a name to it. Then we figure out the best way to address it for once and for all.

Q: How do you find it?

Same way I found it on stage. Stop listening to what people tell you and start looking at what they're doing (without realizing that they're doing it). It's somewhere in the question they answer too fast. The problem they describe too precisely. The solution they're too in love with.

People give themselves away without knowing it. Fortunately (for them) nobody's paying attention. Except me.

Q: Who do you work with?

Founder-CEOs mostly. Companies in the $10M to $50M range where the founder is still the decision center and something has gotten heavier than it should be. They're smart, they're capable, and they're stuck in a frame they built themselves and can't see from the inside.

I'm not for everyone. A lot of what I do is tell people their problem isn't what they think it is. Some people find that useful. Some people find it annoying. Both reactions are fine.

Q: What's the newsletter?

A place for me to share thoughts about interesting topics, questions, technolgies, opportunities and whatever else I notice. It's sent out whenever I have something worth saying, not on a schedule. Short. No frameworks, no step-by-step, no "here are five ways to optimize your leadership." Just observations about what's actually happening inside companies and decisions, from someone who's been reading rooms professionally for thirty years.

Q: What's it called?

Mind Bullets.

Q: Why?

Because I thought it was a funny title, and it stuck.