Here's what I am, plainly: a coach. Not a therapist, not a guru, not someone who's arrived. I'm further up the same staircase you're on — far enough ahead to see your next riser, close enough to remember standing where you are.

Here's what I actually do: I help people challenge and change themselves at the level of who they are, not just what they do or how they have been.

Most advice works on behavior — better goals, new habits, better communication, try harder. I have discovered these “truths” on change don't hold, because the person, the identity underneath, never changed. I work on the person. The couple who can't stop having the same fight. The owner who can't get out of her own way. The guy who's checked every box and still feels stuck. In every case, the thing that needs to move isn't the behavior — it's the identity driving it.

I understand this the way I understand most things: I lived it first.

This isn't a theory I read…

…It's the road I walked.

 And I know where my line is. This is coaching, not clinical care. When something calls for a licensed clinician, I say so — my wife, Cynthia, runs Helios Counseling of Montana, and that's the clinical side of what we do. Keeping those two things clean and separate protects the people we serve. If you need a therapist, I'll help you find one. If you need someone to walk you across your edge, that's my work.

My work