Private Advisory
When you’re accustomed to being the person others turn to, it matters where you go when you need somewhere to think.
Private Advisory is an ongoing, individual relationship for people carrying significant responsibility.
You may not need another strategy, leadership framework, or person with a seven-step answer to a life they have only just heard about.
You may need a relationship where another perspective can matter without replacing your own—somewhere to think carefully without letting thought become a permanent substitute for participating in your life.
I learn enough about your work, relationships, history, ambitions, and recurring tensions that you don’t have to begin again every time we talk.
Bring What’s Actually Happening
Most things worth bringing here do not arrive as neatly formed questions.
You may know all the facts and still be unable to settle the decision. You may know exactly what you want to say and still not know what will happen when another person answers. Or you may be trying to solve one part of your life while work, marriage, money, family, and identity all keep having opinions.
You don’t have to organize it before you arrive.
iBring the decision you’re trying to make.
iiThe relationship that has become difficult.
iiiSomething happening in your business.
ivA question about ambition, family, money, identity, responsibility, or what comes next.
We’ll start with what appears to be the problem and follow what is actually influencing it.
Sometimes the conversation is about the decision itself.
Sometimes the decision turns out not to be the most interesting thing in the room.
Perspective Without Prescription
You won’t have to guess what I think.
I’ll ask questions, notice connections, challenge assumptions, and tell you when I see something differently.
That doesn’t make me right. It gives us another angle to consider.
I may change your mind. You may show me what I missed. Either is more useful than spending the hour politely agreeing with each other.
The goal is not to turn every conversation into an action item. Your life probably has enough of those.
Sometimes the next move becomes clear. Sometimes the responsible choice is to wait, receive more information, or remain with a question that does not have a clean answer yet.
My role is to keep the whole picture in view: what you want, what the moment is asking of you, what has worked before, and what else may now be possible.
When it is time to act, we make the next step concrete. Then you go live it. What happens—expected or otherwise—becomes part of what we understand together.
Because complicated lives do not resolve in straight lines.
The relationship is built to move with yours.
Why Continuity Matters
Some challenges resolve. Others change shape. And occasionally, the next one arrives before the previous one has had the decency to finish.
Over time, we begin to see not only what keeps happening, but how it changes—and what becomes harder for you to access when the pressure rises.
That continuity helps us see when a new problem is genuinely new—and when an old pattern has returned wearing a more expensive suit.
I may recognize when you’re abandoning your own position to keep something stable, or holding it so tightly that new information can no longer get in.
But knowing your history does not mean either of us gets to assume we already understand the present. What happens now must remain capable of changing what we thought we knew.
We can follow a decision beyond the moment it is made—what it changes, what it costs, what it reveals, and what becomes possible next.
That is the value of continuity: the work can keep moving because your life does.
Who This Is For
Private Advisory is for thoughtful, capable people carrying enough responsibility and complexity that occasional advice is not always enough.
You may lead a company, a team, a family, a professional practice, or work that matters deeply to you. The title is not particularly important. What matters is that your decisions affect more than yourself—and that no part of your life stays conveniently in its assigned lane.
You are probably accustomed to functioning under pressure, solving problems, and being the person others rely on. Competence helps. It has not, unfortunately, made life less complicated.
You may already understand yourself surprisingly well. But understanding yourself does not always tell you what to do when several things you value pull in different directions.
This relationship works best if you want someone who will think seriously with you, offer different perspectives, and challenge you without taking over your judgment.
You do not need to arrive in crisis. You do need to be willing to bring what is actually happening, and allow what we discover to affect how you participate in it.
How It Works
Private Advisory is an ongoing relationship, not a package of appointments.
Conversations
At least two full conversations each month
Response
Generally within one business day
Commitment
Six months to start
Investment
$2,500 per month
I reserve room for at least two full conversations each month, with more contact available when life calls for it.
The cadence follows the work. Some periods may call for several conversations or exchanges in a short amount of time. Then we may not speak the following week.
Both are part of the relationship. Life rarely distributes complexity evenly across the month.
When something consequential arises, you can reach out. I will generally respond within one business day; not necessarily with a complete answer, but with enough contact to decide what the moment needs.
We may schedule a longer conversation, have a short call, exchange messages, or allow something more time before deciding what comes next.
I keep the number of Advisory clients small so that this kind of flexibility and responsiveness remains possible.
From time to time, I may also send an essay, question, book passage, observation, or something else that seems particularly relevant to what you are living.
There is no curriculum to complete, no allotment of hours to use up, and no need to create work simply because the calendar says we should talk.
The relationship develops around your life rather than asking your life to conform to the relationship.
The initial commitment is six months. The investment is $2,500 per month.
The first conversation is for us to determine whether this kind of relationship is the right fit before either of us commits.
Advisory and Psychotherapy
The difference is not how serious or personal your life is.
I am a licensed psychotherapist and maintain a separate clinical practice. Psychotherapy and Private Advisory are distinct professional relationships with different purposes, scopes, and responsibilities.
Private Advisory is non-clinical. It does not include mental health diagnosis or treatment and is not a substitute for psychotherapy or crisis care. Its focus is how you understand, decide, and participate within the responsibilities and complexity of your life.
Personal subjects will come up. Relationships, family, grief, identity, uncertainty, and ambition do not belong exclusively to therapy.
If I believe psychotherapy or another kind of care would serve you better, I’ll tell you. We can then determine the most appropriate next step rather than asking the Advisory relationship to become something it is not.
Why Work With Me
I have an unusually high tolerance for complexity. It has finally found a respectable use.
For more than twenty years, I’ve worked with individuals, families, and leaders across the United States, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. I’ve also trained and supervised other therapists.
That experience has taught me how to hold a lot of moving pieces, find the pattern connecting them, and make what is happening understandable without pretending it is simple.
I’m less interested in giving you the right perspective than in making sure the first one available is not the only one you can see. We’ll look at the same moment from more than one angle, notice connections, and see what each perspective makes possible.
Those perspectives still have to remain answerable to your experience. A coherent explanation can still be wrong. Occasionally, even a very enthusiastic one.
My job is not to become the most convincing voice in the room. It is to help you see the room more clearly—including the parts that become difficult to see when you are standing inside it.
You remain the author of what happens from there.
You don’t need someone else to run your life.
You may need a relationship in which you can be challenged, changed, and still remain yourself.
Private Advisory is a non-clinical professional service and does not constitute psychotherapy, mental health treatment, diagnosis, or crisis care.
Looking for psychotherapy?
Brandt maintains a separate clinical psychotherapy practice.
Information about therapy, availability, fees, and becoming a therapy client can be found on his clinical practice website.