The page you came from is short on purpose. This one isn't. If you'd rather read a plain explanation before deciding whether any of this is for you, here it is.
Portraiting is a conversation, and then two things you get to keep. You and I spend about four hours together — in person if that's possible, on a call if it isn't. You talk, mostly. I ask questions, listen closely, and at a few points I tell you plainly what I actually think, including things you might not expect to hear. I'm not neutral in this. I have a point of view, and part of what you're paying for is that I give it to you honestly, even when I'm not sure I'm right.
Afterward, you receive two things. The first is a portrait: a hand-drawn ink drawing, not a literal likeness of your face but a reading of what came up in the conversation, drawn by hand, one copy, signed. The second is a map: a written document that arranges what you said into something you can actually use going forward. I build the map with the help of AI tools, but the thinking in it is mine — it reflects what I heard and what I make of it, not a neutral summary.
Most people who do this come out of it with more clarity than they had going in, about a decision or a period of their life they've been circling without quite landing anywhere. I don't run your life for you, and I don't hand you a plan you're supposed to follow. What seems to happen instead is that hearing your own thinking said back to you, organized clearly, by someone who was paying full attention and is willing to say what they actually think, cuts through a lot of the noise that builds up when you've been turning something over alone, or only discussing it with people who are too close to it to be fully honest with you.
I've done informal versions of this for twenty-five years, long before it had a name. The reaction I hear most often, in different words, is some version of: it's all things I already knew, but I never saw them laid out this simply before.
This is for people at a real threshold: reinventing something in their life or work, weighing a decision that actually matters, or stuck in a way that talking to friends, or a therapist, or a consultant hasn't resolved. It tends to matter most to people for whom getting this wrong would be costly — in time, in money, or simply in years of their life spent moving in the wrong direction.
It isn't for everyone, and it isn't meant to be. If none of that describes where you are right now, this probably isn't useful to you at the moment, and that's a perfectly fine reason to close this page.
You reach out, by WhatsApp or email, whichever is easier for you. We find a stretch of about four hours, usually in one sitting. We talk. I don't work from a script — I ask what seems worth asking, and I follow what actually comes up rather than a fixed agenda. Afterward, I go away and make the portrait and the map. You receive both once they're done. There's no follow-up program, no additional sessions built in, and no obligation to continue past that.
Expect to do most of the talking. Expect questions you probably haven't been asked before, and expect that some of them will be uncomfortable — not because I'm trying to provoke you, but because the honest ones usually are. Expect an actual opinion from me, not just your own words reflected back. And expect that the portrait and the map are yours outright, to keep, revisit, and use however you want, with no strings attached to either.
This isn't therapy, and it isn't a substitute for therapy if that's genuinely what you need — if you're in real distress, please talk to a professional instead of or alongside this. It isn't consulting, and you won't get a slide deck or a strategic plan out of it. It isn't a program: there's no curriculum, no week two, no upsell afterward. I can't promise it will feel good in the moment — some of the truest things people hear in these conversations take a while to sit right. And I can't promise you a specific outcome, because I genuinely don't know what yours will be until we're in the conversation together.
I haven't put a price on this page yet. If you're still reading and this sounds like something you want, the simplest next step is just to write to me.
— bob