Business Coaching
I achieved my American Dream by 50: earning $1,000,000 and retiring. Along the way, I learned that the strategy was never the hard part. The people were.
Now I work with founders, leadership teams, and businesses on exactly that: the relationships, the communication, and the conflicts that quietly drain the energy out of everything else.
Three ways I work with businesses
Partners
For co-founders and business partners working through tension that's affecting everything.
Leaders
For executives and managers who know the relational side is where they keep getting stuck.
Teams
When the way your team communicates is what's actually broken.
You might be in the right place if…
You and your co-founder (or business partner) can’t have a real conversation anymore, and it’s affecting everything.
Two of your senior people are in a conflict that’s spreading through the team.
Your team communicates badly, and it’s showing up in missed deadlines, attrition, and quiet resentment.
You’re a leader who’s good at the work, but the relational side is where you keep getting stuck.
You’re going through a partner separation or a difficult team transition and want help making it less destructive.
You have a cross-border or cross-cultural team and the misunderstandings are getting expensive.
What I don’t do: strategy, growth tactics, financial decisions, operational frameworks. There are great coaches for that. I work on the people side: communication, conflict, and the relational dynamics that determine whether the rest of it holds.
What Working With Me Looks Like
We start with a free 15-minute call.
You describe what’s actually going on. I’ll give you my honest read on whether what I do is what you need, and what kind of engagement would actually move it.
Then we design the engagement together.
For co-founder and business partner conflicts, it’s typically a mediation engagement: individual sessions with each party first, then joint sessions, then a written agreement and skills handoff so you don’t need me back in six months.
For leadership and team work, it’s usually a series of sessions or workshops focused on the specific relational dynamics in play, using the Conscious Communication model (based on NVC) that I’ve built and taught for over a decade.
You – and your team – leave with skills that stick.
I’m not here to deliver a workshop and disappear. The goal isn’t to manage the next conflict better, but to change how the people in your business actually talk to each other.
In addition to more tailored business coaching approaches:
Communication Training (NVC-based)
Conscious The communication framework I’ve built and taught over a decade. Gives your team a shared language for naming what’s actually happening between people, without escalating it.
Conflict Resolution Coaching
For leaders and teams working through specific tensions. Practical tools to move from reactive cycles to constructive conversations.
Leadership Communication Coaching
For executives and managers who want the relational side of leadership to actually work — including hard conversations, feedback, and presence under pressure.
Team Communication Workshops
Group sessions for teams who need a shared communication framework; useful before a conflict, during one, or as part of culture work.
Co-founder & Business Partner Mediation
When the working relationship between founders or partners has broken down. Structured process to surface what’s underneath the conflict and reach a working agreement — or, where that’s the right outcome, a clean separation.
Workplace Mediation
For conflicts between employees, between teams, or between employees and leadership. Resolves the situation and improves the working relationship going forward.
Cultural Mediation
For conflicts arising from cultural differences, common in cross-border teams, mergers, and international partnerships. Ensures each side actually gets understood.
#1. Diagnostic
"I start by figuring out what's actually wrong between the people. Usually it's not what the team thinks it is."
#2. Neutral
"When I'm mediating, I don't take sides. My job is to help each person see clearly: themselves and each other."
#3. Practical
"Real tools your team uses afterward. No jargon, no theory for theory's sake."
#4. Honest
"I'll tell you what I see: including when the work won't fix the actual problem."
#5. Transformative
"Real change in how the team communicates. Not a workshop afterglow that fades in two weeks."
#6. Confidential
"What's said in sessions stays in sessions. Clear from the start."
The key is to understand your wounds and conditioning, so you become 'Allies in Healing' rather than adversaries in pain. —The Wizard of Love
Who is Bernard?
I spent 20 years building businesses in California – a gym, a tech company, a bookkeeping practice. I achieved my American Dream by 50: $1,000,000 and the freedom to choose what came next. What came next was relational work.
The question that brought me here was the same one I’d had through all those years of building: why are the people parts of business so hard, and why don’t most leaders have a real framework for the relational side? I went and built one: through years of training in NVC, mediation, trauma-informed coaching, and emotional intelligence. Now I work with founders, executives, and teams on the part of business most coaches skip.
What I bring to every engagement
an MBA, two decades of operating experience, a decade of relational and mediation work, and no patience for jargon. I’ve lived across four continents and three languages, and I’ve worked with teams across cultures.
Credentials
– M.B.A.
– Certified Relationship and Personal Development Coach & Counselor
– Trained at Interchange Counseling Institute, Union Institute, Ecology of Leadership, The Evolutionary Collective
– Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Expert
– Mediator for business partners and workplace conflicts
-10+ years coaching, 20+ years building businesses
FAQs - The Wizard of Love answers your questions
What is the difference between counseling and coaching?
The difference between counseling and coaching is that counseling helps you address past issues to improve your present well-being, while coaching focuses on developing new strategies to help you grow and move forward into the future.
How is this different from a business coach or a corporate coach?
I don’t do strategy, frameworks, growth tactics, or goal-setting — there are great coaches for that, and I’ll happily refer you. I work on what most of them skip: the relational and emotional dynamics that determine whether the rest of it holds. When a co-founder relationship is fraying, no amount of OKR coaching will fix it. That’s the work I’m trained for.
What size of company or team do you typically work with?
Mostly founders and leadership teams from early-stage to mid-sized companies (under ~200 people). I also work with individual executives at larger organizations. If you’re not sure if you’re the right fit, the discovery call is the place to ask.
Do you work with HR, or directly with the people involved?
Both, depending on the situation. For partner and individual leadership work, I typically work directly with the people involved. For team-wide engagements, I usually coordinate with HR or the founder/CEO on scope and outcomes, while doing the actual work with the people involved. Confidentiality is clear from the start.
How long does an engagement run?
Mediation engagements are typically 3 to 6 sessions across a few weeks. Leadership and team work usually runs 2 to 6 months depending on the depth. Workshops are one-off or short series. We’ll scope it together after the first call.
What about confidentiality?
What’s shared in sessions is confidential. For mediation, the standard rules apply: things said in private sessions don’t get brought into joint sessions without consent. For team engagements, we agree on the confidentiality structure with the sponsor up front.