Well now, after two months of quarantine and two dozen emails requesting it, I finally said yes.

A phone consultation with me can be booked from anywhere in the world (make sure you’re adjusting your time to mine – I am on Pacific Time Zone -America). You’ll be required to enter a payment method to secure your reservation.

Please use this Square link (also repeated below). You’ll pay a reasonable fee of $300 for a 1/2 hour chat -we do this over the phone but if you feel the need to share things with me such as documents (non-proprietary, please) we can use Google Docs, Dropbox, or conference apps such as Cisco WebEx, Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts— I use them all. Make sure you use the one app you’re comfortable that it gives you the highest degree of security. If we need further time together, another 1/2 hour for example, you will not have to pay another $300. This phone consult is on a sliding scale after half an hour, your total phone consultation cost will depend on how long we’ll be together depending on our schedules. A full hour, for example, might end up costing you $450 if we so agree. I will not cut a phone call short before fully explaining myself to you and giving voice to my concise opinion, giving you time to take notes. I’m not here to hold your hand, I draw on 20 years of “Senior-level” experience.

If you need to cancel your phone appointment, please do so at least 24 hours beforehand. Otherwise, you’ll be charged a late cancellation fee of $100. No-Shows get charged more: 50% or $150.

The topic/s we’ll discuss can essentially be whatever roadblock(s) you have in your personal and professional life.

Please be as specific as possible. While you can change names for the sake of it, it may be advantageous to you to use your real name because it happened to you and not “your friend”. Have a solid clear, chronological List of Events, just like you do when you go to a lawyer. (To be clear, I don’t give lawyer advice or opinions of law). Hire a lawyer for that one. Lawyers (some of them) are good at what they do. Relationships “therapists” and “marriage counselors” -they’re garbage if you know what I mean. Note: I don’t discuss or entertain any securities offerings or investment advice.

I specialize in low-hope, distressed and high-stakes situations. Career, personal life, geo-tactical decisions, “incredibly difficult” missions, reboots of life.

Because of the nature of my business, all information will be held in strictest confidence. At worst I’ll point you to the right resources. I’ll sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with the folks who want it. If you decide to go forward and employ me to undertake a project for you, thereby taking advantage of my personal resource capabilities, you will sign a formal Compensation for Services Agreement which spells out my tasks and responsibilities, the services involved, milestones. and compensation structure (typically a fixed retainer with half of it due at signing, the other half after completion).

Book NOW: Confidential Phone call with Max Cantor

Since I am starting to test this service, readers will understand that I am not able to answer their personal email questions any more, although your thoughts and inputs are always welcomed in the comments here.

Thank you.

Max Cantor

CEOs pay reports aren’t what they’re taking home. They are taking much more. Performance equity factors outsize market activity…by a lot.

Oracle reported paying co-CEO $190 MM over three years. Is that what he earned ? Not even close. His pay over those 3 years was valued at $535 MM- almost 3X as much -WSJ

As we can see, there’s the distinction between reported CEO pay and realizable pay, and you can read the graph on 18 companies presented there.

But that *shouldn’t* concern shareholders much, does it ? “Companies usually disclose the maximum possible award value, at award-date share prices, in a footnote.”

I’ve read enough 10Q and 10Ks in my life to cover 100 miles if printed and rolled out cover to cover.

And what is long term performance ? Is that really three years ? (consider your average long-term shareholders stick for decades).

It’s never been a better time to be a CEO.

Can you believe it they’ve got 9-year old CEOs ?

And he’s making more than you’ll ever make in your lifetime.

Put it into a more academic fashion, the Wikipedia entry:

“The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are overemphasized. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred.”

Barbara Connors, an author and poker player, explains its origin in her article since this fallacy is a a sin among those of us who are poker players.

” Picture a man, sitting on a hillside. He has a gun and he’s firing random shots at the side of a barn some yards away. Before long, the wall of the barn will be riddled with bullet holes. Despite the randomness of the shooter’s aim, the holes will be unevenly distributed. Inevitably, there will be gaps and clusters. If he wants, the shooter can walk up to the barn and paint a circle around the biggest cluster of bullet holes. To the casual observer, it will now appear that the man is a terrific sharpshooter. ”

Barbara Connors

But this mistake is common outside of the world of poker as well. In fact, it is one one the pillars of support leaders and CEOs rely upon. What you don’t know will hurt you. Leadership relies on so many things, Texas sharpshooter fallacy is one of them. (the other name for this fallacy is the clustering illusion)

While researching the subject I came across a resource book by Dr. Bo Bennett, Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies, which I plan on reading.

Leaders, influencers, CEOs and bosses have been baking hot potatoes out of mushed leftover flakes for as long as I can remember.

I’d like to introduce you today to Free Resources for the Free Mind recommendations, where the recommendations come from the readers…for the readers.

This week, reader Hank recommends a free course from IAI TV

Why The World Does Not Exist

by professor Markus Gabriel

About the course: “Can reality be described by a single theory? Does our failure to find a theory of everything expose the limits of knowledge, or might the world not exist at all? With philosopher Markus Gabriel. (Markus Gabriel specializes in epistemology and Post-Kantian Idealsim. He is the Chair for Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy and Director of the International Center for Philosophy at the University of Bonn. He is also a visiting professor at UC Berkley and a Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Study.)

He is the author of several books, including Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology, Why The World Does Not Exist, and Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism, co-authored with Slavoj Žižek.”

Note: I have no affiliation with the course, its author or platform, and only display it as a free resource recommendation from the reader.

I picked up People’s magazine April 11th, 2019 article (by Joelle Goldstein) relaying an interview with Dorsey on Ben Greenfield’s “Fitness: Diet, Fat Loss and Performance” podcast.

According to that interview, Dorsey’s routine includes only one evening meal a day only (between 6 and 9 PM). He walks 5.3 miles to work. And back. (that alone convinced me to relay this interview). 10 mile walk to work every day ? In America? Talking about unplugging. I can *like* that. More:

“Dorsey hydrotherapy routine consists of sitting in the barrel sauna for 15 minutes at 220 degrees before hopping into the 37-degree ice bath for three minutes. After completing the extreme cycle three times, Dorsey tops off the bodily shock with one minute in the ice bath.” -Joelle Goldstein

In other articles I read the ice bath is three minute long, but whether it’s one minute or three it is not that important. I’m starting to like Dorsey, and it is not because I work for him for free (being on his platform and stuff).

So Dorsey eats one meal a day. (that’s IF for 24 hours).

Fasts the entire weekend (48 hours) according to another article.

Meditates daily for one hour in the morning, and one hour in the evening.

Works under an infrared light. (using a standing desk)

Those are some pretty good habits I would say. No, it’s not going to make me use Twtr more, but that’s a pretty stoic routine.

I write for the up-and-coming folk who is rising to the top and is ready to rock the boat. If you don’t know how to rock the boat, you’ll not only suffer reprisals but will end up worse than you are.

There’s one ex-CEO, however, that’s inspirational. If you haven’t read Carly Fiorina : “From Secretary to CEO” bio you should. It’s a powerful life example

Fiorina went to Stanford, got a liberal arts degree, then went to law school and dropped out. “When she broke the news to her father, he responded: “I’m very disappointed. I’m not sure you’ll ever amount to anything,” she wrote. She got a job as a receptionist at Marcus & Millichap.” She worked there for a year, she quit, married her college sweetheart and moved to Italy to teach English.

Does that sound familiar, is it a life that many people relate to ? Yes, I thought it is. Keep reading.

After graduating from Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, Fiorina got an AT&T sales rep job. She was promoted several times so that by 1985 she was District Manager, overseeing AT&T’s largest civilian government account, the General Services Administration (GSA).Eventually, AT&T sponsored her for a fellowship at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She then became Director of International Strategy and Business Development for Network Systems, and then promoted to Vice President of Strategy and Marketing. Source: From Secretary to CEO.

How many are still hanging on that plot? Not many ! Keeping up with the Joneses suddenly got hard. You got lost somewhere.

“In 1997 she was named group president for the Global Service Provider Business of AT&T spin-off Lucent Technologies.” The story continues, of course. She becomes CEO of Hewlett Packard in 1999 and candidate for Republican nomination in 2016.

Guessing game or not ?

Max tells about power moves in the boardroom …

                                                                             Does running out of fucks count as cardio ?