Who I Am

I’ve spent nearly four decades in rooms where things break quietly.

Where owners can’t say out loud what they fear. Where boards smile, numbers mislead, and truth hides in plain sight.

I’ve built companies, saved them, fought for them. I’ve carried payrolls I couldn’t afford. I’ve stared at ceilings at 3am wondering if it was all about to fall apart.

Here’s what I learned in those hours:

My life’s work is helping people rediscover clarity, worth, and potential - especially when they feel most lost - so they can build lives and businesses they’re proud to inhabit, not just sustain.

I listen for the thing beneath the thing.
I speak to what no one else has permission to name.
I create spaces where truth feels safer than silence.

I help owners remember who they are when the story they built no longer fits the life they want. Not through advice or frameworks, but by creating the safety they need to stop performing and start becoming.

That’s why I do this work.

Not as a consultant. Not as a coach.
But as someone who knows the weight you’re carrying—because I’ve carried it too.

When everything breaks, I don’t run.
I listen. I sit. I help rebuild.
And I’ve made a life out of that.

I do this work not to be needed, but to bear witness. To help others step out of the weight I once carried alone. To make peace contagious.

So I built Private Work as the work I wish I had when I was alone in it.
Fast. Precise. Quiet.
No audience. No judgment. No noise.

I am here so you don’t have to be alone in the hardest moments.

If you’re here, someone trusted you with my name. That’s enough.

- Howard Mann

hm@privatework.co