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My Story
"I've been the watcher my whole life.
It just took me a while to claim the Perch."
Hello! I'm Brian.
Long before I had the language for it, I was the one in the room who saw what others missed.
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The wrong people in the wrong roles. The systemic problem hiding under the surface fire. The team running on fumes because leadership kept treating symptoms instead of causes. The talented person being managed out instead of developed. The plan that wouldn't work, and the reason no one wanted to hear why.
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I saw it. I named it. I built the plans that would have fixed it. And then I watched leadership take my analysis into a closed room and emerge with something less useful than what I'd handed them, confused by their own confusion, unwilling to ask the person who'd already solved it.
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I was told I was too intense. Too much. That I needed to be patient. That I should be a "good fit." So I tried. I worked the unpaid overtime. I softened the edges. delivered the well-laid-out plans and waited for someone to finally look up.
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They didn't.
What the military taught me about authority
​Before the corporate rooms, I was a U.S. Army Infantry Officer.
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I went to college on an Army ROTC scholarship and led soldiers through some of the hardest moments most of the population will never understand. I served as a Platoon Leader, Executive Officer, Company Staff Officer, Unit Movement Officer, Safety Officer, and Personal Security Officer, including a deployment to Iraq, where I held a Top Secret security clearance due to the nature of the work.
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I learned what real leadership looks like, the kind where the cost of getting it wrong isn't a missed quarter. It's people. I learned what it means to claim authority that the team can actually move with. I learned the difference between a leader who issues orders and a leader who earns the room.
And I learned, in the worst environment possible, what happens when leadership fails.
I personally witnessed an entire company of soldiers lose all faith in their upper leadership and shift their trust to those of us who they knew would take care of them.
That is something I hope I never see again.
It's also something I will never forget, because it taught me, in a way nothing else could, what is at stake when leadership is in name only. When ego is protected at the expense of the people. When the ones who should be leading aren't, and the ones who are leading don't have the title.
The Patterns I Couldn't Unsee
When I came back to civilian work, I kept seeing the same patterns, quieter, lower-stakes, but unmistakably the same. Leadership in name without leadership in practice. Smart people sidelined while less qualified ones got the platform. Teams losing faith in the people above them and quietly shifting their trust to whoever was actually steady.
Over fifteen years in corporate roles, I worked across manufacturing, construction, technology, and operations. I supported clients including Costco, Apple, Gap, Home Depot, and others. I founded a construction company and ran it for five years. I led teams as small as two or three people and as large as a hundred-plus, across the United States, Canada, and Iraq. I held roles from technical positions to project management to senior leadership. I earned my Project Management Professional credential and trained extensively in risk management, operations, and team development.
The most consequential corporate moment came during a manufacturing shutdown and expansion, leading multiple departments through the closing, the rebuild, the restart. New processes, retraining, safety systems, and people management, all under pressure, all on a clock. The kind of environment where strategy meets dirt under the fingernails.
I'd already led where the stakes were highest. Watching the same dynamic go unaddressed in rooms where the fix was easier, and the cost of inaction was still real, was its own kind of unbearable.
The Done Point
​I left, and left again. Took new opportunities. Hit new egos. Worked roles I was overqualified for while the people in charge stayed comfortable with mediocrity. Kept learning, kept building, kept watching the same dynamic repeat itself in different rooms with different faces.
Eventually I hit the moment that ends every story like this. I was inside a company that chose to manage people out instead of develop them. That pointed fingers instead of taking accountability. That mistook protecting itself for leading.
That was my done point.
So I did the only thing left to do. In 2025, I founded Perch Insights Consulting.
Not because I had it all figured out. Because I was finally done shrinking to fit rooms that couldn't hold me, and done waiting for permission to lead from a perch I'd already earned.
And Then I learned the Why
In adulthood, I discovered I'm AuDHD — autistic and ADHD.
I'm not a fan of the language of "diagnosis," but it's the language we have. What I prefer is the word answer. Because that's what it was. The answer to why I'd always seen what others missed. Why my brain reached for the systemic problem when everyone else was firefighting symptoms. Why I noticed the patterns three moves before they played out. Why being "too intense" and "too much" had followed me my whole life, not because I was wrong, but because I was calibrated differently than the rooms I kept walking into.
Discovering my neurodivergence has been one of the best things to happen to me. Not because it gave me an excuse, but because it freed me from one. I stopped trying to fit a shape that was never built for how I think, perceive, and lead. I learned the why behind what I'd always done, and that knowledge gave me my Perch.
It also gave me something I didn't expect: a way of seeing other people that I now know is rare. I can recognize the perceptive, Perch-wired person across a room. I can see the strategist whose intelligence is being filed under "intense." I can see the high performer who's three steps ahead and getting punished for it. I see them, because I've been them, and because my wiring makes that recognition almost involuntary.
"I don't sell lies. I'm where I am because of the harsh reality of working in the world we actually live in."
What I bring to the Work
I am bringing direct experience into coaching, not theory, not a six-week certification, not a methodology I learned from a book.
I've had my face in the mud and my hand in the room where decisions were being made. I've led soldiers in combat. I've run a small business. I've managed manufacturing departments through shutdowns, expansions, and startups. I've worked the bottom-floor roles and the senior-leadership roles. I've been the one watching less qualified people get promoted, and I've been the one promoting better people into the roles they'd earned. I've been mentoring peers throughout my entire career, guiding them through decisions, explaining why the moves I was making were the right ones, helping them keep their heads when fires were everywhere.
Education and credentials matter. They complement real experience. But if you're looking for someone whose qualifications start and end with a degree, that's not me.
What you get instead is someone who has lived the work, across industries, across stakes, across teams, and who has spent two decades watching what works, what fails, and why.
Credentials and Service
U.S. Army Infantry Officer | Roles included Platoon Leader, Executive Officer, Personal Security Officer, Unit Movement Officer, Safety Officer, and Company Staff Officer. Held a Top Secret security clearance.
Schools: Army Infantry School, Airborne School, Army Unit Movement Officer School, multiple risk management programs.
Awards: Joint Service Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal with Campaign Star, Overseas Service Ribbon, Armed Forces Reserve Medal with M Device, Parachutist Badge.
Project Management Professional (PMP) | Project Management Institute
15+ years of corporate leadership across manufacturing, construction, technology, and operations. Founder of a construction company. Senior roles serving clients including Apple, Gap, and Home Depot.
Founder, Perch Insights Consulting | 2025
How I Work With People
The foundation of how I work is built on three things, in this order: Trust, Respect, and Collaboration.
If we trust each other, we can respect each other. If we trust and respect each other, we can collaborate to do real work together. Without trust, the rest is theater.
Here's what that looks like in practice: I will tell you the truth. I don't sell lies. I'm where I am because of the harsh reality of working in the world we actually live in, and that's the perspective I'll bring into every conversation. If you want validation, there are easier places to get it. If you want someone who will be honest with you and respect you enough to tell you what's actually happening, you're in the right place.
I'm not interested in being the person you look at. I'm interested in seeing you become what you have worked so hard to be. Coaching, done right, is not about me. It's about handing the megaphone to the right person, you, and making sure the rooms around you finally hear what you've been saying.
I respect your time and your intelligence. No tactics, no hype, no inbox clutter. Sessions start on time, end on time, and have a point. Homework exists because it serves the work, not because it makes the engagement feel weighty. If something isn't useful, we change it.
I treat you as the expert on your own life. You know your situation better than I do. My job is not to tell you what to do, it's to help you see what you've been carrying, what's actually possible from where you're standing, and what the next move looks like. We figure it out together.
I won't pretend to have answers I don't have. When something is outside my experience or expertise, I'll tell you. When the right move is to bring in another perspective, therapy, legal counsel, a different specialist, I'll say that too. Coaching is a tool. It's a powerful one, but it isn't every tool.
"I'm not interested in being the person you look at. I'm interested in seeing you become what you have worked so hard to be."
If You've Made It This Far
You probably already know whether the work makes sense for you.
If something on this page made you feel less alone, less like you've been making the whole story up in your head, that's recognition. And recognition is usually the beginning of something.
The discovery call is exactly that, a conversation. No pressure, no pitch, no script. Twenty minutes for me to understand the moment you're in, for you to ask whatever you need to ask, and for both of us to decide together whether the work makes sense.
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