Coach · Researcher · Speaker
I'm Michael Keeler. I've built companies, managed teams, and spent the last five years in graduate research figuring out what actually makes work good for people and good for the business. I help leaders tell the difference.
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Coach, Researcher, Speaker
Every owner I meet has read the books. You know culture matters. You know trust matters. You know that great managers build great teams. Knowing it has not made Tuesday easier.
The hard part was never more knowledge. It's the conversation you've been avoiding for six weeks. It's the person who is great at the job and rough on everyone around them. It's the system that worked at twelve people and quietly stopped working at thirty, without anyone announcing it.
If that list feels like a personal failing, it isn't. Researchers have been studying these exact problems for decades, and they know a great deal about what actually helps. Most of that work stays where it was written, in journals read by other researchers. The version that reaches you has usually been through three rounds of simplification and lost whatever made it true. So you improvise, and then you blame yourself for improvising.
That's where I work. Not the philosophy, the specific move you make next.
I bring the research because it offers tested solutions, and I bring the operating experience because I've been the person avoiding the conversation.
Speaking
Keynotes and workshops on leadership, management, culture, communication, productivity, and service. I've spoken on a TEDx stage and in a lot of rooms with folding chairs. Both get the same preparation.
Coaching & Consulting
I coach founders, CEOs, and leadership teams through the messy middle: the next hire that feels risky, the person you should have talked to months ago, the systems that worked at twelve people and don't at thirty.
I've spent over a decade coaching entrepreneurs, and the work translates to any company.
Start a conversation →Research & Teaching
My doctoral research at Antioch University looks at entrepreneur mental health and how human connection changes wellbeing at work.
I teach and guest lecture on management, organizational psychology, and entrepreneurship, and I'm interested in adjunct work with programs that want a practitioner in the room.
Read the research →[ TESTIMONIAL 1 — coaching client. Two to four sentences on what was true before and what is true now. ]
[ TESTIMONIAL 2 — corporate or non-fitness client, so the set does not read as gym owners only. ]
[ TESTIMONIAL 3 — speaking or workshop client, so all three doors are represented. ]
Free self-assessment
Ten questions, about three minutes, and an instant report showing where your relationships with your team are solid and where they are thinner than you think. Built on the same research my doctoral work draws from.
Ten questions. No email required to see your results.
Start the assessmentYou can send me your results at the end if you want my read on them. Entirely optional.
I got into this work sideways.
I spent five years with Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, in Philadelphia, on Lana'i, and in San Francisco, working the concierge desk and eventually running it. Luxury hospitality teaches you something most business training misses. Exceptional service is a system. It is not a personality trait and it is not a mood. You can design it, staff it, train it, and repeat it on a bad day.
In 2011 I joined Mark Fisher in what was barely a business yet. He had a newsletter and a six-week group program called Snatched in Six Weeks, running out of rented rehearsal space in Midtown, mostly for theater people who had never felt welcome in a gym. I came on as his business partner.
In January 2012 we signed a lease in Hell's Kitchen and opened what we insisted on calling the Enchanted Ninja Clubhouse of Glory and Dreams, which tells you roughly everything about how we thought about culture. We were serious about the training and deeply unserious about everything else, and it turned out a lot of people had been waiting for a gym like that.
That became Mark Fisher Fitness. It landed on Inc.'s list of the fastest-growing companies in America twice and got written up in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. The part I'm actually proud of is less quotable. We built hiring, onboarding, and feedback systems that held while we grew, and we ran the company's first culture survey because we wanted to know the truth rather than assume it.
Then I went back to school, because I wanted to know which parts of what we built were real and which parts were luck. I have an MA in organizational psychology and change leadership from Columbia, and I'm a PhD candidate in industrial and organizational psychology at Antioch, where my research looks at entrepreneur mental health and how human connection changes wellbeing at work.
Today I'm co-founder and CEO of Business for Unicorns, where I lead coaching, client engagement, and retreats for a community of gym owners and entrepreneurs. I host the Business for Unicorns Podcast, and I'm writing a book about management called Strong Enough to Lead.
I'm based in New York City, with my husband Andrew and a Cavapoo named Pippin who has strong opinions about squirrels.
Podcast
Every week I talk with leaders and entrepreneurs who are actually doing the work. No gurus.
Listen →Book · In progress
The part of management nobody trains you for: staying steady enough to hold the thing together while you're also the one who has to change.
Get a note when it's out →The fastest way to reach me is email. Tell me what you're working on and what's in the way. I read everything.
michael@businessforunicorns.com