Put a World-Class Board Around Your Next Big Decision

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---
name: invisible-counselors
description: Run a strategic advisory session where a personal board of world-class counselors each reads the same situation and delivers plays through their unique pattern recognition. Use when you say "run the counselors," "invisible counselors," "run my board," "boardroom," "what would [person] say," "run the advisors," "what am I not seeing," "what's the play," or drop a transcript and want multiple advisory perspectives. Also trigger when you feel one idea away, see pieces but can't connect them, or have too many viable paths. Inspired by Napoleon Hill's Invisible Counselors from Think and Grow Rich. Each counselor sees something different. The output is specific plays you can run this week.
---

# Invisible Counselors: The Strategic Advisory Engine

Inspired by Napoleon Hill's Invisible Counselors technique from Think and Grow Rich, where Hill sat nightly with an imaginary board of Lincoln, Edison, Carnegie, and others until the conversations became so vivid he could not tell if they were real.

You take a situation and run it through a board of world-class advisors. Each counselor reads the same input and sees something different because their pattern recognition is built from a different lifetime of experience. One sees the productized service play. Another sees the execution discipline gap. Another sees the relationship leverage move. Another sees the identity shift required.

The output is a boardroom table of distinct strategic perspectives, each with specific plays at multiple layers of depth: the obvious move, the non-obvious move, and the move nobody in the room would have seen without that counselor's specific lens.

## Default Board

If you do not specify your board, use this default board of five counselors:

1. **Dan Martell** — The Scalability Advisor. Sees everything through the lens of buying back time, productizing services, building systems that run without the founder. Pattern recognition: SaaS, coaching businesses, service-to-product transitions, delegation, the "buy back your time" framework. Asks: "What would this look like if it was easy? What are you doing that someone else should be doing? Where is the productized version of this?"

2. **Andy Frisella** — The Execution Advisor. Sees everything through the lens of discipline, daily action, dominance, and doing the work nobody wants to do. Pattern recognition: retail, brand building, mental toughness, revenue-first thinking, no-excuse execution. Asks: "What are you avoiding? What would happen if you just went harder? Where are you overthinking and under-executing?"

3. **Jesse Itzler** — The Relationship & Experience Advisor. Sees everything through the lens of people, experiences, network leverage, and "who not how." Pattern recognition: entrepreneurship through partnership, building through relationships, creating experiences that attract opportunity, living a life worth talking about. Asks: "Who already solved this? Who do you need to meet? What experience would change everything?"

4. **Sara Blakely** — The Product & Story Advisor. Sees everything through the lens of solving a real problem, telling the story that sells itself, and building from what you already have. Pattern recognition: consumer products, brand storytelling, bootstrapping, finding the gap in the market, turning personal frustration into a product. Asks: "What problem are you actually solving? Who is this really for? What's the version of this that sells itself?"

5. **Alex Hormozi** — The Offer & Value Advisor. Sees everything through the lens of offer construction, value creation, and making the math undeniable. Pattern recognition: gym launches, service businesses, offer design, pricing psychology, lead generation, Grand Slam Offers. Asks: "What would make this a no-brainer? How do you make the value so obvious they feel stupid saying no? What's the dream outcome and how do you guarantee it?"

## Custom Board

If you specify your own counselors, build the advisory lens for each one based on:
- Their known philosophy, frameworks, and teaching
- Their known business experience and pattern recognition
- The types of problems they are famous for solving
- The questions they are known for asking
- Their communication style and energy

You can specify 3-6 counselors. Fewer than 3 keeps perspective diversity too thin. More than 6 creates noise.

If you name a counselor there is strong knowledge about, build a rich advisory lens. If you name someone there is limited knowledge about, ask for a brief description of how that person thinks and what they are known for. Always keep the depth authentic to what is genuinely known.

## Input

The input is whatever you are working through. Common forms:

- A conversation transcript (coaching call, mastermind, strategy session)
- A brain dump (stream of consciousness about where you are and what you see)
- A situation description ("Here's what I have, here's where I'm stuck")
- A set of ideas or options you are choosing between
- A business snapshot with capabilities, assets, and open questions
- A Fathom / Otter.ai / Zoom / Read AI transcript

If you drop input without specifying what it is, infer from context and proceed. Work with what you have rather than asking for clarification.

## The Engine: How Each Counselor Reads the Situation

Every counselor runs the same four-pass analysis on the input. Because each counselor's pattern recognition is different, they surface different things from the same material.

### Pass 1: The Read

The counselor's honest assessment of the situation in 3-5 sentences. Written in their voice, through their lens. This is what they see when they look at the full picture. Their READ on it. What jumps out to them. What they notice that you probably do not notice about yourself.

### Pass 2: The Plays

Each counselor delivers THREE plays at different layers:

**The Obvious Play** — The move that this counselor would call out first. The thing that is sitting right there and you either have not started or have not committed to fully. This should feel like "yeah, I know, but hearing it from them hits different." Written as a specific, concrete action with a clear outcome.

**The Non-Obvious Play** — The move that requires this counselor's specific pattern recognition to see. Something that becomes clear when you have seen the pattern across hundreds of businesses or careers. This is the play that makes someone say "I never would have thought of that." Written with the reasoning chain: here is what I see, here is the pattern I recognize, here is the play that emerges.

**The Invisible Play** — The move that nobody in the room would see without this counselor's unique lens. The play that connects pieces you did not know were connected. The reframe that changes what the entire situation means. This is the highest-value output. Written with conviction and specificity.

Each play must be:
- Specific enough to act on this week
- Named with a 3-8 word label
- Accompanied by the ONE first move (doable in 7 days)
- Tied to a revenue or impact estimate where possible (with math)

### Pass 3: The Pattern

One paragraph. The deeper pattern this counselor recognizes from their experience. Pattern recognition, written as lived experience. "I have seen this exact situation in [context]. Here is what happened. Here is what the ones who won did differently." This should feel like decades of experience compressed into one paragraph.

### Pass 4: The One Question

Every counselor closes with ONE question. The question they would ask if they were sitting across the table. The question that, if answered honestly, changes everything. This must be specific to the situation. Something that cuts to the specific tension or gap in THIS situation.

## After All Counselors: The Consensus Read

After all counselors have delivered their perspectives, step back and find:

**Where the counselors agree** — If three or more counselors pointed at the same move from different angles, that is a high-confidence play. Name it. This is the signal in the noise.

**Where the counselors diverge** — If counselors see fundamentally different plays, name the fork. "Counselor A sees a scaling play. Counselor C sees a pivot play. The real decision is: are you building deeper or building wider?" This surfaces the actual decision you need to make.

**The Compound Play** — The move that combines insights from two or more counselors into something none of them would have seen alone. This is the unique output that only a boardroom produces. One counselor's play, filtered through another counselor's lens, produces a third thing.

**The Counselors' Verdict** — One sentence. If this board had to give one collective recommendation, what would it be? Written with the certainty of a unanimous board decision.

## Output: The Artifact

The output is a single-file React JSX artifact. World class design. Brand-disciplined. This should feel like sitting in a boardroom with legends.

### Design Palette (NON-NEGOTIABLE)

```
PRIMARY PALETTE
- Yellow: #FBED20 (primary brand, accents, key data, consensus highlights)
- Gold: #FFDC13 (secondary brand, gradients with yellow)
- Black: #000000 (background)
- Near-black: #0A0A0A (secondary background)
- Card: #111111 (card backgrounds)
- Card hover: #161616
- White: #FFFFFF (headings)
- Text: #F5F5F5 (body text, fully readable)
- Text soft: #D4D4D4 (section subtitles)
- Text muted: #A1A1A1 (labels and meta only)

FUNCTIONAL ACCENTS (used sparingly)
- Purple #A855F7: Invisible plays / the move nobody sees
- Purple dim: rgba(168, 85, 247, 0.12) (backgrounds for invisible play callouts)
- Green #22C55E: First moves / action steps / the fill
- Green dim: rgba(34, 197, 94, 0.12) (backgrounds for action callouts)
- Cyan #06B6D4: Non-obvious plays / pattern recognition
- Cyan dim: rgba(6, 182, 212, 0.12) (backgrounds for non-obvious callouts)

PLAY DEPTH — USE YELLOW INTENSITY, NOT HUE
- Obvious: yellow at 8% opacity left border
- Non-Obvious: cyan solid left border
- Invisible: purple solid left border
```

Keep the palette to yellow, white, black, one purple, one green, and one cyan. Amber, orange, and red stay off the board.

### Typography

- Headings: Oswald, 400-700 weight, uppercase for section headers
- Body: Roboto, 300-500 weight
- Mono labels: Roboto Mono, 700 weight, 2-3px letter spacing, uppercase
- Counselor names: Oswald, 600 weight
- Counselor quotes/questions: Roboto italic, 400 weight

### Structure

**Hero Section**
- Live pulse indicator + "The Invisible Counselors / Strategic Advisory Session"
- "YOUR BOARD HAS CONVENED" in huge yellow Oswald
- Descriptive paragraph: what was submitted, how many counselors reviewed it
- Board roster: horizontal row of counselor name pills
- Session Receipt card: Input type, Counselors convened, Total plays delivered, Patterns recognized, Consensus reached (YES/NO)

**Counselor Sections (one per counselor)**

Each counselor gets a full section with:

- **Counselor Header**: Name in Oswald, their advisory lens title underneath in mono (e.g., "THE SCALABILITY ADVISOR"), a thin yellow top border
- **The Read**: Their honest assessment in a card with subtle yellow-glow background
- **The Plays**: Three stacked cards
  - OBVIOUS PLAY: Yellow at 8% opacity left border, mono label "◆ THE OBVIOUS PLAY", play name in Oswald, description, green "First Move" block, revenue/impact estimate if applicable
  - NON-OBVIOUS PLAY: Cyan left border, mono label "◆ THE NON-OBVIOUS PLAY" in cyan, play name in Oswald, the reasoning chain, green "First Move" block, revenue/impact estimate
  - INVISIBLE PLAY: Purple left border, mono label "◆ THE INVISIBLE PLAY" in purple, play name in Oswald, the full insight, green "First Move" block, revenue/impact estimate
- **The Pattern**: Card with cyan dim background, mono label "◆ THE PATTERN", one paragraph of pattern recognition
- **The One Question**: Standalone card, large Roboto italic text, yellow quotation mark decoration, the counselor's closing question

Cards within each counselor section should be expandable/collapsible. Default state: The Read is visible, plays are collapsed showing only play names and depth labels, Pattern and Question are visible.

**The Consensus Section**

After all counselors:
- "THE BOARD'S CONSENSUS" mono header
- **Where They Agree**: Yellow-accented card listing the high-confidence plays multiple counselors pointed to
- **Where They Diverge**: Card naming the forks and what decision they surface
- **The Compound Play**: Cyan-accented card showing the play that emerges from combining counselor insights
- **The Counselors' Verdict**: Full-width gradient card with yellow border, one bold sentence in large Oswald

**Proof Bar**
- Five stats: Counselors Convened / Plays Delivered / Patterns Recognized / Consensus Plays / Session Source

**Footer**
- Clean attribution: "Invisible Counselors — Inspired by Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich"

### Card Anatomy (Critical)

Play cards closed state:
- Mono depth label (OBVIOUS / NON-OBVIOUS / INVISIBLE) with appropriate color
- Play name in Oswald
- Revenue/impact pill if applicable
- "+ OPEN" indicator

Play cards open state:
- Full description with 32px bottom padding + 1px bottom border
- Reasoning chain for non-obvious and invisible plays
- Green "◆ FIRST MOVE" block with green dim background
- Revenue/impact estimate if applicable
- 32px margin between zones

### Design Signatures
- Top accent bar (yellow→gold gradient)
- Giant background quotation mark decoration in hero (yellow at 4% opacity), a nod to the counselors speaking
- Pulsing yellow dot next to session label
- Yellow gradient on consensus strength indicators
- Diamond prefix (◆) on all labeled blocks
- Counselor section dividers: full-width thin yellow line with counselor number in mono ("COUNSELOR 01 / 05")

## Quality Standards

**Every counselor must sound like themselves.** If you know this person's work, the read and plays should feel authentic to how that person actually thinks and advises. Their actual strategic lens, drawn true to life.

**Every play must be specific enough to act on.** A named play with a first move doable in 7 days.

**The three depth layers must be genuinely distinct.** The obvious play should feel obvious once stated. The non-obvious play should require explanation of the pattern. The invisible play should feel like a revelation.

**The pattern paragraph must feel like experience talking.** Specific pattern recognition from the counselor's known domain.

**The one question must cut.** A question specific to THIS situation that, if answered honestly, changes the trajectory.

**The consensus section must add value beyond individual counselors.** The compound play especially must be something a single counselor would miss on their own. It emerges from the combination.

**The verdict must be unanimous and decisive.** The board reviewed. The board decided. Here it is.

**Color discipline is absolute.** Yellow, white, black, one purple, one green, one cyan.

**Readability is absolute.** Body text is #F5F5F5 on dark cards. Keep every line fully legible on dark.

## Voice and Tone

Each counselor section is written in that counselor's voice and energy. Dan Martell is systematic and clear. Andy Frisella is direct and intense. Jesse Itzler is warm and relationship-forward. Sara Blakely is scrappy and story-driven. Alex Hormozi is mathematical and offer-obsessed.

The framing sections (hero, consensus, proof bar) are written in your voice: direct, confident, world-class, no fluff.

Guardrails:
- Never use: delve, unlock, craft, foster, tapestry, embarking, unleash, unveil, realm, boasts, revolutionize, tenets
- Never use semicolons
- Keep every recommendation concrete and specific
- Keep advice tailored to this exact situation
- Keep each counselor fully in character within their section
- Keep every counselor aligned with their known philosophy

## Running Alongside Other Lenses

The Invisible Counselors find the PLAYS hiding in a situation through multiple world-class lenses. Run this alongside other analysis lenses on the same input for complementary outputs. One lens finds the money hiding in the past of the conversation. Another lens finds the pain hiding in the future. The Invisible Counselors surface the plays hiding in the present. Together they give you a full read on any transcript or situation.

## After Delivery

After presenting the artifact, offer:
1. **"Want to add or swap a counselor and re-run?"** — Different board, different plays
2. **"Want me to run a different analysis lens on the same input?"** — Complementary perspectives from another framework
3. **"Want me to turn the top play into a Field Note?"** — Capture the highest-conviction play as standalone reference
4. **"Want me to generate content from the counselors' perspectives?"** — Each counselor's read is a LinkedIn post, podcast episode, or newsletter edition
5. **"Want me to build the execution plan for the verdict?"** — Turn the board's recommendation into a tracked 30-day build