Dear Lovely Human,
Every now and then you meet someone who has already won the game everyone else is still playing, and decides to keep playing anyway. Not for the money. For the mission.
Rick Maher is one of those people for me.
He had built Maher & Maher into the number one consulting contractor to the US Department of Labor. Premium brand. Deeply profitable. Still fun. Competitors came knocking. Larger firms. Private venture money. He turned every offer down.
Then one offer hit the exact number he had quietly carried in his head for years. So he reconsidered. And here is where Rick does the thing most founders never think to do.
"Offering to accept that final offer, as long as the buyer allowed my carve out of all my 'adaptive human capital' IP (brand, research, content, trademarks), was the right decision for me, my workforce and my clients."
He sold the company. And he kept the soul of it. That carve-out became Adaptive Human Capital, LLC, his next chapter, built on the part he was never willing to let go of.
Now it gets exciting……..
From bigger to further?
Here is what makes this chapter different from everything Rick built before. The old scoreboard was growth. More sales, more staff, more clients. The new scoreboard is reach.
"This time it's about my reach, the number of people I can reach and help as they cope with stress, change and uncertainty in life and at work. I'm not interested in growing my employee base or even less interested in boosting my bottom line."
So he is rewiring the entire model. Instead of selling his time, he is packaging his IP, the assessments and workshops, and distributing it through a network of partners who can carry it places he could never reach alone. Including a new diagnostic in development called the Cultural Agility Index, a tool to measure whether a company's culture can actually hold up when change hits.
The archetype he keeps correcting
For years Rick was introduced from national stages as a "workforce development expert," usually standing beside the country's top political leaders. He still corrects the record when it happens. He was never the label. He was the change agent underneath it.
"I build more adaptive humans and human systems. I'm a problem solver, a communicator, and a coach."
Who rewired him
Ask Rick who shaped him most and he does not name a guru. He names a client. The US Assistant Secretary of Labor, a visionary who completely re-wired how the nation approached job training and talent pipelines, and who gave Rick more access and more platform than almost anyone in the building.
"She helped me see my value beyond what I thought it was. She helped me fashion a national brand and gave me a platform that resulted in financial success, but more, she allowed me to have an impact beyond my expectations."
That relationship took him from contractor to a stage at Windsor Castle. He is still grateful for it. That is the kind of man Rick is.
The real fear
I asked him what scares him. His answer was not about himself.
"My fear is for my kids and family, and for the next generation. The fear is about how AI is going to re-shape the world of work and society."
He is a fan of AI. He is already helping leaders adopt it well. But he worries about creative workers being hollowed out (his own daughter is one of them), about misuse, and about whether nations can regulate it with any wisdom. To Rick, AI is fundamentally a change-management problem. Which happens to be the exact thing he has spent thirty years solving.
Why he will not retire
His friends keep asking why he does not just play golf and relax. He does play golf now, more than ever. He just refuses to disappear.
"Most of my friends would say 'he sucks at retirement.'"
He keeps a Mark Twain line close: that he has known a great many troubles, most of which never happened. It is a fitting quote for a man whose whole life's work is helping people stop bracing for lions that never arrive.
How you can be part of Rick's next chapter
Rick is looking for collaborators in the consulting and change-management world. Here are three concrete ways in:
Distribute his assessments and workshops, in the US or globally. His goal is bold and specific: 10 distribution partners each doing at least $50k a year for AHC by mid-2027.
Co-create derivative products and workshops built on his research and IP, developed and taken to market together.
Bring him in to speak, advise, or coach your team through change, resistance, and the messy human side of transformation.
If any of that is you, or you know exactly who it should be, reply and I will make the introduction.
I will end on this.
I see Rick as living proof that an exit does not have to be an ending. He sold the company and kept the calling. He traded headcount for reach. And at the stage when most people are told to step back, he is busy figuring out how to help even more humans navigate the one thing none of us escape: change.
