Mike McHargue

I get obsessed with things. Those obsessions turn into companies, books, and things I say on stage.

Usually it starts because I can't stand not knowing something. It ends because somewhere in there I found people who needed the thing to exist.

Community college dropout. Accidental COO. Keynote speaker who opens by asking what he's doing there.

The pattern

My résumé looks like six careers. It's one move, repeated.

I fall down a rabbit hole — narrative game systems, psychedelic compounds, why podcasts make strangers feel less alone, whatever won't let go of me. I don't know why I'm doing it. I just have to know. And somewhere deep in the obsession, I notice what the thing is doing for people. That's when it stops being a hobby.

Then I build the real version. A company. A game. A book. A talk. Whatever the situation actually needs.

  1. CuriosityI can't stand not knowing something. Curiosity becomes obsession, and obsession becomes a rabbit hole with no plan.
  2. PeopleSomewhere down there, I find people who need something new to exist.
  3. The buildThen I build the real one — at scale, with a P&L and a payroll.
  • A curiosity about mushrooms became a research chemicals manufacturer I helped scale from three people to multiple factories, with distribution worldwide.
  • A lockdown D&D campaign with dozens of dozens of players in one shared continuity became a funded game studio and an original world.
  • The biggest questions about being human became two bestselling books and a podcast that reached millions.

Half the things I'm proudest of, I can't name — not the work, and sometimes not even the company. That's what comes with being called in early, or quietly, or both. Every so often enough time passes that I'm allowed to say one out loud.

Google. Marvel. Netflix.

Consulting & advisory

Most people call me when something's wrong and they don't know what to call it yet.

My engagements almost never start with a scope. They start with “we're not sure what we're supposed to do here.”

Called to fix the Wi-Fi→left as their COO

A research chemicals company booked thirty minutes with me. The meeting ran five hours.

Booked for a keynote→helped set the conference's theme

Google gave me the stage and let me choose my own subject. That's a real bet for an organizer to make. It paid off.

Often it's something a team is already stuck on, and nobody wants it known that they had to call an outsider. So the arrangement is usually: fix it, hand it back, leave no fingerprints. It's why my references are people and not case studies.

If you already know exactly what you need, hire a specialist — I know great ones. If you're a founder or an executive staring at something wrong that doesn't have a name yet, that's my whole job.

Tell me what's wrong

Keynotes

I made my living selling tickets to hear me talk. Now I do it for rooms like yours.

Corporate keynotes are graded on a curve. I'm not on that curve — my baseline was audiences who paid to be there.

But the reason serious rooms book me isn't stagecraft. It's that I've done the jobs of the people in the audience: startups and the Fortune 100, technology and marketing and operations, the boardroom and the build. So the talk is strange and delightful and it still lands as something you can use Monday morning.

At Google Xi Days I keynoted on using tabletop-RPG worldbuilding mechanics to build better organizations. Weird topic. The rest of the conference spent the weekend responding to it.

“Mike is way too funny to be as smart as he is and way too honest, touching, insightful and entertaining to be ignored. What I mean is, I resent his multiple talents. Any time he's speaking my ears perk up like a dog hearing a can opener, and yours should, too. Also, feed your dog.”

Pete HolmesStar of HBO's Crashing, host of You Made It Weird
Book me to speak

If you want the whole path

Mike McHargue

The whole path

I started in IT in the nineties, doing digital transformation before we called it that. Pioneered search and digital marketing inside a TBWA agency. Started a record label to figure out what music meant when it stopped being physical. Built venues in Second Life for major brands and hosted Sundance in the metaverse before “metaverse” was a word anyone said out loud.

Then, for a chapter, I was “Science Mike” — an author and podcaster helping millions of people navigate the biggest questions about faith, science, and being human. I'm proud of that work. I still get letters from people who are alive because of it.

Yes, Mike is a smart dude, but it isn't just his brain,
it's his heart.
And it isn't just his heart, it's his refusal to let his life pass him by without giving it everything he's got.
Whatever he does, he throws himself into it.
All of himself.

Rob Bellfrom the foreword to Finding God in the Waves

Since then: COO of Wohler Chemical. Co-founder of Quantum Spin Studios and the World of Vesser. Science consulting for Marvel and Netflix. Co-founder and advisor at Protixa and Cell Wellness. These days most of my time goes to consulting and keynotes — and whatever the next obsession requires.

Normal people think I'm weird. Weird people think I'm cool. You'll know pretty fast which one you are.