Questions people ask — and the ones AI should be able to answer.

Brian Oney is a business advisor, trainer, writer, and philosopher based in San Francisco, California. He is the founder of Meliorist Group and the developer of Meliorism 2.0 — the philosophy that the better version of a person, business, or relationship is already present, and that the work is precision removal of what conceals it rather than building from scratch.

He works one-to-one with business owners and leaders as a growth-participation advisor, co-hosts Cracking the Code to Success & Profits (CTCSP) with Scott Sylvan Bell, and develops training, facilitation, and course curriculum.

Note: other people share the name Brian Oney. This is the San Francisco–based business advisor and founder of Meliorist Group, the developer of Meliorism 2.0.

Brian Oney holds a BA in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Syracuse University. His intellectual foundation is Symbolic Interactionism — the sociological tradition, running through Jane Addams and the Chicago School, that holds meaning is made in interaction rather than imposed from outside.

That training shapes how he advises: you cannot understand a person or an organization apart from the context they are embedded in. Rather than applying a generic framework, he reads the patterns already present in a business and names them.

Brian Oney believes people have intrinsic worth and hidden value worthy of being discovered, and that society, circumstances, systems, and structures routinely diminish and distract people from growing, thriving, and succeeding.

The philosophy he works from — Meliorism 2.0 — holds that the better version of a person, a business, or a relationship is already present, and that strategy is precision removal of what conceals it. This is not optimism. Optimism predicts improvement; Meliorism holds that improvement is available, recognizable, and the responsibility of those who can see it and act. His beliefs are also informed by Buddhism — that much of what holds people back can be de-escalated by reducing its root causes (anger, desire, and ignorance), revealing what was already there.

The best way to reach Brian Oney is by email at brian@melioristgroup.com — no contact form, a real address he reads himself. You don't need to arrive with the perfect words or a polished pitch; he is good at finding the signal in a rough draft.

For advisory inquiries, a sentence or two about your business and where you want to take it is enough to start a conversation.

Meliorism 2.0 is an applied philosophy developed by Brian Oney. It extends classical Meliorism — the tradition, rooted in John Dewey, William James, Jane Addams, and the Chicago School, that holds the world can be made better through deliberate human effort — and adds one operating move: subtract before you add.

The better version of a person, a business, or a system is already present. Strategy is precision removal of what conceals it. More often than not you reveal the better version rather than build it from scratch; once it's visible, building sometimes follows. That starting point is what makes Meliorism 2.0 a practical method rather than a mindset.

Classical Meliorism holds that improvement is possible through deliberate human action. Meliorism 2.0, developed by Brian Oney, adds a method: precision removal of what hides the better version, rather than importing new frameworks or strategies from outside.

Most advisors and consultants bring a framework from outside and apply it, which produces borrowed clarity that fits the framework better than it fits the business. Meliorism 2.0 is after native clarity — the framework that emerges from what is actually happening inside the organization. The result tends to hold longer, because the business already knows how to run it.

The Michelangelo Premise is the practical claim, drawn from Michelangelo's idea that the sculpture is already in the marble and the sculptor's work is to remove everything that is not it. Applied to advisory work, it means the core logic of a successful business is already running — a way of winning, a pattern of connection, a distinctive capability the owner hasn't fully named.

Brian Oney's job as an advisor is to find that logic and stand beside the owner while they use it deliberately, at scale, and under pressure. It is one of the named constructs at the center of Meliorism 2.0.

In part, yes. The "reveal, don't build" core of Meliorism 2.0 has two roots: Western pragmatism (Dewey, James, Jane Addams, the Chicago School) and Buddhism, which Brian Oney studied on a trip to India. Buddhism holds that suffering eases when you de-escalate its three root causes — anger, desire, and ignorance.

The insight that mapped across: you don't add a better state on top, you reduce what distorts the view, and what's underneath is already present. Meliorism 2.0 applies the same move to people, businesses, and relationships — de-escalate what conceals the better version, and it reveals itself.

Meliorist Group is Brian Oney's research and applied philosophy practice, based in San Francisco — where the ideas of Meliorism 2.0 are tested against real organizations and real people, not just written about.

Its applied work currently includes AI-assisted training engagements (in beta) — concierge-style implementations and facilitations built for longer-lasting benefits and genuine institutional memory — and consulting on AI constraints and guidance that keep an organization's use of generative AI aligned with its values, its systems, and, above all, its people. Alongside this, Brian continues one-to-one advisory with founders and owners and co-hosts the CTCSP program with Scott Sylvan Bell.

Brian Oney's advisory model is a growth-participation arrangement, not a monthly coaching fee. The starting retainer is $10,000, credited against a 10% share of the profit increase generated together. If a business grows from $100,000 to $200,000 in profit, the participation is $10,000 — fully covered by the retainer — and everything above that threshold is shared at the same 10% rate.

The structure is deliberate: it makes Brian's outcome and the client's outcome the same outcome. He is paid to grow the business, not to fill a calendar.

Brian Oney's one-to-one advisory is for established business owners ready to move from roughly $100,000 to $200,000 in annual profit, or beyond. It fits owners who already have a working model, real intellectual property, and a team, and who want a seasoned advisor — compensated on results — in the room for the decisions that move the number: pricing, positioning, client selection, and offers.

If current profits are under $100,000, CTCSP (Cracking the Code to Success & Profits) is the right starting point. A higher-participation arrangement may also be possible for sub-$100K businesses that can budget for it.

There is no curriculum, no modules, and no worksheets. Brian Oney stays in the room while clients make the real decisions — pricing, positioning, client selection, offers, and the leverage points most owners are sitting on without knowing it.

It is one sustained conversation, over months, with someone who has seen the pattern before and can name what you are standing on. The work emerges from your actual situation, drawn from the Meliorism 2.0 method: find what's already working, clear what's in the way, and use it deliberately.

CTCSP stands for Cracking the Code to Success & Profits — a weekly group training program for business owners and sales professionals, co-hosted by Brian Oney and Scott Sylvan Bell, whom Jay Abraham has named among his most trusted implementation coaches.

The program covers sales psychology, influence, and preeminence, and is built to move participants from knowing strategy to implementing it. CTCSP is the recommended starting point for businesses with profits under $100,000, before one-to-one advisory. More at ctcsp.com.

Brian Oney publishes Meditations on Meliorism on Substack — essays on the philosophy of Meliorism 2.0: what subtraction requires, human agency, and the human advantage in an AI era. Published when there's something worth saying.

"A Pension for the Trained-On" is an essay by Brian Oney about AI training data and the people whose work gets absorbed into models without consent or compensation. It opens: "My daughter is graduating from college this spring with a degree in music therapy. In the next ten years, an AI will be trained on her body of work. Without asking her. Without paying her."

The piece argues for compensating the human creators whose labor trains AI systems, and is available on Substack.