MIND THE GAP — ATTRACT
A Note on the Acknowledgements

Books carry two kinds of debt.
The first kind is intellectual — the thinkers, the researchers, the clinicians whose work provided the foundations. That debt is settled in the bibliography. Every source named. Every lineage traced. Every framework acknowledged.
The second kind is harder to settle. It is the debt owed to the people who shaped the instrument before the work began. Not the sources. The shapers. The ones who believed before there was evidence. Who stood quietly in the foothills. Who sat in rooms and trusted the practitioner with parts of themselves that few people ever get to see.
That debt cannot be settled in a bibliography. It requires something more personal.
The acknowledgements that follow are that something.

They name Jean Bond, who taught the author what careful, compassionate, rigorous clinical practice actually looks like. Without her, tens of thousands of people across decades would be slightly less whole than they are.
They name Bob Mills, who believed without condition when belief was what was needed.
They name Andy Makeham, who backed the author completely at the moment it mattered most in a commercial career — and who felt, at times, like another father standing quietly behind him.
They name Ewan [name held], whose NLP training gave the author some of the deepest listening tools he has ever used.
They name Dr. [name held] and his surgical team — the people who gave the author back his voice, without which there would have been no therapy room, no coaching practice, no lectures, no teaching, and certainly no book.
They name the hundreds of clients who cannot be named. The people who sat in rooms and entrusted the author with their stories, fears, grief, shame, hopes, identities and pain. Their courage is in these pages even where their names are not.
And they name, at the very end, the grandchildren — [name held], [name held], Erin and [name held] — to whom the life’s work is ultimately dedicated.
Work travels. Ideas travel. Kindness travels. Understanding travels. Long after the original conversation has ended.
The acknowledgements are the author’s words, written in his voice, in his register. They are not summarised here. They are given in full in the document that follows.
Read them. They are part of the book.


Ideas and direction: Paul Roebuck
Words: Claude AI (Anthropic) — claude-sonnet-4-6  |  May 2026