The $10,000-a-Month Psychic

When Seagate Technology, the $11 billion-a-year maker of hard drives for the Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox, went searching for a consultant to run one of its management workshops in the fall of 2006, it bypassed the usual list of Silicon Valley gurus. Instead, Seagate's executive director of software engineering, Gabriel Lawson, invited Laura Day—a stylish New Yorker with no tech experience—to train his Colorado-based team. "She was amazing," Lawson tells NEWSWEEK, recalling Day's quick insights into the poor coordination between the company's research and marketing teams. "Anybody who can afford her will get 100 times their money's worth." What exactly is Day's expertise? While she likes to downplay it as mere "intuition," her clients prefer another explanation: she's a psychic.

Day's feel for the unknown has become a hot commodity among certain high-profile business people, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the 49-year-old mother in the process. The William Morris talent agency has used Day to help it decide whom to represent and how to help the company grow. "It's like looking over at your opponent's cards in a poker game," says Jennifer Walsh, executive vice president of William Morris's literary department, which reps Day. A big Hollywood producer says Day advised him in 2006 to pass on a can't-miss animated film, predicting it would bomb at the box office. It did. (The producer didn't want to be named for fear of public ridicule.)

A Manhattan attorney who serves as special counsel to several white-shoe law firms has used Day's insights to help her select juries and anticipate the opposing team's arguments. "Day saves me thousands of minutes on my cell phone" working a case, says the attorney, who also didn't want to be publicly identified.

It's impossible to objectively judge psychic powers. Are psychics just good listeners who pick up enough clues from their clients to provide seemingly insightful answers? Are they making lucky guesses? "It's kind of a dirty secret," Day says of business people who use psychics like herself. She declines to identify most of her clients, and almost all who spoke to NEWSWEEK also requested anonymity out of concern for their reputations.

Day is one of a small but expanding cadre of corporate psychic consultants—the professionalized face of an occupation better known for hokey headscarves and crystal balls. Rebranded as "intuitionists" or "mentalists"—terms more palatable to mainstream America—psychic advisers in recent years have been crossing over into the world of legitimate business, where they are used by decision makers in law, finance and entertainment looking for an edge in a down economy. "I specialize in nonbelievers," says Day, referring to her roster of "red-meat-eating, Barneys-shopping, Type A personalities."

For a flat rate of $10,000 a month, Day's insight is available for rent. She has about five monthly clients at a time, offering them unlimited 24-hour access. She works from her airy Tribeca apartment, fielding calls while juggling domestic life as the mother of a 16-year-old boy, whose friends are often over in packs. The commotion is helpful, she says, allowing her to keep her "rational mind busy" while she picks up on things from "left field." (Though she admits her teenager can be psychically distracting as well: "I don't want to see what he did with that girl until 2 a.m.," she says. "But I can.") In a typical call early last year, a prominent Wall Street money manager asked whether he should pull out of a risky, multimillion-dollar energy deal or let his money ride. "My gut," Day recalls saying, "is that you're not going to get your return." The money manager listened and yanked his investment, she says, just before the deal nose-dived.