“I designed this life, and it works. I’d design the next two years differently.”
Ask a man in your position what he wants from them and he can answer in about ninety seconds. Ask what he’d put down to create space for it, and he goes quiet.
That’s where The Kestrel Project™ starts: private coaching and practical tools that begin with what you’d put down, not what you’d add.
The trip you keep moving to next year. The fitness to enjoy that trip, not just book it. Evenings with your wife that aren’t just what’s left of the week.
Most of what fills a week was chosen once, years ago, under rules written for a different chapter, and nobody has chosen it since. We call that Inherited Momentum. Left alone, it decides the next two years.
Create space for what you want inside the life you’ve built, not instead of it: what to keep, what to reduce, what to renegotiate, and what the space is for.
Men who intend to author the next chapter, not inherit it.
Some are ready to change how they live. Some like the life they’ve built and want to steer what comes next. The work is the same: evidence first, then deliberate change.
The Kestrel Project™ is private coaching and practical tools for high-achieving men in midlife who want the next two years built around what they’d choose today, not what they chose twenty years ago.
Your calendar, your commitments, your relationships, the experiences that keep repeating. That’s the evidence, and it’s where we start. A plan built on it fits the life you have, not one you’re supposed to want.
After decades of building and carrying, the next chapter rarely needs another goal. It needs space, and space comes from what you reduce, stop or renegotiate.
A role can change without costing the relationship, the commitment behind it, or the part of you that’s proud of it. We name what must stay true before anything goes. If the question “who am I without this?” arrives, we call that The Crossing, and we work through it. Graduation, not erasure.
Insight is where most work stops. Ours doesn’t: each change gets a defined test in your real week, and what actually happens decides the next move.
Read the evidence. Remove what no longer fits. Author what comes next.
This isn’t a ladder. Each door is complete in itself, and each has a complimentary guide if you’d rather start there.
Authority Foundations is where you choose the core values that get the final say over your next two years, and start making decisions by them.
Live with James, in The Authority Practice: four Wednesday evenings on Zoom, five seats, starting 14 October. You’ll read the evidence of your last twelve months, name the five core values you want your next two years built on, and put them to work on one real decision. Then you’ll test one small change in your own week and bring back what it showed you.
Includes four live sessions, the fillable workbook, My Foundations Summary, and fifteen minutes privately with James after the last session. Enrollment closes Tuesday 13 October.
If you’d rather do the work on your own, take it self-led, at your own pace: three on-demand videos with James and the fillable workbook, $97. Begin self-led →
Four moments from your own life, one value in your own words, and one decision to hold it up against.
A thirty-minute assessment that scores your life across the Five Domains: Meaning, Time, Freedom, Vitality and Connection. You see where your life already supports what you want next, where it doesn’t yet, and where to look first.
Includes the interactive assessment, a welcome packet with three written guides to your result, and a fillable workbook to keep.
Twenty quiet minutes to see whether your days are heading where you want to go, and what deserves your attention first.
Private work, in two scopes: your first move, made properly, or the whole next chapter designed on purpose.
Precision Realignment is one month of private work with James to choose your first move toward the life you want, and start making it in your actual week.
Three private sessions, a fourteen-day test in your own life, and a Realignment Report James writes personally for you.
Begin Precision Realignment →The flagship. Sixteen weeks with James to change how your life actually runs, not just to plan it. That might mean a responsibility renegotiated, a commitment kept on purpose, a postponed priority given a real place in your week, or a bigger change tested before you commit to it.
Twelve private sessions and your Authored-Life Blueprint hold it together. A five-week supported Activation Bridge takes it into ordinary life.
Same man. Lighter, and headed somewhere you chose.
By application. James reads every one himself and, if the work fits, invites you to a thirty-minute conversation so you can both decide.
Apply to Work with James →
I had a life that worked, built almost exactly the way I’d designed it. Then I realized it wasn’t the life I wanted to be living two years from now.
What made it real was an older friend in the helicopter flight simulator where I taught. He was still working full time. Whenever I asked when he’d start doing the things he wanted, he said soon. Soon. Soon. Then one day he told me what the doctors had told him. He didn’t have long.
That was the last push I needed. I left a well-paid job and started writing my next chapter while I still could.
Nearly 25 years as a U.S. Army and Air Force officer and helicopter pilot taught me that the smallest overlooked signal often becomes the most expensive problem. Today I help other capable men read those signals in their own lives, while the years are still theirs to spend.
Start with one honest look at the life you have today, and one step you can take this week.