Twelve Fridays

IThe room you've been looking for and couldn't quite name

If you're reading this, someone you trust thought you should.

You're somewhere between 38 and 55. You're senior — a CEO, a founder, a managing partner, a C-suite operator, the person other people look at for the answer. By most external measures you're doing well. The income is there. The title is there. The reputation is there.

And somewhere underneath all of it, something is off.

Maybe it's the gap between who you are at work and who you are at home, and how much energy it costs to keep that gap invisible. Maybe it's the fatherhood thing — you swore you wouldn't repeat the patterns, and lately you've caught yourself doing exactly that. Maybe it's that you've gotten almost everything you said you wanted, and the relief never came. Maybe it's the loneliness — not the obvious kind, but the quieter kind that exists at the top.

You don't have a place to put any of this. Your spouse is too close. Your team is too dependent on you being the one who's okay. Your friends from college don't talk this way anymore, and the new friendships you've built since 35 are mostly transactional. Your therapist is good but it's still you, alone in a chair, with one other person.

What you're missing is a room.

Not a networking group. Not a peer advisory board for business decisions. Not a men's retreat that asks you to weep on a drum. A room. Ten men, the same ten men, every month, for a year, then another year if it's working. Men who are at your altitude, carrying their own version of what you're carrying, willing to be honest about it, and committed enough to show up the same Friday every month no matter what.

That's what this is.

IIWhat this is

A small, intentional, high-trust cohort of ten men who meet together to do two things at once: think clearly about the work, and stop being strangers to themselves.

We meet one full day a month, the third Friday, at a private space in Richfield, Ohio. We do a two-day off-site once a year. Between meetings, you have a monthly one-on-one with me for whatever the room couldn't hold or you didn't bring. Members start texting each other after about month four. By month nine, most members will tell you it's the most important standing day on their calendar.

The work in the room is real work. Sometimes it looks like a peer advisory session — you bring a hard decision and nine other men help you see it from angles you couldn't reach alone. Sometimes it looks like nothing you've ever done in a professional setting — you bring the thing you've never told anyone, and the room holds it without flinching, and something shifts. Most months it's both. The business and the human are not separate problems. We stop pretending they are.

This is not therapy. It is not coaching. It is not Vistage and it is not a men's weekend. It's the thing that should exist between all of those, that mostly doesn't, and that men carrying what you're carrying need badly and rarely find.

IIIWhat this is not

I'd rather waste your time here than later.

IVThe arc of the year

The curriculum is a starting frame that flexes with the room. The themes are the grounding; the path through them shifts to fit what's alive for the men in it any given month. Some sessions stay close to the planned topic. Some get redirected by something a member brings that the room needs to engage.

What the year covers in broad strokes:

Session one — building the room

Before anything else, we figure out who we are to each other. The first day is given to learning who's in the room, agreeing on the working commitments, and building the foundational safety and belonging the rest of the year depends on. By the end of session one, ten men who started as strangers have begun the slow work of becoming something else.

Months two through four — foundations

We start with hope and resilience, because they're the bedrock everything else rests on. From there we move into the diagnostic questions every man eventually has to answer: how did I get here? What was the script I was handed, and how am I still running it — for better and for worse?

Months five through seven — the personal core

Relationships. Parenting. The honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversation about masculinity itself — what it is, how it was defined for you, what you still hold from that definition, and what you're ready to challenge. This is the heart of the year. The work that's hardest to do alone, and the work most men at this stage of life have nowhere to take.

Months eight through ten — looking forward

Purpose. Contribution. The legacy question that has nothing to do with money. What comes next, and how do you want to give? This is where the year starts turning from inward work to outward direction.

The off-site, around month nine or ten

Two days away from the everyday context, somewhere chosen for the work. By this point in the year the trust is real, and that trust opens doors the day-format alone can't. The off-site is required for active members and announced a year in advance.

Closing session

Celebration of the year's work. Each man names what he's carrying forward into the next year of his life — and into the next year of this room, if he chooses to renew.

VThe shape of a day

The day starts by grounding the room. Coffee, arrival, then a check-in around the table — each man, briefly, where he's at in work and life and what he wants to put on the table for the day.

The morning runs two to three hours of topic work. Sometimes the theme of the month. Sometimes a book the room is working through together. Sometimes something a member has brought because the group's perspective is what he needs. The format flexes — full-group facilitation, member-led conversation, structured exercise — chosen to fit what the day calls for.

We share a meal together. The lunch is unstructured by design. Some of the most important work of the day happens here — side conversations, connections, the pieces that don't fit into the formal agenda.

The afternoon moves into small groups and paired conversations. Different partner each month. The morning's work gets translated into something personal and applied — what does this mean for me, what am I going to do with it, what am I asking the man across from me to hold me to.

We close as a group at three. Each man names what he's taking forward. We're done.

VIWhy me

I've spent twenty-plus years in rooms with senior leaders, and I can read a room as well as anyone you've worked with. I will not let you get away with the polished version of your story, and I will not push you past where you can actually go. I go first when the room needs someone to go first, and I get out of the way when the room is doing its own work.

I've been fortunate to coach men like you, and that work has given me a peek behind the curtain. I've sat with too many men quietly terrified at the end of their careers — ready to retire, paralyzed by what comes next, because it's the first time they've truly thought about it, and the life they've been missing all these years is now staring them in the face. That moment can be an opening, or it can be an anchor pulling them under. Most of the men I work with are nowhere near that point yet. The earlier they engage with the questions underneath their yearning, the more time they have to do something useful with what they find.

My consulting work as co-founder of Switch Innovation Lab has afforded me the opportunity to be inside organizations of all shapes, sizes, and industries. I've facilitated strategic work for Smuckers, Hyland, the Cleveland Clinic, and several non-profits. I've led mission-and-vision work for the International Space Station National Lab. I've designed and facilitated multi-year leadership development engagements for organizations ranging in size from mid-market CPA firms to the Ohio Turnpike. I've taught collegiate-level design courses and an MBA course. I opened an office in Mauritius and work with the largest co-working operation on the island.

I've built businesses. Some have worked. Some haven't. That's part of the receipts.

Over those years I've developed and refined the innovation and change methodology that sits at the center of Switch's work. It centers on five human truths — psychological safety, belonging, clarity, accountability, motivation — all underpinned by hope and resilience. These truths are informed and vetted by a couple of decades of client work and the personal terrain I've written about in a book called The Broken Mirror Project.

Which brings me to the other set of receipts.

I grew up inside the kind of childhood most people read about and think that doesn't happen to people I know. It happened to plenty of people you know — they just don't talk about it. I spent the first half of my life surviving it and the second half doing the work to stop the patterns from running my life and the lives of the people I love. Decades of therapy and coaching. Deep work understanding and applying frameworks like Positive Intelligence, Intentional Change, and CliftonStrengths. Ongoing study of trust and emotional intelligence. And the book itself, which I wrote because at some point I realized my own story might be useful to other men who don't have the language for the version of it they're carrying.

I'm a damn good father, and I broke the cycle I inherited. Those two sentences are the only credentials that matter for the work this room does.

What I bring as host, specifically

A colleague once described watching me facilitate this way: "People gravitate toward you. They get physically closer. I looked up and there were all these people around you, relaxed and engaged." I only know how to be authentic, and people sense and trust that authenticity.

Most sessions, you'll leave feeling seen — more fully than you expected. You may occasionally drive home afterward and second-guess how much you said. That's the sign it's working.

I am further down certain roads than you are, and I'm still walking them. That's the only kind of leader I trust to lead a room like this — so it's the only kind I'll be.

VIIThe structure

Cohort Size

Ten men.

Composition

Established leaders aged 38–55. Diverse across industry, race, religion, sexuality, and life stage — by design. No two members from the same company. No direct competitors.

Cadence

• One full day per month, the third Friday, 8am–3pm, including a meal together
• One two-day off-site per year, late September or early October, in a location chosen for the work
• One 60–90 minute one-on-one with me per month, scheduled at your convenience
• Informal member-to-member contact between meetings, encouraged and unstructured

Attendance

Members commit to a minimum of ten of twelve monthly meetings per year. The annual off-site is required. If you miss more than two regular meetings in a year, we have a direct conversation about whether this is still the right room for you right now — a reset, not a punishment. Real life happens; the expectation is honesty about it.

Location

A private space in Richfield, Ohio — two floors, room to think, room to be quiet, no hotel ballroom energy. Designed to feel like a place you actually want to be.

Investment

$15,000 per year, paid annually or quarterly. Membership is a twelve-month commitment with an option to renew. After year one, members participate in selecting new members.

Confidentiality

Total. What's said in the room stays in the room. There is no exception, and the first violation ends membership.

VIIIHow you get in

If this resonates, you reach out. We have an initial 60-minute conversation — no pitch, no hard sell. I want to know what's actually going on for you and whether this room would serve you. You want to know what kind of person I am and whether you'd want to spend a Friday a month in a room I'm running. Most prospects need a second conversation before either of us knows the answer. Some need a third.

If we both decide it's a fit, you're in. If either of us decides it's not, you're not, and there's no hard feelings on either side.

A few things that, in my experience, predict whether someone thrives here

• The weight of your decisions is real, and it's lonely.
• You have something — a relationship, a pattern, a question about who you're becoming — that you'd bring to the room if you trusted the room to hold it.
• You can commit to twelve standing Fridays for a year without re-litigating it every time something else comes up.
• You've done at least some prior work on yourself, in some form, even imperfectly. Or you're ready to start, and you know it.
• You can be in a room with men who are different from you and stay curious instead of guarded.

A few things that predict the opposite

• You want to be the smartest person in the room.
• You're looking for an audience for the version of you that already works.
• You can't be honest about your money, your marriage, your kids, your fears, or your mistakes — and you don't want a room where other men are honest about theirs.
• "Confidential" is a guideline to you, not a vow.
• You want this to be transactional. You want a network. You want leads.

I'd rather have eight of the right men than ten with the wrong two.

IXFrequently asked questions

Is this only for men? Why?

Yes. The specific terrain we work in here — fatherhood, the inherited scripts of masculinity, the loneliness many men carry without naming, the way professional success and personal alignment can drift apart — is best worked on among men. Mixed rooms do different work, and that work is also valuable.

Is this room rooted in a particular faith or spiritual tradition?

No. The room isn't tied to any religion or spiritual path. Members come from across the map — men with active religious practices, men whose spirituality is more personal, men who consider themselves agnostic or atheist. What's asked of every member is openness to the inner lives of the men around them. No specific belief or tradition is required, though we may have conversations about the larger mysteries we can't explain.

What if I have to miss a meeting?

Real life happens. Members commit to a minimum of ten of twelve monthly meetings per year and to the annual off-site. The expectation is honesty — let the group know in advance, name what's pulling you away, return ready. If you miss more than two regular meetings in a year, we have a direct conversation about whether this is still the right room for you right now. That conversation is a reset, designed to be useful for both of us.

What's expected of me between meetings?

The core expectation is the monthly one-on-one with me — sixty to ninety minutes, scheduled at your convenience. Beyond that, the work between meetings is whatever the room has agreed to: a chapter of the book we're reading together, a commitment you made in dyads, an outreach to another member when something hard comes up. The between-meeting load is light by design. The transformation comes from the consistency.

Will I be expected to share things about my personal life?

You'll be invited to. You won't be forced to. The room runs on honest disclosure, and the depth and pace of what each man brings is his to set. What we ask is that you show up, listen, participate in good faith, and resist the urge to perform a version of yourself that isn't real. The men who get the most from this room are usually the ones who arrive willing to be seen. Some men need a few months to get there.

How is this different from working with my therapist or my executive coach?

Therapy is one-to-one, clinically grounded, oriented around your individual psychology and history. Coaching is one-to-one, oriented around your goals and your performance. This room is peer work — nine other men who are facing their own versions of what you're facing, telling you the truth, and being told the truth in return. Most members of this kind of room also have a therapist, a coach, or both. The peer work is a different category. It's where you stop being alone in the work.

Can my company pay for this?

Often, yes. Many members fund this through their company as professional development or executive coaching. Your finance team or accountant is the right person to confirm what works for your situation. I can provide an invoice with whatever level of detail you need.

What happens if it isn't the right fit after I've joined?

The fit interviews are designed to make this rare, but it does happen. If you decide within the first ninety days that this room isn't for you, I'll prorate the unused portion of your investment and refund it. After ninety days, the year-long commitment holds — both for you and for the rest of the men, who are counting on the room being stable. If something changes mid-year, we have a direct conversation and figure out what's right.

What if my industry or company is sensitive — how is confidentiality handled?

What's said in the room stays in the room. There is no exception, and the first violation ends membership. Member identities are confidential as well — the existence of the cohort isn't a secret, but who's in it is yours to share or not share with anyone outside the group. For senior leaders in regulated industries, public companies, or competitive contexts, this is one of the foundational reasons the cohort works at all.