“I’ve thought about the next chapter long enough. I’d like to start living it.”
A responsibility renegotiated after twenty years. A commitment you decided to keep, on purpose this time. The trip you kept moving to next year, finally on the calendar.
Authorship by Design™ is sixteen weeks of private work with James to design the next chapter and start living it inside the life you’ve built.
We start with the evidence of your actual life. We decide what to keep, reduce or renegotiate before anything is added, protect what you’ve chosen to keep, and test each change in your real week while James is still with you. Twelve one-on-one sessions, your Authored-Life Blueprint, the written design of the chapter, and a five-week supported Activation Bridge, where you live the plan with James still beside you.
Sixteen weeks from now, the change shows up in how your life runs, not only on paper. Open time on your calendar that you put there yourself. A commitment that no longer fits, renegotiated or gone, with what you love protected on the way. A bigger move tested in your real week before you commit to it.
Your version will be your own. What every version shares is how it’s made: from the evidence of your actual life, around what you chose to protect, and tested in your real week before it becomes permanent.
Same man. Lighter, and headed somewhere you chose.
Naming what you want next is seldom the hard part. The hard part is deciding what you’d put down to create space for it, in what order, and without harming what you’ve built.
A long career leaves rules nobody wrote down: what you say yes to, whose calendar comes first, what counts as a good year. Inherited Momentum like that doesn’t take a crisis to be worth deciding, and gratitude for the life you’ve built doesn’t oblige you to leave it unchanged. The answer isn’t reckless escape. It’s to take the pen back.
This is how you author the next two years instead of inheriting them.
I created space in my own life late, and the hard way. For years I saw my daughter two or three times a year, and I wanted time with her to be the first priority of my life, not something that fit around the rest of it. In 2019 I held an estate sale, sold the house, and on the day it closed I drove away in an RV with one deadline: Orlando by the fifth of December, for her birthday.
You don’t have to sell the house. The point of this work is the space without the wreckage.
Your Authored-Life Blueprint is built in four phases: Clarify, Remove, Design and Activate. The order is the point. You don’t design a new chapter until you’ve seen where the current one actually goes, and you don’t commit to it until you’ve tested it.
Start with the most reliable record you have: your calendar. Where your time and energy actually go, which commitments you’d choose again today, what you’re proud of, what keeps frustrating you, and what you want the next two years to hold. Clarify ends with a written read of what needs attention and what must be protected.
Before anything is added, your commitments, roles and expectations go through one test: keep, reduce, renegotiate or release. Week 6 is a recalibration. If changing a role raises the question of who you are without it, The Continuity Method® keeps hold of the qualities and relationships you value while the role changes.
Then design the next chapter across the Five Domains: Meaning, Time, Freedom, Vitality and Connection. You decide what the chapter is for and build its first two years in detail. The two-year picture gives each decision a concrete target, and every change goes in order: what happens now, what waits, what gets tested first, what stays protected.
Then the plan meets your real week. Coaching continues through Week 11 as you make the first specific decisions and run small tests. Weeks 12 to 16 are the supported Activation Bridge: you live the plan, with brief support between sessions and a final review with James.
Most sessions run for an hour. The opening session and the closing session in Week 11 run for ninety minutes.
You bring what you’ve noticed, the workbook pages you’ve done, and the decisions in front of you. James asks the harder questions, tells you plainly what he sees, and checks it against your experience before anything goes into your plan. He isn’t after the tidy summary. He’s after the sentence you haven’t said out loud yet.
Each session closes with what became clearer, what you still need to find out, and a next action or test with a date.
Six written tools turn your decisions into something you can act on. The Blueprint is built to be used, not filed.
During the final five weeks, you use what you’ve built in your normal life. You complete short weekly reflections, note what works and what needs adjusting, and can use WhatsApp for brief questions and reflections within the program’s support limits.
These are self-directed weeks, with no scheduled weekly coaching sessions. At the end, you meet James for a final 60-minute Activation Check-In, the twelfth session in the engagement. Together, you review what happened, refine your Blueprint, and decide what comes next.
These five weeks are included in the sixteen‑week engagement.
The complete sixteen-week engagement: twelve private sessions, the workbook and preparation videos, your personalized Blueprint, limited between-session support, and five weeks to put the plan into practice.
You apply first. If the work appears to fit, James invites you to a Clarity Call: a private conversation about your situation, the commitment involved, and whether you both want to work together. You decide before enrolling.
The work depends on your participation: arriving prepared, completing the workbook, and using the support fully.
To qualify for the Show-Up Guarantee, you must:
If you meet those conditions and believe the work has not delivered meaningful clarity and a practical path forward, James provides up to sixty additional days of targeted support at no cost. He determines the format, frequency, and scope based on your situation.
This service extension does not restart the program or provide unlimited access, a financial refund, or a guarantee of a specific life, business, relationship, financial, emotional, or health outcome.
James personally reviews every application. He looks at what you want to work on, whether this engagement suits that need, and whether you have the time and capacity to take part.
Applicants whose situations appear to fit are invited to a private Clarity Call. Enrollment follows only when both sides agree. James accepts one or two new clients per month so he can give each engagement the attention it requires. The work stays this personal because the practice stays this small.
If you’re dealing with a recent loss, a health crisis, or a major upheaval, describe it in the application. Those circumstances don’t decide the answer on their own; James will consider whether the timing and scope fit your situation.
The time commitment: plan for about three focused hours a week during the first eleven weeks, including your session and the work between sessions. Weeks 2 and 11 take longer. The opening and Week 11 closing sessions run for ninety minutes. The final five weeks are lighter and more self-directed. You review the actual workload and your available time on the Clarity Call before committing. If three hours a week to author the next chapter of your life sounds like too much, this isn’t the program.
After his military and contractor careers, James had to decide what he wanted his own life to become. Service and achievement told him what he wanted to keep. They didn’t tell him what came next.
He redesigned his life around time with his daughter, his health, slow travel, and the freedom to choose how he spent his days. His training in counseling, leadership, business, and engineering informs the work, alongside the experience of making those changes himself: lived, not theorized.
James has visited all fifty U.S. states and seventy-six countries, and lived for about a year or more in six countries. He and his wife, Ana Milena, now travel slowly, spending time in places rather than rushing through them. Your next chapter will look different from his. The work is designing yours.
Start with what you want from the years ahead, then decide what has to change, what stays, and what you’ll test first.
After you apply, James personally reviews your application and writes back within forty-eight hours. If the work appears to fit, he invites you to a private 30-minute Clarity Call. If you both decide to proceed, you receive an invoice or payment link. After payment, James arranges access to your private program materials. Not every applicant is invited to enroll.
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. In practical terms, you choose one move, try it for fourteen days and review what happens with James. Authorship by Design is the wider sixteen-week engagement: twelve sessions to design the whole next chapter, develop your personal Blueprint and begin putting it into practice.
Some men start with Realignment. Others come straight here. 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. Neither program is a prerequisite; Clarify establishes your starting point within Authorship by Design.
It’s a 30-minute private conversation after James has reviewed your application. You discuss what you want next, what stands in the way, and whether the work suits your situation. You also confirm the time commitment and terms before deciding whether to enroll.
No. Working that out is part of the Clarify phase.
No. You decide what changes, what to test, what can wait, and what to protect. Some changes are substantial. Many are a responsibility shared, a boundary set, or an hour a week used differently.
No. This is private coaching to help you decide what to keep, what to change, and how to begin the next chapter of your life. It is not clinical care.
There are no financial refunds. The application and Clarity Call give both sides the opportunity to assess fit before enrollment. Eligible clients can receive up to sixty additional days of targeted support under the Show-Up Guarantee, subject to the conditions, request window, and limits above.