Your world will change when you start living and leading from that purpose you came here for.
An 8-month journey for men standing at a life-changing threshold.
I pole-vaulted across a chasm because of this by seeing that I could lead something that actually mattered to me.
— John Jernigan, Heart of Men Participant
You have game, but the full extent of your gift is waiting for the confluence of these previously isolated currents.
You're a fulcrum point in your world, and your pursuit of the real stuff has to enhance and uplift all you're responsible for.
You know you're here for something important, and you're ready to live it fully before another five years pass.
If you resonate with at least two of these recognitions, Living Leadership is for you.
"I didn't know what game I was playing. I was doing the wrong things right and the right things wrong."
— Lature Van Duren, Heart of Men Participant
"Before this program, my deepest fear was to die with my heart's work latent."
— John Jernigan, Heart of Men Participant
For all my life, I've felt split between different worlds.
In my early 20s, I founded and ran a successful startup. I ended up selling the company after 8 years because I felt I was ultimately abandoning something precious in who I really was in my leadership.
I fled to the other end of the spectrum: 22 acres with a solar-powered, spring-fed abode in the Appalachian Mountains. I wrote the best poetry in my life in these years, but I ultimately felt stagnant, fragmented, and self-imploding as I had abandoned my ambition.
I felt stuck because I saw no models for how to weave both worlds. Then, I realized I would have to lead myself into the reality I longed for.
My past several years has been a continued experiment in bridging the both. To work devotedly on behalf of what's actually most important. To grow an online business while living on land and raising our own animals.
It's through this lens that I look out on a world and see those men meant to build bridges stuck on one side of the water.
It is the structure that allowed me to create a life where I raise my family in the woods at an original pace and run a flourishing business that's an expression of my deepest purpose and contributes to the renaissance of our culture.
Over the next 8 months, you are going to get really good at leading from the both and thus living what's actually most important to you.
We call this your genius. And its full-send expression is the only thing that can create the future you've been waiting for.
"I couldn't do the things I'm doing now that I've really wanted to for a long time because I didn't believe in who I was. With Heart of Men, I'm just starting to, and now I'm doing this stuff I actually love."
— Colin Olexa, Heart of Men Participant
"In essence, I know who I am in a way that I never have before. I can feel it. My wife and children can feel it. My employees can feel it."
— Justin Cole, Heart of Men Participant
"The qualities instilled in me through this journey are playing a major role in how I am a father and will forever shape the future of my children...it's been huge, so thank you, guys. I'll carry what I've learned here into the raising of these children, which is pretty awesome to think about."
Matt MacVitte
Heart of Men Participant
"I went from ruminating, solving and moving through the guidance of my mind to developing a relationship with my heart that cracked open a new world."
Nate Rubio
Heart of Men Participant
"This space exposes the truth amidst a complex world that keeps us shrouded in confusion and misdirection."
Jake Rosenberg
Heart of Men Participant
"Before Heart of Men, I thought I had to find meaning outside of myself. Through my experience here, I have come to FEEL the life that wants to pour out of my soul. I now run my own therapeutic practice, run groups on grief, and have plans to run a men's program in the future. None of my professional endeavors come from a place of need; they come from a place of life."
Connor Mack
Heart of Men Participant
This brotherhood will not integrate all of your shadows. Nor will you leave these 8 months an enlightened man indefinitely beyond collapse, numbness, or distraction. You will still have bad days and hard moments.
What I will promise: you will integrate your worlds to be able to lead powerfully on behalf of what's most important. You'll know you're giving fully what is yours to give, and you will watch life blossom around this expression.
This is not the "men's work" you'll find in other places (I don't even call Heart of Men "men's work.") This is not "paint your face and get primal." Nor is it Robert Bly's mythopoetics. We don't sit in a fluorescent-lit room in folding chairs and talk about our feelings. And it's not a space where men get together to be spiritually serious.
This journey feels much more like that hike you've always wanted to go in with your best dude friends to that mountaintop meadow overlooking the most gorgeous river valley. Where you reach the summit and are feasted on wild meats and fine wine you know you've earned by a warm fire under starlight.
"I want to acknowledge your fear and your resistance to opening up in this work and this transformation. Because Heart of Men will change your life, and you will wake up one day the kind of man you did not think was possible: connected, nourished, and free."
— Jakuen De La Paz, Heart of Men Participant
You are going to step into the full current of your life and learn to lead yourself into a world that will surprise even your wildest dreams by its aliveness, direction, and service.
Our journey revolves around three components: capacity, initiation, and collaboration. Leadership capacities are the skills, practices, attunement, and perspectives you will cultivate to lead on behalf of what's most important. Initiations are the passages the soul calls forth from the personality to become the man trustworthy of the vision at hand. And collaboration within the brotherhood is what makes the previously uncharted path now inevitable.
We will move through four thresholds together over these eight months: darkness, desire, vision, and service. During each of these thresholds, our journey will be structured about masterfully-crafted capacities, initiations, and collaborations.
By the end of these 8 months, "I don't know if I'll ever be able to…" is going to become "Holy shit, no training wheels, LOOK AT ME GO."
"The formatting of this journey was really awesome for me AND had a big impact. It allowed me to tune into something less cognitive - something beyond just me but also moving through me, like a current."
— Will Grim
"The in person retreats were masterful in my opinion; pacing, content, play, invitation without pressure, downtime, integration, all delicious and nurturing, and never was I unsure of the strong and capable hands that held me on the land."
— Jack Cowden
These 2.5-hour sessions weave Council, Curriculum, and Coaching. They will likely become some of your favorite moments of the month. Our first session is September 30th, and they are recorded.
We gather at an off-grid retreat sanctuary in the Appalachian Mountains. Supported by star-lit skies, feasts of delicious, seasonal foods, and swims in spring-fed creeks, we make inevitable what was impossible on our own. You will remember and reference what you experience in these days for the next decade.
Homework supports you in taking the clarity from our work together into your everyday life through practices and rituals—some of which will stay with you the rest of your life. On average, 10 minutes a day is adequate for you to squeeze the juice from these invitations.
"I pole-vaulted across a chasm because of you guys by seeing that I could lead something that actually mattered to me. I'm astonished by where I am right now compared to 8 months ago. Even if you had given me a cheat sheet with how to do all this, there's no way I could have without this."
John Jernigan
Heart of Men Participant
"Heart of Men has been one of the clearest mirrors I've had. Through this work I've discovered what I'm here to do — what genuinely lights me up — is working with men and young men. And I'm not just feeling it — I'm actually stepping into it."
Lature Van Duren
Heart of Men Participant
"I came to this community in the same year after I had completed a divorce from my 13-year-long marriage. I thought I was doing well after my divorce. I wasn't. Through my journey with Heart of Men, I experienced a version of masculinity that I had never made contact with before."
Colin Olexa
Heart of Men Participant
"This is unlike anything I've ever done. Thomas has made a game out of men doing their best every day and being seen in it. I couldn't express enough how meaningful this course was."
Colin Quigg
Heart of Men Participant
This journey will ask a real devotion from your time, money, and attention. And what you put in, you will receive back ten-fold. Acceptance into Living Leadership is by application given the intimate nature of the program.
+ $975/mo starting September 30th
for 8 months
This is for brothers standing at a significant creative threshold who want additional, tailored support for their business launch, artistic endeavor, or pivotal life passage. I will only be working with two brothers in this capacity. By application.
+ $1825/mo starting September 30th
for 8 months
"There have been two programs I've participated in over the past six years that cost four figures. Each program, at the time, was 25%+ of my monthly income. The only reason you're reading these words and have the choice to join something that will change the trajectory of your life in Heart of Men is because I made those two bets on myself. They felt crazy at the time, and it's only in hindsight I can see that something in me knew they would bear 10x the fruits of what I paid for them."
Thomas Doochin
Heart of Men Founder
The Guys In This Work
Carpenters. Software executives. Artists. Formerly incarcerated brothers now dedicated to serving justice-involved youth. Wealth managers. Musicians. Blue collar business owners. Entrepreneurs. Mechanics. Men with PhDs and men without high-school degrees. Men of all sexual orientations. New fathers. Grandfathers.
What we all share: we're chasing the real stuff of this life, and we want to leave this world better than we found it.
Two spots in Living Leadership are reserved for men coming from life circumstances and lineages that are historically underrepresented in and underserved by the dominant paradigm of leadership. Full Circle Fellows receive financial support covering 90% of program investment + a travel stipend for both in-person summits. These two brothers offer the circle an immense gift in the perspectives, experiences, and life-ways they bring into the work.
"Heart of Men is becoming a central fire for me in my life even outside of the programs because of the relationships I have gained during the programs. What feels special to me is the longevity I feel from being part of the groups. Other offerings I have been in feel like a one and done thing but this feels like I am becoming part of a family."
Cameron Allen
Heart of Men Participant
"I left this program less interested in performing masculinity and more interested in living truthfully. This work matters because most men have spent their lives learning how to succeed, protect, compete, and provide, but very few have learned how to truly be themselves. Heart of Men creates a space where men can stop pretending, tell the truth, and reconnect with who they actually are."
Lane Rankin
Heart of Men Participant
"The friendships I've developed with these brothers who took the journey with me I'll cherish for a lifetime. Through this council I've found a home in my body, safety in loving and being loved by a healthy masculine connection I've never witnessed, the release of these traumas and dark clouds I thought would follow me forever."
Dominic Tovar
Heart of Men Participant
"I came to this council a desperate man. My marriage was in trouble, after 25 years of striving for repair. Through the course of this work, I gained a new perspective on living that has brought renewal not only to my marriage and family relationships but also transformed all aspects of how I navigate life. This is the most transformative experience of my life."
Ken Beamon
Heart of Men Participant
A powerful, practical framework to imbue everything in your life with your deepest purpose as you find that very purpose. You'll leave with inspiration, understanding, and a 5-minute-daily practice to live the life that's uniquely yours.
Recording made available for those who cannot attend live. September 10th, 2:00pm ET.
Your email will not be shared outside of Heart of Men.