When I became CEO of Modern Elder Academy, roughly two-thirds of the people in our workshops were women, and lots of the men who were showing up kept saying some version of:
“A friend told me to check this out. I wasn’t sure it was for me. But by day three I’d had more honest conversations than I’d had in the last five years.”
Guys who loved it but almost didn’t walk through the door. It got me thinking about what we could build specifically for men in midlife. Men who’d checked every box on the playbook and were quietly thinking: wait, is this it?
So I looked at what was already out there. On one end: ayahuasca ceremonies, psychedelic retreats, drum circles. I’m not knocking it if that’s your thing. But if I suggested a drum circle to most guys I know, they’d suddenly remember they had somewhere else to be. On the other end: become-an-alpha, Navy SEAL, cold-plunge-at-5am bro culture. Screaming affirmations at each other. Because apparently the solution to burnout is… more intensity?
Neither end felt like it was built for someone like me. And as I talked to more men, I realized they were all looking for the same thing: a place in the middle. That’s where MEA belongs. That’s why I called this article “No Woo, No Bro.”
But the gap isn’t just about what’s available. It’s about why men aren’t showing up at all.
Women make up roughly 70% of the self-help market. Because somewhere along the way, women got permission to do this kind of work. They read the books. They go to therapy. They talk to each other about how they’re actually doing. Men? We talk about the market, the game, or the gear we just bought. Something feels off, so we buy a sports car or sign up for another marathon.
You’ve probably told yourself you’re fine. You’ve got a good life. You should be grateful. And you are grateful. But something is missing.
This is personal for me.
I’ve been a driven, Type-A entrepreneur since my twenties. Building companies, chasing growth, measuring everything. My father is a retired police officer who always had a side hustle going. A good man. But talking about feelings? That wasn’t in his toolkit. His toolkit was work ethic, a firm handshake, and “get back out there.” He’s in his 70s now, and he’s softened. We’ve had conversations recently that we never could have had when I was younger.
But the model I absorbed growing up was clear: work hard, achieve, provide. Most Gen X and Boomer men got some version of that playbook. Our fathers operated within a set of rules that said feelings were a luxury and your value was tied to what you produced. For the first half of life, it works. Then you hit midlife. And you realize the playbook that got you here can’t take you where you need to go.
For me, that realization came in stages. After I exited my second company, I got a real education in what Arthur Brooks calls “real friends” versus “deal friends.” When the deals go away, so do a lot of the friends. People I thought were close turned out to be close to the opportunity, not to me.
If it weren’t for my wife Coralynn, who is far more extroverted than I am, I’d be a much lonelier person today. She’s helped me build a circle of friends over the years. But I can count on one finger, maybe two, how many of my close male friends are willing to go deep. Not the “how’s business” conversations, but the “I’m struggling and I don’t know what to do about it” conversations. That’s not because these are bad guys. It’s because none of us were taught how.
Your wife asks, “Are you okay?” and you say, “I’m fine.” Again. You’ve got 2,000 LinkedIn connections and maybe two people who actually know what’s going on inside your head.
Here’s the part that should alarm all of us.
Men account for nearly 80% of all suicides in the United States despite making up just half of the population. The male suicide rate hit an all-time high in 2022, with men ages 45 to 64 seeing one of the sharpest increases. When you look at why, it comes back to the same things: disconnection, loss of identity, and no one to talk to.
The Surgeon General has declared loneliness a public health crisis. And yet 15% of men report having no close friends at all.
These aren’t strangers. These are the guys coaching your kid’s soccer team. Sitting next to you at dinner saying “I’m fine.” This isn’t abstract for me. And it isn’t abstract for Chip Conley, MEA’s founder, who lost five male friends to suicide between the ages of 45 and 50.
So we built something.
“The Midlife Shift: From Success to Self” is MEA’s very first men’s workshop April 13-18. Twenty men. Five days at our oceanfront campus in Baja. Led by Ben Katt, author of The Way Home, who built nonprofits from scratch, sat with dying men in hospice, and hit his own wall with the achiever’s playbook. And me, a guy who built companies for 25 years and had to learn that achievement and fulfillment aren’t the same thing.
The kind of room where you say “I don’t have this figured out” and the guy next to you says, “Yeah, me neither.”
I think this is the start of something that’s been missing for a long time.
And if you’re a woman reading this, thinking of your husband, your brother, or a friend: you’ve watched him go quiet. You’ve asked if he’s okay and gotten “I’m fine.”
This is the one you can point him to. If any of this hits home, I’d love to have you in the room. Learn more here.
-Derek
Derek Gehl is the CEO of MEA. After 25 years as an entrepreneur chasing the next big deal, he learned the hard way that the achiever’s playbook has an expiration date. A husband of 20-plus years and a father, he now leads MEA’s mission to help people navigate midlife with more purpose, connection, and honesty, starting with his own.