The account
When he has not had a purpose, he has made one.
This page is one man's position, stated so you can weigh what the rest of the site says.
Who he is
James Roberts, born in Manchester in February 1976. Nearly twenty years in travel and hospitality recruitment, latterly running a firm of twenty. He has interviewed and met men all over the world through wars, recessions, a financial crisis, a pandemic and the arrival of entirely new commercial models in his sector.
He drank daily from eighteen to forty-five, went into residential treatment in Cheshire in June 2020, and has not drunk since. He moved to Tenerife that December and ran a small BnB there for five years, which he sold.
Who you are talking to
I have been in a lot of rooms.
Most of them with other men. Some of them very ordinary, a few of them not ordinary at all. Every one of them taught me how to listen.
- 01
Thousands of men
Nearly twenty years of recruiting, all over the world. Men at the top of their game, men on the way out, and every one in between.
- 02
Unusual housemates
I have shared a home with a man who had done time, and with a journalist who wrote for the Daily Sport and the News of the World. Neither was dull.
- 03
Famous company
I have spent time with a Premier League footballer and a pop star. Same questions, same worries, better shoes.
- 04
Half the planet
I have navigated half the world and never once been punched. Polite and cheeky, in that order.
- 05
Any room, same man
As happy in a trailer as on a stag do. I have seen in the New Year with a prince, and another with a sheikh.
- 06
Other men’s stories
I take inspiration from other people and live a little through them, in a happy and healthy way. Then I make my own judgement.
I can sit with any man, in any room, and be myself. That is what I bring to the conversation.
James Roberts, Tenerife
What he is not
He is not a philanthropist and does not present himself as one. He has no professional standing in charity, finance or law, is not a career coach or a therapist, and holds no qualification relevant to any of it.
He is not giving you an example to follow. He is describing what he has watched happen to other men and what he has needed himself.
What he has observed
- Capable men, at the point of losing a role, lose the structure rather than the ability. The skill is intact. The Tuesday is empty.
- The ones who came through it better tended to have somewhere their hours were expected — not a hobby, a commitment somebody else was relying on.
- Men who admitted they wanted to be needed committed properly. Men who picked something noble instead tended to stop within months.
- Nobody who gave him a confident prediction about his industry in nearly twenty years turned out to be right about it.
Observation from one vantage point, not a law, a framework or a prediction about you.
His own position
He says plainly that he cannot go long without a purpose. The guides in this network were built for himself before anybody else read them, which is the honest account of why they exist.