Meet Carl Muir, founder of The Provider, whose unique life path has taken him from fishing and tourism guide to men’s wellness coach. Based in Tairua, Carl has now run close to 45 men’s wellbeing retreats, and each one, as he puts it, makes the waka bigger, stronger, and more powerful. Through health coaching he empowers men to rediscover their connection to nature, reclaim their energy, and tackle life’s hurdles head on.
“There is a vulnerability and release that you get with a group of men, out in the wild, whether that is around the campfire, on the boat, or in the forest, that you just won’t get in a clinical setting.”
Graduate Profile: Carl Muir, Founder of The Provider
Meet Carl Muir, PREKURE Certified Health Coach, Men’s Wellness Coach, and founder of The Provider, based in Tairua.
Living his purpose at 51
Carl has been self-employed for over 20 years, building a career as a fisherman and fishing guide in Tairua. He was successful, provided well, and by his early forties had paid off two properties and was cruising toward what looked like an early semi-retirement. But without a deeper sense of purpose, his mental health started to suffer. The loss of close friends to preventable illness, including a friend diagnosed with terminal cancer in his late forties, and the death of his father from a brain tumour in his sixties, brought into sharp focus what Carl really wanted his life to be about.
He found PREKURE in 2019, after hearing Grant Schofield on a podcast, and it arrived at exactly the right time. The science, the coaching tools, and the practice of holding space for others gave him both the foundation and the confidence to redefine his mahi completely.
The Provider: four days that change men’s lives
Carl’s core offering is a four-day Men’s Wellbeing Retreat hosted in Tairua. The men who come are typically successful, capable, and have spent years carrying the weight of the world as providers for their whanau, their workplaces, and their communities. By the time they arrive, they have hit the wall.
The retreat strips things back to what matters. Men reconnect with nature, gather their own kai through fishing, diving and foraging, learn to cook nourishing whole food, and are introduced to tools like breathwork and meditation. Most importantly, they sit around a fire and talk to each other. That essence of community and connection, which Carl believes modern life has quietly stolen from men, is at the heart of everything he does.
Before each retreat there is coaching to prepare men for the experience, and many stay on in a coaching programme afterwards. A recent client, a man in his forties who runs hospitals, arrived at the first meal deeply suspicious of the amount of olive oil Carl was pouring over everything. By the end of the retreat he was, in his own words, bouncing around like a 20-year-old.
Why men need this work
Carl is direct about the stakes. Men in New Zealand are not doing well. Over 300,000 people have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, with many more undiagnosed. Around 75% of people who take their own lives each week are men. For Carl, this is not a statistic, it is personal. He has lost friends and family too early, and he has lived through his own version of that struggle.
That is why he shows up, retreat after retreat, and why he encourages any man considering this kind of work to get started. As he puts it, the world needs you, because men need more people doing this work.
What PREKURE gave him
Carl describes PREKURE as arriving at exactly the right moment. The nutrition, movement, and mental health science gave him a framework to stand behind, but it was the coaching practice, the hours of coaching gyms and listening skills, the ability to hold space when someone brings something heavy to the table, that he credits most. Nearly 45 retreats in, he is still learning and still improving.
Connect with Carl
- Website: theprovider.co.nz
- Email: carl@theprovider.co.nz
