The Cadre
Revolutionary coaching for revolutionary humans.
I help people courage.
Radical Coaching
Radical Community
Radical Results
I work with those who live and lead courageously and disruptively — or who are ready to.
I SEE YOU. I GET YOU. I LOVE YOU.
I see you.
You thrive in community.
You believe the collective is healing.
You know islands were not meant for liberation, and that individualism can be toxic.
You get that community isn’t always easy, but it is where growth can thrive. By being witnessed, and witnessing.
I get you.
You crave learning and being stretched.
Growth is a fundamental part of who you are.
It’s been hard to find development that really stretches you in the ways you want a stretch – in your head and your heart.
You want development that leaves you feeling full instead of empty. Development that doesn’t demand that you put some piece of your identity on the shelf. Development that values your success and your soul. To start with the whole you(because we are all whole and grow from that point and that depth.
Maybe you’re burnt out, or maybe you’re an over-achiever who knows there has to be a different way. Maybe you’re seeing how perfectionism is a toxic poison that sucks your spirit and authenticity dry. Maybe you are observing the ways that your organization’s model of success is monolithic and you want a way of succeeding that honors all of who you are.
You understand at a core level that your ability to learn – to drive your own success and impact – from place of radical self-love is an act of resistance, disruption, and liberation.
And you’re game for peeling back the layers and learning how to do it.
I see you — and I fucking love you.
The only problem is
You’re so powerful on the inside that you’re stuck on the outside.
And fear holds you back.
- You’re charismatic and compelling. Others are drawn to you. And that attention can become addictive and lead to people pleasing syndrome. Being in the spotlight and admiration of others feels good (nothin’ wrong with that), except often without even realizing it, you’re making big decisions constrained by how they’ll be perceived or received by other people. That tendency to want to please others means you’re often shrinking who you are in order to make the people around you more comfortable.
- You’re… well… you’re a little funky. You’ve always been different than the crowd. And whilst that makes you courageous and authentic, it can also lead to isolation and loneliness. You tend to decline offers of help and support, you don’t reach out when you need it most even though you believe in the power of the collective. Even if you’re not alone, you sometimes feel alone. And often misunderstood by those you love the most, because you keep your cards close to your chest.
- You’re a deep thinker with a brilliant mind. And you get stuck there. You’re in your head about the big stuff, you over-think, and you intellectualize your fear.
- You have a big heart. Which means you put others first. To your detriment. You’re compelled to be a caretaker (and you’re good at it), and there’s rarely any energy or time left for you.
- You’re growth-oriented, always learning, and ambitious. Which sometimes means that joy is a far-off feeling and you’re often not present for your life. You multi-task your way through a million challenges and make it look easy. You can dazzle people with half your attention and effort. As you race around, you: rarely celebrate, struggle to feel true joy, and fail to slow down and show up for your life.
Fuck fear. It’s time to make love.
I will support and challenge you to step into the fear, the unknowing, and the risk.
Because we all have those fears and feelings. It’s part of being human.
I will create space for enthusiastic participation in heart-centered community where we choose to be vulnerable and can feel safe in our skin.
I will hold you in a container where perfectionism and achievement can be damned. You can leave them behind.
The un-learning becomes organic, and comes with a sense of ease, not a sense of panic, or shame, or over-effort, or scarcity.
Imagine how it would feel if the fear slipped away.
Imagine a community in which you don’t need to perform, or shrink, or play small.
Imagine a bold and radical practice of self-compassion and personal freedom.
It always seems impossible until it’s done.
-Nelson Mandela
The darkest hours are always before dawn.
- Could build a practice of self compassion and freedom, that allowed you to do the things you crave?
- Were finally able to take the steps toward your dream, the steps that right now seem impossible?
- Could proudly embrace your new identity, however you want to define it: a new gender, a different orientation, professional growth, or
- And what if all happened with authenticity, self-care, restoration, and joy?
High-octane, disruptive experiences
A community of high performers
A bold coach
Tools and accountability
Space to reflect, to grow, to learn and to process:
Tailor-made challenges
The place between your comfort zone and your dream is where life takes place.
— Helen Keller
Explore and create your new identity
during our 20 group coaching calls so that you develop your new world fueled by the passion you feel inside
Experience the love and support
of private coaching sessions to map out your plan so that you start to build your dream, step by step
Feel courageous and supported as you step into this work
by relying on your own private “Board of Directors” — the Cadre has its own unique power
Participate in dynamic conversations
with your like-minded tribe in our Facebook group, so that you can get support when you’re stuck and celebrate every win
Radical Reflection
Every week, you’ll engage in deep reflection and share that reflection with your Cadre members in a private facebook group. You’ll reflect on the actions you took that week; you’ll share the insights you gleaned; you’ll make commitments for the week ahead. You will have a historical blueprint for how you built, how you grew, what you shifted, and how you showed up.
Radical Coaching
In The Cadre, we’ll have live group coaching calls (which are recorded, so members can go back and learn from them all over again) twice a month. In each call, you’ll get a unique opportunity to: receive 1×1 coaching, be coached as a group, and to witness your extraordinary peers receive 1×1 coaching. Sometimes witnessing others as they experience deep coaching is even more insightful than being coached yourself. You choose how to play – but expect BOLD. Expect DISRUPTIVE. Expect SEISMIC shifts and impact in how you claim your own freedom and stand for the freedom of others.
Radical Community
Making radical change and pursuing radical missions is difficult. Your Cadre members are like gym buddies – folks all working to strengthen their muscles, all putting in the effort to make the change, and all championing one another in the process. In The Cadre, you get to ask for feedback, or help, or support. And you get to give all of that too. Our liberation is all tied together – so we’ll do this together. In community. In practice. Being witnessed, and witnessing.
The Cadre What
The Cadre How
- You’ll get weekly 1:1 flash support opportunities: brief, intense bursts of support and accountability directly with laura.
Tell me how you want to die, and I will show you how you need to live.
The Cadre is a one of a kind experience. Nothing else like this will give you the results you crave, in the same heart-on-fire way.
If I sucked all the fear out of your head and heart, how would you live?
I am a heart breaker and a heart opener.
I will force you out of hiding and into the places that most scare you.
For the sake of your individual – and our collective – freedom.
Fuck fear. Let’s figure out How to Make Love.™
Meet Your Personal Coach
I’ve never been fond of coming out. It’s not something about which I have positive associations. I waited until I was 18 to come out, because I grew up in an environment in the south where a likely reaction to coming out was that you’d be sent to a camp, therapist, and/or “doctor” to be ‘made straight.’ I remember telling my parents I was gay, but what I also remember was being publicly outed by a religious organization and group of mentors I loved and trusted just before that. I showed up to what I thought was a regular meeting, was moved to the center of a room of “friends,” and was told to choose Jesus or my life of sin. All that to say: coming out hasn’t ever really been my personal cup of tea.
What was also true was that I pretended to be — and performed — straightness for all of my adolescence and a big part of my adulthood. I’ve known I’m queer since I was 7. Imagine an actor playing a role for 15 years of his life. That was me. And I acquired two superhuman strengths from being terrified that people would see me and find me out:
- I became an expert in fear.
- I became an expert at hiding.
My panic attacks started around the age I realized I was gay. Alongside the acute terror of believing I was going to hell because I was queer. From 7 to 29, I got to know the curves of terror and fear intimately. I know what it’s like for a heart and body and mind and spirit to try to live and work and love and lead under its influence. I know what it’s like to long for something that truly terrifies you with all your heart. I know the half-life of that sort of living.
But my truly impressive superhuman power was keeping all this hidden. The anxiety; the depression; the fear; the queerness. I became a master at hiding from others, and from myself. Not just hiding my queerness, but hiding my truths — my me — my special mojo. And this meant that I also became a master at hiding from love. Love was all I wanted — to love others as me, and to be loved and accepted as me. So I even — and especially — became an expert at hiding my feelings and learned how to not feel them at all. If you want to learn to numb out, allow fear to control you, be called a “cold, unfeeling bitch” (those were the literal words a colleague used), and to shrink to make others more comfortable around you— I can help.
And: if you want to dislodge and break free from all that stuff, I can help with that too.
Turns out, my pain as a youngster has made me brilliant at what I do now. I specialize in a particular sort of alchemy:
- Fear to radical love and courage.
- Playing small to revolutionary authenticity and personal freedom.
Sound familiar? Then let’s come out of those systems and social constraints and fears and inhibitions together.
Liberation takes deep inner work, and it can lead to BIG outer change – in our lives, our relationships, and in the world. But the work is hard. It’s edgy. It’s essential for justice. And it’s the work I specialize in: taking people deep into the practice of radical courage and self-love, as an act of resistance – and as a path to collective liberation.
None of us are free until we’re all free. I’m so honored that you’re here, and to do this work beside you.
PS:
If you’re curious about my professional background, you can check that out here. (Cliff’s notes: I’ve been specializing in leadership development and coaching for over 10 years. But that doesn’t really matter. Read this to see what does.) You can also see some of my recent training and the teachers I work with here. And of course, there’s always here. And: if you’d like to know a little bit more about my personal story, you can give a listen here.
Before I joined the Cadre, I was fleshing out an idea to write a book. I wanted to write one that highlighted the experiences of people in my hometown, especially given our socio-economy and political climate. That being said, the weight of creating that type of work felt really heavy to me, and I was both frustrated and unsure about how to remove my “writer’s block” so that I could move forward with my project.
Post Cadre, I am now fleshing out the actual book! Something special unlocked for me during my time with laura and my Cadre group: they supported me in exploring forms of resistance – e.g. procrastination, doubt, etc. – that I had latched onto, and they inspired me to reach further in my daily and weekly goals. In doing so, I reshaped my thinking around my book project and now have a draft that captures my intentions. I also committed to performing pieces of my work as a part of a performance tour – something I would have never thought of doing so soon!
The Cadre Offer
Application Required; Limited Availability- The investment is $4997 in full or 8 monthly payments of $687.
- There is a VIP apprenticeship available as an add-on—that includes a teaching component to grow in your ability to pursue social justice in your environment.
- Sliding scale options: $3997 (20% applied scholarship) | $4997 | $5697 (re-balancing & scholarship access)
- 8 months of support and community.
- 20 powerful group coaching sessions.
- 1:1 private flash support across 8 months with laura to ensure you create the change you want most.
- 1:1 coaching with laura, normally reserved for private 1:1 clients.
- Radical community. Radical coaching. Radical results.
Before I joined the Cadre, my life project was unclear, murky and scary. I felt really alone and didn’t know how to pursue it. The Cadre was a transformational experience for me. I am a different person. I’m living and acting in ways that are aligned to the vision that I have for myself. I have a support network unlike anything I’ve had before. The Cadre has truly changed my life in small and big ways.
And working with laura brewer was magical. She pushed me beyond what I thought was possible for myself. She never let me off the hook…She seamlessly blended identity development and critical consciousness into our work together. It never felt like extra or other or a separate component. It was brilliantly woven into the fabric of our work together.
The next Cadre cohort of 2019 BEGINS in
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What makes The Cadre unlike any other investment is my commitment to YOUR experience, goals, and youness. My love is fierce, and I hold this group tightly.
Clients tell me over and over that the work we do together is the most powerful, awe-inspiring, heart-wrenching, ass-kicking work they’ve done. [Their words, not mine.]
You will walk out on fire — in ways that support your personal freedom, and our collective liberation too. Let’s do this.
Have questions?
Ready to jump in?
FAQs
Why is this virtual
The Cadre is a group experience for a small group of truly amazing humans doing truly incredible work in the world. For the sake of your experience, selection for The Cadre is not limited geographically. And we try to limit the number of people who might be members of the same network or organization to one person per Cadre, to ensure that you have wide open space to be freely yourself without concern about shared professional associations. But make no mistake: these are not “conference calls.” This space will be unlike any virtual (and perhaps any in person) space you’ve ever been a part of.
How can I gauge if I’m ready for this experience?
There are a few attributes that participants will need to have in order to participate:
- A big goal, dream, challenge, etc. that you are trying to build or navigate. Nothing is too big, or too small: only that it is your longing. And ideally: that it feels impossible. We want to be inspired by what you’re up to. So what is it you’re up to? Transforming your marriage? Writing a book? Starting a company? Quitting your job? Bring your heart’s calling. Without that, The Cadre will not serve you.
- An eagerness to do DEEP internal work. You know that this experience is about heart-based introspection, and you are willing to change your habits and beliefs.
- Vulnerability. You must be willing to be perhaps more vulnerable than you’ve ever been in a group with other people, for 6 months start-to-finish.
- Personal responsibility and leadership. This experience will be what you make it. Folks who get all they want and more from these Cadres take personal responsibility for their learning, for their engagement, for getting their needs met in and out of the group, and for what they discover about themselves as they do the inner work.
- Critical consciousness. The Cadre is not a space for folks new to conversations and work around supremacy, power, privilege, and systems of oppression.
The application questions will help you further evaluate whether this experience is right for you, as will the interview, itself.
What will the return on my investment be?
That is entirely up to you: what you put in, what you practice, how deeply you reflect, and how willing you are to risk your previous achievements and who you think yourself to be in order to discover new edges, goals, strengths, and capacities you have not previously known. My clients are extraordinary people who achieve remarkable results. What is your biggest dream right now? Are you willing to play full-out in order to achieve it? If yes, this is the place for you and your investment could be 10-fold. But. The path there will challenging and uncomfortable. What could the return on investment be if you were surrounded and known deeply by an intimate group of other critically conscious, extraordinary humans? – and pushed to do some of the most rigorous inner work of your life – for 6 months? [Expect to be asked that question directly in your interview.]
What roles will everyone play?
You will:
- Show up unmasked to approximately two calls per month, and do deep internal work with your Cadre in service to your personal goals. Vulnerability is required 200% of the time.
- Share a brief and powerful reflection once a week in a private Facebook group that will guide your learning and take it even deeper. Many of your “ah-has” will com from these reflections.
- Receive custom feedback and challenges from laura and your peers on your weekly reflections.
- Leverage the private Facebook community for support, feedback, and coaching on anything you’re dealing with in your life and work. You can regularly share your work, request feedback, share celebrations, and build your own support network within the group.
- Be invited into play and provocation on each call. How deep you go is up to you. Calls will involve individual coaching in the group space, and sometimes group-wide coaching. You will always have choice about when and how you engage; it is YOUR job to get your needs met.
- Provide feedback, support, celebration, challenge, and coaching to and for your peers.
I will:
- Bring bold, disruptive experiences, tools, and questions to our calls that will transform your work and life.
- Protect and honor your time. Calls will begin and end on time. You will not have pre-work or transactional tasks – ever. Any activity provided will be potent development.
- Coach boldly. I will say things to you that most people aren’t willing to say. My job is to serve you, not please you. Expect high-flame coaching; expect your stories to be interrupted; do not expect agendas or bulleted outcomes for any call or experience.
- Provide custom feedback and coaching to you directly on your weekly reflections.
- Post monthly challenges and games that will push you to your edges in our
- Facebook community and invite you to play. It is always your choice about whether, and how deeply, you want to engage.
- Provide feedback, coaching, reactions, and insights on request to any work from your life and world you choose to bring to our Facebook community. You will have the type of access to me directly that is usually reserved for one-on-one clients; support is virtually unlimited if you are willing to make bold requests.
We will:
- Go deep, together.
- Build a community that provides sustenance, inspiration, feedback, and challenge to every member.
- Fine-tune our visions; establish concrete priorities and strategies that light us up; audit our energy and determine what drains it and what sustains it; name each one of our limiting beliefs and fears – and confront them; identify the complex pieces of our personal systems and apply what we’re learning to our lives and work; enhance our relationships; build new skillsets and mindsets; experiment; create; challenge; celebrate; coach; share vulnerably; transform, awaken, and build the lives, relationships, and work we want to be living.
- Disrupt the status quo.