Courage Under Fire: How to Stop People‑Pleasing.
Two and a half days in a room with other accomplished men who are done performing. You walk in pretending. You walk out with a structure.
Enroll — $3,497 Secure checkout via SquareYou have been reasonable for long enough. It hasn't worked.
You're accomplished. You run things. People outside your house think you've got it handled. Inside your head you're still performing. Still adjusting. Still reading the room before you read yourself.
You don't have a motivation problem. You have an ownership problem. And ownership isn't something you read your way into — it's something you build, in a room, under fire, with witnesses.
That's what this is.
Accomplished men who are privately exhausted.
Carry real weight
Founder, executive, manager, partner, consultant, therapist, clinician, senior operator, parent who runs the household. Maybe you run a team of fifty. Maybe you run a practice, a side business, and a family. What qualifies you isn't the title — it's that people default to your judgment, and you're tired of being the one holding everyone else up.
Saying no feels like losing
You've tried therapy, books, courses, journaling, retreats, men's groups. Some of it helped. None of it stuck. The pattern keeps finding you.
Boundaries feel like starting a war
You over-explain. You soften what you actually mean. You leave rooms angrier than you arrived. You keep agreements you never wanted to make. You apologize for things that aren't yours.
To stop performing
Not to be cold. Not to be difficult. To be honest — in real time, under pressure, with the people who matter — and not pay for it with a week of hangover.
What we hold true in this room.
- Information was never the problem. You've had the information.
- You don't have a motivation problem. You have an ownership problem.
- Setting a boundary feels like starting a war because you've been avoiding one.
- Niceness is not kindness. It is a negotiation strategy.
- You don't need another framework. You need a structure you actually live inside.
- This is not personal development. It is architecture.
Two and a half days, on purpose.
Experiential. No lectures, no slide decks, no workbook you'll shelf. You do the thing, in the room, with witnesses. Then we debrief. Then you do it again — harder.
Thursday — Fear, beliefs, the comfort zone
- OpenCourage Under FireTrade stories of the moments you were most afraid and did it anyway.
- ContextThe comfort zone and what it actually costs youThe dollars, the relationships, the respect. The real math on staying "nice."
- ExerciseListening for fearLearning to hear it in yourself and in the people across from you.
- Core workStanding in beliefsYour limiting beliefs about pleasing, approval, and what happens if you stop. Felt, not discussed.
- Evening— redacted —The first of two envelope-pushing exercises we don't describe in advance. You'll find out when the room is called. It's the one men often point to a year later as their turning point.
Friday — Ownership, range, and your edge
- OpenWorking from WhyNot the slogan. The real reason you keep saying yes when you mean no.
- Core workWorking with fearWhat are you most afraid of — as a person, not a professional? We stand in it, together, and coach through it.
- AfternoonThe hard conversationThe one you've been rehearsing for months. You run it here — with a coach, with witnesses — before you run it at home.
- EveningRockies at Coors Field · and the second redacted exerciseWe take the cohort to the game Friday night — tickets included. There's a second envelope-pushing exercise that happens at the stadium, and we're not telling you what it is on this page. Nick doesn't attend this one. You'll find out when you arrive. Trust us.
Saturday — Standing in Judgment (half day · ends 1:30 pm)
- MorningDebrief & integrationWhat you saw about yourself last night. What you saw about the other men in the room. What stopped being theoretical.
- Core workYour personal operating systemYou leave with a written structure — not a set of intentions. Rules of engagement you'll actually run.
- CapstoneStanding in JudgmentEach man stands in the center of the room. Nick coaches you live, in front of every other man, to proclaim your new truth out loud. No speech. No preparation. What's actually there. It's the moment you stop auditioning for your own life.
- Close · 1:30 pmCommitments & the first hard conversationYou don't leave until you've named the first real conversation you'll have when you land. With a date on it. Then you're released to the rest of your life — the flight home, the afternoon at the airport, and the conversation you said you'd have.
Two exercises on this timeline are deliberately not described. They're the ones that push you the furthest. If you could read about them and prep, they wouldn't work. You find out when you walk in the room. They're not dangerous. They are a blast. And they're the parts you'll be telling people about at Thanksgiving.
Standing in Judgment.
You stand in the center of the room. Every other man in the cohort is watching. I coach you — live, in real time, in front of the room you were most afraid of being judged by — to speak your new truth out loud.
Not a speech. Not something you wrote down. Not something you practiced. What's actually there, now, after two days of doing the work.
It's the whole workshop in three minutes. It is the moment you stop auditioning for your own life. It's the part men come back and tell me changed them.
A structure. Not a feeling.
Your operating system
A written set of rules you'll actually live inside. Yes/no criteria. Non-negotiables. The parts of your life you stop auditioning for.
The hard conversation queued
The one you've been avoiding for months. Scripted. Dated. With a witness who'll ask if you had it.
A different body
Not a mindset shift. A nervous-system shift. You stood in the center of the room and spoke your truth out loud. That's in you now. It's no longer theoretical.
The range
Bold. Direct. Warm. Funny. Dangerous. Whichever version of you has been underfed — it gets fed here.
Fifteen men who saw it
A small cohort who watched you stop performing. They remember. They check in. They call bullshit.
No dependency
You leave with the structure — not with a reason to need me. Optional continuation is offered; not assumed.
Four things that come with the seat.
Not filler. Each of these makes the weekend do more work — one before you arrive, one when you land, one for the thirty days after, and one that shows up in the mail the week my book drops.
20-minute intake with Nick
Two weeks before Denver, you and I get on the phone. I want to know what's in the room you're walking into — what you're afraid of, what you came to do. I shape the cohort's work around what you bring. You arrive knowing I already know your story.
The Hard Conversation Workbook
A printed workbook — not a PDF — mailed to your door three weeks out. The writing prompts that get you warm. The Operating System template. The coaching quad. You work through it on the flight to Denver and land already in the work.
30 days in The Council, free
The curated graduates-only forum opens to you the moment you walk out Saturday at 1:30. Monthly live call, private forum, hard-conversation audits — all included for your first thirty days. Day 31 it's $197/mo or you walk. No lock-in.
Signed copy of I Hope You Hate This
My book. Signed. Mailed to your door the week it releases. You'll be on the pre-list — a physical object that keeps the work alive on your shelf long after Denver. If the title doesn't tell you enough about what this work is, nothing I write here will.
Nick Pollard.
I spent twenty years being reasonable. I was good at it. It made me successful and it was slowly making me unrecognizable to myself. I built what I needed and didn't find. This workshop is the first door of it.
I run the room with one co-facilitator. The work is direct, the tone is warm, the standards are high. No performative intensity. No rah-rah. You came here to stop performing — we're not going to start.
The room speaks for itself.
“[PASTE TESTIMONIAL HERE — ideally something specific about the transformation, not generic praise. Something like: "I'd done therapy for seven years. I'd read the books. In two and a half days I did what none of it had done — I actually had the conversation I'd been hiding from for a decade."]”
— [First name, Last name] · [Title, Industry] · [City]
“[PASTE TESTIMONIAL — ideally one that speaks to a specific outcome or the felt change after the workshop.]”
— [First name, Last name] · [Title, Industry] · [City]
“[PASTE TESTIMONIAL — ideally something punchy that names the mechanism, e.g., "Standing in the center of that room was the first time I'd told the truth in my own life in a decade."]”
— [First name, Last name] · [Title, Industry] · [City]
Three thousand four hundred ninety-seven dollars.
| 26+ hours of facilitation with Nick at his private 1:1 rate of $1,000/hour | $26,500 |
| Workshop venue, materials, meals, Rockies ticket | $800 |
| 20-minute pre-workshop intake call with Nick | $500 |
| Printed Hard Conversation Workbook (mailed) | $97 |
| Signed copy of I Hope You Hate This on release | $97 |
| 30 days in The Council (post-workshop) | $197 |
| The Three-Layer Guarantee | Priceless |
| Total stated value | $28,191 |
| Pay in full | $3,497 |
| Or 6 monthly payments | $700 / mo total $4,200 |
| You save (pay in full) | $24,694 |
Travel, lodging, and incidentals not included. Cohort capped at 18 for a reason — once full, next cohort is named to a waitlist.
Reserve Your Seat — $3,497 or $700/mo
Pay in full or 6 monthly payments · Three-Layer Guarantee · Seat confirmed on paymentWednesday night — dinner with Nick
Arriving a day early? Join me and up to seven other men from the cohort Wednesday night at [Denver venue TBD]. 7 pm. No workshop content, no agenda — just dinner, a drink or two, and meeting the men you'll be standing in the room with tomorrow. First eight who add it, get the seat.
You don't carry the risk. I do.
Most premium workshops have a no-refund policy. I'm not most premium workshops. Three guarantees cover three different stages — so the only thing you risk by enrolling is finding out who you actually are.
Full refund if you cancel 30 or more days before the start date. No questions, no clawback, no guilt. Seat transfer to the next cohort, free, up to 14 days out. Life happens. We plan for it.
Show up. Do Thursday. If by Friday morning this isn't what you came for, you walk. I refund every dollar except $1,000 for the hotel, meals, and materials already paid. No speeches, no guilt, no follow-up calls. I'd rather you take your money and go build what works for you than sit through a room you don't want to be in.
You'll walk out Saturday at 1:30 pm with one hard conversation scripted, witnessed, dated, and committed to. If you don't — if you sit the whole weekend and never open your mouth in the center of the room, never stand in judgment, never run the rehearsal — the workshop is on me. Full refund to your card within five business days.
Three guarantees, three stages, one promise: you don't carry more risk in this room than I do.
I'm not guaranteeing you change your life. I'm guaranteeing you never pay for a room you didn't want, a weekend that wasn't for you, or a workshop where you didn't actually do the work. That's the deal.
The workshop is where you build it. These are how you install it.
Graduates only. Offered once, at the close of the workshop. You decide then, not now — this page is just so you know what's available.
The Council
A curated, graduates-only forum I run personally. Not a group chat. Not a Discord. A small room of men who've done the work, checking each other's operating systems over time.
- Monthly live call with Nick (90 minutes)
- Private forum — I respond personally, on a schedule, not 24/7
- Quarterly "hard-conversation audit" — we look at what you've actually had, and what you're still avoiding
- Cancel anytime. Pay monthly, or pay up front and get two months on the house.
The Architecture — 10-Week Install
You don't need another workshop. You need ten weeks with two other graduates and me, holding each other to the structure you wrote on Saturday morning. Small enough to go deep. Small enough that I know your pattern by name. That's this.
- Ten weekly group coaching calls — you, two other graduates, and Nick (1:3 format)
- Two private 1:1 calls with Nick, spaced across the ten weeks
- Two "hard-conversation rehearsals" — real conversations on your actual calendar, scripted in the pod before you run them
- The Council included at no additional cost for the full ten weeks
- By invitation at the close of the workshop · limited to three graduates per cohort, exactly
Before you book.
Is this worth $3,497?
One hard conversation you finally have — with a business partner, a spouse, a team you've been afraid to fire, a parent — will pay for this several times over. That's the literal math. The other math: you've probably already spent more than $3,497 on books, courses, coaches, and retreats that didn't stick. This is the last one.
I run a company. I can't get away Thursday through Saturday.
Yes you can. You have for vacation. You have for a medical thing. You have for every other thing you decided mattered. The honest truth most men won't admit to themselves: the calendar is the hiding spot. If "I can't get away" landed when you read it, the calendar isn't the problem.
I'm not in crisis. Do I actually need this?
This workshop isn't for men in crisis. It's for men running a pattern they haven't named — men whose lives look fine from the outside and feel heavier than they should from the inside. If this page hit somewhere real, you're the right person. Men in real crisis should work with a therapist first; this will be waiting when you're ready.
Is this a men's workshop?
Yes. This cohort is men-only. The work is built for men who don't usually name what's happening to them — men who call it "being professional" or "being a good guy" instead of what it actually is. A women's cohort is planned as a separate program with a separate facilitation team. If you're a woman and want to be notified when it opens, write me.
Is this group therapy?
No. I'm not a therapist and this isn't treatment. It's an experiential training in ownership and range. If you're in active mental-health crisis, do that work first; this work will be waiting.
What if I can't make Saturday?
You need Saturday. The half-day is where you leave with the structure. If you book, you're booking all three days.
Will I be asked to do something embarrassing?
Yes — in two specific places, on purpose. The embarrassing parts are the point. They teach you in your body, not in your head, that no one actually cares. It's short, it's specific, it is a blast, and you'll be laughing about it within ten minutes. No humiliation. No theater for its own sake. Anything more intense than your current edge — you have the option to observe.
Why aren't all the exercises listed on this page?
Two are deliberately not described. If you could read about them and prepare, they wouldn't work. The men who've done them will tell you they were the point. You find out when you walk in.
What if I miss the cut-off — is there any way in?
Maybe. The cohort is capped at 18 and closes when it closes. One additional seat — the 19th — can be opened for a latecomer, but only if the existing cohort votes unanimously by secret ballot to allow it. I don't decide. The room does. That's on purpose: it makes your cohort the gatekeeper of the room they're building, and it keeps me out of the politics of who gets in late. If you miss the window, put your name forward for the 19th seat or move to the next cohort.
What's your refund policy?
Three layers. Full refund 30+ days prior. Free seat transfer to the next cohort 14+ days prior. If you show up, do Day 1, and by Friday morning it isn't for you — you walk with every dollar back except $1,000 for hotel, meals, and fixed costs already paid. And if you show up, do the whole thing, and still never open your mouth in the center of the room — full refund to your card. See the Three-Layer Guarantee section above for the full language.
How is this different from a men's retreat or a leadership program?
Retreats are usually about feeling something. Leadership programs are usually about learning a framework. This is about installing a structure — one you write, live inside, and have witnesses to. You leave with rules, not resolutions.
If it were that simple, you would have done it already.
You don't need more information. You need a room, a structure, and witnesses. Two and a half days. You leave different.
Reserve Your Seat — $3,497 or $700/mo
Pay in full or 6 monthly payments · 18 seats · Three-Layer Guarantee