Monday Motivation: Please Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself

Get your kicks for you. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Cadre family. We're just gonna give it a couple seconds here. I always wait till the magic Cadre notification goes and then we get rocking. By the way, what do you think? All my Cadre swag today. How do you like that? He could spiel. Good morning, everybody. Hope everyone had a great weekend and you're off and running on a fantastic Monday. Good morning. I have seen at least 15 names pop in over and over again. It's amazing. I'm listening to the Like a Rolling Stone.

Little Bob Dylan. Got my cup of coffee. I got my Cadre swag. I got my Cadre hat. Let's go, Alexa. Shut off. Good morning, everybody. Hola. Hola. Hope everybody's having a great start to their week already. I just wanted to reintroduce myself. We have what is going to be thousands of new users that are coming on our app and our platform with organizations that are rolling out with their January 1st employee benefits. So I just wanted to reintroduce myself and say, hi, Katie Donovan, Happy New Year.

Oh, my gosh, this made my morning. Love, Katie. Wonderful human being, wonderful soul. Just walk into the gym. Speak wonder. Steph Irwin. Jules has just walking into the gym. Get ready to start my day. Well, not a better way to start your day than that. So I am going to reintroduce myself here. Who I am, what do I do, why do I do it, all the things. So if you ever see a guy by the name of Luke popping into your feed, popping into the app, going live, et cetera, you know who I am and what I stand for.

Number one, I have been a part of the Cadre team since day one. We have built something very special for you all, but also for me, too. I'm an individual that struggles with generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, and in my past life, I also struggled with alcohol. Sometimes even hard to say that, but I did. And now, and I wouldn't say like a true. I think everybody will say this, like, not true, alcoholic. But to the point where it did affect me, you know, my professional life, my personal life, all of it.

And then coming up here in April, I don't even remember the time, April, May, I will be five years without. So that's super exciting for me. The last decade, though, was, I would call it like using every so often where it would be like binging, where I would like, wait, wait, wait. I would go somewhere with the guys and it would be like a two or three day binge or I would Maybe do a happy hour or something along those lines. And a happy hour may lead from 4 o'clock till 2 in the morning. So it's part of life.

But again, really, really excited to be here. That's my story from a 30, 30, 35, 55,000 foot view. But what I do want to share today is a little bit about my past life. Again. Born and raised in farm country, Minnesota. I'm very proud of that. I have an amazing mom and dad, grandma and grandpa. Now my, my dad knows the value of really two things. Number one, hard work and number two, his word. He's the most honest man I've ever met in my life. And the best part about it is, is when you run into other people, community, they'll all tell you the exact same thing about your dad.

You know, how honest of a businessman, how honest of a person he was. And it's something I strive to be. I think we all struggle with that sometimes, either honesty with ourselves or others. And so it's an aspiration that I have continue to have for my future. My mom is a passion, purpose driven individual that worked at both my mom and dad worked at the same company all of their life. My mom as a nurse for 40 some odd years. My dad who going to be retiring in March with ending his organization for again 40 some years as well.

So kudos to them and their journeys in life. One second please. Me from the farm country of Minnesota to Duluth, graduated with my undergrad. When I was wrapped up with my undergrad I moved out to Michigan. Well actually I take that back. I almost finished my undergrad in the University of Minnesota Duluth. I ended up finishing out in Michigan at a smaller school called Ferris State University. Met some unbelievable people. It was really the first time that I spread my wings and fly where I just knew nobody.

I did not know one person at the school at all. I had no clue who was going to be there. I just showed up and it was one of the greatest personal and what would ultimately be professional growth opportunities for me in my life. Just I could have taken the easy way out. Continued at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where I knew everybody, had my group of friends, you name it, and took that leap of faith. That leap of faith kind of just springboarded me into many more opportunities leading back to the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Graduating with an mba, another master's degree, and then starting working in corporate America. In corporate America I felt like I had every, every person's goals and dreams met except my own. And it was very difficult for me to continue to show up to work that I didn't feel the purpose and the passion and even like my why. And I was going through so much stuff of my own at the time with a newborn boy, divorced, trying to figure out how to navigate through this life. So it was very, very difficult.

But I still kept my head down and working and figuring out what to do and how to continue to move forward. Then my whole life changed. And I'll never forget the individual that replied to my email bought a job opportunity at an organization called Hazel and Betty Ford Foundation. Her name is Roxanne Vol. And she asked me for the interview that was back in the craigslist days. So I searched for jobs in Craigslist and then ultimately as Hazel and Betty Ford foundation with a business development manager where I was helping working with their new initiative called the Core 12 program.

And it forever changed my life. I figured out why I am who I am, why I do what I do and more importantly, the trajectory of the next decade of my life, which was in the health and human services field. I'm very proud to have started a residential treatment program which turned into be one of the larger providers in our backyard here in Minnesota called Northstar Behavioral Health. I since have sold that organization and of course do what most entrepreneurs and dreamers do is start what they believe to be is an even more impactful journey.

And that one is as Cadre. Not saying the first one is less impactful, but a more impactful in my mind of helping more people, supporting more folks. My dream is that there is somebody at your organization or organizations that you work with that's struggling with generalized anxiety disorder, that's struggling with call it the walks of life. There could be many, many things going on. Maybe it's down to how I get a raise and it's causing me stress. Maybe it is raising a child on your own and how do I deal with that?

Maybe it's fiscal and financial problems that you're dealing with. Maybe it's I don't know how to meditate, having trou sleeping, alcohol, substance abuse, mental health. Right. There's many, many, many life conditions that we all face at work and I am trying to help and support those folks because I know what it's like and my job is to build an app and a platform that allows individuals to be, to be, feel a part of a community where they can learn and thrive. And I believe in everything in my heart.

That Cadre was developed and built by a group of people like minded that care so much about other human beings that they're willing to be a part of. Communities like this where you see all of these names that are popping up in and out, in and out of this live stream right now. I've seen probably the better part of 20, 25 different names. And sure some individuals have the ability to want to or feel the ambition to write in, to speak to, to share to, and some other individuals are just listening and either or it's okay.

You know the best part about Cadre, it's completely as anonymous as you want to be. You can show up and watch all of the content on your own. You can show up into live streams, you can participate in the community, you can have a username that nobody has a clue who you are with whatever avatar and picture that you want. For us, the only thing that matters is that we do what we say we're going to do in our mission so we can help each one of you thrive to be the best version of yourself. So again, my name is Luke Wendtlandt.

It has been an honor to build this community with some insanely incredible people from day one to day 300 to day 900 to day a thousand each day here. Just being able to build and develop new tools, things and like for example, you know what's coming down the pike, right? I mean, here's some things like we are building a search feature out throughout the whole entire app that you can find anything that somebody says, even in a live stream to be readily available for you. You know, uploading from each one of our own creator posts so that creators can fly in all of their own video content versus our past.

What I would call is a little bit of an old school methodology, but it still allows us to be vetted because every bit of our content and our creators are vetted peers and professionals. And that's very, very, very important for us. Another thing is that I really want to do because I'm inspired by peloton and my own streak and is every week that you're on, we want to make sure that you have your active streaks going. So it's like a peloton s type of vibe where you can keep your streak going every week on the app.

Have you been doing it one week, five weeks, 20 weeks, 30 weeks? And just by showing up, we want, we want dopamine for good. We want to, you know, use algorithms for good. And one feature that I just wanted to share about the app that is just blows me away that I use almost daily at this point is if you go into your profile and you click on the picture of you and it's Ask a Question, which is ultimately our Cadre companion. That is a complete AI tool that is driven by Cadre and all the support that we have coupled with, let's call it an AI generative model.

So you can ask everything from I'm struggling to sleep. What do I do? I am paranoid walking into an interview. Help me. And so if you can't get the answers in Cadre with the live streams, you can go right to that Ask the Question feature. And I just love it. And then we are going to continue to create so many clips to have our own TikTok style of video content throughout. Like I said, this is our goal in the next 90 days, is to deliver that to our Cadre users and so just continue to move this platform forward to be the best that we can be for you.

So if there's ever anything that you'd like to see on the app or develop in the app, please let me know. There's many different ways to reach us. You can shake the app to provide feedback. You can send it to hellodre IO helpdre supportdre or I have no problem giving out my own email address. O. again. O. i will be more than happy to help and support any way, shape or form that I can. So again, I just want to reiterate, it is an honor to be here with all of the members that have been here since day one, day 200, day 400, and all the new members that are coming on board here in January with your organizations as they've invested in your own mental health.

That's why we do what we do. So like I said, honor to be here. Thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of it. Again. My name is Luke Wendtland. I will be here every single Monday like I've been for the last few years. You will see me again 52 Mondays, Monday morning. And I hope there's something that there's a nugget for you every time that allows you to take something away to allow you to be a better you. That's my goal and that's my job. So with that, I sign off Alexa Play and I'll end with a little bit more Bobby Dylan as we go.

Take care, you guys have a wonderful week. Knock it out of the park. Be good to each other, says and all the steeple and all the pretty people they all think and thinking that they got it made.