Keep your mind sharp when AI makes thinking easy.
Six weeks. Twenty people.
One rule: Think for yourself.
Application only. LinkedIn profile required.
A live, curated circle for accomplished adults 40+ who want to stay mentally sharp, socially connected, and intellectually alive in a world where cognitive surrender is the quiet risk of the AI age.
Weekly sessions combine cognitive games, AI judgment challenges, strategic sparring, and meaningful peer connection.
THE PROBLEM NOBODY IS NAMING
We outsource more of our thinking every year.
Memory. Writing. Research. Navigation. Decisions. And increasingly, our first opinion on almost everything.
Much of this is useful. None of it is neutral.
Recent Wharton research describes cognitive surrender as the tendency to defer to AI-generated answers with minimal scrutiny, especially when those answers are fluent and easy to accept.
The finding that matters most:
When AI was correct, participants performed better.
When AI was wrong, participants performed worse than people who had no AI access at all.
Their confidence still increased.
Polished answers can make independent judgment feel unnecessary.
The Sparring Circle creates a weekly dose of beneficial cognitive friction: a live space where accomplished adults practice questioning, reframing, remembering, challenging, and thinking alongside other sharp minds.
A room where sharp minds come to play seriously.
QUESTION
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Ask better questions.
Disarm autopilot.
REFRAME
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Shift perspective.
Expand frame.
REMEMBER
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Strengthen recall.
Build mental leverage.
CHALLENGE
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Test assumptions.
Sharpen judgment
That is the quiet risk.
What happens inside the circle
Inside every session you practice four things:
Think clearly
under pressure
Live prompts, timed challenges games that keep your mind active, not passive.
→
Spot weak logic in polished AI output
Learn to notice what sounds intelligent but lacks judgment, context or accuracy.
Reframe messy problems
Connect with peers who raise the room
Turn vague, overloaded questions into sharper thinking and better decisions.
The value comes from the quality of minds in the room, not passive content consumption.
Sessions are live, facilitated, and interactive. Presence is the point.
Between sessions
Members stay connected in a private WhatsApp group with weekly prompts from Cristina, introductions, and light-touch peer conversations that keeps the thinking alive between Wednesdays.
One standard for the group: keep it as sharp as the room.
NOT READY FOR THE FULL FOUNDING COHORT?
Enter one Circle Session first.
Circle Sessions are standalone 90-minute live sparring rooms from The Sparring Circle.
Same format. Same quality. Same room. One focused topic.
They run on a flexible schedule when there is a theme worth gathering around and a room worth building.
$149 per session
Application reviewed. LinkedIn required.
One session credit applies toward the September cohort.
This is not a subscription. You will hear from Cristina personally when the next session opens.
How the founding cohort works
Six live sessions across seven weeks, with one built-in skip week. Designed for presence, continuity, and a room that gets sharper over time.
6 live sessions
Live sparring, AI judgment challenges, reframing prompts, and peer discussion.
20 seats maximum
Curated for room quality, not volume.
Wednesdays
Attend at least 5 of 6
12 PM ET / 5 PM UK / 6 PM Central Europe.
No recordings distributed. Presence is the point.
Across the cohort, the work moves from noticing your thinking patterns to practicing sharper judgment, better questions, stronger reframes, and more active discernment in the AI age.
THE FOUNDING COHORT
This is for people who still want to think properly.
FOR SMART ADULTS WHO MISS BETTER ROOMS
You may already use AI. You may be curious but cautious.
You may miss sharper rooms. Rooms where people ask better questions.
You don't need to be technical. You do need to be curious, self-aware, and willing to participate.
Founders. Executives, Advisors, Strategists. Creators. Independent thinkers.
People who have lived enough, built enough, questioned enough, and still refuse to become mentally passive.
The Sparring Circle is for accomplished adults 40+ who miss rooms where the conversation is sharper than the content.
Not for you if...
THIS IS PROBABLY
You are not ready for active participation.
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This is a participatory experience, not a spectator sport.
It rewards curiosity, honesty, challenge, and real engagement over quick fixes.
If most of the above make you nod, this probably is not your room. And that is okay.
You want passive content.
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This is not a webinar, lecture, or summary feed.
No recordings are distributed. Presence and participation are the point.
You prefer large, open communities.
___
We keep the circle small on purpose.
This is a curated room where quality matters more than scale.
20+ years in strategic rooms
AI, leadership, business, and systems thinking
Sharper questions across global markets
The Sparring Circle is the room she wanted to exist for people who still enjoy thinking deeply with others and could not find it anywhere.
A room held by someone who knows how to make thinking move.
Cristina Imre
FRACTIONAL EXECUTIVE • STRATEGIC ADVISOR FOUNDER, THE SPARRING CIRCLE
ABOUT CRISTINA
For more than 20 years, she has worked across leadership, strategy, entrepreneurship, AI transformation, business building, and high-stakes decision-making.
Her work often sits where most systems break quietly: between intelligence and execution, ambition and structure, people and technology, expertise and relevance.
People who work with her often describe her facilitator style as mental ping pong: fast, direct, layered questions that challenge assumptions without turning the room into ego theatre.
One founding room. One clear commitment.
Six live sessions. Twenty carefully selected people. One standard: think for yourself.
THE SEPTEMBER FOUNDING CIRCLE
FOUNDING CIRCLE
$895
Six live sessions across seven weeks
6 live facilitated Circle sessions
20 seats maximum
Structured cognitive games and timed challenges
AI judgment exercises
Strategic sparring and reframing
Private WhatsApp continuity group
Weekly prompts and member conversation
No recordings distributed
YOUR FOUNDING SEAT INCLUDES
A complete live cognitive sparring experience for accomplished adults 40+ who want sharper judgment, stronger questions, and meaningful peer connection in the AI age.
Application only. LinkedIn profile required.
If accepted, a $150 deposit reserves your place and is credited in full toward the $895 cohort price. The deposit is a reservation, not an additional fee.
Small by design. Selected by intention. The quality of the room is the product.
Simple steps. High standards.
A selective circle by design. We keep the room small so every mind in it can make a difference.
Apply
Selection is based on curiosity, self-awareness, room presence, and willingness to engage.
HOW JOINING WORKS
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Cristina reviews the fit
Submit your application and LinkedIn profile. Answer a few questions about how you think and what you want from the experience.
Reserve your seat
If accepted, a $150 deposit reserves your place and is credited toward the $895 cohort price.
Enter the room
Live sessions
You receive onboarding details, dates, and access to the private community group before the cohort begins.
Wednesdays at 12 PM ET / 5 PM UK / 6 PM Central Europe
Live. Facilitated. Interactive. Presence is the point.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Is this a course, a mastermind, or a coaching program?
None of the above.
A course delivers content you consume. A mastermind focuses on business accountability. Coaching is typically one-to-one.
The Sparring Circle is a facilitated peer experience: structured thinking games, judgment challenges, reframing exercises, and live sparring with sharp people from different industries.
The value is not simply the information you receive. It is what happens to your thinking when it meets real friction from real peers in real time.
How is this different from a networking group?
The primary value of a networking group is the contacts you collect. The primary value of The Sparring Circle is the quality of thinking you practice.
Those motivations attract different people.
Nobody enters the room to pitch, collect business cards, or search for clients. Some members may develop genuine professional relationships over time, as naturally happens in any strong room. But networking is not the purpose of the session, and it is not why people return.
Why does this exist? What problem does it actually solve?
After 40, the rooms that genuinely challenge how you think can become harder to find.
Networks grow larger and shallower. Conferences become stages. Masterminds become accountability check-ins. AI starts answering questions before you have finished examining them. Many professional gatherings stop being intellectually interesting.
The Sparring Circle exists for people who notice this and want to do something about it.
It is not a medical or wellness program. It is not conventional professional development. It is a live thinking practice with sharp peers who make each other better by being in the same room.
Why is it application-only? Is this just a marketing tactic?
No.
The application exists because the quality of the room depends on who is in it. One poorly matched participant can change the experience for everyone.
The application gives Cristina enough information to make a genuine judgment about fit. The selection is not based only on credentials, industry, or seniority. It is based on intellectual character: curiosity, honesty, self-awareness, willingness to participate, and the ability to be challenged without turning the room into an ego contest.
Price alone cannot filter for those qualities.
What does a session actually feel like?
You enter a live room with approximately 12 to 20 people from different industries and different parts of the world.
Cristina or a personally trained facilitator opens with a direct provocation, a problem, a challenge, or a question without a clean answer. You think out loud. Your peers question your assumptions. You question theirs. You may find yourself defending, revising, or abandoning a position you were not entirely sure you held when you arrived.
It is closer to an unusually good dinner conversation with sharp people than to a conventional professional event.
The friction is real. So is the energy when you leave.
I am not a technology person. Will I be out of my depth?
No.
The AI-related work inside The Sparring Circle focuses on judgment, assumptions, reasoning, and the ability to recognize when a confident answer rests on weak foundations.
It does not require coding knowledge, technical AI expertise, or familiarity with specific tools.
People from non-technical backgrounds often bring valuable perspectives precisely because they approach AI output without automatically deferring to the technology.
Why live? Why not recorded or self-paced?
Because the product is the friction between live minds in real time.
A recording of a sparring session is like a recording of a tennis match. You can watch it, but you cannot play it.
The value comes from being placed inside the question, not knowing exactly what comes next, responding under light pressure, and hearing another person challenge an assumption you thought was solid.
That experience does not survive passive replay.
Sessions are not recorded or distributed. This is intentional.
Who else will be in the room?
The founding cohort is designed to bring together founders, executives, advisors, strategists, creators, and independent thinkers from different industries and geographies.
Professional and geographic diversity are deliberate. The room works because participants do not all approach a problem from the same frame.
What members share is not a title or industry. It is curiosity, directness, and a willingness to have their thinking challenged in real time.
Every participant is reviewed personally before being accepted. Everyone is there by design, not by chance.
When do I pay the $150 deposit?
You apply first at no cost.
The deposit is requested only after you have been accepted. If you choose to reserve your seat, the $150 deposit is credited in full toward the $895 cohort price.
It is a reservation payment, not an additional fee.
If the cohort does not reach the minimum threshold of 12 confirmed members, your deposit will be refunded in full.
What if I miss a session?
The cohort includes six live sessions across seven weeks, with one built-in skip week.
Members are expected to attend at least five of the six sessions. One missed session should not break the experience.
There are no recordings or makeup sessions.
If you already know that more than one session date will be unavailable, mention it in your application. We will tell you honestly whether this cohort is a good fit or whether a future one would suit you better.
What happens after the six sessions? Does it just end?
The six-session founding cohort is a complete experience in itself.
Founding members will receive the first invitations to future Circle Sessions, alumni gatherings, continuation circles, salons, and other formats developed after the founding cohort.
You are not being asked to purchase a long-term membership before experiencing the room.
The continuation model will be shaped partly by what the founding members value, use, and want to return to.
The Sparring Circle is intended to become something people can come back to, but the first commitment is intentionally simple: six live sessions across seven weeks.
Do I need to prepare anything before each session?
No preparation is required.
Sessions are designed to work with what you already know and how you already think, not with material you studied in advance.
Coming in without a rehearsed answer is often better. The sessions exercise live, unscripted thinking rather than your ability to research a topic before class.
Is €895 worth it for six sessions?
That depends entirely on what you compare it to.
Six hours of executive coaching runs €900 to €1,800 with a single perspective.
A one-day conference runs €500 to €2,000 with mostly passive content.
A business school executive program runs €3,000 to €15,000.
The Sparring Circle is €895 for six live sessions of active intellectual challenge with twenty curated peers, plus seven weeks of community continuity and a priority seat in what becomes a permanent alumni network.
Whether that is worth it depends on how much you value your own thinking. If you are genuinely unsure, the application costs nothing.
Is there a refund policy?
If the cohort does not reach the minimum threshold of 12 confirmed members, all deposits are refunded in full.
Once the cohort is confirmed, the $150 deposit becomes non-refundable because your place is being held and the room is being finalized around the accepted members.
The remaining balance becomes non-refundable after the final payment deadline stated in your acceptance email.
If a genuine emergency prevents you from participating, contact Cristina directly. Any transfer or exception will be considered individually but cannot be guaranteed.
I have a question not answered here. Who do I contact?
Email [email protected] directly. Every message is read by a real person. You will receive a personal reply within 48 hours.
