And just like that, our latest cohort is almost over!

In January, we set out to do the biggest update to our cohorts yet.

• New 30+ page playbook for both Notion and Google docs
• Revamp all of the sessions including teacher workshops
• Added 2 weeks and 4 sessions to the cohort

I thought that'd be it - yet I have come out of these 8 weeks with 4 more pages of small changes.

As such, I couldn't help but reflect on some of the things that I have learned in the journey, and some of the ways that our students helped me create a better experience for them.

Here are my three highlights that I really hope can help you as well create better experiences for your audience!

In summary

• Three highlights to create better experiences for your customers based on our latest cohort.
• Allow space for implementation by creating dedicated time or a system for answering questions.
• Create intentional check-ins by implementing checklists throughout the journey to help people stay on track.
• Create accountability groups that encourage connection and allow people to learn from each other.

From my Notion Dashboard

You can create yours here!

• ​Scroll my email is a very nifty tool perfect for showing your email off in presentations, or on web pages, to replicate what reading an email in your inbox actually feels like.
• Can you productivise yourself?..and what does that ACTUALLY mean? This excellent overview looks at the rise of the one-person business model from the author's real case study. Fascinating.
• It's time to up your meeting game with pre-work. Despite its bad reputation, meeting pre-work doesn't have to be a drag. In fact, it can help your meetings be more efficient and productive. When everyone comes to a meeting having already reviewed and thought about the material, you can jump right into decision-making and action items.

Allow space for implementations

Hands down the best addition to this cohort have been our hot seats sessions (breaking down the curriculum) and office hours at the end of each class.

By creating a very clear dedicated time to answer any questions we gave students the confidence to know when and how they could get the support they needed.

The hot seats sessions were also a winner, as we planned them to fall during times that would allow students to have enough under their belts to bring their progress and work to the table.

Far too often people are scared to ask questions worried about getting the support they need because they don't want to look like they're not understanding what they are supposed to do.

Actually, by you creating structure for them, you give them a clear journey to follow as well as diminishing in our case, hugely the amount of questions that were asked in the middle of the main session.

If your audience, customers or students are shy, use a tool like Slido to collect questions and record a Loom with answers, creating a personalised FAQ bank.

Create intentional check ins

One of my favourite things about running a small business (and small cohort) is that I can make time to implement and change small things on the go, instead of having to wait until the end of the experience.

This suggestion, came from our student Cleo (so shout out to her) and I started implementing it already in our final sessions!

Create easy checklists and touch points for your students/customers.

Far too often, because we are the ones who create our products, our services or even our courses we tend to forget that it's important to provide instructions and reminders of what is expected of people, not just at the beginning of the journey, but also implement checklists along the way.

They can help people know how can they stay on track and not fall behind.

In our example, what we have implemented (and we will be refining for next cohort) is going to be not just a checklist at the beginning of the lesson, but also one at the end of each session to tell our students what they should have accomplished by that date.

Accountability groups

We brought back accountability groups, and a very welcomed side effect from that has been a few students huddling up to set up masterminds post cohort on Tuesday evenings - I said it before and will say it again, our students' Tuesdays and Thursdays will never be the same!

When they told me that, I could not help but smile. Creating an environment that encourages connection allows people to learn from each other (or interact with each other) as much as you it's a skill - and one that took me years to master.

If you'd like to see all of our updates from the cohorts check our release notes.

A little gift for you

Get 25% off our best-selling OS to set up better, more streamlined systems for your marketing and beyond! You are welcome.

Appreciation corner

This week I was interviewed for Matthias Bohlen's podcast, very exciting to share it with you when it comes out! Love Matthias approach to building in public and great videos, so go and check him out on Twitter!

Matthias Bohlen @bohlenlabs An audience and followers are two different notions. You audience need not be your followers, they can be anybody's followers. So, no need to wait until you have built a following on whatever platform! 😄 Go and work with your audience. April 9th 2023 1 Retweets 4 Likes

Fab-ulous weekly highlights

1. Talking about podcasts, I was interviewed by the fabulous Ashlee for her podcast Purpose & Progress - you can listen to the episode as we talk purpose, systems, values and marketing here.
2. Over the past 3 weeks, we also worked on revamping 2 or our 3 self-paced labs, including our fundamentals of marketing AND brand archetype lab! As a reminder, our course library new pricing and tiers go live TOMORROW, with a new course-only lite plan at £97 per year, our community plan (including everything we currently give members access to) at £247 per year and VIP plan at £497. Find out more about it all here.​

On that note, if you'd like to experience some of the AMS magic, our early bird price for our 4-day intensive experience end next week - so go and grab your spot for £178 instead of £275 with the code IAMAWESOME23

See you there?

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P.S. if you are looking for more support, these are 3 ways I can help…

1. Learn how to market with purpose and access weekly tactics here.
2. Book a power hour session and get unstuck here.
3. Reclaim time to focus your energy where it matters here.

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