Most program pages describe what you get. This one describes what happens, in order.
The shape below is the Structured pathway, the option most owners take. Self-Guided runs the same sequence at your own pace, and working privately runs it around your calendar. Current intake dates sit on the cohort page.
The whole thing in one paragraph
Eight weeks of active support. Four live group workshops online, two hours each, opening the work in weeks one, three, five and eight. Three thirty-minute one-to-one coaching sessions, booked directly with your coach. Between the workshops you apply what you have built inside your own business, guided by the online pathway, tools and templates, with your coach reviewing your key outputs. You finish with a growth strategy, an operating design, a Business Brain held in your own cloud storage and a quarterly plan you can run to.
Before week one
Enrolment opens your diagnostic and onboarding straight away, so the first workshop is not spent on setup.
The diagnostic is a comprehensive capability assessment across the areas that determine whether a business can grow beyond its owner. It reads your growth stage, your constraints and your opportunities, and turns them into a personalised pathway. That is the reason two owners in the same cohort do different work in different orders.
Do this bit properly. Everything after it is shaped by what it finds.
Week one, workshop one: where the business actually is
The first workshop opens the diagnosis. You read your own results alongside other owners reading theirs, which is usually the first moment the pattern becomes obvious rather than personal.
Your first one-to-one lands near here, and its job is interpreting the diagnostic with you. Owners often arrive at it expecting to be told what is wrong and leave having named what to do first.
Weeks one and two: the first build
Between the first two workshops you start the work the diagnostic pointed at. Plan for one to two focused hours a week of implementation on this pathway.
The word doing the work in that sentence is focused. Two uninterrupted hours will get further than five hours in fifteen-minute fragments between customer calls. If your week currently holds no uninterrupted hours at all, that is a real finding rather than a disqualification, and it is usually the constraint the program is about to address. Why do I never get to the work that actually matters? covers that pattern.
Week three, workshop two: direction and design
You build your growth strategy against your own definition of success, then the operating design that makes it real: how work flows, who decides what, and what stops running through you.
This is the phase where the honest conversation about owner dependency happens. How do I move from running everything to leading the business? is the longer answer to the question that surfaces here.
Week five, workshop three: capture it, then decide where AI belongs
Two things happen in this phase.
You build a Business Brain in your own cloud storage, moving the business away from you as its single source of knowledge. Past participants rate it the most valuable thing they leave with, and the thing that makes everything else durable. What is a Business Brain and does my business need one? explains it properly.
Then, with a system worth multiplying, you decide where AI earns its place. Tool-neutral, judgement-led and governed, ending in an AI Opportunity Map that names your specific opportunities rather than a list of apps. The sequence matters: AI applied to a business without a system multiplies the mess underneath it. What order should a small business adopt AI in? sets out why.
Week eight, workshop four: the plan you leave with
The last workshop turns everything into a quarterly implementation plan you can actually run, pressure-tested by your coach in your final one-to-one.
A 90-Day Growth Capability Review reports the metrics that matter and shows the capabilities you have built, so the finish line has evidence attached to it rather than a feeling.
What happens between the workshops
This is the part worth reading twice, because it is where programs quietly succeed or quietly fail.
Between workshops you are applying the work in your business, not studying it. Your coach reviews your key outputs in the platform, so nothing you build goes unreviewed. That review is the step owners most often name as the difference, because it is where a good draft becomes a usable one.
The gaps between workshops are deliberately uneven. Weeks one, three, five and eight carry the workshops; the wider gaps in the middle exist because that is when a Business Brain or a financial model actually gets built.
Your three coaching sessions
Thirty minutes each, booked directly with your coach through the platform at times that suit you. They sit at the three points where they change the outcome: interpreting your diagnostic, refining your strategy, and pressure-testing your implementation plan.
Because they are booked rather than fixed in a group calendar, a clash is a reschedule.
The twelve weeks after it ends
Every pathway includes twelve weeks of CEO Circle Starter membership. Your goals, artefacts, Business Brain and education library stay live, and a ninety-day rhythm checks that the plan you made is still the plan you are working.
Everything you downloaded or built in your own storage is yours permanently. After the included twelve weeks you choose whether to continue, and nothing renews unless you choose it.
The three questions this raises
Each of these has its own page.
- Who is this cohort for? describes the person rather than the demographic.
- What will I actually build in the program? lists the artefacts you walk away owning.
- Who should not join this cohort is the honest version of the same question, written by Sam.
If the cohort format is wrong for you
Some owners should not be in a cohort right now, and that is an ordinary conclusion rather than a failure. Self-Guided exists for owners who work alone and prefer their own pace, with coaching addable whenever you want it. Working privately exists for owners with a leadership team to align or a schedule that will not bend to a group calendar.
The Capability Snapshot will tell you which shape fits how you actually work, in under ten minutes, and the result is yours whether you enrol or not.
Being good at the work doesn't make the business clear
One practical email a week for owners finding the words, the structure and the confidence to match their craft.
