On Monday June 16, I had the great honour of hosting our very first in-person masterclass for Agency Mavericks in Chicago. It was held at the same venue as WordCamp Chicago – the University Center Conference Chicago.
We had 8 WordPress consultants in attendance from Chicago, New Jersey, Nebraska, Indiana and even Toronto, Canada.
The format went a little something like this:
We started off with a welcome and introductions so everyone got to know each others background and current position in the business. I then spent about 45 minutes presenting a high-level version of the Agency Mavericks blueprint, a system we teach for running a successful WordPress consultancy. It was a brief overview just to get us all on the same page for the rest of the day.
Then we spent 30 minutes focussing on one business at a time. Here's how we rolled it out:
- the business owner had 2 minutes to tell the room the biggest goal they were trying to achieve and the roadblocks holding them back
- everyone then had 5 minutes to ask questions so they could get clear on the goal and the problems
- everyone then had 2 minutes to write down as many ideas as possible to help overcome the problems and breakthrough the roadblocks
- then we spent 10 minutes sharing those ideas while the business owner wrote them up on a flip chart and numbered each idea
- then we had 60 seconds to vote on our favourite ideas
- then we spent 5 minutes tallying up the votes and the business owner took the piece of flip chart paper home with them
I think the most valuable part of this format is helping other's with their problems because you tend to look at someone else's business more objectively than your own.
During the day we were lucky enough to have some guests come in and share their stories with us. Brent Shepherd from Prospress and Woo Subscriptions, Matty Cohen from WooThemes and Lisa Sabin-Wilson from WebDev Studios and AppPresser (and I have to mention that Lisa was too sick to make it to WordCamp, but drove an hour and a half down from Wisconsin to spend some time with us). These special guests were a highlight of the day for me as they inspired us with their success stories and helped us all understand that we all have journeys to go on and no two paths are the same. I hope our attendees were inspired by the guests as much as I was.
I was honoured and humbled that this group of people chose to travel some distance to spend some time with me and I am very much looking forward to running many more Agency Mavericks Masterclasses in the future in various formats.
The next one we have lined up is in Melbourne on July 2, 2014 and then Thailand on September 1 – 3, 2014.
Have you attended any masterclass or mastermind groups? Do you have any formats you particularly like?
