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In 2020-2022, cohort-based courses had a moment.

You might know a few of the big ones:

Write of Passage, Ship 30 for 30, Building a Second Brain, B-School, Part Time YouTuber Academy.

But... many of these programs no longer exist, or no longer exist in the same format, even when the material was great. I took a few of these programs.

(Read BTS of my colleague Khe's story, or the Write of Passage story).

You might think it's the economy or zoom fatigue.

But... is it actually economics?

Watch my video on the rise and fall of cohort-based programs.

A video today, because there are charts!!

• The three economic curves that shape the CBC movement
• What you think ends a program... and what *really* ends the program
• Why I've decided to keep my cohorts small, even if that means I sacrifice revenue

Watch the Video

Finding the natural scale

I've never wanted to scale an education empire. (Although, there are now over 225 people in the Membership, so apparently that happened.)

But I've always wanted to run a transparent, high-consent, high-education marketing process.

Less urgency, less incentives, and more grounded decision making and thoughtful investments.

(And... frankly... I don't want to play the algorithmic traffic game. I don't have the desire or stamina for that anymore).

I also want to be of deep service to the people in my programs, even if that means enrolling fewer people because I'm so hands-on. I've been in larger programs where I was, at best, worked with occasionally and, at worst, frankly ignored.

My DYF cohorts are capped at 20 participants. After six rounds of leading this program, I've learned that's roughly the natural breakpoint for this particular program. 20 participants is a number I can generally enroll and serve well without dramatically increasing the volume or intensity of my marketing.

Could I try to turn 20 into 50? Probably. But I'd have to change something: generate a lot more leads, sell more aggressively, reduce the amount of individual attention, bring in additional coaches, or change the economics of the program.

I don't want to.

Every participant fits onto a Zoom screen and that's how I like it.

"Scale" isn't the right answer for everyone, and scaling this particular product beyond this natural breakpoint isn't the right answer for me.

The recent cohorts have largely filled from the waitlist, alumni, and existing Members so if you're curious, I encourage you to register for an Open House and sign up for the waitlist.

The cohort begins the week of September 14. Capped at 20, with a few spots already claimed by returning participants.

Join the Waitlist

RSVP to an Open House

NEW EPISODES

The Secret to Becoming Referable In this episode, we talk about the chicken-and-egg problem underneath developing a reputation and referrals: you need a point of view to get in the room, but you need to be in rooms with actual humans to sharpen a point of view. We get into why AI-workshopped positioning defaults to the average of what everyone else is already saying, what it actually takes to be referable, and how long it really takes for an angle to become something people seek you out to talk about. We’re honest about the awkwardness of testing out your language with other humans and provide a “call me when” framework to help you sharpen your positioning for your network and for AI. Listen to the Pod

Community and Reads ​The State of Delegation​ Check out this white paper on the bottlenecks behind delegation... and how being able to delegate is an organizational competency in the world of AI. If you're an operator or even lead just one other person (or even just delegate to yourself...), this paper is worth the read.

Jessica Lackey ​​