The guys at AJ&Smart can show you how to become a high-paid facilitator in 90 days or less, using their 5-1-6 Method. In doing so, you can work with some of the best companies on the planet, make six-figures, and still enjoy a lot of freedom. “I never planned on being the facilitation guy,” says Jonathan Courtney. “And I never planned on starting a company that now trains thousands of facilitators per year.” Read on for my review.
Jonathan was a frustrated UX designer. He was getting clients, making okay money, but it never failed: several weeks into a project, this sort of “collaboration chaos” would kick in. They’d either have a meeting with the client, everyone would talk in circles, and the only outcome of the meeting was just to schedule another meeting. Or, even worse, a higher up would join the meeting, crap on everything that had been built so far, demand it be changed, and essentially undo months worth of hard work.
It all felt pointless. Even though, sure, Jonathan and his team were still getting paid. But still. These meetings were like being taxed to do the work they wanted to do. Jonathan became obsessed with finding a way out of this collaboration chaos. He spent the next two years (and well over $200,000 on books, courses, and coaching) to learn everything he could about communication and public speaking and leadership and making the most of meetings—all so his company, AJ&Smart, could get back to doing what they did best: designing great products.
Eventually, Jonathan reads the book, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas In Just 5 Days, by Jake Knapp. It was a game changer for Jonathan, who ends up reaching out to Jake, forming a friendship, then running live bootcamps and creating an online course to teach this formula to the world. As a result, AJ&Smart became known as the “Design Sprint Company.” Jonathan was getting asked to come in and run retreats and workshops to help other companies implement this stuff. And it paid incredibly well. He had become a “facilitator” on accident.
“It’s fun. I love it. It’s amazing. It gets me excited,” Jonathan says. “Plus, it pays really well. And all that combined is what brings me to this 5-1-6 Method. So 5-1-6 represents the five steps you can take, to become a top one percent facilitator, and earn six-figures while doing it. As a top one percent facilitator, you’ll be able to run any type of workshop for any team regardless of the brief or constraints. A two-hour alignment workshop you run virtually; or a two-day leadership event in person; or a two-week product roadmapping session; no matter what comes at you, you need to be able to run it.”
“This 5-1-6 Method, if you’re able to look at the five steps as a blueprint and take these things and start applying them,” Jonathan continues, “you can turn this facilitation skill into a business, into a six-figure income. And the cool thing is that you’re also going to help companies with one of the biggest problems they have, and this is a global problem, which is of course collaboration chaos. No matter how organized a company appears from the outside, it’s always chaos when it comes to collaboration.”
“And so these companies are gonna be looking for people like you over the next few years. We’re entering a golden age for this whole facilitation thing. But only for the people who are in this upper echelon, this top one percent. You can run any type of workshop, for any type of team, any type of company, facilitate any type of situation, but also find clients and convince people this is a useful skill and that they should book you and pay you this high rate.” Join Jonathan’s program, Workshopper Master, if you’d like him to mentor you through this.
