Pick your core team
Before anything else, sort out who's an owner and who's a helper. This one distinction prevents the most common way launches fail: everybody caring, nobody on the hook.
Choose someone to run the session
One person keeps time, asks the follow-up questions, and writes things down. Pick whoever can stay most neutral ... or invite a level-headed friend to do it. Their job isn't to have the answers. It's to gently refuse to let the table move on without one.
Set up the two hours
- Two protected hours. Phones away, nobody half-in. If someone can only come for part of it, pick a different day.
- Record it. A phone in the middle of the table is plenty. You'll be glad you have it when you write the plan ... people remember decisions differently.
- Send the four questions ahead. Two days before, share the four opening questions (Part 2) so nobody hears them cold ... and check that everyone finished the get-ready worksheets from the next pages.
Five people sat around one family's table, but the plan named a core four as owners; the fifth ... deeply trusted, wonderful at helping others shine ... was named a helper, along with the outside advisors. Nothing about how much she mattered changed. What changed: every job had exactly one name on it, and everyone knew whose.
Put your values into words ... three layers
The first thing your workshop will decide is the foundation: the one thing about this dream that is not up for negotiation. That's a values question. Teams that arrive with their values already spoken settle the foundation in minutes. Teams that don't spend forty minutes discovering ... mid-argument ... that they never agreed on what this thing is for.
Work through three layers, in order. Each one feeds a different part of the workshop:
One family knew their project's deepest value before the workshop ever started: this thing existed to serve something bigger than money, and that was settled. Because they'd said it out loud beforehand, the workshop never had to debate it ... it was laid down as the foundation in the first ten minutes, and every choice after that could be tested against it instead of against each other's moods.
Get honest: what you need, what you can give, what's true
Two more short exercises before the big conversation. The first prevents the quiet resentments that sink family teams; the second makes sure your workshop argues about choices, not about missing facts.
What each of you needs ... written alone, then shared
Each owner answers four questions on paper and shares them with the team before the session:
- Why do I want this to exist? Income, meaning, a creative home, something to build together, proof that we can ... every answer is allowed. Unspoken is the only wrong one.
- What do I need from it this year ... and what am I okay waiting for?
- How many hours a week can I truly give for the next 90 days? Truly. The plan gets built on these numbers, so a generous guess now becomes a broken promise by week four.
- What am I nervous to say out loud? The doubt, the boundary, the "I want to help but I don't want to be in charge of anything." Said now, it's just information. Discovered in week six, it's a crisis.
The facts, on one page ... one person gathers them
One owner writes down the plain facts: how much money is available and how much the launch needs · any rules, permits, or insurance questions hanging over you (and which are still unknown) · anything already promised to anyone, with dates · what's already owned, built, or decided · anything with a deadline attached. Your conversation about risks will only be as good as this page.
Two plain facts changed one family's entire plan: a permission they needed couldn't even be applied for yet, and customers were already booked five weeks out. Put side by side, those two facts turned a vague background worry into the #1 roadblock ... with a hard deadline and a name next to it. Facts like these are cheap to gather the week before, and expensive to discover mid-argument. Or worse, after.
Everything above plus the next two pages ... your values, what each of you needs, the facts page with your time-or-money call, and the Working Genius map ... is one packet, built with Worksheets P1–P4 in your Workshop Kit. Bring it printed. It's the difference between a workshop that starts at zero and one that starts at sixty.
More time than money ... or more money than time?
Before you hand out a single job, answer one question as a team: which do we have more of? The answer shapes how everything in the next 90 days gets done ... because nothing on your list has to be done entirely by you, and nothing gets done for free. Every single task moves on someone's hours or someone's dollars.
It's rarely all one or the other
Most teams have time to spare in some areas and money to spare in others. A rule of thumb that serves well: spend money on the one-time stuff that doesn't need to be yours ... the permit paperwork, the insurance review, setting up the bookkeeping ... where one hour from an expert beats forty of your own. Spend time on whatever touches your customer and grows with you ... what you're offering, what it costs, the relationships, your own voice in the photos and words. Nobody you can hire knows why you started this.
Then hold every item on your first-month list up to the light: moved with our hours, or with our dollars? An item with neither behind it isn't a plan ... it's a wish. Cut it, or fund it.
One family had far more time than money ... so they became their own cleaning crew, shot their photos on phones every week, and built their own way for customers to book. But they paid for the insurance review and the permit help, where an expert hour beat forty of their own. Just as important, the same question told them what not to buy yet: no bookkeeper before the books were worth keeping, no assistant before anyone understood what the assistant would do. Time where it grows something. Money where it clears the road.
Learn how each of you is wired
Every project needs three kinds of energy: dreaming it up, getting people moving, and finishing what got started. Most founding teams overflow with dreamers and run dry on finishers. You want to know which team you are before you hand out the jobs ... not after things stall.
We use The Six Types of Working Genius®, a short quiz from author Patrick Lencioni and The Table Group. Each person takes it online (about 10 minutes, roughly $25 each at workinggenius.com) and learns their two geniuses (work that gives them energy), two competencies (fine in small doses), and two frustrations (work that drains them dry). The six types, in the order work naturally flows:
Because we're unreliable narrators about ourselves. People genuinely believe they're finishers ... until the map shows a family of five with one true finisher among them. This isn't an optional extra: it's a requirement of this process. The workshop hands out every job based on this map, so every owner takes the quiz before the session. At $25 a person, it's the cheapest insurance you'll buy this year ... budget it like it's part of the workshop itself.
Put it all on one page ... and read it honestly
Gather everyone's results into one grid (there's a fill-in version in your Workshop Kit), then ask the only question that matters: where are we naturally strong, and where will we stall?
| Type | Genius (names) | Competency | Frustration |
|---|---|---|---|
| W Wonder | |||
| I Invention | |||
| D Discernment | |||
| G Galvanizing | |||
| E Enablement | |||
| T Tenacity |
How to read your map
- Strengths ... types where two or more of you have a genius. This work will feel easy; just don't let it crowd out the rest.
- One-person jobs ... types where exactly one of you has the genius. If that person gets sick, discouraged, or busy, that whole part of the project stops. Build a simple system around it, not just a person.
- Empty spots ... types nobody has as a genius. You can still do this work; nobody will love it. Hand it out on purpose, in small doses, and check on it weekly.
- Frustrations aren't excuses. On a small team, everyone works in theirs sometimes. The map just tells you what to hand off first ... and to give a person working in their frustration a short, kind list, not an endless one.
One family's map overflowed with Wonder and Invention ... ideas were never going to be the problem. But rallying people and finishing each lived in just one person. That single page reshaped their plan: the natural finisher became the keeper of the weekly meeting and the tracker, and reaching out to future customers became a written list anyone could work through ... not a job that lived and died on one person's energy.