What to Expect When You Join Thought Leaders Business School

The School is for experts who want to build a commercially successful Thought Leaders Practice around their expertise.

Our students include consultants, coaches, facilitators, advisers, professionals, academics and experienced leaders from many different industries. What brings them together is the desire to turn what they know into valuable intellectual property, meaningful work and a commercially sustainable practice.

No. Some students join with established practices and considerable experience, while others are at an earlier stage of working out what their practice could become.

You don't need to have everything figured out before you arrive. The School gives you a curriculum, community and environment in which to develop both your thinking and your commercial capability over time.

There isn't a single point at which someone becomes ready for the School. What matters more is whether building a Thought Leaders Practice is the direction you want to pursue and whether you are ready to give that work deliberate attention.

A Discovery Call gives you the opportunity to understand the School, talk through where you are now and decide whether this is the right next step for you.

You are joining Thought Leaders Business School. The Third Choice is where your journey begins.

The Third Choice runs for six weeks and is followed by Fundamentals, also over six weeks. Together they give new students a shared foundation before they move further into the curriculum and community of the School.

Students stay with the School for years, developing their practice as their thinking, ambitions and commercial opportunities evolve.

The Third Choice is a six-week program designed to help you get your head in the game of building a Thought Leaders Practice.

Across six 90-minute sessions, you will explore some of the perspectives, choices and practices that help Thought Leaders build work that is commercially smart, personally meaningful and sustainable over time.

There are frameworks and ideas, but The Third Choice isn't designed as a content download. You will have time to think, work on your own practice, make decisions and learn from the experience of others.

For many experts, the conventional career decision appears to offer two choices: remain an employee and build a career within someone else's organisation, or become an entrepreneur and build a traditional business.

A Thought Leaders Practice offers a third choice. It allows you to build a commercially successful practice around your expertise, intellectual property and the contribution you want to make.

This is the choice at the heart of The Third Choice and the practice you will begin deliberately shaping during the program.

You move into Fundamentals.

The Third Choice is primarily concerned with how you see the game of building a Thought Leaders Practice and yourself within it. Fundamentals introduces more of the core tools and technology of the Thought Leaders Curriculum, with a particular focus on Think, Sell and Deliver.

Fundamentals is another six-week program, so your first twelve weeks give you a common foundation for the longer journey through the School.

Thought Leaders Business School is specifically designed for people building a Thought Leaders Practice.

The curriculum brings together the intellectual and commercial sides of that work. Students develop their intellectual property, learn to sell the value of their expertise and become increasingly effective at delivering work that makes a meaningful difference.

Think, Sell and Deliver provide the core architecture, with the curriculum developing in depth as your practice develops.

You can join Thought Leaders Business School at any time.

We have three natural commencement points during the year, aligned with The Third Choice and Fundamentals programs. Joining around one of these points gives you the cleanest progression into the introductory curriculum.

If you decide to join between those commencement points, you can still become a student and begin your journey. You will begin your onboarding and connection with the School from the time you join, with The Third Choice commencing at the next appropriate intake.

Once you make your commitment payment, your place in the School is confirmed and we begin getting you ready for The Third Choice.

You will hear from Matt and the School team, receive the practical information you need and begin connecting with the thinking and community of the School. As The Third Choice approaches, we'll send your session details and everything you need to begin.

We'll send the practical information for The Third Choice in the week before commencement, including session links, calendar invitations and details of your first session.

The Third Choice and Fundamentals each involve a 90-minute live session each week. You will also want some time between sessions to reflect, work on your practice and apply what you are learning.

There is no advantage in trying to consume as much curriculum as possible. The School works best when you engage with the ideas, use them in your practice and allow your experience to inform what you work on next.

We encourage students to attend live wherever possible because conversation, questions and learning with other students are part of the experience.

We also understand that people running practices have commitments. Recordings are available when you occasionally can't attend a session or want to revisit the material.

The Third Choice and Fundamentals establish the foundation. From there, you continue on your Journey to Black Belt, working through and applying the School curriculum to develop your practice alongside other students.

Thought Leaders Business School is designed as a long-term learning environment. Students commonly stay for years because the work changes as their practice develops. The questions you bring to the School when you are establishing a practice are different from those that arise as your intellectual property strengthens, your commercial model matures and your opportunities expand.

There is always another level of the practice to work on.

There is a one-off $1,800 commitment payment when you decide to join the School.

Your ongoing School fees are $23,400 per year. You can pay these fees upfront or in payments of $1,800 every four weeks, with the first four-weekly payment due four weeks after your commitment date.

The $1,800 commitment payment is a one-off payment that confirms your decision to join Thought Leaders Business School and secures your place.

It is separate from your ongoing annual School fees. If you choose the four-weekly payment option, your first $1,800 School fee payment is due four weeks after your commitment payment, with subsequent payments continuing every four weeks.

If you decide that the School is no longer right for you, speak with the team and we will explain the process for concluding your enrolment in accordance with your student agreement.

Yes. The Discovery Call exists to help you understand the School and decide whether it is the right environment for the practice you want to build.

You can ask about the curriculum, your particular circumstances, the investment or anything else you need to understand before making a decision. We would rather you make that decision with a clear understanding of what you are joining.

The Third Choice and Fundamentals are your introduction to the School. The larger value comes from what happens as you continue to work on your practice over the years that follow.

As your practice develops, the work develops with you. You deepen your intellectual property, become more commercially capable and encounter different questions about what you want to build and how you want to work.

That is why Thought Leaders Business School is structured as a school rather than a program to complete. It gives you a place to keep working on the practice as the practice, and you, grow.