The training · one day
You learn it by getting it wrong. On yourself, out loud, with eleven others doing exactly the same.
One day. Five exercises. No slide marathon, no certificate, and no offer at the end.
Straight talk
That is rarely your fault. It is how the training was sold to you.
There are three kinds you meet everywhere. All three fail for a reason this book explains.
A trainer learned one technique that worked for him, and wants to teach it to you. Exactly the way he does it.
One-way traffic, one dimension, and a simple promise: do this trick and it will be fine.
It worked for him because of his situation. You are standing somewhere else — and you take in his words from your own position.
Announced as free training. In reality a well-built story, after which you get to order the real training.
With every familiar lever attached. Decide now, the price goes up tomorrow. It normally costs ten thousand, today one thousand.
That isn’t urgency, it is pressure. Pressure comes from him, and the moment you leave the room it is gone.
A story that lifts you up. And it works — if you want to be motivated, the next day you genuinely are.
But can you win a client with it the day after, or solve your actual problem? After a few days the feeling is gone and you have to carry on. Often with an invitation to the next course.
Motivation is heat. And heat alone doesn’t make fire.
I’m not saying you get nothing out of them. That is yours to judge. But once you see the pattern, you recognise it in time.
What you get here
No pitch, no trick and no product at the end.
The day is built to give you the tools to take the next step yourself. If you need more afterwards, you hire me and I come and stand beside you. You get what you paid for, not an offer for the next thing.
Why it usually doesn’t stick
Anyone who starts working this way looks slower for the first month. You produce fewer proposals. You have more second conversations. You say more often that this isn’t the moment yet.
And then your manager, your partner or your own impatience tells you to work harder.
That is the fourth match pulling at you.
Chapter 27 · The Fire Card
That is why this day is built so you walk out with something concrete rather than with insights. One completed Fire Card and one step you can take tomorrow morning. Insights don’t survive that first month. An appointment in your diary does.
The programme
The eight steps aren’t explained to you. You walk them, on your own stuck situation. That is deliberate: this book is about order, so the day sticks to it.
The times are a guide. If an exercise lands hard somewhere, it gets the room and the rest shifts along.
The eight exercises
No role-plays with invented clients. You bring your own stuck conversation, and that is the material all day.
20 minutes · whole group
Everyone writes down one thing that hasn’t moved for months. One sentence, no explanation. Then the round isn’t about solutions but about one question: which of the three is missing?
Anyone who offers a solution is interrupted. That is part of the exercise.
30 minutes · in pairs
Take a conversation that stalled. The other person asks only two questions, over and over: what did he literally say, and what did you fill in?
The penny usually drops within ten minutes.
45 minutes · in groups of four
One person brings a real situation. The other three play the same counterpart from the three positions: submissive, assertive, dominant. Same content, same proposal, three times.
This is the exercise that lands hardest.
60 minutes · team or leadership
Pick one process that has run this way for years. A job advert, a proposal route, a meeting structure. Three questions: what assumption about people sits underneath it, who ever checked that, and what are we actually measuring?
This one can get painful. On an open course we swap cases instead.
15 minutes · alone
Take a proposal you are about to make. Write down the first step you were going to ask for. Then make it three times smaller.
What is left is almost always the step you should have asked for.
Who for
Yes
You have to get people moving without being able to order them to.
You currently have one situation that hasn’t moved for months.
Advisers, salespeople, project leads, managers, policymakers.
No
You are looking for closing techniques or objection handling. This isn’t about that, and that is exactly the point.
You want the day as a reward or a team outing. Exercise four can get painful.
You have no concrete situation to bring. Come back another time.
No prior knowledge needed. You will get more out of it if you have read the book — chapter 1 is free here.
Two formats
Same day, same exercises, but not the same product. Exercise four only really works when the whole group shares one process. Exercise three works better between strangers.
excl. VAT · maximum 12 participants
excl. VAT and travel · up to 12 participants
Venue by arrangement — at your office or elsewhere. For the open course I first collect enough registrations for a full group, then we set a date. I don’t fill half a room with a countdown clock.
Afterwards
Ninety minutes online, six weeks later. One question: what slipped back?
Six weeks isn’t arbitrary. That is exactly the point where it starts to feel slower and somebody around you says you should work harder.
Bookable separately, and I only offer it when you are ready. Not on the day itself, because then I would be doing exactly what this book warns against.
excl. VAT · 90 minutes online
Registering
I want to know what you are stuck on first, because that is the preparation: everyone brings one stuck situation.
Answer four questions here. You get a diagnosis back, and that shows whether the training is the right thing — or whether you are better off waiting.
Start with question 1 on the right
Still not sure
Describe in one sentence what isn’t moving. If it turns out you aren’t missing urgency but trust, a training day may not be what you need at all.
FIRE INSIGHT
Waiting is the safest decision there is.Chapter 13 · Heat