Most coaches put off or avoid running cohorts entirely, and for good reason: because the delivery sounds like a tech-stack science project: one platform for content, another for community, a page builder for schedules and replays, Zoom links in three places, plus payments, email reminders, text reminders, tagging, onboarding, and the inevitable “where do I find that?” messages when someone gets lost.
That mess doesn’t just cost you ten software subscriptions. It costs time, and it costs momentum. Participants disengage when the next step isn’t obvious. Support questions multiply when links are scattered. Attendance drops when schedules and join links are hard to find. And you end up managing tools instead of leading a group toward its goal.
This week’s Office Hours training walked through a cleaner approach: how to set up and deliver a live-start cohort inside AttractWell so the entire experience runs from one organized home base—without duct-taping together extra tools.
If you want the weekly trainings and a reliable rhythm of live guidance, you can join Office Hours here. If you want to follow along and build the workflow in your own account, you can start a $1 trial here.
Below is the exact framework we taught. Use it as your planning map: it will tell you what needs to exist before you open enrollment, what needs to be visible to participants, and what should be automated so your cohort feels easy to run.
How To Set Up A Cohort Program (Without Extra Tools)
To set up a cohort program, you don’t need a mountain of new content. You need a clear sequence, a structured delivery environment, a predictable live rhythm, and reminders that keep people showing up and following through.
In the training, we broke the full setup into nine moves. Each move has one job: reduce friction for participants and reduce admin for you. The goal isn’t to build something complicated. The goal is to build something repeatable that you can run again next month without rebuilding from scratch.
Here’s the big idea: your cohort should feel like a guided experience with one obvious place to go. Participants shouldn’t have to remember which tool holds which piece. They should be able to log in and immediately answer:
1) What am I working on this week?
2) Where do I go for calls and replays?
3) Where do I ask questions and get support?
If those three answers are clear, engagement goes up. Completion goes up. Support overhead goes down. And you get to spend your time doing the part you actually want to do: leading the cohort.
Why Cohort Programs Break When Delivery Is Spread Across Platforms
Cohorts don’t usually fail because your curriculum isn’t “good enough.” They fail because delivery becomes confusing.
When a cohort is spread across platforms, participants get hit with micro-friction every week:
• The schedule lives in one place, but the join link is in a different place.
• The replays are hosted somewhere else (and half the group never finds them).
• The community is separate, so important updates get buried under notifications.
• Content is organized one way, reminders refer to it another way, and support questions explode.
That fragmentation creates a predictable pattern: people start strong, then life happens, they miss one week, and re-entry feels complicated. Not because the content is hard—because the system is hard.
The fix is not to send more links. The fix is to centralize the experience so the cohort has one home base. When everything is in one structured environment, re-entry becomes simple. People can miss a call and still find the replay. They can fall behind and still know what to do next. And your reminders can point to one consistent place instead of a scavenger hunt.
Step 1 — Create A Cohort Curriculum Map
This step is where most people overthink. They try to perfect every lesson before they sell. That’s backwards.
What you need first is the curriculum map: the ordered sequence of lessons, steps, concepts, and implementation actions that define the scope of the program. Think “path” rather than “content library.” The map answers: What happens first? What builds on that? What must be done in order for the participant to get the outcome?
In the training, we used two easy planning formats: a simple outline or a Trello board. (Our free course includes a done-for-you Trello template designed specifically to plan a cohort and its launch.) The tool doesn’t matter. The sequence does.
Here’s what makes a strong curriculum map:
• Each lesson has a purpose (what it unlocks).
• Each lesson ends with a clear action (what to do next).
• The map reflects reality (the order people need, not the order you feel like teaching).
A practical filter from Office Hours: if a piece of content doesn’t move the participant forward, it doesn’t belong in the main path. Save it as an optional resource instead of clogging the sequence. Cohorts run on momentum. The map is how you protect that momentum.
Step 2 — Build A Structured Member Experience For Your Cohort
Once your curriculum map exists, the next job is to place it into a structured environment so the experience is organized and easy to access.
This is where “one system” becomes practical. Participants shouldn’t have to hunt through menus, threads, and folders. They should be guided through a clear progression that matches the curriculum map you just created.
In AttractWell, you can upload your outline and use the AI class builder to generate the initial structure for you, then adjust it so the flow matches your program. That matters because most people don’t get stuck on strategy—they get stuck on setup. Speed reduces friction for you, which means you actually ship the cohort instead of keeping it in planning purgatory.
From the participant side, structure equals confidence. A structured member experience tells them: “You’re in the right place. Here’s the path. Start here.” That first login moment sets the tone for the entire cohort. If the first login is confusing, engagement starts leaking immediately. If the first login is obvious, people settle in and follow through.
Step 3 — Add Videos, Downloads, Prompts, And Clear Next Steps
Cohorts aren’t just information. They’re implementation.
So this step is not “upload everything you’ve ever made.” This step is: add the assets and instructions that make action obvious.
In the training, we showed how to layer in:
• Videos (to teach the concept or demonstrate the workflow)
• Downloads (worksheets, templates, checklists)
• Discussion prompts (to create momentum and reflection)
• Instructions (so the next step is crystal clear)
Inside AttractWell, you can upload videos, files, images, and resources into the files manager and plug them directly into the right spot in your program. That’s important because clarity is contextual: the best place for a worksheet is inside the lesson that requires it, not buried in a separate “resources” folder people forget exists.
If you want your cohort to feel premium, optimize for clear next steps. After every lesson, the participant should know exactly what to do next without messaging you. That single design choice reduces support load and improves completion rates because action becomes automatic.
Step 4 — Publish Your Call Schedule And Create A Replays Page
Live calls are where the cohort becomes a cohort. They create urgency, accountability, and real-time support.
But live calls only work if logistics are frictionless. If people can’t find the schedule, they miss calls. If the join link is unclear, they show up late (or not at all). If replays are scattered, they never catch up.
The solution we taught was simple: create one dedicated schedule + replays page and make it the single source of truth.
That page should include:
• The full call schedule (dates and times)
• A clear join link for the live call
• A calendar add link (so they can save the schedule once)
• A section where replays are posted every week in the same place
In Office Hours, we also provided templates for this page so you can add it to your program hub and publish fast. And because AttractWell includes Zoom, you can create a recurring meeting link for your cohort and keep it consistently available where members already go. No weekly scramble. No “which Zoom link is the right one?”
That consistency is a quiet driver of results. When the schedule is obvious and replays are predictable, participants stay engaged even when they miss a week. They can re-enter without friction, which is what keeps cohorts from slowly bleeding momentum over time.
Step 5 — Set Up A Cohort Community Space (And Decide The Pace)
A community space is not there to create noise. It’s there to create support and momentum.
In the training, we emphasized an important choice: you set the pace. Not every cohort needs daily posts. Not every cohort needs an always-on chat. The right level of interaction is the level you can sustain while still delivering great calls and responding consistently.
Inside AttractWell, you can add a discussion room to your program hub so cohort members can post, comment, tag, and share images—the familiar community behavior people like—without being pulled into distractions.
If you want engagement without improvising every week, pre-write prompts. Prompts are the difference between a community that sits quietly and a community that produces progress. A simple weekly prompt can drive implementation, surface obstacles, and give you material to coach on during calls.
One practical suggestion from Office Hours: design your community around outcomes, not chit-chat. Ask questions that make people take action. Ask for screenshots of progress. Ask for commitments. Ask for reflections. That’s how a cohort starts to feel like a real experience instead of a content dump.
Step 6 — Set Expectations So Participants Know Exactly What To Do
This step prevents confusion and protects your time.
Every cohort needs a visible expectation hub: schedules, guidelines, how support works, and what the weekly rhythm looks like. You can create a dedicated guide page (we provided a template for this in the training) or place this copy in the most visible area of your program hub.
Your expectation content should answer the questions participants will ask anyway:
• What happens each week?
• Where do I find the call schedule and replays?
• Where do I ask questions?
• How quickly will I get a response?
• What if I miss a call or fall behind?
Clear expectations improve engagement because participants stop guessing. They know how to use the cohort properly. And you stop repeating yourself in DMs and threads because the answers are visible in the same place they already log in.
Step 7 — Automate Email And Text Reminders For Cohort Attendance
Reminders are part of delivery. They are not optional if you care about attendance and follow-through.
In Office Hours, we recommended a simple baseline reminder cadence that supports action without becoming annoying (especially if your discussion space also generates notifications):
• A weekly kickoff message: what matters this week and what they should focus on
• A day-before call reminder: time, what to bring, what will happen live
• An hour-before reminder: the join link and a quick “here’s what we’re doing today”
This cadence works because it reduces decision fatigue. Participants don’t have to remember where they left off. They get a clean “here’s what matters now” prompt at the exact moment they’re deciding whether to show up.
In AttractWell, you can set up date-based campaigns that send messages at the exact calendar date and time you choose, via email and/or text. And if you want to build the campaign fast, you can upload an outline and use the AI-powered campaign builder to generate a draft sequence, then edit the message content to match your tone and your cohort rhythm.
The goal is simple: fewer missed calls, less drift, more completion.
Step 8 — Set Up Your Cohort To Sell (Purchase → Access → Reminders)
This is where many cohorts break before they even start: the purchase-to-onboarding handoff is manual, inconsistent, and stressful.
What should happen at the point of purchase is straightforward:
• The buyer is granted access to the cohort hub immediately
• They can see where to start and what to do next
• They are added to the reminder sequence automatically
• They have a clear schedule + replays page waiting for them
When that handoff is automatic, you can sell confidently because delivery is guaranteed. You’re not manually adding people at midnight before the cohort begins. You’re not sending apology messages because someone didn’t get a link. The cohort starts clean.
In AttractWell, you can connect purchase to access and apply the reminder campaign when someone buys, so enrollment triggers delivery automatically. That’s how you build an offer that can scale without your workload scaling with it.
Step 9 — Run Your Cohort Live And Turn Calls Into Replays Fast
Once the cohort is set up, running it becomes a rhythm, not a scramble.
Your weekly execution looks like this:
• Open your cohort hub and check the discussion room
• Engage where it matters (answer questions, reinforce progress, guide the group)
• Let scheduled posts and reminders drive momentum between calls
When it’s time to go live, you start your Zoom meeting from inside AttractWell, record to the cloud, and after the call you can convert that recording to a video and place it directly onto your replays page.
Speed matters here. The faster replays are posted, the easier it is for someone who missed the call to re-enter the experience. That’s how you prevent “I missed one week so I quit” from becoming the silent killer of cohort engagement.
Three Ways To Turn What You Already Have Into A Cohort
A cohort is a wrapper. It’s a structured, supported version of what you already teach.
In the training, we mapped three starting points that work immediately:
1) A 1:1 framework. If you already guide clients through consistent stages privately, those stages become your cohort milestones. Your calls become coaching and troubleshooting around the shared path.
2) An evergreen course or content library. You don’t need to rebuild lessons. You need to choose the weekly sequence and add prompts, instructions, reminders, and live support to create momentum.
3) An outline. If you only have the sequence, that is enough to start. A structured hub, a schedule + replays page, an expectation page, and a reminder cadence give you a complete delivery system even before every lesson is perfect.
The common thread is that participants aren’t paying for more videos. They’re paying for a guided experience that keeps them moving.
Duplicate Your Cohort Setup To Run The Next Round Faster
Once you build one solid cohort setup, you should never have to build it from scratch again.
That was a major point in Office Hours: when your cohort hub and your reminder campaign are built as a working system, you can duplicate them, swap in a new schedule, adjust the curriculum sequence, and run the next round without reinventing the wheel.
This is where cohorts become scalable. Your first cohort is your build. Your second cohort is your refinement. Your third cohort is where the offer becomes a machine: cleaner onboarding, clearer prompts, better call rhythm, stronger outcomes, and less admin every time you run it.
The Bottom Line: An All-In-One Group Coaching Setup You Can Build In An Afternoon
A typical cohort requires multiple subscriptions (or a tangled WordPress setup):
• Course platform
• Community platform
• Video hosting
• Website pages
• Zoom
• Payments
• Contact management
• Email marketing
• Text marketing
The alternative we taught is simpler: build the cohort as one connected workflow in AttractWell, then sell and deliver from one place. That’s how you can set up your next cohort in an afternoon and be ready to start selling and delivering right away.
And if this is your first time running a cohort digitally (or the first time you want it to feel organized), support matters. Alongside the platform, AttractWell provides training, templates, and real human support so you can get it done without guessing.
Watch The Training Replay
The replay is embedded below so you can watch the full walkthrough and see the workflow built in real time.
Next Steps: Build Your Cohort This Week
If you want to move from “I should run a cohort” to “enrollment is open,” use the nine steps above as your checklist. Start with the curriculum map, then build the structured hub, then add schedule + replays + expectations, then automate reminders and connect purchase to access.
If you want a consistent weekly push with new trainings and live guidance, you can join Office Hours here. And if you want to build your cohort workflow inside your own account immediately, you can start a $1 trial here.
Once your cohort runs in one system, the whole experience gets easier to sell, easier to deliver, and easier to repeat. That’s the win: fewer moving parts, better follow-through, and a cohort you can run again without rebuilding your life around it.
0 Comments