A short, cohort-led course that builds your team’s capability to create well crafted, engaging messaging, supported by AI
Referral
Ready
You and your team are customer-facing all day. Then, at nine at night, you open your AI and ask it to write something to keep the leads coming, because enquiries do not arrive the way they used to. You are confident with AI. Yet what comes back still reads like anyone in your category. Something is missing, and despite all the hard work your business story is not landing. And your time is precious.
A short course for owners who already use AI well, and want it to know their business well enough to tell the story properly. Quarterly cohorts, 24 hours over six weeks, Auckland and online.
Every word-of-mouth recommendation now gets checked online
Join next course
Blended course, Auckland
Join in person
Three 5.5 hour workshops in Auckland, two 2.5 hour online sessions in between, and 2.5 hours of one to one. 24 hours over about six weeks.
Fully online course
Join from anywhere
Seven weekly 3 hour online sessions and 3 hours of one to one. 24 hours over about seven weeks.
Quarterly intakes
Register interest
Email us with your preference for online or in person, and we will let you know when the next cohort opens.
Short course, quarterly cohorts
Two problems, one gap
Referrals that stall and content that sounds like everyone else look like separate problems. They are not. Both come from the same gap. Nobody has written down what makes you worth choosing, in plain language a stranger would understand. So customers cannot feel the difference, search cannot find it, and AI falls back on the average of your category. Your business reads as a commodity. Not cheap, just interchangeable.
Lead generation without living on social media
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Clarify who you are for
- Who your customer really is, and what they are trying to solve
- What else competes for the same money
- What makes you worth choosing, in plain language
- How your business reads to a stranger, and to an AI
2. Tell your story properly
- Told from the customer side rather than yours
- A positioning statement you can say out loud
3. Onboard your AI with a project pack
- A brand foundation file and context repository, in markdown, that your AI reads before it writes anything
- Skills that walk you through each step on your own context, so the work compounds rather than dates
Your Trainers
Liz and her team run each cohort, working with you on your own business rather than lecturing from the front.
Understanding the unmet needs of customers is one of Liz's favourite pastimes. It requires thinking about what drives people and their behaviour - and Liz has been doing this for 20 years. In this course, Liz will help you step into the shoes of your target audiences and learn to reconnect with them and they way they want to interact with you. Having started her career in magazine production - relaunching BMW Magazine and writing a regualr sports and wellbeing column, Liz has since written countless brand identity suites; narrtives and publications globally.
Diego is a creative brand strategist and copy director at Good CX. He works alongside Liz on each cohort and leads the storytelling sessions, helping you find the words for what makes your business worth choosing.
24 hours over six weeks, no session longer than 5.5 hours. Quarterly intakes, capped at twelve
What you take away
Business storytelling, from customer first
Audience, brand, then channel and content
The course is time set aside to find your gaps, which you never get on the tools. The work follows one sequence, because doing it in another order is why most AI output disappoints. First we look at how your business reads to a customer. Then we ask an AI to describe you. After that, we build the story from the customer side, and onboard your AI with it.
Twelve people who have never heard of your business
The room does real work
You cannot see your own business the way a stranger does. That is proximity, not failure. So we cap cohorts at twelve, and you present to owners who know nothing about you. Their first questions are the closest thing to hearing your customers think aloud.
Book follow up callJoin the next Referral Ready cohort
Referral Ready is not a marketing course, and it is not AI 101 either. You already use AI, probably well. The gap is that nobody has onboarded it to your business, so it cannot tell your story or build your credentials with any conviction. Closing that gap is the work here: thinking, then writing down what has only ever lived in your head, in a form your AI can run on. The course suits businesses that grew on word of mouth and can feel that slowing, with real customers and real revenue. It works best with an owner in the room, because the conclusions often change how you position the business. If you are still working out what your business does, this is not the right starting point. We will say so.
Further reading from our journal
Thought leadership to drive your business forward
Why isn’t my content engaging customers? (and how to fix it)
Why isn’t my content engaging customers? (and how to fix it)
Unlocking Innovation through movement in Workshops
Unlocking Innovation through movement in Workshops
Small Business AI: Fuelling adoption for SME employees through play and pause
Small Business AI: Fuelling adoption for SME employees through play and pause
Finding Flow for your Team: Leadership Lab at Ferg’s Kayaks
Finding Flow for your Team: Leadership Lab at Ferg’s Kayaks
The Power of Word-of-Mouth Referrals: How Reputation Management Drives Sales
The Power of Word-of-Mouth Referrals: How Reputation Management Drives Sales
Common questions about the course
What is Referral Ready?
Referral Ready is a short business storytelling course for owners who already use AI well and want lead generation without living on social media. It runs quarterly, in small cohorts, in Auckland and online.
Over the course you work out who your customer really is, what they need, and what makes you worth choosing. Then you turn that into a context pack: persona maps, a positioning brief and project instructions. That pack onboards your AI to your business properly. The course is education, not marketing. We make the time most owners never get, to get what has only lived in their heads into a form their AI can actually use.
Is this a marketing course?
No. The course is education. Together we explore what makes your business different, then help you document it. However, we do not write your content or run your channels. What you produce afterwards is yours, made by you.
Will this help me get more customers?
Indirectly, yes. If you are asking how to get more customers, the course does not chase them for you. However, it fixes the reason people hesitate after a recommendation, which is a digital presence that never explains why you are worth choosing.
Most lead generation advice assumes you enjoy posting. You do not. So we focus on LinkedIn and your Google Business Profile, which are credibility infrastructure rather than social media. Once your AI is onboarded, it can build those out properly: your profile, your business description, your case studies, in your voice and with your credentials front and centre. Get them right once and they keep working whether you post this week or not. The result is qualified leads. Fewer enquiries, better ones, from people who arrive already half convinced.
We already use AI. Will this be too basic?
No. The course assumes you use AI daily. You have the subscription, the projects, and you have probably vibe coded something that looks the part. The problem is not your prompting. The problem is that nobody has onboarded your AI to your business, so it reaches for the average of your category every time. The course builds the context layer it has been missing. You leave with a project pack: a brand foundation file, a context repository, persona maps, and skills that read your own context before they write. Then you learn to connect your AI to the tools you already use, so the work keeps paying off. Better prompts alone will not fix it, because AI cannot describe a difference nobody has articulated.
Does this work for product businesses as well as services?
Yes, and cohorts usually mix both. The thinking is identical. However, what differs is where your customers look, and what they weigh you against. If you sell services, you are up against a staff hire, or doing nothing at all. If you sell products, you are up against the item beside yours.
Is co-funding available?
Businesses may be eligible for co-funding to help cover the cost of attending but this is at the discretion of your Growth Advisor who will assess eligibility.
Is this for small businesses or larger ones?
Referral Ready is the business storytelling course in our education range, and it is built for smaller businesses: owner-led, with real customers and revenue, where the owner is still the voice. If you run a larger business with a sales team, a professional services firm, or a leadership group that needs to sell on trust rather than story, look at The Trust Advantage instead. Education is how we share what we learn with the many smaller businesses New Zealand runs on. Our advisory practice is the main body of the work.
