Sessions to the rescue

So, 2020 was the year the world changed, right?

There are very few people, if any, around the world who didn’t feel the impact of the pandemic on their work. As a consultant to corporate clients and business mentor to small businesses — oh my — my work changed beyond recognition.

All of a sudden, instead of meeting prospects for a chat over coffee, running group programs in swanky meeting rooms, and going into clients’ offices to discuss the next pieces of work, we were doing all of this through the little screen of laptops and sometimes phones.

And while everyone was grateful that we DID have the tools that existed in fledgling (and let’s face it, fairly clunky) form, it became quickly clear that my biggest need — running group & 1:1 workshops that facilitate maximum learning and convey maximum value to my clients were not met by those tools.

The lack of visible structure, the messy screen sharing, and having to send agendas by email are just some of the things that make it hard to run effective group and individual meetings and training sessions.

Delivering in a muddled way where I needed to piece together lots of different tech just does not provide a great participant experience — and does not fit my brand of high quality, high value.

So it was with utter delight that I happened to come across Sessions.

When I saw that just like in my face-to-face programs, I could meticulously plan my meetings and workshops, I was sold.

This simple aspect by itself has skyrocketed Sessions above the competition because now I can give my participants a real smooth experience:

• When they join, they can see the agenda straight away, letting them know what we are covering,
• At any point, they know exactly how we’re progressing — are all agenda points being covered?
• I can load documents, videos, and tools right into the app — all my clients were blown away by the fact that we can just move seamlessly from one topic to another, no more “can you see my screen?” or “oh, let me find the right tab”…!

And my clients love it.

It shows them that they are in safe hands because I come prepared.

That I make their lives easy because all the materials are right in the program — no hunting for links or sending them around via email

That they can be guaranteed a great experience that focuses on their progress, not the tech.

I now use Sessions for all my online workshops — whether that is coaching a group of experts on how to land corporate clients, mentoring a small business to scale, or brainstorming with experts on their business strategy.

For routine training sessions, the agenda templates are a massive time saver and being able to preload both training materials AND documents for participants to take away cuts through email clutter.

But what has really blown me away is the pace of development of the Sessions app. In the space of 12–18 months, the tool has gone from very good to amazing.

The team keeps adding more features — breakout rooms, forms, Miro, Videos, Canva, Airtable, and more are already there and make my online sessions work a delight.

Add to this an amazing responsive support team that helps me with any questions and (generally user-originated) errors, and you really have a rare gem in tech.

For me, Sessions is the must-have if you work online in any fashion with others — give it a go!