Free tool
What one mastermind seat actually pays you
Enter your seat price, cohort size and the losses you already know about, and see the collected number instead of the advertised one.
Free tool, no sign up
Does every member get a hot seat before the cohort ends?
Put in your call rhythm and room size and see how many turns each member gets and how long she waits between them.
The most common design fault in a twelve month mastermind is arithmetic. A facilitator books two calls a month, gives forty five minutes to hot seats, runs a generous twenty five minute seat, and then wonders why members with ten in the room feel like nothing is happening for them. The answer is that the calendar only holds so many turns, and with a large room those turns are spread thin enough that a member can wait a whole quarter.
This planner runs that arithmetic before you sell the seat. It also totals the monthly hours you personally spend on hot seat time and member prep, which is the part coaches underestimate when they add a second cohort.
Your result
Hot seats the calendar holds
48
Total hot seat slots across the whole term at this call rhythm.
Hot seat turns per member
6.0
Below one means somebody will finish the term without a turn.
Weeks a member waits between turns
8.7
Past eight or nine weeks, members start to feel like an audience.
Your monthly hours on seats and prep
4.2
Hot seat time in the room plus the prep and follow up behind it.
If turns per member drops below two across a twelve month room, either shorten the seat, add a call or cut a chair.
The number that predicts month four attendance
Members do not leave because the content was thin. They leave because nothing in the room was about them for a long stretch. When the wait between turns runs past two months, a founder starts treating the call as optional, then misses one for a client meeting, then two, and by the time you notice she has already decided. The waiting interval is the earliest warning you get, and you can calculate it before the cohort starts.
If the planner shows a long wait, you have four levers: fewer seats, more calls, shorter hot seats, or a second format such as a paired accountability slot in the weeks between. The last one is the cheapest, but it only works if the pairing is assigned and tracked rather than suggested.
What a second cohort really costs your week
The monthly hours figure includes only hot seat time in the room and the prep and follow up per member. It leaves out selling, invoicing, the teaching portion of a call and the private messages that hold the room together, so treat it as a floor rather than a total. Doubling the room by adding a second cohort roughly doubles that floor.
This is where facilitators discover the ceiling of their own model. Two rooms of ten with twice monthly calls is a full delivery load before you have sold a single seat for next year. If the arithmetic says you cannot carry it, the honest options are a higher seat price with fewer rooms, or a co facilitator, not a promise to work faster.
Questions about this calculator
How long should one hot seat actually run?
Most facilitators land between fifteen and twenty five minutes for a room of eight to ten. Shorter than fifteen and the framed question never becomes a decision. Longer than twenty five and you have run a private coaching session with an audience, which is a different product from the one you sold.
Is it better to give fewer members longer seats?
It depends on what you promised at the screening call. If members bought the room for the turn, a shorter seat that arrives more often protects retention better than a long one that arrives twice a year. If they bought it for the network and the teaching, the calculation changes.
Can I count a group problem solving segment as a hot seat?
Only if one named member owns the question and leaves with a stated commitment. Open discussion is valuable, but it does not satisfy the expectation that every seat gets its turn. Keep the two on the agenda separately so the rotation stays honest.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The cohort seat setup checklist, start to month twelve
Everything that has to be decided, written or scheduled before eight women founders pay you for a year in the same room.
Take that number into the cohort
You have a figure now. Holding it true through month twelve means someone has to catch the failed installment in week three and the member who has been waiting five months for a hot seat. Book a demo and we will show you the roster view that puts both in front of you in the ninety seconds before a call starts.