Frequently-Asked Questions

It replaces the guessing. Instead of a pile of advice with no order to it, you get one path laid out across twelve months, shaped by where you are starting from, so you can see what belongs in this quarter and what belongs in the next one. Most people who read it say the relief is less about learning something new and more about finally being able to stop holding all of it in their head at once.

Because the cost of a wrong order is measured in months, and months are the one thing you cannot get back. People rarely fail at this because they picked a bad idea. They fail because they spent the first half of the year on work that only pays off later, and the money ran out before the part that earns.

No. One of the six questions is whether you have one, and roughly half the people who fill this in do not. If you are in that half, your roadmap sends you somewhere different from the person who has already picked.

Then you are somewhere on the path already, and the roadmap is more useful, not less. Freelancers in particular tend to be much further along on one part and further behind on another, and seeing that laid out is usually the point where things start moving again.

About ninety seconds. Six questions, four of them multiple choice.

The roadmap is free and complete on its own. There is a free live workshop you will hear about, and a paid program that some people go on to apply for, and neither is required to get value out of what you are downloading here. If all you ever take is the roadmap, that is a perfectly good outcome.

We use it to send you your roadmap and to keep in touch about building a solo business. We never sell or share it, and every email has an unsubscribe link.

It gets you out of the waiting. Instead of hoping something arrives, you spend an hour working forward from evidence you already have, and you come out the other side holding three or four directions you could actually pursue. For most people the relief is less about learning something new and more about finally having something concrete to react to.

Because the raw material is invisible to the person carrying it. Fifteen years of being good at something makes that thing feel ordinary, which is exactly why you cannot see the business in it on your own. The worksheet is a set of questions that make the obvious parts visible again, in an order that goes somewhere.

Most of them do not, at first glance. That is the point of step three. The pattern holds across operations, finance, legal, engineering, design and marketing, because you are looking for the person whose problem you solved rather than for a version of your job title that already exists as a company.

No, and it is often better if you have not. Doing this while the paycheck is still landing means you can choose on the merits rather than choosing whatever might bring money in fastest.

About an hour, and it is worth doing in one sitting. Step one usually takes the longest, because remembering what people actually came to you for is harder than it sounds.

The worksheet is free and complete on its own. There is a free live workshop you will hear about, and a paid program some people go on to apply for, and neither is required to get value out of what you are downloading here. If all you ever take is the worksheet, that is a perfectly good outcome.

We use it to send you the worksheet and to keep in touch about building a solo business. We never sell or share it, and every email has an unsubscribe link.

Free. No card at registration, no card at any point during the session, and no upgrade required to get the recording. The workshop exists because a portion of the people who attend eventually apply to Plan A, and that is the entire business model behind it.

Register anyway. Everyone on the list gets the recording within 24 hours and it stays available for a week. You will miss the last 20 minutes of live questions, which is where most of the value sits for people who already have candidates, so come live if you can choose.

This is the session built for you specifically. Roughly half of every group arrives with nothing, and the first half of the workshop is designed to be run from a blank page. The registration form asks which camp you are in so the follow up matches your situation.

Sometimes, and that is worth an hour of anybody’s time. More often it survives in a narrower and more specific form than the one you walked in with. Either way you leave knowing where it stands instead of hoping.

No. Cameras are optional and most people keep them off. Questions can be typed in the chat and asked on your behalf, so you can put a real situation in front of the group without appearing on camera.

A list of business ideas is attached to nobody. It cannot know what you have been paid to do, who you can reach, or what you would refuse to spend the next 5 years on. Everything in this session comes out of your own history, which is why you leave with 1 direction you believe in rather than 30 you do not.

The teaching portion is recorded. If you ask a question out loud during the last 20 minutes it is in the recording, so keep anything confidential out of it, or send it through the chat instead. Nothing you write in the registration form is ever shared or published.

Once a month, same format. If this date does not work, register anyway and you will be told about the next one. The material changes as the questions change, so a later session is not a worse session.

Start where you are stuck, not at number 1 out of tidiness. If you cannot name what you sell, start with the expertise business model, because every other toolkit assumes you have answered it. If you know what you sell but not who buys it, start with the niche. If you have both and no customers, start with closing. Once you know what you sell and who buys it, social media content is how you put it in front of buyers every week without an ad budget.

A downloadable document you work through, with worksheets and templates included. Length varies by subject, because they are written to be complete rather than to hit a page count. None of them is padded, and none of them is a summary.

Not at once. Most people buy 1, use it, and come back for the next one when they hit the next wall. The set exists because the discount is real: it saves you $345 on buying all 6 one at a time.

What you already paid comes off the price of the set. Nobody pays for the same thing twice here.

Annual plans include them. Both annual plans unlock all 6 after your first 30 days. Monthly members unlock 1 Toolkit for each month they stay.

These are instant downloads, so the sale is final. If you buy the wrong one, tell us within 7 days and we will usually put what you paid toward the right one instead. We do this once per customer. That is exactly why every toolkit page states the failure it prevents and who it is not for before you reach the button. If a page has not convinced you it applies to your situation, do not buy it.

No, and most buyers are not. They are written for somebody working evenings and weekends around a job, which is when the runway and the content questions matter most.

They are built on how markets, buyers and solo operations behave, rather than on whichever platform or tool is current, so the substance holds for years rather than months. If a toolkit is revised substantially enough to be a new edition, that edition is sold separately and you will hear about it first.

Possibly, and it is not what we promise. A customer is not ours to hand you. What we count instead is the number of real conversations you had with real potential buyers, because that is in your control, we can both see it, and it is the thing that brings a customer in the end anyway.

You have income, which is not the same thing. A business keeps earning when you stop, because it has a niche, a repeatable offer and a way of being found. Freelancing usually has none of those, which is why every month starts at zero and why work arrives through whoever happens to remember you. Plan A is often a sharper fit for freelancers than for people still employed, because you have already found out the expensive way that picking a service is not the same as picking a market.

No. That is Path B, and it is the reason this program exists. Finding the idea is the first week of the work.

Yes, and most people do. The fixed commitment is 2 hours a week, in 2 sessions you schedule before you start, and we will put them where they actually fit around a job. Everything else happens on your own time. Budget real hours for the work between sessions though, not leftover ones.

You start as soon as we accept you, and your own 8 weeks begin then, so there is nothing to wait for.

Your first month of Uncommon Mentorship starts the week after you finish, on the 2 session plan. After that month you can continue on either plan or stop, and nothing renews unless you choose it.

A course hands you frameworks and leaves. This is 16 hours of live 1:1 time plus your work read and marked up between sessions. If a video library were enough, the failure rate in this category would not be what it is.

The refund scale on the Refund Policy page is published in full and honored without a conversation about staying. You can also pause once and pick it back up within 6 months.

No. We review every application against the same 4 questions you use in week 1 to test ideas, and we say yes only when your answers show you are ready to do the work.

No. You can start a plan right away, or book a free 30-minute trial call first if you want to talk it through.

A marketplace lists thousands of mentors, and each one sets their own method and price. Every mentor here runs a solo business, charges the same plan prices and works from the same framework as Plan A.

The 2 session plan is $199 a month and the 4 session plan is $399 a month. Annual plans cost 12 months at the monthly rate and include Uncommon Toolkits, released after your first 30 days. You can add a single session for $99 in any month.

Yes. Your new plan starts at your next billing date.

Unused sessions expire at the end of each billing month. If your mentor cancels a session, it is rescheduled.

Give 24 hours’ notice and you can reschedule it within the same month. A session missed without notice counts as used.

Yes. Monthly plans can be cancelled at any time before your next billing date, and you keep access until the end of the month you paid for. Annual plans refund in full within 30 days. After 30 days the year is non-refundable, and you can switch off renewal at any time.

Tickets for Uncommon Salons, Summit and Retreats are sold separately. Mentorship members get first booking on all of them.

It depends what you bought. Toolkits are delivered in full at purchase, so those sales are final. Annual mentorship plans refund in full within 30 days, and monthly plans can be cancelled before the next billing date. Plan A follows a sliding scale across the first three weeks. The full detail is on the Refund Policy page.

Card, through our checkout. Plan A can be paid in full or in installments. Mentorship is billed monthly or annually. Everything is priced in US dollars.

Toolkits, yes. Once you buy one it is yours, including any updates we publish to it. Mentorship access lasts as long as your plan does. Plan A includes lifetime access to its materials.

There is a bundle discount on the full set of six toolkits. We do not run sales on individual products, because it is unfair to everyone who paid full price the week before. If cost is the only thing standing between you and the work, email us.

All 6 Uncommon Toolkits and the complete set are on sale now. Plan A is taking applications, and Uncommon Mentorship is open now. The free tools and The Shortlist cost nothing.

Yes. Pricing, positioning, finding customers and running a business of one work the same way almost everywhere. The exceptions are tax, company structure and health insurance, which are local to you, and we say so wherever it comes up rather than pretending otherwise.