The session kit
The whole session, written out, so you can run it without me.
Everything below is what happens in the forty-five minutes: the promises that open it, the line that starts it, the 7 kinds of answer you will hear back, what to say when it lands close to home, how to debrief it, and what to send three days later.
Most of it does not change with the topic. The promises, the clock, the ground rules, the debrief and the Tuesday note are the same session whichever conversation you run; only the line, the topic word and the response card belong to a particular one. So this page shows the money conversation as the worked example — the one whose every word has been reviewed — and you can choose different ones and get the same kit built around them.
There is no licence and nothing to sign. There is no dashboard, no login, no licence, no seat, no group report. Take it, run it, charge for it, put your own name on the session — it is your room and they are your people.
Nobody has run this yet. It has been written and not tested, and 9 things in it have not been confirmed by the person who wrote the session. Those are marked where they appear and listed in full at the end, because a facilitator running a draft should find that out from this page rather than from a room.
A plain text file, generated from the same source as this page, so the two cannot say different things. It pastes into an email or a document with nothing installed.
The three promises. Say these first.
This is the only part of the session with fixed words, and it is the part that makes the rest of it safe to run.
- Nothing here is recorded unless I have told you otherwise and you have agreed. I am taking written notes on what people say, because that is genuinely useful, and those notes have no names attached.
- You will not be asked to share anything about your own relationship or your own money. The situation we are working with is made up, and I am the one playing it.
- If something in this hits close to home, you do not have to say anything. You can turn your camera off, you can sit it out, you can leave, and nobody will follow up asking why.
Say these in your own register, but do not trim them and do not hurry them. If your session IS being recorded, replace the first one with what is actually true — including who will see it and how long it is kept — and do not soften it.
The run of show.
Assume five minutes lost at the front. Never compress the debrief. Every block says where its wording came from, so you can go and disagree with it.
0:00
Frame and consent
The host introduces you, briefly. Then the three promises, in the words on the consent card.
Then say the thing that makes the rest of it work: nobody is being put on the spot, and we are going to listen to one conversation and talk about how it went.
D-F §2, the consent script. Close to John’s own words.
0:04
Why this oneNot confirmed
Money is not the hardest conversation because of the numbers. It is hard because of what the numbers reveal — how someone was raised, what they are ashamed of, and what they think a partner owes them.
One short concrete example. No statistics you cannot source on the spot.
D-E §4, reconstruction.
Still open: Five minutes of framing before anything happens is a long time in a forty-five minute room. Does this survive contact with a real group, or does the line want to land sooner?
0:09
The line, liveNot confirmed
Read it in role, once, without preamble. Then one question to the room, and nothing else: what is the first thing you would say?
Everyone writes their answer down before anybody hears anybody else’s. Collect them before you comment on any of them.
Line from the reviewed scenario. Everything around it, reconstruction.
Still open: HOW the answers are collected is not a detail — it decides whether "nobody knows which one was yours" is true, and the site already promises it. A public chat breaks the promise to the whole room, and a private message to the host breaks it to the one person with the ongoing relationship. The only collection methods that keep it are anonymous ones: paper in a room, or a form that carries no name.
0:17
What the answers revealNot confirmed
Read them back without names, grouped by the kind of move they were. Use the response card.
Say it clearly, and more than once: there is no correct answer here. The useful question is whether what you said matches what you say you value.
Nobody is asked to own theirs out loud. If somebody volunteers, that is theirs to do.
D-E §4 and §3; the classes themselves are the engine’s.
Still open: Ten minutes to sort and read back a room’s worth of answers. Realistic for eight people; probably not for thirty. What is the group size this is written for?
0:27
The gapNot confirmed
The one insight of the session, and it is delivered as a question rather than a verdict: if you rate financial responsibility as one of the things that matters most to you, and your first response reassured without asking a single thing, what does that gap tell you?
Not a diagnosis. A thing to be curious about.
D-E §4, reconstruction. The mechanic matches the report engine.
Still open: The written rehearsal asks the value question BEFORE the conversation, so the gap is measurable. A live room has not been asked anything beforehand. Does the live session need a one-question show of hands at 0:04, or is the gap only ever hypothetical out loud?
0:36
The bridge, and it is youNot confirmed
Where this goes next is a real conversation with a real person, and in this room that person is the host. Name them.
This is not a courtesy. They have the ongoing relationship and the duty of care, and a visiting voice that keeps the room’s attention has taken something that was not on offer.
D-E §4 and knowledge/architecture/ai-bridge-principle.md. Wording is a reconstruction.
Still open: When the host is running it themselves there is no visitor to hand back FROM. Does this become the moment they name the next session, or does it disappear?
0:42
Close, and the two questionsNot confirmed
Thank them. Ask the debrief questions live if there is time, and send them the same day if there is not.
End on time whether or not it felt finished. Overrunning somebody else’s evening is not a way to earn their trust.
D-E §4 and §5, reconstruction.
The line.
Read it once, in role, without preamble. This wording is reviewed script — it is the same sentence the written rehearsal uses.
Before this goes any further, there's something you should know. I've got about forty thousand in debt. Some of it's student loans. Some of it isn't.
Then one question to the room, and nothing else: what is the first thing you would say? Everyone writes their answer down before anybody hears anybody else’s. Collect them all before you comment on any of them.
The 7 kinds of first answer.
Sort what the room said into these and read them back without names. Label the move, never the person. These are the same categories the written rehearsal uses, which is why the two can be run in the same week without contradicting each other.
- You asked about the size of it
- Establishes the scale before reacting, and signals you want facts before feelings.
- You asked how it happened
- Invites the story, which usually matters more to the other person than the number does.
- You asked what happens next
- Moves to responsibility and the future rather than blame and the past.
- You reassured them first
- Protects the connection in the moment. It also closes the topic before anything is known.
- You responded critically
- Communicates a standard clearly, and puts the other person on the defensive at the same time.
- You moved away from it
- Relieves the discomfort in the room. It also leaves the disclosure unanswered.
- You named a limit
- Makes your position knowable, which is a real service to the other person.
3 of the 7 are questions. The other 4 are not. That is the whole observation, and the wording above is the second person because it is lifted from the rehearsal’s own report rather than written twice.
The 7 kinds generalise to any disclosure. These particular sentences do not — every one of them was written for the money conversation. If you run a different one, this is a card to translate rather than a card to read, and nobody has translated it yet.
Say it more than once, in these words or your own: there is no correct answer. The useful question is whether what you said matches what you say you value.
The rules that hold while the room is running.
No named notes. Anything you keep afterwards carries no name, no email and no identifying detail. If somebody says something that identifies them, it does not go in the notes.
No quoting anyone afterwards without asking that person directly, in writing, after the session. Not "does anyone mind if I quote the group".
Do not diagnose. Not the people, not their relationships. The language is "we noticed", "it sounded like", "I wonder whether". Never "you have a pattern of".
You see who came. You do not see whose answer was whose. Say that out loud — it is the reason they will answer honestly instead of performing an answer for the room.
No pressure to speak. Silence is participation.
When it lands close to home.Not confirmed
Somebody will say "this is exactly what happened to me." Plan for it, because it is the moment the session stops being a workshop.
Acknowledge it briefly and without alarm. Do not explore it. The failure mode is not saying too little — it is turning the group into an audience for one person.
Move the room on. Coming back to it publicly makes it worse.
Afterwards, if it warranted it, one private follow-up that points at a real person. Usually you, because you are the one with the ongoing relationship.
If anything suggests genuine risk of harm, it stops being a workshop moment entirely. Direct them to real help and follow whatever duty of care you carry. A rehearsal is not equipped for that and neither is a facilitator running one.
What to actually say
A principle is not much use to somebody with three seconds and a room watching them. The principles above are John’s; these four sentences are not — nothing in his notes supplies a line to say out loud, and these were written to fill that gap. They are the highest-stakes wording in the kit and he has not read them.
- "Thank you for saying that. I am not going to ask you anything else about it here." Then move.
- "That is a real thing, and this is not the room for it. Find me afterwards if you want to."
- If they keep going: "I want to give that the attention it needs, and I cannot do that here. Can we talk after?"
- To the room, once, if it has gone quiet: "That happens. It is why we practise on a made-up person."
The debrief.
Ask the room, live if there is time and by message the same day if there is not.
What surprised you about your own first response?
Was there a moment you wanted to say something and did not?
Would you do this again with a different topic? Which one?
Would you recommend it to a friend?
What would have made this more useful?
And two you answer yourself, honestly, because they are the only two that decide whether any of this becomes a product.
Would you run this again for your people?
Would you pay for a version you could run yourself, without John?
The Tuesday after.Not confirmed
One session and then a gap is not a programme. This is the part that makes it one, and it is entirely yours to send — nothing comes from us, nobody is added to anything, and your people never hear from John again unless they write to him.
It cannot go back to what any one person wrote. In the written rehearsal nothing anybody types is kept at all — not by us, not by you. In the room, whatever is collected must carry no name into anything you keep, and it is never handed to a leader or a partner. Weeks later there is nothing to look up.
That is not something being withheld from you. It is the reason they answered honestly rather than performing an answer, and every question below is built so it can be asked without it. If a couple wants to compare what they each said, that has to be their decision, in their own time.
Send this three to five days later, in your name
Then, at your next ordinary session
Three questions about the experience rather than the content. Every one of them can be answered without disclosing a single thing anybody wrote down.
What surprised you about your own first response?
Was there a moment you wanted to say something and did not?
Has the first thing you would say changed since?
After that it is the next conversation, and which one that is depends on your people rather than on us. There is a list of the candidates, most of them unwritten, and telling John which one you would actually use is the whole mechanism by which one gets written.
What you may do with this.
Run it. As often as you like, for whoever you like, with or without telling anyone.
Put your own name on the session. It is your room and your people.
Charge for it, or fold it into what your clients already pay you.
Print it, cut it up, rewrite it in your own words, translate it.
Say publicly that it was not useful. That is a result too, and a more useful one than politeness.
And the two things that must not change
Both are safety rather than ownership, and neither is enforceable — which is exactly why they are a request to a professional rather than a clause.
The three promises at the start. Not the wording — the substance. Recording, nobody asked about their own life, and permission to sit it out.
Nobody is asked to disclose their own money or their own relationship. The moment a facilitator asks a real couple to talk about their real debt in front of a room, this is a different exercise with different risks, and none of the thinking here covers it.
Not confirmed: the 9 open questions.
Written down rather than smoothed over. This list is generated from the same records as everything above, so a question that gets settled disappears from it rather than sitting here going stale.
The clock itself
Two different run-of-shows exist for the same forty-five minutes. This one follows D-E §4; the version that shipped on the facilitators page had eight segments on different minutes. Neither has been run. Which is it?
The disclosure line for the money conversation
Two wordings exist. The reviewed scenario says "Before this goes any further, there's something you should know. I've got about forty thousand in debt. Some of it's student loans. Some of it isn't." and D-E §4 says "Before this relationship becomes more serious, I need to tell you that I have substantial credit-card and student debt." A live room and the browser rehearsal should not be hearing different sentences.
What to say when it lands close to home
The principles are John’s. The four literal lines are not — nothing in the source documents supplies a sentence to say out loud, and these were written to fill that gap. They are the highest-stakes wording in the kit and they need his ear.
The Tuesday note and the bring-back questions
Entirely new. Nothing like this exists in the plan or the phase-one documents. Two of the three bring-back questions are debrief questions from D-E §5; the note itself and the third question are proposals.
0:04 — Why this one
Five minutes of framing before anything happens is a long time in a forty-five minute room. Does this survive contact with a real group, or does the line want to land sooner?
0:09 — The line, live
HOW the answers are collected is not a detail — it decides whether "nobody knows which one was yours" is true, and the site already promises it. A public chat breaks the promise to the whole room, and a private message to the host breaks it to the one person with the ongoing relationship. The only collection methods that keep it are anonymous ones: paper in a room, or a form that carries no name.
0:17 — What the answers reveal
Ten minutes to sort and read back a room’s worth of answers. Realistic for eight people; probably not for thirty. What is the group size this is written for?
0:27 — The gap
The written rehearsal asks the value question BEFORE the conversation, so the gap is measurable. A live room has not been asked anything beforehand. Does the live session need a one-question show of hands at 0:04, or is the gap only ever hypothetical out loud?
0:36 — The bridge, and it is you
When the host is running it themselves there is no visitor to hand back FROM. Does this become the moment they name the next session, or does it disappear?
If you would rather watch one before you run one, John will co-host the first one with your people and then get out of the way.
Every artifact in this kit hands back to you. The rehearsal, the note, the questions, the room — all of it exists to get somebody to a person who knows them, and you are that person. If any of it starts holding on to somebody it should have handed on, that is a fault and worth telling John about.