My name is Jordan Koster and I am a workshop enthusiast. Leadership, communications, advertising, social media – I’ve done them all, and they’re all different.
One commonality I’ve found, however, is that in every full-day workshop, we reach the 2pm mark and I. Hit. The. Wall. My reasoning? I’ve been sitting in a bright room with that sterile, dentist-clinic vibe since 9am (I’m not a morning person, just ask my mum), with never-enough-and-horribly-instant coffee with only a five minute lunch break for you to scavenge the local neighbourhood (that you’re totally unfamiliar with) for food that isn’t Maccas. 2pm is the time where all those workshop inconveniences, the stress of that morning’s peak-hour traffic, and the lack of sleep I got worrying my alarm wouldn’t go off, catch up with me.
Hence, the wall.
So I just *knew*, walking into TDP for their Get Social Savvy workshop, that I had to make the most of it before I hit that 2pm slump. So I took my seat next to the total #bosslady wonder-human (AKA Cherie) and locked eyes with TDP’s infamous spaceship coffee machine. Having interned at TDP for the last three months, I was all too familiar with this contraption, but it had slipped my mind that they kept one in their workshop space. It was love at first cappuccino; it satisfied the caffeine-monster that stays with me until coffee #2. There was no instant-coffee-needing-four-sugars nonsense, but instead a delicious (albeit user-unfriendly) coffee machine. What did this mean to me, you ask?
Unlimited workshop coffee.
For a beach girl turned Melbourne coffee snob that has a minimum of three cups before lunch, this was total #workshopgoals.
(Oh, and also? This workshop started at 10am, which just *feels* doable for the morning-opposed).
So I sat down with my first coffee of the workshop and, like a seasoned workshopper and total nerd, I flicked through the booklet while waiting for everyone to arrive and settle in (I’m *always* early). You could feel TDP’s wealth of knowledge emanating from the booklet in a non-intimidating way. You knew that you would leave the workshop upskilled and confident in how to run your socials. It was a good feeling going into a seven hour workshop.
After friendly introductions and a warm welcome, Cherie took us on a sensational, relatable workshop educational. With pie-throwing anecdotes and nightclub analogies, Cherie taught us the social media musts, without making the task of managing socials seem *too* daunting.
In our lunch break (where we had time to move cars, make coffee #4 and eat the beautiful catered lunch) Cherie answered all of our questions, walked people through any content met with blank faces, and engaged with all of us workshop attendees like she cared about the businesses – because she does. Throughout the day, Cherie tailored the content to suit the businesses who showed up and were ready to show up on their socials. When walking us through Instagram stories she highlighted businesses that would *thrive* on stories. When talking about influencer marketing, she knew who it would be relevant to because she knew the businesses and their goals. She just *got* them, and I think they got WAY more from the workshop than they expected.
But what made it stand out to a seasoned workshopper was what Cherie was talking about at 2pm. It had to do with a mummy blog, a family tiff and a pie-throwing incident that went viral. I won’t go into the specifics because I couldn’t do it justice, but it was the transparency with which Cherie engaged with the workshop that had me leap over that 2pm wall. At the end of the workshop, I had the joy of replacing, “I survived!” with, “Wait, where did all the time go?”. I made it to the end of the workshop alert, caffeinated, attentive and wanting to learn more.
I could listen to Cherie and all the team at TDP talk for days, not only because they are engaging and interesting people but because they have an abundance of knowledge up their sleeves and are excited to share it with the world.
I left Get Social Savvy feeling inspired to amp up my socials, a little shaky from all the coffee, and confident that I knew how to nail my personal brand and organic content on socials.
So, to TDP? Thank you for making a workshoppers dreams come true.
#staycaffeinated