Mara · Corporate Brochure

Mara. Performance under pressure.

Watch the film at thesessionlab.com

01 · The cost of the problem

The cost of the problem.

Senior communication failure is not a soft cost. It is a hard line on the P&L, and it shows up in every market. In the United States it drains over a trillion dollars a year. In the United Kingdom workplace conflict alone, most of it communication, runs to tens of billions. Across Europe the pattern is identical: the same wasted hours, the same stalled decisions, the same lost deals. The most expensive version sits at the top: the leader who is capable when calm and loses it when the room turns. The pitch that does not land. The board that is not carried. And the team that quietly fails, since leadership and team breakdown ends nearly a quarter of all startups.

$1.2tn

Lost every year · US

US businesses, to poor communication. Grammarly · Harris.

£28.5bn

Lost every year · UK

UK workplace conflict, most of it communication. ACAS.

$12.5k

Per employee, per year

The measured cost of miscommunication, in every market. Grammarly · Harris.

1 in 5

Leaders have lost a deal

Business or a pitch lost directly to poor communication. Grammarly.

1 in 3

CEO transitions fail

Within eighteen months. Cause: communication. HBR.

75%

Of senior executives

Carry a hidden fear of high stakes speaking. Chapman.

58

Investors per seed round

Forty detailed meetings, twelve plus weeks to close. Harvard Business School and DocSend.

23%

Of startups die

From leadership and team issues: vision, communication, the ability to scale. Wilbur Labs.

10 sec

Predicts the investment

Brain signals in the first ten seconds of a pitch predicted investor interest and amount, above self report. Neuroforecasting research.

What organisations currently spend

Global executive coaching market

$15bn / year

US corporate L&D spend

$370bn / year

Senior executive coach (FTSE)

£750 to £1,000 / hour

BetterUp · CoachHub (AI plus human)

£5k to £12k / seat / year

L&D communication workshop

£5k to £10k / day

Mara · annual licence · unlimited sessions · scales with your team

£900 / seat / year

Client testimonial

“Mara has completely changed how I communicate and has become my go to communication coach.”

“Mara has been an absolute game changer in how I show up and communicate with prospects, customers and the C suite. Prior to using this unique online coaching tool, my pitch was too long and I struggled to drive my message home.”

“By practising on Mara, I receive invaluable feedback that I have never received from any of my real life coaches in the past. The AI driven software evaluates wording, breathing, pauses, posture and tonality, and identifies exactly where I need to improve to communicate like a pro.”

“You can practise your pitch in the comfort of your own home or office, with continual feedback on where to improve, until your message is on point. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their communication skills.”

David Homewood · Regional Vice President of Sales · Faro

For investors and the boards that back founders

The variable that predicts the cheque, and nobody is measuring it.

Fundraising is brutally inefficient, and every weak pitch compounds it. Closing a single seed round takes presenting to around fifty eight investors, forty detailed meetings, and over twelve weeks. Team and leadership failure is one of the largest causes of startup death. And the research is now blunt about why: how a founder performs in the room, measurably, predicts the cheque.

"Take one portfolio company that fails to raise its next round because the founder could not carry the room, and crumbled under pressure. Now ask how many of your founders you would honestly back to walk into a hostile board or a competitive term sheet negotiation and come out ahead. The ones you hesitated on are your exposure. Coaching that variable costs a fraction of one written off position, and right now nobody is even measuring it."

The cost of weak founder communication to a venture investor is not a coaching line item. It is portfolio risk that is currently unmeasured and unmanaged. Every other risk in the book gets monitored: financial, legal, market. The one variable that demonstrably predicts whether a founder raises, at what valuation, and on what terms, is the one nobody has tooling for. That is the gap Mara fills, and it is why this is a platform decision, not a training purchase.

02 · The platform

What does Mara do?

Mara is a set of coaching rooms, a meeting layer, and three complete courses. Every session is private, scored where scoring belongs, and saved to the leader's own dashboard. You see aggregate engagement and the outcome arc. You never see the content of a session.

i · Coaching Room

Executive coaching, on demand.

Coaching on the live situation: the pitch, the difficult conversation, articulation, storytelling, presence, holding the room. The call without booking the call.

ii · Practise Room

Rehearsed on camera.

They rehearse the pitch, the presentation, the public moment. Camera and microphone on, scored across six dimensions, every take saved. Mara coaches the next delivery.

iii · Off the Record · Private

The conversations they have nowhere else.

A private, judgment free space, trained in psychology, NLP and proven coaching methods. For the difficult conversation, the hard decision, the moment that knocked them, or simply to confide and resolve it. Nothing leaves the room. Shred any time. Never reported, never scored.

iv · Mindset & Breathing

Regulation, scheduled like meetings.

Reset patterns from two to twenty minutes, plus the ten minute pre performance warm up. For the carpark before. For the day that has already gone wrong.

v · Voice training

Range, breath and projection.

A focused warm up for the public moment: the panel, the keynote, the camera. The voice that carries the room, trained before they walk in.

vi · Mara Teams

Coaching for the team, not just the leader.

The layer that works on how the team communicates together, built on the meetings they already have. Relationships get clearer, decisions get faster, the work compounds.

Flagship

vii · Meeting Observer

She listens to the meeting, and records nothing.

Two ways to use her. Hand Mara a transcript, or let her listen live to the meeting itself. In live mode she transcribes nothing and records nothing: she listens, observes the communication as it happens, and hands back a detailed report. Who held the floor and who conceded it, where the decision actually got made, how each person showed up under pressure. Each member receives a private debrief in their own space, and the team gets a coaching protocol for the weeks ahead. No new meetings. No observer in the room. No transcript to leak.

Plus three complete curricula: Be Heard, fifty six guided sessions on workplace communication. Performance, sixty lessons on presence, connection and live delivery. And the signature: The Programme, the complete sixteen session ICOP arc across ninety days. All delivered by Mara, calibrated to each leader's seniority and block type.

New in Mara · For every leader

The communication test.

Before the coaching deepens, each leader takes a six minute test that reveals how they communicate and how they hold up under pressure. It gives Mara the profile she coaches to, and gives the leader a result worth keeping.

New feature

The communication test

Two codes, one type, and the edge to work on.

In about six minutes each leader gets a Communication Code for how they express, influence and connect, a Performance Code for how they hold up under pressure, and the overall type they fuse into. Not a personality quiz: a coaching roadmap that trains Mara to coach the real person in every room.

Two four letter codes and a named overall type, theirs to keep
Built on the ICOP Method and the Performance State Method
Sharpens over time as Mara observes real sessions
Aggregate communication styles roll up to the team view, individual results stay private

03 · Under the hood

What sits beneath every session.

Past the rooms and the courses: the measurement that proves the work, the intelligence that personalises it to each leader, and the safety architecture that lets your people, and your legal team, trust it.

01 · Measurement and evidence

The proof, accumulating.

Six scored dimensions every session: Pace, Vocal Range, Energy, Clarity, Presence, Impact
The recordings library: every take saved, the session one baseline permanently archived
Side by side comparison: week one next to now, objective video evidence of change
Video upload with timestamped AI feedback on recordings from the real world
Auto generated reports, weekly and monthly, in Mara's voice, in app and by email
Session journal and free text goals, the documented development record

02 · The intelligence layer

Why no two people get the same coach.

Five tier seniority reading: the CEO is never coached like an individual contributor
Real time calibration from the first three exchanges: language, pace, processing channel
Five block types diagnosed: State, Clarity, Authority, Pattern, Transition
ESL Leaders framework: two extra dimensions, Fluency Under Pressure and Personality Transfer
Inter session memory: patterns, goals, upcoming events, the last edge, carried forward
Calendar context: Mara opens by referencing the real event in the diary

03 · Safety and trust

Built for scrutiny.

Four level safety protocol: from holding light emotional charge to immediate crisis referral
Honest scope: Mara is a performance coach, not a clinician, and says so
Individual consent and organisational DPA before anything is analysed
Audit log of every administrative action
Aggregate only reporting: engagement and trajectory to you, content to no one

04 · The methodology

A method, not a feature list.

Every room and every course expresses the same framework: the ICOP Method, the four stage somatic coaching arc developed by Session across eighteen years of professional performance, psychology and executive coaching practice. What blocks senior people in high stakes communication is not just a lack of skill. It is a nervous system response. ICOP addresses both layers, in sequence, every session.

I

Identify

Diagnose the block. Every block has a structural signature. Mara names it inside the first session.

→

C

Clear

Regulate the nervous system response. The stage every other coaching product skips.

→

O

Outer skill

Coach technique on top of the regulated state, so it holds under pressure permanently.

→

P

Presence

Install the portable anchor. By the end of the arc, the state is on call without Mara in the room.

The method was built in real rooms, with real stakes.
Session has worked with leaders at Netflix · Deutsche Bank · Channel 4 · Vodafone · Hilton · Sky · BBC · HBO · Audible

Everything a speaking course covers

Everything they expect, and the part they cannot get.

Everything a public speaking course promises is inside the Signature Programme: managing nerves, structure and openings, vocal delivery, body language, storytelling, handling Q and A, and virtual presenting. The difference is what happens next. Leaders do not watch a lecture and hand in a speech. They practise their real moments on camera, in live role play, and Mara coaches their actual voice and presence in the room, not a hypothetical on a stage.

05 · What your organisation gets

The work shows up where the business can see it.

Mara is not a workshop that fades by the next board cycle. It is a coach your leaders reach for every week, a set of courses that build the skill underneath, voice and camera work for the public moment, and a meeting layer that turns the conversations your team already has into the clearest picture of how they communicate you have ever held. Communication strengthens. Relationships hold. And for the first time, you can see it happen.

For every leader

Coaching that strengthens how they show up.

Voice, presence, storytelling, the difficult conversation, authority on screen. Coached live, scored across six dimensions every session, tracked from the first baseline to now. The leader who froze in the board meeting carries the room. The one who avoided the hard conversation has it.

Mara Meeting Observer

She listens, and transcribes nothing.

Mara works from a transcript, or she listens live to the meeting itself. In live mode she transcribes nothing and records nothing: she observes the communication and hands back a detailed report on how the team really talks. Who holds the floor, who concedes it, where the decision got made. Each member receives a private debrief, and the team gets a coaching protocol for the weeks ahead.

The report you receive

The communication data HR has never had.

An aggregate read of how your team actually communicates when the stakes are real, built on the Five Systems of Presence. Where the team is strong, where it concedes, how the dynamics move across the programme. Not sentiment scores. The first hard evidence of a soft skill.

The courses

Three complete curricula, always on.

Be Heard, fifty six guided sessions on workplace communication. Performance, sixty lessons on presence and live delivery. The Programme, the sixteen session ICOP arc across ninety days. All calibrated to each leader, all there the moment they want them.

The movement, dimension by dimension

An illustrative cohort arc across the six scored dimensions, week one to programme end. The kind of movement participants feel in the room, made visible.

Clarity

52 → 81

Presence

48 → 84

Vocal Range

55 → 79

Energy

50 → 77

Pace

58 → 82

Impact

45 → 86

Week oneProgramme end

What you see, and what stays private

Six

Scored every session

Pace, Vocal Range, Energy, Clarity, Presence, Impact. Objective movement, baseline to now, not a self report.

Five

Systems of presence

The team read: State, Signal, Clarity, Attention, Authority, tracked meeting to meeting as the dynamics shift.

Private

Content stays theirs

You see engagement, the outcome arc and the team report. You never see anyone coaching content. That boundary is why the data exists at all.

Start with a pilot

Five to ten leaders, ninety days, £300 a seat. Every pound is credited to your annual licence the moment you continue. A ten leader pilot is £3,000, and one round carried or one relationship repaired pays for it many times over.

06 · The numbers, live

Run the ROI on your own cohort.

Move the sliders. The model is deliberately conservative: it counts only the cost of a single failed senior promotion and the coaching spend you would otherwise commit, and sets both against your Mara pilot and full licence, priced per seat so they scale with your team. The return is communication that holds and relationships that strengthen across the cohort. Use it before any internal budget conversation.

And a human coach is only as good as the match. Traditional coaching can spend its first sessions building rapport, and a personality mismatch wastes the whole engagement. Mara removes the compatibility gamble: it calibrates to each leader from the first exchange, coaches consistently from session one, and never has an off day.

Your cohort

Cohort size Senior leaders whose communication carries financial or strategic weight.

25

Average fully loaded salary Per cohort member, including bonus and on costs.

£180,000

Executive coach hourly rate you would otherwise pay FTSE senior coach benchmark: £750 to £1,000 an hour.

£875

Coaching hours per leader per year, the human alternative A typical senior engagement: one hour a fortnight.

24

What the model says

Equivalent human coaching spend / year

£0

Your cohort, at your coach rate, at the human cadence.

Cost of one failed senior promotion

£0

Conservatively 1.5 times salary: search, ramp, lost momentum. One in three senior transitions fails on communication.

Mara pilot · 90 days · fully creditable

£0

Your whole cohort for the full ninety days. Every pound credited to the annual licence the moment you continue.

Mara full licence / year

£0

Unlimited sessions, every room, all three curricula, the portal, Mara Teams and the renewal pack included. Priced per seat, so it scales with your team.

Coaching coverage ratio

0×

What the same budget buys in coaching availability: every leader, unlimited sessions, all year, against the booked human hour.

The model deliberately excludes the harder to attribute lines: the discount applied to an underprepared pitch, the deal that went quiet after the board meeting, the regretted attrition under a leader who avoids hard conversations. If any of those numbers belong in your case, the argument only strengthens. Figures update live; nothing you enter here is stored or transmitted.

07 · The category

The others are scoreboards. Mara is a coach.

Mara is not a transcription tool, a coaching marketplace, or a communication app. It is a performance platform built on eighteen years of applied performance direction and behavioural science, available the moment you need it.

	Poised / Yoodli Transcription based "coaching"	BetterUp Human coaching platform	CoachHub Human coaching platform	Mara Performance Engineering
What it actually measures
Real audio and video signal analysis Processing the actual voice and presence signal, not a transcript of words	✕ Transcript derived only. Word counts and keyword frequency presented as communication metrics.	~ Human coach perception. No signal processing.	~ Human coach perception. No signal processing.	✓ On device. Measures the actual voice and presence signal, not a transcript.
On device processing Raw audio and video never leaves the their device	✕ Audio sent to cloud for transcription.	✕ Cloud hosted sessions.	✕ Cloud hosted sessions.	✓ Processing stays on device. Signal data never transmitted.
Pacing, tone, and presence data Genuine biometric markers vs word per minute estimates	✕ Pacing calculated from transcript timing. Filler words counted from text. No acoustic analysis.	~ Coach observation only. Subjective.	~ Coach observation only. Subjective.	✓ Voice waveform, resonance, and presence markers measured directly from signal.
Coaching depth and method
Proprietary performance framework A structured method, not a generic conversation or a transcript summary	✕ No coaching methodology. Metric dashboard only.	~ Whole Person Model. Wellbeing focus.	~ Behavioural science framework. Generic.	✓ ICOP Method. Built over eighteen years of performance direction. Not available anywhere else.
Performance psychology embedded Nervous system response, pressure patterns, behavioural science in every session	✕	~ Wellbeing and resilience only.	✕	✓ Invisible infrastructure in every session. Never surfaced as a label.
Personal communication profile Deep diagnostic built on 70 to 80 question assessment. 16 profiles.	✕	~ Basic assessment included.	~ Limited diagnostic.	✓ Dual diagnostic system. Empowering user profile plus invisible coaching engine data.
High-stakes scenario coaching
Pitch and investor preparation Coaching specifically for fundraising conversations	~ Generic practice. No investor-specific coaching.	✕ General leadership only.	✕	✓ Dedicated module. Built for the investor room.
Board and executive presentation coaching Preparation for the room where decisions are made	✕	~ General executive coaching.	~ General executive coaching.	✓ Core use case. Pressure simulation included.
Difficult conversations and negotiation AI roleplay for the conversations leaders avoid	~ Basic roleplay. No psychology layer.	~ Human coach facilitated only.	~ Human coach facilitated only.	✓ Dedicated module. Pressure simulation. Behavioural feedback after every session.
Performance Under Pressure module Specifically engineered for high stakes, time critical moments	✕	✕	✕	✓ Unique to Mara.
Availability and access
Available 24/7, no scheduling required Ready before any meeting, pitch, or conversation	✓	✕ Sessions must be booked. Typically 6 to 12 week onboarding.	✕ Sessions must be booked. Typically 6 to 10 week onboarding.	✓ Instant. Same day deployment.
Live meeting analysis Feedback during the actual meeting, not just in practice	~ Transcription and word count during calls. No signal analysis.	✕	✕	✓ Meeting Observer. Signal-based. In build.
Enterprise and data
EU data storage and GDPR compliance Recordings user owned, EU stored, never used for model training, deleted on demand	~ SOC 2 Type II. Audio transcribed via cloud.	~ US headquartered.	✓ ISO 27001, GDPR, EU based.	✓ EU stored (Frankfurt). User-owned. Never used for training. Deleted at 90 days or on demand.
L&D admin dashboard and cohort reporting Measurable outcomes L&D teams can report upward	~ Basic team dashboard. Transcript metrics only.	✓	✓	✓ Full cohort management, progress reporting, and completion artefacts.

5 to 7×

Average return on coaching investment for organisations that measure it

ICF / PwC Global Coaching Report

08 · Blended delivery

Workshops with Session in the room. Mara holds the daily practice.

Session holds the live work. Mara holds the rhythm between. Workshops are delivered in person or hybrid, tailored to your organisation, and run by Session personally. Together they build a leadership team that communicates with authority on demand.

i · Intensive

Presence Under Pressure

A half day or full day on landing in the room, holding the silence, and recovering when the moment goes sideways. Live practice with feedback, individual diagnostics, Mara access afterwards so the work compounds.

ii · Intensive

Story & Articulation

Distilling complexity into the line that lands: narrative structure, the power line, the clean ask. For leadership teams who present the business to the people who fund it.

09 · How to start

From curious to deciding, in three steps.

The first step takes fifteen minutes. The whole sequence costs you nothing until you decide it is worth a pilot.

1

Today · 15 minutes

Try Mara yourself.

Open the taster, pick a scenario, run a live coaching session with Mara. Scored across six dimensions. Real coaching, real pressure. No card. No commitment. You decide whether your leaders need this.

2

This week

Apply for the 7 day pilot trial.

Tell us about your organisation, the team you would roll Mara out to, and what good would look like. Session approves every trial personally. Manual approval, twenty four hour turnaround. Only serious applications get through, by design.

3

Next week · 30 minutes

Thirty minutes with Session.

A direct call with Session: the method, the platform, the licensing model, and how Mara would fit your team. You receive the brochure and the price list in advance. Booked through Calendly, your slot.