Founding Cohort · June 15 – July 27, 2026
Get your ads working before Q4.
A live, six-week Meta ads bootcamp for small and local businesses. Graduate in late July, spend August and September testing on real budgets, and walk into Black Friday with a working account, a creative library, and actual data — instead of boosting a post and hoping.
Founding cohort: June 15 – July 27, 2026 · 15 seats · Limited to one round at this price
Section 02 · Fit
Let’s see if this is actually a fit.
For you if
- You own a small business, local shop, or service business
- You're spending somewhere between $500 and $2,000 a month on Meta ads (or want to start)
- You're currently boosting posts, hiring someone you can't quite afford, or DIY-ing without a real strategy
- You'd rather understand your ads than hand them off and hope
- You can commit 3–5 hours a week for six weeks
Not for you if
- You're an ecommerce brand spending $50K+/month — you need a different solution
- You're a marketer trying to go pro — this is built for business owners, not practitioners
- You want someone else to do it all for you (we have an agency for that, hi)
- You can't show up live for at least 4 of the 6 weeks
Section 03 · The problem
There’s a gap, and Q4 is when it hurts most.
Most small business owners have two options when it comes to ads, and both fall apart right when it matters most.
Option one:pay an agency $2,000–5,000 a month. For a lot of small businesses, that’s not just expensive — it’s mathematically impossible to make work on a sub-$2K monthly ad budget. The math doesn’t math.
Option two: figure it out yourself. So you boost a post in October. Maybe two. Black Friday hits, you panic-spend, you watch the “reach” number climb and feel like something’s happening. By January, you’ve spent $2,000 across the holiday season and you genuinely cannot tell if it did anything. So next year, you do the same thing.
There’s a third option, and it’s the one nobody’s selling to you: learn how this actually works in the off-season, when clicks are cheap and mistakes are affordable, so you walk into Q4 already knowing what works for your business.
That’s what Mainstreet Ads is.
Section 04 · Why now
Why June, why six weeks, why now.
Most small businesses do somewhere between 30% and 50% of their annual revenue in Q4. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the gift-giving stretch, the year-end push for service businesses. It’s the most important window of the year, and it’s also the worst possible time to be learning how ads work.
By the time November hits, ad costs have climbed, competition is sharp, and every wrong move is more expensive than it would’ve been in July. Founders who try to “figure out ads” during Q4 usually burn budget, get frustrated, and quit by mid-December — right before the only month that would’ve actually paid them back.
You can’t shortcut this. There’s no version where you start learning ads on November 1 and have a working system by Black Friday. The runway has to come first.
This bootcamp is timed on purpose:
Phase 01
June 15 – July 27 — You learn
Set up tracking, build campaigns, launch real ads.
Phase 02
August – September — You test
Cheap clicks, low competition, real data. Test creative, refine audiences, find what works.
Phase 03
October — You know your numbers
You have a creative library. Your account is warm. The guesswork is gone.
Phase 04
November – December — You scale what works
Scale the winners — instead of guessing in the most expensive month of the year.
Section 05 · Curriculum
Six weeks. One platform. No fluff.
We’re focused on Meta (Facebook + Instagram) because it’s where most small and local businesses see the highest return on a small budget. Google ads is a different cohort, coming later this year.
Week 1
June 15
Foundations & Setup
The unglamorous but critical week. By the end of it, your tracking is working and you actually know what you're measuring.
- Business Manager and ad account setup, done right the first time
- Pixel & Conversions API install (with walkthroughs for Shopify, Squarespace, and WordPress)
- Conversion events that matter for your specific business
Week 2
June 22
Knowing Your Customer
Audience strategy, reframed for small and local. Less “interest stacking,” more actual strategy.
- Custom audiences and lookalikes that actually work
- Geo-targeting for local businesses (radius, neighborhoods, service areas)
- Why broad targeting often beats narrow targeting now
Week 3
June 29
Creative That Actually Converts
The week most people say is worth the price of admission alone.
- Hook frameworks and the 3-second rule
- Copy formulas that work for small businesses (no agency-speak required)
- Phone-shot creative that outperforms polished work — and how to make it
Week 4
July 6
Building & Launching Your Campaigns
You put it all together and launch something real.
- Campaign objectives, decoded (and why “boost post” is almost never the right answer)
- Budget structures for small spend — the simple version
- Live build-along: we launch a campaign together, on screen
Week 5
July 13
Implementation Week
No new content. This is where the lessons land.
- Two live office hours sessions
- Hot seat reviews of student accounts
- Troubleshooting in real time, on real campaigns
Week 6
July 20
Reading the Data & Building Your Rhythm
You leave with a sustainable system, not a homework hangover.
- Which metrics matter (and which to ignore completely)
- When to kill an ad, when to give it more time
- A weekly and monthly account rhythm you can actually keep up with
Cohort wraps July 27 with a final office hours and a Q4 planning session.
Section 06 · What’s included
Here’s what you get.
Six weeks of live training
Recorded the same day, posted within 24 hours.
Weekly Q&A and hot seat sessions
Bring your account, your numbers, your stuck points.
Private student community
We use Slack, not Facebook groups. This is a no-Facebook-group zone.
Five templates you'll actually use
Campaign tracker, creative brief, weekly audit checklist, naming convention sheet, small-budget testing framework.
Lifetime access to all recordings
Rewatch anything, any time, after the cohort wraps.
Alumni community access
Stay in after graduation. Future Q&A drop-ins included.
A Q4 planning session
Final week of the cohort. You leave with a holiday game plan, not just notes.
Section 07 · Instructor
Who’s teaching this.
Hi — I’m Emma. I’ve spent the last decade running paid ads, first as a team member, then leading teams, then starting Fiddle Leaf Marketing in 2023 from my couch during maternity leave with my second kid.
FLM is a Portland-based paid media agency. We work mostly with women-owned businesses — boutique brands, local shops, service businesses, founders who care about their craft. The agency grew entirely through referrals, which I mention because it’s the closest thing to a review I can offer: the people we work with send their friends.
I started Mainstreet Ads because there’s a real gap between “boost a post” and “hire an agency,” and most of the small business owners I talk to are stuck in it. The agency can’t help every one of them — the math doesn’t work for everyone, and frankly, some people would rather just understand their own ads. So this is for them.
Section 08 · Pricing
Founding cohort pricing.
Mainstreet Ads · Founding Cohort
Or three payments of $349.
What’s included: everything above. Six weeks live, recordings, templates, community, Q4 planning session, alumni access.
- Six weeks live, recorded same-day
- Weekly Q&A and hot seat sessions
- Private Slack community
- Five templates you'll actually use
- Lifetime access to recordings
- Alumni community access
- Q4 planning session in the final week
This is the only cohort at this price. Future cohorts will be $1,497. The discount isn’t a marketing trick — it’s because round one runs in real time and you’ll help shape what round two looks like.
15 seats total · Cohort runs June 15 – July 27, 2026 · You’ll graduate with 12+ weeks before Black Friday · One scholarship seat available — apply here if cost is the only thing in the way.
Apply · Founding Cohort
Save your seat.
Drop your email to start the application. Two short steps, then a payment link to lock in your seat.
Section 09 · FAQ
Real questions, real answers.
- Why does Q4 matter so much for this?
- For most small and local businesses, Q4 is 30–50% of annual revenue. It's also the most expensive and most competitive time to advertise — which means it's the worst time to be learning. The point of the June cohort is to give you a full off-season to test on cheaper clicks, so you walk into Black Friday with data instead of guesses.
- What if I'm a service business without a Q4 spike?
- The timing still works. Service businesses tend to see January–February pushes (new year, new budgets, tax season for some), and the same logic applies — learn in summer, test in fall, scale when your season hits. The bootcamp content is the same regardless.
- How much should I be spending on ads to make this worthwhile?
- Realistically, $500/month minimum. Below that, you don't generate enough data to learn from, and the bootcamp will feel theoretical. If you're not there yet, the self-paced version (coming after this cohort) might be a better fit.
- Do I need to know anything about ads already?
- No. We start at zero. If you've boosted a post before, you're ahead of the curve. If you haven't, you're fine.
- What if I can't make a session live?
- Every session is recorded and posted within 24 hours. That said: this is a live cohort for a reason. If you know in advance you'll miss more than 2 weeks, wait for the self-paced version.
- Will this work for my type of business?
- It's built for small businesses, local retail, service businesses, and women-owned shops doing under ~$1M/year. If you're a $10M+ ecom brand, an agency, or a B2B SaaS company, this isn't your fit.
- How much time will I actually need each week?
- Plan on 3–5 hours: one 75-minute training, one 60-minute Q&A, plus implementation and homework. Week 5 is heavier (you'll be launching). Week 1 is lighter on content but heavier on setup.
- What about Google ads?
- Different cohort, later this year. Mainstreet Ads is Meta only, on purpose. One platform, deeply, beats two platforms, shallowly.
- What's your refund policy?
- Full refund within the first 7 days, no questions asked. After that, no refunds — you're holding a seat that someone else could've taken.
- Will you try to sell me something at the end?
- We'll mention what's next — the FLM agency offers a managed service for graduates who realize they'd rather hand it off. There's no live pitch, no upsell webinar, no “VIP day” sales pressure. The bootcamp is the product.
Six weeks of learning. Twelve weeks of testing. One Q4 you’re ready for.
The founding cohort runs once, at this price. You’ll leave understanding your ads, with real campaigns running, a creative library forming, and data coming in — months before the season that actually pays the bills.
This is the only Mainstreet Ads cohort that lands you ready for this Q4.
Questions? emma@fiddleleafmarketing.com