My Biggest Takeaways from Hosting my First Group Coaching Program
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Here are my biggest lessons from going from courses to a group program!
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Transcription:
Welcome back to my channel! 🥳 In today's video, I wanted to share with you my biggest takeaways from running my very first online group coaching program. I launched this program for the very first time in 2021. I have since run it twice, and I've learned so many lessons that I think will be very helpful for you if you too want to have a group program. If you are new here, hi! 👋 I'm Louis. Here on this channel, I help you create a simple and efficient online business. If that sounds good to you, make sure that you hit subscribe.
My group coaching program is called 90-Day Growth Strategy. It helps people create a simple and repeatable sales and marketing team that works for their business. The way that I formatted it, the very first time was that I taught live on a Monday. I taught the lesson for that week, and then I did another 90-minute session where I was answering everyone's questions and coaching them through anything they needed help with. However, since then I have come up with what I think is a much better way of running a group program. I'm going to share that with you in today's video!
Group Coaching Programs are SO Different! 🤯
One of the main things you need to know is that a group program is actually very different from an online group coaching course. Online courses are mostly what I do (and what I have done for many years now), but it is completely different to a group program. In a course, you are able to put absolutely all of the information that you want someone to know inside that program, right? Generally, they have lifetime access and they can go through it at a pace that works for them.
However, with a group coaching program, generally everyone is following a similar schedule. You might even have everyone starting on the same date and ending on the same date. And that key difference brings its own unique complications.
Everyone is Different
It’s important to be very mindful as you are designing your group program, that it is not a course. You cannot just give them absolutely everything that you want them to know. You have to be very selective about the information to ensure that you are not overwhelming your students and that they are able to implement the task that you are giving them for that week. They are going through this program with a group, then they have all these different points of comparison. If your students are looking around and seeing everyone progressing at such a pace and they start to feel behind, they can very easily start to feel discouraged. Then they may slowly pull back from the program, and therefore not get the result that you so badly want them to get.
So as you are designing your group coaching program, I think it's really important to think about how much time your ideal student could really dedicate to this every single week. You also have to account that while also still showing up to any of the calls or events, that you have included in the program. It is totally different to an online course, and you must be very careful about overwhelming your students.
Save Yourself some Stress!
What we ended up with format-wise, is something that I absolutely love? ❤️ Feel free to just take this for your business and format your group coaching program this exact same way. Every single week on the Monday, a prerecorded lesson is released. With this lesson, I've aimed to make it as short and impactful as possible. Generally the lesson itself is 20 minutes or less. Your students will be able to watch this at a time that is convenient for them, and they do not need to worry about showing up for a live call.
We do that every Monday, then every Wednesday, I show up for one hour and answer any questions that have come up with. If someone can't make that call, we will give them an opportunity to pre-submit their questions. Then, I will answer it on the call and then we will send out the replay after!
This has worked really well, because it gives students time to go through the material on their own and then come to the call on Wednesday to ask me any questions. They're always very on-topic for that week's material. It’s also less overwhelming for students, because they only need to make sure that they have cleared space in their calendar for one hour, every single week. On top of this, we also have a private members' area for all our students, where they can ask for support in between Q and A calls! 👍
Start Small
The next major thing that you need to know is: when you run your group program for the very first time, I would recommend doing so with a small group. So, I thought that I was doing this! 🤔 I limited the number spots available to 50, thinking that that was a low number, especially compared to online courses. However, I was wrong, because that is a lot of people, especially when you are still working out your program. You’re still figuring out if you have included the right amount of information, and what sort of support people are going to need. There's still some details that are really going to be needed to be worked out the very first time that you run it.
I would recommend for you limiting the number of seats available actually to something like 10 people. 🔟 I think with 10, you could really stay in contact with all of them and monitor their progress. You can see how they're doing, and see overall if there are any tweaks that you need to make to your program (which for sure is going to happen). Run it the first time with a smaller group, and it'll be a lot more manageable. In the end you'll be able to create a much stronger program.
Get Help 🤗
And finally, my last piece of advice for you is to get help. It takes a lot to run this type of program! From filming all the lessons, to being live on the calls, to all the support and feedback that can happen in between. A great way to start with this would be to get a virtual assistant who can help you with anything like login issues or finding where the lesson is. As they progress, you can also have them help you with the actual material that you're teaching or answering questions. Once you do get help, there are even ways of making this faster. As the facilitator of this group program, as the teacher, as the CEO of your business, you have to be very aware about what the true value you bring to the program is.
In terms of value, really what it comes down to is the advice and your strategic viewpoint. That's the really, really valuable part, not necessarily typing out all of those answers. Me and my amazing team member Taylor would send voice notes back and forth about our students. That's so much faster than me having to write out like paragraphs to a student. Instead, I would just say, “here's my advice. Here's what I'm thinking.” And Taylor would take what I've said and type it out to respond to the student.
There's little things like that, that you can do to make the support side a lot less intense. We save time by using voice notes, and then also just hopping on calls occasionally and talking about all our students. That way we are making sure they were all good, and they had everything they needed to keep moving forward and keep getting results.
Wrap Up
I learned SO much from this group coaching program. I hope that these takeaways really help you in creating yours. Group programs are a lot of work! 😓 I think they are often positioned as so much less work, because people are contrasting this to one-on-one coaching. In those coachings, you have to hop on for an hour or so with each individual. So it is absolutely less work than that.
However, it is so much more than an online course. Keep that in mind as you are choosing what you want your offers to be (and of course, there's so many variations within that). Really think about what your students need, what you want to facilitate, and I think that you'll be able to come up with the perfect offer. Whether that's a group program, one-on-one online course membership, you really do have so many different options.
So those are my biggest takeaways from running a group coaching program. I hope that you found this video helpful! Let me know in the comments down below, don't forget to hit subscribe if you haven't yet. Check out all the tools that I use for these programs here. And I'll see you real soon with another video.
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