00:00:00 You are listening to the Scaling to Freedom Podcast and if you are an online coach or course creator, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Christina Bernhard. I’m an Ads agency owner that gets an inside look every day on what’s working and what doesn’t in the online coaching space. I’m here to share with you what we see works in our agency as well as what we see happening and changing in the industry. Stay tuned to up level your coaching business to have the freedom you want. Let’s get started.

00:00:31 Welcome to Episode 182. So in this episode, we’re going to be talking about ways to scale your group coaching program. And what we want to go over is how you can actually serve more clients without working more. So that’s often the goal. That’s not everyone’s goal. But I’ve been exposed to so many different coaching programs because of what I do. We serve primarily coaches, occasionally just course creators, but typically all of our clients are coaches. So with that, I’ve seen all kinds of different ways that you can scale group coaching programs. And what I see seems to stick, that people stick with for longer term and just different ideas that people have. And it’s pretty incredible the different things that I’ve seen because it’s so smart and it’s such a win win for my clients and also for their clients.

00:01:24 And so I wanted to just share things that I’ve seen and things that I’ve seen work for my clients. Because typically the thing is that whenever people go into Ads, a lot of times they’re trying to scale, they want to grow their business. But from a perspective of a coach, there is a point where you feel like you might be capped out on calls. And I often hear that they want to be on less calls. And I did also recently do a podcast episode on sales calls and whether you need to do those because that’s often a group of calls that my clients are trying to get off of. So check out that episode if that interests you as well. If you’re doing sales calls and you’re not sure if you absolutely need to, that’s a good episode for that. So that’s a big thing, is they want it to be on less calls. Also, if they’re scaling, what does that mean for their call load? Is their call load going to quadruple if they actually scale this group program?

00:02:22 A lot of them want to be able to pull themselves out of the process. They want to serve more clients. And there are ways to do this and you can actually keep the quality high and sometimes even higher. So we’re going to talk about that as well. So let’s go ahead and dive in on the different ways that I’ve seen. I’m going to go over five main ones. I might throw in a couple extra at the end, but these are the main ones that I see most commonly done and my clients have had a lot of success doing this. So let’s go ahead and get started on the first one. The first one is to set up their program to be rolling enrollment. So the reason that a lot of my clients have chosen to do this is because it prevents them or it allows them to not have to constantly be launching.

00:03:08 So this isn’t really a part of you scaling the actual program necessarily. This is a way that you can kind of get pulled out of the cycle of constantly launching. Now let me explain though, that my clients that do set up their programs to be rolling enrollment and not have to have cart open and closed dates at certain times of the year, they do still launch and there might be some sort of other incentive for people to join at that specific time. So they’re still launching but they’re not reliant on constantly launching. Now also, another thing I want to point out is that there are certain programs that this might not actually be for. It really depends on the content of your program and what the end result is and all of those variables. You’re going to know better than anyone as the expert on if this is something that will actually serve your clients or it will actually lower the quality and the results of the program. So really important for you to kind of tap in to know whether this is a good idea or not because it’s not a good idea for everyone. It’s not going to work for every type of program. But if it does, it might require some restructuring of the content and the calls and the different topics that you’re going over to be restructured in a way that you can have people coming like new people coming in and not do specific cohorts.

00:04:30 So what this does is it leads more often to just having easier and more consistency with the leads and having people enroll in throughout the year and you are also able to close sales whenever they’re hot. So as people are coming into your world, people can actually convert when they are ready and they don’t have to wait. So if you do have someone come into your world and you kind of just launch, they’re going to have to wait maybe a whole another quarter for your next launch if you launch quarterly. So it allows that as well, but it also allows you to not have to launch so often. I’ve had clients that launch every single month and it’s a lot, that’s a lot. Most of my clients probably launch quarterly but this does allow you to not have to do that. So that’s going to really help your workload on the marketing side of things. The second thing is hiring co-coaches. So this is really common, I’m sure you’ve heard of this. If you don’t already have your own coaches.

00:05:33 This is kind of necessary after a certain point, depending on what your program has. But what this does is it’s where you don’t have to facilitate every single call in your coaching program. So all of my clients that do this, or even past clients that I’ve seen do this, they still facilitate a lot of calls in their programs and so their clients still have access to them, but they also get more calls that my client doesn’t actually necessarily have to be on. So the clients still get served very well. You’re still going to hire really good co-coaches that know what they’re doing and that can provide value that are vetted through you, maybe trained by you, and so they’re still getting that value. But you get to be able to actually have more people into the program and not have to show up for every single call. Or maybe with this one, maybe you don’t have more people in the program, you’re just not going to be on every single call. So you’re able to actually pull yourself out a little bit. And this is especially helpful for the coaches that are either trying to prevent burnout or they are heading towards it, or maybe they’re in it. So that way clients still get served really well, but not having to be on every single call and go towards that burnout.

00:06:48 The third one is having two or more cohorts at once. So this is really good for that. I talked about that scenario where some people in some programs, it’s just not going to work for them to have rolling enrollment. It’s just not one of those programs that people can just come in at any point. There is a specific structure that things need to happen in and you don’t want that kind of rolling enrollment, new people coming in. I’ve also heard that it’s harder to have community as much like that close knit community, if new people are constantly coming in and then older people are dropping out at different times. So that’s a good point for that. So what you can do instead is have two or more cohorts at once. And what this can do is you can open, let’s say, double the spots without lowering the quality. Because it can be difficult if you’re trying to scale and have more people in your group program.

00:07:44 It can be really difficult to serve people well if the group is really large. And I have seen this personally. I’ve also spoken in different Mastermind groups and sometimes I have gotten on calls and I’m a little shocked at how many people are on the call because it’s been a while since I’ve seen this. But there was a time during the pandemic where I saw this a lot and I’m kind of shocked by it because I’ve been a part of Masterminds and I know that there are different Masterminds and there’s different levels to them and different kinds of high touch or low touch with the actual coach. But if you have 40 people on the call, you’re probably not going to be able to have a chance to get coached or that call is going to be like 4 hours long.

00:08:30 So it’s really nice to have those smaller groups so that people can actually get coached and you can actually help them. It’s just more helpful if the client or for the clients, if they can all have a chance to be coached on the call, maybe not every single person, but if most people can or throughout the calls, they have a good chance of getting coached. It’s just really difficult if you have a ton of people on the calls without the calls being crazy long, which is also just a tougher commitment on the clients too, if you have these super long calls. So having two different cohorts at once and what that means is that each group, you would take that let’s say 20 people, 30 people, and you’re separating them into their own group. So you essentially have two different masterminds or group programs happening at one time.

00:09:14 So this does double the calls, but you are able to serve double the people. And you can utilize the other tips that I’m giving in this episode to kind of balance that out. So the fourth thing is having guest experts fill in calls. And this is a really good thing to do, I think, because it does give more value and more well rounded help in your program. So this is really common if you don’t already have guest experts, if you do, maybe just seeing how you can structure to have more, how you can lean on them a bit more because the clients get served really well still. If you think about what you do, if there are specific niche things within your program that you offer that someone else might be able to dive deeper into, you can bring on an expert, they would take over that week’s call or whatever the case is, and they can dive deeper into that. So I’m in a guest expert in a lot of different groups and it’s really helpful because I obviously do it specifically on Ads. So whenever I go on there, while my client or the coach on there probably does have some Ads experience and knowledge, it’s what I personally do for a living all day, every day. So I can go in and answer very specific questions and walk people through their specific situation and give them advice on that from an Ads perspective, from a media buyer’s perspective. So it’s really helpful for the clients.

00:10:45 It’s really helpful for you because you’re just completely off for that week. As far as the call for that group program, if you have weekly calls, whatever your structure is, and it’s also just a win for the client, they get more focused, higher end, higher touch, help with that specific area. The last one that I’ll go over is also offering done for you services within the program. So I used to see this more and then I didn’t really see it for a while and now I’m seeing it more and more. Like, for example, I’ve seen groups offering like VA’s or social media managers within their group program if they’re a business coach and things like that.

00:11:28 So with that, this is more so for business coaches, but also it can be for other types of coaches. So if you are, let’s say, a health coach, you can include like labs or something, you can include other different just elements that allow you to be able to raise the price, but it doesn’t require you to actually get on more calls necessarily. So this is something that is really going to vary based on what you do. But it is, I think, worth thinking about and just brainstorming about other ways that you can add more value to the group program. Again, I’m mostly talking about done for you services for business coaching typically like a mastermind or something, but you can also do it for other things too.

00:12:17 I’m sure you can find other ways that you can offer something extra that is outside of coaching, but it does aid in the coaching and it just helps them get an even better result or maybe a faster result. Whatever the case is, definitely brainstorm other ways that you can add things to that. Like if you do labs, you might be able to for one, you’re not doing the labs like you have a lab doing them, you can maybe even have someone else review them or whatever the case is. If there’s something that you could add in where someone else would be taking on that portion of it, that’s the goal. You’re still raising that value.

00:12:53 You also might be raising the value of your coaching as well because you’re coaching alongside this other really great offer put together. It’s just packaging that up because you know that it’s something that they need can be really valuable and a win win for both of you because that’s the goal here. If you’re going to scale your group programs, we want it to be a win win for everyone. It’s a win for the client. The client gets even more value from you and you are able to still provide more value, but also be able to pull back and leverage other things like coaches, your team, and other things that you can actually be able to offer that without it necessarily being you.

00:13:31 So that is what I have for you for this episode. So we have setting up your program for rolling enrollment. This is more for the launch perspective, being able to take yourself out of that constant launching. And then the second one is hiring co-coaches, having someone else facilitate some calls in your place. The third one is having two or more cohorts at once so that you can actually have more people, but you’re not lowering that value.

00:13:59 You’re still giving everyone a chance to be coached, having guest experts and leaning on them to also give more specific value to your clients. But again, there are more calls that you don’t have to actually be on. And then the last one is offering some sort of done for you service or some sort of extra component to your group coaching program that is not necessarily coaching but is a really good complement to your coaching. So that is what I have for you this week. I hope that you found this episode helpful and hope that this really gets your mind kind of spinning and gives you some ideas to brainstorm to be able to scale your coaching program so you can grow your business larger and you can make your impact bigger without actually having to work even more hours.

00:14:43 So that’s always the goal, right? So I hope that you found this helpful. I will see you guys next week. Thank you for listening to the scaling to Freedom Podcast. If you are a seven figure coach looking for ads management with an agency that partners with you to get your work out into the world and amplify your impact, see if we are a good fit by applying for a spot in our agency at christinaburnhard.com/apply. Find the link in our show notes.