108: How to Run a Scaled Coaching Team with Notion

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I get a lot of questions on should I scale with a coaching team? Is this right for you? It is a nice way to scale your services a little bit and I do a lot of the one to many communications like this and then it's nice to be able to support any inbound interest by keeping that within the universe of free time or pivot. I don't want to just turn everybody away. Oh I Jenny, don't do coaching anymore, but there's still a really solid framework for both pivot and Free Time that people can walk through. And if you resonate with the work, you resonate with the books, you resonate with these podcasts, then it's something that feels really good to be able to match readers and listeners and career changers and free timers with the best possible fit coach that I feel very fortunate to work with.

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Hello. Hello friends. This is a quick solo episode on ways that I use notion to run our coaching business. I get a lot of questions on scaling a business with a coaching team. I don't do one on one coaching anymore, but I partner with other brilliant qualified coaches who are trained professionally by coaching schools and have the business and career chops that I look for for pivot and free time and of course our warm, generous heart based people. So that mix of love and systems, as my husband Michael puts it, of what I look for, I get a lot of questions on should I scale with a coaching team? Is this right for you? It is a nice way to scale your services a little bit and I do a lot of the one to many communications like this and then it's nice to be able to support any inbound interest by keeping that within the universe of free time or pivot. I don't want to just turn everybody away. Oh I, Jenny, don't do coaching anymore. But there's still a really solid framework for both pivot and free time that people can walk through. And if you resonate with the work, you resonate with the books, you resonate with these podcasts, then it's something that feels really good to be able to match readers and listeners and career changers and free timers with the best possible fit coach that I feel very fortunate to work with. This is more on the system side of things. I did do over an hour long seminar on how to scale your business with a coaching team. If you want access to this, it's not public, but I will give you complimentary access if you visit itsfreetime.com scalecoaching that's itsfreetime.com scalcoaching you will get a behind the scenes look at how I've set this up in my business and maybe it will spark some ideas for how you can do the same in your business. Yours part of what you're going to learn. As I share how we use notion for our coaching team, you'll also get a sense a little bit of the architecture of how I've structured this process. I'm not saying I'm the end all, be all or that I have all the answers. I know people who've created entire scaled venture backed companies that have hundreds of coaches. That's not really what I'm doing. Mine is a small shop, small operation and to be honest we don't have the demand. It's not like of the five or six, you know at any given time they go on wait list but you know, handful of pivot coaches and we have currently one free time coach. It's not like the demand is exceeding our capacity so I have no need to grow any bigger than we currently have. But of course as I share in free time about being ready for a big break if we're to get some kind of big break and 10x the number of inbound interest or 100x the model itself scales so that's always something I'm looking for. The first way that we use notion is the interest form. If you want to work with a pivot coach or a free time coach, you would fill out an interest form. That's step one. I use Typeform and I'll put all these links to the software in the show notes. I like it because it means you're going to tell us a little bit about you before we match you with a coach or before you even sign up for a free 30 minute intro call. That way we can also assess is this person who's filling out the interest form a fit for us? I always tell the coaches, you never have to work with somebody that doesn't resonate. If somebody has really negative or toxic energy or a complete victim mindset or they're not showing up for their half of the equation, you don't have to work with them. Every coach is in choice about if this client that they speak with, a potential client resonates great, you may pass go, and if not, it's okay. We don't have to accept every potential client who's interested, only the ones that we think are a good fit and that we can serve well by the way. We learned this the hard way. The second to last question in the type form is are you prepared to invest X, Y, Z, whatever the current rate of our coaching on monthly retainer at this time? We do that because we had a lot of people who would schedule a 30 minute intro call or get to know you call with a coach and then have sticker shock or nowhere near the budget that would be required to work with one of our coaches. There is plenty of other services out there. I don't want to position us as the cheapest option. We are a really experienced, high quality option. So different strokes for different folks. That's okay. But we now ask in the interest form, are you prepared and able to make this level investment? By the way, if they say no, we have other programs. So in pivot that means that I point them to my friend Adrian's career pathfinder. It's more of a group coaching and community program that I wholeheartedly believe in. He's honed it to such a brilliant, beautiful place. And on the free time side, they're welcome to join the BFF community. So it's not like we kick people out, oh, you can't pay the investment, you're gone, we're done here. No, it just means there's a different option that might be better for you. If they say yes, they are prepared to make that investment. Then the last link in the survey, they choose their coach and schedule that 30 minute get to know you call and that way they can make sure that it resonates on both sides. The match that interest form ports that information over to notion. Typeform now has a direct integration to a notion database so you don't even need zapier. In the past I was creating a Zap, that would send that information, but now Typeform directly will send it to a Notion database. So within my Notion operations dashboard, we have a coaches hub and there's a potential clients tracker. So if somebody fills out that form, there is a card for them and then that card moves along the path. So they filled out the interest form. Then we have a column called Intro, call held. Then we have a column that's, you know, not going to sign up right now, waiting or yes, they are going to become an active client. That brings us to the next database. Once they become an active client, then we keep a record of who is working with whom in terms of active clients, the coach, they're paired with, the monthly investment when they joined. Sometimes things come up and they need to pause or, you know, we can correspond with the coaches or with my team on the back end about each person. Not any personal details about what they're working on in coaching, just do they need anything, do they have any questions for us? And we need to know how many active clients we have and then that informs how much to pay out the coaches as well every month. Now, you may have a question, as I do even in this moment, could our interest form database be combined with active clients? Yes, it could. What we could do is have one mega database including everyone who's ever interested and our active clients. In that case, we would just need to create a view. This is now getting maybe too technical if you don't use Notion or care about it, but we would just create a view to be able to look at only active clients. And at any given moment. I use Kajabi. That's the service that I use. We basically create an offer for each coach. That's Kajabi speak for a checkout page. So if you want to work with Rebecca, she has her own checkout button and checkout page. And that way, once you check out with Rebecca, we can direct you to her scheduling link. And we know that at the end of each month we're paying out to Rebecca. The coaches and I, we split 60, 40. So my business keeps 40% for marketing and operations and support, and then the coaches get 60%. I've talked to friends who do 50, 50 in their business in terms of revenue share. And I just like the idea that the coaches get more, you know, than me because they're the ones doing the work. And on my side, these are all clients that I'm bringing in through my efforts. So there is a lot of effort invested in marketing, getting the word out, supporting this podcast supporting anything that's going to bring interested people into our universe, into the f Another way that we use Notion for the coaching team is we have a database of coach bios and links. This is super helpful and super important. Yes, we have public facing bios on the websites, but the helpful thing about having a coach database within Notion is that my team members can quickly see who enjoys what type of client, what is their expertise. And sometimes a client writes in and says I just signed up with Gris but I didn't get the scheduling link and so we can go to the coach bios database, get Chris's scheduling link and send it to the client without needing to bother Chris. So we track all the calendly links for scheduling, their email, everything about the coaches that would be helpful for us to know and for them to know about each other because they might have an intro call with somebody and it's not a fit for them but they want to browse through our coach database and be able to recommend one or two others.

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Another database that we have in our coaches hub in notion is Coaching Resources and I have to say we're not using this as much as we could be right now, but I like having it. We have a Google group for our coaches that everyone can send an email to the group. Hey, do any of you know a really outstanding resume writer or a LinkedIn profile optimizer or whatever resource they want and we all see it on the alias for the Google group and people can jump in and respond when I see valuable threads like that. We also put it into the Coaching Resources database. So ideally there's a centralized place where we're all collecting our best recommendations and resources. Because you know, as I say in free time, every question lives. Three lives. It's great that somebody asks it to the email alias, but we don't want it to just fall into the email abyss. Even though Google groups do have searchable archives, it's better to kind of pull it out and then we just have in the resource hub we might have a card that says LinkedIn reviewers or resume writers and that way coaches can easily see and kind of answer their own question. Next time we don't have to repeat the same questions to the group. So some of the categories in our resource board are coaching frameworks, job searching, service providers. Sometimes coaches ask about coaching insurance for themselves and people share what they do on their end software, things like that. The final way that at least off the top of my head that you could use notion that we're not even taking full advantage of right now are client facing pages. When I was doing one on one coaching I used to create a shared Google Doc for me and the client and one of my superpowers as a coach was taking a near transcription of our sessions. You don't have to do this. I actually recommend most people don't take notes, but I had been paid as a note taker in college. I can type like listening. It's like breathing to me. I can be typing and taking these really detailed notes that everybody always loved to have. Now you could even record the call and then throw it into description descript. I guess there's two ways to say it because I always say it wrong. You could throw it into descript. I'll put a link to that service in the show notes and the transcription could be pretty accurate. But my notes for this pride and joy I would tell clients add to these notes at the end of my sessions I would always give homework little actions, resonant next steps and I would say keep a record of what you do. Throw them at the bottom of our notes. I won't necessarily comment in detail between sessions, but I'll always read them before we talk next. So it was just this repository of what we had covered, what the homework was, what actions they took and I could review that before we get on the phone again. Now if I were starting today I would probably have a client card for them shared just between the two of us. What I love about notion compared to Google Docs is you can embed all kinds of resources onto one page so you can change the layout. You could have a database within their client facing page that has different meeting notes so you could have a different little entry for each day if you wanted that you spoke. You could easily Copy and paste templates that you had created elsewhere and put it onto their page. It's just a little more dynamic than a Google Doc. On the downside, there's a little bit of a learning curve. Maybe they might get a little cranky, like they're used to Google Docs. Maybe they don't want to use Notion, but it's kind of cool. I also like helping people over the learning curve just a little bit by saying, I know it's new, but you might thank me later for teaching something new just by starting to use it. How I got into Notion was my friend Sarah and I created a page SKP on saying no. And we just saved all these resources. We had quotes, we had links, we had a database of ways to say no. This was a time in both of our lives where we were really practicing saying no. And that impetus, just her saying, let's share a notion page. I remember feeling a little unsure, what even is Notion? I was so intimidated by it before that I had started a blank page and I never did anything with it. I'm like, this is ridiculous. You know, the learning curve is too high. But once we did that page on saying no, then I started to get excited because I saw what was possible. So if you're a little hesitant either for yourself or for client facing pages, you might be surprised at how much joy you can spark by showing what's possible and creating something super creative and functional. That, by the way, adds tremendous value to your coaching because a lot of the insights, a lot of what happens, as a coach once told me, is not just on the call, it's between the sessions that you might say something and in the moment, they don't even like it or agree. But then as they're walking, as they're showering, as they're commuting, as the time is passing, as they're crock potting, as my friend Stephanie says, something happens, an aha moment. They realize something. And so having a container for where to collect all of that and a record of it can be so helpful. I have clients who printed out their Google Doc after a year of working together or two years of working together. And they're like, I have a 60 page document and it's this beautiful thing that's their entire life and psyche and next steps and strategy and vision. And it's this beautiful repository of their biggest, most aspirational creative thinking that then they can reread and remind themselves and keep integrating all that great work that has unfolded.

I'm running a really lean operation at the moment because there's been some turnover and this is one of the results of me just getting back into the business and then the more that I learn about notion and the more comfortable I get, the more I can see, oh, this can be even simpler. And I'm always, always looking for that. If I dig back into any area of the business, I'm primarily doing it to see what's broken, what can I simplify, what can I eliminate altogether? And my big theme of the year seems to be emerging as elegant simplicity. I didn't set out with that at the start of the year. That's not my word of the year. In fact, my word of the year was a four part compass. Healthy, wealthy, wise and grateful. But what's emerging is this theme of elegant, streamlined simplicity. Just I see myself like a duck shaking water off. Like less, less, less. The more I shake, the more droplets of stuff can just fly off. That's all for today. Thank you so much for listening everybody. And don't forget, if you want the full workshop on how I've scaled a coaching team, visit itsfreetime.com scalecoaching that's itsfreetime.com Scalecoaching have a beautiful rest of your day everybody.

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