203: The Right Way To Run Group Coaching Programs - #GrowYourLife

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jaron Mike Rakowski. And on this podcast, I help coaches, trainers, and mentors scale their business and make more money. And today I'm doing it with Halston right here. Because you know what? That's just how you got to do things sometimes. And he's sleeping. He likes to hear my voice when I talk, and so why not? He's gonna outgrow this stage eventually. I'm gonna take advantage of it while I can. Now, today, what I want to talk about is eliminating codependency in coaching. And there's this belief that you need to coddle your clients and care more about their success than they do, and that it's unkind and lacks compassion to not do this, to follow up with everybody one on one, to reach out to everybody, to see how they're doing, to see how they're going. That's your choice, obviously. But I would. I would urge you to lean in to a different approach, personal responsibility. And this applies to ourselves as well. I'm saying this both to myself to how I'm coaching, reiterating how I coach. I don't reach out to my clients to see how they're doing, to see how they are. Their. Their business is going. Now, I've actually had some nasty emails written to me because of that, because people expected that, which, by the way, I am very clear that I do not do that. But people have expected that of me and were disappointed, upset, angry that I didn't do that. Turns out they just weren't a good fit to be a client. There's this whole sort of split, though, in the coaching industry of basically codependent coaches that over hover and micromanage everything that their clients do, every activity that they do to make sure that they're getting results. It's toxic. It's not healthy. It will burn you out. And you're not helping anybody. You're just making people be a leech onto you, and their success is now your responsibility. You got to cut this out. I get it. If you're a manager or a middle manager or a CEO of a company, or maybe you have a. An organization that you're running and you got staff under you. It's a little different, right? I've read all the different leadership books. You want to reach out, see how you can support people, things like that, like that's an important thing to do when running a company, when coaching people. Your job is to empower people on the path and journey of personal development to not rely on you for their success. Caveat to that, you definitely want to offer opportunities for people to reach out to you. My coaching clients know they can post in my Facebook group, they can send me a message, they can send me an email. My one on one clients can DM me, My one on one clients can send me a voice message. Now I have consulting clients that pay me way more money. I do reach out to them to see how they're doing, but those are few and far between and those are a much higher level where I'm writing their copy and running their ads and doing all that. So it's more of a more of a staff based relationship versus a coaching relationship. And I refuse in the coaching relationship to operate that way. It's something that I learned from Dan Kennedy, it's something that I learned from my mom is focus on the people that are getting the most success in your coaching business. Not the ones that are struggling the most. Not the quote, unquote, least of these that are not getting value, not doing anything, not taking action. You'll go crazy in your head trying to help raise up people and creating a toxic, codependent relationship with them. So to where you are legitimately working harder on their success than they are. It's not a sustainable business model at all. And so when you set expectations of, hey, listen, this is how I'm going to act, this is how I'm going to respond. I might respond once a week to you and respond back. You can ask me for help, you can ask me for questions, I can give you guidance and advice. When you operate out of that, it's healthy because you're expecting people to show up and ask you questions, not for you to reach out to them to see if they're doing okay. Okay. And I've had a lot of people come at me and even attack me and even tell me that this teaching is harmful to people. Getting people into a coaching relationship and then not coddling them, basically controlling everything that they're doing is not a good way to do things. And I just, I disagree with that. There's literally opposing viewpoints on this in the coaching industry. That there's a solid line. I'm on the side of the line of I require personal responsibility from people that I work with and I will not show up with more energy than they are willing to show up in their business. I will not show up following up constantly with my clients to make sure that they're doing their work. If they're not Doing their work, that's on them and their personal responsibility to take control of. I will focus on one person who is having the most success and how can I help them go to the next level of success because they have shown that they are faithful to the system. When people follow my system, they get results. When they do what I say, they make a lot of money. There are some people, they get caught up in their head, whether it be religious beliefs or whatever, that they can't do what I say. And they justify inside of their brain this need to do everything right, do everything perfect, why they can't succeed. And then they go out there and they blame everybody else. They refuse to take personal responsibility for their lack of success. And it's just not. This is not a game I'm willing to play. I get it. If you grew up in a house, family system, maybe a relationship, maybe even a church environment that did this, you might expect that that's what coaching is supposed to look like. And this is how most people go into it. Where they're trying to manage other people's emotions, where they're trying to manage other people's choices, where they're trying to make sure that other people are doing what they should. You gotta cut that crap out. My mom made a post on my, my social media post that I did about this. I loved what she said. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read it to you because it was just, it was so powerful, pointed and perfect. She said if a client can't monitor their own growth and check in with themselves as a matter of good CEO habits, having a coach do it for them actually reinforces the employee mindset behavior that most entrepreneurs need to get past. If I did that to coaches, I would literally be reinforcing behavior that is opposite of what I'm trying to help them overcome. Self governing entrepreneurs make great clients and build incredible businesses. And that's who I work with. Those that are self governing, those that can follow up on their own, those that don't need me for their success, I can guide them, I can direct them, I can give them opportunities, I can provide them the best training, I can give them the answers when they come ask me. But I'm not going to spend my time and energy wondering are they succeeding? Are they doing this? Maybe I should follow up with them, maybe I should call them. Maybe I should do a one on one call with my clients that are not succeeding to see if I can help raise them up. Nope, I'd rather they just drop off, disappear, and I'LL get better clients and I'll focus more and more and more on those that produce case studies. And this model is what produces the most financial results. I get it. You might disagree with that. There are some people, they have gone as far as to tell me they would rather make less money and coddle people because it's the right thing to do and because it's kind and compassionate than to do what is effective to bring in revenue. And oftentimes I come in, in organizations and even ministries and I've had to tell them with a lot of disagreement that this is not a healthy way to build things, that this is not a good way to grow stuff. That we need to focus on where the results are coming from, not our feelings. Not trying to make everybody feel welcome. You're not going to make everybody feel welcome and perfect. A big part of our marketing method that we use is repelling people that aren't a good fit. Finding and identifying who is not going to be a buyer in our business. What I look at is who has upgraded to my coaching program. I have a group coaching program. It's $2,000 a year. Okay. And I look at, we've had almost, we've had over 220 people now go through the program. And I look at of those people, what do they have in common? What do the ones who, because we have a 30 day money back guarantee, trial period of the ones who took me up on that left and canceled, what did they have in common? And so then how can I adjust my marketing to not attract the ones that cancel? See, I'm not going after trying to solve why they canceled. It's not my job to. The biggest reason why most people did is they're just too, they realized it was a lot more work, it's too hard and they don't have enough money to succeed. So I've stopped marketing to people that, that's their excuses. I've stopped marketing to people that have the inability to make decisions. I've stopped marketing to people that, that are afraid to take action, afraid to move stuff forward. And I can bet you my. In fact, I know for a fact after being in this industry for 20 years that this is going to be the catalyst that's going to grow things. I've had a lot of people come at me, tell me that how I build things, this structure is wrong, it's not right, that it's even hurting people. And at the end of the day, I have my convictions, my beliefs, my standards, my values about building a business as well as designing the life that I want to build. And that doesn't involve me spending energy on people that are not willing to show up for themselves. I put my energy to those that are willing to take personal responsibility and take ownership of their actions and where they're at, to where they eventually don't need me, to where they eventually don't need me for their success. And I'm there as a guide and as a mentor to lead them from where they are to where they want to be. But I can only meet them halfway. I'm not going to go any further than that. And what that does is that creates a beautiful relationship with your clients and incredible results with the ones that are willing to cross that threshold. So I hope this has encouraged you. If you're a new coach, if you're starting out, you're wondering, man, how does Jeremiah manage his time? This is a huge part of that. And I hope that you take away from this some wisdom as well. Grow your life, everybody, and we'll talk soon. Have a good one.