How to Scale Coaching Without Burnout

One on one coaching is fulfilling, but let's get real. It doesn't scale if you're book solid. If you feel capped, you're probably wondering, how do I transition to group coaching without losing that personal touch that my clients fell in love with in the first place? This is a great question from Suze here on Q and A Wednesday. How do I transition from one on one coaching to group coaching effectively? I'm going to show you today in this lesson, step by step, how, how to do just that. But first, why would you want to do group coaching? There's a lot of benefits of group coaching over one on one coaching that a lot of people don't talk about. The first one is, is that it's actually more valuable for the client to do group coaching. I know a lot of people think that, oh, one on one time, it's dedicated, it must be more valuable. No? Because it's been proven that we actually learn better by watching other people being coached. In a group coaching setting. You are not only being coached by the coach, but you're also watching the coach coach other clients and sol problems. It's a lot easier for us to learn from that observation because we're detached from the problem. We're learning how to solve problems. Without our own egos and our own stories in our own head, we can be objective about the situation. So we're not only learning from the coaching that the coach is delivering for us directly, but we're also learning from every different coaching moment that the coach is delivering from other clients in the group. I know this firsthand because I grew my software company, webinar Ninja, by joining a group coaching program, SaaS Academy. I learned a ton from Dan, but I actually learned more from him coaching other people because a lot of problems and challenges that other people are going to face are going to be your challenges or are your challenges at some point. And there's so much more your client's going to get like community and peer support. But even on your side of things as a business, you're going to be able to have more leverage on your time, more income for fewer hours, and of course, less burnout. But it only works if you're intentionally designing your group coaching experience properly. And that's what today's lesson is all about. That's what you're going to learn step by step. Let's jump into step one. Pick a specific result. This is actually quite important. One on one coaching can be broad, but group coaching needs to be defined in the outcome that you want your group to have or you want the members of the group to have. You want to see your program as people are going from this state to this state. The before and after. What's the after picture when it comes to your client? Some examples are like from zero confidence to launching their first product or offer, from no clients to landing their first three high ticket clients. From being stuck as an aspiring author to a published author. You need to define the results so people feel it's made just for them and and made for what they want out of this situation. Because you're not selling the actual sessions or the group or the community. What you're selling is an outcome and the outcome can be valued very high and therefore you can charge more for your group coaching. So I want you to stop thinking about I'm going to help people with these things and think more about this is the result that my group coaching clients are going to receive or they're going to achieve when they're in my group coaching program. All the other details like the sessions, like the recordings, like your, you know, supplemental materials or the tools or whatever you're going to offer, that's the means to the end. Think about the end as the actual product. Step two. Structure the curriculum. You will not be winging this. If you want to be professional, you have to have organization and structure so that you actually can repeat results over and over. Take what already works with your one on one clients and map it to a repeatable framework, something that you can follow over and over with your group. You want to create things like a weekly focus. This week we're going to focus on this or if you're meeting monthly, same thing, live group calls where you have Q and A and hot seats and accountability. Remember, people are not only just signing up for the information, they want to be held accountable by you and the group. And then of course, light assignments or checkpoints. We have assignments on every lesson inside our program, the hundred dollar mba because we want people to take action on what they learn. Think of yourself as a coach and a facilitator. You're helping them learn from each other, not just from you. Step three, Pilot with past clients. Start with people who have already helped. You know, those who helped one on one with the one on one coaching. Invite four to six of them into a founding group round. Like this is my first group coaching round and they're a special bunch. They already built a relationship with them one on one and they're probably like minded and they're going to actually love this program. When you're starting out with any kind of project, like moving from one on one to group coaching, keep it small. You don't have to have 30, 40, 50 people. You can have under 10 people, 4, 5, 6, 7 people to get started. Maybe you can offer a discounted rate given its group. So for example, if your one on one coaching program is, let's say $5,000 a month, give them a discount rate of $3,000 a month. But now you're in group coaching and they're going to get more value with that group coaching. Make it clear that they're going to help you shape the program. They're going to be part of the process and a lot of people love being part of something new and something that they can contribute to. This way, you'll get testimonials, you'll be able to refine your format, you'll be able to build confidence through your group coaching program without the pressure of being perfect on day one. Step four, you want to set expectations early. This is a group coaching program, not a private consulting program. That means you need to be crystal clear about what they should expect. Meaning on these group calls, there'll be shared airtime. It's not going to be them speaking the whole time, one person, it's going to be everybody. We're all going to listen and learn from each other. Make sure they understand there will be peer feedback. Other people are going to, you know, chime in and give advice and maybe share their own experiences with a challenge that was similar to yours. And the idea that there'll be accountability, not just from you, but between members. You're still guiding and supporting, but the format is different. Set the tone early to avoid any kind of confusion or unmet expectations. This is very easy to mess up, but it's also very easy to get right. So when you're marketing this, when you're selling this, when they're signing up, make sure it's clear that this is what they should expect. Now, once you have your pilot group where it's, you know, you have under 10 people and you're learning from them, you're getting feedback, it's going to be easy for you to start scaling. This is what's great about group coaching, is that you can start adding people to the group and then eventually maybe your group is going to get a little bigger, like maybe 30, 40 people and then you can have breakout rooms. You know, Zoom has this ability to do breakout rooms. So you can split the 30 people into three rooms of 10 and that way you know, the talk time is reasonable, or maybe you want to split them into, you know, five groups of six. But the point here is, is that you just need to refine as you go, as you scale, and it's going to become more and more profitable because the amount of time and effort that you're putting into it doesn't change. But but you're adding clients and you're adding revenue. The truth is, is that you actually don't scale a coaching business by doing more. You scale it by doing less of what's draining you and more of what's valuable to the clients. Group coaching allows you to reach more people with more energy and more freedom for yourself. It's not a step down, it's actually a step up for you and the client. Thanks, Suz. Great question for Q and A Wednesday. If you got a question you want to ask, you could submit one easily over at 100mba.net q and we will answer here on the podcast. Also, if you want to continue learning from me beyond the podcast, you could subscribe to my Three Things newsletter over at 100mba.net. Every week I send you three things, something to think about to improve your mindset. Number two, you get something to do so that you are moving one step closer and closer to your goals. And number three, something to learn so you're skilling up each week. It's absolutely free. It's super useful. It's no spam. It's how I can coach you from afar. It's via newsletter. Just go to 100mba.net, sign up for any of our guides and you'll be added to our weekly newsletter automatically. I'm Omar Zainam. Thank you so much for being a subscriber of this podcast. If you haven't subscribed yet, hit that subscribe button or Follow button on whatever you like to use to listen or watch our podcast. I'll check you in the next one.