MBA920 Q&A Wednesday: How many people is too many for a group coaching program?

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This is a seven part seven video course that we offer for free over at 100mba.net. This is going to walk you through how to make sure you're selling something that your customers want. It comes with a handy workbook with some interactive exercises that you can do today. Just go to 100 MBA net to check it out and sign up for free to Today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes I answer a question from a listener of the show. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar mba.net and I'll answer it right here on Q and A Wednesdays. Today's question comes from Hank and Hank asks how many people is too many when it comes to group coaching? So Hank is Running a group coaching program where he coaches people online, and he's asking, how many is kind of the maximum in that group to make this actually a great coaching program? That's a great question, Hank. And I'm going to talk about the factors you need to consider when you're trying to choose that sweet spot, when you're trying to figure out how many people can I include in this group coaching? So it's beneficial for everybody, and it's not too crowded. Group coaching is actually one of the best forms of coaching because not only do they learn from you, the coach, but they also learn from the experiences and the challenges of the other people in the group, the people. There's so much you can learn from just listening to some of the issues people are having and how they're overcoming those challenges and how you're helping them with it. There's going to be a lot of crossover, but how do you make sure there's not too many people in the room where it's really not fair for people, where they feel like maybe they don't get their questions answered or they're not getting the attention they need? I'm going to get into all that in today's Q and a, Wednesday's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Hank asks, how many people is too many when it comes to group coaching? Well, there's a few things we need to consider here. The first thing we need to consider is how frequent are these group coaching sessions? Now, often when you're offering group coaching, it's like a package. Like, you're going to have 12 sessions, and they pay a certain amount of Money for those 12 sessions. But how frequent are those 12 sessions? Is it once a week? So we're talking about, you know, a total of three months once a week. That's, you know, 12 weeks. Or are we talking about 12 months once a month? This makes a difference. The more frequent your group coaching sessions are, the more likely you'll have people not show up every week. And this happens. I've run group coaching, and sometimes people just don't show up for the session. They get caught up with life. They get caught up with business, and they kind of know that going in, that, hey, if I miss it, I miss it. And you need to kind of factor that in because you might not have a full house every single week. There's a pretty good chance everybody will show up with once a month. So that's the first thing you need to consider. How frequent Are your meetings. The second thing is how long are your actual Sessions? Are they 45 minute sessions? Are they an hour, are they two hours? Now the reason why this is important is that the longer the duration, the more time you'll have for everybody to be included and to have their dedicated time. If you have, let's say, a group of 10 people in only 45 minutes, there's a good chance there'll be people that won't have a chance to ask a question or, or discuss a challenge they're having. But if you have a group of, let's say, eight people in two hours, that might be enough. Now, in business you're gonna have to experiment. But what I wanna do is give you some criteria, some things to start with so you know how to experiment. So in order for group coaching to really be useful in terms of learning from one another, you need to have at least three people and yourself. So I'm not gonna include you in the numbers, cause you're the coach. But let's say three participants or three clients. So I say that's kind of the minimum of group coaching. And if you have three people and you have a session of a minimum of 45 minutes or an hour, that's plenty of time for everybody to kind of get their questions in and discuss their challenges. Obviously, you as a coach will have to monitor that and, you know, make sure you're keeping time and being fair with all the participants. So that's a good starting point. You can start with three and experiment. Now, obviously you shouldn't be experimenting within the same group. So say, for example, you have one group of three people, you can have another group of four people or five. So one strategy that really works is to have two groups with different frequencies. So one group meets once a week and one group meets, let's say, every two weeks or even once a month. Up to you. But the point is, is you want to have two different groups with different cycles or different frequencies. The more frequent, the more liberal you could be in terms of the numbers. So say let's have one group that meets once a week for an hour, and, and you can experiment with five people. And then you can have another group that meets once a month for an hour, and you can experiment with three people. And the next time you run these parallel sessions, you can bump the numbers a little bit more. 4 and 6, 5 and 7. Now, I probably wouldn't go over 10. I think 10 is really pushing it. I've seen group coaching sessions that have done well with 10 but it takes a lot of organization, a lot of timekeeping and some management, you know, really some policing really is to make sure that everybody doesn't kind of go on, on tangents and you kind of cut people off and make sure they understand that, hey, just, you know, ask a direct question, let's answer it, let's talk about it as a group and make sure everybody has the time allotted or time to ask questions. There are going to be people in the group that don't have any questions but just want to learn from each other. They might kind of skip their turn. So that might help some things. But I love this idea of having two groups and experimenting with the numbers. Now to answer your question directly, how many is too many? I would probably say more than 10. Now I'm kind of seeing this as a live video conferencing softw being used here and you're all meeting face to face via video and mic. This is not a webinar here, this is like a meeting. So if there's more than 10 people, it's gonna be really hard for you to really give everybody their fair share of time. Now the exception to this rule is if this group coaching is free. Some people use group coaching as a free opt in so they can get people into one on one coaching and you can open up the doors a little bit more. And then really what's the point of this is that you can actually show people that you can help people with their issues and their problems and you can help them with their challenges in their life. Now the point of all this is so you can show people that you can help them. And people aren't necessarily looking to have their voice heard every single time you run this free session because it's free. They're not paying money to get this coaching, but it gives them an idea what kind of coach you are. And then they might want to opt in for some one on one coaching or maybe your smaller group coaching program. And in that case I would probably say 20 people, 25 max is kind of good. You'll have half of them being kind of spectators, listeners and the other half kind of chiming in with some questions.

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Podcast group coaching, in my opinion, is actually a really good offer. It's a great service to people because you're really helping people quickly. It also helps keep people accountable when they have to show up to a group session every single week or every single month or however frequent it is. It puts their feet to the fire. It makes them feel like, hey, I gotta get things done before the next meeting. They so I can, you know, share my results so I can share my success. Especially when it comes to doing this online or running any kind of business online, it can be lonely and having a coach and other colleagues in that session with you can be really supportive. So it's a great offer and it's a great way for you to share your expertise with other people. So I tip my hat to you, Hank, for doing your group coaching. I wish you all the best and thank you for your question. If any of you listening have a question and you want to ask it, I'd love to answer it here on the show. Just email me@omar mba net it that wraps up today's lesson. I hope you loved it. Hey, I totally get Running a business can be very challenging and sometimes you feel like throwing in the towel. You feel like you're working hard and you're doing everything you can. But here's the raw truth. Working hard is not enough. I know that sounds really hard to hear, but it requires more than just skill and talent and the right strategy and, you know, finances and working hard. It requires something really critical and and that's what I want to discuss in tomorrow's episode, why working hard is not enough and what you need to tip you over the edge. I hope to check you in tomorrow's episode where we discuss this. If you don't want to miss this episode, hit subscribe so it gets automatically downloaded to your device. This is an episode I've been working on. I've been really crafting for some time, and I'm really looking forward to actually delivering it and giving it to you tomorrow. So I'll check you then. But before that, I want to leave you with this. I think it's really important for you to recognize the importance of your audience. Whether it's your email newsletter audience, whether it's people on your webinar, whether it's people that are buying your products and services. They're the reason why you have a business, why you exist, why you have a YouTube channel, whatever it is. So thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It means so much to me and Nicole and the whole team. We've been doing this for over three and a half years and it's such an honor for us to know that you're listening every single day and being a part of this community. And so I want to just take a moment to say thank you. I really appreciate your listenership and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that every single episode helps you and your business. All right, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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