EP095: 5 Reasons to Run a Group Program

Welcome to the Perfect Practice podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel is a functional medicine and success coach, international speaker and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

Hello my friends and welcome to Perfect Practice. It's Sachin. I know I've been a little absent lately and it's not because I'm not working, it's not because I'm not continuing to create amazing content for practitioners. However, I've been very focused on my mentorship at this time, supporting and guiding about 80 new practitioners that we're coaching at the moment. And we're helping each and every one of them implement group programs for their functional medicine and coaching practices. So today I wanted to highlight five key reasons why group programs are something that you should keep on your radar. And I would encourage you, highly encourage you to, to incorporate some of the content I'm gonna be sharing into your practice as soon as possible. A new study just came out that demonstrates the power of what I'm gonna talk about. So I wanna highlight that first, we're all evidence based practitioners. We wanna leverage the latest information and the best research that demonstrates the value and the effectiveness of what we do. So my first reason to encourage you to incorporate group programs is just that. In fact, the Cleveland Clinic just released a study that's set to publish in the British Medical Journal that highlights that functional medicine programs delivered in a group setting are more affordable and more clinically effective than doing one on one care. How about that? Who would have thought in a million years that that'd be the case? Well, I kind of had an inclination of that because functional medicine and most forms of healthcare require a healthy, thriving community where people feel supported and nurtured and they don't feel like they're alone. In fact, many years ago I spoke in Guernsey. And Guernsey is a small island in the English Channel. And one of their goals was to create the longest living country on the planet. In fact, they have the financial resources, the population is small enough and it's just nestled perfectly for them to thrive and for them to actually create the longest living population. So they invited speakers from all over the world, longevity experts, people who were really inclined to help them and support them on this mission. And each and every one of us spoke about the power of community. So it's no surprise to me that community creates much better outcomes. In fact, my friend James Maskell wrote a whole book about it called the Community Cure. So if you haven't read that book, then I highly encourage you to do that. Now, Cleveland Clinic has been running group functional medicine programs for many years now. And their research demonstrates the power and the effectiveness of group programs. So if you're evidence based, if you like to do things that not only make sense, but also are scientifically backed, then group programs are something that you should keep in mind. Now, reason number two to do group programs is the way your time is leveraged. Coaching practitioners, I realize how difficult it can be and how quickly functional medicine practices can lead to burnout. So the busier you get, not only is there one on one time that you're spending with your patients, but there's also that behind the scenes time that you're spending with your clients. And oftentimes, using the Pareto principle, I'll say that about 80% of the time, you're probably saying the same thing over and over again. However, in a group setting, you have the ability and the capacity not to say the same thing over and over again. You can say it once in a group and everyone gets it. And if anyone has questions, then certainly other people probably have similar questions and you can answer them all at the same time. So it's a much better way to leverage your time. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in this conversation. The number three reason to incorporate group programs is that your community that you create provides a fantastic support system for one another. This takes a lot of the heavy lifting off of your plate. This takes the necessity for you to be there at every single moment to support each person in the group away. And when you have veterans in the group, people who may know the answer, guess what, they jump in. They help, they support. So that work is divided. Many hands create light work and many minds create light work as well in this instance. So again, another good reason to incorporate group programs is that that load can be distributed amongst other people in the group. And guess what? Nobody feels more inspired. I mean, you know, who wouldn't, right? All of us feel so inspired when we can help and support one another. And I can promise you that your clients will, who've acquired knowledge from you are so happy to pay it forward. And they're so happy to guide others along the journey. And of course you can vet their answers and, you know, chime in if necessary. But we found in our group programs that many people will jump in and answer the questions and we'll come in and log in in the morning and guess what? Many of those questions are answered. So this takes a load off of you as opposed to shifting all the responsibility onto you. When you're working with clients, reason number four is that you don't have to say the same thing over and over and over again. So by saying something to a group of people, you're able to say it once, say it right, and then you can record what you're saying and people can watch it over and over should they choose to. But you're not having to say the same thing over and over again and again. We spend a lot of time doing that in our practices. Now you might be wondering, well, Satchin, how can I say the same thing over and over again to everybody? Well, the reason for that is because you want to put people in a group who have similar goals and similar challenges. So you would want to have a group, let's say, with people who have autoimmune conditions or people with thyroid issues or people with metabolic issues or diabetes or metabolic syndrome. You don't want to have a group of people with general, generally different problems, okay? So it might be difficult to have a group of people that's all super diverse with their condition because they're not going to get as much benefit. So if you work with people with digestive issues, and that's your niche and avatar, then your group should be people with digestive issues. So then guess what? You can say certain recommendations or panaceas that are the same for everybody, right? Everyone should chew their food and everyone should take a moment to have gratitude. Everyone should go to bed on time. Everyone should spend some time in the sun and realign their sleep and wake schedule with the rising and setting of the sun. There's certain things that we all need. Now that brings me to point number five. When you're using group programs, what we actually do and what we encourage you to do is actually have a hybrid model. And what I mean by that is that the bulk of your services are delivered in a group setting. Now, in addition to that, you may also want to have like, we have one on one appointments with your clients. So we have one on one appointments that we do with our clients to troubleshoot their specific needs so their individual needs are being met, but their general and broader Needs are being met by the group itself. And you know, there's different types of care. There's synchronous and there is asynchronous. So one on one care and one to many group care can be synchronous, which means that people have to be there or can be there in order to get the service. One on one requires both parties being there, right? It requires you to be there, requires a patient to be there, one to many. In a group setting, you have to be there. The patient or the client may not necessarily have to be there. They can always watch the recording. That's asynchronous. And then that group training or other trainings that you have can also be delivered asynchronously. So what that means is you can have a series of recordings like we do. We have a complete 10 week program. And that 10 week program is what enables our clients to dive into the content whenever they want. They can access the materials whenever they want. They can watch it over and over. And that's completely asynchronous. They can do that on their own time. So many reasons to do group programs. You know, it's more affordable, it's more accessible, you get amazing clinical outcomes, you build an awesome community, you have a better scaling and leveraging of your time. You have the opportunity to hybridize the program, make it one to one, one to many and one to infinity with asynchronous and synchronous services that you're providing. So if you haven't considered group programs, I highly encourage you to. You know, this day and age, you can do them in person, you can do them online. Zoom is our favorite platform and platform of choice for group programs. And we love it. We love delivering care in this capacity. Our clients love it. We're providing world class outcomes using precision wellness principles such as wearable technology and leveraging the best of what science has to offer. So I hope you consider this and if you are considering launching a group program, then I highly, highly, highly encourage you to do just that. And you know, let's just see what happens. Let's see how much fun you can have and how many more people you, you can serve by incorporating groups as part of your practice delivery model. Lots of love, lots of gratitude. I hope you got some value out of this and I'll see you on the next episode. Thanks, talk to you soon. Bye for now.