If you’re a leader or expert who’s keen to create, launch and run a group program – perhaps your flagship program, the jewel in your offerings ecosystem – then welcome! You’re in the right place.
In this article, I cover:
- What is group coaching?
- How do you create a group coaching program?
- How do you hold group coaching sessions?
- How do you launch your group coaching program?
What is group coaching?
Group coaching is facilitating a group of people who want to achieve similar goals. Typically this is done through live group coaching calls, and you might also have an online social group where the group meets in between calls. In addition, you can offer asynchronous online coaching, using apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram or Voxer.
So what are the benefits of group coaching?
What are the benefits of group coaching for you?
Starting your own group coaching program enables you to:
- Leverage your expertise, working one-to-many, rather than one-to-one (and help more people)
- Scale your business more easily
- Systematise your thinking and process into an expert methodology, that you can then leverage further into assets such as a book, keynote, licensing program, or certification
- Better position yourself as a leader, authority and expert in your field
- Free up your time to invest in professional development, developing your thought leadership, creating strategic partnerships, and simply enjoying life…on a yacht, while cruising the Pacific Islands 🌴
If you already have a one-on-one coaching program, converting your process into a proprietary group coaching program enables you to leverage your time and expertise, while magnifying your impact.
My brain can only handle so many clients at any one time. From the very beginning, I’ve always limited the number of one one-on-one business coaching clients I work with at any one time, from four to six one-to-one coaching clients. This makes it very hard to grow my income without grouping up my clients.
When I’m working intensely with a business owner client, either through my masterminds, one-to-one business coaching, or through my group business coaching programs, they’re squatting in my head.
I’m thinking of people I need to introduce them to, partnerships that would be beneficial for them, positioning to help them nail their niche, or creative ideas to help them with their sales conversions. I’m thinking about them and their business while I’m making coffee, walking my hamster, or lying with my legs up the wall.
I can’t have too many one-to-one business coaching or mastermind clients at any one time. I am not the Buddha, and I haven’t yet figured out how NOT to be energetically invested in my clients.
What are the benefits of group coaching for your clients?
Group coaching programs are also a win-win for your clients. In fact, the benefits of group coaching for my clients are what led me to creating online group programs in the first place.
These benefits include:
- Diverse perspectives of group members. There is copious evidence to suggest that diversity of thinking and being around people who are different from us, improves and benefits us.
- Networking opportunities: as business owners, we need to recognise the value of our network, and our network’s network, and our network’s network’s network (and so on!). It’s not WHAT you know, it’s who you know – in short, your network enables you to reach your goals far more quickly and easily.
- Faster self-insight: how we operate in groups will give us far deeper self-insight, far more quickly. In a group of diverse personalities, we can notice our particular tendencies, and how different personality types provoke different aspects of ourselves. This self-insight is invaluable for helping us develop our character, work to our strengths, and know our personal, particular charms.
- Reach your goals faster: Research shows that group coaching is highly effective in helping you attain your goals more quickly. Perhaps this is due to accountability of the group? Or tapping into healthy competitiveness? Or having evidence of what’s possible for ourselves and our businesses, in our close relationships?
As a coach, you need to learn how to manage a larger group of people so that you don’t become overwhelmed. You’ll also need to give exceptional support so that your clients get great results (that’s what you’ll learn in this article).
As a business coach, I have invested heavily in other coaches group coaching programs and online courses for several years, so I’ve seen what works – and what doesn’t – from both sides.
Plus, I’ve worked closely with hundreds of business owner clients to help them to design, develop, launch and deliver their own group coaching programs.
So when is a good time to start your group program?
When should you start a group coaching program?
I suggest waiting until you’ve worked with at least 10 one-on-one coaching clients, and if you have corporate experience mentoring others, then this will be hugely relevant and beneficial too.
When business owners come to me wanting to start a group program having never worked closely with a client before, I consider this a red flag. Yes, I appreciate that not all clients are ideal, and that some clients turn out to be energy vampires, but nothing comes close to the understanding you’ll gain working one-to-one with clients.
The intimacy of a one-to-one coaching relationship gives you invaluable insights that you can use to design, deliver, market and sell your group program. Plus, you’ll be better equipped to anticipate your group coaching participants’ common obstacles and questions.
But how do you create a group coaching program? Here’s what you need to know.
How do you create a group coaching program?
To create a group coaching program, you need to a solid structure, you need to decide on your price, and decide on the number of people you want to enrol.
How to structure a group coaching program
As the business owner, YOU are ultimately in charge of all decisions relating to your group coaching program. You can design it in a way which plays to your strengths, fits your lifestyle, and meets your goals, while also (of course!) meeting your ideal clients’ needs and wants.
However, if you twisted my arm, and demanded, “Brook! Just tell me what to do!”, then I’d suggest making it 2-6 months duration, with either 1-4 live calls a week, though six months of weekly group coaching calls would likely be too much.
In between live coaching calls, you can create a group on WhatsApp, Facebook, Slack, Voxer, or Telegram, where your group gathers.
But far more important than the tech, the calls, the duration, is a solid group program structure.
This will greatly increase your chances of success. Further, if you’re seriously about scaling your group program, you can’t throw together a bunch of group calls without structure. You need to centre your participants’ experience and outcomes.
Fortunately, no matter your industry (whether you’re a writer or leadership coach) your coaching is going to have some type of proprietary process. Your work isn’t pure intuition – even your intuition has a pattern behind it – and understanding your particular patterns in your work is key to codifying your expert methodology, and scaling your group program.
Typically, you lead your clients through the exact same steps. Some of your clients may need more time to go through some steps, while others can move forward more quickly. But the particular steps remain the same.
If you’ve worked with a handful of coaching clients, you likely already know what your structure looks like. Some things need to be done first, in order for the next stage to be successful. Your structure does the heavy lifting for you.
I recommend a blend of live and pre-recorded content, which works out to be roughly 90% pre-recorded and 10% delivered live. I always recommend to every client that ANY program or course, no matter how large or tiny, is first delivered 100% live.
Delivering new content live to a group for the first time, enables you to get real life, real time feedback from paying clients (the only type of feedback that actually matters). The first time you deliver anything will be the worst time; this is unavoidable. You must do something the first time to do it the second time, which will be 87% better.
So what are the live elements of your group program, beyond the first time you deliver it?
I suggest you choose to deliver live lessons or topics that are:
- Complex or easily misunderstood
- Delicate, or typically provoke people (such as money or pricing)
- Require higher-than-normal customisation to help people get the most value
- Creative brainstorming, best done with a group.
How much to charge for your group coaching program
Most everyone over-thinks their price. Don’t do that. Remember, that you can (and should) always change your price – up! Not down.
If you are secretly wanting to price your group program at $5000, don’t start with $1000, as it’ll take you far too long, and be far too much work, to bridge this gap.
Remember, the marketing you do at a particular price point will solidify this in the minds’ of your audience. So investing time and effort into a $1000 value proposition, when you ultimately want to be at $5000, is ineffective.
You need to take control and responsibility of the price you charge but, if you twisted my arm, I’d tell you that $1,500 to $5,000 is a good price range for a group coaching program, and $2,000-$3,000 is the most common price. My flagship group program Hustle & Heart is $4,500.
Your price is arbitrary. Far more important than your price is your ability to communicate value. But even the most extraordinary of messaging specialists can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.
Simple problems attract lower price points. Complex problems need commensurate higher price points.
The more complex the problem, the more compellingly simple your messaging and marketing needs to be. As Einstein said, “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”.
How many people to enrol in your group coaching program
You decide how many people you want in your group coaching program. While I’m a fan of intimate programs (all my high-end group programs are 5-20 participants), remember that you’re limiting your ability to scale if all your group programs are deliberately kept intimate.
Generally, high-ticket programs ($5,000 upwards) will have a limit on participants, typically up to 20.
Many owners who I work with are concerned that the larger the group, the less valuable for participants this will be, and while there is an element of truth in that, it’s not a justification for a sloppy structure or messy program.
I’ve participated in large group programs that I’ve received a lot of value from, and intimate programs that under-delivered. It all comes back to your structure and the tiny details that make participants feel seen, heard, and understood.
But what if no-one buys your program? What do you do if you only get one or two buyers?
If it’s your first time selling your group coaching program, then one or two sales are amazing – these show that you’ve done a good enough job of communicating the value of your program. This isn’t a failure – this is you getting started (I’d far rather have done something than just thought about it forever).
If you’re wondering, “won’t people judge me if I only enrol one or a few people in my program?” then please know that they won’t. Participants will likely feel that they’re getting even more value because your group is so intimate. So take this opportunity to spoil your people!
The best days for group coaching calls
Choosing a time that works for everyone in your group is impossible. I used to run Doodle polls to determine the best time for the majority. But this was never 100% awesome for everyone, so now I just pick a time ahead of time, that works for most people.
So when should you hold your group coaching calls? I suggest holding these Monday-Friday when people are more focused. If your clients are full-time employees, you might do evenings around 7pm.
However, because my clients are all business owners, I almost never run group calls in the late afternoon or evening. I get sleepy, my clients get sleepy, and we need to protect our evening routines from the insidious creep of our businesses!
I wouldn’t be taking my own ‘analogue evenings’ advice if I ran group calls in the evenings, so generally I hold group calls from 9am to 1pm.
If you have a global audience, you’ll want to try to find a time that works for everyone, though you could offer the same call at two separate times, specifically for time zones that are incompatible. For example, a group coaching program with participants in Europe, Australasia, and the United States would likely require two call times, so that participants could choose one or the other (or both, if they were keen beans).
This year, I’ve had clients on group coaching calls with 12-hour differences – from Perth and Boston (as well as the Australian eastern seaboard). I’ve worked with clients across Australia, as well as Asia, the US, and Europe, though that pesky one-hour daylight savings time difference between where I am, in Sydney and Queensland still trips me up the most!
You can also increase the likelihood of success on live group calls with tactics such as sending a form that collect questions before the call, and making recordings available so that everyone gets the support they need.
How do you hold group coaching program sessions?
Next, we’ll look at how to run your group coaching program (how to organise, lead and scale your programs with the right support). Here’s the most essential information:
How to organise group coaching sessions
I like to open every group call with ice-breakers. Quick tip: create a collection of awesome ice-breakers so that you’re not resorting to the same-old-same-old. Get people engaged with you and the group right from the first moment they come on the call.
Next, I ask participants if they have questions, to please post these in the chat. This serves several purposes:
- It centres the participants, not you and your agenda
- It encourages participation
- It means that people who have come to the call with questions or curly conundrums aren’t preoccupied and distracted, wondering whether they’re going to get the opportunity to have their question addresses
- It gives you invaluable feedback into what your clients need help with – particularly when you get asked the same questions over and over again, which indicates that you need to strengthen your curriculum in that particular area, or devote more time to it.
As the coach, it’s your role to ensure there aren’t too many interruptions or oversharing of details. The ability to keep people focused and on track while also making them feel seen, heard and supported is complicated, but it’s important, and it can be developed with practice.
It’s also your responsibility to create a safe and supportive boundary, cultivating an environment that’s also open-minded and encourages vulnerability – again, a delicate line to balance.
If you’re leading a larger group, you can collect questions through a form beforehand, to make your time more efficient.
If you have had experience in facilitation, you’ll find it very similar to group coaching. While all coaches have a different style, group coaching is most similar to facilitation – where you, as the leader/facilitator, pose questions, provoke thinking, guide discussions, question assumptions, point out bias, and inspire diverse thinking.
Most importantly, you want participants to actually DO something differently as a result of your group coaching calls, not just feel good.
You can set up your calls with a tool like Zoom and send calendar invites. I use AddEvent and Zoom for my group coaching calls.
How to lead group coaching
You might be wondering how exactly, to move from your one-on-one coaching to group coaching. Here’s what you need to know about leading a group coaching program:
What’s the promise of your program?
You must get clear on one thing: What’s the big program promise of your group program? And how is the delivery of your group program going to match that promise?
A common mistake coaches make is to think that their group program is just them delivering one-on-one coaching in a group. If that’s what you want to do, then this is typically a mastermind, which has no curriculum.
But if you want to create a highly scalable, flagship group program, where everyone goes through the same modules, and can then access extra support in a group setting, then you need a strong structure, curriculum, and program promise.
What’s the depth of your support?
The next thing to get clear on is: What depth of customise support are you going to give?
I have tried all kinds of things since 2015, when I first launched online group programs. I have hired external experts to give detailed one-to-one feedback, I have delivered this myself, and I have included elements of done-for-you services, such as sales writing, website design, and building email funnels.
While offering intensive support is appealing to participants, it also has its downfalls:
- Doing something for someone doesn’t teach them how to do it for themselves
- Offering a lot of support, feedback and done-for-you can encourage dependency on you and your business, which isn’t great if you want empowered, independent clients
- Your costs and time can balloon significantly, eroding your profit margin and eating into the time you were freeing up by creating a group program in the first place, yes?
Before you jump in to offer a lot of support, first ask yourself, “am I doing this because I need to be liked and admired?” Harsh, I know. But as a reformed people pleaser, I know from hard-won experience that taking too much responsibility for your program participants doesn’t help them, nor you.
Instead, think about:
- Creating easy-to-follow tools and templates that have instructions baked in
- Making it as easy as possible for participants to learn what they need to know in order to DO the thing they need to do
- Coaching and guiding your program participants on how to ask better questions, and how to get the most out of group coaching, while providing you just enough context to enable you to answer these well.
Understanding the depth you’ll go into, and what’s possible, fair and appropriate will help you to avoid overpromising and under-delivering.
What’s the depth of your answers?
How in-depth will your answers be? One mistake I see new group coaches make is to go into too much detail in their answers, rather than provoking the client to answer their own questions.
Beginners or inexperienced coaches tend to overdeliver on their answers, to prove their value. A more experienced coach knows what key details are necessary to share, and how to ask the right questions or a group program participant which will inspire their own answer.
Remember, people know their own situations better than you’re ever going to know them. Your job is not to jump in and fix other people’s problems, as you see them. Your job is to equip and empower them to identify the most important problems, find the most effective solution, and inspire them to implement it now, not later.
Overdelivering is another reason why you need to clarify the promise of your program first, so there’s no mismatch in your delivery.
When clients join my group programs, I send them a welcome questionnaire, which solicits as much relevant detail as they’ll likely tolerate answering in my form! Then I review these questionnaires before and during each program so that I can better understand and cater to participants, while still keeping confidentiality.
When someone asks me a question, I’m able to answer their question far better because I know their situation through their questionnaire. I can also direct them to existing lesson that’s particularly relevant to them.
In this way, you can give customised support that’s leveraging your existing program content, as well as being scalable.
Questions to ask on your group coaching call
You, as the coach, are leading your group calls, which includes asking questions such as:
- What’s one recent win you’ve had lately?
- What’s one thing you’re currently working on?
- What are you currently obsessed with?
- What’s one thing you’d like help with today?
- What’s waking you up at 2am?
By going through participants one by one, everyone can speak, so try your best to keep the allocated time similar for each participant so each gets the same support.
How to make time for supporting your students
So how are you going to set aside time to support your coaching students? A lot of coaches tend to struggle with this.
I suggest that you carve out regular time each week. Sometimes I have three different group programs running concurrently, which means I allocate different times of the week to each program, outside of the group call times. Typically, I do this on the same day of the week as the group call falls on.
If you’re focused, this can take as little as a few minutes a day. If you’re easily distracted (like I am), you can use tools such as the Forrest app, the Pomodoro technique, or even co-working, to keep you on track.
In this way, the structure you create for yourself gives you freedom, so that your group program doesn’t take over your life.
It’s also your responsibility to set expectations on how to make the most of your support, and what/when communication will happen. This prevents you falling into bad habits of checking in on program participants 24/7, which foster unrealistic expectations and dependency.
How to scale with program coaches
Many coaches struggle with having scalable support, so that they can service more program participants without becoming a bottleneck.
One solution is to hire other coaches so that your group program isn’t solely dependent on you. Hire coaches who you’ve personally worked with before and know are awesome. And hire them initially on a subcontracting basis, so that you can use them more or use them less, depending on your needs. You can choose to pay them either per client they support, per hour, or a set fee per program or month.
There are two approaches to using support coaches in your programs:
- Have program coaches who act as “mini yous” – representing your brand and methodology. This approach can be good for high-end group programs with more one-on-one support, with these coaches supporting smaller groups within your larger group program.
- The second approach is to have specialist program coaches, for example, in finance, law, copy writing, design, accountability, etc. My Audacious Mastermind has its own Accountability Coach, to support clients on a day-to-day or week-to-week level, between our calls.
Having support coaches enables you to focus on the particular things you really enjoy.
To implement this, first identify the people you want to work with so that you don’t have to scramble to find these specialists right when you need them.
How do you launch your group coaching program?
Planning and preparation only takes you so far! Sooner or later, you’ll need to launch and sell your group coaching program. How you do this depends on many things.
Let’s review the main elements:
How far in advance do you market an online group coaching program?
Ideally, you already have an audience, in which case, an eight-week runway is a good amount of time.
If you don’t have an audience, or have a very small audience, then you can start right away building your audience and using this audience to co-create your group program with (though they may not be aware you’re doing this).
How do you market your group coaching program?
There are are many marketing strategies as there are people in the world, and any expert you ask will tell you something different. The best way to market your group coaching program is using various different channels, working to your communication strengths and actually enacting your plan. My preference is always ‘minimum viable marketing’ rather than best-case bells-and-whistles marketing that is far too complicated and expensive to actually be used.
A long-time strategy that still works for group program is to build your email list, then run one more content events (layered one on top of the other), though which you directly sell your program.
Other strategies include:
- Using other people’s audiences to grow your own, including affiliate marketing
- Guest speaking, as above, you’re using other people’s audiences to grow your own
- Actively seeking referrals from clients
- Using your testimonials and case studies
- Advertising
- Search engine optimisation
This is not an exhaustive list! First and foremost, you need to build your email list and sell to your email list. Ideally, all other marketing strategies are helping you to build and nurture your email list.
Grow your own way
A well-structured and scalable program that offers the best support to your participants is right around the corner for you, I can feel it! Perhaps the most difficult thing about designing, launching, selling and delivering a group coaching program is the immense number of decisions to be made.
While there are definitely common mistakes that owners tend to make when moving from one-to-one to group coaching, there are many more decisions that simply comes down to, “what do YOU think?” and “what do YOU want?”
After all, there’s no point creating a group coaching program that you’ve gotten advice from experts on, as well as input from clients, but it makes you miserable. A sustainable business with a healthy, thriving owner at the centre is a business that simply WORKS, from all perspectives.
Perhaps your biggest hindrance to your group coaching program is perfectionism, which is actually self-sabotage trussed up conscientiousness. Good ideas are worthless. Implementation is everything.
Life is short. Sooner or later, you have to eject that squatter from your brain and LAUNCH already. It might be the best business decision you ever make.
If you’re keen to start a group coaching program, then check out my Leverage Mastermind.
