Hey, welcome back to the Life Coach Launchpad. My name’s BJ, and I’m here every week talking to you about all the online business things that, as it turns out, need to happen in order to have a successful life coaching business. I’m a business coach. I love to help life coaches make more money, get more clients, have more fun, and to do what they love to do, what they’re meant to do, and that’s coaching.

So let’s dive right in. Welcome back coaches. This is a fun little story about how I helped a client to transition from doing only individual coaching to offering her first group coaching offer. It’s fun because she got to touch more people’s lives, more transformations. And as it turned out, she also ended up tripling her annual profit to 350, 000.

And that happened in just the first 12 months of us working together. [00:01:00] The way we designed the building out of her group coaching program, she actually got paid to build it. She made 40, 000 to create the program. Then she made another 40, 000 when she launched it for the first time. So if that sounds good to you, stay tuned.

Okay, here we go. This is how it all started. I was actually hired to increase the podcast downloads on her podcast because that’s how she was getting consultations. Everyone who signed up for a consultation said that they heard about her podcast. They heard about her through her podcast, but the more we talked and the more I questioned what she actually wanted her business to look like in the long run.

She realized that she had always considered moving to group, but didn’t really know where to start. Her wait list was a month or so long, so if, by the time you, when, from the moment you signed, [00:02:00] a client would wait about a month before they could get started on their coaching, and she had raised her prices a few times.

Now, I don’t mean to say that everyone should move to group as soon as they’re able to, um, And that’s actually a whole nother episode investigating. If you want to focus on individual coaching or move to group or offer both in short, it does come down to how you want to be spending your time. In general, a group program will, will most will more often than not have bigger launches, more systems, more automations, more tech, more content.

Yeah, I can come with bigger, bigger revenue, but. Honestly, that doesn’t, that’s not even always how it works out. So it really, think of it as what do you want to be doing? Now, I, I do say that also considering that group programs come with different levels of complexity. You could have a subscription where people are constantly coming in and going out every month.

There’s a lot of marketing that goes with that. [00:03:00] You’re creating content ongoing. And on the other hand, you could throw together a sales page, a buy button and meet on zoom with multiple people instead of one person. So it’s a lot like individual coaching, except there’s just more, more people on the call.

And that is actually a sneak peek into this story. Like I mentioned, she was considering group coaching but didn’t really know how to go about it or if she would have enough demand. I helped her come up with a plan that would both increase how many people wanted her coaching and create a group coaching program so she could serve more people.

Sound good? To increase demand, the very first tweak that I had her make was adding video to the content that she was already producing, which was just a podcast once per week and maybe a social post per week that her VA was writing up. And [00:04:00] here is my first mention that this example that I’m sharing today is just one example.

When I work with a client, whether I’m coaching them or delivering done for you services, I don’t deliver cookie cutter solutions. I work with my clients to create the business that works best for them. It’s both for them in terms of what they want to be doing and also what they want their business to be looking at, looking like longterm.

What are the goals? I help them with strategies that feel most natural to them, yet also bring in a steady stream of clients and therefore revenue. The biggest challenge for any coach is building that know, like, and trust factor. Trusting the person, but also trusting the process. Getting others to believe that you are the person that can bring them from where they are now to where they want to be.

What is a great strategy for most coaches, and was the strategy that this client used, was doing more video. [00:05:00] So potential clients can see your face, hear your voice, see your facial expressions. And video just happens to be the fastest way for you to get your point across. Jot down a few notes, then say them on camera.

It’s quite convenient. If that’s intimidating for you, I know I said just write down a couple notes and then say them on camera. That’s not always that easy for everyone, but I did create some content to help you with that. I show you exactly how to do that in a set of tools and instructional videos that I’ll put on the show notes of this page.

Uh, the show notes page for this episode, I included all that as a bonus, since one of the main strategies that this client used to increase demand in her coaching business was video. You get there bjbutler. com forward slash 19. So if you’re on my website, it’s forward slash 19. My client in this example thought video would be hard.

She pushed back [00:06:00] to say the least, she pushed back at first, but after she got into it, It really wasn’t that hard. I mean, everything that you’ll see in this, if you go to the show note page, all the teachings that I have there is what I gave to her, and it made it easier. And it felt even easier when she saw all the additional people coming onto her email list and interested in her coaching programs.

We actually created a schedule of content that she would create each week. Now, each week, there wasn’t that much to do. I’m just meaning throughout the month, each week would be different. One or two of the weeks, she just turned on her video recorder when she recorded her podcast. Boom, done. That was her video for the week.

It was something, it was video of her doing something that she was already going to do. Another type of video that she would create, she was just creating one video per week, is what we called an informal video. It was her in a setting that was just different than her at her desk. It was just, [00:07:00] it both caught the attention of people passing by on social or in a newsletter.

And it also, the way that she came off was totally different, the way, the, it almost changed her messaging. Like, the core of the message, messaging didn’t change, but just how, kind of the lead in was always different. And so it’s fresh. And, of course, she sometimes created a video from her desk, because that was most comfortable for her.

Repurposing content she already had notes from, from her podcast. She just condensed that down to two to three minutes. And those videos would go to a combination of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. That’s what it was for her. For you, it could be the same or different. Again, there’s a whole suite of tools exactly how to create, how to get started using video, make better video, how to always have something to say, and how to say it so that people remember it.

All these things can be taught. It’s what I taught [00:08:00] her, and I can teach you if you go to the show notes page. It’s at bjbutler. com forward slash 19. The amount of content you create does not have to be a lot. You get to choose how much, but I do recommend creating a long form of content per week. If it’s video, you’re all set.

You’ll probably want to make a, take a short segment of it to also produce into social posts, creating the videos, most of the work. And that also brings me to the point that this is one example. If you were to hire me to coach you or complete done for you services, like sales page creation, tech setup, Facebook ad creation, Facebook ad management, I can do it all because I have done it all.

I ran the backend of a multi six figure coaching business for five years. I always have my hands on a business in a business doing done for you services. It helps me stay current [00:09:00] and my skills sharp. And you get to take advantage of that by hiring me for coaching. So if you were to hire me for coaching, we would take into consideration what is most natural for you, what you feel comfortable doing there.

Cause there is no one way to get the word out about how you help your clients. I’m just telling you one example of how I’ve coached someone into some really great results. There is no one universal solution. I’ll say it again. That’s why listening to all the advice on the internet is really overwhelming.

One expert may tell you to post a live on social media every day to build your coaching business. Someone else may tell you to focus on email marketing. Another person may tell you to create a digital course. Everybody has a different strategy. The reality is all work. They might not work the first try, they may have to be adapted to your exact business, but if you were to choose one [00:10:00] and work on that for a year, you would gain substantial traction.

The problem comes two fold. So many, so many people get overwhelmed with all of the differing advice, so they apply none of it. It’s like, it’s overwhelming. Analysis paralysis. Or they get started on one strategy, but give up before they can see the results and change course. Every time you change course, you lose momentum.

When I buy a program, I show up knowing that something that is going to earn me a lot of money is there. I just have to find it. The good news for you is that all those tools and strategies that I’ve learned over the years from other experts, I have available to use with my coaching clients or when I complete done for you services.

Okay, so once we added video to her very short list of content she produced every week, then we went to building a group program that had instructional videos for each week of the program. [00:11:00] The group program she wanted to build would have an online portal that for each week of the program, students would watch a video and complete a short exercise before the group coaching session that took place on Zoom.

Okay, this is the beautiful part. This is how she got paid to build her program. I walked her through how to sell a simple, no frills group coaching offer. Then use the time that she spent teaching during those sessions as the videos that would go into her eventual, her eventual full fledged group coaching program.

The simple no frills offer consisted of one sales page, a link to PayPal to buy, no automations, no funnels. She had her VA write up a sales page, send it out, sent it out to her email list. She did do a free webinar, about 400 people signed up, 100 people showed up, and 12 bought, which was not bad [00:12:00] for just a really simple offer.

There was, she probably sent out about 10 emails total. For the simple no frills group coaching class that she sold, she organized each class in such a way that she taught for the first 10 to 15 minutes. During this time, she didn’t mention anyone’s name or acknowledge that she was in a group coaching program, which, even if she did, I don’t think that would have been a problem.

I just think it looks more professional this way. Then the rest of the class was coaching. She sent me all the class recordings. I took those teachings and turned them into the online portal. I used Entreport to create a membership program, but you could use a tool like Kajabi or other online course software.

It’s what she had access to, it’s what she was using already, and I think it was actually already included in her tier, in her pricing tier. Kajabi or other digital course platform is like way [00:13:00] easier to implement though. This was all a really great transition for her because she was starting to get burnt out teaching the same stuff to each person Individually and teaching a group was a step in the right direction But wouldn’t it be great if you could just do all the actual teaching once Record it and then let you and then she was letting her clients learn from that video The group coaching calls were laser focused on just her coaching.

That is something that is just more powerful life. And that’s it. We had a video. She sold a no frills group coaching class that consisted of a sales page, a PayPal link, and a dozen or so emails. Then she used the teaching in the recordings to create an online digital course that went along with, in, with, and into, with a group coaching session once a week.

Okay. If you’ve been building your business for a while, you may get all this. [00:14:00] But if you’re new, I know it can be a lot. Chances are that this exact set of strategies won’t apply to you 100%. That’s because starting or growing your business is always a very personal journey. There is no cookie cutter solution that’s going to solve all your problems.

That’s why having someone coaching you who knows what your specific goals are and takes into account what type of work you enjoy more than others is so valuable. If you’ve been doing this for a while, this probably wasn’t specific enough. If you’re newer in your business, this may have felt very complex and overwhelming and impossible to do.

Regarding using video to increase demand, if you’re interested in that or upping your video game, look through the content that I have at bjbutler. com forward slash 19. There’s, there’s a calendar that has 365 prompts that can be used to create any type of content, video, audio, text based. You basically just [00:15:00] answer the question, answer the question, write down a few notes, and then either turn it into text or turn on the video camera.

Again, the path to creating a thriving coaching business is not the same for everyone, but using video is a common thread in many businesses. You’ll see it everywhere. When you’re ready for help getting more individual coaching clients, transitioning the group, growing your group, or scaling a digital course, sign up for a mini session on my website.

If you’re interested in done for you services or are unsure if coaching or done for you is best sign up for a mini session. It’s free. You’re a coach. You know how helpful it is having someone in your corner, helping you through it. Who’s been there. If you have any questions, email me. I’ll talk to you next week.