Time for money. That’s the trap that many coaches find themselves in and a big reason why it’s so hard to create sustainability in your coaching practice. Constantly trading time for money leads to burnout, period. Not to mention that it also caps your earning potential. You only have so much time available which means you are only able to trade a set amount of time for that money. Unless you keep increasing your hourly rates, hitting 6 figures and beyond in your business will always be out of reach.
Coupled with that is the limitation of not doing our best work. As coaches, we all have a gift, a purpose that allows us to stand out from the crowd and provide a very specific transformation for our clients. When we are trading time for money and working with clients one on one it becomes difficult to work in our zone of genius.
Coaching is hard work, emotionally and spiritually. Especially if you work in some of the more difficult areas such as trauma, health & wellbeing, and intuitive work. We need to take care of ourselves in between clients and ensure that we are taking time to restore our energy. This means that we cannot work with back-to-back clients, again creating challenges in our earning and time potentials when we are trading time for money.
So what’s the answer? Signature Programs.
Signature programs give you the opportunity to create a package that includes one on one coaching, group work, workshops and facilitation, tools, programs and courses, and any other items that would bring value to your clients and help them move through their transformation. You would then price this package based on the value to your clients and the results that they achieve and not on how much time you have given to them.
Group work is a crucial part of these programs not only because it allows you to present an incredible amount of value in a much shorter time frame, but also because peer-to-peer learning and development is one of the most effective ways to move people through transformation.
Let’s say you are a leadership coach, specializing in working with first-time managers and leaders who want to build their leadership toolbox to create effective teams. You could coach a client one on one for 6 months, twice a month for an hour, and charge them $2400 in exchange for 12 hours of your time. If you had 10 people at a time you are working with that’s 120 hours in exchange for $24000 over 6 months.
Or you could create a 6-week workshop with a pre-recorded element of coaching and a weekly live group session. You could also add in 3 one on one coaching sessions and maybe an assessment of some sort, like Gallup Strengths or similar. You could charge the same $2400 only now you are earning that over 6 weeks instead of 6 months. Your workshop once written and recorded will be used for the next year to 18 months before you might have to do any revisions and you would be coaching for 36 hours instead of 120.
Yes, for the first creation of your workshop you would have to spend the time creating it but after that it’s repeatable AND your clients will be ecstatic as they are getting the same results in 6 weeks instead of six months. Plus additional value of whatever tools or assessment you decided to add, the ability to network with like-minded people, and learning and developing alongside other participants who may have questions and comments that they would never have thought of to bring to the live group sessions.
Do you see how much value these programs pack in for the attendees as well as how much more scope they give you?
Now, a word of warning, don’t go packing your signature program full of “stuff” because you feel like you should be giving additional value. People don’t want stuff, they want results. They want you to move them out of the pain they are in now and into a more pleasurable existence. When you create that transformation from where they are now to where they want to be, your clients will find the value in that.
Adding in tools and experiences that contribute to that transformation is great, but you don’t need to add in stuff that does not contribute to that transformation or that confuses the process.
So where do you start with creating a signature program?
Always start with the end in mind. What is the shift, outcome, and measurable result your client can expect once they have been through your program? Your client is coming to you because you specialize in helping them move past the problem they have. Clearly define this problem and how your program will move them through it and out the other side. What are the results they will see? How will they feel? Write all this down as the initial outline of your signature program.
Next, you’ll break down your big idea into mini outcome sessions. You want to create 6 to 12 mini outcomes that all contribute to the overall transformation. Essentially bite-sized steps that your clients can consume and implement on a weekly basis. You may have more than 6-12 outcomes, don’t worry, you will skinny down your list of outcomes to pick only those areas that truly move your client through the transformation.
If those other areas are really good, keep a note of them, maybe they will go into a masterclass that clients can go on to after this first program. One thing to note is that clients typically want to see results happening fast, so aim to roll out your program over 6-12 weeks tops! The number of weeks will correlate with the number of mini outcomes you have.
Once you have your big transformation and your mini outcomes, it’s time to start working on building your content and tools so that you can start marketing and enrolling your clients and then you are off to the races!
Now here are another few tips to help you get this bad boy off the ground (because I know you and your perfectionist tendencies)
- You do not need to have all of the content and tools in place to launch. You will be guiding participants though weekly so you can continue to add content even after week 1 has started. As long as you are constantly ahead of the week you are facilitating you can create content as you go.
- You don’t need to have fancy workbooks and graphics and other fluff to make this work. You clients want the transformation you can give them, whether it comes with a workbook or not.
- DO NOT make this a bigger deal than it is. You are already doing this work, you are just formatting and delivering it in a different way that benefits both you and your clients. That’s a win-win! Don’t let it overwhelm you.
If you are having challenges coming up with the ONE problem you solve for your clients, book a Shift Your Focus Coaching session with me, and let’s get this locked down along with your ideal client avatar so that you can get to being the transformation expert that you are. You can book a session here.
Now go get to work on your awesomeness!
You are exhausted and on the brink of burnout from doing all the things and getting mediocre results. It’s time to make some changes! Watch our webinar “4 Reasons Your Coaching Practice isn’t Thriving“
