How to Launch Your Online Coaching Program

FULL TRANSCRIPT

So, you're ready to become a coach and you want to do it using an online methodology. Everybody else is online, right? And right now, that's the new normal. However, you've got some doubts still about even being a coach, and now you've got to enter an area, a new realm that you are totally unfamiliar with. Well, if that's you, stick with me because what I'm going to do today and over the next few weeks is I'm going to help you to launch an online coaching program without all the frustration and without technical overwhelm. Let's do it.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and today, I want to continue our conversation around all things becoming a coach by helping you to understand the key elements that you need to have in place so that you can launch an online coaching program.

One of the biggest areas of frustration that I see right now with new coaches and, for that matter, coaches who've been around for a while is, "Should I, and if so, how can I get involved in this online thing?" By the way, I'm going to let you know upfront that I don't use the word "virtual". Call me stubborn, but for me, I like to make sure that I call it online. Why? Because "virtual" means it's not really real. It's sort of real, it's close to real, but it's not the real thing. And when we look at it that way, and we think that it's not the real thing, it's not like real coaching that creates some mindset problems and some beliefs that actually can hold you back. So for me, it's not what I do that's changed. It's how I do it. Now, instead of traveling around the world or indeed traveling in my own city and going into organisations and being inside a room with people, I'm now doing it via a camera via an online medium. So, that's the first distinction I want to make. This is an online coaching program that we're going to be talking about. It's not virtual because ours is real.

All right. Now that we've got that out of the way and you know where I'm coming from with that, what I want to do is help you to remove the uncertainty and overwhelm and indeed remove and eliminate those limiting beliefs that you have about yourself and about the online space that are going to hold you back from creating and delivering a world-class online coaching program. Here's the thing that a lot of people doing what we do think, and I was one of them, "Oh, I need to be face-to-face with people to deliver the greatest amount of value." For me, that held me back from getting into the online space for quite some time. However, my experience has been exactly the opposite. I've found that delivering online, I can touch more lives and I can go deeper than what I was doing before. The old one hour coaching session face-to-face has been phased out. It doesn't work. Why? Because a lot of times, people fill those hours with fluff, where they start the coaching conversation building rapport, and we talk about why we didn't do what we said we were going to do last time, et cetera, et cetera. And we get to a point where, "Okay. Hey, how about we get started in today's coaching session?"

And because we are people and we are conversational, the second challenge is that we like to have a bit of a chat. And even though we've got the coaching session done, we can tend to extend and go over and eat into bandwidth that we could actually be helping somebody else with, and they could actually be implementing some of the stuff that they learned in that coaching session. So for me, that first belief of I've got to be in the room needed to change, and perhaps it does for you as well. Now, to do that, all you've got to do is realise the language around what you've said. For me to deliver my best coaching, I need to be in the room. Well, you are, you're just there on a screen rather than face to face. This is one of the main reasons why I call it online, not virtual, because I want myself and others to understand that I'm not doing anything different. I'm just appearing in a different way. Now, we're not advocating that we use holograms like some have done. We are there live and we are interacting and we're having a conversation. However, we're just not physically in the room together. So, that's the first belief. Let's shift that let's move forward from that and realise that an online coaching program is actually more beneficial for you in terms of leverage and how many people that you can help. And it's more beneficial to your client because it doesn't matter where either of you are. You can still get together and make it happen.

The second belief that I see a lot is that, "If I develop an online program, I'm going to have to put lots of stuff in there so that it gives that extra value and makes up for me not being there with them." And that too is a false belief. What we want to do is make sure that we have a minimum viable program that allows for implementation, not just filling them full of information. So those two beliefs that I see a lot of people have, let's dispel those. They've been debunked. And let's go into this realising that this is an opportunity to go online. It's not something that we have to do now because of pandemics or any other reason. It's going to give you the opportunity to start your practice in a leveraged way. Most of us who have been around for a while. We started off doing one-on-one coaching. We did that with people live or way back then we did it on a phone call or whatever it was. And then as things changed in the world, we had to change with it. But what you, if you are starting right now, have the opportunity to do is start at the right spot for what we need right now.

So now that we've got that out of the way, and we have made a decision that we're going to create an online program for our clients, where we can deliver our coaching and our value, and what I want to do is just give you some key pointers that you need to consider when you're going into developing your online coaching program. Over the month of May, what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull each of these elements apart. I'm going to go deeper for you so that you can then get started and follow the journey along with me, and in the month of May, end up with your online coaching program built, operational, and changing lives.

The first distinction that we want to make is the distinction between an online course and an online program. And if we put a third one in there, online coaching sessions. A great online coaching program is way more than a course. A course is a way that we can deliver information in bite-sized chunks so that people can consume that self-paced, in their time, and in their schedule. The challenge with that and with a lot of online courses right around the world is that it may be fantastic content, but the completion rates are very, very low. One of the key elements of a coach, as we've talked about before, is the ability to provide two things. One is an environment of support. The second is an environment of accountability. So, a course is just information. A program is information with implementation.

So now that we understand that, there are three key stages that we need to go through when we are building an online coaching program. The first stage is to design the program. Now, when we design a program, the first thing I want you to do is go analogue. Yes, it's an online program. There's all technical ways of doing things when we build an online program, but we're not going to go anywhere near that just yet. What are we going to do is get out some paper and a pen, and we're going to design what that experience is going to be like for our client and how we are going to do that. In designing a program in analogue, we're not creating anything, we're not doing anything. We're making sure that we are putting together what needs to be in that program so that we can deliver the promise. We can deliver the transformation that we bring as a coach. Now, that depends on what type of coaching you do. That depends on who your client is. And part of the design process is designing that perfect client, designing who it is that this program is going to help. So, the first area is to design the program. And as I said, next week, we'll start going deeper on some of these things, and I'll give you elements of what goes into the design process.

The second area is to create the program. This is where we take out design and we put it all together. So if we look at the design as being the mise en place, for those of you who are chefs, or you like watching those reality chef shows, that's where we chop everything up, we get it all already, and that was the design phase. But now, we're going to go into the create phase, where we take all those ingredients and we put them together. We add our own secret sauce and we create a program that is going to deliver what it is that your clients need. A lot of people say, "Oh, but Grant, everyone's got an online program at the moment. How do I make myself different?" Well, in the design phase, we started that in the create phase. We get to make sure that we are creating what our client, our particular client needs. Those other people that don't fit into our client avatar. They can get looked after with those other people's programs. So, the second thing that we're going to do, and we'll go deeper on this over the next few weeks, is create the program.

The third area that we're going to work on is automating the program. One of the things that scares a lot of coaches is, "What if I build this program and I have to deliver it and I don't have the time and it owns my life and I lose all the energy that I've got", and what have you, and I've been there. So, what we're going to do is we're going to automate the program so that it delivers clients. It creates growth in our coaching program, and it's done in a leveraged way so that we help more people and we keep our sanity and we have some energy left to do things outside. So, the third area that we're going to deal with and I'll handle that with you in May is automating.

So, there you have it: Three key areas that we're going to work on so that you can have an online coaching program that's going to change lives. It's going to deliver your transformation, the thing that you are best served to bring to the world, and it's going to do it in a way that is not just information, but it's going to create massive implementation and results for your clients, and therefore it's going to help you to grow your practice.

Well, that's it from me for this week. Make sure that you hit the subscribe button and you stick with me in this journey as we continue as we go into next month to pull the individual elements of how to put together your coaching program so that it delivers online. And next week, we will start that in the design phase. I'll see you then.