How to Start a Coaching Program From Scratch

Do you want to start a coaching program, but aren’t sure how? Or perhaps you have considered starting a coaching program, but it seems overwhelming, or it feels like there are too many steps to doing it.



If so, I plan to dispel all of those challenges today! I’ll show you in this article how very easy it is to start a coaching program, and to start it fast.

Now, there are different levels of a coaching program that you could start, for example, maybe you have a very small following and you will only start with 1-3 clients, the size (level) of your coaching program will be very different than if you have a very large following and 1000+ clients would enroll the very first week you launched it!



But . . . the basic implementation is exactly the same, but of course there will be small differences in delivery (or at least, there are apparent differences).

So in this article, I’ll give you a basic model, and if you get to something and you think, that won’t work for me, that’s okay, instead ask, okay, how can I do that single thing differently so that it WILL work for me?



You see, the model I am getting ready to share with you WILL work for you in principle, but you’ll see there’s tons of variability in exactly how you implement it according to your own needs and desires, so you can launch a coaching program using this flexible model, no matter what your needs are.

Let’s get started!

First off, what is a coaching program according to the definition of this article? A coaching program is a program (course of interactive study) wherein that you are able to coach (teach interactively) a larger number of clients simultaneously than you could on a 1-1 basis.

That’s it!



Let’s first talk about why not 1-1? And first off on this, 1-1 is fine, if you only want to help/work with 10-15 clients per week. 10-15 clients is about the point at which I find most people become burnt out, if they are helping those clients each week. Now, for you it might be 25, but for most people that is quite aggressive, unless you are ONLY showing up for the coaching sessions, and not having to sell and schedule and write, etc.

But since you are reading an introductory article about how to start a coaching program, I assume you are still doing those basic things  – and they take time.

So with 10-15 clients, you are actively coaching 2-3 people per day, which takes 2-3 hours of intense focused activity, plus preparation and planning time, plus all your normal business activities.


Now, before we go any further, let me say this: there is NOTHING wrong with personally coaching 10-15 people. NOTHING.



But let’s say that you get to the point where you are thinking, I want to help MORE people than I currently help. Maybe you want to help 30 people instead of 15. And you realize that you simply can’t help 30 people 1- 1 or you will burn out (of course, again, this is an elastic number, if you can help 30 people, insert a number here that you know you can’t, for example, you might not be able to help 100 people and you want to).



So you have reached your 1-1 limit. The next step then is to say, ok, what if I helped folks in groups of 5 instead of 1? Instead of having 15 1-1 clients, you could help 75 clients in the same amount of time. Or more realistically, when you first start out, you would help 15 1-1 + 5 in a group. Then in a few months, you might add another group of 5, and let’s say 2 1-1 clients drop out, then you are helping 13 1-1 clients + 10 clients in a group. And so on, until you are helping mostly everyone through small groups.

So the next step in your thinking is that perhaps you can’t get 5 people at one time the same help that you can 1 person. But think about this, if you have been coaching 10-15 people at a time for awhile, you’ve probably noticed that 95% or so of everything you help one person with – you are helping others with too.

So if that’s the case, you don’t really need to do 1-1 for the 95% part, only the 5% part. So with 5 people at a time, each person only needs about 5% of 60 minutes = 3 minutes per person. So you can really help 20 people an hour, answer 1 3 minute question per person, and simply recording an audio of the 1 hour of training you would normally do 1-1, and sending that one hour out automatically via an autoresponder based on how many weeks someone has been in your program.

So you would have a week 1 training, a week 2 training, a week 3 training, and so on, and those lessons go out automatically each week. And to create them, it just takes one hour per week, teaching every concept one time, instead of teaching it 15 times (one time for each client). Then you simply make your live coaching call a questions and answers (q and a) session each week, and all 5-20 people could come to a single one hour call, instead of 5-20 one hour calls.

Are you beginning to see the power of this? Instead of taking 5-20 hours to coach 5-20 clients, you are taking 1 hour to coach 5-20 clients. Imagine shrinking your 5-20 hour client delivery time down to 1 hour a week! What could you do with the extra time?



Now, one more thing: if you are thinking, what do I do if I want to help 100 people at one time?

Answer: start smaller and add clients as you see that not everyone is asking questions. My experience is that with 100 clients on a call, only 3-7 will ask a question. Everyone else is learning from others asking similar questions to what they would have asked. So you can add more clients over time. Or you can add coaching hours, so with 5 hours of coaching, you can help 500 people.

So . . . how do you get started?

It’s easy: simply decide you are going to do it, then announce to everyone you know you could use the coaching that you are starting a new coaching program next week.

Seriously, just commit to next week. Set a time, for example, Wednesday at 10 AM. Then set a price, a fair price. That is your monthly fee for your group coaching. You can always increase it for future clients coming in.

Then, the next step is to decide how to deliver it. You generally either use the telephone (a teleseminar) or video (a webinar). You subscribe to a teleseminar or webinar service, create the conference call, then send all enrolled clients the private access info to join the conference.



The first week you ask everyone what they want to learn or work on. The next week you teach one of those topics. Record that conference and that becomes your first lesson for all future clients. The second week you teach another of those topics.  Record that conference and that becomes your second lesson for all future clients. Do this for a year, and you have your first 50 lessons for all future clients. Then after that, all clients receive the first 50 lessons automatically, and each week come to a live call where you answer questions (and you can still teach new topics live if you want).



Hopefully by now you are seeing how very easy this can be.



Maybe you are thinking, but how do I do this, or how do I do that?

If that’s the case, I can probably teach you how (I’ve taught thousands of clients how to create a wide variety of coaching programs).

To start learning more, start by downloading my free manual, “How to Start a Coaching Program”:  How to Start a Coaching Program

Sean Mize, author, Anyone Can Coach