Wendy (00:01.836)
Hello there. Welcome back to the Coaching Edge. I'm Wendy McCallum, your host. This is part two of online coaching courses. And I, in the first portion of this episode, I really talked about all of the reasons why online courses are so helpful as a small business owner, as a coach. I went through the various ways that you can use online courses to both
both boost your revenue as a coach and also structure your coaching programs and fill some of those gaps that are out there that you're noticing that your kind of target clients, your dream clients have some of those problems that they're having. So today what I wanna do is I wanna focus in on some of the nitty gritty about course creation. I thought the best way to structure this would be to go through some of the most frequently asked questions I get.
The questions I get most often from my coaches in the BBB, which is my business building community for coaches, where I support an intimate community of coaches as they build their businesses, including their online offerings. So these are some of the most commonly asked questions that I get there. And also in the CCC, which is my coaching course creator program. This is an eight week program that takes you from an idea to a completed, launchable, sellable online course. Again,
The CCC, if you're listening to this episode, when it drops in February, there is another cohort of the CCC starting on February 26th. You can register now for that program. It is an eight week coach program that combines a combination of a very comprehensive and well organized content library that takes you through step by step the course creation process, including checklists to make sure you don't miss anything and a really helpful organizing tool that helps you to organize.
and structure your content and any supplementary materials that you're going to include. And then also like the key things that need to be included in a course to make it really user friendly. So in addition to the CCC course online, you also get eight group coach sessions with me. So we have a small group of coaches that go through this program every time I offer it. And in those live coach sessions, you can come and you can ask me anything about the course creation process.
Wendy (02:26.998)
What I find when I lead these groups is that this is where all the value is for coaches. Coaches love the, you know, they love watching the lessons and they love the templates and spreadsheets and organizing tools that I give them. But they always say that these live sessions are what really makes this like an incredibly transformative process for them and what helps them get from idea to completed sellable course. So in these sessions, I get to know you, I get to know your course idea and your course structure.
And I get to know your overall business model as a coach and I help you really create something that is going to be the most helpful for you as a business owner in terms of filling a gap that you have in your current business model and also the most helpful for your dream clients in terms of helping them affect transformations. And as I talked about in the last episode, one of the things we really focus on in the CCC is creating flexible content that you can use at least three different ways.
to create three different streams of revenue. If you're doing it right and you're following my coaching in the CCC, you're going to create content that you can use as self-guided evergreen content. is something, of course, that you can sell, that you never actually see the participant, you don't do any live coaching with them. It's something that you can sell as really pass and create some real passive income in your business. Also as a...
in addition to your current one-on-one offer. So if you're doing private coaching, something you can offer to all of your one-on-one clients as part of that program can help to add value and it can help you justify higher pricing for your one-on-one work. And then lastly, as the basis of a group coach model. of the structure, it can provide the structure and the backbone for a group program that you wanna offer. So...
Those are just three ways that you'll be able to use the content. And there are lots of other creative ways that you can use the content that you create if you join us in the CCC. So if you're curious about the CCC, the details on that are in the show notes, you can go to wendymcallum.com forward slash CCC. I would love to have you there. If you've got questions, you can always send me an email at wendy at wendymcallum.com. Okay, let's talk about some of the frequently asked questions that I get from coaches around course creation.
Wendy (04:44.206)
So I had tried to narrow these down. There are so many, but honestly, I started brainstorming this and they just kept coming. So I'm just gonna go through them. They're not in any particular order, but they are the types of things that you wanna be thinking about if you are considering creating some online course content. Okay, this is one, like, I think that the main question, it's not even a question, it's just more of a general feeling that coaches have around online content. It's like building a course seems like so much work.
Why would I want to do this? Like, why would I invest the time in this? It doesn't, it feels to me like it'll just be monumental in terms of a task. And I would say it doesn't need to feel that way. There is a way to do this that feels really different. And this is something that we talk about a lot in both the BBB and in the CCC program, which is this idea of like, this is a beta. It's an opportunity for you to test an idea. It doesn't need to be.
the very best version of itself the first time around. In fact, it will not be and the goal should not be to have it be perfect because you're never gonna achieve that. In fact, the goal should be to do your best with it knowing that you're gonna learn some really cool things and some really helpful things from the participants that go through the course and also from the process of creating the course that you can use to make the next iteration of this course even better. You're gonna learn things about who it's for and how to market it and...
what the client's experience is in the course itself and what language the client uses to describe the value of the course. And you're gonna be able to take all of that and use it to create both a better course and also better marketing for the next time that you offer this course. So think about it as a beta. I'm gonna encourage you to do that. If you're feeling overwhelmed about the idea of creating an online course, think of it as a beta. And remember.
that you're going to be able to use this content in a variety of ways. So it is worth doing it. And I talked about all the reasons why it's worth doing it in part one of this episode. But I think what I would encourage you to do is just think of this as a beta, as a test process. This is the first time you're running it and it gets to be a little messy and it gets to be a little imperfect. It always looks like that every time. Still for me, every time I run a course, the first version of it, it's a beta. Okay, now.
Wendy (07:01.854)
Oftentimes coaches have ideas for a course, but they're really struggling with whether it's the right idea. You you might have a bunch of different things on a list somewhere, ideas for courses that you'd love to create. That's certainly how it works with me. I've got something that I call the vault, which is where I keep all my good ideas, things that I don't have time to do yet. And there are so many different ideas for online programs in there.
The question is that most coaches have, how do I decide what's the right idea? Like, which is the right thing to start with? So the first thing to think about is what's the purpose of this course? Because that's gonna influence the subject of the course. So how is this course going to fit into my business model? What's the primary reason why I'm creating this course? Now remember, of course, it's gonna be flexible. You're gonna be able to use it in a bunch of different ways. But usually when we create a course, there's one primary reason why we're creating it.
And it might be, well, I need something that's lower ticket offer. I've only got a medium and a high ticket offer in my offer suite. I need something low ticket. Or it might be, I need some structure. I wanna launch this online group program and I need some structure and some online content to go along with that. What is the reason why you're creating this program? And then you ask yourself, okay, what is the gap? Like, who's it for? I guess it's the next question. So who is the perfect participant for this program? Who am I designing this for?
And what's the problem that that person has right now? Right now, okay? So not six months from now, but right now what's the problem that they're facing? Because in order to sell something, has to, of course has to address a current problem that your dream client has. I see this happening a lot. It's a mistake a lot of coaches make. They think to themselves, well, you know what? I help women. This is something I hear a lot around alcohol. I support some alcohol coaches and they'll say, well,
I love to help women take a break from alcohol, but what really like lights me up is what happens to them post alcohol. So once they have gotten free from alcohol, what they're able to do with their lives after that. And I'd love to create a program for that. And I'll say to them, that's great. Create that program, but only when you have a nice warm collection of women who are ready for it, right? If you're just starting out, you've got to ask yourself, where are those women right now? Because if you haven't coached them through
Wendy (09:23.414)
a break from alcohol to a place where they're feeling free from it, they're not ready for that next course. So where is your person right now, your dream client, where are they? What's the problem they're struggling with right now? Where's the gap that they don't have the solution for? They don't have the bridge to get over. What is that? That's a really great place to start when it comes to what the right idea is for your course.
In terms of like how you know whether it's good and whether you can sell it, go on out there and ask people. This is one of the things that I learned too late. It's the value of getting feedback from the people that you support and serve. Get out there and ask your people, ask your existing clients, ask your audience on social media, send a note out to your newsletter people and say, look, I am looking for feedback. If I could create the perfect group program for you, what would we focus on? How long would it be?
And what would you, what transformation would you want? What would you want? Where would you want it? Where are you now? And where would you want to be at the end of the program? Get some feedback from people or pitch a few different ideas. If you've got some specific ideas for program, throw them out there. Would you prefer, would you be more interested in X, Y or Z? But I think when it comes to knowing for sure that an idea is good and you can sell it, a lot of it comes down to, am I actually solving a problem that my people have right now?
Right? And then am I solving it in a way that is the best way to help them, to help them? Right? And this is where all the creative conversations happen in the CCC. We talk about this like a lot in the first few weeks. What is the gap? What's the problem? And how can I solve it in a really unique, effective and efficient way for them that is going and then how can I describe that in a way that they're gonna, it's gonna be a no brainer for them to sign up, right? So the first,
The first thing I want you to focus on when it comes to culling your ideas is, I actually meeting my dream client where they are right now? And what is the problem that they have and how can I help them solve it? Okay.
Wendy (11:34.306)
People get really overwhelmed when they start mapping out the course content. So once they have the idea, they start working on what I call the client roadmap, which is, you know, this is where people start. This is how my clients are feeling before the program. And this is where they're gonna be and how they're gonna feel at the end of the program. And that's something I get all of my CCC coaches to identify early on. Then what we start doing, sort of mapping out the milestones that take their client from where they are now to where they want to be.
And then once we have those milestones, which are kind of like the big aha moments, behavioral changes, insights, pieces that their clients need to have in place that will take them. If you think of it as like a stream and they're laying down rocks that they step on, stepping stones to get across the stream, those are the milestones. Then we start looking at each of those milestones as the modules. And we start looking at, what are the little pieces that they need in order to get to that milestone?
and how can I organize that content in bite-sized, digestible, in an accessible way for them. And so people get overwhelmed. My coaches get really overwhelmed with this and I'll say, they'll say like, I've mapped this all out and there's so much stuff. I have so much stuff in here. And I don't know, like it just feels like way too much for this course, which is usually when I'll say a couple of things.
because there are a couple of different options when this is happening. First of all, trust your gut. If it feels like too much, it probably is. What I would say is what are the absolute bare bones must have pieces of information in here and what is like a little extra, slightly fluffy or a little bit more advanced. Eliminate all of that stuff and I provide a tracking tool in the CCC or an organizing tool that helps people to move their content around.
so that they can, once they have it all listed out, if it looks like too much, they can start moving some of the content that isn't must have content into kind of a nice to have column or into a part two of this course column, right? So if maybe you've got enough content here for more than one course, and it's a matter of dividing it up into a couple of different courses because this is too much. The other thing that you might do with the extra content is create a bonus module or two.
Wendy (13:47.918)
which is often what my CCC members will do. They'll end up taking some of these ideas that they have for good lessons and adding them in as like bonus content, which helps in the marketing and the selling of the course to be able to offer that. So when you're asking yourself, what do I include? What do I ditch? The question really that matters is what do they absolutely need to know, understand, achieve in order to get to this milestone? And what is not so necessary in here?
Another question that I often will ask my coaches is, when you went through this transformation yourself, what were the key lessons, the key pieces of learning, the key insights, the key coaching exercises or questions that got you there? The things that if they hadn't been there, you wouldn't have succeeded. Those are the core things that you wanna be including in this course, in this first level of teaching this thing, whatever this thing is that you're coaching people through.
Another question I get a lot is how long should my course be? Such a good question. Really depends on the purpose of the course. Really depends on what it is you're trying to teach. Courses can be, you know, three lessons or they can be a year long. So what is it you're trying to do with this course material? If it's a freebie, so if you're using this as a little mini course,
then I'm gonna say, you know, people who coming into a freebie are looking for something that's valuable, but not something that feels so overwhelming that it feels like they can't do it. You wanna make sure that it feels accessible and achievable if it's something free or if it's a sort of a smaller scale, lower ticket offer. So I would tend to focus in a freebie on maybe like three weeks max. And in a lower ticket, maybe...
self-guided evergreen program or something that you want to also use and do some coaching alongside. Maybe it's like four weeks to eight weeks. But if it's something more substantial, if it's a more substantial offer, then maybe you want to go longer than that. Again, these are all questions we consider in the CCC. There's no right or wrong answer to this. The key thing to be thinking about is what's going to serve my client best. So I've seen people try to cram, you know, so much content into four weeks and also
Wendy (16:02.872)
try to help people affect a transformation that's like virtually impossible in the time period of the course. That is not helpful to anybody. So you've got to ask yourself, what is a realistic time period that it's going to take that I know from my own experience coaching maybe one-on-one or from my own personal experience in actually going through this transformation myself, how long does it realistically take for people to get there?
What can I actually promise in this course and how long do I need to be supporting people in order to set them up for the greatest chance of success, right? And again, you don't have to do everything in the first program. You can break this into like a level one, level two, level three. It doesn't all have to happen right now, but you do need to make sure you do is that you actually back up whatever it is you're promising that you're going to help them do. So.
You wanna make sure that whatever the transformation is that this level of the course is helping them to affect that you state that you can state that really clearly and that your course is clearly designed to get them there. So for example, the CCC is not designed to get you to like the best version of this course that could ever be and have you run it through a beta test and learn from that and come back and change all in eight weeks. That's not what the CCC promises to do.
But it promises to do is take you from your idea to a mapped out, very clear structure of lessons and materials for the course, to a content recording schedule for the course, to developing the very basic assets that you need to launch a beta so that you can actually get out there and sell this thing and start trialing it. And all of that is included in the program and is achievable in that eight-week window, right? So make sure that whatever you're promising is achievable in the...
the window of the course. So the answer to how long my course should be is very much dependent on what it is you're trying to help people do in the course and the purpose of the course and where it fits in your business model. Now, when it comes to organizing content, I would say, you you want to make sure that your content is always organized by modules, modules just like the big subject header, and then by lessons, and your lessons should be very bite-sized. This is a very
Wendy (18:18.732)
very clear rule of content creation, you don't want your lessons to be too long. I work with busy people. The last thing busy people need is, you know, 25 minute lessons that they need to watch every day. So what I do is I organize the content. It's always around five minutes or less. Every once in a while, there'll be a video that's a little bit longer. And if there is, I will give people warning this video is a little longer. So make sure you've set aside a little bit more time today to watch this one.
But generally speaking, stick to short, short videos. And I would say five to seven short videos max in each module is a good guideline to get you started. If you've got more than that, when you map this all out, then we need to start talking about is this actually more than one course? Which of these lessons are actually essential and which ones aren't? And how can we really simplify this? Because if someone logs into a course and there's so much there, it is so overwhelming.
really, really overwhelming, especially if the course is of shorter length, it's a shorter duration. Okay, another question I get all the time that I wanna deal with today, as much as I can in a short podcast episode is how do I price my group program? This is a biggie and we spend a lot of time in the CCC talking about pricing because the inclination for most coaches is to under price group programs. The point of a group program, I think it's twofold. One,
It helps you reach more people. It helps you support more people, which for most of us as coaches is why we do this, because we want to help people improve the quality of their lives, get unstuck, feel better, all the rest of it. So group coach programs, because you can work with more people in the same amount of time, allows you to reach and support more people. It also though, is the way you scale your business, which means you can make more money on an hourly basis coaching groups than you can one-on-one.
in order to make more money, you need to price effectively. And a lot of coaches get caught up in this. They look at it they think, my gosh, if I was coaching eight people and I was charging them this much, that would work out to be this much an hour for my coaching time. And that's way too much. That feels like way too much. It's not. It's how you sustain and build a coaching business. What you need to make sure of is that the value is there for your clients. If the value is there for your clients, then you're not overpricing.
Wendy (20:38.594)
So there are a lot of different considerations that go into pricing and in the CCC actually provide this really great program pricing worksheet that I use, which helps people to go through a number of really important questions around pricing and also provides them with a little worksheet with a calculator that we use to make sure that the price makes sense and that they're pricing high enough, not too high, not too low. So here are some of the questions that you should consider around the program pricing.
The first question, and I think this is one that coaches rarely ask, but it's actually critical. And it's something I ask myself every single time I'm pricing a program. What do you need to make? Like, what do you actually need to make from this group program to make it make sense for you? Consider your overhead, including how many hours it took you to create this course, because that needs to be built into your program. You absolutely get to get paid for that time.
So how many hours did it take you? Did you have to pay somebody to help you with this? Did you pay somebody to help you set it up online because tech's not your forte? Or did you get somebody, you pay somebody to add a sales page to your website or to create some copy for you or to manage your social media side of this thing? What were your costs involved in creating this program? Your course creation costs and disbursements, but also your continuing in MIND costs. Like, do you have to...
pay a VA to help you manage this program and manage enrollment and all the rest of it. And then other revenue needs and goals. So this is a question I was asking myself, like, where's the gap in my revenue this month? If you have done my two times your profit masterclass, you know that I'm a big fan of planning. I know how much money I want and need to be making on a monthly basis. And if there's a month that comes around and it feels like I'm not gonna make that, or if I'm looking forward to the future and I'm thinking there's gonna be bit of a dip in the summer and I wanna make some more in the next couple months,
then I'm gonna be creating programs based on that revenue need and I'm gonna be making sure I'm pricing them accordingly so that I can fill that gap in my own revenue, so that I can stay in business and so that I can keep helping people. So what you need to make is actually a really relevant, valuable and important question to be asking. The next question that's gonna factor into pricing for sure is how big is your ideal coaching group? So is this a program you're hoping to have 50 people?
Wendy (22:55.754)
on calls or is this a program that's gonna be more intimate? Were you really in a perfect world? You'd be coaching 10 women, right? You need to know your minimum and your maximum participant number. This must come up every single week in office hours in the BBB. Someone is talking about the group program and I'm like, what's your minimum? What's your maximum? So how many people...
Do you need in order to actually make this group feasible and to run this group? And what is the maximum number of people that you would want to be coaching in this group? You need to know both of those numbers because it's going to affect how you price it. You need to know what's included, obviously. So the number and the length of your coach sessions, the weeks of support, and then, of course, all the additional content. So the online content and anything else that comes with this program. Maybe you're creating a community for support in between the live coach calls, right? This one's really important.
kind of stands alone on its own. What is the actual value of the transformation or the problem that you're helping people solve? What's the value to them? So for example, in the CCC, what's the value to a coach of having created an online course, having it done up, uploaded, ready to go, sales copy, ready to launch? What is the value to a coach of that?
Trying to quantify that is actually really challenging. What I know for sure is that it's way more than a thousand dollars, which is the course is priced at, right? So the course is 997 and the value to a coach of having an online course that they can sell is far more than that because the way I teach coaches to create programs, they can use them, like I said, in at least three different ways for three different streams of revenue. So it's very, very easy for a coach to recoup the investment in that course very, very quickly. So.
I've already done that work around the CCC and I do it around all my programs. What's the value of the problem solved or the transformation? What's it worth to your client to no longer feel the way they're feeling? How's it gonna impact their life? How is resolving whatever this thing is they're struggling with going to practically impact their life? Is it going to increase their productivity, their efficiency, their ability to be present with people?
Wendy (24:59.086)
their sleep quality, which is gonna impact their energy, which is gonna impact how they work and how much money they make. Like what's the actual value of this transformation? How much money will they solve by sorting this problem or by changing this behavior, right? Look at the value of the problem solved to the transformation and make sure that's factored into your pricing. Look at your competitors. How are they pricing courses? This is important. It's not determinative, but it's definitely important to know what other courses are going for.
that are in the same area as you doing promising sort of the similar types of transformations. If you can find them, look for comps in the market. Now you can distinguish yourself and you can charge more. There are ways to get around comps. There are people out there charging like dirt programs, they're dirt cheap. You can absolutely distinguish yourself and charge significantly more, but it is helpful to know what people are charging. It can give you lot of confidence, frankly, in pricing to look at what other people are charging.
You definitely want to know what your hourly income for coaching is. You wanna break it down. Like if I have 10 people in this group and I charge $1,000 for this program, that's $10,000 and I'm coaching 10 sessions, that means per hour I'm coaching, I'm making $1,000. This is of course, after you've paid yourself off for your overhead and all the work in course creation. So it takes a while to get there, but on my second or third iteration of this course, I will be making $1,000 an hour to coach this. You need to know that, you need to know it.
Another little good rule of thumb that I teach in the CCC is to be thinking about what is a third of your one-on-one rate? And you wanna make sure that you're charging at least that on an hourly basis for your group clients in a group program. So what I mean by that is if your hourly rate is $300 an hour, you don't wanna charge a group client less than $100 an hour for a group session. Now, there are definitely are some...
specific cases where this doesn't work, some exceptions to this rule. So if you were, for example, you're coaching a program and it's more like a meetup and there are going to be 100 people in each call, well then, you you probably can't justify $100 a call for that. But if you're coaching a small group, you know, I would always be thinking about that. Am I charging these clients at least a third of what it would cost them to work with me one on one? It's just a good little rule of thumb. It's a good check to run your pricing through.
Wendy (27:19.218)
And, you know, then I get I get my coaches to start looking at the formula and the little worksheet that I have, and we start plugging in numbers to try to figure out the right pricing for this. And at the end of the day, it's a gut check. Honestly, once you set your price, it's a gut check. But you need to be really careful. That's not fear. That is there that it's actually you feeling like, no, this is not this price does not reflect the actual value of this program one way or the other, so that it's a value based
resistance if there's a resistance to the price and not a fear-based resistance. Okay, so those are some tricks and tips around the pricing that I wanted to cover. Another question I get asked a lot is do I need a sales page? The short answer is no, you do not need a sales page. I have sold lots of programs and online things through just social media, talking about it, my newsletter.
but also through like a really well-crafted PDF that I send people that has all of the information about the program in it and a link to book. So you don't need a fancy online sales page. You certainly don't need that for your beta. I think it is eventually, if it's a program that's gonna stick around, that you're be selling a lot. Certainly if it's gonna be an evergreen program that you want people to be buying direct from your website, then you're gonna wanna have a sales page, but you don't need one to start necessarily. And...
Yeah, think that, okay, one more little thing I'll cover, because I've got another minute left. I have so many questions here I could talk about, but I often get asked this too. I have two different audiences that I want to sell this course to. So it might be, for example, I remember having someone in my course at one point who wanted to sell a program on how to get free from alcohol to restaurant and hospitality workers, but also to new moms.
two completely different client groups there. And the marketing for those two groups would be very, very different. And where you would be marketing this would be very, very different. And so we talked about that. And one of the things we talk about a lot in the CCC when it comes to flexibility is, are you actually gonna be best served by creating two or more iterations of this course? And how can we do that really, really easily? I.e. how do we create a core set of modules and lessons that are applicable and helpful to both of these groups?
Wendy (29:41.186)
both of these potential audiences, and then create one or two modules that are actually customized or personalized to this audience. So that we can just duplicate the core module of courses in our online platform and add two different modules with some different lessons in them that are more suited and directed and supportive for that audience, know, the second audience of this course, for example. And so we've done that actually a number of times.
coaches that have gone through the CCC. I've had a number of coaches who've created one course with two different versions of one course that they can sell to two very different audiences. So you can build that flexibility. And again, it's all about planning. It's all about thinking. hopefully this is getting you excited again to create your own online programming. If you are excited about it, but also feeling a little overwhelmed, that's totally normal.
Ask yourself how different it might be if you had support, if you had structure, if you had weekly accountability and motivation, if you had somebody to ask questions from who has created now at least 25 courses over the course of her time as a coach, and how much more likely you would be to succeed in actually creating, finishing your course and having it ready to market. And if you're thinking,
Yes, I would benefit from all of that. You are absolutely right. And I would love to see you in the CCC. Again, you can get the information from the show notes. It's wendymcallum.com forward slash CCC. We have a new CCC cohort starting February 26th, 25 that will run through to mid April. But if you're listening to this podcast episode at a later date, maybe it's an archived episode and you're listening to it.
You can always check the homepage of wendymcallum.com forward slash ccc to see when the next cohort is being offered or do the self-guided version of that course anytime you're ready. I hope that you found this episode helpful and I'll see you guys next time on The Coaching Edge. Thanks for listening.
