Steph Crowder (0:00)

Hey there. Are you ready to learn the only process that you need to fill up your group program or really any signature offer anytime you want year round? I've got an upcoming advanced sales training class called fill your group program in five weeks. This is a three part roadmap to consistently sell out your offer year round anytime. In this training we are going to talk about my signature 5 week buzz blitz process. I'm going to show you the calendar for how to create a five or even six figure launch and also going to learn the three key ingredients for a step by step rinse and repeat sales cycle that brings you consistently full groups. You just have to go to Steph crowder.comworkshop to get all signed up again. It's on June 24th. That's a Tuesday at 12pm Eastern Time and I cannot wait to see you there. Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity the brass tax simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello. Hello CNC listeners. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to be hanging out with you today. I'm always excited when it's a day that I get to sit down and record the podcast. I But I'm especially excited today because I am kicking off a new series. This is my updated 2025 group program series and I have lots of thoughts to share with you over the course of the next few weeks. All about group programs, all about why group programs. This year, you know, all of my updated experiences that I have for you. What's working for my clients. We're going to have multiple different faces on the show. People who I've worked with who are using my strategies and who are killing it, killing it with group programs. And so I think you're gonna love this series because it's a really great mix of tactical. I mean it's just like so vintage Courage and Clarity podcast, right? Like part inspiration, part motivation and you know, getting you fired up and excited and ignited around this amazing business model of group programs. And maybe hopefully if I do my job properly here, kind of give you some fresh and new and different things to think. Cause I know you aren't new to group programs. Like, it's not a new thing in the online business world. But I think my perspective on group programs and some of the cutting edge strategies certainly are new. So we'll do inspiration and motivation, like I said, and we'll also be getting into strategy and brass tacks and steps and tips and what's working. And so over this next series of, you know, about four weeks, we are going to just have so much helpful and. And inspiring information about my favorite business model to run myself and to teach people how to run, how to create group programs, how to sell out group programs, and how to scale group programs. So for today's episode, I want to really talk about why 2025. This is a prediction, okay? 2025 is going to be the year of group programs. This is the year for group programs. Okay, Know we're already about halfway into 2025, so maybe I would even say that, like for the next year or couple of years, I think group programs are this really nice sweet spot for what the market is looking for. So I want to share with you how running a group program is the growth, sorry, the growth lever that you need to be thinking about this year and into next year. You know, I have. If you've been around me for a while, you know, I have a mastermind called sold out group program. So you might be thinking like, of course you would say that stuff, like, send your own best interest. Right? But I'm gonna prove it to you. Okay? This is not just me saying this. I've been really thinking a lot about, and I've talked in different ways on the show about how buyer behavior is different in 2025. It's not better or worse. But this is not 2022 anymore. It's certainly not 2020. If you have been noticing that your buyers are showing up differently than they did in 2022. And certainly, like I said, 2020, that's not just you, okay? We are in a different moment in time where people have adjusted how they buy. Notice I didn't say that they're not buying. They've just adjusted how they buy in response to the climate of the world around us, which is very normal, by the way. Okay? And so the great news is you can meet buyers where they are. You don't have to be like, oh my God, I had something that was working, and now it's not. And I'm totally screwed because buyers have changed. Not at all. It's likely that you can take what has worked and really tweak it with your group program format to again, meet buyers where they are and make them feel like they have just hit the jackpot with the right blend of everything that they are looking for in this exact moment in time. Okay, so you may have noticed it. Maybe it feels to you like every coach, every service provider is spinning up a group right now. Like, does it feel like everybody has some kind of group program? If it seems like that there's a reason, it's because it is a really effective business model right now. Let's get into why that's the case. So here's a little bit of, like, a trend snapshot that I have for you. Okay. What I would have said and what a lot of us have been saying, you know, for those who are watching the coaching industry, watching the online business industry in general, you know, people who. Who are selling services and digital, even digital products online. If we were to look back in certainly 2023, a lot of 2024, we had what we. What we saw was the sort of, I don't want to say death of online courses, because that's way too dramatic. And I have lots of clients and friends who still absolutely have, like, online courses that are successful. So it's not that they're dead, but the heyday of online courses sort of was starting to wind down. We know we've talked about this before that during the pandemic and the COVID shutdown, courses really had their moment. It made a lot of sense. A lot of people were learning online for the first time. A lot of people found themselves with extra time on their hands. They wanted to learn new and different skills. And so we saw this renaissance of online courses, you know, 2020, 2021, even into 2022. And then we saw a little bit of blowback from that. 2022 and 2023, I would say, were about the I've been burnt by online courses era. Right. And what that looked like was now everybody had bought, like, over, kind of overcompensated. So you have to remember that in business, anytime the pendulum swings too far, there's always going to be a market adjustment. This is true across all different kinds of industries, from real estate to the stock market. Right. There's a correction. And so we saw that in 2022 and three, when people were like, ooh, I maybe went a little bit overboard with Buying online courses. And now I've been burned, right? We had people throwing out courses who frankly didn't have any business doing so. We had some unfortunate, you know, people like some important, unfortunate circumstances. As is always the case whenever there's like a gold rush or something's working really well, you are going to get people who don't have the best of intentions, people who are scamming people who are just trying to take people's money. And unfortunately that can, can really poison the well for those of us who are trying to make an honest living changing people's lives, right? So we went from this era of what I would call blind trust in digital courses to people being like, okay, hang on, I still want my problems solved, right? But a course didn't work for me. I bought all these courses. Nothing happened, nothing changed. I'm ready for premium support. So that's what we saw in 2022 and 2023 is a, I would say a boom in high ticket offers, right? So people like absolutely one on one, even like done for you, like bigger ticket packages. People really, really wanted that customized approach. Again, think of it as a correction. If we were really in an era in 2020 of like you never see the creator of the course ever again. You're just supposed to go through the kind of teach yourself the things. The correction that we saw is people are like, I am burnt out on diy. I just want someone to tell me what to do and I'll do it and I'm willing to pay for that. People were really willing to pay top dollar. I was hearing that a lot and observing it in the marketplace where people are like, I don't want to have to figure it out. I'm happy to pay the experts if they're going to walk me through it step by step. And so I would say that in 2022 and 2023, we definitely saw a, a higher willingness for people to buy high ticket, one on one personalized customized solutions. Okay, now that brings us to today where today is a little bit different. Here's what hasn't changed, okay? Buyers still want customization. They still want expertise. They still want your feedback, your brain, your eyeballs, your personal touch. So the desires from 2023 and 2024 have not changed. Okay? People still want, they, they, they're still not ready to do the diy. The like. You know, I hate to say this, but it's just kind of how it's coming up in my brain a little bit of like a dime a dozen courses or dime a dozen, $10 digital products. People still want the customized. Like, show me, this will work for me, right? That hasn't changed. What the other thing that hasn't changed is people want community. People want to be around like minded individuals. In fact, I think this piece has increased. I can speak for myself and a lot of my friends. I'm seeing this where we are missing the pre Covid days when there was a lot more getting together in person. There was a lot of community. And then that was kind of fractured and fragmented and disrupted both on the in person side of things, when people were literally no longer able to get together. But then also, I think that just led to. There was a lot of isolation that happened in general. You know, they're just, you know, back before 2020, we saw big booming Facebook groups that kind of fell off and went a little bit by the wayside. Still absolutely exists. But we again, sort of had this moment where people were not congregating, whether it was in person or online. It just kind of felt like our congregation game was just off. Right. So here we are in 2025, and I think people want to be in community more than they have. They're like ready for that again and missing that and looking back and being like, wow, remember, like that was actually really great. And then the other piece of the puzzle that hasn't changed is people want accountability. People want to be held accountable. They don't want to be, you know, left to their own devices with a digital course where nobody's going their hand through it. And again, I'm speaking in generalities. I'm literally thinking of clients of mine who have accept. So if you're an exception and your digital course is working, that's amazing. But I'm talking about the majority of us who are coaches and service providers are going to notice these shifts. Okay. And so this is the other interesting part. So like I said, people still want customization, personalization, but their willingness and ability to pay for it has changed. Right? So we have recession fear, we have irritating political climate. We. And by irritating, I just mean like rubbing. It's rubbing people the wrong way. There's a lot of friction right now. There's hesitation, there's conservation, there's an overall. Let me slow down my decision making process again. Not because I don't want transformation, in fact, I deeply do. But is it a moment where I'm throwing my money around? Maybe not. Okay, so on top of that, you know, I'm no expert on this piece, but I. But you know, you don't have to look very far to hear that things like paid advertising, the costs of paid ads have gone up, right? So we have rising ad costs. We also have AI. Okay, so AI is still so new in my opinion, like as far as what we know about this thing and how to use it, but we do have people rushing to ChatGPT. And again, the pendulum, when the pendulum swings so far where it's like, oh my God, now everything's available with ChatGPT. ChatGPT can be my coach and my accountant and my, you know, marketing staff and my virtual assistant, right? We gonna need to have a correction where people are craving relationships, right? So all of what I just said, it's like there's so much free information, but then there's also a lot of people out there that are over relying on AI. And what that does is it creates a connection deficit. Your clients are feeling that, right? If you're overly relying on AI and you're using it to write your emails and you're using it to write your sales pages, like people know that people can pick up on that and they're going to start, not start. They already have been gravitating to the realness, okay, the authenticity. I'm not saying, I mean I am literally using an outline from Chat GPT. I'm. I use my own brain and my own thoughts to help me organize my thoughts. Okay, Total sidebar I could have about. I'm not saying Chat GPT is not helpful for your business. It absolutely is as an organizer and as a research assistant. But I see way too many people who are trying to delegate their creativity, their problem solving and their genius and their brilliance. They're trying to delegate that to Chat GPT and it's falling flat and it lacks energy. And your clients and prospects and audience members can see it and feel it and they're gonna go somewhere else. Okay, so to summarize, people still want personalized customized solutions. They want it premium, they want it designed to them. They want to know you, they want to connect with you, they want your expertise, they want all of the experience that you bring to the table. And they have a new willingness to entertain being in a group. Because a group prices tend to be a little bit lower than all the way truly private one on one. If you're doing it correctly, your one on one services are always going to be the tippy tippy top of your pricing, right? Because you can only see so many one on one clients and you charge accordingly. A group, what people trade is they Get a perhaps more accessible price, which is very appealing right now. Right. What they trade is the privacy. And so what I'm seeing is we have a higher tolerance for learning in a group right now where 2023, 2024 people like my group programs were booming for sure. Like I'm not saying. And my clients too, I'm not saying they weren't successful, but I would say that a lot of people were like, ah, you know, I'm willing to pay for one on one. Like I don't really know if I'm gonn group. Like I want to make sure again, having been burned by courses, they're like, I don't even want to go down that road. I want to get the expert. Like me and the expert closed door now with all of the pieces and components that I already mentioned and sort of the, again, the sort of like hesitation around throwing money around and the desire to be in community, the desire to connect again is creating the thought for most of our clients. You know, maybe I would think about being in a group, right? If you're telling me that I can save some money and I can still get the expert and they're still gonna know me. If you're doing your group correctly, the way I teach it, you are still gonna know your clients. They're gonna feel like they are getting all of the benefits of one on one and all of the benefits of being in a group. It is like this wonderful Venn diagram where in the middle you just have this juicy connection based, community based congregate like. Like town square. Right? And the intimacy and that wonderful feeling of being known is baked into your program as well. And I'm seeing this in my clients too. Like my clients, I have multiple clients. You're going to hear from them over the course of this series who are selling out their group programs, who are having their very best group program launches that they've ever had. Even though you go online, you cannot go on a news site today and not hear about how the world is ending and how it's a recession and nobody's spending money. And it's like, I beg to differ. I beg to differ, Right? But it's because of the positioning of what group programs bring to the table for people. Okay? So it's this really exciting moment in time. I know I always get excited about group programs because I've been believing that groups are king for years now. But I haven't seen a moment like quite like this where I really feel that the stars are kind of aligning for Those of you who either have a group or want to have a group, it is again, this like really wonderful sweet spot between customization and individuality and access, price point accessibility and making it more doable for people. Right? We can talk about extended payment plans in a group program. We can talk about making it feel like a win, win, win. And so it is such a great time to work on your group program with that sort of mid tier pricing instead of the truly, truly, truly high ticket is going to be such a great way to kind of meet in the middle for your clients. Now you might be thinking to yourself, this is exciting, that's great. But like, I still either don't think a group can work for me or I've tried a group or if you have some apprehension about this, I totally get it. There's a lot of different thoughts you could be having, but I'm just going to address the top three right now to get you really excited about why 2025 is the year of group programs. Number one, you might be thinking, I don't have a big enough audience for this yet. Okay, this is especially for you. Maybe you've tried a group before and you're like, eh, it was half full, nobody wanted it. I put it out there, I had to cancel it. I hear that all the time. And you may have very logically deduced from that that you need to grow your audience first. You're like, all right, that didn't work. I people, I need more eyeballs. That may well be part of the equation. It certainly doesn't hurt to have more eyeballs, but typically that's not what what went wrong. If you've tried a group before, there's a few different things that break down. A lot of times it comes down to visibility. It's one of the first things my clients increase when they come work with me. Inside of sold out group programs, the mastermind is they turn up their visibility without that much more effort. Okay, they turn up their visibility. A lot of it is getting coached on being seen and being loud and making noise. But they turn up their visibility and then they realize, oh, people just didn't know I had a group, or people didn't know that my group was closing, or people didn't know that this opportunity was truly, truly for them. So visibility tends to be a big piece of it. Also, messaging clarity. So making sure that why your group program is the absolute best solution in the marketplace. You need to be making sure that that messaging is really coming across. You first have to get so sold on like, you can hear it in my conviction, right? How I really genuinely believe my group programs are better than one on one coaching. Right? And so you have to get to a place where you are like, people could be so lucky to be in this group. This group changes lives. So that's one of the things to address. So before you ever worry about having a huge audience, these are some of the things that we would address that we need to address. You can fill a group program with a very small audience. My record on this is I have a client who did it with 40 people in her audience. She filled a group program. So you do not need to have a huge audience. It gets easier. I won't lie to you that it's easier and easier to fill a group program, the more demand that you have. But even if you have a small but mighty audience, you can absolutely have a group program. And your, your people will be so excited to have this mid tier, mid ticket way of working with you in 2025. The second myth I want to address is that groups dilute results. This is probably the biggest mindset belief that you have to get over in order for you to be sold on your offer. When you really do a group program well and you learn the proper anatomy of a very successful group program and a very transformational group program, you realize that groups get better results than one on one. When they are done properly, you do not have to trade client results for the size of your group. I, I work with a lot of clients who are really worried about this. I know that it's a mind bender, especially if you've been doing one on one for a while. You're like, but step, I can't see how I would be able to deliver the same level of service. I don't know how this would translate to a group. I have people in my program tell me all of the time they can't believe I'm able to offer the level of intimacy and feedback and making you feel seen that I do in the group. It's all about knowing how to scale your results. So you, if you've tried this before and you feel like people aren't getting enough of you or you feel like they're not getting the results that you want. We just have a scaling issue, right? We just have a growth issue. You need to have the thought, my clients can get the same or better results in a group. I do it all the time. My clients do it too. You can as well. And then the third thing, and this will keep you from really Growing with a group is having the thought having a good group is exhausting. Right. Or launching is exhausting when you're learning something new. Launching, for example, we. We use a process in my program called Buzz Blitz. It's a five week process and when you learn it, it does feel uncomfortable. And you want to know why? Because it's a new skill. It's something you haven't done before. In the same way that running your first mile is exhausting. Right. That doesn't mean that you don't train for your 5k in the way that you know learning to speak Spanish when you're a native English speake feel exhausting. Yeah. Anytime we do something new, it's going to stretch you. Now here's what's really exciting. When you have a repeatable sales system and you have a process that works, especially with templates, a calendar and a process which I hand my clients inside the program, it doesn't have to be more work, it doesn't have to be burnout. Right. You can learn how to do this in a way that is sustainable. I do my own process three to four times per year. And so once you learn it, once you have it and you create that muscle memory, it doesn't have to be exhausting at all. In fact, it could actually be really energizing. I'm kicking off my launch right now and I have not been this excited in my business all year. Right. So launching can actually be the most energizing time of your business. Most exciting. You might feel the most connected with your audience, not like you're burdening them. It's all about having the right plan. And so I hope this kind of gets you excited about the opportunity that you have around group programs. Right. I want it like really inspire you here and get you thinking and expanding your mind around what could your group program look like if you don't have one right now? I want you to think about your past five one on one clients and start to look at the similarities and what they went through. Start to look for the commonalities between them. That's going to give you a lot of clues about what your group could look like if you already have a group program. Now, whether that's a coaching program. When I say group program, I'm also even talking about memberships or, or courses. We could put those in the category of group programs. I want you to really be thinking about where do you think you want to optimize your group this year if it's not sold out when you go to launch it when it if it doesn't feel like your enrollment is where you need it to be, where do you think things might be breaking down? Start to take note of that and you can come to my upcoming free training on June 24, which is called fill your group program in five weeks. We are going to go into the process that I've been referencing here today to really help you get excited and feel prepared to fill the next round of your group program. All right, my friends, if you liked this episode, if it was helpful, you know I love to hear from you. Send me a dm. I'm at hey Steph Crowder on Instagram. You can reply to any of my email emails. I love hearing from you. I'd love to know your questions or what's coming up for you, or you want to argue with me and tell me you disagree, or your brain is giving you some some objections? I'd love to hear them because I tend to make new podcast episodes based on what you share with me. So please know that I'm always open to that feedback and I absolutely welcome it. So I can continue to make the most relevant content for you and I'll even add it to the upcoming training because I am still working on that training and preparing. And so I want to make sure that what's actually happening for you out there in the world is reflected and that I'm teaching you the right stuff. So I will talk to y' all soon. I'll be back next week with another episode of this group program 2025 series, and until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.