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 stephcrowder.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 tacks, 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. We are talking today about how my group programs are saving my summer. If you've been listening to the podcast the past few weeks, we've been talking a little bit about being a summer mom and a CEO in the summertime and how this is my ninth summer of having kiddos and a business to run at the same time. Now, in that time I've had all different kinds of business models and I have to say that running the business model that I have now with two group programs is truly my favorite way that I've discovered as far as having the lifestyle that I want to have. You know, I think it really is possible to create a life that you love that you're proud of with any business model. Maybe not any business model, but for example, if you are booked out with one on one clients right now, if you have a membership like whatever it is that you've got going on, you're a service provider. I by no means I'M creating this episode to make you feel like you can't have your favorite summer ever, which is what I talked about in that Summer mom episode. I'm not trying to say that that's not possible for you. I don't want to discourage you if you are in a different place. And as I've shared on the podcast, I've encouraged some of my clients to get booked out with one on one right now before they go into group programs. So I want to be really clear, this is not the only way to have an amazing summer. I have had summers where I have a full book of one on one clients. I've run a large scaled digital course with hundreds of clients. This is just really my favorite way to run my business, to be honest. And I'm gonna kind of talk about what my schedule looks like. And I hope that this episode can be used to inspire you. Not to make you feel shame or to feel like you, you know, go into any kind of spiral, but really ask yourself if you were the intentional designer, the architect of your own life and your own schedule, which I believe we all are. Even if it takes us time to get there, it's not gonna be an overnight fix. I want you to know how sanity saving and how amazing it is to be in a space again. I've worked very hard for. I have built the processes. I have done tons and tons of mindset work. I've cried tears at all the things. So it's not necessarily like, I think you all know if you've been listening to my podcast. I am not the like, easy button shortcut coach necessarily. I'm definitely an evangelist for hard work. And, um, I. I'm always one to say that I think hard work, like working hard so you can play hard too, is always a worthy pursuit. However, I am now at a place where I can work with, gosh, getting close to like a hundred active clients at one time in my group programs and be working a very, very small number of hours in the summertime because I have young kids and there's not always camps. And even if there are camps, they seem to end at like one o' clock in the afternoon. And as I shared in that previous episode, I am just so excited to have a really juicy summer, fun summer with my kids making all the memories. But I'm also not willing to sacrifice my level of service that I stand behind and that makes me proud. And I'm certainly not willing to sacrifice my client results. And so group programs are the mechanism that I use to help My clients create huge results. They still feel known by me and seen by me. This is not about me never seeing them. I, you know, really take my commitment to knowing my clients very seriously and I think they would echo that. As, you know, it's something that comes up in our feedback over and over again. And at the same time, I'm able to spend all of the time that I want to outside with the kids at the pool and all of the things. Now when I came back to business in 2022, I shared in a previous episode that I first got fully booked with one on one clients. That was my first mission. It's like I've told a lot of my clients this, that these certainly the very simplest business model that you can have is one on one clients. You get 10 one on one clients and you're set. Right. It's very simple. And I, in a lot of ways I look back on that period of time and I loved running such a simple business. I just had my 10 clients and when, you know, I'd meet with them and then, you know, it's really all I had to do. And that was great. Of course the challenge with that is the, you know, the calendar hours. You know, I'm not somebody who thinks like we shouldn't be trading time for money. I think that, you know, running a successful business always takes time and effort. However, there is a real disadvantage of having to fit 10 or 20 clients onto your summer calendar. And so when you start shifting and scaling towards sustainable group programs, you are able to do a lot more batching. You're able to see more clients at the same time. So for example, when I coach my clients for two hours, I am able to coach something like six, eight, even ten of my clients in the same two hour block. Right. And so I'm able to help like, and these are deep, helpful conversations by the way. That doesn't even count the people who are on the call who aren't getting coached, but leave the call being like, that was amazing, or listening to the replay later. They are getting, I co call it like coaching by proximity, right? So they're getting coached by listening to me coach somebody else. And they're like, I have that problem too. And just by being in the room, I'm actually having such a, like lasting coaching impact that goes beyond even just the people that I'm speaking to on the call. So I'm able to batch seeing clients. You know, suddenly 10 hours of seeing clients can condense down into two hours. So what would have taken me 10 hours in my previous business model now takes me two. Right. Like I said, it takes time. It takes ironing out your sales process. There is, you know, a pathway to getting to this place. It's not a switch that you can flip overnight. But this is the work that we do inside of sold out group programs is help you build to a where this can be how you run your business. Like this is the goal and to be here now where I'm living it and I'm getting to show you all how I do it with my leadership. It's not like I said, sometimes it's really scary to, you know, feel like I want to make sure I'm doing right by my clients and I don't always have all the answers and I'm still trying to figure it out. But a lot of it is really, really working and it does feel like my dream schedule. So not only am I able to see, you know, 10 clients in the span of two hours, but I'm also able to batch the days that I need to have meetings. So these days in my programs I have coaching calls on month or sorry on Tuesdays and Thursdays between my two programs and occasionally Wednesdays. Once a month I coach my same day sales clients on Wednesdays. And so I know and my assistant Lacy knows and my co coach Haley know and all my clients know for the most part as well that when it comes to seeing me on calls it's going to be Tuesday or Thursday, sometimes Wednesday. What's wonderful is my husband knows this too. And so for family planning and you know, he works from home, which is really great we're able to do. We've been, I feel like we've been juggling since 2020. We just never stopped juggling. And it works for us, but it works because I'm able to like, I don't see clients on Mondays and I don't see clients on Fridays and I mostly don't see clients on Wednesdays. I really have something like four hours a week where I'm coaching clients and then like, like live coaching and then I'm spending an additional probably three hours a week, three to five hours depending on volume of doing our other types of support in the program. So giving clients feedback, whether that's written feedback or I record videos for my clients, giving them all kinds of really constructive, helpful, tactical feedback, their sales pages, their 90 day plans, their launch plans, their webinar slides, like everything they could possibly need. So I'm able to get all of my coaching work done. I'm able to see all of my clients and make sure that they are taken care of in under 10 hours a week. And that's all I do want to say. That's also because I have a scaled group program where I have coaching support. So I've mentioned that I do have a support coach, Haley, who is trained in my methodology and very qualified to, you know, give her coaching as well. And so she is putting in time right now about five hours per week into helping me make sure that my clients are getting what they need and my clients are benefiting from all of her amazing experience. She helps run a community for writers of 100,000 people and she has been the director of client management for Mariah Causes company when we worked there together. So my clients are. I shared this in a previous episode in this series. It's not a substitute for me and I never claim that it is. It's in addition to. Right. But I have someone there if I like. Actually a great example. I have my son's preschool graduation this week as I record this episode. And when I normally see my clients, I have his graduation. So Haley will be seeing my clients on that day. I coach inside my mastermind. 80 to 90% of the time it's going to be me. But of course, I have preschool graduations to go to. I have vacations, I have conferences. I have a life. And I know you're building your business to be able to have a life as well. I have scaled to the point where I have a plan for that. There is a plan for that and I'm able to make it work with my real life, which is so exciting. So there's a batching of my time and energy that is made possible through group programs as well. I also think that I talked about in a previous episode in this series, I talked about thinking about your support matrix inside of your program. So it's about so much more than your live coaching calls. Yes, those are valuable, absolutely. But I always tell people that is just one way to get support in your group program. It's only one way to get support in my group program. We have asynchronous support structures in place. I already talked about our feedback submission process. That's totally asynchronous. I can do that in the evening. I've done it. If you're one of my clients and you're listening to this, I have given you feedback. I have made you a video sitting in the parking lot of the cheerleading practice. I have made you a video on my treadmill getting my Steps. I've done it at five in the morning, I've done it at nine o' clock at night. I do it when it works for me and when it works for my schedule. I've done it on vacation and airports and airport lounges. I love being able to give hard hitting, impactful and actionable feedback and coaching to my clients. Asynchronously. It's amazing. And so not only am I doing live coaching, and I always will, it's very important to me that I get to see my clients live and I offer that multiple times a week for my clients, but to also know that they don't have to wait for the next call to get to talk to me. And especially going into the summertime, I can shoot like slot, you know, an hour after bedtime or an hour in the early morning or, you know, an hour if they're, if they're with a babysitter going to the pool. So easy for me to make it work for my schedule without any drama. And then I also just want to share too. This is really unique to groups and I'm seeing this right now in my Mastermind and it's so exciting. Going into the summer is what I would call peer led momentum. So in our Mastermind, we have clients working on all different kinds of projects. In addition to selling out their group programs, we have some clients, a small subset of our clients are launching podcasts right now. And so those clients are talking together in our Slack community, cheering each other on, sharing links to their episode, talking to each other about how it's going, holding each other accountable in a way that would not be possible if I were coaching each of these clients one on one. Right. Very. Similarly, one of our clients started a accountability thread for posting daily on Instagram. So those of us, myself included, are participating in this challenge. And every day we're going in there and saying, I posted today, or you know, I saw your post today, great job. And they're creating momentum together. So if I'm not logged in every hour of the day, I see them holding each other up. I see them, I see them weighing in on each other's questions. And so I'm the leader of this community. My coaching staff and I are very, very active. We don't rel eye on our Mastermind members to do our coaching for us, but I just think it's so cool. We have multiple channels. We have a general discussion channel and a water cooler channel, which is just like casual, where we've told the clients like these are not necessarily Coaching spaces. These are for you all to talk amongst yourselves and to see those spaces be active and flourishing and people holding each other up in those spaces, I think is so incredible. Especially for me going into the summer, knowing that I've built a really vibrant community that I don't have to be plugged into. Like, it doesn't die when I log off. And your group program will be exactly the same. I think one of the biggest things from a mindset perspective that has helped me get to this place is letting go of the idea that I, me, Steph Crowder, and my live attention is the most valuable part of my program. I've had to really let go of that thought and challenge that thought. Right. And you will need to do the same thing, which is like, my clients only get me or like, I am the number one asset in this program and that if I'm not around or I have a different kind of calendar, that they can't get results. If you are the your own bottleneck in your offers, it's only a matter of time before you start to feel like you've hit a brick wall in your dream schedule. Right. And you have, you know, you want to be able to run your dream business on your dream schedule. You won't be able to get there with that thought. And so now you heard me say, and I could keep saying it over and over. It's not that I don't want to see my clients. I love seeing them. It's something I look forward to every week. But I no longer see my time as the only. Like, that's the only way for people to get results or that their results stop when I go on vacation. I've been able to cultivate leadership to the point where my clients get results. When I'm out of the office, my clients are making progress. When I'm out of the office, my clients are transforming when I'm not around. And that will help you get to the next level. It takes, again, it takes the mindset work, and it takes scaling and going through what I'd like to think of as the scaling scaries. It can be very scary when you've built a business on just your manual effort, which is how most of us get here. And so you do need guidance and coaching. I need. I've needed a lot of coaching myself to get to the point where my leadership has grown past me seeing myself as the most important part of my program. I no longer see it that way. I think that I'm definitely super helpful, and I think my Clients love getting my coaching and they certainly, they have plenty of opportunities to get coaching from me. But the truth of the matter is the most important thing is that their ability to get results and there are so many different ways from curriculum to asynchronous support to support coaching, to guest workshops. Like, there's so many different things you can do to help people get the ultimate result. It's no longer like, I look now at how much I was making it about me in the past, right? When it was all about like, I'm the most important thing and I can't take my daughter to Disney World for two days because they need me and if I leave them for two days, they're going to be lost without me. Now I'm at a point where it's like I have the program and I have the trust in my clients to believe that like they can be out there getting results and getting support from the program, even when I am pouring into my own cup so that I can be the best for them. I think with that mentality in the past, I, you know, was really under believing in my client's ability to take advantage of all of the amazing things that are waiting for them inside of this program. And the same will be true in your group as well. When you really allow this to sink in and you really integrate that. It is safe for you to have the thought that there's so many ways for your clients to succeed in your program that don't just have to do with you showing up live all the time. It's actually not the most efficient way for them to learn stuff. And so when you start to make it about them versus about your own ego. And I say this from experience, right, of your own ego, of thinking nobody can replace me and nothing is better than me teaching it live. When you start to creatively problem solve and you think about all of the ways that it actually benefits them to be able to learn in different ways that don't involve you showing up all of the time and help them get transformation and results faster. You start to create safety and sustainability in your business. And ultimately, paradoxically, that is going to be what allows you to stay in this for 5, 10, 15, 20 years if you want to, versus burning out a year from now, right? And so as we kind of think about like this is, you know, my, I am living my dream with the group programs that I've built. It's taken me years to get here and I'm not done, not even close, but I'm able to have My dream summer because of group programs. And that's why I'm such a group program evangelist. Because it is work to build a group program properly and build a sales process that keeps your groups full. And you might be thinking it sounds like a lot. And oh my gosh, launching is so hard. And all these buzz, like this buzz blitz that you teach Step all of these emails and it's like, this is the dream. It's worth being able to live. Your definition of success group programs make that possible. And so what I would really love for us to do to kind of close out this episode is I want you to take a little bit of time, if you can, to do a visualization exercise. Would you be willing to do this? I did this a couple of years ago and it not to be dramatic, but I know everybody says everything changes our lives, but this really did change my life. I was encouraged in a. It was actually like a health and wellness program. I was encouraged to write out a visualization of where I wanted my. What I wanted my life to look like in summer of next year. So if you're listening to this in real time, it would be summer 2026. Now, real quick, I'm not saying that you have to wait until next year to feel the things that you're gonna put into your visualization, but just bear with me, okay? Because there's something really powerful about us going into summertime right now. If you're listening to this in the future, you can do it about. If it's fall, you could do next fall. If it's Christmas time, you could do next Christmas. You get it? But for right now, let's just think about summer. Cause I remember doing this for summer. And I swear to you, everything that I wrote in that visualization became reality. This is actually. I've shared this in previous episode. This is the exercise that showed me I needed to stop drinking alcohol. Because in my visualization it came up that I was no longer a drinker. And I was like, what in the hell is that? And it ended up being really integral to my up level. So you may just get some. Be careful. You may just get some insight that you are not prepared for. But what I want you to do is get a piece of paper if you can. If you're driving, you can come back to this later. But please do come back to it. It's well worth it. And I want you to write exactly what your life looks like next summer. I want you to write about your schedule. I want you to write about how you're working. I want you to write about your clients and the success that they're having. I want you to write about your children, if you have them, or travel, if that's a part of your life or whatever it is that you got going. What does it look like? Not what you think is a realistic. Not, you know, what you think you're worthy enough to ask for, but, like, actual. Like, I don't know how the hell I would get there. I don't know the how. That's so scary to even write down. That's where I want you. Okay? And I want you just writing what it looks like. Are you at the lake? Are you at the beach? Are you working five hours a week, ten hours a week? Like, what does it look like? Do you have a book? What's happening? And just write it down, Allow yourself to dream it. And then if you want to be extra and kind of corny like me. But this, I think, was the game changer. Record yourself reading it. Record yourself reading it. I know, total cringe, but it's worth it. Record yourself reading it into a voice memo and. And then listen to it. Listen to it multiple times per week. Listen to it every day. If you're an overachiever, this is starting to set the foundation of where you are trying to go with your life, your business model. And group programs can be such a high leverage tool to help you have so much control. You don't have to be limited. That's what I love about group programs. It's not just about me, like, sipping on pina virgin pina coladas and like never talking to my clients. That's not the dream for me. It's actually the opposite. My dream is to have such a deep impact on a hundred active clients between my two programs without compromise. I don't have to compromise my time, my precious summers with my children. I get to have it all. I get to have massive client impact. I get to help people change their friends freaking lives, make money with their skills. And I don't have to give up these precious years. I get to go on the slip and slide and go to the pool and have slow mornings with coffee and go on vacation. All of the things that I want. My dreams have come true because of group programs. And it's 100% possible for you as well. Maybe you're really close to that and you just need some more optimization or maybe that feels really far away. But regardless of where you are in that scale, I want you to know that this is the work that we do inside of sold out group programs. This is why my program is a year long, right? We can help you work towards that vision. You could get there much faster. I have some stories of clients that you're going to be hearing on the podcast where I have clients who make that dream come true in a month, two months. Right? But just worst case scenario, right? We can think about what it looks like next year and you can start week by week, day by day, pulling that into the reality of your consciousness. But it starts by having the courage to even put it on paper. If this sounds like work that you want to do with somebody who has figured out how to do it and helps people do it every single day, then I want to invite you to think about applying for sold out group programs. My Mastermind we are opening for enrollment during my free advanced training class on June 24th. That's a Tuesday at 12pm Eastern time. There's going to be a bonus that I want you to be able to hear all about. So be sure that you join me live. You can go to stephcrowder.com workshop, get signed up again. The live experience is going to be best. There will be a replay, but I really would love to see you there live and you can book a call with me and have a conversation about like what I'd love to hear maybe in our our one on one private deep dive call. You can tell me what did your visualization look like? What are you working towards? What is the dream for you? And we can talk about how my Mastermind program might just be the right engine to help you get there. My friends, I hope you loved this episode and I really hope to see you in my upcoming free class. I cannot wait. And until then I. I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.