How to run a coaching club without it consuming your life?

Try building a private forum. This might help you a little bit as other members might chip in and answer some of your questions for you.

Charge more & weed out the idiots.

Make sure you charge enough to drive out all people that drive your rate down

In all reality it is the old 80/20 rule 20% of your students are going to take up 80% of your time.

Either you charge enough to make money off that 20% or you figure out how to limit their drain on your business.

Damn Rich beat me to the punch and so much more succinctly

Depends on the niche but a lot of it can be automated.

First off, find common problems and create products such as videos or pdf's around it.

Have them in your members area.

If you coaching is about taking a person from point A to B it can by done via videos. Record videos of the entire process broken down into steps and accessible via the members area.

This way you are only doing the work once where as your members get the benefits.

Answer the complicated questions personally but now it shouldn't take more time as you've already got the commonly asked questions covered and you can simply point them in the direction of your members area.

Plus, Afaq's members forum idea is a good one. It is quite common to have a forum in most of the Internet Marketing Coaching groups.

you can also create a F.A.Q document and still have the personalized touch as copying from the document and making changes according to the questions and then emailing them should take a lot less time than what you are doing now.

Hope it helps.

Maddi

Hey stockguy,

I would suggest you run a forum. That way, you will not be compelled to answer all the time. Also, another idea is to set a particular time where they can ask questions like a weekly webinar or teleseminar.

Aira

I'd highly recommend going with group coaching session to maximize your efficiency...and a great way to do this is to provide your coaching via scheduled webinars, where all members can get on at the same time and ask away...

I learned the hard way too, 1 on 1 coaching via email is NO fun at all and even with high prices, it just doesn't pan out. Also, try to have as many pre-made templates as possible prepared ahead of time...so that nearly every coaching client is most of the way "taken care of" before they even enroll.

Good luck =)

Hi,

I suggest a ticketing system with knowledge base support, meaning people can see if some of the questions have been answered before while typing the question as a suggested article will pop out.

But the best way to to really automate your business is to outsource another expert or outsource someone you can train to answer the emails for you.

Hi Mate,

I know exactly how you feel. And this
is what I did as my solution. And it
works perfectly.

1. Charge More!
2. They are limited to 1 question per 24 hours
3. If you do critiques, there is up to a 72 hour turnaround
4. Questions are only answered Monday-Thursday

When you accept more than one question at a time you
answers become watered down or even rushed, because
you know you have a million other questions to answer.

If only one question is asked, you can give the best
god damn answer you could ever do and provide way more
detail for them.

One question per 24 hours actually gives them time to actually
impliment the advice you have given them.

As you know, you are spreading yourself too thin.

Run your coaching through a ticket system like hesk.com
and then all their q&a is compiled neatly in the one thread.

You can also send and recieve files without them getting
lost in email etc. Another bonus is you can add "Canned Responses"
to the ticket system to answer any questions you get on a
regular basis.

Also, when they first join your coaching...let them know
about the "Rules of the Game", what to expect from you
and also what you expect of them.

Hope that helps?

Take Care,

Michael Silvester

I've been doing exactly this for about 3 years now.

I did the 1on1 route originally, it's just not sustainable for any single person. You go batty answering the same questions over and over. The group format is best for this. Some may think they need one on one, but in reality they don't. They think they have unique questions, but they don't.

You have to find the dollar amount that makes it worth your time. If you're just starting out in this, you can take on more members for less money, but over time, you need to increase the price, (like wealthy affiliate did), or decrease the support to a level that matches their cost.

After a while, if you really like, it's not even like work anymore.

Also, consider elevating some of your more apt members to "Team Leaders". They'll like the feeling of being valued and singled out, and folks can ask them for help also. Delegation is a wonderful thing.

The forums idea is a great way to delegate.

Think Michael hit the nail on the head. There has to be a limit to how much time they have access to you, or the number of questions the ask.

People get lazy and stop looking for themselves for even the most mundane, stupid questions -- when they should be saving the time with you for the biggies only you can answer.

Good luck!

Steven has this bang on.

When I think of a coach I think of the Olympics. Did Michael Phelps join a swimming forum, download some PDF's or attend some webinars?

No.

Coach Bob was there every step of the way.

Back in 08, I was paying $2,500 an hour for one on one coaching sessions. Im not kidding. It was worth every cent.