Not only did it save my business, but it saved so much more.
Just imagine this…I’m 6.5 months pregnant, we just immigrated to the USA (I’m originally from Brooklyn but my hubby and I were living in Honduras after we got married and then we decided to move to the USA when baby #2 was coming).
I’m the only income in the home because we were waiting on hubby’s papers, and I’m maxed out with 1 on 1 clients who already paid me in full! This means 0 new income coming in and I have NO time left in my schedule to take on new clients!!
What was I supposed to do?
I needed to continue bringing in income to support my family. Little did I know that the immigration process would take more than 1 year for my husband. So that’s one year where I had to be the sole provider and mamma to a newborn and a 1.5 year old.
Can you imagine the stress?! I knew something had to change in my business because this wasn’t working anymore.
As someone who works online coaching other women to achieve their own success, I found that the way I was going about it was burning me out on both ends. Talk about unneeded stress and pressure.
I had to figure out what needed to shift so I could expand my knowledge to my clients without worrying that I can’t take on anymore clients.
Cue the lightbulb. A Mastermind Launch!
… But first, what IS a Mastermind?
What makes it so different from one-on one coaching, group coaching or an inner circle?
Well, for starters, one-on-one coaching is exactly what it sounds like, its you and the client. You offer your services to one person, just the two of you on calls, and in your weekly check-ins. It can be a nice way to engage with your clients, but fills your schedule up very quickly.
Group coaching is a bit more scaled up.
It is usually the first one to many model a coach launches. It allows you to serve more people at the same time without eating up more of your schedule. Some versions of group coaching could look like a three month weekly program offered via online between the facilitator (you) and the clients. The calls are group calls and clients can bring their questions to these calls and get the support they need.
An Inner circle is an elite group. They usually only have small amount of members with advanced training and skillsets, that are connected to network and expand their resources. They aren’t normally intended for pre-launched projects or someone looking to learn how to start their own business.
Which brings us to the Mastermind Group.
A hybrid of the group coaching and inner circle, the mastermind group brings the support of group coaching on a more personal level, while offering next-level services to your clients. Sound awesome? That’s because it is.
Masterminds can have any number of members at one time depending on how you want to set it up, and they allow each member to be able to comfortably interact with one another.
In my opinion, it also allows me to serve my clients on a much higher level to help them achieve results without requiring one on one work.
How do you set up a mastermind group?
You can set up your mastermind anyway you like, but the way I did it was to hire a team of coaches that I knew my clients could use support from (mindset, technology, traffic generation, legal, accounting) as well as my support in business development and digital marketing.
My mastermind has a very specific focus which is to scale your coaching business to multi 6 figures so I made sure I added every support needed to get my clients there.
The container I chose was 12 months because in my expertise, that is what is required. Depending on what result you are promising your clients, you container and set up can vary. At my highest level mastermind, I offer one on one Voxer access in between group calls which has been really helpful for my clients that don’t like speaking up in group calls and prefer a more direct and private approach. Even though this is a form of one on one support I have found it very scalable.
Are you as excited as I am?
Since starting down this avenue, I’ve come up with the top seven reasons in particular why launching my mastermind group saved my online business, and how it could benefit you as well.
1. It saved my sanity.
Because let’s face it. No matter who you are, there are only so many one on one clients we can handle at a time.
If your roster is full at ten clients, let’s say, you’d need to put in about one hour a week per client, plus your one hour coaching call. That’s already twenty hours a week, and that doesn’t even touch working on your business- marketing, networking, building new products and services etc. and each of these take time.
Before you know it, you’re burnt out and in desperate need of a break. Having clients isn’t a bad thing- in fact, it’s what will keep your business afloat. However, having a group of people to work with you and support each other will be a welcomed breath of fresh air.
Another great aspect of the mastermind group is the ability to cut out repetitiveness.
A lot of coaches have multiple clients asking them the same questions, or looking for the same result. Having this group allows you to answer the questions once, and frees up your schedule immensely. I also created my own framework of teaching my material and recorded it with workbooks so clients can watch the training videos and work on the homework and come to the calls ready with questions.
2. It saved me time.
As you know, time is money. Once I switched from normal coaching to the mastermind group, I was able to leverage my time to benefit myself and my clients. It’s amazing at how much less I work now that it has been set up, and I started making more money as a result.
By leveraging the time I would spend just on managing my clients’ needs each week, I cut my hours drastically – that twenty hours I mentioned before dropped down to ten, and so forth. Mastermind groups help you help each other, and in doing so, it frees up that extra time you’d be spending on each person and diving in to help those in the mastermind group if they were not able to help each other first.
If you’re feeling ambitious, or you have multiple courses that you offer coaching for, you perhaps could open up several different mastermind groups to leverage even more of your time working on your business.
Perhaps you coach technical support, as well as marketing and branding. Opening up a mastermind for each of those services allows you to further leverage 
that time, while taking more clients on.
3. Allows you to make a greater impact
Since you’re not working solely as a one-on-one coach, you’re able to take on more clients at the same time.
Isn’t it crazy? You can go from ten clients a week to even more. Since they can also rely on each other for answers, you’ll find that collectively, your clients will take in more from their environment than if it was specifically a one-on-one session.
Taking on more clients that you’ll facilitate also helps you expand your network.
As each client offers support to one another, they’ll most likely start networking amongst themselves to assist each other’s needs, which also benefits you, the facilitator. Since we’re all always learning, you may find yourself fascinated with a connection that you may have never found otherwise.
If you’re just starting out in online coaching, you probably don’t want to say ‘no’ to more work. With the mastermind groups, you don’t have to! That’s the beauty of it. I take on more clients now than I have before, but I feel nearly a fraction of the stress and it shows in the support I offer.
I want my clients to feel like they are getting the well-rounded support from the group as well as from me, the coach. You want them to leave feeling empowered from your services and made some connections along the way without thinking they’re just a number.
That impact you’ll make on every client will show and will help grow your business.
4. It makes more money.
Naturally, more clients means more of an income. Even though mastermind groups are cheaper than one-on-one coaching, you can set it up to produce better results than if you had stuck with one-on-one!
When you provide a cheaper service with the ability to engage with likeminded people striving for the same goal, you’ll find people tend to migrate toward that. People like having support, and people generally love to offer advice and solutions.
It’s a promising opportunity for those who may have been on the fence about starting their own online business, whether it is out of fear or not having a skillset. They tend to flock to the cheaper services as it seems to be less of a risk when it comes to finances.
Think of your target market – if you’re trying to attract stay-at-home mothers with young children, offering services for $500 + for one-on-one coaching probably won’t bring in many clients than if you were to offer a mastermind group of twenty for $250 each.
There’s some simple math involved here.
You’d net in about five thousand dollars for that one mastermind group quicker than if you were to fill up your clientele spots. Depending on your niche and the promise of transformation you are selling you could be charging $3-10k for your mastermind. So imagine $20k months if you were charging $5k, that’s only 4 clients needed per month. This is how you can watch as your revenue climbs while working the same hours. That is bliss and the dream!
5. It helps serve your clients better.
Masterminds are designed with your clients in mind. With most masterminds, you’d usually have an entire team of coaches or support systems to help your clients get their desired results faster.
As a quick example, in my own group, I offer all marketing, tech and mindset support myself so my clients have literally zero excuse to meeting their goals.
I like to offer the above support because I find that keeping my clients accountable allows them to grow and succeed faster. Even though it is possible to do so while coaching one-on-one, I have found that in a group setting, my clients hold each other accountable as well as work together.
In typical one-on-one settings, you may approach your clients once a week to see where they are at and what they need to work on. For some, that can be a bit intimidating. Once they’re inside your group, asking everyone at the same time to comment or email what they’re working on solicits the same question, but with much better results.
Another way a mastermind can help you better serve your clients could be the portal in which you place them.
Some people use a private Facebook group they check in with, while some others have a web portal the facilitator created to integrate the information taught and where the clients would submit their portfolio work.
Knowing which portal would be easier for your client market and tailoring it to their needs creates a sense of ease and allows them to focus on what they paid to learn, without having the difficulty of figuring out how to access it.
6. It gives YOU a support system.
My dear readers, I cannot even begin to express how awesome it is to have a team. It really is so nice to not have all of the answers all of the time, and it really allows me to focus on what I am most passionate about – business strategy, funnels and digital marketing. Without this team of amazing people, I’d be answering every question and following up on every thread and I would not have any time to continue to build my platform and business.
It really does take a village to make the dream work.
For me, having the time to work on my passion is a stress relief.
It allows me to continue to teach and coach while simultaneously check things off of my to-do list.
What would you do with your time if you didn’t have to spend all day answering emails or attending phone calls?
I’m sure you’d use that time to do something you love. That is why I am sharing this with you – not only will it save you time, make you more money, you’ll truly be free to do the things that interest you!
One of my favorite aspects of a mastermind is the fact I don’t have to know all of the answers. More often than not, another client will chime in with the information requested, leading me to only have to fact-check for my own peace of mind. The countless hours I used to spend reiterating to different clients the same answers are now filled with planning my business strategy and digital marketing efforts to keep filling my mastermind and programs.
7. The world is your oyster!
You can tailor it in any way that works with your lifestyle – a major bonus to most online entrepreneurs! You can even offer direct access to you if that is something you’re looking for. There are multiple ways to make it work- you don’t even have to offer direct access to yourself. You can offer live or recorded video classes, dripped or on-demand and more.
Whatever the case may be, feel free to create whatever support that you feel will help your clients get the results that they’re paying you to get.
Lifestyle is one of the MAIN reasons people are turning to the internet to start building a business or finding work. I have seen the same dream from many different people – whether they want to spend more time with family, or create another stream of income while the kids are napping, they’re on the internet to try and find a way to enjoy the life they’ve built.
You can offer that to them right here, in a way that benefits YOUR lifestyle.
For some, recorded class videos posted weekly give the same results that others feel live classes do. No matter where you fit in the spectrum, it’s a guarantee that you can make it work for your business. Even if you think it may not fit your niche, I can guarantee you that there is a way to scale your business by launching a group or mastermind program.
For me, moving to launch a Mastermind group was the best thing for my online business.
Without making that switch, I’d be drowned in work with no time to move forward. The best way to be successful is to always move forward. I enjoy the time I have free to do other work, grab a drink with friends and family, or just calculate my next move.
I can’t see myself not doing more mastermind groups, as it has taught me valuable lesson on how to better leverage my time and expertise, while making more income with half of the time spent. I truly believe working smarter, not harder is the way of the future.
So what’s in your future?
Are you interested in launching a time leveraged business model like a mastermind group or group coaching program?
Leave your thoughts and comments below! I look forward to hearing from you!
xo,
Angelica
