From “I Have an Idea” to a Clear Group Programme

One of my coaching clients came to me with some ideas for a group programme she wanted to run.

She had lots of experience and there were a lot of people she wanted to help support.

The ideas weren’t the problem. She had lots of great ideas for course topics.

The problem was working out which idea to choose, what the actual programme should look like and where to start.

What should the focus be?

How long should it run?

What support should be included?

What should she charge?

And, on top of all of that, would anyone actually want to pay to join?

It is a place many coaches, therapists and wellness practitioners find themselves in.

You know there is something good in the idea, but you can’t quite work out what the offer is yet, how to explain it or how you would begin selling it.

Over six coaching sessions, we worked together to change that.

We started with the person, not the programme

When someone is creating a course or group programme, it is very easy to start with the content.

How many modules should there be?

What should happen in week one?

What resources could be included?

What could be added to make it feel more valuable?

But before we decided any of that, we needed to get much clearer on who the programme was for and what she genuinely wanted to help them with.

We looked at the people she most wanted to support, the challenges they were facing and the change she hoped the programme could help them create.

That gave us something solid to work from.

It also made it easier to decide which ideas belonged in the programme and which ones, however interesting, were distracting from the main purpose.

That is often one of the hardest parts of creating a group programme.

It is not coming up with more ideas.

It is deciding which ones to leave out.

Then we made it practical

Once the focus was clearer, we could start shaping the programme itself.

Together, we developed it into an eight-week online group programme for a small group of four to six people.

It would include weekly 90-minute sessions, one individual 75-minute session for each participant and WhatsApp support between sessions.

We worked through the level of support she wanted to offer, the group size that felt right and what she could realistically deliver without making the programme overwhelming for her or the participants.

We also explored pricing, positioning and how to talk about the offer in a way that felt natural to her.

Not full of vague promises.

Not written as though she had suddenly become a different person because she was selling something.

Just a clear and true explanation of who the programme was for, what it would help with and what people would receive.

The harder part was putting it out there

The practical decisions mattered, but they were not the whole story.

A lot of the coaching was about what came up when she imagined actually sharing the programme.

Would people understand it?

Would they see the value?

Would the price feel too high?

What would it mean if she talked about the offer and nobody responded?

It is easy to describe all of that as simply being scared of selling.

But that does not really help.

So, instead, we broke the fear down into smaller concerns.

What exactly was she worried might happen?

Which concerns were based on evidence?

Which were assumptions?

What could she test before investing more time, money and energy into a full launch?

That led us towards a much simpler way of selling the first pilot.

No big sales funnel.

No complicated tech.

No plans for her to suddenly start posting online every day and spend hours on canva.

The first step was to have real conversations, explain the idea clearly and listen carefully to how people responded.

What she is leaving with

At the end of our six sessions, she has much more than just lot’s of great ideas.

She has a clearer offer, a defined audience, a programme structure she can realistically deliver and a simple plan for testing it.

She also understands much more about what had been keeping her stuck.

That is the value of this kind of business coaching.

It is not about handing someone a template and telling them to copy it.

It is about helping them make the decisions they have been going around, question the assumptions that are slowing them down and create something that fits their experience, their clients and the way they actually want to work.

If you are a coach, therapist or wellness practitioner with an idea for a group programme, workshop or retreat that keeps going around in your head, the answer may not be more ideas.

You may need the space, structure and honest support to turn the right one into something real.

To find out how we could help you shape and develop your idea, get in touch at hello@bluespaceswellbeing.com.