How to Leverage Private Coaching
How to build and run private mentoring as a high-value offer.
By James Schramko
A super high value offer that I have created for some levels of membership is to provide personal private mentoring.
As in ME being there on a constant basis. Part sounding board, part advisor, part coach. It sounds like hard work and people often question, is this for real?
It is.
So far I have answered more than 35,000 private questions since 2010.
The following is designed to help you if you run a group or community, or offer private coaching
The reality is - this is probably the single, greatest asset you will create. Also, it will keep you as sharp as a knife and it is a HIGH value offer to sell to your customers.
You can charge quite a lot for this service. Thousands per month.
Basically, I answer a few questions every day and everyone is happy.
Make sure you find some leverage
If you do it WRONG, you will burn out.
How is it possible?
These days I run this through Signal. Each member who is entitled to it gets one private thread with me. Any private channel works for this: a one-to-one thread inside your group platform, or a messaging app.
What follows are a few bullet points about lessons I have learned about how to make this work for you. It's been so effective for me for lowering churn, increasing results for clients and making profit.
1) Only let customers have one private discussion thread
That way you can retain focus for them as you build a running history for context. Occasionally, you will need to re-visit the original discussion to get context or put the train back on the track.
2) Give them homework to do
When people ask me a question, often the answer will involve them going to research, prepare, watch or calculate something, to then come back to me. This takes them out of circulation for a while, but it also helps them get a result, which is the point of them being there. Use Socratic questions and diagnosis. Don't be tempted to just answer every question without provoking thought if you're in a coaching capacity.
3) Train them to go public where appropriate
Not everything should be or needs to be private. If someone asks you something that would be better to be asked in the public discussion thread such as a website review, encourage them to go and post it publicly. Link to the place where they should post it.
4) Use your phone and voice dictation to speed things up
I answer most of my posts on my phone, many of them with voice dictation using Wispr Flow. If you need to link to threads, open your group platform on your phone browser so you can copy URLs and paste them into your reply.
5) Put detailed responses in the public section
If you are tempted to answer questions in great detail for someone privately, it is good to then anonymize the answer and go and post it in the thread where it should be, in the public section.
You can do this first and then link to it from the customer's private thread and say "I've gone ahead and answered your question here without referencing you and I'm sure some of the other members will get some great value from this content as well". This entire post was inspired by a private question but the answers will help many others. I want the leverage from the answer. One-time answering is not leveraged. Sharing is.
6) If someone is absent, get them re-engaged
Aside from your engagement tracking flagging abandonment, look out for private discussions that have been inactive for a while. You should go back to old threads and say "where is this up to", " how are you doing", "what is your next move?".
If they don't ask you a question and just make a statement, they might stall.
This active prompting encourages the continuation. Always look to advance the discussion rather than let it stagnate. I know this is counterintuitive because you would think the goal is to have the minimum possible commitment for you but the reality is, if people are getting amazing results, they get more encouraged by the results. It works well for you because you feel good about it and they will respect your time.
7) Use different media types
Sometimes it works better if you ask your customer to make a video or provide screenshots or audio recordings. For some of my private coaching threads, customers just make a little video for me which I watch and then I type my answers. Loom is great for this.
Conversely, it might be easier for you to make a little video, screenshot or audio to answer a complicated question rather than type it. And certainly use voice dictation. Wispr Flow is what I use.
8) Point to existing work
If someone asks you a question and you know the answer has already been asked in the group, just point the customer to where the answer is with a link to the resource and encourage them to use the search tool.
9) How to answer posts as the group owner
When I log into my group platform, I go straight to the private discussion section first. I answer the oldest question. This keeps me very up-to-date. I can usually answer every question within 24 hours.
10) Gather testimonials and success stories
Provide lots of encouragement and excitement and screenshot when they say something very nice. It's okay to ask them if you could publish something like that as a testimonial if you feel confident.
Encourage them to go and say something in the success thread if they've had a tremendous win. Let other members know about it, since if it happened only in the private discussion, others are not going to see it.
11) Make sure every customer starts a private discussion if they are entitled to it
They are missing out if they don't, and so are you.
12) Use the FAQ as product ideas
Harvest your answers from the private discussion as an inspiration source. Take the common challenges and make larger products around it or videos / podcasts for your PUBLIC BLOG, not just your forum.
13) Consider charging a premium for personalized responses
If what you are answering is highly unleveraged, charge more.
14) Slow down
Be cautious about overservicing your members. It may set an unreasonable expectation if you post multiple private answers per day and maybe even once a day is too often. YOU set the cadence.
15) Recruit hyper users to assist you (for public stuff)
Offer lower rates, or pay them to moderate or point people around and help members. It gives them purpose. They truly learn when they are teaching and they value insider access to the founder.