If you’re a coach, you’re focused on getting better results for your clients and finding new clients to serve.

So you don’t want the tech you use to get in the way of delivering value for your clients.

That’s why Circle is a perfect platform to run your coaching business. It's simple, beautiful, and easy to use -- and the best part is it keep everything all in one place! No confusion or tech issues for you or your clients.

In my work consulting with different coaches, I find that their tech stacks are usually so complicated and confusing that it adds a lot of friction to the client experience.

Without Circle, even simple things like scheduling group calls and making sure everyone shows up, can be a pain with people spread across different timezones.

So today I’m sharing 3 tips to maximize the impact of your coaching business using Circle.

1) Live events & Circle live streams

Running your live events inside Circle each week is an easy and beautiful experience!

Using an Event space you can easily create your events, members can RSVP and add the event straight to their calendar (super important), then will also receive an auto reminder from Circle before the event starts.

One of my clients saw a 50% increase in live calls attendance after we moved her from Kajabi + email + Fb group to Circle!

Why? Because it’s simple, all in one dedicated place, and distraction-free (unlike email inboxes or FB groups).

Circle has two native live streaming options which can replace Zoom for many users.

Live Streams — best for large events, similar to webinars. You can bring up a few people up on stage to talk with you live, but most people will be receiving a feed and can chat in the comments, but not unmute themselves to talk.

Live Rooms — this is what I normally use for my coaching calls. Best for smaller groups and most resembles normal Zoom meetings where everyone can be on screen and talk at the same time.

Great for Q&As, office hours, coaching calls, etc!

A great benefit of using Circle’s live video features is that with the click of one button I can record the call and have it automatically post the recording into the Event once it’s over. Or I can post the recording into a different space with another click.

Super easy! And much faster than having to download the zoom recording, upload it somewhere (Vimeo, YT, Circle) and make a post about it in Circle.

Here’s an example of me using Live Rooms for a recent coaching call in my community.

2) Private 1:1 coaching spaces

Many coaches are moving away from the 1:1 model and focusing on building effective group programs.

And this is definitely the right way to go to impact more lives and increase your income. But some still want to offer 1:1 for select clients — and there’s a really cool way you can do this with Circle.

Of course you could allow members to DM you directly, but there are a few downsides to this:

• 1:1 clients DMs can get buried with everyone else’s DMs
• Your other coaches will have no visibility into your DMs

If you have multiple coaches, then the DM strategy is not a good one. Instead, what I suggest are secret spaces for your 1:1 clients.

See these two examples from my clients

Chat spaces for Mastermind clients with the client and 5 coaches

You would set the space group settings so that members will not be added to other spaces in the group and will not be visible unless you are a member of a space. Then you’ll make all spaces secret.

That way anyone who isn’t a Mastermind client won’t see the space group at all. And if you do have a private chat space, you only see your name, and no one else!

In this example they are using Chat spaces, similar to a slack channel, which is just a stream of text. You can add some attachments, but it’s pretty ‘unstructured’ — best for quick chatting.

Another example is to follow the same strategy but use a Post space instead of a Chat space.

Here you’ll see this serves as a great progress log throughout the duration of the program. There’s a start post, several check-ins and a program wrap up.

This helps the client and all coaches see and evaluate the progress of the client from start to finish, all in one place.

3) Onboarding

This is an area that is often overlooked, but incredibly important. I think it’s because we, as experts, have the curse of knowledge. We know how everything works already! So it might feel obvious or unnecessary to explain it all in great detail. Or we simple don't think about it.

But your new client may know almost 0 about how your program works, and especially how your community is setup. (Even if you’ve explained it one in an email — not everyone reads everything you write! sorry )

So one of the best things you can do for your coaching program is to create an engaging onboarding experience and get people started on the right foot starting the second they sign up.

Good onboarding looks like..

Fully automated, but still human

Personal welcome to members via DM after they join

Clear, thoughtful, actionable next steps in text and video format

A thorough overview of your program and your community setup

Result  Members dive in, take action, get motivated and succeed in your program at a higher rate.

Bad onboarding looks like..

Drop member into an LMS or community feed after purchase

They aren’t sure sure how to get help or who to talk to

No action list of next steps to take

No tutorials or clear expectations

Result  More members will stagnate, lose momentum, disengage, fail to overcome challenges, and do not achieve the outcome they signed up for.

Some key steps you may want to include in your onboarding:

• Welcome video (reaffirm why they’re here and what they’ll achieve if they do the work)
• Program overview
• Community tour
• Circle customization (profile setup, change notification preferences, download mobile app)
• Add badges
• Dive in! RVSP for live events, introduce yourself, start the first lesson in a course

If presented the wrong way (i.e. a huge wall of text post) it can be very overwhelming and unlikely they will do all the things you ask them to do. It's very easy to skip over and never come back to.

But if you present your onboarding in clear, simple, bite-sized steps, we’ve found we get a very high percentage of members to fully complete the onboarding and then are much more engaged in the program.

Need help?

If you need help with your onboarding experience, I just launched a brand new product called Onboarding Blueprint where you’ll get a high end customized onboarding experience installed inside your community, done for you, for a fraction of the price that our $30k DFY clients pay to setup their entire community.

This is a limited-time offer until the end of February with only 10 spots available.

I want to hear from you!

Which of these tips will you add next to take your community to the next level?

Are you doing something cool that's not on this list? Let us know in the comments!