Wendy McCallum (01:59)
Hello, hello, welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum. I'm so excited to be here. It has been a while since I have recorded a podcast episode. This will air at the end of September, but I am just coming back now from four slash five weeks basically of being pretty much completely away from my business. I, during the month of July, set aside only one day a week to do client work, one-on-one client work, and to run my
BBB group sessions, that's my business building bootcamp for coaches. So I ran those calls on Tuesdays and I saw any individual clients that I had going through the summer as well as scheduling. I scheduled all my meetings for those days, which allowed me to take this really big kind of chunk of time away from work. And it was amazing. Now there was a lot of planning and work that went into getting my business to a place where that was possible for me. And maybe some, in another episode I'll talk about.
what went into creating those systems and the reliable both structure and revenue streams that allow me to take a full month off in the summer. But anyway, for now I'm back. Give me a little grace today because I may be slightly off my game, but I'm really excited to talk about what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about creating a signature or flagship coaching course, when to start that as a coach and how to get it right when you do so.
This is something that I have done myself. I've actually done it a couple of times in the various sort of iterations of my business over the last 15 years. The latest iteration of it is my BBB, my business building bootcamp for coaches. And it is something that I think is sort of the thing that sets a sustainable coaching business apart from a coaching business that's going to fizzle out.
So it's something that I talk to all of the coaches that I support about, and I wanna plant the seed for you today. What you're going to learn today is whether this is right for you yet, and if it is right for you, what you need to be thinking about and considering when you're designing this flagship or foundation offer. So here's my question for you. What if you could create a coaching program that becomes the cornerstone of your business? One that clients instantly recognize.
delivers consistent results and generates income year after year. That is exactly the point of a Signature Coaching course. A Signature Coaching course is something that is scalable, which means you can add more people to it without actually adding more of your time to running the program. So it can grow over time without taking more of your own personal resources and time away, which means you can make more money in less time.
So it's scalable, it's supportive of your specific niche. So that is the group of people and the problem that you tend to support most often. It is value packed. So it's going to be an incredibly valuable offer, your flagship offer. And it showcases your expertise and effectively becomes the thing that you're known for.
It's like the foundation of your coaching business and everything else flows out from it. So by the end of this episode, you are going to know with clarity whether you are ready to create your own flagship offer right now or whether that's it's something for down the road for you. And you're going to know how to recognize when you are there. If you're not quite there yet, you're going to know the key elements that you need to be considering when you are designing or brainstorming your flagship.
offer and you are going to understand like with a lot of clarity which is going to be incredibly motivating for you how creating this type of an offer making the decision to do this can set you up for scalable long-term success as a coach which of course is the name of the game and why I have this podcast. So this is going to be a really value-packed episode one that you may want to listen to more than once. So
Let me start by telling you my story of a flagship offer, a foundation signature coaching program and how I got to the point where I decided this was the right thing for me. Now, as I said, in earlier iterations of my business, I had different coaching niches. I've been coaching for a really long time now. If you listen to this podcast, you know that I started out in food and wellness and nutrition. I moved into
burnout, stress management, big transitions for women. I got certified and did training around life coaching and then eventually sort of created a subspecialty around alcohol. So in the personal coaching side of things, I've had lots of different focuses and I have created a couple of different flagship programs in those other niches. But for the purposes of today, I'm going to talk about my foundation business course for coaches, because that is really the focus of my practice now and what I love to do.
just more than anything. So 10 years into my personal coaching business, again, that was the business sort of based on burnout, alcohol and transitions for professional women. I was at a place where I was making year after year, really reliable income. It had really become a business I was proud of. And I felt like I had figured out sort of the recipe for
running a small business and not burning out in the process. And listen, as I've said on many other episodes of this podcast, I made lots of mistakes. All my years weren't smooth, but by year 10, I really felt like I had a good thing going. And that sort of coincided with me taking my last certification, which was around alcohol. And coaches from my last certification class started to reach out to me. So they had been promised in their certification,
that there was going to be a business building module and they were going to be given everything that they needed to start a small business of their own and make money. And they didn't get it. They were feeling lost, they were feeling overwhelmed.
And they looked at me and my business and thought, well, this person has figured this out and knows how to do this. So they were coming to me and asking me to support them. Now at the time, the only option that I had was to support them one-on-one. So I started working with coaches privately, trying to get a handle on the type of work that they wanted to do and their existing networks and connections and how we could use all of the things and put all of the pieces together for them that I had put together in my own business to become successful as a coach.
And for about a year or so, year and a half, I was working one-on-one with a lot of coaches and word got around that I was good at this and coaches would share it with other coaches. eventually I got to a place where I was just too busy to manage all of this business coaching work alongside of the personal coaching work that I was still doing. My one-on-one practice was just jammed full and I was starting to feel really stretched thin.
The other thing that I was noticing is that the one-on-one work didn't feel great to me because of how expensive it was. mean, it's expensive to work with a coach one-on-one. And at this point, a 10-year experienced coach, my rates were not low. And I didn't love that because I know how hard it is to build a business and I know how hard it is to spend money on your business before you're making money. And so that part of it, I didn't love. I felt like it was cost prohibitive for a lot of coaches.
And the other thing was these coaches were really craving connection and community, and I couldn't offer that in the one-on-one format. So I had a bit of a light bulb moment where I thought, I bet I can create something now after a year and a half of working one-on-one with these coaches, something that's scalable, that's supportive, and that's affordable with the community aspect built in. So there is a way for me to give coaches all of the things that they need.
to put a really sort of structured, proven, supported, reliable business structure in place in their small businesses and also give them one on one, like the equivalent of the strategic support that I was giving in those one-on-one sessions. the ability to access me and get support when they were stuck, ask questions.
brainstorm things, get some strategy from somebody who's been there, but also create that community that they were craving. And the way to do that was through a flagship or signature offer. And when I was thinking about what would be included in what ended up being the BBB, my business building bootcamp, which is the one year flagship signature course that I offer for coaches, I was thinking about things like, what are the things that I am teaching over and over to these coaches when I'm working with them one-on-one?
What are the questions that come up time and time again? What are the things that I already have systems for that I am actually sharing with these coaches in sessions? What are the sort of shortcuts that I already know, the templates that I have, the things that I can give people in a library online or teach through a series of short kind of bite-sized videos and then supporting resources.
that I could offer up that way to more coaches for less money. And after a fair bit of trial and error, and if you've listened to my episode about how everything's a beta, this is called, it's called the best business building advice you'll ever get. And it's actually my most popular episode. So go and listen to that if you haven't yet.
In that episode, I talk about the importance of a beta mindset and testing things. And that's exactly what I did with the BBB. There were several different iterations. I think we had three different levels of beta where I tested this program and figured out how to get it just right. But eventually what I ended up with as this flagship or signature offer was my BBB, which is a combination of this online course library. It's very comprehensive and it's there for on-demand learning so that you can go to whatever module topic lesson is the thing that you are
currently working on in your business and get the tools, the resources, the guidance from me right away for that. And everybody is obviously working on different parts of their business at different times. So I wanted to have it all be available and accessible as you need it, when you need it. There is a live weekly coaching component, which allows me to still have that connection with my coaches. I get to know every coach's business. I have a really good sense of their strengths, their challenges.
their marketing opportunities for them. And I can also provide accountability and do on the ground problem solving and strategic brainstorming with my coaches in those live sessions that happen every week. And then I also wanted the ability to bring in some experts on topics that maybe were not things that I was an expert in and have some other people come in from the outside and fill in any gaps in that program. And that was the beginning of
the Masterclass Resource Vault, which is enormous and which all new BBB members get access to when they join. So if you join the BBB now, you get the benefit of every masterclass that has happened since the beginning of the BBB, since that very first beta. So we have this really amazing resource library of masterclasses from experts. And then on top of that, it allowed me to create this community. So this space for coaches to connect and talk and support each other.
and share experiences and share learning so that they didn't feel alone in all of this anymore. So that is how my signature course came about. It came about through years of working one-on-one with coaches and starting to realize that I couldn't do it anymore. I had just too many people and not enough time. And I started to see the need for some things that would be better.
provided in a group coaching program format than in a one-on-one format. And from that BBB, I've been able to create some spin-off specialty programs. And this is something we're gonna talk about with your flagship offer as well. So those are courses that are not necessarily critical when you are starting to build your business, but cover topics in great detail and with really intensive support.
that become issues for coaches or become things that they feel like they want to do down the road. So that includes things like the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive that I did a beta of in the spring of 2025, which is where I taught the skills, the basic skills of coaching to coaches. And it was so much fun, but really helping coaches build their confidence and build the value that they were able to provide in coaching sessions with clients.
increase their flexibility as coaches. They feel really confident coaching on any topic that comes up in a coaching session. And then the other course that is a good example of a spin-off program is the Coaching Course Creator or the CCC, which is really rooted in that coursing as your offer, of the BBB. But that's for people who are ready to create from beginning to end with weekly support from me just on this project, a
like the signature courses that we're talking about today, actually. So why is a signature coaching course often a complete game changer for coaches? And why do you need to be thinking about this if you haven't been thinking about this yet? Because this is the thing that builds authority and brand recognition for you. It's the thing that you become known for. If you ask a coach about Wendy McCallum, anyone who's heard of me has heard of the BBB.
People will say, she's the one with the BBB. She's the coach who runs the BBB. It has become what I'm known for in the world of coaching coaches. And that's a good thing.
A signature or foundation or flagship offer also creates a central hub that your other offers can branch off from. Like I was just talking about the CCSI or the CCC, they branch off of the BBB, the main offer. So it's your main offer from which you can do upsells. You can probably do downsells too. We can talk about that as we go on here in this episode, but it's kind of the hub. It's the main offer and other things sort of branch off from that.
It increases efficiency for you as the coach, which means you do not have to reinvent the wheel for every client, which gets tiring after a while. And also you can just see the inefficiency in that. The longer you practice one-on-one, the more you'll see, every week I'm teaching the same exercise or I'm teaching the same topic or I'm asking these same questions. And there is a way for me to make this so much more efficient for both my busy clients, but also for me as the coach by allowing
me to do that. So in doing that, making it more efficient, that allows me to scale. So to serve more people with less of my time, which means I'm much less likely to burn out as a coach. And it also allows me to offer the support at a price that is a little more reasonable for people or maybe feels more accessible for people and allows me therefore to serve more people.
A signature coaching course can be a complete game changer for those reasons. It helps you build authority and brand recognition, creates a central hub from which your other offers can branch from, and it increases efficiency, which allows you to scale without burning out and allows you to support more people than you can currently serve in your one-on-one practice and often at a more attractive rate.
So how do you know if you're ready to create your signature course?
There are a few things that you want to be thinking about and I went into a lot of detail about my offer so that you could have kind of a real life example of some of these things I'm going to talk about. So the first sign that you are ready to create your signature course is that you have worked one-on-one long enough around this problem to deeply understand your clients challenges and the unique solution that you offer as a coach.
So you have spent enough time with clients one-on-one or maybe in like small group settings, if that's how you do it, to know the patterns, the pain points and the transformation pathway. You need to have a really clear understanding of that and feel really confident that you know that. So before I started the BBB, as I said, I spent all that time working one-on-one with coaches and, you know, obviously also had my own experience as a coach building a small business.
I felt really confident that I knew what the common, overlapping, consistent patterns and pain points were and that I knew the solution or the pathway to success for newer coaches. So that's the first thing. You've worked long enough one-on-one to know this. So if you're a new coach and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I'm not even finished my certification yet, or I only have one practice client, or I've hardly worked with anybody, I'm just in my first year of coaching, you're probably not ready to create your flagship offer yet.
But it's a great time to start thinking about it and paying attention to what those pain points and questions and challenges are that come up time and time again in those one-on-one sessions. What are the things you find yourself going back to? What are the topics, the tactics, the tools that you continually refer your clients to or teach around and start noting them somewhere. This is a really great practice. Pay attention to those things because eventually those things are gonna become the basis of your foundation or signature offer.
The second sign that you're ready to create your signature course is that your demand is exceeding your capacity. So the demand for your services, your one-on-one or your small group services is exceeding your ability to meet those demands. So you just don't have enough time. You're finding yourself working with like six, seven clients a day. You're exhausted at the end of the day. For me, it always shows up. I always know I'm overbooked when I have a headache and I forget to eat.
Those are my two red flags. I'll have a headache at the end of the day because I've been sitting for so long with a ring light on my face and I forget to eat. So your demand is exceeding your capacity. If you're in that situation where you've got, you really are struggling to find places to fit people in and you're starting to feel really overwhelmed with your schedule, it's probably time to start thinking about a scalable signature program.
The third sign that you're ready to create your signature course is that you really feel like you're ready to build something that's bigger than the sort of one and done one-on-one coaching offer that you have right now. So you want an offer that you can run year after year, creating stable revenue and client flow. Now,
I want to be clear here, just because my BBB is a kind of an evergreen membership model, I mean, you can join the BBB tomorrow. It's always open for new coaches to join. There isn't like a set cart open date when people can join and then the cart closes and you have to wait until the next time I offer it. That doesn't mean all signature offers need to be that way. That's just the structure that works best for my program because I have coaches all the time.
reaching out to me saying like, hey, I just finished this training or just finished the certification, or I've been struggling alone now for the last couple of years and I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to be able to make it. And I feel like I really need to make an investment in the business side of my business. Those are kind of random. And I wanted to make sure that when people are looking for support, that support is immediately available to them. You might decide to create a signature offer that launches once a year only.
and is open for a certain period of time, and then you take a break from that, and then you launch it again the next year. The point though, is that it's something that you can run year after year, and you can start to count on the revenue from that program. So you can count on a certain number of people coming into that program every year, and you can count on a certain amount of revenue every month from that program. This is one of the amazing things about having a signature offer and working and listen.
If you listen to this podcast, you know that I'm a no BS kind of person and I'm not going to say this is something that's going to take you a couple of weeks to do. It's a really simple thing. Signature offers are a big deal. You should be putting the work into creating these. They should be really great and really, really value packed. I've spent so much time creating all of the amazing resources in the BBB. It is an enormous comprehensive library organized by Topic.
I work really hard to bring in cool people for the master classes or to teach cool master classes myself every month. And I am there on these calls listening to my coaches every single week, trying to fill in any gaps that might come up in the BBB program itself. So this is, it's not like a little, you know, I'm just gonna take the weekend and I'm gonna brainstorm and create my signature offer. I'm talking about creating something pretty substantial here. But there are different ways to offer it.
The key thing is that you're ready to offer something that you can run year after year so that you can create some stability in your business, both in terms of client flow and revenue flow. The BBB and the offshoot offers in the BBB is what has allowed me to take a month off this summer. So I didn't take a month off the BBB to be clear, I always show up for those coaches, but in the summer, our call schedule goes down to one call option a week instead of two call options a week that we have.
from September through to the end of June. So it makes it a little easier for me to take a month and only work one day a week. So if I had not created that flagship offer, I would not have the revenue stream and the client base that I have from the BBB. So it's just a really, it's...
become sort of the underpinning or the foundation of my business coaching practice. That's the point of this one of these signature offers. Okay, so again, three signs you're ready to create your course. You've worked long enough one-on-one that you have a really good handle and you feel super clear on the problem that you help people solve and the unique way you solve it and what those recurring pain points or challenges are that are coming up all the time in your one-on-one practice that you want to incorporate into a scalable offer. Second,
Your demand, the demand for you is exceeding your capacity. So you just can't meet the demand anymore. You're starting to feel like you're stretched thin and you might burn out. Three, you're ready to create something that is bigger than kind of your regular one-on-one, one and done type program. So something that you can use over and over again every year. You're ready to do that. Okay, five key considerations that you need to keep in mind when you are designing your signature offer.
So assuming you're at a place where you're thinking, yeah, I think this is something I need to be starting to think about. I need to think about it a lot and maybe start building this thing. Here are some things I want you to just start mulling over and brainstorming. So the first thing you need to be super clear on, this will come as no surprise, is what the core problem is and what the promise is. So what is the thing that this signature program helps clients overcome?
With the BBB, it is the overwhelm of launching and building a small business. That's what the program is designed to help newer coaches with, to get you out of spinning your wheels, total overwhelm, not a lot of action and not making any money to a place where you're actually making money and you feel like you have some reliable systems in place that will allow you to keep making money and actually sustain and continue growing your business. That's the promise of the BBB.
You need to know what your core promise is. What's the problem and what's the promise? Be crystal clear about what you help your clients overcome and the transformation that they can expect. You wanna keep it specific, you wanna keep it measurable. So you gotta stay out of the vague coaching thing here like, I'm gonna help you create a life that you don't wanna escape from. That is just such a vague promise.
As specific as possible, I'm always like, my gosh, my coaches in the BBB, this is going to resonate with you. You've probably heard me say this a million times in office hours. I am constantly saying, what is the actual measurable change, the actual measurable impact for this person in their real life? So what is one thing that is specifically changing for them in their real life as a result of taking this course? So is it that they're going to feel like they have one more hour in every day for themselves?
Is it that they are going to be able to save 15 % more money annually than they were able to save the year before for their retirement? Like what is the specific promise here and outcome? You wanna be able to make that very measurable for people. So first key consideration, crystal clear on the core problem and the promise and the measurable outcome. Number two.
you need to decide on the structure for this thing. And this is really where I encourage you to spend some time. And if you join me in the CCC, we have a coaching course creator program starting at the beginning of October. This episode is like right, gonna air right before the deadline for that. It's still time to join us. If you're thinking, I wanna create a signature program, join us in the CCC starting in October. It runs for October, November. This is the thing we're gonna spend time on. We're gonna talk about...
how you wanna structure this program. So what is the balance between self-paced content, on-demand content versus like structured, dripped content, and that's where the content becomes available at a specific time for people so that it doesn't overwhelm them often, or so that everybody can stay on the same page and be at the same place in their transformation journey, for lack of a better word, when you are coaching them in the live calls.
what the balance is between the content and the live support and community normally. Those are the three big things that we think about. And then in order to do that, you want to spend some time thinking about things like what are the learning styles? What's the way that my clients best learn and make change? And this is going to vary depending on your niche and it's also probably going to vary depending on the individual client. So when I'm creating a program, I'm always thinking like,
people learn different ways. So how can I present this material in a variety of ways so that it is most helpful to the most people? And that is why the BBB has a combination of short video content, sometimes text-based content, sometimes templates to go with things, sometimes audio, and then always like the live opportunities for learning because people learn in different ways. Some people learn so much better
when it's a live presentation and they can ask questions. Other people learn better by repetition and by watching things. Other people learn better by writing and doing exercises. So ask yourself and just pay attention to this. If you're not ready to create a signature offer yet, this is another thing to start paying attention to in your one-on-one practice. What resonates, lands, and helps your clients most in terms of the ways that you present information, questions, coach them?
So you want to be setting them up for the maximum chance of maximum success. That's what I teach in the CCC. So it's about thinking about the people who are your absolute dream clients for this program. How can you set them up for the best chance of maximum success with this program? So you want to think about things like how long does it typically take for a client to move through this problem and get to final solution?
Is that a six week thing? Is that a six month thing? Is that a one year thing? How long does that take? And again, what are the ways that my client, different ways that my clients learn? And so how can I create this to set them up for success with that? I'll give you a tip here. And this is something I, I'm not shy about sharing and talk about constantly in the BBB and the content creation module where you talk about the best ways to create professional content. The shorter the better.
People just do not love really long content. That's why these podcast episodes are generally between 30 and 40 minutes. I don't wanna overwhelm people with too much stuff. Nobody has time to sit down and watch an hour and a half video and he can't retain all of it anyway. So keep it short, whatever you do. The third thing you need to think about is how do I create something that is scalable and sustainable? And there are lots of different considerations that go into this, but a really key thing to be thinking about is
How do I set this up so that I, you know, I'm not creating something that's actually gonna cause me to have to put more work hours in to run this thing that I'm working in my one-on-one practice, which is right now feeling a little overwhelming to me and a little too busy, right? So you wanna make sure you're creating something that doesn't require you to work too many hours. The whole point of this thing is to make it scalable.
How many hours do you need to put into it? Now, there's always going to be a curve on this. It's always going to be front end loaded with work. There's always way more work at the beginning of a signature program than there is once you've had it running for a while. And you have to sort of accept that and prepare yourself for that. I spent so much time every week on the BBB in the first year, but now I'm at a place where, you know, I've got systems and structure in place, which is exactly what I teach my coaches to do inside the BBB with their own businesses so that it feels
So like so much less work for me on a weekly basis. You also want to be thinking about like using a mix of that evergreen content. So that's the content that's pre-recorded that, you know, lives inside the course that is always accessible for people that you don't have to put any more work into is another way to think of it.
versus the live touch points of coaching. those live, whatever those live sessions are that you, where you actually have the interaction with people, whether that's happening in your community or that's happening in set coaching calls. So scalability and sustainability. How are you gonna do that? What's the right balance for you? And then the other thing you need to think about is your delivery sweet spot. Okay, so what are you best at?
What do you do really well as a coach and where do you still struggle a little bit? And this is not to say that you don't want to be challenging yourself and kind of pushing yourself out of the box and to try new things, but you also probably already have a sense of what you do very well. I am good at live presenting and I am good at recording myself because I've just done it for so long that it's an easy thing for me to do and I don't get too stressed out about it and I'm not worried about it being perfect.
