Wendy McCallum (01:28)
Hello there, welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm Wendy McCallum, your host. And today, as is often the case, our episode topic is informed by something that I've been doing in my own coaching business. And I thought, what a great topic to talk about on here. So what we're gonna talk about today is the Wild West of your business. Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about Wild West, that's cool, don't stress. Go back and listen to episode 68.
which aired at the end of December, 2025. So a few months ago now, that is the episode where I talk about this model that I use when I am supporting coaches in business building that I call the Compass Model. And that really very simply is that we divide the coaching business into four main quadrants, the South, Northwest, East.
Okay. And, ⁓ I have spent a lot of time referencing this business compass since I did that episode in December. So you may have heard me talk about it in other episodes, but usually I'm talking about the North, which is your top of funnel. This is your main visibility. This is how people find you and come into your world. Or I'm talking about the East, which is where we warm up those clients, potential clients who've come into our world. So our followers. that might be through a newsletter or podcast or
really great quality lead magnets or low ticket offers, for example. And I've spent some time talking about the South, which is where we start converting and selling those either, you know, so far non-paying clients or maybe low, they purchased a low ticket into higher ticket clients, maybe one-on-one clients, or maybe moving people into group programs, that kind of thing. What I have not talked a lot about on this podcast yet is the West.
And I thought because I was working on some ideas in the West quadrant of my own coaching business, this would be a really great topic for me to be talking about. So the West is really all about retention and expansion and what I would consider back end revenue. So this is money that is made, revenue that is generated.
from clients you have already worked with, from existing alumni clients. Now this is one of my favorite areas to talk about, so it's actually kind of funny that I haven't talked about it yet on the podcast. But the reason I haven't is because honestly, when I'm working with newer coaches in the first five years of business, they are usually focused primarily on building their North and their East. So again, North is all about your top of funnel. This is your broad reach, how you...
get people's eyes on your business, whether that's your website or your Instagram account or wherever your offers might live. And there are lots of different ways to do that. So some of that happens sometimes through social media. It also happens through really great free resources and lead magnets. It happens through presentations that you might do out in the community or even online free webinars. Although I hate the word webinar, but a presentation online, let's say, or
maybe a workshop or something like that you do. Or it might be through establishing really good referral networks with other professionals. I mean, there are so many different ways to bring people into your world. That's the North and that's where coaches tend to spend their time. They also in those early years of business are really focused on creating good content to keep people in their world so they don't unsubscribe from their list.
and also to really start building that like no trust, which is incredibly important, right? Because no one's gonna buy expensive coaching from you until they know for sure that you're the right person for them and they feel really comfortable with you, they trust you and they like you. So it makes sense that this is the thing, that the West side of things is the thing I probably talk about the least in supporting really new coaches.
but the coaches who've been in the BBB for a while have all had conversations with me about developing the West. And this is something that comes up all the time once people have established, you know, a relatively reliable stream of income, usually through one-on-one coaching practice. So they've built that up and they've been coaching, you know, they've had a relatively busy coaching practice now on the one-on-one side for a year or two. And we start really, really talking about the West. So today we're gonna talk about what the heck the West is. We're gonna talk about
why it's so important. We're gonna talk about why it's really one of the easiest ways to increase your revenue, the easiest areas to increase revenue, especially by the way, in a trust recession, which if you've been listening to this podcast and frankly, listening to anything out there in the world of business, you know that we are in a trust recession right now. this is...
⁓ It's really going to be a useful topic, I think, for everybody to be listening to. Don't turn this off just because you haven't launched yet. I want you to listen to this because this is something that I always want my coaches to be thinking about. I often have ideas for the West side of my business that I know are actually not going to come into fruition for another year or two, but I am governing myself in the offers that I am running in such a way
that I am seeding those offers to come, if that makes sense. Those offers I'm eventually gonna make to the people that I'm working with right now. We're gonna talk a little bit about seeding and what that means and how I do that and a way that you can start doing that right now with your one-on-one clients. So I really recommend you keep listening to this. I'm also gonna keep coughing in this episode because this cough I have will not go away. It's now been, I think I'm on week five now, so just bear with me.
I don't over edit these podcast episodes. things like coughs and if my dogs start barking is probably going to end up in the podcast itself. I don't do that on purpose. One, it's easier. Two, no one seems to mind. And three, it's proof that I'm not AI. all right, let's talk about the West, the West quadrant, which is again,
offers that you create for people you have already worked with, people who have already bought in to your coaching services. Usually these are people you've worked with one-on-one, but sometimes it's people that you have worked with in a group capacity, depending on how long you've been running your business. Okay, so this is a really warm, almost hot audience. It is much easier to sell to these people and it's just...
always going to be aligned because you get to sell to these people who are your avatar client. Like they are already in your world. You've worked with them. You know they're the right fit to keep working with you. And so for all of those reasons, they're ready for the next offer and you're excited about the next offer. These people don't just like No Trust You. These are the people who love No Trust You. And they are the people that get left alone.
for far too long, far too often by coaches, which is why we're talking about it today. So how do you know if you're ready to build something in your West Quadrant? So some kind of a continuing offer for people that you've already worked with, whether that's one-on-one or in some kind of group program. You know when some or all of these things are happening. First of all, your clients might be asking you like, hey, what's next? Like, what can I do after this? You might find yourself like feeling sad.
when you're ending a relationship with a client. And I can tell you that having a really flexible back end offer for an existing one on one client once you have worked through whatever the first area of challenges that they came to you for support around is key here. I love the fact that if I'm wrapping up with a client and that client is saying to me like, I don't want this to end. I absolutely love meeting with you every week.
And I'm feeling the same way. I love that I have something always to offer them in terms of continuing support. if you start, if you're feeling sad at the end of your coaching engagements, that's sometimes a sign that you need to create something else to come after that. If you have been coaching for a while, one-on-one or even in a group around an insular or specific topic or area of challenge, what you're probably going to notice at some point is that there is a problem after the problem. So we often use this kind of
analogy of like dominoes when we're talking about coaching problems. And so when we, when I start with a client, I'm also often looking for like their one big domino. So that one big problem that if they were able to conquer it, change the way it shows up in their life, change the way they, their mindset around it, whatever might be the solution to the problem. If they were able to do that, solve that problem.
that one big domino, if it fell, would make every other problem in their life just a little bit easier, right? So that's usually where we start. But that doesn't mean that all those other problems, all those other dominoes are gone. They're still there. After the one big domino gets dealt with, usually there's another one that pops up right away. It's kind of like whack-a-mole, right? So if you have been noticing that you're working through, maybe you support people around taking a 30-day break from alcohol, for example.
And you're noticing that in the one-on-one coaching program that you do, where you take people, you know, you get them ready to take a break and then you take them through a guided break and you support them through that. And then at the end of it, they're feeling amazing about all the things and they go off on their own out into the world to continue trying to, you know, drink less or maybe not drink at all. Maybe you're noticing that it is a regular occurrence that they come back to you a few weeks later, maybe a couple months later, and they say, that didn't last for me.
I still need to work on these things or I really thought I could do the moderation thing, but that didn't work for me. That is the sign of the problem after the problem, which is, you know, taking a break from alcohol is really hard. That's a problem for people who've never taken any time away from alcohol. Getting 30 days where they actually get to, you know, look at their relationship with alcohol and learn what it's like to be an alcohol-free person in an alcohol-centric society. There's so much value in that. That is a ⁓ huge accomplishment. But...
keeping that going is hard and figuring out where you want to go from there is also really challenging. And so maybe the follow on program that you create supports people through that, right? So supports people, for example, through the first six months of your alcohol free experiment instead of just the first month. So if you're seeing a challenge coming up after the original challenge, then that sometimes is a really great thing to...
create a new program around or a new offer around, whether it's a one-on-one offer or a group offer. I can give you so many examples of this. In the work that I do, when I'm doing my personal private coaching, which I've been doing now for over 15 years, I primarily work with professional women who are burnt out. Oftentimes, they're drinking too much to cope or they're using some other less than healthy coping mechanism as a way to manage their stress and it's just not working for them anymore. Once I help those people,
you know, recover from the burnout, come up with a plan, you make the decisions that need to be made, change some of the underlying foundation habits that need to change, maybe eliminate some of the unhealthy coping mechanisms that aren't serving them and change their mindset on those. Once we do all of that work, what very often happens is that those clients find themselves in a period of like pretty intense clarity around their life. All of that other stuff has been making it really difficult for them to see what's really at the root of the problem.
And the root of the problem, the root of their stress, maybe the root of their unhealthy reliance on alcohol maybe is something else. And it's something significant. It might be that they're very unhappy in their career. It might be that their relationship is no longer satisfying. It might be that their kids are leaving the nest and they're really terrified about what's gonna happen to them once they are no longer.
and I no longer have this role of sort of being an active parent, for example. So there are lots of different things that come up once you clear the way, once that one big domino gets knocked down for the women that I work with. All of those things have led to continuing offers for me. All of those problems that I identified have become continuing offers. I have ways of supporting clients through those other problems that become much clearer and clients have a whole new.
sort of well of energy and motivation to deal with those once they have knocked down that first domino. So that's one sign. You see new challenges emerging after the original problem solved. Another sort of sign that you're ready for this backend offer or to really develop the West quadrant of your business compass is that you have about, I would probably be comfortable with around 20, but it might be a little less. So somewhere between 10 and 20.
alumni clients that are on a list somewhere. So people that you have worked with and have finished up with. those people are people who you know would likely say yes to something else. So the people who you had a wonderful coaching relationship with, you were sad to see them go, but you've got this list there. So you have a bit of a critical mass in terms of people to whom you could market this new offer.
⁓ And ideally, I think in order to get to that place, you have ideally coached one-on-one for one to two years. Like you've really got some experience under your belt. So all of those things are signs that you might be ready to start building the West Quadrant of your business. And as I said earlier, this is often the most overlooked area of a coaching business. And it is also the most reliable, the most stable, and frankly, I think it's the most, in many ways, the most fulfilling.
part of a coaching business because you're coaching people who are a perfect fit, which means you love coaching them and they love working with you. So it's just really, really fun. Okay, so I want you to start thinking about your West. And as I'm going through these examples of the types of one of the types of offers that you can create in the West part of your business model, I want you to ask yourself if you're ready for any of these or if there are things you can be doing now to prepare to be ready to offer those things down the road, including
starting to plant the seeds with the existing clients that you have now, that something like that might be coming and starting to really get curious with your clients as to what kind of support they might be interested in after the support that you're currently giving them. So the first thing I wanted to talk about, which I think is the easiest way to create a backend offer.
is to create what I'm gonna call like an expanded one-on-one offer. So like a phase two one-on-one offer. So if your initial one-on-one offer is, for example, I do 12 sessions of private coaching. When you come in, when you first start with me, this is what you're struggling with. This is how you're feeling. This is the problems it's causing in your life. By the end of the 12 sessions with me, those problems are no longer there. We've solved that problem. You're feeling completely differently. And all of this X is,
X and Y is possible in your life. And that's the transformation that you're promising. Phase two is the thing that solves the next problem they have. it's another, oftentimes it's either another 12 sessions, for example, it might be another six sessions, but it is another one-on-one offer that makes perfect sense given what they have just completed working on with you and the transformation that you have helped them to effect, right? So.
This is the simplest way to do a back end expansion of your offers to just add another option to keep working with you one on one, but on with a different focus on a different area of challenge, right? Now, I guess there's actually even a simpler way, which is sometimes when you're working with a client, either the initial coaching engagement isn't really complete.
by the end of the sessions. And that's not because you're not a good coach, it's because things got complicated. There were lots of things to talk about. Your client maybe struggled a little bit in terms of making change and it took her longer to learn the things that she needed to learn to progress or whatever it is, but you're not done. In that case, it might be just adding on more sessions. So you don't even really need a new focus. It's like, we're not quite done. We're so close, but we're not done yet.
I absolutely believe in you and your ability to do this and you have a reminder session where you talk to the client about how they were feeling when they first started with you and how much progress they've made, but that also what their goals were when you talked about their goals at the very beginning of the coaching engagement and it becomes clear they haven't reached those yet, but you remind them how great it would feel to reach those goals and then you just extend the coaching relationship. So that's also an option. But I guess what I'm talking about is a more structured offer that obviously deals with...
the next area of challenge for these clients that you work with one-on-one that you can have ready to offer at the end of the 11th or 12th session or whatever it is, you can start talking about the option to keep working with you. So this might be like a broader life coaching container. This is often what it is. You support people around a very insular specific area of challenge. It might be like emotional eating or alcohol or a career transition or burnout.
And then, you know, becomes obvious once you solve those, that problem with your avatar client, that the next thing that often pops up is X, right? So you offer something around that, but it is broader life coaching. It's like, now that you've got some clarity as a result of dealing with this first issue, let me help you figure out what the right next steps are for you. Let me help you create a really aligned plan for the next.
three years of your life, for example, in terms of something that is aligned with your life's purpose and your personal values. Let's do that work now, because that makes sense. And we've got the space and the capacity for that now. So it could be just like a broader sort of life coaching container. It could be a flexible monthly coaching thing. So again, it could be like 12 sessions that you pre-sell. It could be...
let's just keep working together until we feel like we've gotten to a place where it makes sense for you to move on, where we have resolved all the outstanding things that you want to work on with me. And it might be, let's do that on a monthly basis. We'll just do one session a month, and we'll do two sessions a month, and this is what that will cost, and it's a monthly fee. But you can also offer sort of a...
a looser arrangement where they pay a certain amount a month and that covers off up to this many coaching sessions and they get to choose whether they use them all or not in that month. I mean, there are so many different ways to price this, but this is a really great thing to have. And this is probably the first thing that the majority of the coaches that I support create after they have had a pretty steady year or two of one-on-one coaching in their coaching business.
This is also the main reason why I created the CCSI, which is the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive that I offer. It is closed now. As I'm recording this, is a new ⁓ coach-led version of it starting. That is closed for registration, but it is open for a self-guided course. So if you're thinking to yourself, I'd love to create something after this initial coaching.
⁓ offer that I have one-on-one, but I don't feel confident that I can expand outside of the specific area that I coach in because that's the only area I was really trained on or because I just don't have a lot of confidence in my skills or because every time I'm in a coaching session with someone and they get a little bit off the topic, I start to panic, then the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive is the perfect solution for you. It is an amazing program. I'm so proud of this program. It is 10 modules.
You get to work through those at your own pace if you're doing it self-guided. The modules are all organized by specific topics that come up most often in life coaching. So all of the things that my coaches inside the BBB were telling me, my gosh, this came up and I didn't know how to manage this thing. Those have formed the basis of each of the modules. Not only do I walk you through how I coach somebody through the types of challenges that often arise in that area of life coaching,
I also provide you with all kinds of resources, including the most powerful questions that I use when I'm coaching around those topics and lots of troubleshooting for when things can get tricky or dicey, including how to stay in your coaching scope and how to manage emotions that come up with these things and how to ensure that in any session, ⁓ whether it's on a topic that you're used to coaching on or you branch off into something else that you establish really clear value for your client in that session.
so that you're consistently getting good testimonials. All of that is rolled up in the CCSI. Again, I'll put the link in the show notes here in case you're interested in doing the self-guided version of it, which is obviously a different experience than doing it live coached with me, but also I think can be incredibly valuable and it is priced in a much more accessible way because it doesn't involve live coaching with me. Okay, so that's the first idea for...
building a back end offer. It's just like a phase two of the one-on-one coaching. So it's just another one-on-one coaching engagement. The next thing I want to talk about is a kind of a neat little model that I have used a couple of times. I used this, I think, most effectively when I moved into a more specific niche. maybe eight, how many years ago now was it?
six years ago, I moved into really specifically supporting women who were drinking too much. And that had not been a specific focus of my coaching up until that point. I received another ⁓ coach training and certification, and that led to me really leaning into that niche. And I got busy really, really fast because I already had an existing audience. This was something I knew my people were struggling with a lot of them. And it was not something up until this point that I confident.
coaching women through, even though I had at that point been sober for a few years. So I went back and did some training around this and then I started offering it. My one-on-one practice was just wall-to-wall packed with clients. It's the busiest year of my coaching career as a one-on-one coach. had, you know, every day, Monday to Friday, was booked with clients and I was having to do all the other marketing work and everything around that. And to know that that's a good problem to have, and many of you listening are probably like, cry me a river, but...
It does burn you out. And you have to be careful when you're doing that much one-on-one work. And I loved it. I loved working with these women. But I also, from the beginning, from the first few months, I was thinking about the back-end offer because I knew that I was going to max out. My capacity was going to max out.
But I also knew that what I was seeing with these women is that they weren't finished after a three month coaching engagement. So after 12 sessions, many of these women were re-upping for another 12, which was fine. I could do that. So again, wasn't creating a new offer. It was the initial offer. I just sort of duplicated it. And they did another 12 sessions because we were still working on that initial problem, which was getting to a place where they felt free from alcohol. But I also knew that these women wanted
continuing support and connection and that was important to them in terms of maintaining the changes that they've made.
So from the very beginning, I was thinking about this type of program that I'm gonna talk about now, which is what I call a back end membership. So an alumni membership or a back end membership. And this is an invitation only model. But I knew that the one thing I could not provide in a one-on-one coaching container was community, obviously. So was just me and the woman that I was coaching.
So, and community is a pretty key part of recovery around addiction and alcohol. And frankly, recovery from anything and a lot of the niches that we coach in, community can be incredibly helpful when it comes to helping people feel like they're not alone in this area of challenge and also helping them keep going, right? So.
I knew I couldn't create that through one-on-one. I knew that was something I wanted to create down the line. I knew it'd be really helpful for these clients. And so I started planting the seed really early for something called a back-end membership. What I would say to my clients when they would get on a discovery call with me, we're figuring out whether they're a good fit for the one-on-one is I would say, if they were a good fit at the end of the call, I'd say, think you'd be a great fit. You're exactly the type of woman that I work with and I'd love to work with. So I'd love to bring you in as a one-on-one client.
I want to let you know that after the coaching engagement, which may or may not be done in the 12 sessions, but whenever we wrap up with that, I'm hoping that at some point I have the option for my one-on-one clients to move into a small group that will continue to be coached by me at a lower price point that provides community and continued support. So that will be invitation only. And if
and when that's available and when you're a good fit for it, I will extend an invite to you. So I would start using that in the marketing and just drop it. And it was a really good way for me to gauge interest because women would regularly say, oh my gosh, that's awesome. I love that that might be available for me at the end of this. And then of course, after, I don't know, it was probably about eight or nine months, maybe a year of coaching these women one-on-one.
and just being super busy. I had a really good list of women and I started my first back end membership at that point. I sent personal invites out only to people who I thought would be a good fit for the group. And this was another selling feature of the group. It allowed me to have it sort of feel like curated and special. It was by invitation only. I told the women that.
I knew everyone's personality who was joining the group and I felt really confident that it was going to gel really well and there was going to be a great vibe in there and everybody was going to really enjoy the other group members. And that was really helpful when it came to selling it. And there were some people that I didn't invite because there are certain personalities that don't work very well with group and I am pretty good at identifying who those are now. So I pre-sold it by planting the seed. So as soon as I knew that thing was going to happen,
Not only did I mention it in the discovery calls, I started talking about it at like session six of 12 in the one-on-one coaching container. And I would start saying things to my clients like, look, I really think you'd be a great fit for the group that I have going. And I'd love to have you join. Usually what I do is I have people join like just a few sessions before.
a few weeks before they wrap up their one-on-one coaching engagement with me. So I'll mention it to you again in a few weeks. And I would gauge their interest on it I would make a note. And then when we were close to finishing up the one-on-one, I would offer the group to them again. So I was planting the seed while I was having really great one-on-one coaching sessions with them. So much easier to sell to somebody who already has bought into the value of coaching with you and who really, really likes you, right? And who is feeling a little stressed and sad about the idea of
completely breaking up with you at the end of the coaching engagement. it's a really, really great model. Now, a couple of caveats on it, don't do it too soon. You really need a big alumni base to be successful with this. And I also would just, just a little word of warning here. And this really goes for any type of an offer, group offer. Interest does not equal signups.
I usually, and it's something as a lesson I've learned the hard way, right? You'll have like 15 people say, yeah, I'm in, I would love to do that, that sounds so great. And then when the rubber hits the road, we actually have to pay for the thing and commit the time to it. You can be guaranteed that only a smaller, small portion of that list is actually gonna sign up for the offer. So you need to over, you need to have a bigger list than you think you'll need to actually fill the program and make it a workable offer for you in terms of.
the size of the group and the amount of money that you need to make off the group to have it make sense for you financially. just remember that. Just because they're interested doesn't mean they're going to sign up. The pre-selling piece, can be really helpful around that because you can gauge the interest. And you can also start to get some soft commitments and sometimes even harder commitments. Sometimes you can even take deposits for this group. If it is truly the case that there is
some scarcity with this group and that it's only 12 spots at a time, you never take more than 12 women in the group, then you can let people know that. Like there's a spot opening up because someone's leaving, but I only, I capped the group at 12. So if that's a spot you're interested in, you'll need to register today, or you'll need to give me a deposit to hold your spot until next week when we're finished our one-on-one or whatever. If you've been listening to me on this podcast, you know that I am totally against any kind of false scarcity. So only do that if it's actually true, because otherwise I don't.
think it's ethical personally, and I don't think it's for me personally not aligned with the way that I show up. But it's absolutely valid if it's true, and that can be helpful. And again, like I said, positioning it as like a special thing, kind of a curated special offer can be really helpful to sell it as well. It's a high trust environment. Everybody's worked with you before, and it's easier to sell that at the full price. You don't have to offer bonuses and discounts and all the rest of it, because these people want to keep working with you, and they know your value already.
So it's great for all of those reasons. Now, the next thing I want to talk about is a bit of a hybrid, which would combine that type of an offer that you would sell to your alumni clients, the people you've already worked with, some warmer people in your existing audience that you haven't worked with yet. So you can create a back end offer. Excuse me. That is.
a group type offer that you offer to your alumni clients because it really seems to solve the problem after the problem for them. But you can also then offer that out to your general list. So people you've been warming up for a while or wherever your audience lives, whether it's on social media or maybe you have a podcast or whatever, you can offer it up to them too. If it's the type of program that people can come into without having done, solved the first problem with you, if that makes sense. So.
It might be just a completely insular problem that many people will have who did not have the first problem that you help people solve, right? So you can then be selling this not just to your alumni clients. You might want to give them first dibs. You might want to give them, you know, make them feel special by, you know, offering it to alumni first before you open it up to your general list. But it might be an offer that you can also open up to a general list.
So this could be the same type of group program that I was just talking about. So where people get together regularly and you might charge on a monthly basis for that, or it might be a 12 session group program or something like that. But it can also be like topic specific intensives or workshops that you offer, skill building programs, seasonal resets. So I have a couple coaches right now who have these quarterly.
resets, workshops that they offer to their alumni clients, but also they offer it out to their warmer leads on their newsletter list. So people who've been in their world for a while. So it doesn't need to be a huge program or offer. It can be kind of a one-off or maybe a series of four or something like that. But you offer it both to your alumni clients who again already love, trust you and are an easier sell. And then you also offer it out to your list.
So this allows you to expand both the Western quadrant of your business model while you're also developing the like no trust with the East, right? Because it's maybe gonna be a lower ticket offer. If it's just gonna be one of these workshops, then coaching with you for 12 sessions would be, it's an opportunity for you to bring people further down the funnel and actually get in front of them and build more of that like no trust, but also provide some continuing support.
and coaching and connection for the people who are already down deep down in your funnel who've been working with you one on one. Okay, so that kind of segues me into what I would call like micro back end offers. These are really little offers. So something less than a workshop series, for example, or a three month program, something smaller. And that might include like,
you know, and less than like 12 sessions more of the one-on-one. So what are some like little things that you can offer? So I had a coach inside the BBB who over the summer offered, think it was three sessions of coaching to her list and her alumni clients. And it was like a summer, was a seasonally specific offer. So it was solving a problem that arises often for her avatar client in the summer. And it was a three session one-on-one mini coaching package.
You could offer something like that. You could offer like tune up coaching packages. So just send an email out to your alumni clients and say, hey, it's been a while since I've seen you. I'm offering just for people who've worked with me one-on-one, I'm offering the option of buying two coaching sessions with me. The idea of getting together and figuring out, you know, what's still working for you, what's not serving you and doing some tweaking, micro tweaking through like laser focused coaching sessions or something like that. Again,
those like quarterly workshops or initiatives, if you just had one thing that you were offering that would qualify as a micro, a micro offer probably, or a masterclass or something like that. These are easy. These are like low lift. They don't have a lot. There's not a lot of work required with these and it's something that you can offer up. And you've seen me, if you're in my world, you've seen me do that. I will offer workshops from time to time that are usually low ticket workshops. Sometimes they're more intensive and it might be like build a lead magnet with me or
you know, let's get together and like do an offer suite audit or something. And those are offers that I would offer to alumni clients who've worked with me in the business coaching capacity before, also to the members of the BBB, usually BBB members get a discount on any workshops. And then also though, generally to my newsletter list and any podcast followers. So that's an example of that. Now, the last thing I want to touch on is the high touch backend offer, which is a retreat.
because this really does belong in the West. A lot of coaches try to run retreats and sell to the East, that is the people who are in their world, but don't know them very well yet, but have come in somehow and are on their list, or even they try to sell it sometimes in the North, like just do cold traffic selling for retreats. I'm here to say that is not a good way to sell at a retreat. It is a way to stress yourself out beyond and often end up in a situation where you're losing money.
The best way I think to sell a retreat is to market it as a backend event and to be selling it first and foremost to your alumni clientele. That does not mean that you can't sell it to other people, but I love selling retreats to alumni clients and focusing on them because of a couple things. First of all, much easier to sell to for all the reasons we've talked about. But secondly, you know that if these people show up on a retreat, you know them.
and you know they're gonna be a good fit. You know they're gonna be fun to have at a retreat. And so you can be really selective about who you invite if you want. If it's a really small gathering, you can be selective, do an invitation only thing. you're only sending out invitations to people who you think this would be perfect for, or you can do it much more broadly. But retreats are usually best sold to alumni.
to long-term followers, so people who have been with you for a long time on your newsletter list, maybe they've participated in a few lower ticket offers with you, but you've never actually coached them one-on-one, or people that you're currently working with one-on-one or in the group setting. Cold audiences rarely convert. It's such a personal thing to go on a retreat with someone, and the ticket is usually very high ticket.
So retreats work better when you've got community, when people understand what it is you do, when they have dipped their toe in the waters of your coaching somehow, at least, and where they trust you. And so that's why retreats, whether they're online or they're in person, especially if they're in person, are kind of the final evolution of a mature back-end offer suite. So they'd be kind of the last thing.
So yeah, that kind of wraps up the offers that I wanted to talk about today. So the different ways that you can sell on the back end. Going forward, I want you to think about what your West looks like. I guess in today's...
world, which I've been talking about again, a lot on the podcast. I've been talking about the buyer mentality. I've been talking about how things have shifted. I've been talking about the trust recession. I've been talking about the financial recession. I've been talking about all the things on here. Backend offers are pure gold. So if you don't have any yet, do you have an audience for them? Do you have a list of alumni clients? Have you been working one-on-one for a while? Have you run a bunch of group programs? Do you have a list of people who've already worked with you and who would be
potentially very excited to work with you again. If so, I want you to be thinking about a backend offer. If you don't yet, that's okay. Make this a goal down the road. And as you are building your one-on-one practice, I want you to be thinking about it, be paying attention, be listening for the problem after the problem. And also, you can be doing some surveying of your clients and asking them what type of support they would love to be available to them after they finish the one-on-one coaching with you.
And you can also be planting seeds for these types of offers that I've been talking about today. So here's what I want you to ask. What's the problem that I solve after the first one? These are all clues to what a good backend offer might be for you. What do my clients struggle with like six to 12 months later? So if you don't know, because you've never checked in with your clients, check in with your clients people, send them a note and say, hey, it's been...
three months since we stopped working or six months since we start working together, I'd love to connect to see how things are going. What's going well for you? Are there any places where you're struggling? Just get that information from them. What are areas that your clients loved getting coached around or exercises that you took them through that they would love to revisit? So this is also kind of a gold mine, right? So one of the things that I do with clients,
regularly is we do kind of a big picture bird's-eye view of their life. We look at the areas of their life that contribute to life satisfaction and fulfillment and we score them. We rate them. Lots of coaches do this. Sometimes it's a wheel of life activity or some other activity like that. That is such a great activity to do regularly because as you are doing the personal growth, as you are doing the coaching and working on changing things, your scores in each of those levels, your satisfaction, your
feeling of fulfillment in each of those areas of your life is going to shift. so revisiting that can be really, really useful. So that's an exercise you do with clients. They love doing it. What if you offered a workshop where all your existing or your past clients, sorry, got to get together and do that again with you? Or maybe it's a one-on-one, like a mini package where you do like a revisit of that. And then also ask yourself, as always, this is really important, what kind of containers align for me?
Like what do I actually want to do here? You know, I'm giving you lots of different ideas for things today, but you've got to find the thing that works best with your life, with your coaching style, with the parts of coaching that you love the most and figure that out. Maybe you don't want to do a group program. Maybe that the idea of coaching a group is just overwhelming for you. Maybe you can't commit to that regular slot every single week because your life is really busy or because you travel a lot or whatever, but you definitely could offer some kind of focused one-on-one
phase two offer for your clients, right? So think about that. What kind of container would be in line with me? And then the most important thing here is to start small. Don't take on too much, start small. When I trialed that back end alumni offer, I think I had about, wanna say 20 women or so that I offered it to who I thought would be a good fit with a goal of having a maximum of 12 in the program, in the group. And that group sort of,
Over the course of the next couple of years that I ran that group, the membership was somewhere between like nine and 12 people over the course of that year. So I did keep that fairly small. So start small. Don't go over the top. I also didn't have new content that went with that. It was just coaching. It was just let's get together every Thursday at noon to check in and here's the format and how those things are going to go. I tested some other stuff and ended up with a very simple format for that. So don't get too jiggy with it.
And yeah, I think that's it now, I don't know if you know this yet But if you are subscribed to my newsletter every week, I talk about the new podcast episode that's come coming out So this week I would have sent out a newsletter today As this podcast airs and in that newsletter, I always list coaching edge action steps So these are very specific action steps for you to take as a coach in relation to the topic of the podcast episode this week So if you're not yet on my list
There are so many ways to get on it. The best way for you to get on it is to go get one of my free resources that will always add you to my list and will be incredibly helpful and valuable for you as well. You can always go and check out what I have at wendymcallum.com under the tab, like free and low ticket resources. You'll see there are loads of things there for you to download. I would love to have you a little further down into my community in a place where I can...
Connect with you that way by email. You can always respond to my newsletters. I love it every week. Someone, a few of you respond. It's a great way to give me ideas on new podcast episodes and feedback on episodes. So I would love to see you there on my newsletter list. And one of the things you get there that you don't get here are these coaching edge action steps every week. they're very carefully designed for coaches who are in the first like...
five years or so of building their business. So I wanna just cap off this episode by saying, look, you don't have to start from scratch all the time. And if you're currently feeling like, I don't have enough money coming in, I'm stressed about revenue. First of all, you're not alone. It's a tough year. Everyone's trying to figure out this new landscape and navigate it. Back end offers are gold. They're basically revenue waiting to happen because those people,
are not in a trust recession with you, they already like no trust you. And they may just need a reminder that you're out there and for you to offer them something that solves the very problem that they're struggling with right now. They've already bought into your special sauce, how you help people. So it's just a matter of making the offer. So your next revenue stream is probably already sitting in your inbox. So I encourage you to think about
whether there is a back end or an alumni offer that you need to be making now. As always, thank you for listening to the Coaching Edge. I love hosting this podcast and I'll see you next week when I am back in this chair. Have a great week, bye.
