How long should a coaching program be?

If you coach or provide 1:1 services as your core business, at some point you are going to hit a limit of how many hours in the day you can handle working, which leads to a limit on the number of clients you can take on.

If you want to grow your coaching or services business, your options are either to raise prices or hire others and split up the work. Neither are easy decisions, and both make your business more complicated. What if there was a third option?

That’s where a group coaching program comes in.

No need to fill up your entire calendar with calls or double your rates. A coaching program can be as long or short as you need it to be. How do you decide how long your coaching program should be? In this guide, I will show you how to pick the optimal length and cadence for your next coaching program.

Table of Contents

What is a coaching program?

What are the types of coaching programs?

How long should your coaching program last?

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What is a coaching program?

A coaching program is going to be similar to the one-on-one services you already provide, except there is one key difference: instead of working with each client individually on an ongoing or as-needed basis, you will provide them with a structured curriculum that they follow.

You could run your coaching program in cohort groups, where everyone goes through it at the same time, or allow new clients to join in an evergreen model. I’ll discuss those options in a minute.

Unlike a package of individual coaching sessions, a group program offers a defined roadmap spread across multiple scheduled sessions. Your goal is to ensure that your participants not only identify their objectives but also receive your consistent support, tools, and strategies to reach them.

Once you get the hang of creating one coaching program, you can sell multiple ones on different topics or themes. For example, you could have a choice of programs for clients who are at different stages of their business. Check out my primer on creating a group coaching program for a high-level view if you want to learn more of the basics.

What are the types of coaching programs?

Coaching programs are flexible - that’s what makes them so great! From weeks to months, your coaching program can be as long as you would like. There are three main types of coaching programs to consider:

Cohort-based: This is where you enroll a group of students together. Cohorts run at fixed intervals throughout the year and typically have a launch period and close after the cohort is filled up. Marie Forleo’s B-School and Amy Porterfield’s Digital Course Academy, which run once a year, are great examples of cohort-based programs.
Drip model: Unlike a cohort-based program, a drip model will not have a definitive start and end date for everyone, but you could still run it at regular intervals to keep members motivated to complete the program. New participants can sign up whenever they want while you have enrollment open, and they will be drip-fed content over days or weeks. This ensures that people don’t jump ahead in the program content before they’re ready, so you can better ensure their success by guiding their learning step-by-step. Of course, you would still add live coaching elements, like in the next model that’s evergreen.
Evergreen/Membership: This is where things get more freeform. Students sign up whenever they want and can access all of the content as they like. This is a popular model for group coaching and for good reason: it’s flexible and scalable for you and your students with minimal overhead on your part. Many coaches run weekly Q&A sessions and an online community to facilitate the coaching aspect of the program, regardless of when people join.

While an evergreen model won’t bog you down with intervals or start and end dates, a cohort and drip model will. A cohort-based program has the benefit of everyone supporting each other since they’re all at the same point in their journey. So keep that in mind when deciding which type of program you’re inclined to run.

How long should these coaching programs be? To help answer that, I like to break them down into three buckets:

Short programs can range from 1 to 6 weeks: Short coaching programs run in intensive bursts over weeks rather than months. These are a great fit for skill-based coaching programs. For example, you might run a social media marketing boot camp where people create and publish content daily over 4 weeks.
Medium programs can range from 3 to 6 months: Medium-length coaching programs are usually run over a series of 3 to 6 months. These are a great fit for topics that need a bit of time to learn and apply. For example, growing an email list from scratch, learning Facebook ads, or implementing an SEO strategy all require some time to see results. While these topics could be scrunched down to a few weeks, you can go deeper over a longer time frame.
Longer programs that go from 6 to 12 months: Long coaching programs can be run over 6 to 12 months. Programs like these go deep into a complex topic that requires consistent check-ins and support. For example, starting a business, writing and marketing a book, or becoming a graphic designer. Lengthy programs give you the opportunity to make consistent progress over a year while nurturing your students along the way.

What works for a short program probably will not work for a longer program, however, you can adapt a topic to work for a short and long program. For example, suppose you run an SEO agency. You could offer:

A short program on keyword research
A medium program on building a content strategy complete with a marketing funnel
A long program on building a career in SEO, or mastering SEO

While the core topic remains the same, different program lengths can help you choose a problem to solve for your customers.

Group Coaching Program Outline and Planner

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How long should your coaching program last?

There is (unfortunately) no single optimal answer.

It depends on your audience, the topic, the outcome you want to achieve, and your bandwidth (don’t forget that!). When designing a coaching program, you should take the following into consideration:

What problem are you solving? Is this a skill that can be learned in less than a month, like how to set up a list-building funnel? Or is this a transformation that requires slow, consistent progress throughout the year, like refining your business processes or achieving a better work/life balance? The challenge your members want to tackle is one of the most important factors in how long your program will last.
What type of outcome are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to teach a practical skill or transform your student’s lives? Smaller outcomes (skill-based) can be achieved with shorter or medium-length programs. Something like a behavioral change requires at least 3 months.
How frequently will you meet with your students? Depending on the topic and type of progress you want to make, you may need to meet weekly or multiple times a week. That may be unsustainable for you and your members throughout a longer program, but can easily be built into a short or medium-length program.
How much would you like to charge? Let’s admit it, money matters! You can charge a lot more for a longer program than a shorter one. However, you can run shorter programs throughout the year with larger cohorts to work the math in your favor.
How much time do you want to spend coaching? This will be a deciding factor in how long you want to spend coaching your cohort group, and how you want to coach throughout the year. A year-long program will require constant check-ins with your members whereas short programs can be spaced out throughout the year to give you more downtime.

So how long should your program be? Answer the questions above and look to strike a balance that gets the best results for your coaching program members, but which also fits into your current business and lifestyle. You also need to determine the time commitment you want to make and what is financially feasible for your business.

Get Our Free Worksheet for Designing Your Group Coaching Program!

Want to speed up your path to launching a coaching program?

Creating a 12-month coaching program is no small effort. Even creating a 4-week program will take plenty of time to put together (and I haven’t even gotten to marketing and selling your program!).

What if you could have a fully-fledged and ready-to-sell coaching program today?

If you purchase a PLR course or PLR curriculum from my shop you can!

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