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Hey everyone, Julie here. And today I want to talk to you about the differences between a group coaching program and a mastermind and how to tell which one would be best for you.

So I have run both and continue to run both group coaching programs and masterminds. And I believe that the terms are very interchangeable as they are used in everyday vernacular, but I see them quite differently. And I think that these differences are, you know, important enough to help you really dial in what it is you’re looking for, from a lifestyle perspective, and from an offer container perspective.

So let’s start with a group coaching program. Now, a group coaching program has a start and end date. And it is usually surrounding one particular sort of objective, that objective could be large, it could include a lot of other things. So for example, you could have a group coaching program that would help people get to, you know, $100,000 in sales, and maybe that would be a one year group program, and you work through and so that would be sort of a big general group program.

But more often than not, the group programs I see that work really well are a little bit shorter in duration, you know, usually three months or six months, and they surround one particular strategy or objective that you’re trying to do in your business. And the reason why group coaching programs are so awesome is that, number one, they have an end date. So if you ever get a cohort, or a group that you’re not super excited about, or that the energy is not quite there, then you can end that group. And then you can start another one. The second reason why group programs are awesome is that they because of that start and end date, they also have some built in scarcity and urgency built in. Scarcity is usually around the limited number of seats available in a group program. And then the urgency is that you start at a given time.

Now group programs can be rolling admission. So you can have a group program that sort of open all the time and people join whenever they want, you do lose some of the scarcity and urgency in that but you could, you know, sort of overcome that with sales calls and applications and, you know, make it a little hard for people to join and then get people in. The danger, I think, with the ongoing group coaching programs that that don’t have a start and stop is that I noticed that people, the owners, or the head of the program can sometimes get really tired of it. Because it’s exhausting to keep up a dynamic in the group. And then you have new people. And sometimes if the screening or the salesperson isn’t super clear, you can get people in the group that aren’t a good fit and can drag the group down. And so those evergreen group programs are a little bit more complicated. And so this is why usually, for someone who’s just starting out, transitioning from one to one to one to many, I really recommend live programs that have that start and end date.

So that’s a group coaching program. Now a mastermind is different, a mastermind can be a set point in time, right, it can be for one particular season. But the idea behind a mastermind is that you’re pulling people together, who are going to come together for the sake of helping each other make your business better. And so there’s a real group dynamic, which means it’s a little bit more like hosting a party, you want to know who to invite, you want to make sure everyone’s having a good time, you kind of want to like work with a room and introduce people, there’s a lot more relational dynamics in connecting going on. And if you think of this as kind of like a spider web, a mastermind is a very intricate web of all these different dynamic relationships, almost kind of creating this tapestry or this net. Whereas a group coaching program, it’s more vertical, you know, that each person coming in is really connecting to the leader and or the coach. And that’s really what they’re paying for. And so that’s sort of kind of how that all how that all functions.

And so in a mastermind, you get the added benefit of that group dynamic, you also get the added responsibility of that group dynamic, because you want to avoid cliques, you want to avoid drama, you know, you want to kind of keep the group curated in such a way that you don’t have one, you know, idiot who’s you know, drunk in the corner causing a scene, you know, kind of using that party analogy.

And so a mastermind has usually, you know, prerequisites and requirements for entry, and it has that sense of permanency. So the two examples that I can give you right now are Launch Gorgeous, is a classic group coaching program. It starts and stops, it runs twice a year. It’s three months, there’s that built in scarcity and urgency getting people into the group working in the program. And of course, there’s a lot of great relationships in the group program, but really people are joining to get the strategy, the results and the coaching that Funnel Gorgeous provides for that particular program. That’s a three month program and it runs at $3,000.

The mastermind that I currently run is Digital Insiders, this has been an operation as an evergreen ongoing mastermind for four years, it is a much higher ticket program, it is much more labor intensive program than Launch Gorgeous, I actively spend about 30 hours a week, you know, working with people in the group and creating that environment. So it’s, it’s almost residential, and it’s feel people come to move in, you know, to the mastermind to get to know people. There is a coaching program component in Digital Insider. So, I whenever I’m talking about it, I say to people, you know, this is a mastermind, but there is a coaching program layered on top of it. And so in that regard, I’ve added a lot of those, you know, coaching components.

So, if you’re the kind of personality of someone who loves to loves new ideas, and new projects, a group program is going to be a better option for you. Because you’re going to have that start and stop, you’re going to have the shorter time period, you’re going to get fresh new people. If you’re the kind of person who loves to create community, you love to nurture relationships, you love to kind of create that sense of, you know, place for people, and you love making introductions, hosting dinners, you know, just like that sort of host mentality a mastermind is going to be something you’re more attracted to. But from a bandwidth perspective, mastermind is much, much more labor intensive than a group coaching program.

Now, both are very profitable types of programs to run, they are not infinitely scalable, the way courses and memberships are, but they can generate tremendous amounts of revenue. Our Launch Gorgeous program generates anywhere between three to three and $500,000 every time we run it. So if you kind of do the math, and you were running a you know that program twice a year, you could run a million dollar business with just two three month, programs a year, the mastermind right now, my mastermind is $25,000 for the year and has a max of 100 participants at any given time. And so that’s gonna run at about a $2 million a year business.

That business though is much more expensive, because we have two weeks of in person events, I have coaches on staff that I’m paying, you know, a good amount of money to. And so that has a lot more labor costs than the Launch Gorgeous program, which you know, is shorter in duration. So I hope that gives you kind of some idea of the differences between them. And really, when you’re looking at the core result or the problem that you’re trying to solve, there are problems that are big and complex and need a lot of time and energy and space and a mastermind might be a better place for those problems to get solved.

And then there are problems that are very specific or problems that have very clear start and stops and milestones in which a group coaching program might be better. So I hope that helps. And I appreciate you all and I’ll talk to you soon.