Transcript
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I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach ritualist and all around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change.
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And results with their clients.
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I created the Coaching Revolution podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips and advice, as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior.
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Of yourself so that you can do even better client work and group work.
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Grow your business organically and know that you’re making a real difference in the world. This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry.
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So that more practitioners feel amazing about what they do. And so that more of our clients experience life changing shifts.
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Let’s get started.
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Welcome, welcome.
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Today I’m going to be sharing a quickie but very important tip about curriculum development, and it’s also an essential piece on how to start each and every one of your group experiences.
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Whether you are leading a year long group program or a 2 hour workshop, or anything in between.
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But before we get to our tip for today, I wanted to share with you a little bit about why I’m publishing a podcast episode today, even though I also published one last week.
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My rhythm over the last five months or so with podcasts has been to publish.
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Every other week.
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So for those of you that listen to episode 30 of this podcast, it was my year 2024 in review.
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And I shared about my year and I also shared about the review process that I do for my personal life as well as my business each year.
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Was a.
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Fun episode and I shared a lot.
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I highly recommend it, and in that episode if you listened.
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You might remember that I shared.
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That one of my learnings from 2024 was that people who listen to podcasts are more likely to listen regularly and consistently. If the podcast comes out regularly at least once a week.
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And that makes total sense to me.
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You probably guessed one of my pastimes is to listen to podcasts.
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I am a podcast listener and.
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The podcasts that I remember to look up regularly or listen to regularly are the ones that publish at least once a week.
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So.
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So to that end, one of my commitments to you, my dear listener in 2025, is to publish this podcast every week instead of every other week now.
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Here’s the other thing that I learned about podcasts last year, especially since it was my first year doing a podcast.
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Creating a podcast episode that has a lot of quality.
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And value it takes time to create.
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It takes a good hour for me, sometimes even more, to craft the episode and think it through.
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Then write out what I want to share with you, and then it takes time to record.
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The episode and then write the show notes, etcetera, etcetera.
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And even though I have an amazing team who help me with so many things, and I’m so grateful for my team, even though I have that I do all of the podcast creation minus the editing of the recording and the posting of the.
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Of the podcast on platforms I do, all the other things all by myself.
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Because this podcast is so special.
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Me and.
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I really love.
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To do all the creation pieces.
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Also, I might be a little bit of.
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Control freak.
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I’m sharing all of these learnings about podcasts in case it’s helpful to you, but also so that you understand my plan for this podcast.
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Since it takes so much time and energy to craft episodes, my working plan is to alternate each week between a full episode and what I’m calling.
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A mini episode, basically a quickie tip or thought that’s maybe just about fifteenish minutes.
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This way you’ll still get tons of content regularly from me every week and at the same time I’ll be able to handle the workload, so I’m excited to see how this goes.
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And also thank you for being in this podcast.
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With me.
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Oh, and by the way, if you’ve been wanting more content and tips and wisdom about coaching and about leading groups and about business and about life.
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From me.
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In addition to the podcast, definitely join my e-mail newsletter as well as my Facebook community. One of my very long time clients always teases me that I’m the content queen.
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That’s what he calls me.
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Because I put out, he says. So much value in lots of different ways.
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And it’s true.
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I really take seriously bringing you as much value as I can, so I’ll drop the link for both my newsletter as well as.
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For the Facebook.
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Into the show notes. OK.
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So now let’s dive into today’s topic.
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For this mini tip episode and today’s topic is an important and I would say an essential skill for being able to create any kind of group experience or curriculum that has your audience or participants engaged and excited.
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And ready to receive the material that you’re going to share, and this tip that we’re looking.
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Day is one of seven tips that I share in my free master class called the transformative, powerful curriculum.
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Create a program that’s as powerful as you.
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That master class is 90 minutes.
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Of solid gold tips and tricks to make your group your group programs the kind of experiences that your participants will remember forever.
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I’ll drop the link for that free master class in the show notes if you want direct access.
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To it, OK.
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So without further ado, here is the tip.
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Include opening content and exercises in your curriculum so that your group participants can become invested ready to learn.
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And ready to receive your thought leadership.
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So let me explain what I mean by this.
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Many group programs lose participants interest or their commitment as early as the first session of the program or the 1st 5 minutes. It is a workshop.
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The first session or the the first recording. If your program is a home study or the 1st hour if it’s a day long retreat or longer.
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Is critical in being able to engage your participants in being able to help them build deeper investment in doing the work of the program in supporting them to really be open to receive all that you’re gonna be sharing.
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Throughout the program with them now at first it sounds counterintuitive because.
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If someone.
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In your program, or has your home study or at your retreat or your workshop?
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They’ve already spent.
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They’ve already purchased your program, so then why wouldn’t they show up for the program engaged and ready?
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Well, some of your participants are gonna show up, excited and engaged for sure. But human behavior and neuroscience shows us that from the time someone registers for your program.
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To the time that you start your program, even if it’s just a few days later.
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The excitement and the dopamine about the program have already started to dissipate a little bit for your participant.
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And some resistance to feeling inspired to do the work, or believing that they’re gonna get results usually sets in by the time they start.
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And then beyond that, even when people register for a program and are excited.
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The more that you can as the course leader from the very, very beginning of the program, inspire them and get them set up to be crystal clear on their commitment to the results they want to create.
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That’s when you get much higher student success.
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That’s when you’re able to create more transformation throughout the course.
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That’s when you’re able to create more willingness among your participants to go deep and be vulnerable.
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And so much more.
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So those first words and those first opening exercises of your program.
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Of your workshop of your retreat.
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Are so important, they’re crucial.
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So then the question becomes, how do you craft opening exercises and content so that your participants are really ready, really engaged, really open?
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Well, I’ll share a couple of tips right now.
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First of all, don’t jump straight into the nuts and bolts into the heart and soul of your content.
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You don’t wanna just start a program and jump straight into content.
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Instead, you actually need to wet the palette and include a number of very specific things in your curriculum first.
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If you jump right into your content, you’re going to lose people.
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And I always kind of share a little story about this as a participant in a workshop I was at kind of a day long conference.
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Many years ago.
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Where you can kind of pick, you know which talks you were going to go to. This was in.
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And I saw a talk that was on black and white thinking, and I was interested in it. And so I decided to step in. And the woman who was leading the workshop on the black and white thinking.
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She just as soon as the workshop started, she just jumped in to giving her how to’s on how to move out of black and white thinking.
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There was no.
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There was no definition of what black and white thinking is.
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Was no talking about.
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Why it would be important to wanna move out of black and white thinking there was no leading the participants in the group to thinking about how black and white thinking was impacting them negatively in their lives.
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And I’ll tell you.
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This woman may have had fantastic.
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Content on how TOS.
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But people were disengaged.
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There were quite a number of people who left her talk within the 1st 5 minutes and.
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I actually left.
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Shortly after that, I just wasn’t engaged.
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So what I want to invite you to do with your programming instead.
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Is to take the time to create a container for your content.
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I’m going to say this again because it’s so important.
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Take the time to create a container for your content from the beginning.
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This is also rooted in neuroscience.
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The the container is what creates the safety that allows your participants to stick around.
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Earned.
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Even if they’re fearful or uncomfortable about the the content about the stretching that they’re about to do through your content.
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Now you want to be masterful when you create containers for your content. If not, your participants literally are not ready to receive the heart and the depth of your curriculum.
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Of your content.
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If your curriculum is really valuable and really cutting edge and is going to really ask a lot of your ideal client, right?
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We want our curriculum to ask a lot, to stretch our ideal client.
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Then you wanna do a few key things first.
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Number one, start with inspiration.
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Inspiration is what will get your participants excited about the outcomes that they’re gonna achieve in your course or your workshop.
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Is what’s going to give them confidence that with your support they can overcome the obstacles.
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In the way of the outcomes that they want.
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Inspiration is also what will help your participants see that they’re in the right place by being in your program or workshop, and that what they are going to learn is 110% relevant to their needs.
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So when I say start with inspiration, think about starting with some words about why they’re there.
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Right. Why are your participants there on this journey with you?
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Speak to also why you’re there.
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Why you’re taking the time and the energy to be on this journey with them?
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Speak to what’s.
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Through the work you’re gonna do together.
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Speak to what?
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The obstacles to the possibilities are and how together you’re gonna overcome them.
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As part of that inspiration in the beginning.
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Speak to who is this?
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For who is this workshop for so that people can identify themselves?
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In what you’re sharing, right? So.
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Always towards the beginning you want to start with these types of things.
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Is what’s going to help you set the container.
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And then.
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I want to share just a few other things to start to think about at the beginning of your curriculum and you know, we’re just going through this very, very quickly.
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In the life changing courses training, which is my 10 week hold your hand training so that you create a curriculum that’s deep and has gravitas.
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And fully articulates your unique thought leadership.
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We really unpack all of the pieces that you need to do step by step by step, in the beginning of a group program, you get templates of all of this.
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I also teach you.
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How to build the container and how to facilitate so that you know exactly how to create all of this for your own course?
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But I wanna just give you a few other things for today.
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So in addition to starting with inspiration.
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You also want to help people get clear on their specific reasons for being in your workshop, for being in your course.
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Are they there?
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Literally.
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Ask them to answer that question for themselves.
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And.
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They’re there for what do they really want?
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Helping people identify why they’ve shown up why they’ve purchased the program, why they’ve made the time for the retreat and what they wanna get out of it is going to help them become more.
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Invested in being present to the experience.
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You may also in the beginning want to lead an exercise so that your participants can assess where they’re at on their journey as it relates to what you’re teaching. Where are they starting?
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What’s not working for them in terms of the topic that you’re gonna be looking at this?
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Create investment and engagement, and then the last mini tip for now that I’ll share.
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You want from the get go to get your people talking, right? Whether you’re teaching on zoom or in person, or even a home study. What are the different ways that you can get people talking, whether it’s to each other, to the group?
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To themselves, community and connection is key to engagement and to being invested.
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One of our.
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Life changing courses grads recently shared with me that she applied these tools that I’ve been sharing with you today and the many others that we learn in life, changing courses that you wanna be doing at the beginning of your program.
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She applied these to the beginning of her.
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It’s a program that helps formerly incarcerated folks get jobs.
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And she told me that these beginning pieces made all the difference from.
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How she’s taught the class before.
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It went from in the past, where her participants would just dismiss.
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Just not wanna get through. It felt like they just had to sit through this thing to her, her participants being engaged.
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And excited.
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So taking all this into account, here’s a piece of homework I want to leave you with today.
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What is something that is vital for your ideal clients to hear from you that will have them be excited and inspired to take the journey with you?
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What is something that is vital for your ideal client to hear that will help them stay inspired as they do?
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I want you to make notes on that and then make sure you include that at the beginning of your course or your workshop. OK my friends.
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I hope you enjoyed this quickie Mini tip episode. As always, I love, love, love to hear from you what you’ve learned, what you’re taking away from the episode. Please let us know.
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And also remember if you want to go deeper with curriculum tips with group facilitation tips with creating an incredibly powerful course that you can feel proud of, please register for free to get that 90 minute master class that I mentioned before called the transformative power of.
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Gilliam.
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I’ll drop the links for that in the show notes. And as always, of course, please share this podcast with any friends who you think might really love it.
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Thank you for sharing your time with me today.
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And I can’t wait to catch you next time.
