Ready Set Coach Podcast

Reimagining Your Group Program (+ Introducing the RSC Accelerator)

• Emily Merrell and Lexie Smith • Season 2 • Episode 93

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This week’s episode discusses reimagining your group coaching program. Em and Lex discuss the opportunity to co-create and evolve a group program at different stages of your coaching business and how to do so authentically and strategically. Em and Lex also introduced the Ready Set Coach (RSC) Accelerator group program. They discuss what it is, how they came up with the idea, who it is serving, and what it means for the future of their programs.


Here’s what you’ll learn: 

  • How group programs can evolve through different phases of your business and life
  • Tips on figuring out when it’s time to reiterate a group program
  • How RSC has evolved and changed with different cohorts
  • What Em and Lex have learned from each cohort
  • Tips on how to reimage your group program thoughtfully
  • What the RSC Accelerator is
  • And more!



Listener Links: 



Lexie Smith  

Aloha. Aloha. I I just one big firmas trip to Hawaii club


Lexie Smith  

to see Emily's amazing outfit.


Emily Merrell  

My mom every I feel like it's like every birthday now it's her tradition. She shops at TJ Maxx for me and she got this like, incredible. Black and white. Floral printed number with ikoula It's on. You remember a cool Lazzara?


Lexie Smith  

Oh yeah. I was gonna say your head's been cut off. I don't know. I kind of want you to stand up and do a spin.


Emily Merrell  

I'm happy to do there's a 98% chance These fans are see through so


Lexie Smith  

double YouTube only fans watch out.


Lexie Smith  

Hey, guys, she looking good. And the only way you're gonna see it is on the YouTube. Oh, yeah, work at Mama.


Emily Merrell  

I'm ready for the villages.


Lexie Smith  

You're ready for the villages. And I'm wearing a romper today like a summer romper. So that's unusual for me during the day. That weekend. So we're kind of on theme.


Emily Merrell  

I don't know how the weather is there. But it is like it is hot. It is hot as Hades in Denver, and I'm pretty sure it gave my son heatstroke to this morning. I sent him to daycare.


Lexie Smith  

He's he ate food. The first thing? No,


Emily Merrell  

he didn't have a fever. He had one yesterday, but not one today. And when I woke him up, the first thing he said to me was back to bed and try to yank him like a little like taking a koala from its tree scenario. And then then he started like, he'd been on me and it took him to the sink for a little vomit session and he was fine. He ate all


Lexie Smith  

small to get all the other kids sick. Thank you, Emily Merrill. F word. I feel like I walk into daycare and there's all these like really sick kids. And I'm like, Great, now my kid's gonna get sick. And I love you. But out because this morning, all the other kids are gonna go vomit. No,


Emily Merrell  

the other kids were vomiting. First. I was talking to a few of the parents and I ran into one of my friend's mom or my my mom friend's mom friends. Like friends mom's mom friends. So she's a mom friend. And she's like, oh, yeah, he vomited yesterday. Did he didn't want to go and she sent him yesterday. So it was like,


Lexie Smith  

Oh, I'm just gotten out your daycare cheese.


Emily Merrell  

I think it's honestly heatstroke. I think it's just it's been so hot. I think a mixture of heatstroke.


Lexie Smith  

Actual casual stroke. You know, this is this is how they get stronger



again. He also had Indian food too, so I think heatstroke Indian food, it was a great school. I'm solo parenting right now, y'all. So the judgment while it's there. I also think you know, I said to them if he needs me, call me. I'm right across the street. Legitimately. You


Lexie Smith  

che I'll drop the judgment down at least two notches. In Israel, um, no, I just you know, I have a knock. I don't even want to speak. Nevermind. We're gonna fix so what we're going to talk about today is mom guilt. Just kidding. We're not all that great episode. Let us know if you want more because it's very real. You just saw it. Real time I was


Lexie Smith  

I was feeling attacked in that. You kind of you were attacked. I was.


Emily Merrell  

I feel like see and I'm just getting no I mean, on our other series where it's murder and mom guilt where we do a podcast talking about murders and all things bombs. You guys should


Lexie Smith  

follow that one. Yeah, you should murder and mom guilt. That's a good trademark.


Emily Merrell  

Oh, my sound just one way. There you go. No,


Lexie Smith  

you're here. Okay. Okay. So here's here's our transition guys. We're reimagining what it's like to be a mom and 22 or 100 Sure, but what we're really going to talk about today is how to reimagine your group who wrote right here


Emily Merrell  

oh my god all the moment you did the transition my brains like I have so many things I want to tell you.


Lexie Smith  

Like I just read a really good book. Have you ever been chadway


Emily Merrell  

like all these girls come up. Okay, now we're gonna talk about reimagined I love it. I love this topic. Because first of all, one of the things that excites me the most about this topic is that so many people think that the group program that they create is the group program for life and they can't change or edit anything, they put it out once. And that is it for the rest of their life, the end, when in reality, having a group program is an opportunity, every single time you run a group program is an opportunity to iterate and to make adjustments to make timing adjustments to make length adjustments to take to have formatting adjustments, like there's so much opportunity for real time co creation, yet, it's usually under the umbrella of the same group. So what we're going to talk talk about is what happens when you have a group program, but you want to reimagine it into something else. So Lexie, how does one reimagine their group program when not just iterating? Every time they launch it, in true


Lexie Smith  

Lexie fashion, I'm going to answer your question with a different question that I want us to start with, because that's my role on this show. And I am clearly the eighth hole in this relationship.



Who's more likeable?


Lexie Smith  

And yeah, how that poll would come out? I just wouldn't be so surprised. No, no, we're gonna do that. But what I think what you inspired me, what you just said inspired me to say what I think is worth also noting is when is it time to edit? When is it time to iterate? To EMS point, because what we have seen, when we've ran our previous group program, it can be a really easy opportunity to also delay or not commit long enough or some form of an excuse. Okay, well, it didn't work. You know, the first time I sold it, I tried a few posts on Instagram. So I'm going to change it all again. And then your time is spent just changing, changing, changing. So let's talk a little bit about what really truly warrants and edit. And then we'll go into the how



you're brilliant. No, I'm


Lexie Smith  

not. I'm a jerk. But better. You're


Emily Merrell  

brilliant. Okay, so I'm, I'm gonna ask you another question, Lexie Smith. So for us when we created our Ready Set coach group cohort program, we ran it four times, I believe, on two three, like that. Yeah, four times. What was it? What was your moment when you were ready for an edit?


Lexie Smith  

Yeah, so Well, first off, we sold it. So a work so our first time for editing we use version one really as an opportunity to co create it was our first vision, our first version of it. So our first edit came after, when we were gearing up to launch Cohort Two, because we have learnings that we wanted to apply, apply. We had changes, we knew because now we've done it, right. And one of the things we changed, for example, was our length of the program, the first iteration of ReadySet group was back to back to back 12 weeks, three months, we realize that people have lives and that was a lot and people got behind. So we decided to spread it out a bit more, we made it a four month group program to bake in a little bit more time for people to digest the content and execute. So that's my first answer to your question. What's another thing that we decided to edit or moment we knew it was time to edit? We


Emily Merrell  

did, we moved from back to back to back to back to also every other week meeting, which I think was really helpful. We ended up with our group program, we had created modules. So we had modules that would drop and then the next week would be live coaching, and then modules that dropped and then live coaching. We also played around with how available out available we were to the cohort. So initially, I think, you know, they got everything in the kitchen sink from us, which was inclusive of like, editing, editing every single document at checking all of their homework, lots of one on one calls. And then we we took a inventory of our own energy and how we felt with that, and assessed what the next step or what would make the most sense for us both energetically, financially and for our students


Lexie Smith  

100% That was what I said on the last episode to 500 times Oh,


Emily Merrell  

you did now you're gonna say 500% We're gonna upgrade it.


Lexie Smith  

That's my shot. I'm so amazing. The other thing I'll say, we, I don't know. I think maybe around cohort three. So we will run into a year just to kind of pace that out around cohort three. We also started to edit a little bit more who we wanted to target because we saw who was really showing up who was really getting results and And honestly, who we really enjoyed coaching the most. So editing our target also allowed us to edit a bit more how we were marketing the program,



the really great thing to remember to call out. And then I feel like the last thing I'm trying to think of anything else that we did? I don't know. I think that was it. Well,


Lexie Smith  

and then after cohort for we got a little burned out. Yeah, yeah, no biggest Senate what we do, I'll see you up there.


Emily Merrell  

They will thank you so much for the softball. We turned it into a an evergreen course. So we took the learnings we recorded them to the cleanest and best of our abilities, we updated it based on trends that we had seen that maybe didn't make sense to two years before when we had first launched. And we made it an evergreen offering that people can consume on their own time and go through the steps of it without having to wait for a new cohort to be enrolling. Then that


Lexie Smith  

was the Ready Set coach launch pack, which is still available to this day. There's active people in it as we speak. It's also something we then gifted back to everyone who had gone through the program. So they have an easy way to revisit the content. So one of the reasons we did that is this was also a moment where Emily and I decided to shift our focus to build a community for the first time. So Ready Set, Coach group program had been micro communities, right. Each cohort in itself acted as a community, but there wasn't a landing space for everyone, and more than people so we wanted to go for large scale impact. So we transferred that group program into a passive course of sorts, although it's more than just a course, because there's a lot of resources and bonuses within it. We focus on building the community, we officially have crossed the 200 member Mark, raise b, which we're super pumped about guys, don't forget to celebrate the wins. We took a moment and we're like, yeah, go us. Now we're entering another phase. So we're iterating. Again. Which what triggered this iteration only?


Lexie Smith  

In? Well,


Emily Merrell  

I want to I want to back up a little bit and answer a question with a question. Lexie Smith. Thank you.



Well, when we


Emily Merrell  

when we were feeling burned out, it was, it was we felt so good at what we had created. And we were really excited to experiment. And I think, again, to what Lexie had said earlier about, we iterated but we always we gave it time we like we saw it through we made sure that the group program happened, we we did it like we we proved that we were capable of it. But we're getting a little bored. Like we were getting burned out and bored. You're doing the same thing. It's the same rinse and repeat type of thing. So at the community for us, I think you said it beautifully. It was like such an opportunity to bring all these extraordinary women we were connecting and meeting and collaborating with and coaching into one room where they could hang out with one another and then we could see them flourish and we could see them do Instagram lives and collaborated experiences. So


Lexie Smith  

before we move on to the next part, because I think you just brought something up that is worth everyone listening to self reflect on. Another way to say that we were bored is Emily and I know our ourselves really well for multiple multi passionate multi business owners. And for us, we had what Boardman was, we weren't bored with the women we were serving, it was more we wanted a new challenge because we had figured out how to rinse and repeat group. We knew how to build it. We knew how to sell it. We knew it worked. We were ready for a new challenge. And that new challenge something we hadn't done for this brand yet was community. Yeah.


Emily Merrell  

No, that's a that's a, that's a great way to say it. And then a great way to articulate that, especially as someone in my other world I have a community and I feel like I've learned so much from building this community for RSC because we we started together. So intentionally while like ibac flipped into my community. So it was really a fun, fun process. So at this iteration, similarly, like we've got all these amazing humans in the community, and then we see these challenges arising where they're like, I'm feeling stuck with X, Y, and Z. And I am looking for accountability or I am seeking X, Y and Z. And so back to that, like that passion that fire within us, as ignited again of how can we serve these women in a way that makes sense for their lifestyles in a way that makes sense for our lifestyles, and not reinvent the deal. So with that, it's looking at what the offerings are that have already been created already exist? And how do we reimagine it to work for 2024.


Lexie Smith  

And beyond and 2025, thank you for highlighting what works for them. And for us, because that has been a big signal for our latest transition, which PR just moments away from announcing, you know, for me, I'll like call myself out here, Emily has been more ready to get back in group than I have. I've been feeling overwhelmed with not feeling confident I had the capacity to serve a group program, given the other arms and businesses that I I'm in, at least in the capacity that we had with the first iteration of the Ready Set group, with the the level of coaches that we were serving, there was a lot of hand holding, which was amazing and so fulfilling, but I know what it takes to show up for a group like that. So with that being said, you know, Emily and I, we have a marriage, right? A legal marriage for business partners. We're like, what, what is like, how can we and this is kind of like back to when we first started becoming partners. We're like, how can we have our cake and eat it too? And how can that also be their cake? So what does that look like? Here's some shifts we've made. Okay, first, we're narrowing in a little bit more on who we're serving, which we'll talk about, and we're changing some formats around. So drumroll.


Lexie Smith  

Emily, what are we doing?


Emily Merrell  

We are launching and introducing the Ready Set coach accelerator program. Comes with two frigerators. A car that BMW


Lexie Smith  

BMW just gone away. Can you can you give us a walk around of the program?


Lexie Smith  

Oh, T Flexi. Okay, so what is the Ready Set coach accelerator? How is it different? What is it all the things why an accelerator I want to start here, I want to start with who we're serving, because that truly is the basis of how you create a successful group program or how you reimagine it. So quick reminder, when we first launched already set coach first iteration, people who didn't have a coaching business yet, or they had but they were feeling really stagnant. And they just wanted to reinvent it. This time around. While yes, if you want to come and join us in your pre launch, there's still value that will be had. This is more so for the active coach, the person already in the game, meeting one, accountability, support sounding boards support along the way where they're really ready to scale. So this isn't the person who is in corporate and teetering on, you know, they might might want to coach I don't know, if that's you come join our community, there's such invaluable resources, sign up for the ReadySet coach launch pack, that's going to be a great passive tool for you to consume while you still have a day job that this isn't for you. Okay, if that's you, this is for my recently accredited coach who is so freaking good at what they do. But they just haven't been able to figure out marketing and sales yet. This is for the coach who's been in it for a couple of years. And the market has changed so much. It's so loud. What is AI? What is this? What is happening? I'm starting to feel lonely? Should I get a day job? No, you shouldn't, you can should come join the accelerator and breathe new life back into your business. And this is for you if you're ready to take it from as far as you've gotten today, which congrats to that next level. This is for you know, I


Emily Merrell  

like to I think you've nailed it so, so perfectly. But think about it like a Y Combinator or like a Tech Stars for your business, where it's really intentional. It's really curated and it's in it, you're sitting next to people that are at the same level or a little farther ahead from you. If so they're going to challenge you, they're going to push you and they're going to help you up level in the way that you desire. And I think the biggest thing that we've seen, that has frustrated the heck out of both of us is that these coaches are so brilliant. They are experts at their craft, they can problem solve whatever their niche is that they're problem solving, but when it comes to running a business, but it wasn't necessarily like what they they imagined running the business would look like they imagined themselves as coaches. They imagined themselves on stages they imagined themselves holding community or groups for people but they didn't imagine that the business aspect of the business. And so I think that's where Lux and I really really shine is helping them not only understand how impactful their coaching is but on MOQ like what it means and what it means is needed to run a business, that's not going to run you into the ground. 100%.


Lexie Smith  

So let's talk about goddamnit. I said 100%, and then


Emily Merrell  

it costs and you're gonna be so wasted at the end of this. Oh, I


Lexie Smith  

agree, Emily. So let's talk about kind of four pillars of the structure, because this is how we've edited it. First and foremost, everyone does get full access to the ready, set, Coach launch pack. Something we noticed with people who were buying the Ready Set coach launch pack is they were making it 30% through 40, through 12%, through meaning they started, but somewhere somewhere in life, they dropped off, and we did a little digging there. And it was this. What was missing was accountability. Okay, so yes, you're gonna get access to all our templates, all our scripts, all the curriculum, but then part two, you're gonna get that baked in accountability, you're also going to get virtual co working part three, you're going to be with us for six months, for half a year. Because honestly, guys, that's what it really takes, you're going to go through multiple seasons, you're going to have a community and intimate vetted community of women with you, and then you're going to get their group support. You're also going to get one on one coaching support from me. Yeah, and I think that


Emily Merrell  

that is so important. And you know, the accountability is a word. I feel like it's it's a hot word that we say a lot. But it's so important to have the naggy moms or the other people who show up to the calls. And like I did the homework. And when you're the person that says I didn't do the homework, there's a feeling that you have or like I feel behind. I don't know about you, Lex but whenever I'm in group, like something wild happens within me where I'm I want to I want to uplevel and I want to brag and I want to be at the same level as these other humans. So with that, it comes in a you mentioned this too, but like we will be hosting these monthly 80 minute live group office hours. So this is the opportunity for us to get, you know, get an understanding of what people are struggling with and, and, and do live coaching in real time. And I think that is one of the most valuable parts in addition to the coaching that you said with you and myself. Yeah, yeah,



my work myself,


Emily Merrell  

you and me. And


Lexie Smith  

something else I want to know that we did that was a big Edit from the group. Because right now you're you might be hearing like this sounds a lot like your first group. Well, something to note was with the first group, it was a very regimented, laid out schedule of topics like Alright, everyone, here's Module One to module one, we're gonna have a group session on module one, this is a lot more flex. So you're going to be given the materials to consume as you need it. So you might feel you want to focus more on sales. You don't even want to go through modules one through three fine, you can do that. So we're not going to be laying out a regimented you have to follow us like like a college course we can. We can offer you you know, guidance and how to consume but that's one big difference. That also allows the group calls we do monthly to be more masterminding and focus meaning, you know, if you want to talk about marketing that month, you can, you aren't pigeonholed to just talking about market research. That's a big deal. I'd also also say we took we know that the ladies in this program are going to be really busy because they have businesses. So the support structures we have are not as there's not as large of a volume, they're really potent, and a lot more flexible. So we're gonna give you bi weekly accountability buddies for you to just schedule in your own time. Only meet with us once a month as a group rather than, you know, like the first iteration was every week. The second iteration was bi weekly, which just isn't sustainable for MSI. Nor do we think it is really for the women who are going to be in this accelerator. There's going to be group support via the circle community. So we're super excited because the last time we did group we are still in Slack. Anyways, there's all these fun stuff, you can learn about it by going to the website ReadySet. Coach community.com you'll see at the top a big button for accelerator, check it out or slide into our DMS ask us in the community we will be kicking off in August we enrollment is officially open.


Emily Merrell  

Love it Love, love, love it. And I think again, this is such a to bring it full circle at the beginning we talked about the multi different the reasons to reimagine your group program. And for us at this moment in time. We did a little audit of our lives like what is the time that we want to commit? What is the transformation we saw based on the best results of every single person that was in the original program and maybe they were in the grad program? How can we make this the most I liked the word put in that you said and I'm gonna say juicy Oh my god. Most juicy Get offering yet or the most compelling offering yet where you're going to feel completely held.


Lexie Smith  

You said you


Emily Merrell  

see, I know I know. I had to say it. Oh,


Lexie Smith  

the facts about me it's pet peeve of mine. Okay guys, so we got to wrap things up today Your homework is this to check out their ad set group accelerator program, that's my homework for you to go check it out. If anything if you know you're not someone who needs it, it can give you a better breakdown of how we reimagined it so I think either use it as market research for yourself. Or heck, check it out and see if it could be a fit for you. I


Emily Merrell  

love it. And I think also I'll add I want you to wrap this part out Lexi. We'll see you the next time on The ready.


Lexie Smith  

By guest I don't know okay, bye