43 Oct 20
So before I start today, can I just share something that feels monumental, which is that this is the 100th episode of the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I am so proud of what we have done here, beyond being proud of myself for that level of consistency, and that is at least weekly, if not more than weekly, on many occasions, I do feel very proud of that, but beyond that, I really feel proud of the community of coaches, that we've built and that I get to connect with every week.
So from those of you who let me know where you're listening in from, . It seems the gym walking the dog and the commute are the most common to those of you who share when an episode really resonates with you or when there's been a tool or a suggestion that you've implemented and gotten great results from. I really appreciate you all, and I don't just mean those who reach out to me, but if you are a regular listener.
I really appreciate you for allowing me to do this work because this work of helping coaches grow businesses, and particularly this podcast, which is a way of really offering advice out into the world. This work for me feels very creative, but it also feels very mission driven, my goal and my singular focus, through everything I do inside.
The corporate to coach business is to just enable more coaches to be out there having a positive impact on coaches inside organizations. To be doing more of that work because I truly believe that, it is work that will make our workplaces, communities, and the world better places to be. For all of that, for the connection you offer me, for the feedback you give me and for the work that you're doing in the world.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, I really mean it. And I know that that sounds really cheesy, but it is deeply true, so that is my heartfelt introduction. Now I'm gonna get back into the usual flow of practical advice on your coaching business.
So welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarf, a senior executive coach with over 17 years experience coaching, which I now bring to my role as a mentor and business coach to other executive coaches. When it comes to coaching business, I have done it all. So I've grown coaching businesses solo and in partnership,
I've been an in-house coach, I've been an associate coach. So when I talk about selling coaching to corporate clients, that I'm sharing from a place of deep experience as well as deep empathy. I work with coaches now through my group coaching program, the corporate to coach accelerator. Where executive and leadership coaches grow their businesses with more corporate clients. I'm also a mom, of a soon to be high schooler next year.
I'm a big reader. I'm an even bigger fan of my miniature schnauzer Yoshi, but keep listening in for lots of practical tips, lots of inspiring stories from coaches and prompts to grow your business your way.
Before I dive in, I wanted to share one last reminder that I'm running a free live masterclass tomorrow. If you're listening to this on the day that the podcast comes out, that is Tuesday the 21st of October or Monday the 20th if you're in the US. This masterclass is called Business Growth for Executive Coaches, your Pipeline to Consistent Clients. The premise of the session is to really break down the executive coach pipeline, which is all of the foundations and systems that you need in place to build a predictable pipeline for corporate clients without feeling you are constantly selling.
So my goal with this masterclass is to show you how you, as an executive or leadership coach, can build a very tailored system within your business that will allow you to consistently add new corporate clients to your client base without feeling you are acting out of alignment with your values, without feeling you are always selling and without feeling your marketing is belly controlled. Chaos. Rather, I aim to help you build a system that will help you to feel.
An overwhelming sense of forward momentum, the investments you make of your time and energy in business development are paying off not just now, not just next week, but into the future.
And also that you can reduce this emotional load of marketing. So less stress, less anxiety, less sitting at your desk and wondering. What now? So if you are curious how to build that system and what needs to be in it, sign up at elliescarf.com/pipeline and tomorrow we'll dive into it.
It is great if you can make it live because you will go in the running for a special bonus, which is a 90 minute one-on-one strategy session with me if you do come live. But if you can't make it, we will send out the recording. So be sure to sign up. So even if. The event has happened, if it's within the next couple of weeks when we have doors open to the accelerator, you'll still be able to receive that recording and check it out so today I'm very excited.
This is a little bit unprecedented. I think it's gonna work, but what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take you behind the scenes of the accelerator. So I'm going to show you everything that goes on in the accelerator. So the curriculum, the coaching calendar, the community, all of that.
It is one. So if you are listening in, I am going to share the video of this because you may, I'm gonna try and describe everything, verbally, but there may be some things that don't make sense or that you feel you would check out, visibly. So you can head over to the Corporate to Coach accelerator page, which is at elliescarf.com/cca.
And I'm gonna embed this video at the top of that page so you can see all of the screens. I'm referring to all the features as I talk through the curriculum, the calendar, and the community. And my goal is to give you a really good sense of what it is as a member of the accelerator from the perspective of exactly what you'll do inside the program.
The curriculum, you'll get the coaching sessions, you'll get who you'll be working with. What happens, in the community, all of that. Now, this is totally unscripted. There is a chance I may meander, but bear with me because I think it will be very, if you've been interested in what really happens inside these group coaching programs, I will show you all of that.
So the way it works is that when you join up, you get immediate access to the library. Now let me share the screen so you get immediate access, as I mentioned, to our library.
And the library is the place that really directs you to all of our course materials. And what you'll see in here is that you're gonna see a number of courses that you get access to as soon as you join. So the first thing you get access is.
The Corporate to Coach Accelerator portal, and I'm gonna show you that in a second. But you also get access to three key pieces of the curriculum, the Corporate to Coach Blueprint, the 90 day Quick Start, which is all about developing your assets and the Business Development Accelerator framework.
So I am gonna take you through all of those pieces of the curriculum. But, so to start with, let me show you the portal. So the portal to the corporate to coach accelerator is the home base. So it's got an introduction, a video of where to go when.
Start, it's got an introduction to how to prepare for group supervision sessions, and then it has things, it's got our Zoom link, it's got our monthly password, it's got our twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six call schedule.
It's got links where you can add the whole calendar to your calendar, whatever system you use, whether that's Apple or Google or Outlook, or Yahoo. You name it. It's got our link through to our community that is hosted on Slack. It's got a link to how you can access our private podcast, which is where we host all of the recordings of the coaching calls as well, we also have those on video. But if you are someone who prefers podcast or audio, you can listen to recordings of the coaching calls that allows you to submit questions if you can't make it live and listen in or just catch up because there are multiple coaching sessions every week.
And I'll talk a little bit about that, when I talk about the coaching. But you. Can always listen in even if they're not sessions that you are attending because they are honestly full of gold and a lot of the feedback is that people learn just as much from listening to other people's coaching as they do from their own.
We also have a link to where you submit your assets for review. Which I will share with you, when we get into the 90 day asset Quick start, which is, all about how you get personalized feedback on your key documents. So that is the portal, the admin and there's always these, all of the links, all of the calendars, all of that practical stuff we've got that all are sitting in one place. But what people really wanna see is, what are the inclusions.
So we've got a section. The first section you come across is your tools and templates. And, the reason I am growing this bank of tools and templates is because something that my clients really value is anything I can share with them that will save them time. And so my intention with everything I share inside the accelerator is that I want you to use it and I want you to save yourself time.
And I want you to use exactly what I'm sharing. So. For example, I've got outreach messages, a whole bank of those that you can use and adapt for your warm outreach. I have a year of LinkedIn prompts, which is quite cool.
I won't open it 'cause I think that I will lose this screen that I'm sharing. But just to describe what this is when you open up this year of LinkedIn prompts, what it includes is a document that has for every week of a 52 week year, and it's not tied to a particular year. It has four prompts for you to think about if you are ever stuck on what to post on LinkedIn. And so if you did nothing else.
But following these prompts every week for a year, you would have a very well balanced, consistent LinkedIn presence that is speaking to your ideal clients. So, you have. Absolutely, got this resource and this resource, is something that we do actually a lot of work on tailoring your content plan, but this is intended to supplement that, or if you don't have time to dive into building your own content plan, this is a great place to start.
We've also got a series of templates. The most popular and used one is the coach bio. And so your coach bio is obviously a foundational asset for you. I'll talk about that when we get to the quick start as well.
We have a template for a client proposal, which is a coaching proposal, and is really valuable. And this can also be adapted into a coaching services guide. But this template just allows you to either, you can download it as a, can, a template or word file.
And you can adapt it for any time you need to send a proposal. You might also find that it's a less formal quote that you're sending through, so we also have a template for a quotation that you can use. All of these will save you hours and hours, so I highly encourage you to do that.
Now we have got a whole lot of curriculum, which I'll take you through, and the curriculum are really the core places where I will send you when we build your pathway, and that will depend on where you are at in your coaching business.
So for example, if you are a coach who is. just in the process of leaving your full-time corporate role, you might start with the corporate to coach Blueprint, which is the helicopter view of business?
If you have been in business for a year or two, you might head over to the 90 day quick start, where we're going to build your assets, not because you don't have them, because actually. Most people who come to me need to get a little bit clearer on their ideal clients and on their office suite. And so we go through a process of review of actually doing the thinking work and then cascading that down into the core assets that you already have.
And I'll talk about that when I talk about that curriculum. And then we have the business development accelerated framework. And for some people. That's where they go straight to. Now, the reason I share that now before I dive into that curriculum is that we also have a series of targeted master classes.
And what these master classes are for is when you go through your curriculum pathway, which we work together on in your kickoff call, which we do, as a group.
Each month you would join everyone else starting that month, and we will help you work through actually mapping out your pathway relative to your goals. So. You might say, well that's great, I've got this, I'm all over the business development stuff, but actually I don't feel super confident about B2B sales conversations.
For example, so what you would do then is you would come over here, I would direct you there, or you might find it and we'd say, here is a masterclass on B2B sales conversations, and just last week had, one of my wonderful members who was recommending it to everyone else saying, I've been working through the content of the curriculum. It's all super helpful, but I was a little bit, I had this sales call booked, and so what I did is I went back and I watched the masterclass and it just set me up to have a very successful call.
So, the sorts of master classes that are included are. Building your marketing hour of power, defining your tech stack, managing your finances, a 90 day content sprint, assessments and debriefing.
So choosing what assessments to get certified in and debriefing best practice, mindset, warm outreach strategies, quarterly strategic planning.
And then my favorite new masterclass that I've added here is. A special session that I ran inside our group coaching calls and it says funnel activity, which doesn't really give it fully away, but this is about actually, defining how do we go from your revenue target, down to specific numbers in your funnel. So, revenue target, how are we gonna make up that revenue based on your offers and your pricing? Then we go down to.
Well then how many proposals do we need to have out there? If we wanna have that many proposals out there, how many sales conversations do we need to be engaged in? If we need to have that many sales conversations, how many discussions do we need to be having on LinkedIn or email? And then based on that, how much outreach do we need to be doing to generate. So this is about thinking of your business development system as a numbers game.
So that is a really, a great masterclass as well, so that's what we do there. The other masterclasses you can, I think I've read most of them out.
We also have run, and we do periodically run these guest expert sessions, so we have, Dr. Maya Vic Andre talking about the leadership maturity framework, which is a very interesting developmental assessment, higher level assessment theory, we have a session talking about the value of coaching supervision, with our in-house supervisor, Dr. Louise Kovac, as well as some other supervisors.
And we have a great guest expert session on chemistry conversations. So, if you are already in business, you'll know about the joy of chemistry conversations. If not, you will find out about them. Those are the conversations we have, when we are meeting, when a potential coach in an organization is meeting with a number of coaches.
We call them chemistry conversations, some people call them a beauty parade, but it's where we really need to build a strong connection and also sell our value as a coach in a very short amount of time. So we've got some advice on how to navigate those, we've also got a series of recorded masterclasses that I've run,, not just inside the accelerator, but also outside.
So everything from pricing strategy to, building your corporate coaching offer, to different ways to use LinkedIn strategically and, annual planning, so annual life and business planning, workshops in there.
We've also got a series of workshops that are available, for people who are currently still in their corporate role and ready to make the leap or anticipating, and this is quite more people than you might imagine, anticipating that a redundancy is on the horizon and this is all about, well, how do we get you in the best position ready to make the leap?
So it's not a zero to 100, but we can go, from a rolling start. So we have a workshop series on that. We've got a few guides on how to use AI in your business. And then we have all of the recordings of the coaching calls. So all of those recordings go up here. You can go back and check them out really for, as long as you. And when you are looking back through them, what you might do is have a look and say, am I interested in listening to this one? What we've got is quite a detailed summary of the topics that were covered and the timestamp, so you can say, I'm interested in team success models or facilitating effective workshops or preparing for sales calls and, the art and science of sales conversations.
You can see that. Yeah, we talk about everything in our coaching calls and I'll talk about that, in a moment. But these recordings that you can find in the portal really too, there's so much gold in there. It's almost too much to navigate, and to be honest, one of the big questions I have from my members about the accelerator is how do I know where to start or what to focus on first? And that is a really important question. That's why we have kickoff calls now. We run these kickoff calls monthly, and, those calls, and we start as monthly cohorts. So you'll tend to start at the start of a month with your group, and prior to now, that's not been the case, but what we're doing is we're creating just these little mini communities within the community. And so you'll come along to that session, and in that session what we'll do is we will do a few things. We will map out. You'll go through, make sure you've got access to everything so you feel very comfortable with the technology. We will talk about your goals for your business and for what you want to achieve inside the accelerator, and that includes, I want you to break down a revenue goal. I want you to talk about your priorities beyond revenue.
So things, your lifestyle goals, your flexibility goals, the impact you wanna have. So all of those sorts of things. Then we'll talk about, well, based on where you are at, what is the path through the curriculum. So I'll talk you through that, and coach everyone through their own individual pathway, and then we may dive into also a little bit about, where you're at in terms of understanding your ideal client and your offer suite so that when you are ready to dive in, you have, where you're going, so there's no. There's no question. So there's a lot of content, but you're not going to go into it feeling overwhelmed.
So, that's the portal, that's the home base really, once we are then off and running, into your specific plan, there are three places that you go with the curriculum. The first is the Corporate to Coach Blueprint, and as I said, the blueprint is a foundational course. I think of it as the helicopter view, it's all inclusive. Let me look at what is involved in an executive coaching business. So if you want to sell to corporate clients, what are all of the pieces of the puzzle that you need to consider? And so, if I just run through what's included in that course, that is everything from the foundations, your mindset and, the goals you have for not just your business, but how your business will be a vehicle for your life. We look at balance and boundaries and self-care. We look at compliance, and I talk about that early on because that is about what are your obligations by law, and everything from insurance to privacy policies. And of course it is specific to where you are in the world. But I get you thinking about that soon.
We then talk about, in module two, we talk about your unique business model. And so, your business model is all about. Who do you wanna work with, and what is it that you wanna do? Now, as I mentioned, we have a piece of curriculum that is a much deeper dive into this. So think of the blueprint as this is telling me, what I may need to know that I don't know, I get to learn the language in this course, I get to see a bit of everything.
Whereas the other pieces of curriculum that I'm gonna show you are much more of a deep dive into the how and how you're gonna bring it to life. But we touch on here, we touch on your assessment toolkit, your pricing, and how to manage your finances as a business. We talk about the client acquisition model, which is all about having, the mindset of being a salesperson, your coach brand. And, even so far as we take you into Canva and how you might design a logo.
We talk about messaging and value articulation. We talk about your online presence. We talk about building an email list, sustainable content creation, sales conversations, tapping into your network and being an associate coach and everything that is involved in that.
Module four is all about working with corporate clients. And so what's different about working with companies versus individuals? We talk about some of the key language that is used, such as coaching panels or your bench and, all of those sorts of, terminology. We talk about the buying cycle inside corporates, I dive deeper into what it means to be on a coaching panel and what it doesn't mean. What you can expect once you get onto a coaching panel within a larger organization. So what does that mean? I talk about what an end-to-end coaching cycle looks inside an organization where your stakeholders are not just your coach, you have the organization as well, what an engagement looks like, what challenges you might have to navigate and how to do that.
Module six is all about professional development, and specifically your, how do you choose what to invest in, in terms of your professional development.
Module seven is all about systems, tools and processes, which is such a huge part of what we do in business, and module eight is all about, well, what is the support you need? Who is the support team you need as you go into business? So that is the Corporate to Coach Blueprint. As I mentioned, it's great for everyone and all of these modules. And by the way, it has the most useful workbook of any course I've ever written or attended.
Even down to things a guide on how to run a stakeholder interview process if you don't have a formal 360 certification. Everything that is very comprehensive and, you will come away from this, even if you just listen to it and don't do the task. They're all between five and seven minutes long. You will know what you didn't know, You'll just have expanded your understanding and then we can dive into the details, in the other, the other pieces of curriculum.
So, as I mentioned, I've been leading up to this. The other two pieces of curriculum that you will have are the 90 day Quick Start Challenge and the Business Development Accelerator framework.
So let me start with the 90 day Quick Start Challenge. Now, this course is a way of getting through the foundational assets that you need. Without allowing perfectionism and procrastination to derail you. So the intention is that you come out of this program, and I call it a challenge because it is a challenge. You come out of it with your website, your coach bio, your LinkedIn profile completed or reviewed if you already have one, and your thinking around your ideal clients, your audience, and your offer.
Really clear? So knowing what you wanna do and who you wanna do it with now doesn't mean you won't work with anyone else or do any other types of work. What it does is it gives us some guardrails so that we can have focus and not be constantly drawn to, Ooh, what about this? What about this, what about this?
It's having some focus. Most of the coaches I meet mention that they need that because they feel they are everything to everyone, and while we might choose to do the work if someone offers it to us, we've gotta be really deliberate about what we are actively marketing. So within this 90 day quick start challenge, it is targeted at saying, here's three months to ramp up and develop all your assets. I have had people in the accelerator do this in one week, and I've had people do it in six months. So there is no, because, as I've mentioned, I, really fundamental to how I see this work is that this cannot be one size fits all work. This needs to be about you and your business, and so we will talk about what the pace is for you. You will know what you have available to you in terms of time and energy, and in some cases money for things like website design.
So some people will build their own website, some people will outsource it, for example. So don't feel tied to the timeframe, just think about the modules as step-by-step. So what we do, as I mentioned, is we go into it, you have to make some decisions upfront, which is things, will you be building your own website? Are you just, amending, the tools that you have? Or are you starting from scratch?
Then we move into defining ideal clients. Now, within each of these modules, for example, what you'll see is that there is a workbook, a worksheet for all of the modules. And I'm just gonna show you one, or if you're listening in, I'm gonna tell you about it. But so if I go into week one where you'll see, what you'll see there is, no, you won't see it. There, there is a place to download the entire workbook. I think it is probably up to the top. Yeah. Here it is.
So the fillable work. So you could download a copy of that. And we are also getting this made for Google Docs. So, it is a fillable worksheet now, but we'll make it even easier. But you'll find that, in each of the modules we've got a lot of guides. To help you along the way to make it easier and easier. So everything from ideal client worksheets, brainstorms, offers, worksheets, hang on. Where are we? Offer worksheets, checklists, guided processes. In terms of finalizing those things, sample services, menu of all of the things you might consider having in your office suite, how to review which ones you actually want to do and, how to build an offer in a way that is relevant to your ideal client.
So. We do that. We do ideal clients, we do offers, then we dive into Coach Bio, we dive into LinkedIn profile, we dive into website copy, and then you have time to build the website if you don't already have one. Now, the magical part I think of this is that,, for every asset that you develop, whether it's inside, the quick start or if it is something that you just need, you've built, but you just need some feedback on. So a proposal document, for example, you submit that through to us, and I will send through video feedback. That video feedback will either come from me directly, if it's something your offer, your ideal client, your coaching bio, a proposal, or from our LinkedIn coach Kate Merriweather, who is an absolute gem who will give you, an audit of your LinkedIn profile feedback on your profile and feedback on the copy of your website.
So, there is a form where you submit that and you can do that . Obviously, until you get it done, but just a maximum of two assets a week. But all of those will get feedback to you by the end of the next week. So that is a really cool thing and I know that a lot of my current clients really appreciate that, and sometimes we go back and forth? So it is very common to send me a couple of versions of your bio, and then we end up with a version that you feel really happy with, and that is the goal. Not only that you feel happy with it, but that I can tell you that it will land with corporate audiences.
So that is really, that's our quick start challenge. Most people will go through this, some will do it as the primary focus, and some will do this in tandem with our business development curriculum, which I'll show you now. So inside the business development curriculum, this is all about putting in place the system that will allow you to execute your BD strategy in five hours a week. But there are things you need to do to get to that. So what you have to do, and what we support you to do in this piece of curriculum is to build your pipeline, and that means actually understanding who is in your network, who is in your network on LinkedIn, who might be sitting outside of LinkedIn, accessing that data from LinkedIn if relevant, and adding any non-LinkedIn data to that. And then segmenting the data.
So actually getting really clear on who fits your ideal client profile, who doesn't, who is warm and really warm or hot, versus who is cooler so that you can then prioritize for the purpose of your outreach. We then talk about building your content strategy? So if we're doing this consistent outreach, we're doing consistent audience growth, but we need to make sure that we are really clear that LinkedIn supports that by our content speaking to these people.
And we, I talk about how to do that in the most efficient way. We talk about the five hours a week strategy, exactly what tasks you need to be doing in that. There are four weekly tasks that I share. We need to build a rhythm to help you bring it to life. And then we talk about metrics and tracking and the importance of that. And the reason I really focus on this is because what I want us to be able to do is say, well I have put in place this pipeline and this funnel that in theory will get me to my revenue goals. But what I need to be doing is I need to be monitoring fairly consistently to make sure I'm on track, and what that monitoring allows me to do is say, well.
I'm hitting those benchmarks when it comes to the number of outreach messages I'm sending, the amount of people I am having conversations with, but maybe my stats fall down when it comes to going from conversation to sales call to actually a real life conversation. Maybe that's where my gap is, or. Maybe my gap is going from proposal to acceptance. So there's something about the proposals I'm sending or the pricing perhaps that is not landing.
So we wanna be able to track that so that we can then pull the lever that makes the most sense. So, that is the BD framework. Sounds quite simple, but in reality, all of these things, when we start to implement them into our business, are in fact extremely complex and completely personal to your business, completely personal to your business. So you need to that's when really our coaching, the coaching arm of the accelerator, comes to play. And so I'm just gonna show you what our coaching schedule looks like so that you can see what coaching is available. Now we have coaching. Available to you every week.
So there is some coaching event for you every week. We also have a coaching channel available in our community, which I'll talk to you about. So the intention is you never have to go a very long time without getting your and your questions answered so that you can always get unstuck. You can always keep moving. In terms of our formal, in-person coaching sessions, we have, as I said, sessions every week in the first and the third weeks of the month. That is the coaching business q and a style calls with me. And so those are all about bringing questions about how you are applying the things you've learned in the curriculum or how you are going with the next steps of your business.
So it may be that it is. Well, I've got this sales opportunity. How do I navigate that? Or it might be I'm setting up this part of my asset, but I'm stuck about my ideal client. It may be that I have to choose between three logos. Can the group vote for which ones you best? ? All of those things. So. Sometimes it's, I actually need to build a pool of a team of coaches to be able to pitch myself for this engagement. What should I think about when it comes to being able to do that?
And then for others, it's, I don't know how to price this. I think I'm undercharging and I'll probably agree and I'll help you think that through. So you are literally, there is no limit to what these questions can be. It is just about you and your business. So deal strategy, brainstorming with the crowd. Mindset, feeling stuck. You name it. That's what we do. And so as I said, those are in week one and week three of the month, we alternate those between a Tuesday and a Wednesday or a Monday and a Tuesday if you are in the US.
And those happen at three different time zones. So wherever you are in the world, there will be a time. That works for you. So that is, yeah, that which is really important to me. Now the same is true in the second week of the month. We have LinkedIn specific coaching with our LinkedIn coach, Kate Merriweather. As I said, she's amazing. She is no nonsense. She will give you straight feedback, but she also has a lot of insight into what really matters when it comes to. The algorithm, getting noticed by people talking to your ideal clients messaging and her background is as a copywriter, so she really gets it when it comes to messaging, and specifically a lot of those messaging challenges that coaches have, which is things, should I be talking to individuals? Should I be talking to organizations? How do I marry those two? So she helps us and she also helps us to remember. That we need to be real, that we have to bring ourselves into this and we can have all of the structure and the plan in the world, but we actually, as coaches, we have to show ourselves as well.
And so she really helps us work on those aspects. And so those sessions are typically on Wednesday, occasionally. As you can see, if you are watching this month we're doing one of those sessions on a Tuesday and one on a Wednesday in the second week, because of commitments. So sometimes things shuffle.
But if you have our live calendar, in your diary, you'll always be updated on when the current state of sessions is. And we always make announcements of any changes. Both by email and in our community. So that is the second week. And then in the fourth week. Now, this is pretty magical. In the fourth week of the month, we have small group coaching supervision and the feedback, so this is with Dr. Louise Kovac, who is, an extraordinarily qualified coach, supervisor, also has grown very successful coaching businesses herself, has been my mentor for. Many years now, I won't say how many years in case it ages us many years. But she runs those group sessions and these are very highly regarded by the members of the community. The feedback we get on those is extraordinary. And so this is the opportunity to focus on your coaching practice. So whereas most of what we do inside the accelerator is coaching business. This is a little time to tune into coaching practice rather than business. And so yeah, really highly recommend everyone, get involved in those sessions, and then once a quarter, so I'm just, if you're, if you're listening in, I'm scrolling through our, we've got a PDF version of our calendar. It's got lots of colors.
But once a quarter as well, we run networking sessions, so occasionally there are months that have five weeks. And in those weeks we run networking sessions. We also will occasionally, as we are in November, we are running our 2026 planning workshop, in place of one of our coaching calls. So we're extending those to a three hour session where we will actually sit down, plan out your funnel for 2026 and look at what your priorities are going to be. So that's going to be really fun.
And so you'll see in our calendar, we do all of those sorts of things. So that is our coaching. Now, some of the questions people have when it comes to coaching, coaching sessions are time zones. So. As I mentioned, these are all in Perth time, but Perth time in Western Australia, so AWST. We have a 6:00 AM session, a 9:00 AM session, and a 5:00 PM session. So typically the morning sessions are also very good for New Zealand and the USA and my evening session suits, Europe and the uk. Asia really can attend any of the sessions, and the same with Australia.
So those times are really intentionally spread so that there is something that will work for you. The next question is, well, how many people are in these sessions? Because I think a lot of people have had experiences where they thought they were going into a small group and they ended up with hundreds of people on a call and couldn't get their question answered. These calls tend to be between 2 and 12 people, and our intention is that as we grow and, we will grow, we will add more sessions if it's required. Each session goes for 90 minutes. And generally, I ask people if they have to duck off the call to put their hand up first. You are not required to ask a question. You can come and lots of people come just, to be part of, the energy to feel that. Ongoing momentum around business, but if you don't have a question, you don't have to ask a question. So you can come along and everyone gets their questions answered. If you don't, I will get you to follow up, send me a question, and I will send you a video answer to that question. So. That is coaching, and I would say the coaching calls really are the heart of the accelerator because that's where we connect, that's where we take the curriculum and we bring it to life in your context.
So, it's a really important piece of our puzzle, and then the final piece of the puzzle, and I was about to say, I've just said coaching is the heart of the program, but you could also form an argument to say that our community and where we run our community out of in Slack is also our, is also, the heart of the community.
So in our community now, I'm not going to dive into these channels because, obviously there is confidentiality that people are posting their wins, their questions, all of those sorts of things. So I'm not going to, I'm gonna tell you about it without giving away too much. But what we have is a number of channels, and our community is hosted on Slack. We used to host it on Facebook, but didn't really do what we needed it to. And Slack allows us to be so much more.
Focused and hands-on and just not that distraction that exists, when we're on Facebook. So, it's a wonderful platform. It's working really well. We have these channels that I'll show you here. The first is announcements, and so I am showing you that, but you will see, every week you'll have a list of all of the events that are on, you'll get to sign up for coaching, supervision, any new course content that's being released.
All of that is announced here.So that is always fabulous. You could always know that the most up-to-date information will be there. But then we have my favorite channel, the accountability channel. Now in the accountability channel, and it's really hard for me not to show you this, but yeah, it is confidential, so I won't do that.
But in the accountability channel, what you'll see is we ask you every Monday to share your top three priorities for the week. And, in the top three priorities, we ask you to consider making sure that you have got priorities that are focused on sales and business development. And so, people share their priorities. Usually it's about what piece of the curriculum they're working through their outreach commitments, their sales, their follow up, whatever it is for you, you commit to it. And then on Friday what we do is we follow up and we ask how you went. And so what we're doing is we've got this cycle of you can know that there is someone who is in there with you.
And wants to know where you're going and we'll hold you accountable to that. So, sometimes there are very good reasons why you get off track and sometimes I will push a little bit, myself, or our support coach Zoe, we'll push a little bit and say, is there one piece of that you could perhaps do, before the end of the week, just so that you feel that momentum going into the next week. And sometimes that's not appropriate. So we don't always do that, but know that we are there. We're on your side and we are keeping you on track. And I have this conversation with coaches who are considering joining the accelerator a lot. One of the things that they need the most is, this greatest sense of accountability. So that, because it feels it's just us, it's just us we're sitting, in our offices and, whereas previously we had this huge support network in our organizations.
Now it is really just us, many of us with our dogs being lovely coworkers, but very bad at accountability. They would much rather go for a walk, so that is the void we're hoping to fill with, in this space. That is, I guess, added to our celebration channel and our celebration channel is really getting you. To focus on what is going well so that we generate more of that and so we wanna be celebrating the wins from the most microscopic to the biggest. So it could be anything from, actually, I did my outreach and I got some replies all the way through landed the biggest client of my life, multi six figure engagement, huge corporate client. It might be an individual, new individual coach and feel really good about that. It might be, I just got paid in my business for the first time. So all of those things have happened.
Someone celebrated, recently hit 3000 followers on LinkedIn. Incredible. So celebrations are also a big part of it, and community is the opportunity to connect.
We have a lot of geographical connections, so people who are in the same place, who are catching up, who wanna form a network, people asking for body doubling sessions. So for example, you might be really stuck writing the copy for your website. Probably someone else's too, post about it, arrange a session, sit there and commit to doing it with each other. So we have a lot of that. There's also a lot of asking for feedback from each other, which is really powerful.
So that is a very active and fabulous channel. And then we have coaching. This is where you can post a question. So post a question, find out what's happening. Get some advice, usually within a day or two from myself or Zoe, our support coach, and we'll help make sure you are unstuck if it's a little while until our next coaching call. So, this is what happened, inside our program and I'm, really proud, of what we're doing in this space, so I have shared a huge amount, of information, about, the accelerator, about the program, about what's included the other piece of it that I wanna share is a little bit about who joins the accelerator because to be honest, a good amount of the magic of the accelerator is the people who are our members. And we have members, currently about 50-50 members and they are global.
So we have people from the US to Canada to Italy, to Spain, to the UK to Singapore. We've had members from, in Bangladesh and we've got people in Malaysia and, New Zealand, Australia, you name it, The UAE. You name it, we have members around the world who are in your region. And, that is really important to me. So it's important that we are bringing very much global perspectives to what we do. Very diverse perspectives.
That this is a group of coaches who are really, yeah, really broad, really different. And you won't be in an echo chamber of people who are just the same as you. And I know for coaches that that is something that we value, which is broadening, broadening our perspectives, and ensuring that we're looking at things that.
So. If you have listened in today and you're feeling this drive this, oh yes, this might be what I need to take my business to the next stage, then you have excellent timing because the doors are opening, on the 21st of October, to the accelerator. For a chance to join at a heavily discounted rate before prices will go up for the next iteration of the program if you choose to join. Now, just to be very transparent, I'm discounting the joining fee by $1,500 from 7,999 US dollars down to 6,499 US dollars if you join on an annual basis or down to 12 monthly payments of 550 US dollars.
Now, there are two ways that you can be invited to join the accelerator. The best way is to book a call with me and you can go to elliescarf.com/bookacall. Where we will talk about your business, your business goals, I will no doubt give you a lot of very hands-on advice, and we'll talk about whether the accelerator is a good fit for you. The alternative to this is to send me a message by email or on LinkedIn and just letting me know a little bit about you and that you are thinking you'd to join the accelerator because we need to make sure that people who are joining the accelerator are all in this space of executive or leadership coaches who wanna work with more corporate and organizational clients that includes not for profit government, for example, I just need to make sure, so you don't have to have a call to get in, but you do need to let me know that you fit that profile, you don't need to have a certain background. You don't need to have a certain number of years of experience. You don't need to have a certain type of training or accreditation.
You just need to be committed to being an excellent coach in this space, and that you want to grow a business from whatever stage you are in, and so if that's you, send me a message. I understand that sometimes people would prefer not to have a call, so I wanna make space for that, this launch.
So I really hope that this has given you a clear sense of what is included in the corporate to Coach Accelerator, what that experience is, and as always, please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions, and I'll be back next week.
