How to Run a Workshop

>> Are you ready to start offering workshops as part of your health coaching business? Awesome. In this lecture, we'll teach you the tools and tips you need to host a successful workshop, both online and offline. First, let's start by talking about the differences between online and offline workshops. Online workshops take place virtually, usually through a service such as GoToWebinar, Google Hangouts, or FreeConferenceCall. These webinar phone conferencing and virtual meeting tools can help your group to connect via the Internet. Offline workshops take place in person at a physical location such as a yoga studio, a doctor's office, or a community center. Remember, when we talked about places where you can speak to groups, you can use those same venues for workshops. Talk about repurposing your research. The primary difference between the two is how you teach and lead the groups. They will be a bit different because you're teaching through different mediums. Hosting a workshop online can increase your attendance because students can access the workshop from home rather than having to join a physical location. However, there can be difficulty during students sharing and interactions due to the virtual nature of the workshop. As online workshops utilize technology, there's also the possibility of technical errors occurring. Hosting a workshop in person can increase engagement during the workshop and will likely lead to more Health Histories. Another plus is that clients and students get to meet you and interact directly with you. However, in-person workshops can have their own difficulties, perhaps you will not have an ideal number of students to do the activity you had planned. Also if public speaking is something you don't excel at, that could certainly cause some added stress. How do you choose? Which type to use? If you are comfortable with technology or maybe you just prefer to not stand in front of a group of people, online workshops could be a great fit for you. If you love interacting with groups of people and technology is a bit of a struggle for you, in-person workshops will probably suit you better. Now how do you get started offering these workshops? The process is simple and fairly similar to what we've discussed with group coaching programs. Write down the answers to the questions in the following steps on your Workshop Planning Worksheet. One, choose a topic. What is your target market struggling with that you can help them with? The topic of your workshop should relate to the problem you solve or the solution you provide. For example, if you work with moms who want to raise a healthy family but don't have a lot of time to cook, you might offer a workshop titled "Healthy Meal Preparation for Busy Moms. " Two, decide on the length of your workshop, is this a one-time workshop or a series? How long will the actual event be, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours? If you're offering a workshop series, you'll want to make sure that you include homework and as discussion forum between the sessions, this will keep participants active and engaged. Three, choose the format. Are you offering your workshop online or in person? Four, choose your location. What service will you use and where will you host it? Some services include Free Conferencing, FreeConferenceCall, GoToWebinar, Zoom meeting, and Google Hangout. Five, get clear on your intentions. What is the purpose of this workshop? What do you want to get out of it? This could be money, it could be exposure or clients. Your intention will help you to decide how to offer and structure your event. Six, decide on your price point. What will you charge for the event? Will you offer it free of charge to use it to build your list or to book Health Histories? When picking a price, refer back to the intention you set. Do you want to make money from a one-time event or do you want to use this event to build up your private coaching practice? If you want to build your list or book Health Histories, your best bet is to offer the workshop for free. If you're concerned about no-shows, you can always create a refundable deposit. When someone signs up for your event, you can ask for a small deposit such as $10 or $20 and that you will return to them once they have attended your workshop. If they don't attend, you'll donate their deposit to charity. This is a common business practice to ensure that students don't register for the conference and then not attend. When someone does that, it takes the seat away from another student who truly wanted to be there. Seven, consider a partnership. Would it be beneficial to organize with another coach's support? Partnering with another practitioner for your workshop has its pros and its cons. On the one hand, two people marketing an event will reach more people than just you marketing the event. It also relieves some of the pressure of hosting an event. If you can split the administrative hosting duties, this really helps. On the other hand, partnering with someone else can require more preparation. Also, you'll need to make sure that you're on the same page when it comes to delivering the workshop so that one person doesn't end up teaching more than the other. If you decide to partner with someone else, make sure that you have a clear agreement and expectations are outlined for each of you so that the event can be mutually beneficial. Eight, organize your materials. What do you need for the workshop? This could be handouts, a sign-up sheet for your mailing list, a slideshow preparation, it's really up to you. When you first start out presenting workshops, you might experiment with a couple of different workshop formats to get a feel for what works best for you. Some coaches like to sit in a circle and focus on group sharing while others prefer to use a workshop outline and teach to the group from there. Nine, prepare for your workshop. Preparing for your workshop is similar to the process we discussed for setting up your speaking gigs. You'll want to get your location or sign into your virtual workshop space at least 15 minutes early. Put your business cards and handouts on the chairs. If you're running an online workshop, you can email these out in advance and tell your students to keep them handy during the live event. Have a signup sheet for your mailing list. If you're hosting a workshop online, you've already collected these emails when participants signed up for the event. Ten, run your workshop. We've included three workshops and the outlines and scripts for each in the done-for-you materials that were released during this module. You can use these to run your workshop or create your own teaching tools. For suggestions on how to run a group, review the How to Run a Group Coaching Program lecture. At the end of your workshop, we suggest giving your participants an evaluation forms so they can provide feedback on the workshop content and the presentation. This will help you to create and offer better workshops in the future. To support with this, we've included a Workshop Evaluation Template in this module. Eleven, follow up with your students. Once your workshop is over, send your students an email thanking them for attending. You can also use this as a way to offer them an opportunity to become a client and to continue learning from you. Refer back to your intention for the workshop to get an idea of what to offer in your follow-up email. Examples include an invitation to a future workshop, an offer to do a Health History, or a link to join your online program. To recap, we talked about the differences between hosting workshops in person and online. We then discussed the steps for creating, preparing for, and hosting a workshop. Finally, we offered some resources you can use to plan and offer workshops as part of your health coaching business. Thanks for watching. And I'll see you in the next video.