If you’ve ever taught a class or worked one-on-one with a client, you know it’s challenging to ensure your clients are actually using what you’re teaching them.

Do they keep bumping into problems as they implement? Do they procrastinate and never reach their goals?

When they get value, you win, too

You want your clients to be highly satisfied with the information you share. While they might love the ideas they learn from you, a client only finds true and lasting value once they put it to use.

And a client who finds huge value in what you’ve taught them tells other people about you. After all, passionate students become passionate customers and help you to get known as an expert in your field.

How can you ensure your client is using their new-found wisdom?

You need to create tools and support systems for your clients and students while they’re implementing. One of the best ways I know to support your students and clients is to offer them a mastermind group after you teach a class or after they work with you in some way. (Don’t know what a mastermind group is or how one works? Read my introductory blog post, What Is A Mastermind Group, here.)

Here are three models to consider:

1. Offer a live class first (in-person or virtual), so that everyone learns the same information at the same time. This steeps them in your methodology and ideas, and gives them a shared vocabulary. After the class ends, create an ongoing mastermind group where they share their experiences as they implement your ideas. It’s a place where they can talk about the problems that arise as they take action, make smart plans, and be held accountable for getting things done.
2. Include both the mastermind group and training in the same meeting session. Start each meeting with a short training module and allow time in the meeting for brainstorming and accountability.
3. Flip the classroom entirely by having them study on their own and use the live meetings for discussions. Create self-paced training material they consume outside of the meeting. Then, use the live meeting time to do hands-on exercises and answer questions about the content. Allow some time during the meeting for masterminding when a student needs to solve a bigger problem.

Timing is everything

When designing your training-mastermind combination, start by considering how much time you’ll need to teach in each meeting session.

Let me give you an example:

I have a 10.5 hour Facilitator Training class I typically teach over a seven-week period, 90 minutes per class session.

If I want to teach that entire set of lessons first, I’ll do seven weekly training classes, then the mastermind group starts in week eight.

But if I choose to include the training inside the mastermind group meeting, I could use one of these methods, depending on how much time I want to use for training in each meeting:

• Keep the program at seven weeks and increase each meeting from 90 minutes to 3 hours. That way, I could use the first 90 minutes of each weekly meeting for training and the second 90 minutes for masterminding. We’d get all the training completed in seven weeks, and have plenty of time for hot seats each meeting.
• Change the program from 90-minute meetings to 2-hour meetings, use the first 30 minutes for teaching and the remaining 90 minutes for masterminding. Since I have 10.5 hours of training material, this would extend the entire program to run (at least) 21 weeks.

Remember, I have 10.5 hours of training material to share – so whichever training time I allow, I must include all 10.5 hours of material to be covered. By being flexible about how much training time is used in each meeting, and how many weekly meetings we have, I can come up with endless possibilities.

You can always have a longer time between meetings, say every two weeks or once a month. Your students might need more time to implement their plans and see results, so giving them space between meetings means they can implement what they’re learning and come back to the next meeting with questions, feedback, and success stories. Having ongoing support and accountability over the long haul is hugely important to their success rate.

Grab a piece of paper and start mapping out possibilities. It will open your mind to new ideas and help you think through your new training-mastermind offer.

Want to learn how to start a mastermind group? Click here to get my free video tutorial on how to create a mastermind group of your own.