Do you want to know what money-making offer you should add to your business? Katie Zaccardi, founder of “Out To Be,” joins Bree Noble to discuss their own experiences to help you choose which offer is best for you. At the end of the day, your best money-making offer depends on your personality, your current goals, your audience size, and where you’re at in business right now. If you are a music teacher, a coach, or a musician looking to expand your streams of income, this episode is for you. Dive in! 

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What Type Of Money-Making Offer Is Best For Your Music Business With Katie Zaccardi

I cannot wait for you guys to dig into this episode. I’ve got my friend Katie Zaccardi on the show. This was originally aired on her podcast but it is good. I wanted to make sure you all read it. We are talking about what money–making offer you should add to your business as a musician? If you are a Music teacher, a coach or a musician looking to expand your streams of income, this episode is for you. We are talking about four different possible offers to add to your business and describing them at length to help you know, which one of them might be right for you. 

You don’t need to read this episode to figure that out because we’ve got a quiz for you that we created to help you figure out, which is the best money–making offer for you. I still want you to read this episode because we talk about our own experiences with these offers which are going to be enlightening for you, why we chose the ones we did? What we liked about them and what we didn’t? For you to figure this out for yourself, go to ProfitableMusician.com/quiz. You can take the quiz. It will take you a couple of minutes and you will know exactly the best money–making offer you should add to your business. At the end of the quiz, we will give you detailed results so you can understand exactly what this offer is, why it’s best for you and the next steps. Let’s jump into my conversation with Katie Zaccardi from the Out To Be Podcast. 

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If you are reading now and you are like, “I don’t know if this episode is for me.” This is for you. If you are a Music coach, a Music teacher already or a musician who is thinking about adding additional streams of income and starting to coach or teach, if you are any one of those things, what I like to call them multifaceted music entrepreneurs or some people say musicprenuers, this is going to teach you how to increase your offer suite and streams of income. Also, figure out exactly what offer you should add to your business based on where you are at, what your interests are and how big your audience is. If you are brand new to this versus if you already have an established business that you are looking to grow, this is for you. 

If you are like, “I don’t know if this is for me.” If you feel like your income streams have been a little unstable and who hasn’t, adding another stream of income that we are going to be talking about is going to help you to be able to feel like, “I’ve got several things here that I’m doing to rely on.” If one of them is not going as well, the other ones are going to keep you stabilized and feeling strong in your business instead of feeling like you are moving with the tide of whatever is going on in the world. 

In 2020, the big word that everyone was saying was to pivot. It’s like, “You have to pivot what you are doing. You have to figure out what’s the best way to make money right now.” We are going to talk about memberships. What’s interesting is that I feel like everyone was pushing memberships because it was lower cost, easily accessible and that’s what people want. Now, we are out of the initial shock and need for change in our businesses and also in our lives. 

What do we do with that? There’s still the movement to online, which we are going to talk about online offers primarily. There are still a lot of different ways that you can navigate this. You don’t have to be reactive. You can be proactive to figure out, which offer makes sense for you, your audience and plan out a launch for that to be successful. You are not feeling like you are still in that place where you are like, “I’m trying to readjust things and get back to some sense of normal after everything that happened.” 

It’s good to analyze what works best for you, your interests, your personality, where you are at in business, your goals, all of that. If people are pushing memberships, it might not be the right thing for you. When I first started, I had a membership and I was like, “Everybody has courses. I should have a course.” At first, I did a course and I was like, “This isn’t for me. Membership is for me.” I had to play around with different things and figure out, which thing fits me best. What’s great about this quiz that we developed is it helps you get a head start on that to analyze the different aspects of where you like to work, how you like to communicate with students and what audience you have. You don’t have to spend all this extra time trying things and going, “That wasn’t for me. I wasted 3 and 6 months of my life putting this thing together and it doesn’t feel right.” 

Analyze what works best for you based on your interests. Click To Tweet

Bree and I are laughing because it’s a pure example of this right between the two of us. She has a thriving membership. I started a membership in 2020 because I thought it would be a good offer at the time. I ended up setting it at the end of 2020 because it wasn’t worth my time, my energy, what I wanted to do or at the end of the day, it wasn’t what my clients were desiring. I found it was better to sell higher–ticket programs. Selling a mastermind program, which was nearly ten times the price of my membership was so much easier than trying to sell my membership. That was my experience. Bree had a different one. That’s what is going to make our conversation even more interesting because there is no perfect answer for every single person. It’s up to your circumstance. 

It’s also where you are at in your business. For me, a membership was awesome for several years. I tried a course and it wasn’t the thing for me. Later down the road, five years into my membership, I had developed a framework that I wanted to teach to people in a specific way. I’m like, “Now it‘s time for me to have a course.” My first course was all over the place and all of that information belonged to a membership. I launched my course five years in and now my course is doing amazing. I’m loving it because I understood more about the way I like to run things. As we will get into it, I also had developed a specific framework that I wanted to teach and give people a specific result. 

Before we dive in, if you guys want to go to get the answer to your quiz so that you can follow along even more closely with this episode, you can head to KatieZaccardi.com/quiz or ProfitableMusician.com/quiz. Both of those will take you to the quiz so you can see, which offer is the best fit for you right off the bat. We are going to talk about each option. 

Go over there and go do that. When you come back, what we are talking about will make even more sense to you. 

We are going to deep dive on each different offer. Since we have been talking about membership, why don’t we start with the membership? What is a membership, first of all? Who is this best for? What are the benefits of it? Bree, you are a membership expert. Tell us about it. 

A membership is a way to bring a lot of people together. They may be at different stages of their journey. For me, it’s the music career journey that I’m helping people with. The people that come into my membership are all at different stages. I’ve got people at what I call the foundation stage, some people are at the professional stage but they want to learn more or have a community that keeps them accountable. It’s great because you can serve people at all different levels and you can also talk about a lot of different things. 

What I love to do in my membership is I love to teach people things that I am learning. I have done all kinds of different mini–courses or mini–training within my membership of things that have come up in my own business. I’m like, “These musicians need to know this.” I have done deep–dive training on Instagram, on money mindset and on how to get session work online. It’s totally different subjects but they all relate to the common goals that my musicians have is that they want to build their career, find momentum and figure out what they love to do in music and how they can make streams of income. 

That’s how a membership brings all different people together. They are at different levels but yet, they have a common goal. It allows them to also collaborate and mentor each other, which is fun because there are people in my membership that have been around since the beginning. People have been in there since the beginning. They are still around. They are mentoring all the new people and encouraging them. They are a little further down the road so they are able to inspire those people. 

There are plenty of people at all different levels so nobody feels like they are alone and all these people are ahead of them. Also, in a membership, you want to facilitate that community by bringing people together in different ways. For the past years, we have had live calls every week. They were run by me and my team and everybody comes together on Zoom. We’ve got different themes that we are talking about and people can ask all the questions that they need. It’s a great support system. We have had some people that have been down about what they are doing. I saw people cry on the calls. It’s a safe space to support each other. 

Especially in the music space, a lot of people don’t have a lot of that local support. They don’t know anyone that’s doing what they are doing. They don’t have a lot of support from family and friends. They can come to this place where everyone is like them. They have the same common goals and they can receive that support as well. It allows me as a facilitator to bring people together. My favorite thing is when someone says to me, “I’m looking for an accountability partner,” and I’m like, “I know the perfect one for you. Talk to this person.” Bringing people together. I have seen collaborations of musicians writing songs and do live shows together, all kinds of cool things. I know for me, I get a lot of satisfaction out of making those connections and facilitating community and collaboration. 

 

That is what a membership is like. Practically, it is a lower cost offer where people can pay monthly and the price is not extremely high but they continue to pay monthly. In my membership, they join for a year, they pay $59 a month or they can pay for the whole year at once and get two months free. Having them in there for a long period allows them to see the growth that they want to within the membership and allows us to connect with them and be able to encourage them over time. It also offers a low barrier to entry if people are first starting in what they are doing and they can’t afford to pay a higher price. That’s how a membership allows people to get in, and then get that transformation over time so then they can bring in income that they need to pay higher prices for other things. 

The way we will talk about each offer is in almost price order. A monthly membership is probably going to be the lowest investment that someone will make. In a membership, sometimes they can be comparable. With a membership, you are most likely looking at charging anywhere from $5 a month if you consider Patreon in this. Although most memberships are probably at least $20 a month. I have seen business memberships for almost $300 a month. That is potentially significant. The reason I say potentially is that sometimes they are more like group coaching where you do get a ton of resources or you get a hybrid experience where you have higher touch points with a coach. Even still, you are looking in that range. 

Most memberships are not going to go beyond that range. Especially when you are in the lower end, below $50, below $25 or around that number, it can be approachable for people. Even below $100 or Bree’s $590 for a whole year of being in membership, that makes it more approachable for someone than working one–on–one with a coach and they still get an amazing experience out of it. That being said, Bree, what are the barriers to entry from a coach’s perspective or even a musician’s perspective who might be looking to do a Patreon? We are not specifically talking about Patreon but since it is a membership, I will bring it up. You do want to have some things in place and you do want to have an audience to be able to pull this off most likely to make it worth your time. Tell us about that. 

I’m glad you asked that because I was like, “I forgot to talk about the audience.” That was a big thing for membership because the price is low. That means you as the coach or mentor is not getting as much from each student. You have to know that you are going to be able to have enough people in your membership to start off to make it worth your time. For me, when I started mine, I already built an audience. I was running Women of Substance. I had a list of several thousand artists. That was an okay choice for me because I had a feeling that I have built up trust with the people on my list where they would be like, “I’m willing to try this.” 

My membership was empty when I started it. I started with nothing inside and it was all about trust. They were like, “We are going to go on this journey with you.” You don’t have to do it that way if you don’t want to because I had a good audience, I’ve got eighteen people to say yes upfront and pay for an entire year. My price back then was $297. They gave the investment jumpstart so I could invest the time to create the content inside the membership. You do need to have enough of an audience and have a sense that they trust you enough and that they would want to come to hang out with you in membership and learn from you before you launch one. 

If you launch a membership and you get three members, it’s going to be frustrating. It’s the same thing with Patreon. I tell artists, “Don’t launch a Patreon if you don’t know for sure that you’ve got a certain number of people that want to join because you are then beholden to create these resources. If you are creating them for three people, you are going to be frustrated and annoyed that you have to create these resources for three people and you are only making $150 a month.” 

Especially with Patreon when people will do the $5 tier. “I’ve got five people at $5 but do I want to show up for that?” It can make it more stressful on you than beneficial. That was the experience I had in mind. I always had a decent steady number. When I was running my membership, it allowed me to put on training for all of my clients, membership, one–on–ones. I could bring everyone together for that even if they were in a higher tier program than the membership. Even still, having to promote the membership and feel like, “I’m not seeing that my audience is big enough and that the interest is there for this type of offer to continuing to run it.”

In a community, people have the same common goals and they receive support from each other. Click To Tweet 

It wasn’t worth launching it, trying to promote it, running the training and booking guests in it. I didn’t enjoy it anymore because I was feeling like, “I’m getting better results in other areas in my business that are yielding a much higher return. I would rather focus on that.” That’s where knowing your audience size and interests as well as what you like to do is important. We can talk about this too. Bree, you have shared with me that you don’t like coaching one–on–one. I do. For Bree, doing a membership like that is ideal because that’s her preferred way to deliver information. 

I’m in there helping too but I don’t want to be the only resource. I don’t know everything and I don’t have everyone else’s experiences. I love to be able to watch other members and be like, “I tried that and this is what happened.” I can’t try every tool out there. I can’t have every performing experience out there. I love that I can shine the spotlight on those other people and have them connect and help. 

Is there anything else in terms of the pros and cons of a membership that we need to talk about? One thing that’s coming up for me is you have been doing this for many years. That’s a long time that you are every single month showing up. Talk to us about the pros and cons. 

The definite pros are you can scale it. It takes a while to scale because of the price point. As you scale it, you can bring other people on your team to help you out. If I had to do everything related to the membership right now, that’s all I could do. I have my customer service person that sets up all the emails to send out to remind people to show up to the calls. I have a community manager. She handles the Facebook Group and I go in there every once in a while. She will even do live sometimes. She shows up to the calls and helps me on the calls. 

I have another coach in there, who does one call per month. I don’t have to show up on the last Friday of the month. She’s handling it. She also helps me with the other calls. You can scale in that way if you can grow your membership big enough that you can have enough money to pay other people to help you. That’s a big pro because then you don’t have to be involved in the day-to-day and the nitty–gritty stuff that you might not like doing like the admin stuff or checking the Facebook Group every day. 

It brings me to this thought that if you are looking for instant gratification and big bucks, maybe a membership isn’t right for you. 

It took me years to grow the membership to the place that I’m feeling good about it. I wish we had twice as many members. I’m happy with the way we are running it, the team that we have and I feel like we are poised and ready to scale it now where we could serve more people. It’s taken a lot of different iterations. Luckily, I was getting enough members that I could keep running it as I was figuring it all out. 

At the start of your business, you were like, “I need a cash injection. I need a high ticket sale. We will talk about what is it but this is not it.” It’s not to say you can’t ever do a membership because when you are growing and scaling your business, you will introduce new offers as your audience grows and this might be a good fit down the line. This is not quite it if you are looking for a quick hit, a million members at once unless you already have an established audience and business. Let’s talk about a course, which is similar to membership in some ways but it’s different. Most people know about courses because they might have taken one or they are seeing people promoted at least. 

I have courses. You have courses. There are different types of courses that people can run. It’s probably a step above a membership price–wise. You can have a lower price course, like a bundle. I have a bundle, The Wealthy Musician Bundle, that I would describe as a course. It’s $50 but you can also have courses that are $1,500 or sometimes even more expensive than that, depending on what you are learning and what the program is. Bree, walk us through the basics of a course. I know you mentioned that you started with a course, then you took it down and then you did a new course. What was that process like? What made the difference there in launching the first one versus the second one? 

The first one ended up being the core information that’s in my membership now. The result of it was not immediate enough. That was the problem with my first course. That’s where membership comes in because people are on this growth journey and that’s what the material for my first course, which was The Musician’s Profit Plan. That became the membership material because people were on a long journey. I was frustrated because I couldn’t see them have the transformation fast enough. They weren’t staying as connected with me as I wanted. That’s when I realized the membership was right for me. 

There are different kinds of courses. There are smaller ones. I have a ton of $97 courses because I have created them as training within my membership over the years. They are specific. They were like, “Get more done in less time. It’s time management and productivity.” The Money Mindset is one I did or, “How to hire low–cost assistants?” Those are specific results and that’s where a course is different from a membership. You have a specific result that you are getting out of it. It may take you several months to get those results if it’s a longer course. 

There are mini–courses, the way I call them, $97 and less and maybe even $197 and less. I have a couple of those. There is your flagship course, which is your main course. For me, it’s the Rock Your Next Release Program, $497 is the price. It’s a bigger course. It’s taking someone through their entire release process for an album or an EP. They are in this course for months. As far as the support that you offer with courses, mini–courses don’t need to offer any support. You don’t have time to be offering a monthly call for a $97 course. 

 

You have many great courses and memberships. I have courses too, I have The Wealthy Musician Bundle, From Stressed to Success and The Audience Builder Bundle. One thing I will throw in real quick is that bundles also are technical courses. Those can be great too if you accumulated a lot of training or performances and you can sell it as a bundle. It’s still going to be on a topic or still going to be cohesive. Sometimes that works like a lower–priced option for people but the key there is you want to get results. 

I always struggled though, because you want the course in some instances or most instances to be a somewhat lower barrier to entry. I would always be like, “I want to help them. I want to have the Facebook Group or Slack. I want to be hands–on and guide them through it.” Sometimes not only was it just not worth it for me but it also didn’t make sense given the price point or people didn’t want that. As a coach, I always have to hold myself back from almost over–delivering in a course, which is funny to say because it’s like, “How you could over–deliver?” You don’t need to have your hands on everything. The course is usually for people who don’t want to have their hands on everything. People can buy the course, do it themselves and get the results. 

That’s why I have the membership because I do want my hands and that satisfies that part of me. Yet, I can still have these courses that I sell as one–offs and know that I’m getting somebody a result. It feels good. Usually, those people come back to me for more stuff or they join the membership or they join the bigger course. 

Let’s talk about the framework. The framework is one thing that you need to have to host a course or create a course, even with bundles like I was talking about. For instance, I have The Audience Builder Bundle. Even though that’s a bundle where I have compiled videos, I pulled some from the mastermind, I had some new training come in, I recorded some on my own. There’s still a framework in there that I take people through, even though I have bundled the videos together from other places or training. To get results, talk to us about how to create a framework or what we should do if we don’t have a framework and how to know if we are ready to put information into a course that’s going to get people results. 

One thing is that you notice the questions that you are answering all the time and you are telling people similar things. You are taking them through a certain journey, step by step, of how they can get the transformation and the result that you want to give them. You take note of that. You start putting that all down, spewing it all onto the page. That’s how I figured out my framework for Rock Your Next Release. I was like, “If I were releasing, what I would do first? What would I do next? What’s missing?” I would either use sticky notes or put them on a Google Doc and you can copy, paste and move things around. Brain dump and figure out what people would need to know to get that result. Generally, you get this from having either done it yourself or having gotten this result for someone else. 

If you are not the person that got the result but you have been able to get it for other people by taking them through a step-by-step framework that maybe you didn’t ever write down as a framework or realize it was a framework. As you started thinking about it, you started seeing all the commonalities of how you were helping people one-on-one or how you did it yourself. You were like, “How do I get here?” You start realizing, “I did this.” When you put it into an organized fashion, that’s a framework. What’s helpful is you can name that framework, mine is The Rock Your Next Release framework. People are like, “They associate you with that framework.” That gives a lot of credence to what you do in your course because you can say, “I’ve got this framework.” It’s like when somebody authors a book, that gives them more cred. It’s the same way with having a framework. 

Something that we touched on is memberships going to give you recurring income. Each month people are paying unless they pay in full. Most likely, people are going to pay each month. With a course, it’s a little bit different. Let’s talk about how we can grow and scale those pros and cons. On the one hand, it’s easy for you because you can sell it and be done but what do we need in terms of audience size? What do we need to consider in terms of how the income looks coming into us when we are considering launching a course? 

When you grow your membership big enough, you can pay other people to help you. Click To Tweet

You can have pay in full and a payment plan if you want. Depending on your price, you can have the payment plan be longer, depending on how long it takes people to go through your course. With my course, at first, I launched it with $497 pay in full and $97 every month for six months. I started to realize that was too long of a time for them. Although it was nice to get that $97 a month for six months, it didn’t quite work with the way that they were thinking. 

By the time they’ve got further down the line, they had more expenses with their release. It started to become more of a burden in their mind. I decided to switch it to a three pay. I was getting $179 for three months. It allows overlap. Let’s say I was only going to launch once every three months, that would allow me to still have recurring income every single month if people bought on the payment plan. I would still have this coming in even if I wasn’t launching every single month. 

It’s funny because I did the same thing. When I did From Stressed To Success the first couple of times, I introduced these six–month options like, “Make it more doable for people.” You open the door sometimes with people falling off, people asking for refunds or changing their credit card information the longer you have it. I would sometimes have people who chose that option and then say, “Can I pay off the balance? I don’t want this hanging over my head for three more months. I want to be done.” There are options. 

Bree and I will talk more about that stuff in the upcoming episodes. Remember that you don’t have to sell your left shoe and lower the price to zero to get someone to join your program. We don’t want that. We want our leads to be qualified and interested in what we are launching and not having to convince them to join. That’s important as you’re deciding, “Which option is best for me? Which option is my audience going to most gravitate to? How did they react when I launched these things or present these offers so far?” I find that to be extremely important in the process of selling. 

With courses, it’s still important to have an audience like having an engaged group of people online. Another option is if you are teaching people one-on-one and maybe you are full, you are on a waitlist status and you can’t teach everybody or you want to stop trading time for money because you are teaching people a similar framework, why not have them all go through a course instead? Sometimes, some people want to work with you one-on-one but they can’t afford it. Generally, one-on–one is more expensive. They would be a perfect group of people to create a course for but you need to see, “Do I have these? Do I have people coming to me saying, ‘I want to learn from you but I can’t afford it?’” Are you at weightless status? Do you have people online that are coming to you saying, “I love what you are doing? I would love to learn from you?” 

The other great thing about a course is, it’s a specific outcome for a specific group of people. For me, no one is going to want to take Rock Your Next Release if they are not releasing music. It doesn’t apply to them. I say, “If you are releasing music in the next eighteen months, this is for you. Otherwise, it is not for you.” It’s great to know who it’s not for so you can focus on the people that it’s for, and then you know where to find them. Where would I find people that are wanting to release music? They probably like things like CD Baby or TuneCore. They are asking a lot of questions about, “How to get on Spotify playlists?” There are easier ways to find that audience if you have a specific outcome for your course. 

It’s different than a membership. In a membership, you can have a big audience that might be at a slightly different place and you are going to create training that caters to everyone and you are going to able to answer everyone’s questions. A course is something where not only do you need to have an audience large enough that they are going to opt into something but you also have to have a large enough audience that’s interested in the specific topic that you are going to be teaching on. 

Let’s say Bree had a bunch of people on her list but they all wanted to tour and none of them were releasing music or cared about releasing music. If she launched this course, she could have a huge list but if none of them care about that topic, it’s going to flop because it’s not ultimately what her audience wants and needs, which is why market research is important. That is a distinct difference because your ideal audiences for each offer are going to be different and your course audience is going to be much more specific. 

Is there anything we haven’t talked about with courses yet? 

I don’t think so. The only thing that’s coming up for me is bleeding into the group program where sometimes you can almost have a course that runs as a group program or vice versa, depending on how you want to describe it where you have a framework that you take people through and you also coach them through it. 

 

One thing that we can use to jump off to the group programs is you can choose to be as involved as you want with courses. We talked about the lower–priced courses, you want it to be passive. Whereas the flagship course, “I have one meeting with my students a month. I decided that’s something I could do. I thought it would be helpful to them.” Group programs are a little bit more hand–holding. I work as a coach in a group program but I don’t run a group program. I would love to know what do you see that is different from a group program from a course? 

I run several different group programs. When I first started, it was almost a one–on–one made group. I had several clients who had been one-on-one clients or they were new. It is about half and half. They are looking for something that’s a little bit lower cost than my one-on-one. I wanted something for me that would allow me to have a little bit more time in my day and be able to work with people in a group. The great part about a group is you are not trading time for money as much as you would be in a one-on-one circumstance. 

The first time I ran a group program, it was group coaching. You show up every week or however often we had the calls. We had a 1.5-hour call and we brown table that up. We would have a group. Somebody would go first and say, “I need support with this, this week,” and we talked it out. Everyone else who’s on the call in the group can ask their question and get coached. They can also learn from the other people who are in the group and who are maybe asking questions they didn’t think to ask or are working on something that’s not what they are working on right now but will be helpful for them to know down the line and stuff. All the people in that group are working on similar but slightly different projects and businesses because not everyone is going to be identical based on what they are going through. 

I have also run programs like the mastermind. First off, when I first started From Stressed To Success, which is now a self-paced course. The first couple of times I did it, I did the Facebook Group, bonus and with lives. That’s not group coaching because, especially if you are doing lives, it’s a little bit more hands–off. You are not necessarily coaching. That’s where maybe the line gets blurry. You can do what’s more group coaching and a course similar to what I did with The Mastermind or we are going to be doing with Out To Launch. 

Here are a couple of different examples. With Out To Launch, it was the framework of launching. You go through the course, we’ve got the modules, dripping the videos and you are watching the step-by-step of how to create your offer and how to launch. There’s the group coaching component. Each week we would have a call and we have a Slack channel so that everyone could ask their questions and get support during the process. 

I would drop the videos so everyone had the time to watch the teaching material. There would be a coaching part of it on the calls and via Slack. It’s a combination of teaching and coaching where a course is more teaching. One-on-one might be more focused on coaching because you are not necessarily showing up to each one-on-one call teaching information. That’s one example. That’s more like a group course hybrid that I would refer to as a group program. With the mastermind, it was even different than that because the mastermind was a group and one-on-one hybrid. 

There were video modules and a video vault. There was some framework there but it wasn’t necessarily like, “You are going to get from point A to point B,” like Out To Launch was. By the end of Out To Launch, you will have launched. The mastermind was more like supplemental supportive materials and guest training based on where everyone in that program was at. The mastermind is an intimate program. That’s maxed out at ten people. That’s a broad overview of a couple of different examples of what a group program can look like and show you that you have some flexibility in there. We are getting the weeds where some of these offers can be combined but you have the opportunity to figure out what works for you based on what it is that you are seeking to do and what’s going to work for your clients. 

One signifier of a group program is it does tend to be a higher price than either a course or a membership. I work as a coach in what I would call a group program. It is a much higher price point because everyone gets personalized help on anything at any time. They don’t get one-on-one calls but we have calls where people’s specific questions are answered. They are submitted in advance and they are talking through like now in a one-on-one setting but there are multiple people per call. Also, our Facebook group is full of coaches. Coaches inside of there are helping them with their particular problem and work through things. 

If you are an individual, you don’t have to have that group of coaches that are running. You could eventually be at that point if you are the only one running it helping people with their specific problems within a group setting. It is like a one–on–one meets framework and meets membership. It’s almost like a combination of all of them and then any combination that you wanted. To me, calling it a group program signifies a lot higher touch and probably a lot higher price. 

The key is most likely your price point is going to be determined by the touchpoints that they get from you. A course that they buy, they don’t get access to you and not getting coached by you. That might be a lower price. A membership, maybe it’s once a week or once a month that you are meeting with them. That’s a level above. A group program is going to be another level above where you’ve probably got weekly or maybe even multiple times a week calls and you’ve got Slack access or a Facebook group where you can ask questions and continue that support. One-on-one is you would get one-on-one specific support. 

Think of it as the ladder of closeness to you, the touchpoints that they get to you and that will also determine your price. I agree that a group coaching program is something that allows you to scale up your prices from membership but scaled–down your prices from a one–on–one. It can make it more approachable for clients in that sense because they are still able to get support from you but without a super high one-on-one price. 

Group momentum happens when people see other people having wins. Click To Tweet

For you, you can ultimately make more by doing that even though the price is lower because you are teaching everyone in a group. You have five people in a group and one-hour call per week, that’s one hour of coaching versus five hours of coaching per week if they were all one–on–one clients. With four hours back in your day, what can you do? How can you monetize that? How can you grow your business? It allows you to continue to grow and scale from there. Growing the numbers of the program is one thing but also getting time back in your day to work on money–making activities, plan your launch, plan your social media, that’s all–important stuff too. 

Who is a group program good for? What kind of coach or teacher? It has to be someone that enjoys working with people. I love working with people but for whatever reason, I don’t like working one–on–one, partly because of the trading time for money thing. I’m interested to hear when we get into the one-on-one why Katie loves that. I don’t tend to love that but I love working in groups. It’s a little bit of a different dynamic. It’s like you are not the only one that’s responsible for their results. Everybody in the group is cheering them on. There’s also where I feel like this group momentum that happens as they see other people having won. When other people ask questions that maybe they are afraid to ask, they are embarrassed that they don’t know the answer. You have to be a person that wants to work with people but I do think there’s a different vibe in working in a group versus working one–on–one. 

There are and a lot of that comes with the group itself. When I ran the last round of the mastermind, I had a lot of people join who worked with me before who either came directly from being one–on–one clients or who had been clients in the past and came back as well as some new people. A lot of people had already worked with me in a one-on-one setting. When we made it a group, by the end of the group, it was no longer like, “This was my client. That was my client.” It was like, “This is the group.” 

ln the training or in the group calls, when people would ask questions, everyone would be in the chat, hyping them up, giving them ideas, sharing their support. We used to call ourselves witches because we would make all witchy jokes. The group became its own identity and, in a sense, the program did too because you have that chemistry there. That’s why one of the cons of group coaching is you have to be particular with the clients that you choose to work with. 

The mastermind was six months. Out To Launch is four months. If you are working with people for six months or even longer than that and you have a bad egg or you have someone who’s not vibing with the group or you choose people who aren’t ideal clients. You let them in any way because you are feeling desperate. You end up stuck with people who aren’t a good fit for long periods. You also risk that group dynamic becoming lower or not as good if you are not particular with the people that you let in. 

In the group program that I work in, we do not allow toxic people. If we see even one sign of them being toxic, we give them a warning. At some point, we say, “You are not allowed to show up for the calls. You are not allowed to come into the group.” It’s not good for the whole group and it will mess up the entire vibe. That is important. Do people need to generally be in a similar place or is it okay that they are a beginner and further along like in a membership? 

It depends. For something like Out To Launch, the ideal client there is going to be way more specific because you are coming in knowing that you are going to launch an offer like one of the things we are talking about. Some people might have a business already established. Some people might be brand new. That doesn’t matter a lot but you want to make sure everyone is in the same place where they know they are working towards this specific goal. 

For a mastermind, for instance, you have more flexibility there. Some business masterminds will say, “This is for people making this range of income and then the high level is for this range of income.” I don’t particularly do that with mine. I haven’t felt the need to yet. I make sure I’m vetting people. With my mastermind, in particular, I don’t like to put too many specifics on it because the ideal client for that is a multifaceted music entrepreneur. A lot of people who are in the mastermind were musicians, coaches and teachers. They had multiple streams of income. I had one client who was a musician and she had a fashion line. Another client was a musician and she started teaching songwriters how to write and record their music. 

The goal of The Mastermind is you are a multifaceted entrepreneur. How do we balance all of these things? How do we make sure we are growing every part of your career so people are going to have different projects but in that sense, they are on the same wavelength? They are all music entrepreneurs doing multiple things, most of them were full–time or at least trying to go full-time. Those were the qualifications but it wasn’t like deal–breakers or they all had to be musicians and coaches or they all had to be coaches or anything like that. 

One thing that can help when you are vetting people for a group program is at least try to have a certain core of similar knowledge. What you don’t want is someone who’s a total beginner that doesn’t understand the terms that everyone is using. “What’s an opt–in?” For example, let’s say somebody has never done business online before, and then they jump into a group program with a bunch of people that know how to create a landing page either they are going to be lost or the people that are further ahead might be a little annoyed that you are asking basic questions. That’s one thing to think about in a group program to at least try to have people that are on the same wavelength. They don’t have to be doing the same projects but they at least need to have a similar base of knowledge so nobody feels like they are either totally lost or bored by the conversation. 

Sometimes you can offer people bonuses. If someone is like, “You are a perfect fit but you are struggling with this one thing or lacking in this one area. I’m going to give you complimentary access to my course. You can do this as pre–work and then you will be all set to go.” You can do that. If somebody is like, “You need to go through this program first. You are simply not ready.” You need to be able to make the call as the coach so you are not welcoming someone into a program that they are not a good fit for point–blank. It’s not going to be good for either of you if that happens. 

Let’s talk about one-on-one because I know that you have done a lot of one-on-one and that’s how you started. Why do you love one–on–one? Who do you think is the best fit for doing one–on–one? 

I love one-on-one because I’m a control freak. 

I don’t think so because I’m a control freak and I don’t. 

I started with one–on–one. That is great both to start and to scale your business. When you are getting started, you heard Bree and I talk about frameworks and stuff that you might use for a course or group coaching program. One-on-one is a great way to test the waters. No one is going to want to join a course where you are like, “I made up this framework for the first time and no one has ever used it before. It has never been tested. I have no testimonials but buy my core and give it a try.” Nobody wants to do that. 

When you work one–on–one with people, that’s where you can start to try out the framework through coaching and start to see, what’s working? What doesn’t? What do we do that got results? When you are getting started, one–on–one is a great place to start because not only does it bring in higher income without you having to have as big of an audience. If you are bringing on five clients to make the same amount of money that you would bring on 50 clients in membership or a course, that’s a big difference. You don’t need as big of an audience to get started with one-on-one. You need a few people who are good fits. 

When it also comes to scaling your business, one–on–one is great because it becomes your highest ticket offer. Now you’ve got courses, membership, group programs or a couple of different offers that build upon each other. One-on-one is going to be for those people who want VIP access to you, all of your product suite, everything you have to offer and they want your hands in their business. That’s how I look at one–on–one as a business coach. It’s like, “I have my hands in my client‘s businesses and we are doing all of the strategy planning together.” They are getting my feedback on everything like working through mindset blocks because that’s what I coach on. 

Let’s say you are a music teacher or you are teaching on marketing, it would be the same thing but in that specific area essentially, it’s the most support that you could ever give someone based on what you are willing to give. With that, it’s also going to be the highest price point that you would charge in your offer suite, which is a win-win. That also makes the barrier of entry for people joining. Sometimes a little bit higher because not everyone is going to be able to afford the higher one-on-one prices. 

What is great about one-on–one is it has built–in accountability. You know that your people are either going to get results or they are going to bail because they are not doing the work. That helps you get a lot of great testimonials. 

To answer your question of why I love it so much, I like it because it allows me to deepen my relationship with the person I’m working with. There’s nothing bad about this but I’m going to use an example. If you have a big membership and you are having calls with people once a month let’s say, you are maybe not as able to know as much or go as deep in people’s businesses because you simply don’t have the time to do so. With one-on-one, especially with a longer program or a continued relationship, you can get to know someone’s program, business or whatever it is you are working on. You can do more impact, work, get specific. That’s why I like it a lot. 

Coming from someone who is a coach in the music industry and working with a lot of other people and other coaches that I have hired to help me, a lot of them don’t know the music industry. When I was getting started, there were no other music industry coaches teaching business. I would go to business coaches, fitness coaches or wellness coaches. They didn’t quite get it. It would take time to warm up to my business and get to know my niche and my industry. If you are working with someone who’s already in that, you don’t have to necessarily think about that. Having the time on one–on–one gives people a way to get a full picture of you, your business and therefore coach you in the best way possible. 

In a membership, I am not able to keep up with everybody as much as I would want to. Sometimes I have to read my newsletter to see the wins of everybody so I can keep up with what everybody is doing. I want to know but I also don’t want to, which is one of the cons of one–on–one, trade my time for money by having one–on–one clients. I would much rather leverage my time to do other things like creating more courses or do more things for my members or do what I’m doing right now with Katie and create a quiz for you. I couldn’t do that if I was spending all my time doing one–on–one. 

With one-on-one, what was hard for me is I had a hard time looking at my calendar and seeing that a lot of my time was filled up. That didn’t sit well with me. I like seeing an open landscape. For me, that is one major reason why I don’t do one-on-one, especially for someone starting, it’s like, “I don’t need to do it because I have a bigger audience. I can run membership and I can have courses.” If you are starting, those other things take a lot longer to build your audience to the point where you can do that. What’s great is there is no barrier to entry other than you know what you want to teach and you might know some people that want to learn from you. 

You don’t have to have like, “Here’s the step by step.” You can have more of a general overview of who you are and how you are going to help them, which makes it easier to market and launch. It’s easier to start with. What’s interesting is if you are at the scaling point of your business where you are building your offers, that’s where I feel like one–on–one becomes interesting. If Bree were to reintroduced or introduce one-on-one, she would be charging top dollar. Now it’s like, “I’m only taking 1 or 2 one–on–one clients. My time is valuable that to do this, I have to be paid my worth.” 

The people who join that are going to be the people who are like, “I’m all in. I want to be in Bree’s energy and her space. I want to have her brain in my business.” Those are the people who are there almost for you as opposed to being there because it’s like, “I want to do this thing so I’m going to take this course that will get me this result.” It’s more like, “I see the vision of what Bree created in her business and I desperately want that and I know that having her inside of my business is going to help me get there.” 

The times that I have paid for super high touch programs and one–on–one are when I saw somebody that had the exact result that I wanted. That’s when it was worth it to me to do that. Someone had built the exact membership that I wanted to create. That’s when it’s worth it to me to pay the higher prices for one–on–one because I know that they can get me the result I want. 

Most likely you also like that person and the way they operate. That makes a big difference when it comes to one-on-one as well. When you are working so closely with someone, you want to get along with them. You want to not think the same as if you are validating each other but you want to have similar values and get along. Most likely, the people who are hiring you, are going to look up to you, admire you and know that they are a good fit to work with you as they go through the process to apply. 

The benefit of one-on-one is that we all have blind spots in our business. I have blind spots and that is why I have mentors. We can’t always see everything from every angle in our own business. We get sometimes major tunnel vision and we miss out on things that could be fixed easily but we are missing it. That’s where one-on-one can be super helpful for people that utilize it. 

This has been thorough for everyone who has gone to this point. Hopefully, you have already taken the quiz, KatieZaccardi.com/quiz or ProfitableMusician.com/quiz. Go take the quiz. Let us know on Instagram, which one you’ve got and which offer you are thinking about introducing in your business. Before we wrap up, Bree, is there anything else that we didn’t cover on these four offers that people can consider adding as a stream of revenue? 

 

We covered so much. Even if you read all of that and you are like, “Who am I to be doing this?” I’m telling you that you can do this. You have knowledge and experience that’s going to be valuable to somebody else. If you have never done this before, you can test it out one-on-one. You can see that you’ve got something that can become a course. If you are somebody that’s already teaching and you have been teaching for years but you haven’t jumped into the online space and created a course or a membership, I highly recommend that you look into that. That’s going to be a way that you can scale what you are already doing and get back some of your time. I have friends who used to teach voice lessons back-to-back solid, they were completely booked out and they had a waitlist. They introduced a membership and now they’ve got so much of their time back that they are almost like, “I am not used to having this much time. I have hobbies again.” 

That’s something I will mention too because I have had people reach out to me and say, “I’m trying to scale my business. I feel like I need to hire on coaches or teachers underneath me.” That can be a solution. You can scale your business by hiring coaches or teachers that are below you that you take cut off but you are still going to be trading time for hours. You are still going to be doing that. If that’s you, use this episode as brain fuel to figure out, “How can I think of other ways to scale? What might be a good fit for me to scale that maybe isn’t hiring more people, which can also seem risky but instead allows me to get more time back? Also, grow my client base in a way that works for me and my business model and my interests.” 

Take the quiz because we try to look at all the angles and ask you questions from all the angles that you may not have thought of to help you figure out, which would be the best fit for you. 

Now the next step in the process once you have decided what you are going to do is to launch that offer. Bree and I are going to have a lot more content coming out in the future. Make sure that you are following the Out To Be Podcast and me on Instagram. You can also subscribe to my email list but you will be able to do that if you take the quiz. Bree, where can we keep up with you? 

ProfitableMusician.com, FeMusician.com for the Female Entrepreneur Musician Podcast. We will be having episodes around this as well on those shows and also follow me on Instagram, @ProfitableMusicianLLC. I’m going to be talking about some of this stuff on my IGTV and things coming up. 

 

Important Links

• Katie Zaccardi 
• Podcast – Out To Be Podcast Past Episode 
• ProfitableMusician.com/quiz 
• Out To Be Podcast 
• KatieZaccardi.com/quiz 
• Women of Substance 
• Facebook Group – Female Entrepreneur Musician & Women of Substance Radio Podcast 
• Rock Your Next Release Program 
• The Wealthy Musician Bundle 
• From Stressed to Success 
• The Audience Builder Bundle.  
• The Mastermind – The Out to Be Mastermind 
• Out To Launch 
• Instagram – Katie Zaccardi 
• ProfitableMusician.com 
• FeMusician.com 
• @ProfitableMusicianLLC – Instagram 

 

About Katie Zaccardi

Katie Zaccardi is a music career coach for musicians, music teachers, and music coaches, helping them grow their careers & their bank accounts while ditching overwhelm, self-doubt, and burnout for good. Growing up in New York, Katie watched her parents run an online commerce business and knew she would be an entrepreneur…someday, somehow.

After dedicating 10+ years of her life to the music industry as a student, indie artist, and music industry professional, and creating a life of freedom, abundance, & music for herself, she founded “Out to Be” to give women in music the tools, support, & motivation to do the same.