Episode #55 – Leaving Teaching To Help Clients Leverage Group Programs – with Gemma Gilbert

Podcast Introduction and Mission 0:00

Welcome to the Startup Support Surgery podcast, where we light the entrepreneurial spark in medics and healthcare professionals. Join me, Dr. Jo Watkins, GP, business coach and co-founder of The How People, on a journey to discover where your medical know-how meets the business world. This will help you find some clarity on how to balance work, passions and family so that you can gain more freedom and control over your life but also continue to help people, which is actually why most of us went into medicine to start with.

Embarking on this entrepreneurial adventure is not easy. It is a roller coaster of emotions, but it's hugely rewarding and exciting in the process. Drawing in on my 20 years of blending medicine and business as a GP, I am here to share experiences, insights and lessons. Expect lively chats, expert interviews and real life stories from medics who have taken their own path. Let's break free from traditional healthcare norms and explore more innovative ways of making a real difference to people's health and wellbeing, along with paving the way for a brighter future for us as healthcare professionals.

Oh, don't miss my free PDF called From Stethoscope to Startup, which is an 11-page guide in the show notes full of practical help and advice. This is your roadmap to kick-starting your journey with us. Enjoy the Show. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while and thinking, I know I want to do something different. I just need help getting clear on what to, do and what that actually is. Then clarity is the place to start. Over 30 days, you get the chance to work one-to-one with me and to come along to The Group Calls inside my main program as well, so that you can start to get a feel of the support and coaching and community that is needed around you to This is perfect for people right at the beginning of processing all their thoughts and ideas.

But it's also great for those who have already got some of the sprinkles, as I say, in place. Maybe that's a website, an Instagram page, and idea, some new training, but you've still got no real traction and no steady clients coming in. And that can give you the feeling that maybe it is just not going to happen. By the end of Clarity, if it feels like the right fit for you and for me, then there's an opportunity to come into the main year-long group programme for deeper support, coaching and community.

If this sounds like something you're interested in, please have a look at www.joeworkins.com where you'll find a link, plus there is an apply to work with me form if you are really not sure what sort of help and support you need, fill that in and I will get back to you. I am really excited about the podcast today. I'm interviewing Gemma Gilbert, who is a business coach who helps established service providers turn their deep, nuanced work into a scalable group program. Gemma is a former teacher and she blends strategy, curriculum design with calm, ethical marketing approach.

Gemmer lives in Nottingham with her family, two dogs, and a rotating flock of chickens that you will hear about later on in the interview.

Clarity Offer and Listener Support 3:25

Jemma and I, as you'll find out during this interview, have worked together closely and am really, really privileged and honoured to be interviewing her on the podcast. So Gemma's random fact is that both her parents were head teachers and you actually went to your mum's school and they both told you never to become a teacher, so you thought you'd become teacher. Exactly that classic rebelling against authority, did the thing they told me not to do, learnt my lesson the hard way. Love that. But do they just say, told you so now?

Yeah, well, my brother became a teacher as well. We were very teacher. I feel like when you've got one in the family, you're sort of drawn to it. They gave me a really good work ethic because they worked very, very hard. But they also showed me in that what I didn't want for my business because, they were out early, back late. We had an au pair who looked after us. So they were very career driven to provide for us, you know, and also follow their own ambition, I'm sure. But, when I had my son, it was one of those realizations of, is that the choice?

Do I have to choose the career or being present? OK. Lots to get into there. So we've done, I've introduced you, but I'd love you to, in your own words, tell me, you know, who you are and who help and then we're going to go back a little bit about that story and we are going get stuck into your favourite subject around group work and marketing. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Joe. So I'm Gemma Gilbert, and the core thing I help my clients achieve is to create a leverage group program that reduces their one-on-one time and allows them to serve in a group dynamic.

And I helped them grow that so it's sort of their core business. and I help them to fill that group program without these sort of high pressure super salesy launches that we see people do. And I do that inside my program, Amplify, which is kind of hybrid group and one-on-one. My whole business model is just this one offer where I serve really deeply. That is how we met. I was trying to remember last night the actual person that introduced me to you, but Two years ago, just gone two years, ago we had a one-to-one and then I jumped into a quite intensive period of time working with you because I knew exactly who I wanted to help and how I want to to them.

And I know that I went into group having done a lot of one to one work prior. That's how we met, wasn't it? I came into Amplify and that period, September 2023, you made a massive difference to me and my business and confidence. And I don't think I'd be doing what I'm doing now if it wasn't for you. Yeah. And you know, you were such a great client as well, because you came with a really clear vision. You were like, I've got this deadline, and I have this opportunity. I want to start the group now.

So just sort of strategizing and being that sounding board and creating that strategy, You just went and launched your group within a month. and, you know, and then jumped into Amplify. So for me, that was a real, when you have clients like you, it's such a pleasure because you just had feet to the fire. I'm going to do the work and you've just flourished and that's down to you. It was it was privilege to be by your side during that time. Oh, thank you. And I think we have to remember that, and I talk about this a lot with the people that I work with within my program now, is that it's that risk, right?

It's investing, you've got to invest in yourself.

Gemma Gilbertu2019s Background and Business Model 7:10

You've gotta back yourself and find the right mentor and the the person at the time to support you, I mean, we're starting at head and we gonna go back, but I guess you had those people in your life that you invested in and those moments that have made a big difference to your career as well, have you? Yeah, especially in the first couple of years. So I invested with my first coach right from the beginning. And I just, you know, I was in a corporate career. I wanted to make as fast a progress as I could, and I didn't want to take any of the missteps that I knew would cost me time and energy because I had a limited time to do it work.

and working with him was absolutely pivotal. I made very fast progress. Like I got fully booked with one-on-one clients within eight months, and that's not typical. And I want to say that because I know people are like, cool, I'll just do that. But I went all in, all-in straight away. All of the fears I have, it was just like I'm just going to go for this 100 percent and ignore every fear because that is the only way I will know if I can make this work. Yeah, OK, so take us back to that time so we can understand how we talked about.

We've already mentioned this one on one and group and I really wanted to dig deep within into that with you. But talk us through that pattern like you were a teacher. Tell us how you're doing what you doing now. I was a teacher back in 2018, I wasn't a corporate role. I got very disillusioned with the politics of teaching and I knew I didn't want to go into leadership. So I moved into educational sales and i was selling this brilliant educational software around the country and that's where I really got like a taste for sales.

And also marketing because it was small company, so you're sort of involved in a lot of things. But the company had been bought out whilst I was on maternity leave. And I walked back into an entirely different landscape. I had my job role changed overnight. Their head office had moved to South London, so it was a six-hour drive for me from Nottingham to south London. I was absolutely miserable. And I realized this traveling sales role and the company takeover, men that staying in that role was, absolutely impossible.

I'd been doing a coaching qualification and I want to make this work, but I just had to pick a niche and didn't really feel like I had any specialist expertise. So I started, I remember my coach said to me at the time, Because I said, I want to help moms like me to leave the corporate gig who feel trapped and want be there for their kids and start a business. But how can I help people with that? I've never done that before. And he said well, you can either go away and get that experience and come back when you feel qualified to do that and do it.

Or we can just find a way for you to move forward in integrity now. You can coach, because that's the thing I had trained to. Do you could just coach people through the blocks. So I was like, yeah, let's do that. That sounds way faster. So, I picked that route and I just started coaching people. And it was terrifying. I had massive imposter syndrome. It fed into my deepest core wound that I'm not good enough. But I, just did it. Just took those steps. Very good at kind of following a game plan. When he was, like you're going to mark it on Facebook.

Cool. Good at writing. you're going to do videos. Cool, I'm going do that. You're gonna go put out 20 free offers and just book 20 sales calls, 20 for free coaching school. I was like, fine, i'll do. And I just did everything he said over and over again. i just put myself in the arena and that action, and I guess not being afraid to test stuff. Like I ran in person workshops for like £10 a ticket just to like get in I started working with him in August 2018 and by June 2019, I had 12 one-on-one clients, maybe like 500 quid a month or something.

And I was like, ah, i can see this working. You were specifically dealing with people at that time, your niche was those people in the corporate sector who are wanting to leave their jobs and do other things or just start a business? Just start a business. Mum's in the corporate space. So I had a Facebook group back then called Mummy's Got Clients, which always made me laugh because everyone was kind of like, it makes you sound like you're a prostitute. And I was like I like that humor. It was kind of back when Facebook groups weren't everywhere.

They weren' as saturated as they are now. And I was just this honest, direct voice speaking about my experience as I grew my business and my values as a mother and how I wa changing it. I just attracted people to me that resonated with that message. That stayed my niche for a couple of years, the whole Mums in Business. So I attended local networking groups for mums, Facebook group for moms. journey for a while, but really, really quickly within a year, I realized that one-on-one work I just found it so draining.

And it's one of my favorite things about running a business. It just shines like a light and a mirror on all of the things you hadn't really registered about yourself. My changing energy levels, my mood changes, Obviously, it gets worse as you get into your late 30s, early 40s. And I just thought this business isn't sustainable just doing back to about one-on-ones a week.

From Teaching to Coaching and Early Growth 12:40

Yep. And that's when things shifted into this group. So let's just go back to, you've mentioned a couple of things there that I'd just like to sort of pick up on. You mentioned this sort just say yes, like testing, experimental approach. Now that is something that really important in business, isn't it? And it's something I find myself talking about a lot because most of my clients are medics. We don't tend to be desperately experimental for obvious reasons. Yeah. fit. Now, how important is that kind of the concept as opposed to sitting in your house and coming up with your ideas and making sure they're perfect before they get out there?

Talk about that experimental aspect of running a business, especially when you start out. I think there's two routes. One is just finding someone you resonate like you and follow their path and do the things they say. And they can maybe save you some of the experiments to say, just follow this pathway. If you do these things, you're going to have a better chance of succeeding. But I do think there's an area of marketing where we have to accept that that person's blueprint isn't necessarily going to be quite right for us.

For example, the coach I was working with, he'd built his whole audience through like long form blog writing and email marketing. I really quickly realized that I very successful running challenges. And very good running workshops. Like when I'm speaking to people and doing that presenting teaching thing that obviously comes from my teaching career, That's when people resonated with me. And it wasn't, you know, without experimenting, I wouldn't have found that and it was finding that that accelerated my progress.

So I'd say if you're afraid to experiment, You're going to have to accept that your progress is going be a lot slower because the fastest way to succeed is to fail faster. Yeah. And like you say, you're not always going to be completely aligned with somebody else's blueprint. You've got to work out what works for you. That's that classic transferable skills you've described there, isn't it? That teaching arena, that structure that you bring to that group program that we can talk about in a minute.

I love that. Thank you for sharing that! What about niche? How important is that? Everybody panics. retracting and sort of like wanted to hide behind a cushion every time I mention that dreadful awful word because actually most of the medics I work with want to go out there and help anyone with everything because that's what we do especially in general practice that what's we're actually trained to do is to be able to help an old man with Parkinson's, then a neonate who's got, you know, unwell with a respiratory illness, menopausal woman, a teenager with self-harm, all in an hour.

So why do we need to niche? Why is it so important? So as, say, a GP, your job is to be a generalist, and you have the general population coming to see you. With a business, we have to attract someone. And you can't attract everyone. It's just impossible because not everyone resonates with the same messaging, has the Same problems. Marketing is so saturated. AI is So prevalent. Unless you choose to specialize, you're going to struggle to And I was a generalist for such a long time and I resisted it just like everyone else.

The second I dared to specialize into group programs, I attracted higher quality clients, became more easily referred, my audience grew, and became known for something. I became credible because I had more case studies in that area. There are some people that can get away with not niching. And people always look to these people and say, but they're not niching, how do they do it? If you are a charismatic, influential personality that naturally compels people to you, that magnetises people, you can probably get away with your energy doing the heavy lifting.

If that's not you, right? So I was okay as a generalist. I had a really great generalists membership that did pretty okay. We grew that to 10K months. That is because I'm good with writing and with words and like constructing an argument to say to people, this is what I think the problem is. Most people don't have that kind of marketing skillset. And so, if you don't niche, If you choose to stay general, you're making your marketing immediately harder, because you are constantly jumping between contexts, jumping, between problems, Jumping between solutions, jump in between insights.

It's just not enough in the marketing landscape that we're in, it will be impossible to get known. And AI has just made that harder and harder, hasn't it? Particularly if you're relying on 2D content, whether that's posting on, writing on social media with a graphic. That stuff is just dilute now, isn't? Showing up as yourself and running little videos and making sure that people can see the person is becoming more and more important. So if your relying writing, you've got to know exactly who you are talking to.

Completely, but not even that, even within my niche of, you know, what I call evergreen group programs, which are group programmes you enroll into kind of on an ongoing basis, rather than just running like one group together in a cohort. Within that niche, I'm competing with my peers in that Niche. And so like a good exercise to do is to go to AI and say, well, how do I get found through AI in this niche? Because I've got my first few clients through a recommendations now. And AI is not just looking for that niche, it's looking at the philosophy under that.

It pointed to me and said, you champion this no-launch approach, this spacious, slow business, so you need to be creating blog posts, YouTube videos that reflect that philosophy. Otherwise, when someone says, who can help me with a group program? It's got so many people to choose from, why would my name come up?

Why Experimentation and Niching Matter 18:35

Fabulous. So let's talk a little bit about this group thing. A lot of people see on Instagram or on LinkedIn that running a group program is the panacea to having a profitable, sustainable, scalable business, which I think we both agree that it is. Tell me about the steps to get there though, because I sometimes a lot people it seems to me, are in a rush to get there. And I suppose maybe I was in rush because I had a deadline, but I have also done a lot of one-to-one work. I've done this. Daniel Priestley put something on Instagram yesterday that just caught my eye, and I haven't had the chance to look at it properly.

But the beginning bit of almost like an apprenticeship learning that needs to happen. You talked about the fact that you did that very quickly because you invested in a coach, but there's a degree of learning and a. Degree of doing and then there is kind of like right. I know what I want to do now. Know what this looks like. Am ready to go. So is what's the stage before in terms of do you think everyone should do one to one? Do you thing you can go straight into group like I realize this is nuanced and we're not going to be able to get all of your all your insights.

But what about those people are saying I just want I want to differentiate here between running a one-off like test beta group and scaling your business with a group. I've had plenty of people come to me and say, look, I have done this in different guises. Can you help me launch a beta? Of course. Most people, if you can rally your network, could pull together five people at a discounted price and run a test. That's not that hard. Scaling your business with a group requires an audience, systems, a sales process, and a more complexity that we're going to build in to fill that group on repeat.

Yes, I believe people should do one on one first. Why? Because it just seems bonkers to test it for the first time with more than one person. I don't know if I can help you, I've not tested it. Do you want to come see if i can't help? Why should I trust you? why don' t I go to someone that has a proven framework or experience that they can point to? Now we tend to buy though from people we know like and trust. So if you've done sort of different jobs or transferable things like I said you probably could just run a one-off group.

If you're super set on that and you just want to find five people because that would motivate you to show up and they understand that dynamic that you are testing this. then go for it. But I like if then people work with me and they're like, cool, how do I turn that to 10K months? I'm like OK, so we've got to spend the next few years building your audience and marketing strategy and your trust and credibility in case studies and all of that stuff that allows you to generate consistent leads. So there's a bit of a gap for me between yes, we can get a group of the ground fast and how we turn into recurring predictable income.

Yeah. And what you're talking about there is that bringing, say, five people into a group program without having to go through that sort of launch cycle. So those people that you see them heavily invested in their marketing for short periods of time to bring six people in to a cohort, and then they disappear off the radar for three months, then do it all over again. That's what we're trying to avoid with this concept. of the Evergreen Group program, is that right? Yes, but even with cohorts, a common pattern that people come to me with is they say, oh, I've launched the group, filled it, had 10 people for the first round.

I launched it again and no one bought. And I look at their messaging, and I'm like, yeah, because your messaging is shit. It's like the people that bought that, bought because they are fans of yours, because the knew you. Your messaging never stood up against was this a repeatable offer that you could sell. That's the key to business growth. Are you solving an actual real high value problem that is simple to explain and people need now that can sell over and over again, whether that's in a cohort over, and ever again or evergreen like I roll mine, which is I enroll clients month on month.

I kind of believe that everyone will get to the point after running so many cohorts that they're like, oh, this doesn't make sense. I keep having to start again and my income drops every time. And like I have to restart the program. What if the programme was just open all the time and I enrolled clients into it? But it's a later stage of business that you realise that model makes more sense because it doesn' t make sens to close your main offer constantly. Yeah. And like you say, it's that tweaking around, isn't it?

I remember the first time I did it, I had something like 16 people come in to my beta offer, which was essentially a group program and a course that I hadn't written yet. So, and that was off the back of that deadline, And I had that run up to that. And then I launched this group program and they became my founders that helped me write the program. I showed up live and recorded it and I did everything that you told me to do. Then I went through a stage of bringing people into that group afterwards and came across a problem which was essentially a little bit of the founders not wanting new people to come in.

So there was a bit of that resistance about new people. But also there were there, were new, people coming at very different with very, different things going on in their lives. And sometimes they were going from zero to 100% in a month. Whereas somebody that had been in the program for six months was little bit green eyed monster, because actually that person was making a lot more progress. So, there are problems with groups that people don't anticipate, aren't they? And you help people kind of move through some of these things, because you've seen them a million times.

You know, people come to you and tell you these problems that have come up. I've kind of worked it out now by having people in a sort of smaller container, and then if they want to still come into the main group after 30 days, then they come in to the Main Group program. And that seems to be working for me at the moment, but it's an iterative process, isn't it? There are so many different ways you can run it. You know, like some of my clients don't like to do monthly enrollment, but like almost like a mini launch every three months.

Group Programs, Evergreen Offers, and Common Pitfalls 24:50

you have the situations where you really have a problematic, loud, kind of mouthy client that disrupts the energy. If you let people in that are too early on that you're speaking to who need a different level of conversation and when they're in the main group, they pull it down. You have the problem of not enough people showing up to your group calls and your ego being affected. So this is the brilliant opportunities we have. Just like working with one-on-one clients, we had the same challenges.

They're just in a different context. And this what running your business is all about. It's navigating these challenges and figuring out how do I put in place stronger boundaries, better systems, and make this group into the group I want it to be, but also to enjoy the process and relax a bit and to accept that it will always be imperfect. And that's the beauty of your offer in a group is that you'll never hit a route where you've just got, great, I've got 30 people in here who are all going 100 miles an hour and show up to every call.

It's just never going to happen. I love those examples of problems. You've probably got a list of them now that you've heard every single one, haven't you, of these things that can go wrong. And as a leader and as facilitator of a group, navigating those things can be just as difficult as the pressures of one-to-one. So thanks for sharing that. I just wanted to touch on something that your wrote about this week in your newsletter, that I was actually discussing with somebody I interviewed on the podcast earlier this week who helps people with that sort of GDPR data protection things.

We talked about this business resilience and when things go pear shaped. Like you've had a bit of a shitty month and you wrote a newsletter last week about the fact that you lost your hens. You had fox that obliterated your hen population, which must have been fairly dreadful to deal with. The reason I bring that up is not to cause you any more trauma, but our businesses are potentially vulnerable places, aren't they? Can you just talk a little bit about that analogy between what you talked about with the Fox and our business?

We all like to live in this bubble where everything's just going to work out. And there's actually quite a big risk to running a business, especially when your income is entirely reliant on it. You know, like I am solely responsible for my eight year old son and I can't have my business fail. But the reality is we are at risk. We so often don't take things seriously. like two-factor authentication, like making sure our businesses are secure, having cash reserves, considering the risks that could come into our business that would ruin us overnight like reputation or damage.

So, it was an email about being mindful of those risks and seeing that as one of our CEO roles, not just to get caught up in the momentum and the fun of running a business and how do we grow, but also thinking if you are actually in charge of safeguarding your business's future and considering the risk, what safeguards would you put in place to ensure that the first time a fox comes into your garden, you don't lose everything? very, very important. And this is the stuff that I think can get really sidelined as we get sucked into this, you know, the sexiest stuff about obviously the logos and the branding and posting on social media.

how to get your clients and learning about marketing, this other stuff needs to be ticking along the background, doesn't it? And almost like that sort of monthly CEO time or audit time, are all these things in place? Does anything need reviewing? How are the policies? Are there any changes that need to made? You do that as you would do if you were running a bakery on the high street or a healthcare clinic, you'd be answerable to somebody else. We need be doing that for ourselves, don't we? Totally.

And it's dull, isn't it? No one wants to sit down and consider that risk. You know, I'm not even writing that email saying, I'm great at this. But it did remind me of this brilliant workshop I went to on risk, where we figured out how this woman's business could ruin in 24 hours. And it was so easy to come up with these reasons, because she was a product-based business. We were like, oh, yes, the supplier goes bankrupt. There's a fire in the factory. Suddenly you're like shit. So this guy basically saying that we were putting ourselves at risk just having one business, that you should have different businesses in multiple industries.

And this has been in the back of my mind ever since that workshop is like, what's that second business idea that doesn't put all my, you know how many chicken related sayings there are? You start to realize when you have chicken, that it doesn t put my eggs in one basket. Love the chicken analogies. Right, before we go, and I ask you your top tips to somebody like me a few years ago, I want to just talk about something that you told me and that I tell my clients in terms of marketing. No medic has ever come up to me to say, oh, what?

I just can't wait to market my business. This is so exciting. Most people absolutely dread the idea of it. They're not very good at that. imagine a world where they're going to be confident to show up on social media. It's a real process to kind of move through because no one else is going market your business for you. And I love that. I don't know where it comes from. You did tell me, but that kind hunting and farming in terms of marketing, would you mind just telling the listeners about those two concepts?

Because I think it's really good way of explaining marketing to somebody that is experiencing or listening and hearing about this stuff for the first time. Totally, I love this analogy. It's one of the core metaphors we use in our program weeks at work that I ran with another coach, Greg Faxon. So hunting is where you're gonna go out and search for food, right? So that's your clients. These, you don't wanna be hunting all the time. it's exhausting. You're not even sure if you gonna catch something, but you gotta go and hustle a little bit.

And so these are your short term actions to get clients like putting out free calls, going to a networking meeting, basically doing all of those uncomfortable stuff that puts you in front of people right now because that's your fastest route to get clients. But you don't want to stay hunting forever because when you say hunting, forever, your marketing always feels uncomfortable. You never quite know where your next client is coming from. And this is where farming comes in. When we farm, we sow the seeds for the crops to grow and then we have food in the future.

This is your long term marketing. This Is the importance of growing your email list or taking whatever actions you do to grow your audience and nurture them over time. And it's going to differ for everyone's marketing strategy. So for me, it adds email marketing, and more recently, YouTube.

Business Resilience and Risk Management 31:45

If you're a people person, it might be going to 10 networking events every single month, bringing them to your LinkedIn and posting LinkedIn content. So you need to know your farming strategy because that's the thing that brings you clients long term and builds your credibility. But every now and again, you'll be in a cash crunch, or maybe more often than that. And that is where your hunting skills come in. So you need to master both. You need your Get Clients Now hunting strategy, and you'll need a long-term farming strategy.

And when you know what both of these are, you can have a weekly rhythm that allows you to do mainly farming and hunting if you want to. That's how you get easier clients long term. Absolutely brilliant. I love that analogy. It's brilliant, really simple, and really clear. And it will look different for everybody. So thanks for sharing that. Before we finish, you might have one tip, three tips, I don't mind. But somebody who is in this early stage of thinking about potentially starting a business, doing something alongside the day job initially.

Ideally, most people want to grow something independently that they might be able to replace their income for, you know, that sort of stage of thinking. What would be your advice to somebody in that early stage? So the first one. is find a mentor that is in your niche or industry that has taken the path that you want to take and then cut out all the other noise. Because where people get really overwhelmed is they're listening to 10 different strategies. There's going to be more ways to get to where you to go to.

So many it's overwhelming. The fastest route is taking one route. Don't be the person who's working with a mentor whilst taking advice from elsewhere and challenging your mentor on different advice. Be the client like you were that's all in. What do I have to do? I'm going to take the actions. Great, what next? That's your fastest route to success. That is number one. Okay. Number two, spend more time creating than consuming. So if you are starting your day by reading other people's input and going down rabbit holes and triggering your imposter syndrome, you're never going to be successful.

Start your date by creating. So this is a big shift that I've seen as I grow my business. I'm not working with a coach right now. If I see someone doing something that I think is impressive, I'm like, maybe I should be doing that. I had it this morning. Then my third one, I mentioned this earlier, but I just think it's the most important one. There's a great Brene Brown quote about getting in the arena. She says, this isn't the exact quote, you know, ''I don't take advice from anyone that's not in arena getting their butt kicked with me.'' If you're in a gym, right, and I train a lot in gym and you see someone new come in, You never judge them for taking the first step.

The people that judge are the ones not in the arena, right? So if you feel judgment, let them have their judgment while they sit on the sidelines judging other people because they don't have the guts to get in. The arena get any arena yourself start failing faster and surround yourself by other. People who are also in The Arena. I love those jammer find yourself a mentor. Creating, not consuming, trusting your intuition and getting in the arena. I will expand those and have a listen to them again afterwards because they are fantastic pieces of advice.

It's really exciting. Two years, three months to the day that we started working together pretty much. And I really love that. period of time. I think you're brilliant. We're always listening and listening to what you do, reading your emails. So please, I will be putting in the show notes what have shared. You've got a free resource there for people. How else are people best, which is the best way of people keeping in touch with you or finding out more about what So the two places I am on social media, I limit my social medial, but it's Facebook and Instagram.

So Gemma Gilbert Coaching, come follow me there. The best thing to do is get on my email list. Grab that free resource. It's basically all of my insights of what makes a scalable group offer, one that you can scale to 100K, the five traits of those group offers, and they're super tangible. If you start with those, if you're looking to explore groups, that is a great place to start.

Marketing Mindset and Final Advice 36:35

You asked me earlier what do people actually need to have in place, so let me tell you because I know people are so excited to go to group and they do it too early. In my book, To Join My Program, you have an audience, right? If you come and you've just not grown any audience Why do you think you can grow a group program? So like 500 to 1,000 people on an email list or a core social media platform. Number two, you're seeing patterns. You see that your clients are taking the same steps over and over again and your conversations are getting a bit repetitive.

Your like, oh my God, I said this to Sarah on Monday and now I've got to tell Chris on Tuesday. So you like huh, wouldn't this work well as a great program, there's a little clue. And the third one is you can think of five people that could jump in and run a group with you. That's how I started my first ever group. All I did is I went to five clients that had said no to my one-on-one because I said it was too expensive. And they said, no worries. Do you want to join me in the group? It's half the price.

They all said yes. Yeah. Really, really important. And this is where I absolutely love what I do. But I, you know, I am kind of like baby stage. I'm getting people to that point where they are hopefully at the end of working with me, people are at a point, where, they have got that clarity of who they help. They have started building their audience. They do have those first paying clients. They are working one-to-one with people. they are looking at what they're doing and they all taking those big brave steps.

And then I am like a bird launcher. Well, you know, they come out of the other side and I'm like, right, You want to go to group? you've started group, you know where you need to go and that's where I think this works so beautifully and I'm really proud of the people that I've built relationships with because I will not be recommending anyone to any of my listeners or anyone in my group program that i don't really trust and i haven't worked with myself. You know, Gemma is the right person to go to, but not necessarily at the beginning.

If you're sitting there wondering whether that's the case, I think you'd agree that they need a bit of a stage before you. Obviously I'll be waving my hands and saying that I'm the person for that. But, you know like genuinely you don't want to jump straight in without those three things, do you? I mean I just wouldn't let them in. No offence to the stage they're at, they are going to bring down the level of conversation and they just need to be in a more supportive container that can give them the ride steps of where they were at.

There we are. You heard it here first. So reach out to us and thank you for listening. Thank you, Gemma, for spending your time with us today. Thanks, Jo. I hope this episode has sparked some new ideas or challenged your thinking. Transitioning from medicine to business is not easy. It's about adapting our skills while embracing the unknowns of entrepreneurship. it can be nerve-racking but remember you are not alone on this journey. Please feel free to reach out to me via direct message on LinkedIn or Instagram or just shoot me an email at joe at bendylegs.com for support and don't forget to grab the free PDF from the show notes from stethoscope to startup, which is your go-to guide and resource for diving into entrepreneurship.

Many thanks for tuning in. I will see you next time. Thanks for spending your precious time with me. This has been a Monkey Pants Productions Podcast.