From One-on-one to Group Coaching: How to Create an Online Course
Shifting from one-to-one to group coaching has caused many coaches to have a panic attack. You don’t want to lose your magic, so if you’re trying to build something more evergreen, much of what you do needs you in the room needs to shift and adjust, and if you’re group flavor is a live cohort, the curriculum needs to adapt to work for more people in the room.
That's exactly what Corie, my last guest, was hoping to do. Her one-on-one ADHD coaching spots were limited, people had to wait months, and the cost was a barrier. So she decided to build a course.
She came to me because she had all the content and didn’t know where to start. She knew that not having her in the room would be a flop if she just bundled it “as is.”
And she wasn’t wrong. When we started talking through the structure, we hit why her gut was telling sending her in a million different directions: the teaching order that worked when she was in the room would not work when she was not.
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When you’re shifting to group coaching, you need to account for removing yourself as the connective tissue for learning.
Group Coaching as Accessibility Can’t Be “Just Press Record”
If you’ve been wondering how to create an online course as part of the move to group coaching in your business, the first thing you need to recognize is that one-on-one coaching looks different from group coaching. You can’t just recycle the content as is.
Corie is no stranger to helping people find tools that actually work for their brains, so she knew that wasn’t the way. BUT she had very limited one-on-one coaching spots. When people had discovery calls and wanted to work with her, she often had to tell them she could not see them for another two months, or the only available time slot did not work for them. It was frustrating for everyone.
So she wanted to build a course. That’s often how a lot of coaches end up building courses: to offer something more affordable than one-on-one coaching.
Sometimes, the thing is something people could access in their own time, when they got that burst of motivation, or in bed before going to sleep at night, if it’sself-paced group coaching. Sometimes it’s just something that would reach more people and create access, if it’s cohort based group coaching.
She came in with a clear structure already mapped out. She had been teaching this content in workshops and groups for a while. She knew what worked one-on-one.
Start with mindfulness and self-awareness.
Then move through:
time management,
Motivation,
prioritization,
working memory, and
execution.
Each area got its own module with education, reflection, strategies, and an action plan.
But as we worked through, it became clear that this structure was relying very heavily on the one-on-one setting.
So how DO you take what works when you’ve got them one-on-one and make it work when you’re group coaching (evergreen or not)?
How Create an Online Course for Group Coaching That’s Designed for YOUR Learners
You find the patterns of the people you actually work with. We’ve been talking aboutyou not being in the room,but really this is about designing for what THEY actually need.
Typically, in her coaching, Corie’s foundation was mindfulness and self-awareness, and she built skills on top of those in her coaching process. When you remove her from the one-on-one room (or remove entirely), you remove the accountability. You remove the reminders. You remove the person who is helping them manage their time to show up every week.
And her learners are people with ADHD. Time management is often their biggest challenge. If they cannot carve out time to do the course, they will not finish it. So starting with mindfulness, even though it is foundational, might mean they never get to the time management module that would actually help them complete the course.
That is why I suggested flipping the order. Start with time management. Not just so they learn it first, but so they can use it immediately to actually do the course. And then revisit it throughout, because managing time to complete a course is not a one-and-done thing. It is ongoing.
The mindfulness piece was similar. Corie normally taught it as the first module, the foundation everything else builds on. But mindfulness is not something you learn once and check off. Regulation is constant, especially for ADHD brains. So instead of making it a module, we talked about weaving it through every lesson.
As she is teaching time management, she is also teaching the mindfulness piece that makes time management work. As she is teaching motivation, she is weaving in the regulation piece.
The final big piece for helping her specific students was breaking lessons down smaller than she normally would and adding in more integration lessons (where multiple tools are pulled together). Not just because smaller chunks are good practice, but because executive function challenges mean what feels bite-sized to a neurotypical learnermight still feel overwhelming to someone with ADHD.
Just remember this isn’t about you; it’s about figuring outwhere your learners NEED you in the roomand designing in ways that account for the places you’ll be absent.
Three Things to Consider When You’re Designing for Group Coaching
Being accessibleas you shift how you’re delivering things often means redesign (that’s not starting from scratch, but thinking from scratch). Some things need to be recurring and that has to be baked into the design. Expertise = amnesiaand so you’ll want to break things down smaller than what you normally do.
Accessibility might require redesign, not just adaptation
Sometimes the first logical step in that move to group coaching is “how do I adapt this?” BUT that lead to leaning too heavily into the structures that worked in your one-on-one coaching sessions (or even the live group coaching if you’re shifting to evergreen). Your first logical step needs to be the barebones structure first, so you can see it from a birdseye view.
That view lets you see the learner’s journey.
We saw this with Corie. She wanted to create access. More people could afford a course than one-on-one coaching. More people could fit a course into their schedule than a weekly group call.
But accessibility is not just about removing barriers to entry. It is also about designing for how your people learn when they do not have the supports they would have in a live setting.
For Corie, that meant her teaching order had to change. Starting with mindfulness made sense when she was there every week reminding people to practice it, holding space for them to process it, helping them regulate when things got hard. But without her there, starting with mindfulness meant people might never get to the time management tools they needed to actually complete the course.
So accessibility required redesign. Not just adapting her existing structure to async format, but rethinking the order, the pacing, what gets taught once versus what gets woven through, what needs to be smaller, where people need more integration practice.
If you are building a course to create access for people who cannot work with you live, ask yourself: what am I providing in the live setting that needs to be built into the course structure itself? What changes when I am not in the room?
Some things are cyclical, not linear
This one can be the hardest to see on your own because you do it so naturally. Especially if you’ve been doing this awhile. When you’re coaching someone one-on-one, they have your full attention and you bring them back to things as you see they need it.
Group coaching removes that moment for you, so you have to anticipate it.
Corie normally taught mindfulness as the first part of her process. The foundation. Then you move on to the skills.
But mindfulness is not something you learn once and move on from. Regulation is constant. You do not master self-awareness in week one and then just apply it for the rest of the course. You are practicing it continuously, in every new context, with every new challenge.
The same was true for time management in this course. It is not just the first thing they learn. It is the thing they need to keep reassessing and adjusting throughout the course to actually finish it.
So instead of making mindfulness a module you complete and move on from, we talked about weaving it through every lesson. And instead of teaching time management once at the beginning and assuming people would apply it, we talked about revisiting it throughout - building in spots where learners reassess how they are managing their time to complete the course and adjust as needed.
This is true beyond ADHD learners and beyond Corie's course.
Some things are cyclical, not linear. Spaced repetition and recall are how everyone learns. If something matters, it needs to cycle back through, not just appear once in a linear progression.
So if you have something in your course that is foundational, that learners need to keep practicing and applying in new contexts, ask yourself: does this need to be a module they complete? Or does it need to be woven through everything else?
Break it down smaller than you think you need
Sometimes the fix isn’t what you think. When you become an expert in something you forget all the tiny little pieces that become automatic. I call it expert amnesia. What it can lead to if you don’t include enough steps for a beginner is overwhelm and overload.
Corie already knew her lessons needed to be engaging. She was not planning to just talk at people for 45 minutes. She had worksheets, reflection prompts, pause points where learners would stop and do something before coming back to the video.
But we talked about breaking things down even smaller. Not just becausesmaller chunks are easier to complete, but because executive function challenges mean what feels manageable to a neurotypical learner might still feel overwhelming to someone with ADHD.
We also talked about adding integration lessons. Spots where the lesson is not Corie teaching something new, but learners pulling together multiple tools they have already learned and practicing using them in combination. Because learning tools in isolation is one thing. Knowing how to use them together is another.
This is not unique to ADHD learners. Everyone benefits from smaller chunks and integration practice. But when you are designing for people who struggle with executive function, it becomes necessary, not just nice to have.
If your course is for people who have the kind of challenges that make courses hard to complete - time management, focus, overwhelm, executive function - break things down smaller than you think you need to. And remember that what your brain has automated still needs breakdown for a new person no matter what. Build in spots where learners practice integrating what they have learned, not just consuming more content.
How to move to group coaching in the form of an online course
Step 1. Identify what you provide when you are in the room that needs to be built into your course structure.
If you are building a course to create access for people who cannot work with you live, do not just adapt your existing teaching structure to async format. Ask yourself: what am I providing in the live setting? Accountability? Reminders? Regulation support? Pacing? What changes when I am not there? Build that into the design.
Step 2. Identify what is cyclical, not linear.
If you have something foundational that learners need to keep practicing and applying in new contexts, do not make it a module they complete and move on from. Weave it through. Revisit it. Build in spaced repetition. Some things are not meant to sit on a line.
If you are building a course to create access for people who cannot work with you one-on-one or live, think about what needs to change when you are not in the room with just them. If you want to know how to create an online course but are stuck somewhere, grab a strategy session, if you want me to just tell you what to do, check out the course audit options.
Wanna Connect with Corie?
Podcast Music credit: Alex Mitchum
Alex, Catrina's youngest brother, was a jazz guitarist. This was one of the last stems he recorded before he died, and his family established a scholarship in his name at his alma mater. Please consider donating: https://www.alexmitchum.com/scholarship