114. Designing Programs That Align With You AND Your Clients - BTS of My CEO Mom Collective

So this episode is a little different. I'm currently very pregnant, less than a week from my due date, sitting in my office telling you the real behind the scenes of how and why I built the CEO Mom Collective the way I did. Not the trendy way. Not the "everyone else is doing it this way" way. The way that actually works for my life right now, with a house full of kids and a business I refuse to let eat me alive.

This isn't just a "come join my membership" episode either (though... you should). It's actually a masterclass in how to think about EVERY offer in your business. Because here's the question I want you asking yourself the whole time you listen: am I building this for what's trendy or what my friend is doing, or for what actually works for me and the person on the other end?

What You'll Learn:

• Why I ditched weekly Zoom calls (and what I do instead that works better for busy moms in every time zone)
• The real reason I chose Slack over a Facebook group, and why voice notes changed how I coach completely
• What makes a membership actually scalable instead of falling apart the second it grows
• Why "just a content library" is the laziest kind of membership and what I built instead
• The difference between the Collective and my Mastermind, and how to know which one is actually for you
• The exact question you need to ask about every single offer you're building right now

Mentioned in This Episode:

• CEO Mom Collective (founding rate ending soon, price increases from $97/month to $147/month after July 13th)
• CEO Mom Mastermind (get on the waitlist here)

CTA Mentioned:
DM or email Yael the word "loom" on Instagram @theyaelbendahan, tell her where you are in your business and where you want to be by December, and she'll send a personalized Loom walking you through it.

LINKS
📈The CEO MOMS Growth Matrix - feeling stuck or plateaued at your current revenue? Snag your custom roadmap for sustainable growth from $0 to multi-6-figures in this FREE training! >>> yaelbendahan.com/matrix

🔥Join my FREE 3-Day Program, LEVERAGE - the process that’s creating multi 6 figure years working nap times and being a full time mama of 6. Claim your spot here >>> https://yaelbendahan.com/leveragepod

💰Offers in Your Pocket - 11 Offers You Can Pull Out of Your Pocket and Sell This Week! Only $9 - yaelbendahan.com/pocketoffers

💃 Apply for the CEO Mom Mastermind if you're ready to scale sustainably to $15-20K+ months. Read more about the mastermind here OR go straight to the application here.
Want to chat about the mastermind before you join? DM me on Instagram - instagram.com/theyaelbendahan

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

this also matters to the bigger picture because this model can actually grow without completely falling apart, which means I can bring in more members without the coaching getting watered down. I don't wanna build something that's gonna be amazing for 10 people and a disaster for 100 people, right? I wanna support as many CEO moms as possible, especially at this weird in-between stage in a way that's actually sustainable for me too,

Speaker 3 0:18

Welcome to the Raising Your Business podcast. I'm your host, Yael Bendahan, founder of CEO Mom Academy, mom of six, and lifelong reading addict. This podcast is here to empower moms to run their businesses and lives like the powerhouse CEO they are. I want you to believe that you can have the business success you desire and be present with your family, and to give you my best tips and strategies for how to make that happen. I'll be sharing the honest reality of balancing business and motherhood, biz models that work for you, marketing simplicity, and the mindset of a CEO mom. Now, let's dive in.

Speaker 0:59

hello. Welcome back to the podcast, and this episode is gonna be very topical and specific because before we get into it, I'm currently sitting in my office very pregnant, less than a week away from my due date, and I bu- and I really built this entire thing that I'm about to chat with you about from this exact spot combined with some carpool, brainstorming with Claude and brainstorming with my biz besties and in between Braxton Hicks contractions and heartburn, and I'm really excited about it. Because I think that really everything about my business has always been, "Okay, how can I serve people in the highest way possible while still being able to be the mom and, the present mom that I want to be?" And So today I wanna walk you through exactly why I built the CEO Mom Collective the way I did. It is very carefully and intentionally constructed to allow me to serve clients, to serve a, as many people as I possibly can really, within a reasonable amount. This is not an infinitely scalable offer, meaning I don't think I could, I don't think I could, have 1,000 people in it, but I do feel like I could have quite a few people in here, between 50 to maybe even 100, depending. And so I wanna talk about why I built it the way I did and why I'm shifting my business model a little bit due to my lifestyle and due to everything that's been going on in my life and where I feel people need the most support and opening up coaching support to people in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming for me or for them, right? And I'm getting a lot of questions about the Collective "Why is it this?" "Why are we doing it like this? Is this right for me? I'm over here. Is this right for me?" And so I wanna just offer it all... offer you all the answers in one place. So my goal for you today is not just come join the Collective. Even if you never joined, I want you to walk away asking this question about every offer in your business. Am I building it for what is trendy and what people are in... what's, what the most common thing people are selling right now or whatever it is? Or am I building it for what actually works for me and the person on the other end at the same time? So even if you don't j- join the Collective, which if you're a mom, a CEO mom in the messy middle of business, where you've had some success in business, you know you can sell, you know you can make money, you're just kinda stuck on your next steps and you feel like you want some more direction and to be able to tap into support on a regular basis without jumping into a high-ticket premium price tag quite yet, this is made for you. But if that is not you or you're, like, not quite ready right now and you're like, "You know what? I don't need the founding rate. I'll wait till later. I don't care if I'm paying $50 more a month," which really you should just jump in now. But let's just say you're feeling that way. You are still gonna get a lot from this because it's going to teach you a lot about program design and how to build offers that actually enable you to serve at your highest level without feeling like you're giving everything away and you're just taking everything out of yourself. So let's get into it. So before I dive in, so the quick update is founding pricing on the Collective ends on Monday, the I think it's the 13th We're down to 18 spots for as of right now, but we have a few people in the DMs, so probably will- by the time this goes live, it will probably be less. And the price goes up to $147 a month from $97 a month after July 13th. I will give you all the details at the end, but I want you to have that in your back pocket while you listen, because some of what I'm about to say might make you want in before you even finish the episode, and I'm not gonna apologize for that. Okay. So Let's talk about the structure. So I have run a program with a weekly live call for years, since pretty much 2020. Okay? And it was genuinely fantastic when my kids were younger. They went to bed at a decent hour. My life had less moving parts. But somewhere between kid number five and now baby seven almost here, my life just got really busy. Older kids means just more, you're up later, they're up later. There's more going on. The house in general is active to, till a later time. And I love live calls with my people. I love it. Okay? And I would get off my, my, my CEO Mom Academy calls, my mastermind calls. I would be, I'd be genuinely energized. But that being said, when I was thinking about I wanna have a group program and, I wanna be able to, re- reop- maybe I'll reopen CEO Mom Academy. Should I do the mastermind? What should be my focus in this upcoming year? Realistically, when I thought about those evenings where, because I do have to do my calls in the evenings because I am seven hours ahead of Eastern, 10 hours ahead of Pacific. Most of my clients are in the States, and so When I thought about the stress of trying to shove my kids, into bed. I didn't literally shove them, just hurrying up, hurrying them up to get into bed before before, the call time, so by 8:00 PM or by 8:30 PM, it just added a lot of stress to those evenings. And once I was already on the call and I was I was on I was fine. I was great. But, the more people are on a call, the more questions that you're, you're gonna have and the more you're gonna be covering. And so while I love doing live calls, I'm like, I need... I'm gonna need to ha- be able to cap the amount of people that show up to live calls in general because I'll generally offer a one, a 60 to 90-minute weekly call to people that are in high proximity with me as a group, and I want that to be enough. I don't wanna go on for three hours, or, to make sure everyone's questions get answered, but I do want everyone's questions to get answered. So I don't have that bandwidth to open up a weekly Zoom to a huge group of women and make sure every single person gets an answer to their question. So I had a choice. I'm like, I could keep doing the traditional thing 'cause that's what everyone does, or I could pick something that actually works for the life I'm living in right now while being able to give more people access to quality coaching for their business, right? So what I knew is, number one, I wanted to be able to know who I'm speaking to. So this membership was going to entail some level of onboarding that would give me context for people's questions. I wanted to have a kind of like a place of all truth where I could hold everyone's information and up- be able to update it repeatedly and enable them to, when they ask a question, for me to know okay, this is the kind of business they have. This is what they're doing, so I don't have to go back to the drawing board every time. I wanted that. I also wanted to make it accessible because I feel like there's a lot of people, again, in this messy middle of business that, that are maybe in between high proximity mentorship, or maybe they haven't w- quite invested in high ticket yet. Or they, maybe they are just, they're just not at a place to invest a lot of money into it because they don't have, they're not at a place to invest a lot of time into it, and they don't want, they don't wanna feel like they're wasting their investment when they can't give it their all. All right? And so that was the person. I was sitting there, I went, I'm like, "You know what? I wanna reopen my mastermind. I don't think I wanna have a big group coaching program." I'm just not at a place in my life where I can do that, where I can have a big group coaching program with weekly live calls and all this other kinds of stuff. 'Cause, in CEO Mom Academy, I had a weekly live call, and I had a community where I answered questions the whole week, and I had I had access, I had I had people could submit, every week they could submit something for review, right? So When I when I was thinking about creating this When I was thinking about creating this, what I realized was that I needed to be able to make this possible for me to deliver wholeheartedly, and I also wanted to make it possible for I wanna make it possible for people to get great support without me being locked into a specific time of day or time of night. So that was what I wanted. I wanted to make sure that people were getting the support they needed, and they also... I also want it to be, like, the right support for the time of year. So I wanted to be able to offer different trainings or different experts that were very topical for those months, based on based on the best practices that I've learned over nine years of business. What makes sense to learn and do at different points in the year. So I wanted to be able to be, like, something where I could keep adding to it without being locked into just one specific curriculum as such. Okay? So that was what I wanted to do. So it needed to be, again, asynchronous. It needed to have a really good community. It needed to have a way for people to onboard, so I could get their information and have context for their questions. And it needed to have content that would be constantly evolving with what people needed. Okay? And that was what I wanted. And so now as I thought about it, I'm like, you know what makes the most sense is some sort of membership. Because I know not everyone is for my mastermind. I am gonna be reopening my mastermind in the fall. But the thing is, I know that a small... i'm not looking to fill the mastermind with 25, 30, 40 people, right? I'm giving myself like probably up to between 10 to 15 people at most in my mastermind at any given time because I just don't have band... I wanna have bandwidth to pour into those clients. They get a lot more one-to-one support from me, and we'll discuss further on, what's included in the mastermind that's not included in this membership. But they get a lot more support from me, and I wanna be able to give them that support without feeling, again, without feeling overwhelmed, while still being able to pour into them the way that I wanted. So that is why I decided to build this membership the way I am. So number one, why Slack, not Zoom? Okay? Like, why are you coaching in Slack and not on Zoom calls? So the first reason that I love Slack more than a Facebook group is number one, it's less overwhelming because you can really organize the topics really beautifully. You can organize the channels, so it's very organized. You also can make sure that you're staying on topic within you're staying on topic within someone asks a question, you can answer in the replies, and you can continue the conversation in the replies, so keep things like on topic and organized instead of an ongoing thread like in Telegram, for example, right? Everything is nested. Everything makes sense. And my favorite part about Slack, and this part actually, this changed how I coach 'cause I always do, I do Voxer coaching for my one-to-one clients or Telegram coaching, is the voice notes with transcriptions included in this organized beautiful way of delivering coaching and c- and answers. So you drop me a question. You can drop me a question as a voice note. I will get the transcript and your actual voice, which means I r- I read a lot faster than I listen. So I can catch your tone and listen while I'm skimming your question, take it in a lot faster, and then I can answer much quicker, okay? 'Cause if I can't necessarily listen, I can't necessarily listen at the time, I wanna just read it quickly, and I'll just glance at it and, and look at it and be like, "Okay, this is their question. It's a great question," right? I can answer you much faster because number one, I can answer you v- w- via voice, and you can read my transcript as well, so it's more convenient for you. And a- and I find that I coach better when I can riff, okay? And I can also do it, because I'm doing an asynchronous coaching day, I can do it from my couch, right? I can do it from wherever. I don't need to be locked into a certain time, and neither do you. And that's, that is really important to me because people would miss a call, and they maybe had a question they really wanted to ask, and and I would just So that honestly for me feels like one of the best parts about it. I'm not sure where I was. Oh, because it's an... Okay, because it's an asynchronous coaching day meaning you can ask questions within a 24-hour period, and I will answer you within that 24-hour period. Number one, you're not locked into a certain time where you must ask a question within... i've been in other places where it was like, you have two hours, and I'm doing office hours during these, this specific time, which is cool, but again, it locks you in. It locks me in, and what if I don't have time at that exact time? I- my life is very fluid, right? I can schedule a time for myself, but it's not always gonna be at a time that works for you. For example, it could be in the morning and when, while my baby's napping in the morning. But for you, if you're in New York, it's 3:00 AM, right? So I wanted to make sure that you'd be able to get your questions answered while still being able to leave me room to answer the questions fully and and just show up for those answers in a way that I could do it on the go or while nursing a baby or in the car or whatever, okay? And I wanna be able to deliver that really wholeheartedly. So that also answers, the why asynchronous, why not live? I might do live calls, okay? I might do live calls because maybe in the future when my baby gets a little bit bigger, when I have a little more time. I was thinking about doing a once-a-month sort of batching call or a maybe like a co-working call. We focus on a specific goal and all work towards it together. Or just do like a collaboration networking sort of call. Maybe I'll do that, which would be cool, right? But I... Again, like I said, I don't really have the bandwidth to lock in a weekly call, and I don't want you to feel like, "Oh my God I'm not getting what I wanted out of this membership because I can't show up to the live calls." All right? And this also matters to the bigger picture too because this model can actually grow without completely falling apart, which means I can bring in more members without the coaching getting watered down. I don't wanna build something that's gonna be amazing for 10 people and a disaster for 100 people, right? I wanna support as many CEO moms as possible, especially at this weird in-between stage in a way that's actually sustainable for me too, right? So more scalable, more leverage, but also sustainable in real life, okay? Then, of course, there's the community piece, and that's... the membership is always... You're, you should have a community in a membership, I feel. Because building alone is just miserable and objectively harder. I really... When I was in between high-proximity m- mentorship, I just remember feeling really lonely. I have nowhere to go when I'm feeling, insecure or stuck on something or generally I don't really know what I'm doing, and I feel like overwhelmed, or I feel like I don't know what my next step is, or can you have a look at this and let me know? So I wanted to be able to have a place to go where I could get supported or I could get, cheered on or have people just telling me that things are not that bad or, and I want to- I wanted to create that room full of women who understand the juggle between motherhood and business, who will celebrate your wins instead of just double-tapping and being like, "Oh yeah, that's awesome." Who will just tell you the truth about your offer or your caption or your pitch. That really changes everything, okay? And so it's not like just a nice-to-have to be tacked onto this container. It's really a lot of the value is having that place to go to for that support And so people might be like, then, why would I even join your mastermind? Like, why do I need a mastermind?" And the truth is, the mastermind is not gonna be for everyone, right? It will be for eight, 10, 12, 15 women at most at a time, okay? And I g- I understand, because it feels okay if I'm getting all this support, then, like, why bother? First of all, when you have a mastermind, you get access to everything, right? And everything that I have everything that... all my content, anything that I'm doing, anything I'm delivering. And in the mastermind you get a lot more one-to-one support. You can tap in to ask me questions all week. There's a level of one-to-one access to me that people in the membership are not going to have, right? I am gonna be doing live calls with my mastermind. Maybe not every single week, but at least twice a month at least, right? It is very... Excuse me. I'm just getting my voice back after a really hard week. So it is very high touch, high ticket, deeply personalized place where you get unlimited reviews on your content, your copy, right? You get direct access to me. This is the full experience. The collective to me is the accessible version of that support, where if you wanna build up to being ready for the mastermind and you want, you wanna, let's say, book out your one-to-one service or get feedback on that to really make as many sales as possible so you can turn it into a scalable offer, and then you come to the mastermind to build in that scalable offer and get my eyes on your funnels, your launches, do the strategy sessions with me, do the brainstorming on calls and things like that, that is that is what the mastermind is for. And if you're not quite ready for that, then my goal is to have the collective be the place where you can get ready for the mastermind. Where you can start adding in those systems the sustainable offers, the sales the marketing, the stuff that will get you to the place where you are ready to invest in the mastermind. And again, it's not gonna be for everybody, right? It may n- never be for you or it may very well be. I don't know. But I want to make sure that people are getting support to get to the place where they can invest in the mastermind. Okay? I'm not the person who's gonna say just follow my free content and when you're ready, then be ready." I get it. You might wanna try me out. You might wanna be like how does she coach? I wanna get... I wanna see how she does things, how she thinks. The way she, the way she strategizes, the kind of business advice she gives, because I don't know... before I invest high ticket," which is great and which is fun and great and fine, I wanna make sure that she's the right coach for me." Which is completely understandable. Okay? I know I've invested in lower-ticket things with coaches that I wanted to hire high-ticket before investing in them. I was in my my, my coach Julie, I was in her mastermind for I think four or five years. But I was in her membership way before that, for a couple years before that, okay? So I want this to be a different version of support that's built to be sustainable for both of us at a price that does not require you to take out a small loan or have a panic spiral before you hit buy. Okay? And when it comes to the actual content, real quick, I'm not just throwing... i've seen- I've been in these memberships where they're just content libraries. Okay? They're just loads of content in there, loads of trainings just to like to beef it up and make people feel like they're getting a lot of stuff, which I don't believe in. So I wanted to make sure that every, any trainings that you got inside the portal are intentional, okay? And chosen on purpose for what makes sense for you, for the stage of business that you're in, and what makes the most sense for you to focus on at different points in the year. So the Momentum Roadmap course that I need to get a have n- I need a better name for it. I'm gonna... Maybe I'll work with Claude on that. The Momentum Roadmap that I give you in there, it gives you the six core pillars of a business that is built to scale as a mom. Okay? So it's not specifically like CEO Mom Academy is about creating and s- and booking out your signature offer at your signature service and productize your service, right? And the Mastermind is very focused on creating those leveraged offers, the, the Masterminds the group program, the courses, the memberships, the low-ticket offers, the funnels to scale your business beyond beyond your services, beyond your one-to-one time. So the Momentum Roadmap gives you those six core pillars that I really think are gonna be so valuable to you, and a lot of what you need is going to be in there. During July and August, you're gonna be focusing a lot on audience growth and your backend systems, okay? To really make sure that you're set up for success when you really go all in on booking yourself out. In September, we're gonna be tightening up your sales and go after your high... You're gonna be selling your higher-ticket offer and going really all in on that. In October, we're gonna be building your front-end offer in the background while your audience keeps growing and while, you have people who may have been interested in your higher ticket but are not quite ready yet, you will have them on a list to potentially downsell them. In November, for your Black Friday strategy, that front-end offer becomes part of your Black Friday strategy to grow your list with leads and sales that are qu- actually quality leads that are likely to ascend into your premium. And in December, we're gonna set you up with a New Year's pre-sale so you're not starting January panicking into your coffee being like, "Okay, great. Back to zero. Now what?" Nothing in there is random. Everything is building on the thing before it, and the guest experts that are coming in are going to be very geared towards these goals. I have someone coming in for September To talk about how to identify and r- and specifically how to reach out to your warm audience. I'm gonna probably... I'm gonna have someone coming in to talk about threads, lead generation. Someone coming to talk about systems. Someone coming in to talk about email, s- email marketing. It's gonna be, it's gonna be so good, and I wanna make sure that you are getting the best support possible and that it is targeted towards exactly what you need, right? And also, the more that I kn- know you and your business, the more I'll know what you need, I'll be able to create the trainings accordingly, okay? Nothing in there is random. So that is why I built it the way I built it. And to be honest, at $97 a month, this level of support is a freaking steal. I have no words for why, how great it is. This is my this is my place where I really can scale, right? This is my place where I can go all in on really supporting people without without feeling like, "Oh my God, this is a really heavy lift for them. This is gonna be really stressful for them." I want people to be able to come in and feel really excited about joining without feeling like they're like, this is too much, or they just can't manage or it's gonna be adding to lo- loads of stress to their month, right? So that is important to me. I want people to be able to access the coaching that they deserve, and I want you to access the coaching you deserve, and be able to get to the place where, you are ready for that higher proximity with me, and I'm not even... I'm- there's no shame in my game. I'm like, I want you to be able to get to the place where you can invest in your business to get more proximity and have me as almost a partner in your business. So as you're listening to this, I'd love you to think about, the s- the services that you offer and the the offers that you're creating. Are they built for you to be able to deliver highly to your clients while also being sustainable for you, or are you building it around someone else's business model, right? 'Cause I, when I look at some of my friends who... Maybe they do have kids, but their kids are in school all day, right? They don't have babies at home, or they have a full-time nanny, or they have- they don't have kids at all yet, right? So if I looked at that and I compare myself to them, I would be very... That would be very bad because that's the last thing I should be doing, frankly. That is the last thing I need to be doing, is make myself feel bad about, about, about business models or business or business goals that I am not able to afford, right?. So I want you to think about your own business that way and think about, w- are you building it for the life that you wanna live in a way that makes sense for you, but also in a way that will deliver it to your clients in the best way possible? So here's my offer. I know, I'm sorry I keep coughing, but it is what it is. Here's my offer. There are c- like I said, currently 18 founding spots left in the Collective. The price goes up to $50 more a month soon, right? So right n- right now it's $97 a month. On Monday it's gonna go up to 147 a month after our intro call. I am doing a live intro and networking collaboration call for the Collective right before I go off on maternity leave. I want everyone to meet each other and get to know each other, and it's gonna be an amazing call, and I'm really excited about it. So if you wanna join by then so you can get on there, collab, see what you can contribute to each other's l- audiences, lives, referrals, whatever it is currently it is at the lowest price it will ever be. And if you wanna know exactly how the Collective could work for where you're at right now, I want you to DM me or email me with the word loom, okay? So just send me a DM on Instagram with the word loom. Tell me where you currently are in your business and where you wanna be by December, and I will record you a personalized loom walking you through it. And if I don't think it's a fit, I will tell you that too, okay? I'm not gonna take your money if I don't think I can actually help you. So that's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I dropped the link to join the Collective in the show notes. And if this episode made you rethink anything about your own offers or the way you're running your business, I would love it if you share it with another mom entrepreneur who needs to hear it and left a review. It genuinely helps this show reach more people. And please tag me and share it, this on Instagram and let me know that you're listening, and and that will also just get it out to more people too. So talk to you next week. Go build something that actually fits your life, and I hope to see you in the Collective.

Speaker 2 25:50

I can't thank you enough for listening to Raising Your Business. I hope this episode has inspired you to take another step towards building a business and life that you love and growing your income in a way that works for you and your family. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a second to rate and review, and let's connect on Instagram. Screenshot and share it on Instagram stories so we can get the word out to more mom business owners like you. Tag me at theyaelbendahan and share your biggest breakthrough from today. See you next week.