When I was a new, young pup of a coach, I joined a group coaching program. 

I was eager to learn, and although the calls were in a different time zone that made them from 10 pm to midnight for me on those nights (ouch), I was on every one with notebook in hand and ready to soak it all in. 

Although I met some nice folks in there, I was disappointed by a lot of things:

-> we weren't learning much, or any, useful stuff.  There was too much chit-chat and shooting the breeze (they could have been boiled down to about 10 minutes for each call)  

-> the attendance rate was bad.  On some calls there were just a few of us out of the 10 or so that were in the group.  When your fellow attendees aren't bothering to show up, it can be pretty demoralizing. 

-> we were given a list of books to read between calls.  I'm an avid reader, but even I can't read three 500 page books a week and expect to soak it all in. 

To sum up, it was a waste of money. 

But I guess I did learn something from the whole experience.  I learned what NOT to do once I started my group program.  

When I was laying out my program, I promised myself that I wouldn't crap the bed like the people running those calls did. 

The result was a group program that I run at least five times a year, and that actually teaches things that can be put into use right away. I pack as much value into our 12 weeks together as I possibly can. 

I've got the next one coming up in September, and there are some awesome coaches in there already.  We've got some room left, check this out and see if it's a fit: 

Cheers,

Marc "I Won't Waste Your Time" Mawhinney