There's a fast way to lose clients from a group program, and I was reminded of it recently while watching a tutorial for some music production software. The coach knows their stuff and they've got a full one-to-one roster to prove it. But in their group program, clients are quietly checking out and the coach can't figure out why. Here's the thing. I watched this exact pattern play out in classrooms and online courses for 17 years, and the frustrating part is that the content is usually solid. Today, I want to talk about what's actually going on and what you can do to avoid this problem. So back to the music software. This was a three-hour tutorial series with about 12 videos. I've been interested in songmaking off and on for years, but I always drift away, and whenever I come back, there's either new software or I have to relearn everything I've forgotten. I guess the algorithm knew it was about time for me to have another go at the software because it kept showing me videos for the software. I found a person I liked and I figured I'd get their course because they had done a great job at getting me interested again from their content. Learning from someone who knew the program should help me get back up to speed faster than poking around on my own. At least that's what I was expecting. The first video opens up and it's a tour of the interface. Okay, fine. Second video, more interface. Third video, keyboard shortcuts. Fourth video, the library, which is important, but not an entire video important. By the end of video four, I've been watching for over an hour and I had not made a single sound. So I quit and I never finished the tutorial. Here's what's wild about that. The information in the videos weren't wrong. The guy clearly knew the software. In fact, if I had stuck around for video seven or eight, I'm sure I would have learned how to actually make a song. But I didn't stick around because nothing about those first four videos felt like progress toward the thing I came for. To put this in coaching context, let's talk about my partner Heather. She's a book coach, and one of her group programs teaches writers how to weave backstory into a book without info dumping in chapter one and losing the reader. Imagine if she opened that program with an hour on how to set up and use Microsoft Word. Things like making an automatic table of contents or how to use track changes. Neither of those has anything to do with why somebody signed up. They came to learn about incorporating backstory into a novel. By the time she got to the actual backstory work, most of the group already would be checked out. And the irony here is that what Heather teaches is literally the same problem as with grouped programs. Don't dump everything on the reader in chapter one, or you'll lose them. Coaches do the exact same thing to their clients in week one and then wonder why retention is bad. That is the trap that you need to avoid. When you front load a program with everything a client might eventually need to know, you bury the thing they actually came for. And clients don't tell you they're overwhelmed, they just go quiet. They'll start missing calls and stop opening the modules, and the people who were excited on day one are gone by week three. And then you sit there wondering why. Now think about what would have kept me in that music tutorial. Because that's what will save your group program. Oh, and it is not teach less. It's something entirely different. The way I think about program design is stepping stones across a river. The far bank is the transformation your client signed up for. The river is everything between where they are now and that outcome. And the stepping stones are small wins along the way. Each stone needs to be solid, something a client can stand on, something they actually wanted to get to, not some fake milestone we invent. So back to the music tutorial. If that first video had said, here's how to make a simple drumbeat in the next 10 minutes, I would have stayed for the rest of the series. Because by the end of video one, I would have made something. A drum beat is not a finished song, but it's a real thing. It's a stone I can stand on and an integral part of the song I wanted to make. And the only information I need to get there is how to open a project, how to load a drum kit, and how to put a few hits on a grid. That's it. The mixer panel can wait. The keyboard shortcuts can wait. All of that information gets folded in later when I actually need it for the next stepping stone. This is what Heather does in her group program. Her first small win is not understand the theory of backstory. Her first small win is by the end of week one, her clients have taken one piece of their character's backstory and woven it into one scene in a way that draws the reader in. That's a real stone. The client wanted to do that and they've done it. A small win on the way to the bigger transformation. And the only information she teaches in week one is what's needed to get that first scene with backstory in it. She doesn't open the program with a lecture on novel structure or character arcs, or even worse, how to use Microsoft Work. When you sit down to build your program, the question is not what do my clients need to know? That question is what gets coaches into the info dump trap in the first place. Because the honest answer is that they need to know a lot and you start trying to cover all of it. The better question is, what is the first real win I can get this client to, and what is the smallest amount of information I need to teach for them to get there? Then you ask the same question for the next stone. And the next one. The information you thought you had to front load is still going to get taught. It just gets taught in service of a win, not as a prerequisite for a win. So if you're listening to this thinking your week one might be doing too much, that's worth thinking about. The question to take back to your program is the simple one. What's the first real win I can get my client to, and what's the smallest amount of information I need to teach for them to get there? That's where you start. Then you build the next stone after that. Now, figuring out what those wins should be is a separate conversation, and it starts way before you build out a single module. It starts with the transformation your program promises and working backwards from there. I have an episode that walks through exactly that. It's called the foundation every online course needs before you start building. Quick heads up before you go listen. That one was recorded before I pivoted the show, so I say course throughout instead of program. The thinking is still the same. Don't let the wording throw you off. You've been listening to Program Design for Coaches, I'm Dr. Curtis Satterfield, and if nobody's told you lately, you've got what it takes to build your program. I'll talk to you in the next one.