Unveiling the World of Coaching Bootcamps

Building a Coaching Culture - #106: Unveiling the World of Coaching Bootcamps === J.R. Flatter [00:00:45]: Welcome back, everybody. It's JR Flatter. And as always, I'm here with my co host, Lucas. Lucas Flatter [00:00:53]: Hi. How are J.R. Flatter [00:00:53]: you doing, Lucas? Lucas Flatter [00:00:54]: Pretty good. J.R. Flatter [00:00:55]: We're just chatting. We finally got back into the gym this week, and our bodies are thrashed. But it's good that you're a millennial and you're thrashed, so I don't feel so bad being a boomer and being thrashed. Yep. So I wanna spend some time today talking about our boot camp schedule coming up. And it's something that we're still working through the sequencing. So if anybody wants to know about our boot camps, this would be a good episode to listen in on. I'm working off of 3 screens here, so I'm looking back and forth. J.R. Flatter [00:01:24]: I got a world map here. I've got the schedule here. You in front of me. So we decided a long time ago that we wanted to teach a global cohort. And we do have a global cohort. The 5 PM classes, people from all over the world are joining those. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, our time on the Eastern US at 5 PM. And then that's the morning in Japan and Sydney and New Zealand or I should say Australia. J.R. Flatter [00:01:53]: Depending on whether you're in Perth or Sydney, I think they have 4 or 5 different time zones in Australia. 3, actually. I'm looking right at it. Perth and Sydney are different time zones. Plus or minus a couple hours. So goal of ours for a long time was setting up boot camps because that's our main product for commercial and our government customers, the 30 hour boot camp. And so there's sequencing involved as to when and why and how. So we've come up with a schedule. J.R. Flatter [00:02:31]: We're piloting it right now. We've done 3 of the 10 and scheduling them in verticals of time zones. So one of the challenges, and it seems like rather simple, was finding the the right title for the boot camp. There are several different ways to name areas of the world. And we look at a time zone vertical, Greenwich Mean Time is that global standard, 0 being the United Kingdom. But it just didn't resonate. GMT 0, GMT plus 1 was the name of the of the boot camp. So we kept looking. J.R. Flatter [00:03:08]: We finally lighted on what the UN calls different verticals of the world. And so we the next boot camp that we teach is going to be GMT plus 1, and we're calling it EMEA, e m e a, which is Europe, Middle East, and Africa. So if you had a world map in front of you, you would see that GMT plus 1 covers a big swath of the world. And if you go minus 1, now you're in the United Kingdom, you're in Ireland, Iceland, parts of Greenland, if you headed west. If you headed east, there's a whole swath of the world, GMT plus 2, GMT plus 3. And just about all of Africa is plus or minus. The farthest west in Africa is GMT 0. So that's only 1 hour difference. J.R. Flatter [00:04:08]: And the farthest farthest east in Africa is gmt plus 2. So that bootcamp scheduled on GMT plus 1 time covers a really big swath of the world. And we've done that across the globe, that same logic. So that our facilitators and we have a growing team of facilitators that we vet personally. Nobody walks in off the street irrespective of their credentialing and facilitates for us. We vet them pretty closely over time till we're satisfied they're ready and can represent us and can represent the ICF. We have a growing team of facilitators that are in different geographic areas of the world, So it's convenient for the student coach, and it's convenient for the facilitator. Lucas Flatter [00:05:06]: So when we do so say we do the next one, you said the e and you say EMEA or EMEA? J.R. Flatter [00:05:15]: You know, you could say the acronym in, you know, different parts of the world are gonna say it differently. I call it EMEA. Mhmm. It might sound like an a in the beginning. So I always say Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Lucas Flatter [00:05:27]: Do they tend to have some people local? Or is it still a 100%, like, remote online access? Virtual, you mean? Yeah. Virtual. J.R. Flatter [00:05:37]: Yeah. So we do I'm glad you brought that up. We do open enrollment, and we do invitation only. And so if we're gonna travel somewhere in the world and add that cost onto the price for that particular cohort, we'll come and see you anywhere in the world. The cost, we split the cost of travel across all the seats. And so the more seats you fill, the less the marginal cost for that travel. So we just planned a trip for me from East Coast of the United States and for one of our facilitators from Sydney to Germany, to Munich specifically, we're delivering coaching education there live for an invitation only audience. And I think it ended up being about $5,000. J.R. Flatter [00:06:36]: We travel as a guideline. We use the US government travel regulations, and so cost of airline, cost of lodging, food, all within those parameters. We're not staying at the Ritz, and we're not flying 1st class on the customer's dime. If you divided that $5,000 cost across number of seats, it becomes a few $100 extra to get us to come live. But to be honest with you, given the technologies and tools we have today, the marginal benefit is not that great. We love teaching in person. We equally love teaching remotely. So it's it's an individual choice for the invitation only customer. J.R. Flatter [00:07:27]: I'm going out to Utah in a few months to do an invitation only. Germany, the EMEA one that you and I were talking about is virtual. And so I'll facilitate some of it. 1 of our facilitators in the United Kingdom will facilitate some of it. One of our facilitators in Australia will facilitate some of it. So if you've ever used if you're working globally and you wanna use a really cool app, there's one called TimeBuddy. TimeBuddy. World TimeBuddy where you could put it any city or you you could put a series of cities, which I do. J.R. Flatter [00:08:02]: So I put in the city for every facilitator, and it tells me what time it is where they are at a specific time for the geographic location we're teaching. So we're teaching on GMT plus 1, but we're minus 6 from that. So if it starts at 9 AM, it would be 3 AM where I am. That's not too inconvenient for a facilitator to get up. But in United Kingdom, it's only 1 hour difference. And so facilitators only offset by 1 hour. And they're usually taught from 8 AM to 5 PM with a 1 hour lunch break. So that's 8 hours a day for 3 days, and then one day is a 6 hour day with a working lunch. J.R. Flatter [00:08:51]: And then in Sydney, they're the next day, but the evening of the the next day. So it works out well. Lucas Flatter [00:09:00]: From, like, marketing and sales perspective, is the messaging different? Like, if you're targeting a different, like, geographic region, like, do the are they looking for different things? Or what's what's the approach there? J.R. Flatter [00:09:17]: So the 30 hour boot camp is the fundamentals of coaching. And you could look across different cultures, different ethnicities, different age groups. And there isn't gonna be much change in the fundamentals. So the content doesn't change a lot. When we do an invitation only, we work with the customer to customize the content. So we'll send them our 30 hour template and we'll go back and forth with them a few times on are there any particular topics you'd like to add or delete? And then we have a 200200 deck catalog that we can pick and choose from, plug and play, of which about 60 of those are case studies. And so they might want another case study. We allow the facilitators to select their case studies that they're gonna facilitate. J.R. Flatter [00:10:16]: And so they might have one from their own coaching experiences. They're living in the geographic region, maybe in the same country that they might think is a little more relevant. So there there's some flexibility there. The entire catalog that I talked about is vetted by the International Coaching Federation. So they've seen all the decks. And we pull one out and put one in, it's still part of the same program, the ICF accredited program that we have. Lucas Flatter [00:10:46]: If I'm coming like through cool, like I'm active duty and I'm looking for my next certification, what kind of cadence might I look at? So if I wanna go, you know, next month and when would the next one be? And if that doesn't work, when's the one after that kind of thing? J.R. Flatter [00:11:04]: Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up. So we have 10 boot camps in the books every year, and they're aligned strategically with the geography that they're in. So we teach 2 boot camps in Eastern US time a year, 1 aligned to the end of the fiscal year of our government or just beyond the end of the fiscal year into the brand new fiscal year because everybody is so rushed at the end of the fiscal year. And the year kinda starts over for the government in October. So one of those is aligned to that. The other eastern time zone is aligned to summer vacations, and they might have some time to set aside. We do one in the Western United States, which is aligned to the end of the fiscal year as well, so October timeframe. J.R. Flatter [00:12:02]: So they have 2 opportunities to do the October timeframe from the Eastern US or the Western US and the one in the summertime in the eastern US. And the logic there, if you look at a slice of the world map, Eastern USA, you get all of Eastern Canada, all of Western Latin America. If you wanted to stay up a little late, you could do the United Kingdom. You could do Ireland. You could be from United Kingdom or Ireland to do one of those. If you wanted to get up a little early, you could do Eastern or the Western United States on that time zone. So we do a lot of people from the West Coast of the United States. In those GMT-five boot camps, the Western United States is focused on Western United States, Western Canada, But it also allows French Polynesia, Hawaii. J.R. Flatter [00:12:59]: That slice of the Pacific is just a few hours difference 2 hours difference, as a matter of fact, in Hawaii and most of French Polynesia. So Tahiti. So you could jump into one of those. We talked a lot about the United Kingdom already or the the EMEA one. The one that we haven't talked about at all is, India. We know the population of India. And if you think about that vertical of the world, it gets a good chunk of the world, but it's offset by half an hour. For reasons of their own choice, India has chosen to be, GMT plus 5.5. J.R. Flatter [00:13:40]: So that's why they get their own boot camp and given the size of the population and largely English speaking. And then we do 2 APACs a year which are specifically focused on Japan, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, all of the countries in in that slice of the the vertical, plus or minus a couple of hours in either direction. And so it's really up to the individual as to which they pit. And one of our objectives, and we're there, is to publish the entire calendar and let people plan ahead and let organizations plan ahead. If they wanna send we have, an organization sending 10 leaders to one of our boot camps, And we want them to have the opportunity to plan ahead at least 12 months and and push it out to 18 months. So I know for my own calendar, I schedule 2 things 2 years in advance pretty regularly. And so we wanna give them an opportunity to plan ahead. And so maybe if Eastern America 2024 doesn't work in the fall, they could do Eastern America 2025 in the summer, or Western America doesn't work. J.R. Flatter [00:15:00]: For budget reasons, for timing reasons, they wanna gather up the cohort. They can pick 1 in the future that is more aligned to their budget or availability. Lucas Flatter [00:15:10]: It seems like a lot of logistical details and I don't wanna say challenge, but I guess your mission is to kinda reach these people and J.R. Flatter [00:15:23]: Yeah. Absolutely. Lucas Flatter [00:15:24]: So it's it's worth kind of converting to different time zones and using World Time Buddy and things like that. J.R. Flatter [00:15:32]: Yeah. I mean, it's pretty complex. But once you figure out the process, it becomes a bit of rinse, wash, repeat. And that's what I keep telling our team. We need processes and technologies such that it becomes not automated. There's always a human being in the process talking to other human beings. We don't wanna be that person where you know, one of my favorite pet peeves of the 21st century is we're experiencing unusually high call volume. Every hotline every helpline you call says that, so we don't wanna be that person. J.R. Flatter [00:16:07]: You're gonna be able to talk to a human being. But I just said that to someone this morning. Our external protocol for reaching back out is 24 hours. So if you ping us, you should hear something back within 24 hours. It's kinda bringing me to my next topic. Well, like, you know, one I didn't talk about is our Spanish speaking cohort. So we have, Spanish speaking facilitators that are experienced coaches, at the PCC level, and they teach a cohort in Spanish. And so if you're interested in obtaining that, it's it's going to be GMT minus 5 for the eastern time zone vertical. J.R. Flatter [00:16:50]: And that's largely based on the large Spanish speaking demographic in in the Americas, in Canada, the large Spanish speaking in Latin America, South America. So that's why that one's GMT minus 5 on east time zone. And depending what happens to demand, we could certainly do custom in Spanish, which brings me to my next topic, and that is invitation only. We will build an invitation only boot camp. We'll look at our calendars and compare times and dates. We just did this as recently as last week with a customer, and they pick the time, they pick the date, whether they want it virtual or in person, and then we just make it happen. We've traveled all over the world to make that happen and we'll continue to do that. We have a minimum threshold of 20 seats to make that happen. J.R. Flatter [00:17:43]: So if you can gather up 20 people and pick a date that you want, whether it's virtual or live, or virtual or in person, I should say, and we'll make it happen. For all of the planned boot camps that we have, and all of this is on the website, and the website is Flatter Leadership Academy, so foxtrotlimaalpha. So wwwflatterleadershipacademy .com, all spelled out. Mhmm. And it'll show these boot camps. So minus 6 weeks from any boot camp, we do a learn, see, give. You and I have talked about the learn, see, gives before. So I'm not gonna do a deep dive into them. J.R. Flatter [00:18:25]: But we have found through our experiences over the last several years to get buy in from a complex organization or to even get buy in from an individual. If they can learn about coaching, see a facilitator coach live, and then coach each other during the 2 hour block, it really opens their eyes. And so each of the boot camps that you'll see on our website will have an associated Lauren c Give with it. They're free to the public. They're aligned to a future boot camp, and so they'll the date and time of the learn, c, give will be right next to the date and time of the boot camp itself, and it'll be 6 weeks before the date and time of boot camp. So that you have time. Anybody that's interested in joining or interested in building a cohort and bringing them to the boot camp will have time to get people into the learn, see, give to learn about what this journey is all about. So that would be the last thing I would talk about is that learn see gives schedule aligned to each of the boot camps. J.R. Flatter [00:19:42]: And once in a while, we have a custom boot camp that the customer either wants or needs additional participants, and then we open it to the public. So once in a while, a boot camp will pop in and become available to the public that's not currently on the schedule. So you should check the website on a pretty regular basis to see. And that just happened as recently as last week. I'm building a new boot camp that the customers agreed to open it to the public. And so it's on the schedule now. And it'll have an associated learn, she give with it. So you don't have to convince your leadership to join the boot camp. J.R. Flatter [00:20:27]: We can help you do that by having them attend the learn, see, give. Lucas Flatter [00:20:31]: Oh, I had a thought when you were bringing up tools and automation process. I had seen on you know, if you search, like, different tools for coaching, often it's kinda presented with the word platform. And and platform encompasses the processes and the people and, you know, our style of emailing and our responsiveness. So I think, yeah, like having a robust platform that's, you know, enabled by tools and technology is kinda what we're striving for, I think. So, yeah, it's never at the expense of the human touch because the platform includes humans. J.R. Flatter [00:21:14]: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. And we're gonna talk about this in a future podcast, but AI and automation are supplements to what we do and not, you know, alternatives to human to human interaction. Coaching at large is all about emotional intelligence. And as wonderful as AI is, it's generations away from human to human connection. So, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. When we when you and I talk about platforms, platforms, it's largely the learning management system, email correspondence, automation so that you get a welcome letter when you register. You'll get a reminder letter. J.R. Flatter [00:21:59]: That's the kind of automation we're talking about. And we do have a world class learning management system that once you register for a class, you'll get access to that learning management system and get access to the materials for the class, access to our evening live coach training, access to our asynchronous training. Alright, my friend. Mhmm. Good chat. That's very good. Hope everybody enjoyed that. And if you have any questions, just reach out to us and we'll answer your questions. J.R. Flatter [00:22:29]: So I was butchering the email address earlier, but fla, foxtrotlimaalphaflatterinc.com. Just send us a note. I talked a lot about the EMEA boot camp coming up, but I didn't give you the dates. Let me grab the dates. So it depends on where you are in the world. So for us here in the East Coast of the United States, the dates are 15th through 18th. Oh, that's APAC. Sorry. J.R. Flatter [00:22:56]: APAC 24 Charlie is 15th to 18th in the United States or the this side of the world. And in Australia and Tokyo, they'll be 16th through 19th because they are always a day ahead of us. Lucas Flatter [00:23:11]: Are we looking at May 6 to 9? J.R. Flatter [00:23:13]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Here it is. EMEA 6 through 9 May. You're right. So thanks for that. And it's set to the time zone. So, you know, I'll be getting up in the middle of the night or wee hours of the morning to facilitate. J.R. Flatter [00:23:27]: But in that time zone, whether it's APAC and Sydney or Tokyo, it'll be their time. And if they're in Ireland, Germany, United Kingdom, it'll be in their time. We wanna be convenient to our student coaches. Well, that concludes this episode of building a coaching culture. I truly hope that this episode was helpful to you. If it was, be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Maybe stop and give us a rating or review and share this podcast with someone who might find it helpful as well. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.