In this episode, Tara discusses the challenge of managing expectations with a growing customer base. She shares strategies to address the issues such as delegating basic customer support and using group interactions like weekly Q&A calls or a community platform like Slack to facilitate 24/7 interaction for your customers. Tara emphasizes the importance of setting clear expectations and providing regular updates to maintain member satisfaction.
About Me:
My name is Tara Bryan. I help business owners break into the next level of success by packaging their expertise into an online business. It's my passion to help you find the fastest path to results to create a greater impact and income for you and your tribe.
This podcast is 100% focused on support, tips and example sharing, and building a community of online business owners who are passionate about building awesome learning experiences.
We do that by building engaging, motivating, gamified, and learner-centered online experiences. We come up with ideas and strategies to ensure that our learners can thrive and succeed using our packaged products.
To learn more:
Find us at https://www.taralbryan.com
Here are two ways we can help you grow and scale your online course-powered business:
1. Want to package or pivot your business online? Download our free Step-by-Step guide to get the exact steps you need to create an online business.
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Mentioned in this episode:
Hey everybody, it's Tara Bryan, and you are
listening to the Course Building Secrets® Podcast. Whether you're
a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based
on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide
them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give
you practical real life tips that you can use today to build
your online experiences that get results and create raving fans.
Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people
without adding more time or team to your business? If you're
looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and
use it to scale you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
Welcome to this week's episode of the Course Building Secrets®
Podcast. Welcome, welcome. Hey, in this episode, I want to
address a common problem that a lot of people have. And, again,
like we do a lot of teaching in Learn Academy about creating
your first launch, creating your initial beta launch, where
you're testing with a group of your ideal avatars, your entire
proprietary methodology, so that you know that you can get people
results, so that you can make sure that everything is working
how you want it before you lock and load it into a more
formalized program. But we got this question the other day. And
it's, you know, one of my favorites, because it's such a
common problem. And it is the very exact problem that we
address here with our clients. And so I wanted to go ahead and
just I'm going to just read to you a little bit of the post
that was put out there, because if you're struggling with this,
you're not alone, number one, and number two, there are
definitely some very simple strategies that will help you
sort of dig out of the this particular problem.
Alright, so I had this post come up the other day, and it was
just like, I just finished my first launch. I'm so excited. It
was amazing. And 42 members. And now this person has 108 members.
And and so, you know, 66 people joined there was incredible,
right? And so she was super excited, she went to her beta
launch, she went through the whole process. But now here's
the problem is she's got 108 People who are expecting to be
immersed in whatever she has to offer. And unfortunately, what
started to happen to the beta, which is very common, because
you don't have everything built up yet. And so a lot of times
you're doing one on one, or you're answering questions
individually that people have, just because you're trying to
sort of solidify what you have. And so this happened to her, she
had a really great community, right, she had a way for people
to contact the group and to contact her individually. But
now there's a it's over. And she's like, Okay, what do I do
with these 108 people? Because they've started to all, you
know, Vox her or message her individually, that she sees how
much of a lift that's going to be as she moves forward and adds
the additional attorney people or you just tries to keep up
with what's going on with all of the questions and comments and
all of the things. And so her post goes on and on about how
she does that, right. So she's got somebody who's sort of
taking care of basic customer support, billing, and all of
those types of things. But, but she sort of created a monster
now with these 108 people that they think that they have one on
one access to her 24/7. And and so she was like, how, what do I
do? So one of that. So first of all, if you have this challenge,
it's normal, right? This is sort of part of the building process.
But as you can now see, you cannot possibly help 108 people,
500 people 1000 People in exactly that same way because
your calendar will be maxed out. And even if you keep hiring team
is not going to, it's not going to help right, you're eventually
just going to keep getting maxed out. And so there are a couple
of strategies that we recommend doing right away to counter act
this particular challenge, regardless of what system you're
using, or platform or whatever else.
So the very first thing is start thinking about putting all of
those people into some sort of group situation where they can
come on and ask their questions. So one engagement strategy that
we love to use is a weekly Q&A Call or weekly office hours,
however you want to think about it. But it's a scheduled time,
usually an hour, where you are on a zoom call, or whatever
other platform you want to be on. And people can jump on, they
can either pre register with our questions, so you can research
ahead of time depending upon what your topic is. Or they just
jump on ask their question, or listen to what other questions
other people have. And, and, and then they're getting their
questions answered in that environment. That is the very
first thing that we do to help shift people over, you don't
need anything complicated. You just need, you know, Zoom, or
Google Meet, or whatever else you use to do live virtual
training, is to say, you know, Thursdays at one o'clock, we are
having office hours, and anyone can come on and ask her
questions, that eliminates a lot of sort of the one on one
conversation or banter that's going back and forth in terms of
what people need.
The second thing you can do is set up something like Slack or
Voxer, or something that's not like a text message, right?
Because let's be honest, if you have a get a text, and it's on
your phone, you're going to check it automatically. Because
a lot of times it's the same phone you're using for your
family and for other things. And so because you need to set those
boundaries and see this is when I'm checking it between this
time and this time, putting it onto a platform like Slack, or,
you know, if you have a membership site, you can you
know, kind of put it into a group membership area, or you
know, something else from a community standpoint, where your
audience can answer your team can answer and you can answer,
because that's the challenge is is that, you know, there are
other people who could probably answer the question that that
person has, but if they're just interacting with you, and no
one, no one else can see it. So a lot of times we'll move our
clients to slack so that the entire team can see that message
when it comes in, and then whoever is available can answer
it. So that is one approach in terms of just moving everything
off of your own personal device or personal messaging system, so
you're the only one who is seeing it. And then better yet,
like, you know, the next step in that strategy is creating a
community where you're having people put their questions in
the community that then again, lives outside of one on one
transaction, and is available 24/7. So anyone can jump in and
answer it or contribute to the conversation at any point in
time? Because the reality is, is that if somebody has a question,
most likely one of those other 100. And some people also have
the question, or somebody has the answer. And so the more you
can do that the actually, the better off it is, because number
one, it obviously takes away the you the burden of you and your
time. But it also starts to build a community of people who
are helping each other, which adds an entirely new dimension
to your membership.
And, and so those are just two quick strategies that you can
use to start shifting, that sort of challenge that you have with
the one on one to go into one to many. And in honestly, a lot of
times they're the the opposition that people have is like, well,
but people want to have access to me. And and that's great,
right? Like you can still have people have access to you
without having access to you 24/7 Right. And so there's a
difference between having people ask you a million questions, and
having focused interaction interactions with people that
help them move forward. And hopefully, you know, you kind of
can can gauge the difference there in terms of what that
looks like. So hopefully this serves you those are just two
strategies out of lots of other ones. But these are the two that
start to shift you in a different direction, where you
get out of that just sort of constant one on one churn of of
your time as you are adding more members or customers into your
programs.