#117 - 5 Simple ways to scale your program support (without losing the personal touch)

If you do not design your support in a way that is deliberately designed to be scalable, then you will end up putting a cap on the number of people that you can have come through your programs. And that's obviously not great for your bottom line. It's not great for your energy. And that kind of defeats the purpose of having a scalable program.

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Hey, hey everybody. It is Kate here from hellofunnels and welcome to episode 117 of the Doing It Online podcast. Today we are talking about scaling. Yep, the fun stuff, the sitting down and planning out how you're going to take your online courses, your online programs to the next level. And this episode applies to anyone who either has an online program and is dreaming about making it bigger, or even if you are thinking about creating an online program and you want to make sure that you kind of have it baked in from the start, that this is going to be a program that's not going to be really reliant on a hundred percent on you and that's going to be able to take on tens, fifties, hundreds, thousands if you want of students without completely wearing yourself into the ground. So let's dive in. Let's dive in. And I wanted to just also make sure that it was really clear about our intention today is it's not just about scaling support in a. Let's tick a box. Let's make sure that we're doing the bare minimum kind of thing. It's about how do you scale support for a program and it still helps people the best, best way possible. It still has that personal touch. It still leaves your clients feeling like that you actually give a shit, like they are actually cared for, like they can get the help that they need and let your program is the best thing that they've ever done. Let's dive into that now. So first of all, let's just stop for a second, think about why do we need to make this decision? Why do we need to think about scalable support? And there's a few reasons there. One of the most obvious ones being that usually when people start asking us about this inside a program, usually what it means is that for them, they've designed their program in such a way that is very reliant on them, that it almost is kind of almost a bit one to one kind of feeling. And they are probably maxing out on the number of clients they can take and serve well with how it is currently set up. If you do not design your support in a way that is deliberately designed to be scalable, to be able to have hundreds of people being supported in a really fantastically all at once, then you will end up putting a cap on the number of people that you can have come through your programs. And that's obviously not great for your bottom line, it's not great for your energy. And that kind of defeats the purpose of having a scalable program. And it is a common problem. It's particularly once you move away from that more self study style of program and start wanting to create programs that are more premium, that are more high touch, that are more high value, then there is going to be a point when you go, okay, I can't just do this on my own. I can't just do this how I've been doing it. The other thing that's really important is, like I said, is that while obviously taking it into account and finding that balance between what you as a person and your team, if you have one is able to do, you also want to make sure that you're not forgetting about your client and you're not scaling at the sort of and growing and changing things up in a way that is no longer serving them how you promised to serve them. This is also why it is great to have start thinking about this stuff as early as possible. Because it is harder to undo things and remove things than it is to add them in later. So anyway, that's just a little caveat there. The other thing that I see is a really important thing to have to see some good models and to have these ideas in place early is because like I said, when people do kind of get to this point and they're like, okay, I've created this great program, it's getting people great results. It's too reliant on me getting burnt out. I'm starting to resent it. I want to just remove myself. And they kind of go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and they pull themselves out completely or they work with a coach who basically tells them that anything under $10,000 they shouldn't be even talking to anybody. And that's another thing altogether. And all of a sudden you have these people who were promised a certain thing and they've come in and they've bought that certain thing because they want to have access to that person and that is the design. And then they go and switch it up while they're in there, or they remove themselves or they get in there and that person isn't active, or they've just got some team who haven't been fully trained, fully briefed, and it's a terrible experience for them. What we want to do here is, is we want to find where is that balance between and what are some simple things you can add, some simple tools you can use to still have that personal touch, to still give the support that is needed in a way that your clients actually need it, and to also be mindful of your personal time of making sure that access to you is considered something that is a premium, which is something that you want to be deliberate about as well. And how do you find the sweet spot in between all of those? You're happy, clients are happy, everybody's happy, and you're growing and scaling and everything's sunshine and rainbows. How do we do that? Well, first of all, we need to make sure we're avoiding these few mistakes. You need to make sure you are not setting up and over promising and over committing to something that is going to be really reliant on you. And this is a super common mistake usually. And again, this comes down to often, mindset, feelings of worthiness, imposter syndrome, all of that fun stuff. When you go, particularly if this is your first premium program, you sit down, okay, well, I'm going to be charging a lot more than I've ever charged before, therefore I have to just give so much, right? And that's not scalable. And the thing is that, or you sort of go and you look and you model the kind of support or the kind of setup that you're. You want to have on this new program or this program that's just getting started. It's got a handful of clients on a program that's maybe got, already got hundreds of clients and therefore has the income from those hundreds of clients and the learnings from those hundreds of clients and has a team that's grown piece by piece. And you kind of go, okay, well I'm going to go from 0 to 100 and I'm going to have everything set up from 100 from the get go. And that is either expensive or it's complicated or it's confusing. Like I said, if your program is just getting started, you might find that you promise all these things and it's not even getting used. So all of that, all that like the main thing I want to sort of come back to is keep in mind one, don't over promise from the start. Don't over promise you while we're going through this, I'll give you some other examples of other ways that you can do it but just always have at the back of your mind, okay, if there's gonna be 200 people doing this, if that's your goal, like think of your number, what's your dream number for inside your program? If there's gonna be 200 people doing this, can I, can I sustain it? And then also don't make it too complicated, people don't always need the bells and whistles and it's actually usually far better to add them gradually as you go. Not just because it's more affordable because as you say when you go have like five clients versus 50 clients, just economies of scale wise you can obviously start adding some things in, but it's much, much harder. Like if you start out with this super complex sort of setup and it might not even be what your clients want and then people aren't using things and they have to remove them. It's very, it's much harder to take things away than it is to give or add. It's a rule number one, keep it at the back of your mind this, if you had 200 clients, 500 clients, is this sustainable? Will you be a puddle on the floor or is this going to be something you can actually maintain? Rule number two, keep it simple, start simple. Yes, probably from the start it will be mostly you, but you know you'll be able to scale over time as you do have those economies of scale. But keep it simple and add as you see the need, not just because it's how you've seen someone else do it, like add slowly and deliberately and intentionally. So what are five ways? Started with five, there's actually a bunch more and we go into them all in a lot more detail. Got actually a bonus training inside our Ecourse Empire program next week which is all about how to take your one to one offer or your self study style course and turn it into an amazing premium program with you know, fantastic high touch components that gets really great results. If you really do want to dive in and get more help with that, then I strongly recommend you go hit pause on this, head on over to hellofunnels Co apply for our Ecourse Empire program. Get yourself into that onto that list because the doors are closing on the 27th so and I said we've got this amazing training coming up so you don't want to miss out on that either. So hit pause, go apply, then come back and give you a little taste test. But you'll be able to dive into all the nitty gritty inside the program. Let's dive in now to those five simple ways to add scalable support without losing the personal touch. So first of all and this one as I said like to start off with it may just be you and that's fine. Again remember that you can, you can add these piece by piece. But as even if it is just you, it is so great to make sure that you have welcome videos and onboarding videos that are from a human to like to welcome them, say hi, let them know what their first steps are so that they kind of, they come in, they feel like they've had like this conversation, like they feel like they've been guided in, but it's not actually someone doing a one to one walkthrough. Think about those like the first three things they need to do and do a little video on each. And bonus tip is as you do add team is I would recommend that some of these videos are from you, but some of them are actually from your team and that actually right off the bat then starts to position you as first of all not the own, the be all and end all of this program as far as support goes. But it helps to like elevate and a spotlight on how amazing your team are. But it also starts to position you and access to you and time with you as a more premium valuable thing and something that while they'll get amazing support all the time from your amazing team who you've taught and you've trained up, their time with you is super valuable and that's why they can't have it 24 7. You want to start like planting those seeds even if at the start it's you and a va or it's you and one other person. Like just remember start and update and tweak as you go along. The second thing is obviously what you want to do as soon as you can afford to. And again I would recommend you probably have a bit of a plan like okay, well when I get to 20 clients I'm going to do this. When I get to 50 clients I'm going to do this. When I get to a hundred clients I'm going to do this and have little bits that you're thinking about adding on and making sure you can afford at each step. But I would absolutely bring in guest coaches as soon as you can afford to. And these can either be guest coaches in areas that are not your area of expertise, if you have a. If there's some complimentary topics or things that people ask about that you are not an expert on. So for example, we have guest coaches on Facebook ads, on copywriting, on social media. Like, yes, I can answer these questions, but they're not my area, they're not my zone of genius. They're quite often things I'm quite capable at. But there's people out there who can answer them better than me. I stay in my lane of strategy, launches, offers, marketing, and then that way we can have more calls, more call times with different people who are experts and can really step up and shine. I would absolutely be looking, planning out to bring those on. Like I said, do it as you can afford it. You don't have to do it. From day one Equals Empire started out with me and two coaches because. And we started with the bang and since then we've added. And now we get to have like three, four sessions a week and we're adding more all the time. Next is to think about how do people actually like being communicated with and is there a way that might be a bit of a shortcut or work better for you? And this is more for people who are trying to juggle responding to clients around a busy life. Now, this isn't personally something I do because I actually this doesn't work for me, but I know it works really well for others. It's your business, they're your clients best. But having something like having an option for Voxer or using Slack voice notes or having a. What's it called? Telegram Group instead and doing your support in there. The option of doing voice sporadically here and there rather than typing. Sometimes people find it quicker. It also feels a lot more personal, so it could be a time save. Plus it's faster. One little extra bonus tip that something I really love is inside Slack. If you use Slack, I think this is only available in their paid plans, but I know they are changing things with that at the moment. But if you do send a voice note, the person who receives it actually has the option to read the transcription. I know for me I shy away from voice notes because I don't want to get a voice note back because I can't often listen to it because I've got a toddler climbing on me or whatever and I'm trying to answer these things from my phone or something like that. Or I'm somewhere that's loud. Usually I don't do voice notes because it's much quicker for me to be able to read it, but then it's faster if I can send a voice note back. So this is kind of the best of both worlds. That's another option. I said if it makes sense for you and it makes sense for your client, it might be a really, really valuable thing to add that voxer or other voice note option for responding to questions, giving, you know, giving a good response. Just with that though, always make sure you're clear with your boundaries. You don't want people sending you a 20 minute voice note that you have to then listen to make sure that if this is gonna be something you're gonna offer that from the start, you let them know this is how this works. Give them even a script. Like if you've got, you're gonna send me a voice Note, please spend 30 seconds on this, a minute on this, a minute on this. Send it through, keep it short and sharp so I can get back to you quickly. Like let them know why and give and train them from the start on how to do this in a way that's going to be effective for them and effective for you. Another great option, and again, this isn't something that we do, but I've seen it work really well in other programs and inside client programs is if you are going from a really group style program and it's. They're not as and it's not part of it that they get one on ones or maybe they get a limited number of one on ones as part of it. But you know, sometimes people want more. You have the option of having like even little banners inside your kajabi or teachable or whatever it is you're using that links directly to a checkout for them or to a calendly or something like that for them if they want to, if they need it to book extra calls on top. If you go, I know people do want to be able to have an extra one on one here and there. Even a 15 minutes or 20 minute or whatever doesn't have to be long given that option, that option and it's a paid option as an extra way of earning revenue. And if you do have guest coaches, it could be something that you negotiate with them where they obviously get the bulk of the revenue of this book for them and you get almost like a finder's fee off the top. Now our fifth and final option and as I said guys, this is the tip of the iceberg. There are so many cool and clever ways that you can add these little touch points that are makes it so scalable, makes it feel so valuable and so personal. And they're all inside that workshop. Plus a bunch of other things like how to structure your content, how to come up with your offer pricing, all of that good stuff. If you haven't already and you are interested in joining us and you don't want to miss out on that workshop, make sure you head over, apply for ecourse Empire. But our final little tip is to start creating one or both. You don't need to do both at the same time. I probably do one first and then switch. But you need an FAQs vault and you need troubleshooting checklists. So the FAQs vault is something that you would kind of start off with yourself. Like think about like what are the most common questions I get asked? Write them out, categorize them, shoot a quick little video. It could even be a loom. Chuck that into a spreadsheet with like a tab per category and then that is something that you can share with your team as you get them and as you, as you grow your team or even just for yourself so you're not having to write out the same things over and over. These are like your canned responses, right? But they've got video responses, so again feels more personal. Bonus points if you get captions put on those video responses. Because then obviously people can read them on the go or on their phone or if they are not able to be able to actually hear them. So then the next step of that is making sure that it is as up to date as possible is anytime you get asked a question is to respond. If it's not in there is either make a note to create a video for it later or create that video and then pop it in there. But then you start building up this really, really valuable vault that you can hand over to team members and they go through the same process that as they're going through, they might be the first ones to check the community, see any questions, make sure the questions are getting any ones that they can answer because they have those, those pre written answers or pre recorded answer answers. And any ones that aren't, they highlight them. And then maybe once a month you go and record some new videos or whatever needs to be done there. And then the other side of that is troubleshooting checklists. Having troubleshooting checklists is if you think about the main areas, people get stuck that it's like you're gonna have to ask them same kinds of questions, right? It's going to be certain things that highlight why they're getting stuck or where there's falling down or how you're going to be able to give them the right advice. Anyway, if you do find yourself spending a bit of time, you know, answering these same things over and over and doing that back and forth and, and trying to troubleshoot with people via text or via voice, coming up with a troubleshooting guide that can just be as simple as if you're having troubles with this, check for this symptom. If you have this symptom, then symptom can apply to marketing, it can apply to health, it can apply to all kinds of things. Then look at A, B or C, you know, like just having that, even having links then to the parts of your program that it goes into more detail, like building these up. They take a few hours to create, but once you've got them, put them inside your program. People start asking about this. The first step for your team or for yourself is like, hey, have you gone through the troubleshooting guide? Do that first, come back to me or have a little audit or something like that. Like have a tool that is created that people can self assess, particularly if it is something that it doesn't matter that he's a bit more formulaic, that is definitely going to be this causes this or this causes this and you can then help them to self assess. And also it empowers them a bit. It makes them feel like, oh, I've got this and I'm going to be able to have this in my back pocket for later. Those are my five as a top five, but we've got a bunch more. They're welcome videos from yourself and your team. Bring in guest coaches gradually as you can afford it using Voxer, Slack Voice or some other voice notes if it makes sense for you. Adding the option to pay for more coaching more one on one time if and when they want it, and having like really, really killer FAQs, vault troubleshooting checklists that are, you know, accessible within the program for your team and for yourself. It will save you so, so much time and just make it all so much more scalable. But like I said guys, this is just the tip of the iceberg and I'm so excited to dive into this so much deeper with our new bonus training inside Ecourse Empire next week. If you are listening to this, loving it, want more, which I hope you are, make sure you apply now. Link is in the show notes and then jump on in. Join us. Doors are closing on the 27th I believe. Can't wait to see you inside.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly, exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.