Why do you need to scale your online course support? So that you can serve MORE people and make MORE sales, while still serving your people with excellence, humanness and in a sustainable way. In this episode, we’ll look at 5 simple ways you can add scalable support to your program!
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Things You’ll Learn in this Episode of Doing it Online:
- Common mistakes to avoid when scaling your online course…
- 5 simple ways to scale your course support (while still keeping it personal + human)…
- How to design + set up your support model in a sustainable way from the beginning…
You’ve started your online course, (or are thinking about it) so that you can reach more people than what’s possible just through 1:1 work
And that’s exactly what online courses enable you to do, which is amazing!
If you set it up right from the start (what I’m walking you through today!) It means that course is going to be able to take on tens, fifties, hundreds, or even thousands of students at a time.
The goal:
To make sure each of those students gets incredible, personal support as your online course scales…
And that you’re not scaling or growing in a way that’s:
- Unsustainable for you (+ your team if you have one).
- No longer serving your client in the way you promised to serve them.
- You don’t want to be getting to this point and end up burnt out and resentful over how much the program needs from you, and end up removing yourself altogether.
Because, this isn’t just about ticking a box. We want to make sure every client, member or student that walks through our digital doors feels seen, heard and supported…
But there’s still only one of you right?
So how can you do that for all your amazing people, without burning yourself into the ground?
Ta-da! Welcome to the episode will help you scale your online course support, without wearing yourself out, and still keeps excellent value and personal touch for your members.
If you can do this from the start, then that’s amazing! But this still applies if you have a course and are dreaming of making it bigger…
But first…
Why do you need to scale your online course support?
Because as we’ve said, you want to serve more people and make more sales. Yes?
So, if you don’t design your program support in a way that’s deliberately designed to be scalable, and to have hundreds (or thousands) of people being supported amazingly 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 not great for your bottom line, or your energy…
…And pretty much defeats the purpose of having a scalable online course.
What this boils down to is making sure your course is set up to not be 100% reliant on you.
Common mistakes to avoid…
Ok! Firstly, let’s look at some mistakes that people make when setting up their programs. (These are super common, don’t feel bad if you recognise one or more.)
Overpromising + overcommitting access to you
One of the first things that people make when they first set up their course, is to set it up in a way that’s heavily reliant on them personally. Whether that’s driven by imposter syndrome (“But I’m charging X so I need to give it all in order to justify that.” Or copying someone else’s business model who is much further ahead and can afford that kind of support framework.
How to avoid this? Firstly, ask yourself if 200 people (or whatever your dream number of members would be) were to come through your program, is that sustainable? Or would you be a puddle on the floor?
Making it too complicated, too soon
When you’re setting up your online course support, keep it simple. You don’t need all the bells and whistles.You can add them in slowly and intentionally as you see the need and can bring on the extra help to support it.
And keep in the back of your mind: it’s much harder to undo and remove things than it is to add them in later.
5 simple ways to add scalable support
Well, we’re starting with 5, but we’ve got a bunch more! We’re actually running a bonus training next week inside eCourse Empire where we’ll go into all the nitty-gritty of this. It’s all about how to take your one-to-one offer, or your self-study course and turn it into an amazing premium program. (Complete with high touch components that get incredible results!)
If you want to dive into that and get all our help, then click here to go apply for eCourse Empire now before the doors close on the 27th!
And then come back and dive into these 5 tips…
Scalable support idea #1: The welcome video(s)
Create a couple of (simple, imperfect) welcome and onboarding videos to greet each person as they join. That way they feel like they’ve had a human connect with them, rather than just an email.
I go more into this in the episode, and give you ideas on what to include etc so give that a listen for more details.
If you have team members that play a role in making the program great, make sure you have some videos from them as well.
This does two things:
- Takes the pressure off you as the be all and end all of the program, while shining a spotlight on how shiny your team is.
- Starts to position access to you as a more valuable, premium thing.
Scalable support idea #2: Have a support plan
Set goals to scale your online course support. So, as you’re growing your program and reach, set goals for what you want to add when you hit 20 members, 50 members, 100 members and so on.
One of the first things I would recommend is that you bring on extra coaches as soon as you can afford to. As an example, inside eCourse Empire we have a Facebook Ads expert, a Social Media expert, a Business Mindset Coach, Copywriting and more…
This means that even though I might be able to answer those questions, it frees me to stay in my lane of strategy, launches, offers, and marketing. While also making sure that people are getting support from people who can give them even better answers than I could.
And, it means we can have more calls, more often and over a number of different times.
So, tick, tick, tick!
(Want to hop on 3, sometimes 4 group calls a week with us? Click here!)
Scalable support idea #3: Voice memos…
Sending voice memos through something like Voxer or Telegram can be a great way to have a really personal touch point, without taking up as much time as a written response.
The paid option in Slack has just started to offer voice memos, with full transcripts which is amazing.
Personally, voice memos aren’t something that I do very often, (usually have a toddler crawling on me or a puppy in the background) but this model of support works amazingly for some.
(Give the episode a listen as I give you some good ideas around setting boundaries in place for this if you choose this for your program, so you don’t end up with 20min messages from people…)
Scalable support idea #4: Additional paid 1:1’s…
Another option is to offer the opportunity for people to book in a 1:1 session with you or one of your team for an extra fee.
This might work if you hold 1:1’s already, and people want to pay for more time, or if you only offer group calls and people are happy to pay for that additional personal time, and it brings in extra revenue for you.
If it’s available for your guest coaches as well, then you would work out some kind of split, where they might take 70% of the payment and you would collect a ‘finders fee’.
Again, this isn’t something we do, but I’ve seen it work really well for other programs.
Scalable support idea #5: FAQ’s vault…
Start collecting commonly asked questions and create some quick (but valuable) answers to them with a loom video. (Or similar.) That way people feel like they’re hearing from you directly, (nice and personal) and you don’t have to repeat yourself! Plus, they’re not waiting for an answer. It’s in the vault.
Then each month review any new questions that have come up and batch process some answers.
We’ve done this for eCourse Empire, we have oodles of video answers, as well as troubleshooting checklists for every kind of funnel or launch issue we can possibly think of!
Exhibit A: (This is just for opt-ins!)
The value is amazing, but it will also save you SO much time! It means both you and your team have somewhere to refer people to the best answer for their situation.
If there’s still Q’s, then no problem, they can come back to you and ask away. But a lot can be answered with your FAQ’s Vault + Troubleshooting Checklists.
Want more?
There we go! 5 simple ways to scale your online course support! This is just the tip of the iceberg, I’m so excited to dive deep into this with our new bonus training next week!
Remember, make sure to sneak your application in before doors close on the 27th!
Apply for eCourse Empire here!
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