Evolving your business structure to make room for a thriving community

Kelly Tay: Hi, alexis. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me.

Alexis Teichmiller: Oh, I'm so excited that you're here. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for coming so late. Kelly is on the other side of the world right now. What time is it right now for you?

Kelly Tay: So I'm in Singapore and it's like 12 07 a. m.

Alexis Teichmiller: Okay. Well, you are an absolute queen for being here so late in the day.

Thank you so much. We're thrilled to have you kicking off our first workshop. I'm going to hand you the stage and I'm excited to learn from you. And then once you're finished, we can come back and we can facilitate some Q &A. If anyone has questions for Kelly, just feel free to drop them right in the chat.

Kelly Tay: That sounds good. Thank you very much. I am going to start by sharing my screen. All right. Are we good? Can everyone see this? Yes. All right.

Today I'm going to be talking to you about how I restructured my business, my parent coaching business from placing the community as a next step to positioning it really front and center and like what people come to in the first place.

But really my talk should be called the ex perfectionist guide to community building because I am a perfectionist while a recovering perfectionist. And what changed was I became a parent. And I very freaking quickly learned that I am not perfect. I will never be. And the good news is I don't have to be a perfect parent in order to be a great one.

And that is something that I'm applying to my business too in community building. So let's get to it. So first, let me tell you who I am. My name is Kelly Tay and I am a mom of two. I'm Singaporean. I'm based in Singapore. It's 12 midnight here. And I am a respectful parenting coach for Asian parents. And I'm the founder of a company called Juicy Parenting.

So a little bit of background. I wasn't always in the parenting space. I was actually a financial writer for a decade. So first, I was a business reporter for a financial newspaper and then I worked as the head investment writer for a private bank. And this background becomes relevant later on in my presentation, but I just wanted to put that up front right now.

But for now, let's just stick to the parent coaching part. So every time I say that I am a respectful parenting coach for aging families, people are like, What? What is a respectful parenting coach anyway? Why do I focus only on Asian parents? What the heck is juicy parenting? So, in one line, what I do with juicy parenting is I help Asian parents stop hitting their kids.

That's the short answer. The long answer is in Asia. It is still super common, not just in Asia, but like Asian families culturally. It's very, very common to hit a kid. And it's Singapore where I'm from. The implement of choice is a cane. It's like basically a long stick made of rattan. It's called a cane.

And in Singapore, parents will actually take their kids to the shop to choose which cane they'd like to be hit with. anD you know, physical punishment aside, there's a lot of emotional neglect as well. There's manipulation, gaslighting of kids, all in order to gain compliance. And I want to say this comes from a really good place.

Asian parents really want their kids to excel. They want them to be tough in life and weather all things. And Asian kids do grow up on the surface to be really successful. Most of us like great careers, great educations, but the emotional literacy piece, the resilience piece isn't quite there. A lot of us don't really know how to process emotions healthily and have emotional regulation skills.

And so since the research is so clear that old school Asian discipline just doesn't work and actually harms kids, my mission in what I do with my business is to spread the message of respectful parenting and to show parents what they can do differently because I really believe that no parent wants to hit their kid, they just don't know what to do instead.

So here's how I spread the message. Basically, I provide free content on Instagram. That's where all my traffic comes from. And I recently created a freebie that people can download. So it's just a PDF that talks about one word that 99 percent of parents use that is undermining their authority with their kids.

So in this PDF, I teach what the word is, why it's important to drop it, what to say instead. And then for paid stuff, I have my course, which is called respectful parenting for Asian families. And then I have my community for group coaching, which is called the juicy fam. That's my community. It's hosted on the lovely circle platform.

And then I also do one on one consults in private. So today I'm going to focus on just two parts, right? The cause and the community bit. So I'm going to talk to you about what my business structure was like before, and then what it looks like now. So here's what I was doing before. The cause would come first, and then the community will come next.

So, at the beginning, I was teaching my course live. So people would basically come to juicy parenting, find my stuff on Instagram and decide, Oh, that's interesting. I want to join. And they'd have to wait for a new batch to open. And then I teach it live. And then when they were done with that cause, I would say, okay, now that you've finished the course, you are now eligible to join the juicy fam.

And then in the JuicyFam, the learning will continue. So there's a forum where people can ask any question, they can get answers, not just from me, but also the community. I post mini lessons there, which kind of takes whatever I taught in the course and builds on it really in depth. And then I also host monthly challenges where we focus on one thing we are going to improve on as parents this month, like how to leave the playground like a boss without threatening your kid, how to get your kid to brush their teeth without like threatening them or like involving some kind of physical punishment or like hurtful words. And then I also host twice monthly live group coaching calls. So in short it was take the course and then join the community next as an option. That's why I'm saying it's community next, right?

The before was community next. And so there were two main reasons why I initially structured things this way. Number one, I wanted to make sure that people had done my course first before joining the community, because in the community, you'd have access to me to ask any question. And I really didn't want to have to be going over the basics of stuff over and over again, because people didn't speak the same language because they hadn't taken the course.

That was the first reason. The second reason was counterintuitive. I really wanted to slow growth at the beginning. I wanted to focus on fit and culture because with parenting, it's a judgy ass space. And it was really paramount to me that I focused on making sure it really was the kindest parenting group ever because my group, my community only works because people are able to be vulnerable.

They feel safe enough to share their deepest parenting struggles. And we work from there. So I started my first year just teaching live batch after live batch every few months. So I teach a course live and then when the course was done, I would say, okay, you can come join now if you want. Now, the problem with that structure was twofold.

So on my client's end, those who enrolled in the course, they love the course. They love the content of it. But the one thing that they kept asking for. Over and over again was more of a community element to learn from each other, from fellow cost takers. And in my head, I was like. Yes, you can do this. I provide it.

But after, after you've done this course, you can join the GCFAM. That's where you're going to get the community. And so in the course, in the live batches, what I would do is I would teach the curriculum, and then I also have live Q& A with me. And so I saw it as, well, if you like this and the Q&A was really popular, I was like, if you like the Q&A, then come join the GCFAM, right?

My community. And then you'll get this and more because we have twice monthly group coaching calls. But the fact was people wanted it. Now, while they were taking the course, they were saying that the Q&A bits was so valuable because they were hearing not just from me, but also other parents' struggles.

And it really helped them immediately feel less alone and realize that they were all facing the same struggles with parenting. So people kept asking for more of a community element at the cost stage. So that was the first problem. I wasn't giving people what they wanted. I was withholding the good stuff, thinking it was an incentive for them to join the community.

People were very clear, I want it now. And then the other problem was, on my end as a business owner, this structure was also a bit problematic, because it made my income very seasonal. So you'd see a bump in income from my course whenever I opened a live batch, and then anywhere from a quarter to half of the course graduates would then join my membership.

So after each live course batch, you see the bump in recurring revenue then. And it wasn't super sustainable, because in order to get recurring revenue to increase, I would have to keep teaching live batches. So I tried to rectify this by giving the option to purchase an evergreen course. I basically took one of the recorded sessions and put that up live not live, sorry, evergreen so that someone could come to the course and watch anytime.

They wouldn't have to wait for me to open a new batch. And I did this also because I was traveling to Canada for a few months. I knew I was not going to be able to teach live. So I said, okay, here's this recording. You can purchase it. And then after you do that, you can join the community. But frankly, I didn't market it very well.

Actually, I didn't market it at all, so it never really took off. I'll talk more about that later. So this brings me to the after. In late December last year, right at the first year anniversary of GC Parenting, I changed everything around. I Decided to go from community next, as in finish the course, join the community next, to community first.

So what exactly did this look like? It looked like this. So first I decided to no longer teach life at all. I decided to stop the income seasonality and also just focus my energies on the community instead. So I bundled the Evergreen course as part of my community, saying that if you join my membership, you get the course recording for free.

And this was actually a really, really good deal for customers because it meant that they were getting access to my course. Yes. And me, yes. And the community immediately versus having to finish the course and then get ongoing coaching and support them. So I changed the minimum billing cycles from. One month to every quarter, meaning that I would ask people to sign up for three months at a go.

And that way I was making sure that eight people had the time to actually do the cause and engage with the community and practice what had been taught. And then also on my end, I covered at least the value of the cost with three months worth of membership upfront. I also raised Per month prices to the initial rate of US $29 per month.

I raised it by 10 to us 39. And to be honest, I'm probably going to raise it again at some point, because the value and there's amazing because it's basically a living library of Q and A's and Asian parenting support. And in fact, when people join, they're often like, Whoa, holy crap. This is way more than I had expected.

And that was really impressive. So could I have made more if I continued to separate the two? Yes and no. So yes, in the sense that I collect more money up front for the cause, but no, because not everyone would join the community, right? And the community was really where the recurring revenue would come from, assuming someone didn't cancel after the three months.

So in the long run, This is a more sustainable way to grow and frankly, also just gives people what they want, right? And it made sense to do this to me because whether I had 10 people in my community or 50 people in there, the work I was doing was still the same. I was still posting many lessons. I was still creating monthly challenges.

I was still doing twice monthly group coaching calls. So perhaps my work goes up in the sense that maybe more members means more people are asking questions in the forum and I would have to answer more. I didn't mind that. And it's still manageable for me right now. And so. This new structure is basically community first.

You join my membership, you get the course for free, versus before where it was like, take the course and then be eligible to join my membership. So what happened next? What were the outcomes? I'm going to focus on two things, community engagement and recurring revenue. So first, community engagement. As a barometer of success, I am showing you the number of comments that I see kind of as a proxy to how engaged the community is.

And I should say also, I only pulled data from the last two months because I only made the switch in the last week of December, like recently in 2022. So it's been barely two months since the change. So the dark green shows the number of comments over a 60 day period in the old structure, the before, and then the light green shows the number of comments in the new structure, the after.

So it's super interesting, right? Because engagement has consistently been higher over the past two months, and I don't think that's a coincidence. And I can feel the difference in the community, too. People are super engaged, and it's a really invigorating vibe because new members are jumping in and asking questions and supporting each other, and then old members are coming in like the OGs and helping to support the newbies, too.

And the feedback I've been getting is really wonderful. I also want to say that I get that this Isn't as watertight a litmus test as it should be in terms of engagement, like looking at comments for engagement because people can be highly engaged. They may be consuming content, but maybe they don't post comments.

So again, this is just a proxy to show how engagement has improved. Okay, so now the important part for all of us here is business owners of judging the success of business restructure is financials, right? And so let's talk about. Monthly recurring revenue. So I'm happy to say that it's been moving in the right direction since this change.

And also at a faster clip than before. So this is a screenshot from my Stripe account. I'm going to walk you through it. So the orange circles you see mark every single time my recurring revenue has grown, right? It coincides with when I ran a live batch. So December, 2021, when I launched my business and then February, last year, May, last year.

And November last year. So you can see, I was very much dependent on life cohorts. Every time I taught my course life to create membership, simply because of the old structure, right? Where the model was do the course, then join the community. And then in the middle, you can see it kind of like plateaus, right?

This was when I wasn't running life courses. I was traveling in Canada to visit family. And so, well, my MRR was just stuck and it wasn't really increasing. And like I said, I left. Singapore to go to Canada with the evergreen cause, but I didn't really market it properly the way I should have. So that explains that like really steady, like tabling out.

But then if you look at the red circle, the red circle shows when I changed my business structure. And so I'm really happy to see that my MRR has grown about 30 percent since implementing this community first strategy. And importantly, you can see the rate of a pickup. Like it's not just in. Increase itself much quicker.

The pace is quicker. And so the uptrend line shows a nice pace. And so a behind the scenes, look at the numbers, over 170 people have taken my course out of those numbers, 90 people are in the community right now. They're subscribing paying members. And out of those 90, 29 of those people join following this new business structure, meaning that I've, I've added one third of my existing members in a matter of two months compared to 60 in the past, like 11 to 12 months prior.

And so what's nice about this to me is. All of this has happened without the need for me to teach a single thing live. It's more sustainable growth for me. And then in terms of clients, you know, members aren't getting the short end of the stick. In fact, they're getting more value because me not teaching life doesn't mean less support.

In fact, with the community first approach. They get a lot more support, right? They're getting immediate access to me to ask any questions and join my calls. And they're getting support from the existing members and all like the library of resources that are in my community. So clients actually get more this way than if I had stuck to the old model of teaching life batch and then asking them to enroll after.

So it's good for me. It's good for them. I need to caveat all this and say that this wasn't the only change I made at the one year mark of my business. I made quite a few changes. The other substantial change I made Was I created a freebie, the PDF I talked about earlier, and I actually created a marketing funnel.

So prior to this. Everything was just on Instagram. It was literally just telling people on Instagram, buy my thing. I had no email list. People came to me because they chanced upon me on Instagram and that's all they got. I didn't have anything to give them for a free taste. There was no email sequence.

There was nothing to give any value before I even made a sale. So that was another major change I did in December last year. And I think that these two things changing my business structure from community next to community first and creating my freebie funnel, those two things together. Have been the reason for this very encouraging increase in recurring revenue.

So I mentioned at the beginning that I'm a journalist by training and as a journalist, I love words. And so today's summit is all about momentum, right? So I looked up the actual definition of momentum in the Oxford English Dictionary, and here's what it says. The ability to keep increasing or developing and a force that is gained by movement.

And I think that is so apt to remember that in order to create momentum, there must first be movement. And so for all the perfectionists or recovering perfectionists out there, this is important because we often don't even move because we're wanting things to be all neat and tidy and perfect. But guess what?

No momentum ever happens that way because you first have to move. So this is why I said at the beginning that this presentation can be alternatively titled The Ex Perfectionist's Guide to Community Building. Because here's what I'd say to everyone who is struggling to find momentum. The first thing is just start.

And I know for myself, I always wish I knew for sure what I'm doing, that I knew for sure what I'm doing is going to be a success, but I've come to accept that I'll never know for sure. Like, of course, I'll prepare myself, I'll do my research, I'll prep as much as I can, but then I just take my best guess.

I just freaking do it. And then two. Listen to what the market says. So for example, when I started Juicy Parenting, I was adamant that people would take my course first before joining my community. So we'd have a shared language right in the JuicyFam. But then I quickly learned that actually this isn't what people want.

People want to feel like they belong to something. And I think that's especially so true in parenting where things can feel so lonely at times. And so I listened, I listened to what people wanted. I put my ego aside and how I thought things should be, and I gave them what they wanted and it's paying off so far.

And I'm glad because yeah, you know, the community really is such amazing value. And I've known this from the start. I've known that the community is the wonderful part of my business. And what I've done now by putting it first is ensuring that everyone gets to experience that from the start, not later, or to be frank, not experience it at all.

Right. Because in the old model, I had a 25 to 50 percent conversion rate. Of course, take us who then chose to join the community after, which is great, but it also means that anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of people never got to even experience the magic of the juicy film. So, I like this new structure a lot more.

And then finally, iterate. Just be comfortable with changing and changing and improving and improving. And this is where I think the perfectionist side is actually really useful. It's just about working with that perfectionism in a productive way. So I am no longer a perfectionist about my product. I no longer wait for it to be perfect or expect it to be perfect.

The minute it goes out, I have enough humility now to know, look, I just never know for sure. I take my best guess and I just do it. But what I am perfectionist about is the process. I expect to iterate over and over. I expect to continue listening, to continue tweaking, to continue delivering what people want, not just what I think they need.

So I'm perfectionist about the process, not the product, if that makes sense. And that's something that a mentor of mine had told me. And when he said that it like really clicked for me. So I hope that resonates with you too. I also want to say that by no means do I have it all figured out. I have so many things that I want to improve on with my business, like my onboarding process and circle.

I really want to improve that. I want to start a newsletter. I want to automate more things. I want to put out a free webinar to create another funnel in addition to my free parenting guide, so many things. And I know Jay is speaking later. I'm a big fan. I follow Jay Klaus and Tom Ross's newsletters religiously because I'm really trying to up my community game here.

So I'm really, really perfectionist about the process, not necessarily the product. And I'm in this knowing that I'm just going to keep iterating and it's exciting to me. And so the key thing, I guess, is to. Yeah, just keep improving things and remain committed to that process of change and development.

That's how momentum happens. So thank you all for listening to my presentation. That's all I really have. I hope it's been helpful from the business side of things. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share this with you. And then if you're a parent and you're interested in that one word that 99 percent of parents use, you can download my free guide, or you could also just go through it.

Go through my funnel, read my email sequence, and then give me feedback on what that experience is like for you. So that's all I have for today. I think we're going to go into Q& A and yeah, thanks everybody.

Alexis Teichmiller: Thank you so much, Kelly. That was so detailed, so precise. Loved seeing the shift in your business before it was community first versus after.

I've been collecting a lot of different questions. Are you, are you good to jump right into Q&A? Yes, let's do it. Okay, let's do it. So Maiden asked, what was the time of initially building the community like the time commitment of building the community after the course, how much of your time was devoted to it.

And from a secondary question around pricing. What's the reason behind monthly versus annual versus quarterly subscriptions? So maybe let's, let's take the initial time question first.

Kelly Tay: Yeah, so to be honest I set up my community in a matter of like two weeks. I like did the free trial with Circle. I had done all my research prior to then I watched all these videos of how to set it up.

And then I basically spent two weeks just kind of like building out what. The spaces and the space groups would look like. But that is only specifically with the Circle platform. Prior to that, I had spent a lot of time thinking about what my community would look like. in Terms of devoting time, like once my thing had launched to be honest, I was on it all the time at the beginning because it was like, This is my new baby, right?

And I wanted to see, like, what engagement was like. And it took a little bit of restraint to be like, okay, just don't answer every question immediately. Let people jump in. And then now one year and two months on I spend, I spend time every day checking on the community, but I don't necessarily answer everything immediately because I do want to give members time to jump in as well.

And then I kind of like, Go through it daily to see what's new and what's coming up. And then I make sure that every, every question that is posted, I answer. And then in terms of pricing. So when I started, I didn't even go into those details, but like, there was so many more different pricing things that I did at the beginning.

I have always offered monthly options and then an animal option. The animal option is great because I get. You know, a whole chunk of money up front, right? And what I would do is I would give people the 12th month free. So they pay for 11 months. if they sign up for the full year. But then I also offer the monthly option just as a, you know, you can join and cancel anytime if you want as well.

So that's it. And then why I changed it to quarterly now for every three months, it's just because I now have the cause in there, right. And I want to make sure that when I'm providing the cost, even though. I say it's for free. I also want to make sure that I'm covering what I would have charged anyway for the course.

So technically it really is. You're getting the cost and then you're getting the membership for free, but I think it's a lot easier for people to understand that you join the membership and then the cost is already in there. So that's why I call it that way. So that's, that's the thinking behind pricing.

Alexis Teichmiller: I love that. And it, it's also important when it comes to pricing. Now that the course is inside the membership, how long does it take your members to go through the course and to see results and to actually implement a lot of what the course content is teaching them. And so there's like that transformation element.

So sometimes pricing is also attached to how long is the transformation of a member as they're walking through your content.

Kelly Tay: Yeah, 100%. So the thing about my course is that when I teach it live, it's like, it depends. Do I split it up into days? How long does it take? But the, the evergreen one that I've recorded, it's really only three hours long.

It's six videos, three hours long. So if someone wants to binge watch it, they can, and many people do, and they're done just like that. But the implementing, the practicing these parenting strategies, that takes a longer time. And so that's also part of why I did the quarterly subscription, because I'm like, if I'm giving you the course for free, I really want you to give a good go at it.

I don't want you to just kind of take it like with parenting stuff. It's really hard to rewire our brains. We're asking an Asian parent to stop hitting their kid. It doesn't just happen. It takes a lot of effort. So I love what you said about how. Part of it is, you know, how long does the cost take? And in my case, it's quick.

The cause is quick to blitz through, but it's about how do you take what you've learned and put it into practice? That takes a long time.

Alexis Teichmiller: Absolutely. I completely agree. Charvel asked, how do you filter people out in a community first strategy?

Kelly Tay: Filter people out, meaning like they're not my ideal client?

Alexis Teichmiller: I think so. Yeah. I think that that's how I'm interpreting the question is if someone gets in the community and maybe they aren't a good fit. Yeah. How, how do you address that as the community manager?

Kelly Tay: Yeah, you know, honestly, this is something that I obsessed about for a long time, because as I said, in my first year, I really deliberately slowed down growth.

I would open my life batches and only have a fixed number of spots and I would turn people away because I wanted to focus on fit and on culture. I think that one year on, I can safely say I no longer obsess about this so much because I've put in the work to create a culture that I think is really unbeatable right now.

Like in the parenting space, I'm really, really proud of the non judgmental culture that we have. And it's something that I speak a lot about on Instagram. I always say like, look at what these people are sharing. Look how vulnerable people are. The only reason they can do that is because they feel safe.

And I think because I set the expectations out there, I talk about this all the time. It's in my community guidelines as well. People know. That if you're trying to join, if you want to join there are expectations of this community. And in my onboarding process, there is a community guidelines section where I do talk about the expected behavior.

And I, I, I kind of. Phrase it this way. I say we're all here to learn how to become respectful parents. And being respectful is not just about being respectful to our kids. It's about being respectful as a person to ourselves, to the people around us. And so I expect that people who are learning to be respectful parents and want to model that for their kids are going to be respectful in the community as well.

And so, so far, knock on fricking wood, I have not had anyone who's not a good fit. That's great. Everything has worked out great. Yeah.

Alexis Teichmiller: It sounds like you really set those expectations from the very beginning and how you speak about the community on Instagram. And Shantae actually had a question around some of those marketing strategies since the majority of your traffic has come from Instagram.

How have your marketing strategies Changed since you shifted your business model from, you know, Instagram to course to now Instagram to community has, has the way that you've approached talking about it and marketing it changed.

Kelly Tay: Yes, it has changed a lot because at the beginning it really was the cause. I hardly mentioned the community and I think people didn't really know very much. Like people kind of associated juicy parenting with the cause and the community was kind of this line, what's this thing. And then now Because people enter the community first I talk about my community all the time.

And this was also feedback I received from people who had joined the community. They were telling me that, like, what would have sold them sooner was seeing what we discuss in the community. So a lot of them were telling me, you should be taking screenshots, you should be sharing, like, censored versions, like giving people a sneak peek of what we're discussing.

And so I started to take that on instead of talking. Just about the cause. I hardly talk about the cause anymore, by the way. I really talk about the community. And especially what I'm noticing is with parenting, I think all humans want community. They want to feel like they belong to something, but especially with parenting and parenting like this in an Asian cultural context, it's really isolating because you often feel like you're crazy.

And so showing the community element helps people see that you are actually not alone. If you are thinking of parenting differently, you absolutely can because look at the number of people who are here doing exactly what you want to do. And there's no reason that can't be you. So my marketing strategy on Instagram has definitely changed.

Alexis Teichmiller: That's beautiful.

One, one quick question that came as a result of that, Emily asked, do you offer a course only option?

Kelly Tay: I do. I still do. Yes. Okay. But I will say. Financially, it doesn't make sense for the consumer. So with the community, you pay 39 a month for three months upfront, right. Versus paying 149 for the course alone.

It doesn't make sense. Joining the community, getting the course free, like that's a much better deal. I will say though, some people still buy the course alone. So I guess what these people, maybe they don't want to be spending a recurring like membership fee. So I still keep that option up. Honestly, sometimes I think about taking it down.

I haven't decided yet. I've decided that I've made enough change in December. So we're just going to keep things going for a while and then evaluate. But so far, yes, I do have it up as an option.

Alexis Teichmiller: Okay, another follow up question around the course content from Nick. He said, I'd love to know more about how long you make each course available permanently versus how often you update that course to keep it fresh?

Basically asking about the balance of pleasing current members, but also making sure new members don't get lost in a world of, of too much content or too many courses.

Kelly Tay: Yeah, that's a great question. So I only have one course right now. That's the respectful parenting for Asians course. It's like the one on one.

When new members join, they know that is what they have to watch first. I Actually do not update that. I have not updated that at all since May. So the evergreen recording that's up was the batch that I taught in May. So in December, in February, in May's batches, I made a lot of changes. I was basically iterating each time I taught live.

I would see what resonated, what didn't, and then I would add in more or take away stuff. Whatever was the final product in May, that is what the recording is now, and I have not touched it since. I would like it to be more professional because it's really just slides and then me talking on Zoom. I would like to at some point get it professionally recorded.

It's not there yet. And I don't intend to change the content anytime soon. So how do I keep existing members happy because I don't change the course? Well, I think the genius of community is that you're not stuck with just A cause that stays there and then you have to update it to keep people happy, right?

I keep people happy by making sure my community is freaking awesome. So my community with its posts member generated posts when they ask questions with the comments, I respond to the comments, people are often surprised, like how much effort I put into the comments. I literally write like many blog posts in my comments in response to people's questions.

I also do like many lessons, meaning after I've. Like you've watched the course. Now let's talk about this little specific thing that I spent one minute talking about, let's expand it into a proper lesson. So those are like long as blog posts as well. So there's always something new. There's a monthly challenge.

They have live group calls. There's always something new for people who've been in there for a while. And I think it really shows, because I think in the whole time that I've been running this, only three people have canceled their memberships. wHich is really great. Yeah, I'm really, I'm really proud of it.

And that's what I mean by like, the culture is awesome in there. Like people stay for the content, but also because they feel like they're part of something.

Alexis Teichmiller: That's beautiful. Congratulations to, to have such high retention. It sounds like the course is that foundational piece of content. And then the community is that fresh engagement.

People feel connected. That's amazing. Okay. Another question is. And it was actually what I was going to ask as well. Do you believe that community first is a good way to start? If you're just getting started with your business, like we launching a business, do you think community first? Is the solid first step versus you went course first. So what, what's your opinion now in hindsight?

Kelly Tay: I feel like it really depends. Like it, it depends on the person who's building out that product and how confident they feel about running community, because I will say that running community is not easy. Like people make it out to be this thing where like.

You put it up and you get recurring income and that's great and people subscribe. But like in reality, to make a community successful, I think it does take a lot of work. It takes a lot of planning. And people don't stay if you don't provide value. So if, I mean, I am a fan of community first now that I've done it.

And I think it would be a great way to start if the person feels confident that, okay, they're going to go all in on this community thing and they're not. They're not going to let people down. It's not an option. They're going to be there. They're going to be watching this community. They're going to be adding value every day.

And at the same time, I'm not going to say that it's the only way, right? I think if you right now just have a cause and you feel comfortable building that out first and getting feedback with that, then go with that. And I think again, there is no, there's no right way. I think we take our best guests.

We do it. And then we listen to what the market has to say. And then we iterate from there.

Alexis Teichmiller: This kind of goes back to that perfectionism tendency of so much of why we don't get started or why we sometimes lose momentum is because we're trying to search for the right way to build our business. And just back to what you mentioned around movement, movement creates the momentum.

And so when you're. Testing and experimenting and listening to, as you mentioned, the market or your, your clients or your existing members, that's where the momentum starts to really pick up. But when we're in our head and we're trying to figure out the right way, it's difficult for us to ever get started, which is why sometimes we'll sit on something for six months.

Two years, five years, right? Christina asked, or Christianne apologies if I am mispronouncing your name, asked what platform is the course on? I think I know this answer, but you know share like the relationship between a community platform and a course platform.

Kelly Tay: Yeah. So my cause is hosted on Circle. I really want to keep everything in one place. I just. Even like paywalls, like everything is through Circle. The short answer is just because I just like keeping everything there. And so that way it's really nice because people come in, especially now that it's community first, people have a profile, they see everything.

Whereas before they would only see like the one space. that was open to them for that course. Now people see that space and they see everything else as well. So everything's hosted on Circle. When I taught live, I would conduct it over Zoom, but still there would be like to facilitate like just discussion and whatever, it would be via Circle.

And then I would take it off on Zoom to teach live.

Alexis Teichmiller: Okay. Love. I love hearing that. I think it's important as a business owner to think about how you can simplify your tech stack in general? There's so many different tools to use and it takes the mental load off of you whenever you can just go to one place and it's taking care of a massive chunk of your revenue.

A question from Fiona. Do you have a community manager? Yeah. Or someone that's helping you manage the community on your team, or are you managing it yourself right now?

Kelly Tay: Yeah. It's all me. Juicy parenting is a one woman show. It's all me.

Alexis Teichmiller: Can you share? Oh, go ahead.

Kelly Tay: No, go ahead.

Alexis Teichmiller: I was just going to ask if you could share some of your experiences. Like how you set boundaries with that, since it is a one woman show, how you set boundaries and also how, like on average, how much time you might be spending in your community on a daily basis.

Kelly Tay: Yeah. So I have 90 people in there right now. It's still manageable because I think sometimes people think of community and they're like, well, if like 90 people are going to ask me questions every day, the reality is that.

You will see a distribution among your community, right? So some people will be highly, highly active in terms of posting questions and posting comments. And then there'll be many people that you never hear from, but you know, that they're watching stuff. You can check that they last logged in like one hour ago, you know?

And sometimes they'll DM me on Instagram being like, I love the post you just wrote, but they're not doing it on Circle. Because, and I think when I first started, I got very affected by this. I was just like, why are people not using the platform? Why are they not doing, like, engaging in the way I'd like them to?

And then I realized, you know what? People use the community for different reasons, right? For some people, they use it because they want to ask a ton of questions. For some people, they want to answer a ton of questions. For some people, they just want to look, they just want to feel that. They're part of something they're reading, what people are saying, and then they're kind of seeing how that relates to their lives, but they're keeping those thoughts to themselves.

And I've come to accept that that is all okay. That is actually great. If you had all 90 people writing a question every day, then it would be really, really difficult. I would for sure have a community manager then on average. Now, there are some days where there are zero posts and zero questions, and then there's some days where they're like six posts, but even then it's manageable.

So every day, I honestly don't know how many minutes I spend but I definitely check, I have like my push notifications turned on. I know when someone writes a new post if I'm not able to respond right then, or even strategically choosing not to respond because I want other people to respond I just kind of have like a three to five day timeline within that like five day period.

I would want to respond to that post. And then sometimes responding is not just me giving my thoughts. It's about tagging other people who I know, Oh, they've gone through this before, or, Oh, they have kids of similar age. And then I'll tag them to be like, Hey, would you be willing to share? And then people are always happy to share.

So it sounds like a lot, I think before I started my community, I had those fears about like, Oh, it would be so much work, but actually the work is in being intentional about the culture you create and the value of providing the work for me, at least right now, isn't so much about like how much I'm on or how much I'm typing.

Alexis Teichmiller: Okay. That's very helpful. I think we can. Sometimes over, overestimate the amount of time that it will take. And if you just start with 30 minutes a day, or even 15 minutes a day, you know, whatever that daily, whatever you can allocate, whether you are full time or a side hustler, start there. And then that engagement will continue to grow.

But. Yeah. The expectation that you need to spend four hours a day in the community is, yeah, it's, it's a myth. Yeah. Yeah. Time for two more questions. Thank you so much, Kelly. This Q and a has been phenomenal. Caitlin asked when you accept payments through circle, this is a bit technical when you accept payments through circle, do you need to use another piece of tech like Stripe or anything else? How simple is that?

Kelly Tay: It's super simple. You just need Stripe to be able to process the payment and that's it. That's all you need. Yeah.

Alexis Teichmiller: Easy peasy. We love that. And then Gerald asked when starting the community, did you use other communities as a template to develop your site or did you create from scratch?

Kelly Tay: I created like 95 percent of it from scratch. I will say that I already said earlier, I'm a fan of J Klaus. He has a free community, like that's open to anyone. And I definitely like stop that one and like looked at it and tried to figure out like what he was doing and why. And I borrowed very, very heavily his onboarding sequence about like your community guidelines, like what people see a checklist of what they need to do when they join so that they get.

Alexis Teichmiller: Oh, okay. Is it? I think it's yep. Kelly froze. Okay. No worries. No rise. Yeah, Andrew, right at the good part. All right. Well, let's see. Maybe she could leave and then potentially come back. But yes, for those asking, it's Jay Klaus. He'll be speaking later on the panel. And yes, Hossein, international WiFi issues.

But yeah, just to finish like starting from scratch and using inspiration. I think it's important not to necessarily look at someone else's community for a full template and then fully copy. You want it to have an element of your own personality of your own offering, whether that's live coaching or whether that's, you Kelly's community is based in membership discussions.

So chat spaces and responding to posts. I am going to see if I'm going to research her. Okay. Yeah. She wasn't able to rejoin, but I'm going to give it one more minute and see if she's able to hop back in. But how, how amazing was that? I'd love to hear what your biggest takeaway was from Kelly's first workshop on shifting her business structure from, Oh, and she's back.

Hi, welcome.

Kelly Tay: I'm so sorry.

Alexis Teichmiller: It's okay. It happens. That's just life. That is just the virtual world we live in. You were right in the middle of talking about using Jay, Jay's onboarding as inspiration while also, you know, building something from scratch.

Kelly Tay: Yeah. So the rest of that was really me building from scratch thinking about what I, how would I want to structure the different space groups.

Yeah. And just like even simple things like when I post, does it go to a different space or does it go to where all the other members post, like in a forum? Where would I host monthly challenges? What, how would people know to find out when the next group coaching call is? So stuff like that was like, yeah, building all of that out from scratch.

And I didn't know any parenting groups that were on Circle that I could look on. So it was just me. I think there are many now.

Alexis Teichmiller: There are, but it's like looking at your niche and what does your niche need? And then how can you draw inspiration from other, other communities that you are kind of piecing together, but focusing on what your niche needs as well.

I loved it. How hearing what some people's biggest takeaways were. Jana mentioned my biggest takeaway is that she has a super high retention rate because of how careful and thoughtfully Kelly built her community culture. Nancy said the best takeaway was doing community before the course and offering the course in a quarterly subscription.

Christina said, Oh, she asked a question about onboarding. Do you mind, actually, we had another question. Do you mind resharing your screen? Where that QR code was, people were wanting to know people were wanting to download your freebie. And if you could also share where people can connect with you online, this has been an honor.

Thank you so much for staying up so late on your end of the world. And just thank you for building the community and the impact that you're having on, on parents is amazing.

Kelly Tay: Thank you so much, Alexis. I've really enjoyed my time here, and I'm actually really impressed my baby didn't wake up to nurse. So yeah, yes but thank you everyone.

I really, I really do appreciate the opportunity to share. Like, my business is still really young, so actually doing this presentation kind of forced me to, like, look back and think very intentionally about, like, wow, like, how did this happen? And so, yeah, if you want to connect with me, basically I'm on Instagram.

I just started a TikTok account. Not much going on there, but Instagram is where I'm at. I'm Juicy Parenting. You can email me anytime or DM me there. And then this is the one that freebie that you can download. And if you're having trouble scanning it, it's just https://www.juicyparenting.com/freebie.

Alexis Teichmiller: Amazing. Thank you so much, Kelly. It's been an honor to spend time with you. Go to sleep. I hope you have a great rest of your evening and we're going to transition into our next workshop. Thank you so much, Kelly.

Kelly Tay: Thank you so much. Bye everybody. Good night. Well, good day.