WE'RE BACK - Lessons Learned in Launching the Free Ready Set Coach Community

 Em and Lex ARE BACK! This episode, the first episode of season 2, reviews what lies ahead in Season 2 of the Ready Set Coach Podcast and reflects on the lessons Emily and Lexie have learned thus far during the launch of the free Ready Set Coach community. 

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

• How Em and Lex decided to start the RSC Community
• Who the community is for
• Their plans for their community and how it will grow
• What’s in store for season 2 
• Some of their guest experts they will interview
• What lessons they have learned in launching the Ready Set Coach Community
• And more!

Follow Em & Lex on Instagram at @readysetcoachprogram

Join the Ready Set Coach Community: https://www.readysetcoachprogram.com/community

Learn more about the Ready Set Coach Program at Readysetcoachcommunity.com 

Learn more about Six Degrees Society and THEPRBAR inc.

Transcript

Lexie Smith  

Hi, Lexie Smith, we're back. The

Emily Merrell  

people. I think we can curse I think we've basically given permission first, but 13 is weird y'all in that? It's like this content includes explicit

Lexie Smith  

materials and then I'm like, is that hurting our listenership? I don't know. Or does it improve it? I don't know. It felt like a strong thing to open this season two with a cuss word, but

Emily Merrell  

here we are. We're back. Really kind wonderful humans are slated to be here. So Season Two of the Ready Set coach podcast. Lexie, I I can't believe that. First off, I just want to reflect this was a podcast that y'all we literally started off with a Slack message for Lexi's, like, you know what, we should do a podcast. Really cool. How do we do that? She's like, tomorrow. Here, she gave me a destination link. And then we were there. And that was our podcast. And I think what we've recorded 55 I think

Lexie Smith  

more than that, I think, I think we're in like the 70s. Dude, we're we're high. The season one was a lot of episodes, it was the longest season of the podcast history.

Emily Merrell  

What we did differently, then, I think what well, that's not true. I was gonna say what we've done differently with those podcasts. This podcast versus our own podcast is we were dropping it in real time. And we were dropping it. We were kind of like the daily but not to toot our own horn. We were just dropping a weekly, we were actually

Lexie Smith  

one episodes, we've done 61 episodes. That's this has been a lot more by the fly of our pants. It's stuff that has been inspired in real time, what we're coaching where at least for my personal podcast, it's very methodical, it's planned upon. So it's just completely different. So this season isn't going to be different in the fact that we're still going to fly by the seat of our pants. However, in lieu of our newest shift with our ReadySet. Coach brand, we're also opening up the show to bring on more guests and have more conversations with with people beyond just us. You guys will still hear plenty from em and Lex, don't you worry. But we're also going to invite some of our favorite, favorite humans on to share and talk and get different perspectives.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah, I think I think as coaches and since most of you listening are coaches, it's just so important to sit and listen. And so often we're talking and we're filling space. But listening is such a learning and to be in rooms with people who knows we know a little bit more than we do or know a bit more about something is such an honor.

Lexie Smith  

And so that's what's coming up in the pipeline. What else is coming up in the pipeline real quick, just give you guys a quick update on our lives because clearly you care. We are both kind of ironically taking huge vacations at the exact same time did not plan but it works out really, really well. I am going to Korea and Japan and Emily, where are you going?

Emily Merrell  

I am going to Lisbon and post Kitano Italy and Lexi I am going to make a public plea for things that I want you to bring back for me from you. So you ram so when you're on the plane, you're gonna read the you're gonna listen to this, but I want all the skin products from Korea.

Lexie Smith  

All the skin you have such good skin Emily?

Emily Merrell  

Well, because I get them all from Korea clearly. No, but seriously, I feel like every time I watch a Korean show, I'm just like, oh my god, their skin is exceptional. And so I'll send you my BB color. You know shades that you can you can hook a sister up,

Lexie Smith  

hook a sister up. Well, the request has been noted.

Emily Merrell  

It has not been processed but it is Hey, it's guys, you know, I just want to say Lexi and I have now been in relationship with each other since 20. End of 2020, when our little crafty idea of starting a business together, like sure, yeah, whatever, let's do this, let's start this business together. And how it has really got it is like infiltrated both of our lives in such an incredible, big way. And I talk to you more than I've talked to my husband every single week, I know more about me. So we're in love. And we want to know, I'm just getting,

Lexie Smith  

we are in love. And we're so intertwined at this point that I'm getting spam texts, I freaking kid you not. And I don't know how this is happening. But my spam texts from my phone lately have been saying, Hi, Emily. I just know it's my number. Name.

Emily Merrell  

They have one. But the point being is we are we're, what, three years, three years deep into this relationship. And we want to talk about, you know, the evolution not only of ReadySet coach, but the evolution of us with ReadySet. Coach and what this next season of life brings us, I'm so sorry, I just stole a transition,

Lexie Smith  

kind of pissed off that you season one, or season two, episode one transition over, but you know, we're here for it. We're rolling in real time. This episode today, guys, we're going to talk to you really, and give you the lessons we've learned in our learning in real time about the launch of the Ready Set coach community. So if you're someone who is looking to launch anything, hopefully, there are some tidbits and some takeaways that you can learn today through us.

Emily Merrell  

So backing up here, Lex, I want you to give our listeners a little bit of an understanding of what the heck you're talking about, what is the Ready Set coach community.

Lexie Smith  

So Emily and I had a vision a long time ago, that one day Ready Set coach program would become a community. And there's a few reasons behind this vision. And there's a few reasons why we're pulling the trigger now. So first, let me like give you the technical breakdown of the change to date, we offer or we have operated in cohorts. So Ready Set coach program has been a four month program, we invite usually eight to 10 women into a retainer for that period of time. And there's modules and homework, and we have a very intimate community within that space. Now, we have opened a virtual community on a platform called circle that is open for all with the caveat that you have to apply. So it is an application based online community. And it is completely free. What, what, what's the catch looks? Why do you do that? Now? Why did we do that? And

Emily Merrell  

why did we do that? Lex? That's a great question. I asked you every day. No, I'm just kidding. I think first off, I just want to I'm gonna answer your question in a second. But I want to say is also the platform has given us the opportunity to marry all of our past graduates in one space. Previously, we had toyed with the Facebook group, and that was really challenging to for us to maintain and we didn't we just weren't in it or hurt wasn't there. And so this community not all not only offers the opportunity for past cohort members to commingle. But it also offers the opportunity for new people to come in and to collaborate and to learn from each other. So why did we offer this for free? A few reasons. One, it impact is one of the number one pillars of Ready Set coach for both of us. We it fills our heart to give back. And we're able to give back through a lot of learnings, a lot of our expertise, a lot of our authority. By creating and curating this experience, I come from a background of community building. Lexy is the PR guru that we all know her to be. And so we're able to marry these these specialties that we have and really amplify them within this space. Second thing too is we're at this point in our life to where we want to start thinking a bit more about scale of our impact. So what that means is that down the line, we will be not charging of membership fee. We will not be charging people to be a part of this. But we will be charging sponsors to be getting access to this community, as well as offering and introducing products that people can buy within the community. But that is again, there's no obligation to buy things. There's no obligation to do anything really

Lexie Smith  

but pause pause, pause, pause, pause because you're going into how we're monetizing. So to recap real quick the wall AI behind free. There's two parts. What Emily, what I'm hearing and I know because I was part of the decision. One is because it gives us an opportunity to scale our impact, right? That is one of our big why's. We also recognize that a lot of coaches have trouble with making large investments. So being able to bring this at the most accessible price point known to man of free dollars, allows us to truly create that impact. Now second, which then you all let you continue, and I will stop interrupting you is we have envisioned other ways that we can monetize, that still allows us to have a business, while also creating the scale of impact. Continue Emily,

Emily Merrell  

where am I? Where am I starting from?

Lexie Smith  

What how are we monetizing? If we have a free community, what's the catch? How are we making money? Are we just truly Mother Teresa's or No,

Emily Merrell  

no, no, we're definitely not Mother Teresa in this in building this community. But it is something down the line that we have ambitions to monetize, but not monetized by charging a sponsorship, we have the we have the goals, and the hopes to introduce products where we can let our creativity continue developing in real time and offer products for individuals who are part of this community. And as well as target sponsors, be able to marry these incredible brands with the opportunity to get in front of this incredible community. So those are some some monetization goals down the line. Yeah, so

Lexie Smith  

we're not going to charge for membership, this is going to continue to be able to be a true community with immense value. We will make money through sponsorships and partners from outside businesses, and to what we're doing now. And I think it's worth knowing because a lot of people do the reverse order, is we're transferring our program content into a passive course, a lot of people start with wanting to just have a passive course, and thinking if they build it, people will come. We didn't do this on purpose. And we're building a community and a large volume space, that one day we can activate to sell this passive course to. So

Emily Merrell  

yeah, I think to add on to that, too, like this is not something this is not a it's going to happen overnight type of thing. And I think, you know, going into learnings for the community like things, we didn't get 100 People overnight, we didn't get active people overnight. So thinking about you know, monetizing overnight is just ludicrous. So if you are thinking or this is percolating in your brain, that idea of creating community, also remember that there is a lot of patience, and a lot of consistency that is going into it. So lax, I have to ask you, when you think about the last few months and building up this community, because you know, we've been planning it for a bit, what have been some of the learnings or things that surprised you, I think the most about building community.

Lexie Smith  

There's so many. And like you said to me, let me say one thing, and then I'll answer that directly. I just want to reiterate, one thing Emily and I are intentionally doing which is hard, is we are playing long game, it would be a lot easy, easier for us to start freaking out and figure out how we're going to make money this month or even next month. But we are staying committed to understanding we might have to park more money, we have to spend more money and not make money for a bit in order to become profitable. So that is a strategic strategic decision we're making. So one learning I've had is that can be hard. I think there's been a few times we're like, oh man, like should we watch something else? Because like it sucks having revenue right now. And we thankfully have had the accountability with each other to be like, nope, stay course we have a plan. Right. So that's, that's been one thing. The other one that I want to bring up has been people's reaction. Yeah. To a free community. So we've been getting a lot of people are excited. A lot of people are joining and we've been getting. And I'll Emily will show you some specific examples. But we're getting a lot of what's the catch? Like a lot of people which is fair, right. To Shea, what is the catch? So a lot of people have been really skeptical on what we're doing.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah, yeah. And I think I think it's funny because you, all of us are part of free communities on Facebook. And when you think about what they're building on Facebook, it's not different than what we're building with ReadySet coach, it's just a different platform in which it's hosted way better, and way better, and we're offering that much more. But what is funny, yeah, we've had and we'll talk about like, how we launched it and how we invited people and all of our strategies leading up to the launch I've had people that I've reached out to on LinkedIn and who would respond like Nope, I don't join free communities. That's it. Like literally, period like, oh, okay, cool, cool. Cool. And luckily, I think, you know, from both six degrees and or one on one coaching in our own unique businesses, we're okay with rejection. But if anything, it also has solidified that the people that are there are there and are there like, excited to be there?

Lexie Smith  

Hey, everyone,

Lex here, and M. And if you haven't

Lexie Smith  

heard, we did something pretty darn

Emily Merrell  

cool. We sure did. We launched a completely free community built specifically for coaches.

Lexie Smith  

Say it again, for the people in the back.

Emily Merrell  

We launched a free community for coaches, tell them quickly who it's for what we're doing inside flex

Lexie Smith  

your thing. So for anyone from the coaching, curious to side hustlers, to coaches ready to scale, and through the virtual platform that we've built, we've created a safe and fun space where we learn, launch, grow, connect ideas, collaborate, fit, and evolve together.

Emily Merrell  

You nailed it, Lex. Now while it's free, you must apply in order to gain a free membership. You know, so we can make sure everyone inside is awesome. Like us.

Lexie Smith  

Apply today at Ready Set Coach community.com.

Emily Merrell  

So lax, I want to share one of my biggest like fears or learnings about the community in general is you remember, like a fifth grade dance. And you'd go and the boys would be on one side and the girls would be on the other side. And no one would ask the other to dance. And they're like, Oh my God, you're like no one is going to be on the dance floor tonight is just going to be this awkward them on either side of the the gymnasium. And at the beginning of a of a community it kind of feels like that. There's, you have everything set up. You've got the Punchbowl, you've got all the quippy little copy, you've got everything there. And it's it's crickets, no one's talking. And then something miraculous happens. There's a fifth grade dance person who is brave and makes the first move. And then everyone stumbles onto the metaphorical dance floor and starts making introductions and connecting with one another. And there's such relief. But there is also you know, when that happened when there was that silence, or when there was that, like brief moment where I felt like people were joined, and then they pieced out and they did other things with their life. I was really proud with you and I how we handled that how we were we took action to get people engaging. And how did we do that Lex

Lexie Smith  

was gonna say they didn't just stumble, we pulled them. There's a few yeah, there's a few things we did. First, we have sequences setup, where we're messaging them all individually multiple times. We tag them that's been huge on this platform, we take the time and tag people we think would care about certain posts. So for example, one of the perks of the communities we post PR opportunities. And yesterday, for example, there was one that was a call out for Mind Body green for financial coaches and personal finance experts. And so we took the time to go through our member list and tag every single person that fits that archetype so they could see that post. So we've been doing work that some people probably at the stage of business we're out would be like, Oh, that's kind of like Scott work or VA work? No, we as founders are taking time out of our day to do these tasks to to invite people to the party and show them that their favorite song is playing.

Emily Merrell  

There we go. She's got a transition in there. Well done. Yeah, so I think that was a big point is that getting the systems right, understanding the platform, understanding how we can optimize for our time, but also optimized for showing up? I think the other thing that's really big to include in there is that we've made a daily practice of hanging out in this in this community. So I don't know about you, Lex, but I keep it up in my browser. So it's always there. It's always local, and I get a ping, I have every single notification on I want to be the first to the party.

Lexie Smith  

Yep, for sure. Um, we're putting a lot of effort into the quality of the product to which I think this this is transferable guys, if you're not trying to launch a community but even for coaching, really, really making sure that especially as a newer offering, you're paying mind to the quality and the experience that your clients are having because they become walking talking billboards, and what's been really beautiful, is those in the community who have been activated are now inviting their friends and so they are becoming are walking, talking referring billboards. And so yay ca them. I did want to say briefly before we get too far away from it a key key lesson from your LinkedIn messages that you and I have talked about. And I just want to reiterate here, because it is something that we teach in our program. And this has been a great reminder of such, you can have a 10k program, or completely free program, and people are still going to have some sort of objection, like free and someone says, I don't join free communities, right. Like they're objecting free.

Emily Merrell  

Totally. And then I could probably message back and be like, I have a 10k you know, community at super expensive. So you know, it's you can't win. And there are those moments when you feel like the rejection is personal. And it's not going to be the other rejections I've had have been people have said that they're too busy to engage in the community, that's a big objection, or they don't have the bandwidth. And I appreciate the boundary. But it's also baffling to me, I'm like, Well, you don't just want to be in there and check it out before you make that judgement.

Lexie Smith  

No matter how enticing your offering is. There are just some people who aren't ready to buy, they aren't ready to invest in themselves. And it's not a you problem. It's a them problem. It's like reverse Taylor Swift. It's not hiring the problem. It's me it's, Hey, you're the problem. It's you. It's you guys.

Emily Merrell  

Well, okay, and lax. I think we should also talk about how did we build excitement for this launch, and, and how we also utilize different own platforms in which we were able to leverage both our authority, our messaging and our invitation to people.

Lexie Smith  

Yeah, so I think there's definitely lessons to be learned in this strategy and the route in which we've rolled this out. First and foremost, we went to our internal champions, which are RSE. Grads, so we kind of did our first iteration of beta with them. And we did this for a few reasons. One, they are our clients, and we want them to feel special, and a lot of this community was built for them, we wanted them to have an opportunity to co create, it also allowed us to kind of get out some kinks, and make some adjustments within a space where we knew the woman already knew and loved us. So there wasn't as much pressure.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah, I think that's a good, that's a really, really, really good lesson. So be it that you're launching a graduate program where you're launching something, a next version of your, your offerings, thinking about the people who are your champions, for the superfans of whatever you're selling. So the second thing that we did two is we created an external waitlist. So we communicated it to our mailing list and to our Instagram channel and to our very, very wildly huge Tiktok that we have a waitlist, that we're sorry that we have a waitlist that you can apply for and lax What did our waitlist do.

Lexie Smith  

It was great. Actually, we had a lot of people join the waitlist, something that has been a struggle. And this is a lesson learned was even though I don't have the exact number, we'll just pick an even number. For example purposes, let's say like 100 people join the waitlist. When we opened applications. When we added another step, we did not have everyone on the waitlist, submit the application to join. So that's been something interesting to reflect on. And we've segmented out campaigns without getting too in the weeds. And we've we've had to really work at getting those weightlifters to take the next step. So we can decide, you know, moving forward if we liked that or not, but we did make it a little bit more challenging to get for someone to get in and that did drop off some of the numbers.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah. And I think to your point, Alexa, you guys just big shout out to her. She understands she will literally send me like screenshots of like a whiteboard of email flow. And it it feels like the scene from A Beautiful Mind where he's just like writing out equations. And I have, I'm just like, thumbs up. That looks great. Then she, like writes back an essay about what happened and I'm like, Cool.

Lexie Smith  

Just keeping you informed.

Emily Merrell  

She's very communicative. I love it. But I'm like, I have no idea what you just told me you literally just spoke Chinese to me and I read cruciate it, but the email sequences, no joke. So I just want to recap here. So we used the graduate program or graduate students, we and our current students as beta clients, then we extended it to waitlist and then we opened it up to the general public. So what that meant was not they weren't didn't have a two step process. They didn't have to apply for a waitlist or get on the waitlist and then do the application. They went straight to the MVP. which was that application, submitted their application and had to fill out the whole application, and then we would review it, approve it and let them in.

Lexie Smith  

Something else that we've done that I think I'm proud of us for practicing what we preach. Because this is a free community, we have done a lot more automations than we do with our high ticket high touch coaching. So when someone's paying a big price tag, we think it's really important for them to feel that kind of white glove service. That's not to say we're making people feel crappy with their onboarding onto the community. But it wouldn't make a lot of sense, since we're going after a volume play for us to spend that much one on one time onboarding every single person. So we do have a lot more automations at play that, for example, once we accept your application, you're inserted into an onboarding sequence where emails or automated reminders are automated, whereas with our one on one coaching, we choose not to do as much automations just so we can personalize it more.

Emily Merrell  

And a big shout out to Zapier for helping make our lives that much easier. So thinking about your business, and this can be a whole other like 2.0 on on systems that we've talked about in the past. But Zapier is great, because it basically turns it's an API, and it's the translator between circle and MailChimp. And when this happens that happens to this. And so it's it's made the manual part of our day that much more fun are we get to tag our members, and we get to introduce each other and we get to read their beautiful stories, versus manually being like, hey, here's the deets about everything.

Lexie Smith  

Yeah, I'd say to something that is a positive takeaway that we're still doing. And one that I think is worth sharing, is we've been really, really receptive to feedback. I think it's easy when you're an expert and a coach to sometimes let's call it what it is. Have your ego get a little bit in the way and think you know, the best. While yes, Emily and I are both business owners, Emily's built other communities, there's a lot of things that could bring her ego up. We've been very receptive to tweaks, changes, suggestions, what is and what isn't working from our members, and we're enacting them in real time. Like we have these support groups and someone's like, I really want to see this type of support group. I'm like, Absolutely, we will make that happen for you.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah. And I think that we're kind of like the Ritz Carlton of circle right now, is what I'm hearing us say, No, I'm just kidding. But actually, I'm not kidding. Now, we want to be like a very high, high level free group. Because it's curated its application. It's very, very much a coach of a certain level, who is joining and a certain mindset, who wants to meet other like minded individual collaborative.

Lexie Smith  

Well, that's on the application is you have to be pro collaborative to be let in.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah, this is not a community of takers. This is a community of givers, which has been really beautiful to see. And I think one of the most fun things for me in terms of just reflecting, you know, back to the analogy of the dance is getting people to dance or getting people to show up to the dance. It's also we're offering free events for people. So we have networking and mingling hours we have Lexie, just let a cue for goal setting. I'm leading a, I think an event planning event. I'm like, I can't even remember what I'm doing an event planning event in the next few weeks. And so there's all this different programming that Bowflex and I are doing together and, or separately, and people are showing up for it. And they're sharing each other's social media. They're sharing their own social media handles, and they're growing their LinkedIn and their Instagram. And they're, what do I say, instead of Twitter? I say x,

Lexie Smith  

I just say their x No, because you still go to twitter.com. And it still goes to twitter.com. So it's weird

Emily Merrell  

to say they're growing their acts like, Sure, just for those under good. Anyways, so they're growing in in tandem. And they'll some of them are even meeting up with each other already, which has been really cool. been like, so nice meeting you last night and seeing all the engagement. So, point being it's been about a month in and those were my biggest reflections. Anything else you want to add?

Lexie Smith  

Yeah, I think the last thing I'll say is like, despite us tooting our own horn for some of the things we're doing right. We're certainly there's been, you know, dropped workflows in the in the process. There's been times where we're like, Ah, this isn't working. We've had to do a lot of pivots in real time. And it hasn't all been clean. There's been mistakes. It's been messy. We've had moments where it's exhausting and we're like we're doing literally all of this for free. But I think what motivates us is really really a the accountability of each other while keeping our eye on the prize for the long game. It can be very easy to fall back into short term mindset of I need to make money now. But we're really approaching this from a long term vision, and we know that we're doing it at a pace that is going to be beneficial in the long run. But anyways, we're not perfect. So basically what I'm rambling on about,

Emily Merrell  

but lacks, I think, just to, to piggyback on what you're saying, I think we are also people, that impact is really important to both of us. And at the end of the day, like when we think about how we can best provide the most value into the world when you take us and resume out in the world and you realize we're a little tiny little dots and there's a gajillion people, how are we best leaving our mark, and I feel really grateful that we can say that we were talking the talk and walking the walk right now.

Lexie Smith  

And we're going to make money eventually because I never want to ever have people think that we think money is is wrong to write. This isn't a hobby for us. So again, we have planned for monetization, we're just really focusing on the impact and volume model first.

Emily Merrell  

Exactly, yes. And then we'll buy you all lunch when we're really rich. So Emily Sure

Lexie Smith  

well Wow. Not out on the on the interwebs I'll work on your Korean face lotion. Okay, thanks, Nikki by every lunch sound.

Emily Merrell  

No lunch for Lexi's, but what I'm hearing is well, Lex

Lexie Smith  

lunch. I'm hungry. Okay. Yeah,

Emily Merrell  

this is this is it? We're kicking. Your next episode

Lexie Smith  

we'll be our first guest will probably say it's the first episode again, but it's the first guests episode. This was the first the first and the second second. I don't know Should we close out by singing this is the bed podcast.

Emily Merrell  

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