The New Playhouse Thursday Schedule (and the Data Behind It) with Deanna Seymour

I'm taking you behind the scenes and digging into the data around a big schedule change coming to The Playhouse this summer! 

In this episode:

0:32 - Vulnerability alert: why the Playhouse isn't growing in a sustainable way

6:46 - The top 3 reasons members leave (and their exit feedback responses)

13:21 - The Think Tank stats that surprised me... and not in a fun way

14:36 - Why "67 events in 90 days" isn’t as impressive as it sounds

15:57 - The new Thursday Playhouse schedule and why this container will hopefully make showing up a habit for members

Links from this episode:

Episode about Free Tier:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2423323/episodes/19202983

Hang out with Deanna: https://deannaseymour.com

Join us in The Playhouse: https://jointheplayhouse.com

🪩 Join us at jointheplayhouse.com and get access to bonus content, all kinds of cool events + hang with creative business owners!

And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend! It really helps us grow and keep the good vibes coming!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Hey, welcome back to the Playhouse podcast. This is a special episode, um, sort of taking you behind the scenes with me, Deanna Seymour, the founder of the Playhouse, to talk about a big change that's coming this summer to the Playhouse. Dun dun dun. We are moving to a Thursday schedule. So I'm gonna dive into all the reasons we're choosing this, the background of the Playhouse, and like where we're headed in this episode. So I'd love for you to listen along and learn more about what went into making this decision. So, real talk, vulnerability alert. The playhouse isn't growing in a sustainable way. And I would be a terrible business owner if I just let this boat sink without trying to solve the problems I'm seeing. Okay, so that's number one is that also having a community is really freaking hard, and people warned me, and I knew that, and I'd had little communities here and there before, but you know, it's really hard. It's also really hard to do something that nobody else is doing. It feels really exciting at first, but it's also kind of confusing to people. So let's just dive in. A huge value in my business since the beginning has been experimentation. It's my whole life, to be honest. I'm a former art teacher, and I just really think that it's impossible to know if something will work if you don't actually try it and experiment. So even if someone else does something and tells you what happened for them, I feel like there are so many variables at play that, like, you know, you can ask yourself, like, when did they do it? What was their audience size? What were their own resources that they had to pull from? Maybe privileges that are just, you know, based on society or just things they've already had, or you know, lack of privileges or lack of resources um that got them the results that they got, good or bad. You know what I mean? So I'm a huge believer in doing it for myself and seeing the results that I get, also seeing how it feels for me. So it could feel totally different for them. It's too many variables. So I'm always just a fan that I need to experiment for myself. So if you are a member, a Playhouse member listening, you know that we've done some experimenting and shout out to the people who've there been there since the beginning and stuck with me. But um, I want to dive into some real data. And I know that I joke about hating data, and um, I do think it's trauma from being a teacher and data being weaponized against us, but I do have some data to back up the decisions that I'm making and how these you know experiments have gone. I swear that this is not always just about me having ADHD and never making up my mind. Okay, so in September 2020, blah blah blah blah, 2020, 2020. I'm like short circuiting. September 2024, I started the playhouse by just sending loom videos to people that I knew personally in my network, sort of pitching them the idea of the playhouse. It was not created yet. And I actually pulled up one of those looms and checked the transcript to kind of refresh my memory and be like, what did I, what did I even say, I wonder back in 2024? I mean, we're, you know, we're coming up on two years in September. So um I'm honestly kind of when I when I saw the transcript, I'm like excited and kind of proud to say that I freaking built the thing that I pitched these people. Okay, it's changed slightly, but um, I talked in the transcript about people in online business starting to feel stuck with the old marketing playbooks and craving something more collaborative and human. Anybody who's in the playhouse would say 100% we have that. The Playhouse concept was built around themed rooms, which we have now. Um not everyone's getting a room in the future, but co-working. Also, if you are listening and you have a room, I'm not taking away anybody's rooms. Okay, I'm just not building any more themed rooms. It's built around co-working, QA's, workshops, brainstorming sessions, the idea of members hosting sessions, members networking and learning together, and visibility through collaboration instead of just content creation. I feel like I still check all those boxes. And I still will check all those boxes moving forward with this new Thursday schedule. In the transcript, I also talked about getting rid of the like, you know, teacher student divide, or like this person's a master, this person's so smart, and I'm a ding-dong who doesn't know anything. I wanted that to go away. I wanted everyone to be able to learn from each other because like maybe I'm good at design, but you're good at Facebook ads, and you know, you're good at uh whatever, you know, systems, and my brain doesn't work like that, and you know bookkeeping, and I have no idea how to even price myself. You know, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, right? And I just thought we could learn from each other. I wanted the community to be affordable, collaborative, multi-voice, relationship-driven, intentionally not dominated by one person, lots of voices instead of just one expert, quote unquote, and make online business feel more human and fun. And I will say that we freaking did that. Um, I hope anybody listening is feeling like, yeah, yeah, we did. Um I will say also moving forward, I don't want to think that I am dominating the playhouse. Like, oh my god, Deanna is like the leader. What is that like um in Toy Story? Like those little aliens in the claw machine. I'm not gonna be the claw in the claw machine, but I do need to kind of lead this ship a little better, I think, than I have been. Um, and just take ownership over this, which is also part of the Thursday schedule. Is that as one person running this membership and also running, you know, my my custom work, my business, side, like the service-based side of my business, trying to promote everyone's events was just like too overwhelming for me. So the Thursday schedule will be a very simple cadence that we can keep talking about and showing up for in my emails and on my social media and like feels much more sustainable for me. Um, and even though I'm really proud of what we created, it's a membership, right? And all memberships have churn, all memberships have people that have left. And when they do fill out the form to leave, we ask them some optional questions if they want to give us feedback. So this is like I was talking, real data, right? So here are the top three kind of reasons that people are leaving. The first one is like, I'm not using it. Okay, so things like people saying I didn't have time, I forgot to log in, I didn't attend events. And the biggest one that kind of showed up is people basically saying it's like not part of the routine, right? They didn't build the habit. And yes, in onboarding, I have a little habit tracker and I had a little Google Calendar, and we would send out reminders saying check the calendar in the Playhouse for events. But one thing to note about building a membership where everyone can host their own events whenever they want to, the calendar's all over the place, right? And so even though I was trying to do what I could to help build a habit, we're all running our businesses. Like we're booking discovery calls, we're booking coffee chats, we have client meetings, we have stuff to do. And a lot of us also in the Playhouse are parents or maybe even have other jobs. Like we have a lot going on, and so the schedule being all over the place is not helping anybody to build that habit. Okay, second reason wrong timing. People cutting business expenses, their businesses are paused or pivoting. People we're talking about personal stuff, you know, moving, having kids, facing burnout or um grad school, like like things are happening. I get that, that's gonna happen. Um, and so that was one of them, which I feel like is gonna happen in any membership, right? The third one is specifically calling out scheduling and attendance challenges. So hard to attend live events, time zones, especially international. Some people are talking about low turnout for their own events on here. Also, some people wanted recordings of the events, which was something I started off the playhouse with. We were, I was like, we're just hanging out. We don't need to record this. You know, Casey Hodos is a therapist, a mom coach in the group who hosts like a Monday mom meetup once a month. And, you know, we don't need to record that and treat it as content. And so that was something I made as a rule in the playhouse in the beginning. Um, and as it's gone on, I have realized that some people are kind of teaching tangible things that could probably be a replay. So, um, moving forward to our Thursday schedule, some of those will be recorded so that people can listen in if they couldn't make it. Okay, because we're gonna probably be focusing a little more on business. But we can also like cut out the more personal fo the personal chats. Like if on a Thursday we want to hang out and we want to like complain about online business, and vent, maybe we don't want to share that part. And it will be pre-decided what is getting shared and what is not getting shared. So that's another change coming to the Thursday thing. One thing that people could answer on the question is what did they love? And what people loved was the community, the people, my energy. Thank you very much. Just kidding. That it was like a fun, welcoming, creative vibe. Um, one person said, I love this, I'm just not using it. Ugh, that's a heartbreaker, right? Like, yes, obviously I'm in my business to make money, but so it's frustrating that someone like loved it but wasn't making the habit to use it. And that's on me as the membership coordinator, as the owner of the playhouse, right? The founder of the playhouse. So, you know, obviously the love and the people who are still in the playhouse kept me going this whole time. I'm not gonna lie, I also get paranoid about making changes because I'm like, oh my God, these people have put up with my changes. But like making something truly new and innovative, I think is what got so many people on board in the beginning, right? They were like, whoa, this sounds cool, this sounds different. So I honestly am giving myself grace because I tried to build something way outside the norm. Yes, other memberships have guest speakers or whatever, but that this was definitely outside the norm. So I think it's clear from the data that we need a regular schedule so people can make it a habit. Like the dream of everyone hosting whenever they want to and having event spotter painted all over a calendar is not sustainable. It's not working for the people inside the playhouse, it's not working for like the people hosting or the people attending, right? Because the people hosting aren't getting a bunch of people there. And then the people who aren't going are thinking, why don't why am I in this membership? I'm not even going to anything. So it's kind of a bummer on both sides. And we have tried to say, give us at least four weeks, and then we were thinking, do we need six weeks? Like people need to put this on their calendar and save the date. But I think the problem really is that it's not a regularly scheduled thing. So also when I dug into the data about events, now in Go Brunch, I can go in and download an attendance log. So anybody who goes into that room in um Go Brunch, I can see on the back end. So I pulled up the think tank rooms and it was very interesting to see. So think tanks are our masterminds inside the playhouse. And when I launched think tanks, I just wanted them to be accessible for everyone, right? I I just think in my heart of hearts, like I hate to think that anybody is excluded or anybody can't come. So we so I did what I do when I was very extra, and we started off with five different think tanks. Okay, I hosted one at 7 p.m. Eastern on Monday evenings, like the first Monday of every month. And then we had so we had each day of the week covered. We had like the first week, the second week, the third week, the fourth week. We had, I think, a 10 a.m. one, we had like a 3 p.m. Eastern one, we had a 1 p.m. Eastern one, and we had like a 4 a.m. or 5 a.m., depending on the time change, Eastern one for European people. And I just wanted to make sure that people got what they needed, but I think it made too many choices and it spread us out too thin. So think tank data is that the think tanks that we started um from last October have averaged, like when you take how many think tanks we've hosted and how many people have come total, averages actually 2.9 people per think tank. So we're talking about three people per think tank, okay? Which is fine. I'm not mad that I've hosted think tanks, like I actually love the people who came to hang out with me on Monday evenings, but it is not a sustainable business model, right? Um, Kate's is the one that is from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern, and it turns out that time frame had the largest turnout with a record of nine. Um but it wasn't always nine. Do you know what I mean? So like one to two p.m. fits into our Thursday new schedule. Okay. I think Kate's was on Tuesday, but regardless, a 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern time is pretty good for most people. So I think with the new schedule, it just helps people be like, okay, Thursdays from noon to three, I can block that off. Like you get busy, you don't come that Thursday, but you know, next Thursday, same time, same place. Um I want to talk too just about the data around a community where anyone can host anytime. All right. So I pulled up the events statistics for the last 90 days. And this isn't exactly 90 days from today, because I probably did this like a week or so ago, two weeks ago. Um, but when I pulled these numbers, I did it for the the previous 90 days. So the total number of events in those 90 days in the Playhouse was 67. 67, which is actually, I think, quite impressive. Okay, so like we were getting some events on the calendar, but then when I took out repeat events, we were down to 34. Then when I took out Think Tanks and Coworking, which are like playhouse sponsored or whatever events, so we're talking now from 34 to just member-led events, was 19. So I think my numbers were a little bit inflated by things we were doing. Um, and then when you look at those 19 member-led events, if you take out those repeats, like people in there hosting more than one event, 12 different people hosted um in the last 90 days. So when you first look and you're like, wow, the calendar's like jam-packed. 6'7, 67, it's really 12 members have hosted. Okay. So then I'm like, okay, well, it's actually not. Because you know, part of my decision making is like, oh my god, so many people are gonna be like upset that I'm like putting putting these events into a more of a strict container. But uh, when I look at these numbers, I'm like, nope, okay, this is gonna be okay. So Thursdays from 12 to 3 p.m. Eastern is the new schedule that we're going with. Of course, I do worry if it's gonna be okay for people in certain time zones, or like who's gonna be mad, who's gonna be sad. But ultimately, like we need a schedule, and 12 to 3 works for me. And according to the data, is really when most of the events happen and when most of the events are better attended. So it's gonna be an easy-to-remember schedule to stick to, and you know, have on our calendars as our playhouse time. Like I said, if you're busy one week or if you're on vacation or whatever, skip it one Thursday, but just know, okay, but this is like a habit. Um, the format of of the weeks will rotate through some different ideas for networking, co-working. Um, we've been doing live podcast interviews inside the playhouse, so that is part of our Thursday schedule. Um, as well as members getting us getting a chance to tell other members about their newest offers or their newest promotions, so that hopefully we can have some collaboration combos and figure out, like, oh, oh, you're doing a workshop on that. My audience would love that. I can shout that out in my email. So we have different formats and themes for these Thursday meetings, but it will always be between noon and three, so you can build a habit around showing up inside the playhouse. So it's still gonna be fun. It's just gonna be in a container on Thursdays from 12 to 3. And of course, the whole point of the playhouse is to make friends and hang out and network. And so, like, if you're stressed and you're like, well, uh, what if I want to have a mom meetup? Like, you can still, there is a heartbeat community, you can post in there, like, hey, if any moms are interested in hanging out with me, let's hang out on this day. And people can comment on the post and people can put it on their calendar and they can hang out. But the official playhouse container is going to be from 12 to 3 on Thursdays, but we have plenty of spaces in the community, like I said, to plan for your own hangouts, to promote your own hangouts, also to use events you're hosting to grow your email list and to share with the whole world. Um, and I also am about to record an episode on the future of the free tier. So I'm gonna link that episode in this show notes so you can head over and listen to that episode about what's happening with the free tier because I really think that you should be using any events that you're hosting to grow your network, grow your email list, grow your authority. And I'm not sure that that all always happens inside of this container. But I do think the playhouse is turning into a really fun collaborative space where we can learn way more about each other and what we all do. There's no reason anyone like I want to know what every single person who's in the playhouse does. And I think the way that we do that is by having a common time where we can all kind of meet together and learn more about each other. So we have networking on this on the schedule, we have speed networking on the schedule, podcast interviews, think tanks are there as a whole group, or maybe some breakout rooms if we need them. Like we have this planned out so that we are just kind of like really shoving all the fun into this 12 to 3 on Thursdays container, and I am like so excited about it, and I can't wait to see what happens. Okay, talk soon.