The Playhouse Free Tier Experiment Results Are In… with Deanna Seymour

I’m officially announcing the end to the free tier inside The Playhouse and I’m sharing the data that’s led to the decision.

In this episode:

0:23 - The fate of the Playhouse free tier (and why it's ending)
2:27 - The improv troupe analogy that sparked the whole experiment
4:24 - 5ish months of real membership data, broken down
11:05 - When my funnel went upside down: paid members dropping to free
12:30 - The new Thursday schedule and what's coming next

Links:

Episode about the Thursday Schedule:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2423323/episodes/19202496

Get on Deanna's Newsletter for Networking Parties: https://deannaseymour.com/newsletter

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, what's up? Welcome back to the Playhouse Podcast. I'm the founder of the Playhouse, Deanna Seymour, and I am recording this special episode to talk about some changes that we're doing this summer. And so I um already shared an episode about a new Thursday schedule that's happening. So I'm gonna link that in the show notes because you might want to listen to that episode too. But today I am talking about the fate of the free tier, which is unfortunately going away in the beginning of June. So I just want to tell you a quick backstory. It's a longer backstory on the episode, I'll link in the show notes. But I basically started this dream of building the Playhouse in 2024. I keep wanting to say 2004. That is not true. It's in 2024, uh, where I wanted to make a membership community where anyone could host an event and we were all experts. Okay, this idea that everyone was building their own memberships and that each membership meant that the person who started it was the expert and we all looked up to them. I wanted to create something that wasn't just going to be my membership, it was gonna be a membership where where I wasn't the smartest one in the room. Like we were all smart and we all had something to add because I do really feel like we all have our own areas of expertise, so let's all hang out together and like learn from each other. So I opened the doors and made custom grow brunch rooms for everyone, and we hung out. And of course, it was fun, but it wasn't growing as much as I wanted it to, and no one wants to keep hosting events like we would have you know, ask me anything, coffee chats, hangouts, little live sort of teachable workshops or whatever you want to call them. And nobody wants to keep hosting those for, you know, just one person or nobody's RSVP'd, or or it's just so little. Like, I mean, we're all running a business, and so we do have to prioritize our time and what we're putting our efforts into, where we're showing up, and you know, members slowed down on hosting events. Um, and I totally do not blame them at all. And since experimentation is a huge value of mine and honestly, my life and business, and obviously my past life as an art educator, um, I decided to try something in January of this year, 2026. Um, I started a free tier inside the playhouse. Uh, the way I sort of was thinking about it at the time, and this was because I was listening to a lot of Amy Puller's podcast, good hang. Um, I've actually never done improv, but I started to think of the members inside the playhouse as being like an improv troupe. Okay. And then we were all in the improv troupe, though. So there was nobody in the audience, right? And so I thought, oh, we're all in this club together, we're all wanting to host events and be on stage. We can't always go to each other's events, but what if we started inviting our audiences in? Then we would have an audience, you know, in this whole analogy where we're the improv troupe with no audience, we would bring in the audience. Um, and you know, obviously, as a community builder and someone who needs this to grow, to be sustainable, to keep it open. I totally thought it would be cool if they saw what we were doing and maybe thought, oh, I I want to host events, I want to be on the stage, I want to join the improv troupe too, and then they could join us. Right? I thought also, you know, maybe there's newer business owners who aren't really ready to take the stage yet or host their own events. So, like, let them come in, get used to it, and hang out. I switched it, so I started hosting my networking parties, which were called pop-up networking parties, which now they're gonna be at a regular time, so I'm dropping the pop-up because it's not not very pop-up y. Um, I was hosting my networking parties in the playhouse. So I was like, join the free tier and then you can come to the parties. So back in uh when I announced it to the community to the playhouse, I said we would try it for three to six months and see how it goes. So even though I always make fun of myself and say I don't like data, I actually keep a lot of data for someone who doesn't like data, right? Uh, I don't love it. I do always think that it's because it was weaponized against me as a teacher, but that's a story for a different day. But let me just tell you the stats for the last five months. So in January, we started off with 83 members, paying members in the Playhouse, and we had 101 friends. Okay. So even though I said we're gonna launch it in January, I remember like I started telling people about it um a little bit in December. So so we try it three to six months, and right now I'm recording this May 19th, you know, June 1st, the free tier is ending. So we definitely gave it a good, good five to six months, okay. Uh, and then the collective grew by three to 86, and then we had 123 friends. The following month we had 137 friends, 92 people in the collective. That number's a little inflated because I pushed some pushed some buttons and heartbeat, and there was like a seven-day free trial. So some people joined under a quick free trial and then didn't actually stay paid. It was a free trial with no credit card put in, you know, like no pressure. Um, and so that number is definitely inflated. The following month, our number of friends spikes from 137 to 235. I'm pretty sure that is due to Alex Roman event, and I did a pop-up party, and lots of people were inviting different people. So, I mean, that's pretty, pretty good growth. 100 people basically in one month on the free tier. The paid tier drops by two members that month, which is fine, you know, churn happens, whatever. We also have a mix of monthly and yearly people paying in the playhouse, and um, I have just found for my audience and the people in the playhouse, the year really feels like a big commitment um when people go to renew. Uh, and so I haven't had honestly the best luck at renewing yearly people as much as kind of just keeping the monthly people happy. And to be honest, I like the planning of like these are the people in for monthly, this is what I get each month. Like for me, the reoccurring um income helps me and I think helps the people budget. Uh so yeah, that could have been also where those two people dropped off. Um, and then the following next month, Friends tier only grows by one and the paid tier stays the same. So at the end of this chart, which is not necessarily exact data for today, because we're at, you know, May 19th, like I said, but this would have been at the end of April. We were sitting with 236 free people, and um the paid people were at 84. And I'm so sorry, it is not 236 free people, it is the total people in. Um, sorry, I was wondering, I was like, 101. How do we start with 101 in December? Clearly, I've said data is not always my favorite. So basically, you know, I feel like I gotta get my phone if I'm gonna do this math, but um and now I'm like regretting hitting record, but it's fine, we're going with the flow. So basically 101 for that first month minus the 83 people paying. There was um 18 people that were quote unquote free people, okay, in the friends tier. And so really at the end of April we had. I'm talking like this because I'm calculating, we at the end of April we would have had 152 free folks and 84 paying folks. Okay. So here's the result that I'm seeing inside the playhouse. The free people are not very engaged, right? They are logging in. I'm keeping track of like how often they log in. I have a tag for that and whatever. Um, but I think it's also after talking to a few different members and kind of my own feeling, which is important, right? Because I'm the founder of this community, I have to be there a lot. I think that it kind of creates this weird is this free? Is this paid? Who sees my posts? Like, we have channels that are locked and we have channels that are unlocked. And um, I just think people are kind of like, well, what do people see? I also want to be mindful that I'm not like giving away too much to free people, not because I really care, although obviously I'm running a business, so I I don't want to give away everything for free, but I also never want someone who's paying me money to feel like, why am I paying like free people are getting all this cool stuff, you know? So then there I feel like I'm weirdly overthinking stuff. Um, I ended up turning off intro posts. So in Heartbeat, when people fill out the the information when they join the community, you have the option to create a post immediately that that like shares their answers with the group in an intro channel. And I turned that off because as you heard in the numbers, like some of those months we grew by a lot. And it was too many intro posts. And the paid folks were being amazing community members, responding, saying, Oh my gosh, cool, uh, you know, and then um the free people weren't necessarily always responding to us, which I totally get. Like, I'm not mad at them because they like joined a free thing, they wanted to come to an event. Maybe they went to the event and like didn't log in again. Like, I don't think that people were like, oh, I don't care about these people not responding. I just think that's the nature of the way it was set up for free people to come in. They probably like went to the event they wanted to, but maybe not many more. Um, and so now I feel like the vibe for me is sort of like when you have somebody over at your house. This is like a really funny analogy, so just bear with me. Like you have someone over at your house, and maybe you have to like toot, but you don't want to, so you kind of hold it in. But if it was like just you and your family, you would just let that toot rip because you're like with your family. Um, and so you're like holding in your toot because there's a friend there, and you're just like not, you know, I don't want to say not being yourself because I still think we're being ourselves, but you know what I mean? There's like guess, there's guess over, right? I know it's a weird analogy, and I don't even know if it's completely accurate, but I think you know what I'm saying. Um, not to mention that the whole point of adding the free tier was to get attendance up for people's events, right? As a as a person who's hosting this community that's saying host an event and have people come and learn about your stuff, I feel an obligation to make sure those rooms have people in them. Um and adding the free people, I thought was an experiment on seeing like, will that help attendance be up? And it is not based on those numbers. So the real data to drive this decision, also in terms of a financial aspect as the business owner and founder, is that I've also had three people in the last few weeks, month, I'm not exactly sure, um want to just like pop down to the free tier. Okay, which is definitely not part of a great community growth strategy, right? So it's a situation where my funnel isn't just leaky, it's like upside down and people are falling right out of it. So um the decision is that June 1st is going to end the free era of the Playhouse. You know, we tried it for I'm I'm feeling like six months because I know that we kind of started it in December. Um, so we've tried it and it's not working. Um we are soft launching our new Thursday schedule in June, where we still have some member events on the calendar, but we're also starting to put some of our new Thursday events on the calendar. That's our soft launch in June, and then we're officially launching and switching over to our new Thursday schedule in July. So it is really the perfect time to transition the community back into a paid-only space. And I'm really excited about it, to be honest. Like, we are gonna be tootin' up in there, just kidding. But for the time being, I am still inviting people on my email list to the networking parties. So definitely make sure you're on my email list if you're not already, and that is gonna be where you're gonna get that info to join us in the networking parties. But there are gonna be really fun things happening in the Thursday schedule. So the new plan is that Thursdays we're hanging out from noon to 3 p.m. Eastern, first through fourth Thursdays. If there happens to be a rando fifth Thursday, we're gonna like live our lives. Maybe take that afternoon off, like go on a walk, do something fun. Um, so I'm hoping that that will give people a little more um of a reason to make it a habit, like a little bit more um consistency. Put it on your calendar, noon to 3 p.m. Thursdays. Eastern is when we hang out in the playhouse. So we're gonna be rotating through lots of different ideas. We still have the think tanks during that time on one of the weeks. We still have co-working involved in one of the weeks. We have um a fun, like show and tell, sort of share your offer, promote your stuff hour, where I'm hoping that people will be able to find aligned referral partners and collab people so that when you hear someone's offer, you're like, oh my god, what? My list would love that. Like somebody's hosting a workshop somewhere, or somebody's starting a new podcast or doing a summit. Like, oh my god, my list would love that. I'll share it. So we have lots of ideas for what's gonna happen in those Thursday hangouts, including still members getting to take the stage and show us a thing or two, teach us a thing or two, or facilitate a discussion that's important to them. Um, so I'm excited about that. I just wanted to walk you through the decision and why I'm doing what I'm doing because I also think if we share this kind of stuff and we're like, hey, I added a free tier, and instead of like people going from the free tier to the paid tier, a few of my paid people left to go to the free tier, like. Um, I just think the honest, you know, look and peek behind the curtain is what's gonna help us all like grow. Um, and if you run a membership, you know that it is not the easy um like residual, or what am I trying to say, not residual? Like you know, the easy income every month, reoccurring income every month. So if you want to also listen to the behind-the-scenes look at how I came to the realization that we need that regular Thursday schedule, like I said, give that episode a listen. I will link it in the show notes. And if you are someone listening who was in the free tier, I feel bad. I'm like um Uncle Phil kicking you out of the playhouse on June 1st. But um, you know, I uh would love for you to stay and join us and be a paid member so that we can all toot together. Just kidding, I need to stop bringing that analogy back up, but that's just who I am. Sorry, I am who I am. I am who I am. Um, yeah, I just want to give you the peek and the reason behind the decision, and I'm gonna stop talking now and okay, love you bye.