Treating people like people, not numbers

Perhaps it is time business got more personal.

Up above, I mentioned how I have begun sending personal welcome videos to all new Lab members. Yes, it takes time. When I have a lot of people join at once, it takes quite a lot of time, actually.

But, then I get a response like this one from somebody who got the welcome video…

“Gotta say, I wasn’t expecting such personalized attention right off the bat!… it’s so nice to see you really ARE available to your students – I’m already super pleased I’ve invested in your guidance and resource material.”

I really appreciated her comment (Hey Chelsea ). But, here’s my real point…

In this whole online marketing world, it is really too easy to get caught up in the numbers. The conversion rates. The sizes of your list. The retention rates. The page views. I mean, marketers and bloggers get really focused on those numbers and…

Sometimes we forget these are real, actual people.

But, the other thing is…

This world of online business puts a lot of focus on passive income. There’s that whole stereotype of sitting on the beach, drinking a mojito or a pina colada, while the money rolls in. You want to automate and scale! Right?

But yet…

Sometimes, automation and scaling aren’t the right thing to do.

We’re all used to being looked at anonymously online. Like another number. We join an online course, perhaps, and we barely have any interaction with the instructor. We’re a spectator. We lose interest.

I might have a little automation in place to help me make personal welcome videos, but you can’t really scale it. The time to make that video for one person is the time it takes. And, THAT’S FINE.

This is a major reason – no, THE major reason – why I just ended the availability of lifetime Lab memberships. It wasn’t some scarcity play or a marketing tactic. Did I time it for around the Black Friday/Cyber Money rush? Yes. But, this wasn’t a tactic.

The reason I did that is because my vision for The Lab includes a high level of personal member service. Where my Lab members feel acknowledged, that I give a crap about their business and their results. That takes time. It takes actually caring, too. And it also means I could never afford to do that if somebody pays me only once.

Sometimes, in our quest to scale and automate, we lose sight of just how personal this business really is.

This is a people business. If you’re in business, YOU are in the people business, too.

How can you be more personal? How can you place more value and importance on the customer experience and actually walking your customers to the result they signed up for?

For the Lab, I’m developing a whole new onboarding process for this. I’m going to be seriously ramping up the member service aspect of things by using a combination of custom software, some automation, and me daily being in there concentrating solely on an awesome member experience. One by one.

It is the right thing to do.

I don’t compete on price. I’m just going to blow people away with personalized member service. And prices change as needed.

– David