Searchie Spotlight: Why Play Matters In Course & Membership Creation: Fun & Effective Lessons From Casey Patch

During this interview, we cover: 

• The importance of play in course and membership creation
• Repurposing content to engage and motivate members while reducing overwhelm
• Strategies to meet the demands of busy parents and make play accessible
• And a whole lot more!
  
  

  Spotlighter Bio  Name: Casey Patch Business: Little Lifelong Learners Niche: Casey Patch helps parents prioritize play in their daily lives with their children, which not only makes a positive impact on families, but offers valuable lessons for course creators and membership site owners, showing how the power of play can also enhance the learning experience of your audiences.

Let’s Dive In With Casey Patch!

Paulina at Searchie: I thought we could jump in with getting you to tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and who you serve.

Casey: I I'm Casey Patch from Little Lifelong Learners, and I help parents to inject more play into their days at home with their children.

I was a former primary school teacher and when I left the classroom to start my own family, I sort of stumbled my way into this niche, and it has been so much fun being able to serve other parents that are hanging out at home with their kids and looking to fill in the day together with them and create some pretty special memories while they're at it. 

My husband retired from his nine to five to join me in the business as well.

So it's been a really beautiful way, not only to have more time together in our family, but also to help other families to do the same sort of thing, to just really spend that quality time with their children, no matter how much time they have up their sleeve.

Meeting the Demands of Busy Parents

Paulina at Searchie: What's your secret sauce when it comes to dealing with a very, very busy demographic?

Casey: I think the biggest thing for parents is that we all feel stretched thin.

Like no matter what, we never feel like we're on top of our to-do list. And so I didn't want to make parents feel like play was this extra thing that had to tick off their list.

So when we'd been thinking about the deliverables and how we're going to support our members, I had to step away from the done way of doing things and really think about,

“When I was a new parent, what was my day like? How much time did I have up my sleeve? I didn't wanna be sitting and watching hour-long master classes, for example.”

So we have to  try really hard to reign it in, keep the masterclass really short and brief under 20 minutes so that parents can say, “okay, I've got 20 minutes while the kids are playing happily, I can quickly watch this video.”

Being able to have all our videos caption with Searchie as well has been really helpful because a lot of parents are feeding their babies at nighttime, or laying with their children for hours at nighttime waiting for their kids to fall asleep. 

So being able to turn the audio off and just watch with the subtitles has been a game changer for our community as well.

So really thinking about that “time poorness” of parents and how we can cater to that when creating our deliverables to make sure that they are really easy to use, and parents can use them at any time of the day around their kids.

Repurposing Content: Engaging And Motivating Members

Paulina at Searchie: How do you stay on top of and manage your content delivery schedule?

Casey: It's definitely something I struggled with for a long time, especially when I started my Membership… I felt like I had to be giving a lot of content to give value, and so I was really stuck on that hamster wheel of delivering something new every week.

Over time I noticed that our members were probably feeling a bit burnt out by that constant need to cycle through all that content. 

And we were noticing a lot in our exit survey that people were saying, “I just don't have time to stay on top of everything.”.

So we had to really think, what are the things that are really gonna help them move forward and how are we gonna support them to take action and use those materials that we're giving them?

One way that we helped them to do that was turning our masterclass also into a challenge so that once they had watched the masterclass, they could take action and go into the running to win a prize as well.

I had to really think about how we could make it easy and fast for them. 

Then on my side I had to think about how can I create content quickly? What content do I already have that I can recycle and maybe present in a different way for different kinds of learners?

Some people love a masterclass, they love a workshop, other parents love a challenge where they've got a bingo board and they can just take two minutes to tick off and that's their action item done.

So being able to recreate that content we've already got, but in a new way so that it's not only faster for me to put together, but hitting those different members the way that they learn best, and really reflecting on what is actually being used in the membership and what we could perhaps replace with something else.

Recently we got rid of our Q&A sessions and started doing a really casual coffee chat. They're just really casual ways for the members to come and connect, not with me as the expert, but with one another.

It was a really nice way to facilitate more of that community aspect and give them what they needed. There's so much on their plates. 

We had to think, how can we help them to connect and realize that we all have similar struggles and that they can really lean on one another in those really tricky times.

“What are the things that are really gonna help them move forward and how are we gonna support them to take action and use those materials that we're giving them?”

“It was the best decision moving over to Searchie, it's so easy to use. I feel like a lot of the other platforms that are out there are clunky and you have to have so much tech knowledge to get things going, but Searchie was just so easy and fast."