✨ Watch Casey's full Spotlight interview here!
When it comes to creating engaging and impactful courses and membership programs, incorporating play can make all the difference. And it’s especially true when your audience is composed of ambitious little ones… In today’s spotlight, we explore the insights and strategies of Casey Patch, founder of Little Lifelong Learners.
From Primary school teacher, to mum, to entrepreneur–Casey's ongoing dedication to helping parents prioritize play in their daily lives with their children has not only made a positive impact on her own family and others but also holds valuable lessons for course creators and membership site owners.
Let’s jump into the interview as she chats with Searchie’s Customer Success Lead, Paulina, and discover the power of play and how it can enhance the learning experience for your audience.
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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. |
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Paulina at Searchie: Why did you choose Searchie to host your Membership site?
Casey: I was originally on WordPress and I went with that because I was so scared of investing initially any amount of money.
I didn't know whether the Membership would be well received. I didn't know if we'd sign anyone up. So I thought, how am I gonna do this for free to test the waters?
And anyone that's thinking of doing that, I would say just jump in and spend the money first, because it is not fun having to move platforms further down the track.
But I'd started on WordPress, it was clunky, it was messy, it was really hard to organize the content and I'm such a fan of Stu and doing The Membership Experience, it was hosted on Searchie around the same time that I'd started my Membership and it was such a wonderful user experience.
So I'd gotten to use it on that side of the fence and I thought, I think this is going to be a really good fit for my Membership as well.
So we took the plunge, we set it all up, we got a couple of our members to test it for us and give us feedback to see what they thought, and they all loved it. So then we moved everyone else over and they all loved it as well.
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.
Even now if I post a live workshop, I'll put the replay into a Searchie Hub and it will take me like 30 minutes to get a Hub set up for them, put all the PDFs in there, put a workshop replay in there, have an upsell to the Membership there.
Like it's so easy to just get that going without having to set up this whole website or other area to host those sorts of resources.
Paulina at Searchie: I wanted to wrap up this interview with a question about play… How have you prioritized play in your life, with your business model and the content that you deliver to your audience?
Casey: Being able to experiment is the beauty of having your own business.
I think I had my first business when I was 19 years old. So I've always been an entrepreneur and I've always been playing with things I would say.
Otherwise you would just go and work for someone else and have them tell you what to do.
The wonderful thing about being a business owner, you can be creative in a way that feels good to you and you're not stuck with doing things a certain way.
You can experiment and find things that bring you joy and be able to tweak what you're doing constantly to make sure that your business still feels fun and enjoyable and that it doesn't feel like a drag.
That's the wonderful thing about memberships especially, is that it's not just one way of doing things. You can tweak things and add new things all the time while listening to what your members are saying and you can make it work better and be enjoyable for you as well.
Paulina at Searchie: Do you have any tips or tricks for anyone who you know may be a little bit scared to experiment or play?
Casey: I I think you just have to get it going like Stu says, because at the end of the day, no decision that you make is permanent. Like you can try something, if it doesn't work, it's fine, you can just try something else.
I think a lot of the time we get stuck thinking if I make this decision and it doesn't work out that it's done. But we are in charge of our businesses so we can tweak them at any stage if things aren't working out.
So there's really nothing to lose and everything to gain at the end of the day.
Paulina at Searchie: I love that. Casey, thank you again so much. I think that so much of your message resonates with a lot of our community members, so I can't wait to share your story with the community. Thank you again for joining us today.
Casey: Thank you so much for having me.
By incorporating Casey Patch's insights and lessons into your own course or membership program, you can harness the power of play to create engaging and transformative learning experiences for your audience. Prioritize play, foster community, and embrace an entrepreneurial spirit to take your offerings to the next level.
Watch Casey's full Searchie Spotlight interview here!
Thanks for reading!
Want to learn more about Casey’s business? Head over to her website here.
We’ll catch you in the next blog.
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