Jeni Barcelos (00:01)
Welcome to the Wellness Creator Podcast. today's episode, we are going to discuss, Sandy, I'm gonna cut this out in the beginning, okay? I wanna start over. Welcome to the Wellness Creator Podcast. In today's episode, we are going to discuss how to deal with low engagement when you start to see that happening in your business, particularly within your paid programs and offerings.
Sandy Connery (00:09)
Yep.
Yeah, because usually, I mean, I don't know how many times we had this discussion in our, coaching program, but usually people take it as a sign of failure. Things are nose diving. I'm failing. It's not going to work. You know, people don't like me. No one wants to engage. think understanding what low engagement could possibly mean other than you're failing is valuable.
Jeni Barcelos (00:46)
Yeah, and I will just give the TLDR of my perspective on this. It's just that you don't know what someone is getting out of your paid offering unless they tell you. So whatever you're reading into it, you're making up until you actually have cold hard data and evidence from your customers what the heck is going on. But in lots of cases, people are getting what they need to out of your offering passively and it's not really your business.
how they use what you sold to them.
Sandy Connery (01:19)
Yeah, let's, let's just give a concrete example. So like on Marvelous, lot of people, a lot of our clients make memberships and usually with a membership as per our recommendation is you have a community component, right? So only the members can go into the community and chat and the teacher can connect and so on. Sometimes the teacher goes in there, post something or, know, regularly post things each week or each day or whatever it may be. And then no one says anything and it's like, right. And so.
Jeni Barcelos (01:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sandy Connery (01:48)
What
you're saying is like, maybe they read it and they're like, got it, great, you know?
Jeni Barcelos (01:54)
Yeah,
yeah. Yes, and I will just say personally, I'm one of those people. Like I am a lurker. Unless I have some compelling thing to say, I'm going to keep my mouth shut and I don't feel the need to go like and heart and add emojis and add gifts to things like I don't engage with people that way. If there's an in person class, I'm going to be in the front. I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to like get every last drop of information and communication. But in an online space for me, I'm
Sandy Connery (01:59)
Me too, me too.
huh.
Jeni Barcelos (02:23)
I take on an observer role and I think that that's kind of natural. Like a lot of people fit into that category.
Sandy Connery (02:31)
Yeah, and it doesn't mean that it's a waste of time, you know, like people are watching and there are those people who are like right in there and commenting and liking on every post. but I just, I really think that, you know, there's so much value in the, in the membership itself that if you are judging how it's working or not by the type number of likes, I think that's a real, you know, something just to sit and consider.
I mean, we've also had clients who are like, should I even have this community in this paid membership or in this we're talking, the example we're using is the membership, but it could be a course too, right? Like a, we're coaching program or whatever.
Jeni Barcelos (03:09)
Yeah.
Yeah,
or people aren't like putting comments on the bottom of videos or you know, whatever in the comment feed like it might need not even have a community feature at all. It just may be like, people aren't watching, you know, a lot of the content that I'm putting out or they're not commenting on it or they're not asking questions. like, here's the thing. We can have a whole podcast about this. We've talked about it a lot before, but less is often more in a busy world. So if somebody signs up for your membership,
and there's only two videos that they wanna watch and they don't watch the other 98 videos in your membership, like maybe that's exactly what they want and need from that membership are to watch those two videos over and over again. And like that's sufficient for them and satisfactory for them. And so just like for you to make it mean something else without knowing isn't helpful for anybody.
Sandy Connery (03:48)
they needed.
Right. Yeah. I think it's a good point. And if you just think about what your experience with that is like some of us, good girls or, um, past good girls will feel like if we sign up for a membership or a course that we have to do all the things, you know, in order to get our money's worth. And I don't think that's true. Like if you don't show up to every coaching call, it's okay. Right. And so maybe you just do need the one or two calls or little pearls of wisdom that you glean. And it's like,
Jeni Barcelos (04:31)
Yeah.
Sandy Connery (04:32)
Got it, that was so worth my $70 this month.
Jeni Barcelos (04:33)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's right. And then again, even if someone does not log in, we also have had clients who are maybe a little paranoid that someone isn't using the thing that they bought. Maybe they don't even log in. can tell. And like for some people who purchase something, it's knowing that they can go use it if and when they want to. Like that's a good enough reason for them to pay the money.
Sandy Connery (04:41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jeni Barcelos (05:00)
Right, so again, we don't want you to make up stories about the value that you're putting out for someone else. Like only the student or the client in that case gets to decide what is valuable to them and what is worth it to them. even, like I've had many things like that that I've paid for and I don't necessarily use all the time, but there is a sense of safety or just satisfaction knowing that it's there and that I don't have to go create an account.
Like it's there and I can go use it if and when I want to. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Sandy Connery (05:32)
Yeah. The security of knowing you have the coach, the teacher, whatever to help you through whatever
the content is. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's a good point. But I also like understand the teachers who fear that because like what else like in real life, we would see facial expressions and we would see like how many people are coming to live classes or whatever. And it's like, you're just feeling like you're blind a little bit, right? With in the online space. And so all you have is this.
community and the number of people watching the videos, like looking at that count. and then if it's silence, of course you're going to spiral into like, this is useless. They're all going to churn, you know, whatever the, whatever you're going to ruminate on and tell these, these horrible stories about. so I, I get it, but I think like, this is where we need to really change our thinking and change our mindset about this on online work.
is that people are going to have their own experience with it. We can't witness it. We can't actually see it happening. And I think to run a business, it's obviously so much better to come from a place of like, they're getting what they need. Like always asking, how can I improve? How can I get better? You know, in listening, but like maybe show up with the assumption that, you know, it is working instead of like,
Jeni Barcelos (06:43)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, I like that. Like so much of this is kind of just internal mindset work. And also just to put those concerns at bay, what I would recommend is just having ample opportunities and requests for your students and clients to give you feedback. Like be constantly asking them if they have feedback, if they need anything else, like put that out there. And then if you're not getting requests for anything else, then like,
Sandy Connery (06:57)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeni Barcelos (07:21)
Hopefully that helps you calm those fears a little bit. But also you know that you're putting it out there and making it really convenient and safe for someone to give you that feedback.
Sandy Connery (07:31)
Yeah.
And like it's not 2015 anymore. And so there's also the possibility that your people don't need or want that community. Like that's another option, but you have to like talk to them and see just because no one, you're not getting the engagement that you want or expect doesn't mean you need to close it down. But I think like that is an option because we are, you know, online so much and it's normal to have like lots of different communities online and it's not such a special place.
thing anymore like it was in the beginning. So it may be a possibility, but I would pull your people, talk to them, you know, and they might just like you say, be comforted by the fact that they can pop in a question in the community and know that you're going to be watching and answer it.
Jeni Barcelos (08:14)
Yeah.
Yeah. And OK, so I want to also pivot to this idea of community being really important because for some of our customers on the platform, the community is like the central hub of their business is the online community. And I think you need to know your business and your clientele well enough to know whether that is the case. So, you know, obviously, if you have one of those communities, you know, but that should be intentionally how you structure your
Sandy Connery (08:23)
Mm.
Jeni Barcelos (08:42)
your business and should be the central point of what you make and how you work with your clients. And if you do that, like you can obviously build a really robust, powerful, engaged community. But I think what doesn't work now in 2025 is kind of like half assing a community and tagging it on and expecting it to be that like robust central everybody's, know.
couch, like everyone meets together every day. Like there are plenty of online communities that are like that still, including on Marvelous. But what I've noticed is that that has to be a very intentional space created by the teacher or the business to, know, like there has to be a lot of love and intention put into create that versus creating that versus 10 years ago, just tacking it on sometimes magically create those spaces because we didn't all have those spaces online.
Sandy Connery (09:29)
Right, Wednesday wins.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jeni Barcelos (09:35)
But now
people, think, especially post pandemic, there is some fatigue. Like we're all in a million groups. Like we just are, all of us at this point.
Sandy Connery (09:44)
Or we've just don't want to do it anymore. Like we've just been in it. I think that's a good point because I think having just listened to what you said, like I, I do think that a lot of people are trying to mimic the Facebook groups of 2015 or 10 years ago and, know, like by posting the same thing on Monday and then Wednesday and then Friday or, whatever. And I've seen that work in some communities, but
Jeni Barcelos (09:46)
Yeah. Yeah.
Sandy Connery (10:12)
Is that what they want or is that, your, are your clients just like, you know, eye rolling and like, my God, this is what I've seen every single group manager do for 10 years. Like maybe it's different what you need to do.
Jeni Barcelos (10:22)
Yeah,
yeah, and I would say that one of the places where communities are really like robust and where there's a lot of engagement is when there's a constant new influx of people, because those are the people that typically like, I'm here, look at me, this is who I am, I'm a new person here, like shaking my tail feathers, look at my feathers. Like I think that that is, so if you have a,
Sandy Connery (10:38)
Yeah.
Yeah, I just joined. I'm so excited. Yeah.
Jeni Barcelos (10:49)
a business where that's not what you're making. You don't have like a constant influx every week or every month of new people kind of coming in. Those are usually the people that are the most active, I guess is what I would say. So if you don't have that, like that's where those posts you're talking about, Sandy makes sense where you're like giving people something to say about themselves and where are you from and what did you do this week and what did you eat and show me a picture of your refrigerator and like all those things. Those are like new people posts. And if you have a
you know, an online membership say that's been going strong for five years or 10 years, you know, like you're gonna have a, you know, you're gonna have new people coming in, but you're also gonna have like a hefty majority of people that have been around for a long time and they don't wanna do that. Like I can almost guarantee you that nobody wants to post those things. They wanted to do that when they first came in. So like, that's another thing to just think about. Like when you're prompting your community,
Sandy Connery (11:35)
Mm-hmm.
Jeni Barcelos (11:45)
Are you talking to the new people or are you talking to the people that have been around for a long time? Like you need to know who your audience is within even a paid product when you're posting.
Sandy Connery (11:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we
teach this in our membership course, membership marvelous, where you think about the journey of that, of the different members in different stages. And often, and not always, but often the more senior members will start to mentor the newer members or jump in on the community, on the, on the posts and like welcome, or there'll be a question.
And your older members will like come in and answer the questions, right? That's that sort of a natural evolution. but again, I do think it's like the topic and you know, if it's something really sensitive, like I'm in an AI group, right? And so there's lots of people, AI course, and there's it's, it's like finite amount of time. And it's like the old, people who have repeated this are jumping in and helping the newer, the newer members. Right? So it's like, there's this excitement of.
being here and doing this. So I think there's a personality type that that will be that person. Yeah, right, right, right.
Jeni Barcelos (12:51)
Yeah, there's like the, yeah, that TA, like the
lifelong TA. So there's going to be that little segment of like your, you know, thousand true fan slash lifelong TAs that are going to jump in. are fantastic people to have around. But yeah, I mean, I think most people, once they've like kind of been in and introduced themselves and they're sort of, I staked my claim. This is who I am in this space.
They're busy, right? Like their life moves on and they're getting what they get out of being a part of this community, but it's not necessarily a ton of engagement. So, I mean, there's always exceptions, but yeah, I would say like, know who you're talking to. And then I would say like, with the idea of people being quiet or being more reserved or introverted.
that also just might be your audience too. So like part of this too, Sandy, is like, I think people need to know who their audience is. And you might have an audience of introverts. Like I think how much engagement you expect from, you know, from a particular group of people should factor in. Who are those people? How busy are they? What are their personality types? Like, you know, yeah.
Sandy Connery (14:06)
or topic, like I'm not
gonna jump in on, be super loud about what, know, if it's something sensitive or super private, right? I've seen coaches in that and they typically don't have communities for that reason.
Jeni Barcelos (14:13)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Sandy Connery (14:23)
hold on one second.
I don't know. started a new recording, whatever. so I've seen coaches in that, in those spaces that just don't have community cause their people are happy to talk privately, but not so much publicly, even though it's like a private paid only group.
Jeni Barcelos (14:43)
Yeah,
yep, yep, yep, yep, Yep, okay, and then I just wanna talk about censorship too, since we're on this topic. And one of the things when we were brainstorming this podcast topic that came up is I think it's really important when, and we talk about this too in our membership course, is to sort of set the ground rules around what is and is not acceptable behavior within a space online.
Sandy Connery (15:06)
Yeah.
Jeni Barcelos (15:12)
people behave differently on the internet, we all know, than they do in real life. Like we are much more likely to take risks and say hurtful things when we're behind a keyboard than we are when we're flesh to flesh in real life. So I would just say like, you really do, especially in paid programs, like you really do need to set the ground rules of like what is and is not acceptable. And that means making it clear like what topics people can discuss and how to treat people.
when they bring up a topic that you maybe have strong feelings about or that you could say hurtful things about. So I just want to put that out there. as you were mentioning, Sandy likes, you know, talking to some, some people are going to be really shy around sensitive things, but if you do have those spaces where sensitive things could come up or like even just, we do biz we for years did business coaching and numbers come up in that too, right? Like have very clear rules.
Sandy Connery (16:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeni Barcelos (16:10)
what that means in that community. How do we treat information like that? How do we deal with stories that you don't want getting out of the room?
Sandy Connery (16:18)
Yep, absolutely. That makes sense. So bottom line is don't make stories up about how awful or how much you're failing based on engagement. may be some very, very good reasons behind the scenes and you might be succeeding and people are super happy and it's just, they choose not to communicate in that group. Whether you need that group or not is your decision and in consultation with your members or clients and you can, you can decide, but,
I think our main message is like, don't jump to the conclusion that things aren't working.
Jeni Barcelos (16:54)
Yeah, base your thinking on facts and not feelings when it comes to this. Yep.
All right, thank you, Sandy. We will see you all next time.