Why We Don't Just Rely On Facebook Groups

Are you solely relying on your Facebook group as your only means of engagement with your community? Would you still have a coaching business if your group vanished one day after a Facebook update?

If this is something that has you nervous, you’re going to want to catch this week’s episode of The CRUSH Method Show so you don’t just rely on Facebook groups!

This week, Amanda and Chris are discussing the hype around Facebook groups in the coaching industry and their utility belt of assets used for community engagement that allow them to not just rely on Facebook.

They’re covering some tips on how you can catch attention and then monetize that attention on just about any platform you use to help people get to a goal faster.

Don’t miss out on this free discussion that is going to give you insight on what sets a struggling coach apart from a successful coach.

Come learn more in this week’s episode of The CRUSH Method Show.

Join the CEO Coach Community at The Coach’s Plaza at www.thecoachesplaza.com 

Get the full vlog, transcript, and mp3 at https://bit.ly/2PTpR0u

Why We Don't Just Rely On Facebook Groups

Transcript of Podcast - May 14, 2021

Hey, Hey, Amanda here. And Chris Lavelle. And we're talking about Facebook groups and why we don't just do Facebook groups. Like we love our Facebook group. We do like it, but why not just do that all the time and only that all the time. Yes. You know, I've been doing this for a minute. More than a hot minute, maybe. A little more than a hot minute.

And I originally got into this coaching business thing because I wanted out of corporate. Yeah. You wanted to leave the nine to five, kind of be your own boss, so to speak, run your own show and you got started, you jumped out there and- And all of the marketing was just razzle dazzling of the one thing that was going to help me build my business.

And I've just, I've just noticed a huge uptick lately in the one thing is Facebook groups. Specifically Facebook groups. It's a hot topic right now in 2021. And it's understandable because you know, Facebook has been investing a lot in their group experience. And if you've noticed the interface on your app on your phone, you've probably noticed that they have a dedicated icon at the bottom for groups.

So, you know, it's with reason that it's such a big topic. Sure. And with over 3 billion people on their platform, there's a lot of people to go into these groups. But I also noticed that in a lot of entrepreneurial groups, there's a lot of chatter about, "I started a Facebook group and then.." Queue crickets. It's definitely not a situation where if you create it,

they will come. It's the Kevin Costner movie all over again. It's not that. I tell you what, like, if there's one theme that I've heard the most in the past four years of building a coaching business, the lament that I hear the most often is, "I built it and they didn't come." And I hear that probably the most about Facebook groups, "well I created this group.

But nobody responds to it. Nobody joined it, nobody whatevered. And nobody engages, nobody Engages." They especially use the word engagement, but you know, it's not just about creating the group. And there are different definitions of engagement. I mean, Facebook has a definition of what engagement is. It's "do you get a like, or a laugh or a ha or a comment?",

but that may not be what serves you best, Coach in your coaching business. A year ago I thought that that's what that meant. Like I thought that our Facebook group was a graveyard. You remember that? I was, I was, I was concerned about it. I was like, dang. You know, we've got at the time we had, I don't know,

600 people in it or something like that. And I was like, we're posting this content. Nobody Ever engages with it from a Facebook perspective. I need like a, I do need a sound effect board for this show because I need a Cricket's sound effect. Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. Yeah, seriously,

maybe in post editing, we need to, we need to work on this, but you know. I do, I remember thinking I'm like, we're posting, we're posting, we're posting. And we posted for a good long time. Nobody's engaging, nobody'sresponding. Are we doing something wrong? What should we do different? And I remember when Facebook groups first came out,

everybody was like, Oh, "You got to have motivation Monday. And then you got to have tips to have all these themes. And then you've got to have throwback Thursday, and then you gotta have-", you know, and those worked for a little while, till everybody got bored with it for like 90 seconds. And then everybody was like, yeah,

I know the whole world got bored of those themed days, like immediately. So that didn't work. And so, you know, all of that to say, all of a sudden, all this attention got put on Facebook groups and it's like, you are not a cool kid in the coaching community unless you have a Facebook group and there are ways to monetize your Facebook group.

Absolutely. But there are ways to monetize email lists. There are ways to monetize a masterclass or a webinar or workshop. There are ways to monetize a YouTube channel. Let me just like, take my little, my little pin. I'm going to burst a big old bubble for you right now. And that is if you can catch attention, you can monetize it.

Absolutely. And there's a lot of ways to catch attention. There is a lot of ways to catch attention and Facebook groups are yet another way to catch attention. And, and so, you know, we actually just did a training in The Coach's Plaza, our Facebook group, ironically enough. How meta. That is pretty meta, isn't it? And, and, and we were talking about this. Let,

let you know, what matters more is is that as a coach, you recognize that what you're really doing is you're helping people get to a goal faster than they would have, or following a better process or with more confidence than they would have without you. That's right. You're helping them achieve their result in all those ways she described faster, better with more assurance of a result that they want,

things like that. Yeah. And if you're not doing those things, then your product probably needs a little bit of work. And as a coach, you know, really what sets a struggling coach apart from, from a successful coach is your ability to set a community around that problem of appropriate magnitude that Pam, that Pam and your content and your programming that actually helps people solve the problem faster,

or following a proven process or with better confidence and better results. Absolutely. So like, well, all those ways you were describing: YouTube, Facebook email, all of these other various ways, they're all just different tools that create a virtual community. That's really what that's all about to Amanda's point faculty, it's all about community. So when you say gotta

have a Facebook group, it only matters if it actually creates a sense of community and you can do that on email, a different platform, another tool, yeah. You can do it on Instagram. You can do it on YouTube. You can do it anywhere. The platform doesn't matter. What matters is the sense of community helping people achieve that PAM,

that problem of appropriate magnitude, a result they really care about and how you can help them do it, like Amanda said: faster with more assurance, with confirmed ways that will work all those kinds of things. Exactly. Exactly. Those are the only real reasons that people hire coaches or consultants is because they do want to get that result better. Right? All those things

we said, all those things that we said. And so, you know, I think, I think where a lot of coaches and including myself struggle in the beginning is, is that if you're good at a lot of things, then, you know, narrowing in on what's that specialty or what, what is that thing you're, you're the most passionate to solve?

Or what is, what is, what's your thing? Like, what's your, what's your real thing? And I think it actually took us a while to really land it. I think so I think so, even after kind of the general direction, there's still a process of evolution and growth and refinement that takes place. That's for sure. Yeah. And what great way to do that then with a community that evolves and grows over time.

I think that's so super true too, is the community has been a big factor in helping me get clear as the founder, as well about our vision and our mission and what we're here to do. For the longest time I thought that we were, you know, helping coaches build coaching businesses, which we are doing, but really what we're doing is we're helping people to be able to have the freedom,

to leave whatever vocation they had. Maybe the corporate nine to five. Maybe a corporate nine to five, for example. And we're using a coaching consulting business to help them to actually do that. So the problem is not that they don't have a successful coaching business. The problem is that they're stuck earning their income in another way. And they want to be,

doing it another way. They want to break free of that other lifestyle. So, you know, getting that clarity, I would never have gotten there without the community. Absolutely. And without talking to literally thousands of coaches, and here's the thing is, is you don't have to have those thousands of conversations first. You can have those thousands of conversations as you're serving.

You can, over time, you can have clients that whole time, because as long as you're being of service and helping the individuals that you're helping along the way, it's all good. Like, you know, you're, you're going to constantly be in, in levels of refinement as you go. Yep. But yeah, your, your Facebook group is just yet another device,

another communication tool, another platform, and P.S., it's one you don't own, you know, just. That's a good point. You don't actually own that group. You may have started it, but it's Facebook's group really from a community standard standpoint and they can take that platform away if they so choose. Just last week, Facebook seemed to have been doing some updates on their backend.

Some algorithm changes some API updates. They're constantly up, they're a software company. You guys they're like one of the biggest, the biggest employers of nerds on the planet. I respect that. I respect that too. Holla. We love you, but, but there were, there were these changes and there I'm in a member of, I'm a member of a lot of different communities that are building,

you know, businesses and communities as well. And There was a huge Tidal wave of panic because Facebook lives were getting interrupted. Oh, what was happening to the Facebook Lives? You know what? It reminded me of? Two years, almost three years ago, you saw this same thing happen when Facebook had a big shift in the way it's algorithm calculated organic reach for lack of a better description for businesses and everybody who had a business page panicked because they were all committed to that single platform operating that one way.

Well guess what? They didn't own the platform. And literally overnight you saw businesses dry up because they committed and put all their eggs in one basket, one platform, for example, just a Facebook group. That was owned by another business. It was, it was- That they didn't control. Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's, Facebook's prerogative to change how it's doing,

doing things. And you know, obviously Facebook needs to weigh how it's making its decisions, like any good business, but it was their decision to make the change. And they are going to make a decision based on what's going to serve their business in the longer term. And that's the decision that they ultimately made. It hurt a lot of people, a lot of businesses put a lot of businesses out of business,

but it was a greater good decision for Facebook the company. Right. And that's what that's, what's going to happen. That's what they're going to do. So if you're building your coaching business for longevity and sustainability, I encourage you to please use the tools that are available to you right now today. But please, please, please, please. Please think about it in a bigger strategy vision and think about it.

Like you're building a real community. You're, you're using this as a tool, but this is just one tool in your, in your belt. You can have- You've got a utility belt, your Batman, Batman, and you can have- I'm wearing a Star Wars shirt. You're like a Storm Trooper. You've got a utility belt. If you do Facebook lives every single week. Like honestly, we were perturbed slightly by a couple of Facebook interruptions,

but you know what we did? We just flipped to our phones and we use the native Facebook lives and we just kept going and we kept trucking. We found a new process. We just found a new process. And you know what, like if that didn't work, you know what we were going to do, we're going to host a zoom call.

That's right! We had already worked it up. We already worked it out. We, we were like cool as cucumbers. We were just like, I got to tell you, why is that? Because we were serving the community And we weren't relying on a single platform or tool to serve our community. We have a variety of ways we could serve. And that's what we want you to feel,

Coach. Is we want you to have the confidence to know that there's a variety of tools, variety of platforms. One I might prefer, or the platform or tool dejure might be a group right now, for sure. It's not the only one you can serve through email, YouTube, whole bunch, other ways, live webinars or mastermind classes. All kinds of stuff. Your business and your career is way bigger than the individual tool.

Your mission is bigger than the individual tool. So don't forget that. Now we did a, like a whole full blown training on this. P.S. fire. Like we had so much fun, great participation in the group with that. So come check it out, go to www.thecoachesplaza.com and come join us in our Facebook group, which happens to be live right now at the time of this report.

And, and come check out that full training. We'd love for you to come participate and have some fun with us. We'll see you in an upcoming video, but we'd love to see you in the group. We'll see you soon. All the best, Coach! MWAH