How to keep your students accountable so that they get results.

Welcome to the Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I am an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs, the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators, just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love.

If you are looking to uplevel your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator in business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you to play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. 

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to my podcast. I'm happy to be chatting with you again today. 

So this episode is, was actually inspired by a conversation that I had in the DMs with someone on Instagram. And this was someone who had been, has been listening to my podcast for a while, and they listened to last week's episode all about memberships. And she just wanted to tell me how much she loved it.

And then she shared with me a struggle. That I know many educators in business or anyone really in an online business who sells courses, memberships, digital products comes up against and that is that their students aren't using, some of their students aren't using the services provided in the program.

In other words, some of their students aren't showing up the way that she would like them to show up. And because of that, they won't get the results that she wants them to get, or she just wants them to use what she's giving them, right? And implement and take action, right? And she was telling me that she is feeling so guilty.

And she's like carrying this feeling of, ugh. I'm charging them every month because hers is a membership. And some of them are not even using what they're paying for. And so she's now carrying all this guilt about that. And so I thought this was such an interesting conversation that I had with her, because I think so many people experienced this, right?

I can almost say that you've probably experienced this before. If you've got an online business and you selling courses or coaching or things like that, memberships. So this is what I want to talk about on this episode. It's all about how to keep your students accountable and also what not to do.

And things that we can do and what things that we shouldn't do really. So for context, this lady who I was chatting to, she's selling a membership of a certain amount per month. And the students who join her membership get a various number of things, but they get audio coaching with her every month. 

And so quite of the students that are paying and join, they're not really using that audio coaching. They're not really utilizing that service. And so she feels bad. So that's the context of the conversation. And if you're wondering what I responded to her, I will let you know that now. So my response to her and to anyone going through a similar experience where you're carrying guilt about your students actions or inactions or the way they're showing up. Or how they're showing up in your containers essentially.

If you're carrying guilt about that, then this is what I'll say to you. You need to stop carrying the responsibility of all your students on your shoulders. And this is what I said to her. Whether your students take action, show up, implement, execute, and apply what you actually give them, is on them. 

It's not on you. I'll say it again. Whether your students take action, show up, implement, execute, the information and the training you give them is on them. It's not on you. Doesn't matter whether they're paying for $20 a month or $2,000 a month or z$20,000 a month, their results and ultimately their transformation is really their responsibility.

So it's going to be really hard for you to grow your business, welcome more students, make more money and scale up. If you are taking on everyone else's responsibilities, your students responsibilities, things that they should be responsible for. They're not your responsibilities. They're theirs. And I've got a little story about this, a little bit of a story about this.

So in the early days of my online business, when I started coaching clients right in the beginning, like five years ago, and I was helping them launch their courses. I had never really coached before at that point. And I was just, really dived into the deep end of business coaching and how to help someone launch.

And what happened is I was really overcompensating and enabling a lack of responsibility and accountability for my coaching clients because I had weak or no boundaries. And I was allowing for certain things to happen and enabling certain behaviour. And I wasn't holding up my clients to a certain standard and expectation.

And I ended up assuming a hundred percent responsibility of their results in their launches. And it was a very difficult time because some of them really didn't have good launches. And I would take on like a hundred percent responsibility of that. But they weren't applying what I was teaching them.

They weren't implementing, they weren't showing up. They weren't doing like any of the things that I was telling them. And I actually had such weak boundaries at that point that I would go into my clients business systems and do the work for them because I just really wanted them to get a result, but they weren't showing up.

So I would overcompensate and over show up. And I wasn't doing myself a service. I was very miserable and I wasn't doing my clients. At all the servers because they had this lack of responsibility, I was essentially enabling them to not take ownership of their results. And your clients and students need to take ownership of their results in order for them to get a result because that transformation is not going to happen without them really actively being a part of it.

It's really hard for you or me to get someone a result if they themselves are not showing up for it. It's like paying for a personal trainer to get the best body ever, and then you still eat crap food and you hardly show up to your gym sessions. That's what it literally is. So the first thing I want to reiterate Is that the results in the transformation of your students or your clients is a two way street.

It requires you to show up to the party and do your part, which there will be definitely a part for you that you have to uphold and do it well and, really provide them the content and support that they need to succeed. But then they need to show up to the party and implement, execute, take action.

Be consistent, keep going, all of those things for it to make it work. It's really key that both parties show up for this result and transformation to take place. I don't really know many niches and things like that, where you can create a course or a membership and that you give everything for them and do everything for them.

And then they don't need to show up and they'll still get a result. I think it's virtually impossible for someone to get a result unless they show up. So them taking action is almost mandatory and they need to take responsibility. For what they want in their life. And that's just, I think really important. That's the first thing I would say. 

I can't help my DBA students or my coaching clients make money and launch courses if they don't show up, implement and execute, it's just not possible. And it'll be the same for your students, whatever niche you're in. We aren't magical fairies that can wave our magical wand and grant a result to people.

It takes effort and energy from your students to do that and to get that result. And at the end of the day, you have enough to worry about in your business, and in your life. You don't need to take on everyone else's jobs and responsibilities. And energetically, if you take on everyone else's responsibilities and jobs, then you're actually energetically maxing yourself out because you just won't have capacity to grow your business from that space.

You'll just be maxed out because you'll be carrying all this guilt, overcompensating, worrying, thinking that your product isn't good enough when actually there's the students haven't really used it and applied it and things like that. And then it really affects you being able to sell and launch and scale and grow your business. 

So it has a very negative effect. So with that being said, now that we've set the tone, that it is not your responsibility. How can we create more accountability and how can we move that responsibility and that engagement to our students. The ones that come into our programs and our containers and our memberships and courses.

So there are some practical things that you can do to boost that accountability and responsibility and get people showing up really so that they can reap the rewards and get the results that you want. And some of these things you may be doing some of these things you may have not thought of, but I think all of them are very worthwhile.

The first thing you can do is you use emails to get them to implement, show up and take action. So when someone joins your course on your membership, there should be an email automation that triggers and sends them emails over that period of time, whether it's an eight week program or it's a membership and they get a couple of emails a month. 

You need to have an email automation that sends to your students that gets them to take action and execute in the way that you want them to do. So you have to basically tell people what to do very clearly in your emails. And it has to be like repeatedly. Otherwise people aren't going to do stuff. So you have to have an email automation that's doing that.

If you don't have that, you must get that. The next thing is reminder emails and posts. So if you have a Facebook group or a community, you want to have reminder posts just to remind them to do things. Otherwise you can also use reminder emails. So say you have calls and you want your students to show up to a call and or you want them to do something before the call or submit something. Like for me with my gold students, I have them submit hot seats ahead of time.

I remind them I send an email reminder. I send a drop a reminder in my voxel groups. I would have. Done it in my Facebook groups. You have to remind people and you can pre create these email reminders just so that they show up to the call or their submit their homework or they submit the hot seat and all that stuff.

Life is busy, people are busy. They just need reminders to do the thing. The next thing is creating a Google calendar schedule for any of your group calls that you want your students to show up. So I love doing this now. So you can go into your Google calendar and set up the call schedule and then you can share that calendar link with your students that they can then add that calendar to their own google Calendar and sync it in. 

So then the calls are actually built out in their calendar already, and then there's notifications for the calls. So when they're on their computer or on their phone, there will be a notification saying, hey, this call is starting in 30 minutes or in 10 minutes. However you set it up.

And so that really makes a difference in just getting people to show up to the live things that you want them to show up to. The next thing you can do is actually give deadlines. So some people actually, a lot of people need some sort of deadline or urgency to help them move or take action or show up.

I don't need that. I don't like too much urgency and deadlines. I'm not big into having a deadline and working just before the deadline. I hate that. It stresses me out. But Mike, my partner, he works really well with deadlines. And if he has a deadline, he will just chill, chill, chill, chill, chill.

And then two days before the deadline, he really grafts. And just gets it done and that he always gets it done before the deadline, but he just does it in his own way. Whereas for me, that just stresses me out. So what you can do though, is set up deadlines for whatever the things are that you want. Say you want them to submit a certain thing in, you have to give a deadline for that thing.

Say you want them to book a certain call with you, you have to give a deadline for that call. Say there's anything that you want them to do, give them a time frame to do it in and a strong deadline for it, and you're going to have a much better uptake in those people doing that thing, when there is a deadline. If it's just open ended and there's no real urgency, people just don't do things. It's just how it works. 

The next thing is if you have Voxel or audio coaching, that's part of your program and say the person isn't actually engaging and using it much. Then it's your job to prompt engagement by maybe asking key questions and getting them to respond, giving them activities in the group, in the Voxel chat, and just prompting them. 

Because a lot of the time people need to be prompted and then once they're prompted it could get the conversation going and then it can get the flow going and then they can continue. But it helps to just prompt engagement by asking key questions. Or giving them certain tasks to do just to keep to get them engaging.

The Other thing that you can do is use some form of gamification, which is like playing games, making it a bit more engaging, adding quizzes, building out like games through the thing so they can unlock different things along the way.

When they do a certain thing, they can unlock something and just getting it like a bit more, making it a bit more playful just to keep people engaged. That is an idea as well. And then the last thing on that is the messaging of your offer and the messaging of your content the kind of people that you're attracting into the offer, if they are not showing up and they're not really taking responsibility and they're just not the right people. 

Then ultimately, perhaps you have gotten in the wrong kind of people and they aren't your ideal student avatar because your ideal student avatar isn't someone who doesn't take responsibility and doesn't want to get results. Your ideal student avatar should be someone who wants to get a result. 

Is committed to showing up to getting that result and takes responsibility for themselves and the work that they do, and they don't push that ownership and that responsibility on other people. That's like a massive value or core thing in my business. I take radical responsibility for the results of my business.

It doesn't matter what coach I'm with. What strategy I'm implementing, who I'm learning it from, whatever that result is, it's on me. It's not on my coach. It's not a reflection of anyone else. It's a reflection of me. And I need to take responsibility. And because of that radical responsibility, I only want to work with people who take radical responsibility and are willing to really show up to get the result they want, because that's just who I am.

And that is what I do. And that is what I expect of others. And in my messaging and in my content, I speak to that and I really pull that forward. So people know that that is part of my brand, ultimately. Who I am as a person and the people that I want to attract. The people I want to work with. I love it when people just take action and execute and take responsibility.

I find it the most amazing thing ever. And those are the people that I work with. It hasn't always been like that, but that's what it is now. And that's because I tightened up the messaging and I spoke to it in my messaging. So I changed my messaging from being more victim minded, disempowered, like really struggling, poking the pain. Kind of people who are very in the pain of their situation. And that's like pain based marketing. And I didn't speak to the people who were so desperate or in that victim state or really, yeah, just in the pain of it. I spoke to the people who are really solution based and solution aware.

And the ones that are like very forward driven who want to get a result, who are like excited to get that result, who are like really driven and ambitious and willing to create the life that they want. And I changed my messaging to speak to those people. And I really spoke to that person, like how I would speak to me because I wanted to attract more people like me and just by shifting my messaging in my content, and in my offers, I started getting the right kind of people into my containers.

And that is something that might be some where you'd want to look at is. What is the messaging in your content in your offers. Are you showcasing those values and what you want? And are you really speaking to your ideal student avatar? Or are you speaking to someone who's disempowered and maybe doesn't have money to invest, or maybe is just too in the trenches and in the pain to actually move forward with a solution?

Perhaps you need to shift that messaging and speak to the person who maybe has experienced pain and struggle. But is aware of the solution and wanting actively seeking a solution. So actively looking to find a solution to this pain or to get this result. And they are responsible, taking ownership, developed, evolved human beings. 

That I think is massive. Your messaging plays such a huge role in the people that come into your containers and the way, ultimately, that they show up. Because you can get a lot of people who just expect the world from nothing. And the fact that people can't take responsibility for their results is just like a red flag for me.

Okay. So that's keen. And then it's all about also just setting expectations and boundaries. So once people are in, you want to set the expectation, lay down the boundary. And from the get go, your students need to understand that it's a two way street and the only way that they will get success in whatever thing they're trying to do is if they show up and implement what you asked them to do.

So you really need to verbalize that from the get go in your offers, in your containers, whatever it may be. You need to let them know that you are committed to their success, but their success is dependent on how they show up, not how you show up because how you show up, you're going to show up for them and you're going to give them what they need.

You're going to give them the tools, the container for support, everything they need. The training, the teaching but they need to implement and practice and take action for them to get that result. And so you have to say that. That needs to be verbalized. And I've verbalized that a lot and I do it in my launches and I do it in my content.

And it is just something that people need to know. So when someone comes into a container, you need to verbalize that. What's the expectation of you? So what are you going to do? And this is almost like a boundary. What are you going to do each week, month, and what can they expect? And then you can say what is required by them in order for them to get the results, have the best experience in the container. 

So you literally state the boundaries clearly. Boundaries and expectations. Okay, you have to state them clearly. So you need to know exactly what you want, how you want the program to go, and how you want your students to show up, and then you need to verbalize that in the beginning. And then you need to energetically hold that boundary by not breaking it yourself and overdoing or overcompensating or doing something that's breaking the actual expectation boundary.

For example, if the boundary is, I'm only going to respond to you from Monday to Friday on Voxer, I'm not responding to you on weekends. And then I Go in and respond on a Saturday. That's me breaking my own boundary. And that is not a good thing. That's when things go pear shaped. And so you need to uphold the expectation and the boundaries.

And when you uphold the expectations and the boundaries, you actually empower your students to show up and take responsibility, knowing that is the thing for their highest good. You know that enabling your students and creating this unhealthy dynamic where they don't really take action.

You take more ownership and do more of the work. You overcompensate, they undercompensate, like that's not in their highest good. And you know that. So by you stating the boundary, the expectation, and then energetically holding it up, you're actually empowering your students and you're actually getting them. 

You're helping them get to their result in a much faster, more effective way by upholding the boundary and that expectation and holding them up to that responsibility as well. When you start letting that slip and slide and let students overstep things and do this and that, then it can snowball and just get out of control.

And then it's not actually in service of your students either. So there's a lot that can go into just the way that you facilitate your programs and your memberships and the way that you create these containers and set these containers up for your student success. And there's a lot of practical things you can do, as I mentioned in this episode. But there's also energetic things that you can do.

And just verbalizing things and setting expectations and slaying those boundaries and then upholding them and things like that. And if you do these things, you're going to, especially if you shift your messaging, you're going to find that you're going to have a much better upkeep or uptake rather in the like engagement in your programs and things like that.

People are going to show up more. People are going to feel. Like more supported, everyone's going to be on the same page. Everyone's going to know exactly what they need to do. Everyone's going to have their own responsibilities, and then you can really work together with these people to get them to that result in the fastest and best way possible.

So I hope this was valuable and this was helpful. And yeah, I will chat to you again next week. 

Bye. 

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you are a teaching business owner, freelance teacher, or online teacher, and you are interested in creating a digital course or group program to scale your income and impact without teaching more hours, then I have just the thing for you. Grab my Free Scalable Digital Course Roadmap, and it will walk you through the six steps of turning your one on one classes into a scalable offer that frees you from the teacher burnout trap.

Creating scalable courses and programs have allowed me to 10X my hourly rate, hit 6 figures in my business and impact hundreds and hundreds of people around the world without having to be actively teaching all day. If this is what you desire, grab my guide in the show notes and let me help you. 

I appreciate you so much, and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.