Webinar Transcript
C. Travis Webb 17:09
Hi, my name is Travis C Travis Webb.
I'm founder of Yo-Do
This is our first webinar.
It's also Juneteenth, which I did not realize when I scheduled the webinar.
I wouldn't have scheduled it on Juneteenth, but it's set, so I want to go ahead and do it.
Thank you everyone for joining us.
I appreciate it.
So today's topic is basically how to increase your revenue.
Without spending any money on it now.
Obviously there are a lot of ways to increase your revenue.
You can add additional services.
You can find partnerships revenue sharing with local businesses depending on the size of your business and whether it's complimentary to your neighbors depending on the level of competition you have in your area.
But I'm what I'm going to talk about today is something that just about every business can do.
And it's something we did.
So before I founded Yo-do, my wife and I ran a very successful music studio in large county, California called Molly's Music. The inside voice, and we sold that business in 2023 to a national chain.
And because we wanted to pivot to software because there was no software on the market, that really did what we wanted it to do.
So our you know our big thing.
Obviously this is sponsored by Yo-Do I work for Yo-Do? I founded Yo-Do.
So you know Yo-Do’s gonna be in here.
The main point of this is to actually give you some tools.
It's very likely that you have your own all in one business management CRM that you're using and that's fine.
This is something that will work for some of them. Not all of them, but there are definitely a handful out there that you can use this this billing structure to increase your revenue.
And the main point of today is to, you know, help you out.
So help you think about different ways to engage with your clients because you know Yo-Do our whole approach.
Short whole angle.
Our mission is, is that we are a service as a software and not software as a service.
So you know we want to be a partner for our customers, for our clients because we want to help them succeed.
So I'm going to talk to you about something that we've literally done.
We went through this, so I'm not.
This isn't theoretical.
It's very concrete and very real, so I'm going to start out by screen sharing and we can get we can get into it. So I'm not taking up any more of your time.
Let me pull up my give me one second here.
Find my PowerPoint presentation, my keynote.
Alright.
Almost got it.
There it is, trying to just organize my windows.
So you guys are bombarded with a bunch of unnecessary information.
All right.
So here we go.
OK so.
You know the title of the webinar 'cause. You clicked on it or you're here and it's how to increase your revenue by 10% per year without spending a dime.
But there should be an alternate headline, which is, you know, don't be afraid of your customers.
And I, you know it is… it is a balancing act. When you run a personal service business that you, your entire business is, you know based on customer satisfaction. I mean this is true of of all businesses, but it's particularly true when you are a personal service business. If you are running a Mart.
Arts Studio or a dance studio or a music studio.
And even if you're a plumber, you know, like it's, you know, people satisfaction, like determined.
How successful your business is gonna be, whether they're gonna keep coming back.
What your churn rate is and so it creates a really it can, it creates a precarious relationship, particularly as you start to grow, right. If you're just by yourself, you manage all those relationships by yourself. You know this isn't really.
As complicated for you, but as soon as you start to bring other teachers and you bring other clinicians in, you bring other service providers into your business. This starts to become a sort of potential source of friction.
And so there's a little bit of anxiety around your customers who are the, you know, the source of your business and the source of your revenue and your livelihood.
But I really, you know, one of the things that I will say today and I will say in future webinars is do not be afraid of your customers.
Don't be afraid of them.
Right. If they are there, they're there for a reason.
And if they're leaving, there's a reason for it, right?
So, and that's probably something that you have to address as a business owner and something you got to look at in a pretty in a serious way.
So everything that we do when we present our webinars and everything that we're gonna talk about, basically the thing that I try not to use a ridiculous word undergird is the one word I want to use the thing that undergirds it is this, you know, your relationship with.
Your customers is a relationship and it's a give and take.
Yes, they are paying you money for a service, but your service has real value or they wouldn't be paying you money for it.
Right. You wouldn't be an expert in it if it didn't have value, right?
You wouldn't have gone out and become an expert in whatever your particular field or your service is if there wasn't value in it, why did you spend all the years learning to be, you know, a music teacher, a physical therapist, a martial artist? You know, why did you?
Spend all the years you know in drama classes because it has value, right?
So the monetary exchange, the commercial exchange does not change that.
So your relationship with your customers is a relationship.
And I encourage you, and I encourage all of our customers to lean into that.
So key points for most subscription based services. Now I I did a little research on this beforehand and most of the data for this is honestly from our competitors in the SAS industry.
So people that have been around 1020 years.
And you know, they there are some good tools out there and not, you know, I'm not maligning any of our competitors and they've been around a long time.
They have a lot of good information on these industries.
Obviously, I think we do things better, but you know that's that's why we're doing what we're doing, but it doesn't.
It doesn't take anything away from what they've done in the past and what they've accomplished in the past.
So, according to most Saa's providers in the industry, the most common form of billing is recurring monthly billing.
So this is, you know, June, you pay this month, July, you pay this month, August you pay this month, etc.
So the advantages of this are it's habit forming, right? So.
Each time the month rolls.
Around it's an expected payment.
The payment comes up the parent or the adult makes the payment service continues.
Advantages. It's predictable.
Oh, it's the 1st of the month.
It's the 5th of the month I have to pay my fill in the blank this month, right?
Easily automated by most software.
So most software on the market now, not all. There are definitely some less expensive alternatives that kind of our invoice based like you.
Provided this many services, you send an invoice, you pay the invoice.
Kind of an old school digital version of you, like receiving an invoice in the mail.
Then there are definitely some of our less expensive competitors that this is their primary mode of billing.
But once you step up from that, monthly billing is going to be something that just about all of our our serious competitors, your tools, if you have a, if you have a CRM that you're using, it's going to be set up to be able to do this because.
Is what's most common.
And then the 4th one that it it cited was aligns with enrollment cycles.
What this means is you know people you know tend to chunk.
This is particularly relevant when it comes to service businesses that cater to kids 'cause everything for a parent is structured around the kids school schedule, right?
So you've got summer, you've got winter breaks, you've got kind of the scrum of fall, and then you have kind of the long.
Roll from the New Year into the summer.
And this is an enrollment cycle. So you, you know, if you run a personal service business, when we ran our music business, you know you would have a fall push, you get a lot of people like, oh, my kids are going back to school. I want to send.
Them back into music lessons.
Are you many years ago, before we had a music school, I ran a martial arts studio.
Also, a very common time for people to to jump in and then you get another big push around the first of the year. New Year's resolutions. I want to start this.
I want to do this, you know I.
I have a buddy who worked at the physical Therapist office and he said same thing around physical therapy, right?
So people would decide like, oh, OK, it's a new year.
I want to really work on, you know, fixing that back problem that I have. So this is the enrollment cycle, right?
You see, sometimes you see a bump in the summer.
You see a summer drop off depending on what you offer.
So these are the advantages of monthly subscriptions, right? This is why people.
Use these for their personal service businesses.
It's a tried and true method.
It's, you know, it's it's been done this way for a very long time, but there are some real disadvantages to this approach, and the disadvantages are, ironically enough, all of the things that are cited as advantages.
And I'm going to explain that in a second. What I mean by that?
So what are cited here as advantages?
This habit forming predictable, easily automated, aligned with enrollment cycles.
These are actually.
Disadvantages or software limitations?
Right, particularly around the easily automated portion of it.
So we'll get to that in a second. This next one, I apologize for this.
This kind of crazy slide this was this was me using ChatGPT to project out.
5th.
5th Week or I'm sorry. Fifth days in in months from now until 2030, and the reason I use ChatGPT for that is because if you look at this.
So if you take a second to look at this, so you got these, these, these are the months with five Mondays.
Five Tuesdays, 5 Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, etc.
You guys, I'm sure you follow. And if you run a service business, everyone knows this. Everyone understands this.
This is a point of friction and it's a point of friction because of, honestly, thousands of years of history, right?
All of our calendars were originally lunar calendars, which is which are basically 29 1/2 days, but we call it 28 and then you've got solar calendars which are 365 days a year, and that's split up into 12 months in the West.
So you get this weird mashup of of dates, right?
Seven days splits very easily into 28, and you know that that is 52 weeks a year.
But 12 months doesn't doesn't fit into that.
So you have these weird months and So what now?
Obviously you are not concerned about that running a service business.
You're not interested in calendrical history, but it is the background of why this is a problem.
So if you look at this and you try and discern a pattern, there is no pattern here.
This is why I had to use ChatGPT for it.
So five Mondays in March 2025, in June 2025, September 2025 and then this doesn't repeat, right?
There is no pattern here.
So the issue with that is and there is what is claimed to be predictable is actually very unpredictable, right?
It is actually unexpected.
What's coming next?
And we'll talk about that in a second so.
The the big kind of take away from this is I would really like to encourage you and this goes back to like, don't be afraid of your customers of the advantages of a 28 day billing cycle.
Now you know this is something that I had not seen any.
I'm not saying no one else has done it right, but when we we sold our business in 2023 and we went to a 28.
A 28 day billing cycle. I think in 2221 it's towards the end of COVID probably like 22.
I don't remember exactly, but it was about a year, year and a half that we did this.
And you know, before we did it, I did as much research as I could. And you know, like, you know, who else does this?
It's it's pretty incom. The closest thing is you know, you buy like kind of a pack of lessons, right?
So like you buy four lessons and then those lessons run out and you buy four more. You know, that's pretty close to those.
But it's not that exactly.
So I'm gonna go through why I think.
And we have very, I have concrete evidence to support this.
Why a 28 day billing cycle is something that you should at least consider. If you are a personal service business. If you are providing a service.
To families, kids, parents, etc.
This is something you should seriously consider now. If you you know if you're a martial arts school you're doing monthly lessons. Depending on your structure.
This may not be the right way to do it because you know you might have people that are just kind of dropping into classes, right?
This is really common. You've got like, you know, 4 beginner classes a week. You come to as many beginner classes as you want, or you maybe come to two beginner classes.
So in that kind of structure, this is probably not the way you'd want to go, although you could maybe make an argument for it.
This is going to be more applicable to personal services businesses that are a small group.
An individual.
So first point every other service business is paid for their time, right?
If you hire an attorney which you know probably everyone has to do at some point, they pay you in you. They bill you in six minute increments.
Plumbers pay by the hour. Electricians you pay by the hour.
HVAC by the hour, paying people for their time is how.
Many established trades.
Most established trades just about.
Not all established trades other than personal service businesses that run music, schools, dance schools, etc.
How they do it?
Because you know, I mean, it's a cliche to say time is money, but but that is that's the economic structure that we have, right.
Someone gives you the time and you compensate them with with whatever their hourly rate is, or their their fractional rate for an hour.
And The thing is, clients know that, right?
You're not ever fooling a client.
And if you set up your billing structure in a different way, they know what they're paying for, right? Consumers are.
You can you.
There's plenty of critiques of consumers out there and what not, but in my experience of running businesses, consumers are fairly sophisticated when it comes to spending their money. When people are not afraid to pay for services they believe in, right, they're happy to do it right? If they.
They know that their daughter is going to music lessons.
They know that their son is going to see their track coach.
They know how much time has gone into.
To that and they value that.
Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.
And so when you switch to this form of revenue, what it does is you literally gain.
There are two options here.
There are two possibilities and this is the reason that I think the 28 day billing cycle works out better.
So on one end you gain an entire extra month. There are 13 billing cycles in a year as opposed to 12. This is what we did at our business before we sold it and our revenue.
Blew up we we lost exactly 1 customer we had about.
We had almost 300 customers when we did. When we made this change and we lost exactly 1.
That is, I mean that is a fantastic ratio and that person was probably already unhappy with something. Anyway to begin with, right?
I mean, because there's always, always some portion of your client base is is going to be unhappy with the service which is you know something you want to try and get approach 0 but is never going to be 0.
So you get an entire extra month, so if.
If you're charging $320 a month for your service, you get an extra $320 a year from that client.
Multiply that by 100 clients.
1000 clients and that's a chunk of change.
Or here's the alternative.
Maybe your business is set up and what you do is you change the monthly rate based on the number of.
Fees, right?
Well, again, there's no pattern here.
So that means unless your clients.
Are looking ahead to the next month and thinking about how many times they have to take.
Jane to piano lessons and how many times they have to take Mark to, you know, French tutoring or something like that. They are going to get a different Bill 3 * a year that is not predictable, right?
We went over here to these things, so habit forming predictable. It's not habit forming.
Right as I have the form because it's a it's a different amount a few times a year it's it's actually intermittent, right?
It's not predictable in this way that you you say it's habit form because you're, you know, something is paid at the beginning of the month and that's a fair. That's a fair observation. But in our experience, people were very willing to go to the form of billing, right.
They just had four lessons.
They're gonna pay for four more. Why?
Because they like coming to music lessons.
Or maybe their kid doesn't like piano lessons, but they're gonna make sure that they stay in piano.
Lessons anyway. So the thing that is normally touted as an advantage to monthly billing, I actually think is is beat by the 28 day billing cycle or you're either.
You're either more.
You're either providing a more predictable.
Consumer experience for your customers or you're actually getting more revenue out of it?
So I'm gonna transition to showing you what this looks like in yo do, because you know one of the things that that we did when we designed it is we had had this experience.
So this is front and center in our platform now.
Maybe you don't feel this way.
Maybe you don't wanna build this way, and that's OK too.
Obviously our software handles other forms of billing and handles predictable forms.
Handles handles monthly forms of billing that follow a different schedule than this.
That's not a problem, but I do want you to see at least what this looks like.
So I'm gonna turn this over to to Emma, who's gonna help me out with that.
She's actually in the system right now.
Emm. Are you able to grab the screen share? Yeah.
Emma Best 41:12
Yes.
Looking good.
C. Travis Webb 41:23
OK, OK.
Emma Best 41:24
OK, great.
So we're on currently the Universal Inbox.
You might call it a dashboard, but we like Universal Inbox for the administrator side of yoto.
So this is what of course, most users at your company or just you as a business owner would be using. We have of course, platforms for administrators, curators being your teachers or practitioners.
And the customer being the clients or students, so this is your landing page.
When you first log in but Travis, I don't wanna direct us around.
C. Travis Webb 42:03
Yeah, sure, sure. Sorry.
So we, you know, we think it's good for people to have a complete overview of what they're going to be responsible for that day.
Emma Best 42:05
There we go.
C. Travis Webb 42:11
So that's why we use the Universal Inbox.
From there, we're going to jump to the calendar.
So you can see what you know, just kind of these side by side, lessons look like even though these are actually different, they're going to show up on the calendar in a different way.
I will also remark that the system's a little slow 'cause. We're actually our demo environment is down for maintenance, so we had to use our test environment.
Which is a slower architecture. So so here you see this is, you know, I guess I'm the curator here for this.
So you'll see you've got your your weekly lessons here, all stacked on a Saturday.
But these are all actually different.
They have different building so they show up on the they show up on the calendar in the same way, but the way they look on the product side is going to be different.
So, Emma, you want to jump over to products so they can actually see what this looks like?
For setting this up.
I mean a filter so.
OK.
So here you'll see these you've got weekly voice lessons, weekly piano lessons, and then the two different subscriptions types, which is monthly continuous and four week continuous.
It's probably pretty straightforward which each of these means, which each of these mean. There's another view that we're not going to show you where you can actually see the window of service, so it'll show you that you know this the the monthly continuous terminates on 6:30 and.
Then renews again on July 1st, but the weekly.
It terminates. I guess it would be like maybe July 16th.
Or something like that before it picks up again.
So management of this, you can manage these side by side in our platform if you want to have one that's monthly continuous next to a four week like say for example you were thinking about making this transition you want to AB test it or maybe have different program.
In which you think it's appropriate. You can do both inside of Yo-do. The last thing I want to show you though is. So this is from the admin side.
You know, it's basically very information heavy.
Is meant to present you with the stuff you need to get done to you.
Satisfy your clients needs and to you know win business and so you can move through your day in this productive a way as possible.
But I also want to show you what this looks like on the customer side. So if they jump into your store on the customer side, Emma's going to switch over to that. So you can see what these two different kinds of billing look like for them.
OK.
So this is this is your. This is the jam store, right?
This is one of our this is one of our test environments.
So and then, Emma, do you want to actually turn it over to you because you you have the control of the pointer here?
So I'll actually let you walk through what you're doing here and showing with the store so you can let everyone see.
Emma Best 44:57
Yeah. So this is like we talked about from the customer's point of view, the store that you know when at its core shows all of our products here, there is some options to highlight some different products if you would like, you know, these to be the top.
Ones available, of course. If they want to see absolutely everything they can.
But that's why the filters are at the very top of the store page here.
So we're gonna go ahead and.
Search by recurrence type.
Because we just looked at some weekly voice lessons and weekly piano lessons.
So we're going to narrow that down to look for both of those.
So we're gonna search weekly as our recurrence type.
And it will give you without any other filters. All of the weekly options here.
But we only really care about these two right here, so it shows you the title of the product.
There's you can add a description here.
Here I've chosen.
To differentiate this monthly product by giving the text charged on the 1st of each month that is configurable, you can have this be charged on any day of the month if if it's the monthly cycle that you'd like the first, the 5th, the 7th, you know it's it.
Totally up to you.
So let's look at the. This shows you what's part of the product here.
So this is our four week continuous product here. These weekly piano lessons.
Can it also has some helper text here little tooltip?
Regarding the subscription, so this will tell the clients that this recurring four week subscription is billed every 28 days, 4 weeks, 28 days of course is the same thing so.
That pretty much explains the difference to the customer. If they're confused about what the billing structure is like and then over here under the weekly voice lessons charged on the 1st of each month, this is the maximum amount that they could be charged, of course, but since we.
Almost at the end of the end of the month.
Depending on the weekday that they choose to schedule this on, of course we have, for example, two Fridays less than the month, two Saturdays.
But say we were looking to book this last week, there would have been three Mondays left in the month.
So this tool tip here shows that this is a recurring monthly subscription billed on the same day of each month, and we'll tell them the renewal day here. But of course it's a bit more.
User facing customer friendly to have that in the description.
But that's up to you, so.
The exactly, yeah. The number of recurrent.
This is important for the monthly total, the number of recurring items can vary based on the billing cycle. Those months that have five of a certain weekday like Travis mentioned.
If each lesson is $120.00, of course it won't always be 480.
But in that case it prorates based on the week and the day that the customer is scheduling on.
So that's kind of how.
How customizable you can be with the different product types and different subscription types, but this is how they present in the store. If you choose to have either or. I hope that clearly explains it.
C. Travis Webb 48:08
Yeah. No, that's perfect.
No, thanks so much.
I appreciate that. OK.
So we're coming up on time. I want to be respectful.
Everyone's time, but we probably do have time for a couple questions. If there are any.
I'm happy to to answer them or Emma can answer them too, so I'll give everyone a couple minutes to to see if they have any questions.
OK.
All right.
I think we're good.
I think we don't see.
I don't see any questions so.
Emma Best 48:43
Oh, I think we have a. So sorry, we have a chat Q&A question from Kelly.
C. Travis Webb 48:47
Oh my.
Oh my bad.
I this is so I'm literally looking at the wrong screen which is. So how do you handle holidays enclosures with the 28 day cycle?
Emma Best 48:49
That's OK.
All right.
C. Travis Webb 49:01
Emma, do you want to take that one?
Or I mean, what do you when we were at TIV, basically you would do something.
I mean, there were a couple.
Let me just say there are a couple of ways to handle this.
So in a jump in, if she has anything to add, what we did is we would call, we banked it what was called banking the lesson.
So basically that lesson would get would go into the the customer's bank, their lesson bank, and then they would get to use that at some time. At some point in the future.
We we found that to be pretty effective.
What we added with Yo-do, what we did with Yo-do is basically I've I've been told by our marketing person to not use this term anymore. But it's just how I think about it.
So we've made everything fungible, right?
So which means that everything can be turned into credits.
So what this does is when you have something like holidays, closures, teacher gets sick something like that.
That lesson that is missed could be turned into credits, and that credit can be applied in the future to additional purchases, recitals, etcetera.
We have in the backlog.
A feature coming up where you'll essentially be kind of like with PayPal. If you have something left in your PayPal account where your credit will be able to discount your renewal, that's not that's not quite live yet, but but you can be used in a variety of differe.
Ways again, we saw almost no friction as long as people know that they're getting something for their money, they know that they're gonna send their kid to a recital.
They know that they're gonna take the summer off, say for example, but they have a couple lessons in the bank, so they're gonna use their bank lesson and then come back in the fall.
So there's a few different ways to handle it, and we rarely got any pushback from our clients. When we did this.
And we got one more.
Can you set expiration dates on banked credits, Emma?
I'll take that. We go to the expiration date for bank credit.
Emma Best 50:44
That is a feature we currently have in development that currently banked lessons sort of follow the logic that you set for the original lesson, like how good the original lesson, or how long that original lesson is good for. But it absolutely is a it's a priority on our.
Backlog to make that configurable and not, you know, not married to what it was originally valid for, so.
C. Travis Webb 51:06
One thing. So there is. Yeah. So well, although on that point though. So but what you can do in this instance and you know anywhere that there is cause different businesses have a lot of different needs. So anywhere that there is something like oh we want to do.
Emma Best 51:07
Yes, soon is the answer to your question.
C. Travis Webb 51:20
This so this can be done manually.
So what you do is you can grant a bank lesson that extends this out.
You can set up a reminder for yourself so that you're taking care of that their log entries for it. So.
It's not as automated.
It's not as automatic.
It's not as automated as we want it to.
Be because this is a typical use case for sure, but there are workflows for handling it.
So yeah, if if it's in the backlog, we've already thought about a manual workflow for it.
So yeah.
OK.
All right.
I think that's that's time.
Thank you everyone for joining us.
Really appreciate it and I hope you know, regardless of your interest in yo, do I really hope you know what you'll take away is don't be afraid of your customers, right?
They're they're happy to pay you for the service that you're providing. If you're providing a good service.
And seriously consider the 28 day billing cycle because it it is.
It it was a winner for us and I think it'll be a winner for a lot of other businesses.
Thanks for your time.
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