Why I'm Moving My Business Off Simplero
I recently emailed my students to let them know I'm moving my courses off Simplero over the next few months... and many of you wrote back asking me why.
First, there's nothing wrong with Simplero…
Simplero is excellent software with a great team, and I still highly recommend them.
The Founder/CEO is dedicated, active, values-driven. The team is always responsive, smart, and courteous. And the software is continuously getting better.
I'd recommend it for people who are actively growing their businesses, with regular revenue that makes the pricing of Simplero easy to afford.
So why am I leaving?
I've seen a big downturn in my business over the past 2 years, in part because people’s use of AI is replacing courses and membership programs... which has been the majority of my business revenue.
But I’ll be ok. Fortunately, I have been investing well over the past decade, and I've now become work-optional (I explain how in A Simple Plan for Financial Freedom).
I'm still offering private coaching, though I'm being very selective about whom I work with.
And I'm giving myself a lot of space in the next year to explore what's next for my business: how I can best serve my audience in a way that uses my unique strengths, while truly meeting their needs.
Given the exploratory period, I'm being more careful with my business expenses for the time being. Simplero is my biggest monthly expense, so I'm choosing to remove that cost (for now) and lower my expenses.
What will replace Simplero:
I'm still exploring all the tools I'll need to replace what Simplero currently does for me, but here's my initial list:
- Course delivery will be done simply via Google Drive: one folder per course, holding Google Docs of the course texts and the highlights of the video transcripts, plus any templates students can use. Possibly some video files too, if it isn't too costly to move them from Simplero to Google Drive.
- Payments will be taken via Stripe.
- Course comments won't be part of my courses anymore, after November 30. Instead, I invite students to interact with me and one another via my monthly Q&A calls, or to get quicker answers from my AI, which I'll be monitoring regularly to improve its answers.
- Registrations for Q&A calls and webinars will be handled with a simple signup form in Kit, with the Zoom link and reminders sent by email.
- Website hosting will be easy to find (there are many options out there!). I still need to look into which one. If you’ve used one for years and found it reliable, let me know in the comments.
- Email newsletters will be handled by my various Substack publications. And my main email list will be on Kit. I'm grateful for companies like Kit that offer very generous forever-free plans!
- Smaller email lists (such as buyers of a particular course) will also be in Kit, each one private, so nobody can see who else is on the list.
- Membership programs are ending, so their community forums close on January 2, but if needed, I’ll use either Google or Facebook Groups.
- Email automations mostly end along with the courses and programs they served. The few I still need will become simple routines my AI runs for me, such as scheduling emails in Kit.
- My contact list and its history get exported and kept, so nobody's email preferences get lost.
- Client scheduling can simply be done via Google Calendar (which now has public appointment booking options) or other free tools like Cal.com.
Yes, it’ll be a lot more moving pieces. That has been one of the strengths of Simplero, unifying many softwares. However, I’ve become skilled in using AI as my executive assistant and I’ve been able to use it to simplify and streamline a lot, taking nearly all admin off my plate. I’m confident that my AI will be able to easily organize and coordinate my future tools.
And when needed, AI can now create software by prompting it with normal language, without having to be a technical person. In the coming years, it'll get even easier.
If you have any questions, comment below. Thank you 🙏🏼
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