How Hannah Harris Asynchronously Supports Her Students using Marco Polo

Welcome back to another episode of Made with MV! In this episode, Hannah Harris from #TeamMV dives deep into the concept of asynchronous support, a powerful tool for providing personalized support on your own schedule, eliminating the need for live, synchronous meetings. As an accomplished Irish fiddle teacher who's found success hosting video content in MV, Hannah shares how she uses MemberVault for her teaching business and introduces a game-changing approach to music lessons: asynchronous fiddle lessons via Marco Polo.

Key Topics & Highlights

• Explanation of asynchronous support and its contrast to live support
• Scheduling conflicts across different time zones
• Benefits of Asynchronous Lessons
• Using Marco Polo for Asynchronous Fiddle Lessons
• Integration of Marco Polo with MemberVault
• Upselling asynchronous lessons within MemberVault's courses
• Setting up payment options and actions in MemberVault for added personal access
• Tagging students in Convertkit based on selected payment options
• Recommendation to use MemberVault, Convertkit, and Marco Polo for asynchronous support

Connect with Hannah

Website 
MemberVault Site
Instagram 
Youtube 
Podcast 

Episode Full Transcript

Hannah Harris [00:00:01]:

Hi there, this is Hannah Harris. I am a member of Team MV, and I also use membervault to run my own business as an irish fiddle teacher. I've recorded a few other episodes for this made with MV podcast around lead magnets and hosting video content in MV as a music teacher. And today I'm coming back at you with another strategy I use for my fiddle studio as part of our asynchronous support series that we're doing here. Now, just to quickly explain asynchronous support, in case this is the first time you're hearing that term, this is when you are helping your client, you're providing the support for them one on one. This could be clients, students, members, whatever you want to call them, but you're doing so in your own time. So it's like sending a text or an email where you're not necessarily meeting live in the moment. So for two examples, membervault on the team here we offer asynchronous customer support where you can email or write into chat with your question, and usually either myself or my amazing teammate Ira will write back to you with a response within 48 hours.

Hannah Harris [00:00:59]:

It's not a chat experience where you get a live conversation and have to stress about you keeping your browser tab open or losing your chat history thread. So that's one example. And then my second example is the actual topic of this episode, which is offering asynchronous fiddle lessons. So when you think of music lessons, you're probably envisioning either a live Zoom call or meeting someone in person in more of a live classroom setting. And that's how I was taught and definitely what I see as being kind of the normal way to give music lessons. However, there are a few downsides to offering live lessons, whether that's on Zoom or in person. So for all of my music teachers listening, or really anyone who offers one on one live calls in some capacity with clients, know that there is another way, and that way is asynchronous lessons. So as I said, there's a few downsides to live lessons that asynchronous lessons resolve.

Hannah Harris [00:01:52]:

And the first one is having to coordinate schedules with your clients. We're in a day and age where, one, our lives are really full and really busy, and two, we have technology to reach students in multiple time zones. So I live here in the eastern US, and with asynchronous lessons I can provide this customized one on one support to a student in Japan, and neither of us have to stay up till midnight unless you know we want to for totally different reasons. The second downside is having to show up and be on all the time. So I am an introvert who loves people. If you know, you know. And I do actually still offer live Zoom calls because I crave that human connection in the moment. But there are certainly days where I don't have much energy, and just the thought of having to sit on a Zoom call for 30 to 60 minutes drains whatever energy is left.

Hannah Harris [00:02:40]:

So with asynchronous lessons, I can time my feedback to shorter windows of my day, and I can select a time in my schedule that day where I have the most energy to respond. The last downside I'll cover is asynchronous lessons help you use time more efficiently. So when you're on a lesson, you might be inclined to chit chat back and forth, and before you know it, you've spent 75% of the lesson time having a gab, and the remaining 25% is left for. For the actual teaching part, it's a lot easier to stay focused and not get sidetracked when you're sending messages on your own schedule. So the way that I offer asynchronous lessons to my students is through an app called Merco Polo. This is a video app for mobile devices where you can record a video message and send it to your contact, and then they can respond in turn. So my students can send me a video of them playing, practicing, whatever it is they're working on for the week, and then I can record a video for them with my feedback, and I can demonstrate something on my fiddle if needed for them as well. You can use any similar tool that allows you to send videos back and forth.

Hannah Harris [00:03:41]:

But I like Marco Polo personally because, number one, you don't have to share your phone number. I have a link that I can send my students in their welcome onboarding email, and then they just click that link and they're automatically connected with me on the app. Number two, Marco Polo stores your videos in the app. Now, there are limits that they've introduced on the free version, so after a certain period of time, you lose videos if you have the free, but if you have the paid version of the app, then they all just live on in there. Number three, you can control the playback speed, which is very useful, especially for musicians. Number four, you can have group chats. So again, keeping people's numbers private from one another. But if you have a group lesson that you want to have a group chat, that's all asynchronous, and that's great for keeping in touch with both groups and one-on-one channels with people.

Hannah Harris [00:04:28]:

And number five, it is hands-free video recording, which is very good for fiddlers because we kind of need both hands to play. I stumbled across Marco Polo several years ago when Amy Porterfield did a podcast episode on her morning routine and how she checks in with her biz besties on the app. And I had taken her digital course, academy and was in an accountability pod for the course with a few other music business owners looking to create online courses. And so we decided to keep in touch via Marco Polo after the course was over and we weren't meeting live on Zoom every week.

As a side note, I'm happy to say that we have still kept up this channel for almost four years and they are still my biz besties, so I love it. But since I had already known and loved the app in the context of talking to my friends in the business space, I decided I would give it a try with my students as well. It started off as a way to keep in touch between lessons, but pretty quickly the majority of them were asking if they could switch to just polo lessons and leave off Zoom. This was not anything against the Zoom lessons that were happening, but as I said before, Polos really allow for that value and recorded feedback and in many cases just was a preferred experience because my students still got my eyes on their fiddling, still got that personalized one on one support, but the feedback was very, very focused and they could come back to it as well.

Hannah Harris [00:05:42]:

It was all recorded for reference, and then they can play along with me in the app as well. Now, obviously, Marco Polo is a separate app from MemberVault and this podcast is called Made with MV. So I do want to touch on an overview of how this all works and how I've set it up to connect with my MV account.

I am leaning away from live one-on-one lessons, but I do still offer asynchronous lessons in my MemberVault, and at one time, asynchronous lessons was its own product in MV, but now I actually keep it more reserved as an upsell on my courses. So it's a bit of a vip option, and that way my students can choose to have that additional one-on-one access to me as they are going through my courses if they would like. So in any product where I want to add that asynchronous support, I create a payment option for this. And again, it's more than just the general course itself because it's an upsell, because they're getting that one on one access to me. And then I add an action to tag a student in Convertkit when they select that payment option for Marco Polo.

Hannah Harris [00:06:39]:

So this is all through MemberVault actions here, and it's a beautiful, beautiful feature. Then in my welcome email in Convertkit, I include a block of conditional content which if you're a convertkit user, this is called liquid coding and that gives only students with that specific tag that I gave them in Membervault that link to add me on Marco Polo. So it just fits together beautifully, seamlessly. I love it. I highly recommend using membervault, Convertkit and Marco Polo as part of your tech stack if you are looking for doing an asynchronous support option, and that's really all there is to it. So if you have any questions or plan to try this strategy yourself, be sure to post in our community over at membervault.co/collab and you can find my Membervault page at learn.hannaharrisceol.com. Ceol means music in the Irish language and I'm most active over on Instagram @hannaharrisceol. Thanks for listening.