Part I: Sustainability Update
Ive been reading, thinking, and consulting to figure out the best path forward to help us get to a sustainable place. Last week we launched two options - back us and upgrade. Here is a quick overview of the feedback we received:
1. Some of you did not like that someone who backed us for $5 would get the same perks as someone who signed up for a more expensive monthly plan.
2. Many of you requested greater transparency. There was some level of fear that we would misuse the funds in some way.
3. Several of you wanted to find ways to provide a way to upgrade people that have less financial resources.
4. Some of you did not like the advertising language. For example, we were testing buttons that said Want to feel better? Subscribe today to start feeling better.
Ive listened to this feedback and worked to integrate it into this next iteration. Remember that this is going to continue to be a process. We are not going to get it right immediately. Instead, we are going to have to figure this out as a community. What Ive outlined below is the next iteration. Based on the feedback, this seems like the best way to move forward.
1. We will only have one back us or upgrade option. To start, we will remove the monthly, annual, bi-annual, and forever upgrade option. People can back us for $5 or more per month to unlock all the perks involved with an upgraded account. These perks involve the 32 paths, sustainability icons, conference calls, and trainings. If this works, then well be delighted. If it doesnt work, then well need to test other options.
2. We will be transparent about our costs. Weve created a remarkable system and Im very proud of what weve accomplished. We will have to decide as individuals, and, collectively as a community, how we are going to make 7 cups sustainable. We have 17 months to figure it out.
7 Cups, as we know it, requires $65,000/month to operate. This includes all infrastructure, insurance, office, and salary costs. We have investment capital to run us through May 2017 (you can read more about that here. We have some distance to go to reach sustainability. We can get there, but well need to collaborate, make hard choices, and problem solve in order to make sure that 7 Cups continues to survive and thrive for years to come. Well display this goal with a thermometer that fills up as we make progress towards our goal.
3. We will continue to work very hard on our 7 Cups for Organizations and 7 Cups for Mental Health Professionals initiatives to bring in additional income. Once these launch, youll be able to also help by recommending that your school, organization or company adopt 7 Cups as a means of providing emotional support to its students or employees. These initiatives will yield recurring income that will help us reach our goal.
4. We will use personalized language on buttons and tips to call attention to the back us option. Well test language like: Want to back 7 Cups and get extra help for depression? Subscribe today to… We dont have these all mapped out yet, but will soon.
5. We will create a way for people to gift a 7 Cups plan to another person.
Im being open and honest with all of you about where we are now and what we need to accomplish as a community. I prioritized us learning how to solve bigger problems, because I believe they were the much harder problems for us to solve. For example, working together to create a compassionate way to scale mental health care is 100x more challenging than figuring out how to make 65k/month in revenue.
Now, with that said, it isnt a slam dunk that 7 Cups will get to sustainability. Our community and other organizations may decide to not fund 7 Cups. People may see it as a good idea that came into this world, showed a new way of doing things, and then ceased to exist. I am going to give it my all, and I know many of you will as well, to make sure that this doesnt happen. However, if it does, it does not take away from what weve accomplished. We created a blueprint for how to scale compassionate care. That is really what I wanted to do and Im very proud of us for figuring that out.
This all leads us to where we are today. Weve solved some very big problems on our journey so far. The next problem we have to solve is how to cover our costs to get to sustainability. Last week was our first iteration. This is our next iteration. We have done something beautiful here. What Ive outlined above is one way that I believe we can keep 7 Cups both beautiful and sustainable.
All - keeping you in the loop. Since we made the changes the other day, the amount of people backing 7 cups has actually decreased. We'll be experimenting with providing more personalized support options in the next couple of days to hopefully increase the amount of people backing us so we can reach sustainability. This will continue to be a process and will require a lot of experimentation to get right. I'll use this thread to keep you all updated and to also answer any questions. Appreciate the help and feedback so we can figure this out.
@GlenM Thanks for updating us! :)
@GlenM I believe that I could help a great deal in getting large medical facilities to become contributors and also encourage their patients to use our service. I have a vast network of relationships with large medical practices.
I have also been involved in many fund raisers and am interested if you have marketing materials available or if we are free to make our own to distribute? I could help in the creative side of making these materials if they do not exist.
I do think that raising this amount of funds monthly is easily attainable. I would like to share my opinion about asking listeners and members to contribute, I believe that it would be more desirable to obtain funds from fund raisers and outreach programs (which I would love to discuss with you). I do extremely appreciate and have learned so much from all the resources available on this site. And I do like the idea of listeners contributing to being able to have access to all of this valuable information. And I know this is also available to members. But I will say it is somewhat offensive to me when I am in the middle of a difficult chat and have been developing a relationship with someone that is in a great deal of pain, then a message comes up..."Would you consider backing 7 cups". In the moment, I feel annoyed, thinking I am backing 7 cups by being here with my member or guest. I will definitely be adding a monthly support to keep 7 cups sustainable because I believe in this with all my heart and am very passionate about what you have created.
My suggestions is to form a group of people that have a desire to reach out into the community to obtain financial support from establishments that would benefit by communicating to their patients that this support is available.
If you would like to discuss this further please contact me. I have many more ideas and a group of people that would be more than willing to put in a great deal of effort to keep 7 cups up and running. Thank you for everything you have done and your team to make this site possible. I believe it is the most amazing concept that I have seen or have been involved in.
~Amy - @chasingchaos
@chasingchaos Thank you Amy. I appreciate the feedback and offer to help. Just sent you a message so I can learn more.
Thanks for listening and keeping us informed.
Can we like.. do some free work for this website? I mean.. people volunteer as listeners on 7 cups and if they happen have some relevant skills, they could also do some work towards maintenance and improvement on this website. You could actually outsource some tasks on to a page and people may actually do them for you and mail the results over to you.
All - here is the next update in our process of getting to sustainability. See the lead post on this thread for details. Essentially, we tested pointing people directly to the back us page where anyone who backs us can get access to all the perks that were previously available in the upgrade process. Then, on 11/20, we started integrating more specific language that would be tied to the persons issue. For example, if a person was struggling with panic attacks, then wed recommend the overcoming panic path and point them to the back us page. We now have enough data to show that this version of pointing people to back us is not working.
I had high hopes that it would work. It feels the most consistent with who we are. I like it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and working with our designer and experts to get it right (arguably, much more time than I should have). In startups, this is a common process. You have what you think is a great idea. You implement it, iterate on it, tweak it, but, even then, sometimes the idea doesnt work as well as you hoped.
We are not giving up. There is a path here. We just have to find it through some pretty thick woods. The sun is still high up in the sky, so we have lots of time.
For this next round of tests, we are going to bring back the upgrade process. Well remove the back us button from the top of the page for members and guests and replace that with a subscribe button. Based on prior feedback, well also remove the paths from the back us process. Later this week, well also be integrating the DASS-21 emotional wellness test into the process for people in chat and also on the growth path. People will be prompted to take the test and well then recommend a personalized path for them based on their results. Additionally, well test out different variations of the buttons and tips weve been using.
Part of this will involve using language like risk-free for 30 days etc. This language is commonly used when selling products. It is advertising-like in the sense that it is the sort of language used to advertise products. That said, the reason behind such language is that it enables the person to feel safer about trying out an upgrade.
If the person can cancel and get their money back or get more of a product for buying more up front etc., then I think they feel more comfortable giving it a try. Like some of you, Im not a huge fan of this type of language, but I get that it helps people frame an offering in ways that make it easier for them to try it out.
I want to continue to be very clear that we are not going to harm the culture or the community that we have created here. Im listening, sharing, being open and transparent with you all, because this a partnership. We are all in this together and I want to err on the side of moving slowly. We just need to find a path that allows us to continue to fund it. Ill keep you updated on this next round of tests. Thank you again for the support. Though this is challenging (and not knowing how to solve a problem always is), well get through it just like we have all of our other challenges.
Ill also keep you updated on this next round of tests. Thank you!
@GlenM Fingers crossed that this update will help! I'm sure we can all figure this out together and find what's best to make the site sustainable <3
@GlenM thanks for the update Glen! I hope we can find a solution that makes the site sustainable while still keeping in line with our mission. One day the site will get there :)
@RebeccaEmily yes indeed :). There is a path here - likely multiple paths - we just have to find one of them!
@GlenM
Hi Glen :) thank you for updating us. I was just wondering what is the website's priority when it comes to enhancing the back 7 cups plan?
I read a lot of posts and comments from many people in this community and I think the majority of feedback focused on many points related to the well being of the community, but I feel that the focus of the website is on making it more appealing and to encourage more people to subscribe.
Are we going to do anything about those have have less financial resources? what about the teens? Several people suggested ideas of alternative ways to get the perks -like working on a certain project or reaching a certain number of cheers- so are these ideas considered and if so why aren't they a priority?
What do we plan to do in order to increase the quality of services provided here? the main service we provide here is 1-on-1 chats with listeners and I'm worried that we need to work a lot to assure high quality of listeners here. I personally tried many times using my guest account to connect to listeners, and I'll be realistic here and say that I was not satisfied, and in 2 times I was blocked in the beginning of the conversation just when I said where I'm from. Do we think if this happens to a new member they will consider paying money to subscribe here? will a new member stay here in the first place if they receive low quality service? I guess a lot of work needs to be done on the Quality track, and I strongly recommend making the verified listener badge mandatory.
All - another update! I'm writing them all here so we can track it all in one place rather than have to hop around to a bunch of different threads.
Today we'll be releasing the updated tips, removing back us from the top nav, and adding in the upgrade process. We'll also now start working on the testing process discussed above, but I don't think we'll be able to push that live until Monday of next week.
Thanks again for help and support and willingness to pitch in with ideas as we discover the path. I'll keep you updated!
Hi All - I last updated you last week. We have good news, the changes we made last week are performing better than the back us alone initiative. We still have a long ways to go, but it is always nice to see a change in the right direction. I had also indicated last week that we had hoped to push the change outlined where people go to the wellness test in the chat live on Monday. That didn't happen, but looks like we'll be ready to push that live tomorrow. We'll collect some data over the next week and I'll update you again here towards the end of next week as we learn more.
We have also conceptualized this idea of a compassion jar. This is similar to the thermometer idea that we outlined above, but the compassion jar feels a bit more like us. It'll track how many upgrades/backs we've had a day and will also provide a collective celebration piece when the goal has been met. We are still refining this idea. I hope to get this piece live next week.
Finally, I want to thank you all again for your help and support. Each step gets us a little closer to discovering the path to sustainability. I'm encouraged :).
@GlenM Glad to hear it got a bit better with the last update! :D
Another quick update - a listener asked this morning if we were still testing things - wanted to update you all that we are indeed still testing things. Nothing is set in stone yet. We still have lots of learning to do. I'll keep you updated as we learn more. Thanks!
@GlenM Sounds good! I've always said 7 Cups is a pioneer in its technology and technique - looking forward to hearing more 
@SpencerT yup one step at a time!
How much of that 65 thousand per month goes to Salaries and how many people are on the payroll?
