How Swarm Helped This Creator Build a High-Engagement Coaching Program

Ronald Ead is a coach and creator of The Joint, where he helps individuals struggling with airway and jaw health who are seeking treatment. In a space often crowded with advice motivated by referrals or commissions, Ron stands out with his no-BS, honest approach.

Ron utilizes Swarm to create a video-centric space for his community while offering streamlined membership and coaching options.

Ron’s Story

Ronald Ead runs JawHacks, a YouTube channel focused on sleep apnea treatments- specifically surgeries and palatable expanders. These treatments tend to be overwhelming, confusing, and long, with treatments often lasting 2-3 years by the time individuals reach the end.

The channel Ron runs focuses on providing individuals who are going through this journey with clarity by featuring content that includes interviews with top dentists and doctors in the field of jaw development, as well as firsthand accounts from patients themselves. 

If patients choose to sign up for Ron’s membership program, they receive 60 minutes of live coaching with him, which can be booked in 20-, 40-, or 60-minute blocks, along with the ability to reach him through private messaging for an entire year after. 

They also become part of his community on the Swarm platform, which provides them with access to live Q&A calls featuring Ron and guest experts.

Having undergone jaw treatments himself, Ron offers advice and emotional support to his members, drawing on his own experience to understand the challenges patients face during their journey. 

His honesty and focus on integrity go a long way in a space filled with people receiving kickbacks for recommendations. 

This is why Ron has built a network of top dentists and doctors in the field of jaw development, which he uses to direct individuals seeking recommendations in the right direction.  

“Humility around what can be known and what you actually know is so important.”

Ron’s Roadmap to Coaching Success

Ron started his creator journey in 2017 with a blog on Squarespace, where he documented his experience trying to figure out his chronic headaches. As he explored palatable expanders as a solution to his own problem, he realized how many people were interested in jaw procedures.

This is when he began creating videos and eventually started interviewing doctors by 2020. 

By 2022, he began incorporating YouTube Shorts and TikTok videos into his content strategy, aiming to appeal to a younger audience.

“Remember that as a coach, a lot of what you do is not technical. Technical expertise is important, and you need to have some amount of that. .... As a coach, it is not just about the technicals, it is also about the intangibles and the emotional support.”

The Strategy Behind Ron’s Audience Growth

Ron emphasizes that he focuses on having a dedicated following, rather than a substantial one, especially since he is so niched down. 

Selecting the right platform, i.e, the platform where your audience lives, is also of the utmost importance, which is why Ron focuses primarily on YouTube.

For creators just starting out, Ron suggests narrowing down on a niche to break through in a competitive space like YouTube and deciding early on which platforms you are going to focus on.

The theme here is not to try to handle more than humanly possible. 

Start with one platform, don't compare yourself to creators who have been around for a decade, and ensure that quality is the primary focus—not quantity.

Ron’s Offer Structure

Ron’s offer focuses heavily on access to his knowledge and expertise rather than on other community features.

Other creators sometimes opt for scalability, but Ron’s focus is on keeping the community small and genuinely helping people with integrity and quality.

This allows him to handle clients 1:1. Ron uses Swarm because he describes himself as a ‘very video-centric person’ and Swarm helps him send personalized video messages as responses to queries sent his way.

One of the reasons Ron selected Swarm to host his membership community is that a fellow creator suggested he look for a platform that would allow him to send video messages to members and vice versa.

After trying alternatives like Circle and Kajabi, Ron discovered Swarm, a platform that heavily focuses on video messaging. Other features he liked were competitive pricing and the ability to white label your app.

Moving Followers Down the Sales Funnel Into Membership

To start his community, Ron reached out to past coaching clients via email with a discounted offer to join- he called this a ‘Founder’s launch.’ From that list, he got his first few members to join. 

To thank the people who had supported him in the past, Ron offered a heavy discount to these first few members.

In the second stage of his launch, he reached out to his broader email list, which included individuals who had not directly sought his coaching but had interacted with his brand in some way, such as signing up for his email list or following him on Substack. 

One of Ron’s takeaways from this was that he noticed a substantial difference in the percentage of people who signed up from his ‘Founder’s Launch’ versus his broader email list, with the larger percentage coming from clients who had worked with him in the past.

This suggests the importance of maintaining and growing relationships with clients, rather than focusing solely on attracting new members.

The final phase was going public and listing his membership on his website.

Ron’s Approach to Member Onboarding

Once a member signs up for Ron’s membership, they gain immediate access to his space on Swarm - The Joint.

They are then greeted with a ‘Start Here’ page, which includes a welcome video and the answers to some frequently asked questions.

After this point, members are prompted to schedule their onboarding call. Swarm integrates with Acuity scheduling, allowing users to schedule appointments directly within the platform.

Using the Zapier integration, an intake form (powered by Fillout) is automatically sent to the new member, providing Ron with all the necessary information before the call.

Members receive continuous support through direct messaging with Ron, who primarily responds via video messages. They also gain access to past live Q&A sessions with Ron and guest experts, which are all available as recordings within Swarm.

The two main reasons this approach worked are:

1. The simple ‘Start Here’ page avoids overwhelm and gives users a clear path forward.

2. Immediate value is received when booking the onboarding call, and the personalized approach of his coaching is reinforced alongside Swarm’s video-centric approach.

How Smart Retention Keeps Your Revenue Flowing

Ron’s retention strategy is built on a foundation of high-quality, authentic connections through direct messaging and live calls.

He emphasizes the importance of video and also points out how it ages better in comparison to platforms like Reddit or Discord that promote quickly written text content that often comes out sloppy and ages poorly.

Video is also harder to screenshot, but more importantly, it communicates tonality, body language, context, and meaning more accurately.

In the age of AI, outsourcing, and chatbots, video allows creators to stand out by providing their community with direct access to them, alongside authenticity and personalized engagement. 

This directly helps grow communities by improving conversion rates and enabling the repurposing of video content to reach audiences on various platforms.

Ron advises other creators to value giving their all in every interaction they have with their community by staying curious and honest.

The problem of losing interest in your niche over time can be addressed by ensuring you continuously expand your knowledge and network by meeting new people.

Ron’s retention strategies center on prioritizing connection and honesty, while also providing consistent support and value to his community.

“In respect to what I do in airway health, jaw surgery, and expanders– this field is moving quickly, and social media is pouring gasoline over the fire, where more and more patients are becoming interested in these procedures, and then the doctors are changing what they do in response to the demand.”

The Results

Using Swarm’s video-focused community platform, Ron averages one new community member per day. In a little over a month, he reached 50 paying members for his program.

He focuses on features such as the ability to send personalized video messages back and forth with members, host live events, integrate with other tools like Zapier or Acuity Scheduling, and have a branded app (using the ‘Scale’ tier).

Want to build your own high-ticket membership program? 

📅Book a 1:1 onboarding call with a Swarm expert to get started today.