Honest Business Conversations, Part 2: Creating and Scaling A Successful Membership

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0:38Welcome back to the Jasmine Starr Show. This is the second part of what I'm calling quickie consulting. For those of you who don't know, I do take on the occasional coaching clients. And this particular week, I booked two consulting sessions, both of them having to do with memberships. And so what I like to do after consulting is take my notes and frameworks so that I am distilling the type of advice that I'm sharing again and again over time. So let's talk about memberships. And we're going to do this in two ways. My clients, one came to me wanting to start a membership and one came to me already having had a membership for three years and wanted to scale.

1:12So in both of these situations, these are going to be in addition, an extra arm to their business to bring on scaled and voluminous revenue. Okay. So we're going to get into a framework. If you are just starting out, wanting to add a membership to your business. So first and foremost, the client I met with is a consultant. So she's a consultant and she has worked a lot one-on-one with clients and she does it in person and she does it virtually, but she's looking for a way to scale a digital offering. And she thought a membership would be great at that. So here is a framework if you're just getting started, but hang on, let me start with the end first.

1:50The end is get to testing. Let's call that GTT, get to testing. That is what we want to do as quickly as possible. And you want to test with a small group of people before you actually make it a big offer so you can work out the kinks. That's the end. Let's start at the beginning. Number one is to figure out who this membership is for. The more specific you get with who you're targeting on the front end, the higher likelihood that membership will take off. Now, here's the thing. The temptation is to believe if you make a membership for anybody who has a credit card, your total addressable market, your TAM, is rather large.

2:24But when you have an offer that is for everybody, it's actually for nobody. People will wait longer, spend more, invest for longer term when they feel like the offer is tailor-made for them. When you clearly identify who the offer is for, ah, we niche down, that is going to have the highest path to growth, revenue, and sustainability over time. So once you figure out who it's for, I added another component specifically for this client because when we were going through a lot of the competitors in this space, I kept on asking her, Well, where is the gap? What about the other offers that you are not a fan of or you don't like or what is not appealing?

3:00Because then in my mind, that becomes an opportunity. There is a gap in the market that she could serve. And for some reason, we kept on floating around this issue that she liked what other people were offering, but it missed a personalized component to which I responded, well, oftentimes memberships serve in mass. A lot of people volume at scale. And that is really hard to identify what that means for a personal touch. And she had said for her that revenue is important, but it's not her main driver. Her main driver, the thing that lights her up and makes her feel alive as an entrepreneur and as a successful entrepreneur is personal connections.

3:36She loves getting to know people. So then I simply said, oh, well then that's the gap in the market, exclusivity. A membership that is for everybody, I'm going to repeat it again, is for nobody. But what we kind of crafted together, led by her, was her deep desire for personal connection. So she then decided in a big light bulb moment that her membership was only going to be for her clients. So her clients were going to pay her one-on-one for a series of consulting, and then they would be eligible for her membership thereafter. And I carefully explained. So you know that your total addressable market, your TAM, is much smaller.

4:16And she said, I know, but I feel like I can still maintain a personal touch with the lower volume in my membership and charge more per month because I can send one or two personalized notes in regards to the capsule, in regards to the membership content that she's delivering every month. She was lit up by this idea and so was I. So step number one was to figure out who. We really drilled down. It's on for her former clients and current clients if they decide to join the membership as well. Then we figured out what her main driver was. That's really important. Why are you driving? Is it for really voluminous amounts of education?

4:53That's your purpose and it really lights you up. Is it for revenue? Which is great. You want to have a membership for lots of revenue. Awesome. Is it for personal connections? Everybody's going to have a different driver. Once you identify your driver, it always goes back to serving your why, which helps you stay in the membership game longer. The last and final point was going to be focusing on leveraging their competitive advantage. She didn't necessarily see a blatant gap in the market, but she saw a competitive advantage where all of her other competition was going after scale. And she said, I'm going to play the smaller, denser game.

5:26She can go deeper with her current clients and really increase her LTV over time and increase the exclusivity. One thing I thought was very smart. We discussed the idea for one of her clients going through one of her programs, consulting one-on-one sessions, going into the membership. And then I asked her, what happens if that person wants to leave the membership? Are you going to let them back in? Or are you going to say they only get access to the membership if they rejoin in X amount of time? Ah, so what we did is we further extended the exclusivity of her membership by saying if somebody wanted to get back in, they would have to book at minimum another one-on-one consulting session in a given timeframe.

6:04So if you are just getting started, these are three main things I want to focus on. And then the foundational tactical, her big CTA, I asked her to start testing. So what does that look like? I wrote a few down notes. I asked her, when do you want your launch date to be? Like, when do you want to close a membership? Now, here's the thing about a membership. If you have an open enrollment period, you're going to want to give prospective members a bonus, a depleting asset, something that's going to disappear. You want to give them a discount. You want to make sure that somebody is making an action in a given amount of time so that you could really get your membership off the ground.

6:37She decided that during a seven-day open-door period that her members, her future members, were going to get a discount. So we said, awesome. So then we reversed engineer. She said, I want to know how many members by this date. And so when I looked at the calendar, it was exactly six weeks from the time of our call. And I replied, that is really quick. Are you sure you can make this happen? And she said, I think so. And let me tell you, that is not the right words for me when I am working with a client. I want to know with specificity, with specificity, is it possible? So I said, let's reverse engineer.

7:11Let's work backwards. She said, this is the specific date that I want to know how many members I have, which is what we're calling cart close. I said, awesome. That gives us six weeks. I said, we need to have a punch list of everything that needs to get done. Now I won't share the entire punch list, but here's some high level key takeaways. I asked her, how long is it going to take for you to create a sales page, your email funnel and responses for commonly asked questions, FAQs and templates for customer success. You're going to have new and inquiring members have a bunch of questions. I need you to come up with the top 35 questions that you think you're going to be asked because what you don't want to do is sit there and handwrite a bunch of emails one by one.

7:48We want to have a queue built out so that you can systematize a template process and scale over time. So she said, I think I can get all the copy done in 14 days. Now, because we're working on a tight turnaround time, I asked her, are you willing to work on weekends? To which she said, yes. So we were working with a true six weeks. So she said 14 days for all written copy. And I was like, awesome. Once she has her written copy done, she can then turn it over to part two. And she's going to be working with an assistant to build out her CRM, which is her client or customer relations manager. This is every person is going to have a profile.

8:19This is how they get started. They're going to get started in this CRM as a one-on-one client. And then they're going to be granted access on the back end to the membership. Well, she needs to get all that set up. And we allocated seven days for that based on what her assistant asked for. Then she said that it's going to take her 14 days to build out the first two months of content. She's going to spend one entire week, all day, every day, working on the content for that first bundle drop of the month. And then she's going to be prepared. She's going to build out a runway for month two. Great.

8:50She said she would get that done in 14 days. So what we have right now is seven days before cart closes. We're calling this cart open. She's going to be sending emails as part of her funnel to her former clients or current clients, inviting them to the membership. And if they join in those seven days, they're going to get a discount. And this means that she has the potential to build out a six-figure revenue stream in the next six weeks. She's fully dialed in and buckled down. And she has a small, tiny, but mighty one-person team who's really gonna take it to the next level. I'm interested, I'm intrigued, I am rooting for her, and I'm really thrilled to be sitting front row in the arena as she pursues this thing.

9:31And I look forward to making tweaks along the way. Now, if you are interested in memberships, but you have something that's a little bit more seasoned, a little more advanced, I wanna talk you to the second. I wanna talk with you. You know what, I'm a big pronouncer of words. I often talk so fast that I actually cut out words because adding like a and or the, It really annoys me. So I'll cut those out, which makes no sense as I'm making a video or a podcast. So if you have a more seasoned membership, if you've been doing this a while and you're wanting ways to grow or scale, let's talk about that.

10:00I have a few notes here. Okay. So I spoke with a membership owner and he struggled getting people to convert into a monthly or yearly plan. So for the first year and a half of his business, he was creating a ton of free content on the outside and on the inside of his membership are detailed case studies, analytics. there is a way. So think about this. I'm not going to give too much away about his membership, but we want to think about this as like content education density. This is, he's creating a content library of every question you could possibly ask about business. His ambition is to create that content library.

10:32Well, what happened was he was doing so great at creating his free content that people were like, I'm getting enough with this free content. I don't know what's on the inside. I'm okay just following along. But the crazy thing was, is that he's growing his newsletter list. So from his free organic content, he always has a CTA, a call to action to sign up for a newsletter. He's getting like a thousand new subscribers a week, 1500 new subscribers a week. And that's with zero paid ads. I'm like, that's incredible. Like you need to leverage that. And he's like, well, that was the mechanism for conversion.

11:04And I said, interesting, tell me that. He's like, we're getting a lot of new email subscribers. And then in an email funnel, we're inviting them into the paid membership. But we had a really hard time getting people to convert into the monthly or the annual plan. And he's like, so we were struggling financially and our runway was getting smaller. And he said, we decided, I think it was about six or seven months ago that they made a pivot. It was a financial pivot. Instead of offering a monthly or annual plan, he offered a lifetime plan and he saw his conversion go up. People felt really confident investing in a lifetime plan.

11:34So I asked him about the conversion rate. He was still selling and promoting his membership with zero ads just by way of his newsletter funnel. We did some math and analytics and we found out that his conversion from a newsletter to a paid membership was less than 1%. You know, when you think about it, he's getting thousands and thousands of new followers, a 1 % conversion. It's not that great, but guess what? It's not zero and he's making money by spending no money. He's just creating content. So I thought, let's see if we can look at the newsletter list as a different way, as just the lead in to actually making a formal offer.

12:06So So what I was really going to focus on with him was building out a preview of the content inside of the membership, because that was what was really lacking. Somebody saw a TikTok, an Instagram, something on YouTube. They signed up for his newsletter. They got into an email funnel. The offer was made and they're like, it's OK. And I said, what's missing is a preview. So what I proposed to him is to give a way for a prospective member to learn about what's on the inside of the membership. Now, I used to have a membership. I now have a tech SaaS platform. I'm very familiar with both types of businesses.

12:35And I said, when it comes specifically to a membership, what we want to do is give a preview on the inside. I have done this a multitude of ways. I have done this by way of a webinar, a live webinar. I have done this by way of a recorded webinar. I have done this by a live video launch where I'm doing live videos for a series of days, teaching education and showing people the inside. I've also done challenges where people sign up for a challenge and then we drip out content over five days. I've done a lot of different mechanisms. And I will say, I keep on going back to a live webinar as a key component for a conversion.

13:04People build trust watching another person teach in real time, but they also build trust when you give a lot more value than what you're extracting. Okay. So I asked him if he was open to trying a webinar to which he replied, yes, but he didn't want to use any paid ads because he'd never done a webinar before and he wanted to test it out. And so he was asking me, how do I get people to join a webinar? Like he's like, I'm not running ads. They're coming to my newsletter from organic traffic, how do I get them to watch a video that's 45 or 65 or 85 minutes long? And I said, first things first is you want to create a title.

13:40Like we know what you're going to talk about, right? You're going to talk about all the great things on the inside of the membership. But first and foremost, you have to give so much value. You have to teach them a framework. You have to show them. You have to open your kimono and say, there's more of this great stuff on the inside. And so I thought, let's distill this down into creating a webinar title that's just irresistible. So this is a framework for titling a webinar. I mean, you're going to make it your own and it's going to be better, but this is a great place to start. So here is the framework, what I call an equation.

14:07Title, how to get X, the result they want in Y, which is the timeframe without Z. Things they hate or the things that are getting their way. So we have X, Y, Z, how to get X in Y without Z. Now what you're doing is you're pre-qualifying who's going to be on the inside of this webinar. So I told him since he's never done a webinar, I'm like, ah, you might be a little intimidated. What you could do is you can record a webinar, put it on the inside on demand in your email funnel, and then you could leave it unlisted on YouTube. So nobody on the outside can see it. Only people who are in your funnel can access that.

14:43And then you could watch the YouTube data and analytics. Where are the fall off points? What kind of comments are people leaving? And I said, then you could rerecord every two weeks when you're getting that feedback loop analytically through YouTube. And he's like, yeah, that's a great idea, but I want to get feedback faster. I want to get better the fastest way possible. And I was like, I like your chutzpah, dude. Let's go. And I said, if you really want the fastest, sharpest peak to growth, you're going to be doing a live webinar every week. Silence. And then he said, I'm going to do it. He is so hungry to really scale it that he wants to get the quickest feedback loop.

15:19So once a week, every week, he is going to be teaching this class and what he's going to be doing. And And I even told him, I said, you know, there is a possibility that you're going to have in the beginning, four, five, 10 people join in this live webinar. But those 10 people are going to be the hottest leads. You're going to be speaking to their pain points and you're going to be building so much trust that just imagine if you have a less than 1 % conversion and then on your first month of doing this for a total of like 20 or 30 people that first month going live four times and you have like a 20 or 30 person conversion, you're well over that 1%.

15:50In addition to the other subscriptions, the other memberships that you were getting along the way. And I'm like, you're going to be on the upswing. That is how strongly I believe in this. And I believe that every week he does it, he's getting better. This is like a comedian going and going to a comedy club once a week. This is like somebody learning how to run a marathon and they're training long distances once a week. This is like somebody learning how to play the guitar and they decide to practice for three hours once a week. Listen, it is the dedication. It is the consistency. That is the fastest feedback loop to scaling your business.

16:19He is ready to go. I'm so excited. So now let's talk about what his new funnel looks like. His previous funnel was organic content into an email funnel with less than 1 % conversion, but he's getting thousands and thousands of people on his newsletter list. Now his new point of entry or his new funnel is going to be organic content to email funnel in email number two, an invite to join a live webinar. and he gets to say every Monday at X time or every Tuesday, whatever the day he says, every time at this time and date, and he's gonna be using the same Zoom link. So he doesn't have to change this email funnel.

16:58Join me every time. And then he's gonna do an ad event. So it's like, add it to your Google Calendar, add it to your Outlook, whatever the case may be. So people are gonna add it to their calendar. They're going to get a reminder. And every week that he's there, he's going to get more confident and he's gonna refine his webinar so much so that he knows that on a webinar, he can convert at eight, 10, 15, 20%. When he gets to that level of confidence and conversion, then his big move will be to have a live public webinar that he can run ads to because he feels really confident in the content, in the call to action, in the conversion.

17:34Content, call to action, and the conversion. When he does that, he can then leverage paid ads. He can go back to all of his hundreds of thousands of free subscribers and then say, I'm teaching a live class. I really think you should join me for it. I think he is going to see such a spike in his membership by being willing to do the work, by offering so much value, by teaching a class, following the XYZ promise of a webinar, and over-delivering on the content on the inside. Do I still think that he should be doing lifetime memberships? We decided to keep that to a different conversation. And when that time comes, I'm going to be following up with another quickie consultation in regards to my approach from changing from lifetime to annual or monthly, because then it then changes the LTV and the evaluation of a business.

18:19Y 'all, thank you so much for listening, watching, engaging, and sharing the Jasmine Starr Show. It is an honor and a privilege, and I hope you have a beautiful day.