Creating a Successful Membership Site in 2022

in those seven days 1200 people joined my membership site i have more members that have joined in a week than i had joined an entire year oh my gosh i could not believe it [Music] hello hello um i'm coming if you're watching this on the video version i'm coming to you from a different location today i am upstairs at the office because um there's a fire door in my office room and the fire door connects with the fire door of the cinema next door the cinema next door is an amazing cinema it's like a really retro light really cool cinema and um but my goodness gracious me when they are playing movies it is like the movie is on in my office i smell the popcorn coming through and it's super loud and then if they open their firewalls when that movie is playing well game over like it's literally like the movie is is really happening in the office like the whole room vibrates um so um it is the school holidays right now and so there's lots of movies happening and so yeah i'm just not gonna risk filming in my office because it's just too loud um so i'm really excited to be recording this episode because uh you may i'm sure a lot of you know so i have a membership site my members club and this year will mark the ninth birthday of it which is insane i can't believe it's already nine years old and membership sites are still more memberships are still alive and kicking like they are still such an amazing um thing to create for so many online businesses and i get asked all the time about memberships and about starting a membership and um when not to start one uh what do you need to like how much content you need to create when you launch a membership site um you know so many questions and so i recently put out a post um saying i was gonna do an episode on membership sites and for your questions i've got your questions and i'm so excited to do this episode and answer some of your questions for you and talk more about membership sites and i also want to share with you some of the things that we're working on inside of our membership the fda membership and the direction that i see memberships going in um and what i would do if i was starting my membership again today like what i would focus on and and more so in terms of the the kinds of the kind of stuff i'd be focused on creating and putting out there and what i would be delivering so i really hope you enjoyed this episode i am very excited to dive in so just to take you back on my journey with membership so like i said i started my membership back in 2013 i remember having the goal to set create a membership um obviously had no bloody clue how to do it and it was on my goal for the year though and i remember getting to like i don't know them you know march april time maybe and thinking well i haven't done anything um to progress this goal so i decided to put out a survey to my audience to find out like would they be interested in membership and if i created one like why would they want to join and what could i help them with what would they want help with and i actually asked them like if i actually did create a paid membership would you be interested in joining and eighty percent of people said yes and i was like oh my gosh i really have to do this but it was interesting because i gained so much insight as to what people wanted um i'm just gonna stop right there because i feel like there's a really a great golden nugget in that which is if you have an existing audience of people people who are engaging with you whether it's like followers and email lists like i pr you've got a presence you've got you've got people who are interested in what you have to offer um co-create a membership with them literally like ask them tell them your ideas cast the vision for what you want to create and bring them in on it don't just don't you don't have to figure it all out by yourself like i did not figure out my memberships all by myself i asked questions to my audience to find out what they want and it could be a survey but it also could just be questions that you're constantly putting out on social media like i'm always putting out questions in actually my membership group now but in the facebook groups i have i'm asking questions on social media always there trying to pay attention like listening to what my audience have to say listening to what it is my audience wants and you can do this with a big audience and you can also do with the tiny audience and actually often i find that even with teeny tiny or tiny audiences um you can create really great connections with people when you just stop and listen ask questions and connect with people it's really powerful you can connect with people in a way that when you have a large audience like you just can't connect on scale with that many people um so it is really powerful so yes firstly i started co-creating with my audience so co-create discuss your ideas cast the vision bring them on this adventure it doesn't have to be perfectly polished this perfectly polished idea it can be raw it can be messy it's passion it's like your heart and soul bubbling out of you so speak out like speak up on it and tell people and bring people along for the ride it's such a powerful thing to do okay so that said i did get to work around like september october time and i still haven't done anything else fear it was fear getting in the way damn it um i yeah it was just overwhelming i didn't know what i was doing i didn't i didn't have a course or anything that could show me like how to do it and i wish i did have because it would have really helped me so i remember thinking bloody hell i really want to reach this goal i need to do it i need to figure this out so it was me my developer andre who was still with me and he helped me to create the website and i came up with an idea for why what content i could create for month one and i did this thing called the um program yourself the success bundle uh and it was success month that was it the first month success month and i created a guide on programming yourself for success a little guide a little workbook um i created a guided visualization i think i created some printable like some cut out affirmations you could cut out cut them out um did i do anything else i really i think that was about it i think i did an intro video but that was it so i just did this little bundle and i called them bundles of business love and um and i launched and i didn't have anything else planned i just was like i'm doing this i'm going for it if i try and figure out what how the hell else i'm gonna do on month two three four five six i'm never gonna go live with this so in november i went live clearly i wasn't even thinking straight because i actually went live i think it was the day before thanksgiving and my audience are predominantly based in the us so great timing um but nevertheless and i always say john is better than perfect i was just blaming getting it out there and so it was out there and i'd sent an email to my audience i had about 18 000 people on my email list at the time and i had really been working hard the previous few years to really build an audience and create that presence myself to build that platform which was really important in my success do you need an email list of 18 000 people before you can launch a membership site absolutely not um do you need some kind of audience i would say absolutely yes i really wouldn't recommend launching a membership site when you don't have an audience like do not do that to yourself that is when not to start a membership site um yeah i really do feel like you need to have really like 500 people plus and you want it's not just 500 people that you're not really that connected with it needs to be a audience of at least 500 who are actually engaging with you they're replying to your emails they're responding to you you you chat with them online you have built really good relationships with them you can feel that momentum building in your audience it's not just like this really cold and engaged 500 people like they need to be engaged and connected with you um at that point if you have an audience like 500 or larger of engaged people i would say a membership it's a blooming good idea you should go for it um so i launched and i think by the end of like month one we had brought on about 150 members and i was like oh my gosh this is amazing it was about three and a half thousand dollars in recurring revenue um by month four i think i had about four hundred members it was ten thousand dollars in recurring revenue and i was just like oh my gosh this is incredible um by the end of the first year i had a thousand members i had been grinding away literally i was the content creator i was the admin i was the support i was the graphic designer i think i think i was all the things pretty much um and i got to the end of that first year we had a thousand members twenty five thousand dollars recurring revenue a month and i couldn't believe it but then i also thought bloomington has to be an easier way i need some help i need to figure out how i can do this differently and i remember searching the internet for membership experts of figuring out like who could help me and i the only memberships i really knew of was one called um platform university by michael hyatt and so i reached out to michael heyer because he did some uh like i think he had a mastermind or something and so i reached out to see if i could join or be part of it but he had just like he didn't have any spaces available so i was like oh no and coincidentally i was telling a friend of mine about this and she was like um have you heard of stu mclaren i was like no and she was like he is michael hyatt's like strategic business partner and he's helped him to build his membership site i was like oh wow and she was like yeah he's changing what he's doing at the moment and he is going to start on like start mentoring people and i was like what oh my gosh so i literally went on google google's stu mclaren and i emailed him right away saying i really wanted to work with him and i didn't hear back from him for a while and i kept emailing him being like respond to me and then eventually he replied i think he'd been doing some kind of launch and it had been really busy so i ended up flying to uh canada for a one day vip session with stu mclaren and it cost me i think the vip day was at the times what at the time it was seven and a half thousand dollars which was an insane amount of money to spend on one day in my opinion and i booked my flights because i was traveling from the uk to canada for this one day and i was like what am i doing but i was like i just need to do this i need help i need to speak to somebody that can help me with this so i went over to canada and stu was i carrie um like obviously he was like you know what you've created is amazing but you need to close enrollment you can't just have enrollment open all the time and i was like what do you mean closed enrollment he was like yeah you've got it open all the time people can join whenever they want close it stop people from joining whenever they want and just do launches throughout the year and i was like are you insane why would i close my membership anyway i was like i paid all this money at bad blood and listen so i closed my membership and that in itself drove people to sign up before it completely closed and then it was closed for a good few months and then i learned how to launch and i did this three-part video series called success on purpose that led into open enrollment and i opened enrollment for seven days and in those seven days 1200 people joined my membership site and i was like she was right i have more members who have joined in a week than i had joined an entire year oh my gosh i could not believe it and then over the next year we grew to 3 000 members and then we reached 5 000 members which was amazing like 5 000 members it would you know so it's just was mind-blowing to me that my little idea to create a membership had turned into this this incredible community this incredible platform where all these and women were coming together to build businesses and we were supporting each other and cheering each other on and i was able to serve them on another on another level and it was generating recurring revenue and it was generating a lot of recurring revenue i mean uh you know at this point it was like you know 200 000 plus a month and i was just like whoa like this is amazing and then i had kids it kind of went out the window no but the best part was when i had casey well i had casey first and i took about really i remember i mean i remember by he was 10 months old i still wasn't really back in the swing of things i was trying but just wasn't i just my inspiration had gone i just wanted you know if you're your mum you know i just wanted to be a mom i just wanted to be there with casey and i just wasn't in the same frame of mind and i'm so grateful that i had a membership site because it really helped me to keep the business going i was no two ways about it it really helped me like without that recurring revenue if i if i had had if i'd been relying on doing a launch for a course for example that generated like 90 of my revenue for the year like i'm not entirely sure what would have happened with the business so i'm really grateful um for my membership site and i love membership sites i love how the way you can show up and serve your audience i love the recurring revenue um i love that when you have the membership of people really they become in a way super fans of what you mean if you're doing a good job and you're serving them well and you're creating something really great you're you know they really love what you're doing and so those are the people that are most likely to want to take the next step with you so if you have new products you launch or you have a next level that you launch like those are the people that are going to be most likely to take that next step with you so i love the membership model and it's definitely it's a very very um it's still it's still an incredible model like some people are like is that done with like there's so many memberships now and i really don't think it is i think that you can still create a wildly successful membership today there are a few key things that you need um so let's talk about what those key things are that you need when you're creating a membership site i think in order to make it successful i don't think i know in order to make it successful you really need to have a mission with it like what is the mission of your membership site what is it why on earth would somebody want to join and pay you every month or every year to be part of your membership site i think you have to be really clear and really specific about this and i remember stu wants telling a story where he said um i think it was maybe someone that had worked with him and they had a photography membership site just helping photography businesses to to grow and it wasn't really working and she wasn't really getting you know having much success with it so then she changed it to saying the goal of the membership site is to help you to get one new paying client every single month that's what we're going to do get you one new paying client every single at least one and that way she could justify the payment the fee because she knew that that client work was gonna far um out you know was gonna be so much greater than her membership fee and so it took off and it started doing really well and it's really obvious when you and i are talking about this right now that it makes complete sense because you know you would join a membership that was going to help you to get one new client a month over just a membership that was just going to help you grow so the specificity of it is so important um i say that and it's a bit hypocritical of me because i also recognize that my membership site is quite broad it's for helping women in business to grow very very broad however i entered the market at a different time i was one of the first people to create a membership site for women in business like fea the fva platform the fda membership is probably one of i don't know i don't know another female entrepreneur membership like it that existed before it which is why one of the reasons why i created it so it's different because i got in really early i think if you want to get in now and you want to make it work now then you need to really be specific about what your membership is about and who it is serving i think that's really really important um so one being clear on that the second thing is really you need to have an audience of people who are interested like sometimes i see people like uh people who are influenced online or who have really decent sized followings but have a lot of engagement and sometimes especially i see influencers who haven't necessarily monetized their following they haven't monetized what they're doing and i always look at those people thinking oh my gosh you start memberships you start membership i think if you have an audience of people who are interested in what you have to say who you know you've all you've got people coming to you all the time can you help me with this can you help me with that like and just people coming to you i think you will find that if you had a membership site you'd have people who were excited to be part of your membership site um so i do think to be honest if you want to be build a successful online business full stop you need to figure out how to create that presence that visibility you need to have that connection with people um you know especially if you have some kind of digital product like a course an online course or an online membership or an online program then you definitely need to be building your platform your audience of people who are engaging with you who love what you're doing i'm going to refer you back to an episode i did a few weeks ago on this it was an episode talking about how to create momentum and visibility and growth without using social media i say that but it does also come the same strategy applies to social media and when you use the strategy i talk about in that episode for social media it makes social media so much more effective i think so often we think visibility is about numbers it's about growing your following on social media or the number of likes you get or the number of people you have on your email list or creating that next lead magnet to grow that email list but then you create that lead magnet and you spend that time and effort doing that lead magnet but the email list doesn't grow the email list isn't growing you're putting stuff out on social media putting it out putting outputting out but then it's crickets no one's paying attention no one's responding no one's engaging you just feel so deflated it's so frustrating social media is not growing nothing's working i don't know what to do i don't know what to do i don't know what to do i'm so overwhelmed doing all these things it's failing and then you just feel like you're failing and you're not but this is a trap i see so many people falling into and getting so disheartened by the whole situation and then giving up but i want you to go and listen back to that episode on how to create i can't remember exactly what it's called but i'll link it in the show notes for you but there's something on basically how to grow without social media um and the things i share in that episode are absolutely essential essential like go and listen to the episode like three times because i think you'll pick something different up each time you listen to it so it sinks in in a different way because if you want to build a successful online business in this day and age you need to be doing those things um gotta sound like such a tease to get you to listen to another episode it's not my intention but i just really feel like you need to go and listen to that other episode um so yeah building up your audience creating that connection with people building those relationships is going to be absolutely essential to you building a successful membership site can you build a successful membership site 100 you absolutely can but you need to have a really specific mission and you need to have an established audience it can be a small audience but it needs to be an established audience of people that are actually engaging with you that actually love what you have to say who are interested in what you're about if you have that then right let's go for it um so obviously there's so many different types of membership sites that you can create um and i wanna get into this a little bit more with you so um i'm gonna come back next week and i'm gonna talk all about the different types of membership sites we can talk a little bit about pricing and how to price it um and really getting into yeah some of the other exciting pieces around successfully launching your membership site and all that good stuff however before i end this episode i do want to share with you like i said at the beginning a trend that i see happening um with memberships and the trend is really this um i think that for me when i look at what i've created with my membership i think i think we've been the past few years the past really 10 years have been all about information and sharing information and while i don't necessarily think that's completely going i think we are transitioning and i think we'll start to see more memberships and we are seeing more membership sites that are based around more implementation than information so less about information and more about how are you getting people to implement and it could and so when i say that i mean um it could be more about um showing up and doing co-working calls together rather than giving people information um one of the things that we're doing is we're creating the ceo dashboard where people will be able to track their stats and track their goals and track things so actually using it more to actually show up and do and track it's not just here's some information here's some information here's some information i think we're seeing a shift away i think everyone is in a bit of information overload so i think we'll start i don't think we are seeing that like that move away so at least that's how i feel in myself i feel like i know the path i'm going down with my membership is to take it more away more from sorry didn't say that very well take it away from just creating masterclasses and and more towards the doing the um and also that connection piece of getting people to connect and it being more about the taking action but making it easier for people to take action i think we'll also find it's more like done for you things more templates and giving people access to more of that stuff people are busy they don't have time they don't have time they don't have time they don't have time for you they're going to be counselling and you don't want that so i'm going to talk more about that as well in the next episode very exciting um one thing i did also want to say is stu mclaren who i worked with like i was talking to you about earlier he really helped me with my membership when it was just me myself and i to figure out like especially when it came to launching like how to really do it and he is i really do think like the king of membership sites and he's worked with thousands of membership site owners he just has all the information on building successful membership sites so if you really are serious about building a membership site you want to pay attention to stu mclaren he has his free membership experience workshop series coming up it's free and he delivers so much value i would highly highly recommend you go and sign up for for that because you will learn so much from it um he'll also have his membership experience program opening for enrollment too so if you want to take it a step further you can also join his program and he stu was a really good friend of mine and he's such a nice genuine guy and he delivers so much value um i would never recommend somebody that i hadn't worked with or had got you know got value from him in some way um or i didn't know no one you know i know him he's amazing he's helped me so much which is why i wanted to share that with you because if you are serious about this then i really don't think there's anyone better to learn from so um i'll put the link to that in the show notes you can go and sign up in fact i'll put it on a little a little one of our little short links for you if you go to fea dot link forward slash stew stu that'll be the easy one um i just make these links up on the spot and then thankfully like the team create them um f e a dot link forward slash stu f e a dot link four slash two nice and easy just go over there and you'll be able to sign up for his free workshop series definitely one not to be missed anyway i hope i've given you entice you with a few of my nuggets and my story um but yeah come back to the episode next week and i'll dive more into memberships and we can keep talking about this stuff because it's exciting and the opportunities are massive so i will see that [Music] i hope you've loved this week's episode of the she means business show if you want more help and support to build a wildly successful business then join hundreds of thousands of women and become an fea insider you'll get access to some of our amazing freebies to our bonuses to our giveaways to so much good stuff you can join me over at fea.link forward slash insider to get all of the goodness and i will see you next week for another episode of the she means business show [Music] you

Channel: Carrie Green

Views: 8,284

Keywords: carrie green, female entrepreneur association, women in business, she means business

Id: ZrAUtVhBmuc

Length: 24min 49sec (1489 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2022