151: Why I decided to change my membership platform (and what it taught me about growth)

This week on Online Business Uncovered, I’m taking you behind the scenes of a big decision I’ve recently made in my business… moving my membership to a brand new platform.

Now on the surface, it might sound like a simple tech update but this episode isn’t really about platforms… it’s about real growth!

Over the past 18 months, my membership has evolved and my vision has expanded. I’ve added more structure, clearer phases, launch support and ongoing marketing and sales training. However, somewhere along the way, what once felt simple and exciting started to feel restrictive and clunky.

In this episode, I share what led to that decision, the fear that creeps in when something works “well enough” and why sometimes growth requires us to upgrade our systems, our standards and the experience we create for our clients.

If you’re feeling friction in your business right now (whether it’s your offers, your tech, your structure or your direction) then this episode will help you reflect on whether you’ve simply outgrown your current setup because sometimes evolution doesn’t look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like refinement and that’s where real freedom in business begins!

Grab a cuppa, get comfy and tune in as this one might be exactly what you need to hear right now!

Transcript

Karen [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Online Business Uncovered. This is episode 151, and in today's episode, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of a really big decision that I've recently made in my business, why I decided to change my membership platform, and what this experience has taught me about growth, leadership, and building an aligned business. So let's jump right in and let's get started. Hello and welcome to Online Business Uncovered. 

This is the show that helps you turn your expertise into digital products, passive income, and of course, time freedom. I am your host Karen, and I really do appreciate you hitting that play button to listen to today's episode. Now today's episode is a slightly different one because I'm going to be really honest and I'm going to be taking you behind the scenes, and I think this is something every business owner is going to relate to at some point. So today I want to talk about why I decided to move my membership to a completely new platform and what this decision has taught me about growth leadership and building a business that actually supports your vision.

Karen [00:01:19]:
So if you're currently feeling that friction in your business, then this episode is going to be for you. But before I do, I just want to talk about the Digital Creators Hub. Now, this is free community that is designed to help you kickstart your online journey. Inside the hub, I've got resources, I've got tools, I've even got a workshop ready for you to go and watch because this is going to support you in turning your expertise into either an online course, a membership, or a digital offer that you can sell on repeat. Now, if you're ready to take the first step in creating your scalable offer, then this is the perfect place to start. So you can join join for free today, head on over to www.sellyourbrillianceonline.com/community. 

Right, let's jump into today's episode and let's get started. In this episode today, I wanted to just peel back the curtains of my own business and talk about what is currently going on in my world and where I am on this journey.

Karen [00:02:44]:
Because like you guys, I am in the trenches. I'm doing this, I'm building things out, I'm selling things, and everything that I share within this podcast is born out of my own personal experience and what I know to be true in the space that I'm in. And so it's really important that I share what I feel is the truth about what it takes to actually build a successful business online. Now, it's not always plain sailing, and there are challenges. And I think as online entrepreneurs, part of our job is about figuring out what is not working and then creating solutions in order to get it working. And I feel like that's kind of where I've been at because over the past 18 months I've had a membership that I launched on the 1st of July 2024. And my membership was really born out of an idea of wanting to really provide my customers with a deeper level of support. Because one thing that I have found over the years of teaching people online course creation and creating digital products and memberships and all of that good stuff is that it's very easy to get stuck, to feel overwhelmed, and not take action.

Karen [00:04:13]:
And so I wanted to create something that was really an environment for people to come in where they could have access to everything they needed, didn't have to think about it, they just had to follow a very simple roadmap., but then they would be given everything that they needed in order to get it done. So templates, plug-and-play tools, resources. I've even set up online course, um, sort of structures for people who are building their course on Systeme.io. Anything that's really gonna make their experience so much easier. And one platform, like I say, that I use is Systeme.io, and I love that platform. It's very easy to use. It's got a great user interface, and I have integrated it right throughout my business. So it's connected to my website, it was connected to my membership platform.

Karen [00:05:07]:
So that's the, the piece of tech that kind of holds all my data, but, but is where all my email list is built, my sales funnels, my email campaigns, all of that stuff that is needed to be able to kind of communicate with your audience, but also create that visibility for yourself. Now, for a while, I've been feeling this really low-level frustration inside my membership. And it's not because of my members or the content or the vision that I have, because the vision I have today has grown because of what I have seen is possible running a membership. It's really been down to the platform that I was using because that platform no longer matched where the membership was going. Now, just to give you some context, when I first created my membership site, I spent so long looking at different solutions. You could ask me about any membership platform and I could, I could have given you the absolute lowdown. I did my due due diligence. I looked at every solution on the market so that when I chose my final product that I was going to use, it was going to be the right one for me and what I wanted to happen.

Karen [00:06:36]:
So I spent a huge amount of time, and I— and what's really interesting is I get asked a lot about tech. In fact, that's probably one of the questions that is most asked: what platform should I be building my online course on? Or what platform should I be building my membership on? And I always kind of answer that it really depends on where you're going and what you wanna create for yourself because different platforms offer different things. So the more you know about what it is that you're looking to create, the easier it's going to be to choose your platform because you can just marry up your needs with what you get. And make a decision that way. So when I was thinking about my membership and I was looking about what is it that I actually need, what's important, I had this belief that my membership had to be community first. And I think that was really born out of this idea that community sits at the center of everything, because that's what we're told in the business world. Community is everything, and it is important. It is important.

Karen [00:07:56]:
It's important to build an audience and to build a community of people that are like-minded, that sit in your space. But I made the decision on the platform based on this, and I also future-proofed it, or so I thought, because I knew at the time when I created the membership that it would naturally grow. And so I chose a platform called Mighty Networks because I believed at that time that, that platform would support the growth of my membership. Now, 18 months later, and so much has changed, not just with the vision I now have for my membership, but with regards to that platform as well, because during that time they have made changes as well. They've changed their pricing, they've changed what you now get on each of the pricing tiers, they've made changes inside the membership, the way they that the platform functions, what you now have, they've built in a lot of AI and a lot of the changes they've made have been really good, you know. But I think the reality sort of dawned on me that I've, I've probably outgrown it because of what I— the behavior of my members. So what I mean by that is is when I chose Mighty Networks at the start 18 months ago, it was right for that season that I was in at that time because I didn't know how to run a membership or what it would entail. But 18 months later, I do feel that regardless to the changes that they've made, I do feel like I have now outgrown it.

Karen [00:09:49]:
I have grown my membership and I've got more members and I want to do more things with it. So what used to feel simple starts to feel restrictive, and what used to feel exciting about the platform has started to feel really clunky. And yes, you can sort of stick with something and say, yep, it does the job, it's okay. By doing that, you're limiting the experience that you want to create for your members. And I think as leaders of our business, when you feel that tension, I think you have to address it because I think with memberships you are creating that environment for your members and their experience matters. And when you start to feel that what you're able to offer is restrictive, it starts to take away from the things that you're, you're wanting to create. So when I first built my membership, the goal was very simple: to create a space where entrepreneurs learn how to grow their audience, create their first digital product, and build scalable income. So that was my goal, and, and it worked.

Karen [00:11:05]:
I built my membership, I managed to fill it with members, and it's been a really fun journey, and I love being a membership host. But of course, as the membership has evolved, so has my vision. So These days I add more of a structured pathway, more clear phases. I have a launch hub, I've got marketing and sales trainings because I wanted to create an all-inclusive, um, sort of solution to what people need. So rather than just coming in and creating something and then saying, well, what do I do next? I wanted to provide that end-to-end journey. Now, it was really important for me in the membership that it wasn't just a content library. I wanted to create a structured pathway that had clear progression and, and a slightly more elevated premium experience. So people wanted to be in the site, and I wanted to make sure that the system or the platform that I was using could integrate with my funnels and systems that I'd built out on Systeme.io.

Karen [00:12:19]:
And I also wanted to make sure that when people are coming into my membership, they have a really smooth onboarding journey. And what I was starting to find with Mighty Networks is that some of which I could do, but as a whole, it was becoming more and more difficult because Mighty Networks is very community-led. So if you are building a membership where you're wanting to create a community, it is such a good platform for that. It's expensive. But it's a good platform for that because it's got all the tools that you need to be able to engage people in a community. But if you're wanting to create content-led material so that you're, you're teaching people, then it doesn't work as well because that's kind of sort of like put on the side and you can't really, I don't feel, successfully create those pathways. And that was proven to be a problem. So that was where I feel like I was outgrowing the system.

Karen [00:13:24]:
Now, recognizing that you're at a place of growth can be really challenging because sometimes the fear creeps in and it's like, I have something, it works, and I don't want to change it in case it breaks. And what was really interesting is I was recently working with a client. I was doing a bit of consultancy work where this client client was on another platform, um, so she was on a completely different platform to Mighty Networks, and all her courses, her funnels, webinar stuff, all of that stuff was in this platform. And for a while she's been finding that the platform itself was not working properly. It was clunky, everything was spread out all over the place, and she was just getting frustrated with it. And she sat on it for quite a long time before she made the move to a different platform. I think sometimes that fear can creep in, especially when you've created things that you know has taken you a long time, but you don't want to fiddle with it because you don't want to kind of run the risk of it affecting your sales, especially like my client if it's something that is set up to help her make money. So, so I get it, and, and having been in that position recently, that fear can really creep in and really kind of keep you stuck because you don't want to mess up.

Karen [00:14:59]:
You don't want to move to another platform only for that to be worse than the platform that you, you've moved over from. So I had to make a decision because this year for me in my business, it's about scaling my membership because in the membership is where I can really help people and it's where I'm seeing transformations happen. So So my goal, my one goal for this year is to grow that membership. So I had to make a decision. Do I stay or do I go? Do I stick with what I know, what's comfortable because I've learned the system, I know what it does, I know where everything is, or do I bite the bullet and I move to a different platform and I have to rebuild everything, which is gonna take me absolutely like weeks and weeks and weeks,, but potentially I can have a better platform in place that's gonna serve my members better. So that's what I did because I decided if I was building this platform from scratch today, would I choose my current setup? And the answer was a clear no. And so because I knew that, I couldn't sit on it. I had to make a shift.

Karen [00:16:16]:
And so over the past 2 months I have been working on rebuilding my membership on a different platform. Now I think this is something that so many entrepreneurs struggle with. We often put up with things because it feels familiar, it's comfortable, it works well enough. We don't want to experience disruption because we don't have the time, the bandwidth for it, or the energy. So we stick with what we know works, but sometimes when we're going through a growth phase, that growth requires upgrades. It requires an upgrade in your identity, in your standard, in what you do, in the systems that you use, in your delivery, and in the experience that you offer your clients.. And something that I realized is that if I want my membership numbers to evolve, and if I want them to refine their offers, and I want them to build scalable businesses that support their life, then I have to model that behavior too. Something that is so important to me is that I walk my talk because there are so many people out there in the online space that tell you to do one thing and then they're doing something else, that their values are not aligning.

Karen [00:17:58]:
They're not demonstrating that level of integrity because they just want to make money. And something that is really important to me, why I created this podcast in the first place, was so that I could be upfront. I can be transparent. I can share stuff because by doing this, I get to help other people. So that's really important. And I think that is is ultimately what being a leader is. It's making those hard decisions and going with it and listening to your gut as well. Because that's another thing, I think sometimes we can block out the noise of what we're, what we're hearing because we don't want to experience that discomfort.

Karen [00:18:40]:
And when our gut is screaming at us that we have to do something because what we're currently experiencing is not the right thing, we have to listen to it because that's leading us to really where it is. We need to go. So I wanted to really share this with you because this episode isn't about the tech. It's not about Mighty Networks. It's not about my new platform. It's not about Systeme.io. They're, they're just tools that help me to, to do the things that I need to do. This is more about alignment because if you are feeling that in your business something is feeling heavy, maybe it's feeling clunky, or maybe you're getting constantly frustrated by it, then I just want you to ask yourself, have Have you outgrown whatever that thing is? Does this still support the direction that you're heading? And are you holding on to something because it's familiar? You don't know anything different.

Karen [00:19:41]:
Because I think sometimes the smartest move in business isn't about adding more to your plate, it's about refining, upgrading, restructuring, and then simplifying. And that's exactly what I've done. And that's exactly what I've done with this new platform. And yes, it's taken me weeks and weeks and weeks to build out, but you know what? I love it. It's better, it offers more, and I've moved my members over and they are loving it. And so for me, all of that work that I put into upgrading my membership has been worth it because I know my members are going to get so much more from it. So this is about creating more clarity in our businesses. It's about creating that structure that is needed and building out that momentum so that you can create a better experience for your clients, a more scalable backend, which is really important if you're looking to grow, and a stronger ecosystem so that when people come into your world, you can convert them and actually make money from them.

Karen [00:20:58]:
So for me, now that this new membership space is up and running, I've been able to build 2 additional phases. So I now have 4 phases in my membership. I've got a Phase 1, which is all about growing your audience and building your audience online. Phase 2 is about creating your scalable product, whether that's a digital masterclass, an online course, a digital product. And Phase 3 is 3 is about launching. So when you've got that product, you can now launch it. And then phase 4 is about ongoing marketing and sales. It's clearer, it's more strategic, it's built for action because I don't want my members to get lost down rabbit holes.

Karen [00:21:46]:
I want them to take the right action at the right time. And it's built for movement as well. And from this, I can build sustainable growth in my business, and that is what is feeling aligned. So yes, it was a risk moving platforms, but I do think that it was the right thing for me to do. And I think from that, moving forward this year, I'll be able to grow it to where I want it to be. So if you're currently in a season of change where maybe you are questioning if what you have is right for you, or if you're upgrading your offers or restructuring something behind the scenes, then I want you to just that evolution is a sign of growth and not instability. Sometimes I think the most powerful move you can make is the one that nobody sees— the system upgrades, the backend shift, the structural refinement— because those are the decisions that ultimately create long-term freedom. And as you know, I am all about building freedom in business, but it has to be done in a smart way..

Karen [00:23:00]:
So if this episode resonates with you, then I would love to listen to you. I would love to hear about your experience and what you've got going on in your business right now. So please do come and connect with me over on Instagram or LinkedIn. And if you are ready to build your first digital product or structure your launches and create a business that doesn't rely on you being online 24/7, then I'd love you to take a look at my membership, Sell Your Brilliance Online. Online because I would love to support you inside this membership, and I'd love to see you achieve your goals as well. 

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope this episode has given you some clarity and sparked some new ideas for your business. Now, if you found this helpful, I would love you to share it with a friend or a fellow entrepreneur who is also building their business online, because it may be exactly what they need to listen to today.

Karen [00:24:21]:
And And if this episode has you thinking that you are now ready to get started with creating scalable income in your business, then come into my free community, the Digital Creators Hub, where inside you'll get access to free tools, resources, masterclass replays, and you'll be the very first to hear about my upcoming live events. Head on over to www.sellyourbrillianceonline.com/community. I will be back next week with another episode, but until then, have a wonderful week.