Episode 107 - From Email List to Membership: Build Recurring Revenue Without Ads with Mike Morrison

If you’re a coach, course creator, or online service provider who wants more stable, recurring income, less pressure to launch constantly, and has thought about creating a membership, then this episode will change how you approach your offers.

Today, I’m joined by Mike Morrison, founder of Membership Geeks, to break down how to grow a successful membership model without relying on paid ads—and how to improve retention so members stay engaged long-term.

Inside this conversation, we cover:

• How to turn your email list and visibility into membership growth
• How to improve retention and reduce churn
• How to create predictable, recurring revenue

And if you already have an audience or email list, you’re closer than you think!

Mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Mike:

Website: https://www.membershipgeeks.com

Free Resource (Membership Growth Health Check): https://score.membershipgeeks.com/healthcheck/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/membershipgeeks

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/membershipgeeks

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemorrison8/

Free Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/506428616152347/

Tired of building your business in a vacuum?

Constantly creating content, promoting your offers, and navigating mindset wobbles without real-time support?

Entrepreneurship isn't meant to be a solo sport. That’s why I created a space that gives you visibility, community, and encourages you to promote your offers, connect with other members, and build meaningful business relationships.

Inside my free Facebook group, Be A Confident Entrepreneur: Get Visible + Grow Your Email List and Income, you’ll meet thousands of other online business owners who are building real momentum together.

Come introduce yourself, answer the quick entry questions so we know you’re a good human, and when you join, shoot me a DM and let me know you found us through the podcast. I’d love to welcome you in personally.

Join here: 

https://tracybeavers.biz/bacefromcobs

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What if the most reliable income in your business didn't come from your next launch or your next post or even your next lead magnet? But instead, it came from a group of people who choose to stay with you and pay you every single month. Here's what I see happening all the time. Entrepreneurs, that's us people. We are working so hard to stay visible, paddling like crazy, posting, creating, showing up, trying to grow our email list and attract those new leads. But what if we're missing the next step? Because visibility and list growth are powerful. But if you don't have a way to turn that attention into something sustainable, you're constantly starting over. And that's where memberships come in. But, and this is most the most important thing, not all memberships work. In fact, most don't. But I found an expert on the topic, and I am so happy he said yes to coming to chat with us, Mike Morrison from Membership Geeks, to talk about what actually makes a membership successful: how to grow one without relying on paid ads, how to keep people engaged long term, and how to turn the audience you already have into consistent recurring revenue. If you've ever wondered whether a membership could work for you, or maybe you have a membership and you're wondering why isn't it growing the way I wanted it to, this episode is going to give you some real clarity. Ready to grow your online business without losing your mind? You're in the right spot, my friend. Welcome to Create Your Online Business Success. I'm your host, Tracy Beavers, and this show is all about practical strategies, creative ideas, and sanity saving solutions that you can use right now. Let's crank up the dial on your business growth and make it fun. Let's create your online business success. Hey there, Mike. I am so excited to welcome you into the podcast. I just shared a little bit with our listeners, a little bit about who you are and what we're going to talk about today, but I always love for my guests to give the full scoop. Like, who are you? Um, who do you serve? And why did you decide to become an entrepreneur in the first place? Because this is a roller coaster.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Well, okay. So that last question, that could be an entire episode because I've been doing this since um kind of mid-2000s officially, and even longer as a side hustle. Um, but yes, I'm Mike Morris and I'm founder of Membership Geeks and Membership Academy. We help experts and influencers who are extremely passionate about their special topic to monetize uh that expertise by creating uh online memberships and paid communities. Uh, I call my business membership geeks because I am a huge geek in all walks of life, but particularly about memberships. Like I've been doing this for around 15 years now, and I am still so excited being in this space, and I love what I do every single day. So we work with um entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes across every industry imaginable, from your kind of normal sort of marketing memberships through to ones on things like fish husbandry. Um, so yeah, this is what I get to do. I get to help people who are super talented and super passionate in a range of of crazy industries and you know, some that are a little more familiar to me. Um and it's yeah, it's something I absolutely love. And um, I first started out as a freelance kind of digital marketer and web developer and just kind of built from there through all the ups and downs of entrepreneurship and reached reached a point where we were achieving enough success where we got to be a little more selective about the kind of jobs that we did. Um and this was around the time that online memberships and online education was starting to become more possible in 2014, 2015. Uh so we just niched down or niched down for my transatlantic cousins um into into online memberships because we always found those people were just the best to work with, and the projects were always a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

That's amazing. So you mentioned um that that you started this as a side hustle. Are you like me and you used to have a corporate career?

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Um, yes, but my corporate career had nothing to do with what I do. So um I I was I I was around about that strange period in time where uh the internet was really kind of gaining prominence. This was Web 1.0 for the younger viewers, it existed once. Um I I taught myself web development. Um, or honestly, I I went through a period of kind of um you know mental health struggles in my early 20s. I taught myself web development as as a distraction, like as a hobby, it just kind of pulled me out of it. But my educational background was in marketing, my work was in sales and and management. Um, but I never thought people made money from it. Like, of course, no one's gonna pay you for for this silly little hobby that I was kind of developing. Um but I worked in banking, I was in, I was in finance. Um yeah, and and and as a young, as a young kid, uh I kind of woke up one day and I was doing well and had a good career in that. Um, but just kind of woke up and thought, I I'm not meant to be a financial advisor, which is what I was working towards. I wanted to kind of leave banking and set up my own um my own shop. Um, I'm not meant for this. This isn't my it's not something I enjoy. Um, and you know, if I get to my 30s and 40s and 50s and I'm doing this, with no offense to the people who love that. Um but if I'm doing this, I don't know what the heck's gonna happen. And yeah, I uh I kind of was in the no man's land of uh all right, well, if not this, what am I doing? So, you know, I went back to university for a little while just to do the most interesting sounding um course, which was um criminology and forensic science. CSI was big at the time and just kind of expounded, yeah, but all the while still doing this stuff on the side just because it was fun. And then people started asking me if they could pay me to do little bits and pieces, and then those bits and pieces got bigger, and then that led to going freelance in 2008 officially.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yeah, that's really cool. I love that I always love to hear the backstory of how people got here, and I do love to ask every guest for a fun fact. So, what is something that my listeners would love to know about you that kind of showcases your personality?

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Oh, I'll see, these are these are tricky because you're just throwing a whole hole of the wrinkle. Anyone who's ever been put on the spot and asked for a fun fact fact will struggle, but the bit about showcasing the personality is a oh, that's a tricky one because I was gonna mention that I'm related to John Wayne. Um yeah, the late Marion Morrison. Um so, yes, my my lineage um goes to John Wayne and Jimmy Lee Curtis as well, which is brilliant. Um, the Scream Queen.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

So crazy.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

But I don't think that is anything about my personality. Um, I'm a Lego obsessive. I am what is called an AFOL, an adult fan of Lego. Um, and whether this video goes out or not, I have a tattoo of a Lego brick on my arm. That is the mark of my obsession, and a house filled with um way more Lego than any human should ever have.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Um yeah, we have all of our Legos that our kids played with um in storage for hopefully when we have grandkids later on, we can get all the Legos back out. Yeah, love a good Lego. And I I want to share with you that I, and I think I told you this when we booked this. I'm really happy you're here because I haven't had anybody come on the podcast to talk about memberships before. And it is a very hot topic with my clients and my students. Um, my students in my business visibility made easy eight-week uh coaching program. They are actively deciding on their offers. What do they want to do? Do they want to have a membership? Do they want it to be a general public open all the time, or do they want to do a launch, or do they want to make it a back-end membership? I mean, there's so many decisions. So the first question I have for you is this one. Um, because I get this a lot from my clients and students. How do we know when our audience is actually ready to join a membership that we create? What are some good signs?

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Really, a lot of the time it's when they're asking you for more than you're currently giving them. Um, that's always a good sign when people want you to serve them in some way that you simply can't do one-on-one. Um, or when you've got more people who are asking you for things. And I think with a membership in particular, it's when those when those overall goals that they're working to are long-term significant, more than you're going to get done in, you know, a few months of consulting or you know, a three-day retreat. You know, these are big transformational goals, big um pursuits of mastery, uh, and where they have problems that are recurring, you know, that that the problems repeat, they they're not finite. You're never going to start a membership. Oh, I mean, you could, but you're probably not going to start a membership to help somebody pass their driving test. Because, of course, I know over there in the US, it's part of your school system. We don't have that here in the UK. We have to do it all separately. But once somebody's passed, well, there's no recurring need. And so um, when you start to see these needs come up within your audience, um, and when I think your your visibility has got to a point, and your your community side has got to a point, whether it's in a Facebook group or your social following, where it's kind of looking for a home. And I think some of that is a sense where you know you have your people, you know you've kind of reached uh a little bit of a tipping point in terms of how visible you are to them and how much they're resonating with your message, uh where you kind of feel we need somewhere to bring these people together. Um and and that then lends itself a little more to creating that sort of community because I think these days um people don't want to be uh on social media as much, they don't want to you know broadcast their opinions on things or share anything that might involve vulnerability because social media is not a safe space anymore. And so you have those different those those different sides of of your audience needs. You have the actual tangible, transformational, you know, what they're looking to accomplish, the goal, the change, the person they want to be. But then you also have this drive towards community, this this want to be in a safe space with like-minded people. And when you start seeing those signals, when you start getting those needs coming up in conversations and emails, um, then that those start giving an indication that, you know, actually something like a membership or a paid community would be worth exploring.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that's what happened to me with my my membership, although I call it a mastermind, um, was it it it was a product that I developed because of the demand. So I mentioned that I have my eight-week group coaching program, and and we just finished or we're wrapping up round number 12 of our with our students, and I do that three times a year. So we've had it for several years. And I was noticing in the, I think this started happening in the second and third round, like early on. We would get to week six, and people were like, What are we gonna do after this? We wanna stick together, we want to keep working. And finally, I was I was out walking my dog and it just dawned on me. I was like, well, duh, Tracy, you should do a back end membership. And so I came in and I voxered my assistant, and she's like, Well, it's about darn time. They've been asking you for this. And so, and literally, Mike, I flew, I I like I will fly by the seat of my pants with most every new thing that I develop. And I just came back and I told them, I said, Hey, we're gonna do this. I'm gonna put this together. Um, founder rate for the, you know, for you guys for being the early end, because it's still kind of a mess. And uh we'll we'll fly, we'll build the plane as we fly it. So that's how mine happened was essentially what you're saying. It's like when people are saying to you, hey, Mike, we want more of you, then you're like, oh, I need to develop something for them. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

And it comes, it comes from listening to your audience, it comes from talking to them, to paying attention to them, to actually, you know, not going on to Chat GPT and saying, you know, what does somebody in this market need? Go to your people, have conversations, they'll be the perfect GPS. And I always like to encourage people to just zoom all the way out. Like once you know, you know, what what do people need? What are they motivated by? And there's kind of four main motivators for memberships, which I I can go into if you like. Um, but then look at the whole journey, right? Like, okay, so the person someone is now, the person they want to be, and where they want to go when they are that person, where do I currently fit? Like, what part of that process do I help with? Because chances are you maybe are helping with, you know, getting them from C to F, if we're going on A to Z, right? And then you can look and say, okay, what might they need with them for the part of the journey that that they're with me? What do they need before? What do they need after? What can get them there faster? And then you start to kind of be able to arrange the pieces and think of what would actually work at the different phases of someone's overall journey or experience. Um, and then from there it starts to become okay, so what are the products here? But it all starts with that overall need and that understanding of what is driving people.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yes, for sure. Because we don't want to build anything if we don't have already know that people want it. Um let's talk about some of the keys to being successful with the membership, because the audience may be thinking now, okay, Tracy and Mike are talking about this. This sounds like it might be a good fit for me, but how do I make sure that it is successful? Because between you and me, Mike, I have been in some memberships that have so much content that it feels completely overwhelming to me. And then I just I what I find is I just don't do anything because I don't know where to start in the membership. So, what are some of those things that we can do to make sure that we are successful with it?

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Yeah, I think it it starts first and foremost with the mindset. It starts with an understanding that um memberships are about the long game. Um, it's not get rich quick, it's not, you know, some secret formula to passive income. Passive income is very rarely actually passive. So we kind of need to adjust our expectation and recognize that if we want people to be in it for the long haul with us, we need to be committed to that long haul. Um it takes work. The work you do will be fulfilling, the work you do will be rewarding in both tangible and intangible ways, but it's it's a business, it's not a gimmick, it's not a funnel, it's not a get-rich quick thing. So it's always that reality check of what you're in for, um and that mindset is important. Um also recognizing memberships are a retention business, they're not a sales business, they are a retention business. You do not build success off that first sale. With most kind of things, if you're selling a product, an event ticket, you know, the sale is is the finish line, it's the culmination of what you're doing, right? Or when the membership, the sale is your starting pistol. It's not enough to get that first sale. You need to get that sale month after month, year after year, because memberships are typically low ticket. You know, generally, most online memberships are are under $100 a month. B2B, it tends to range between about 35 to about 75 on average. B2C, you're looking at about 15 to 35. So it's a volume, it's it's about the accumulation, and it's about keeping people for 10 months, 20 months, yeah, three years. Like that's where the money is made, it's in retention. So what happens after the sale is infinitely more important than what happens before the sale, and that's one of the biggest things that I feel people miss.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Um, yeah, and such good information.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Yeah, and and and that comes to your point about you know, so many people I think, okay, well, they understand, right? I need to give people stu uh something. Um memberships are a value exchange. You want people to pay you on an ongoing basis, you need to deliver value on an ongoing basis, right? But people equate value with stuff, the most lessons, the longest courses, and I think today, more than ever before, that is a recipe for disaster because we have a lot of stuff, yeah. ChatGPT can give us all the information we want, and the average person doesn't know enough to know that the information they're getting sucks, otherwise, they wouldn't be asking the question, right? So they don't have the knowledge to assess uh what they're being taught, so they'll just take it as it is. So value and volume are not the same thing, it's about tapping into that deeper need, that deeper motivator, um, and getting people to adapt the particular thing that's driving them as quickly and as efficiently as as possible. So there's four main membership motivators. Uh people either motivated by outcome, so they've got a big goal, they've got a version of themselves they want to be, and there's a gap between where they are now and where they want to be.

unknown 18:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Those are usually um e-learning based. So typically people need to learn a skill, they're going through a process, you know, they want to run an event, they want to um lose weight, they want to increase their their income. Like there is a very tangible linear pathway to results, they want wins, they want progress. Um motivator one is outcome, motivator two is mastery. So these are things where people aren't necessarily looking to kind of complete something or reach a destination, they're looking to perfect and to hone their skills.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Like music memberships, you're never going to complete drumming, you don't finish like cool, I'm done. Sticks down, right? It's a lifelong thing, right? Um, yes. The third type of membership motivator is community. So these are memberships where it is about the safe space. People are driven by a desire and a need to be surrounded by the right kind of people, to make connections, to build their network, to be held accountable, to be supported, um, and make friends.

unknown 19:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

And the fourth type is resource. Now, the resource-driven memberships, they do want stuff, they want all the stuff, they want good stuff, they don't want volume, they want good stuff. Resource-driven memberships, they want tools, they want templates, they want shortcuts that will help them do their job better and faster. Um, so a great example, one of our community members, a guy called Mark Warner, he runs a very long-running membership here in the UK called Teaching Packs. They sell pre-made bundles of um learning materials for classrooms, for teachers, for young children. Um, so colouring in activities and um little worksheets, posters for your classroom walls. Their market is teachers. Teachers don't want to come in and hang out in a community for six hours a night because they don't have six hours a night, right? Um they want to get in, get their stuff cool, lessons are taken care of for the month. I can, you know, maybe get a moment's break now, right? Um, right. These are very distinct. There's often a little crossover, but I think the mistake some people make is not thinking about that. So they just they'll they'll have a uh an outcome-motivated um membership or an audience, and they're just they're treating them like you know, a community-oriented one, where actually, you know, like it's all well and good, but if you're not seeing wins, you're not seeing results, ultimately you're going to leave. Um, and so you need to identify what is that motivator and what is the most efficient way of delivering on that, of helping people get their first win, helping people see their progress, helping people make those connections early, um, helping people find the right resource. And yeah, expediency is so important, and that whole volume versus value, there is more value in solving someone's problem in five minutes than there is in saying to them, hey, look, we've got we've got a five-hour long course. Isn't that great? Because this is the thing you're interested in. Like, yeah, you what people need to understand is your membership, as phenomenal as it might be, your membership is an obstacle. Your material is an obstacle, it's an obstacle to what they. Want. If someone could uh click their fingers and have their outcome, yeah. Well, they wouldn't join your membership for the heck of it, right? Right. Yes, your membership's a vehicle, um, and it can be the nicest vehicle in the world, but they still need the drive, they still need to make it sure it's fueled up, they still need the route planning, they still need snacks, they still need to know what music. These are all things they need to do. It's the thing that means they've got to do the work, and so it's on you as a membership owner to make like it's it's unavoidable. Like they they have to get over this gap between where they where they are and what they want, right? But you need to make sure that your membership doesn't add too much of the wrong kind of friction, right? A completely frictionless journey would be not needing your membership at all. People don't want to have to join the membership, they don't want to have to hire anyone. They would love to that's why everyone's loving AI right now, because they don't have to do any of these things, um, uh even though they end up having to do it after because AI can't do it. Um, you have to kind of recognize that, and it's a bitter pill to swallow because we all want to think that we are so incredible and what we create is so amazing. But I can guarantee you, if someone could just push a button and have phenomenal membership growth, the nicest looking membership in the world, no one would join my membership. They don't want to, they don't want to need to do that, they don't want to not be at their destination. So you just have to recognize that and and realize anything you can do to make that experience, make that journey fun, fast, rewarding, um, to distract them in some ways as well from the fact like you have you're gonna have to do a whole lot of work, you're gonna have to like get over a lot of hurdles and do it. Like that is worth so much more than just giving them more stuff. No one wants more stuff. Um, right. And the days, the days of being the Netflix of your industry, like that's no, that's good.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Yeah, I love what you said about the value versus volume. I think that's really key. Um, people want value versus volume. And so that's a that's a great soundbite from this. If the listeners remember nothing else, you know, focus on those four things that you said of what is it my people want? Are am I marketing to teachers that want to get in, get out, like you're saying, or are I marketing to coaches, course creators, and service providers that are in my audience that are truly craving community and guidance, um, but not necessarily more templates and more worksheets and more stuff. So I I think that's brilliant. Speaking of the uh retention rate, let's go into that for just a second because I'm really curious about this. What are some really great, well, like we kind of we kind of touched on it, bringing them value, making sure we're meeting the need that they have. That's gonna keep them staying in the membership. What are some other things that we need to be thinking about? Because nobody wants a high churn rate. Um, how do we reduce that churn rate? And then a piggyback on that, I always people always ask me, well, what's an average churn rate? And I'm like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Well, you know what? That's the right answer. That that is generally the right answer.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

The membership world is better.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

The membership world's still a very, very small kind of cottage industry compared to something like SAS, for example. SAS is huge, memberships are tiny. Um, so there's not a great deal of data out there and not a great deal of benchmarking information. Uh, we run an industry report every other year um that gets this data from thousands of memberships, but even then, still relatively sample size-wise. Um, but that tends to kind of bring it out of average churn rate being around about eight to nine percent per month. Um, and there's a few other sources that almost validate that as well. Uh, but it is that kind of thing, it's it's only the usefulness of knowing an industry average for churn. Um, really, when it comes to benchmarks, your only benchmarks should be yourself. Like that's what that's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah. You only ever want to improve on yourself, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Um, because you can track that analytical data and see what's happening each month.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Yeah, sadly, a lot of entrepreneurs in general, but particularly membership owners, don't have that data. There's a there's more KPIs you need to know as a membership owner. Churn rate, average member lifetime value, member tenure, um, trial conversion, all that sort of stuff. Um, right. So, yeah, you know, uh, we've got a free report, um, which yeah, I can kind of give you the link to if you want to put there's it's genuinely free, not internet marketing free. Um yeah, so we've got that at membershipbenchmarks.com. Um, that breaks down all this kind of data. So in terms of how you make sure you have low churn, and for anyone wanting a sanity check, if you can get it under 10% a month, great. Under 5% is um the holy grail for an online membership.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Um got it.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

But retention starts before you even get the sale. Retention really yeah, it starts it starts with your marketing. Um, yeah, so you know, of course, as an online business person, we've got our own little terms for these things. Um, so I refer to it as magnetic marketing, and that doesn't mean marketing that pulls people in, it's marketing that attracts retention prone subscribers.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

So looking at the way you market and really thinking about what kind of customer is this strategy likely to bring in. So if you're someone who's using a lot of urgency, a lot of scarcity, false countdown timers, and all that sort of stuff, what kind of person is that actually going to bring in? Well, it's gonna it's likely going to bring in people who two camps, it's gonna bring in people who were not ready to buy. They were early on in their journey, they're not at the place to buy yet. So if they if they only respond to these tactics, um they're not ready to buy because if someone is uh you know, we've got the whole buyer awareness journey. If someone is at the solution away and they they they're at a point where it is the right time, then they don't need an additional like manufactured reason to join. Their problem and your you having the solution to it is where the urgency comes from.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

But with heavy use of scarcity and urgency, you end up pushing people into a buying decision that they otherwise would not have made. And interesting. When that happens a week, a month, two months later, people realize they might realize instantly right away afterwards and get that buyer's remorse. Because of course, because there's a disconnect between where you are meeting them and where they are, right? It's like you know, forcing someone to accept your wedding proposal on the the first date. Um, it might work out for some people, but that's the exception, not the rule. So it's thinking about that, yeah, okay, you're gonna get you're gonna get a bunch of sales, you're more likely gonna have a heck of a lot of drop-off if you're using a lot of urgency and scarcity. Um that makes sense. You're also gonna attract, you know, if you have a closed door membership and these where maybe you open once or twice a year, someone comes and they sit on your wait list, and then they'll join when the doors open. What does the fact that someone was willing to wait three months or four months, they were willing to defer the solution to their problem by several months. Well, what does that tell you about them? How seriously they take solving that problem, how urgent that problem is. Well, it can't be that urgent, they can't have that much of a desire because they would see that you were closed and they would go elsewhere. So it's thinking things like this, it's thinking about the things, you know, when you use price-based marketing, like discount and offers, pricing really cheap, it attracts price-sensitive members who are always going to be mentally measuring their return down to the cent. Um, so it's it's it starts retention with having retention-focused marketing, retention-oriented marketing, and then from there, the clock is ticking once somebody joins. Member onboarding, that new member experience is the most important thing for me. Um, you know, the the first minute, the first day, the first week, the first month, all of this needs to be mapped out. Like you need to right away make that right impression. Because anytime anyone buys anything, especially online, right afterwards, you get that little bit of post-purchase. Oh no, the niggles, right? So you need to be affirming that decision right away. I'm so glad you're here. You have made the absolute right decision. You've finally found your place, and I cannot wait to work with you. Like, yeah, right away, you, your energy, a video on the thank you page. Like, you made the right call, you're in the right place, you are home now. Let's get you going. Um, from there, you need to be getting a bit of data. Personalization is so important within the member experience these days, in particular. So, getting a little bit of information from your new members in order to be able to personalize their experience, even just a little bit, um, is going to help both you and them. So, we want to know how did you find us? We want to know how our marketing is working, but also where are you in the journey? What's your number one objective?

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Um, that can then help inform what comes next. We can give them the recommended first steps because we want to get them into the habit of using our membership right from the get-go. We want them to set up their profile, get in the community, introduce themselves. We want them to know that they're going to get emails from us over the next month that's going to give them a bit more information about the membership. But right now, just go and do this one thing to get started. Um, and then we want to give them a win as fast as we can. If we can give them even a tiny little win within the first 48 hours, we're off to the races because ultimately, again, this is what people are there for. They are there for results, they are there to make progress. And if you demonstrate you've been a member for like two days and you've already had a win, imagine what it's gonna be like in three months. Like it just right away validates that they made the right decision, it demonstrates why investing their limited time and their limited attention in you will pay off because you've shown them. Um, so that new member experience, we need to uh affirm their decision to join. We need to acclimate them to the membership little by little, showing them around, and we need to advance them towards whatever their goals are. Um, and this needs to be woven into at least the first 90 days of someone's experience within their membership. And as we're doing this, oh my gosh. Yeah, and and we're introducing the value, like it all it all then comes together.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Yeah, and it helps the retention overall. I think that's so valuable what you just shared, Mike. Um, okay, one more question, and then we'll move into a couple of fun questions. So I have been hearing this for a while, and I love to know your take on it because you've been doing memberships, all kinds of memberships, far longer than I've even been thinking about them. But I have heard that it is harder to sell a membership than it is a one-time offer. And the thinking is people are hesitant to do a subscription that recurs every month. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Um it can be harder if the membership is not the right way to address those audience needs. Um, that can so that alignment and that understanding of audience needs is is critical. But it is very much um a pros and cons to each. And it really does come down to yeah, that having the right fit between what their problem is, is it a recurring problem, is it a finite problem? Um, and is a course or a workshop actually better than a membership? Um, you know, I spend a lot of time talking people out of starting memberships because what they're teaching is so hyper-specific and it's so self-contained, there's just no recurring aspect to it. Um, so there is definitely two sides to the coin, even beyond that. Without question, there is a little bit of subscription fatigue setting in across every space because everything is on subscription now, like everything. I've got hand wash, hand wash for my kitchen, it's it smells lovely, but it's on subscription. I don't need a subscription for hand wash. I right everything's on subscription, and I love subscriptions, but even I'm fed up of everything being on subscription, and people are far more discerning. Um the data shows that I think it was about two-thirds of people feel they have too many subscriptions, and about 55% of people are in a place where they have said before they take on another subscription, they always they'll cancel one. So this is where having your value proposition dialed in, regardless of whether you know, regardless of the debate about membership versus one-off, like you need to have that value proposition dialed in, and that comes to the membership motivators. Um, and it comes to just understanding your audience. But yeah, there's there's there's kind of pros and cons. Typically, a standalone product you would price more, um, right. So it might not be as affordable. Generally, with a standalone product, you're probably not going to have the support system, the access to community, the maybe not even the access to you, and even if you do, it'll be for a limited period of time. Um that can be off-putting to people again, depending on their goals. Um, yeah, with that one of products, they can be easier to market. Memberships can be tricky devils to market because yeah, people are so focused on the stuff and the features. And internet marketing advice has told us we need to, you know, focus on the value stack. Go on your sales page, here are all the features, plus here are 10 bonuses worth $20,000. Like we all know they're not like it's internet marketing wisdom, quote unquote, for anyone if it's not on video, is taught us stack the value, stack the value.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

And people don't believe it, but I think it puts us into the mindset of marketers where there's so much in the box, memberships are a big box of stuff that we get overwhelmed trying to talk about all the things that are in the box. So we just start talking about what a beautiful box it is. Like, I have the best, this is the best community. I'm not gonna tell you why, it's just great. Like, look at this shiny box, it's got jewels on it. And so you're talking about an abstract product that can be a lot harder for people to understand, versus here is this one thing, this one course, this one event. Um, yeah, so it can definitely be a lot more challenging. The flip side of it is though, typically again, memberships, it's slow and steady. It's the it's the turtle and the hair. Um, yeah, when you're selling one of products, quite often you're doing it with big launches um to open the doors to your course. With a membership, you don't need to do that. So you have more time to educate people about the membership. Um, you're more likely in a membership to create advocates within your community from your power users. Um, so you have more people out there doing the marketing for you, tapping into affiliates and and referral programs. You're more likely in most cases, with something like a membership, because you've got more time to serve someone and more time to respond to like if they're not making progress, you have more flexibility and more ways to help them along. So that makes it more likely that you actually start generating wins, generating results, and generating social proof assets that you can use in your marketing as well. So I have not uh I I'm uh my biggest bugbear in the online marketing space is anyone saying this way is the best way.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Yes, are better than memberships, memberships are better than masterminds. Like there is no one size fits all when it comes to the online space. Um, right, it it is, it's understanding your market and just making sure you're not trying to market a membership the way you would market a course. You're not trying to serve an audience who just want a course by trying to ram a membership down their throat and understand the nuances because all marketing is challenging.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Yes, it is. It is, and I love what you just said that because because the frustration the exciting thing and the frustrating thing about the online space is that there is no one size fits all. So it's exciting because you can kind of do what you feel like is best for your audience, but it's frustrating because it's a lot of testing and tweaking and you know, listening, and and then there's no guarantee. You know, I I always remind my students, I it we're it's not like we're building a McDonald's franchise and you could just you've got the benchmark, you've got the blueprint, you put in the cash registers, you get the uniforms, and you're done, and you can stand back and go, isn't she beautiful? And then move on and build another one. This thing is constantly evolving.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

So I love what you shared.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Speaking of sorry, I'm I I I can just ramble and ramble on. I think in in uh in kind of the the spirit of the whole, you know, one way, one magic kind of funnel. I people are hardwired to look for you know the silver bullet. Um the only ones that exist in business are data and feedback. Like they are the only magic formulas. Data and feedback, they'll tell you everything that you need. And you get those by talking to your audience and experimenting, trying stuff.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Yeah, I love that. That's another great soundbite from this episode. The value and volume thing, and then the data and feedback thing. That's brilliant. We should needlepoint those on a pillow, Mike, and sell them.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

As a membership or as a one-off product.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

It depends as in the uh voice of my friend Mike Morrison. It depends on the audience, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Exactly. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

So one more one more question just for fun. I am at the last couple of weeks, um, I've been in some rooms where some people are having great success this year. Because at the time of this recording, I know this isn't gonna air for a couple of months, but at the time of this recording, you guys, it is the start of Q2. It's April 2nd, start at Q2, 2026. And some people have looked at their numbers for Q1 and they're like, this is the best year. Oh my gosh. And then other people have looked at their Q1 this year and their numbers are down compared to Q1 2025, and they're even down a little compared to Q1 2024. So how do you, because you've been in the space a long time too, how do you navigate the roller coaster of income? Where one minute you feel like I'm gonna be a millionaire, and the next minute you're like, oh my God, does nobody know my name? I, you know, how do you work through that as a business owner?

SPEAKER_02 42:05

This is where I get evangelical about memberships, because this is the biggest strength of the membership model. You do not ride the roller coaster because it it's about that recurring revenue that accumulates with every every sale that you get. And so, unlike when you're working with clients, um, unlike when you're you're doing course launches and product launches, if you have a bad month for sales, it does not impact you the same way with a membership because you've still got, unless you had a bad month of sales and all of your members decided to leave at once, which would be an extreme bad month, like you still have that baseline, you're not starting from zero every month. And honestly, for me, I had that duality of obviously I teach memberships, but I am a membership owner as well. Um, we were doing perfectly well working one-on-one with clients, um, some uh extremely successful companies. Could have kept on doing that, but the unpredictability, the instability that comes from trading time for money or relying on big product product launches, um, right is just it's something I personally don't want. I've had enough of that. I served my time um with that fragile up and down, the feast famine, feast, famine, feast, famine, famine, famine, famine. What the hell's going on? Like I had enough of that. Um, with a membership, you're not starting from zero every month. Your income, the revenue, it's far more um stable, it's more predictable, so you can actually start forecasting with some confidence. It's more reliable. Um, and that just gives such Peace of mind and such freedom because you have uh such a long runway, you have a lot of cliff to walk back on, even when things start getting harder, start getting tight. Like right now, most people's problems traffic. Like everyone's funnel is designed to be traffic at the top, right? And all of the discovery engines that we've relied on for years, barring like one or two, have just figured out they're better off with a business model that actually doesn't prioritize sending traffic to us anymore. Um, and we have to recognize Google, all the social networks, like they never existed for us. We were just the fortunate byproduct, the traffic they sent us, we were just the fortunate recipients of, and now they've realized they don't need to send it to us anymore. And so everyone's struggling, but when you have a business that has uh that stable baseline, so that even if you don't get a single new member sale in the month, um, you'll have lost some members because churn happens, right? But you're not going, you're not hitting zero after a bad month, you know, you dip a little and a little, and that gives you a lot of time to experiment, to adapt, um, while everyone else is panicking and scrambling because they only launch their course once a year, and they're you know, last year they got two million, this year they got half a million, and they've already spent it on ads. Like it's it's just karma, it's the turtle versus the hare. And yeah, like we're saying we're not immune. Like, I'm not immune. Right. Traffic's gone down, everyone's traffic's gone down. Um but I'm quite calm because you know, I've got got a lot of space, got a little time, got my built-in focus groups, you know. My I can go to my audience, like, okay, cool, how do I serve you better? And then take that and adapt that into to marketing. Um so yeah, it it's of any business model, it is the most insulated from the up down, up down, up down. Um and it is the thing I love about memberships because I'm all about that. Easy snuff.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

I love that. Yes. All right. Well, that's a great place to wrap it up. Mike, tell everybody where they can find you to connect with you because I know they're going to want to after everything you just shared.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

All right. Well, it's I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I always love the opportunity to geek out about memberships. So if anyone wants to do a little bit more of that with me, um, I would send them off to membershipgeeks.com. Uh got a lot of free resources. You'll also find the podcast there. We're at like 450 episodes. So it's just a treasure trove to dive into. And if you like what you see, you like what you hear, and you want a little more, um, then my own membership about memberships, because I like to keep it meta, is at membershipacademy.com. And that's where you'll find me every single day because I still love this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

I love it. And you guys, all the links to check out Mike are in the show notes for you. Um, and he gave us a freebie. The link is there too. It's a membership growth health, growth health check, which I think is really exciting. Um, all right, my friends, here's what I want you to do now. As always, I invite you every single week, come to my free Facebook group. It's called Be a Confident Entrepreneur. We have over 4,200 members now. We do free networking sessions once a month, live QA Zoom sessions with me on a specific topic, and you're actually encouraged to meet other members, ask for help, ask for feedback, set coffee chats. So the link for that is in the show notes. But again, it's called Be a Confident Entrepreneur, and you can go over to Facebook and search groups and find it very easily. As always, you hear me say this too. I want to know your thoughts on this episode. Send me a DM, send me a message, share the episode with a friend who needs to hear it today, especially if you have a friend that is considering doing a membership. Mike, is there anything you want to share with us really quick before I wrap it up?

SPEAKER_02 48:14

Um Yeah, I would encourage people to do exactly what you've just said there. Like get to the Facebook group. Because with the rise of AI, with both everyone turning to it for so many things, and also all the content we're seeing now, like you can't tell if it's written by a human or written by a robot. People to people. Yes, people to people, those connections, the human aspect. I feel as entrepreneurs, we need that now more than ever. Get into the group, connect with people, have those conversations. Um, because entrepreneurship can be a lonely place, but it doesn't have to be. That sounds like I'm doing honestly, I'm not paid to pitch this. It's just I'm yeah. Um I'm a big believer. Like right now, yeah, making actual connections with other entrepreneurs, I think can serve us so well.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

I do too, Mike. And I've had lots of guest conversations this year alone. I firmly believe that 2026, the businesses that are doing what you and I are doing, that are actually connecting as a human, that actually care about their audience, that actually want their audience to succeed and will have those conversations with them, these are the businesses that will succeed this year. Because people are tired of buying things and not having help, or they're able to go over to AI. Well, we've got to prove why we're the better choice, you know, than just going to learn something from AI. So I love that. And I also love what you shared about this being hard because I say this every single week. My audience knows I end every show with this. You guys don't go it alone. Being an entrepreneur is freaking hard, just like Mike and I have been talking about, because some days everybody wants to buy what you're selling, and other days you think nobody can remember your name. And it can be lonely. And that is why we've got to keep cheering each other on, getting into communities of support. Um, I want you guys to have a great balance of the week and weekend. And I want you to remember when one of us rises, we all rise. Mike, thank you again so much for being here.

SPEAKER_02 50:12

Thanks so much for having me on. It's been a lot of fun. And uh yeah, any excuse to talk memberships. Um, and yeah, I can go back to my Lego.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

Yeah, memberships and Legos. Y'all, that's what make Mike makes Mike happy. Hey, thanks for tuning in to create your online business success. I hope you found today's episode packed with actionable tips and inspiration. And listen, if you want to dive even deeper with me and connect with a community of like-minded entrepreneurs that totally get you and understand what you're building, then join us in my free Facebook group. You get to promote your offers anytime, network with other entrepreneurs just like you, and possibly find some lucrative collaborations. Just search for be a confident entrepreneur, get visible, grow your email list and your income over in Facebook. Or if it's easier, just click the link in the show notes. We cannot wait to welcome you in. Let's stay connected so we can create your online business success together.