The Esthetician Podcast

Membership Magic: Turning Beauty Subscriptions into Profit

• Kari Jo

Share episode

Send us a text

What separates a failing beauty membership from one that drives 30-50% of your revenue? After my own membership completely flopped, I discovered it wasn't the concept that failed—it was my approach. Most estheticians struggle with memberships because nobody taught us how to structure one that actually works.

A successful membership isn't about discounting your services; it's about creating a value system that increases client spending and loyalty. Think of it as a newborn baby—if you introduce it and stop nurturing it, it will die. Your membership should have a clear goal, whether that's boosting revenue, improving retention, or evening out seasonal income fluctuations.

There are three powerful membership models you can implement: flat-rate for predictable income, tiered for client options, and point-based for rewarding desired behaviors. The magic happens when you include exclusive perks like priority booking, retail discounts, and special add-ons that make clients feel valued while encouraging them to spend more.

The numbers don't lie—a healthy membership generates 30-50% of your total revenue with an 80% annual renewal rate. If you're below these benchmarks, your membership isn't delivering enough value. Remember to consistently remind clients of their benefits and create urgency with limited-time offers when launching.

Ready to transform your esthetics business with a membership that actually makes money instead of draining your time? Subscribe to the Esthetician Podcast for more empire-building strategies that help you achieve time and financial freedom.

To learn more about coaching please visit: https://www.karijopatterson.com

Connect with me on your fav social platform:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kari.jo.patterson
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karijopattersonestheticiancoach
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@karijopatterson
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@kari.jo.patterson

Links You May Want to Check out:

Join the Client Building for Estheticians group to go deep in learning all the latest tips and strategies https://www.facebook.com/groups/clientbuildingforestheticians
Check out Kari Jo’s courses here https://esthelaunchacademy.com

Announcer:

Welcome to the Esthetician Podcast, where passion meets prosperity. Your host, Kari Jo Patterson, transformed from a solo esthetician into a successful business owner, achieving ultimate time and financial freedom by the age of 38. Kari is the author of Fearless Prosperity, empowering estheticians to build their empire and achieve financial freedom, and the creator of the Empire Growth System for estheticians. Get ready for some empire-building wisdom Now. Welcome your host, Kari Jo Patterson.

Kari Jo Patterson:

If you've ever tried to launch a membership in your aesthetics business and it totally flopped, or you thought about it, but you have no idea where to start. This episode is for you. Most estheticians don't have a profitable membership, not because they're bad at business, but because nobody ever taught them how to structure that one that really works Well. Today, I'm going to be diving in to why most beauty memberships fail and all the metrics that you need to track and how to build this membership that is going to increase your client retention, grow your revenue without adding more stress to your business. Plus, I'm going to share my own personal story of launching a membership that completely tanked and what I learned from that experience. So stay with me, because by the end of this episode, you are going to have a clear strategy to create a membership that makes you more money instead of costing you time and energy. So let's take you back to when I first tried to launch a membership in my business. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew memberships were supposed to be a great way to increase recurring revenue. I threw together this membership. I even, like you know, I call it like the cause. My business was called deluxe. I call it like the deluxe VIP membership or something like that, I don't know. And I even got these hats and, like you're so special that you're like in this like membership program, I made up my numbers because at the time I didn't know what my services should actually be priced at and I was looking at everyone else around me and just being like, oh yeah, they charge 75. Guys, don't do that. I have a course that you can totally take to teach you how you need to actually price your services, not your competition, but what it actually is going to cost to keep your business up and running. But yeah, I didn't do that. So I just. This was at the time of my business where, like, I had no idea what I was doing, I was just throwing it together. I winged the whole entire thing and guess what? It was a total flop. Total flop. It was a waste. It was a waste of my time putting it together. It was a waste of my time even marketing it, of my time putting it together. It was a waste of my time even marketing it. Like all of it, guys, I didn't have a system, I didn't even have a clear goal and, most importantly, I didn't nurture it. That's like the big one you got to nurture your membership.

Kari Jo Patterson:

A membership is very much like a newborn baby If you introduce it and then you stop feeding it, it is going to die, and that is exactly what happened to mine. After a few months, I realized that the problem wasn't the membership itself, but it was me. I didn't structure it right, I didn't market it right and I had no clue what numbers I should even be tracking. I had no idea, even if it was actually profitable to be running this membership. I was just yeah, that number sounds really great. Guys, don't do that when I go back. Sorry, I got to go back to this. It's like a new baby. If you have a new baby when you're releasing your membership and you promote it for one month and then you don't have anyone to keep up with it, don't get into a membership unless you're committed long-term. If you're committed to spending a certain amount of hours every single month, this is going to now add to your plate, and if you can't do that and you're not going to do it, then don't do it. The baby's going to die and it's a waste of your time. I really did learn that. Anyways, I want to go back to. Why do most estheticians they struggle to create the membership? Well, honestly, from my experience I've learned it's because they never learned finances. Nobody taught us how to run numbers, measure profitability or create an offer that is going to increase client spending instead of just cannibalizing on all of our existing services. So I want to break down for you the key elements of a successful membership so that you can get it right the first time. But remember, like I said, if you're not willing to add this to your plate every month and spend hours on it every month, then don't do it. You've got to be. You've got to have the bandwidth to keep this going and feed it every day, every month. You got to feed it like a baby.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Okay, first, when you are setting up your membership, I want you to define your membership goal. Before you do anything, you need to ask yourself what is the purpose of this membership? Why are you doing this? What do you want out of this membership? And there are several different reasons why people do a membership. It could be you're trying to increase the revenue in your company. You maybe are doing it because you want to increase your client retention rate. Maybe you are trying to boost your average service ticket because, like I've talked to you guys about before, is there's only like three ways where you can make more money. You can get new clients, your clients can spend more, which has increased their average ticket of what they're doing. So that's kind of what a membership is for.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Another, if you're going through peaks and valleys, if you want to even out your income a little bit, whatever it is, you want to determine everything you want. Your your goal is going sorry, I said that word, but basically, whatever it is, your goal is going to determine everything about your membership, like how you're setting up what you're concentrating on. So you got to start with the goal. I didn't start with a goal, I just started with. Everybody wanted a membership. My phone's dinging over here, guys, yes, so we first find the goal.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Next, you got to know what numbers that you need to track. A healthy membership should literally make up about 30 to 50% of your revenue every month, every year. 30 to 50% If you have a healthy membership. That's what you're aiming for. If you now know that that's what the goal is, now you can work towards getting that. If, say, to make it like you guys can figure this out on your own. But let's say you're making a hundred dollars or I don't know I. Okay, I'm not even going to try to do the math. I was going to try to be like, so let me give you an example of what that should look like Basically do the math. Do the math. I was going to try to be like, so let me give you an example of what that should look like Basically. Do the math. 30% of whatever you make every month, it should be coming from your membership. Okay, I need a calculator by me when I'm doing these episodes. Apparently that shouldn't have been too hard, but okay, anyways, we're going on.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Listen, if you are below 30% of your revenue, then that membership is not strong. So you got to keep aiming. And the other thing with it is you want to aim for like an 80% renewal rate At the end of the year when your memberships renew. 80% of people are re-signing up for it because they really like it, and you want to track that every year. These are the numbers you're tracking. This is what it means to read your numbers. Is your membership healthy or not healthy If you're below an 80% renewal rate? You guys, you got to listen to that. That means you're not delivering enough value in your membership. The next thing is is you got to choose? What is your membership model going to be?

Kari Jo Patterson:

There are several different ways that can structure a membership. I'm going to go over three different ways with you. The first one is a flat rate. Clients pay a set monthly fee and they then receive services at a discounted rate. The reason why a flat rate membership is so good is because you get great predictable income, but you have to make sure it's enough for you to stay profitable. The second idea that you can do for a membership is you could do a tiered membership. This is where you have multiple different pricing levels, where clients pay more for better perks. You know, if you have a staff, obviously the higher level membership could have your higher tiered estheticians with more experience, more premium services, and you know all of that. The reason why a tiered membership works well is it works really well if you have people in your team and you guys are all at different levels and that works really well. I will also say that the other reason why a tiered membership works really well is because people like options. Right, they want to have options. So it's just giving your clients a little bit more options.

Kari Jo Patterson:

And the third one that I'm going to give you is going to be a point-based membership. Clients basically pay monthly a certain amount and then they earn a certain amount of points that they can redeem for services. A lot of our systems, like Vigaro and stuff, already has this built into it, so it makes it really easy. The problem with this membership is it requires more tracking. That requires more tracking. That means you have to be able to set more time in to this type of a membership. But it is so powerful because it allows you to reward client behaviors. When your client read books, you get some points. Or maybe when they refer clients basically, like you're going to reward your you can use it to reward your clients for all the behaviors you like your clients to do. Say, you have a promotion and you want to get that out. You could send it to all of your membership clients and be like, hey, share this post today and get 10 extra points, and so it's really nice way to increase clients to do what you want them to do. Go, leave me a Google review, dang it, and I'll give you some points.

Kari Jo Patterson:

What is the biggest mistake that I see. Estheticians create memberships that just discount their current services. That is not what a membership is about. That is not a goal. The goal of a membership is to increase people's spending and you do that by you offer exclusive perks. You get a free add-on or priority booking, or you get birthday bonuses, or they get a discount on retail products, and that boosts your retail sales. Always include retail in there because, guys, your clients are going to have better results if they are using product and if they have better results, then they're going to like you more and they're going to talk about you more. So make sure you include that retail.

Kari Jo Patterson:

You also got to make sure that this is super easy to market and super easy to sell. See, a membership will not. I learned this the hard way, guys. I learned this the hard way. A membership does not sell itself. You have to launch it, you have to nurture it and it's just like any other part of your business. And some ways that I like to help my clients by building their membership is I like to tell them create urgency Offer like a limited time signup bonus. Who does this the best? The airlines. When you're on an airline and you're flying somewhere and they're like if you sign up today, you get an extra thousand points on your point system, right? So create that urgency when you're trying to sell it, and then you gotta make it easy to say yes, the first month should include a special perk. It will make people sign up. They're more likely to sign up if they get something really quick and easy for it.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Now you also have to keep reminding them. Clients forget that they have points or perks. Your team has to remind them at checkout and emails. Even on your social media content, you got to remind them. The people that I think do the best at this is there's this drink place here in my town. It's called Seven Brew and, dude, I just drive up. I don't even know what points I have or anything like that. It's just all of a sudden, they're like you have a free drink today, do you want to use it? And I'm like, yeah, you have a free upgrade today, do you want to use it? Yeah, they're always telling me you like upgrade today, do you want to use it? Yeah, they're like always telling me and I swear I have new stuff there all the time, which is why I keep going there instead of like Starbucks or anywhere else. You got to keep reminding them. That's why the point system does require more work. If you set it up correctly, you're basically your membership, isn't? It just isn't going to add predictable income, but it is also going to increase your client loyalty and it's going to make them spend more every time that they come in, which is the goal of a membership.

Kari Jo Patterson:

If this all sounds great, but you are thinking, carrie, I don't even know what level my business is at, let alone how to track my numbers, I definitely have something for you to get started. I wrote a book it's called Fearless Prosperity and it breaks this all down. It's going to teach you what numbers you need to track in your business, because you guys need to start learning how to read numbers in order to grow. It's going to teach you all of that. You're going to learn what phase of building your business is in, what systems you need to implement and how to get started tracking your finances. So if you're serious about building a profitable aesthetics business, whether you are a solo esthetician, you are hiring a team or you already have a great big team.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Guys, you need this. It is packed with everything I wish I knew when I was growing my business. And you can grab the copy today. Just go to my website. I will add a link in my show notes and I will see you then. All right, that's it for today. I hope this episode gave you some clarity on how to create a membership that actually makes money instead of draining your time. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram. Tag me, I would love to know what you think. And if you haven't yet, make sure to subscribe to the Esthetician Podcast so you never miss an episode. I'll see you next time. Keep building your empire, stay fearless and growing.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening to the Esthetician Podcast with Kari Jo Patterson. Each week, Kari brings you real-world lessons on how to grow your empire. To learn more about Kari Fearless Prosperity Mastermind Group, one-on-one VIP coaching opportunities and more visit Kari. That's wwwcarijopattersoncom. See you next week for more insights and strategies on the Esthetician Podcast.

People on this episode