Brief Overview

I just watched a video that was teaching the entrepreneurial market about growing membership sites. The video was full of skepticism and all kinds of limiting beliefs, and it was holding back everyone who watched it.

When you hear the crap they’re saying to themselves (and teaching others!), it’s no wonder they aren’t growing. Your mindset matters. So, in this episodes, I’m going to address some of those limiting beliefs that often prevent us from making the big leaps in our business (and life).

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Big Ideas

Launches Are Real [2:40]

Firstly, this person was calling launches fake. If you think about it, launches happen all around us, which definitely means they are real. Take Apple, they use launches all the time. Or movies, there are launches every time a big blockbuster Hollywood movie is released. Then there’s a whole bunch of us who use launches all the time to grow our business. Launches are not fake and they get real results.

Using Scarcity To Drive Buying Behavior [3:23]

This person was also talking about using false scarcity. Does scarcity drive buying behavior? Yes, but I don’t ever recommend using false scarcity. With false scarcity, you just keep on selling because there’s no real limit to it. With real scarcity, you stick to a strict deadline or a limit you set. We have people all the time who want to purchase Tribe after we have closed the cart and the reality of it is that no matter who you are, if you contact us after the cart is closed, the answer will be no. We do that because for us as a company we shift gears from promotion mode to focusing on delivery mode, and they’re two completely different mindsets.

The reason is because I have a belief that it is very hard to do both of those things simultaneously. It’s hard to be world-class at promotion as well as delivery at the same time. So for us, it’s a very real scarcity. I don’t think we should ever say there’s a limit where there really isn’t a limit, because those things will destroy your reputation long-term.

You Can Grow Without Affiliates And A Big Ad Budget [7:15]

The other thing this person was talking about was how launches only work if you’re backed by an army of affiliates and a big ad budget. We have people in our community who are growing their memberships like crazy without affiliates, without big ad budgets, and this is where that limiting belief and the mindset comes in. I would encourage you to think about how you could grow your membership or your product launch without affiliates or big ad budget? That would get your mind thinking about solutions and open you up to a lot more possibility.

Does Having A Membership Site Pay Off? [8:10]

The guy in the video went on to say that with membership sites, there’s no financial payoff. Then why are some of the biggest companies in the world all shifting toward a membership site and subscription? There is an absolute real payoff for memberships, and not only for the business owner.

He was also arguing about the affiliates. I know affiliates who make a very handsome living who only promote membership sites or subscription services, and they get a monthly affiliate commission from all of the sales that they’re sending every month to those services. My brother-in-law and business partner has a software company with a recurring subscription, and they had affiliates making hundreds of thousand of dollars a year off of the recurring subscriptions affiliate commissions. It is a very real business.

Growing And Maintaining Your Community [9:18]

The other thing he said that made me laugh was that when a product launch happens, you have a whole bunch of new members coming in to the membership, and it ruins and messes up the community. That belief is limiting him to say that we don’t want to grow with big numbers because growing the community is a bad thing.

Instead, the better question would be to ask how. How could we welcome a lot more members and still maintain the culture and this beautiful chemistry that we have inside the community? Do you see how that immediately shifts your mind to thinking for solutions?

Making Your Community Stronger With A Closed Membership Model [10:19]

The last thing he said was when you close a membership site and you don’t add people consistently, the environment gets really stagnant in between launches and people start slipping away. There is a flip side of that which is absolutely real and you can ask so many people in our community who have made the shift. You can ask Jennifer Allwood or Patricia Callahan, both of which are running membership sites with thousands of members. When they went to a closed membership model, they could pour all their attention into actually loving their members. They’re not trying to do two things simultaneously, and as a result, the communities got better, not worse.

Food For Thought [11:48]

I want you to ask yourself three questions. Number one, what are you constantly telling yourself and is that serving you? Number two, who are you listening to that could be influencing your thoughts? And final question, whenever you want to break through any kind of limiting belief, I want you to ask yourself how. How could you do the very thing that you really want to do but may not believe to be true?

Memorable Quotes

“If you have a limiting belief, it doesn’t matter what tactic or strategy you hear about, you’ll never be able to have the kind of progress, success and opportunity that you could have, if you were just more open to the possibilities.” – Stu McLaren

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