This episode is jammed packed with juicy ideas for growing a successful membership. It’s like being a fly on the wall hearing from our TRIBE mastermind with 6 and 7-figure membership site owners. 

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Big Ideas

The TRIBE Mastermind [1:02]

I run two different masterminds. One is my Impact Mastermind, where everybody is pretty much a seven-figure membership site owner. But we started to find that we had a lot of people who had been in our TRIBE community for a while, and they were making massive progress in their business, too. They may not necessarily be at the seven-figure level yet, but they are making serious progress and are getting there very quickly.

And they were looking for a group to hang out. So, we decided to create another Mastermind that we called the TRIBE Mastermind. We held it just recently, and my journal was full from ideas and strategies that were shared by people in that group. The collective wisdom of that group is far greater than any one individual person, so we intentionally have set up the mastermind to be able to tap into that wisdom. We have lots of opportunities for people to share with the group, interact with each other and gain value from other people’s insights.

Visual Success Path [3:33]

The first insight came from Tamara Bennett. Tamara came into our TRIBE community and hit the ground running right away. She has a membership site for people in the creative market, particularly artists, with a very niche focus. She’s focused on helping people create decorative door hangers. One of the things she talked about was how in her launch, she did a challenge ahead of time. Each day of the challenge, she did the same painting. But each day she layered on more and more techniques, so that the painting became more and more vibrant by the end of the week. This gave her the opportunity to visually showcase the difference between somebody in stage one of her success path and somebody in stage five of her success path.

We talk a lot about the importance of creating a success path trademark in our TRIBE community. The reason why is because it gives your audience, your people, your members a pathway to follow. It helps cast the vision of the progress that they’re going to make as a result of being in your membership. And Tamara took that to a whole other level. She created it in a visual way, so that people can not only understand it conceptually, but they can see the difference between somebody in stage one and somebody in stage five. It creates a natural gap and a desire to close that gap, which they will do by joining her membership.

Voxer Access for 2nd Level Membership [5:55]

The second idea came from a hot seat. Partway through the day, we broke up into small groups, and then we had a hotseat. So, somebody in the group has a pressing question. They ask the group, and everybody gives feedback. The question came from Jason, who said, “I’m thinking about adding another tier to my membership and I’m wondering what everybody who has two tiers is doing to make the second tier different from the first tier? What’s the price difference? And what is the difference in terms of deliverables?”

There were lots of great responses and answers. The one I really dialed into was a response from Cody Burch. He said he just recently added a second tier and kept it super simple. Cody has two levels. The first level in his membership is $80 a month, the second level is $500 a month. But the only difference between the first level and the second level is that he added Voxer access, which is a walkie talkie app that allows you to have almost real-time engagement with somebody on the other end. There were a lot of people in his membership who were asking for more access to him, so he decided to do a test. He sent an e-mail to his members and said that he was looking to add this. Cody had a few people that responded right away, and he immediately added thousands of dollars of additional monthly recurring revenue.

Brand Essence [5:23]

The second big lesson I got from Lara was the importance of creating your brand essence. The brand essence is made up of three components – your consumer, your market, and your company. As it relates to your consumer, we want a brand that enables consumers to see what they can become, like it’s meaningful to them. If the brand doesn’t matter to them, there’s no connection.

We also want a brand that’s going to be unique as it relates to the market. We don’t just want the same as everybody else. And then as it relates to the company, it’s got to be authentic to you. There’s no point in trying to have a fun-loving brand if you’re not really the fun-loving type. And there’s no point having a serious buttoned-down brand if that’s not your MO either.

Onboarding Challenge [8:52]

The third one came from Andrea Ames. As you know, a membership site is really important in the sense that the longer somebody stays, the more profitable the membership becomes. So, the question becomes how can we help make people happier and, therefore, stay longer?

One of the things that’s important in helping people stay happy is to make sure they’re making progress. Nobody wants to keep paying for something that’s not serving them. So, Andrea Ames walked through what she’s doing in her onboarding process. The onboarding is one of the most important things because if people have a great onboarding experience, the entire membership is seen through a positive lens, and that dramatically increases the likelihood that they will stay longer. Andrea created an onboarding challenge, for somebody within the first 24 hours, within the first five days, and within the first 30 days. And if they complete the 30-day challenge, she sends them a T-shirt as a symbol of accomplishment.

It gets people into action and makes them use what she’s sharing inside the membership early and often. This is the key, you want people to feel comfortable when they join your membership, you want them to be able to find what they are looking for, and you want them to be able to begin making progress. And this onboarding challenge she designed does all of those things.

Anticipation for the “Reveal” [11:37]

The next one was from Ali Novitsky, who has a really tiny audience of a few hundred people. And yet she just finished a launch, where she generated over $300,000 in revenue. She walked us through how she did it, and the key takeaway for me was that she created anticipation for the reveal of her new program. Ali didn’t just have a launch that built up anticipation in the midst of launch, she created anticipation ahead of time for the reveal of this new program. So, people knew there was a new program. But it was the excitement and the anticipation of the reveal of that program that really heightened interest and had a lot of people who were paying attention right from the get-go.

Record Your Future Self [13:46]

The last one I want to share came right at the end of our two-day mastermind from Becky Davis. The thing she was talking about actually has nothing to do with building a successful membership, and yet has everything to do with building a successful membership and business. She said she was having one of those days where she was feeling down and a little anxious about some of the things that she was doing, and she just needed somebody to talk to. And it just happened that her friends and her mastermind partners she normally talks to weren’t available.

So, Becky wrote out a script of herself five years from now, looking back and giving advice to her now. She described what the future looks like, where she was five years from now in vivid detail. Take the time, write out a script where it’s you five years from now describing your future, what life looks like, why you are doing what you’re doing now, the late nights, figuring out all the challenges, the problems, and just working through it, where you keep moving forward despite the challenges that you’re facing now. Because five years from now, you’re going to be looking back, and you’re going to be describing that future. Learning how to channel your own strength in that way is incredibly powerful because you always have access to it.

Memorable Quote

“The happier people are, the longer they stay. The longer they stay, the more profitable the membership becomes” – Stu McLaren

Resources

Marketing Your Business podcast
TRIBE Mastermind
Tamara Bennett’s Door Hangers
Cody Burch
TRIBE Mastermind iTunes
Stu McLaren Instagram

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