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The Level Up Creators podcast is for digital creators ready to take their business to the next level. You'll learn valuable strategies and hear engaging stories from industry pros and digital creators who have walked the path of scaling up.
Whether you're tired of tap dancing for the algorithm or seeking to build real wealth - without the burnout - this podcast offers proven methods and practical advice to help you elevate your business, on your terms. Join us!
Amanda (00:00.992)
Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators build thriving, sustainable businesses they love. We are so glad you're here. Welcome. Today, I am joined by a very special guest with deep roots and very successful creator first businesses and memberships in particular, Jen Matichuk. Welcome, Jen.
Jen (00:20.694)
Hello, thank you for having me.
Amanda (00:24.352)
I'm excited for our chat today. So a little more on Jen. Jen currently works as the strategic partnerships manager at Memberful, helping their biggest clients launch and succeed with their white labeled membership product. Before this, she worked at Mythical Entertainment for six years, first building and running their social media and brand presence, and then building out their custom membership program on Memberful.
Today, Jen and I are going to get specific and talking about some really successful online membership communities and what goes on behind the scenes that sustains them year over year and positions them for growth and success, while of course providing a tremendous amount of value to their own members. But first, Jen, you have a really interesting background and have worked on some incredible projects over the years. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about your background and the path that led you to become the strategic partnerships manager at Memberful?
Jen (01:14.802)
Yes, absolutely. I do have an interesting background. I feel like not a lot of people share the path that I've taken to get where I'm at, which is fun, fun and fun. But basically, I started working for these guys named Rhett and Link back in 2013. So I had just graduated from college. I studied film in college, so I was like.
you know, it feels like a natural progression to move to LA and try and work in the industry. But I landed in digital media, which is awesome. I mean, it really started off my career in a fun way. And I knew a lot about YouTube to begin with. So I worked for them for a while, building their social. I was their fifth employee. And now they have over 100, which is fun. But, yeah, I was hired to build out their social presence. Like, I started their Instagram.
I solidified their presence on the internet, obviously outside of YouTube, because they already had started that presence. But then at the, like my fifth year there, I was there for six years, they wanted to dive into the membership space. And obviously me having been so closely connected with their fans, it felt like a natural progression to.
put me in charge of building out this very fan-centric space. And we built up their membership on Memberful, as you said. And it was really fun to try and figure out, you know, what makes sense for a membership, how to price the membership, what people want. And so I've kind of gone through all of that from a creator's side.
And it felt like, you know, once things started flowing on the mythical society side of things with Rhett and Link, that when Memberful had a job opportunity, I kind of jumped on over into it. And so my experience with building this on my own and being on the creator side has really lended itself well to helping people.
Jen (03:33.302)
First of all, understand what membership is and how it can be great for what they're doing and also find out who could possibly benefit the most from membership. So I help people build, launch, and then grow all of their membership. So I wear a lot of hats within the memberful world, but yeah, that's a little background on what I'm doing.
Amanda (04:02.568)
Super interesting. I have so many questions already, but we talk a lot about nonlinear paths here and how creators typically end up where they are in a way that they never could have possibly anticipated. And so it's always kind of fascinating to hear the journeys that people take to get to where they are today. Creators are not, everybody has an interesting story, I think. So that's cool that you went to LA and set out for maybe one path and then in this very much like.
what sounds like a full circle moment to me are now working at memberful helping their biggest clients leverage what they already have going. So I think that is interesting. Did you ever see yourself in this kind of a role?
Jen (04:41.534)
No, definitely not. I didn't see myself ever working for a tech company. I studied film in college, so I was like, I'm gonna make movies. And you know, I'm still planning to do that, but I'm on the tech path right now. But yeah, I never saw myself helping people build their memberships, but it's still really fun to be.
Amanda (04:44.672)
Ha ha ha.
Jen (05:08.022)
within a creative community and helping people push their businesses to the next level because they wanna create full time. Whether that's like videos or podcasts or writing or whatever the membership is, it's still fun to be on that creative side and see people grow within that.
Amanda (05:29.716)
Yeah, I imagine that's quite gratifying as well, that you're able to go in and be so impactful for so many different businesses and creators. So I think that's awesome. Okay, well, yeah, I hope so. Man, you should for sure. Well, like I said in the intro, we're gonna do a bit of a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of a handful of really successful membership programs. And our goal for this episode is for you to understand the journeys that these now successful creators took to get where they are.
Jen (05:38.026)
Yeah, and I get to meet fun people too.
Amanda (06:00.076)
So of course no one started out there. I don't believe in overnight successes. And a lot of the time people rise to the top of what feels like overnight when you're not on the inside. But I wanna hear the nuts and bolts of how people are getting to what looks like that overnight success level. So what we're gonna do here is break down three specific memberships and we will help you avoid costly mistakes, give you fresh ideas to take forward. And most importantly, we want you to know that you do have what it takes to have a seven or eight figure creator business.
and we're gonna teach you how to get there. So let's get into it. Jen, let's kick off with Mythical Society, since you know that one backwards and forwards, like the back of your hand, I'm sure. And for those who are not familiar with Mythical Society, can you give us a little bit of background on how they got started, where they are now, and then we'll kind of zoom in on some of the intricacies and challenges over the years.
Jen (06:40.147)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (06:51.378)
Yeah, absolutely. And I will say a fun, I think the biggest theme across like the couple of folks that we're gonna talk about is all of them are very long standing creators slash businesses. So to go off your point about overnight success, I think that that's gonna be a really key thing to talk about here is because all of them started a long time ago and only in the last few years has membership been
a super viable option for them. So I think that's one thing to start off with. But mythical. Speaking of longstanding, they started their company back in early days of YouTube. So 2006, they've been around, they're called, Bret and Link are called the grandfathers of YouTube. They started off, truly, they started off by
Amanda (07:27.464)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (07:51.49)
basically just talking to a camera like vlogs and it evolved into making their own wraps and it evolved into making local commercials for various businesses around the US, which got them a TV show at ITV and that's what moved them over to LA and that's what started them to like start building out everything. They,
from that, realized that they needed something that was more recurring and they could replicate easily. So they did a morning show called Good Mythical Morning and that's where they really took off. They're on their, I don't wanna get this wrong, like I wanna say like 19th or 20th season of Good Mythical Morning, maybe more at this point. They've done a lot of seasons of it. And so as you can see, 2006 until now.
2023, that's a lot of years. And they've been basically just growing their audience. So they do morning shows. Good Mythical Morning is kind of their claim to fame. It's a long way to say what they do, but they are YouTubers and video content is their thing. So, yeah.
**Title: The backstory of OG membership communities**
> Amanda (09:17.396)
Okay, cool, that's a great intro. So what revenue streams existed for them before the membership? How was the decision made to launch a membership product? What's the value prop? Tell us a little bit about that. Jen (09:31.338)
Absolutely. Well, before they launched the membership, I would say that their main revenue streams, as with a lot of YouTubers, are YouTube AdSense. So they were part of, or they are part of the YouTube Partner Program, and brand deals. So whether that's within videos or elsewhere, solidifying those brand deals. And when they started this membership program, their merch business was also taking off on the side as well. So they have a pretty strong merch business on the side. I mean, of course there are other revenue streams that are coming in that maybe are a smaller piece of the pie, but I think those are the main three. Um, and then when they started the membership, it wasn't necessarily to be like, we need to diversify revenue because I think they were doing well.
That was, of course that's a driver, you know, having your different pots. But it was more for how can we really keep our fan base engaged and excited about the content that we're putting out and a place where, you know, we can grow that deep core of Retin-Link fans because they used to have an online community that they nurtured called the RetinLink Community.
>
It started with a K because it ended in link. And it was on some forum site and it's so janky. It's just like, it was a bad experience. Yes, yeah, it's very old. And I don't know if they even still have it, but that was where these core group of people were.
Amanda (11:14.892)
Probably arcane at this point.
Jen (11:30.086)
hanging out. They weren't necessarily on social media, but that's where the biggest fans were hanging out. And so the Mythical Society felt like a big progression to first of all get those folks to come on in. And they started with a Discord and all that good stuff. And then it brought in everybody else that was new. So that's kind of how they decided to push into the membership.
Um, but yeah.
Amanda (12:04.344)
Okay, and so what was that process like? Like, this is, you know, a bit of a hop, skip, and a jump here. So we've got YouTubers with a morning show, and you know, kind of like gained popularity, and taken super non-linear paths, speaking of which, to kind of get to this fork in the road where they decided that membership product was the right way to go. Obviously like the YouTube AdSense Revenue brand deals, merch, super dialed in, you know, for...
monetization pathways for creators to take. And so was the membership their first digital product? Like no course, no nothing, you know, kind of before this.
Jen (12:45.295)
Yeah, yes, I believe so, that this is their first intro into that because...
Previously, they had done a YouTube Red show, which I don't know if you recall YouTube Red, but it was basically paid YouTube to get TV show level content. And for that, people had to pay a subscription, but it was never to ret and link directly. Obviously, they negotiated a deal with YouTube to get whatever money from it, but...
that probably would be the first digital product. And I don't think that necessarily like pushed the needle on whether they wanted to launch this or not. But yeah, so this membership was the first digital product that they started to sell.
Amanda (13:41.644)
That's interesting and it's also really rare. Okay, so what was the initial value? I mean, typically we see some kind of digital offering, even if it's an ebook or a mini course or a master class or workshops or something like that. But this is kind of an interesting pivot for what started as more of an entertainment-based creator, but now we've got a really unique value proposition to bring people over and start creating MRR, monthly recurring revenue.
Jen (13:45.366)
Okay.
Jen (13:51.403)
Yeah.
Amanda (14:11.508)
So, okay, the decision was made that a membership is the right thing to do. How many employees were there at this point?
Jen (14:19.766)
I think there was somewhere in the, like maybe 60 to 80 at that point. Yeah, so they were big already. And this was in 2019. So, well we started thinking about the membership in 2018 and it probably took about eight to 10 months to build it and conceptualize it. It was...
Amanda (14:20.277)
if you remember.
Amanda (14:28.017)
Okay, quite a long yeah.
Yep. Yeah.
Jen (14:49.282)
not a process that anybody took lightly. A lot of thought went into it. And a lot of cooks in the kitchen, I will say. So a lot of these, a lot of the bigger memberships, especially ones that are put on by bigger companies, have a lot of cooks in the kitchen to try and build something. And maybe some of them should probably step out of the kitchen.
But, you know, I didn't say that. I think that it also makes things a lot harder to build out rather than like three stakeholders or so. But yeah, it was like a 10-month process. And that was to, first of all, decide what the product was. And I think this is common across a lot of the people that I work with.
Amanda (15:24.628)
Ha ha ha.
Jen (15:48.09)
is I'll talk to them in November of last year and they'll launch this past October. It's a year long process of first of all figuring out, okay, what do we wanna do? And then figuring out, okay, how do we wanna present this to people and when? And the biggest thing that always comes with it is how do we price this? Because...
I know you're saying a lot of folks that you've worked with or interacted with have sold courses or had like an ebook or something. Not a lot of the people I work with have done that. So they do not know how to price something that when traditionally they've been giving it a lot of content away for free. So that's the biggest conversation that we often have.
Amanda (16:24.181)
Hmm.
Amanda (16:29.089)
Interesting.
**Title: Being strategic with membership launches**
> Amanda (16:43.476)
Interesting. Okay, well, let's dive into that in a second. First, let's talk about what are the key selling points, or at least at launch, what were they? What was gonna move people over from being very used to free content on YouTube to paying a monthly or annual fee? Yeah, what was the enticing offer to get them to pop over?
Jen (17:04.418)
So when we, we obviously did not know how it was gonna go or how people were gonna accept it or not, because Rhett and Link give away so much content for free, like an inexorbitant amount of content for free. We had a focus group first. We talked to the folks who were moderating the old community about the new thing we were gonna launch to get their thoughts.
Jen (17:34.086)
on it, which was also helpful, I believe. But I still think that we didn't have the best idea of how it would go. So a big thing is we put merch with it because we knew that merch did well and people are enticed by limited drops.
>
So we...
We made this thing called the Society Chalice, which was just like this huge chalice that was absolutely ridiculous. And it had the society emblem on it. And we said, okay, for the first people who sign up within the first five, I can't remember the exact time period, the first five days, whoever signs up for third degree, which was the top level, will get...
a limited edition Founders Chalice. And the first and second degree, so first and second tier, they would get a pin and a patch and a handwritten letter that we enlisted a company to do that made handwritten letters easier to send out to large groups of folks. So those were, that is how we,
Amanda (18:54.085)
Yeah.
Jen (19:00.054)
kind of bridged the gap between what we were already doing online and what we were gonna put out over there. We're like, okay, we'll bring them in with merch and then we'll show them like, okay, there's a discord and it's so awesome. You get to talk with everybody. It's like the old Rhett and Link community. And there's a bunch of behind the scenes content and we're going to show you how we create, you know, these episodes that you love with behind the mythicality. So we started like,
building out little series that we're gonna go on there. But I really think it was the merch because that chalice, we got more than we had prepared for and threw a wrench in those plants.
> **Title: Approach your membership strategy by listening to your audience**
Amanda (19:44.408)
That's awesome. Okay cool. So you already had like a well established merchandise line. People are used to spending money with you that way. And so, and I saw today on the website that like that is still a part of their offering like every quarter member, a member gets like a really unique little artifact right mailed to them. And so you know, sort of using that heuristic of, okay, you're already used to buying physical goods from us and so come over here and we'll give you something not only using like scarcity, exclusivity and kind of those psychological, not tricks, but it's just using psychology to sell stuff. That's good and that's fine. Okay, cool. And so you've found a gathering place for people. You're like, this is gonna be awesome. Okay, so you were able to get your super fans over super easily. So, or because you, listened to the moderators that y'all had, not like it was this super easy, magical thing that just appeared, but you did your research. You talked to customers first. You found sort of like not the pain points in the traditional sense, but you found where you could come in and provide value to the point where people are willing to pull out their credit cards for, right? And so what has happened, well, you got the tech set up, right? And then there's the ongoing value proposition, obviously, because this is, you know, your...exchanging money month over month or year over year.
>
So how has the membership product evolved over the last like four and almost five years and what's worked and what has not worked?
Jen (21:19.922)
Yeah, I mean, the evolution has been great to see. In the first year, it was just about trying things and seeing what sticks. So the TMV, what we call it, total membership volume or total monthly volume that was processed each month was kind of like a roller coaster in terms of...
who was joining when and what we were promoting and if people were excited about it. So that first year, and this is how I kind of describe membership to a lot of folks, the first year is you just trying things and you're probably not gonna have a consistent stream. And the second year was looking back at everything that you did and trying to iterate on it. So one thing that they did the first year that then they were like, okay, this is not working for the second year.
is the first degree they would send out the pin in the patch. And it just wasn't working in terms of, somebody's paying $5 a month and they're getting something that costs way more than that sent to their house, and then they're churning out. So the churn rate was high, and so they weren't getting the value out of those customers when, so they're losing money on that first degree.
Amanda (22:33.58)
right?
Amanda (22:45.344)
Yeah.
Jen (22:46.186)
So that was like the first thing they're like, okay, we need to take away merch from the first degree. And we're kind of treat first degree as folks who are hopping in to check out what it's all about. It's like a pretty accessible price point at $5 a month. And there's a lot of content in there and they can join the discord and they can see what's going on in there. And then so then the second year was just testing out all of those.
things that had kind of done badly or done well and seeing what they could change or what they could make better. They also did a series on the society where they brought in people from the cast, or people from the crew, I guess. The crew is a really big thing within Mythical. They are often on the show.
and people get to know them, fans get to know them, but they made the crew kind of have their own specials, their own episodes that Ret and Link weren't in, and they didn't perform as well as what they expected. And when we went back to look at it, people were viewing the society as more access to Ret and Link, not more access to the people who are surrounding them. So you kind of have to pivot
Amanda (24:14.008)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (24:15.634)
on that and be like, okay, this can be a place where we're trying out content, but we still need to make sure that there's enough RetinLink specific content that people are going to stick around for or join for. So it was like changing the content strategy of, okay, we need to find a series that is maybe a lower cost to produce, but really high payoff.
So is that Rhett and Link vlogging in their car when they were driving to work? Sure, easy for them to do, easy for us to put out, fans love it. So it was iterating on that and figuring out what made sense. And now they're in their fourth year and I think they're really hitting their stride in terms of finding out the balance of content. A lot of it is still driven by
Amanda (24:55.948)
High value.
Amanda (25:00.076)
Nice.
Jen (25:14.102)
these quarterly items that you brought up. People will join for those quarterly items because they're obviously limited drop items. Sometimes they'll stay in past what we would expect them to, which would be three months. And that's great because they see maybe the next item and they're like, oh, I wanna stay for that next item too. But otherwise it's because they've hit a balance of bonus ret and link content and crew content. And...
Amanda (25:17.272)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda (25:42.225)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (25:43.914)
Yeah, I think they're just going to keep going up because of that.
**Title: Numbers don’t always tell the whole story**
> Amanda (25:47.956)
Nice. Yeah. Okay. So what I'm hearing you say is this launch here was approached with, okay, we're going to learn this year. We're going to test things. We're going to measure. We're going to iterate. And so I love that like low risk iterations that yield medium to high rewards. Like that's definitely a mental model and sort of decision-making framework that I'm big on. So I love that. I love both the qualitative and quantitative data gathering. Sounds like you guys pay very close attention to quantitative metrics. I bet you know them backwards and forwards and. You're making decisions based on that and user feedback. The churn percentage doesn't say why people are churning. So you guys going in and determining that, oh, people want to have more access to the creator celebrities effectively. That's a huge draw oftentimes to memberships in creator-first businesses is that they get access to the creator influencer and feel very special.
>
**Title: Pricing memberships**
> Okay, that's awesome. And then let's talk about pricing for a minute since you brought that up. So what was ultimately, how did you all ultimately decide on a price and then how has that been iterated upon over the last few years?
>
> Jen (27:01.194)
Well, when we were deciding on pricing, we were looking really closely at tons of different memberships on Patreon because it felt like the most applicable in terms of similarities of people who were building something similar to what we were building. And we tried to find out like-minded people who were pricing things and kind of based it off of that. And...
>
> I wouldn't say it was necessarily the right choice to begin with because there are a lot of tiers on Mythical. There's a $5 tier, a $10 tier, a $20 tier, and then a quarterly for that $20 tier, and then a yearly for that $20 tier. So people go to that page and they could potentially be overwhelmed by the choices.
>
> Amanda (27:52.3)
Mm-hmm.
>
> Jen (28:00.054)
So like looking back on it, I don't think that launching with that many tiers was necessarily the right choice, but we thought that we were gonna take the psychological trick of, okay, we mostly want people to be in the top tier and we know people are gonna join in the bottom tier.
>
> What if we give a lot more in the top tier and only make it a $5 difference? So less people will actually join the middle tier because they see what a great deal they're getting in the top tier. So we tried that and I really think it actually did work because we had way more people join the top tier than we thought would ever happen, partially because of that limited chalice.
>
> Amanda (28:36.216)
Mm-hmm.
>
> Jen (28:51.538)
also partially because it was super close access to RetinLink, like live streams and stuff like that. Since then, the pricing hasn't changed. And that's not to say that they might not change it in the future. I could see them doing that for sure. But I think a YouTube audience is really hard to...
>
> Amanda (28:56.312)
Yeah.
>
> Jen (29:19.978)
raise pricing with, honestly. Because video creators in general, they have the hardest time with people justifying the content that they're putting out. Because all of these members or potential members are comparing what they're getting to a Netflix or a Disney Plus or whatever. And these creators are very aware of that.
{this may be a bit long for at YT Short, but it’s a good clip to capture and save in our folder for social sharing}
>
Amanda (29:24.485)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda (29:43.468)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (29:49.386)
And so I think that creators are trying to put out way too much and spreading themselves too thin and not putting out the quality over the quantity. So a long-winded way to say their pricing hasn't changed. They've added a quarterly tier. That's the only thing that they've done in terms of pricing. I wouldn't be surprised if they upped the pricing in the next year.
Amanda (30:10.404)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda (30:17.08)
Okay, cool. All right, I just looked at the time. I feel like we could talk about Mythical Society all day and like every angle, but let's talk about Comedy Bang World and Stab Magazine, whichever one you wanna start with. But yeah, let's make sure that we're able to cover, I'd love to talk about marketing for launches, evergreen marketing, again, like common mistakes that were made and things like that. So, go for it.
Jen (30:21.248)
Ha ha!
Jen (30:28.799)
Yes.
Jen (30:41.598)
Absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about Comedy Bang World. So, like Mythical, they've been around for a very long time. They started by this guy named Scott Ackerman, who is big in the improv comedy world, and he started this show off of a live show that he had back in like, I don't know.
What day was it? I think I wrote it down. 2009, he formed Comedy Bang Bang. And it was a podcast. It started as a podcast. And what Comedy Bang World is, is a group of podcasts, a network of podcasts. And they primarily focus on improv comedy, but a lot of them are just, they've given...
voices to a lot of comedians in the podcast world, and comedy podcasts are top trending podcasts. So they do incredibly well in that way, where they have some of the most famous, most popular comedians, especially in the improv space, in the sketch comedy space, regularly on their show or on, or hosting their own shows even. So yeah, that's Comedy Bang World.
Amanda (31:49.069)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (32:09.641)
I started working with them.
Jen (32:14.254)
Two years ago now, my gosh, I think two years ago, they launched in October and they launched fast. I will say they're the only people that, they're the only clients that I've worked with that knew exactly what they wanted coming into it, knew what they were gonna build and went for it. Their marketing in general for their launch.
was I would say pretty minimal in general. Because, and this is just like a common theme with the folks that I work with, they have built this dedicated loyal audience over their years that they really knew was gonna convert well because they were putting things that they've been asking for years behind this paywall.
And it's also to do with the stream that they're in, which is comedy podcasting and comedians. Typically comedians aren't making a ton of money. They're really not. And the people consuming the content are well aware of that discrepancy and want to support their favorite comedians.
Amanda (33:14.632)
Okay.
Jen (33:40.634)
So it lends itself really well to having a membership because these members or potential members are excited to, you know, fund their favorite comedians and what they're doing.
Amanda (33:53.953)
Yeah.
Yeah, and there's a lot of research that's coming out. I feel like everywhere I look, there's a new creator economy report. One of them, I can't remember which in recent months cited a statistic about like how likely your followers are to buy from you. They really, really like you. They feel like you know, they know you personally. And they are so much more inclined to purchase from you than they are big, giant global legacy brands. And so.
Jen (34:13.784)
Mm.
Amanda (34:26.432)
like creators in this instance too, like that is such a great example of a place to monetize for a creator who typically, yeah, it doesn't make bank, right? Like there's comedians or there's a lot of them. And so the monetization model is really tough. You know, you can only do so many gigs, right? So having like a recurring revenue model here through podcasting is super interesting. And I love that they kind of, sounds like kind of held their.
Jen (34:41.439)
Yep.
Amanda (34:55.127)
cards close to their chest, if you will. Like, okay, we've been holding back all these features and cool things that you've been asking for, but now we're putting them all behind the paywall. So it sounds like they really had a very well thought out value proposition, had been listening for a very long time and came out of the gate, swinging, right?
Jen (35:12.598)
They really did. They had a big launch that did incredibly well and their retention is off the charts. Like these folks, yeah, they're joining and they are sticking around and it's really, really cool to see, especially because I'm also a fan and have been a fan of their content for a long time. But yeah, when they were coming to Memberful, they...
Amanda (35:22.837)
Really?
Jen (35:41.642)
came off of another platform. And with that platform, they had been using Stitcher Premium. So they kind of had...
and understanding more of what fans would want based off of what they're releasing with Stitcher Premium. And so that made it easier to be like, okay, we know that they want a bonus podcast, we know that they want a longer episode, we know that they want the archive of these podcasts that are no longer running, and we know that they want these.
new podcasts. They literally put brand new podcasts behind the paywall that no one had heard, but they were so excited to hear because it was all these comedians that they've never heard together before. So altogether, it was a true recipe for success on their launch, and they've done really well since. Actually, they just raised their prices this past month in October, and they had their biggest month ever.
Amanda (36:32.621)
Hmm.
Amanda (36:43.329)
Nice.
Amanda (36:49.896)
Nice, nice. Yeah, that's a huge lever that you can pull. And when you're that sticky, like if their churn rate is very, very low, I mean, the odds that people are going to drop off for price increase are also very low. So that's awesome. So it sounds like they did launch really strong and like have been doing well since they launched their, their member full membership, but that was a years in the making product. They had their ear to the ground for a long time.
And so they knew how to make it awesome. Yeah, is that fair? Cool, cool. And then I guess for any of these mythical society, comedy, bang world or stab magazine, can you speak to launch marketing and then evergreen marketing? Because obviously the big trick with membership is churn is a thing, right? People are going to cancel for one reason or another and you have to keep the pipeline full to.
Jen (37:19.666)
Mm-hmm, exactly.
Amanda (37:43.796)
not only replace the members who churn, but add additional ones so you actually grow and make more money over time. So how is that addressed at these three memberships?
> **Title: The best approach to marketing a new membership?**
Jen (37:49.653)
Yeah, I mean, I think that launch marketing for all three of these ones is a little bit different than a smaller creator in that they when they launch, they're probably going to get a lot of people joining no matter what. It's just like how they launch and how they present it is going to determine what that amount of a lot of people is. And for that reason.
Jen (38:19.646)
A lot of these memberships vary with how they're launching. Like Comedy Bang Bang, for instance, when they launched, they, like I said, it was just like a, hey, we launched this thing, check it out right here. Mythical did like a whole video and launched it on their main channel and linked to it and followed up with that launch marketing for several weeks on their main channels and on their socials. It was a whole plan of rolling out.
Stab Magazine, they, I believe, was similar to what Comedy Bang did and was like, okay, let's just roll this out and here it is, hope you join kind of thing. I mean, not to say that that's one way or the other is better or worse. I think it all depends on your audience and how they're going to receive it.
like STAB magazine, we haven't talked about them yet, but for instance, they're a surfing magazine. So their audience is far different from people who listen to comedy podcasts as their main source of interest. So surfers are going to receive a paid membership, launch marketing plan in a far different way because I would say they're consuming internet less.
Jen (39:46.274)
than folks who are watching YouTube consistently. But with all that being said, they also have, like you said, marketing in between to keep that pipeline full. And each of them varies on that. All of them are using some form of paid marketing. And I think that a lot of them should be using paid marketing.
{if this is too long for a YT Short, you can cut the last paragraph above}
>
A lot of membership should be because the...
Amanda (39:50.934)
Yeah.
Jen (40:16.298)
the membership world, or not the membership, the creator world is oversaturated, not in a bad way. I'm so happy there's a lot of creators, that's awesome. But the social media side of things is oversaturated and you need to stick out. You need to find the right cohort of people to target. And paid marketing is very helpful for that. But outside of that, it's more just using their other channels of free content.
to push the memberships. Those are their biggest sources of, okay, we need to hit these people, use the theory of account-based marketing, and we need to hit them seven or eight times before they finally convert. So we need to find them in all the different places that they are, and hopefully at one point, they're going to finally convert, or at least sign up for the free membership.
where then we can hit them a few more times to upsell them.
Amanda (41:18.612)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And for those who don't know what account-based marketing is, it's basically a sales motion or sales strategy where you're hitting people in different places at different times over time. And so you might do LinkedIn ads, or meta ads, you know, so you're on Facebook and Instagram. I don't know if WhatsApp has ads or not, but that's kind of in that ecosystem. Google ads, you might do a mailer.
Jen (41:42.434)
I don't know.
Amanda (41:45.824)
Like just any kind of things. And so you want to, and retargeting is big too. If someone visits your website and doesn't convert, you want to show them an ad served up by Google, you know, the next day or something like that to try and drive traffic back to your website. Have there been any particular paid marketing plays that have been just like wildly successful for any of these three? Or is it always that multifaceted, more ABM type approach?
Jen (42:11.518)
I would say that...
Jen (42:18.098)
Not specifically, not that I can think of. I also don't have really specific access into their paid marketing, so I wish I could talk more to it. But I, yeah. I do think that with paid marketing, the agency that you work with, if you're a big company and you're using an agency, is like a make or break situation. You have to find an agency that understands the content and understands your audience.
Amanda (42:28.62)
Let's go again. That's okay.
Amanda (42:43.552)
Mm.
Jen (42:47.89)
And I've seen other clients use an agency that just didn't get it. And they had such poor performing ads that the moment they switched over, they increased their sales by like 100% to a new company that got it, that understood where to go and how to target. And so it's being really specific about who you're working with.
Amanda (42:54.572)
Yeah.
Amanda (43:06.648)
Wow. Mm-hmm.
Jen (43:16.494)
to build out your paid ads because, you know, the difference can be very different.
Amanda (43:24.68)
Yeah, yeah, sounds like it. So takeaway there is if you are working with an outside party, whether that's like a single person contractor doing your meta ads or a full blown agency, make sure that they have like a demonstrable track record of success in your niche. And they like get it, truly, truly get it. Who exactly your audience is, what the value is that you're offering, and how to connect the dots on those two and lead those prospective customers kind of on this journey toward purchase, right?
Do any of these three memberships use lead magnets or marketing automation or is it really, really just having unpaid ads?
Jen (44:04.11)
Uhhhh
Jen (44:08.318)
Not that I, I mean, they might. I would say the person, or the company that's most likely to would be Mythical. Because they do have folks that are focused specifically on growth. Like that's their whole gig, is to dive into that side of things. So I wouldn't be surprised. But is that a popular thing amongst folks that you've been working with?
> **Title: What is the customer journey in a creator businesses?**
Amanda (44:37.412)
Oh, like massive. Yeah, I mean, we're typically working with subject matter experts, right? So their thought leadership content marketing motion is kind of like the drill. And so marketing automation is a massive, massive part of that. You know, you treat social media as top of the funnel. Next step down, get people on your email list through join my newsletter with a value proposition or grab this piece of content that solves a specific problem for you. And then they get a nurture sequence that gets them to like a tripwire or a loss leader type product, like a one-off digital product initial purchase, get people spending money with you, demonstrate that you have awesome stuff, and then offer a recurring revenue product, would typically be the next in the play. And that could be a mid-dollar membership, it could be a higher ticket group coaching cohort or something like that with a smaller group where you get more access to the creator celebrity person.
Jen (45:19.356)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda (45:34.816)
and are learning directly from them. And so that's kind of like the typical customer journey within these subject matter expert businesses, like creator businesses.
>
But this is so interesting because you were talking largely about entertainment-based, surfing magazine, kind of like really different types of creator businesses. And so it's so interesting to hear.
from that POV, right? And what works and what doesn't work and how things are thought about, how decisions are made, who's in charge, you know, all that kind of stuff is really, really fascinating. I think there's learnings for all types of creators, you know, within this podcast. And there's things that you can take and test and see if they work in your specific business or not. And if they don't, no harm, no foul, you move on to the next thing. But then when you find the thing that works, you pour a lot of gasoline on it, right? And so if you can find a...
paid acquisition funnel that works well consistently, dump a ton of money into it. That's like a no-brainer. So I think that's something that is not often considered of like super high importance for subject matter expert creators or creator educators. So I think this is super interesting to learn about another path that works, right?
Jen (46:48.638)
Yeah, I mean, that's not to say that each of these creators doesn't have some sort of funnel of folks who are coming through. They're just not, I would say, as in depth as the specific funnel that you just outlined. And I think that the difference between somebody who's like a subject matter expert and the top of their field in that regard.
Amanda (46:57.448)
Yeah.
Jen (47:16.918)
and more entertainment-based creators is that people want to know more about that subject once they see a little bit. Whereas like entertainment-based creators, you kind of already get what they've got in terms of you know this is who they are, this is the content that they put out. And you know you can tease them with content but a lot of that is happening on social first. And
if they're getting them onto their email list, the conversion is not necessarily.
I wouldn't say it's as high as putting out a clip on social and saying, hey, go join. Whereas, you know, it's just a completely different audience. It's so interesting.
Amanda (48:07.132)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, in some ways it's like building memberships and entertainment-based creator-first businesses. Like it's more challenging on some level because like you're saying, getting that value proposition right, getting the pricing nailed, again, the like marrying of the merchandise line with the exclusivity and scarcity and stuff like that, that is, I think is really, really fascinating. So I'm super glad we're having this conversation.
And one thing I want to go back to is actually the comedy bang world switching platforms. And you know, I feel like the theme that I'm hearing there is they wanted to own their own work. They didn't want to be on somebody else's platform. They wanted to do their own thing. And they said, hey, we're going to step out. We feel like we can do this thing. We're going to go full bore toward it and we're going to own the whole the whole deal. Right. So.
Do you know anything about like kind of the mindset that went into that like platform switch and you know, kind of, Hey, this is mine. I created it. I'm going to own the whole deal.
Jen (49:10.474)
Yeah, I think that was generally the main thought about it. It was the ownership and also finding something that worked really, finding a product that worked really well for how they wanted to offer it. Basically, they were creating a podcast network that was going to house tons and tons of different podcasts that they all wanted to have.
the branding that they wanted to have and live on the same website and be able to communicate with these members in a way that was specific to how maybe they would communicate via the podcast. So, jumping onto memberful for them was a no brainer in why they launched so quickly because it allowed them to, first of all, use the hosting provider that they wanted to use and push it through memberful and not have to
use something that they've been told that they have to use. And they also wanted to have their own website with their own presence, that all of these could be presented in the way that they wanted it to be presented. So yeah, the ownership, the communication, the ease of use, I think, is what went into the thought behind the move.
Amanda (50:33.364)
Awesome. Okay. I think that's a really cool and important point for both entertainment-based and subject matter expert creators and influencers to think of. And a lot of times we run up against sort of like some mindset blockers with creators that we speak with. And there's some resistance to charging people, like asking their followers for money for products. But again, citing that research earlier, this come out about people are so much more likely to buy from you than other brands.
Jen (50:54.498)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda (51:03.432)
Again, nailing whatever type of creator you are, whoever your followers are, it's knowing them and putting together the right offer at the right time in the right way. I mean, that's kind of the foundation of all of business, right? That's really what it boils down to is you're solving problems for people and whether they want to laugh, they want to know that they're going to laugh consistently and get enjoyment out of the comedy bang world. I mean, that's like a really powerful value proposition.
And then you can swing the other way and to different subject matter experts who are creators. But it's like, it's okay to charge for your stuff. People want to support you. They wouldn't follow you if you didn't have value to offer and it is totally okay healthy. And when you're not doing it in an icky marketing or icky sales way, like sell your cool shit. People will buy it. You know, put it out there own it build an empire.
Jen (51:53.791)
Yeah, exactly.
Jen (51:58.781)
Yeah.
That totally, let me jump off of that because I have one more thing to say about that. I think that a lot of people are really hesitant to price their content or sell their content or their courses or whatever they're selling when they haven't yet talked to their audience. I think that's where they're really not sure. And.
Amanda (52:01.484)
Cool, okay, well that's kind of, yeah, go ahead. Yeah.
Amanda (52:24.073)
Mmm.
Jen (52:28.886)
That's where I'm talking to a lot of people. I'm like, have you spoken to your audience yet? Have you brought this up to anybody? Like, no. I'm like, you need to go talk to somebody. You need to put on your stories. You need to put out a tweet or whatever, and just talk to your audience and put out feelers. And if you feel really confident in what you believe you're gonna put out there, then they're going to sense that confidence and wanna be a part of that.
teetering on the edge of I don't have that thing yet that I feel excited about, hold off. Brainstorm a little bit more, let it bubble up and figure out the best thing to put out there as your membership or as your course or whatever because you can only really launch it once. So first of all, make sure your audience is excited about it and make sure that you're excited about it.
and then the pricing is going to feel okay.
Amanda (53:33.116)
Yeah, that's such a good point. I'm so glad that you jumped in and said that because you know, in social media, you are talking to your audience, but that's a one way street. That is a one way conversation all day, every day. And so what Jen is saying, talk with your audience, like one-on-one, like the focus group with the mythical society to get that right. Or is it mythical society or comedy bing-bing? Which one did the focus group? Okay, that's cool. Yeah, awesome.
Jen (53:54.49)
Yeah, it was mythical society with the community. Yeah.
Amanda (53:59.736)
So that level of conversation to better understand what they think of you, what they expect from you, what they like about you, what they want more of from you, super, super important. Like, yeah, just old school focus group level stuff. You can also do one to many surveys. Those are easy to deploy on whatever social media platform you're using. And again, like you're trying to identify problems that you can solve for your audience and then.
the question then becomes like, how do you package that up in the right product or service? And then how do you demonstrate through marketing that you do in fact solve the problem that you say you are going to solve within this well packaged product or service? And half of this podcast season is about, we break down in a great amount of detail all of the ways that creators can make money online. And so that should give you kind of like infinite ideas for all the options available.
to you for how to package up your solutions. And we do talk a lot about how to speak to your audience and again, make that right off the right time, right person, right way. So, okay, interesting. Well, let's talk specifically for a minute just about missteps or even failures that these successful creators have experienced, how they handle those challenges, whether that be through like getting back on their feet or working iteratively or making full-scale pivots, because we really don't want people to leave here thinking that like you can...
have massive overnight success. That's just complete crap and everybody has failures behind the scenes that they don't necessarily share publicly. So let's open up the hood a little bit on that.
Jen (55:24.167)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (55:30.906)
Yeah. Do we want to say failures of the membership or just failures as a creator?
Amanda (55:39.86)
Mm, dealer's choice, whatever you want to talk about that helps make these now super wildly successful creators feel a little bit more human to those who have not yet achieved that level of success.
Jen (55:42.52)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (55:51.954)
Yeah, okay. Well, I think that when we're talking about the membership specifically, it's hard to say, you know, these are the mistakes that anybody could make. I mean, they technically are, but they're still, like these big creators that have really big loyal audiences are still gonna gain a lot of traction with their membership, even if they make a big mistake. And...
That's just how it is. And they've worked 15 plus years to build that base of people to make sure that they're gonna stick around through the mistakes that they make. And I think that's the first thing, is that you have that loyal audience to help you through any missteps that you might go through, and they're still gonna be there. So that's gonna be the first thing overall.
In terms of specific mistakes that have been made, I think I talked a little bit about mythicals in terms of their revenue and how they were giving out those merch items for the first degree when they weren't gonna break even, they were gonna be negative on that. I think that was the first thing. And then in terms of other mistakes, let me think.
There was also a lot of learning around those quarterly items. So when we first launched the quarterly items, we didn't really understand how to work with the merch company to build those up, to send them out at the right time. So there were times where there was massive delays and people were getting so upset.
Amanda (57:39.49)
Mm.
Jen (57:47.766)
with the merch deliveries because we couldn't necessarily control it. And it's going, it's every three months. So, you know, the lead up to this, if there's one mistake, then it's going to push the merch. So getting to a place where you are planning incredibly well on things that are very finicky is probably the best option if you're going to launch or something really finicky because, you know.
Amanda (58:01.272)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda (58:13.484)
Yeah.
Jen (58:16.962)
people are gonna be upset. I would say that those were the two biggest mistakes that I have seen come out of Mythical. They, I mean, they and many other creators make a lot of small mistakes along the way. Like, I don't know, posting something too late or maybe not committing to the promise of
Amanda (58:20.738)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda (58:41.902)
Yeah.
Jen (58:46.286)
you know, we're going to do this thing quarterly. Those are probably the biggest things. There's never like a really big mistake because things are really thought out and planned. With Comedy Bang World specifically, there's is also a little bit related to pricing or not pricing, but like how they presented things on the Internet. So their website, they launched, like I said, really quickly.
Amanda (58:51.405)
Mm-hmm.
Jen (59:15.298)
And I didn't have a chance to review what they were putting out there. They just kind of launched with the site that they were excited about, and that's great. I'm so glad for them. But we saw pretty quickly in their first three to six months that people, when they looked at the site on mobile, only saw the first two plans and didn't scroll down further to see the next two plans.
Because of that, they were joining, and then they thought they were gonna get something that they weren't getting, and so they churned out. And they came back, and they're like, I just heard the marketing again, that people are getting this, and I didn't get it. And so they come back, and then they realize there's another plan that has the thing that they want. So they just...
didn't scroll down all the way, it wasn't immediately obvious that they could get that. So in the beginning, they had a lot of churn from those lower plans, but they also had a lot of movement from that plan to the higher plan. So they eventually fixed that, and just now, two years later, things are starting to level out.
in terms of their retention percentages for that lower plan, which is crazy. Like one small thing at the very beginning has had a two year impact.
Amanda (01:00:48.401)
Oh my gosh.
Amanda (01:00:53.792)
Wow, yeah, that says a lot for, I mean, pricing page psychology is a whole discipline in and of itself, but then you've got like the mobile optimization piece on top of that, that's a tough lesson to learn. So I'm glad that they're out of that at this point, but oof, that one stings a little bit. Oh my gosh.
Jen (01:01:11.026)
Yeah, I always tell folks, like if you're not going to dive into the psychology of the pricing page, which a lot of people don't really actually want to do, at least put the plan, yeah, at least put the plan that you want people to join at the top. If that, like, if that's, if there's anything to take away, just make it so the first thing they read is the thing that you want them to join.
Amanda (01:01:22.84)
No, they don't.
Jen (01:01:40.622)
So.
Amanda (01:01:42.048)
Great, that's a good takeaway. That's a great learning. That's super actionable too. That's not a tough thing to implement. Anything else on that front? Kind of failures or missteps or hard lessons?
Jen (01:01:52.054)
Yeah, let me think.
Jen (01:01:57.914)
What did stab, stab?
Oh, okay, one thing that, one thing that STAB has done that they've learned since to change is they would launch their big series of content all in one month. And it was a huge undertaking of eight episodes.
and it's not like an ongoing thing, but they would launch it in one month. And so they would see people join and then churn out after because they consumed all the content and then they moved on. And so what they have since learned is to, you know, release it over several months, drip it out.
Amanda (01:02:42.284)
Mmm.
They bends, yeah.
Amanda (01:02:57.541)
Mm-hmm. Drip it out.
Jen (01:02:58.454)
and give people a reason to stay. So it was a really big learning and it's made a difference in terms of their retention from the months that they launched those big pieces of content to then the spanning of over two to three months. And they're still working on it. It's been two years with them now, two and a half years actually. And they're still working on it in terms of.
how do we launch this? How do we release this so that people are gonna stick around and consume the content or so people don't see the content being released and then just join after the fact for a month and binge? Like, how do we figure that out? And I think that's an ongoing thing for them. They're gonna have the hard cores that join that wanna be a part of the conversation while it's happening and that's great. And then there's gonna be the people that are gonna join.
Amanda (01:03:45.397)
Yeah.
Jen (01:03:54.766)
two or three months later that are gonna ingest it all and then churn out. And it's kind of like having to come to terms with the fact that there is always gonna be those two groups of people in terms of their content and the people that they are selling to. And it's trying to figure out how to retain the people who are there for the content drip out versus trying to retain the people who are never actually going to retain because you're
always going to have that group.
Amanda (01:04:28.772)
Yeah, that's a good lesson too, because when you're doing a membership site, again, you're asking for money from the same people over and over and over and over again, or at least that's most ideal, right? If they're still there, they still are receiving value, right, and so, but the work of a membership is just never done. You're constantly, again, taking that feedback and the quantitative data from your metrics dashboard and trying to make strategic decisions. You are listening to your customers, you're iterating, because your customers needs
evolve as life evolves. And so you've got to evolve right along with them and you can't do that if you're not paying attention to both sides of that, both sides of those data sets. So that's super important. That's good to know. It's like, yeah, these people are successful but they still have time, you know, they still have room to grow, right? There's always room to grow. And so that's great that they're working hard to iterate. Well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience with us today, Jen.
I'm sure our listeners learned a lot and everyone's coming away with some actionable ideas to apply in their own business. And I hope that if recurring revenue wasn't on your mind before listeners, that it very much is at this point. We believe that recurring revenue is a central piece of the puzzle to unlocking your full potential as a creator. Jen, do you have a quick parting shot and or where can listeners find you online?
Jen (01:05:47.73)
Yeah, my parting shot is be engaging with your audience. Always chat with them. Always keep in touch with them. I think that's the biggest thing to building out your base and then building out your successful membership eventually when you get there. And then in terms of where you can find me, I'm on Instagram pretty consistently. It's just at Jen Matichuk. I'm sure you can link to it somewhere. But.
Yeah, I'm hanging out there for the most part. Not a lot of membership musings over there though. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amanda (01:06:16.896)
Yeah, of course.
Amanda (01:06:23.032)
A little bit more fun, which is great. Thanks again, Jen. And we know that your time is precious. Thank you for sharing yours with us. Level Up Creators exists to amplify the voice, reach and impact of creators, making a positive impact on the world. With your expertise as our focus, our team of strategists, marketers, sales pros, product developers, administrators, and tech gurus handle the heavy lifting of building and optimizing a profitable business that will transform your life for good.
Subscribe to the show and check out [welevelupcreators.com](http://welevelupcreators.com/) to sign up for our newsletter where we share weekly actionable business tips for creators just like you. See you next time on the Level Up Creators podcast.
Jen (01:07:01.838)
Thank you.