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Work Less, Earn More is the podcast that explores how to get the most out of every hour you work. Gillian Perkins brings more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and educator to help you design a business that's not only flexible and fulfilling, but highly profitable. She shares strategies that are working in her own business to save time and maximize profits. She also features interviews with successful business owners on how they’re achieving big things in their businesses with crazy-little time investment. Share Work Less, Earn More with an overworked entrepreneur you know who could use a change of pace!
[0:00] Welcome back to Work Less, Earn More. Today, we're going to tackle a big question for anybody who's thinking about starting or improving a membership program. What should your membership actually include? So this episode was inspired by some great questions from Cheryl Kosner, who is one of our membership members. So she's been a Startup Society member for several years now, and she is planning to start a membership of her own pretty soon. So she's facing a lot of decisions that she needs to make and things that she needs to figure out, including how much content she really needs to have ready before she launches. When does it make sense to add more modules or courses, more content to your membership? How often should you be creating new content for your members? And do you really need to publish fresh material every single week to keep people engaged? If you've ever worried that running a membership means that you will be stuck on a never-ending content treadmill, then this conversation is going to be a breath of fresh air. I'm going to be sharing the behind the scenes of how I've structured my own membership from the early days with just a handful of pieces of content to now a more streamlined and very comprehensive program that is focused on impact.
[1:14] Not on overwhelming the members with too much content. So if you are interested in starting your own membership or you have a membership and you're looking to improve it, then keep on listening.
[1:32] [intro bumper]
We became entrepreneurs because more than anything, we want freedom. We want to be in control of our own schedule, income, and life. But unfortunately, that isn't always the reality of being a business owner. I'm Gillian Perkins, and I'm on a mission to take back entrepreneurship for what it's supposed to be.
In every episode, I'll share with you how to get the most out of every hour you work so that you can work less and earn more. Let's get to it.
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[2:01] Okay, so the first question that Cheryl wrote in with was how many modules or mini courses or workshops did I have completed and ready to go for my members when the doors opened? And the answer to that is basically six, but let me give you a little bit of the backstory. story. So leading up to creating my membership, I knew that I really wanted to create a membership. I was really excited about working with clients in that ongoing capacity and the recurring revenue that could be created with a membership. So instead of having to make new sales every single month to make money with my business, the business could consistently make money every month just from the customers who were ongoing members in the program. So I knew I wanted that, but I was definitely overwhelmed with needing to create a bunch of content before I launched a membership.
[2:55] And it wasn't just overwhelm. It was also strategic thinking. I knew that I didn't have a proof of concept for the membership, that I didn't have data that this membership would be successful. I hadn't done my market research enough. And I didn't have that validation, you know, that we work with our validate students to get ahead of time. And so I was pretty concerned about investing a bunch of time into something that I didn't know if it was going to pay off. So what I did, and I've shared this in plenty of other episodes before, so forgive me if you've heard this before, I'll keep it short. But in short, every month for about six months, I created a workshop on a different topic and then I taught the workshop live. So it was kind of like I was creating a webinar and then advertising a webinar, except that these were paid classes and they didn't have any pitch at the end or anything like that. And each of these different workshops was on a different topic. Now, they were all under the umbrella topic of online business and digital marketing. So they all appealed to the same audience. But some of the topics that we covered were things like how to find your first clients online, how to start a YouTube channel.
[4:05] How to create a digital marketing strategy, and how to start an online business, just the basics. So those were most of the topics because I did five of those workshops over a six-month period. And by doing that, I accomplished two huge things. One was that I had gotten a lot of data about which of these different topics was the most popular with my small but growing audience. And so I knew which topic I should focus on for a product. But also now I had these five different workshops that I could put inside a membership so that now people could sign up to pay to have access to these five different workshops month after month. And of course, the promise of new material to come. So we'll get into what that new material was and how often I was releasing that in just a moment. But I think that that pretty much answers this first question of Cheryl. She was wondering how much content I had in the membership when I first launched it. And the answer is five different workshops, plus the community that we created for it, plus the promise of new content to come, including some live events that were scheduled to happen each month from there on out.
[5:20] And as far as when we added that new content to the program and what that content looked like, we've gone through kind of five phases. So when I first launched Startup Society, it was in the middle of 2018. We had those five workshops in the program. And what I promised the members was, aside from the community and the interactive elements, that there would be a new workshop in the program every single month after that. So for the rest of 2018, that was what I did. every single month, a new workshop on kind of a random topic, to be quite frank. Now, these topics, again, all were under that umbrella topic of online business and digital marketing, but they didn't like connect one to the next in any sort of like sequential way. Now, at the start of 2019, we entered kind of phase two with Startup Society. And what that looked like was I had a curriculum planned out for the entire year. So there was still a new workshop every month or a new mini course every month. But now we were starting with how to decide what business to start at the very beginning of the year. And then we were building on that. So the next month, we were talking about something like how to create a business plan. The month after that, we were talking about how to create the branding for your business. The month after that, how to set up the website for your business and so on through the end of the year where we had gotten through creating and launching a product and then hiring team members to help you scale your business and scaling your audience and all sorts of different things like that.
[6:49] So that, like I said, was kind of phase two. Then going into 2020, that was what I would call phase three. So we kind of went back to the random topics. Not quite. It wasn't like totally random, but because we'd covered all the basics and had this now 12-month curriculum in the program, I now was able to kind of do elective topics. So we covered the basics. Now people had all the information that they really needed to be able to get their business up and running and making money. So now we could do like nice to have things or optional things. So we might talk about Instagram strategy, for example. Now, not everybody needs to use Instagram to grow their business, but some people were really interested in that. Or for another example, a mini course about how to grow your email list with quizzes.
[7:36] Now, through both phases two and three and on into the future, really, all of these mini courses that we were creating and releasing had the format that we call the action plan format. So what that looks like is each of them has exactly five lessons. It has, first of all, an introductory lesson and then four lessons that can be completed one per week to complete the entire action plan in a month. And then there are action steps that correlate with those lessons. So most of the action plans have 12 action steps so that you can do three action steps per week and finish the action plan by the end of the month. And also all of the action plans are very outcome oriented. So none of them are just like, learn about YouTube strategy or learn about hiring team members. They all have like a specific objective that you will accomplish by the end of them. So for example, one of them is like, start your email list. One of them is create a website for your business. One of them is create a digital product.
[8:40] One of them is hire your first team member. And some of these objectives or projects are a little bit bigger than others, but they're all doable in one month. And we have just worked really hard to break them down, to make them as simple as possible so that while it might be something that people often spend many months on, you can get it done in a month, make that progress in your business, this really measurable sort of progress that will add to your bottom line, and then move on to the next thing so that you can keep working on steadily building your business. Okay, so again, going back to those phases with the content. First phase was 2018.
[9:17] We had kind of random mini courses. Second phase was 2019. We had a very structured 12-month curriculum. By the way, all of those courses, they're still inside Startup Society. But we were just building on that material that was there.
[9:32] 2020, we started adding these more elective type courses. And then in 2021, so this would be essentially phase four, we started having guest experts come in and teach mini courses. Because at that point, I felt like I had covered most of the things that were within my area of expertise, at least the things that fit within the topic of startup society, which is starting and growing online businesses.
[9:56] And so it was good to bring in guest experts. So we did that throughout 2021 and beyond. But after 2021, we moved into the final phase, the phase that we're in now, phase five. And in this phase, we are not releasing new content every single month. And the reason for that is because after releasing new content every single month throughout 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, as you can imagine, there was quite a lot of content. You know, there were over 40 different mini courses inside Startup Society on various topics. And at that point, we just really felt that what the members needed was not more material.
[10:36] Now, sometimes, of course, there is a reason why some new material is merited. Maybe there is a new strategy out there that we think that they should really know about, or something has significantly changed about how to do one of these things. And so what we're focused on these days is really serving the members with live events every week. So we do like mastermind groups and co-working sessions. And monthly, we do guest expert workshops. And then we are really really present in the forum so that we can interact with the members on a daily basis and get all their business questions answered and then a few times a year we work with guest experts to bring new fresh mini courses into startup society and a few times a year we re-record updated versions of some of the older mini courses you know because some of those many courses. They're from 2018, 2019, 2020. And several years have gone by and some things have changed. So we update them as needed to make sure that it is all very up to date and still relevant and still accurate.
[11:40] [mid-roll ad]
Okay, can I get really real with you about something for a minute here? I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks you should be able to learn how to grow your business without spending thousands of dollars on bloated training. Seriously, there's no reason it needs to be as expensive as a lot of online courses are. That's why I don't offer really pricey coaching. I want to teach real people how to build really profitable businesses at a price that actually makes sense. So I asked myself, how can I connect with you in a really personal way, teach you everything you need to know to grow your business and help you actually do it? And how can I guarantee this won't cost an arm and a leg? Asking myself those questions is how I came up with the idea for Startup Society, the program I wish had existed when I was struggling to get my online business off the ground. So if you're a freelancer, a coach or a course creator, and you want my guidance, plus the support of my own team to build your business then startup society is for you just head to startupsociety.com to learn more and find out when enrollment next opens i can't wait to meet you show you the ropes and guide you to start growing your business a whole lot faster. Startupsociety.com: building an online business doesn't have to be so complicated.
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[13:03] Okay, and then the final question from Cheryl that I want to cover today is how did you come to create a model that is not requiring you to create weekly content for the membership? I listened to information about how others run their memberships and many create new content for their membership every week. That sounds completely exhausting and overwhelming for the members. Yeah, I totally agree, Cheryl. That does sound exhausting and overwhelming. Like I said, even just creating new content every month. After a few years of that, we decided to stop creating new content for the most part, because we did think that if anything, more new content was just overwhelming the members. And it was distracting them from the most important things that they needed to focus on. And then also, I knew from the get go that I did not want to have to create new content every single week. I got into the whole membership business model because I wanted to create recurring revenue, but also because I wanted passive income.
[14:05] And today, and not just today, but for several years now, Startup Society has been passive income for me because it makes money for me whether I market it or not and whether I'm there or not. Now, I do really like to be plugged into the community and to interact with the members and offer them coaching and create new content for them. But I don't have to keep doing those things for it to keep making money, right? I really can just sit back, especially because of all the content that we have created in the past. There's still so much value there for the members to be going through and a reason, good reason for them to maintain their membership because there is so much in there that they can learn from. So in terms of figuring out how you can create a membership that doesn't require you to constantly be creating new content, I would really kind of encourage you to just go back to the purpose of the membership. Like, what is the reason why people want to be members of your community? Is it for the community aspect of things? In that case, the membership content might be able to be fairly minimal, really. Maybe just some resources that they will want to go back to over and over again, for example, and maybe you have weekly or monthly events that they get to participate in. Maybe the forum is a big part of it. Or if it is training that they are really looking for, and they're looking really for more of something like a course, there's actually no reason why you have to add to it over time necessarily.
[15:31] You can create just a solid course and you can offer it as a membership. Now, what I will say is it can't just be a course and sell as a membership because you won't have very good retention from your members. So there has to be something that makes them want to keep paying you month after month, right? Now, that could be access to the community. It could be live events that you do month after month. It could be new content that is being added every month, at least for a period of time. Now, as with the case of Startup Society, at a certain point, you may have added so much content that it will take them long enough to go through that it won't have a negative impact on your churn. So what I mean by that is, When you have a membership, there's always going to be this thing called churn, which basically is like the average length of time that somebody stays a member. So in the case of Startup Society, for example, our churn is basically six months. So most people on average stay a member for six months. Now, like I said, that's the average. That is taking into account some people who join and then they leave within the month because they decide Startup Society isn't for them. And on the far other end of the spectrum, people who joined back in.
[16:47] Honestly, 2018 or 2019 and are still members to this day. And so six months, that's a really good healthy churn rate for a membership. But my point in sharing that is that as long as you have plenty of content to keep people busy, keep people learning and, you know, just having plenty to go through and to grow from for at least six months is not going to have a negative impact on your churn. Now, I would recommend that you have at least enough content for twice the churn rate that you are aiming for, or in other words, probably at least one year's worth of content. So you don't have to create all that content before you start your membership, but you'll probably want to keep creating content until you create about one year's worth of curriculum if it is going to be a curriculum focused membership.
[17:41] Now, like I said, on the other hand, your membership might be more focused on some community aspects or some live events. In that case, it might be fine for you to just have one or two or three months worth of kind of standalone or static curriculum, as long as there is some other reason why people will want to maintain their membership, namely those live events. Now, there are other benefits you could offer that could cause people to want to maintain their membership. For example, maybe your members get access to some sort of help hotline where they can email you or have access to you via a Slack group or something like that at any time so that they can get answers to their questions. Or maybe you have partners or other resources that they get access to through your membership, just as a few other examples. But please don't feel like you have to create content on a weekly or even a monthly basis. As long as you really are clear on why people will want this membership, and you make sure that that is a benefit that will be ongoing, but something that they only get access to as long as they are a member. So not something that they can just get when they become a member, then they have it and there will be no reason for them to continue their membership. As long as you do that, then your membership can be successful and you don't
[18:57] have to constantly be creating content.
[19:00] So a big thanks to Cheryl Kosner for those questions that helped shape this episode. If you, dear listener, are thinking about starting a membership, or maybe you have started one, but it's not been as successful yet as you would like it to be, feel free to write in to contact at gillianperkins.com with your questions. You can always shoot me an email at contact at gillianperkins.com with questions, whether they're about memberships or about some other aspect of online business. And I would be happy to answer them on a future episode of the show.
[19:32] [outro bumper]
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Work Less, Earn More. Now, here's what I want you to do next. Take a screenshot of this episode you're listening to right now and share it out on your Instagram stories. And when you do, make sure you tag me at gillianzperkins so I can see you're listening. Sharing on stories is going to help more people find this podcast so they too can learn how to build their business in a way that allows them to work less and earn more and if you really love the show head over to apple podcasts right now and leave work less earn more a review to give it a boost and help even more people find it okay let's wrap this up i'm gillian perkins and until next week stay focused and take action.
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