00:00:00 Carinda Gosling
Five years ago, I started my membership and I did it because I wanted to stop chasing sales from zero every single month. I wanted to stop saying goodbye to people at the end of a course when I loved working with them and knew I could help them more. I wanted a scalable business, but something more stable, more impactful, more sustainable, and a membership ticked all those boxes.But to say I wasn’t terrified would be a lie. I had so many worries. What if it’s too much work? What if people leave after a month? What if I can’t fill it? What if it takes over my life? So I made a deal with myself. What if I just try this as a membership for a trial period? And if I don’t like it, at least I will know for sure five years later that membership is still running.Last month was its fifth birthday. It’s had thousands of women through it. It’s made over a million dollars in profit. It’s given me recurring income every single month. That’s carried me through breakups, through hard seasons, given me freedom in the best seasons. It runs in under five hours a week, semi-passive, and honestly, a joy to run.And today I am sharing the five most impactful lessons from building this thing, this amazing membership because whether you have a membership, whether you want one, or whether you’re just trying to figure out how to build something scalable that doesn’t burn you out, these lessons will change the way you think about the way you can serve the world and yourself through offers.As a female online business owner with dreams of more income, more impact, and more freedom, you know, there’s more potential in your business waiting to be unlocked, but figuring out how to shape and transform your biz and get seed love. Selling and scaling can feel like, well, a mystery. So how do you cut through the noise?Create offers that deeply resonate, sell and scale without you always being on or while creating a life you love. That is exactly what this show is about. Welcome to Seen Loved Selling Scale. I’m Carinda Your Small Biz marketing sidekick, digital office strategist, and online biz bestie. With tens of thousands of digital offers sold, tens of thousands of people helped and millions of dollars in revenue generated in my own business as a small business owner, and through this podcast, I am here to share it all.You’ll gain clear, actionable insights. Strategies and shortcuts to master your online marketing, build scalable online offers, and create a business model that works for you as much as it works for your people so you can grow your income, amplify your impact, and free up more of your time. Let’s get started.So the Content Mastery Club just turned five this month, and I’m honestly a bit emotional about it. This membership has been one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made, and today I want to take you behind the scenes and share the five biggest lessons from building and running this thing for five years.Because here’s what I know, not just from my own journey, but because I have had the honor of helping so many other people build memberships now, and that is this. A lot of you listening to this are either thinking about starting a membership or you have one and it feels harder than it should, or you’re just trying to figure out how to build recurring revenue into your business without burning out.And I get it. I had all the same fears, all the same questions, all the same doubts, but I learned so much along the way. So let’s get into it. And that starts with lesson number one.Memberships aren’t the work you think they’ll be if you make them in a special way. I remember the biggest objection I had to making a membership, even though everything made sense on paper, was the worry.I was going to go back to being always on. I could see the potential. I really wanted this offer in my world. I was convinced it was going to take over my life. As someone who manages anxiety and has bad weeks, I was really worried would I not be able to turn up? What if I’m having a hard week and I can’t show up for people?What if this becomes something that depends on me being on all the time? And that fear almost stopped me from starting. But I took all of that into account when I was making the membership from day one, and I asked myself three things, three questions that I now teach in depth. To help other people shape their memberships.And now with this in mind, I run a membership with 500 people in about five hours a week, and I also run another higher touch membership with 100 people, with no team, no one else inside helping me deliver just me. And these membership spaces have truly changed lives. I don’t say that lightly. In fact, I blush saying it truly, but it’s because this is what people tell me.I have members in there still from the very first founding members who just keep growing year over year as the space does, or because I asked three things, one. What does this space need to have to get outcomes for my people? Two, what does it need to be? So it’s a space I love to run. Three, and what does it need to be?So my people love to be in it as well to make this a viable offer overall. And I found the intersection of those three things, outcomes for them, joy for me, value for them that makes them wanna stay. People often over stuff, memberships or think they have to have something because they saw a membership with that inside.But the truth is, if you can get these three things right for you and your people, you’ll build a membership that works for everyone. Let me give you an example for the Content Mastery Club. When I was building that membership, I knew I wanted support. I didn’t want to have weekly calls. At the time, my anxiety wasn’t great and calls were triggering for me at that time, and I lived in the outback with blackouts from power regularly, and that worried me too, that I would be on a call and lose power.So while I knew my membership would benefit from support to get outcomes, and my people would love that. I shaped support in a way that worked for me and that looked like daily asynchronous support via questions submitted in writing. Meaning I don’t need to be online at a certain time. I just log in once per business day and answer questions in my own space, at my own pace, working around what I needed for some of the people.I’ve helped shape membership since then. In the scalable business school, it might mean one call per week. Or two times per week of async support on Tuesday and Thursday because it’s not about doing more or doing what so and so is doing in their memberships. It is about having the three right things to make a membership self-sustain and get outcomes.This has been one of the biggest game changers to making a membership that feels like magic. And now I pass this on to the people I mentor. And there are other things that go into this as well that make this three pillar intersection work. Things like having a core pathway to success for your people to achieve a transformation, an outcome.So for example, if you have a course already, this can become a membership, but you don’t have to have a course. You can make a success pathway that meets people where they’re right now in their journey and take them where they wanna be. So that the space transforms them without needing you to be on for that transformation.Another element that keep things light for you is you enabling people to get outcomes through tools or templates, and this has never been easier than it is right now. With ai, for example, I just built tools recently for the membership to help my members get faster results. Things that would’ve taken me hours to build a few years ago.I can now build in minutes and drop into the space. How you find the intersection of these three things, outcomes for your people, a space you love to run, a space your people love to be and is so important. I wish I could cover them all right here, but there are too many things to go through under each of the three pillars that make memberships a massive potential for you and work together to make the perfect offer.But as a birthday celebration for the Content Mastery Club, I’m holding a special membership method workshop next week, and you can head to the show notes if you want to check that out. Because together in this hands-on session, I will show you how to shape a membership using these three pillars, how to price a membership, and something else really important.That’s coming up in this podcast that I’ll share in just a second, but you can join that Hands-on Workshop. By checking out the show notes of this lesson, and I wanna wrap up lesson one by reading you something that a student who I had the honor of helping build a membership in her business, we’ll call her a and said this.After six years in business, I was still struggling to keep revenue consistent, but with Karin’s encouragement and guidance, I was able to grow my membership to over 200 members and around $7,500 in monthly revenue. In just a few months, I cannot believe it took me so long to start. Every online business should include recurring revenue as part of their business plan.I was worried about being able to keep up with the demand that goes along with having a membership, but it turns out it’s totally doable and I love being able to support my community in this new. I actually feel like I have more freedom in my business now because I’m not constantly having to hustle for the next sale.And I wanted to read this to you because this light lift membership method, this realizing that memberships can lighten your life and your business. This is not just myself experiencing this. I think so many of us have this understandable fear that memberships will be more work, but the truth is when shaped right and with the recurring revenue they bring to your life.I can be a true blessing and joy, which brings us perfectly to lesson number two. Recurring revenue is one of the best things I ever added to my life, and I could never imagine now running a business without a recurring revenue income stream. Just like a said in that love note. How she thought it would be harder to run the membership, but actually not having recurring revenue was the harder thing.I found the exact same thing, and I wanna talk about this because I love courses. I teach courses. I still have a course. There are people I help make multiple five figures per month in course sales. And they thrive with that model that works for them. There is nothing wrong with courses. If that works for you, please hear that loud and clear.But if I personally had to choose between a course and a membership right now, it would be a membership. And I share this only as. These are my true, authentic lessons from having a membership. But if this resonates for you, well, maybe it was meant for you too, because my lifestyle, my sales cycle, my mental health, my entire business has thrived having recurring revenue because knowing I have multiple five figures per month already locked in, gosh, even when I first started the membership and had $5,000 locked in per month.Well, it changed the way I live and serve and think about my business overall. When I was month to month with income, I always had this feeling of, what if this ends tomorrow? Like, what if next month no one buys? What if the launch flops, what if something shifts and suddenly a platform stops working? Or my sales funnel flops for some reason.But with the membership, I know I have recurring revenue locked in and I can forecast that. It’s done. Things like made me more confident to invest in support. It has given me more confidence to truly embrace my lifestyle business, like planning a month long US holiday last year without thinking, how would I sell during this time?I just went because the recurring revenue kept coming in while I was traveling, serving light lift, but not selling. So the opportunity to add recurring revenue to a business is one that I’ll forever tell past Carinda to take time and time again if I had to do it all again. And I share that with you.And here’s the thing too. You don’t need to choose between a membership and other offers. The feast or famine of only launching over and over and over again as my only income model. That was harder on my nervous system than running a membership has ever been. The membership is stable, it’s predictable, it’s recurring, and that stability has been life changing.I can launch other things on top of that, I have had and still have courses, and have had masterminds and group programs all on top of the membership across the five years. And I get to do that with a sense of excitement, but also the joy of detachment. Of course, wanting this offer to do well and knowing it will for my people, but not feeling the huge pressure of it has to work or else it takes the pressure off and brings more joy and ease, and ability to take more risks, have more fun, and really experiment more with an income already coming in every month.While we’re on the topic of risk, let’s talk about a risk or something about a membership that might feel risky. I know this comes up for people a lot, and it did cross my mind for sure at first, and that is lesson three from my five years of membership mastery. Let’s call out the elephant in the room.What if people sign up for a month? Take everything and leave. What if someone comes in, downloads every template, watches every training, grabs everything they can, and then cancels after 30 days? What if I’m just giving away everything I’ve built for one monthly cost if I’m a month by month membership?But here’s the truth. My average lifetime value of a person in my membership and the students I teach and mentor in the scalable business school, see this too, is more than the courses I used to sell. Even though for the club in the past five years, I have had no lock in contracts at all. So let’s say the course I used to sell that I made into the membership was $400.It’s easy to think someone could come in for the 50 something dollars that club is and stay for a month and then leave. But that just isn’t what happens. An average person in the Content Mastery Club stays for many months, and their average lifetime value is around $800. So you can see this is a more profitable business model than what the course model would’ve been.Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not running a scam here. People get the course inside and then also get monthly deliverables on top in the membership tools they can use every month. My support that I spoke about before ongoing. Monthly experts or masterclasses. They’re not just paying more for a course people used to pay for.They’re getting ongoing value, ongoing support, ongoing transformation. But when you think I will make less or I will be worse off because everyone will come for one month than leave the truth. If you have a great membership that retains members, this grab everything and leave thing just doesn’t happen at the rate you think it will.Has it likely happened a few times in the time I have had the membership? Sure. But if that person really wants to operate that way, they’re gonna find a way around that anyway, whether it be coming into your course and then asking for a refund or doing a chargeback or something else like that, or coming in on a three month lock in or six month lock in, and then just canceling payments on their end and ghosting.If people really want to just get your stuff, then leave. No matter the business model, this will happen. But the point is those people lose out. Because they didn’t look at my success path and then use me to implement it. They didn’t use the tools or get the updates to the tools I do regularly. They didn’t use the audits.They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t get the real transformation. You have to bless and release those people, but what you do have to realize is that. 99% of people are joining because they want the experience. They want your monthly support of their outcome. They want the community and the momentum that brings.Most people are gonna come in and stay. If you build a space they wanna stay in, don’t let the tiny portion of people you worry might do this thing stop you from the huge impact and income a membership can authentically bring. Which brings us to lesson number four. And this is a big one when I just said about average lifetime value in a membership and how most people will stay and do the right thing.This also comes down to one thing, how strong your membership retention is, because when you nail this, not only do you get that solid lifetime value, but you’ll have the best membership ever. One that scales, one that feels stable and so, so satisfying. And this is a lesson every membership owner needs to know or learn because here what I see happen too often with memberships.Mostly when people come to me to help them fix their memberships. Something I love to do, a lot of people understand they need to get people into their membership. They build an offer. They open doors, they get people signed up and then they think the job is done. But actually, that’s when the real work begins.Not the hard work at all, but the important work because if you can get people in, but you can’t keep them, you’re constantly starting from zero. You’re running on a treadmill, you’re filling a leaky bucket, and that is exhausting. And honestly, that’s what gives memberships a bad name. People think, oh, memberships are so much churn.The word used to explain when people leave, it’s not worth it. But that’s only true if you dunno how to retain people. One of the questions people always ask me is, how did you scale to 500 members? And honestly, I could scale much further, but I have at that number because that is my version of success and the level I know I can support at without a team.The answer is in two parts. Number one, my low ticket offers strategy. This is no secret and I have spoken about this endlessly. Low ticket offers bring the perfect people into my world and give them a genuine outcome in a pain point or desire they have in my core area of expertise. And then that offer can lead to your fuller expertise in that area, in a course or a membership.And mine lead to my membership. So. Yes, I launch these to the public with normal launches, but over 50% of people in my memberships come from my low ticket offers automated Seamless. Perfect, because they already assess that I’m the one for them and they know they want to be inside. But the key. Is having people stay inside, and this is called retention.So I’m not endlessly chasing new people. When someone comes in from a low ticket offer or a launch, they stay. You see there is something called membership churn, which is completely normal. People will leave your membership when they graduate. When they move maybe to an even higher level offer with you, if you have that or you did your job and they don’t need you anymore, and that feels so damn good to have that happening and that churn number, but you don’t want super high churn with people leaving for other reasons before they finish their transformation that you could have control over.For example, you might have a membership helping parents navigate newborn and toddler years. Make sense? People would leave at the end of that [00:19:00] development period. That is natural churn. That should not be high, and you want to retain people in this example for that whole journey for as long as they were meant to stay.That is retention. You normally wanna retain 90 to 95% of people every month, but if they leave before that and your turn gets higher than five to 10% per month. You want to be looking at your membership itself, and if you master retention as well as acquisition, that is the best thing in the world because you’re not just filling a leaky bucket, you’re building something that grows and compounds over time, it scales, stays stable, and you get the satisfaction of seeing true outcomes in people’s lives.This comes in part from your offer itself, but there are other key elements to retention as well. Some very key learnings. As someone with a churn rate under 5%, well under industry standard, I know what retains people inside memberships. And that is what we are covering deeper in the membership method workshop too, to shape your membership, but make sure it’ll retain people as well.So you can have people come in, serve them with ease and outcomes, and have them stay. Again, that workshop link is in the show notes, but the part I want you to take away the most is a membership that focuses on key elements to keep people inside is the key to scale, not just the new people you can have join.And that brings us to lesson number five, the one I really want you to hear, because I have thrown around big numbers, like having 500 people in my membership, but a membership doesn’t have to be big to be profitable. When I started the Content Mastery Club, my goal was 100 members, not 500, 100. I didn’t sit there thinking I need to build this massive thing with thousands of people in it.I thought. If I can get to 100 members, that would be incredible. And you know what? If I’d stayed at 100 members, that would’ve been $5,500 in recurring revenue every single month. That is more than many people get paid in a full-time role. That gives you breathing room. That means you’re not starting from zero every month, wondering where the next sale is coming from.It also doesn’t have to be a low ticket. I have helped someone grow their 197 USD membership to 75 people, the max she wanted, and we did it in a few months and she’s retaining them with ease. That is $15,000 per month. She is doing as light lift. On top of her low ticket passive income, and she did it with just over 700 followers on her ig, working under 15 hours per week.So while you can scale a membership to big numbers, if you would like, you also don’t need thousands of followers to fill a membership. You don’t need a huge audience. You don’t need to be internet famous. You don’t need to have some massive platform before you can start. You need the right offer with the three core pillars, the right pathway to get people in like a low ticket offer.My personal favorite, and the method I teach, and the right retention strategy to keep them there. You don’t have to wait until you’re big to make this work. You don’t have to keep holding back from fear of the things I get. Seem scary. You can start now. So those are the five lessons. And I hope my story can inspire or provide insight to yours and if this is the kind of business you wanna build or wanna work for you.One last reminder that next week I’m holding the membership method workshop, and this is a hands-on session where I’m walking you through how to shape a membership that actually works for your life, plus so many other endless insights from the past five years. I will drop throughout the whole session too on filling pricing, running, and loving your membership too.To those of you who have been a part of the Content Mastery Club in the past five years, or who are members now. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a part of this journey and letting me be part of yours. Every day is the biggest damn honor to get to support you, to watch you grow, and to grow alongside you as well as we all navigate life, business, and everything in between.Serving you or having got to serve you is something I never take for granted, and the club wouldn’t have been here without YouTube and to everyone listening, whether you’re in the club, whether you’re thinking about a membership or. Whether you’re just here figuring out how to build a business that works for your life, thank you for being here.Thank you for letting me be part of your journey too, and I already can’t wait to see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the scene Love Selling Scale podcast. I hope today’s episode left you feeling inspired, fired up, and empowered to make serious moves. It’ll align with your goals and version of success both in life and business.If you loved what you heard, head over to www.thisisco.com.au to find all the links and resources mentioned in today’s episode. And if you aren’t already following the show, make sure you hit that follow button so you never miss a future episode when it drops. I’ll see you again next week. Same time, same place, same goal to get you seen, loved selling and scaling.See you then.
