Are you looking for a highly connected revenue stream for your business? You might be.
Well, if you are, I wanna tell you about three of the amazing advantages of having a membership. Guys, this is the business model that I love, because you know what? We go together. Remember why? Why a membership model? Well, let me tell you.
If you are considering adding a membership to your business, or you have a membership and you’d like to improve it, I have got an amazing, fabulous resource that you might wanna consider. But let me just tell you the three advantages. The three advantages of a membership is why I chose this business model for my business.
So if you don’t know, I’m Meredith Canaan, a business coach. You’re heart-centered, singing out loud, crazy, kind of quirky little business coach who loves to sing and who has an awesome magic wand. I am sharing with you why membership are such a powerful business model.
So one of the things is, as a heart-centered business coach, I’m about connecting heart to heart. I’m about creating.
I love community. I love community so much.
And a membership, it’s really about having and creating a community of support for people that are on a simple mission, that are on the same mission moving forward.
So if you’re looking for a business model that supports high connection, that supports creating something for your members to be moving along a path together, to have people who are moving on the same path and the same journey with them, membership is the way to go.
Now, one of the things that’s great about membership is it’s great. They will come for the content, but they are gonna stay for the connections. They’re gonna stay for the community. They are actually going to have this moving forward.
First Advantage of Membership Model
It is such a powerful business model. And the reason I love it so much is that it creates that connection. If you are looking for a relationship, one of the things I love so much about community and connection is when we have breakthroughs in the space of community and they are witnessed, then those breakthroughs have a way of being reinforced in our systems.
The growth that we take inside of a community is set in such a way that when it’s witnessed and reflected back to us, that has us grow in a more powerful way than we do in a one-to-one setting. So if you’re looking for that type of connection, if you’re looking for that type of heart held support membership model, especially because it’s ongoing, then a membership might be great for you.
So you know that you’re seeing people time and time again, they start to witness you, they start to hold you, they start to connect with you and hold that space. And it’s a space where your gremlins don’t exist. Your little fluffy gremlins, your community doesn’t see or hear your gremlins. They hold you as the best version of you.
So that’s one of the most amazing advantages as a business model, especially as the leader as well, is that that community holds space in addition to you being the space holder. So connection, connection, community membership is a great model, especially for long-term, long-term journeys. We are on the journey with you for a while. My membership is over two years old and I have, I think 90% of my originally founding members are still with me. And so that can be really helpful.
Question from the Audience
Ooh, I have questions. I love questions. How to recreate a membership? Oh, for your kind of business. Ooh, I’m happy to answer your questions. Type in some of your specific questions and I’ll help you.
It’s often good to look at finding the needs of your people. Sometimes we create and we think, oh, I think this is really what they need. One of the things I love about membership is it’s co-created. So if you have an existing membership and you want to recreate something, the question is looking at what is the need that they want to have served?
What are they looking for? So when you’re looking at a membership model, the thing that’s beautiful about the membership model leads us into advantage two.
Second Advantage of Memberships
So advantage number two is that recurring revenue.
So that it’s a set pace, that it’s a recurring revenue model, and that people are looking to have that source.
So is it for childcare or is it for childcare owners. Looking at people who own other childcare facilities and you’re helping them create their childcare systems. Or is it for a childcare membership.
There are memberships where, daycare you could say is a type of membership. What are the benefits and the services that they get? Maybe as members, they get additional services that aren’t available. Other people who aren’t a part of a membership, we’re seeing memberships.
Forbes says, I think the number two business model for 2022 is membership. Because so many people are adding this type of level.
We have memberships at the grocery store, we have memberships at Starbucks, we have memberships in all different areas. And so when you’re looking at your childcare business, what are the things that your people really need that have them coming back for more? What makes it easier? What makes it a better service? How does an added membership or incorporating a membership in this model help you?
So Missy is saying, as a writer, memberships, we are looking at creating in Patreon. Let people behind the scenes of creating your comic books and published work. Great example, Missy!
So there are people who wanna support creative artists and that type of membership. People like the inside scoop.
I’m in Oprah’s. Oprah has a membership.
I love Oprah. You guys didn’t know that about me. I have serious love for Oprah. I want to grow into an Oprah version of myself. There’s some amazing things that you actually get to have conversations with Oprah inside of her membership. Other people that have memberships in the behind the scenes of how you’re putting your stuff together, what things look like.
That type of information, again, the information is one of the assets and the connection is another main advantage of having that. And so my person is looking for parents or providers. So part of understanding and how you’re designing a membership or recreating a membership is what is the path that they’re taking on?
And so I have this amazing resource, I’m gonna post in the comments next week, my membership.
So if you go to meredithcanaan.com/stu you can learn about Stu McLaren’s workshop. He has got some amazing resources on what you want to do. But when you’re looking at creating your membership, whether it’s because it’s gonna be a different membership for parents than it would be for providers.
So if it’s for childcare providers, maybe how you’re running your childcare, great tips on or providing them. Like if it’s early childhood education and younger things, maybe you are amazing at curriculum design and other people are not. Maybe you could provide a monthly curriculum for early childhood education people. I know one of Stu’s big case studies that he shares about is a woman that did it for second grade teachers.
Part of her membership is she helps them with the curricular design for second grade teachers. So it’s very specific. So if you’re doing it for early childhood, you could have it for kids zero to two and maybe a membership for two to four, right before they get into kindergarten. Maybe they’re two different sets of curriculums and those types of things.
And, so you could help design the curriculum, you could help design the planning, what are the skill sets that you have when looking at creating anything, the sweet spot of the skills that you have that are easy, not hard, easy, that you already have. That’s an expression of something that you wanna talk about continuing. You wanna support people in and where you have a journey that they can go on so they know where they are and where they need to go next.
It’s why a membership is a great model. People can come in at different points on the journey and as long as they have an understanding of how to figure out where they are and where they wanna go, what are the right resources? What are the right resources to get them where they’re going so that they have some structure.
So these are some of the advantages that membership can be a little more of a broad niche than maybe a very specific product you can have, again, connection community.
Recurring Revenue
Did I mention the recurring revenue? Because recurring revenue can be the basis and the foundation for your business. To just help you feel that sense of support so you can live in the space of higher creativity to come up with creating more content. It’s not as active as a one-to-one service. It’s not as active as the things that you have to do.
So advantages, it creates a beautiful connection and community. Community helps hold other communities up. So you are not the only energy and space of your business.
You can have other contributors inside of a membership. I have my biz bestie, Gary Schleifer. He is the publisher of Choice Magazine, the magazine for coaches. He is a contributor inside our membership. We do profit first where we help do some money management and money mindset work. And I don’t have to be there. There are days Gary handles it all by himself.
And so there’s some beautiful things about the advantages of having the membership. I love it as a baseline. The other thing is, you could have it, is that either people in the membership have perks, other perks that other people don’t have. My memberships get special discounts on private coaching and other things versus what the public gets.
So there’s all different kinds of advantages when you look at having an integrated business model. And so I love my membership, I love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. And I think part of it is because I just had a couple of renewals, people who’ve been in, who came in last year during the summit that have renewed again.
Retention is Key to Success
I love to see that level of retention. So when you think about the advantages from a marketing perspective, when you get people in, you spend all the ad spend or the marketing efforts that you’re doing to get people in. Once you’re in your job it is to keep them happy, retain the clients and keep them happy. Time and time again, whether it’s on an annual basis or a monthly basis, you’re making sure that they have continued buy-in.
I think that’s another thing that I’m, that’s not an advantage I was planning on talking about, but that they have continued buy-in. When you pay for something time and time again, you see that on your bill and you think, am I still getting value out of this?
Yes I’m staying. Or oh my goodness, I’m still getting charged for this. Am I using it? Do I need it or do I wanna let it go?
As a business owner, it’s also a great opportunity when people leave and they come back and you say, oh, okay, so what is it that’s missing? It’s an opportunity for you to continue to grow on your personal development journey as a business owner.
Memberships help us also have the ability to grow, have our clients grow as we grow. The membership grows. The one thing I love about my membership is our prices have increased over the last two years. It’s over a hundred dollars more than it was monthly to join the membership than what our founding members got.
My founders aren’t leaving. They’re just not going anywhere. Cause that’s such a good deal.
And the people who are coming in see the value when they see people who are here time and time again month over month. And you start to get to know people in a very different way. As our people are now renewing for their second years and third years, their people in their third year.
These relationships are deep and long-lasting. And if your business is long-term, a membership is just such a beautiful thing. Such a beautiful thing. So those are my three advantages.
Stu McLaren’s Membership Workshop
As a reminder I highly recommend Stu McLaren is treating an amazing free workshop on how to create and design your membership. People have watched the free workshop and launched memberships just from his free training. There is my link to his free training if you decide to buy in. I will get an affiliate commission. I recommend it because not only have I done Stu’s program, I’m still in his membership still.
I still get value out of it and I love to review it year after year. And anybody who’s interested, if it’s something that feels like it’s a good fit for what you’re looking for inside your business, is a good business model. I also have some really cool bonuses where I’ll, I’ll walk you hand in hand through the idea of building it.
So those are my three reasons why I think business memberships are amazing. Why business is a business model. That’s not what I’m meant to say. Why memberships are a fabulous business model. I have one, I love one, it’s been, I’m in my third year of running the Love then lead membership.
Our community’s freaking amazing. And so number one, community and connection, the transformation that’s provided by an engaged community of people who hold space for each other on a journey, witnessing people as they have transformation. It’s so amazing. That’s reason number one.
Reason number two is that as a business, as a model for your business, the recurring revenue that a membership provides can give you that sense of relief because it’s ongoing. You can predictably see what your expenses are, you know what’s coming in and out. And once you’ve done the marketing, your marketing expense, if you keep them happy and you keep serving them, then it has a long value of your money.
Your marketing dollars go further when you focus on retention. Again, my retention is in the high nineties. It’s 95, 97, something like that in terms of retention for my membership as we are moving into our third year.
And it’s such a beautiful model because your community will grow as you grow. It gives you the place to explore. And I think the thing I love the most about membership is that ours is very co-created. If I don’t know what to teach, I ask, Hey guys, what do you guys wanna learn this month? What is it that you wanna focus on?
And we have themes and we create them inside our themes and we go through spirals cuz I’m a Spiraly girl, but I love the business model. And if you’re thinking about adding a membership to your business, I highly recommend Stu’s training. His free training is fabulous. The paid training is even more fabulous as I have done it all. I love him.
He’s quirky. And if you like quirky and crazy, just like me, you’ll like Stu. If you don’t, he’s not the right person for you. But I absolutely love it. So check it out. Hopefully those are three reasons that you might check it out.
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