3 Tips for Creating Paid Membership Communities with Alisha Robertson
Branding with Friends | Episode 10
Featuring Expert Guest: Author and Business Coach at Living Over Existing, Alisha Robertson
Watch or listen to the video interview below or scroll down to read the transcription.
Meet Alisha Robertson, Author and Business Coach at Living Over Existing
Annie: If you have been wondering about how to create an amazing online membership community as a coach or a consultant, you're going to love today's episode. My guest today is the incredible Alisha Robertson. Alisha is an author and she is the founder of Living Over Existing, a podcast, newsletter, and community for women entrepreneurs who want to run a successful business without sacrificing the life they desire. After experiencing severe burnout, Alisha tore down everything she thought she knew about becoming a successful entrepreneur and decided to build a brand that helps women to focus on building their business and life with intention. Through her work, Alisha strives not only to help women entrepreneurs to launch, grow, and scale their brands but also help them to prioritize themselves in the process. I'm so glad you're here with us today, Alisha.
Alisha: Thank you so much for having me.
Annie: I get lots of questions about how do you create a membership? How do you have a community? What do you do? I know this is really your wheelhouse today on Branding with Friends. If this is the first episode you've watched, we share three tips straight from the experts.
Today Alisha is going to share three tips about how to create your own membership community as a coach or consultant. We're going to do the first two and then wait until the very end of the episode to get that third tip to make sure that you hear exactly what Alisha has for you in-store.
As we're gearing up for that first great piece of advice, Alisha, could you tell me a little bit about Living Over Existing how you started it? Why you started it, sort of how that all came to be?
Alisha: wish was one of those things that I could tell you I planned out thoroughly. But I think like most great businesses, it just kind of happened. A few years ago, I wrote a book actually called Living Over Existing which I just really felt pushed and called to share more with women entrepreneurs about my journey and also how the mental barriers like fear and anxiety and comparison, how all of these things held me back from really pushing forward in my own coaching business.
Once I wrote the book and put the book out there, people were just like, okay, so what's next?
I launched a podcast with the book but it was only supposed to be like a marketing tool for the book. It wasn't supposed to be an ongoing thing that I did. People were like, okay, what's the next episode and what's next?
As I continued to listen to my audience, I started to learn more about what they were needing outside of the basic business-building strategies. People are struggling with fear. They're struggling with getting out of their own head. They're also struggling with how in the world do they build this business and also still feel like they have a personal life, they still feel like they're hitting their personal goals. It just so happens around the same time I was experiencing severe burnout. I'm talking like, to the point where I couldn't get out of bed, let alone complete a full sentence. I took what people were telling me about living over existing and I took my own experience of just needing to make a change in my life and in my business, and I just said, okay, let's see what would happen if I, of course, continue to help women to build a business but I help them to do it with intention. Meaning I help them to first figure out what they want in their personal life and figure out their personal goals and the things that they value and desire the most. But then also help them to build a business around that. I feel like so many of us, we go to build this business, and then it doesn't really match my life. But what would happen if you built a business around the life you desired instead of making like your life or your personal goals, a second priority?
That's like the short version, there are, very many iterations of what it was before we got to this point. But that's how it really happened. And again, it happened out of nowhere. I did not plan this. I love it
Annie: Well, it's so funny you say that. You say, as you started your story, I didn't plan this. I didn't have this perfect plan. I think that’s a big thing that I talk a lot about. I was just telling somebody the other day that I still have a reminder to come up on my phone that says I should work on my business plan that I set a reminder weekly back in 2012. I've just never turned it off. Yeah, I really should finish my business plan. I've been in business for seven years.
I think that there's something to that, but also something in your story where you're like, I didn't plan this. But what you actually did, because you put out something that you knew your audience wanted. Your ideal clients needed your book. So, you created the book, then the podcast to market the book, and then you started listening.
I think that's a huge thing that I want to encourage everyone who's watching or listening today, to listen to what you're saying. Which is, at every point you heard, women needing more from you, and something specific, and then you went and created it. You didn't say, oh, I'm going to create this membership community out of nothing. I don't know if anyone needs it. I think everyone needs it. You actually listened to what people were asking you for and then delivered on that. So, it's much more strategic than it would have been when you say I didn't plan it. But what you did is you responded to it. You took a lot of action which I think is really cool and empowering for everybody to hear that is in this mode of wanting to create content. I think there are going to be a lot of women who are going to watch this and say, yes, I want to empower women too. Oh, it's as simple as listening to them? Let's do that. So much easier than just inventing something out of nothing.
Alisha: Exactly. You can learn so much about your audience and the content that you should be building and the products you should be creating just by asking questions and listening. People will tell you what they need. You just have to be willing to push past yourself and push past what you think is always right and just listen to the people who are going to be buying.
Annie: Easier said than done. Let's get to that first tip. So, what's the first thing a coach or consultant should really focus on in thinking about creating a membership community?
#1 Action TIP
Have a clear roadmap that will help your members visualize their path to success
Alisha: I would definitely suggest having a clear roadmap that will help your members to visualize what their path to success will look like. I think one of the biggest things when it comes to building a membership community is that if you're building a community that is really content-focused, meaning you are either having monthly themes that you're going over each month, or you have courses that are included. I think one of the biggest things that really holds members back and kind of makes them feel stuck is not being able to visualize where should I be starting? What should my main goal be with this community? It's not like a one on one coaching service where you clearly have it laid out each week or each session, this is what we're going to go over. When these people come into your community, it's like, oh, wow, so much content, what do I do next?
I think that creating a clear roadmap for people to be able to follow and even teaching them how to use that roadmap will really help them to visualize what their success in the community is going to look like. It also eliminates that barrier for people who are wanting to join. They already know upfront, this is like the clear process that's going to help me reach whatever the goal is, and this is what I can find in this community.
In our community, we have the intentional success path, which walks you through six steps of building your business with intention. I put that on the sales page. I talk about it when I'm marketing because I want people to know, this isn't just another space where you're going to be overwhelmed with content. I'm going to show you exactly where you should be starting in giving you a clear path of what you should be doing next. To make you feel like you really are getting the full value of what the community has to offer.
Annie: I love that, again perfect to your brand. Alisha is all about intention. She has so much intention. Maybe you heard that buzzword, branding. So, branding, your framework, and your success pattern. A success path or roadmap is really, it's establishing expectations and saying, this is how you get the most out of it. Here is your clear step by step way to move from where you are to where you want to be.
I would say that applies not just to a membership community, but to almost anything and the work that you're going to do with clients. I was just writing this down for me as I do a lot of mentoring. And we're going to have a future episode of Branding with Friends all about mentoring. Me talking about talking to someone I've actually hired to mentor me, and how valuable that is. I think having a success roadmap to your point, so people don't get overwhelmed. I think this is something not only that applies to a membership community, but also to how you might be coaching your clients, how you might be delivering services to them. Do they know what the next step is in the process? Have you branded that process? Do you talk about it in a way that makes it seem easy? Because it is easy. It's easier than being overwhelmed by everything. I love that as a tip and I think that that would challenge you if you're going to create an online community to be intentional about, what is it that you're trying to get people to accomplish by doing that?
So, your next tip, what would be the second thing that you want to keep in mind about a membership community?
#2 ACTION TIP
Find small ways to wow your members to create a great membership experience
Alisha: I would say to find small ways to really wow your members to create a great membership experience. Again, when you're running a membership community, everyone wants a large number of people within their community. It's not like you can give each person one on one attention the way you would do and maybe in a group coaching program or a one on one type of coaching program. Finding small ways to wow your members will really help you to take that member experience up a notch. It creates great word of mouth marketing, which is still gold, right?
Annie: It's always the best. People put it down. You want that over a Google lead. You want word of mouth and you want referrals. Can you give us an example of something that's worked in your community that you would say is one of these ways to wow your members?
Alisha: One, I show up. For some reason, people think oh, I thought we were just in here and doing our own thing. I'm like, no, I'm here. I have a way for you to get feedback on your projects, I'm in here joining in the conversations with you. All this month we're talking about creating a free email challenge. I noticed that a couple of ladies had a lot of questions. I said on Thursday we're going to do a Q&A call and we're going to sit down and all hash this out together.
Annie: You responded to the need going on.
Alisha: Yes, I don't want people to get to the end of the month and say I didn't do anything because I was confused as to what to do. I want to make sure that we are all on the same path. Also, for new members, we have our member welcome kit, which is an actual kit and a workbook, and a little mini journal that we mail to our new members. Getting something in the mail, even in 2020 is still a huge deal for people.
Annie: How much you love Amazon? It comes to your front door and you're so excited.
Small, but personal touches can make a huge difference when running a membership community.
Alisha: Exactly, it's like Christmas when you get something in the mail. We package that up, we make it pretty, I ship it off to our members. And again, it's like you're taking this online experience and giving it some personal touches. Those little ways and you don't have to go all out with creating a whole cake. It could just be something like a handwritten thank you note or a shout out in your email or a shout out on your Instagram account. It doesn't have to be over the top but thinking about those little personal touches does make a huge difference.
Annie: I think about when you send out snail mail. I think I've heard the statistic that the average person gets eight pieces of snail mail a year. That's not from direct marketers, that's actually something they want, not including Amazon packages. When you think about that, especially with an online business, it's a fabulous way to stand out no matter what you're doing, whether membership community or not. But that's why I always design stationery for my clients because you want that to look and feel like your business and not just have to go to Target and get a thank you note or not send any notes because you're not prepared because you don't look the part.
One of the things that I see a lot of value in is when you do something like send a kit out or even you pop in for marketing purposes or to do something special, having a clear and consistent brand. So, having the messaging you're trying to put out there plus the toolkit of your great logos, your color palette, and your fonts. Can you talk a little bit about how important you felt branding has been to having a successful membership community and growing your business in general?
Having a clear and consistent message is key.
Alisha: With branding I am first and foremost I think an esthetic snob. I need all of my colors to match. I need the fonts to match. One of the things one of my most recent members said when she came into the community, she was, this is really nice looking. She said it matches the same brand you have on your website, it matches the same color scheme, things you have on your Instagram. She said this is really well branded. That's probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said.
So of course, colors, logos, having that consistency, makes a huge deal. You may not think that people notice it, but they do. They definitely do. They appreciate the time and effort with it too. Then as far as messaging, you want people to feel like you are the same person on Instagram as the same person in the membership community, and you're going to be the same person if they were to meet you out in public. No matter what platform if I'm on my personal social media accounts, if I'm on my Living Over Existing accounts, I'm always talking about the same message. Whether it be from the point of view of my clients, or from the point of view of me sharing my personal story, I want people to get a clear understanding of what my brand is about. You do that through the consistency of always sharing your message and finding different ways to put your message out there.
Annie: I love that. I'm glad that you brought that up. I think a lot of people focus on a problem of having unclear messaging. They also focus on a problem and feeling like their messaging isn't creative enough, but they don't remember that it needs to be consistent. I think that that's the thing we all push back on that I see a lot of entrepreneurs spending way too much time noodling the words on their website. Even when it's been professionally done because that feels a little bit easier than the marketing piece. You have to think about it.
One of the ways I've been talking about your message is like, it's like your hit song. You need to go out and sing that hit song because if you went to a Journey concert and they didn't play, Don't Stop Believing, or every time they play, Don't Stop Believing they change the lyrics you would be ticked right? As tired as they would probably be, I don't even know if Journey is still together. I'm not a music person, I'm a movie person. If you think of your favorite song, and if the band played it differently every time, you would never remember it. It would never become your favorite song in the first place. You wouldn't tell other people about it, because it would just be so confusing. There's a reason you go to the concert and you get mad if all the band played was their new stuff and didn't play your old favorite you knew by heart.
You really need to be repeating that message by heart. You can say it in different ways. Where's that sound? Where's that song that you're hitting on every level? Getting in front of every audience, too many people have the song created and never go sing it. So, go out and sing it.
I loved that you shared that as well. You've got one more tip for us today in terms of membership communities. But before we do that, I know you've got something special for Branding with Friends audiences. What is it that you would like to share with folks watching or listening to Branding with Friends.
Don’t miss this special opportunity for “Branding with Friends” fans…
Grab Alisha’s free Business Plan Template, Business with Intention: https://www.livingoverexisting.com/bwi
Alisha: I have a free business plan template called Business with Intention. Again, pushing my branding and talking about my message is all about intention. But one of the big questions I receive is how, okay, you talk about building a business with intention and the importance of it, but how do you make that happen?
I created this free business plan template that really guides entrepreneurs through how to build a business on purpose. Starting with your personal vision and what it is that you want out of your life and then getting into the branding and figuring out your audience and how you're going to monetize that. But making all those decisions based on where you see yourself in your personal life and what personal goals you want to accomplish and building your business around that.
I created this free business plan template to easily guide you through that process. There's also like a walkthrough video too, to take you through it. You can find that at livingoverexisting.com/ bwi.
Annie: Fantastic and anywhere you're watching or listening to this we'll take care to make sure that there are links to connect with Alisha and links to get to that, of course. The community is linked on your website as well. So, we'll make sure that if you're interested in Living Over Existing, if you sound like the woman who wants to grow their life with intention and their business, you've got to talk to Alisha. You can find more information on her website.
If today's episode has gotten you thinking about your brand and feeling like you don't know what your hit song is and you want to go sing it, for example, or you need help with more consistent visuals. That is what I do. I offer free consultations on my website, greateststorycreative.com. You can literally hop on my calendar for 20 minutes, just me and you in a private 20 minutes together. Feel free to grab that if you have questions about branding coming out of today's episode.
With that, we know where to find you, Alisha but what is that last thing that we should keep in mind if we're thinking about creating a membership community.
#3 Action Tip
Plan out your member content in advance so you can focus on marketing
Alisha: I would definitely say in order to stay consistent, is to plan out your member content as far in advance as you can as possible. Just so that you can focus on the other business building tasks, like marketing, and even just, nurturing the members who are in your community. Sitting down and saying, okay, for this quarter, this is what we're going to discuss or this is the professional I'm going to bring in with my community or this is the new piece of content that I'm going to release within my community.
Having a clear plan ahead of time will save you so much time in the long run, and you won't go into a new month or a new week, feeling completely frazzled, because when you're frazzled, you can't serve your members how you want to. You can't really create content how you want to because everything feels so rushed. Ask me how I know because I make the mistake all the time. You definitely don't have to be perfect but try your best to at least put down on the calendar, okay, this quarter this is what we're going to discuss. This is the kind of process I'm going to take them through, or these are the professionals that I'm going to have inside the community to talk with them. But just having that clear plan ahead of time makes all the difference.
Annie: I bet it does. I think that's such a smart strategy across your entire business, which I'm sure you also teach women entrepreneurs as well. I try to teach it to, I often call them like batching or batch days. I took a day out of every month to work on the business instead of in the business, which was so helpful. I always take December as a business sabbatical. So, I call that batch December to do this kind of work.
The reality of our time, especially now, and what everyone is going through when this episode is happening in 2020. I don't need to say much more than that. Hopefully, in the future things are things better. In the future guys? Please tell us they’re better.
So even in the uncertainty of now, it's really hard to come up with things in real-time and what I find is that people get stuck because they're flying by the seat of their pants. If you can get ahead of it a little bit, and plan that content out. So, if you're going to have this membership community, well, what do the first two quarters look like? Do you have enough content to do that? Because if you don't that might tell you, it's maybe too early to be creating a membership community at this point.
I do have that question for you, which is, based on your experience, I know this happened as a strategic reaction to what you were hearing what's next, what's next. But now that you have done it, when you do have a successful practice as a coach, what would you say, when would you say is the right time to be considering creating a membership community?
When is the right time to create a membership community?
Alisha: Going back to that clear process or clear roadmap, one of the best things with working one on one with clients before even thinking about launching a membership community was I really got to dig into who my target audience was. Through that, I was able to perfect my process and tweak some things and see what would help people get to their results faster. To see what areas would really help them to shift their mindset and what areas I needed to spend more time on.
Having that time in that space to really perfect that process with my one on one coaching clients really helped with the success of growing the membership community because I didn't have to do all that guesswork. I didn't have to do research going into it.
I would just say whenever you feel like you have your process down pat and you know exactly how to move your client from point A to point B without having to shift or change too much. That's when I feel like you are ready to go on to like building something else. Also, when you have a pretty steady audience just outside of your coaching clients.
Launching a membership community was definitely different from marketing my coaching program. I'm thankful that I've spent the past seven years branding myself online to where people know what it is that I do. They know what I have to offer. I have people on my email list who are interested in whatever my next step is going to be. So, spending that time really putting out the content building that trust with my audience helps a lot as well.
Annie: Would you say that there's a minimum number of people you would want to have on your email list to be able to move forward with doing a community?
Alisha: I don't think so. I don't think there should be a minimum. I would say gauge it by the engagement on your email list because you could have 40,000 people on your email list who are only there because you kept running giveaways and really don't care about what you have to offer.
I have 1000 people who are my ride or die, people, who are ready to buy whatever it is I want to put out. I don't really gauge it by number obligated by an engagement. I know for me, my email list is where the majority of my sales come from. That's how I kind of engage it or my open rates or my click-through rate. So that's how I kind of gauge how healthy it is.
Annie: What do you feel like is a healthy open rate? I know people are going to go, so what was it and how many people are on your list? I'm good about that. I don't think it matters.
I think you make a great point about the number like it's not necessarily a magic number. It's about how engaged people are because you could have a list of all the wrong people. So people chase all these followers. Followers aren't buyers per se. You could have 100,000 followers and not $100,000 that's not how that works.
I think a lot there's a lot of advice out there about the best open rate is. I see a whole gamut. I saw something the other day that the average for marketing is 17%. What do you think is the number that shows your engagement?
Alisha: So, it does vary between like industries. But I don't have a large list. I have a little over 4,000 people on my list. I got down to that number because I purged people.
Annie: You didn’t want to send to people that weren't engaging with you?
Alisha: Exactly, I send out an email every Sunday. Typically, my open rate teeters between about 23% and 30%. For open rates, but again, I've been emailing these people every single Sunday for as long as I can remember. So, I've almost kind of I don't want to say trained my audience, but they know what to expect from me.
Annie: What you hear is consistency. I don't want you to get fixated on the numbers. I think she’s looking for the right metric. It's less about how many people. Yes, you can have a successful coaching practice and membership community with only 4,000 people. A lot of people say, oh, 4,000 people, I'd love to have 4,000 people. I'm one of those people. I could be at four, five, or 6,000 people. I have cut about that many from my list over several years. I
What a lot of people don't realize is a lot of email marketing tools will charge you after 1,000 people. They will charge you more. So, for a while, I was keeping it right at about 950. I've recently switched platforms that to one that doesn't have a limit on the number of subscribers. I think that's going to change but, I'll tell you too, I have a six-figure practice and I have had less than a thousand people on my list on average.
That's going to grow over time, especially now that there's not a cap on it. I was having an average open rate of 35% sometimes on some emails. it's really about a mighty audience versus a huge audience. We hear that and we think all we need is followers. You have to be great. You have to be really there for your clients and for your audience. If you show up and you offer value the way you are, you are going to be successful. That's not a magic recipe or number.
That’s the perfect way to end on that. Alisha, thank you so much for joining us today for Branding with Friends.
Alisha: Thank you for having me!
Annie: Excellent. I'm so glad you came. We hope that you guys enjoyed yet another episode of Branding with Friends. So many special thanks to my guest, Alisha Robertson of Living Over Existing. I hope that you'll tune in next time when we're going to tackle yet another topic where branding meets business. Until then, I'm Annie Franceschi of Greatest Story Creative. You can find all our episodes, branding resources, and more on our website at greateststorycreative.com. Have a great day. Thanks for joining us.
“Branding with Friends” Episode 10
Show Notes + Resources
Here are 3 key tips to use Paid Membership Communities to grow your service business:
Have a clear roadmap that will help your members visualize their path to success
Find small ways to wow your members to create a great membership experience
Plan out your member content in advance so you can focus on marketing.
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To learn more about Paid Membership Communities or to seek Alisha’s help:
• Visit her website:www.livingoverexisting.com
• Grab your free business plan template: https://www.livingoverexisting.com/bwi
• To grab your free course creator’s starter outline, visit: thecourseconsultant.com/course-creators-starter-outline/
• Follow her personal Instagram and the Living Over Existing Instagram
