How To Launch A Membership Site From Start To Finish with Teresa Heath-Wareing

Eric: Hey Teresa, welcome to the show.

Teresa: Thank you so much for having me on Eric. I’m really pleased to be here.

Eric: Yes, it’s my pleasure. We met March of this year at Atomicon. That was a really fun and exciting event. I recall one of my memories of you is, we were sitting in the back of the room and you were about to go up and do your speech, your talk, and you were talking about how you were nervous about it, then you go up on stage and completely blow everybody way. 100% execution, 100% rapport. I was wondering in your mind, what is the value of nervousness? How do you respond?

Teresa: Do you know what, I think there’s a few different things. Firstly, I’m glad I still get nervous in a way because I think it shows that I care, because if I was completely blasé about it, then I would worry that I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m so over this already.” Then the other side of it is, I read a lot and I listen a lot of podcasts and books. I’ve read Mel Robbins’ 5 Second Rule, and she talks about whenever she gets nervous, she tells herself it’s excitement. In truth, I think is excitement but I think I need that kind of adrenaline. But the minute I get on stage, the best thing about it is it literally just disappears.

I might be a little bit nervous when I go on. With Atomicon I was really nervous actually, because the boys are great. I knew it was going to be an amazing event, and therefore I was really conscious to make sure I did a really good job. You always want to do a good job, but you know when you just think, “Okay, I know what they’ve put into this and I need to show up, and I need to be a bit funny,” which is really difficult, being purposely funny. I needed to be a bit funny, so I put a lot of pressure on myself at that talk. But like I said, the second I got on stage, you do your first line or two, you take a breath and that’s it, you’re in. Then it’s like, I don’t want to get down. Just keep me there all day, I love it.

Eric: Well again, you did an amazing job, a very memorable talk. What we’re going to talk about in this podcast is, you’ve recently launched your own membership site. You’ve actually been helping clients of yours for over 15 years do the same thing, and so now it’s your turn to do it for yourself. So again, you’re stepping on stage, you’re getting in front of people with your own thing. Was there any nervousness in relating to this similar to getting up on stage and speaking and launching your own platform?

Teresa: Oh my God, honestly it was the most scariest thing ever. I had it in the wings, if you like for years, but I was terrified. I was so scared that the person that can help people do this, or the person that can help market themselves because obviously they market everybody else and all these great tools and tactics I had, what if I put myself out there and no one wanted it? What if no one turned up? What if they thought it was stupid?

I let fear hold me back, which is really interesting because normally when people want to do this sort of thing, the bit they get stuck with is the, how do I set it up? What do I do? How do I get people to buy into it? How do I market it? How do I manage it and all that sort of thing? That stuff I was cool with. I was like, “Yeah, I know how to do all that,” but honestly the fear just held me in one position for literally it must’ve been way over 12 months.

Then I basically drew a line in the sand and I said, it was really funny. I had said on a podcast it was coming and I’d put a date on it. The problem is I would bat so far ahead that in my head I was like, “That is miles away, that is fine.” Then of course, it was in that podcast and even though the podcast wasn’t going out for a few months, or a few weeks or whatever, I had said it so I had to just keep going with it. It felt a bit rushed and it felt a little bit uncomfortable for me, but I knew if I didn’t do it that way, I’d never have done it.

Eric: I like that. I often think over time we get to know our own tricks that we play on ourselves. I always compare it to bowling. I’m not very good at bowling, and I don’t do it very often but when I do go, I do the first couple bowls and I realize I’m trying to bowl straight, but sometimes it usually goes left or right. So, rather than trying to get better at going straight, I just step right or left based on my own issues.

Teresa: I love it. I love it.

Eric: So, you know, well, how do I get motivated? You didn’t necessarily think about this way, but it sounds like you know how you get motivated and you knew you were holding yourself back, so you were like, “Okay, I’m just going to throw myself in the deep end, and I know that that will help motivate me to get this stuff done.”

Teresa: For sure. I knew that it would take, with a membership in particular, I knew that it would just take doing it that first time and having to draw that line in the sand the first time to motivate me enough to then go forward and, do what I now need to do going forward. But without actually saying it, and I’m very, I like to set myself boundaries and tell myself. When I email my audience, I tell them that I’ll email them every Wednesday, and I won’t miss a Wednesday because I’ve promised to them. When I make that promise, I’m not going to break it, even when in my own head I’m going, “I really want to break it because I don’t want to do it.” I stick to it, so I set myself a boundary and I had to stick to it. I didn’t have a choice.

Eric: That’s great. The thing that I’d like to go into, I’m really interested to hear about this because as we’ve mentioned, you’ve helped many numbers of clients launch membership sites over the years, you know all the how-to’s, you know how to coach people through what they need to be coached through, so now it’s about yourself. I’d really like to break it down, your experience with this launch, your planning process before the launch, during the launch, after the launch and hear how you personally approached it having all this arsenal of tools to choose from and what you chose to go through. Before we dive into that, can you just tell a little bit about your membership site and who you serve there?

Teresa: Absolutely. My membership site is called Marketing That Converts, the academy. It’s basically aimed at small-ish business owners, so from solopreneur to basically if you haven’t got a marketing team. If you’re still at that point where you’re doing it yourself and you’re trying to manage it all yourself, and also marketers. I do attract a fair few social media people and that sort of thing.

The idea of the academy is almost like having your own social media and marketing and digital marketing expert on tap. Obviously when I’ve helped someone launch in a past, they’ve paid an awful lot of money for us to consult them step-by-step, for us to physically do stuff for them and to be honest, it’s a certain level of business that can afford to do that. What I was really conscious of is also there’s a lot of information out there but is overwhelming and isn’t straightforward, and is wrong quite frankly when it comes to social media and digital marketing.

I have done a lot of things with a lot of people so I have a lot of experience around that. I did a degree in marketing like 15 years ago and my entire world has been spent doing it. So, I wanted to provide a membership where they could come in and get some of me and get some of my teaching, so I can put full on lessons there. Rather than someone paying me an awful lot of money to sit in front of them and teach them how to do Facebook, or teach them how to do ads, or teach them how to come up with content, or a funnel or whatever, then I could put courses in there that they can follow themselves.

But then, we could add on the coaching element. We have coaching calls, we are Facebook Lives, we have a community, we have a Facebook group where those guys can go in and literally ask me anything. And you know what? I just love it. I can’t tell you how amazing is, because one of the things I love more than anything is, and I can’t help myself. I don’t know about you but when someone starts talking to you about their business, my brain wakes up and goes, “They could do this, they could that, they do the other.”

This is what I love about it. That’s the idea that on tap, they can ask a question and get a straight answer so they’re not sat there thinking, well, should I be doing a launch this way? Or, should I use Pinterest or Instagram? Or, should I do this? They can get on a coaching call, have a hot seat, ask me a question and I’ll answer it for them.

Eric: That’s great, and I think one of the things that your members definitely get from you, you have a natural excitement, which then can carry over and help motivate people. I was planning on covering this towards the end of this episode, but I’m feeling in my mind as people listen to this, they may be at different points. Some people may be getting excited like this is great, I’m totally on board. I already know I want to launch something and build something, so I’m just going to be taking notes. But, some people may be getting excited but at the same time, that excitement can translate into fear like, “Oh, what if I’m not ready?”

I want to take some of these objections first because something you mentioned to me in our call before the podcast, you’ve been a part of a lot of different online marketing groups. Some of the things that can go on there, it varies, and sometimes what can happen there is there’s a lot of talk about big numbers and this can really make people shy away. They may think, “Oh, well my list is not big enough. I don’t have enough of an audience.” What do you say to people who may have that concern that they can’t go big?

Teresa: Like I said, I am in lots of different communities myself where I have joined memberships, and I am part of different memberships and in all honesty, there are some out there that a massive, and I just feel completely lost in them. I feel like I can’t get the most of what I need from them. Maybe that’s a bit to do with me and my confidence in a larger group. I’m not saying that everybody feels like that, but for me that was one of the things.

Often, like you said when you’re in these groups, and I’m in groups where when they talk about a case study, they talk about millions of dollars, or they talk about a six-figure launch or whatever. When they talk about strategies, they also often talk about remarketing ads, or things that are much easier done when your list is bigger, or when your audience are bigger. They don’t often look at the where you get started because let’s be honest, these huge, amazing people who have got fantastic memberships and fantastic academies and courses online, they had to start somewhere.

Now of course, you’ve followed them and you’ve listened to their advice, and their advice is very much seem to be pitched to the kind of higher end whereas in all reality, most people are going to start small and you shouldn’t be worried about that, and you shouldn’t be concerned about it. I think if you’re sat there thinking my list isn’t very big, then obviously as a marketer, I would always encourage you to try and grow that list. However, if people know you for the thing you want to do a membership for, then that is almost good enough.

If you have been doing the thing that you are going to sell your membership, which hopefully that is the case because otherwise, you’d have to learn something brand new. But as long as people are aware that obviously you do that thing, then you don’t necessarily have to have a massive list. You can do it straight from your social media, you can do it from your interactions in other areas and things.

Also, why not start that membership and have five, or 10, or 20 people in that membership to begin with? I’m sure we’ll cover, there are some great advantages to having a small number to begin with. If you want to get going with it and you really want to try it, then you don’t have to wait till you’ve got a massive list. Granted if you have a huge list, huge following, it is going to help but I think for me, my list was modest. Although I’ve done lots of speaking and things, I still had a fairly modest list because I hadn’t been building it for that long. I am more than happy at the level I’ve opened, and the level I went for, and the numbers I have to be honest even though they weren’t six figure, millions of people in my membership.

Eric: This has been actually a recurring theme in a lot of people I’ve talked to on the podcast, that the benefits of starting “small,” it’s not just about starting small. It’s about giving yourself time to grow into your offering because the product, the content, the offering, what you’re putting in front of people is why people are going to pay you. If you don’t get that right and you don’t have time to practice, then even if you have large numbers, they’re not going to stick around.

Something I like that multiple people have said I mean. Andrew and Pete have said this, my last podcast guest said this, if one person gets benefit out of something you did, that’s great. That’s enough, because you build on that. You learn what worked, what didn’t with this person and then you keep going. I’m completely on board with this opinion that small organic is nothing to be concerned about. In fact, that’s how MemberMouse started too.

Teresa: The things that you can do with a smaller group and the learnings that you can take for them and for you are way bigger than you can manage in a larger group. Because when you’re large, there are things that you just actually can’t do because of the size of it. Whereas actually, being the size it is, I’ve been able to do things that I’d have never been able to do in a membership that had 200 members. So, for me, there’s lots of good reasons for it.

Eric: I agree. Now let’s dive into the actual nuts and bolts of your launch. Starting with this, like as I said, we’ll go into the before launch, during launch, after. So, let’s talk about promotion. How did you start getting the word out? How far in advance were you doing this?

Teresa: Probably a couple of months before it launched, I held myself accountable and put it on the podcast and put it in places to say I’m doing this. Actually, funnily enough, it was from a coaching call from a group I’m in that kind of not pushed me to take action, but positively pushed me to take action, so a good couple of months beforehand. However, it literally was, “I’m going to be doing something like an Academy, it’s coming.” That was pretty much as much as I said to begin with.

Then from that point on, I went into list building and did some list building, which I did through numerous different lead magnets, and obviously put them on my email list. I have a weekly email where I literally just give value. I tried to really add value and love them and give them stuff and help them. Things like if they emailed me, I would email them back. If they DM me, I DM them back. It might take time, and granted it might take me a few days or even a week sometimes to get back to people, however, I wanted to make sure they knew that I was there and I was present, and I cared about them and I was interested in them.

But basically, the way I launched it was through, following on from the lead magnets, was through a webinar, a masterclass which I held. I had three in one day. People told me, “You’ll never manage three in one day, it’s exhausting.” Oh my god, I love them. Honestly, I come off these calls and it’s like 10:30 at night UK time. My first one is at 8:00 am UK time, so I’ve done one first thing in the morning, one middle of the day, one night, sort of evening and I come off, and I’m still buzzing for about two hours afterwards because I get so much energy from them. I love them.

But basically, I went on and I did a webinar. My thing about the webinar is, I don’t know about you, I’ve watched a million webinars where they’ve given me nothing. Like, the title has been, this is going to be really good and I’ve sat for an hour and a half, and all I’ve done is be sold to for that hour and a half. I’m just frustrated by the end of it because I’m like, “Come on, you said you were going to give me this thing.”

I have a very clear structure when I do a webinar. Before the webinar, I work really hard to try and get them onto the webinar live. That is really important for me. Once they’ve signed up, there are a number of emails that go out that obviously are encouraging them to turn up live. If my webinar numbers were too small or not too small, but if they were small enough that I could do individual stuff, I would’ve contacted them if I knew them through … If I recognize some of their names and I’m connected with them through another platform, I’d have DMed them and gone, “Hey, really looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday,” or whatever it was.

The other thing I did is I actually, anybody that had DMed me anytime in the past, I don’t know, couple of weeks, I literally went back through and said, “Hey, I just wanted to make sure you’d seen this, thought it might interest you.” Again, trying to get them onto that webinar. Again, I couldn’t have done that through DMs if it hadn’t been smaller numbers. If my DMs were, I don’t know, the size of Jasmine Star’s and she’s probably getting, I don’t know, 50 to 100 a day or something, then you couldn’t physically do it. Whereas, I could because I was only getting say, two or three DMs a day. That worked well for me, and again I got people replying and saying, “Oh yeah, thank you Teresa. I did say it, haven’t signed up, just done it.” That was really helpful.

Then on the webinar itself, I’d break it down really clear. I do an introduction and, in the introduction, I say to them, the part where you say, “Are you in the right place?” You know, are you where you should be? Is this for you? I actually say to them, “If you get offended or upset by someone who gives you an hour’s free training and then offers you something at the end,” so I make it really clear to them that I am going to train them, however, I am going to offer you something at the end. I have got something I want to sell, but you can sit here for an hour, get that value and then go well on your merry way and not by thing.

That is absolutely fine, but then I make sure I give them good value. I literally cram in as much good content as I can and then obviously from there, at the end of that I then go, “Okay, if you want to take it further or you want the next steps, then obviously come and join me in the academy.” But for me, the live masterclass webinar even though the turn up rate is getting lower and people are not as in love with them as they used to, for me, I teach well on camera. I like speaking, so for me it suits me really, really well. It might not suit everybody doing it that way.

Eric: I think what’s also clear throughout this entire process you’re describing is, you really value the personal connection and developing the relationship.

Teresa: Yeah.

Eric: I just want to go back to a couple of things. I realize that this is going to be part of my job on this podcast, because you’re talking about the webinar. In my mind, I know you gave a whole one hour talk just about webinars at Atomicon. We’re trying to cover a lot of stuff here, so naturally you have a lot of stuff to give. My job is to sometimes pause and just clarify, maybe the lead magnet concept. Could you just briefly explain what that is and some of those strategies around lead magnets?

Teresa: Yeah, sur thing. One of the ways that you can get people on your email list, because getting them on social media is great. Obviously, I’m a huge advocate of social media. I love it, it’s very powerful, it’s great. But, they don’t belong to us. Social media is a tool that belongs to the platforms themselves, the people on them belong to the platforms. The best thing that you can always try and do is get them not off completely, you’re still going to engage them on social media, but get them onto your own email list.

The way I do this and works for me is through lead magnets. Now, my lead magnets tend to be downloadable type PDF things. But again, I’ve had a million of these that gave me no value whatsoever, so I cram them full of good value and I make them very clear, very succinct and quick wins. No one really wants a 50-page eBook necessarily, not when they’ve just heard about you because that’s a big investment for them to have to read that. What they want is for me to tell you very quickly how you should do something and what you should do. 

My three lead magnets that I had out were five things that they could do to build their email list that they might not be thinking about. These are some of the more unusual tactics that are would you use to build my email list. There was one around webinars, and there was one around building your sales page. That was actually 10 things that I always include on a sales page. In fact, I could’ve literally done a whole sales page from that one lead magnet. I put them out as fairly short, succinct, quick win PDFs that then I promote through social media, I promote through advertising on Facebook, I put everywhere.

I talk about them on the podcast, I always do very easy URLs. It’s always teresaheathwareing.com/ and whatever the lead magnets called. So, while they’re on the podcast even if they’re not writing it down, they hopefully might remember it. I link up to in the show notes and I try and put them everywhere. Those lead magnets lead into what the masterclass is about, because there’s no good in me putting a lead magnet out there that’s all about how to do PR, and then my stuff has nothing to do with PR. It really does need to be almost not the next step, but very much complementing the lead magnet.

Eric: So basically, you’ve got a number of these lead magnets to get people on your email list and all of these things are gearing up towards then leading towards the webinar masterclasses that you do prior to the launch.

Teresa: Yeah, because having them on your email list, you’re still going to put it all on your social media. It just gives you another touch point, and a touch point that might be slightly more effective based on how the algorithm works, and they might not see your social media post.

Eric: At this stage in the game, are you doing any sort of automation on your email list, auto-responders when they’re signing up, or is it all just newsletters?

Teresa: Yes, it’s automation. They have an onboarding sequence from their lead magnet, and then obviously we go into the weekly email newsletter, which again, this is a really … If I can just touch on this quickly. I was building my email list and I was doing nothing with them. Talk about taking my own good advice, I literally didn’t take my own advice. I decided to email my list and say, “Listen, I’ve been a fool.” I talk to them very honestly, because I want that personal connection.

I said, “I’ve been an absolute idiot. I’ve been collecting your like stamps and you’re on my list, and I’ve given you nothing. I haven’t emailed you, I’ve given you the thing you asked for but I’ve not been emailing you. Now I’m going to email you every Wednesday.” I actually wrote in the email that I’m going to add value, I’m going to give you stuff. I’m not going to be just selling to you every Wednesday, I am going to add value and I’m going to write the emails.

I did consider getting my copywriter or the girl who writes my show notes, my podcaster considered getting her to write them for me. I actually put my email, “But if you wanted to hear from her, you’d have signed up for her email list, not mine. I’m not promising you award-winning, I’m not promising you no typos, but I am promising you that I will be sat at my desk writing these emails with you in mind.” And the response I got was phenomenal. People emailed me back like, “Thank you so much. This is so refreshing, this is so …” Because it didn’t know … You’re in the same world as me. You know that you’ll be signed up to stuff, you’ll get emails from your favorite people and it sounds like a copywriter. It doesn’t sound like them, and I don’t like that. That’s not for me.

Eric: Which again, going back to our theme of small versus big. This is the real challenge of getting big is, how do you keep that personal connection and get big? Some people start with that, because all these tools have been created to assist with large numbers. Therefore, a lot of people who are large are promoting these tools, but then you bypass and skip this step of learning how to build the connection with your community and listen to the community, which ultimately, listening to the community is giving you the ammunition you need to actually grow your product in the direction that the market wants. It’s a weird world today.

Teresa: It is and I like I said, we’ve got all these cool things that we can use but like you said, it’s almost taken away from my actually doing the smallest stuff or having to make that bit of an effort. And don’t get me wrong, we try and build things in a way that we can scale them easier, but why not do some of those more personal things? Because, this is the only time you’re really going to be able to do that and that’s where you create those fans. That’s where you create people who love you, because you put that time and effort into them.

Eric: Right, and the amount of goodwill and promotion that somebody who truly is a fan of yours can’t be compared with in terms of marketing efforts. Jumping back to your webinars, so you did three live webinars in a single day. How did the results of that?

Teresa: The webinar show up rate was about 30% to 37% on people who signed up. That wasn’t too bad, I was fairly okay with that. It did differ depending on time of day, so that’s always really useful as well. The other thing about all this process is literally all the results you get at the end of it to then start tailoring and tweaking and that was the thing. But then from the conversion rate of attendees to sales was about 25%. My percentage of sales from a webinar is great, I’m really pleased at that percentage. It proves my theory to myself that if I can get people on a webinar, then I can do a better job of convincing them what the benefits are than necessarily just a sales page.

Therefore, that was really helpful to understand that, because now I need to focus on right, how do I get more people onto the webinar? Then that gives me something to aim for, and again, it draws that line in the sand. It basically goes, okay, this is what you got. It’s not to say that I’m always going to get that because it might’ve been that those people were waiting for this to open and therefore they were like, “Yes, definitely.” Whereas it might go down on the next one, or it might not be as much, it might be more, whatever, but at least it gives you a guide.

Eric: Now when you say you had a 25% conversion rate, the conversion was they were actually signing up for your membership site.

Teresa: Yes.

Eric: Okay. Your membership site at this point just to get the timeline in my mind correct, the website was already launched at the time of your webinars? It was launched the day that you did your webinars? Was that without the first day?

Teresa: Yes. They could literally sign up that day, yeah. From the webinar, obviously we then … So, we were in webinar mode and promoting people onto the webinar, then the minute that webinar hits, we’re then in obviously a sales mode where we’re focusing on sending people to the sales page. But obviously, the best way in which to do this and the best way to do it was through the webinar.

Eric: Do you have any favorite tools that you use to facilitate your webinar process?

Teresa: I just used Zoom. I actually quite like it. I think it’s pretty good, and obviously …. The one thing I would recommend with the webinar though is, I always have someone else on with me. I have one of my team, and the last webinar of the day because it was late and my poor team member had been on the other team, that is actually my husband. He actually helps in the business, but he was my assistant for that evening. The reason I have someone on is because it’s really hard to teach and read comments at the same time, because you get so distracted and I lose what I’m saying.

So, I tell them again, it’s managing expectations. I say it at the beginning, “I want you to ask questions as we go along, but I’m not looking at them. I’m going to answer them at the end,” which is another great way to keep them until the end. That’s helpful, but I just couldn’t do it as I go along because I would go off on tangents constantly. Then what was happening is, the chat is, obviously people are putting stuff in the chat. My assistant, or my husband in that case was then taking the comments out of the chat, telling me who it was, and then sending it me via a different way.

For instance, we either have Skype open or Slack open, or I had a text message. Then basically when I got to the end and I was ready to answer questions, I could literally go to that other thing, rather than trying to have to go back through all the comments and all the chat that was going on. I could literally go, “Okay, first question is from da, da, da, da,” and I could answer it. Just quickly that, for me is the best bit about the entire webinar. The same with the membership, it’s great that you can sit and watch me teach, but the value comes where you can say, “Teresa, you know you said do that thing, well, would that work for me in my business as this?”

Then I could go, “Actually, you’re right. I’d probably tweak it and do this,” or, “I’d probably do that.” That has got to be where the value comes, because then you get a direct answer about your business.

Eric: Right, and that’s why you choose to do three live webinars as opposed to one live webinar and two recordings.

Teresa: Exactly. You know, I have been asked that a few times and my assistant said to me a couple of times, “Should we evergreen this or should we automate it?” I know obviously, there are very many successful online courses and memberships that are evergreen and I’m not going to say never but for me, I just really liked that interaction. I like the fact that I go on and go, “Where are you from,” and then get all excited when there’s people from around the world sat there watching me. Yeah, I like that life.

Eric: You know, we’ve actually been doing that at MemberMouse. We do live office hours most Fridays and it’s been a tremendous learning experience and value just available for 30 minutes a week for people, or prospects, or current customers to ask questions. It makes a big impact and I don’t feel like it can truly be measured. There are certainly metrics that we have on it and we’re like okay, the sales process is longer, people are engaging us more before they buy and they do end up signing up,” which maybe they normally wouldn’t have if they didn’t have that opportunity to connect. And, people who are customers have a place where they can ask questions and if they’re frustrated, get the answers before making a decision to leave. There’s obviously tangible metrics, but there’s also intangible ones that you get from just being present and giving people that opportunity to connect with you.

Teresa: Exactly. I think just even being there live at that point and being like, “Look, here I am.” You can’t get more authentic and not vulnerable, but you know what I mean, kind of, this is me. I am sat here at the end of a screen. This isn’t scripted, this isn’t prepped. When i do webinars, I am very real like the same I’m on my podcast the same on stage, because that’s what they’re going to get from me so that’s what I need to show them. I much prefer the live thing.

I actually much prefer … If you said to me, “Can you do a prerecorded video or can you do a live one?” Give me live any day, which I know lots of people it scares them but when you’re doing something like that, if you mess up, people don’t mind so much. Whereas, actually if it’s prerecorded, they do expect it to be a little bit more polished and a bit more finished, so I really like the live stuff.

Eric: I like live too, and a lot of it’s because how do you know what to say if there’s no audience? In my mind it’s like, otherwise who are you talking to? You have to shotgun approach it whereas if there’s an audience who’s responding to you, you can tailor what you’re saying to them. So, the day of the launch of, the day of the webinars, it seems like there’s probably a lot going on this particular day or couple of days. What other things besides the webinar in terms of what you’re doing do you have to work with? For example, is your cart opening and closing? Do you have specific email communications planned out throughout that particular period of time?

Teresa: Yeah. Like I said, the aim before the webinar is just getting people on the live webinar, then the minute the webinar has happened, we have a process that we do immediately after each webinar. The minute a webinar finishes, we get the list off of Zoom as to who attended. Will then go and match that against who signed up and we send out two emails. We send out one email to the people that signed up but didn’t attend, one email to the people who signed up and did attend.

I want to make it very personal at that point, because the other thing you’ve got to think about is obviously now we’re trying to promote the membership. But the people who came to your webinar, they know about the membership, they know that it’s obviously on sale because they’ve just watched you talk about it. The people who didn’t attend the webinar, they don’t even know that that’s an option yet. So, your aim, or my aim that I feel are the people who signed up but didn’t attend. My aim is to get them to watch the replay, and then to introduce the fact that I’ve got something on sale.

The other thing I do is, I limit the replay. I only give them a replay available for maybe, well in fact, this time I did it for as long as the cart was open, which was a week. I gave them a week to watch the replay, because I want to put that sense of urgency if I’m closing the car, I want them to not take forever to watch the replay. Like I said, I split the two different types of emails and then anybody else on my list which didn’t sign up for the webinar, I will send them more gentle sales emails.

I only send a couple because I obviously want to sell my membership, but I also don’t want to annoy my list. I don’t want to irritate them because they just might not be ready at this point so if I go all out, full on hardcore selling, people are going to get irritated and then I get irritated by it. That’s where some of those more icky type sales tactics come in that I’m not so keen on. By doing a couple of emails and very honestly going, “Hey, I just want to let you know one more time because I really don’t want you to miss out, it is going to show on this day. But if you got any questions, let me know,” type thing. It was more like those sorts of emails.

Like I said, after each webinar we did that process in terms of who was on and who wasn’t on. Then we do things like we have a loaded posts ready to go out on social media, we have an advert ready to go up on social media, which we’re doing through a retargeting, so you can still do that with a fairly small list. It’s better with a bigger list, but you can still do it. People who had been on the webinar or on my list, we’d send them an ad as well through Facebook, just because again, it’s just another touch point. It’s another way to go, “In case you didn’t see that, here it is over here.” We have there’s other things ready in the pipeline ready to go because like you said, you’re full of it on that first day, so you want to make sure everything’s good and ready to go then.

Eric: Right. Now, you were talking about opening and closing the cart. You are literally only accepting members for your membership site in that one-week period of time?

Teresa: Yes. Now, this isn’t necessarily what I will do forever. The reason and again, if you’re literally just starting, this is my thought process behind it. I hadn’t done the membership before. Obviously, I knew what they’re about, I knew what I was going to put in there, I knew how I thought it was going to go but in all honesty, I didn’t know. Because until you get in there, you don’t know A, who’s come into the membership, what they’re expecting to get from you, what you’re going to do for them, what’s going to work, what’s not going to work. Also, you’re testing everything because as much testing you can do beforehand, it’s very different when suddenly it’s live and people are going in.

For me, I didn’t want to be trying to sell it the same time as I was trying to love the people in the membership. I made a decision and I was very honest about that on all my communication about the membership. I said, “I am closing the cart and the reason I’m doing this is because I want to pay attention to the people in the membership when that week’s over. I very honestly said to the people in the membership I was present, but not as present as I was once that cart closed. Now, when the cart reopens at the end of September, I might leave it open. I’m yet to decide that, but I really loved the fact of I can concentrate on the members now. I don’t have to be thinking about selling, and promoting and that sort of thing.

Eric: I imagine that has positive impacts on retention and engagement, just that you’re making a conscious decision to close the doors and be like, “Okay look, everybody who’s here, this is who I’m working with.”

Teresa: Yeah, absolutely. That honesty around saying I am going to close the doors so they’re shut, that’s it. Also, the fact that I want to spend that time with them and I want to focus on them in the group, and I want to give them the love that … Because this is a big thing, they’re trusting me. What really surprised me was that I had a couple of, well, more than a couple, quite a few annual signups because I gave a monthly cost and an annual cost. Now, for someone to immediately go, “Here’s a whole year,” I was like, “Wow, that is big trust and thank you so much for that.” I wanted them to know that them taking a risk and a chance on me by putting their money on something they didn’t know what it was and there’s no one else in that to say this is good, I wanted to thank them for that by giving them that time.

Eric: The other good about small is it keeps us as the person who’s selling conscious of the fact that when people are giving us money, the money is important to both us and them, but it’s not the most important thing. To them, the most important thing usually is, “Hey, I’m giving you money, but really I’m doing this because there’s some goal or thing that I’m trying to accomplish that I can’t do on my own, and hopefully you can help me with it.” That’s the thing they want to accomplish. Sure, they can stay for three months and end up canceling because something wasn’t to their liking, but that would be a loss greater than just the amount of money they paid. That would be a loss of the dream that, “Oh, I can actually accomplish this.” So again, another vote in favor of having a situation where you can really pay attention and get to know each individual person’s position and how you can help.

Teresa: Absolutely and you know, it’s almost like they are as invested in you as you are in them. I have had a cancellation strangely enough within these first few weeks and she came back to me and said … She emailed me for one. She didn’t just straight off cancel. She emailed me and said, “Listen Teresa, this isn’t the right time for me. I thought it was, but it’s not. I can’t give the time to this, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel.” I went back to her, again, personally …

I’ve got team members and they do certain things, but I wanted to get back to her and I said, “No worries at all, I totally understand.” Because again, I obviously want to keep them but I don’t want to force them into something. If they don’t want to be in there, they don’t want to be in there. I said, “From a learning point of view, from the academy and a personal learning point of view, can you tell me why? I want you to be as honest as possible.” She came back and blessed us.

She was like, “I trust you implicitly. I know you’re good at what you do. I love your stuff, it just isn’t right for me right now, but I’ll be back.” I was like, “Thank you very much, that’s lovely.” Here you go type thing, and canceled her membership. She had obviously a bit of time left because she had joined for a month but for me, that is a really positive experience because it’s not her time right now, however, it might be in a couple months’ time. Or, she might say to someone, “Do you know what? You really want to go and do this membership because it was awesome, it just wasn’t right for me at that point.” Like I said, for me that was a very positive experience, even though she left.

Eric: Everything we’ve covered up to this point has pretty much been up to and including the launch and even though we’ve only grazed the tip of the iceberg, it’s a lot, a lot of stuff to do. With that said, still, once your launch is done, well now in a sense, the real work begins. So, how have things been and what have you been focusing on since the doors closed and you’re actually running the membership?

Teresa: You’re right. I think like you said, there’s so much that goes into the launch but actually once the launch is done, you’ve got it then do the membership. I think the first thing that’s interesting is, even though I told myself forever and a day this is what I wanted, you don’t know until you start doing it. You don’t know how you’re going to feel when you’ve got to do a coaching call at eight o’clock at night because it fits in with the American audience or when you’ve got to create more content and that sort of thing.

That for me again, is the first test that I had to see like, I think this is what I want, but is it? I’m very glad to say, it is exactly what I want and I think for me that very first coaching call I did again, I came off and I was literally, I could do that all day, every single day of the week and not get bored, which made me very confident and happy that I’d made the right decision. But what I did was, my aim is very much about adding value and pleasing people. So, I immediately gave them all more coaching calls.

When I sold the membership, I said it was a coaching call once a month, but actually I’ve been doing them every two weeks because I wanted to get to know them, and I wanted them to get to know me. I wanted to do some really good quick things, and I knew that’s where the value would be. I’ve also thrown in more content than I would normally because again, my plan is once a month I’ll put a training in there and it’s going to be all around different marketing things.

I split it up into sections which follow the theme of the webinar. I have what I call the Marketing that Converts Method. It comprises of four sections, get seen, get emails, get sales and get fans. It basically tells you how to take someone from not really knowing who you are, to then seeing your stuff, to signing up to your newsletter or whatever, then convert them to sell, then convert them into a fan so that they start promoting you. I put content in each of those sections so they had some things get started with and like I said, I’ve just been spending a lot of time loving them.

The other thing I did, a couple of little things, which again I could only do because of the size of it is, I hand wrote cards to all of them. I will do this again, even if we have more people join. I’m spoiling the surprise if anybody does join, but the point was I went and looked at them and some people I vaguely knew, or I had met or had seen me speak, or were on my email list and some people I didn’t really know much about. So, I went and … Well, I’d already asked them to introduce themselves and their group and I went and looked at their businesses.

I went and looked at what they did and I tried to write something personal in every single one. And like I said, I wrote everyone. When you start a membership with 30-odd members, it doesn’t sound like a lot but I can tell you, it takes time and again, the response from that was amazing.

The other thing I’ve done since starting the membership, which is going to pay dividends going forward is my … One of my team members and I sat here the other day and we literally went through every single member and she almost did a mini interview on me about who they were. I answered questions like, do they have children? Where do they live? How did they know me? Where did they come from? Did they go on the webinar? Didn’t they go on the webinar. I tried to profile these people because again, before you start this process, you think you know who you’re attracting and you think you know who you want in there.

However, let’s see, let’s literally go, this person is a social media manager, she has a small freelance agency, she has children, she’s trying to manage their, she’s doing this. This guy has a product, this guy has a membership, this person’s just launched an online course. It’s basically literally going, “Okay, that’s who you are.” But, the other thing that it’s helped with when people come on the call and I go, “Hi whoever, Bridget. How did the membership go,” or, “How is your whatever?” Again, that value for me is like … If someone remembers details about me, it’s like you care, you care enough to remember. I think stuff like that is super important.

Eric: And like you said, I’m sure it’s going to pay major dividends. When you were talking about all this, it reminded me of back to Atomicon, a big theme of that. Actually, I think it seemed like a lot of their messaging of both Andrew and Pete and guests, was they seemed to be targeting people who were trading time for money. A lot of people in the audience were people who are consultants and people who were doing these one on one things, and there’s an obvious scaling issue with a business like that. We touched on how you’ve been doing the consultation thing for a long time. Now that you’re getting a taste of the membership thing and feeling it out, do you feel like there will come a day where you’ll just switch over for a large portion of your time doing your membership as opposed to one on one?

Teresa: Honestly Eric, I can’t wait for the day. I’m serious, I am counting down the days. The point in which I get a tipping point to where … I have an agency, and so we’ve done a lot of stuff for a lot of people in terms of we’ve done their social media, we’ve done their email lists, we’ve done lead magnets, we’ve set up funnels, we’ve set up memberships, we’ve helped them with online courses. Not only do I consult, but we can physically do these things as well for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love working with clients. I love the experience that has given me because without that, I wouldn’t be where I am today. However, I worked in marketing for like I said, I’ve been in marketing now 15 years. For 10 years of that I was working in a job, and I left my job because I wanted that freedom of being on my own and do my own thing, and managing myself and being able to go to a conference if I thought it was worth going to or take a day off I wanted to.

What happens when you have clients is, you basically just have more bosses. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a wonderful business and I’ve loved the clients, but it wasn’t necessarily what I want to do going forward. What I want to do going forward is the membership. Now I have very distinct goals in terms of, this is what I want to do. I’ve got the speaking, that’s a big thing and I love doing that. I love the podcasting stuff. I love the membership and there are other things where I’m going to do a 90-day program that will be a bit more high touch so that if they felt that they needed more than just a group coaching call in terms of a larger group.

When the membership maybe does get to a point where it’s getting bigger because at the moment, the value of the guys getting in the membership is huge. They joined on $29. That was where I set it and I said, “It’s never going to be this low again. I’m doing this because you guys are coming in brand new. You’re going to help me test a few things and we’re going to work a few things out while you’re in there.” So, I said, “This is the price it’s coming in at, it’s never going to be that low.”

But, the membership obviously is very, very good value. If they do want that higher touch, then maybe a 90-day program. Maybe they’ll still be a little bit of consulting where I just tell people what to do and we don’t physically do it, but this is my long-term aim, goal that this is what I’m going to do. I mean, I look at the membership guys and I just think, “Oh, wow! How amazing.” That’s where I want to get to. That’s where I want to get to.

Eric: Really it just is a natural progression to because with all the experience you have, it’s just more valuable to people in general that you can spread it around and the fact that the membership, it basically has a … It’s the situation where normally your fees would be a certain amount and only a certain amount of people could do it. But now that you are getting a crowdsourcing impact, it means more people can get access to you, which is great.

The other benefit is that because you’re so honest and open about what you expect of yourself and what you have to offer and also what people should expect to do if they come to you, there’s more accountability on their end, they have to expect that there’s going to be work to do. Those are the kind of people that we want to work with. We don’t want to work with people who are just paying the money because they hope that something will happen and somebody will do it for them.

Teresa: No, absolutely. That’s the other thing that was interesting, because I’d had the agency for ages and I’d obviously built up a reputation and a database from that. But the thing was, people on that list, they didn’t want my academy because they wanted people to do it for them. Then I had to almost start from scratch when I decided to go for the academy side and do the membership because of the fact that I knew I needed to reach different people who granted they might want someone to do it, but they’re not necessarily in the financial position at that point.

Also, some stuff I wouldn’t recommend that you get people to do. I think in the early days, it’s good that you do all this stuff yourself because when you do grow, you know what you’re expecting, you know what you like, you know what you expect? You see clients all the time where we used to do Facebook Ads or they’d have someone do this for you and then you’d go, “Can I just have a quick look at what they’ve done?” You’d look and you go, “You know that that’s not great,” or, “You know that that isn’t the case,” because they haven’t had the experience of it. 

So, for me, to help them get the experience, to give them an idea of what’s good or bad or right or wrong. And again, super honest about these things. I try and say to them, “If it’s my money, would I spend it?” My husband and I sit there constantly talking about, is it good value? Am I offering good stuff? Am I doing this? And he’s like, “Oh my god, it’s like the best value in the world.” Right now, what the membership is out because we’re building, the value these guys are getting is phenomenal and that is absolutely fine by me. It’s my thank you to them for coming in the early days, and the same when we open again. They’re going to get more value to begin with because we’re in the early days and I can do that.

Eric: We talked a little bit about in the beginning how you’re a part of different groups online, different marketing groups. What has been your experience with those and how does that influence how you’re working on yours?

Teresa: I think my experience has been a few different things. The first one is from a marketing point of view, I’ve been in a membership before now and when they’ve gone into sales mode for the membership, when they’ve opened the car again, they’ve been advertising to me to join and I’m in the membership. That was really frustrating because it’s like … The thing is, this person is huge and the thing is, they’re probably not doing their own ads and they’re probably not managing their own email list.

But the point is, whoever is managing their email list is not doing a very good job of cleaning out who is already a member. So, obviously when I do any promotions on anything, if you’re a member, you don’t get those emails because, why should you? You’re a member. Things like that really bothered me. It was like, if you do want to do things at scale which they were doing, get the little things right. Get that right, because that makes me feel like you don’t even know I’m a member, and that’s not on, and it’s a real small fix.

Eric: Right. It’s like if you got sold Girl Scout cookies one day and the next day they show up and be like, “Hey,” give you the same sales pitch and you’re like, “I just bought some cookie yesterday.”

Teresa: Yeah, “Did you not see me yesterday?” Exactly, and it’s like, “Oh, I’m really valued then. Thank you very much,” Because obviously you value me being there.

Eric: The Girl Scout cookies actually isn’t a good example, because you might want another box the next day.

Teresa: You might. Now I have to say, we don’t have that sort of thing over here so I’ve never even tried that. I come over to the states a lot. Maybe on my next trip, that is what I need to hunt down and see what they’re like.

Eric: There might be better things for you to hunt down.

Teresa: Oh, okay. I’ll take that as red and maybe go for something else. The other group I’m in and the other experience I’ve had is when I’m in a group that’s got a Facebook page as part of that membership, as part of that group and it’s so big that one, you can’t keep up and your notifications are literally every 30 seconds. I know what’s lovely about the academy at the moment is that I’m having so many good, positive, nice interactions. People are feeling they can come and ask questions, I’m answering them.

I’ve got two team members in there with me who are specialists in different things. Again, when I feel that one of them are better placed, so if it’s a tech thing or if it’s a … I’ve got team member whose amazing at content creation and uses video systems and is great at all that. If it’s important and I think they can answer it better, I’ll get them to do it. The interaction is great but my worry is, I don’t want to irritate people by those notifications going up all the time. When the group gets massive, that’s the first thing.

The second thing is that you get lost in the group. I just like I said, I don’t feel that I can shout out and stand out enough. Actually, what’s interesting is, I went from one level of membership up to a different level of membership that was much more expensive so that I could then get a bit more, also that I was in a much smaller group. Because in this one group now for this one membership, you’re talking like 2,000, 3000 people. I didn’t even know how you get seen, and this might be a strategy that I need to work out and I need to get there. I’m sure there are ways.

Actually, I’m not talking about this example. I’m talking about, isn’t the membership guys because actually, they do it amazingly well. How they manage to have their membership at the size it is with all that high touch is the blueprint I’m trying to lead to because actually, they do it amazingly well, whereas they are in the minority. Lots of memberships that get to such a big size, unless you are a very loud, very active member of the group, you literally can be lost and I don’t want members to feel like that.

Now, I know there’s members that are voyeur and just want to look and don’t want to get involved. That’s absolutely fine, but I don’t want them to feel like it’s not because they’re not seen. The other thing is often in those groups when they get that big, the person who’s in membership you signed into isn’t present. They’re not answering their questions and they’re not necessarily active in there. Again, that for me feels a little bit disingenuous. I keep talking about my membership guys, but they’re a good example. When I put a question into a forum, Kelly comes and answers it. Amazing, because I’m buying into your membership because you’re the expert.

Don’t get me wrong, likes I said, I’ve got two team members in there and someone just put in a question about ActiveCampaign. I don’t use ActiveCampaign, my assistant does so she’s obviously much better placed to answer that question because it’s very specific. But any marketing question, anything that I can answer on, even if I just go, “Yeah, great answer by so and so,” I would do that to. I’m active and I’m visible on every single post, which is super important for me at the moment.

Eric: What I hear a lot from your experience, you’re applying to your membership. In turn, I think what you’re pitching and promoting to your members is that personalization and personal communication is really what’s of value. I 100% agree with that because the world we live in today, there’s just so much choice, so many options for everything. You got to go buy some toothpaste and you got to sit there for five minutes and consult Google and be like you know, all this stuff.

Eric: If you can create that personal connection, not only is that going to be better for you as the person who’s running it, not only is it going to be a better experience for the customer, but that ultimately leads to organic growth, because we all want that. We all want to connect with somebody when we’re doing something. I think that’s a huge thing to be of focus and to put a priority on.

Teresa: Do you know what? There are a million me’s out in that world. The social media and digital marketing space is a busy one. It’s very competitive and there are some very smart, clever people who’ve got big presences. The only thing that’s ever going to differ from them to me is me, that’s it, the person. So, if you’re not doing that personal stuff, how are they ever going to get to know you and like you and want to work with you? For me, that’s why that connection is so important and genuine.

I think that’s the other thing, it needs to be genuine. It’s really interesting again, being in this space. There’s one guy that I’m part of his membership and we found out on one of our meetups that he doesn’t respond to his own social media, someone else responds on his behalf. It was a little bit like, “Oh, okay,” because you think you’ll have … When you’re in someone’s DMs on Instagram, you think you’re actually speaking to them whereas you take someone like Jasmine Star, she genuinely is responding to all of her DMs. If she responds, it’s her.

Again, I wanted people to know that that was the case with me. That if you email me, I will email you back, if you DM me, I will DM you back. Actually, one thing I did do between the webinar and while I was trying to sell the membership was, I actually sent voice notes to people because one of the things I love to do obviously is talk way more than I write. I don’t like writing, talking I can do with ease. So, because Instagram has got that voice note thing on DM, I love it.

I do use it a lot anyway, but I literally would send voice notes going, “Hey, thanks so much for coming to the webinar. Obviously, if you’ve got any questions about the membership, if you need to know anything, please disconnect show. I just wanted to touch base and make sure you saw everything.” And again, generally because I was so … I wasn’t trying to be like, you want to join because it’s this and it’s amazing. I was just being like, “Just want to make sure you saw it and I don’t want to miss out on that thing,” or whatever. Because I was being very genuine about it, I got very genuine responses back, which was lovely and all very positive.

Eric: I’m sure some people have made those they’re recording for their alarm clocks and stuff.

Teresa: Do you know what? This is brilliant. We were in Nashville and my very good friend Mary Hyatt who is a coach, we went and spent some time with her and her friend Bentley was there. They kept laughing because every time I’d wake up in the morning and see them I’d be like, “Morning Mary,” and she’d be like, “Oh my god,” and Bentley’s, “Can you just record?” So, I’d be like, “Hello Bentley,” and he’s like, “Record it.” He’s like, “This is the best day ever.” So, he’s like, that’s going to be his ringtone or something. It’s like, “Someone’s ringing you Bentley.” He just thought it was amazing. Maybe as a freebie that’s what I should give away, not a lead magnet. I’ll give you a personalized wakeup call in the morning or something.

Eric: Yeah, that’s a good idea. The thing is, and I think scientifically you’re doing this naturally but scientifically, there’s so much more communicated in tonality of voice than a written message and the thing is your voice … Ever since I’ve met you, it’s very clear that the power of your personality comes through your voice. The more that you can use it, you’re doing it naturally but the more that you use it is to your benefit, because so much is communicated in that there’s the compassion, the understanding the motivation, the excitement, the enthusiasm. You can’t type that into Instagram. What you just said that you said to somebody, you were like, “None of those words were …” It was just like, “Oh, you’re good and everything’s good.” If you type that, it means very little.

Teresa: Yeah, exactly and I think … One thing I’m trying to do with my emails is, I encourage them obviously to listen to the podcast and lots of people come from the podcast to my email list. But, I’m trying to write it as I speak. Sometimes someone will proofread it for me and be like, “Well, does this make sense?” Because, I am literally writing it as I speak and some things don’t make sense written down. But, I want people to hear my voice. I want them to read it and literally be like, “Oh yeah, I can imagine her saying that.” Because for me, trying to get that across in text is really, really important.

Do you know the other thing I do? Actually, I’ve got a freebie out at the moment which I’m happy to share with your audience but on this freebie, obviously you’ve got the landing page, which is just a standard landing page to get the freebie. When they get to the thank you page, I’ve recorded a video and the video says, hi if we haven’t met, this is who I am, this is what I do. This is what’s included in any freebie, it’s really good. Can’t wait to see what you do.

But again, because I appreciate the … I did my Myers–Briggs, I think it’s Myers–Briggs and it said that I am better face to face than I am through a sales page. I use that, I use those opportunities to connect to someone, and when a face is saying to you, “Come and find me and say hello,” or, “Come and DM me,” or, “Come and do this,” or, “Can’t wait to see what you think,” it’s because I mean it. It just has that whole much more gravitas to it than necessarily if I just chucked on a page, thanks, come and say hi. That’s why I try and use that as much as I can.

Eric: It’s again about going with your strengths and understanding who you are, which you really can’t do unless you put yourself out there in the first-place learning from all those years, doing client work and now testing the waters with the membership site. We were talking a little bit ago, you mentioned there’s a million me’s out there. It’s true and in this time, it’s true of everything.

When I was considering doing this podcast I was like, “Well, what do I have to say that nobody else has to say?” I’m a very logical person so I came to the conclusion that well, it’s already out there, but I was listening to a Pat Flynn episode and his guests who was on, she had the same issue about starting her podcast and somebody said to her, “Well you know, there’s no new messages, just new messengers.”

Teresa: Yeah, that’s good isn’t it?

Eric: It’s important, and to me that gave me permission to do it because it’s like yeah, there’s … I can be a messenger of a kind and I will won’t be able to reach the world, but there will be a small group of people who are interested in hearing what I have to say about something that so many other people have said, but I say it in a unique way because of who I am.

Teresa: Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, in both of our worlds there’s nothing that you can’t find on the internet. Honestly, just Google it, there are millions and millions of things. However, if you want it from my take of my experience or you like listening to me, then great, come and get it from me. If I’m not your cup of tea, if I’m not for you, then that’s cool as well. Don’t get me wrong, it’d be nice if I was but if I’m not, then that’s okay, there are lots of other people out there who can do that for you.

I used to really worry about this and I used to really freak out about it and think, “What was this person doing? What’s that person doing?” Then I just got to a point where it’s like, if they want to come and do work with me, they’re going to, if they’re not, they’re not going to be, so me worrying about it is not going to change that.

Eric: You not worrying about it means it gives you permission to just be who you are and trust that as a result of that, you’ll end up with the people who truly authentically want to listen to you.

Teresa: Don’t get me wrong, obviously being in marketing and helping people sell stuff, I know the tools and tactics and I do use some of the tools and tactics, but it doesn’t make me desperate for it. I’m not desperately trying to send an email every minute of every day. I saw something the other day where someone opened the car and it was meant to shut and they were like, “Oh, we had a computer error, so it’s staying open.” It’s like, whatever. Honestly, I’m like, “What a …” It really frustrates me because it’s like, don’t lie. Because if you lie once people are going to go, “Hang on a minute,” whereas if I got to the end of my car and I didn’t have the lovely 32 people that are in there currently, I’d have still shut it, whether I had five, or two, or one.

In fact, my one of my members came on a coaching call the other day. She opened her membership and got one member and was like, “What am I going to do?” I’m like, “You’re going to love that member, and then you’re going to go to every other person that was on the webinar, and you’re going to personally ask them if you can find out what they thought of your webinar, because you said your interaction was great. What they thought of the webinar, and why they didn’t sign up. You’re going to try and have a personal one-to-one conversation.”

Because your numbers are small, you can do that. And offer them something in return, because if you offer them, I don’t know, some free coaching or something, then they might want to do that for you and help you out. But, you’re in a position now where you can chop, and change and move, and better tailor your offering because you’ve only got one member. Instead of sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my god, this is a failure. I’m going to throw it in the bin,’ Think, ‘Okay, let’s really understand what happened here.'”

Eric: There should be t-shirts like 32 members and proud, because it’s a problem today with numbers. Everybody’s trying to get a certain number of likes, a certain number of followers, and so you “see these small numbers,” and it’s small only relatively speaking to something else, which is the problem. Because if you think about it, and Andrew and Pete are the ones who I heard this from. If you think about it, think about 32 people in a room and you’re standing in front of them. That’s not your everyday situation, right? It is still meaningful, but it’s just like we’re so … everything has become so digital, data oriented that there’s this stigma associated with, oh, I should be ashamed I only have this many people who like me, or are friends with me, or whatever.

Teresa: And looking at how they find you. There are some people who joined my membership who like I said, joined up for a year, which just blows me away the trust that they put in me, and then also, there are some people who joined who have never met me, never seen me, aren’t on my email list, but they’ve seen me on InstaStory, or they’ve seen me through LinkedIn, or whatever it might be. Or they saw me speak on stage once, and from then they made that decision. Honestly, I celebrate every single tiny teeny win because it’s like, do you know what? You’re amazing, thank you, thank you for being here. Like I said, it’s just loving them because I think the problem is if you sit there and go, “I only got 32 members,” what are those 32 members going to think? [crosstalk 01:06:19]. Exactly, so you should love them.

Eric: Well, thank you so much Teresa for coming on. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you. As we wrap up here, can you just tell our listeners some of those resources that you mentioned, your your website, some of the places that people can find you, your podcast, all that?

Teresa: Absolutely. Basically if you search Teresa Heath-Wareing on any social media platform, you’re going to find me. The advantage of having a very long and unusual name. The podcast is called Marketing That Converts. It’s all connected to the academy, and obviously if you go to teresaheathwareing.com, then you can find everything there. Also, if it’s okay, I’ll share that resource that I’ve just put out. Obviously, if you want to get the results and unsubscribe, feel free. I don’t want to feel like I’m trying to force you down my lead magnet funnel, but I have 10 ways, 10 things that you can do over 10 days that are going to help you grow and give you a few different things and confidence around social media and some of the digital marketing skills. If you go to teresaheathwareing.com/10 as in the number ways, you’ll be able to get that there.

Eric: Awesome, and we’ll include those links in the show notes so people can find them and easily access them. Again, really appreciate you coming on Teresa, it’s been a pleasure.

Teresa: Thank you Eric, it’s been lovely.

OUTRO:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Subscription Entrepreneur Podcast. I hope you’re walking away feeling excited about applying some of these tools in your projects.

I’d also like to express my gratitude to Teresa for coming on the show and sharing openly about what really went into launching her own membership site.

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