Ep152 What's MRR and What You Need for a Kick Arse Membership

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Hi Friends, welcome to episode 152 of Her Empire Builder Podcast and welcome to December, sleigh bells ring. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited for Christmas I just love it. I love the whole season of joy and relaxation. And just, I love Christmas, I love everything about it. And so Happy Christmas to you, I know that coming into December, people can be two types, people can either be like, You know what, it's time to start winding down for the year, let's start relaxing. Or there's the other type of the type that I used to be. Which was, oh my gosh, we're going into the silly season, so much to do so little time. Go, go go. And if you are that type, I employ you to go through that beautiful to do list that you have, and work out what actually has to be done this year? And what are the things that you're thinking have to be done, but they're really just you want them done? And you can kind of pack them on a separate list. And if you do them you do them? If you don't you don’t because I think that, you know, this year has been a year for everybody, no matter what kind of life you've been living. Every single human that I have spoke to is like, well, Tina, it's been a year. And so we need the rest, we need the recuperation because I do believe that 2022 is going to be like the opposite. I think 2022 is going to be the most incredible, amazing experience where everyone is liberated and back out in the world and ready to go. And so sick of being like held down both both physically and locked down in our homes, but also by the fear and uncertainty as well. So I am so here for all of that. But I want you to have a nice rest so that you can come back really recharged and take advantage of that whole opportunity. So for me, I've just had a week off. So I'm only recording this a few days before it's supposed to go live. Usually I'm about six weeks ahead on my podcast. But when Cohen my son had his accident in October, it kind of like everything caught up, everything caught up to me. So everything like all the social media that I've done in advance, or the podcast recordings that I've done in advance everything that was kind of done, all caught my tail. And so I mean, that's the good part of planning ahead is, you know, you've got a little bit of space and grace for things to be able to catch you if something unforeseen, like that happens. But the bummer is, oh, I'm back to like podcasts. Oh, it's a week already. Let's go. So my goal is because I'm having a beautiful break this year, I am taking off all of January, and the last week of December. So I'll have five and a half weeks off. And that is the first time I have done that in this business. And so it's quite a big, quite a big move to be able to do that. But it means that there is a huge amount of preparation. beforehand. Every newsletter will be written every social media post designed and written every podcast episode, every lead magnet going out every course. Intro, all of it will all be done ready to go. So you know, there's a lot to do, and I can't wait, I can't wait for the break. So yeah, so that's actually I've just been rambling because I was like, Hey, I'm back from a week off. Feels great. But today, what I want to talk to you about is monthly recurring revenue. So if you you know, I'm assuming you're listening to Her Empire Builder, you're in the online course world or you want to be and if you have been in that for a while, you've probably seen MRR going around and wondering what is this? And so today I'm going to be talking about how awesome MRR is in your business, how to know if it's right for you, and all of the elements that you need to take into consideration if you want to run a kick ass membership in 2022. So let's get into it. 

Hello, I'm Tina Tower and you're listening to Her Empire Builder. For my first decade of business I thought grinding and hustling and working harder than everyone else was my path to success. It was pretty successful by a lot of measures, but it led to burnout and adrenal fatigue. Then when I travelled around the world on my family gap year, I discovered the simplicity and the reach of online business. And I completely fell in love. You have so much knowledge and expertise that's within and I want to help you to package that so You can also help to lift others up. So, how do you build a thriving million dollar business based on everything that's in your mind, this is Her Empire Builder, the podcast.

If you have ever been, well, I mean, I'm going to say if you've been in business, you probably know what it feels like to have feast or famine in your business, to have that feeling of you've made it you've done really well. And then when's the next a lot going to come in, though. So it's kind of like you do a launch, you get this influx, but then you can't launch again, for at least three months. If you're live launching, and you're following something like my limited launch formula, where you have an eight day live launch, like you're really out there, you are going for it, you are saturating the market, you're reminding all your customers, here I am, this is what I do. This is why you should work for me with me. And then once you close that, though, you can't do it again for another three months. And so what happens is you get this feast or famine, you get this massive influx, and then you've got to wait until you get the chance to do it again, unless you've got little evergreen courses going well, in between. It's kind of like this constant customer acquisition. And that is where memberships come into play. So MRR is simply monthly recurring revenue from your ongoing membership subscription customers. And this can be done in a lot of different ways. It could be a year long mastermind, or it could be like a perpetual ongoing membership, it can be super involved, or it can be something more low cost high volume. And so today, what I want to talk to you about is why you need to have recurring revenue in your business, the metrics of membership health and how you know that it's, you know, going well and what you need to tweak and change. And then, I’m going to be talking about is it right for you. Because, look, it's not right for everyone. I love it. I think it's part of the ecosystem in your ascension model for a really healthy online digital business. But in saying that I've got some clients that memberships would be terrible for because they like to go away for three months at a time and different things like that. So I'm going to be talking about that. And then I'm going to be talking about how to craft your offer for your membership. So four things we're going to cover in today's episode. And you can go if you want a summary of this, if you're listening in the car or something like that, and you're going oh my gosh, so many points. Because I know some of my episodes, I'll talk about mindset things, and they're nice to listen to and kind of get you inspired and listen to different things. And some of them are more things like hang on, somebody hand me a notebook. So that's you for today. Go to tina tower.com/152 for episode 152 later, and you can get all the show notes. And if you're a loyal podcast listener, you can do that with any of my episodes, too. For each of our episodes, we always do a blog post of a summary that goes with it. And also the full show transcription, and all of the the main points and resources in there too. So if you ever listening on the go, and you think I want to come back and grab that piece of information, we've made it super easy for you to find. 

Okay, so why have a monthly recurring revenue, the biggest thing is to have the predictable business model. So to avoid that feast or famine, because it's really hard for things like mortgages, for things like knowing what you can afford and what you can't afford, what you can invest in future business growth, all of that sort of thing is if you don't know what's around the corner, it makes it really hard. So I like to have both I like to have courses, short courses, love short courses. And then I like to go into the membership. So that's a part of my ascension model. And I don't know if I've done a full episode on Ascension models, I have to have a look at that. And if I haven't, I'll put that on for 2022 Because I love kind of the customer journey that people take. So for me and my ascension model with my business, a lot of people will enter my world either through the podcast, like you're listening right now and people beautiful listeners will share it with their friends and on social. And that's how a lot of people say they find me is through the podcast. And then the first paid product that people really come into contact with me is million dollar macro business, my book, writing a book and in a couple Oh, hang on. When are they coming out January. I have book week where I am doing three episodes in one week one on writing a best selling book marketing a best selling book and then the commercial ecosystem with your book. So if you're thinking of writing a book, look out for that one in January. But the book is is my kind of introduction because it is, it's such a good way to introduce people into the world and give them that really solid base to find out one, whether they like me whether they want to work with me whether they like the style and whether they want to go that next step further, then I have some short courses which are more, I've got some cheaper ones. And then I've got some more premium ones around the $1000. And then limited launch formula is $2000. So that is when people are getting really serious. And they're like, Alright, I want to make 10s of thousands of dollars. And I need to know how with a live launch, let it let us have it. And so then it goes into that, and then people will go into Her Empire Builder. So that is my ongoing monthly membership that we have there. And so it's a really nice ascension model for people to kind of upgrade as they go along the journey and as they want to go deeper. And as they want to learn more. So for me, it's quite predictable. I mean, once you've been in for a year or two, you can kind of predict your course sales. Evergreen courses, I know, I know, we sell like two to three courses a day. We don't do Facebook advertising. So it's pretty predictable. There's there's kind of like a tap, that we turn on that we don't really like, overflow it unless we're going to have Facebook ads and running to that and really turn up the dial on it. So it stays pretty predictable with that. And then I know when I get members how long they're likely to stay when those drop off points are and all of that sort of thing. So it means that I can go, Alright, here's the growth. And when I look at my business next year, and I want to grow a certain amount, what levers do I need to pull in order to get those those growth things going. And if you don't have that in your business, it makes it really hard because it means that you're in this constant cycle of marketing for new customers. And so as soon as the customers have done your short course, you've got to go and find new customers. And we all know that it's much easier to keep your current customers happy than to consistently and constantly cycle through new ones. So I really, I find a lot of safety in that recurrence. I can look at it and go, Alright, I know I've got this many members, I know we lose this many a month. So it means to stay the same, I have to gain this many, or I have to be able to like gain them all in a chunk so that I know they're going to drop off at certain times. So it's safe, it's a lot safer for me, then it gives you also an increased return on customer acquisition costs. 

So when you get a new customer, it's always gonna cost you more I remember, I did a marketing cost like 2005 2006, like right near the beginning of my business, and it always stuck with me was the line of it is much cheaper to love up your existing customers than to buy new ones. And the reason it kind of struck me was I was like what, by people, we don't buy people like we don't buy them. And then you know, you know, when something triggers you like that, it's usually a really good indication to start looking at. And so I started looking at and going, hang on, yeah, we are like it costs a lot of money, either in money or time to acquire a new customer, you know, you've got to, if I look at a new customer that joins us into into the Tower Co world, I go, alright, they've read blog posts, or they've listened to podcasts, or they see me on social media, like they've seen a lot of effort going out into that world. Whereas when I have people that are already members, I can surprise and delight them constantly, which yes, is costly in both time and money, but not as much as if I had to find someone from scratch that has no idea who I am. And so once I keep someone for a long time, and I can love up my customers and keep them in our ecosystem, then I get that increase return on that customer acquisition cost. Also what it does is it creates raving fans with your loyal customers. So one of my favourite things about having a membership is the relationship that you get to make with those people. So when you've got short courses, I know for a lot of people that take my short courses, sometimes I'll see people post on social media and go just launching with Tina's limited launch formula. And I'm like, oh, who's this? Like, what is what is happening here? You know, I've never seen that person's name before or heard of that person. And so, you know, it's it's that separation, whereas when you've got a membership, they're in your world and it's that next layer so if you think of like a house and you go, alright, social media podcast, like all your free content, people are kind of standing on your front porch, you know, they're on your veranda, they're knocking on the door. They're looking in the windows like, do I want to come in? I'm not sure. When they start getting your low paid courses, they've kind of come in there in the foyer area, maybe they've come into the lounge room to start to sit down, they're getting a bit comfy. Then when they become a member, and they're paying you monthly again and again, and you're seeing those same people, and you're getting to have a relationship develop, it's not just a commercial transaction anymore, you know, they're coming on the house to or they're seeing your bedroom, they get nice and comfy, and you're nice and comfy with them. And I know, that's why I have a membership is I really do love those deeper connections and those deeper relationships and being, you know, more part of someone's journey. 

But what it does from a business point of view, is it gives you those raving fans. So for a lot of people that come into my business, they've been referred by my existing customers. And so you get that through having really great customer experiences, which you can do with an ongoing membership. So another reason why I love monthly recurring revenue is it's a great indicator of growth. So you can't, I don't know how to say this in a polite way, actually. So I'm just gonna say it, you can't bullshit the growth of a membership. When I see people have really great course launches. And look, I am a fan of live launching, obviously, it's my flagship short course, is being able to do that. And I think live launching is hands down the best and fastest way to grow your digital business. But it depends on how you do it. So, you can throw bucket loads of money at Facebook advertising, Google AdWords, all sorts of things, and buy customers and do this amazing looking launch that you actually have very low profit on because you've spent too much in acquiring those customers, or you've kind of you know, faked it a little bit. But it doesn't matter because people talk about top line, and they're like, Oh my God, I just did a six figure launch, you'll never believe it. And don't tell you all of the other things that go into that. And then those customers have done that course, and then it's over, right. So it's not a good indicator of growth or health of that business. Because it means that if you don't front up and do that, again, the next time you launch, you're gonna feel like a loser say you get 100 people in your launch, because you spent all this money on Facebook advertising, you did all of this effort, and you nearly killed yourself and you got to the end, and you're like, oh my god, how am I ever gonna do that again,

you have to do that, again, if you want to be able to grow the business where as with a membership, it's much more authentic success, you can't fake it, people will leave otherwise. 

So it's kind of like if you're looking at someone's business. So you're looking at your own business, and you start off and you've got 10 members, and those 10 members become 12 members become 14 become 15, 16. And on it goes and you've got good retention, and you've got the same people staying, that means you're doing a bloody good job. And it's a great indicator for your future growth. So that is why I love memberships as well. Okay, that is the why section. 

Now I want to go into the second section, which is metrics of membership health. Because it can be hard when you start a membership and going okay, what's normal, what's not. And the hardest part I see of when people started membership is. If you have a membership, you know, when someone leaves, insert sad face here. When you first start, oh my gosh, when your first person wants to leave, it's just heartbreaking. But look, when you've been going enough, you'll learn that individuals have their own shit going on. And sometimes it does have to do with you. And most of the time, it has nothing to do with you. And so there's metrics that I recommend following so that you don't take it so personally and you just follow the numbers. So one of the biggest metrics is churn. So churn is something that you'll hear which is really how many of you losing like what's your churn rate that you're going through members? So to do that, we track things like when did they join your what are the catalyst for people joining? So with Her Empire Builder, my membership for the first year we live launched, so we did three a year open and close now we don't live launch anymore. We have it open all the time. Now the reason we did that was because it was unknown in the first year so we wanted to be able to I know live launching is quickest, easiest, fastest way to get in front of as most people as possible, in a really concentrated way. And so people would join her Empire Builder, when we did really public like door opens for that. Now we have people trickle in each month. So we've got the club level, which is really non committal people can come and go as often as they like. And then we've got the mastermind level, which has more accountability calls and live events in there as well. So they will come at different times, always. But we mark off when someone joins, we've got a system that we go, alright, here's how we measure the lifetime value of our customer. So this is the date that they join, then how long do they stay? So we're looking at our customer lifetime value. So when they leave with their mark, then it gives us an average of, you know, do people stay nine months? Do they stay? 14 months? How long do they stay? So for us, we know, people are either likely to leave in the first two months, or two years, not so much in between, because people are either joining and going, Oh, actually, this isn't right for me, this isn't what I was looking for. And you know what, that's totally, totally fine. But once people have gotten past that we know if they found it's right for them, and it's ticking all their boxes, we have really good customer lifetime value, we still have the same members that we did, like from three years ago. And so our lifetime value is really, really good. And then we always analyse why do they leave? So we always ask people, why are they leaving, we always ask for feedback on that. As a membership owner, it is really hard to do that. If you've ever asked for feedback in your business, you can no Some of it's just ridiculous. Some of it you read and you're like, Oh my gosh. No. And then others like boosting a little because you've tried really hard for something and it hasn't hit the mark, or the expectations were wrong. So there's all different, there are so many reasons why people leave. It's either personal reasons, it's financial reasons, it's expectations, it's that they need to put the money into something else I know with like memberships like like yours and memberships like mine, people will leave because they want to put the money into done for you instead of doing it themselves. 

So we look at why people going to they feel like they've run their course and they've got everything out of it or like it always gives us an indication of what we can use to improve. So that's one of our main metrics. Next metric is downgrades and upgrades. So we track Okay, when people have downgrading, so if they're going from, like our accountability group, which is, you know, they have their accountability calls, they get dibs for our live retreats, they get our live planning days, all of that sort of thing. So, do they go from there to downgrade into the club? And if that's happening, do we need to value load the middle level a little bit more? Or if everyone's going from the club and upgrading into the mastermind? Do we need to do the opposite do we need to have that distance a little bit more so that we've got the right amount of people that we want in each of those levels. So we look at how many downgrades we have we look at how many upgrades we have and make sure that they're sitting where I want them to see it and that I value stacked each of those offers in each of those tiers perfectly. And that's a constant kind of tweak every year, we tweak that a little bit, we look at all the results. And we go, alright, I want to have more people here, I want to have more people there, I want to have less people here. And so we will change the offer slightly to make it more appealing to have more people where we want them because of scalability. And I'll talk about that in the next section of is it right for you. 

And so then our last metric that we look at is our feedback. So we send full feedback forms every six months. And like I said before, feedback is hard sometimes. And I always ask a question and go, you know, if you ran Her Empire Builder, what would you do differently? And some of our best suggestions have come from that. I mean, how the club portion of her Empire Builder started was because of feedback forms. And so I always will do them. I will never stop doing them. Always when I do them, My husband goes oh my gosh, Tina, don't do this anymore. Because if someone says like something slightly negative, I'm like, Oh my gosh, what have I done wrong? How can I make it better? I hate having anyone sad with my offer at all ever. I just want everyone stoked all the time. But the thing is, when people are paying you money, they're going to have different expectations. And for some people, you know, I'll have two feedback forms in a row and one of them will say This is the most insane value I have ever got from a program ever. Oh my gosh, last week alone, I earned $18,000 implementing one thing from the master class, it was incredible. And then literally, the next feedback form will say, I've got nothing out of this, I feel like I'm just wasting my money, I think it's time for me to go.

And you can kind of look at those two things. And this is the good part about having volume. And having time in the game too, is I know that actually, neither of those are me. So I can look at it and go, I don't deserve the accolades for the person, that wne, I also don't deserve any insults from the person that didn’t. Because they're using all of my tools, all of my tips, all of my systems, all of my processes, everything to make their life easier, but they're the ones that are doing it. And so I can't be responsible for somebody else's success, whether they gain it, whether they lose it, it is not as a direct result of me, it's from my tools for sure, but I can't make someone use them. And so you learn to kind of get that feedback and be a little little Teflon and let it kind of bounce and slip off and be able to distinguish and take the bits that really are going to help you improve your offer. And then let the other bits kind of just just go to the wayside. And try not to take it too personally. So that's the second part that is metrics of membership health. 

The third part is working out is a membership right for you. Now I say this, because it isn't right for everyone. So like at the beginning, I joked and said, You know, I have some clients that want to take off months at a time. And if that's you, then a memberships probably not the best thing because it is a lot more work than running a normal short course like a lot. Now you get the reward financially for having monthly recurring revenue. But it is a lot of work. And you need to really take that into account when you're designing it, and especially when you're crafting your offer. So obviously, the price, and the offer is going to depend a lot on how present you have to be. But what I found is anyone that runs a membership, no matter whether it's low cost, high volume, or more the premium cost and the low volume, it's a lot of work. The other thing you have to accept is that you can never keep everyone happy. And I know that you know, a lot of the time as women or as humans, really, we are people pleasers, you know, we want to create really good work for good humans. And we want to be loved and admired and respected for that. And not everyone can be kept happy. It's actually impossible. So I always find there's the 10%. So you know, Pareto is 8020 rule, I find it's actually 9010, which is beautiful in the online course world. But you'll always have 10% of people that go you know what this sucks, this isn't what I wanted, I'm going to want to change that. And so that means when you've got 10 members, one person is not going to be stoked with you. And it means when you've got 100 people, that's 10 people that aren't stoked with you. So the more you get, the more that's going to come out. And there are definitely things that you can do to mitigate that. But I don't want you to go in thinking that you know what, Tina, that may be your experience, but I am going to have 100% satisfaction.

Because I think you can if you've got an itty bitty group, but as soon as you start getting volume, it's just not going to happen. And I want you to be prepared for that. It'll be too much for some not enough for others. So I mean that with content wise. So you're always going to got to figure out, who are you going to aim it for? Where are you going to kind of not pitch but like when you're teaching your content? Are you going to go high, you're going to go low? Are you going to go the person that knows a lot of what you're talking about already? Are you going to go the novice like where are you going to pitch that content. And know that when you get the group programs, group programs mean it's never right for everyone. So you'll always have the outliers. So when you're doing, say, a group master class, you'll have some people that already know what you're talking about. And you'll have some people that are really behind and then they're feeling like oh my gosh, there's so much for me to learn. I'm overwhelmed. Can I do this? And you have to have things in place to catch those people to be able to say, Hey, you're safe. I've got you. Here's how we can get you up to speed. And what I found for the people that already know I mean, some of my best clients that are in Her Empire Builder. I teach a master class sometimes And I'll go you know what they could teach this master class. They’re so good at what I'm talking about right now. But still, they'll go, you know what it's reminded me that I have to do this, this or this. And this, I had totally forgotten to do this, this and this, like you always get something else out of it. And I'm the same, I listen to so many podcasts, I go to master classes, I mean, my own business groups. And sometimes there's things that I'm like, I could do that standing on my ear, but I'll listen to it. And I'll go, oh, my gosh, I hadn't thought of it that way. So you can always get more out of it. But I want you to know that it's not going to be right for everyone all the time, some months, you'll be perfect for this person, some months, you'll be perfect for that person. And you have to be okay with that. Because it is a group program. It's not individual. And this is the mistake I think some people can make, especially when you're doing group coaching. Say you're doing coaching calls, and you've got 10 people in there, sometimes people will join and the expectation is that they're getting private coaching in a group setting. And same for you, as the facilitator, you have to be really careful that you're not trying to do 10 individual coaching sessions in one group coaching session, but it is a collaborative group session. So it does take a little bit of adjusting to if you haven't done it before. Another thing when you're looking at is it right for you is I had a really great mentor, Clint Salter say to me, when I started my membership, that they'll come for you, and they'll stay for the community. And I was like, what really, and some of the best advice that he gave me is do what you can do to cultivate that community connection. Because people will stay for the community connection. And it is so true. And one of the best pieces of advice that I heard, when I was starting my membership was that yes, for sure people will come because they want to I mean, I've even had someone before when they've tried to call me on my phone on a Saturday, say, but I bought you like, Oh, honey, I'm not for sale, I think this is not the right program for you.

But people sometimes will think you know, they've bought you they've come for you. And you've got to be available as much if not more than what you say you're going to in your sales, because you are there to surprise delight to add massive value to love up your customers. But you've got to also note, there's boundaries there and they can't push them. But at the same time, people are going to come into the world for that. But they're going to stay for the community. So making sure that you can foster that beautiful group, and that you're not just coming in kind of running a master class disappearing and leaving everyone to their own devices, you've got to be able to put that effort into those connections. So some of the things that we do, for example, in her empire builder that work really well. We always have Q&A time at the end of master classes and guest expert sessions where people can connect with each other, ask different questions of me. And I can give all of the answers when everyone's there together. We have accountability calls for our mastermind members in small groups so they can connect. We do business & bubbles, where we go into breakout rooms. And this is where so many of our members have hooked in together and done podcast interviews together or appear on each other's programmes and, and different things like that. So there's a lot of community building and of course, live events. I love live events, even though I'm in an online world love a good hybrid. So they'll stay for the community. 

The other thing that I would say when looking at is it right for you, is boundaries are difficult. So you have to be really, really clear on that from the beginning. And one of the biggest ways that I see people get caught out is Facebook groups. I know Facebook groups sound so easy. But when you're being tagged all day, every day on a Facebook group, it's really hard to actually get any work done. And so you want to be really clear at the beginning and start as you mean to continue. So work out what your boundaries are in your offer. And really try to keep that in place right from the very beginning, which is hard sometimes because you want to be helpful and you want to be able to do things but unless you can do it for everybody, it's going to be really hard to do that scalability. So keep your boundaries in place and if people don't respect those boundaries, ask them to leave really easy. 

The good part is relationships are awesome. I mentioned that before. But for me I had a similar thing when I was running tutoring centres so I don't know if you if you know my backstory, if you're a new listener, you won't know it, but I ran primary tutoring centres for 13 years. And I would teach reading recovery. So I'd get the kids that that didn't know how to read and teach them how to read. And when our business started taking off, I pulled out of the teaching and just started running In the business, and then I stopped managing the centres. And would just look after the sales and the legal contracts for our franchisees and I lost touch with why I was doing what I was doing. And once I lost those relationships, I found it, it just didn't have the same spark. For me, it just didn't have the same connection as why I was doing what I was doing and the contribution that I wanted to be able to make, even though by running the business, I knew that I was employing other teachers that could make the contribution, I wanted to be able to be in that too. And so with this business, I've been really conscious to not do that, which is why I still I run some some of the accountability groups myself, I have really good relationships with my members, I make sure that I touch base with everybody, I make sure that I'm staying in contact with messages with how they're going with what their business is doing when they're launching all of that sort of thing. Because I want to have those awesome relationships, I want to be part of that journey. And when I see people succeed, go, You know what I was there cheering them on every step of the way. So if you like to have the relationships, then a membership is a really beautiful vehicle to be able to do that. 

Also, and what another thing to take into consideration is incorporating personal touch points. So with a membership different to an online course, in that you want to have those personal touch points. So we have things with, like when people are joining, when it's their birthday, when it's their anniversary of their membership, when they're launching when they've done something that deserves to be publicly recognised, like all of these little personal touch points we have systems for so that we can incorporate them into our membership as well because a membership does require a higher level of customer service, you really need to be able to put that into there, because you've got people showing up for you that are brand loyalists that are coming in and going, You know what, every month that credit card is getting debited for your program, you need to be serving them at the best of your ability. And for some people, that's just too much pressure. So that's the things to take into account of whether or not it's right for you. 

Alright, so now the fourth and final piece. So we've got, we've gone over what we've got why we've got metrics, we've got the right for you, now, I want to talk to you about creating your membership offer. So to do that, we have a massive offer menu that we use to make up memberships. So there is about I think there's about 30, 40 things on there that you kind of pick and choose, you need to be a member of Her Empire Builder if you want that one.

So if you are not already, you can go toherempirebuilder.com. And check that out. I mean, the idea of Her Empire Builder is for me to provide, like literally all the tools that you need to grow your online business. So we have an offer menu for that how to craft your offer all of that, but it's too much to go through in a podcast episode. And quite frankly, it makes such a difference that if you want that sort of level of information, you're going to have to pay me for that. So the main thing to think of when creating your offer is to provide massive value always. And this goes for a membership or for a short course as well. But the idea is to provide everything that your customer needs. So it's not like a short course that's very siloed very like, Okay, this is how you run a live event. Or this is how you start a podcast like one of those things, I mean, inside of a membership, you've usually got the equivalent of 10s, hundreds, even courses like I know I could get my membership. And I could chop it up into at least 100 Short Courses, there is so much in there that it can be overwhelming. And that is always a risk that you take when you're crafting a membership. But it's also what you need to have because you don't want someone to get into your membership and be like what this is it? This is all I get? Oh, and then want to leave. So you want to be able to keep giving massive, massive value, but then make it as user friendly as possible so that people can find things easily and navigate at all quite quite easily. So when you're creating your offer, it's typically charged monthly or annually. You're always going to want to have bonuses for annual for a lot of people they'll do a membership, where they get people to commit annually. And this is totally up to you and something definitely to take into consideration when you're crafting your offer. For me, I don't do any lock in contracts for monthly, people can give 15 days notice and they can leave at any time and I like that because well situations change and I don't want to lock people into anything if their priorities change or if they've got enough out of it or if they're not getting enough out of it, I just want to go, you know what, that's totally fine. Like, we don't have to have awkward conversations, you can just cancel and and off you go. So it's up to you how you do that. But typically they charge monthly or annually. And you want to have a few different levels as well. So you've heard me mentioned when I'm talking about memberships here with Her Empire Builder, because that's my membership, we've got the club, which is our low level, lowest level one that doesn't have in-person events, and it doesn't have the accountability calls, because we found that there's a lot of people that actually just want the resource library, they just want to go, Alright, I want to repurpose my content, give me all of that, or I want to do podcast covers, okay, or get your Canva templates, or I want to run a live event, I'll get the whole process for that, or I want to run a webinar, I'll get the slides and I'll get the instructions. And I'll get that, like they just want to get whatever they need when they need it, and just kind of have that there as a resource on tap for them and their teams, then we have our mastermind members that are also looking for the community element that are like, you know, what, I want to come to the lives, I want to be part of the community, I want to be held accountable. I want to have that relationship. And so we had those different levels. And so you want to look at what do your customers want, and be able to give them exactly what they're asking for. That's when it works so well. Her Empire Builder was mean made solely because people were asking me for it. And so listen to customers, they have the best ideas. The next thing when you creating your offer is get your pricing strategy, right. And now, you will always be too expensive for some people. And that is totally okay. The worst situation to get yourself in is because I've told you in the you know, bits to take into consideration, a membership requires a lot higher level of customer service and a lot more personal touch points, which means it's going to be a lot more expensive to maintain as you scale. So you need to make sure that you've got your pricing strategy, right, that you're not like totally burning out and running yourself ragged, because you can't afford any help. And you can't support it anymore. Because what I see so often is people starting memberships, and they run them for six months or a year. And then they're like, oh my gosh, what sweet hell is this? Ah, people at me from every direction, I can't keep up with the emails and the Facebook messages and all of the different things, you're going to make sure that you've got your pricing right for the level of service that you're providing. The next thing to take into consideration with your offer is to create scalability or not. So when I when I say scalability or not, it's really coming down to, okay, do you want to have something that's low cost that is infinite, that you could have 10,000,  20,000 members, and you could just keep that going and have a really great team of customer service VA's, answering all of those customer service questions that you've created systems for? Is that the level of scalability that you're looking for? Or are you looking for a lot more of a personal experience where you know that you can serve 100 people? So you've got to work out? What can you yourself scale to, and then price accordingly with that and craft your offer around that. So like, for example, with Her Empire Builder, we have annual members, we have that capped at 50. So we won't go past 50, because they're the people that get our luxury retreats, they get our special days, they get a whole heap of other things that I don't provide to anybody else. And then we've got our club, which then is infinitely scalable. So I could have 10,000 people in our club, totally fine, because it's not taking it's not that relationship community level of it. So you want to really look at what are those levels of scalability? And how can you craft that in there? And what do you want to have? Do you want to have low cost and be able to just infinitely grow that? Or do you want to have the high cost but making sure that you're capping that and keeping it that little bit more exclusive? And you can have different levels of both? The other thing with the offer is, are you going to do a hybrid, or are you going to do completely online only? So I love a hybrid. I love some live events. I just think like I said earlier with Clint’s advice if they'll come for you and stay for the community. There's no better way to build that community connection than with live events. Now live events cost a frickin fortune.

Like they’re so expensive, and there's so much work that goes into them. So like our Australian Retreat is in Uluru in June, which is incredible. It's the most magical place in the heart of Australia. And I have gone bonkers in just making sure it's going to be the most magical experience of everybody's life. But we started planning that In October, like eight months, nine months beforehand, we've started ordering all of the gifts and designing the workbooks and the guest experts and all the speakers and everyone that's coming in and out. It's a lot of work. And we have kind of like monthly task list to do for the whole year before we get ready for the next one. So it's a lot of work, but it's worth it. If that's part of your offer, so to me, it's worth it. Because I'm like, I friggin love love events. And I just love giving people great experiences, I just get so happy. I mean, when we had our retreat this year, and standing on the stage, and looking out and seeing people just having the time of their lives and learning so much and feeling inspired. And knowing that they can do all the things that they dream to do is just, I wouldn't want to miss that. And I don't get that from looking at the computer screen. And so the live events is is just as much for me as it is for the incredible experience of my members as well. So that's what you want to take into consideration for your offer, you want to look at upsells as well. So what the journey is going to be. And if you're going to have upsells available, upgrades downgrades how you're going to do that. And that is everything that I wanted to talk to you about in monthly recurring revenue. That's a lot, hey, I’ve just given you a lot of information, if you want in depth information, so you can get the dot points for all of this at tinatower.com/152. But we obviously have lessons for all of this and resources, checklists, often menus, customer service programs, master classes, all of that sort of thing in our membership, herempirebuilder.com. So if you want access to that, you can grab that, as I said, we don't open and close doors now. It's open all the time. So you can go whenever suits you. If you want to go in the holidays, and you can dive in and you can just do everything. But if this has sounded good for you, I think monthly recurring revenue is a lot better than one off courses because it does give you that predictable business model. It does give you that safety and recurrence and real stability for that as well. So I hope you got so much out of today. Have the best day. I hope you've got the Christmas tree up if you celebrate Christmas and try not to overload yourself with with too many things as we cruise into the holiday time. Have the best day I'll talk to you next week. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of her Empire Builder. If you loved it, please share it on Instagram and Facebook for your friends. And if you really want to deliver me smile, you can pop a review on iTunes. I'd love to hear from you. So if you have any questions, email me at podcast at Tina tower.com. And if you want to know more about what we do, head over to Tina tower.com. Now I truly hope this podcast gives you so much value and you can use it to dream big, plan well and take massive action in building your very own empire. That's perfect. Just for you.