Untold Truths of Running a Membership Site

Welcome to episode 322 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

It's once again that time, real talk time. I want to talk about membership sites today because we passed our year anniversary of Hit the Mic Backstage a few months ago and I have spent probably almost the entirety of the second half and for sure the bulk so far of the fourth quarter this year all in on making my community better in every way I can, upgrading things, like the sales page, like the checkout system, the onboarding sequence, all of that stuff because of these lessons that I have learned.

The three things I want to talk about today, the three lessons that I want to talk about today are the things that I feel I don't get enough conversation, enough highlighting. I think we talk a lot about tech and plugins and content even, but I don't know that we talk enough about these things, certainly before you launch. These are things that I don't think I really digested before I started and so I want to talk about them with you today and I would love to hear your thoughts. Of course if you're a member already, good for you. Don't tell the others, but you're my favorite. You can come over to the private community and talk to me about this there.

If you're not a member yet, dude what's your deal? Head over to the Facebook page or even better, join the membership and come talk to us in the private community. That's going to be the best way to do it. All right? Let's jump in.

Lesson number one, and this is just a good business lesson in general, even if you don't have a membership site or want to have a membership site. It's not for everyone. Nothing that you do in your business will be something that's a fit for every single person. If you launched a membership site and you're just not feeling it, that's okay. Just because this is the thing that a ton of people really love right now, I know that I launched in August of 2015 and by October I think I knew of like 9 billion people who were launching membership sites. It's been the thing of 2016 because everybody wants the ever-so-mythical recurring passive revenue, which by the way a membership site is not passive.

It is recurring if you can keep members. It's not entirely passive. It is certainly more passive than a one-on-one is, but it's not as passive as say me selling on online program like I did with the Rock Star Guides. It's not for everyone. I happen to really love delivering value this way. I happen to really love connecting with my members. I really like being of service to the people I get to be of service with through Hit the Mic Backstage, but it's not for every business model. It doesn't make sense for everyone. It doesn't feel right for everyone, and guess what, guys? That's totally okay. If this is not for you, and you're like, "Well, everyone is doing it, and should I do it? Recurring revenue, rah, rah, rah. That would be great," but it just doesn't feel right, then don't do it, because you will never build the kick-ass program which you want to build if it's not aligned with you and how you best serve your audience. Don't force yourself into doing this. Okay? Promise? Look, I'm just going to assume you said promise, okay? Thank you.

Number two, sort of in that same vein, it is impossible to make everyone happy. The upside to that is through knowing who your ideal members are or your ideal clients, you don't have to make everybody happy. You just have to make them happy. Caveat t