How To Launch A Profitable Membership Site - With Lisa Princic

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Lisa Princic.

Lisa Princic helps impact-driven business owners dive deep into their unique value and business models to build sustainable & profitable brands. She helps them simplify & package their offers, increase their visibility with bolder messaging & strong positioning and scale with membership programs.

A staunch believer in business simplicity and intention, Lisa helps her clients accomplish their goals by focusing on what to do AND what to ignore.

Why you've got to check out Lisa's episode:

- Discover how Lisa helps Coaches, Consultants and Professionals who have a wealth of experience but are not sure how to simplify their expertise into a unique value proposition.

- The challenge of having too many options and the importance of being able to describe the transformation you offer to your clients.

- What we mean by 'you confuse you lose' and how to avoid this happening in your business. AND How to avoid being the world’s best kept secret.

- Why you need to know and obsess with the transformation that you deliver for your clients and niche down so that you and them are crystal clear on what you do and who for.

- How to get access to Lisa's membership design offer as well as her tool called The Hours To Outcomes guide so that you can decide what your package is and how to deliver your transformation.

Resources / Links

http://www.scalingdeep.com/design

http://www.scalingdeep.com/package

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking, the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

Hello, I'm Tom Bailey, and in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Lisa Princic, who's the founder of Scaling Deep and also the host of the Scaling Deep podcast. So, Lisa, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.

Lisa Princic:  Hello and thanks for having me. 

Tom Bailey: Thanks so much for being here and out of interest, whereabouts are you in the world right now?

Lisa Princic: I'm in a little town called Squamish BC, which is right near Vancouver. So, I'm in the west coast of Canada.

Tom Bailey: Incredible. Thank you so much. And I just want to share a little bit more about you before we do get started. So, Lisa helps impact driven business owners to dive deep into their unique value and business models to build sustainable and profitable brands. She helps them simplify and package their offers increase their visibility with bolder messaging and strong position and scale with membership programs. The title for today's episode is How To Launch a Profitable Membership Site. And Lisa will show us how to do that in just seven minutes. So, question number one today is, who are your ideal clients?

Lisa Princic: My ideal clients are coaches, consultants, and professionals who have quite a wealth of experience and are not quite sure how to simplify their experience into a kind of a really unique value proposition so that they can sell something and make it really attractive. And they're really appealing online.

Tom Bailey: Perfect. Awesome. So that, that sounds like a challenge that they've got, but what would you say is another big challenge that they typically face when you meet your clients?

Lisa Princic: They've got too many options. They can't see the value, you know, the value. They can't see what they do in terms of the eyes of their clients. So, they can't describe them properly or really help describe the transformation that they deliver to people. They just say, oh, here's this thing that I do. And when you're writing to an audience online, they really need to be able to understand what it means to them. 

Tom Bailey: Got it. And by not being able to create that value proposition or share what you do in a really clear way, what impact does that typically have on their businesses?

Lisa Princic: Well, it's that whole, ‘you confuse, you lose’ title. So yeah, basically they just don't get people signing up for things and they don't get referrals. They don't, people don't understand what they do and they can't communicate it and share. Yeah. So, these miss out on doing there, they're probably really good at most, people are amazing at what they do, but they're not communicating it or describing it properly, or even putting it into offers that are in the best way to deliver that service.

Tom Bailey: So, they may end up becoming the world's best kept secret because then it's not getting that message out there into the world. So if you do think of this person who is, you know, they've got this expertise, knowledge, and the value to add what's one piece of advice that you might give them to really help them get started on that journey.

Lisa Princic: Well, I think it's about knowing you're the transformation, the outcome that you will obsess with delivering to your clients and being, being comfortable, niching down and saying, this is the thing I do for people, instead of saying, well, I can do all these things they need, you need to get crystal clear. You've got to niche down, whether it's the format, the tool you're using, the outcome you get for people, the outcome you get for a specific group of people. Like it really has to be so narrow that someone can come across you and say, oh, that's your, you're my guide because you're doing the thing that, that I particularly need, and it's not watered down by all these other potential things. So, you've just got to get, like, you're filling a hole in the market. You're filling a need in someone's life. And you've got to know exactly who that person is and how it works.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, perfect. And it doesn't put you in a box, you know, you can expand later.

Lisa Princic: It, you don't, you don't need to, you don't because people will still be attracted to you, but if they don't understand what you stand for, even if it's different than their actual need, they will not understand you at all. Yeah, so, that's the problem.

Tom Bailey:, But it is really important, like you said, to get that niche really early on in that, in that journey.

Lisa Princic: You got, gotta take a chance and you got a niche on something that you're promoting and even if your whole brand isn't representing that, like I focus on memberships, but I also I do help people with other service-based business models who don't want memberships, but it's like the, the membership is the thing that everyone will not understand that you're, this is the person to talk to you about my membership.

Tom Bailey: Perfect. Excellent. So, thank you for it. Thanks so much. And to help people with this journey, have you got a free resource or guide or something that you can share to help people really get started?

Lisa Princic: Yeah, like for getting, going on a membership anyway you can find me at scaling deep dot com slash design, and that will teach you how to design a membership. And I also have a really great tool. That's not free, but it's not very expensive. That's called the hours to outcomes, outcomes guide to help people who are not necessarily sure what their packages should be. Like, and how they should be delivering their transformation. It's a, it's an excellent way to figure out how to package up your services. And that can be [email protected] forward slash package. So those are two different options, depending on what you're interested.

Tom Bailey: Great. And I love that name hours to outcomes because you know, so many coaches do still charge by the hour. Yeah.

Lisa Princic: Ending the length of service at any given arrival point. So, sometimes you go too long with people you've already got them. They're like transformation, and then they're super excited. And then you keep going. Cause you said you'd keep going or you never declared an end point and then it starts to water down. And then when your arrangement ends with them or your, your contract. They're not as excited as they were that when you got them that transformation. So, we have to be willing to really commit to giving the transformation and, and sticking to it. Yeah.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Perfect. Love that. So, what would you say is one of your greatest failures or mistakes that you've made along the way and what did you learn from it?

Lisa Princic: Okay. Okay. Not niching. I would say not having something that I did that was very, very specific. It wasn't the only thing I did, I needed to build something very specific, very successfully. And even if it was just, it ended up becoming a skillset later that I used for my own business. Maybe not on other people's I, that is something that I think would have helped me get more. Success focus experience and doing something really well for multiples of people. And it would have helped me create more consistent revenue sooner, which I think is really helpful in building your confidence towards all the things that you can do.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. I love that. And the last question from me today is what is one question that I should have asked you that will also bring some great value to our audience today?

Lisa Princic: Okay. So, this is like a bigger one, but I love talking about memberships and yeah. So, the question would be like, when is, are you ready to build a membership or a scalable program? Like a membership and yeah. You know, I would like to say that you can do it sooner than you think, because there's a lot of creative ways to, to grow memberships that are not necessarily low cost. And they're not all about like getting everyone in a community to talk all the time. There's some, some ways to do it, that you can add value to your clients by bringing them together and offering a membership type of access. So, that would be something that I think. Is really worth doing sooner than later, so that you get used to serving more than one person at a time because that also grows your momentum in a business.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. And I guess it's that, it's that transition from one-to-one to group or membership and that, and that's that sticking point for some people?

Lisa Princic: Yeah. And a membership is a great way to do it. The reason why I love it because you don't have to have everyone all learning exactly the same thing at the same time, they don't all have to show up, you know, in order to make safe, you have a group coaching. Course, everyone kind of needs to be there in order for it to work. But a membership is, you know, people know that they may not be there for a month. They may zoom in and zoom out based on what they need and, and your whole success of the program does not rely on that. Everyone's starting at the same time and ending at the same time or showing up at the same time. And I think that's where there's a lot more flexibility, as long as you don't price it too low, to be a really rewarding experience for our clients and even extending our client journey by offering them to put into like an office hours tape program afterwards.

Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Great. Lots of great advice then today. So, thanks, Lisa. Thank you so much again for your time today. I really appreciate you being here.

Lisa Princic: You're welcome. It's been great to chat with you.