User Spotlight - How Mike Roberts Uses MV

"My business was not really a business....
Until MemberVault came along."
- Mike Roberts

In this lovely interview with Mike Roberts  from 'makingdigitalreal', we chat about his "buy me a coffee product" that he created inside of MV and the reason behind why he created it. The Video, podcast and transcript are all below. Enjoy!




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TRANSCRIPT

Remi Oduyemi
Hello, everyone, welcome to another user spotlight. My name's Remi from Team MV, and the user success Lead here at MemberVault. And each week, I get to interview some of our lovely MemberVault members. And this week I am with Mike Roberts. Hello, Mike. How are you?

Mike Roberts  
Hi, Remi. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you for having me on really appreciated.

Remi Oduyemi  
Absolute pleasure. I've been looking forward to this chat, because I'm a little bit obsessed with your MemberVault account. And I'll tell you why as we go through this, okay. How long have you been using MemberVault?

Mike Roberts  
I would say it's coming up to just over a year now.

Remi Oduyemi  
Okay. Was you anywhere else before? Or was this like your first platform?

Mike Roberts  
First platform, my business was not really a business until MemberVault came along, it was literally a 10 page PDF document that I was sending to people.

Remi Oduyemi  
Oh, nice. And then the business grew by using MemberVault.

Mike Roberts  
Yeah, the business grew because I just discovered your platform, I realized that I could run my whole ship from there. sell tickets, give freebies. Yep. Engine by love it.

Remi Oduyemi  
I call it my business ecosystem. Because it's like everything's in there. It's magic. So good. So now you're a LinkedIn coach, is that correct?

Mike Roberts  
Well, kind of, it's a little bit of what I do. So I tried to set myself apart. So the business is called making digital real. So whilst I'm helping people understand LinkedIn, and how to get visibility, and understand the algorithms and the secret hidden corners of LinkedIn, we also mix it up a little bit. So we talk about landing pages. So I put a little bit of member vault, stuff in there as well, how people can gain traction and visibility on their products and services. And also just how to use digital video messaging, for example. That's one of the big things that I trained on how to send a brilliant video messaging and when to do it. So yeah, it's a little bit of everything.

Remi Oduyemi  
Business Coach, do you define yourself as or do you not put yourself into a box?

Mike Roberts  
I haven't really put myself into any category yet. Maybe that will happen this year? Who knows?

Remi Oduyemi  
So who are you currently working with? Is it mostly small business owners? Is that your ideal client?

Mike Roberts  
Ideal Client? Yeah, solopreneurs small business owners new setups. Anybody that's really looking to make a difference. And they're just just wanting to learn more about how to use digital.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, brilliant. And what tech tools are you using as alongside member vault to help sort of support you and support your customers?

Mike Roberts  
Well, to support me, I think the the integration with stripe is incredible. And the mailer light fan through and through, so that's perfect. And also, I'm using something called trust at the moment, which is a platform where I can amalgamate all of my LinkedIn reviews, Google reviews, Facebook reviews, and they put them all into one place. And trust is give us gives you a widget. And I've pasted that widget into one of my products on MemberVault, which is called the MDR superstars page. So literally every time I get a review from a client, that is somewhere on MemberVault, where that is populated automatically.

Remi Oduyemi  
Beautiful. That sounds good. What do you say it's called trust it?

Mike Roberts  
Trust test, tr U S? T, i s t.

Remi Oduyemi  
Brilliant. Okay. Can you tell us now Erin MemberVault. CEO she tagged you because you have a product called buy me a coffee? Right? It was that coffee product? Yeah. Can you talk to us about how that works? Why you set it up? And how that's going for you?

Mike Roberts  
Yeah, so I created this product because I wanted to kind of avoid in what my eyes were slightly embarrassing moments. So for example, I'm chatting to somebody you know, they're interested in maybe utilizing LinkedIn, for example, and we have a good 15 or 20 minute conversation. And I might realize they actually don't really need my services. All they need is a little bit of help here in here, which I can do in 10 to 15 minutes, no problem and give them the tools that they need. And then comes that really awkward conversation at the end. Oh, Mike, please send me an invoice. You know, what do I owe you for this?

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, and I just I've had those I know exactly what you mean. Yeah.

Mike Roberts  
And I just thought there's got to be some type of way I can get around this. And it just occurred to me one day, you know, so now what I say is, look, don't worry about it. It's fine. I'm more than happy helping you. Listen, if you want to buy me a coffee or a coffee and a doughnut. Here's a link. Feel free if you want to. That would be great. Yeah.

Remi Oduyemi  
And is it working and people buying,

Mike Roberts  
working working on a weekly basis? It's absolutely fantastic.

Remi Oduyemi  
And I suppose because also be cuz it's a member about right and we got the binge and by kind of marketplace, actually, if somebody is already there because they've bought a product of yours, or they're coming for a freebie of yours, that they get to see this kind of floating around as well. So that if they want to just go, oh, you know, I've just got this freebie from like, or I've really, you know, learned something today or had some light bulb moments, I'd like to go buy a cup of coffee. It's right there. You don't even have to like shove it at them. Is it? Is it visible yours? Or is it an invisible that you just share with selected people?

Mike Roberts  
No, totally visible. Brilliant. And I also include it in some of my signup pop ups as well. So when somebody does download one of my freebies, you know, on the success page where it says success, you now have access to this product. Yeah, I've created one that says, you know, Thanks for downloading it. And by the way, if, if you somehow managed to get the deal of the century from using any of my tools, why not buy me a coffee in a donut?

Remi Oduyemi  
Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, I like that, putting it into like the, on the thank you pages success page. That's brilliant. And you could also you know, it's something that yeah, if you are offering a free lead magnet or something like that, you can put it on the Welcome page, you can put it in a module underneath whatever the freebie is that you're giving away. So there's loads of different ways that you can use this, you very much inspired me to create my own mind was called by me, by me a cuppa. Because I don't drink coffee. And I just I looked at what you've done, and I created a very similar page. Now before there are other I can't remember what they called Now there's a couple of other software's that you can use, it does a similar thing, and then they take a little fee. But for me, what I really liked was the idea of creating this inside of my own ecosystem, without having to like link to another product or another software, like it's my own, you know, buy me a cup of tea. And it's all because of the way MemberVault is set up. But you can put your car in, you can put pictures in, if I wanted to go in and add some extra things in there, like as a, an extra thank you to them buy me a coffee, then it can easily be done in MemberVault by just throwing in another module or less than or, you know, something secretive, almost like Oh, get special thing or a secret podcast series or something like that. Right? Like, yeah, but you could shove in there, as well. But, um, on

Mike Roberts  
the signup page, you can give them a little nice surprise, just saying, you know, just as a thank you. Yeah, why not have access to this?

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a genius idea. So thank you for creating it. So it because I, I've done it, literally coffee deals. And be I think there's gonna be a lot of other MemberVault people that perhaps haven't thought about creating a product like this. And you're absolutely right, in that when you sometimes I mean, I get it all the time. So people might slide in DMS for like a tech question. And I solve a problem for them, like in 10 or 15 minutes. And they're always like, oh, you know, I want to give you something and I can't give them my hourly rate, because it's ridiculous for what I've just delivered. So actually being able to just go, here's my buy me a cup of product and MemberVault is such a nice way. And then they feel like they've been served and they may feel better because they bought me a cup of coffee or a slice of cake or, or whatever. It's it's such a such a lovely idea. And well done for thinking that Mike,

Mike Roberts  
I just love it. I just I just keep thinking of new and innovative ways to use member vault. And the fact that you guys keep throwing out new features all the time. It's just a win win.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I've got to say, I like your simplicity with how you build your MemberVault I had little nose around because I'm nosy. I'm a nosy Nellie. And so the other day I did a workshop and it was one to one is to do with one to one products, right. So anyone who wants to and you had responded to one of Aaron's post about sharing your one to one offer. And I loved the simplicity of your one to one offer. In that a customer can land on the page, you have a banner image that very clearly lists out the sort of four or five things that they're going to get. The price is there. So it's integrated all the payments and they so they know they're gonna get they're gonna get 90 minutes of your time. They're gonna get 100 page manual, they're gonna get advice on X, Y and Z. They make a purchase and they come in and then you can even create any modules or lessons I'm literally giggling again. There's no modules in here you just put your Calendly link straight into the welcome the welcome area. And it was just so simple knee it's like they come they see what they're gonna get. They make a payment. They come in the calendar links right there. Bam, they're done. That's it. And and it was just like wow, like just does things I mean, I need some Mike Roberts in my life to simplify I think I overthink.

Mike Roberts  
I just love the simplicity of it. I've also read read recently discovered the fact that you can put moving gifts inside of your images on your product pages. Yes, it's just all There's nothing stopping you from being creative on this thing.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you can do so much. And I'm not always with cascading style sheets or CSS yet. So I have to default to you see who's part of the team? And because she's the queen of, of that, but um, yeah, when you start applying things like CSS, and using animated GIFs, in in places where you think there shouldn't be any animation, it really does bring your account up to life. And yeah, it's amazing. So amazing platform. Alright, so before we go, how have you found using member vault? As a user? Has it been quite easy for you? Was there a learning curve?

Mike Roberts  
Well, MemberVault, was introduced to me by an amazing lady called Victoria prince from touchpoints. Marketing. And when she showed me the simplicity and the power of it, within 10 minutes, I automatically knew that this was for me. Yeah. And, and, and that, you know, I've, I've explored other platforms before, but never ever taken any leap of faith into them, because I just thought, you know, it just looks so complicated. But this was created product, attach a price, and do what you want with it. The best?

Remi Oduyemi  
And you mostly do one to one? Or do you have any group coaching programs? Or are you mostly just sort of one to one in terms of your work?

Mike Roberts  
No. So I have the one to one offer, which is there on my page and priced. Then I have the team training programs, which the button simply says contact me that takes them to my contact page on my website. Brilliant. And I've recently created my first course on member Vault, which is LinkedIn for teens to show teens How to Get confident for their for their future. Love that. And, and I'm just in the, in the process of filming my next course, which is, you know how to and when to do video messaging, whether it be on LinkedIn, or emails, but I just thought, I create a video, I upload it to a site to host the video. You can have comments now you can have the questions. Oh, my gosh, my head is full of ideas for the future. There's so many things I want to do.

Remi Oduyemi  
I was gonna ask you about comments, what are you thinking? How are you thinking you might start using comments in within your ecosystem of your, your platform and your your time? What do you think?

Mike Roberts  
Yeah, so at the moment, comments are available for people that have signed up to your products. So at the moment, I've already been asking people for, for feedback and comments, which I've already got on there now. So people are actually telling me what they're doing and how they're finding it and things like that, which is great. And I'm going to use it for cost questions. But maybe one day in the future, we'll be able to have comments for people that haven't signed up, which is just another powerful engine for don't just take my word for how great this course is. Look at all these comments from the people that have taken

Remi Oduyemi  
it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, brilliant. Well, it's constantly evolving. And Mike and Aaron are constantly, you know, bringing out new features. And we have a massive features list. Because you know, it is MemberVault is very much a collaborative, put together. thing, right. And so the the members get to send in feature requests, and they are genuinely put onto a list and people can up vote and and there is this huge list of cool stuff that's coming. Yeah, it's constantly evolving and growing and getting better. And we really listen to what people want and what they need. And when you tell us what you need, then we can put that on the list and bring that out for people. All right. Have you had much feedback from your your customers about using MemberVault? And their experience of using it? Is it easy for them? Are they happy?

Mike Roberts  
Yeah, I've had no feedback whatsoever. So no feedback is like, yeah, that was so yeah, it's all good. And, uh, you know, when I apply somebody to a product, or when I remove somebody from a product, it's just

Remi Oduyemi  
effortless. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So how can people find you might if they want to come and check out all of your digital resources and learn about LinkedIn and all your digital trainings, how can they find you?

Mike Roberts  
So vault dot making digital real.co.uk is the MemberVault page. You can find me on LinkedIn if you search for Mike Roberts but I actually come up as Mike Roberts e signatures made easy because I also have another role where I run a software company which provides e signatures and email encryption. So that's what I do for the for the world. But that is me. It's just that I have two businesses. So yeah, you'll find me on on either platform.

Remi Oduyemi  
I will then pop your links and I'll put your LinkedIn link on now that we're connected on LinkedIn I'll add your link into this as well. So this will go in the blog and apart podcast so I'll put the your MemberVault and I'll put your LinkedIn so be

Mike Roberts  
perfect. And there is a special area on MemberVault where they can get my 100 page ebook but you Got to be quite smart to find it. But if you message me and just say that you've heard me on the podcast, I'll sort you out.

Remi Oduyemi  
Amazing, right? So reach out to Mike, everyone. Anything else you want to add about MemberVault before we wrap this up, Mike?

Mike Roberts  
I don't think so. I just love it. It's just the best thing ever. And it's like I said on Facebook the other day when anybody asks me how my business runs, the answer is MemberVault. Simple as that.

Remi Oduyemi  
I love it. Thank you so much for this. This has been brilliant, and it's been lovely to meet you. And yeah, I think you really get inspired to people today with what you're doing. And I'm sure loads of people can come and check out your account, because it's amazing. So thank you, Mike, for giving up your time today and let's talk soon.

Mike Roberts
Thanks a lot.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Check out Mike's MV Site here: https://vault.makingdigitalreal.co.uk

Hey, hey! 👋 I’m Remi, the User Success Lead here at MemberVault.
You’ll hear me over on the Vault podcast, see me in the Collaborative, and also hosting special user success workshops.

Outside of MV, I work with established entrepreneurs and ambitious business owners who are ready to scale their business using simple systems and cool automations.

You can find my MV site here: https://www.onlinebusinesstemple.com