Hey, hey, Erin Kelly, CEO and co founder of MemberVault. Out here. So Happy new week, if you are listening to this, right after I publish it, I want to do a update on the maker MV shine toolkit decision that I covered in the last podcast episode around uncomfortable decisions. Because it's been a little crazy how well that decision has worked, in terms of everyone feeling good, like both me and era as the content creators behind it. And then the member vault community, overwhelmingly has been voting yes, by clicking by and doing thumbs up and like tons of engagement, both on the posts that I did in the collaborative this weekend, and then also, the people that actually purchased are super engaged inside of the product itself. So I wanted to do an update on this, I was actually talking to Mike about it, and how that this, this is why I love making these uncomfortable decisions is that what feels heavy can all of a sudden feel really exciting and light. And there's like a new path that unlocks once you've gotten past that friction. And so that is what has happened with this. And I was telling him that I really love this process of, you know, increasing the price as you add resources to it, but without a

set deadline. So, I've talked a lot about pre selling in the past, right, and the way that I pre sell is always that I tell people, this is what you're gonna get, you're gonna get on this date, it's not ready yet. And you'll get something like either a bonus or like, there's going to be something available to you. When you buy like it's not gonna be an empty product. But like, the main resources that you are investing in are not ready yet. And they won't be ready until x date, which I'm still a huge fan of that.

But I think that it works better for micro courses, which is something that we cover, in that free resource that we created a while ago, lightning fast courses, which you can get by going to a member vault.co forward slash LFC. And that that resource is all about how to pre sell how to create micro courses, and then how to bundle them. And so I think that that is a really great idea, depending on your business model and your audience and everything. But that's a really great idea for you to like, be doing little jolts of digital offers that aren't super big. And then you can always bundle them, you know, after the fact. So I could have done that here. But instead, what I had done is I did, let's do this big offer, it'll be ready in mid June. And there's a little micro offer, that'll be done sooner. And that if you buy it, you can apply the price that you paid to that micro offer to the bigger offer once you're ready right now expiration date. And that felt really good. And I'm still, I think that that's a great strategy. If that feels good to you, and you have a lot of time to create content. The problem is and it was twofold. The problem is, is that the big product, the toolkit, the main toolkit that were in charge $500 for

the list of resources was really big, and not some, like I really always want to caution you to be careful to not put too many too much content in your digital resources. Because it's overwhelming. So if it's like all these videos, and that that but these were actually like a exhaustive list of swipe files and templates, so it was gonna be a lot of work for us to create it. But it's gonna save a lot of time for the people that bought it, right.

And so it was a lot of stuff to be creating amidst a lot of stuff that we are doing, you know, elsewhere inside of my role, like we're, we're pushing a lot of changes. In terms of like features that we're working on. We're working on our website, we're adding new team members that we're trialing right now. So if you're in chat support, they actually just started this week, we have two new team members that we're trialing that are going to be helping out with chat and community support, which is very exciting. And so we won't be doing a formal announcement until they officially join the team. But just know that if you're in chat support, you might interact with some new faces. So we have that happening. And then we have a lot of kind of like overhauling our knowledge bases and our

our onboarding, our email onboarding to really support especially beginners around like email specific guidance. So there's like so much other stuff that we're doing, not to mention the free plan changes that are rolling out on June 30.

And so there's just a lot of stuff happening. And

the other piece is of course, that I am very pregnant. And you know, my due date is at the end of July and so it's like okay, like mid June is probably doable, but also my energy is like not where it normally is. Plus, I already have two kids that I'm chasing around.

And then era who is going to be helping create design resources is also a mom of two young kids and does not have child support. And so by choice, and so it's like, Okay, this is feeling really heavy the way that we've structured this, and it's feeling almost impossible at this point, and very, very burnout II, which is why we ultimately made that decision, I am not against the strategy itself. But I think that for us, it wasn't the best fit for where we're at right now. And so that's why we made that decision. And so enter this new idea. And so I was talking about it with Mike. And

I really like that it is, there's no deadline for the content to be created. Because that was making it feel really pressured. So if you are a service provider, or a coach that is already pretty maxed out, and you know, that you want to create this, like, big resource, that's gonna save your people time and energy and like, it's gonna be really good stuff. But it's gonna take you a lot of energy to create that content. I think that this is a really good option, because you can, whereas pre selling, you are getting validation because people are buying and you still have that pressure, I have to do this within a set amount of time. And I do think that that's part of the reason why the toolkit, the bigger toolkit for $500 did not convert really like hotcakes, because we had a few buyers, but not that many. I think it's because a lot of people, obviously $500. And then there's a payment plan too. But obviously, like, that's a bigger ask. But I think that, why would you buy it now, like if it's not going to be ready until June 15. If it's stuff that saves you time, that's more of a like, not, it's not an impulse buy, but it's like, I want to take action now buy and delete, why would you do that in advance, even as an early adopter? Like you don't have to? Right. So I think that that pre selling has some limitations, if you if you need more time to create the resources, there's only so much time that you can have as your deadline between purchase to,

to the release date of that content, unless you add like a bunch of other stuff like, like a pop up community or something. But then you're taking more energy from yourself. And you're have to be creating all this content, right. So I think that that's where pre selling is maybe not the best decision is if it's like a really big thing that you're creating. So I'm still very much a fan of it for doing the micro course method. And again, I think that that could have worked with this as well. But I like that we're testing out a new strategy, because then we're giving you options, we can be like this is this worked really well or this didn't work.

And so I talked about it with Mike and he actually coined a really great term, the snowball product. And so basically, like, as you add content, you also increase the price. And everyone that purchases before that time,

still has access to everything. So there's like an early investor that is gonna get all these like goodies down the road for a really great price. And then you don't have the pressure of like, I have to do all of this stuff by x date. And so I was very transparent. I was like, you know, this, this is how this is working. Like, you get what you get what you get on May 15, when I unlock the original, like the foundational content unlocks, then you'll get another batch of content, like in late May, early June, I may or may not get another I didn't actually even say that, but I'm kind of planning on like getting another wave of content. If baby cooperates and and all the other things cooperate. And then there's going to be a break, like there's going to be a

a slow zone through like summer and me having a baby and being on a short maternity leave. And then I look forward to having this be kind of my project to come back to slow and steady. Like, as I have time with the baby. And I already have this like list of stuff that I want to do. So I'll be able to like, Okay, I have 20 minutes, like let me write some some soap,

swipe files, or do a template, or do a quick workshop recording. And so in the fall, like, I'm really excited to come back, and it's something I'm really looking forward to doing.

And so I was very much like transparent with that, like this is going to be a process of this resource growing over like a year period. And I wasn't sure if people were going to be okay with that. But I've gotten like resounding like, Oh my gosh, this is so cool. First of all, I love our community that people a lot of people are like I'm so glad you're taking care of yourself, which I love. And I love it when I see other people taking care of themselves.

And then a lot of people are really excited to be getting in at that price point. Which up until you know this weekend It was $25 for like the early early bird and now it's $50 because the foundational content has unlocked and then

the next batch is going to go up to 100 which is cool because it gives me more opportunities to bring up that little urgency push which is always when you see the most conversions like hey like this is about to to end like this price.

is about to go away, right? Like that always works. So it gives you a natural, easy way to support your community and have like natural, like doses of urgency along the way.

So, it's been really cool because the feedback that I have been getting inside of the resource between the quiz answers, which are private exchanges between me and the user, and then I also did circle embeds for commenting. There's been a lot of engagement on those as well. And so it's, it's very exciting to me, and very energizing to me to be getting feedback as I'm creating content. And I think that that works for a lot of content creators. So this is really cool, because it's like, you have your early adopters who are very passionate, and probably big fans of yours, like your cheerleaders that are in that product that you're creating, that are going to keep you motivated. And you're going to be making sales along the way. So already, I can say that I am a very big fan, like we've, I did one post about the earlybird discount, going away inside of the cooperative, we have been so busy that we did not send an email, which is our bad.

But just with that post, we have over 100 sales on that resource that happened within like a 48 hour period, and we're almost at $4,000 revenue for a $25 eye, a few of those have been $50 after the fact. And we're not, we're not doing a lot of promotion. So I think that there's there's a lot to be said, for getting the right offer, that your people are really excited about having an engaged audience and doing stuff that feels good to them. And very energizing, it's like you're a part of something, we're going to co create this together. Like, I'm excited about it, they're excited about it, like it's just a win win win. So I wanted to do an update on like how that is going and how that going is going is like amazing. So I'm going to, you know, continue to share how this process has worked as it goes along. And as like kind of the early rush is over. You know, and, and how the like, next round of like, Hey, this is the price is gonna go up in 48 hours when this next batch of content unlocks, like, how that goes. And then how it goes after, you know, that like slowdown when I'm when I'm on maternity leave, like, Are people still staying engaged? Like all of that good stuff. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of opportunities off of this type of offer, like you could totally

I personally like that it's not a membership, because I just don't have the bandwidth to support that. And we already have the recurring revenue from the platform itself. So this is where like business model comes in. And like, what do you what are you already offering? What are you looking for? Like? What's your goal? Is it?

Is it high dollar cash flow? Is it more passive revenue is it like, there's a lot of things to consider where you would fit this into your product lineup, like I don't think that a snowball offer is really going to be the best thing for you to do as your main cash driver, until it's already built out. And then like Maybe so, but because it's a one time payment, like it's just, you know, there's other things that I think are a little bit easier. That gives you a little bit more comfort, where you don't have to worry about like, Where are my sales coming from each month? And that's the thing, right? It's like the scarcity, thinking of like, well, if I'm selling this like big product, that eventually is gonna be like $500.

When it's all created, if a lot of people are getting it for $25, then like I'm losing all this revenue, like that's, I think we're a scarcity thinking person would it be on, but instead, it's like, no, all my early adopt, this is how I think, all because I've done a lot of scarcity work on myself, but like, all of our early adopters are going to get advantage of this, they're going to help me create it, it's going to get done. And then the buyers that want to because there's different types of buyers, the buyers that want to see testimonials and results, and they want the content already be ready and everything, they're going to be able to have all of that when the price is higher, and they're going to be more willing to pay that because it's already going to be done. And there's gonna be a lot of pure evidence that like it worked from the early adopters.

And then I think that, you know, after, after I kind of like recover, whenever that's going to be whenever I recover from having a newborn, and kind of get into my new groove of having three kids, and also exciting. Um, you know, I think that there's a lot of opportunity to like, have an incubator or a mastermind, from those people that are going through this swipe thing that want more like hands on support. So I just think that it has like a really great evolution path where it benefits everybody. And I think that that word would work for a lot of people and like maybe it's an incubator for you like maybe you do a snowball offer. And then it leads into a membership for people that want to have access to you through like live calls or something like that if that's something that you want to offer, right. So

It's a great fit for a lot of people, especially if you don't have a ton of bandwidth. And you aren't sure that you can commit to a content release date for a pre sale, I think that the snowball thing is like, where it's at. So that's my update on that. And, you know,

we'll see, we'll see how it all goes. And of course, like, this is the problem with recording on your phone, my sharing the behind seeing real life scenes, my phone locks, and I'm like trying to unlock it, so that I can hit the end button. Because anchor doesn't put that on your like open screen, you have to actually unlock your phone. Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful, great week. And again, I will keep you in the loop and the circle embeds for those of you that are interested in including like a community inside of your MemberVault products. And you don't want to do Facebook group, I have to say like right now I'm really happy with it. So that's my update. They're very excited about having the single sign on integration that we'll be adding with circle later this year. Because I think that like the few glitchy things that have happened, or like customer service, things that have happened with circle so far,

you know, embedding the comments inside of the inside of the MemberVault content, like the only things that have been a negative are things that we solved by having that integration. So I'm very excited about that. But just know that I think that that is definitely working really well I don't

from what I've seen so far. I don't think I would recommend it as like a full replacement for a community just from what I've seen, I still really like our Facebook community.

But as far as like having engagement inside of your content inside of MemberVault It's really cool. So that are I think that's pretty much all of my updates. No more tangents for you.

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