In this fun interview with Rita Perez from Take the Helm we discuss how she uses gamification in MV and her fantastic Bingo Cards to deliver a fun, user focused experience for her customers in her business.

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Transcript:

Remi Oduyemi
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another user spotlight. My name is Remi I'm part of team MV on the user success lead with member vault. And what we like to do with these of spotlight is talk to our lovely paid members who are using member vault in the platform to run their businesses in all sorts of different ways. And every time we do this, we learn something new or get a new idea or new inspiration about things that we can be doing inside of our member vault accounts. So today I'm joined by Rita Perez. Hi Rita, how are you?

Rita Perez
Good. How are you?

Remi Oduyemi
I'm very well, thank you so much for being here with us today. And I've got some questions for you if that's okay.

Rita Perez
Yeah. So excited to be here. Let's jump in.

Remi Oduyemi
Ah, lovely. So tell me, how long have you been using member vault?

Rita Perez
I actually, I think just shy of two years, 2020 was the big year. I know for many of us to jump in

Remi Oduyemi
Was member vault your first platform or did you try another platform before, or what?

Rita Perez
I had actually wanted to try a different platform because I didn't know about member vault and somebody who creates a lot of courses had recommended member vault for starters, and that's how it began. And I, one of the things that I really loved was the community, the collaborative that we have on Facebook, because everyone is so incredibly helpful. And I also get love getting that one-on-one touch point with Erin and Mike. Yeah, no, I've not you're right. I've not experienced that with another piece of software where the kind of the creators and the owners are so like involved and respond and very co-creative. So, you know, they listened to what, what the members want and then they just go make it happen. There's like, Yeah. It's one of the things that kind of drew me in as well. Yeah. I just saw I mean, there's been so many new features that have been added that I've been so excited about blogs and pages and then a coupon expiration that just came out. So I'm like, I know. So it's like every day it's just like something you're like, oh, this book in this here.

Remi Oduyemi
I absolutely love it. So Rita, tell me, who is it you work with? Who's your sort of ideal client that you work with in your business?

Rita Perez
Yes, I work. So I have two businesses. My primary business is a travel business and the travel business has kind of spurned out for me to support other travel business owners. So travel entrepreneurs, travel suppliers, travel advisors, or agents as some people might know.

Remi Oduyemi
And do you mostly works with one-to-one or do you do small groups or memberships?
What's your sort of preferred model of working?

Rita Perez
I do a little bit of everything. So like my first big thing. Well, the big thing that I kind of started in was my own podcast, this strategic travel entrepreneur podcast. And then last fall, I went ahead and I launched something called prep for wave week to help travel entrepreneurs prepare for something that we call wave season. It's where a lot of people after the holidays, they're like, okay, we've talked to our families and we're ready to go. And I know a lot of people had that conversation, especially this past year with everything that happened. And it has kind of spurned out that I do a little bit of everything from there, but at the end of last year, I had the idea because so many groups were popping up in the travel industry, a lot of education-based group and I'm like, we don't need another educate. Like we need someone who's going to hold people accountable to doing the actions that they need to be doing daily in their businesses so they can move forward and see improvements. And that's kind of like where my spotlight member vault product came to life, which I it's officially called the take the home collaborative, but the fund name is travel biz bingo.

Remi Oduyemi
Oh, we're going to dig into that and a little bit more details. Cause that sounds very cool. And I want to hear all about your bingo creation that you made and how you use gamification remember about that's going to be awesome. But before we get to that what tech do you use to support your business and alongside of member vault?

Rita Perez
Yes. So Zapier is my friend, so I use it to do all the connections on the backend I use. MailerLite currently for my email marketing and I think that's really it. I, I go really like I do use a Facebook groups that I can keep in touch with everybody keeping communication and zoom. Zoom is another big thing because we have kickoff celebration calls.

Remi Oduyemi
Ooh, that sounds nice. I love the naming structures that you use. That was really cool. And can you tell us a bit more, so we talked just a minute ago about your bingo and your game-ification. Can you talk us through how you set that up? Why you set it up and and what, what, it's, what it's like for your users to have the kind of bingo gamification experience with you?

Rita Perez
Yeah, so like I had mentioned, I was all about accountability, but sometimes when we're in business, like we know there's 50 million things that have to happen, so we just need something to tell us like, okay, these are the things that you should be doing for this month. And I change up the bingo board every month, not everything changes. So I'll have last month's bingo board. So it is a five by five. And of course I have the free space in there and then I have different actions that you should be doing. So whether it's sending an email to your list or reviewing your financial numbers, to see where you're at and goals, did you change your process? Did you actually use a product that you purchased like a course or a template? So I had different things in there. Did you go to a networking event or in our industry, a supplier events so that you can trace the different activities that you've done in the month and see kind of like what action that you've taken. Also have a goal in mind. Like the goal here is to get a bingo for the month to be like so excited and celebrating that I did it. I did some action.

Remi Oduyemi
I think that's a brilliant idea. It's a really nice way to keep your users motivated and focused on, on the things that they should be doing in their business. And it's fun. It's like check this off. Like, oh my God, it makes you feel good. This is such a great idea. How did you come up with this idea? Or was this just...

Rita Perez
Do you know, I wanted something to be fun also. Like that is a big thing. Like I, I wanted to do something a little bit different that nobody else really had thought about and I wanted to make being in your business fun again, because I know with all the different things, like we have to do all the marketing portions, we have to do all the Salesforce, like we're Jack of all trades make that fun. So it's actually something that we want to be doing.

Remi Oduyemi
Yes. Oh, I think that's, I think that's absolutely genius. I think that's really, really cool. And I might be implementing that into my own business Rita. Yeah. I mean, I'm all about fun anyway. And I try and make all my training stuff fun. I love the idea of a bingo like yeah. Bingo board. It's just, I think it's genius. I think it's really, yeah.

Rita Perez
Yeah, every month to kind of like kick off the month, I do something again. I want it to be fun. So I don't want to say like, it's just a zoom call. It's a kick-off celebration where I debut the new kit, the new bingo board for the month and kind of go over the tiles because some things people need a little bit more clarification, like what exactly is a trade event. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's brilliant. And I like the name of your zoom calls as well.

Remi Oduyemi
I think that's really cool. And it, I mean, isn't, it sometimes it's about naming things that are going to make people want to get engaged rather than just come to another zoom meeting.

Rita Perez
Right. It's this is an exciting thing that we're going to do and it's really going to motivate you and inspire you.

Remi Oduyemi
So naming, naming, yeah. Your meeting sessions with your, with your people is a brilliant idea as well. And so let's talk about member vault quickly before we sort of get towards the end of this. When you first started using member vault, how did you find using it? Was it easy for you? Was there a steep learning curve? What did you like? What didn't you like? Give me some feedback on that.

Rita Perez
It was easy, but there was a little bit of a learning curve trying to figure out the difference between like modules and lessons and, and just those different naming conventions. But like once you're into it, it, it is so easy to really start it in daily life. And then I start thinking of other things, like some of my lead magnets, I now house on member vault. I've also started like one-on-one sessions. I've started doing that so that people can go ahead and, and pay for that through member vault. And then we do go ahead and do scheduling. Oh, Calendly is another big thing that I, I knew there'd be more tech in there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. But I really love the user experience as well as the customizability that I can really brand it to what my brand is and what it really is all about. I love that there's so many, like you might be looking for the bingo board, but then at the bottom that it offers different things. So people are like, oh, well, yes, I need that. And I need that to.

Remi Oduyemi
Yeah. The binge and buy environment, I I've found that works really well for me. I am not a I'm not a very firm or pushy salesperson. So I like bringing people into my member vault for free and then like casually, oh, there's all these other things that you could buy was doing here as well. And that works really well for my kind of personality. Cause I don't like, you know, like I feel like I'm bragging a lot, which is, you know, stuff I need to work on, but rather, you know, rather than buy my thing, buy my thing, buy my thing. It's like, Hey, here's a free thing. Come into my world. And whilst you're here, you can then choose and decide if you want to buy some other things. And what's great about member vault is once people have signed up for a free thing or, you know, a low cost thing and they're in your a member of our ecosystem, we're able to track them. So you can see when they're looking at products, but they've not bought yet. So you could see when some of these warm leads or somebody is a hot lead and then you can engage with them and be like, oh, I saw you check this out. So would you like to buy this thing? Or here's a coupon you've only got seven days because now we can put deadlines on the coupons, which is amazing. Yeah, so there's, there's lots of really nice things that we can do. Like you say, you know, they might come for the bingo card, but then they discover, oh, there's these other things that I can utilize whilst I'm here as well. So that's a really powerful thing. I was going to ask you a question, but it's just jumped out of my head. I had one lined up about something and I can't remember what it was.

Rita Perez
I will say because my, the membership is so new. I am kind of like evolving the way that I do things. So one of the big things that I want to increase its engagement with the bingo board and not necessarily with the bingo board, but just with the other people who are there. So there's something that I there's two additional sessions that I'm thinking about adding, and one is going to be called the search party where we actually go searching on the interwebs for different ways that we can meet our ideal clients within the travel world.

Remi Oduyemi
Oh, I like it.

Rita Perez
I just recently held a challenge and that was one of the things that we did in the challenge. And I love that and I think it's just something that needs to be done on a regular basis. And the more that we do it, the more traction again, we can gain in our businesses.

Remi Oduyemi
Yeah. I think that's, yeah. I think that's a really neat idea. And yeah, it's all about gamification making it fun and then people want to keep engaging and they keep coming back. I think that's, I think that's wonderful. Okay. So before we go, how can people find out about you and your travel business and your bingo game-ification stuff that you do?
How can people find you online?

Rita Perez
Yeah. So I am most active on Instagram and my handle is take the helm V like Victor B like boy S like Sam And take the helm VBS VBS. Yep. And then of course it's takethehelm.vipmembervault.com.

Remi Oduyemi
Brilliant. So what I will do is I will make sure I get all of your links put into the show notes for the podcast, cause this will be in the podcast and I'll make sure we put all your links on the blog page as well, so that we can link to your member vault and your social media handles as well. So thank you so much for joining us today. Is there anything else you wanted to add before we depart today?

Rita Perez
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. No, I cannot wait to see how other people might start incorporating bingo boards for their own memberships.

Remi Oduyemi
Yeah, I think there's going to be quite a lot of take up of this because it's a genius idea and you know, keeping your members engaged, having fun is what a lot of our members want to do because they want to keep people coming back and engaging with their content and working through their content. So any new ways, that we can add fun into our business, I think there's going to be a lot of businesses who are going to appreciate this episode, because the idea is really cool. I've not heard this idea before, so this is new for me and I think it's going to help a lot of people. So thank you very much. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. Thank you. Have an amazing day.

Rita Perez
Thank you. Bye.

takethehelm.vipmembervault.com