Feeling burnt out at some point is very common amongst membership creators.
But instead of just starting a new program and completely shutting down your old membership, there is an alternative: “The Dimmer Switch”
In this episode, we are discussing how to slowly transfer your existing members to a new, more sustainable membership while still giving those who want to continue in your old program access to valuable resources in a way that won’t eat up all your time.
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3 Big Take Aways
- How to avoid over delivering
- The “dimmer switch” – how to transition to a more sustainable membership
- How to effectively communicate the transition with your members
- Paul & Melissa’s Inner Circle – The Inner Circle with Paul & Melissa Pruitt is an epic 12-month experience for online business owners, coaches, course creators, and membership site owners who aspire to create financial freedom and a lifestyle they want for themselves and their family and also create a positive impact in their community and the world.
- Adaptive Membership – Adaptive Membership is an exclusive opportunity for online business owners, coaches, course creators, and membership site owners to play bigger and bolder in their business and explode their bank account with more clients!
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Melissa: So we're gonna start with Kari
Kari: So I have a membership that I've had for almost three years now.
And my membership was really built into delivery it via a membership. So I didn't have to like resell it every single month. Right. And so I have produced a ton of content, right? I mean, cause I, every month I was producing, I've been producing like 13 video lessons. They're 10 minute lessons after editing, but they start a lot longer.
Anyway, I am like getting burned out with that. And about a year ago I created a master's program which gave members only four sessions. And I said, if after 12 months they could move into masters if they wanted to. And so what I'm looking at doing is, is in January, I'd like to get out of the 13 lessons a month completely.
I mean, cause I can still deliver this to new people because when people start, I start them at the beginning, but I figured after three months of content, I'm not going to break even any longer because people leave after a certain point. Right. And so I'm realizing my return is becoming less. I'm getting burnt out.
My challenge at this point is, is I've gotten some people converted to masters when I pull the plug, which I'm thinking I'm going to tell them at the end of the year, no more 13 session classes.
I've got about 75 members right now that have not shifted to masters, but they don't want masters. They want the full class. And I, I can't seem to figure out how to get them converted and what to do with them.
And you know, do I just let them go? I mean, 75 is a lot to give up. So losing those on the flip side, I'm paying a lot of money to keep them. So I'm just looking for any advice on how best to transition right during this and any, any words of wisdom I willing to take. Yes.
Melissa: Awesome. Okay. Good question.
Paul: So we always open it up to the group. Does anybody have any insight . Or input or some ideas and
Melissa: so Doreen,
Doreen: Kari, I had a couple of questions for you. So the 75 members,
they're getting those 13 sessions, they're getting them, you said every month, is that right?
Kari: Right. But they have been almost with me from the beginning. Yeah. It's like every other month. I've actually only been doing 13 classes every other month and then on the offline side.
Doreen: Okay. is your membership only those classes?
Kari: There are other things like I do help sessions. I do a Facebook group, I do challenges, but what they love are the lessons. If I do a survey and said, if I did away with anything, they'd say the one thing not to do away with is the lessons.
Doreen: And to stay fresh and new, I'm not sure of your content of those lessons for the practice. But what I noticed with my membership is that there was an ask about they really wanted to implement more. And so I have reduced the number of trainings per month and incorporated more essentially office hours, ask me anything where they submit questions in advance or it's a work session that other people are watching.
Right. So you already have that?
Yeah. That's sort of what I'm doing with my masters because they get help sessions that is just for them. Right. And the idea was is they get to work on their own things, but yeah, it's just those seven and can't figure out how to get them transitioned to wanting to do their own.
And that's where I think I was raising my hand to say, if it's something to get your 75 warmed up to these interactive sessions and that, that becomes, you know, 80% and the training is 20% or something along those lines, but I'll, I'll leave it at that.
Kari: I appreciate it.
Paul: So Suzanne
Suzanne: Hi Kari. I am Suzanne. And the question that I had is what is your niche and what is your price point?
Kari: Okay. My niche is quilters that want to design their own quilts and blocks using a program called electric quilt.
Suzanne: Okay. actually know if somebody does that. That's amazing.
Kari: Okay. And my price point for my regular program, it's around $30 a month.
Suzanne: Okay.
Kari: You know, I think it's 38, but you know, 30 to 38, depending on what, you know, prepaid option you sign up for. And then yeah, I think that was the price point
Suzanne: and the masters group. What is in the master's group?
Kari: In the masters group I actually have been signed up for six months for $80 or a year for 150. So it's actually a cheaper price point because I only give four lessons for those that are in the master's group. So it's actually a less expensive option.
Suzanne: Interesting. And you prefer, you prefer method?
Kari: Well, I mean, I want them to be as long as they want to stay in my regular, but at some point, I mean, this is like a little quilt design program, you know, after three years I'm sort of out of content. So part of me . Goes, okay, they're ready if they've done, you know, even a year or two years, they're ready to branch out and do more of their own things.
But with my support is really what (inaudible)
Suzanne: I really liked, what Doreen contributed to you. And that she's tried that in her own group, I think is an excellent sort of runway for you. I think that people come to expect this from you because you've taught them how to treat you about it. You know, that's what we do.
But I would just suggest that thinking about, and as I think Melissa says started planting seeds about what 2021 is going to look like. And I would start planting those seeds now. And one of the things that I'm doing to just take some of the content pressure off is I'm having vintage week and vintage week is is content I'm repurposing. It's like a video I did a year ago or a video did, did two, three weeks ago showing it again, I think at the Saturday night live, you know, vintage kind of intro.
And then let them know that you're going to be bringing the two groups together. I would bring them together and make it easy on yourself.
And then, and then when it's time to create another master's level, make it more expensive.
Kari: Well, and I was thinking I would increase the master's price, and so I may even tell people I'm going to increase it in December and try to get the conversion and maybe even do a special thing with them. When I do my open enrollment, I do quarterly for my master's. I give them one last chance, right? to get in on the discount price because I did think I have to increase the price to
Suzanne: in 30 lessons even though if they're just two minute, little vignette lessons at you are really, really over-delivering and I commend you for that. But you've also spoiled them. So
Kari: yes, I have.
Suzanne: You're going to have to sort of maybe reel that in a little bit. I would want to reel that in a little bit. Cause it gets, it gets old after awhile.
Kari: Yeah. Well, I'm definitely at that point, what's the name of your site? I'll tell my friend onpointquilter.com and I'm just doing a flash sale starting today.
Actually, as of this conversation, just (inaudible)
Paul: and for a split moment, back to Kyrin, you had your hand up, did you want to contribute . Anything?
Kyrin: So was trying to understand the numbers, and I think the numbers that you had is 75 people you're making about 2,500 almost a month. And you're wondering whether or not you want to give that up because you're exhausted or it's just a lot of content. And I was wondering whether you can, you had some great ideas, but I just wondering whether you can invite other contributors and change the format so that it's not so much, you know, it's so heavy.
Paul: I think giving up $25,000 a year, I mean, for me, it's a, it's a chunk of money, so that's the only thing that I wanted to throw out there. So having guests come in cross reference people who may be doing similar, but not necessarily identical.
So it takes, I'm assuming it's the workload. And because you have so much content, you probably could just do a swap or you're swapping, you know, your three years of content with somebody else in their group. Or so I I'm, I don't know enough about
Kari: your here's the ironic thing. I'm the only person that does what I do in my industry.
Kyrin: Okay. So, so that is pretty awesome.
Kari: It's awesome. I mean, I've got such a small niche. It's like, I'm never going tobecome huge because
Kyrin: If it's not necessarily identical, it could be, for example, I don't know if people want to do similar to use if they want to move into a business area.
Paul: So I'm not sure. I'm just challenging you to brainstorm and see if there's something else. Because from myself, I'd be very hesitant to throw 75 people out the door. And I know that's not what you want to do, because at this moment it is $25,000 worth of income.
Kari: Yeah. I know. I said I that's, that's been my little bit of hesitation on the whole thing. It's like, okay, that's a lot to throw away that wouldn't necessarily be easily replaced with new people coming in the front door. And then I'm also thinking, well, maybe those people when they don't have another option, right. When I have no more new funds, new 13 session classes, like say, well, it's better than nothing.
Paul: That's where I was going to somewhat lead the conversation. So we always look at when we want to do dramatic changes instead of looking at things as like an on and off switch, look at it as a dimmer switch. So what I would do is you always want to begin with the end in mind.
And what I would recommend is to write down what would be the perfect membership for you. Cause I know we always do this for our members, right. But we don't think about how is this sustainable for ourselves? Because if you disappear off of burnout your members, then aren't going to find a solution in the market at all. Right. And sometimes the members you have to understand is when we go to our members over and over again and we ask them what they want.
They're always gonna say more. They're always gonna say more. They're never gonna let, they're not gonna say like, Oh, give up things. Right. So you gotta be careful when you ask that question.
Kari: Yeah. You're absolutely I just feel inadequate when I do
Paul: So. And the challenge is, is typically when people are more indoctrinated with you, they normally want to ascend and how you, this maintenance program, the mastery, it's more of a maintenance where you're backing off and people actually, as they're more indoctrinated with you, they don't want less of you. They typically are gonna want more because they're like already in a certain rhythm that you gave them.
So for them to suddenly go to four lessons instead of the, like the 30 or whatever, like that, that's a, that sounds like a downgrade. Okay.
It's more about how you present it is so key and so important.
And what I would do is I would have a very open, vulnerable conversation. Oh, this is just what I would do because I would, I would, at some point I would just say, you know what? Yeah, you know, I'm here and I'm serving you guys. And what I also realized is that I can't serve you at my highest level if I'm burned out.
And I really, this is a vulnerable post and it's something I want to talk about because coming in to 2020, as I had grand visions on what this is going to be, and I think all of us got caught off guard and we all are reevaluating our lives , and I wanna be very purposeful and very conscious.
And what I realized is that over the past several years of me, giving of myself to you is it's also coming to the expense of my personal life, in that isn't good for any of us, because if I burn out and disappear, then there's no lessons. And what I love to do is to create something that is better and win-win for everybody.
Now I did create the masters program because the intention is after you learn the fundamentals from me, that you really just need maintenance and everything. I feel like in this program here, I've taught you everything. But what I realized is that you want to have access to the library, okay? What I've taught you.
So since you've come through anybody, that's spent more than a year with me or whatever threshold is, and this is you can do this totally different than what I'm saying. It's just my idea of what, based on what you said, the mastery isn't Ascension.
And the idea is for me to initially help you get up and running. That's what this program is that you're currently in. But I would feel really bad and very conflicted inside that I feel like I've already shared everything that you need to know. So what I'm going to do is those of you that go ahead to mastery.
You're also going to get access to the library, the mastery library. And those are the 30 lessons that you've gotten from me over the last three years. So once you stepped forward, you have a virtual library that you can access anytime that you want to be able to do the next thing that you want to do. But also all my new content is actually held inside of mastery.
So if you want to stay here, you get access to the library. If you want to move forward and get what I'm working on now, then I invite you to come over into mastery because I want to support you. Yeah. So maybe something like that, but I would treat it as a dimmer switch. Like everybody new that comes in and your first thing doesn't know all of this that you used to do, right. They only know what you're offering now.
So as you dimmer switch people over all these existing people over now, the challenge though is, that's $2,500 worth of income that you're now gonna like downgrade into less money. So you want to be protective of that as you're bringing people through.
Cause normally there's an ascencion, normally you would take what you're doing and reverse it where you'd have a lower price thing. And then that they're there with you for a while. You're like, Oh, you want more of me? You go up, you know, so, but it seems like this is more of a, of a maintenance type program is how it feels to me.
I'm not sure if I'm guessing.
Kari: Yeah. I w I would actually agree. I mean, that's the way I sort of view it in my mind. They still have access to me. So when they get stuck on their forum, right. I'm giving them new lessons. Yeah. I have an older audience that I think sometimes I'm there game that comes out, when I send out a new lesson, it's something fun for them to look forward to and do, but I can only produce so much new games
Paul: But it doesn't really have to be new? could you start in mastery and instead, just do impromptu over the shoulder. This is what I'm working on.
Kari: Yeah.
Paul: So you just do your thing.
Kari: Like if you're making something for a client or making something for somebody else, they get an over the shoulder camera just to watch you work. And they would probably buy into that all day long and you don't have to produce new content. It's just whatever you're working on next, you turn on the camera and just have them,
Cause I would say that's what they love with the help sessions. It's not, it's seeing how my brain works as I sought to work through their problems. Right. Which you guys all probably deal with, you know, so. Wonderful. Well, thank you.
Melissa: I love it. Awesome. Good, good question.
Melissa: So we're gonna start with Kari
Kari: So I have a membership that I've had for almost three years now.
And my membership was really built into delivery it via a membership. So I didn't have to like resell it every single month. Right. And so I have produced a ton of content, right? I mean, cause I, every month I was producing, I've been producing like 13 video lessons. They're 10 minute lessons after editing, but they start a lot longer.
Anyway, I am like getting burned out with that. And about a year ago I created a master's program which gave members only four sessions. And I said, if after 12 months they could move into masters if they wanted to. And so what I'm looking at doing is, is in January, I'd like to get out of the 13 lessons a month completely.
I mean, cause I can still deliver this to new people because when people start, I start them at the beginning, but I figured after three months of content, I'm not going to break even any longer because people leave after a certain point. Right. And so I'm realizing my return is becoming less. I'm getting burnt out.
My challenge at this point is, is I've gotten some people converted to masters when I pull the plug, which I'm thinking I'm going to tell them at the end of the year, no more 13 session classes.
I've got about 75 members right now that have not shifted to masters, but they don't want masters. They want the full class. And I, I can't seem to figure out how to get them converted and what to do with them.
And you know, do I just let them go? I mean, 75 is a lot to give up. So losing those on the flip side, I'm paying a lot of money to keep them. So I'm just looking for any advice on how best to transition right during this and any, any words of wisdom I willing to take. Yes.
Melissa: Awesome. Okay. Good question.
Paul: So we always open it up to the group. Does anybody have any insight . Or input or some ideas and
Melissa: so Doreen,
Doreen: Kari, I had a couple of questions for you. So the 75 members,
they're getting those 13 sessions, they're getting them, you said every month, is that right?
Kari: Right. But they have been almost with me from the beginning. Yeah. It's like every other month. I've actually only been doing 13 classes every other month and then on the offline side.
Doreen: Okay. is your membership only those classes?
Kari: There are other things like I do help sessions. I do a Facebook group, I do challenges, but what they love are the lessons. If I do a survey and said, if I did away with anything, they'd say the one thing not to do away with is the lessons.
Doreen: And to stay fresh and new, I'm not sure of your content of those lessons for the practice. But what I noticed with my membership is that there was an ask about they really wanted to implement more. And so I have reduced the number of trainings per month and incorporated more essentially office hours, ask me anything where they submit questions in advance or it's a work session that other people are watching.
Right. So you already have that?
Yeah. That's sort of what I'm doing with my masters because they get help sessions that is just for them. Right. And the idea was is they get to work on their own things, but yeah, it's just those seven and can't figure out how to get them transitioned to wanting to do their own.
And that's where I think I was raising my hand to say, if it's something to get your 75 warmed up to these interactive sessions and that, that becomes, you know, 80% and the training is 20% or something along those lines, but I'll, I'll leave it at that.
Kari: I appreciate it.
Paul: So Suzanne
Suzanne: Hi Kari. I am Suzanne. And the question that I had is what is your niche and what is your price point?
Kari: Okay. My niche is quilters that want to design their own quilts and blocks using a program called electric quilt.
Suzanne: Okay. actually know if somebody does that. That's amazing.
Kari: Okay. And my price point for my regular program, it's around $30 a month.
Suzanne: Okay.
Kari: You know, I think it's 38, but you know, 30 to 38, depending on what, you know, prepaid option you sign up for. And then yeah, I think that was the price point
Suzanne: and the masters group. What is in the master's group?
Kari: In the masters group I actually have been signed up for six months for $80 or a year for 150. So it's actually a cheaper price point because I only give four lessons for those that are in the master's group. So it's actually a less expensive option.
Suzanne: Interesting. And you prefer, you prefer method?
Kari: Well, I mean, I want them to be as long as they want to stay in my regular, but at some point, I mean, this is like a little quilt design program, you know, after three years I'm sort of out of content. So part of me . Goes, okay, they're ready if they've done, you know, even a year or two years, they're ready to branch out and do more of their own things.
But with my support is really what (inaudible)
Suzanne: I really liked, what Doreen contributed to you. And that she's tried that in her own group, I think is an excellent sort of runway for you. I think that people come to expect this from you because you've taught them how to treat you about it. You know, that's what we do.
But I would just suggest that thinking about, and as I think Melissa says started planting seeds about what 2021 is going to look like. And I would start planting those seeds now. And one of the things that I'm doing to just take some of the content pressure off is I'm having vintage week and vintage week is is content I'm repurposing. It's like a video I did a year ago or a video did, did two, three weeks ago showing it again, I think at the Saturday night live, you know, vintage kind of intro.
And then let them know that you're going to be bringing the two groups together. I would bring them together and make it easy on yourself.
And then, and then when it's time to create another master's level, make it more expensive.
Kari: Well, and I was thinking I would increase the master's price, and so I may even tell people I'm going to increase it in December and try to get the conversion and maybe even do a special thing with them. When I do my open enrollment, I do quarterly for my master's. I give them one last chance, right? to get in on the discount price because I did think I have to increase the price to
Suzanne: in 30 lessons even though if they're just two minute, little vignette lessons at you are really, really over-delivering and I commend you for that. But you've also spoiled them. So
Kari: yes, I have.
Suzanne: You're going to have to sort of maybe reel that in a little bit. I would want to reel that in a little bit. Cause it gets, it gets old after awhile.
Kari: Yeah. Well, I'm definitely at that point, what's the name of your site? I'll tell my friend onpointquilter.com and I'm just doing a flash sale starting today.
Actually, as of this conversation, just (inaudible)
Paul: and for a split moment, back to Kyrin, you had your hand up, did you want to contribute . Anything?
Kyrin: So was trying to understand the numbers, and I think the numbers that you had is 75 people you're making about 2,500 almost a month. And you're wondering whether or not you want to give that up because you're exhausted or it's just a lot of content. And I was wondering whether you can, you had some great ideas, but I just wondering whether you can invite other contributors and change the format so that it's not so much, you know, it's so heavy.
Paul: I think giving up $25,000 a year, I mean, for me, it's a, it's a chunk of money, so that's the only thing that I wanted to throw out there. So having guests come in cross reference people who may be doing similar, but not necessarily identical.
So it takes, I'm assuming it's the workload. And because you have so much content, you probably could just do a swap or you're swapping, you know, your three years of content with somebody else in their group. Or so I I'm, I don't know enough about
Kari: your here's the ironic thing. I'm the only person that does what I do in my industry.
Kyrin: Okay. So, so that is pretty awesome.
Kari: It's awesome. I mean, I've got such a small niche. It's like, I'm never going tobecome huge because
Kyrin: If it's not necessarily identical, it could be, for example, I don't know if people want to do similar to use if they want to move into a business area.
Paul: So I'm not sure. I'm just challenging you to brainstorm and see if there's something else. Because from myself, I'd be very hesitant to throw 75 people out the door. And I know that's not what you want to do, because at this moment it is $25,000 worth of income.
Kari: Yeah. I know. I said I that's, that's been my little bit of hesitation on the whole thing. It's like, okay, that's a lot to throw away that wouldn't necessarily be easily replaced with new people coming in the front door. And then I'm also thinking, well, maybe those people when they don't have another option, right. When I have no more new funds, new 13 session classes, like say, well, it's better than nothing.
Paul: That's where I was going to somewhat lead the conversation. So we always look at when we want to do dramatic changes instead of looking at things as like an on and off switch, look at it as a dimmer switch. So what I would do is you always want to begin with the end in mind.
And what I would recommend is to write down what would be the perfect membership for you. Cause I know we always do this for our members, right. But we don't think about how is this sustainable for ourselves? Because if you disappear off of burnout your members, then aren't going to find a solution in the market at all. Right. And sometimes the members you have to understand is when we go to our members over and over again and we ask them what they want.
They're always gonna say more. They're always gonna say more. They're never gonna let, they're not gonna say like, Oh, give up things. Right. So you gotta be careful when you ask that question.
Kari: Yeah. You're absolutely I just feel inadequate when I do
Paul: So. And the challenge is, is typically when people are more indoctrinated with you, they normally want to ascend and how you, this maintenance program, the mastery, it's more of a maintenance where you're backing off and people actually, as they're more indoctrinated with you, they don't want less of you. They typically are gonna want more because they're like already in a certain rhythm that you gave them.
So for them to suddenly go to four lessons instead of the, like the 30 or whatever, like that, that's a, that sounds like a downgrade. Okay.
It's more about how you present it is so key and so important.
And what I would do is I would have a very open, vulnerable conversation. Oh, this is just what I would do because I would, I would, at some point I would just say, you know what? Yeah, you know, I'm here and I'm serving you guys. And what I also realized is that I can't serve you at my highest level if I'm burned out.
And I really, this is a vulnerable post and it's something I want to talk about because coming in to 2020, as I had grand visions on what this is going to be, and I think all of us got caught off guard and we all are reevaluating our lives , and I wanna be very purposeful and very conscious.
And what I realized is that over the past several years of me, giving of myself to you is it's also coming to the expense of my personal life, in that isn't good for any of us, because if I burn out and disappear, then there's no lessons. And what I love to do is to create something that is better and win-win for everybody.
Now I did create the masters program because the intention is after you learn the fundamentals from me, that you really just need maintenance and everything. I feel like in this program here, I've taught you everything. But what I realized is that you want to have access to the library, okay? What I've taught you.
So since you've come through anybody, that's spent more than a year with me or whatever threshold is, and this is you can do this totally different than what I'm saying. It's just my idea of what, based on what you said, the mastery isn't Ascension.
And the idea is for me to initially help you get up and running. That's what this program is that you're currently in. But I would feel really bad and very conflicted inside that I feel like I've already shared everything that you need to know. So what I'm going to do is those of you that go ahead to mastery.
You're also going to get access to the library, the mastery library. And those are the 30 lessons that you've gotten from me over the last three years. So once you stepped forward, you have a virtual library that you can access anytime that you want to be able to do the next thing that you want to do. But also all my new content is actually held inside of mastery.
So if you want to stay here, you get access to the library. If you want to move forward and get what I'm working on now, then I invite you to come over into mastery because I want to support you. Yeah. So maybe something like that, but I would treat it as a dimmer switch. Like everybody new that comes in and your first thing doesn't know all of this that you used to do, right. They only know what you're offering now.
So as you dimmer switch people over all these existing people over now, the challenge though is, that's $2,500 worth of income that you're now gonna like downgrade into less money. So you want to be protective of that as you're bringing people through.
Cause normally there's an ascencion, normally you would take what you're doing and reverse it where you'd have a lower price thing. And then that they're there with you for a while. You're like, Oh, you want more of me? You go up, you know, so, but it seems like this is more of a, of a maintenance type program is how it feels to me.
I'm not sure if I'm guessing.
Kari: Yeah. I w I would actually agree. I mean, that's the way I sort of view it in my mind. They still have access to me. So when they get stuck on their forum, right. I'm giving them new lessons. Yeah. I have an older audience that I think sometimes I'm there game that comes out, when I send out a new lesson, it's something fun for them to look forward to and do, but I can only produce so much new games
Paul: But it doesn't really have to be new? could you start in mastery and instead, just do impromptu over the shoulder. This is what I'm working on.
Kari: Yeah.
Paul: So you just do your thing.
Kari: Like if you're making something for a client or making something for somebody else, they get an over the shoulder camera just to watch you work. And they would probably buy into that all day long and you don't have to produce new content. It's just whatever you're working on next, you turn on the camera and just have them,
Cause I would say that's what they love with the help sessions. It's not, it's seeing how my brain works as I sought to work through their problems. Right. Which you guys all probably deal with, you know, so. Wonderful. Well, thank you.
Melissa: I love it. Awesome. Good, good question.
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