How To Structure Standalone Courses Inside Your Membership – Episode 61

Melissa: We'll move to Patty. 

Patty: How you structure things when you actually put a course inside of a membership? So similar to like what "ADaptive Ads Course" is doing, I'm realizing the membership, there's a core amount of information that they're going to need to know. And I'm not sure that I want to really separate that between and half the member, the course first and then the membership. So I'm looking for ideas and ways that people have done that. 

Melissa: Great question. 

Paul: Great question. So does anybody have a membership where they put core content inside of their membership that technically itself could be ripped out to be its own standalone course, or maybe you've had a course in the past and then moving into a membership model, you made a decision like this is better served, maybe being inside of  a membership model because the people in the membership would be better supported if they had the core content itself. If that makes sense. Does anybody have any experiences? 

Yeah, Laura. 

Laura: So I did that with mine. I took my core. "What is your life purpose" course and I pulled the first four chapters out of eight out of the course and put them in the front end of my membership because that's what I, I know people need that foundation to do any of the other work with me.

And if it seems to work really well and then if they want to go deeper, that's where I get them to do more. One-on-one work with Nick. So that's worked really well for me. 

Patty: Do you do anything with the rest of that course 

Laura: Not at this point in time, it's just inside the membership. That's where I want to drive people.

I want to drive people to my membership. That's where I've served really, really well. 

Paul: Anyone else have any experience? Yeah, Sarah

Sarah:  I'm similar. I've got lots of separate courses and that all within my membership, people can buy the courses separately if they just want one like module or one course. 

So some people would say possibly that my membership has too much value, but I don't see it like that. For me, it makes my life easier because I've only got one thing to market. So I market my membership. It's great value because it's got modules or courses in it for every topic that they need. 

So for me, it's great. I only have to market the membership. So it makes my life easier to do that rather than selling a course every six weeks, eight weeks and then have to refill it. So I actually, for me, it works really well. I love it. 

Patty: Does the support change for them because they're not all going through the course at the same time. So they're all independent study, kind of, they do it on their own. 

Sarah: So this is where again, I have some people say, oh, you shouldn't be doing that because, but it works. It works for me. I don't know what it will work like down the line when it gets to a certain, when it goes up a grade, I've got, I don't know, 220 members or something like that at the moment, I'm a dog trainer. 

 I do a weekly life and they can ask questions all throughout the week in the Facebook group, they can post videos of their training. I tell them the standard sequence that I would follow through the modules, but I can direct them to other modules if they've got other problems.  When they're posting their questions within the group and it is a really active group, they can post videos off their training for feedback, and they're all working on different things, but it works. 

Paul: Love it. Thank you, Sarah. Anyone else have any input? you have any?  

Melissa: With us, with our "Inner Circle", we have courses inside of there and the way we always frame it to them, because we say it's like a buffet. We have these pieces of information to take what you need if you need it, but it's available to you in this like resource type of thing. So I do think that like it, and again, I loved, what Sarah just said.

 It's like, figure out what works best for you and your marketing strategy, because you want to begin with that, that end in mind. If you want to be marketing a course and launching it and not launching it, or you're not shaking your head, that's not what you're looking to do. so again, it's just, it's how you frame and present it, you know, to your members and the way that we do it, where we have it, it's on this virtual shelf that they can grab it. 

Then when they come on the live calls, if some of them are working on the course, they can ask specific questions if they need clarification on that particular lesson, but they all might not be working on that. That some members might be working on the course.

Some members might be coming for other things as well, but they have a space where they can ask those questions. So you could have  people going through the course at different times too.

Paul:  The side thing I would mention is take yourself out of this online marketing bubble courses and everything. If I wanted to buy a machine to dig up my yard today, I'm probably not going to go out and spend $20,000. I'm probably going to rent it for a couple of hundred dollars for a couple of days to use it for the function that I want. Right? So I'm used to, the idea of renting is different than ownership.

 If I  back in the day, you know, back when we had like DVDs and VHS has remember those days, cassette tapes and all that stuff, there was a different value in renting a DVD versus owning the DVD. You would give Disney 40, $50 that own that DVD or Blu-ray. 

And there's people that same day that were able to watch that exact same movie. And they got it at that time from blockbuster and paid three bucks and they were able to get the same movie and the same experience, but there's a difference in value between renting something and owning something. If you're on vacation and you want to rent that car, that you've always desired and you can drive it around for a week and it cost you a few hundred bucks, whatever you're going to do it, you're going to rip and roar. You're going to have fun.

You got the experience of it, right? But the moment that last day of that rental is up, it's gone, it's gone. It's not sitting in your driveway. It's not there anytime you want to jump into it and explore it and do whatever you want in the future. So it's the same difference, like owning a car versus renting as well.

So when we get into this internet marketing bubble, then we totally separate out. And we're like, and internally I think a lot of us struggle, Oh my goodness, people are gonna look at this and be weird, or they're going to be ticked off. And it's like, Nope. Like with "ADaptive Ads Course", when we do a course, and as you know, firsthand, I put a lot of energy in a lot of time and I show up as a lot of energy and a lot of time, some people pay that larger amount and that's exactly what they get. They don't just get the course. They're getting a very focused amount of time that I am like, boom, there during those X amount of weeks.

Right. And then when we come into the membership, there's different deliverables. Now, the course is in there, it's tucked in there and somebody can come along and they can invest in, in the membership and they gain access to the course, but they're not getting those, those weeks that I spent with everybody. They don't get that. That's the difference between owning the movie, and renting the movie, owning the car and renting the car, you know? Cause the moment that they stop renting in a way the membership, they make a decision to leave. They don't have access to any of those resources it's gone. 

And somebody that bought the course can go back and reference it in the future, whether they're a member or not, they can go back. And you know, when they're ready, you know, six months from now a year from now, whatever.

Patty:  So in "Adaptive", they can't download things? 

Paul: No you can't download the videos, it's the streams. That's smart. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We have people all the time that he asked us if they can, or they can download and it's streamed. Like that's what you can do.