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John Lee Dumas is an amazing personal friend, known for his podcast, Entrepreneurs on Fire and his website eofire.com. John is not only a prolific podcaster, he is also a true membership master inside his membership community, Podcasters’ Paradise. In it, he teaches aspiring podcasters how to start, build, grow, and monetize podcasts of their own.
What You’ll Learn:
- Memberships do have legs, you can give yourself a raise every day.
- The ins and out of lifetime offers.
- There are pros and cons to everything you do in life.
- How to turn ‘making a living into ‘making a fortune.’
- How to keep your finger on the pulse.
- All things website!
Show Notes
In 2013, John was running along the bay in San Diego when he started thinking about his podcast and its’ success. But, he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was missing, things that he kept hearing from his audience. What are their:
- Struggles?
- Obstacles?
- Challenges?
Some of them were saying they would love to start a podcast about ____. Their problem? They didn’t know where to start, what their first step should be.
At the time, John would send them different blog posts, YouTube videos, whatever he could find on the internet.
Every membership should pre-launch. You should never do anything until someone votes with their wallet.
Because, a survey where you can click a little button, that’s easy. But, when it comes time to put the money on it, suddenly that changes if they’re not serious.
People come for your courses, but they stay for the people. They stay for leadership. they stay for community.
Memberships do have legs, you can give yourself a raise every day.
If you do out and sell 5 members tomorrow at $100/month, you just gave yourself a $500 raise!
Each membership has its’ own journey. No matter what number of members you lose each month, you will replace them, you just have to keep moving.
When John started Podcasters’ Paradise, he was focused on just getting it out there. He wanted to make sure the concept was proven and people had voted with their wallets. Then, once he had that down, it was just about figuring everything out.
When membership officially launched, it was $500 for a lifestyle membership. No monthly recurring payment.
John’s fear at first was that people would just come for the trainings, tutorials, and templates. Every now and then, it would be about questions.
A few months in, John put up a surveys and questions that asked what peoples’ favorite part of Podcasters’ Paradise was.
The response was that it was videos, the templates, the webinars. Luckily, John left a spot for an ‘other’ option.
It only took one person responding other. It said, “came for the tutorials, stayed for the community.” Everybody voted for that one. The first 20 people voted the answers that John put in, but then everyone started answering that they stayed for the community, after that person answered.
Lifetime offers not only give you a great influx of cash, build an anchor. A core crew inside of your membership, those members will probably buy everything else you’re ever going to sell.
This reminds us of one of our members. Because she decided to make lifetime offers, she made $47,000 in one month. Then, the next two months, her community became more alive than ever!
John Lee Dumas experienced this too. For his members that did the monthly payments up to a 12-month payout until their lifetime membership, they get to month 8 or 9, and they begin counting down to that payout being done. John knows that a decent percentage of those people that pay every single month, if they didn’t something that they build up to they would have been out.
There are pros and cons to everything you do in life.
A couple years ago, John did shift to a fully monthly-recurring membership model. Now, if you want to get into his membership, you have 2 options:
- $97 per month
- $997 per year.
Again, you get a couple hundred dollars off when you pay up-front, because that’s people that commit from day one. Those $997 members are so valuable, that John and his wife add bonuses as well. Including, a 15-minute strategy call with John, a $600 value intro and outro for their podcast.
But, those $97/month members also have a solid reassurance of that monthly cash flow, all at the same time, when 50 or 60 embers pay all in the same day.
For us, it takes a ton of pressure off when all that money comes in and now you just get to be creative and think about how you can reach more people with your message. You are free to go out and serve people, instead of worrying about whether or not you are going to make a sale today.
Turn ‘making a living into ‘making a fortune’
The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast is what we use to help people quit their jobs and make a living from their own memberships.
But what’s next? What about those people that want more? That want to make s fortune? That’s how we got the idea for Membership Masters.
We take people through a calendar monthly, it’s all for marketing. That is our next-level ascension. Then, people who are really big membership owners in the Membership Masters subscription, we have the Million-Dollar Membership funnel, which is an eight-week training.
John calls himself a massive believer in ascension models. You want to bring people in at a high value and a decent price point. Then, ascend the right people up. John has this with his traditional business, but he does not with his community. He does however, offer a few ascension-based opportunities like, ‘A Day with JLD’ which is a $10,000, 12 hour, sit down with John that is only available to people in Podcasters’ Paradise. They also have what they call, ‘Puerto-Palooza’ at John’s Puerto Rico home, which is $7,500 per person, 7 people for 3 days. 2 days of business, 1 day of fun. So, both of those models ascend people on more of an individual basis.
Keep your finger on the pulse.
You have to be willing to do what you’re saying. You have to be in-person, be live, ask questions, engage.
John says to ask questions like, ‘what are your biggest struggles, obstacles or challenges right now? ‘This helps him know what the next steps looks like for him, as well.
For us, we use an email that actually replies to everyone’s inboxes, including ours. It simply says, ‘what’s frustrating you?’ When we added the word frustrating, it opened up the flood gates for people to hit reply. It was so good, that it is now the third email in our sales sequence!
Let’s talk website!
JLD’s website is very simple, asks people to join his podcast community and masterclass before you see anything else. He says he did this because he realized that if people take that podcast masterclass, the likelihood of them joining his community was through the roof.
A lot of people are ready, but they’re scrollers.
The 30-Day money back guarantee is super important! This builds trust with everyone that comes across the site. It works so well, that it has a 6-8$ rate of people that actually use it on John’s site. That means about 94% of people took the plunge because of that guarantee.
It doesn’t take a ton of testimonials! JLD only has a few on his page. He has found that fewer testimonials actually work better, because they don’t overwhelm anyone. Because, people will actually take the time to read them!
If you would like to connect with John Lee Dumas, check out:
- Entrepreneurs on Fire Podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/entrepreneurs-on-fire/id564001633)
- eofire.com
- freepodcastcourse.com
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