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On today’s podcast we help Dr. Michele Summers grow her membership site! Dr. Michele is mobile physician and long time member of the Flip Your Life Community. In today’s podcast, we celebrate Dr. Michelle’s growing membership, and Shane helps her had a higher priced certification program as a new tier for her membership site! If you’ve ever wanted to add a certification to YOUR online business, you do not want to miss a single minute of this episode!
What You’ll Learn:
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Adding certifications to your membership (11:15)
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How should I price my membership? (17:00)
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Renewing certifications. (20:45)
Show Notes
Michele Summers had her medical practice in California for 20 years. When we met her a couple years ago at Flip Your Life Live she was selling her practice and moving to New York! She had been working nursing homes in New York when the COVID-19 pandemic started. Thank goodness she had her online membership Body Wisdom with Dr. Michele (drmichele.com) – one where 50 people are now paying her $100/month!
In Michele’s membership she teaches healthy habits that are based on teaching people how to get into rhythms of sleep, eating right, exercising. It’s for people that may not have exercised for a year at a time and don’t know how because it has been such a long time.
Adding certifications to your membership.
Michele has an amazing membership that is really taking off but she feels like one thing is missing. She really wants to add a certification component for people that finish her courses!
Because of COVID-19 she says a lot of health professionals are having to make a pivot and they are looking for things they can do while working at home to make money right away. Michele has a health coaching certification that she has been working on for a while. She has built out so people can start coaching and making money right away. So, instead of enrolling in a course that takes 2 years to complete and spends thousands of dollars up-front, within the first month or two Michele’s members would be to start using what they’ve learned!
We love this idea! In a way this is a tier of Michele’s membership. It’s an ascension product. When you certify people to do something there’s a couple of things that can happen (which is why you should always seek legal advice when you do any kind of certification):
- You are exposing yourself to some degree to legalities. If someone you teach your method gets sued, they might sue you too.
Thankfully, Michele is a doctor so she knows all about malpractice suits and the legalities there. Upfront Michele is going to let people know she is not teaching medicine but healthy habits. Strong disclaimers and documentation are your friends!
- Make sure you don’t accidentally create a franchise (yes, it can happen). A franchise model is taxed differently, governed differently, ruled differently.
This has happened to people we know and it put their entire business in jeopardy so just be mindful!
How should I price my membership?
Pricing always comes down to you. You’re the expert. You’re the business owner. After Michele’s research she found that courses offering similar certification run from $1,500 to $5,000.
Michele wants to make her certification affordable. She wants to make it to where they can pay in payments just like in the membership site. We’re going to treat this like a high-ticket offer because it is the easiest way to think about it. She can undercut the competition and have the selling point of being able to teach immediately. The $997-$1,500 range is probably where she wants to be at. We want her to do this as up-front as possible. Michele can have payment plans but they need to be small and she needs to finance them with a charge.
Ex. If it’s $997 up-front then it’s 3 payments of $397 over a three-month period.
The reason is because you have to put constraints on people to get it done. If she has 100 people going through this a year that’s $100K. Eventually she could easily get up to the $3,000 range – but let’s wait until she’s proven the model we’ve got!
You can’t cheapen something like this because it’s such a huge opportunity. If someone signs up for this and they sell 10 spots at $50 that’s $500 right there. They can do it month after month and will definitely get their money back! She needs to watch 10 people that get certified for a year. Find out what they made back and that’s the price she needs to guide her membership by.
Renewing certifications.
Even though this is separate from her membership itself Michele can still recurring revenue. How? By making people renew their certifications.
Anytime you add a certification you want to think about continuing education. They need to re-up. Ex. If it’s $1,000 up-front pls $297/year. Every year they would have to pay $297 to keep their certification.
After people certify should could also send out a newsletter to down-sell and by use that as another tier of her membership.
How to experiment with your membership. (22:50)
Use 5 people to experiment your idea with. Michele has 5 people that she can tell, “hey, this is going to be $1,000 and $297/year. I’ll let you in for $500 and $100/year forever.”
This will allow her to see what works and play around with it as she needs to!
When it is okay to drip content. (23:45)
We are usually against dripping content. You should only drip content for very good reasons. Certifications are that good reason in this case.
Michele needs to separate this onto a completely different platform. These people may be in her community but this a completely different thing. Most people are trying to make healthy habits but some people are trying to teach them.
The real money is getting people that become certified coaches to join the community. Let’s say the goal here is to teach a local coach how to teach this – not an online thing. This person may have 10 or 20 clients. This might be their side-hustle to make an extra $1000/month. If Michele could offer those people the membership a little cheaper (like $75/month) they could become a recruiting force for her. They can teach using her membership as the resources to go along with what those clients are being coached on. Not only is this teaching certified people up-front she is essentially creating an affiliate army.
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