Generating Monthly Recurring Revenue with a Membership (Beyond Services: Expanding Your Offer Suite) with Liz Wilcox

Have you fallen victim to believing the lies that low ticket memberships can’t generate a six-figure income? In today’s episode, Liz Wilcox joins me to share how she’s bringing monthly recurring revenue (MRR) back through her $9 email marketing membership. Listen in as she explains how she decided on a membership, why she priced it at $9, and highlights both her successes and failures over the last three years.

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Guest Bio:

The Fresh Princess of Email Marketing, Liz Wilcox is an Email Strategist and Keynote Speaker showing small businesses how to build online relationships, package up their “magic” and turn it into emails that people want to read and, most importantly, purchase from.

Today’s episode is brought to you by my Client Hub Template inside the DIY Systems Template Shop. Business owners often have their client information spread across a variety of different tools, making it hard to access the information they need to make critical decisions. That’s why I built the Client Hub Template for Airtable, to take the guesswork out of building your own!

Here are the highlights…

[2:13] Why Liz Moved from Services to Memberships

[5:05] Monthly Recurring Revenue

[7:09] Why a $9 Membership?

[13:20] Low Hanging Fruit Makes an Impact

[14:37] Digital Product Opportunities

[17:00] Launching to a Small List

[20:00] Failing Goals

[21:09] Annual Passholder Strategy

[25:57] Churn Rates in Memberships

[31:03] Affiliate Payouts

[35:00] Liz’s Encouragement

Mentioned in this Episode

Email Marketing Membership

Connect with Liz

Website: lizwilcox.com

Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/emailmarketingwithliz

Instagram: instagram.com/thelizwilcox

Review the Transcript:

Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Business First Creatives Podcast. I am chatting with yet another returning guest today. This is the amazing Liz Wilcox, the Fresh Princess of Email. She was previously on the podcast to talk about how to make friends with your emails. And today I’ve brought her on because she has a very unique perspective of how you move beyond offering one to one services to a different kind of offer in your business.

Liz, good morning and welcome back to the podcast.

Liz Wilcox: Hey friends, I’m so excited to show you what’s possible today. This is going to be really fun.

Colie: I mean, not only is Liz super amazing at email, but she has now like transformed her entire business around a 9 email membership. Yes, friends. I said 9. It started at 9. It is still 9 and Liz is literally kicking ass everywhere that she looks with this membership. So Liz, First, let’s talk about why you decided to move on from like one to one services.

When did you make that decision? And why a, why a membership?

Liz Wilcox: Listen, I don’t like working for anyone else but me. I love Liz Wilcox so much. I want to grow Liz Wilcox’s business. Um, and I only started services because I knew it was quick cash. And maybe that’s not your thing. Maybe, you know, you got into photography, you love photography, and you love taking photos and maybe now it’s just doesn’t feel as exciting as it used to.

It’s a little more draining than it was. And so for me, when I first started, you know, I made that singing joke. Yeah, I was excited to work on other people’s businesses and I was a copywriter, uh, by trade, but I knew that I could sell digital products. I knew that, flip my hair. I was a star. I knew that I was supposed to be, you know, like I had the knowledge and the skills to teach a large audience more than just working one on one.

And so if you feel that deep down, I’m doing these things and you know, each project takes X amount of time and I’m maxing out my impact, you know, I made a joke about loving Liz Wilcox, but I, I was maxing out my impact, right? If I just worked on Colie’s launch. Who else can I help at that time?

Almost no one, right? And so for me, I knew I wanted to go the digital product route, and just reach more people, especially with what I do, email marketing. That’s something I believe that everyone has the right to learn. I come from an education background that was drilled into me. Day one, semester one, everyone has a right to an education.

And so I just knew that I was the missing piece in helping people learn about email marketing in a simple way. So maybe you have something similar. Like, I just know I can help more people with this. And so that’s why I was moving away from. service providing and why a membership, uh, M R R monthly recurring revenue.

Y’all we’re in the service industry. We get it like feast or famine, right? It’s either, you know, the faucet is on high or it’s barely dribbling out. And I was. So over it, I knew that there had to be a better way. I just, you know, chose to believe all those marketers out there that said, you know, you can. Steady Your Income, and so I, I knew the membership was for me because it was, you know, the best customer is a repeat customer.

Monthly recurring revenue sounds really sexy to me. It’s like rare. Uh, you know, J. C. Chazet in the 90s type of sexy. So I was totally down for a membership. I had never started a membership. I I wasn’t even in any memberships, unless you count, you know, streaming services. And so that’s, that’s why I membership.

Colie: I mean, and I think all of us dream of having consistent months. I mean, especially those that are still doing live launches, you know, like you said, you can have a really great launch and then you’re going to go a few months without it. And then all of your revenue just dries up. And so you have to take what you made in that launch and kind of stretch it and make it work.

And while that works for a lot of people. There are some of us that just crave the consistency of knowing where your money is coming from, especially if we’re the sole breadwinner or I mean, even if you’re not like, I really love my husband’s monthly check. I mean, it makes my job a lot easier because I’m like, yeah, my money is good, but like, my mortgage is paid every month, but I tried a photography membership.

Liz. I don’t know if you know this. I have a photography membership in my business. And it’s really nice when I can just see those monthly payments coming in at the end of every month. It’s like, oh my gosh, this is great. Like, I have at least this much money coming in every month. And while I get MRR, and that is really sexy, and I feel like I should try to put that in the title somehow.

My next question for you, Liz, is why 9? Like 9 is such a funny amount of money and I know that, you know, if you had asked me my opinion, which you didn’t, but if you had asked me my opinion, when you started your membership, I would have been like 9. Have you lost your mind? Like, how are you going to make significant money off of 9?

But now when someone’s like, you know, can you make six figures off of a low ticket item? I’m like, yes, here’s Liz Wilcox. Go look her up. She is fabulous. So why 9? No,

Liz Wilcox: just said. There’s no way you can do that. I’m a bit of a contrarian. I like to do things that other people think are impossible. Like I started at the top of the hour. Like I want to show you what’s possible. And so I will say the reason why the membership is still 9, we are at our third birthday at the time, of this, podcast release, February 16th, we turned three.

It’s still 9 because Dammit, I’m the owner, and I just want to prove to you that you can make money with a low ticket, and in 2023, this 9 offer made 500, 000, so you can do whatever you want in your business, but why it started as 9, a couple, different factors, number one, I was sitting down to write my newsletter, and I was I don’t want to say desperate, but I was really wanting more customers on my email list.

I was charging those higher ticket prices, but I knew the people that were on my email list, you know, it was going to be a while for them to be able to afford my packages, right? My packages were five to 10, 000. And so I just wanted a way. Like we talked about earlier to create more impact to help people where they were at right now and selfishly gain more customers.

Right. And so I knew coming from a business to consumer BTC background that everybody and their mother has an issue with. Sending newsletters, right? That’s what my membership’s all about. I just give you a newsletter template. And so I knew that was a gap in the market because most people, including me, we’re selling high tickets on sales, emails, launches, right?

The things that make money. But I knew that the thing that was missing from launches, the reason your launch made it or broke it, right? Was those weekly newsletters, was that nurturing of the audience? And so I knew it was highly valuable, but I also knew the majority of my customers, the majority of people that would buy this, didn’t have those launches in place yet, right?

They were seeing a lot of quote unquote failure in email, aka they don’t have a lot of cash flow, Liz, what are you gonna do? And so I knew it was high value, but I knew I had to price it low. To get people to just trust me. Hey, I’m gonna charge you nine bucks, just give it 30 days, see if this helps you, you know, hate email less.

I mean, it was a really low bar. It still is. I’m like, hey, I just want you to not hate email. Join my membership. I’ll help you out. Until you can love it, and then you can leave and, you know, fly from the nest, right? And so, the last factor in that, as far as like, narrowing in on 9 was I thought about when I first started out and I was, what do I write?

What do I write? They say money is in the list, but how do I extract that? I didn’t have a lot of money. 20 bucks. Sure. 20 bucks is 20 bucks, but it. It felt like a lot. I was already paying for WordPress. I was already paying for ConvertKit. Maybe I bought a course or two at that point. And maybe my husband was wondering if I was in a cult.

Like, what? Why are you spending our money? Right? And so, I just realized it had to be under 10 to just release that pressure valve for people to say like, Hey, I’m going to offer this. Yes. It’s a, you know, it’s high value, but I’m going to offer it at a low price. So you can just trust, maybe you’ve been burned before, or maybe you just don’t have any cash.

Just trust me for 30 days. Let’s see what happens. And I did, honestly, I did plan on increasing the price. But once I saw people, oh my gosh, thank God. This is 9, Liz. I never would have been able to purchase it or I wouldn’t have believed you or would have thought, Oh, this is just another thing, that I’m grasping at, but the 9, felt.

Less stressy enough to give it a go. And I’m so glad that I did. So every single month, every single day, I get more firm that the price is 9. I’m so glad after three years, quote unquote, in this economy, I’ve never had to, increase the price and that feels so good.

Colie: I mean, it’s got to feel amazing and I don’t think that I’ve actually ever heard you say this before, Liz, but you said, I want to make you hate email less. I’m sure you’ve said it. But like, that should be your bumper sticker. You should get a t shirt made. That should be your slogan. Because Email is so accessible.

Like you said, you’re paying ConvertKit. I also pay ConvertKit. Flowdesk is a little cheaper, you know, doesn’t have the limits on how many subscribers you have, but like email marketing is very accessible for everyone. Like all of the email marketing subscription, um, companies have a free plan to where, you know, up to your first thousand people or whatever it’s free.

So, If you could like, you know, go out there and help people hate email a little less, people have way more accessibility to email than they do, say, Facebook ads or getting into someone else’s group to like, do a teaching seminar to get people onto your list. Like, email is the lowest hanging fruit for every single business owner.

And so I really do appreciate that you are so honest and so vulnerable about why you’re charging 9 and that it really can make a huge impact on the business owners that are inside of your membership. I

Liz Wilcox: or any kind of digital product, you know, thinking about what is that low hanging fruit that maybe my competitors don’t bother with because they think, oh, we can’t make money here or whatever, but also like she said, it’s the lowest hanging fruit, but it’s also the juiciest fruit.

Like people don’t understand that it has the highest ROI, right? And so if you’re thinking about your offer, You know, what’s something that’s kind of low hanging, but also really juicy. That may be some people, some competitors, some peers are kind of missing the boat on, and how can you sort of wiggle in and say, Hey, I’ll offer this.

And it helps to be passionate about it. I love newsletters. I know it’s corny. I love talking to my

Colie: love reading your

Liz Wilcox: Uh, oh, thank you. I love, I love newsletters because it’s just that quick connection point. So what is it, you know, in your business, that you love, that you could teach others?

Colie: Now, Liz, I don’t think I know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask. So we’re talking about digital products because technically it is a membership, but you’re offering a weekly template, which is a digital product. Did you sell any digital products before you launched the membership or did you launch the membership and that was actually your first digital product?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, so lizwilcox. com, the email thing, this is actually my third business. So my first business, I was an RV travel blogger. You name a digital product, I have sold it. Uh, ebooks, printables. I had a digital summit. I sold videos. I had sold bundles. You know, all, the whole shebangabang. But within the email marketing business, this was my Second or third, I had, I sold like an outline called 20 minute newsletters, which now the, every single template in the membership is based on that outline.

And then I, I sold a lot. I did a live workshop. This is a great way to gauge, uh, what your customers need and what they’re lacking is doing some kind of live workshop. And I did the typical, you know, get it now for 47. And then the replay was like 79 and then I did it live again for 100 and then the replay went up for 150.

And that’s actually, side note, something that I now sell for 50. I actually slashed all my prices a few years ago. I said, you know what, why am I selling a replay to a Zoom recording for 150? That doesn’t feel cool to me. It’s 50 now. And I haven’t raised the price since. But yeah, so I’ve sold some digital products before.

I recommend, you know, just trying out a few kind of low effort, products just to see what your audience really likes. And then I just noted all the things I’m teaching. Nothing is going to work if we don’t have X first. X being those newsletters. So let me just write those for you every single week.

And I do consider it a digital product. Like Colie said, I get, you know, you get that template. It’s. Now it’s on a, password protected site, but you basically just copy and paste it into your, email service provider.

Colie: And then you customize it for your business. It’s awesome. So you’re selling the digital products before, and then you kind of migrated into email marketing. I feel like everybody’s going to want to know, Liz, what was the size of your list when you launched the membership? Like how many people were on your list?

Cause I still have a relatively small list, like in my opinion, but you can do great things with a small list, but just curious, how big was your list?

Liz Wilcox: Listen, when I launched the membership, my list was probably about 14 months old, and I had 800 people on it. So it was You know, relatively small, not a lot, but not a little. It was a decent list and in the first 30 days, I had 100 members. That was something that I pushed out. I said, Hey, I’m going to launch this thing.

And in the very first email where I launched it. I said, I want to get a hundred people in the next 30 days because you want, you know, one of the things you miss when you’re launching a digital product is you have to build up that excitement. You have to give a little behind the scenes. It’s the same.

You’re selling a high ticket service. If you’re a photographer, somebody might want pictures of your studio first, or they might want to come in and see the space, you know, they want to see some photos that you’ve taken before. I know I just hired a brand photographer, I got new photo shoots done, and I, I wanted to know that they understood what a personal brand was, right?

It’s the same in your, Digital products. People want to see as much behind the scenes as possible, and one of those things that’s often overlooked is The fact that you’re excited and you have a goal. That’s part of the behind the scenes for digital products. I want to get 50 people into this workshop.

I want to sell 20 of these in the next 48 hours. I want 100 members in the first 30 days. So that I can know like, yes, this is something you guys want. I know that, you know, it feels kind of weird, a little different. You wouldn’t, or you might not as a service provider say, yeah, I want to get three clients in the next three days.

Come on guys. But we do often do that as service providers. I’ve got two slots left. Before summer, I’ve got three Christmas packages, right? We show them, we tell them how many sales we want. We’ve got to do that with our digital products as well.

Colie: Absolutely. Liz, 800 people. I mean, wow. Okay. So 800 people. And then I am totally hearing you on this excitement, like, because I want to push for you. I want to be one of those first 100 people. I want to share it with my friends so that I can be part of you reaching that 100 person goal. I feel like sometimes we shy away from saying our goals out loud because we think they’re too big.

We think they’re too audacious. We worry that if we don’t hit our goal, we’re going to have to publicly admit that we failed to meet that goal. And then what does that say about us? And what does that say about our business? Like all of that, but. So yes, I am very happy that you put your goal out there.

What else did you do to build excitement? Because I feel like the next part was offering the annual pass, but I don’t know how much time passed between the initial opening and then when you decided to start selling an annual pass.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, Colie, you’re gonna hate me. I’m gonna put an asterisk in that. I just want you guys to know that, in 2023, I put a big giant goal out there. I said I was gonna get 10, 000 members. That was my goal in the membership. And guess what? I fell flat on my face. I was nowhere even close. We had 4, 000. It was like 4, 100.

And so I just want to let you guys know, and no one emailed me to tell me I was a fraud. Everyone said, wow, I can’t believe you have 4, 000 members, without ads. Like, that’s crazy awesome. And so I just wanted to point out, like, don’t, well you can be afraid, but do it anyway. You know, put the goals out there.

Sometimes you hit them and sometimes, you know, you get a little too big for your britches and you don’t, but your people want to support you. Everyone that said, Oh my gosh, you didn’t hit your goal. I’m so sorry. But 4, 000, that’s crazy awesome. And now I’m getting the more support, than I think I would have if I would have hit that ridiculous goal.

So anyway, Colie mentioned something called the annual pass. That is What it sounds like. Colie and I are both Disney fanatics, right? So you can see where I stole it from. You know, you buy an annual pass into Disney World, you get in, you know, all the kingdoms every day for free, right? And so that’s what I did with my annual pass.

It was, you buy a year into the membership, And you get access, you get the keys to the kingdom, you get access to all my other products, for free as an annual passholder. So I launched that nine months after the membership launch. So the membership launched in February, in November, it was like a Cyber Monday thing.

I said, hey, I’ve got this idea. And here’s where we get our people involved. I said, Hey, I’ve got this idea to give away all my products. If you join for a year, hit reply. If you think that’s a good idea, if I should do it. And everyone that replied said, that’s a terrible idea. How, how are you going to make any money next year?

You’re going to go out of business, those types of things. But Liz, and this is where I knew I had something, but if you do it, I will buy it. So I said, okay. Well, I know, and at the time my email list was, you know, like 1500 or something. It had grown a lot with the membership. And so I said, okay, well, even if I get a thousand more subscribers next month or next year, I can sell this to a thousand more people.

I’m obviously going to make money, you know, shout out to Costco and the gang. Right. And so I, so I, you know, I’m Cyber Monday. I said, Hey, I’m only going to sell a hundred of these because I didn’t know if people would actually buy it. Y’all I had it. I mean the list was monetized but it was monetized for nine dollars, right?

Um, and so this was a hundred eight dollar offer. That’s a bigger jump and I sold out those hundred slots in two hours. Made something like 12, 000 and I said, okay, now I’m on to something and this is where, you know, Colie and I were talking about retiring services. I launched the annual pass again a few weeks later because everyone and their mother was like, wait, what?

I missed it.

Colie: I missed it.

Liz Wilcox: I was this or that. And so I felt like about three weeks later, okay, I’ll open it again. And I sold 225 of those, that’s 25, 000. And so in the matter of a few weeks, I’d made what,

Colie: Almost 40 K.

Liz Wilcox: yeah, 37, 000. Y’all as a service provider, do you know how much work I would have had to do for 37, 000?

I wouldn’t have been able.

Colie: the math.

Liz Wilcox: Right, that’s a lot, that’s a lot of providing service. And so, I said, okay, I’m going to use this 37, 000 to pay myself for the next X amount of months. I can’t remember, I was, y’all, I was paying myself less than 4, 000 a month. I’m a single mom. Who has two houses in her name, okay?

So not a lot of money, but 37, 000, oh my gosh, that’s going to pay me forever! And so I officially retired my services, I took my services page off my website, I started to learn the word no, spelled N O, period. It’s a full sentence. And I went all in on growing that membership. Now that I knew, you know, I had about nine, 10 months of people saying, yes, this is a good idea.

I created nine, 10 months of content. You know, obviously this was a viable idea. So I went all in on it and retired my services fully in, December, 2021.

Colie: Okay. And I, you, you had a sale? I mean, I remember because I got a podcast pitch, I believe from you. I feel like I got one other thing. I mean, Liz, that was so long ago. I don’t remember. But not only did you make the 37k, but at some point you had a sale on your services and you did get like, I would say a surge or an influx of cash before you shut them down.

So. You did this list and, you know, great. I love both of those. And then now that you’re going into the new year, you’re going into your 1 year anniversary. How do you continue to bring new people into the membership? Because I know the pushback that we get on memberships, no matter what the price is. It’s 100 a month.

It’s 9 a month. It’s 300 a month is. But how many people leave your membership every month? And so we often call that a churn rate. What does your churn rate look like? And are you happy with it?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, my churn rate is honestly, it’s a, it’s higher than it ever has been, and I’m not happy with it, and that’s something in 2024, I’m really focusing on. I have a call with a consultant in about a week, to figure out, I mean, I know where the gaps are, but for her to remind me, like,

Colie: Remind you.

Liz Wilcox: these, are the gaps. so let’s kind of take you on a little journey here. So the first year, the churn rate was amazing. Hardly anyone left the membership. I attribute that to most people finding Liz Wilcox first and buying directly from Liz Wilcox. The second year, the churn rate and by great, I mean, it was like 2%.

Like,

Colie: I mean, that’s amazing.

Liz Wilcox: like hardly anyone left. Totally opposite of what people say about low cost memberships, which honestly can, and what they say is that, oh, it’s low cost, people are gonna, you know, drop out like flies. Let me tell you something, how long have you had your Netflix account? Okay, that’s a low cost membership.

Screw off. I’m so tired of this. I’m so tired of like gurus telling you things that simply aren’t true. Okay, so anyway, so the churn rate was incredibly low. The second year it went up a little bit, but it was still under five percent. It varied between three and five percent every single month. Now, I will say 2023, I was incredibly distracted.

A few months prior to the new year, I suffered a really bad concussion. I started having some really bad health problems and I started taking Liz out of the business more and more, which was great for Liz. Right. But as the business started growing and as people started buying from Colie, from Shahara, from Roberto, instead of buying directly from Liz Wilcox, the churn rate increased, right?

They didn’t have, those customers didn’t have the same level of trust as someone buying who had been on my email list for a few months, direct to becoming a customer. Those people were quote unquote dropping out, canceling a little faster, but we did do the churn. I calculated it a few months ago. and it’s still only at about.

6%. 6 to 10 percent depending on the month. and so it’s still not bad. They say you want to keep it under 10%. I’d like to keep it under 5%. I work hard. I don’t run ads. So it’s, you know, every, every little person is super precious. I love every one of my members. and so this year I really am working on.

a better user experience as we’ve y’all my membership is built on free plugins on WordPress But as we get more, yeah as we get more users, we’re at over 4 000 now The plugin doesn’t work as well as it did when there were only a thousand people using it. So I’m actually launching this month in February 2024.

Is that what year it is? We’re launching an entirely new website, an entirely new user experience. That’s gonna help with Churn. We are having a entirely new onboarding system to help people, better use the membership and know how to use it. I’m recreating the entire tagging system and categories so they make sense, for different people.

I’m launching a reward system where when you create or when you use the templates you’ll get, And those points can, you can redeem like at the grocery store for prizes. And so I’m really, it is something that I’ve taken into consideration. I have seen over the three years, an increase in churn.

That’s a real thing. Not ashamed to admit it. it is something I’m like, wait, come back. Jack, don’t go. Jack, Jack. Y’all, we having fun. We having fun

Colie: Okay, I mean it. I do love a good Titanic

Liz Wilcox: Right, so, shout out to the 90’s Leo, we loved him. So, you know, right now it, it varies each month between 5 and 10%, which to me is like super cringe as I work towards this, 10, 000 goal.

But, at the same time, the membership is still growing. We get, 100 to 300 new members a month, which is like insanity. Y’all, I don’t run ads.

Colie: I know Liz just feels the need to say that over and over again. Now, you don’t run ads, but you do have an incredibly generous affiliate program. So I think that we should talk about this because I do think that it may not have helped you initially start the membership or grow initially. But like you said, in year 2.

Was when a lot of people started buying from people who were in the memberships or other affiliates. And so, why did you decide to do your affiliate program in such a generous way to where it’s just 50 percent of every single payment?

For the foreseeable future. MRR.

Liz Wilcox: and I’ll say it again, I don’t run ads. So why wouldn’t I have a generous affiliate income? So what Colie is saying, you know, it’s 9. If Colie gets you to sign up, she gets 4. 50. For as long as you’re in the membership, it’s recurring again, that M R R is bringing sexy back is bringing sexy back like JT.

Okay. And so for me, I knew I never wanted to run ads. , I always want to show people what’s possible and I really am on a mission to show people that you can have a million dollar membership, without running ads. So that’s kind of my mission with this. So I knew I never wanted to run ads, and I also, coming from that B2C background, I know what affiliate commissions can do for someone.

They can be, they can make or break whether you decide to keep going, especially in this online space. And so I really wanted to say, like, hey, I know this is low price. I know you’re not going to make a million kajillion dollars off of this. But I want it to be worth your while, and if you get two, even if you just get two people, you pay for your

Colie: Your membership.

Liz Wilcox: And so I don’t always subscribe to the belief that, well let me back up, a lot of experts and marketers give their people 40%, because they don’t believe that their affiliates should make more money than they do. That’s usually what you hear. Like, well, I created it, I’m keeping it hosted, you know, I should at least make a little bit more than my affiliate.

But I actually believe the opposite. I didn’t have to go out and market. I was asleep in my bed, , recovering from a concussion. I went to Disney with my kid yesterday after school. Why shouldn’t I just give you 50 percent and absorb the fee, right? Because I’m paying the fees. I’m paying my assistant to cancel the memberships and make sure all that’s clean.

But for me, The same way you pay for ads and you don’t wonder why Zuckerberg is making more money than you, I just love to pay my affiliates and I love to give them 50 percent because I believe they are doing the brunt work. You know, there’s, why did I start an affiliate program? Because I needed more people to sell my stuff.

And so why shouldn’t they get. 50% and I, you know, I have larger courses. Uh, my biggest course is $400. It’s an entire launch course. I give 50% on that too. It’s not just because, oh, $4 and 50 cents, whatever, whatever. Like, I just believe in giving affiliates 50%. I always will believe that and I always will be giving 50%.

Colie: I mean, Liz, I never thought about it, that you’re doing it so that it’s an equal partnership. I love, I love that about you. I really do. I mean, and it does make you think about why people give the 40%. And, you know, I’m not telling you that anything is right or wrong listening audience. And I don’t think Liz is either, but I really do think that the fact that she gives 50 percent and she intends to do that.

going forward because she sees the role of the people that are selling her products as affiliates as equal to the role that she takes in creating the actual templates that you get when you join the membership. Liz, I feel like that’s such a warm like thought to end on, but I do want to ask you if you have any other closing thoughts about memberships or being an entrepreneur in general?

Cause you know, I love to hear it all from you.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Hey friends, listen up. can do it. Whatever your idea is, I, I know you can do it. The thing about memberships that you have to understand though, is you, you can’t do it right now. You’re not gonna get 4,000 members, you know, and make half a million dollars right now. I will say I do believe email marketing membership is a bit of an outlier. meaning that you might have to put in a little more time than Liz Wilcox did. You know, my membership just really took off and it’s something I talked about at the top of the hour. It was really this exceptional gap in the market that no one was tapping into. And for the people that no one was talking to in my industry, nobody wanted to talk to the people who could only afford 9, right?

And so I took that as an opportunity. And I do believe that is one of the reasons it grew so fast. Of course. The reason it continues to grow is I continue to do outreach like this. I continue to, perfect the product and, you know, perfect my affiliate program. But I know you can do it. I know you can get creative.

And you just have to be patient. You know, if you take nothing else from this, just be patient. I was willing to wait two years for this membership to take off. Think about your services. How much money do you, how much money is enough? For me, it was, if I made 9, 000 a month, that would be enough to, you know, pay myself and keep the lights on on my business, and I’d be happy.

And I told myself, I wrote this down, Liz, in two years, you’re going to have a thousand people in your membership, and that’s gonna pay you 9, 000 a month, and you’re gonna be set. Of course, things look different now, but I was willing to put in the work for two years to make that happen. And now, three years in, after that two year mark, you know, I started looking at the content.

How can I make this better? How can I repurpose some of this? And y’all, I had two years of content to play with. And business and life suddenly got even easier for me. So if you’re willing to put in the work, if you’re willing to be patient, I know it’s going to pay off for you and I can’t wait to see it.

Thanks Colie.

Colie: Guys, I, there’s, there’s nothing else to say. Liz, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. I think that this was one of the most honest and vulnerable episodes that I have done on Business First Creatives. And everyone, again, if you did not listen to the first episode with Liz, I do highly recommend that you go back because this was all about how she built her membership.

But that episode was all about how you make friends with email, which is how you get excited about email marketing and you learn to hate it less. All right. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.