In this LMScast episode, Chris Badgett and Micah Mitchell discuss how Infusionsoft, Keap, and ActiveCampaign users create powerful automated WordPress based membership sites with Memberium and LifterLMS. Memberium helps you build powerful, automated membership sites while being deeply integrated with your CRM.
Memberium is a WordPress membership plugin, so it controls access to what pages and resources on a website are open to the public or only for certain members. And it does this at a very deep level between a website’s database and a CRM. And you can use that to trigger actions based on a customer’s actions on the website. For example, as a customer is doing things on the site, you may want to give them a discount or reach out with a phone call based on their activity in the membership site.
Micah has a long history in the Infusionsoft community, and Memberium has an implementation partner program that’s really focused on implementation. Partners in the program have to pass a practical exam where they create and then show that they can build and automate all the different things. Working with an expert can help speed up the setup process, because it can be technical and complicated at times.
For many site owners, a membership site is a way to deliver content that’s just a piece of an overall marketing strategy. Their business still works in a traditional way, and they’re using the membership site to supplement it, not to replace it. So the site is part of an overall strategy. Some people offer consulting or events, and their membership site access is a bonus. Others are using a membership site to educate and warm up prospective clients.
If you have a free ebook or a free video on your web website as a lead magnet, you could make that into a free mini series that’s protected on your site. Protecting the content with a membership can give it a higher perceived value.
You can learn more about Memberium at Memberium.com. Their support is helpful, so feel free to reach out. Micah encourages people that if you have something to share, to please share it with the world. Make your course, and don’t let anything stop you.
And at LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. If you like this episode of LMScast, you can browse more episodes here. Thank you for joining us!
Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a repeat guest from way back in the vault. His name is Micah Mitchell. He’s from Memberium, which helps you build powerful, automated membership sites while being deeply integrated with your CRM, ActiveCampaign or Infusionsoft or Keap. Welcome back on the show, Micah. Micah Mitchell: Thanks for having me, Chris. It’s so good to see you again, man. Chris Badgett: Yeah, it’s awesome to connect. We’re industry peers in the space of this whole online information product, online marketing, bridging WordPress to CRM tools like Infusionsoft and ActiveCampaign for somebody who hasn’t really thought about kind of the bridge between those two worlds of marketing automation and your WordPress site, your membership site, how do you describe what Memberium is and does? Micah Mitchell: Yeah. So, hopefully people are familiar with WordPress. If not, it just helps you build a website. So, the way I describe it to most people, even those not technical is, your website’s here and your customer information’s here. And Memberium is just in the middle saying, “Well, these customers have paid for whatever or have access for whatever reason to this stuff.” And so, it’s kind of communicating back and forth and deciding whether a page is open to the public or only for certain members and not just pages, but other resources on the site. So, we’re really kind of doing access control, but at a very deep level. But, it is a little bit weird to describe because it’s like, well, we don’t really do anything. The website does stuff and the database does stuff and we just help them talk. Chris Badgett: So, that’s awesome. And, that’s important talking that happens there. I’m curious, does somebody who comes to Memberium more likely come to you first as … I have a WordPress membership site and I need a membership tool. Are they more likely to come to Memberium say, “I’m an Infusionsoft or Keap user. I’m an ActiveCampaign user and I need a membership site.” I’m sure it both happens, but which one is more common for you? Micah Mitchell: Definitely, the more common is to come from this CRM as a recommendation, but we have gotten … So in the past it was all from the CRM pretty much, because we were such a unique, just for a few people kind of thing. But we have now had people come in, interested in Memberium and go buy something like Infusionsoft to use Memberium which to me is weird because our product’s maybe 57 bucks a month and Infusion’s a couple hundred a month. So, they’ll buy a super expensive product to use a cheap product in some cases. But mostly, yeah. They’re coming saying, “Well I already use ActiveCampaign or Keap, and they told me I need this for my membership. Chris Badgett: If somebody’s coming from the CRM or marketing automation tool, why does WordPress and Memberium? How do you kind of sell WordPress is the way because versus a SaaS, a traditional SaaS solution for a membership site or courses and stuff like that. Why WordPress? Micah Mitchell: Yeah. So, I don’t ever try to talk anybody into WordPress. It’s kind of changing somebody’s religion. If they’re not technical, then having them do WordPress is going to make them. It may not be a good fit. And so, if people who like SaaS, if they say, “Oh, I use Kajabi.” I don’t think I’ve ever said you should switch. I say, “Oh I love Kajabi. That’s awesome. How’s it working?” But if somebody is using WordPress, they definitely want the flexibility and they want to be able to use a bunch of different tools that aren’t going to be available in some sort of SaaS system or at least not available or customizable or whatever. So, I don’t have to do a big sales job on WordPress. Typically, they’re already there and they’re coming to us for that reason saying, “Well, I want my own theme and I don’t want it my group to be on Facebook. And, I do want to be able to include custom code and so on.” Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. So, the more are power, user custom. I want customizability kind of advanced marketer, user experience designer type person. What’s a common thing somebody’s trying to do? I mean, there’s the control access to something like a course or … What are the most common ways that people … A tag happens in the CRM then what goes down with Memberium in the WordPress site? Micah Mitchell: Yeah. So, there’s on the user creation side, let’s say somebody buys and you’re saying a tag is applied to somebody that can trigger password creation, sending an email, having them log in. And, there can be a lot of details there, meaning depending on how they’re delivering their content. Some people really want to get extreme. So for example, with something like Lifter where it’s doing learning management and all that, somebody might say, Well, yeah. I want that to happen.” But if they’re going too fast, I want to limit them. So, I want an extra layer of control over Lifter. But typically, people who are using us are looking for two-way communication. So a lot of platforms will say, “Well, when a purchase happens in your whatever, we’ll give that person a membership.” A lot of times what people are looking for with Memberium is to say, “Well, now when the user’s going through the system and doing things, we really want that to communicate back to the customer database so that we can email or text or whatever, give them a discount or reach out with a phone call based on their activity in the membership site.” And we want that not only to be around consuming video content or going to pages, but a lot of people will hook into their community and say, “Well, we want to give people points for interacting in the community and consuming content.” And when they hit these certain combos, not only do we want to reward them or be able to text or email them, but we also want to show it to other people for social proof. So, we need it to do a combination of things. So, a lot of times, they’re automating back and forth from the CRM down to the site, but also from the site back. And then, it’s usually going into other tools as well. So, if they have a community tool, they want to know, “Hey, if they click this link in, keep our ActiveCampaign, let’s unlock this area in the community, which is a separate plugin.” So, that’s a lot of what Memberium brings is integration to WordPress at the core, but integration beyond that into a lot of other plugins that people are trying to use and may want a little bit of extra detail or interaction. Chris Badgett: Wow. That is really well explained. I can tell you’ve been in this industry for a long time. Like you said, that there’s a user with a level of customization and user experience that they want to design. And, it’s one thing when a company says, “Oh yeah, we can … Or this SaaS membership site, there’s a Zapier to connect this to that. This is a whole other level of two way communication. We’ve got the CRM and all things happening over here. And the, we got the WordPress membership site and all these things happen over here, but it’s not just the initial account creation and enrollment or access control. It’s just two way communication, which really opens up unlimited possibilities, which brings me to something I wanted to ask you about. I know myself included, I’ve got a long history in the Infusionsoft community is, sometimes with all this power, it’s easy to get a little messy or over-engineering things. And, one of the cool things I know about Memberium, which is awesome is you guys have this implementation partner program, because I see a lot of experts, if you will get super excited about all this customability, but they may want a professional to help advise and actually set up the tech. Can you tell us about your implementation partner program? Micah Mitchell: Yeah. And thank you for asking. I actually love that program because what we notice with a lot of other partner programs is they really just want those partners to sell. So, they’ll get partners and they’ll kind of reward them and treat them based on how many apps those partners are selling. And so, ours is a little different where we’re really focused on implementation. And so, they have to pass a practical exam where they basically create and then show us on video what they’ve created and send it back, and we grade them on our team. And so, if they passed, they’ve shown, “Oh, I can build and automate all these different things, one click up sales, auto unlocking things, and delay timers and stuff like that.” And so, we make sure they’re technically savvy. And then, we also have a level of quality where if they ever have a issue with a client, we had to do this the other day for the first time in years. But, I felt a little bad initially saying it just like, “Well this is our policy,” but the way the partner responded, I was like, “Oh, it’s still the right policy.” But basically, we had a customer come in and say, “Oh, this partner said they do this and I’m not happy with their work.” So, we just reached out to the partner and reminded them, “Hey, it’s our policy that somebody’s unhappy, we de-list you. You’re no longer a partner. So, can you make this right?” And they were like, “Oh, of course, I’m so sorry. It was a misunderstanding.” And they made it right. So, that’s what we’re doing there is making sure people can just get it set up, because it can be technical and complicated. It’s enough of a pain without having to guess at who’s in your system helping you. And so, having those certified partners where we make sure they know what they’re doing, and then we get the feedback from clients that they’re doing a good job is part of what makes all this work because we do not as a company, do service or want to do services. And so, having that kind of teamwork aspect with these other companies helps a ton. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I was just looking at your examples page. You’ve got some incredible case studies on here. What are some of your favorite or not favorites, but just ones that stories that you like to highlight from your user community? So, tell us a story about a project. Micah Mitchell: So, one in particular that I really liked, it’s a story. It’s not a usual one from our user community, but Infusionsoft themselves keep the company and software company. They started using our software to do intern an training for their employees just because they could do some of the things they wanted to because they wanted to not only distribute content to their employees, but say, we need to know that they’re doing it. And in a timely fashion, if they don’t do it by this time, their manager needs to know and so on. So, that was kind of a big win where we got to help them implement that system and then do a case study with them about that setup, which was really cool. And, I always loved that use case of internal training because I think it’s so practical and overlooked. We all try to write policies and procedures and have systems and it’s like, yeah, I feel like a membership site is so perfect for that especially view something like Lifter to make it a learning management system and actually have the quality that the people are learning there. So, that’s kind of an odd one, but we’re doing. We have two case studies this week that are both of membership sites and they both came to us. One was said something like, “Oh we did 75 million in the last year using Memberium and want to do a case study.” Another one was like 65 or something. And I was just like this, “That’s awesome.” So I think, the fun use cases and there’s some other ones like that are where people have used other platforms and they’ve got into a level in their business where it makes enough of a difference to get the extra automation to go through the pain to do it. So, they might be on a different platform and it’s working pretty well. Their marketing’s working well, people are happy, but they realize, “Hey, if we could just get a little 3% bump here and a 5% bump there and whatever, it’s worth a significant amount of money and now it’s worth automating.” So, there will be some case studies coming out like that. But, there is one on there already of a Tony Robbins site, which we’re going to do an update on them, but that always makes me happy kind of seeing that the automation, like you said, you can over-engineer it. But when people are engineering and things and saying, “Hey, look at this cool little thing I did, creative little twist and here’s all this extra income.” So, yeah. It’s those little tidbits where you’re, I think, especially getting the community to interact, causing more people to consume, which causes them to upgrade, things like that. Chris Badgett: That is awesome for the experts out there, the course creators. What are some patterns you see? I mean, there’s these big numbers, these people making millions and stuff. And I’m sure, I know I see people that have all the best intentions, but the project doesn’t work out. What do you see in your success stories? It’s common, not necessarily from the implementation of your software, but what qualities do successful membership sites have in general? What patterns have you seen? Micah Mitchell: So I think, the main one is, it’s the people who understand that the site is part of an overall strategy. So, some people will say, “Oh, I’ve been an attorney for so many years. And now I want to create a membership site and stop being an attorney.” And so, they want to switch from one to the other and make this magical changeover and now they never work again. And that’s usually doesn’t quite work. Maybe, I don’t know quite what it is, it’s like they’re trying to shoot them or something. But, when somebody understands that the membership site is just a way to deliver content, and just a piece of an overall marketing strategy, and they’re still doing … How do I put it? Their business works in a traditional way and they’re using this to supplement it, not replace it. And the reason, I guess I say that, it’s kind of obvious that somebody trying to create one from scratch without separate business would have a harder time, but I love it when someone’s able to say, “Oh, well I offer consulting or events and the membership site’s a bonus” or the membership site’s a thousand dollars value, and now we’re able to charge more or give it to people who … They’re using it as part of everything else that they’re doing and they’re using it to educate and warm up prospect clients. A prospect who hasn’t bought, give them a free membership. You’re going to be the expert in their eyes. And then, when you offer services, them knowing that you’re smart enough to structure a whole course makes you the choice for that. And so, a lot of people, they’re trying to just sell the content and make whatever a hundred bucks for the course, so many hundred or thousand dollars versus seeing it as a way to add a ton of value to everyone their business comes in contact with, add more value to customers, position the company and the expert, more and more and more, kind of higher and higher. I’m kind of off in the woods here. I forgot what your question even is. Chris Badgett: Oh, you’re there. You’re there. This is what I wanted to get into. Coming at it a different way, you mentioned a lot of people are already using the CRM and the marketing automation suite of Infusionsoft key for ActiveCampaign and their … What’s the transition to the light bulb moment? “Oh, I want to have a membership site.” What are they already doing inside with their, either their website that they already have, and then the marketing automation and building their database and their email list? What’s the classic transition from being, let’s say, Infusionsoft customer to I’m an Infusionsoft customer with a membership site? Micah Mitchell: Yeah. That’s a great question really because it’s kind of subtle. I think, the classic transition is something like, we have a free ebook or a free video on our web website. And now, that becomes a free mini series that we want to protect. We want to have a username and password situation. And so, a lot of times, it starts with a lead magnet that they want to actually give a higher perceived value to by protecting. And then, that’ll develop from there. I’d say that’s like the simplest transition. Another one that we get a lot of that I wouldn’t wouldn’t have expected when I first started doing any of this is, a lot of, especially Keap users since they do their eCommerce and Infusionsoft, they’ll use us as just a customer portal because you can show all of your invoices and subscriptions and they can add and cancel stuff and basically manage their account. So, we do have basic account management from people who aren’t really selling access to the site. They’re just using it as a functionality of their business. But otherwise I’d say, “Yeah, it’s a lot of people trying to create high value lead magnets.” And then that develops later into adding prices to those. Chris Badgett: Nice. For somebody who’s trying to kind of get clear in their head the difference between a CRM and the CMS, for the acronyms, the customer relationship management, the database, the Infusionsoft type platform versus the content management system and WordPress and putting the layer of membership site on top of that. Why do we need both? Because for example, people like, I don’t know if they still have it. They probably do, but I know Infusionsoft one time had something called customer hub and then which is kind of like a members area thing. And then, you can kind of treat a WordPress site. I mean, it has users in it and stuff. Why do you really need to kind of bridge these two worlds and let them each do their best of breed stuff and not really try to squeeze all the functionality into one or the other? Micah Mitchell: Yeah. So, with Infusionsoft and customer hub, for example, they had acquired that and then eventually actually sold it back to the founders who had started. So, they divested that and now they really don’t have any sort of content platform. So, they are just a CRM. And then like you said, WordPress, it does have a user database. There are e-commerce plugins for WordPress. I think, somebody could build everything they want probably for free with WordPress but they’re going to be with those tools that are free or even some of the premium tools. It’s just a matter of choice. And I think, Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaigns, some of these CRMs, especially, they have intelligence in them. They have automation in them that WordPress really doesn’t. So for example, those anybody not familiar, Infusionsoft and ActiveCampaign, both lets you kind of create sequences of contact, like emails and texts and these sorts of things with timers. And that’s not really a thing in WordPress, at least that I know if there might be some plugin, but it doesn’t get as complex where you can say, “Well, after seven days send them this email, but if they’re already a member that program, instead send them this other email.” Having your e-commerce data available to make decisions on as you’re deciding what communication to send clients is a big part of what those platforms provide I’d say is, they’re kind of like the artificial intelligence or the brain of most people’s businesses. In fact, a question we get asked a lot about the automation when someone’s trying to decide, well, what do I put where we always come back and say, “Well, keep in mind that your CRM is the core. It’s the hub of everything. We are just a spoke.” So, WordPress or whatever I feel is just a spoke off of their customer relationship management, their database. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Another one too, the CRM specializes in deliverability and email at scale and stuff. This is a very important problem that the CRM is focusing on. And also like you said, with the hub and spoke model, as much as I would love to have as a WordPress guy, everything in WordPress, I also think about the CRM. Me personally. I’m a heavy ActiveCampaign user these days. And I think of my ActiveCampaign as also this master backup of my business. If the WordPress site, which we sell our software with and everything else were to go away, it’s all I could rebuild it based off tags and everything of who had what and when, and all that history is kind of mirrored in the CRM. So, it gives, it lets me sleep at night too, which is kind of cool. A personal question for you. This industry, the tech world moves fast, but you’ve been in this game for a while. What keeps you, first of all, how old is approximately is Memberium and what keeps you in the game, Micah? What keeps you excited about membership sites and CRM and marketing automation and information products? How long has it been and why are you still here? Micah Mitchell: So, a funny question, because this is the first interview or something like this I’ve done in about three years. So, the company’s about seven years old. Several years ago, I actually kind of got a little bit burnt out on this, but it’s because for years before that, I’d been doing the same thing, just different platforms. So, I did take a break and that’s why coming back now, I feel refreshed. And, even during the break I was taking a break, but the company wasn’t, obviously. I just needed a little reset, but coming back into it, realizing that basically nothing’s changed. It’s the same. There’s some new whatever platforms and social media, whatever. VR is coming down the road someday. But, it’s the same stuff. And what actually makes me passionate about it, and what is part of our company’s mission is that we help experts share knowledge. And so, when we have somebody let’s say, I’ll use kind of an extreme case, but let’s say somebody has some sort of pain going on and somebody else in the world has figured out how to solve that with some sort of simple remedy and this person can make a course and deliver it to that person, it’s like, that’s awesome that we could be a part of that. So, that’s our purpose is we help experts share knowledge. And the last few years when I’ve been not involved in software, I have been taking a lot of courses and trainings and things like that. And, it’s not from colleges, it’s not from public school. It’s because somebody somewhere was empowered to create and share their knowledge, create some sort of curriculum and share it. So, that’s what gets me going. And that’s why I’m back, very active personally. And, we’re making other products in this direction as well. So anyways, yeah. I love helping that information get across because one example, and this is really stupid, but once I had a toothache and I was in such horrible pain, and then I finally Googled it and realized I could swish my mouth with salt water, just salt and water and no problem. And it’s like, just that idea that I didn’t have and then having it was so valuable to me. And, I mean, that time’s a thousand or millions is what I’m hoping to achieve. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. It’s great to be with you on the journey, by the way. We’re about seven years old and I know what you mean by it’s hard. The Internet’s always on and there’s a lot of demands and all that stuff. So, it’s good to reset. You mentioned, I mean, you’ve seen a lot of people create membership sites. You’ve taken courses and things. You’re a member of things yourselves. What makes a great membership site? If somebody, I’m sure you come across people that have all the potential kind of locked in there. They have to keep it ability to help a lot of people, but what could they do to structure that content or kind of just get over themselves and actually create an outline or something like that? Micah Mitchell: There’s a few things in there. I think somebody who needs to get over themself, what I usually talked to that person about is meaning they have some hesitation for a million reasons as to why not. But, I’ll usually to them, there’s a couple, but say something like, let’s say, they’re worried about somebody stealing it. Chris Badgett: That’s one. Yeah. Hear that one a lot. Micah Mitchell: And it’s like, “Well, you can’t prevent that. I don’t care what software yo use. I don’t care.” It doesn’t matter. If you’re going to share it, someone’s going to use it. No big deal. So, you might as well become the face of that information. You know what I mean? The person sharing it and have that information associated with you, et cetera, and kind of go down that rabbit hole with them as to why they should be the person doing it, not somebody else. And if they don’t feel like they should, then it’s like, “Well, don’t do it.” But most of them deep down do feel that. They’re just worried or afraid or there’s something in the way. But as far as what makes a really good experience, I think it’s when someone’s really relatable. So, depending on what the content is, there is something to be said about positioning yourself as the expert, but also being able to be human so that they realize, “Oh, I can acquire that knowledge.” It’s not special or specific to you or genetic or something. And so the sites, I think that do a good job of general user experience, has got to look and feel nice, but when they’re communicating the information, it’s not just raw data, it’s put in a story. It’s personally relatable. They give you exercises to try to experience it or try on the idea or they ask you to give feedback. Like Lifter, the whole LMS learning management thing was a revolution from membership sites, because before that it was, I’m going to push content at you and ask for money. And if you give me money, I’m just going to dump this content on you, but being accountable to, well, are they going through it? Are they able to pass the quiz? And so on. Now, it’s kind of table stakes. I think, when you guys came out, it was so new and amazing. And now, it seems like a lot of people know about it and they want it by default. So I think, a step above that, above the automation and the user experience is that the content is genuine. And you’re saying, this is, this was created not I hope to make money off it, but created because I think it’s genuinely helpful and I’m trying to convey it in a way that’s going to get through to the most people. And that takes vulnerability, I think, on the part of the person teaching so that it does get through so the other person can connect and download it from them, not just hear it and the not allow it into subconscious. Chris Badgett: I love that. And I love the kind of the trip down the history of membership sites and how it’s evolving and that insight that the content has never been more important and then, the relatableness of the instructor or leader expert in the content is super important. As an entrepreneur yourself, whether it’s on the tech side or the instructional design side or the industry side, what do you see? The membership site has come a long way. I mean, you’ve been around this for a while. You mentioned the earlier days of like, we got to pay wall and behind this pay wall is lots of content. And, whether we’re using OptimizePress or whatever the early days membership site tool was, we’ve evolved and Memberium has evolved to meet the need of the modern membership site creator. What, as an entrepreneur, do you see coming in the future for membership sites? Micah Mitchell: You and I being in the WordPress world, I hate to say it, but I think as SaaS platforms get better and better, people will want that all in one more and more just because right now the all in one doesn’t always perform perfectly at every task. It’s hard to be good at everything. But as that technology improves, and there’s more platforms those guys can plug into, and when I say all in one, I don’t just mean a SAS. What I mean is, they’re going to expect that their client can get to their information however their client wants, desktop, mobile, whatever. And just like you use Hulu, Netflix, when you switch device to device, it picks up the exact episode, the exact time mark in the video. You know what I mean? I think they’re going to just expect a seamless experience. And technology is getting better at that. I see on the creation side, there will be more tools for the creator. Meaning, right now there’s a lot of tools for the publisher. The content’s created. There’s a million ways to publish it and decorate it and distribute it. But when someone’s going to create their content, having something that almost like an AI that would interview the content out of them in a way that is more packageable versus the person says the content and then you got to package it. So, I see some tools probably coming on that end, that help, that could take like, let’s say, my mom’s an expert at something, but doesn’t know anything about courses or technology. And it could just interview and extract the information that’s valuable and spin that out into a course. So, that’s what I think is coming in the long run. And then, of course VR at some point, but otherwise, same old, same old. Chris Badgett: Yeah. I love that idea of … because it’s a big sticking point. I mean, I call that instructional design. You’ve got the expert, but they’re not a teacher or a coach or whatever. So, how do you some technology or AI to kind of pull it out in a nice package? There’s definitely a need for that. That’s awesome. You mentioned, same old, same old. What hasn’t changed for membership sites or this industry? Like you said, and even you mentioned you took a break and came back and you’re like, “All right, we’re still here. This industry is still humming along.” What hasn’t changed and is pretty much evergreen about membership sites? Micah Mitchell: Hmm. I think, the opportunity hasn’t changed as far as there’s still people seeking it and there’s still people achieving it. I’ve even had moments where I’m like, are we even doing anything for anybody? And then, when somebody comes back around and tells me, “Oh, we just have done all this money.” And I’m thinking, “Oh, I thought courses were dead. I thought YouTube had just had made all the content anyone needed. Why would someone buy it?” And that’s where I’m realizing like, “Oh no, still I guess what hasn’t changed is somebody uniquely packaging content, somebody’s still going to buy it.” So you still have people saying the same thing in a different way, selling it in a different way, same thing though, on a million different topics. And experts are just rotating through, new gurus on every subject are coming and going and that sort of thing. So, it’s like a cool teacher’s market. So I guess that the teacher student aspect hasn’t changed. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And, why do some experts you think … You mentioned [Tony Roberts] and [Dean Graziosi] are using Memberium. What kind of content stands to test of time? What do you think those guys are just still around? There’s these mega successes out there. What do they got? What’s going on there? Micah Mitchell: Well, there’s a couple parts. One thing that I learned out on a little bit here and there is the shelf life of content. So, if I make content on a technology subject, it may be out of date in six months. But, where Tony’s talking about basic human psychology … Chris Badgett: Forever. Micah Mitchell: Yeah. Forever. So, he is just gotten so good at the same thing and then such a big following. And, it’s kind of like the rich get richer. So, the more people who know him, the more people who know him and so on and he of course shows up and performs and does his thing and is who he is, but … Yeah. I think I got off track with what the question is, but … Chris Badgett: That’s just really what … For the folks you mentioned some gurus kind of come and go, but some just stick and they’re just still here and maybe they keep iterating on their offer or their training, just kind of making it better every year or something like that. Why does some kind of come and go and others just stick around? Micah Mitchell: Quality comes to mind. So, another example is Jeff Walker doing product launch formula. Chris Badgett: Great example. Yeah. Micah Mitchell: Yeah. He’s done it so many times, but it’s a high quality product. My mentor who’s in the toy business, but has previously been in the information business and so on, he was like, “If I were to go do anything today, all I would do is buy PLF and apply that to it no matter what it is, if it’s a store, or a restaurant, a toy, I don’t care. I’d buy a product launch formula. And so, Jeff, still coming out with the same core, but adding nuances and details and staying consistent at a high quality. And Tony, the same. There’s a lot of people where they’re just kind of consistent at that high quality and they might make mistakes. Sure. But yeah, if it’s something people need, they’ll just keep coming back. And so, these guys with working solutions, at the end of the day, of course it has to work, but where they just keep the system running. I’m going to keep providing the solution and I’m going to keep marketing that I’m providing the solution. And I never let up on either side. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. One of my business coaches said that, you get tired of your marketing before the market ever does. So, using Jeff Walker as an example, there’s always going to be somebody who’s looking to launch a product and maybe you get past that and you kind of integrate the product launch methodology and customize it to your business, but there’s going to be the next person who’s going to need to launch a product or a business. And they just keep coming. And so, cool. Well, final words of wisdom. Somebody’s in ActiveCampaign, or Infusionsoft, and Keap, and they’re really focusing in on prioritizing the membership site and they’ve purchased Memberium. What are the first handful, one to three things that people should focus on to be successful with your product and their project as a whole? Micah Mitchell: Yeah. So I think, minimum viable product is the main thing people need to focus on. So, you mentioned over-engineering earlier and sometimes people will, they’ll not only over-engineer, but they’ll be like, “Oh, I’m going to make a 60 chapter course or something. Chris Badgett: I call that the giant course. Yeah. It’s just massive. Micah Mitchell: Yeah. So getting those people to create a prototype, and some of it’s just in their head where I’ll say, “Well, just make something just for your employees. Don’t even make a membership site for your customers, because you’re going to overthink it. You’re going to feel that stagefright or whatever and overthink it. But once they start, let’s say automating internally for their employees, then they’re like, “Oh, okay. This is useful. They like it, doesn’t matter. No big deal.” And then, they just start automating and helping their customers without overthinking it. So I think, if you do, I tell of people sometimes that do the dumbest thing you can think of, like the simplest dumbest, because it’s with all the options open to you, it’s too easy to elaborate. Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. That’s Micah Mitchell. He’s from Memberium. Go to memberium.com. Any final words for the people or anywhere else you want them to connect with you at? Micah Mitchell: I would just say, thanks for having me on. And yeah, at Memberium, you can ask us anything. Our support’s helpful. And if you have something to share, please share it with the world. Make your course. Don’t let anything stop you. Chris Badgett: Awesome, Micah. Thanks for coming on the show. Micah Mitchell: Thanks, man. Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends, and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at lifterlms.com/gift. Go to lifterlms.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action. And I’ll see you in the next episode.
