Minimum Viable Membership Method - Sadie Smiley

00:00 Hello friends and welcome to minimum viable memberships. I am Sadie Smiley and the reason I created minimum viable memberships is because I had to as I'm recording this video i just got out of the hospital the other day. So besides that, I am autistic, I have ADHD, and I live with BPD. My energy levels are all over the place sometimes I have the energy to do the thing and other times I'm not getting out of bed. I also have brain fog from past thyroid cancer so if you are sitting here wondering how the heck you can run and sustain and scale a membership even with all of these issues, I'm here to let you know that you absolutely can. 

00:51 So what is minimum viable membership and what it's not? So what it is, is to work in a way that is sustainable for your life, for your energy levels, for your creativity levels. What it's not is crappy. Minimum viable does not mean low value. So I want to make sure that as I'm calling this minimum viable that it makes sense that it is not crappy or low value you are still creating an amazing membership that everyone is very excited about. Minimum viable means the simplest version of your membership that works with your energy. 

01:36 So even on the low days, you can be making money every every single day. Real quick, let's talk about the agenda i'm going to talk to you about why minimum viable, which I kind of already buried the lead there, why we overcomplicate things and people think that we have to have so much stuff in our membership. And I'm also going to talk about minimum viable blogging, social media, email list. The reason for that is because without these things, my minimum viable membership wouldn't work. And then we're also going to set some realistic expectations. 

02:15 So the million dollar question, why minimum viable y'all i have helped hundreds if not thousands at this point. Women launch, grow and scale their low ticket memberships and one of the things that breaks my heart more than anything is when they get burnt out and give up before the 1st year is even complete. The first year of your membership. Like it's just a little wee little baby. You're just getting started. It's just like whenever you're investing in stocks, when you first start and you're making all those deposits and it doesn't feel like it's growing, that's because you're not looking at the long term. 

02:58 In five years, those stocks are going to be a lot bigger than whenever you first started investing. A membership is the same way. Your first year, you're depositing, depositing, depositing you're investing in it right from that point on, you have that compounding growth. So doing this in a minimum viable way that works with your energy flows can help you prevent that burnout and that overwhelm that those people who give up they experienced during that first year. Now, doing it this way, it really helps you build that forward momentum because you're thinking about long term and you're not working all day every day, all day every day and just feeling exhausted. You can focus on the future because you have that freedom in your time and your energy. 

03:51 Now, MVM obviously accommodates your energy fluctuations, so if you're super tired one day, you don't have to do anything. And if you have your membership set up the right way, you will still make money of creating it in this way is going to help you sustain the systems that you create. It's going to help you maintain consistency even if you've been struggling with that in the past aDHD who? And because you're going to stop overthinking everything, it helps you build confidence through completion. So why the heck does everyone overcomplicate memberships? Why do you think that is? I think that one of the reasons is the fear of not being good enough, especially if you've been fortunate enough to get inside a really good membership. 

04:49 And then your imposter syndrome and comparison itis kicks in and you're like Oh my gosh she did this so amazingly how could I ever keep up? You are focusing on perfect instead of published, which spoiler alert, perfect doesn't exist so knock it off that's just an excuse. Maybe you're procrastinating even because you're focusing on perfectionism, or are you overcomplicating it because you've gotten lost in research mode, especially if you just started using AI and chat GPT went off the rails creating this huge membership that you have no need and no business creating another reason I think that we overcomplicate things is because we're like, well, what if this and what if this and what if this? So trying to predict all the scenarios and if you're an anxiety girly like I am, I understand that. 

05:47 But we've got to separate that anxiety and those emotions from building this membership. And maybe you have the false belief that complex equals better. Think about your experiences every time you've gotten into a membership. Was it better if it was complex or did you kind of feel overwhelmed? Or maybe you even left the membership because it was too complex? And last but not least, my favorite, ADHD the dopamine hit of planning versus doing i love planning. I could spend all day planning, it's so fun. But we also have to do the thing your business needs to work with your energy, not against it. So if you're following a coach who has all the energy in the world and seems to do all the things and it's just amazing and you're feeling inadequate because you just don't have that level of energy, I really, really challenge you to think about who you're following and what type of content you're allowing in your life because the last thing I want is for you to be following someone for inspiration. 

06:59 But really it's just beating you down because you're never going to have a business like that coach has because your energy levels just don't match up. What I want you to focus on with building your membership is creating systems for your worst days so then you can thrive on your best days. So what I mean is on your good days, so when you have higher energy, higher creativity, you're able to get in there on the computer and work you need to create sustainable systems that will hold everything in place. 

07:34 Or when you have the low energy days so for example, like I said, I was just in the hospital all weekend and one of the things that I was not worried about was making money because I knew that I had my systems in place, that I was still getting new membership members every single day. I didn't even have to send an email because I have my emails, my blog posts, my social, all that stuff I batch create. So when I got sick, I didn't have to worry about it. Those are the systems that you need to have in place so you can rest on the days where your body needs to rest and heal. 

08:12 I know this is a course and membership training and summit, but my foundation for everything I do is blogging and or YouTube so I have to talk about this in order for the rest of it to make sense. So whether you're doing blogging, YouTube or both, I highly recommend doing a YouTube video and using a tool like Write Blogger to turn those videos into other content. So this is what that would look like. 

08:40 You're going to pick one day a month to create your YouTube videos so maybe you'll do one a week and that's four. So knock out those YouTube videos. You're going to take one day a month to edit and schedule your videos. I don't really edit my videos very much i literally like shoot them in Loom with a screen recording like we're doing right now. I go through, watch it two times, speed, and then edit out anything that absolutely must be edited out. If you're like fancy and you know how to do all the other stuff, go for it but this is minimum viable. So no, I don't have the fancy setup and I'm not using all the fancy tools. 

09:21 I'm doing what my energy allows. And so I suggest you do that as well. So we're going to take one day per month to use Write Blogger or whatever AI tool you want, and you're going to turn those videos into blog posts. Now with Writeblogger, it's super easy. It's literally one Click to turn it into a blog post draft and it's not like junk AI, it's literally what you said in the video. So it's kind of like a transcript on steroids, I guess you would say, but it's like literally formatted and then you can go in and add your images and all that stuff. So that's one more day and then you're going to choose one day per month to turn all of your content, so your YouTube videos, your blog posts, whatever, into social media media posts and your emails. 

10:08 Now I am in a membership called Template Tree House. Pam Allen from Campbell Clubhouse has it and she's got like social images, emails and sales page scripts, all kinds of stuff to save time. So if you look at this blogging and YouTube minimum viable plan, this is 4 days per month that you're going to take care of all of your blogging, YouTube, social and emails. That's four days a month. That means we have 26 other days, y'all? That's awesome. And if you're looking at this and you're like Sadie, I literally cannot do 4 videos in a day, that's OK. Turn these into half days and that's still 8 days per month that you're working on your blogging, YouTube, social, and emails. 

10:59 I do want to talk a little bit more about social because I personally do not do a lot of social, which is why I can do it so easily in one day. But if you need to do minimum viable, you need to pick one platform. Schedule in batches to where two to three posts are going live per day so that one day per month where you're doing your socials and your emails, that might be 60 social posts. 

11:24 And if you're using, like I was saying, templates from the template tree house or if you have your own templates or another membership, whatever, then you're going to be able to do them really fast. So do your scheduling in batches. And then as far as engagement goes, I just engaged from my phone. I am not online all day, every day answering people's stuff. It's like when I'm in bed at night, either like maybe watching Netflix or just having a conversation with my husband and we're just kind of unwinding. I can engage on my social media. 

11:58 My social media strategy is my Facebook group that's it. So I can engage from my phone and then keep it simple. Just follow your pillars of content. Don't worry about what should I post, what should I post. The answer is always in your blog or YouTube video pillars you've already got them created. Just follow that path. And then if you have a Facebook group or if you just are doing social media and getting great results, but you don't want to keep doing it for some reason, focus on making money in other parts of your business so you have the money to hire help to moderate your group or to schedule your stuff or what up. 

12:40 A sustainable business isn't built on hustle and burnout. I love the hustle, I love the grind, I love working hard. But burnout is not a way to grow a business. So you've got to know your limits and not just know them but also honor them. So I have worked from a hospital bed i've literally gone live and done trainings from a hospital bed because I felt fine. I had a surgery, whatever, I was good. 

13:11 And then other times I've either been in a hospital bed or just been in my bed at home and not felt well and I don't get online, I don't work. That's OK. That's because if you take those four days per month to batch everything out, then you don't have to be online and present all the time. Now, we already talked a little bit about minimum viable email because you can schedule all that out along with your social, but I just want to go a little bit deeper into my email strategy and how I have everything set up. 

13:43 I do have about 20.000 thousand email subscribers and though this business, Passive Income Pathways, is only about 3 years old, I just started really, really trying to grow my list probably about a year ago. So most of the growth has been in this past year. And some of the things that really worked for me is having one high value freebie per category on my blog, having a simple landing page so I use subtrio, which is a white label of go high level. 

14:12 I can clone anything I do so I will just take one of my templates, make a landing page for the freebie, bam, it's done and then I'm going to clone it. Do the same thing, clone it like for every category on your blog and then you can have a simple 3 email welcome sequence that fits really closely with that freebie and then you basically dump everybody into your Evergreen sequence which you can batch create. My goal for my people is always to have 52 emails because then you have your nurture sequence for a year. 

14:50 Once you can get those 52 emails, your gold now don't get overwhelmed with this you can batch create them. So say you're doing one day of just emails, couple hours, whatever batch create you can use templates, scripts, AI prompts. Like I was saying about the template tree house, which it's not an affiliate leak or anything, but there are email scripts and prompts in there so I can take the script and then just pop it into Claude and say, hey, I want to make this perfect for my business. And writing 52 emails doesn't take that long. Make sure you always have a clear call to action there's always a purpose behind your email. 

15:30 I follow jab, jab, jab right hook Gary Vaynerchuk, if you guys know who that is. And I will do value, value, value sell however, even in the value emails, I mentioned a paid product of some sort. You want to focus on connecting with your audience and getting them published rather than, oh, this isn't perfect, I need to do this, I need to do that. And then like I said, last but not least, obviously batch create using templates, scripts, prompts. Let me just give one word of caution. If you're using scripts and templates, like Liz Wilcox has an amazing email marketing membership and she has a new email template every week. 

16:13 I recommend going through the archive and using the older templates first because if everyone she's got like 4000 members, if even half of them use the same template every week, it's going to get repetitive and people are going to notice. So I would take any templates or scripts that you have, pop them into AI or use the older ones if you're in a membership like that. So minimum viable memberships show up how you can. If you don't have a membership yet and you're planning a minimum viable membership, you're in the perfect position because you haven't promised anybody anything yet. And you could be like, OK, what can I do on my worst months say you have a month that's bad. 

16:59 Ok, that's not going to happen for most people but I have had months, that whole months, multiple months that were bad oK, so I understand this, but let's pretend that you have a month where you can't work more than, let's say 5 hours a week. That's only 20 hours. You have 20 hours out of the whole month to your emails and your social and your membership and all the things. That's what we're going to say is a really, you know, low month. 

17:29 So think about as you're building out your membership, what you could keep up with if you only had that much time for everything. So out of 20 hours for your whole business, you're going to spend a lot of that marketing and email and scheduling and all that, right so let's say we have 5 hours for our membership. That's not a whole lot. So what can you create in five hours or less that will deliver massive value to your people? So first, don't try to do a course every month. 

18:06 Don't promise a course every month i've seen so many people start saying I'm going to do a course every month. That sounds so good in theory. In actuality, not so much. People don't even really want to consume a course once a month to be honest. Quarterly course releases is what I recommend. And these could be mini courses I do everything I do pretty much is mini course and then you want to have preferably weekly templates or resources or trainings, like whatever your membership is it's really hard for me to give exact things because you are a member. 

18:43 Your membership is going to be way different than mine and I have 150 VIPs that all have different memberships, right? So whatever your thing is that you're delivering batch, create these to where they can get a new thing every week. And obviously use your best judgement here if something that you're delivering takes you 10 hours, you don't have to do that every week. I hope that makes sense and keep the tech stack simple. If I could go back and change one thing about how I did business the 1st 2 years of Pips, I would have joined a platform like Subtrio that was an all in one. 

19:26 It has email sales pages, your freebies, automations, workflows, courses, membership, calendar, everything you need in your business in one spot. I wasted so much time, energy and money and I lost so much money because I couldn't decide on a platform. Somebody would be like, oh, try this one and I would try it and I'm like, oh, this is crap. Try this one oh this is the right one this is the right one this is the everyone has their favorite platform right i have my favorite i'm, you know, caping for sub trio. 

20:01 But the reason I'm talking about sub Trio is not just because of sub Trio itself i'm talking about an all in one platform. Ok, so whatever that platform is for you, I don't care. Trying to duct tape your email list over here, your course platform over here, your calendar over here. That's a mess. And then you finally get fed up and you find an amazing platform like some trio or whatever it is that's all in one that you love and it's affordable. Y'all do not be paying 500$ a month for these platforms but you finally find one that you can stick with. 

20:38 If you already have your membership launched, you have to manually get everyone to move over. Part of the reason low ticket memberships work so much is because people just don't pay attention and they'll forget about the membership just like Netflix membership, like any membership we have, it's like 20 bucks or less we don't really think about it it's on autopilot, right? That's why local ticket memberships work so well. So think about that. If everyone that has Netflix had to log in and physically change the way that they do things and set up Billy again, how many customers do you think Netflix would lose? Like so many, right? Our memberships are no different. 

21:22 There are ways that you can get a lot of the people to move over with, like bonuses, incentives, yada yada i've done it all because I've moved five times. But every time you move platforms, you're going to lose money. So don't just hop on the next shiny object train. Find something that's all in one. You need some place that you can build sales pages, you can have funnels and automations, and you can have it all in one place and not have to duct tape everything together. 

21:52 Another key to your minimum viable membership is basic onboarding. I have a launchpad for my members and they walk through step by step by step all of the onboarding and there are clear expectations set along the way i tell them what I'm delivering and I tell them what to expect of them. Show up to the calls y'all like I tell them I have Co working, I have coaching calls show up to the calls. 

22:20 That's what I tell them in the expectations. Ok. And one thing that you have to really, really remember is this has to be sustainable. So when you think about that quarterly course release, when you think about that weekly template or resource release, batch creating is the way to go because the content creation is like what 25 % of our business, 20 % of our business, the rest is marketing and promoting and creating content like blogging and YouTube and stuff to really get people in. 

22:55 So set up that sustainable delivery schedule and under promise and over deliver rather than over promising and then getting stuck. And if you set it up this way, it allows you so much room for growth. I was talking to someone this morning she has an icing membership, like a like she teaches people how to frost sugar cookies and stuff like really cute. But she was like, OK, I have 18 tutorials I can add and I've got this kit and this book and this and this and this and this and I'm like, whoa, why don't we start? Just an idea. Why don't we start with just a few things in the membership before you launch it, right? And then as you launch it, you have all this stuff, drip it out week by week by week you have a new resource. 

23:48 Because if not, your people are going to be overwhelmed and overwhelmed people don't take action. They quit and you don't want them to quit your membership. So start small and give yourself that room for growth. A quick little reminder here before we finish all of this up. Your capacity may vary right from day-to-day it varies. Your worth does not. So if you can work really hard today, but you are just dead to the world tomorrow, that doesn't mean that you are more valuable today than you are tomorrow. 

24:31 So on your worst day, please, if you do nothing else, be kind to yourself and remember that you are worthy and people need what you're putting out into the world. Ok, I am going to show you the spreadsheet I made for y'all, but I just want to reiterate minimum viable for your membership. One to two new resources weekly that you're creating in batches. Quarterly mini course or training. Keep the tech stack simple one platform for everything. Doesn't matter who is telling you that this is the next best thing? They're probably an affiliate and going to make a bunch of money off of you, which is why they're promoting it. 

25:09 Simple, simple, simple. Create a clear member path this will mean less questions from your members, which means less tech support, less help desk support, etcetera. Create a basic welcome sequence. Make sure that everything you're doing has a sustainable pace for you, and keep in mind that we need to keep our members engaged, so you might need to go live sometime. You also need to help your members feel accomplished. And if you do all of this, you're going to have high completion rates and natural growth. Word of mouth is going to get you more sales. Now, since we had that reminder, let's talk about what happens when your membership is too complicated. 

25:54 You're putting out five new things every week. That's weekly content they can't keep up with monthly courses that they don't have time and energy to finish. You're juggling multiple platforms oh, you have your membership over here, but you can't even do sales pages there so then you got lead pages or whatever else, which is however much a month and then, oh, you got to do your email and then this and this and this and this. Knock it off. 

26:17

This also creates confusing access points i love that everyone knows they go to Subtreio to log into everything i do my freebies, my courses, my memberships, everything also complicated looks like this. 15 plus emails on your onboarding sequence you don't need that at first if you want to work towards that, cool, but you don't need that to launch. It is unsustainable and you're going to be tired. Complicated memberships mean you're too busy creating everything to engage. Your members feel overwhelmed they don't know where anything is. You have a high abandonment rate because they're like, I'm out of here because the members are leaving from burnout and then you're burnt out too. 

27:00

Now remember how I said we're going to talk a little bit about expectations. I do want you to be realistic. If you are only working on your membership 5 hours a month, you're not going to be making as much money as the person who is hustling their ass off 14 hours a day, OK it's just it's not the same thing and that's OK. Setting realistic expectations upfront is so important because even with minimum viable, if you think you're going to be making six figures in your first year, you're going to get burnt out. 

27:32 Can you make 6 figures your first year? Absolutely i've done it more than once. I've seen people do it. Is it likely when you're working a few hours a week? No. So start where you are and give yourself grace. Start where you're at, not where I'm at, not where another coach is at, not where your mentor is at you. Nothing more, nothing less. Quality over quantity is so important. Hosting an amazing call once a month or releasing an amazing mini course quarterly is so much better than trying to show up weekly and having crappy energy or trying to release a course monthly and getting behind. 

28:14 I've seen so many creators be like, sorry guys, I know I said I would have this, but I don't. You never have to worry about that if you follow the minimum viable membership method. All of the stuff I've taught you here today, you guys, I've been doing it i've been living it. I've had chronic illness for, geez, 6 years now i had cancer six years ago, so I've been sick off and on for six years. And this membership that I built starting three years ago, it makes multiple 6 figures, but I focus on quality. Ok, so now I'm going to show you my minimum viable membership. I call it a brain, kind of like a second brain type thing it's a spreadsheet. 

28:57 Because of the way I'm editing my video minimum viable, I'm actually going to finish this slideshow and then show you the tour of the minimum viable brain spreadsheet. Ok, this is the last slide. This is how you can get a hold of me support at passive income pathways dot com. My blog is passive income <a href="pathways.com">pathways.com</a> and then I have YouTube, Facebook, and then I also have an AI group called the Women of AI. So that's all of my contact info i would love for you to reach out and if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. 

29:29 Now let's go over into the minimum viable spreadsheet. Ok, friends, let's check out this minimum viable membership method spreadsheet. So I do have right here this little prompts doc, which I am obsessed with and I love. So we're going to go into that in just a second but basically you're going to fill in this front page so you're going to go to file and make a copy you guys know how to make a copy of a spreadsheet. So you're going to make a copy of the spreadsheet and then you're going to add it to your bookmarks bar so you don't lose it. 

30:01 And you're going to put in the type of membership you have, your target audience profile, your core content, themes. If you already have a membership, this is going to be easy peasy lemon squeezy for you to fill out. If not, the prompt stock will help you. And then you want to make sure that you have an onboarding sequence for your people so what do they do first? What do they do next? What do they do third? So for me, my people, they get an email and then they have instructions in their email they need to log in and watch the onboarding video and then they need to save the launchpad so let me just show you an example of what my steps would look like. 

30:39 Ok, so this is the launchpad that I created for my people so the very first step is they log in and they get this launchpad or they get it through their email either way, I have it everywhere because this is so important. And then they have to bookmark it. And then as you can see right here, it says have you completed your onboarding? And that's their next step is to do onboarding. And then Step 3 is actually for them to go into the group and post. So that's what my onboarding sequence would look like step 1-2-3 Also, whenever you're creating, I want you to run everything through the filter of your mission statement. 

31:21 So what is your membership mission statement? Every time you go to create something, I want you to ask if it aligns with your mission statement. I hope your mission statement has something to do with staying minimum viable considering that's what this whole training was about. But say it does say that you're, you know, part of your mission statement has to do with following your energy and making sure you stay minimum viable with everything. And then you come up with this amazing idea that's going to take you 20 hours to create something. 

31:51 Does that align with my mission statement? No, so it's not a task for right now. The next tab we have here is our content creation calendar. You can use a different calendar if you already have one this is how I like to do it i like to, if you look at column C where it has the core theme, you have a core theme for each month and then week 1-2-3-4 that's going to be a link to the resource that you're going to pop in. 

32:15 And then are are you going to have a live event, whether it's a workshop to promote your membership or it's something to nurture your membership, whatever it is, put the live event in and then if you need any resources, templates, scripts, whatever, and then you could put the status in there. You know, are you just now creating it is it published whatever and then there's a section for notes. This next tab is for task completion. So right here you can go in and click this little edit button and edit these i just put in random categories that fit with a lot of my clients memberships. 

32:49 So content creation, social media, email marketing course development etcetera but you can go ahead and edit those and then you're going to say, OK, this is the task category. This is how much time it's going to take me that I think it's going to take me. This is how much time it actually took me. This is the priority level do I have to do it right freaking now or can it wait? Energy level required low, medium, high, or peak. So do I need to be in a hyper focused state can I do this while I'm tired? And then how enjoyable is this task going to be for me? I'm going to put a little star here, one to five stars and then notes. 

33:24 Can I do this from my phone can I do this from bed can I do this while I'm out and about can I hire it out? Whatever you need to put in there, that's what the notes section is for. This next tab is about the front loading tracker so everything I taught you guys, all of the talk about batching, right that's what this is. So content type again, click this little edit button if you're not doing ebooks, get rid of it. 

33:48 E, book, course resource, whatever live call the topic, the due date, the resources needed, the status is it an ideation creation or is it already in your membership, The priority level and then again notes. Next we have a member journey map. So what stage are they in pre purchase 1st 24 hours so they just got in first week, first month ongoing or renewal especially if you have a yearly, how are you going to keep them renewing that yearly that's so important. 

34:18 And then what do they need? So if they are in their first 24 hours, what do they need from my people need the launchpad. So I would put the launchpad. What is the resource i would link to the launchpad. What is the delivery method? I send it out through email and I put it in their dashboard. What is the status? It's in my membership. What are the notes? I don't really have any notes for this one, but you get the idea, right? Last but not least, we have the Quick Wins tracker. 

34:46 Ok, So this is the win category, onboarding, content creation, etcetera you can edit your own here. What's the description, how long it's going to take them, what's the impact level and then notes so again, let's talk about that launchpad. The win category for the Launchpad would be onboard and then the description would be light Launchpad implementation time. There's not really a number there it's ongoing. And then the impact level is huge. The people who pay attention to the light Launchpad versus the people who don't you can tell it's night and day. 

35:23 So then I can put my nose here as well if I want. Now let me go real quick to that prompt stock I was telling you about. Yay for pageless format and Google Docs. Love it. You can just click these little arrows to open up each of these. So it depends on which phase you're in if you're already have a membership, you don't need the foundation planning, right so that's why I nested these like this. Let's say you're in the journey mapping phase where you're turning blog readers into members, social media readers into members, etcetera. So this shows you different prompts you can use in AI so you're going to say, hey, this is what I'm working on. 

36:02 Please help me create a path to turn my blog reader into a member and you just copy this into Claude or whatever AI you use and come up with a plan to map everything to where you can batch create all of these things and create a path that's Evergreen. So people will join your membership every single day. And there's some about, you know, delivery systems like onboarding workflow. When a new member joins, what are the first three things they need what quick wins can they achieve in week 1 what resources make this automatic? You can answer these questions and create them yourself, or you can take this in a Claude, explain your membership and ask AI for help. 

36:46 There's always room for continuous improvement so you know, feedback, integration, etcetera. But I want you to use these so you're working smarter, not harder. Again, my name is Sadie Smiley from Passive Income Pathways and the women of AI. I appreciate your time here today and if you have any questions, just reach out. Remember to use those resources. I was talking about the template tree house write Blogger. All of those memberships that you have that have templates and such, make sure you're using them so you can actually do this minimum viable membership method.