Ask Muse: Elizabeth Ionita and Chanelle Lavigne Get Answers on How to Start a Successful Professional Women’s Membership Business #032

Show Notes

In part one, Elizabeth Ionita and Chanelle Lavigne shared their vision for creating a business platform where professional women could come together to find resources for personal and professional exploration and development. Tune in as Lori Vajda and Nola Boea share their vision for creating this recurring revenue stream. Will Elizabeth and Chanelle be in agreement? If you’ve dreamed of starting a membership business you will not want to miss this episode. Get access to the handouts, resources and step-by-step guidance so you can take small steps leading to big effects and for creating and launching a successful new membership business.

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Sticky Brand Lab

A positively exciting business opportunity is in the works. Come have a listen!

In This Episode You’ll Learn

• The most compelling reasons for starting a membership business...we’ll give you one hint, recurring income.
• Why starting your membership business with a small audience is an advantage. 
• How to avoid overwhelm when launching a new business.
• What makes or breaks most membership sites. 

Although membership businesses make money from paying members, you don’t need a large following to start this type of business. What you do need are true fans. What are fans? These are the kinds of members who are excited to buy your products and services. These fans have respect and trust for the information you provide and are therefore willing to pay for your offerings such as courses, your e-books, your newsletter or etc. Listen in as we share our suggestions, ideas, and action steps for launching and scaling a membership business idea.

• ​(2:10.12) How an economic crisis launched  Airbnb, Slack, WhatsApp, Uber, and Square and why a crisis can be a great time to launch a new business idea.  
• (04:43.60) The 6 steps to building a successful paid membership business. 
• (05:59.01) Why narrowing your audience can actually give you an edge.
• (08:01.23) The top three reasons for starting a paid membership business.
• (09:13.02) The four most common types of membership business platforms.
• (13:30.36) The 3 Bs to building a unique brand for a membership business. 
• (15:24.03) 4 benefits of using an acronym to explain your business.

Resources
This episode was supported by: Ask Muse

Transcript

​Chanelle: 0:00
I think we were seeing everything kind of overlapping together and now it's more structured, more bite-sized. So we know what steps to take now and what to leave for a little bit further down the road.

Announcer: 0:13
You're listening to the Sticky Brand Lab podcast. We're time, strapped professionals like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week.

Nola: 0:25
Welcome aspiring hustlers. We're excited to have Ask Muse guests, Elizabeth Ionita and Chanelle Lavigne back for the second half of their Ask Muse session, where we'll be presenting our suggestions, ideas, and action steps for launching and scaling their membership business idea. But before we unveil our recommendations, be sure to subscribe to the Sticky Brand Lab podcast. So you never miss a show. And so we can continue to help you and other aspiring entrepreneurs, just like you create launch and market a profitable side, business and lifestyle you love. Now let's get this women empowering women episode started.

Lori: 1:00
If this is your first time listening to an Ask Muse episode, I'm going to recap how this works. First Ask Muse has done in two parts. During part one of Ask Muse a listener, or in this case, two listeners come onto the show to get some assistance with a specific challenge. In part two of ask muse, we share our thoughts, ideas, and recommendations with our guests, get their reactions and make any adjustments that are needed. Both episodes are dropped at the same time. For this reason we provide high-level ideas, resources, and or links, which you'll be able to find in our show notes or on our resource page. Now on with the show.

Nola: 1:41
Whether you're currently or have in the past, been in a transition or going through something challenging in your life or career, you probably are thinking about your future and how to move forward from this present situation into something more stable, rewarding, or supportive. We want to share a little secret that might make you feel better, and maybe even encourage you. Many successful entrepreneurs get inspired after a crisis, a realization or a major change in their lives. I think Airbnb, Slack, WhatsApp, Uber, and square to name a few. These startups were all inspired during the global financial collapse between 2007 and 2009. Fast forward to the current COVID pandemic during a time of change, a pandemic or a combination of both our natural desire to find a solution for our own challenge can inspire us with the business idea. And for today's guests, Canadian residents, Elizabeth Ionita and Chanelle Lavigne. That is exactly what happened after taking maternity leave from her position as an account executive and adjusting to being a mom to two small children during a pandemic, no less. Elizabeth had both a realization and an inspiration. The result. Comwune an online community where women can come together to connect, collaborate, share, and learn together. And from one another. And as Elizabeth prepared to return to work, she knew this newly created community could not be sustained without help. So she enlisted her very good friend and trusted, confident, and entrepreneurial minded business partner Chanelle. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade and leading with your combined strengths.

Lori: 3:22
Initially Comwune was started during a pandemic as a way for you Elizabeth, to meet other like-minded women. As more people came together, the idea of turning the group into a sustainable business model is what prompted you in Chanelle to reach out, to Ask Muse, both of you have a lot of ideas, but needed some help prioritizing your list, which you shared with us and reads accordingly. Get help with your value proposition, structure, packaging, and monetization. Did we sum up everything correctly? Is there anything you want to add or change?

Elizabeth: 3:58
No, that sounds good to us so far.

Lori: 4:01
Great,

Nola: 4:01
Great. Starting a membership business as a side business is not easy. I suspect you already knew that her started to figure that out and establishing yourself as two entrepreneurs is so exciting and we want to help you conceptualize the best path possible. And keep in mind that the steps that we're laying out for you are a starting point. So as we're sharing, just feel free to ask questions and get clarification as we offer up our ideas. So, are you ready for us to

Chanelle: 4:36
move in? Ready?

Lori: 4:43
So we've laid this out in six steps. Step one, selecting a niche. The thing that we wanted to talk about here is, is why selecting a niche is so important. The wrong choice can mean you spend a lot of time and money chasing a goal that won't materialize or won't resonate with your target audience. In your particular situation, you said you wanted to be knowledge brokers. In addition, you wanted to create an education platform and you want Comwune to be at the intersection of personal and professional. So you want to start by clarifying your niche. We know that there are sites out there that are targeted to professional women. But we aren't as familiar with sites that start out with the proposed idea of the intersection of both. So we think you're on the right track there, but we're recommending that you make sure that you do your due diligence and that you check out your competition. And that you're certain of what they offer and what they're not serving that gives you an area to focus in and to differentiate yourself. We also think that you'll gain an edge by narrowing your target audience.

Nola: 6:05
Which leads us to step two, defining your audience. You told us that Comwune was ideal for women in their twenties to sixties from around the world. A few things to keep in mind here 20 to 60 is a wide age range, especially starting out, because what that means is you're encompassing women that are at all different stages of their lives stages of their careers. And they're going to need different information as a result. It also means. To be relevant. You're going to have to identify the challenges for each stage of development and produce content that is relevant to each stage each age, career personal. So trying to meet the needs of so many different life stages, life experiences might be a heavy burden, especially starting out. What we recommend is zeroing in on a smaller target audience. And from there, once you see who self-selects to be part of that smaller core audience, you can then pivot organically. Our suggestion to start out is that you begin with people, more like you more that you can relate to and who can relate to you. Women say in their thirties to forties or early forties. So they may have similar life stages and life experiences life needs both personal and professional. As people self-select and identify with you and feel like, Oh my goodness, they get me. So your audience will naturally grow from there. Any questions so far,

Chanelle: 7:53
No questions. What you're saying totally resonates with what we are trying to do.

Lori: 7:59
Perfect.

Nola: 7:59
That's great.

Lori: 8:01
So step three is a monetization strategy. And for a business model, as we've mentioned earlier, we think a membership business model is a good starting point for your business. The benefits are that there's predictability of revenue. Memberships can be scalable as a business model. And although there are a lot of work in the beginning when you launch them as more people come in and pay, the costs to run and to host often goes down. Now, of course, there are some drawbacks. It can take awhile to scale to the point where you're seeing significant revenue, but the reality is that's for anybody starting out in a new business, having a paying platform and having to provide support and administrative costs, even though you may be doing most of the work yourself, that investment is time. Again. It's not an, if you build it, they will automatically come and start paying you. But that's the same for any business. So we're going to introduce four possible membership types. The first type of membership is called a content library And it's pretty much like the name suggests you have content like blogs, audio workshops, courses, any type of content that helps members learn and solve problems is under the content library. Now, the pros of having a content library are the solutions allow you to create, source and vet contributors. You can provide information for free, and when you reach a certain number of members, you can then start charging for your higher quality content. The cons. You're new. You're starting at the bottom of the funnel. So another con to this is time. It takes a while to get members and it takes a while to seed and maintain a library, especially with valuable content. And a third con, since you don't have a high number of members at this point, you don't have enough information on what your audience wants and needs. So you might find that you're going to start from your knowledge base and as people come in and you continue to crowdsource information, you're going to make pivots along the way, because you're going to now know what your audience wants. Makes sense.

Elizabeth: 10:33
Absolutely.

Nola: 10:34
Cool. The next business model is service membership site. This type of membership is where providers and clients find each other. And here you could charge members to access providers in any number of ways. We recommend that you offer at least three types of payment options so that people can choose, which works best for them. And that way you still get income and people are not left out.

Elizabeth: 10:59
Yeah, that sounds good.

Lori: 11:00
Great. The third type of membership model is branded virtual groups or community membership model. So here members pay monthly to be a part of it, or they can pay yearly and get a discount for paying for the full year. Participants have access to the large group community and the ability to pursue micro groups, for example, moms groups. So you might have a, a micro group for new moms for moms that are homeschooling. So the here the larger community you pay to be a part of, but then you have access to these specific what I need or what I'm looking for type of groups.

Nola: 11:43
So then there's the event membership site model. That's where participants pay for each event. They can come together to discuss and share ideas. They can network. Members-only events are held online or at a location. We really like this because this is what you're already doing. This is something that people are starting to get to know you for. And this is something you can start growing, now. We also recommend though that when you're evaluate the competition, in your niche evaluation, you consider analyzing your competitors by asking them what does their membership include?

Lori: 12:20
So as Nola said, we really think the two membership models that work for where you are right now are the event membership. To give you an example of that you offer events for free and your higher quality that's where you charge people. The other component is the one before, which was paying for content. So right now, on the example in your website, you only have a blog listed in there, but as your content takes shape, what you'll have is access to information and people can have free and you can think about what it would be like to give either monthly or the opportunity for yearly exposure to the highest quality content that isn't available.

Elizabeth: 13:17
We really like the idea of the event based model. Because again, like you said, we are doing that already. We agreed.

Lori: 13:27
So step four is building your brand. And building a strong, beautiful recognizable brand for your business will help you stand out and add some legitimacy to your business. And you already have this beautiful logo and your websites. It's starting to look really good. When you think of brand or building a brand, think of three Bs, brand, branding, and brand identity. You guys have the brand identity really coming along. It's beautiful. Where we think you're missing is in brand and branding. The brand is the perception of your business, that your audience has a view. This includes the experience people have when they have that intersection. Like they know that your business is about the personal and the professional. One of the things that's really important in having a brand is telling the brand story and Comwune needs a story, a story beyond why it was created. Take a minute. Will you and tell us how you came up with the spelling for Comwune and how you came up with the name Comwune.

Elizabeth: 14:43
Comwune is almost like multifaceted in the sense that it can mean commune as in a place where there are certain people living together or coming together to share resources. Also commune as in to commune, to come together. The decision to invert the second M into a w was to symbolize the, women. And we want to have women commune and come together.

Lori: 15:15
Which is beautiful.

Nola: 15:17
And I really like how you illustrated that in your logo.

Lori: 15:24
In building a business, your client, customer, buyer, they're not looking at it for what's in it for me. They're looking at it for, make me feel important. We think there's power in the story you're going to create using the acronym of Comwune. So in the example is the acronym that we are suggesting you might consider for Comwune. We started with the C and we wrote career because it was the intersection of personal and professional. You'll notice that, "O", here we wrote for opportunities because we see Comwune as bringing women together and the offerings that you're proposing as opportunities for them to grow and connect. We made "M" money in this case. The reason we chose money is because all sorts of things are related around money issues and for women, so we saw that as an opportunity, as well, When we were thinking about Comwune and the w being in the center, we recognize that as women. The letter spelled out three different acronyms on either side so that the women were being supported by these elements. Moving down. We made "U" unity. We just saw unity because of your connection that you, as part of what you wanted Comwune to be about. We made. N networking. We saw that as a purpose for Comwune and we used E for education. So you can change out the letters, but you can see that by having the acronym, it gives you areas to focus on. It gives you a story to develop and a purpose and a mission and a vision for what commune can be about.

Elizabeth: 17:34
Yeah. I love it.

Chanelle: 17:35
I do too.

Lori: 17:36
Now, the second element that we felt you needed a little more help in was in the branding. And branding is the acts that shape your business. Make it a distinct brand. So the third image that is being sent to you was normally in the funnel.

Nola: 18:00
That is what is relevant, when we talk about step number five, which is growing your following, how will your target audience find out about you and your business? You want to draw all these people so that you can bring them through and scale them up. Where are they going to find you? And what platforms does your global audience reside?

Lori: 18:24
The idea would be that once they come in to your group, like, how are you communicating with them? And you're already writing in blog posts, but maybe it's time to think about writing where a larger audience can read you. And there's a number of online places to do that. Medium is one. I chose Reddit in here just because it's so conversational. So you have to change your mindset from where do you reside to? Where does your audience reside?

Elizabeth: 18:59
Yeah, totally agree.

Lori: 19:01
Step six is knowing when to expand. And that really is going to involve having a business plan, especially if you're choosing a membership model. You want to be able to think of your business plan when you're going to expand based on a number of things, will it be expanding based on membership size? Will it be expanding based on the offers or at each level? How will your offers your products, your services expand to meet the growing expansion of your membership base. Are you basing it on sales, so that your business plan helps you think conceptually about how you grow. And, one of the bigger things is you're starting from a base in Canada. And granted that you want to reach globally. But if you're really thinking longterm, imagine commune at national levels in countries. And local levels within countries. And having conferences that bring people together globally from those chapters. It's always good to know where you're starting and having good big blue sky dreams.

Nola: 20:19
And don't let the term business plans scare you. We were really thinking more with the concept of when you establish these milestones, knowing that at this point we can scale when, you know, at what point you're going to make this decision, those milestones become your, business plan. So how are you feeling about these things so far?

Elizabeth: 20:42
Exciting. Lots of work to take on which we're really excited about. But more importantly, I think a sense of relief because we were feeling like it was almost. Too cumbersome. Like it wouldn't be possible what we envisioned to put it into practice, but the steps that you've lined up so far, make it a lot more feasible and easier for me to at least envision. Next steps.

Nola: 21:13
Party time. That means that we've met our goal. We want to try to take something that's complicated and overwhelming, and just kind of simplify it into baby steps, especially the beginning steps. So you could really see yourself using some of these recommendations.

Elizabeth: 21:36
Absolutely.

Chanelle: 21:37
Definitely.

Elizabeth: 21:38
Absolutely.

Chanelle: 21:39
I think we were seeing everything kind of overlapping together and now it's more structured, more bite-sized so we know what steps to take now and what to leave for a little bit further down the road.

Lori: 21:51
That is really important because one of the things that you said is when we talked in the first session of ask me is we had an opportunity to ask you, realistically, given your schedules, how much time can you devote to this a week? And when we were conceptualizing it, we decided that we would take the minimum that you had given us. So if each of you had 10 hours that you could devote, so about, uh, Yeah, because if they did 10 hours so about it, well, my math, all of a sudden went out the window, as you can tell little over an hour, a day, whatever it is. But the point being that. As you organize this for yourselves and you divide it, if you can break it down into kind of this shared piece, just this one small step. And if I get this one small step done, I can move to the next one.

Elizabeth: 22:55
Yeah, I think that approach makes the most sense because it's an approach that kind of spills out in anything that we're doing again in our personal and professional lives is if any changes are to be made or done, you need to kind of undertake that process with a sustainable approach. Right. Because too much too fast, kind of we're setting yourselves up for failure.

Lori: 23:23
And when you put on an event and you talk about where it's going to happen, who the speaker is a little bit of the bio on the speaker and cost, you want to stand out when it's free, you want to make that bold and free. It gets people used to seeing that there's a possibility for cost so that when you introduce cost at a low level, and there are some platforms in which you can do a cost so that the cost is associated and people get used to seeing cost free. But what they're really getting used to is seeing cost. So that when cost has $10 for non-members and $5 for members, there's a pause. Wait, what? There's a membership. So again, you're introducing things that help your audience get in the habit of recognizing

Chanelle: 24:24
that's great.

Elizabeth: 24:24
Yeah,

Chanelle: 24:25
it's really, there's less shock when you start to charge.

Lori: 24:30
Which is why using other platforms to host your speakers, gives you an opportunity to do that because they often have email reminders that are there. People have to register. So you're collecting emails, you're getting people in a habit. So test out, platforms. Try some free platforms. See what's out there, but for you, it's setting up what the expectation is from your audience, so that your audience understands this is great information and it's free. This is premium information, it's a base cost. So you're introducing it. So people get a chance to know you, when they get to know that you exist, like you, because you deliver on what you promise, they begin to trust you. So as that cost and that membership begins to become more take shape of your business model they're already bought in because you've delivered. And you're consistent. So get in the habit of being consistent. That is also part of your brand and your branding. Make it consistent on the same time. So you train people to look forward to when you're showing up.

Elizabeth: 25:47
Yes, I agree.

Nola: 25:49
Thank you, Elizabeth and Chanel for being our guests on this edition of ask muse. If someone wants to learn more about you and commune, how can people reach out to you?

Elizabeth: 25:59
If you are on LinkedIn, you can just search commune and follow our group on LinkedIn. And you can also find us on instagram. The website is still in construction, but when it is ready and live, we'll be notifying it through LinkedIn and Instagram.

Nola: 26:19
And if they reach out and do a search for commune, how do they spell it?

Elizabeth: 26:24
Yeah. So commune is spelled C O M W U N E.

Nola: 26:31
Great well, listeners, if you would like to be a guest on ask muse, visit stickybrandlab.com/ask-muse and apply today. Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring and motivating episode. And remember action creates results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day, small steps, big effects.

Lori: 27:03
You have questions about creating a personal brand side hustle or small business. Sign up for one of our clarity sessions. For more information, contact us at stickybrandlab.com/contact. In my presentation.