Ask Muse: How Do We Start a Successful Professional Women’s Membership Business? #031

Show Notes

Have you dreamed of starting a networking community? Maybe you’ve wondered if it’s possible to create a thriving community in which members would be willing to pay a fee to access premium content, resources and attend ‘members only’ events. In this episode of Ask Muse, guests Elizabeth Ionita and Chanelle Lavigne ask Nola Boea and Lori Vajda to help them explore this business idea.

Having identified a missing need for many professional women, that of having access to highly recommended personal and professional mentors, coaches and counselors is what propelled Elizabeth and Chanelle to consider this model. The two women sought out Ask Muse for help creating a business model, strategy, and messaging that would resonate with their like minded prospective audience.

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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

• One of the main reasons entrepreneurs want to start a membership business is because it has the possibility to generate a predictable and recurring revenue stream.
• Why so many major publications are putting their premium content behind a paywall.
• You don’t need to have a massive following to create and launch a successful membership business model.
• What the number one advantage is for starting your membership business with a small audience. 

Whether you’re at the beginning and just contemplating the idea of starting a membership business or you’re seeking out tips to make your membership even better, this episode will help you. And, best of all, launching a successful membership business does not require a massive audience.

• (4:50.37) How the pandemic is giving fuel to new business opportunities? 
• (07:27.15) Why you need this shared goal if you want to build a community whose members are willing to pay to join. 
• (12:14.10) This is the major benefit prospective participants consider before deciding whether or not to become a paid member.
• (15:18.00) Questions to consider before deciding to start a membership side business? 

Resources
This episode was supported by: Ask Muse

Transcript

Elizabeth: 0:00
Hello, Lori. Hello, Nola. This is Elizabeth Ionita, the founder of Comwune.

Chanelle: 0:05
Hi ladies. My name is Chanelle and I'm the co-founder of Comwune and here is our main goal with Comwune.

Elizabeth: 0:14
So Comwune is built on three pillars. Connection collaboration community. We want to create an ecosystem whereby we are bringing together women who are challenged with different aspects, whether that be it in their personal or professional lives. We want to be able to be really intentional about partners and alliances. We bring to the commune so that we are able to provide and connect these women with different resources, such as coaches, practitioners, consultants.

Chanelle: 0:51
And the way that we want to bring this into bite size, it's creating an education platform and bring a unique course to people.

Elizabeth: 1:02
What we're really considering ourselves are knowledge brokers.

Chanelle: 1:05
Our need here. I think we know what our niche is. We know what gap we're filling. We know how we want to do it. We need that structure. What we're really going after is how do we take all these ideas and

Elizabeth: 1:19
streamline it. How do we package it, how are we able to communicate our value proposition? And hoping to work with you both to really understand what we don't know.

Announcer: 1:30
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.

Lori: 1:43
Hello and welcome aspiring side hustlers. Lori and Nola here with another Ask Muse edition of the Sticky Brand Lab podcast. We're excited to have Elizabeth Ionitia and Chanelle Lavigne from Quebec, Canada on today's episode. But before we get started, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. That way you'll never miss out on any of our weekly helpful, informative, and always opinionated podcasts. Now let's get today's community unity episode started. If this is your first time listening to an Ask Muse episode, I'm going to recap how this works first Ask Muse is done in two parts. During part one of asked me as 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. So you listeners can hear the problem and the solution without having to wait a week. Also given that the show is 30 minutes long, we often limit how detailed we are in offering assistance. 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: 3:13
Today's guests, Elizabeth and Chanelle are with us from Quebec along with, uh, Elisabeth's son, Mateo. How old is Mateo? Eight months. Eight months. Oh, we see him on screen. As we're recording this, he is adorable. Well, Elizabeth and Chanelle, I'm so glad that you're here with us today. Elizabeth, we understand that you created commune and then brought on. Chanelle, your close friend after the fact. And you're still in the starting stages of getting this all laid out. So for those in the audience who are just learning about your organization, would you and Chanelle mind telling us a little bit about yourselves and why you started Comwune?

Elizabeth: 4:06
Yeah, thanks so much Lori Nola for having us. So yeah, my name is Elizabeth. Ionita and I, from a professional perspective, I have spent close to the last decade in the HR space. So I was in talent acquisition. And then in my current role, I'm in technology sales for a large human capital management organization. In July. I actually had Mateo and left work and here in Canada, we're so fortunate that we, if we decide to stay at the 12 months, we do have 12 months to stay on our maternity leave. So I have also have an older son he's three and a half, but just from my experience on this around, I should say it was a completely different experience. It was a pandemic had happened a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty around that. And a lot of social isolation. And so originally I was so excited to be able to go on leave because then I could have that opportunity to reconnect with friends and spend a lot of time with my family. And that unfortunately just wasn't the case. So in November, October, I had attended a woman in sales summit, and a few of us had connected offline and had just started speaking more about how there was just an overall lack of mentorship and sponsorship opportunities. Within our respective organizations and I've been fortunate to mentor and be mentored. I agreed that, you know, with everything moving to a virtual kind of platform and anyone that we were going to meet knew we'd have to meet them through different platforms and communities. And so I ended up. Just really kind of happened overnight. And it really started just having, you know, taking a life of its own just in terms of like, what did I want to see? Like what did I want to be able to have access to? So I ended up just starting to engage with, with different women who I knew from a professional as well as a personal capacity. And just started asking them about, you know, how everything was going. And, you know, how had the, in the pandemic and everything impacted them, impacted their lives. And the more women I started connecting with, the more I started realizing there were a lot of challenges that were. More or less difficult to discuss openly both in our home lives and then also at work. And for many of us moving to a virtual telework situation, those are realities, just kind of collided. So, you know, there was this notion of like, do you work from home or did you home from work? So really understanding that there was this challenge that, you know, how were these women doing it. Their home life, whether they had children or partners or spouses, or, you know, the women that did have kids, the homeschooling component. I just started realizing that a lot of us just weren't making time for ourselves. Whether that was for self-care, but then also that was for professional growth and development. And so I started just, doing a lot of research and connecting with a lot of different professionals and really learning more about their realities. And so I created a Comwune to be able to build a community of women who could come together to connect, to network, to share their stories.

Lori: 7:33
And how did, uh, Chanelle come into the fold?

Elizabeth: 7:37
Yeah. So before I let her speak. So full disclosure, Chanelle is actually a first cousin of my husband's and we've known each other for 15 years. Yeah. And Chanelle has always had this like really ambitious entrepreneurial spirit. And she's done a lot of different things. She's basically had so many different experiences that she's, she's very versatile. So I initially started telling her about Comwune and like come to the sessions, come to the workshops that I'm, I'm hosting a facilitating with other women. And we started talking and I said, You have something that I don't have, and I have something that you don't have. And so we really decided to say, how can we combine both of our respective strengths and weaknesses for that part? Because the more we're realizing is that we can't really do everything. And I think it was just a really. A natural thing for me to just ask her, like, do you want to embark on this journey together? And like, let's do something.

Nola: 8:38
So how did Elizabeth explain to you her idea and what made you excited about seeing it as a business opportunity?

Chanelle: 8:48
At first, it wasn't, it wasn't an explanation of like, this is where it's going. It was more of a conversation. I've always been like my own life experience, aside from the professional, I've been diving into personal development and growth and really understanding our psychology, our subjective experience as human beings and what shapes us informs us and make us who we are today and how to change that. And I've always had this vision of creating community for women to bring them together. To be able to share and to talk about things and help each other, see our patterns and where we're getting stuck in our own selves to be able to put a stop to that. So when Elizabeth invited me just to participate in sessions, initially I really connected right away to what she was doing because seeing come to life or I over always had a vision for. So the more that this sessions were happening and I was sitting in my chair at home. And I'm like, like, this is it. This has so much potential. I just saw the vision that it aligned together. And we just had a conversation. And the, just that conversation started as an open conversation of this is what's going on. This is my vision. And you just ended up at the end of that hour, hour and a half being like, let's do this together. I think it was just meant to be, we're both in a space right now where we're aligned in this and we compliment each other in our strengths. Like she said,

Nola: 10:18
That sounds like such an exciting synergy. There's a magic when that happens.

Lori: 10:23
Well, actually I wanted to ask just if they would be able to say, if you could tell us what you're hoping to accomplish with Ask muse.

Elizabeth: 10:34
So far, we've had, we've made some really amazing connections and we see the, the women that are, have been engaged or been part of the community. I wouldn't say there's a gap, but there's a need out there. Where we know that we can potentially bring value for us. It's really about further identifying our targets community. So the types of whether you want to call it our demographic or our target audience, we want to be able to find those women to find really creative and innovative ways to engage with them and really understand very on a subjective. Level, what their own personal stories are and where they are in are in their lives. And if there are opportunities where they, they need help or they're looking for guidance or counseling or coaching, then we will be able to provide them with the resources and the support structure to meet those goals. Essentially

Chanelle: 11:33
like Elizabeth said, we have this idea and we want to know how to to create the structure for these women to understand clearly what we have to offer. How do we stay connected with them? How do we create that connection so that they are willing to share? More openly where they are in their lives, because what we think they need and what they actually need. We might not be aligned at the moment. So we want to be able to get that information, to be able to deliver very specific services and resources that answer that need.

Lori: 12:11
How would you describe your niche?

Elizabeth: 12:14
We want to be able to be sort of knowledge broker, where we have developed these partnerships, these alliances, this ecosystem of professionals and resources who are able to provide personalized and customized approaches to these women in the Comwune community, so that we are able to be the ones who can build out the rapport, you know, establish credibility with these providers. And also for us to be really intentional about this notion of referral business. So, you know, in my line of work, what's really important is referral business. If you have a customer. How likely is that customer to refer other business to you? So I think for us, the world has become so much smaller now since the pandemic has happened, but there's still that many people out there, but the connections that we're making, what I'm finding are more valuable because of the intention behind it. So we're looking at, you know, cultivating relationships with people for the longterm. And not so much from a one-sided transactional approach.

Nola: 13:30
Can you more specifically describe the women that you have in mind? Do you have a target audience in mind?

Elizabeth: 13:38
For me, I would say in terms of a target audience or demographic would be women from ages of we're talking about like early twenties to mid sixties or even older, like for us age, isn't what we're really focused on as a criteria. I think the more diverse and inclusive we can make this community the better. Because then the real knowledge transfer happens. And so for us, it would be like women who are either on a quest to take that next step further into their careers or women who are happy and content with where they are in their careers. But maybe need some support in terms of approaching other aspects of their life. Like for example, health and wellness. And how do I let's say, you know, I'm at a point right now where I need to do some, some work, for example, Chanelle and I were having a conversation last night. And it's the first time for us in the last year or so that we've really started digging deeper into going back into our childhood and looking at how, what some of the things that we went through as children has really been critical in understanding who we are as, as women now fast forward in our thirties. And so for women it's do we know, like if there's a person out there who is hesitant had to go to a counselor or a psychologist. Then I might want to be able to recommend someone in our community, in our ecosystem or resources who has served as a life coach, who is specialized in the area of, or the realm of. A B or C.

Lori: 15:18
Regarding Comwune, have you done any competitive analysis to see what's already. Out there in organizations for women?

Elizabeth: 15:26
I've definitely come across organizations or associations that are building out or resource platform, or like, for example, there's an organization out of Montreal and there's two women who basically cultivate the forum. Safe space to be able to come and share stories, but it actual in public like face to face when we could do that. I understand that that is something that we'll really need to focus on is really understanding the competitive landscape. That's something that we definitely I'm hoping to be able to explore with you both.

Lori: 15:56
Do you want commune to be for your local area for Canada? What is your bigger vision?

Elizabeth: 16:04
Global. I mean, I have to be honest that I've been connecting in the last eight months with people all over the world. We actually want to be able to be global so that we can have more members in the community that are coming from very different cultural realities.

Lori: 16:20
You've talked about basically helping people, your audience get connected to those educational standpoints. Beyond that, though, there are networking opportunities their job board opportunities. There's just friendship opportunities. There are a variety of other things, but you've primarily focused on the educational and the developmental as in mental health and counseling coaching. So I'm trying to see if the networking, if the other opportunities are out there as well, or if your niche is very, very narrow to the education.

Chanelle: 17:01
We do want to bring the networking. And it's important for us to be able to connect these women. Like, should we want to take this globally in a sense that if we can connect somebody from Canada, who's working in a certain type of industry. Someone who is looking for that skill set, but that's in New Zealand. We want to be able to create those connections so that these women can start working together and create something that might not have happened if they hadn't connected over Comwune.

Nola: 17:31
Hence the collaboration. Yes. So far you have actually started Comwune in kind of an organic way as you've been kind of reaching out and gathering that network to yourself for your own purposes. And you've been seeing the potential out there that, you know, you're not alone in this. And right now you've got, I want to say a prototype almost kind of forming. Can you tell me, like right now, how are people finding out about Comwune?

Elizabeth: 18:03
Yeah, so through word of mouth. So just like asking anyone who's come in or attended a previous session to let them know about peers at work or friends in their, in their lives or family so far, you know, we've just started in terms of the marketing automation piece. So what I initially did starting in November was I was writing one article, a newsletter of sorts, and then asking readers to subscribe. And then I'd put out once a month.

Nola: 18:35
How effective has that been? Have you been getting subscribers?

Elizabeth: 18:40
Yeah, but it hasn't been consistent for me right now, understanding where I am in my life. I'm returning back to my full-time job in two weeks right now on the docket for Chanelle. And I is really understanding like how much of this can we automate.

Lori: 18:55
So if somebody had a question about what Comwune is about or how often it meets or what services it provides, anything of that nature, where do they get the answers to that?

Elizabeth: 19:08
We have an Instagram account for Comwune. I have a LinkedIn page for Comwune. I have a general email, but again, we are in the process of launching the website. And that's another thing we want to be able to say, like how we considered everything with regards to the website. Does it give enough information? Is it clearly articulating and communicating who we are and what we want to be doing? What our mission and vision is.

Nola: 19:32
You mentioned mission and vision. Have you actually made a mission vision statement or,

Elizabeth: 19:36
Yeah, so to be refined, but really what we want to be able to say is that, you know, the three pillars are connection, collaboration and community.

Chanelle: 19:49
So we want that message to be clear

Elizabeth: 19:51
and concise and consistent.

Lori: 19:55
You bring up a really good point about the message. What is the story that you're putting out there to brand Comwune about Comwune

Elizabeth: 20:05
The underlying the message here is that women need to do more to support women. My goal is with the Comwune. We're almost like we're the knowledge piece, the, the experience piece. We want to be able to convert that into kind of a, a thing that we trade or we barter. It's not so much that we buy and purchase and it's a transaction.

Lori: 20:28
Okay, great. We want to switch a little bit here into the branding, marketing, digital presence, that kind of stuff. So what experience do you have with personal branding?

Chanelle: 20:39
I know that personal branding is more than just, you know, the, the fonts and the colors and all this it has to do with the story that you're communicating. So. I'm good on the visual side, but I know that I need help or support in really refining and keeping a straight of sharing.

Lori: 21:01
Okay. So you bring up a really good point. And what is your experience with developing designing websites. I'm, self-taught,

Chanelle: 21:08
I've dabbled in this for a very, very long time. I did take an actual HTML course a few years ago. No way, an expert level. I'm also not a beginner.

Nola: 21:22
I have a question. Imagine yourself. Five years from now. What does success look like?

Elizabeth: 21:27
Self-employment

Chanelle: 21:29
Of course I see Comwune, you know, having grown that we're both doing this. Full-time hopefully way before the five-year mark. I see us collaborating on a consistent basis with different experts in their field, whether it's like marketing or strategy or somebody for our website. Maybe even having people that work with us full time in the, in coaching people and building programs and running communities. I also mentioned like having a nonprofit organization that supports women that are starting businesses.

Elizabeth: 22:01
The one thing that I'm really passionate about and hoping that one day I can pursue this is the public speaking part where we can actually go down a segment. Let's say to young girls in high school and elementary school in almost like having that, you know, I'm coming to you. I was there in your position. How are we preparing these young children, these young girls who don't really have an understanding of the future of work

Lori: 22:35
You gave the five-year goal with the big dream, be one year from now?

Chanelle: 22:41
Having a presence, having let's say at least like a thousand subscribers. Members. Members the community. Well, I would love to see in a year for us to be able to having like a subscription-based community.

Elizabeth: 22:55
To have like a, a very clear and concise go to market strategy, let's say.

Lori: 23:02
Well, Elizabeth and Chanelle, you've been very delightful and this has been very, very exciting. Um, you've done a great job explaining your organization. I know that for you. It probably feels, especially with Mateo being an extra guest on today's show, like you've been all over the board, but actually you've been very far more organized. Given what you're dealing with on your side, in this process. So that has been great. And I think you've done a great job explaining what your purpose is for Comwune. What you're hoping to grow into and what your big blue sky dreams are. Just to give you a little bit of information. Nola and I are going to start brainstorming. And when you come back for what will be episode two, we're going to explain and share our ideas that we have based on the information that you've given us. And it's going to be a starting point. We'd like to get your feedback and we'll make any. Adjustments in real time at that time to what we've said. And we look forward to seeing you in part two and sharing with you, what we've come up with and listeners stay tuned because you're going to want to hear us discuss Elizabeth and Chanelle's Ask Muse dilemma.

Elizabeth: 24:20
Thank you very much. Thank you this.

Nola: 24:22
See you then. Looking forward to it. All right. See you soon. Well, Lori, let's put on our thinking caps because there are so many ideas. I mean, I can see why they would need help reeling it all in. It's one of our goal, wonderful vision about bringing women together and really connecting them in an authentic level.

Lori: 24:44
I totally agree. And given the fact that this is their side hustle, we have to take into consideration the bandwidth they have to develop this. And all of the areas that they want to get to and kind of help them to organize it in a way that they can take small steps that maximize big effects. Otherwise they'll feel overwhelmed given their own professional and personal lives as they develop something that they're clearly, clearly excited and passionate about.

Nola: 25:18
And it could be that they don't have a one-year or five-year mark. They have milestones.

Lori: 25:26
Oh, that's a great idea. Well, I'm thinking about, they're getting clear and focused for their target audience services they offer on what development would look like because they talked about this being organic and wanting to be. Global.

Nola: 25:42
Yes. And what's intriguing is their desire to really, really get women to open up and really provide value.

Lori: 25:53
Absolutely. I think that that was really important because this is women helping women and supporting women and empowering women. And to do that, we have to create something that's unique to what's already out there, which I think they are. But part of that rests on women feeling safe in sharing that so that they can reap the benefits of getting the networking, the support, the mentorship, including what offerings do they start with and what offerings do they grow? So I think some of the question that we build, because they are working professionals. Elizabeth is as a mom with two kids, both of them have their personal and professional lives. So how do we contemplate this in general? Like I'm thinking systems, I'm thinking like a honeycomb, like a vibrant beehive. And that might just be because of the queen being at the center.

Nola: 27:03
You're thinking of a beehive. If I'm thinking of like a spider web with the, you know, the intersections of, of the different lanes. And, but I have the feeling that it could be both.

Lori: 27:15
Yeah. And right now I think this is privately funded and they would like to grow this to support. So it does it stay privately funded. So funding in order to develop this as going to be important in thinking about that timeline. Because they have a five-year and then we asked about their one year,

Nola: 27:33
And they want to monetize it in a way that doesn't leave people out based on their budget, that everybody of all budgets get something, which is great.

Lori: 27:43
It sounded to me like they wanted to help their target audience find the coaches, sponsors, mentors, resources. They need that. They wanted to develop something different than just having an, a directory. They wanted to help give users a valuable tool. For not just reading somebody's services, but getting a sense of who they are they are and what they're about in that matchmaking. Yes. That style where for me, that personality would work for me. That's also unique.

Nola: 28:21
And have a path from a warmup to an engagement. To a collaborative relationship or a mentoring relationship until the synergy either brings them forward or not.

Lori: 28:32
Yeah. You're talking about having a unique value proposition that they want to offer, even though they struggled to articulate what that was, you and I could see what those potentials were, and that was. Super exciting.

Nola: 28:47
Oh my goodness. I can't wait until the next episode. So we can, I can't wait to

Lori: 28:52
come back a week and share some ideas with them.

Nola: 28:54
Yes. Well, listeners, as you've gathered, we have a lot of thoughts about what direction and strategy and next steps might work for Comwune and for Elizabeth and Chanelle and in part two. You'll hear what we've come up with and whether or not they are in agreement. 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: 29:32
Do 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

​Out-Take:
Nola: 29:49
today's guests.