How to Modernize Your Membership Organization: Lessons from an Australian Business Chamber's Digital Transformation Memberium

[00:00] Micah: Hey everybody, it's Micah Mitchell with the Membership Site Success Show. And today we have very special guests from Australia. We have Christelle and Pascal. Thanks for joining us, guys.

[00:11] Christelle: Hey, thank you. Great to be here.

[00:15] Micah: So Christelle, I've met you in person a bunch, along with your business partner, Pete, up here in the U.S. But Pascal, meeting you for the first time, but I feel like I already know you, so we're good. And I want to say the U.S. doesn't feel like home without a couple Aussies up here. You guys make it magic. Today we have a very exciting thing. So I'm going to maybe not say the name correctly, but we have the Canberra Business Chamber. And this is a site run on Membarium that Christelle and Pascal from Launchy, is the name of their company, built. And I'm going to start with you, Christelle, and ask, what were some of the problems you were solving for them? Or what were their needs when you guys started this project?

[00:58] Pascal: Thanks, Micah. Yeah, you know what? They've been using what was once Infusionsoft and now Keep for about 10 years. They've typically been very manual in all of their processes. So they were very resource-heavy in terms of their team, and just everything was quite clunky in their business. So, and, you know, they're a business chamber that is part of our capital. You know, they have government as part of what they do. They have a lot of different levels of membership and members that are part of their events and all of their processes. So you can imagine, like, a manual billing process from the point of prospect through to choosing what level and what that includes and then invoicing. Like, there was a person sending out every invoice to be paid for every member. There was nothing online for them to be able to log into and see their invoices, let alone be able to have a choice in if they paid by credit card or by invoice. So over, like, quite a big, long period, we actually kind of untangled that. So they felt like it was just very cumbersome.

[02:22] Micah: Gotcha. So you not only built them this website, and I'm sure put a lot of things in the members area, but it sounds like you were doing a bunch of kind of business automation for them, right?

[02:34] Pascal: So, yeah, that's right. That's right. Now, we did work with their web development team to support their web development in terms of the front-end website. But, yeah, absolutely, we worked in conjunction with all of that to make that connecting to keep all their campaigns and all the process that goes with it.

[02:54] Micah: This is awesome. So for people who aren't from Australia or haven't been, we were talking earlier. So this is, like you said, it's in the capital. This is kind of the main area of Australia where this is happening. What are the, I guess, what are the businesses who are joining this membership site? What are they getting out of it?

[03:16] Pascal: Pascal, do you want to go on to that one?

[03:18] Christelle: Yep, no worries. Well, the site, what we've built from this, so this is the main marketing site. We've built the member site on a subdomain. So it then clicks to that one there. So initially, the goal for them is a clean onboarding experience to show professionalism of the Chamber. With beforehand, it was, like I said, very manual, clunky. I'll use a word, an archaic system. And what they had tried to do just didn't work. So they just adverted to say, technology is too hard. We're going back to manual. And then they just adopted that and forgot it and abandoned the technology. And that's when they approached us saying, look, you know, help, obviously. And that's where we spent the time really untangling three parts of the business. The onboarding process. Sorry, the prospect process. The onboarding for the first year for a customer or a new client. Renewal. And then, obviously, from in there, the other elements is, which we're still in the development stage, because we're having to decode that from then, is the event management process. And where they've never had an education portal, which is now what we're developing is the next year as well, which the exciting part is obviously bringing in the child account. So other members within their organisation, or other, once they become a member, they will have other team members within their organisation would like to have access to these resources. Where beforehand they can't. Couldn't or would it be just a PDF, which, again, is not environmentally friendly and not resource, not an efficient way to do business. So that's the end goal, is creating an education portal, because they also help with HR elements with businesses. Those members, when they join, can have access to the professionalism of the HR or human resource management expertise, which is an intervention which we built out as well.

[05:24] Micah: So did I hear buried in all of that, that you're solving global warming with this project?

[05:29] Christelle: Absolutely. Did I underestimate the value of that?

[05:37] Micah: No, you're good. No, this is really interesting. I'm going to ask a dumb question. Is the Canberra Business Chamber a business or is it a government entity?

[05:52] Christelle: How does a chamber work, Crystal? I think it's just...

[05:55] Pascal: I believe it's a business, but it does have a board. So they have advisors and they have some political influence on the board, I believe. But it is a business, yes. And so, like, their goal as a business is to support other business owners at all different levels through face-to-face education, online education. They have a lot of articles. But they want to now... The next stage of this project actually is to take a lot of that and put it online in that portal and do that kind of online more so than the face-to-face and the networking and that kind of thing.

[06:41] Micah: Gotcha. This is awesome. I've never been part of a chamber, and I assume they might work similar here and there. But I may ask some dumb questions if you don't mind explaining them along the way. Okay, so as I understand it, businesses are accessing this while they're signing up with the chamber, either in person or online, whatever. And then you're trying to streamline the onboard process and then have this manage their membership dues, maybe some event information, as well as the online training you're going into. Do we have the membership site open? Can we jump into that?

[07:16] Christelle: Oh, sure. So if they want to go, why don't we go on board ourselves? Where are we?

[07:24] Pascal: So right now it's done in stages. And so what Pascal will show now is from the point of a prospect through to automated billing and being able to choose what level they're at and then throwing them into their sequencing campaigns through that to welcome them and get them kind of connected. The next stage is then using it for their event management that is still a little bit manual. And so they've been, Pascal, would you say six months? It's gotten to this point. But the first three to four months was untangling, planning and really pulling it apart.

[08:07] Christelle: So part of the planning part was obviously one of the things is, and this I've got to give you, Mike, a credit, because about 10 years ago you did a video on the proper way to sort of look at a membership site and how to untangle a business and really build a good membership site and a business process. And it was actually, that's what I did for them for the first three months and was just simply in the old video you did, and people will kind of laugh at that we do it that way, is you explained it about just having little A3 cards, little cards, and writing down each step and then putting it on the floor. If you can't walk through it like a maze and understand it visually in a physical representation, how the hell are you going to build it in a digital way? Because there it's kind of, it's just, if you can't explain it manually or in a physical way to a client, doing that through that walkthrough place, how are you supposed to build it properly online? And that was about, and I've taken that video and I've actually applied it every time I've built a site. It's kind of frustrated members, clients initially, because they're going, why can't we just get building? And I go, well, I really need to understand not just what you're trying to do now, but what's the total vision? Because it's kind of how you build, in my experience with building sites and particularly membership sites, if you don't get the foundational right, the levels right and all that thing, you create problems and restrictions and complexity later. Where now, if you do it right at the beginning, you build a great foundation to build a great business that allows for business process automation for your business, not just member management. And I think that's important because I think a lot of people don't see, think of Memberium as just a member's site. I see Memberium as an integral part to help with running a business

[09:59] Micah: because it can automate business workflows better. Yeah, thank you for that. I think that part is underestimated. You can just deliver a membership or some information, but since Memberium is really just tied to your CRM, it's like extending your CRM into your website, right? Yeah. Whatever business processes are available. I'm curious with the changes that you made, what was the feedback from the chamber? How has it helped them or what have they said to you about the work?

[10:36] Christelle: Removed all stress. Like if you've gone from a complete manual stress overwhelm, now we've just completely created where it just all works. So you think the amount of workload and stress that required to just manage someone, to sign up and get payment from them and give them their onboarding resources from a completely manual process when you've got hundreds and hundreds of members moving every day to suddenly it's just all working. Stress level that it just works is like heaven.

[11:16] Micah: I love that. My son was asking me earlier today, when they have robots around, what's everyone going to do? And I was trying to explain, well, they asked this question when they built pretty much every device, like what about the people doing that job? And so I think of those people in the chamber and it's like, what are we going to do if we're no longer shuffling paper? It's like, now you have, like you said, creative time. Now you can go and create new services and products and help your customers better. I love it.

[11:41] Christelle: So they're customers instead of being bogged down in tasks and workflows, they can actually serve and do the people part, which is what people get stuck in. They get stuck away doing stuff that's mightn't seem, it's important, but tedious and cumbersome and shows no value, but it's valuable other than having, when you, when you're particularly a people, this is a people business. You need to have the time for the people. And if you, if you, if you're delivering just task-based activity, people don't see that value. But when you're starting to spend time with them, because you're not having to shuffle paper, I mean, that's what, at the end of the day, it's all businesses about people. And the more you can engage with the customers, instead of spending time doing tasks, you're just going to add value. And emotional value, which, you know, at the end of the day, people make buying decisions on emotion. So if you're engaging with them better, I mean, it's a win-win across the board.

[12:36] Micah: Yeah. It's almost like a currency if you're able to spend time with them. And like you said, especially if it's adding emotional value to the situation.

[12:46] Christelle: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's it in a nutshell. So, so, so this is all credit to you, basically.

[12:56] Micah: I mean, I'll take credit for your work any day, man.

[13:01] Christelle: As you can see, I'm a bit of a fan of Iberium.

[13:04] Micah: I appreciate that. So tell us what we're looking at here. What do we.

[13:08] Christelle: So what is this when they're at the marketing site? And look, we didn't build this part. We just sort of linked off it to go to the sub domain. So obviously that, when they decide to join, so if we decide to join, say the corporate one, we'll click here. So the first thing is, so this is where the beauty is now. Now, and I'll sort of pause it here is what was the before happening. People were starting their journey to buy, but they had no idea who was going to their site, who started the journey. So they never had a way to manage their prospects. It's only when someone finally bought, they went, Oh, we've got someone who was interested. Well, now we've got this process where they click there. They got to register their memberships. They got to register their information. So this is, while it's a registration form to join the chamber, it's the start of the lead capture of an party. So what happens here is this is actually, while it's a registration form, it's actually a lead capture form. And I'll link that to the prospect campaign here, which is triggered. Once they fill that form in, it creates a prospect member membership level in memberium, in the sub domain. And because I believe memberium should be used within the sales process, not just the, once someone's a board, because we can track all their behavior, we can start marketing them and redirecting them back on the sales path. So once they register here, and we'll create a, we'll create one here. So let's go. Netbeerium. All right. And now they're registered. So now they are, as a lead capture, now they're in the system. And the first thing they know, so they're actually auto logged in now. They don't know it, but they're auto logged in. You can see here, name my email. So they're actually in, they're actually now as a prospect member. So within the tag now, they're actually in this journey right here. And there you are. Make sense? Yeah. So now we can fill in the, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, membership. I'll just put a, so you can see a difference. We have an ABN in Australia. We have your business number, general email admin.

[15:31] Micah: Well, you're filling that out. I'll ask the question there. Process. Was it a multi-step signup process by paper? Or was it like a one packet you sign up, sign a contract?

[15:42] Christelle: Uh, it was a form, a form. They got a paper, someone to ring them up, follow up manually, sell them over the phone, uh, all this processes. So yeah, it was, uh, uh, but then it wasn't until someone actually contacted them. Um, uh, yeah, it's not all of it works. So, uh, the frustration in them describing what was happening, I actually couldn't work out how people on board. If that makes sense. It was just so convoluted.

[16:10] Pascal: Yeah. They hadn't, they had, uh, web forms that were like, they had tried to do this kind of like a gravity forms approach that would go through. And depending on what they answered, then they, you know, see different questions, but it was so, so complex that I think the prospect would get lost in the process and, and the chamber wouldn't know what had come through as well, which you can imagine then it's just a whole heap of manual work to redo it again.

[16:39] Christelle: Yeah. There's just a private company. Let's go education training. Went from here in the same for, uh, for a member for a profit body. So now then obviously need to check that. And then we submit. So now what's happened is now I've now submitted, uh, we've got all information. We need to know about them, where they are, what their business is. We've got some key details that I think they're registering, but they're actually filling out. It's kind of like a prospecting. I want to know more about you before I have to follow you up. If you don't proceed. So soon as they've now registered, this is a, this is basically a part of a Woot, the same site. It's all done under WooCommerce and they can choose whether they have annual or monthly plans. So if they do monthly plans, they then they've got to pay by credit card straight. And then it just becomes a subscription. subscription. But I, so that's makes sense. But the beauty of this, what was happening, excuse me, the challenge they had is that for many members that were buying is that they would first have to get an invoice first, then send to their accounts department. The accounts have to pay for it. And then they'd have to manually. So it was a very manual process. So within the chamber, what was happening is the person who was speaking to them had to then ring, get to the accounts department. Could you create an invoice, get that invoice sent out. So it was multi persons involved in a, in a simple signup to get information. And the goal was how do we get this invoice to their accounts department? Simple. So they can do it themselves and sign up without needing 50 people involved. And that was sort of the key challenge. So what we've done is that from here is that we've done it as a membership plan. And they just basically, let's have a go for the business membership. So it's just a normal WooCommerce type application adds to the cart. And then we have these other elements. So if they might be also interested in either, and this is the HR element. So they might want to have the HR assistance package as well. They can add that as well. So we'll add the system package. So add it. And now they have their membership and the additional employer assist package up signed to it. We also have coupon codes that if they want to, for if they want to have a discount to certain members, we can apply that. And then basically from here,

[18:58] Micah: we proceed to checkout. So can I ask a clarifying question? So you, you have WooCommerce in your members area. Is that right?

[19:10] Christelle: That's correct. Yeah. So it's a, sorry, go on.

[19:14] Micah: No, go on. Sorry.

[19:16] Christelle: Yeah. It's a gated process because we need to get the information from them. And also, cause we don't, we, it was part of the process to manage that, that onboarding process. They don't want just anyone buying without knowing information about them.

[19:31] Micah: Gotcha.

[19:33] Christelle: So then, and also because we want them to register all their details, it means the onboarding is where it's all the details are already filled in. We've got all the information we need. Obviously here, we just need to re-click the site that now adds the GST. And suddenly now we can have the, and this is the part they can either pay by credit card straight away and pay now, or they can go direct debit. And this is where the beauty of it is, is, and I'm going to go down this path. And this is the challenge they had before and really why they brought, this was the key thing they wanted solved. Really no one could solve initially. And this is where the power of member room really came into. It's, it shines and why I love it so much because of the next couple of steps. So if anything, this is the, the USP that why they came on board with us, if that makes sense, what, what we could solve for them, because this was their biggest number one headache, headache of being able to get an invoice to their accounting department and pay it. The didn't involve a whole manual process and 50 people involved. So now we just go from here. So just to step one back, if you did credit card, that means they've paid. They'll go, they'll get the confirmation you've paid and it leads them onto the next step of onboarding. If they go back transfer, it goes to a different page, which is now saying to them, your next step is now to pay us. We've generated your invoice. Go from here. There we go. So transfer confirmation.

[21:03] Micah: And this is like a, sorry, this is like a wire that we have a direct bank transfer. You're giving them wire instructions.

[21:10] Christelle: Yeah, that's correct. Yes. Yes. Yeah. EFT. Yep. So now here we are again, they're still locked in. Tell them we've got the bank details. And they can click here to see their invoice. And this is. One of the key features that I love about Minbirum is the different invoicing, which I don't think many people realize the power of this. They can then view their invoice. There it is presented all compliant for Australian standards. So whatever country you're in, you can then modify it where you couldn't do this through keep. You couldn't get it with the right GST. You couldn't get it with all your ABN. You couldn't get it with your right. You just, this created so that we could make it designed exactly for the member, the chamber member. Oh, sorry, that business. So it looked like an invoice and people were very particular. It had to look professional, if that makes sense.

[22:03] Pascal: So there's something that, that Pascal is being very modest about. So there's, there's a couple of nuances that come through, like what he just talked about there with the invoice and the compliance. That's a massive one, but even little things like when you're changing what country, the, it says in New Zealand, it's a province and it changes all of the, the states within the countries. It says province and then changes. If it's Australia, it then switches to state and then changes all the states. And so you can't do that kind of out of the box with just, just keep as a CRM. You need them to work together with gravity forms and memberium to go through. But also we have a sister company called connected. And so we had to do a bit of work to, yes, had to do a bit of work to actually sync. Um, what is a principal or contact record with the company record to be compliant for the chamber. So, um, that's a big part of this process. Isn't it Pascal?

[23:04] Christelle: Yeah. I'm sorry. Didn't you say one of the things is when you create a contact and keep, and they might put a company record, a company record doesn't automatically get created. Yeah. The chamber actually run their whole business off the company record, not the contact record. So we needed to have a parallel that when the contact record got updated, the company record got updated with all the, with all the same custom fields. And it was triggered from there. So, uh, that can't be, there's no, that's a manual process, which, so we had to, uh, do the, use our sister company connected, which does all the development work to have that, that when a company or contact record is updated, either in memberium or in WordPress, they both synced. So everything updated synchronistically.

[23:47] Micah: Gotcha. So to be a little nerdy here, you are taking them from a regular marketing site, fill out a form and auto login via memberium into the WordPress site where you've got your forms, like I said, gravity forms, you've got WooCommerce there so that when they're done with the forms, they check out, but all of that data taken together then goes into keep. And then you're using memberium here on this page to, pull the information back out of keep and then stylize it. And on top of all of that, you're doing some extra API work and custom coding and whatnot to make it all work.

[24:27] Christelle: Yeah, that's correct. To tie the company record to the, uh, to the contact record, but not just so that they, the custom fields both updated. Um, that was critical. That was a critical part for them.

[24:39] Micah: Gotcha. This is amazing. Really nicely done. You're right, Christelle. He's, he's kind of underselling himself, but that's all right. That's cool. That's respect.

[24:48] Pascal: Absolutely. Our data integrity, um, particularly now with all of the email authentication rules and who you communicate with and all of that is just so important. And so for the chamber, um, Pascal really solved that problem, the data side and making sure that's correct.

[25:06] Christelle: Yeah. Yeah. So now they've got the ability here. They can just print it off and then send that to their accounts department. They then pay it. So that means it's all customer centric. They're doing all the behavior. And if they don't, if they don't finish the form or pay. So there's two parts of this now, so that now that we finished the form. So if you saw here, you've now just completed that form that you've done the payment there. Now you're into this sequence here where you filled out, uh, the bank. There we go. The bank form through here. Where are you? yeah, you're here. There we go. So that you are now in, you're down here somewhere. Uh, so you've done the bank transfer. So we're in here now waiting for the payment to be completed, to move you to the next stage. All right. Uh, so if I go, so the beauty is now, once they print off the invoice, if we print it off again, it made it so it's taking up cleanly. It's a nice clean invoice showing completely all the information that's going to be compliant for, because there counts to people like everything to be all the I's and the T's to be dotted, particularly for a, an organization like, uh, Canberra business, because they are at the center of the, you know, they're the tax capital of Australia. So you've got to dot your I's and cross your T's. Um, uh, where beforehand, that was a very manual process of generating this step. And this step alone is, uh, what, what basically that they wanted to solve as a highest priority. Uh, and we did it. And then from there, once they purchase, so you can see here, uh, where are we? Uh, sorry, back in here. So once they, so done, they can view their invoice. So once it's paid, obviously like a normal transfer, you just record that payment inside keep and move them along as being a completed payment. And then they move on to the full onboarding process, which is go through the welcome series, uh, welcome series, which is, uh, this one, which gets them, the, which then sends them down through the next automation process of updating their information, more information and leading them through their full year, year membership, which is again, this other full year, first year membership on, uh, onboarding, which is a full onboarding process as well.

[27:24] Micah: This is so cool for businesses who haven't dealt with some of this nitpicky, like get a printable invoice, or like you're saying, getting a contact to also have a company record. Some of these were little things that you understand why the client has that business need and would want it, but then it's not a feature. It's cool that you guys have found these ways to solve those problems. What, what else? So we had a brief look from the outside at some of the courses. What do the courses or the actual materials they're delivering in here look like?

[27:59] Christelle: Oh, okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Um, there is, there, uh, if I, uh, let me go, um, let me just pay that you've paid. That's okay.

[28:08] Micah: Yeah.

[28:08] Christelle: We can leave that one later. So we're going to go.

[28:16] Micah: And, um,

[28:19] Christelle: there we go. So, so here's the order in here, ready to be paid. We'll just add a payment. Just, just a, uh, so we can go to the next step. You can see. Was it? Okay. All right. So that'll now fire. That will now move you into the welcome series, which I'll show you the next bit from there now, because that makes, that'll make sense. So, uh, let's sort of go into this one. Uh, should use the real email so we can do these, the email link. So if we go back into here now, you would now be in the welcome series. So once that, sorry, let me just, uh, membership purchase. There it is. So now it goes through the membership purchase. So here's the really cool thing. Now they've purchased. Now we start, because they have a lot of things when they need to know, uh, then, you know, sets their, it sets your, it sets your initial date, your renewal date. It sets the, so you're going through this process here and it's now setting up all the reporting. Where are you? We did business here. We got that to you there. So what it is, it's setting up for going through this whole series here of setting all the standards where beforehand that to someone to manually, you know, give the file to here to all the departments. So this is now going through and creating all the onboarding, administrative tasks that they were doing, which is setting their membership level, setting the renewal date, um, uh, setting up their internal membership, like all the basic administrative tasks that would just bog them down. So it's not just the prospecting that manual. It was all the manual, other things getting their, um, their membership card organized, get all these sort of things. This is all happening automatically now, which obviously take, there we go. Show it. Then through here, because obviously now is if they're a new member, member, they'll go, this now sends them through different, um, whether they're renewing a new member, or if they've canceled and then returned as a returning member. So each one of these will go through a different welcome series. You're in this case, you're a brand new member. You'll go through the brand new welcome series, which will then start to ask him about, you know, um, which we'll go through next, which asks them the next stage of their onboarding things like, give us a company profile. So we'll put you on our website. What's the best link to contact you for, so that they can start marketing their business, their new members business on the chamber as well, which again was all a manual process. Now, now it's going to be, it's all customer, it's all, uh, member centric.

[31:04] Micah: You know, one of the things that we haven't talked about, one of the benefits of what you're doing here is not just taking humans out of the equation so that they have more time to help, but it's also probably removing human error. You know, somebody might look that they had been a member before or that they had something, right. They don't see the whole history, whereas the system knows really cool.

[31:26] Christelle: Absolutely. Look, um, just to sort of, I'll sort of diverge a little bit in a lot of other businesses we work with. Um, 99.999999% whenever they've had errors. Now is maybe like a, maybe an API call that didn't quite work because of a fail. Beforehand, 20 to 30% of transactional activities were error from human error. Now, any, like a lot of businesses, and it's another industry we're in heavily, is 20 to 30% of their onboarding information has errors, which means there's now manual people having to follow up to just get payments. We've eliminated that a hundred percent. That's worth, in these businesses, worth millions of dollars a year in terms of not losing revenue because it's, it's, we're capturing that details and checking it correctly from the word go. So while I'm not saying this will be the same case here, uh, it's removing all these, um, like you said, human error steps have now been removed. Um, because numbers, because in essence, um, computer systems don't make mistakes. Unless someone programs to make a mistake or it goes down. That's the only time it really goes to mistake, but it's, it's defined logic. It can't move outside that logic.

[32:39] Micah: Yep. It's as good as the data that goes in, right?

[32:41] Christelle: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so now here we go. This is one is a call is doing an API call to connected our sister company, a, uh, application. So now it's going to create and completely update the contact records of all the information in the company record now, because now that's the company is actually the member, not the individual.

[33:03] Micah: That's interesting.

[33:05] Christelle: All right. And then obviously you're, you're moving from there. Um, does that make sense? Because obviously they run everything. It's a chamber of a business, not a chamber for an individual member. And so later on for the memberships later on is what we'll have the child accounts. So a business can have 10 child accounts of two, so they can share the resources of the chain.

[33:29] Micah: Yeah. This is such a good application of the parent child situation. So did you guys do anything interesting with that? Or is it just basically a chamber member can say, I've got five team members. They get the same access as me. I guess a question is what does the, the member, the chamber member who bought it, what do they get that's different than their team members who they add?

[33:52] Christelle: Um, they will have virtually all X same access except for the billing unless, unless they have the authorization of that.

[34:00] Micah: Gotcha. Cool.

[34:02] Christelle: Yeah. Yeah. So, so they can't change. Yeah. Just, um, yeah, that's, it's basically to give access to all that. And we're still in the development stage of that, but it'll be giving access to all the education, FAQs, the HR elements, events type of thing.

[34:19] Micah: Speaking of events, what in the site, what, what happens in the site that helps with events? Is it just a calendar?

[34:28] Christelle: Uh, uh, at the moment, it's just an invite to come and join events. We're in the next stage. Uh, the next stage for them was we need to get the onboarding right. And the billing, Now that they're happy with that, we're going to be moving to events. They're still discovering from themselves what they want to do for events. Um, um, I've suggested the ways we can do it. And they're very, they've leaked their lips already on that saying, well, that's pretty cool. If we could automate all that. Um, and, um, that, that's, uh, that's a, that's the next step in the business. And I have big events. I mean, they, they, they, they have a cap, they have big events that involve, uh, they're big events, the big business events. Yeah.

[35:07] Micah: This is so fun because this type of work, you can do it for a smaller business with less track, you know, traffic going through it and whatever, but it's fun to create a really good system that works at volume, right? That at scale creating results for people. It's, it's just, I don't know, satisfying. It's like your work has multiplied so much as you do it.

[35:29] Christelle: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, look, you know, the, uh, the thing is in our initial investigation in, in being with, uh, speaking with them and divulging, we knew about events for the future, which, you know, um, um, you can only build units of a business at a time. You can't build, you know, like, it's like the old thing. How do you eat an elephant? One, one bite at a time. So you can't deliver the whole elephant. So at the moment, we've just done the feet. Now we can start building the rest of it, you know, and we'll build the leg and then eventually more and more. And, and with any business, uh, you find that once you, uh, there's things that when we initially started with them, we didn't know about that business. As we discover more, there'll be more things we can do. So that's, um, uh, so for a consulting firm like ours, uh, that's very exciting because we can create a lifetime client, not in the sense that we want, you know, we're trying to keep them and keep, you know, it's more that, Hey, the more value we can keep building them in, the more benefit they have, the more we can add value. So it's, it's, it's, it becomes a partnership other than just a customer relationship, a customer, uh, you know, a supplier journey. It's actually a relationship.

[36:36] Pascal: Hey, Pascal, do you want to show the main kind of homepage where all the other content's going to be coming in?

[36:43] Christelle: sure. Uh, we've paid that now. So let's just go back to my account. Uh,

[36:49] Pascal: Micah, maybe we can do a part two in this for you once we build out the next stages. So that'll probably be in the next three to six months, I'd say once they're really clear. Um, but this, just this, which is pretty, like, this has just been totally business changing for them, but super excited to see this education, FAQs and the member management, all of that be built out as well. Um,

[37:14] Christelle: so once we, once they've paid, if they still logged in, I just do the member room, HTV post to update the site. So they updates the details. So they don't have to log in or log back out. So, uh, now they've got access to the rest of the pages, which is this, their main account where they can go to their profile, uh, which I haven't changed that tag. Cause we'll still add some details. I think it's, uh, you know, sorry, that one, I, sorry, that one, I was actually working on that. Yes. I know. Sorry about that.

[37:42] Micah: No, you're good. You're good.

[37:44] Christelle: Uh, but basically let me just re refresh that. So basically from there, you know, they got, they're just a different, my profile. They can go see their invoices. That are subscriptions, their billing information. Uh, and that's the details where, again, a lot of these features where it's got all the details of, uh, you know, the details that you have their address. Now, obviously here, there's no credit card on file, but you can add a credit card if they needed to. I like, and that's where subscriptions come in really good. If they need to update a credit card, add a new one, there's the new details. If they add a new credit card, we've got the feature down there. Retrospectively back invoices and becomes the default, just using all the Mnbirim shortcodes, which is really, really cool. I really love that. Uh, the billing automations with Mnbirim. I think again, it's a, it's a, um, uh, it's a feature that I think people don't use at all. I don't think they, I don't think they use enough. Uh, but when we add that to businesses, they just love it because now they're never chasing money. It's easy for the customer to, uh, to go in, invoice. Cause you think with, you think a lot of spam aspects at the moment, people, people get an email or an email sent to some random site to update your credit card because it's the third party merchant. They go, well, I'm not, I'm with the business chamber. I'm not with X, Y, Z thing. I'm not giving my details. They don't pay it. Then they get an invoice saying, Hey, you've been paid. It's where now it's all inside the branding inside the site. They know with the domain, uh, it's secure. Uh, it's all compliant. People feel safe. They're okay to update the details. Cause I go, Oh, I'm in my portal. I can add my credit card. And the link is to my, to the site. Does that make sense? I mean, that's, that's a big thing for, um, I don't think people are realizing is, or business are realizing that people are becoming more and more skeptical of links and adding details. They want secure ways to do that. And Membira provides that hands down the best because you can embed it in a beautiful format inside your site.

[39:42] Micah: Yeah. And I think there's so much slippage. If people aren't doing this stuff, right, they don't realize how much slippage there is in their system and, and what they're losing. They just kind of think it's normal, but it is a big change to have, like you're saying the same domain and just be, I look at it as being like fully professional versus, Oh, I'm using a vendor to collect money and they'll send it to me and, and whatever, you know, it's even if it's Venmo or PayPal or something, it's not as good as your domain, taking a credit card securely. You know, they, they trust that more, just like you're saying it's huge.

[40:17] Christelle: Yeah. Particularly for a professional organization who, you know, they, they've got large enterprises. They don't want to be sent to some third party, put your details in here. That's just, you know, they've got their own security protocols and that alone would breach their security protocols. Doing it this way, you're hearing and going, it's, it's, it is the chamber of, chamber of, the Canberra chamber of commerce. So again, with the, with the way the world is changing, this solves it. This is future-proofing the business.

[40:46] Micah: Very, very cool. What type of community do they foster within the website? And that might be a future project, but have you tackled that much?

[40:56] Christelle: We will be. And that's where, that's, that's where that, if we go back to, back to their, down the front, back to the, in the main account, here we go. That's where this part will, these three parts will be coming into place. The community will be a, the event. So once we, once we understand the events, I'll actually add an element here, event management. There'll be an event portal management part here. That's, that's sort of hidden at the moment, but in underneath there, there's a whole event future section, if that makes sense on the main, which will take them to the event part, which will show future events. So that's building that culture there. And, but the big one will be the FAQs, the education, and the event management part will help them because obviously for, if you think for, there's an old thing, you know, business, being a business owner is lonely. So to, so to be able to have and create a process where efficiently inviting people to events regularly, like those network meetings, if they, and that they're very big at that. And again, it's a bit of a manual process because I don't know who attends, who doesn't attend, how many times they've attended or what they do know that they have to manually check. Which is one of the processes we want to, they want to develop in the future. But so to answer your question, it will be three parts. FAQs, just general FAQs like normal, a full education, which will then, obviously from that will more than likely go down you with LearnDash, and it'll become an, an whole extension of this portal. And then obviously we'll add the event management underneath as well. So that's sort of, it does that sort of answer your question there.

[42:34] Micah: It does. Yeah. I would love to do a part two with you both. The event side. I think they're going to love even more because events are so stressful as it is. And if they're manually doing this on top of the, the energy management and people management, right. Of an event. Yeah. That'll be awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, the education piece on LearnDash, like you're saying, the event piece, whatever you guys put in here. This is, this has been really awesome. And I want to respect your time. And I think it's probably enough for part one. So everybody watching, stay tuned for part two, but I want to ask you, Pascal, and then I'll ask Christelle, what, what maybe should I have asked, or what else do you want to share with the people out there? We have so many small businesses, similar clients to yours, right. Who are looking for solutions. And I don't mean like software, like a recommendment barium. I mean, what kind of resources can you at Launchy offer to them? How do they reach out to you to get these types of problems solved?

[43:41] Pascal: All right. Great question. I think, you know, a big part of where these solutions come from is looking at the full ecosystem. You don't nail your business automation with one system. It's just not possible because, you know, if you, if you think you can get an all in one, you get the jack of all trades, master of none. And that's why we work with memberium with WooCommerce within infused woo to get it to talk to keep and then gravity forms because there's specialists in their area. And that's what we do. And that's what we do. We're, we're about creating the ecosystem and it's about business automation, not sales or marketing automation or, or bookkeeping. Like it's not just one area. It's the full business. And so you can, this is a really great example of, this is helping all areas of the business, right from marketing through to the finance department. And everyone in between is getting leverage from this. And so jump onto our website. If you want, there's heaps of articles, there's videos. We, we attend events and do all kinds of stuff, but also webinars as well. So it's just launchy.io. And so there's heaps there. And you can also, I think, Michael, you mentioned Pete earlier. He does free consults at the front end of everything to look at your ecosystem and see if you're in the right systems. You know, that's the thing. Like you might be powering along as you are, but you, you don't, it may not be the right. Everything. If you know, like you have your heart and soul, the CRM in the middle, and then what is working with it? What's integrating with it and seamlessly along. And that's what Pascal, what's done here with the chamber. He's integrated the systems. So then they might have say six different systems involved in their whole experience, but it all works together, which is a massive key to create that eco environment or ecosystem. So yeah, I think, sorry, that's a very long winded answer for that one.

[45:53] Christelle: Yeah. From a, from a tech point of view, if to answer sort of bring what Crystal talked to the top level there, we chunk that down a bit. I use the analogy of using microservices. So look at every part of your business as a microservice. And in that, that how, what can be, and have like Crystal talked about having a central truth and that, and then from then microservices around. So every microservice works, come back to source of truth, and then talk to the other microservices. So where most people businesses run their businesses like circular. So if one system's not right, that's the limiting factor. But if you run everything where you have a center of hub and everything's a microservices around each then can be, each can be enhanced without affecting the rest of the system. And I think that's a paradigm shift. The second part is that typically when we work with businesses, first off is they're all wanting to help with marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, and where we get the biggest runs initially is helping them operationally to free them up to do better marketing. And I think that's, that's going to be a bit of a paradigm shift as well. Does that make sense? Because I think unless you free up time to go and hunt more customers, you're going to be stuck in tasks and you just, you know, that's why they don't get customers because they're stuck in tasks.

[47:10] Micah: So let's pretend that you had with the Canberra business chamber, just done their marketing instead of their process automation, you would have made it worse, right? You would have created more bureaucratic headache for them. Right?

[47:23] Christelle: Yeah. Just shoving more in the top of the funnel with a funnel that's this big and wondering why no water's coming down the bottom. So you need to open the tap to allow them to open the, to open the floodgates. You know what I mean? Very, very simple. You know, that's, that's a process. Yeah. That's that we could talk a thousand hours just on business processes, which I love doing and then how to automate.

[47:45] Micah: Yeah. Launchy, L-A-U-N-C-H-Y dot I-O. For those of you listening, we'll put the link under the video obviously, but this is a really powerful team. Like Pascal said, you know, they're thinking deeper that paradigm you shared about kind of hub and spoke engineering is genius. Cause just like you said, most systems are running around that way. Something breaks, the whole thing breaks, they're freaking out. And Christelle, your comment about the, the environment that people are operating in and, and is it right? Does it fit? Because often they're saying, Oh, I have this tool. Help me use this tool versus, okay, is this the right tool? Are you even trying to do the right thing with it? So the level of strategy, I think you guys bring to the table and Pete, who's not here, who I love to death. Um, he apologized for not being able to make it, which is totally cool. Hopefully he can join part two, but you know, like you said, booking a call with Pete would be, I didn't realize he, he just let anybody do that. So for those listening or watching, I would take them up on that and see what launchy can do for you. Because as you've seen here, and I think you'll see if you contact them very, very smart people, you know, on their game ahead of the game, doing the, the work behind it. Right. You can see the site, how it works for their customer. So very awesome. Thank you guys both for coming. Thank you for sharing. Christelle, Pascal, you guys rock. Anything else you want to say?

[49:15] Pascal: No, that's awesome. Thank you so much for having us and can't wait to do part two.

[49:19] Christelle: And, and you guys, and I will say one thing, Dave and team and support and all that. Absolutely. Kick us. So we kick our support. So whenever I've had a problem, they actually make me look genius. Cause they solve it for me as well. So safe. Say those guys. Thank you very much as well, because you're so awesome and they always follow up and they always show up that everything's working. So kudos to you guys. I love me.

[49:44] Micah: Thank you so much. We love launchy. Thanks guys. Thanks guys.