Tips on Membership Site Branding, Cohorts, Groups, Calendars...

[00:03] Micah: Hey there and welcome back to the third and final part of the Digital Marketer and Scalable.co membership site case study. If you missed parts one or two of the case study, you'll find links to those videos below. But you're about to learn how to transfer a personal brand's value onto a business brand gradually if you need to do something like that. Then you'll see how they run cohorts to improve the experience while keeping it simple for them and on point for the user. Finally, we'll talk about managing member groups and how to use member calendars to organize ongoing trainings. This is a very high-end example of a membership site with lots of neat functionality. I hope you enjoy the video. We are at the top of the hour. Do you guys have time for one more question

[00:44] Richard: or do you got to run? Absolutely. Yeah, I want to make sure you get to see the back end and some of the stuff there. I know Taylor's done some different stuff with the way that groups are done here that I think is pretty cool. And also the calendar functionality has been good. So I want to make sure we're here to add value and not leave anyone hanging.

[01:01] Micah: Yeah, I want to see both of those things from Taylor. But I have one question touching back on something you said earlier that I learned from Ryan. I forget where he was speaking, but he was talking about this. I never heard anybody speak on it before, but I find it so interesting and so applicable to people with membership sites. It was when he was talking about transferring his personal brand onto the digital marketer brand. So can you just, you alluded to it a little bit, but can you talk about how you guys did that and maybe some tips for somebody who wants to say, you know, I'm no longer Joe Smith. I want to become whatever brand, you know, quilting or basketball

[01:38] Richard: or, right. How do they do that? Well, you still have to be Joe Smith, right? You it's, it's an, I think it does come down to transferable value, right? What, what brands typically need is a worthy guide, right? What brands need is a brand ambassador. What brands need is someone that has the ability to be a human, have personality, right? Have that soul, that heart, but then point back and we need to be able to pull the characteristics that made that person interesting into the soul, the heart of the brand that comes shows up in, in, in design, in brand voice, in character diamond. There's a lot of intentionality that, that is involved in the architecture of a brand, not a logo, not a website, right? Not your color palette. Those things all matter, right? But in your, um, you know, in, in your character diamond, right? Like how does, how does your brand speak? Because if you're speaking from a brand, a brand is everyone. So everyone has to be intentional and adopt the same brand voice, right? So it is an intentional creation of, of a living thing, right? Not an entity, but a living thing. We have to say, what is this thing? Then making sure that it's a transition from, you know, Joe Smith to, uh, you know, the brand, whether it's, you know, Joe's clothes, right? Like if we're going to go from one to the other, it's not a complete, uh, like, uh, departure of Joe, Joe's still there, but when are we forward facing the brand? For us, it happened, uh, predominantly in email subject lines, right? We mailed from Ryan Dice. Then we mailed from, um, Ryan dash digital marketer or Ryan Dice dash digital marketer, then Ryan dash digital marketer in that from line, then eventually digital marketer. Like really, I believe that that slow transition, um, is the thing that had the biggest impact in the adoption of the brand because most of our brand impressions at the time happened in the inbox, right? So it was there and it was making sure that we had to have the CVJ. That's, I think that's the other thing, like to your, your point about the framework. Um, if the differentiator, right, if the, the, the core like value that you're bringing and kind of that, that, that big picture is the person. It's really, really hard to separate the person into a brand. You can have multiple worthy guides. If the brand has a methodology or a tool or something that everyone's pointing back authority towards, right? This is transferable. A human is not right. So for us, when we build new brands, we build, um, real building them brand first framework first, like what is that primary? Um, what is that, what is that methodology that we're going to lead with, whether it's the seven levels of scale, whether it's that, what is the thing that everyone who is a brand ambassador, whether or not they have equity or they're a partner or they're a founder, everyone can point back to, that's what allows you to build a brand, right? So whether it's the CVJ, whether it's the, the seven levels of scale, some flagship framework that can stand the brand up, and then

[04:54] Micah: you can have multiple ambassadors point back to it. Wow. I love that so much. Thank you. Um, Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. For those of you listening, you may, Richard, do you guys have a course on the

[05:08] Richard: character diamond or some sort of training on it? I think we have a training inside of digital marketer, um, on, and, and it's funny. I was going through digital marketer site today and I was like, what is this training? Um, the name, I mean, is it's hidden very well. Um, but it does go into, to branding. Um, uh, Taylor, if you could go back over to digital marketer and go to the workshops, that would be helpful. Um, I think we could find it quickly. I was shocked by the, by the workshop, but Ryan does go into kind of that transferable value, that brand voice. Um, I don't know if you can search by Ryan or not, probably not. Can I don't like that.

[05:52] Taylor: Let's have a training. No, let me go over to the, the elite coaching one. Um,

[06:00] Micah: and just while they're looking for this guys, what we're talking about is a lot of membership site owners, their success is kind of like their success in branding themselves backfires later when they want to exit the business or, or even just when they want to have a, some time to themselves.

[06:16] Richard: Right. Yeah. So it's architecting a branding blueprint. So if you're a lab member, um, you can go through this. There were so many good ones in here. It's funny. Cause we're putting together a bundle offer on just this right now. Like how do you create that brand? And it's the brand blueprint. It's the homepage. We were literally having that conversation, uh, today with Mark Degrass, before we came in here, he's, he's the president of digital marketer now. So saying like, we really need to have something more forward facing on this. So it's funny that it came up. Uh, but this is really where, you know, uh, where that instant authority framework, that's how you build that brand. So this, if you're a lab member, uh, you definitely need to get in on this. If you're not, I don't actually know that we have this for sale for all of cart purchase. Um, to my knowledge, maybe it is, if you just go to the site, I don't actually know that.

[07:03] Micah: That's okay.

[07:03] Richard: Taylor, do you know? Uh, I do not know, but if it's not on, I'll put it on there. Yeah. Join the lab. Join lab. It'll be fun. You'll love it. Um, but it is really, really good stuff on how to create that brand. Yeah. Thank you for asking an amazing question.

[07:15] Micah: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I agree with you. They should join the lab because it's, like I said, when you're selling marketing, it's almost easy. Cause if they just do what you're saying, they're going to get an ROI. It's like, it's a no brainer to take this stuff. If you have a business, you're trying to market online. Um, Taylor, will you, and thanks for bouncing around for us. Um, will you hop over to the other site and show us what you did in the group accounts on the scalable?

[07:37] Taylor: Yes. Let me show you on, uh, as a user real quick first. So I think I'm set up as the group leader or the moderator in this case, but so the way it works with buddy bosses, there's social groups built in using their buddy press, which is also a separate plugin. Um, but learn dash groups and buddy press groups kind of work hand in hand. Um, so the buddy press brings in like the social feed, obviously the test groups is not one in here. Um, but it also, uh, allows you to do trainings, uh, together kind of as a team. So the group leader can see the progress of the team members, uh, inside that group, um, as well as be able to communicate about them and share, uh, you know, resources and documents and, um, have zoom meetings about the specific meetings too, which is really nice.

[08:21] Richard: Can we pause here for a second, Taylor? Um, not to draw this out, but this is really cool, like really, really cool. And let me give you a use case. So we can create a, uh, uh, asynchronous training. We can duplicate that training and allow moderators, um, whether it's, um, uh, an SBA or whether I wanted to lead a cohort based version, I can lead a cohort based class from an asynchronous training that is duplicated in here. Only people that are in my group would have it. If I'm the moderator of the group, then I'm actually triggering the conversations. And if anyone's uploading files or chatting, it's coming to me. So we can take an, uh, an asynchronous training and on-demand training. Someone else can create a release schedule and actually lead that course as a live cohort based facilitator. So when we have cohort based courses, we're able to just duplicate our on-demand trainings, change them, change up the delivery mechanism and make sure that the person receiving all the feedback is the person we're leading that leading that cohort all through using this, these groups. It is truly a game changer. They don't have to come in here and do trainings. They're basically it's releasing a training every month or every, every week. Um, then they're showing up to have a call about that. If there's an assignment, the assignment that's being created and submitted through, uh, through this, this site, through their login only goes to their instructor. It doesn't go to the site owner or the moderator. It goes to the group moderator. It is really, really, really cool.

[09:57] Micah: It is really cool. Um, for people who don't, you know, use or understand the concept of cohorts. Can you explain why that's better than just delivering an evergreen course?

[10:08] Richard: Yeah. And it, it may not always be better. So to me, um, if I want to, if I want to consume something that I'm probably going to go on demand, I want to go at my pace. Right. But when we're talking about cohort based, um, synchronous training, typically what we're talking about is we're all starting and ending at the same time. So we're going to go through module one together. We're going to have a conversation about it. We're going to, we're going to have assignments or, or deliverables that we create and that are uploaded. So we're all on the same course. Think about it like college, right? You're in a college course. Everyone starts at the same time. Everyone ends at the same time. Um, so these group cohort based trainings, you may have 25 people that are going through, um, one of these accelerators together at the same time. It's great because now you're getting the perspective of, of your peers, right? I, if I'm going through this with Micah and I'm hearing Micah or seeing what he's submitted, if he decides to share it with the entire group, not just the instructor, uh, which can happen here. Um, I'm having breakthroughs or seeing practical application of something that maybe I was a little, I had a little tunnel vision on. I could only see it through the lens of, of my scenario, my company. Um, now I'm seeing, uh, Micah's take on it through his, and maybe that's the thing that enables a breakthrough. So it really is everyone. It's a small group. Everyone starts at the same time ends at the same time. Typically, there's a facilitator or a moderator that's delivering the training, um, and, and hosting weekly or, uh, bi-weekly coaching, uh, or, or, um, Q and A calls in and around the topic that was

[11:40] Micah: released that week. Gotcha. And, and for me, I've done, you know, I've consumed both. And like you said, sometimes it's better to get the content at your own pace. Um, but there are certain topics where it is so useful to have that Q and A, to have people experiencing at the, at the same time as you, you know, where they can say like, yeah, I had that problem too. This is what I found. Um, and it's cool to me, like you were saying earlier, that you're able to just kind of clone these things to start cohorts and make it pretty simple. Cause that's, that's probably the reason not to do cohorts is there's a little bit more management, but if you can escape that and give people the feeling that they're coming through it live and they are special and it's being delivered to and for them rather than, you know, just a copy of something that was made long ago,

[12:25] Richard: really cool. And for us, it was the ability to have other people facilitate without having to worry, could they deliver the content with the same, um, the same ability that we could, right? So how can I have true facilitators deliver this? Well, that they are, you know, they're, they're facilitating. So we, they're delivering our content by assigning the module, the module plays it's us. The live aspect of it is, you know, the office hours when they're doing work together and that's all integrated through zoom. Each, each different group can have its own zoom link. So all their zoom is happening, um, through a specific zoom link for their group. It, it really is, um, it is a great way to scale up the accelerator or, uh, synchronous training and, and still have a lot of control, especially if someone else is going to

[13:18] Micah: deliver or moderate. It's really amazing. Um, is there anything else you wanted to show us about

[13:24] Taylor: this stuff, Taylor? Um, I guess one thing about the groups, it's pretty cool. So, uh, kind of like Richard said, we can have this, the same course going on in different groups at the same time. So the way we've kind of figured that out, the best way to do it is obviously in LearnDax, you can have the ability to trip out a lesson that specific date or specific time. Um, but if you have it, so they have to go in order and you put, uh, an assignment or an essay or a quiz that has to be manually graded, they can't get past that point until it's graded. So, uh, if somebody's leaving this is okay. Hey, so like next Monday, we're going to start on this part. They'll just leave that either that assignment ungraded or quiz ungraded and everybody stops there until he goes and hits, okay, approved. And then now it unlocks the next one. So it's a way for the same course to be in. Everyone's saying that we don't have 20 versions of course. It's just based on whenever the instructor says, okay, let's go to the next one, which is a, which is pretty sweet and saves a lot of time from having to go in on the back end. And it makes it also so the, uh, whoever's, whoever's leading these, they don't actually need admin access and WordPress. They're just set up as a, in this case, a group leader, um, through

[14:27] Micah: BuddyBoss and through the OneDash, which is awesome. Really awesome. So smart. Um, and for anybody listening, these are problems that these guys have had the time and experience and resources to solve, but they're problems that you would probably run into as you try to scale up your membership site at some point, if, if you're really kind of pushing to the edge of what you can do and the value you can deliver with your subject matter, your curriculum. Um, this is amazing. Uh, what was the other part of this scalable site that we're going to show it was the groups and what was the other part? Um,

[15:03] Taylor: let me see, let me pull it the back end and see. Okay. Well, here's what I'll just show this cause I have it open right now. Um, but here's using, again, shortcodes within inside the, uh, the umbrella with children list to show those, uh, custom fields we had. And, uh, one of the best things about these shortcodes and then very fasted, uh, the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the backend information, which is awesome. Um, and it's also makes it super easy. Obviously this is a little, it looks funny here, but it's just copying and pasting the shortcode and changing out the field name. Um, which is pretty cool there. And we go to the backend real quick. Let me see if we have anything different as far as plugins goes here. Again, we need to update these. So I apologize for all the, the notifications you're about to see pop up. No, I don't totally get it. Yeah. So we are using buddy boss here that brings that social, uh, group aspect to it. And learn dash does have groups, but the kind of mixing those two works great with the buddy boss plugin. Um, let's see. Again, we're using the auto complete. This is just a database search replace tool. We changed the domain name for the members area. So that just replaced it everywhere. We had to go fix it. Um, yeah, buddy boss. Uh, these are pretty cool. So we have the dynamic content for both the groups and the profile. So, uh, like the, my team, uh, profile tab, which was, let me go back. And it's, uh, my team here. And we renamed these, we had the groups and those are all done using these, these plugins. So you can, you can literally just name whatever you want and drop it right in the same template and, uh, add your content in which for good, which is awesome. Um, again, elementor is, uh, the main thing for any page board that's not based in, uh, the learn dash templates. Content clone is great. You want to duplicate it for us without having to go through and remake every single lesson. Um, more learn dash plugins. Yeah. It's pretty much all the same stuff. We are using smush here for, um, lazy loading images. Some of these are image heavy.

[17:21] Micah: So let me ask a general question. Cause it sounds like the two sites are very similar, except on the DM side, like Richard was saying, you guys use Facebook, but over here, you using this internal community stuff as well as a Slack group. Um, are there any other major differences besides the way you do the two communities? Would you say?

[17:41] Taylor: I mean, not necessarily, uh, the, the biggest difference on the actual website itself is just the way, um, the, the, the theme really, because there's a lot more custom stuff on the DM side, because we do have that ability for people to buy one product or buy multiple ones. Um, the way we're doing it on this site is everything is actually set up as a locked course, a closed course. So there's no way to buy it in the actual site itself. Um, but we're using, um, our auto enroll tags. So if they, if they have the membership level, they auto enroll to it. So, um, if you only had one, uh, purchase on your one accelerator, for example, we'd only see that in your, your dashboard, you wouldn't see any other products, any of those filters would be gone. Um, so we kind of just customize a little bit more based on the user level, but otherwise the,

[18:28] Micah: the tech stacks are really, really similar. Gotcha. And I should point out for people listening, as far as memberium goes, um, Dave programmed in a lot of extra things for it to work specifically with learn dash with buddy boss and some of these other tools. So it's not just that everything's sinking down to the WordPress user table. There's a little bit of extra stuff happening where it can kind of pull from here and there and create this integrated experience. And then you guys are making amazing use of the short codes, of course. Um, is there anything else about the scalable site that, that you want to show or that you think would be helpful or interesting?

[19:03] Taylor: Can they give anything Richard?

[19:05] Richard: I think the calendar has been, I mean, there's nothing unique, uh, about it. Um, but for us, making sure that there's a, there's a centralized place and we can, you know, we can swap out the calendar based on the membership level. Um, so if we have multiple memberships, which luckily this one, you know, scalable is, is simpler and more complex at the same time. We don't have the multiple levels of membership. We don't have all the all the cart. However, we do have, you know, peer to peer mentorship, uh, and mastermind groups. So we have a lot of these groups on the back end. So outside of groups, it's very simple. Um, but here, you know, the, uh, at the event calendar has been kind of a, a big game changer, uh, for us and our ability to, to make sure that members know what's going on. You know, the, all of the events that are happening because they, they are, they're live, right? All these things are, are, are live every week. Um, while the, you know, the, the recorded can be consumed later, uh, making sure that everyone sees these, that's been, that's been pretty cool. Um, I can't really think of much,

[20:06] Taylor: much else. Yeah. And again, this is just loaded using one of those, uh, the, the, the plugins that goes on top of BuddyBoss. I forget the name of it. Um, but I just had that up a second ago, but, uh, yeah, this, this is great. We can customize anything here. And then this is, this is dependent on the user level as well. Their memory and membership shows a different, uh, calendar based on whatever it is. So again, using shorter codes, um, everywhere is, is the easiest thing. Cool. Um, so question,

[20:33] Micah: since we're talking about the calendar, about mixing recorded with live a little bit, it does seem like you guys have a ton of live stuff in scalable, like all the time I'm getting, Hey, if you need help with this, there's a live call. If you need help with that, there's a live call. Um, what was that decision-making process like, uh, as far as how much, you know, can we just provide for these people in video versus how much hands-on do they need? Yeah, it was, it was two questions.

[20:59] Richard: Um, one, the, the, you know, how much can we provide and obviously make a business case, right? Cause we, we like to look at everything customer case, business case. We have to be able to make both. Um, and then once we figured it out, like really what people need, um, is kind of one live, um, workshop where we're going to either focused on something to increase sales, increase profit, or increase that transferable value each and every month. Um, usually from one of, uh, either the, the principals or one of our, our, um, six mentors that we have, those need to be live, but they're easily, uh, you know, they're easily switched over to on demand, appropriately categorized, and they're there. Um, that's more of the like proactive education, right? Like, what are we doing? What are we saying? This is important. This is where we'd like everyone to focus this, this week. Then the, where do people just have help? So for us breaking down, you know, those six different levels, we have the eight, uh, you know, the eight scale constraints, really, they're kind of, you can compress them, um, into six when you're talking about mentors and just saying, how do we make sure that those people are available, uh, each and every week so that you're never more than about 10 days away from, um, you or someone on your team being able to get, uh, an operation or a finance or an accounting or an M and a answer. Obviously you can, you know, go directly to your advisor or to one of us in the Slack group if you need it. But, um, for us, it was a mix of what's the proactive education and tools that we're providing. And then what is the, um, you don't, you shouldn't feel compelled to show up, right? Like you don't need to show up to the, uh, momentum coach. You know, Taylor, will you hover over today's momentum coaching? Like who, who was that today? Uh, management and metrics, right? So, uh, uh, you know, that would have been Tom, uh, Tom Pierce. So if Tom's on, if you've got management metrics, questions about how you built your scorecard about your, your communication, like Tom's going to be there. And if you've got questions, you show up, if your team has some questions, they show up. If not, don't worry about it. Right. It's, we, we wanted to make sure that it wasn't, um, so much so that you felt bad if you didn't show up. So that was kind of the, the, the mix of live versus not is more, what category does it fall into? Um, and, and then as far as membership, I think since, you know, we're talking about the technology that enables it, but so much of that membership program is about, uh, consumption is about engagement in that group engagement. There's a fine line between over communicating and making someone feel bad because they're not using it, making them feeling guilty. So for us being super intentional about member columns is, is critical. So, um, the technology enables us to, to really push engagement and make it super easy. Then the communication, like we send out a, you know, this month kind of next month, here's what next month looks like. Every Sunday we send out this week and, and all the activities, uh, every Monday we post in the, the general group, um, in Slack, the same schedule. So everyone knows then for the monthly intensives, uh, we have our account managers reach out to every single member and say, here's the upcoming intensive. Um, who on your team would you like to attend? I want to make sure that we get them all the access information. So it's not just massive email blasts. And there is that high-end one-on-one touch, um, so that, you know, to there if you need it, but we do not send dedicated emails about our

[24:31] Micah: weekly, uh, calls because they happen so frequently. Gotcha. Yeah. This is, uh, like I said, I know being a member of the program, my experience, when I hear you explain it that way, it's like, yeah, that's interesting because I haven't ever thought, oh, I'm missing out. I just see those calls and it's like, oh, if I want to get in there, I can, but I don't feel like I'm missing value. Um, and I'm sure that's something like you're saying you're doing in your communication intentionally. Uh, so you guys have been so generous with your time and showing all this stuff. Thank you so much, uh, for people who, and I'm just going to give a shameless plug for you guys. You know, if you're building a membership site, you probably need DM honestly, because most membership site people are not the best marketers. And so just going over to these guys where they have these, like Richard saying, transferable frameworks, you can access the content. There's the live calls, there's the community. I can say from my experience that when I need something, that's where I go. And when somebody asks a question about something that I don't know, I say, go buy that course. So, uh, for anybody out there, go to digitalmarketer.com or go to scalable.co. I'm also like I said, a member of the scalable thing, join their founders board. And I think there's just a truism of you guys in general. You always over deliver every course, every event, both these companies, you know, my experience has been that, and you guys didn't know me, you weren't trying to do something special for me. It's just how you show up. So I really, really, really appreciate that. And I think this case study is just a continuation of that. Um, do you guys want to say anything else

[26:02] Richard: to anybody watching? Um, I'll say something to you. I'll say, thank you. You've been very kind, not only in, uh, inviting us here, but, but in speaking, um, you know, uh, just the, the way that you, you talk about our programs, we appreciate it. And, and I think that you've underestimated the value you've added, uh, to our ability to do what we do. Right. So, um, we, uh, we appreciate you and I didn't have to know you to know what you did. Um, we will show up anytime because what we've walked through, um, is enabled by you and what you've built. So I'll, uh, I'll, I'll thank you. I'll thank your audience for having us, but I really will thank you for what you've built and what you've enabled us to do. Uh, so that's, that's all I have to say is thank you.

[26:47] Micah: Thanks Richard. And thank you, Taylor. Appreciate it, man.

[26:51] Taylor: Thanks for having me.

[26:52] Micah: All right. Everybody else go to digitalmarketer.com or scalable.co, check out their stuff. And if you have any questions about Nenbarium, as always, you can email us. We're happy to answer. Thanks guys. Thank you. Thanks guys. Hey there. I hope you enjoyed watching the videos as much as we enjoyed creating them. If you missed parts one or two of this series, I will leave a link to those under this video, but thanks to Richard and Taylor, we now have an in-depth idea of how the best in the digital marketing world are leveraging the power of these tools and platforms to run their business here at Manbarium. We are very grateful to be an integral part of their tech stack and have them with us for this presentation, whether you're starting with a 10 user site, or if you already have 10, thousand users, Manbarium can help you create or grow your membership site. If you want to check out Manbarium or have a question about the features in this video or anything else, please contact our award-winning support team by emailing support at Manbarium.com. Thank you so much for watching. Hopefully we'll see you again soon. Bye bye bye. Bye bye bye bye. Thank you.