Discover How to Organize a Site with an Abundance of Content...

[00:03] Micah: Hey everybody, it's Micah Mitchell, co-founder of Membarium, and today we have the Mary Kay with us. Mary Kay, hello, hello. Thanks for joining us.

[00:13] Mary Kay: Hello, Micah. How are you?

[00:15] Micah: I am great. Before we turn on the recording, we both noticed each other's sweaters. We're on different sides of the Rockies, but it is freezing out there. All right, Mary Kay,

[00:25] Mary Kay: I understand you have a client who's achieved pretty interesting success in a relatively short

[00:31] Micah: period of time, and so I'd love to hear you just basically lay that out for people because a lot of time on these calls, we get into the technical details and we can go there. But first of all, do you want to just kind of explain who the client is and the little journey they went through before we dive into the back end? And if you do want to pull up a screen and show anything as you're talking, feel free to do that as well. But otherwise, yeah. Mary Kay, everybody, go ahead.

[01:00] Mary Kay: All right. So when you invited me to kind of share with this audience a little bit, this particular client was the first one I thought of because what we have been able to do for him, basically, I became associated with him through another client that we have that we don't do any kinds of membership sites or portals with. We actually do affiliate stuff. But so Raja was someone that they were utilizing in different areas of their business and design and consulting work. And the company owner from SHIP Network knew Raja had a pretty deep and long time spiritual practice. And Raja is from India, but he has spent a lot of time in the United States and in Britain. So he's got this whole kind of global approach to teaching. And so he was actually tapped to be faculty for SHIP. Now, fast forward a few months, Raja and I had been associated with each other through the work he was doing with that company. And when he kind of entered into this arena of teaching his practice, he discovered he really loved it. And so he got back in touch with me to find out what he might be able to do with this in terms of building a business around it. So his business primarily had been design work, a lot of marketing website stuff, and also filmmaking was a real love and still is of his today. So of course, I said, sure, let's dive in and see what we can create. So we spent a few months kind of more on a consulting level. And then a little over two years ago, we launched effectively a membership site for him. And we focused first on people that he had come in contact with through his teachings with SHIP Network. And they were extraordinarily enthusiastic about the opportunity to be able to connect in this in a membership portal with him. And this particular model for Raja, and there's a number of different types of models that we work with for membership sites. But this particular model really leaned heavily into access of the teacher. And so he set it up where he would come on basically every other Sunday. And he taught this group and the group has continued to grow to this day. And now he has a multi six figure business that really rests on that membership, that membership site and that original membership structure. And so it's just been really a lot of fun to just kind of build something from nothing from a content perspective, and have it really take off. And of course, over time, we've we've done a lot of tweaks and adjustments, he's now added some courses. So we also have on demand courses. For him, we have hybrid courses that he teaches, etc. But still the the baseline running for everything, in particular revenue is absolutely that membership program. And he has, you know, just really good, a really great stick rate doesn't have very high churn. And every year, it just grows a little bit,

[04:15] Micah: a little bit over last year. That's awesome. So a couple questions that came up for me within that is, you mentioned it kind of involves access to him, I'm guessing that's group stuff. Is there live stuff? Is there one on ones? Can you explain a little bit more in detail there?

[04:33] Mary Kay: Yeah, absolutely. So he's he started it with just him and he would come on, he would come on a zoom every other Sunday. And then of course, that was recorded and everything was then put back into the portal into the membership site for ongoing access. And so we were we were utilizing the portal structure for notifications for links, right links that we only wanted members to have access to ancillary content, supportive content, and of course, these very valuable recordings that he was creating. But really, the driver for and still is to a degree to this day is people want to be on these live teaching sections. And he does, because he's coming up through the kind of the the Indian tradition, there's mantra, there's meditation, there's a lot of interaction and engagement that's happening in the live format. But because we have a memberium portal, we also are able to track engagement with the same content in its recorded form. And so what we know that over time is we're seeing about 20 to 30%, some a little higher than others, of reengagement of this content from membership, you know, maybe they wanted to revisit it, maybe they had to miss that particular event, etc. So the portal has played, like we couldn't have done it without, without a memberium portal, because it would have, there would have been no centralized location for people to, to really gather and understand around the content on a larger level, you know, when you just run things on zoom, and then you send them a zoom link, it's pretty flat, I got all these zoom links in my email, you know, back forever, whereas now it's colorful. There's a there's actually a path through it, we've got nine different categories of content, which, you know, I could actually probably show you that you can get an idea of how it's laid out on the on the back end, so that people have when they come into the portal,

[06:41] Micah: after the fact that they're not on that live call, they know what the content is about, they know where

[06:48] Mary Kay: it fits in the schema of the totality of what they're there for. And I think that's hugely valuable in terms of how portals are set up and really help make your membership membership run better.

[07:02] Micah: Yeah, definitely, especially as you go over time, and you have so much, you know, without something like that. It's crazy. Yeah. So if you could pull up your screen in a moment, and what I'd love to see before we look at the back end is actually just the front end, you know, you mentioned he started off, and he had kind of a group of people who knew him who were enthusiastic. But nowadays, if somebody who doesn't know him or is referred or is interested comes, how do they make it from being anonymous to a

[07:31] Mary Kay: member? That's a great question. And I will be just very candid that this is an area that that I am encouraging him to lean into significantly more. Because he has had such success with a warm audience, and because, you know, one of the things in our business, we work a lot with what I call the high creative type, right? And they get bored pretty quickly with what exists, and they're on to the next thing. And so we have actually, we have maintained and grown this mostly through a warm audience. But this year, 2023 is the year that I think I have finally got him ready to create content outside of the of the close circle of the portal. He does have a very strong following on YouTube. And so we do absolutely bring, bring new people in through YouTube. And, and he asked actually now I think I I'm watching a YouTube video. So this is minus advertising, you know, minus, minus some fancy funnel, minus doing all the things that as a marketing consultant and conversion specialist, I'm like, you need to do these things. He's been able to just kind of run on just on his fan base in the short term. But 2023, what my intention is to take this from multi six to if not seven this year, certainly tracking towards seven figures, because the structures are all there, the content is there, the interest is there. It's just a matter now putting out the marketing side content in a way that

[09:24] Micah: pulls more people in. Gotcha. What what do you want to show first on your side? Do you have a front page

[09:32] Mary Kay: or do you have a back end? I'm actually I can show the back end from a subscriber side or from the admin side. And then I can also bring up the primary site. Let's do that. Let me do that as well. And we'll just start there. So you can kind of see the yeah, what the focus is of the whole of the whole piece.

[10:01] Micah: That's perfect. One kind of question in the middle of all that to back up a little is you mentioned he's doing some sort of call about every other Sunday. Is that most of his contribution into the

[10:11] Mary Kay: system is those calls? It is plus the plus the courses which are now have now flipped to on demand. So he all of the course, he has two courses were delivered live in the initial run in the initial launch and then but delivered live with the intention and structured so that they could then be put into into on demand, into on demand content. He also has bubbled up through this community, a group of leaders who have just, you know, presented themselves as long, long time students. And this is another kind of really cool thing about a community and a membership site like this is you will whether you set out to

[10:53] Micah: do this or it kind of happens more organically, you're going to bubble up people underneath you

[10:59] Mary Kay: who are going to be able to then further turn back around into newer membership and support that membership in whatever it is that that whatever it is that your membership does. And so he has probably eight or nine of these individuals and a couple of them have progressed to now they are hosting Sunday events for the group as well. Some of these are recorded and put into the portal. Others are a little bit more spontaneous or not necessarily the kind of content that that needs to be archived, right. But there's growing opportunities for connection and it is because of this kind of organic effect of these

[11:41] Micah: folks just kind of raising their hand and saying, you know, I want to be I want to be a part of this

[11:47] Mary Kay: and here's what I'd like to contribute. And so now they're contributing as well, which is pretty cool.

[11:52] Micah: I would guess you've thought about certification. Have you guys talked about that?

[11:55] Mary Kay: We have. And, you know, one of the things with spiritual teaching, as opposed to perhaps some other kinds of content, it's not that you can't do certifications, you absolutely can. But there's a few extra considerations that are that are involved. And so he's still kind of mulling around whether or not that feels like direction he wants to wants to take here. What we do know is that there's a lot of ancillary type of content that goes with kind of the core practices and teachings that he does. And so bringing individuals on to do their thing within the container is definitely something that he's leaned into. And interestingly enough, I have a brand new client who has just launched her membership. And I say just, I mean, like, let's say end of December, I think middle of December, we actually opened the site. Not a wholly different structure from from this. And her intention is actually to create her membership container is going to be much less driven by her personality and much more driven by the other individuals that we're bringing in. So in a few months down the road, it might be kind of fun to to to have a conversation about that. And just see where that's gone, because it's going to be highly collaborative. And when you put a bunch of creators into the same kitchen, things are either going to be genius, or they're going to be chaos. So we're going to see how that ends up.

[13:35] Micah: That sounds like it like just like you said, one end or the other. I'm not sure.

[13:38] Mary Kay: I don't know. I have a I have a lot of faith. So anyway, it's similar, similar structure. But just, you know, a couple of different couple of different examples. So let's let me share screen. So this is this is the home, the homepage, the home site. One of the things we're doing this year is he started this in his original concepts. He really felt like he was doing like a mystery school with some curriculum and a lot of depth. And he looked back into some some really well established models. Now he's starting to feel like he actually wants to pivot from a brand perspective more on this course right here. So this is his entry level course that I mentioned that he the extent of the marketing, honestly, right now, much to my distress and embarrassment is, is YouTube. But because he has a following there, people do just jump right in and and enroll in this course. Once they've completed this

[14:54] Micah: course, they are eligible for the membership. And so this is this is a really, you know, a really solid entry point into into that membership. So that is a big, a big driver that we hope to make quite a bit

[15:14] Mary Kay: bigger. And then we're in the process of a whole new rebrand for this. And then the business is actually going to rest on the brand, the Kundalini code, rather than on the Academy, the Academy brand. So that's, that's kind of front front of this.

[15:30] Micah: I like it. That's smart. Have you ever done Kundalini?

[15:35] Mary Kay: Um, I've Kundalini yoga practice a little bit. I'm not as I don't, I practice a lot of different types of yoga, but yeah, a little bit, a little bit of Kundalini. It's a fascinating, I mean, it's a fascinating, um, teaching and discipline and, and yeah, it's cool. It's very cool. All of my, of most all of my clients, many of them, I should say, um, do very interesting, interesting things.

[16:00] Micah: Yeah, I feel you.

[16:02] Mary Kay: Yeah. I have an opportunity to learn a lot, right?

[16:04] Micah: Yeah. Um, let's go to the back end now. So this is kind of, you mentioned, you know, they're, they're coming from YouTube. He's got a following in there. It seems like they're so primed to buy that you're saying this whole marketing structure isn't maybe necessarily as optimized as it could be, but he's getting orders at works. Yeah. Let's see. Single payment.

[16:24] Mary Kay: Yeah.

[16:24] Micah: Three payments, 72. Awesome. Um, and you said this was initially created by just those every other week calls being recorded, you know, with that intention. So what I, what I want to kind of comment on here is, uh, as the creative, he's not having to do so much. Sometimes people with a membership site, they're like, I'm going to do these one-on-ones. I'm gonna do this and this and this and all these other things. And even though he has a following on YouTube, somebody might say, oh, well that's because he's, he's got this following that he can do that. But I would actually, um, just take a second to point out. Everybody should do it this way first, where they keep it really simple on the creative side so that you can spend more time doing the following stuff. And just point out like, you know, you don't have to over commit to a thousand calls. He's only every other week. And out of that, he's created a membership and now multiple courses because Mary Kay, you were guiding him, like you said, with the intention and the structure in the first place to end up here, you know? So, so I just wanted to point some of those things out, but go ahead and

[17:24] Mary Kay: continue. Yeah. And, and you know, another interesting kind of dovetailing on that is in our, in our kind of linear thinking about how this should roll out, I think a lot of folks would assume that the course would come first and the membership would follow. And in some ways it did because he taught a course for shift network and then the membership followed that. But, but the, really what the shift network course did, now I introduced him to a few people who then would recognize his name of course, but it sparked this, this awareness of what he loves to do. And what he loves to do is teach. Like he's a maniac for teaching. He didn't realize that before this started. And so the format of that membership site where he was able to get on live with students

[18:14] Micah: every other week, drove his excitement about the, about the content and about just doing it. And then

[18:23] Mary Kay: all I had to do sort of was capture it and provide enough organizational structure to where we could turn it into money to where we could turn it into a business. Right. But really what he's been doing

[18:35] Micah: is sort of the proverbial following his bliss. I just want to teach. And I'm like, okay, so I'll capture

[18:41] Mary Kay: that and put it into a format that, that now allows you to, uh, to make money. And he would never be able to use the same course over and over again, live because he would be bored. Yeah. So we run it

[18:54] Micah: live and then we, and then we put it into on demand. So his content I got, I think is pretty evergreen. Is there a plan to re record it or go back over it at some point or not really? What our plan is,

[19:06] Mary Kay: is to, um, and I'll go to the backend now. So it's a little easier to see. Uh, so this is the backend. One of the things that we always create when we, uh, when we set up, uh, a memberium driven portal is we create what we call the, the logged in homepage. And so when someone logs in, rather than them going into the content that they have exclusively, we're going to take them to a page that shows all the content that is available to them, and then allow them to click through from there. Now we obviously make good use of auto login links and things like that. We're not going to get too deep into the granular, uh, the granular on that, but what I want people to do, what I want someone to do when they log in, let's say they have just purchased the Kundalini code. Um, and this particular subscriber that I'm demoing, of course, is showing that they have access to all of the, all three of these pieces, but they would then have an opportunity to upgrade here to the master code. Or once the engagement tracking shows, they've completed the Kundalini code, they would be invited to join the path. Hmm. This is course one. This is course two. This is an Ascension model one and two. And then this is the membership site. So we've got core structures back here in an Ascension model plus

[20:32] Micah: membership. So let me clarify. You're saying they have to do the one on the left, the Kundalini code,

[20:39] Mary Kay: before they can even get into the membership, the path at all. Correct. Um, but you, I think said that

[20:47] Micah: they started it, some people started in the path and the code was created out of that program, right?

[20:54] Mary Kay: That's correct. Because, um, because he started teaching a code for another code, a course for another company. Okay. And, um, and then because of its success and how much he enjoyed it, he came to me and said, what, what, what can I, what can I do with this? And because I was familiar with, because I have been for so many years working with you guys in the Barium, obviously I was like, well, you know, let's, let's explore creating a, a membership program for this ongoing content. And, and so that is, so it developed a little bit in, in reverse to now how someone would, would come into, into it. Um,

[21:35] Micah: Gotcha. Well, and I, I just want to kind of understand, I'll, I'll make a point there, but then come back to this page. So just, just for everybody, um, you know, listening, this is something that you, you talked about how your membership is growing. The stick rate of a membership goes up, the harder it is to get into it. So this is kind of a genius thing where it does so many things it makes in their mind, like, oh, I had to earn it to get in here. It's not just about money. I had to go through the Kundalini code. And then within the membership, it's a much higher level conversation. You don't have people coming into the membership every single week, new guy comes in and asks the basic questions, right? It slows the bus down. Um, so that's awesome. I, I, I love it. So, uh, but not to distract from your point of this page being a container for all of their resources, right. And a chance to upsell cross-sell. Um, and I love the simple layout of this. Sometimes it's easy to get a little too design heavy, but this, this great, it's like, you basically have CD covers, you know, um, scroll down if you don't mind.

[22:35] Mary Kay: Uh, and then this is just, this is just open content. That's just back here. Yeah. Open video content

[22:41] Micah: for anybody. And is it just like a blog role or is it random or is it? Yeah, this is, this is mostly

[22:49] Mary Kay: a blog role. Um, and, and I will, you know, I'll say candidly that this is not an area that, that he pays a lot of attention to his focus is here. And so when we, when we click into this,

[23:00] Micah: I'll just show you, let's go into the path content. Um, cause this will be where you'll see how we have

[23:07] Mary Kay: divided it into nine categories. Here we go. So we are, um, a lot of things going on back here. So, and again, this is an evolution. So I don't want people to feel overwhelmed, like, Oh my gosh, in order, you know, in order for me to make my work, I've got to have all, you know, all of these various pieces, parts in the mix. You don't start simple, um, start getting those classes recorded. And what we discovered after about six ish months of twice a week classes, maybe a little bit longer, um, was that he had a pretty clear path of organization of the content. And so here you see the organization of the content. So each class is organized under one or more of these nine categories. Um, and so what can happen is if I want to, uh, if I want to focus on Kundalini, for example, categorically now, as a member, I'm understanding on a deep way, what, what these pieces are going to be about here. We have all of the classes, all of the recorded classes that he did live originally that now have come back into the structure and what we have done, because his live sessions are so long, they're not like just a half hour, like a little quick Q and a thing. Some of them go on for like two and a half hours on a Sunday. And so he will cut them into some segments. Um, and then we put it into learn dash to just make it one step easier for a member when they come back to it, whether it's to revisit or because they weren't able to attend, uh, attend a particular week. They now have some, some support and some guidance in getting back into, into that content where we're trying to make it a little more bite-sized, a little more structured. And so you can see we've taken what originally was a single class,

[25:15] Micah: just delivered live into four lessons. And the last lesson is always what is called the

[25:23] Mary Kay: Shakti Cafe and the Q and a, and so this is where he does breakouts and, and, you know, obviously a lot of these folks really know each other quite well and there's chitter chatter going on and, you know, talking about, you know, personal things. And, you know, this is a, this is a real opportunity for people to engage with each other. So that gets pulled out separately, but this is the, the teaching sections of this particular, uh, this particular event.

[25:54] Micah: You know, there's so many things, uh, that are just, I would call it best practice, but honestly, most people don't even do this. This is above best practice to do the simple thing, not complicated of taking a live call and breaking it down like this for consumption. So that then the future people coming in, it's such a more pleasant experience to yeah. Have the tracking and the lessons and the chapters versus, oh, there's a one hour video. I hope somewhere in there is something that was for me, you know? Right, right. Or just

[26:26] Mary Kay: having to carve out, cause I'll know I've experienced this so many times myself. And, and for me, if there's a little nugget to share with folks as they're listening, if you're either the business owner listening to this or, or the developer pulling this type of thing together, think about your own life and how things actually work. So I know for me, if I miss something live, carving out the time that I would have carved out for the live is much more difficult after the fact. And so I needed to get chunked down unless I'm able to be on live. Sometimes I can, I've got a conflict or, you know, whatever's happening, life is going on. But I just know myself and I'm like, yeah, if I just get a dump

[27:15] Micah: of what happened Wednesday night that I missed, I'm going to have a hard time catching up with that

[27:21] Mary Kay: because I'm going to put 8 million things in, in, in front of getting back to it. You know, it just sort of falls off the priority list pretty quickly. And so just kind of tap into sort of your own thinking

[27:32] Micah: and your own behavior and your own realities in terms of what do you do with content. And, and so

[27:40] Mary Kay: that's a truism for me. And so that's something that we kind of lean into pretty consistently, especially for someone like, you know, like this teacher who goes, you know, his sessions are forever. Um, it just felt like the right thing to do to cut it up. And now we do that across the board for folks, um, pretty much as a, as a, as a consistent best practice in our, in our development.

[28:04] Micah: No, I love it. Can you, I know this is like a test record you put together real quick, but can you complete one of the lessons just so I can point out the progress bar? It's a little bit difficult to see.

[28:17] Mary Kay: I mean, I've also got a big screen so I can, um, I can blow it up too, if we need to.

[28:24] Micah: Oh, you're good. But I, I just want to show. So yeah. Do you want to go back to the? So she completed lesson one and, and this is just in case people don't know this. So that progress bar moved, but if you go back to the previous page before this as well, I'm pretty sure it had, um, progress bars. I mean the, the home kind of courses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let me go here.

[28:49] Mary Kay: Yeah. We went into the Kundalini.

[28:53] Micah: It's going to be track. Yep. So these are the categories. And then when she clicks on Kundalini, these are actual courses, learn dash courses, and you can see that top left one, the progress bar moved. So in case you didn't notice it before, and then there's a percent complete, and this is what we're talking about as a user, you come back in and it's, oh, this is the one I was going on. Let me get

[29:14] Mary Kay: back into it. And this is exactly where I was in it. And honestly, if it were me, I would jump into a

[29:19] Micah: bunch of them and see which one I like. Right. And maybe come back if the first part is interesting, but

[29:24] Mary Kay: it gives people that, um, kind of like save your place so easily. And I know a lot of people are

[29:29] Micah: familiar with learn dash, but just to point that out, cause it was so small in the video. Yeah. Um, yeah, I love this. So, uh, let's talk a little bit about, um, first of all, the Ascension model, um, before we, before we go into the backend, cause I want to show all the nerds, what they want to see. Um, I'm a nerd. So I say that with respect, um, all here for the nerds. That's right. So somebody comes in and they pay $200 one time or three payments of 70 ish, if I remember correctly. And then when they upgrade to the path, what is the offer there?

[30:05] Mary Kay: So they are going to come in. So the Kundalini code is, uh, it's straight, a straight learn dash, uh, set up, right? So this is a self-contained course, um, that I am going to, uh, there's a welcome video in here. Uh, and then here's our modules, right? Whoops. Click too soon.

[30:29] Micah: Let me go back. Sorry about that. So, and then of course, here's the module layout. So this is

[30:34] Mary Kay: classic because we have tracking, um, on, because we're obviously we're tightly integrated with keep, um, we have tracking on this. And so we know when someone completes the course. And so that's when we can trigger the opportunity to upgrade to the path. And so we have a short email sequence on that. Um, and then about once a quarter, we do actually do a live webinar with Raja that gives people a taste for what the path kind of feels like. And so we invite all the Kundalini code grads to, uh, to that particular, to that offer. Um, and so we're bringing people on, uh, it one-on-one as they finish, but really those quarterly webinars are probably a bigger mover to kind of, to bring the next group into the path. Um, and it works better for, for the path as well, because one of the things you made note of, and it's absolutely true, the path is really more of a membership for what we might call advanced studies or the more serious student. Right. And so the existing members, you know, it's kind of like, um, if you go to the gym regularly and have for a whole lot of years and then January shows up and you're like, Oh, for the love of Pete, I'm going to have to deal with these yeehaws for the next 17 days. And then 90% of them will be gone. Right. You're just like, so they, they definitely Raja does seek to kind of protect the existing path membership and, and make sure that people coming into it are really, really ready and able. Um, so that's, so that's how that, that flow goes. We can go back to

[32:15] Micah: the Kundalini homepage. And, and I guess one thing I'm curious about is what is the price of the path

[32:21] Mary Kay: and is there a special offer coming in? Yeah. Um, it is priced so low that we don't special offer it too much. It's 67 a month, um, or six 70 a year. We don't do quarterly just because that's too much around and about. We have about 20% of our membership on annual renewal. Um, I have many thoughts on annual renewal, which, you know, I think it's, I think it's super dependent on the offer, whether or not annual renewal makes sense for a highly engaged membership like this one,

[32:54] Micah: the annual renewal works quite well. Um, but until you really know how well you're going to be able

[33:03] Mary Kay: to engage and keep people moving forward, I like monthly best. Gotcha. Um, now it's all awesome.

[33:13] Micah: So let's see, we jumped into these things. Let's go ahead to the backend and we can always come back in here, but if you have an admin window open, um, for those of you watching, I like to, I like to, this is how I usually build is I'll have multiple browsers open. So I have different sessions, you know, the admin session, the user session and the anonymous person session. Um, so here we are on the admin. If you go to the backend and look at the plugins, um, and I'll also ask about the theme. So, you know, if somebody wanted to do something similar, cause I know there are probably certain parts of this that come from plugins, right? They're not just built into WordPress. Obviously memberium is on there. You mentioned learn dash. Um, what are some in your mind of, of let's say the core functionality plugins. And I'd love to know also like, what are

[34:03] Mary Kay: the frivolous plugins? All right. And I apologize for all these meeting updates because it's every WordPress site ever. Mike has surprised me a little bit with this conversation. So there's my disclaimer. Um, yeah, no, we actually really do try to keep up a little tighter than this with updates. Anywho. All right. So we, we really like Divi. Um, I have also, uh, built Elementor. I am, um, I am coming to a level of warm tolerance with Elementor, but you know, you like what you know, and, and we've been working with Divi longer. And so we, we do tend to lead into Divi as a theme. Um, with either of those themes though, one of these is so awesome is that, you know, Dave has built into those builders, the ability to, um, work at all the various builder elements and controlling access, utilizing them a variant functionality that has been such an enormous game changer for us, just in how quickly we can turn out sites and just how fancy we can make the experience. Um, and so either Divi or Elementor, and it may be, he's done this with some other builders as well, but I'm, I'm not as familiar with. So we do use that.

[35:18] Micah: Uh, let me, let me just interrupt you for, for my old eyes. Do you mind zooming in on that? Your monitor must be huge because on the video, I'm like, what does it say there?

[35:27] Mary Kay: Yeah. You know, and I'll have to stop share and then come back because it doesn't like to zoom with the zoom. It doesn't like to zoom with zoom. Okay, here we go. This should work.

[35:41] Micah: Perfect. Yeah, that looks good.

[35:43] Mary Kay: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. All right. Um, couple of other plugins that we really just find incredibly, incredibly useful. One is Gravity Forms. We really, really love Gravity Forms. Um, and we pair it with the Sistasis, uh, integrator plugin. So that is integrated with, uh, with Keep. In addition to the fact that, that Gravity Forms has a really solid, uh, integration with Membarium. So when you, if I'm going to create a Gravity Form, like for example, Raja periodically will do one-on-one, one-on-one mentorship, uh, opportunity for folks. There's an application with that. Uh, and so the application is set up using Gravity Forms with much of the content pre-populated for that individual member or student who is filling out the application. So a couple things are nice on that. One is we know we're going to match the application to the contact record in Keep, which is obviously super handy on a lot of levels. We know when someone has submitted it because we can either apply a tag

[36:57] Micah: through the Embarium or use the API goal through Sistasis. Um, and then we can populate as needed certain fields from the Gravity Form into Keep, or we don't have to burn custom fields in Keep

[37:12] Mary Kay: for things that are, you know, more like, tell us why you want to do this, right? Kind of a pros input. I don't necessarily want to build a place in Keep to hold that. So it's on the Gravity Form. So we love

[37:25] Micah: Gravity Forms and that integration. LearnDash, obviously we talked about that. Like,

[37:30] Mary Kay: if you're going to do courses, just combine Membarium and my gosh, just don't even, don't even pass go. That's, that's just critical. Um, this Modern Events Calendar Lite, this is the free version of Modern

[37:45] Micah: Events Calendar. And I tried probably, I don't know, three or four, five different calendar plugins.

[37:52] Mary Kay: This one is the shizzle-wizzle. Really high functionality, plays nicely with Membarium. Many, many options for how you want your calendar data to present, uh, both structurally like day, week, month, but also just sort of design elements and visuals. You can pull your brand colors in there. Um, we have just, we really have kind of fallen in love with the Modern Events Calendar. And I've never had to upgrade it. I've been on, been on free. Notes for LearnDash. Um, this is a super cool little plugin because it allows you to literally put a note taking element right

[38:30] Micah: into your, uh, into your course structure. And then they can export that as a Word document onto

[38:38] Mary Kay: their own computer and work with it later. Um, it's saved within the, within the system so they can come back to it and they'll still have their note. You know, you were talking about the progress bar, Micah. Um, so this is kind of like that. I'll have that note, the notes that I started on this particular module will be there when I, when I come back, uh, to the module. I love that. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a super cool little, little plugin. It comes from Snap Orbital. It's not a, it's not a LearnDash native. And I think it has a low price point. I can't remember what it is. Um, so Stasis obviously

[39:12] Micah: mentioned that that goes with the Gravity Forms. Some of these we don't use anymore and really should

[39:17] Mary Kay: be taken off, uh, taken off the site. Um, one I noticed as I was just scrolling through here that we really don't use anymore because Membarium has, you know, over, you know, Dave's always in there bettering. Menu Items, Visibility Control, we don't use, uh, anymore. Um, LearnDash CourseGrid. I have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with that, but we do use it on this particular site. We found it helpful. Classic Editor, sorry. I just, I love my Classic Editor. Nice. Yeah, same.

[39:53] Micah: Yeah. Um, well, awesome. So you mentioned some stuff about the themes, any custom code going on,

[40:01] Mary Kay: on this site? You know, really not too much. I, um, for reasons both, uh, practical and the fact that I like to kiss everything, keep it sweet and simple. With few exceptions, I will almost always try to wait to find a way to do something out of the box of, you know, whatever, whatever the systems are that I'm, I'm using. I kind of take this attitude that if, if it's really complicated to figure out how to do something, maybe I should rethink about what it is I want to do. Um, so for this particular site, there's, there's not any, you know, other than a little CSS, you know, chisel dizzle and things like that. There's not, uh, we have not layered it with a whole lot of things that might break. No, that's smart. You know? Yeah. For, for the average membership site person,

[40:54] Micah: you know, in that 30 seconds of what she just said, there's so much wisdom, just the whole thing of use, use the tools you have for the most part. If you feel like you have to go custom, of course it's possible not saying there's not use cases for it, but more just, yeah, back up and maybe question. And often, often we're doing something complicated to try to solve a problem that may or may not even exist. You know, it's like, this would be a fun upgrade. We need to now go do these things and, you know, get kind of down a rabbit hole. Um, so yeah, just, just reviewing, do I really need to

[41:26] Mary Kay: do it? Is there an easier way? Well, and here's my litmus. Honestly, I go back to basic. So fundamentally, we're business developers and conversion experts, and we really love the way these sites, the way that they support those growth initiatives for a business. Right. And then I could do a whole hour long conversation on that. But so when I'm trying to decide if I want to do something fancy, my question is, will this help me make more money? And it maybe sounds a little crass, like, is that really all you care about? No, no, no, no. But we're running businesses at the end of the day, we're running a business. And so if that thing that I think I need to do isn't clearly connected to money either now or in the future, because user experience and customer experience on the other side of a paywall is, is, is, would be something that I would give a thumbs up, right? If we're going to dramatically improve a customer's experience with whatever this thing is, it's complicated that we want to do. And we really feel like that improvement is going to help them flip back around and either become brand evangelists for us or, or continue to move forward into higher dollar programs or whatever that is. So that's always my litmus is how closely is this connected to the absolute bottom line thing I'm most interested in as a business owner, which is, can it help me grow my business and make more money? And if the answer is, well, no, well, I'm not sure, then probably it's not worth investing in.

[43:02] Micah: Yeah, that's very fair. And like you said, there are some improvements where it's like, you know, I can't see that it's going to instantly do it, but it's going to make people happier. We should do that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um, all right. So let's, let's, uh, I think we've covered this unless you want to say anything else about this site or project. All right, cool. Um, if people are interested in working with you, which I, I think they should be, you know, you have a very practical approach and get results and understand the structure and all of it and the tech, obviously. Um, what's the best way for them to connect with you, right now?

[43:41] Mary Kay: We offer, uh, like many, many marketing agencies and consulting firms, we offer our free 30 minute discovery call. Um, and that is right on our website, convertmoreconsulting.com up at the top, right, click discovery call. Um, you will book with me personally. Um, and we can have a conversation about what your goals and objectives are for building on a new membership site, enhancing an existing one. Um, and we'll talk about your, talk about your business, what it is that you feel like you, uh, what you're lacking, what you need to do. If you are leaning in building a membership site or what we really refer to more as a, as a customer portal, because it's to me, it's so much more than just a membership site. Yes, we can build membership programs all day long, but it's also course delivery. It's also, uh, and you have more and more opportunities to nurture your list level, your free level, uh, your free level audience as well can be done through these sites. We build affiliate portals and affiliate structures for them and also client delivery portals. So if you're a one-on-one consultant, um, and you want to really up level how you are managing your deliverables to, to bring to these one-on-one clients, like that seems like maybe that doesn't fit at all with the conversation that we had earlier. Actually, we do it every day. We have one for our own business and we also build one-on-one. So, so even if you're a consultant level, um, these kinds of sites can really help you up level your customer experience, your client experience, uh, keep folks with you longer, uh, increase that lifetime customer value. And, um, yeah, and we're happy to just have that conversation with you and, and see what it feels good to do next. New site, upgraded site, add on to a site, focusing on, uh, on funnel building, lead generation. Uh, we have, we have opportunities for all of that. That's awesome. Well, Mary Kay,

[45:49] Micah: I think this was actually very, very helpful. Um, just because of the, you said, kiss, keep it, uh, what was it? Keep it sweet and simple, sweet and simple. Um, that's much kinder than what most people do. Um, and, but just people seeing that like, oh, okay. Uh, cause, cause I guess what I'm trying to say is that to me is about the right amount of simple. You can oversimplify. Right. Um, and that looks, that looks just about right because so much of it is designed. I feel around the creator and what he needs and how it needs to like maximizing the contribution he wants to make with his time. Um, cause there's a lot of, you can easily get creator burnout. Right. So that is cool.

[46:29] Mary Kay: Oh my gosh. Yes.

[46:30] Micah: Yeah. Um, and then the, how the site also is developing over time. The fact that you're taking, you know, pieces of the work and recreating them back into courses that are now the front end to push into the backend and, and all of it. So those of you watching this one might be worth another watch. Uh, but of course you can just go directly to the source, Mary Kay, um, convertmoreconsulting.com. Go ahead and book some time with her. The only problem is you do have to talk to her personally.

[46:56] Mary Kay: No, I'm just kidding. I love Mary Kay. Um, but, uh, you know, that, that, that is awesome.

[47:02] Micah: You know, there's so many companies who you're gonna maybe not get the boss. And so, uh, I know Mary Kay have for a long, long time. She's one of our agency partners. So yeah, I highly recommend you take her up on that offer and, uh, wish you luck with your membership site. Mary Kay, thank you again.

[47:17] Mary Kay: Thanks, Micah. It's been great.