How to Pivot from In-Person Events to a Digital Membership Site The Right Way Memberium

[00:00] John Castro: I would say that if anyone wanted to get something from building memberships, if you really want to scale, don't underestimate the team you're going to need to deliver that as well. Team is going to be important, especially when you're making a transition into the thousands of clients. When you are selling, I believe, online courses or memberships like this, find out who your ideal client is, because your retention will be an effect of that, right? Really, to build a proper business in memberships, you need to have a good membership, you need to have a good product, and that needs to be delivered to the right person. The first thing you want to do is get people into a membership, get that feedback, and evolve as you get the feedback. We are expanding, and Membarium is going to allow us to do that, because with a simple tag, you can hide whatever you want on this sidebar. Like, literally, if I go here, there is a tag that you have to add in order to get this bonus content.

[00:49] Micah: Hey, everybody, it's Micah Mitchell with Membarium. Welcome to the show. Today, we have my friend, John Castro, a very successful membership guy. John, welcome.

[00:58] John Castro: Thank you, buddy. Thanks for welcoming me. Welcome, everyone.

[01:01] Micah: Yeah, dude, I'm excited, because you are another one of those people who is just, you're living it, you're doing it, you're kicking butt, and so I just want to get into kind of what you do, and maybe some of what you did in the past, and why you switched from it to this, and so on. And so why don't we just jump off with, you know, kind of, if you'll give a rough explanation of the customers you serve, and kind of the product, and how you're helping them, I think that'd be a great place to start.

[01:56] John Castro: Yeah, sure. You know, we're not a cheap, quote-unquote, cheap membership, right? We're not like $10 a month. We're not even $100 a month. We're about 2,000 pounds, UK pounds a year. So, you know, it's quite a premium membership. So we serve a slightly more premium, and for choice of a better word, customer, than your, you know, everyday person, for example.

[02:20] Micah: Gotcha.

[02:20] John Castro: And you are, maybe give me a rough idea

[02:23] Micah: of what it is you're delivering to them. Is it a giant library of videos? Is it live training, some mix?

[02:30] John Castro: Yeah, I love that. So it is a mix. So there's two asset classes that we specialize in, which is stocks investing, so stock market investing, and then we've got, from recent markets, to crypto investing. So we've been doing crypto since about 2017. We launched something called Your Crypto Club when crypto first came to, I would say, the mass market. And you basically choose that asset class, and you get a membership login that will have a library of videos, which has a bit of a journey map for you to follow on how to get started, and then the strategies that we're using, how to find the right investments. Once you've completed that, you go into more of a support system, which is community-led, all in the same login, where you watch your live weekly webinars, live support calls every week. So we have that mixture. And then within the membership as well, you also have access to our workshops, which are all virtual now. And we can go into that story in a minute around how we had to make that transition because we were in hotels every weekend before 2020. And now you can access our virtual workshops as well as part of your membership. And that's all accessible through the online login and membership.

[03:37] Micah: Gotcha. So give the listeners, if you would, an idea of the scale of what you're doing.

[03:42] John Castro: Are we talking, you have hundreds of members,

[03:46] Micah: thousands of members?

[03:47] John Castro: Yeah. So we're currently at around 3,500 members internationally. We are predominantly Europe. So 65% of that membership will be UK-based. The rest, another 20% is actually, ironically, Germany. And Germany, just because we actually deliver our training in German as well. We have German coaches. And that's something I inherited, actually, because one of our founders is German. So he decided to deliver some training in German. But then the rest will be Europe and US and Australia. There's a mixture there. But predominantly UK and Germany are our most client base. 3,500, that's growing every month at the moment. And yeah, that's where we're at at the minute.

[04:28] Micah: That's amazing, man. Congratulations.

[04:31] John Castro: Thank you. It's been an interesting ride, right?

[04:34] Micah: We were about pre-COVID.

[04:37] John Castro: We probably had a very small membership, 600, 700. And we were really lucky that we made that transition. And then now we're fully e-learning now. I only rent a hotel three times a year, where we used to do it 30 times a year.

[04:52] Micah: So you can imagine, it's slightly different now. Yeah, very different. No, I've done a little bit of the event thing. And I personally hate doing the hotel thing and live. I mean, I love being in front of a group and teaching them, but the logistics and stuff. So tell me about that. How and why did scrapping the hotels and going digital grow your membership so much?

[05:15] John Castro: We had to transition, right? Like overnight, I think the whole world stopped. And we were running conferences. That was our business. We were a seminar business. And you would pay to attend a seminar or attend like a three-day workshop in a hotel. And we got to a point where you just weren't able to do that with COVID. So we always had an online offering, but it was just more support-based. So webinars, not really a place you could log in and watch anything. It was more webinar-based or, you know, yeah, mainly webinars. So within literally a space of a few months, I just had to take some action. So I got whoever I could resource-wise, and we built out what you're seeing today, but more watered-down version of what we call your trading club, which is the stocks trading membership, and then your crypto club. And we started just doing our best to offer, with the love of cam links and capture cards, training virtually. And it just stuck. And then we realized actually even post-COVID, people are actually wanting this stuff more because they get to stay home. They haven't got to also worry about costs of hotels themselves and flights and all of this stuff. So that transition had to happen to the point where we, I'm literally sitting in right now, our own self-built media room with inspiration from the likes of, you know, Tony Robbins and Dean Graciosi and all of that. We thought, why don't we build one of those? Now, we don't have 16-foot screens here, but we have an abundance of TVs in front of me right now where we just deliver, you know, virtual trainings that way. And that took some adjusting. We didn't shrink during the COVID year. We actually stayed the same as a business in regards to revenue. But what did happen is we got a lot more clients in, and then we started jumping on that because instead of having to deliver like 50, 100 people in a room because walls don't move, we could deliver this to 250 people at one time. And then we just got better and better at delivering virtually. And then I built a team around that. And I built an operations manager who came from the events business who started learning virtual. I got a content manager who started learning virtual. My sales manager started, and they all started absorbing this new virtual world. And now they're experts in their own right at how we deliver a business virtually, but also the product virtually. So, yeah, it was tough times during COVID. And then now, you know, we're out the tough times, I think.

[07:40] Micah: Gotcha. Interesting. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you guys, you saw the online as an afterthought, just a support system. And so your staff was really geared for in person. Like you're saying, they all had to learn it.

[07:53] John Castro: No, literally. So the ops manager I'm talking about was an events manager. That was her role. Like just run these things. She came from the wedding industry, right? So she knew how to just put people in a room, organize people, deliver stuff, you know, get paperwork done, get handouts printed. She just knew that game. And so to make that transition is a pretty extraordinary thing to ask, but she did it well. Actually, with the help of some people we all may know from Sage Management, I think they're called, where we went on and they started training how to do virtual events. We took on as much training as possible. We're big advocates of education, untraditional education, right? So I paid and we made sure that we all learn. And yet, even to the point of understanding DSLRs, which I'm using now, like a GH5, and knowing that this is called a Panasonic GH5, we didn't have a clue before COVID. We were literally using Logitech to do our support training. And now we're at the highest level you could probably afford. That isn't, you know, what you're seeing from like an Unleash Chappelle you're within from Tony Robbins, you know?

[08:58] Micah: Yeah, gotcha.

[08:59] John Castro: This is fascinating to me because most people, I think,

[09:04] Micah: who were in your position, they went out and tried to hire people, right? They're like, oh, we got to hire the people with the skills because we don't know. But it sounds to me like, you know, your people understood the principles and the core of, you know, what needed to be delivered, like human to human. So going digital is just a matter of translating it and not making some of the mistakes, right?

[09:26] John Castro: Literally. So if you're giving out a handout at a physical workshop, how do we now just deliver the same handout digitally, right? Do we even send it to them, right? There was all of these kind of things that we had to think of. Do we factor in now these delivery boxes, what we might call wow boxes or goodie boxes or whatever people call them, where we absorb that. And well, actually, if we're paying £200, it was per head, probably, per weekend, if not in excess of £300 at some hotels when you go to the five stars, times 50 people. We can afford £100 to send and create, let's just say, $125 to create a box that we send to people. So we just started thinking quite logically. What I will say about the team is the ability to have a team that adapted was a blessing. There's no doubt about that. You know, they are career-driven, you know, young professionals that just got on the ground, taped HDMIs to the floor, and we just all did what we had to do. So I was very lucky. And I will say this to anyone, don't underestimate membership sites and think that you don't need team. You know, a lot of people I find, like when you get to 3,000, 3,500, we're going to go to 5,000 probably this year, and then, you know, then the 10, and we've got all these big numbers in our vision. You do need good people behind that. You know, you can't play solopreneur when you get to those numbers because your admin inbox or your inbox just for help of how to get on a webinar goes from two emails to 25 just in that 10 minutes of trying to get on, and then you've got to have someone answer them. So I would say that if anyone wanted to get something from building memberships, if you really want to scale, don't think there is massive margins in memberships, for sure. There are big margins in the virtual game, but don't underestimate the team you're going to need to deliver that as well because, you know, if you definitely want to be an entrepreneur and a CEO like you and I, you don't want to be doing the day-to-day. I mean, I'm pretty much fed up of looking at HDMI cables, let alone plugging them in and stuff, right? And so I think that's one thing I would say is, you're right, team to be able to help you and support you is going to be important, especially when you're making a transition into the thousands of clients. There was an interesting one for us, for sure.

[11:46] Micah: Yeah, I think some people, they sell a course and they think, oh, if I just sold 10,000 of these, I'd have 10,000 times as much profit.

[11:54] John Castro: And it's like, well, there's a certain level of support infrastructure that you maybe don't have to have.

[12:01] Micah: Sure, you might be able to do it yourself, but the customers are going to feel that and, you know, you're going to feel that. So I couldn't agree more. I love, especially with events, I know live events, having some people around you who can just be relied on, like runners who, like you're saying, even though they might be well-educated, they don't mind jumping down and taping a cable down. It's the same thing digitally where, you know, will you come on this webinar and just make sure the recording works? Will you come and be sure our sound is level? Will you, you know, just people who are willing to help, right? So that you, you and I can focus on the content

[12:36] John Castro: and kind of keep the bigger picture in mind.

[12:39] Micah: And so thank you for sharing all that. I'd love to see your kind of the process. You mentioned to me a little bit

[12:48] John Castro: that people are typically being sold on a webinar.

[12:51] Micah: Can you show us, you know, how do they first encounter your brand? How do they end up on that webinar?

[12:56] John Castro: Yeah, sure. So there's actually two ways you can, so we don't publicly announce our membership because of the client we're looking to put in there. And that's another point just to point out at this moment is that when you are selling, I believe, online courses or memberships like this, find out who your ideal client is because your retention will be an effect of that, right? If you start getting in the wrong client, like especially in the bait game, we're in the get rich quick client, you're going to, your attention is going to go down. So we don't open it to the public because of that. So there's only two ways you can really join the membership right now, which will evolve in time. And we need to evolve our sales strategy, of course, and our awareness strategy. But really, you can either book a call with one of our team members, and we have a funnel for that, where, you know, it's a book a call funnel. You download some sort of tool, and you go to a page, and either you're qualified to be able to be booked in based on some questions that we've asked you, or you don't. Or really, where we get a lot of traction, which everyone will be familiar with, is webinars, right? We run a monthly or sometimes bi-monthly, depending on how long we want to do, to wait out, where you join the training. We offer you some free stuff, which is great free stuff. You can actually use it. Really, really good stuff. And then we go, look, do you want to spend a year with us to really take this to the next level? And that's where we sell. So I can show you that if you want. Do you want me to show you, like share my screen and show you some of that stuff?

[14:17] Micah: Yeah, I'd love to kind of, I'd love to see it. And if I heard you correctly, you're saying that the webinar itself is the really good training that you provide people.

[14:27] John Castro: Yeah, absolutely. So the webinar, we actually don't do 90 minutes. We do like four, five, six hour trainings for free. Okay. And the reason we wanted to do that is to really distinguish ourselves compared to others, right? Like there's only so much in 90 minutes of even rapport you can build. Don't underestimate. I mean, most people, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, but they're probably converting anywhere from two to 5% on a 90 minute webinar from cold traffic where we're converting seven to 10%. And then we have follow-up, which brings in another seven to 10%. So we do really well

[14:59] Micah: because we've spent five,

[15:01] John Castro: six hours with these individuals. So there's a, and we also make sure that they're the right individuals on those webinars as much as possible. So we're really honed in now and weren't in the beginning. I'll be honest with you. In the beginning, we just like anyone that would buy this stuff, you know, take it. But then we realized to build a proper business, we had to really hone in on who we're selling to, how we're selling it and be a little bit more careful, I would say, and cautious on that front. So what I can show you

[15:27] Micah: is what the webinar opt-in page looks like.

[15:31] John Castro: It's live. We actually ran one on Saturday and I say a webinar, it's more virtual event. And then that was free. And then there we did, recently we just done a seven and a half percent on the day. So not amazing conversions, but it's pretty good. And then we'll get another probably 10% with the, you know, the consultants, which are our sales team who will follow up and, you know, people have booked in some calls with more questions and we do that. So do you want me to show you that stuff?

[15:58] Micah: I want to see it, but I want to touch on something that you've been, that you've been kind of talking about. So you just mentioned to build a proper business, you got to make sure and get in the right people, not just sell to anybody. Can you go deeper into that? For example, let's say you're selling to the right people and then like a hundred of the wrong people want to buy it. Why not take their money? What is, what happens? Like why, why, why are you qualifying them?

[16:22] John Castro: Okay. That's a perfect question. Firstly, because we actually want to help people, right? I mean, if you're in this game because you're just in it for the money and I know you're going to hear this time and time over, but genuinely, there's no, you can't say it enough only because of the industry we're in of this, I call it personal development industry. You have to want to help people. If your end goal is the revenue line, that's good. Business needs money to grow and there's no, nothing wrong with making loads of money. You should all make loads of money. But if you're not servicing the right person, all that happens is you get a bad name. It's unsustainable. Longevity is impossible. Retention is next to nothing. And you're constantly on a hamster wheel, which we've experienced. And at some level, we're still experiencing today a little bit because we're still honing in our product. And you're just on this constant hamster wheel and every month it's like a reset. And that's just not the game you want to be in when it comes to membership. You want to actually build their membership. You're like a gym, right? So you want people to keep coming and keep using the facilities. Now, I'm not going to comment on the gym industry because 80% of the money they make is from people that don't go. But the point I'm making is you don't want that, especially if you're a small, I call small, like under 10 million in revenue. If you're under 10 million in revenue, you want to build a little mini community in your little corner of the universe that love what you do. So I think it's really important to find out who you can help, what you can help them with, what problem you're obviously solving and how quickly can you solve that problem? So what's the time to value as well, which is super important because all you're going to get is refund rates, complaints, and there's no business there. You can be a great marketeer and there's no doubt people like you and I probably came from that industry, the internet marketing and sales floors and all of this. But really to build a proper business in memberships, you need to have a good membership, you need to have a good product and that needs to be delivered to the right person. So I would do some exercises around finding out who you can help, who's the right person and you know what,

[18:25] Micah: I will add something else.

[18:27] John Castro: If you have been selling to anybody, that's not the end of the world right now because you have data. So go and use those individuals to get feedback so you can actually find out who the right person is. It's actually a little bit tougher when you haven't sold to anyone. So in the beginning, fine, cool. Anyone that buys it but then get that feedback and find out who's the best person. So I even know that if you are on over £70,000 of income, so that's around $80,000, $90,000 a year, I know I can, that's like the sweet spot for us. If you're like £70,000 to £100,000 a year, personal income, not household income, and you're in a career and you're over 45, I know that we can help you because we've seen so many thousands of people through our membership and we got so much feedback, they're also the action takers because they're career people. So they know how to get, you know, some results because they've been doing it in their career. So we know that that's the person you'll see on the landing page in a moment. We're very clear this is not for this person and it is for this person. And we're very clear in our copy with that as well. Does that answer your question? I hope so.

[19:37] Micah: Absolutely. It's genius because like you said in the beginning, you might have to sell to people, collect the data, find your market. But the issue with serving everybody is, for example, you and I are in a business group and there's qualifiers. And if somebody came into that group who wasn't qualified and started asking basic questions and slowing it down for everybody, you and I might not want to be there, you know? So it's, I mean, it's so many reasons to do it. Like you said, right from the beginning, hey, if they're not the right person and you can't help them, don't take their money in the first place, right?

[20:10] John Castro: But if you get

[20:11] Micah: the right people in there, like you said, you have very specific over 45 career person, so on, then you can speak very confidently. Yeah, you should buy this. You know, we've helped people like you and so on. Thank you again for going into that detail. I just thought it was a little nuance that most people don't kind of understand at your level. Let's go ahead and look at the page now. If you don't mind, yeah, talking us through what's happening.

[20:38] John Castro: So I'll just share Chrome for you. So what you're seeing here, so can you see my screen?

[20:43] Micah: I can. You should be able

[20:44] John Castro: to see Chrome, right? Okay, cool. So basically, what you're seeing here is our, you know, virtual seminar landing page, right? The video is quite highly professional. By the way, it doesn't need to be like this in the beginning. In the beginning, it was just one angle, direct to camera, you know, not even a lapel mic or a boom mic, but, you know, we've got editors now. We've got, you know, I've got 40 people in my team now. So we've got quite a high level video sales letter here that is just to register. And then as you scroll down, the copy is speaking to that audience. So this is exactly what I wanted to highlight, really. Attention, career professionals who want to build their wealth without working additional hours or taking high risks. That's what we do. It's not a big thing we do. We're not trying to teach you to be day traders or anything like that. You know, these are stats that will relate to that person. Most career professionals don't say they save enough money. This is a, you know, this is a real stat. So we're really talking in the copy to that audience. All right. And then we invite them and so on and so on. As you scroll down, it tells you a bit about the event. But what I want you to see a little bit here is as we scroll down, obviously some, some, you know, by the way, as much social proof as possible is always important. So we actually embed out, I don't know if you guys have Trustpilot in the US, but Trustpilot is huge in Europe. So using that more, this is our private community. So this is now our Facebook group that you get with the membership and you can see people are winning, making money. Great. Brilliant. And then as you come down, actually through the page, quite a long sales letter, we introduce your trainers. But I think where the key here is if you get to this point and you're still reading, we just want to reassure you that this is for people that are actually looking for, not looking for get rich quick. So that is also here in the copy as well. And I'm actually trying to find out where we put that, but it is in here. And we say, look, this is for career professionals, action takers. This is not, so it's actually here. So what makes this summit distinctively exceptional is the quality of its participants. You know, we're not, we don't entertain people who lack work ethic, no patience, won't get rich quick. But if you're a career professional and you want financial secure retirement without adding more hours, this, you should consider this mandatory, right? So we're really honing in on the copy there. So I just wanted to point that out to people. But once you attend, essentially, this is, click on here, right? This is what I would recommend most people look at as well. Okay. And I'm going a bit salesy here rather than membership, but or marketing, but we'll go into membership and that in a moment. But what we've got here, and this is mainly directed at Europe and UK. So we ask for, we have really three tax brackets in the European market. So we ask for your tax bracket. The more tax you're paying means, frankly, the higher tax you're paying, the more we can help you because that means you're earning a certain level of income. So when you fill this out, we get that data and we know that percentage of people that are going to be there at the training as well. We know who they are and it really does help us. And we do this on all of our lead magnets, by the way, this question. It has dropped opt-in rates, but by 2%, nothing major to hinder any of the funnels. And we're starting to get data that allows us to really talk to the right people. Because if you're in this 20%, we just know that we can't help you right now. So we just send you off to something more free or a very low ticket offer. But if you actually put in, you know, your 40, 45%, we know we can definitely help you. So we send you to, you know, that put you into that membership sales funnel, essentially. So that's the landing page. That's that there. And then once you attend the webinar, we really use Keep a lot, right? Keep is our, this is a Keep order form with GoSpiffy. And as you can see, it's still, they still use an Infusionsoft, but this is an Infusionsoft order form. And it really just, this is what we'd send you to when we're on that virtual seminar. And this is the value stack, right? This is what you get. You're getting your 12 month membership. And this is all connected to Keep and Memberium. And what happens is this just does everything for us. Literally, it's all automated. Once you sign up here, within two to three minutes, you've got your login. Memberium's triggered off. It's given them the appropriate tags. Sometimes we have, you know, added tags that we have to add in because we give some bonus content and things like that. But that's all done in the back end of Keep connecting to Memberium, which connects to WordPress. So really smooth. And that's it. It's really, sounds simple, but it is simple, but it does have a process to it. And that's what we do. So yeah, that's the sales part.

[25:20] Micah: Yeah, I got to say, when you say it sounds simple, I was going to say, your pages here are a clinic. You know, your sales page is beautiful. You're doing all the things, right, that you're supposed to do. So what I love about talking to somebody like you and knowing that this works is then I think people should go look at your page knowing it works because I can go look at a beautiful page, but I don't know if that page is converting or not, right? But you showing this and saying, hey, this is working for us. This is real, right? I think people should go if obviously, I assume you're not uncomfortable with this. They should go and model your page, right? 100%

[25:58] John Castro: and I'm happy to even give you anything afterwards so people can access this stuff and because this will, this is actually a live enrollment, by the way. This was something we did Saturday. We're now on a Wednesday. So we did this last Saturday and this is now going to shut in three hours, right? This is all automated and it shuts and then it says it's expired and then you have to wait till the next month because we want to enroll people and we want to onboard people with, no, I'm not saying this is scalable long-term and we want to get to the tens of thousands of members but right now this works for us because of capacity of my team. We actually onboard you. We actually have physical people that coach you here, right? This is not just watch some videos so this will expire but I can give you screenshots and PDFs and everything like that. Please feel free. It's not perfect but it definitely works for us for sure.

[26:47] Micah: Oh, it's beautiful and you mentioned the Trustpilot thing. That is so huge and the fact that it's embedded. It's not as big here for sure. People could use whatever but that social proof is awesome because if I was on your site and this is no offense to you if I didn't know you and I was on your site the whole time I'm thinking is this a scam? Right? Like the whole time.

[27:08] John Castro: Of course.

[27:09] Micah: Of course.

[27:10] John Castro: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't blame you by the way because we're in a really scammy industry unfortunately and we are trying to get out of it and we're trying

[27:17] Micah: to differentiate

[27:19] John Castro: ourselves as much as possible but look every time I think anything that's untraditional education is online course world I expect you all to be very cautious. You have to be even if you're selling funnel building or sales training or anything like that how to become a consultant all of these things it's super important. I can't tell you how important social proof is it's one of the key elements of how we bring clients on they want to see and that takes time by the way and I get it like just so you know our membership is now 2,000 a year it started off at around maybe 500 and then we tested another price point then it was 1,000 and we incrementally put it up to also get the right client in

[28:06] Micah: so don't be afraid

[28:07] John Castro: I would say just one little tip to just sell it in the beginning get it not for profit I know it's hard but if it's like a side hustle you're doing don't do it for profit get your testimonials get your case studies and trust me they will serve you forever so that's one thing I would also say as well

[28:27] Micah: yeah the like you said serving the people especially in the beginning when you don't yet have a name and so on it's totally worth giving it away for free or at a loss to get that testimonial to leverage into future profitable clients you know

[28:41] John Castro: 100% 100%

[28:43] Micah: cool

[28:44] John Castro: should I show you inside a bit do you want to see what it looks like would love to see it yeah

[28:47] Micah: cool

[28:48] John Castro: so essentially we have three offerings right so as you can see I prepared this earlier so this is once you've logged in okay so this is all memberium shortcodes frankly speaking there's nothing here that you cannot do I mean it's so simple it's ridiculous when you want to build it well look the first part of it can be a little bit complicated if you're new but once you learn like how to use the memberium shortcodes and things like this is what the code behind this is memberium shortcodes so you can buy three levels of our of our membership we've got this I said the trading club the crypto club and then we've got our gold fast track this is our mentorship more one year coaching product where you're actually physically put into a cohort of only 15 to 20 individuals and we open that every month as well and that's that's actually 10,000 pounds a year that's a very high end high end product so these are the ones that most people are in so what I'll show you is oh yeah independent again it's all memberium based is that dependent on what you've bought will depend on what you see here because what you could also see here is no access or it says locked I think that's what we have there now and then you can click and inquire about that membership level but you're literally this is all tags that give you what you're seeing here so you'll see the squares but you won't have the access button essentially so I just have all access so that's that and then when you log in so whatever membership you have what you're seeing by this is all one wordpress install this is not three sites in one it's all one wordpress install you can see here URLs and also good thing I think it's memberium you might have to tell me this

[30:25] Micah: but you can't go

[30:27] John Castro: now crypto club dashboard if you don't have the tag it won't show you that dashboard right you can probably go to that link

[30:32] Micah: but don't be fooled

[30:34] John Castro: guys you cannot go to that dashboard so and I think that's a memberium thing as well so what you're seeing here is a dashboard of when you're a newbie what you see which ongoingly is being updated so you know if you've been here for a while this will change these things will change over time and that's managed by the team that managed the club you've got your onboarding video you've got all here on the sidebar is basically where you access all the content webinars live support and things like that as you scroll down what you'll see here as you can see these are all integrations actually funny enough with buddy bosses what's behind this as well so we've got an integration with zoom

[31:15] Micah: you can see

[31:15] John Castro: your recordings here these are like post let me just mute it these are like old webinars that we've ran you can see one of our coaches hosting a webinar here so and he's going through some options so

[31:28] Micah: it's all quite

[31:30] John Castro: accessible you've got your courses this is what I wanted to show you so when we say courses we actually give you a roadmap guide to what we think you should be doing but what we don't do and it's very different with us than some other people I believe because you can jump in at any point of the roadmap and the reason we've done that is again back to surveying your clients the ideal client has some level made some investments in their past so they were getting fed up that they had to watch all introductory stuff when they just wanted to know how do I do this learn this VCA strategy of yours so we were like okay cool so we opened it up now you do have to complete all of these modules to get to the next video for example so if I go here now you're going to see look I've got to go back but you don't have to watch the get started stuff in order to get right into the meat right and that was just a survey done and that was information given to us by the ideal client so that's why we why we did that we've got workshop recordings here that you can access again all very you've seen this Mika it's all standard templated stuff guys this doesn't take a lot to build out this is all you know WordPress buddy boss templates learn dash templates that are out there trading tools now this is something I will go into if you don't mind is we do build our tools so you're not using Excel's or Google Sheets because so we have live pricing in our membership club so this is actually custom code and it's a calculator that is based on the strategies we teach you so it shows you all your entry points you can do chart analysis in the membership now this is definitely not off the shelf this has been developed this has been you know embedded and this calculator here if I go up sorry you can just search literally any stock you want and it should there we go Amazon

[33:25] Micah: and it then

[33:26] John Castro: will give us fetching the data and this is all behind the scenes stuff going on so this is really cool as well because our members can really just start calculating their investments through how we train them using an online tool like this as well that's most of it really that's it really and you've got your webinars and again you can access everything here

[33:47] Micah: it's it is

[33:48] John Castro: quite simple as I said it actually isn't that complicated but what I just want to reiterate it's not like a one man band shop there are people behind this there are there is as I said I have 40 staff members now so there is a lot of manpower behind even just what you're seeing here because it is got a mixture of live and we do run workshops and we do have community managers and all of this kind of stuff to keep the retention as high as possible but also ensure you get success so when you really want to scale out membership

[34:21] Micah: the website

[34:23] John Castro: is the first step

[34:25] Micah: but there's

[34:26] John Castro: more to it than that as well I would say that too so I'll show you the other ones as well actually so okay if you also have access to all the levels you can access all the levels here on the top left again same template same layout just different branding same stuff crypto courses are here slightly different roadmap but built a roadmap out for you

[34:46] Micah: so we feel

[34:48] John Castro: that this is the way you should if you're a complete beginner this is how you should start this and then we go through the modules there training tools again pretty much the same layout and as you can see here we've got two calculators in the crypto one to help you based on our strategies so we wanted to look at some BTC it will grab the live price of BTC there for you right now you can even change the currency as well if you want to and you're based in the UK so we've done some work as you can see here we even have alerts right you can literally say I want to go in at this price and you can set yourself an alert and then they will list them here for you so there's a lot going on here to be honest that maybe can be underestimated if not explained in the goal group

[35:33] Micah: same thing

[35:34] John Castro: just another skin just more advanced

[35:38] Micah: training basically so that's

[35:40] John Castro: our membership buddy

[35:43] Micah: dude this is amazing

[35:44] John Castro: so first

[35:49] Micah: of all

[35:50] John Castro: I want

[35:51] Micah: to say that the general approach to this and you can correct anything I say that's wrong I might make some assumptions is that you are using just best in class tools and you're not trying to complicate them initially you're like I'm just going to use this template I'm going to use what they basically tell me to use tools and then you've layered in a couple so first of all it's the way you've arranged those tools right because I'm looking at this and I'm thinking to myself I'm sure it took a while to dial this in but you've got

[36:18] John Castro: quite a

[36:19] Micah: bit presented here like when they come in they can see and feel the value all around them versus having to dig for it but you did it in such a way that's not overwhelming it's easy to browse and then the fact that it's consistent across the three so they have a little bit of once they understand one it's easier to understand the others so that's just a comment saying it seems like you're maximizing the technology you're not saying oh I got to go custom build it so it's different and special because I feel special right you're saying no I mean this stuff is good on its own bring it out and then where I do need to customize is this calculator or this you know stock chart or whatever and by the way you're doing my favorite thing in the world which is you're starting to blur the line between a membership and a sass because once you start providing functionality in there then you know it's they're kind of paying for not just content right so so cool so cool by the way the way you have your your three sites presented with the portal the way they're just different skins a specific question is tell me about this daily timer in the upper right because I saw that in all three right good

[37:25] John Castro: so so we we encourage everyone to only spend 20 minutes a day at maximum right we're not this is not an income replacer this is a pillar of wealth that is a 5 10 15 year plan that we're teaching you to build so this is literally a 20 minute timer so when you go in you can just press start as it I should have probably done it at the beginning to see if we can you guys can see what happens but basically after 20 minutes it will then stop you and you have a choice to carry on but it also just reminds you look you've done your 20 minutes congratulations well done

[37:57] Micah: do you want

[37:58] John Castro: to carry on or shall we exit and then you have that and we just want to encourage people not to look at stock charts for all day this isn't day trading we're not trying to teach you that now there are some people that have become day traders from our stuff but that's just not our core you know message so that's what that timer does and literally you can just you know reset it if you want you can resume again and start again totally up to you and we're actually going to customize this so we're in the process of this is what you were saying this is really a basic piece of code but what we're going to customize here is and actually now we've created our own shortcode for this which is great so it can be placed anywhere on the site by someone who's not a tech person but what we're going to do is you can actually then eventually because we are getting more and more people that want to spend more than 20 minutes but so you can customize this eventually and actually just choose the time and then it will say to you we're going to have like a calendar that shows you when like what days you've actually worked on your you know investment portfolio so you can track yourself and all of these things that we want to add right as you can imagine we're just like let's add this let's add this so these are some things that we're working on but essentially this counts you down to 20 minutes

[39:05] Micah: that is so smart so cool trying did you pick that idea up from somewhere or did you guys come up with that

[39:15] John Castro: we had a UX and UI person support us for sure we definitely knew that we wanted to have some sort of accountability or not

[39:24] Micah: we wanted

[39:25] John Castro: what I said is that I want to make sure that no one's spending all day on this stuff and then they came up and went why don't we just give them a timer and I was like all right cool and then that just worked and now everyone loves it because when it actually reminds them to stop and we've had great feedback on it but then we've also had feedback like can I just change it to 30 minutes and we're like right that's coming don't worry that's coming we're going to work on that but yeah so it was a mixture of obviously I'm not that smart I just know this is what I want as the outcome and then I get the team members

[39:56] Micah: awesome I my mind is going nuts with this thinking of all the different industries because of course you're right you don't want your people looking at charts

[40:03] John Castro: all day and and

[40:05] Micah: I've done that so I I know what you mean like you can waste time for nothing but I also think any membership could use a concept like that to say hey you don't have to come in and study all day we understand you have a life you're doing this you're doing that it's a

[40:19] John Castro: simple commitment

[40:20] Micah: you know it's bite size and and even

[40:22] John Castro: though this is I

[40:24] Micah: wouldn't say you're forcing it right they can get around it it's almost a little bit

[40:27] John Castro: of a almost a

[40:29] Micah: placebo but you're saying hey we want you for the long term you know we don't want you binge watching or binge whatever and get back to your work go make money that you can

[40:38] John Castro: invest just so smart

[40:40] Micah: so smart yeah that

[40:42] John Castro: brings it back to that message right I think there's been a core theme here is just find out who you're serving right and I know that in the beginning if you are starting out that isn't going to be as easy as what I have now and I'm by way it's never easy right I have to try and get feedback from three and a half thousand people that's a nightmare right that is really difficult sometimes it takes four months just to get a survey filled out but once you get that data and you serve and you understand who you're serving you you can't really go wrong in business I find and that's my experience and this is the second membership company I've built you know I've built one previously which is was slightly smaller around business development and sales training and it's the same thing who were we serving we knew that you had to really be doing a million dollars turnover to take on our sales and development strategy right so you know we made sure that that membership and every time and I think you you'll know this in any

[41:31] Micah: business I think for you

[41:32] John Castro: yeah look I correct me if I'm wrong and I might be teaching stuff that maybe might be wrong but even

[41:37] Micah: with memberium a starter

[41:39] John Castro: membership yeah you can help them but someone like us you can really can help right we can create layers with memberium we can we can add several different like we're now about what you'll see if we get time to go into the back end is we don't have that many tags there's only three core tags we have right now we're going to see and I'd love to do a follow-up maybe in six months you'll start to see we're going to start adding 10 20 30 tags because we're going to cut this up now because we now understand our client and they all they're not they don't all want you know this strategy or this together they actually just want this one so we're like okay well why would we not just give them that just at a cheaper price right so we are expanding and memberium is going to allow us to do that because for with a simple tag you can hide whatever you want on this sidebar like literally if I go here there is a tag that you have to add in order to get this bonus content which is called bonus content tag right so if we add that you get some of this bonus stuff which is a little bit more mindset driven so I think you know it's that theme of understand that client and then these mini little gimmicky tools which still runs as you can see is still running no matter what club I'm in really do help get your message across and and allows the client to feel that they're being spoken to they're being served because you know their problem you know so that's that's that's what

[43:01] Micah: I would say yeah it's I think especially for your market it's a good fit you have you have different you're doing things that accomplish differentiation from other brands but it's not just for that purpose you're doing them it sounds like because it's also like oh this is the right thing to do this is what they actually need and we'll help them and and create that testimonial here's what I want to do because

[43:22] John Castro: we are at the end of the

[43:23] Micah: hour and I want to be respectful of your time I know we could probably go for another hour but since you mentioned a two-part yeah since you mentioned a two-part if you don't mind me following up and scheduling another one of

[43:34] John Castro: these we'll go into more

[43:35] Micah: detail and we can do a sooner or in a couple months whatever but but John before we go for people who want to connect with you or they want you know they they actually need your products and whatnot what's the best way for them to get in touch with you you've been so so generous with your knowledge I'd love for people to connect with you

[43:53] John Castro: yeah of course I mean honestly just google investment mastery I mean go to our website we're on every social channel you can think of YouTube is probably the place I'd start so YouTube investment mastery and we have an abundance of content on there and or if we get actually the one of the best plays let me just if you don't mind me showing you really would help most people is just our newsletter it's a free newsletter investment marsh investment-marshery.com forward slash insider it comes out every other week you also get access to a bunch of free tools here so this is again by the way using membering behind the scenes but this is a watered-down version of what you just got presented or what people are buying and you get access to a membership by also being part of this too so this is a good place to start the insider will be be a good place but also YouTube I'd say that is a good place to

[44:45] Micah: start to excellent John you are the man thank you so much for coming on and answering my questions showing your site really cool stuff well done no man

[44:57] John Castro: I really appreciate it and you know kudos to you because it does make it easier when you've got something like memberium and working with our CRM whether it be keep whatever people use but you know it is really simple for us to to evolve the membership by using the right tools and one lesson I think they need to take from you is just keep it simple don't complicate templates they're there you guys even have templates that people can

[45:19] Micah: download and use just start

[45:21] John Castro: there and then evolve as your clients start giving you feedback but the first thing you want to do is get people into a membership get that feedback and evolve as you get the feedback

[45:31] Micah: beautiful thanks again John

[45:32] John Castro: thanks buddy appreciate you thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks Thank you.