Retention, Scaling, and Smart Membership Growth with Vic Dorfman

[00:00] Micah: Hey everybody, Micah Mitchell here with the Membership Site Success Show. And today we have Vic Dorfman of MemberFix and MemberHost. Vic, welcome to the show.

[00:10] Vic: Hey Micah, thanks for having me.

[00:13] Micah: Yeah, man, I am really excited about this because you're one of those membership guru people, right? You have an agency, MemberFix, you have a hosting company that specializes in memberships. I talked to your partner the other day, Denny, and we got into all of the details, obviously super, super sharp. But I'm excited to talk to you about the business side, the marketing side. To get started though, I think it's interesting and I'm a bit jealous. You're living in Thailand right now, right? So how did you end up there? And then maybe you can weave a little bit of your business story into that so people kind of know where you're coming from.

[00:54] Vic: Sure, so I'll give you the, not the long story, but kind of the medium story, which is that I was a musician. I was a professional classical singer in university. And after working in music for a little while, for a few years, I decided that it wasn't really for me. So I decided to join the army, which I did. And then I had about three months before I shipped to basic. So I decided to go on an adventure. And so I stepped out onto interstate 95 in Jacksonville, Florida. And I started to hitchhike north to Philadelphia where my mom lives.

[01:33] Micah: And, uh, I had an adventure.

[01:36] Vic: And then after I got to Philadelphia, I said, well, okay, why don't I go West?

[01:40] Micah: So I went West wound up in Seattle.

[01:44] Vic: And then I thought, Hmm, I still have time. Why don't I fly to Costa Rica? So that's what I did. I was just like racking up credit card debt. I figured I'm not going to be spending any money in the army.

[01:53] Micah: I may as well just put it all in the card.

[01:56] Vic: And while I was there in Costa Rica, I got the four hour work week. You ever heard of it? And, uh, started reading that bad boy. And, uh, a couple of weeks later I was in Nicaragua. I was sitting at some bar. I was talking to some, to some random American guy. And I said, Hey man, have you ever heard of this book called the four hour work week? He's like, bro, I'm in the book. I'm one of the case studies. That's my friend. That's my friend, Ty. And, uh, he actually lives in Thailand. We're, we're still good friends to this day.

[02:26] Micah: And, uh, so he was doing that for, for, for a long time before it was, you know, cool.

[02:32] Vic: And, uh, it, it just got me thinking like, what am I doing? You know, why don't I start my own muse as Tim Ferriss calls it. And that led to me actually borrowing money from my dad, uh, starting my first digital product, which was a how to sing product. And, uh, which I recorded at the conservatory of San Francisco. And I was like, okay, this is cool. This is, this is what I want to do. And then, you know, fast forward many years and I was living in Miami and I was, uh, working for a e-commerce company. I actually got laid off from the company and, uh, I, I couldn't really put my finger on it. I couldn't really explain it.

[03:13] Micah: I can explain it now, but at the time I just felt, I don't really want to stay in the U.S.

[03:19] Vic: right now. And I just bought a ticket one way, one way ticket to Thailand. And I really had nothing. I had no money. I had a few thousand dollars at about $22,000 in credit card debt. And, um, I arrived in Bangkok. I was living in a hostel. My computer broke instantly upon arrival. So I, so I had to then go, uh, buy another Mac off of Craigslist, uh, for like half the money I had left. And I was just living in this hostel every morning, coming downstairs, getting on the wifi. Uh, this was back in the warrior forum days back in the day. And I'm trying to saying like, Hey, can I write you an article? Can I do SEO for you guys? And then eventually I put together a little membership site called smart keyword research about SEO back when it was very, very easy. And some, one of the members of the site, they said, uh, Vic, I like your membership site. Could you build me a membership site just like this one? And I was like, yes, of course, anything for money.

[04:22] Micah: And, um, so I built him a membership site.

[04:26] Vic: He really liked it. And I think he referred somebody else. And then I, it just kind of dawned on me that is there anybody who's doing membership sites as a thing? You know, it's not a niche per se. It's not a vertical.

[04:40] Micah: It's not like tourism or, uh, you know, hospitality or, or staffing or whatever, but it's a niche

[04:49] Vic: in the sense that it's there, there's a positioning of it. Right. As you know. So I thought, Hmm, okay. Nobody's really doing this. It turns out there were people doing it. There were like the Mike Philzanes and there were people who were like coding up from scratch their own memberships, their own carts and stuff. These big internet marketers. And, uh, and then, so WordPress was really starting to come along and I thought, Hmm, okay, let me, let me kind of focus on this for a while.

[05:15] Micah: And that's what, what I've been doing.

[05:18] Vic: And I was doing that as a freelancer for many years, essentially doing my own thing, learning about membership sites, also doing the technical implementation. And then eventually I thought, okay, like I can't do this forever. Let me try to bring a team aboard, which I tried several times, failed several times until I finally figured out how to hire really good people. And by the way, if that's a topic you'd like to talk about, that's something I'm super passionate about. I'm super interested in. I'd be happy to talk about that. And here we are.

[05:49] Micah: I'd love, well, I'd love to dive into hiring. One question I have from that is, uh, what happened to the military? I think, did you, did you end up still going in for that period of time?

[05:59] Vic: Oh yeah. Good question. So this, I don't, do you have any experience with the military? Like what, what they have to do to try to get you in?

[06:06] Micah: Personally, but my brother, a year older, uh, spent 20 years.

[06:11] Vic: Okay. Well, so they, like the recruiters, they want to meet their quota. Right. So they're trying to get you in and they're trying to like gloss over grades and things like that. And, uh, which my grades were kind of so, so. And, um, so they kind of go to bat for you sometimes. And so this recruiter, Sergeant Bates, I still remember his name. I called him from Nicaragua and, uh, I said, Sergeant Bates, he's like, Dorfman, the fuck are you? I said, uh, Oh, I said, sir, I'm in a, I'm in Nicaragua. He's like, he's like, you know, you're shipping in like a week. I'm like, uh, I think it was two weeks was the lead time where you could still cancel without

[06:47] Micah: getting, you know, sort of in trouble.

[06:50] Vic: And then once you pass that deadline, your ass is his uncle Sam's. And, uh, and I said, I'm out, sir. It's like, the hell you mean you're out Dorfman? I said, I'm not, I'm not going by. And that was it. I felt a little bit bad, but I don't know if people with serious problems with authority really belong in the military.

[07:15] Micah: Yeah, that would have been a different branch of your life for sure. From this wandering nomad situation.

[07:21] Vic: Um, that's cool.

[07:23] Micah: That's very cool. I'm glad you, uh, I'm glad you made it out in time to be honest. Uh, I don't know what year that was, but anyways, so very cool. So what does, uh, I do want to talk about the hiring and people and whatnot, but before we get into that, um, what does member fix do really? Like the, the name is intriguing, the agency member fix, you guys are helping people, but

[07:45] Vic: can you talk a little bit more about, um, who, who you're helping and some of the things

[07:50] Micah: you're doing for them?

[07:52] Vic: Sure. Micah.

[07:53] Micah: So we help to set up support and maintain heavy WordPress websites and member memberships,

[08:03] Vic: member fix. That's obviously part of our name, but we don't only work with membership sites. We work predominantly with membership sites for sure. But we also work with WooCommerce websites, uh, big e-learning sites, uh, communities like big body boss communities. And oftentimes what you see. And you guys know this. Is, uh, you'll have a combination of these heavy plugins together, right? So people have like a course component to their membership, which is static content that you consume. Uh, for example, one of our great customers is echelon front. That's Jocko Willink's leadership training company. And you go inside and you consume their great, amazing content on leadership. In fact, I'm going through it right now. And, but there's also maybe a forum or a community and there's also maybe live calls. So all of this requires you to set up specific tech. And so we handle, we set up, we maintain, and we host that whole technical world so that the entrepreneurs or the businesses, they can focus on content or, or interacting with their community and giving value to their, to their members and to their subscribers.

[09:15] Micah: And on the hosting side, so that that's the agency member fix.

[09:20] Vic: And on the hosting side, member hosts, how that came about briefly is that basically a few years ago after doing this for many, many years, I mean, I've been doing this since before 2014, which is when I first originally incorporated member fix in Hong Kong and, uh, we're in the U S now, but there was a constant issue that a larger site would crash, would slow down. Like no matter how much hosting firepower we threw at it, no matter which host we went to. And we just realized that the conventional hosting industry, the conventional WordPress hosting industry, they don't, um, really understand or cater to these types of sites, which are the technical underpinnings of which are fundamentally different from just your static brochure side. And it like, and I'm not going to go into that cause you, I think you probably already did that with Denny, but we just kind of got this idea that like, well, uh, nobody's really addressed this issue properly, competently. I think, uh, a few people have, but they're a little bit few and far in between, but we wanted to focus specifically on that. Like how do we host the Jockos of the world? You know, people, uh, membership sites with thousands, tens of thousands of members, dozens or hundreds of transactions a day, tons of revenue coming in. You cannot afford any downtime and it has to be snappy. And you have to have people who understand the WordPress component too. So there's, there's a lot of requirements there that like the WP engines or site grounds, and I'm not singling them out, but just the, I'm just indicating the standard kind of hosts that people know about, they're not really going to understand that at the, at the kind of level required, uh, for those types of businesses. And that's why we started member hosts. That's where we met Denny, uh, who is amazing, just an amazing, amazing, highly competent, highly high integrity person. And we've been doing that for about two years.

[11:22] Micah: Yeah, that's awesome for anybody listening who hasn't listened or, you know, watch that video with Denny, you can go check that out. But, uh, to kind of summarize it and you can help me hear of it. Cause I'm sure you know better than I do. Um, but they are basically, you know, doing the only place I had seen this before is you would have somebody big like Jocko or let's say Tony Robbins or whoever, right. So one of these people, they would have to almost get their own server and co-locate it somewhere and get their own server manager. Like if they really wanted it to be right for them, because like you're saying, none of the major services had an understanding or a service or package that really did cater to ultra complex, you know, WordPress sites. Um, and you guys just kind of created it by the sound of it. Uh, you know, that service almost like that's the main service. It's not like an afterthought to something else. It's like, that's what it is for is just for that. So really specialized. Um, and like I said, if you're, if you're a nerd, uh, go watch that. If you're not a nerd, send your, send your nerd to go watch it because, uh, we went deep and it was good, but I can say, you know, and that's why I had, uh, Denny on. I can say that like, yeah, nobody else that I've ever known, and we've been doing it about the same time period, 10 years, specializing in memberships has ever had an actual package or service that met this need until I met you guys. So it's kind of nuts.

[12:47] Vic: Um, all right, cool.

[12:49] Micah: So now that people kind of know, okay, you've got the agency side, you've got some tech, uh, client like Jocko is awesome. And I, I envy you because those businesses are so interesting to see from the inside. And I'm sure you're kind of aware of all of that just to, to help out. Um, let's maybe talk about, uh, so somebody listening to this, they're either just starting a membership site or they've got one they're trying to improve.

[13:12] Vic: Um, what are some of the common things that you think most sites are, are maybe missing

[13:19] Micah: or could do better?

[13:22] Vic: Oh, that's really hard to say, Micah. I would say there's, there's not a formulaic approach to success as, uh, in, in, well, okay. I can say this, that a membership site, it's not a business. It's a value delivery vehicle, right? So fundamentally you need to have a relationship with your audience, right? You need to have some kind of method of acquisition, whether it's your Facebook group or, um, we also work with like corporate customers.

[13:53] Micah: So they, they just need a more complex setup in which case a membership it's, uh, it's not

[14:00] Vic: really the right word. It's more like an, it could be an association or corporate accounts thing.

[14:05] Micah: So I use the word membership in a very broad sense in the term, in the sense that you have

[14:11] Vic: to log in behind a paywall and there's all of this complex functionality, but I would say all of the business fundamentals need to be in place. And the membership is the value delivery vehicle. And it may or may not be appropriate for your particular industry and for your particular business.

[14:30] Micah: And if it is appropriate, uh, for example, let's say if you're teaching something or if you're a coach, uh, one of our customers teaches hand weaving.

[14:40] Vic: She was a former Google employee who left Google and started this hand weaving Academy. She's amazing. Her name is Tian. And, uh, so she teaches hand weaving. It's a really, really cool membership, really unique. And, you know, what I've seen is that static content is great. You need good static content because that is kind of what teaches the, the members, the thing they want to learn.

[15:05] Micah: Assuming that that's, that's what the membership's about, but then how do you retain those members?

[15:11] Vic: What is, what's in it for them to keep paying on a monthly basis? What value are they getting back on a recurring basis to justify paying on a recurring basis? And that usually takes the form of a community element. It could be a forum, could be, could be weekly group coaching calls. That's also huge.

[15:30] Micah: I know one guy from my business mastermind who teaches English and the real big draw is the group coaching with him, which, you know, for better or worse, because it kind of makes

[15:43] Vic: him a bottleneck. So yeah, you've got to try different things and you've got to try to, you don't, you don't want to force something that doesn't make sense for your business. You know, there's a little bit of, of common sense involved there. And like one of our customers, um, has a forum. So their whole membership is a forum. For dream interpretation called this union life, like Carl Jung, you can get in life. And it's great. People love it. People are so into it. There's so much user engagement. And I, I'm not sure if there's that a content. I think it's just the forum, but it's like, people absolutely love this thing. So, um, one, and this, this will be the last thing I say here, but one thing I've learned from my business coach, James Schramko is that, uh, what you actually want to do is you

[16:30] Micah: don't want to just throw the kitchen sink at your members that causes confusion.

[16:34] Vic: That causes paradox of choice. What you really want to do, try to do over time. You're not going to get this right straight away. You want to find out, uh, what is the minimal, the minimum you can give? Not that that's not the right word. What is the sufficient amount, the perfect amount that you can provide as far as content features, functionality, like you don't want to have a million different things happening. You just want like the, the one piece of value or the one value delivery method that is the most impactful that people really care about. If you probably care about one or two things, you don't care about, about a hundred things. So your task is to figure out, well, like for example, his coaching is just, just coaching. And once you join his higher tier program, there's no more forum. All you have is your weekly calls and a private message with him. You actually lose access to, to all of his like, like, uh, for, to the forums and to a bunch of other stuff. It's like, it's, it's meant to be focused minimal.

[17:37] Micah: And so it's a hard thing to answer.

[17:41] Vic: I think you kind of need to get into it. Research experiment.

[17:45] Micah: There's no formula other than making your members happy, asking them and providing as

[17:53] Vic: much value as you can.

[17:54] Micah: So much value that it, that it hurts is always a good strategy, right?

[17:58] Vic: In business.

[18:01] Micah: You, uh, covered a lot there and I really appreciate it. Meaning you covered several principles for different stages, right? You know, first of all, do you really need a membership or not? Uh, it's not a business, it's delivery vehicle. Um, and then at the end, they're just kind of like, yeah, I mean, really, you just, you have to give them something of value, much more value likely than they're paying on an ongoing basis. Somehow I thought it was really intriguing that you're saying they actually remove access to some things when you go up a program genius, really. Um, there's a client of ours in the UK who has an investing site. And, and this is a little bit kind of in tune with that, that I think is fun. He has a timer in there where basically you log in and the timer runs for 20 minutes and it kicks you out. Cause he basically says you shouldn't be spending all day on this crap. This we're selling this as a like side day trading thing. Don't lose your focus on your day job. Don't lose your focus on your family. Come in and do this. It's easy to get obsessed, right? The same kind of like limitation that actually adds value. Oddly enough. Uh, your, your kind of main thing there about, you know, not minimalism, but like sufficiency, I think is, is the right way to think about it. What if any, uh, patterns are there across, let's say kind of industries, meaning you mentioned a teacher, you mentioned, you know, hand weaving dream interpretation. Are there certain topics that maybe are better in one medium than another in terms of like, Hey, this one's better for a form. That one's better for group calls, any kind of grouping. And this is, I know I'm being broad here, but I think you have a depth of knowledge. So just kind of any patterns you see. And, you know, for somebody starting out, um, we can't be too prescriptive cause we don't know them, but just kind of giving them a like, Hey, if you see this, maybe, maybe go left instead of right.

[19:56] Vic: Or if you see, you know, any thoughts come to mind? Well, I would say that what you probably want to do.

[20:06] Micah: Okay.

[20:07] Vic: So let's just without covering the edge cases, let's just look at kind of the, the meat of the bell curve. What most memberships look like is that there's some kind of educational components.

[20:17] Micah: There's some kind of courses or some kind of documents teaching something, communicating

[20:23] Vic: some kind of value, some kind of information.

[20:27] Micah: Okay.

[20:27] Vic: People aren't going to pay month to month just for that. Probably unless you're constantly updating it, unless it's something very cutting edge industry specific, you know? So again, common sense figures in here a little bit, but if you have kind of your standard membership,

[20:42] Micah: like teaching guitar or something like that, which we have several customers who do just

[20:46] Vic: that, what you probably want in addition to all of the courses to giving people the techniques and the tools to learn guitar, different chords, et cetera, is you want some kind of engagement, some kind of accountability. And that's again, where the forum comes in. And you could do that in a number of ways. You could use something like BuddyBoss, which is native to WordPress. You can use some third-party apps like Circle. You can even use a Facebook group. You could use a WhatsApp or Telegram group. People do that too. For example, like in the crypto world, you may know this Micah, like Telegram is kind of the place or Discord. They're kind of the places where those communities like to do their engagement and interaction with one another.

[21:30] Micah: Okay.

[21:30] Vic: Well, if you're in the crypto world, if you have a crypto membership, which we have several that we work with of those, then maybe Discord should be your community thing. And so basically what I'm trying to say is you probably want to have a few things available. Like you want your static content, but you also want some kind of retention mechanic, right? Whether it's again, group coaching calls are huge. So, okay.

[21:56] Micah: Big three, a course content of some sort, community of some sort, group coaching of some sort, if

[22:03] Vic: and when relevant. Um, and I would say, I see that as the main thing. One point I do want to make, which I failed to make earlier is that some people have the mistaken idea. This is coming back to this concept that a membership site isn't like a business. You know, it's not, it's, it's, it's a method of delivering the value to your customers is sometimes people get the mistaken impression that if they put up a membership site and if they put up a sales page in a checkout that they will come, you know, if you build it, they will come and they have the idea that it's like passive. It's like this online thing. You don't have to do anything offline. You don't have to do sales calls and like, and you don't have to do any of that. But if you, what I see is like people, it's a, it's a form of like laziness or something that they're like, Oh, I have a membership site now. I don't have to like get on the call or zoom calls with anybody or sell. It's like, no, you should absolutely do that and do it first. And this also depends on industry. Of course, it's going to be hard to like cold call people to teach guitar, you know, or yoga or whatever, but actually not necessarily right. Like you could cold call gyms. You could, you can do like a corporate model.

[23:19] Micah: And I think what I'm trying to say is that, um, don't let the sort of superficially passive

[23:27] Vic: nature of recurring income, people signing up and staying for a while seduce you into thinking that you don't have to do the fundamentals of business like sales and marketing.

[23:38] Micah: Um, and get on the call, get on a zoom.

[23:42] Vic: Like, like if somebody is interested in your thing, don't just email with them. Like, Hey, let's, let's get on a zoom. Let me, let me see how I can help you. The chances of you, of that person becoming a customer are so much higher.

[23:53] Micah: If you talk to them and answer their questions and you'll understand more about your market

[23:59] Vic: and what they actually want, what the people actually, um, struggle with. And yeah, so don't, don't let, uh, I, I succumbed to this as well. When I first got into internet marketing, I was like, oh, this is gonna be so easy. It's so hard. Business is so hard unless you're one of these, like, um, I'm sure, you know, people like this, Micah, you might even be one of these people. I'm not who just has the Midas touch that like everything they do online just turns to gold. But like, I have to hustle for every bit that I earn. And that's always been the case for me.

[24:32] Micah: So yeah.

[24:34] Vic: It's been my experience.

[24:36] Micah: Yeah. I mean, it's, you're preaching, man. I've, I've had a few experiences where like you, it works better than expected. Right. But more often than not, it doesn't work as expected and you got to troubleshoot and fix and work, work, work.

[24:51] Vic: Um, yeah, I think everything you said is spot on the, the way that I've thought about it

[24:57] Micah: in the past, when you talk about like, Hey, the membership site isn't the business I've thought the best membership sites are really hybrids with another business. Like it's, it's a, some, it's a gym, it's a coaching business. It's a, it's a, this or that. And then they also have a membership site. But yeah, when you have just a membership site, um, and you get lazy, you stop doing those calls, you, whatever you quickly lose touch. And then somebody comes and takes that spot, you know, um, that's the rotation of, of leadership or whatever. Somebody wants it more. So I agree. And especially in the beginning, like you said, start off on the phone, start off trying to just help people. And that'll teach you what you want to know.

[25:38] Vic: But I think ongoing as well, once you hit success, it is a little tempting to, um, lose

[25:45] Micah: touch like ivory tower, right? Hey, I've got members. I've got recurring revenue, you know, I don't need to do what I used to do, but it's like, no, you have that stuff because of what you used to do, you know? Um, so sorry, I'm getting off on a tangent there, but yeah, I loved what you said.

[25:59] Vic: Um, I guess a question then.

[26:03] Micah: Yeah, go ahead.

[26:04] Vic: If I may, Micah, you, you might have the momentum where you don't need to do that stuff anymore and you don't want to. And it's like, fair enough. Like if you, you know, if you've already got a decent income coming in and because it depends on your, your goals too, right? Like what, what is a membership site for you? Is it a lifestyle business? Is it like an investment in your portfolio company?

[26:24] Micah: Is it your career, your business?

[26:28] Vic: And like, maybe you've got paid ads that are just like crushing it. And you're like, well, fuck it. I don't want to do calls anymore. I hate calls. You know, it's okay. Don't do them. Uh, but don't not do them in the beginning if that's an option, because those are going to be, it's going to take you way longer to try to do everything like, you know, passively or through SEO or organically. Um, organic growth is really slow. And another topic we could maybe touch on is like acquisitions. You know, we've, we've gotten into, I've gotten into acquisitions and I'm just like, so stoked and so passionate about acquisitions. It's like super, super interesting. And like, yeah, it's, it's, I'm just so stoked. I don't even know what to say.

[27:15] Micah: Well, I'd love to talk about that. Let's go there because I was going to say earlier, you know, we're kind of talking about the beginning. Let's talk about the end phase. Like when you're in a state to acquire, be acquired, um, when you say acquisitions, which side are you talking about or both?

[27:30] Vic: Well, I was actually more talking about like acquisitions as concerns our business, but certainly people buy and sell membership sites all the time. So we can, we can go there too.

[27:44] Micah: Um, tell me about your business. Uh, what do you mean? What do you mean? Acquisitions is what I should ask.

[27:49] Vic: Yeah. Let me give you some context, Micah. So, uh, you know, we've, again, we've been doing this for over 10 years and organic growth is very slow. It's very complex, like SEO changes. It's, I mean, it's not dead, but it's certainly not as easy as just like putting keywords on a page. And so you've got to constantly be on top of things and that's fine. You know, that, that is the nature of this game. But, uh, we had an opportunity through, through my, um, business coach who referred somebody to me that actually already knew for many, many years.

[28:25] Micah: It was actually a big inspiration to our business in the very beginning, who turns out was selling

[28:31] Vic: his hosting customers. He had a small hosting company that he'd built up.

[28:35] Micah: And so I reached out to him and long story short, uh, we bought his hosting customers.

[28:41] Vic: There was about 50, 50 of them. And the, so that was my first, uh, sort of big acquisition, you know, and once the dust settled, once we've worked out all the logistics and everything, we realized like, oh man, we're, we've got another, you know, several thousand dollars per month coming in just, just like that. And we're like, man, you know, I could do these all day. And what I found really fascinating about that. And, and if you're a membership site owner or a potential buyer of a membership site,

[29:11] Micah: this is something to think about is like, what is the value of a thing?

[29:17] Vic: How much is the thing worth?

[29:19] Micah: And the interesting thing there is like, uh, nobody thinks their baby is ugly.

[29:25] Vic: Everybody thinks they have the most, most beautiful baby, but they're not all. As beautiful as people think they are. So like, there's what people think something is worth and there's what something is objectively worth. And how do you arrive at this understanding? That's defensible. That this is objectively worth this much. And then convince the seller that in a way that they can't really argue with, uh, on, unemotionally that, well, actually you're right, Vic. I see your point. Yes. That's what it's worth.

[29:56] Micah: So to me, it's like this detective game where you're not chipping away.

[30:02] Vic: You're not trying to devalue or diminish anybody or anybody's business, but you're just trying to reconcile the difference between what somebody thinks something ought to cost and what it realistically costs. And to me, that's just such a fascinating process. Um, but from the perspective of like somebody who maybe wants to buy a membership site rather than start their own for the same reason, because it could take you years and years. It might not work at all. It probably won't work at all. Or you could just go get in on a going thing. And we have several customers who own membership sites that they purchased actually. And again, it all comes back to business fundamentals, right? Uh, and that's also another very interesting layer of like kind of the acquisitions world is it, you get altitude, uh, and you see things in a very dispassionate way. Like here are the numbers. Here are the numbers. Uh, here are, here's the acquisition model, the acquisition of customers. I mean, here is the retention. Here's the churn. Okay. If I buy this business for a hundred thousand dollars, what's my horizon for getting my money back? What's the likelihood that of the thousand members that are here, X percent of them will churn over time. How will that affect the price negotiations? And so again, it's just, um, back to the business fundamentals. So if you go to acquire a membership site or you want to sell your membership site, those are the things that a buyer is going to look at. And are you the bottleneck? In other words, is the membership site dependent on you? Like in the example of the English teacher, he's doing the group coaching. It's kind of his big retention play, but only he can do it unless he can hire somebody who's sort of equally competent. But then you get into the thing of like, well, his personal brand is linked to the brand of the membership of the business. So people want him. And I've had this problem. I think you've probably had this problem too, where people want access to Micah. They don't want access to memberium. They want access to Micah and Ben. And it's like, how do I extricate myself from this such that people are interacting with the brand? How, you know, such that people want, how does the brand hold the value rather than like

[32:25] Micah: Micah being the, the guy that everybody goes to?

[32:30] Vic: And again, same, same thing for a membership, I think.

[32:35] Micah: Yeah, probably.

[32:36] Vic: So, you know, I have a software memberium, but I've also had multiple memberships and it was

[32:43] Micah: definitely easier to extricate myself from the software because, you know, they're not like initially it kind of launched maybe on my personal brand to a degree. But when I kind of like brought in other people, right, and eventually overlaid myself and

[32:55] Vic: left, it was okay.

[32:58] Micah: You know, and I, I'm still, you know, I'm happy to promote the company and so on. But yeah, with a membership site, I feel like it's a very different story because they are, you know, most content you can get anywhere. But when you hear like a certain person say it in a certain way and you like the way they

[33:11] Vic: talk, that's the value.

[33:13] Micah: It's not like somebody else saying what they said, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of their delivery. And, you know, yes, you can externalize that. You can create frameworks and models and hire co-teachers and whatever to extricate yourself. And some people do and so on, right? Like you said, some people have bought memberships from others. It's not impossible, but it is a big consideration. And in my mind, often it is the creation of models, playbooks, like writing a book, for example, is one way where it's like, okay, this is outside of me now. Um, in the real world and physically, uh, especially it's kind of a different thing. Um, did you sell those memberships?

[33:54] Vic: Oh yeah.

[33:55] Micah: Uh, well, so let's see, I've had a couple, I'm, I've been all over the map, man. Um, you mean sell to customers or sell the business? Did you sell the business? So one of them I did, uh, and that was great. It was like a mastermind slash membership thing and whatever, sold it to my other partner in the business, but that was a little easier to exit because there were multiple partners. And so for me to step out, what it was still a big consideration where they're like, yeah, there's a portion of the customer base. That's here for you. There's a portion that's here for me. There's a, right.

[34:28] Vic: So together we have all these customers, um, but it's going to affect the business, right?

[34:33] Micah: If one of us leaves and affect it. Right. And so the, the pricing, like you said, was considered there on like, well, yeah, what it's worth today versus when one of the faces leaves, um, that's going to be different. Even though they have to buy you out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and that was great, you know, taken, taken time off, whatever. Uh, I, my problem, like to our earlier conversation about like, how in touch should you be about the membership person? I've done this a few times where I, I build up enough momentum. Like I build a membership site. I feel like I'm living the dream. Um, and so I, I get that stupid mindset of now I don't have to do anything anymore because it, it'll live forever. Right. It'll even grow. Uh, and then a few years later, I'm like, oh, wow, I lost all the momentum I built up. I lost by being lazy, right. By, uh, you know, sitting back and so on. And so, you know, going forward and I love your thoughts on this going forward. My, what I'm looking for is, and, and trying to demonstrate as well in kind of what I'm doing and trying to coach clients. But looking for the correct, um, again, I'd love your thoughts on this, the correct, uh, path to follow so that as you're growing your, your membership, your info business, whatever, you don't experience burnout. You don't experience, oh, I went too fast. I burnt out. Now I got to stop, lose momentum, start again. Like, how do you kind of pace it in a perfect world? We'll pretend it's a perfect world. Um, how would you pace, you know, building out something like, uh, you know, you can, you can kind of summarize and stay high level, but from like zero to 10 million a year.

[36:06] Vic: Well, I've never built a membership site from zero to 10 million per year.

[36:09] Micah: So let me start with that disclaimer because.

[36:13] Vic: Me neither. Um, because I'm in that, that is hard to do, uh, very hard to do where I've seen people do that successfully is that they've already had like major brands, huge audiences. And the membership site is, or the, the, the growth and the size of the membership site is to some degree proportionally related to that size of the audience and the strength of the brand and the engagement and so, so on and so forth. Although we've also worked with corporates who, for example, um, they've got maybe, uh, let's say an association is, is a good example. Like it could be a large association, you know, millions, 10 millions of dollars plus per year. And they're using all this super legacy software from like the nineties. That is just horrible. So when we show them WordPress, it just blows them away. And that's actually really cool because we're able to help those people disproportionately more than somebody who's starting out, who's going to be doing things themselves and tinkering because they're going to be on top of like Elementor and Embarium and WP fusion. And they're going to have all the latest cutting edge stuff. But like these, some of these corporates, like you show them like WooCommerce and they'll just like cream themselves because this is just like, wow, you could do all of this. And it only costs like 200 bucks a year or whatever. Like our thing costs $20,000 a year and it can't do any of this. So it's really exciting to be able to transform these people's businesses and make them more efficient just by introducing stuff that you and I work with every day. But to answer your question, so to go from zero to 10 million, I think without, without getting

[37:55] Micah: burned out, let me, let me speak to the burned out part.

[37:59] Vic: I think this is agnostic of whatever particular business or business model that you're in. I think this is where you need to have some kind of system for managing your energy and your attention. And there's a lot of resources. The best ones that I've ever found were a book called The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz. Amazing, amazing short book. Very potent. I've reread it multiple times. My wife has read it. We talk about it from time to time. It just comes up. And then like, you know, there's all different kinds of systems. You know, there's the Pomodoro method for managing your time on the micro level. I haven't found it to be effective personally, but some people like it. There's the system that Strategic Coach teaches. Free days, buffer days, focus days. And that's something actually one of my entrepreneur friends who runs an e-bike company here in Thailand, he introduced me to the Strategic Coach system. And I remember, this must have been about five, six years ago, up until then, I worked every single day. Like, I never took a day off. You know, even if, you know, I was like on a visa run or something, I'd be checking my email on the bus. And he's like, Vic, you need a free day. I'm like, what's a free day? He's like, bro, a free day is midnight to midnight. Right? No work, no email, no nothing. And he took me on my first free day. So we went out into the jungle. We took some acid and we just like tripped out for 15 hours, just getting lost in the jungle. And I came back from that and I was so energized and so refreshed because I wasn't what Tony Schwartz would call continuously partially engaged.

[39:46] Micah: Right?

[39:47] Vic: So this, this, um, you ever had like your phone by your bedside and it just like, it calls to you, like whispers to you, like, pick me up, check Instagram. Did anybody message me? Let me check my telegram. It's like, so you got to keep your phone outside of your room. Otherwise it's, there's like a script running in the back of your head. And so there's so much distraction. I think really, uh, accomplishing anything is just really about managing your energy. And then there's fundamental things like waking up early. Now that's a Jocko thing. That's kind of always a good thing to just try to wake up early. Assuming you get enough sleep, manage your sleep. I don't know.

[40:24] Micah: I, I think it's just, there's no, I don't know if you can get to 10 million bucks a year.

[40:32] Vic: Like you've, you've got it figured out pretty good. Some people get lucky. Some people hit on something really big, but, uh, they're not the people we want to model really. Hmm. I don't know. I don't have a good answer for you, Micah. That's a, maybe you should ask somebody who's done that like multiple times and then they'll, they'll probably have a good answer for you.

[40:55] Micah: Yeah. Um, you know, we've got some clients who I think have done it. And so like, I can, I can look at them and think about it and things like that.

[41:04] Vic: And I've had an interesting experience, uh, going to a lot of these big events, um, you

[41:12] Micah: know, being in the back of the room, kind of seeing how they sell and how they speak and how their team works and, and like working with them. And it is interesting, but I think you're right.

[41:19] Vic: It's, it's not something to model because yeah, I won't say which half, but at least

[41:24] Micah: half of them are crazy. You know, um, like these, these people who are overworking on this level to create those results. So why don't we change it and say like, just, just up to a million, like what's a pathway

[41:36] Vic: and kind of what I mean here is, do you write a book first?

[41:39] Micah: Do you make a course first? Do you like, you know, uh, and I know people take different paths and not every business needs everything, but let's say that you were going to create a course on, uh, you know, jujitsu or whichever martial art, um, you know, say I held a gun to your head and said, Hey, you have to, you have to grow this course to a million dollars. Um, how are you going to do it the fastest in your mind if you just had to kind of, what comes to mind?

[42:08] Vic: Well, I've actually thought about starting a membership, so I'll, I'll use like a real example that, that I thought might be cool, which is that, uh, one of our things that we

[42:16] Micah: do really well at member fix and member host is we are able to hire like the higher and find just the most talented and keep these really talented, extremely competent people.

[42:29] Vic: Uh, and, and help them bring out their potential, help train them, give them opportunities, um, that they wouldn't get elsewhere. And that is, if there's any key to what we've been able to do, it's, it's our team. Our team is absolutely stunningly amazing, terrific.

[42:46] Micah: And the problem is that I had to do all this through trial and error.

[42:50] Vic: So if, if I were to make a course, it might be something like how to hire amazing talent for your agency, for your company.

[42:58] Micah: Right.

[42:59] Vic: So maybe I'd do a membership on that. And so I've done the hard part, which is I, I have scratched my own itch. I've identified a problem that I had and that I know for a fact that lots of other people have, which is, um, you know, outsourcing or even bringing people like full-time on board

[43:19] Micah: into your company, but making sure that, you know, the value is there, that you're not

[43:25] Vic: paying like a crazy amount, which is what you might have to do in like, uh, in the U S that these are dependable, high integrity, people, honest people, that they're extremely competent, that they're growth oriented, that they're not just like cogs in a machine. I don't want those kinds of people, which actually it makes sense for some business models. You just want people who do some very specific thing like assembly line style, like maybe SEO kind of comes into mind. Right. Um, and so that's the first thing you have to identify your, your problem that you're solving. It needs to be a painful problem, ideally. And ideally it needs to be a problem that's not going to go away in, in five or 10 years. You know, something that's a little more evergreen, like weight losses, you know, the classic or, or picking up girls or whatever. Uh, those are always going to be things that people want to know how to do. So now you need to find the people who have this problem that you can offer your solution to. Okay. That's all pretty obvious, right? That's to get like from zero to 10,000. Okay.

[44:30] Micah: So how do you get to the million to 10 X?

[44:33] Vic: Uh, in my opinion, nine times out of 10, you're not going to be able to do it alone. You're going to need to teamwork. You're going to need to, uh, hire, maybe partner with somebody else, especially if, if there's a complimentary skill set there. Um, for example, like with member host, Denny is our CTO. He's a technical genius, you know, and, uh, I'm the marketing and sales guy. I'm the face of the company. I'm, I'm out there doing podcasts and talking to people. And then we have it is though. He's our co-founder. So there's three of us and he's our sales guy slash sysadmin. He helps with the sysadmin stuff, but really he's the sales force. Um, and he's amazing at what he does. Denny's amazing. What is what he does. And I try to be amazing at what I do. Uh, and so.

[45:26] Micah: Yeah.

[45:26] Vic: Rarely have I seen people who've, who have gotten to like a million plus just on their own. They at least have a tech team that they outsource to. Um, oftentimes they're partnered with like their wife or husband, uh, or they might have another partner.

[45:40] Micah: And so, yeah, I would say if, if you want to get to that next level and you're trying

[45:46] Vic: to do it by yourself, that also comes to avoiding the burnout. You need, you need to like give up some of the money that you're putting in your pocket probably to hire a team, right? Like, in other words, like the company's like its own entity and you need to nurture it. So if it's the goose that's laying the golden eggs, you need to make sure you don't kill it, right? You need to make sure it lays more eggs. So you nurture it and you invest in it. Uh, and in the short term you might actually take home less money.

[46:14] Micah: Like I made way more money probably when I was freelancing like eight years ago or 10

[46:20] Vic: years ago before I hired a team than I take home now. Maybe that resonates with you, Micah, but you know, um, sometimes it's easier to make money

[46:29] Micah: on your own. Yeah. Yeah. Not always, not for the long term. But it's harder to scale in the short term.

[46:34] Vic: Yeah.

[46:35] Micah: In the short term.

[46:35] Vic: Exactly.

[46:36] Micah: Yeah. Um, I like that you mentioned the golden goose because I think maybe a point that you're

[46:44] Vic: hitting on here is to not avoid burnout.

[46:47] Micah: You need to consider not yourself the goose that's laying the eggs, but the company's the goose. And if you keep it healthy, then you can get that goose to a million without you yourself laying all those eggs. Right.

[46:59] Vic: Yeah. And, um, the other thing I'll say there, you know, the getting to a million thing is that, uh, two things. One is you want to, uh, always go like a value first approach.

[47:13] Micah: You want to really just, this, this is something I never understood.

[47:17] Vic: This, this killed me when I started on the internet is because everybody was saying like, um, just help people, you know, be a value, be of service. Don't think about the money. Don't think about the money. I'm like, how can you not think about the money when you don't have any money? It's ridiculous. It's, it's impossible. It's like telling somebody who's starving not to think about food. You're going to think about the money. I think that's fine. But, uh, I think it's more of a habit that what you want to do, if you want the money, which you do because everybody does, I don't care what you say. Um, the way to do that is to give people massive, massive value. So just help people as much as you possibly can. And you might get something in return. You might not, but just help people, help your community, help your members, help them

[48:05] Micah: when you don't want to help them anymore and then help them some more.

[48:08] Vic: Really try to be of service and think of ways to be of service more.

[48:12] Micah: That is the way that, um, that you build trust.

[48:16] Vic: And actually the, the funny thing is what come to find out it's very, very fulfilling. It's very rewarding to be a vessel of sorts to, to, uh, be this change agent and to, to really help people and to stretch yourself to do that rather than like, you know, like, Hey, I did for you. Now are you going to do for me? That's an ugly mode of interacting in, in, in business really. And in any kind of relationship, right? It's like, well, I did this for you. You're not going to do this for me. Does anybody like that? No, of course not. So that's the first thing I would say to getting $10 million is just help people tremendously and yeah. And, and stick with it. Oh yeah. I know what I wanted to say. Uh, try to find something that's like different, right? So, okay. So you're, if you're teaching guitar, see if you can do it differently than somebody else. So you can kind of be in your own category. Right. Um, cause like there's hundreds or probably thousands of memberships to teach how to play guitar. What can you offer? That's going to be categorically different from the other people. You're not going to be first to that market. First is the best. And you're probably not going to be best in that market. Best is not as good as first, but it's second best. It's a bit confusing, but you know what I'm saying? And, uh, so you don't need to be first or best. You just need to be the only of something. And that's always been something that, uh, I've been kind of good at doing is trying to, cause I don't want to like compete with anybody. I don't mind competition. Obviously, like you mentioned the jujitsu, the boxing, like I love competing. I'm competitive person, but I don't want to compete unnecessarily in my market. So how do you do that? Well, you position yourself as being a different. So for example, using guitar as an example, I might say, okay, I only teach jazz rhythm guitar, just jazz rhythm guitar. I'm the jazz rhythm guitar guy. If you want to learn jazz rhythm guitar, I'm your man. If you want to learn how to improvise, or if you want to learn a rock guitar, go somewhere else. I'm not going to help you. So you're essentially, uh, qualifying through your positioning, the kind of customers who would want. And like somebody who wants to learn how to play jazz rhythm guitar, they're going to go to you. Like you're the jazz rhythm guitar guy, you know? So that's always, um, not always, but like, that's generally accepted is that you want to niche down. And I think it's a good idea to be in a category of one. If you, if you can be, that'll make things a lot easier.

[51:05] Micah: Yeah. It makes sense. Um, kind of create a new pie and have the whole thing instead of like, try to slice out of something. Uh, yeah, that path zero to a million that you're kind of pointing out. I like that you kind of leaned into the idea of teamwork because it is, it is kind of overwhelming to look at on your own. But if you think about like, Oh, if I partnered with somebody with the opposite or whatever, complimentary strength, or obviously add team with complimentary strengths, then it's like, Oh, that's, that's not actually too hard. You might have to give up some of the revenue as you said along the way. Um, but getting there's not that big a deal. And what I think is smart about that approach of sharing it and making it

[51:44] Vic: faster is once you've done it once,

[51:47] Micah: it's so much easier to do the second time. Like the first time is, is the hard one, you know? And then it's like, okay, now I, now I see it. I can, I can either get new partners, new team to do a new venture, or maybe now I see how to do it, you know, a different way. Um, I'm sure we could go on and on forever and ever.

[52:03] Vic: Uh, but what I want to ask is what is, uh, you know,

[52:09] Micah: question that I should ask you about membership sites. Again, keeping in mind, a lot of the people watching this, um, a lot do use memberium. So they're somewhat sophisticated, but we also have a lot of people just coming in from wherever, like, Hey, I, I might want to do a membership site. What is a membership site?

[52:25] Vic: So I know that's a spectrum.

[52:28] Micah: Um, but you know, what, what should I be asking you about membership sites? Like what, what other great advice do you have for people who are interested in this topic? Um, you know, and have listened this far.

[52:40] Vic: Hmm. Okay. Well, I'll, I'll keep it really simple. I would say go try to leap leapfrog your knowledge, right? Cause there's so much to learn and go somewhere where there's people who are doing what you're trying to do or who have already done it to a high, high level.

[52:57] Micah: For example, a really great community is I don't, don't, doesn't memberium have something

[53:03] Vic: like a community for membership site owners?

[53:06] Micah: We do. It's mostly for memberium people, but anybody can join. So, so yeah, um, might be a little bit technical sometimes, but yeah.

[53:14] Vic: Okay. So there's like the memberium community. Uh, if you, if you, especially if you intend to use memberium, that'll be probably a great place to see what people are doing. The membership, the, is it the membership academy member site used to be member site academy. It's the membership academy, uh, run by Mike and Callie, which is amazing. I've been a member for like five years. I've learned so much. There's, uh, I think over 10,000 members now all starting membership sites or working on their membership sites or growing their membership sites. Some people have huge sites. Some people have tiny sites and you see their progress logs. There's courses and it's like, okay, instead of trying to Google everything or figure everything

[53:57] Micah: out, why don't you just go where it's actually a membership site for membership sites.

[54:01] Vic: So that's pretty meta. And that's, that's what I would do.

[54:04] Micah: I would just go to educate myself and, uh, know what I don't know.

[54:13] Vic: And, and then start to figure out my plan. Right.

[54:17] Micah: So, uh, yeah, that, that would be my very simple advice. That is very simple. Very good advice. Um, something somebody told me years ago, really sharp guy that kind of echoes what you're saying and kind of ties into it is he, his whole presentation, his whole thing was about how do you sell high end courses, like really high end, really expensive courses. And his really simple advice was you yourself have to take high end courses because once you start, once you're a customer of that thing, you see, you see how they do it. You have a belief that people buy these things and that you're now worth it because you're investing in yourself. And so you can, et cetera, et cetera.

[55:00] Vic: And so, yeah, I think, you know, somebody listening, yeah.

[55:05] Micah: Going and consuming the existing membership, uh, memberships, right. Getting meta here, becoming, you know, joining some of those things, buying some of those things. Um, you're going to become a believer real quick. Oh, how are they doing it? How can I copy it? What, what is the content? What are they telling me to do? Teaching me, right. These people have, have figured it out. Why, why Google it? Like you're saying, so perfect advice. Um, Vic, uh, this is amazing, man. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing just this. No nonsense, like very grounded type stuff here. Uh, we mentioned member fix. We mentioned member host. Uh, how else do you want people to connect with you if they're interested in having a conversation with you?

[55:45] Vic: They, if they want to check out my Instagram where I'm just doing jujitsu and singing and going on waterfall adventures, my Instagram is Vic underscore Dorfman. Uh, otherwise you can, you can find me on, on, uh, on our website, memberfix.rocks. Nice, man.

[56:04] Micah: Well, thanks again for coming on.

[56:06] Vic: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.