The Power of Less: Simplify, Focus, Scale Your Membership to 7 Figures with Melodie Moore Memberium

[00:00] Micah: Hey everybody, welcome to another amazing episode of the Membership Site Success Show. Today we have M-Dog, Melody Moore, the princess of Minvarium. There's a battle over queen. You might be queen, you might just be princess Melody. I like queen better,

[00:15] Melodie: but we'll do that another time. But Melody is our first certified partner.

[00:23] Micah: She's one of our, you know, one of only four agency partners that we have. A longtime friend, a very, very, very smart technical person. Her business, Business Tech Ninjas, helps people with Minvarium, with Keep, with all sorts of sticky issues, API, you know, custom programming. So Melody, welcome to the show.

[00:43] Melodie: Thank you. It's lovely to be here.

[00:46] Micah: So I wanted to bring you on just because I know you're always down in the weeds. You and your team, right? You guys get, you get your hands messy, but I know you also do all the strategy stuff with clients. So I kind of want to pick your brain on behalf of the listeners

[00:59] Melodie: about some things that they can do to, to kind of move their membership forward. Maybe we can even

[01:05] Micah: pretend it's almost like a group consultation where you got a group here and they all have the same issues, right? You can kind of give them your two cents. I know also we are both working for a start client together. You know, I won't mention who, but they are having you help them with their Keep stuff, right? They're moving them in, bury them. And so I just know that you have the chops, right? And like I said, I've known you for

[01:30] Melodie: a long time. So we're friends as well, but let's talk about membership. So when people come to you

[01:36] Micah: typically, what position are they in? Like when they come to you, are they saying, Hey, I'm making a bunch of money and I want to make more. Are they saying I'm not making money? So what position are they in and kind of what, what are you looking for? First of all, so let's kind of create our audience

[01:50] Melodie: out of thin air. Typically customers that come to us already have a proven business model to some degree. They're typically already making at least a hundred K, but our sweet spot is really in businesses that are around that 800 K or over a million. And the problems that they have are technical chaos a lot of the time. And this can show up in a number of different ways of one, I'm just not knowing like how many payments are you expecting this month? Did people pay? Are you sure that the people that are paying have access and the people that aren't paying don't have access, otherwise known as freeloaders. And these might simply this, if you're new to memberships, you might be like, well, surely when I get to that level, I'll have all of those things dialed in. But that's just not the case. The problems don't get easier as you scale, they just get more challenging and more complicated. So figuring it out when you're at that hundred, 200 level is really where you want to invest the time and the energy to do that. Before that, you really want to put all of your energy into just making sure that your product, whatever it is that you're selling is actually something people want. And I think that hundred K level, I don't know if you would agree, Mike, it was kind of like that, like, okay, yeah, I've got something here that people genuinely want to buy.

[03:02] Micah: Yeah, I think a hundred K is a great marker because it's also probably enough money for the person creating the product to say, okay, I can, I can continue to invest in this. If it

[03:12] Melodie: has at least that much potential. I wouldn't want to invest too much in systems before that, like just keep it as lean and bootstrapped as you possibly can before you hit that hundred K mark. And then, you know, when you start to get around that, that's when you want to start to invest in better systems and better tools. Like it's just, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the technology and forget that like businesses run on money and your number one goal is sales to start with.

[03:37] Micah: Yeah, that totally makes sense. So keep it simple, do anything you can to sell. Right. And then once you start to experience these, like you said, technical chaos or, Hey, there's a market. How do

[03:47] Melodie: I do this right before I hit the chaos? Um, what does that look like? Cause I know you do,

[03:53] Micah: you do different tech stacks, uh, depending on what somebody needs, but let's start with a hundred K person. Um, and I know we're getting nerdy quick here, but what kind of like basic tech stack, and I'm not as interested in the particulars, but we're just saying like, you know, their budget should be about this month. They're going to need like some hosting and a thing to do this and a thing to do that. So like kind of, what is your, what are your thoughts on appropriate tech stack at a hundred K and then as you get up to your million, what changes?

[04:21] Melodie: It, um, I mean, obviously I recommend Membarium and Keep, uh, or Membarium and, uh, and, uh, ActiveCampaign, sorry. Um, but sometimes that can be overwhelming when you're still trying to like prove the process. Um, so I'll sometimes say like, Hey, just do it on a platform to start and then know that you're going to want to re-platform and get as quickly as you possibly can to that level where it makes sense to invest in a, in a WordPress based system. It also lends itself to helping you as well, because I like, I like working with businesses that already have something going on versus somebody that's just kind of like starting and trying to do a course, because then if they have something in a platform, then I can go and see what's kind of working and what's not. And then when we're looking at translation, transitioning it over to a WordPress site, it's like, then we can kind of think about like, what cool tool in my toolbox. Can I like pull out to really make this like exceptional. And when they're just kind of starting and throwing spaghetti at the wall, it's much more of like, we just need a version one and to get that live. So I like those platform based tools to kind of like get yourself going, prove that business model, and then take that as quickly as possible to move to a WordPress based system with something like Membarium that really allows you to give an exceptional user experience.

[05:39] Micah: Gotcha. And so when you say platform based tools, examples might be like teachable, thinkific, Kajabi, something where they don't, they don't have to get into the technical, they could just put their content and sell, right?

[05:50] Melodie: And there's like, I think there's this dirty lie that business owners tell themselves when they go to a platform based tool of like, it's just going to be easy. And it's going to be totally out of the box and solve all my problems. We move a number of people off of those tools, because it's just simply not true necessarily. Any tool you use, it does not matter is going to have its weirdness or it's like little quirks. Platform tools do tend to have a little bit less of that, but you have to stay within the confines of what they want you to do. If you start to go outside of those lines, then you're going to encounter more and more errors.

[06:28] Micah: Yeah, that makes sense. And that's, that's kind of the case. Typically, like you said, people moving to Ben Barium is they hit the limit in their platform. Like, Hey, it was working for me. But now as an example, I want to do cohorts. I want to, I want to have a summer group and a fall group and a winter group. And suddenly the platform doesn't, it's not aware of that concept. And so you have to like clone your whole program for each cohort and it gets, just becomes crazy fast.

[06:49] Melodie: You're sending a customized email based on the program they're on. Or I mean, one of my big pet peeves with the platform based tool is that they only seem to really have the ability to have like courses. So it's like course, course, course, course, course. And I really love dashboard pages. And I love that we can do that within Ben Barium of I can have anything on that page and really make it an experience for like, okay, who is this member? What are they trying to get? What's important to them that they can see on this page and really designing something that makes more sense to them. And courses are usually a part of that. But if you have an ongoing membership, there's usually other pieces or resources or different things. And above all else, you want to make it really clear to them the progress they're making and how great it is that they're in their membership and really show, okay, like you've completed this many things, or this is where you're started. And this is where you're going. Stu McLaurin, big fan of the success path and being able to frame that out on a WordPress site. And there's lots of different ways to do that. But you do tend to be handcuffed by these platform based solutions, because they just don't really give you that ability. I think maybe in time, they'll develop it, but I'm still not seeing that functionality in those platforms at this point

[07:59] Micah: in time. Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know, for those of you listening, when we talk about courses, what Melody just said about, you know, these platforms saying course, course, course, course. Just before this call, I had a call with Justin Fairman, who created LearnDash, which is like a course platform. And he was saying the same thing. Hey, most of our people, they just sell courses, and then they sell more courses, and they're happy, right? And I was saying to him, well, yes. But then the reason they also add Membaring to that tech stack is when they want to layer their courses with group coaching, live events, communities, all these different pieces that they might play differently for each business. So like courses might be the commonality, but then they might each want to add a different piece. And at that point, it kind of gets weird. And like you said, when the member comes in, they do want to see a dashboard that is maybe not like, yeah, specific to them, but specific to the program that they're in. The most relevant things based on their purchase history are all right

[08:56] Melodie: there, right? Well, a lot of the times people will put like call recordings into a course. And it's like, I don't want to have to go through every single one of the call recordings. Like I want to be able to categorize them and see what's the most recent, see which one is about copywriting or design or something like that. Like for me to have to go through, like, it's not a course, like the expectation is not that I'm going to go and watch every single one of those. It's like an as needed thing that should be more of a resource than a course. So people who are just getting started,

[09:25] Micah: let's, let's dive into what you're saying. A course is typically like premeditated, you know, linear. Yeah. And what you're saying is when people take a call recording, like they do a monthly call and those might be totally different topics and then they put them into a course. Yeah. The concept of a course doesn't hold that data as well as maybe like a library or like you said, a searchable, maybe kind of keyword tag, right? Yeah. We're working on a tool right now

[09:52] Melodie: called the content library, which will be a plugin that will work beautifully with Menbarium, which really allows to organize content well, because we each, every, basically every client that we've gotten at the high performing level has some version of a content library. So that could be call recordings or it could be like resources, like PDF downloads or, you know, maybe not courses, but like this, like a one-off training video and they have so much content, but the challenge is just organizing it and making it consumable for the, the end person, because people don't buy your membership to sift through all of your content and try to figure out which one of the hundred different things that you have that they should take. They can go on YouTube for that. They can go anywhere on the web for that. They buy your membership because you are an expert. You've gained authority in this. And they're like, tell me what to do because you know what I should do. And I'm going to follow your steps. And this is going to save me time in learning or trying to sift through the, just the mass amount of content that's on the web right now. Because I think that is a big problem that we're going to see. And it's only going to get worse now is just the amount of noise and, and a membership they're buying your membership to get rid of the noise and point them in the right

[11:15] Micah: direction for what they should be doing. It's such a good point. Cause I think when courses were first being created, it was like the content doesn't exist. Here it is. It's the only place to get it. But now it's like, no, there's too much content. You're not buying the content. You're buying the time to not go through the bad content, right? You're buying the curation almost. I was thinking about it today,

[11:36] Melodie: even with my own business of like we, one of the common problems that our clients have is like what checkout system to use. Cause there's lots of different flavors that you can use. And I was even thinking about it of, you know, we're doing a lot with AI right now. And it's like, I could throw that question AI and AI will give me an answer, but like, but I, it would be wrong based on my experience because it's just looking at like generalities within there. And in order for someone who doesn't have our experience of working with each one of these tools, they'd have to like sift through so many Q and A's and tutorials. And like, does this work for my particular instance? Or like, is this checkout the best because I want to have order forms, but I only do subscriptions. And like, there's so many variables to keep in mind. And it's like, when somebody goes into a course, it's like, they want to see all of that played out and organized effectively. So they can just read your course or go through your course and not have to spend hours going through. Well, there's also with technology, sales pages are often liars. Let's just put it that way. Liars seems mean. I'm sure there's a softer term.

[12:42] Micah: They stretch the truth.

[12:42] Melodie: Stretch the truth. Yep. That's, that's a good way to put it. Of in that's why I love when I'm testing technology of like, just give me the tool. Let me get in it. Let me see what's actually, what's actually going to work here because salespeople will often say, Oh yeah, it can do that. Kind of like I can run a marathon. However, I don't think I'm going to run a marathon anytime soon. Not without some training,

[13:05] Micah: potentially one day, but it's got some time. Yeah. I hear you. Especially complicated products. Can I do this? Oh yeah. Yeah. People do that all the time, but they don't ask the particulars to where then you get into it. You're like, Oh yeah. Kind of this one feature that you don't have as a, as a deal breaker, you know,

[13:22] Melodie: but you're, we did a support into like, I'm, I'm right now I'm experimenting a lot with support tools because it's a big time suck for our businesses of just like, how do we support our customers? Well, and a lot of them are just using email, which creates just so much noise. And like the customers aren't getting responded well too. And it's like, Susie, were you going to respond back to that? No, I, I'm sorry. I forgot. It's been two weeks. The customer hasn't gotten back to. And then a lot of these support tools are also very expensive. So we're playing around with a couple of different options with it. And there was one of them that we implemented that we were really excited about because it's like, Hey, hi, this and hi, that. And I got, I got sucked into the sales page. Let's just put it that way. And one of our customers did well as well. And I kind of gave them, I gave them a little bit of a, um, I was like, you know, we haven't implemented this yet. We're not really sure what we're getting into. Do you know, just take this with a grain of salt. And they're like, no, we love this. We're going full tilt and we're going to implement this. I'm like, okay, cool. We're, we're here for the ride. And I think that's one thing that separates out my company from others is it's like, we're going to talk about those choices. And no matter what choice you make, we're going to, we'll be in that ditch with you, digging out and making sure that whatever decision is made, we'll figure it out together. And they ended up spending months implementing this tool. And we'd wanted to put like a little chat bot on their membership site. So people could get like a walkthrough of their membership site. And most of their traffic is on mobile. It turns out this

[14:51] Micah: little thing doesn't work on mobile. And there was just not a question that came up in that sales

[14:59] Melodie: process, but it was a, it was a deal breaker and they abandoned it after two months of implementation.

[15:05] Micah: Ouch, ouch, ouch. Like just the time and energy, you know,

[15:08] Melodie: It was, it was a very, that's why I'm a big fan of the idea of get a terrible version one, like a working version as quickly as possible. Cause it's like, had me just focused, cause we got really into the nuance of how the AI would work and like training it and doing all this really, really fancy stuff in my mind too quickly. And what we should have focused on initially was just like, let's just get a really dirty version number one. So we know that this is actually a path we want to go down before investing all that time. And I keep, I keep thinking I'm going to learn this lesson and I keep relearning it over and over again. So it's like, I need to get it tattooed or like paste it somewhere of like dirty version one. And like, how, how dirty can it be? Like, and when I say dirty, I mean like, um, simple. I want to see this tattoo dirty version one.

[15:59] Micah: Yeah. Um, you know, it makes me think of a, like a kind of silly analogy, but I hope it helps people listening. I run into this, you know, the same as well, dealing with membership side owners, they want to build this perfect magical thing before they even start. It's like, if you were to build a car from scratch, load it up with, you know, six months of travel gear and you never drove it around the block to see if the engine runs, if the tire, you didn't do anything and you're just building up for this journey. And then you get into go and you're like, ah, it doesn't work. Right. And it's like, yeah, we could have found that out. You know?

[16:34] Melodie: Yeah. It's, it's fascinating. And like so much of it, the more I'm in business, the more I think that business is just a lesson in psychology of just like how we try to avoid paying. Cause a lot of the times when people are building up this like perfect membership site, it's cause they're trying to avoid the pain of actually selling it. Yeah. They want to, they want to focus on the technology and all the features in the back end. They don't really want to do the pain of selling it. And Alex Rosier had a great quote the other day I saw, which was sales people get paid a lot because they just get beaten and they're like, no, no, no. And they just keep showing up with enthusiasm, even though they keep getting told no over and over again. And if you're going to run a business, like you're a salesperson, your number one job is sales.

[17:18] Micah: Yeah. I honestly am guilty of this too. It's, it's a hard, like you said, businesses, maybe the soul psychological self-reflection thing for us entrepreneurs, because I can relate to that saying, you know, when I build a product, I want to keep adding features to where I feel I get selling itself. Like, well, maybe if I had one more thing, then people will, they won't be able to help it. Even if I don't announce it, they'll come by it or some stupid thing. Right. And they will come, I think is the term. Yeah, exactly. Um, and, and we just, uh, you know, it's happened over and over, like across decades where it definitely is just part of human nature where I've had clients who extremely intelligent, like, you know, well off, they have money, they have experience, they, they coach people on the same thing they suffer from just like me coaching people. But, you know, when it comes time to sell, it was like, Ooh, uh, you know, maybe we can hold off. Right.

[18:08] Melodie: Um, recently we did a promotion and it took like, I think I procrastinated for like six or seven or

[18:15] Micah: eight months from the time I wanted to do it. Right. And I finally had to, and it, and it worked out well, but I'm just saying like, I can totally relate. Sorry to go off on that tangent. And, and I'm also upset when I see people doing, I'm like, you know, stop, let's go sell.

[18:28] Melodie: So it's easier to do as I say it, not as I do. It's easier to point out with somebody else, but it's like, it's harder to like take that. I still fall into it all the time. I will also like avoid proposals and stuff because I don't want to have to like write out all the different things. And I don't want to have to deal with like the emotionality of them saying no, or challenging something. Like it is such an emotional journey, like business in general, and not just for business owners, but for team members too. It's just, it's different for team members. But definitely that emotional being aware of those emotions and how they come up with us can also just bring a lot more happiness to our work. If you can see that separation of like, this isn't me failing, this is just me, this is just my stuff coming up. And I can look at that and I can make it better.

[19:11] Micah: I like that. Melody, the membership psychologist here. It's beautiful. It really is though.

[19:19] Melodie: It really comes down to a desire to actually want to get stuff done for people. And I think that's fundamentally what's always really motivated me as both a human being, and then also as a service provider, a lot of customers come to us after working with other companies for sometimes years and not being able to launch a site or not just not being able to get things done. And it's, you know, every single instance like that, it's a hundred percent responsibility on both sides. Like they have some ownership there. The company that they hired definitely has ownership as well. It's never one more than the other. We just look at it a little bit differently in that. I look at the, the business owner and like the structure and like social dynamics of that business. When someone says like, we were working with this company for over a year and we weren't able to get a site launch. I'm like, Oh, okay. Tell me about that. What was going on there. And there's usually some pretty consistent patterns. The most consistent one that I see is that the, the business owner often just doesn't make decisions or will change decisions really rapidly. So we'll say, Hey, we're going to have a homepage with three boxes. And we'll be like, cool. We made the homepage of three boxes. And then the next week they'll be like, Oh no, now we're going to need four boxes. And then you do four boxes. And then you do those four boxes. I'm like, Hmm, actually it's gotta be six boxes. And it's like, you're not at that point in time making progress forward. It's the illusion of progress because you have activity without actually moving things forward. And I think that is the core thing that people miss is, is that illusion of progress is so prevalent that we're almost addicted to activity instead of actually getting things done. So we're very busy all the time. However, not as effective and a lot sadder too. You'd think people would be happier these days with all the access to technology and all these different things,

[21:04] Micah: but it just hasn't played out that way. Yeah. For the most part, not. I will say that when it does work out, well, it's a beautiful thing when somebody's like, you know, when we're all hanging out together and having a nice meal and whatever. And it's like, Oh, we're all making money sitting here,

[21:19] Melodie: spending money, you know, it's like automated. So it has its golden moments. Right. But I agree with

[21:24] Micah: you that, uh, you know, I guess, I guess even everything working doesn't equate to happiness.

[21:29] Melodie: Right. Um, let's talk about these technology systems. Uh, you were kind of mentioning,

[21:36] Micah: you know, a couple of things along the lines of how to think about technology.

[21:40] Melodie: The term that came to mind for me is that, uh, something you said earlier, like sometimes people

[21:45] Micah: add technology and it actually fragilizes their business. It makes them fragile, right? Because they're going to maybe hire somebody who implement something too complicated, uh, something that is too much of a specialty, right? Not enough people know how to deal with it. So how do you guys, how does business techninjas help their clients not get stuck, not become fragile, not get dependent?

[22:10] Melodie: We, I mean, this is years of trial and error of, and I, I always like got really hung up on this concept that around technology, people are like, well, there's no right way to do it. There's no like right tool for every customer. I do believe there's no right tool for every customer, but I do think there's a right way to do technology and a wrong way to do technology. The problem is that we don't all have the same guiding principles to be able to say, like, it's almost like we're not playing by the same rules. So you can't have a right and wrong because there's no guiding rules that are going to say like, I'm going to make the same decision as you are based on this rule set. Like we're playing a soccer game. I'm not going to get into sports analogies because I know nothing about sports. Um, but when, and part of it was like, I wanted to be able to hire a team because I, I'm an entrepreneur at my core. I love to figure out the problem, organize all the things. And take chaos and streamline it. But for a business to really run and really run well, you need consistency. You need somebody to consistently do the things and consistently improve upon those systems. So I need people that like, and enjoy doing that, which is not me. And so I needed to give those people a framework to follow that they could make good technology decisions because with our technical world, there is no amount of SOPs or checklists I can give or make that's going to account for tomorrow. And then Miriam's going to update and maybe the whole UX changes. Maybe they change everything. And it's like, they, the team needs to be able to work with that and move with that and make the right decisions when they're working through something. So we use three different guiding principles on our decision-making process, which is stability, flexibility, and exceptional user experience. So it's like when we're thinking about how we're building something out or which tool to put in or which tool to switch out, we're always coming back to those three principles, which we then can have a good conversation on what is the best way to do this based on those three guiding principles.

[24:08] Micah: I like that you have some principles defined because as you said, it changes like right underneath you. And I know a couple of great references to like the pace of change right in the future and whatever. And the only way to combat that pace of change is adherence to true and right principles.

[24:27] Melodie: It's a little physical. We got psychology, now we got philosophy. What are we going to do next?

[24:33] Micah: We got to add in some religion and politics. No, just kidding. So let's, let's get into the marketing for a second. So let's say that one of these people, they've got this hundred thousand, you know, dollars in revenue kind of coming in from whether it's courses or memberships, they're getting going and then they're like, okay, I really, I feel like there's an audience. People are telling me they love it. I want to, I want to go big. You know, sometimes people use that. So somebody says, I want to go big. Is there a way or, or how would you let's, let's play. I'm the customer, right. And you're trying to help me avoid what we were just talking about being, being dumb and jumping off cliffs before checking for rocks. How, what might you recommend? Is there like a staging process? Does it take a few years?

[25:17] Melodie: How do I get from a hundred to a million? What are the, what are maybe some of the steps? I probably have a little bit of a different view on this than I think most marketers probably do. And I, it comes down to what I've seen successful for my customers. Cause I mean, we, I've, I've worked with, I work with some clients that just kill it consistently time and time again. And then others that it's working mostly and, but sometimes not. And just looking for the patterns with, with how they work and how they structure their business and how they think about marketing and sales. And then also how I've done it for my own business. And we recently crossed the seven figure mark, which I'm incredibly proud of. It was, it was a fun, it's a fun number. Funny enough, there was no fireworks. I thought there would be fireworks, but no, it was like, I didn't look at the computer screen. It was like, oh, fireworks. Oh, nice. Side note. Um, I, I like an iterative approach of do more of what's working. And I think that the mistake that I've run into, like looking back over the last, you know, nine years that we've been in business, I paid a lot of attention to shiny objects of things I should be doing and didn't pay enough attention to what is already working and working well, and just figuring out how to do more of that. And I think that when you get to that a hundred K mark, the good question to ask is what got me here? Like why, why did people give me money in the first place? And how do I do more of that? Versus I think that the trap people fall into is like, I'm going to add this new thing and then add that new thing. And then add this new thing. And that becomes so distracting that they end up moving away from the thing that actually got them to a hundred K in the first place. And I've, I've actually seen a business go out of business from this. They had a core business that was a seven figure business and they got distracted with all of the other wonderful things they could be doing and ended up going under. And it was heartbreaking to watch from the outside, but they were so, they were so certain that they had to have this like new feature, this new function. Like one of the best ones is like an app. Everybody seems to think that when they get an app, it's going to like, people are going to go wild and they're just going to be banging on their doors, like take my money. And we've gone down this path with several customers. And cause all their, their customers are like, all you need is an app. And then, so they spend all of this money developing this app and going down this path and they release it. And they're like, and it does not have the impact. I've never once seen it have the impact that a, a business thinks it's going to have when they, when they invest that amount of time and money into it. Yeah. Anyways, that's another tangent for another day that I don't get into.

[27:58] Micah: I like it. That's a, that's a sobering reality though. So you're saying if I build a mobile app, my business won't double.

[28:04] Melodie: I mean, probably not. I mean, it depends. I think there's always, there's always going to be exceptions. My experience has been that mobile apps in one regard is like, it is just a, you have to really think about mobile and mobile experience very separately, even on when it's a mobile like website and a mobile app, even more so. And then the investment in your developers that are developing a mobile app are three times the cost. So the accessibility or flexibility is what we would term it because it's only a certain number of people that can go in and actually make changes. And it's like the pain of it is just, I have, I am yet to find a use case where it's been worthwhile. And additionally, on top of that, Apple makes you give 30% of your revenue to them. If you have any hint of selling something. So it's like, you're not only getting down into this technical problem, but then you're also giving away 30% of your revenue. And you know, maybe that makes sense. If you're a 10 million, $10 million company or $5 million company, but if you're a million or two, like it hurts. And you feel that you feel that, that technical debt, you feel that technical pain, but you also feel like 30% of your revenue, it's significant. If you're selling through that app.

[29:19] Micah: The mobile thing is interesting. We recently did a, an interview and somebody had a very simple mobile app that was pretty much like a PDF in an app. And I thought that's a pretty clever way to do it, you know, cause like they have quick access to your concepts and it didn't have any user, you know, authentication, right. It was basically really just, you know, simple. And I thought, okay, that, that I could see, like, it's like a companion. It's not the core of it, you know,

[29:43] Melodie: but I agree. We do progressive web apps too, which is kind of like, and I heard one web developer say, it's like, yeah, progressive web app is just, it's basically terrible at two things instead of, instead of just one. It does, it does kind of get the job done in a way that is economical and it answers that customer questions. You can't ignore if your question, if your customers are complaining about something, like you got to do something there. So it kind of like enables you to check that box without having to go like full tilt, full tilt into it.

[30:16] Micah: Yeah. One thing that I saw and played with recently that I thought was pretty clever was giving users instructions to save their auto login link as a home screen tab so that it almost acts like an app. Like they click it and it logs them into the membership site and pulls it up. I thought that was, that was a pretty funny little like, oh, hilarious. Cause that's all they really want is to not have to go and log in and do all the stuff. They just want to click an icon and get the experience, whether it's iOS or a browser, you know? Yeah. It's all about like just saving time

[30:46] Melodie: of like, I just like, don't want to have to think about this. Like I want to go in, especially if it's like a fitness, thing or something like that. It's like, you want to have the least amount of friction. There's a great book that I'm reading called the friction project. And it really, really talks about when you want to only want to add and when you want to reduce friction.

[31:02] Micah: Interesting. That makes, I want to check that out. That sounds pretty cool. We got way off on a mobile tangent. Let's get back to marketing for a second, because I think you made a really good point when you were saying, instead of trying to go from a hundred K to a million a year in adding, right? Adding products and apps and all sorts of crap. You're saying, well, what got you the a hundred K? Can't we just do like 10 X more of that almost? Like, can we scale that pretty much?

[31:28] Melodie: And the companies that have seen successful, like they spend most of their energy just trying to do more of what's working, but they do still experiment. But they, the, the companies that seem to struggle, get really precious about their experiments and tend to focus more on their experiments than they do their core business. If they know, here's the other problem. I mean, we see this more on the higher margin, like the higher numbers, once you get up to like a million of some business owners don't know what their core business is. They've got, and the lie that they tell themselves is we just have so many things that people love and we couldn't possibly just have one core thing. But if you, if, if they're really going to get honest with themselves and they look at the numbers, I would bet you that if they actually

[32:15] Micah: looked at the numbers that there's probably one or a couple of products that are probably about 70,

[32:19] Melodie: 70, 75% of their business. And if they were to double down on those rather than spreading themselves, then cross a really large product line, then they would probably double their business.

[32:32] Micah: Yeah, I totally agree. It's a, I think it was Jim Collins talks about like preserving the core while stimulating progress. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that those businesses who have a lot going on, if they do any real analysis, like you said, there's only a couple that are most of their business and especially not just from the

[32:53] Melodie: revenue, but probably from the profit side. They might, they might have more revenue. It's actually sometimes that happens where you see like a high revenue one, but it's also the most expensive thing to deliver. So like their prop and it's a really good point of like your profit margins on them too, of like, maybe you do have a bunch of product lines, but like, if you look at them, like three of them cost so much manual labor that you're making a quarter of what you do on just your, you know, your courses that just sell and people consume them and they're really happy with them. And maybe someone checks in with them once in a while. So it's like, you're making almost twice as much on those. And it's like, well, why not just focus more on that? It really just comes down to focus.

[33:32] Micah: Like, what are you focusing on? Yeah. I let's, let's take it. So let's say that somebody does what we're talking about and they do focus and they get to a million and they theoretically tap out their core product. And now they're in that stage of like, okay, I want to keep this core going, but I do want to add things on. Right. Let's say they like, I go over seven figures, a concept that I've been kind of playing with recently thinking about that my mentor shared, he has a toy company and some of his toys are bestsellers, other toys that they're roll out. He shared with me, they're almost like positioning where he's saying like, when I roll this new toy out, even if it doesn't sell well, the fact that I'm bringing out a new product reminds them of my company and my other core product. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting releasing products. You know, you would want probably a low commitment into it. Like you don't want to give yourself a bunch of work, meaning like it's the, the fulfillment is automated, good product, but automated fulfillment so that, you know, it's almost a positioning thing, like said, and we played with that a little bit ourselves recently. And it was interesting where we got comments on a program that we released and they were like, Oh cool. This sounds interesting. Like more kind of buzz than actual take into the program. Right. And I thought, Oh, that actually worked. Like we may not even do that program. We might cancel it, but just having it there actually, I think did lift the perception of the whole brand. So that's, that's maybe a little bit, you know, conceptual.

[35:01] Melodie: It's almost like it's a, cause marketing is just staying top of mind so that marketing is staying

[35:07] Micah: top of mind so that when they're ready to buy, they think of you, not your competitors. So to your

[35:13] Melodie: point of like, you know, the product launch or just like staying top of mind of like, Hey, we've got this new thing. We've got this new course. And they're like, and then when they do want something that

[35:21] Micah: maybe is your core, they still remember that. Yeah, I think so. And it's, you don't want to create a mess for yourself, right? Like you'd have to automate it, but it does make me think that, and I've seen businesses do this well, where let's say somebody's like, they've got their core channel that they're great at. And then as new buzz comes up, they're not going to go become that new buzz thing, but they are going to maybe do a collaboration with somebody. Right. Be part of it.

[35:47] Melodie: Um, we try to do that a lot. Staying, staying current, I think is what it is, especially in

[35:52] Micah: our world of technology. Like you've got to stay current. Yeah. Otherwise you're like a dinosaur. Yeah. I know there are probably some like membership and course niches where they don't need to stay as current. Like, I don't know, sewing, who knows, right? It doesn't move as quick.

[36:08] Melodie: Let's give sewers some credits. I'm sure there's some new sewing techniques that are coming out.

[36:14] Micah: You're probably right. I'm sorry. Sewing people. Um,

[36:18] Melodie: There are all sorts of hate in the comments now from sewing. Chris Meyers, baby.

[36:25] Micah: So I want you to think, Melody, about some real clients who have passed the seven figure mark. How much past the seven figure mark did they get with their core product versus how much did they have to add to their product lines, would you say? And I'll be thinking the same, but you don't have

[36:41] Melodie: to name names, but like any thoughts on that? Um, a lot of them got to seven figures by focusing on one thing and then they ended up, um, either their businesses dying a little bit or be staying stagnant by adding new variations. Um, and they, you know, there's a great book, uh, 10 X is better than two X. Um, and he actually takes a different opinion on he's like, well, you need to start adding product lines at that point in time. And I think that there's a delineation of there's a difference between a different product line and then like complimentary items. So you can either go down or up from your core product. So what this is, it's not, it's not changing. It's not adding like a new stream. It's saying, okay, where are my people in their journey? And I really love, um, the concept of like iteration and really making sure that as you're building out your business and your technology, you have really clear feedback loops of how you're going to get information about what people are actually doing and paying, paying attention to what they're doing and what their struggles are. One of the, my most favorite is why are people canceling? Um, and just having that as an open text box, like what's going on in your life. Um, there's a really common one that people is widely known called the MPS score. I hate it. I think it's useless. I want to kill the MPS. Because we have not to be dramatic or anything. Um, we we've done, we've implemented the MPS score for dozens of clients and we got the data and we're like, cool. It's like tarot cards. I'm like, cool. That's fun. I can't really do anything with that data, but there's a question that I've been loving asking after people buy a product. So give it like whatever the timeline is, um, let's say like three months or a month, or if they're canceling of, if you were to go back in time and be given the

[38:38] Micah: option to buy this product or service again, would you, why or why not? And that data is fascinating

[38:48] Melodie: because does my sales page line up with what I actually deliver? And did they make assumptions on what my thing was going to be doing based on that sales page or based just on their hopes and dreams? And so then you can take that and it really enables you to really like make your core product better or potentially add, put on add-ons, which can be revenue generators. So if you want to increase that revenue, take it from like what people, like where they are. It's almost like I see that. And I've seen, I've seen myself do this and I've seen customers do this. It's like, we think that there's something magical out there that's going to magically like double or triple our business, but really it's right in front of us. It's in that core business. So if you want to add more revenue, look at what can be complimentary, where it's like next steps where the people can either go up or go down, or you can expand the amount of wallet that you're taking from them based on the problem that you're solving for them. Where people go wrong is they're like, I want to solve this completely different product now for a completely different problem for them. That's kind of somewhat adjacent, but like not really. And it's almost like a completely different sales cycle. Like that's what I'm not recommending. I'm not saying you shouldn't add more complimentary things or add ons to your core products. Like you absolutely do in order to get like, to continue to grow after seven figures, but just make them the natural next step from your core product. Don't kind of like

[40:13] Micah: try to reinvent it. So like, for instance, um, somebody that I'm trying to think of one that

[40:19] Melodie: not call out any, any specific people. Um, I often, I'm seeing this trend right now where business coaches are all of a sudden becoming fitness coaches. Um, I don't know what it is, but it's like teaches business, learn how to scale a SAS company. All right, cool. Now we're going to talk about your macros and how to do exercise and strength training. And it's like, these are two very vastly different problems that you're trying to solve. And yes, your customer probably has both of those problems, but you, you know how to solve this one. Learning how to solve this one is a completely different muscle you're trying to build now.

[40:58] Micah: Yeah. It's, um, for some reason, the, the reference to Boeing comes up, right? They've got

[41:03] Melodie: those astronauts stranded up there. And I was listening to a thing recently and they're like, Boeing is an airline company, like commercial airlines, a defense company, like fighter jets.

[41:14] Micah: And a space shuttle company. And they're like, for any one company to be good at, even one of those is next to impossible. All three is fully impossible. And it's kind of like, you know, and that's, that's a, they seem related, right? We're all flying, but they are so different. They're so different. You different buyers, different problem sets,

[41:35] Melodie: different, you know, um, kind of silly example. I like your example better of,

[41:40] Micah: Hey, I can also help you with your fitness. You know,

[41:43] Melodie: now that your business is there and it's, I feel like it just gets weird. Um, what you were talking

[41:47] Micah: about, you know, the same core concept and like upstream and downstream. I've been thinking about that recently. Um, the example of, you know, why did Google build Android? Why did they build a phone? And what I heard was they actually did it to get upstream so that other phone makers wouldn't block out their search on mobile. So they only did it so that they couldn't, they couldn't have the upstream taken from them. Right. And so I think for some of these businesses, they can look that way. You know, for us, for example, we sell software about memberships. So upstream is convincing someone to create a membership, right? Downstream is, Hey, we're going to add some, some extra add-ons to gamify or community or, or whatever. Right. Um, the concept of focus and like, you didn't,

[42:28] Melodie: you know, there's a book focus on the one thing it's so easy in principle, but so much harder to actually implement to understand the case. So is this part of my core business or is this a distraction that I'm using to distract myself? Cause we need, we need to accept ourselves for who we are as entrepreneurs. The thing that makes us special is also the thing that holds us back the most of we get bored. So the idea of just sticking to one core business fills most of us with a feeling of dread because it's like, well, that's not very interesting or challenging. I need a challenge. I need, I need more challenge. And as an entrepreneur, you need to like appreciate that part and love that part of yourself, of course, and then figure out how to give yourself that variety in other ways that isn't necessarily messing with your, your core business. That's funny. That variety in other

[43:15] Micah: ways, like go try some Thai food. Don't, don't add a product in your business. I am. So I just

[43:21] Melodie: recently decided there's going to be nomadic and not live like anywhere permanently. And for me, it helps me to be a lot better at my business because I'm so, because it's like answering my need for variety and chaos in that way, I have to make my business a lot more stable. So it's like, it balances that out for me. So it's like my, my need for chaos, which is why I love, my favorite thing is a spaghetti mess, seven figure business where you've had a whole bunch of contractors in there. And this person came in here from keep and that person is like, nobody knows what's going on. Emails sometimes go out. Do our members getting their confirmation emails? We hope so. Like I love untangling that because I have a deep love for chaos, but things working well consistently is really good for the team, but it, I get bored. So then being nomadic answers that internal need that I need of my chaos. It's a good duality, I think. Yeah. So I'll, I'll share one thing that helped me

[44:24] Micah: when I was building and I think would help everybody out there. That's right. Kind of in

[44:27] Melodie: line with what you're saying on the business front. I think the best thing I did to grow a memberium was saying no to stuff. Yeah. And I don't remember where I got it, but it was like

[44:36] Micah: just this idea of just say no, like not to drugs, right? Drugs are good. And I'm just kidding, but saying no to somebody coming in and saying, Hey, we could do this. Hey, we could do that. Because what was weird is as the business started to move, it's like the number of ideas came in faster and faster, which was really paradoxical because what was moving it, what was growing it was the focus. Right. And so the whole time, and, and there were times when people were not quite mad at me, but thinking I was being kind of a stick in the mud, right? As we hit like 500 K, Hey, let's add a mastermind. No, not yet. Right. No, all we're going to do is sell this one subscription many times as we can. Right. Um, to as many people as we can, I should say. And so just saying no, it was like what I wanted to be known for, for a long time. And, and that was, that was helpful. Uh, it's almost like, uh, the FOMO versus JOMO, right. Joy of missing out. And I said to no to things like even social media, which maybe 10 years later, it's like, Oh, we could have done more of that. But at the time it was like, no, no to opt-ins, no to social media, no to all of these things. Yes. To just selling my core subscription. And that, that worked. It took a minute, but it worked. It really got it to scale. Um, and I think for anybody out there, I guess what I'm saying is being okay to say, no, if somebody comes in and they're like, Hey, here's this new AI thing. Here's a mobile app. AI is going to build your mobile app. Right. Um, you can just be like, no, I'm going to, I'm going to tweak my site a little and improve it by 1%. And you know,

[46:02] Melodie: that's where I think it's kind of boring. A little caveat. Like I do like, I mean, I, I like to explore, I like to explore them without needing to make it a thing too. So it's like, you can go down the path of like exploring AI or exploring social media without necessarily having to commit to making it part of your business. Cause like, I mean, this might just be me, but like, I do like to kind of like know about the things that are happening, but without putting the pressure on myself to like, and cool, we're going to have a whole social media plan and a whole AI plan and we're going to implement this for the business. Just taking that pressure down. Cause you do, cause you do need to explore and kind of make sure that you're still open. Cause it could be a fit for your business, but put like a, put a box around it. I'm going to spend a couple of hours on this, or I'm going to go to an event on it or something so that it doesn't cause you stress that you feel like you have to like go full tilt on that. Cause I think that's, that's really the challenge. And just still be able to say, no, like, Hey, I get to say, I think, but like, I'm just not for us. Like here's why, but still to be open to those things, you can, you can make that assessment one way or the other.

[47:06] Micah: I think that would be wise at the time I was not open to anything. Right. I was just like, no, no, we're not doing any of that. Right. But I agree with you. Um, recently, for example, when I say recently, a couple of months ago, right, we'd been tiptoeing around AI, but we did what we called an AI hackathon where we basically said, Hey, we're going to take an afternoon and we're just going to like throw stuff at the wall and see where it takes us. And it might tell us, wait, six months before trying this again. And it might tell us, Hey, this is mature and good. We happen to find out, Whoa, that was easier than we thought it's working. Let's pursue this. So I agree. Like, you know, keeping the eyes open, but definitely for a while there, I was, uh, I was definitely saying no to everything. And it felt, it felt good for one, because I predetermined like, no. Right. But I would still like, listen, I just wouldn't do it. Um, Melody, what's, what have we not touched on that the people listening should know about? So we kind of, we, we've gone in a couple of different directions, but what comes to mind for you that

[48:05] Melodie: would be important? I think the one thing, and I was on a podcast with Clayton mask, um, uh, the CEO of keep two. And I brought this up with him of there's this underlying assumption that I think brings an incredible amount of unhappiness to business owners of this idea that you're going to find a technology and it's just going to work consistently all the time. And you're not going to have any issues with it. You're going to be able to find people that support it perfectly. Their support's going to be perfect. It's never going to have any bugs. It's always going to do every single feature you think it should in every single way. And it's like, we seem to have this fairy tale in my, in your mind, kind of like, you know, the princess fairy tale. I'm going to find my prince charming one day

[48:47] Micah: and he'll rescue me and all my problems will be gone. Um, and there's like a technology out there

[48:53] Melodie: like, and there just isn't, and there's no right tool for your business. And it doesn't matter which CRM or membership platform or anything that you choose. There's going to be things that you're going to like about it. There's going to be things that you don't like about it. And there's going to be things that it just messes up sometimes. And I think accepting that brings a lot of peace to people, not accepting that just causes a lot of stress because even that for us as a service provider, we can get that pressure put on us of like, well, why didn't this work? And it's like, we don't, we don't know, like we do our best to always be proactive and be on top of this, but like there are just things that are out of our control. Technology is built by people and we are flawed. We're not perfect. We're, we're figuring this out as we go. And if you can appreciate that and accept that and then put checks and balances in place for the things that truly matter with the functioning and running of your business, it brings you so much more peace and ease within your business rather than that, like that struggle of trying to make what is reality different than what it is. Now, it's not to say you should accept like errors all the time and things not working all the time, but to appreciate like perfection is just not achievable. Let's get as close to it as possible, but appreciate that, you know, it's, you know, it's always going to be a long-term game.

[50:12] Micah: Thank you for sharing that. I hope, I hope the audience resonates with that. Like I am right now, because I didn't know I had that in my head, but I think I did like someday some tech, right. Or, or new tech that comes along. Was that the one I'm not sure should I have checked it out? It could

[50:27] Melodie: have been right. Versus just like you're saying, no, nothing's perfect. There's always going to be gaps.

[50:33] Micah: It's obviously you, you do everything you can, but just accepting that from the get-go definitely

[50:39] Melodie: does feel better. That is a weight off. It's almost like a relationship too. Cause when you get in a relationship with somebody, it's like, okay, like what can I tolerate about this person? What are my deal breakers? And what are the things I'm like, all right, it doesn't really matter. Like this, this I'm okay with, but like, oh no, you need to like wine and go out with me or do these things or whatever. Like what are your deal breakers and knowing that with your technology and with your people too, by the way, cause they're never going to be perfect. And knowing what your deal breakers are and what like you can tolerate, um, I think is, is just really helpful because, you know, mental health continues to be a topic because it should have been a topic for many years and appreciating that and realizing that I think, um, just helps make our lives a lot better. And I, I'd like to see a world where, you know, business and both for business owners and then also for team members that we appreciate that we are, we are human beings working. We are not

[51:35] Micah: machines. Definitely makes sense. I, it's a great analogy thinking of these pieces of software as like people in your life, whether, you know, relationships intimate or not, but yeah, just kind of like, yeah, you got to take the bad with the good. You know, what is the long-term value, even if there's some short-term hiccups, whatever, um, kind of build the trust bank account, things like that with these softwares. Yeah. I think that's got legs. Um, but if they beat you, then you should get rid of them. Yes. If the software is being abusive, if it's not a good

[52:06] Melodie: relationship, that's right. There are times we just need to switch it out. It's true. Very,

[52:12] Micah: very true. Well, on that note, Melody, um, thank you for coming. It is a happy note though. Like sometimes if your software, you know, don't demand perfection, but if it's time to switch it,

[52:25] Melodie: switch it. Have reasonable expectations and know what those expectations are and hold both your

[52:29] Micah: software and your team to it. I agree. And I think you, anybody who's listening could talk to you about that. Like what are reasonable expectations for my software, my tech staff, my team? Definitely. Cause I know you guys also like supplement teams, train people on teams and that sort of thing to, to be able to take care of stuff. How did people thank you by the way, for coming on and having this conversation? I've had a lot of fun, but how did people connect with you? You know, what, especially let's say somebody's at that a hundred thousand dollar mark or working toward it, or maybe working toward that million mark or add it. Um, how can they connect with you? Uh,

[53:04] Melodie: how do they engage with you? It's probably business tech ninjas.com. Um, if you want to get a better sense of just who we are and what we do, uh, we've got blogs and videos up there that really walk you through more about the methodology and decision-making practice. If you're around the a hundred K mark, um, we have a lot of just free resources to kind of guide you in that right direction. And we do offer some consulting to kind of like help just cut down on your learning curve. So you, as you scale, you don't have to spend as much energy figuring out the technology. You can focus on your actual business. Uh, and then for businesses around that seven K are around the seven bigger mark, we'll typically do some sort of audit and go through. And I, uh, I get to have a lot of fun in your systems to see all the wonderful things that are going on there and how to make it just easier for you, for your team to see what, see the numbers that matter. So you can make decisions based on those numbers and then how you can grow your business with more ease.

[53:57] Micah: It's beautiful. Well, we'll put the links to your website and also we didn't even mention it, but you just recently did a whole course for keep Academy about payments and collections. So melody is the real deal. Uh, like she said, she's been on the podcast recently with the CEO of keep. I've known her over 10 years, right? Like I said, you, you were our first certified partner, one of our few agency partners school and invest in my business. You're welcome. That's right. I convinced her to drop out of school. So anybody watching this check, you know, connect with melody, talk to her, have a conversation, go to her website and check it out. Highly recommend that you work with her. We've, we've worked together a long time. I've had a lot of mutual clients and, um, I just really appreciate you, Melody. Thanks for coming on.

[54:41] Melodie: It's always a pleasure.