Building a HIPAA Compliant, Multi-Language Membership Site with a Companion Mobile App Memberium

[00:00] Micah: It's Micah with Membarium and we have a special guest today, George Diaz.

[00:04] George: I got into the membership space and I remember Micah going, George, you got to learn how to build these membership sites. And I almost like, yeah, are you really sure? And he goes, shut up and learn it. I run into a lot of folks that I think want to do too much too fast. George, yes, you can do a million things, but you shouldn't be doing a million things.

[00:24] Micah: I've seen 20 businesses just like you and the ones that are successful do this, right? They skip that. They do this instead.

[00:30] George: We need a way to automate this. How are you going to sell this?

[00:36] Micah: George is a longtime friend, a longtime associate in the Keep Space and in the membership field. George, welcome to the show. I've known you a long time, but why don't you tell everybody a little bit about your journey to becoming a membership site expert?

[00:50] George: Sure. I've got a programming background. I got a computer science degree from way, way back, a little bit older than you, Micah. Yeah. And actually in 2010, that's when we met at FusionCon when it was called that. And at the time I was building websites. I was still working a day job and really got an appreciation for Keep. Barium came later, but I got into the membership space. And I remember Micah going, George, you got to learn how to build these membership sites. And I almost like, yeah, are you really sure? And he goes, shut up and learn it. And since 2015, I've been doing this full time. And 80, 90% of the work we do is membership sites, online course sites of one sort or another.

[01:32] Micah: Why do most of your clients, would you say, want to build a membership site?

[01:36] George: What is their reasoning?

[01:38] Micah: And do they come and say, I want to build a membership site? Or do they say something else?

[01:41] George: They think of it more as online courses. I want to say that's what tends to be at the front of it. I've got a guy that we built a guitar playing app and not app, a membership site. And he says, I need to put my courses online because I've been teaching this face to face for a very long time. And I want to better leverage myself, make my information available over the internet. He's in Sweden, speaks perfect English. So he wanted to broaden his audience. And that was his opportunity for doing it. But you typically have all types coming to the internet, either with a course that already exists or materials from in-person consulting, training, practice. And in other cases, we have people that come to us and say, I am editing the videos as we speak. And we're ready to launch this. I now need a platform to make it available to the world.

[02:33] Micah: They are, I think you said with the guy from Sweden, they're mostly trying to make more money with less time is what I gathered from that. Yes.

[02:42] George: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. How do I better leverage it? Because there's only so many hours in the day that you can be teaching. He has hired other people. So that's one way to leverage himself. But he really had some great material that he thought he could put online and start selling it that way.

[02:56] Micah: Let's start here because it's an interesting example. I feel like you said there's somebody with a pre-existing course that they need to move online and then people who are some sort of expert consultant, whatever, who need to turn that into a course.

[03:09] George: What was it like with this guy to move him online?

[03:14] Micah: What are some of the ahas from saying, hey, I'm a successful teacher. Who knows? Like, let's even pretend he's run workshops and live events and whatever. What are you doing when you move him online? Like, how do you translate that magic he can do in person online as best you can?

[03:32] George: Fortunately, he had spent a lot of time recording things and it is music. He's like a rock guitar player and he's got long hair. He's got the right look and everything. And so actually the biggest challenge was inventorying all of his lessons, organizing them into the courses. We've got a virtual assistant team that is, thank goodness, very detail oriented. We take an inventory of all the videos, all the content that goes with it. I don't think this lesson goes here or we're missing one here or this, maybe these are flipped. So there's a lot of, I want to say administration and project management that goes into these things. The technology with Membarium made it pretty straightforward to build it. We used LearnDash, which is the online course tool that we use most of the time. And he had a lot of great branding and visuals. So making the site look very attractive was not a big challenge for us.

[04:29] Micah: Gotcha. So in this case, you had, it sounds like a lot of the ingredients. You had the right personality. You had the content. It's interesting to me that you guys got involved in almost curating the content versus just like, Hey, we're going to protect it. We're going to build the page and protect it that you were able to give them some advice on how to package it. I'm curious, how did you approach product creation? Was it like, Hey, we're going to create a handful of courses or was it one big master course? What did you do with all of his content to turn it into an offer?

[05:00] George: He had some really good partitioning of it. He had three courses and then he had a, I want to say like a coached version where you sign up and then you could play things. You play your riff or your, and I want help with this. And then what he would do is he would point people at, Oh, you need to go to course two, lesson five, six, and seven, go over those because that's what will help you take it to the next level or get better in what you're. So it was a combination of do it yourself or do it with me. And then he was using the content to supplement his coaching.

[05:36] Micah: That's awesome. It's a good example. I feel with music where just like you said, if he's built out the resources to help somebody with whatever it is he hears in their sample and just point them over there, that's great leverage. Can I ask what some of the prices are just ballpark? If you remember what is it one time, is it a subscription?

[05:56] George: No, in his, it was the three courses were one time. And then the coaching was the one that had recurring prices. It was a long, this was over a year ago and he's had, he's tested out a lot of different prices. So I'm just, I don't have the pricing right, right up front.

[06:11] Micah: No worries. No worries. I know the case study isn't even about that. It just got my attention when you brought it up. So let's talk about this site. So skillssystem.com, right?

[06:21] George: Yes. Interesting. I've been working with Julie Brown as the owner of the company. I've been working with her five and a half years. And when she first approached me, honestly, I go, I'm more than happy to work with you, but I don't think this thing's going to sell. And honestly, over the years, I've quit vetting on people because you just don't know what they bring with them and the audience they bring with her. But she had spent some time recording a lot of video content to help either clinical practitioners, people that deal with mentally disabled folks, even people like prison guards that are dealing with violent, not mentally all their type of folks. And it helps them manage their emotions and manage the emotions of the people that they're working with. So what concerned me about her is she had course one and course two, and it's really part one and part two. It's a certification that she puts them through. Each of them has, I think it's 12 and eight lessons. And you're building up in these skills. So it starts with free thinking and planning and how do you do safety and relationships. So there's a very specific order. And she had done some phenomenal recording. Her and her daughter did all that work. And so our job then was to organize it into two LearnDash courses. At the beginning, that's all that was a part of the content. And she sells it for $20 a year, which was my concern from the very beginning. It's like, gosh, your revenue is going to be a challenge. But she's doing it because it's something that's needed in the field. Apparently, she's very unique in this field. She's got a PhD. She comes out of academia. But she's published books. And she's got a really strong following. And then in addition to that, she does webinars to that same audience, which kind of helps with the revenue streams.

[08:09] Micah: Gotcha. Yeah, I imagine that audience would have a lot of challenges and might be under-trained for like the psychological aspects of dealing with all of that. So that's cool that she does that and makes it affordable.

[08:22] George: And she also sells them in bulk group licenses to the state of some U.S. state that's got 100 employees working for them. Or it could be that they buy 400 seats. And then they split it up among four, five, six departments, each one with their own parent group leader. And then the invoicing is done behind the scenes, purchase orders, checks with customer service coordinating, giving people access.

[08:50] Micah: So let's get technical for a sec and break down some of these pieces. You've mentioned LearnDash. You've mentioned Membarium. We're talking about, in this case, how she's doing bulk licenses. I could guess at what you're doing to create all this. But do you want to just give a simple example so that if this is appealing to somebody like, oh, I didn't ever think that I could sell these group accounts, how does that happen? Or how does LearnDash work with these other things?

[09:13] George: Sure. In its essence, it's a two-course LearnDash site. I don't want to trivialize it, but it's technically, that's how it's built. It's connected with Membarium 2Keep. It's hosted on a HIPAA-compliant platform because they do gather enough information for them to have. I want to say they don't technically have to be HIPAA, but it builds a lot of credibility,

[09:35] Micah: especially to the type of government and large corporate buyers that they have.

[09:40] George: So it really covers their, I want to say, their marketing basis. We use Keep to do the typical Membarium. I've got to give them access, send them the email with their welcome credentials, creating their environments.

[09:54] Micah: And then there's a lot of, for example, at the very beginning, we can't send their passwords

[09:59] George: along through clear text. So they come to the site, they set their password from the very beginning. They have to go through accepting terms and conditions. And it's only after they've jumped through a couple of hoops that we allow them into the site. But we use Keep tags to manage all that. And as soon as they accomplish something, we turn a tag off, which then opens them up to the dashboard.

[10:21] Micah: LearnDash, for people who don't know, and maybe you could pull up the site and share your screen with this system for a minute. For those of you who don't know, LearnDash organizes the content and does things like progress bars and check marks when somebody completes something. And what George is essentially saying is Keep, which is a CRM, a customer database, is doing

[10:42] George: the billing and different things and managing, allowing somebody in after they've done the

[10:47] Micah: terms and conditions and so forth. So Keep is the brains, LearnDash is a lot of the display and the learning management. Go ahead, George.

[10:55] George: Right. Like I mentioned, they have course one and course two. This test account gives us access to those two. This is the training. They actually have a training session coming up this week, which allows people to go into a webinar live event. But here you go. You have some progress indicators. I can enter in here. They do have badges because they can get certified and then they can get continuing education credits with the different licensing organizations that they might be a part of. As they go through here, lesson one, A and one B, they earned the first badge. When we started this, we didn't want to go super sophisticated using gamey press or other systems. These are pretty straightforward and barium wrap shortcodes so that as soon as they pass the assessment that comes with each of these lessons, we light up another badge and they get a nice little pop-up that gives them an attaboy that's really cool before they go on to the next one. This is where you can get access to the companion app. Before we started, you were asking how people get there, but this is how we encourage them to do this. They don't make it very prominent at the very beginning because this only makes sense after you've been through the program. And now you want, I want to say like a reinforcement tool to keep top of mind what you've learned.

[12:13] Micah: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the app since we are there. As you explained it to me, the app is not really authenticating the users who come to it. It's basically like a free wide open app, but it's a resource that is a companion to the site. So maybe somebody could get it without using the site, but it doesn't sound that useful. It sounds like you don't really need to protect the app. So I thought that was a really cool idea and a cool way to use an app, make it a lot simpler. You don't have to deal with a bunch of authentication and junk, but you're delivering something valuable that is more convenient via the app. Right.

[12:49] George: Right. And they service a very non-technical audience. So they have to be very careful. Like even here at the beginning, typically you would see the language controls up here at the top. We really wanted to keep everything right in one place. Like for example, we do some additional captioning, American Sign Language, Icelandic, which I was surprised, but they've got a contingency of clinical workers out of Iceland and they got a grant. They did the captioning and then she partnered with them and us to make the captions available on the site. That's how they did the Spanish. And as a matter of fact, we're working on French now. That should be up like in the next couple of months. And that's being done by a partner out of Toronto.

[13:35] Micah: Go ahead and scroll down. I'm curious what else is on this page. So I understand those are going to go into courses. Okay. So reinforcing.

[13:41] George: Right. So encouraging this. These are, matter of fact, the skills posters are a lot of what you go to the app for. So when you open this up, it does show you these. So this is something you could print and then remind yourself of where you are in the skills system. So just think about it. How do you calm yourself down? A lot of these things are very common. I've learned this over the last five years. They're common to us and almost innate, but for some people who don't have that emotional development, they almost have to compartmentalize. Oh, hold on a second.

[14:15] Micah: I've got to think a certain way.

[14:18] George: Which stage am I in? And so these are like flashcards that they make available so that a clinician can give that to one of their patients. They might give it to a parent of an autistic child so that they can coach themselves after they've learned the material that's a part of the program.

[14:34] Micah: Can you join this meeting by your phone and show us the app a little bit? So hopefully this is coming through on the recording here.

[14:43] George: George is sharing his phone, which has the app up that is a companion to the membership

[14:48] Micah: site. So George, go ahead and show us what's in here. You showed us the PDF version of it. I'm interested. What are the skills posters look like? Right.

[14:55] George: So the skills poster, this was the first part of the app that we published. And if you saw the PDF files, there's a lot of commonality between these. So we basically got a lot of those PDF files and rebuilt them as the app. So this is a fairly static app. It's not a dynamically generated. We're not logging anybody in, but I can use this on the fly. I can have the phone with me and remember, oh, hold on. I got to figure out a safety plan. And so I can click, oh, OK, what's the level of risk? Oh, it seems like it's medium risk. OK, what type of safety plan do I need? Oh, I need a talking safety plan. And this corresponds with the lessons that they would have gone through.

[15:38] Micah: This is so cool. It's such a low tech, like an app is high tech, but the implementation is such low tech, just so accessible and so useful. I'm thinking to myself, every program I've been in, I would have loved it if their slides had become an app. So I'm sitting around and I click that app and I look through some of their content to refresh. It's really cool. It's really smart use of tech.

[15:58] George: When we started using this, especially given that their price point is so low, I was worried about the funding. And when we started developing, this wasn't inexpensive to build, but it also, because it's a bunch of flashcards, it's a lot of static content, which really simplified the implementation of the skills posters and the skills coaching. The track builder quiz game is a little more advanced.

[16:24] Micah: Yeah. Let's have a look at that. What does that do?

[16:27] George: So this is a way for you to test how well you have ingrained the learning.

[16:33] Micah: Interesting.

[16:34] George: So I can come up in here. There's a timer down here. You'll see that as soon as I click on it, the timer at the top starts going and you're almost racing. So what skill is this? I think this one is clear picture. So you see how it gave me a one, like I passed that one. What is skill number five? I think it's me activity. I got that one right. How can skills help us be what others want us to be? That's probably wrong. So you see how it sing me for that. And 26 seconds have gone by. So it's keeping track of how long it is. And it's almost like, how fast can I race through it so that I know that this is very self I've ingrained the learning.

[17:14] Micah: Yeah, this is great. It reminds me of a learn dash quiz, but it's a little more fun in this format.

[17:19] George: And then it's low pressure.

[17:21] Micah: I'm guessing they just take this and then nothing happened and they take it again and they're just trying to improve. Exactly.

[17:27] George: Yeah. Because when you go into it again, it starts from zero again. I want to say, yeah. And it randomly generates the questions. So it's one bank of questions that we're running through here multiple times. And then the games just get a little bit more advanced as you go. And then it's got the gamifications with the train track at the top to see how far along you've gotten until you get to the ribbon at the end.

[17:49] Micah: So what is next for the app? I think it's brilliant implementation, but do you have a future roadmap or not?

[17:57] George: I was talking, we meet every week. And one of the things they have this intellectual property thing that they've never really launched. And what they're wanting is a way for them to have like a coach, an avatar setup where in addition to the coaching and the app, I'm sorry, in addition to the LearnDash course and the app, they could have a coaching module where you entered some information where you might be struggling. And it worked a little bit like AI chatbot that would come up and say, oh, you probably ought to start here. Go to lesson two and go to this topic and grab some knowledge there and then come back for what you ought to be doing next.

[18:41] Micah: I love it. So what you just said reminds me of what you were saying earlier with the guitar playing guy. Exactly. And it makes me wonder, in your opinion, that we're going to go off in the weeds here for a second. Sure, sure. In your opinion, how soon will AI be able to do what he's doing? Meaning customer of his sends in a riff, a sample, whatever. The AI listens and says, oh, you know what you need? Module this, lesson that.

[19:07] George: I think AI is likely capable of doing it already because it's really a rules engine. And if someone asks this, then here's what you get out. But I want to say the programming languages or the rules building tools are not universally understood. And there's no clear winner. One benefit I get is I LearnDash and I know they've done a really good job. And if I use the features that LearnDash has, I feel comfortable that I'm building a learning management system that makes sense. The same is true with Membarium. It's like, I know the login, the access features, they're proven, it's done. And now my job is to implement.

[19:50] Micah: And I think what needs to happen is some equivalent of that so that then when I go to build an AI

[19:56] George: tool, I'm not as a consultant starting from scratch. And by the way, that also means that the price point for someone to be able to really use it goes down. And by the way, I'm just not very knowledgeable on that. Maybe the tools are already there, but I haven't found them for this sort of platform.

[20:12] Micah: I think it's, yeah, it's the right answer. There's not an AI platform that is so far ahead that you feel it's intuitive enough to meet your need without you basically developing this almost on your own using AI, right?

[20:26] George: Right. Our team, some of our team members that are programmers are like, boss, we could build one of these. And I go, I'm sure you can, but could we actually make some money at it? Technology and business decisions don't always sink. For example, we were one of the first folks that were using these umbrella accounts, the group accounts. And there was definitely a need that needed to be addressed. And then you and David, I don't know who came up with the idea first, but the minute it came

[20:52] Micah: out, we had customers that were saying, oh, I need to enroll multiple people in a course.

[20:57] George: And it's like with keep out of the box, you can't do that. But now with umbrella accounts. So having someone that's thinking and looking at what the demand is and then adding it to a tool that we already know, you're almost like using someone else's look ahead to run your consulting practice.

[21:14] Micah: Yeah, it makes sense. And since Dave's not here, I'm going to take all the credit for umbrella accounts. No, of course. I'm just kidding. I'm pretty sure it was his idea. And of course, he wrote the codes. Kudos to Dave. He gets the credit. But yeah, I see what you're saying. If you're using a best in class platform. The other thing is with something like Membarium, like you're saying, we've got thousands of users and they're telling us what to do, right? They're the ones pushing the envelope, telling us we synthesize that and then release a feature. And you're like, oh, yeah, this must make some sense, right?

[21:42] George: By the way, without going off on a tangent here, we do a lot of buddy boss work. And one of the things that we like about buddy boss is that it addresses so many community features that LearnDash users need. And they've always been very tight with LearnDash. But not everyone needs them all. So sometimes these tools can also be overwhelming because it's like, how do I put all these to use? And it's like, no, pick the one you need now. Get that one out there. And then you have these other ones. So not everyone needs umbrella accounts. Not everyone needs a companion app. But the tools are there. And if it's, hey, that might be something I use. But don't start with that because before you know it, you're not focused on what you need to be focused on at first.

[22:27] Micah: Yeah, and I think that's where the value of talking to somebody like you comes in, because it's easy for, I feel, somebody in the audience, let's say the guitar guy. At some point, he's in the audience. He sees some internet marketer up there saying, hey, you should go online and make millions and drive a Ferrari to the beach where you make more money, right? All the BS. That's such a fun thought, though, right? That's what these membership things are all about. More time. Anyhow, so he's sitting there and he hears this and he comes out of the gates like, oh, I need to do what that person is doing.

[22:59] George: And they had an app and they had group accounts or they had whatever it is.

[23:03] Micah: I need to copy them. I think consultants are so valuable like you where they come in and you can help them understand like, OK, for your particular case, for your budget, for your price, for your audience, let's massage it a little. Let's tweak it to make it have better chances. Because you and I know not every membership site works, right? We often talk about the success stories. Maybe you can tell me, you don't have to go into any unsuccessful story, but what is the difference for you? You mentioned you don't bet on these founders, these people who come in with the idea because you're just not sure how they're going to.

[23:37] George: And especially when you don't know the whole history of what got them there. At the beginning, you're in a sales process, right? I don't want to turn down their idea unless I really understand it. And you don't always get five and a half years of hindsight to go, gosh, they really had their act together at the beginning. And that's why they've been able to come this. But I run into a lot of folks that I think want to do too much too fast. Now, I use my software engineering background and I am very analytical. I hate gut instincts because most of the time they're wrong. I like, let's get something out there, see how many people use it, see what sort of feedback you get, and then go to the next level. Even as much as I recommend build, learn, dash, memory, and keep and all this stuff. Some people really ought to start with a Facebook group, a private Facebook group, coach in that environment, test out your idea. Can you sell it? And if you get to the point where it's like, I can't give people access fast enough to my Facebook group, it's like, okay, you've got a problem that then the technology can address, but you don't spend a lot of time and effort and money on things that really don't make a difference before you have a viable product.

[24:50] Micah: I couldn't agree more. How do you or do you help them sell their product? Do you only help them build and develop and fulfill, or do you help with sales?

[24:59] George: We do some strategic consulting.

[25:01] Micah: We don't really get into like sales, but for example, with courses, we've done so many

[25:06] George: of them. We've seen the sort of setups that do work. We'll see some people offer three, four, five, six options. And it's why don't we start with small, medium, and large aiming people at the medium because the way they sell popcorn at the theaters, right? So we've seen a lot of these, so we can advise in some cases, but we really do rely on the customer. Like the guitar guy really had a lot of sales experiences from a lot of the other programs he had been exposed to. So he needed us mainly for building. And when we saw that maybe he might be going outside of where he should have, we advised them, but that's not really our specialization. I can do it, but that's not what my business is about.

[25:54] Micah: That makes sense. I'm the same way. Sometimes it's hard to convince someone that you can't or shouldn't help them with sales, right? They're like, yeah, just throw this together. And you're like, there's a difference between what I'm going to do and what like a marketing agency really could do. But to your point earlier about starting with what you got, starting small, so on, yeah, just doing the basics, seeing if it's going to work. I love the idea of starting in a Facebook group and seeing where that takes you and having issues before you start dealing with this technology, because there are some people, and I'll tell not a specific membership horror story, but there are people who build and build and build. And when they do finally sell, they think they're going to just make a ton of money and it's going to be so successful because of what they built. But sometimes they find there's not an audience and they regret all the building, right? It suddenly becomes a burden instead of this incredible asset that they've created. I agree with you as well on build something small, sell it. Let me ask you this, maybe a little personal. How successful are you in convincing them not to overbuild? Are you able to wrangle that in and make them start smaller today?

[27:07] George: Sometimes I can, it really depends, but some people are just dead set. We're going to do it like this. And it's, I'm your builder. My biggest concern when I'm talking to people is, are we the right match for them? If all of a sudden they start talking about, we also want to bring in HubSpot and we want to bring in this.

[27:24] Micah: It's, hold on, maybe we're not a good fit for you.

[27:29] George: That's really my concern. If they want to build something that is maybe outside of what they ought to be building, you can take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink, right? So we're both thinking about probably the same test case from our mastermind group from many years ago. Gosh, don't waste all that money, please. And some people will.

[27:50] Micah: I've had an almost repeat of that experience recently. And from the beginning, I was even like, oh man, this is very similar. I'm telling them right from the beginning, hey, we got to sell. We got to get out there. Almost a year later since the initial engagement, very little selling, right? A lot of building, which in a way is interesting and good because they also sell group accounts and selling just a couple of those group accounts makes up for it.

[28:16] George: Yeah, it makes a big difference.

[28:17] Micah: Yeah.

[28:18] George: So we have run into a lot of people and one very recently that they basically knuckled down, built it themselves, built it as good as you could for your first try and hit it out of the park sales wise. And then they come to us going, okay, we know our idea works. We've actually made good money, but oh my gosh, we have a cluster F here that we, what's

[28:46] Micah: the keep account tags are out of control.

[28:50] George: Memberium, they've got like 25 different membership levels. And it's like, are you probably only using two of those? So there's a huge history of stuff going on. And then when they come to us, it's, we want you to help us build the next version, right? Make it scalable. And those make really good customers because they understand how painful it was to build it the way they did. But they're confident that they can sell it. And that those end up being just knock them out of the park type of businesses.

[29:20] Micah: Yeah, those kinds of businesses, there's quite a bit of work to be done if they have a large audience, because even small optimizations are totally worth it. I love those. To your point, we're dealing with somebody right now. I think it was just yesterday we discovered they had over 14,000 tags are on the call before it when it's hanging and all this kind of stuff. And it was a similar issue where they have real problems where implementing the technology is going to be like an immediate pressure release valve, which is the best case, right? Success causing problems. Those are good problems to have. Too many customers. They're buying too many things. It's a little disorganized. We have too much content. It's like success all the way. Good for you. Let's clean it up, right? For people watching this, I want to put this in early. We're nowhere near the end of the conversation. But I want to just encourage them if they are in a position where they need to talk to you, what do those conversations go like? Because I think you're pretty level-headed. And of some of our agency partners, you're one of four currently of our top partners. You have a more, I think, reasonable approach, a kickstart approach. You have the ability to kick out a lot of these. And if I'm saying anything wrong, feel free to correct me. But if somebody's vibing with what you're saying, can they have a conversation with you? How do those conversations go? So what can you do for people?

[30:46] George: Yeah, the best way to get a hold of me is on our website, LarryJacob.com. The very top, it's do you want to talk? It's almost in your face. But our conversations, I'm not a high-pressure, let-me-close-you kind of person. It's what are you trying to do? Explain to me what it is that you're trying to accomplish. I'm going to ask you a lot of questions. I hope that's fine. I want to make sure I see this project the way you see it so that we're not sitting there going this way when you're wanting to go that way. So we want to make sure that we understand what you're trying to do. And then if we get to the end of the call and the call warrants, let's talk some more. Let's do it. But if not, let's cut it off now so we're friends six months from now. So I'm really upfront. As much as I want to close more business, I'm not going to close business. It's just stupid business for us and just as much for them. So that's kind of the approach that we take. And again, if you're doing LearnDash, Memberium, Keep, we're doing a lot of active campaign work now. BuddyBoss, that's definitely within our wheelhouse. We're doing a lot of BuddyBoss app work. And we're also using a tool called Blockly, which allows you to expand the BuddyBoss app. So now that's kind of part of our wheelhouse. But the minute you start going, oh, let's say go high level and I want you to do my funnels. And it's like, well, hold on. That's, I'm sure we could do it. But that's probably the biggest lesson I got out of the original mastermind where we met was like, George, yes, you can do a million things, but you shouldn't be doing a million things.

[32:16] Micah: Yeah, absolutely not.

[32:18] George: Anybody who can do a million things most likely cannot do them that well. And with this type of technology where you're doing automation, you don't want to automate anything less than the best, right?

[32:30] Micah: So a few platforms knowing them really well, I think is the way to go. I've always for sure thought that way. In your mind with ActiveCampaign and Keep, for those listening, if you're not familiar, those are two of the CRMs that Memberium connects to. George, what is the difference between those two systems for you? If a customer comes and they say, hey, which one should I pick ActiveCampaign or Keep and why? What are some thoughts you might share with them?

[32:56] George: The one that comes up right away is Keep has an e-commerce module, which works, I want to say, for about like 80% of the public. When you're using ActiveCampaign, you've got to bring in either a WooCommerce or a ThriveCard or some other. You've got one more level of integration. Your Keep is going to be more expensive over the past years. As a matter of fact, in the forums, there's a lot of discussions about, yeah, they're raising prices again.

[33:22] Micah: And I've been paying just a little bit more than what I paid 10 years ago when I got my, actually 14 years ago when I got my first app. So I really can't complain, but for some people, that's like a real drain.

[33:36] George: ActiveCampaign is going to be less expensive. It's even if you start with their Lite or their Pro, the initial versions, you probably have a lot of power and aren't missing out on a lot of things that you think you need, but maybe you don't need them yet. For Keep, a lot of folks will see a lot of features that they're going, wow, that's pretty cool, but when would I use that? So Keep, because of the history, just has a lot of stuff. And I'm referring primarily to the KeepMax Classic because that's the one that I think Memberium users are most using. And we haven't really made a lot of inroads with the other ones because most of the time when people come to us, they're in KeepMax Classic.

[34:15] Micah: We were talking software earlier about how you get in a software and it's like, oh, if they have a feature, maybe I should use it. Maybe it's, but Keep is a good example, like you're saying, where somebody coming in might see all of these features and assume that they should be using them. But again, having somebody like you, a consultant, kind of say, oh, actually for where you're at, I've seen 20 businesses just like you and the ones that are successful do this, right? They skip that. They do this instead. A reality check in a way.

[34:43] George: Yeah, like Keep has a decent affiliate program that I want to say maybe one out of 10 customers uses because they don't, that's not something that's very pertinent to their business. They've got a really good opportunity management piece. Well, let me hold it back. They've got an opportunity management piece, good, bad, whatever it is, what it is. I used it once years ago for myself just to see, could I use it? And it wasn't applicable to me. So it's got a lot of features that you might use. But for example, if you're running a call center, then those opportunities are good. But I've only run into one of those in my 12 plus years doing this.

[35:26] Micah: Yeah, it's interesting because they, a long time ago, started there, right? With kind of call centers and opportunity management. And so it is, or was very strong. I don't know how it compares to things today, but it definitely has a full feature set. Yeah, it keeps an interesting one.

[35:42] George: Active campaign is a, like you said, it's a little cheaper.

[35:45] Micah: They are more focused on, let's say, campaigns, deliverability, simplicity. And then you're going to have to go outside for some sort of e-commerce. Luckily with Membarium, there's Membarium Pay, which is a super basic starter thing. WooCommerce is a good option. Like you said, it's another integration layer. Some things you, some people might even pay for. So Keep, I think is nice sometimes when someone's making that decision, because they can say, when I need these things, they are there and integrated.

[36:15] George: And I don't have to bring in yet another thing to bolt on.

[36:20] Micah: Yeah, and don't have a bunch of different bills.

[36:22] George: So it's, it cuts both ways.

[36:24] Micah: I've heard people really passionate on both sides of that. And I'm always thinking to myself, I don't want to, I don't want to push a client too hard either way and have it be my decision. Because then if they have some sort of heartache, they're going to blame me versus trying to form them, let them make a good choice. You mentioned BuddyBoss. So we got BuddyBoss, LearnDash, Membarium, and then some CRM, Keeper Active Campaign. Are there any other ingredients that you think are just like necessary, must have, should have?

[36:52] George: Those are our bread and butter. Sometimes we get people coming to us and they don't need a CRM. So Membarium doesn't play. And we might play with a commerce member or member press. But I'm telling you, the minute I get there, the requirements start creeping. And once you get a little farther into it, it's like, oh man, I wish we would have gone the Membarium Keeper, the Membarium Active Campaign route. And I'm not just saying that because I'm an agency partner. But things tend to get more and more difficult because you're limited to only WordPress. And it's not meant to be a CRM with tagging and things like that. So you miss out on features and you end up having to work a lot harder to deliver the equivalent of what you would be doing when a Membarium Keeper set up.

[37:40] Micah: Yeah, we're even moving somebody from Kajabi, which is a cool all-in-one, you might say, membership type delivery system that's popular.

[37:48] George: And I like Kajabi to a point, right?

[37:51] Micah: But then when you hit that point, and in this customer's case, they are very successful. And the little headaches that Kajabi gives them multiplied by hundreds of people are big headaches, right? It makes sense, like you're saying, to go with Membarium connected to a CRM. You can really refine some of those little details.

[38:07] George: Yeah, and what ends up happening with the Kajabi, the Thinktifix, even Customer Hub, if you want to start up fast, prototype, just like I was recommending go with a private Facebook group, sometimes that's not a bad approach. Keeping in mind that you may have to forklift the whole thing out in order to get what you want later. Because it's a really, if you want to do something very fast, it's doable.

[38:33] Micah: A very simple Membarium LearnDash Keep site or ActiveCampaign site.

[38:40] George: But for us, we whip these up like nothing. But you can get something very quickly that you can manage yourself. And then there really is no, you don't run up against those limits. It's like, oh, you can't do affiliates. Or you can't do, let's say, umbrella type accounts. And then you're going, okay, we really need this feature. And now we've basically got to forklift out the solution, bring another one in order to fix this problem.

[39:05] Micah: Yeah, I think that's what I was trying to say about you guys earlier is you have the quickest, simplest, it's my perception, way to get started. Where it's low-key, basic ingredients, get you running, a little bit comparable to one of these SaaS things, right? If you build them kind of the basics and turn them loose. But then being in WordPress, they can add all sorts of things. And then again, being in WordPress, being able to go into PHP if they want, they can customize if they want to. Typically, let me ask you a question. How often are you diving into PHP versus able to accomplish what you want with shortcodes?

[39:43] George: We get a lot of people that want to customize a LearnDash template. In BuddyBoss, there's a lot of things that aren't configurable. So we'll go in and modify the way something looks or the options and some of the menus that aren't currently set up to be modified. But we've also had people that want to totally change the way a LearnDash course grid wants to appear. And that makes sense. So these are more mature solutions and they want to take it to the next level because they don't want to limit themselves to what these platforms do. I'm an engineer.

[40:20] Micah: I'm not Tiffany.

[40:22] George: So for me, good enough is usually good enough. Some people just, they have a different opinion, but we can do that. But it requires custom coding, which has a lot of implications long-term because it's like, hey, we need to change this. It's like, you can't just go in with a shortcode and someone who knows Membarian fairly well, I've got to bring in a coder. And now it just makes things more complicated, more expensive to maintain in the long run. And it's part of our business model, but there's got to usually be a good reason for that and not just saying, I think I want it to look like this.

[40:57] Micah: So it sounds like you're really using it to modify BuddyBoss and LearnDash look and feel. It's not really like functionality passing data. It's just look and feel modifications.

[41:10] George: Yeah, but for example, in this, when the skill system site, here's something that they needed because it was causing a lot of manual issues. So I buy a 100-seat account, right? So I also want to use LearnDash's reporting, which Membarian does a really good job of doing it. But in order for me to have access to only my people's reporting, we all have to have the same tag. And we all have to be enrolled in the same courses. So if you were to come up and say, okay, Micah, you've got this account. And then someone manually comes up and assigns that to you, you have it. But then when you invite child accounts, it can be done, but it's pretty cumbersome. So what we've done is we've run a series of just small PHP things that we call from Keep. And you get a tag that matches your Keep contact ID. And then we store the ID of that in a custom field.

[42:15] Micah: Then every time you invite a child account, we pass that number along to them.

[42:20] George: And then they get that tag. So everybody's automatically enrolled in the courses that you want to do. Those sound like really simple things to do, but it took like five little calls to make it happen. And now we use those over and over again because every once in a while we have people that need that. But that's a step in automation that we built only after it's like, hey, this is taking too much of our team's time. We need a way to automate this. And we did that. We also, if you have, let's say, 10 seats and now you hit your limit and I need another 10, I need another five. However, we've also written some code that allows you to sell an additional five seats. Then we do a call into Keep. We find the count. We use that to update the number of seats that they have so that now when they look at how many people they have in their number of enrolled, we bump it up.

[43:19] Micah: That one actually, we actually tapped a lot of David's know-how to make sure we got that one working right.

[43:25] George: So they're little things that require some coding, but they really make the usability of the site work better.

[43:32] Micah: Gotcha.

[43:33] George: So some extra kind of fine tuning also to the parent-child reporting and all that kind of stuff.

[43:39] Micah: That's cool.

[43:40] George: So that's where we are messing with Keep, Enman, Berium and making sure that LearnDash, they're all kind of playing well together.

[43:47] Micah: Yeah, I think it's a miracle sometimes that all these different systems can just like plug and play into each other, just how WordPress did that. The compatibility is so cool. What is something, George, that I should have asked you, maybe some area of membership sites that you're especially good at or some piece of advice you want to give to people listening? And let me qualify it a little, a lot of people watching this are thinking of a membership site or just getting started building. Of course, some people are experienced looking for nuggets, but more toward the beginners.

[44:22] George: I think for beginners, I've got an offering, it's called Profitable Online Course Builders. And it really gets into what does someone who's going to offer a course for the first time need to do? So how do you get into people's that are potential buyers heads to understand what they want in terms of how you can sell it? And I can't stress enough, I had this one guy, he's out of Switzerland, and he had written books for academia. And he wanted to teach leadership and management. And he had a huge qualification for doing that. And I go, how are you going to sell this? I was really concerned, and he was really fired up, and he had team members. And I go, so are you, because he, I go, so it seems like you like to teach women executives that are in that. I'm climbing in my career, but now I have a family and I want to make an adjustment. He goes, yeah. And I go, I also hear you say that you want to work with men who are twilighting their careers, and they want to figure out how do you land the plane into retirement? He goes, yeah, I do that too. And it's like, dude, you've got to decide what you want to do. And then make sure that you can sell into that audience. What is it that's their biggest pain point? What is it that, what is it, what are their buying triggers? And he assumed as the expert that he knew that. And I tell anybody who wants to hear it, you, the expert, are contaminated. It's been so long since you've known that unless you ask other people, you can't tell what they are looking for when they're wanting to buy your stuff. And this program that I have actually forces people through that process.

[46:05] Micah: It's, I love the way you put that. You, the expert, are contaminated. I've definitely felt that. So I've been, obviously, do membership sites and membership site software. But I've also done my own trainings. And it's so frustrating to know a subject. But then to be like, what do I put in my slides to communicate it to somebody who's going to be in this audience? Because to me, it's just so simple, right? It's almost unconscious and not even like consciously available to understand. I love that word, contaminated. I've been looking for a way to describe to people like, yeah, your perspective is, you know.

[46:41] George: And by the way, it's even worse. Because think of the attorney who's been working for a big law firm for a long time. And he's going, I want to go on my own. His, the things that made him successful in that law practice are probably his biggest negatives. Because he knows how to do it. But you need to forget about all that and figure out how do you sell it. And I always tell people, I go, look, if you could sell a million hours of legal cases,

[47:17] Micah: couldn't you find someone to do the lawyering for you?

[47:21] George: And most people will tell you, man, if I could sell a ton of them, yeah, I hire a bunch of kids. And we start cranking out legal cases. And it's like the same thing that makes you really good at what you do is a big detriment to you launching your business. Because you want to stay good at what, using what you used to do makes you less valuable as someone that's out there selling and building your business.

[47:44] Micah: I feel like you navigated that really well, George, because when I met you, you weren't, you're new to having your own business as far as I know in general.

[47:55] George: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, that's, I was a complete newbie.

[47:58] Micah: Yeah, and then you were able to get out there, explore some options, end up on something and stay with it and build it up. Why do you think you were able to adapt? Because like you say, we were at these events and you got some sort of advice, like, hey, focus on this, focus on that. What I think the reason you're on this call today is you actually did those things. Most people hear it and they're like, oh, good idea. And they don't do it.

[48:20] George: I'm just wondering, what advice can you give people?

[48:23] Micah: What caused you to be like, yeah, I'm going to do that and actually do it?

[48:26] George: Yeah, actually surround yourself with people who will be honest with you. We met through the mastermind that you and your partners had set up. And I'm telling you, it was so counterintuitive to me. And I remember being on hot seats where people are going, George, why are you selling video editing? And it's like, because I can do it really well. And it's like, what do you want to be when you grow up?

[48:50] Micah: And it's really having people challenge your thinking so that you can really get outside of your own self.

[48:59] George: It takes a ton of humility. Some painful learning experiences. And I remember when I decided one of the advices that I remember, it's like niche down until it hurts. And I go, really? The first time I heard that made no sense to me. And then I go, you know what? I am only going to sell membership sites. Back when there was LearnDash hadn't been invented. And I was like, oh, but is my business going to totally shut down because I won't get any leads? And I'm telling you, I panicked over that for a couple of weeks.

[49:35] Micah: And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, George does membership sites.

[49:39] George: Oh, George does membership sites. Oh, George. And you become known as the guy that does membership sites or whatever it is that you specialize in. But if you do a million things, people can't know you for something.

[49:50] Micah: Do you come across people who have already settled on their niche? Or do you ever pass that advice on and get them to change it?

[49:58] George: I don't. Because of my walk, I usually don't run into those types. I'll sometimes run into, like, my kids are 30s to 20s. And I'll run into their peers. Because I've done a lot of career counseling over the years. And they'll come in here. And especially in that age group, when they're either thinking of changing jobs or they're trying to wonder. And it's what do you want to do? What is it that whole niching down? Because even if it's selecting a career, you've got to do it.

[50:28] Micah: Otherwise, why should I hire you?

[50:30] George: So it's advice that works. But I just don't run into a lot of people in the business stages where that advice really applies.

[50:37] Micah: Gotcha. You might think you're grown up. And maybe you plan on doing membership sites forever. But I was going to ask, what does George want to be when he grows up? Like, what's after membership sites? Or what's the next evolution of it?

[50:48] George: I think we're going to be covering more platforms. And by that, like, I know that ActiveCampaign is something we only started doing last year. We'll probably keep following that along. Keep in mind, we started off doing Keep. Then we started doing membership sites with Memberium kind of leading the way. And that was our world. And then I remember LearnDash. And I remember, what the heck do we need LearnDash for? And then you start seeing, hold on, LearnDash really plays a part that building the manual doesn't make sense. And so, interestingly enough, our marketing has become very LearnDash BuddyBoss focused, which I didn't. If you told me that five years ago, four years ago, I'd just say, no, that's never going to happen. So, it's keeping an eye. Like, for example, mobile apps is not something that I ever thought we'd be doing. But I really kept an eye on the BuddyBoss app offering.

[51:40] Micah: BuddyBoss started selling that probably four years ago.

[51:44] George: And it was, it didn't work. And I go, I can't work with that because the last thing I wanted people, hey, George, you told me to go on BuddyBoss app. And so, we waited until it became more mature. And we can make a nice offering out of it.

[51:58] Micah: I anticipate that being something that probably grows us to some extent.

[52:04] George: And then AI, I still, it's almost like when Bitcoin, everybody was into Bitcoin and I just never saw it. I hate to compare it to Bitcoin because that's not the same stuff. But it's almost like AI, is it really applicable in our space? I'm not saying no. But I will tell you, I got guys on my team that will write emails that sound like Winston Churchill wrote.

[52:27] Micah: And it's because they use AI and English isn't their first language.

[52:31] George: And it's interesting. I go, hey, bring down the formality of the language and the next email is that much better. So, there's technology there. I don't know how it will fit in. But I think that's just something to keep an eye on to see where that might take our customers.

[52:47] Micah: Yeah, it's been, what, a year and a half or so since ChatGPT kind of made it big. And when it first came out, it almost seemed like, oh, this is going to change everything so fast. Just like, right, when mobile came out and social and like you're saying, Bitcoin. There's a bubble and it bursts and it's, I think you and I are both trying to time those waves.

[53:08] George: With AI, for example, we are, it's something we want to adopt.

[53:14] Micah: It's like on our annual, hey, we need to be using it more this year. And in our three to five year, be leaders in it. But yeah, as far as right now, it's clever. It's good at a lot of things. But maybe I'm not clever enough to make it sing the way it should.

[53:29] George: Because you do hear about people doing amazing things, right?

[53:32] Micah: And startups and all this. So, I'm very intrigued. We'll have to keep talking about it. But yeah, I agree with you.

[53:38] George: I turn 61 next week. So, I've been around the block a few times. And I've seen so much technology come and go. AI was a big deal in the 80s. And I remember we did a lot of it in grad school. There was a lot of talk and a lot. But the power of the computers, the computers weren't powerful enough to really make much of it. So, it faded. So, it's interesting to see something that people thought of that long ago is now coming more and more of a reality. But I've seen things come and go. I remember when Google was like a really cool idea. But Yahoo was the dominant player. I've been around long enough to see things come and go. Remember MySpace? Where are they now?

[54:21] Micah: Yeah, it'll be interesting how OpenAI does. All this stuff fascinates me. I know we're getting way off from the membership topic. But let's bring it around. So, AI with memberships. We talked about maybe an AI giving feedback to members and things like that. Would you recommend that somebody use AI? Like, should ChatGPT be one of the tools they're using for parts of their job? Sorting content, something? Or are you like, yeah, it's still too error prone. I'm just going to let the humans do it.

[54:53] George: Yeah. You know, remember when most sites had an FAQ? I think there's a really good way to do the FAQ sort of thing with chatbots. Now, the problem is that so many of us use chatbots. When you go to like, try to fix something with your AT&T or your cable bill, and it's, no, I need a body. I don't need some idiot chatbot doing it. So, you're up against the negativity because it doesn't work the way you need it to work. But could a chatbot be set up? And I know they're a good platform. That's not our space, so we haven't done too much of that work.

[55:31] Micah: Something that can really intelligently, hey, if you ask this question, this person definitely

[55:35] George: needs to go over here. So, it's a very complex set of rules that will get you to an answer. And if it's effective, people will use it. Right now, most people, it's like, no, I don't need to reset my password right now. I need to get to the next level.

[55:49] Micah: Yeah. What's interesting, like you said, if it's effective, they'll use it. But I also feel like we have a low tolerance for error, where if you go to the thing and it makes a mistake, like twice, you're, I don't know about it.

[56:00] George: This is wasting my time. I'm trying to save time. I'm not trying, because nobody wants to sit there forever waiting for the person to answer the phone, right? But I also don't want to sit there for 20 minutes trying to get this chatbot to tell me what I need.

[56:11] Micah: Well, George, let's talk about Larry Jacob, internet marketing. In the middle of the call, we mentioned if you're interested in talking to George, you can reach him, go to his website, larryjacob.com, catch it at the top. I just want to, I always think it's interesting. I want you to talk about the origin of your company. Is it your grandfather's names? The two grandfathers?

[56:29] George: My father's name is, was Lazaro. My middle name, just like it says there, my middle name, Lazaro. But when he got here from Cuba, he was immediately branded Larry. And then my grandfather's name was, now my grandkid's name is Jacob. And so my wife and I go, I really want to name my business that both of those guys really had an impact on me. And my wife goes, didn't they nickname your dad Larry?

[56:53] Micah: And I go, Larry Jacob.

[56:55] George: And a lot of people think, I still have people come up and say, hey, I need to get ahold of Larry. And it's, there is no real Larry here, but, but that's the origin of the business. He was a great guy. He raised six kids and at age of 59, which is a little younger I am now, gets booted out of Cuba into Miami by the whole Castro communism thing. And he lived the next 10 years, actually a pretty happy man, despite the fact that they uprooted him and messed everything up for him. So he was a good role model for me. And I go, let me, kudos to him.

[57:28] Micah: That's cool. It's, I remember when I first met you, I'm thinking, I speak some Spanish. Hey, what, hey? And you're like, it's Joe. And then everybody since then tries their accent out on your name. And it's like, no, it's George.

[57:41] George: That's a, that's a Miami thing. Just like they made my dad, Larry, they made all his Jorge's George. And I didn't realize it wasn't like that across the country until I went away to college. And it's like anybody who was from Puerto Rico or they grew up in California, the Mexicans, they all went by Jorge.

[57:54] Micah: And it's like, I've always been George.

[57:56] George: It works for me.

[57:58] Micah: No, it's awesome. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing the skills system website and shout out to them. Appreciate them. Allowing you to share some of that. For those of you watching, go to larryjacob.com. You can book a call with George, have a conversation with him. As you can see, he's a very straightforward guy, very chill. George, I really appreciate you over the years, your friendship and everything. And for being an agency partner. Thanks again.

[58:21] George: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.