Should you launch a membership or a course first? The host built relational equity through three years of live challenges and cohort courses before launching her Ignite membership in 2023, converting 31% of 150 past clients at $67/month. She recommends most creators start with a cohort course for faster testimonials and stronger relationships, then move to membership once you have deep trust and can sustain ongoing delivery.
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You. We're kicking off a brand new chapter of the podcast with a special 21 day series called From Purpose to Impact. I'm celebrating by giving back to listeners who are ready to take the next step. If you've been feeling stuck, overwhelmed or unsure of how to move forward in your online business, I want to hear from you. Simply go to youronlinebusinessmentor.com and tell me what's been holding you back or ask a question you'd love for me to answer on the show and you'll be entered in a special listener giveaway for access to programs designed to support you in your journey. I can't wait to help you get unstuck and moving forward. Welcome to day 11 of my 21 day series from purpose to Impact. Today we're talking about something I get asked all the time Should I launch a membership or a course first? So if you listened to the last episode, I shared why I decided to build a membership instead of continuing to rely only on live launches. But today I want to share why my founding member launch worked and why I do not think memberships should be your first move in most cases. So let me take you behind the scenes. When I launched Ignite in 2023, I I did not blast my entire email list. I didn't even post about it publicly, didn't run ads. I simply emailed 150 people. Not leads, not subscribers, not followers, but past clients and customers. Every single person I invited to be a founding member of my Ignite membership had already paid me in some way. They had either joined one of my cohort style courses or worked with me as a coaching client. They knew how I taught. They had experienced live Q and A calls in some format, or they had been coached by me. One on one. I sent those 150 people to a private landing page with a personal video for me explaining what my Ignite membership would be. I invited them to become a founding member at $67 a month, one month before the official launch of Ignite. Now they had to sign up before the official launch and I limited it to the first 50 people who joined. By the end of that month, 47 people joined me. It was a 31% conversion rate. But that founding member launch was not successful because I had a perfect sales page. It was successful because I had spent three years building relationships. For three years I ran live challenges. I sold cohort style courses. I hosted live Q&As. I coached in real time. People did not just know my content, they knew me. They trusted that I would show up, they trusted that I would listen, and they trusted that I would coach them through their specific situation. And because Ignite was built around live support, that trust was everything. If you're teaching business strategy, launch strategy, marketing, anything that requires nuance and feedback, people are not going to jump into a 97amonth membership without connection. Now, could someone launch a yoga membership or a fitness membership without the same depth of relationship? Yes, I have joined these types of memberships myself without even knowing the instructor. But if your membership requires guidance, feedback, transformation, you need relational equity first. That is why I often recommend launching a cohort style course before launching a membership. A cohort course has a clear start and stop date. It solves a specific pain point to a specific audience, and it's easier to sell because the transformation is defined and you can also charge significantly more. Would you rather sell something for $997 that you deliver in just eight weeks or open something for $47 a month and hope people stay long enough to equal the same value? It actually can take a long time to reach $997 when you have a $47 a month membership. It takes volume. It takes retention. And that brings me to something else. Because recurring revenue only works if you have low churn. If people are leaving every month, it's like running on a hamster wheel. And that retention also comes from trust. Retention comes from people feeling supported. They come from believing you're going to continue showing up. And that is built long before the membership opens. Even today my membership is not set it and forget it. We still launch it with specific launch strategies and campaigns. We still invite intentionally and we definitely nurture relationships within the membership. And we nurture relationships in our other programs like Cohort Impact Accelerator, which is an eight week focused experience for those who want to learn how to create cohort style courses. Whether somebody joins Ignite first and then learns about our Cohort Impact Accelerator or joins CIA and then jumps into Ignite as their next best step. The whole ecosystem works because the foundation was built on connection. So if you're asking yourself, should I launch a membership or a course? Here's the real questions to ask yourself. Have I led people through a clear process before? Have people experienced my teaching live? Do I have enough warm buyers who trust me deeply? Am I ready to commit to ongoing delivery, communication and admin? And does this revenue model make sense for my current stage of business? Memberships are beautiful when they're built on a strong base, but if you launch too early and only two or three people join in, it's very hard to build momentum from there. That's why I recommend a cohort style course first. It gives you higher revenue, faster, clearer messaging, stronger testimonials, and deeper relationships. And if you offer that experience to a number of cohorts, it builds relationships that make a founding member launch possible. My membership generates about 50% of my annual revenue today. It's stable, it's meaningful, and it's something I love showing up for. But it only works because I invested years building trust first. If you skip that step, it will feel like pushing a boulder uphill. Now, if you've already created and sold many successful courses or coaching programs and you've built that trust, now is the time to consider launching your membership. But if you're just starting out with your very first offer, my recommendation is to start with a cohort style course first. Guiding students through a transformation over four or eight weeks of time can not only generate typically more revenue faster, but it will also give you an opportunity to build those relationships. After a few cohort experiences, that is a great time to look at building a membership. No matter what your next best step is. Remember, clarity and impact come from action.
