MBA1480 Q&A Wednesday: How do I tell my lifetime members I need to charge them?

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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Doll Army, a show where applied knowledge is power every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and a Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omarr.net Today's question is from Jody and Jody asks, hey Omar, I'm revamping my membership area. I'm a business coach and back in the day I sold my coaching program as a lifetime deal. I'm improving this program and including some extra coaching both live and in Facebook. And because I'm adding these live aspects, I want to charge those lifetime members a monthly or annual fee. How do I break the news to them and make sure they're not disgruntled? Love the podcast. Thanks for your help Jody. Great question Jody. A lot of us, we make the decision to sell a product as a one off product lifetime membership and then realize, hey, let's add a few components. Let's add something that's going to require my time on A regular basis, whether they're live calls or they're online, forum coaching or Facebook group coaching. And the things that you're adding is not really what they paid for in that lifetime deal. They paid for a package. So what do you do for these lifetimers? How do you make sure you offer this new value, charge them for it and make sure they feel like they're not being slighted? It's a touchy one, but there's definitely an elegant solution to this, and I'll explain exactly what that is in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Lifetime deals can get messy. You launch a product, people have lifetime access, but then you decide to add some things to that package to improve it. And for the most part, if you're adding content like videos or even PDFs, then giving those lifetime members those upgraded items is pretty straightforward. But what if you're adding something that requires your time on an ongoing basis, like a live call, like group coaching, like forum coaching? This is the scenario that Jodi's in. This is the challenge she's in right now because she wants to charge these lifetime members that reoccurring fee to compensate her for her time. And that's fair enough. But she wants to make sure she solves this problem without ruffling the feathers of the lifetime members. Now, there's a few things I highly recommend you do when you relaunch this product. The first thing is you need to make sure you define the new offer and what that means for your lifetimers. This means what exactly will new customers get? How is it different from what you were offering before in the lifetime deal and how much does it cost? So say, for example, you have some course content, but now you're adding two live coaching calls a month and a coaching Facebook group. Those two things did not exist in the lifetime deal and it was a one off thing and didn't require your time. So once you define that, what I recommend is you reach out to the lifetime members first, you your current members first. Before you launch this new program to new members or new customers, you want to be honest and transparent with them. You want to say, hey, I just added a couple of reoccurring coaching elements that will require my time in my version 2.0. More about version 2.0 in a second. Now, this was not included in the deal that you bought. You bought a lifetime deal with a bunch of courses and PDFs, but it didn't come with the live coaching calls and it didn't come with a Facebook group. My suggestion is give them what they actually bought, right? So they're gonna have continued use of the product that they bought for lifetime use. And the things that are gonna cost you your time, like the coaching in the Facebook group, you can add it as an add on. So everybody else who's new is getting the course, let's say, for example, for $200 a month. Now, the bulk of the course content is already in the hands of the lifetime users, but you can charge them for. For the reoccurring coaching. Let's say you charge them, you know, $80 a month. So they're getting a discount. They're not paying what everybody else is paying because they already paid, but they're basically adding on the live coaching element and this will be a reoccurring cost. And you're giving them sort of like a lifetime deal discount for being loyal customers. And if you lay it out like that, if you show them, hey, I'm adding something new that's going to, you know, take my time, and my time has to have some value. Then I like to offer you this add on to what you already have. Now, you're not going to pay what everybody else is paying. You're paying actually a discount. And by giving them the heads up first, they feel honored and they feel like you're being honest with them. Now, they don't have to opt in to buy this upgrade. They could continue to enjoy the lifetime materials they have. But if they want the new stuff, they want your time, then they're going to have to pay for it. And that's only fair. Why? Because when you sold the lifetime deal, you didn't promise them or you didn't commit to, hey, you're going to get all my time with coaching as well. That was not part of the package they bought. You're honoring what they bought, but you're offering them a discount to something new that you're releasing. And you might be surprised how many people will opt in because they want more from you, because they're like, hey, I want more from this coach because I enjoyed the content so much. Also, they're gonna feel a little bit special because, hey, they're not paying full price. They're paying maybe half the price because they already paid for the course program. So as you can see, it's all how you present it. And to be quite honest, this is not like some sort of sleight of hand or something. This is just being honest with your audience and saying, hey, I'm launching a new version of the program. It's gonna include an extra few things. And if you want those extra few things, because it's going to take some of my time, here's a discount for you as a loyal customer. Also make it clear that they have the option not to do anything. You can just keep on enjoying the materials you have. I just wanted to let you know and offer you this special deal because I value your patronage. Now, will you have a few disgruntled customers? Maybe. Maybe you'll have people that will find a reason to get upset. You'll always find people that find a reason to get upset. They're upset before they even got your email. Okay? And that's okay. That's just the nature of business. That's just the nature of trying something new or change. But the bottom line is, is that they're not getting anything taken away. Okay? You're not not giving them something that they didn't sign up for. So you might get a few ruffled feathers, you might get some people getting upset, but you're not going to hold back progress from your business and launching a whole new product with a new value metric and a new val because you're afraid to slightly upset or maybe disappoint a few customers for literally seconds. They'll forget about it in few seconds. And the other thing is, is that as long as you're doing right by them, you should feel confident. And with a plan like this, you are.

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So happy that Jody asked this question. Because a lot of us, we create programs. They're great, we launch them, they're successful, and then we realize, wow, I can improve this. You learn from the students that take the program. You learn that you can do some things that can make it better and better. And when you release version 2, 3, 4, you may want to change the pricing, the packaging. You shouldn't be in handcuffs here if you're going to add things. That's totally okay. Now, this is some advice. If you're thinking about launching any kind of product or deal or program that gives people lifetime access, a course that just gives them access with one fee, be careful promising, you know, free updates or upgrades because people might interpret that as anytime you improve or change the version or add, you know, coaching, for example, that's your time. They're entitled to it. So make sure when you do offer the product for lifetime use, you show them and you say, hey, this is what you're getting right now. This is what I can promise right now. So make a decision based on that offering. Thank you so much for listening to the Hunter MBA show and thank you, Jody, for the great question. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at omar@100mba.net. I'll answer it right here on the show. As always, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. By hitting subscribe, you automatically subscribe to over 1400 business lessons. You have access to all of them, and it's absolutely free. That's the only way to have access to our archives. So do that right now. Whatever you use to listen to podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or on them all. Also Shameless Plug. If you're interested in running webinars and you're shopping around for webinar software and you want to look at what we have to offer at Webinar Ninja, join me on our live demo. I'll be there live to say hello. You can ask me any questions and check out the software over@webinarninja.com workshop. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're making some major changes to a program or product, there is nothing stopping you from changing the name of the product, renaming it, and making it a totally new product, or Even sticking a 2.0, 3.0 at the end of it. No one expects to get a new iPhone for free the next time a new iPhone comes out. When you go to get your degree in college and you graduate, you're not allowed to go back to the classroom and take the lectures again and again as many times as you want, okay? So remember that, yes, we are in the world of informational marketing and people have, you know, access to these videos for long periods of time. But if you're going to update. If you're going to change the product, you have the right to sell it as a new thing. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

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