The Design Business Show 151: Applying Memberships to Creative Businesses with Lisa Princic

Lisa Princic is a trained business strategist and the host of the Scaling Deep Podcast. Lisa's clients turn to her for help with business growth when they are worn out from chasing the next mass marketing trick, but know they need to go beyond word of mouth. She is a results-oriented, deep thinker who has an innate instinct for “seeing” the value of a business and turning that into a pipeline of ideal clients. A staunch believer in business simplicity and intention, Lisa helps her clients accomplish their goals by focusing on what to do AND what to ignore. Here’s what we covered on the episode: Lisa’s Journey to Becoming a Business Strategist  How Lisa’s team reached out to me about having her on the podcast to talk about starting and launching a membership and how it applies to a creative business owner    In 2008 Lisa decided she needed to get out of her day job and because she had a great experience with a life coach at that job, she decided to take life coaching  Within a year of life coaching, Lisa realized she loved working with small business owners and entrepreneurs Lisa explains business coaching can get tricky because you can be a trained coach but not have business experience, or vice versa and says coaching is about empowering people to make their own decisions  In 2015, Lisa came across Tara McMullin who was running a business strategy training program, she took it and became a business strategist Around 2018, Lisa decided she needed to go in fully and had a great experience getting on the networking outreach plan where she started connecting with people, which helped her feel more validated about what her true value was, and what her skill sets were  Shortly after, Lisa started her podcast which continued her networking and shares that from the beginning of 2019 to now, her business has really started to grow  The Membership Niche + Membership Models   Last fall, Lisa figured out that the membership niche was one she could dive into even further to help make herself more clear, easily referred and understood One area Lisa focuses on is helping people design their ideal membership and grow it along with helping her non-membership business owners Lisa’s unique positioning even within the membership market is that she doesn’t care about tactics and says you should focus on your best skill set or asset to focus your membership around The fears that surround memberships and how knowing your superpower can help combat those fears  Lisa explains the 3 main focuses of models when you’re in the service business; the education and training model, the community model and the coaching model, which is the one she leans towards as a strategist    The first membership Lisa started was a membership for past clients and says they do 3 calls a month, which is easy for her and suggests sticking to one core thing, then adding onto it once it becomes more natural for you to help take the overwhelm out of it  How you should really pay attention to the customer journey/transformation and look at your membership like a program Lisa says choosing your technology and platform should be based on the kind of model you pick for your membership and says there is no perfect solution so you should focus on the one platform that will fit you best  Don’t forget, you aren’t locked in just because you have a month to month membership, Lisa says you can learn and change things as you go and know that it probably won’t be perfect right from the start and doesn’t need to be Lisa explains that a warm-up group/model is a group that might have a lower price range and says they're the first group you bring in to learn about you and sell to What Lisa Offers in Her Business  How Lisa’s uses a coaching model, where she works with people in business design intensives, helps sort out their business model so they know what they need to do and all they need to do is implement — she keeps people on track and offers follow-up support  What Lisa loves offering in her business is VIP design days so she can help clients sort out their business model, she also offers her follow-up membership, and just launched her Profitable Membership Program for women led membership business owners Lisa shares good retention strategies that you can use for memberships, like different payment options, interviewing your members and getting clear on your customer client transformation How to set up boundaries within your membership and how Lisa is going to run her Profitable Membership a little like a course in terms of people getting hands on support and having a roadmap to work through   When entering into a membership it can be confusing where to start, which is why Lisa reminds us that people need guidance and that you need to have some intention for them because if people don’t know what to do, they won’t stay  Connect with Lisa on Instagram, check out her podcast, send her an email at lisa@scalingdeep.com and if you’re into memberships, get her free training on her website  Lisa’s podcast is called Scaling Deep and is all about helping online business owners learn how to grow; they go behind the scenes on what it really takes instead of following all the mass marketing tactics     Links mentioned: Scaling Deep Podcast   Profitable Membership Program Lisa’s Website - Scaling Deep    Connect with Lisa on Instagram    Lisa’s Free Membership Training   Like what you heard?  Click here to subscribe + leave a review on iTunes. Click here to download my Sales Page Trello Board Let’s connect on Instagram!