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EPISODE DESCRIPTION & RESOURCES:

Relying on motivation to sell and grow your membership is a risky strategy, but it’s so common among the business owners I work with (even the very successful ones).

In this episode of The Membership-Driven Business Podcast, we’re talking about why your membership growth feels shaky, especially if you’ve been letting your energy or motivation levels dictate how (and how often) you promote it.

I’ll walk you through the three strategies I use with my clients to help them grow their memberships more consistently, without a BIG exhausting launch.

Also, this approach is way more fun — which means you’ll be more motivated to show up and grow this thing!

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What to do if it feels like your recurring revenue is tied to your motivation or energy
The three core focus areas that drive membership growth
What to define before you make another plan
How to adapt your membership growth strategy to fit your capacity, working style, and the reality of your business
And: the truth about why you feel like you have to “do everything” to move the needle (and what to do instead).

No matter how you sell your membership, this episode will help you define what’s been getting in the way of your growth, and how to start putting together a system that moves with you during the year.

Click above to listen, or keep scrolling to read the article below ⬇️

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PREFER TO READ? HERE’S THE ARTICLE!

Why relying on energy bursts keeps you stuck (and how to finally get strategic with your growth)

Here’s what I know about you:

You’re always working on your membership.

Updating content, supporting members, answering questions, managing community threads… plus, you’ve got other offers and responsibilities that keep your calendar full.

But when it comes to growing your membership, that’s the part that never feels clear or consistent. You have good ideas. You make solid plans…

But for the most part, your recurring revenue is a reflection of your energy and motivation.

Growth happens in fits and starts.

There’s no system, no structure, and no reliable way to build on what you’ve already done. That’s frustrating, especially when you know how valuable your membership is, and you want to get it into more people’s hands.

But instead:

You realize you probably should put a date in your calendar to promote your membership again, but you just don’t want to. The sales page updates. Writing new emails. Showing up and saying the same thing over and over. None of it feels appealing or exciting. You think: “Can we just not?” So… you don’t.
This means → another quarter goes by, and even though you’re delivering on your membership every month, it’s been a while since you welcomed any new ones… which means your recurring revenue is going down while your effort stays the same.

It can also look like:

You decide to do a promo because you need to bring in revenue, so you scramble to create a new bonus, write emails, post on socials. And maybe it works! You hit your number or get close, but the next time you’re starting all over again. You’re not sure what to reuse or how to build on your last launch.
You’re making decisions in isolation. A few emails here, a lead magnet, a handful of social posts you definitely spent way too long creating. It all feels disjointed: like none of it connects into a bigger picture that actually compounds over time.
You’re juggling delivery, marketing, content, coaching, admin… and everything feels half-done. You’re not sure what’s working, what matters most, or how to string it all together into a system you can rely on.

While everyone seems to be selling you a solution (create a customGPT! Do a tiny paid workshop!) what’s missing is the full picture.

One that helps you understand where you are, what to focus on, and how to bring all the moving parts together in a way that makes sense for you.

Nobody is showing you how to build a growth plan that works even when life or business gets busy.

(But they should be!)

When you get this sorted out, you will:

Stop relying on bursts of motivation and start showing up to grow your membership consistently (without working yourself into the ground)
Know exactly how to grow your recurring revenue… and your plans will actually feel doable and fun
Finally stop second-guessing and start making strategic moves that build momentum, so that your hard work (and your recurring revenue) stacks over time.

My client Maggie Patterson from BS-Free Business is a great example of this. She has a strong membership and wasn’t new to promoting it, but each one felt like a heavy lift and a series of unknowns.

During our Gameplan Intensive, we mapped out multiple promotions that felt simple, achievable, and made sense for her capacity.

Since then, she’s hit her “good” or “better” enrollment goals for each promo—and she’s bringing in members regularly without a full-blown launch every time.

These are promotions she likely wouldn’t have done at all, simply because she didn’t feel excited or clear enough to follow through. Now, she’s showing up to sell her offer more consistently than ever, and watching her recurring revenue grow.

I want you to celebrate results like this too!

In this episode, I’ll walk through three strategies that will help you stop spinning and start growing your membership steadily in the weeks and months to come.

Let’s break it down:

Get Clear on Your Growth Focus (And Stop Trying to Do it All!)

Most membership owners try to grow by doing everything: email list-building, podcast interviews, reels, Facebook ads, live launches, all at once.

Is it any wonder you’re tired and it feels like nothing is working?

We need to swap that “stretched too thin” feeling for some focus! Otherwise, you’ll keep doing a lot but getting nowhere.

Growing your recurring revenue is going to require you to make some bold decisions about where your focus belongs.

Do you know what moves the needle for your membership?

Do you know where you need to be paying attention right now?

At the end of the day, growing any offer — including a membership — comes down to:

Getting in front of the right people
Building trust with those people
Making a great offer

Audience growth, nurture, and sales. That’s it!

Three things that drive your entire business and your membership.

If your membership growth is stalling, it’s because one or more of these pieces isn’t where it needs to be.

Launching again to the same audience and watching your sales shrink? Your offer isn’t broken. You just need some new eyeballs on your work.
Getting in front of the right people and asking them to buy, but they’re not moving? They might need more help seeing why this membership and your approach is the right one for them. Creating your signature sales assets will help with this!
Sending weekly newsletters, creating all of the content, and growing your audience steadily… but only selling your offer when you feel like it, or a couple of times per year? It’s time to make the ask more often without throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Most membership owners are doing a little bit of everything instead of diagnosing where they need to be paying attention.

In last week’s episode, I spoke about the importance of knowing your numbers. It’s why, when I work with my clients, we look at how their launches are performing and diagnose where the bottleneck is — so they know what to work on before their next promotion.

This is how you get strategic about what matters right now.

It means you’ll be able to look at the next 90 days and plan your time wisely.

Maybe it means focusing on ways to be more visible and get found. Maybe it means refining some of your best content that will prep people to buy. Or maybe it means planning a low-key promotion because it’s been way too long since you asked people to join!

Inside the Gameplan Intensive, we walk through your membership model, current numbers, capacity, and goals to pinpoint your smartest next move.

Then we commit to that focus for the next 90 days, so you know exactly where to channel your time and energy.

Define What Success Looks Like…Then Simplify it

Even with a clear focus, it’s so tempting to overload your plan with too many tactics.

You start with one good idea… and suddenly you’re staring down a 20-item to-do list.

Oooft.

This is why so many people come to me and say, “I’m just not showing up for my membership like I should be.” Which honestly surprises me, because I know you are showing up!

You’re in there all the time: fixing things, improving content, supporting your members.

But when it comes to growth, that’s the part that keeps falling through the cracks.

A big reason for that is your goals might not be specific enough or grounded in anything you can actually measure. So instead of having clear signs that say, “Hey, this is working!” or “Hmm… time to pivot,” you’re relying on vibes and feelings.

And when we’re tired, overwhelmed, or not sure where to start, vibes aren’t reliable. That’s when plans get abandoned, postponed, or put in the “too hard” pile.

This is why we always start by defining what success actually means for your focus:

Want to grow your audience? Awesome. What’s the number you're aiming for? (500 new email subscribers? 10 qualified leads per week?) Let’s be real about what growth means to you.
Focusing on nurture? Cool. Are we creating evergreen content that deepens trust and builds buying intent? What do you want people to do after they read or listen?
Going for sales? Great. What’s your target? Let’s lean on your past data, average conversion rates, and list size to map something that feels realistic and motivating. Not every launch needs to be a record-breaker to be worthwhile.

Once you know what you’re aiming for, it’s time to simplify.

This is where we cut through the noise and create a focused plan with just one or two key moves.

You don't need to do everything.

You need to do the right things, consistently.

Inside the Gameplan Intensive, we’ll co-create a plan you’ll actually want to stick to. We’ll simplify down to what’s essential. Then, we’ll map it to your real business rhythms and how you prefer to work.

Instead of over-planning and abandoning the whole thing halfway through (or avoiding the plan entirely), you’ll have a clear strategy to grow your recurring revenue that you can actually follow through on.

Get it On Your Calendar — and Stay in Touch with Your Plan

Creating a plan, deciding your focus and how you’ll measure it is a huge step, but it’s only part of the picture.

If your plan stays in a Google Doc or Asana board… it’s just a wish.

You have to translate the plan into time on your calendar.

Even the best strategy will gather dust if it’s not tied to your reality, your actual commitments, and your real-life working style.

Once we’ve defined your growth focus and simplified the strategies you’ll focus on to grow your membership, we look at how this fits into the flow of your business and life:

What else are you selling in the next 90 days & throughout the year?
What kind of support do you have around you?
What time off do you want (or need)?
What work energizes you—and what drains you?

All of this matters.

If your plan doesn’t feel doable, you won’t work it.

And if you’re not reviewing or adjusting it, your plan will get irrelevant real fast.

Inside the Gameplan Intensive, we’ll use the results from the Play to Win Quiz to understand your personal growth style—so we can build a plan that works with how you naturally operate, not against it.

And once the plan is set, we don’t just wave goodbye 👋 and hope it works out.

Because things will change:

You’ll get new data from a recent launch
Your energy or capacity might shift
A strategy that felt exciting two months ago might need a tweak

That’s normal. Reviewing and adjusting your plan is part of the planning process. But it’s a part most people forget to build in.

This is why I designed the Gameplan Intensive to include ongoing follow-up and support from me to check in on your plan and adapt it in real time.

Making regular check-in and reflection part of your planning system is how you stay grounded and connected to your goals.

It’s how you stay strategic.

And it’s how you keep showing up instead of second guessing yourself and abandoning the plan, even when things shift around you.

When your plan fits you, you’re way more likely to stick with it so that your efforts to grow your membership add up (instead of fizzling out).

But if you STILL feel like you need to do everything…

You might be thinking, “Okay, I hear you Natalie… but I still feel like I need to do everything to move the needle. The list is too damn long!”

My perspective?

This thought is a symptom of spending too much time watching what everyone else is doing.

When you’re consuming a lot of content, scrolling endlessly, or tuning in to what other people are building, of course you’ll feel behind. You’ll start to believe you have to chase every tactic and spin every plate just to keep up, but this is a lie! Don’t fall into this trap.

One of the most powerful things you can do is hit pause on the noise and pay attention to your own business. Put the blinders on and look at your own paper.

Even though you know your business, you might not be deeply connected to the reality of what’s actually working for you—and what isn’t.

Maybe you’ve tried 5-10 different strategies in the last year… and one or two of them probably worked! They just got buried under everything else, or you got distracted before they really had time to bear fruit.

So instead of figuring out what actually works for you, you end up doing a lot of things poorly because you’re afraid of getting left behind (or doing nothing at all because it’s just too overwhelming).

That’s the real work we do together inside the Gameplan Intensive:

We look at what actually moved the needle for you in the last 12 months (even if it wasn’t perfect)
We get curious about what you want to do—not just what you think you should
And we prioritize the few things that will make a real difference for your membership growth

Let’s stop worrying about what your competitor Susan is doing and focus on:

What you want to be doing?
What you’re excited about doing?
What makes the most sense for you to be doing?

It’s funny how those fears get a lot quieter once you’re in motion.

Let’s recap:

If you don’t have a system to grow your recurring revenue from your membership—or you can’t stick to one—here’s where to begin:

Choose a clear growth focus for the next 90 days. Decide what you’re selling and how.
Define what success looks like, and simplify your strategy down to just one or two core moves that you can track and follow through on.
Map your plan to your real life and business rhythm, so it’s not just a plan on paper… but a doable part of your schedule that you’re excited to show up for.

When you do that, you’ll stop the spiral of overworking on your membership and not seeing that reflected in your revenue.

You’ll feel more grounded and in control because you’ll know why you're doing what you're doing, and how it’s adding up.

You’ll finally start seeing growth that reflects all the work you’re already putting in…

And most importantly: you’ll know how to keep going, even when life throws you its next curveball.

Want more recurring revenue from your membership? Stop waiting for the motivation. You deserve a plan!

It’s fun, I swear!

The Gameplan Intensive is booking now at introductory pricing.

This is a one-on-one way of working directly with me that blends sales strategy, planning, and ongoing support.

Together, we’ll sit down and answer the most important question:

Where do you need to focus in order to grow?

Then, we’ll turn it into a plan for exactly how you’ll make it happen: quarter by quarter, month by month.

You’ll walk away with a personalized 12-month growth plan, and a flexible system to keep adapting and executing it as things evolve.

My goal is for you to be enrolling new members in the next 90 days (or sooner).

But the difference is you’ll be doing it with a long-term view, which means you’ll know that your efforts are adding up over time, while your recurring revenue grows.

This is for membership owners who are ready to stop relying on inconsistent promotions and start building a business that brings in members consistently, in a way that actually fits your life.

Learn more & book your Gameplan Intensive with me today.