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EPISODE DESCRIPTION & RESOURCES:

Think the only way to grow your membership is to plan a big, high-pressure launch every few months… only to burn out and start all over again?

Not in my world.

In this episode of Membership-Driven Business, we’re talking about what’s changing in the world of memberships, and why hanging all of your hopes on your next big launch might not be your best bet.

If you’ve been relying on a handful of big launches each year to grow your recurring revenue, this conversation will show you why that approach is becoming harder to sustain (and what to experiment with instead).

We’re talking about:

Why the old model of relying on one or two big launches a year is not the way forward for almost all the membership owners I work with.
What’s driving this shift and what it means for you as a membership owner.
A different approach for you to think about: one that gives you more chances to win and grow your membership, instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket.
Why you don’t have to choose between “big promotions” and “going evergreen” to sell your membership.
Real-world examples of how this approach works in practice.
The mindset shifts and specific skills you’ll need to pull this off.

This episode will help you think ahead, stay nimble, and make a plan for growing your membership you can actually follow.

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

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PREFER TO READ? HERE’S THE TRANSCRIPT:

2017 is calling… and she wants her launch strategy back, babe

I started working with memberships in 2017, and let me tell you: the world of launching was so different back then.

Over the years, I’ve written countless sales pages and emails for memberships with thousands of members—and the wins were fast and frequent.

Some examples:

One client went from enrolling 400 new members to 1200 in a single promotion (tripled her sales)
Another client had 2300 members join in just over a week (almost double her previous best)
And another (non-membership) launch I’ve worked on generated over 4 million dollars in revenue in just 5 days.

… So why don’t I talk about these results more?

Have you noticed that you’ll never catch me saying that you’re just “one launch away” from your wildest recurring revenue dreams?

It’s because I know the full story.

I’ve been behind the scenes of so many high-revenue, high-stakes launches, working directly with the founder to dial in their sales and messaging strategy.

So I’ll be candid when I say this: hanging all of your hopes on a single promotion each year is stressful as hell.

It was stressful back in 2017 to 2022 when selling felt “easier” and the online education space wasn’t as saturated as it is today (and before so many people got burned by bad experiences).

Back then, it mostly worked — so we kept on doing it.

But the “launch once or twice per year and hope it works out” approach just isn’t working in 2025.

Relying on one record-breaking launch to grow your membership is too risky.

If the launch doesn’t work out, you’re left feeling exhausted, frustrated, and it can take months to pick up the pieces and plan another big promotion… and in the meantime, you’re still committed to delivering on a membership where revenue is stagnant or even going backwards.

This is not the position I want to see anyone trapped in.

It’s why I talk to all of my clients about having a diversified plan to bring people into your membership:

One that mixes public promotions with longer-term, slow burn strategies that add up over time (which is exactly what we do together inside The Gameplan Intensive, by the way).

Because it’s not just what you do before or even during the launch that determines your long-term membership growth…

It’s the decisions you make after the dust settles, and what you do in between your big promotions, that make all the difference—and give you more chances to win.

Is this something you’re curious about?

If you:

Feel like a big public promo (or talking about your membership non-stop) is the only way to sell your membership
You’re not sure how to sell throughout the year in a way that complements your bigger launches
And: you’re questioning whether your approach to launching is even sustainable in the first place…

This episode is for you.

Let’s dive in.

HOW I CAN HELP YOU

Work with me to fast-track your membership growth this year

If anything in this episode strikes a chord with you, I invite you to learn more about the Membership Gameplan Intensive.

We’ll work together one-on-one to map out a clear gameplan for growing your membership that gives you more chances to win (instead of hanging all your hopes on just one or two high-stakes, high effort launches each year).

You’ll walk away with a fully customized growth gameplan for your year ahead, with decisions made about the specific strategies and promotions you’ll run throughout the year.

You’ll know exactly what’s required of you, the specific goals you need to hit, and the angles you need to focus on in order to get more people into your membership this year.

Give yourself a Gameplan and let’s get your membership growing.

🎯 Get all the information about The Gameplan Intensive right here.

The way we launch and grow our memberships is changing… but why?

I see several forces converging to make the old launch-heavy model less effective for growing your membership.

1️⃣: With recurring income comes recurring responsibility… and you can’t sustain it all.

As a membership owner, you’re always delivering: creating new content, supporting your members, staying “on” for your community.

When your growth strategy demands the same level of “always on” intensity (because you’re always either scrambling to plan a launch or taking time to recover from the last one) something eventually breaks.

This is doubly the case for people who are trying to execute launch strategies at a level that would require an entire team to pull off.

Those “record breaking” launches you see your most successful peers celebrating are typically held together by 6 to 12 contrators & employees behind the scenes. I know this because I used to be one of them!

If you’re a founder trying to grow your membership, but you don’t have much outsourced support (either by design or simply because you’re not quite there yet), this has to factor into your plan.

Don’t expect yourself to do the work of half a dozen people.

Even if you do have a team to lean on, most founders don’t know how to build their personal capacity and preferences into their promotional plans.

Without this, you’ll stop feeling excited about selling your membership.

You’ll resist putting promotions on your calendar, because you resent the energy it takes from you, or you just can’t sustain the effort.

So your growth stalls, or takes on a pattern of fits and starts.

You might even feel like you’re “launching to get back to baseline” instead of seeing your recurring revenue increase steadily over time.

2️⃣: People are less likely to part with their money, so you need to be willing to try again (and again)

One of the few upsides of the pandemic was the volume of money that flooded into the global economy. We’re now paying the price for this with inflation and higher prices across the board.

This, plus the general sense of political anxiety is affecting how much discretionary income people have and what they’re willing to spend it on.

This means it’s time to experiment with the messages and offer features that your people want right now.

This season is asking us to be more nimble, to try out different things, and see what resonates.

But it’s hard to experiment with different angles and positioning when you hang all your hopes on one launch that takes months to execute.

In fact, it leaves you vulnerable.

Do you have a plan to test what works in 2025, while minimizing risk and the effort required to do it? There’s a big difference between experimenting with intention, and throwing spaghetti at the wall.

You could be getting paid this month with new membership sales by experimenting with promotions in a smaller, lower-lift way. This is what I’m helping all of my clients do behind the scenes right now.

And dare I say: it’s actually really fun to approach growing your membership this way.

To be clear… I still love the power of a big promotion. But it can’t be our only option for growth. It’s time to diversify and give yourself more chances to win this year.

3️⃣: Information is a commodity, but experience is everything

OK, fine. Let’s talk about ChatGPT. It’s completely changing how we create, market and communicate… and, it’s changing what your potential members are looking for.

Access to information (300 hours of workshops! 50 templates and PDFs!) isn’t the selling point it used to be when I can get all this and more from ChatGPT, even if it’s not as good. The way we access informaton is changing, and this means…

Your members don’t want you to be like Netflix.

They want you to help them take action!

They’re already drowning in AI slop and resources people whipped together inside ChatGPT without checking if it actually said anything of substance.

(ChatGPT also has a habit of sanitizing all the smart ideas in your head and changing it for vague words like “clarity” and “confidence” that don’t mean anything to the people reading it.)

This brings us to: the (brilliant) information inside your membership isn’t the selling point it used to be.

What matters now is two things:

Show them the experience:

Because being aggressively, unapologetically you in your communication and delivery (even if you could do it faster with ChatGPT and get 80% of the way there) is your edge.

It’s the final 20% that makes whatever you create worth paying attention to.

If you want to move people to action, it’s time to choose where you will invest the extra time and energy in showing who you are and what you’re about.

This extends to:

Your perspectives, point of view and the unique way you can showcase them
The experience of what it means to be in community with you
The visual feel of your brand and community
How you want people to feel and behave when they’re working with you

Not everything needs to be optimized or fast-tracked. And it shouldn’t be.

It’s time to decide what you’ll strategically pour more of your time and effort into, and what you need to care less about (because: balance).

How you approach your marketing, promotions and overall brand experience matter more than ever. I’ve seen a lot of people get caught up in the allure of speed and quick execution with AI tools, only to realize their marketing isn’t saying anything of substance when you look below the surface.

Faster isn’t always better, especially if you care about your long-term results.

Sell the steps they’ll take… not the information they’ll consume!

In 2025, people are buying the specific actions they’ll start taking — not the information you’ll fill their heads with. There’s so much power in selling your process and making it feel appealing and fun.

After all, memberships are at their best when we make them about the ongoing actions our members will take with us. But, most membership owners are still selling like a course creator, and wondering why their membership doesn’t stand out!

To be frank, we need to give people a better reason to choose us.

People need to understand how they will think, behave and feel differently when they become a member. (Emphasis on: the “behave” part! Can you explain what members will be doing differently when they’re learning from you?)

This is more important than ever because your potential members now have more options to choose from, and more reason than ever to save their money and “suck up” the status quo. Are you giving them a compelling reason to change their behavior and act differently than they already are? (More on this in ep. 16 of the podcast!)

Each promotion for your membership can hit on these ideas from a different angle. There are so many different results and wins your membership can help people achieve, that only 1 or 2 promotions per year won’t do it justice!

What if you could support your bigger, “signature” membership launches with a handful of hyper-focused mini promotions that gave people a new and unique reason to choose you?

You can, and it’s something you can pull off with just an afternoon of work (like we do in the Gameplan Intensive together).

Either way, you need a more adaptable and diversified approach to keep your membership growing in 2025 and beyond.

So what does the path forward look like?

Eminem was WRONG: You have more than one shot!

At the risk of spawning the next Slim Shady diss track, my argument for you is this: you need to give yourself more chances to win instead of hanging it all on one big launch.

No launch should be “make or break” for your business. There’s a much calmer way to approach it instead.

Growing your membership can be the natural result of small, incremental steps you take that add up over time.

For my clients, the growth strategy we create together usually includes a mix of:

Higher effort (but higher return) visibility-driving promotions to generate buzz and attract new members — timed strategically throughout the year, and tailored to fit your business, resources and preferred ways of working. You don’t need to be a show pony to get targeted visibility on your offers.
A handful of low-lift mini-promos to spotlight new features, updates, or timely offers—which give your audience new reasons to join. These are the perfect complement to your bigger visibility pushes, allow you to test new angles in a low-pressure way, and help you attract new members without the typical runway or workload of a traditional launch.
Evergreen assets like optimized sales pages, nurture sequences, signature content pieces and lead magnets. These work quielty for you behind the scenes to grow your audience, support your sales efforts, and make sure your efforts compound over time.

When these strategies start adding up, you get to stop hoping for one launch to carry you (and crashing out if it doesn’t happen).

Instead, you’ll have a sustainable sales rhythm that keeps your membership growing steadily.

More client examples & what this could look like for you

I’ve seen this new approach work for real clients:

One client traded high-effort quarterly launches for two sales campaigns a year, complemented by low-lift, email-based mini-promos in between. The result: more consistent revenue and less exhaustion.
Another client already had a loose growth plan when she came to me, but it felt overwhelming and she was already dreading the promotions she had planned. We strategically pared back what was on her list, reduced the workload and scope of the promotions we kept, and she’s been hitting her growth goals ever since.
Finally, another client with a creative membership was able to find new opportunities to enroll members by using the momentum from promotions for her other offers. She was able to generate revenue from her paid workshops and, with a few tweaks, use them as the perfect launchpad into the membership.

None of this involves adding “more” to your calendar just for the sake of it.

Your strategy for growing your membership needs resilience right now. It’s a matter of giving yourself more opportunities to succeed and more ways (and more angles!) to connect with your audience throughout the year.

If you like this approach, here are the shifts you need to make as a leader to pull this off

If you’re ready to move from being reactive to growing your membership with intention, you’ll need to start showing up and thinking differently.

For my clients, this looks like:

Know your numbers: How much recurring revenue do you have right now? What’s your churn rate, retention, conversion? If you don’t know these numbers, you’re flying blind, which makes it so much harder to make decisions about where you’ll focus next, or even how to set realistic goals.
Build diversity into your plan: Stop betting everything on one big launch! You can cmbine bigger campaigns, mini-promos, evergreen assets, and audience growth initiatives to create a system that gives you multiple chances to win throughout the year. More diversity means more stability, more data to guide you, and a more predictable path forward.
Decide on the right assets and initiatives for YOU: because copying someone else’s growth formula is so 2017! Your approach to growing your membership should feel like a fit for your business and how you prefer to work (unless you want everything to feel harder than it needs to). It should also take into account the assets you’ve already created, so you can stop feeling like you’re always re-inventing the wheel when it’s time to sell.
Be ruthless with your calendar: because creating a growth plan means you will need to begin saying no. When you make space for the things that will actually move the needle, you must remove the clutter that’s not essential. What are you saying yes to that you shouldn’t be? What are you still doing out of obligation? What new boundaries do you need to set? This part is uncomfortable, but without it, your growth plan will not have the time and space it needs to work.
Stay the course: It’s tempting to abandon your plan when results don’t show up overnight or when distractions pull you away. You need to have a plan in place for when doubt creeps in. For my clients, this usually includes two things: relying on what the data is saying before you let your emotions take over the show, and having a trusted advisor in their corner who can offer a different perspective.

If you’re ready to be that kind of leader, let’s create your membership growth plan together.

Where I See This Going

The future belongs to membership owners who are willing to try again. Showing up to sell your membership more often doesn’t mean you need to be selling at 100% intensity all the time.

But people need more touchpoints than ever, and you might need to be more experimental with how you sell. You can do this in a way that feels way more steady and balanced than only relying on big launches.

This is something I’m baking into all of my clients’ membership growth plans at the moment.

I said it best on Threads recently…

View on Threads

When your plan to grow your membership income has diversity and gives you more chances to win… this is how you can start stacking the odds in your favor!

Big launches or bust? Nah. Get a growth gameplan that keeps you balanced instead:

You already know how to deliver value in your membership.

You’ve shown up for your members month after month.

Now it’s time to show up for your membership on the front-end (so you can grow it!) instead of focusing your effort solely on supporting members behind the scenes.

We can work together to:

Get clear on your numbers and where you stand today.
Identify the growth opportunities that make the most sense for you.
Build a promotional & sales calendar that supports your goals and how you prefer to show up.
Decide on the key assets and initiatives you’ll focus on, so you can stop reinventing the wheel.
Create a plan you trust yourself to follow through on (plus, support from me along the way).

If you’re ready to stop winging it, scrambling, or second-guessing every decision, I invite you to book your Membership Growth Gameplan Intensive with me today.

Find all the details and how to book in the show notes below.