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Joining a membership have you intrigued? When I was growing my business in the early years, I knew I could take a course to learn a specific skill, but being somewhat of an introvert, the thought of memberships had me timid. I love the flexibility of courses, but joining a membership always interested me. Fast forward to today and I’ve been a part of a dozen different membership structures over the years. So when I look back on why I joined and why I left certain small business memberships over the years, I share the five questions I came up with to ask yourself before joining a membership.
Are small business memberships worth it?
Is joining a membership on your radar? Are you wondering if they are worth it, and could you learn new things to take your business forward, or will it be a distraction? I know those are the questions I asked myself in the beginning stages of my business.
Courses Vs Memberships
I knew I could take a course to learn a specific skill, but being somewhat of an introvert, the thought of memberships had me timid. I love the flexibility of courses, but joining a membership always intrigued me. Getting to constantly learn new things without doing a deep dive into Pinterest or Google sounded appealing.
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5 questions to consider before joining a business membership
So in the last year, I joined several more memberships to #1, learn new skills I had been curious about, and #2 to see how others run their memberships. Having invested in a course to learn how to build my own membership in 2020, I’m always curious about what others in the online selling space offer inside their memberships and how they deliver their content.
So when I look back on why I joined and why I left certain memberships over the years, I came up with five questions to consider before joining a membership.
1. Would you benefit from learning new things?
I know this sounds like a no-brainer question because it is. Of course, you can benefit from learning new things. The whole point of owning a business is to grow it. And let’s face it. Right now, you don’t know everything about running or scaling your business. That’s where a membership can help you out.
The information they offer you should be knowledge that you need to move your business forward. It should be information that you can implement now and what you need in the future to take your business to the next level.
2. Are you willing to pay for help?
Here’s the tricky question. If you don’t value the time it takes the trainers to learn, research, create, and deliver content, then you’ll never be happy with spending money on any e-learning material.
I get it… there is so much information for free online that you might think you’ll save money by researching it all yourself. But that’s precisely why you should be paying for help.
Avoid the overwhelm and time it takes to sort through hundreds of methods and perspectives.
Usually, by the time you’re done googling “how to use hashtags on Instagram?” you’re tired and never actually do the work of what you learned.
Every successful business owner on the planet continually pays for quality education to sharpen their skills. Heck, in two years alone I had invested over $10,000 in online courses + workbooks + memberships to LEARN how to grow an online business when I had become obsessively frustrated with the copy-and-paste marketing tactics reinforced throughout the direct sales industry I was in at that time.
3. Does the membership offer their content in a way that’s easy to consume?
Like I mentioned previously, with so much free content on the web, you need coursework or a business membership that’s laid out for you step by step. You need someone to walk you from where you are now to where you want to go next and how to get there.
Since you are paying for content, you also want to consume it on your time. So look out for expiring content and ensure you get lifetime access to all content released while you are an active member.
I prefer paying for structured and organized content housed in a password-protected course vs. something this is only emailed to me that can easily get lost in delivery. If I’m paying good money for content I want it where I can easily locate it and access it when I need to.
4. Do you feel isolated in your industry?
Many memberships have online communities that you gain access to when you join a membership. This means you’ll surround yourself with others who are in a similar business stage as you.
This community also means you can ask for help from an actual person, get feedback, and start to build relationships that can open the door to new business opportunities.
So look for a membership that offers the community piece and allows you to ask direct questions to the trainers. And yes, even if you are an introvert like myself, this is an important piece to start networking and growing relationships with others.
5. How much experience do the membership hosts have in your industry?
When you’re looking to learn from someone, make sure the trainers have been where you want to go. Do they know more about content, mindset, social media, branding, or sales strategy than you?
Whatever it is that you are looking to achieve, make sure the content is quality over quantity.
Most membership hosts who have been in your shoes know how to condense content down to offer you the biggest bang for your buck. This training style means they don’t need to water down their offerings. They know what you need to understand, and they leave out the extra fluff you don’t need to waste your time on.
The perfect business membership for you!
As you may know, I host a membership with Jenny Taylor called The Social Note, and we love being able to share our experiences and teachings with our members. Because we have over 20 combined years of experience in the online selling space, we can save others so much time, overwhelm, and frustration. Our membership doors are now open at jointhesocialnote.com.
What you are not going to find inside The Social Note Membership
With the variety of topics that we cover in our material, from brand strategy to mindset to content marketing, we offer social sellers a toolbox of help for each stage of their business.
We drop four new pieces of content twice a month inside our online course platform and do frequent updates inside our Instagram Community. Not too little nor too much, but what we believe is the perfect amount of consumable content for every busy online marketer.
We believe that when you pay for content, you are more likely to do the work. But there’s nothing worse than paying for too much content that you can’t keep up with. So we feel like we’ve found a happy medium with our material drop schedule!
Recap: Joining a Business Membership
The 5 questions to ask yourself before joining a membership are:
- Would you benefit from learning new things?
- Are you willing to pay for help?
- Does the membership offer their content in a way that’s easy to consume?
- Do you feel isolated in your industry?
- Lastly, how much experience do the membership hosts have in your industry?
If you’ve been considering joining a membership that allows you to ditch the hustle to do more purposeful work and impact those who you are meant to serve, but you’re feeling deserted and discouraged with trying to figure everything out on your own – you need to learn on others who’ve gone before you. Join the Social note and follow our actionable steps to begin to build your business from a place of rest.
Since I share awe-inspiring resources and must-have products for business builders like you who want to streamline their business – my content may contain affiliate links for products I use and love. If you take action (i.e. subscribe, make a purchase) after clicking one of these links, I’ll earn a small commission. While it has no effect on your pricing, it’s my responsibility to let you know that an income (however small or large it may be) is made from recommending products I love, use, and share with other awesome people like yourself. With your support, I’m able to commit time to this blog and to each of you on your journey!
