Membership Mastery with Micah Mitchell

In This Episode

• [01:49] – Stephan interviews Micah Mitchell about his experience with membership site software, with Micah highlighting the benefits of using Memberium over other platforms, particularly for users of Keap and ActiveCampaign.
• [04:31] – Micah explains how Memberium provides personalized experiences for members through customization and integration with the CRM, allowing for more tailored communication and ongoing management.
• [10:46] – Micah highlights the importance of community and accountability in transforming individuals.
• [14:20] – Micah explains how LearnDash can be utilized with features like gamification, quizzing, and certification.
• [22:05] – Stephan and Micah discuss creating a certification program with video feedback.
• [24:02] – Stephan asks about implementing quizzes and assessments in a membership site, with Micah providing examples of how LearnDash and Memberium handle this.
• [32:46] – Stephan and Micah talk about the potential of AI in content creation, with Micah highlighting its efficiency and versatility but also cautioning against relying solely on AI for creative tasks.
• [35:33] – Micah recommends visiting scalemember.com for basic training on membership sites and memberium.com for software.

Jump to Links and Resources

Micah, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Thanks for having me, Stephan. I’m excited.

First, how did you get started with your focus on membership sites and creating a software platform for WordPress website owners to run a membership site with Memberium?

I had a little experience myself in the past trying to make my own membership site, and I even used Joomla! I don’t know if people would recognize that anymore. Then, I started doing Infusionsoft or Keap consulting. A lot of those Keap clients at the time needed the same thing. They needed a membership site. 

Initially, I made a few custom ones, and then it started to be that I’m redistributing the same code. Back then, it was really a product—just snippets of code and so on. It just grew naturally from there. 

I caught the wave at about the right time as that whole thing was building, and I was very focused on it at the right time, but most of it came out of Keap’s growth. Keap—for those unfamiliar with it—is a CRM customer database, but it attracts a lot of influencers, speakers, and people who have a lot of content, typically information marketers.

Are you an information marketer and a course creator yourself?

I am. I’ve created several and done some live events and things like that. I’ve done the recording. I have done all of this myself. I would say mostly, I’ve done it for other people. There was a time when I was flying around, going to people’s offices, homes, and so on, helping them do this. 

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I definitely enjoy doing it for myself. That’s the best. I want to create courses, but I also love helping others.

You are scratching your own itch. How old is Memberium?

This is its 10th anniversary, actually. So excited about that 2024.

Not that this is a pitchfest or anything, but what’s the benefit of using Memberium versus MemberPress or one of these other WordPress-based platforms for a membership site?

Memberium specializes in either Keap or ActiveCampaign. Many other software companies say, “Oh, we’ll take anybody pretty much,” and then they integrate into a bunch of systems lightly. They do light integrations to most things, whereas we focus on very heavy, deep integrations to just a few things.

The way I put it to people is, “Hey if you’re using Keap or ActiveCampaign, it’s a no-brainer. If not, we can’t help you. But if you are, nobody is as specialized.”

I use Keap and Infusionsoft. What features do you provide through Memberium that wouldn’t be typical with a lighter-weight membership site solution?

A lot of membership site solutions are concerned with just getting the member into the site like, “Oh, they bought here.” Therefore, they need access to this membership site. Some take it further to, “Okay, they bought here, and they’re paying to recur.” We’re going to say, “As long as they’re paying, they get access,” but when they stop paying, they don’t get access.

Memberium specializes in either Keap or ActiveCampaign.

We do those things, but we also integrate the whole affiliate portal. Affiliates can log in as members, get their affiliate resources, and see their statistics. This is all pulled out of Infusionsoft or Keap. They can update their credit cards, buy additional things, and one-click upsell. It takes what Keap has, which is pretty robust functionality, and then allows you to apply that within your website.

Essentially, we’ve done everything possible with the Keap API, so its affiliates and customers are managing their own stuff. People are doing a lot of customization with Memberium.

For example, Keap and Infusionsoft use Memberium now to train all their customers, employees, and partners because they can customize that experience. Somebody comes in and gives a bunch more info than they normally would—they don’t just get access—and then it tailors the experience to that person.

A big part of it is adjusting the communication and the CRM. It’s not just, “Hey you, you are a member, you go into the site, that’s all we care about.” We can send you everything you accomplish on the site to the CRM and message you. “Hey, congratulations on completing module two. Here’s a bonus,” and so on.

People typically use it to create a lot tighter interaction and make it seem a little more personal to their end user rather than just distributing a broad course—a lot of personal customization and things like that where the site knows everything that the customer database does. Most systems don’t have that. Like I said, they’re just concerned with access, not ongoing management like we are.

This brings me to the point of how you differentiate, for our listener, an online course versus a membership program, something that’s more of a community with coaching and so forth and not just learn at your own pace, go through a bunch of modules and then hit the completion button.

Over the years, people have gone from, “Okay, I have a library I’m selling you access to. I’m selling you subscription access to my library,” to “Okay, now the library comes with a lot of coaching, hand holding, and maybe some live interaction.” 

It is more about hooking people in with the content. Getting them involved in the community and supporting them will allow them to stay for a long time.

Most people are trying to blend it. They’re trying to go from just selling information to trying to sell some sort of implementation, whether through group, coaching, or the membership site, which is helping them. But those are a couple of the distinctions. 

Membership means subscription, recurring revenue, or whatever, versus a course that’s a one-time sale. But a lot of people are building courses until they have enough courses to spin into a membership to underlie a membership structure. I hope that answers your question.

How do you suggest, or how do you see some of your best customers implementing something that is not a solution but an outcome? They’re selling the transformation, not the information. That’s a crucial distinction that keeps people in a membership program for longer.

Absolutely. What I see as the key behind that is people are getting better at doing assessments. A member comes in, they do a more complex assessment of where that person is and what that person’s needs are, and then they can spin up a path through the content that serves them.

If you think of Apple Maps, you have the destination you want to get to. Join my program, and you’ll get X. That’s the destination. But if you don’t know where they’re starting, you can’t create an accurate route. 

We need the person’s current location. The more sophisticated sites are doing a great job of that. They’ll have the person do some sort of intake, and some of them have proprietary models where they’ll give you, “Hey, you’re this personality type or this business type. You’re strong in these areas, and you’re weak in those areas. Therefore, based on that, here’s a path through our curriculum and a few coaching calls to help.”

One thing you mentioned earlier that I didn’t touch on is the community aspect. For example, I’m currently part of a group called Scalable, which is a client of ours. It’s a nice blend of those things. You have the quarterly retreats and certain monthly and weekly calls. 

As a client, I’m working through a progression of, “Okay, here’s our customer journey. You are here and trying to get to this next step.” Essentially, they’re pushing stuff at me to get me to that next step.

They’re a good example, but most of the membership sites that are more sophisticated and doing what I would say a good job of transforming the end user—not just giving them education—are definitely bundling community, coaching, accountability, content, live interaction, and so forth.

I’m not going to remember the specific statistic, but it’s about how people who, let’s say, have a heart attack and their doctor says, “Hey, you need to change your lifestyle.” You would think that person would change their lifestyle. It just makes sense. I’m going to live longer, but most don’t. The vast majority don’t.

Whereas that same scenario. Somebody has a heart attack, and they need to change their lifestyle. If they have coaching and accountability, the vast majority do. 

Everybody wants to sell content without having to interact. “I sell a million, and there’s no additional work for me because it’s all content.” I think that chapter has not closed. You can still make money that way, but I think more and more people are looking, like you said, for the transformation, not just the information. To do that, they’re packaging together a lot of interaction, accountability, and support.

When the community supports each other, you don’t have to—as the community moderator—do as much as the person who makes sure that every question gets answered, etc. If your community is self-monitoring and self-maintaining, then you can just steer it and let it have a life of its own. Does that take place typically, or is that something that’s kind of rare these days?

There are so many choices of communities you can be in. But people come for the content, and then if you do a good job for the community, they’ll stay for the community. I do see a ton of that. In fact, the groups that I have left have been my major considerations.

Let’s say I’ve been in a group for a while and feel I’ve already absorbed most of their content. The question in my mind then is typically—let’s say I’m going to cancel the group. “What am I missing out on in those interactions?” It’s the group interactions and the connections where I’m thinking, “Yeah, I’ll go to this event. At dinner, I’m going to be able to invite some people to my podcast, organize a retreat, or whatever.” That will come out of that community for me once the content has run its course.

Our system doesn’t necessarily do community, but most people who build a custom community with Memberium are using BuddyPress.

I used to coach people on building out their future content as far as possible. If you have 12 months of content, you will keep people for 12 months. If you have 24, you’ll keep them for 24. But now it is more about hooking them in with the content, getting them engaged with the community, and getting them in little support groups with one another, and then they can stay a long time.

For example, many people are in that Scalable group, but they have put together small subgroups of five to ten people to do masterminds. They’re trying to meet many of those needs, and I might buy different solutions from companies trying to put them together. They’re not the only ones. A lot of people are going for that same idea.

Do you find that the most successful communities were helping each other out, providing their accountability, and so forth? Is that happening inside your platform, in a Facebook group, a LinkedIn group, some other system, BuddyPress, or whatever?

Our system doesn’t necessarily do community, but you just mentioned BuddyPress. Most people who build a custom community with Memberium are using BuddyPress. 

What I hear from people that is a constant theme is that no matter how good they make that community, people just don’t want to interact there. They’re already interacting on Facebook, or they’re already interacting in Slack. They don’t want to come into BuddyPress and figure out the nuances of that, even if it’s beautiful. 

Some of the BuddyPress implementations are amazing. If somebody completes content, it automatically shares in the community, like, “Hey, so and so completed this video. Tell him congratulations.”

In the best scenario, it stores a bunch of internal stuff. But, I found that smart companies will survey their group in the long run. They’ll say, “Where are you guys? Are you already on Facebook? If so, we’ll just put it there since you’re there.”

A good example is one customer of ours. They have two avatars. One of their avatars is on Facebook, so that program’s community is on Facebook. The other avatar is more on Slack, and they’re not on Facebook, so they put that community on Slack. They go out of their way to manage the communities where the communities want to be. I think that is much smarter because I know that any program I join with anything proprietary is like, “Yeah, it’s never going to happen.” I just don’t have the headspace for it.

Great point—really important. If you invest a lot of money and time to build a community inside BuddyPress, good luck because it won’t stick.

No, unfortunately.

Some folks have Memberium tied into a learning management system called LearnDash or something similar to LearnDash. Why would somebody want to incorporate a separate learning management system like LearnDash into Memberium or any membership system?

It’s a fantastic question because there is some overlap. When we talk about solutions, they’ll say, “Well, LearnDash does memberships as well. Why do we need both?” 

The way I look at it and explain it to people is that Memberium is just transferring data around. It’s just connecting things. It’s middleware hidden in the background, whereas LearnDash is the visible display. You’re seeing ten videos. That would look boring. We’re going to make them look beautiful. We will have green checkmarks, progress bars, and percentages complete. When they’re done, they hit the mark completely, and it congratulates them and sends them on to the next page. 

LearnDash really works on the gamification experience if you do it right. But even before that, the learning management experience is smooth, making it easy for someone who may not have time to watch a full-hour video. We will cut that into 12 five-minute chunks so that the person watches one and marks it complete. They get a little reward dopamine hit for marking the five minutes complete versus just watching straight through.

LearnDash is mostly for structuring content so people can easily flow through it. Also, they have things like quizzing so you can make sure the person understands and retains what they just watched. They do certificates, which are valuable for many membership sites. 

Let’s say you’re teaching marketing. You have this marketing podcast. Creating a marketing certification increases the perceived value, even if it’s the same thing. The fact that you just quizzed them on what you just taught them and then gave them a certificate at the end weighs not just perceived value but real value to that person versus saying, “Oh, I took a course. I know that topic. I’m certified in that topic.” What does that really mean? It’s not like it’s government agency-certified. It’s certified by X company. That seems to work rather well for people.

Memberium is just transferring data around, connecting things. It’s a middleware hidden in the background, whereas LearnDash is the visible display.

One of our customers had the big library model for years, and just through their own success, the library got big and bloated. They restructured it all into not just marketing certification, but you are email marketing certified, Facebook advertising certified, and Google’s search engine optimization certified. 

They just took every video that would have just been a video, and the value would have been perceived as basic or similar to what you’d find on YouTube and turned it into a certification course. Now it’s like, “Oh, I want that badge on my site and resume.” I’m paying for a badge, a certificate, or an increase in my status when trying to recruit and deal with my customers.

LearnDash does so much between structuring the content, the quizzes, and certifications if you want to go that far. They do other little gamification things in there, too. You can do points or badges and reward people when they hit certain levels. All of that stuff works better than not doing it. A lot of best practices come into play just by adding LearnDash.

Do you actually use LearnDash and Memberium for either internal or customer-based online training and value-added community stuff?

We do. In fact, we did the whole certification thing. Here’s a perfect example. We have public-facing documentation. We took a bunch of that public-facing documentation and put it into a certification program where we lined it up in a process of, “Hey, if you want to become certified, you need to know all these pieces.” We’d say, “Read this documentation, take this quiz, and check.” Ultimately, we arranged our public-facing documentation using LearnDash into a certification, which we’ve been doing for years now, and we have a bunch of partners who are certified by Memberium.

By the way, that whole process might sound like a lot. Somebody might be out there thinking, “Yeah, I want to do a certification, but it sounds difficult.” I was lucky enough to have a client push me to do it. When I did it, I found out, “Wow, that was easier than I thought and worked better than I thought.” It’s a smart move. If you’re considering it, I would encourage you to.

What sort of investment did it take in terms of time, money, and resources?

The initial launch was funny because I was doing live training in Chicago about membership sites. This person had pushed me to say, “Hey, at the end of that training, just give people a quiz. Create a test. Don’t just say, “Goodbye. Thanks for coming.” Say, “Hey, anybody wants to stay an extra hour or whatever? You can take this test, and if you pass, you’ll get certified.’”

That’s all I did. I built the pages for the people who were certified on my site, like, “Hey, here’s so and so, and they’re certified.” That was basically it. They’re paying—I think it was pretty inexpensive—$500 a year at the time. It’s gone up since then, but by the same content I was already doing, I just took some time on the plane and created a test. It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t even digital. It was in a Word doc. I just listed questions and then graded them personally.

If you have a marketing podcast, creating a marketing certification increases your content’s perceived value.

But that’s how it got off the ground. Then, later, I made the digital version of it, like I said, by just using a bunch of the content we already had and then putting it in order. 

The quiz is basically “Okay, they did go through that. They do understand it.” Then, the additional thing that we did was we told people, “I think could do this; it’s pretty easy.” Once they learned the subject matter, we said, “Okay, now make a video showing us that you understand.” 

In our case, you just watched a video on how to build this membership site. Build a membership site and send us a video walkthrough of your membership site explaining what you did. We had some detailed instructions, but it’s saying, “Show yourself adding a new member, show that member logging in, show that member upgrading, show that member canceling, show that member doing all these things, and show that on the backend, the correct data is happening. Now we know that you did it correctly.”

That worked fantastic. Any business I’ve encouraged to do something similar has worked well for them also. It may not always be like a grand slam home run. I made a million dollars, but it’s like, “Oh, this makes sense. This is building my brand.” It’s bringing in revenue. It’s creating more community, too, because we now have certified partners to whom we can connect our customers, not just like, “Oh, yeah, go find somebody.” It’s like, “No, here’s a list of people who you can interact with.” It’s good for the partners. It’s good for the customers. It’s good for us.

That’s brilliant. The prototype was really wrong, as you said on the plane, right in, just in a Word doc. You don’t have to spend months preparing those. You can just kind of ad hoc wing it. Good job. How long have you been running those certification programs?

I guess it’d be eight years, 2016. We have many original partners who came in from that first one who are still there. One of them, for example, brags about it all the time. I was the first. It’s just an interesting dynamic that I would have probably put off for another year or two, thinking I needed to do more and then just do it. It was like, “Oh, here we are. I guess we have this now.”

I love how you incorporate the video element of how they have to create videos walking through what they’ve built based on what they learned so that it’s not just a simple fill in these multiple choice questions or quizzes. Then we’ll certify you, which they could outsource somewhere and not even know any of it themselves.

I got that idea from a client of mine who trains tennis players. He has, for example, a course just on the forehand, a course just on the backhand, and a course just on the serve. 

One of the functions of his membership site is at certain points, people will send in a video of their shot, and he’ll send them feedback. They’re sending in one to five-second clips. He takes a glance at it, and he then can shoot them back with, “Hey, watch this video.”

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They feel like, “Oh, this world-class tennis coach who coaches pros just gave me specific feedback on my forehand.” But it only took him a few seconds because you have this list of super short clips that customers had sent in, and you check that out. “Oh, this person’s footwork. Oh, this person’s grip. Oh, this person’s whatever.” 

For him now, he’s providing not just that course material but really quick, professional feedback to these people. And they loved it. Most people who bought one of those courses would end up buying all of his courses. It was easy enough for him even if he was traveling on the road with one of his players going to tournaments. He can just look on his phone, see what they’re doing, and send a quick response.

The video feedback has worked well. It puts pressure on the other person, but it’s not bad. Challenging them as part of that accountability is good to make sure they’re doing it. As you said, it’s not like they just said, “Oh, I watched it. I’m going to continue.” I should say that was something they had to do to proceed through this course.

Typically, with a certification or course system that verifies that you learned the content, they have some quizzing system. Is it built into LearnDash? Is it built into Memberium? Is that a third-party add-on that may be a hosted solution like Interact or something? How is that usually implemented?

It is mostly in the learning management system. LearnDash has its own quizzes, and most similar systems also have their own basic quizzes. Some people modify them.

Can you have quizzes that are public and not inside of the membership site so that, for example, somebody who comes to the public website can take a self-assessment, answer all the questions in the quiz, and then get an immediate recommendation for what level they’re at, what program they should take, what their equivalent to an IQ in that topic space that you specialize in, or what their score number is?

The IQ quiz, like you brought up, is a perfect example of you always taking the quiz first, and then if you want the results, give us your info. It’s a lead capture. 

But yes, you can have public-facing quizzes and even LearnDash content, which we talked about earlier. You can structure it so that users don’t have to log in, but they still get the checkmarks and progress bars. 

Of course, when they close the window, it resets them, but that public person can get a taste before they log in.

What are the best intakes or self-assessments? It could be a facilitated assessment where they bring in a coach, a success specialist, or whatever it’s called to help ensure the person sticks or becomes a paying member.  What are the best implementations of that?

Are you asking for the quizzes, a sales tool, not a membership delivery tool?

Yeah, or just as a taste for what they would get. It could be for the new member, too. Somebody paid. Now that you’re a member, take this initial assessment and intake questionnaire, and you’ll be placed into the right program or assessed to be at a certain level, so you don’t have to take as many prerequisites as somebody else.

I think the Scalable site is a good example of that to me. It’s scalable.co, but we also have a Memberium case study where we interviewed them, and they walked through the back end. You can find that on our website. It’s fun because they’re doing well, so for them to walk into the backend of, “Hey, here’s why we did this and that, here’s what we tried that didn’t work along the way, and so on is pretty interesting.”

Gimmicks only work if people already love you and are part of your community. Gimmicks don't create value, but they do build on your existing resonance with your members. Click To Tweet

I bring them up because they’re constantly pushing everybody to take this assessment, even at live events where it’s not a members’ event. Everybody’s out there. That’s the QR code they’re throwing up. “Take this assessment.”

They’re typically trying to get you to take the assessment and then give you a tool so that you can see immediate value. It’s not as much about—at least in their case or as far as I’ve seen, “Oh, you’re perfect for this or that group.” At least in the sales funnel process, it’s important to take this assessment. “Okay, here’s your weakness. Here’s something to solve it. Do you like this? Join our program.”

But there is some aspect of you taking the assessment, and let’s say you’re either not a fit or you’re close. For example, in their case, they said you need to be doing at least seven figures to join our group. Then, there came a time when they started to say or have a seven-figure momentum, meaning you’re at least halfway there. You’re above $500,000 and growing by at least—I forget what it was—20%-25% a year or something.

It’s like false exclusivity there.

Exactly. I thought that was interesting because initially, they did capture just the top end of their market that they wanted, the people who were already there, but then I think they realized these other people are banging down our door saying, “Hey, we want the material even though we’re not there yet.” That seems to have worked well for them.

They did try, at one point, wristbands. You go through seven stages at the live events from seven to eight figures. These colored wristbands that they’re trying to get people to wear to identify themselves, “Oh, I’m a three. I’m a four. I’m a whatever, it didn’t take.” 

But I think that same idea digitally in their Slack groups and their community kind of makes sense where they’ve got the channels organized by the stages. If I’m in whichever channel and even as I was coming into the group, it was like, “Oh, great, you’re a perfect fit. Let’s put you in the mini-group that you guys are going to meet with. Here are the channels you should be in.” 

I kind of know them, but even though they don’t always have personal knowledge of my business and situation, they did enough structuring to help me find my own way.

The colored wristband thing reminds me of a couple of things. One is the lanyards that were colored at, I think, a Tony Robbins event. It was based on revenue, income level, or something like that. That was not a popular thing. Once people caught wind of that, they’re like, “No, I don’t want to look like I’m the poor guy in the group.” That’s not good for their ego.

Then, I had a very recent experience at a Genius Network annual event. I love Genius Network. I’ve been a member for a number of years. But one of the sponsors said, “If you have bla bla bla, then stand up.” Most of the room stood up. “Also, if you have at least X amount of revenue—I forget what it was, $3 million, $5 million, whatever the number was—continue standing. Otherwise, sit down.” 

It was really uncomfortable for the people who had to sit down. I don’t think the guy realized what he was doing at the time. He was making people feel really uncomfortable, like, “Oh, these are my peers, and now they know, based on the fact I had to sit down, that I’m just a small seven-figure business.” I’m a $1-million-a-year business. That’s kind of icky.

Anyway, I think that’s why the wristbands didn’t work. But I do like the idea of having some sort of stage-based thing where here’s where you are in the ascension ladder. It’s not based on revenue or income level but on how far you’ve gotten through their program. They could wear wristbands or have badges on their name tag that correlate to that level. That I think is cool.

I think there’s a right and wrong way to do some of these things. Some of the gimmicky stuff is only going to work if the people love you and want to be there in the first place. The gimmick isn’t what creates the value or the community, but if you’ve got that resonance happening, it can be really fun, and people can get way into it.

One of our clients in Australia started doing awards based on revenue that people were hitting because it’s like an Amazon sales thing. For them, it turned out well because it’s like different colors of rhino because their brand is the rhino. It’s like, “Oh, if you want to be a white rhino, you have to get to hear whatever it is.” That’s worked great for them because they give awards yearly.

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In fact, he’s like, “Man, we created these fabulous awards for people, and they’re glass inlaid whatever, but now so many people are hitting it.” We’re thinking, “Is this sustainable?” But all the people in those communities are totally like, “Oh, yeah, I’m this. I’m that.” That’s their internal speak as they are all trying to climb that ladder, like you’re saying.

Some of the nuance there was really just like, “Hey, we’re going to reward and celebrate somebody who gets it,” and then everyone sitting in the audience was thinking, “Well, I know that person. I’ve sat with them at dinner at these things. If they can do it, I can do it.” They did a good job of pushing it aspirationally rather than excluding people for not getting to where they should be. It’s powerful.

It’s a celebration. As you said, it’s recognition. It’s this fancy award. That’s cool. That reminds me of ClickFunnels with their Two Comma Club.

That’s exactly what we said he was modeling when he did it.

I know we’re getting closer to time here, so I wanted to explore another area. It might overlap significantly or just a little bit with membership sites, but I’m curious to hear your take on AI like LLMs and how that’s changing the world of online course development, membership sites, funnels, content development in general, and all that.

It’s pretty wild. If you’re brave, you can do a lot. For example, AI video tools allow you to upload a clip of yourself speaking, making gestures, and whatever. You can upload a written script, and it will then create a video that looks like you talking and making gestures following the script.

The reason I say that and the reason that to me is one of the bigger game changers besides the obvious is that “Okay, I don’t have to act now. You can take your old content and update it.” People are doing this. 

I’ve done all this content, but it looks bad. The camera and audio weren’t good. You can extract a transcript from that and upload a great-looking video-audio sample, and it can redo the whole thing with fantastic video and audio. Let’s say you’ve even shifted brands. You had a bunch of content under one brand and created a new brand—same thing. You can spin it up.

I wanted to ask you. AI is changing the face of marketing, especially content development, LLMs, ChatGPT, Claude, Dall-E, Midjourney, etc. How does that impact the course creator or membership site owners roadmap for 2024, 2025, and so on? Everything is shifting and changing so quickly. What’s your take on all this? What’s your advice for our listeners?

I’ve been studying this heavily in the last year. That’s a big focus of some of the groups that I’m in. My advice would be that you can’t miss this boat. It’d be like businesses missing the Internet. It’s that big, at least. It doesn’t mean you’ll go out of business if you don’t adopt it in 2024, but within a couple of years, I think you’d be not competitive.

I took about a year studying it and playing with it, but my goal this year is to use it in everyday stuff, and I have been. Several of my mentors, who are quite a bit older than me and I wouldn’t have thought would have adopted it so well, run almost everything through it. They’ve gotten into the habit of throwing up all their work at the AI to see if it has anything to add or mess with. 

They use it for their rough drafts. It’s not to the point where it’s creating perfectly finished products all the time yet, but it is a fantastic drafter and analyzer. Regarding content, particularly people creating content for training, the sky’s the limit. You can get it to write the content, and then you can actually get it to produce it for you, meaning if you upload a clip of yourself, audio and video, and a transcript of some content you want, it’ll put it together and make you act out that content. To me, it’s crazy.

As far as AI efficiency goes, it’s not perfect. You can’t trust everything it creates.

As far as efficiency goes, it’s not perfect. You can’t trust everything it creates, but if you oversee it, it’s almost like the difference between Tesla’s idea of autopilot, where we’ll have it be autonomous, and Toyota’s, where they’re talking about guardianship. They want the car to be your guardian. You shouldn’t trust AI as if it’s already a person, but you should look at it as an assistant.

That’s how I look at it and how I implemented it into my content creation, whether it’s Claude, ChatGPT, Midjourney, or whatever.

Awesome. If our listeners are interested in not just using and being a licensed owner essentially of the Memberium software and they just want to learn best practices of membership sites, course development, and all that, where can we send them to you?

I would go to scalemember.com just because I’ve put a really cool basic training there that you don’t have to be using Memberium. You don’t have to understand the space. This training is really valuable for people because if you have any confusion, it’ll clear that up immediately. Whether you’re just getting started or advanced—I know people are usually overwhelmed—this cuts through that well.

And then, of course, to get your software, it’s memberium.com.

That’s right.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Micah. This was a lot of fun, very informational, educational, and hopefully transformational as long as our listener actually applies the stuff that they learned from you in this episode. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, and thank you, listener. We’ll catch up with you in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Tailor my site’s membership experience using assessments to assess each member’s goals, needs, and skill levels to personalize their experience.

Offer live coaching calls, mastermind groups, peer accountability partners, and moderated community discussions to drive engagement.

Create bonds to sustain my membership retention. Hook members with content. Keep them engaged with my community through subgroups, niche topics channels, and my social media profiles.

Survey my members to discover their community and connection needs. Facebook Groups, Slack channels, etc., can save me work and leverage familiar environments that promote active participation.

Structure my content for engagement and retain my members through gamification. Break courses into small structured steps that faster rapid progression. Offer rewards upon step completion, such as points and badges.

Certify my members when they complete a structured course or final exam. Help my members get credentials to recruit clients, acquire jobs, and achieve expert status.

Have my members submit quick, personalized feedback videos. This shows I care and reinforces proper technique and accountability.

Feature free quizzes on my website. This allows my potential members to assess their skill levels before signing up. Provide answers and recommendations that drive them to enroll in my training courses.

Update my older content with AI video and audio tools. This will allow me to quickly generate drafts and ideas.

Visit scalemember.com for insightful training on membership sites and course development. Explore Memberium to unlock the full potential of membership mastery.

About Micah Mitchell

Micah Mitchell is the CEO of Memberium, which powers thousands of the web’s most sophisticated and successful membership sites. He’s been consulting and speaking on memberships for over ten years and has created courses, live events, and masterminds for membership site owners to get more members and keep them longer.