Membership Business: How I Make £4,596 Per Month and Growing

Membership Business: How I Make £4,596 Per Month and Growing

One thing I absolutely love doing is teaching people how to start their own businesses or side hustles.

But rather than just teaching, one thing I've started doing lately is working with them hand in hand to actually build their businesses from scratch.

Today we're going to explore a side hustle case study of how I helped someone go from zero to create a Membership Business paying them £4,596 per month in 12 weeks.

The goal is to help you:

• Build i.e. turn your specialised knowledge or expertise into a membership business,
• Multiply i.e. give you multiple income streams by others paying you monthly,
• Invest i.e. teach you to invest your profits tax efficiently and make money work on money.

If you're interested in building your own membership business, book a free call with me for the Architect Programme.

👉🏽 Our next cohort of only 12 people starts on 17th September 2024 for 12 weeks.

This will help you launch your new business in January 2025. Don't miss it.

We also recently created a Free 5-day ‘Start Your Membership Challenge' for those who want to discover and clarify their membership ideas.

Back to the case study, here is the result that we achieved in 12 weeks from zero:

Before we get into the case study, let us look at common questions about memberships.

1. What is a Membership Business?

A membership business is one where people pay you a small recurring amount monthly to access your knowledge or expertise.

Membership sites offer various things for a small monthly amount.

e.g. Courses, community, accountability, expert masterclasses, group coaching, events, etc.

2. Why Are Membership Websites Attractive?

They're attractive because they're cost-effective and sustainable.

There is demand as more and more people are online seeking communities of like-minded people.

They're scalable and tend to be very profitable as they grow.

In addition, they can be run from anywhere in the world and attract global customers.

Finally, anyone can start one with their existing skills and expertise and run it from home.

There is literally a membership business in every niche you can imagine.

3. How Do I Start a Successful Membership Site?

You can start a membership business all by yourself if you want.

Here are 10 steps you can follow to create a successful membership site:

• Be clear on your membership idea and niche.
• Decide on who it's for and what problem it solves.
• Validate your membership idea for demand.
• Create a waitlist for your membership site.
• Decide on what you'll offer inside the membership.
• Do research on your pricing and positioning.
• Choose your membership tech and start building it.
• Start creating your membership site content.
• Decide on a launch strategy.
• Launch your membership business and community.

The alternative to doing it yourself is to get coaching from those who have experience in creating successful membership websites.

4. Membership Business Owner Case Study

Below is a case study of Andy Ayim, whom I helped to build his membership business at Angel Investing School (AIS).

I coached him as part of our Architect Programme.

He launched with 34 paying members and earns £4,596 per month and growing.

For some background, Andy started AIS as a side hustle.

He is a married dad of 1 and wants to create a lifestyle where he has flexibility for family life, fun and travels.

The membership aspect of his side hustle that we created together is designed to help him replace his full-time job and give him the flexibility he wants.

I've put this in conversation format so that it can flow naturally. Enjoy 😀.

Ken and Mary:

Please share with our audience, what is your membership business about?

Andy:

I'm so proud and privileged to be here and I thoroughly enjoy the programme.

So I've been looking forward to this conversation for ages.

The Angel Investing School helps to educate, equip, and empower experts, professionals and entrepreneurs to invest as little as £1000 into start-ups so that they can create wealth.

Ken and Mary:

I love that so much. There's so much purpose to what you're doing, which is why I couldn't wait to have you on board.

Do you want to just tell us what life was like before joining the Architect Programme? 

Andy:  

There's a blog that I love from Kevin Kelley called 1000 True fans.

It talks about this concept of how given the internet population is 5 billion or more, there are at least 1000 true fans for every niche in the world.

After reading that, I knew that I needed to expand my business model.

I needed to figure out a way to scale my impact and scale how I can really support others across the world.

So when you shared more about your Architect Programme, it felt so right and intuitive for me to give this a shot.

This felt like the foundational infrastructure that I've always needed and the accountability that I need to make sure that I really make progress as well.

And looking back, it was a decision well made. I'm so happy that I took that decision.

Ken and Mary:

So we've worked together for 12 weeks. What results did you get out of joining this programme?

Andy:

So first and foremost, there's power in having a peer-to-peer community and accountability.

Because there are so often times in life when we have ideas, but we struggle to execute those ideas.

And often it's because we're going it alone, and it's a lonely experience and entrepreneurship is often like that.

So I found it so nourishing and nurturing going along this journey with others that are in similar boats to me.

The second thing is because I committed financially to this path and I had you as a peer leader, I didn't want to let you down almost.

I also want to make you proud.

That external accountability helped me make progress like you always say, progress over perfection.

I wondered, how can I continue to strive to do more and deliver, and be dedicated to results.

So I knew that because I invested in myself, the best ROI I can make was to get results from going through this process.

Going through that launch experience, was really educational.

i.e. the psychology of messaging, nudging and giving people evidence and testimonials, about the results that you deliver was so powerful and impactful for me.

And I'm proud to say today that after launching less than four weeks ago, we have 34 paying members at the Angel Investing school membership,

Ken and Mary:

Woohoo! Come on 🙌🏽

And 12 weeks ago, that was zero. You've achieved this in 12 weeks.

There are many people whose 12 weeks just goes like that.

Some people are still processing their ideas. They're still like, should I do this idea or not? 

Andy:

It was 29 people for my initial launch.

People have been coming in and joining since then.

So we're now at 34, and I'm pretty confident we'll get to 40 or 50, before the end of the year.

Ken and Mary:

I'm confident you'll be hitting the hundreds the more people learn about what you're doing.

Andy:  

That's the goal. That's the aspiration.

And, you know, every week, I'm getting more and more validation from people who thought that you know, through their limiting beliefs, people like me, don't invest.

We really challenge and break down those limiting beliefs and handhold our community to let them know exactly how they can get started. 

I think that change of perception, lifting of aspirations and mindsets is what really, really builds a strong foundation for them to then go on and create wealth for themselves and their families.

Ken and Mary:

Share a bit about some of your biggest highlights on your programme. 

Andy:

One of the biggest highlights at the start was that there's a sea of niches out there.

e.g. There are membership businesses for people that love messy art, for people that love travelling to Italy, etc

It's inspiring to see that because it encourages you and validates the fact that there's a long tail of opportunity and that my idea is a valid and valuable idea too.

I think that sense of belief upfront is so important to keep you motivated and to know that there are others like you that are already doing this.

For someone that's born in the UK like me, I feel like people in the US are ahead and market themselves to the world.

So they will naturally get onto ideas like this.

Whereas in the UK, I feel like it is a bit of a shift in mindset of selling our services and skills and packaging it in this way.

The other big misconception that initially many people on the programme had was that you don't realise that everyone has knowledge that other people will pay for.

The idea that you have to be an expert or at this level of mastery, or have a certificate or qualification is a fallacy.

Expertise is really linear.

The student is always a teacher and the teacher is always the student.

So in certain rooms, I'm soaking up knowledge and learning like in this Architect Programme.

In other rooms, like in my membership, I'm the teacher.

People value that I'm only two or three steps ahead of them.

They value that I'm not a millionaire and I haven't exited a business and made millions.

And they value that they can relate to my journey and who I am.

There's power in everyone's story in that same way,

Ken and Mary:

This is why I'm so passionate about doing this running this Architect Programme, because I meet so many professionals who are literally sitting on gold!

They have knowledge and experience and are looking for a way to unlock that using today's technology using and the power of the internet.

This is where I believe the membership model comes in.

You're taking what you know already and the access that you have to your networks, and you're literally getting that out into the world.

But you're doing it at a price point that a lot of people can afford using the power of technology.

In addition, you're not draining yourself in a process, you're creating a business that's scalable as the cost of acquiring a customer decreases as more members join your platform.

I hope that this chat we're having will inspire many other professionals to ask themselves:

Why can I not be the person who's done what Andy's done?

Andy:  

Absolutely. And that's the right question to ask, why not?

The truth is, we've all been given God-given talents in this world.

When we tap into those talents and think beyond our job roles, there's so much in our lived experience that we could use to teach and support and nurture others.

One of the other things about this programme that for me was so powerful is that Covid over the last few years has taught us a lot about work environments.

i.e. what it means to work in an environment online and offline.

It's difficult to build a work ethic without the right environment.

When people are working at home, they may be working out of a single bedroom, or a single bed flat, and they might not have a garden.

They may feel claustrophobic or trapped.

Other people, maybe parents may feel really distracted and hard to be present with the kids and present at work at the same time.

You know, everyone talks about hard work and working hard.

But it's tough to do that unless you create the environment where that behaviour gets encouraged and nurtured more.

So being on this programme allows us to be in that environment, where we're helping each other, supporting each other, encouraging each other and sharing our progress.

This helps to inspire others to make progress.

I often use this phrase about setting the standard and nurturing people to that standard.

In groups like this, I saw my role as also doing that for others.

Even though I'm making progress, my mindset was to share the details of what I did, so that others can also make progress. 

Ken and Mary:

And what worked for you exactly.

Andy:

And what didn't work, what didn't work. Equally.

There's no failure here and both are equally valuable.

What didn't work teaches me and others what not to do next time.

And what did work is great, because it tells me what to double down and do more of going forward.

Ken and Mary:

This is what gets me so excited about this because I see this as enabling other people.

We're creating platforms that then enable others through our knowledge or experience and all the things we've acquired over time.

Andy:  

Yeah, it's all about Unlocking Potential.

Yes, I'm fully agreeing with you and I'm aligned with you there.

It's so exciting to feel like, wow, we've just unlocked potential now this person is now pursuing the life of their dreams…

or really fulfilling their potential and really being a full expression of themselves for the first time.

That's so exciting, and that's such a blessing that we're able to serve people in that way.

Ken and Mary:

Yeah, one theme that ran through and continues to run through the cohort is this theme of purpose. The fact that everyone is purpose-led.

This is so important because I feel for a lot of people, there's that sense of a lack of purpose in what people are doing. 

Andy:  

Another thing I would say to anyone that wants to join this programme, is really take the time to work on yourself.

Gain conviction over your own life and your lived experience to know the ways that you think you want to serve.

And you don't have to have a full answer, because the programme will help you get there.

You do have to have a few ideas on what that could look like and why.

Ken and Mary:

I absolutely agree with that. What do you think you learned about yourself in those 12 weeks?

Andy:

Before joining, I was paralysed by not getting started.

And without getting started, how can anything really truly happen?

By doing nothing, it had 0% chance of success.

By even just getting started and coming on the programme, I've increased that to at least 1% and that's powerful.

The other thing that I've learned about myself is that there are a lot of undervalued skills that I treated like common sense.

One of the traits that I grew up undervaluing because it wasn't a qualification was my ability to feed my curiosity with an open mindset.

When I was 21, I went backpacking in South America.

I remember my friends saying, that's not a black thing to do, you're gonna get killed.

But actually, it was that same curiosity that I used on this programme to really explore with an open mind, the ideas, the concepts, the teachings that you were sharing.

I was happy to unlearn things that I previously thought were true, in order to go on it with the spirit of learning and making progress and really lean into this experience.

I think for some people, it's hard because they hold on to things that they previously knew.

And sometimes use that as a restraint and a challenge to not even give it a try.

I had to let go of that to come on this programme from a place of humility.

And I had to put my ego aside and say that I'm coming here as a student and to give it my best.

I think my results are directly correlated to that open mindset that I had.

Ken and Mary:

That's such a powerful thing you said there about being coachable.

There are people who sign up for a coaching programme but don't actually allow themselves to be guided through the process and actually follow what works.

The programme exists because it's a repeatable process to get a very clear result over a defined period, which happens to be 12 weeks.

So, it's so good to actually hear it from you and I hope that for the people reading, it actually set off some thoughts in their minds.

Andy:

Absolutely.

Aristotle has this quote called excellence is a habit.

And I once heard Jay Z talk about patience and persistence.

This Architect Programme is literally what it says on the tin, it's architecture.

It's the framework and foundation infrastructure for building a better future for yourself. But you have to be willing to make that investment into yourself and to do the work.

If you're someone who knows that you're willing to work hard and follow through with an open mindset and continuously learn, you will execute your ideas through this programme.

It will build the foundation to build the life that you want in the future.

And I'm not saying that as someone who's just a fan of The Humble Penny, or a friend of Ken and Mary.

I'm saying that as someone who has gone through the programme and has already started to see results.

In a year's time, I'll probably have the same conversation with you both and I'm very confident that I would have elevated the membership to another place.

So if you're someone that values, community, learning alongside others, and is willing to have an open mindset, you're gonna get so much value.

You'll execute on the idea you've always had in your mind, but not known how to actually bring to life.

When you hear about how much it costs to go on this programme, it's really important for you to understand that you're investing in yourself.

Life is a cost because time is something that we can never get back.

So by investing your time over these 12 weeks, the real ROI and dividend will come from the patience and persistence of following through over the next few years.

Ken and Mary:

That's powerful. Andy, that means a lot to us, as instructors of this programme.

At one stage of our lives, this programme was just a vision we had.

I want to be working with people who I'm enabling to enable other people.

So it means so much to have had you on the programme in a cohort.

I'm super proud of what we've created together and I'm cheering you from every part of the world. 

Andy:

I feel so excited by the position of responsibility that I'm now growing into.

Today, I have a lifestyle where I can drop my daughter to school, pick her up, go on vacations.

And I'm so excited about not only unlocking my future but being able to inspire others to take action and unlock their futures.

I'm so inspired and excited about how many 10s of 1000s of people, I can really unlock potential through this vehicle and really express myself in this way.

That mindset shift just means the world to me. So that's what keeps me going.

That's what keeps me motivated and so excited.

And that feeling is hard to replicate through a 9 to 5 employment or doing it for others.

I'm finally in a position where I'm a full expression of myself, I really enjoy being myself in and outside of work.

I'm leading with a purpose and a real-world cause.

Ken and Mary:

Wow, this means so much Andy.

It excites me to wake up every day knowing that we're doing what we love. Thank you.

5. Conclusion

A membership business is quite an adventure and is best suited to you if you're not just interested in it for the money.

You have to care about the outcomes of others and see it as a purpose-led business.

It will take work to get it started and about 5 hours per week to keep it running, but it will create more income than your job over time.

If you'd love to join this programme and go on this journey of turning your professional skills or specialised knowledge into a membership business, then join here.

12 weeks later, you'll emerge with a business that not only helps others but makes you recurring income each month and growing.

Remember, the next cohort starts soon and only 12 people will be accepted onto the programme.

I look forward to us working together and launching your membership business 🙂

p.s. I'd highly recommend joining the new Free 5-day ‘Start Your Membership Challenge' for those who want to discover and clarify their membership ideas.

6. Frequently Asked Questions about a Membership Business

Here are frequently asked questions about starting a membership business:

How Do I Set Up a Membership Business?

Here are 10 steps you can follow to set up your membership business:

1. Be clear on your membership idea and niche.
2. Decide on who it's for and what problem it solves.
3. Validate your membership idea for demand.
4. Create a waitlist for your membership site.
5. Decide on what you'll offer inside the membership.
6. Do research on your pricing and positioning.
7. Choose your membership tech and start building it.
8. Start creating your membership site content.
9. Decide on a launch strategy and execute it.
10. Launch your membership business and community.

Are Membership Sites Profitable?

Most membership sites are extremely profitable because the cost per member decreases as more members join.

The cost of the technology is also usually fixed and doesn't increase per member.

Finally, you can have members join from anywhere in the world, depending on your niche, making it not just profitable but diversified.

How Do Memberships Help a Business?

Memberships increase the valuation of a business because subscribers are better than customers.

Subscribers pay you monthly but customers pay once in a while.

This means that you can have predictable income on a monthly basis.

What to read next about a Membership Business:

• Join the Architect Programme
• How to Start a Business: 10-Step Guide
• Free 5-day ‘Start Your Membership Challenge'

What to watch next about a Membership Business: