Why I’m Killing my Membership

Today, I wanna talk to you about intentionality. And as I was trying to think of the perfect analogy for this, a few crossed my mind. Is it like playing a poker game where you have a limited amount of chips and you need to increase those chips and win more hands to make it to the end of the game? Kinda. Is it like going to a grocery store except you don’t have a shopping list? You’re just wandering around hoping you get everything you need. Yeah, that’s pretty close.

But I settled on an old standby, getting in a car and driving someplace. Maybe you know the destination. Maybe you even have done the drive before and you think you know it so you decide to not put on the GPS, and you end up wandering around. That road that you thought you could take was closed. There’s construction in another place. You took a wrong turn, and you ended up wasting time and resources and gas and wear and tear on the car when you could have had a clear plan. You could have turned on the GPS. You could have known exactly where you were going. You could have known the traffic that you would’ve avoided. And yes, even with the GPS, you may not make it to your destination when you think you will. Maybe you get a flat tire. Maybe bad weather means you have to turn around, or the first leg of the journey took a lot longer and you need to stop at a motel overnight. But the GPS gives you the best chance of making it to your destination as efficiently as possible. It gives you that intentionality.

And that’s what I wanna talk to you about today. See, my yearly theme is the Year of Control. And one of those tenets of control is control over my schedule, which means I need to make sure I’m spending my time right and I’ve been thinking about how I can spend my time, right, and how I can be more intentional. And I think it really comes down to a few things. I’m time-tracking more. I have decided what my high-leverage tasks are. I’m gonna talk about the difference between goals and values. That’s gonna be a little bit of an ambush for next week’s episode with Tanya Alvarez. I thought it was really good. And I want to give you a little preview.

And then I’m gonna talk about how all of these things led me to the decision to kill my membership and why that’s actually the best thing right now for my business. Then in the Pro show, I’m going to answer the question: Why does this even exist if I’m killing my membership? And I’ll give you some more concrete data on what I’ve learned about time-tracking. So, I really hope you enjoy this episode. My goal is to grow my business this year, and I need to be more intentional if I’m gonna hit the goals I want. Stick around and listen. I’d love to hear your feedback. You can get all of the show notes for this episode over at [streamlined.fm/408. But for now, let’s get to the intro and then the episode.

Hey, everybody. and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps busy solopreneurs and creators grow their business without spending too much time on it. I’m your host, Joe Casabona, and each week I bring you interviews and case studies on how to build a better business through smarter processes, time management, and effective content creation. It’s like getting free coaching calls from successful solopreneurs.

By the end of each episode, you’ll have 1-3 takeaways you can implement today to stop spending time in your business and more time on your business or with your friends, your family, reading, or however you choose to spend your free time.

All right. Welcome. Welcome, everybody. Thanks so much for being here. I’m excited to talk about this ’cause it’s not something I have spent a lot of time on, which is a little wild to think about considering I’ve been in business in some way, shape, or form for 24 years. And yeah, I know I was in high school and sometimes I was gainfully employed. I was in college and grad school, and it was all usually pretty low stakes. I had a pretty rude awakening at the end of the pandemic and through maybe mid-last year where I thought that my business skills, like the things that helped me in Web Design, were commutable, we’ll say. And I could just change my niche from WordPress Developer to Podcaster and I’d have no issues, which is wild, right? There’s, you know, there’s a reason that certain authors can only write certain books or certain actors can only be in certain types of movies, but that’s what I attempted to do and it bit me pretty hard in the butt.

Now, I bounced back last year and I’m happy to say I didn’t fold my business, and I’m still happily self-employed as a solopreneur, but I didn’t wanna make those same mistakes going into 2024. And so at the top of the show, I talked all about intentionality. And there are a few ways that I’m being more intentional.

Starting with time-tracking. I’ve always danced around the idea of time tracking. I like the idea of it, but I never kind of built in the proper habits to do it. And I decided to really make a concerted effort starting in November, December. So I configured my stream deck to have all the right buttons. I have a bunch of time-tracking widgets on my various devices, so it’s very hard for me to forget to time-track. I’m using Timery, which is an iOS app and a Mac app that sits on top of Toggle because Toggle apps are not very good and Timery apps have shortcuts. So, for example, when I enable certain focus modes, I can start certain timers or when I open ECAM Live, I start the recording timer. When I open Logic Pro, I start the podcast production timer. All these things that I could do thanks to shortcuts and Timery.

And it’s been really eye-opening because I know roughly how much I wanna make per hour. And so if I am time tracking, not even aggressively time tracking, just kind of loosely tracking the amount of time I spend on stuff, I can determine where I’m spending my time appropriately.

And so, one big question, again, I’ll dive deep into these reports in the pro show, but one big question for me was: Are LinkedIn Learning courses worth it strictly from a time to upfront dollar investment? Right? And for those who don’t know, LinkedIn Learning was [lynda.com]. [lynda.com] used to be a book publisher. And so all of their course instructor, payment plans, I guess their compensation packages are based on that where you get a certain amount upfront that’s called an advance, and then you get royalties after that advance is paid off. And so if you’re lucky, the course that you put out will pay back the advance and then you’ll start making royalties, and you can choose to get a lower advance. Because that means that you’ll start generating royalties faster.

I found that for the courses I was developing, my preference was a higher upfront advance. And so I know how much my advance is, and time tracking the last two courses, I determine that yes, if I just get the advance, it’s actually worth my time.

And so the royalties are gravy. They’re just extra. Now, I will say that most of my courses aren’t generating the royalties. I hope they would. I had a couple of courses when I first started that were very popular that made up for the lion’s share of my royalties. And so, you know, I’ve made some decisions around that to not do any LinkedIn learning courses for the rest of the year. Unless the next couple of courses I release, right, the ones that I just wrapped on, unless they really start generating royalties. It’s not worth it from me, from like a mental health or kind of focus point of view, if that makes sense. Like, yes, the LinkedIn Learning courses, if we’re strictly doing like hourly rate, how much it takes me, how much time it takes me to make the course against my hourly rate. Yes, yes, it makes sense. But from the intentionality point of view, I’m spending time on the LinkedIn Learning courses that aren’t necessarily podcasting-based. And so that’s taking away from other podcasting-based things I could do. So, I made the decision to not do those anymore. But, that was one exercise that was really eye-opening for me. I thought for sure, it definitely wasn’t worth it for me to do the courses. And it turns out, if I’m just looking at how many hours I’m spending versus how much I’m getting paid, then yes, it definitely is worth it. But from other aspects, It’s not necessary. So, I won’t, again, I won’t dive into all of this here. I’ll save that for the pro show, but tracking everything from my contract work to producing this show and my other show to writing and then the kind of management side of the house, I’m learning a lot about how I’m spending my time, how much time I’m spending on things. And it’s pretty clear like when I have an unproductive day and why I had an unproductive day. And so using this data, I can take control of my schedule and structure my days in a way that assists me in being as productive as possible for the amount of time that I want to be productive.

And this is even more important as we go into the summer because my wife and I have made the decision not to send our kids to summer camp because summer camp is getting pro, almost prohibitively expensive. And we both can have kind of flexible schedules, right? She’s a nurse and she makes her schedule. And so she’s maybe picking up a couple of extra weekend days and I’m, I’ve decided I’m not gonna work a full week by day, and we are getting an assist from family, but I know I’m gonna have fewer hours over the summer to work. And that intentionality is going to be really important to me because I know, if I know, I only have, let’s say 24 or 30 hours, I guess 30 is almost a full workweek anyway. But let’s say I have 26 hours, I know, I will know by that point the best way for me to spend that time. And so that’s the first part of taking control of my schedule.

The other part of that is determining what my high-leverage tasks are. And so I will talk about that In a minute. First, I do want to take a break to hear from our sponsors.

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Okay. And we’re back. So, what are high-leverage tasks? I’m sure if you’ve listened to, I mean if you’ve listened to this show, you’ll know the high-leverage tasks. There’s also the idea of the product ladder where there are certain things you do that are definitely worth your time from, again, from an income or mental health point of view, right? And so lke I said, I could keep doing LinkedIn Learning courses, and I know that, you know, it takes me about 20 to 24 hours to produce a LinkedIn Learning course based on the hourly rate. I know that the royalty they pay me is worth it for just those costs, but I also know that there’s a lot of stuff around that which makes the actual project not worth it for me.

So, when I’m doing a LinkedIn Learning course, if I’m trying to get it done in 24, in 20 hours, that’s basically all I’m doing for 10 days to 14 days. Because I’m writing scripts, I’m taking breaks, I’m thinking through stuff. And so the actual work is not just, is not the only like brain power, like, you know, if I track 20 hours, I’m spending more than 20 hours in brain power, Right? And then I switched my computer to the recording setup that works best for LinkedIn. I have to set up LinkedIn’s recording stuff. And so my computer is basically unusable for one or two days ’cause that’s all I’m focusing on. And then after I ship the course, you know, I have like that work hangover, right? And I’m not picking on LinkedIn for any reason except that it’s a big task like it’s a big project. I just finished one. But this could be any project that takes a lot of your time, right? And so, anyway, I have that work hangover which basically kills a day or two for me while I try to switch back into like a completely different context that’s not LinkedIn learning instructor.

And so, and that’s really important by the way, like I’m glad I do that because when I’m in that mindset, it makes, it helps me deliver the best course possible. The best raw video for the editors to make their lives easier and my producer’s life easier. And you know, if it takes me a day or two to get out of that mindset, then so be it, right? Because I want to produce the best course possible, but that’s not necessarily high-leverage work, right? Just like, oh, I can do like one-off coaching calls or free discovery calls. Free discovery calls is another thing that I am eliminating. Because none of the free discovery calls that I did last year led to any appreciable work, and it led to more wasted time where people would book a free discovery call and then they just wouldn’t show up because they had no skin in the game. So, I’m reworking that strategy. Maybe I’ll show, I’ll share that in a future episode. But that’s not high-leverage work, just like, you know, doing workshops is not high-leverage work for me. Doing like one-off coaching calls may not necessarily be high-leverage work for me. Live streams may not be high-leverage work for me.

So, I wrote down everything I do, everything I offer. I created my product ladder, right? The product ladder is a Membership that starts at $7 a month. I have automation templates on sale for $39. I can sell workshops at $99. Miscellaneous courses for anywhere from $47 to like $200. I have the playbook for $397. One-off coaching calls, and planning sessions, were done for my done-for-you podcast launch service. And my coaching program, which is like $2,000 a month.

I looked at all of these things and I determined what is my high leverage work? What is the work that gives me the best bang for my buck, right? Or the best bang for my time, really? And it’s the coaching. And It’s the done-for-you launch, which roughly aligns to a certain amount of coaching like it’s basically the same hourly rate. The planning sessions and the coaching calls, they’re good as well. They’re good lead-ins to the bigger programs, so I’m gonna keep those. But those are the high-leverage things.

The playbook is out there and it’s for sale, but it’s not something that has been worth me actively updating. It hasn’t been something that is worth marketing at this point. Same thing with the miscellaneous courses. I was kind of trying to do like a land grab and go for like the cheaper, someone who wasn’t ready to spend like $500 with me, but maybe they spend $50 with me. And I realized that those people are not ready for the high-leverage work, right?

And so, all of this led me to Determine that starting in March, right? Actually, this month as this episode comes out, I’m really gonna focus on promoting my coaching program and my Done-for-You service, because that’s the high-leverage work, which means I’m killing my membership. And by the time this episode comes out, my members who were part of the membership will know this. A couple of them have churned out already reasonably so. Because it hasn’t been a focus of mine.

And so if you don’t know the way my membership worked was this, it was the pro version of this show, right? Ad-free extended episodes and bonus episodes of this show, a weekly newsletter, any live streams. And at the higher level, there would be workshops, right? But I spent too much time writing those extra newsletters. And producing the show, yes, but that’s different. And I’ll explain that in a second. And figuring out what the workshop’s gonna be and where, like, what’s the platform I’m going to sell my membership on? Do I wanna use WordPress? Maybe I should use Substack, or I sell over here. I also sell in Thrive Cart. Like that was taking up so much unnecessary mental energy, right? And I talked about in a previous episode, my Be Everywhere strategy. That was an incredible failure. Like I am, I’m barely two months into it, and I can already tell you like it was a terrible idea. And the reason it was a terrible idea is because I was trying to copy somebody who is a creator, who’s much, much bigger than me, right? It’s, I would never try to run track because I like Usain Bolt, right? I would never try to swim because I like Michael Phelps. I would never try to sing because I like Taylor Swift. Those things are not in my skillset, and they’re not, I’m not built for those things.

So the fact that I was trying to copy CGP Grey, just didn’t make any sense, right? He has like a team and it’s worth it for him to be everywhere and diversify. Because his income like really relied on YouTube and he didn’t like that. That doesn’t make sense for me, right? And I learned that and like, my conversation with Nathalie Lussier helped that as well, right? And I think It gave the impression at the end of that conversation that I was gonna go all in on Substack and what I really came away with. Thanks to that conversation and the high-leverage work and my Electric City Mastermind, which is a bunch of friends of mine, shout out to them. we meet every couple of weeks. All of that was like, Hey, Joe, you’re spending too much time on this membership and it’s not paying dividends for you. And it probably won’t like I read an article that I’d like to do a longer piece on that, a small dollar Substack Membership with a massive audience, those are all the top earning substack. The low, like the small audience, high-dollar memberships don’t do well on Substack. And I’m not saying there’s not space for those. I’m exploring that this year as well. I mentioned that in the podcast Advent, but the way I positioned it was not the right way to position it. I think Alex Sanfilippo from PodMatch is positioning a high-dollar membership the right way. They’re different things, right? Maggie Patterson a couple of weeks ago talked about this, right? You’re either doing a one-to-one business or a one-to-many business. And those are different things. And you can’t run them the same way.

So, all of that is to say that yeah, I’m killing the membership. Everything except for the pro version of this show. And the reason for that, I guess I said I would talk about this in the pro show, but it feels very relevant right now. So, the reason for that is that it’s low effort still, right? I talk with a guest for a little bit of extra time, and then everything else is done in editing which my editor does. So, I don’t, you know, I don’t think that that’s a very low effort for me and it does offer an additional way for people to support this show. So that’s not fully reliant on sponsorship money.

So, you know, again, I’ve reached out to the members, anybody who’s on that, anyone who is on like the $10 a month plan who was getting all the extras, like I just dropped them down a few bucks to the $7 a month plan for just this show. So they’ll continue to get this show. Anybody at the $25 a month level, I basically told them what was happening. I dropped them to $7 a month and then I made it right, however, they felt fit, like either a refund or I gave them access to a different thing. And so, yeah. This was not an easy decision ’cause I really wanna make my membership work, but I also know that moving into March, I can better focus on my goals, right?

And I think I teased this in the reverse way, because I just talked about killing the membership, but I had a great conversation with Tanya Alvarez that’s coming out next week as you hear this. So, that’ll be episode 409 where she tells us the difference between goals and values. And, you know, I always thought one of my goals was to spend more time with my family, but that’s really a value. I value time with my family. And my goals need to adhere to those values. And doing the membership and the LinkedIn Learning courses and kind of that hustle of like anything that’ll get me to a certain monthly amount, that’s what I was doing. And that didn’t adhere to the values because there were times when I had to work on a Saturday to get the LinkedIn Learning course just off my plate. Or there were times where I had some downtime and I fell into a rabbit hole of like, oh, should I use this platform for the membership? What am I possibly gonna talk about? And that stole time away from my family.

And so bringing all of this together, the time-tracking, what I know is my high-leverage work, thinking about my goals and values, and killing my membership and deciding not to do the LinkedIn Learning courses anymore, I have made so much space in my month to focus on bringing in more coaching clients and doing more done-for-You work. And it’s already paying off. I’m still doing the rss.com evangelist stuff like that is good high-leverage work for me, and it keeps me really connected to the podcast community. I love what they’re doing over there. And so, it makes sense for me to do that as well.

I’m still doing coaching for Justin Moore. I don’t know if I’ve ever officially announced that, but I’m a brand deal wizard or a Wizards Guild coach for Justin Moore, and I’m still doing that because it’s in my wheelhouse of helping Creators get sponsors, and I’m bringing my expertise to that. And those are both really smart things to do. And the rest of the time, I’m really gonna focus on the done-for-you clients and the coaching program because those are my high-leverage work.

And so, because I need to give you actionable advice, I’m going to challenge you to think of these things or maybe write down these things. Make, consider this stuff. What is your high-leverage work? You don’t need to have four or five, or seven or 12 months’ worth of time tracking data to understand that. If you’re doing stuff and it takes you an hour and you’re getting paid a hundred dollars and you want to get paid $200, then you know that’s not your high-leverage work. What’s the stuff that comes easiest to you that people are willing to pay you the most for?

You know, I think in Maggie Patterson’s episode, we talked about seemingly this myth that everybody, every creator, every solopreneur, every business needed to start a membership or a community. And I’ve learned that, no. No, you don’t. If you don’t have a massive audience, then a membership is probably not the right thing for you, to be honest. It could be. It has to be a very high dollar though. And at that point, it’s almost like a one-to-one business, right, versus a one-to-many business.

So this is advice I got over and over again. My friend Austin Church said the same thing, like, you know, he’s like, you have a list of, at the time it was a thousand people, he’s like, you’re not gonna make any money selling somebody a $10 a month product. You need to sell them a $10,000 product or a $10,000 service, right? Then only 10 of those people on your list need to buy it for you to hit a $100,000.

And so I have an income goal in mind. I know how much I need to make per month, and focusing on my high-leverage work. I know exactly how many of things, those things I need to sell. Most importantly, it’s attainable.

So that’s what I would challenge you to do. Make a list o, all the ways you make money, all the products, all the services. If you have a membership, if you have a sponsorship, write those down. Then honestly, give it a grade between, let’s say F up to S, right, like the STR style. How much effort are you putting into those things? You want the inverse of the amount of money it makes versus effort. That’s your high-leverage work. Then you consider, okay, I want to make X amount of dollars per month. I need to sell this many of these products and this many of these services every month to hit that goal. And I think you’ll be happier with your business. You’ll have that intentionality. You’ll have the GPS guiding you, helping you avoid the traffic jam that is shiny object syndrome, having you avoid the closed road that is product that nobody except you wants to get to your destination. That is your income goal.

All right. That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. If you are a member, stick around because I’ll give you the real, since I gave away why the membership still exists. I’ll give you my actual income goals and what high-leverage worker is gonna get me there.

And then I’ll dive a little bit more into the time-tracking side of things, which I’m staring at right now. I’m looking at my teleprompter as if my video’s on and it’s not, and I’m just staring at my time-tracking graphs. So if you wanna become a member, you can head over to [streamlined.fm/408. That is where all the show notes exist for this episode. And there’ll be a Join the Membership button where you can get ad-free extended and bonus episodes. If you’re listening to Apple Podcasts, you can just become a member in Apple Podcast so you can subscribe right in the app. So, I hope you do that. I would really appreciate that support.

Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.