Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

At some point in every membership's journey, you'll have to decide whether to raise your price. That's a good thing! It means your membership has grown more valuable since you launched.

But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and this week I'm on my soapbox about the very, very wrong way. My video host took my annual renewal from about $900 to $4,500, with less than one months notice and a single email that was easy to miss...

If it isn't obvious to spot, I break down exactly what they got wrong, why I only raise prices for new members, and what you can take from it for your own membership.

If you're thinking about a price increase, please make sure you never handle it like this.

• Why considering raising your price is a healthy sign for your member
• How an upcoming price increase becomes one of the most profitable promotions you can run
• Why legacy pricing is a silent retention tool that gives members more reasons to stay
• What Vimeo got wrong, and the communication, clarity, and fairness lessons you can apply
• Where the line sits between a smart save offer at cancellation and rubbing it in

Want a clear plan for doing it the right way? Grab the free Member-Centric Guide to Raising Your Prices.

And if you'd like tailored advice and support on where the gaps in your membership business actually are, join Membership Academy here.

"That price increase promotion is phenomenally successful. It's always one of the most profitable, the most successful types of promotions that I see other members in the academy running."

"Because if they do, they obviously lose that legacy pricing. So it becomes really good for member retention."

"When we're doing price increases, communication, clarity, fairness is absolutely paramount."

"Putting existing subscriber prices up should be the absolute last resort. It's unfair. It's difficult to do."

• The Hidden Costs of Legacy Pricing (And What to Do About It)
• Should You Increase the Price Existing Members are Paying?
• 11 Signs That it's Time to Increase the Price of Your Membership
• How to Deal With Member Cancellations

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

I always talk about the fact that memberships are an evolution. They're constantly changing. The membership you launch won't look the same in six months, twelve months, or five years, and most of the time those changes are small and slow.

But every now and then the change is more substantial, sometimes an entirely different topic you end up switching to. So how do you pivot in a significant way without alienating your existing members?

In this Ask Mike episode, I revisit a question from one of our live member Q&A calls to break down exactly that. If you're weighing a real change to what your membership is about, this episode is for you.

• How do you tell whether a change is a genuine pivot or an entirely different membership in disguise?
• What's the honesty test to run before you announce anything?
• When should you run two memberships side by side instead of forcing a switch?
• What do you do with the members a partial realignment leaves behind?
• Why does timing matter as much as the message itself?

If you need your membership questions answered, head over to Membership Academy to join our next live Q&A!

"Deep down, if you're really honest and blunt with yourself, is this just not what people signed up for?"

"If this was a brand new membership, would you actually market to these same people? Or is this an absolute departure from what they've joined for?"

"The rest of it is just communication. It really is communication."

"You can't just have them keep paying you for a thing that you're just going to switch out for something else."

• I Need To Pivot My Online Membership. Help!
• Why Membership Site Owners Need to Embrace Change
• Inside Look: Pivoting the Membership Academy
• 4 Huge Ways Membership Academy is Changing

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

In this episode I'm sharing the second half of my closing keynote from Retain Live 2025, where I break down the four essential components of a scalable strategy for your membership business.

Most membership owners think scaling means working harder: more content, more posts, more bells and whistles. That's not it. So many of us don't have a clear answer for what we're actually building toward, and without that clarity, we end up chasing tactics instead of building real leverage.

I'm walking through the three revenue routes you need to balance, how to stop being the bottleneck in your own business, why there's no secret formula (but there are two things that come close), and why the memberships that actually break through are the ones willing to make a genuinely big bet.

• The three revenue routes that actually grow a membership business, and why chasing new members alone won't cut it
• How to build strategic leverage so your business doesn't depend entirely on you
• The two "magic bullets" that actually drive growth (and why they're not what you think)
• How to design a controlled experiment instead of guessing what will work
• Why making a big bet on yourself might be the move that changes your trajectory

Want a way to actually test your next idea instead of just hoping it works? Grab the free Experiment Design Worksheet, it walks you through turning any idea into a proper hypothesis, controlled test, and decision, using the exact framework from this episode.

"Memberships are a retention game. They're not an acquisition game, but ultimately more members does make it more likely you'll make more money."

"The third, and the most overlooked revenue route, and the most powerful, is increasing your member lifetime value."

"Data tells you what people do. Feedback tells you what people think. The truth lies somewhere in between."

"What got you here will not get you there."

• Why Member Lifetime Value Is More Important Than Churn Rate
• How To Level-Up by Creating a Membership Ecosystem
• 6 Areas to Focus on When Scaling Your Membership Business
• You Need To Prioritize These 8 Things in Order to Grow Your Membership

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

Back in 2025, we ran our second ever live conference, Retain Live, and my closing keynote there was called Scalable Strategy. It's all about the things that take a membership beyond just a marketing or retention strategy into a genuine long-term plan.

This episode is part one of that talk. It tackles a question most membership owners have never actually sat down and answered: what are you building, and why?

We get zoomed into launch goals, then revenue goals, then member count goals, and the bigger picture rarely gets a look in. If you've hit a growth plateau, or you just have that nagging feeling you're working hard without working towards anything in particular, this episode is for you.

• Why the tactics that got your membership to where it is now will eventually stop working
• What's really behind most membership growth plateaus (it's rarely what you think)
• Why fear of change is the thing quietly keeping you stuck
• How to figure out whether you're building an empire or a lifestyle business, and why that distinction matters
• The four exits every membership owner will eventually face, whether or not you ever plan to sell

Want a guided way to actually work through your own end goal? Grab the free Define Your End Goal Planner, walking you through where you sit on the empire-to-lifestyle spectrum, what "done" looks like for you, and which of the four exits you're working towards.

And if you'd like a wider view of where the gaps in your membership business actually are, our free Membership Healthcheck is built for exactly that.

"What got you here will not get you there. If you want to get to that next level, it's going to call for a different approach."

"The audience stops growing and eventually the well runs dry, because every sale you get from an audience that isn't growing is increasing the ratio of non-buyers and never-buyers on your list."

"You're not less of an entrepreneur if you just want to create an amazing lifestyle. You just need to be asking yourself this question, finding clarity around where this ends."

"It's not one huge cataclysmic exit event. For memberships, it's more like four exits."

• Setting Goals For Your Membership Business: A Practical Process
• Why Your Membership Signups Have Slowed Down
• How to Handle Shutting Down Your Membership Website
• The 3 Pillars of Exponential Membership Growth

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

This episode isn't about your membership. It's about you, the person running it.

You could have the best content, the smartest retention strategy, and the tightest community in the industry, and none of it matters if the person at the helm is stretched too thin, winging it, or quietly burning out.

I've spent years watching who lasts in this industry and who burns brightly for a year or two and then disappears. It always comes down to the same five things, and none of them require any kind of special talent.

This is for you if you've ever wondered whether you're working on the right things, or you're starting to feel that first flicker of dread before a live call.

• Why knowing a handful of key numbers beats "flying blind" or drowning in data you never act on
• How vague goals like "grow the membership" quietly guarantee they never happen
• The difference between busywork and the work that actually moves your membership forward
• The specific mindset gremlins (perfectionism, imposter syndrome, comparisonitis) that derail even experienced owners
• The early warning signs of burnout, and why ignoring them puts your entire membership at risk

Want a guided way to catch your own burnout warning signs before they take you out? Grab the free Banishing Burnout Workbook. It walks you through spotting your personal early indicators, auditing where your week actually goes, and setting two boundaries you can start this month.

And if you'd like a wider view of where the gaps in your membership business actually are, our free Membership Healthcheck is built for exactly that.

"When you don't know your numbers, every decision becomes guesswork."

"Nobody wins if you lose."

"A burnt-out founder can't run a membership, and a membership without its founder will quickly fall apart."

"They know that self-care, that looking after yourself, isn't a luxury. It's a strategy."

• Avoiding Burnout When Running A Membership Site
• 9 Non-Negotiable Traits of Thriving Membership Owners
• Time Management I Use to be a Productive Membership Owner
• KPI's Every Membership Site Owner Should Be Measuring

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

Every month inside Membership Academy, I run a live Q&A where members bring me their toughest questions. One that keeps coming back around is this: should you onboard trial members differently to your regular paying members?

Most people either run one blanket onboarding sequence for everyone, or assume trial members need something completely different. Neither is quite right. The answer comes down to a concept I call the off-ramp, and once you understand how your trial length lines up (or doesn't) with your natural off-ramps, the right approach becomes obvious.

• Should your trial onboarding be the same as your regular onboarding, or different?
• What is an "off-ramp," and why does it decide how you should structure your trial sequence?
• How does a 2-week trial change your approach compared to a 1-month trial?
• How do you detect (and nudge) trial members who haven't actually used their trial?
• What's the case for letting trial members skip the trial altogether?

Want a simple way to check your own trial onboarding against this? Grab the free Trial Onboarding Timing Map at membershipgeeks.com/490. It maps out exactly what should change based on your trial length, plus ready-to-adapt nudge and upgrade prompts.

And if you want a wider view of where the gaps in your membership strategy actually are, our free Membership Healthcheck will show you in about two minutes.

"There are some natural off-ramps within the member journey where people are more prone, more likely, more at risk of leaving your membership."

"If someone signed up for a trial, there's less impetus for them to actually use what they've signed up for than if they'd paid for it."

"Assuming your membership is as awesome as it should be, all you need to do is you get people using the membership, you get them getting results, you get them consuming your content, then that's going to make it far more likely they'll stay than if they've not used it."

"When somebody joins on a trial basis, they are not entering with the same expectations, with the same commitment level, with the same intent and purpose to someone who would be joining as a regular member. They are not the same, and therefore your onboarding should reflect that."

• Advanced Tips and Tactics for Offering a Membership Trial
• Should Membership Trial Periods be Free or Paid?
• 5 Things to Include in Your Member Onboarding Sequence
• Why you need a solid member onboarding process

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

In this week's episode, I break down member experience, the single biggest factor in long-term retention, and why a forgettable, unengaging membership is the fastest way to lose members who never got the result they joined for.

I'm walking you through 7 specific ways to make every part of that experience work harder for your members and for your retention. None of them involves piling on more content, and we'll also cover the 5 types of overwhelm that quietly kill memberships from the inside.

• How to apply the AAA framework, Affirm, Acclimate, Advance, to build a 90-day onboarding strategy instead of a one-off welcome sequence
• Why personalizing and segmenting the member experience drives a measurable jump in engagement
• How to use gamification without accidentally rewarding busywork instead of real progress
• Practical ways to deliver value off-platform, from member-only podcasts to newsletters that are the value, not just a summary of it
• How to set up automated engagement triggers using the 3 signals that actually predict a member drifting

Grab the free Engagement Trigger Cheatsheet to help you take action on this episode, or if you want our dedicated support, head over to Membership Academy.

"Member experience is the single biggest factor in long-term retention."

"Members don't need instruction, they need inspiration."

"Subscriptions rebill passively, so the fact someone continues paying doesn't instantly mean that they're engaged."

"Churn is a lagging indicator. It is the result of problems that set in 3 months ago, 6 months ago, 12 months ago."

• Why You Need a Solid Member Onboarding Process
• Why Membership Owners NEED to Embrace Off-Platform Engagement
• Use Feedback Loops To Drive Our Membership Growth
• How To Reduce Overwhelm In Your Membership

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

Fake countdown timers, staged waitlists, closed doors that mysteriously reopen the moment someone hesitates. These tactics work in the short term, and they quietly wreck your retention in the long term.

In this episode, I dive into a bit of a hot-button topic for me: how to use urgency and scarcity in your membership marketing without crossing into these manipulative tactics that give this whole area a bad name.

I break down why the closed-door model gives you the worst of both worlds, what real, ethical urgency actually looks like, and a simple test you can run on any deadline before you publish it.

If you've ever wondered whether the "urgency" in your marketing is doing more harm than good, I'm here for you.

• Why the closed-door model gives membership owners the worst of both worlds
• How fake scarcity and staged waitlists quietly destroy member trust
• Why positioning your membership as a painkiller, not a vitamin, is the real source of urgency
• Which legitimate urgency levers (launches, price increases, live events, capped bonuses) you're probably not using yet
• The simple "day-after test" for checking whether any deadline you're using is actually real

Want a tool that tells you exactly which of those legitimate levers fits your situation right now? Grab the free Urgency Lever Decision Tree.

And if you'd like a wider view of where the gaps in your growth and retention strategy are, our free Membership Healthcheck is built for exactly that.

"Someone has a raging headache, they don't need a countdown timer to convince them to buy a painkiller."

"The right kind of members, the members who are prone to sticking around long term, they don't need countdown timers and fake scarcity to panic them into joining."

"If you have a deadline that actually exists, if the offer genuinely ends and goes away, if the bonus is genuinely limited, then there's nothing manipulative about leaning into it."

"People who respond to pressure are more likely to crack under it once they actually get in there."

• Using Urgency to Promote an Evergreen Membership Site
• Everything You Know About Scarcity Marketing is Wrong
• Avoid the Lie of Scarcity Marketing for Memberships

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

If your membership signups have slowed down, your first instinct is probably to look at your sales page, your emails, or your pricing.

Nine times out of ten, that's not where the problem actually lies.

In this episode, I break down why stalled signups are almost always an audience growth problem in disguise, and I share seven proven strategies for keeping new people flowing into your world even after your membership is up and running.

• Why stalled membership sales are almost always an audience growth problem, not a sales problem
• The three core levers for growing your audience, and why they work best combined
• How to build a brand and content strategy that reaches people at every stage of the buyer journey, not just one
• How to repurpose your content so more of your audience actually sees it
• A repeatable framework for landing guest spots, collaborations, and other borrowed-audience opportunities

Want the CLEAR framework as a ready-to-use template? Grab the free Collaboration Outreach Swipes, which includes the fill-in-the-blank pitch email, a leverage currency worksheet, and a pre-outreach checklist.

And if you want a wider view of where the gaps in your membership business actually are, our free Membership Healthcheck is built for exactly that.

"It is almost always the audience growth that is the main culprit."

"Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room."

"Paid ads should amplify and accelerate what's already working organically. It's not a fix for a broken system."

"Go in there and be a valuable member. Share useful tips, generously answer questions, contribute to discussions."

• The 3 Pillars of Exponential Membership Growth
• Growing Your Membership with Joint Venture Promotions
• Understanding the Customer Journey with Kenda Macdonald
• 4 Tactics for Accelerating the Growth of Your Membership Audience

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.

This episode kicks off a new regular feature on the show: Ask Mike, where I pull real questions straight from our monthly member Q&A archive inside Membership Academy and share the answers with you.

First up is a question about drip feeding content. A membership owner running a diet and lifestyle site wanted to know if releasing their courses gradually, rather than giving members full access, would help improve retention.

My answer might surprise you, because drip feeding as a retention tactic isn't actually the fix most people think it is. The real issue is almost always something else entirely.

If you've ever wondered whether locking up your content on a schedule would keep people around longer, this episode is for you.

• Why drip feeding content to force people to stay is the wrong way to think about retention
• What to check first before you even consider a drip feed strategy (onboarding and offboarding)
• How to build a step-by-step content pathway that gives members a reason to stick around
• Why too many live calls can actually make members feel like they're failing
• How milestones, rituals, and habits keep people engaged without artificial gates

If you want a wider view of where the gaps in your membership strategy actually are, our free Membership Healthcheck will help you find them fast.

And if you're looking to get your questions answered by me in our next Membership Academy Q&A, you can join Membership Academy here to be part of the conversation.

"I'm not a big fan of just arbitrarily drip feeding content as a means of prolonging someone's membership."

"Nine times out of 10, people drop off because they never really get started the right way."

"If you give them that path, you don't need to drip feed because you're telling them exactly what to do and when you are laying out the journey for them."

"I think members should stay members and stay subscribed because they're getting something from it."

• Is Your Member Onboarding Missing These 3 Vital Things?
• 21 Quick Tips For Improving Member Retention
• How to Identify Your Membership Drop-Off Points
• The 5 Key Stages of the Member Lifecycle

We really appreciate you choosing to listen to us and for supporting the podcast.

We would be eternally grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show.

They're extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and we read each and every one personally!

Finally, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to make sure that you never miss an episode.