How a Yoga Teacher Turned Her Daily Habit Into $2,000 a Month

When people think about memberships, they often assume they need a huge content library, endless trainings and a busy community to keep members happy.

What if that's not true?

In this episode, Claire shares the story of Tonya, a yoga teacher in New Zealand who built a membership around something she was already doing every day. Instead of creating more work for herself, she simply invited people to join her daily yoga practice.

The result? Around $2,000 a month in recurring income from a membership that's incredibly simple to run.

You'll discover:

• What a "do-along" membership is
• Why people often pay for accountability, structure and consistency rather than more content
• How Tonya turned an existing habit into recurring income
• Why your membership doesn't need to be complicated to be valuable
• How to design a membership around what you already enjoy doing

If you've been putting off starting a membership because you think it will take too much time, content or effort, this episode might change the way you think about memberships altogether.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, it's Claire Mitchell, and I help business owners and coaches and consultants and retailers make money recurring income with memberships. That's what I do. And today I want to tell you about a really great membership idea that one of my clients had, and she now makes $2,000 a month. $2,000 a month, that's crackers. And it's even more crackers when I tell you what it's about. So a few years ago, um, Tonya, she's in New Zealand, she was watching one of my um things, maybe a live, maybe a video, maybe my training, and she'd been wanting recurring income in the business, she'd been wanting a membership, but she couldn't think what to do, and then something I said made her go bing light bulb. And what I said was, you could have a do-along membership. What's a do-along membership? That is when you're already doing something and you think that your members would benefit from or enjoy doing it along with you. So in Tonya's case, she is a yoga teacher, among other things. She's a homeschooler as well, but she's a yoga teacher in her day job, and she was already doing her own yoga practice every day. So she thought, Oh, do along. And what she decided to do was say to her um uh existing clients and people in her audience, she didn't have lots, but she said, Would you like it if if I live streamed my daily yoga practice and you could just join in if you want to? And they were like, Yeah, so she did it, and from that she now makes $2,000 um New Zealand dollars every month doing something that she was going to do anyway. So all she does is does her own yoga practice, and sometimes people will come into the studio. I think maybe twice a week people come into the studio with her. Um, she's got a home studio, but most people just join in um on the um on her live streams and they pay her money every month. And I think that is a brilliant example of a do-along membership, but it could also work if you are like a um an artist, some kind of art teacher. You know, think about whether it might work for your business if you're doing it anyway, um, and what you can do is give people it's kind of like giving them permission and the space to do it. So, in Tonya's case, she found that people weren't making time to do their own yoga practice, even though they knew it was really beneficial, they knew that they wanted to do it, they just never got around to it. So, by Tonya offering to do this, that gave them a set time because she does it the same time every day, that gave them a set time and some accountability to do it along with her, which is brilliant, it's so simple. So, I just wanted to tell you about Tony's membership and tell you about do-along memberships, just so you know, there are at least 12 different types of membership, plus lots of hybrids. You can literally design your membership to suit you. So, just think about how you could create a membership that is quick and easy for you to run and enjoyable for you to run, and that is easy and enjoyable for your members. You know, not every membership needs to be packed full of stuff. In fact, I recommend that they're not, unless you've already got loads of stuff just sitting there, in which case you could build a library of alt membership. But you can start a membership literally with um a payment link on Stripe or PayPal and a date and time in the calendar. That's how I've started every single one of my memberships. So, lots of food for thought. Any questions, stick them on here. But do along memberships are just one of the 12 that I teach. You can literally design your membership to suit you based on what you are doing already and what you enjoy doing. So if you don't enjoy creating content, create a no-content membership. If you don't enjoy doing you know managing a Facebook group, then don't have that in your membership. Um, if you want to just have an email-only membership, I'm a member of two of those at the moment. So it's just about being open and thinking about what people, what your people, your ideal members, would find enjoyable and useful. In Tonya's case, it was they wanted that space and time and permission to do their um their daily yoga practice alongside her, and now she makes tons of money from it. And she as she says, every time I talk to her about it, she says, It's so easy, it's so easy. You can have an easy membership as well. Alright, that's it for now. Lots of love. Bye for now.