AL 006: Why Do Some Memberships Last While Others Fizzle Out?

AL 006: Why Do Some Memberships Last While Others Fizzle Out?

Liz Wilcox: What is up, my friends? Liz Wilcox here for another episode of AskLiz, the bite size weekly podcast edition? Episode? Whatever. This isn’t actually, like, a separate podcast from Smart SPI. Smart SPI? You know what, I’m not re-recording. Let’s just keep going.

This is the bite size weekly episode of SPI to answer your online biz questions.

Maybe you’ve got questions about your, lifestyle design, personal development, whatever. I am here for you.

Each episode, I’ll feature a question from you, whether you’re coming from our main SPI podcast, our SPI community, my email marketing membership community, or maybe you’re just someone who has recently discovered the SPI universe.

And to honor our founder and the original Ask Pat show, just like he did before, anyone featured on this show is definitely getting a T-shirt because who doesn’t like free swag? So don’t forget, the link is in the show notes to submit an audio of your question. So I emphasize audio because today I’m actually taking a question that was just sent in to me via email, but I would love, love, love, love, love for you to send in the audio.

So the audio people get free T-shirts, okay? So be sure, link in the show notes, send your questions in. It can be about anything, business, again, lifestyle design, whatever, we’re here for you.

So this question comes from Chris from Writing Momentum, and he’s a member of my community over at EMM. And he says, “You know, Liz, your membership is almost six years old, and I know you mentioned Pat Flynn’s is also turning six very soon. How? How the heck do you keep a membership going that long? How do you keep selling it? Do you ever get bored?”

Well, Chris, my friend, I never get bored of my membership. I love my membership, and this is the how. This is the very first thing I want to say. I love my membership, and I have such a passion, not for the content necessarily.

I love creating the content. My membership is just weekly newsletter templates that you can take and make your own. But I have a passion for the people that need those templates. Just like Pat, you know, of course, he’s, you know, he loves writing books, he loves creating YouTube videos, right? But he has a passion for people, and that’s why both of us are able to sustain these long-term memberships, right?

So I love my people. No one can out care Liz Wilcox. Like, there is nobody that cares about early stage entrepreneurs, beginners quite the way I do. I just… and I’m getting ahead of myself and I’m going off script, but oh well. I just did a, you know, “Hey, you’re not in my membership, but you can come to my live Q&A,” I call it Big Sender Circle.

And there was somebody that came, a peer of mine, and she wrote me and she said, “Wow, Liz, you have a lot of beginners in your membership. I didn’t realize that. The way that you can help beginners, that was really, really impressive. It’s not everyone that can work with early stage entrepreneurs the way that you do to break down this complex problem that is email into something simple for them.”

So that was a great compliment, but it’s also, yeah, this is why I have my membership and why it’s almost six years old, and why I’m, you know, working with Pat, right? I love, love, love the people in those zero to three years that are just getting going. Just you can’t out-care me. You really can’t.

So the second thing that I think keeps the membership going for so long is new content.

For my membership personally, I’ve got new content that comes out every single week. It’s a weekly newsletter club. That keeps it really easy, that keeps it fresh over and over and over again. The membership has never gone stale, but the content has to be new, but not too time-consuming. If it took me an hour to three hours every single week to just come up with one template, I’d probably get burnt out because there’s other things I’ve got to do in my membership, right?

So new content, but not too time-consuming, right? So with Pat, what we’ve been doing in 2026, we recreated the framework. We’ve got the superfan system. That launched in April 2026. The month after that, we launched a new course called Sponsor Me. Pat and I, in September, are gonna launch a new course all about how to make money as a service provider or consultant.

There’s gonna be new stuff that comes, you know, up in the next few years, but also that, the courses, yes, I might be contradicting myself. Those courses are a little more time-consuming, but we also put in workshops. We did a workshop at the beginning of June, I think, that was all about AI with Dan Cumberland.

We’re gonna do workshops throughout the year. We did a sales page training that I hosted. So those are not too time-consuming, and they keep the content fresh.

Also, community events make it feel alive. I just mentioned those workshops, but within SPI, we’ve got three, actually four community events a week.

Mondays, we’ve got an accountability meeting where you come in, and you just say like, “Hey, this is what I wanna be accountable for. This is what I want to accomplish this week. Can you keep me in check?” David hosts that. It’s amazing. Then on Tuesday, we have two co-working events, one for North America and one for my peeps down under, right?

And so you can come, and you can co-work. You can work on that stuff you told us on Monday you wanted to get done, and we also host our last fourth one on Fridays as a last minute, “Hey, did you get this done?” “No.” “Come on. We’ll work together for an hour. It’ll be quiet. You’ll be accountable ’cause there’s other people in the room,” quote, unquote.

And so those community events make it feel alive. I mentioned in my community, EMM, I do Big Sender Circles. My people, I call them big senders because I want them to send out emails big time, and I do those circles once a month, and that makes it feel alive.

Then last, I wanna share that new members make it feel alive as well.

I’m constantly trying to get new members in. I have a tripwire, and we just implemented this for SPI as well. So when you join my email list or Pat’s email list, you get a one-time offer to join the membership. It’s like a dollar for 14 days or something like just come in and try it out. And that makes it feel fresh ’cause there’s always new people introducing themselves, new people showing up to the Big Sender Circles, the Pat’s office hours, et cetera.

So it feels fresh.

It feels alive. Now, Chris also asked, “How do you sell this thing?” Well, number one, I do little things. Like I mentioned earlier, I said I was getting ahead of myself. I was hosting my big sender circle on a Thursday, so I sent out an email Thursday about 20 minutes before we went live to my whole list, the people that are not in the membership.

I think that was like 10,000 people or something got it, and I said, “Hey, normally this is a paid thing, but if you’ve got a question for me, I’m already gonna be live. Come hang out.” And I actually made several sales from people that came, asked questions, or just, you know, kind of went quiet and just listened, uh, that said, “Yeah, you know, I want this. For nine bucks a month, I would love access to this Q&A.” So little things like that, seeding it all the time. I also have launch events, right? SPI launch events. We did the Superfans system back in April, and we launched it. We sent a lot of emails. We had live events with Pat, and also this month for my side of things, I’m doing a Christmas in July event, a short little flash sale.

I’ve been building the wait list up. The wait list just launched, I don’t know, seven or eight days ago, where I’m giving away, like, “Hey, join the wait list. You can get golden tickets. You can win a free trip to New York City to meet me,” things like that. So those are our launch events. With SPI next week, SPI is turning six, the community, the paid community, so we’re doing six days of deals.

Be on the lookout for that. Also, I sell with affiliates, right? You sell my membership, you get 50%, right? We’re bringing back SPI community affiliates. Stay tuned for that. Also, I talk about it everywhere. I’m talking about it on this podcast, right? Also, it’s on my website. If you go to LizWilcox.com, right at the top there’s a yellow bar, and it says, “Are you here because you heard of my $9 membership? Click here to see what it’s all about.”

Right? So every person that lands on my site sees that. It’s the same with the SPI homepage. We’ve got, you know, the membership right at the top. And share on podcasts. Also my signature talk. So I give a talk that shares like the three components of email, and one of those components is a welcome sequence, the other a newsletter, and the other sales emails.

Guess what is in my membership? All three of those components. So when I’m showing examples of what those emails would look like, I literally just pull up my membership and pull up the templates. So that gets me a lot of sales as well.

All right, Chris, I hope that helps, but really I want to go back to that first point I love my membership.

I have a passion not only for the content, but really for the people. It’s why I joined SPI. It’s why I became the director of community over here because I love those early stage entrepreneurs. I love those people not trying to make a killing from their online work, but trying to make a living, right?

That’s you. That’s me. I love those people, and I really want to help them. And so that’s truly how the heck, in Chris’s words, I keep a membership going for so long. All right. Hope this helps. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Psst, are you still listening? Quick, while Pat’s away, I’ve got a special little secret just for you and me.

If you love this episode and want more, like a lot more, you need to get yourself into the SPI Community. You know that’s where I’m hanging out, as the director. My friend, it really is where the magic happens. You get access to the full Superfans System. You know Pat Flynn’s entire framework for turning strangers into ride or die fans of your business that actually buy from your business, right?

We’ve got courses, resources, implementation guides. It’s all in there. Okay, okay, listen up. This is the part where you and I can get really close to your monetization goals. I do office hours inside the community. That’s right. You can bring your business questions. You can screen share. Whatever’s holding you back, we will figure it out together.

But here’s the secret. The SPI community normally $99 a month. But with the coupon code SECRET50, you get 50% off. That’s less than 50 bucks a month for life as long as you stay active. This deal is just for the people listening to this AskLiz episode. So don’t sleep on it, babe. Head to SmartPassiveIncome.com/2026 and use code SECRET50 at checkout.

I will see you in there.