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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
284 Content Won't Keep Members Anymore. Community Will
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Shelley and CJ Hitz have run the same low-ticket membership for over eleven years. That alone is worth paying attention to.
They built Christian Book Academy for Christian writers, people who want to finish and publish their books but keep getting stuck. The membership costs $49 a month. They have over 300 members. And they have had to figure out, the hard way, what actually keeps people paying month after month.
Dominik sat down with both of them to dig into the mechanics. They talked about how they get 20 to 25 new paying members from a virtual conference twice a year, with no ads, just speakers emailing their lists. They talked about progress pods, small accountability groups inside the membership that have become so valued that one member's pod literally paid her subscription so she could stay. They talked about why removing the countdown timer on their conference offer tanked sales. And they were honest about the moments they almost walked away.
There was also a moment I did not expect. They turned down a spot in a book that hit the USA Today bestseller list because the topic did not fit their brand. No hesitation. They would do it again.
If you run a membership, or you are thinking about starting one, this conversation gets into the real economics in a way most people do not talk about publicly. I think you will get a lot from it.
Check out Shelley and CJ's work:
🌐 https://www.trainingauthors.com/
📸 https://www.facebook.com/kingdomwriterspage/
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@kingdomwriterstv/
Why Content Alone Fails Now
SPEAKER_00With AI giving content away for free, content alone will not keep members anymore. What are members actually paying for now if it's not the information asset?
SPEAKER_03It's definitely the community for us. In the way that we set up our membership, I do really think it is AI proof. People may come into the membership for content, but they stay for the community.
SPEAKER_00Hello
Meet The Christian Book Academy Founders
SPEAKER_00and welcome to the Art of Telling Online Courses. We are here to share winning strategies and secret facts from top performers in the online course industry. My name is Dominique Dragon, and today's guests are Shelly Kit and TJ Kit. TJ and Shelley have published 70 books through their independent publishing company, Body and Soul Publishing, reaching nearly a million readers. Since 2010, they have helped over 1,000 writers finally finish the book they were meant to write because they believe every story deserves to be told. Together they run Christian Book Academy, a membership community where writers go from stock to publish. And today we are going to talk about why a low-ticket membership might be the hardest business model in the online course world from the two people who have run one over a decade. We are also going to talk about the day that they turned down a USA Today bestseller and why they will do it again, how they get 20 to 25 new members from a single conference without posting one reel, and why content alone will not keep your members anymore and what actually will. Shelley and CJ, welcome to the show. Great to be here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00I want to
From First Book To Publishing Company
SPEAKER_00start before the business. So before the membership, before any of it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. CJ was speaking and traveling all the time, and one of his colleagues brought over a self-published book. And this was in 2008, I think. And we were like, oh, I think we could do this. Like we had been writing and publishing content online on a website. So we published our first book in 2008. And we're both naturally teachers and speakers. And people started asking us, How did you do this? How did you do this? Because it was, you know, before it was really widely known. And we started a website to share our process. And so one thing led to another. And we kept publishing books, but then our business evolved over time. And we started our membership in 2015.
SPEAKER_00Nice. That's a really beautiful story. So you have published 70 books on your own. So what did publishing those teach you that you could have never taught from theory, for example?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, you learn things when you write your own books and publish them, you know, it just um through the process. And now CJ handles the publishing process for our company. So I don't know if you want to share a little bit of just the learning process.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, uh when you go back to when um Kindle uh really started taking off back in uh I guess 2012, 2013, somewhere in there, we kind of rode the beginning wave of that. And uh kind of experienced uh, you know, some highs there. And then the market over over time became a little more flooded. But uh we've still maintained to this day uh trickles of royalties from a lot of those books. That once you get them up there and you go through those hoops of getting something out there, you never know what can happen with it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
Royalties, Reach, And Books As Assets
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's truly kind of a passive income, you know, once you once you get that up there, plus it's passive, you know, impact. Um when people get a hold of your books and you believe in that message, uh, it's something that uh can impact people for years to come.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and we always say, you know, even as a business owner, it can be the best business card for your business that people won't throw away, right? They don't throw away a book. And um we have found that having books opens doors. So a few years ago, we worked with a subscription box company in our niche, and we were able to sell 150,000 books to this company over five years, and it produced thousands and thousands of dollars of revenue for our business. But we would have never had that opportunity had we not had a big catalog of books, right? And also if we wouldn't have taken that step in the first place.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly.
Pastoring Writers Through Isolation
SPEAKER_00So um, there's a phrase that you use that I really liked, and you called yourselves like pastors for writers. I have never heard anyone in the publishing space describe themselves that way. So, what does being a pastor for writers actually mean day-to-day?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you know, our particular niche, the Christian writing niche, we know that uh there are things that people are sharing regarding uh the way God's impacted their lives, the way they're sharing their story, that is difficult. And we actually believe there's a lot of spiritual uh resistance, put it that way, to getting those books out there. And so why we call ourselves pastors for writers is we're helping walk people through the process. Kind of like walking through someone through a field of landmines and knowing exactly kind of where those are, but just kind of moving slowly, encouraging, saying, you know what, you're gonna make it one step at a time. We're gonna help you cross that finish line uh together. Uh if you're a runner like I am, uh you also understand the the fatigue that a marathon can bring on. And you get to certain points where you wonder if you can continue. And I think a lot of these writers we work with, they just need that encouragement, they just need that push, that accountability, that belief that, hey, we've done it, and we know you can as well. We're not special. We believe you can also go through the same process that we have, and so that's where the pastor part of it comes in. We're helping shepherd those people across to get their books and messages out there. And um, their messages again that can really impact people uh emotionally, spiritually, physically, uh, in all the different ways that we deal with life. And so uh that's a little bit of uh behind the pastor part of it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and how we do that in our membership, Christian Book Academy, is every month we have a war room prayer meeting. So we actually meet to pray together every month, and then every month we have a two-day virtual writing retreat where we write together and we use the Pomodoro technique, and um, our members get so much writing done during that time. But CJ kicks it off with a message, kind of like you would get in a church service, really, and he is like a pastor for them, encouraging them, and everyone just loves it. And they like even this month, they were like, We got our dose of CJ this month, but it's our you know, the dose of God, like you know, integrating their faith and encouraging them. Like, you know, it's it's it's really um helping them to keep going because it's a very isolating thing. You write in isolation, and so it's a community that they get that support.
SPEAKER_00Makes sense. Um
The Conference Engine Without Social Media
SPEAKER_00let's talk about how people actually find it because you do it in the kind of unusual way. There's no ads, you have stepped back from socials, and your big lever is actually an event, the Kingdom Writers Conference, right? So walk me through the mechanics. How is that conference actually structured?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I do want to say we have dipped our toe back into ads this year. We're we're trying some, you know, ways just to um diversify our leads. But um, primarily over the last probably five years, we have run what's called the Kingdom Writers Conference. It's a virtual conference, similar to summits. We call it a conference because that's the the verbiage that writers are familiar with. And so we do that and we have done it in different ways. We did a really big one, like a summit in a box style, and it was our biggest thing. We had like, I think, over 50 people join the membership and it um, you know, lots of revenue and all of that, but it was really stressful. Um, we're we're both um highly um, you know, highly sensitive empath, and like we just got overwhelmed really easily, all the lives and all the things. So we have scaled it back to a repeatable system, and it's an audio only like type of summit or conference, and it's really low lift for our speakers. It's a 15 to 20 minute presentation, audio only, like a podcast. And we usually have, you know, maybe 14 or less people. So it's smaller, and we do this about twice a year. One year we did it four times a year, and it really, you know, helped, you know, boost our membership, but it was um a little bit too much. But it's um through collaborations. So all of the speakers agree to promote the conference through their email list, and they send at least one email out, and that's how we've gotten a regular amount of like, you know, 20 to 25 new paying members through those conferences each time.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um
Speaker Recruiting And The Offer Stack
SPEAKER_00I like that part that the speakers promote the event to their email list. So how do you recruit those speakers and what's the deal that you have with them then?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So um uh we've done, I think, 11 of these now. And in the beginning, I the very first one, I used mostly people who had been in our academy. So they also gave us great set testimonials and they had published their books through our content. And so, and some of them were now teaching writers as well. So that was really great. But then after that first one, it's like, hmm. But um, you know, I I started looking at people that are, you know, similar to us or in the industry and like, you know, um reached out. And um now we have done so many of them. I'll post even on Facebook and say, hey, we're doing a conference. I'm looking for speakers. Do you know anyone or you know, are you interested? Or I'll open up applications. We have um a list of all our previous speakers. So sometimes we have our speakers come back for another time, especially if they did really well with affiliate sales and you know, promoting and if it was a good fit with our audience. And then that's just it's not just about numbers, but it shows us that it was a good fit with their audience and our audience. But yeah, so I just sometimes do research and I just search online um for like other podcasts. So I see who was featured on those podcasts and then other events. So if there's other like virtual events or even in-person conferences, I look at who their speakers are and then I can reach out and sometimes I just do that cold outreach. But because it's for a speaking engagement, a lot of people do show interest.
SPEAKER_00And when someone comes in from a speaker's list, what is the path from uh from there to a paid membership of yours?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So what's worked really well for us is we have a time-limited offer for the all access pass. So they can keep ongoing access to all the presentations plus some of our like, you know, workshops or, you know, we have some other digital products that we add to that bundle. And then they get a one month um, one month in our academy as part of that all access pass. So it's like they paid for it. It's a free trial basically, but it's included in that. So what happens is when they sign up for the conference, they get the all access pass and it's a special price for like 20 minutes. And I tried remove removing the timer and our sales tanked. Our audience needs that deadline. So we have that. And then um, once they sign up for the all access pass, immediately the upsell is claim your free month. This comes, you know, included in the all access pass. Make sure you get that. And we've had, you know, good response to that. And then our average rate of people staying after the free trial is about 50%.
SPEAKER_00And um, right now you're adding a new channel at the top of that.
YouTube To Lead Magnet To Trial
SPEAKER_00So you're reviving YouTube. So what is your plan there for YouTube right now? And um, where does it hand off to an email, for example?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it was just it kind of came out of the blue. And honestly, it was so interesting because it's like God works in mysterious ways. It was the same person that first showed us his self-published book that we were we were meeting with him. He was in town, and he was like, you know, you guys should consider, you know, going all in on YouTube. And CJ showed him our channel, Kingdom Writers TV. And um, he was like, Well, you already have over 5,000 subscribers because we've just been dumping things like from the podcast or, you know, just different things over the years. And he's like, This is a gold mine. You guys need to try this because Facebook ads are frustrating. You know, it's like sometimes they're working, sometimes they're not. You're pouring all this money into it, and you're just like, ah, and it's stressful. It's a roller coaster emotionally. And so I started researching it, and it just seems like a lot of people are having success finding their people. And we have a very, very small niche, and that's been really hard to um to find those people on Facebook. And then Facebook doesn't let us use faith-based targeting because you know, we're uh they they categorize this as a religious organization, even though we're technically not. So, anyways, we've just been round around with all these things and trying to figure out like how do we find a reliable lead source. So we're gonna go all in on YouTube, see how it does. We both enjoy like teaching and you know, encouraging. So we're just gonna see how it goes. And um, we're we're leading people to a lead magnet. So, what we've started to do is last year we hosted a new live workshop every month. But what we realized that works for certain audiences, and it might work for yours, but our audience got overwhelmed. They're highly creative and they just need to write. And so having new content every month, our numbers started going down and down and down. And with the workshops, we would also have the upsell of the free trial. And so it just became less and less effective. And so, what we've tried this year is a group writing session once a month, and we just have them write with us for 15 minutes and it's amazing. They're like, oh my gosh, I got so much done, and I've been, I haven't worked on my book for a year. And um, we're offering offering a free trial on that call. So we're driving all our traffic right now from YouTube to sign up for that 15-minute writing restart live Zoom call each month. And then we'll, you know, um offer them the free trial. But we also have another sales sequence. We send them through once they're on our email list, a welcome sequence, but then also a sales sequence to join yearly um for some discounts and some bonuses. And so um, so yeah, we're just gonna see how it goes, but that's kind of how we're envisioning the funnel to go right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sounds perfect, actually. So um let's open up the membership itself because 11 and a half years is the part that should make every membership owner actually lean in because most do not survive past year two. So uh
Onboarding, Progress Pods, And Retention
SPEAKER_00let's start again with a model. Uh so what's the price point? What does a member actually get for it? And um how do those first two weeks look like for them? So can you walk us through the onboarding and stuff?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's $49 a month or $450 a year. And the first couple weeks, um, we really uh, you know, walk them through what they get access to and how to take um advantage of that. We also recently, a couple years ago probably, we added a kick start challenge. So it's a fifth 15 minutes is all like that's our thing is 15 minutes. Like just give us 50, because a lot of our people are retired, they're older, they're finally have time to write, but then they're still like busy and all of the things. So just um give us 15 minutes for this kickstart challenge and you get these bonuses. So we also incentivize because um we found that that works better to incentivize. So um they go through this challenge and um get to know a little bit more about the membership as well. And yeah, we just let them know about you know the progress pods. That's something we added a few years ago. I don't know if you want to share a little bit about what those are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh progress pods were introduced to us uh from one of our friends, uh Richard, who's uh out of New Zealand. He had started this software. Uh it's a program where you're you're basically uh having groups of people in what's called a pod. They meet uh either once every two weeks, once a month, but the whole goal is accountability.
SPEAKER_03Ours are usually weekly.
SPEAKER_01And so his whole thing was just take the next small step. What's the next small step? And then when you come back, you can share with the group how that that step went. It's not rocket science, it's not, you know, finishing your book all at once, but one little bite at a time, but it's the encouragement. We've we've found that implementing those progress pods is one of the favorite things now in the membership because people have this little community within the community. And so that's huge. If you can get people that mesh and bond and share emotionally their wins, their losses, their struggles, what you find is those people will keep coming back. And if they leave, if they want to leave the membership, um, they essentially are leaving access to the progress pods. And so it's just one of those little things that really helps keep people involved in your membership, but it also is a real uh value for them because it helps them move forward and not just stay stuck and feel like they're a number within this big membership.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it really has improved um or has has helped retention. And there was one person that she was like, I don't know if financially I can stay. Her progress pod literally said, We will pay so you can stay in our progress pod. So there was people that paid for her membership. And um, you know, so we try in that onboarding to get them in a progress pod, right? Because we know that that will help them to stay as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that's a really cool idea. I haven't heard of anything uh like that as a software. I know that people usually use those kind of progress stuff, and it really helps with retention, as you mentioned, and stuff. So that's a really, really cool idea.
SPEAKER_03I think you can find it at progresspods.com or something. It's Richard Ralston, and he he he has a great software. If anyone is interested, definitely consider. I tried everything with trying to do accountability groups and doing it myself and you know, all the things. And this is the easiest thing. It's hands off, he will train your people. My VA handles everything. I do nothing.
SPEAKER_01And each of our pods have a pod leader that leads the call. And in many of those cases, we've given those pod leaders free membership in exchange for their time with their willingness to lead these groups because they're these pod leaders are people that have even gone through the process and had books published. They understand the struggles, they understand what it takes. And so they've been there and now they can help others in that that pod.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, that's a brilliant idea, definitely. Uh,
Building A Community That Feels AI-Proof
SPEAKER_00you also said something I think um is the most important strategic point you have made. That with AI giving content away for free, content alone will not keep members anymore. So uh what are your members actually paying for now if it's not the information as is?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's definitely the community for us. And we and you know, there's so many times that I'm like, why did we go into something that's such a small niche? You know, because it has been a struggle at times, but we've just you know, we are people of faith and God has just said, keep going, but um, he's always provided for us. But um in this, in the way that we've set up our membership, I do really think it is AI proof because we we will be able to continue because of the way it's set up with communities. So we have the virtual writing retreats every month, we have, you know, like I said, the war room prayer meetings, we have the progress pods, and people are not coming into the or they may come into the the membership for content, but they stay for the community.
SPEAKER_00Um, what about the email uh side of things? So it's you send two to three emails a week. What are they mostly? Content, promotion, or a mix of both?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's a mix of both. And honestly, I'm in a process of changing things up a little bit this year and trying to really get more of an automated flow. So, like a strategy. Um, I've done a lot of launching in the past, and I want to have something that's a little bit more hands-off and you know, have leads coming through, do the you know, the live um writing restart call each month, but then have a sequence that each person goes through. So I've been setting up more automation. Emails. And I have been working with a coach to set up a sequence that will run, you know, for at least a year and have send people through a specific belief, you know, belief emails to help them overcome the objections and the, you know, the belief, like, you know, things like, who am I to be a writer? Can I really do this? Do I, you know, I think feel like I need to have a traditional publishing contract, you know, just all of the, you know, things where they get stuck. But look, those will be what we're planning right now, those will be on Fridays. And they will just continually come out and they'll get to know us, they'll, you know, do that. I'm thinking now that we're doing YouTube, we may have a video or an email going out on Tuesdays about YouTube. And then if we're doing any other like special, you know, things, like if I'm featured in a summit and I need to promote it, that would be a Thursday, you know, something extra. Or like if we are having a promotion, then we'll pause the Friday email sequence and then we'll do Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Those are the days that typically our audience opens the most. So that's why we choose those days. But we're just kind of in a process of figuring it out right now. But typically we've done a lot of like story-based emails with a call to action. And um, so it'll be interesting to see how this goes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, for sure. What about email promotions that you mentioned? Do you structure those differently or do you just send value emails with a call to action button from some to time? And how does that look like?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for our um conferences, we usually promote those for two weeks. And we have a series of different types of emails. And I followed a specific template that I I had purchased the program Summit in a Box. And so she gives certain emails that she recommends sending at different times. And so some of them are value-based, some of them are like um like overcoming objections or you know, different things, but you know, the first one's just an announcement one and that sort of thing. But there's a certain sequence we go through for those. And yeah, tip like it's a typical like launch sequence type emails that what do you know when we're having a promotion?
Going Narrow, Staying True, Saying No
SPEAKER_00Um you mentioned before that you were told your niche is too small. So you went narrow anyway, and now um you have run a membership in it for over a decade. Knowing the economics now, was going that narrow a business advantage or a constraint that uh you had to fight?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I remember very clearly, and CJ and I talked about it. It was 2015. I launched the um membership, and at that time it was called Author Audience Academy. So it was broad. It was more for just any self-published author. Our website, trainingauthors.com, was for all self-published writers. And we had really gone broad, and I mean, still niching down to self-publishing, but um I realized I worked with a coach, I realized I love opening our trainings with prayer and sharing my faith. And CJ and I have always been in ministry. My dad was a pastor, and so like it just made sense like to incorporate those things. But um, my coach said it's like a magnet, you know, when you really, really niche down, you're going to attract those that are for you and you're gonna repel those that are not. And I definitely see that on Facebook ads. People are like, you know, that are not for us, the the comments that they leave. But what we have found over the years, and CJ, you can attest to this too. Like, I don't know that we would be doing this today if we wouldn't have incorporated our faith. Wouldn't you agree?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh, I think at the end of the day, uh you have to let your your true passion come out in whatever niche you're in. People will know very clearly whether you're faking it or if you truly have that passion that comes from your heart. What we realized is that uh we want to just be able to freely share about uh our our faith and not have to tiptoe around things just because we don't want to offend some people but please others. And so that's where you decide, well, this is gonna look you know decrease our niche even more. But what we found is that um people will find you uh as they as they see your faces, as they see that uh, you know, whether it's our conferences or again Facebook ads, now YouTube, people will be able to see, oh, okay, they they have faith in Christ as well. And these people will feel comfortable. Uh and we we've had others along the way as well that uh don't necessarily share our faith, but know that they can glean some some wisdom from our experiences of still self-publishing and going down that route.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And the thing is, like, I think I would have gotten bored by now just talking about self-publishing. And I think being able to integrate my faith and our faith and just even like I I started the membership and CJ really joined in in 20 um 19. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think 18 or 19.
SPEAKER_03And that's when we rebranded to Christian Book Academy and really went all in with that. Um, but yeah, it's just it's really been, I think, what's kept me in the in the game because as an entrepreneur, you know, it's it's so easy to get bored or just don't want to go on to something else. And being able to integrate our faith, we always have something that we can talk about that also relates to the writing and and and so forth.
SPEAKER_00Then there's uh the bestseller that you turned down a spot on a book that hit the USA Today list because the topic did not fit your brand. So, from a business standpoint, what did say no to that protect?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so we really bel believe in integrity and our audience that's very important to them is that you know, you are who you say you are and you do what you say you, you know, you're going to do. And I'm very, very particular about who I promote and you know, that sort of thing. Like I don't do very many affiliate promotions and things like that over um over the years just because I I did in the beginning when we were very broad, but now that we've niched down, I'm just very cautious. And um, this particular opportunity, it was a great opportunity, but it was for more of a um, you know, it was just they they were really pushing a lot of things that that really didn't align with what we believe in. And um it was it was one of those things that I was like, oh, it'd be so easy to write something in this, but then my my name would always be associated with that book, with that topic. And um, I would have to promote it with to my audience, and my audience might be like, why did she why should she participate in this, you know? And so um it was it was difficult, but you know, I said no, and I'm glad that I did.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. And um,
Churn Math, Offer Suite, And Next Steps
SPEAKER_00you have been honest that you have wanted to walk away from this twice. The model is hard. So for someone listening who is in the grind of membership right now, what is the one thing that you know now that you wish you had known back then?
SPEAKER_03So memberships really do provide, um can provide a more stable income with the recurring revenue, but there's always gonna be churn. Even if you have a low churn rate, ours is about right now 6.6%, which I'd like to get under five. So it's not too high, but um, so 94% of people are staying, you know, with us. But um, even with that, like there's a constant amount, like we have over 300 members right now, but we need to to get 15 new members every month just to replace the churn. And so it's um it can be, it can feel like a grind with the marketing, especially if you have a low-ticket membership that you have to maintain a certain level to pay the bills and pay yourself and everything. And I remember a couple of coaches of mine a few years ago and said this, and it finally clicked for me. They were running a $45 a month membership, and they said, it's just taking too much to try to get enough people, you know, into our list and into our sphere to try to fill this membership. And then they went back to another model where they were doing a little more high-ticket things. And um, you know, so what has had to happen over the years, and it's just really gotten in place finally, like this last year, is we had to have an offer suite. So it just wasn't working, just doing the low-ticket membership alone. Now I have a 90-day group coaching program that I run two to three times a year. And then I also have one-on-one coaching with those two offers in addition to the low-ticket membership. So people that are already in the membership are the ones that typically upgrade to those two things. It has given us a little more stable income to where we can really make this work long term. But yeah, it's it's not easy. I mean, people promise like, oh, recurring revenue, it's wonderful, it's wonderful. But it really can be a lot of work with on the marketing side.
SPEAKER_00Definitely, definitely. Um, before I let you go, two quick ones. So for someone who has the expertise but has not launched a membership yet, what is the first piece of the funnel they should build?
SPEAKER_03Well, what was recommended to us back when we were first launching in 2015 was to do a beta group. Um, I wanted to launch my podcast first, but they were like, no, like launch the product and get the product up and then do the marketing and do the things. And so that was the best advice for me. And what we did was we had a group of like maybe 20, I think, that joined us initially for the beta group. And um, then after that, we opened it up. But during that beta process, I literally started with just a small little workshop I had created. And then I told them this is what we're gonna do over the next three months. And I created the curriculum with those 20 people. They paid me to do it, and they also gave me feedback so I could make it better through the process. And then I launched it after those three months, also launched our podcast right after that, launched our popular challenge writingweek.com that same year after that. But it was like it was a big thing. So last year was like the 10-year anniversary of all the things, but I did the membership first, and then I did the podcast, then I did the challenge, then I did the other, you know, and so I think um that would be my advice still today.
SPEAKER_00Great advice. And for someone two years in and plateaued, uh, where do they look first? Is it the Legion, is it the conversion or the retention? What would you say?
SPEAKER_03Look first at the retention because if that's very high, there's something wrong there. And so you can improve your onboarding, you can improve like we totally redid our member area a few years ago. That's when we added progress pods. I worked with a retention specialist. And so um, you already have people in your membership. It's easier to keep the them than to find new people. So if your retention is higher than you know, five to seven percent, I would say look at that first. And then um, yeah, I would say lead gen. And I really encourage you to consider hosting your own type of summit or conference. And even if you're not known in the industry, you will be after that. And also you're gonna connect with all of these people that will send their list and their audience your way.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. CJ Shelley, thank you very much. Where should people go to find you and grab that writing restart toolkit?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so our website is trainingauthors.com, and we'd love for you to join us on our next group writing session. It's trainingauthors.com forward slash writing dash restart.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. That's it for this one. If you got something out of it, subscribe so you don't miss what is coming. Everything we do is over at datadrivenmarketing.co. I'm Dominic, and I will see you in the next one.