A behind-the-scenes of our big transition and an update on comments

Hey, hey, Erin Kelly, CEO and co founder of MemberVault. Out here. So last week, we took a break from the podcast, both myself, Steve and Remi.

Because it was our first week after the big transition with, you know, saying goodbye to our free plan and changing our pricing. And it was quite quite the whirlwind, from even before we made the announcement, because, you know, there was a lot of discussion and deep thinking and team project management and all of that stuff. And then when we made the announcement, you know, over almost two months ago, it's been pretty much a whirlwind.

And so last week, we went ahead and just everyone took some, some mental mental time off. And we, we really didn't do anything as a team that didn't have to be done that week. So we actually took a break from the podcast, and it's nice to be back. And, you know, now, we are starting fresh in this new iteration of MemberVault salts future.

And I have to say, you know, it was a really difficult decision that, that I made that I had been thinking about SEO for, I don't know, probably six to eight months, if not really longer in terms of of kind of like, Hmm, like, how do we want the company to evolve? And like what's important to us? And, you know, what about our pricing? And like, how do we want to do these things. And, you know, I, as a business owner, I'm sure you, you know how that goes, you kind of have like an inkling that like, something is going to change, but you don't know what yet. And that can take that can take a while to process and, and really nail down what it is that you're going to be doing. And then you challenge it, and you talk to people that you trust, and you sit on it for a little bit longer. And then, you know, the actual rollout of, of the change, can be can pretty, can be pretty momentous as well.

But it's been really cool to see how, you know, we from from the transition itself, which, you know, this is not really any any shocker to anyone that understands urgency, we doubled our MRR, which is our monthly recurring revenue, we had a bunch of people lock in legacy pricing. And they were very excited. We had a bunch of people, you know, messaging us and posting in the collaborative on Facebook, you know, that they were they've had a member ball, like free account for a year or years, a multiple years. And this thanking us and saying, like, this actually made me take it seriously.

And now that I'm in there, like, I'm realizing how much this can do for my business. I've noticed the tone of the conversations in the collaborative in terms of instead of people trying to figure out how they can stay on the free plan, and kind of scarcity level thinking there's a lot of like, Ooh, how can I do this? How can I do this, and a lot of it has to do with customer experience, which is what we are really leaning into. It's something that we've always been interested in as a company, but we're really, really focusing in on that. And so it's really cool to see that the conversation is, you know, with this transition, the conversation is really changing to focus on, you know, people, people posting or being like, hey, like, I'm doing this and gamification, and email tracking and tagging and like triggering things. And it's just been, it's been really cool to see that. And I know that there was this is a little snarky, but like, there has been, you know, some people being like, well, this is going to be the death of the company. And you know, no one's going to convert at the premium level pricing. We've had plenty of conversions since the pricing switched over. And that is without, you know, really optimizing our onboarding.

There's, I have a lot of plans there that I really want to geek out too, in terms of, you know, really, really upping and testing out customer experience, things that we can do inside of our onboarding. And so that's been really exciting. It's just been it's been the right move for us. And, and so yeah, so that's the update on that in case you were curious, kind of the behind the scenes, and we've been we've been recovering Katrina, our head customer service person.

We actually she's taking every Friday off in April, because the amount of work that she put into this transition is just mind boggling. And the number of emails that she was Fielding and handling. It has been it has been a heavy lift for pretty much the entire team but definitely for for Katrina, myself and Mike. It has been a has been a lot and as an introvert I know I've had to take last week was very much needed for me to because I was very, very much feeling the burnout. So that is all of the behind the scenes.

But I wanted to talk about, you know, first I wanted to speak to the importance of after you do something big in your business that it, I don't remember where I read this, I wish that I could give credit to the source. But it was an article about burnout. And it said that as a culture in the US, but even really as a worldwide global culture that this emphasis on productivity has really caused a an increase in burnout. Because we put, there's like four steps to kind of the work process. And that is like your idea. And then you create, and then so everyone's like, all all up in the hamster wheel and productivity we all have, and the hustle and the grind, and all of that stuff of IDEA and create, but there's no celebration or rest, which is the other two pieces.

And I think that that is so important to pay attention to, and this article was talking about that, that is why there are so many people that experienced burnout is because you are just constantly cycling between idea and creation mode, and you're never celebrating your victories, and you're never resting.

And that that is just as important rest. It's just as important as the actual, like implementation work. And so I've really been personally working on that, because I'm guilty of this as well. It's like, okay, like, cool. That's done now. Now, what am I doing, like what's next. And so, you know, as a team, I've also really been wanting to support our team to do that, because it's super important, or like, if you get sick, like taking some time off, like I know, as entrepreneurs, we can be really guilty of that. I know Mike and myself, like, we are terrible. If we, if we are able to be on our phones and checking in, we still do even when we're sick. And you don't do that. Normally, when you're working a nine to five, if you have a sick day, you have a sick day, and you just, you know, watch Netflix or whatever, if you're lucky enough to not have kids that you're also taking care of that's like a whole other thing when you're sick and have kids. But yeah, we don't spend enough time in the rest and celebration cycles.

And so that's what we've been really, really working on. And I wanted to speak to that because I think it's a really important topic that isn't talked about enough in the online space. And so that is something that we are really working on, because this was a really big transition for us. And it was a big lift. And we are very excited about all the stuff that we're moving into, and that we are optimizing and that we are creating. And we have people that we're going to be hiring and you know, there's a lot of continued growth is going to be happening. But it's important to also take the time to rest and celebrate what has happened. So that is a reminder for you as well. If you and your business if you have just completed something or if you are in the midst of of completing something, that to leave some space for yourself to to rest and celebrate. And so you know, do do that, however works best for you and whatever you're able to do in your life.

But just even a little bit is important because I think most of us just completely skip over that. So we have some really, really great episodes coming up this week and beyond. From Steve in the user experience realm. You know how to how to preview products and all kinds of good stuff there. And then Remi has some really, really great user spotlights coming up, talking about cool things that people are doing in their accounts. And then of course, also her strategic user success episodes. So those are really exciting. We have two episodes from our course expert, JESSICA RODRIGUEZ, that will be going live this weekend as a special series.

So you can look forward to that if you are a course creator or wanting to create a course these are going to be really good episodes for you. She's talking about five things to pay attention to in today's course market. And also this is this is another thing that I don't think people talk about enough. And it's a really good episode, what to do if your course isn't selling. And so she talks about things in that episode that people typically do when their courses aren't selling. And I have definitely been guilty of that in the past. So it's a really good episode because she also talks about like, okay, don't do these things. Try this instead.

So it's a really, it's a really good episode. So keep an eye out, or an ear out, I should say, for those episodes landing this weekend. And so there's some some really, really good stuff coming to the podcast. And I am so excited about the comment feature, which is taking a little bit longer than we than we anticipated, anticipated. Because we are wanting to include, you know, comment replies and then the whole notification element of, of the comment feature is definitely there's a lot of different use cases I'm like, Okay, but how does this work for the admins? How does it work for the for the person that's leaving the comments.

And, you know, one of the things that I've been reading a lot about is ethical notifications, which is the idea of which Facebook does not employ ethical modifications. But it's that whole idea of like, Should How much should you bother people for or like, you know, barged into their lives. And in the lock deck electronic, sorry, I can't talk here, the electronic space in terms of like, you know, lighting up their phone when they have a notification, like what, what is important enough to to garner a notification. And of course, on the flip side of that, as a marketer, and as a person that's really interested in customer experience, you want to make sure that your people know that people are replying to their comments. And so notifications is actually like a pretty big element of this common feature that we're going to be pushing. And so we're getting down to the, to the end of the feature to where it can be pushed to our Early Access people, and they can, you know, be kicking around and testing it out.

And I know I'm really excited to be testing it out inside our of our Maker MV shine product that we have, that we have been using circle embedded circle comments for, but I'm really excited, I'm actually planning on kind of overhauling the content in that product and reorganizing it, which I've been planning for a while. And it had to kind of wait until this big transition was over. But that's my next project. And I'm going to be really excited to be able to use a new comment feature for that, because there's some really cool things. So my question to you for you to be thinking about is yes, the comment feature is not live yet. But I would love for you to be thinking about like, okay, like, where am I going to use this?

Am I going to throw some comments once it's available to me? Am I going to put comments on my blog posts? If I'm doing them inside of my member vault? am I adding comments to an existing product that I already have? Am I going to launch like a fun little, like two week intensive that has comments, I saw a really fun post inside of the collaborative where someone was saying, you know, you can actually use this for individual one to one products and have a back and forth conversation with your client and using comments. And so be thinking about like, okay, like, comment, I can use comments everywhere, that there's content inside of my robot, what am I going to do first. And so that way, when we, when we do push this, this feature, we're dragging through right, the end of the feature in terms of development.

So we're almost there, and then it'll go to early access. So it should be in your account very, very soon. Be thinking about how you want to use it first. So that is pretty much my my update, we took a rest and recovery and celebration week last week. And now we are as a team, getting really excited about all of the things that we want to bring to the table to discuss and to help you use MemberVault in your business and to be talking about customer experience and to be rolling out the new comment feature. And really helping people use it inside of their accounts.

Lots of really fun stuff coming. So yeah, so definitely I'm going to be doing a post inside of the collaborative asking people what are they going to put comments on first, and I'll drop the link to that post inside of the show notes. So if you want to come over and have a conversation. If you're using Facebook, you can absolutely just click the link in the show notes and come join us. And I can't wait until the future be able to say hey, come join the conversation over in our member because we have comments.

So that is my update and I will see you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai