User Spotlight - How Rachel Bentley Uses MV

In this delightful interview with Rachel Bentley from 'rachelbentleyonline', we discuss SO much in this episode from.. business strategies to how Rachel sells her physical product in MV and how she uses her amazon affiliate links to drive extra income into her business. 




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TRANSCRIPT

Remi Oduyemi  
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another user spotlight. My name is Remi. I'm the user success Lead here at MemberVault. And today I am interviewing the lovely Rachel Bentley. And we are going to have a little chinwag all about her business and all the cool stuff she's doing in MemberVault. And we do these user spotlights to inspire you guys to give you some ideas about things that you could be doing inside of your member volt as well. So let's get into it. Hello, Rachel. How are you my darling?

Rachel Bentley  
Hello, Remi. Lovely to see you and dinky the pixelated.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yes, partly he's half pixelated here is pixelated. But yeah, me and a puppy are back for another special. So Rachel and I know each other, which is lovely. But can you tell the users how long have you been using MemberVault? 

Rachel Bentley  
So I came across it at the beginning of COVID. Really, probably about two years, I took the free option. And I scared myself with it and then didn't use it for a bit and then did another free option. So somewhere out there. There's another Rachel Bentley account. And then I sort of upgraded to a lifetime Pro as it was available last January and haven't looked back at all. So yeah, it was brilliant. Because obviously in COVID, like everybody else, I was pivoting and needed an online option for courses and so many other things I've been able to use MemberVault for

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, which we're going to get to in a minute which fighted about. Did you use anything else before MemberVault? Or was this your first sort of platform that you arrived upon?

Rachel Bentley  
No, it was the first and partly because sort of just before locked down. I had written a book about getting online in one day. Yeah, like a little ebook. But using nothing but free apps. So I think you know, we've probably covered a lot of tech the same way. Yeah. Tech? Yeah, we I know. Because I know you're i It's about testing out what you can do for free or low cost to get yourself kind of up and running, which is really how I work and clients kind of your minimum viable. Whatever. Yeah, so this was really, I've kind of looked at another bit of tech via a previous role I had, it was a local company. And some of the stuff they offer is fantastic. But it was too much. Sometimes he can actually be given too much. Yeah. And ended up paying for it. Yeah, with MemberVault. Whether really liked was how easy it was to use. And the fact that I had a free option there. No, it has changed. I think it had to change. Yeah. But I think that for me, it was it was helpful at that time. Yeah. Lovely.

Remi Oduyemi  
And who do you mostly work with now? Who's your ideal?

Rachel Bentley  
So it's again, a weird so before lockdown. I've kind of gone back to that now. So it's changed a little bit, which I'll tell you about. But my ideal client, I worked with people who are owner operators, that probably a limited company. They're either a corporate X escapee who is wanting to change into self employment or at least, you know, provide a professional level of self employment. They are professional experts in what they do. Yes. But not in sales and marketing. Yeah, because I am a marketing coach, but I come from it from a sales point you can't just create leads. as a marketeer. That's what we're supposed to do is create leads when you're a small business owner, pointless Craig leads and that's gonna sell something my love. You know, that's, that's the thing, though. You know, what Mike, Mike don't have genius tends to be with people who perhaps been around a little bit of time. So probably in the 40s or 50s. Three, there was corporate escapee or the somebody who really, really developed a fantastic services business. And for whatever reason, maybe COVID, maybe just the way the world, they've got a bit stuck, frustrated, they may be actually looking at exiting. And it's, it's, let's make you some money. And that's what I do. I mean, I help people to make money, but I don't do it for them. I coached them. Because again, it gives them such power and enjoyment. And I have good success with that. So I tend to do that one too. Well.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah. I love that. I love that term. Corporate escapee. That's my, because I'm one of them. Yeah. Well,

Rachel Bentley  
I'm gonna say, I know, I know a little bit about you. But every time we chat with keep thinking we need to do more chats. Yeah, we were gonna do. One of one of the things if even my group, my group work that I have done tends to be a similar sort of person who's had a very professional career or they they're professionals some way. I think what, you know, because I have done groups and certainly MemberVault have helped me do that through lockdown. But, you know, one of the biggest things for me has been people who just want to help that's been sort of like the basic thing we just wanted to help. Yeah, but at the end of the day, we have to make that sustainable and I don't just mean ethically, ethically sustainable, which is very important to me something I'm working on more than that. But they have to sustain that business.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, fine. Eventually, it has to be sustainable. 100%. Yeah, neatly.

Rachel Bentley  
So this is where I think that, you know, this misunderstanding that marketing has to be something that you throw a lot of money out. And it doesn't marketing is a process. It's an art and a science. But being processed, driven with it, because I'm not the best person. I'm not the best organized person, but I've had to become really good at simple processes. Yeah. And I know that you've got sort of that similar vibe as well, absolutely. But for me, it's also about putting the whole person in that business because again, I've worked with people who tend to not really want to be visible. And I get that because I'm naturally quite shy. And you know, there are certain things I will and won't do. And I work with people with their strengths. We don't talk weaknesses, ever. It's not in my vocabulary, nobody has weaknesses, they may have lesser strengths. So again, I hate that term weakness, because it, it sort of says that this needs fixing. And my thing is that I don't want to fix people you're looking to fix. Why throw a lot of money at something because you think it needs fixing. I think we need to look strategically at business, we need to look at the person, what they're capable of what they're, you know, you're having a chat about being post COVID. Before, before we go on there, you know what, what fits people within their natural energy levels. And I'm not going to be working as an energy coach and work is just Dziedzic markets here to coach people in strategic marketing. And we work out what's going to happen strategically, before we start going into campaigns of fixing any marketing or spending any money. Yeah, because unless you're actually making more money than you're spending, you're not making a

Remi Oduyemi  
profit. No, absolutely. And so how are you doing this work? Is this one to one? Or is it in group coaching? Or have you got a membership? How are you doing that, and MemberVault.

Rachel Bentley  
So one to one, one to one, I use MemberVault, for one to ones, very, very successfully, because it's amazing to onboard one to ones. And I completely love doing that. I don't do all of my clients recording meetings or anything on what occurred. But I choose to use email because it's just simpler. For me, I like simple. I have run groups, I've been successful groups. So I've run an academy group. And I've run like a little weekly group for 90 days after focus group. So have used MemberVault like that. groups don't suit me in the natural sort of membership. That's it, it just doesn't suit me because I'm a bit of a free spirit. And I like that. This week, we're going to do this. So this time, we're going to do that I quite like that. But this is the beauty of mandible. So I've been able to try things out. I've done quite a lot of free group coaching over COVID As a coach between 350 and 400 people for free. I haven't actually counted up. Wow, that MemberVault has been really helpful to do that to onboard people and to to serve people with a daily video. Yeah. So have used it for that. But most of my work is one to one. Membership, not for me. But the group side of things. And also some I want some evergreen products. But I'm just looking at what that looks like at the moment it might have a personal element, or are they all able to be serviced by envy? Yeah. As well as the fact that when I set my mini sort of mastermind after focus group at my 90 Day group, I wanted to actually support them with a print product, which ended up then being on Amazon, which has ended up then being through going through MemberVault option. And we're going to talk about Yeah, this is this is what a love of MemberVault for simply because we've got this, this all these different things. And the fact that we are sharing use case studies. Yeah, just brilliant.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's funny what you just mentioned, I did an interview yesterday, but to the viewers, this will be last week's episode with a lady called Ricky. So you'll see her episode for yours. And she mentioned going and having a human design profile done. And she said to me have I had it done? I haven't. And something that came up for her was that she realized that she is better at working with people in short chunks. She's not sort of made to do long running programs and and these bells started going off. I think that's me like

Rachel Bentley  
this is exactly this is exactly the problem that we have with marketing at the moment is that everybody is not copycatting in the in the this sounds like people are copy I don't mean that Yeah, but this leads to somebody doing this thing now, I'm going to do that it looks really good and looks really successful, and looks really well paid. And this is the story that we would get. Yeah, and again, all kudos for people who have who have built six or seven figure businesses I mean, I've I've got backstory, which is that not building my own business for that level, but you know, I could make sales of Millions of pounds in here, literally. I've got I can prove that. Yeah. But you need to then have a vehicle and engine works behind that. And yes, we can get that with envy with other tech tools that we can build in. But we end up building people into that as well. I don't want that empire. But also I need to recharge yet to have something that is I have to show up every week without fail. Yeah. I don't know whether this is a Yorkshire term. I don't think it was it. It does my head and

Remi Oduyemi  
well, it's a term that I understand you truthfully. But it is this thing about if you're building a business, right? We need to build it in a way that is energetically aligned to us. Right? Not Not that we're just doing what we think we should be doing or what we see other people doing. It's about what works for us. And, you know, maybe running a membership or doing a year long program is for you maybe, you know, offering sort of DIY courses or self service things are a better fit for you and

Rachel Bentley  
it is completely but then I think you have to also blend it with what you can actually offer. Yeah, so you know, it's it's that whole thing under promise and over deliver. Yeah, so again, we sometimes we have to throw the kitchen sink it's a membership. Yeah, it's actually we can actually look yeah, if you if you actually look at some original memberships Yes. Original membership gurus think it was guy you sent out why newsletter? Yeah, the first one I can't remember his name now Jeff's and the other kids. But you know, you might be is

Remi Oduyemi  
it Gary Vee

Rachel Bentley  
before him because this is I could talk an hour about this. But the thing is that he was charging like $5. Why membership? Not it was was like the best wines to get or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And then suddenly, with these memberships, now, they have to have you doing two lives a week. And then we're going to bring this guest expert and at all you end up doing is just churning this stuff out. Yeah, constantly having to refill the top of the funnel, because you get people from dropping out the memberships. If so I thought when I started my group, it wasn't going to be a membership, it was going to be a one off payment. And then for the duration of my Facebook group to support it, they would get that, but they would have lifetime access to the actual cost side. Yeah, so I've closed my Facebook group, just under two years on from setting the actual Academy up and not supporting it. I've told them, that's what's happening. If they need me, they can get in touch with me. And that's fine. And while you're in touch, but you know, my issue with it was it's like, oh my god, when's this gonna finish? So, you know, I've talked about exit strategy clients, it should be the same really, with any campaign that we're running and any service or product? Yes. And also to think to yourself, What does my client need? What does my ideal client need? Perhaps they don't need a membership. That's actually this, this problem identifying rather than solving maybe that's all that's the necessary this stage. Yeah. So again, the beauty of MBA is that, for instance, I have now got collateral from Milan Chilean Academy, which I have kind of developed from like my knowledge, now, it's a starting point for so many of the things so there are books are going to pattern from that. I want to actually be able to potentially do some audio courses, but just talking to my accountant about that at the moment, because they're doing just just delivery only classes. But you know, for me to be able to use V in the way I have, I've got that collateral there. When I did my academy, I dropped in the academy, program weekly. And I've talked about that in V before, there is another little podcast somewhere. But the point being that you don't have to actually written anything, you can offer a course, or membership. And like I had a little Academy, where it was actually a weekly dropped a bit of information. I didn't have to write it all I've sold it out without writing a note of of content, but that content itself now, because I've written it, I'm really good at working under pressure. I'm good at that. And that's something I've always done. Yeah, that's content that I can now use in all of these, some micro courses, books, some workbooks, the sky's the limit, and that is just from that one lot of collateral and I couldn't have done it without anything.

Remi Oduyemi  
That's amazing. And what techy using as well to support year round.

Rachel Bentley  
So again, I was I think I fell into zoom back a little bit because I was following some web e CS, which I call WebEx, I'm not sure what it is but it's an American coaching group and they do an annual sort of free event or you can upgrade to a paid thing. So I was on zoom there thinking I was on one of those webinars things you go on, you know, there's things that are not really so I went some stuff. I've got autoimmune conditions to do with my guts, and it was to do with the brain gut access which is really interesting, which I won't, again, won't go into. But it's really interesting. So I sort of typed in a question thinking it would never get, you know, yeah. Right. And then there's this gorgeous lady with this gorgeous kind of curtain thing. And she's obviously on the East Coast of America. Sorry, the West Coast of America, you know, and I was some unearthly hour at home, typed in a question. And she goes, Oh, it's Rachel from Yorkshire here. And, you know, she answered my question. I'm busy going. Zoo at that stage. It was like, it was like, a webinar style thing I was on. But then I soon realized that they did this kind of face to face thing. This is before anybody knew about zoom in the UK. But I thought,

Remi Oduyemi  
the pandemic beeping,

Rachel Bentley  
because I used to have to tell people how to sign on Zoom. Everybody was on, you know, the, the one before teams what? The one before teams, the one that was it, Google Hangouts, or I was used to Google, but what the heck is Microsoft? The one that can't remember anyway, but the one that I hate that you have to have a profile

Remi Oduyemi  
with instant messenger, or is no, no, I don't know. I think it's one

Rachel Bentley  
that if I haven't got Bret COVID. But it's, you know, it's Case in point the zoo, you give somebody a link, there's no signing up for anything. We're on its own. Yeah, just record it, you can record it, or I can record it. So for a client, I could say to them that you feel free to record it on your local device, and you've got a record of it. I love to faff about free fast Yorkshire work. So I love zoom. And I also have a thing called tidy cow, which is part of the AppSumo. Family. And AppSumo. Again, brilliant place to go and sort of try out some different apps and you can have a 60 day like you pay you get money back if you don't like it. Well, AppSumo themselves have a few different little apps tidycal is one of them. 

Rachel Bentley  
it's like Calendly. But I can have loads of different types of calendar within it. I don't know what their current offer was. But it was $19 when I bought it, like whenever this year earlier this year, and then the last year, don't have a lifetime, lifetime thing. And I Yeah, and I literally can now have a calendar. So I can have a calendar that set up just for one person. And I can just allow, it creates a link to Google cows. Well, if I want in the actual little product itself, that one little calendar, I can put the availability. So if I only want to see that client on a Tuesday afternoon, I can send them a link that only gives them Tuesday afternoon, but then better when my rest of my calendars there. Now I do a lot of networking online. And you're very encouraged to do one to ones afterwards. So I have something called a zoom kappa. And that goes out to everybody I want to network with. And then obviously, again, I don't want anybody just to have any old time with me for networking, one to ones either don't really want to see people on a Monday or a Friday. So for those they're only available Tuesdays and Thursdays. And so I can put you're not having to pay each time it's really flexible. If I want I can take stripe payments, which is fabulous.

Remi Oduyemi  
Because I was just looking for it as he was talking. Yeah.

Rachel Bentley  
I think it's really that there's this misnomer that when you market you've got to have a website, you've got to have you know, an envy. Now we've got the website capability. Even before that, I was saying to people, you can use it as a mini website.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, I was using it before we even got pages as my main, my main hub, you know, so you know, with

Rachel Bentley  
MemberVault you can take payments on that, that say you don't even have that you could have something like tidy car, which has got a payment facility. And the point there is that's what you need start business you need to have people to spend time with you if you're a services business, and you need for people to be able to pay you can engineer everything out later.

Remi Oduyemi  
Absolutely amazing. Well, that's very I love that your business is so simple. It's not heavily stacked with tech. It's simple to run simple to manage. And you've got the right the tools that matter right?

Rachel Bentley  
I've got I would say that those if I looked at my tabs, because I have my little tabs it's I do use my website. Click everything through to member box is so much easier to update. So yeah, it's my website rememberable but tidy cow Mizzou. I'm a socials.

Remi Oduyemi  
Amazing, amazing I love it. I love it. Um, so let's talk about your very clever way that you are using

Rachel Bentley  
probably brandishing back to front.

Remi Oduyemi  
No, it's actually showing the right way. Good Review, really so and so you are using a product in MemberVault to sell a physical product. So do you want to talk us through what it is we've seen this a notebook The planet. It's not like because it's a

Rachel Bentley  
planet. It's a planet. It's a planet. But the interesting thing is that it's even got QR codes to take people back to number volt. Oh, I love that. Yes. No, it does. It was done to support my focus 90 Group, which I have actually done one of, but I'm going to not hold it. And I'm waiting for people to put the names on a waiting list for many mastermind style groups. But if I don't, again, it's gonna be done differently because it was fine. But it didn't work in what otherwise. So again, I've tested that out. So that's it. That's what that was

Remi Oduyemi  
on that, could you not make that evergreen?

Rachel Bentley  
It's cool. Could be except that why was that it was a bit of a group thing. So the only service I would give was an hour of group session, and then a little bit of support in a team's group in between. So there's a potential for it, but I think it probably does need an element of

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, it needs a bit of you in it. And spring. What I

Rachel Bentley  
found with this was that it was really simple to put together for me, I mean, I can't, I sweated tears over it just because that's what I do sometimes. But once penny dropped with how to do it, getting it set up on Kindle publishing was very, very easy. And I kind of just taught myself to do that with a couple of notebooks I've done and it took a little bit of a sort of got involved in a group just to do the journal. But it was more that we were sharing the experience as much as I knew. But I would say to people, it's fairly easy to put a product like this together. So that's the first thing. Kindle publishing, if you're publishing your own book, get yourself an affiliate link. Okay, now the affiliate link needs to be on a static site. And you need to tell them what that stuff excited so it can't go on your socials. But it can go on your website, and guess what it can go on your MemberVault old site, okay? Remember royalties, that is the brilliance of this. So I have this as a product in member Vault, which then links to my Amazon account. So I talk about this. And I say there is if you if you get it by this link, I will get a small commission at no extra cost to you. But what people might not know is that if that person still has them, the basket open and they buy other products as well as my product or instead of my product, I still get a small commission. Now, I don't really market this, it sits it sits there, I did a little bit of marketing to start off with and I managed because of the way I marketed it to get in the top 40 on Amazon for business and mentoring, business coaching and mentoring, which is my thing. I'm a business coach or mentor, my mentor, business coach, marketing mentor. The point was that I now have proof that this is a top 40 Best Selling journal. So again, that goes into MemberVault. Yeah, if people come to them and file we know about binge and by marketplace, they could have a click on that they can go and look at it. But the purpose of purposefully being there is that it's it's about seven or eight quid on Amazon. Yeah. And now wherever you threw your own note, yeah, yeah. And it's such fun, isn't it in this photo talking about it, it is, if I can't think of something I want to talk about, I can always talk about this and then send them to a MemberVault account while they're in there, they can start looking around the other things that I offer anyway. So that includes a one to one work. So it's so simple. But the other thing I have done is I have set myself up a bookshelf. So this sits there anyway. But then separately to that I've got something called bookshelf, which people can sign up for not massively pushed that. But you know, I'm sitting with the whole row row here of business books are bought bought off Amazon. So of course, again, with the way Amazon works, they give you a little option to get a little thumbnail from your affiliate link that you can then post straight into your MemberVault. And I just take the description of Amazon. And I've just said these are the business books I'm reading and I've kind of just put them into modules in sort of what they are now it's very much in its infancy. But for me, it's not so much the fact that somebody buys that book or go and look or may get an affiliate link. The point is that it's just actually what can you use? How could you use MemberVault

Remi Oduyemi  
We love we love when users are experimenting and trying new things. And MemberVault gives you the flexibility to really evolve it into whatever it is you need for your unique and individual business. So this is

Rachel Bentley  
the thing is this actually supported something I was already selling within MemberVault So it's actually very iterative. Yeah. Yeah, the thing is, if I'm then going to do the academy into these mini books, it might be that I even just do an ebook within member volts. I might not even do the Kindle publishing because you know, you can just do any but people you can just do it, put it together on Canva or something like that and just keep it can be very simple without it having to be all these lovely prints. have books at the end of it? Yeah, absolutely. But this is the thing, if I do have a printed book I can still use I know now, because I've done it, I can still use that in real in a real strategic way to actually help promote those as well. So I'm gonna have the mini courses that can be a book, it can all be a member file, keeping it simple, and keeping it that marketplace and that binge and by that we love MemberVault for so much.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, the binge of buys super powerful. And I talk about it all the time in these episodes. And if you are giving something away for free, or you're doing something like what Rachel's doing here, which is using a book where people can come and check out her book, what you're really doing is driving people into your business space, and it gives them the opportunity to look and see all the things that you are doing. And for me, I've just seen constant trickle of sales from when people come in for one freebie thing or one lead magnet I've put out. And then they see the other courses or my video training workshops, and they buy these things, because they're here anyway, and it looks cool. So

Rachel Bentley  
the thing the other thing for me is that I know that strategically, I can do more with my MemberVault. But it doesn't matter that I haven't at the moment. So it doesn't matter that haven't got these other courses that what matters is that these, this is useful, and it's there. But yeah, I've got my freebie in there. And that also has a little cart bump, which I know the people are talking about. But that hasn't happened to other things. And that's what's important. It's about marketing is not about leads, it's about selling somebody something. So you know, this is there, not because it's marketing is there because it's selling somebody something.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah. And it's bringing somebody into your world and they get an introduction to who you are, and falling in love with you. And it builds that know like and trust factor and on and on and on. And it just, it's also super powerful. So, no, that's brilliant. I bloody love it. Thank you. I love it. How can people find out more about you, Rachel, where can they find you on the interwebs?

Rachel Bentley  
Well, you can find me at the very long titled.

Remi Oduyemi  
Hey, have you not used our for our link shorteners? Rachel you can make your long title even sure

Rachel Bentley  
you mind that my name is like massive you know like just because why would anybody call themselves a small business marketing coach have a really

Remi Oduyemi  
keywords but you've got all the keywords in there. Brilliant. Yeah, exactly.

Rachel Bentley  
I do actually get people finding.

Remi Oduyemi  
Okay, yeah,

Rachel Bentley  
it's lazy. It's lazy SEO Tell Tell me about it. So Rachel bentley is I don't have any extra A's. There's only one A but rachelbentleyonline.vipmembervault.com will get you to my main member vault account. Otherwise, it's small business marketing coach.net. And again, weirdly, they can find my MemberVault because I just direct them back to that one. For me one last one bit of work. It doesn't have a separate products list. It just has links from my website. And I love it when people are asking them for Facebook support group about oh, how can I do that? You just do it by the simplest.

Remi Oduyemi  
Always keep it simple. And this is why we love you, Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with me today. And this will be really inspiring for our members. So yeah, thank you very much and talking to you soon.

Rachel Bentley  
Thanks very much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Check out Rachel's MV Site here: https://rachelbentleyonline.vipmembervault.com

Hey, hey! 👋 I’m Remi, the User Success Lead here at MemberVault.
You’ll hear me over on the Vault podcast, see me in the Collaborative, and also hosting special user success workshops.

Outside of MV, I work with established entrepreneurs and ambitious business owners who are ready to scale their business using simple systems and cool automations.

You can find my MV site here: https://www.onlinebusinesstemple.com