Key Takeaways
- The moment Shelagh realized that she needed to walk away from her career as a teacher – and what she did about it.
- How Shelagh unexpectedly landed her first job offer and training client – and the moment she realized she could scale to create a hugely successful business.
- What happened when Shelagh’s first online course only made one sale.
- Why Shelagh provides a high touch service with as little automation as possible.
- How to take the leap and start asking for money for your services – and how Shelagh still deals with the voice in her head telling her not to put a price tag on her name and experience.
- Why you can’t have a five-figure launch or retain clients if you can’t provide meaningful support, impact lives, and build relationships.
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Ready to reclaim your time and attract more monthly paying customers? Our step-by-step guide will show you how to build a membership site that turns your passion into recurring profit. Click here to download!Memorable Quote
- “When you believe so deeply that you have the solution to the problem, it doesn’t matter what price you give out. What matters is the confidence and clarity you use when you say the number.” – Shelagh Cummins
- “If we just consume the content, we’re a little more knowledgeable. If we don’t implement it and turn it into action, we’re not going to get results.” – Shelagh Cummins
Episode Resources
Transcript
Read The Transcript
Shelli: There is profound power in staying in your lane, following your inner voice, and saying yes.
Stu: There is a big trend brewing that’s revolutionizing the way business is being done. Big companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple are jumping on this too but so are thousands of others in all kinds of markets like photography and calligraphy, fitness, finance, meal planning, lesson planning, dog training, and so many more, and they’re doing it by shifting to a recurring revenue model. Hi. My name is Stu McLaren and for more than a decade I’ve been helping tens of thousands of entrepreneurs generate recurring revenue through membership sites. Join our host, Shelli Varela, as she takes you behind-the-scenes to see how these companies are building a thriving tribe that spends with them every single month. Now, let’s get to today’s episode.
[INTERVIEW]
Shelli: Shelagh Cummins, welcome to the It’s a TRIBE Thing Podcast. My friend, how are you?
Shelagh: I am awesome and thank you for having me.
Shelli: My absolute pleasure. I love the pre-conversation we had and I’m going to ask you to share that but first I wanted to introduce you. You’re a business coach, a consultant, and a speaker. You have a very successful membership site but when you started your journey you were actually a teacher. I’m wondering if you can explain to the listeners how you ended up being a membership site over when you started out as a teacher for so many years.
Shelagh: If I could say that our path to where we are becoming is circuitous, I think I need to start there. There is nothing straightforward. I’ve been trying to get, I’ve been a teacher for 15 years, Shelli, and I’ve been trying to get out of the classroom for the last five of them. I just knew something was amiss and so I tried changing schools and I tried changing grades and there still was something missing and I went back and got a master’s degree in education with a focus in instructional design. I love the learning part of it but there still was something missing. And so, when I went on that leave after my first child, I sort of explored what it was like to make money outside the teaching and I didn’t land on anything that really turned into anything. The day I went back to work after he was born, in Canada, we get a year-long mat leave which is just amazing. And that morning I remember it was a Wednesday morning. It was a beautiful fall day here in Toronto, crisp, crisp air and I walked in the classroom and that morning we had realized that we were pregnant with our second.
Shelli: Oh boy.
Shelagh: It’s not that we don’t know how we got pregnant but we weren’t necessarily expecting to be pregnant that close to having had our first but anyway, we were and it’s a gift and so I was looking at this beautiful sea of faces in front of me and I was teaching at an all-girls school here in Toronto and three things struck me at that moment in the first one was, no matter how good of a teacher I was, I could never make more money and be able to afford to put my daughter in that class if she was, in fact, a girl. And that was unsatisfying to me. And the second thing was I knew that there was more, but I didn’t know what there was. And so, I just I made it a mission to figure out what else I could do in that moment so that I could get that more, that feeling of whatever was missing. And so, I finished the school year with her and then I ended it at the end of June and walked out the classroom door and I’ve never looked back.
Shelli: Wow.
Shelagh: Yeah. So, I tried a whole bunch of things. I worked as a corporate trainer for a little bit. I designed and developed courses for a training company which was such a gift because it allowed me to read everything in sight and to learn all the theory of best practice in business and I also was doing tutoring in the afternoons and so I’d be home with the two little kids through the day and then at 3:30 this beautiful babysitter would arrive and I could escape and go an adult for a little bit and I ended up getting full like I couldn’t tutor more hours. I didn’t have more hours available, and so then I started placing other women on maternity leave in tutoring positions as they came to me, but there still was something that wasn’t right about it and I have an online blog. I had a parenting blog for a while, but it wasn’t quite right, but it allowed me to learn the online space. And so, this whole journey evolved into me speaking at a women’s conference one day and it was for women entrepreneurs and in between each speaker, I would do a little training or teaching that would segue into the next speaker.
And at the end of the day, a lovely woman came up to me and said, “Shelagh, I want to hire you,” and I was like, “Oh, awesome. Do you want me to come and train your team? Do you want me to…?” I was pulling on the corporate training. Do you want me to teach something? She’s like, “Well, no. I want you to coach me,” and I just looked at her and my eyes just sort of – I was like, “Well, I don’t know what that looks like,” and so I said, “Sure. Let’s try it,” and I didn’t charge her any money because I’ve never done anything like it before. And, Shelli, she’s still with me today.
Shelli: You’re kidding.
Shelagh: Yeah. Eight years later, so it’s all just sort of evolved but every experience in my life has fed into where I am today.
Shelli: I love what you said about you have this background in education and I’m sure as somebody who has a thirst for knowledge like you do, it’s a great lesson for all of us because many times we’ll hear people say, “Well, you know, I’m not qualified to teach that or who am I? I don’t have a degree in that or I don’t have any formal training in that,” but it’s interesting the experience that life can afford you and also with you, you had your formal education in education but also as you’re cartwheeling down the path of life, learning stuff about business and then looking at it from a 30,000-foot view and saying, “Hm, I wonder if this could be a thing.”
Shelagh: Yeah. I wondered if I’ve got something here.
Shelli: Because so often people will discount the things that come easily or come naturally to them. So, I’m wondering if you can share with us where you went from there. I know that you started with courses and ended with the membership site. I want to know that journey look like.
Shelagh: Well, again, it was up and down and lots of successes and equally lots of failures. So, I started it what I call the top of the funnel and once I saw the results I could get for that woman who had approached me and the impact it had on her business, I knew I had something. I had a gift somewhere and so then I brought on another woman. Again, not really money exchanging hands. It was a barter system and I wanted to test out whether this was a fluke, or whether I actually did have impact with the women that I worked with. And sure enough, Shelli, her business skyrocketed too. So, then I was like, “All right. Well, I got to do something with this.” And so, I hired a business coach and I had to take a loan from my mom to do it and it was a very scary moment because there was a lot in my life that wasn’t going well but I just I followed that voice that was like, “You got to do this. You got to do it. You got to give it a try.” And so, that day on my very first call with her, she helped me put together a coaching package and a price and my homework was to book 40 prospecting calls and that’s really daunting. I’m not going to lie.
I hung up and just burst into tears and was like, “Oh my God, where am I going to get 40 people?” So, I did have email list through other ventures that I was involved in and playing with and so I just put out an offer. “Here I am. I’d love to offer you a session to see if I can help support you in your business. Click here to book a call.” Well, 40 people booked a call, and I was like, “Hot dog. I got a huge business sitting on the end of this. This is something.” Well, call number one came in and it was a no and call number two came in and it was in no and call number three came in and it was a no. And number eight came in and it was in no. Thirteen came in and it was in no. Eighteen came in and it was a no, 21, 27, 29, 30, 34, 35, 36 and then 37 came in and she said yes. And I was like, “Wait, seriously? Like for sure?” She was like, “Yeah. What happens now?” And so, I just shaking, absolutely shaking. Just took her through the enrollment process and what happened through those 37 calls is I got to fine-tune my sales conversation and I got to really understand and shift to a place of joy where I really enjoyed the conversation, and the rapport I had built with her was massive and she said yes and 38 said no and 39 said yes.
And all of a sudden, I had two private clients that were paying me to do what it is that I just have been experimenting with. So, I started one-on-one because I had to make money. It wasn’t like I was making bonus money. I was stepping out of teaching and if I said no to a permanent teaching position that has a hugely strong pension, a massive health plan that would cover all five of us, we’re now family of five, just so much job security, I had to have proof that I could make that kind of money outside of doing this other coaching business. And so, I took an extra year’s leave and they were gracious enough to grant it to me just so that I had that security behind me in case the coaching business didn’t work out and it did. And so, then what I noticed is I was coaching one-on-one. I had up to 17 clients at one point and I was burnt out. I was done and to take something that used to bring me so much joy and not be able or have to dig so deep that it was continually draining me to deliver these amazing results for women, I just think there’s got to be another way.
And so, then I got on the online course platform and the bandwagon and I learned everything that I could about online courses and I spent hours and hours and hours and thousands and thousands of dollars creating this online course. And I went through this massive launch and it was so exciting, and I was like, “This is it. I’m going to have a $10,000 launch,” and I got one sale and I was devastated, Shelli, devastated. And so, I took her through the program as if it was a full program. I just I loved on her and Stu’s words and I love those words because I think they’re so important. You know, she took a chance on me and she invested in me and though that program has been sliced and diced and re-delivered probably four times now, it was such a gift to be able to give it, to be able to take her through the program. And so, since then I’ve done four or five launches of an online course. I’ve tried six months, three months, six weeks, and it just never worked. I had one really good launch after I first signed up for TRIBE and I implemented some of Stu’s launch strategies and his sales copy, and I used some videos kind of loosely using the structure that he gave us but I really, I just was like, okay, let me try this. Let’s see what happens. And it was my first five-figure launch and it was the best outcome that I had had to that date and I was excited.
But you know, Shelli, I didn’t love running that program. There was just something missing. I just felt like I was this content machine that just kept spewing out content and I never really got to know the women that were taking it and I never really got the feedback that I was looking for and I am a bit of a control freak and I like being – I hold myself somewhat responsible for the outcomes they get and if they’re not understanding the concept, there was no way for me in the structure that I had sold to give that. And so, I tried it again. It was three months, but it was just way too much content for three months and then I took TRIBE again and I was like, “Okay. Last time I watched TRIBE and I just consume the content, but my workbook was empty. This time I’m going to take TRIBE and actually do the work.” And I just slowed it right down and I went through and, “Oh my God, that success path was almost the life of me, but when you finally get it and can see it, then it all just sort of fell into place.” I think those online courses didn’t work because they weren’t how I shine. I love connecting with my women and it is a personal experience. And I have traditionally kept my courses and my programs quite small so that I can have that personal interaction with each and every one.
You know that intimacy for me is really important and it’s something that I stand firm. It’s included in all of my programs and as I noticed in our industry, there’s a shift away from the high touch and everybody’s wanting to automate everything and sales funnels are all automated and course delivery is all automated and you know there’s a place for that. It’s really important but where I’m really shifting and going the opposite direction is making sure that there is that high touch, that high personable, high feedback, high support element to all the programs that I run because that’s where the results are sitting. Because if we just consume the content, we just are a little bit more knowledgeable. But if we don’t implement the content and turn that into action, then we’re not going to get results. And so, that action piece so often needs a hand to hold in order to help you shift there.
[ANNOUNCEMENT]
Stu: So many people in all kinds of niche markets are leveraging their existing knowledge and influence and they’re transforming it into passive monthly income. This isn’t luck. This is a repeatable formula for producing a growing subscription income and if thousands of others can do it, you can too. To find out what type of membership site would be right for your business, visit GetTRIBEGuide.com. Go to GetTRIBEGuide.com and download it today. You’re awesome.
[INTERVIEW]
Shelli: I love everything you just said, and I have to like I have to jump in because I have a couple things that I wanted to highlight for the people that are listening. One thing that I love about you is your ability to honor your sacred space and the place where you shine, and I love that you have basically matched your background in education with your experience in business and it’s not a surprise to me. And I know we were talking before the top of the interview that your membership site now kind of mimics the cycle that you would’ve had as a teacher in a classroom throughout the school year where you get to get to know the students and you get to be with them on the journey and find out the highlights and the struggles and the stumbling points that each one of them has so that you can handhold them through the process. So, I just love that you’re so self-aware enough to know where you shine and to not try to fit a square peg in a round hole because to your point, when you find the thing that comes to you naturally that’s just like your jam, all of a sudden something that you may be struggling with just has a certain essence of ease to it.
But also I wanted to talk about, you were talking about at the very beginning stages when you first decided you were going to hire a coach and she put together this package for you and then you put a price on the package, I’m wondering if you can speak to what your inner voice was saying at that time because we all have and there are like thousands of listeners tuning in right now that haven’t yet taken the leap from, “I haven’t been paid for something,” to, “I’m about to ask for a fee for something.” Can you speak to that inner voice and what that felt like for you when you actually had your package down on paper and you’re like, “Okay. I’m going to go for it.”
Shelagh: Yeah. For sure. And I think I need to just start my response with saying I’m now eight years in and I still have to fight with that voice. Well, maybe not fight. I still deal with that voice each and every day, Shelli. So, I think it’s not necessarily something that goes away. The voice just shifts a little bit and I noticed that women, in particular, the minute you put a price tag on your time and your knowledge and your experience, all of a sudden every value they have attached to money comes flooding to the surface and if we don’t do the work to understand that, it is really hard to open ourselves up to receiving money. So, I just wanted to start by responding with that and to bring back to that initial point, I stood in the mirror and I practiced saying, “The six-month program is $3,000. The six-month program is $3,000. The six-month program is $3,000,” and I say it to my babies because they were so little. They had no idea what I’m saying. And I’d say it to my husband, and he’d say it back and I’d say it to him. So, that when it came time to actually say the number, I was just numb to it and it was no longer, there was no longer that feeling to that number.
Now, my number is considerably larger now eight years later, and what I know to be true is it’s not the number. It’s how you make the other person feel in that moment of sharing the value of what you’re selling. And when you are in deep integrity with what you’re selling, meaning you believe so deeply that you can get the results or that you have the solution to the problem that the other person has, it doesn’t matter what price you give out. What matters is the confidence and the clarity that you use when you say the number. And if you sit there saying, well, it’s $3,000 but I know that’s a lot of money so we can split it up into couple payments. Well, actually I really like you and really want to work with you so let me just bring it down to $2,795. Well, actually you know it’s really more important that I work with you,” then it’s going to be $2,500. When we do that, we’re undervaluing and undermining the quality and the impact that we’re bringing to society.
I mean, all of our businesses are there because we solve a problem for someone and if we’re solving the problem then we are positively impacting society in our world in some way. And it doesn’t matter if you sell gadgets or you sell screwdrivers or you sell education or you sell photography, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you understand the impact of what you’re selling and how it’s making someone’s life better and when you can say that number without your story attached, but from that place of integrity with what you’re offering, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Shelli: I loved what you just said because I am a firm believer in that as well and the truth is if somebody is seeking your help, they need to, and they want to have confidence in you.
Shelagh: Yes.
Shelli: And when you waver on the number when you don’t stand in your integrity and say you know like yes this is the product that I have. This membership site can help you. It’s going to change your life, there is a certain feeling, a transference of energy that if you don’t have confidence in yourself, how are they going to have confidence in your ability to get them the results. So, it really is important to be able and also to have that mental refrain because when you are standing in your integrity, if you’re not able to offer something the gift or the product or the membership site that can get them a result, that is in some way being out of integrity because you’re not offering the help you know you’re able to give them and provide them, and then the ripple effect that would go on to have in their lives.
Shelagh: And that is an experience that I think we’ve all had where we have connected with someone who was out of integrity with what they’re selling, and it feels icky, it feels uncomfortable. And I want to attribute the quote and I can’t remember who said it, but people don’t necessarily buy what you sell. They buy how you make them feel. And I’ll never forget the day when a woman hired me for a six-month coaching program and she called me the next day and she’s like, “Shelagh, I am so embarrassed and am really sorry to ask this. I know that I made the right decision to work with you. I just have no idea what I bought,” and that to me is the perfect example of she bought how I make her feel. I made her feel confident and she should be. She’s got a fantastic business. We ended up getting her great results. She tripled her revenue like she was definitely a success story, but she bought and made that risk because of how I made her feel.
And you know bringing this back to membership sites the number one piece is how you show up and build that relationship with them before they say yes. So, if you appear out of nowhere and are expecting to get tens of thousands of people in your membership site and you haven’t taken the time to help them, or your audience get to know you by sharing great content, by impacting their lives in some way, by being a support for them by building that relationship, it’s really, really hard to make that sale or if you do make the sale, it’s hard to retain them as a client.
Shelli: Well, that’s the beauty of a membership site is you get to actually have a relationship with the person on the other end. I have one last question for you. What is the biggest impact having a membership site has had on your life?
Shelagh: Yeah. Well, knowing that I now run three, I have two that are definitely a mastery style membership that are 12 months in length, and one which is a true ongoing membership style business training program, I know, Shelli, exactly how much work is contracted for next month. And so, what that means is I can actually build the budget. I know how much money I can expect to come in so I know how much I can pay for outsourcing, how much I can pay myself, how much I can put into the operations of my business, how much I can be keeping what my profit margin is. And so, every month I can start on the first of the month without that noose around my neck of, “Oh my God, I got to go sell these whatever it is that I sell so that I can make my bills,” because that is exhausting. Now, my memberships provide the basis for where my budget is. Don’t think that I don’t have a sales goal that’s above and beyond that. For sure I do but it provides that peace of mind where I don’t have to be in reactionary mode because I know that my needs are covered, but I do need to stay in action and I do need to show up and I do need to give my all to my members each and every day.
Shelli: What does it feel like to show up in your membership site when this is a destination and a place and a thing you created and you want to be there as opposed to what you were doing before when you are showing up in a classroom and you’re starting to lose interest?
Shelagh: Yeah. For sure. You know, I wouldn’t say I know every single person really, really well but I know everybody well enough that they feel like a really good friend and I am by nature a very shy person. I’m very reserved, I’m not somebody who you’ll notice in a big crowd. I’m not going to fight to be heard but within my groups, people get me and they understand me, and I just get to have fun and I can show them the good and the bad, and I can share and feel authentic and just show up as me and it really is that circle of friends in the community that does give that fulfillment that had been missing in the teaching.
Shelli: I love it. I so appreciate you sharing. There’s been some really, really key insights that are going to benefit. I know a lot of people and I’m curious if people are looking for you online, what is the best place for them to find you?
Shelagh: Well. I am the only Shelagh Cummins there is, S-H-E-L-A-G-H C-U-M-M-I-N-S. So, you can find me on Twitter as @ShelaghCummins. You can find me on Instagram at Shelagh Cummins. You can find me on Facebook at Shelagh Cummins. You can find me on LinkedIn at Shelagh Cummins or you can go to my website which is also ShelaghCummins.com.
Shelli: Amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing and I appreciate you, my friend.
Shelagh: Well, thank you for having me.
