Survival Trainer Turns Expertise into a Powerful Membership Business

Shelli Varela: What do survival skills and building a membership site have in common? You’re about to find out.   Stu McLaren: 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 Varela: Lisa Bedford, welcome to the It’s a TRIBE Thing Podcast.   Lisa Bedford: Hey, Shelli. Thanks for the invite.   Shelli Varela: I love your story because yours is one of the more unique membership sites that we’ve encountered and I’m super excited to share you with our audience. But I’m wondering if first, you can start with telling us what is your membership site and also, where did your story start if we trace the route all the way back to the beginning?   Lisa Bedford: Yeah. It’s been quite a journey. My membership site is Survival Mom Sisterhood and I train just everyday women with survival and prepper training to equip them to handle with confidence any kind of emergency that arises. And my story begins about 10 years ago when my family was in Phoenix when the economy at the time, late 2008, early 2009, the economy was just devastated, particularly in the area of home construction and my husband owned this construction company. And he went from getting 50 to 60 phone calls a day to zero and that went on week after week after week. It was scary as I began to watch our family finances in some serious jeopardy and began wondering what if we’re next? What if our company goes bankrupt and we lose our home? I’ve always been really proactive in tough situations and I decided I’m going to research what can I do.   And just the category of survival started coming up and I began to learn for the first time ever in my life what emergency food storage was. I didn’t grow up with that mindset or that training or instruction whatsoever. I began learning about emergency kits and I started putting these things together. I just wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. And you know, Shelli, that was my way of maybe distracting myself from a really highly stressful scenario and I felt very empowered when I had an emergency kit for my vehicle. And when I knew just what to do if some kind of storm hit my family or a long term power outage, it was very empowering. And because my previous background was in training and in education and even writing curriculum in my former teaching career, the next logical step was to start writing about what I was doing.   And I was completely unaware that this was right on the cusp of the whole prepper movement, which really gained steam in 2010 and lasted for several years. So, the blog that I created initially was TheSurvivalMom.com. It’s been around for over 10 years now. They’re well over 1,000 blog articles on it on all kinds of topics related to building that level of confidence and those that knowledge and skills that really, for a lot of us, our grandparents and our great grandparents knew it was a part of their lives. So over time, I wrote a book. It was published by HarperCollins. I’m really proud of that book so that’s just titled Survival Mom and I began doing some speaking, some live training, some recorded training, and eventually, that led me to making the decision about a year-and-a-half ago to create a membership site.   Shelli Varela: That’s fantastic. What I love about your story, if we trace it back, you were a teacher who taught junior high and I just love the flow path of how one skill built on the next, built on the next, and then all of a sudden you find yourself a membership site owner. I know before we started recording, we were talking about how when you were teaching junior high, you’ve always been instructing, you’ve always been sort of leading and showing people new ideas and new ways to think about things. But the thing that I love that you said about being a teacher was you’re also selling ideas and teaching people how to wrap their head around new concepts. So, it’s no surprise to me you went from junior high teacher and then right into direct sales marketing.   Can you talk about the transition in between the two when you were a person originally who had a regular job or a 9-to-5 job like many of our listeners do, and that first time you decided you were going to take the leap into something sales-oriented, digital marketing, something like that?   Lisa Bedford: Exactly. You know, Shelli, I think it’s really important for us to understand what our skill set is, what are you really best at, and then capitalize on those skills. And for me, my number one skill is talking. I once took a personality test and I discovered that one of my skills, I can talk about anything with or without information and I can talk on that subject indefinitely, and that really helped me succeed in the direct sales industry. Now, as I am constantly creating content for the blog, and now currently the membership site for the most part, that one skill has really aided me because as I’m talking, as I’m writing, what I’m really doing is I’m organizing information in a way that makes sense to the other person, whether they’re listening or they’re reading. As I’m organizing that, I really take time to make sure they’re covering gaps in my information that one concept flows to another. And I guess that would be my superpower that is just I’m not good at so many things but it just so happens that in this I am. And so, recognizing what I can do and then finding ways of capitalizing that, whatever my current profession or even a hobby might be has really led to numerous successful careers.   Shelli Varela: I am so stoked to dive in with more of this because I love what you’re saying. Many of our listeners, their superpower or their gift or the thing that they’re really, really talented or good at is right under their nose and oftentimes when something comes naturally, you don’t even consider it that, “Oh, that might be a thing.” And so, I love that you touched on that because for everybody listening like the things that come easily for you and the things that you could talk about for hours that you just sort of throw away as, “That’s just kind of a commonality,” sometimes that’s where the gifts are living. I actually, at TRIBE Live this past year, I had the opportunity to speak to a gentleman who also is in your same niche. He talks on survival, survival techniques. It’s a big thing. It’s a really big niche.   Lisa Bedford: It’s an interesting niche. It’s one that I’ve tried to carve out my own unique area because when I began researching, Shelli, really the only information out there it was very much directed at men because men were the ones who were just into the whole survival, hunker down mindset.   Shelli Varela: The hunters and gatherers.   Lisa Bedford: Very much so. And once in a while on like a survival forum, there was like a little section down at the bottom of the form. In one case, it was called The Hen House and that’s where women would, you know, that was their area to talk. Not that they weren’t allowed elsewhere, but it was for women and I remember one time after I had really done tons of research, my husband came home from working that one night and I said, “Honey, I’m going to start a blog and I’m going to title it The Survival Mom.” And by the time we got home the next day, somehow, I had no background in this but I’d somehow managed to snag the domain name. I had somehow figured out WordPress enough for me to at least have a banner at the top, The Survival Mom.   Shelli Varela: He doesn’t want to leave you alone for very long. All of a sudden, you’ve got all the world’s problems solved.   Lisa Bedford: I know. Sometimes I feel sorry for him. He never knows what I’m going to do next. But I really wanted it to be mom-friendly, woman-friendly, and looking at survival and prepping through our point of view. So, for me in a crisis, for example, when a big hurricane hit my town, my concern was all the kids in the house, do we have our electronics charged? Do we have some food if the power goes out? And for a lot of men, they may have those same concerns but a lot of times it’s more about protection, how am I going to protect my family? How am I going to provide for them? While as a mom, my take was just a little bit different. And so, from the very beginning, I was really gearing it more toward women. And then over time, I really made a point of not really unsurvivalizing it but talking about survival in a way that an ordinary survival mom, a single mom living or a single woman living in an urban setting that they could really relate to, and I believe I have accomplished that with my brand.   Shelli Varela: I love it.   [ANNOUNCEMENT]   Stu McLaren: 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 Varela: There’s a couple things that I want to ask you about from a community perspective. And one of the things you were talking about earlier was when people in your community feel like they’re prepared, they feel empowered and they feel safe. What do you think the ripple effect of that is going forward? Because the word empowered, I hear a lot. And in cases, much like you articulated earlier that that was true for you when people feel like they’re in a situation where they are either out of control or they’re not able to influence their outcome, oftentimes, that brings up a lot of anxiety and things like that. What is the ripple effect that you’re providing with respect to helping your people feel empowered, prepared, and safe?   Lisa Bedford: Just overall, when we take positive action, even just one step in a direction of something that we fear, we do gradually gain confidence. And in the scenarios that I deal with, things I’ve gone through personally and experienced or things that I am informing and training people to handle, it really is to put a plan in place that is something you could just automatically follow. Because when we’re faced with something that is very scary, terrifying, something completely unfamiliar, then there’s a little part of our brain in the back of our head, it’s about the size of the almonds called the amygdala and it begins shooting messages to us. And sometimes those messages are, “Freeze. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what decision to make,” and that is the worst possible reaction. If your smoke alarm goes off, and you realize the kitchen is on fire, or your child comes in and there’s just blood everywhere and you panic. And when you fall through these scenarios and you’ve taken very practical actions to put plans and preps in place, then as a way of just combating that amygdala who is almost your enemy at that moment, you now know what to do.   And I even trained people how to do survival breathing. Survival breathing is just something that you set in motion. It just becomes automatic. And as you do that, your blood pressure lowers and your brain focuses on what needs to be done. So, the ripple effect is just a growing level of confidence so there’s less panic and a phrase I use is prepare more, panic less. And I think as women, caretakers, as moms, we really do need to have that mindset and the skill set as well.   Shelli Varela: Well, these skills are so universal. I’ve been a firefighter for over two decades and I echo all of the things you say to be true. You know, when we have the ability to prepare in advance, if and when that situation ever happens, not only the way your body reacts to it but your ability to stay cognitively present is dynamically different. So, these are not just survival skills should the worst happen, but these are also like impeccable life tools as well.   Lisa Bedford: I know when my kids have gone off to take like an SAT or an ACC test or some big exam, they were homeschooled but nevertheless, they’ve encountered these tests, they go walk out the door, “Honey, remember your survival breathing.” “Yeah, I’ve already been doing that, mom.” So yes, they are very definite life skills. And they’re also practical, Shelli. I have really veered away from the survivalist, hardcore prepper framework because, in so many different cases, it’s a waste of money, and impractical. So, I really tried to teach women, in particular, this is the kind of emergency food that you need. These are the kind of preps you need to have in place. Don’t worry about the nuclear bomb-proof bunker. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’ve got to wake the kids up in the middle of the night, there was some kind of a bomb raid, and you go into hiding. To me, that’s just some kind of fantasy from some kind of a novel or worst-case scenario movie. That is not my brand, and it’s not me.   Shelli Varela: Well, these are usable, practical, tactical life skills. I really like. What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve gotten with respect to either empowerment, confidence, or change that you’ve made in one of your community members’ lives?   Lisa Bedford: Quite a few because what I teach is so highly practical, that even if someone doesn’t encounter a scenario like an earthquake or a hurricane right away, just knowing I have the emergency kit, “Lisa has taught me what kind of emergency lighting I need to have in the house. She’s told me what kind of foods to have on hand,” and I do get that kind of a feedback. Just recently, as part of my membership, I have an online prepper planner and one of my new members just joined like about six weeks ago, Susan, she wrote me a long message and she said, “You know, for the first time ever, I feel organized about what I’m doing.” For many years, Shelli, and this kind of flew in the face of the whole survivalist mindset and movement but I’ve been telling people, you have to get organized, you have to declutter in a moment of crisis. You don’t want to go on a scavenger hunt for your first aid kit. You don’t want to go on a scavenger hunt for the flashlight and finding batteries. You need to have those things in place.   And a lot of times our homes become more and more cluttered than we ever realized until we’re desperately searching for something even if it’s just the car keys. And so, this feedback from her telling me that this online planner was just the best thing that’s ever happened to her in her whole prepping experience, that let me know that I really was on the right track in what I’ve been providing.   Shelli Varela: Well, I love that you said that because there is no better way to take your panic to DEFCON 5 than to be panicked and unprepared.   Lisa Bedford: That’s right.   Shelli Varela: One of the things you were talking about and I’ll just close out with this question, you were talking about the fact that you have the ability to simplify information and to organize information and create ease and learning and I wondered if you could speak to how keeping your members away from overwhelm and keeping it simpler than maybe many of the listeners think it’s possible for it to be, I wonder if you could speak to how that is actually more effective.   Lisa Bedford: It’s easy to become overwhelmed especially when you’re feeling fearful. If you do a search for survival, survivalism, prepping, preppers, you’re going to come up with thousands of websites and probably hundreds of thousands of different articles and forum posts, etcetera. But you have to hone-in on what you need in your specific set of circumstances. And no one knows that but you. A survivalist expert, who is up in Idaho when some kind of hidden cabin somewhere has no idea what your budget is. They don’t realize that you have a handicapped child and that your spouse has significant health issues and you’re caring for aging parents, for example. You have to take just some fundamental preparedness, concepts, and actions, and then think, how do I adapt this to my set of circumstances? And always, I just come back to this because this really is what propels women in particular and not just women, but men and dads is that it really stems from the love of our family.   Ultimately, it goes back to the people that we love and that is what causes us to think, “What could I do if we were stranded by the side of the road? What kind of training could I get if I could get the medications that my child needs?” And so really, at the very, very heart of this is the heart of a mom, the heart of a dad. And when I try to simplify and organize the information, so someone walks down a path that I call the survival mom journey, as they know what to do, they know how to customize it for their own family, their budget and so on, just that feeling of confidence grows. And as you become more confident, then you can make decisions more quickly if and when an emergency confronts you.   Shelli Varela: Brilliant. Do you have anything else you want to share with the audience as we wrap up in terms of membership sites and advice for anybody who might be considering starting one of their own?   Lisa Bedford: I started my membership, Survival Mom Sisterhood. I didn’t even have a website at the time and it was kind of a mess because I did a five-day challenge, followed up by the open registration for my membership, I hadn’t a website, I had a fuzzy idea in my mind about how I was going to organize the content. I had a ton of content. After 10 years, I had loads of content. I had a platform on social media and a decent blog presence but I really honestly was starting at the very bottom rung, Shelli, and that is no joke. In fact, I ended up just sick for a few weeks afterwards. So, for me, I would just say, take a look at what you can do and find the easiest route to that membership based on where you are right now. So, the easiest route might be a paid Facebook group. It might be just putting together email training, but I was trying to do the whole shebang at once. And that was not ideal, to say the least.   Shelli Varela: Yeah. Keep it super simple.   Lisa Bedford: I know. And a lot of us, we love our content so much that we and I did this, that we don’t realize just how important ultimately the community is going to be. So, I have learned that as new members come in, I try to get them attached and part of the community first day. I want them joining the Facebook group first day. They get something in the mail from me that invites them to different events and group calls. Because as I have seen friendships blossom inside my membership community, I realized this really has taken on a life of its own. It’s not just a membership where I’m just delivering dry information month after month. It really has just started talking about this way, it’s actually becoming a whole experience. It’s not just delivery of information, but it’s the friendships that happen and it’s hearing one of my members say, “Hey, Lisa, I want to start mentoring brand new people.” And another one, “Lisa, I want to start sending out birthday cards to members.” And you realize this is something bigger and better than I ever realized it could be that it really comes back to the community.   Shelli Varela: Absolutely. I hear this again and again. And so, for anybody listening out there, if you are waiting to consider that a membership site might be right for you or if you are waiting to start that membership site that in your belly you know you really have something valuable to share, I want everybody to consider what is the cost to the potential members who will be allowed to be in your community, who would be part of your inner circle. What is the cost to them for you not starting? Lisa, I wanted to thank you so much for your time and if people are looking for you online, where’s the best place they can find you?   Lisa Bedford: The blog, TheSurvivalMom.com, that’s where you’re going to find foundational information, advanced information and training, just to really make sure your family is prepared. And that is a great starting point.   Shelli Varela: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you.   Lisa Bedford: You’re welcome.   [CLOSING]   Stu McLaren: I hope you love that story. It’s amazing, right? That’s what It’s a TRIBE Thing is all about. 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. Listen, this isn’t luck. There’s a repeatable formula for producing a growing subscription income and each week we’re going behind the scenes to show you exactly how they did it. Get the latest stories and actionable ideas from each episode at www.ItsaTRIBEThing.com and if you know one other person who could benefit from this, tell them to subscribe. Tell them to go to ItsaTRIBEThing.com. [END]