What It Took For Aprille To Launch Her Membership… Even If It Wasn’t Perfect
Aprille Reed worked for years as a successful webinar creator, empowering entrepreneurs and their businesses across the globe. She coached them one-by-one to thrive using webinars. As her business grew, she knew the one-to-one model couldn’t scale. She needed to find a way to better leverage her expertise—and the membership model seemed like the perfect fit.
But Aprille had a common problem. Even though she knew the membership model was the answer, she struggled to take the first step.
Her fears of failing consumed her. Weeks and months drifted by. She wanted it to be perfect, but she never felt like she was ready.
Then, she shifted her thinking: rather than measure her initial launch as a single success or failure, she decided to interpret each step of the journey as a lesson to be learned. No matter what happened, she would come out stronger, smarter, and ready for the next phase.
To Launch or Not to Launch?
It’s true. Every impactful organization, business, or community started with that
one person who realized, “Hey, I’m good at this and love doing it. I wonder if someone else would be, too.”
If one is such a powerful number, Aprille wondered,
what’s holding people back from living out their greatest potential?
The answer?
Fear. To launch or not to launch? Aprille Reed had to face that question head-on.
So what
do you do when the launch button is in front of you, but that nagging voice inside your head keeps telling you a thousand reasons why you’re not ready yet?
In this story, we’re going to follow Aprille’s mental journey to overcome the paralyzing fear of rejection and create a membership community that immediately began making a difference with real-world impact.
Meet Aprille
Like a lot of people who have a successful membership, Aprille is really good at something specific—designing webinar funnels. She knew how to coach her clients to use webinars to craft funnels and achieve their business objectives.
With so many growing online businesses, her natural abilities were in high-demand. Coaches, consultants, and service-based businesses were willing to pay her big bucks for personal webinar coaching.
So,
Aprille equipped them, one-by-one, to leverage the power of a webinar and reach more customers.
Then it hit her—she was teaching people to break out of the one-to-one model while still stuck in it herself. Amid the seasons of freelance feast and famine, she was still trading her time for money, and the returns wouldn’t fulfill her own growth plans, either.
It was time to practice what she preached and find another business model—one that would scale with her growing vision. Then she discovered it—the membership model.
Silencing A Thousand Nagging Voices
The more she learned about it, the more she loved it. She could multiply her impact and expand her reach while investing the same amount of time. But Aprille had another hang-up.
She liked helping other people succeed. That passion had driven her to this point; however, she didn’t like being in the spotlight herself. You couldn’t tell by her warm, bubbly personality, but being the center of attention as the leader of a community felt like someone else’s sweet spot.
And what if she put herself out there and nobody wanted to join? What if she just flat-out failed? How would that feel?
The nagging voices inside her head became a paralyzing chorus that kept her admiring the membership model from a distance. Until, one day, she decided that the possibility of helping others outweighed the rejection she might experience.
And besides, wasn’t a future of doing what she really loved worth the risk? So Aprille took the first step.
What If No One Listens?
She started with a Facebook group. There weren’t many bells or whistles, and it was totally free to set up. After gathering about 60 members in the group, Aprille sensed it was time to really put herself out there and take the membership leap.
But fear pulled her back. Having 60 people in her group was encouraging and terrifying at the same time. What if she launched and no one signed up? What if they got closer and then rejected her vision.
If no one responded to her ideas, would that mean her ideas were no good? She’d been working in the webinar field for years. She
knew that her approach helped her clients get results, but how would it work for a membership model? Was she
even ready to launch?
These are choices that almost every entrepreneur faces at some point:
- Stay on the safe path where no one judges you and where you never grow out of your comfort zone, or…
- Take a risk, push through the resistance, and keep going until you find your true mission.
Finally, a close friend and mentor told her what she needed to hear, “Just set a date.”
So Aprille opened a calendar, picked a date out of thin air. She didn’t have a complex strategy. She didn’t have a detailed launch plan. She didn’t have all the loose ends tied up—or even loosely organized.
But she knew that if she waited for “perfect,” she would never act at all.
“I have an intention. I have an idea. I’m stepping off the cliff. And I’m going to knit my parachute while in freefall.” — Aprille Reed
She launched her new membership on a Thursday, opened the cart, and logged in to her Facebook page. Her very first Facebook Live got a few people talking. But sales? Zero. Friday? Still crickets.
On Saturday, she did another Facebook Live, but still no new members. She thought about shutting it all down and going back to what she knew. “I’m putting myself out there. I’m making myself vulnerable,” she sighed. “And I’m going to get egg all over my face.”
Courageous Vulnerability Invites Community
But Aprille wasn’t content to wallow in self-pity. Each time she went live, she learned a little more from the feedback she received. Each time she gained a little more confidence in front of the camera and worked at honing her core message.
On Monday, her Close Cart day, Aprille took everything she had learned and did one more Facebook Live. This time, she broke all the steps down to the basics. She talked her audience through her vision for her business, where the membership was going—and how they would achieve success.
Plus, she offered a special founding member rate.
Finally, she was open and honest, and invited her audience to join “It’s not all there yet, but this is what I want to make it—and
you can help make this membership truly amazing!”
And they listened! Aprille’s transparent, authentic message was exactly what her people wanted to hear.
“It’s not ultimately about the results you get. It’s about growing within yourself. It’s about your own personal development, learning and taking action.” —Aprille Reed
Aprille had been afraid that laying out her vision so candidly would push people away. Instead, her vulnerability invited them into her community and created something they could gather around.
She had thought people wanted to hear a perfectly manicured pitch. She assumed they would only buy a polished plan from a popular influencer. But Aprille discovered that with the know-how to share, a heart to serve, and the mindset to learn, membership growth was right at her fingertips.
She realized it didn’t have to be perfect. She just had to pull the trigger and launch.
And it only grew from there—in ways she never expected. After watching Aprille launch her webinar-teaching membership, one of her new members found the courage to launch her own membership—helping women work through life trauma.
Aprille’s courageous first step—leveraging the membership model—didn’t just start a membership. It inspired others to overcome
their own fears—and change lives.
Memberships: More Than a Business Model
When you choose to push past the fear to launch a membership like Aprille, you can:
- Identify the root of what’s holding you back
- Experience breakthrough personal and professional growth
- Inspire others to share their ideas
- Scale your business for maximum impact
- Create a ripple effect around the world
