Audria Richmond spent six years in a cycle of launching businesses, shutting them down, and failing to retain customers. Her struggles revealed that the piece missing in her work was effective marketing, which sent her on a deep dive through every course and book she could get her hands on.
Now, as the founder of the Uncloned Marketing Membership, Audria helps fellow creative entrepreneurs market their businesses – effectively and creatively. She shows her clients how to challenge the norms and think outside the box while getting real, measurable results.
Today, Audria joins the podcast to talk about how her challenges as a creative led her to become a laser-focused marketer, how she differentiates herself from her competitors, and how bravery can feel like fear in motion.
Key Takeaways
- How Audria found her mission to help solopreneurs and small businesses create effective marketing campaigns.
- Why there are no scripts or templates in the Uncloned Marketing Membership – and how Audria leads by example when it comes to being different in your marketing.
- How Audria’s membership site goes above and beyond the typical social media support channels to provide exceptional customer service.
- Why Audria recommends you diversify your deliverables every other month.
- Audria’s guidelines for launching, no matter how unprepared you feel.
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Memorable Quotes
“I treat the members in our membership who are just starting their business, all the way to our multi-six-figure earners that are in our community, the same. No one is treated better or less than based on where they are, and I feel like that’s what keeps that human connection.” – Audria Richmond
“I want most of my members to experience making $100,000, 100% from their business. It sounds flashy, but it’s possible, and I remember so many people telling me it was impossible. I think that’s the gift that I would love to give to my members – for them to experience their first six-figure year.” – Audria Richmond
“We think a membership site is always about the deliverables, but in our world it’s all about customer service and making sure that no member feels lonely.” – Audria Richmond
Episode Resources
AudriaRichmond.com
Uncloned Marketing Membership
Transcript
Read The Transcript
Shelli: Audria Richmond, welcome to the It’s a TRIBE Thing Podcast. How are you?
Audria: Hey, how are you? I’m doing fine.
Shelli: I’m great. So, I want to talk all about your membership site and I’m really excited because it’s called the Uncloned Marketing Membership and I love that even in your title the word, uncloned, is sort of indicative of standing out and rising above the noise. And can you tell us a little bit about your membership site and the problems that you’ve overcome once you’ve got it up and running and what’s really, really working well for you?
Audria: So, our membership, the Uncloned Marketing Membership, is about showing solopreneurs and businesses with small marketing teams how to create effective marketing campaigns. And my back story in creating this membership site is that I too struggled with marketing when very early on in my entrepreneurial journey. So, from like 2008 to 2014, I would always start and stop a business, start and stop it, start and stop it. And I would think like, “Man, I know these ideas are epic but why am I not keeping customers? Why can’t I keep a steady flow of customers?” And then once I really looked there, I was like, okay, the common denominator in all of these business attempts is that I don’t know marketing and so it made me become very, very, very effectuated with the idea of marketing. I became a student of marketing. I read every book. I took every course I could like I did everything possible to really mass marketing and then one of the things that makes me a little different around the marketing piece is that I’m creative first so my earlier businesses, I was a professional photographer and professional graphic designer.
And so, I was able to take that creativity side and apply it to marketing because marketing sometimes can be a little boring to some people, so I was able to really make it more fun and creative and I feel like that’s my creative edge with our membership is that it’s not only about the technical side of learning marketing. It’s also about how to challenge the norms to be different and so we really spotlight creativity more as it relates to marketing as opposed to just generalizing marketing.
Shelli: Well, I love what you’re saying because I too notice this. You typically have people that lean towards the practical tactical, the marketing, the strategy, the nuts and bolts, and then you have the people that lean sometimes towards creativity and the vision and the overarching idea and I love what you’re doing with respect to combining the two of those into something that these creative individuals could actually action and so they can experience the same kind of success that you are experiencing now as opposed to you’re stopping, starting, stopping, starting, as so many of us have. Can you tell us about how you do what you do?
Audria: So, inside of our membership, one of the things that we do is we always think we don’t have scripts. We don’t have scripts in our membership. We do not have like copy and paste templates and the reason for that is because I want to really encourage them to be different and so the only way to be different is to pull from your own source, to pull from yourself. So, I empower our members to really think outside the box and really encourage them to do things they probably wouldn’t be approved in their industry, actually, things that are legal but we actually, you know, if people were saying you got to do… For example, because I was also featured as a backstage pass for TRIBE for this very reason. So, we did a virtual conference in the summer and that virtual conference was different, but a lot of people tell me like, “Oh, you can’t do nothing of that magnitude online,” and so that’s an example of the things that I teach and do myself. I’m also leading by example on how to be different as it relates to your marketing.
And really an example would be like when you think about a summit, most summits have what, like 10, 12, 20 speakers, right? I was the only speaker for my virtual conference and so a lot of the times people were like, “Okay. Well, why were you the only speaker?” I’m challenging the norm. That’s what our mission and vision is all about. So, that’s what we do inside the membership to really encourage that individuality so they can begin to do really fun marketing campaigns.
Shelli: I love what you’re saying because if you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten. But it’s so great though because like there’s a saying, the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole. And so, when you’re constantly looking at what other people are doing and even on an unconscious level just on autopilot trying to create this is the way a summit’s done or this is the way you do X, Y, and Z, I really love that you’re challenging your creatives to actually not only create but to create their own opportunity in a way that kicks the crap out of the status quo and completely like not think outside the box, like get rid of the box altogether.
Audria: Right.
Shelli: So, what makes your membership site different? And I know we’re talking before this. You, one of the things you really, really pride yourself on inside your membership is your customer service. So, for those people who are listening who are either interested in starting a membership site or want to do a better job or be more streamlined with respect to growing their membership site, how is that pivotal that customer service piece that you do so differently in Uncloned?
Audria: So, in the Uncloned Marketing Membership, we have eight support channels so we have our traditional support channels that you will see in a membership which is our monthly Q&A, things like that, but we also have text message support so you can actually send a text message and we obviously have our personal Facebook group. We have an app that people can download.
Shelli: Oh wow.
Audria: Like an app in the app store that they can download. And so, there are so many ways for our members to be supported and the reason we spend so much time on customer service over content, over anything is we think about a membership site is always about the deliverables but in our world it’s all about customer service and making sure that no member feels lonely. The moment that your member start feeling lonely, they’re going to leave, they’re going to unsubscribe, and they’re just not going to be a part of your membership so we want to make sure that every member feels good to come in the community and ask the question and also create space so they can share their fears, they could share the things that make them sad, they can share the things that make them mad, and not be judged for that. And that’s super important for us and so that’s why we spend so much time on customer service in addition to, obviously, good content.
Shelli: Well, I love that because it sounds like you’re not just doing customer service. You’re doing human connection and if it’s true that people come for the content and stay for the community then what you’re cultivating here makes your membership site super sticky. And the other thing that I love to and we’ve been talking about the people that that are great at strategy or the more logical, practical, tactical stuff versus the creatives, I love for you that you’re creating this safe space because there are deliverables that you provide, and there is strategy and ideas, and I know that you combine innovation and creativity with tach, but what I really love that you do is you support the human beings who are your community with respect to what are the struggles that they are experiencing as people that are standing in the way of executing on the stuff you’re teaching. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Audria: Yeah. One of the biggest things about marketing, in general, is getting your first customer and not only getting your first customer but your next customer and next customer. And it’s levels to it, right? You know, you have your year where you make your first $10,000 in a month and then it just keeps on going on and on and on and on and I feel like inside of the membership we hold space for the small wins and the big wins and I think sometimes that can get lost in the sauce because oftentimes that when we hear about these huge stories on the Internet, they’re always about people who will establish and I treat the members in our membership who are just starting their business all the way to our multi-six-figure earners that’s in our community. So, no one is treated better or less than based on where they are and I feel like that’s what keeps that human connection.
Shelli: I love it. What has been the unexpected gift of being a membership site owner that you never saw coming?
Audria: Freedom, freedom, freedom, peace of mind, knowing that I’m not at the edge of broke. You know what I mean? When you’re constantly in launch mode, you are kind of very close to the edge because every month you’re thinking, “Okay. I got to make this last. I got to make that last,” and then when you think about putting together a launch, it’s a lot of work. And so, I could have never accounted for the community that I’ve built. It also has taught me patience dealing with our members and really slowing down and being present. I also spend more time in my community than I do on my own like public platforms and it makes my community feel special. But then like there she’s spending time with us but for me personally, freedom, knowing that, okay, here is our projected revenue and then I can breathe.
Shelli: That’s it right there. So powerful. If you were to give somebody a piece of advice who is considering starting a membership site or is running a membership site that they maybe need to breathe some new life into, what would be the one piece of advice that you would give them?
Audria: I would say diversify your deliverables. Example, so this month we’re doing a challenge. We’re teaching our members how to live stream and literally, I’ve always been given them like a training, a Q&A call, you know, reviews, and then we support them with any questions that they have. This month I mixed it up like this month we’re doing a challenge. It was a shock to them and so it disrupts that pattern of like what is to come, what is expected. So, I would say disrupt your deliverables every other month. You don’t have to do it all the time but I feel like that will spark up the community and boost morale in the community.
Shelli: When you think of the people you serve who are seemingly more of a community and a family than simply just attendees of a membership site, what is your greatest hope for them? Because when you think of what you’re doing, there is always a ripple effect of what that causes and then when that ripple effect reaches the next wave of people that that skill or that talent touches the lives of others, what is the biggest and brightest goal that you have not only for your membership site itself, but for the people in the community that are your members?
Audria: I want most of my members to experience making $100,000 100% from their business. It sounds flashy but it’s possible and I remember so many people telling me it was impossible, and as a person who doesn’t have a college degree and then goes to some fancy college to know that I’m making a living and I’m doing better than my parents ever would have, as a young adult, I think that’s the gift that I will love to give to my members is for them to experience their first six-figure year.
Shelli: I love it. I love also that you are keeping it super simple because you said something earlier and I want to repeat it back to you. Don’t get lost in the sauce.
Audria: Yes.
Shelli: I love it. What is some…
Audria: Hello?
Shelli: Oh, sorry. My mic cut out for a quick second. What is the one limiting belief you had about starting a membership site at the very beginning that you found to be untrue? So, for those people who are listening right now who may be experiencing a limiting belief about starting a membership site, what is something that you can say that you’ve encountered and how did you overcome getting past that?
Audria: I didn’t feel like I was ready. I felt like, “Not now, not now. Let me get a little bit more experience. Let me get a little bit more experience,” and I also felt like I wasn’t going to have enough content. Do I have enough content around to keep a membership site going? Because in every single month where people look at their statement, they want to make sure they’re in the right place. And so, also making sure that I set the expectations with people every month when they invest in a membership because my membership is not like the low end is on the high end. And so, I had to justify that investment every single month so really just making sure that my content and my deliverables match what they were going to be paying every month.
Shelli: I love it. So, what does ready feel like, for those people who are listening? Because here’s what I suspect, I suspect that people look at somebody like you who’s running a successful membership site and think, you might not have felt ready at the beginning but when you finally start it, it felt a certain kind of way. And what I find is sometimes people who are observing others that are in a position that they aspire to will think that that person feels differently meaning the truth is sometimes bravery actually just feels like fear in motion.
Audria: Yes, that’s so true.
Shelli: So, what would you say ready feels like for those people who are maybe standing with their toes on the edge and are waiting to feel a certain way before they actually jump?
Audria: I will say come up with a theme, set the date, and launch. When I launched my membership, I literally had like three videos in there and now we have over hundreds of videos so I would say just set a date, come up with a theme for your membership site, and get going.
Shelli: Love it. When people are looking for you online, where is the best place they can connect with you?
Audria: They can connect with me at Audria Richmond on all social media platforms.
Shelli: Great. Thank you so much for spending the time. This has been really incredible. Appreciate you.
[END]
