Strategies for Creating an Engaging Membership for Teacher Authors with Farrah Henley
Apr 22, 2024
Lauren Fulton - The Rebranded Teacher
Unlock the potential of a successful teacher business with the wisdom of Farrah Henley, our remarkable guest this week. Transitioning from a dedicated educator to a flourishing business owner, Farrah exemplifies the transformative journey of leveraging marketing strategies to amplify sales on Teachers Pay Teachers. Dive into the essentials of maintaining a vibrant membership model as we dissect the nuances that keep an audience engaged and invested. Farrah's candid sharing and my own insights serve as a compass for teacher entrepreneurs aiming to navigate the waters of sustainability and growth in the competitive realm of educational resources.
Have you ever wondered about the delicate balance required to prevent spreading yourself too thin while building your entrepreneurial dreams? This episode hones in on the mastery of one's niche and the critical importance of establishing a strong foundation before expanding your reach. With a clear differentiation between memberships and subscription services, we provide hands-on examples to illustrate these concepts, ensuring that you can confidently approach expanding your offerings with a focused strategy.
Reflecting on the resilience needed to weather the storms of unpredictable business cycles, I open up about overcoming periods of no sales and the strategic pivots that fueled my growth. We compare the intricate dynamics of memberships and subscriptions, highlighting how my own Learning Centers Made Easy evolved from a simple offering to a full-fledged community. For those with their sights set on long-term stability and success, this episode is a vault of strategies and experiences that will empower and inspire your venture in the educational business landscape. Join us and imbibe the lessons that Farrah and I have learned on our distinct yet converging paths to entrepreneurship.
Unlock the potential of a successful teacher business with the wisdom of Farrah Henley, our remarkable guest this week. Transitioning from a dedicated educator to a flourishing business owner, Farrah exemplifies the transformative journey of leveraging marketing strategies to amplify sales on Teachers Pay Teachers. Dive into the essentials of maintaining a vibrant membership model as we dissect the nuances that keep an audience engaged and invested. Farrah's candid sharing and my own insights serve as a compass for teacher entrepreneurs aiming to navigate the waters of sustainability and growth in the competitive realm of educational resources.
Have you ever wondered about the delicate balance required to prevent spreading yourself too thin while building your entrepreneurial dreams? This episode hones in on the mastery of one's niche and the critical importance of establishing a strong foundation before expanding your reach. With a clear differentiation between memberships and subscription services, we provide hands-on examples to illustrate these concepts, ensuring that you can confidently approach expanding your offerings with a focused strategy.
Reflecting on the resilience needed to weather the storms of unpredictable business cycles, I open up about overcoming periods of no sales and the strategic pivots that fueled my growth. We compare the intricate dynamics of memberships and subscriptions, highlighting how my own Learning Centers Made Easy evolved from a simple offering to a full-fledged community. For those with their sights set on long-term stability and success, this episode is a vault of strategies and experiences that will empower and inspire your venture in the educational business landscape. Join us and imbibe the lessons that Farrah and I have learned on our distinct yet converging paths to entrepreneurship.
Welcome to the Rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teachers, Pay Teachers and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPT businesses in a way that's purposeful and sustainable. So if you're looking for actionable, step-by-step ways to grow your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started it.
Speaker 1:
This week on the podcast, we have a really special guest. We have Farrah Henley, and we are so excited to chat with her about how to create a profitable membership, when you should consider having a membership inside of your business, and the mindset behind a membership that will keep your members coming back time and time again. This conversation is chock full of fantastic information, not only about memberships, but about other aspects of your teacher seller business. So I encourage you, even if you're not interested in starting a membership right now, to have a listen, because you're going to enjoy absolutely everything that Farrah Henley has to share. So let's go ahead and dive in and let's meet Farrah.
Speaker 1:
Hey, Farrah, how are you? So let's go ahead and dive in and let's meet Farrah. Hey, Farrah, how are you? I'm good. Lauren, how are you? I'm great. I'm so excited to chat with you today and have you on the podcast and I'm really particularly excited about our topic, which is memberships. But before we dive into that, would you just take a moment and introduce yourself and tell everyone who you are and what you do?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to come on the podcast and talk about memberships. I will tell you our membership has been an absolute game changer in our business and I love our membership. But to kind of take it back to the beginning, I actually started this journey as a teacher business owner back in 2011. It doesn't seem like that long ago, but then when I actually do the math, that was a really long time ago. I'm like wow, that's like halfway through a generation, right, yeah, so 2011 was the year that I started my teacher business and I was still in the classroom, and I am no longer in the classroom full time. However spoiler alert, I have not made this public yet, but I have started subbing in classrooms, and then I'm also maybe considering taking a position at the school where I've been subbing. I haven't quite decided yet. I'm really missing the classroom a little bit, and so I just don't know that I have time to go full time instead of just subbing. But when I started in 2011, like most people, I just literally started this, as you know, a side hustle, a way to supplement doing some things in my classroom.
Speaker 2:
We all remember well, I say we all I forget that I'm. I feel old when I say this, but when I drop names of OGs that went before us and people go, who is that? I'm just like, oh my gosh, I feel so old now. But the million dollar teacher, deanna Jump. We saw the Good Morning America interview I think it was Good Morning America and she kind of like put it on the radar of all of us that there was something that we could do beyond being a classroom teacher, that we can actually potentially be business owners, and so I very much was like, wow, I want to do this Now.
Speaker 2:
I had such grandiose dreams because I was like, oh, and I know no disrespect whatsoever, but I was like, if she can do it, I can do this Absolutely. And I jumped into it and well, spoiler alert again, it did not become the million dollar business that I thought it was going to be immediately. And it spoiler alert again, it did not become the million dollar business that I thought it was going to be immediately, and it was a lot harder than I thought it was, especially being a full-time classroom teacher. So jump forward seven years and my husband was retiring. He wanted me to retire because we wanted to travel. And so I was like you know what? I've been at this for 20 plus years at the time and now over 25 years in education. I just cannot believe this. But I was like, okay, I wasn't necessarily ready to walk away, but I was like, okay, I can walk away from the classroom and I'll go full time with this business because it had potential.
Speaker 2:
I'll just say it had potential. And so then, in 2018, the story I love to tell when life changed, as I know it was I got into marketing and I started actually marketing my business and, really pretty much overnight, just implementing some marketing strategies. It blew up and we went from I mean, I went from spending seven years just trying to hit that first milestone on TPT and had barely hit that first milestone to hitting the second and the third very, very quickly.
Speaker 1:
And those are very far apart, like the second and the third milestone, are really far apart.
Speaker 2:
Yes, they are. And it was crazy and really honestly, I mean, I had never made more than like $1,000 in a month and that was like in seven years that was like two months out of seven years I had managed to hit $1,000. And this particular month, after implementing some marketing strategies, we did over $56,000 in 30 days. And I was like whoa and just for the record, this was prior to TikTok, because nowadays people are like get on TikTok, you know, and go viral and all that. But literally I was just completely flabbergasted. But what it did was it showed me what I already had seen, what was possible because of those that had gone before us and had done this. But what it did for me was it showed me that I had the potential to really build something that was like really sustainable. I essentially made my teaching salary plus some in a month and I was just like what is going on? So at that point and it just went from there. I mean, it just kept growing from there, and so I continued that. I like to call it my NASCAR year because and I was being lapped by all the other cars on the track my business was lapping me. I literally spent the next year chasing my business because I had no infrastructure in place. I had no systems in place. I had nothing prepared to deal with how fast this grew. So that is, you know, not pertinent to what we're going to talk about today, but definitely the number one advice I give all teacher business owners is build your systems early, because you never know when that moment is going to happen in your business and you want to be ready. So after about a year, I was like okay, things are rocking and rolling, everything's going good.
Speaker 2:
2019 rolled around and I decided I wanted to create a course. So I took Digital Course Academy. I created a course, launched the course. It was a successful launch. It wasn't we didn't hit any crazy numbers with it, but I think it was a successful launch.
Speaker 2:
But I felt like there was something missing. And the people who took my course, they wanted more and they were asking you know what's next? That's when I was like, well, I wonder if I could start a membership. And because what they were asking for was not another course, but they were asking for a membership. They were asking for materials, they were asking for resources to do what my course taught them to do and they were asking for ongoing support and coaching, and so I really tried to DIY it, and then I got smart, but I did launch the membership, and it was a success.
Speaker 2:
I mean, in the very beginning, our very first launch, we had a very good launch, and then it just kind of grew from there, and here we are in 2024. And the business itself has just grown into so many other things. We have a side of the business that serves K-5 teachers in the classroom. We have a side of the business that is serving teacher sellers and teacher business owners, and I love both. I've pretty much got the side that serves teachers running on autopilot with a team, and then I get to spend a lot more of my time in Teacher Business Society, which is the side that serves teacher businesses, but it's been amazing. The membership, though, and then, obviously, our digital downloads, but the membership is really a backbone of our business on the teacher side, which is really, really great.
Speaker 1:
I love that. Can we talk for a second about you mentioned when you first started this membership? You were at a point in your business where you had everything where you wanted to be Like you had grown. You had focused on growing the TPT side or that part of the digital product side, and then you were like, okay, let's move on to this course. And so you decided to create this course. What would you say to somebody listening right now who's where you were at in, say, 2015 or 2016, before you really figured out that portion of your teacher business? Who's saying you know what? My income isn't where I want it to be. This business on Teachers Pay Teachers is not where I want it to be. Maybe I need a course to help supplement the income. Do you think that is a smart play to try to diversify before you've really honed your craft on that first venture? Or would you say like, yeah, go ahead, get your feet wet. Like, get your hands dirty, give it a try.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So I think this is a really great question because I get asked this question weekly from clients. And it's so interesting when I'm coaching teacher, business owners, because I see in them where I was and I can very physically see their mental process and I think, oh, I was so there. I so remember asking myself those same questions. I'm going to use an analogy. My clients refer to me as the analogy queen because I tell everything in analogies. I think it's a superpower.
Speaker 2:
But I'm going to use this analogy and this is actually not an analogy that I came up with. It's one my own coach shared with me many, many years ago, and it is the analogy of imagine that you're on two islands. You have two islands in front of you and one is reality island, it's where you currently are, and then you have desire island, which is where you want to be. And I think we all, when we start our businesses, we have these goals, these aspirations of where we want to be in our business, and you start building a bridge to get from where you're at to where you wanna be. Most of us start that with selling our digital downloads on Teachers, pay Teachers and we start building that bridge. And then, somewhere along the way, that bridge construction is not going as fast as we would like it. So we decide, hey, I'm going to do a course. And people call it shiny object syndrome. I think it's just you're.
Speaker 2:
As a business person, as an entrepreneur, I'm a serial entrepreneur, so I can't have a hobby.
Speaker 2:
I turned my hobby of creating t-shirt graphics into a whole nother business, and it started off as just a hobby and a creative outlet, and now it's a whole nother business because I can't just have a hobby, right, and so I think it's just in our nature to do that. But what happens is when we stop putting our focus on that first bridge that we were building to get us to our goal, we take our focus away from that and we start building another bridge, and then that one's not going fast enough. And then we say, oh, let me have a membership, so we start building another bridge. Or oh, let me have a t-shirt shop, we start building another bridge. Oh, you know what? I've learned how to do all of this? Now I'm going to be a VA, because these VAs are making so much money, so let me go be a VA. And what happens is now we're sitting on reality Island and we have four bridges that are going and none of the bridges are complete None of them.
Speaker 2:
Now I'm not saying that that first bridge that you start building when it gets to Desire Island, that it's going to get to. Let's say you said, hey, my goal is to make a million dollars a year, my goal is to make $20,000 a year. It doesn't mean that that bridge itself is making that much, but you really need to make sure that you've got that first bridge to completion at least one way. I mean, and really and truly think about it. It may not be a two lane or a three lane bridge that is getting over to that island, but at least you've built out all the systems, all the processes and it is pretty much running itself right and you're just having to maybe come in and do some pothole damage. Maybe you're just having to do some pothole repairs. You wanna make sure that that happens. Maybe you're just having to do some pothole repairs. You want to make sure that that happens, because otherwise you're just left with a bunch of bridges that are not actually ever reaching where you want to reach. And now your time is divided and there's only one of you and there's only so many hours in a day.
Speaker 2:
If I could go back to myself when I actually created the course, what I know now. I would have told myself to wait because I did create the course, but I wasn't prepared to deal with what people were asking for, coming like they wanted more, because I was still continuing to build this other bridge of the digital downloads, and so I do recommend that you have some pretty solid foundations, but more than that, if you don't know what it is that you are the expert in, if you are creating digital resources and you are just, you're kind of all over the place, and this goes for people who say, oh no, I create math resources, oh, I create reading resources or I create science resources. I'm not talking about just knowing what subject of resources or even what grade level of resources you deal with. I think you truly need to know what you are the expert in. It's taken me some time to really figure out what I am truly the expert in, but I am the expert in classroom management and I'm the expert in phonics instruction in small groups, and I'm an expert in math and literacy centers. Those are the things that I'm an expert in.
Speaker 2:
Does that mean that we don't create science resources or we don't create social studies? Sure, we do, but I'm not going to go create a course on teaching science or social studies, because that's not where my expertise. I mean, put me in front of a group of 25 kids I've never even met before, send somebody in to observe me. I got this right. That's kind of the level of expertise and comfortability that you need to have and I would definitely recommend that, before you venture into a course, a membership.
Speaker 2:
I hope we're going to get to this, because I have this conversation with my clients all the time who are thinking about memberships. There's a very distinct difference between a membership and a subscription service and there is a huge distinction. What most teacher business owners, when they come to me about starting a membership, what they describe, I go, that's not a membership, that's a subscription service, and we have to get very, very clear what they want to do. So but I think it is very important to just know what you're the expert in and before moving forward, because that is going to have a huge impact on the success of you being able to serve the members that are going to sign up for your membership.
Speaker 1:
Love it. So what I'm hearing you say is number one you want to make sure that you've built that first bridge to Desire Island for that first income stream. You really want to make sure that you've built that first bridge to Desire Island for that first income stream. You really want to make sure that that's grounded, that's solid and that you've got some solid procedures in place so that you're not having to constantly baby it. That's kind of like, you know, having three under three, right, you know, like three kids under three years old, where you're having to still really tend to the needs of the first one and the second one and you've got this brand new baby as well. And it's very overwhelming and very stressful when you have that inside of your business, particularly if you're still in the classroom which many teachers are.
Speaker 1:
They're trying to work their way out of the classroom really, really quickly and I get that and I feel for them, you know. But at the same time, you're putting yourself in a really difficult spot if you're trying to do what you were saying and build several bridges all at the same time. So finish that first bridge, get it to a good, solid spot before starting that next income stream or before beginning to diversify with the course or membership. What have you.
Speaker 1:
And then the second thing that I'm hearing you say is be really clear, when you're creating resources, even for TPT, but especially before you start to branch out, be really clear on who you are, what you do and who you serve, and make sure that you know what you're the expert in before you try to branch out. Otherwise, you're going to create a situation where you're not able to serve the people that you're serving at the capacity that they need to be served, which, of course, is going to impact you, your business, your income streams and probably your mental health.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, and you said something there that was kind of under the surface and that is it is very common for teachers who are just starting their teacher businesses and maybe they're one, two years in. There are some, honestly, that are even five, six're one, two years in. There are some, honestly, that are even five, six, seven, eight years in and they're at that point where I was in 2018, where I've been at this for seven years, and why isn't this taking off and I'm doing all the things? If you go on social media, you can go on TikTok. Most of the time I see it on TikTok, but in Facebook groups, in Instagram, and you see these TPT coaches who have come on and they've made good money.
Speaker 2:
Don't get me wrong because, trust me, I got on TikTok and I was like who are all these people? Like I'd never heard of them. I was like where are these people hanging out? Because I'd never heard of them, and I started diving into, kind of some of the strategies that they promote and a lot of it is overnight success and they wrap it in a package of. This is a long game. It's not overnight success, but one of the key things that I see that's missing is a lot of them. They started creating these downloadable resources, these printables, what you know, that they were using in their own classrooms, and they're all over the place.
Speaker 2:
And yes, again, they might be creating just math resources or just reading resources or just science resources or just digital resources or whatever, but there's no cohesiveness and what I typically say and I always make a note because I keep a journal, I keep a notebook as I find new teachers, business owners that are having success. I always make a note because I keep a journal, I keep a notebook as I find new teachers, business owners that are having success. I'll make a note and I'll I will watch and I'll take notes under them. This might sound creepy and people are like am.
Speaker 1:
I in this book. I know it might sound on TikTok or Instagram, so I'm not too worried.
Speaker 2:
Well, this is market research right.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely.
Speaker 2:
Because I'm watching. What are they doing that is helping them have success? And here is a common thread Most of them are not doing things in their business that is going to give them long-term stability. They are doing things that, yes, they're making money quickly because they are solving problems. They're following some of the really great advice that they hear about solving problems and meeting people where they're at.
Speaker 2:
Yes, you wanna do that, but they're kind of all over the place and when I really start looking at it, I'm like I give it three years. Unless they figure out what they are the expert in and what they want to be known for, this is gonna fizzle out right and it's going to eventually, because they had this initial success and eventually it's going to start doing this and maybe plateau and I really hope that your listeners are listening to that that it is a long game. Yes, you're desperate to get out of the classroom, but you're leaving behind a stable income, a career, and you want to make sure that you're going forward into this, creating the same stability, and you want to make sure that you are creating a solid foundation for your business to grow. And I'll use this as an example what happened, lauren, to so many business owners in 2020? So many of them completely crashed.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, because they Myself included, myself included Like I crashed in 2020 because I didn't have the systems in place, you know. And so like firsthand experience there, but then also with the algorithm change, when the algorithm changed and everyone was panicking, freaking out, you know, by that point in time I, you know, I learned from the 2020. I was like I'm not going to be in this spot again, lord willing. And then the algorithm changed, happened, and there were so many people who didn't have the systems, they didn't have the stability in their business, they didn't have the ability to drive their own income, and so then they're freaking out about the TPT algorithm, you know. So I think that just kind of shows us it's going to happen, it's going to continue to happen. These things it's not like a one-off 2020, just happened one time Like there are going to continue to be things that are going to rock your business if you're not prepared 100% and the flip side of that is true.
Speaker 2:
Also, there are a lot of businesses that just completely skyrocketed in 2020 and 2021. And then 2022 happened and 2023. And they're seeing this massive decline. People ask me all the time. They're like what happened in 2020 for your business? I'm like we had two zero sales days and our team, we were like, absolutely not, what do we need to do? And we but I had the infrastructure in place to be able to pivot very quickly and within 48 hours we had recovered and then grew exponentially through all of that. But then I call it algorithm gate.
Speaker 2:
But when that happened and people were, I had people reaching out to me that going is this affecting you? I'm like, no, not really. Now on the platform, what were we seeing? Such, of course, but in our business, we were not. It was not affecting us because we had systems in place to make sure and, like you said, if you have a serious business, it is never going to be up, up, up, up, up up. That is not a healthy business. To be honest with you. It is always going to have the ups and downs, and ups and downs, and ups and downs. You're going to have low years, You're going to have high years, You're going to have growth years, You're going to have stable years. There's all kinds of things that are going to happen, especially taking it back to what we were talking about.
Speaker 1:
We got off of memberships, yeah but that's okay.
Speaker 2:
But especially when, if and when you decide to add a membership, because I will tell you, the year that we added the membership to our business, that for us was a growth year, and I'm not talking about growth in revenue, I'm talking about a growth as the company. We look back at that year and our revenue that year was lower than the previous year and our expenses not much lower. But it was a little bit lower but our expenses grew and so our profit margin was less. But we took that because we knew we were adding another bridge to our business, and that is perfectly normal. I have a lot of clients who, if they saw that, they would think their membership was a failure. No, your membership wasn't a failure. You got to remember you were going through a growth year, so, yeah, so those are just some things to think about, just business wise in general.
Speaker 1:
I think one of the things about memberships or even courses or any of that, when we're talking about diversifying income streams, is that you know business owners are looking for, you know, looking to add more stability to their business, looking for, you know, looking to add more stability to their business. So I love what you're saying about make sure the first business or the first income stream that you've created is stable first, and then you can look into diversifying to create even more stability for your business. But let's talk a little bit more specifically about memberships real quick, because I know we don't have a whole lot of time left. When it comes to your membership, can you tell us, like tell us, a little bit about your membership itself? What does it do, and the difference between the membership and the subscription, like you said?
Speaker 2:
And I'm going to apologize because I could talk about this stuff- all day.
Speaker 1:
I tend to go off on.
Speaker 2:
I'm like let's just talk about it. So membership versus subscription. A lot of teacher authors come to me and they say I want to start a membership and what they describe to me is they want to take either all of their resources or a specific product line and they want to put it behind a paywall.
Speaker 2:
And they essentially want teachers to pay a monthly subscription fee to get access to everything. I tell them immediately I'm like, okay, what else do they get? And they're like, well, that's pretty much it. And I'm like, okay, that's a subscription. And again back to analogies. Let's think about Netflix. Right, I pay a Netflix subscription fee to have access to a library of movies and those movies are updated, new movies are added, and that's what most teacher business owners are describing to me. And I tell them right off I'm like that's a subscription and there's nothing wrong with that at all, but let's make sure we keep it in its lane and call it what it is. And those can be very successful. There are your own set of pros, cons, obstacles, hurdles, all the things that come with a subscription.
Speaker 2:
Then a membership. I think about this like a gym membership. If I sign up for a gym membership, yes, I'm paying a monthly subscription. That's the same as a subscription model. I'm paying that monthly fee, I'm getting access to a quote unquote library of things. I'm getting access to a room full of equipment, but in addition to that, I'm also getting access to some training classes. I'm getting access to maybe some fitness coaches and some nutrition coaches. I'm also getting access to a community of like-minded people. I'm getting access to support, right. And those are the differences between a subscription and a membership. I tell people all the time people might join for the stuff, right, and this is a huge con that I see to having a subscription model is they might join for the stuff, but they will stay and be lifelong members for the community. That's the big, huge difference between a subscription and a membership for me.
Speaker 1:
I don't really know exactly what your membership about is about for teachers. Could you explain that to us just a little bit and tell us whether or not that would fall into a membership or a subscription?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely the full transparency. I started it with the intention of it being a membership. I will say when we first launched it, I think it was more of a subscription. We have then seen again, having gone down that path, I can see the cons and I said, oh, and we've now transformed it into what I believe would be a true membership. So our membership is Learning Centers Made Easy.
Speaker 2:
It is specifically for K-5 teachers who are wanting to use math and literacy centers in their classroom, specifically so that they can teach in small group, because, believe it or not, teachers don't learn how to do that in school. There's no class. And I have had so many conversations with principals Because, believe it or not, teachers don't learn how to do that in school. There's no class. And I have had so many conversations with principals. I go into schools and do this professional development as well. I've had so many conversations with principals that I'm like do you require your teachers to teach in small groups? They're like, yes, and I'm like and what are the other kids do while they're pulling kids? Oh, they're doing centers and all that. I'm like, okay, did you train them how to do that? They were like they don't know how to do that. I'm like, no, they're not trained how to do that, and so that's what I do. And because I developed a system for how to do that, that again is so stinking simple. I thought it was the stupidest idea for a course in the beginning and people were like, no, you need to make a course on this. I was like I was one of those people that was like do teachers not just know how to do this? I thought I was the dumb one that just didn't know how to do it back in the day. So, anyway, so I created the course and then people who had taken my course, who loved it, were just like okay, now we want the resources, we want the. What were you using? I was like, well, I've got these. Well, let me put these. They wanted support and, of course, we started the membership prior to 2020.
Speaker 2:
And when the pandemic hit, I'd already been teaching online for three years, because that was one thing I did when I did leave the classroom is I taught online for three years, so I did have some experience in teaching virtually. That's where the community aspect kind of grew was. I was coaching these teachers through teaching virtually, and then I decided I was like, okay, I really love this community aspect that's growing, what's going on. And then I did take a program from Shannon Lynn on cultivating and it's called the Cultivated Community, and she really changed my mindset when it came to my membership. From the moment they hit join to all the way through the day they decide to cancel, a membership should be an experience, and there are so many nuances to that, but that's what we did and we completely transformed it into that experience.
Speaker 2:
So now, not only do they yes, they still have access to a library that gets updated not on a regular like interval now, but it does get updated they also have coaching. We have office hours where they can show up and they can, they can just vent about their day. Girl, the stories I have heard from the classroom. I'm just like, wow, teachers need a year vacation, they need a sabbatical and so. But those are the types of things that have made the difference in our membership and why we have members who have now been on our membership for four years. I mean, they don't leave. Once they come, they don't leave. So I love that.
Speaker 1:
So that leads us right into your Teacher Seller Summit session, which is all about sticky memberships and really getting those members to stick around and creating a membership that cultivates that kind of community and gets people to stay. Can you tell us a little bit about what attendees will be learning inside of your session on sticky membership?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely. So there are some very key things. That and the sticky membership is something I learned from Shanna full transparency and basically what you're talking about is your churn and your retention rate, because you can start a membership and, again, teachers may join for the stuff. They may be like, oh my gosh, I'm getting access to current library that our teachers have access to is over. I think it's now over 6,000 math and literacy center. I mean, that's an insane number and they'll never use those in their lifetime. But they see that 6,000 and they're like, oh my gosh, yes, I'm going to get access to this, but very quickly. If they just get in there and just see 6,000 centers, they're not going to stick around, right, and not to mention just before they even get into the library. There are things that need to happen, and so what we're specifically talking about when we're talking about sticky memberships is we're talking about your retention and we're talking about your churn rate.
Speaker 2:
Now, for those who don't have a membership or maybe you have a membership and you've never heard this your churn rate is the number of members that you lose every single month or every year on your yearly churn, because you're going to have a monthly churn and a yearly churn, depending on your payment setup. What you're aiming for a healthy membership. It's called the membership experience now, but with Stu McLaren, he is the guru when it comes to memberships. Shanna was actually Stu's membership manager for many, many years, so that was another reason why I was like, yes, tell me more, right, but with your churn you're talking about those members that you're losing every single month and what you're aiming for is a 95% retention rate Anything below a 5% churn or a 95% retention rate, and this is not just to do the math.
Speaker 2:
If I have 100 members join in January, I want to keep 95 of those in February, but then in March I want to keep 95% of the 95. So it's not always. Sometimes that gets confusing for some sellers that I coach and when you have a membership where you're not maybe you're only enrolling once a year, like ours, ours is only open once a year. That is extremely important because you are not getting people in constantly every single month. I also think that's another difference between a membership and a subscription is oftentimes, with a subscription, you've got that open year round and people can join anytime. And because of the coaching and the mentoring and aspect of a membership. We only open a big, big enrollment once a year, maybe some smaller enrollments throughout the year. But another big difference and so that's what sticky memberships means is what's going to make those members stick, stay and not leave.
Speaker 1:
Love that, and so we're going to be talking all about that at Teacher Seller Summit. In the meantime, can you tell listeners where they can find you and where they can connect with you to learn more?
Speaker 2:
100%. You can connect with me over on Instagram at Teacher Business Society, and you can find us on TikTok as well. We're growing over there, we're trying. We started that in January of this year and Teacher Business Society TikTok is also brand new as of January. Our normal Instagram is FairHandlingEducation. But, as a seller, you're going to want to go find Teacher Business Society on both Instagram and TikTok and you can also go to teacherbusinesssocietycom and if you would like a free consultation with me, you can sign up for a free 30-minute consultation. And then also we have the podcast, which is Teacher Business Society podcast on Google, apple, spotify, all the things.
Speaker 1:
All the places Love it. I love it. Farrah, thank you so much for being here today and for sharing your wisdom and your experiences. You're a true teacher and like you're like oh I'm so sorry, like I just get so, but that's exactly what how teachers are. You're a teacher at heart and you want to share all of the knowledge and all of the information, and I just appreciate that about you and I thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. Thank you so much, lauren, and I'm looking forward everybody come to the session. I'm looking forward to helping you build your memberships. Absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:
Thanks so much for being here today. If you want to learn more about Farrah and connect with her, you'll find links to connect with her down inside of the description, and you can also come and meet her at Teacher Seller Summit. She is one of many incredible speakers that we're going to be having, sharing valuable information on a variety of topics, from growing your teachers pay teachers business to expanding your teachers pay teachers business to organizing your life so that you can work on your TPT business and beyond. You don't want to miss it. You'll find a link to join us for TSS down inside of the description as well. I cannot wait to see you there.