How Jason Brown of The Brown Report Uses Join Fees To Drive His Membership Site

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Jason is not only a great friend but he is also the founder of TheBrownReport.com. I’ve known Jason for many years and he is an amazing entrepreneur that has truly built an incredible online business. We’re going to talk all about memberships today and how he built his membership community around stock and options trading. We’re going to get into something we’ve never talked about on the Membership Masters Podcast before - having big join fees (up to $1K) to get into membership and high ticket membership prices ($199/month). We’re going to break down Jason’s team so that you can learn how to build a team that can grow your membership site. Jason talks about how you can use the powerful tool of a join fee to not only make more but to actually get more people to join your business. I learned a ton about how to get more members and make more money and I know you will too!

What You'll Learn:

• Join fees. (20:30)

• How do apply your information for today? (29:00)

• Jason’s content strategy. (31:00)

• People need to believe it’s possible for them. (42:30)

• Work within your network (47:30)

• What does your team look like? (1:02:00)

Show Notes

The Brown Report is Jason’s personal brand - then he branched off of the product and service into Power Trades University. Jason is a stocks an options trader. Initially, he began posting about his trades on social media and people started making money off of them. He was giving them away free n Twitter, writing blogs. Jason was part of somebody else’s paid blog. That is when he began wondering if people would pay him for his knowledge, for his insight.

Jason always has one pressing question: “how can I get more money into the stock market?”

He realized he could start offering courses or a membership around it. He initially started the membership site without offering courses. He never really got more than 5 or 6 members because he was just teaching options. People began cancelling and he would ask why. The consensus? What was in the membership was over they heads. His ego of not wanting to teach the beginner basics was holding him back. That is a very common thread among experts though - we figure it out and want to start doing it at a high level. Then, all we want to teach is that high-level stuff because it’s fun to talk about. But then you remember that there are a lot more beginners.

Jason finally bit the bullet and decided to write the beginner’s course - for all the people that cancel. When he wrote down the beginners course he shut down his membership because the amount of time he was putting in was way more lopsided than how much money he was making. What happened when he created the beginners’ course? Nobody bought it.

This is when Jason first heard the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. We heard how basic our approach was and he knew that he had to do the same before he could teach those advance skills and knowledge on the stock market. Something Jason never forget that I said was, “I give away the offense and sell the defense.” It fired him up - something I can only hope everyone that hears the podcast will feel too!

Jason had heard how we monetize through Google ads and decided to do the same by focusing on YouTube ads - which ended up changing the game for his membership site. He instantly began selling those courses. Then, they started asking if he taught options which led to an option explaining course. Which then led to people asking how they could follow Jason’s trades - the place he originally wanted to get to!

He began coining the phrase, “power trading” because he was no longer day trading. We would put $100,000 in to get $200,000 or $300,000 back. This is how everything started cycling into Power Trades University.

Then, Jason and I talked again. I told him how Jocelyn and I were done with courses and were giving them all away inside of our membership. That was hard for Jason to hear because he had just started to sell his courses really well. Jason followed suit. He didn’t feel the best about it in his niche because people were coming in and cancelling after taking the courses the use d to be several hundreds of dollars. That eventually led Jason down the path of a join fee.

Join fees.

Jason began doing join fee because he felt that people coming in and cancelling after taking his courses were de-valuing his membership that he poured all this time and knowledge into. He was going in every week live and telling people what trades he was in and felt that people cancelling were taking too much advantage of that. Right now, his join fee is $1,000 and his membership is $199/month.

He decided to separate the membership and the courses. People can buy the courses separately. Or, if they want to have a membership with Jason the bonus is that it comes with the courses. This means people that want to come in and pick Jason’s brain about his trades they have to pay that join fee and monthly recurring fee.

He needed to make sure that people not only knew how to trade but knew how to trade his way. There was back ground to why he makes these trades and he needed to make sure people understood that.

The problem Jason had when he had no join fee and no courses separated was that people would come in with knowledge of all sorts of different kinds of trading. Or, he would be on a live webinar looking for live trades and the questions coming in would be about stuff the courses taught. He didn’t have time to re-teach the information that was in courses every time he went live.

I’ve found that memberships all into one of three places: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. I think what Jason discovered is why join fees are not good for my membership. My members are as true beginners as they come. What Jason is getting is dabblers - they don’t really speak the language and they don’t really know what they’re doing. Not only do they go onto The Brown Report, they  go onto Power Trade University. Now, Jason’s join fee becomes a velvet rope where people have to essentially pay to get into the club. You’re not paying for access to the courses, you’re paying for access to the freedom to trade from home and still be home with your family. People may come for the content but will stay because he has curated a 4th for them to follow.

How do apply your information for today?

Like Jason said, what his members are paying for is current information and current help. How many times have you seen tutorials or courses and the information changed? It happens constantly. Courses and tutorials can’t keep up in real time the way access to people can. Jason is on the forefront in the trenches with other people - that’s what members are truly paying for.

Your industry is always changing. That in itself is your content.

Jason’s content strategy.

Let’s say you look at everything you can teach in a beginner’s course and 85% of it is evergreen. All memberships need content, community, and leadership. You have to feel like you’re apart of something but how you deliver that issuing to change. Ex. Us changing from InfusionSoft to Kajabi. It might not be right for somebody else but that’s what we teach because it has been most efficient for us. That’s part of the conversation, “what am I doing now?”

As soon as you realize that curation is what you sell and content doesn’t matter - it frees you to have a free content strategy. If you get your content strategy and content marketing right you’re going to be masking major money. You can take an audience, turn them into prospects that subscribe to your list, then those people are going to be members that join your community.

Jason does a ton of content! Jason looks at content as two different things:

1. “What is going to be searchable and findable?” What can be evergreen? Jason looks at some of the YouTubers online and sees how can videos they created. But he also realizes that the original videos he created are better because they keep bringing him new traffic. He tries to create the most evergreen content he can that will stand the test of time. Then, he can work on content that is more timely.

2. The second type of content Jason focuses on is what he calls “mindset content.” Jason says it is not not knowing how to open a trading account that is stopping somebody from investing. It is more about how people are afraid to lose money. It is the fear of being wrong. Jason has realized that the more content he can create that makes people raise their hand and say, “I want to be the person that bounces back and I believe this guy can help me.” But he wants the people that hate risk to raise their hands too because he doesn’t want them buying his product or joining his membership.

One of the first questions Jason asks when you join his email list is, “what’s the most confusing thing about the stock market?” Most of the time the response has to do with their mindset. You have to address their fears before they will come at you with their credit card.

People need to believe it’s possible for them.

What are your real objections? People need to believe it’s possible for them - if they believe it’s possible for them then they’re ready to do business. Do they believe that you’re the person that can take them there? If you are the person that can make them believe in the first place why wouldn’t you be the person they want to do business with? At that point it doesn’t matter what your competitors do. Stop telling people how much you know. Yes, you’re the expert. Put your ego aside and start telling people what you needed to hear when you got started. That is the key to opening up your million dollar membership. You convince everybody that ever hears your voice or reads your words that they should believe in you.

Work within your network.

If realized over the years all the money I left on the table and how it could’ve taken my membership to the next level. Your looks, what you say, your beliefs they will all play a part in who you attract to your membership - the people that you will connect and strike a cord with. By inviting other people to work with him with different audiences and different backgrounds they both broaden their reach.

Don’t create something and then wrap your arms around it. Other people can be better at doing things than you are!

Spread your work out too. Hit some of the bigger markets. Expand your brand. Ex. Let’s say we expanded Flipped Lifestyle out and we had: 1) Flip Your Finances 2) Flip Your Life 3) Flip Your Marriage 4) Flip Your House 5) Flip Your Health. These are all things that my people would listen to - but also reach more! Could I get 25,000 people in each one of those areas? Or in 10 speeches get 10,000? Build your brand! Diversify your brand whether that means new tactics, new languages, all of these things can help build an immense and compassing brand.

What does your team look like?

While Jason’s team is about to change a little bit (for the better), here’s what he has and is working on hiring: 

• Virtual Assistant that he can pass some stuff off to. He had this person from the very start when he was still at his corporate job. That way he was free to do his 9 to 5. She is still with hm to this day and knows everything about his business. 
• Customer service position that deals with all of the customer needs.
• Social media that handles all of his social media platforms and posts.

It is a very small team right now with very specific tasks but that’s about to change! He is about to hire:

• An audio/photo editor that will only focus on any editing anything that the business needs.
• A person that only focuses on ads and research that will help them grow.
• He is training “junior traders” that can go into the community and answer any questions. These are people that Jason trains and can service his members.

These positions are all cross-trained to be able to help the entire company out in the most efficient way possible.

For my team I think of it like this: 1) content 2) conversions and 3) retention.

• You’ve got to have traffic. Most traffic comes from content. For us our Director of Content owns traffic, podcast downloads, and one day could have a team under them. They may eventually have a video editor or someone that just focuses on YouTube.
• You’ve got to have conversions. These are from things like sales funnels which leads into your membership.
• When they join you have to keep them, that’s retention.

We’ve always done virtual assistants until this year. I bit the bullet back in April or May and decided to only hire full-time W-2 employees. I want people that will go to bed thinking about how they can make Flipped Lifestyle better so they can make their family prosperous tomorrow. I don’t want contractors who work for other people where I get 1/10th of their attention and time.

Anyone building businesses this big needs to be thinking this way. Like Jason said, forget the Lamborghini right now and focus on hiring your team to scale!

Remember to subscribe and leave us a review to the Membership Masters Podcast here on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/membership-masters-podcast/id1519253634 

You can also listen this week's full episode here on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/28WYzlvvWpAe2miPxip8Br