Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

In this episode I'm sharing the second half of my closing keynote from Retain Live 2025, where I break down the four essential components of a scalable strategy for your membership business. Most membership owners think scaling means working harder: more content, more posts, more bells and whistles. That's not it. So many of us don't have a clear answer for what we're actually building toward, and...

Back in 2025, we ran our second ever live conference, Retain Live, and my closing keynote there was called Scalable Strategy. It's all about the things that take a membership beyond just a marketing or retention strategy into a genuine long-term plan. This episode is part one of that talk. It tackles a question most membership owners have never actually sat down and answered: what are you building...

This episode isn't about your membership. It's about you, the person running it. You could have the best content, the smartest retention strategy, and the tightest community in the industry, and none of it matters if the person at the helm is stretched too thin, winging it, or quietly burning out. I've spent years watching who lasts in this industry and who burns brightly for a year or two and the...

Every month inside Membership Academy, I run a live Q&A where members bring me their toughest questions. One that keeps coming back around is this: should you onboard trial members differently to your regular paying members? Most people either run one blanket onboarding sequence for everyone, or assume trial members need something completely different. Neither is quite right. The answer comes...

In this week's episode, I break down member experience, the single biggest factor in long-term retention, and why a forgettable, unengaging membership is the fastest way to lose members who never got the result they joined for. I'm walking you through 7 specific ways to make every part of that experience work harder for your members and for your retention. None of them involves piling on more cont...

Fake countdown timers, staged waitlists, closed doors that mysteriously reopen the moment someone hesitates. These tactics work in the short term, and they quietly wreck your retention in the long term. In this episode, I dive into a bit of a hot-button topic for me: how to use urgency and scarcity in your membership marketing without crossing into these manipulative tactics that give this whole a...

If your membership signups have slowed down, your first instinct is probably to look at your sales page, your emails, or your pricing. Nine times out of ten, that's not where the problem actually lies. In this episode, I break down why stalled signups are almost always an audience growth problem in disguise, and I share seven proven strategies for keeping new people flowing into your world even af...

This episode kicks off a new regular feature on the show: Ask Mike, where I pull real questions straight from our monthly member Q&A archive inside Membership Academy and share the answers with you. First up is a question about drip feeding content. A membership owner running a diet and lifestyle site wanted to know if releasing their courses gradually, rather than giving members full access,...

In this episode, I break down the buyer awareness journey, a five-stage framework from Eugene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising that maps how someone moves from having no idea they have a problem to being ready to buy. I focus on the very first stage, problem unaware, because it's the biggest, cheapest, and least competitive audience available to you right now (and it's also the one most members...

Every piece of marketing you write is making a choice, whether you realize it or not. You're either talking about the pain your members are running from, or the future they're running towards. Most membership owners never actually decide which one they're doing. They just default to whatever feels natural and end up leaning hard on one side without realizing it. In this episode I break down push p...

In this episode, I'm tackling one of the most misread signals in your cancellation data - people leaving saying that they "didn't have time" Most membership owners write that off. Busy people, can't be helped. But in a lot of cases, that's not what's going on at all. When a member says they didn't have time or weren't using the membership enough, what they're often really saying is that it felt to...

Most membership owners treat their marketing like a straight line with a finish line at the end. Get the traffic. Build the list. Make the sale. Done. But that model is fundamentally broken for subscription businesses, because the sale isn't the end - it's the beginning. The membership marketing flywheel flips that thinking completely. Instead of treating new members as the end product, it treats...

The online business world is in the middle of a trust recession. Influencer fatigue, polished-to-the-point-of-fake marketing, and one too many bad purchases have left your potential members cynical, guarded, and slower to commit than ever before. Your membership is feeling the effects - whether you've noticed it yet or not. And the frustrating irony is that it's the honest operators, the ethical b...

In this episode, I share a strange little tactic for your next membership promo - one that goes against pretty much everything you've been told about sales offers. Instead of giving people the lowest possible barrier to entry with a free trial or a discounted first month, I make the case for going in the complete opposite direction: incentivising new members to commit to a longer initial period of...

In this episode, I'm tackling one of the biggest mistakes I see membership owners make: treating content as the be-all and end-all of what their membership offers. So many people set out to build the Netflix of their niche, chasing the biggest, most comprehensive library they possibly can. But your members don't join for the volume of content. They join for what that content makes possible. I shar...

In this episode, I get into something that's becoming more important than ever for membership owners: the ability to actually deliver results. For years, memberships have leaned on giving people more content, more features, more bells and whistles. That was never the right approach, and now AI is exposing it. Members don't want information. They want transformation. I walk through what a results-d...

In this episode, I'm tackling a problem I see all the time: memberships with healthy-looking waitlists that convert far worse than they should when the doors finally open. The issue almost always comes down to the same thing: the waitlist has been treated like just another email list, when it's actually something very different. I share how to set up, nurture, and test your waitlist so the people...

In this episode, I tackle one of the most under-appreciated drivers of retention in any online membership: expectation management. I share why memberships are uniquely unforgiving when it comes to overpromising, and how a mismatch between what you sell and what you deliver will quietly kill your retention long before a cancellation email ever hits your inbox. We'll walk through seven practical way...

In this episode, I tackle one of the most common problems I hear from membership owners — people just aren't joining. Or not enough of them are. I share the three biggest reasons this tends to happen, and why the problem is almost never what owners think it is. Spoiler: it's usually not your sales page, your funnel, or your offer. I also give you the single most effective (and embarrassingly simpl...

In this episode, I dive deep into the crucial role that frameworks play in building a successful membership business. Joined by Charlotte Crowther, founder of Signature Framework , we explore why simply piling on content isn’t enough to help your members get results or to make your membership stand out in a competitive market. We break down what a framework actually is, the difference between meth...

In this episode, I share practical, quick tips for offering multiple tiers within your membership business. I dive into the common challenges faced when creating tiered memberships, from avoiding over-complication to choosing the right differentiators for each level. I also cover how to effectively focus your marketing, prevent friction for members, and optimize upgrade/downgrade pathways. If you'...

In this episode, I dive into the time management and productivity techniques I've personally honed through years of running a membership business. I share the exact frameworks and mental models I use each day to structure my workload, prioritize tasks, and maintain focus amidst the constant demands of membership ownership. You'll hear about the Eisenhower decision matrix, the “big rocks, little ro...

In this episode, I discuss three practical strategies to boost attendance for your live member calls, whether you run Q&As, workshops, masterminds, or office hours. I share actionable tips that can easily fit into your workflow, from leveraging technology to personalizing member onboarding. If you’ve ever worried about empty seats during your live sessions, you’ll find plenty of fresh ideas he...

In this episode, I dive into the crucial relationship between your marketing strategy and member retention. I explore how the way you attract new members to your membership business lays the foundation for whether they'll stick around long-term. I break down why focusing solely on sign-ups can backfire and how certain marketing tactics may actually set you up for higher churn rates. The aim is to...

In this episode, I dive into the concept of "1,000 true fans" and why it's the key to building a thriving membership business. Forget chasing massive audiences and vanity metrics—what truly matters is finding and nurturing a core group of highly engaged superfans who love what you do. I break down the myths about audience size, share why smaller, more passionate communities lead to deeper connecti...