Episode 26: Launching Your Membership For Longevity (Or Survival)
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION & RESOURCES:
What if the way you've been thinking about "success" in your membership launches is actually undermining your staying power?
In this episode, I'm challenging the all-or-nothing mindset that so many membership owners bring to their sales and growth efforts. Instead of measuring every promotion by whether you "win" or "fail," I'm introducing a new lens that will you create more longevity, more resilience and real staying power in your business.
This is the episode to listen to (or re-listen to) before your next launch or promotion — especially if you've been feeling the pressure of "this has to work" energy.
We'll cover:
The difference between launching for survival vs. launching for longevity (and why one creates staying power while the other leads to burnout)
If you hate the idea of failing: how to reframe your launches so you're either winning OR gaining an advantage
Why your attention during a launch matters more than you think (and how to train yourself to spot money-making opportunities instead of threats that will either distract you or shut you down)
The critical mistake of outsourcing your decision-making, and how to reclaim your self-trust as a business owner
Timestamps:
06:42 Why I have the audacity to compare my pickleball experience to Roger Federer (and how it will help you think about “winning” in a whole new way)
09:01 Playing for advantage vs. playing to win at all costs
12:08 The "Bank of Future You" — why every promotion builds currency beyond immediate sales
16:13 How your attention during a launch determines your results (survival mode vs. opportunity mode)
24:29 The third shift: self-trust over seeking the "right way"
30:49 What it means to have "watch me" energy in your membership business
If you're a membership owner who wants to grow a membership with true staying power (rather than burning bright and burning out like so many memberships do)… this episode is for you.
Listen now (and let me know what you think) or keep scrolling to read the article. ⬇️
Links and Resources:
🎯 The Gamplan Intensive: Work with me to grow your membership over the next 90 days: themissingink.co/gameplan-introductory
Contact Natalie: themissingink.co/connect
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PREFER TO READ? HERE’S THE TRANSCRIPT:
How do you define staying power for your membership business?
When you think about the work you want to be doing in this world year after year—getting paid more for it, feeling fulfilled by it—what does it mean to stay in the game for the long haul?
I've been obsessed with this question lately. It's been the through line in my work behind the scenes with clients for years.
In fact, some of my earliest launch projects were for people with membership companies generating multiple six and seven figures annually. This became the bread and butter of my work for many years. I didn't just work with them on one launch or one promotion—I worked with them across two to five years and became fairly embedded in how they grow and sell their offers. Case in point…
We'd be in documents titled "Launch #23" for the same membership!
That is staying power. That's what it means to be in the game and iterate over the long haul.
I'm also asking myself the same question as I approach my 9th year of business.
I'm in a season where I'm enjoying a more mature outlook, more calm and confidence in what I'm here to do. I'm making my own rules, possibly breaking some rules, and operating with a longer-term view—knowing that everything I do adds up for the future.
This episode is for the membership owner who is curious about a new way to frame what success really means, beyond just the black and white of winning or losing.
It's about creating staying power so you don't have the kind of membership that burns bright and burns fast, but one that becomes a real asset supporting you and hundreds (even thousands) of people over several years.
The Myth of Winning vs. Losing
Let me start with a sports analogy (which is outrageous coming from me, someone not known for natural athleticism—though I do now play pickleball three times per week).
Do you know that Roger Federer, arguably the greatest tennis player of all time, only won about 60% of his points played in singles matches?
He lost points almost as often as he won them. And yet he's still legendary.
Can you imagine if we took that thinking into how we operate in online business?
Business feels almost the opposite. You're either growing or dying. Winning or losing. Hitting your goals or failing. This gets perpetuated by how we're encouraged to market ourselves—with impressive case studies, big promises, and the idea of having "your best launch yet."
We all want to win. We all want to get better. I want that for you too.
But this is the kind of delusion that really hurts us.
Some of the most iconic “winners” in history have lost nearly as much as they've won. Yet when it comes to running our businesses, we apply an entirely different and an entirely unrealistic standard.
I know, intellectually, you might understand that failure is part of the game.
But I want to introduce a different possibility:
It's not that sometimes you win and sometimes you fail. The real shift is understanding the importance of gaining an advantage.
Playing for Advantage (Not Just to Win)
People who go into their launch with a survival mindset—this white-knuckle "this has to work, I have to get the sales" energy—are playing to win at all costs, and nothing else is acceptable.
I don't say this to be disparaging. I want you to win. I want to win. But it's not a fair or realistic expectation to put on yourself. You simply cannot win all the time.
But if the only alternative to winning is failing, then of course that's going to feel like a big threat. Of course you're going to want to survive and win at all costs—possibly doing things that don't create longevity but actually get you very close to burning out.
What I want you to think about instead:
Either we win or we gain an advantage.
That's my mission with everyone I work with inside The Gameplan. Either we run an initiative and you get great results (and we celebrate that), or we see the ways you've gained an advantage before, during, and after that promotion.
This is crucial because one thing I recommend to people looking to be more strategic with membership growth is to do something—make some kind of invitation.
I call this an "activator event": a small-scale promotion you can pull off with relatively low work that gives people a time-based invitation to join for something happening inside the membership.
I recommend this to most clients because either:
It gets new members in the door (and we make it an ongoing part of your strategy), OR
It gives us information, data, and feedback about where the gaps are in your sales pathway
That information is so valuable, and it's what gives you the advantage.
It sets you up for a winning position when you’re ready to make your next move. In fact, it will reveal what your next move should be.
The Bank of Future You
Every move you make—every invitation to join your membership—represents a deposit in the Bank of Future You.
There's a currency you create every time you sell, promote, and launch your membership… and it goes far beyond the sales hitting your bank account:
Visibility that comes from making an offer
Awareness that gets built about who you are and the problems you solve
Trust-building through nurturing and warming up your audience
Brand equity from sharing case studies, results, and testimonials
All of these are deposits that help people perceive you the way you want to be perceived. That brand equity accumulates in value over time, and you'll be able to withdraw on it in the future.
Does that feel different?
To think about it not as "I guess everybody fails and I have to get used to it," but as "no matter what, I am going to make moves that allow me to gain an advantage and advance my position"?
Deciding you're playing to gain an advantage with every move is also how you start solving bigger problems and asking better questions.
Not every complex problem can be solved in just one move. It might require a series of steps and thinking much longer-term than you already are.
Training Your Attention (Threats vs. Opportunities)
When you go in with a "succeed or fail" perspective, your brain puts itself into survival and threat mode. You know what that's like.
When we're anxious, everything feels like a threat. When we've attuned our attention to looking for evidence that things are either going perfectly well or we're failing, we get tunnel vision.
That looks like:
Checking Thrive Cart obsessively during your launch
Deciding it's game over when you don't see the sales you want
Working yourself to exhaustion in the lead-up, thinking if you just work hard enough and write the perfect emails, that's what will make it work
The alternative: A longevity mindset
When you have a longevity mindset, you're attuned to the possibilities, information, and feedback that will come from launching. You naturally start to see opportunities to lean into.
This is critical during a promotion because my work with clients isn't just about what we say and do in the lead-up. It's also about staying nimble during the promotion itself.
How do we stay open to feedback and objections? How do we build awareness of what's landing, what's not, and where we might need to redirect the conversation in the moment?
I see two patterns come up:
Reactivity: Throwing everything at the wall, throwing the baby out with the bathwater
Shutdown: Deciding it's not working and giving up
There's a third alternative:
Being curious in the moment, listening, and attuning your mindset to where there is movement in the launch.
The work isn't just in the preparation
A lot of the time we think our work is getting all the emails done ahead of time, setting up the page and checkout cart, maybe doing a webinar, and then hoping magically that sales roll in from all our hard work.
What I'm seeing right now is that we need to be more nimble and responsive than ever before.
That means opening our attention to the feedback we're getting. It means going into a launch knowing we might get results that surprise us, and if we can steady ourselves for that ahead of time, the work of responding in the moment becomes way less scary.
When a client is launching, we're either celebrating how well things are going, or we're looking at the data together asking:
What are we noticing?
Where are things landing? Where are they falling flat?
What conversations are you having?
What interesting threads are coming up?
Part of this work is putting in our best effort, then holding the results lightly and knowing we need to create space in our calendar and capacity—to still have fuel in the tank so when we're launching, we can pivot and respond where possible.
Some questions to reflect on:
What does it mean for you to be fully present during a launch?
How do you need to support yourself?
What does it mean to give yourself the information, input, and space to reflect, observe, and respond where it makes sense?
My wish is always that we do the work and it goes incredibly well. But I'd rather you have a plan now for what you might do if things don't go to plan, so you can handle that from a steady, cool place versus a frantic, panicked place.
Self-Trust Over Seeking the "Right Way"
Whenever we seek help with anything in business or life, it's usually because we want to share a heavy burden. There's a difficult problem we want support with, rightfully so!
The hope is that when we buy a course, choose a mentor, or educate ourselves, we're going to learn a more effective way of doing things. And that's great.
But what differentiates people who have the most success is this:
At the end of the day, they trust themselves. They know that nobody but them is in a position to figure this out and decide what their next move is going to be.
Be really careful about where you might be removing your own agency or degrading your own self-trust by deciding somebody else has the right way (or all the right answers).
Staying power begins with self-trust.
Trusting that your ideas are good. Trusting that you can and will figure this out. Having a "watch me" mindset—knowing that sooner or later you're going to get there.
A lot of the time, this means:
Letting go of "the right way"
Understanding there's risk involved in every move
Getting comfortable with risk and embracing responsiveness
Being totally open to what happens when we make a move
Soaking in feedback—both external (where opportunities and conversations are unfolding) and internal (what your gut says, what feels good to you)
The next move is revealed in the move you just made
I recently read an amazing book called Art and Fear. Its about the practice of making art and the eternal struggle artists have in trying to figure out where their work should go next.
In business, we can fall into a similar pattern: deciding that the answers have to be external, that somebody else has the perfect technique.
But, in Art & Fear (and I’d argue also: business!) the next move you need to make is actually revealed in the move you just made.
All the answers you're looking for are, in some way, self-evident in your business. They're just waiting for you to see them. And you'll get more answers and clarity with the more moves you make.
When I work with clients, I want to look at where they are and what they've got and make sense of what their next move should be… based on what the evidence in their own business is telling us. But I also want to help them practice the ability to listen: to their gut, to their intuition about where the conversation needs to go next.
That's where all the interesting goodness is waiting. That's where your one-of-a-kind-ness is waiting.
Building Your Staying Power
So let's recap the three shifts from a survival approach to a longevity approach:
Win or Gain an Advantage: Reframe success. You're either winning (and celebrating), or you're gaining an advantage that positions you for future success. Every move should advance your position.
Train Your Attention: Direct your focus toward opportunities you can lean into rather than threats to run away from. Stay nimble, curious, and responsive during promotions instead of reactive or shut down.
It Starts with Self-Trust: Operate from a place of knowing you're going to figure this out. Stop outsourcing your decision-making. Trust that you're a person who stays in the game and succeeds, come hell or high water.
The question I want to leave you with:
Think about the moves you have on your calendar, the things you're plotting for the rest of the year:
Are these moves that represent longevity and staying power? Or are they more reactive and short-term?
What needs to change for you to shift more in the direction of staying power?
There is no such thing as failure.
You're either winning or gaining an advantage.
If you're a membership owner asking questions about longevity and long-term success (so you can build something that lasts, and create more strategic systems for growing your membership that can support you just as hard as you work to support your members) then The Gameplan might be the perfect way for us to work together.
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