What Happened to the Members Club?
AskTy was created because I used to get handfuls of emails a day asking me how I grew such a successful real estate business. I was flattered that people wanted my advice and I was more than willing to share my experience. There is nothing I love more than giving back to the best industry in the world.
And since its inception, AskTy has been a free resource. It was never intended to be a source of revenue. I was a top producing real estate agent who founded a successful tech company. Trust me, as much as I like money, AskTy has never been about making a buck.
I’ve always received great feedback on the content that I put out but occasionally someone would contact me and say “Ty, I tried [insert idea here] and I didn’t get tons of referrals. What am I doing wrong!?” My response was and continues to be, “You cannot do something one time and expect results. There is no quick fix. You have to consistently execute.”
What I’ve come to realize is that most agents struggle with consistency. It’s not that my solution doesn’t work, it’s that you are not consistently implementing it. You take my idea, try it once, and expect life-changing results. I offer great advice but I’m no magician.
So I made it my mission to figure out how to help agents consistently execute. And that’s how the Members Club came to be.
The Members Club was a way to hold Realtors accountable. My thought was that if you pay for something, you are more likely to use it because you want to get your money’s worth. I wanted the content to be super valuable but I didn’t want it to cost an arm and a leg (because again, this has never been about money).
So, in exchange for your money, members could request specific products and have personal access to me via monthly live chats. This is how I differentiated the Members Club from the free content that I continued to produce.
In three months, the Members Club delivered some phenomenal content, from a customized listing presentation to the Best Week Ever checklist to the All About You form. At the same time, I continued to create videos and blog posts for the rest of my audience.
I talk a lot about ROI, time management, and knowing what you’re worth. I began thinking about these things in relation to the Members Club (because ya know, practice what you preach). And after careful evaluation I came to two rather surprising realizations:
The management of the Members Club is very time consuming
As much as the Members Club inspired me to bring you quality content, it also required significant back-end management from my team. The creation of content wasn’t difficult (my team is on point), but the administrative side of things was incredibly time-consuming.
Here’s the boring and unsexy side of what we were doing backstage:
- Collecting updated payment info from members whose cards had expired or declined
- Running ads and promotions to grow awareness for the club
- Creating and handling the fine print that goes into selling products online (stuff like privacy policies, terms of use, refund policies, etc.)
- Setting up and then managing the paywall, subscriptions, sales pages, bank account, etc.
All of these things took considerable time away from delivering real, usable content (boo, thumbs down).
Money doesn’t necessarily hold people accountable
My original motivation was to help agents consistently execute. However, when I compared the Members Club (fee-based) to my regular content (totally free), it didn’t appear that people were more consistent. To be honest, the analytics and feedback were similar: The agents that really wanted to succeed, were incorporating the materials into their practice and the agents that wanted a quick fix, looked around and left.
This careful consideration combined with my long history of providing free, quality content brought me back to my roots—to help Realtors make real estate great… for free.
Moving forward, I am discontinuing the Members Club and all fee-based products (which includes my course and several other auxiliary products) and will be transitioning this content to my blog and through my social media accounts. All of my courses, guides, templates, and scripts will be available to everyone at no cost.
I’m really excited to provide the best content to the best fans in the world. There is nothing I want more than to give back to the industry that was so good to me. I truly believe you are capable of success and real estate is the ceiling-free industry that allows you that opportunity. I’m excited and privileged to be a part of this ride with you. I’ll keep delivering kick-ass content, you keep implementing!
The best is yet to come.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or feedback, feel free to comment. I would love to hear from you!
*For those of you with paid Members Club accounts, you can continue to access the Club materials HERE
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