The Circle Membership is the cornerstone of my business… 

It was the first offering I birthed and launched. So, with the re-launch of the NEW look membership framework (and portal), now is the perfect time to take you behind the scenes of The Circle Membership. 

In this episode of The Essential Shift Podcast, we explore the origins of this membership, its growth and impact on the community, the reasons behind changing its structure and why a membership may not be for everyone in business despite what the online business guru is telling you. 

Join us as we uncover the power of building a resilient and supportive community for business owners.

If you LOVED the episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag me @essential.shift. 

✨ Want to connect and build your business with a support network? JOIN THE CIRCLE✨

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 

• Why I decided to create a membership 

• Behind the scenes of the membership 

• The results seen within The Circle Membership 

• How my membership is the cornerstone of my business 

SHOW RESOURCES 

• For community and support, JOIN The Circle - HERE 

• DOWNLOAD my FREE Rituals Guide - HERE 

• FOLLOW me on INSTAGRAM - HERE

• FREE tools and guides to support your journey - HERE 

• CHECK out the blog for this episode (uploaded every Thursday) - HERE

• Join the FREE FACEBOOK COMMUNITY - HERE

• Find out more about how to WORK WITH ME - HERE

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @essential.shift.  

Bless it be. 

With love, Laetitia!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Laetitia Andrac  0:15  
Why hello, welcome to a new episode of the Essential Shift Podcast. I'm really excited to be with you. This is a solo episode where I am showing the behind the scene of the circle membership and lots and lots of you have been asking me about why I decided to build a membership, how do I build it and all those kind of things asking me a lot of behind the scenes questions. So it is time why I decided to build my business that focuses on community and around an offering that foster community which is a circle membership. So before we get into this episode and all that you may have seen that the circle membership doors are open again and you're welcome to join. And this podcast episode is ready to dow to dive deeper. Into the journey of how this membership became the cornerstone of my thriving business. We explore the origins of this membership, its growth, the impact it has had on the community on my clients on the one we decided to jump in, take the leap of faith and join this sacred and save community. The reason behind the recent shift in the membership in terms of its structures a pathway that I created within the membership, and why to conclude why a membership may not be for everyone in business. Despite what the online business gurus out there are telling you. So join this podcast listen deeply to uncover the power of building a resilient and supportive community for your business. Whether or not you're part of the circle membership you will earn you will gain a lot of knowledge from listening to this podcast and if by the end of this podcast, you're keen to join the circle membership you can join with the link in the show notes. You can DM me on Instagram with any of your question at essential that shift and I would love to welcome you and nurture you as part of the community. So let's go into the first story the origin story of this membership of the circle membership. Now this membership came to be and the funny story is actually it all started before the lockdown before the lockdown before COVID-19. I had been facilitating so calls with girlfriends in my own home on the beach. To connect with the new moon cycle the forming cycle I used to go to cacao ceremony I used to host cacao ceremony so it was something that I would do outside of my day job as something to really connect with sisterhood to connect with other women. And remember the sacredness of sitting in circle of being together and as I realized that I was completely loving this process and loving hosting it I realized that many people didn't know about this and they were not familiar with sitting in circle and as soon as they started sitting in circle was Musee became you know, addicted to it and they wanted more of it because where are the safe space in our society? Now? Where are the sacred space where we can really be ourself and be welcome with our tears was our joy being really cheered up through the beautiful moment and being really held and supported through the aha moments. And actually, when locked down happened in France before it hit Australia I decided with a girlfriend to host online circles to support those in France. Our friends were in France, our family were in France and connecting them through the practice of circle I was doing that for free as you know giving back to the community and supporting my friends were in lockdown in France when we were not yet in lockdown in Australia and it was a very different time. Right? A lot of uncertainty around what it meant to be online. It was the beginning of zoom. So a lot of you know funny story about zoom for instance in one of the circle I was running and I ask everyone to sing along like I would do in a real in person circle was so massive because zoom cannot pick up on everyone singing at the same time. If you've ever tried this, you you will know it's a fail. It doesn't work out. And then as Australia went into lockdown I starting offering also that for my community. People were not necessarily part of my membership, but more part of my rephrase Book Group, which was very active at the time and all that and I started facilitating this. And I really realized that actually I wanted my business to be around this community value of mine and around this power of sitting in circle and as I turn around, I see no other business owners business mentors, strategy advisor like I am offering this sacred space for growth for community for sharing transparently the good, the bad and the ugly of the entrepreneurial journey. So I saw it as an opportunity. And I launched what it was called at the time the Essential Alchemy membership. It was launched in November 2020 during Black Friday, I don't call it black friday i call it love Friday because as you know I'm very minimalist and I don't like buying a lot of stuff and I don't like what Black Friday creates as a frenzy to buy new stuff. So I created this concept of love Friday was my first offer ever that I had launched anyways, this Essential Alchemy membership, which is now called circle. So let's get into the second element I share with you the birth of this membership, which was over two and a half years ago and the reason why I created it. And this is where I love to guide my clients for human centered design through design thinking to help them see a gap in the market as an opportunity to create an offering that meets those needs, whether it is a software product or service. So now this membership has been growing and flourishing in the last two and a half years. So first of all from the get go I had a clear validation that this membership was needed. And I launched it as I say November 2020. The same way that I often recommend my clients to launch which was a seed launch, launching it without adding it ready. It was like just let's get it to the market and see the validation straightaway. We had 50 members joining but the background the back end was not ready. Nothing was ready and I had hundreds of time helping me in the business and it was like putting it all together because straightaway the response was overwhelming. It was like yes, we need that we want that. We were you know, in the midst of the lockdown everything was moving online. And so this seed launch was very successful and I encourage all of my clients if you want me to help you with launching something to launch it in this way and you can book an intensive with me or you can join the circle and I'll share that process as well with you around the seed launching and how I initially validated that they were a market fit, which is exactly what I tell my daughter to do you know when they wanted their shop to sell their shell and all that in front of the house. You may have seen that that I shared on Instagram story. I told them first validates the need so they started with putting their shell in their rocks with their drawing on a skateboard validated their needs. And then with $50 vouchers and Zoey one at Bunnings she went and bought a proper shop stole and last weekend's they made $3.71 sale which was amazing. They were so happy. So it's another story this is a story for another day but this is a story of you need to launch it before it's ready that it has a need before creating something amazing. And I love to quote the founder of LinkedIn when he says if you're not ashamed of the first project you launch it means you launched it too late. I was fully ashamed was the first people bought it I was like But it's and it was delicious. When they entered that space, that space that is saved that is unique. Everyone describes it if you don't know what is a circle, you can go and scroll through the case study on my website. You can go and look at the page and the description and there was the members say that it's a unique space that keeps on giving. That's why they stay. I have members who have been there from day one. And they're renewing every year because it's a 12 months experience to build this strong community knowing really each other helping each other I think this intimacy and this strong resilience link between each other. So they really support each other and there is thanks to being online. It's a very diverse global representation. We have different phases in business, different phases in life, and this is what I love. It's not a membership to take you from zero to 100k to membership

Laetitia Andrac  9:37  
to take you wherever you are in the revenue results in the profit and the cash flow of your business. It doesn't matter. We have no to medium business owner and we're full we haven't started yet. Which really matters is your own journey as a human being and you connecting with like minded people and you connecting with people who are also in different walks of life. So then this is where ideas and creativity and collaboration can foster right. This is a village This is my village the circle is my village Welcome to my village and in a village you need to have everyone every age group, every path of every walk of life, right? So this membership becomes a resilient and slippery space for those business owner and that's why it's flourishing. It's solidifying people stay people love it and you know this is a space which is something else I wanted to mention in there. If you're considering creating a membership for me the membership is really a space where they get long term results. They collaborate with each other because I am holding the space but in comparison to many other spaces of the Guru where only the Guru can promote himself in that space. Everyone can promote what they're doing so they buy from each other. One client was a member of the circle she's sold out her first ever launch of a course to fellow members. How is that like? She made back her investment into circle membership and more thanks to the members because they know each other as it buy from each other as a support each other they collaborate. They collaborating creating joint offerings such as retreats workshops, they collaborate in terms of podcast interview, blogs, events, publication, they help each other. And that's where you have positive results and tangible outcome for each member in their personal life and in their business. And this is where if you want to create a membership, make sure that you create it in alignment with your value with what you stand for. And as you know, now that you've listened to this podcast for a little while, I am all about community and this membership is centered around this, the community and the community gathered together. Thanks to the circle and every workshop and the quarterly planning that we do online in person. We gather together and we gather within with oneself we find oneself through the different training and approaches where I teach you about the cycle way to chew about business about strategy or That's it, just love it. So then something that I wanted to share with you about the behind the scenes of this membership and how this membership has become the cornerstone of my business is generating over a six figure in revenue over the years for my business. It is a recurring five figure revenue stream monthly for my business and it is a beautiful playground for me to test new ideas to gather. You know the members and understand what other needs the accelerator my flowing business accelerator offer was born out of a few members telling me I cannot afford working with you privately but I need you to teach me how to create a strong foundations that you're teaching your private clients and that's how the flow in business accelerator was created and I give to my members discount My Courses discount to access my retreat discount to access to me on intensive wiser because I want to give back the part of this community I give them back so it's a nourishing way for me to offer my clients the support they need after working with me privately or before working with me privately or you know, space when after the major on my mastermind was a major online courses to think about this, for me is a membership has been an opportunity to really create this strong community around all of them together but also to create this robust, you know, ways that I can sit on to validate my offering to upsell cross sell and all that. So we completely redesigned after two and a half years of the membership, the membership pathways, the structures, the steps and all that and restructured it around my book. So for anyone who is part of the circle membership now you know everything that is insane my book in a way you still need to read the book to you know, have all the story and all that that are in the book. But inside the membership it guides them through the lighted infinite framework, which is the proprietary framework that I developed as I was writing my book and they go through that to connect more was an intuition with what it is to embrace the different cycle. As a human being running a business or from the cycle in the day as a cycle. In a mom's the cycle of the moon the cycle of the season, the cycle of the euro as being a woman, all of those kinds of thing. They learn about it and now it is I am anticipating a new growth in the membership as I'm launching my book and as I've enhanced the experiences of the current member at no extra cost and everyone's joining now the membership can join this space where you have a strong community already created. So you're straight away the communities cheering you on. I had a member joining at the beginning of the reopening and I use her words here she said that it was the most supportive community she has ever been part of. Because as you have already a strong resilient community when you join everyone cheer you on everyone is supporting you everyone is you know, holding your hands and giving you you know those first few things that you need to be supported and to be helped. So I just love this space so much and we have those agreements around. You know, we listen from the heart we speak from the heart and everything that is shared in the circle stay in the circle. So I won't share the stories that I shared in the circle but I will tell you this is very sacred. So finally, finally you know how I am in a little closer against the guru out there the online you know myth of you need a membership and everyone was membership can grow their business No, because a membership it's not for everyone. You know it's like I would like to use the analogy of creating a membership is like a moment song. It's not for everyone. So please, created only if it's aligned with your business framework with your business journey. You some consideration before jumping into the membership bandwagon is really considering that it's a long term commitment. As I've told you, it's been two and a half years that I'm running this membership it was even before essential shift was incorporated, that I started running this membership it was my first ever offer. It requires commitment. It requires showing up every month. It requires regularly showing up for the community and giving them feedback on their progress on their resources on what they're creating. Going through the content inside the membership. We have 27 hours of guest speaker we have a guest speaker volt which is was the best speakers that you can think of from you know spiritual practices to live to business like we have amazing speaker that came and delivered the gold in this membership from PR to marketing to profit to getting on stage to starting writing a book all of those kinds of things like it's a gold like honestly the gold mines its membership, as Adrienne said and she says that in her testimonial so I can share here. It's a gift that keeps on giving. So I say so. For me it's really like a space where it was aligned for me it was aligned with my goal. It was aligned with my audience. It was aligned with my long term commitments. So before you start a membership, please don't blindly follow the guru advice out there. Assess if a membership aligns with your business vision and objective and if not explore alternative approach. So one of my clients came to me and she had this membership and she was not really having joy facilitating it. So what we did is we closed it and we created three months course where she then obviously support group forever or for as long as she's running this course. So people then go into this support group. So she sells a three month course maybe more than what she was selling her 12 months membership. But now she's having this beautiful launch every three months and delivery every three months so it's more aligned with her so think about Buford there is no one fits all in business. And there is no one fits all solution around a membership. So really connect back with your own vision. As always connect back with your own vision, your own values, everything like this. So to conclude this podcast, I shared with you the journey from the humble beginnings of having an it about the circle membership to growing it I think this flourishing and resilient community and how this membership is really the cornerstone now of my business and is the embodiment of my value of community and impact. So I also shared with you how I reviewed all of that and how you know it's like going back to the drawing board was really really energizing for me and relaunching and reopening a next level, content structure pathway and all that and aligning it with my book which makes sense now as my book is coming out very soon. So it's this is an invitation for you to consider what's working for your business. And for those of you were asking me question around a membership or not a membership. Remember that there is a difference between outsourcing to someone else's decision to your business and making sure that a membership is aligned with your long term vision.

Laetitia Andrac  19:33  
I hope you were inspired by this episode. Send me a DM on Instagram at essential don't shift with your thoughts about it. And if you like this podcast, please take a moment to follow it rated leave a review and share it with a friend. I truly appreciate your support. And the more cards are reached with this podcast, the more impact I can have on the world. Before next episode I leave you with so much love and gratitude. Until next time bless it be