Stop Doing What You 'Should' Do: How Rachel Muir Built a Membership Business Model Around What She Loves
"I was so grossed out. I would send an email and want to go hide under my bed." That's how Rachel Muir, founder of League of Extraordinary Fundraisers, describes her old high-pressure launch strategy.
Now? She's built a thriving membership business around the things she actually loves doing: monthly webinars and writing emails that people think are newsletters (spoiler: they're sales emails, just really good ones).
In this episode, Rachel pulls back the curtain on her complete business model transformation during COVID, when her speaking revenue disappeared overnight and she had to choose: adapt or fail. Her choice? Build around what energizes her, not what she "should" be doing.
Highlights:
Stop forcing yourself into marketing channels that drain you. Rachel admits she barely posts on LinkedIn and doesn't have a VA—and her business is thriving anyway.
The 80/20 split that works. Rachel spends 80% of her time marketing her membership and 20% delivering—and why that ratio makes sense.
How to handle the "commitment issues" of subscription pricing. People assume they're locked in for a year. Rachel's messaging strategy addresses this head-on.
Why scaling isn't always the goal. With twins heading to college, Rachel's choosing travel and flexibility over aggressive growth—and that's perfectly fine.
Listen to discover how letting go of the "shoulds" and building around your natural strengths can create a business that actually works for your life.
Ready to ditch some business "shoulds" of your own? Subscribe to Confessions for more real talk on building a thriving consulting business.
Timestamp summary:
00:00 - Cold Open: Rachel on "PowerPoint is My Canvas" & Building Around What You Love
03:10 - Meet Rachel Muir: From "Sea of Beige" to Rainbow Star
04:55 - Rachel's Business Journey: From Girl Star Nonprofit to League of Extraordinary Fundraisers
06:35 - The COVID Pivot: When Speaking Revenue Disappeared Overnight
08:06 - The "Grossed Out" Confession: Why High-Pressure Launches Had to Go
08:30 - Building Around What You Love: "I'm Gonna Do What I Love the Most"
10:30 - Audience Building Then vs. Now: Email Lists & Facebook Ads
12:45 - What's Working Now: Speaking Gigs vs. The Webinar Boom
14:00 - Life Phase Planning: Twins Going to College & Travel Dreams
17:42 - Membership Logistics: Solo Business Model (No VA, No Staff)
19:26 - Service Delivery: 90-Minute Monthly Workshops + Elite Coaching Group
20:29 - The 80/20 Marketing Split: Why Most Time Goes to Promotion
21:00 - Sales Emails That Don't Feel Salesy: "People Think It's a Newsletter"
21:33 - Pricing Strategy: Why She's Never Raised the $49/Month Rate
22:50 - Scaling Reality Check: Why 1,000 Members Would Be "Insane"
24:18 - Marketing Challenge: Overcoming Subscription "Commitment Issues"
25:50 - Addressing Fear Head-On: "Commitment Issues? Me Too. You Can Quit Anytime."
27:24 - Community Without Shame: How to Support Members Without Pressure
29:35 - CONFESSION: "I Don't Have a VA & I Don't Post on LinkedIn Nearly Enough"
30:11 - Ditching the "Shoulds": Building Business Around What Lights You Up
31:50 - Boundary Setting: Pre-Qualifying Discovery Calls
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Rachel:
Rachel’s website: https://www.rachelmuir.com/
Membership website: https://www.leagueofextraordinaryfundraisers.com/
Find Us Online: https://www.confessionswithjessandcindy.com
Connect with Cindy:
Cindy Wagman Coaching: cindywagman.com
Fractional Fundraising Network: fractionalfundraising.co/
LinkedIn: ca.linkedin.com/in/cindywagman
Connect with Jess:
Out In the Boons: outintheboons.me
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Rachel: What I absolutely love doing is I love webinars. I just love them. I'm gonna do what I wanna do and what I love doing, and I absolutely love and I love presenting in person too, but I love doing webinars and PowerPoint is my canvas I was like, I'm gonna do a webinar every month So I created this elite group That is where people who really just want more help can go. And now it's this amazing group of all women and it's like this incredible, I adore it. We're like all old friends, but we're doing great work, improving their fundraising. But yeah, that's basically how it happened.It was economic conditions and me like, this is what I love the most, so I'm gonna do what I love the most.
[00:00:43] Cindy: Welcome to the Confessions podcast. I'm Cindy Wagman.
[00:00:47] Jess: And I'm Jess Campbell. We're two former in-house nonprofit pros turned coaches and consultants to purpose-driven organizations.
[00:00:55] Cindy: After years of building up our separate six figure businesses from scratch, [00:01:00] we've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall and have lived. To see what sticks.
[00:01:04] Jess: We're on a mission to help other nonprofit coaches and consultants looking to start or scale their own businesses past the six figure mark by pulling back the curtain,
[00:01:14] Cindy: whether you're still working inside a nonprofit and thinking of one day going out on your own.
[00:01:19] Cindy: Or you've been running your consulting business four years, you understand that working with nonprofits is just different. We're giving you access to the business leaders who serve nonprofits as their clients. You know the people who truly
[00:01:34] Jess: get it. No more gatekeeping, no more secrets. This podcast is going to give you an inside look at what running a successful.
[00:01:43] Jess: Full nonprofit coaching and consulting business looks like. Basically, we're asking people how much money they make, how they get paid, and what has and hasn't worked in their businesses.
[00:01:55] Cindy: Listen in as these leaders share their insights, their numbers, and the good, the [00:02:00] bad, and the ugly. When it comes to building a nonprofit coaching or consulting business, we're gonna empower you to make the power moves that give you the income and freedom you set out to create from day one.
[00:02:12] Cindy: You ready? Let's go. Hey, Jess. Hello. Hello. I feel like it's been a long time since we've recorded and we've
[00:02:20] Jess: both
[00:02:20] Cindy: been
[00:02:20] Jess: summering.
[00:02:21] Cindy: Yeah, I think is good. It is so good. I think earlier one of our episodes, I was like, I'm big goals. I'm gonna work more this summer and da da da, and I'm like, no. I actually just either messaged
[00:02:34] Jess: or emailed someone like, it's so important to rest, and you and I both.
[00:02:39] Jess: And our guest, I'm sure is this way too. We like our work. It is not hard for us to fill our time with work, and yet it is important for us to rest.
[00:02:48] Cindy: Yeah. And no one's gonna do it for us,
[00:02:50] Jess: so No.
[00:02:52] Cindy: Yeah. I booked out, I don't know if I said this, we recorded our like hacks for, I'm not letting anyone book meetings in my [00:03:00]calendar all summer.
[00:03:02] Jess: Welcome to the
[00:03:02] Cindy: Club, babe. I am like Fort Knox when it gets on my calendar. You're one of the random one I, and even I have limited access. So with that, we have precious time because otherwise are doing that much this summer. And today's guest, I'm so excited. When I started consulting, I was researching people who were consultants in the sector who I thought presented.
[00:03:29] Cindy: Really well online. Like who I was like, Ooh, that's the kind of business I wanna create, or that's the kind of business owner I wanna be. And our guest today was one of those people who I discovered and I was like. She's cool. She actually didn't meet until two years ago, I guess it was. Oh really? Um, icon.
[00:03:47] Cindy: Yeah. So Rachel Muir is our guest today. For those of you who don't know her, she's the founder of League of Extraordinary Fundraisers and like I said, just so cool. So Rachel, welcome to the podcast. [00:04:00]Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
[00:04:01] Jess: I'm actually shocked you two don't go way back. I feel like that's shocking.
[00:04:05] Jess: 'cause same like then I think you've been running your business slightly longer than me yet. Same I saw and knew of Rachel at the beginning and I just, I'm shocked that you guys didn't know each other. So this will be fun 'cause we're all new friends
[00:04:21] Cindy: and for anyone who doesn't know Rachel yet, literally just look her up online.
[00:04:25] Cindy: I'm like, yeah. What? Like rock are you living under? Yeah. But rewind, I don't know, seven to 10 years ago when Rachel will have you tell us. Your business journey, but in a sea of beige, like boring, traditional, probably not beige, everything was probably like that, like dark royal blue of websites and all that kinda stuff.
[00:04:46] Cindy: You were this shiny, bright rainbow star of like just showing up who you are and in such a cool way. So tell us a little bit about your business when you [00:05:00] started and like how long you've been doing this.
[00:05:02] Rachel: I love this, and you guys are giving me so many warm fuzzies. I started the League of Extraordinary fundraisers.
[00:05:09] Rachel: This is so hilarious and crazy. I started it in April of 2020, and I literally felt like I was late to the game in terms of having an offer out there talking about fundraising in a crisis. I was like, I can't. I'm so late to the game. It's April and it's like. I mean, we were only like two weeks into COVID, but it's just crazy when you look back.
[00:05:36] Rachel: But I have been consulting for a really long time before I launched League of Extraordinary Fundraisers and League of Extraordinary Fundraisers is a low cost offer. It's $49 a month. I've never raised my prices and if I launched it to take many steps back. My whole career in fundraising, I started out, I started a nonprofit called Girls Start To Empower Girls in Math, science, [00:06:00] engineering, and Technology.
[00:06:01] Rachel: Raised up $10 million, ran over in CNN. I worked for a fundraising software company called convio. We were bought out by our competitor, black bod. I did major gift consulting. I also led custom training for a fundraising agency. So those are things that I did before. I went out on my own and went out. Went out on my own originally.
[00:06:22] Rachel: I, you know, was consulting with clients and doing a lot of custom training and not turned into a lot of speaking gigs, and that evolved into me wanting to make this highend offer, which I launched called Makeover, my fundraising, and then COVID. I came along and I completely switched my business model a hundred percent because I didn't have a choice because.
[00:06:49] Rachel: I felt like I couldn't make it with this really expensive offer that nonprofits were gonna be freaking out and all of my business doing in-person custom training and speaking in [00:07:00] conferences evaporated overnight.
[00:07:02] Cindy: Ooh, yeah. That is a huge blow to the business model. And I was just having this conversation with someone else about strategy and just being able to move quickly.
[00:07:14] Cindy: And so yeah, as you said, like it felt slow, but you move fast. You created this offer. Can you tell us a little bit about how that went, how you launched it and what it looks like now in terms of the size of your community? Are people in it for the long term? Give us some of the nuts and bolts of that.
[00:07:35] Rachel: Yeah, a hundred percent. So. Part of why I launched it was those economic conditions that I just talked about, COVID. I had to replace this big loss in my revenue. My gut just said, this is gonna work. And I also was so tired of launching. So when I had this high ticket offer, I had to do the launches hard and fast, where I'm [00:08:00] literally sending so many emails, I'm like, PS thinks we're not throwing rocks at me because I know I'm sending you a lot of emails right now.
[00:08:06] Rachel: All the fomo, all the urgency, all of these doors are closing. They're not gonna open. I just was so grossed out. I ate it. I would send an email and wanna go hide under my bed. 'cause I had my launch calendar and I knew exactly how many emails I was sending and I was just overwhelmed. And I just felt like the grind of it was exhausting.
[00:08:29] Rachel: And so I launched four times with that offer. Then COVID happened and I was like, you know what? I love doing the most. What I absolutely love doing is I love webinars. I just love them. I really love them. People would do a podcasts. I'm like, I love webinars. I'm gonna do what I wanna do and what I love doing, and I absolutely love and I love presenting in person too, but I love doing webinars and PowerPoint is my canvas and I love doing webinars.
[00:08:57] Rachel: I was like, I'm gonna do a webinar every month and I'm [00:09:00] gonna. Be smart and have a place where people who want more help, people who aren't just interested in kind of DIY, gimme ideas, gimme templates, gimme inspiration, gimme examples, gimme before and after makeovers. But someone who really wants, like, rewrite this email for me, Rachel.
[00:09:20] Rachel: So I created this elite group that's $149 a month. That is where people who really just want more help can go. And now it's this amazing group of all women and it's like this incredible, I adore it. We're like all old friends, but we're doing great work, improving their fundraising. But yeah, that's basically how it happened.
[00:09:43] Rachel: It was economic conditions and me like, this is what I love the most, so I'm gonna do what I love the most.
[00:09:51] Jess: Isn't that true? I find that folks who's been doing this work for a while, like it's always this little bit of refinement combined of being a good [00:10:00] listener and listening to what the market tells you, coupled with the things that you actually like to do.
[00:10:06] Jess: And one of the questions I have is just because you have the experience that a lot of people who are listening, because they've just recently started, don't have. Around audience building. Sometimes I'm like, man, if I would've just started in whatever year, I would've hid it because it's a lot different now to grow an audience.
[00:10:28] Jess: It's a lot more competitive out there. And you've been on all this ads, so I'm curious like to even be able to have these offers to present to people, to have even options to give people, you had to have an audience, right? You had to have either an online presence or you had to have an email list. And I'm really curious what you did in the beginning versus what you do now to bring in people to learn about you and your offers and things like that.
[00:10:58] Rachel: Sure. No, that's a great [00:11:00] question. Yes, I have been working on my email list and yeah, I would like to say that I love email. I'm obsessed with email and I'm really obsessed with centric clients, and I love writing email, and I just, I love it and I adore it. Who do you love presenting? You love email. All these things help because it takes a lot of email to sell.
[00:11:23] Rachel: Yeah, I really worked on growing my email list with Beacon with doing free webinars. Back then, you could do a free webinar and share the list of everyone who registered for this, so that is different now. But I was doing a lot of list growth through webinars, through freebies. I've got a lot, I have 20 different downloads, and now I do Facebook ads to promote those downloads.
[00:11:51] Rachel: I do Facebook ads to promote my program. I did Facebook ads before. It's kind of interesting. I was looking back at a lot of stuff 'cause I knew you guys [00:12:00] ran into top numbers. It's one of the most interesting things, and this came up recently with, uh, another fund racing consultant. When I had my high ticket offer, I did all of my video ads, my Facebook ads, the sales page.
[00:12:16] Rachel: I hired a videographer. I hired a makeup artist. I was making the content for the cores literally like two nights before it started. I spent six months just doing all the marketing. It's fine. So I started with all that. 'cause I'm like, oh well the fundraising content, I can write that in five seconds. But, but yeah.
[00:12:39] Cindy: But honestly, that is advice I give to people all the time, which is like, sell first. You can create the content after. But I'm so interested in hearing about what's working now in terms of are you running ads? Where are your leads coming from? Are you still doing monthly live webinars? Well, that has died
[00:12:58] Rachel: down during COVID [00:13:00] was probably the peak of like everyone doing a webinar all the time and lots of free webinars.
[00:13:06] Rachel: So that's definitely died down. I still do Facebook ads. I still promote my downloads when I speak. I definitely promote. All that. So yeah, that part has died down, but the public speaking is still going strong. But that whole climate of people doing webinars every week, that's definitely died down for sure.
[00:13:24] Rachel: Totally. Yeah.
[00:13:26] Cindy: I also find, 'cause I love playing around with ads and stuff like that, the way we show up is different. So my top performing ads now are like literally my son and I dancing in the kitchen, B-roll. Really not fancy. Behind the scenes with text over it. I'm like, this has changed. Like how people are engaging online has changed.
[00:13:50] Cindy: So what are you. I love that you talk about doing things that feel good, that you love doing, and how that's led to the business that you have now. So as you [00:14:00] look forward, or over the next year or two, what are you just sticking with tried and true? Like you have a system that works. Is there anything you're experimenting with going forward?
[00:14:13] Rachel: Sticking with what works? I have twins and they are 18 years old. Next month they are going to college. One's going to Duro, Colorado and one's going to Iman, North Carolina. So I'm really looking forward to traveling a lot more. There's so many things that I fit into. I'm really excited. I'm looking forward to all the things I'm gonna do with my time.
[00:14:37] Rachel: So yeah, I'm sticking with the giant and True for now.
[00:14:41] Cindy: I love that. And I think as we were talking right off the bat of taking time and having space. That not everything has to be build, grow, which I don't know about you, but that's really hard for me. My default is like build, build, build, grow, grow, grow.
[00:14:56] Cindy: But I'm like, no. So I'm curious as a [00:15:00] total aside, and this, I might be stealing from Jess's rapid fire questions, but you know, I have to ask where you wanna travel to first.
[00:15:07] Rachel: Oh my gosh. Italy, definitely. I used to live in Italy when I was in high school with my dad and yeah, definitely Italy. We went to Greece this summer.
[00:15:16] Rachel: We took the kids for graduation and we weren't gonna do Italy too, but it was like two breakneck moving here and they like to just chill. So definitely Italy, number one destination for sure.
[00:15:28] Jess: Teenagers who just wanna chill. How do I get some of those? My husband and I leave Monday for a trip and he was like.
[00:15:34] Jess: So do we have activities planned? And I was like, you know, I'm like, how about reading a book by the pool? Like how about bad activity? That's amazing. And I think that really speaks to all of us get into this work because we're trying to create and design the life we want to live, both that we can afford to live, and how we spend our time.
[00:15:55] Jess: And I guess my question for you is like. How [00:16:00] do you plan for that kind of thing? Are you thinking in six months increments? Are you thinking in five year increments? Is it ever changing depending on what's going on? Is it the phase of life you're in as you are about to send your kids off to school? Like I guess I'm just curious because I find that people.
[00:16:21] Jess: That I meet who are in consulting are kind of obsessed with what's next always versus just living in what's now. And I also understand that's like a delicate dance to figure out, so I'm just curious how you do it.
[00:16:38] Rachel: Yeah, I've had multiple businesses. 'cause I started my nonprofit in the living room of my apartment.
[00:16:44] Rachel: And when I was doing that I was. Obviously so stressed out trying to raise money, but I'm still an entrepreneur and I started Girl Star when I was 26 years old. So I've learned a lot since then about [00:17:00] enjoying the experience and having fun and enjoying the journey. When I had my high ticket offer, I was so stressed out doing all those launches.
[00:17:11] Rachel: I was like, I can't do this anymore. This is just too stressful. So I feel like. I'm really into the here and now and enjoying what's happening. I'm not thinking in five year increments. Maybe six months, maybe three months, because I'm thinking like, oh, I've got this work trip. I'm gonna go, then it's gonna be Parents weekend and all those
[00:17:32] Cindy: things.
[00:17:33] Cindy: Love it. And the parents weekend just got me thinking about, we have Visitors day for camp this weekend. I'm so excited. This must be so. Surreal. Having them leave and yeah. So excited for you. Okay. I wanna ask about some of the logistics of balancing a membership with these other things that are really important in your life.
[00:17:55] Cindy: How do you support the community? How do you have to or get to [00:18:00] show up every month? Or how, like frequency, what does a service delivery look like with this offer, and how does that dovetail with your other activities? I love
[00:18:13] Rachel: it. Believe it or not, it's totally just me. I don't have any staff. I contact with some people like designers, someone to help me with Facebook ads, despite all my time studying Facebook ads.
[00:18:24] Rachel: It's just me. I don't even have a ba. Should have one, but I don't. It's just me. I've had employees, I've had up to like 10 employees running Girl Star and it's a lot of work to manage employees. I loved it when I did it and I took a lot of pride in it and we had a great culture that was very envy by other nonprofits, but it was a lot of work to create that kind of culture.
[00:18:49] Rachel: So it is just me. And in terms of the service delivery. People can sign up anytime. I have people who sign up and they join and they're a member for [00:19:00] six months, and then they quit and then they come back. No shame. I don't do refunds. It's $49. And it's not like I saw lots of models where it was like, show me your work and if you did the work, you can get a refund.
[00:19:15] Rachel: This isn't like that. It's $49, but yeah, it's one webinar a month and you get access to all the resources, all the workshops and templates and guides from this year, from last year. Did I answer everything in that?
[00:19:28] Cindy: It sounds like basically you have a once a month, eight that is you and your business, which I love, and you have to show up like once a month live and everything else sounds asynchronous.
[00:19:42] Cindy: Yeah, it's like a live
[00:19:43] Rachel: 90 minute workshop every month when the third Thursday of the month, and then my little coaching group meets every single week for an hour. And that's a small group. It's 12 women. But yeah, I've got roughly 150 members [00:20:00] and it's fluctuates. Like my, probably my peak was like 200. Some workshops are more popular than others, of course, end of year fundraising.
[00:20:09] Rachel: Always a really big one. Membership goes lower in the summer months and then kicks up again during the school year. But yeah.
[00:20:18] Jess: Okay. I just wrote down like 14 questions, so I too have memberships and so this is gonna be like a little bit of a, me being nosy because you've been doing it a bit longer than me.
[00:20:29] Jess: So my first question is to Cindy's question a little bit more specifically. Like, how much time would you say you're spending marketing. The membership versus delivering the membership? Is it a 60 40 split? Is it 50 50? Is it 80 20? What do you think?
[00:20:45] Rachel: Probably 80 20. 80% marketing, because it is like a 90 minute workshop once a month, and I'm doing Facebook ads, I'm doing emails.
[00:20:57] Rachel: Emails, and. I'm doing my [00:21:00] sales page every single month. Mm-hmm. And I work really hard on my emails. I'm really proud of my emails. It's funny 'cause people say, oh, you should join Rachel's newsletter, and I don't have a newsletter. I guess that could be my true confession. I do not have a newsletter. I literally just mostly send sales emails.
[00:21:18] Rachel: But I worked so hard at making them entertaining and funny and valuable, rich. Interesting, helpful content that people think it's a newsletter. That's the
[00:21:30] Jess: goal. That's amazing. Yeah. Okay. The next question I have is what you said towards the very beginning of our conversation around the price, and if I heard you right, you said you've never increased the price.
[00:21:42] Jess: Mm-hmm. Can you tell us a little bit more about that thought process, that strategy? Why.
[00:21:48] Rachel: Because this is a one to many offer. This is a low cost model offer, and I really felt like, okay, well this is problematic. Like I increase the price. What [00:22:00] happens to the other people who you know are paying this amount?
[00:22:04] Rachel: I do have like a pay for the year in full, and you get two months free and you save $98. Sometimes I will do emails promoting that because. I'll do an email promoting that to people who aren't on it, and I'll do an email promoting that to people who are paying monthly. Like, Hey, do you wanna save a hundred dollars?
[00:22:21] Rachel: So sometimes I'll do emails promoting the coaching group that I have this weekly program. But it's such an awesome mix that I don't promote it a lot because it's just the dynamic of all of these women is so fantastic. It's perfect, but like break it.
[00:22:38] Jess: And so then how do you think. Or maybe it's not really like part of your plan about scaling.
[00:22:45] Jess: I think you said you had 200 members. It's around one 50 right now, but because it's about the same amount of work, whether you have 200 people or a thousand people right inside the membership because it's asynchronous. That being [00:23:00] said, I understand like just sometimes knowing you're holding space for more people energetically.
[00:23:05] Jess: I know this is like sounding so woo woo, but it really does like consume something in you. Do you think about scale? Is that part of your goal plan to send this to the moon and have thousands and thousands of members, or are you kind of like, this is good the way it is?
[00:23:21] Rachel: Yeah, having a thousand members would be an insane amount of more work because it would be so much more customer care.
[00:23:29] Rachel: People can come and people can go, people can sign up and they can quit and they can rejoin, but there's a level of management that I have to give them to make all that happen for them. My husband is asking that question too 'cause he's like, Mr. I'm like, let's scale this. But really I think, I feel like I could double it, but I feel like it's more admin work.
[00:23:51] Rachel: Totally. 'cause I don't want it to be like a thousand people. And I, you know, and I go through and like, I'm pretty tidy about keeping everything [00:24:00] clean in the community. We have a private Facebook group. I'll have people who join and then they leave and then they quit. And then I'm like, okay, we, I'm gonna move them, remove them from the Facebook group.
[00:24:08] Rachel: So I don't have any immediate aggressive plans. Around its growth because I'm looking forward to traveling a lot more with my kids.
[00:24:17] Jess: Yes, we're excited for you. Okay. And then last question is just around the marketing. Since you said you spent about 80% of the time marketing the membership, I'm curious what you do as far as messaging goes to convey to people the value on a recurring basis.
[00:24:33] Jess: I know for me, when I've been promoting and selling my memberships, getting people over that kind of ongoing cost, there's definitely like a, a hurdle you have to get over for people to, to get them to invest on an ongoing basis. I noticed this subscription pricing is like really hot and it's becoming more and more popular.[00:25:00]
[00:25:00] Jess: I've just found that in some instances it's more difficult to sell like a $13 membership than it is to sell like a $10,000 project to people, and I'm always blown away by that. But I'm wondering if that's your experience or if you just do some messaging tweaking or something in your marketing to really convey the value of the ongoing membership.
[00:25:23] Rachel: No, that's a really good point that you brought up, Jess. A hundred percent. There is this fear of commitment. I don't wanna be locked into this, and sometimes people will ask me, they just assume when they read my emails, oh, this is like I have to pay for the whole year in advance and I rarely market. That.
[00:25:43] Rachel: Part of it is on the sales page, but I rarely market paying for the year in advance. I think people just assume if it's a membership that they're locked in, they have to pay for the whole year. So I address it really head on and really frequently, and I'm like, God, commitment [00:26:00] issues. Me too. You can quit anytime.
[00:26:02] Rachel: No question is asked. I'm not nosy. I use a lot of language like that. And for a while there people would ask me, okay, well let me just buy this one membership. How much is just this one membership? I would tell people, okay, just the one workshop, you just want the one workshop, okay, it's $495. And some people were like, okay, I just want that.
[00:26:26] Rachel: And I'm like, I'm not even gonna spend the time to make all this happen. It's so much work. Sign up and then just quit. Or email me and I'll quit for you. I'll clog in and do it for you. It's just too much work to do that.
[00:26:41] Cindy: All right. I wanna ask about engagement. And you mentioned that we've been talking about commitment.
[00:26:50] Cindy: Earlier you mentioned like, you know, you don't want a community that's like a thousand people. That's a whole other level of requirement from your business to show up in [00:27:00] monitor. And I know personally, I get very hung up on like, are people showing up? Are they engaged? Like if they're investing in me and my programs.
[00:27:10] Cindy: I feel like a sense of obligation to make sure that they're doing the work, which sometimes is really hard, and I know that's not a responsibility, but I'd love to hear where you've landed after doing this for so long on that sort of lower ticket offer, how you engage people or how you encourage participation.
[00:27:32] Cindy: Or not, and it's just like, you show up, great. You don't, it's fine. And like just how you think about that both from a personal level of, 'cause you mentioned like the community feels really close, especially your weekly one. That's something you wanna protect. So I'm assuming people show up, they're engaged and I'd just love to hear how you think about and manage that kind of community feel for things.
[00:27:58] Cindy: I love
[00:27:58] Rachel: that. That's such a good question. [00:28:00] And it is a really delicate dance because. I am not here to shame anyone. I am very consciously, very careful in my reminders. Like I'll send people calendar reminders for a workshop, but I'm very careful to say like, can't join live, got a donor visit. Binge watching X whatever show on Netflix and can't get away right now.
[00:28:25] Rachel: Don't worry. It's waiting for you when you log in. Here's how to log in. You have access to this and this. I am very sensitive. I've done a lot of online courses. I studied how to create an online course and market an online course, and I launched my hide ticket offered in 2018 on Valentine's Day. So I'm very sensitive about not shaming anyone and having anyone feel guilty or bad that they didn't show up live.
[00:28:51] Rachel: A lot of people just access it when they access it, and that's fine. Maybe people just flip through the slides and it go through the workbook and use the templates and they don't listen to it. It's [00:29:00] all good. I'm very careful to not shame anyone. I don't want anyone to feel like, oh, I didn't show up. And even when people at me and say, I haven't been coming.
[00:29:11] Rachel: Great. You're welcome with any time. I'm here to make it easy. Love
[00:29:16] Cindy: it. It's always that dance, right? You don't want to shame people, but you also want 'em to be successful. That's why you do this in the first place. So yeah, making sure they have access, and I think the repeated messaging around here's how you access things is also really important.
[00:29:33] Cindy: Because honestly, people forget the simplest things, so. Alright. I feel like we gotta move on to, you already gave us like a mini confession earlier, but are you up for another confession before we wrap up?
[00:29:47] Rachel: Yeah. I already said this. I don't have a va and here's another confession. I don't post on LinkedIn nearly enough.
[00:29:55] Rachel: It's ridiculous. It's like I'm one person and I'm just doing [00:30:00] the things. The cobbler's children have no shoes. So I would say we all have our things and mm-hmm. It's totally okay. Like doing the best that you can. And that's what it's like when you're an entrepreneur.
[00:30:13] Cindy: First of all, I hate the word should, especially when it comes to our businesses.
[00:30:17] Cindy: I call, like I say, we all inherit a case of the shoulds, right? I should be doing this, I should be doing that. And what I love about your whole journey is you have focus on the things that light you up, that bring you joy, that are fun for you. Like even when we were talking about the webinars, I love this.
[00:30:34] Cindy: I'm gonna do this. That to me is much more important than you should be doing this on LinkedIn or this. I often, like I see some amazing consultants who have huge successful businesses with no websites. They're not conditions of success, and I think you've built a really meaningful business that works for your clients and works for you and allows you to spend time doing things that you really enjoy.
[00:30:59] Cindy: Fuck everything else. [00:31:00] So I love it. Rachel, where can our listeners connect with you and find you? I was gonna say online LinkedIn, but maybe not
[00:31:09] Rachel: LinkedIn. Rachel muir.com and of course lead of extraordinary fundraisers.com is my membership. But yeah, rachel muir.com and I've got all kinds of great resources.
[00:31:21] Rachel: I think what you guys are doing is fantastic and I love supporting other consultants in this space. And so yeah, people are welcome to reach out to me.
[00:31:32] Cindy: I have a sneak last question. Yeah. Because we all love supporting other consultants and for people who've been doing it for a long time, who've been consulting for a long time, I do find sometimes, like we get a lot of requests for our time and so I would love to wrap up this conversation.
[00:31:53] Cindy: I think was it, I think I, we aired this part where I said I'm not taking meetings this summer, so. [00:32:00] As a, we can all share maybe one thing around how we manage requests when we want to help. That is like we are, I always find like people are in a sector, we are helpers, we're generous. We want to support other people in their journeys, and sometimes we have to have boundaries on what that looks like.
[00:32:18] Cindy: So my sneak question is how do you manage that? How do you find the right balance?
[00:32:25] Rachel: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I will say this is more for nonprofits in general, but like on my website, anyone can book a call with me, but I ask as you make the appointment, are you a nonprofit? Are you in the United States once your budget to spend on this project?
[00:32:43] Rachel: And so I very consciously am like, if you're not a 5 0 1 C3, if you're not in the us, if you don't have a budget, then I'm gonna know because. I've asked those questions. I encourage other consultants to do that. I wouldn't do a free discovery call [00:33:00] without asking those questions because your time is really valuable.
[00:33:04] Rachel: I spoke last year for Mandy's nonprofit consultant conference. That was a lot of fun. I'm seeing more resources out there where. Fundraising software companies are really seeing how can I support this network of consultants and what can I do to support them? And I think that's an opportunity where seasoned fundraising consultants can leverage those opportunities to help others in a way that isn't draining.
[00:33:33] Cindy: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I know it's tough. It's so hard because we all want, that's why we started this podcast, right? We want to see everyone be successful and share what we know and experience, but also we're super nosy and we wanna hear what everyone else is doing. So Awesome. Rachel, thank you so, so much for joining us.
[00:33:56] Cindy: You're very welcome.[00:34:00]
[00:34:00] Cindy: Thank you again for listening to the Confessions podcast for nonprofit coaches and consultants. If you enjoyed today's episode, which I sure hope you did, you can show your support in one of three ways.
[00:34:11] Jess: Number one, post a screenshot of this episode to your Instagram stories or LinkedIn profile. And text Cindy and I so we can repost you.
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[00:34:30] Cindy: And of course, make sure you subscribe so you can get the latest and greatest interviews as they drop. Every
[00:34:36] Jess: Thursday and to our fellow nonprofit coaching and consulting friends, remember we're an open book and here to answer your burning biz questions.
[00:34:45] Jess: See you next time.