MemberFix Radio — How Operators Print Predictable Cash

One of the first things Gabe Anderson did after buying All Healthcare Careers was read the support inbox. He calls that connection to customers "the best way to get a sense for what those customer pain points are and how you can address them." The confusion he found was about the subscription itself: when it begins, and how to cancel it. Gabe owns All Healthcare Careers, a subscription site that helps aspiring nurses and nursing assistants prepare for their certification exams, and spent his career on learning product teams. With Risto Karaivanov he walks through what he changed first after...

Anyone can sell a course and print a certificate at the end of it. Only a few of those certificates mean anything to anybody. Jeffrey Horne runs learning and development at SCTE, the standards and credentialing body for the broadband industry, and has spent his career in education and training, Coursera included. His starting point: credibility is earned long before anyone recognizes it. A famous name on a credential validates work that was already done, so when you don't have one, you build the same way anybody did - solve real problems for a small group of people, and let...

Chris Badgett, co-founder and CEO of LifterLMS, expects a lot of people to go to AI to learn, maybe instead of a course or a membership. He sees something like it at his own company: support tickets are down about 75% while usage isn't, and he thinks it's because people now ask AI how to do something instead of waiting on a reply. So the question for a course is how it beats the generic answer ChatGPT or Claude would give. That can mean curation for a specific customer, personalized support or coaching, or a community people want to belong to...

Latika Manaktala had spent years teaching her members webinars, one-to-one closing, and social media, and still had people who would not move. So she started booking one-to-one calls to find out why. Her conclusion: skills are about five percent of what decides whether someone gets a result. The rest she now tracks as mindset, energy, and unconscious programming, and she changed the check-in question from how are you growing to why are you not. That diagnostic runs on top of a business worth studying. Latika is the founder of Passion to Profit Lab, a yearly membership starting at around $1,000 with...

Lingerie Fighting Championships (LFC) spent years building the audience before building the revenue: 5.3M social followers and Tubi's most-watched show within a week of landing on the platform. Then the platforms pushed back, and the UK tour that grew the following from 1.5M to 5.3M was run as an intentional loss. The audience worked. The business model is the part still being built. Shaun Donnelly, CEO of Lingerie Fighting Championships walks through the full picture: revenue against followers, VIP-membership, live-event tickets, and more. In this episode: - How event-driven churn works: members join before a show, cancel after, and rejoin...

The most valuable traffic any business gets is somebody vouching for it. A partnership is how you arrange that on purpose: someone endorses you to their audience, and you pay commission only when a sale lands. Sai Blackbyrn built Coach Foundation on partnerships, starting with little to spend on ads and nobody in the space who knew him. He takes the method apart in this episode. What we also discussed: - The introduction swap: ask for three introductions, offer three back, and why that almost guarantees you a yes - How Sai decides who is worth the work: revenue rather...

Giving your best course away free sounds like a fast way to go broke. That was Mark Virkler's reaction when the founder of ClickFunnels told him to do exactly that, after years of hiring marketers who, by Mark's account, never made him a penny. He tried it anyway. Every month since, one of his top twenty courses goes online free: ten pre-taped sessions, each watchable for 24 hours before it comes down, then a 48-hour window at the end to catch what you missed. Nothing downloads. The copy you keep is the one he sells. The first month made back everything...

Micah Mitchell is co-founder and CEO of Memberium, which connects WordPress membership sites to Keap and ActiveCampaign. His view on AI is that it is the new mobile. When phones arrived, everyone said websites were finished. What happened instead is that people added an app and kept selling the same thing. The big change he has seen inside memberships is that live calls and mastermind groups came back, and access to the expert moved from a perk to the core of the offer. On the software side, support is getting harder to get from the bigger companies, and a company...

A $39/month membership can sell a $1,000 upsell offer. The people most likely to buy it already pay you every month. Jordan Rafaelov runs Dopamine Digital, a cold outbound agency that charges per qualified booked meeting instead of a retainer. Much of this conversation is about the opposite problem: what to do with an audience you already have. He walks through the launch format behind what he says is a $137,000 average over five days, how a friend's launch went from $2,500 to over $60,000 in a week on the same product, and his case that anything priced over $1,000 belongs on a phone call...

How do you scale expertise past 1:1? As director of mathematics, Lucy West took the district from 16th to #1 in math - out of 32 districts in the largest school system in the US. Her method: refuse to coach the struggling teachers, find the teacher-leaders everyone already went to, and grow them until their peers came to watch. She then productized that method into Metamorphosis, a consultancy that won clients entirely through inbound - and nearly lost everything when its biggest client canceled every contract overnight. In this episode, you'll learn: - Why she refused to coach struggling teachers - and grew...

Nathalie Doremieux, co-founder of The Membership Lab, has helped build over 300 membership sites. Her position after nearly two decades: when members stall, drift, and cancel, it's rarely the member. It's the design. In this episode: - Why "they didn't do the work" is usually a cover story, and what the cancel notification actually means - How to find the exact spot in your program where members get stuck (tracking, asking, and the questions that repeat on your calls) - Why the platform is rarely the problem, and how to tell when you've genuinely outgrown it - The month before a...

Free two-week Rupt trial for MemberFix listeners: https://rupt.dev/memberfix/ If five people are using one login on your membership site, four of them are not paying you. According to Rupt's data, 15-20% of accounts on a typical membership or eLearning site are shared - and without the right tooling, it goes unmeasured. Ahmed Saleh, founder and CEO of Rupt, built his company on a counterintuitive idea: account sharers are warm leads, not thieves. They already use and love the product - they just have to pay for it. In this episode, he breaks down the math (5-10% net...

After a broken leg left him stuck in bed for two months, Jack Arturo - creator of WP Fusion, the glue between WordPress and CRMs - started turning AI agents into coworkers. His message for membership business owners: you don't need to be a developer to do the same. In this conversation: - The free, low-risk way to start: give an AI read-only access to your inbox and ask it how it can help - Build it or buy it? Jack's two-question test settles it - Why AI accelerates people with real expertise instead of replacing them - What AutoJack...

Want a no BS audit of your site and SEO? Normally $97, free for MemberFix listeners. The content your members pay for sits behind a paywall, which means Google and AI can't see it. And what they can't see, they can't recommend. Phil Hudson of Rook Digital breaks down how membership sites actually get found in an AI-search world: free funnel content that answers real buyer questions, schema markup that hands AI your best information in a way it can't misread, and the one signal AI can't fake - genuine human experience. It's also the reason memberships hold up against AI...

Shaun Nanan is the co-founder and academic director of Nanan Academy, a STEM education provider for youth and adults built on WordPress and LearnDash. In this episode, Shaun breaks down why sustainable education requires sustainable revenue, how Nanan Academy structures long-term student journeys (grade 3 through post-secondary), and the operational decisions behind their platform stack and business model. What we cover: - What Shaun noticed about incoming students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic - and why he built Nanan Academy to fix it earlier - The three revenue streams that make Nanan Academy sustainable: after-school tuition, school seat licenses, and camp fees ...

Shane Walton - co-founder of the Commercial Loan Broker Institute - joins MemberFix Radio to break down what commercial loan brokering actually is, why most new brokers fail before they start, and how CLBI built a five-phase training system that gets people launched instead of just educated. Behind the scenes, that system runs on a WordPress-powered membership platform plugged into a CRM, Zapier automations, gated Vimeo content, and daily marketing operations - and Shane gets honest about what actually breaks when you're supporting hundreds of active members. Key moments from this episode: Why "selling money" is the wrong frame...

Alexander Ford spent a decade running a marketing agency before he shut it down to coach. The reason wasn't a market shift or a better business model. It was a thesis he keeps coming back to: most engagements fail not because of bad tactics or weak discipline, but because the client - or the founder - doesn't actually want to do the work the engagement requires. He joins Vic to walk through the pivot, the high-touch coaching practice he's building in its place, and the worldview connecting both. In this episode: → Why Alexander thinks pivot timing is an emotional-honesty question, no...

After 10+ years running Membership Academy, Mike Morrison has a bird's-eye view of what quietly kills membership businesses while owners are staring at the wrong metrics. In this conversation with Vic Dorfman, Mike breaks down why most owners are misdiagnosing their biggest problem, what the churn data actually tells you vs. what it hides, and why the subscription economy has fundamentally shifted against them. What you'll learn:

Věra Lantelme-Faisan, president of HETI (The Federation of Horses in Education and Therapy International), shares what it takes to lead a not-for-profit organization across 45+ countries since 1974. In this episode, you'll learn:

AC Hampton built Supreme Ecom - a 43-person, fully in-house e-commerce education company - without spending a dollar on paid ads. In this episode, he walks through the shift that changed how his business operates: moving from pure revenue KPIs to retention rate, churn rate, ROI, and customer satisfaction. The money, he says, followed when the metrics did. In this conversation: How Supreme Ecom engineers recurring revenue across a three-tier offer structure - and why the customer's next problem is more valuable than closing the current deal Why 50-60% of his clients stay in the pipeline after their initial mentorship...

Jen Santos is the founder of Smart Event Academy, a training platform she built after the pandemic wiped out decades of institutional knowledge from the events industry. Her premise: when events fail, the technology is almost never the real problem. It's the people around it - the teams who don't know what they don't know, in an industry that has almost no formal training for newcomers. In this episode, you'll learn: → Why event tech failures are a people and alignment problem - not a software problem → How Jen built a 68-lesson modular course and why she built the full program befo...

Evan Mestman, founder and Chief Gratitude Officer of ProAttitudes, has spent 30+ years at the intersection of clinical nutrition, neuroscience, and leadership coaching. His argument: self-awareness is the first step - but without intention, it just keeps you comfortable in your discomfort. In this episode, he explains why burned-out leaders keep repeating the same patterns, how he built a coaching practice with clients who stay for years, and what the research actually says about what motivates people at work. In this episode, you'll learn: → Why self-awareness alone is not enough - and what intention actually does to the brain → How Evan help...

Kim Pomares, CEO of Mendability, explains how sensory enrichment therapy helps autistic children and individuals with neurological challenges by boosting brain plasticity without pharmaceuticals. In this episode, you'll learn:

Most membership businesses don't have a technology problem. They have a "too much technology without strategy" problem. Melodie Moore, founder of Business Tech Ninjas, has spent 10 years helping seven-figure membership and eLearning companies cut through the noise. In this episode, Melodie introduces the "technologist" role — someone who asks "what problem does this solve?" before implementing any tool. She shares why hiring for mindset beats chasing "A players," how her ClarityOps system develops self-leadership instead of management overhead, and why rigid course structures are losing to flexible content libraries. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by your tech stack or wondered why yo...

Don Crosby has spent 35 years in behavioral science, but his real mission started when he watched his parents' marriage fall apart after 28 years. Now, he's building a suite of online courses with one audacious goal: reduce the divorce rate in America by 10%. In this episode, Don shares: → Why most relationship courses market poorly (and what he's doing differently) → How he's targeting teens to prevent divorce before it starts → The dual-market strategy: affordable consumer courses + premium corporate training → Why he spent five years creating nine courses instead of rushing one to market → How he saved a manufacturing client $148K by understanding human beha...

Dawn Holts, Director of Operations at Amnio Technology, reveals how she built a biotech business where quality and ethics replace aggressive sales tactics. With a PhD in Performance Psychology and Navy background, Dawn explains how regenerative medicine works, why she uses WordPress and LearnDash for regulatory compliance training, and how her company achieves accreditation standards that exceed FDA requirements. In this episode, you'll learn: → What regenerative medicine does that traditional steroids can't → How WordPress + LearnDash became compliance infrastructure for distributor onboarding → How Amnio Technology gets distributors through inbound word-of-mouth instead of outbound sales → The forecast-based model that creates operational predictability in biolo...

Kristýna Mertlová built Czech Republic's first premium matchmaking empire serving Forbes-listed CEOs, while simultaneously running a completely free social impact dating platform for people with disabilities—both on WordPress and LearnDash. In this episode, she reveals the exact membership site pricing strategy that makes her €1,000 VIP service more valuable, the two-year database building period that nearly broke her, and why running two opposite business models saved her from a legal crisis. You'll Learn: - How to structure membership site pricing tiers (VIP, hybrid, e-learning) where the lowest tier makes the highest tier seem affordable - The truth about building a two...

Struggling to scale your coaching or membership business without burning out? In this episode of MemberFix Radio, host Vic interviews Barb Reppert, a former CFO and COO turned executive coach who's built a thriving practice across 23 industries by doing the opposite of what most coaches do.

In this episode, you'll learn how to:

Jennifer Crowley, RN and co-founder of Life Care Management Institute, shares how she transitioned from hospital nursing to building an online education platform. Running on WordPress and LearnDash, Jennifer serves both professionals entering the life care management field and families navigating aging and caregiving decisions.

This conversation covers practical lessons for anyone building learning platforms or productizing expertise: how published books establish professional credibility, the reality of serving two distinct audiences, managing WordPress tech challenges with LearnDash and Memberium, structuring products from textbooks to online courses to digital templates, and her perspective on AI in...

In this episode of MemberFix Radio, host Vic Dorfman interviews Dr. Peter Flores III, founder of Praxis Lead Equity, about building inclusive organizational cultures that drive business results.

Dr. Flores brings a unique perspective from 25 years in the U.S. Navy, where he rose to leadership positions during Operation Iraqi Freedom, followed by a successful career as a K-12 educator and district-level administrator. Now he helps educational institutions, government agencies, and businesses eliminate cultural blind spots that hinder success.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

Debbie Caudle did something most therapists would consider insane: she walked away from insurance and Medicaid clients to build a cash-based practice. In this episode, she shares the full story of her transformation from burnt-out generalist to thriving virtual marriage coach.

You'll learn why dropping "guaranteed" income was the best decision she ever made, how productizing therapy created leverage, and the mindset shifts that turned fear-based money decisions into strategic growth moves.

Debbie also gets real about delegation, the role of AI in relationship-based businesses, and why "massive imperfect action" beats...

Most clients sabotage their own Upwork projects before they even start — by writing job posts that instantly turn off the best freelancers and agencies. In this episode, Vic Dorfman (founder of MemberFix) breaks down why “fixed price” postings, vague requirements, and phrases like “should be an easy job” send red flags to serious professionals. Learn how to structure your job posts and project discussions to attract top-tier experts, avoid hostage projects, and build honest, productive partnerships — the same approach Vic uses after spending hundreds of thousands hiring on Upwork himself.

Brian Casel on Productized Services podcast about Restaurant Engine, service which Brian went on to sell.

In this episode Alec Kinnear of FolioVision.com shares how to keep business fun, ethical and rewarding...

Today's guest on The Membership Site Success podcast is Nathalie Lussier! Listen to Nathalie share about the importance of design and how to connect with a female audience.

John Oszajca is the founder of Music Marketing Manifesto, a membership site where he teaches musicians how to sell their music online!

Shane is the co-founder of Thrive Themes, a conversion-focused WordPress themes and plugins business. He also maintains a blog that utterly fails to suck over at www.imimpact.com.

Russ is the founder of Design Pickle, a service that provides unlimited graphic design for a very reasonable monthly price.

Ashley is the founder of Selling Your Screenplay, a community that provides support, resources and services for screenwriters and aspiring screenwriters who want to...you guessed it, sell their screenplays!

How To Build a Massively Successful Service-Based Business with Dan Norris