AI-Powered Membership Communities: Nathalie Doremieux Insights

Speaker A: Welcome to another Human First AI Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Mike Montague at Avenue9. You can find us at avenue9.com. My guest this week is Nathalie Dorameu, and she is from southern France and co-founder of the Membership Lab. And I'm really excited to talk about this, uh, AI-powered membership and communities and, and online programs. Because, Nathalie, I think AI is doing amazing things, but with, you know, communities that are inherently human and we're trying to build relationships, I'm fascinated to know how you found to help AI power those kind of communities. Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So, so actually it's really been through looking at the problems that clients were having. So when we talk about AI-powered memberships, We talk about how do we use AI as a tool to solve problems, right? Not to replace. So it's either get— getting back time or, um, it's helping people make a decision quicker. All that so that we have more time to be humans. So it completely fits within the community aspect, right? So we see AI as an accelerator. So if you've got nothing, you put AI, you're gonna get more of nothing, right? For those who feed it well, right? And so if you combine, you know, without being too technical, you know, the knowledge base with the prompt with some key information that you have from a client or member, then imagine what amazing output you can get and help them come up with an idea or decision or the draft of an email so much quicker. That's how we use AI. That's why it's AI-powered, because it's putting fuels on decision-making, basically. Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. And I, I think, um, it fits perfectly with what I'm trying to do for my clients and the, the mission that I, I'm trying to spread here because, uh, if they go to themembershiplab.com, uh, you have an awesome community. You gotta have a community about communities. Uh, for sure. But, um, coaches and, you know, trainers and, um, consultants and people that are trying to build their own community is really who you're targeting. And I think that is awesome because the structure is one part. A lot of people struggle with what kind of community, what am I posting? Where are they going? What's the tool that I'm using? You know, Facebook groups stink, LinkedIn groups are even worse, and there's a lot of technical challenges. But then what I love to work with is like, how are we engaging? I love, you know, interviewing members, creating podcasts and content and coming up with cool things to say. But then there's that whole other challenge of like, how do we get this into a medium that people can enjoy? So that's what I'm hoping we can explore here today, but I'll start with, Maybe the basic question, uh, an easy softball for you here is why should somebody start a community if they don't have one? Speaker B: Uh, well, actually not everybody should because some people don't wanna be running communities, right? And actually I think it's at the core of why so many communities fail is because people see it as something super easy, super scalable. Throwing some copy, some videos, and then, you know, people will love it and they will stay, and it doesn't work, right? So it's actually not for everyone. It is, however, for the people that have a desire to, uh, expand on something they're already doing. For example, they're a coach and they have a method, a system. They've been helping people one-on-one or even in small groups, and they're like, I got something that works here. How can I scale this without putting more hours in my calendar? Right? So it could be something like this. It could be, I'm close to retirement and I work with so many people. I would create a community. I could show up once a month. We talk, you know, we inspire each other and they both go through my program. So they kind of know the method and I can coach them a little bit. Brings, you know, some recurring income and I still get to make the impact that I want, right? Speaker A: Thank you, Ashley. Speaker B: So there are like so many ways, but the first key you were saying, like we were talking, you know, before we started to record, like membership that actually don't work, that fall flat. Well, go back to your idea. Why are you doing this? Are you pretty excited? If you are not excited, there are so many people that are not excited about their membership. And you can tell, and people can feel that energy, right? And two, are you really solving a problem that people have? Now, just because you're putting really good stuff inside doesn't mean that people need it or willing to pay for it. It's a question of priorities as well, right? So like there's so much that goes into, into that before we even talk about membership models. None of that. You have to really make sure that you have an offer that is something that people want and that you're excited about, cuz you're committing to, you know, 2, 5, 10 years potentially. So is that something that helps you get to your vision? Cuz if you're close to retirement and you want to slow down in the business, don't go and start a thing where you want to show up, you know, 2 times a week and stuff like that. You know, it's just not aligned. It's not gonna work. Speaker A: Yeah, I do have some questions and I'm sure the answer is it depends on what you're trying to do, but you're a pro. You've been doing this for over 18 years now in membership communities. I'm wondering if you see maybe like just the free versus paid question of like, are smaller communities that are really tight and niche and they serve a specific purpose and maybe they're paid and the commitment is higher, Do they tend to do better than free communities where anybody can join? It's really wide. You, you're trying to get, you know, 1,000 members and, and stuff. 'Cause I, I kind of feel like in classic marketing you would say the smaller people that invest money are gonna show up and they're going to be more active. But sometimes small communities make me nervous. It's like, oh, if I, you know, if I have 1,000 people, I only need 10% of them to, you know, participate. Where if I have 10 people and only 10% show up, I'm sitting there by myself with one other. person, right? Tell me a little bit about maybe the strategies and models that you've seen from successful. Sure. Speaker B: So I mean, first, like when you say, I, I don't think you said successful membership, but like when it works, first we have to define what it means work. For some people it's, I need to make $5K a month with this. I need to make $10K a month with this to replace something or something like that. For some people it is. I don't really care so much about the money, but I wanna get the right people that are aligned to be ready for my one-on-one. Very different approach, right? So it's first you have to look at what is my definition of being successful and being worth it for me to do it? What's the outcome? Is it monetary? Is it feeding another program? What is it going— what is it right now in terms of engagement and what is easier? To, to create, I would say the lower the price point, the more likely people are to not show up for a month or two. You know, when it's that amount of money we can afford to lose. Oh, how many Starbucks is that? Speaker A: Okay. Speaker B: I can live by that. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: But when you start to pay $100, $200, $300, $1,500, $2,500, some of my clients. You show up, so actually you show up, or you don't show up, but you are busy implementing, which is what's happening as well. Some people would say, hey, I'm not, you're not gonna see me for the next month because I'm really busy in the trenches. But it's a different kind of membership, right? It's a membership where people need to have access to the expertise if they need it like that. Otherwise, they know what they have to do, right? Speaker A: Yeah, more like a master's degree course where you're like, you're doing a project or some sort of, yeah, PhD program. I love those. I think the coolest thing about communities is there can be so many different ones. And I tend to be somebody that's not intimidated by the tech and structures and stuff, but what does intimidate me is the activation. And I feel like one of the reasons membership groups can be really great for people is that they're selling something that requires some sort of activation of an audience or a behavioral change. And just because somebody, you know, signs up for your software or whatever, doesn't mean they're ever going to use it. And so communities can be really great about helping people actually get on, activated, and engage with your product and classic customer success stuff, but also in other memberships and stuff, just because somebody's a member of the Chamber of Commerce or another business community doesn't mean they're ever going to show up. And so I think communities can kind of hold people together, create, you know, cross-accountability, but also, um, kind of, uh, build this peer networking effect that, that goes beyond you so they can solve each other's problems and, and stuff. So, um, I I guess I don't have a specific question here other than getting people in feels like an easier challenge to me than getting people actually engaged in participating. Do you have any tips for how do we get people participating in the groups? Speaker B: Yeah, so I mean, it really comes down to, you know, we were talking about, uh, your membership. People will join if they think it can help them, right? Either they're learning something or they need support on something, right? So if people will join, if they've been looking for a solution and you are the solution right now, it's your job as the membership owner to make sure that they engage. Now, the way you get them to engage is people have to see what's in it for them. So the first place is the onboarding. And usually in the onboarding, you get an email. Maybe you have an email sequence if you're lucky. Right? If you can log in, if you're not like, oh, I'm not getting my email, what is my login? What's my password? You know, like worst onboarding experience ever. But what we are finding now in what works, especially in memberships that are more like content-based, and I'll talk about like the one that are purely community-based, I'll share that with you as well, is that, um, people want to find information quickly. If they have to click on 3, 5 different things to get to the thing, they're going to give up quickly. So during that onboarding, what can be interesting is to gather information about the member, but telling the member why we do that. So if you tell me what you're interested in, then I can create a customized experience for you and show you some content that you can go through during the onboarding, right? So they will be more likely to share that if they understand that this is going to help them have a better experience and find what they need quickly. Okay. Speaker A: Are you using AI in that part of the process or is that more like typical marketing automation? Speaker B: Yeah. No, this is more typical tagging, segmenting audiences, but we could, we, we could bring in some AI inside. Absolutely. but right now this can be done, you know, just with technology, you know, human technology. But what happens here is that then the member doesn't feel just like a number. They're like, okay, she's like, she, they're going to actually prepare a customized experience next time I'm logging in. I told them I was looking to grow my list and there it is. Content about that and not content about Facebook ads because this month we released Facebook ads. So here, look at my masterclass. Okay. Facebook ads, right? So, you know, when you manage to create this customized experience, then people can feel like, okay, I'm not gonna waste my time here. You know, some people used to say, do the Chinese menu. People are adults, you know, they'll find the content that they need. People not sometimes, most of the time don't even know when they need. They're gonna might be attracted to something that actually feels less challenging and fun. But will they go through what they actually need? We need to help them with that, right? So when you can set these things up, yeah, then you get the engagement. Speaker A: I totally agree with that. I, I ran an online, uh, sales training program that had hundreds of thousands of people in it, and we created large libraries of, of really awesome content. But people are not going through there. And like you said, if they do, they pick the fun stuff that they are already doing and that they like. They never go, oh, here's the part of sales that I'm not doing. Let me go figure out how to ask a closing question or, or make a cold call because they don't want to do that. Exactly. Speaker B: Exactly. So you can take that one step further and just like if you were like in a coaching environment, you could say, okay, what's your goal for the next 90 days? Or 6 weeks, right? And they share their goal, and then that goal, you can remind them by email. So how are you doing with that goal? Do you need any help? This is when the next call is, or post here, this might be helpful, right? So people feel seen, right? And supported beyond the calls. Speaker A: Well, I heard several things in there that maybe people that haven't ever tried this didn't catch, which is, You're emailing people outside the community as well, and that alerts and reminders and notifications and stuff are a big part of the community. It's not like if you build it, they will come and they just keep showing up and stuff. And then I also feel this way about writing a book. I've written a couple of books and I think people that write a book for the first time think finishing the book is the finish line, but really that's just the starting line. You now, you got to get somebody to read it. And then once they're reading it, you got to get them to finish it. Tell somebody else about it and you gotta promote the book and all that kind of stuff. And I feel like communities are very much a similar challenge where like building and launching your community is the starting line, not the finish line. So can you talk, uh, maybe a little bit about how AI is helping people keep these communities going? Because what I find so fascinating, especially about, for me, it's podcasting. But if I can create something every week, then I have something to talk about in the community, or I can take this podcast and turn it into a blog, an email, an educational post or something, and use AI to really take that heavy lifting off because that, that gerbil wheel becomes exhausting in a community pretty quick. You think you have a ton of ideas until you try and run a community, and then 12 weeks in, you're like, I got nothing. Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, and, and you know, that's actually a concern for people that want to start a membership. They're like, what am I going to talk about? How much, how much videos do I, how much content do I need to give them? And I'm like, just enough for them to get what they need. Nothing more, nothing less. Right? It really depends. So I think that when you write, you want to think about this in advance when you're going to start the membership and feel like, okay, maybe you're going to, you have a framework, some something, you know, like in, in the architecture, yeah, you've got like a, a system in place and you wanna help people identify where they are and, and, and there is this content that they can consume and then they get the support, right? Now, in terms of running out of ideas, I mean, there is one thing that works every time is just to ask people, what would you like me to talk about next? Would you like me to interview someone on a specific topic? Like when I am not the expert, so you're becoming the curator, right? So it's not like you even have to come up with the content. I think what people want as part of the membership is they, it's like you're creating content for them on that specific topic. I mean, I'm talking about like business, you know, memberships. Um, and you are basically saving them time, you know, everything in centralized. If I want to know something about AI marketing, I'm going to go to Mike. Because it is going to know what is going on because it's keeping a pulse on it, right? So it's gonna tell me, I'm not gonna have to go and search, you know, so it can tell me and I can say, hey, I've heard something about this new model. Do you know anything? And maybe you know someone, so, well, let's bring it up them and talk about the different models and how do we choose a model and like, how do we just pick something and stick with it, right? So, you know, it's, it, those are all ways to create content basically to have content generated that's actually relevant for members, you know, co-create collaboration, ask them. Speaker A: Yeah. Great, uh, answer there. All right. I, I do wanna roll it back a little bit to our, uh, original question about communities in, in this world and as we look forward. Did you have something else? Speaker B: No, you mentioned about AI, AI and, and I didn't answer that question. So I, I can tell you like quick, quickly, like the way we integrate AI, you can integrate AI is basically to help people get results faster. For example, um, the role play, you can have a chat where you can train, you can do sales page. Sales page, sales call, role-playing. And you can say, okay, I want to be a tough, I want you to be a tough lead. Okay, role-play. I want to be, you know, the nice lead, you know, role-play, right? So that builds people confidence, right? Another one could be, I need to write that email to invite people to my interest list. So you can give them a template and fill in the blanks. You know, that's what people do. Or you can ask them 2, 3 questions. Who this is for? Why do you really want to do this? Like, why this is important to you? And you craft that into the draft of the email. Already is going to look a lot more like you. Now they have to make it their own, right? Because always human in the loop. Don't send it as it is, right? But, um, so those are accelerators. Something that could take 2 weeks to write, suddenly you have the tool It takes you maybe 10 minutes, 20 minutes if you want to edit. That's it. So that's the accelerator. And when people do that, then they can go on to the next step and the next step, and they are seeing progress, right? And it builds their confidence. So those are some kind of tools that— Speaker A: I love that. I think you can also do that for yourself when you're trying to come up with, you know, stuff to talk about this week is go brainstorm ideas and say, hey, ChatGPT, give me 20 ideas for posts for my community. And, uh, it's really cool with the custom GPTs that you can build these days around either getting them to accomplish a task for a, a member if you have a specific, you know, framework or, or set of steps you go through, or just for yourself. Say, here's all the stuff about my community, here's who my members are, here's everything I know and the problems we're trying to solve. Now give me a marketing calendar for the next 12 months about monthly themes and you know, weekly posts that I could do. And really, you can, in very quick time, build out a cool marketing plan. Speaker B: So, so these custom GPTs, they are like one level of supporting people with AI. The problem with custom GPTs is several things, and I have clients that came to us just for that, is one, you cannot monetize a custom GPT, right? And they can share it with anyone. Okay. 2, they need a paid account in order to get there, and you get them outside of your, of your world. Speaker A: Under the umbrella. Yeah. Speaker B: 3, people tend to use, uh, AI like they use Google, right? So it can very quickly go sideways, right? When you can integrate this type of, um, GPT of chat inside and you can have it use the information they know about the person, right? That you are even have a better output because right now anybody can go to ChatGPT and, and say, give me a month's worth of content and it's going to be the generic boring stuff. And you're like, okay, it looks cool, but then you're like, yeah, super generic. Like It's not even like— Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I think that's why I called this the Human First podcast and I adopted that philosophy is that I noticed really fast, if you don't put your thought in first, if you don't do the work as the human first, the output is terrible. But if you give it the context of what you're trying to do and what you know about your member and all of that stuff, then you get some more interesting stuff. But you still have to look at it as a professional's mindset. You know, I'm sure you, after 18 years of running communities, would know which posts are gonna get better engagement than ChatGPT would, you know, making up stuff. Speaker B: Again, it's using it as an accelerator. It's not using it as the answer, as the creative, you know? Speaker A: Yes. So as we look at the future, the, the bigger question I wanted to ask you, um, And I'm assuming you're gonna agree with me, but my thought here is that these private communities are gonna become more and more common and more and more valuable as AI kind of ruins the other public communities because we see hundreds of fake accounts on Facebook. There's fake engagement and people automating and scheduling their posts and doing all of like, you know, fake direct messages on LinkedIn from robots. And it feels like as these wider communities get broken down, we're gonna want to, we're still gonna want community, but we're gonna have to drive to these private ones that are not filled with robots. And I, I would rather talk to my 200 friends in a, a private community than try to engage on Facebook and get bombarded with ads and, and all kinds of other stuff. So, Can you talk maybe about what you see the future of communities in 5, 10, 15 years from now? Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, I agree with you. I think that building trust is taking longer and longer for people just because now you just don't even know, even when there is a video. I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm like, I'm trying to see. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: Do you know that I have a friend, like months ago she sent something and I'm like, there's something off with your video. You're not like you usually are. And I'm like, is it AI? And she said, yes. She said, well, it's not working. It's not working. Just do it yourself. It's not. So it's one of these things. I think we are still in the stage where there are lots of things that people are trying, you know, all the images and, you know, riding a unicorn and being dressed as a goddess and stuff like that. Okay, but it's entertainment to me, right? Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: It's not like, so it's how do you wanna use AI? Again, I think we need to put some blinders, even like all these tools. People are saying, you know, what tools are you using? Are you using Notkin.ai and this and this? Literally, you could be busy trying all these things. So I think eventually this is going to slow down because these companies are gonna die if they have no marketing. Behind, you know, like real, there's not a real need. Um, but for, for the people, I think the people that are going to win the community game are the people that are going to keep the human first, the human in the loop, because more than ever, people are going to look for the trusted community that they can stay on. So I see more loyalty. Right? Um, but then there is nothing wrong with using AI tools to accelerate things, right? So, uh, I think it's going to be there, it's gonna be even better. I mean, when we didn't have, you know, ChatGPT and the Open APIs and all that stuff, it was very different. I mean, 4 years ago when we were doing AI, that was complicated, you know, that was, uh, that was not like mainstream. Now there is the no-code, uh, you know, like You don't need developers anymore. Now they're hiring developers back because they're realizing that they cannot put things together. It's like they, they remove, you know, you've got this and then you ask a question and it zaps half of it and you're like, you took it out. Oh yeah, sorry. And it puts it back. Speaker A: So like, it's, it's, yeah, it's crazy. Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy. So you still need that, that, that expertise. It's just that you're gonna go much faster if you know how to leverage those tools. Speaker A: Uh, yeah, I think that's great. My brother had a funny, uh, hallucination with ChatGPT where he was asking it to help him write this paper, and the ChatGPT kept saying, I'm working on it, like, come back to me, I got it, like, we're gonna— he's like, where is it? Can you do it? Like, write it now. And it wouldn't— it just kept saying it was working on it. Yeah. And so there are some funny bugs, but the interoperability too, so much stuff is being created that there's really not a great way to link all these tools together and stuff. So I think the cool stuff you're doing at the Membership Lab, the membershiplab.com, is really cool 'cause you can create some safe environments where you know stuff works together and you're not trying to piece together your own thing. That's great. But I gotta ask you the fun question before I let you go. Oh, well. If you go out, you know, uh, let's say 30 years now, where do you think humanity ends up with AI? Uh, if you had to pick a sci-fi movie, which one do you think would be most accurate? Are we gonna end up in, uh, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix? What do you think? Speaker B: I don't think we're gonna end up in any of those. I mean, I, I would love Star Wars, stop, you know, like just because it's bigger. Speaker A: Wow. Speaker B: I think, I mean, look, the movies. That were created 20, 30 years ago about what it was going to be in 2025. It's ridiculous. We are still not, you know, uh, you know, flying cars and, and all dressed the same boring, you know, stuff. It's like, we don't think it's going to go, you know, as, um, what's your best guess then? Speaker A: What do you think it'll look like in 30 years? Speaker B: It's hard to say. I don't know. I, I think, I don't even know, like, if it's like all electric cars and things like that, but because even with all the issues that we have right now, I mean, there are so many things that we need to solve to make it scalable. Even AI. I mean, do you know like the, how much power and servers is like, people— Speaker A: Insane. Speaker B: Like, it's insane. Those are the limitations. Speaker A: Server farm. Uses as much power as a small city in the United States. Yeah. So yeah, one farm and there's multiple of these AI farms. So we're, we're building whole cities of electricity. Speaker B: Yeah. So we are, uh, exactly. So we are going to hit limitations that we don't even know about yet. Right. So I don't think like this is going to be terribly different. I just hope that there are still, uh, lots of colors and things like that, and it's not as boring as, as most sci-fi movies. Speaker A: I think that's fair. Let's go. Speaker B: No, the colors, I don't know. People are doing— Speaker A: yeah. Why does everybody dress in gray in the, in these things? Yeah, it definitely, most of them need, uh, a lot more color. I do think it's funny you mentioned the predictions of the future, that the future in Back to the Future Part II was 2015. So we're 10 years past the future prediction. Of Back to the Future. Speaker B: It's not there, right? Yes. And I hope we get to be more outside as well, because look, it's all gray. There is no greenery. It's all— there is, there is city and tall stuff, like, or underwater or whatever, but it's not like nature, which is, uh, I think it's gonna keep, um, I think we're gonna have to go back to some of that. Speaker A: I, I hope that we've reached kind of peak industrialism and now we can get back to some more of the optimization and humanity. And same thing like with internet marketing, really. I feel like we reached peak SEO algorithm stuff and now we have to do something else. Like there's nowhere else to go in that arena. And I hope that brings us back to smaller communities. I hope it brings us back to real life communities. Speaker B: Yeah, I think— Yeah. Speaker A: Yeah. That would be awesome. Well, Nathalie, last question, uh, for you here is how can you help us or how can we help you? Tell us about the Membership Lab. Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, at the Membership Lab, what we do, you know, like, we kind of, we kind of shared that, is we help people build, uh, online portals, memberships, online courses, online, you know, group coaching programs. And we use the power of AI to accelerate members' results. Um, we also do custom development and you can find us at themembershiplab.com and I have a couple of freebies at themembershiplab.com/gift. Speaker A: Natalie, thank you so much for being on the show. I had a great time. Again, it's the Human First AI Marketing Podcast. Share this episode with somebody that you think needs to hear it. Hit subscribe if you want to learn more about human-first marketing and find Avenue9 if you want to amplify those messages or things that you're, uh, sending to your community. I love engaging membership communities. I've been doing that, uh, my whole adult life, from the radio, uh, to gigantic, uh, corporations and communities with hundreds of thousands of people. So if you want to, uh, interview your members and feature them in private podcasts or, or lessons and case studies, if you want to interview your, your founders and tell your story or just need help keeping on that treadmill and publishing blogs and podcasts and episodes, uh, and things to, to keep that machine rolling, go to Avenue9.com. Until next time, keep going, have fun, everybody. Bye!