How Cathy Hay Turned an Obscure Passion into a Profitable Membership

Cathy Hay trained as a math teacher, but found herself overwhelmed by the stress of the classroom – which eventually led to her building a completely different career – sewing dresses. Unfortunately she learned the hard way… sewing is one of the most underpaid skills in the world. She discovered that many people were also struggling to get by as dressmakers, and created her membership site as a way to generate steady income from month to month. However, what makes her membership site truly innovative is her extraordinary ability to curate the expertise of other people in her field. At Foundations Revealed, Cathy provides mentorship and support for corset makers. She’s built a community where people interested in extremely specific periods of historical dress can learn new techniques, participate in monthly live workshops, and discuss their craft in a private community. Today, Cathy joins the podcast to share the story of how she started her membership site, how it allows her to empower her friends, and how she’s turned her niche interest into a profitable business without ever struggling with the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Key Takeaways

How Cathy combined her unique skill set into the perfect foundation for her membership site – and how she learned to monetize her passion, despite it being historically underpaid.
What Cathy did to escape the content treadmill – and how she attracts, hires, and retains the best talent in her field.
Why you’re not trying to create the perfect membership site when you launch your first version, how you can use your audience to guide your services, and the epiphany that made Cathy realize how powerful her site is.
The value of going narrow and deep – and why Cathy should have never worried that her interest was too obscure to find an audience.

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Memorable Quote

“We go deep on corset making. It’s about as niche as you can get.” – Cathy Hay “You aren’t starting again every month, wondering what you’re going to make.” – Cathy Hay “You can always hire people who are better than you are. They’ll up your game.” – Cathy Hay

Episode Resources

Foundations Revealed Cathy Hay on Instagram

Transcript

Read The Transcript

Shelli: Cathy Hay, welcome to the It’s a Tribe Thing Podcast. How are you? Cathy: Hello. Fantastic. Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s an exciting thing to be here. Shelli: Oh, my goodness. I was so inspired by not only your personal story, but specifically how you’re doing memberships and I’m super excited to dive into that for everybody listening because you sort of put a twist on it that keeps the overwhelmed down and the creative juices high. So, before we get into that, though, I would love if you could share with our amazing audience who you are, who you serve, and how you got to be this incredible membership site owner. Cathy: Okay. That’s a lot of questions in one. I am a costume maker and a corset maker, and I have a membership site that is specifically for corset makers. I know we do all sorts of sewing but particularly historical costume and especially we go deep on corset making. So, it’s about as niche as you can get. Shelli: Right. Cathy: So, I started teaching math. I trained as a math teacher originally but never quite finished the training going into it because I got very overwhelmed in a classroom. It’s a very stressful environment, it’s a very stressful job because you’re working 24/7 really but that way, you’re at school is just like a performance and you’re doing lesson planning and all that. So, I found it very stressful and having got out was that I got very into sewing and particularly making historical clothes. I came all the way to fabulous dresses I can see in movies and on TV. So, after about ten years of trying to make it as a dressmaker and I would make historically themed wedding dresses, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, what I didn’t know until that point was that sewing is one of the most highly skilled and underpaid jobs in history. I mean, in centuries it’s been horribly underpaid. So, my income as a dressmaker was not so much feast and famine but a sort of very modest afternoon tea income. So, it was fits and spurts pocket money. So, this was when about 2007 I found something online about memberships, about membership sites. There seemed to be I was just getting to a point where I was very, very frustrated and seeing that a lot of people around me were very frustrated with, how nobody seems to get what we’re worth. We can never make enough to get by as dressmakers, and it had to be another option. So, I got into membership just as a way of making a sustainable steady monthly income. What really impressed me about the business was just how steady it was month-to-month because once you’ve got a few members, you might have some people leave and some people join but, generally speaking, from month-to-month you aren’t starting again every month to ask again and make up what are you going to make this month. It’s fairly stable from month to month. Shelli: That’s amazing and I want to dive into how you do your membership site because this is the piece that fascinates me. So often I’ll hear people talking about starting a membership site and one of the things I often hear will be that people are thinking, “I am an expert and I have a certain amount of knowledge or expertise in a particular area but do I have enough expertise just to maintain it and sustain it month after month after month?” And I loved how you are doing things but I also love that I consider you one of the great innovators both because, well, even with respect to being a math teacher and being overwhelmed teaching math and then developing this love of sewing to alleviate your stress and it’s ironic that the way you’ve chosen to run your membership site much like you’re finding it overwhelming as a math teacher, you’ve chosen to run your membership site in a way that keeps the stress at an ultimate low and the overwhelm at an ultimate low by essentially, listen to this, people, curating the expertise of other people as well. Can you speak to that and how you decided to choose that way of doing your membership sites? So, not just featuring you but all of the other experts in your field of expertise? Cathy: Yes. Well, I started out before we went very deep on the corset making, we were doing just costume making in general. Now, the history of costume is a pretty big subject. You’re going from Anglo-Saxon and Viking right up through Elizabethan and into 18th, 19th century Victorian. So, that’s a huge skillset. So, there would be people who love that period, they would love, so I knew that when I started, I had my special sauce was that being a math teacher I could show people how to make patterns and do the math problems which was intimidating to people. So, I could do a few great tutorials on that. And really, I kind of wanted to hire my friends to write about the thing that they knew about. I mean, really, they were writing blog posts at the time where they would share a few pictures, a few construction details, what fabric they used and just a few bits here and there. But I was like, “When do I get like the full details? When do I get the step 1, step 2, step 3?” Maybe if I started this membership site, we would be like we were passing the hat around everybody and we could all clock together and pay this friend to actually lay out all the details for us just like give us the goods already, all the fun details. So, by doing that, I could get Kendra who is all about the 18th Century and somebody else who is about a different period and if everybody could add their little bit of the – it’s like everybody had figured out a little bit different bit of the puzzle and if they all contributed their little bit, we could make this complete picture. So, and that continues today because at that stage or right at the beginning, I hired a friend who’s what I could tell from the most stressful part was going to be what we know called this content treadmill, how do you keep producing great content week after week? So, I hired a friend whose one job was to find content, to source content, to be the person who was like a talent scout almost and look out for people doing interesting things and invite them to write something for us. So, we paid them in which time we just started to curate this library and in fact, my editor at the time was a lady who had particularly in [inaudible] so she really got into creating this library of content. Later on, in the last couple of years as I got onto TRIBE, at the beginning though, it was much more like I used to describe what we were doing as a magazine because we were just publishing content every week. And now as I’ve come to TRIBE, I’ve been much more about creating the community and bringing in a sense it’s a two-way conversation. It’s not just putting stuff out there, and that means I can bring in coaches. I mean, now I’m running this membership site and I’m no longer really sewing for money myself. I’m not taking commissions so I had people who not really competitors but people who might see themselves as rivals saying, “Well, at this business we’re all practicing professional makers,” because obviously, I’m not doing that anymore. So, I was like, “Okay. Well, bring on some more people,” and I’ve brought on coaches who are absolutely the best in the world at corset making certainly in my opinion. So, I’ve been able to bring on coaches and bring on people who know way more than I do and it’s just something I always believed that you can always hire people who are better than you are because they will up your game. Shelli: Absolutely. I just want people to get the depth of how actually brilliant this is because if you have an area that you have expertise in or even an area that you have like an outstanding amount of interest in, the benefit to the community is that as somebody who has that interest or has that expertise, you have a 30,000-foot view perspective of all of the people that you would want to talk to and you’re able to curate them and bring them together but because you’re able to triple down on somebody’s expertise in a very small niche, like you were saying some of these people, they specialize in a specific timeframe. So, to being able to bring all of these people together in a membership site for a monthly fee that is affordable for the people that have those interest but the best part in some ways is as the person who has an interest in this area, you get to now basically have the ear of being the place where those people come to share their knowledge. And so, it’s almost like you get to borrow authority and become the meeting place for your niche. It’s just it’s genius on several levels, my friend. Cathy: Thank you. Yeah. It’s just a place where everybody goes, and it works to sort of – it sort of multiplies all of our authority together. It’s not about taking it from me but it’s more like we get to bring a whole community together to share resources. It was a sensitive but we having trade secrets they would hide but now I think of myself, I think I have a great obsession of the Greatest Showman and I think it was obvious the way master of circus of bringing together all these fabulous very different artists who are all figuring out different pieces of the puzzle and we all have different pieces of the solutions to our problems and we all put all of that knowledge together. We all get to borrow each other’s research and borrow each other’s expertise. Shelli: I love it because we can much farther together than we can alone. Cathy: Exactly. Yes. Shelli: I also wanted to point out to everybody as well that you were saying earlier in our chat that sewing is not like a high-profit endeavor generally speaking. What you were able to do by setting up your membership site and especially setting it up in this way where you are the place online for corset makers is you’ve turned something that on the outside wasn’t an occupation that pays really well or is sustainable on its own even though you loved it and the vehicle of the membership site were then able to turn that thing which you love into the vehicle for recurring monthly revenue. Cathy: Yes. And not just for me. These are the makers as well because when they write an article for us, they get paid. They get to make a bit of money and they get to increase their influence and their confidence. Some of the best stories that we’ve got are not just how we built the confidence of our members. That we build the confidence of our writers as they have developed an identity as well. So, it’s just bringing… Shelli: What is your favorite part personally about having a membership site? Cathy: I think my favorite part at the moment is how it’s developing into something that’s about much more than sewing because I mentioned at the beginning I was finally being able to cope as a math teacher, well, I’ve struggled, well, I’ve worked all my life on dealing with my mental health and being always feeling very different than feeling like I don’t fit in anywhere and that has translated out the two. That’s become something that I seem to be able to help my members with that kind of comes under the radar as a secondary underlying benefit is now the messaging is changing from make better corsets into this is how we score our mental health. This is how through creativity, we give back to ourselves. Just now that we’ve got – we’re now running an annual competition where everybody gets to show off what they’ve done and it’s become not so much competition which that can beating for a prize but a challenge in which they’re getting over their mental obstacles and getting through and getting determined and having a vision and realizing it and just proving that they can do more than they have. So, and that goes all the tangent of it. Shelli: No. That’s not a tangent, my friend. That is brilliant because we’re all in this game together in terms of mental health, and making sure that we stay healthy and however that looks for different people and having the ability to stay in something that you’re interested in for a period of time in some ways is almost like a meditation and to be able to accomplish something and also have the support of the membership site like yours is amazing because to your point, this wouldn’t exist had you not curated all of these incredible mentors and team members and created this community in which they’re supported in that and my hat is off to you for what you’ve created and how you’ve created it. Cathy: Thank you very much. Yes, it’s very a rewarding thing to do. Shelli: What would you give – what advice would you give to somebody who is maybe at your step one when you’re very first thinking about, man, is a membership site for me? Or if I had not a membership site that maybe they want to move in the direction that you have with respect to curating other experts and authorities in that specific niche? Cathy: Well, I started out in a very organic way almost. I wasn’t – when I first got online before Facebook, before I started a community, I started out just getting online wanting to find friends. My interest is so niche that corset making is pretty much a minority score so when I first got online I was going on a cycle of life journey from this is us 15 years ago and just making friends and I was able to start this membership site and curate all of this content because I had already built so many relationships within that group. It wasn’t that – and it happened very organically is also whether I was “building an audience”. It was just finding friends and creating community together, so we knew a lot of people with different interests and we were all interested in what each of them was doing. So, it was really a way of almost formalizing that. So, the first advice is just to be very involved in your community, in your field of interest, and be very interested in what everybody is doing so that you can start to become that sort of the ringmaster of the circus or the cheerleader so that you could be – so you can have the 35,000-foot view of what everybody’s doing as a community and where that community is going, what we’re learning and what we’re learning in corset making is really still quite new in its present incarnation. We’re only really started to get really into it to about 2004 so I can see how it’s developing as an art form to be able to see that overall view and be involved with as many people as you can and get involved and do build that network because you need the network in order to start curating the content. Other than that, I just say it’s just about once you do decide to get a membership going, the best advice I have very early on I did a course that was like a very, very primitive version of TRIBE long before TRIBE came along and the best advice in that course was just to get something out there, just get something online. It’s very tempting to want to make it perfect before you launch but it’s just you’re not creating the perfect membership. You’re creating version 1.0 and once you get – and the hardest part is getting, the hardest thing I’ve done in almost 11 or 12 years is to get our first version out there. Once you’ve got something online, you can tweak that thing to your heart’s content and that will be fun because you can always mix little things you can do. The hardest part is just don’t worry about how great it is or how perfect it is. You just get something up there then you can start playing with it and get going. Shelli: So, when you did just get it up going so like your friends do says, “You don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to get it going,” because if you find that once you got it out there and thought, “Man, I’m just going to launch it. It might not be perfect.” Did you find though that your audience was then kind of informing you and championing you in terms of this is what we would like more of and almost guiding you to where they wanted to go which is, in essence, is making your job as the membership site owner even easier? Cathy: That’s certainly how we do it now because we have a two-way conversation. At the time, it was much more we were chumming this back in 2007. So, we were just producing content and seeing where you went with it whether how many, well, I mean, we did in our Facebook, but we have comments. You can comment on tutorial. So, yes, we would respond to what people wanted and respond to have any comments so, yes, we would certainly respond as best we could given the technology we have. So, yes, it is all about responding to what people want and then also looking where your field is going. We had an epiphany a few years in that we were trying to respond to what people wanted but we started to realize that we were becoming a central hub in our niche and we were influencing where it was going. We were having an influence in a two-way sense. So, it becomes a very two-way conversation what do people want and then also looking around to see what people need, what not just what they are actively asking you for but what do they need that they don’t know they need yet. What are the underlying pain points or the things that aren’t going well in our interest as well? Shelli: That’s brilliant. What do they need that they don’t know they need? That’s genius. Cathy: Yeah. Shelli: One last question for you. So, as we spoke earlier at the top of this interview you were talking about initially you were the area of interest that you were diving into which much bigger but then you ended up niching it down. What was the benefit of that that you weren’t expecting that ended up being a great surprise for you? Cathy: It was the value of going narrow and deep. When I first started, I worried like crazy. The historical costume was a bit obscure and I kind of knew that sewing would work and I started a sewing membership. A lot of people sew but historical costume, and at the time I had a partner who’s bringing in most of the household income, so this was – I was kind of messing about and having fun with it. I didn’t need it to make money out of the gate. So, I got well, I’ll just do costume because that’s what I’m into and that all probably crash and burn and then I can dig up and do general sewing. But I can’t not give it a try and sure enough after two years, we started to notice that there was this deep passionate need for knowledge about corset making. I mean, that was a bit that everybody felt hard. So, we started a second site on the side about corset making and that one knocks and was more popular than the costume making had ever been and I start to realize how the historical costume was way too broad, still way too broad because one person wanted to be Elizabeth I, another person wanted to be Margaret Washington. Third person wanted to be Lucille Ball. How do you cater to all different periods of history? So, by going deep in corset making which just went nuts and we were able to cater to a number of different kinds of costume who are doing corsets for different reasons but I would never ever have guessed at the beginning when I was worrying that I needed to come to general sewing that by concentrating on a single garment that would take us 12 years and still going. So, it really taught me that it’s a really great example of whenever I come to events, I’m just like it just seems to blow people’s minds. It’s like I’m not the poster child who is more niched. It’s like… Shelli: Yes. Yes. Cathy: And I would start hearing people say, “Gosh, she’s into corset making.” I mean, I’m sure to succeed but [inaudible]. So, don’t be afraid to go narrow. Because when you find people who really want that thing that there’s a real need for them, we are, “Oh, my god, I have to join this thing. It was made for me.” And so, there’s so much fun even going narrow. Shelli: I love it. So, for everybody listening, you don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to get it going. Don’t be afraid to niche down to something even smaller than you initially think and the third take away is you don’t have to be the person creating all the content. You can become the hub and the curator to bring in those people that have specific expertise and those people that you always wanted to speak to anyways and now they have a reason to come and offer their knowledge. So, Cathy, thank you so, so much for spending time with us. And if people are looking for you online, where is the best place they can find you? Cathy: I’m in two places on Instagram. My personal thing at Cathy.Hay. Cathy with a C and H-A-Y. Cathy.Hay which is all my fiddling around with it and we’re also if you want to see the corsets that’s at Foundations Revealed on Instagram or FoundationsRevealed.com. Shelli: Perfect. So, FoundationsRevealed.com and Cathy.Hay. Thank you, my friend, so much for your time. Cathy: Thank you. Thank you, Shelli. This has been such a pleasure. Shelli: These incredible wisdom bombs. You’re incredible. Cathy: Thank you. And thank you [END]