Key Takeaways
- Why the membership site model is a natural, organic extension of Kasey’s art studio that helps her serve her students.
- What Kasey did to turn extra income from her membership site into charitable giving.
- How Kasey narrowed down the focus of her membership site — and why all she had to do to find her niche was listen.
- The specific steps Kasey took from TRIBE to launch Whatever Letter, the unique situation she found herself in as her membership site launched, and the unforgettable moment that happened along the way.
- How Whatever Letter ties into many other aspects of Kasey’s life, visions, and goals.
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Memorable Quote
Not everybody is going to love you, but you’re not looking for everybody. You’re looking for the people who do love you. So, just show up, be yourself, and be real.” – Kasey Hope
Episode Resources
Transcript
Read The Transcript
Shelli: Kasey Hope, thank you so much for hanging out with us on It’s A TRIBE Thing. How are you?
Kasey: I am good. Glad to be here.
Shelli: I was glad to be able to have a little pre-chat with you about what you’re up to in the world and I’m hoping that you can share with our amazing listeners about your journey through your membership site but also like who you are, who you serve, and what you do with them.
Kasey: Yeah. Absolutely. So, my name is Kasey Hope. I am an artist and a teacher so I have owned P’zazz Art Studio for almost 12 years and that’s where we just teach art. And so, I teach art in person and online and recently started doing that online space when I came across TRIBE and just started doing a membership site. So, our membership over at Pzazzonline.com is called Whatever Letter, and within that, we teach ladies how to letter. Like, everybody’s wanting to learn how to do pretty hand lettering and we call it Whatever Letter because based off from verse that just says to focus your mind on whatever is true, whatever is right. And so, not only are we learning to letter, we’re also learning art and we are lettering things that are filling our mind with truth.
Shelli: That’s awesome. My question is I always think it’s interesting when hearing people’s stories. What was the tipping point for you as an artist who had a bigger vision and then ultimately, I know that ultimately you heard about TRIBE and starting a membership site but what came before that when you were teaching, and in doing art that you had that vision for maybe an inkling of something different or something bigger?
Kasey: Well, just the limitations of our studio space, so there came a time where we were maxed out like as much as we wanted to grow and reach more people, we physically couldn’t. We physically can’t fit more people in the building. We can’t fit, do more days in a week. There is only so much you can do on a one-to-one format and so that’s where I really started thinking of how can we serve more people in the online space. We also live in an area that’s really close to a military base and so we were always having students currently, we love them, and get so connected with them and their families and then they would move away. And so, we thought, “If we can get into the online space, we can continue to serve people even after they leave us and expand our audience in a way that we are not able to in our physical location. So, I was really playing with the online classes for probably about five years before I ever heard about TRIBE. I mean, way back to where I was just having a blog and having a secret passcode to get in the blog, it was nothing fancy at all. It was just as a way to try to reach beyond my local area.
Shelli: That’s awesome. So, when you decided I want to go the launch journey of how you launched your membership site because I love the result and the story that went with that but I’m always interested also in the community portion and you pointed directly to that link, especially with a military family that were transient with you for a period of time and then gone. What are you now experiencing now that you have a community of people that get to know you, love you, trust you, and also like go on this journey with you? So, I’m sure that not only are they learning lettering from you but at some point, there also starts to be relationships built as well.
Kasey: Yeah. Absolutely. And those relationships are the best part of all of this, you know, because not only I mean on the business end, the relationships are what grow our business because the people who know, like, and trust me, already they know me, they trust me, those were the people that when they move away, they’re telling their friends, “Hey, check this out. This is not just somebody. I know this girl. We should tell our kids.” So, that relationship is really kind of word of mouth is how we are growing. But then just also we’ve had one meetup so far with our membership and we invited them off. If they were close enough to come, they come to the studio and do a fun a little time and those relationships in that room that were able to be formed in a deeper way to go around a room and tell everybody story and kind of where they were from and what drew them to Whatever Letter and whatever was going on in their lives, just to see the friendships that came out of that room and the relationships that were strengthened, it’s just a cool, sometimes we think of this online world as almost being a disconnect from real life and I think that it’s really important just to see the exact opposite. You know, they are these really deep relationships that are growing within these communities.
Shelli: Well, I agree with you 100% and to your point I’ve had the privilege to speak with numerous people about their membership sites and not just their membership sites, that’s sort of the subtopic, but really the impact of the membership site and having one has on their life, their freedom, their abundance, their ability to travel to be benevolent to give back, their legacy, all of that but the common theme that everybody is circling back and connecting with is that idea of community. And although it is digital in nature, in some regards, it really is the human connection that really is the underpinning of the membership site and of the community that you’re creating.
Kasey: I agree 100% and so much it expands so much even beyond just the members in your group because each of those members have their own circle of influence. They can take back – we’ve seen people take just like their lessons that we teach and go back to a small group maybe at their church or somewhere and do similar things within their small group. And we’ve seen on the benevolent side, we’re partnered with an organization called Rice Bowls and they feed kids around the world. And so, through the extra income that a membership has, we’re saving it for every one member every month for feeding one kid. So, that combined with what we’ve already been doing with the studio like I am reaching and hoping for this year we will hit 100,000 meals provided and the membership site is just something that’s helping, do that even more. So, the ladies that are in it, they know that not only do they have an awesome connection within the group but their money is also being used to feed kiddos around the world.
Shelli: I absolutely love that and one of the things that touches me personally about this whole model is I have this concept that I always talk about, about currency, and that when people think about currency, of course, they think about money, but there are many, many different types of currency like we just said like benevolence and creativity and peace and meditation or integrity. There’s thousands of them and when you have a regular recurring revenue that is generated by the membership site that not only offers you freedom of your time, but it allows you to be able to give and to trade in the currencies that mean so much to you and to your point like you get to feed all these kids by being the visionary who was once an art teacher saw something bigger, executed on that, got to create this amazing community that that in itself is rewarding but also now get to pay it forward with the charity that you’re supporting as well. Incredible.
Kasey: Yeah. And I think generosity spurs generosity. So, it’s not just about what we’re giving but by our members knowing that, “Hey, I see that she uses a small amount of income to help other people.” I’ve seen the ripple effect that people saying, “I want to do something with my job too or with my income too. How can I help other people?” And I think that’s a cool thing too. And generosity becomes contagious then it just keeps going and going and going.
Shelli: Absolutely. You know, it’s kind of re-creating the business model from being competitive to being collaborative and charitable. So, the thing that I love about your membership site is from the offset, there are probably many people that are unfamiliar with the space that might say, “Wow. You’ve created an entire business around lettering.” What advice would you give somebody who perhaps has an area of interest, hobby, expertise, whatever it might be who is saying to themselves right now, “Oh, that thing that I have isn’t a big enough gift to give. It’s not going to go, it’s not going to have legs or fly. It’s not a thing,” what would you tell those people?
Kasey: Well, I think one of the things that I’ve heard Stu say a lot that really helped me was to narrow down because if I’m talking to somebody else who feels like they’ve got a gift, they may very well, if they’re in the creative space, they’re going to have a lot of gifts probably. And I think that’s what I was doing wrong for those first five years. I am the art teacher and so in my studio, we teach watercolor and pastels and acrylic paint and clay and collage. We do all of that stuff. And so, I was trying to take all of that stuff online. I was basically just trying to duplicate what we do in the studio and some online classes. And what I found is it was almost too diverse and so Stu kept saying, “Narrow it down. Narrow it down,” and I was thinking, “How do I narrow it down?” There are so many things I love and so many things I can teach and so many things that I think people would want to do. I just listened to what he said, I’m like, “Okay. So, what am I going to narrow it down to? How in the world am I going to pick one area when I love so many? And I just started just paying attention to what people were asking me for and during that time, really, I was praying too. I was like, “God, show me what you want me to do.” I know that I’m called to something else here but I need some direction and I just wanted somebody just to tell me and that didn’t exactly happen.
But during that time of just searching on like how am I going to narrow down my focus when I feel so passionate about so many different art forms? I just started listening what people were asking for and we had people in the studio that would say, “I love how you wrote on that. Do you ever teach classes on how to write like that?” Or, “My daughter got some markers and she really wants to learn hand lettering but she’s just not sure where to start.” And so, I just started listening to what they were asking and kind of just said, “Let’s give it a try.” I’ve been trying other things for five years. It doesn’t hurt to try and I didn’t know how successful it would be but when I narrowed it down to hand lettering, I kind of start putting it out there. And even within the TRIBE community, I love that they kind of gave me some ideas too on how could I combine all this stuff. And somebody within the community was like, “You can teach lettering along with watercolor and along with acrylic paint, and along with all these other things.” And so, now just through talking it out, through listening to what people were asking for, that is what our membership is. It is lettering but it’s not just letter. I mean, it’s not every single month you get a handwriting. We do different lettering projects. So, for a quarter, I will teach these beautiful watercolors and then I’ll teach how to letter on top of them or how to use the watercolor brush to letter. And then now we’re into using acrylic paint and acrylic paint pens and we letter on glass and on canvas and on wood.
So, it is pulling in everything that I’m gifted in but it’s not marketed like that because that’s almost overwhelming sometimes to just say that you’re going to do it all. So, it’s very streamlined focused into hand lettering. If you want to learn hand lettering, this will teach you hand lettering and by the way, you do a lot of other stuff too but that is the narrow down. So, if I’m talking to somebody who is multi-passionate, I would just kind of re-give the same advice that Stu gave and to narrow it down to something very specific.
Shelli: I love the simplicity of that and I echo that as well because I was given the same advice. So, it’s quite powerful when you have this toolbox of skills or talents or interests that you have, it’s counterintuitive to narrow it down, but when you do, it actually expands your reach.
Kasey: It does, yes.
Shelli: You think like it should be the other way around.
Kasey: And it expands your mind too. As far as, okay, if I’m just going in with lettering, how much can I think to do with lettering? And so, it’s almost as if like whenever you give kids limited options, their creativity grows like just yesterday I did a class and every kid had very limited options. They all had the same paint place setting and get to ask for a different color paint. They all had the same starting place that everybody was completely different because they had these limited things that they were working with and then it expanded their creativity and that’s what it does when you narrow down your focus or that’s what it’s done for me anyway, to narrow down onto lettering and it’s expanded all the different things I can do with lettering.
Shelli: Brilliant. I want to segue into, if we can, your launch. So, you went from an art teacher that had an idea executing on that idea into the launch of your membership site. I want to talk about how your launch went and what it was like for you to actually pull the trigger on, “Okay. I’m actually going to do this now.” I want to hear about what your biggest success was, but also what your biggest challenge was.
Kasey: Okay. So, yeah, I wish I had my notes in front of me, but we really followed the game plan that was inside of TRIBE. We followed it to a T. We did lives. We did a lot of different lives every day letting people know of what was going on but we also collaborated with other TRIBE members. And so, some of our biggest boost came from other people that I met through TRIBE saying, “Hey, come over to my platform and tell a little bit about your membership.” And we did that and really that was a huge boost about collaborating with other people. It exposed me to a lot more people that didn’t know about me before. And so, I feel like just doing lots of lives, collaborating with as many people as I could, getting on different platforms, we had like 100 in four days. We ended the launch of 167. So, for me, I was very excited. I thought that was a great, great first launch.
Shelli: Okay. I just need to circle back on that because you flew through that really quickly. I just want to say that one more time. On day four of your launch, first time out, you had 100 members.
Kasey: And that is largely due to collaborating with other people, yes, because there were a lot of people who I knew but there were a lot of people that I did not know. I’d started doing a lot of videos prior to the launch to try to kind of introduce myself to people at other TRIBEs. Also, inside of TRIBE, we have a little mini, it’s called TRIBE Creative Minds. We just collaborate with it. We’re all in the artsy space and we all have memberships and so we collaborate a lot and through the help of those girls, I swear, I wouldn’t have the membership that I have without them, not only help during that launch mode but every other step of the way. Like, I’m thinking, “I don’t know how to ship,” because along with our membership, we also ship them a monthly packet. It’s not really, it was not meant to be a box subscription but kind of we do ship them things every single month just to get them started and I had no idea how to do that in bulk. And one of the girls inside TRIBE taught me through that. And so, yes, a lot of where I am now is from those friendships inside of TRIBE.
Shelli: Well, it’s amazing how different the membership community and the membership business model is from so many others in that it is so supportive and it is so just like we’re going to support the people in our membership, we’re going to be supported by our community of people who are also out in the world doing the same thing. And kind of like I am a firefighter as well as, you know, and it just reminds me so much of the same sort of I have your back no matter what.
Kasey: Yeah.
Shelli: And when you’re in that sacred space, you can kind of feel a little braver than maybe you would otherwise or be supportive in a way to take action when maybe you would’ve been challenged or you would’ve had something that perhaps showed up like procrastination or overwhelm or whatever, but really underneath all of that, it’s fear. But when you have that community shoring you up, it really does change the game for how you move forward in your business.
Kasey: It absolutely does. Absolutely. Accountability, motivation, everything.
Shelli: Amazing. So, what was the biggest challenge you had while you were launching and how did you overcome it?
Kasey: So, during my launch, my grandmother passed away and that was tough. She was ready though and so that was a lot of blessing. She was very much like, “I’m ready.” It was very much of a blessing just to see somebody at that stage of life and not be scared of death but they’re like, “You know what, I’m ready to be in heaven.” And so, but we had a lot of stuff, a lot of grieving, and funeral and it’s right in the middle of a live launch and I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m supposed to be one way and I feel kind of a different way.” And so, that was a challenge but you know, I just kind of I did There was a couple of days where I wasn’t super consistent with my lives and when I did go live, it just was real. I didn’t do anything pretty scripted. I talked about her and we did letter and we lettered the words, “I’m so happy.” And to letter those words because she kept saying that. She said, “When I die, I’m going to be happy, happy, happy.” And so, we just kind of just gave a testament to her life and to her faith and to that. And so, although my emotions were all over the place and I wasn’t as consistent as I would have been otherwise, I was able just to still share real life and that’s what we keep on doing within the membership too. We share real life and things aren’t always scripted perfectly but we just keep rolling with it. So, it was a challenge but it was okay too.
Shelli: Well, it speaks to also what you are you talking about earlier in terms of community like in that moment, they can learn lettering from a bunch of people, but they want to learn it from you, the human being that you are, and the way you show up and the way you support them is very similar to the way you allow other people to support you. And so, it’s interesting to me that you said you weren’t on as many lives as you had hoped to be or as you wanted to be, but my guess just from talking to you for this very brief time as the lives you showed up for were very much quality over quantity and people really got to go deep and get to know you, and I’m sure that made a difference in terms of saying, “I’m with her.”
Kasey: I hope so. Yeah, yeah. That’s what we try to do. With all of our live videos, we try to just like let people feel like they are in the studio and just be ourselves and there’s that whole thing and they call it attraction marketing and it’s just be yourself and not everybody is going to love you but you’re not looking for everybody. You’re looking for your people who do love you and so just show up, be yourself, and be real.
Shelli: Absolutely. So, one last question, now that you’ve launched successfully and you’ve got a bunch of members in there, how was your life different now in terms of maybe how it’s rewarding for you or the confidence you may be had from launching or the recurring revenue or the benevolence you get to give back to other people? How is your life different now than it was before you started and what was the unexpected gift in that?
Kasey: So, different was on the financial. It’s so interesting. I did look for a membership for the financial. Two things, I want to spread what we’re doing. I want to grow our business, but within that, I found something even more meaningful because the membership that we now have with Whatever Letter is so much more meaningful than just recurring revenue like it is we are speaking the truth. We have a Bible study within it. We send out different scripture cards. We feed kids around the world. I’ve had people messaging me within our group and just need prayer because their dad is on the deathbed and they just don’t know what to do. So, there’s much more like that is not financial that feels me up like, “Thank you, God, that you are using me in this space,” like when you feel it to me like for me, when. I feel that I am being used, that is the most fulfilling thing for me. Like, if I’m being used by God for his purposes, that is the most fulfilling. So, number one way that is more different is that I feel like that I am being used just a bigger scope than previously on the financial side. I do still have a studio and I love the studio.
Like I said, we’ve been here for 12 years but having that recurring revenue does help with just the fear. If you’re a small business owner, like every month you’re like you never know what’s coming in and so having something that is coming at every single month definitely gives stability there. We’re able to pay off some debt because for us the membership right now it is not my full-time business. The studio is a full-time business. The membership is just another avenue of our business so we’ve been able to pay off some debt with that, give back with that like we mentioned before, and then just a great community of people. So, that’s kind of how my life is different and also, we’re not even a year into this. We’re just a few months down the road. And so, I’m really excited just to see how this grows and how my life continues to change and more people that we can impact and teach.
Shelli: What’s your ultimate vision for your membership site?
Kasey: You know what, because I’m a dreamer I feel like that question…
Shelli: I love it. I love that you’re a dreamer.
Kasey: It kind of change all the time and part of me, we recently just had just for Christmas for Black Friday, we had a lettering box that we released. It’s product with our lettering, traceables in there, and markers, and some of our scripture cards and it links backs to a video. And so, part of my dream is to have product corresponding with the membership too so that some people they don’t want just the membership. They want the product that goes along with it. So, that’s one of them and really just to continue to give back in bigger ways and to grow the membership.
Shelli: I love it and I appreciate not only your inspiration for executing and having such a successful launch but also for your ability to really go so much farther beyond just the financial part of the membership and realize that membership is made of members and members are humans and humans are a community. So, thank you for that.
Kasey: Absolutely.
Shelli: If people are looking for you online, where’s the best place they can find you?
Kasey: Well, if they’re interested in our membership, Pzazzonline.com is our online side of our website because that is our studio space but then also on Instagram @pzazzartstudio.
Shelli: Brilliant. And I appreciate you and I thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us on the It’s A TRIBE Thing Podcast.
Kasey: Thank you.
