There’s a moment in every membership journey that stings:

Your vision is clear. Your content is polished. Your platform works. But engagement is lukewarm, the feedback is vague - and the conversions?

They’re way slower than expected.

You wonder: Did I miss something?

The truth? Maybe.

But it’s not because you didn’t work hard enough.

You missed something because you built the product you imagined people needed - not the one they actually came looking for.

Now, that’s not a failure. That’s feedback.

And it’s one of the hardest and most important realizations any operator can have.

But it’s what you do with that feedback that often determines if your membership will sink or swim.

Let’s dive in.

I love to talk about fixing churn, improving onboarding, and tweaking pricing. But here’s a deeper question:

What if the core problem you’re facing isn’t how you’re delivering the membership - but what you’re delivering in the first place?

I see many operators fall into the same trap:

They spend months (or years) building something beautiful only to realize it’s out of sync with what their audience actually needs.

None of this means your idea was wrong. It just means your members showed up with a different reality.

As operators, we have time to brainstorm, test and imagine everything our product could be. We’re fully in it.

But the reality is this: Our members are coming to the table because they have real needs and real problems to be solved - and they don’t always have the time or energy to dive into the extra bells and whistles we often build into our product.

They just want what’s reliable. What’s consistent. And what’s needed.

They want to trust that what you’re providing them is actually moving them forward.

And often, that reality looks different than the original plans you had for your membership.

So this is where you have to decide:

Are you married to your original plan or are you committed to serving the people in front of you and addressing the realities they brought to the table with them?

The best memberships don’t stick to the blueprint - they evolve.

They adapt to the beat of their people and strike at the heart of precisely what those people need.

Now, it’s not always easy to adjust to the needs of your members. The truth is, most won’t take the time to give you valuable feedback - they’ll just cancel and move on.

But there are signals you can spot to help uncover the mystery of what your members want most and ways to structure your offering to invite the kind of feedback you can iterate off of.

Years of building memberships with other operators taught me this:

It takes humility to admit that your product needs reshaping. But that’s what separates good operators from great ones: The willingness to rebuild when necessary.

Because the membership that thrives isn’t always the one you first imagined.

It’s the one that meets people where they are and evolves as they do.

It’s easy to fall in love with your vision. But membership is a relationship, not a monument.

It’s something you build in conversation with your audience. And that conversation has to include change.

So here’s my challenge to you:

Identify one part of your membership that isn’t landing.

Not the one you’re most proud of, but the one your audience barely touches.

Now ask: If I rebuilt this for the member who’s struggling, what would it look like?

Maybe it means reworking a feature. Maybe it means cutting something entirely. Maybe it just means rewriting how you explain it.

Whatever it is, take the first step toward making your membership not just functional but truly useful.

And lastly, I’ll leave you with this question:

Are you holding on to your plan or holding space for what your members actually need?

Think about it.

Tell me: How can I help you with your membership? Respond to this email and let me know (I always read every reply).

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See you next Tuesday.

-Michael