Membership Models for Coaches and Experts: How to Know If a Community Offer Is Right for You
About a year ago, I started playing with the idea of launching a membership in my coaching business.
On the surface, it seemed like the obvious next move. A close-knit community space where I could show up for my audience more consistently, and yeah, create some predictable, recurring income. A total win-win, right?
So I did what I always do before building something new. I went into research mode. I read everything. I listened to podcasts. I learned from people like Robbie Kellman Baxter, Stu McLaren, and Lisa Princic. I studied all kinds of membership models and actually joined a few myself because I wanted to feel what actually works from the inside. And what doesn't.
And after all that digging around?
I realized a membership wasn't the right fit for my business. Or my energy.
But here's the thing. That whole exploration gave me something way more valuable: real clarity.
Today, I want to share what I uncovered about why memberships and community offers are everywhere right now, what actually makes them work, and most importantly, how to know if this model is meant for your coaching business.
Because while memberships can absolutely create real connection and bring in recurring revenue, they also demand a kind of structure, presence, and emotional labor that not every coach is willing or designed to carry.
The Membership Movement: Why Coaches Are Paying Attention
In 2025, memberships and paid communities are literally everywhere.
Circle's latest trends report shows that 75% of paid communities are actually maintaining or growing their engagement year over year, while free Facebook groups and Slack communities keep declining. And Paperbell did a survey of online coaches that found over 60% are exploring membership-style offers as an alternative to the one-off course or launch cycle model.
The appeal makes total sense. Recurring income, clients who stick around, and that sense of belonging that one-time programs just can't seem to create.
Robbie Kellman Baxter, who wrote The Membership Economy, puts it perfectly:
"If you want recurring revenue, you have to deliver recurring value."
That sentence stopped me cold. Because delivering recurring value is genuinely different from just collecting recurring payments.
And that's the distinction right there. It's where memberships either thrive or quietly start falling apart.
The Promise vs. The Pressure: What Makes a Paid Community Actually Work
Two Communities, Two Totally Different Vibes
Over the past year, I've been part of two paid communities that couldn't have been more different from each other.
The first one? Massive. Over 2,700 members. The second? Intimate. Maybe 50 of us.
When I first logged into the large one, I felt this rush of excitement and immediately got overwhelmed. The feed was moving faster than I could even keep up with. New trainings were dropping weekly. There were channels for every single topic you could imagine, and people were posting around the clock.
At first I thought, "Oh wow, this is incredible. So much value!"
But a few weeks in, all that "value" started to feel more like noise than anything else.
It was hard to find real people to connect with. It was harder still to actually get the hosts' attention. They were always in launch mode, always promoting the next thing, always adding new bonuses, new content, new programs and offers. I could tell they genuinely wanted to help, but the scale just made real intimacy impossible.
It felt less like a community and more like an entrepreneurial assembly line. Hundreds of people grinding away next to each other, but not really together.
Now flip to the smaller community I'm in.
We actually know each other's names. Conversations actually unfold instead of disappearing into the void. When someone shares a win, everyone shows up to celebrate. When someone's struggling, the host doesn't just drop a comment. She actually engages. The monthly calls feel like sitting around a table with people who get it, not shouting across a room full of strangers.
Here's what living in both of those spaces taught me:
Bigger isn't better. Connection is.
The memberships that actually succeed aren't the loudest or the largest. They're the ones built at a human scale.
Why Some Paid Communities Actually Thrive
When I look at memberships that are genuinely working, five things keep showing up:
A clear, living promise. Members know exactly what they're getting month after month and why it matters to them personally.
Connection over content. Sure, new modules are great, but it's belonging that keeps people renewing.
Predictable rhythm. Whether it's calls, sprints, challenges, or discussions, there's a rhythm people can count on, and it builds trust. In my smaller community, the leader hosts a monthly revenue driving activity that we can all participate and support each other in.
Real host presence. The leader shows up. Not just to teach, but to actually see their members. Just last week, the host of my smaller community recorded a personal message to me in the group. It was helpful for me and for the other members.
A culture of care. Wins get celebrated. Silence gets noticed. People feel held.
Stu McLaren says something I think about all the time: "Retention is the real measure of success."
And Lisa Princic talks about "going deep before you go wide."
They're both right.
Where Membership Hosts Go Wrong
After being inside paid communities, I can tell you most struggling memberships hit the same stumbling blocks:
Overgrowth. They scale too fast, and when you do that, connection just dissolves. You can't hold intimacy with 2,700 people when your space was designed for 200.
Overload. Instead of creating more connection, hosts start pumping out more content. Members feel it, hosts feel it. Everyone gets exhausted.
Overpromise. Constant bonuses. Constant add-ons. It becomes a treadmill that eventually becomes impossible to sustain.
Undersupport. The host's energy gets so stretched that members feel invisible, even when all the systems are technically running smoothly.
It's not about bad intentions. It's about misalignment.
Here's the thing: community isn't a content strategy. It's a relationship strategy.
The Membership Mindset Shift
The biggest shift happening in 2025 isn't about technology. It's about philosophy.
A report from Ember Consulting found that creators are moving away from being educators toward being facilitators.
"The real value of a membership comes from the interactions between members, not just from the leader's content."
That's huge, and it's something every coach should sit with before launching a membership.
Because facilitating connection requires a completely different energy than teaching transformation.
If you light up when you're holding space, guiding conversations, and building culture, you'll probably thrive in a membership. You'll love it.
But if you're someone who thrives in deep, one-on-one work. If being "on" for a community 24/7 sounds draining. That needs to be okay too.
Both paths are valid. The real question is: which one lights you up?
The Core Question: Does Your Audience Have an Ongoing Problem?
Robbie Kellman Baxter wrote something in The Forever Transaction that I keep coming back to:
"To justify recurring revenue, you need a product that solves your customer's problem on an ongoing basis."
That's the real test.
Ask yourself these questions:
Does my audience face a challenge that keeps evolving?
Or does my coaching help them reach a finish line, and then they're done?
Think about it. Leadership development. Self-trust. Business growth. Those are ongoing journeys. Clients in those spaces could genuinely thrive in a membership where the support and accountability never really end.
But if your work leads to something specific. Like completing a certification, building a website, or finishing a 90-day transformation. Your clients might not need or want an indefinite container.
Memberships work best when the need renews itself naturally.
Four Core Membership Models for Coaches
Let me walk you through the main structures. Most coaching memberships fall into one of four categories, and each one has a different feel and purpose:
Model 1: Community Circle
This is best for early-stage coaches who are still building their audience and trust. It's great because it gives you visibility and helps you create real connection. But here's the watch-out: without strong facilitation, it can easily drift and lose its purpose.
Model 2: Implementation Lab
This works beautifully if you have alumni clients or people who've already worked with you and need accountability to keep their momentum going between your launches. The strength is that it keeps people engaged and moving. But it demands consistent energy from you as the host. You can't phone this one in.
Model 3: Curriculum Hub
This is for course creators who want to shift toward an evergreen model and blend education with community. It blends both worlds really well, but the pitfall is that you can easily end up with content bloat. Too many resources, modules, and trainings that overwhelm rather than support.
Model 4: Premium Collective
This is for established experts who want to serve people at a similar level. It's incredibly high-touch, creates strong retention, and people value the peer-to-peer aspect. The reality check: it has limited capacity and requires high maintenance to keep the energy right.
The right model depends on why you want recurring revenue and how you naturally like to deliver value.
Here's what I'm seeing in 2025: the strongest trend is moving toward smaller, more intentionally curated groups. More intimate circles than mass markets. People are hungry for meaning, not volume.
Free vs. Paid Communities: What Actually Changes
Not every community needs to be paid, but I'll tell you, charging for access absolutely shifts the dynamics.
I've been in free groups and joined paid ones, and the difference is night and day.
Free communities are wonderful for visibility and for being generous. They create reach. They can build trust and funnel people toward your deeper work. But they're also transient. Engagement fades. People lurk way more than they participate. Usually the host ends up carrying all the energy while members quietly disappear.
Paid communities? They create real commitment.
Money isn't just a transaction. It's an energetic agreement. When people invest, they show up differently. They ask better questions. They take ownership of their own growth.
But there's a shadow side to that. When you charge for access, expectations rise. Members want consistency, presence, and support that matches what they've invested. That means clearer boundaries, stronger systems, and a sustainable rhythm for you as the host.
Here's how I think about it:
Free groups work when your goal is connection that converts people to something else.
Paid communities work when your goal is connection that continues indefinitely.
Both can serve your business beautifully as long as you're honest about your actual capacity and what you're really trying to create.
Offer Alignment and Energetic Fit: The Real Deciding Factor
This is where we go deeper, and this is where most business advice stops short.
Every offer, whether it's a membership, a mastermind, or a course, has two layers: strategic fit and energetic fit.
Strategic fit is the business logic: Does this model align with my audience, my promise, and where I want to take my business long-term?
Energetic fit is the human truth: Does this model align with who I actually am, my real bandwidth, and the way I love to work?
Alignment as Strategy
If you've been following my work, you know I'm all about clarity creating freedom. You can build any model that looks perfect on paper, but if it drains you, it's not going to scale.
A membership might make perfect sense for your audience, but that doesn't mean it's right for you. Or maybe it's the opposite.
So before you build the funnel or map out the content calendar, I want you to pause and do what I call the Energetic Self-Audit.
The Energetic Self-Audit
Ask yourself these questions honestly:
Do I light up facilitating group energy, or do I thrive in deep one-on-one work?
Does the idea of daily community interaction excite me, or does it quietly exhaust me?
Can I show up consistently, even when I'm not feeling inspired?
Do I have, or do I want, a team to help me hold this space?
How does this model fit into my natural rhythms of rest and creation?
Your honest answers? That's your data.
They're going to tell you not just what's possible, but what's actually sustainable for you.
For some people, the hum of an active community feels alive and inspiring. For others, it feels like background noise that never, ever stops.
Neither answer is wrong, but knowing which camp you're in can save you months and thousands of dollars of building something that misaligns with who you actually are.
Redefining Success for Coaches
We get told all the time that scalability equals success. But I've learned the hard way: bigger isn't always better. Sustainable is.
For some coaches, a membership becomes this beautiful ecosystem. Members stay for years, results keep compounding, and revenue stabilizes. For others, it becomes a revolving door of cancellations and content fatigue.
The difference?
Alignment.
"Offer alignment is the ultimate growth strategy because when you build from alignment, everything else compounds with ease."
Lessons Learned: What Exploring Memberships Taught Me
Even though I didn't end up launching a membership, exploring the whole landscape was incredibly clarifying. Here are the big truths I'm carrying forward:
Trends are teachers. You don't have to follow them, but studying them sharpens your discernment about what's actually right for you.
Sustainability beats scalability. A smaller, calmer business that fits your actual energy will always outperform a bigger, fragile one.
Clarity is currency. When you know what fits you, you make faster, cleaner, more confident decisions, and you stop second-guessing yourself.
So while I didn't launch a shiny new membership, I got something better: a foundation for every offer I build moving forward.
Alignment first. Strategy second.
Final Reflection
Exploring the membership model taught me something simple but really powerful:
You can respect an idea. You can even admire it. But that doesn't mean you have to adopt it.
For some coaches, a membership will be the most fulfilling, profitable offer they ever create. Something that scales impact and builds lifelong community. For others, it will be an energy leak masquerading as an opportunity.
The real wisdom? Knowing which one you are.
If you're standing at that crossroads right now, trying to figure out which offers actually align with your energy, your audience, and your real goals, I'd love to help you map it out.
It's a 90-minute clarity and strategy session designed to help you build the business model that actually fits you. So every offer you create is sustainable, aligned, and ready to grow.
Because sometimes, the smartest move isn't launching the next big thing.
It's designing the offer that's already waiting to fit.
Lori is the creator of the OfferMojo™ Studio and the visionary behind the AI-powered OfferMojo™ Squad. With more than 20 years of experience crafting and launching offers, she blends intuition, strategy, and soul to help heart-led coaches, healers, and experts build aligned offer ecosystems that scale without burnout. Known for her grounded integrity and sharp strategic insight, Lori guides clients to clarify their audience, structure their core offers, and develop magnetic messaging — so selling starts to feel natural again.
