The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Creating Recurring Revenue with a Small Community

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 57

Share episode

In this episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I’m joined by Lorna Lyons, a positive psychology expert and entrepreneur, to talk about building a sustainable, profitable business without chasing vanity metrics.

We’re diving into:
 ✅ How positive psychology can help you manage mental well-being while growing on social media
 ✅ Why engagement matters more than going viral—and how to attract the right audience
 ✅ The recurring revenue model—how to create a profitable membership without burnout
 ✅ The power of storytelling and why an email list is your biggest asset in long-term success

If you’re tired of constantly chasing new clients and want to build consistent, predictable income, this episode is for you!

🎧 Listen now & grab your free toolkit
👉 https://artisanal-hustler-4980.kit.com/0e6038aabf 

SHOW CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome and Intro
00:21 Guest Introduction: Lorna Lyons 
00:51 Lorna's Journey from Teaching to Business 
02:09 Positive Psychology and Social Media 
04:04 Audience Growth vs. Vanity Metrics 
11:03 Creating Recurring Revenue through Memberships 
15:15 Social Media Strategies and Trends 
18:56 Final Takeaways and Free Toolkit

Connect with Lorna Lyons:
LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to my podcast because more like this is on the way!

If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

My 2025 Social Media Content Planner & Guide is now available! Packed with 400 content prompts, expert tips, and $377 worth of free resources to help you save time and get results in 2025.

Grab your copy now on Amazon!
Amazon UK
...

Welcome to the social media takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonald, and this is the show for business people who want to learn how to use social media more effectively to drive sales and leads for their business. If you enjoy the show, please make sure you subscribe. And if you enjoy this episode, I'd really appreciate if you would give us a five star review. So today I am absolutely delighted to be joined by Lorna Lyons. And Lorna has a master's in positive psychology. She's an ex teacher by profession and has successfully launched two online businesses in the space of two years, which allows her to walk, which allowed her to walk away from her day job to a full. time in her business. She's the founder of themumboss. com and her other business then is bump and beyond wellness. You're very welcome to the show, Lorna. Thank you so much, Louise. I'm so thrilled to be here. And so tell me what made you want to leave the world of teaching to, to start your own business? Oh my goodness, that's a loaded question because I don't think I even realized that I wanted to leave it until the pandemic hit. And I think because we were just launched into this little bubble at home at the time I had three small children, they were like two, three and five. And I got to experience what it was like to be at home with my husband and the three of them at that age. And even though it was really hard with them at that time, it was also. Such a privilege to get to be there for all of their beautiful moments. And when it came around to me going back to school, go back to teaching, I was devastated. I was absolutely devastated. I had always loved teaching, but I think having the break away from it and just being at home with them, it made me not want to do that anymore. And throughout the pandemic, I had taken on a master's in positive psychology just to keep my mind going and keep things active. I thought at that time, I might use it for school in some way. I might mentor students. And when I decided that I didn't want to teach anymore, I was like, okay, how can I actually use this to set up my own business? So I set up an Instagram account and the rest is history. I've ended up doing what I'm doing now, but like it by no means was like a in my head of where it was that I was going. I was just literally following the breadcrumbs. Oh, wow. I'm like, I'm totally intrigued by positive psychology. How does that relate to social media? How does positive psychology relate to social media? For me, it's actually a huge part of what I teach my mentees about in terms of how they grow their businesses, because I've got a love hate relationship with social media in the sense that I love it in the sense that it has provided me with opportunities that I wouldn't have been able to get anywhere else. It has created, it's been at this free platform that I've been able to go to if I didn't have social media. access people all over the world, which is just phenomenal. It's still pinching myself, but that's a reality. And but I've got a hate relationship in the sense of how it impacts my mental well being, how sometimes I can get. Emotionally connected to the posts that I create and whether people like them or don't like them more often, if you put your heart and soul into something and then people don't like it or don't engage with us, how they can leave you feeling afterwards. And so the positive psychology side of things what that's really done for me is to be able to equip me to create huge boundaries around my business and my personal life and to be able to separate the two. In a way that serves me in growing my business and allows me to switch off from it and put the phone down and put it away because I know truly what my core values are. And that's what positive psychology is all about. It's about learning and understanding and identifying, discovering what your core values are in life and then creating systems and putting them in place around you so that you get to live it out instead of just. Thinking about it and dreaming about it, you get to actually put it into action. So my core values are family first, my family and living life and being present for my kids and the moments that they have in the, in their young years. And so it's really important for me to work in the mornings only and then put my phone away for the afternoons. And then I take it out again in the nighttime when they're gone to bed. But I know a lot of people struggle. with that separation. And so that's really, I think one of the key things that positive psychology has done for me it's really implemented me to be able to separate the two. great. Okay. And so one of the things that we chatted about just before we went live is that, you were saying the importance of aligning audience. growth over vanity metrics, like such as going viral, which is something, if anyone has ever listened to me, something I talk about all the time, like the viral posts mean nothing, but aligning like genuine audience growth. Can you talk a little bit more about that? this really came from. Talking from a heart centered place, talking from a place again of knowing what my core values and beliefs were and connecting with people over something that was important to me, rather than creating content because I thought it might go viral, creating, seeing a funny reel out there and just recreating it for the sake of it. Kind of went down the more the track of just creating content that was specifically focused towards my niche, who it is that I wanted to help and how it is that I wanted to help them. So it really just meant that everyone who clicked follow on my page were people who wanted to typically buy from me at the end of the day. And so through the growth of both of my different businesses, even by the time I had 1000 followers on there, I had a substantial financial income from the back of that. And over the last couple of years, I've worked with quite a lot of people who have. Tens of thousands of followers, like I'm talking about 40, 000 followers, 50, 000 followers, most recently 120, 000 followers, and she didn't have any income off the back of it. So I've really just seen massively how it really doesn't matter the size of your audience. I'm sitting there with 3000 followers. It's more than enough. Imagine trying to fill your house with that number of people. It's more than enough to be able to create a financially profitable business, rather than creating content to be liked and engaged with and go viral, but have no money in your bank account because of it. Yeah, you totally speak in my language. That happens all the time. Like I'm always like saying that who I help in my coaching academy. It's businesses with relatively small followings that from there can still, as you said, generate revenue. On the flip side, as you just said, you can have people with 50, 100, whatever thousand followers they're not leading anyone towards an offer. They're not actually, sometimes when you speak to people, the first question I ask them is, What are you selling? And people, if you can't answer that like straight away, if you're not clear, what it is you're selling, then you're just, going to waste your time on social media. So that's actually, yeah, such an important point. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that, Louise. And I think, even when you're starting out, it's it can be really beneficial just to start with one product, like the power of one and rather than having think we can all sit down and have amazing creative ideas and come up with all the different things that we can make all the different offers that we can provide out there. And but like you say, it can then become confusing and if it's confusing for us in our own heads to be able to tell people what it is we could do can only imagine what it is for. Anyone who's jumping onto our account, trying to figure out how it is that we can support them. So I love to help people start off with something substantial, just one thing, like one key offer with one key message directed at one key person. And working that really well until it becomes a well oiled cog in your machine and then start to optimize it and add different offerings in afterwards. Absolutely. Another thing.. Totally , singing from the same hymn sheet is that you hear people sometimes say, who are you targeting? Oh, everyone. And you're like, no, you're not. So if you can be very specific and serve a very specific audience, it makes social media a lot easier. And just to go back to what you said, earlier on, sometimes people can get a bit down if they create a social media post and it only reached a few hundred people. Imagine if you were if someone said to you this. 250 people in a room there. Would you like to go and speak to them? Of course you'd be like, Oh my God, yeah, thanks so much. Your social media posts actually don't need to go viral. They just need to reach the right people consistently. Consistently having the same message that you just repeat over and over again. There's such a personal growth journey in this Louise. I'm sure you'd agree like that resilience building for being able to. throw the post out there and feel like you're talking to the wall and feel like nobody is listening. And then to, be expected to do it all again tomorrow and the next day and the next day there's nothing easy about that. And so the way I think about that is that we are getting to use a free platform here. It's not like we are. Investing money in meta ads, where, you're like investing so much money and trying to get people onto your email list here. This is a free platform where actually you just have to sit down with your phone in your hand and be clear on what your messages and who you're speaking to. And that's an absolute gift that we are provided with that opportunity. Because I know there's, I had no money to invest in a business when I was starting off. Like I had absolutely none, nor did I even. Think my business was going to be a business. it just wasn't in my head that was something that was going to happen. So when you don't have the money there, or you don't even have the business mindset there to be able to utilize a free platform, such as this, to create a platform for yourself and get your voice out there and be heard. That's really incredible. It is. And actually just to go back to what on about going viral, like I always say to people as well, think of something that popped up in your news feed yesterday that from somebody that's gone viral yesterday and they're like going, Oh my God, I've reached a few million people and it came into your news feed. It was in your life for a few seconds and then you moved on to the next thing. if you never hear anything about that business or that brand ever again, like you're just, it's not even on your radar. So going viral is, I'm not saying who wouldn't want to have a post that, that goes viral. Fantastic. But it's not the be all and end all. And I think when the media talk about social media, like the mainstream media, They drive me demented because they bring people on who have had, Oh, I have 5 million followers now or I had a post that was seen by 20 million people and they're only interested in the big numbers. And I think that is very damaging then to smaller brands who are not whose role is not to be on social media to go viral, whose role is to run their business and use social media in the most efficient time possible. And then they have these unreal expectations. So I suppose the message from this is. You don't expect to go viral because you don't need to and it if you create a post and Like bombs it does not perform you know what maybe put it out in a few weeks time at a different time and a different day and maybe try A different tactic and you might find that the same post performs perfectly. It's so true. And I don't think enough attention is actually given to the nurturing side of social media. If you just think about the the marketing funnel, put the marketing funnel out there and awareness is at the top of the funnel and nurturing is in the middle of the funnel and selling is at the bottom of the funnel. Like everything that you're talking about there is all about growth. Get awareness, get visibility of my business. But actually the kind of business that I love to build and the kind of businesses that I love to support my mentees to build are ones that are much more focused on retention. It's like you bring the people in and then you provide them with such an incredible service, like such a valuable offering that they want to stay around in your world. They want to come back and it's repeat business. Over and over again, and they tell all your friends about you, and that's the kind of business that I've been growing like for the last two and a half years. The people who are with me now are with me since the very beginning. And that's such a beautiful way to grow a business because you've got this longevity with people. You get to be part of their journey., it's so much more sustainable. Satisfactory, I think at the end of the day like what you're talking about there, the media and all them talking about going viral and growing and being visible and bringing all these million of views. It's just far nicer to think about bringing in a small cohort of people and actually delivering enormous value and nurturing them and keeping them there over time. So what advice would you give to someone who's listening in here what steps would you get them to follow if they want to create recurring revenue in their business by growing a community? If they want to create recurring revenue. So that's obviously been the In terms of my business model that I have inside my business, the main part of it, the heart of it is my community membership. And I am so grateful that I got in on this at the very beginning. When I say at the beginning, I was to give you a little bit of context to go back in time. The first year of my online business was when I set up Bumping Beyond Wellness. And so this is where I was a hip. I am a hypnobirthing instructor. I am a positive psychology coach and my entry into the online world was supporting women to have converts and to support postpartum moms to have a calm Transition into and after a year of working in mainly one to one roles and small group programs, and I used to run workshops like burning out towards the end of the 12 months. I was still teaching. So I had set up this side hustle business as a side to my teaching job. And I was trying to figure out for myself how I could move out of teaching into something that was sustainable. Something that wasn't going to eat away at all of my time, something that would make me like a really good income that would match the lifestyle that I had as a teacher and more. And I was trying to figure out what that was. And I'd never heard of memberships. I'd never even heard of it as being something that people did until I found myself in a membership. I was like, what's this business all about? Like I'm here every month and it's coming out of my bank account to them every month. And the person who I'm paying. it into isn't here all the time. And I started to work backwards on it and go, to her as the business owner, this is really great because she's only showing up two times in the month, but I'm still getting all the value from all this pre recorded material that she has here on her. Her website and stuff. It wasn't like I wasn't getting value. I was getting so much that I wanted to stay month after month. So after being in that membership for a number of months, I then went and I went over to Stu McLaren in Canada and I did his the membership experience back in 2022, I think it was. And it was like a self paced course that I did for six weeks or something. And off the back of that, I created my membership off the back of learning that And since then, I have invested heavily in like high level mentorship with the lady Tracy, who I was initially in her membership over in Australia. I was with her and for about 12 months, her teaching me how to grow this recurring revenue business model. And I'm so grateful that I invested. My time and energy and late nights getting up going to these calls because she's the opposite side of the world. So I was getting up at 12 o'clock at night, one o'clock in the morning, go to these calls to learn how to do it. And so my top three tips and answer to your question for how to do this, because it has been hands down the best thing I've done for my business because it is recurring revenue every single month after month. And I host events. I host. All sorts of other programs inside my business and everybody feeds through from my community membership. And so what I would say is number one, know exactly who your person is. Make sure that your core values and the heart of what your community membership is all about is very clear so that the people who are all coming together in the same space all have this beautiful golden thread that runs through us all. And we all have this common set of values that we come together and connect over. Number two, I would say have a really crystal clear onboarding system so that when people are joining your membership, they know exactly what it is that they need to do next. Like three steps ahead of I'm going to do this first. And then after I watched this video, then I'm going to join this group and I'm going to start connecting with people here. And then I'm going to do this. So create a really seamless onboarding system so that they know exactly. How to get the best out of the membership from the very beginning. And the third thing I would say, top tip for your recurring revenue membership would be the deliverables that you create inside there. So intentional design is really important for a membership. You have to create something that's low of energy for yourself as a business owner, but high in value as the person who's actually receiving it and learning from it. Being very careful about how you curate your deliverables inside your membership. A lot of people go and say, Oh, I'm going to jump on a zoom every single week and do Q and A's or do coaching calls or do this on the other. And it ends up being super time consuming for yourself. And what you want to do is get a nice balance of. Low energy input from you, but high value from your people. That sounds really interesting. and so tell me in terms of social media, then where do you like to hang out? And what tactics are you using right now? That's working well for you. I mainly hang out on Instagram. I use repurpose. ie is it? To repurpose everything and throw it in TikTok and throw it on LinkedIn, but I'm not over there at all. I do want to get into LinkedIn more. Mainly hanging out on Instagram and I have Facebook. I have all the different things going. Instagram is where I'm hanging out. And I think what's working really well at the moment is storytelling. Storytelling, having a strong hook to capture people's attention and get people Interested in what it is you're talking about, having your story there and then having a clear end and a call to action for how it is that they can find out more about you or what it is that you're offering. Brilliant. And what are you seeing that's working right now that maybe is new or wasn't working? Maybe, it's an emerging trend or anything like that apart from storytelling. Gosh, I'd be more inclined to be able to tell you all the things that aren't working. I see them every day. Aren't working because it's an experimental game, isn't it? It's all just trial and error of what you can put out there. But for me, that's what I've been doing recently is the storytelling side of things. Like I was doing a lot of lives. I feel like lives aren't working as well. Anymore. It goes through different phases because I say lives aren't working, but then there is hunger out there for long form content as well, isn't there, whether it's the case of video or the emails. What I tend to use Instagram mainly for is getting people onto the email list. And that's what I. Support and help people to actually build. So Instagram is teeny, teeny, tiny part of my content strategy. Like I said, it is the kind of nurturing space and where I show up and show a bit of me and share my message and share how I can help people showcase case studies of other women in my community, of how far they've grown, brave, bold actions they've taken. And so these things all take part of your content marketing strategy, but for me, the main thing to use Instagram for is to get people onto your email list and communicate with them there. And that's what works really well for me because Instagram is absolutely wonderful, but a lot of the time it's only sharing your content with less than 10 percent of your following. Actually, Louise, in the last week, it's funny that you say what's working well. And I say it's actually what's not working well at the moment, because in the last week, two weeks I've started promoting new like workshop that I'm doing at the end of February 2025. I don't know when this is being aired, but this is when it's being rolled out. And it's actually about how you can grow your audience beyond social media. And so in the areas of email marketing, collaborations, and speaking gigs. That's what I love to help people to do. And Instagram has been absolutely squashing me, pushing me out because I'm obviously sharing the ways to grow beyond social media or outside of social media. So when I say it's squashing me, like it is not pushing out my posts. It is not pushing out my stories. I actually went to try and share private DMS with people it wouldn't send my DMS. I thought I was going to get shadowbanned. Yeah, no, I know. So There's this a whole thing of being really careful with the algorithm and what you say, not to be promoting it because it's definitely been squashing my content recently because I'm trying to support people to grow their business. Yes, surely using Instagram. But there's all these other ways that you can do it as well. I know. And that's the I'm so glad that you said, you talked about growing your email list because you don't own your Instagram account. You could lose it at any time. You, they could just ban you or not like you or just get a glitch and. It happens all the time, don't ever depends on it, but like the ads on Instagram are really good as well. Or I'll say the ads on Facebook running across the Instagram are actually better.' the Facebook algorithm is more powerful than the Instagram one. So yeah, that's something to definitely look at if you organic's not working especially if it's something sales related. Just put some money behind it and just, yeah. Run the right types of ads and then afterwards you can just figure out what the return on investment. Brilliant. Okay. So how do people find out more about you then, Lauren? And where's the best place to find you hanging out with the best account name? Oh, the account name on Instagram. My community network name is called the MumBoss network. And my own personal pages, it's Lorna Lyons. Oh, very good. Look it. Thanks so much for coming on. I think it's absolutely fascinating. Like audience growth beyond vanity metrics and creating a recurring revenue in your business. That is actually where it is at. And if people focus more on those, on achieving that rather than. This vanity metrics of likes and followers and I think everybody would be a lot happier in themselves and in their businesses and they'd have a lot more money in their bank account. You have a free gift for everybody., do you want to tell us about that? It's a toolkit for creating a recurring revenue in your membership. Oh, very good. I have lots of different gifts, Louise, that I give out to people at different times. I do, absolutely. I have a great toolkit. If you are looking to get started, if a community membership is something that you want to get started with, I have a fantastic toolkit devised out for people, which will give you all the deliver, it's like a checklist of onboarding material that you need for people who getting started or getting people into your membership. And then there's a whole heap of Beautiful marketing prompts because there's a lot of mindset shifts that you need to take if you're deciding to switch your service or practice over into a recurring revenue income stream. So there's lots of marketing prompts and supports there that you can lean into when creating your content. And we'll have a link for that in the show notes for anybody who's listening in or watching on YouTube. So that's where it's all at. It's all about recurring revenue. It's about being true to your own values. It's about growing a community and not depending on vanity metrics. Thanks so much, Lorna. I really appreciate all your advice here today. Thanks so much for having me here, Louise.