Savvy Sexy Social / Social Authority Membership

Amy Schmetawa had been creating YouTube content since 2008, building an audience and establishing herself as a thought leader in video marketing for brands. She expanded into consulting, charging clients $1,500/month for weekly calls. But something was fundamentally broken. As she describes it: "I woke up after working for myself for three years, building my own damn dream and not wanting to get out of bed." The problem wasn't the money—it was that clients weren't taking her advice. They'd make excuses, blame their market, and complain about competition, while completely ignoring her strategy. She realized she'd "fired" herself from a client relationship because the impact wasn't there: "I'm not saying look at what I've done, look at what I've done because no one's doing what I asked."

Amy diagnosed her real problem: she was targeting businesses too small to afford her consulting fees, but large enough to want to negotiate her time. The solution was a membership model. In May 2015, she launched Social Authority Membership (socialauthoritymembership.com) at $59/month for the base tier, with annual and annual premium options priced around 15% more. The key insight was switching from hourly selling to recurring revenue with a filter: only businesses willing to commit annually and actually execute would be admitted. She explained her pricing psychology: when someone sees the annual premium option, they realize "well, the benefits though are, you know, I'm getting a $500 an hour consultant to talk to me. So I think I'm going to go with annual premium."

Amy leveraged her existing platform and authority. She had been making three videos per week on YouTube and maintaining a large social following through Savvy Sexy Social. The membership launched in October (a few months after May launch) with a refreshed website hosting all the community content, which immediately increased visibility. She was also actively speaking at events like APCTC in London and AMA conferences, which provided additional exposure and credibility. Her content strategy—constantly pumping out new videos—created multiple touchpoints to drive people to the membership.

The monthly option didn't work well. Early data showed the average monthly subscriber stayed only 3 months, which wasn't long enough to see results. Amy actively phased out the monthly tier, recognizing that "people that are on the monthly basis, they're not actually executing." The annual membership proved far stickier—those customers engaged heavily in the Facebook community and reported real results. Amy's ruthless approach to pricing worked: she turned down speaking gigs that didn't meet her $5K fee, telling conferences: "I write them back and I say, unfortunately, I'm all out of free gigs this year." This scarcity mindset likely attracted higher-quality customers to the membership as well.

By October 2015, less than six months after launch, the membership was doing $5K/month and growing. Amy was explicitly phasing out the monthly option to focus on annual and annual premium. She had other revenue streams (selling out existing products, speaking fees), but the membership was becoming her primary focus. Her goal was to extend average membership duration from 3 months to 7+ months by attracting only businesses ready to commit a full year. She rejected comparisons to software businesses, confident in her content creation strengths and the unique value of her community model: "I know what I know and I know what people want to know from me... I have finally found where I can meet my customers and say, hey, like this is common ground for us."