Attention: Entrepreneurs TIRED Of The Same Old Re-Hashed, Overused And Underperforming Business Models…
Discover How You Can Own The World’s Most Recession Proof…
ASSOCIATION
BUSINESS
Finally, Own An Honest, Recurring Revenue Business With Almost Zero Risk In Just A Few Days, And Manage It From ANYWHERE, In Just A Few Minutes A Day – All Without Quitting Your Day Gig, Being A Great Marketer, Or Learning A Bunch Of New Tech Skills
GUARANTEED!
My Dear Friend,
Consider this…
When was the last time you heard of an association of any kind going out of business?
Go Ahead I’ll Wait…
Not Never! That’s when 🙂 (In my Best Kat Williams Voice)
Niche Association ownership is TRULY one of the best kept secrets in business.
Fact is, owning an association is as close as you can get to starting your own religion without going to hell.
Look, in the United States alone, there are more than 171,000 associations… to put that into context, there are just 152,000 convenience stores. Crazy right?
Why so many, duh… money!
According to the ASAE (Yep, The Association of Associations), the average annual budget for a US association is $1,600,000.
That’s both for-profit and non-profit organizations combined. BTW, You get to choose which you wanna be 🙂
Surprisingly… Most associations tend to be for profit ventures, especially the trade & hobby related ones I like.
Plus there are no special licenses or regulations to start one. You just hang out your shingle and you’re in business… seriously.
Moreover, associations have been around forever, making them truly the World’s second-oldest profession 🙂
Hi, My Name Is Perry Belcher
In the past decade, I’ve sold and taught my students how to sell over $1B in goods and services both online and offline, however, as you may have noticed, I’ve been pretty silent for the past few years.
Why?
I have built three large association businesses with more than 50,000 MONTHLY paying members. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first let me tell you how I found this amazing model.
Their Kitchen Table Association Goes To $62 Million Dollars
Once upon a time Katie and Peter Davis founded a little group called the “Dance Exercise Association,” whose only benefit was a newsletter, distributed to 300 or so members, mostly aerobics instructors, each month from their kitchen table.
They came on to my radar when I read a story about how they sent out a tear sheet to all of the gyms in the country alerting them that if they didn’t certify their aerobics instructors they could be liable for injuries and possibly lose their gyms.
It worked!
The International Dance Exercise Association, as it was called back then, became the largest association of aerobics instructors in the world, providing training, a community, and certifications for its members’ and gyms.
The business model immediately piqued my interest and I started a company called Association Management International… and promptly did nothing for the next 10 years.
What a boneheaded mistake that was 🙁
Then…
In 2005, my partner Ryan Deiss and I founded the Family Protection Association, based on our Survival Life business and the American Gun Association, built from our guncarrier.com website.
Today, These two associations have 50,000+ active monthly members and over 500,000 junior members between the two.
…And remember, association members tend to stay around for YEARS not months paying dues, buying gear, taking trainings etc…
This is a VERY different animal, so read close.
However, we still fall short of what the dance exercise association has accomplished in now becoming IDEA Health & Fitness, the largest fitness association in the world.
The couple actually just sold the association to Outside, Inc, the same company that owns Peloton, in 2020 for an “undisclosed sum” after their little Grassroots group reported sales of $62,000,000 annually.
Impressive right?
Why NOW Is The Best Time In History To Start An New Association
To be frank, the best time to start an association is when a brand new industry is in its infancy or tons of new people are flooding into the business market.
Today both of these things are true.
Looking at the chart below should certainly convince you. Americans are quitting their jobs and starting new businesses at an alarming rate.
What’s more, because of the gig economy more than one-third of Americans received a 1099 last year or basically income outside normal wages.
That’s 3 times the number in the 80’s when just 11% of people owned businesses.
Think about it, every Uber driver is a business owner, every Airbnb host is a business owner, every barber, hairdresser, massage therapist and freelance web designer is a business owner.
In other words, at 36% more than 1 out of 3 people in America are now business owners.
New industries are being created overnight, out of thin air almost on a daily basis and most of these new business owners are inexperienced and have NO network.
They need associations for their very survival.
Are you starting to get it?
Start Up Or Bolt On An Association To ANY Business For Recurring Revenue
The creation of an association can be a lucrative start-up business or an addition to almost any existing business. Our first two started as add-ons to our Survival Life and Gun Carrier websites.
The majority of memberships came from our media blogs, but we have recently started creating new associations in emerging markets. More on that in a bit too…
That’s really the point of this letter.
Let me explain.
I have too dang many ideas.
I need partners, and the easiest way to get them is to teach this business model to other people who may want to team up with me to build associations together.
Look, I know not everybody will want to partner up and many of you will go it on your own and that’s OK. I just need a handful I can team up with.
Before we get into all that let me start…
Dispelling The 3 Big Lies About The Association Business
Let’s get rid of a few myths before we begin…
- In the United States, having an association does not require a special license. Especially not for a trade or hobby association. While this can be very difficult in Europe and other countries where they have begun to understand the power of these groups, for once we have an advantage in the good ol’ US of A.
- The vast majority of revenue that comes from associations doesn’t come from membership dues. In fact according to the ASAE only about 38% of association revenues now come from dues, the rest comes from 7 extra streams of revenue that I’ll reveal later in this letter in some detail.
- You don’t need a huge investment to start an association. In fact, almost anyone can get started for just a few hundred dollars from their kitchen table. You really just need a logo, a set of benefits, and an industry that needs community.
Fun Fact: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1916 with just 18 invitations mailed again from a kitchen table. It was an association of secretaries. Now it has an annual budget of $175,000,000 USD 300,000 members and a staff of 470 employees.
Believe this: People benefit from association, always have and always will.
Discover The Benefits Of Owning
An Association
#1 Mobility: The association business is probably the best business in the world to operate remotely. It is ideally suited to distributed teams, working from home, and flexible schedules. If you have a laptop connected to the internet, you can run an association from almost anywhere in the world with a few cheap communication tools.
The Porcelain Steel Institute is a great example. It’s owned by a gentleman I met recently. The PSI serves porcelain steel manufacturers.
Crazy, right?
The CEO is a one-man show. He runs a multimillion-dollar association with only a few hundred high-value members.
Typically, if you call him, you will catch him talking on his mobile phone in the car with the top down or on the golf course. No kidding.
#2 Scaleability: As you can see from my previous examples of the Dance Exercise Association crossing over $62 million dollars per year and exiting for likely hundreds of millions of dollars, you can scale the association business as big as you want.
Or, you can stay low key, running a small business that pays your mortgage, college tuitions or just some random bills.
Or anything in between…
How big you grow is up to you, and since associations are so inexpensive to start, you can own as many as you like.
#3 Low Risk: Other than rushing to scale, there’s no reason to invest a lot of money into an association.
Honestly, today, I spend thousands of dollars a month on paid media in order to increase membership quickly, but you don’t need to do that in the beginning or ever for that matter.
Truth is, after a bit, most associations grow organically.
To begin, you may want to leverage free Facebook groups, join Discord channels, or create your own LinkedIn groups or even create interest boards on Pinterest to get new members. There are so many options. (at least 14 we use)
#4 Low time commitment. You can manage just about any association within 30 minutes a day as opposed to ordinary businesses.
You can grow as fast or as slow as you want. You can take unlimited time off, and vacation for as long as you like and your income will still come in.
Once established you can auto-run the whole thing with a small team of outsourcers and you don’t have to be present at all.
I know this is true because I have done it. I don’t work in my businesses anymore because they are all run by other people with micro-teams that work remotely.
#5 Works with ANY Traffic: YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, organic SEO, podcasts, social etc. Pretty much every type of traffic works with Associations.
Remember, association memberships are a soft sale that don’t require pressure. All you have to do is provide the vessel for people to associate, make them aware of it, and they will come.
Once you get it off the ground, the association will kind of build itself.
#6 Chillonaire ready: The association business is a great way to live a balanced lifestyle since there is no real staff, no stress, no pressure and you just earn money on a regular basis without any of the rigors of a regular business.
This is what my friend Kevin Nations calls a Chillonaire lifestyle.
#7 Pride: Unlike some of the other business models in our industry, owning an association gives you a real sense of pride. Regardless of which title you choose, being a president, founder or CEO you’ll feel a certain level of prestige, and you don’t have to be ashamed of what you do to make money. This is a big one for me.
#8 Power & Influence: American associations and their leaders control elections, get advisory roles with corporations, and are at the top of the food chain when it comes to how cities, counties and states are governed and even how they write their laws.
Seriously!
Learn The 7 MAIN Streams Of Revenue That Comes From Associations
Like I mentioned earlier, dues aren’t the primary source of income for most associations anymore.
The ASAE estimates that dues only account for 38% of an association’s budget.
So…
How else do associations make money? Here are a few ideas…
SWAG: Associations sell tons of high margin t-shirts, hats, mugs, tote bags, and everything else you can think of that someone could put our logo on.
People love to wear and use things that remind them and tell others who they are, and there are not many places they can buy things that are so specifically designed for them.
Events: The Dance Exercise Association or IDEA as it’s called today hosts live and virtual events attended by over 25,000 people every year. Imagine the revenue generated by ticket sales, sponsorships, booth rentals, and so on.
From someone who has owned a large event before, the Traffic and Conversion Summit, I can tell you these are multimillion-dollar earning events.
Trainings and seminars: Although this may seem familiar to you, trainings that originate from associations tend to have a higher level of prestige than those from ordinary companies so you can charge premium fees especially when tied to certification… speaking of 🙂
Certifications and Designations: These are some of my favorite ways to generate revenue from associations.
Why?
Because our brains are hardwired to want to be recognized, certified and admired..
Napoleon once said…
“I Have Learned The Most Wonderful Thing. Men Will Fight And Men Will Die For A Piece Of Coloured Ribbon”
…this principle applies to today’s associations more than ever..
There are also designations, these are titles someone can add to their name like CPA, CLU, CDMP, or certified digital marketing professional.
All of these titles are created by associations and private organizations to recognize individuals who have completed certain training or reached milestones like the Boy Scouts Eagle Scout for example.
Imagine how sticky a membership is if it’s part of your name.
Dues: While dues are certainly no longer the largest part of Association Revenue, they are still a very valuable part. In addition, they are the recurring revenue that pays all the bills. Everything else is gravy.
Sponsorships: Unlike ordinary businesses, sponsorships are very easy to obtain for Associations. Having an event, get sponsors, having a webinar, doing an interview, or hosting a podcast, get sponsors.
All sponsors want to be associated with large organizations. Imagine how easy it is for me to get an interview with a senator or congressman as the owner of the American Gun Association.
Try doing that by owning an ordinary website or any other business.
MUCH More. From jobs boards, to directories, software, to insurance, awards and recognition, you name it there are dozens of ways to make money from your association business.
How To Start Your Own Association
Look, by now, unless you are brain dead, you’re at least thinking about starting your own association, right?
Why Not?
It is a very low risk, high reward kind of business.
There are only a few hurdles you will have to cross to get started..
- You’ll need to select a niche.
- You will need a name.
- You will need a brand and logo.
- You will need a benefits stack.
- You will need a proven member getting system.
- You will need a way to onboard and retain members.
That’s all there is to it, then you can just start adding revenue streams.
Let’s be clear, you can do all of this 100% on your own and you don’t need me.
While you may make a few errors along the way, if you’re of average intelligence you will eventually succeed.
I am only offering you a system to help you shorten your learning curve, reduce errors and effort and speed up your success.
My Selfish Confession
Frankly, my reasons for releasing this system are incredibly selfish.
Bottom line. I need smart educated partners and no one else teaches this stuff.
I hope to meet you someday and possibly do a deal with you. I have so many ideas, brands, and high-level domains set aside for association businesses that I cannot possibly get to them all without knowledgeable partners.
That’s why I created the Association Domination Community and System.
My first experience teaching about associations was at a $1,000 per person live event in Las Vegas in late 2021. The recordings were never sold; they were only available to those who attended the live event.
However, I have decided to take those live recordings and combine them with screenshares, demos, checklists, and technical maps, for a to create the worlds first turn key association starting system.
8 Years And Millions In Mistakes Later
Listen, It took me more than eight years to figure out how to perfect the association model.
In the end, I burned millions of dollars in paid media ads, made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of mistakes.
I’ve tested and eliminated more than $200,000 worth of software and tools to land on the tiny little tech stack that we use today.
I designed a flawless member getting system and a world class onboarding and retention system.
When you see the system today you’ll see I am revealing everything that I’ve learned holding nothing back.
NOTE: Our older associations don’t have all these parts active yet. We are rolling them out while you get to see the difference it makes LIVE looking over my shoulder.
“I’m A Greedy Old Geezer”
Just remember this, it benefits me greatly that you understand and feel confident about the business.
To grow more associations I need partners who understand it, and I just do not have the time to train them individually.
Some of you who know me know I’m not all touchy-feely and I do most things for my own benefit, at least I’m honest about it and don’t blow smoke up your ass.
For that reason, I am offering the entire system for right at the cost of the ads it takes to sell it. Seriously!
Making money from the sale of this material is not my goal. I only care about building a network of people who are well-versed in the association business.
That being said, inside I’ll teach you how:
- You’ll use viral media and trend watching to pick which associations to start next.
- You’ll use A.I. to name associations to have the greatest impact and recognition at the end.
- You’ll create recognizable brands using my “will it swag” strategy.
- You’ll get my MILLION DOLLAR cut and paste benefits stack and start looking like a giant player from day one.
- You’ll learn my customer acquisition system based on the trip wire model that Ryan Deiss and I created some 15 years ago.
And… The last thing I’ll teach you is how we use deep psychology to onboard new members and keep them around for years, not months.
Sales Page:_https://www.howtostartanassociation.com/association-business-wp-2022-3
