If you feel like you have endless tasks to complete as a membership owner, you’re not alone!

Membership owners often find themselves suffering from burnout trying to spin too many plates…

But, when you’re burned out, you’re not helping your members – and you don’t want your membership site to feel like a burden.

So, how can you ensure you don’t become overwhelmed while working on your membership?

Here are five tips to keep you and your membership in good shape.

Think About The Bigger Picture

First, step back and think about the context of your business.

While you have a duty to your members to deliver ongoing value, taking a day or two off to prevent burnout is completely ok.

The reality is that most people won't notice – and if you do get one or two members raising an eyebrow, these may not be the people you want as members anyway.

When you work hard on your membership site, not putting too much pressure on yourself is essential.

So, remember, you can take some time away without the whole internet disappearing.

Be Realistic About Your Time and Ability

Be realistic about the time you have available to deliver content and materials to your membership community.

It's easy to underestimate just how much time is involved with tasks like content creation and the marketing and promotion of your membership.

So, when you're planning out your activities, always double the amount of time you think you need to complete them.

If you’re putting too much work on your plate, you’re setting yourself up for burnout – and that's not good in terms of the quality of the content that you produce or how you approach the day-to-day running of your site.

The last thing you need is to feel stressed or easily annoyed as you'll be less open to engaging and interacting with your members.

Manage Your Member Expectations

In addition to being realistic about what you can deliver, you also need to make sure that the expectations of your members are accurate.

For example, if someone joins your site and is under the impression that they're going to get five or six new courses every month, or that they can contact you at any time, then you need to manage those expectations

That comes down to the messaging you use on your sales page, your product positioning, and how you promote your membership.

Sometimes, you may still get people who have inexplicably bizarre expectations, but you need to set those people right!

If you're getting pressure from members because they're expecting more than you're putting out, that means there's something wrong with how you’re communicating your offer.

So, manage your members' expectations in terms of what they're going to receive in your membership on an ongoing basis, and the boundaries you set with them.

Build A Team or Outsource

Outsourcing is well suited to membership sites because there are many simple, repeatable tasks that pretty much anyone can do.

For instance, if you're sending out email digests of popular discussions in your community, that's something you can have a virtual assistant take care of.

All you then need to do is focus on the stuff that only you can fulfill, such as being on camera.

Think of yourself as the front man or woman of your membership, with your supporting team behind you, doing their part to contribute towards making your site an amazing experience.

And while it can seem a difficult transition to make, it’s actually easier than you think.

If you've got a community with momentum, you’ll find you have power users – these are highly active people who are prime candidates for being given moderator roles.

You can turn to your power users and give them a level of responsibility within your community which takes some work off your plate.

Aside from this, if you're delivering live training or masterminds, then another way of lightening your workload is to bring in guest experts.

For example, if you're doing a monthly live training session, it doesn't need to be you who's delivering that training every single month.

You can deliver one session per quarter, and then for the next two months have different guest experts come in.

This reduces your responsibility for producing and creating live content, while your members get a greater variety of people to learn from.

Have a Schedule

Creating and managing a daily schedule goes a long way in preventing burnout.

You can do this whether you’re transitioning from a day job or client work to membership owner, or if you have a full-time membership business.

This involves putting together a list of tasks that need completing on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis and then allotting time to yourself to get them done.

But, it’s also important to schedule some downtime in your daily routine.

Usually, business owners will cut down on downtime before anything else. However, you need to work smarter; not longer or harder.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you need to work every single hour of the day for your membership to be successful!

Schedule downtime where you can completely disconnect – take a walk, go to the cinema, meet up with friends; whatever you can do to relax.

Anything that isn't business, or that isn't related to your membership site will have an infinitely positive effect on the time you do spend working.

You’re In Control As a Membership Owner

One of the big advantages of running a membership site is that you're in control.

If you're getting overwhelmed with how much content you're creating, you have the power to slow down, tweak your offer, or pivot to something more manageable.

You're the one who sets the rules.

Manage your time effectively, be realistic about the time you can spend on your membership, and outsource where you can.

When you do this, you’ll avoid burning yourself out so you can enjoy running your business and delivering an amazing experience to your members.