Kwame Mensah
Founder · A leadership coaching program and cohort
Who they are
A coaching program and a paid cohort for people stepping into leadership roles.
Kwame bought MemberPress with a real plan, paid for the year, and then time ran out. Between client work and everything else, the site sat there — not because the plugin didn’t work, but because launching a membership site takes time he didn’t have and no developer to hand it to. That’s the WordPress “car in a box” problem: you get everything you need, and then you have to build it yourself, hire someone, or find a friend who can.
Before MemberPress.ai, he had a half-built WordPress site and good intentions.
How they got back to their members
MemberPress.ai picks up the setup Kwame started: a starting set of membership levels, and the join, checkout, login and account pages as drafts, built from a conversation instead of pieced together over evenings. It suggests pricing that fits a program like his, and once members join, it answers from his own site’s numbers.
Watch Kwame
Kwame Mensah on what stalled his launch
Watch Kwame's interview (video)
Opal sits down with Kwame to talk about his coaching business, what came before MemberPress, and what stalled his launch.
Read the transcript
Hi, I'm Opal from MemberPress.ai, and today I'm with Kwame, a leadership coach who runs his coaching program on MemberPress.
We'll talk about life before MemberPress, and what changed once it all lived in one place.
Kwame, tell everyone a little about yourself.
Hey, I'm Kwame Mensah.
I'm a leadership coach.
I run a coaching program and a small cohort, and I've been with MemberPress a little over a year.
Kwame, before MemberPress, how were you running your coaching program?
Honestly? A booking link, payment links, shared docs, and a lot of email.
So what did MemberPress give you?
One home for everything.
My course, recurring payments, and a members-only area.
No more stitching tools together.
So what got in the way?
Time.
WordPress is like buying a car in a box.
Every part I wanted was in there, but I was building it on nights and weekends.
That's the kit, not you.
Lots of coaches have more parts than hours.
Which is why I'm talking to you.
Next time: what's next.
Switching from Kajabi
Kwame Mensah on a cohort that keeps coming back
Kajabi worked well for one offer at a time. Kwame's members come back at different stages, so he needed lessons that open on their own schedule.
Read the transcript
Hi, I'm Opal.
This is Kwame.
He runs a leadership coaching cohort, and before MemberPress, he ran it on Kajabi.
For about eight months, yeah.
Everything in one place.
Landing page, emails, checkout, the course.
I liked that.
So why leave?
It worked great for one offer at a time.
But my cohort isn't a one-time thing.
People come back every quarter at different stages, needing different content unlocked at different times.
I was fighting the tool to do something it wasn't built for.
What did a day look like back then?
Manually moving people between funnels so they'd see the right lesson.
Every cohort, by hand.
And the first month on MemberPress?
Honestly? Slower than I expected.
I had the tool, but I still had to figure out what my cohort actually needed before I could build it right.
That part was on me, not the software.
What changed once you did?
Access rules do what I was doing by hand.
Someone joins, they get week one.
Four weeks later, week two unlocks.
No spreadsheet, no me remembering who's where.
A year in, what's different?
Hana was my first paying member.
She's still here.
The cohort runs itself between sessions now.
So when we're actually together, we're coaching.
Not me explaining which folder to open.
Kwame Mensah, leadership coach, formerly of Kajabi.
What's the one thing you'd tell someone still on it?
If you're selling one course once, Kajabi's fine.
If people are going to stick around, you need something that's actually yours.
Their member
Hana Tanaka
Kwame's first paying member — the one who proved the cohort could work.