Membership Site Interview Series with Stu McLaren Part 1 – Season 2 | Episode 35

Melissa: We are continuing our membership series with our good friend and mentor Stu McLaren. If you've been paying attention to our interview series, all the people that we have spoken to have at some point had some sort of interaction with Stu. He is the membership expert and knows his stuff when it comes to memberships.

So we know you're going to love today's topic. Today we're talking about different membership niches, and we asked the question, to Stu: 

well, if I have a niche, that's unusual. How do I make that work with a membership, will a membership work with my business model? And Stu has some great insight to share. So let's go ahead and listen to what Stu has to say about having a membership, no matter what niche your business is in. 

Paul: Thank you so much for being here today. We're super stoked, super excited. I had to say that Melissa's and my world has completely changed since you came into our lives over the last several years. And we've been rocking and rolling all month long speaking and talking into different opportunities.

How the world is shifting and changing into memberships. I just heard you recently talk about a Forbes report, how it's like one of the highest trending elements as far as business opportunities going on right now. I think still we have people that are listening and watching and there there's, there's still on that edge of kind of like, you know, what my industry, my niche, not quite sure if like a membership model really makes sense.

And I know we've learned the craziest things that we'd never could have ever imagined that are a membership. So just wondering if maybe you have some insight that you could share. 

Stu: Yeah. Well, as you've stated, you know, Forbes magazine, you know, with all the things that, business owners could be looking at this year, they said the number two trend was memberships and subscriptions.

So it's not just me saying, I said, you know, Forbe's magazine identified it as well, but we see it happening as well because, you know, we get to serve tens of thousands of people in all kinds of different markets, you know, product based businesses, service-based businesses. Knowledge-based businesses, community-based business.

They all benefit from memberships and subscriptions. So for example, anybody watching, listening as a product-based owner, this is where you're seeing like the, you know, the box of the month in a subscription boxes, you know, have just boomed. 

And especially after the pandemic, because what happened was people are like, wait a minute, like I can't go to the store. So I can't go here to get this stuff. And so all kinds of companies got creative and innovative in the way in which they are providing the products that they produce. And so now, so many of them are provided on a subscription basis, same happened with services.

Like the introvert in me during the pandemic was like, this is amazing. I don't have to go anywhere. And companies are going to send me stuff automatically. Hallelujah. You know? So like service-based businesses. Like somebody in our community like I was just having this conversation the other day.

A woman in our community who has been in our community for years, she provides massage and specifically foot massage, like it's kind of interesting. She actually massages people with her feet. It's like a whole technique and thing, but anyway, long story short, We were catching up and she was telling me that, you know, her business has stayed steady and consistent this entire time because she has a membership.

So people pay her on a monthly basis and then they get so many credits, so to speak for massage. And she said the, those that joined during her founding members launch. She has like 80 plus percent of them who are still with her, like two and three years later. And she said that just, you know, she's never had to do a big relaunch or anything because her business has just been blocked full with this initial group of clients.

And I see even like, you know barber shops in Toronto, as an example, have all have turned to a subscription model as well. Instead of, you know, hoping that people are going to come back and get another cut. They know with consistency that they are going to have a steady stream of their clients and customers who are coming back month after month after month because of the membership they've created.

And then of course, Knowledge-based world, this is our world where we're teaching people, we're helping people, you know, learn new skills or we're helping people solve an ongoing problem. Like and there are so many examples where you know knowledge-based membership come into play in markets like photography and calligraphy and fitness and finance and music and art, health doctrine, heck even balloon animals, you know, like we have all kinds of people in all kinds of different markets, but I'll share one quick example. 

Recently I was interviewing somebody from our community, his name's Scott, and he had a buddy who's named Ryan and Ryan is like a phenomenal dentist, specifically specializing in Invisalign.

Well, they're two buddies they're jamming around at a barbecue. And Ryan shares with Scott that his back is really starting to kill him because he's like six foot eight. So you can imagine really tall guy as a dentist, you know, always bent over his back was starting to really hurt. And he was saying to Scott, he's like, you know, like, I love what I get to do.

And you know, business is great. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to keep this pace up. And Scott says, why don't you start sharing it and teaching others how to do this? Well, initially Ryan was hesitant. He's like, no, I don't want to give away, like all my secrets. Like, you know, I've worked years to be able to get, you know, the business to where it is today.

Well, fast forward I guess the back problems were getting, you know, increasingly more and more challenging for Ryan. They've revisited that conversation and they started a membership. Now Scott himself is not the expert. Ryan is. So Scott is handling the behind the scenes of, you know, that membership Brian is solely responsible for producing the content, but together they have created this amazing business and it started as a side project.

You know, Scott is actually a lawyer helping nonprofits. Ryan is a dentist, so they both have their businesses. They start this as a side project and it started with a few members in the beginning and blossomed into now a few years later, a more than $4 million a year membership. And that's in addition to the fact that they also have corporate sponsorship from Invisalign itself, which is a significant deal.

I wasn't allowed to talk about how. And, you know, publicly what is a significant deal. And so I'm sharing this because there's so much opportunity, regardless of what type of business you have to be able to add that recurring component. And the way to think about it is how can I serve my audience, my people on an ongoing basis versus hoping that people will come back and buy from me again instead creating that certainty that they will.

And more importantly, giving you and I the opportunity to serve those people over and over and over again. And I'll finish with one quick final example. I was on a walk just the other day, and we were talking about how when my wife and I, Amy, who you guys know but for everybody else Amy and I bought one of our homes.

We we were there for like a month and we were lying in bed one morning and all of a sudden we hear like, and Amy's like, oh, what is. And I'm like, I don't know. And then it was, again, she was like, oh, it's mice. She's like, we're going to have to sell the home. She's like, I can't live here when there's mice.

And I was like, baby cakes. Like we literally just bought the house like a month ago. So anyway, long story short, we get in touch with an exterminator. He comes over he's and he's like, you know what? I'm going to be able to take care of this problem today. But there's a high probability because you live in a really wooded area that the mice are going to come back.

He's like, would you like me to take care of this ongoing? And we were like, whoa, duh, of course, yes, absolutely. I said, please, for the sake of my marriage, please take care of it ongoing. So then we were put on a membership and subscription. Now the interesting thing was fast forward a couple of years and the credit card that was being used for that subscription, it had expired.

Right. And we didn't realize. And then we started to hear the mice again, and Amy's like, they're back. And we called the exterminator and we said, we thought we were on a, on the plan. He's like, oh, you were put your credit card, you know expired. And we're like, dude, like call us. Like we want to pay you every single month.

Like, you know, and so I think sometimes like business owners, they just don't realize just how much the consumers want this as much as they want it as business or business owners. We want it for the stability and the predictability that it provides in our business. But consumers want it too, because it creates convenience and it helps them, experience progress better than ever.

So, so many reasons why a membership is a great fit for virtually every kind of business, but it all starts with thinking about how can I serve my people at a higher level ongoing once a year, we host this free workshop and it all starts on April 21st. And so no matter when you're watching, listening to this April 21st is coming up.

Make sure you got marked down on your calendar. It's a workshop that is designed to help people think through what a membership might look like for them. So if you're hearing this and you're thinking, you know what, like, I love the sounds of the predictability and stability in my business. I love the sounds of being able to help people at a deeper and deeper level, but I don't know exactly what it might look like.

Come and join us for the free workshop, because this is exactly what we'll walk you through and your here's stories from people of all kinds of different markets. We have all kinds of different memberships. And the goal of it is to get you moving down that path as quickly as possible. 

The goal of it which by the way, in every year past we've had people who have actually launched their memberships during the free workshop. So imagine and open yourself up to the possibility of that happening. It can and will happen this year as well, where we walk people through what that membership might look like, how that might be structured, how to even market and grow that membership.

And so. If you're in the beginning stages and it's right now, it's a fuzzy idea. It's something that you've been thinking about, come and join us. If you already have, you know, an audience that you know, would be perfectly suited for a membership, come and join us. And if you already have a membership, here's what I will tell you.

It will become one of the most valuable things for you. I know I've just recently spoke to Marta and she had a membership and it was kind of floundering and she was actually on the cusp of like, you know, giving up on that. Well, during the free workshops, she learned about the success path, which we'll share in greater detail.

And it became the backbone of transformation for her and her membership. And because she finally learned how to structure her content. She also learned how to use that success path in improving her messaging on the front end, and it improved her marketing and all of which led to her membership growing, where she experienced her first six figure year this year.

Which was pretty incredible. And so I'm sharing this because at the end of the day, this free workshop is intense. It is all hands-on. We pour a ton of, into it with the goal to help move you through that process of beginning that membership. And we do it one time a year. This is it. Make sure you come and join us.

Melissa: If you would like to learn how to make a membership work for your business, go to freemembershipworkshop.com. Our good friends do McLaren hosts a once a year workshop, where he breaks everything down with memberships and how to make it work for your business. So go to freemembershipworkshop.com and sign up today.