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The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Transforming Business with Subscription Models: Insights from Stu McLaren
From the Zoo to Wild is a book for entrepreneurs passionate about home services, looking to move away from corporate jobs. Chris Lalomia, a former executive, shares his path, discoveries, and tools to succeed as a small business owner in home improvement retail. The book provides the mindset, habits, leadership style, and customer-oriented processes necessary to succeed as a small business owner in home services.
dollar shave club. So they took something that was, like you know, awkward going into the store and typically razors are behind like a lock and key, you gotta ask somebody to come and unlock it to be able to, you know, buy the box of razors. Like it was a pain in the butt. And so they took that and made that experience like convenient, where just you pay a monthly fee and then you get razor sent to you every month.
Speaker 2:Like super easy and it took off I'm sorry, but yeah, you can go in there and buy all the shit to make meth, but you can't get a razor blade because it's behind the thing.
Speaker 2:So we could be meth of the month club welcome to the small business safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in adventure team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountaintop. All right, alan, I know you didn't hear the ding that says let's get started. But believe or not?
Speaker 3:it's already done. I don't trust you, I know, but I I've been testing it. We've been doing this for three and a half years.
Speaker 2:I don't trust you all right, so I've gone to new technology. What the hell did you just say new technology? This guy can, can't handle it.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:God, I fell down almost, but no, I've done it. I've gone to recording our pods on the cloud. Dude, I'm with it, I'm hip, I'm there, I'm just like all about it. All of a sudden, I've had so many people on the podcast, you know, saying, hey, I can tech you. Man, I still have to reach out to you and then email you.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That makes me sound old, right I? Don't know what the hell, it sucks, it's comforting.
Speaker 3:But no, we're recording.
Speaker 2:We are recording and I've got AI taking notes. That's right. Who is AI? It is not Arthur Treacher's intelligence, it is AI, artificial intelligence. I'm all about it now. Yeah, I know, you are big, I am, I am.
Speaker 3:Chat, gpt Anything you can do to make Chris's life easier.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I can't tell you how quick some of these things have happened. It's helped me build social media strategies for my business. It's helped me. You know, I uploaded. I took a lot of Stephanie I can't even say her name, but Stephanie's Advice Uploaded all that stuff up to chat and now I've been asking questions and it knows who.
Speaker 3:I am. Are you kind of like on the commercials where you're laying in bed and you're like and if you named it like, you know, suzy, suzy, I don't feel very good today. Can I talk to you? And the AI talks back, are you?
Speaker 2:replacing your therapist with AI. That's a long pause, everybody, if you're in your truck, you got me so remember we had another guy in the pod who said he was talking back and forth to his AI in the car. Guess who's doing that, are you really? It is cool too. I'm like well, tell me a little more about that. Well, chris, since you asked, let me tell you a little bit more. Oh my God, this has been cool. So I'm not all the way there yet. I'm no AI expert, but if you want to pay me money to teach you AI, I'd be happy to do it. That's a glowing endorsement. I think that's at least worth a quarter. All right, can we get to our guest please?
Speaker 3:I think we should, I mean he's international?
Speaker 2:Wait, not yet we. We had a big event and we're not supposed to date them, do all this other stuff, but we had a big event here in atlanta. We had snow an inch and a half and I did what everybody else did, even though I came from a place that had more snow in two minutes than we get the entire two years here in atlanta. But I had to do my obligatory snow picture and I posted it out on facebook. Go check it out. Um, if you don't follow me, I'm on Facebook and Insta.
Speaker 3:You can go check that out and for those who are looking, this was full before the snow.
Speaker 2:I was snowed in for at least a day and so, yeah, that big bullet's gone, baby, the bourbon is gone. Chris had to do something, so I was drinking bourbon and doing all that. Stayed warm, stayed warm. I did stay warm.
Speaker 3:So that was fun. Did you uh cook while you were in? Is that that's what everybody does. I went outside and cooked in the snow. I got the big green egg going and I got a dutch oven out there and uh did a smoked chicken and wild rice soup while the snow was coming down baking bread on the egg. It was great oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I know you sent me a picture of your pizza that you do in the uni, which uh has. That episode has gone out and I'm already getting some responses from Ooni. Okay, I lied. Maybe you should hashtag him.
Speaker 3:I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta do a little more promotion on that.
Speaker 2:So let's get to our guest. Shall we Wait? I got one more thing. No, I'm kidding. All right, stu, this is my life, stu, stu, we are back, and Stu McLaren's on. He is going to teach us all about how to build memberships and how to build customer stickiness, how to get people to stay in your biz and grow your biz, and tell us how memberships are the be-all, end-all and where everybody's going. I think At least that's what I'm hoping, because that's why I brought him on.
Speaker 1:Well, so, stu, first of all, if we got to start off with, where are you from? Well, fellas, it is definitely cold and it is definitely a lot more snow where I'm at, and it's just south of Toronto, ontario, canada.
Speaker 3:We love Canadians.
Speaker 2:We have had a lot of Canadians. We never had one that we didn't like. You know what we have not? And Stu, don't break that, Okay buddy Pressure is on. Okay, as we say right before we go on the radio hey, don't suck. Okay. So you grew up. You went to university up in Canada. What were you doing first? What was the reason you went to school and what'd you get out to go do?
Speaker 1:Well, I went through for business. That's what I got my degree in. Now I'd love to say it was like a straight, easy path, but it wasn't. I failed out. My first year of university got the pink slip that said you may no longer proceed in the honors business program.
Speaker 2:Wow, failing out of the honors business, that's solid, and they didn't even give you like that. Hey, you can go to remedial business.
Speaker 1:No no, it was basically an all or nothing. You're either. You're either an honors or you're nothing. And I was nothing at that point. And, uh, I was playing soccer at university, so that's really what had my attention. And um, but anyway, I talked my way back in, and so I went to a professor and I said hey, listen, what can I do over the summer? I want to stay in this program. She gave me a few extra assignments, and the reason that I got the pink slip is you had to maintain a certain average, and so the extra assignments I did bumped up my average enough that I skated in by the skin of my teeth into second year.
Speaker 1:And then something switched though. Third year I went from bottom of my class to top of the class, and the reason was I read a book called Jumpstart your Brain, and it was by a gentleman by the name of Doug Hall, and it was all about how to think more creatively. And so I just started applying what I was learning from the book to my schoolwork. So I'd ask questions like how can I make this 40 page essay fun for my professor to read? Because I was thinking like how can I make this 40 page essay fun for my professor to read, because I was thinking like this must suck for them. They've got hundreds of students writing 40 page essays. That would be awful, and so I would come up with all kinds of creative things for my schoolwork, my presentations, and the short version is it landed me top of my class.
Speaker 1:It landed me the jobs that I wanted. It landed me the girl of my dreams, who's now my wife, and so when I graduated university, I did not want to go into or down the traditional path. I didn't want to go into the corporate world, even though that's what I was going through school for. Like. I didn't, couldn't see myself in a cubicle, couldn't see myself wearing a shirt and tie, couldn't see myself being told when I could or could not go on vacation, and so I resigned from a very well-paying job, and much to my parents' dismay, and I decided to start my own business, and the very first thing that I did was I started speaking to other high school and college students about how to use their creativity to get more of the things that they wanted in life. That eventually led me to realizing that business owners could benefit from the same information, and my very first business that really had any teeth around. It was a service-based business like an agency, and that was where everything began for me.
Speaker 3:I got to back up. So how did you come across that book? I'm just having a hard time imagining somebody at college saying I'm going to read a self-help book.
Speaker 2:Jumpstart your Brain. That's what I was writing down.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, it was actually a video in a marketing class of Doug Hall, and the reason it lit me up was because here was a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, no shoes or socks. He was shooting Nerf guns at corporate CEOs and he had built this business where fortune 500 companies were paying him a hundred thousand dollars for three days of brainstorming. So I saw that and I'm like this is amazing, like I want to do that, and so then I looked him up, found his book, and that's how it all began all right.
Speaker 3:So I know, I know it's a business podcast, but I'm sure most of the guys that are out there listening are going okay, help me get the girl of my dreams. So did you shoot her with a nerf gun too? Is that honestly?
Speaker 2:yeah, everybody. As soon as you said girl, my dream, she know every one of them just went uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh business blah blah blah. This is boring. Tell us about the chick yeah, no, it was.
Speaker 1:Uh, it was not nerf guns, but essentially, um, okay, here was the game plan, fellas, I think. So I in my mind uh said to myself okay, I want to create the most epic first date so that, even if she doesn't want to continue dating with me, just her telling her friends about this date, there's a high probability that one of them would want to date me.
Speaker 1:So, uh, that's what I ended up creating this epic first date. It included, like a bunch of clues that were placed all around the city with flower petals. There was me with a full bouquet of flowers dinner the whole nine yards. But it was a memorable night and it definitely secured the deal.
Speaker 2:Solid bro. All right, everybody, gold nuggets. You want to squirt the chick your dreams, maybe for just a night? Drop some petals. Petals, have a bouquet, and if that one doesn't work, she's got to tell everybody else how epic it was all right so how long you been married now?
Speaker 1:uh. So we dated for seven years before I could convince her that I was the man of her dreams. And then, uh, we've now been married for 17 years.
Speaker 3:Whoa See, when you start that big, though, my question is how do you keep it up? I?
Speaker 2:mean you haven't missed a birthday, a holiday, valentine's day. Everyone's got to be better you can't mail one in.
Speaker 3:That's pressure.
Speaker 1:The proposal was probably my favorite because I, in a mind games kind of way, tricked my wife into organizing a surprise birthday party for me so that we could get all of our family and friends together. And then I proposed to her in front of everybody and nobody knew. And that was an epic turn of events too, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Dude, now that's a business plan right there Dead. Eye.
Speaker 3:Mind.
Speaker 2:Cribs by Stu Right right. How to get your wife to organize her own surprise engagement party. What, but I don't even know. How did you know she was going to say yes, ooh.
Speaker 3:All right, he just built total credibility on whatever he sold.
Speaker 2:But he was at it for seven years. I mean, you know, oh, come on Well, and there was social pressure there, all family and friends were there so I figured there was lots of things to my advantage. Solid move, all right. So you got kids too. I suppose because I see the greatest dad ever in the back.
Speaker 1:I do yeah which.
Speaker 2:Alan begs to differ because I think, alan, what are you up to now like 15, 18 kids? How many you got?
Speaker 3:now who's counting Three? I mean it's amazing how many greatest dad ever posters do you have in your background, chris?
Speaker 2:um, don't suck yeah do, better do better do we bring up my? Daughter, yet no uh yeah, oh yeah, so yeah, this is good. So how many kids you got?
Speaker 1:uh, two kids, so, uh, my uh eldest is my daughter, marla, so she's turning 14 this year, and then my youngest, our youngest, is Sam, and we adopted Sam from South Africa when he was one, and so he turns 11 this year.
Speaker 2:Oh, beautiful, well done man. I tell you what I've said, that to a couple of friends who were adopted. And I said you know your parents truly do love you. I said I was just a whoops-a-daisy. What happened? And I didn't have to work hard Literally every month. We said, okay, let's start trying to have a kid Bam. I was like, can we get a little practice in here? I mean, we're done. Oh my God, that was it. So that's great man, excellent Way to go, good stuff. So obviously you're teaching them all about how to be a great businessman and a great father and husband. So let's talk a little bit more about your journey. So you've written a couple of books. How many books?
Speaker 1:So I've self-published one, and then my latest is my very first published traditionally published book called Predictable.
Speaker 2:Profits, so I call that two yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, good counting, chris.
Speaker 2:Thank you Alan.
Speaker 3:That's a nice fat book too, compared to yours.
Speaker 2:So how many books do you have, Alan?
Speaker 3:You know it's not worth writing one if I can't write a big fat book like Stu did.
Speaker 2:Can we let the adults talk for a minute? Thank you, stu. So I've written my own book as well, with big words and pictures, and I did a lot of coloring in there and there's there's even a couple of graphs.
Speaker 1:Hey, buddy, listen, I love pictures too. That's like in in this book. I got plenty, of plenty of pictures for everybody at different, different spots.
Speaker 2:We're on the same page. Yeah Wow, that's a little bit different than me. Mine usually just had one finger. What I thought about you, what I think about customers, corporate world, what I thought about the corporate world, so predictable profits. So, in that labor of love, that that book that you published, tell us a little bit about how it came about and why you decided to publish that one.
Speaker 1:Well, I had my very first business that really kind of took off, like I mentioned, was a service based business, and it was growing and it was doing well mid six figures. Everything was great, except for the fact that I was working night and day and I was at the beck and call of my clients and that's fine when you're single. But then I got married with Amy and we were talking about having kids and I quickly realized the writing was on the wall Like if something didn't change about the business, I was not going to be the present husband and father that I wanted to be. So what I realized was that the business model itself was broken, and so I was talking to a friend of mine about, like what I could do to change, and he said, stu, why don't you just teach other people what you're doing for your clients and do it inside of a membership site and instead of like serving clients one-on-one, you could now teach one time and serve hundreds, if not thousands, of people who would pay you every single month to access that information. Now I thought in the moment I was just like man, that sounds amazing.
Speaker 1:And then, once I dug into it, like the back then this was 2008,. The technology was not what it is today, back then, and so I was in dealing with things like HT, access files and server settings, like stuff that's way above my pay grade and and I was frustrated by it. And so I was talking to another friend of mine expressing that frustration and he said, well, why don't you just create your own membership solution? And fellas, I got to be honest like I was kind of a little bit annoyed because he's telling me this and I'm like, is he not listening to anything? I'm sitting here saying like I'm having trouble with the tech and he's telling me to go and develop a solution.
Speaker 3:Be more tech.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. And I said, dude, like, are you not listening? I'm like I'm not a developer, and so that sounds like me the next morning after I go.
Speaker 2:Man, I need better friends, but it's usually because I'm hungover. But so at that point you're like dude, I need better friends. Then you slept on it and you went. Huh, you might be right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well then he said to me he's like well, look, I've got a developer, why don't we work together? So we did, and we created our very first software solution. It was called Wishlist Member, and it went on to become the world's number one membership platform for WordPress. When I sold my shares in that company a few years later, we were powering over 70,000 online communities and memberships were powering over 70,000 online communities and memberships, and so being behind the scenes of that is where I learned what worked and what didn't when it came to growing a profitable membership site. And so, since that point, I have been teaching business owners in every kind of market you could think of, from photography and calligraphy to fitness, finance, music, art, health, dog training. We even have a woman, holly George, who's got a membership site teaching people how to make balloon animals for crying out loud with thousands of members.
Speaker 2:But my point is is that this has been my world Ellen, why don't you give yourselves the death stare of balloon animals? Why didn't I think of that Damn balloon?
Speaker 1:animals. Some of the markets would be shocking in terms of how people have built these incredible businesses, but that's been my world for the better part of nearly two decades.
Speaker 2:All right. So let's go back two decades. You brought up something and we've talked about this before, alan and that is you're sitting there and you're creatively frustrated in the first hand and the guy says, well, why don't you just create a membership site? And you're sitting there and you're creatively frustrated in the firsthand and the guy says, well, why don't you just create a membership site? And you're like, well, uh, at the time you probably go through the three phases of truth, right? First you deny it uh, or I'm sorry, you ignore then you deny and then you vehemently accept it. Um, and that's how I got.
Speaker 2:My business is like I'm sitting there, I had this great idea. I was going to buy a company, I was going to do this, and I was sitting on the back of this guy's uh deck here in my neighborhood and he just said, well, why don't you come up with winning a hundred? Call Chris, because that's everybody does that anyway in our neighborhood says, okay, chris will tell you about the house. I mean, let's, why don't you do that? I'm like, now, that's stupid. Next morning I'm like, yeah, oh, that's not. Oh, wow, that's got some legs. So you surrounded yourself around good people. That's my question Did you purposely pick these people out and just keep talking to them about?
Speaker 3:these things. Careful, Stu, because I think Chris is going to replace me.
Speaker 2:Alan, you're irreplaceable.
Speaker 1:There is something to be said for that, though. Like legit, you know, intentionally, you know, picking people that can speak into your life at that time. Yes, I was, and I still am today in, you know, different groups and masterminds of other business owners. I do think that that's really important, because sometimes you're too close to it. You know you're too close to it and you need perspective, and that's certainly been something that's really helped me in my entrepreneurial journey as well.
Speaker 3:So I've got a dumb question, but I'm good at that. So what you built this membership, Chris reminds me often. I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is. Yes, you do. You're way better at that than me. Yeah, it sounds like what you built was almost like a masterclass sort of a scenario.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And because when I think of memberships, I'm thinking of, like you mentioned, the gym membership and and the carwash. You know the monthly, you know membership, but you're you were talking about a balloon animal person who's teaching other people how to do balloon animals. Yeah, so were you kind of catering to people who are just getting memberships, of people who wanted to learn about what they had to offer, or are we talking about recurring business, like in, say, chris's handyman service? Now, I'm in commercial real estate. I don't see how you can do that, but we don't need to talk about that.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I mean not for nothing. Maybe we do, maybe it is a breaker, I don't know. We can see how creative Stu is All right, let's go, we can talk.
Speaker 1:I got examples for you.
Speaker 3:As we said at the beginning Stu don't suck. Yeah, well, okay. Or just suck, don't suck much. Yeah, don't suck as much as we do.
Speaker 1:There are really like four types of memberships. Okay, so this is for everybody who's got like a product-based business. So, instead of like hoping that customers come back and buy the product again, set it up as a recurring membership.
Speaker 2:So I'll give you some examples.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like a, like a razor to the month, tie of the month, tea of the month, coffee of the month, uh, subscription boxes, these are all examples.
Speaker 2:I will tell you, when I got sucked into, it was called Bespoke Post and it was a man box because my daughter, who at the time only had a starter job before she went back to PA school, decided she had to spend every dollar she could because she was spending with us to save money or staying with us to save money. So she was getting a box every month. So I got the Bespoke Post box and I'm telling you, man, it was awesome. So back to your point.
Speaker 3:I think they need to rename it. I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 2:I don't either and I can barely say it, but I loved what.
Speaker 3:I got it's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so all right. So, but see, I see what you're, so let's keep going.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of great ideas on this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, example um would be the um uh dollar shave club. So they took something that was, like you know, awkward. Going into the store and typically razors are behind like a lock and key, you got to ask somebody to come and unlock it to be able to, you know, buy the box of razors. Like it was a pain in the butt. And so they took that and made that experience like convenient, where just you pay a monthly fee and then you get razor sent to you every month. Like super easy and it took off.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, but yeah, you can go in there and buy all this shit to make meth, but you can't get a razor blade because it's behind the thing. So we can be meth of the month club.
Speaker 3:You could probably get a lot of subscribers, yeah.
Speaker 2:I deal with handymen and we've yeah, yeah, that's anyway. It's a recurring joke in our world about how bad it is. Anyway, sorry Del, it's a shame no worries.
Speaker 1:So okay, so that's an example of a product-based membership. Second type would definitely be in your world and that's a service-based membership. So you mentioned the car wash. Like we have a car wash right across the road from us. The way they price it is brilliant. Like we have a car wash right across the road from us. The way they price it is brilliant. You can go through one time for 10 bucks or you can go through an unlimited number of times a month for 12 bucks a month. It's like a no brainer to join the membership.
Speaker 1:But here's the crazy part about that the one that's right across the road from our office. They have over 4,500 monthly paying customers. So every other car wash in the city is hoping that people come back and use their service again. This car wash knows with certainty that at the start of the month they're going to get paid by 4,500 paying customers. So what does that do for the business owner? It completely transforms the way you approach business, because now you've got way more confidence in knowing that you've got money to spend, in knowing that you've got money to spend on advertising, got money to spend on hiring staff, like wherever you want to invest it. So that's an example, and there's many examples of service-based businesses barbershops, hair salons, nail salons. We have a massage therapist in our community. She transformed her business to a membership and it's just completely changed the way in which they approach the service. So that's another example. Uh, I've got two more. You want me to go through those?
Speaker 3:yeah, two of those, and then I'm going to come back to service. But yeah, I'm writing down massage therapist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, I mean, yeah, continue, all right, sorry because I, I gotta, I gotta pivot on that one third one, I'm gonna move this bottle.
Speaker 3:No, no further away.
Speaker 2:no, no, no'm on a roll, baby. It's only four o'clock, I'm just getting cold.
Speaker 1:The third type that this is the world that I play in the most would be information or knowledge-based memberships, and really there are three different sub buckets of those. The first one would be like teaching people a skill. So perhaps for all the other handymen in the world there are many that are not running a profitable business they could learn from you directly. How do I run a profitable handyman business? Perfect example of this I was in Hawaii. I was running late. We had a big event that I, my wife and I were going to and my wife was looking at me and she said, babes, you've got to trim those eyebrows, you got to get a haircut. And I was like I don't have time, Like we were leaving. And, long story short is we found this mobile barber, Like he would come to you. And so he comes to me. He's cutting my hair. I'm talking to him and I was asking him about his business. We're entrepreneurs Like we get curious. I'm asking him about his business. Turns out he's crushing it because of the convenience of being able to come to clients versus clients having to go to the barbershop. I said to him like dude, have you ever thought about teaching other people this Cause? That's the, that's the secondary opportunity. It's like there are many other barbers who are stuck in a barbershop, who are barely getting by, but this guy has just changed the model and because of it he's booming and that is something that could easily be taught.
Speaker 1:So number one, under an information-based membership is teaching people skills. Number two is solving an ongoing problem. So perfect example of this would be like weight loss Somebody's not gonna go from being overweight to their ideal weight like that. It takes time to solve. That problem makes perfect for a membership. Or like a puppy that's wildly out of control You're not gonna go from a puppy that's wildly out of control to the perfect puppy. Like that it takes time to solve. That's a great market for a membership. So number one if you teach a skill, great membership. Number two solve a problem. Number three, if you create convenience for people.
Speaker 1:So we have a lot of people in our community who are teachers or former teachers and their business model and membership is pretty simple. They create lesson plans for other teachers and they have thousands of members, Like I think of Julie Soul. She's a homeschooling mom that creates art lessons for other homeschooling parents, so these parents don't have to think about what they're gonna teach the kids. They just use Julie's lessons, or I think of Tara Phillips.
Speaker 1:She's been an educator for 25 years and working in the classroom with kids with autism. She's created a whole bunch of resources over that time that have helped her be more effective in supporting her kids. She realized like there are other teachers that could benefit from this. She's created a membership. She crossed the million dollar milestone this year with a membership that's focused on helping other teachers who are in a classroom with kids with autism. So what she's done is she's created convenience, and that's another sub bucket of those information-based memberships. And then the final big bucket would just be a community-based membership, where people are paying to belong to a community of people like them that they have a shared interest with.
Speaker 3:So your wife doesn't like your bushy eyebrows.
Speaker 2:No, that's what you took after all that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all that. I kind of locked on that and I couldn't hear anything else.
Speaker 2:Really I I was so locked on the service-based uh membership and I'm thinking massage therapist, I can teach, I can teach this anyway, don't get back.
Speaker 3:So the informational one, though I mean you may have. So that requires a commitment to providing new content, fresh content, to keep those subscribers, whereas in the service space you go back to the car wash. Okay, well, you've got the car wash and we're just making sure that those people come back. I don't have to really provide anything new. It's a very different animal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, they're different types of memberships, for sure. And like with a product base, you're sending product on a regular basis Service you're. And like with a product base, you're sending, you know product on a regular basis service. You're providing a service on a regular basis information. Yeah, you're teaching. But here's the key thing to remember in this. The number one reason that people cancel any type of membership is overwhelmed. There's just too much of it and they don't have enough time to consume it. So product based membership. If they're not consuming the products and they don't have enough time to consume it, so product-based membership. If they're not consuming the products and they're starting to stack up on their kitchen counter, they're going to cancel Service-based membership, the smoke post.
Speaker 2:I had to pause it. You got to the point where you weren't opening them. Well, I was just like all right, this is getting to be too much.
Speaker 3:I'm accumulating too much shit in the house and I was't queue things up in the right way, in a very clean way in our home, so apparently not in an acceptable way in an acceptable way.
Speaker 2:So I had to pause it because I couldn't. I didn't know where else to store this stuff because, uh, you know, with the way I roll out of sight, out of mind, I can't have everything out of sight. So yeah, I did. So you hit it. Uh, membership overload got it. That's one. I mean it's a big mean, it's a big one.
Speaker 1:And it is a big one. So whether they use it, the products or the services, if they're not using them, they're going to cancel. Same goes for an information-based membership. If we provide too much content, it creates overwhelm, and overwhelm means they're not going to watch it, they're not going to consume it, they're not going to use it and they're not going to make progress, so they're going to cancel. So the the magic in that is that, as membership side owners, we don't have to provide anywhere near as much as we think in order to help people be able to experience progress, cause it's a balance of teach but also hold the space for them to implement.
Speaker 2:I think that's. Another great gold nugget too is sometimes when we think about great customer service cause Alan and I are customer service freaks, absolutely crazy about it and when we think about this, we think we have to over deliver and we always say that we all, you've got to, you got to, but sometimes it's a little bit too much. Man, you know, give some air, give some space, maybe you don't have to do as much. And that's what you're saying. Is this membership?
Speaker 3:well, it's kind of like when you go to a restaurant and there's really good service, and then there's people are trying to give you really good service, but they interrupt every conversation. They're over hovering, they're just inserting themselves too much and they don't read the room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right. And then, in his case, what we're talking about is on the lessons plans. You're like, well, I got to really prove my value. These guys are only paying 10 bucks a month, so you know, but that's a lot of money to them. So I get to give this lady 500 lesson plans and she's like no, I just need, I need one a week.
Speaker 1:I just know I just need 30. Please just stop, yeah. Well, here here's a good example of like a membership that was floundering made a subtle shift and then all of a sudden took off. It was a membership that was focused on helping photographers grow their business. Now, in the membership, initially she was teaching everything under the sun about how to grow a photography business online. She was teaching SEO, she was teaching ads, blogging, like everything so much that she was overwhelming her members. She was also overwhelming herself. So she her name is Jamie Bright.
Speaker 1:She paused and decided to reimagine what that experience could look like, and then she revamped the membership and relaunched and listen to the simplicity of this she taught one strategy a month on how to attract one new recurring client per month. It was like a breath of fresh air, like if all that photographer did was implement one strategy and welcomed one new client, it paid for itself many times over, and so, because of that, more of her members were consuming the content, getting results, and the whole membership just took off because it was also very easy for members to be able to share with other people the value that they were getting. It was just like look, join this membership, you just get one strategy a month, but it's guaranteed to help you get and welcome more members, and it was super easy for word of mouth to begin spreading. So again comes back. We don't need to overwhelm and load people up, we just need to give them the right information in the right amount of time.
Speaker 3:So I'd like to ask you, going back to the service-based membership, you've got your gym, who? They already have their fixed costs, They've got their equipment, they've got their space and the whole everybody knows. You know everybody joins for their New Year's resolutions and then they don't use it. So you can actually have 10 times the membership than you could actually physically put in your space. Then you've got the car wash. That has a little bit of extra expense. So if I've got unlimited washes and I come through I don't know twice a week instead of the once a month I normally do, it's costing the car wash more because they're running their equipment and they've got their chemicals and things like that, but it's still not crazy. Then you've got Chris's business, where I don't know what that membership looks like, but suddenly you've got to send somebody across town. I mean it seems like it could get really inefficient. How do you help him think through? Where's that balance between having a membership that's a no-brainer to my customers where I don't get totally taken advantage of?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I would just be thinking about, like, how can I turn a one-time gig into a recurring project? So here's a good example. My wife and I we moved our family to a new area and we had been living in this home for about three or four months. My wife and I were lying in bed bed and all of a sudden we hear and she's like, oh my goodness, I'm like what. She's like mice, we got mice, we got to sell the place, we got to get out of here. And I'm just like whoa. I'm just like pump the brakes here, babes.
Speaker 3:Like no, we just need to get an exterminator it could have been a squirrel, it could have been a rat, it could have been an owl, it could have been anything, not mice, are you still in this house what's that?
Speaker 2:are you still in this house with the chick that you wowed and we did eventually move like your eyebrows?
Speaker 1:there's a good, there's a good story here. But so I call the exterminator. He comes, sets up the mice traps and stuff and he's look, you do live in a wooded area Like you're going to get mice and stuff. He said, and I've laid down traps and that certainly will solve things. You know, for a few months, would you like me to ensure that the mice never come back? And I was like yes, of course I would. He's like great, we have this program where I come back and I reset the traps every month and it's a monthly fee. And I was like that's a no brainer, like eliminate that stress from ever happening again. And so we signed up for it. Now here's what's interesting Fast forward two years and then Amy and I are lying in bed again and we hear and I'm like what?
Speaker 1:What is going on? Like this is this was supposed to be solved, right, we've never had that problem for two years up to that point, cause the guy has been consistent. And then what I realized was that my credit card had expired and it hadn't been processed. So the guy hadn't come back through. And I call him up and I'm like dude, like where he been. He's like yeah, your credit card's expired. I'm like, give me a call. Like just because my credit card's expired doesn't mean I don't want the service. Like dude, you know, get on it.
Speaker 2:So I like this. So let me tell you exactly what Amy was doing. He's on the phone going dude, dude. She's on the phone with hey, real estate agent, yeah, we'd like and list our house. Now you're like no wait, wait, abby. No wait, wait, wait. Did that happen in your house?
Speaker 1:well, we did move, uh, we did move, yeah, um, but uh, let me tell you what happened to my house before I started my business.
Speaker 2:Uh, that shit was going down just like that. You heard something in the roof and then she talked to a lady in the neighborhood and unbeknownst to me cause I was traveling, I was never at home. And then I came home and there's a real estate agent sitting in my house. I'm like what, what are we doing? He goes yes, I've been told we have roof rats. I'm like, uh, who told you we have roof rats? I said cause I? I'm like, who told you we have roof rats? I said because the reason I'm in the business I'm in, and that's home repairs, is because I love working on homes. I'm like we don't have roof rats, there's no source for them here.
Speaker 2:And she goes no, no, we're moving. I'm like where are we moving to? And the real estate agent said well, your wife says you're looking for a $2 to $5 billion home. I said oh, is that what we're looking for? Oh, wow, oh, that's interesting, cause I need to work like four more times than I am right now. Yeah, so that's what I had to put up with, but at the end of the day, we got rid of the squirrels. That's what they were.
Speaker 1:Well and. But here's the lesson in all that. It's just like thinking about how can you take a service that would have been normally a one-time visit and turn it into a recurring visit For me? I am not a handyman, I am like my dad is extremely handy, used to play jokes on me all the time. When I'd be quote trying to help him out, he'd be like hey, son, can you pass me the left-handed hammer? And I'd be looking for the left-handed hammer for days on end, like I am the least handyman you could think of. But what would be of service to me is like a handyman service where every month I get a certain number of hours quick check-in, come help me take out my air filters, replace those, change the light bulbs, hang the pictures, like. It doesn't have to be complicated, but it's about creating convenience for people and they're more than willing to pay for it on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:Dude, you killed it for us and I hate that we're running out of time, but we've learned so much. Obviously, surround yourself with great people, but recruiting that membership, you gave us the areas you can do it in for a number of our listeners. You can pick that bucket and figure out what's going on, make it a no brainer. The thing I took away that and this is why I wanted you on, because I'm still wrestling with that one myself, like I said that wrestling is that how do I make this a no brainer? Because we have a minimum fee for us to come out. It's $230, $180 plus the service visit.
Speaker 2:But what I was just kicking around with my team is that what if we said but if you want to become part of our preferred member program and our home home membership, what I'll do is I'll waive the, I'll waive the $80 and we'll just make it $50 or 150. And then it's $15 a month. And so that's just something we kicked around, because when I first introduced this home hub membership program, uh, now, going on three years ago, I have basically 10 people, but I have over 17,000 people in my database and I have um up to 3000 people who deal with every every year, so I know it's not working. And, um, and somebody said, well, why don't you do this? And I'm like, well, that's a lost leader for me. But I think you're proving to me and proving to a lot of us, that if we think about it differently, maybe even in the commercial real estate business, there's a way to do this.
Speaker 3:Well, that's like you need to call Stu.
Speaker 1:I would be thinking about it differently. I'd be thinking about it from the standpoint of, like, how do I take a customer that would normally spend, say, 300, maybe $500 a year with me and turn that into a customer that is spending $1,200 a year? Like I know for a fact, there would be people who would be more than willing to pay a hundred bucks a month for a service that provides maybe an hour of, you know, check-ins every month, and it may not even be every month, it might be every quarter if that's necessary. But it's the comfort of people knowing that they don't have to worry about their house falling apart because they're not maintaining water filters, air filters, like all those kinds of things Like, uh. Here's a perfect example. We have a uh, a skylight in our bathroom and we can see that there's something not right there. Right, like the you know, there's water starting to do something on that skylight. We need somebody to look at that. But it's been a pain in the butt for us to find somebody and nail it down.
Speaker 1:If I had the comfort of knowing every month somebody's going to come by and be like can you just tell me what I got to do here? What should I be looking at and thinking about. That's comfort of mind, that's peace of mind and people are willing to pay for that. And now you're taking a customer that would normally spend a few hundred dollars a year with you, turn them into a customer that's spending thousands of dollars a year with you and there's a very good chance that in that handyman being in that home, it's going to lead to other projects. So imagine, if you rethink how that membership is operating, it's more about a getting paid to scout out future projects. Now that reframes the whole concept of that membership. You're getting paid to be in somebody's home to identify future projects. That is amazing and that's a whole different business model that could set that in a whole different trajectory.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, I got one more question. We may just have to forego the four questions, because I'm going to have to forego the four questions because I'm over here processing.
Speaker 2:Well, we already know what his favorite book is yeah, and that's a great book. Actually I've written that down and that book was Jumpstart your Brain by Doug Hall. Love that, okay, and he's already proven that he doesn't like to work on houses and his DIY nightmare story was mice. But thank God your wife didn't take it to the absolutely apocalyptic level that my wife did, because that was a lot of fun to walk in off the week away, flying in from the airport with a real estate agency to my home. I'm like dude, what.
Speaker 3:So, stu, when you're working with a client, you're coming up with a strategy. You're coming up, maybe, with pricing Are you helping with that? And then you help them implement how you market it, how you train people, how you project it on the internet. I mean, is it a full service service that you're providing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have two ways in which well, three ways in which we help people. The first way is, like I have a course which I teach people how to launch and grow a membership, and that's been our flagship program. We've taught now nearly 19,000 people how to launch, grow and scale memberships and, as I mentioned, in all kinds of markets that you could think of, and that's been our primary way to serve people. The second way is that we have our own membership software platform. It's called membershipio, so that is the platform I'm incredibly biased that I think is the world's number one platform for memberships, you know. And so that's the second way. The third way is that, yeah, we have a done for you service where we work with clients and we help them, you know, set up their membership and launch their membership and certainly grow it.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, I was writing that stuff down, man. This has been dynamite, all right, so membershipio. How else can they find you, stu? Let's get your digits out there.
Speaker 1:Let's get all that out. We'll put it on the show notes everybody. Yeah, best thing. I have detailed everything about launching and growing a profitable membership in my brand new book called Predictable Profits. So if you go to Amazon, search Predictable Profits and or Stu McLaren, you'll find it. But the easiest way to find out all the things is just go to my website. Stu S-T-U dot me like the shortest, easiest URL. Stu dot me. And if you want to see the book and the extra bonuses, go to Stu dot me. Forward slash book.
Speaker 3:How is that available?
Speaker 2:Stu dot me yeah, how'd you pick that one up? I mean that, come on seriously, there's actually a funny story there.
Speaker 1:So I was coming home from with my wife, we had just visited our accountant who was breaking down the numbers for the year, and I knew that that domain was coming up for auction. And so I was legit. My wife was driving, I'm in the passenger seat and I'm bidding on this domain name. And my wife's like what are you doing? I said I'm trying to get this domain name. She's like you have stewmclarencom. I'm like yeah, but babes, everybody always butchers my last name. Like I just if I got stewed on me, it's way easier. So I, I, uh, I finally I like got it. And she's like what did you pay for it? And I said, uh, $18,000.
Speaker 1:She said sorry, what was that? And?
Speaker 2:I said uh, $18,000.
Speaker 1:She said you paid $18,000.
Speaker 2:I said no, I didn't, I only paid $600. She's like oh okay, oh my god, that dude's a freaking master. Jedi Mind Tricks by Stume. Everybody remember Stume. This thing has been amazing. We have got to go. Everybody You've been driving. If you took on this long, you've got to. You learned something, because I have learned a lot. Number one mice make roof, rats make thump, thump, thump sounds, by the way, so they're freaking loud. Stu, that was awesome. Thank you, man. Stu is the master of memberships. Go check him out. We're going to get this thing out there, but in the meantime, we've got to go out there and make some money. Let's get out of here.
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