212: The Recurring Revenue Model Used by 20,000+ Entrepreneurs with Stu McLaren

If your revenue resets every month, growth is harder to predict, and harder to scale.

That’s why so many companies are moving toward a membership model.

A lot of businesses assume recurring revenue doesn’t apply to them. Today’s guest has spent nearly two decades proving that assumption wrong.

Stu McLaren has helped more than 20,000 entrepreneurs to launch, grow, and scale membership-based businesses across nearly every industry imaginable—and in this conversation, he breaks down how to identify where recurring revenue already exists in your business and how to structure it into a membership that actually works.

Stu also shares the single biggest factor that determines whether members stay or leave in the first 30 days. Don’t miss it!

Mic Drop Moments

• “I think structure is the thing that actually creates more freedom, flexibility, and opportunity to be creative.” – Stu McLaren

• “Once you’re an entrepreneur, it is really hard NOT to see opportunity.” – Stu McLaren

• “Business is all about relationships. When people join a community, if you can just help them get connected and help them form one meaningful relationship, it can frame up the entire perspective that they have around the membership or subscription itself.” – Stu McLaren

• “If a business does not have recurring revenue in its income streams, it is always going to be tremendously stressful.” – Stu McLaren

• “Memberships and subscriptions are synonymous. People are paying for access to something on a regular basis.” – Stu McLaren

• “You don’t have to get it right. You just have to get it going.” – Stu McLaren

• (00:45) Why Predictable Revenue Lowers Founder Stress
• (02:40) Why “Passive Income” Is A Misleading Idea
• (03:16) How To Tell If A Membership Will Actually Work
• (06:26) You Only Need One Signal To Move Forward
• (07:31) Why Subscriptions And Memberships Are The Same
• (14:43) Turning One-Time Buyers Into Monthly Revenue
• (17:34) The Real Reason Members Quit In 3–6 Months
• (23:03) What Actually Matters In The First 30 Days
• (24:12) Why Retention Is A Customer Experience Problem
• (48:44) How To Lock In Retention By Highlighting Wins
• (59:03) The Mindset That Keeps Entrepreneurs Moving

   

Brad Weimert: One of the challenges and questions, the things that I’m reconciling right now internally, are I think that for most of my journey, I’ve had Easy Pay Direct since 2012 and got into the space in ‘06. And for most of my journey, the value of the rooms were the relationships. And there was some education in there, too, right? But as life has progressed, I’m not short on relationships. And it doesn’t mean I don’t want more, but I can only allocate so much time and energy into so many relationships. And I would rather go deep and wide. And from an education perspective, the education is everywhere. If I actually want to learn, I don’t actually want to do it sitting in the back of a room watching somebody speak.

First of all, they can’t talk at 2x. And so, I need them on video so I can speed it up. Second, now we’ve got these interactive tools where I can press pause, ask a question to the robot, get feedback, learn about the thing that I actually want to know, and then continue, right? And I can have this interactive process of education, and, man, the gap for learning is so much shorter now. But what I can’t do is think about the things that I’ve never thought about. I need somebody else to prompt that. You don’t know what you don’t know, and being in the room seems to be, for me, the value prop is I might hear one thing that I’d never considered, and sometimes the robot does that, but conceptually the new stuff doesn’t often pop up that way, right?

But if I can get the lived experience from somebody also, I get a new idea and get lived experience, that’s my current value of the groups, I think. Like, I’m trying to rationalize, do I keep spending time on them or not?

Stu McLaren: Well, I think you make a really great point. I think the other part that, for me, when I’m deciding whether to go to an event or be in a room or whatever it might be, is the cost of being away from family. And my kids are at this age where I’m counting down the days, like I know my daughter’s 14. She’s got a few more years left before she’s going to be onto her next chapter of life. And those years are fleeting. They’re going by so fast. My wife and I watched a video of our son the other night when he was four years younger, and he seems so tiny and like precious. And now he’s like this young little man, and it’s just like, where did this time go? And so, man, that’s my biggest factor is, does the opportunity outweigh the cost of being away from Amy and the kids? And so, I’ve definitely become a lot more selective.

But one of the things that I’ve tried to do is when I am away is try to leverage that as much as possible. So, it’s not just one event, it’s an event. And then there’s like a whole bunch of maybe podcasts that I’m recording in person around that, or dinners to try to deepen relationships. So, then that way, like we maximize the time away. And it’s not just me because, truthfully, I’m more of an introvert, so I’ll go to the event, sit at the back of the room, and then when the sessions are done, I’ll hide away in the hotel room. That’s not as productive and not the highest and best use.

Brad Weimert: I’m in the same boat, by the way.

Stu McLaren: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Everybody thinks I’m an extrovert, and I’m like, “No.” I’m very good at putting on a show.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, exactly. I love talking to people when I’m in front, but if I have the choice, I’m definitely going to be up in the hotel room, like ordering from getting it delivered, like yeah. It’s just my nature.

Brad Weimert: Constraints create pressure to be efficient, right? And so, when you have a full life, and you are deliberately trying to drive on the home front with family and trying to drive the business, you’re looking for how do I optimize that time? And the more empty space you have, the less pressure there is to be efficient, but you’re talking to probably, let’s call it, today, I don’t even know, 35 and up, right? Because when you said, “I’m worried I’m going to be away from the family,” I’m like, “I’m worried I’m going to be away from the business.” I’m leaving the business for five days or three days, or whatever. And I think younger entrepreneurs think about it that way if they’re trying to manage things. And obviously, people with a family, that’s the consistent push-pull.

And now I think the landscape’s changing quite a bit, but that’s how I think about it. I think the quandary is the same, which is you’re breaking away from the thing that’s really important to you that you’re trying to drive and spend time on, for what? And it’s also routine.

Stu McLaren: Oh, 100%. I find, when I am out of routine, I am far less productive.

Brad Weimert: It’s not even close.

Stu McLaren: Like, this morning I’m at home, I’m in a rhythm. My wife, when she gets up, she’s like, “How’s it going?” I’m like, “Amazing. Already worked out, already got Marla off to school, already done, created social content. I’m ready to go.” It was like I’m in routine, I’m in rhythm. When I travel, it’s like all of that just gets thrown out the window, and I hear these videos and people talking about like being in a rhythm, and when you’re traveling. I’m like, “Forget that.” I am so not productive when I’m traveling. And so, I like being at home. I’m 100% a homebody, which is in conflict with my wife because my wife loves to travel, and we would be full-time gypsies if she could have it her way and the kids didn’t have school and things.

So, we’re always fighting that tension of like being in routine and in rhythm at home versus being out of routine but traveling and seeing the world. And it is a tough battle. But I do think there are pros and cons to both, but I by default love being at home and love being in routine, and that’s where I’m most productive.

Brad Weimert: So, I kind of, when I hear people that are like… I actually just had an interview yesterday with this guy, Brian Luebben, who has a super interesting business, but he’s functionally nomadic. So, he spends tons of time every year on the road, running the business from the road. And I just want to call bullsh*t on that being efficient. I’m like, look, I’m sure you’re having fun, but I don’t think you can argue the point that you’re more efficient on the road running the business.

Stu McLaren: Well, interestingly enough, I was listening to a podcast this morning, and two people were talking about the difference between having a remote team and an in-person team. And we have an in-person team. So, we’re all, I would say, three-quarters of our team are here in office. The rest are remote, but we have an office intentionally because we get way more done together. And what was interesting to me was hearing one of the people being interviewed. He was just talking about how all of his team is remote, but yet they are most productive when they get together for their semi-annual team retreats. And I’m like, “Well, duh, because you’re together, like get together more often, you get more done. Like, that’s the way it works.” And we can talk about like Zoom meetings and online huddles and all that kind of stuff. It just does not produce in the same way as being together in person.

Brad Weimert: No question about it. And by the way, like teach their own. If your lifestyle is such that you want to prioritize travel and you’re okay with the inefficiencies, or you want to have a remote team because it’s easier to hire and it creates more flexibility in your own life, more power to you. Great.

Stu McLaren: Totally.

Brad Weimert: And don’t f*cking argue the point that it’s more efficient because it’s not.

Stu McLaren: 100%. I mean, I think truthfully what you said there, though, relays across a whole bunch of different areas of life because we’re talking about productivity. But in the same way, like I am very mindful of the fact that I know that I could have made a lot more money in our business if I had chosen not to prioritize family and being home. Because I would be on the road, I’d be speaking a hell of a lot more. Like I love to speak, I love being in front of audiences, and I love being able to create these magnetic environments where it leads to a lot more sales. That leads to a lot more relationships and all the kind of stuff that comes from that. But that is a lower priority for me than being at home with Amy and the kids. And so, there’s a tradeoff and I think there are always going to be trade-offs.

But like you were saying, working remotely, that’s a trade-off because you’re going to have the flexibility, but you’re not going to be as productive. Same choosing to be home with Amy and the kids, that’s a trade-off because that’s a higher priority. But it means that I’m not going to be able to go and do all the things that sometimes and more often lead to greater sales when it comes to speaking, developing relationships, partnerships, collaborations, all that kind of stuff. So, I think it’s full of trade-offs.

Brad Weimert: How do you internally reconcile that? So, for me, now you have, presumably, a supportive spouse.

Stu McLaren: Yes.

Brad Weimert: Which is somebody that you presumably have aligned goals with, right, and outcomes that you’re after together.

Stu McLaren: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: So, there is some sort of support network for this, but for me, I often find myself fighting myself. And you could use the frame of FOMO, right? I’m around somebody else that’s building at a level I’m not, or I’m around somebody else that’s enjoying other areas of life in a way that I’m not. And then I have this internal push-pull of like, “Oh sh*t, I could do more.” And of course, then I’m like, “F*ck, I’m going to do all the things now.” And then I drive really fast in one direction. And that just creates friction, and it creates this internal friction for me. How do you reconcile the notion of having a desire, having a big goal to grow the company, to reach more people, and then simultaneously make the choice, “I’m not going to do everything I can to drive that forward because I have another priority that’s more important”?

Stu McLaren: It’s a really good question. In my life, I had to make rules. Otherwise, I would be pulled in 1,000,001 different directions. So, the very first thing I did was just identify, like, what are the priorities in my life? And very early on, I recognized that Amy and the kids were my highest priority. And that actually led to the decision to completely change my business model. This was back when Marla, our daughter, was born. Because at that moment, I remember holding her in my arms and just thinking like, “I can’t keep running the business the way that I’ve been running it because I am not going to be a present husband and father.” And at that time, I was trading my time for money. I had a really successful consulting business, and it was great.

Everything was going great, but I was trading time for money, and my schedule was not my own. It was very much dependent on my clients and what their schedule looked like in terms of promotions and so forth. And so, I had to make some shifts, and ultimately, it started with me just creating rules for the priorities. So, number one, I started to get clear on what are the priorities. And if family is number one, then my decision-making needs to reflect that. The second thing that I did was I made rules to help me in the moments when I have those decisions in front of me. And I am a very impulsive guy. When I see an opportunity, I want to just jump and pounce. And I knew that that had to be corrected before I’m in those moments.

And so, that’s why these rules come into play. So, a good example, I mentioned I love speaking. I get asked to speak all the time, and I would be on the road all the time because I love being in front of audiences. But the rule that I put in place was that I’m never going to be away from Amy and the kids for more than four days a month. So, if multiple speaking opportunities come up, I then have to make the decision. Do I go to the speaking engagement and I bring Amy and the kids with me, or do I say, “No, not this time”? And so, it was always a simple rule. Never away more than four days a week. And if another opportunity comes up, then it’s either take Amy and the kids, or I say no.

And in the beginning, when the kids were younger, we took them to a lot of different events, and we made a whole trip around it. Now that they’re older and they’re more intertwined in their sports and activities and school and so forth, I say no to a lot more of those opportunities. So, that was an example of a rule. Another rule was that I never work after five o’clock, and the reason being is because that’s when the kids are home from all the stuff, and that’s the most important time for me to be present. And so, again, another simple rule that plays out in what time I book interviews, what time I book meetings, when I schedule certain things. Some are my assistant. We just never book anything beyond three o’clock because three will lead to four. And then that’s essentially the timeline that will allow me to have that buffer room.

So, I think they are just simple rules. You got to first get clear on your priorities. Number two, create the rules. And then that alleviates a lot of the decision-making. Because at that point, you’re not stuck in that moment of friction of like, “Yeah, this is an amazing opportunity. Oh my gosh, it’s so exciting. Oh, okay. I’ll do it this just once.” Well, just this once will lead to like again and again, and again and again. And before you know it, you’ll be weeks, months, years down the road, and you’ll be looking back like, gosh, like where did all that time with the kids go? So, I don’t know, for me, priorities first, then create rules around it.

Brad Weimert: So, priorities first, and then I think that you basically allow past Stu to create constraints for emotional, erratic, impulsive, current Stu.

Stu McLaren: That’s exactly it. Yeah. Future Stu is like, okay, let’s get that guy under control. Let’s put some structure around that, and then that way he won’t go off the rails in those moments.

Brad Weimert: Well, I think one of the things that people buck is the impulsive people, or the adventurers, or the people that are self-defined ADD entrepreneurs. Whatever bucket, they feel like rules and constraints are restrictive. I feel like rules, constraints, and discipline are what create freedom.

Stu McLaren: I would 100% agree. I think rules and structure actually create a foundation for creativity and freedom, and flexibility. Without them, it’s like a whole lot of randomness in a whole bunch of different directions, and it’s hard to reign that in. But when you’ve got structure, now, you could be creative within that, and that’s where you make meaningful progress in any one particular direction. So, I’m in agreement with you. I think structure, rules, that’s the thing that actually creates more freedom, flexibility, and opportunity to be creative.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. For me, I really need to, as it turns out, I need to give myself permission to only focus on one thing and to not respond to things. And I need to give myself permission to say no, and I need to give myself permission to let a bunch of stuff hit the ground so that I can keep focusing on a really big priority. But if I don’t premeditate that, if I don’t let past Brad make those decisions, then present Brad, as you mentioned, is going to get pulled in 15 directions, and it’s going to be random.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. I think we all struggle in the moment. I’m sorry I can’t speak for everybody. I know for me, I struggle in the moment because I get excited. I get excited about all kinds of different things. I have entrepreneurial ADD, where like I see opportunity everywhere. Like, once you’re an entrepreneur, it is really hard not to see opportunity. Like, I’m at my son’s tumbling in gymnastics, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, if I was running this business, I’d be doing this, I’d be doing that. They could optimize this. They make way more money this way.” And my son, he is also a competitive skipper, and like this is a growing sport.

Brad Weimert: What?

Stu McLaren: Yes. He’s a three-time national champion, jump rope for Americans, three-time national.

Brad Weimert: Okay. Okay. Okay. That makes more sense than I’m picturing somebody just skipping down the street.

Stu McLaren: No, no, no. Yeah, he’s like a competitive jump rope, and it’s like a…

Brad Weimert: That makes more sense.

Stu McLaren: I had no idea this was a whole sport until he got into it, and then his first year as a 9-year-old, he ended up making it to the national championships, and I was like, “What in the world?” We flew out to like Halifax, and then he’s competing, and it’s intense, man. There’s like, for a freestyle competition, there’s 12 judges, there’s hundreds of people in the audience. He’s the only one on the gym floor, and he does like this whole skipping routine with tricks and all kinds of stuff in front of all these people. Anyway, he ends up winning the national championships in his first year. Opened my eyes.

Brad Weimert: Crazy.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, blew me wide open. But this is a growing sport, and they’re trying to get it into the Olympics. And my entrepreneurial brain is just like, “Okay, you got to run this like a business,” but it’s still being run by a volunteer mindset. And so, they are so stingy on so many little things that would make a big difference in blowing this sport up across the country. And that’s where my entrepreneurial brain goes. It’s just like, “Oh my gosh, you should do this. We could do that, we could do this, this, this.” And we’re trying to help, and it’s like, but that’s just it. Like, I could get distracted by 1,000,001 things because I see opportunity everywhere.

And so, I do think that structure is really good for that. I do think business partners are really good for that, too, unless they’re like ADD as well. And sometimes we go on tangents but having people around you that can keep those guardrails on so that they can facilitate that energy, be like, “Sweet, okay. Like, get it out. Get it out,” and then guide you back on track. I think that that’s really, really important and powerful.

Brad Weimert: So, I think what I heard, Stu McLaren, is that you’re going to stop being the membership guy and be a professional stripper.

Stu McLaren: Dude, I just see so much potential. You know, like when you see potential, and you’re just like, “Ah, if you just did these few things,” but it’s all good.

Brad Weimert: So, some of the rules that you put in place, I think, early pivoting to your chosen path here is that you should not be dependent on your time to make money, and that led you into the membership world. I didn’t know this until digging in, but I didn’t realize that you were WishList. And I knew WishList Member back in the day, and Wishlist Member for anybody, I’ll give a couple of stats here for anybody that doesn’t know Stu McLaren, but WishList Member had something like 70,000 membership sites when you left the business. You have, to date, worked with something like 20,000 different creators to launch membership sites. You also have a pretty cool charity in Kenya, opening schools for students there.

And today you’ve got membership.io, which I want to talk about because it’s kind of the evolution of memberships, which is interesting, predictable profits. One of the things that I find interesting about that path to lean into recurring revenue or passive income, as people like to say, is sort of the farce that that label is. It’s almost never passive, and people think that they’re going to put it on autopilot and be like, “Oh, all of a sudden, I have a membership, and I’ve got all this money coming in. It’s great.” Before we officially press go on this, we were talking a little bit about kind of like where memberships can fit in and where things fit in in general.

I see businesses come to the conclusion that you did, which is like, I’m trading too much time for money. I’m too dependent on independent sales or a sales organization. I want a membership, and then they do a terrible job of doing it. What do you think the biggest mistake is that people make when they’re trying to impose a membership onto their business model?

Stu McLaren: Well, number one, if a business does not have recurring revenue in its income streams, it is always going to be tremendously stressful. And survey after survey shows that the number one stress that all entrepreneurs experience is money. Like, where is the next sale going to come from?

Brad Weimert: Imagine that.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, exactly. And so, this is why I’m so passionate about this, because to me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an information-based membership, a product-based membership, community-based membership, or whatever it is, like just get recurring revenue in your business. And this is why some of the biggest companies now have recurring revenue in it. Like, Netflix recurring revenue, Amazon, got recurring revenue with Prime. Like, we can go down the laundry list of massive companies that some point have found a way to incorporate recurring revenue into it. And the reason is because it’s so much more stable, not passive, but it is stable, and it provides that predictability.

And so, when I think customer or when companies and businesses are trying to think about recurring revenue, they’re approaching it the wrong way. And what I would say is there are really three indicators that I look for in a market that is a good fit for a membership. Number one is, can you solve an ongoing problem? So, a good example of that would be like weight loss. Somebody’s not going to go from being overweight to their ideal weight like that. It takes time to solve that problem, which is a perfect market for a membership because that’s what we’re supporting people in doing over a period of time, is losing weight, as an example. And there are other markets that would fall under that bucket, but the whole thesis is, can you solve an ongoing problem?

Number two is, can you teach a skill? So, this is why we have so many artists in our community who have booming memberships. We’re talking like thousands and thousands of members. Because learning how to go from not knowing how to paint to becoming a great artist takes time, which is perfect for a membership. And then the other side of that is that there are levels of mastery. Like, you and I have been in business a long time. We were talking off camera. You’ve been in business since 2006. I made my first sale in 2004. So, dude, I don’t know if you realize this or not, but we are old men in this industry.

Brad Weimert: Speak for yourself, man. Speak for yourself.

Stu McLaren: So, we’ve been in this game a long time. But a part of that is that we also know that we haven’t crossed the finish line. It’s not like we have crossed the finish line of mastering business. There are different levels of mastery, and that’s where, again, a membership is just incredible when it comes to teaching a skill because it doesn’t matter how much people learn. There are levels of mastery, which is why people will stay. And then the third indicator I look for is like convenience. Can we make someone’s life easier? So, a good example of this would be like Tara Phillips. So, she was a full-time educator for 25 years and specifically working with kids with autism.

Now, during that time, she created a bunch of resources to help her kids thrive in the classroom. And she had this light bulb moment, which was like, “Well, wait a minute. There are probably like a lot of other educators that could benefit from these resources.” So, she created a membership, and that’s what she provides inside the membership are these resources, so that teachers don’t have to think about what they’re going to teach in the classroom or don’t have to think about what resources to create. Tara’s already providing them for them. And she’s built a multimillion-dollar-a-year membership providing other educators resources. She’s created tremendous convenience.

And so, if you can shortcut the amount of time it takes for people or make their lives easier, you’ve got a great membership model. Think about like social media template, is another great example. I think of Nicole Melton. She’s got a membership that provides social media templates for businesses in the beauty profession. Like, think about how specific that is, right? But it’s thriving because those businesses in the beauty profession don’t have to worry about what they’re going to post on social media every day because they just log into the membership, and Nicole’s already provided them all kinds of social media templates. They’re just going to make a couple of tweaks and, boom, they’re off to the races.

So, when I think about a business that wants to create recurring revenue, I’m thinking about, can you solve an ongoing problem? If yes, green light, thumbs up, move forward. Can you teach a skill? If yes, green light, thumbs up, move forward. Or number three, can you make someone’s life easier? If yes, green light, thumbs up, move forward. And you don’t have to say yes to all three of those. Just one of those is the indicator to make it a great market for a membership.

Brad Weimert: Bonus points, if you are solving a government inefficiency, like teaching teachers how to teach.

Stu McLaren: Another rabbit hole.

Brad Weimert: Right. Okay. So, first and foremost, let’s define membership. So, what’s the difference between a subscription and a membership? And give me a few examples of each maybe, if they are different.

Stu McLaren: They’re not. Membership and subscription are pretty interchangeable. I just think the word subscription typically gets used for more like on-demand services like SaaS companies. But at the end of the day, with both membership and subscription, it’s the same thing. People are paying every month to have access to something. That might be access to information, it might be access to a service, it might be access to ongoing products that are being sent out. But there are all kinds of different types of memberships. Like, I think about years ago, my wife and I, we moved into a new home, and it’s in a pretty wooded area. And we had lived there for about two months, and Amy and I are lying in bed. And all of a sudden, we hear tick, tick, tick, tick. And she’s like, “What is that?”

And I’m like, “Ah, I don’t know, babe. Don’t worry about it.” And then all of a sudden tick, tick, tick, tick. She’s like, “What is that?” I’m like, “It’s probably mice.” She’s like, “Mice!” She’s like, “We can’t live here! I can’t live in mice! We got to sell the place.” I’m like, “Babes, we literally just moved in two months ago. We’ll figure this out.” So, I call an exterminator. He comes over. He is like, “Yep. Yeah, you definitely got a mice problem. You’re in the woods. They’re here. This is where they live.”

Brad Weimert: This is where they live.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. This is where they live. He’s like, “I can take care of this for you, but they are going to come back. Would you like me to make sure that they never come back again, and just come back here and service on a regular basis?” And I was like, “Yes, I don’t want to have to worry about this.” So, guess what? Immediately, we go from a one-time customer, now to a recurring customer, and that’s as simple as it is. He’s solving an ongoing problem for us. And so, I think too often people get wrapped up in their head thinking, “Oh, this doesn’t apply to me or to my business.” No, it does. Just ask yourself like, “What could I continuously do to serve my customer and help them on an ongoing basis?” That’s where you start, because at the end of the day, memberships and subscriptions are synonymous. It’s the same thing. People are paying for access to something on a regular basis.

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, you just hit on it, and I want to double click on it because I hear a huge chunk of listeners say, “But it doesn’t apply to my business.” So, what are some of the industries that people think, “Oh, that wouldn’t work as a membership,” that you’ve seen people apply memberships to? Because when I hear this, like a lot of this, where my brain goes right away is, “Oh, I should look for an industry that has an ongoing issue, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,” which by the way, I did, which is why I am in payments, because the whole thing’s recurring, right? Slower to build, for me anyway. Maybe that’s my own inefficiency, but I targeted an industry that was residual by nature. What are the spaces that have that opportunity, but people often just don’t see it?

Stu McLaren: Well, I think it’s more about a mindset and the questions we need to ask ourselves to discover the opportunity. Like I used to say, there are going to be certain types of businesses that a membership or subscription would not make sense for. And I used to joke around that would be like tires, like a company selling tires, I don’t know if we could turn that into a subscription. But I live up here in Canada, and what I could tell you is that you could 100% turn that into a subscription. Let me tell you how. Every winter, we got to swap out our tires. We got to go from our summer tires to our winter tires, and that in and of itself is an ongoing service two times a year, right? So, one time of the year, we got to take the summer tires off, put the winter tires on, and then later on, end of spring, we got to take the winter tires off, put the summer tires on.

So, that’s two services right there. Next piece of that is that where are you going to store the tires? You could store them in the garage, but then the garage starts stacking up with all these tires, or the tire company could store them for you. That’s an ongoing monthly service. So, I just think at the end of the day, it’s a mindset, and we just got to ask ourselves the questions like, “How could I serve my customer on a regular basis?” And I’ve seen people do this with product-based businesses. Like, I’ve seen companies do it where, this is a funny one, this company, I forget the name of it, it’s like Men something, but it’s an underwear company, and they send men regular new pairs of underwear every month.

It’s a service. Because what they found was like men don’t like going shopping. They definitely don’t go like shopping for underwear. And so, what they do is they just send them on a regular basis, or the classic, which is a Dollar Shave Club. I remember when that company launched, they launched with like this viral video. I remember seeing a video when it had got like 10,000 views. I was in Hawaii. I literally like sent them a message. I said, “Hey, are you looking for investors?” Because I wanted to get in right away. I knew that this was going to be a big thing. They came back, they said, “Actually, we’ve already got the investors that we needed,” but that blew up because why? They were solving an inconvenience problem.

It was inconvenient to go to the store. Most of the razors were behind like a shop and key, and then you’d have to find the person to unlock it, to get the razors. It’s a nightmare. And so, they just said like, “Screw that. Let’s just make it easy. We’ll just send razors on a regular basis, and people pay for them on subscription.” So, they’re just asking like, “What can we do on an ongoing basis to serve our customer?” And so, I’ve seen it from underwear to razors, to candles, to my wife is part of an earring membership. She gets those sent to her. It’s just like, what are your regular customers buying on a consistent basis? I’ve seen it done with pop-up juice bars. I was in San Francisco, come up to the menu, and I looked, and each of the juices are like $10 each, or if you’re a member, you get them for $6.

And so, I looked down, I said, “Well, what do I need to do to become a member?” And said, “It’s $10 a month, and it gets you two free juices plus the member discount on any juices thereafter.” I’m like, “That’s a steal of a deal.” And they’re like, “Yeah.” And so, immediately, I sign up, and now I’m a member of this ongoing juice business. There’s a car wash right across the road from our office. Every other car wash in the industry or in the town is hoping that their customers come back and buy from them again. But that car wash, when it got built, I remember the guys in the office coming in saying, “Dude, you should go check this out. They’ve actually structured it based around a membership.”

So, I go over, you could go through the car wash one time for $12, or you could buy a monthly membership for $14 a month, and you can go through an unlimited number of times. And so, some people hear this and be thinking, “Well, that’s dumb. They’re going to lose money if a customer comes like twice.” I’m like, “No, no, no, no. They just completely transformed the business,” because I went in when I got my membership, and I asked the girl behind the counter, I said, “How many customers do you have so far?” And she’s like, “Oh. It’s like we’ve been open a month and a half and they were already over 3,000 monthly customers.” And then after my membership, my car was like sparkling clean.

My wife, Amy, is like, “Why is your car so clean?” I’m like, “Oh, it’s this new membership.” She’s like, “Can I run my car through it?” I’m like, “No, no, no. My membership is tied to my car.” She’s like, “Well, can we get a membership for my car?” I’m like, “Sure.” I go in again. This is about a month later. I ask, “Where are you at now with your customers?” They were over 4,500 monthly paying customers. And so, just time out. Like, every other car wash in the town is hoping that their customers come back. This car wash know with certainty that 4,500 customers are going to pay them at the start of the month. Why? Because they just thought about it differently. They thought about how can I take a one-time customer and turn it into a repeatable sale every single month?

And so, I think, Brad, at the end of the day, it’s laziness when a business doesn’t think about how to generate recurring revenue. You’re just not obsessing about your customer. And if you just obsess about your customer and think about what’s the next logical thing that they would purchase, you will find opportunity to create recurring revenue everywhere.

Brad Weimert: Well, I agree with you. I also think that telling people to think better and think differently is a difficult path to educate them to do so. So, I think that the examples of how it works, like you gave a ton of examples, which I love. And then I think some of the bullets that I heard there were like you gave three, which is ongoing issue, teach a skill, or make something easier. But I think mechanically, the other things that were outlined are like, what are the elements that could make that true? And one of them is you post a discount if you’re in the membership. So, the juice example was it pays for two juices a month, and then you get a discount beyond that, which incentivizes people to go for a third or a fourth or a fifth, right?

You also mentioned storage as a facilitating mechanism here. I recently bought a lake house, which has more space than I anticipated, and I wanted to put Christmas lights up. Well, Christmas lights are a b*tch to put up on a roof that’s 30 feet tall, so I wanted to hire somebody. Then I learned about the Christmas tree light or Christmas light model that exists here. And to your point, there is a company in town. Now, there are actually several. First of all, they gouge the sh*t out of you to put the Christmas lights up. I mean, it’s like functionally, $200 an hour or some nonsense. But they also will store the lights for you on a monthly subscription. And I think that on the front end, the person that owns the Christmas light install company, nobody thought of that.

Then they realized, oh, there actually is a market for that because especially the bigger the house or the more lights you want, the less likely you are to want to store all that crap in your house all year for that one time a year, right?

Stu McLaren: Exactly.

Brad Weimert: So, the storage option is also amazing. When you put a membership in place, though, how you facilitate it, how you engage the community, how you start the process, inevitably has a lot to do with it, right? If it’s click a box to subscribe, we know internally at Easy Pay Direct that the attrition on those, I mean, your most subscriptions are three to six months, and that’s the fall off period. So, what do you do to create a unique client experience in the first 30 days of a membership to keep that person engaged and coming back?

Stu McLaren: Well, here’s what most people don’t realize. You can triple the lifetime value of a customer in that first 30 days if they have a positive experience. So, how do you create a positive experience? There are really three ways. Number one is that the customer is real clear about the journey that you are taking them on. See, a lot of times, a membership isn’t clear that this is a journey. And so, of course, a customer doesn’t want to just keep paying for the sake of to keep paying. They want to keep paying to ensure that they have continued access to something and that something is leading to an outcome or transformation that they’re after. It’s like the guy with the mice. The outcome that I want is I don’t ever want to have to worry about mice again.

And so, the thing that’s leading to that is that he’s going to come on a regular basis and reset the traps or whatever. And so, that is a service that I’m paying for on an ongoing basis to have the outcome of not stressing and not worrying. So, number one is just getting clear and communicating that with your customer. If you’re teaching people something, whether it’s you’re teaching them how to solve an ongoing problem or teaching them a skill, then you want to get clear on communicating what that path looks like. It’s something that we call a success path, and it’s a journey. It’s like, how do you go from where you are to where you want to be, and where should your focus be right now that’s helping them get clear, and that clarity creates confidence and momentum?

The second thing that you want to help do, especially if you have a membership that has community, is you want to help them form a meaningful relationship. So, good example of this in the real world, when we move to this new area, my kids are going to a brand new school. They don’t know anybody. And as a parent, there’s like this anxiety of like, “Ugh, please let them just feel settled and comfortable.” So, my wife and I, we walked the kids to school, we meet the teacher, the kids go into their classrooms. At the end of the day, we go to pick them up, and I’m watching, just hoping that there was a good day, and my daughter comes out first, and I see this big smile on her face. She comes running up. I was like, “How was it?”

She’s like, “Dad, this is the best school ever.” I’m like, “Really?” I’m like, “Tell me why.” She said, “Well, you know how I used to go to Montessori school?” I said, “Yeah.” She’s like, “There’s a girl in my class that used to go to Montessori school, too.” I’m like, “Ha, ha.” She’s like, “Yeah, but dad, it gets better. You know how I love riding horses?” I said, “Yeah.” She’s like, “She rides horses as well.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, you guys are like a match made in heaven.” She’s like, “But dad, you know this new stable that I’m riding at?” “Yeah.” “Her mom owns the stable.” I’m like, “What are the odds?” She’s like, “This is the best school ever.” Timeout. Her whole framing that this was the best school ever had nothing to do with the school. It had everything to do with the fact that she made one meaningful relationship.

And so, business is all about relationships. When people join a community, if you can just help them get connected and help them form one meaningful relationship, it can frame up the entire perspective that they have around the membership or subscription itself. The third one is that we want to help our customers get a quick win. If they get a quick win in that first 30 days, it creates confidence and momentum that sets them up for long-term success.

Now, we think it’s got to be a big win. It’s got to be like a home run. We’ve got to save them thousands of dollars or we got to make them thousands of dollars or whatever it might be. Like, In our minds, we think big wins. No, it’s little wins. It’s just about progress. The thing that is going to feel the best for your clients or customers is if they are experiencing little wins that begin to stack up. And so, when I’m engineering an onboarding experience, I want to direct people as quickly as possible to the few things that are immediately going to help them get a win. I’ll give you an example. So, my business partner Andrew, years ago, joined a very expensive mastermind. We invested $60,000 to be a part of this mastermind.

Now, in the community, he saw a thread that somebody posted about how if you’re starting a software company or a SaaS service, how you can get up to $100,000 of credit from Amazon AWS and $25,000 of credit from Stripe. And it was just literally following a few simple steps. Andrew followed the steps, sent in the application, and literally less than a week later, we got approved. We got a $100,000 credit from Amazon AWS and $25,000 credit from Stripe. So, within a week, we had essentially made the business $125,000 from a $60,000 investment. We’re like, this is freaking amazing. That was one post within the community. So, that was a win that immediately was a huge win for us, and now it’s framed up our whole thought process around the value of this particular mastermind. So, I just share this because at the end of the day, the onboarding is the most important part of a membership.

You mentioned three to six months being the average. I call BS on that, Brad. That are companies that are not paying attention to retention. What we see are not months. We see customers staying on average for years because we have intentionally crafted both an onboarding experience, either number one, creates clarity, number two, helps them form meaningful relationships, or three, helps them get a win. And we do that within the first 30 days. And then we double down on retention. Like, what else can we do to keep people happy moving forward? And at the end of the day in the membership or subscription business, we are in the happiness business. As long as customers are happy and are making progress, they’re going to stay. So, if you see customers dropping off, it’s because you’re not making your customers happy and that at the end of the day is why customers are going to stay. So just obsess over the people and it starts within that first 30 days.

Brad Weimert: Well,  I love that. Couple things, one, what you define for memberships, I believe to be true for the client experience. Period. So, whether you are onboarding somebody in a membership or you’re doing just your client experience and journey for any process, for anything that you’re selling or delivering, all of those points or many of them still hold true. Two, for clarity, I think that I just need to send a bunch of our clients to you to beef up their subscriptions and memberships because statistically, the tens of thousands of clients through the Easy Pay Direct channel, those are our stats. They are at three to six months, depending. So, let’s talk partnership after this. Let’s see if we can juice up those subscriptions because everybody wins that way.

Stu McLaren: Honestly, dude, and it doesn’t take much, like, this is the crazy part about memberships and subscriptions. It does not take much to have a massive compounding difference. So, I work with clients who come in and they’ve got horrible retention. I’ll give you an example. We had a client. I won’t mention their name because we’ll safeguard their reputation, but they had a very booming membership, over 8,000-plus members in this membership. They came to us because their retention was pretty bad. They were losing anywhere between 20% to 30% of their members every month, which is crazy.

And so, right away, they got a red flag. The husband, he sends me a message and he is like, Stu, can you help us? Sure. Take a look at their membership. And it is a gong show of overwhelm. People join the membership. They log in and it’s just like, boom. Like, customers are just hit with 1,000,001 different options and pass that they could take within that membership. And so, right away, the customer doesn’t know whether to go left or go right or click this or click that. And it just creates confusion and overwhelm. And that’s when the seed of doubt is planted, which is, I don’t know if this is going to serve me. I don’t know if I can keep up. And then boom, it’s a matter of time before they’re gone.

So, all we did, we didn’t change the offer, we didn’t change the price, we didn’t even change the content. All we changed for them was the membership experience. When a member logged in, we directed them. Well, first we did was we asked a couple questions, and then based on that information, we could now direct them to content that was specifically relevant for them with where they were in the journey of going from X to Z, so to speak. And so, we reorganized the whole experience, we reorganized the content, and we created pathways for their members. In month number one after implementing this, cut their churn in half.

Brad Weimert: Amazing.

Stu McLaren: That meant literally hundreds and hundreds of members who would normally leave our staying. That meant tens of thousands of dollars a month is now going right back into the business. That meant hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because of the compounding nature of memberships. And so, I share this because it boils down 100% to onboarding and to the experience, and a few changes can make a massive difference in the bottom line profits of a membership.

Brad Weimert: I love that. What’s so funny about that to me is like there’s no marketer that would create a sales funnel that has 17 different CTAs on the checkout page. Hey, what do you want to do? Any of these 17 things. Yet they have no problem selling it and then dumping them into a membership area where there is no clear path and there are 17 options. So, the three things you laid out were a clear path for the client experience and walking them through that clear path. And I want to challenge anybody that’s thinking about this to look at this, both, in terms of just your onboarding sequence for anything you’re selling as well as a membership or subscription.

The other that I like and I think is a challenging but interesting construct is connecting with somebody else, like some relatability and some handholding or a peer, but some human touch that makes them feel like they’re heard and seen, right? They can relate to something that’s them directly.

Stu McLaren: And that could also be a customer success rep on your team, right?

Brad Weimert: Love that.

Stu McLaren: Like, I talked about it being somebody from a community, if you’ve got a community around the membership or subscription, and if you don’t, doesn’t mean that you can’t utilize that strategy. Help the client form a relationship with a customer success rep so that now they get to know them on a first name basis, and now that person is the go-to person for that customer that got any questions, like we can all form these relationships, but the customer needs to feel connected to somebody.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. One of the ways that we do that internally is we pair our merchants with somebody in our company that has specialization with that industry. So, if somebody comes in and SaaS is their background, we want them to work with one of our certified payment specialists that knows SaaS really well. If high ticket is their background, we want somebody that’s really good at high-ticket businesses that’s done these massive product launches with Tony Robbins and the big names because they feel like that person knows exactly their problems and they do, right?

And then the third thing you said is give them a quick win. And I think one of the important things that you mentioned is that it doesn’t have to be a big win. It has to be a quick win. And so, the little things that make them feel like they’ve made progress are the things that keep them engaged and keep them feeling like we have gotten value delivered. Purchase to value delivery is what gets you engaged and keeps the client experience exciting.

Stu McLaren: Let me give you a little secret about that.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I like secrets.

Stu McLaren: When you get your client a win, you want to make sure you reflect that back to them and remind them of that win. So, too often, we see a client or customer who will get a win, and internally, we’re like, yes, things are working. Amazing. But what you want to do is you actually want to reflect that back to the customer and remind them of the value they’re getting from being in the membership. So, a good example, we had a customer this morning make a post in our community. She did a campaign that grew her email list by 14,000. That was more than she had grown her list the entirety of last year. That’s a huge win.

And so, she posted that. We’re reflecting back to her the value of that. Like, oh my gosh, by being in this membership and hearing this one particular thing, you have now made more progress in a one-week time span than you made all of last year. And now, it’s like, oh my gosh, this membership is so valuable. And it is. And that’s the point. It’s the same reason why Spotify at the end of the year do their Spotify Wrapped. What are they doing? They’re reminding you of how much value you got from all the music that you’ve listened to. They’ve wrapped it, no pun intended, or actually, totally intended. They’ve wrapped it in a fun way that makes you want to share it. So now, you’re sharing with the world how much value you got from the membership.

Peloton does the same thing. At the end of the year, they tell me how many minutes I have been using their app, who my favorite instructors were, all the badges that I’ve earned. It makes me feel good about the value that I’ve gotten from that membership. So, it’s not just enough to help your clients get a win. That is definitely important. I want to emphasize that. But the secret is reminding your clients and customers of the value that they’ve received and what that means for them moving forward. That’s where now you connect the dots of this membership in subscription is tremendously valuable. I don’t want to let this go.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, and you brought up Spotify Wrapped, which is interesting because, first of all, every fucking SaaS company on the planet just started doing this. Like, all these platforms rolled out the wrap function this year because Spotify, the last two years, has gotten attention for a lot of shine for how popular that specific campaign has been. But we’re talking about reiterating those things during the onboarding experience to facilitate the quick win. And it doesn’t have to be a huge thing. It’s just a little thing. But I’ll tell you, the least effective time to tell somebody about their wins is when they’re canceling. And then you’re like, oh, hey, but you got all this stuff out of it and you’ve missed the mark, right? Because they didn’t realize or they didn’t internalize those wins and connect them to the value of the experience, the membership, the product, the client journey because it was too late. And all it takes is the reiteration in the beginning is how I mapped that to my own business and my own life there.

Stu McLaren: I want to add one other final thing that I think is really important in this piece of the discussion. I would encourage everybody watching and listening to go through their whole buying and onboarding process with fresh eyes. So, I recently got hired for a one-day VIP day from a client that had a very established membership, and their customer avatar were specifically men who were pretty strapped for time. Like when I asked them, like, what’s the number one reason that people give when they cancel? The number one reason was they just didn’t have enough time to consume the content. So, these men are strapped for time.

So, I go through the onboarding process and I’ve got fresh eyes and they said, do you want the login straight into membership? I said, no, no, no, no. I want to buy as though I’m a brand new customer. And so, I start going through that process, and it is like multiple steps to finally get into the membership. And one of the steps was I land on a thank you page, which is common, and it has a thank you page video, again, common. But the thank you page video has no controls on it. I don’t know if this video is 30 seconds, 3 minutes, or 35 minutes. So, what happens is if I don’t know how long it is, I’m like, see you, I’m out of here. Like I don’t have time to hope that it’s only 30 seconds. So, I guarantee you, very few people are even watching that video. And that video is the most important thing because it frames up all the value that they’re going to get. So, people are skipping that.

Then I go to a next page and it’s like I got to select my username and password. Got it. Go to the next page. Then it’s like another login page. I’m like, what? I thought I was already logged in. Like, what’s going on here? Like, it was really confusing. Then I finally get into the membership, and like I said, it was like. I could go in 1,000,001 different directions of stuff that I could click. And I said, you’re losing people every step along the way. Every friction point is a point in which you’re going to lose people. And then the moment that you lose them, they are not getting the value in that first 30 days. And we got to hope that they’re going to find their way back in. And I don’t want to be hoping.

And so, what you want to do is you want to go through fresh eyes and you just want to limit the number of options and steps so that there is one clear path to get people all the way through into the membership. And even when they’re in the membership or subscription, it is very clear how to get value quickly from that membership or subscription. So, my big tip when it comes to improving that whole onboarding experience is just go through it with fresh eyes. When we’re building it, we often don’t even think about all the steps that we’re creating. Go through it with fresh eyes and you’ll see a ton of opportunity.

Brad Weimert: Or go through it with tired eyes over and over and over again. Just f*cking go through it again.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, good point.

Brad Weimert: Like, well, that’s one of the things, our mantra this year was do less better as a company. And what that meant to us is stop looking for the new ways to improve the business. Look at the core client experience and improve that. I don’t need a new shiny object or a new magical AI robot. I need the core experience to be clean and simple and better, right? Okay, so we talked about the first 30 days engaging. Let’s talk about acquisition. So, what are the tips to attracting new members in the first place? So, you have a membership, a subscription, and I think a lot of this applies to business in general, but what are the acquisition levers that you’ve run into or you’ve seen that have been super effective?

Stu McLaren: Well, I think one mistake that people make when they’re not getting enough members into the membership is that they’re not giving their audience a reason to join today. So, most times, and this applies not just with memberships, it applies to selling all kinds of different things, but most times that we’re just hoping that people see the value and they’re just going to buy today. But what happens is most people will come and they’re like, oh, this looks good. Yeah, I’m going to save this for later. And that’s like the kiss of death. Like, nobody, as business owners want their audience saving things for later. No. We want people making a decision today, so we got to give them a reason to buy today. And there’s all kinds of ways to do this. In the membership world, I took a page right out of Sports Illustrated. Sports Illustrated used to have like…

Brad Weimert: You sent them a football phone.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, exactly. Like, you get your subscription, you get the football phone. Isn’t that crazy how you knew exactly what I was talking about? And that’s my point. It’s like they gave us a reason to get the subscription today. And so, one of the things that we did in one of my earliest memberships is we would create a new promotion or bonus that was only available that month. And so, we would build up excitement for people to get this thing this month, and then what we would do is we’d put price, position it to be super attractive to join the membership so they could get this thing for say, $97 or they could get it for free inside the membership, which was 20 bucks a month. And so, we know that most people are going to think, okay, I’m just going to join the membership for one month, get the thing, and then cancel. We know that. But job one is just to get them in the door. Once we get them in the door, then we knock their socks off so they never want to leave. But the key thing is you got to give people a reason to join today. So, that was a good example.

Another example is that I actually encourage people to close their doors to the membership. So, meaning people can’t join. If they go to the main website, they can’t join. There’s no pathway to join. And then a few times a year, you open the registration period. Now, a good example of this was Ali Kay. She’s an artist in our community. She’s got now more than 6,000 monthly members inside of this membership. In the last two years, she’s grown it significantly by actually closing her doors. So, prior to this, she had her doors open all the time, and it had taken her two years to welcome about 1,100 members. When she came into my world and I said, close the doors, that’s scary. That’s like, wait a minute, Stu, you’re telling me to not allow customers to buy? Yeah, that’s exactly what I said.

And so, she did that, and to her credit, she was open to it. Then she had time to build up to a promotion. She called it Paint Week. And during Paint Week, that was the one-week window for which people could join the membership. The first time she did this, she more than tripled her membership. She added over 3,000 members during that one-week promotion. So, the first example was giving people a reason to buy today. Usually, that’s an incentive, a bonus of something. In this case, it’s a different reason. It’s urgency. There’s a deadline. And so, people have to make a decision between a window of time, and so, again, that puts the onus back on the audience or the customer to make the decision today. To not delay it because if they delay it, they won’t be able to get in. And so, it forces people to make a decision, yes or no, versus that in-between grounds of saving it for later.

So, I think at the end of the day, Brad, like it comes down to a few things. Number one, thinking through promotions that give people a reason to buy today. Number two, creating deadlines that give people a sense of urgency to buy before a particular time. If you don’t have one of those two things, then it’s too easy for customers to delay the decision. And we don’t want people to delay decision. We want them to make a decision today.

Brad Weimert: I love that. And I’ll add a third to that, which is, and urgency is very similar to this, but in the physical product world, you’ve got scarcity, so quantity of what you have. And a ton of examples come to mind, but if you look at a lot of, I guess even in like NFTs, there are specific, there were NFT drops, right? Hey, we’ve got this specific launch of this specific thing. In fashion, you’ve got a unique pair of kicks or a unique this seasoned shirt that’s available. And once it’s gone, we don’t make that anymore. We have next season stuff, right? It’s new. There’s a brewery in Northern California called Russian River and they make a beer called Pliny the Elder. And Pliny the Elder is this IPA, and they make it in small batches and they created this lore around it, this narrative of Pliny the Elder, which is a throwback to Rome, I believe. And this is a character in ancient Rome. But they sell out and they sell out by design. And it’s so scarce that when they release it, everybody clamors for it and runs after it. And it’s an interesting game. I love the idea of that, of creating these deliberate, again, constraints that create a reason to buy now.

Stu McLaren: Well, you reminded me, this hat right here is something called 29029. Are you familiar with it?

Brad Weimert: Oh, yeah.

Stu McLaren: Okay.

Brad Weimert: Speaking of lore.

Stu McLaren: Speaking of lore. So, in the same way that you just talked about scarcity, they have a limited number of spots for participants to climb the equivalent of Mount Everest in 36 hours or less. And so, every year, they get more and more new people who are doing these challenges, which creates this pool of alumni that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So then when they release a registration period, they first release it to alumni, and then after a day later, they release it to the general public.

Well, alumni end up gobbling up 60%, 70% of the spots. So, now there’s like even fewer spots available for new people to register for these events. And this is a perfect example of being mindful and thoughtful of how that sales process is going to work, where they’re giving people a reason to buy. They’ve got a deadline associated with it. And as you said, there’s scarcity all built into the limited number of spots because truly, they can’t have thousands of people climbing up this mountain. It’s only going to be available for a few hundred. And then they have a whole bunch of different dates and they sell out like crazy. And so, it’s just a beautiful business model that has built in all of the things that we’re talking about.

Brad Weimert: Which allowed them to sell. Which allowed them to sell that organization pretty quickly after building it, which is a very strange event company to be able to sell at all. It’s a super unique proposition. And yeah, I know those guys pretty well. Marc Hodulich is the operator that makes it work. Yeah, I actually saw in prep for this that you did that with your team.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, I’ve done it now four times and…

Brad Weimert: Oh, sh*t.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, I just fell in love with it after the first time I did it. And I said to my business partners, I’m like, man, this is an experience that I know our team could get a ton of value from. So, yeah, we ended up offering five spots a year. And then throughout the year, our team compete for one of those spots and then the five of us plus the founders, we go and we do the 29029 and it’s just been a magical experience on so many levels.

Brad Weimert: So, I mean, I have to mention it because the story has come up on this show before, but I’m not going to tell the whole story, but the first year that they did it, they didn’t really know what they were doing. It was clear. It’s gotten way cleaner. But the first year that they did it, I got my foot in my mouth and I told Marc that I would do it twice in 36 hours. I was drunk. And dude, that is wow, and he held me to it and he was like, yeah, or you could get your f*cking foot out of your mouth. And I was like, yeah, okay. So, the first year that they did it, I did it. It was in Vermont. And the challenge was to climb the mountain 17 times. And I climbed it 34 times in 36 hours.

Stu McLaren: Wow, dude. That was my first one that I did with my wife. Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Formative experience for me for sure.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, it was amazing. I remember for mine, my first one, as you said, we got to climb it 17 times. Amy asked me what I wanted to do for my 40th birthday and I said I wanted to go climb this mountain. And she’s like, gosh. So, she agreed to do it with me. And we were doing it together, and she’s like, I don’t want to hold you back. I’m like, no, I want to do it together. Like that’s, to me, part of the appeal is doing it together. And she’s like, okay, but if I hold you back, then I want you to go and do your thing. I was like, okay.

So, my whole thought was I had done the mountain math, figured out like how many we need to do by what time? And we were pacing well, but it started to pour down rain, like torrential. It was awful. And Vermont, that mountain, it just becomes like a mud pit. And Amy was not enjoying herself, whatsoever. We were on our 11th summit and the way it would work was when the aid stations were there, I’d like hike a little faster. I’d get to the aid station. I’d get her a hot tea and everything ready. And so, when she’d come in, I’d be like, here you go, honey. Well, we came into this one and it was like torrential downpour. And she comes in and she’s like, do you know with what we’ve paid for this f*cking mountain, we could be in Tahiti right now? And I’m like, yes, babe, but here’s your tea. We’re having a good time, right? We’re learning a lot about each other.

And then at that point, we were more than halfway and I’m like, well, do you want to like call it quit? She’s like, no. She’s like, there’s no way you’re going home with that red hat and I’m not. She’s like, there’s no way I want the kids seeing that I quit. So, we trucked and slept and found our way up that mountain six more times and it was a pretty awesome experience.

Brad Weimert: Well, you’re a champion. Congrats. That’s awesome. Do you know the construct of level one fun or type one fun and type two fun and type three?

Stu McLaren: I don’t. Tell me about it.

Brad Weimert: So, type one fun is you’re having fun in the moment. Type two fun is you’re going to think it was fun after you’ve done it, which you’re talking about, right? And then type three is probably like, at no point was any of this fun actually, but it’s going to make a good story later. And you’re somewhere in the type two, type three fun with 29029 or any endurance feat. But that’s awesome, man. I love hearing that.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. Well, if you ever get a chance, go do Whistler. That one was unbelievable. That’s the one that we’ve done. So, I did Vermont once, and then we’ve done Whistler three times.

Brad Weimert: Oh, that’s awesome. So, I did Vermont and then I went back and did Snowbasin in Utah. And that was a blast too. And that was actually particularly fun to me because I went and Colin O’Brady is a buddy who’s actually currently crossing Antarctica, pulling a 400-pound sled behind him as we speak.

Stu McLaren: He’s insane.

Brad Weimert: Insane. And so, I got to see him again there. And I probably ran into like five or six people on the mountain and you know, like you’re talking to the people when you’re on the mountain going up and five or six that were like, hey, I heard that somebody actually did this twice at some point. And I was like, yeah, I heard about that. But it was just like…

Stu McLaren: I am the man and the legend.

Brad Weimert: I had to hold back to not say that. I just had to like, enjoy it, hear it, just sort of appreciate the journey that was there.

Stu McLaren: You should have asked him, do you know what that guy’s name was? And then…

Brad Weimert: But nobody did. It’s just sort of, it’s been this lore in that community where I was when I was doing it the second time.

Stu McLaren: That’s so funny.

Brad Weimert: That’s super funny. Okay, so I have to ask you before we wrap here a little bit, I want to talk Membership.io, but I also want to talk kind of your marketing model to feed into Membership.io and into your whole world. So, you both wrote a book, presumably to promote and to help with it. And you also had a podcast that had 200 episodes that you stopped. So, I want to start there because you built a podcast and you gave it time, I mean, 200 episodes of some sh*t, and it was your podcast, which also had great reviews and a lot of reviews. What was the point of the podcast when you started? And why did you choose to stop?

Stu McLaren: I think this is a part of entrepreneurship that not many entrepreneurs are willing to talk about.

Brad Weimert: That’s why I’m asking.

Stu McLaren: And in 2021, we had come off of, essentially, at that point, it was a year and a half of COVID. In Canada, we were still shut down in 2021, meaning we weren’t able to go out and see people. It was really intense. And we had just come off of our biggest promotion of the year and things were great, and I just fulfilled on all of that delivery. And I just hit a creative burnout and it was a sudden drop off where school started in September and we would walk our kids to school and I’d come home and I’d ride the Peloton. And actually, the reason I was riding the Peloton was because we were scheduled to do the 29029. And so, I needed to get my fitness in. So, I’d ride the Peloton and then I’d shower and then I’d sit in a chair, Brad, and I would stare out a window for hours and I wasn’t doing anything. And truthfully, it was a real low point in my life, like I’ve never been to that place. Positivity is my number one strength on StrengthsFinder. I’m a walk and talk and cheerleader.

So, to not be motivated, to not be excited about life, it was a weird place. And I actually started to feel embarrassment around it because my team’s asking, hey, do you got this? Hey, where’s that? Hey, where’s this? And slowly but surely, those requests just dropped off because they just knew I didn’t have any of that done. I didn’t feel comfortable talking to even my team about what I was going through, let alone I didn’t even talk to my wife. And so, I would sit there for the whole day and just stare out the window. And this went on for almost two and a half months. And it was at that point where I just stopped doing the podcast. I stopped doing anything creative and it was an out of body experience because I knew I was in a funk. I knew it. And yet, I couldn’t get myself out of it.

And finally, it was actually a friend of mine, Dean Graziosi, who is business partners with Tony Robbins and so forth. He called me up and he said, hey, Stu, we’ve got a new membership that we’re looking to launch, would you be open to coming down for a day of consulting? He’s like, I’m asking you, Dan Martell, and Alex Hormozi to come down and just pour into us. And so, we’ll kind of use it as a mini mastermind, but it’s really a day of consulting. And I was like, sure. And so, this was like my first time out of Canada since the whole shutdown.

Brad Weimert: Was this Mastermind.com?

Stu McLaren: It was at Mastermind.com. So, it was just Alex, Dan, and I consulting Dean and his team about their membership. So, I go and I fly down to Scottsdale. And I’m in that room and I’m just like, I’m sharing everything that I know about memberships, trying to help Dean and Tony and what they’re doing with their membership. And at the same time, like they’re learning from Alex and Dan as well, and Dean is chiming in. And it was really, really great. And it was the start of my turnaround from this mild depression that I was in. And what I realized was that I needed to be around people. I’m more of an introvert by nature. So, at the beginning of COVID, it was amazing. I’m like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. Like, people are figuring out how to bring more stuff to me without me having to interact with people. It was amazing. But then over time, I realized just like I missed that energy. And so, that was the start.

Then shortly after that was when I did 29029, and that’s just an electric energy, and so, I was just starting to get rev back up and what I realized was that I was also feeding my mind all kinds of negativity. I was obsessed with the news and I was obsessed with what was going on in the world. And it was like this downward spiral and like, it just started to feel heavier and heavier. And what I realized was that I got to let go of a lot of that and I got to start feeding my mind better more positive stuff. So, I went back to my roots. I went back to Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar, like the classics. I weaved in a bunch of Oprah and I was just trying to fill my head with positivity. And slowly but surely, I started to come out of it.

Now, I came back to where I could be productive, but I wasn’t feeling creative for a long period of time. And that’s why the podcast has not come back. Now, the good news is that I am bringing that podcast back this year on my birthday. We are re-releasing the podcast and we’re doing two audio episodes a week. That was the format that I had done before. And we’re doing one video episode a week. And the video always felt heavy for me, so I just asked myself, how could we make this easy? And what I realized is that I love creating content like this in conversation. And so, we scheduled a whole bunch here in the office to be able to film, and I’ve already got 12 episodes in the can. By the time we launch, I’ll have over 20 episodes backlogged, which gives me a tremendous runway to be able to not only hit the ground running, but to ensure that I stay consistent with it.

And so, I’m really excited to finally bring the podcast back. It’ll have been five years since I stopped doing it, because one of the things that I love about the podcast is I love being able to help people. Like I love being able to just in the moment with what I’m thinking and what’s going on, to be able to take those lessons, to be able to share them with the audience. And then I get immediate feedback from that. Like, our audience loves the podcast, and so, I get asked all the time like, what happened? But the truth of the matter is, is that I fell off a cliff with my creative output and I went into this crazy funk and mild depression and it’s just taken me a while to get back into my groove.

Brad Weimert: Well, I appreciate you sharing that openly, man. That’s awesome, and I think super helpful for lots of people.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, and I think like a lot of us, whether we’re public about it or not, like there are moments in our entrepreneurial journey where we go into these kinds of funks and we start doubting ourselves, and it could be a downward spiral. And then we feel shame about it and embarrassed about it, and we don’t want to talk about it because even when you’re in masterminds, you only really want to talk about the good stuff and you want to share the good stuff, and it feels like lame to bring up all your problems or challenges or like, hey, I’m struggling with this. And so, we just stay quiet and then we don’t have anywhere to go. And it becomes even more isolating. And it’s just like this negative downward spiral that can really put you in a bad place.

And so, today, I have more empathy than ever before for people that are in a funk and are struggling. And I have really made a conscious effort to be that voice of light, to be that person that brings positivity to people, to show them the opportunity to support them when they are feeling in a funk because it is a part of the journey. Like, there’s always going to be ups and downs in the entrepreneurial journey. And if we don’t have that supportive network to pull us through those downs, then we’ll stay there. And that’s really where I was for a long period of time.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I want to highlight how you articulated getting out of it. And it started with being of value to other. You went in to help consult, but you went in to dump into another entrepreneur to help them. That was number one. And the other part of it was you were around killer people that are at the top of their game and you got to spend time with them. And that was the thing that turned it around. And so, I think the irony of the situation for most entrepreneurs is it’s the moment when you are most reclusive, when you are most hurt and vulnerable that you’re going to benefit most from being with other people and being exposed to that energy.

Stu McLaren: And it’s the opposite of what you want to do because in those moments, you just want to stay quiet. You don’t want to talk to anybody. You don’t want to be around anybody. And so, you stay isolated. And as you said, it’s like getting around that energy. It’s hard to describe why that matters because our natural instincts are not to do that. We don’t want to do that. But breaking that and getting around that positive energy can make a massive difference. And it doesn’t, it’s not like it’s a light switch. Like, all of a sudden now, all life is going to be good and everything’s going to be rainbows and unicorns, but it’s the beginning of that journey back and you got to start somewhere.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love that. Well, I have a bunch of other questions and I also have a hard stop here. So, let me ask you this one because I ask everybody that, which is, what advice do you have for brand new entrepreneurs starting out?

Stu McLaren: Well, I heard a quote back in 2004 that has just stuck with me ever since and has been super relevant in these up and down journeys of being an entrepreneur. And I first heard it from a gentleman by the name of Mike Litman, and what he said was, you don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going. And I think in the entrepreneurial space, that’s exactly the kind of advice that we all need to adhere to because at the end of the day, like we can obsess over the perfect way to roll out a membership. We can obsess over the perfect onboarding experience. We can obsess over all these things, but if we just don’t start trying something, then nothing is ever going to happen. And more often than not, like entrepreneurialism is just a bunch of experiments. So, just start trying stuff and then pay attention to the things that work and the things that don’t. And simple Stew Rule 101 is do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. But all of that comes from our willingness and openness to just experiment. And that’s why I love that quote. You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going. So, friends, get it going.

Brad Weimert: Amazing. Where do you want to point people?

Stu McLaren: I would come, find me on Instagram. That is my favorite place to interact with people. I do answer my own DMs. So, it’s just my name, Stu McLaren. My website is Stu.me is the easiest one in the world to remember, Stu.me. And then our software platform is Membership.io, and you’ll be able to see how we are able to support and serve those that want to launch a membership.

Brad Weimert: Amazing. Stu McLaren, dude, it’s a blast talking to you, man. I hope we get some more time at some point in the future.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, likewise. Thanks Brad. Appreciate you.

Brad Weimert: Thank you, man. Likewise.