The Proven Membership Strategy for Predictable Profits with Stu McLaren – EP 249

Justin Donald: What's up, Stu? Great to have you on the show.

Stu McLaren: Justin, pleasure to be here. Thanks, buddy.

Justin Donald: Yeah. Well, this is fun. You and I have had a chance to connect on a number of different things and we've got my COO and one of my closest friends, Ryan Casey, as part of your membership community, and I figure why not bring the expert, the real deal of membership communities here to tell everyone kind of how to do it and what to do, what not to do. And you recently wrote a book outlining all this although you've been teaching it for, I don't know, 15, 16, 17 years, something like that, right?

Stu McLaren: Yeah. For the last 17 years, all I've been focused on is just helping entrepreneurs be able to create more recurring revenue with memberships. And, yeah, it's great having Ryan’s group as part of the mastermind but that's where we're just talking about all things like, how do we generate more recurring revenue with our memberships and subscriptions? And that's the world I've lived in for the last 17-plus years.

Justin Donald: Well, I think anyone listening to this or watching this is going to love the idea of more recurring revenue. How do we create more recurring revenue? If you have a business, that's one of the best ways to increase the valuation of that business. It's the best way to have a great lifestyle around it. Often it is a lot easier to create revenue than it is to cut expenses although it's important to do both. But if you can figure out, yeah, I remember early days in my marriage. My wife was a teacher. She had a budget that she lived by. She didn't make a ton, but she was still able to save a bunch. And I was really impressed that she had money to put towards our wedding and wanted to contribute to it.

But her whole world is, "Well, this is what I can afford and this is what I do.” And my whole world is, "Well, this is what I want to do so I need to go figure out the revenue side or the profit side to be able to accomplish that.” And it was a source of conflict early on in our marriage, more playful conflict than serious conflict. But, I mean, there were definitely some butting of heads on this approach where she felt like I was being irresponsible and I was just so positive that this is the way you do it. And luckily, my strategies did work and we were able to create a great life and grow revenue and grow profit, but it's a different way to look at entrepreneurship and living life.

Stu McLaren: We have a similar story. My wife too was a teacher for 10 years, so very familiar with somebody who is in the education field. I’ve got a lot of love for teachers that are out there because, I mean, they work so hard during the day in the classroom. But we had neighbors too that were almost an identical profile to what you were describing. They were savers and they were really good at saving. And I remember, like, there were a couple about the same age and we were talking about going out on a double date and they were very curious as to where we wanted to go and they didn't want to go to restaurants. They wanted to go to like a subway because they had coupons for the subway.

And they were very meticulous about where they spent their money and they did well in saving money. But I said to Amy, I'm just like, "Look, that's really stressful. Like, I find that so stressful because you're constantly like you’re squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, trying to get everything out.” And I'm just like, “I'd rather just create.” Like, I'd rather just go and create like I love the way you framed it. It's like, "What do I want? And then what do I need to do to be able to afford that or to be able to create that?” And it's just a different mindset. But after a little while, my wife retired from teaching and she's now joined not only helping me and my business, but she has her own businesses too. And, yeah, we're very much now on the same page.

Justin Donald: Oh, I love it. Well, I love that we've got similar stories, similar backgrounds, and I actually enjoy doing the math. Like, doing a budget was really, really painful to me. But figuring out the math of here's what it would cost to live the life that I want to live. Here's how it breaks down on a monthly basis so here's the amount I need to go figure out like how we create. That was always fun for me. And if it didn't work out, it's like, "Okay, how do we reiterate?” or, "How do we start something out? How do we start a business? How do we buy a business? How do we buy an asset that produces this?” And instead of spending money on something that is maybe a liability or a luxury, that's not a necessity, it's just more fun for me to buy an asset that produces the income to cover the payments of whatever that item might be.

Stu McLaren: And what you're talking about too, it reminds me so much of what we call membership math because, in the same way, the reason that I fell in love with memberships and recurring revenue is because of the stability that it does create. If we just keep it real simple, like if anybody watching and listening would just like to immediately give themselves a $12,000 raise this year, you don't need tens of thousands of members. You don't need thousands or even hundreds. Like simple membership math, if you have 20 members paying you $50 a month, that's $1,000 a month in recurring revenue. But because of memberships, they are then going to be back the next month and the month after that, and the month after that. And so, over the course of the year, that's $12,000.

Now, is every single member going to stay every single month? No. But the majority will, and this is where it gets fun, is because with memberships and recurring revenue, it compounds. Just like an asset that is compounding over time, the same is true for memberships. And so, that's why I'm such an advocate of memberships for entrepreneurs or recurring revenue, not only because as you mentioned, like the valuations are much higher, but more than anything, it's peace of mind. It's like the stability and the predictability. And I know you've got multiple recurring revenue streams in your business, and I'm sure you've experienced the same. It's the peace of mind that it creates.

Justin Donald: Yeah. If you know that your lifestyle is covered through just, and let's say that you've got enough surplus income coming in that even goes above and beyond your cost of living, it really takes a lot of the stress out of life. And it really creates clarity, at least for me, around important decisions I need to make. And I think my experience is I make higher quality, better quality decisions. Well, first of all, I have higher quality problems when you solve the financial game, right? But the decisions that I have that I make are higher quality decisions because I'm not making them from a framework of can I afford it or can I not afford it? That is often a primary question people ask, but it's probably not a great starting question, right?

I mean, if you're running a business and the question is, can I afford it or not? Well, I mean, that strips out maybe the most important question, which is like, is this good for our customers and clients? Is this good for our employees? Is this good for the growth of the company? And so, I just think if we can eliminate the financial aspect of it, we get to a place in life where we have more choices, we can make better quality decisions that have more impact, and then it's just more of a stress-free life.

Stu McLaren: And you're operating from a place of confidence, right? So, instead of like, "Should I hire this person? I don't know if I can afford another person on staff.” It's like, "No, no, you're operating from a place of confidence that you know that the revenue is going to be there to be able to invest in hiring more team or invest in your marketing or whatever it might be.” That is a different place to operate from as a business owner or even just as somebody in everyday life. When you're operating from a place of confidence versus fear, as you said, your decisions are better and you are able to move forward without the stress and the weight of like just everyday expenses. It's like, "No, not only is that covered, but I'm able to make better decisions. I've got confidence in being able to move forward,” and is a totally different place to operate from.

Justin Donald: I love it. Stu, you're the foremost expert in this space. I've learned a lot from you whether you realize it or not because I've had friends that have told me about things you've taught them that they have then taught me. And so, as I was rolling out the mastermind in early days, Ryan Levesque was an instrumental guy. He is one of our OG members, one of the first people to join. And he was a private client before that where we had this really fun relationship where I helped him create the passive income that allowed him to escape needing business for income from his business. And so, he always spoke so highly of you. And there were always people that had things that they were saying or that they had learned from you.

And so, I'm really glad that, one, you've got your own membership community. You have Membership.io but you have like a membership experience community and I'm really thankful that Ryan is part of that with some other epic human beings, right? But now you've kind of done the trilogy because you've written a book and I know it's a new book and I haven't read everything, but I've read a bunch of it and I'm very blown away because it is so detailed. It is so easy to understand. You have the reps so you know what does and doesn't work. You've done trial and error. I would much rather use your experience in your trial and error than my own trial and error that may not work.

And so, I'd love to hear just some of the pitfalls of membership as well as, you know. So, what are the missteps that people take, the pitfalls that they find themselves in? And then what are like best practices to building out a highly successful, profitable membership community?

Stu McLaren: Yeah. I think, first and foremost, I'd encourage everybody to just get real clear on who specifically you want to serve and how specifically you want to help them. When I look at like memberships that don't do very well, about who it is that they're trying to help and trying to help everybody. And when you try to help everybody, you're not really helping anybody. And so, I'll give you an example of a membership site that is very, very specific. And in a two-year period, it went from zero to a multimillion-dollar-a-year membership. And then just the year after that, they went from a million-dollar membership to multiple million-dollar membership. And it's a woman over in the UK. Her name is Bonny Snowdon, and she has a membership teaching people how to draw realistic animals with colored pencils.

So, it is so niche, so specific, and somebody watching and listening might be like, "What? Like, how the heck can you build a business around something so specific?” But because it is, it speaks to a particular audience. And we live in a day and age today, Justin, where we are just so blessed. Like, it doesn't matter where we live. We don't have to be on the right corner to be able to have a profitable biz. As long as we've got internet access, we could reach people worldwide.

Justin Donald: That's so true.

Stu McLaren: What I love about that is like no matter what kind of wacky things that you may be into, there are thousands of people around this world that are into it too. So, we just kind of bring a face to bring them together. And that's what Bonnie's done. And it's a great example of one of the first principles that I would encourage people to do is just get real clear on who specifically you're serving and what specifically you're helping them with. And if you're ever stuck, just think back to Bonnie Snowdon. She's helping people draw realistic animals with colored pencils. You can't get more specific than that, and that's a multimillion-dollar-a-year membership.

Justin Donald: No kidding. And the other beautiful thing about just the whole worldwide web, access to people everywhere, is that you can run your business from everywhere or anywhere, which I think I do that and I appreciate that. But if there are people all over that may share those interests, and by the way, I heard someone recently that this was the craziest thing. So, where was I? So, I was in Taipei City with some friends. Some several lifestyle investors took a trip there and they were saying, “Hey, there are these different snakes that exist and people want to connect to snakes, all these different kinds of snakes.” So, this guy starts a business selling snakes online.

And this business took off and he is making millions a year. Like, I would've never guessed that there were that many people that wanted snakes as pets shipped to them. And it just goes to your point of drawing animals with colored pencils.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. I mean, I think of Holly George in our community. She was a stay-at-home mom. Her husband was in the military. And she wanted to earn some extra income for their family. They had two young kids so she couldn't go out and get a regular job. So, she just got creative and she started teaching something that she just did on the side as a passion project, and that was she taught people how to make balloon animals. And, Justin, she turned this into a six-figure-a-year membership. She's got thousands of members teaching people how to make balloon animals. Her membership is called the Twisterhood.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Stu McLaren: Again, coming back to our point, like there are so much opportunity today in being able to bring people together around a shared topic or interest. And whenever I'm looking at a market for a membership, there's really three things that I'm looking for. So, you asked about best practices, like this is one of them. If you are looking at a market, you want it to check one of these three boxes. So, number one is I'm looking for, "Is there an ongoing problem?” And what I mean by that is like weight loss as an example. Which Dan Davidson and Victoria Black, they have a membership site called SuperFastDiet. They're over in Australia. And weight loss is a perfect market because somebody's not going to go from overweight to their ideal weight like that. It takes time to solve that problem. That's why it's perfect for a membership.

Susan Garrett with dog training, same thing. You're not going to go from a puppy that's wildly out of control to the perfect puppy like that. It takes time to solve that problem. And so, if you're in a market where there's an ongoing problem, that is a green light, thumbs up, move forward, great market. Second thing I look for is, can you be in a market where you teach a skill? So, this is very much the market that you'd be in, Justin. Somebody's not going to go from not knowing how to invest to becoming the ultimate lifestyle investor like that. It takes time to learn those skills. And even then, even when you do learn the skills, there's so much more you can learn to go deeper and deeper.

And so, I love skill-based markets because there's a lot of opportunity there, whether it's learning how to invest in terms of what you teach, whether it's learning how to grow a business, whether it's learning how to draw realistic animals with colored pencils, whether it's learning how to paint, or, I think of Levi and his business partner, Tony, they've got a membership site with over 14,000 members teaching them how to play guitar. And so, these are all skill-based markets. So, if you're in a market where you can teach people a skill, that's green light, thumbs up, move forward. And then the last market, or sorry, the last indicator that I look for is, can you help make someone's life easier? And so, I'll give you some examples and it'll kind of firm up the direction that I suggest you go.

But we talked about teachers earlier. So, your wife was a teacher. My wife was a teacher. And so, you know that one of the most labor-intensive parts of being a teacher is the lesson planning. That's the thing that typically consumes teachers' evenings, their weekends. And so, there's a whole lot of people in our community who have created memberships providing teachers lesson plans. So, I think of Anna DiGilio. She's got a multimillion-dollar-a-year membership providing grade 2 teachers reading lesson plans. Or I think of Caitlyn and Jessica. They provide middle school teachers lesson plans. They have more than 4,000 plus members. Or Patty Palmer provides art teachers lesson plans. She's got more than 6,000 members.

And so, what they're doing is they're creating convenience for somebody. They're making their life easier. But there's all kinds of other ways you could spin this. I think of Andrew Krauksts in Australia. He's got a membership site providing Facebook ad templates for real estate agents. So, the real estate agent doesn't have to be the person that's got to master Facebook ads. They just take Andrew's proven ads, make a couple of tweaks, and now they win in the marketplace. So, it makes their life easier, saves some time. Or I think of Nicole Melton. She's got a membership site providing social media templates for businesses in the beauty profession. So, again, you can see how specific it is.

Justin Donald: Wow, that's a niche down again.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. But they're creating, they're making these people's lives easier. So, that's another great indicator of a market that will do well with a membership. So, if it's solving an ongoing problem, you're teaching a skill, or you can create convenience, those are all great indicators of awesome membership markets.

Justin Donald: I love that. And I'm sure you talk about that in a ton of detail in your book.

Stu McLaren: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, I wrote all about it in Predictable Profits. And it's like 17 years of experience distilled down into 250 pages.

Justin Donald: That's awesome.

Stu McLaren: And it’s the best $30 anybody can spend.

Justin Donald: I love it. That's awesome. Now, something that I think you're really proud of that you've developed is called the Success Path framework. And I'd love if you could share some of what you do there. Like, what is it? What do you do? Why do so many people come to you for this?

Stu McLaren: Well, what I saw over time with memberships is that if we just create a member's area and we just put a whole bunch of content in and we just hope that people are going to be able to find value, you'll see high churn, meaning you'll see members come in, they'll stay for a couple of months, and then they leave. And there's this old myth that members of a membership will only stay for three to four months. And I'm here to say that that is 100% a myth because when you have a proper plan in place, people don't stay for months. They stay for years. And so, one of the things that was missing a lot of the time was a plan that provided direction for people.

So, when somebody comes into a membership, ideally what we want to do is we want to ask a couple of questions and we want to identify like, where are they in their journey Justin, I'm sure when people are joining your mastermind, you're asking a variety of questions in terms of their investment knowledge. Am I right?

Justin Donald: Yes.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. And you're wanting to know, like, have they ever invested any money? If they have, what kinds of investments have they made? You know, have they ever invested in real estate beyond even just their home? Like, you're digging. You're trying to find where are they in this scope. And if you find out that maybe they've invested not only in real estate, they've invested in trailer parks, they've invested in storage, like this is a different level of investor. So, we want to ask those kinds of questions to identify where are they in this journey. Because then inside the membership, we can now direct them to content that is going to be most relevant for them.

And so, the whole success path, the theory of it, is that we're creating a journey that has different stages. That way we can say, "Okay. Based on your answers to these questions, looks like you are at stage one. And if you're at stage one, here are the few things that you should focus on right now.” And what that does is it eliminates this huge heavy weight that somebody's got to learn all the things all at once. And instead, it's just like a breath of fresh air. It's like, actually, no, Justin. You don't need to learn all the things. You just need to focus on these few things. And if you do that, you'll begin to make serious progress. And that's how we win people over long term because it's the progress that they're making.

And now, with our Success Path, we can look back and we can say, "Okay. When you joined us, you were way back here. And look how far you've come in just a short period of time.” And that demonstrates value to the members, which is why they will continue to stay.

Justin Donald: I think that is brilliant and, for us, we've noticed it's interesting because in the Lifestyle Investor Mastermind early on I was like, "Well, the more stuff we can have, the better.” Right? There's just more value. And we learned that that's not necessarily accurate. More stuff means more overwhelm. In the early days, and by the way, our members stick around for years and years and years. I mean, we have a member, Ryan, who is just at one of our events last month and he is like, “I learned something on my estate planning and that one thing that I did covers a lifetime of memberships for me.” So, he is like, “I'm never leaving. I'm just always here.” And I think if you can help people find that one thing that is so valuable that it makes years of time and easy yes, I think that's huge.

But early days for us, our OG members, like it was really easy for them to stay up to speed, to catch every session that we did. You start adding people later on who maybe year two, year three, we're in year 7 now. We have 700 hours of content. Like, that is super overwhelming. So, for you, saying like, yeah, let's figure out what are the problems. How do we solve those problems? How do we at least direct them to, A, people that have solved them and, B, content around it to help them solve it for themselves? I think that's such a slam dunk and I think you nailed it.

Stu McLaren: Well, speaking of nailing, I was just going to say, you hit the nail on the head because the number one reason across all different markets that people cancel from a membership is overwhelm. They're just not using it. Whether it's a knowledge-based membership like we're talking about where we're teaching a skill, or whether it's even like a product-based membership, like think of Dollar Shave Club where they're sending out razors every month. If you've got a stack of razors that are starting to pile up and you're not using them, it's only a matter of time before you're like, “Why am I paying for this? I got more than I need. I'm going to cancel.”

So, the whole goal of membership is we want to help people experience progress in their lives in some way. And that comes from two key things, consumption and engagement. If people aren’t consuming the content, they're not getting value. If they're not engaging with the content, they're not getting value. If they're not getting value or making progress, they're going to leave. So, it's really simple, like we're in the happiness business. As long as people are happy, they're going to continue to stay and pay. And so, all we’ve got to do is just focus on how do we create clarity for people and help them make progress and experience progress and create clarity around their next steps.

Justin Donald: And something else, Stu, that we've learned that has been really interesting because we appeal to a very high net worth crowd in Lifestyle Investor. And when you think about the people that are in there, you would think, "Oh, these people are killing it. They probably are so abundant in mindset.” And I think in some areas they are. And in other areas, people definitely aren't. And I can relate because growing up my parents had a very scarce mindset around money. And so, I adopted that as my own. I just, for whatever reason, took it as my own belief until I really dug in and did some hard homework there to figure out if that is true. Is it not true? Why should I believe this? Did I come up with this or did I steal it from someone else?

But what I see with people that are highly successful is they get in the scarcity mindset around maximization. So, for example, we've had people that were like, well, I don't know if I should renew because I'm not making as many calls as I've made, or I can't make as many events. And I feel like I'm missing more than I'm making because we do way more events now than we did in the early days. And we have to remind them, it is not about how many events you attend. It's about how much value did you get from the event or the events that you did attend. Because it only takes one idea, one connection, one relationship, one mindset shift, one strategy, one preferred vendor, one partner that changes the game.

And so, it's not about I need to be at everything, and then you feel like you're so scarce in your mindset that you're missing out. It needs to be, how do I really get the most value? And I could get my years membership and beyond covered with the right situation, the right event, the right person, the right strategy, et cetera.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. And you're absolutely right and it's interesting too, because you just never know when or where that idea will come from. Sometimes it’ll come from content that is being shared in the membership. Sometimes it'll come from a live call. Sometimes it'll come from a live event. Sometimes it'll just come from a conversation that's happening. And that's the value that everybody's got to realize when it comes to memberships, you don't have to consume everything in order to be able to make this a win. You just need to put yourself in a position where you are consuming something and then creating space to be able to implement that.

And from a membership owner standpoint, what’s really important is that we create breathing room and space for people to learn, but also for people to implement and do. It's like that whole learn and do, learn and do. We've got to have space for both because if you don't, then people are learning, learning, learning, but they're not implementing anything and so they can't reflect back. It's like if all you did was just load people up, strategy after strategy after strategy, they're learning lots but if they don't have time to go and implement and invest or look at for deals or do that, then they're never going to get the value from it.

So, you're right. There's a huge place for both space for learning but also space for implementing. And we don't need to be able to learn everything all at once. We can pick and choose and get the one idea and that can make all the difference in that year, in that decade sometimes.

Justin Donald: I love it and I couldn't agree more. And something else that we've noticed, and I'd love to hear your thoughts around this, is not everyone is as outgoing. And for some people, it is hard to meet new people. But I think running membership communities it's our responsibility to help create opportunities for connection so people can get to know one another through live events, through virtual events. I mean, live events are a lot easier to be able to do that. But even just connecting the dots, “Hey, you need to go talk to this person because they went through this same scenario. You're about to sell your business, they sold their business or you're dealing with this situation with an employee, and they did as well.”

And I just think the human connection, that human touch like every time we do a live event, magic just happens. And the more people that get there, it creates this energy. These relationships get deep-rooted. You connect that one time and now there's this level of comfort to continue the relationship. And then for us, we've done a lot of small groups. We call them tribes which are like four to seven-member small meetups that they do in some cases every other week, in some cases once a month. But then like really getting to know people on an intimate level and those deep-rooted relationships are huge for members wanting to stay in the community, learn and grow, and even give back their talents.

Stu McLaren: Well, one of the things that I talk about in the book is something that I learned early on, which is people come for the content but they stay for the community.

Justin Donald: So true.

Stu McLaren: Initially, they're coming to solve a problem or they're coming to learn a skill or to save themselves time. But if you can create that connection, that begins to act like glue and people are seeing so much more value because of the relationships and the depth of those relationships. In fact, Justin, one of the things to note is that one of the most important periods of a membership is the first 30 days, and there have been studies around this that if you can create a positive experience in the first 30 days, it will on average triple the lifetime value of that member. So, then the question becomes like, "Okay. Well, what do we need to do to create a positive experience?”

Well, we've already talked about one of them, which is creating clarity. Like, if people have clarity on terms of where they are and what they should be focused on right now, that's a positive experience right out of the gate. And so, as membership site owners, one of the things that we want to do is we want to look for opportunities to intentionally connect our members to each other. Now, that can be in a discussion area, and it could be as simple as like an introduction post and where maybe members are stating the reasons why they joined. And maybe somebody says, "Well, I'm looking for ways to invest in Austin, Texas.” And so, the community manager says, "Ah, okay, well, here, let me connect you with this person, this person, and that person who are all in Austin and who are all investing in this way.”

Now, that person coming in, that member feels welcomed like, okay, like immediately they're being introduced. It's like going to a party and somebody saying hello and then immediately like connecting you with others versus you coming in and be like looking around like, "Is anybody here?” And you're engaging in small talk, like nobody likes that, right? So, that welcoming. But another little simple trick is, as part of our onboarding, we ask several questions. So, in our community, it's a lot of it are creators and experts and speakers, authors, people teaching their skills. And a lot of them have both podcasts and of course they have memberships.

So, one of the questions that we ask is, "Do you ever interview other people on your podcast or in your membership?” And another question we ask is, "Are you open to being interviewed on a podcast and membership?” And now just through a simple directory, we can play matchmaker because we can say, “Ah, okay, you're in this niche and you're looking for guests. Ah, you're in this niche and you're open to being a guest. Hey, you should meet them and vice versa.” And now we help begin forming those relationships.

But the other last thing I want to share is I love that you are combining online and offline because there's magic there. It reminds me of Carrie Green who is a long-time client and customer and owns a membership site called the Female Entrepreneurs Association. And she's got 5,000 plus members in it. But one thing that she did last year, which I thought was brilliant, was during a one-week period, she hosted over 100 in-person events and she didn’t attend any of them. So, what she did was she put out a request to her community and she said, "Okay, we're going to try this idea where we're going to get people together in cities all around the world. Is anybody open to being a host?”

And she had about 200 plus people say, yes, they were open to being a host. They narrowed it down to about 100 because there was a lot of overlapping cities. And then she went out to her members and she said, "Okay, during this one week, there are going to be all these different events in all these cities around the world,” and there were small groups. There were 3, 4, 5, like 10 max, 15 max, and people got together and then they took pictures in the community and it was like a whole week. It was self-hosted by the members. She just helped facilitate the connection.

Justin Donald: Oh, that's amazing.

Stu McLaren: But after that, it was just like people felt so much more connected and like the depth of those relationships, it's exactly what you were talking about. So, I just think that there's a lot of creative opportunity for us to be able to take the online and move it offline and deepen the relationships, just like you were saying.

Justin Donald: Stu, you just blew my mind. I thought we were doing so well with a monthly meetup where we actually limit the number, 10 to 30 people. So, we have three big events a year. We have our big annual event that everyone comes to. Spouses are always welcome at our events. We got a big spring event and a big fall event, and then we do these monthly meetups and we try to keep the meetups to 10 to 30 so that people can get to know everyone. But you got me thinking about multiple cities, multiple meetups at the same time. And our members host them and we'll do some epic stuff. Sometimes they'll be in someone's home. Sometimes we go Porsche racing at the Porsche Track in Birmingham and we just did a health and longevity event out in Salt Lake City at EastWest Health with my friend, Regan Archibald.

So, we're always doing this cool stuff. We did a Napa trip with our sommelier who got us into some pretty highbrow places and some pretty cool tasting experiences, but I love that idea. I mean, I just think the in-person event is critical. And you're just such a wealth of knowledge here. I'd love to know if there's anything, I mean, also the name of your book, Predictable Profits, I love that. I mean, that's the type of company I want to buy, right? I want to invest in predictable profiting companies. And so, you're teaching people how to do this from a membership site, but it's not just membership. Like, you can do this in various different niches, various different industries, like this whole idea of predictable, recurring passive income, this can be done all over the place. It just happens that membership communities are also a great place and you've got so much expertise around it. So, if there's anything else you want to share about it, please do.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. Well, what I would say is just to open people's minds and to continue the conversation that you began here, which is there's opportunity no matter what type of business you're in. So, there are product-based memberships. We talked about the Dollar Shave Club. For anybody that's got a product-based business, what I would be asking is, how can you take it from a one-time purchase and turn it into a recurring membership? So, their Dollar Shave Club, it was a razor where all the other companies are hoping that their customers come back and buy from them again. But Dollar Shave Club said, "Just take it easy. Let's just send people razors every month.” And now there are companies that have done it with razors and earrings and t-shirts and coffee and tea and all the things.

Justin Donald: Socks. I was part of a Sock of the Month Club.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. Ties, right? Like, I even saw there was a number of underwear-related memberships.

Justin Donald: I love it. I love it.

Stu McLaren: But my point is it's just like, as a product-based business owner, I'd be asking, "Okay, how can I get more of my products in front of our customers on a more regular basis with a membership?” Service-based businesses, huge opportunity because, again, most service-based businesses are hoping that people come back and buy from them again. But Mary-Claire Fredette in our community, she's a massage therapist. Well, she set up a membership. Members pay a monthly fee and they get a certain number of massages. There's a slight discount. So, there's value in being a member. They get more consistent service and they get priority service. But what that's done for Mary Claire's business is it's created consistency because before, she'd have up and down months just based on seasonality. Now, it's consistent.

And I've seen barber shops do this. I've seen car washes do this. There's all kinds of ways to take what would've normally been a one-time service and turn it into a recurring membership. The third example is my favorite. This is the one we've spent most of the time on, which is knowledge-based memberships. And the reason I love them so much is because they are so profitable. We're selling digital information. So, the profit margins are much higher than a product-based membership or even a service-based membership. That's why I love them. But again, if you can teach a skill, if you can solve an ongoing problem, or create convenience, great opportunity.

And then the third type is just a community-based membership. It's where you're bringing people together who've got a shared interest, and you've created this container for them. This is where like old school, like country clubs would be a community-based membership. But nowadays, like you can do it on any topic in any kind of interest. It's just a matter of bringing people together and they're paying to have access to other online individuals. So, I think more than anything, no matter what type of business you're in, there's opportunity to be able to create either product-based business or product-based membership, service-based membership, knowledge-based membership, or community-based membership.

Justin Donald: I love it. Stu, this has been an awesome session. Thank you for taking the time to join us, and really just teach just your… You've got so much expertise here and I feel like what you have shared is incredibly valuable. I think your book is incredible. I'm excited to finish the rest of it. Where can people learn more about you and your membership communities and purchase Predictable Profits?

Stu McLaren: Well, my website is probably the easiest one to remember ever. It's my name Stu, S-T-U dot me, like the shortest URL you could probably ever remember.

Justin Donald: Love it.

Stu McLaren: So, Stu.me. But if people want a free copy of the book, we'll send a free copy. Just got to pay for shipping. You just got to go to FreeMembershipBook.com. You'll be able to see it there, or if you want it faster, you can go to Amazon and you'll certainly find it on Amazon. They'll send it to you a little bit faster, but you got to pay for the book. And then you can always find me on Instagram. That's where I hang out the most, on Instagram. Send a DM. I'm happy to chat.

Justin Donald: Love it. Well, this has been awesome and I love ending every episode with a question for our audience. My question's the same each week. So, if you're watching this, if you're listening to this, what is one step that you can make today to move towards financial freedom and move towards living the life that you desire that's on your terms? Most people live a life by default. And I'm talking about living a life by design. So, what is one thing you can take from what Stu taught you today and put it into action in your life? Thanks so much and we'll catch you next week.

Stu McLaren: Thanks, Justin.