Starting and building a successful membership with Stu McLaren

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with the amazing Stu McLaren who a membership expert and the owner of TRIBE – a course that teaches business owners all about memberships and generating a recurring revenue. We talk all about memberships - how you can get started with your own and build it for success. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST Memberships are not guaranteed to succeed - It takes some tweaking and figuring things out!Key components for a webinar:Get people to registerEnsure people show upMake an offerAny type of business can be turned into a success when you understand which piece of the puzzle needs you to spend energy onIt is really important to get clear on what matters right nowDon’t get overwhelmed by all the things then take no actionHow can I get started in the most simple way possible?The noise does not matter!Founding member launchCommunicate with an audience on social media or via your email list and let them know about your ideaCast the vision for where you see the idea goingInvite them to come and join you as a founding memberFollow up – send them how they can joinJust get going and beginOnce you have momentum on your side, everything else becomes easierIf no one is interested in your founding idea – you have saved a lot of time!Your membership should give your members solutions to ongoing problems or new skillsWhen you are outlining your membership, you want to create contrasts between now and the future – the journey to where they want to be.Use 1 and 3-word phrases to describe how your audience feels right now and then to describe where they will be. THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE… Don’t give up! Ask the right questions and work it through. HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS An introduction to Stu 06:33Making your business/membership a success 09:45Getting started with a membership 13:09Your membership roadmap 23:05 CHECK STU OUT: Website RESOURCES MENTIONED: Tribe Transcript:Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week I have an interview and I am very honored and lucky that Stu McLaren was able to give me some of his time and come and talk to me about memberships. As you know, I'm sure I don't need to tell you, well, you maybe new here today as if you are new.I have a membership. I really liked my membership and therefore it was very nice to talk to Stu about memberships. However, before we get on with today's interview, I want to ask you a favor. Now I love doing the podcast. It's one of my favorite things. And I love getting lovely messages from people who said they've listened to it and they enjoyed it.And maybe I made them laugh sometimes you never know. And I'm asking a lovely favor that if you wouldn't mind sharing this with one other of your business friends, family, Whatever, whatever, like if you're happy to share it, I would be so very grateful. If you enjoy any of the episodes, if you just want to DM them, post it on social media, whatever you want to do, I would honestly be so crazy grateful for that. You know, you know, and I know that marketing is hard and, you know constantly trying to keep yourself out there is work.It takes work. So I would really very much appreciate that support from you as one of my lovely listeners. So thank you for that little advert over. So let's get to today's episode and interview. So hopefully, you know who Stu McLaren is. He is the guy who talks about memberships. He has a course called Tribe where he teaches people to do memberships.Now I've had my membership for years. I help other people launch memberships and talk about them and know about them. And I never bought Tribe, never, not for any particular reason, but just didn't. And then I was working with someone who did my 90 day program and they bought it and they raved and raved and raved about it.And I hate to say it. I got FOMO. I seriously thought I need to see this stuff. I need to go in there and look at this stuff. And I'd always liked Stu, had seen him years and years ago, uh, trafficking conversion conference. And I knew I liked his approach. So I thought, 'You know what, I'm just going to buy it to see how he manages it and what he does and what his system looks like.'And I am like an open book when it comes to anybody else's stuff. I constantly want to see what's happening, what they're doing. Like, how they do things. So I bought Tribe and I wasn't disappointed. Now, obviously I would like to think that I know a bit more than the average person about memberships and running memberships and marketing them.However, there was still definitely stuff that I learned because you always can learn new stuff. I don't think anybody should ever and will ever be at the point where there's not something to learn. And it was great. And one thing I loved about Stu when, because I'm not very good at like getting involved, this sounds really weird, but I'm not great in Facebook groups.Like I struggled enough with my own and it's mine and it's part of my academy, but I am, I wouldn't even say I avoid it, I just don't. I, I just miss stuff all the time and I don't, I don't use them the way people should use them. So anyway, but I watched a bit of Stu stuff and I saw obviously when people were launching and I watched him on a couple of videos and what I loved about him was he talked about people and he celebrated launch.Launches and openings with like, 'Oh my God, they've got 10 members. That's amazing.' And it was so refreshing because I think there's too many people out there who talk about and show examples of people who have made hundreds and thousands and millions from things that they've done. And they only use those examples.They only use the examples of so, and so did this thing and it was phenomenal when actually when you look at the small print often says, this is not a typical result. So I love the fact that Stu was like, oh my gosh, they've launched, they've got ten members, high five. So I think he's really genuinely a nice guy.Also, you may recognize the surname McLaren cause I had his lovely wife, Amy a few weeks ago who is also a very lovely human. So I should imagine they are just very nice, genuine people from what I have had experience of. I'm going to leave you to listen to the lovely Stu and I can't wait to see what you think.Okay. I am very excited to welcome a very special guest today to the podcast. Welcome the amazing Stu McLaren.Stu: Ah, I, I, that, that just feels good to be called the amazing Stu McLaren. If my kids would walk in, say, it's my amazing dad. That would be, you know, that'd be epic.Teresa: To be honest, tapping your children a bit younger than my daughter.She's 11. If I could walk in a room without ever even looking at me, like I was, I don't know what then that would be amazing.Stu: So nowadays I get, 'Oh dad, you're so embarrassing.' You know, like, I, I will, I gotta tell you one, uh, one dad, when so I was in the car and I'm always trying to encourage my kids to like sing along with me in the car.My daughter's always like, no, it's too embarrassing. But one day I was like driving, uh, her and her friends and I put on like Taylor Swift, shake it off. And Marla's friends, they were just like singing at the top of the lungs with me. And I was just like belting down and Marla, my daughter, she was like, 'oh, like maybe this is fun.'And it was like a turning point. So like now, now she sings karaoke with me all the time. So fun.Teresa: I love it. Honestly, you and I both I am the embarrassing mum, cause I think I'm really cool. And like, they just look at me. I have stepchildren.Stu: We are cool, they haven't realized that yet.Teresa: As parents. We're super cool, but like I've got 18 year old stepson and he just like, he's like, 'Yeah T. Yeah, you try it, you try and I'm alright, thanks.' Stu I am confident you do not need any introduction, but if someone has been under a rock somewhere, please tell my audience who you are and what you do.Stu: So I help business owners create more recurring revenue in their business with membership sites, and they could be all kinds of different types of membership sites, um, from product based memberships, service-based memberships, knowledge based memberships.Uh, but the point of the matter is, is that I help business owners generate recurring revenue. Now, how I got to this point was because I had a business myself where I was limited in how I could grow. It was a consulting business and it was really great and successful. But the point of the matter is, is that something had to give, because, uh, I got to the point where I could, the only way to grow the business was to give more time and I didn't have any more time to give.And so I was just like, how do I fix this? Because I don't like being limited like that. And one of my friends and mentors, this was back in 2008, he suggested that I create a membership. I knew...