The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 623: Stu McLaren - Building Communities, Stories About Transformation, A World-Class Onboarding Process, & The Business Model of The Future

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader Stu McLaren helps leaders and all types of business owners transform their knowledge, expertise, and influence into recurring revenue by launching, growing, and scaling membership businesses. He's the author of PREDICTABLE PROFITS - Transform Your Business from One-Off Sales to Recurring Revenue with Memberships and Subscriptions. Notes: People come for the content, they stay for the community. People want to feel a sense of belonging. This has been hard-wired in us from many years ago. We want to be part of a group. In the old days, this was the only way to survive. We have not outgrown that need and the feeling of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. Life advice: Listen to your gut instinct and embrace the unknown. You are not ever going to know how it's going to pan out. You have to keep taking that next step. And I loved the story of the lengthy process of adopting his son Sam. The raw emotion in Stu's eyes as he told that story was awesome. Watch this on YouTube and you can see. Take the next step. Keep going. You're not going to know how it will go. Embrace that. And keep going. Cody Burch Story – In October, Cody's dad was diagnosed with leukemia. Cody had been sitting with the idea of a membership. He saw the fear in his dad's eyes that he was nervous about the financial part of it. "I wanted to take that financial fear away from him. Within a few weeks of launching my membership, I had a few hundred members, and I was making thousands of dollars per month." "The more we make, the more we can give. The more we make, the more we can help." Stu says that all the time Create "super surprises" for your friends. Create an amazing experience for them. Online communities must be one of the three: Can I solve an ongoing problem? Weight loss, dog training Can you teach a skill? Can you make someone's life easier? Provide teachers with lesson plans You don't need a big platform to get started. Have founding members. Float the idea that you're thinking of it. Momentum starts with movement. Get going. Pay close attention to onboarding. The first few days are EVERYTHING. His daughter's new school was "the best school ever" because she met one friend on the first day. Help them build one meaningful relationship within the first few days. Connect them. Proactively do this. Sales is the most noble profession in the world. Everything must be sold. Stu learned from John Childers, but couldn't do it like him. So he just told stories about transformation. People don't care about the "stuff." They care about the outcome. They care about the transformation. The objection matrix - Match every objection with a story of someone who had the same objection and overcame it. Use stories. The importance of building a membership around transformation, not just content. While many focus on delivering endless content. By focusing on helping people achieve meaningful outcomes, rather than overwhelming them with information, leaders can build stronger communities, improve retention, and deliver real value that keeps members coming back.

Sales are the lifeblood of every business. And unfortunately, most businesses hope that customers are going to come back and buy from them again. We don't want to build a business on hope. We want to build it on certainty. And when you have recurring revenue coming into the business, it creates certainty. This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. I love the leadership team and the people at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company.

dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show.

I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your we call right you'll also receive details about how our book the score that matters will help you become a more effective leader text hawk to 66866 now on to tonight's featured leaders stew mcclaren helps leaders and all types of business owners transform their knowledge expertise and

influence into recurring revenue by launching growing and scaling membership businesses he's the author of predictable profits. Transform your business from one-off sales to recurring revenue with memberships and subscriptions. During our conversation we discuss how you can build your own membership and why it could be useful for you even if you already have a full-time job. And then Stu shares some useful ideas on how to properly onboard someone new, including the one thing you must do, you've got to do this, within the first week.

Then we talked about how to effectively sell. This was especially good for the people who hate the idea of selling anything. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Stu McLaren. I want to start with a personal story from somebody who has been greatly impacted by you and your work. There's a guy named Cody Birch. I met Cody years ago in Toronto at a Jason Gainard Mastermind Talks event. And we had lunch during that conference with Jason.

And afterwards, we stayed in touch. And in fact, Cody's wife, Christy, is my event planner. She does all of the events for me. So amazing family. I love them. But anyway, in October, Cody's dad was diagnosed with leukemia. And Cody was sitting with this idea of, of, of starting a membership.

And he said he saw the fear in his dad's eyes, not only of the leukemia, but also of the financial burden that this could create. And he said, quote, Cody told me this. I wanted to take that financial fear away from him. And with your help, and within a few weeks of that diagnosis,

Cody launched his membership and started making lots of money from it and serving his members of his community in a big way. and he said that he learned from you that you were like sitting on his shoulders, the Stu McLaren on his shoulder saying, the more we make, the more we can give. The more we make,

the more we can help. He said, Stu says that to me all the time. And I was so grateful to have Stu's knowledge when I found out about my dad's diagnosis. By the way, Cody said his dad is doing better right now and is still in treatment, but is doing better.

When you hear a story like that, in the actual impact it's made on a real person, in a real person's family, man, how does it make you feel? Thank you first off for sharing it. I know Cody, he's an incredible stand-up guy. And he's just, yeah, he's a great dude. I think, you know, when you ask like the impact,

what's crazy is that I've had my own business for 23 years and I've been online for 21 of those years. And that's a long time. And that's like internet marketing year. So I feel like, you know, in some sense, I'm like an old man in this industry, but I still feel like a young whippersnapper. all this time goes by. But when you hear the stories of just everyday people and how their lives

have been transformed because of membership and the stability that it has created in their lives and the confidence that it's given them as business owners and just the way it transforms the business. And then obviously when it transforms the business, it transforms their lives. Like Cody's story is amazing because this is such a gift that we have as entrepreneurs by way, here's a situation. His father is feeling this incredible stress of not just the cancer and what that stress, you know, brings to anybody that's facing that adversity. But he's feeling the stress of paying for the treatments. And like, here is where to me the magic comes in. Cody immediately flips on the entrepreneurial brain and says, okay, no problem. Like,

is just a money problem. As entrepreneurs, we can solve this. As leaders, we can solve this. Like, and it's a money problem, but we're one idea away from solving a money problem. And he just shifted into gears, launches this membership. And now it's producing recurring revenue. So it's not just like a one-time lump sum payment. It's recurring revenue that can pay for those treatments for his father on an ongoing basis. And just imagine how therapeutic that is for his father to not have to worry about that and how rewarding that is for Cody to be able to use those skills to be able to support his dad. To me, like, those stories are incredible. And we've got so many in our community of people who have brought their husbands home from corporate America

jobs that they absolutely hated or how people have moved from being stuck in a cubicle in a nine to five and being told when they couldn't go on vacation to being able to take their families on incredible vacations. Like Tara Phillips is a great example. She was an educator for 25 years in the classroom with kids with autism. And she, during that time, realized that she had created a bunch of resources to help these other kids and that other educators could benefit from that. So she started sharing them and selling them and turned it into a membership. And this year, she resigned or just over a year ago, she resigned from her full. time position as an educator. And she more than doubled her business this past year.

She crossed the million dollar milestone helping other educators who are in the classroom working with kids with autism. And one of the most rewarding messages was her sharing the video of sitting in the car with her best friend. And she was doing something that I talk a lot about in our community, which is a super surprise. You pick like a loved one, a family member, a friend, somebody that just cared deeply about and you create an amazing experience for them that they couldn't create for themselves. Well, in this case, she was filming herself talking to her best friend. And she was telling her that she's about to pay off her entire credit card debt. And for her best friend, this had been something that had been like really holding her back, had been weighing

heavy on her, stressing her out. And Tara's coming in. And with like one single act, just like, boom, eliminated all of that. Like, this is, this is the magic. Like business is created so that we can, you know, pour into people and do amazing things. And at the end of the day, the more money we make, the more good we can do. And that you see it playing out in Cody's story. You see it playing out in Tara's story and so many others. And that's what makes being an entrepreneur amazing. I love these stories.

Let's go back to the beginning of memberships and communities because it's your world. You're the go-to guy. If you want a membership community, you want to start one, Stu McLaren's a guy to go to. I've heard that from Jason years ago and from many others. but let's get at the foundational level. What's the membership community? Like, what is this thing online? What makes it really good?

How did you get into this? I know that's a lot of questions, but I'd love to hear that element of it because there are some saying, what is he even talking about? I've never been a part of any type of online membership or community. I just kind of go about my day job and that's that. I think there's probably a lot of curious people to understand what exactly you do.

Well, what's interesting is we most likely are part of multiple members and subscriptions, we just don't really think about it very often. Like, if you think about Netflix, it's a membership. If you think about Spotify, it's a membership. You think about Amazon Prime, it's a membership. You think about Costco. It's a membership. Like, we all belong to different memberships of one form or another. They're just different variations of the same thing, which is essentially we are paying every single month to access something. And because of it, of that, it creates stability for the business owner because they don't have to worry and hope that customers are going to come back and buy from them again. They know with certainty that at the

start of every month, the members who belong to that membership are going to pay them. And that creates tremendous confidence to be able to move forward. Here's a fun fact, Costco, over 70% of their bottom line profits come from their membership. They've got like, Hundreds of millions of paying members every month and over 70% of their bottom line profits come for their membership. It's not the stuff that they're actually selling in the store. It's the membership fees. And what's magical about memberships is that it compounds over time.

And so you're starting the month with the momentum from the month before. That's why it's attractive for businesses. Why is it attractive for customers? Why would customers want to pay for it? because it's annoying to have to remember to go and, you know, pay for the things or buy the things. And here's a good example. A few years ago, my wife and I, we moved into a new home and we live in a very wooded area. And so we move in and we're about a month into this home.

And Amy and I, my wife and I are lying in bed. And all of a sudden we hear, and she's like, what's that? and line there and we hear it again. I'm like, oh, it's probably like, you know, mice or something. She's like, forget it. She's like, babes, we got to sell this house. I can't live in a place with mice. And I'm like, babe, pump the brakes here for a second.

We can just get an exterminator to come and figure it out. So we hire this guy. He comes and he's like, yeah, you definitely got a mice problem. But we can get this handled. We'll set a bunch of traps, blah, blah, blah. That'll get them for the time being. He said, but you live in a wooded area. So there's a high probability that they'll be back.

Would you just like me to put you on our monthly plan? And I just come back every month and reset the traps? And I was like, yes, please. Never had a mice problem again. It took a stress and just eliminated it. I'd never had to worry about it. Now, interestingly enough, about a year and a bit goes by. And Amy and I are lying in bed.

And then all of a sudden we hear, the mice are back. I'm like, she's freaking out. The mice are back. The mice are back. I call the exterminator. I said, dude, what's going on? The Meisterback? He's like, oh yeah, I haven't been by your house. I'm like, well, how come? He said, well, your credit card expired. I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm like, dude, just give me a call. I'll give you the next credit card. Like, we don't want this

mice problem. But it was interesting because the lesson learned from here is like, number one, I as a consumer, love paying on a monthly basis for services that I love and appreciate because I don't have to worry about not having them. In the second lesson is that this, guy assumed that because my credit card expired, I didn't want the service anymore. And that's a big lesson for everybody. Don't ever assume that because credit cards expire all the time. And most of the time, people don't even realize when their credit cards are expiring. And so the best thing that we can do is, you know, business owners is be proactive in following up with that and ensuring that our customers don't have the disrupted service. But bottom line is that like a membership is something

that customers are paying for on a monthly or regular basis, could be monthly, quarterly, or annual, and in exchange for something in return. And there are all kinds of different types of memberships, but they generally fall into four buckets. Number one would be a physical product membership. So it's where a physical product is being sent every month. The Dollar Shave Club, perfect example. Members pay a monthly basis and razors get sent every single month. Second type is a service-based membership. Perfect example is Mary Claire Ferdat in our community. She is a massage therapist. Instead of her clients buying massages one-off, she created a membership where they pay a monthly fee and they get a certain number of massages each month. I've seen this done with massage

therapy, barbershops, car washes, all kinds of different businesses. Instead of hoping customers come back, you turn it into a membership, they pay every single month and they get a certain amount of service each month. The third is a knowledge-based membership. This is where you're teaching people how to solve an ongoing problem, helping them learn a new skill, or you're creating convenience in their life in some capacity. It's generally a digital product of some kind. That's the most popular type of membership. It's certainly the fastest and easiest one to launch. That's a knowledge-based membership. And then the fourth is a community-based membership. It's where people are paying every month just to belong to a community of people that they, you know, want to be around. Like, Mastermind Talks is a

perfect example, right? Like with Jason Gaydard, like, you know, he brings together this incredible group of entrepreneurial leaders. And because of that, people want to be in that community. It's a perfect example of bringing a group of people who have a shared interest together and people are willing to pay for that on an ongoing basis. Bottom line, membership is where you're paying on a monthly basis to access something. Jason Geyard was episode number one, 10 years ago, Stu. Oh, that's amazing. Episode one, he really is.

Okay, you listed out the four different types. So how about for somebody who's never joined the online version? Everybody's Netflix and Costco and what about someone's like, huh? I'm thinking mostly about three and four, like knowledge and community because this is something my team of coaches and me are working. to build quietly right now, but it will be loud kind of soon. So this is kind of for me here and for my team. The knowledge and community, I think I'm a part of some of these online and I love both elements where I'm learning from the person who host it, but also learning just as much

and probably more from the power of the people who are inside these communities, inside these online groups. So I would love to go deeper on those two parts of the community. Still, and I think to start, what makes one of those online communities slash knowledge share type places? What makes them awesome? What makes them lasting? What makes people want to go there, stay there, and tell all of their friends they should go there too? Yeah, great question. When I'm working with clients and they're sharing a new membership idea with me,

I'm really looking to see if it ticks one of three boxes. Because if it ticks one of these three boxes, it's virtually guaranteed to be a home run winner. So the first question to ask yourself is, can I solve an ongoing problem? Because an ongoing problem means that it's going to take time to solve. And that's perfect for a membership. So I'll give you a couple examples. Weight loss is a perfect example because you're not going to go from being overweight to your ideal weight instantaneously. It takes time to solve that problem and that makes it perfect for a membership. Dog training would fall into that bucket. You're not going to go from a puppy that's wildly out of control to the perfect puppy instantaneously. It takes time to solve that for a membership or even relationships.

You know, we've got a whole lot of people in our community that have relationship-based memberships. Those don't solve themselves either because if you've got a terrible relationship, you're not going to go from a terrible relationship on the brink of divorce, as an example with your spouse, to like this amazing relationship overnight. It takes time to solve that. So first thing I'm looking for is, can you solve an ongoing problem? And if the answer to that question is yes, then it's green light, thumbs up, move forward. Second indicator is can you teach a skill?

Because again, skill acquisition. takes time. I'm not going to go from not knowing how to paint to becoming the next Picasso instantaneously. It takes time to develop that skill. I'm not going to go from not knowing how to run a business to becoming a successful business owner instantaneously. It takes time. I'm not going to go from never leading anybody to becoming a world-class leader instantaneously. It takes time. Now, the other big benefit of skill development is that we're never finished learning. And so, even if we do get to quote the outcome or transformation that we're looking for, there's levels to that, a martial artist who earns their black belt. Do you think, Ryan, that they ever stop practicing

the fundamentals of punching and kicking? No way. They just go deeper in their level of mastery, right? It's like second degree black belt, third degree belt, fourth degree, but they just keep going deeper and deeper in their level of mastery. And so the same is true for all of us. No matter what we're teaching, people just go deeper and deeper in their level of mastery of whatever it is that we're teaching them. So first one is like, can we solve an ongoing problem? Second indicator I'm looking for is can you teach a skill? The third indicator that I'm looking for is can you make someone's life easier in some way? So there's a whole lot of very successful memberships that are built on the back of doing something or providing a resource for someone or saving them time

on a regular basis. So let me give you a come of examples. I think of Caitlin and Jessica. They have a membership site serving middle school teachers. It's a multi-million dollar a year membership. And what they're doing is they're providing lesson plans for middle school teachers. That saves them time. My wife was a teacher for 10 years. And I know that the majority of lesson planning was done in the evenings and on the weekends. And so here comes, Jessica and Caitlin and they're saying, hey, teachers, you don't have to worry about lesson planning. We'll do it for you. We're just going to hand you the lesson plans. And now all you got to do is just focus on delivering them in the classroom. It saves them time. And so there's Jessica,

there's Anna DeGilio, who's done the same thing for grade two teachers. There's Julie Sol who's done the same thing for homeschooling parents. She's providing art lesson plans for homeschooling parents. But bottom line, this is a great example of saving people time. And I've also seen you be using a variety of other markets like Andrew Crouched over in Australia. He has a great membership site providing Facebook ad templates for real estate agents. So they don't have to worry about what to say when it comes to their Facebook ads. They just follow his templates and swap out pictures and copy accordingly. But it makes it easier for them.

They don't have to become a Facebook ad expert. They can just follow his templates. And by the way, his is a higher price. membership. It's $350 bucks a month. But if a real estate agent, if all they do is sell one home a year as a result of those ads, it's paid for the membership and then some. So it's a really great value exchange. Another example is like Nicole Melton. She has a membership site providing social media templates for businesses in the beauty profession. And so they don't have to worry about what they're going to, you know, promote. So many of these are nits down. I got to say,

do you think like what and I know you write about this in your book about how you think you can get too nichey or too that your examples here say that is not true you might have like a little micro skill that you think is too niched it's obvious that just isn't that's not true solve a problem teach a skill create convenience if it checks any one of those boxes you don't have to check all three just one of those three it's a green light thumbs up move forward so let's just give you some more examples. So you talked about niche markets. Some of the markets that our students are in will blow your mind. Like I think of Bonnie Snowden. Okay. So listen to how specific this is. She teaches people how to draw realistic animals with colored pencils. Are you serious? Super niche. Dude, how many people

are in that one? Like how many people are in that? Thousands. In two years, she grew up from zero to a million dollar membership. In her third year, she crossed two and a half million dollars. Like, it's mind-boggling. Or there's Tamara Bennett. So when I first heard tomorrow's, I was like, what? I've never even heard of this market. She helps people create decorative door hangers. And I was just like, decorative door hangers, right?

She's like, oh, Stu. She's like, no, here in the South, you know, we have the, we put on things on our door like wreaths, but these are like decorative door hangers. And it's like a whole thing. When she first launched the membership, she welcomed more than four, 100 plus members in that membership. She's now got thousands. And it's just crazy. Or here's another crazy market. Holly George. So when Holly started her membership, her husband's in the military. So he's away a lot. And so they have young kids and she wanted a way to be able to earn some money, but at the

same time still be at home and care for the kids. So she lost a membership around a passion. And her passion was making balloon animals. She launches this membership. She's grown it to now, a six-figure membership, it's called the Twisterhood. So it's just like the markets are just crazy and varied. But the takeaway for all of us is that we live in an incredible time right now because the internet connects all of us weirdos together. So if you've got a passion for a very particular thing, there's a high probability that there are thousands and thousands of people worldwide who have that same crazy passion and interest. And so, what we're doing is we're just giving them a place to come together and to congregate.

And that is incredibly amazing for them and an incredible opportunity for us. What about for the people who don't have any sort of an online platform yet? So for ours that we're going to do, it's very helpful that I have this podcast and everything online and the books. And there's a platform that's going to really help propel the launch to be big. I'm going to talk to you obviously in private too to help with this. But that makes it easier. But there's definitely lots of people listening who have probably a full-time job,

but have a niche or something they're really curious about or they're really good at or they can help others that have no online platform. How does that person successfully launch a membership group online and actually create potentially a side hustle or maybe even their full-time thing at some point? How does that person do it? Well, I think there's a big mistake that a lot of people make and thinking that you need a big platform in order to launch a membership. You don't. You don't need an audience of tens of thousands or you don't even need an audience of thousands. If you've got a couple hundred people,

you have more than enough to be able to launch your membership. And so that couple hundred people could be on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. It could be on platforms like YouTube or a podcast. It could be an email list. It could be past clients. There's all kinds of ways to do this. But bottom line, if you got a couple hundred people, you can launch a membership doing what I call a founding member launch. And it's not some big, complicated campaign. Legit, it's one message where you're floating the idea of what you're thinking about doing. And in that, you're going to end up welcoming people who raise their hand and say,

yeah, I'm interested. I'd love to be a part of that. And that is the beginning of the momentum that you build for membership. A perfect example of this is Jennifer Chamberlain. So Jennifer did not have an audience. she did not even consider herself a businesswoman. She just had a passion for art. She just loved sharing art specifically with women her age, which was in their late 50s, early 60s, because she wanted to help women in that age bracket rekindle their creative sparks, so to speak.

So she started floating the idea out there that she was thinking of bringing together women in that age bracket and she was going to help them learn how to rekindle their passion for art and painting. And so when she did her founding member launch, she didn't welcome thousands of members initially. Like she welcomed 20, like 20, 20 founding members. And in that first year, she just stuck with it and grew that membership and it grew from 20 to 100. And then at the end of the second year, she had grown it to just over 200. But by the end of the third year, there was a shift in Jennifer that happened because she went from this identity of like, I'm not a business woman to like, hey, I'm I've been running this membership now for two years.

Like, yeah, I'm a businesswoman. And that identity shift started to change things about how she approached her business. And she started to double down on the things that were working. And she started to like really put her attention into it. And in that third year, she grew from 200 members to more than 2,000. And that then turned into again a multi-million dollar membership. And so I think a big mistake a lot of people make is number one, thinking that you've got to have a huge audience.

You don't. But number two is just forgetting that momentum starts somewhere. If you don't have an audience, then start working with one person, one person. Find one person that has the specific problem that you are looking to help solve. And once you help them experience progress in some capacity, then start talking about that story, start sharing that story because that one story is going to lead to three. And the three will lead to 10 and the 10 will lead to 100. and so forth. But you've got to start with one. My advice for anybody that doesn't have an audience

yet is get real clear about who specifically you're looking to help and what specifically you're looking to help them with and then identify and find one person who is open to working with you, even if it's for free, just so that you begin to have a story about the journey that you're helping people experience en route to the transformation that you're working. with and that'll help build momentum to then roll into a founding member launch. I want to riff on part of my own business too, maybe again, selfishly for me, but I hope others could find it useful. About seven years ago when I was trying to create my offerings for this business as I was leaving corporate America, one of my mentors said, you have these

listeners, they probably would love to team up or group up together and meet with you regularly. And so that became what we called our learning leader circles, which were paid mastermind groups. And what I found was I built the curriculum on the fly. And I told everybody I would be doing that as I was teaching it and sharing it. But what I learned through the course of that first group is that as much as they value coming together and listening to the stuff I was sharing in the curriculum, what they valued way more was each other, was getting to know one another. We did one in-person event per year, and we've done one since that seven years ago. And now a significant percentage of that very first group, they're still together renewing for their seventh year when I never intended it for it to go beyond a year. It's not necessarily a membership, but it's a group that now I've built more groups since then.

And lots and lots of them say like, hey, can we just renew and keep doing this? And I'm like, oh, I didn't really plan on that, but I guess so. What I'm getting at, Stu, is the power of the community, the power of the people. Now, there was an application process. There was a vetting process. It took a lot of work to build them and it still does. But I'd love to hear you talk about the power of the people, the people inside of these memberships, inside of the communities, because I've personally felt this. I stumbled into it.

And now it's one of the most gratifying elements of my business is seeing these people from all over the world. connect, become best friends, do business together, go on vacations together, stay at each other's houses when they're traveling, like all that type of stuff is happening. I'm just curious to hear from your side of it the importance of and the power of community building as part of memberships. Yeah, one of the things that I actually quoted in my book, you'll see there's a bunch of different pictures in the book. I'm a visual guy. But one of the pictures is this quote. And it's they come for the content, but they stay for the community. So what we got to realize is that like when people are deciding whether they join or don't join our community, initially, they're focused on solving a

problem, acquiring a skill like we talked about, or creating some convenience in their life. But one of the super sticky elements is if you can create a community where the emphasis is less on the content and more on connection and helping facilitate that connection. And you're absolutely right in that people love to be surrounded by others who share the same passions and interests. I grew up in a small town, Ryan, like out in the middle of nowhere. Imagine a home and then on the right hand side, a cornfield and on the other hand side, a field full of cows. That's where I grew up. And so most in a little town called Waterford, Ontario, Canada.

Yep. So out in the mill of nowhere, concession six. Like that should be enough of an indicator to know that we didn't even have a road name. It was just concession six. Bottom line is that everywhere that I, when I was growing up, all my peers were all farming. They all went into, I grew up farming. I was growing up on a jensing farm and a tobacco farm. That's just what we did.

And so when I started having an interest in building an online business, dude, it was like talking a foreign language to everybody around me. Nobody got it. nobody understood it. My parents, it was like the most confusing thing for them. They didn't know how to tell anybody else what it is that I was doing. It was just so far out there. But the moment that I found other people who were trying to build their business online too, it was just like, oh my gosh, I found my people. And you just feel this sense of belonging. And that's what we're creating. We're creating that sense of belonging because we all have our own passions and interests

and things that we're trying to accomplish and achieve. But trying to accomplish and achieve some kind of outcome or transformation is so much more enjoyable when you're doing it with people who get you. And there are all kinds of ways to facilitate that inside of a membership. Like one of the very first things that you should pay attention to in any membership is your onboarding. Because that first 30 day window is the most important window of all for the membership. In fact, you can triple the lifetime value of a member in that first 30 days if you do a few key things correctly. And one of them is connecting them with each other. So I'll give you an example of this and the power of this. When our family moved to the home that we're in now,

it meant that our kids were starting a brand new school. And they didn't know anybody. They didn't know the teachers, didn't know any other kids. And just as a parent, you just want your kids to feel comfortable. You just want them to feel settled. So we walk our kids to school and we help them find their teacher and they get in line and off they go. And secretly, my wife and I are like, please let this be a good day. We come back at the end of the day and I'm like watching, you know, as the kids are all coming out of the school and trying to find our kids and just trying to gauge on their face what we could expect. And my daughter comes running out first and she's got a big smile on her face. And I was like, oh, this is good. So she comes running up. And I'm like, how was it?

She's like, dad, this is the best school ever. I'm like, really? Tell me why. She said, well, you know how like I used to go to a Montessori school? I said, yeah. She's like, well, there's another girl in my class that used to go to a Montessori school too. I'm like, that's amazing. She's like, yeah, but dad, it gets better. You know how I love riding horses? I said, yeah. She loves riding horses too. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what are the chances? She's like, but daddy won't believe this. The new stable that I'm riding at. I said, yeah. She said, her mom owns the stable. I'm like, get out of town. She's like, this is the best school ever. Time out.

her whole framing of this being the best school ever was because she made one meaningful relationship. So in our communities and in our memberships, if we can help our people develop one meaningful relationship, especially in the first 30 days, even more so if we can do it in the first seven days, it can frame up their entire perspective of their experience in the membership. You and I have both talked about Jason Gaynard multiple times already on this episode. He is a master at this. He facilitates people developing relationships. He finds what people have in common. He sits them beside each other. He makes introductions. He goes out of his way to ensure that people find that one meaningful relationship and connection.

And we can do the same in our memberships. We can, as people are joining, we can ask a bunch of questions to find out where that member is at in their journey, what are their challenges. We can help connect them with others who are maybe one step ahead. We can also connect them with people that maybe live nearby or have similar interests. And so there's all kinds of things in which we can do inside of a membership to help facilitate that connection. but the bottom line is people come for the content and they stay for the community.

That's not only the case for a kid going to a new school or for somebody joining a membership or a community. Think about if you own a business or you run a business and you have new hires. If you, I think hopefully you can do this in person, but even if it's virtual or your people are scattered all over the place, distributed company, if you can help your new hires in those first seven days become friends or start building relationships with others, the likelihood, I bet Joey Coleman in his first 100 days would know more about this than us. But if you can do that initially, the likelihood of that person staying and thriving and wanting to crush it at your company, I would bet, Stu, and you know this, dramatically goes up. So not only is this for memberships or for community, think about this if you're running your own business and you're thinking about your onboarding process and connecting your people with others there so they build relationships.

You facilitate that. You help engineer that process. That's really good. Just piggyback on that for one sec, because there's two things that we've done in our company that I think other leaders will appreciate and get some ideas from that have helped in this very specific thing. the majority of our team all work out of our office in Brantford, Ontario. The other 15 are distributed around the world. But every single month, we hold like a town hall where the different leaders in our company are talking through different things that are happening that particular month. We're recapping what happened in the past month. Just bringing the whole team up to speed on what we're doing.

But during that meeting, one thing that we've started to do recently that has made a huge difference, in the connection that you're talking about, is that we have breakout rooms on Zoom. We just had our meeting earlier this week, and we did the breakout rooms, and we asked a specific question that was designed to help connect people. I was in a room with two of the fellows on our team,

Marcus, a young guy that just joined our team a year ago, and Britain, who's been on our team for three years. In that conversation, I learned stuff about Britain that I had no idea about. I learned that he actually does not love. like to travel whatsoever. He is a homebody. He doesn't like to travel. But I learned like if there was one place that he could travel, he'd want to go out west, but he doesn't want to fly there. I said, would you ever drive there? He's like, yeah, I'd maybe drive there. I said, would you take the train?

He's like, maybe I'd take the train. Whereas Marcus, I learned that that guy loves to travel. He's been on all kinds of travel experiences in his young life already. And we found all kinds of common threads. Point is, it's that point of connection that is so important and giving and creating space for your team to get to know each other really powerful. The second element of that, which is relevant for teams as it is for communities, is anytime you can create shared experiences with one another, it dramatically deepens the bond. So every year, we as a team have a contest to earn a spot on an adventure that we run as a team. And some of the adventures that we've done is an event called 29029, where you essentially hike the equivalent of Mount Everest

in 36 hours or less. It is not easy. It is difficult. It is challenging. But every year that we have done that, our team have formed this incredible bond. Because when you're on that mountain and you're struggling and you then are beside your team who's trying to pick you up and then it's a matter of time between those roles reversing, you just form this incredible connection with each other. This year, our team's going to Kenya. My wife and I have a nonprofit where we build schools in Kenya. And so we're taking eight of our team on that experience. But anytime you can create experiences and shared experiences, it really deepens the bond. On a local level, we do this by volunteering as a team at the local food bank. See, it's one thing to do it yourself. It's another

thing to come in as a team, we can get two weeks worth of work done in a few hours because there's so many of us. But that experience, that shared experience, creates that connection and bond. So bottom line is you can do it virtually with just simple Zoom breakout sessions, getting to know each other. But number two, anytime you can create shared experiences, that's another valuable way to deepen that bond. Okay. One of the things you write about, I believe this is Chapter 27 is selling, especially how to sell even if you don't like selling. Now, my first job after my football career was in sales for a decade for 12 years. And so I love the profession of selling. It's the most noble profession in the world. If salespeople didn't exist, the world

would not exist. And that is a fact. The world happens. The economy happens because of great, great, great sales professionals. So I love it. And I think it's the best and everybody should try to get really good at it. Because what is selling? It's helping other people. That's what sales is. And so those who've had a bad experience buying a car or something else, I get it. I understand why, ooh, I don't like that. But that's not good selling, right? Good selling is when you understand the problems of other people, you do great discovery, right? And then eventually if your solution helps solve their problem, you offer it to them and help them get it.

That's professional selling. I don't like when people use the word sales and think it's a bad thing. It's an awesome thing. It's the best because it helps people. So, Stu, for the one who still is drawing from their bad experience at a car dealership or somewhere else, how do you help people get over this idea of,

I don't like to sell, I don't want to sell. That's part of growing a business. though. So how do you help them? Well, I made a discovery a few years ago because for many years, I was trained by a mentor of mine who was exceptional at selling and specifically selling in front of a group of people. He was just world class. In fact, he ran a whole training every single month that people paid $15,000 to attend. And this was by the way in like 2003. So like this was, way back and it was a high price point, but he was world class and he would have people fly in from all around the world every month to learn from him how to sell. So he was my mentor.

Did you name this guy? Who was this? His name is John Childers. And so I learned a ton from him. But between us, his style never totally felt comfortable for me. So I share that as back story because fast forward to, I'm hosting my very first event for our business now. And we have about thousand people in the audience. And we had an offer that we wanted to make. And so I went back to studying all my old notes of how my mentor would develop that presentation and how he would describe it, all those things. And we built it all out. And about 45 minutes before I'm to take the stage to deliver this presentation, I turned to Rick on our marketing team and I'm just like, dude, I don't know what it is, man.

This just, I just, I can't do it this way. He's like, what are you talking about? Like, we were about to take the stage in 45 minutes. Like, we don't have time to revamp the presentation. He's like, what are you going to do? I said, I'll figure it out. So I go out on stage and I didn't know what I was going to do. But what I started to do was I just started to share stories. and I shared stories of transformation, stories that our audience would relate to, stories that they could see themselves in. And I just started talking about where they started, the challenges they faced,

the process they followed, and the outcome that they then achieved. And what happened was eventually it led to me then making the offer because I basically said, and I want to help you experience the same transformation. If this is resonated, I want to encourage you to come and join us because the whole program of blah, blah, blah, is designed to help you get that transformation. Now, I'm up in front of the whole room and there's big bright lights on me.

I can't quite see. And I just happen to do one of those things where I put my hands over my eyes to kind of block the light. And my heart dropped, Ryan. There was nobody in the audience. and in that moment, I remember feeling like, oh my gosh, I've blown it. Wait, you mean, they actually, they weren't there. They weren't in their seats.

And I was just like, oh my gosh, like I've blown it. Now, our event organizer could kind of see on my face that something wasn't right. So then he realized. So all of a sudden, he puts the lights on and everybody's at the back of the room signing up for the very thing that I just offered. And it was the greatest sales day that I have ever had in my life. I superseded my mentor's best sales day by a factor of eight, eight times his best sales day. And it was mind-blowing for me.

And it was a huge aha moment because what I realized was that I don't need to sell the stuff. So often people talk about the stuff. And memberships, people will say, you're going to get 18 million hours of video and 200, 27,000 pages of PDFs and this. People don't care about the stuff. What they care about is the transformation. They care about the outcome. And the best way to describe how you can help them achieve that outcome or transformation is through stories. And so what I like to do is I like to create what I call an objection matrix. It's a fancy word for drawing a line straight down the middle of a page.

the left-hand side listing all of the top objections that you face when it comes to making an offer. I don't have an audience. I don't want to get stuck creating a whole lot of content. I'm overwhelmed by the process. These are all objections. And then what I do is I just list a whole bunch of stories of our clients and customers on the right-hand side of that page. And then I just match them up. No time? That reminds me of Michael Hyatt. And I've gone to tell him that story. Not an expert. that reminds me of Scott Paley and I tell that story. And so what happens is you start matching the objection to a story. And so anytime the objection comes up, the easy transition is like, I get it. I hear it. It reminds me of and then you just go right into telling the story of that particular person that

objection. And in my experience, it's become one of the easiest and most effective ways to sell. Because I'm not selling. I'm not pushing. I'm not being aggressive, which is where a lot of that negative connotation comes from when it comes to sales is I don't want to be that slimy, sleazy, pushy, aggressive salesperson. But when you're telling stories, you're never in that position. But they're just as effective and it is a great way to sell. It reminds me of Seth Godin. And sometimes you just say it's not for you. I think that's part of it too. It's not for everybody.

And that's okay. It's definitely for somebody. It's definitely for a lot of people. But it's also okay if it's not for you. I think that it has to be like a legitimate element of the sales process is not for everybody. But we're going to find the ones who we do think it can transform in a good way. And we're going to do our best to support them and to help them. And our offering is there for them.

We're right at our time. Stu, I do have one question that's kind of adjacent. to everything we've been talking about. But given the fact that you've built a really great career, I see behind you, you have a sign that says coolest dad ever. I assume that was given to you by either one or both of your kids. If you're speaking to someone who's a bit earlier in their career and they want to leave a positive dent in the world, but they're not exactly sure what they want to do, what are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? I would say a couple of key turning points in my journey have because I listened to a gut instinct.

Number one, gut instinct was I went through school for business and everybody in my class went into the corporate world. And they right out of the gate were earning great money. But I just knew gut instinct wise, that journey was not right for me. And it was a tough moment because I remember signing on the bottom line to work with a great company up here in Canada called Maple Leaf Foods and I had a salary that was earning more than both of my parents combined right out of the gate, company car, benefits, everything that they could ever hope for. And I turned it down. And so that was a gut instinct. And it was tough for a while. Same gut instinct several years later, I had built up my first software company, a million dollar plus company,

great business partner, great team. But gut instinct, I just knew that was not the business that was going to get me to where I wanted to go. And I sold my shares in that company without knowing what my next step was going to be. But instinct-wise, I knew it wasn't the fit. And in those moments, you're filled with all kinds of fear and doubt. And for me, it was just like, is this a one-hit wonder? Will I be able to repeat my success? Am I putting my family in financial jeopardy by making this decision? But instinct-wise, I knew it was the right decision. I think the same thing goes for people. We have instincts about people. One of the big ones, lessons I would share is to trust those instincts. Second lesson I would say is that you are not

ever going to know exactly play by play how everything is going to pan out. And the biggest thing that we can do as entrepreneurs and in our careers is just embrace the unknown and have confidence that you can and will figure it out. But the only way that you will ever have the chance of figuring it out, is by taking that next right step. My wife and I, we started our own nonprofit 16 years ago. My wife had this dream of being able to bring education to kids in rural parts of Africa. We had never been to Africa. We had zero experience with schools.

We had zero contacts. And yet, somehow, some way, we figured it out. And here we are 16 years later. We're building our 16th school. We've now educated more than 5,000 plus kids. Last year, we opened our 15th school, which was an all-girls high school for more than 900 girls. The president of Kenya, the president of the entire country of Kenya came to open that school with us. When I look back on all these kinds of things, man, we just didn't know what we didn't know, but we just kept moving forward. I think of my wife and I, we adopted our son, Sam, from South.

Africa when he was one. That adoption process was probably one of the hardest, most difficult things that we have ever faced because it took eight years, like eight years to complete that adoption. We're getting older and we're second guessing ourselves and we got family members who are lovingly saying like, hey, maybe you should just try for your own. Maybe you should do it, you know, adopt domestically. And there were all kinds of doubts and fears. But we just kept on keeping on. And then when we got matched with our son, Sam, Ryan, it was like one of the most magical moments. My hairs are just standing up on my arm right now because his name is Sam. It's short for Sam Kellow, but we all call him Sam. And it was just meant to be. My first initial,

obviously is an S. My wife's name is Amy. It's an A and our daughter's name is Marla, which if you take the first initial of our names, it spells Sam. It was just like synchronicity. like it was just meant to be. And I just share this because you won't always know exactly how things are going to play out. There will be curveballs and there will be obstacles and there will be challenges, whether it's like starting a business, whether it is starting a charity, whether it's adoption, wherever it is. But you've got to keep moving forward.

And if you don't keep moving forward, you're going to stand still. And standing still means you're actually moving backwards because the rest of the world is moving forward. But you've got to just take that next right step. And in taking that step, will come and that next step will become clear as well. So yeah, lots of great lessons certainly throughout this journey. Thank you for sharing that. It's so cool. The book is called Predictable profits, transform your business from one-off sales to recurring revenue with memberships and subscriptions. This is a useful book, not just for that person who's looking to launch a membership.

I think it's a useful book for leaders who want to build good culture, who want to build teams, who want to onboard people well, who want to have people want to stay where you work, to do great work. Certainly it gets snitched down into running a membership, and it's probably the book to read if you want to run a membership in addition to the things that you do at stew.me, but I'm really grateful that you've written it, and I'm grateful for your time today, and I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

Yeah, well, I appreciate it. And I'm really passionate about this book because at the end of the day, the top stressor for people running and leading companies is finances. Like, where is the next sale going to come from? Sales are the lifeblood of every business. And unfortunately, most businesses hope that customers are going to come back and buy from them again. That's why I wrote this book. We don't want to build a business on hope. We want to build it on certainty. And when you have recurring revenue coming into the business, it creates certainty. It means that we can invest in our marketing with confidence. We can invest in our team with confidence. We can grow and scale with

confidence because we know at the beginning of the month, we're starting the month with the momentum that we gained from the previous month. And it's just a game changer. And so I am passionate about this book. This is like nearly two decades squeezed into 250 pages. And I just want to encourage everybody to go get a copy or get the audio version because I read the whole thing. But I'm passionate about it because we don't have to live with that uncertainty and that stress. This is why companies are shifting to a membership and subscription model. And this book will show you how. Awesome.

Thanks again, Stu. I really appreciate it, man. Yeah, of course. Thanks, buddy. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com, let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Stu McLaren.

A few takeaways from my notes. People come for the content. They stay for the community. people want to feel a sense of belonging. This has been hardwired in us from many, many years ago. We want to be part of a group. In the old days, this was the only way to survive. However, we have not outgrown that need and the feeling to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

For us as leaders, it is our job to help people feel a sense of belonging to our community, whether it's at work or with a membership you are building. Then one of the things I think Stu emphasizes that sets them apart is the importance of building a membership around transformation, not just content. While many focus on delivering endless stuff, Stu, by focusing on helping people achieve meaningful outcomes rather than overwhelming them with information, this way it helps leaders build stronger communities, improve retention and deliver real value. That's what keeps people coming back. And so I think we can all think about how we do this in our lives. Instead of overwhelming people with stuff or PDFs or books or information, how can we help them transform, become a transformational leader for others. And then his life advice about listening to your gut instinct and embracing the unknown. You are not ever going to know how it's going to pan out.

You have to keep taking the next step anyway. And I love the story of the lengthy. process to adopt his son, Sam. The raw emotion in Stu's eyes. As he told that story was awesome. I'd encourage you to watch it on YouTube. It was really cool just to see this guy who was in this mode to kind of sell his book and sell the idea of memberships. And he's really good at it. And for a second, he just got really raw and emotional talking about his son. It was so, so good. But in doing that, he was talking about how the fact that you're never going to know how it will go. You've got to embrace that, embrace the uncertainty, and keep going.

Take the next step and keep going. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Stu McLaren. I think it will help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show and you rate it hopefully five stars and you write a thoughtful review and tell all your friends by doing that, you are giving me the opportunity. to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much.

Talk to soon. Can't wait.