Subscriptions & Memberships with Stu McLaren | Building More Recurring Revenue

Good morning, everybody. I'm super duper excited because it's rare that I get the Stu McLaren on a live with me and I get to chat with him with all of you. If you don't know, Stu McLaren has been my mentor— gosh, Stu, since 2018.

I know, it's crazy.

6 years now. Um, and there's been a lot of ups and downs with my business. There's been a lot of explosive growth with my businesses. And Stu has been a part of that all along the way. And today we're going to talk a little bit about that. I was just looking at your sales page, Stu, and I, man, I got like the front and center full page view on the sales page. But really what we want to talk about, what I want to bring to you guys today is we talk about subscription boxes all the time and how it's building this recurring revenue into our business. And we're good at that. But what we're, what we wanna talk about just a little bit more in depth with Stu today, and he's here to answer some questions for you, is how do we bring another recurring revenue stream into our business? Because one is great, two is even better. And so we're gonna talk about that. Stu, for everybody here that doesn't know you, why don't you give them just like a little background who you are, what you do, and then we'll just dig right into it.

Yeah. Well, thanks first and foremost for having me, Sarah. And I just want to say your journey over the last several years has been absolutely remarkable and beautiful to watch. You know, like I've watched you go from a retail shop owner to a subscription business that's primarily local to national, to then having, you know, multiple memberships, both information-based, subscription box-based, It's been absolutely incredible. And I think that that's really why I'm so passionate about this topic of recurring revenue and memberships and all the different sizes and shapes and forms that a membership can take, because it creates tremendous stability for every single business owner. And for me, my journey started back in 2008. I had a consulting business. It was going great. But the problem was I could only grow that business by giving more of my time, and I didn't have any more time to give. So something had to give in a way to be able to, be able to reach my entrepreneurial goals and dreams. And also so I could be present as a father and as a husband. And ultimately, a mentor of mine encouraged me to start a membership. I didn't know what it was at the time, but he said, look, it's a way for you to be able to share what you're doing with your private clients, but with more people and be able to scale that opportunity to help more people. I like the sounds of that. But then in 2008, the technology was not what it is today. And so I was left scrambling. I was frustrated. I was trying to figure things out. And a friend of mine ultimately suggested that we team up and create a really easy solution for ourselves. And that's ultimately what we did. It went on to become the world's number one membership platform for WordPress. Before I knew it, we were powering over 70 thousand online communities and memberships. And that's when I started to see like, what were this small group of memberships doing that were growing year over year differently than everybody else? And so I started paying attention to that small group. I started applying the same strategies in my own memberships. They all took off, became 6, 7-figure memberships. And then I just started sharing it and teaching it. And that's what I've been doing ever since. And it's been some of the most fulfilling work. Watching people go from an idea or a passion or an interest and watching them be able to create a membership and serve hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of people and be able to build this incredible business that has that stability and predictability. So it is something that I am passionate about. I believe every entrepreneur should have as many recurring revenue streams as they possibly can. And that's why, you know, I love talking about this.

Well, as you're talking, my product brain automatically goes off, right? So you're talking about how you were doing this one-to-one consulting, right? And it's the same way when we're doing one-off orders. Like I was at the warehouse this morning grabbing some stuff before I came home and they're, they're packing one-to-one orders. It takes more time. There's a lot more variables in that. So when we think about this one-to-one consulting versus one-to-one orders, it's the same thing for subscription boxes. You can do like 100 subscription boxes in the same amount of time that usually takes to pack 10 different orders because they're all the same. And it's really the same concept when you're talking about the membership. And, you know, I— what I love is the fact that we can do both.

Yes.

And we have so many people in common, um, here, not only members of mine but members of yours that have taken both the physical product, made a subscription out of it, and also turned that into a membership. And I'd love to talk about a few of them. You might know them as the Creative Club, but I would love to talk about them for a little bit because there's different scenarios, right? So let's talk about Casey Hope real quick because Casey Hope, great story. She's got a subscription box and it's tied to a membership. So it's an all-in-one membership subscription box combo. It's called Whatever Letter. And what Casey does is that she teaches lettering. It started off to really be a lettering membership and that's what she was going for. But she realized how important the physical component to that membership was going to be. So she tied it to a subscription box. So whatever letter is a membership learning about lettering, but they get a physical box component every single month. And it's that combination of, live tutorials, recorded tutorials, community-based because she has a community that they, they letter together with. But then she's also getting that physical component. Do you want to talk about the type of membership that is?

Yeah. And before I do, I want to just touch on Casey, because one of my favorite stories about Casey was, you know, she also— she has that subscription box with the membership, the lettering membership. And, um, but she also has a physical art studio. And one of the things, one of my favorite moments with, uh, Casey was in 2020 when the pandemic hit. I got a message from her, I think it was like on March, uh, 18th or something like that. And she said, you know, normally she would have been super scared because, you know, in that moment she had to close her studio. They made the hard decision to close the studio. And so that meant that, you know, there was no income coming in from people coming into her actual Studio. And she said, normally I would have been freaked out in that moment. She said, but I'm just so grateful because I have a membership. And so the doors can, you know, we're not the light, you know, the bills can still get paid. Our staff can still get paid. She said, I can still pay myself thanks to the membership. And then what was interesting was literally like a few weeks later, she sent me another email and that I think it came on like April 4th. And the message said, I just had another, you know, light bulb moment. She's like, I'm launching another membership. And what she realized was during the pandemic, there were, you know, millions of parents, myself included, who had young kids at home who now couldn't go to school. And we're like, what the heck do we do with all these kids? And so she had this light bulb moment, which was like, oh my gosh, like what I'm teaching, uh, in the studio, what I used to teach in the studio, I could just teach at home. And so she launched a whole nother digital membership. She had 400, almost 500 members within just a few months. And that's just because she had the skill set to be able to realize, see an opportunity, and then to be able to act on it and create another membership. So I love Casey, Casey's story. And, you know, she's a great example of, you know, the different types of memberships that we can create. You know, rough, just off the top of my head for everybody, there's really 4 main types. One would be a product-based membership. This is your world, Sarah. This is like subscription boxes. This is like Candles of the Month, Earrings of the Month, you know, you name it of the month. My wife belongs to a membership called Lobe Love. They send, you know, earrings every quarter. So there's all kinds of physical product memberships. Second would be like service-based memberships. So Mary Claire Fournette in our community, she's a massage therapist. Instead of hoping that clients come back every day, or every month. She created a membership. They pay a flat fee and they get a certain number of massages. That gets more regular, uh, massages for her clients, and it gives her more regular steady income.

And so I've got the blowout membership.

I have no doubt, no doubt that you've got the blowout membership for sure. But that's a great example, right? Like, you want to go and do it anyway, and so why not just make it easy for your customers and then at the same time create predictability for yourself as a business owner. And there are many examples of service-based memberships. The car wash across the road, another great example of that. You can go through one time for $10, or you can pay $12 a month and go through an unlimited number of times, right? That's a service-based membership. No-brainer, no-brainer, no-brainer. The third is like a knowledge-based membership. These are the most popular and actually the easiest to create because we don't have any, like, as you were saying, physical products. We don't have to like create any, you know, source any physical products and ship them in or anything of that nature. Like it's knowledge, it's information. But this is where we're helping people solve an ongoing problem. That could be like somebody's in a terrible relationship and they want to, you know, have an amazing relationship. Well, that problem is not going to solve itself overnight. That takes time. Perfect for a membership. Or you could be teaching people a skill. This is what you do in one of your memberships, right? Like, You're teaching people how to become a profitable subscription box owner. Like, that is a skill that doesn't just happen overnight. But the same is true in so many communities where people are teaching them how to paint. Like, our friend Christie Hawkins is a great example of that, right? So you're not going to just all of a sudden have a thought, hey, I'd like to learn how to paint, and then boom, become a great artist. Like, it just takes time to learn that skill. So go ahead.

Let's talk about Tamara in this scenario because our friend Tamara Bennett, who's in my mastermind, is also a great example of having a membership and a subscription box. Now Tamara started with her membership and it was a knowledge-based membership where she's teaching people how to paint door hangers. And she did that for several years, but the need came about to have the physical things to paint on. And so about a year and a half ago, she created a subscription box around that complemented the membership. And it's called the Big Box of Blanks. So now she's— and it's complimentary. It's not together like Casey's. Casey's is together. Tamara's is separate. So she has membership, recurring revenue, all the people that want to learn the paint. And then she has a quarterly subscription box where they get 3 of the blanks, um, one for each month of the, the things that she's teaching in the membership. So it's complimentary to the membership. Now she has 2 recurring revenue streams for that same customer. And that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how we can do that. It's not like, let's go create a whole bunch of memberships for different ideal customers, different audiences, and start building more audiences. We don't have time for that. How can we take what we already do in our product-based business and turn it into digital income?

It's about stacking the momentum, right? Like you hit that nail on the head. Like I love that, the story of Tamara. And by the way, The first time I heard her share with me, you know, being up here in Canada, I was like, wait a minute, like decorative door hangers? Like, I was like, are you talking about like the things on the hotel room that said like, no, I'm still sleeping? And she's like, oh, Stu, clearly you are not from the South. No, no, these are like, you know, and I got— I finally got it. I'm like, oh, okay. But it's amazing to see the community that she's created. And I love the fact that in one sense, she's teaching people how to do it. In the other sense, she's providing them the tools and resources to be able to do it. And as you said, like some people will have a need for both, others will have a need for one or the other. And she gets to serve that customer by stacking the momentum. She's staying in her lane. She's still focused on the same thing. It's not like she's got a decorative door hanger membership and a cat membership. Like those two have nothing to do with each other, right? Like she's staying in the lane, same customer, same profile. She's just finding other ways to be able to serve them.

Yeah. And I was talking with Amy last week. Amy's also in my mastermind and she, she's very similar. She is, she is sending out a box of tier trade items and she's showing up live and she's teaching people how to paint them and decorate with them. And she's the perfect person to really develop a membership that will create yet another revenue stream for things that she's already doing.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's so many, uh, fun examples of being able to take a product that you've already got and then be able to teach people around that product. Like one of my very first memberships was, I mentioned earlier, like my first software company that we launched, we started noticing in the support, like a lot of people were sending in questions that were not necessarily about the product, but were more about like ideas and strategies. And so we spun off another membership. So we had the software itself and then we spun off a membership teaching people how to grow with different ideas and strategies. And the same could be true if you think about any like product-based business, like there's the actual product that people use and consume, but then it's like, well, what ideas could you provide that would help people use that product or get more out of that product or be able to, you know, do things better, faster, easier with that product? So there's all kinds of ways to think about it.

Consuming, you know, you've, you've taught me that well. You got to consume the contents, whether those are physical contents that are inside the box or whether that's digital contents like inside my Launch Your Box membership. I need my subscribers to consume the content, right? And so if you've got one that helps you do consume the contents to the other, it's like they go hand in hand and they're just going to continue to make your retention stronger and help, you know, retain your customers a lot longer.

Absolutely. You know, I think of like, you know, even what you provide in your subscription box, uh, how, um, you know, you, you always have these cute little outfits and all kinds of stuff and, and you're always teaching, uh, the ladies how to get the most out of the items that you're providing in the box. Well, just think about it. Like, imagine if you were to, you know, even team up with, you know, different, um, you know, uh, Instagram influencers as an example. Who are always talking about fashion and always talking about stuff like that's a great another idea. Like even if you don't want to be the person, you know, teaching the material inside of a membership, there's always opportunity to team up with others who are already doing it. They've already got an audience and then you could team up and create a great partnership and membership. So anyways, I can talk about this stuff all day long, but I just saw— did you just pull up Lisa?

Lisa, you were talking about Lisa last night, so we got to know. Tell us, tell us about Lisa. Lisa's a part of Scale Your Vox and Launch Your She's another great example.

I love Lisa. She's got multiple memberships, uh, physical, uh, box memberships, subscription box memberships. They're in the geocaching niche. I had never even heard of geocaching before I met, uh, Lisa. And if you're not familiar with it, it's like this incredible, like, adventure where you are, you know, solving puzzles and, you know, you know, following clues and going to these different places and literally all around the world. And then uncovering the clue that sends you to the next clue. And it's like this whole crazy— it's— I couldn't believe it. But anyway, Lisa has multiple subscription boxes, again, staying in the same lane where she is serving the same customer just in different ways within her different memberships. So in some cases, she's teaching the clients and customers about geocaching, how to become a better cacher. I don't know if that's what they call themselves, But you get on set, we're going to coin that today.

We're going to go ahead and have that copyrighted.

That's right. But she's so in some cases she's teaching them and other cases providing them like supplies and materials in the subscription boxes. So again, it's another example of being able to serve the same customer in multiple ways with multiple memberships.

Yeah, we've got a, we've got a question here from Jennifer who's also in my mastermind. Now what I love about Jennifer is that she has multiple streams as well. She's a product-based business. She also created a VIP membership off of the product-based business that gives you specific benefits within her product-based business. But now she's just recently launched a digital membership. Her question is tips on keeping the momentum and sticking to the plan. I'm in month 2 and I want to scratch it and start over. And listen, we're gonna— we're just gonna give Jennifer some tough love here. She always wants to scratch it and start over, whatever it is. Um, sometimes she'll scratch it before she even gets started. So what tips do we have for Jennifer to keep her going?

Jennifer, I want you to know you're not alone, uh, in the sense that if you're a creator, you most likely love the art of creating. So that means starting new stuff, right? But all you got to do is just kind of channel that creative energy in a different way. And so for me, like, I'm very much the same. I love starting stuff, I love creating stuff. There's an excitement, there's an energy around that. But when it comes to a membership, I'm always just thinking about like how I can create a different or new or an improved experience for my existing members. Like, you know, from a subscription box that the value of a customer and the value of the business increases significantly the more a customer stays. So if a customer only stays for 1 month or 2 months, the value is quite low. But if a customer stays for 8 months, 9 months, 12 months, 14 months, 22 months, which many of our customers in our community stay, then that value of that customer increases exponentially. So Jennifer, what I would encourage you to do is to play a game with yourself. Like, how can you make it fun? How can you make it interesting? You know, and one of the best ways to do that is think of your membership almost like, like a Netflix series. You know, like, you know, when an end of an episode And then like, there's like the, a juicy hook and you're just like, ah, darn it. Like, okay, one more episode, one more episode. That's like the famous words from my wife and I. What? Just one more, just one more. And then we gotta go to bed. Well, inevitably, like you end up watching like 2 or 3 because they are so darn good at creating hooks that compel you to watch the next episode. What if you applied the same principles and philosophy to your content and your membership? Imagine if at the end of one month, you create a hook or a surprise or something intriguing that's gonna get revealed next month. And so now you have like this fun game with your audience where they can't wait to see it. You can't wait to reveal it, but the moment you reveal it, you, you know, have another hook that keeps 'em interested and compelled to see the next month. So from a creative standpoint, that's where I'd encourage you to channel your energies. How can you create a fun, memorable experience that is not only rewarding for you, but also rewarding for your members and keeps them passionate and interested too.

I love that. And I think if you, I mean, you gamify everything. I feel like you gamify your shopping trip at the grocery store. But I think that if you can keep gamifying what you're doing, it makes it exciting. It doesn't make it mundane. It doesn't make it routine for you. Now we're going to do something that do that I don't typically do. And you know, that's, you know, this about me. I'm going to share my screen really quick. But I wanted to share, I wanted to share this page, we're going to talk about Sarah Williams. And I don't do this very often, because you know how I feel about that. But I want, because I don't want to talk about myself, I would want you to talk about me. I want to talk about what's possible. Because You've watched me go from like 0 to 100, basically. You've watched me literally change my whole life with the recurring revenue that, um, that I've built. And I, and I want you to talk about it cause I'm not good at talking about myself.

Well, when I met you, you were super shy, super quiet, didn't say a word to anybody, kept to yourself. And you were just like in your own zone doing your own thing. With your retail shop and you were doing phenomenally well. And then you were savvy and realized that you had customers coming into your shop that were buying similar items. You turn that into a subscription box and you're serving that local, uh, you know, customer base. But what I love about you is you think far bigger than where you're at right now. You're always thinking about like, how can I, you know, do more, reach more, accomplish more, even though you're, super quiet and humble. And so at that time you're like, okay, how do I go from a local customer base to serving people nationwide? Like if I've got this subscription box, I can send this, you know, to people, you know, nationwide. And so that subscription box grows from 300 to more than 3,000. And then in a very short period of time, you start realizing like people are asking you questions about this. You've got expertise around subscription boxes. Like why not turn that into a membership? And I've not seen somebody go, from zero to a million-dollar-plus membership as quickly as you did, especially because you were starting that audience from scratch. But one of the things that I think is really important for people is to realize, like, you may have like big dreams, big goals, big ambitions, but it all starts with taking that next right step. And that's exactly what you did. And you took that next right step and you then took the next one and the next one and the next one. And before long, within a very short period of time, you had grown a second multimillion-dollar membership. This is why I'm so proud of you, because it's not even just the multiple recurring revenue streams. It's not even the fact that you've got multiple million-dollar memberships. It's what I watched and witnessed you then becoming, like watching you be able to provide for your family, watching you when, you know, you had terrible flooding happening in your home and knowing that you could fix that, you could sort that out. You weren't concerned or worried. Watching you grow in confidence in who you are, watching you build an online presence where you're online. When I first met you, you weren't doing broadcasts, you weren't doing videos. And just watching you be able with that confidence, be able to serve hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people because you're stepping into a new version of yourself. And I think this entrepreneurial journey, it is up and down all the time, but at the end of it, imagine who we become is that better version of ourselves. But we've got to be willing to take that next step. We've got to be willing to hold that space for that bigger, better, brighter version of ourselves, even if we don't know who he or she is actually going to be. So for me, watching your journey has been an absolute blessing, Sarah, and it's just a testament to what can happen in such a short period of time when you just start taking that next right step.

And I would have, I would have not taken the membership step had it not been for your encouragement, had it not been for that gentle push. You kept pushing, sometimes gentle, sometimes not so gentle. But really encouraging me to step into who I already was, but me not having the self-confidence to do it. And you are so right about this journey is so personal, like having the confidence that I do now, if you would have looked at me, say, 5, 6 years ago, is a completely different person. But that is from taking a risk and winning, taking another risk and learning because we didn't necessarily win, but keep building on the last step that we just took. And so that's, that's what I encourage people here. Now, you know, that was a membership for me. It was a membership in the form of subscription box first, and that's how I started the journey. But it turned into a membership as far as my knowledge base memberships that turned into a second membership that turned into also a mastermind. So So now I have these 3 levels of my knowledge-based membership that support me. And now, you know, as a single parent now and I'm providing for my household and all the things that I've been through over the last year has that confidence that when I kept taking that next step and I kept having, whether it was a small win or a giant win sometimes, that confidence kept building. for me. Confidence kept building for me. And it's who you see now. It's the person that got a book deal. It's the person that's on YouTube that's doing a podcast. Like, it's that person now. But that person didn't exist before I started to gain the confidence in those wins that I was having.

And confidence doesn't come just like out of thin air. Confidence comes as a result of like, you know, taking that next step, experimenting, trying, surrounding yourself with people who get you, understand you, want to support you and cheer you on. And, you know, it's been a beautiful beautiful thing to watch. In fact, I'm going to just do something fun. Uh, I know we didn't talk about this, but in the chat, uh, I would love, uh, everybody who's watching and listening, just put like, what is your favorite thing, uh, about Sarah? What's their favorite thing that you've learned about Sarah? Why, uh, and how has Sarah inspired you? I want you to put it in the chat, you know, because what's interesting is like many times what we see in others, we, uh, and what we see and admire in others is like the same characteristics that we want to develop in ourselves. And, you know, Susan, I see, just said she's genuine. Somebody just said authenticity. Gina just said she is real. And this is exactly why, you know, Sarah, you have thrived in the membership space, and that's because you are who you are. And there was a turning point, you know, in one of our masterminds. I remember it was in San Francisco. And I had a heart-to-heart. You mentioned like sometimes, uh, you know, I, you know, softly encourage and sometimes I'm a little more like, you know, direct. And I remember this particular moment, um, you had this like epiphany moment where you realized, hey, you know what? Like, I just need to lean into and speak to women like me.

I was the influencer of my business and I realized that.

And you, you were hiding behind it. You were even having discussions about like having somebody else, like, be the front person for your business. And then you had this moment where you realize like, wait a minute, like the people who buy from me can relate to me. They, they, they see themselves in me. If I just, if I'm just having the courage to just start being me and sharing me, maybe that will attract more. And it did. And that's what we're seeing come up in the chat. Like your authenticity, the fact that you're genuine, the fact that you're real, like People connect to you because of that. And so I just share this with everybody because the things that we love and see in Sarah are often the things that we need to develop ourselves in our own character. And my encouragement to you is to, to step into that, to take that next right step, to have that confidence to be who you are and to be able to use that and infuse that throughout your business.

Yeah. And it doesn't have to be zero to a million dollars, right? Because that would scare probably half of this chat away right now. But what if that meant an extra $1,000 a month? What if that meant you could pay the mortgage from your membership once a month? What if that meant you could pay your car payment instead of, you know, having to scramble around and cut expenses here and there? Right now our economy is just so tight. Everyone's paying so much more for food and gas and just everyday necessities. What if you had $1,000 more in your bank account to work with? And that could start with a membership. It doesn't have to be $0 to $1 million. It could be $0 to $10,000. It could be— what if you had an extra amount of money that you could work with that was recurring revenue? Donna says, I'll take an extra $1,000 a month. All of us would, because that's what this could do. So I don't want you to think of Sarah's story. Yes, it could totally happen for you. And I would wish that for you. You could go from $0 to $1 million in a year. With a membership. But what if you thought about $0 to $1,000 a month? And what if you said, okay, now's my time. I know I can do this because Sarah did this and Sarah's not special and Sarah's not different and Sarah's just like me, right? We just talked about it. Sarah works hard and gives. And there are a lot of people in this chat that work hard and they give. And what if we could just take the next step? What's the next step, Stu?

Well, um, I'm just looking here cause I'm looking at the comments as they're, as they're coming in, which is amazing. And, um, you know, one of the things that you talk about that next step, like what is that next right step? And, um, and we talked about, you know, how, you know, wrapping our minds around like, okay, what, what, how could I have an impact on my, my, you know, personal finances or my family's finances in the next 6 months, 12 months. And to your point, like, I love the game. You talked about it. I love games. I love the game of like picking a, like a monthly recurring bill. Maybe it's the grocery bill. Maybe it's a car payment. Maybe it's the mortgage payment. Heck, maybe, maybe it's like, uh, taking your family on a great vacation this year and whatever it is, like you set a target for it, right? Like a target amount. And then. You ask yourself, how many members is that? How many members would I need to welcome to be able to cover the grocery bill each month or the car payment or the mortgage payment? And, and you start focusing on that. Like, for example, like if I just grabbed my phone and we just do some fun math together, here's the next step for everybody, whatever financial goal it is, right? Whatever it is. Let's just say it's, it is a vacation. Um, let's say it's a $7,000 vacation. Okay. We're going to take, we're going to take that $7,000. Okay. And then we're going to divide that by 12 because there's 12 months in a year. And that's going to give us $583. Then we take that number and we divide it by the price of our membership. Let's assume that, you know, prices of memberships vary anywhere from like, say, $20 all the way up to like hundreds of dollars. We'll just, we'll keep it fairly low at $30 a month.

Okay.

That means. All you would need to pay for a $7,000 vacation for your family is 19 members. We're not talking thousands of members. We're not talking hundreds of members. We're not even talking 50 members. We're talking 19, 19. Well, actually it was 19.4. We can't, we can't round down a person. So we have to round up. So that would be 20 members, 20 members at $30 a month. That's when you start to realize like, oh my gosh, like a little can have a big impact this year for my family's finances, my business finances, etc. So this is why I'm passionate about memberships, Sarah. And when we talk about like next step, I want to encourage people to come and join me where I'll show you and walk you through the process of conceptualizing your idea, getting clear on knowing if your idea is going to be a winner, Knowing how to speak to that so that people are naturally wanting what you have, how to structure your membership, launch your membership, grow your membership, and so much more. This is what I do. This is what I've been doing since 2008 is helping tens of thousands of people launch, grow, and scale highly profitable memberships just like Sarah, just like Tamara, just like Casey Hope, and so many others. I can help you do it too. And I want to encourage you to come and join us because that's what I we'll be walking you through in the coming weeks.

And this only happens once a year. So this, this only happens once a year. So I know how our brains work, ladies. I know how this works. Oh, I'll do it later. Oh, I have this to do. Oh, I'll do it later. We're going to do it now because a year from now— Stu just said you need 19 members. Do you remember how many members I had when I started Launch Your Box? I had 19 members when I started Launch Your Box. All you need is 19 members and that was gonna give us $583 a month. So what if I had 40 members? That's gonna give me that $1,000 in recurring revenue that we were just talking about. And what if we do that now and not wait another year? Stop putting it off. Stop telling yourself that you don't have time because we make time for what we want in our lives. And if your time is now, like, Come on, it's a no-brainer.

Yeah. And the fun part about it too, like when I think about like the membership experience, which is that full program where we show you and walk you through this whole process, again, it doesn't take very much. Again, if we use the same $30 a month membership, it's 7 members, Sarah, 7 members before you see, you know, after 7 members, You're immediately seeing a return on that investment. And so my question to everybody is like, do you think that being immersed in this program, I'm going to give you at least one idea that'll help you welcome 7 new members? Well, come on, of course. Uh, and so that's why this becomes a no-brainer because of the nature of memberships. We see it on the subscription box side. I want to show you how to do it on the membership side. And I want to show you how to take and leverage the momentum that you've already got with your audience and be able to create another additional recurring revenue stream that serves them in a slightly different way, but now creates that even more stability and predictability. And so, you know, a little can do a lot when it comes with memberships. And I want to encourage you to come, definitely join us. It's going to be epic.

Yeah. Stu, will you go over those 4 membership types one more time? And then I know my team's dropping the link, my affiliate link to join. Um, but let's go over them one more time.

All right, Shanita, we got you. Okay, so number 1 is a product-based membership. You're familiar with that. That's subscription boxes. Number 2, service-based memberships. That's what we talked about with, you know, Mary Claire Fournette, massage therapist. Now she created a membership where her members pay a monthly fee and they get a certain number of massages. Third is a knowledge-based membership. This is the most popular and easiest one to launch. It's where you're either helping people solve an ongoing problem like maybe they're overweight and they want to get to their ideal weight, or maybe they've got a puppy that's wildly out of control and they want the perfect puppy, or maybe they've got a broken relationship and they want a thriving relationship. That's an ongoing problem that doesn't solve itself. Great for a membership. Another great knowledge-based membership is where you're teaching a skill, just like we talked about Christy Hawkins teaching women how to paint, or Tamara Bennett teaching people how to paint decorative door hangers, or Casey Hope teaching people How to become a better calligraphist, letterer, letterer, calligrapher, letterer, letterer. They make, they make letters fancy. But if you want to get better at that, like that's a skill, right? And so that's a good example of a skill-based membership or another opportunity for a membership is where you are helping make someone's life easier. So, This is where we see memberships that fall in the category of like lesson plans. So I think of Tara Phillips as an example. So she's in our community. She has a membership. She provides lesson plans for teachers and parents who have autistic children. This is what she specialized in for 25 years in the education system. And so those teachers don't have to worry or think about what they are going to teach in their classroom with those students. She gives them the lesson plans. She has more than 850+ members in that membership. And so lesson plans, templates. We see a lot of like memberships in the, again, the convenience type of knowledge-based membership where they're providing templates. I think of social media templates. I think of, you know, in a variety of different niches. Nicole Melton is a great example. She provides social media templates for beauty professionals.

So very niche.

I love it. Very niche. Right? Like she's not providing social media templates to everybody. She's providing them to beauty professionals and that pulls her audience closer because it makes it so much more relevant. So when we think of knowledge-based memberships, the questions I always encourage you to, uh, answer are, you know, can you solve a problem? If yes, move forward. Can you teach a skill? If yes, move forward. Can you make someone's life easier? If yes, move forward. Those are all knowledge-based memberships. And then the fourth and final one is a community-based membership. This is like your mastermind, Sarah, where people pay to be part of a community of like-minded individuals. They may be in an area where they can't get access to other people or they, you know, don't have access to people who have that shared interest. I know where I grew up, like I grew up out in the middle of nowhere, like corn on one side, cows on the other. So if you had a peculiar interest when I was growing up, you were like the only one. And so you kind of kept those interests to yourself. Well, now we got the internet, so all of us weirdos, we can get together, right? Like, it's amazing. So you just got to create a safe place, you know, for people who've got a shared interest. And that is a community-based membership. And people are willing to pay to be surrounded by others who are on a similar journey, have a similar interest, similar passion and interest. So product-based, service-based, knowledge-based, and community-based.

Yep, absolutely. Diane says, best money I've spent joining the membership experience last year. I have to say it was the most expensive thing that I ever purchased in 2018, but it was the best thing that I ever purchased because look at me now, right?

I love that. Yeah.

When does it all start, Stu?

So we are open for registration right now. We close on Thursday, so only a few days. And what I will say is when people join today, we have a special early bird bonus that is delivered just today. So if you register before tonight at midnight, you'll get that early bird bonus. And here's what it is. You know, I've teamed up with Cody Birch, who is a prominent figure in our community because he helps people specifically with developing a specific Facebook ad that you can run on a very inexpensive budget of like $10 a day. But every single day it helps you build your email list, and that email list is an engine to growing your membership. And so that whole mini training, on how to build this one particular ad that continuously generates you new leads every single day. That's provided if you join us for the early bird today, but registration ends on Thursday and then the official course kicks off one week from today is when we have our opening ceremonies and that's when the whole party begins and we dive in and we talk about, you know, again, how to position your membership, how to talk about your membership, how to— the content inside your membership, how to market and launch. How to retain your members, and so much more. I cannot wait to see everybody in there.

That's a juicy bonus. Like, that's almost worth the price of admission right there.

So, yeah, well, you think about it, like, every single business, we always need to get in front of more people. And the more people we get in front of, the more our business grows. So, you know, Cody's renowned in our community for helping people with this particular ad. That's why I tapped him on the shoulder. I'm like, dude, would you be open to sharing this with our greater community? He's like, absolutely. And so I'm super excited to be able to share that this year.

Awesome. All right, Stu, I'm going to let you go. I know you got a busy day today. Thank you so much for taking time to share all your wisdom with us today. I'm excited. I can see there's a lot of my, my members and my audience are excited in the chat, but it's our time. It's our time to make moves. It's our time to do something different. It's our time to build that recurring revenue. Yeah.

And that time is right now. And, you know, I want to thank you, Sarah, for bringing me and sharing with your audience. And I just want to take a moment to just congratulate you. You know, you have been an incredible example of what is possible in such a short period of time. And when you look at your journey over the last 6 years, it is mind-blowing what transformation has made possible in you and the lives that you are impacting. You know, we talk about the stability of the recurring revenue and that's important, 1000%. But I also want you to think about like the lives that we get to impact and the ripple effect that we get to have with the work that we do. That to me is, that's where our legacy lies, right? And so there's so much, you know, that a membership makes possible in our lives. And I just want to encourage everybody to hold space for that. And the time is now. Like now is the time to do it. So much can happen in such a short period of time. I can't wait to serve you, uh, inside the membership experience. So thank you, Sarah. Appreciate you, buddy. Thank you, everybody in the chat.

Yep. All right. Thanks, Stu. We'll see you guys soon.

See ya.