SPECIAL GUEST!! Stu McLaren 🏚️ Your Community Dies at Day 90 Unless You Do This | Ep. 542

0:01Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This, Not That, and I'm super excited. I got a buddy of mine here. I got one of the smartest guys I know that's out there. You probably know him. You probably follow him. If you don't, who is here? Stu McLaren. Now, why do I love Stu? And I can't wait to learn from him because everybody out there talks about community. That's been like the word for like the last, I don't know, 24 months.

0:38It drives me nuts because it's just been overused. But Stu is doing community before community was community. Okay, this guy's a big deal. But if you rewind a little bit, back in 2008, he co-founded the world's most popular membership platform for WordPress. It was called Wishlist. This thing powered over 70 ,000 online communities and member sites. It was crazy. Then he's gone on to do all this other stuff. He's working on the biggest names, the biggest creators, the people that you all know, helping them to actually drive revenue from this attention that they're getting. But then he also founded something called membership.io and he created the membership experience.

1:20The guy understands community at the core of it is bringing people together and he actually is able to help different types of companies and people actually monetize this energy, people become members of things. And we're going to dig into it all. How do you actually do this stuff? So Stu, welcome to the show, man. I'm excited to be here, Jay. I love you. I love the podcast. And I was telling you that our team listens to this podcast all the time. And we're always like taking your nuggets and your tidbits and we're trying them out. Like our most recent two where the all caps in the middle of the subject line that crushed it for us just like you promised second one was the friday webinar that did okay we're we're still you know uh the the jury's out on the on the friday webinar but i'll report back but i love the show excited to be here well listen i appreciate that and i love that you come from this testing mentality because that's that's what it's all about and before i get into the weeds with you on you know how do you start and become a creator and how do you monetize it all this stuff i want to talk for a minute about community and about membership because this is your wheelhouse and the thing that that drives me a little bonkers the reason why i think the word community has gotten this negative stain is be like oh i'm gonna have a community and they stand something up and then after like 90 days nobody's in there nobody's doing anything yeah like five randos that just keep spamming it whatever how you've built so many successful membership communities.

2:52What is Stu's roadmap? How do you actually do it right so it doesn't become a ghost town after 90 days? Well, it's pretty simple. You just got to care. You got to care about people and you got to care about their progress. And, you know, in most communities, you said it, people set it up thinking that it's going to be a set it and forget it, that the community will just take care of itself and everybody be happy. But if the leader of the community doesn't care enough to show up and engage and support people and help people, then why the heck would anybody else care about it? So number one, I think it is a mindset that you've got to care about your people.

3:26And in the membership and subscription business and the community business, essentially we get paid to keep people happy. As long as people are happy, they'll continue to pay and stay. But if they're not happy, for whatever reason, they're not getting the result, they're not getting what they, uh, you know, join the community for, they're not making progress, then they're going to bounce and leave. So at the end of the day, you've got to care and you've got to care about people's progress. And if that happens, people will stay and pay. So when you say you have to care, okay, if I started up a community today and say, okay, join my community, you're going to pay me, I'm making this up 50 bucks a month, whatever it is.

4:04Um, is it that I, me personally have to be in there every day commenting on stuff, posting on stuff? Because you could be a big SaaS company, right? And your leadership doesn't have time to be in that community. Is it that you need to be intentional that somebody is showing it love? Or is it the leader of the community needs to really be in there with their hands on? Because that sounds hard to me to do. If it's a business that's setting this up or an individual, the ultimate goal is you got to ask yourself why. Why would somebody join this community? And here's the key question. How will someone's life be better or different after joining this community?

4:50Now, whatever your answer to that is, that's your North Star. So for example, like if somebody's joining a community because they want to learn how to draw. Okay. So experiencing progress as an artist, that's their reason for joining. Or maybe somebody will join a community because their dog is like, you know, wildly out of control and they want to, you know, get a better, well-trained dog. Okay, great. So that's the North Star. But at the end of the day, it's progress. People will join a community that's either teaching them a skill, helping solve a problem, or it's making their life easier in some way.

5:25And so as when I say that we've got to care, we've got to care about people's progress, that they are moving forward toward this North Star that they're after. Now, these are different type of communities. There are some, you know, memberships and subscriptions that have nothing to do with people talking to each other or experiencing progress in their life. And there's a place for those. And that would be more of like where, you know, you're making someone's life easier. So lots of examples there. we've got many in our customer base who have built these six and seven and even eight figure memberships providing resources on a regular basis.

5:59So I would think of Tara Phillips. She is a former educator, 25 years, who worked in the classroom with kids with autism. She developed all kinds of resources to help these kids and realized, oh my gosh, there's a lot of other educators that could benefit from these resources I've created. So she created a membership site providing those resources to other educators. She's got thousands of members in that membership. And so that is a resource. There is a community, which is awesome. But the main reason that they're there is the teachers want to be able to get those resources because it's gonna make their life easier in the classroom.

6:37And so therefore the teachers are saving time. It's moving them toward that progress goal that we're after. So when I say you gotta care, you gotta care about the progress of your people. Why are they there? and how will their life be better or different? Okay, so I'm out there and I'm like, listen, I could care. Meaning I would actually put in the time, I would do all this stuff. But how do you know, because everybody out there is like, listen, I'm really passionate about this. It could be on their business side, it could be on their personal life and they have a hobby or something, really passionate about this.

7:10I think I could get a following going or maybe I have a little following going. How do you know it's the right time time to start charging people for access to either a community or some sort of thing that you're willing to put out there? Like, how do you make that leap? Because I think there's a lot of imposter syndrome. Like, I don't know if this is worth things to people. How do you know? First thing I always want to do is I want to start with a specific person and I'm helping them solve a specific problem. Those two ingredients are essential because if you're not clear on that, then your messaging is not going to be clear and it's going to be really hard to attract people.

7:49But once you're clear on like, okay, this is my market and this is the problem I'm helping them solve. So maybe it's like, uh, my market are marketers and I'm helping them improve their copywriting or my market are, uh, agencies and I'm helping them get more clients or my market is whatever. You know what I mean? Like you got to get very clear on like, what is the market and what specific problem are we looking to solve? Then here's what I would do, Jay. This is the fastest and easiest test. It's something that we call a founding member launch. You're going to write one message and you're going to post it wherever you typically communicate with your audience.

8:23Maybe that's on Instagram. Maybe that's via email. Maybe that's on Facebook, wherever you're communicating. And you're going to say, you know what? I was listening to this crazy Canadian and he was talking about community and the power of bringing people together. And it got me thinking about you. And it got me thinking about what it might be like to bring a group of people like us who are all working toward ABC goal. And what it might be like to be able to have access to resources and mentors and guides and accountability so that we can actually accomplish and achieve the thing in community versus trying to grind it out in our own siloed world.

8:59And it got me thinking, how valuable would that be? Now, I've not created this yet, but if I did, would that be something you'd be interested in? Let me know. Send me a DM or reply to this email. And right away, Jay, before we've gone and created anything, before we've done any of that shenanigans, we're going to get people that are going to raise their hand and say, I'd love to be a founding member. Awesome. You can even take it a step further. You can even just send them a payment link and say, hey, for all founding members, this is going to be the absolute lowest price right now. We're going to raise the price if we decide to move forward with this, but you'll be locked in at the low price for as long as you remain a member in good standing.

9:38And right away, you're going to see if people are willing to pay. Now, I know this sounds premature, and I know some people are probably watching and listening, thinking, wait a minute, Stu, I don't even have any content. Like, what are they buying? Like, wait a minute. I don't know that I'm ready for this. Listen, just put it out there. And right away, you're going to see if people are interested. And we have people doing founding member launches all the time. And I always think of the great quote from Nelson Mandela. He said, I never lose. I either win or I learn. And in both situations, it's going to move you forward because you're either going to win and you're going to have people raise their hand and are wanting to pay you to join this membership.

10:18That's a great sign. That is green light, thumbs up, move forward. or you're not going to get anybody. And that's also a good thing because what that means is that you have identified what you're communicating is not resonating with the audience. And so instead of spending a whole bunch of time, energy, and money creating something that people don't want, you are learning that now and you can make the adjustments now before you put all that investment in. Does that make sense? Not only does it make sense, I think it applies to everything. So if you have a new SaaS product you're thinking about developing, you send out an email like that, Would you want to have founding beta access for this?

10:52You know, we're thinking about developing, you know, this new webinar series. Would this be something you'd be wanting to attend? It doesn't matter what it is. I love the idea of putting it out there before you put in all this work, because I think this is what always happens. Everyone builds the rocket ship and they're like, all right, how do I sell the rocket ship? But what you're really doing and what you're really talking about is seeing, is there interest in the rocket ship I'm thinking about? And if there's not, we got to go back and rethink this whole thing. So I think that is just a tactic everybody should really consider doing.

11:24I want to flip the script though here for a second. I had a friend, a mutual friend of ours, Alex Cattoni on the copy posse. And I asked her this question because I was nervous to ask her the question because I really didn't know what her deal was because she's like the biggest thing in copywriting. She sells, you know, courses on copywriting, all this stuff. And I asked her, I said, you know, I feel like you're in the one category that AI is really going to crush. I mean, selling courses for copywriting shows. No, copywriting is hotter than ever because everyone's trying to like on AI their stuff.

11:56And we're out of how to use AI. And she goes, no, no, no. And it's kind of the same thing I want to ask you, is the world that you're in, where people are paying money, subscriptions, for access to basically information of some kind, is AI coming for this whole world that you're in? Or is an AI somehow a positive in your mind? Well, shout out to Alex Cotone. She's amazing. Love her to bits. In terms of AI, memberships used to be about access, access to information, access to stuff. Now, memberships are acceleration. The whole membership game has shifted away from information and toward facilitation.

12:46It's about, again, going back to what we talked about, getting clear of what is the goal? What are we trying to help people move toward? and now it's so much more about facilitating an experience that moves people closer to that outcome, easier, better, faster. So it's less about like loading people up with a big old library of tips and tools and videos and documents and things to read and PDFs and all the stuff. People don't want the stuff. What they want is the path to the outcome. And so now it's much more about coworking sessions. it's much more about facilitated workshops where we're actually doing the stuff that we're talking about.

13:27So we teach a little bit, we break off and we do small groups where we're actually implementing. We come back, we learn a little bit more. And by the end of the workshop, people have stuff done. Like that's what people want. They want progress. And so they're willing to pay for that because there's a big difference between knowing what to do and how to do it and actually getting the result. So good, like practical example, Jay. you and I can go on YouTube and we can watch videos about how to become an elite swimmer. Now, just because we've watched the videos and we can watch a lot of those videos and we can be very knowledgeable about how to become an elite swimmer.

14:04But until we actually get in the pool and actually start swimming, we will not make any progress. And even when we're in the pool, intellectually, we can know what to do, but we're not going to be able to see our stroke. We're not going to be able to see that, you know, maybe your butt's too high or maybe it's sinking too low or you're not kicking enough or reaching far enough. Like those are all things that a coach can observe when you start to try to implement what you've learned. And they can say, no, Stu, reach further. No, Stu, head down. No, Stu, get your butt up. Like they can coach me on that because they can observe from a distance.

14:41Memberships are very much that way now, especially information based memberships. So it's less about the information, more about the facilitation, and people want that accountability, that guidance, that mentorship that does come with the, there is information inside of a membership for sure, but it's through a filter and it's wrapped with now a lot more guidance and facilitation. And that's ultimately what's going to get people to the finish line. That's cool. I like that. Facilitation. That makes a lot of sense to me. All right. I got one loaded question for you here. if stew mclaren woke up tomorrow morning he didn't have his membership.io business didn't have any of this didn't have a big following on instagram all this stuff but you were passionate about whatever you're passionate about what would you do be like i want to get started i want to build an audience i want to build a business around attention i could drive i want to monetize it how would stew get started in 1.0 of Stu's new life?

15:42Straightforward. I would identify the market that I wanted to start speaking to. So maybe it was around a passion. Maybe like here's part example. I love hiking and my wife and I love hiking and we love hiking all around the world. We just last year went on this epic hike called the Mont Blanc trail where you go through Switzerland, France, and Italy on this 10 day hike. It was amazing. After that, we're like, we want to do more of this. Like these hikes are incredible. So of course now my Instagram feed starts like bringing up all these incredible hikes around the world. And then last night I found this guy who, this is what he talks about.

16:19He talks about like different hikes all around the world. He talks about like how to strengthen yourself on the hikes. You can last longer. Uh, how to all anyways, it was epic. I immediately followed him. Why? Cause I have an interest in that. Number two, like I definitely suffered the problems of not being prepared for a 10 day hike through the mountains when Amy and I did that last year. And so here's what I would do to answer your question. I'd identify the market and I'd start to identify five to 10 typical common problems or questions that that market has. And I would start creating content around that topic.

16:54That's step one. Step two is I'd also start asking myself like, what are my opinions on certain types of hikes or certain types of countries or this topic. Like what are my opinions? What are my shared values? What are my philosophies? What are the things that I stand for as it relates to this topic? And I'd start making a list of those and I'd start sharing those as well. Now that can feel uncomfortable for some because some were like, well, I don't want the keyboard warriors coming out of the woodwork and like, you know, blasting me because I've got this opinion. Well, I always go back to a quote from one of my early mentors.

17:31He said, love me or hate me, there's no money in the middle. So if you don't have an opinion, then what's going to happen is you're just going to blend in with everybody. But when you've got an opinion, now you're going to stand out and there's going to be people that will love you and are immediately drawn to you. And there's going to be people that don't and you will repel them. Both are good. And I'll give you a real example. Last night, my wife actually made a post that was an opinionated post. And the post was about like, she said, private school, public school, it doesn't matter what type of school.

18:06What matters most is that the kids have community and that's how they'll thrive. And so this one woman, she came back and was very opinionated herself in the comments and said like, I think you've got off the rails and I'm not going to follow you anymore. And Amy's like, great, that's fine. That's totally fine. But that post has got traction and it's drawing in the people that share a similar belief. So I wanna solve problems. That's one. Number two, I wanna be opinionated. And number three is I wanna consistently create content around those two things. And that's how you become the go-to person in any market.

18:45That's how you become the person that's top of mind when people are thinking about that topic or have a problem or they know somebody that's got a similar problem, you become the go-to person. So that's where I would start. And then I'd accumulate a following of, I'd get to about 250, 300 people. And then that's when I would do my founding member launch for a membership. Let me tell you something. That quote that you just said that, either love me or hate me, or there's no money in the middle. I didn't say it right, but that is awesome. And I couldn't agree with you more. That is absolute gold.

19:20All right, before we wrap up with you, I have one big question. So Stu is very well-traveled. This dude has been a lot of places all over the world. So what I want to know is for everybody out there, since you've done it all, I want to know what's on your bucket list. Where is Stu like, this is someplace I want to go? Because wherever that is, that's where I want to go. Because if you want to go there, I know it's got to be good. Oh, man. That is, you know, I am very, very excited about Japan. You know, you and I chatted about Japan before, just came back from Japan. And I'm a huge fan. I should get paid by, you know, Japan, you know, travel because now I'm evangelical about Japan.

20:03Like, I think everybody should go to Japan to experience it. It's hard to explain. Like, you've been there, Jay. Like, you know, it's just, it's a whole nother amazing world. And truth be told, Jay, like, I would move there if it were closer to family and friends. That's how much I fell in love with Japan. and and i feel like we we barely scratched the surface of it but um i'm i'm very you know uh pro japan i also i mean there's other parts of the world that i love i love australia uh spent tons of time there love africa specifically like kenya uh there's so the people there are incredible we've done a lot of great work there um so yeah those are a few spots well don't go to japan if you don't like fish that's my only two cents on japan i love japan all right so So everybody's got to go follow you, get connected with you.

20:49So we'll put it on the show notes, but where should they go to your world to get involved with you, Stu? Best place is Instagram. It's just my name, S-T-U McLaren, like the car. So Stu McLaren, or you can just go to my website, which is even easier. It's just Stu, S-T-U dot me. So shortest URL you've probably ever had on this show, Stu dot me, and you'll find everything from there. Amazing. Stu, thanks, man. We'll have to have you back. I appreciate you. Yeah, cheers. Thanks, buddy. Wait, don't go anywhere. There's two really important things I want to tell you. First off, my book is out. Stupider people have done it.

21:25And I don't know how, but this book has made it to the USA Today bestseller list, one of the top books in the entire country. Now, all net author proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. And between this book and things that we're doing, we've now donated$130 ,000 in the fight against cancer. If you buy this book, if you buy the Kindle, the audio, on Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, anywhere, money is going to fight cancer. We need your help. Please grab a copy of Stupider People Have Done It. The second thing is I wanna work with you. I wanna amplify your brand. I want my agency to help you get more customers, more subscribers, more whatever.

22:04I wanna partner with you in so many different ways. All you gotta do is go to jschwedelson.com. jschwedelson.com. And then there's a button in the upper right-hand corner that says partner. Fill out that form. Let's work together. Let's do stuff. And if this wasn't the worst podcast you've ever heard, it would be amazing if you follow the show, if you leave a comment, if you tell your friends about it. I appreciate you and go out there and crush it.