Jay Schwedelson: 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. It drives me nuts 'cause it's just been overused, but Stu is doing community before community was community. Okay? This guy is 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 worked with some of 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. The guy understands community at the core of it is bringing people together, and he actually is able to help types of companies and people actually monetize this energy, people to j- become members of things, and we're gonna dig into it all. How do you actually do this stuff? So Stu, welcome to the show, man.

Stu McLaren: Excited to be here, Jay. I love you, I love the podcast, and I was telling you that, uh, our team listens to, uh, this podcast all the time, and we're always, like, taking your l- your nuggets and your tidbits and we're trying them out. Like, uh, our most recent two were 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, 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

Jay Schwedelson: Well, listen, I appreciate that, and I love that you come from this testing mentality, 'cause 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 that stuff, I wanna talk for a minute about community and about membership, 'cause 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 people are 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. You got like five randos that just keep spamming it, whatever. How... You, you've built so many successful membership communities. What, what is Stu's roadmap? How do you actually do it right so it doesn't become a ghost town after 90 days?

Stu McLaren: Well, it's pretty simple. You just gotta care. You gotta care about people, and you gotta care about their progress. And, you know, in most communities, you set it, people set it up thinking that it's gonna 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, uh, care about it? So number one, I think it is a mindset that you've gotta care about your people, and in the membership and subscription business and the community business, essentially we get paid for to keep people happy. As long as people are happy, they'll continue to pay and stay. Uh, 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 gonna bounce and leave. So at the end of the day, you've gotta care, and you've gotta care about people's progress, and if that happens, people will stay and pay

Jay Schwedelson: So when you say you have to care, okay, if I started up a community today and say, "Okay, join my community, you're gonna pay me," I'm, I'm making this up, 50 bucks a month, whatever it is. Um, 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? 'Cause that, that sounds hard to me to do

Stu McLaren: I- i- if, um, if it's a business that's setting this up, uh, or an individual, the ultimate goal is you gotta 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? Now, 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 e- experiencing progress as an artist, uh, that's their reason for joining. Or maybe somebody will join a community because, uh, 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, 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. And so as... when I say that we've gotta care, we've gotta 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. That would be more of, like, where, you know, you're making someone's life easier. So lots of examples there. Uh, we've got, you know, many in our, uh, customer base who have built these six and seven and even eight-figure memberships providing resources on a regular basis. So, uh, I would think of Tara Phillips. She is a, uh, former educator, 25 years, who worked in a 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 'cause it's gonna make their life easier in the classroom. And so therefore, the teachers are saving time. It's moving them toward that progress goal that we're after. So when I say you, you gotta care, you gotta care about the progress of your people. Why are they there, and how are their... how will their life be better or different?

Jay Schwedelson: Okay, so I'm out there and I'm like, "Listen, I could care." Meaning, I would actually de- put in the time, I would do all this stuff. But how do you know? 'Cause everybody out there's 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. I think I could get a following going, or maybe I have a little following going. How do you know it's the right 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? 'Cause 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

Stu McLaren: Okay. First thing I always wanna do is I wanna 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 gonna be clear, and it's gonna be really hard to attract people. But 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 gotta get very clear on like what is the, uh, who 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 gonna write one message, and you're gonna post it wherever you typically communicate with your audience. Maybe that's on Instagram, maybe that's via email, maybe that's on Facebook, wherever you're communicating. And you're gonna 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 A, B, C 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. And 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 gonna get people that are gonna 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 gonna be the absolute lowest price right now. We're gonna 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." And right away, you're gonna 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, I don't even have any content. Like, what are they buying? Like, w- wait a minute. Whoa. I, 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 in the great... I, 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 gonna move you forward, because you're either gonna win, and you're gonna have people raise their hand and are wanting to pay you f- to join this membership. That's a great sign. That is green light, thumbs up, move forward. Or you're not gonna 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?

Jay Schwedelson: 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 wanna have founding beta access for this? You know, we're thinking about developing, you know, this new webinar series. Would this be something that 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, 'cause 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 gotta go back and, and rethink this whole thing. So I think that is just a, a tactic everybody should really consider doing. I wanna flip the script, though, here for a second. Um, I had a friend, a mutual friend of ours, Alex Cattoni, on the Copy Posse. A- and I asked her this question 'cause I was nervous to ask her the question 'cause I really didn't know what her deal was, 'cause 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 gonna crush." I mean, selling courses for copywriting. She goes, "No. Copywriting's hotter than ever because everyone's trying to, like, un-AI their stuff and figure out how to use AI." And she goes, "No, no, no." And it's kinda the same thing I wanna 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?

Stu McLaren: Well, shout out to Alex Cattoni. She's amazing. Love her to bits. Um, 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. It'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, you know, tips and tools and videos and documents and things to read and PDFs and all the stuff. The- people don't want the stuff. What they want is the path to the outcome. And so now it's much more about co-working sessions. It's much more about, uh, facilitated, uh, workshops where we're actually doing the stuff that we're talking about. So 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 a 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, but 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 gonna be able to see our stroke. We're not gonna 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. Memberships 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 gonna get people to the finish line

Jay Schwedelson: That's cool. I like that. Facilitation, that makes a lot of sense to me. All right, I got, I got one loaded question for you here. If Stu 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 wanna get started. I wanna build an audience. I wanna build a business around attention I could drive. I wanna monetize it." How would Stu get started in 1.0 of Stu's new life?

Stu McLaren: straightforward. I would identify the market that I wanted to, uh, start speaking to. So maybe it was around a passion. Uh, maybe, like here, here's a perfect example. Uh, 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 wanna 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. He talks about, like, different hikes all around the world. He talks about, like, how to strengthen yourself on the hikes so you can last longer, uh, how to... Oh, 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 5 to 10 typical common problems or questions that that market has, and I would start creating content around that topic. That'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, um, what, what am I, uh, w- what do I ha- where, what am I... Sorry. 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 we're like, "Well, I, I don't, 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. He said Love me or hate me. There's no money in the middle. So if you don't have an opinion, then what's gonna happen is you're just gonna blend in with everybody. But when you've got an opinion, now you're gonna stand out, and there's gonna be people that will love you and are immediately drawn to you, and there's gonna 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. What 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, uh, opinionated herself in the comments and said, like, "I think you've gone off the rails, and I'm not gonna 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. That's how you become the person that's top of mind when people are thinking about that topic or have a problem or, uh, 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, uh, I'd get to about 250, 300 people, and then that's when I would do my founding member launch for a membership

Jay Schwedelson: Let me tell you something. That quote that you just said that, uh, uh, you know, either love me or hate me, there, or there's no money in the middle, uh, I, I, I didn't say it, right, but that is awesome, and I couldn't agree with you more. That is absolute, uh, gold. All right, before we wrap up with you, I have one big question. So, so Stu is very well traveled. This dude has been a lot of places all over the world. So what I wanna know is, for everybody out there, since you've done it all, I wanna know what's on your bucket list. Where is Stu like, "This is someplace I wanna go"? 'Cause wherever that is, that's where I wanna go, 'cause if you wanna go there, I know it's gotta be good

Stu McLaren: Oh man, that is, I, 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, I, I should get paid by, you know, Japan, uh, you know, travel because now I'm, I'm evangelical about Japan. Like, 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 f- 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, they're so-- The people there are incredible. We've done a lot of, uh, great work there. Um, so yeah, those are a few spots

Jay Schwedelson: Well, don't go to Japan if you don't like fish. That's my only two cents on Japan. I love Japan. Um, all right. So everybody's gotta go follow you, get connected with you. So what are, what are... We'll put it on the show notes, but where, where should they go to your world to get involved with you, Stu?

Stu McLaren: Uh, best place is Instagram. It's just my name, S-T-U McLaren, like the car. So Stu McLaren, or and you just go to my website, which is even easier. It's just Stu, S-T-U.me. So shortest URL you've probably ever had on this show. Stu.me and you'll find everything from there

Jay Schwedelson: Amazing. Uh, Stu, thanks, man. We'll have to have you back. I appreciate you.

Stu McLaren: Yeah. Cheers. Thanks, buddy