Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners

Stu McLaren

Marketing Your Business is a podcast dedicated to all things marketing. It's a behind-the-scenes look at the marketing tactics and strategies that lead to a loyal following, growing sales, and a business that gives you more freedom in your everyday life. Each episode is packed with takeaways to help you get what you have in front of a lot more people. It's about leveraging your marketing to build a business that's high in profit, low in stress, and one that gives you the ability to have the greatest impact on the world. Join leading online marketing strategist and entrepreneur Stu McLaren as he shares what's working for selling products online with product launches, online communities, email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, and more. This is about the marketing that leads to more sales, more profits, and a high-growth business. But this show isn't just about making money. It's about using the power of marketing to give you more freedom. The freedom to work with who you want, where you want, while having time to travel and do the things that matter. It's about reducing the "go-go-go" stress and redesigning your business so you can be more present in the lives of those who matter most to you. About Stu McLaren: For years, Stu has helped experts transform their knowledge and influence into recurring revenue by launching, growing, and scaling 7 and 8-figure membership sites. In 2008, he co-founded the world's most popular membership platform for WordPress (WishList Member). He then went on to partner with New York Times best-selling author Michael Hyatt, helping his company go from a high 6-figure business (with lots of stress) to a high 7-figure business (with low-stress). Michael's profitability soared, his email list grew from 70,000 to over 500,000 and he gained back over 100 days with his family by not having to travel. Today, he's the Co-Founder of Membership.io, helping creators and entrepreneurs build thriving membership businesses. He's also the author of Predictable Profits, which shows business owners how to create recurring revenue so they can stop chasing new customers and start building real stability. If you've got an established business and you're looking for ideas on how to get your products and services in front of more people OR you're thinking about starting a business and want to see the behind-the-scenes of another entrepreneur doing it in real time, Marketing Your Business is tailor-made for you.

  1. 3d ago

    295: How to Make 6 Weeks' Pay in 2 Hours (Not Higher Rates) - Laura Phillips

    Laura Phillips made the same money in two hours that used to take her six weeks of building websites for clients, and she didn't raise her rates to do it. She expected maybe two or three people to say yes, and 42 did. She's from the UK, and she's been in business for 12 years. She started out designing and building websites, then ran launches for big clients, then built launch software called ProperPlan, and now she's back to teaching. And she says that over 10 years of changing what she sells, she's "never ever been without money." So how did one workshop start all of that? It began with a free Facebook group, and people asking her the same questions over and over. And then we dig into the rest. The first membership she closed, the data from her own course that horrified her, the line she uses so the ask feels like an invitation, and the brand-new membership she decided to start about four weeks before we talked, which got 48 members in its founding launch. In this conversation, Laura and I get into: * How one £49 workshop paid her what six weeks of website work did * Why making something new to sell every month stopped making sense * The first membership she closed, and why it was "too broad, everything for everyone" * What her own course data showed her, and why she couldn't keep selling that course * The one line she uses so the ask feels like an invitation * Why "we've all got bills" led her to start a new membership, and how its founding launch got 48 members in * Whether launches still work right now, and what "show up as you" really means FREE RESOURCE: The three plays from this episode, written up for you in the free resource kit: Sell What They Ask For, Invite, Don't Pitch, and Show Up As You. → https://podcast.stu.me CONNECT WITH LAURA: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraphillipshq/ * Code Anything Club (her new membership): https://codeanything.club/ * ProperPlan (her software): https://www.properplan.com/ CONNECT WITH STU: * Website: https://stu.me * Book "Predictable Profits": https://a.co/d/4GIi1uz * Instagram: https://instagram.com/stumclaren * Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me * Membership.io: https://membership.io Subscribe if you want income that doesn't depend on your next launch. That's what we dig into here every week. TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Never Without Money 0:28 - Meet Laura Phillips 0:51 - From Websites to Software and Back to Teaching 1:26 - The Thread That Carries Every Pivot 3:02 - Bad Advice Made Her Start a Group 4:17 - How a Free Group Grew to 2,000 5:17 - The Day Her Whole Life Changed 5:58 - Why It Worked 7:16 - She Just Wanted More Ease 8:08 - Why One-Off Products Stopped Making Sense 9:11 - Too Nervous to Go Off Script 10:59 - There's a Human on the Other Side 12:12 - Stu's Nerves Before Brazil 14:25 - The Messy First Membership She Closed 16:11 - What Her Course Data Showed Her 17:19 - When the Tool She Needed Didn't Exist 18:29 - Her First Big Ask 20:23 - Pitching Software That Didn't Exist Yet 21:41 - How She Asks for the Sale 22:41 - Burnt Out, Then Three Weeks to Raise 23:46 - Why Taking Herself Out Was the Mistake 26:08 - Why She Started a New Membership 26:58 - "We've All Got Bills" 28:09 - "I Should Do a Membership" 29:05 - 48 Members in a Founding Launch 29:40 - You Just Need One Happy Member 31:07 - Why She Doesn't Want 10,000 Members 32:28 - Being Open About How She Uses AI 33:03 - Do Launches Still Work? 34:12 - What "Show Up as You" Really Means 35:10 - Why Personality Does Matter 36:35 - Treat the Launch Like a Journey 37:34 - Over 10 Years of Pivots, Never Without Money 39:07 - Where to Find Laura 39:21 - Stu's Key Takeaways

    295: How to Make 6 Weeks' Pay in 2 Hours (Not Higher Rates) - Laura Phillips
  2. Oct 12

    294: If You Have a Business, Start a YouTube Channel - Dr. Ulrich Selz

    If you have a business, Dr. Ulrich Selz thinks you should have a YouTube channel. He's earned the right to say it: 655,000 subscribers, a bestseller, and two years without launching anything new while the income never dipped. He's a physician in Germany. He still has his practice, but when the wait list hit a thousand people, he closed it. He's also built a German-language YouTube channel about gut health with 655,000 subscribers, and most of his focus over those two years went into writing Der Darm-Doc, a SPIEGEL bestseller. So what paid the bills while all his focus was on the book? Recurring revenue, from his channel and his two communities. One is a self-help group for people with gut health problems, and the other is where he teaches therapists how to help those people. He says it "made me comfortable to write this book." Then we dig into how he runs it all, week to week: one long video a week, scripted word for word, the numbers he checks first, and the freebies that turn viewers into leads. In this conversation, Dr. Selz and I get into: * What paid his bills for two years while he wasn't launching * Why he closed the wait list for his practice at a thousand people * Why he calls subscribers "just a prestige number" * Why 60 or 65% of his watch time comes from people who aren't subscribed * The 15 to 20 freebies he pitches inside his videos, and why "Amazon has the email address, not you" * The free online area he built for his readers, and why 30% of book buyers went in * Why he thinks everybody with a business should start a YouTube channel FREE RESOURCE: The three plays from this episode, written up for you in the free resource kit. The 48-Hour Check, A Freebie for Every Topic, and The Pre-Sale Runway. → https://podcast.stu.me CONNECT WITH DR. SELZ: * Website: https://doktorselz.de/ * YouTube (German): https://www.youtube.com/@DrUlrichSelz * YouTube (English): https://www.youtube.com/@DrUlrichSelz_english * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_ulrich_selz/ * Podcast (German), Dr. Selz - Dein Gesundheits-Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-selz-dein-gesundheits-podcast/id1888730284 CONNECT WITH STU: * Website: https://stu.me * Book "Predictable Profits": https://a.co/d/4GIi1uz * Instagram: https://instagram.com/stumclaren * Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me * Membership.io: https://membership.io Subscribe to the show if you want income that doesn't depend on your next launch. That's what we dig into here every week. TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Two Years Without a Launch (Cold Open) 0:27 - Meet Dr. Ulrich Selz 0:56 - A Bestseller Built on YouTube 1:18 - The Golf Lesson That Started It 2:40 - 655,000 Subscribers 4:09 - Closing a 1,000-Person Wait List 4:35 - What the Channel Really Changed 5:58 - YouTube Is an Underrated Lead Source 6:38 - 15 to 20 Freebies 7:10 - The Hard Side of Being Visible 8:05 - How to Handle Hateful Comments 9:00 - Title and Thumbnail Before the Script 9:45 - Why He Never Plans Far Ahead 10:56 - Shoot Tuesday, Rewrite Wednesday 11:21 - One Video a Week, Word for Word 12:17 - Watch Your Video While You Write It 13:10 - When the Format Stopped Working 13:44 - Most Creators Are Bad Viewers 15:16 - Your Audience Shifts Without Telling You 16:40 - Core Audience vs New Audience 17:36 - Data-Driven Creativity 18:31 - The Monday Morning Check 19:03 - Why He Ignores His Subscriber Count 20:04 - Most Watch Time Comes From Non-Subscribers 21:23 - A Freebie for Every Video 22:36 - Why the Publisher Said Yes 25:00 - "Not on Instagram" 25:41 - Building Buzz Before Launch Day 27:01 - 11,400 Pre-Sales 27:25 - Turning Readers Into Subscribers 28:30 - A Free Members' Area for Buyers 30:02 - 30% of Buyers Came In 30:32 - Why Every Business Owner Should Start a Channel 31:32 - What an Underperforming Video Teaches You 33:14 - Use AI After You Publish, Not Before 34:43 - What He'd Do With Stu's Channel 35:11 - Launch Syndrome 35:42 - Two Years Without a Launch 37:00 - Where to Find Dr. Selz 37:42 - Stu's Key Takeaways

  3. Oct 5

    293: Over 700 People Paid for What You Give Away Free - Carrie Green

    Most of us wait until we've got the whole thing figured out. Carrie Green opened her doors with one month of content ready, a rough plan for month two and an idea for January. And in her words, "Beyond that, I had no idea." Thousands of people joined over the years, and 13 years later it's still going. Carrie is the founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association and the author of She Means Business. She was also my very first consulting client, so this one goes way back. She had the idea for FEA in 2008. Then for a few years she did what a lot of us do. She bought domain names, set up websites and did nothing with them. In 2011 she finally went for it, and for the next two years she gave everything away: interviews with women building businesses, a weekly email, a weekly video, and a free digital magazine where she interviewed people like Kim Kiyosaki and Gabrielle Bernstein. By the time she opened the doors, she had 18,000 people on her email list and about 50,000 fans on Facebook. And then she started with one month. She'll tell you why, and money wasn't the biggest reason. Today she's building a list of people who actually buy, with small offers she makes herself with AI, and one of them sold to over 700 people in a small promotion. She also opens up about what happened to her community when she pulled back after having kids, and the question every ambitious person gets to eventually: when is enough enough? In this conversation, Carrie and I break down: - The real reason she started with one month of content - What was in that first month, including the printout she says "looked dreadful" - The guilt that kept her from charging anything for two years - Why "ready is not a feeling" - What she learned about why people really stay - What she puts on the thank-you page of every freebie - How one small promotion sold to over 700 people - When is enough enough? FREE RESOURCE: The three frameworks from this episode, one page each. The One-Month Start, The Buyers List, and The Sticky Part → https://podcast.stu.me CONNECT WITH CARRIE: - Female Entrepreneur Association: https://femaleentrepreneurassociation.com/  - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamcarriegreen/  - Instagram (FEA): https://www.instagram.com/femaleentrepreneurassociation/  - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCraEIu_mORQKKo8eV9pk6Cw  - Podcast, She Means Business Show: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/she-means-business-show/id1199101868  - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FemaleEntrepreneurAssociation/  - X: https://x.com/iamcarriegreen  - Planners and stationery, Carrie & Co.: https://carrie.co/  - Book "She Means Business": https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/601650/she-means-business-by-carrie-green/  - TEDx talk "Programming your mind for success": https://youtu.be/MmfikLimeQ8 CONNECT WITH STU: - Website: https://stu.me  - Book "Predictable Profits": https://a.co/d/4GIi1uz  - Instagram: https://instagram.com/stumclaren  - Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me  - Membership.io: https://membership.io Subscribe if you want to build something that keeps going, even when life gets busy. That's what we work on here every week.

  4. Sep 21

    290: Why This 7-Figure Founder Shut Off $1 Million in Sales (It Worked) - Susan Bradley

    Susan Bradley went out for a drink with her husband and decided, right there, to shut off a million dollars a year in sales. It was most of what her company sold. The business scaled from there, and she later sold it a year ahead of her own plan. Today she sells about $300,000 of coaching calls a year inside her membership and keeps roughly $5 of it. The coaches get paid, 19 Zoom accounts eat the rest, and her retention has sat at 95 or 96% ever since. That trade is deliberate, and it is the clearest example of how she thinks about every business she has ever run. She has built, bought and sold multiple companies. She decides what the numbers have to look like first, then works backwards. When she bought her shoe company she hired an accountant, told him the price she wanted to sell it for, and asked what the numbers would have to look like to get there. She gave herself five years. They sold it in four. Before that came what she calls "20 years of torture," a business she scaled to a million dollar year and a small chain of retail stores. Eight straight years of growth ended with one down year, and that Christmas her mother announced she had finished all her shopping online. Susan closed roughly a million dollars of wholesale revenue on purpose and went all in on selling direct. Today she teaches thousands of ecommerce store owners through The Social Sales Girls. Her first paid course was $97 and sold exactly one copy. In this conversation, Susan and I break down: - The question she asked her accountant on the day she bought the company - Why she closed about a million dollars of wholesale revenue on purpose - Her own one sentence explanation for why the $97 course sold one copy - What changed between 68 members and 180 - The tick box on her opt in pages that 50 to 70% of people check - Why the podcast is the only front door she funds, and the 15% number underneath it - The three numbers she checks before she calls anything a failure FREE RESOURCE: The three frameworks from this episode, one page each, nothing to sign up for → https://podcast.stu.me CONNECT WITH SUSAN: - The Social Sales Girls: https://thesocialsalesgirls.com - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socialsalesgirls - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesocialsalesgirls - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2GHerESs_5Kd0c0dhKvH6g CONNECT WITH STU: - Website: https://stu.me - Book "Predictable Profits": https://a.co/d/4GIi1uz - Instagram: https://instagram.com/stumclaren - Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me - Membership.io: https://membership.io Subscribe for new episodes every week.

  5. Sep 14

    288: Hate Selling? Tell These 3 Stories in This Order - Robert Hartwell

    Robert Hartwell spent almost ten years as a Broadway performer, performing eight times a week. In 2017 he faked being sick so he could skip his own show and sit in the back of my live event in Toronto, because that was the only way he could get a day to work on what came next. He walked out believing he could teach singing, dancing and acting to young people through a membership. Three years later Broadway shut down, and what he had quietly built was the only thing standing. He locked himself in a studio for three days and recorded a year of content. He gave himself one number to leave Broadway: 30 people into the summer program. He got 33. And the business went from six figures to seven figures and multiple seven figures once he let go of the identity he was holding on to. Now he runs a second business coaching entrepreneurs on story selling. Which is how we got to the part of this conversation I keep thinking about: a five day challenge into a 12 month program with 40 openly promised spots, that closed at 26. He did not go quiet. He said the number out loud, to the buyers, on camera. In this conversation, Robert and I break down: - The four questions he asks parents that turn one class into a three or four year commitment - The gap-and-bridge move underneath every offer he makes, and the guardrail he puts on it - The green, yellow and red system behind his retention - The three stories he tells to sell anything, and why the order matters more than the stories - Why he turns away buyers who can pay - What he said after a launch came in at 26 out of 40, and what he did the following week FREE RESOURCE: The three frameworks from this episode, one page each, nothing to sign up for → https://podcast.stu.me  CONNECT WITH ROBERT: - The Broadway Collective: https://bwaycollective.com  - Personal site: http://robert-hartwell.com  - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sirroberttakespics  - The Broadway Collective on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bwaycollective  CONNECT WITH STU: - Website: https://stu.me  - Book "Predictable Profits": https://a.co/d/4GIi1uz  - Instagram: https://instagram.com/stumclaren  - Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me  - Membership.io: https://membership.io  Subscribe for new episodes every week.

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About

Marketing Your Business is a podcast dedicated to all things marketing. It's a behind-the-scenes look at the marketing tactics and strategies that lead to a loyal following, growing sales, and a business that gives you more freedom in your everyday life. Each episode is packed with takeaways to help you get what you have in front of a lot more people. It's about leveraging your marketing to build a business that's high in profit, low in stress, and one that gives you the ability to have the greatest impact on the world. Join leading online marketing strategist and entrepreneur Stu McLaren as he shares what's working for selling products online with product launches, online communities, email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, and more. This is about the marketing that leads to more sales, more profits, and a high-growth business. But this show isn't just about making money. It's about using the power of marketing to give you more freedom. The freedom to work with who you want, where you want, while having time to travel and do the things that matter. It's about reducing the "go-go-go" stress and redesigning your business so you can be more present in the lives of those who matter most to you. About Stu McLaren: For years, Stu has helped experts transform their knowledge and influence into recurring revenue by launching, growing, and scaling 7 and 8-figure membership sites. In 2008, he co-founded the world's most popular membership platform for WordPress (WishList Member). He then went on to partner with New York Times best-selling author Michael Hyatt, helping his company go from a high 6-figure business (with lots of stress) to a high 7-figure business (with low-stress). Michael's profitability soared, his email list grew from 70,000 to over 500,000 and he gained back over 100 days with his family by not having to travel. Today, he's the Co-Founder of Membership.io, helping creators and entrepreneurs build thriving membership businesses. He's also the author of Predictable Profits, which shows business owners how to create recurring revenue so they can stop chasing new customers and start building real stability. If you've got an established business and you're looking for ideas on how to get your products and services in front of more people OR you're thinking about starting a business and want to see the behind-the-scenes of another entrepreneur doing it in real time, Marketing Your Business is tailor-made for you.

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