Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners

If you're pouring value into your content and it's still not turning into sales, Toni Bache says more value won't fix it. She works behind the scenes with some pretty significant online brands, and she's got a smooth process for taking people from a post, to a workshop, to the offer behind it.

Back in 2015 she was living in Amsterdam in a really big corporate job, and she wanted to move home to Australia. So she launched a 30-day habit challenge and got "like 300 people" to sign up, with no list and no audience. At the end of the 30 days she asked if they wanted to keep paying her a little bit each month, and "everyone was like, yes, yes, yes." That's how she built her first membership.

So I asked her the question so many of us have. What do you do when you're giving great value and it's just not turning into sales? Her answer: "Two things, both starting with B."

And then she walks through how one of her clients sells each workshop. He used to be "really heavy on the sales side," and he flipped it. Now at the end of each workshop he asks, "would you like to join me?" And in her words, "people do."

In this conversation, Toni and I get into: * The two things your content is missing when it gets likes but no sales * Why people can feel a funnel now, and how to make the next yes easy instead * Why she starts from the paid offer and works backwards * Why nobody wants a 47-page guide anymore, and the tiny tool that works instead * How many posts it takes to sell a workshop, and when they go out * Why "like 30 to 40%" of one client's workshop sign-ups are brand new to him * How one of her clients flipped from selling to marketing

FREE RESOURCE: The three plays from this episode, written up for you in the free resource kit. → https://podcast.stu.me

CONNECT WITH TONI: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toni.bache/

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 your content and your offer working together. That's what we dig into here every week.

TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Why Great Content Doesn't Sell 0:33 - Meet Toni Bache 0:59 - From Organic Content to a Paid Workshop 2:12 - From Corporate Job to Coach 2:59 - The Blog Post That Started It 3:57 - 300 Sign-Ups With No Audience 5:17 - "You Should Do a Membership" 6:10 - You Don't Need It All Figured Out 6:47 - Built From DMs and a Personal Facebook 7:25 - Five Hours a Week, Still in Corporate 8:31 - The Agency They Shut Down 10:01 - Random Content vs Aligned Content 10:56 - Why Selling Online Got Harder 11:58 - Buyers Can Feel the Funnel 13:02 - Great Value, No Sales: The Missing Piece 14:22 - Why Viral Trends Don't Sell 14:59 - What Your Market Already Thinks 16:08 - Start From the Paid Offer and Work Back 17:15 - Where Your Best Content Ideas Come From 18:02 - Give Away the Best Bits 19:06 - Won't Free Content Hurt Sales? 19:42 - Skip the 47-Page Guide 20:39 - Micro Magnets: A Real Example 22:18 - From Free Tool to Full Offer 22:55 - How Much Content It Takes to Sell a Workshop 24:08 - The CTA on Every Post 24:57 - One Week of Promotion, Not a Month 25:22 - Who Signs Up: Cold vs Warm 26:16 - The Evergreen Version 26:39 - The Old Way vs the New Way 27:07 - A Client's Before and After 28:04 - The Flip: Less Selling, More Marketing 29:04 - More Change in Two Years Than the Last 22 30:41 - The Delivery Changed, Not the Model 31:25 - Why Community Matters More Than Ever 32:12 - What Toni Found Inside Stu's Program 33:34 - Stu's Takeaway: Line Up Content With the Offer 34:05 - Where to Find Toni

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

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

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.

An 11-year-old boy in Sweden sent Ryan Trahan a DM. He'd never been able to try Ryan's candy brand, Joyride, because it isn't sold there. His one birthday wish was to finally taste a pack.

Ryan got on a plane.

Tyler and Rebecca join me to talk about kindness as a marketing strategy, not as a nice-to-have, but as one of the most effective moves available to any business right now.

In this episode: - The founder who tracked down his single best customer and handed him his credit card - Why simple gestures, like calling a customer just to say thank you, create moments people never forget - The storytelling lesson hiding inside a viral "hopped on a train and built a business" video - The honest debate: is being kind for the sake of marketing manipulative, or does sharing it just spread more of it? - A billboard war between two ice cream and beer brands that turned into free advertising for both

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.

There's a free workshop coming up where Stu is showing exactly what's possible when you start something today. Secure your spot: https://membershipworkshop.com

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Attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to just 7.2 seconds today. The average workday only allows about 4.5 minutes of real focus before an interruption.

Rebecca, who leads our TME brand and has been a friend of mine for over 35 years, joins me to break down what these numbers mean if you teach, coach, or sell anything digital.

In this episode: - Why we rebuilt our core program around the "Core Four" lessons - TME Sidekick, the AI tool one of our team members built that became one of the most used in our toolbox - Why shrinking attention spans don't mean people stopped wanting depth once you've earned their trust - Why Instagram just opened up 3 minute reels while Substack paid creators $510 million - The one stat that took course completion from 42.6% to 65.5% - How a shared launch date got around 150 people marching in the same direction - Simple ways to build community that don't depend on you teaching more

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.

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.

There's a free workshop coming up where Stu is showing exactly what's possible when you start something today. Secure your spot: https://membershipworkshop.com

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You don't need to be a developer anymore. You just need to be a builder.

In this episode, Tyler and Bex join me to talk about AI agents and workflows, sub-agents, orchestrators, and tools like Claude Code. But the part that actually matters isn't the technical stuff. It's what it means for anyone with an idea.

My son had no coding experience, no design skills, and an idea for a dog walking business. Thirty-five minutes later, he had a poster, a working website, and a live domain. Not because he was technical. Because he just asked.

In this episode: - What AI agents and sub-agents actually do, explained simply - The dog walking business built start to finish in 35 minutes - Why the gap between having an idea and having the thing has never been smaller - One warning worth hearing: how easy it is to fall down the rabbit hole

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.

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.

There's a free workshop coming up where I am showing exactly what's possible when you start something today. Secure your spot: https://membershipworkshop.com

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Every week, a few things show up in my feed that make me stop scrolling. This week, four of them were worth talking about.

Tyler and Rebecca join me to break down: - Bad membership sales advice from a well-known marketing coach (whom I still very much respect), and why discounting, bundling, or offering a trial up front usually backfires - AI learning loops, and what they could mean for how we use AI tools going forward - A free tool called Google Search Console that shows exactly what people are searching for on your Instagram - A couple with under 10,000 followers who tracked down a grocery store employee for his perfectly stacked shelves, gave him his flowers, and raised nearly $9,000 for him after the video hit 9 million views

That last one is the reason we started doing this segment. It's a good reminder of what a platform can actually be used for.

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.