The Power Of Coaching with Patryk and Kasia Wezowski and Creating A Membership Program with Robert Skrob

I’m so glad you joined us because we have Patryk and Kasia Wezowski and Robert Skrob. Patryk and Kasia are the Producers of LEAP – The Coaching Movie. It’s a fascinating look at the value of coaching, consulting and mentoring, a movie that’s out now. Robert is the author and number one expert in subscription membership retention. We’re going to talk to two very different groups of experts here.

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The Power Of Coaching with Patryk and Kasia Wezowski

I am here with Patryk and Kasia Wezowski who are the producers of LEAP – The Coaching Movie. They are the Founders of the Center for Body Language, the world’s number one body language training and business. I know both of them do keynote speaking and executive coaching. They’ve been best sellers of The Micro Expressions Book for Business. There are so many aspects to what they do. Welcome.

Thank you.

I am interested in what you guys do. First of all, I’ve watched your movie and I loved it. I saw some people who have been on my show, Marshall Goldsmith for one. You created a movie where you follow people who need some coaching and mentoring in different types of help. You take top coaches and leaders from around the world to help them. It’s a fascinating look at the importance of mentorship, coaching and consulting. I’d like to know a little bit more about the movie why you created it, how you created it and then some background on what led to this interest.

It all started six years ago. We’ve been in India for three months. This was our winter office as we called it. One day I realized that we have all those contacts with great coaches and experts. We were preparing the summit with different experts. I realized that it’s nice to hear them talking about their methodology, strategies and wisdom. I’m still missing to see them in action.

We were wondering does it work what they’re saying.

It all sounds cool but it’s not so easy to walk your talk. We wanted to challenge them.

We put it to the test in the following way. It was Kasia in India that was meditating on the beach. She had this inspiration like, “We’ve been part of this documentary where we coach somebody for two minutes. It’s a very short piece and role. Why won’t we make a whole documentary about coaching? We’ll put all those experts to the test and see the tangible results that they get if they are as amazing as they are and seem to be.” The advertised pages or short movies that you can see out there on YouTube is one of them.

We reach out to different experts. One of the first ones was Marshall Goldsmith and he said, “Yes, why not?” He wants to be a part of this movie.

Then other people draw in like Jack Canfield, Marci Shimoff, John Gray, John Demartini, Mark Thompson, Christy Whitman, Cherie Carter-Scott and many other top coaches around the world. You can watch on iTunes and Amazon and you can see how four ordinary people achieve extraordinary results thanks to the support of about 40 coaches, mentors and experts. That’s what’s the film about.

You mentioned several people who have been on my show. They’re all been very inspirational to me. It’s so hard to pick which ones you’d want as far as coaching. There are so many of them and you mentioned you had so many on the show. In the scheme of how many there are in the world, how did you narrow it down to the people you picked? I realized probably you have a list and you start at the top. Maybe some people don’t say they want to do it or they have no other conflicts. How do you decide how many coaches and which ones to pick?

The amount of coaches were pretty much decided by the amount of minutes we had in the movie. Documentaries are about 90 minutes, so we had to fit in all with a meaningful role in there. We set limits ultimately at 40. We had thousands of applications and recommendations through our website. We had about a dozen criteria that everybody had to match and also be supportive of the mission and the vision of the movie. The mission of the movie is to inspire over a million lives to be more successful in life in business through coaching.

Also, it was about four clients. It was very important to make sure that those coaches will support their clients on their journey. We have four kinds of coaching. We have business coaching, executive coaching, life coaching and relationship coaching. We were looking for coaches and experts in those areas. We were choosing the most powerful and those who can get good connections with clients.

They worked four interesting cases. I loved how different they were. I kept saying which one can I relate to. The first one you mentioned was a business coaching. That was the woman. Do you consider her the business case because she was trying to start a business?

Yes, correct.

What was her name? 

Precious.

She wanted to start the lingerie company for curvier women and that was an interesting story because she had no experience. You got her on the Shark Tank. The financial part of that I would have almost like to see more of. I imagine that took you a long time to explain that. That’s a tough thing to break down into 90 minutes. When you’ve got four stories and 40 coaches and all these things going on, did you have a hard time deciding what part of each case to keep in the movie?

Initially, I spend a number a couple of months watching the coaching sessions and making decisions, which fragments to choose for the edits. We were working with our team on those fragments and shortening it even more. Then Patryk together with me, we had to decide the final seconds and minutes of those fragments. You can imagine that it was hard work.

We had over 300 hours of recordings. Most of them were coaching sessions. That was a lot of material to muddle through and to find those exceptional moments, those transformational shifts to show them on the big screen in theaters, online and on DVD. The film is a summary of some exceptional moments that were completely changing the lives and businesses of the four clients.

What’s interesting is the questions that the coaches would ask people. A lot of it we know the answers ourselves sometimes, but we don’t want to face what we think we know. Sometimes it helps to have a sounding board for somebody to ask us the questions we should be asking ourselves sometimes.

Those questions create a twelve-chapter marker through the film. There were twelve questions that we pointed out as significant questions that have been asked by the coaches to the clients that changed their lives. Everybody who watched the film can ask those questions to themselves. Which ones did stand out for you, Diane?

The type of questions that stood out to me were the things that are holding them back, just because that’s what I’m researching for curiosity. I’m researching the things what holds people back. It’s the stories we tell ourselves. It’s the assumptions we make that we can’t do something. Those are very powerful things that we tell ourselves in our mind. When they drew those out of them, I found that the most useful.

You saw also the responses of the clients that they had to think about those questions longer. There were some amazing questions that the audience can ask themselves. They’re not literally what I’m saying but there was indirection of who you should forgive. If you didn’t have fear, how would you approach it differently? If you were fully self-confident, what would you do next? Those questions changed the lives of the clients. You can see those precious moments happening on screen. That creates for the viewer are also an experience like, “I should try that out too.”

It’s about that timing. The powerful question can be a simple question sometimes, but this is the question that is asked in the right moment. The power of coaching, they have experience that they know which moment to choose to ask the right question.

You brought up something. Another part that was interesting to me was the fear aspect. In my research, fear was such a huge thing that held people back. As they’re asking questions you can see in their faces the fear sometimes and the apprehension I should say. You added a lot of emotional things. A lot of people broke down and had reactions because they were holding in a lot of fear and things that they felt bad about from the past, things that are making them stressed out. What I found interesting in all four stories is that there was emotion in all of them. The next one is the executive. Was that the Asian gentleman?

Yes, correct. That was Soon Loo.

The reason I even referred to him as an Asian gentleman is because you were talking about certain people gravitated toward certain coaches and had certain things. I noticed he was with another Asian coach. Was there a cultural match? Did you find in some of these people like they did better with certain coaches because they had more in common? Was it just happened to be with his case that there were better scenes that you had with his coach? 

Our criteria were first of all to select coaches that would give the most powerful push to the clients. We felt that indeed Kelvin Lim who’s from Singapore, Soon Loo spends a lot of time in Singapore. He would be a great coach because he’s a very experienced coach and also that he has a similar cultural background so he could understand Soon Loo and the way he responds. I would say that the first important thing is how powerful a coach is, how easily they can find the best way questioning the right moment and guide their clients through the transformation. The second criteria for Soon Loo, we wanted also to have somebody who could understand him. You saw that Soon Loo was doing a lot of different activities. He had to focus on the one. The one that he has chosen was related to Asia.

I related the most to him when he started putting the pieces of paper on the ground how many jobs he has. It was helpful to me watching that exercise. For the woman’s story starting out from scratch, a lot of us can understand that aspect of how challenging it is to not know what to do because you’ve never done it before. Those first two stories, I personally related to more. The other two stories were fascinating as well. The next one was life. I can’t remember the four.

Life coaching and relationship coaching.

That was a television reporter. He had gone through a very traumatic experience when he got divorced. His wife wrote a tell-all book that made him not look so great. He did a spiral with the alcoholism and was trying to come back from a bad situation. He had quite an interesting story. I’m curious how you picked these people. I’m sure you had a lot of people apply. What led you to pick the people that you did pick?

In Rob’s case, he had a strong motivation to change. He was desperate to change something in his life, but he didn’t know what. We felt that he had an urge for finding a way out. Also with other stories, what was important for us was the motivation of the clients. The drive, the desire to change. The clients have to be willing to change. You cannot change or help a person who’s not wanting to change. They are blocking themselves. We need to test the clients how far can they get. Are they coachable or not?

We won’t disclose too much information, but you can see that LEAP is about also jumping in. You see some scenes in the trailer of somebody jumping out of a plane. That’s Rob. That’s the symbol of what coaching and changing your mindset can do. He has a huge fear of heights. He got so far that he jumped out of a plane.

I love how you included that. I watched this with my husband. I’m like, “Would you jump out of that plane?” I was asking questions as we go along. It was a very good way to show the progress of what these people have gone through. Your last story was more of a relationship. 

The last story was about Chad.

He hadn’t had a romantic relationship in his life. That’s what he was looking for. He’s a good-looking guy. What do you think led to someone who looks on the surface like they’ve got everything going, but they beat themselves up internally to not have that self-confidence? What led you to him? What was the biggest surprise of that story to you?

This is the power of limiting beliefs that somebody could have. This was the case for Chad that he had so many limiting beliefs about himself and about his capability to be dating somebody and meet his love that he was completely blocked. It was a challenging process to see how step by step coaches worked with him so that he can feel differently about himself. It’s not only about this topic, but it can also be any other topic that we are so blocked that we don’t see that we are beautiful and everything is well.

Watching the movie, I didn’t know what to expect. I was expecting all business coaching at the beginning. I didn’t realize we’re going to be life and relationship type of things. As I’m watching this I’m thinking, “It would be hard to narrow it down to four stories like that.” I’m sure you had a lot of people who wanted to do it. They also have to show a real vulnerability on screen if they break down. Did any of them hesitate to want to share some of that in the movie or did they feel comfortable?

I would say that that’s why we have chosen great coaches who know how to deal with emotions and vulnerability. It went well with those coaches. They were powerful and because the clients could trust them, they could also reveal the emotions. This was very meaningful. We wanted to make sure in the casting process that nobody from the clients would be afraid of the camera because then we would need to have a different coaching.

Because they didn’t have any fear of camera, we wanted to create an atmosphere so that they can feel as if they would be working with their coach without the cameras. We were telling them that the cameras are flies on the wall so that they could relax into the sessions. Those sessions were 45 minutes or one hour long, there was enough time to get used to the cameras and the lights. They can focus on the topic because the topic that they have is important for them. They could achieve a lot.

I was interested in where you did this. Whose home was that? Was that in California? Were you near in LA or somewhere?

It was in Malibu. We found a great location that was available for filming. At the same time, it had lots of rooms and angles for creating a nice space for the coaching sessions.

Did they go to any other locations or was it all filmed there?

A lot of the coaching sessions was filmed there because we had full control over sound and light in that specific coaching headquarters villa. There were some coaching before boarding the plane, before jumping out of it.

We also went to Singapore for the filming because Soon Loo was filmed in Singapore, Italy as well and in Spain.

We had a few other locations that people traveled to show a bit of the world and that coaching is happening internationally.

Soon Loo, who travels to Singapore, had to travel back to the place where he spent so much time to make decisions about his next steps. This was the best environment for coaching and for making the decision that he had to make. The same with Chad. Chad had to go out of his house because he lives in this very small town and not so many possible women to date. That’s why Spain was a good place to go to work on the relationship with women and meet a lot of beautiful women.

You had some coaches I assume you maybe never met prior to that. I know you go all around the world and keynote speak and do all the stuff you do. How enlightening was it for you personally to watch all this? To meet all these coaches and experience what everybody went through.

Making the film transformed us a lot as well. We witnessed great coaches in action and not only us, but everybody who was listening to the coaching sessions on the set itself and were part of the crew. They were thinking, “This applies to me too. That’s interesting. I should think about changing that.” Yes, it changed not only our lives but that of the crew as well. What did we learn? Among some of the things is that how we keep going and having your vision in front of you and never giving up creates magic. There were many moments during the creation of the film where we had like, “Will we get the funding? How are we going to arrange more funds to create this movie?”

It was close to $1 million but it didn’t happen all at once. It was crowdfunded over the course of one or two years. There were many moments where we discovered we need more funds to be able to complete the film. That was one of the very inspiring journeys where we learned that if you trust the process and if you keep going and never give up, you’ll get there sooner or later. We also learned to trust our intuition more and our feelings with people especially when dealing both with the crew and with the coaches. We have a good connection with some people. In the beginning, some others don’t. You learn to trust those feelings more from the beginning to spend your time with the right person and the right people. Those were very precious learning.

We were in touch with thousands of people, especially through applications. Also, we had to hire a lot of people to make this movie happen. This is also about switching off your rational minds and focusing on your heart to be able to walk the talk, to choose the right people and make decisions. This is something that we learn together with the coaching clients. They learn how to take the leap. We also learn how to take our own leap.

We all learn the excellence of the great coaches. For example, we spoke about Marshall Goldsmith in his talk. He was also on your show. We felt first hand why he is the number one executive coach in the world. What you see of him both online in his books, that’s exactly how his life is. It’s genuine. That authentic person. He loved the movie LEAP. He contacted us to make the movie about his life and work. It was great to connect with those amazing people.

Marshall is pretty impressive with his MG100 group. You had a lot of people. I knew Christie Whitman and everybody else. I was fascinated to see them in action. I see them one way through our interactions. I not necessarily hired any of these people as a coach. Your whole idea is the importance of coaching and mentoring and all the things that we can get from this. If we can’t afford some of the top coaches, but we want to get that help. What are you advising people who like the idea of this? How much do you spend to do life coaching? Do you think it’s worth getting a loan or going into debt to do it?

Definitely, you should spend some money on finding a coach. It’s better to hire a good coach than spend less on hiring somebody that’s you think to hire because they have a better fee.

You can spend more money if you hire another coach because then you have to hire another one and another one. It’s better if you hired the more expensive in the first place than trying so many coaches at the end.

Here are some ideas and tips. One, make sure that they have amazing proven testimonials and referrals. What they did for somebody else if they have a tangible proof of that. Not just something that has been written on the websites that could be invented, but tangible proof. Check out from the source that they changed so much in that person’s life and business that you would like to have that too. That’s a good test. That’s one, having that tangible proof. Two, another thing to consider is what’s your gut feeling with this person? How do you connect with that person? How do you relate and build rapport with that coach? Are they a fit for you? The fact that they are a great coach doesn’t mean that it’s a match for you. You should also be able to relate to them. At the same time, it can be too easy because a coach has a challenge. There must be a spark in you saying, “This person, I feel that they have a specific way of helping me to find where I want to get.”

The third point is that said this relationship should be inspiring for you. You have the session, you experience the coach and you come out of the session and you feel inspired. You feel that you have some new ideas and you have solutions. You want to move forward. This coach is helping you to take a leap. This is something that is tangible in your life. It helps you to make good decisions about the next steps.

You do coaching and you do all these other things on the side as the main job I should say. You’re the founder of the Center for Body Language, which is the world’s number one body language training for business? Is that your number one focus still? Are you going to become producers now? Are you doing both?

We are mainly filmmakers. The Center for Body Language, we’re still actively working with that. We train trainers.

We have partners in twenty countries and they deliver the certification trainings on the level of practitioner, master and trainer. They do a lot. We don’t need to travel to get training. Our mission is that we show them the methodology and we inspire people. Then we create materials and books and articles. We have also a team of great trainers. They can deliver a job and this is how it works.

Our main job is filmmaking, directing and producing and raising funds for films. We’ve raised close to $4 million divided over four films so far. We have two or three films in the pipeline. It’s been an amazing journey when people saw LEAP, just like Marshall did, they came to us saying, “Can you make something similar like this for me?” It takes quite a journey to make a film.

Sometimes we still do coaching, but not with everybody. We take on a couple of clients. I love to create with my clients the inspiring ideas about their business and how to create a system to make money and to fulfill their lives. Sometimes I take people that I feel that they have a great career or ambition with what they do and support them. At the same time, we want to inspire people by making movies and this is our main mission on earth.

We mentioned that the movie is available on iTunes and Amazon Prime. I watched it through Prime. Who do you think your market is? Who would be likely to watch this movie?

Everybody should watch it because it can transform every single person. Every coach should watch it because they see world-class coaching action. Every person who wants to find out more about coaching and mentoring or considering a coach should definitely watch it as well. People who are into personal development and want to want to change something in their lives, whether it’s their relationship level, personal level, achieving more success in business or being happier. It doesn’t matter, if you want to change something in your life, coaching and mentoring can help get you there much faster and easier. That’s why everybody should watch this movie because it’s a great jumping board for your next leap in life.

That’s a great place to end this because that’s an important point. I’d like to know if you can share how people could find out more about what you’re doing? How to get the movie if I didn’t list all the places where it’s located? More information if anybody wants to know more. 

Search for the movie, LEAP – The Coaching Movie online on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and lots of other platforms. Go straight to our website which is CoachingMovie.com.

Thank you, Patryk and Kasia. This has been so interesting. I enjoyed your movie. My husband didn’t know he was going to be sitting through it. He liked it. He was like, “Wow, what is this?” It was very fascinating because you don’t see any movies like that. It could help everybody. Thank you so much for sharing it.

Thank you very much, Diane.

Thank you so much.

Creating A Membership Program with Robert Skrob

I am here with Robert Skrob who is the number one expert in subscription membership retention. For more than two decades, Robert has helped hundreds of membership programs launch and then grow from startups to become some of the largest membership subscription companies across the globe. He is the author of Retention Point. It’s so nice to have you here, Robert.

It’s an honor. Thank you so much for having me as your guest.

You’re welcome. I know that Perry Marshall is a mutual friend. He had great things to say about you and he’s the best. I know that you deal with a lot of clients including Perry S. Marshall & Associates. I was looking at your list. You have quite an impressive Harley Davidson dealer and a whole lot of different eclectic companies. I’m interested in what you do because some people might not even know what we mean by membership programs. Let’s start by explaining what we mean by that. Give a little bit of background on how you got into that.

Membership exploded in the last ten years much before that. People bought things. They paid for them and owned it and that was that. Customers are increasingly interested in subscribing. That’s nowhere as prevalent as the movies. Rather than having huge collections of DVDs, I still have a whole drawer full of VHS tapes from my kids growing up and then we transitioned into DVDs. Whereas now instead, the parents get a monthly subscription to Netflix or Disney app and they get all the videos and movies that they can watch. Rather than owning, customers are increasingly buying memberships, buying subscriptions to get access to that. Even though this is a huge growing niche, memberships have been around for at least a century.

The associations, publications, newsletters magazines have been selling subscriptions for many decades. The whole idea is around how to attract new subscribers, how to get them engaged and using your product and how to get them to love it so much they refer their friends. All those are what I’ve been doing for twenty years first in the nonprofit world and political campaigns. Then moving on to for-profit businesses financial publications, online membership websites and working for anyone from a startup to having more than a billion dollars in annual subscription revenue.

That’s an interesting point that you’ve got such a diverse group of companies that can benefit from doing this. Why is it important for businesses to have the memberships? What do you tell them to start and how to begin to create a strong membership program?

Many businesses are stuck in this treadmill where they have to start every month at zero. They’ve got no revenue. They’ve got no customers. They’ve got to figure out how to make their number within the next 30 days. What subscription revenue does is allow you to start the month with a number of customers who have already said, “Yes, charge my card. Send me what you got this month.” It’s an amazing amount of stability that it adds to your business. There’s a whole lot less anxiety and having a group of a group of your customers could be a segment of them that have said, “Yes I want you to ship me what you have.” That’s already pre-approved at the beginning of the month. It completely changes your approach. It allows you to be a lot more aggressive with your new customer acquisition and scale your business a lot faster. It gives you that backside stability that even if you don’t get a single new customer, at least you had revenue going into the month. You’re not going to end the month with zero.

Unless people drop out. How do we keep people in this program? What are the problems you run into? With people maybe quitting or maybe not getting what they want you don’t even know it. How do you keep up with it?

That’s the real game. The membership has been about fostering a different relationship. I have a little restaurant example. You’re married. If Perry gives you a great restaurant choice option and you go to your husband and say, “Let’s go to this restaurant.” Whether or not you have a good experience is at least partially dependent on whether your spouse has a good experience because you got a man to this deal. The restaurant service has got to be just right. The food has got to be great. Everything about that has to deliver and deliver well. If all that goes well but then it goes into the restroom and it’s in complete disorder, then it’s game over. The place stinks and that was a bad experience. The first experience when you’re working with your new customers, it’s all about trust. It’s delivering on the promise. If you don’t deliver on that promise to the highest level of execution, it’s game over and the customer doesn’t want to deal with you anymore. You and your husband go to a restaurant so much that the owners know you. Maybe even know what you want to order, maybe know your name.

We do go to the same places and they do. They already know what I want when I get there and you like that. You want that service.

With that, if the service isn’t perfect on a given day, do you care you or you cut him some slack?

If it’s someplace you’ve gone quite often that you might give them some slack. If they’re new, you’re gone. 

See how the relationship changes? If you go to a restaurant repeatedly and they don’t recognize you and they don’t remember you, you’ve changed, your expectations have changed because you’ve worked with that business over and over again. In fact, as long as they make you feel important by recognizing you, your name showing that they care enough about you to remember you and what you enjoy if the bathroom was a little bit of a mess one particular day or something’s not quite right, it’s okay. You’re way beyond the trust factor. They’re helping you feel important, which is more important than the dinner itself.

I’m envisioning for me in a restaurant, I need my water glass filled every 30 seconds because I drink a lot of water. How do we know what their water glass issue is?

By being aware and important, they’ve learned what you value. If you visit that same place and you deal with them repeatedly and they never can get that right, you’re going to find someplace else. The main point is that the relationship when it started was all about trust and perfect execution. As the relationship between a business and a customer matures, it becomes more about helping that customer feel important. There’s another level. Have you and Robert gone to a restaurant so often that not only do you know the owners and the people who work there, but you also know the other regulars?

Pretty much. Whenever we’d go to dinner and the rest of us that eat before the sun goes down. It’s a very slim crowd that wants to eat as early as we do, but yes.

If you know the other regulars, if the service isn’t quite right, you might get behind the bar and pour a drink. You’re not going there for the food or the experience itself, you’re going there to see your friends. As you move through this process in terms of subscriptions and the relationships that you’re forming, these are the steps that you need to go through in order to create retention. The biggest mistake businesses make is they get stuck in that trust thing. They’re like, “If I give more value.” I know subscription boxes and I talk to them all the time and they’re so focused on its cost. “I sell this for $20. I want to deliver a $100 worth of value.” It’s not about that at all it’s helping that customer feel important. The first transaction or the second might be about, “What’s in here?” If you don’t mature with the customer, the good news is they start cutting you some slack on the execution if you recognize them and help them feel important.

The second step is connecting the members with each other. What that does is allow you again even bigger break as the one that’s running this membership. They’re not only coming for the value you deliver, but they’re also coming to see other people within your community. The people who have shared experience, similar values. They want to be around people like that. By creating that environment where they’re able to make those connections or even you help make those connections within the membership, you’re able to crack the nut of retention. It’s not about you or what you deliver, it’s about them connecting with their friends and feeling great about the experience.

I can envision that in a restaurant. What’s an example of a membership program maybe there are a lot of people speakers or consultants that they can relate to as a membership offering that we could envision?

As a speaker, you’re in front of an audience. They come away completely enchanted in the experience. Many of the audience are probably already thinking to themselves and some even are saying to you, “How can we continue this experience on a monthly basis? What do you have? Could you publish a newsletter? Do you have materials that you write on an ongoing basis? How can we continue this? This was so enchanting I’d like to experience this and learn from you on a monthly basis?” I’ve worked for years with speakers who created membership sites or newsletters or monthly courses. It’s simply giving the individuals who are in your audience. It’s only 10% of your audience said yes. Rather than having to stand up at a podium and speak every month, you’re starting to accumulate income before you’ve even gotten on an airplane. This audience that they have been enchanted with you, invite them to give you, “We taught you this process in order to solve this problem. We’d love to hear from you on how it worked for you.” Let them report back, “I did what you said. This is what happened. We have a client who works with attorneys and teaches them how to do marketing.

Even before they receive his product, which is delivered in this orange binder and shipped to them, he sends them the referral program. He says, “Send this one letter to these twenty people in your area and include me on the list. Your product is on the way and you’re going to know how to do this system. Go ahead and send this letter out now and you can be generating clients even while your product is on the way.” A number of his people take that action and send out the referral letter and he is on the list. A customer service person writes back and says, “Great job. Excellent job. I loved your letter. Let me know how it works for you.” There’s this stream of members who are writing in saying, “I sent out the letter and three weeks later I had two clients worth $4,000.” Someone else will write, “I had five new clients worth $8,000.” Someone else writes, “I’ve got no clients.” Someone else will write, “I’ve got one client worth $1,000.”

When he gets on his membership calls and he goes, “Joe from Tupelo, great job. I saw you’ve got three clients and $6,000. Congratulations.” That makes up that member feel awesome because they’ve been recognized within his community and that engagement. Also, for the people who haven’t yet taken action, it’s proof that the thing that you’re delivering works. It helps you build testimonials for the product when you go to sell it again. To show that, “I sold it and these people got these results within this time period.” Lastly, it helps to make connections so that members are able to know when they’re on the member forum and they’re interacting with each other. They give you, “You’re the guy who did this. I want to know more about that.”

I’m curious now that you’ve connected everyone together and they learned from each other. Do they still need you?

You are the shared experience. Certainly, this is one of the chief fears that a lot of folks have, “If I let them talk to each other they won’t need me anymore.” The reality what I have seen like on Sunday morning church. Rather than going to church they get together with each other at the parking lot and never go in, they still go in. They still want that experience. They still want and need that connection. Afterwards, they want the connection with the people. What I have found is that as long as you’re sticking with a core set of values that remain consistent over time. Where I see people go wrong is they talk about one thing for two months and then they get into some book. They’re off of on some other topic because they are fascinated about it. Then they read some different thing or they take a course and now they’re off on that. It’s this disconcerted mess and you’re going to lose a lot of folks. As long as you’re focused on the same set of values, you’ll keep your members. They’ll love the opportunity to talk with each other about that lesson of the month and how it impacted them.

Do you ever have people drop out because their credit cards either cancel, used it over or their credit card has problems and they don’t bother getting back on? Is that one of the issues that you run into at all with this?

There are two different ways of churn. There’s voluntary and involuntary churn. Both of them need to be managed separately. The involuntary churn is where the credit card simply declines. That could be because the other person had a fraud alert and had to get a new card with a new expiration date. The issuer declines it because they know who your merchant account as they think you might be risky so they’ll decline it for no particular reason at all. That does happen. It’s important to be with a good subscription merchant services provider that suitable for the size transactions. The volume you’re doing and has a great reputation with credit card issuers. Also having auto updater services that Visa will allow you to get a subscription to get the updated numbers. It’s like a US postal service Uber alert. They give you the new address when you mail to that. This is similar but with a credit card, you get updated card numbers.

There are some quite a few things that you can do in order to reduce that involuntary churn. Secondly with involuntary churn, I hear a lot of people they go, “I contact their number and they don’t reply. I don’t get my member to renew because their credit card expired. If the electricity went out in their house. The power company called and said, “I wanted to call you because we had a problem with your bill. They’re taking that call.” If you have such a bad relationship with your member that they’re not returning your call, you’ve got a bigger problem.

It’s interesting that there are all these issues that you know you don’t even think about in terms of credit cards. You figure it out once they’re in. When they’re in, you don’t have to follow up but you do. There are other aspects to it. I’m wondering there’s information overload and when people start getting so much even if it’s all valuable stuff that we’re giving. To get people interested to even find out about us, to begin with, to get them involved in these programs. How do you get people to even want to read anything that you send or do anything anymore when there’s so much of it? Are we getting too much that none of it seems to get through?

Certainly from an individual standpoint, one of the best things I did was the advice of Perry Marshall. I unsubscribed from absolutely everything. Beyond that, there was some stuff I had for clients and things and so those automatically go into a folder using rules. For me personally, I did. Even when you’re overwhelmed if you get an email from Bob you read that. You don’t go, “I’m sorry.” I get 100 emails a day. I just wasn’t able to open yours.” There is a relationship there. Your mother, she emails, you open that. The difference is in the relationship between what gets ignored and what gets opened.

Do you provide that information to your clients about what are good programs? What are good providers? Is it more about how to keep people in? Do you do it all?

It depends on what they need. We do a little diagnosis of their numbers. We can look at their membership reports or I can pull my own and be able to give them like the doctor gives you a blood test and said, “This is within range. This is out. This is what that means.” You’ve got to understand that and at that point diagnose, “We need to do something about this involuntary churn or this voluntary churn. Members are staying a long time. You’ve got a lot of people that have been members for three years or more. These folks that are coming in are not connecting with you. You’ve got a whole bunch that are quitting in between the second and third month. We need to focus on onboarding. We don’t have a lot that are a couple of years old. People are getting bored. They’re around for a few months or a year and then they drop out.

By looking at those numbers we can diagnose what’s going on and help them. Make sure that we address what’s the challenge. What’s the biggest mistake is that too many people focus on getting new members, “If I get new members then my membership will grow.” What I found is that having the wrong proposition, even if you’re trying to accelerate. It’s like going the wrong direction in the car even if increase the speed, it doesn’t get you to the destination any faster. That’s a similar way with membership. If you’re delivering the wrong stuff, any amount of new members isn’t going to help you.

That’s a great place to end this. A lot of people are making some mistakes and they don’t even realize they’re doing that. It’s great that you offer advice and help in this area. A lot of people are going to want to know how they can reach you to find out more about that. Do you have a website or something you’d like to share?

The best place is to start with the book. It’s available at Amazon. It’s called Retention Point. It’s all about how to get members to that point where they’re so excited to open up your emails. They couldn’t possibly think of canceling and they would want to tell all their friends about you. It’s less than $10 on Amazon or even cheaper if you want to read it on the Kindle. That’s the best place to start because I outlined this entire process of how to create those relationships.

It’s so great that your book is doing well. It was so much fun having you on this show. Thank you, Robert. It was nice to have you here.

Important Links:

• LEAP – The Coaching Movie
• Center for Body Language
• The Micro Expressions Book for Business
• Marshall Goldsmith – previous episode
• LEAP- The Coaching Movie – Amazon
• LEAP- The Coaching Movie – iTunes
• LEAP- The Coaching Movie – Google Play
• CoachingMovie.com
• Robert Skrob
• Retention Point
• Perry Marshall – previous episode

About Patryk and Kasia Wezowski

Patryk and Kasia Wezowski are the Producers of LEAP the “Coaching” movie and Founders of the Center for Body Language, the Worlds #1 Body Language Training for Business. They are keynote speakers, executives, coaches, and bestselling authors of The Micro Expressions Book for Business. They analyze celebrities and even created the first international certification standard for body language practitioners.

About Robert Skrob

Robert Skrob is the #1 expert in subscription membership retention. For more than two decades, Robert has helped hundreds of membership programs launch and then grow from start-ups to become some of the largest membership and subscription companies across the globe. He is the author of Retention Point.

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