• 37 minutes 2 seconds
    278: She Built the Membership BEFORE the Audience (and It Worked) - Marine Lacoste

    Marine Lacoste toured the world as a musician for a decade, then built a membership business by doing everything in the "wrong" order. When COVID ended the touring income overnight, she started building online, and she built the products and the membership BEFORE she built an audience. Then she picked one platform, doubled down, and grew from a few thousand subscribers to almost 80,000.

    In this conversation, Marine reveals:

    - Why she built her membership before she had a single person to sell to

    - The one question she asked her buyers that made her double down on YouTube

    - Why YouTube monetization pays her to generate her own leads

    - The brand-new lead magnet she creates for every single video, built before she records

    - What she shows on YouTube vs. what she saves for the membership

    - The simple monthly challenge that woke up a silent community

    - How she surveys her members to find her real avatars

    - How she handles critics and the nasty comments

    FREE RESOURCE: Get the one-page content and membership playbook → https://podcast.stu.me

    CONNECT WITH MARINE:

    - Website: https://onlinerocklessons.com

    - Membership: https://onlinerocklessons.com/the-membership/

    - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OnlineRockLessons

    - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onlinerocklessons/

    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.

    20 July 2026, 11:00 am
  • 43 minutes 34 seconds
    277: Sold a $10,000 Offer Off ONE Email (Before It Existed) - Will Hamilton

    Will Hamilton has built a tennis business since 2007, and the way he markets it is a playbook any creator can steal. In this episode he breaks down the $10,000 offer he sold out off one email, the order bump that converts a third of buyers, how comedy made him a sharper copywriter, and how he gets traffic without paying for ads.

    Will's core offers are situation-based Playbooks (a physical book with QR codes), an order bump that converts about a third of buyers, a low-cost subscription to 40-plus programs, and occasional high-ticket experiences, one of which he sold out at $10,000 off a single email he wrote before the experience even existed.

    In this conversation, Will reveals: - The $67 order bump and the glove theory behind it - The $10,000 experience he validated with one email - How standup comedy made him a sharper copywriter - Why a mistake-based open beat his old videos by a mile - How he stacks open loops and holds the payoff to the final seconds - Where to put the CTA in a video (hint: not the end) - The borrowed-influence strategy he uses instead of expensive ads - Why he split tests every title and thumbnail

    FREE RESOURCE: Get the one-page content and marketing playbook → https://podcast.stu.me

    CONNECT WITH WILL: - Website: https://www.fuzzyyellowballs.com - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fuzzyyellowballs/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fuzzyyellowballsdotcom - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/FYB2007

    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.

    13 July 2026, 11:00 am
  • 15 minutes 3 seconds
    276: Make Price Resistance Disappear With One Story

    You know that moment. You share your price, and right away you can feel it: the resistance. The pushback. The pause before someone says they need to think about it. Now you're defending the number. You're explaining it. You're justifying it. All of it is tiring, because all you want is for people to see the value of what you built.

    I felt the exact opposite of that in a leather shop in Florence. I was there with my wife, my two kids, and my parents, on a trip we'd planned for months. Every other shop that day went the same way: my wife and daughter went straight for the price tag. But in this shop, things were different. Price never came up. The guy just started talking, about how they pick the leather, who makes each piece, how long one bag takes to build. By the time the number finally came up, it didn't feel expensive anymore. It felt earned. We walked out with three handbags and a wallet.

    So what was the difference? I break it down into four lessons you can use starting today. Price pushback almost always means I don't get it yet, not it costs too much. Your story isn't a nice extra, it's the actual value. Tell it before you ever get near the price. And the sale doesn't end when the sale does. I'll also walk you through one of my favorite old marketing stories: a beer company that jumped from fifth place to first without changing a single thing about the beer, only the story it told about it.

    In this episode, you'll learn:

    • Why price pushback almost always means "I don't get it yet," not "it's too much"
    • The $40 chicken menu example that shows how context changes what a price feels like
    • Three ways to tell your story: what you learned, what you built, or what it took to produce it
    • The Jason Gaynard book launch story and what it reveals about showing your process
    • Why the Schlitz beer company jumped from fifth place to first without changing the beer at all
    • The referral move from a shop worker named Smiley that turns one sale into five
    • Your action step this week: find where your story is buried on your sales page and move it up

    CONNECT WITH STU:

    Subscribe and drop a review if this one was useful.

    8 July 2026, 10:00 am
  • 36 minutes 31 seconds
    275: The Messaging Change That Took Her From 2K to 400K Followers - Lisa K

    Lisa K spent eight years stuck at about 2,000 followers. Then she changed her messaging and her content, and in twelve months went from 2,000 to over 100,000, and now past 400,000 across Instagram and Facebook. In this episode she breaks down the niche shift, the daily reel she makes in 15 minutes, what the algorithm actually rewards, and the simple funnel that made 15% of her income.

    Lisa K teaches people to use their intuition to make better decisions, with a spiritual, divine-guidance approach. She is a published author who posted for eight years while stuck at about 2,000 followers. Her big move was niching down and changing her messaging so she no longer had to convince anyone, then switching to daily short-form video built around a simple framework.

    In this conversation, Lisa reveals: - The messaging shift from broad "intuition" to a specific divine-guidance angle - Why she switched to daily reels and the three-point framework she uses - How she produces a reel every day in 15 minutes - What the Instagram algorithm actually rewards (and why saves beat likes) - The imperfect reel she posted live that pulled 14,000 views in 12 hours - The system that keeps her consistent: same setup, streak tracker, calendar alarm - The $7 funnel with a 36% order bump that she set up once - How that funnel made 14 to 15% of her income - The annual-membership jump from about 4% to 50%

    FREE RESOURCE: Get the one-page daily-content and funnel playbook → https://podcast.stu.me

    CONNECT WITH LISA: - Website: https://lisakintuition.com - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisak888/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lmk88fans

    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.

    6 July 2026, 11:00 am
  • 13 minutes 35 seconds
    274: Make AI Sound Like You in 20 Minutes (It's Free)

    A friend of Stu's, Ryan Levesque (New York Times bestselling author), was publicly accused of using AI to write his newsletter. The evidence? He used an em-dash. He's been writing with em-dashes for years. The world around him just changed how it reads.

    This is the world we're in now. Your real writing can get dismissed the second someone thinks it's AI. Stu knows this one personally. He hand-wrote a detailed, thoughtful DM response for a half-million-follower influencer who came to him for membership advice. Poured time into it. Didn't hear back for weeks. When he followed up, the person said they figured it was "a generic chat GPT response" and never engaged. It wasn't. It stung.

    But here's the fix, and it's a one-time thing. AI sounds generic because you handed it a blank page with no instructions. Build a voice guide, and AI stops sounding like everyone else. It starts sounding like you.

    In this episode, you'll learn:

    • Why the "AI tell" is a myth (Stanford researchers found AI detectors wrongly flagged over 61% of essays written by non-native English speakers as AI)
    • The three rules Ryan Levesque wrote for himself about AI (and why Stu builds on all three of them)
    • Why AI sounds like generic slop and the one-time fix that changes everything
    • What a voice guide actually is and how to build yours in about 20 minutes (free tool inside)
    • The difference between outsourcing your typing and outsourcing your thinking
    • Why feeding AI your PRESENT ideas (what happened this week, the result a member just got) is what makes your content sound fresh
    • Your action step: go to voicecloner.io this week and build the instructions that make AI sound like you

    FREE RESOURCE: https://voicecloner.io - Free voice guide tool. Answer a few questions, drop in writing samples, get a set of instructions so AI sounds like you. Takes about 20 minutes.

    CONNECT WITH STU:

    Subscribe and leave a review if this episode helped you

    3 July 2026, 10:00 am
  • 15 minutes 7 seconds
    273: She Had a 35% Show-Up Rate. One Change Fixed It

    Your campaign isn't broken. There's just one spot quietly leaking your results. After 24 years of building and fixing campaigns, here's what I've learned: when something underperforms, it's almost never the whole thing that's broken. It's one weak conversion point. And most of us do the exact wrong thing. We tear everything down and start from scratch.

    In this episode, I walk you through the exact method I use to find that one leak, and I'm going to use a real client story to show you how this works. Her name is Lisa. She came to me for a VIP day convinced she was bad at sales. Turns out, she was great at sales. She just had one broken spot in her campaign. We found it, fixed it, and her show-up rate went from 35% to 58%. Her stick rate went from 20 minutes to 45 minutes. Same audience. Same offer. Same promotion. One change. (All stats from Stu's client work, discussed in episode.)

    Here's what this comes down to: three lessons.

    Lesson one: map every single conversion point in your campaign, every yes or no moment. Lesson two: find where the numbers fall off (and I give you the benchmarks you need to know what's actually a leak). Lesson three: ask WHY it's leaking, then fix that one spot and nothing else.

    In this episode, you'll learn:

    • The "garden hose with a kink" mental model for diagnosing any flat campaign without blowing the whole thing up
    • How to map every conversion point in your campaign (ads, opt-in, show-up, stick, buy) and which ones you might be skipping
    • The exact benchmarks Stu uses: cold traffic opt-in (above 30%), warm traffic (closer to 50%), show-up rate (40-50% industry average), and stick rate sweet spot for a 60-minute session (51 minutes)
    • Why Lisa's show-up rate was tanking, and the one question Stu asked that uncovered the real reason in minutes
    • How 15 of her top 16 Instagram posts were about a completely different topic than her webinar (and what that mismatch was costing her)
    • Why comment-to-DM through ManyChat converts at 65-90% when a standard opt-in page converts at 30-50%
    • Your homework: the one-change test that tells you whether you found the real leak or just guessed wrong

    CONNECT WITH STU:

    Subscribe and leave a review if this episode gave you something to use

    1 July 2026, 3:30 pm
  • 33 minutes 5 seconds
    272: From Bankruptcy to $1 Million With Her Piggy Bank Method - Lou Clarke

    Lou Clarke's biggest client fired her when they found out she was pregnant with her third child, dropping her household from $5,000 to $1,000 a month. Then she rebuilt everything with a piggy bank. In this episode she breaks down the comeback, the $4 million she sold through Instagram DMs, and why she walked away from a thriving one-on-one business to chase a hundred-million-dollar mission.

    Lou is a third-generation bookkeeper who helps female entrepreneurs manage their money so they can keep more of what they make, without going without. After her largest client (80% of her income) fired her on learning she was pregnant with baby number three, her family went from $5,000 to $1,000 a month while carrying a new mortgage. She dug out, built a simple piggy-bank plan, discovered Profit First, and grew a multi-million-dollar one-on-one business. Now she is shifting to a one-to-many membership model to reach a much bigger mission.

    In this conversation, Lou reveals: - The client who fired her for getting pregnant (and the fall that followed) - The piggy-bank plan that took her from bankruptcy to seven figures - Profit First and the money she stacked without making more - Why doing 1,059 one-on-one calls in a year became the breaking point - "You don't need to make more money, you need to manage it better" - The 100 million dollar mission behind her pivot - How she sold over $4 million through Instagram DMs (and why she stopped) - Why she was told to stop telling her story, and what changed when she didn't

    FREE RESOURCE: Get the simple money-habits breakdown from this episode → https://podcast.stu.me

    CONNECT WITH LOU: - Instagram: https://instagram.com/thelouclarke - Website: https://www.thelouclarke.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 for new episodes every week.

    29 June 2026, 10:00 am
  • 14 minutes 18 seconds
    271: The Shortcut to Customers Nobody Talks About

    What if the fastest way to grow your audience isn't building one at all — but partnering with someone who already has the exact customers you're trying to reach?

    In this episode, Stu takes you inside a real coaching call with one of his members — a photo-book membership owner whose #1 problem is traffic. Instead of prescribing ads or more content, Stu asks one question that changes everything: "Who already has your ideal customers?" What follows is a live mapping session — seven partner types, a four-part playbook, and a simple outreach pitch that makes it easy for the right people to say yes. This is strategic co-promotion where everyone wins. And Stu breaks it all down step by step so you can start this week.

    In this episode, you'll learn:

    • The one question that reframes "how do I grow my audience?" into a strategy you can act on today

    • Why one partner workshop could bring in more customers than six months of organic posting

    • Seven partner types Stu mapped live for a photo-book membership — and how to apply the same thinking to your business

    • The two win-win program structures that partners actually want to promote (niche workshops and done-for-you templates)

    • Why the offer has to benefit their audience first — and what happens when you get this backwards

    • How to structure the deal: affiliate percentage (20-30%) or a straight co-promotion exchange

    • The simple outreach pitch that works — including how to use screenshots from their community as social proof to make it easy for them to say yes

    • Stu's closing action step: list 5-10 markets, identify 5-10 partners in each, reach out to one this week

    CONNECT WITH STU:

    RESOURCES MENTIONED:

    Subscribe to Marketing Your Business and leave a review — we just cracked the top 50 in marketing podcasts. Help us keep climbing.

    26 June 2026, 10:00 am
  • 12 minutes 48 seconds
    270: How To Find the One Story That Sells Your Offer

    Russell Brunson stood up at a charity mastermind in Nashville — $5,000 a seat, 100% to charity, 30 people in the room — and he never pitched a single thing. He just told a story. By the time he sat down, people were lining up to be part of it.

    That moment taught Stu three lessons about selling that most creators never figure out. Nobody wakes up wanting to buy your thing. They want to become someone different. And the fastest way to show them that's possible? Not a feature list. Not a price breakdown. A real person whose life changed because of what you do.

    In this episode, Stu breaks down what Russell did, why it worked, and the exact steps to apply the same approach to your course, membership, or service.

    In this episode, you'll learn:

    • Why Russell never pitched the Kenya trip — and how the room ended up begging to be part of it anyway

    • The three-lesson framework Stu extracted from watching it happen in real time

    • Why listing your features informs people but telling a story moves them — and the brain science behind why that's true

    • What Stanford's Jennifer Aker found: people remember stories up to 22 times more than facts, and 63% remember the story vs. only 5% who remember a statistic

    • The "Find Your Jane" action step — how to identify the one real person whose life your work has changed and turn their journey into your most powerful selling tool

    • Why showing beats telling every time — the role of photos, voice memos, screenshots, and real client words

    • How Jason Gaynard used the same show-don't-tell approach at his book launch party

    TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Cold Open: One Story Outsells Every Pitch 0:32 - The Nashville Mastermind (Village Impact) 1:39 - [INTRO GAP NOTE — see flags below] 1:39 - Setting the Stage: Why Russell Was There 3:53 - Meeting Jane in Kenya 5:00 - Jane Becomes Part of the Family 6:34 - The Room Reacted Without a Pitch 7:01 - Lesson 1: People Buy the Story, Not the Thing 7:53 - Find Your Jane 8:29 - Lesson 2: Your Brain Is Built for Stories 9:12 - The Jennifer Aker Stanford Research 9:49 - Lesson 3: Show, Don't Tell 10:37 - The Jason Gaynard Example 11:22 - Your Next Step: Write Jane's Story 12:08 - Stop Describing. Start Storytelling.

    CONNECT WITH STU:

    RESOURCES MENTIONED:

    Subscribe and leave a review if this episode gave you something to use.

    24 June 2026, 3:00 pm
  • 51 minutes 58 seconds
    269: Why He Sells His Most Expensive Program First (Not Last) - Victor Damasio

    Victor Damásio left law in Brazil, built a beloved marketing community, then flipped his entire value ladder and went from 20K to 200K a month. In this episode he breaks down the high-ticket-first move, the audio message he sends every new follower, the four questions that sold over 20 million, and the honest mistake he made along the way.

    Victor is a Brazilian marketer and educator who helps people get paid for what they know instead of what they do. His path: a lawyer who hated his job, then a top affiliate, then the builder of a beloved recurring membership, then a high-ticket coaching practice. His big move was reversing the conventional value ladder to lead with his most expensive offer, dropping to the low ticket only on a no.

    In this conversation, Victor reveals:

    - Why he left law (and the hard moment that pushed him)

    - The first guitar course in Brazil and the affiliate years

    - The recurring membership he built after a workshop with Stu

    - The value-ladder flip: high ticket first, low ticket only on a no

    - The honest cost of that flip and the community he let fade

    - The audio message he sends the moment someone hits follow

    - The four-question application he says sold more than 20 million dollars

    - Why his top high-ticket hire is a gatekeeper, not a paid closer

    - How becoming a father changed how he runs his whole business

    FREE RESOURCE: Get the one-page social-selling and application playbook

    -> https://podcast.stu.me

    CONNECT WITH VICTOR:

    - Instagram: https://instagram.com/victordamasio (also @victordamasiooficial)

    - Website: https://victordamasio.com

    - YouTube: https://youtube.com/@VictorDamasiooficial

    - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victordamasiooficial

    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.

    22 June 2026, 10:00 am
  • 14 minutes 6 seconds
    268: 3 Skills That Separate Great Communicators From the Rest

    Most communicators think they need to be better speakers. They don't. They need to practice three skills that almost nobody ever talks about or works on.

    In this solo episode, Stu breaks down the real difference between communicators who land their message and those who leave audiences quietly tuning out. The key isn't confidence or charisma. It's three distinct skills: Expand (the long form), Condense (the short form), and Connect (clarity at any length). Most people have only ever practiced one.

    Stu shares the story of a one-day mastermind with Amy Porterfield, Russell Brunson, and Eileen where Russell asked for three hours, got offered 90 minutes, and delivered on the fly without missing a beat. That ability to fit the message to the time is the mark of a professional. Stu also shares the Ken Davis singular-focus framework he learned on Michael Hyatt's recommendation, and the Blaise Pascal quote from the 1600s that explains exactly why condensing is harder than expanding.

    In this episode, you'll learn:

    • The three skills great communicators master that most people have never practiced (and why mastering all three changes everything)

    • Why fitting your message to the time you've been given, not the other way around, is the mark of a true professional

    • Why short is harder than long, and what Blaise Pascal wrote in the 1600s that explains it perfectly

    • The Ken Davis singular-focus question you should ask before every presentation or piece of content you create

    • Stu's 4-part teaching framework (Hook, Story, Lessons, Summary) that he uses for every episode of this podcast

    • The practical workout Stu assigns for this week: one idea, three lengths, plain words

    CONNECT WITH STU:

    Subscribe and leave a review if this episode gave you something to use.

    17 June 2026, 10:00 am
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