Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners

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 
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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
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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:
Website: https://membership.io
Book "Predictable Profits": https://www.audible.com/pd/Predictable-Profits-Audiobook/B0DJTJJHKG
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stumclaren/
Podcast (Apple): https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-your-business-teaching-entrepreneurs-how/id1299443864?mt=2
Podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/0LHzoXLyImec4AbB1ZeYfW?si=5b57a4fc0fba4868
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@stume?sub_confirmation=1
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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
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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:
Website: https://membership.io
Book "Predictable Profits": https://www.audible.com/pd/Predictable-Profits-Audiobook/B0DJTJJHKG
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stumclaren/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/marketing-your-business-marketing-strategies-for-business/id1299443864
Membership.io: https://membership.io
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