Graduations are an amazing opportunity for reflection. For starters, they last for at least three hours once they begin. And my family has to arrive at least an hour early to make sure we get a good seat, near the front. This gives you plenty of time to think.
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, our son, Robert William, is headed to the University of Florida, joining their honors program to study business management and entrepreneurship. For the last several months, he’s been applying for scholarships, and has done really well.
His honors include Ignite Your Future Scholarship Award, Lir Sullivan Scholarship Award, Marvin Henderson Technology Award, Drive Smart Video Contest, and Best and Brightest of Tallahassee. Kory and I are really proud of him. And he’s excited to have put some extra cash in his pocket before he starts college.
In between all the awards ceremonies, events, and gatherings for graduation, I’ve been traveling a lot for clients. In the last few months, I have been to New York, New Jersey, South Florida, Austin, California, Connecticut, and Germany. I’ve included three key lessons learned from all this work in the next posts.
But all this travel, together with hours at the graduation ceremony, has given me time to ponder many of life’s great mysteries. One, why do some people act and do something about their plight versus all of the people who give up and give in.
Right now, there are millions of people who live in poverty. Yes, they were born into terrible circumstances. They have had bad things happen to them throughout their lives. And there’s no reason to blame them. In fact, we should offer help. But whether they transform their lives from poverty to wealth will be determined by their own decisions.
There are thousands of stories of people who grew up in terrible circumstances, faced adversity, and succeeded in transforming their lives. It comes down to whether you accept your place, or refuse to accept. As newlyweds, my wife and I owed more on credit cards than we earned in a year of working at our jobs. We lived with our daughter across the street from a drug dealer in a little yellow house. But we refused to accept that life, and made a decision to pursue a different path.
I meet people in subscription programs all the time with high churn rates, and they accept them. One told to me his churn rate, which he said was “not bad for the type of membership.” When I had the opportunity to provide a comprehensive Skrob Membership Growth Analysis, we discovered his churn rate was much higher than he thought it was. He wasn’t in the subscription business, he was in the new customer business.
He’d grown accustomed to 10 percent churn rates. It was his normal. And, because he accepted that high rate he hadn’t done anything about his churn even though his business stopped growing more than a year ago. .
Whether you have a high rate or not is determined primarily by what you accept. I know you’ve worked to lower your churn rate, done all the normal things to welcome members and stop them from quitting. But, when you are ready to get off the churn treadmill of constantly replacing members as fast as they quit, then let’s create a Skrob Membership Growth Analysis to identify your easy wins for membership growth. Start by visiting www.RobertSkrob.com/membership.
About Robert Skrob
