I’m a recovering couch potato. When I started running five years ago, my goal was to run three miles without stopping. I’d never run more than half a mile, so three sounded like a huge stretch. My wife and I are now preparing to run in the 2016 Boston Marathon. I don’t enjoy driving 26 miles, much less running it! But my wife worked hard and qualified by running a 3 hour and 37 minute marathon last year, so we are going to Boston.
Marathon training takes up a lot of time. My work with clients, my time with family, and the Florida State Seminoles football games take up the rest of my waking hours. But, when you have big goals, you’ve got to make choices.
I have a client who is a high-performer, in business and in life. He’s an athlete who takes pride in his workout regimen. He’s building a business that’s been recognized as one of the fastest growing in the country. He’s building a team, filling in the gaps when a job needs to get done, and is traveling more than 60 percent of the time, either selling, building partnerships, or fulfilling what he already sold.
He takes on every goal, seizes every opportunity, and implements every idea. As a result, he’s working six days a week, 14-hour days, and is running himself into the ground. What’s worse, he’s becoming frustrated because the harder he works, the harder the world seems to push back. His business has become a Whack-a-Mole game where he’s got to produce work and resolve problems as urgent emergencies present themselves.
Imagine for a moment if, in addition to training for my first Boston Marathon, I also decided to bike 100 miles a week, swim five miles a week, take up a daily CrossFit class, as well as classes in yoga and Pilates. Chances are I’d be tired. I’m not about to try this regimen, but I’m guessing I’d make less progress on my marathon training if I did. I’d wear out my body and begin losing much of the progress I’ve made in my primary goal of marathon training.
One ambitious goal is enough. Five, six, or seven ambitious goals only diffuses your efforts.
My client views saying no to an idea as a failure. To choose between implementing a new initiative or delaying it as a win-lose. Unfortunately, he doesn’t yet realize clarity creates great power. The definition of priority is one. Every gardener knows the fastest growth comes after thorough pruning.
I’ve have an interesting observation over the last few months since I started offering to provide my $995.00 Member Retention Analysis reports for free to The Skrob Report subscribers (www.MemberRetentionAnalysis.com.) When clients submit their own data using my online tool, the average churn rate (average number of monthly dropped members divided by the number of members at the beginning of the month) is 6.2 percent. A churn rate of 6.2 percent isn’t very good as it means you are losing 100 percent of your members within 16 months.
What’s interesting about this is when I have the opportunity to pull reports from my clients’ Infusionsoft applications, I discover that their actual churn rate is an average of double what they calculated using my automatic online tool. This means the real average churn rate is closer to 12.4 percent, meaning you have to replace 100 percent of your members every 8 months. Because of this calculation, member marketers are walking around underestimating the size of their retention problems.
As you learned from the Perry Marshall Mastermind Club story a couple of weeks ago, this analysis can uncover simple changes that can yield big breakthroughs. Perry’s numbers illustrated that his long-term members loved his program for many years. We were able to focus our efforts on building trust with new members. One priority to make a large impact.
Your business growth rate is based in large part on the success (or lack thereof) of your membership program. If you find yourself running around, spread too thin and working too hard, it could be because you have member retention problems that, if fixed, could help your business grow a lot more easily. Members spend more with you than non-members, they are more likely to come to conferences, and they are much more likely to recommend your program to someone else. Growing your membership is the shortcut to growing your business.
Is your membership program strong enough to grow a successful business for you? There are answers within your membership numbers. It usually only takes Denise a day or so to pull the necessary reports from your Infusionsoft app. She’s a Certified Infusionsoft partner on my team, and she’s been pulling membership reports from Infusionsoft for me and my clients for more than 10 years now.
Don’t feel bad if your numbers aren’t what you’d like them to be. Together, we’ll identify opportunities to prune programs, benefits, and work that’s diverting attention and resources away from your goals. Your secrets are safe with me. By trusting me to review your program, we’ll be able to identify your single best opportunity for trading frustration, overwork, and slow progress for steady membership business growth.
About Robert Skrob
