 Hello. So there is a common joke in the wine industry, and it goes a little something like this. If you want to make a million dollars selling wine, then it's good to start with $2 million. So the reason for that is the wine business is incredibly expensive. You have to grow the grapes, that's super expensive. You have to make the wine, it's pricey. And then if you have the gall to actually want to sell your wine in a restaurant or in a retail location like a grocery store, you have to go through something called the three-tier system, meaning that you first have to sell your wine to a distributor who then sells the wine to a retailer who then sells it to the consumer. And the markup usually doubles at each tier. So what that looks like is if you can produce a bottle of wine for $3, you're going to be selling it to a distributor for six, who's going to be selling it to a retailer for 12, who then sells it to URI for 24. So we can all do the math here, not only are you and I getting screwed, but the potential profit for a winery through distribution is only $3 per bottle, whereas if they could figure out how to sell direct to the consumer through their tasting room or their e-commerce or through where I focus my energy through wine club memberships, then their potential profit was $21 per bottle. So the reality really is that for a smaller boutique winery in the United States, selling through distribution is pretty much a financial impossibility. They just can't do it. So for over six years, when I worked in the wine industry with clients, I helped them grow their memberships and also helped them retain their members as long as possible. And after I launched program after program with my clients, I started noticing a couple patterns. I ended up developing a formula that resulted in one of my clients actually being able to allocate 100% of all of their wine that they sold directly to their wine club membership. And I wholeheartedly believe that this same formula can be applied to the float industry to help you guys grow your membership. So if you're okay, I'd like to share that formula with you. All right. So very catchy, I know, I call it the membership formula. And there are three crucial steps to recruiting and retaining members that operate in a really symbiotic fashion. So you can kind of employ each of these on your own. And many people actually do without even knowing it. But the real power is when you intentionally engage all three of these things to work together and off of each other. All right. So I'm going to go through all these in more detail. But just as an overview, one, you want to create an irresistible and exclusive offer. Number two, you want to facilitate your members' transformation. And number three, you want to curate an empowered community. And once you kind of fire up that engine, fire up that system, that's when you get more members into your business. All right. So let's dive into number one, creating an irresistible and exclusive offer. Now before I really go deep here, let's make sure that we're all on the same page about what an offer actually is. Your offer is a proposed exchange of value. So your customers are coming to you and giving you cash in exchange for benefits that they want associated with their health and wellness and self-care. And at the end of the day, your customers have to believe in their head and in their heart that they are getting the better end of the deal here. That they're making out like hotcakes and that the value and benefits they're receiving from your membership far exceed the cost to join. So this is probably the hardest thing for any business to figure out is this irresistible offer because you have to make it really sweet, otherwise it's not going to be compelling enough for people to join. So that's your number one objective here. So what are the elements of an irresistible offer? So the stack of value you provide has to be perceived as greater than the value paid. So I kind of talked about this, but here I am referencing something called the stack of value. So your offer is not something that's one-dimensional. It's actually has to be multi-dimensional. If you can't just have like $10 off a monthly float and expect that to be compelling for people. So you want to, if that's the foundation of your offer, that's fine, but then you want to create a myriad of value around that. And so one way to do this is to identify all of your customer's objections to why they would not want to join a monthly program and create value or benefits that actually totally kill those objections outright. Just eliminate them from their mind or from a reference. So risk reversal is a big one. People don't want to feel like they have to commit to something for too long, especially when it's their finances that are involved. So can you eliminate any long-term commitments? You know, think about ways that you can kind of minimize risk for your customer that makes them feel confident and secure. Other examples are time. So people in talking with a lot of people this week, you know, people are kind of, they're one of the big objections I'm hearing is that people just don't have time to commit to come in monthly. So maybe you can have, if you have credits in your membership program, have rollover credits. These are all aspects of an offer that kind of make that one aspect of it sweeter. Another thing is, you know, budget, right? So people are not really sure if they should be spending their money with your float center or if they should be going to yoga class or hiring a personal trainer, you know, something else related to their health and wellness. And so one way to overcome that objection is to potentially partner with local businesses. Gloria referenced that this morning, I think it's brilliant, where, you know, you create some value add for people around their health and wellness in the form of, you know, partnerships in your community where they get good deals elsewhere. So that all helps. And then lastly, your customer has to be able to see themselves in the future enjoying and experiencing the benefits. So this is especially important when you're wanting people to come in on a monthly basis. So what could this look like? One way that people have that I see here are the birthday floats, right? Free birthday floats. That's very compelling. My birthday is in November. If I was presented with an offer where I got pretty much a gift in November of floating, that would be compelling to me. That would help make that offer more irresistible. All right, so before I move on, the beauty of creating a truly irresistible offer is that it sells itself. Now, I know a lot of people here in this room are a little hesitant. They don't want to be pushy or overly salesy in their float centers. And really all you have to do, just create an irresistible offer. And you don't have to be pushy or salesy. All you have to do is introduce that offer to the customers that come into your door and let them go through that decision-making process in their mind. And you will increase your membership that way, I guarantee it. But that is just one part of the whole working cog. So an exclusive offer. Real quick, this is pretty easy. You want your members to have to feel like they are getting, they have to feel like they're getting a better deal and a different deal than anywhere else or anyone else. So never undercut your VIPs. Your members are your VIPs in your business. You never want to undercut them. Give them the best that you got. So if you're running Groupon and people aren't joining your membership, that could be some place that you could look at and see, okay, is Groupon really undercutting my membership opportunity? And see where that is. And again, Gloria referenced this morning, her valued nation. Is that what it was called? I think it was called. But she always gives best pricing to her members and that's a really compelling tool. Now, a word on discounting. Giving the best deal does not mean that you always have to discount. Discounts are a great, especially if price is an objection with your customers. Discounting is a great tool. I would never hesitate not to use it if it was the right thing to do. But I don't want people to feel like that's like the end all be all, the crux of having a membership program. Rather, find what your sweet spot is. Where do you want your membership price point to land? Set it at that and then just focus, put all your energy in creating as much value around that as possible. And it will be a win for you and your business. It'll be sustainable. It'll be a win for your customers as well. All right, so winery case study. That's right, we're here to talk about wine too. So with my client, where 100% of the wine that we sold went to our members. They had a great, irresistible offer. So they definitely eliminated risk. It was month to month, people could cancel anytime. We made it super easy. We didn't want anyone to feel pressure to stay a part of the membership. Ironically, they ended up did feeling pressure to stay because there was scarcity involved. And if they left, they might not have been able to come back in. So there's a pain of disconnect. But really, we made it very easy. We didn't want people to feel pressure. Members always received the best price. We had a 15% discount. But interestingly enough too, discounts were not a big motivator for our community, that wasn't like the driving force. It was just a nice to have that we felt was good value add. And then we also had member-only events. So we had about four events a year. And they got to look forward to these events. They planned around them. They got to see themselves in the future coming to these events. This was an incredibly powerful tool for us. And then really the driver of this program was exclusivity. Because we made specific wines just for our membership that really helped us. It was very exclusive. If you want to connect the dots a little bit, preferred times for your VIPs to come floating, that might be something. So how can you create exclusivity in your membership for your members? So number two, you want to facilitate their transformation. So a byproduct of creating this irresistible and exclusive offer is going to be more members into your float center. It's just going to happen. So you want to plan for it, prepare for it, and get excited about it. But you do not want to leave anyone hanging. Leave them at the altar, so to speak. When people join your membership, consider that the start of their journey with you. When a client comes to me and says, hey, I'm getting all these members, which is great, but my retention sucks. This is actually the first place that I look. Are you helping fulfill your obligation to get your members through that transformative process to help them evolve as customers? They're going to come into your float center curious. How are you going to take them through the journey and have them create a ritual and a habit in their life of floating? That's your responsibility as a float tank owner. So that's just, and that's the same as if it's your responsibility to introduce them to your offer. So there's a lot on you guys. You have a lot of responsibility here. But this not only helps your customers with their experience, but it also helps create very loyal customers, lifelong customers for your business. So what does this look like? You have to constantly reinforce their good decision to join and the reasons why they joined. This is key. And this is something that a lot of people miss when they are communicating with their customers and clients and on social media. You're always reinforcing their good decision. Because you want people to be keeping it front of mind that they are supposed to be coming back month after month, right? So it doesn't have to be like banging them over the head. But you just really want to be subtly in your communication strategy, just make sure that you're always kind of congratulating people. People like to have, you know, props for a job well done. We'll congratulate them and give them a props for joining your membership all the time. You have to educate them on floating. So you're here at this float conference. The float conference is facilitating your transformation as a float industry professional. Go home and implement and distill all this information and translate it so your customers can understand it and then educate them. But you have to, it's not a one way street. So communication doesn't just, don't just put it in a newsletter and send it out on a monthly basis and leave it at that and say, okay, I'm educating. No, you have to get people to respond to you. You have to get your members and your customers to open up with you about your transformation. I think this is incredibly important for this industry specifically because it hasn't found a tipping point yet with customers and the culture. So people, you might be the only person in your floater, your customer's life that they can actually talk to about what floating means to them or how it's changing them inside and how they feel. So be available to people and that self-discovery and being able, people to be able to open up like that helps with their self-discovery. And that's incredibly powerful and they will appreciate you for it. It'll help you build relationships with people and that can be incredibly effective for retention in your membership. And bonus, how can you further assist? My gosh, my time is totally running out. Sorry, how can you further assist their health and wellness transformation? This goes back to the partnerships that I was referencing and then gloried it. So I'm going to kind of hurry up. At the end of the day, this is the mountaintop that you want to reach. You want your members to associate your center with their journey to better health and wellness. So if you can accomplish this in people's minds and hearts, you have customers for life. So this right here is maybe the most important thing that you can do in your business for retention. All right, case study, our wines were just Pinot Noir. We had different clones of Pinot Noir. So we had like four different clones of Pinot Noir. That's super geeky, super intellectual, very nuanced. Most people don't understand what I'm talking about. So when people came to us, we were really, really good at converting people into memberships. But we quickly found out that we needed to have them evolve their experience from novice, casual wine drinker to someone that really understood their palate and felt savvy and educated about wine. And so we actually held these events. We thought at the beginning we had to do all these fancy events, themes, parties, whatever, but it ended up being that the most important thing that we could do was hold these tasting events where it was very strategic, just help people understand their palate. And we repeated these events over and over again. That repetition really drilled down the concept of people and got them transforming in their minds about their wine experience. So that was really helpful. All right. Number three, you want to curate an empowered community. So let your members become your ambassadors. Now this will happen naturally if you do one and number two effectively, all right? So this might sound like a loaded gun, but really just let this happen naturally. But you can help this along by giving members the tools and opportunities to support them in introducing your float center to their friends and family. So things like exclusive events, transferable perks, gift memberships, referral programs, all that kind of stuff that you're all familiar with, but make it an intentional integration into the whole kind of recruiting and retaining aspect of your business. And this will kind of fire the engines up and get it all running. So with our winery case study again at the beginning, we only had these events where people really got this like transformative experience only for our members. We didn't have enough space to really allow the public in. And eventually we're like, okay, well, we know that our members love us and they're not leaving, but we're really struggling with having them refer other people to us. So what's going on? So we ended up opening up these events and allowing our members to invite upwards of two people, two of the event, room permitting, and these were paid, they didn't get anything for free. And once we allowed our members to bring people in their life along with their journey of transformation about, you know, gosh, like this is where I've really learned how to appreciate wine and Pinot Noir and my pal and all this stuff, that was just like a game changer. Once that happened, there was almost a viral component to what we were doing. And soon we didn't have any room in our wine club and there ended up being a year-long waiting list for people to join. All right, so that was the membership formula wrapped up in a quick 15 minutes. Now I know that the wine industry and the float tank industry seems like night and day, but I promise you that the method for recruiting and retaining members is exactly the same. You want to create that irresistible and exclusive offer, you want to facilitate their transformation, and you want to curate an empowered community. And once you go through all of those threes, it will start working. If you have any questions, my email address, you can find it at fillyourfloattank.com, gord slash float con. There I have my email address, I have these slides if you'd like to take them home with you in addition to some other resources if you're interested. So I just want to thank you so much for having me and good luck filling your float tank.