256: She Closed the Doors and Added 3,000 Members in ONE Week - Ali Kay
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Stu McLaren
4.9 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ali Kay closed the doors on her membership and added 3,000 new members in a single week. In this episode, she breaks down the exact 5-day workshop launch, the $10 coupon that fills day one, and the charity day that turns cart close into her biggest sales moment.
Ali Kay is a working artist who built a 6,300-member painting community by doing the opposite of what most online creators do. She closed the doors. She picked up the phone instead of running ads. She gave away her cart-close day to charity. And it worked.
In this conversation, Ali reveals:
- Why she went from an "always open" membership to a closed cart (and why it tripled her launch result)
- The $10 coupon trick that makes day one of every workshop her biggest sales day
- The charity-day strategy that turns hesitant buyers into confident members
- Why the "wakeboarding while painting" ad worked when text-heavy creatives flopped
- The exact moment she stopped feeling like she was "selling out" as an artist
FREE RESOURCE: Get the full membership launch playbook → https://podcast.stu.me
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- Instagram: https://instagram.com/alikstudio
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/alikstudio
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- Instagram: https://instagram.com/stumclaren
- Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me
- Membership.io: https://membership.io
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We had 3,000 new members join the membership in that week. |
| 0:06.0 | Which is bonkers. |
| 0:08.0 | We had over 7,000 people sign up for the workshop. |
| 0:12.0 | And this was a free workshop? |
| 0:13.0 | No, it was paid. |
| 0:14.0 | Ah! |
| 0:15.0 | What? |
| 0:16.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:17.0 | And I needed to now support 4,448 people. |
| 0:20.0 | I remember the number. |
| 0:21.6 | If I can get 600 new members, that would be amazing and then I would feel safe. |
| 0:27.6 | And my phone just would ding nonstop for like hours that day. |
| 0:32.6 | It was the craziest thing. |
| 0:34.6 | That was Allie K. She's a self-taught artist, founder of Ali Kay Studio, and the person |
| 0:41.3 | behind one of the fastest growing painting memberships that I have ever seen. She started with one |
| 0:45.9 | course filmed on her iPad. Now she has 6,300 plus members. Today we're talking about the quiet |
| 0:52.0 | goal she set for her first big launch versus the |
| 0:54.8 | number she actually hit, the $10 coupon trick that fills day one of every launch and why she |
| 1:00.4 | gives away her biggest sales day every single time. And wait until you hear what happened, |
| 1:05.5 | the moment her husband retired into the business she once called a side thing. It's so good and so inspirational. |
| 1:13.0 | Let's get into it. So, Ali, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me here. |
| 1:16.9 | Okay, I have lots to dig in too because you have changed your overall marketing approach, |
... |
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