261: The 3 Reasons Your Audience Isn't Growing
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Stu McLaren
4.9 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You've built something great. World-class quality, loyal customers, and yet you're roughly the same size you were last year. If that's you, this episode is for you.
This week I'm taking you behind the scenes of my son's Canadian National Jump Rope Championships, where I watched world-class athletes do things that take hundreds of hours of practice, in front of an audience that's far too small for how good they are. As I watched, I kept thinking like a business owner, and I saw three clear ways the sport could grow almost immediately. The same three things holding skipping back are quietly holding a lot of businesses back right now.
I walk you through all three: making your customers the heroes of your stories (the way Drive to Survive and Welcome to Wrexham grew their audiences), opening the door to sponsorships and strategic partnerships (including how our mastermind client Tara Phillips landed Sesame Street, Melissa and Doug, and Beaches Resorts), and building recurring revenue that funds full-time focus instead of capping you at "evenings and weekends." If you've got a great thing that just isn't reaching enough people yet, these three lessons are your roadmap.
In this episode, you'll learn:
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Why people fall in love with the people in a sport, not the sport itself, and how to apply that to your business
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How the very first sponsor or partner unlocks the next ten (and why momentum creates momentum)
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Why a passion project run on evenings and weekends can never become a category-defining business, and what recurring revenue unlocks
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Three questions to sit down with this week to reshape how you think about growth
CONNECT WITH STU:
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Website: https://stu.me
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Book "Predictable Profits": https://a.co/d/4GIi1uz
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/stumclaren
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Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me
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Membership.io: https://membership.io
Subscribe and leave a review if this episode helped you. It means the world and helps more business owners find the show.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you've built something great, but the audience isn't growing, this episode is for you. |
| 0:05.1 | World class quality, loyal customers, and the same size you were last year. |
| 0:10.1 | That's where a lot of business owners are stuck, and I just saw the exact same thing playing |
| 0:14.7 | out at my son's national skipping championships. Three frustrations and three lessons and three things you can apply |
| 0:23.4 | this week. Let me tell you what I saw. Welcome to marketing your business. I'm Stu McLaren, |
| 0:28.3 | co-founder of membership.io, and author of Predictable Profits. Now here's the truth. You are one |
| 0:34.3 | great marketing idea away from transforming your business. |
| 0:38.5 | One strategy can be the difference between struggling and thriving, between a business that drains you and one that fuels your life. |
| 0:45.6 | Every episode, you're going to get specific tactics you need to build your audience, attract more customers, and scale your business all without the burnout. |
| 0:54.0 | These are real strategies, |
| 0:55.6 | real numbers, real behind the scenes. Buckle your seatbelts, my friend. Let's go. |
| 1:02.4 | So I just got back with my family and we were out west in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada. |
| 1:09.6 | And we were there because my son was competing in the Canadian |
| 1:13.3 | National Jump Rope Championships. This was the National Championships for skipping or jump rope. |
| 1:19.7 | He got into it four years ago when he was eight and now he's 12. And so this is his fourth championship. |
| 1:26.2 | And it's just an incredible, incredible sport. I had no idea about it actually until he got into fourth championship and it's just an incredible incredible sport i had no idea about |
| 1:29.5 | it actually until he got into it but it's a lot like swimming where they have multiple events |
| 1:35.0 | there's also individual events there's team events um but there's a whole lot going on there's power |
| 1:42.5 | events speed events endurance freestyle, and then |
| 1:46.3 | you have double dutch and wheel and there's all kinds of craziness. But anyways, there's so much |
| 1:52.6 | amazingness happening at these championships. For example, there was the endurance event. And |
| 1:58.8 | any time you have an endurance event or a speed event, |
... |
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