Dan Martell - December 05, 2025


How I Built a $100M Business that Never Loses Customers

Topics
growth ceiling cancelation notification flow talk to customers weekly
Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Jane Retina Display Taki Moore Creator Bobby Matt
I had a meeting with my son.. Every business I own has this one rule

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

208.76

Word count

4,335

Sentence count

260


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dan Martell, CEO of Martell Ventures, a portfolio of companies that generates over $100M in revenue, shares the simple 7 step process we use in all my companies to keep more customers paying us month over month, and make more money in the process.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I'm Dan Martell, CEO of Martell Ventures,
00:00:02.140 a portfolio of companies that generates
00:00:03.900 over $100 million in revenue.
00:00:05.860 But we wouldn't be able to drive that amount of revenue
00:00:08.220 if we didn't understand how to keep more customers.
00:00:11.860 So I'm gonna share with you the simple seven-step process
00:00:14.640 we use in all my companies to keep more customers
00:00:17.440 paying us month over month over month
00:00:19.880 and make more money in the process.
00:00:21.760 Because losing a customer that you spend a ton of money
00:00:24.300 to get is crazy expensive.
00:00:26.180 And as business owners,
00:00:27.100 the number one thing you need to run your business
00:00:29.640 is money. So let's get into it. Step number one, we need to understand our growth ceiling.
00:00:34.820 See, every business has a point in the future that no matter how many customers they add,
00:00:39.680 they won't grow. Let's say you have 10 customers today, but every month that goes by, you add five
00:00:44.920 customers per month, but you're currently losing 10% per month. Well, if you have 10 today, 10%
00:00:50.380 is just one. It's not a big deal. But if you keep adding five per month, that's another 45 over the
00:00:55.960 next nine months, 10% of that now is five. Think about it. If you churn 10% of your customers every
00:01:02.480 month, then every 10 months, you've lost 100% of those customers that you had. So you got to keep
00:01:08.180 adding more just to replenish. That's your growth ceiling. It's just like a leaky bucket. When you
00:01:13.520 have a lot of water in the bucket and you have a little hole, it's not a big deal. But the hole
00:01:17.400 gets bigger because the bucket gets bigger and there's more pressure pushing out of it. That is
00:01:21.520 essentially how much water you can keep in your bucket. Plugging that hole is way more valuable
00:01:26.760 than pouring more water in the top. So that's why we have to ask the question, how do we keep our
00:01:31.440 customers from leaving? Step two, we have to capture the cancel. What's crazy is that when
00:01:36.520 somebody leaves, it's super possible to stop them from canceling if we just create a cancellation
00:01:41.940 capture system. Like I'm not trying to stop people from canceling. I just want to ask them why.
00:01:47.020 Think about a restaurant.
00:01:48.080 You have a kitchen that's putting out food.
00:01:50.200 30% of it's coming back to the kitchen uneaten.
00:01:53.280 And the chef never asks himself,
00:01:55.280 why are all these plates of chicken coming back, not eaten?
00:01:57.580 The whole point is for the chef to get out onto the floor,
00:02:01.180 introduce themselves, and just ask,
00:02:02.860 I'm curious, sir, did you not enjoy your chicken?
00:02:05.280 Or ma'am, I'm curious, did you not enjoy the dessert?
00:02:07.600 Fix it, then make it right.
00:02:09.360 And then the person might actually come back
00:02:11.400 to that same restaurant knowing that the chef listened.
00:02:14.480 here's four things that you don't wanna miss
00:02:16.820 when you create your cancellation capture system.
00:02:18.620 The first is we need to figure out the reason.
00:02:21.000 Is the reason somebody's canceling because of the cost?
00:02:23.840 Is the service too confusing?
00:02:25.580 Are we missing a feature, a benefit?
00:02:27.720 You're just not using it.
00:02:28.920 You're switching to something else.
00:02:30.540 If I can at least understand why,
00:02:32.360 then I have an opportunity to do something with it.
00:02:34.300 Again, I'm not stopping them, I just wanna learn.
00:02:36.560 Next, we wanna branch the offer,
00:02:38.540 meaning that based on each one of those options,
00:02:41.160 we can produce a different sub option
00:02:44.040 to hopefully capture the person from leaving.
00:02:46.740 The key is never discount your product
00:02:48.780 because then all of a sudden you're downgrading the value.
00:02:51.340 I'll always take things away
00:02:52.720 to something that I publicly communicated,
00:02:55.280 but I don't like discounting.
00:02:56.500 It's a bad habit to get into.
00:02:57.900 If it's cost, we might ask them,
00:02:59.540 are you looking to pause for a few days?
00:03:01.480 So that way you don't have to pay for two or three months
00:03:03.880 because you're moving
00:03:04.660 and you won't have a chance to consume this.
00:03:06.180 Whatever it is, you can offer them a downgrade
00:03:09.240 to a different plan.
00:03:10.000 if they say it's confusing well then i can offer to get on a 15 minute setup call or a guided tour
00:03:15.480 with somebody on my team if they're not using it maybe i can offer different ways that they can
00:03:19.860 consider using it maybe they just didn't know the product did something if it's missing a feature
00:03:23.960 maybe i have a workaround that i've documented that they don't know about that i can send it to
00:03:27.860 them maybe i can capture the feature request and say hey this is something we're going to build
00:03:31.680 over the next 30 days and when we launch it we'll let you know and then if they're switching you can
00:03:36.180 say you can switch, but I just want you to know that once you leave, your current data will be
00:03:40.100 deleted, right? Do you want to like keep your account active on a lower plan so that you can
00:03:44.000 at least export your data in the future if you want to? Which takes me to the next step, which
00:03:48.020 is create some kind of notification that reminds them what they're losing. Maybe they bought when
00:03:53.360 your product was a lot cheaper. Maybe that in the future when they reactivate, you now have this new
00:03:58.500 fee. Whatever it is that you offer, just let them know what they're going to lose and make them
00:04:02.800 confirm that as a way to get them to think twice before canceling. And the last thing is you got to
00:04:08.400 follow up. Sometimes people leave not because they don't want to use a product, but maybe they change
00:04:12.560 jobs. What if you follow up and you find an opportunity to maybe sell your product or service
00:04:17.000 in the new place where they went to work? Just following up to offer help after they've canceled
00:04:22.060 just sets you on a different level of customer experience than they're probably used to, which
00:04:26.720 will get positive word of mouth marketing on your behalf. To make this even easier, I linked the
00:04:31.860 exact cancellation flow, the wireframes, the copy, the button clicks, everything that I use in all of
00:04:37.500 my companies that you can steal from me. I've paid tens of thousands of dollars to develop this with
00:04:42.120 a UX designer and I'm giving it to you free. Just click the link below in the descriptions and
00:04:46.400 download your copy. Now that you set that up, it's time to make sure customers don't cancel in the
00:04:51.160 first place. Step number three, speed up first value. Click, click, value. My whole motto in life
00:04:58.460 is as soon as somebody pays,
00:05:00.200 how fast can I get them a win?
00:05:02.280 If you shorten the time
00:05:03.680 that somebody becomes a customer
00:05:05.260 in from days to minutes
00:05:07.580 that they get value,
00:05:09.200 they will stay.
00:05:10.280 Like when you get a new phone,
00:05:11.920 the setup time takes like three minutes or less.
00:05:14.700 That's by design.
00:05:16.020 One of my portfolio companies at Martell Ventures
00:05:18.180 is called Precision.
00:05:19.060 And essentially they take an onboarding process
00:05:22.280 that's done with voice
00:05:23.820 and they use AI to automatically create
00:05:26.460 all their business scorecards in minutes.
00:05:28.980 That way nobody has to wait, the process is done
00:05:31.520 and the client's getting results immediately.
00:05:33.840 So how do you do this?
00:05:35.200 You go through what I call a time to first value sprint.
00:05:38.460 It's a four-step process.
00:05:39.840 The first thing is we have to define the value event.
00:05:43.040 Essentially, what's the event that the customers,
00:05:45.380 if they experience, they would brag about?
00:05:47.320 You know, so one of my portfolio companies,
00:05:48.820 youratlas.com, they have this rule,
00:05:50.920 your first 10 calls perform.
00:05:52.620 If they can get their product to do 10 calls on your behalf,
00:05:55.900 as fast as possible, then you're gonna be like,
00:05:58.540 wow, that's amazing and tell everybody about it.
00:06:00.620 The second step is we have to remove all friction
00:06:03.600 from that process.
00:06:04.780 I'm talking defer integrations, give them auto defaults,
00:06:09.460 like offer sample data or templates,
00:06:11.840 like whatever you can do to make that first experience,
00:06:15.260 that time to first value, just frictionless
00:06:17.600 and don't make them think.
00:06:19.500 Like I was saying, youratlas.com,
00:06:21.300 they give the call scripts and best practices
00:06:23.460 and it's built into the software.
00:06:25.100 so you don't have to think.
00:06:27.140 The third is you have to design that path.
00:06:30.220 Click, click, value.
00:06:31.680 The two to three clicks has to end
00:06:33.960 in the customer experiencing the value.
00:06:35.960 When you installed, let's say like Instagram,
00:06:37.880 when it launched, it was the easiest way
00:06:40.220 to take a picture, add a filter,
00:06:42.040 and post it on your social media profile.
00:06:44.060 That's all it did.
00:06:44.880 It did a bunch of other stuff,
00:06:46.320 but it didn't even talk about that
00:06:47.920 because it wanted to get you to take a picture,
00:06:51.040 add a filter, post it on Twitter,
00:06:52.880 post it on Facebook, post it on text message,
00:06:55.520 share it with a friend, that's it.
00:06:56.980 They knew if they could get every new signup to do that,
00:07:00.160 then the person would then go,
00:07:01.660 hey, how does this feed work?
00:07:02.660 How does the messaging work?
00:07:03.600 Don't confuse the experience by adding other stuff.
00:07:06.280 The fourth and last is alerting.
00:07:08.380 I think of it as like nudging the person along.
00:07:11.320 So if somebody signs up for your product or service
00:07:13.440 and they don't get to step one or two or three,
00:07:16.940 you need to create trigger notifications
00:07:19.320 via email and SMS to get them back into your world,
00:07:23.440 maybe back on a call or back in your app
00:07:25.380 and just nudge them to get started
00:07:27.200 to get to that core value.
00:07:29.640 See, the key is, is don't add more features or content
00:07:32.800 because sometimes your customers
00:07:34.080 just need to consume more.
00:07:36.000 The more they use, the more they'll stay.
00:07:38.440 So now that they got to fast value,
00:07:40.740 it's time to map the path so nobody gets lost.
00:07:44.740 Step four, map the golden path.
00:07:47.220 If you have a bunch of customers
00:07:49.080 and you don't know what the best customers are doing
00:07:52.100 that caused them to wanna stay,
00:07:54.280 then what we have to do is analyze the click stream.
00:07:57.120 So it's a software term, but it applies to every business.
00:07:59.660 If somebody came into your retail store
00:08:01.940 and they spent $1,500, but they've been there before,
00:08:05.680 and you could identify the 25 customers
00:08:07.880 that spent $1,500 or more,
00:08:09.800 and then work back from the first time
00:08:12.540 they ever walked into your store
00:08:13.840 to figure out what that interaction looked like
00:08:16.580 that would cause them to trust you
00:08:18.320 to want to spend $1,500 in your retail store,
00:08:21.240 you might discover that 90% of them talk to Jane.
00:08:24.900 Oh, interesting.
00:08:26.160 What did Jane say to them?
00:08:27.760 Because if I can figure out what experience
00:08:30.040 they all had in common,
00:08:31.820 then I can replicate and front load that experience.
00:08:35.340 That's why it's called a click stream analysis.
00:08:37.900 So to implement a click stream analysis
00:08:40.000 to design your golden path,
00:08:41.680 these are the four things you need.
00:08:43.200 First, we have to design some event maps.
00:08:45.560 They're essentially like these milestones, right?
00:08:47.960 things like signed up, started the setup, first value. See, if you can create these milestones
00:08:53.960 in a process or what I call the customer journey, then you can figure out what parts people are
00:08:58.840 getting stuck at. If I sit down with you and I say, okay, all your new customers, what's the flow
00:09:04.620 from the moment they give you a dollar to them becoming valuable or retained? And if you haven't
00:09:10.760 designed that map, then you don't know it. The next step is to create a funnel dashboard.
00:09:15.580 essentially take that flow and put it into a funnel so that you know okay everybody that
00:09:21.740 walked into our store that was 100 how many people went and tried something on oh that was
00:09:27.160 only 50 how many of those people then went and bought anything oh that's only 10 what caused
00:09:32.580 the drop off well maybe while they were in the change room somebody working there could have
00:09:37.380 came with different color options or size options and recommended that because when i go to lululemon
00:09:42.820 and let me tell you, they do that.
00:09:44.580 They have blackboards in the changing rooms
00:09:46.760 that when I give feedback to the staff, they write it down.
00:09:50.320 And at the end of the day, they take a picture
00:09:51.820 and send that back to the product managers
00:09:54.060 so they know what the customer is saying.
00:09:55.960 So in software, we use the data, the analytics
00:09:58.920 to understand that
00:09:59.920 because the customer doesn't have to tell us,
00:10:01.260 we can just look at it.
00:10:02.640 But if you have a retail store collecting that feedback
00:10:05.600 at the point of the activity
00:10:08.140 is where you're gonna find the opportunities
00:10:09.560 to create innovation.
00:10:10.600 The third step is we have to fix the interface.
00:10:13.300 We have to fix the experience, right?
00:10:15.280 So it might be that they got confused,
00:10:17.260 add some copies so that it's not confusing.
00:10:19.680 I don't know what to do next, put some signs up.
00:10:22.460 My son the other day bought a course, okay?
00:10:24.380 He's 13 years old, bought his first course.
00:10:26.600 He spent 50 bucks.
00:10:27.720 As soon as he spent the 50 bucks,
00:10:29.460 he was like, okay, now what do I do?
00:10:31.400 Nowhere on the thank you page after taking his money
00:10:33.980 did it say, go check your inbox.
00:10:36.100 One simple fix would have saved him a support email
00:10:39.340 because that's what my son did instead.
00:10:40.920 It sounds so simple, but those little tweaks
00:10:43.340 will change the whole flow of your customer experience.
00:10:45.840 And the last one is we wanna create targets
00:10:47.820 for each one of those milestones.
00:10:49.960 We wanna sit down with the team and say,
00:10:51.240 how do we increase the throughput of that funnel?
00:10:54.360 One time I was working with a client
00:10:55.640 and I noticed that all their top customers
00:10:57.900 invited other team members to join the software
00:11:00.980 to review and be involved in the tool.
00:11:03.760 It was a reporting tool.
00:11:04.880 So part of the onboarding for that software was asking,
00:11:08.680 who are three or four other people on your team
00:11:10.960 that you would want to have access to that report?
00:11:12.940 Then all of a sudden you have three or four other people
00:11:14.800 that get an email notification,
00:11:16.140 they come back into the tool.
00:11:17.700 When they're doing stuff on the report in your tool,
00:11:20.140 you can email the original person
00:11:21.520 who signed up for the software
00:11:22.500 to let them know that Bobby just did something,
00:11:25.160 brings them back in the tool,
00:11:26.540 which means they're using the tool
00:11:28.100 and that creates retention.
00:11:29.540 Like I said, the more consumption, the more retention.
00:11:32.400 So you wanna create targets for your team to hit
00:11:34.820 and then come up with creative ideas like that
00:11:36.980 based on the data that might improve the golden path.
00:11:39.940 Now, data is great,
00:11:41.120 but real words from real customers is a lot better
00:11:44.020 if you want your customers to stick around.
00:11:45.740 Step number five, talk to customers weekly.
00:11:48.580 This is my biggest pet peeve,
00:11:50.100 especially for you software nerds out there.
00:11:52.440 Stop hiding behind your computer.
00:11:55.060 Like I said, if you owned a retail store,
00:11:57.480 if you were hiding in the back office,
00:11:59.440 looking at cameras and you watch 100 people come in,
00:12:02.380 not buy anything and then leave your store
00:12:04.780 and you're like, why are they doing that?
00:12:06.340 So you think I need to collect their cell number
00:12:08.920 when they come in the store
00:12:09.940 and then you send them a text message
00:12:11.920 filling out a survey to ask them
00:12:13.620 why they didn't buy anything.
00:12:15.060 Or you get out of the back office,
00:12:18.000 you walk onto the floor and you talk to people in person.
00:12:21.020 This is the biggest opportunity in business
00:12:23.140 is to talk to the people, talk and find out why.
00:12:27.820 So how do we do this in a way that's systematized?
00:12:31.120 I call this the feedback flywheel.
00:12:32.620 The first thing is we have to build a cadence.
00:12:34.860 How often are we gonna talk to customers?
00:12:37.380 You just figure it out for yourself.
00:12:38.720 Maybe it's one happy customer, one angry customer every week.
00:12:41.920 That's a good system.
00:12:42.960 For me, I like to do smile and dial on Thursdays.
00:12:45.780 Pick up the phone, randomly call a customer,
00:12:48.380 maybe five or six, depending how many can get done in an hour,
00:12:50.920 and just ask them about their experience
00:12:52.760 and what they've learned and how they heard about us
00:12:54.980 and what we could do to improve.
00:12:56.440 Those conversations allow me to stay connected
00:12:59.100 to the front line,
00:13:00.480 to the people that are actually spending money.
00:13:02.340 The second thing is we have to figure out the beats.
00:13:04.440 Like when we're talking to a customer,
00:13:05.860 ask them what their goal was,
00:13:07.660 find out if anybody's had a successful outcome around that.
00:13:10.840 If they didn't achieve it, what's the friction?
00:13:13.020 And then sit down with the team
00:13:14.120 and just like propose a solution.
00:13:15.760 Sometimes solving the customer's problem
00:13:18.340 is as simple as like updating a process
00:13:20.940 that the support team could do
00:13:22.060 and then creating a feature request
00:13:23.780 that they can fix in the future.
00:13:25.200 The third step is to tag and score.
00:13:28.000 See, I'm all about fixing problems,
00:13:30.280 but not if it only happens to one
00:13:31.980 out of a thousand of your customers.
00:13:33.500 First, you wanna tag how frequent it's happening
00:13:35.940 because it's happening a lot, that's one thing.
00:13:37.720 Then you wanna tag it like how hard is it to solve?
00:13:40.240 Is it simple, medium, or hard?
00:13:42.340 Because if something's happening a lot
00:13:44.040 and it's really easy to solve,
00:13:45.840 I might wanna front load and fix that
00:13:47.520 so it impacts the most customers.
00:13:49.120 The last step, the fourth step, is to close the loop
00:13:51.600 where once you fix something,
00:13:53.520 emailing the customer and letting them know,
00:13:55.780 hey, we just shipped this for you.
00:13:57.700 Now, it could have been something you had on your roadmap
00:14:00.200 to build or add anyway,
00:14:01.560 but keeping a list of customers that have asked for it
00:14:05.080 and then when you launch it,
00:14:06.180 just emailing them, letting them know goes so far.
00:14:09.380 All right, so now that you fix their words,
00:14:11.660 them being upset,
00:14:12.620 if you really wanna keep more of your customers,
00:14:15.320 it's time to fix your words.
00:14:16.920 Step number six, make the product dummy proof.
00:14:20.460 A confused mind never buys.
00:14:22.500 Oftentimes you might have to rename, rewrite, reorder
00:14:25.900 something about your document, your contract, your software.
00:14:29.780 and I know you might have a preference
00:14:31.560 and you're an artist and you're like,
00:14:33.000 this is the way I like it.
00:14:34.480 My customers decide, not me.
00:14:36.720 If every one of my customers is confused
00:14:38.580 that they gotta go from here to here in my store
00:14:40.820 or they gotta click this button
00:14:42.340 to download this information to upload it over there,
00:14:45.140 I need to make it simple.
00:14:46.800 Here's an example.
00:14:47.880 If the dropdown menu for ordering
00:14:50.100 in your online software for food delivery
00:14:52.480 says bovine patty unit
00:14:54.340 and it really should say cheeseburger,
00:14:56.900 you might wanna update it.
00:14:58.220 I mean, it's so funny
00:14:58.940 because like one time I launched this product called Creator
00:15:01.320 and people were like, what is it?
00:15:02.960 And I go, well, it's kind of like a SaaS Academy.
00:15:05.600 Like it's this program for software founders
00:15:07.620 and it's like a university.
00:15:08.720 So it's like Software as a Service Academy.
00:15:10.440 And they're like, why don't you just call it that?
00:15:12.900 So let's go through three tips that you can use
00:15:15.420 to make your product or service extremely easy
00:15:17.880 for anyone to understand.
00:15:19.200 The first is just rename with the customer's words.
00:15:22.260 What's called self-identifying language.
00:15:25.460 My favorite way to do this is to harvest from calls,
00:15:29.280 either support calls or sales calls.
00:15:31.400 And then I want you to ban internal jargon.
00:15:35.000 See, oftentimes the way your team explains things
00:15:37.660 ends up in support documents or sales calls or whatever,
00:15:42.000 and it makes no sense to a buyer.
00:15:44.460 Let them change the words.
00:15:47.040 The best in the world at this is Apple.
00:15:49.620 Look at the way they name their features.
00:15:51.260 Things like AirDrop, AirPlay, Touch ID, Retina Display.
00:15:57.140 You can go through the list,
00:15:58.400 go on ChatGPT and ask it and you will see.
00:16:00.860 This is language that they use
00:16:03.120 that the customer remembers and continues to build
00:16:05.940 what makes their product different.
00:16:07.900 The second thing is we wanna rewrite the documents,
00:16:10.280 any kind of specific outcome language.
00:16:12.560 So it's better to say create invoice versus get paid.
00:16:16.980 Get paid doesn't make sense,
00:16:18.140 but if I wanna create an invoice,
00:16:19.260 that's where I click to do that.
00:16:20.520 The third is reduce the amount of choices.
00:16:23.080 A confused mind never buys.
00:16:25.080 A confused mind never clicks.
00:16:26.920 They don't decide.
00:16:28.140 Why?
00:16:28.740 Because you have too many things on the screen,
00:16:30.420 too many options.
00:16:31.700 Hide anything that's more advanced behind the simple, right?
00:16:35.260 Keep the golden path visible to accomplish an outcome
00:16:38.440 without adding any extra distractions.
00:16:40.940 So when we look at the clickstream analysis
00:16:42.980 and the time to first value
00:16:44.560 and really tweak the language,
00:16:46.480 that's how we ensure that the customers stick around.
00:16:49.560 That's how we can keep more customers
00:16:51.480 without reducing our prices.
00:16:53.620 Bonus tip is to go look at your marketing website,
00:16:56.480 your homepage, take that first line
00:16:58.360 in the description below it and make that the heading.
00:17:01.400 And you'd be surprised how almost every website
00:17:03.420 becomes clearer and more valuable.
00:17:05.420 Every company I work with, I ask them to swap that
00:17:08.280 and they increase conversions by 30%
00:17:10.840 because it becomes clearer.
00:17:12.700 So now, even with the language fix,
00:17:14.860 if you wanna keep customers without lowering your prices,
00:17:17.380 you need to create a strong future
00:17:19.160 for your existing customers.
00:17:20.900 Step number seven, expand consumption.
00:17:23.640 The best way to get people to buy more
00:17:26.380 is to become evangelists of your product or service
00:17:28.580 by making them part of it.
00:17:30.680 How do I enroll my existing customers
00:17:33.140 to participate in things within my business?
00:17:35.780 Think about it like this.
00:17:36.900 If I own a gym,
00:17:38.600 the key is to like get the person to come back
00:17:40.840 first time visit.
00:17:42.020 Think how do I get them twice a week?
00:17:43.660 Then maybe I can get them to hire a personal trainer.
00:17:46.360 But the whole point is increased consumption
00:17:48.220 by getting them involved in the thing,
00:17:50.680 which is just going to the gym,
00:17:51.960 feeling comfortable with that.
00:17:53.020 It's like my buddy, Matt, who runs precision.co.
00:17:55.700 First, he became a coaching client by buying SaaS Academy.
00:17:59.600 Then within that company,
00:18:01.160 I asked him to work on a key project.
00:18:02.920 Then I asked him to speak at an event.
00:18:04.940 Then I asked him if I could highlight them as a client
00:18:07.700 and did like a micro doc on them.
00:18:09.620 Then he exited and I asked him to partner with me
00:18:11.880 at High Speed Venture.
00:18:12.880 So like essentially I think of it this way,
00:18:14.960 how do you create a relationship with a customer
00:18:16.860 that isn't even just your current business,
00:18:18.620 but could be future businesses?
00:18:20.440 To do this and really get people bought in,
00:18:23.020 I call this the adoption ladder process.
00:18:25.220 The first thing is we got to create milestones.
00:18:27.660 So think about like CrossFit,
00:18:28.860 the first 10 classes, that's a milestone.
00:18:31.080 Maybe they become an affiliate member,
00:18:32.580 that's another milestone.
00:18:33.600 Your first class that you coach,
00:18:35.520 now that you're a coach, that's a milestone.
00:18:37.540 Think about like what are the progression ladders
00:18:40.600 of adoption you want your current customers to go through
00:18:44.020 because when you give people a ladder,
00:18:46.260 they wanna climb the ladder.
00:18:47.620 The next thing, the second step is to create the prompts.
00:18:50.400 Essentially, after each milestone,
00:18:52.880 you wanna ask them to do something
00:18:54.780 that is integrated and related to the prompt.
00:18:57.340 Maybe if they get to the 100th class,
00:18:59.560 you could say, hey, we've got a podcast
00:19:01.120 and I'd love to interview you for our podcast.
00:19:02.880 Would you be open to it?
00:19:03.720 You wanna map the milestone to the request.
00:19:07.260 The last and final step
00:19:08.420 is you want to spotlight your customers.
00:19:10.300 They're called bright spots.
00:19:11.660 If somebody accomplishes something meaningful,
00:19:14.400 have them share it with everybody else
00:19:16.100 or acknowledge them for it
00:19:17.460 so that other people can aspire to be like them.
00:19:20.400 It's like my buddy Taki Moore.
00:19:21.760 When he does his events, he gives out belts,
00:19:24.320 just like in martial arts.
00:19:26.140 That way, at different revenue levels,
00:19:28.340 he gives you a different color belt,
00:19:29.980 but there's a belt ceremony at the end of his two-day event,
00:19:32.820 which is like a celebration to the members to say,
00:19:36.480 oh, someday I'm gonna be a black belt.
00:19:38.580 So that's how we get more people to adopt
00:19:40.740 and build the ladder for them to contribute
00:19:43.080 and feel committed to the company.
00:19:45.080 Ultimately, that leaves them to staying around longer
00:19:47.800 and you not having to discount your prices
00:19:49.940 to keep them around.
00:19:50.920 And it also gets them to buy more.
00:19:52.820 And the more they buy, the more money you make,
00:19:54.600 which is how we increase what's called the share of wallet.
00:19:57.040 And remember, through all of this,
00:19:59.080 you should be using a cancellation capture flow,
00:20:01.100 like a documented process.
00:20:02.840 If you wanna get the exact PDF version
00:20:04.860 of how I design it with the copy,
00:20:06.660 just click the link in the description below
00:20:08.060 and I'll send it right over.
00:20:08.980 Keeping customers isn't really magic.
00:20:12.120 It's just caring about them
00:20:13.900 that makes the moments that matter to them magical.
00:20:17.560 You build the system, you document it,
00:20:19.700 you make it a checklist.
00:20:20.840 And it's not about lowering your prices
00:20:22.740 or giving discounts.
00:20:24.000 That's the easy way to do it
00:20:26.100 that just churns through goodwill
00:20:28.060 you build your customers.
00:20:29.360 You wanna be the premium provider.
00:20:31.320 It means you wanna elevate the experience,
00:20:33.000 get people results and make sure you show up
00:20:35.340 caring about them and their needs and their reality,
00:20:38.180 not making it just about the dollar and you.
00:20:41.240 And if you wanna learn how to build a business
00:20:43.000 that runs itself, click the video
00:20:44.920 and I'll see you on the other side.