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

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.

Dan Martell - December 05, 2025

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

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