How Video Case Stories Can Transform Your Membership Site (Even in an AI World) Memberium

[00:00] Micah: Hey everybody, it's Micah Mitchell with the Membership Site Success Show, and our guest today is Ayan Garlick with Video Case Story. Ayan, welcome to the show.

[00:09] Ian: Micah, it is my pleasure, my great pleasure to be here. I love chatting with you, and I love chatting about membership sites.

[00:15] Micah: Cool, cool. Well, there's a lot to jump into today because I think you have some really useful knowledge and advice for everybody listening. Why don't you tell them, though, a little bit about yourself to kick it off, your background, and then eventually get into what is a video case story?

[00:33] Ian: Sure. I've been running our agency for almost exactly 15 years. It's had various variations, but always been doing video and video storytelling and a lot of video SEO and YouTube for the past 15 years. Education membership sites have always been a part of it. We don't do them per se, but we do educational videos on YouTube. Video Case Story, we collect and craft customer stories for service-based businesses. We work with a lot of agencies, SaaS companies, consultants, Gina Wickman from Author Attractions, one of our clients, Financial, across the board. And we got into it because really, I think customer stories is where, client stories is where everything happens. If we are really listening to our clients and make a pattern of listening to them and then collecting those stories and using them all along our entire process, we create amazing businesses. And I got that because we do about us videos, process videos, a whole video YouTube strategy, YouTube SEO. But I realized that we are doing the customer stories in the back end and really needs to be on the front end. Because every time I do one, I'd be like, oh, this is where we need to start. So that's why we started there and rebranded as Video Case Story. And so, you know, we do, like I said, we collect them. We do remote collection. We do a whole strategy around them before you even start collecting them. And I think so many people default to testimonials because they're like, oh, someone said, I'm great. Let me put it on the website. We're done. We got our customer stories. And like, that's not a customer story. And so that's where the video case story, because it's telling about the actions and the details. But there's a story in there. Right. Because case studies really don't have a story. Usually it's like, here's a problem. Here's a solution. Here's the 10 things we did. And, you know, it's fine. I was just writing about this with the eclipse yesterday. This will date it a little bit when we recorded it. But, you know, because we've all seen eclipses and they're talking about all the science around the eclipse and it's like, I'm like, OK, this is going to be cool, whatever. I'm like, and I'm like, oh, these people travel to see the eclipse. And I'm like, really? Like, is it that big of a deal? But then, you know, and I've always been in astronomy. I know a lot about the physics of it. And so it's like, there's, I've always read the case studies about eclipses. And then yesterday, I, we, it was, I'm in Florida, so we can see a partial one. But then I start to watch the TV, like, go through from the totality of all the people. And you see the people crying and their emotions. You can see it on their face. And I'm like, damn it. I need to go watch the eclipse next time, you know, somewhere in the world, right? And it's because it's that emotion that drives us and connects us and the story around it. And that's where we really drive in. It's like, we collect those stories. But then if you listen to the stories, right, that drives your marketing, your evolution. And so it's this entire process of just focusing on the customer, collecting the videos, and making amazing content, but also involving your business around customer stories.

[03:40] Micah: Let's talk about the timing of it, because I think that's one of the more interesting things. Instead of just, yeah, you collect this. Let's say you, I even thought I was doing a good job, but I'm going to go do a case study, right? And I'm going to document a customer so that I can leverage that. Using them more strategically throughout the process. And let's say a membership journey. So using one of these stories of another one of your customers to get a customer, but then maybe using them in the onboarding, maybe using them to retain the member and so on. How do you look at that? Are those different case stories? Are they different parts of the same case story? How do you use them strategically in the process of a member, let's say?

[04:20] Ian: Yeah, you definitely want to, you know, because the story that, great storytellers understand the timing, right? They're not just telling the same story. They understand who they're telling to and when. And we decide, we do everything, human beings do everything for really two big reasons. There's mimetic desire, meaning we see other people do things and we want that. But it's ingrained in us. And people are like, oh, I don't do that. I'm like, yes, we all do it. You just can't fight that. The other thing and the reason we decide is because of timing, because of the situation, right? It's Florida right now. It's 80 out. And if I was going to go get a drink, it might be a warm coffee. It might be an iced coffee. A month from now, I'm only getting an iced coffee, right? And it's the situation evolution. That's a simplification of it. But your client's story is going to evolve, right? And they're going to forget parts of it. So you want to be collecting it throughout. But also, the story that they need to hear is going to evolve, right? And so you need different parts of it and different things going on. Because I'm in a group and we're talking through marketing. And one story of their end result, yeah, I want that end result. And I want that end emotion and transformation. Like, I do want to be, you know, running like you all do. I want to be running a giant, successful membership site. And I think you do this awesome job of talking about the evolution of a membership site. But once someone gets into the membership site, them seeing someone with 1,000 members really almost can be demotivating. Because if you have that story of that someone who just overcame that problem that you overcame and the result that they got, that is much more motivating. And that will keep people in. Because no matter how good your membership site is, no matter how good your training is, there's going to be people that get stuck. And you need to motivate them. And the best thing you can do is not tell them what to do. It's like, here's someone that got on the other side of it. You're going to get there. Let's keep working. And I think that's an important thing, especially for retention, but also for results. Because we all buy into the results, but then we're like, oh, I'm going to go do this other thing. So we need to keep selling the idea of, hey, you can get past this next stage. And each one of those is going to be a different story, right?

[06:40] Micah: That, I believe, is really detailed. That's really cool to think about how membership site owners are always dealing with trying to get their user to consume content, to retain knowledge, to put it into practice, to get results. And so chunking it down, like you're saying to say, you know, hey, so-and-so didn't have the time to get into the content. And then they found the time to get into the content. I love that because it is a constant, constant problem. Even if you have the best content, how do you get people, you know, use the word motivation. How do you get them motivated to go through it?

[07:13] Ian: Maybe talk, if you don't mind, a little bit more about, you know, motivation, inspiration, and then the actual knowledge.

[07:19] Micah: Like maybe what combo is good? How much of these things do they need to be successful in your mind?

[07:25] Ian: I think you have to understand what the person really wants at that moment, right? So let's say I'm like building a membership site, right? And it's like, oh, they're looking at the end goal. But the first thing they have to do is get to 10 customers. So you need to tell someone, hey, this is how you get to 10 customers. Hey, I got to 10 customers. Here's a few of the things that I did. Here's a story around it. Here's where I got stuck. Someone tell me about where they got stuck. And here's how I got past it. And so there's a little bit of education, but a little bit of conflict there and the goal to the next milestone. I'm working with a publisher who's my client and we're doing case stories for him. Absolutely amazing. The only reason I'm bringing up his name is because this one thing is going to sound a little weird until you're inside the process. I'm like, we don't want to tell this case story outside the process. We want to tell it inside the process. So you do your first draft with them. And he's like, listen, I'm going to hate my first draft. You're going to hate your first draft. And that sounds kind of weird. But he's like, it's a starting point. You're going to hate it. But then we actually captured a couple stories of people saying, I hate the first draft. But then I got into the next step of the editing process. And I really told them all things I didn't like. And it transformed the next draft. Now, I had someone else talking about it. Right. And that's not something like you want to go out and lead with that. You probably wouldn't even have that to anyone who's not in your process. You might. But I really don't think so. We've had this long discussion. But it's so powerful inside there because it quickly gets people to the next step. Helps them to enjoy the process more. Because if you're like, hey, this is where it's going to get a little tough. And so, you know, and then you explain what the next step is. And this is what you're going to have to do with it. And now everyone's more involved in the next step. Because they're not fighting back about the hurdle that they had to overcome.

[09:19] Micah: It's like a more empathic way to get them around these problems. Instead of being like, toughen up. It's like, hey, we know it sucks. Here's some other people who also thought it sucked. You know, but look at how happy they are on the other side. Right. That idea you came up with in the beginning. The human nature side of just mirroring other people. Right. The things we weren't.

[09:42] Ian: Exactly.

[09:42] Micah: Because there's going to be tough points.

[09:44] Ian: If it was all easy, everyone would do it. You can talk about the tough points and go, hey, here it is. I was talking to my friend Gray over at Zenpilot. And we were talking about this in project management too. There's level one fun. And then there's level two fun.

[10:00] Micah: And level one fun is like, it's just easy and you do it and whatever.

[10:04] Ian: But level two fun is like, you get this accomplished. You move it past. And I think this is so important for people to sell. And when they're training someone to sell, it's like, hey, this is going to be tough. And you're going to be better. And here's what's on the other side. Whether you're a trainer, right? You know, all these trainers sell. Like there's so many people selling dieting courses and stuff. Instead of going, hey, get ready at this point. Get ready at this point. And get ready at this point. This is how you're going to get past it. Because that's how people are going to really succeed.

[10:31] Micah: I love it all. Let's talk about the implementation and maybe some practical steps for a beginner. So you talk about collecting these along the way. How do you do that in a way that doesn't make the customer feel like they're putting too much effort into that process? You know, if you're asking them, let's say, multiple times in their life with your product or business, how do you make them enjoy the process or incentivize that? Plug my book, Video Testimonials that land the big fish.

[10:59] Ian: It talks about how to ask, how to interview. It's on Amazon. It's 99 cents. It is the process. But at this specific point, the first thing you do is you tell people and preface it as much as possible. Like, hey, we're going to have you share your stories along the way because it's going to help motivate and excite other people. But it's also going to document your process. It's going to document where you are. And we're going to just simply have quick little interviews with you, 10, 15-minute interviews to document each evolution in the process. So you'll have something to see where you are and how you evolved. But also it's going to help other people just like you. And it's going to be a story. You don't even have to tell about what you did with us as much as or like how good we are. We want you to talk all about you. So we'd be willing to share your story. Do you want to be one of our success stories? Because that shows that you're invested in them being successful too.

[11:51] Micah: Yeah, those are great ideas to get ahead of it. I like that because it almost becomes a selling point of the program where you're holding yourself accountable. Like, hey, we're going to commit to hearing your feedback if you're willing to give it. So let's talk about maybe middle of the process retention. So that was a little bit maybe about onboarding, getting somebody going. Let's say that you have a membership site and you want people to stay in there for a long, long time. One way to do it is obviously put them into a community and they can interact with each other. One way to do it is just keep giving them content. What are some ideas from your end on what you could get from a case story and then distribute to people for like long-term retention?

[12:29] Ian: I think going through the process of actually interviewing your clients and going, hey, you know, when they get a success or even when they have a problem, you're going to hear from them what their real issues are. You're going to hear from them things that you didn't know were benefits. And you'll be able to use that throughout and amplify upon it. The case story process actually came out of this interviewing our clients, listening to them, being like, oh, those success stories were so awesome. They made me feel so good and they work so well. Right. And you're hearing that. I'm like, well, I need to spend more time doing that. So you're going to be able to figure out what's working and then use that, right, to go, hey, I'm going to go sell, like do more of this stuff and motivate people. And I think that's an important part is like listening to the customers, listening to your members and going, okay, this is where they're getting stuck. How can I improve on this piece? And just going just instead of just making content to make content. And what's cool about that then is now you can take that story and get them invested in going, hey, I heard from Micah. Micah said that, you know, he's getting stuck in asking more customers for customer stories. So we evolved this system. We're going to show you how our new system based on it. Some of the new things we've tried out based on Micah. And here's Micah talking about it. So now we're integrating the story into the content and giving people motivation because now we know it's something that they really, really need and want. And they're also seeing visually, not that, hey, we are listening to. It's like, hey, we're listening to you so much. Now, Micah, if someone did that with you and they put you in the story and they helped you out, now you're also going to be inside of that community even more because you're going to be invested because it was your idea.

[14:14] Micah: I've seen companies do, I think they must have known at least parts of your strategy, right? Because they were doing a good job of this where they're highlighting customers at the right moments in a way that makes you want to do what they did. And I know sometimes customers will do that, not highlight themselves on their own, but they'll encourage another customer coming up, right? But I do think to your point that when you highlight somebody, it almost makes them like a mini celebrity in your space. Even if it's a small space, your other customers have now seen this customer. And I know for us with Membarium in particular, we've had a lot of case studies we've done in the past. And even though we didn't do them perfectly, we'd have people come to us saying, I want to do what so-and-so did. Help me do it. Or they would even go to so-and-so and say, hey, I saw your case study. You know, how much would I have to pay you to do that for me? Which is cool. I think it just shows a demand, right, for real-world success and trying to replicate it. What about, let's say, a kind of endgame of a membership thing? And I don't want to only keep to the membership thing, but just to continue this for a second. Let's say somebody is ready to cancel, right? Have you seen maybe a part of a case study or case story used to say like, hey, so-and-so was also ready to cancel? Something like that?

[15:30] Ian: I think this is where if you know the reason that they're canceling, I think that's a great reason. It's like, why are you canceling? Like, oh, I'm not getting results. Or, oh, I don't have time. And you can have that case story right away from them. It's like, hey, here's someone that was just saying the same thing. I think this is where listening to them and really using the process of interviewing them and going, were you ever thinking of canceling? What turned you around? So from your best clients and customers, so you can identify those points and go, oh, this is where I was getting stuck. Because we, so, I mean, I want to hear all the wins, too, but you've got to ask about the problems. You've got to dig deep in the problems. Go, oh, you got stuck there? I didn't know that. Right? Know what? Because there's so many times, you know, perfect example. I went to a restaurant the other night. It was an expensive restaurant. I love great restaurants. And they're like, is everything okay? Is everything okay? They checked a lot. And it just, it wasn't bad enough for me to go, oh, there's a problem. Right? And just, I want to get past this. I'm done. But if someone would have asked me specifically, you know, how, it looks like you might have had an issue here. What was the issue? I probably would have told them. And so, that would have been an opportunity for them to evolve. So, I think on direct and cancellation, this is also where not just having customer stories inside your membership site, but having them everywhere. Retargeting is a super important thing that if you're showing success over and over again, people might stay on longer going, okay, there's something on the other side here. So, I think those are a few ways to prevent it. But I don't know about, I've never done it directly where someone's saying, I'm canceling, but I have seen it get people past some tough points.

[17:20] Micah: Gotcha. And to your point about, you know, the staff at the restaurant or any business out there who wants to improve, if they were a little bit more observant, you're saying, if they had been listening a little more, they could have asked specifically, hey, you know, not just a general, how are you doing? But, hey, what is the problem here? Right? Right. What can we help you with? What could we do to make this better?

[17:43] Ian: I mean, I worked for John George. I was working in his restaurant. He's one of the best chefs out there in New York City. Top, you know, top five restaurants and stuff. And if you brought something back in the kitchen that had a few scraps of food on it, I'm not saying like a full plate. I'm saying like something wasn't eaten. He would have been like, what was wrong with it? It wasn't like, oh, that's great. You know, and someone going up, you'd have to go back out and go, was there something we missed that you didn't eat all the food?

[18:13] Micah: Right.

[18:13] Ian: Right. Well, you know, and what's cool is like with Membarium and I'm sure with all the software, you can see if someone's not consuming content and go, hey, why aren't you consuming this content?

[18:24] Micah: You know, a thought that is coming into my head right now is for somebody out there who's listening to this. They're probably thinking this is all a good idea, but I just need to get more members. This might seem a little bit difficult to do. However, in my mind, I'm listening to this and thinking this is probably going to speed up every part of the process if they implement some level of story collection from the beginning. Right. They can use it as part of the sales process. It seems almost like a benefit to say we're collecting your story, but then having it built in from the beginning, they're going to learn so much quicker instead of learning by we're having too many people cancel what's wrong. They'll just they'll hear it right from the beginning. Yeah.

[19:05] Ian: And everyone's going to default right to let's just get more people in the door. And we were in a mastermind together recently and this guy was just talking top of the funnel stuff, not worrying about, hey, let me test this out in five, six people. Let me make sure it's great. I right now I'm running. I'm launching our video case story strategist program because I want it to be awesome. I'm not worried about getting a ton of people in. I want to have the best experiences. So when I do launch in and get 20 people in, those 20 people are going to get absolutely amazing results in the next 20 people and next 20 people. And then I know then I'm not not just have it not have a bad churn rate. I'm going to have people on something I'm really, really proud of. And I like not to go on a complete tangent. But listen, I talk about Walt Disney a lot in the book. The guy was the absolute most famous person in the world. And he would still stand in line at the park and ask people about their experience. You know, he could send people. People are not happy standing in line. And he would ask them how what was like. So if he can do it, you can do it. Like you said, it's going to accelerate everything massive.

[20:13] Micah: Let's talk about like the anatomy of one of these customer interview. Let's call it. What is that call like? And I know it's in your book. Tell us the name of the book again, because I don't mind you plugging it because this is awesome stuff. And it's a cheap thing. What is the name of it?

[20:25] Ian: Video testimonials that land the big fish. Right away, I tell you not to use the word testimonials, but it was an SEO thing. Right. No, go ahead. So you plan the call out, right? You do what we call the tackle box process. You want to talk about the customer story. So you plan out the questions. You want to know what you want to get out of them. Maybe there's an upgrade that you're looking to sell and they had a great experience. You know that they upgraded and had a great experience. We want to know what part we want to get to first. So we craft the questions about it. And then there's three parts to any good story. There's collection or a connection. We want to know who they are. We want them to talk about themselves. What's their life like? You know, what were they doing before they built out a membership site? What were they doing before they met you? When did they realize that they had a problem? We want them to talk about their problems. And then what solutions that they look for? What were they trying to figure out before? What did they try to do before? Because this is a great thing too. It's like comparison, right? It's like what were you trying to do before you got to this, you know, membership site? Before you start working with us, how did you try and fix it? And you have questions around that. And then, you know, then questions about your process. Like, so if you have a membership site, what was the biggest thing that really impacted you on the membership site? What was the thing that you had a tough time with on the membership site? You know, in my courses and, you know, in our membership, what's the most surprising thing that you, from the membership? But one of the biggest things that you can ask too, and of course you want to have the transformation. How is your life different? We are all buying transformation. So, you know, when was the first time you realized that there was a transformation? What was that transformation like? How's your life like different? But when we find that moment, so we all moments, like I talked about with situation, we want to transport someone to the situation. So when we find that moment, we want to dig deep into that moment. We want them to talk in detail about that moment and then ask them about their emotions. How do they feel at that moment? And so that's where, you know, this conversation dives deep into moments and emotions because that's what grabs people's attention. And that's what makes for a good story.

[22:34] Micah: It almost makes me, you know, I'm not, I don't understand film or any of that very well. So it might not be a perfect analogy, but it's almost like you're the director saying like, oh, this is such a great thing. More and more and more out of the person.

[22:47] Ian: I mean, one of the best directors out there is Ron Howard, you know, Opie. He directed every great movie of the 90s. And he talks about that. You know, every great film has four to five emotions. And that's exactly what we're doing. Or four or five moments, sorry.

[23:04] Micah: Tell me about the, maybe then the editing process. So like, let's say you get a great customer on and they, you know, they even cry, right? They shed a tear because they're so happy and you have all this great footage. What's a little bit of your, you know, editing process and then maybe the distribution process?

[23:24] Ian: Editing and the distribution is absolutely critical because the biggest makes people think the biggest mistake people make with the distribution is they throw it on a testimonials page. No one goes to your testimonials page.

[23:35] Micah: Right.

[23:35] Ian: So from, if you go over, if you go over to our YouTube channel or like, actually I have a thing about the entire client journey. So you have to think about where in the client journey you're working first. And so if you go over to my YouTube channel, iron garlic, and we can put a link to the show notes.

[23:50] Micah: I did a whole thing on 30 minutes on how large clients decide.

[23:56] Ian: And if you, I'll send you our video series. I did on the fish in the barrel on distribution. Because there's essentially some core areas that you want to distribute your videos. And these would, you'd have what we call warm to hot versions. So decide where we're distributing first before we edit. Because if you're, now if we're talking about your website, your onboarding, right? You're, someone signs up for your membership site. This is when you really need to remind them about the success stories. Because they're having some regrets. Everyone has buyer's remorse, whether they tell you or not. So if we're going to have some on our onboarding, right? And we're going to want warm to hot. Meaning, warm being about like, let's say the membership site is about, I don't know, what's one of the biggest memberships, most common membership sites you guys have?

[24:45] Micah: Business training, marketing training.

[24:47] Ian: Yeah, so marketing training, yeah.

[24:48] Micah: Right.

[24:49] Ian: Marketing training, they've already know that, let's say it's Facebook ads. And they already know that they want Facebook ads to get leads, but they wanted a training for this. And so we'd have warm versions that are just in general about Facebook training. And then we'd have hot versions about being inside there. About what this specific training, the specific course, the instructors, the membership site, how much it's evolved them over. So in those hot versions, they'd be talking a little bit more about you and your business. Warm versions, they'd be talking about that service. When we go to cold traffic, we generally go with shorts, those sub 60 second versions. So it's like, hey, you know that you want to rank number one for best Facebook training. So we might do a 30 minute case story of someone going through that entire training and telling their story of how their business evolved. We did this for one agency that does SEO. And it ranked for like number one on YouTube and ranked in Google because it was such a compelling story. So we think about where it's going to be placed. And then we do warm, hot and cold versions. We also do versions based on like people's questions. Like, you know, it just depends on like what's the problem we're solving. Maybe it's best lead generation for trying to find the best lead generation for a coach, which would be Facebook ads. So we might optimize for that. And so we'd edit the story around that and then distribute it. YouTube's the second most used search engine. That's where we spend all our time. I talk about it a lot in the book. Definitely get it into your funnels. Get it on your membership site, right? Put it in there. Put it in on your onboarding sequence. Make sure it's in your email nurture sequences, email engagement sequences on the specific parts of your website that are relevant to this. Obviously on your landing pages. That's where I start. And then also drop them into retargeting. I would cut up shorts, different short versions of it. And, you know, different problems you solve, different hooks, different angles. And put that all throughout your retargeting and just following your potential clients.

[26:47] Micah: Yeah, that's so efficient. I am guilty. I'll raise my hand of really not leveraging case studies. We have some really good case studies. Somebody's going to have to go watch till 45 minute mark of this video to find this person saying this thing. Right. And yeah. So this I'm listening. You know, I want to ask good questions for the user. Some of this is a little bit like, you know, I want to know as well. And it doesn't hurt to hear it again because you've told me some of this. But yeah, I'm just getting it from from different angles. And I can't emphasize how important this is to everybody out there because, yeah, testimonials are a great piece of leverage to have when you're trying to convince someone to be able to say, oh, somebody just like you with the same issues and problems and so forth went through it. But an actual video is just light years ahead of that. You know, hearing the person, seeing their emotions and so on. Let's talk a little bit about longer term. You mentioned ascension a little bit or in other words, upgrading. You maybe talk about ways to position those questions in order to get answers, in order to then use those answers someplace in your funnel. How much are you positioning your questions versus how much do their answers just line up with what you want to do?

[28:04] Ian: No, I mean, I would definitely like use the tool, the case story tackle box tool, which is included when you buy the book. It's a spreadsheet that we've designed. So you have the intent knowing, OK, I've got Jill's case story. Jill just ascended from here to here. And she was in our lower group and she decided to get into the $20,000 a year mastermind with the membership. At that moment, you want to collect that story of what, you know, why she did that. But then also I would be, you know, why she did that at that moment because it's going to change in her mind. And then maybe six months later, hey, you've been in here now six months. How is it, you know, how is it comparing? So now you can even compare and contrast. Now, if you don't want to get that involved, you can do the six months, but you definitely want to go into the intent. Like what did you what was great about this lower group? How did you evolve into the higher group? What was the especially the moment that you knew? This is one thing I would be finding. What was the moment you knew you needed to move up? What was the thing you needed the most of? Because that's going to inform you, but it's also going to call out the people going, hey, I'm stuck here. Or I feel like I've gotten as much as I can. Is this on the other side? And that's a great way to do it. It's like, hey, this person or it's like, hey, I want to move faster. I was doing all right. I want to move faster. And that's why I moved up. So that's how I would be thinking.

[29:30] Micah: Yeah, this I'm thinking of a situation I have right now where we have a certified partner who was really debating upgrading to the agency partner program. And they did. And like, as luck would have it within the first few days, they got a lead through there that I was going to pay for their program.

[29:51] Ian: And so they're ecstatic, right?

[29:53] Micah: And I'm thinking, oh, cool. Someday I'm going to ask him about that. And I realized, no, I should ask him now. Right. I should get that now and then later more or whatever. But it makes me think of it as almost like one case study per company and get it like when it's the right moment. Right. But I missed out on a lot of opportunities to collect such not just great sound bites because, you know, there would be but true, true success stories that other people would have benefited from. Because getting it in that, like you said, that state or that that moment when they're really in that position versus saying, oh, yeah, I was in your position a while ago, but now I'm here. It'll be cool. It's not as believable as here's the video of me in your position then. And here I am now. So I love the detail.

[30:40] Ian: Yeah. The one story I got on my book was this stuff's a lot of work. It's really what we're in business for. You should be in business for is the success stories is getting them because it not just it's not going to just drive money. But it's going to give you satisfaction. And you're like, you're going to be like, and we all live on the margin. Right. We all as entrepreneurs are like, we want the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. And sometimes the next thing doesn't work. And you're like, man, I saw. I don't know. I say that sometimes, like I've got a call later with a client who's unhappy. And even though we've made them tons of money and I feel bad, the more you can document it along the way, you remind yourself that each of these steps is so important. And, you know, if you don't have time to do this, you're doing something wrong because you're just not dedicating the time. If you dedicate an hour a week to talking about and collecting your customer stories and just going through them with your team or asking someone for it, you've got a whole list of it. You're going to be light years ahead of your competition. You're going to massively improve everything. And it's going to work.

[31:41] Micah: You know, it seems like one of the safest investments somebody could probably make in their company, right? Because it's leverageable all around. It's input. And I think the point you're making probably is double or triple for a membership site owner than another business that you might have moments where you've screwed up or you're having imposter syndrome or whatever. And you need to remember what you've created for people.

[32:07] Ian: Right. I've definitely been there where it's like, oh, yeah, I got it.

[32:11] Micah: And luckily, a long time ago, somebody told me this will sound kind of cheesy, but I have a Google doc called accomplishments list that I've been building for over 10 years where anytime something cool is done, I'll put it on there and go look at it. But also the case studies, just like you're saying, they make me feel great. They make me feel like continuing on, you know.

[32:29] Ian: Oh, 100 percent. 100 percent. It's the best thing in the world. Well, you know, because there's like, what, 15 to 20 percent of the population are sociopaths, but most of us care about the people that we work with.

[32:41] Micah: How do you avoid making a case story with a sociopath? No, just kidding. That's a tough one. Well, let's talk about ways people can get help with this or how to, you know, somebody's a startup. They obviously just have to be scrappy, get your clients on Zoom, talk to them, cut it up, do your thing. Somebody's an influencer. Maybe who on their team should they get to do this? Should they hire somebody to do this? Obviously, they could also come to you to do this. But what are the principles or what's the framework to think about staffing up to handle this if you have the scale when you need to collect these more often?

[33:17] Ian: Yeah, I mean, if you have a customer success manager, that's a great person to do it, right? Because, you know, as long as they're not the one the story's about, because there's nothing weirder to ask someone a story about yourself. Like, hey, Micah, can you tell me why I'm great? But, you know, it's someone who's a success manager. You can outsource it. You can have an account manager do it. They're not a client of ours, but JotForm has someone dedicated. This is their entire job for their software company. They have, what, 18, 20 million users. So it's worth them having it. But, you know, outsourcing is important, but making sure you're dedicated to it. And I do think if you're not working directly with the clients, then as an owner, if you didn't work directly with that person and you're the owner, let's say it's the membership site. And the membership site isn't just all you. It's other people. And, you know, you've got a community manager. Get in there and talk to your clients. Interview them. Take the time to do it so you can connect with them. Because they're going to love you for it. And it's going to inspire you. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of ways to do it.

[34:21] Micah: It's just mainly being strategic about it.

[34:24] Ian: Going, you know, the book shows you, here's how to do the strategy. Here's how to ask the questions. Here's how to set up the interview. And then you can decide. Now, obviously, if you're going to have this person doing it, I literally was just interviewing an interviewer for us. You want to make sure that they're nice. Yeah. And personable and care about the person. But besides that, you know, go through the system. And then obviously, if you want shortcut, you can come work with us. We have interviewers and we do some training as well if you want to train one of your team.

[34:55] Micah: Oh, that's a cool idea. They could put one of their team into your training and then have somebody able to do that. That's a great idea.

[35:03] Ian: Yeah. You can have someone dedicated inside there if it warrants it. You know, if you have enough clients, if you're onboarding clients or if you're a membership site, right, you have 100,000 members and you're constantly churning through them or even 10,000 members. You've got a decent amount of flow. You know, they might stand six months a year. You want to be collecting as many of these stories as possible. So it's not just having one or two success stories. It evolves your business. I was my friend, Mandy, a hands-off CEO. She talks about like charging more as you get a bigger, I call it the case story flywheel. You can get bigger clients, charge more, get a bigger client, charge more. Same thing in your membership site. You can charge more and elevate them. So you want to be doing this regularly? From a distribution standpoint, you're going to find new keywords. You're going to have new content. To maximize that. Sure. I mean, first of all, just be like, here's my ideal client. This is their story. I want to do X, Y, Z. I want to come up with 20 different versions, 20 different questions that they'll have before their client. I want to come up with 10 different pieces of content. I want to figure out a way to attract more of these clients. I want to make sure that our homepage is completely centered around talking to this person. And the more you can feed into it, you ask it all about your marketing. You can say, hey, what else would this person need in their life? Maybe you need to generate some other content that's not even around them. Or, hey, this is the person's story. Well, what should I get this person for their birthday? Because you can generate, essentially, and I think this is the next stage of it, you can generate a version of your ideal client that you can talk to and be like, let me ask you a question that the ideal client wouldn't answer. What's the 10 pieces of content that you really need?

[36:47] Micah: That is an amazing idea of leveraging the case study material to feed your AI avatar so that you can base things off of them. Because that's so hard. It's so hard to do. Like, we've all created our avatars and been through exercises to blah, blah, blah. But to actually imbibe all of that and then come up with a message the way AI can is difficult. You know, that's fascinating.

[37:14] Ian: And it comes back to the idea of the moment, right? The situation. No, you need to speak to that moment in their life, right? That moment. And it's like, hey, what's, you know, early on in their stages, you know, maybe they're trying to figure out marketing. And before they became my client, what are 10 of the things that I need to be talked into about, right? So it's important to think that way as well.

[37:39] Micah: That is super interesting. I hope the people listening to this are having things clicking around in their head like I am because I'm seeing so many different ways that this could be used. You know, you kind of let off the powder keg with your comments on AI. We're close to the end here. What is something maybe that I haven't asked about that you think would be important to talk about for a membership site owner?

[38:02] Ian: I think as much as possible that you can install in milestones, like into the software, collecting these stories. I think the simplest thing to do is have if they don't have MPS scores in there, have MPS scores. And when you hit that eight, nine or 10, ask someone, would you mind talking about your story and schedule it? I mean, that right there is going to put you miles ahead of everyone.

[38:27] Micah: Super simple. And then I guess this whole time we've been talking about you jump on a call and you interview them to collect this. I'm guessing there's a reason to not ask them to submit a video or whatever. What are your thoughts on that?

[38:39] Ian: Yeah, I think we're human beings. We're used to like having a conversation like this. We react to humans. We know how to do that. We're not good storytellers to the camera naturally. It's a lot of work. If anyone sat down and tried to make great storytelling content, you know, I've got a lot of friends who are influencers like, I'm so bad at storytelling. I'm like, yeah, because you're just talking to a camera. And that's people that make videos on a regular basis. People need, you know, they need to talk to someone.

[39:08] Micah: Plus, if you really want to get the emotions out, you got to have someone knowing how to have that conversation and dig deeper and dig deeper.

[39:15] Ian: That's something I work on our team all the time. It's like, and people are always like, how do you get the people to cry all the time? I'm like, because I'm having a conversation with them. And you can see that this is a moment that was important to them. And you ask them a relevant question. You're not like, wow, that make you feel. And you're like, are you going to cry?

[39:33] Micah: But it's definitely a skill set, but it's so worth it.

[39:37] Ian: I come back to the Walt Disney example. He could have sent anyone on his team out. Like, literally, Walt Disney, when he was towards the end of his life, Disneyland was a huge success. He was still doing this, listening to stories. And he had to go undercover, actually, to do it. He could have sent team members out. He could have sent videographers out, camera people out. He could have done surveys. He could have done anything he wanted. And he still went out there and walked the park. And that's because when you listen to people and you have conversations with them, that's when you get the real, true goal.

[40:11] Micah: Well, let me leave people with a little bit of advice who are listening. I would say, just like Ian said, especially for a membership site, putting this collection at milestones through your process. You know, you want to celebrate the milestones, gamification, right, points, badges, but also get them on for a conversation and capture that moment in as human a way as possible. Because the leverage, especially today, you know, a lot of this used to be more labor intensive. But now with AI, you could probably create a process over time to work through a lot of the distribution. And you've been amazing, generous with your knowledge and time. What's a great way for people to connect with you? How can they reach you?

[40:52] Ian: So, definitely, I'd love for if you subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'm growing my personal one. So, I'm doing a lot of personal videos on there. Just Ian Garlick, I-A-N-G-A-R-L-I-C. And, you know, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn. And then, also, if you need help, you can go to videocastory.com. And we set up a free GPS call. We'll look over your goals, your positioning, and your stories and figure out what's best for you. Well, it's been fantastic. Thanks again for joining us, Ian. Micah, thanks so much for having me on.