#97: Successful Subscription Services with Melissa Lanz, Founder & CEO of The Fresh 20
How many subscription services are you signed up for right now?
Between workout apps, streaming services and monthly subscription boxes, I’m sure the answer is at least 5.
But have you thought about what makes subscription services so popular and why you keep signing up for them?
My guest today was Melissa Lanz, Founder and CEO of The Fresh 20, a subscription meal planning service.
Melissa and I chatted about:
How she grew her business from a $5 a month product
The #1 thing that can help grow your subscription business
Why memberships create an unique dynamic that are unlike other business models
If you have ever tried The Fresh 20, or are just interested in learning more about subscription businesses, tune into this episode!
Check out Melissa here: https://www.thefresh20.com or on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/thefresh20/.
Check out my free training on www.yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing to scale their businesses to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond.
Listen to the Show:
Laura (00:02):
So many entrepreneurs, dream of living a life of massive impact by creating a mega successful company, but only a tiny percentage of businesses actually scale to that point. And when they do it is so often lacking the very joy and freedom that got them into entrepreneurship in the first place. So, on this podcast, we speak authentically on what it actually takes to scale your business in a way that creates freedom and joy that works for you, your team, and the incredible impact that you are meant to make in the world as a visionary entrepreneur. My name is Laura Meyer and I'm your host. I'm a serial entrepreneur wife, mom, to three. And I love talking all things business, especially digging into what it actually takes to scale joyfully to the multi-million-dollar mark and beyond let's get started.
(01:00):
Hey everybody. So, I'm here with Melissa Lanz. She is the founder and CEO of The Fresh 20. She is also a membership site consultant. She and I are in the same mastermind and I'm so excited for you to meet her, so welcome, Melissa. Hello?
Melissa (01:13):
Hello. I always love your background. It always looks like some place that I would wanna go on vacation.
Laura (01:20):
You're welcome to come to Pennsylvania. You in 20-degree weather, anytime you want from your nice cozy hippie living room in Santa Barbara, you are welcome to hop a plane and be in suburban Philadelphia. Anytime you want to hang out in my basement. So, I am so excited that you're here because I think I had mentioned this to you when we first met, but I was like Fresh 20? I was like, I, I I've been using that forever and I actually absolutely love the product. And it really is an incredible subscription that you started. How many years ago did you start that?
Melissa (01:53):
Oh my gosh. It's been 11 and a half years. So, I started April of 2010.
Laura (01:58):
Yes, It's crazy. I really found you when you first started, because I remember making those meals for my husband and I, before I had kids. My oldest is nine.
Melissa (02:08):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's amazing. It's been, it's been quite a journey and learned so much along the way for sure. Yeah. When I started, oh my gosh. I mean, first of all, I quit a corporate that was very high paying. So, I quit a multiple six figure job in tech marketing, because I was so burnt out and I was traveling all over the world and I was leading global teams and launching you know, global websites and building software and it was, it was crazy. And I had, I had toddlers, right. So, I had like a time. I think my kids were
three and four. Wow. So, you know, my life had just gotten to be a Blackberry and a frozen burrito over the sink and my kids knew their nanny and their dad.
(03:03):
And I was like, this lady that, that came in, I mean, I was still mom very much, you know, but it was just, yeah, just wasn't working. And I got the slight tap on the shoulder for my husband one evening. He said, uh, I don't really like you anymore. And I said, oh my God well, something else had some honesty. And uh, we had a really Frank conversation about, you know, at that point we had already been together almost a decade. And we had a really honest conversation about what we had wanted our lives to look like. And it didn't look like that. Right. We didn't have creativity; we didn't have flexibility. We didn't have freedom. All we had was the paychecks. So, I decided to, to leave, I gave my 30 days to notice I had no safety net. Cause I was young.
(03:56):
I was like, I just wasn't at that point where the whole safety net thing even came into play. Right. It's like I made it, I spent it, you know, we made it, we went on vacation somewhere. We did know you're living in California with two toddlers. So, no safety net, we didn't even own our home. Right. So, we were very much like creative thinkers and like, we don't need a home. We're gonna travel all the world and all of this. So, no safety net quit the job and decided to think about how I wanted to create my life. And it was a little bit early on in the, you know, the whole online learning and subscription game. But I knew that I wanted to take the things that I knew how to do.
(04:38):
Right. Start. I wanted to start with what I knew, and I am a trained chef and I used to in my very, very early twenties, I taught cooking. So I knew about nutrition and food and my kids were really little and I wanted to do something that was more family related and I wanted to do something online that didn't have physical products so that I could actually travel when I wanted to or go to the movies on a Wednesday and not have to worry about, you know, shipping or, you know, people having to show up in an office or so I want, I wanted all of those things. So, they kind of converged into this idea of what can I do that takes experience and my knowledge and what I know and what I want and create. And so, I created the fresh 20 out of a need for other families like ours that had, um, busy working parents and wanted to be part of the food revolution, but nobody was teaching them how it was like, you should eat kale and you should go to the farmer's market and, you know, buy kale.
(05:44):
And then it was like a science experiment at the end of the week. So, I just started researching and doing due diligence and settled on being able to create five weeknight meals with 20 fresh ingredients every week and started the Fresh 20 by myself kitchen table, $2,500 investment, you know, no high tech, I, I didn't wanna build software. I didn't, I was getting out of that. Right. So, I just, I was PayPal WordPress, and my own
personal email is what I started with. So, within three years we hit seven figures and then you know, the, within the fourth year, multiple seven and then, yeah, it was, it was a, it was a crazy, crazy journey to go from corporate, having a team and having like all these people then, and you're responsible to like this higher power, right. Something you don't get to the three, the higher power to like literally being responsible for yourself at your own kitchen table.
(06:44):
And if it doesn't get done, there's like, you can't turn around and go, you didn't do this or this or this department messed up or whatever. It was like all on me. So it's really motivating though, because when you want something to work and you want to serve and you want people to be using it, you're motivated to figure things out to, you know, I did everything the hard way when I started, but I learned a lot and I just kept reiterating and I just kept, you know, taking my licks and learning and then pushing forward and learning and figuring it out and messing up and having errors. And, you know, and you just keep, keep doing that. And the secret of business is that that never goes away. Whether you are just starting or you're a five-figure company or a six-figure company or a seven-figure company or an eight-figure company or a nine-figure company, everybody is working, making mistakes, reiterating, fixing, you know they're failing and learning. And that if you can accept that right, as a business owner and not take it on personally and just keep doing that, then there is success at the end of that path for anyone.
Laura (07:57):
Yeah. I love that. So, what does Fresh 20 look like today? And then I also wanna talk to you about that. You offer support to people who want to start memberships as well.
Melissa (08:07):
So today it's gone through so many different iterations at the height of it. We had, I guess there was 12 of us and we were all virtual. The first it was about revenue. So, there was the actual production and customer service. And then I was like, wait, there's no process and we're not doing books. So, then we added. Then we added, you know, finance and operations and production. And, and then we're like, wait, now we don't have marketing. So, we've, we've slowly booked surely like found our way to make sure that all the different facets of business are being taken care of, but our team is still really streamlined. And I would say today, there's probably no more than seven of us. I wanna say right now and, and extremely, um, streamlined and we are higher. We're, you know, we're bringing on and hiring because when we see a gap, we wanna fill it with someone in that area of expertise, which is very different than let's say eight years ago.
(09:08):
I just was like, no, there's three of us. Somebody's gotta take that. Right. Somebody's gotta do that. Which was one of the things that I'm sure that, you know, working with so many entrepreneurs that when you have that entrepreneur spirit and you're smart and you're motivated that you do take a lot on that you shouldn't be taking on. And I think
that the most that my company grows is when I delegate, and I hire people to be doing it. And I got out of the habit of, of saying, okay, like, you know, customer service, you're gonna do this now too. Like, you're gonna do something crazy. Like, you know, you're gonna do the financial reporting. It's like, yeah, no. Right. So, yeah, so it just it's an evolving entity all the time, but we just keep trying to do better, be efficient, listen to our customers as much as possible. Um, but still a really small team. And we've served, we've had over 200,000 subscribers, um, and we're just, we're really proud of what we do. And we just, we just keep making those meal plans.
Laura (10:19):
Every, I know they just keep coming. People need to keep cooking dinner still needs to get made. You know, it's like a really, really awesome business. Cause it's like every week we gotta put dinner on the table. Yeah. And you need a solution for it. So, you grew this business on a $5, a month product to an incredible successful place with seven employees, you had more, now you have a little bit less, they're very much specialized in particular areas of the business that you have identified, um, that supports the overall ecosystem in the best way. Like, what do you think is about membership in particular? And we both, I have a too, that your part of which is amazing. What do you think it is about membership in particular that creates sort of this unique dynamic that is unlike other business models?
Melissa (11:08):
So, there's two things. One, the first thing that there's no way to have a, a, you know, wildly successful membership out process in place. It's one of the things that took me years and years to really understand because people think, oh, I'm getting, you know, members and I'm getting subscribers and they feel, you know, they're, they're excited about it. And then they start to have churn and people start to drop off and they can't really figure out. And it's because they haven't at actually dug in and made their process and procedures efficient enough so that there's always a fire somewhere. Like literally always a fire. So, process is to me the backbone of leverage, but what makes membership special to that? Because that could be side of almost any company, right? What makes membership, when you have relevant, it has to be relevant.
(12:03):
And when you have process and procedure, and then you have a relevancy for your subscribers, you know, for their lifestyle for needs, for their business, for their personal growth, whatever it might be when you have those two things and they are lock and step in your business and you're looking after them, that's what makes memberships so special. Let me give you a couple of an examples of this. So, let's just talk about memberships and subs for a second. So, I'm gonna talk about subscriptions mainly because Fresh 20 is a subscription model. And then I can talk about membership cuz I have another company that's that as well. So, subscriptions are really about someone pays a monthly fee, they get access to product and service. Right? So, let's think about Netflix. Yeah. Netflix is a subscription.
(12:58):
Now if Netflix did and when they first started, they were, you know, mailing in mail, in mail out, keep it as long as you want everything. Like I think I used to pay like, you know, $80 to watch one movie because I kept it for so long. So, people are sending it. So, Netflix is something that people wanna be entertained. They wanna have new things they want. So now this digital version, right. It's relevant in their life. Netflix is amazing at this. Now can you imagine if nothing new ever came out on Netflix, right. If they didn't have top, they're getting so good. It may, it like it is, people need it. Right. It's top 10 in the us today. It's they're customizing your list to like what you've watched the last three things they're always showing you what's new on.
(13:47):
Right? They're keeping it relevant for you. So, what you like and what you like to be entertained at is constantly showing up in your feed. Right? They're making it relevant. Can you imagine if they didn't have the process and procedures behind that? Right. If they didn't have the technology in place that the software broke that their, their customer service was awful, that their communication stream was really, really bad that their business to development wasn't working. So, their process and procedures are totally in alignment with what's relevant to their client. If they didn't have both together, they would be a failed subscription like blockbuster. Right? Cause blockbuster did the same thing, but both of their things were broken. Their process was broken because they didn't get up and running and software and everything. They very much stayed into in an old school frame of mind and they, they weren't listening to the relevancy of their product.
(14:49):
They weren't getting it, that people weren't gonna actually want to drive to the store anymore once they had this option. Right. So, you have these two giant companies, one took process and relevancy very, very seriously. And they're number one in the world. The other, you know, they fell down on both of those. So those are two things that are really, really important and where I see most people missing the mark, pretty much a lot of the companies that I see or that I work with, they have one or the other very rarely do they have to, and you need both to thrive.
Laura (15:32):
Yes. Yeah. That's so interesting. So, when you're thinking about relevance, is there another example that you could provide that would be more like in the coaching space or in the space that a lot of our listeners are listening to, that you can kind of think of?
Melissa (15:49):
Yes. So, for example, a lot of, a lot of people concentrate on the process, right? When it comes in the coaching, right. So, they have their framework, and they have their content, and they build out their course and they have it all neat and it's all ready to go. Right. And then they go, and they go, oh, I, I want clients. Right, right. But they, when they were building all of those things, their process and procedure actually is not set up
to be relevant to the way that their clients live on a day-to-day basis and how their needs change week to week, month to month. Right. So, they stuff, their process, their courses into a membership or a coaching membership, but the relevant piece of how is somebody gonna use it? How are they gonna break it apart when they fail? Like where the failure, like, you know, how am I gonna be relevant because you're giving them, I mean, let's call it a course.
(16:51):
I'm gonna call it canned content. Right. Which is amazing. Right. And that's, that's kind of the, one of the things that was so great because courses it's like, you could get it all up front and people that are motivated and learn really well and can work on their own. It's a great way for them to get content, but let's face it. 80% of the people are not that way. Right. So, coaches are now having to say, okay, I've got my process down, but how am I gonna be relevant in their lives? And they're gonna, they're reaching out. And there, they're asking like, what problems do you have? Which one of those, which problems are cyclical? Like what keeps happening over and over again. And so, coaching to help people build a course is not as relevant as coaching to help someone market a course.
(17:45):
Right. So, there might be process for both, but you cannot be continually relevant to me teaching me something that has a beginning date and an end date. That's not a membership. A membership is something that I can come in and I can constantly be learning. I can constantly be using what I'm getting from the membership to up level my business in some certain way. So that's why I say that a lot of people, they only have one or the other, they're either super, super, you know, one-on-one coaching, then they've turn it into a membership and then they're doing one on one coaching, but they're doing it as a group. Yeah. So, they're like constantly on call for everyone. And it's still one on one coaching or they're, they have a, a library of content that someone has access to, but nobody's looking at it because they haven't made the connection of how that content is relevant and recurring in that person's life.
Laura (18:45):
Yeah. That's so interesting. I'm like thinking about The Advance I'm listening to you because you know, we're still in our first year and like figuring out what is relevant and what people care about and what they use and what they don't use and trying to, you know, trim down what people are not using.
Melissa (19:00):
Right but I think The Advance is such a good example of what I'm talking about because you, you both come with so much content. Right. You knew you didn't want The advance to be a course. Right. Right. So, the best thing about The Advance and where there's that thing, you have the process down of, like, this is, this is our framework for teaching you how to do this. And then that's coupled with now, how that works for you and your everyday life when you're building and you wanna have partners and
advocates and networking and everything. So, if you had just had The Advanced and just said, oh, you get access to this. And then we'll have alpha hours every once in a while. That is like, you have the process down, but you're not relevant, but you've created The Advance advanced around this concept of get to know each other referral, the referral code, like, like not only teaching us how to do it all the time, but like putting us in environments where we have to be doing it and practicing and doing it, that's a long term membership that why would somebody leave if the relevant piece of that is meeting and referring and getting referred by really amazing women.
(20:19):
Right? Like there's, so you've, you've built in the relevance piece of that of, and so that's a really good example of what I'm talking about, your process of your framework of referral code and all of the different pieces of coursework, right. That you created and have, and maintain coupled with the relevance of like, yeah, but nobody knows who I am and I wanna meet new people and I wanna have new partners and I need new services and all of those things. Right. That's a really, really how you've set it up is really, really smart. And I'm sure that you'll find that the thing people aren't using as much is the library.
Laura (21:00):
Yeah. It's a hundred percent true. It's so interesting to hear you talk about this because we're almost at a year, you know, we've done a few surveys. I would like to push them more and like get more people to fill them out. Cause they're easy to kind of blow off and like incentivize them more and just get more data because you know, with a membership, I think a lot of what you're saying is so true for people who think that they might wanna have one or they're growing one it's so easy to let it become a little bit of the junk tour, right? Like people need this and you put it in the drawer, and you need it and you put it in the drawer and like, you know, and, and then at a certain point it actually hurts the relevance. And then you've gotta kind of dial it back.
(21:41):
So, one of the things that I'm actually rolling out in a few weeks is this relationship marketing growth plan, where every 90 days we get together and we talk about how you're gonna utilize the resources to either increase your credibility, visibility or referral partners, you know, and like continue to do that. But it's, but it's interesting to hear you say that because it's so different. Cause Kelly, my business partner has grown her business to eight figures a year through coaching, you know? And it's so different than a coaching program. It so different in that way. It's like, I think a good fit for people who have that continuous process improvement, thinking like they think about things that way. And then it's probably a hard fit for somebody who's like, oh my gosh, I have to keep improving this thing you know like, and it's like, you do like that's membership, but then that's the hard part about it. But then what are some of the upsides of membership from your perspective?
Melissa (22:36):
Oh my gosh. So, well for me, the, the constant iteration is an upside, right? Because you are so, you know, a membership should be built. People that want to set it and forget at it. It's not, it's, it's not the game for them. Right. Right. You know, create a course or, you know, sell one off products and spend your, spend your marketing time, you know, marketing those products, you know, there's lots of people that come to me and ask me, well, I wanna do a membership because I, you know, I did this, this book look, you know, I did this, I did a PDF and you know, I sold $200,000 worth of it. And so now I wanna have a membership and I'm like, okay, let's walk through that. You know, walk through, tell me why. Like, you know, well, I just think, well, I could create a new book every single month.
(23:26):
And, and then I could get all these members and what I typically tell someone that comes to me, and I said, well, if you could sell $200,000 worth of a book, you could sell $2 million worth of a book. So why not put your efforts into marketing that you already have instead of getting into a content loop with members, because trust and believe when people start paying you and you say that this is what it's gonna be. They have expectations. Yes. They want it. They want what you said you were gonna get. So, the time to iterate on a membership is not three months later going, oh my gosh, like I can't, I can't create this anymore. Like I'm gonna have to change the membership. Right. So, I like to get people like, I like to try and nip it in the bud and say, do this first because the opportunity is not always jumping into the care and feeding of members on a month-to-month basis. Right. That's a big, it's a big responsibility. And typically like a lot of people wanna, like I said before, take their content and then serialize it and call it a membership. And that is not that there's very few people that I, I mean, I'm trying to even think of one, there's very few people, there's not a lot of success with that model. And it's
Laura (24:53):
A very specific outcome like Very, very specific like work at this thing, listen to us, come and ask us questions until you get the thing but then you get the thing, and you don't really need it anymore.
Melissa (25:09):
Well, true. I mean, it has a, it has a life cycle, so right. You know, for example, Facebook ads, it has a life cycle. Right. You know, typically an entrepreneur wants to fix an immediate problem. Right. They want to have better Facebook ads, or they want to figure how to grow with Facebook ads. That's an immediate problem. It might not be a repeatable process. So how does that, how does that factor in to having a membership that somebody can be involved in for four or five, six years, right. Because that's really what you wanna figure out. So, thinking about those things that upfront, okay. Their problem is Facebook ads. They're gonna come to me, they're gonna learn how to do it. They're gonna tell their team how to do it. They're gonna figure that out. But then what's
their next problem. And so that's the iteration that can happen is like continually thinking.
(26:01):
Right? So, if it was me, I would have, you know, it would be a marketing membership, not specifically Facebook ads, but a marketing membership because marketing never goes away if you're a business owner. Right. Right. So, it's brought me all, like let's get together and have a cohort and figure out how we're going to consistently on a month-to-month basis up level, our up level, our marketing. Right, right. That becomes a membership that somebody can be in for a really, really long time. Right. It's not it’s, but people get members signed up based on their immediate problem. And then they, and then they wonder why they leave, or they wonder why they are not satisfied or something, you know, something happens. So, it's good to think about these things on the upfront of doing your, doing your membership. Of course, there's room for iteration at the Fresh 20, we, we had to iterate a little, I mean, we didn't have to, but I started to grow as a person.
(26:58):
And as my kids got older meal plans were like, oh, okay. I think I've got this figured out for myself. Right. And for, you know, and so I was thinking, my subscribers might be feeling like the same way. What's the next step. And so, in 2015 we introduced wellness programs into it. Right. And we introduce introduced mind, body resets. So that a few times a year you can reset your, by taking out gluten sugar and dairy for four weeks. And so, we started doing these because that was a way for us, they still have their regular membership, but it was a way for us to be like, okay, what are their ways? Is this affecting their lifestyle? Like, how is, you know, how is their overall eating going and what, what can we do? So, there are, there are places to iterate in a business, but you are thinking about the long-term value of your proposition to your member is the best you can do. And the best I, a lot of times I walk my clients through let's look at what your customer lifecycle like for three years. Yeah. Tell me what that is. Cause if you, if you can tell me what that is, we're in business now, like now we can, we can work on the rest of it, but most of them get lost after three months.
Laura (28:17):
Yeah. So good. So, as we're kind of wrapping up this podcast episode, which has been so, so helpful, what are some final things that you wanna leave people with when it comes to thinking about memberships growing memberships and just your overall experience with creating your own?
Melissa (28:33):
I think start with what you know, would be my number one thing. Right? So, you can have a membership in almost anything. I mean, you and I have a, have a, if friend in our mastermind that has a membership on, on upholstery, right? Oh yeah. It's amazing. It's like, it's, you know, it makes you, and there's artists that have membership now that they like actually teach pieces of art every month. And so, start with what, you know,
don't go out and try to have a membership about something that you think might sell that it's not really what you know how to do. Right? Yeah. Um, I would never have a membership on, on, you know, financial practices or accounting or anything like that because that's not my deal right. So, start with what, you know, two, I would not complicate it.
(29:24):
I would start with the most minimal product that you can in a membership and then add and co-create with your members. Don't try to offer too much off the bat. Don't try to make the technology. There's a lot of people that I talk to and most of my clients come to me and they're like, the biggest question is, well, what software should I be using? And when they explain to me what software, what they're actually doing, and I'm like, oh, you need WordPress and Stripe. Like, why are we over complicating? You don't need to build any software. Like you need boy cross and Stripe. So don't complicate, especially the technology doesn’t complicate the content. Don't complicate the technology, minimal viable product and test your offer. I cannot say this enough, like there's no way that the Fresh 20 would've been able to grow into what it is.
(30:20):
If I, it like start with one thing, I started with one classic meal plan and that was my only offer. It was $5 a month. And I started with that. And it was only that for my first year, until I got enough information and data and feedback and failure and everything coming from it. And then I added vegetarian and then I added gluten free. And this is a process that it took, you know, because I wanted to be relevant, but I didn't have my process down. So once I got one process down, I was able to expand. Right. So, make a smaller offer. Then you think you need to, because really getting that optimizing that one thing will lead you towards a path of being able to grow and scale because it, and, and so please, please, please start small. Small is the new black.
Laura (31:12):
Awesome. I love that advice. It's so good. Right. So, if people wanna learn more about how to connect with you, what is the best way then to get in touch?
Melissa (31:21):
I mean, you can check us out on the website @thefreshtwenty.com and always on Instagram @thefresh20, on Instagram I'm @MelissaBakerLandz.
Laura (31:39):
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. I love this conversation. I know listeners will too, and I will see you soon.
Melissa (31:44):
Thank you, Laura.
Laura (31:47):
Hey there: before you head out, I want to let you know about a free new training I have right on a brand-new website called yournextmillion.me. It's yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses, to the multi-million-dollar mark and beyond. And I have to tell you, it is not what you think. So, check it out at yournextmillion.me. And if you loved this show, will you subscribe to it and share it with a friend or just say something nice about it to someone, you know? I’d really appreciate it so much. Thanks so much for being here and I'll see you next time.
The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.