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The Membership Myth | The GrowthPro Edge · The GrowthPro Edge

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  (Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to The GrowthPro Edge. We're here to help scale your business,
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  build stronger teams and sharpen your leadership skills.
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  I'm your host Denise Killian for The GrowthPro Edge. And today we're going to be tackling an
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  issue that many of us are struggling with. And that's the decline in consumer spending.
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  Oftentimes we think, well, people are spending less. Let's encourage them to come back
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  more frequently or spend more money in a membership is the way to do it. Well,
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  today's guest has a different solution that might surprise you. We're speaking with Jim Kessler,
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  one of the co-founders of Lasertron. So let's get started for today's edge.
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  Jim, welcome to The GrowthPro Edge. We're thrilled to have you this week.
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  Denise, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.
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  Listen, I want to start this conversation, my friend, by before we get into the membership
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  questions and the, how do we increase frequency with our customers? First, tell us a little bit
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  about yourself and your experiences. Okay. Well, I'm Jim Kessler and I'm the owner and
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  founder of Lasertron. I've been in this business since a long time, been 37 plus years. We opened
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  our first entertainment center in Buffalo, New York in December, 1988. I actually was a college
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  project. I dropped out of school after my junior year to start Lasertron and it took about two
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  years to get it open. And, and that, that laser tag arena, we started with a big multi-level or big,
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  I guess, split level laser tag arena. And that kind of grew into a full entertainment center.
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  We have outdoor miniature golf, 27 holes. We have indoors now, we're about 22,000 square feet.
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  We're going to, and indoors have big multi-level laser tag arena, 35 arcade games,
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  nine X throwing lanes, currently five crazy darts, five or three billiard tables.
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  And, and social gaming has been a big driver for us over the last five years. We also opened an
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  entertainment center in Rochester, New York, a little over 10 years ago, which is a little
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  under 30,000 square feet. About half of it, social gaming, 35 arcade games, big multi-level laser tag
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  arena, full kitchen, a full bar. Both, both locations have, have decent sized bars. Now
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  our focus is really adults first and, you know, families and kids second. If you don't satisfy the
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  adults, you're, you're, you may get the kids, but you're not going to be in business long if
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  you're, if your goal is to capture, you know, corporate groups and kind of the full market.
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  And we kind of made that decision probably almost 20 years ago. We saw, you know, there was a lot
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  of competition for birthday parties. We wanted it to be something that was more broad and with the
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  scope of who we got. And, and especially over the last 10 years with the baby bust is, is like,
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  if you're going after kids, especially in the Northeast and, and I guess the slower growth
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  markets it's just, you know, they're putting up nursing homes faster than while they're,
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  they're closing schools and putting up nursing homes. So it's, it's, it's you have to be,
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  I think in a much broader scenario, unless you're specifically kid fork is focused and
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  you're going to dominate the market. And if there's two of you, I don't know how you do it,
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  but but that's, that's, that's what we do. And we're also in the manufacturing side of the
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  business. I would say 70%, 80% of what we have in our facilities is manufactured by us.
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  And we've been doing that since the very beginning. We actually built our own
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  laser tech equipment from day one and then got really quick into the manufacturing side of it.
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  So quite a long history in doing this. He said 37 years, first of all,
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  inventing something that is kind of amazing. So congratulations on that. But also 37 years is a
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  long time for any business. And, you know, that's one of the reasons that I wanted to talk with you
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  today, because not only in your 37 years of experience, but you are somebody who really
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  looks for information and gathers a lot of information and resources to make a decision
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  and to put something into action. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about memberships today.
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  And I think we can all agree across the country, the frequency of our guests is going down.
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  The dollar spend per cap every time they come in to location is going down. People are just
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  being more precious with how they're spending their money. So a lot of folks think memberships,
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  there's a membership now for everything from even, you know, when I get my haircut,
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  they want me to sign up for a membership to any service or places I go. And you've explored this
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  for a long time. So let's talk with, you know, first, why people like memberships,
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  why owners and businesses like memberships, like the pluses of it.
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  I, you know, again, just like us, we, we experimented it with it for five years,
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  like hard, like, like, I mean, literally there were times when we changed the pricing boards
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  the same day, because there was a negative response based on the current proposal for
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  a membership. We probably went through 50 iterations of different value points for membership.
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  And we wrote all the software for it. Our, both of our facilities and probably about three dozen
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  of our clients use our software to run their facilities. And so we did this, we've been
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  doing this for a long time. We don't really actively promote it, but we have it because
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  we can customize everything ourselves and do it rapidly. Whereas when you work with a POS company,
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  it's just like, we'll get to that maybe in three years. And for us, it's just like,
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  we need to do it tomorrow. And I, and what I can say about memberships is number one,
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  don't do it. I mean, you can do it. But like the problem is you have to ask the right question
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  first. And it's not like I need to do memberships because I need reoccurring revenue. It's like,
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  no, what you need is your customers to want to come back to your facility in the same month.
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  Um, and, and that's a very heavy ask. And, you know, so if it's a very heavy ask, that means you
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  have to either discount your membership to such a ridiculously low number that you're really not
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  making any money on it. Um, or you got a hard sell it and no one wants to hard sell somebody,
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  you know, at your, your front counter when they walk into the facility.
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  So it's, it's, it's a very difficult self number one. And if you do it, the other thing is if you
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  do it for like one year, six months or whatever the time limit is, um, you don't even know if
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  it's working. If you're doing a membership for one year, you don't know if it's working until
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  week or year or month number 13. Do they renew after that time? And with most membership plans,
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  subscriptions, you, you name it, like you'll, you may lose 50% of them at the end of the,
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  at the end of the first year. So you, you start out and you got, oh, we got greatest. We got 10%
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  of our customers are on the membership. Well, at the end of that first year, it's probably gonna
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  be less than 5%. Um, so you did all this effort, you hard sell or soft sell, or however you want
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  to call it at the front counter to get your guests to do this. Um, and at the end of the year, you
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  lose 50%. Um, because they didn't think the value was good enough and they stuck with it. And the
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  other thing is we literally wrote software where if they stopped visiting, cause you could tell
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  if they stopped visiting within two months, we did not bill them for the third month.
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  And you're like, well, that's crazy. You know, just keep charging them. And well, I'm not that
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  person. I can't do that. And our manager that was kind of supervising us at the time basically said,
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  well, I'm going to quit if you don't, if we don't do something, because I can't take these phone
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  calls anymore where the customer forgets about it. They call up and it's just like, I can't do
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  this anymore. My husband lost his job, whatever the, you know, the reasoning is, um, you just
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  literally are pissing off your customers that don't want to be on it anymore. And did you,
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  by the way, did you sign up for the membership at your hair salon? I did not. Okay. Like why
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  didn't you, wasn't it a great deal? Like, you know, I don't understand, you know, and that's
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  yeah, for me and in today's world, it is that everything has become a subscription or a
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  membership. And you know, certainly I get my haircut, right. But I don't get my haircut
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  often enough to add on another membership that I'm going to forget about. Right. Or,
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  uh, and, and to me, it, it just feels like, um, it's, it's not something that I'm,
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  I'm a tremendous fan of as a personal consumer. Uh, because as you just kind of said, the long
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  term, I don't see the value. Oh, well almost nobody is, but here's my question for you.
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  Do you go back to the same hair salon? I do. Okay. So they're accomplishing the goal of, of
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  providing you a service that satisfies you as the customer. And so, and it's getting back to my,
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  I didn't, I guess I didn't finish my original statement. It was, it's not about membership.
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  It's not about getting them back again. It's, it's really about, are you providing a service
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  that's so good that they're going to want to come back to you as the provider of their
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  entertainment experience? Whether it's a family entertainment center, you know, trampoline park
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  or action park, all these different types of, of facilities that are out there. Are they coming
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  back to you or is it just like, yeah, you're okay. But I'm going to this week, this month or next,
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  next in six months, I'm going to go to the bowling entertainment center. And then I'm going to,
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  then we're going to go to the family entertainment center in the summer,
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  but you're not the default choice. And that's what we have to become is, is the default choice.
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  Well, then it's, it's, you know, it's, it's not about a marketing. I know, again, membership to
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  me as a marketing ploy. And the problem is, is the people that would want to sign up for a
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  membership are the ones that are coming to your facility all the time anyway. So you end up
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  providing them a special that's significantly discounted. They're going to be there
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  dramatically more often paying way less money. And like we discussed the other day is, is
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  those, not all of them, but like a percentage of those people that come in all the time.
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  Now that you have a membership, we'll literally be off your other customers because they're the
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  ones that are so good at laser tag or so good at whatever attraction they're in or, you know,
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  you know, dominate, you know, a certain aspect of your facility that like you will end up having
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  to ban customers that are on the membership because they're there so frequently and they
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  irritate your customers. And that is what happened when we did the membership. You know,
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  there were not often, but there were times we eventually had to ban certain players because
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  they were there all the time and they were so good that they could ruin a game experience for
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  a wedding party that was there. And, and, and so there's, you know, so at the end of the day,
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  the key is, is are we providing a service that is so exceptional that one is we talked about
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  word of mouth is so important that, um, you know, like, are you raving about your hair salon and
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  saying you should go here? Like, that's, that's how you do more businesses. You have to put yourself
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  in that position as an entertainment center. And again, I think there's, there's multiple
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  keys to being a great entertainment center. It's, it's not only the experiences, the attractions
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  that you have, it's the guest service experience. Uh, it's the food and beverage experience,
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  which I think is more and more important. And, you know, we're even seeing obviously, um,
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  these, these bigger fun centers or the, that kind of were trampoline parks and they kind of migrated
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  into action parks and, um, where they're putting in bowling, they're putting in bars, um, to kind
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  of round out the whole experience because the kid market is, is a pretty finite market. It's, it's,
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  and, and again, teenagers don't necessarily want to be hanging around with, with 10, 11, 12 year
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  olds. So it's, it's a really difficult combination to figure out how to satisfy, especially if they're
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  in playing something at the same time, you've got a 16 year old with a nine year old in a trampoline
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  park or, you know, a dodge ball, you know, trampoline. Um, it just doesn't, doesn't,
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  doesn't work very well. And, and so, so again, as you know, I talk with, um, you know, when we talk
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  with operators, the problem with our industry is there's so many levers that you can pull
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  and there's so many levers that are being pulled without you even knowing it, you know, a new
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  competitor, you know, someone else got a new attraction, you know, down the road that, um,
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  it's hard to identify why your sales are up or why they're down, why they're, you know, flat.
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  Um, but ultimately the key is, is are you providing the best experience? Are you,
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  are you buying, uh, you know, the best customer service and the best food and beverage
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  and whatever else needs to be a part of the mix for what you're trying to accomplish with your
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  particular site or that's going to satisfy your customers or satisfy customers you need to get
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  into your facility. Yeah. And I want to come back to that because that's ultimately what it's about.
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  Is are you the must go place? I mean, we, we're old enough to remember NBC's must see Thursdays,
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  right back in the day, right? Everyone tuned in that you had to watch it. You had to be there.
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  Are you the place where people have to be? And you know, that's ultimately it. And I think that we
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  sometimes can get lost on the way of how do we get there? Um, one of the arguments that people
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  truly fundamentally believe is if people come in more often, they will spend more
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  and your experience for memberships. Is that true? I was the opposite. Um, I would say our,
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  our most avid users of the membership spent the least amount of money on food and beverage. Um,
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  and, and again, we're, you know, one of our main attractions is a big giant multi-level laser tag
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  arena. And, and, and this is on her up in laser tag, but 60% of our guests are 18 and older. Um,
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  and so, you know, we, we, and again, regulars were, it's a small percentage of our total,
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  you know, business, very small. Um, but you have 30, 40 regulars at one point in time,
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  that was probably at our peak. And when we had the membership growing, they would show up with
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  their own water bottles and just, you know, they, they would play, you know, you know, we,
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  we limited it and, or they had to buy more, but we, you know, we limited it to like two times a
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  day or something. They could do it. Um, but they were still there and sometimes they would buy
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  another pass. And, and, um, and, and again, they, they are so much better than the typical player
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  that, um, you know, if you're an average player, your score doesn't really matter.
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  What matters is what are the regulars going to do in that game? And that's one specific example. And
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  with like the social gaming experiences we have, like ax throwing, those are individual groups.
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  Like they're not playing with other kids or other adults. They're, they're, you know,
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  they're in their own small group and that actually works a lot better. Um, but at the same time,
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  you know, you still wouldn't want to do a membership because you use on the extra
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  like lanes and your other attractions, the wear and tear, um, you know, it just,
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  it just doesn't pencil out. And if you want to, you know, get a reasonable price, like a
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  membership needs to be like $150 a month, not, you know, $30 a month. And, and we went as low
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  as like, I think it was like $20 a month for like two attractions a day. And it was just wear and
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  tear and everything else. And just, um, it, it, it, it is not a good idea. And again, I, I look
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  at it, even if you do it in a trampoline park or a place that has a lot of capacity, you still have
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  the same problem of having these basically becoming the babysitter, um, facility where,
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  you know, parents are going to drop their kids off or sit in a corner on their laptop. And,
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  and, you know, Billy, who's a terror after, you know, too many sodas, you know, is the one that's
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  you're causing problems. And I get up to the parent and say, by the way, Billy has to leave
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  and never come back again. Um, and then, you know, and then, you know, parents don't like to
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  hear it. You know, it's just, I can't think of after doing it for five years and really trying
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  to figure out how to dial it in, you know, actually COVID hit and literally hit and we
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  reset everything. And we said, we're not going to do it when come out of COVID. And, um, um,
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  I don't think all of our staff members are so happy. We don't have it. And, um, you know, it,
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  it, yeah. And again, it just, it really comes back to, um, and this is the hard part with
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  industry. Like right now, I think our industry is in the most biggest inflection point it's been
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  in a long, long time. Um, one we're competing with in-home entertainment, which is gigantrically
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  better than it used to be. Um, and you're dealing with mobile entertainment, you know, these,
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  all these devices that literally, you know, you can just sit there and swipe through it. And,
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  and, you know, this person's that was going to go out on Friday night, you know, he looks up
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  from his phone and it's 10 o'clock and it's like, Oh, I guess I'm just going to go to bed now.
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  They didn't go out, you know, he didn't meet his friends out at, at, you know, the
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  Boeing entertainment center or the, you know, the new social gaming venue that opened up,
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  um, because they forgot, you know, he was just got distracted by his phone.
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  And that's the same thing with movie theater. Look at every industry, movie theaters,
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  you know, sit down restaurants, even fast casual struggling. Um, and you know, I, you know,
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  they open up, uh, a restaurant near us recently. And I'm like, it can't be that big. It was tiny.
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  And I'm like, why is it so tiny? You know? And it was, it was an Outback. And, uh, um,
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  it's because 50% of their business is takeout now. Um, and so we don't, they don't need a lot
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  of seats and it's like, people are not going outdoors. Cause they're like, well, I can get
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  my favorite food delivered to the, my house. And while I'm watching the movie that was out three
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  weeks ago on my 80 inch, you know, led TV and, uh, go to the bathroom when I want. And it's just
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  like, that's what we're competing against. And, um, so what we have to do is like, I, you know,
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  this, again, it comes down to what are you going to give the customers? It's gotta be the opposite
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  of what they're doing in the home. It's, you know, it's gotta be, I'm alone in my house or I'm,
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  you know, my, my wife is there, my girlfriend is there and that's it. Or I'm just there by myself
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  to what's going to pull people out of the homes. And I, I think the biggest differentiator right
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  now that I see is, is social gaming. And obviously bowling's been around for a long time
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  and bowling is a hundred percent social gaming. And if you look like coming out of COVID bowling,
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  just, you know, took off and did extremely well. Why? Cause it was like, you know, the most,
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  you know, the, the thing that you could do with your family, uh, you know, that was, or friends
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  and family that, you know, that was social because people wanted to get out and they wanted to hang
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  out with each other. The problem is, I think, I think like if you just have a bowling, I don't
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  think that's enough. Like you need to have multiple social gaming experiences. You need to have,
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  you know, you need to have the bar, you need to have a really good bar and you have really good
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  bartenders. You need to have a really good food, um, you know, service experience and it has to be
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  high quality and, and food is hard. I mean, we do it at both of our locations and one, we have a
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  full kitchen. The other one's more of a snack bar. We're going to add a full kitchen and within the
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  next two years, uh, at our, our Buffalo location. Um, but social gaming to me, and it's not really
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  just social gaming. It's, it's creating an environment within your facility where your
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  guests can bring their friends and family, a corporate group can come in and you can really
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  hang out and just be with each other face to face. Um, and actually bond. I mean, like, you know,
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  like if you go hang out with your family or your friends and like, literally you can communicate
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  with just like, look at your friend who's known for 20 years and just, you raise your eyebrows
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  and he knows what you talked, what you're, what you mean. I mean, it just, you know, whatever the
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  situation was like, it's like, but you can't do that on a phone. You can't do, you know, um,
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  you know, and that's, that's where I think we can literally dominate. Um, and I should say dominate,
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  like that's where that, if, if there is a, what's the right word, not dominate. Um,
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  if there is a, a, a core driver for getting people to leave their homes and come to our,
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  into our centers, it's, it's how do we maximize the human experience with, you know, being with
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  your friends and family, being with your coworkers. And, um, you know, to me, that's the number one
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  driver, but it's, it's hard to do. It's hard to design that. Like, like, you know, you know,
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  we worked with a lot of architects and I think they're really starting to figure it out. Like,
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  you know, people want their own little gathering space. They want their own little hangout.
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  And, um, yeah, I saw a design just the other day and I was like, yeah, yeah, that's it. Like that's,
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  that's the direction. And, um, it's not that they want to be alone. They want to, they want to be
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  amongst all their, um, the community members, people, you know, the people that make up their
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  community. Uh, they want to be out with other people, but they still want their own little
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  campfire. They want the, you know, they don't want to share their campfire with a group of
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  they want to, you know, this is our group or we're out, you know, we're, we're, we're humans
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  and we're all together and there's no AI in the building with us. And, um, um, and I, you know,
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  I think that's, that's really the big differentiator that, um, you know, and again,
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  the mobile device devices and in-home entertainment is you have, we have to be the opposite of that.
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  If we're not in a good way, like what is the opposite of that? But in a really positive
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  human way, and if we can pull that off, we're going to get people to come to our facility
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  more frequently than they're going to go to a place that you walked in and, you know,
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  you see two employees occasionally and, um, you know, and you know, everyone's kind of doing
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  their own little thing and it needs to be, um, you need to be a community venue where people go to
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  hang out with their friends and family. And I think that's, that's, that's the key.
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  Yeah. And that, and, and, and the, the thing to think about for our operators and for our owners
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  out there is it's yes, we want to get frequency of visits up, but we want to get them up for
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  the right reasons. Memberships short-term may increase your frequency, but long-term is not
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  going to increase the revenue that's coming in and is going to maybe do more damage than good.
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  And instead focus on how do we become, you just got to come back, right? Is that bounce backs?
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  Is that, um, creating unique events regularly? What, what do you think that is?
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  I think, you know, I think it, I guess it depends on what kind of bounce back. Cause
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  if you give me a bounce back for like 10% off, like you gave me nothing. Um, you know,
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  if you give me a bounce back for 50% off, come back within 20 days, you still gave me nothing.
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  Cause I have a wedding coming up, you know, there's going to be a funeral at some point
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  in time. Then there's my kids thing. And then there's, there's, well, my kids thing is every
• 23:53
  weekend because it's that time of year for hockey or whatever it is. So, you know, you know, so I'll
• 24:00
  give you an example. Like, you know, we did all this membership for stuff for five years.
• 24:05
  And then finally it was just, it's like, well, what is, what is our ultimate goal? It's just
• 24:09
  to get them back. Like, how do we get them back within 20 days, within 30 days? And I can't find
• 24:14
  this study, but I read this study. It had been like 20 years ago. And it was like, if you did
• 24:20
  a coupon that said, you know, 20% off and it expired in 30 days, let's say 10% of the people
• 24:27
  used it. You know, it was like a place that people would, it was like a donut shop or something.
• 24:31
  But if you did, um, the same offer 20% off and it expired and I can't find this study,
• 24:37
  I think it was like in less than 10 days or less than 20 days. Um, like the, the amount of people
• 24:44
  that came back was like triple. Um, because if it's too long of an expiration date, then they
• 24:49
  kind of forget about it and put it on their desk and then the other, they get busy and then it gets
• 24:52
  buried under clothes or whatever. And, and, and all of a sudden you find it six months later,
• 24:57
  it's like, Oh, it's expired. Um, you know, so, and what we do is because again, we've realized the
• 25:04
  goal is how do we just get them back within X amount of days? I think it originally was 30
• 25:09
  days. And then we went right now it's 20 days. We give you a, um, six credits, which is like,
• 25:14
  you can do, uh, an expires within 20 days, which means you can do one of our premium attractions
• 25:20
  plus one of our, um, like bill user example, or you can use those two remaining credits. Cause
• 25:26
  it's four credits for a premium attraction, two credits for either. You can convert it to $10 an
• 25:31
  arcade. And then here's the thing that like, I think our centers are pretty good. You know,
• 25:36
  I think we have, you know, we keep adding new things. We keep adding more social gaming
• 25:39
  experiences, but less than 10% of the people use that and come back. And it's, it's shocking. But
• 25:46
  at the same time, there's a funeral, there's a wedding. My kids have all this stuff. My
• 25:50
  my daughters have danced that, you know, it's there, you know, that, that is the other thing
• 25:54
  you're fighting is that most kids have their whole week scheduled. And you know, with what, whatever
• 26:01
  event or thing they're, they're doing, or the schedule isn't going to be in the basement
• 26:04
  playing video games. I'm going to be playing Fortnite. Um, you know, I'm a, I'm an older kid
• 26:08
  and I'm a teenager. I'm gonna be playing call of duty. Um, you know, those are things that
• 26:13
  are designed literally to be semi-social and, and, um, um, where kids can be on headsets and
• 26:19
  talking to their friends and they're going in as a squad and, you know, they're doing it all remotely.
• 26:24
  Um, so those are the things we're competing against, but we can't copy those things. We
• 26:28
  have to do something the opposite of that. And, um, where, you know, you know, Billy and his
• 26:34
  friends are, are, are going to go play whatever it is, laser tag or bowl or, you know, do whatever
• 26:40
  it is, but it's gotta be, and it's gotta be priced right. Cause it's, it's, and again,
• 26:45
  we got to price it because we're doing real world experiences. So it can't be too low,
• 26:49
  but it also can't be too high. Um, and again, it depends on your market area. It depends on
• 26:54
  if you're in a tourist area and all that. Um, but it has to be the right number. Um,
• 26:59
  and, uh, and, and again, all those things are difficult to figure out. You have to kind of do
• 27:03
  it, you know, for your, your, your target marketing based on your demographic.
• 27:08
  Right. Um, well, Jim was, and we are coming to the end of our time. I cannot thank you enough
• 27:15
  for your insights. And, you know, quite honestly, when I first approached you about wanting to have
• 27:20
  this conversation with you, cause I knew you were the guy to talk to about this, uh, because you,
• 27:27
  you did the research, you did the data, you did it for so long. I was expecting you to be like,
• 27:32
  yeah, they're great. Everyone should do it. And your response left me a little stunned and
• 27:39
  that talking through it with you and hearing why in your experiences, um, I think are so,
• 27:46
  so valuable and I appreciate it. And I know that at the end of the day, if you offer,
• 27:52
  offer a better customer experience, they're going to come back to you. So that's what we should
• 27:58
  right. Yeah. Well, it's the attract, it's everything. It's, it's the food and beverage.
• 28:02
  It's the attractions. It's the entertainment experiences. It's the environment that they're
• 28:05
  at. It's the whole, it's a whole package. Yep. So your employees, what it looks like,
• 28:11
  what it smells like, how clear the bathrooms, uh, right. I mean, that's, that's actually the
• 28:18
  first one for me. Um, how, you know, uh, what, what attractions do you have, uh, and, and just
• 28:24
  the vibe of the place and that those are the things that we can control, uh, a lot, a lot better
• 28:30
  than, uh, the marketing efforts of memberships and, and, and other things. So gosh, I appreciate
• 28:40
  your time so much, Jim. And, uh, I feel like we're going to have you on a few more times because
• 28:45
  there's things that we've talked about that I'm like, that's a whole other topic. So, uh, you'll
• 28:50
  be coming back to see it. Hopefully. Well, I, I definitely would. And, and thank you for
• 28:55
  taking the time to talk to me today. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we hope today's
• 29:01
  conversation has given you some practical tools to help you sharpen your edge and accelerate your
• 29:07
  growth. If you're ready to grow your team, your business, or yourself, contact us at
• 29:14
  thegrowthprogroup.com and set up a free growth call with one of our coaches. Once again,
• 29:20
  a special thanks to our sponsors, Embed, Party Center Software, A&A Global, Betson, Semnox,
• 29:27
  Shaffer, and Roller for all that they do to help us bring you the Growth Pro Edge.
• 29:33
  And until next time, I'm Denise Killian with the Growth Pro Group. Keep learning, keep growing,
• 29:40
  and keep striving for the extraordinary.