Stu McLaren's Recurring Revenue Workshop 2026

Stu McLaren is the co-founder of Membership.io and this is his workshop, so this is not an independent review. What we can do is describe exactly what happens inside it, then point you at reviews we did not write.

TL;DR:

• The Recurring Revenue Workshop is free and live, running November 2, 4 and 6, 2026, at 2pm ET. It ran for years as the Membership Workshop or TRIBE Workshop, and this is the tenth year of it.

• Each session ends with something finished: a validated idea, an offer message you could send that week, and a map of your next step.

• There are no replays on the free track. If you cannot make the live sessions, the paid VIP track is the only version that records them.

• VIP adds three build sessions between the free ones. Price may vary.

• Skip it if you want platform training or a done-for-you build. It teaches positioning and launch, not tech setup.

What is Stu McLaren's Recurring Revenue Workshop?

The Recurring Revenue Workshop is a free live workshop across three sessions, held November 2, 4 and 6, 2026 at 2pm ET each day. Over the three, you work out who your membership is for, learn the simplest way to welcome your first members, and place yourself on the path from zero members toward recurring revenue you can count on.

A version of this workshop ran for years as the Membership Workshop, which is worth knowing when you research it. Most third-party reviews still use the old name, or the older program name, TRIBE. This is the tenth year Stu has run it. And each year, it keeps getting better and better.

Stu has worked with creators and business owners since 2008, first as co-founder of WishList Member, then teaching the recurring revenue model directly. He is the author of Predictable Profits and co-founder of Membership.io, where thousands and thousands of people run their memberships, courses and online coaching programs.

Around 20,000 creators and entrepreneurs have come through The Membership Experience™, the live, cohort-based training experience, which will become available after this workshop. Past attendees and students span across about as wide a spread of markets as you can picture: art, fitness, finance, teaching, dog training, subscription boxes, faith, music, parenting, balloon animals, yoga, painting and so many more. Some had existing businesses or large followings on social media; others started from scratch.

Why has AI made your knowledge and expertise even more valuable?

Because AI collapsed the price of information, not the value of judgment. Anyone can now generate a competent article on nearly any subject in seconds. What nobody can generate is a person, with the experience, who has done the thing, will answer your specific question, and shows up every month to help you get a specific result.

That reframing matters more than it sounds, because the most common reason people never start is a belief that everything they know is already freely available. It is. It always was (remember Google, right?). The workshop will show you that free information raises the value of guided, human, ongoing help rather than replacing it, and that a membership is the cleanest way to sell that.

What happens on each of the three days?

Session one is about validating your idea and proving it works for you specifically. Session two covers welcoming your first paying members, with no website and no complicated funnel. Session three zooms out to the whole picture, so you can see where you stand and what your single next step is.

Session one runs your idea through a short test built around three qualifiers. Answer yes to just one and you have something. If you want to work that question before November 2, our guide to coming up with a membership site idea covers similar information.

Session two is the founding member launch, which is the framework most attendee reviews end up describing (it's genius!). During this session, you will draft the actual offer and invitation you would send to the audience you already have. A large number of attendees send it during the workshop week rather than after. The pricing side of that decision is worth reading up on separately in our piece on founding member pricing.

Session three places you on a path that runs from no members, to your first, and on toward recurring revenue, then splits the work into getting discovered, getting paid, and continuing to get paid. The most useful part is what it tells you to ignore at your current stage. The last of those three is where most memberships are won or lost, which is why we've written separately about member retention.

What is the difference between the free workshop and VIP?

The free track is the three live sessions. VIP adds three build sessions on the days between, November 3, 5 and 7, at 2pm ET each day, where you finish and walk away with the actual assets: your message, your offer, and a plan. VIP also includes recordings of both tracks. The free track has no replays.

The distinction is learning it versus leaving with it built. Free sessions teach the method and you apply it afterward, which is how most people work and is genuinely enough. The VIP sessions are working sessions: you build your positioning live, then price and package your founding offer, then map your next moves from wherever you actually stand, whether that is no audience yet or an offer already launched. Each one is AI-assisted so the drafting is not the bottleneck. The Membership.io team has collaborated with Stu McLaren to build custom, AI-powered solutions to help attendees make even more progress during the workshop.

What do past attendees say about the workshop?

Attendee feedback clusters around three things: clarity on who they serve, the speed of the first launch, and the live format. We collect them, unedited, with wording and typos left as people wrote them:

• Recurring Revenue Workshop reviews covers this workshop specifically. Start here if you are deciding whether to register for November 2.

• The Membership Experience reviews covers Stu McLaren's signature training program, which is the more consequential decision and deserves the closer read.

• Stu McLaren reviews covers people's experience of Stu across both.

Who should skip this workshop?

Skip it if you want platform training, a done-for-you build, or a tactic you can apply in an afternoon. This teaches positioning, launch strategy and the step-by-step path to a successful recurring revenue business. This is not tech setup, and in most cases, attendees who see the best results attend the live sessions and do the work in between. It's about committing the time, rolling up your sleeves and playing full out.

If you already run a membership, you'll get a ton of value from this workshop, too. And one thing that is not a reason to skip it is audience size. The workshop is built for people with small audiences, and several of the most-cited attendee launches came from lists in the low hundreds. The real requirement is having a topic people already come to you with questions about. Our roundup of membership site examples is a reasonable gut check on whether yours has a shape.

How do you register for the November 2 workshop?

Registration is open now at go.membershipworkshop.com. The sessions run November 2, 4 and 6 at 2pm ET, they are live, and the free track is not recorded, so put the three afternoons in your calendar before you sign up rather than after.

If you are undecided, the reviews are the better use of your next ten minutes. Read the workshop reviews first, then decide.

About this post

Membership.io is the dedicated membership platform built by membership owners for memberships. Stu McLaren is our co-founder and the Recurring Revenue Workshop described here is run by our company, so treat this as a first-party overview rather than an independent review. Attendee experiences referenced here come from the reviews collected on the three sites linked above. Individual results vary, and this workshop teaches strategy without guaranteeing income.