![140. [Re-Release] The Ultimate Blueprint for Solopreneurs Building A Community from Scratch with Andy Guttormsen - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/podcast/artwork/ISeTcyWZ)
The number one mistake people made was that they had way too many, what we call, spaces in their community, too much stuff going on, and instead of just just focusing people on a signature gathering. So instead of, like, adding the extra things, I would only hold in on those 2 to 3 signature gatherings and make those really great.
Welcome to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the one person business podcast for professionals ready to take charge of their company of 1 and reclaim their freedom. Join us as we bring you inspiring stories, invaluable insights, and practical strategies from successful solopreneurs and industry experts. Get ready to feel empowered to create a thriving business that aligns with your unique goals and allows you to live life on your own terms. Here are your hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries.
Welcome to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the one person business podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Carly Ries.
And I'm Joe Rando.
And we are doing a different format today. Usually, we do the interview format, interview style. And today, we are actually going to be doing a workshop on how to build a community from scratch for solopreneurs. This is something that is so important for 1 person business owners because you not only needed to get your stuff done for for a state of mind, but you needed to grow your own audience. And so to help us do that today, we have 2 guests.
If you're seeing on YouTube, there are 4 squares not just 3 today. We have our very own community manager, Stacy Blette, who actually has a side hustle she's working on and that's kind of our guinea pig. But then we also have, drum roll please, Andy. He is the cofounder at Circle. And if you are not familiar with Circle, it is an all in one community platform for creators and brands, and they currently serve over 10,000 people.
So he kinda knows what he's talking about. And from our standpoint, they are a match made in heaven today. So, Andy, Stacy, welcome to the show. Hi.
Thank you so much. Really, been looking forward to this.
Yeah. We have too. It's been a long time coming. I think I was the one that had to reschedule last time and I was super bummed about it. So I'm glad we're finally on the air. Andy I am usually the interviewer and I'm going to pass the baton to you. I want you to run this like you would any of your workshops with Circle. And, Stacy, just get prepared to answer the questions, and we are just gonna work through this solopreneurs, as if this was your business starting from scratch. So get a notepad out, get your phone out, get what you need, and tune in.
Well, thank you so so much, Carly. And Stacy, I cannot wait for you and I to dive in here. So, you know, ultimately, I think we kinda wanna know what success looks like, for you and I for the next, you know, 35 to 45 minutes. So, the idea here is you walk away with a pretty clear plan for how you would potentially launch a kinda community first business. Before we get there, tell me a little bit about it. Like, what are your goals? what's going on?
So the big goal is to have a big party online every day where people can come in and just feel encouraged, supported. It's a big enthusiastic space. Backing up, my product is something I designed for runners. My company is called Sweat Proof, and it's an accessory that you wear while running that helps with sweating, excessive sweating. It's a cloth that you can use to wipe sweat or blow your nose or anything.
And, actually came upon this idea while running a marathon. I've run 17 marathons to date. Wow.
Yes.
Slow and steady.
17 more than me.
Slow and steady. I'm not one in the laurel wreath, but, crossing the finish line. So, I was running a marathon, and the man in front of me dropped his paper towel that he was using. And he stopped to pick it up, and I went right into the back of him. So my product actually is a cloth on a retractor that you clip anywhere on your clothing so that you can use it and then just let it go and it will retract back into itself.
So that's really the product, but the running community is phenomenal. And so the community that I wanna build around this is just more runners who sweat excessively, backpackers, anybody who needs a little bit of encouragement and support along the way, and, like I said, just one big online party when they join the community.
Amazing. And so I'm gonna do a little bit of discovery with you real quick. Just A few different questions so that I can get some context. So the group, these are runners.
And, when you think about the community itself, what role would it play in your broader business? Is it kind of its own individual thing? Is it a paid membership community, for instance, where people they sign up to get access to it? Is the goal actually to sell more of your other product or maybe not? Like how do you think about, the purpose of the community for you?
So I'm thinking along the lines of a Susan G Komen where it's not a paid membership. It's an online community that you can join. My original thought was to niche down to women, but I backed off on that a little bit. And it's really for exposure for products, but encouraging to post pictures, what races are you are gonna be at, who else from Sweat Proof is gonna be there and have logo apparel so that you can find those people while you're there.
Love it. And so when we figure out the strategy, which we're gonna get to the strategy, the tactics very specific with real examples in a moment. But when you think about, like, what happens if this goes well, like, how many people are in there? What does a typical week look like, for the members specifically? Like, what do they get in terms of the value? Tell me about that.
So the running community is extremely supportive. I'm a member of 2 different running clubs, and I get something different from each one. So the main thing is just encouragement, which is huge for, I would say, mid to backpackers. Right? They need that encouragement to keep going. So very encouraging. I would be happy with 5,000 members. Big. Big.
And then, people coming in and saying where they are, what pace they run. They've got their cloth. They've got their sweat headband or whatever the product is, but just support and encouragement. And when they come in, they know they can see where they're gonna be and then eventually have an in person community at different races.
Love it. And I know you can do that. The 5,000 members is totally doable. So, you know, the context is really helpful. And and when you think about like, launching a community from scratch, which is what this is.
Right? A community is a little bit different than an audience. So you might think about if I had an audience, I would have kind of a following. You know, it's a one to many relationship, but my audience, they don't connect with each other. A community, what you're talk talking about is something where those members, they're connecting and getting value with each other instead of just you.
And so, a lot of people when they're just starting out, the first thing that they think about is, what if I launch this community and nobody signs up? Or what if I launch the community and people sign up and then they don't get enough value? Or what if I launch the community, and people come in, but it's a ghost town? And then I kinda look I have that egg on my face. And and it's actually really, vulnerable to actually say, hey.
I wanna watch a community thing go out and and try to do it because there's a chance of failure. And, you know, at Circle, we have 10,000 communities. So we have communities that are, some of the biggest brands, on the planet, like Adobe or Webflow down to little, small very small, businesses where it's just kind of one, really ambitious solopreneur. And, frankly, most of our communities are like that, and then we have everything in between. And and whether you're the really big community or the small community, most folks should start out doing, the same thing, which is really identify what we call, signature gatherings.
Right? So, a signature gathering is it's really, like, these 2 or 3 or 4 moments, these community experiences that you're gonna provide to people. It's the value prop for your community. It's almost like the product, the big features. And signature gatherings, we need to figure out, what yours might be.
But a signature gathering, it could be I'll give you some really great examples. So one of my, favorite examples, there's a guy named Josh Hall. He has a design community, and his design community is all freelance designers. They're, you know, individuals who run their own businesses. He has a community with, I think, now about a 150 people.
It's a few $1,000 a year, actually, so it does a few $100,000. His community members love him, but they love, like, the value they get from each other. So he has a signature gathering where it's called hot seats. People come in. It's a business community, so they come in, and they're in groups of, like, 6 or 7 once a week.
One person's on the hot seat every week. The other 6 or 7 people in the group, they're there, and me, I'm on the hot seat. I might say, I have this big problem in my business. We're all gonna solve it together. So you're gonna come in.
We're all gonna focus just on you this week solving your problem. That's one example of a signature gathering, but incredibly valuable for Josh. Another example might be, book clubs. Another example might be sharing your work and getting feedback. So David Perrell has this amazing, writing community called rite of passage.
And so what he did is he has all these folks going through writing and then getting feedback on their work every single week. It's incredibly valuable. Other examples might be, you bring an expert to teach on something once a week, once every other week, or once a month, or maybe even better. You identify people in your community, because maybe some of them might be the experts. I mean, if you have a 100 members in there, there's so much knowledge.
Bring them in for the experts. Even have your community vote on who that that person could be or what they might teach. And as you think about, the signature gatherings, I mean, we have, like, 15, 16, 17 of them that are really common we see all the time, but you're gonna identify the 2 or 3 signature gatherings for you. And you're gonna choose ones that you're comfortable with. Meaning, if you really like teaching yourself, being live, whatever it is, maybe you'll create, a training or you'll have the experts.
But, you know, maybe if you're a little bit more, tactical, maybe it's, something completely different, and it's off camera. But we need to figure out what those 2 to 3 signature gatherings are for your community.
Can I ask you a question? So when you have these signature gatherings, what kind of a percentage attendance do you expect to see? So if you've got, you know, a 1,000 members, what number what percentage would you expect to show up, if you're doing it right?
So it should be a pretty high percentage, and it all comes back to nailing who the community is for and being really thoughtful about expectation setting coming into the community. Because the difference between an audience. Right? So, there's actually not like, this podcast would be an example. There's gonna be listeners to the podcast, but we haven't really, like, explicitly set an expectation with them, about what they're gonna contribute back from the podcast.
Or maybe you have, but less likely so, with a podcast format as an example. With the community, though, a lot of times people are applying or they're signing up. A lot of times you're doing, you know, a 1 on 1 call with with those first folks. So it should be pretty high because you'll when they come in, set the expectation that we need you to post respond to members, show up to the events, all that kind of stuff to be a really great contributing member, which is different than some other formats.
That's a really good point. That expectation. Perfect.
So, Stacy, we'll come back to the signature gatherings in a moment, but, one of the things that actually a lot of people like, even people with really large audiences, what they don't like to hear, but it's the truth, is that when you start these communities, a lot of times, it's like starting a fire. Right? Like, you're rubbing 2 rocks together. It takes a lot of work. And, you know, even if you have a massive community, you kind of have to start or sorry, massive audience, you kinda have to start with 30 people. Kind of, like, do 1 on 1 calls with with each of them to say, hey. here's what our signature gatherings are gonna be. Here's what, my expectations would be of you.
You know, we're gonna start the community on this date, then it's gonna go, you know, every whatever. But, see, you know, you would have to do that. That's the good thing actually, though, about starting from scratch is that in the community world, yeah, you get some advantages from having a big audience. But in some ways, it's almost like you get to give all this value to those first members because it's so small, which makes it more more valuable and easy for you to deliver on your promise.
And when you think about what may go wrong if the community doesn't work or whatever, like, actually, it's easier for you to reduce that risk Because it's a smaller group. So tell me about, when you think about signature gatherings, like, the real value prop, different value props, different moments that you could provide to people in the community, what are some things that come to mind?
So, one of the things that you did mention was, weekly, I mean, I could even have it daily because I could talk about running all day long. But weekly gathering, a weekly chat for people to come in and say, hey. I'll run-in, you know, such and such a race on Saturday. I'm nervous. I'm slow, whatever, and it's an encouragement call. Have everybody get together and it's like almost like a hot seat. Hey. Who's doing what this weekend? Let's see what their issue is. And they may not.
They may just come in to encourage other people. There's a lot of people like that. So have that at least once a week, and that would be huge because it gets everybody pumped up right before the weekend. And then they're ready to come back on Monday and say, hey. Here's what happened. So it could be like a Friday call and a Monday get together, something like that, like piggyback it on the weekend. So that would be one huge thing for the community. And then
I love that.
Thanks. See, I could start it right now. And then the other thing there are 2 other things. Especially with the people that I'm kind of targeting, What one would be, speakers that talk about, your running form, how to start running, how to tweak your running form, the difference between cadence and pace, different things like that that go with running.
So more of an educational aspect. And then another one would be, in with that would be talking about your apparel. What do you wear for different temperatures, different length of races? So educational. And then the other one would be, like, race etiquette. If you've never been to a big marathon before, what do you do? How do you act? Where do you line yourself up? So it's I think a lot of it is educational and then that encouragement piece.
Love it. So we're gonna get in a minute to going out and finding these members. Right? But let's let's let's start with refining that offer. So the first thing you mentioned was what it's a really great kind of, like, version of a signature gathering.
What are the most effective, which is accountability groups or, you know, whatever it is. So there are forms of that that you could explore. Right? So, you mentioned, you know, the idea of maybe people kind of sharing their intentions earlier on, let's say in the week or at the end of the week, whatever it is. Hey.
Maybe this is what, my next week is gonna look like in terms of my running and my plan and and all of that. And so then there's me being accountable to sharing it, maybe me being accountable to updating folks on how it went, maybe feedback from other people. Right? There's different versions of this where it could happen in private messages. I could be paired with an accountability partner or accountability group.
It could happen more publicly. So a lot of people can see my plans. There's a little bit more, broader not pressure, but broader accountability and all that. So you could really refine, what that is and, you know, maybe to start, it's a broader group. And to your point, it's maybe I share, early in the week, kinda my whole plan for the weekend and get some encouragement
But, by the way, maybe as part of the community, I review other people's, plans for the week, and I give them, feedback, encouragement, all of that. Right? That's kinda part of it. So maybe that's your first signature gathering, some version of accountability. The second one, you mentioned was, education, but kind of a community approach to education where maybe instead of you just this is the best part of a community.
Instead of you just coming up with all the ideas, you ask the the members, like, what do they want? Let them vote on it or even let them propose what we're gonna vote on. What are some ideas, you know, come up with a list that they create, then let the whole community vote. And if you wanna go even one step further than that, say, which of our members do you wanna hear from? That would be great. So that's something that you could do. How often do you think you would wanna do that in the community?
The educational piece? At least once a month. Maybe maybe twice a month.
That could be a good cadence, like, maybe once every 2 weeks.
Yeah.
So that's pretty cool. So now if you think about it, I'm a runner. I'm joining this group, getting to be part of a group where I'm gonna make some relationships, I'm gonna have accountability, get the encouragement, maybe even some, valuable feedback throughout the week, I'm gonna be learning, you know, probably from somebody, once every 2 weeks who really knows their stuff on a very specific niche. Right? We're not talking broad
No.
You know, stuff. We're talking very specific. Specific. So then, you know, we have 2 pretty good signature gatherings there. We probably want, like, 3 or or 4 really solid ones. It could literally just be 2, by the way. So, you know, another example could be something like a challenge. So challenges are really popular aware, and they're similar to accountability groups. But, you know, for 5 straight days, I'm gonna do this thing or 30 straight days, I'm gonna do this thing.
And a lot of times fitness is great for challenges. So maybe there's a challenge you could explore. Is there anything that comes to mind tied to running?
Well, it's gonna be different. When I think about it, everybody's gonna be doing different lengths of races, so I'd have to stop and think about something everybody could do together. Otherwise, my thought would be to have, like, an annual Grand Prix, and, you do a race once a month. It doesn't matter what length you're doing. And almost like at the end of the year, we have an annual banquet, and everybody gets points for the number of races they've done.
And that way, you don't have to all be running marathons or all be doing 5 k's or things like that. And then you can have once a month challenge update to see, you know, how many did you do this month and and lead it in keeping people engaged through the whole year. So that was kinda what I thought.
Yeah. You know, retention is so important. I could even imagine that, you know, as you're going, you're like, you can do a lot of times you can have little, like, badges and things like that that you put on people's profiles to give them, like, recognition and credibility throughout the community for, you know, taking on different different challenges and all of that. I could see you having a version of that. So, you know, those signature gatherings, those are all actually kind of very repeatable, and they keep somebody engaged over an extended period of time.
You know, the signature gatherings we have here, actually they don't require me to be hanging out in the community all day. They just require me to be very intentional and show up for that moment, and then I can come back. That takes some pressure off. It's hard to get people to hang out in the community all day, so it probably shouldn't even be the goal.
So you might have 3 signature gatherings, there. Now you might wanna have, an extra area or something just for kinda more, open ended conversation interactions. But let's imagine that's your signature guy. So you have 3 signature gatherings. Right?
You could create a pretty good landing page there that explains that if you wanted to. I'm sure. So, you know, now you're gonna go figure out where my first founding number is gonna come from. Right? Because you wanna get to 5,000, but it's gonna be impossible if you can't even serve 10.
Right.
So, we gotta find those 10. Now these are gonna be the crazy irrational people who are willing to go on this journey with you. You don't have any community yet. And, you know, one of the things that I would feel if I was creating a community from scratch, is well, do I have to, kinda convince these people that I have some really great community already running And will I feel good about that?
Probably not. Right? Like, it's much easier. It takes all the pressure off if you just tell people you're very transparent. Hey. I'm starting this thing from scratch. I'm looking for my initial founding members, and we're gonna do this thing together. You're, gonna build it with me. That's an easier, conversation to have with folks. We have to go out and find those people, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
But, once we go and have those conversations and find those 20 people, 30 people, we have to bring them into the community. And then they have to get a really great experience because they're gonna be coming in, and the first thing they're gonna be wondering is did I make the right decision? Is Stacy gonna be able to really, make this thing happen? And, you know, all you have to do is prove it kind of upfront. And I actually think this is one of the easiest parts to do if you know kinda very tactically how to approach it.
And there's basically 3 steps that I would recommend. So if you were to kinda put yourself in the member's shoes. Right? So let's say they've already agreed to come into the community. What fears do you think that they might have, or or what hesitations? Like, what's going through their head?
They don't know anybody originally unless they come in with other people, but they don't know anybody. They're not good enough. I know sometimes I feel like I'm not fast enough. I'm not good enough to be in a group. So I look for groups. Before I join them, I kinda pick in and see if I can see somebody that's my pace or something. Those are the 2 main fears, I think.
So I don't know anybody.
And I'm not Fast enough.
Yep. Good enough from us. Yeah. And it's more from, like, a skill level.
Yeah.
So it's really good to know what their objectives are and how you might overcome them. I guess the, I don't know anybody. Very solvable. We're gonna solve that right out of the gate. And then the skill set is another one. So one of my favorite examples of, a community, it's for business owners. It's a membership community. It's run by a guy named Pat Flynn, SBI Media.
He has about 600 people in there. And, you know, one of the things that they've always been incredibly intentional about is how to actually, like, onboard the members and give them a great experience upfront so that they can retain those members. And, when you bring people into your community, the first thing is we're gonna we're gonna have those conversations with, like, 1 on 1 conversations with those founding members upfront, and we're gonna explain to them exactly what they're gonna get inside to really set the expectations. But when they come in, you know, one thing we can do is what, the SPI team does. So first of all, they talk 1 on 1 with all the the customers, right, and all the different members.
At least they used to, for the first few cohorts. you know, if you go to university, you're gonna go away. I remember when I was 19, go to school for the first time and nervous a couple months beforehand, and they do this freshman orientation where you come and you meet all the classmates before you go in. So SPI actually does a version of that.
So before you even get into the membership, they say, alright. The cohort is gonna start, or this month, you know, everybody gets in on this day or whatever it is. But 2 weeks or 3 weeks before that, they bring all the new members together. And they get a chance to meet each other, ask questions, they set expectations, they say, hey. Here's, what a great member is.
Maybe they bring in some existing members to come and talk and kinda, like, share their experience, but they get you excited. And that way, you know, that that first day of school, you kinda know the other, folks in there with you. There's you're not there by yourself. Right? So that's one thing you could do, is you could maybe open up, your community once a month, and then you have cohorts, people come in together, they have friends, they know people.
But regardless, you're gonna let people in, and they're gonna jump into the community. There's 3 things you gotta do. So the first thing is you have to make sure people get just familiar with the tool that the environment. Right? And know how to use it.
The other thing is you need to give people some immediate positive reinforcement for, like, making the right decision. Get them some value right away. And then the third thing is you need to help them get connected to at least one other member. Some relationship has to form in the first, like, 24 hours. Right? that's when they're judging you the most and they're kind of, like, on the fence, and you have to validate their decision, make them feel like they made the right call.
Okay.
So, it sounds kinda like a big task, something, tough to do for every member, But you can create systems and and use the tools to help do that. So, for example, something very tactical you could do is you're gonna create this, like, home for your community where people go. Where they get in, you can come in and basically have, a nice little welcome video. It's you talking. Right?
Because it's community. It's all about the people. So you'll welcome them in. You'll kind of explain the lay of the land and all of that, how to how to use the tool. But then the next thing you can do is you can have, like, a getting started checklist, kind of like a new member, you know, onboarding checklist.
You can say, I want you to go through this list. At the end of the list, I want you to maybe send me a DM or send this person a DM. You know, maybe it's one of your team members or whatever it is, and I recommend it be you. So they send you a DM after they go through. Give them a gift or or something nice.
Say, I'll give you a gift and this awesome thing that you'll really love it, whatever it is, and and send them a nice note. So they've now gone through this checklist, which kinda gives them a lay of the land and all of that. The other thing you'll do is maybe part of that checklist is you'll have them reach out to a specific member. And, you know, sometimes you can just connect them with another member who you think could be a great fit. Even better if you then introduce that that person to the community.
Right? Because a lot of people, they say, hey. Go introduce yourself in the community or whatever. That's fine. The the best thing to do is maybe go and say, I'm gonna use my authority, my influence, my kind of, like, recognition as the admin to go and write, like, a glowing review of this person.
I'm gonna introduce them to the community and say what's so great about them. And so if you accomplish that in that first kind of hour of somebody coming into the community, those moments, you can really go a long way, you know, in terms of, setting them up to succeed and and stick around. But how how does that sound? That sounds amazing. Sounds amazing because it feels like they would start connecting with people right away.
You you kinda know the signature gatherings. Right? Like, you may have the accountability. Maybe there's a challenge. Maybe you're bringing an expert. Maybe there's an open kind of, you know, area. Maybe you have a book club. Maybe there's all these different things you could do. There's long list. Where do you think you might look to find the first 30 members? Like, what's your instinct telling you?
My instinct tells me my 2 existing running clubs, but I know from already knowing those people that they're not all my niche. So, I do have a lot of friends. I have so many friends who are slower runners or walkers who aren't part of the running clubs. So it really would reach out to more of my friends. I would reach out to the running clubs as well, but more of my friends and I've been that I've encouraged to come into the running club so that we can have a, a wide variety of pieces.
And then also, you know, my family, they would jump on board in a heartbeat, but that's really where I would be looking for more, of my friends who are slow runners or are power walkers.
Love it. So so these are people who are maybe, they're kind of more getting introduced to to running?
Yes. Hey, Carly. Because we all start somewhere.
That's me. I tried. So your friends, your family, people that you know. a lot of people, their first instinct, especially, by the way, business owners, marketers, and this is how I am. Like, my first thought was okay. I wanna create, some amazing marketing.
I wanna go out. I wanna do this big launch, and I wanna have the cool branding, and everything has to be perfect. But, you know, what you're talking about is actually probably the right way. Right? Like, that's how most of the communities get started.
It's like you pick out your phone and you go through to your contacts. You figure out who would be 5 people on my phone that are, like, great. Or I go to LinkedIn, and I find, like if I have 500 contacts, I find the 5 from there. And then I find the 5 from this other group that's offline. And so, you know, you may literally create a list, like, on a pad of paper of those names and reach out to them.
And, you know, you'll reach out to them, and then you'll send them an email. You don't even necessarily need a landing page, but you could have a landing page because, hey. I'm gonna do this. Do you wanna chat?
So you would hop on a call with them, which isn't very scalable. But but the whole point in this phase is to create some, like, validation and learnings because this is your product, essentially. So you're almost getting, like, product market fit for your community. It's like community market fit. Because if you can nail that, then you can worry about scaling up to 5,000 members. What kind of questions come to mind when you think about, how do I get my first members? Like, what are you feeling?
That part I'm not sure about yet. I guess maybe, I would wanna know how many other communities they're in so I would know how active they would be. are they even open to being in the community? How do they feel when they go out and start racing? Have they been doing any races? So try to just get a general history on how they feel about, being accountable and being part of a group or a community. That would be my main group of questions.
Yep. You know, and it would be tempting. Those would be great questions and it would be tempting to just, let anybody in the community, but actually then you kinda start to get this base. So this is what Joe was touching on earlier, like, kind of how engaged are they? What's the right amount of people
And all that. It's like, you want if you have too many people who aren't the right fit, it can really dilute the whole community, and it can bring down the experience for everybody else. So there is one of my favorite communities on the planet is, it's run by a guy named Jason Gaynard. It's, called Mastermind Talks. It's not on circle for what it's worth.
It's been around for over 10 years, and he actually capped the number of members in the community. So his philosophy is quality over quantity. And in fact, our quantity will never get bigger. We will only increase the quality of people in the room, and that's how he's really sustained his community.
I love that. Yeah.
If we think about scaling the community up and your time, maybe not even scaling it up, but, let's say you have a 100 members, how would you run it day to day? How would you allocate your time?
Well, because I still work full time, it's going to be a lot of, evenings and weekends, which is what I'm doing now with the product development. And that's okay because, you know, most people that are in a community aren't in it during the day. They're either working or, taking care of their kids or doing something else. So I'm okay with being in it, just at night. Jump on in the morning, say good morning, little quick video, let it go during the day, jump on again at night.
How did everybody do today? You know, who still has to go out tonight? so I'm okay with that evenings. I tend to work a lot around the clock, so I'm good with after hours and weekends and things like that. Yeah.
And you know, obviously, there's always, the trade off of time, you know. How much time can I invest in this thing and what does it have to be what I have to what's the return gotta be in order for it to be worth my time, essentially? And so, like, do you know very explicitly, like, what your goal might be in terms of, like, product sold or extra revenue generated or opportunities created. By the way, I'll give you an example. There's a great, community that we have of it's a venture capital
A venture capital group. They run All their communities for portfolio founders, they just help their portfolio founders get together, but they also hope they get deal flow from it. They don't monetize it at all. There's all sorts of different goals. But, what needs to happen for it to be worth it for you from a business perspective? It's okay if it's if it's not purely about the business and it's just kind of indirect.
Yeah. So, obviously, you can tell it's something that I just have fun with. I'm I'm passionate about it. I love to help people feel accomplished and feel joy. And so for me, I don't really see it day to day as working.
The pro that's the community side. The product side, I, you know, I would like to have enough revenue to pay for my daughter's college or something like that. I don't you know, not looking to make $1,000,000 overnight, but just something to do after retirement. Sorry, Joe. Someday I am gonna leave.
You've said that before.
I know. I said it, like, 4 times. I'm leaving. I'm leaving.
30 years later with you, Joe
30 years later, we're still together. So, you know, something that I could do after retirement to stay active, to travel. I mean, one of my one of my best moments would be if I have a group of people and I know they're running the San Diego marathon and I show up and they're like, oh my gosh. It's the sweat proof lady. She's here. Like, that's what I'm looking forward to. Stuff like that and just running the whole group together and it's just that's my dream.
Love it
So, it seems like there are a couple of different options here. Right? So there's like the kind of indirectly, will this indirectly help my product sell more? Right? And you gotta sell a lot of of volume in order for it to make Yeah. An impact there. Yeah. Right? So, directly, the community may not play as big of an impact there.
Other things, you know, you might think about is, like, a lot of times if you do have a low price on these communities, if they are paid, it does help you get a little bit more invest people who are a bit more invested and committed. And it also helps give you a little bit of cash just to help deliver even more value to people, have somebody on your team who can help, have some more polish on the the signature gatherings. But, when you think about the the action plan, like, let's say that you wanted to you're like, alright. I'm gonna do it. The painting is kinda getting colored in a little bit.
I could see what this could look like. Like, how quickly would you wanna move towards that? Like, what do you think the next steps would be if you were to get into kind of, action mode?
Well, I'm right right now I'm just in the middle of writing up. Like, I have a giant spreadsheet on all of the different things that I would do, which would be, activities or events in the community, posts that I wanna do. I'm trying to make lists of people who could give me educational information, do that the biweekly talks I mean, the bi monthly talks. So I'm trying to get that all together, and then I would launch it. So I think I need, a little more time to do that.
Not much. Maybe another month or 2. And then it will be ready to go because I wanna have a lot of that stuff kind of in my back pocket before. I don't wanna be scrambling, to think of, well, who am I gonna get next week? I'm talking to my friends and see who could come in and I know a lot of runners who could talk about different things. So and physical therapists and, people that I just stay in touch with forever.
So once I get a couple of months ahead of me, maybe 6 months ahead, and then I'll be ready to launch it.
so I totally get wanting to, have the content laid out. I would say you don't need 6 months though. you could almost over prepare from, a content perspective because what'll actually happen is you'll bring those folks in, and you'll start to get really good ideas from them. They'll contribute to the content. But I think your approach is totally right. Like, let's say you wanna have, every other week or maybe you've wanna do it every week for the 1st month or 2 months. So that's 8 pieces of that's 8 expert trainings right there. Who are your first 8 experts? Right?
And then maybe, you have 6 of them lined up, 5 of them lined up, and 3 are gonna be voted out from the community. So you can nail that. Next thing, I'm gonna create some type of accountability group, exactly what you talked about. Maybe there's a prompt each week, right, with that we catch up on, how did the week go, how was my plan, all of that. Then you gotta set up your onboarding flow.
Like, that's one day. So you can set that up in a day, all that onboarding, because it's a system really is what it is. But, you can do this in in 30 days, I would say, pretty well. What I think a lot of people kind of mess up with their community, So we did this benchmark report, but we literally took looked at data from 10,000 communities, all behind the scenes, you know, what's actually working. Because we all have opinions, but sometimes it's just nice to look at, like, what's the actual data telling us, without any bias.
And the number one mistake people made was that they had way too many, what we call, spaces in their community, too much stuff going on. Okay. And instead of just just focusing people on a signature gathering. So instead of, like, adding the extra things, I would only hone in on those 2 to 3 signature gatherings and make those really great.
So is the idea that you're watering it down?
Exactly.
you're watering it down by having too many places to go, so it kind of feels like you're alone wherever you go. That makes a lot of sense.
It dilutes it. Yeah. For sure. Okay. And it distracts because if you're putting all the value into those 2 to 3 signature gatherings and everything else is kinda just more, yeah, give people the absolute best product and and then nothing else.
Okay.
And what you could say is, you know, maybe you're 4 weeks in. How are these signature how are these kind of what we have going? But that also, by the way, here are some other ideas for a signature gatherings that we were gonna have. You have to call them signature gatherings, obviously. But you say, these are some other things we're thinking about doing.
We're gonna add right now, we're doing this challenge. We're doing the expert training, and we're doing the accountability groups. We're thinking about adding one of these 3 or 4 things over here. What does everybody want? And get their feedback on it.
I, don't have a community to start, but I want to now figure out a community to start. I feel so inspired, and I have all this information. Nothing to do with it right now. I need to channel it somewhere.
Carly, I'll send you an invite to mine. Don't worry.
Okay. Thank you. Well, Andy, this has been so, so great. Stacy, I'm sure you have consumed just as much nugget
Yeah. I hope I didn't look awkward on screen. I've had my phone out in front of me, and I've been playing it in front of Andy's, grid to make it look like I was looking at Andy and not taking notes when really I was taking notes because there's just so much good information. So listeners, viewers, if you saw me doing that, I was trying to be smooth and it may or may not have worked out like that.
But, Andy, we cannot thank you enough for coming on today. Stacy, we are so happy you are here as well. Andy, if people want to learn more about you or more about Circle, where can they find you?
Sure. Go to Circle.so We, just launched this community. We're calling it community benchmark report. It's kind of like the behind the scenes data from our our 10,000 communities. You should check that out. I think it'll give you a head start.
And give me some inspiration of what community I want to build. Exactly. Get the ground running. Well, this has been so great. Thank you both so much. And listeners, and viewers, we love helping you. It's one of the highlights of our day. We wanna do this forever and to do that, please be sure to subscribe. Please be sure to leave us a 5 star review. We would really appreciate it.
But with that being said, have a wonderful day and we will see you next week on The Aspiring Solopreneur, the one person business. Take care. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures?
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