Transcript 0:00 I'm in a hotel room in Starkville, Mississippi, and on my four-and-a-half-hour drive here, I decided to listen to some podcasts. I'm sorry in advance for the noise in the background. 0:12 This hotel isn't the quietest, but I really wanted to keep my commitment of doing a daily podcast, so here we are. 0:20 On the drive up, I was listening to a podcast episode on Creator Science, where Jay Clouse talked with the founder of Tropical MBA about events and how he uses events to grow his community and grow his income through his community. 0:37 And for a while, I've been wanting to talk about the economics of community building and monetizing relationships as a source of revenue, not only just for creators, but also brands, businesses, and a lot of the retail and e-commerce businesses that we see placing a higher emphasis on community building using social media and events in 2025. 1:04 There are two types of communities that you can build. One is information-based and the other is connection-based. How much you charge for these communities really depends on the level of access that people get, 1:20 and that could be the access they have to you, but that could also be the access that they have to other members within the community. 1:28 In a lot of the connection-based communities that I see, one, they charge a higher amount because assumingly, the person who is hosting the community is a big enough name to warrant that level of connection and desire to connect with them. 1:45 The other half I see is communities like Hampton that was started by the previous founder and writer of The Hustle newsletter, which had a multi-million dollar exit. 1:56 It's these elite communities where the draw isn't necessarily just the founder of the community, but the other people that you'll be in rooms with, that you'll get to network with, work with, collaborate with, and just have within your network as a result, and those charge a huge premium. 2:13 My community, Please Sell Responsibly, is largely information-based, and I'm trying to bridge that gap between information and connection without overextending myself as a creator. 2:25 All communities start in one place, and they start with relationships. 2:30 So let's talk about how I started and probably how a lot of people listening to this are starting, and that's using social media to connect with other people. 2:38 Relationships don't just happen when you post something on social media. They happen in the comments and in the DMs. 2:44 One interesting stat that I heard on Jay Clouse's episode with the person who helped Tori Dunlap of Her First 100K grow her Instagram and newsletter and revenue using automated DMs on Instagram, is that one metric she looks at to see if someone is primed to work with them, regardless of their follower count, is how many comments they average per post. 3:10 She said, "If you're averaging five comments per post, you're likely more primed to sell something to your audience," and this is the truth across any number of follower counts, and she's worked with accounts of fifty thousand followers up to forty-five million, which is a huge range [chuckles] and I'm not even in that range. 3:28 But I thought that was really interesting that even accounts of that caliber, she's still looking at how many engaged comments are you getting per post. You can leverage your comment section to get into someone's DMs. 3:40 ManyChat for Instagram is probably the foundation that people are using to do this. I'm sure you've seen the posts that say, "Comment 'grow' and I'll send you a PDF on how to grow your own food at your house." 3:54 You comment "grow," five seconds later, you get an automated DM with a link to download. I think that's great as a foundation. I don't use Instagram. I would love to see a ManyChat for LinkedIn as that's what I'm on. 4:07 I think Twitter has something like that with Typefully, and there's some other Twitter plugins that you can use to do that, to auto-DM someone when they comment on a post that you've made. 4:19 And I think that's a great start. 4:20 You can manually respond after the automated message begins the conversation and keep it going to add that touch of personalization, but depending on how big your audience is, that may not be feasible after a long amount of time. 4:32 But in the beginning, I do think it's important for not all of the process to be automated. There should be some level of personalization there. 4:42 In terms of DMs, I've done manual DM outreach on LinkedIn, and I've done some automated direct message outreach. Using automation to start the conversation on LinkedIn has been really helpful at scale. 4:56 The first message is typically automated, but the second message and following messages are always me personally going back and responding to everyone who responds to me, which is awesome. 5:06 As I'm saying that I wish there was a ManyChat for LinkedIn, I'm realizing there might actually be that already. 5:12 Taplio, spelled kind of how it sounds, T-A-P-L-I-O, may have an auto-DM feature if someone comments on a post. So I'm gonna try to check that out and see how that works. But in any case, two things are clear here. 5:28 When you're posting, you should have a call to action of some kind that gets people to comment, whether or not you are automating a direct message as a result of those comments or not. 5:38 And number two, you should have a system for reaching out to people within your network that you're already connected with, no matter the platform, to follow up with them and to get them-- and to develop a deeper relationship with them. 5:50 I personally try to have at least three call to actions that I rotate between on each post in the comment section. 5:57 And to keep this simple for you, you could maybe choose one call to action per week that you're using in conjunction with what you're posting. 6:05 So if you're trying to get more newsletter signups, your call to action could be related to getting people to sign up for your newsletter. 6:12 But trying to get people to sign up for your newsletter, click your affiliate link, download your lead magnet, and listen to your podcast is a lot of different messages that you're sending people, and it probably will get pretty confusing both for you and for them, and harder to track what's working and what's not working. 6:30 It's February, so this month for me has been about my podcast challenge, and I'm usually pointing people to either my podcast or my newsletter where I'm including information about the podcast episodes that I recently posted. 6:43 So what does all this cost me besides my time that I'm using to create the posts that you see online? Budgeting for online communities really comes down to your time and your tech stack. 6:55 Between Beehiiv, Octopus CRM, Captivate, Obsidian, and Notion, I spend probably around $500 to $600 a year. I also use Canva for graphics, but I'm on a free plan there, so there's no extra cost. 7:12 These costs are pretty straightforward, and they only require me. I don't require a team to build my online community as it stands right now. If you're doing events for communities, that's a whole different beast. 7:24 You have to budget differently for these and probably have help. 7:28 One of my connections on LinkedIn writes Gen Z Tea, which is a newsletter on Beehiiv, and she wrote an incredible article about in real life communities that I'm gonna link below because I definitely think you should check it out, and I'm gonna link the Tropical MBA episode of Creator Science below as well, so you can kind of hear from them how they approach community building and events for their communities. 7:55 One thing that I really thought was interesting was the guy that runs Tropical MBA, how he approaches events specifically, because Jay Clouse was essentially trying to learn from him. 8:06 He started his events by having members of his community volunteer to create and put on events all across the world. 8:13 He started off paying them just as a subcontractor as needed, and he said there was a point where he reached where he just knew it was time to bring on a full-time person that was dedicated to running events for his community. 8:25 He decided to amplify and elevate someone who was already in his community versus getting a dedicated events manager because, and I kind of agree with this, he said he felt that it's easier to get someone who's already in the community to host an event than it is to get an events person to do community who's not a part of the community, right? 8:48 Trying to communicate your community values, how you want people to feel, how you vet the spaces that you use and host events at, the type of people that you have speak, all of that is probably a lot more innate to a person who's already in the community and familiar with the atmosphere and environment that has been created for the members. 9:09 When you're bringing someone from the inside, yeah, they can put on an event and those things can be hard to learn logistically speaking, but they're not impossible. 9:16 As somebody who did an independent film screening, was it easy? It's not the easiest thing I've done. 9:22 I'm not an events person, but it wasn't difficult, and I think I and my team really got to craft the experience that we wanted our attendees to have, and that to me meant more than having some posh event that really didn't land properly or give the experience that we wanted to our audience. 9:44 Here's where it gets tricky because again, if you're hiring a full-time person for a role like event managing for your community, where is the money coming from? 9:54 So the guy that runs Tropical MBA, his memberships range anywhere from $700 a year to $5,500 a year, which is a huge price tag. 10:07 And then on top of that, the events are not free just because you're in the community, but you can only access them if you are in the community. 10:15 So not only do you have to pay an annual membership, you also have to pay anywhere from $1,000 to $3,500 per event, and he said they have up to five signature events a year. Insane numbers. 10:30 Insane num-- I can only imagine what he's bringing in from events alone and from his community membership. Yeah. Jay Clouse, his membership is in a similar range. 10:42 I believe his smallest membership is just his courses, and it's basically just access to all the courses he's ever made, and that's about $700 a year. 10:51 And if you want entry into the lab, which was originally capped at 200 people, but I think now instead of capping it, they've added an application feature. 11:00 So now you have to apply for the lab, and I don't think it's capped at 200 people. 11:03 I believe that was, when I was first looking, it was a thousand for the year, and he may have a higher tier that gives more access to him. 11:12 All of the events that he's done so far have just been tacked on to creator industry events that he was going to attend anyway and where members of the lab are also likely to be. 11:23 One of those was Create and Commerce, which is in Boise, Idaho, and that is Kit's, formerly ConvertKit's annual email conference. 11:32 So that's one of the events that he's done meetups at, and that's kind of how he approaches events. They're more just community affinity events, not revenue generating events. 11:41 For the business structure that Jay Clouse has around the lab, that makes a lot of sense for him, right? If he's already getting people who are paying a thousand plus a year and he's generating... 11:54 I think he said he's generated over $350,000 from people in the lab. That's an incredible number. If he were to do more, that would likely stress him out, [laughs] and he admitted as much. 12:09 He would rather have time stress than money stress, and I agree with that because you can give yourself grace on time. 12:16 But if you're thinking about paying someone to get something off your plate to save you time, but you know that that money is gonna cause a strain on your business, then that is a very hard thing to justify. 12:28 There's also a third option here, and I take a lot of inspiration from him. The person I'm referring to is Brett Dashefsky. 12:37 I'm sure I said that wrong, but he is the founder of Creator Economy NYC, and his business is actually built around brand-sponsored events that are recruiting events essentially for his online community. 12:51 So he kind of does the opposite. He uses the real-life events to create community online, which is incredible. His design work is incredible. I love how he designs his newsletters. 13:05 I love how he approaches working with brands. It just makes so much sense. 13:09 And I'm assuming a lot of his events are free because a brand has sponsored them, so he's not worried about generating revenue from his community in that way. 13:19 In his newsletter, he does share community perks that are affiliate links that people can click on to support him, and ultimately, if they do decide to get a plan from Teachable, get a paid plan on Notion, using his affiliate links does help him get a kickback from that. 13:35 So there are a lot of different models here. My model is none of these. 13:41 [laughs] I don't plan on having a paid membership tier that is $1,000 plus, and any paid events I have will be low-ticket events because it's less about the revenue and more about the community building and relationship deepening with my community. 14:00 I want to try some in real life events. I would love to do a take on So Far Sounds for live podcasting shows. So they would be secret venues, of course, in North Carolina, but maybe in a city near you, 14:14 and they would be capped at 15 or 20 people, so kept super small, super intimate. There would be a live podcast, maybe some trivia. I played around with the trivia idea, 14:26 and there would be time for networking, light bites, cute drinks, the whole vibe. Let me know what you think of that. I think that that would be fun, number one, as someone who is pretty introverted and wants to 14:42 create an environment where I can really feel comfortable connecting with people, talking with people, and connecting other people to each other. And I think it fits the vibe of my community. 14:56 What I'm not saying about the three people that I've mentioned, they're all men who do not look like me, and they can think about revenue gen-- differently than I do, 15:08 and they can think about who their community is differently than I can. I care more about my community having access to information 15:17 and having connections to the right people, not just a lot of people or people with a certain title or people that work at a certain company or people that have a certain amount of views on social media. I care about 15:32 what they are generally getting from the community, whether they are meeting me in person or they are connecting with me through my newsletter and online platforms. 15:41 That being said, there are a lot of people who will succeed just fine by cultivating an online community that brings them work or online sales. 15:51 Creators who have physical products, digital products, or an e-com store are good examples. They may do really well appearing at other events occasionally rather than creating their own. 16:03 I chart a budget for industry events each year, as did Jay and the guy from Tropical MBA before they started creating their own events. 16:11 There are great ways to build deeper relationships with people there, and if you speak at an event, that's a great way to get people on your email list once you deliver on a lead magnet or parting gift. 16:22 Speaking at events is nerve-wracking, for me at least, but truly underrated for attracting like-minded folks to you. 16:30 As an attendee, you also get to see what you like, what you don't like, what you want to implement for your own events, and what you do differently at your own events. 16:40 One element that I think allows people like the guy from Tropical MBA to do so many high-ticket events is that he has help. They do a lot of member-led events, and he pays them as subcontractors. 16:53 He also mentioned that he hired a speaker coach for members who are up on the hot seat for these in-person events. 16:59 If there are ways to connect members to each other, actively provide upskill opportunities, and incorporate them into the success of the community, I think that's the winning formula. 17:12 But all of that starts with a one-to-one connection. I hope this episode was helpful in determining how you'll prioritize connections regardless of the medium. 17:23 If you've been enjoying the topics I've been discussing here on the podcast this month, you would love the information in my newsletter. It's completely free and gets delivered directly to your inbox each week. 17:34 If you'd like to upgrade to a paid membership or make a one-time donation to support our work, I definitely appreciate your support in advance. 17:43 A paid membership gets you access to an exclusive article each week where I take you behind the scenes of my creative business and experiments to help you accelerate your creative business growth. 17:54 Thank you so much for listening. I'll catch you guys in the next episode
