0:00

By the way, in case you haven't heard, my brand

0:02

new book, Feel Good Productivity is now out. It is

0:04

available everywhere books are sold. And it's actually hit the

0:06

New York Times and also the Sunday Times bestseller list.

0:08

So thank you to everyone who's already got a copy

0:11

of the book. If you've read the book already, I

0:13

would love a review on Amazon. And if you haven't

0:15

yet checked it out, you may like to check it

0:17

out. It's available in physical format and also ebook and

0:19

also audio book everywhere books are sold. Hello,

0:22

Jay. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

0:24

Hello, Oli. Good to see you again, my friend.

0:26

Doing well. Thanks for taking

0:28

the time to hop on. I thought we would

0:30

do a bit of an experimental format of Deep Dive. I'm

0:34

trying to be a bit less optimized when

0:36

it comes to how I do my podcast

0:38

and a bit less like growth

0:40

hacky with it, like we've been for the last couple

0:42

of years. And now I want to transition it more

0:44

towards just having cool conversations with people who I want

0:46

to learn from. And if people in

0:49

the audience can get value from those conversations, then that's

0:51

great. And if not, then that's also totally fine. I

0:53

think our conversation today will be quite niche, but

0:56

that's okay. Because I was hoping to talk

0:58

to you about creators and communities and this

1:00

new wave of

1:03

people making money on the internet through communities. How

1:05

does that sound? Sounds great. I'm

1:07

excited about it. It's been transformative for my

1:09

business and a lot of folks in my

1:12

community. So happy to chat and help all

1:14

again. Sick. So

1:16

for people who might not know who you are, can you give a quick intro?

1:19

And yeah, who are you and what

1:21

is your background in this whole community thing? Yeah,

1:24

my business is called Creator Science. It's a

1:26

media company helping people become professional creators. A

1:29

lot of people are very good at creating content and even

1:31

getting attention. Fewer people in my

1:33

experience are good at directing that attention in

1:36

such a way that provides value for the

1:38

audience, but also captures value for the creator

1:40

and builds a real business on it. So

1:42

what we try to do with Creator Science

1:44

is help people to do that. And

1:47

our main revenue driver is our

1:49

membership community, which is called The

1:51

Lab. And it's a 200

1:54

person membership. It's capped, but it does about

1:56

a half million dollars in revenue per year. And

1:59

we've done some really unique. things with it. Not

2:02

that will be prescriptive for you by any means, but

2:05

gives us some different levers to pull and look at what you're

2:07

trying to do and see if it makes sense. How

2:10

did you get into all this stuff? Like

2:12

how did life lead you to

2:14

this point? That's a good question. I started

2:16

in startups because my parents

2:19

were high school teachers and my entire extended

2:21

family growing up were actually like K through

2:23

12 teachers and when

2:25

I went to college that was the only like path

2:27

that I knew. I figured I would pick a major, I would

2:30

work somewhere for 35 years, get

2:32

a pension, and that's just what being

2:34

an adult was, right? But

2:37

at that time when I was in

2:39

college that was when like Uber and

2:42

Facebook and Airbnb were things and

2:44

I shared a wall in my dorm with a

2:46

couple of guys who had started businesses in high

2:48

school and just like blew my brain wide

2:51

open. I did not know that you could do

2:53

your own thing. So they

2:55

introduced me to entrepreneurship. I thought entrepreneurship

2:57

was like tech startups, did

2:59

software companies for a few years,

3:02

and then around 2017 realized, hey wait, I'd

3:05

always like to write. Writing

3:07

is kind of a product. Like I

3:09

had gotten in my mind this product

3:11

lens because I did software products, but

3:14

I realized that writing was a product

3:16

but I didn't have to rely on engineers

3:18

or designers to take my vision

3:20

and make it a real thing and that was just

3:23

so attractive because in software, the

3:25

thing that you set out to make

3:27

is almost never what you actually end

3:29

up making because there are compromises and

3:31

technical feasibility, but when it's writing

3:33

and then eventually it was podcasting and then eventually

3:35

it was videos, there's a lot more

3:38

artistic and creative control. So once

3:42

I kind of set my eyes on, okay, content

3:44

is a product, I think I want to do

3:46

content, then I just started

3:48

being very analytical of what

3:50

do people, like how do people make that work?

3:53

I was just very the

3:56

analytical and looking at how do content

3:58

businesses work. And soon it

4:01

just became, oh, Jay's really good at breaking

4:03

down how content businesses work. Interesting.

4:07

So how did you, how did you first start

4:09

making money from writing? In the beginning, it was

4:11

actually group coaching. Um, I

4:14

did some freelancing right off the bat because

4:16

in the beginning, you know, the, the fastest

4:18

way to generate any revenue is selling your

4:20

time. So I was doing WordPress websites. I

4:22

was doing, um, email copywriting essentially and tying

4:24

those two things together so people had a

4:27

actual marketing funnel. And

4:31

outside of that, I was building this

4:33

mastermind program essentially where I was working

4:35

mostly with freelancers and

4:38

that opened my, my eyes to, well, I'm

4:41

repeating myself a lot. There's

4:43

a lot of things that people come in and I'm saying the same things.

4:45

What if I just productize that, put that

4:48

in a course? I had had

4:50

an opportunity to work with LinkedIn learning as a course

4:52

author back in 2017. And

4:55

that got me thinking, okay, well, if I can create

4:57

courses with LinkedIn, I could create my

4:59

own courses and people are already reading

5:01

my email. So I have this group of people that I could

5:04

market this to. And

5:07

that was step one, you know, is writing emails,

5:10

running group coaching programs, starting to create

5:12

courses, getting more people into email. I

5:14

waited way too long to do social

5:16

media or YouTube. Um,

5:18

but now, you know, that whole machine

5:21

is working and, and

5:23

it's, it's a great life. I got to say. Interesting.

5:26

Nice. That's, that's a very interesting to

5:28

hear. One, one thing that strikes me as you,

5:30

as you were speaking is that I think a

5:32

lot of us in this sort of creators

5:35

coaching other creators space, um,

5:39

from the outside, it can seem as if

5:41

the only way to make money as a

5:43

creator is by coaching other creators. Um,

5:47

and it's, I don't

5:49

know why, why this thought came to me recently,

5:51

but actually that's just how

5:54

it looks like, because the only people talking about it are the

5:56

ones who are coaching other creatures. And

5:58

so if someone is listening to this. watching this

6:00

and does not know anyone doing

6:02

a service-based agency or selling online courses, it might seem

6:05

as if the only people selling online courses are the

6:07

ones who are selling online courses about how to make

6:09

money on the internet. But actually, there is a

6:12

whole huge massive, massive, massive industry of people

6:14

selling online courses for all sorts of things

6:17

and doing coaching for all sorts of things. And

6:19

it's only the ones who are like you and me who

6:21

coach other creatives that you actually hear from. And

6:23

so it can seem as if, oh, these guys are just making money, teaching other people

6:26

how to make money. Well, because we're

6:28

also really, we

6:31

can make really good use of platforms to

6:33

talk about these things. My membership, 200 people, the

6:36

majority of them, vast majority of them are

6:38

teaching very specific skills. Like we have this

6:40

member, Claire, she teaches people how to become

6:43

runners on a plant-based diet, very

6:45

specific, very niche thing. She mostly

6:47

reaches people through Instagram. So

6:49

if you're not on Instagram, you're not going to see your stuff. If you're

6:52

not interested in running or plant-based diet, you're not going to see your stuff.

6:54

We had another guy, Craig, who teaches

6:57

high school football coaches. He creates

6:59

content for high school football coaches

7:01

who teach defensive line techniques specifically.

7:03

So a lot of people who

7:05

have the creator business model are

7:08

very, very specific and very, very niche. And

7:11

I think actually there's bigger opportunity there

7:13

for those people than the creators

7:15

teaching creators. Sometimes

7:18

when I genuinely have

7:20

this taste for my own

7:22

meta nature of the business,

7:25

but ultimately you look at, am

7:27

I getting people results? Are people glad that

7:29

they're here and that they're learning from me?

7:31

And when the overwhelming response is yes, you

7:34

press on. Sick. So

7:36

what was your, how did your, I guess, what

7:39

was the history of your community, the lab? And

7:41

where did the name come from? Good question.

7:44

So I actually think we need to go back a

7:46

little bit further. That group coaching

7:48

program that I started doing, that

7:51

was in 2017. We were

7:53

using Zoom on the back end of that. I was

7:55

using Slack to connect people who were in the program

7:57

currently and who had ever gone through the program. that

8:00

business had run its course, there were about 120 people who

8:02

have gone through that program. And that

8:05

sounds like table stakes now here in 2024,

8:07

but in 2017, nobody was using

8:09

Slack for community. And I literally had

8:11

to teach people how to download and use Zoom. Very

8:13

unique. Yeah, I would not have heard of Zoom back then. I

8:15

only heard of it in the pandemic, like most other people this

8:17

time, I guess. It was very

8:20

unique use of tools back then. But

8:23

through that process, I met Matt Gartland, who lives

8:25

here in Columbus, Ohio, as do I. And

8:27

he saw what I had done with digital

8:30

community on Slack. Fast

8:32

forward to 2020, we have the pandemic.

8:34

Matt and his business partner, Pat Flynn,

8:37

were thinking about launching their own online community. So

8:39

they brought me in to consult on their

8:41

community plans in 2020. They

8:44

had just gotten access to this brand new tool

8:46

that was in private beta called Circle, which blew

8:48

my mind. I was like, finally, a tool that's

8:50

actually built for community because Slack is built for

8:52

enterprise just doesn't really work. So

8:55

for most of 2020, I was helping

8:57

them design and launch SPI Pro. At

9:00

the end of 2020, they said, can you

9:02

come lead our community team here at SPI?

9:06

And after some talking, they

9:08

acquired my community business, brought

9:10

those members into SPI Pro, and then

9:12

I led the SPI community team for

9:14

a year in 2021. Throughout

9:18

that year, my content business, which I continue to

9:20

build on the side, just had a great year.

9:23

And it got to the point where I couldn't do both.

9:25

And I said, if I'm going to, you know, bet on one

9:27

thing, I'm going to bet on myself. So at the beginning of

9:29

2022, I went back out on my own, suddenly

9:31

had a lot more time on my hands,

9:33

was still very good at community and love

9:35

community. I decided that I would launch my

9:38

own. And so in March of 2022, we opened

9:40

the doors to the lab. It

9:42

wasn't called the lab at the time, by the way. It was

9:45

called the Creative Companion Club. And

9:48

lots of things have changed. The business was

9:51

finally branded as Creator Science. And that

9:53

year, we rebranded the community to

9:55

the lab to match the

9:58

science motif because the place where we experimented. together.

10:01

And, you know, we're about a

10:04

month away from being active for two years.

10:06

Nice. Okay, very cool. You

10:09

know, as you will have no

10:11

doubt heard, Alex, for most of you is going

10:14

all in on school. And

10:16

it seems like the new, you know, in every

10:18

era of the internet, there seems to be a

10:20

hot sexy thing to make money online. I

10:23

remember, you know, when I was like 15,

10:25

it was about like niche affiliate sites, affiliate

10:27

marketing. And so I tried doubling with that.

10:29

When I was at university, I was building my own business, completely

10:32

unrelated, but I was keeping an eye on the make

10:34

money online space. And you know, drop shipping became a

10:36

thing, Amazon FBA became a thing totally couple years ago,

10:38

it was all about start start a social media

10:40

marketing agency. And now

10:43

it seems to be started community because everyone seems to

10:45

be like, if you want to make your first 10

10:47

k on 10 k a month online, the

10:49

way to do it is community because of recurring

10:51

revenue and because community is the future and stuff.

10:54

What's your take on community being the new, the

10:57

new drop shipping? There's

11:00

some truth to it. But what we're going

11:02

to see is an explosion of communities that

11:04

are done poorly. And an almost

11:07

instant cratering of that as well, because

11:10

people are going to become disillusioned with

11:12

it, because they're going to have a

11:14

lot of really bad community experiences. And

11:17

so in the immediate term, what I tell a lot of folks

11:20

who are thinking about building a community is, how

11:22

can you give yourself the best chance that this is going to

11:24

be the best community that any

11:27

of your members have in their life, because

11:30

they're going to get saturated, they're going to

11:32

be a part of several, they're going to join them,

11:34

they're going to be mildly active

11:36

in several of them, then they're

11:38

going to get overwhelmed and burned out, and they're going to pair

11:40

back to one or two. So how

11:42

can you set yourself up to be the one

11:45

or two surviving communities that people

11:47

can't imagine not being a part of?

11:50

I think that's the goal. And as

11:52

long as you do that, then you

11:54

don't have to worry so much about this

11:56

incoming glut of communities that are going to

11:58

be done poorly. What

12:01

sort of value do people get from these

12:03

online communities? And I asked because when we

12:05

launched our YouTuber Academy in 2020, I

12:09

was kind of saying to my team, who needs

12:11

a community? Don't people

12:13

just want to consume the content and then just take

12:15

action on the thing? That's how

12:17

I did YouTube. I never had really had a community. I just put

12:19

my head down and did the work. But

12:21

thankfully, my team pushed back and they were like, no, I

12:23

think you're unusual. I think actually people really care about having

12:25

an online community to be part of, the

12:28

community of friends. And then we did the

12:30

first cohort of the course. And in our

12:32

feedback surveys, people kept on talking about the

12:34

community. I was like, what the hell? It's

12:37

not about the content. So yeah,

12:39

in your experience, what do people get from

12:41

this online community stuff? We're

12:43

social creatures. For most of

12:46

human history, we literally

12:48

lived in small communities of people.

12:50

And now today we have these

12:53

grid systems of roads and suburbs

12:55

and these giant structures that house

12:57

a very small, hopefully, family unit.

13:00

But a lot of people are still single and doing their

13:02

own thing. So our

13:05

culture has evolved faster

13:07

than our biology. And

13:10

we really need connection to

13:12

other people. And

13:14

if we're not getting it in our day-to-day, getting

13:16

it online where increasingly we're spending all of our

13:19

time is a closed sector. So first

13:22

and foremost, connection is what people want,

13:25

whether that's front of mind,

13:27

consciously what they say they want or not. Second

13:30

to that, I would say, is transformation, going

13:32

from point A to point B in a way that you

13:34

can recognize. And I can give you some examples of all

13:36

these. And then the third thing

13:38

I think people seek out, or really appreciate at least when

13:40

they find it in community, is the sense of identity. A

13:44

lot of people don't know that much about

13:46

themselves. They don't quite understand what

13:49

they care about, what their purpose is.

13:52

And when they have such a great experience, they begin to

13:54

learn something about themselves and identify with it. There's

13:56

that old joke of, how do you know somebody

13:59

is into CrossFit? They'll tell you. Well,

14:01

that's kind of like

14:03

a small example of when people get

14:05

really into something, it becomes part of

14:07

who they are and they want to

14:09

talk about it. And that's powerful because

14:11

that gives them purpose, that gives them

14:13

a feeling of understanding

14:17

of who they are. Hmm. Nice.

14:22

So it's not about the content. I

14:24

think that would go into the transformation bucket. Hmm.

14:27

Okay. It can be about the

14:29

content. But specifically looking for transformation. And usually that's

14:31

like the most obvious explicit

14:33

thing that I can grasp onto as far

14:36

as the value proposition goes. Like if I'm

14:38

thinking about, you know, if you

14:40

have a community as a product rather than experience,

14:43

probably the easiest promise

14:46

to make is transformation because it's

14:48

very tangible. It's very obvious. But

14:52

I would argue that a lot

14:54

of the stickiness or recurrence that

14:56

comes in community comes from connection

14:58

or a sense of identity.

15:01

Hmm. Nice. So if I were

15:03

to come to you and I guess I'm coming to you being

15:05

like, Jay, I really want to do this community thing. We've

15:08

got our YouTuber Academy community already, but

15:10

it's a sort of free lifetime access

15:12

once you buy the course type thing,

15:15

which is somewhat active. Actually, surprisingly active. I

15:17

think we had like 800 active

15:20

members in the last month of the 4,000 or

15:22

so that we have in total, which

15:25

kind of blew my mind when I looked at the analytics. I

15:27

think we could do a

15:30

really good job with some sort of productivity

15:32

community. And

15:34

the name we've actually landed on, weirdly, initially

15:37

was Productivity Club. And now it's Productivity

15:39

Lab. And

15:43

in my book, a lot of the tactics

15:45

are framed, all the tactics are framed as

15:47

experiments. Like there are 54 experiments in the

15:49

book. And there's a whole final chapter about

15:51

like being a productivity scientist. So I think

15:53

there's a lot of parallels, completely coincidentally between

15:56

your science metaphor and my science metaphor. But

15:58

I think we could do a really good job with that. cool community called the

16:00

Productivity Lab or something. And I would love to get this

16:02

to 5 to 10 million a year in recurring revenue. Okay.

16:07

What, where do we go from here?

16:09

Like, how would you how would you go about like,

16:13

coaching me through? Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? What

16:15

are the sort of things we should be thinking about? A

16:18

man with your reach, and

16:20

the different assets that you're controlled, there's all kinds of

16:22

things that you could do well. So why

16:25

a community? What is it about a community

16:27

that's calling out to you? Good question.

16:30

Actually, the word community is not the first word

16:32

that came to mind. I was sort

16:34

of thinking, I

16:37

want to create a sort of peloton for productivity.

16:40

I think having seen lots

16:43

of people struggle with productivity and stuff over the

16:45

years, the main thing

16:47

that's holding them back is just doing

16:50

the goddamn work. Like, they know everything

16:52

they need to know. It's not about more content. It's just about sitting

16:54

there and like doing the thing that you know, you should be doing.

16:56

Or even sitting there and identifying what is the thing that you should

16:58

be doing. Actually,

17:00

like what, what, what actually is that thing?

17:04

And I found that, like,

17:07

for example, I've, I've been regularly seeing

17:09

a personal trainer when I'm at the gym. And

17:11

there's something really nice about having a personal trainer who were

17:13

I know, I'm going to show up. I know I've prepaid

17:15

for the thing I've financially committed. I'm just going to do

17:18

the thing. Yes, I could do do

17:20

the workout on my own. But I know that when I do

17:22

it on my own, I either don't do it or I half

17:24

off it. Similarly, I have friends

17:26

who do good to exercise classes for that reason,

17:28

that you know, at least it's in the

17:30

calendar, you'll show up, you'll do the thing, maybe you'll make friends along

17:32

the way. But like the goal is to show up and do the

17:34

thing. And so what I

17:36

was thinking is, what if we had a community? Well,

17:39

I don't think it's a community. Well, what if we

17:41

had a sort of peloton for productivity, where every week

17:43

we have like facilitated weekly reviews, every month, there's like

17:45

a facilitated planning session that helps you reflect on how

17:48

the month when and plan goals. Every quarter, there's like

17:50

a quarterly planning session because setting goals and is like

17:52

super important. And what if every day we had like

17:54

a handful of like zoom co working sessions that you

17:56

would literally sign up to you'd RSVP to there would

17:59

be in your calendar. you would show up. And,

18:01

you know, I joined a few zoom

18:03

co-working sessions during the pandemic in at the London

18:06

writers' salon. Yeah, I love that. I was gonna

18:08

bring that up. Yeah. And I made so much

18:10

progress on my book in these random zoom co-working

18:12

sessions, which were free. So I was like, What

18:15

if we bring all this together, a CrossFit sort

18:17

of peloton sort of online we work for productivity,

18:19

that would be really cool, where people would come

18:21

for the events. And if they

18:23

make friends, that's a side effect. And that's like a

18:25

happy bonus. But like the goal is not, Hey, you'll

18:27

make friends. And you'll talk to people about productivity, the

18:29

goal is you'll show up and do the gods and you know,

18:31

and do the goddamn thing that you've been intending to do. Yeah,

18:34

I think I think what people look for a

18:37

lot in what you can just say products broadly,

18:40

is they they love the promise of,

18:42

hey, you're trying to get to this

18:45

point B, this outcome.

18:47

And we have this basically

18:50

conveyor belt to take you there, you just

18:52

have to step on the conveyor belt. That's

18:55

kind of the way I think about it in my mind

18:57

is like, how do I lower the activation energy to Hey,

18:59

we've got the system, it's running, it's moving right now, if

19:01

you just step on to it, you're going to get to

19:03

where you want to go, even if it's kicking and screaming.

19:06

So I love this frame of

19:09

peloton for productivity, I think that's a useful

19:12

North Star. So

19:14

tell me more about the business constraints, if

19:16

we wanted to achieve that, what are some

19:18

of the things that need

19:21

to be true from a business perspective? What are

19:23

things that we absolutely

19:26

cannot do, or we don't want to do

19:28

this things that we

19:30

don't want this to impede? No, good

19:32

question. We

19:35

don't want this to impede my

19:37

team, my content team. In

19:41

that, you know, I want to still continue

19:43

making content on the internet. We

19:45

also don't want this to end up

19:48

taking ridiculously large amounts of my

19:50

own time. I've

19:52

been doing a bit of an alpha testing phase as like

19:54

a free for all thing in the last couple of weeks

19:56

and been facilitating a week to review every Sunday. And

19:58

that's actually quite nice. because when I'm facilitating

20:01

the weekly review, I do my own weekly review.

20:04

And I've done a few Zoom co-working sessions where by

20:06

virtue of me hosting the session, I actually make progress

20:08

on my own stuff. So that's really cool.

20:11

But I certainly want wanted to be a Lyco

20:13

YouTuber Academy. Three times a week, I'll leave Roxas up

20:15

and deliver the sermon for two hours at a time

20:17

about some productivity concept. I, so

20:20

I, I wanted to be like low

20:22

lift in terms of me having

20:24

to do extra things for it. Beyond

20:26

that, like there's very little we can't do. Uh,

20:30

yeah, I, if for this thing to be good

20:32

and you know, I want this thing to scale,

20:34

I think, um, we can always

20:36

hire more people. We can always hire a full-time community manager. We

20:38

can always get free answers underneath that person. Like we have a

20:41

lot of resources in the business to make this really fricking good.

20:44

And one

20:46

thing I'm reluctant to do, you know, one of someone on

20:49

the team floated the idea of accountability

20:51

groups matching, like matching people to

20:53

accountability groups. But we sort of

20:55

tried that with our YouTuber Academy. And unless

20:57

they were led by someone on

21:00

our team or someone that was like on our payroll in

21:02

some way, they started to fall apart

21:04

because like, all it takes is one person to be

21:06

disengaged and now another whole thing is screwed. And then

21:08

people blame us for matching them and for that

21:10

sort of have a bad community experience. So I kind

21:12

of want to be quite like, uh, kind

21:17

of like, uh, like Apple rather

21:19

than Facebook, you know, like this

21:22

is the thing we're going to lead the thing. We're going to hold

21:24

your hand through the thing. Cause we know best rather

21:26

than, Hey, this is the thing where you guys can figure

21:28

out what you want to do is like, like, I'm,

21:30

I'm much more worried about that. That model. Yeah.

21:33

Yeah. Um, I recently heard

21:35

you on, um, my first million talking

21:37

with Sam and Sean and you reinforce

21:41

this idea about, uh,

21:43

separating the promise from the delivery

21:45

of the product. So what

21:47

I've heard so far is a really compelling promise,

21:50

you know, Peloton for productivity. Like this is,

21:52

this is a thing where if you're willing to

21:54

join this, you are going to be more productive.

21:56

Yeah. Um, the delivery

21:58

here, you just. given me some constraints

22:00

on how we actually achieve that, but it seems

22:03

doable. So in your mind, what's

22:05

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26:05

Okay, what feels challenging about this? What

26:07

feels challenging about this is that it

26:12

feels like there's a lot of pressure on, like

26:14

I feel a certain sense of pressure for it to

26:16

be done right from day one because

26:19

I know that this could

26:22

be a really good thing and I

26:24

don't wanna fuck it up by me

26:26

just not having, not like

26:28

speaking to the right people is why

26:30

I reached out to you to be like, hey Jay, you've

26:32

been doing this community for a while and I've heard it's

26:34

really good. What are some things

26:36

to, what are some traps

26:39

in the horizon that I don't yet know about

26:42

that you know about having been there that you

26:44

can kind of caution me away from? I

26:48

think one of the most common traps that I see

26:50

in people and I think you're predisposed to not fall

26:52

into this as much but the most common trap I

26:54

see for people who are building a membership is they

26:57

get really, really granular about the delivery and

27:00

make that the value proposition on the sales

27:02

page and then that becomes a very rigid

27:04

system that you have to fulfill. So

27:08

if you want to have, like you've mentioned

27:10

a number of different ways that this can

27:12

actually manifest in

27:15

the community, weekly reviews,

27:17

monthly reviews, quarterly reviews, daily sort

27:19

of check ins, that

27:22

feels easy enough and

27:25

in the first month, two months, three months, you

27:27

can probably maintain that but if you're not really

27:29

planning for it, 14

27:31

months from now, are you gonna wanna keep leading

27:34

these weekly reviews? I don't know, it's

27:36

hard to say. So the

27:38

better thing to do is to make

27:41

the promise and the offer so good

27:43

that you can figure out

27:45

the right delivery over time and

27:47

people don't have a preconceived notion of

27:49

this is how I'm going to double

27:51

my productivity. I just know that Ollie's

27:53

going to help me do that in

27:56

the productivity lab. Ooh, don't

27:59

we need to be... say on the sales page,

28:01

these are all the features. I

28:04

don't think so. And we're tied into that. I

28:06

don't think so. And I don't know that you

28:09

think so either. Like, I think that if

28:11

you have a good enough promise and you have people who can

28:13

follow through and say, yes, I

28:15

did this, that's good. But

28:18

I would try to be as vague

28:20

with the delivery as possible because you

28:22

just quickly discover, you know, it's

28:24

like that old boxing quote. Everybody has a plan until

28:26

you get punched in the mouth. You have a plan

28:28

for how you're going to deliver this, and you start

28:30

doing it, and you realize, hey, actually, we

28:32

don't need this thing that we said we're going to

28:34

do weekly. We actually just need that monthly. Or people

28:36

aren't showing up to this thing over here. We actually

28:38

want to get rid of it. But it's something we've

28:40

promised now to people. We've sold them an annual membership,

28:42

so can we get rid of that? The

28:45

less you specifically promise

28:47

from a delivery standpoint in

28:49

terms of the actual programming, the more flexibility

28:51

you have to right size the programming and

28:53

experiment with stuff. You know, you're calling this

28:56

a lab. You want to experiment with even

28:58

the delivery so you can get that best

29:00

outcome. You

29:03

can certainly say, like, we have these facilitated sessions. We have

29:05

facilitators that are going to help you with

29:07

goal planning. They're going to help you with accountability.

29:09

You don't have to say, we're going to have

29:11

this session for two hours every morning. That

29:14

is a really, really, really freaking

29:16

useful insight. If

29:19

someone's watching this and they're like, that sounds

29:21

kind of obvious. That's not obvious at

29:23

all. That's just like, we've sold annual

29:25

memberships for our YouTube accelerator, $5,000. And

29:28

then we kicked ourselves three months later to be like,

29:30

oh, fuck, that thing that we put on the sales

29:32

page. Totally. We realized that that's not actually

29:34

the thing, but we put it on the freaking sales

29:36

page, and now we can't go back from it. And

29:38

now we have to deliver the thing that we know

29:40

is, ugh. And

29:43

so that was a big part of where the pressure was coming

29:45

from, because I want to sell annual memberships, although I'd love to

29:47

get your take on that. Because I think annual is nice. You

29:49

don't have to worry about churn. And it feels like more of

29:51

a community rather than a revolving door. I feel like that's

29:53

your terminology that I've heard you say on another podcast, potentially.

29:55

Or maybe Pat Flynn, who I was talking to the other

29:57

day. so

30:00

worried because we don't want to get burned by

30:02

a promise we've made on the sales page and

30:04

then we're then tied into delivering annually. Totally.

30:07

If you are able to make the

30:09

promise and then in member

30:12

or student voices, back that up, people are going

30:14

to see themselves in that. They're going to trust

30:16

you and take it on. And then as long

30:18

as you trust yourself to deliver on it, then

30:20

that's good. You're going to get more success stories

30:22

and the sales page is basically promise success stories

30:25

and that should work. In

30:28

terms of annual memberships, I love

30:31

that. This

30:33

was non-obvious to me initially and non-obvious to a lot

30:35

of people that I talked to. If

30:37

you create the opportunity for churn, there will

30:39

be churn. So if you

30:42

have a monthly membership, just by virtue

30:44

of offering the ability to churn on

30:46

a monthly basis, some people will do

30:48

that. And where I think this

30:50

really plays into memberships, you

30:53

do not want to offer a recurrence

30:57

schedule that is misaligned with how

30:59

quickly you can actually deliver the

31:01

promise. So if you're

31:03

sitting here and saying, it's actually probably going to take

31:06

at least three months for somebody to

31:08

see a return on their effort, you

31:11

shouldn't even give them the option to dip in and out

31:13

in a month's time because they have not given

31:15

it the prerequisite requirement

31:18

to succeed. So

31:21

for a membership, a lot of people are drawn

31:23

to this because it's recurring revenue. This is why

31:25

it's the big hot thing, as you said now.

31:27

It's recurring revenue. It's like software. But

31:30

the thing is, to have recurring revenue, you

31:32

have to provide recurring value. And

31:34

so you have to think, what is the mechanism

31:36

that makes this worth recurring for the member? A

31:39

lot of people set up this very specific outcome that

31:41

can be achieved, and they achieve it in a year's

31:43

time, and they churn, and they say something's broken because

31:45

people are churning out. Well, you design

31:48

the community experience to be to a specific

31:50

outcome where there's no mechanism and reason for

31:52

it to recur. This could have just been a course

31:55

in some ways. So

31:58

anyway, if you... see

32:00

a reason why this should be ongoing and it should

32:02

take more than a month. I

32:05

like having longer periods of recurrence

32:09

because I think it aligns incentives

32:11

well. It aligns expectations well. Okay,

32:13

that makes a lot of sense. And as long

32:15

as we're sufficiently vague about the delivery mechanism on the sales page

32:18

or just making it really obvious that, hey, look, this is a

32:20

lab, this is an evolving community, we're going to take member feedback

32:22

on board and we may change things up as we go along.

32:26

If at that point, if we do get six months

32:28

down the line, we change something, someone doesn't like it

32:30

and they want to refund it's like, okay. Most

32:34

of the time you won't hear from anybody like

32:37

that anyway. But I feel the same

32:39

way you do where it's like if I publicly made a promise, I

32:42

cannot go back on that. Even

32:44

if nobody would notice or complain, I just feel like I

32:46

cannot go back on that. So

32:49

the less specific you are with the

32:51

delivery promise, I think, the

32:53

better. Can

32:55

I tell you about one of my favorite strategies for

32:58

putting this out into the world that even gives you some more cover? So

33:03

I call this a private

33:06

opening and a public launch. Some

33:09

people will use language like alpha,

33:11

beta, whatever. I

33:14

like private opening public launch

33:16

because what you can do is basically

33:18

just drip breadcrumbs into

33:20

your existing content and

33:22

say, hey, I'm building this thing called the productivity lab. And

33:26

if you want to be one of the first

33:28

members, site unseen, reply to this email or shoot

33:30

me a DM or go to this link and

33:32

you can be one of the first members to

33:35

be in there, here's this incentive for doing so.

33:37

Then you don't have to make any type of public

33:40

promise because it's only calling out to the people who

33:42

really inherently trust you already. And

33:44

they know whatever Ollie is doing, it's going to be awesome.

33:47

So if you can really experiment with these people, then

33:50

you can get them to have good experiences

33:52

and you use their stories on the first

33:54

public sales page and the

33:56

public launch. I'd

33:58

like to model of a sales page. It's promise and

34:01

success stories. That

34:05

is a much simpler model than the Jim Edwards copywriting

34:09

secrets 14-part framework on desire, agitate

34:11

the desire, regard

34:14

the promise, figure out

34:16

the benefits, figure out the features, do

34:19

the offer stack, like the whole shebang. What's

34:24

your approach to sales pages?

34:27

I have no sales selling, for

34:29

better or for worse. I'm

34:33

always trying to build so much trust that the

34:35

need for selling doesn't really need

34:37

to exist that much. I

34:40

would rather just show that I have

34:42

delivered on the promises that I make than really

34:47

agitate the problem and get people

34:49

in a heightened state of need.

34:52

But again, I think that's to my detriment a lot of

34:54

times that I don't do at least more

34:56

of that. It's

34:59

a spectrum. It's a spectrum of how

35:01

far you want to go in terms

35:03

of really selling.

35:07

I think anything is valid.

35:09

It just kind of comes down to your style.

35:12

But I think ultimately, when we make decisions, we

35:15

are more likely to take the opinion of

35:17

a third party who we see ourselves in or

35:19

we already know and trust than

35:23

the language of the person selling me the

35:25

thing. In general, the more case

35:27

studies, the more testimonials that you have, the

35:29

more successful it's going to be anyway. If

35:32

I'm just seeing the sales page that is

35:34

just covered in testimonials with specific outcomes that

35:36

are outcomes that I want from people who

35:38

I can identify with, that's going to

35:40

be more compelling than anything else. As I

35:43

was browsing the lab sales page, I was struck

35:45

by just how many testimonials there were. I also

35:47

loved how you sort of lent into the video

35:49

thing. I was like, huh. I don't really lean

35:51

into videos on our sales pages, but I don't

35:53

know why because our videos are really good. Video

35:55

is my thing. And it's hard

35:57

to fake. It's

36:00

so easy to create content,

36:02

I use that term loosely, but it's getting so

36:04

easy to produce things that

36:07

people are having a higher guard of, do

36:12

I trust this or not? And when somebody

36:14

records a video that is just

36:16

off the cuff and just talking about their experience,

36:19

we can feel that honesty. Sometimes

36:22

people really wanna do a good job and they'll write a

36:24

script for their own testimonial and they'll read it off

36:26

a script and that actually becomes counterproductive. So I always try

36:28

to coach people who wanna give the

36:30

testimonial like, hey, please do it off the cuff, please

36:33

just finish the sentence, before

36:36

the lab I and because the lab now

36:38

I, or after

36:40

joining the lab, I am able to just

36:42

finish the sentence and do it off the cuff. People

36:45

feel that honesty and again, I find that to

36:47

be pretty compelling. Hmm, nice.

36:51

What are your thoughts on price point and to cap

36:53

or not to cap? This is

36:55

one of the things that really slowed me down

36:57

from launching my own membership. I spent three months

37:00

doing exactly what we're doing now, like sinking through

37:02

like, how is this going to work? And I

37:04

built this kind of gnarly spreadsheet because

37:06

I wanted to pull the levers and say, if

37:10

I have this many members at this price point and

37:13

I even had tiers, like if I had two tiers of

37:15

pricing and I assume that this many people will go for

37:17

this tier and I have this many members, what does that

37:19

look like in the first month, the first three months, the

37:21

first 12 months? So it's worth actually

37:24

doing some spreadsheet work on this. But

37:29

we have to go back to the premise a little bit because

37:32

when you think about a membership, I

37:34

also think about this as kind of a spectrum

37:36

between, is this really content and

37:38

programming focused or is this

37:41

connection and relationship focused? Okay,

37:45

when you do the connection relationship focused as

37:47

like the primary driver, of course, like most

37:49

memberships are gonna have elements of both. But

37:52

depending on which one you really lean into, it

37:54

sets a bias and a pre-framing for what people

37:56

expect from it and how they expect to engage

37:59

with it. When you when you

38:01

go the more connection and relationship side of things scale

38:03

is challenging Like a success

38:06

in that model actually presents new challenges

38:08

as time goes on. Yeah, so I

38:10

have an Assumption

38:12

that with productivity club and or practice lab and

38:14

what you've told me so far that's gonna be

38:17

more on the content and programming So yeah, yeah

38:21

So I tend to see those Memberships

38:26

priced a little bit lower than

38:28

the relationship side and They're

38:31

a little bit less retentive on

38:33

average. I'm just saying on average A

38:37

lot of people go for volume and so they

38:39

make pricing a little bit lower. I Think

38:42

any of these things can be overcome with

38:45

a really great product and some intention So,

38:48

you know, I would be said I would

38:50

say think about the market who would be buying

38:52

this Who are your users? Who are

38:55

your customers? What do they have

38:57

precedent for paying for in this realm?

38:59

you know are these people also hiring personal trainers

39:01

at 200 or

39:03

300 dollars per month so they have that level of resource

39:05

because you have to pick a price

39:07

that the market can literally bear and then

39:11

Then it's kind of how good of a job can I

39:14

do of selling the value of this and delivering

39:16

the value of this? so What

39:19

are your what are your current thoughts and

39:21

pricing? Yeah, or Maybe

39:24

even we could start with how would

39:26

you describe the target customer for this? Yeah,

39:28

great question I want to describe the target

39:30

customer a phrase that came

39:32

to mind is something like ambitious

39:35

entrepreneurs creators and professionals, but

39:38

that is like very very broad in Reality

39:44

Okay, so Kind of two things here

39:47

number one. It's sort of like who is the sort of

39:49

person who would invest in Doubling

39:52

their own productivity it

39:54

is probably not a corporate employee Unless

39:57

they can expense it to their workplace in which case sure

39:59

yeah, why not? The

40:02

way we think of our audience is that our audience is

40:05

probably in three buckets. We've got the professionals who are corporate

40:07

employees. They want to thrive in the 9 to 5, but

40:09

also have a work-life balance outside of work, and

40:11

they care about personal growth and stuff. Then

40:14

we have the side hustlers who have a little bit

40:16

less of an appetite for work-life balance. They

40:18

have a 9 to 5, they enjoy the 9 to 5, life

40:20

is good, blah, blah, blah. They're not desperate to quit the job,

40:22

but they also want some sort of creative side hustle. Man, if

40:24

that could make money, we're off to the races. That's so good.

40:28

Then we have the entrepreneurs who are like, I

40:30

don't have any requirement for work-life balance. I'm going to grind

40:32

and hustle on the weekends and evenings until I get to

40:34

my freedom number and so I can quit my job and

40:36

live a life of freedom. I want to

40:38

quit my 9 to 5 so I can then work 24-7, all that kind of stuff,

40:43

which are people like me. Although

40:46

I started off in a side hustler and then became that kind of

40:48

guy. I think the audience

40:50

of people who will pay to double their own

40:52

productivity are mostly the entrepreneurs,

40:55

but also the side hustlers are

40:57

also liable to invest in things like our

40:59

YouTuber course even because it's like, oh,

41:02

at the average age of our YouTuber Academy is like

41:04

36. They've got jobs, they've got money, earning like 100K

41:06

a year. They're like, cool, paying a grand or 5

41:08

grand for this YouTuber course to help me achieve my

41:10

potential in this thing that I thought I might want

41:12

to do. Now I trust this guy to

41:14

help me get there. It's like, why not? At

41:19

the same time, I don't want this to be an entrepreneurs

41:21

club or the entrepreneurs lab. Although that could be a future

41:23

product. I want it

41:25

to be the productivity lab where I would

41:27

love for this to be a sort

41:30

of almost like mass market

41:32

product and not mass market in terms of the pricing because

41:34

I generally lean towards higher ticket than lower ticket. But mass

41:36

market in terms of I want

41:38

a professional working for Accenture or

41:40

McKinsey or something to get just

41:43

as much value from this assuming they can expense

41:45

it as an entrepreneur for whom even

41:48

just doing one co-working session a week will

41:51

radically improve their productivity because we tend not to just

41:53

make time for deep work. I don't know

41:55

if any of that made sense. It does. How

41:58

much of this is based in... direct

42:01

data versus assumption?

42:05

A lot of it is assumption. Some

42:08

of it is data based on all the

42:10

students that we have in our YouTube accelerator,

42:12

our 5k a year kind of offering. Some

42:15

of it is based on like when we poll

42:17

our audience and just do casual surveys like or

42:21

if I'm giving a talk and I'm like hands up if you're an

42:23

entrepreneur, hands up if you identify as an employee, hands up if you're

42:25

a student, hands up if you aspire to be an entrepreneur, hands up

42:27

if you want to be financially free, everyone puts a hand up, hands

42:29

up if you want to be a creator. The

42:31

sense of like okay this these

42:34

three sort of buckets and then

42:36

there's the students that aspire to one of the one of those three

42:38

buckets as well. I think a

42:42

lot of the opportunity that you have in front of you

42:44

especially with the new book, with the success of your channel,

42:46

I think is going

42:48

after a broader audience as you've kind of

42:50

kind of said here. Entrepreneurs

42:53

are a small

42:55

market you know overall. Yes

42:57

they have probably higher willingness

42:59

to spend but it's

43:02

a small number of people. I think

43:04

it's challenging to try to

43:06

target both because they are

43:09

so different but I hear

43:12

what you're saying about I'm not sure if

43:14

a professional or corporate employee would pay to

43:16

increase their productivity but they're literally paying with

43:19

their most scarce resource which is their time

43:21

to watch your videos and read your book.

43:25

To me that's like that's a willingness to

43:28

pay and maybe it means something different

43:30

to them. Maybe it's better productivity means

43:32

I actually have more time in my

43:34

day to work on my side hustle if I'm great

43:36

at doing this for work or maybe it's this gives

43:38

me more time with my family, maybe it's it gives me a promotion

43:42

at work. So you

43:45

know for me sitting over here also serving

43:47

creators, also serving entrepreneurs, what

43:49

I look at you and admire

43:51

and aspire to is something that

43:53

has the ability to impact more

43:56

individuals and if I

43:59

knew that's what I'm That's what I'm trying to do. I'm

44:05

not going to be prescriptive. At

44:10

one point we were really toying with this idea of

44:12

do we just target the entrepreneurs. We

44:15

realized actually no, we want to make a product for

44:17

everyone. Even

44:20

with all the caveats around like hey, don't make a product for anyone. He's

44:25

aimed at maybe it started off as like the

44:27

bros and the entrepreneurs and the human husbands and

44:29

stuff. Actually, Peloton is a product for everyone

44:31

who can afford it, who cares

44:33

about their health and recognizes the value of

44:35

online community and getting you to do a

44:38

thing that you otherwise wouldn't necessarily do. I

44:42

think that is the sort of person that we're targeting.

44:47

The sort of person who would consider buying a Peloton

44:49

is the sort of person who would be perfect

44:51

for Productivity Lab. This really comes to a

44:53

head and you've probably already identified this as

44:55

in the pricing. Because

44:57

if we want to

45:00

make this a more broader market thing,

45:02

then the pricing probably has to reflect that.

45:07

That comes at the expense of I know I could create a

45:09

product that I could charge $1,000 a year

45:12

for, for

45:15

this entrepreneur, creator,

45:17

business owner crowd. But

45:20

the majority of folks probably can't budget

45:22

that. That's a very large part

45:25

of their disposable income. So I

45:29

think where

45:31

you have to draw a line is are

45:35

we trying to create a product that serves the

45:37

largest audience the best we can? Or

45:40

are we trying to create a product that can

45:42

drive this amount of revenue for the business in

45:44

this short period of time? Because I think you

45:46

can get to whatever that level of revenue is

45:48

with enough market saturation of the larger market. It's

45:50

just going to take a longer period of time.

45:53

And it's going to come with a little bit more operational

45:56

overhead because there are more people. The

45:58

larger the membership is, the more people. more operational

46:02

expense in terms of your own headcount and

46:04

time and capacity that you have to put

46:07

into it. So it kind

46:09

of comes to this point of, are

46:12

we trying to stake

46:14

our claim in the larger

46:16

market over here around broader

46:18

productivity for everybody? Or

46:21

do we see this as just a high revenue

46:23

potential in the short

46:25

term product for

46:27

this more sophisticated customer over here?

46:30

Yeah, that's a good question. I

46:33

think so. All

46:36

else being equal, I'd rather have

46:39

three times fewer customers paying three times as much

46:43

because we were toying with $1,000 a year or $300 a year for

46:45

the price point. $300

46:48

a year, let's just say that it's like less

46:50

than a dollar a day to double your productivity,

46:53

which is kind of cute. But even

46:55

like $1,000 a year, let's just say it's like $19 a

46:58

week to double your productivity or like $2.74 per day or however the

47:00

math works out. And

47:04

I spoke to Jordan, who is part of your lab

47:06

as well, and he was like, yeah, generally, higher

47:10

ticket, lower volume makes

47:12

for a way

47:15

less stressful business than lower ticket,

47:17

higher volume. But

47:20

yeah, I'm curious what's your take on that. I

47:22

think that's absolutely true. One

47:26

thing that I would ask myself in your situation is

47:28

when I assume that this is going to be more

47:32

work and chaos

47:34

and stress on the business, is

47:36

that because I'm assuming that I am going to be

47:38

taking on all of that

47:40

capacity? There's

47:43

a world where you do a

47:45

good job of hiring, training, and the

47:48

way that you interface with this community doesn't

47:50

change at all, regardless of who it is.

47:53

Does it still impact the business? Is

47:56

it on your shoulders?

47:59

No, not if you... you design it to nappy. I

48:04

would be thinking about the

48:06

broader Ollie strategy and

48:08

vision three years from

48:10

now, five years from now, because everything

48:13

that you produce and put

48:16

out there is building some

48:19

understanding of the Ollie brand. So

48:22

if you go in the entrepreneur direction

48:24

with this, that is going to at least

48:27

add a small bit of perception

48:30

that Ollie serves this

48:33

specific audience rather than the broader

48:35

audience. So if you

48:37

are, and I'm kind of saying this because I

48:39

watched your most recent video about wanting to write

48:41

books, and it seems like you're trying to go

48:43

broader generally as a person and as a business.

48:47

And I think if that is true, I would

48:49

be creating products and experiences that back up that

48:51

vision. Interesting. What

48:54

are your thoughts on sort of the

48:57

more like barbell approach, which is that the

48:59

thing is either free or it's very expensive. I

49:06

like the idea of 99.9% of my

49:08

stuff being free for all, and

49:10

the business being funded by a small number

49:12

of people paying higher ticket prices, because

49:15

then the free stuff becomes very, very accessible. So

49:19

I've always sort of shied away from like

49:21

mid-ticket pricing, because mid-ticket pricing,

49:24

unless the numbers are huge, it doesn't move

49:27

the needle for our revenue. And

49:30

huge numbers of paying customers is more fast.

49:34

I may as well just do stuff for free then, which

49:36

is what I'm planning to continue to do, which is why

49:38

I've been sort of flirting with high ticket. So

49:41

what's your free online barbell approach in that sense? I

49:44

think there's merit to so many different approaches.

49:47

And it like ultimately comes down to which

49:49

one appeals to you the most and

49:52

less design for it. So

49:54

if that approach is what's appealing to

49:56

you, then there's probably

49:58

something there. I

50:03

think any choice you make, you have to

50:05

then counter that with some intellectual honesty of,

50:09

okay, if I'm saying I'm going to do

50:11

the high-priced membership for the more sophisticated, affluent

50:14

customer, what does

50:17

that mean for the free offering that I'm offering to

50:19

the broader public? What am

50:21

I doing for free to them to

50:23

also help them double their productivity? And if

50:26

you have a plan for that, and this

50:28

customer, this product subsidizes that, then

50:32

I think it makes sense. If you

50:34

don't have a plan for that, then

50:37

it sounds like you're justifying a decision

50:39

not necessarily following through on the model.

50:42

Yeah, that's a good point. That

50:46

is a good point. And

50:48

maybe it's, you know, you do these reviews

50:51

and these facilitated

50:53

planings infrequently for

50:56

free for the larger audience, and

51:00

you continue to write books that help people help

51:02

themselves, and hopefully they get to a point where

51:04

they can invest in this higher product. Yeah,

51:06

that's the direction that I was

51:09

thinking in that I plan to

51:11

continue making free YouTube videos and

51:13

writing cheap books forever. We're

51:16

releasing fairly low ticket software

51:18

as well, productivity software of the next year or two

51:20

or three. And we

51:22

are going to have free events as part of

51:24

the productivity lab. Maybe every quarterly planning session is

51:26

just like a free-for-all people can rock up. If

51:29

we have like a guest workshop, then the people

51:32

in the community or in the lab can ask

51:34

the questions, but like it gets streamed on YouTube

51:36

anyway. And so, yeah, it's just this balance of

51:38

do we want to

51:41

be selling $300 a year memberships or $1,000

51:43

a year memberships for fewer

51:45

people? And which

51:47

one would be more fun for me,

51:50

less stressful for the team, less stressful for me? In

51:53

a way, if someone's paying less, then there's also lower

51:55

expectations. But in many ways, lower

51:58

ticket customers have even higher expectations. expectations and high

52:00

ticket customers in some ways. There's

52:03

a world where you have you take and eat it too. And

52:05

you say this is actually a tiered

52:07

community and there's tiers of access to

52:10

whatever delivery mechanisms you build so

52:12

that it becomes more accessible to more people

52:14

over time. I think in that world, if

52:17

you aspire to try to serve

52:19

both audiences at both price points, it makes

52:21

more sense to start with a higher ticket,

52:24

learn what works, build

52:27

more efficient systems and then say we're going to

52:29

take this slice of it, make it available

52:31

to a broader audience at a lower price point.

52:34

Okay, that could work very nicely. I hadn't

52:36

thought of that. But

52:40

that is a very cool concept. I know

52:42

a guy who has like a platform

52:44

for co-working sessions and stuff. And

52:46

it's like if you can platformize and productize like the thing,

52:50

like the co-working sessions I think would be hugely valuable and

52:53

much. Yeah,

52:56

if we can figure out the way to scale it, much lower

52:58

ticket. That's good. What's

53:01

your take on how

53:03

many people... I've watched one

53:06

of Pat Flynn's talks and that's some

53:08

thing. And he was talking about kind of doing

53:10

an alpha test and then stabilizing and letting a few more

53:12

people in beta test stabilizing before ahead of the public launch.

53:15

You mentioned private community, public launch, private opening.

53:18

Private opening, yeah. Do

53:21

you have a sense of like numbers that are like,

53:23

what is a good number of people to bring in

53:25

the private opening? Well, again,

53:27

this is kind of rooted in to what degree you

53:29

want to lean into the relationships and

53:31

connection side of things. Because

53:35

if you are listening to this and you want to have

53:37

a community that's built more on the relationships and conversations between

53:39

members, the slower

53:41

you integrate people the better

53:43

because literally the retentive and

53:46

incentivizing

53:48

mechanism for people to post and meet each other really

53:51

is benefited by one

53:54

to one connections. The fewer people that are in there, the

53:56

less I feel like a number, the more I feel like

53:58

I know the people here. You

54:00

can have like Zoom sessions to

54:02

literally let people meet each other. But someone at

54:04

your scale who you can probably go out and

54:07

get hundreds of people in a private

54:10

opening like with one email or

54:12

something, then that's a

54:14

harder thing to do. If

54:16

you're going to lean more on the content side, I don't

54:18

think the limit matters

54:20

quite as much. I

54:23

would just say where most communities really fall

54:26

apart is they

54:28

underbake the onboarding experience and

54:31

like just the first experience with your thing. When

54:33

people swipe their credit card, they have peak excitement

54:36

and also like peak anxiety

54:38

of did I just make

54:40

a huge mistake? And what a lot

54:42

of memberships will do is they'll be like, all right,

54:44

here's the playground. Have fun. And

54:47

what you really want to do is say, hey,

54:49

welcome in. So glad you're here. Let me show

54:51

you around. Let me introduce you to someone new.

54:54

Let me help you feel seen and

54:56

comfortable with the space and how to use it.

54:58

Because when you just get thrown into an empty playground and say,

55:01

all right, everything is here that you

55:03

could want. Have fun with it. People

55:05

feel overwhelmed. And they say, actually, let me come

55:07

back and do this later. And they click X,

55:09

they close out. They built no level

55:11

of habit or expectation with that

55:13

membership. They might not ever come

55:15

back literally again. So in

55:18

your circumstance, I don't think I would worry

55:20

so much about how many people is too

55:22

many people unless

55:25

you have designed the onboarding and

55:28

first day experience for somebody. And

55:31

if you feel like there's a limit

55:33

on how many people you can support

55:36

in delivering that great experience, then that's

55:38

kind of the threshold. But

55:41

for you, I think it's just really

55:43

good handholdy training of you're here. This

55:45

is the next step you should take. This is the next

55:47

step you should take. This is the first event you should

55:50

attend. And you

55:52

can accommodate quite a few

55:54

people, I think. That's a great idea. How do you

55:56

guys do onboarding for new members? So

55:59

when people come in... The first thing

56:01

that happens when they type their credit card is

56:03

they actually get a scheduling link to schedule a

56:05

one-on-one call with me. It only works

56:07

because I charge pretty high ticket and have a small number of

56:09

members. But the

56:11

point of that is they don't know that's going to happen. And

56:14

so at this moment of peak excitement, peak anxiety, to

56:17

say, hey, welcome to the community. By the way, I'd

56:19

love to do a one-on-one call with you. Here's where

56:21

you can book it with me. That's a pretty magical

56:23

first experience. Then

56:25

they are kind of

56:27

walked through a web page experience of training

56:30

of like, here's what you can expect. Here's

56:32

your dashboard. Here

56:34

are the next steps you should take. And here's

56:36

the link to get into the community. That link

56:38

is a Circle invite link that gets them right into

56:40

the community. It pops up

56:42

with a video. It says, hey, fill out your

56:44

profile. They fill out the profile. Then

56:47

they have an onboarding course using Circle's

56:49

course functionality. So I can see, are

56:51

you going through this? All

56:53

the while, this is now triggered an email that comes to them that

56:55

says, welcome to the community. Here are the first things you should do.

56:57

And a direct message that comes from

57:00

me to say, this is an automated direct message,

57:02

but I wanted to welcome you and say, this

57:04

is how you can reach me personally. So it's

57:06

really interesting to question as many

57:08

times as possible. Every time somebody

57:10

takes a step in their mind,

57:12

they're thinking, now what? And you really just

57:14

want to answer that now what question as

57:17

many times consecutively as you can. And

57:21

that's kind of a fun game, just push that. I'm

57:23

not going to tell you where the end is because maybe you'll find

57:25

an end that I haven't found yet, just keep pushing that boundary. Wow,

57:28

okay. That's a really, really good idea. I'd

57:32

love it if everyone could have a one-on-one onboarding, probably

57:34

not doing this stuff, like with someone on a team.

57:37

Well, let me tell you about this. I haven't

57:39

been able to figure this out in this context yet, but

57:42

do you remember Clubhouse? Is

57:44

Clubhouse still around, first of all? I'm not sure if it's

57:46

still around, but I very much remember it. So

57:49

back when Clubhouse was just getting started,

57:52

you had to get a personal

57:54

test flight invite for it. And

57:57

you would get the app, you get in there.

58:00

And everyone

58:02

for the first, I think like

58:04

thousands of people, users, had a

58:07

one-on-one onboarding call with someone

58:09

else. And most of the time it's

58:11

just another user of Clubhouse that loved

58:13

it. So there's something

58:15

that can be done to figure

58:17

out how do I give

58:19

people a very personalized welcoming experience with

58:21

my team, with other members of the

58:24

community? How do I incentivize that? How

58:26

do I make that awesome? I

58:28

really do think that an initial one-on-one

58:30

is great. A lot of times when

58:32

I'm thinking about online communities, I think about offline

58:34

communities and what they do well, and I go

58:36

back to fitness a lot. When you join a

58:38

gym and you walk in, you are

58:40

being greeted at the door by somebody who

58:42

works there. You're being shown around the space.

58:45

You're getting all the necessary prerequisite information

58:47

that you want, and you feel comfortable

58:49

in that place. And you also feel

58:51

like, I know somebody else here. So

58:55

that is like a gold standard to try to achieve.

58:58

It's like with my personal trainer, I had

59:00

a free 45-minute session with him, where

59:02

I then signed up to a whole two months worth of

59:04

personal training. So I

59:07

was like, oh yeah, I'll sign up to the free session. Why not? Okay,

59:11

onboarding. Onboarding is super important. What

59:13

else is very important or what other things

59:15

have you seen that destroy communities that we

59:18

should be mindful of? A

59:21

lot of people have gotten good at getting

59:24

to the point where the member introduces themselves. They'll have

59:26

like an introduce yourself channel, and

59:28

that becomes the first input

59:32

from the individual. And

59:35

it's kind of surprising because it's

59:37

kind of a big ask. It's like, welcome

59:39

to this place. You don't know anybody here. Would

59:41

you mind taking 10 minutes to basically open yourself

59:43

up and be really vulnerable and talk about why

59:45

you're here and the problems in your life and

59:48

what you hope this community fixes for you? But

59:50

people do it because people like to talk about themselves, and

59:52

they want to think that this is going to be awesome.

59:56

Where a lot of communities fall flat is as soon

59:58

as I push publish and I post. my

1:00:00

intro. I am just sitting there

1:00:02

waiting. Am I going to be seen? Are people going to

1:00:04

accept me in this place? Am I going to be glad

1:00:07

that I did that? And so

1:00:09

many communities just don't deliver on that

1:00:11

moment, because they haven't modeled the behavior

1:00:14

of members welcoming each other. The team

1:00:16

isn't prioritizing responding to them. And so

1:00:18

right off the bat, what I have

1:00:20

is a very uncomfortable

1:00:23

experience where I just took time. It

1:00:25

was not a gratifying experience. I feel

1:00:27

actually unwelcomed because of the lack of

1:00:29

response. So if you

1:00:31

can't deliver on that welcoming experience

1:00:34

in the intros, which I think you should

1:00:36

prioritize, get rid of it. You

1:00:38

know, like it sounds bad to say,

1:00:40

but if you can't give people the experience of

1:00:43

I just introduced myself and I feel very welcomed,

1:00:45

then don't make that experience part of the

1:00:47

design, because that is

1:00:50

just a really bad foot to get started off

1:00:52

on. Yeah, I was thinking, as

1:00:54

soon as we get a new introduction, that should

1:00:56

be zapured into our Slack channel. It would

1:00:58

be like new introduction, everyone goes, say hello.

1:01:01

Totally. People ask me all the time, they hear about the

1:01:03

lab and they hear that it's generating a good amount of

1:01:05

revenue. And they're like, how much time are you spending on

1:01:07

that? And it's not about the number of

1:01:09

hours that I or your team are putting in. It's

1:01:13

that I think the communities that

1:01:15

are going to have such

1:01:17

high priority in their members' minds are the

1:01:19

ones that are timely. It's

1:01:21

when I had the thought that this is the place

1:01:23

I need to go to get help. That

1:01:25

was rewarded with help quickly, good

1:01:28

help quickly. So

1:01:31

it's not about that I spend a lot of hours

1:01:33

in there is that I have to be constantly aware

1:01:36

of activities so that I can provide timely assistance or

1:01:38

your team can provide timely assistance. That's a differentiator. What

1:01:41

do you think about not letting them in until

1:01:43

they've booked the onboarding call? Or

1:01:46

yeah, I think that's

1:01:48

an interesting mechanism. I think I

1:01:51

think having some prerequisite activity

1:01:53

that you know is going to set them up for

1:01:55

success. Providing them

1:01:57

from getting some other thing can work.

1:02:00

For sure. There's a

1:02:02

lot of conversation with school

1:02:04

in particular around gamification because

1:02:07

to be honest, when I talk to people about building a

1:02:10

membership, I have not once recommended school as a platform. Not

1:02:14

that it's bad. I just think that it

1:02:16

only does one thing better than circle and

1:02:18

that is gamification. And I

1:02:20

think gamification in a lot of ways

1:02:22

is a band-aid for engagement. And

1:02:27

so I would be careful about gamification because

1:02:29

it can be used positively

1:02:31

to generate behaviors.

1:02:34

But depending on who your audience is,

1:02:36

it might actually be creating busy work

1:02:38

that actually is counterproductive

1:02:41

to the goals they actually

1:02:43

have. I serve entrepreneurs

1:02:45

and creators. Those people don't have a

1:02:47

lot of spare time. Giving

1:02:49

them a badge for commenting on a post might

1:02:53

not serve them. It might just be taking up more time. It's

1:02:55

not super helpful. So if you're going

1:02:57

to use gamification, make sure that it's in alignment with

1:02:59

this is actually getting the ultimate outcome

1:03:02

that the individual wants. What

1:03:04

do you think about

1:03:07

interest spaces, I guess, if

1:03:09

some people in the community want to make an

1:03:11

interest space about parenting or something like that? Do

1:03:14

you let them do that? Or

1:03:16

how do you approach space design in

1:03:18

that sense? I

1:03:20

am kind of militant on trying to keep

1:03:23

the number of spaces as

1:03:26

low as possible. Not

1:03:28

to say that there's a specific number where

1:03:30

it's like, this is the maximum you should

1:03:33

have, but saying that every space should serve

1:03:35

a distinct purpose and be used.

1:03:38

And so if somebody has a desire for a

1:03:40

parenting space, generally

1:03:42

in the beginning, especially in the beginning when you launch a community, people are going

1:03:44

to be like, this is awesome. Can we have a space for this and this

1:03:46

and this and this? And I would just

1:03:48

capture all of those ideas and

1:03:50

then run a voting mechanism to see which ones

1:03:53

are actually the most popular because you don't want

1:03:55

to just be reactive and create spaces for whoever

1:03:57

is asking for it because you might not have.

1:04:00

critical density to make that space work. And now you

1:04:02

have a negative experience for those people who want that

1:04:04

space to work. So you have

1:04:06

to find some way of vetting. Is

1:04:08

there a real density of people who want

1:04:10

this thing? And if so, I will

1:04:13

create it, but also I'm going

1:04:15

to try and identify a champion for that

1:04:17

space, probably the person who suggested it, because

1:04:19

now they feel like I need to prove

1:04:21

that this should be here and they can

1:04:24

kind of help get conversation started, help welcome

1:04:26

people into that space. I think it's great

1:04:28

when done well. But as you identified with

1:04:31

accountability groups and masterminds in communities where you

1:04:33

don't have a paid

1:04:36

staff facilitator, it's

1:04:38

like creating a second job for somebody who's paying to

1:04:41

be in the space. They don't have a

1:04:43

lot of incentive to keep up with it. So a

1:04:45

lot of times those requests, I find there's not

1:04:47

a lot of there there. You have to, you

1:04:49

have to really suss out which one, which ones

1:04:51

of these are worth pursuing and

1:04:53

putting in place. Nice. So it

1:04:56

sounds like kind of minimum number of spaces

1:04:58

to begin with, like minimum viable space numbers

1:05:00

are coming. And then very slowly

1:05:02

over time, add them in. If we

1:05:04

can have some sort of like roadmap with upvoting

1:05:06

features and blah, blah, blah, you know, feedback section,

1:05:08

that kind of thing. Optically, it's

1:05:11

a much better look to expand

1:05:13

over time than contract over time.

1:05:16

And because that feels like, oh, this place is

1:05:18

growing, it's getting better. It's improving and not, oh,

1:05:20

they over promised and under delivered. And now they're

1:05:22

taking away those promises. But the other thing is

1:05:24

when you have a ton of spaces for somebody

1:05:26

new who hasn't been there yet, it

1:05:29

can feel overwhelming to know

1:05:32

where do I go in here? Like a lot of

1:05:34

people talk about a lack of engagement is the word

1:05:36

they use. A lack of participation is the way I

1:05:38

would put it. And they say,

1:05:40

how do I increase that? You

1:05:42

need to think about how am I

1:05:45

teaching people or setting expectations of

1:05:47

what successful participation looks like? I

1:05:50

joined this place for a specific reason. I

1:05:53

now need to be shown or

1:05:56

trained on how to achieve that promise

1:05:58

using this tool. It

1:06:01

really is like the difference between a trainer

1:06:03

in the gym and just putting the equipment out

1:06:05

there. So, you know,

1:06:08

more spaces means more equipment. People

1:06:11

need to know which equipment should I be using. I

1:06:13

like that thing that you just said. It's just like, how do I

1:06:16

help them achieve the promise using this tool? It's

1:06:19

like the community, the membership is a tool to

1:06:21

serve the transformation, which is in our case doubling

1:06:23

their productivity in your case growing your creative business.

1:06:25

Totally. Totally.

1:06:28

This is why I'm really bullish on

1:06:31

using a course as an onboarding mechanism

1:06:34

in the community because it gives people

1:06:36

a very tangible now what question once

1:06:38

they create their profile. Now what? Go

1:06:41

through this onboarding course and you can watch

1:06:43

their progress through it. That should be

1:06:45

the mechanism that trains people on how to use the

1:06:47

tool. Oh, man. You have such

1:06:49

good ideas here. That's such a good idea. You

1:06:52

can immediately solve so many

1:06:54

problems. You can just

1:06:56

record some looms to be like, okay, the goal here is to

1:06:58

help double your productivity. The first thing that you should do for

1:07:00

that is you should – blah, blah, blah – when you've done

1:07:02

that, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's so

1:07:04

many specific things with whatever platform you choose to

1:07:07

use where people need to know how to use

1:07:09

the platform itself, not even just the way that

1:07:11

you've set up the platform. Like, hey, you

1:07:15

probably should spend five minutes configuring

1:07:17

notifications in a way that serves

1:07:19

you. Here's how to configure notifications,

1:07:22

simple stuff like that. This is

1:07:25

good shit. Okay. Anything else, mistakes that you've

1:07:27

made or that you've seen other people make that we should

1:07:29

try and learn from? I don't

1:07:31

know how much this applies to you or not. And I think

1:07:34

this, again, might apply a little bit more on the side of

1:07:36

things where conversation and relationships

1:07:38

are prioritized in the membership.

1:07:42

But I have found if you

1:07:44

have a spectrum of people

1:07:46

on a specific customer journey – let's take

1:07:48

my example of creators – you

1:07:50

have people who are just considering whether they want to

1:07:52

be a creator. You have people who

1:07:54

are figuring out, like, where is my content going to be?

1:07:56

You have people who are just getting traction. You have people

1:07:58

who have built a full business. You have people who

1:08:00

are scaling. Those are like the five stages of creatordom,

1:08:02

as I see them. It

1:08:05

is difficult to serve all five of

1:08:07

those stages in one membership product

1:08:10

where relationships and connection is key.

1:08:13

It's a lot better to hone

1:08:15

in on one specific phase

1:08:20

of a journey because then people can

1:08:22

really relate to each other, even if they have

1:08:24

different demographics or different professional profiles. And

1:08:27

then, with productivity, if

1:08:29

we can find a common ground across

1:08:32

different demographics and different people,

1:08:34

that is kind of where I would gear a

1:08:37

lot of the messaging and marketing around because then

1:08:39

we immediately are set to find

1:08:41

that common ground as members between each other. It's

1:08:44

really difficult to have the wide spectrum

1:08:46

because everything reverts to the lowest end

1:08:49

of the spectrum. As in the

1:08:51

beginners holding their own back. If

1:08:53

you have beginners and you have experts,

1:08:56

very quickly, the majority of conversation becomes

1:08:58

beginner conversation and the experts go and try

1:09:00

to find a very private space for themselves.

1:09:05

It's hard because unless

1:09:08

you literally screen and vet

1:09:10

people, it's hard to prevent that from

1:09:12

happening. I thought initially that pricing was all you

1:09:14

needed to do. If you make the price high

1:09:17

enough, then it will filter out for everybody who's

1:09:19

too early on. That's true

1:09:22

for the majority of cases, but there

1:09:24

are people with high ambitions, there

1:09:27

are people with means, there might even

1:09:29

be people with delusions who are

1:09:31

willing to do that and that can

1:09:33

create a negative experience, like an outsized

1:09:36

negative experience for the community as a

1:09:38

whole. So for a long time, I

1:09:40

was very anti-application or screening

1:09:42

process because it creates friction

1:09:44

that makes ... It

1:09:47

just will slow down member growth.

1:09:50

But more and more, I'm thinking

1:09:52

actually the best communities of the

1:09:54

coming however long should probably have

1:09:56

some experience or some

1:09:58

mechanism for making sure. that the people

1:10:00

coming in are a right fit for

1:10:02

the community. One of my,

1:10:07

as I've been sort of thinking about building this thing, one

1:10:10

of the instincts

1:10:12

I have to fight against is the instinct to keep on adding

1:10:14

more shit to it. Because I was like, yes.

1:10:18

You know, the team's like, well, I don't think we've got

1:10:21

enough content here. Like, Ali, why don't you just go make

1:10:23

a productivity course? And I'm like, okay. But

1:10:26

like, is, and

1:10:28

I will, but like, is it the

1:10:30

content? And then we're like, okay, but we can have a

1:10:32

space for this and a space to post your daily goals.

1:10:35

Because that would be helpful. A space to post your evening

1:10:37

reviews. Because that'd be helpful. A space to post your weekly

1:10:39

reviews. A space to put your life vision. Because that'd be

1:10:41

helpful. And now before we know, we built like 15 spaces

1:10:43

with zero members inside the community. Just

1:10:46

in theory, it would be useful to have space. That

1:10:48

to have a space that doesn't have a specific thing.

1:10:50

It's like, great. Capture those ideas. Let's put

1:10:52

them on a list. Let's roll out the

1:10:54

minimum viable version of this. Yeah. Improve that

1:10:56

we need to add more. Especially

1:10:59

with content. If

1:11:01

you think about other subscription businesses like Netflix,

1:11:05

or Hulu or Amazon Prime, whatever, they

1:11:08

literally, again, recurring revenue comes

1:11:10

from recurring value. If

1:11:12

you created a course and put it in

1:11:14

there, that's good value for the one time

1:11:16

that I go through it probably. But that's

1:11:19

not necessarily recurring value. Recurring

1:11:21

value comes from something

1:11:25

that is new constantly.

1:11:28

Do you want to get on the treadmill of saying,

1:11:31

I'm going to create a new course every month, the

1:11:33

way that Netflix adds original programming every month? Probably not.

1:11:36

But saying every

1:11:38

month, we are still

1:11:40

having these highly effective

1:11:43

goal setting workshops or these

1:11:45

productivity things. That is the recurring value that you

1:11:48

have there. And I think

1:11:51

you can find the level of enough of

1:11:53

that. When you have

1:11:55

so much stuff, it

1:11:57

gets difficult to train people on which stuff to use.

1:12:00

And also, everything becomes a

1:12:02

little bit less valuable by

1:12:04

comparison. Let me give an

1:12:06

example. In the lab, I was

1:12:09

doing an office hours call every single week

1:12:12

because it's the most popular event we had. So

1:12:14

I said, let's ramp it up. Let's do more of them. But

1:12:17

what I found was the more often I

1:12:19

did this, the easier it

1:12:21

became to deprioritize any

1:12:23

single of them because there's another one just next week.

1:12:27

And so a couple of cycles of, well, I don't need

1:12:29

to do that this week. I'll just go to the one next week, suddenly

1:12:32

becomes, oh, I'm not using this at all. Whereas

1:12:35

when you have

1:12:39

fewer things that you know are high value, you can make

1:12:41

each of them a bigger deal. We

1:12:43

do a town hall in the community once per year. And

1:12:46

that allows me to say, hey, we

1:12:48

do this once a year. If you're going to put

1:12:50

time aside to do anything in this community, come

1:12:53

to this town hall. And it drives

1:12:55

by far the highest attendance of every any

1:12:57

event that we do because the stakes

1:12:59

are higher. You could

1:13:01

look at it from a scarcity and urgency perspective.

1:13:05

But if you do use a ton of stuff,

1:13:08

I think it actually can sometimes

1:13:10

create non participation because there's

1:13:12

overwhelm, but also because each

1:13:15

one of those things now feels relatively

1:13:19

less valuable. What's

1:13:21

your thought on recording the calls and

1:13:23

recording the sessions and sticking them on

1:13:25

the somewhere on circle as

1:13:27

like an archive of recordings? I

1:13:30

think generally good depending on what the

1:13:33

session actually is. Like, are you going to record

1:13:35

an hour long co working session? That's just an

1:13:37

hour of silence and put that up there. No,

1:13:39

I don't think that's going to be super useful.

1:13:42

But if there's something that is teaching,

1:13:44

that's great. That creates an asset that

1:13:46

builds a library of content. At

1:13:48

some point, that also becomes a little bit overwhelming

1:13:50

and it becomes a challenge of how do I

1:13:52

wayfind through the best stuff? So

1:13:55

from the beginning, what I would be doing is thinking about

1:13:57

how will this be organized a year from now? wonder

1:14:00

the ton of this? How can I help

1:14:02

people wayfind their way into the right stuff?

1:14:07

Because eventually you may have enough assets that you can actually

1:14:09

create like onboarding

1:14:11

pathways. Somebody comes in, they answer a couple questions,

1:14:13

you say, well, we have identified that there's like

1:14:15

four or five different types of people that come

1:14:17

in here. We have done enough programming and build

1:14:19

enough curriculum and content that we serve all five

1:14:21

of those things. When people come in, we want

1:14:24

them to identify which these five paths make the

1:14:26

most sense for them. We're going to put them

1:14:28

down the specific path with the specific series

1:14:31

of content that

1:14:33

we know is going to serve them. The

1:14:35

earlier you start thinking about that, I think the better

1:14:37

off you are, but it's not mission critical to absolutely

1:14:39

get it right right away. It's just planning

1:14:42

for the future a little bit. How do

1:14:44

you do payments? Do you use circle payments or

1:14:46

something else to then send them an invite link?

1:14:49

If I were doing it today, I'd probably use circle payments.

1:14:51

Circle paywalls didn't exist when I was doing it. I actually

1:14:53

run my payment through ghost

1:14:55

because my website is built on ghost and so I just

1:14:57

use the built-in membership. But I think

1:14:59

circle paywalls is probably the best way to do

1:15:02

it because when people want to manage their membership,

1:15:04

they want to do it inside of the tool

1:15:06

that they're used to using as opposed to a

1:15:08

third party tool. So you'll have less support

1:15:11

cost having it in circle. Okay,

1:15:14

so productivity

1:15:17

lab leaning towards higher

1:15:19

ticket, but I will definitely think about what

1:15:22

you suggested and things to think about

1:15:24

on that front, like what is really

1:15:27

the value, the free value versus the

1:15:29

expensive value. Minimum

1:15:31

viable number of spaces that we can always expand

1:15:33

over time by polling the

1:15:35

members and seeing what people want

1:15:37

and then delivering on that. Timeliness

1:15:40

is ridiculously important and

1:15:42

always keeping in mind what is the now what dot

1:15:46

dot dot thing. And like

1:15:48

really kind of being almost a benevolent dictator and

1:15:50

like really holding their hand like no, this is

1:15:53

how you use the thing. Introductions

1:15:55

were really important onboarding course, really

1:15:58

important teaching them how to set up notifications. and

1:16:00

stuff. So the profile, like, hey,

1:16:03

introduce yourself and then maybe this is the

1:16:05

next event that you should attend. And

1:16:07

like maybe here's the course that you can go through.

1:16:09

We'll figure out some sort of way

1:16:11

to do one on one onboardings with the team, at least

1:16:13

for the first X number of members, just so we can

1:16:15

actually poll people to be like, hey, what are you hoping

1:16:17

to get from this? And what made you sign up? And

1:16:20

especially, especially at the start for the private opening, when

1:16:23

we don't have like a whole shebang

1:16:25

sales page and everything with

1:16:27

your stuff. I think you have like Friday

1:16:29

co working or something like that. Yeah, we

1:16:31

do. And a couple of

1:16:33

other things. For us, we wanted to

1:16:35

have like daily co working and also like weekly

1:16:38

review events and also like, I guess, workshop

1:16:40

every now and then but like seeing like clicking on the

1:16:42

events page on circle, at least until

1:16:44

they add a calendar feature, which apparently is coming soon, it

1:16:47

starts to get like a bit much to suddenly see

1:16:49

this enormous list of things. Do

1:16:51

you have a sense of like, should we

1:16:54

be separating up multiple event types into different

1:16:56

event spaces or what? I

1:16:58

wouldn't. I think I think

1:17:00

multiple event spaces is only

1:17:02

relevant when you have tiered levels

1:17:05

of access and events that are only permission

1:17:07

to certain people. I hear you on

1:17:09

like the challenge of so many events starts to be vertically

1:17:12

a lot since there's not a calendar view.

1:17:14

But I think that's okay.

1:17:16

Because generally, those if

1:17:18

those are set up as recurring events as they are,

1:17:20

then when people RSVP, they can add the whole recurring

1:17:22

thing to their own calendar. And

1:17:24

it should be. Oh, okay.

1:17:26

Okay, cool. Awesome. Oh, one other

1:17:29

thing, possibly a big

1:17:32

one. We already have a circle

1:17:34

community, a circle community set up for our

1:17:36

YouTuber Academy students, which has 4500 students in

1:17:38

it. And as mentioned 800 active in the

1:17:40

last month, still seems

1:17:43

to be weirdly active. And you

1:17:45

know, our team is in there as well. What I

1:17:47

was toying with the idea of is instead

1:17:50

of having productivity lab and YouTuber Academy as

1:17:52

two separate circle communities, consolidating

1:17:55

them both into the

1:17:58

Ali Abdaal Academy kind of big

1:18:00

circle thing. And now if

1:18:02

you bought the YouTube Academy, you have access

1:18:04

to that space. If you have

1:18:06

access to that space. If you bought our accelerator, which is our

1:18:08

highest ticket thing, you have access to all of the above. And

1:18:11

if you haven't bought anything, you have access to the free stuff, which is

1:18:13

just the free events as part of the value of that Academy. What

1:18:16

are your thoughts on like consolidation versus

1:18:18

keeping the productivity pros and the productivity

1:18:20

people and the YouTube people separate? I

1:18:23

get the draw to it. I tried

1:18:25

it out with the lab. So we have like

1:18:27

a basic level membership that doesn't have access to

1:18:29

the community discussion spaces, but has access to all

1:18:31

of the like content, we'll

1:18:33

call it the educational content. And

1:18:35

it mostly works, but there are

1:18:37

aspects of circle as it stands

1:18:39

today, that become unusable

1:18:41

when you have permissioned levels

1:18:44

of access. And so

1:18:46

for me, I'm actually going to be separating that out. I

1:18:49

either want people to have like full

1:18:52

access to everything basically, or not be

1:18:54

in that space, I

1:18:56

would create a separate circle account. Oh,

1:18:59

interesting. What do you

1:19:01

mean aspects start to break when you have

1:19:03

different spaces? I'll give you a very specific example.

1:19:05

Yeah. In the home

1:19:08

feed on circle, which is a great feature, they

1:19:10

allow you to set a banner at the

1:19:13

top of that, which basically creates like a

1:19:15

static call to action to anybody who logs

1:19:17

into the community. I find that to be

1:19:19

very, very useful for drawing attention to important

1:19:21

aspects of membership. Right. Some

1:19:25

of those announcements, I just want to

1:19:27

make to a specific group of people,

1:19:29

namely like the main core community members

1:19:31

like, Hey, here is this

1:19:33

upcoming event that is only for

1:19:35

members of the core community. If

1:19:38

I put the link to join that event, the

1:19:40

people who are not permissioned

1:19:42

to that event still see it. They're

1:19:45

the the public members

1:19:47

directory on circle, if you use

1:19:50

like their native like members tab

1:19:52

will show everybody in the community.

1:19:55

And so if you have different levels

1:19:57

of person, you know, I was talking about the

1:19:59

specter. of beginners to experts. If

1:20:02

you had multiple levels of people and some

1:20:04

people are sensitive to not wanting to be

1:20:06

solicited or have their contact information or name

1:20:08

or face out there to everybody in the

1:20:11

community, if you have that feature open,

1:20:13

anybody could see their information, message

1:20:16

them, email them, whatever. So

1:20:18

like, that's

1:20:20

the type of thing where I said this

1:20:22

is untenable for the experience I want to

1:20:24

give super for like an advanced customer, I

1:20:27

want to give them like a super safe,

1:20:30

amazing private thing. So yeah,

1:20:32

if you have any of those

1:20:35

concerns, I'd probably separate the two out because

1:20:37

I just find that there are certain complications.

1:20:39

Another reason is actually these interest

1:20:43

groups you brought up. I just started doing this in the

1:20:45

community to where I had a space for

1:20:48

different platforms. Like I have a YouTube space and

1:20:50

a Twitter space and an Instagram space. And ideally,

1:20:52

I just make those spaces and people can join

1:20:54

them however, if they

1:20:56

would like, you know, but

1:20:59

there was no way of making

1:21:01

that experience possible without making those

1:21:03

spaces joinable for the basic members.

1:21:05

So there's just like little things

1:21:07

I keep running into that tells

1:21:09

me if there's permissioning, I'm just going

1:21:12

to create a different space for the

1:21:14

most part. Cool. Thank you. Jay, this

1:21:16

has been enormously helpful. Anything else come to mind at

1:21:18

all that you would recommend as

1:21:21

we embark on this project? You gave a great summary of

1:21:23

a lot of the key things I said a minute ago,

1:21:25

but I would just double down

1:21:27

on saying the better the initial

1:21:30

experience somebody has after they swipe their

1:21:32

credit card, the more coverage

1:21:34

you have to kind of figure out and

1:21:36

make this experience awesome, like a really great

1:21:38

first experience will carry somebody for

1:21:40

months in a community believing that this is going

1:21:42

to be different and awesome. So I

1:21:45

would really try to over index on making that that

1:21:48

feel kind of magical. Okay,

1:21:50

brilliant. It's been enormously helpful. And

1:21:52

finally, I guess, if anyone has gotten

1:21:55

to the end of this recording, any tips for someone

1:21:57

who does not have a huge audience looking to start

1:21:59

their first? community? I get this question

1:22:01

a lot. I think you need five people. If

1:22:04

you want to start a community, I

1:22:06

think you literally only need five people. Ten would be great,

1:22:08

but I have to think there are five or ten people in your

1:22:11

life that you could reach out to and say, I'm doing this thing.

1:22:13

It's for people like you. I think you're going to get a lot

1:22:15

out of it. The smaller the number of people you have initially, the

1:22:18

more I would lean on real-time

1:22:22

programming in the beginning. Like you have the

1:22:24

benefit with a small number of people that

1:22:26

you can basically create one-to-one relationships

1:22:29

and interactions between all of them by having

1:22:31

some live events and getting them to commit

1:22:33

to going there. Because when people have real-time

1:22:36

experiences, even if it's on video, with

1:22:38

other people, now suddenly the

1:22:42

two-dimensional profile photo,

1:22:44

a name that I see in the forum,

1:22:46

I feel more connected to that person. I'm

1:22:48

more likely to help them and feel invested

1:22:50

in their success as well. That

1:22:52

kind of goes back to making the entry experience really good,

1:22:55

but you really only need five to ten people to start.

1:22:57

Then those people are going to feel really close. They're going

1:22:59

to tell their friends, and it's going

1:23:01

to grow slowly, but that's okay because slow growth

1:23:03

means a great experience

1:23:06

of integration into the community. You

1:23:09

can build a really strong culture and have

1:23:12

really good retention. Great. Thanks

1:23:14

so much, man. I'm liking people to learn more about you and

1:23:16

your stuff. Yeah, I am Everything

1:23:18

Creator Science. You can go to creatorscience.com.

1:23:21

If this is interesting to you, I have a

1:23:23

membership course that goes even more in depth into

1:23:25

what we did here. I

1:23:28

created a coupon code for folks of Deep Dive. You can

1:23:30

go to creatorscience.com. If

1:23:34

you'd like. Lovely. Thanks so much,

1:23:36

Jay. Very good. Thank you. All

1:23:38

right. That's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you

1:23:40

so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that

1:23:42

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1:23:58

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1:24:00

if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this

1:24:02

episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff

1:24:04

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hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you

1:24:08

next time. Bye-bye.