Jay Shaw and Nakia Alexander break down how they scaled Dreams in Action, their coaching community, in 2024. They share their pricing strategy, value ladder from free to high-ticket offers, and why niching to coaches specifically lets them charge more. Daily engagement, member leadership roles, and a clear path to one-on-one coaching are what made it work.
Chapters
I'm seeing what this does. Preparing the live stream, the meeting.
Yeah, deleted all my shit.
All right, redirecting to YouTube. I'm seeing what this does. It took us live.
What'd you say?
I said it took us live. We on.
Oh, hey, what's up?
What's up? What's What's up, man? How y'all doing? Sitting here with my business partner Nikki, Nakia Alexander, and we talking to our coaches tonight, man. If you a coach, you helping people change their lives, you're gonna want to tap in, man. We're gonna have some interesting conversations just about our experiences as coaches, some things we've noticed, what we do different, what we do the same. We'll be talking a little bit about our community DNA, Dreams in Action. Just an awesome community for entrepreneurs. But, um, how you doing today, Nikki?
I am doing very good. I'm super excited. We're used to going live on TikTok, so I'm very, very excited.
All right. But, um, this YouTube algorithm, we, we over here learning it. We're going— so we starting to spend more time over here, and we just wanted to hop on and talk about things we'll be taking into 2025. Things we'll be leaving in 2024 as it relates to our community, as it relates to our courses, as it relates to our sessions with clients. So welcome to the chat, guys. If you guys have any questions, any comments, feel free to jump in. Yeah, let's get to it, Nikki. So Nikki, biggest lesson for you in 2024 that you can't wait to implement in 2025?
Um, My biggest lesson. I think we talked a little bit about this before, but just really for me, you know what? Knowing my worth and not settling. We know how amazingly smart we are, and we have this passion for entrepreneurship, and we're able to. Help people. And when you want to help so many people, sometimes, you know, you can, you cannot charge your worth. I'll just say that you cannot charge your worth. And, um, I want people to understand that if you have a skill and you are knowledgeable about something and helping people transform their lives, you most certainly should feel comfortable and confident when you are pricing your services, your products, and offering it to your clients. And I love how learning this and learning this, it has allowed me to transform abundance, financial abundance within my own life, you know, being comfortable with the in-between time, that becoming, right? You set a goal for for yourself. And, you know, when you don't see that goal happening fast enough, you typically want to revert back to what was working. And, um, I've learned to become comfortable with sitting in that. So I'm taking a lot of that with me into 2025. And what about you? What did— is— what's one of your biggest lessons that you are taking into 2025?
Man, um, it's what one of those ones was talked about earlier. It's something I already knew, but I got a deeper knowing of it this year.
Yeah.
The work is— the work is in here. It's 80% thinking it out, 80% mapping it out, 80% figuring out what is my well-formed outcome.
Yeah.
And trusting my subconscious mind, trusting my skill set, trusting all the knowledge that I've gained over all of these years to fill in that stuff in the middle.
Yeah.
Like, I don't— I went through a phase of I was so conditioned to working, I was so conditioned to always doing something that there would be a slight guilt when I wasn't working. I'm like, wait a minute, I only put in 2 hours of work today. I can't be— I can't be done. Like, there has to be more to do. So I'm looking, I'm analyzing data that doesn't need to be analyzed. I'm doing stuff just because I'm in the habit of working. Realizing that those are really great times to sit back and go, okay, where are we going next? What's after— this is working, I'm done working on this. What's next? What's the future? What's the, the next course? I don't gotta just keep working on what it is. That's the perfect time to sit back, get in my imagination, and just create. Just let new ideas pop up. Or go watch— go, go play some games. Go get a walk. Go Go for a run. I don't have to be at this desk 12 hours a day. Now, there was a time early in my career where I needed to be at this desk 12 hours a day because there was, there was things to be done. But at this point, I got momentum going. I can't take a year off, but stepping away from my desk for 48 hours is not going— nobody's going to die. Sometimes I wake up The ads are doing what they need to do. The content is doing what it needs to do. Yeah, I can, I can, I've earned the right to breathe a little. I'm not gonna go broke if I take a day or 2 or 3 off. So that was—
Isn't that what we want? That's, that is part of why I became an entrepreneur, to be able to work at my leisure when I feel in flow. You know, of the craft. Yeah.
Realizing that a lot of times I was working not out of necessity, but out of habit.
Yeah. And I think it's, um, it is, it really is this fine line. Um, because you have these moments, I know I have these moments, these surges, like it seems like, where I'm just going crazy. I am nonstop, nonstop, nonstop, and I feel like sometimes that creative— those creative juices are what's fueling, you know, fueling me at that time. I'm so excited. I'm so excited about my product. I'm so excited about my service that I just want to share it with the masses, and I want to get it out of me. And it calls for entrepreneurs in general to, you know, to really sit down, buckle down, and, you know, put in the work. But there is also creation in the sitting back, observing, letting things fall into place. And it's a beautiful part of creation. And I think you're right, we forget. You know, to do that sometimes. Um, but yeah, I love that. I love that.
And I just thought of another one as you were talking. You and I started working together on a lot of different things this year, man. I would have got a partner, like a business partner, a long time ago, like my true equal opposite. I'm not detail-oriented. I'm Big picture. Now I got this business partner who's all about the— those small— Jay, we can't push this out. This— Jay, are you— are you like somebody who is going—
Yeah.
Like, like, no, this can— this needs a workbook. I know we could get away with not having one, but no, Jay, like having that other half in business that can hold me accountable, hold— like hold my feet to the fire, and that enjoys doing things that I don't like doing. And vice versa. Like, I would have did this years ago if I understood. Like, to build Dreams in Action on my own, it would still be the launching stage. The classroom would not be developed. It wouldn't be nearly 300 people. And like, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be ready. It would still be in the incubator if I was building it. on my own. But like Dreams in Action, from like idea to like a community with people in it, it took us— I don't want to lie, I'm trying to think back.
Like, the idea to people in the community, like a week? Seriously?
Like, it was, uh— and just like give y'all a quick backstory, Nikki and I, we met with January, February, early, early this year. On TikTok.
Yep.
And then, um, you had an event coming up. You came across my content, you had an event coming up, and we just started talking in the chat. And you was like, this, this is good stuff. I gotta, I gotta run. But you was like, you know, we'll talk. We talked, got on the phone call like 2 or 3 days later. It was like, I got this— was it the Money March or it was the Love—
Money Mindset in January. I was doing an event.
Yeah, you had those things going, but it was like, you know, would you like to come talk? We did that. You already had that, so I just showed up, did what I did, and you already had that rolling. But I was like, I like her, her crowd. I like— those are the type of people I enjoy talking to. So after you finished up like with that, you, you know, you kind of like, let's do something. And we, you know, went back and forth and we landed on the Beat Do Have Dreams in Action. The entrepreneur thing, and we built that. It was like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday thing that we built. And about 3 days after it ended, we started getting emails back and we started getting feedback. And, um, you're like, yo, this can't be a one-stop shop. Like, this is something we got to keep going. And it was originally gonna be a podcast.
Yes.
I think podcast idea, I don't even think it made 24 hours. You called me, it's like, Jay, Forget that. Like, let's do a— let's do a community.
Right.
And we got on school, built out the community, and start growing. Use, um, a lot of TikTok to like funnel people into that community. And now we got a community. So in the process of building that community, if we were starting tomorrow saying, hey, new community, What would we— what, what do you think we would— what do you think we would do different this time around?
Um, so right off the bat, do you think you would charge for your community?
I think I would. I think I would make the community free, but I would attach it to another offer that I had, like another low-ticket offer. Buy this $9.99 thing. I would make it be some type of financial investment. Just because you tell people what it's worth when you tell them what it costs. When I say it's free, I just told you that it's worth nothing, right? So I would like— I got the, the, um, 5C Jumpstart thing that I sell for like $49. I would say, you know, if you purchase the 5C Jumpstart, I would add it to one of the benefits of the 5C Jumpstart. And then—
Like you do now.
Yep, we get in, or I would make it a part of some package. It would be some barrier to entry.
Yeah.
Just some type of barrier to entry. Then you keep out people who just want to come in and pitch stuff and sell stuff and stuff like that. I want people in my community who want to— who fit the core values of the reason we built the community. I don't want people just joining because it's free. I want it to be some type of pause and consideration before you, before you jump in.
Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, and I think that that's great too. I think when we first started, it was $47 a month. We started out, um, right away with charging. Um, so I definitely think it depends on what your services are and what your products are. Um, that you will be offering, but we most certainly think you should use your best judgment, um, considering those things when you are building your community. Okay, um, because, uh, we see where people have been successful funneling others into their community with it being free and then them upselling within the community, and we see where people are successful with charging monthly. So it really depends on what services and products you'll be offering as well. So yeah, that's great. I, I agree with you because we're both doing that now, right? We're both offering the community as a bonus onto the products and services that we already offer. So it is a great way to funnel people in. And, um, upsell them with workshops and challenges that we offer and coaching.
Sure.
What about the, um, the build, the building of the community? Because a lot of people will say, oh, I want to build the community, but it's like too overwhelming to get started, or do I have enough information to put— I mean, we were thinking about those things Initially, um, when we were considering building a community. And, um, I would say, like, do what we did. We took, we took the information from our previous business seminar and we made that into the first course within our, our community. So So that really helped us having a seminar that we had previously recorded and had workbooks from, and we were able to upload that into the community, and that sort of took a big load off of the content that we needed initially. Sure.
And me personally, that's just how I feel like I do my best presenting when I'm just in my flow and I'm, and I'm, I'm going like, if I go, okay, let me go teach, like, I'm like, I can do it. But it's like, it feels different than like we're flowing. We got this thing going. And I wasn't even thinking about making content when I was presenting. I was just presenting because I present. But after the fact, like, wow, that's an awesome piece of content. Let's chop that up and put that because it don't— me out of my head and like, oh, this needs to be perfect. I need to really make sure when I'm just flowing. And then after the fact, oh yeah, that's a— that's content right there. That's a great piece of content. So that definitely helped. And we, like you said, it was a 3-day event we had just finished. So we had, what, nearly 12 hours of footage? It'd be crazy to use 12 hours of footage. I didn't realize that.
But yeah, and, um, you know, your hypnosis videos that you are able to upload, that was some more content. Um, I had some YouTube, uh, some TikTok replays that I was able to upload, some previous workshops that I was able to upload. So definitely take a look at what you already have that can sort of help So you want to fill your community up with content and information and tools and tips and all of that before you— or before you open it up to others. What were you going to say?
I mean, keep in mind, like, in these communities, people want like that short digestible content. You don't got to make 45-minute videos. Even on the 5-minute videos and the 3-minute videos we got in our classroom. Sometimes we'll be in one of the Q&As and, um, somebody asked a question, and not being rude, but I could tell just by the question you asked, there's no way you went through Module 1. That, that's Module 1. And sometimes I go, yeah, I did, not knowing that we can log in on the back end and see, no, no, no, you didn't.
Right.
So, um, and one thing that we've gotten better back is, um, we're doing a lot less handholding as of late, and we're Challenging our entrepreneurs in the community to be entrepreneurs, be problem solvers, because it's easy to stress yourself out and become like mama bird and daddy bird and like take other— like, you're not responsible for other people's success. You cannot— even with your children, you can't make them be successful. You can set them up, but it's gonna take—
Right.
Taking some ownership. And buying into the end result. So we've been doing a really good job, especially you, Nikki. You've been doing a really good job of telling people, hey, you got Google, you got ChatGPT. There's so many resources. We're here to help. But don't you dare get a problem on Monday and wait until Friday to a mastermind. So how much money you've let slip through the cracks over 4 days? You know how much? Like momentum you've lost a lot while sitting still waiting for Jay or Nikki to show up so you can ask the question that at the end of the day is not— come on, what, what, what, what if we weren't here, what would you do? Yeah, then give an answer similar to like, come on, that was just your excuse to take a week off. Get, yeah, get back in there.
Yeah, and I think that also boils down to people really, it's like, do you really want it or not, you know? And, um, I think we're good coaches because we do hold your hand in the beginning. We do help you, you know, understand our software. If you're using our software, we take the time to make sure you're, you know, your questions are answered. Um, and we have, you know, methods in place now that they can utilize if they have a question. You know, they can send it to the form and, you know, get it in queue. We have different ways that we can still help the community. You know, you can bounce questions off people, other people in the community. We have established these other avenues, if you will, for them to utilize in order for them to still be able to thrive. But a good coach will push you out of the nest and say it's time to fly.
And we see And here recently, we started this thing on Juneteenth. We, um, see people kind of graduating out of the community and going, hey, I'm ready to work with you guys one-on-one. You shared an email with me today from somebody who's been with us since the beginning, and she's realized like, hey, I've gotten what I need from the community, that my next phase is working with you guys one-on-one because my particular industry, it's got nuances. that we sometimes we might have time to get to in the group. But other times, if I'm sharing you guys with 30 other people at one time, I can't get as deep into my stuff as I'm ready to get into. So she's realized that, hey, I'm done with the community. I want one-on-one coaching. I want two-on-one coaching.
Yeah.
So, and that's what it's about, like, especially like therapeutically. I tell my clients all the time, if you with me for 2 or 3 years, That's, uh, like, I don't, I don't plan to be looking at you for 2, 2 or 3 years. Like, now if we got moving issues, like you came in to quit smoking, after you quit smoking—
Sometimes scaling that.
And after you, you know, lost the weight, you wanted to work on your confidence. Like, that's different if we're going from issue to issue. But if we've been working on this one thing for 2 years, that say very little about me as a coach and very little about you as a student. Like, we Somebody's dropping. Either I'm feeling you, or you feeling yourself, or we feeling each other. And we—it doesn't like that quote that I've been talking about lately. It didn't take me a long time to build a successful business. Took me a long time to become the version of myself that could. And I feel like that's what the role we play in the community. The community is about helping you to become, be, do, have those first three modules. Community is about helping you to. First off, become entrepreneur. Once you become entrepreneur and it's time to do the doing, that's when it's time. Like, you can still benefit from the community, you can still benefit from the challenges, but that's when it's time to say, okay, I'm going, I'm taking on more responsibility for my success and I'm, I'm ready to take it up a notch.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Awesome. What else? What else are some lessons? And I think it's great to say that, you know, in Juneteenth we started with zero, and today we have 290 members. That's a beautiful thing. Um, it is a really, really great thing to be proud of. So we should be proud, um, of the progress that we're making. Another thing that I feel like people should consider when they are creating a community is that You have to be consistent with the communication every single day. So if that is not within you, you need to find somebody to do it for you, um, because your community will die if you're not in it keeping it alive, to be honest.
Like any other relationship, if you go, um, 2 weeks without talking to your wife? Like, huh, that's not your wife. Do you think your marriage can withstand 2 weeks of no communication? Like, yeah, you might get through one— that once or twice, but eventually it's like, what's— what is this? Did we just go— what is this without talking to each other? Like, what are we doing here?
Yeah, exactly.
It's a— it's called— it's called a Community.
Yeah, yeah.
Community. And one thing, um, we really push people in the community is make friends, make yourself known, be present. You'll sell stuff on accident. Don't come into the community on day one saying, hey, I sell these water bottles, you can buy these. I don't know you, I don't trust you, don't even know if I like you yet. I know that the first time I talked to you, you were trying to sell me something.
Mm-hmm.
Like, so, um, that's one thing that we've seen. And people who have followed that strategy, we've seen it with, um, Zen Rose, we've seen it with, um, Zeni Beauty and the makeup. Yeah, we've seen our people who come in, show up to the masterminds, be active in the community, and when it just comes up in discussion, oh well, yeah, I sell these things, you know, I'm a mom and I use leads to do this. And it's people in the chat naturally going, where can I get some of those? What, like, so that's one of the big things that, um, and we do a really good job of kicking people out of our community because we could easily have like way more than 300 people in that community. But we kick out a lot of people who are in there just to sell, just to get leads, just like this is not It's not that. This is not Craigslist. Exactly. This is claims in action. This is for entrepreneurs who are looking to build, who are wanting to scale, who are wanting to introduce AI to their businesses. And this is for people who serious about their business. And if that's not you, then again, I'd rather have 10 people who align with the reason we built it than have 1,000 people there with mixed with mixed motives.
Yeah, I love that. Me too. I, I would rather that too. Um, one, because it's nothing worse than trying to drag someone along who thinks they want to pursue entrepreneurship but don't have what it takes because that's not something that, you know, they really resonate with. Um, but yeah, I, I think you're right. We are We are very particular about the ones that we let come in. Um, but, uh, yeah, I, I think people should definitely pay attention to the people that you're letting in because they will be trying to take your leads. They will be in the chats trying to get your people, so be careful from that. Um, but yeah, definitely the Constant communication, especially as a coach, because as a coach, you know your people's pain points, and one of their pain points is being consistent. So it's like, you know, that they're not going to be as active for as long as they should be, or, you know, so we're there to help stimulate them and keep them on track, if you will. So have some, you know, exciting incentives that you can offer to keep your people engaged. Do things like challenges and contests and giveaways, you know, sometimes. And, you know, your giveaways don't always have to cost money. They can be, you know, having a free consultation with you or something like that. Um, but there are options. There are ways that you can keep your people engaged, and you definitely want to make sure that you have somebody to help you with that if that's not your strong suit.
For sure, for sure. So we're, you know, behind the scenes working on adding a new layer to Dreams in Action aimed, um, Hey, Coach, what's good? Welcome. I had some content finished over here, just start talking. Did y'all hear that? Yes, y'all could hear that. But we're all aiming it specifically at coaches. And, um, on the back, just off of that, I also want to add, don't be afraid to niche down communities. Niche down the community. Don't—
That's a good one.
You're not leaving money on the table by niching down. What you're doing is putting less work on yourself. What you're doing is getting a group of people who are going to have overlapping questions and overlapping problems and overlapping circumstances. And when you get them in a group, you're gonna have one person ask a question and the other 20 people like, oh, I'm so glad they asked that. Then you had 10 questions to answer, but 8 hands went down because it was a very similar question. So especially if it's your first community, the more niched you make it, the better. And also, the more niched you make it, the more expensive you can make it. Like, you go to Target to buy just a planner, you can get a planner for $14.99. But if you go to Target to buy like a gardening planner, Or a teaching planner. You might spend $89 for a planner that's made for teachers, and it got the grade section in it and somewhere for you to call your roll and somewhere for you to do your, your planning. And it's made with teachers in mind. The more niche you make that community, the more value that it's going to have for the right people. Yeah.
So I love that. Yeah, um, that would be a super tip actually because we're doing that now. But had we did that in the very beginning, um, because we did entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who were just starting out and entrepreneurs who were ready to scale, um, what we ended up attracting were mainly, I would say about what, 90% 95% people that were just starting out.
Mm-hmm.
And then we discovered, okay, maybe we want to get more specific and now work with coaches who have been— work with coaches, number one, because we weren't even just working with— yeah. So now we're working with coaches and coaches who have specific, you know, their specific requirements. We're, we're really Getting specific about the people. Yeah, particular. Yes, about the people that we want to work with. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
So I would definitely recommend just doing it from the start. Just go ahead and niche down from the start. And, um, it may seem like you'll grab more. It seems like by keeping— for instance, you're— we, we coach entrepreneurs, but in the beginning when we created Dreams in Action, we We just wanted to speak to entrepreneurs, and it seems like we're gonna grab more. You don't, people, you don't. Okay, you grab more when you're more specific. And it doesn't seem like that is the reality, but that is the reality. Because, um, it's a beautiful thing when you are speaking to one people, but that one person is actually millions of people. Like that one person There's millions of them. And it really helps you in your business when you can really focus on that one avatar, that one avatar. You know the pain points of that avatar, you know the journey that they're on. Like, it can become so calculated. That's the beauty of it. It really can become calculated. Like, okay, I know where they are here. I know what they're feeling. I know what they need. And it's like, um, it's really— that's where you really become like this guru in your industry, um, because yeah, you can really just pinpoint where they are specifically on the journey and be able to offer them the best solutions there. So niche down.
It boils down to like, can I help you grow a daycare center? Yeah, probably. I know a lot about marketing. Like, yeah, I probably can help you grow a daycare center, but can I help you grow a coaching business? Absolutely. Like overnight. Like, why are you doing that? What's this? What's, what's this thing? What's your— like, I can, I can help you grow a coaching business with my eyes closed, right? Grow a hypnosis practice with my eyes, with my hands tied behind my back. But it's, it's definitely worth niching and niching early.
Yeah, yep, absolutely. That's another great super tip, um, for business owners who are considering making a community. Why, uh, do you think people should create communities? What do you think about community building?
I think, um, people are done opening emails. Like, my longtime people that I already have, yeah, standing relationships with open my emails, but, um, open rates don't look like they used to, like they used to look. Text messages look a lot better, but they get a lot expensive. Community is a really cheap way to talk to your people every day in a non-intrusive way. If you got a community that has valuable content— and don't make your community all about learning, don't make your community all about Self-development. Make your community chill. One of the things that was really popular in our community that we got to get back to is the book club. They are still talking about the book club. But Nikki and I, we bring our personalities to the community. We don't show up and be robot instructors like we have fun. The first 10 minutes or so every meeting is what y'all do today? What's going on? Like, yeah, yeah. Like it's it's chill. Like we productive, but we are. We're chilling. So it's not like, let me go work on my business. Let me go hang out with Jay and Nikki and get some new ideas about my business. So it's like a social, it's like a, a mixer where we're being productive, but it's not like, oh God, Jay is trying to sell me something. Oh God, Nikki is trying to sell me something else. It's like, no, Nikki and Jay gave me 5 tons of value, then they made me an offer.
Yeah.
And it was the offer I needed, not just Jay and Nikki saying, Sell them this. It's like, no, you guys, um, you guys don't understand funnels. You guys don't understand conversions. You don't, you don't have a value ladder. You're not gonna— like, that's a nice workbook that you have, but you're not going to retire your, your, your, your wife selling that one workbook. What's the rest of the value ladder? So when I got a community, I get to a bird's eye view of you guys, not only Like asking questions in the community. I get to see what y'all saying to each other. I get to— and as you in our community, we follow you on TikTok, so we get to see what you're doing on social. So we can, we can— and it's like in a community you build these relationships where you can say things to people that you couldn't just say if you've only talked to them through email. But I've seen you in Zoom meetings once a week for the past 3 months. So I can say, why the hell did you post it on TikTok? You knew that wasn't gonna— what, what is— like, I can— it's a relationship in place.
Yeah.
Where I can really coach you in a way that I can't coach you through email. It's a relationship where I can— I know that this person, I can, I could push them really hard and they're gonna respond well to that. This person, I need to act like— I can— it's kind of like being in-person to-person thing. I got some clients that I'm like, I can scream at them, they actually want to be screamed at. And they— but I got some clients, if I scream at them, I'll never see them again. But in community, I get to see how you interact.
Yeah.
And another dope thing about community, we tend to attract people in our community that got similar cultural, cultural backgrounds. Everybody's welcome, but it's just 85% of our community happens to look like us. So It's certain things that I can say and do in community that I can't necessarily say and do in, in email. I could push you in a way in a community that I can't push you through email. And just even on TikTok, it's something about like, because there's things I want to say when I'm live on TikTok that I can't say when I'm live on TikTok. But when I'm in my Zoom room, who the hell gonna do anything about it?
Exactly.
When you do it, like, I can, I can say what I want to say. If I'm coaching you on TikTok, I can't give you advice about what you're doing on YouTube because TikTok gonna penalize me for what I'm— so community is— and even if TikTok shut down, like it might, if I got my people in my own space, I could care less if TikTok shut down because my people who— and we're saying it like we're good people, so we're not going to take advantage of it, but we got our people in community. We know whatever challenge we do next, whatever product we sell next, they trust us. We haven't led them wrong. They will follow us right off a cliff. Not that we would lead them off of a cliff, but community lets you build a type of trust where you can build something and you know you're not wasting your time building a course. I know out of these 300 people, I got 75 people who can't wait on the next course to drop.
Right, exactly.
So it just gives you— it's like being a, uh, a preacher with your flock of people who trust you. Now it's your job to lead them responsibly. But yeah, you're not constantly having to go out and go find new people. And even when you find new people, you got this loving, dope community to even welcome the new people into, and you're not responsible for getting them completely up to speed. You got people like Uma who, you know, has been around, who is really starting to embody our teaching, and she enjoys reaching out and helping people. You got people like, um— Chalk, who, who like to talk and who like to interact, and she's gonna get them in and talk to them. And it's always somebody to talk to. Jay and Nikki might be out of reach at 4 AM, but if you come into the community and you just got something on your mind, one of your brothers, one of your sisters, somebody's in there. Like, the community is just a— it's a win-win-win. I can't think of any reason as a coach to not have a community in 2025.
Yeah. Yeah, it most certainly is the future for sure. That's for sure. And I think again, like Jay touched on, it's a great way to get people in your own ecosystem. So yeah, I definitely, if I could go back, I would have started a community a year ago, 2 years ago, 3 years ago, whenever they started. becoming, you know, I would have done it because, yeah, Facebook over there and everybody else. Exactly. I mean, and if you think about it, like, everyone loves feeling a part of something, right? People want to be a part of something. And, um, the beautiful thing is Dreams in Action gets to help people not only be a part of something, but we get to help you build your business, um, scale your business, you know, grow. And, uh, I think one of the toughest things for entrepreneurs is jumping, like jumping, uh, growing, scaling, you know, becoming this new, this new, um, person who can handle those bigger amounts, right?
Mm-hmm.
That bigger salary, those, those, um, being comfortable with charging those those higher fees and stuff like that, you know. And it's a beautiful thing to have a community like Dreams in Action because we're able to tell you the action steps you should take within your business. Like, we can tell you, hey, you need a funnel. Hey, you need to do this. Where is your, um, your email list? Like, you know, we can point out these different actionable steps that people can take within their business to help position them correctly. But, uh, it's a wonderful thing that we can also help with— help them with the mindset of transitioning into the superpreneur, for instance, that they want to be, um, because there is a level of mental conditioning that you must, um, go through. In order to level up, right? You want to talk about the mindset. Isn't it so fun to talk about and get paid for what we love? I love it. I love it.
My friend Josh and I were talking about this the other day. He was live on TikTok. He invited me up, and we were talking about how one of the coolest things about entrepreneurship is it forces you into self-development and spirituality. Like, it, it's gonna test your faith. Like nothing else. Absolutely. It's, it's forcing you to learn about confidence. It's forcing you to learn about networking and how to communicate with people, how to be a good communicator. It's forcing you to pick up books like Think and Grow Rich and How to Win Friends and Influence. It's going to force you to become a reader. It's gonna, it's gonna force you to become like keen on self-development and advancement, and it's going to make you a lifelong learner. And outside of the money, when you do it right, entrepreneurship is the gym because it keeps you sharp. And I think we're fortunate in the event that, um, our, our day-to-day life and what we do for a living, like, it's a lot of overlap.
Right.
And I'm, I'm putting enough in, like, what I do every day It, it keeps my tools sharp. Yeah, I teach mindset for a living. I teach self-development. I teach turning thoughts into things for a living.
Yeah.
So when controversy, when unwanted shows up, lucky for me, every, every week at a minimum, I probably spent— I've spent 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 hours deep in self-development. So it keeps my tools sharp. And that's another thing that I like about community, because we got this community that we responsible for and that we got to show up in. Even if I go a week or two without going live or without presenting, I'm still sharp because I've been showing up to Zooms in the community. Like, it keeps my— keeps my sword sharp. Like, we've been doing this long enough where we could probably take a year off and we would get on a stage and be okay. But it's different when that's when you've been speaking every day. You've been speaking. We got some feedback. Is that on my end?
Let's see. I don't know. Someone said they couldn't even hear me. I'm over here. I'm like, oh my gosh! Oh, they can't. They said they hear you, but they don't hear me. So if you can hear me, can you put it in the comments for me? Yikes. I'm like, so I just immediately went in panic mode. Sorry, like this whole time it's 40 minutes in, but, um, but yeah, so let's just keep it going. Oh, they here now. They here.
Okay, good, good, good. Hey y'all, how y'all doing?
So sorry about that, Jay. I didn't mean to be—
No worries, no worries. But it keeps the sword sharp. And it's so important as an entrepreneur. Like, I went out and did some street hypnosis the other day, and it's been probably 6 or 7 months since I did street hypnosis and I was getting through it, but I wasn't nearly as like a year ago, man. Things that would have took me no time at all to do, it's taking me 5 minutes to do. I was like, oh, I got to keep— I got to get back out here and start sharpening this sword. But one thing about running that community alongside you is it, um, it keeps me sharp on my coaching. It keeps me sharp on my speaking. It keeps me— it keeps a lot of my tools sharp. But sometimes it's easy to lay down because as your business really pick up momentum, man, you find your time working more on the business than in the business. So it's sometimes it's really easy to go, man, I ain't I ain't did that in a while. Let me, let me, let me find a stage to jump on. Let me, because you got to keep that sharp sword, that, um, sword sharp. But that's one of my favorite things about the community. It keeps me, it keeps all my communication and all my coaching, it keeps me sharp. And the way we've been doing it, it's been keeping me sharp across several industries. But I can't wait to niche it back down into coaching and, and self-development specifically.
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. Um, what else? What, um, we discussed, um, what are some super tips? Did we discuss super tips?
Um, we didn't purposely. Some came up just while we were, were talking. But, um, super tips for community. Niche it down. And that's one. If you can, if you can find somebody who complements you, I say start the community with a partner. Like, I say have somebody who can— who— don't start it with somebody who's just like you. Start— find you an equal opposite who can If you don't like making workbooks, find you a partner that like making workbooks. If you don't like editing videos, find you a partner that like editing videos. If you can find somebody who likes to do those things that you don't like to do, man, that makes running a community so much easier. We used to have a community called Dream Well Hypnosis. I did it for about 6 months and I was so burnt that I happily said, hey, this last month I'm taking everybody's cards off file. Keep the money. I don't want it. It's too much. Yeah.
Right.
Like, I got, I got burnt easily, right? But running a community with a partner is, is, is so much, so much, so much easier. But find the right partner. Don't get a partner just for the sake of having a partner. Get your partner that's going to challenge you. Get your partner that's going to stretch you. Get you a partner that, like I say, is good at things that you aren't good at. Get you a partner that's gonna go, yeah, we could do that, but have you consider— like, get you somebody who's gonna balance, not somebody who's gonna say, yeah, yeah, get you somebody who's gonna call, get you somebody who's needed, somebody that you couldn't do it without, right?
Yeah, definitely.
Best friend that you grew up with, maybe it could— I'm not saying it couldn't work, but probably not, right?
Yeah, definitely have to complement each other. Um, I mean, like you mentioned, like you mentioned earlier, Like, there are things that, you know, I want to do that you don't want to do. There's things that Jay knows about the business and takes care of that I don't, of course, right? But I think that that helps with especially taking on, like, you know, a project or something together, you know, being able to designate those or have those strong suits in different areas in order to, of course, Build, build, you know, your thing. Um, so yes, make sure you get a partner that complements you and all you have to offer, and that you have similar goals. You gotta, you gotta be on the same page.
Yep, for sure.
Have to be on the same page, for sure.
And even if you don't have a partner, or even if you have a partner, the other thing is find people in your community that have that natural leader, go-getter in them and give them responsibility. Yeah, give them things. Because you got people who are— who, who want responsibility. You got people who like, hey, how can I help? I want to help. Utilize, utilize those people.
Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think, I think that, uh, one of my, um, things that, um, I had to, I guess, get over was control. Releasing control, surrendering control, right? I trust that what Jay works on, he's got it, right? I think that, um, And that doesn't always happen when you work with people. And so you really— I've— this, this relationship, this, this business relationship has allowed for me to feel comfortable with that. Because before, I would— I'm like, I'll do it myself. Don't worry about it. I'll just— because you, you don't trust that people are really like, I guess, have the same vision or on the same page as you can portray it, can You know, as you wish it to be portrayed, or your message and stuff. So yeah, me, I needed to learn how to release control, surrender in a partnership. That helped, I think. I believe. What else?
They need to know power tips for community. Da da da da da da. We talked about using content that you already got where possible.
Yeah, we talked about charging appropriately. We talked about keeping in communication daily, multiple times a day if possible within the community, or how important that is. And if that's not your strong suit, to utilize, like you said, people in the community or find someone to do it.
Right. And this isn't a mistake we made, but it's just a mistake that I see in other people's communities when I'm just being nosy and hanging out and stuff. Um, not having a value ladder. It's just a big party and it's people that are interacting, but it's no ascension. It's no like, okay, like community is great, but you do not start a community to not make money.
Right.
What's the, what's the, the value ladder? What's the high-ticket offering? What's the, what's the strategy to monetize this community?
Yeah.
So have that in the beginning because you don't want to be in a community, already have it going, and then trying to build a value ladder. You want to have a value ladder when the first person show up so you can start walking them up. the value letter.
So yeah, that's really important. I, I believe too. Yeah, that's, that's really important.
Um, stream— like, even if you don't got a community, if you a streamer, have a value letter. I see some really talented streamers. Like, um, there's a lady on TikTok that I see that does like tarot and different things like that. She could fill up a room, but, um, she doesn't have a value ladder.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I almost said her name, but I'm like, one day I just DM'd her like, hey, what's, what's your value ladder? Are you collecting leads? Are you like, you got 200 people showing up and I know they giving you gifts on TikTok, but you splitting half of that with— they don't keep those. Keep those. Like, you can use them to help get up the For You page. But if you— please don't drop $100 worth of gifts on me on TikTok. Go to my, go to my website. And purchase.
Give me all the money. Yeah, give me all my money.
Yeah, I gotta give, um, Stripe a little percentage to process it, but I don't want to split my money with TikTok. I'm trying to figure out right now how to turn off my subscription on TikTok. I had 3 people subscribe to that. I'm like, I'm just subscribing. I can't figure out how to turn on— what you subscribing to that for? I got some stuff you can see.
They let us.
I cannot find the off switch for that thing.
Yeah, that's crazy. Um, that's crazy.
Yep. Get you a CRM. Get you something like what we use, the Dream Engine, to keep leads and to stay in communication and have a strategy for getting people in your community. Like, we were very fortunate that we, we do okay on TikTok. We get a constant flow of people On TikTok, especially Nikki. Nikki be over there filling it, filling it up.
I'm trying to be like her.
But we are strategy— like, a lot of people use like Facebook ads to grow their communities, and we did something like that. Oh man, we probably have 5,000 people in the community. But as you're starting your community, have some type of funnel strategy for getting people into the community and a value ladder to like Don't start a community just because somebody on YouTube told you to start a community. Have a plan for your community. What role does this community play in my business? Like, yeah, take time to ask yourself that question. And like I was saying in the beginning, realize it's 80% figuring out what you want, then 20% action. Sometimes you gotta put the action ahead of the thinking, and you can't— if you can't think it, you can't do it. And sometimes it's easier to go like, well, let me just start building the website. No, sit down, slow down, relax, figure out what do I want to communicate? What's my objective with this? Who am I talking to? Yeah, go ahead, like, figure this stuff.
Oh, another super tip that I definitely think that, uh, if we could go back to June, I feel like I would have wanted to implement this, and we're doing it now. But videos leading people to our community as opposed to only just going TikTok, going live on TikTok, um, it really is helpful to have videos that will always be working for you. If I could go back, uh, I would try to double down on both TikTok and YouTube for us. I think that would, um, I think YouTube would have brought in a lot of great quality, uh, leads into the community and, um, possibly would have to work because the videos can continuously help us, you know, continuously be working on it, working for us. So that is a super, super tip. Yep. Okay, super, super tip.
We've had a few people that joined recently that came as a result of just stuff that I was— stuff I had made on TikTok. TikTok recorded live, I uploaded on YouTube. So I came and a few other people, they go, man, I saw, I saw one of the videos on YouTube and you mentioned the community. I found it and I, and I came. I'm like, okay, exactly. Definitely should have been doing that. Yeah, since, uh, since the beginning.
Exactly. Uh, so yeah, that's a super, super tip, guys. Definitely do that if you can. Um, I know that it can take a lot of you— a lot out of you, uh, doing content, but if you do things like this, utilize strategies like this where you're going live and it can be recorded, and then you just have it automatically uploaded That's great. I wish that TikTok— TikTok saves your lives, but, um, you have to download it and all of that stuff. So it is a great benefit to be able to utilize YouTube and just go live and it's there. Of course, unedited, but it's there.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so, so that was great. That was great, you guys. We love Dreams in Action. Dreams in Action, just listen to the name, Dreams in Action. So, um, Dreams in Action is a community that we established Juneteenth 2024, and now it has 290 members. These are entrepreneurs at all levels. Um, I would say about, um, In 2025, we are niching down and we will be focused heavily on coaches. The beautiful thing about the community is that you can come in at all levels and learn from the very beginning. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur and you just need to wrap your, your mind about around what needs to be done, the initial steps to establish yourself, Um, we do have weekly masterminds on Wednesdays for our members where you get to come in, ask questions, and we really get into the mindset of the entrepreneur. But you can utilize the community to take care of your action steps, so you can learn about funnel building and all of that stuff inside of the community. But we are calling on coaches for 2025, um, to join the group of coaches that we already have. And we, um, want to help you guys scale. We do have particular requirements for the coaches that we will be, um, taking on this upcoming 2025. But if you are a coach that's really ready to take your business to the next level You'll definitely want to tap in with us and go ahead and get signed up for Dreams in Action now. The link is in our description. Um, you can make sure that you're following Jay, make sure that you're following me on YouTube. You can follow us on TikTok as well. You can find me at The Hippie Nikki, H-I-P-P-Y-N-I-K-K-I. What about you, Jay?
I coach bosses. I coach bosses everywhere.
So, um, yeah, definitely tap in with us. Our website is www.dreamsinaction.com, and that's D-E— I'm sorry, D-R-E-A-M-S, the letter N, A-C-T-I-O-N.com. Okay, anything else?
