Kyle Ford argues the fastest path to a $1M digital business is building a community around people in transition: new parents, recent grads, career changers, people getting sober. They're motivated, engaged, and attract experienced mentors and sponsors who fund growth.
All right. I've made the case that it is easy to create a $1 million digital business that you can do so by bringing people together and helping them get results and transformation that they're never going to get on their own. And the first, and I would argue probably the most important piece of the whole formula, it is your ideal member. Your ideal member is the person who needs and wants your community the most right now, where right now is like all caps. And it turns out that there is a relatively simple formula for identifying your ideal member. Now, a lot of people out there talk about it as like, pick your niche, then figure out who your ideal customer is. Seeing of that's true. But here's what I've found to be the easiest thing in the world. Number one is figure out who you like and who brings you energy and who you would be excited to bring together and help in ways that they're not even thinking about, that is your ideal member. Now, there's a cheat code in here in terms of how do you get your first members, how do you get your first customers? And it's actually something I don't see talked about a lot, which is the people who join paid communities, the people who buy online courses, the people who participate in challenges, and the people that are going to show up at your event, the most motivated of them have one thing in common and it's this. They are in transition. So human beings in transition are absolutely the people to focus on when you are launching. Whether it's a course or a membership or a challenge or event. The people who are in transition are the most motivated to meet people like them. Whether that's new new dads, whether that's people who just moved to a new city and just graduated from college and are looking to meet their 20 something era friends, or whether it's the people that are meeting each other because they're all starting in the same industry together, or they're exploring sobriety together. People join communities, they take courses, they participate in challenges and they show up at events when they are in transition. When you focus in on an ideal member who is a human in transition and they are the core of your community and they bring in other people as well. So you can always expand out from the people that are in transition. I'll give you an example. One of the things I see a lot is people who show up as hosts of mighty networks who want to bring together people in the C suite, so executives at companies and when you focus on people who are really experienced and who already have their network. You hear a lot of times, well, they don't have time for a new community, they're not interested in a membership. And what tends to happen is the person who's the host, that might be you. Oh gosh, nobody wants to join a community. That is simply not true. If you go to the people who are just starting off in their marketing career, they are highly motivated to join your community, then what happens is that you have an incredibly engaged community. And you know those same C suite people, those same executives who couldn't be bothered with a community of their own, well, guess what? They're actually probably going to show up to speak at events and be a part of mentoring those up and comers that they're probably also going to be excited about what you're doing and how you're doing it and potentially even sponsor it because they love what is happening in this community. And the fact that that next generation is going to be able to navigate their careers together, well, that's invaluable. And it's all because you focused in on the people who are the most motivated to, to meet each other, the most motivated to pay and the most valuable to each other, they're the most likely to help each other. And when you look at what's possible, then the sky's the limit. Because when a group of people come together and they have a shared identity and really clear motivation, magic happens.
