Recipe for Making Growth Feel Natural | People Magic Summit with Darrell Vesterfelt

Foreign. And welcome to our final session of day two of the Mighty Networks Summit People Magic. Oh, I'm so, so excited to be back here. I'm especially super excited to interview who I will be introducing here very, very soon. So just wanted to quickly say hello to all of you first. I see a lot of your names in the comments section as well. So welcome back. If you were able to join the previous sessions. Welcome back. It's so good to see you back for this last session of day two. However, if you weren't able to join the previous sessions, I believe I saw someone in the chat who wasn't able to watch the previous sessions we had today. That's okay, we got your back. Just a reminder that replays are going to be available for you in the January 30 day challenge that Mighty Networks is going to be putting on just for you. So Chloe, if you can do me a favor and drop that in the comment section down below just because I saw a couple of people who maybe have missed the last few sessions. Okay. But I'd love to hear, since you guys are in the comment section, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaways so far. Okay. We had three incredible sessions, three really huge takeaways that each of you probably pulled from each of those sessions. And I'd love for you to just drop it in the comment section because one, I think it's really good for everyone else attending this event right now to read what it was that you took away to gain that insight too, just so that we can cultivate that community as we all grow together. But I also just think it's essential for you just to write down what stood out for you. Writing something down rather than just keeping it in that amazing creative brain of yours can really just help you actually take action on the key takeaways that you are pulling from each of these sessions. So go ahead and let us know if you in the comment section here someone said be Marie Forleo. You know what, I love it. I love that authenticity. Yes, her session was amazing. I see. Simplify to amplify. I see it's all about the people 100%. I see. Going from a hero to a host. So good. These are amazing. So remember, I just want you to keep that in the forefront of your mind and in regards to whatever was just the biggest takeaway for you from each of the sessions today. Now with that being said, we got one more session for you today. I am so, so excited. We are going to bring on Darrell Westerfeld to specifically Talk to each of you about how you can grow your community and specifically what it looks like to grow your community from a place of simple and from a place of just ease where you're not complicating it by thinking about all of these high budgets, putting in all of this unnecessary effort, effort, effort. Just what does it look like to get community growth in the way that you envision it, but keeping it simple and keeping it easy. So, Darrel, I'd love to bring you onto the stage so that we can have that conversation. How's it going, my friend?

Good, how are you? How are you? Looking forward to this. Somebody just said in the sat, in the chat, relationships are the root of it all. And I think that is true for growth as well. So really excited to talk about kind of people first growth today 100.

Yeah, that's so, so true. Now as we dive into this topic, I'd, I'd love for everyone to first hear more about your story. Now I know you personally, I know that you've been in the entrepreneur and creative space for a long time. You've had the pleasure of working with incredible companies and building your own communities. I'd love for people to get an insight of your background and your story.

Yeah, that's really great. Well, first of all, I want to say I have no formal training in marketing or sales at all. I've never, never done any kind of training whatsoever. I actually have a degree in theology, which is like maybe the most unhelpful degree when it comes to building businesses. But while I was in college, I started learning about online business. This was in the early 2000s. And so for the last 20 years I've been building online businesses. I had a short stint at a company that you and I both worked at, which is Kit, formerly ConvertKit, as the head of growth there. And that's a fun story to talk about because unlike other venture backed companies, we didn't have two nickels to rub together at the time. And so we really had to figure out growth strategies without having a crazy budget, without having complex strategies and really figure it out and we really did it. Angel, as you kind of know the story there.

Oh yeah.

My time at ConvertKit we grew from about a hundred thousand a month to 700,000amonth in just over a year without having any kind of crazy budgets behind what we were doing. And really people first marketing. So we'll talk a little bit about that. And really cool. The founder of Kit is going to be on tomorrow, Nathan Barry, to talk a little Bit more too. So you guys will get a chance to hear him in day three. After I left, after I left Kit, I have built a few community based companies as well. And so I have one now maybe most notably called School of Traditional Skills. And it is a community very specifically focused on teaching people the skills that their great grandparents never taught them. Gardening and food preservation and traditional cooking and things like that. Really kind of in the homesteading world, which is kind of a funny spot for me to have fallen into, but it's a really, really cool community and so I want to talk a little bit about some of the strategies we've used there around events specifically. So not only have I worked at kind of high growth companies, I've also launched communities. I also have an agency that works with high level creators to develop their communities as well. So we've launched dozens of course and community companies with creators over the last little bit. So I've been doing this for 20 years. This is my bread and butter. Not only have I helped people do it, I've also done it myself as well and so really, really excited to talk about it. Our School of Traditional skills community has 22,000 members in it just in about two years. So that's grown quite a bit in the last little bit as well. But my favorite part and kind of transitioning into what we want to talk about today is again, with no formal marketing training and no formal background in marketing, I want to demystify some of the growth and sales and marketing conversation a bit because I am a strong believer that it's all about people and the people magic and People first is a conversation that's going to be happening. A lot has happened so far and it's gonna happen a lot more in the next couple of days. So I want to talk a little bit about that.

So I love it. So good. Well Daryl, thank you so much for sharing your background with us. And I see some people in the comments section that are like 22k in 2 years. Yes, it is possible and I want to emphasize the fact that that this is possible. Daryl had brought up a couple of examples referencing his experience back when working with Kit, previously ConvertKit and how they scaled like, scaled like crazy without any ridiculous budgets and even recently being able to scale the community to 22k, that is insane. So, so let's talk about that a little bit more. I'd love to dive into your transition in the first community you launched to the communities you currently have been running now and what it took for you to kind of Demystify that, like that overly salesy aspect of it all to make this work for you.

So there's a couple of things that we like before we even get into tactical things on marketing. There's a couple of things that I really want to hit on. And the first community that I ever launched was one called Author Launch. And I at the time I had an email list of about 15,000 people who were writers and they wanted to tell their story. And at the time there was a New York Times article that had come out. It said something like 85% of people wanted to write a book at some time in their lifetime. So boom, like the bells went off in my head and I'm like, there is people in transition. As Gina would say, 85% of people in the US want to write a book at some point. I have a list of writers. I want to create a community to help people write their book. And so we were building that. And so what I did is I created the best kind of concept that I possibly could have. And I spent three months developing this course and it was great. It was a 52 week course and you could take it one lesson per week. Really amazing, right? All education based on. And I released out into the World and nobody bought it after three months. I spent all the time building it. Nobody bought it.

52 weeks.

Like, oh man, this, like, I thought the positioning was really good. I thought the offer, like, I thought all of it, like we start hitting on some of these things. I thought it was really great. But here's the piece that was missing. It was the people part of it. And I realized that I had actually never written a book before and the offer wasn't really credible. It wasn't really exciting. And so here's what I did. And this was kind of my first growth strategy in our community is I hit pause. And after I wiped the tears from my proverbial eyes after working for three months and making no dollars, I said, great. I don't think that my, my belief, like, I don't think I'm very credible. So I want to find some friends. I want to build a community. So I asked eight of my friends who had written books before if they would participate in this community. And so I asked them, hey, I think this is a great idea. I had a good idea. The offer wasn't really credible because I had never written a book before. But now I was going to pull experts in who had written a book before. And mind you, like, I didn't have any money. I was Living like paycheck to paycheck broke. Just trying to figure this out early on in my career. And so I didn't have Facebook ads, budget. I didn't have budget to like pay somebody to come in and do something. And so I just said, these eight friends, like, would you help me with this? Do you think this is a good idea? Would you want to be a part of it? So I invited eight people to be a part of it with me. And we launched this community out. And we went from $0 the first time we launched it to now with this community. We did $97,000 in our launch. And again, it was like, I didn't have this like crazy huge audience. I didn't have this a huge budget to like find paid acquisition. But it was like I hit a wall. I thought the offer was really good. I thought the product was really good. Even though I hadn't written a book, I thought we could get people there. And I was like, pause for a second. What would make this work is community employing people together. So I had mentioned that we had 13,000 people on the list. The way that we had did that is I had actually asked all of these authors to participate in an event just like this. It was a summit, and so they all kind of contributed to promoting this summit together. It was like that group of people. So as relationships that I had built over time with people, I asked them to promote an event similar to this. We then grew our list to 13,000 people, and we were able to then have a more credible community offer versus just like this offer that was a little less credible before. And so the positioning of that was way different when it had a community of experts involved in it where people could now contribute and ask questions and be a part of that community. And it was a really, really powerful shift from $0 to something like that very early, early on.

This is so powerful. And a couple of people hit on it in the comments section that I'm watching right now. But I just want to emphasize the pattern that we have been seeing over the past two days of our people magic summit so far, which is you don't need a big audience. You don't need to think that you need to have this in place first and this. And it just has to be picture perfect. No, like, just like Darryl's story and so many other stories from the previous speakers that you guys had the pleasure of tuning into. They started with their network. They started with their friends. They just started with other people who believed in what that community was supposed to be. And from those people, they have audiences, they have their networks that can invite them as well. So good.

I think, I think that your personal network is so underutilized when you think about launching something out. And this is something that I taught a lot in the early days of. Of kit is we. We often don't think about the people in our immediate circle or in our network as a tool that we can use. And. And the reality is, is like, I think a lot of people are afraid of coming off as like, transactional in relationship, right? It's like, oh, I'm afraid to ask a friend to do something for me because I don't want to be seen as like this trader of things back and forth. And I think this is one of, like, the mindset things that need to get debunked. It's like growth mindset stuff that needs to get debunked a little bit is I often talk about this. It's like I'm afraid of being too salesy. I'm like, well, are you salesy? Are you a salesy person? Because if you're not a salesy person, like, how can you all of a sudden become something that you're not? And I think that there's like a good kind of mindset thing that here that's really important for people to understand is like, don't be transactional then. Like, how do you not be transactional when you're asking your community to help you out? Well, first of all, step one, I think people just want to help you out because they believe in you. So that's just step one. So just believing that people in your network want to help you out. Second is find the win win. Find a win win for people. So for me, the people who promoted that event and then eventually the. The community that we sold at author launch, I gave them half of everything I made from the first group of people that came in, knowing that I didn't have a big budget, right? I didn't have $20,000 or $5,000 or honestly even $20 to put down on Facebook ads. So I needed their help. So, hey, we're going to share in this together. Is this a win for you? First of all, do you believe in my product? Is my product good enough that you'd want to share it with your people? Second of all, why don't we just share in this? You take half, I'll take half. And so it was really compelling for people to be involved in this. So of that $97,000 that we made 50% of that went to the people who helped me out. Right. Like, that's a really cool thing where it's like, now we're getting to make money together. And so it's like this was the same thing. Early days at Convertkit is, you know, the way that we grew our audience there was again, we didn't have two nickels to rub together. I remember that Nathan couldn't even buy a plane ticket for me to come out and spend time with him employees because we were just so early on. So what happens when you're starting? You don't have a lot of extra budget. What we could do is we could teach and we could teach something so compelling, and then we could share in the money that we were making with the people who would introduce us to their audiences. So I think there's a way to do this that makes a lot of sense for everybody involved. So a is people just believe in you and they want to help you. Number two is make it a win win. If you're making it a win win, then it's not transactional. What would make this a win for you is I can teach really great content to your people. What would make this a win for you is like, here's another way for you to make money without you having to sell something. I'll sell something, and you can make money from it. And so I think that mindset shift is really, really key. Early on is like looking at your network and if you don't have a network of people who are willing to share, how do you make one? Where do you show? Like, how do you show up in places where you can find friends, where you can do this together, where you can create relationships, where you can do this together. There's a guy rolling around in the chat here. His name's Thomas Canal, and Thomas lives like 15 minutes away from me. We just met like a few months ago. Now we're collaborating on things because we just met randomly at another online event that we met and now we become real life friends. So this is like a really low key, good idea and kind of digging into this network. If somebody in this room is like, well, I don't have any friends. I don't know how to friend. I'm an introvert. I have a really, really cool, cool idea for you. There's a community that's attached to this event where you can go make friends and you can go find people who are actually on the up with you. And so there's never excuses of where you can find people There are Facebook groups, there are Reddit forums. There are like all kinds of places that you can go and find your people.

So good.

There's. There's dozens and dozens and dozens of ways that you can find relationships with people where you can benefit each other in building community.

Endless options. And I love that you're emphasizing that there really are dozens of ways, because I think that that's a mental roadblock for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially if you're new and wanting to start or to scale your very own community. And overall business is feeling like you just don't know enough people when, as Darrell is saying, there are so many options for you to start to know a lot more people and therefore grow your network because of it. So, Daryl, just to emphasize off of that interesting question came to mind for me that I think could be helpful for a lot of people watching right now. You had mentioned the value in finding and growing your personal network and being able to work with them to build a community. What about finding and growing your ideal community member and maybe how can those two align? Because I know over the past few days we've been talking so much about the audience that you serve and thinking through what transition is the audience that you want to serve going through. Where are they now and where do they want to be? And how can you show up in the middle as that bridge between the two? So, Darrell, what would you say are like the connecting dots between finding and growing your network and also finding and growing the right audience members for you?

Yeah, that's really good. Well, first of all, I think everybody in here has a network, whether they know it or not. So I think that immediately, if you have a Facebook page and you have a group of friends that are on that Facebook page, there is a community. If you have even 10, 20 followers on LinkedIn or connections on LinkedIn, there's a network. If you're got Twitter followers, you can. So this is early for me was this. So I know that Gina talks a lot about finding people in transition. So what is that transition? And I think the reality is that a lot of people who are starting communities and starting businesses, the transition that they're finding people in is one that they have been in before. And I often talk about this a lot. I think. I think the best businesses in the world are the businesses that are formed on solving problems that you used to have. Right? And so it's like immediately we can begin having empathy. And so the empathy is a term that I think is super powerful. It's maybe the Most powerful force in business, actually. Um, and so I want to just pause for a second, define empathy, because it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It's just putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and feeling what they feel, right? So when we talk about finding people in transition or we talk about solving a problem, like your business is solving a problem, like empathy, all of a sudden becomes, like, the most important tool you could ever have here. So I'm going to put myself in the shoes of somebody. Most of the time it's a problem or a transition that I was in before, so I can really, really understand how somebody felt. So then I start thinking, like, who else do I know who is in that transition? Who else do I know? Just, do I know even, like, five people who are in that transition? If I just even know five people who are in that transition? And by the way, like, I did this, I've done this before where, like, instead of just watching Monday Night Football or whatever I'm doing on an evening, I'll actually just open up my Facebook friends and I'll be thinking, like, who else might be in a transition where they would want to be around other people who are solving this problem or coming through this transition or wanting to be a part of a community of people similar to them? Like, and so I'll just scroll through, literally, like, I don't know, you have 800 friends on Facebook. Just scroll through 800 people and think who else might be going through a transition that would want to be a part of a group like this or community like this? So doing that, do that for your Twitter followers, do that for your LinkedIn followers, grow through your contacts on your phone list. Who do I know that might be in this transition, too? And if you can just find like, 10 people who might be, you have the start of a business right there, Period. End of story. We always call it the 10 person rule. It's like, can you find 10 people who are going through that transition or who have that problem and your community can help them solve that problem or be not alone in the midst of that transition and talk to those 10 people and just send them a note and say, hey, here's the idea. I want to start this community for people who are in transition similar to you and me. Are you interested in being a part of it? Boom.

That's so great.

That's the start of it, right? And if you can get. Seth Godin has said this before, and it's stuck in my head ever since. I heard it from him. He said, it's kind of like a song, right? Like, community is kind of like a song. If you can get one person tapping their foot to your song, then you know that you have something. So if you can get one person to say, I want to be a part of that community, you know you have something, then you know that 10 people will tap their foot to the song. And, you know, a hundred will, and then, you know, a thousand. Well, and so on. And I think that's the key here, is like, can you just find 10 people?

Oh, that's fantastic.

And of those 10 people, can you just find one that wants to be in that community? Because community is community as soon as there's two people in the room, right? And I think that's the key. And so what does that look like? And so then we put our empathy hat back on, right? And we say, okay, people who are in this transition, what does it look like? What do they need? What do they need right now? What would make this community something so compelling that they have to show up for it? What did I need when I was going through this transition or when I had this problem? What do I need? And so I think, like, some of this is. You're kind of getting the idea here is like, we're demystifying this a little bit. This is not really. There's not a whole list of tactics that you have to do here. It's like, really just understanding, like, what moves people. What moves people. What would move you? And so you can go back to, like, what would move you? What would move x person who is in that transition, what do they need? And it's like, I tell this story often, is the first job I ever had in sales. You may have heard this. I heard this company, angel, because you're from the Twin Cities here in Minnesota.

Oh, yeah.

Shot City Cellular. It was all of those cell phone kiosks and all of the malls in the Twin Cities. And it was the first time I ever got exposed to sales. And I was like, I kind of walked in there and I was like, holy moly, this is crazy. Like, people doing some crazy stuff to try to sell a cell phone. And I just decided that I was never going to, like, adjust my values to be become a salesperson. I was just never going to try to sell something somebody didn't need. And so what happened is, even on a part time, I was in school, so part time at school, I became one of the top five salespeople in the entire region because I was just helping people solve problems. And then what happened was people didn't like to be catcalled from the kiosk as they're walking by. So people would be like, man, I actually had a good experience with this guy at this kiosk in Maplewood. You should. You should go check him out. And so people just send their friends and family to me when I was there. And it was like, again, it was like, we didn't have to be crazy salespeople. We didn't have to be pushy. We didn't have to, like, give people something they didn't want or need. It was empathy. So I just thought in that moment, like, how would I want to be sold to? Great, I'm just going to do that instead. I'm going to forget all the rules. I'm going to forget all the tactics. I'm just going to be sold to the way that I would want to be sold, right? Which is, hey, don't cat. Call me across the. Across the alleyway. Like, actually just solve a problem for me when I come up. Don't sell me something that's obvious that I don't need. Give me the best tool. Listen to my problems. Like, these are just, like, really basic human ways of interacting.

Just. Just be a human. Just be a human. That's it.

And so. So I think this is really, really key here. So it's like, let's. Let's put that empathy hat back on a little bit and say, like, great, let's use our networks. Let's think about our transition, and let's just find a handful of people. And now all of a sudden, we have a business, right?

Oh, that's.

You have, again, just a handful of people. So that's. That's the starting foundation point for all of this.

I love this so much. So something that I always tell myself and that I like to tell others is you are your own case study. So a lot of times we kind of get held back by, like, oh, I'm just not an expert yet. Oh, I need to be certified over here. Oh, I need to have this in place first. When it's just like, you are your own case study. Just as Darrell said, what has worked for you? What solution have you implemented in your life that has genuinely worked? Because if it worked for you.

And by the way, let's. Let's look at a case study right now in the chat, John and Kelly, we're talking about Twin Cities right now. It's like, oh, wait, why do people in the Twin Cities Want to get together. Because guess what? Doing business online is lonely. And so people want to get together. Like, we're literally seeing it happen right now. Maple Grove, Wayzata, St. Paul. It's like, this is. This is like, it's actually happening. I didn't plan this. It's actually happening right here. There's a community in this chat on this online event of people that's going to start probably next week. I would guess we'll all get together. And now all of a sudden, it's here. And this is how community starts. And it's so much more organic and so much more natural than we think because we get in our heads, we see like, oh, my God. Facebook ads. Oh, my gosh, SEO, oh, my God. Newsletters. Oh, my God, xyz. And it's like, look right here. It's like, it's literally happening right here, right now in this chat is people just want community.

Yes. And I just want to emphasize on that because to your point, Darryl, seeing people who are also like, oh, I'm from the Twin Cities too. I'm from here. I'm from here. As someone who's seeing other community members be from the same place as me, like, Greg, you're from Maple Grove. I went to Maple Grove Junior High. I went to Osseo Senior High. Like, when I see that from a community member's point of view, I'm like, heck, yeah. I want to be a part of the community that y' all are in, because you guys get me. You guys know what it's like to be from Minnesota. And this is just an example. But you can take that specifically based off of what you do. Right. And I love this sense of, like, how, how you feel. Just because I'm connecting it with how I feel seeing other people in, in Minnesota too, of bringing that feeling into the community itself and therefore creating the people magic that we've been talking about this entire time. That's how people feel. They want to feel connected. They want to feel like they there. They just know each other there. There's familiarity there. And that's so powerful. I love that.

Like, this chat's like, I'm. I'm smiling. So I'm just reading this chat of, like, people want community. Like, this is exactly it. This is why, by the way, like, what Mighty is talking about here is so powerful. In my opinion, community based businesses are some of the most powerful in the world, and they have the power to transform people. And then the transformation of people is where you build, like, longevity in business. Right. It's like, this is. It's literally happening here. Hey, who's in dmv? Who's in Michigan? Who's in Colorado? Who's in Iowa? Like, this is amazing. Like, we're literally seeing in person here how easy it is to get started again. We. We didn't plan this, but this is just actually why this works is exactly. This right here is people are looking for people to say, me, too. I'm just like, that. I want that. I want to be a part of that.

Oh, good. So good. So. So for anyone who's watching and you're questioning still, can this really work? Yes. You're like, you're literally seeing the proof in the chat right now. I love that. I love that. Okay, Darrell, so we. We talked about your story. We talked about community building, and what does it look like to grow that organically, starting small and then scaling your way up from there? I'd love to transition into talking about how someone positions their community together. Right. Like, what is that positioning of someone's community look like before they even start? I'd love your thoughts there.

Yeah, this is really good. So I think there's. There's a. I see people make mistakes here all the time. So, again, I call this process damn near automatic. And we've all seen businesses where things just kind of grow organically and naturally. And if feels easy, it feels effortless. That's what we're really looking for here. And a big part of this is. Is thinking about how we position our community before we even get started. Right. And we've talked a little bit. We've hit on this a little bit, but we'll be more specific here. Gina's language for this is people finding people in transition. I've often said, like, business exists to solve a problem. Right. It's like, what problem are you trying to solve? And the more specific that you can be? And this is why I like Gina's framework so much for this is finding people in transition is a lot of times I see communities that are confusing. I see communities that are trying to be 20 things to 20 different people. And I think this is a huge hindrance right away. So what's the one type of person in that one transition? Right. Again, Gina's so brilliant, and she didn't pay me to say this, but, like, that's why the transition language is so cool. It's like, because I'm finding somebody in one transition, I'm not finding somebody in 17 different transitions, and there can be multiple different types of People who are going through a transition, right? So it's like, it kind of breaks down this idea of like, what is a niche? Great. Well, we don't have to think about that. It's like finding people in transition. And so if you try to be all things to all people, you're nothing for anyone, right? It's just kind of watered down garbage. And so this is why, again, it's like, let's put our empathy hat back on. And even better, if you're creating a community for a transition that you've come through or gone through, then it's a superpower. I think you have a superpower as a founder or business owner is, I've been here before. I know what this transition feels like. I know exactly what somebody needs. And then we've just got to put our, our, our feet in the shoes of the potential community members and say, what is so compelling that it feels stupid for somebody to say no? Like, so let's, let's use a very simple example of this, okay? Our Minneapolis, our Minneapolis St. Paul crew here, that's kind of forming here. If I were to go to them tomorrow and say, all right, everybody, we're going to have a community, but it costs $900 to be a part of that community, probably nobody's going to show up, right? Like, all of a sudden, like, I'm positioning this in a way that doesn't even make any sense, right? It's not compelling. Like if I put my shoes in, if I put my feet in the shoes of somebody else, it's like, why would I want to pay $900 for that?

Like, right.

That doesn't make sense. So pricing and positioning is very simplified down into making it so easy for somebody to say yes to that. Because it's exactly what they need, right? It's exactly what they need in that transition. So I think that's a low key thing that people forget a lot about is you can't out tactic bad pricing and positioning. You can't, like, there's no way that you could ever come up with the best marketing tactics in the world. And if you have bad positioning for this, it doesn't even matter. So this is a really, really important part of that. And the good news for everybody in the room here is that you have the ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and ask the question, like, what would I want? What would be helpful here? What would be compelling here? And I think this is very, very, very important. And something that people overlook so often is they get into thinking about business like a business owner. And that is maybe one of the most toxic things in the whole world is like, stop it. Right? The best businesses in the world are so compelling because they actually help you solve a problem. They help you walk through a transition. So just be a good person, Just be an empathetic person and think about what it is that that person in transition is going to need and what makes it so easy for them to say yes. And that's.

And I, I love that you're also bringing in pricing when it comes to positioning your community, because I think that as entrepreneurs, as creators, when it comes to pricing, we think from that business owner hat that you were talking about. Right. Based off of how much income we want to bring in. Right. And you have every capability. Every person in this room has the capability. A six, seven figure plus community. I 100% believe that. But to Darrell's point, it's necessary a lot of times to take off that business owner hat, to put on the hat of what your community members are experiencing. Literally putting them, putting you in their shoes and thinking, would I really pay this price point rather than, no, I want this price point because I want to bring in specific income every month. Flipping it and saying, okay, but would I really pay this price point if it were someone else selling this to me? I just think that's so powerful.

Exactly. Right? And I think there's, like, you can't overcome bad positioning. You just can't. It's just like, it's an impossible thing to do. Right. So I think it's a super key. But it's okay to make 100 other mistakes along the way. Like, Gina made a comment here a little bit earlier about, like, you know, like, maybe the community, like, if you start with value, maybe a community would love to pay 900 bucks. Maybe they would. But I think that's something that is. Is easy for you to make adjustments for. Like, underpricing is better than overpricing. But I see the mistake all the time where people underprice. Again, we're getting into mindset stuff a little bit, and I want to. I want to be actually really actionable. But I see this all the time. People underprice their communities all the time. You know what's really easy is to say, guess what? As this community has grown, we have seen the value of this. It's easy to adjust that pricing up. But one thing that you can never overcome is like, being boring, being not compelling, being a part of something that nobody actually wants. So how you do That I think is, is kind of putting on that empathy hat again and saying, all right, what exactly is it that I want?

So, so good. So good. Okay, so, so I'd love to continue that conversation on positioning the community because I think that there's a lot there and one of the things that we can talk through is as people are positioning their community, there's a lot of options, right? There's a lot of features, there's a lot of things for them to think through in regards to what the community offers to the members, like posting and chats and events and all this stuff. Based on your experience being in this experience for over this industry for over 20 plus years, what have you seen work well and where should people start based off of what's working well? And as you answer that, I'm just going to close my blind here because this sunlight here is blinding me. So Darrel, go for it.

Yeah, that's a, it's a question that has like a, a lot of potential answers to it that I want to, I want to kind of avoid a tiny bit because I don't actually think that's the important, the important thing here. So I'm actually going to pivot a little bit. So we've talked a little about the positioning of the community, putting on the empathy hat, thinking about what people, the things that people are going to need, then leveraging our existing networks again. If you have a cell phone with any kind of contact in it, if you have a Facebook profile, if you have Twitter, like you have a network of people that you can start getting into. We're thinking about finding that five to 10 people really early on. Once you have people in that five to 10 community, I want to talk about the next steps of growing the community beyond that, because five to 10 people make it really hard to have a sustainable business. So what I, what I think is super important here now is if that community, and again there's lots of different ways that you can put like the community can work and this is going to be like things that you are going to learn in this, this, this 30 day challenge that's happening afterwards. So if you haven't signed up for that yet, sign up for it because you're going to learn from the people at Mighty exactly what goes into all that community. And, and like, like spoiler alert. You don't have to develop a bunch of content to make this happen and to make this work, which is, which is good news for everybody. It's like, what do we do now? How do we get the next 10 to 20 people, right? And, and here's what I've learned about community angel is if these 10 people, if our first five to 10 people are in the community and they're actually experiencing change in the middle of their transformation, it will be impossible for them to not tell other people about it, right? Be impossible for them not. Not to. It'd be impossible not to. And the really cool thing is there are amazing tools like Mighty, by the way, again, I'm a huge fan of this tool. There are amazing tools that will help you make it easy for people. So we start talking about network effect a little bit, right? If you really think about this, think about a product that you love, angel, and think about like, this actually happened to me today. My friend Brandon, who might actually be on this call today, he like, called me at like 9:45 this morning. He's like, dude, I've got to talk to somebody about this thing. It's so amazing. I've got to talk about it. It's impossible not to. So if you're building a good community, like we're getting back to this kind of positioning and like making the community really good, it's like we're just making it easy. So this is network effect stuff. So there's a few kind of tactical things we can talk about here. Number one is make it easy for the people inside of your community to tell their people about the community as well. Here's one thing I've learned about community over the last 20 years is I want people I know to also be there because it's more fun, right? I want, I want it to be more fun. So network effects stuff, hey, if you refer somebody in, I'll give you X thing for doing that. I'll give you a month for free of the community or I'll give you X thing. It's similar to kind of that affiliate model that I talked about earlier. It's like, what is a way that you can reward people for sharing about the community? And so I think that's a really, really great way of doing it. But it is natural. It is a natural thing if you create the kind of compelling community that I know that anybody who puts that empathy hat on can do. It's like it's going to be impossible for people not to talk about it. So let's not make it hard for people. Let's make it easy. Let's use a tool like Mighty where we can do this kind of thing and then let's make it easy. Let's Reward people, let's incentivize them for doing so and getting them to be a part of the community. And this is like how the network effect of this stuff really grows out over time. So, so making it easy for them to share, giving them assets to share on social or to send emails, making it easy for people to join the community and be a part of it. But it's a natural part of community, is that people want to invite other people to be a part of it. Nobody has ever been a part of an amazing community and been like, ah, I just want to do this by myself. I don't want the people I care about or the people I know who are also part of this community. And guess what the best part of this is? This is a free way of marketing, is making it easy for the people in the existing community to do the same thing. The other thing here, just super, super practical. Just tell people that they can and should do this. Empower them to do it. A lot of times people don't build the referral engine because they just don't remind people that they can do this. Hey, do you know anybody else who would be impacted positively like this to share about it and make it easy for people? And I think this is super, super key. So give them the things that they can share, remind them to share and then incentivize them to share. And again, this cost you no money to do this. This is like not a huge, a huge out of pocket expense to just build the kind of community that other people want to invite their friends into.

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Okay, so we talked.

Tina's over here blowing up the chat. By the way, I love this. I wish she could just come in with us right now.

But fantastic.

We have free trials. Like you can make it free for somebody to come check out the community, right? Like we're making it easy. We're moving the friction for somebody trying, trying out the community. But I think that the, the theory here is really important to remember is if you have a community where people are actually experiencing change and transition, it will be impossible for them not to talk about it. I talk about shoes that I love. Of course I'm going to talk about community that's helping me out. I talk about like an iPhone case that I like. I talk about this water bottle that I love. Like things that I love, I talk about. So of course you're going to do it in community. It's a natural part of the process.

So good. I love the concept of growing your Community naturally and organically and authentically by making it easy for your current members to share, to refer, to, talk about it. I love that concept. Now I want to, I want to talk about how we can also make it easy as the creators of our own communities. Because I think a lot of times when we think about, okay, we're simplifying it for our members so that they can share, they can refer, it's easier marketing on our part, which is fantastic. And then we see our community growing. There's more and more people coming in. What advice would you give to the host themselves? Like, they're, they started this community, it's growing, it's scaling. Without them feeling so overwhelmed, how can they still pursue that growth without being so hands on in a way that's just effortless and fun as their community and members continue to come in?

Yeah. So let's talk about this as our next phase is like looking for growth channels, like, beyond, like the network effect of marketing. Here let's look at growth channels, which is really key. The biggest mistake that I see early stage companies make is they try to do too many, many things too early. Right. So, you know, when I, when I came into kit early phases, we had a blog going, we had a podcast going, we had webinars going, we had this thing, we had that thing. And I was like, pause. Like, here's the benefit of not being very smart is like, I can only do like one or two things at a time. And so, like, I've got to say, like, we've got to find one or two things that really, really work for us. And so there's a lot, like, there's not a right or wrong answer about finding a growth channel, but there is a right or wrong way of going about it. And the right or wrong way of going about it is trying to do too many things. So once we've kind of like mastered this network effect, looking for a growth channel or two that are really going to work for you. And again, there's not a right answer. And most of the truth of the world is there's not a right answer. One size fits all answer for everybody. But if you're good on video and you're like, like talking, then find a platform that works for you to leverage that channel. If you like writing, find a channel where you can leverage that skillset. If you like networking, find channels where that makes a lot of sense for you to do. If you have a budget and you start making money in the community, look at paid acquisition channels. But that's kind of getting into more. More of the advanced, advanced phase of it a little bit. And I think that there's just not a right or wrong answer here. I could talk about all kinds of different channels that I have tested out and tried, but I think every business that I'm involved in, and right now I have seven businesses that I'm involved in, every one of those businesses have different growth channels that work for it, because the people involved in it are individual and unique people. They have different skill sets and strength. And I think that this is so key here. Is. Is. Is key, right? Is don't copy somebody else just to copy somebody else. I sat. I sat in a. In a growth channel, the. Or in a. In a Mastermind last week in Atlanta, and I was listening to this guy talk about LinkedIn. I'm like, man, that's amazing. Good for you. Like, I don't think I can do that right now. It's not a channel that I can. I can pursue, but I can pursue other channels. And so find the ones that make sense for you. Pick one or two and that's it. And just master those ones. Okay. And a lot of people give up. A lot of people give up way too quickly on this as well. Takes time to build momentum on those channels.

So that is so powerful. So good. I want to emphasize Dustin in the chat here says, do the thing you will actually do consistently. Dustin. Yes. I love that comment so much because it emphasizes exactly what Daryl is saying. You don't have to force yourself to be in these marketing channels that you honestly maybe don't really like or, you know, you're not going to be consistent in. When you find areas, especially in the online space that you are more passionate about that you like showing up in, just double down your efforts there. Like Darrell said, he himself went to a mastermind, heard someone talk about LinkedIn, and he was like, yep, that's great for you, but not for me. But I'll take some of those strategies and pivot it into my own. You guys can do that exact same thing. Oh, I want to.

I want to. I do want to say one thing here, because here's. Here's a strategy that I think is really, really important that goes back into our kind of what we've been talking about so far, which is testimonials. Right. Like, I cannot stress this enough. I feel like I'm going to sound like a broken record by the time we're done here is you cannot ever win if you have a bad product or a Bad community. So, like, this is key. But when people start having transformations, like, just tell the story of the people who are having the transformations inside of your community. So I don't care what platform it is, right? Whether it's a video platform or a writing platform, if it's Twitter or X or LinkedIn or Facebook, I don't care what platform. I really don't care. Because you can win on any platform, but what you can't overcome is like telling the stories of people who are actually being transformed, right? This is another way to like not step into like the cow pie of being a salesy person is just let other people tell their story about how your community has helped them change or transform or grow. That is the key, right? Because it's really cool for me to come on here and say, just trust me, just trust me, this is going to work for you. It's a whole different thing to say, hey, actually, just listen to Angel. Angel was a part of this community. So it's like, I say this like, it's really cool if you can sell something for yourself. It's even cooler if somebody else will sell it for you. And telling the stories of people who've had transformation inside of your communities is the best way to do any kind of marketing or growth period, right? So I don't care what channel you pick, but make sure that you're telling the stories of the people who have been transformed through your community. And that, by the way, is a hack where you don't have to come up with some sort of content strategy here. It's like, just tell the stories, just talk about it, talk about it over and over and over again. It is massively important and it's the kind of content that people want to look at and read anyways. So then you're not also becoming the beating yourself on the chest, being like, look at me, look at my community. It's like, no, actually just listen to this story over here. And I think this is really key.

Yeah, that's amazing. It's a huge credibility booster for you in order to demonstrate other people's stories and how they were impacted by your community. That's so good. And I think that that can, can connect directly to what we were talking about at the very beginning, which was you don't need like all of trying to, you know, put in all the effort to find your people, find your people. When in actuality you really just need to start with your network, your personal network, as Darrell was saying. And Darrell, I would assume, like getting testimonials from them, too, since they were technically the founding members and using that as your base. Right? So for those of you that are watching and you're like, well, I don't got no testimonials and I gotta wait till I have this many members who are trying. No, no, no, no, no. Start with the personal network. Get testimonials from them. Easy. That's so good.

Exactly right. Exactly right.

All right, so I. I'd love to transition. We have about 13 minutes left. We have quite a few questions, and I'd love to transition into answering some of those because the chat is on fire right now, and I'm loving it. How did. Let's see. We have quite a few good ones here. Oh, I like this one from Gem. What's a good example of a compelling offer? So thinking about a compelling community, is there an example in your experience, in your shoes, where you're like, oh, that is compelling. Maybe that's something that I could even do for myself or my own communities?

There's a lot here. Okay, so this is like, I don't want to get too specific because I want you to understand the theory behind this more than I want to get specific because I've seen compelling offers that are $100,000. I've seen compelling offers that are $2. Like, there isn't a playbook for this. Right? And I think this is key, right? This is how a kid from a trailer house with no formal training can, like, think this stuff through is like, let's understand the concept behind this. So I don't want to get specific about what a compelling offer is because I want people to understand the theory of this. Right? So this is like a visualization thing that I do is I think about that person in transition, and I just think about what is it that they need? I think about what is it they need? And I want. I want it to be. This is a framework that I didn't. I didn't come up with, but it's something that I often talk about it. What would make somebody feel stupid saying no to the offer that you create? Again, this is not mine. Somebody else has said this, but, like, what is the offer that makes people feel safe? People feel stupid saying no to it, and that's the place that you want to get to. So it's like in our mind's eye, let's think about our person in transition. What is it they need? What is it they want? And what is it going to make it. Make it so compelling for them to say yes to that community, they feel stupid saying no to it. And that's your framework, right? That's your framework for doing it. So what does that look like? I think the other kind of like, if we're doing a Venn diagram here is like, what are you good at doing? How are you good at helping people through the transition? Is it teaching? Is it live events or like, zoom calls like this? Is it PDFs or frameworks? Is it like, there's a lot of different ways that you can do this, right? And so it's like, find the thing that you're good at doing and the way that you're good at helping people out and do a Venn diagram. And the sweet spot of that Venn diagram in between those two things is like, what makes it so compelling that people can feel stupid saying no to it? And then what is it that I'm best at doing? Like, how can I consistently show up for this community of people? And I think that's the framework. That's the mental framework that you want to have. And so that could look like a bunch of different things, right? And then be ruthless with it. Be ruthless with it, because this is going to be the thing that has the greatest effect on your growth, is making sure that this is done well. Again, you cannot out market. You cannot out market a bad product and bad positioning, but you can be a mediocre marketer and have really significant growth if you position your community really, really well. I think this is key.

Oh, that's so good. I know Darrell is giving y' all a lot to think about right now, like in such a good way to better impact what you guys are soon going to be launching or scaling within your own communities, too, especially as we head into the new year. So I just love it. Another really great question here from Yezabel. Who's asking if we are starting it in the beginning. The community. If we're starting the community in the beginning, should we make it free until value is proved?

No, no, do not. Do not do that. Do not do that. This has kind of been mentioned in the chat several times. If you don't have people commit inside of the community in some way, then people aren't going to show up. So I don't like free community. I won't say never because there are some instances where it makes sense. But this is a huge mistake that I think people make all the time. And this is like your check engine light that your mindset is off on this and you need to call a friend and have them help you here. Call me, call me, send me a message on LinkedIn and I will help you out of this. Do not do that. You have value to offer from the very beginning and people to fully receive that value, need to commit in some way as well, otherwise they're not going to be incentivized to show up. So do not do that. Start paid. It needs to be paid. It needs to be free. And, and, and by the way, like, this is part of that compelling positioning of the offer is like, if it's free, like, I don't even believe you. I don't even believe you a little bit. It's like, oh, this is good. You know how the people say it's too good to be true? It's like, if it's free, it's like it's too good to be true. I don't, I don't believe you. It's not even believable. Like the value has to be there. And like all, all like people paying is, is an exchange of value. Right? So if you have value, what is the appropriate exchange of money for the value that you're going to offer? Right. And there's a lot of different things that you could think through on that front. But no, do not do free. For the love of all things good, do not do free.

I love it. That, that is one of the biggest takeaways. Do not do free. That's so good. Now, now as people are building on their paid community, you had also mentioned leveraging that personal network, leveraging the people that are already in there from the start to refer people. So you have this referral process going. Are there any specific referral tools that you would recommend that can help people with this process?

Yes, whatever way that you can, one to one, talk to somebody. So a lot of times this people will, I've given this advice so many times for people and then I'll see people like post on Facebook, like a, a public Facebook post and they'll be like, hey, I'm starting this thing. Who wants to be involved? And that is like, that would be like standing out on the street corner with a megaphone saying like, hey, come into my restaurant. You know, it doesn't make any sense, so I don't care what tool it is, but like do it in a way that is a one to one interaction. Like, hey, Angel. I'm sending this message to angel specifically. I'm asking angel specifically. It's an invite. It would be the difference of like sending out an Evite versus getting a phone call from a friend about coming to a party, right? It's like, the more personal, the better. And so I don't care if it's a Twitter dm. Sorry, I still say Twitter. I can't switch to X.

Same.

If it's a Twitter dm, it's a Facebook message. If it's a text message, if it's an email, I don't care. The tool, the tool actually doesn't matter as long as it is, like an ordinary way of talking to people and it's one to one. That's the key for that first 10 group of people, is just talk to people one to one. Again, like, this is like, I'm way too. I'm not smart enough to think of, like, complex things here, but it's like, just don't stand on the corner with a megaphone. Like, just go talk to somebody. Hey, I thought of you specifically. I know that you're going through this transition. I would love for you to be a part of this with me. Here's why it's compelling for you. Talk to them one to one. Be a real person. Be like a human. Talk to them one to one.

So that's so good. So good. And I see another question in here that's kind of referencing what we were talking about previously in regards to not doing free, starting with the paid. And I know Gina in the chat was talking about, you know, free trials and doing that. What are your thoughts on that free trial strategy leading into the paid version based off of your experience?

It depends. I think it's. I think it's fine, you know, if it's, if it's going to be a, A strategy that you use. You want to have people experience value where they, again, they feel stupid for. For saying no to go ongoing. So I think that's an okay strategy, too. But again, I think, I think paid is just so much better. Like the quality of people that you're gonna get. So much better.

So, so good. So good. And then last question from the audience. We got so many good ones, you guys, and my eyes are just going, reading, trying to pull as many as I can. So thank you so much for being intentional and dropping your questions, you guys. This is great. All right, last question from key. Who's asking, starting multiple communities, if you have different interests, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, don't do that. Just pick one. Just pick one. Start with one. Start with one that you're. Maybe start with the one that you're most passionate about so that you have the sustained passion or energy behind it to keep going. But don't do that. Like don't spread yourself too thin. Like, like maybe eventually you can do that. But like I know people who have built businesses with tens of millions of dollars in their community. You don't need multiple things to get there. You need one really, really good thing. So just do that is really key.

Keep it simple.

I want to say one more thing before we're done here. John Coe said this in the chat. He said, interesting thought, personal one to one for initial members. So scaling up is different than the initial strategy. And yes, you can't scale something that doesn't exist. You can't scale something that doesn't exist. So you need to get that initial group from your current network. So let's, let's just recap really quick. It's a good way to recap. It's like everybody has a personal network. Open your phone, look at your contacts, open your Facebook, your friends, open LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever you have to do. Like look at the people you're connected to. Find 10 people who are going through a transition that your community will solve and reach out to those 10 people and keep doing that 10 person rule until you have 25 people in your community and then the network effect will start taking place and then you can start looking at other strategies but you can't scale something that doesn't exist. So at the initial phase, once you kind of get to that early one to one reach out, that's where you do the direct outreach and then you can start thinking about other additional scale strategies after that.

Oh, it's so good. So many golden nuggets that you're sharing here, Daryl. It's, it's amazing. Now I know we're about to transition to end this session here soon, but I have one final one for you because I think this can help give people some, some better insight. You yourself with the experience that you have and what you know now today about communities, about growth, about simplifying the process as a whole. What do you plan in 2025? What does that look like for you in 2025 based off of what you're seeing and what you know works really well.

Oh, that's a good question. I've got lots of things thinking about, but I am, I am actually launching a community about growth in 2025. Yeah, that's my plan is my, my mighty community based on people focused growth strategies is launching in 2025. So that's what I'm, I'm working on personally.

Oh, that's so good. I love it. I love it. Well, as we near up our time, Daryl, I just want to say a huge thank you. Thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you so much for sharing all of those insights. I especially loved that we ended today with this session because I know a lot of you might have that roadblock of feeling like I just don't have the audience. Oh, I just got to wait till I have the audience first. And you've seen that pattern over the past couple of days so far, of these incredible speakers coming to you, giving you their perspective on the very real reality that you do not need a big audience. You can start small. It has worked for Daryl. It has worked for Amanda. It has worked for Marie Forleo. It has worked for so many people. And I just felt like this session really was the cherry on top and emphasizing how much of a reality that is. So, Darryl, thank you so much. This, this has been golden for us. Thank you.

Before we're done, really quick, if you haven't joined the community yet, I'm telling you, this is where you can find your people. So join this community. Gina is going to walk you through the next 30 days. Like how you build your community. Please go sign up for that. If Chloe or somebody could drop that link, please do that. You do not want to miss this. If you have any desire at all to build a community business in 2025, these next 30 days are going to be key. And I, I, I have a sneaking suspicion that Gina is going to make it really easy for you and kind of taking you through step by step. So if you have not done that, please don't walk, run. Sign up for that right now. You don't want to miss out on that.

I second that. Darrell, thank you. You have been absolutely wonderful.