Why Retirement Loop Ditched Courses for Community

Were really the kind of people who build the plane while we're in the air. Right. We started and we took the comments and adjusted ourselves and came back with new ideas and new things and new discussions and it worked. So I mean, why wait? There's no reason to wait. Maybe we're going to start small, but it doesn't matter. What matters is starting.

I'm excited to bring in somebody next, Veronique, who's only been doing it for a few months. They launched at the end of 2024. And so I'm excited to welcome Veronique to the stage to share a little bit about your community. How are you doing today?

I'm great, I'm great. Thanks for having me, Daryl. Such a pleasure.

Absolutely. So you have a community called Retirement Loop. Why don't you tell me a little bit about how you got started last year?

Well, triple. Prior to that we already had a membership website which is called Dividend Stocks Rock. And we were helping people invest with conviction so they can enjoy their retirement. But as we go we were getting questions about planning retirement which we could not answer because we're Canadian, but we have clients in the United States and also in Canada and tax rulers like so much different that we couldn't like give advice for that. And so we thought we need to make a course about retirement for Canadians only. But then I mean, course not bad for sure. But once you're like, we all read books, we all subscribe to all of sorts of things and then I mean check, move on and we forget about it. And so we thought we need to not only give them a course but a place to learn together. But we didn't have like the tool. So my boss, which is also my brother in law, so we've been working together for a while now for almost like 15 years. He went to Craft and Commerce last year and he met Gina Yankini there during her workshop. And this is how we learned about Mighty Networks. And this is like this was our aha moment. Like oh my God, this is what we need. This is really like the platform that we need to make that happen. Because then you can mix content but also people together, which is I believe what makes them stay. So the idea of a course evolved greatly at the late of 2024 when we learned about Mighty and it really became a community from there.

Yeah, I think that's, that's been another theme that we've talked about is like courses, people are, there's lots of courses in the world. And also the way that we're learning is fundamentally changing with AI, but the way that people actually transform the best is inside of community with other people. So I love that you all had that realization right out of the gate. So. So you launched last fall, and the thing that's kind of cool is you just opened up again. You opened enrollment again last month and you added a couple more members last month. So tell me a little bit about relaunching in June and kind of what happened when you opened up.

So when we opened the first time, we really opened the doors before. We opened the doors first to our members at Dividend Stocks Track. So, like, we knew it was a perfect match, but then when we had to reopen the doors, it was a little bit more challenging because we didn't know how many people would come this time. Right. So I think that it was very important to warm the room up a bit. So we really had like a setup of emails, a sequence of emails to talk about Retirement Loop and, and how it's going to help them. And this is why it worked at that time, because when we launched after the DSR members, we also did like it was an founding members. Then we had like early birds. The first early bird was not bad. But I mean, we didn't reach our goal because we didn't warm the room enough. So we, we said, we said, okay, let's, let's go back to work. Let's rethink our things a bit. And so we, we. This is exactly what we did. We went back to work and we wrote like this sequence of emails and we sent them. We worked on that. Like, I think it was a month before the launch date. So the. Before that we reopened the door. So they were hearing about and reading about Retirement Loop for a whole month before we reopened the doors. And this is how we got 100 more members. So we're, we're close to 600 now in just a few months. So we're really, really happy about that.

Amazing. So do you, do you have any regrets about going the community route versus just the course route or I'm guessing you do it again.

Oh, for sure, for sure. It's fun to see them like, evolving and also us. Like, to be honest, I'm still young, I'm like 41. And people at retirement, most of them are like 55. And plus they got things figured out a lot more than me, actually, because I'm not like this close to retirement, but I want to learn. And so the tools that we make available for them, we use them ourselves too. And so we, we really learn together, and we really do that, you know, from scratch, basically. So. So no, I, I would, I wouldn't do, like, just a course.

Yeah, this is, this is one of my favorite points that I want to double. I want to double click into here because you, you really hit the nail on the head. Is a lot of people that Gina and I have talked to before. Like, I don't want my people talking together because I don't. I don't think they're as smart as I am. And it's just like, we hate that mindset. It's like. But what you just said is, like, people have so much figured out. They have their own stories and experiences and things to share that when you let them talk together and you let them work together, they get to share their own experiences, their own ideas, their own thoughts, their own stories. And that's where the magic really happens.

We have a member who's retired since 1995. 5. And she's there and she's helping others and she shares stories, and she still learns something too. So that's amazing that she's one of my favorite because I, I can see. I can see her coming back, and I'm like. But Denise, like, what. What are you learning? And she, she does learn something because we have a projection tool, we have monthly newsletter. So, you know, she keeps track of. Of what's going on. She keeps track of her own retirement, and she's helping others at the same time. So it's perfect. It's a perfect mix.

Yeah, I think so, too. And it takes the pressure off of you where other people are teaching. It's like, if you were to have just done a course, you would have maybe made money one time and then they would have taken the course and that would have been it. But now, because it's not based around just the course, but around the people, now you've gotten people in there and they're going to stay for a longer period of time because they continue to get value. And even after being retired for so long, like that one member, you're just saying it's like there's still continued value, not just by you putting out more and more content all the time, but from them connecting together. And I think that's such a beautiful, beautiful thought. So.

And I mean, I was, I was looking at the comments a bit before I came on stage, and I saw, like, Joannie, she said she's still learning and it's great to see herself as a beginner. Like, she, when she was Looking back at her videos. And it's the same thing for retirement because things change. Like for, for photography, it's technology. For retirement, it's the market, it's economics, it's politics. Politics changing and evolving. And it does have an impact. Most of the time it's a short term impact, but it does have an impact on our retirement. So, you know, that's the point of having a community like this, because you can always come back and just reassuring yourself, pretty much. Because, you know, once you have a plan, you're set, but emotions gets in. Right?

Yeah. Well, for, for the folks who are maybe thinking about some. Somebody just said, Eric said, I have 1200 students in a course. For those who maybe are thinking about getting started, what kind of thought would you give them about why they should consider community or why they should get started now versus waiting until later?

Once we started, I'll be like, really honest with you. We didn't have much in the community. We're really the kind of people who build the plane while we're like in the air. Right. So we had like icons, we had colors, we had a logo. We knew a bit what we were doing, what we were going to do. We knew our, our monthly teams, but I mean, we didn't test that out. And we just, we, we went there and we presented ourselves and we started and we took the comments and we adjusted ourselves and we, we, we came back with new ideas and new and new things and new discussions and all that stuff and it worked. So I mean, why wait there, there's, there's no reason to wait. You should just start. Maybe you're going to start small. Maybe among your, like you said, 1200 people. Maybe only like 100 is going to come in the first year. And it doesn't matter. What matters is it really is getting starting started.

That's great. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. It's fun to see you're not even a year into having a community yet. You're already at 600 members. We'll be excited to keep in touch with you and see how your community continues to grow, to see how you're learning and growing and to seeing how your business continues to benefit from having a community and not just a course.

Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. All right.