The Million Dollar Community Blueprint

Welcome to Uploading the podcast where we take you behind the wheel with the world's best creators, marketers and professionals who have cracked the code on how to profit through content. You'll learn the ins and outs of content strategy, creation, production, distribution, growth platforms, tools and more. If you haven't already, be sure to join castmagic, the all in one content workspace for professionals. We be sending out tips from our shows in our weekly newsletter and we've also got a slack community of over a thousand creators. So make sure to drop in and say hello. And now get ready for the show. Welcome to today's episode of Uploading. Today we're joined by Eugene Kman, who is the COO of million dooll sellers MDs, which is an elite community for top Amazon entrepreneurs.

Eugene helped grow MDS from a humble Facebook group into a six figure membership community of over 650 founders, generating over $8 billion in annual sales. And he did it while running his own Amazon brand as well. So in today's workshop we're going to cover how Eugene grew MDS into a thriving community without quitting his day job. He strategies and values that he's used to grow MDs. For example, give more, get more, which has made MDS super successful. The business model behind MDS and why people pay over $7,000 a year to be part of this network and so much more.

So.

So Eugene, without any further ado, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, how you got involved in MDS and you know, just, just what it's all about.

Yeah, well, thank you for the little intro. So it came about in a very organic way. I mean, I entered the Amazon business. You're behind the computer and you're alone and I was looking for other people that were doing the same thing. There weren't any at the time. There wasn't, you know, any groups around of people that were doing what I was doing, which was just importing things from China and selling them on Amazon. Pretty funny. That didn't exist before, before but most of the Amazon sellers were just doing retail arbitrage.

So there were a couple groups here and there that were, you know, just. And said, you come to this Foot Locker, get a good discount, buy some Nikes and Jordans and list them on Amazon. That's how most people did it. Then I stumbled upon this group called mds. Well, it wasn't called MDS at the time, but what made it different is it was a verified Private label sellers. So in the beginning, the verification line was just $10,000 a month and there were about 50 members when I joined. So I came in, saw this group, they quickly raised that bar to 1 million a year or $50,000 a month was like kind of the next one. Then it was 1 million a year.

And being a member, I finally became kind of part of something I was really enjoying, was just a Facebook group. There was nothing else going on and everybody was trying to kind of figure out what they were, how to succeed in this business. So we had that common denominator. Everybody was struggling to figure it out. There wasn't much information about, you know, doing this kind of business. So there was a, you know, a real kind of wantingness to share information with one another. And also being that everybody was verified and there was no, you know, kind of pitching or no like outside service providers, it made it kind of a very safe place. So I came in and I decided to say, hey, let's all meet up in person.

I put together a little event in Cancun about I guess six years ago and 80 people, I mean at that time that group was about 120 people on Facebook. And 80 of those people actually flew down to Cancun for this meetup. I think I charged at the time like $99 for a ticket. I lost a ton of money. But it was just something I did for fun and I got to know everybody in person and that's kind of what started this community journey. And over time I continue to do more events. MDs became what it is and we partnered and started treating it like, like a real community, you know, growing organically from members, things like that. And here we are today.

We're kind of the E Commerce founders community for, you know, that seven to nine figure sellers. Great.

So you covered a whole bunch of stuff there that I think is really important that you could easily just glaze over. But we're going to get into all of that. One thing just before I start asking you those questions is tell me about where you stand now. What characterize the community? How much does it cost to be in the community? How much revenue are you guys doing on an annual basis? How many members are in the community? Just give us some of those stats.

Yeah, so we have now about 700 members in the community. We're up to 11 billion in total sales, which kind of makes up about 1% of all of Amazon private label, which is pretty impressive to have at least a digit there. So yeah, we have a couple Million in revenue amongst all the members. We also have like a partnership revenue from affiliates or partner sponsoring the events. We have about 100 events a year. So we have some event revenue too. We have our biggest event of the year coming up right now, just called Inspire. See it here.

And that's at the end of this month. It's the same week as Shop Talk and Prosper Show. So that event's like the highest concentration of 79 figure founders. So it's a couple different revenue streams, but yeah, total, I'd say 4 million amongst it all.

Awesome. So 700 members, $4 million in revenue. And what's the ticket price to get in the community?

Seven a year.

Seven what?

7,500 a year.

$7,500 a year. Okay, so that's. So now everyone has a little bit of context about what MDS is, what Eugene has done and now want to get into the tactical stuff. Right. So couple things that you had mentioned in your, your opening intro that I think are important to go over. Number one, you had said you had started the community organically. Another thing that you said is you made sure to filter out the noise of the community. So you guys not only set a threshold of what it took to become a member, but you also said who couldn't be a member.

You said, we don't want any like service providers in this community. And then so maybe we start with, there with those. Right. What does it mean like when you're starting that community, why is it so important to like get the, you know, the membership of who's like becoming a part of that, right? From like an organic sense and what does it take to get that right?

So I, I think, you know, in order for people to engage with one another, they need to have something to talk about. So first the common denominator, right? We were all trying to succeed in this, you know, private label Amazon business, you know, so we had something to talk about next is there they have to feel like safe that they can talk in this space without their that information, you know, escaping the room. Right. Took a while. I mean we've had our fair share of information escaping just like anybody else in the community. But like making sure that we took that seriously and everybody kind of respected one another was a big thing and that helped it grow organically. And that peer to peer trust that was built over time. So had we had service providers or people wanting to sell one another that would deteriorate very quickly, especially when somebody has a tactic that they're sharing and then there's a service provider there and they're going to just take that tactic and share it to grow their audience like they have some other ulterior motive.

So you know, as long as everybody's motives are aligned, you have, you know, good quality engagement, which is I think what's important to make your community grow over many years.

Yeah. And you know, a couple things that you said there, I think like we've seen a community can be absolutely one of the best ways to, to monetize. But talk to me about value, right? Like in order for people to pay to be part of something, you need to create some sort of value. So when, when is the right time to monetize the community? In your case in mds, where did that happen along the journey? And how should other people think about the monetization element of a community versus building something of value that they can then monetize?

I, I think your first objective should always be like that, that correct core, you know, group of the founding members, right. For us, I mean I think it was like 150 members before we started actually monetizing. But you know, I would say you want to get to 100 members, you want to have at least your, you know, at least 40, 50 Die Hard members that are engaging in there every single day. You want to get, you know, at least five to 10 conversations happening a day, right. If somebody can ask a question and have it answered that same day like that, that, that's the value creation right there, right. You don't want to be the one, you yourself answering every single question because you yourself, you don't know everything. And that's the hard part too. People try to build communities, you know, which you can do that if you're a brand or if you're, you know, a podcast or something like that.

If you're trying to build it around subject matter, you want to bring together people around that subject matter that can help one another. So I would say once you get to about 100 people, once you get to, you know, a core group of really engaged 40, 50 people, once you get to about 5, 10 conversations a day, that can be that, you know, have threading and be answer quickly. You start with an event. That event doesn't need to be driving any kind of revenue. For us it didn't drive much revenue. But those people meeting up in person, like putting a multi day summit together is going to build a very strong bond. It'll feel almost like a family reunion. Right.

Like these people have been engaging on an online chat Room for months. Right. Getting to know one another and they're going to see each other in person for the first time. It's a pretty cool thing to see. And that's what kind of starts that first kind of flywheel effect. And that's what it did for us. If you can get to that point, then you can start saying, okay, we're going to put a price on this. Right.

But until you get there, it's going to be really tough. And if you're putting a price on it, like, you have to make sure that you're doing it with your group. Right. Like you want to include them in the decision making process. And that's what we've always done. Right. We have a corporate members, like a council that we run all of our decision making by. So that's what I recommend.

Yeah, no, I love that because I think, you know, when you're launching a community, this is a question we get all the time. We've launched a couple communities as well. It's like, how do you know how to launch it? How do you know when to monetize it? Like all these different things? Because a community is very different than know, launching a podcast, podcast or like a content series or launching a product. Right. It's like a totally different thing. It's living, breathing thing. There's human relationships there. And the monetization element, like you were just saying, is, is definitely a part of it, but it's a, it's a, it's a distinct part.

And one thing that you just mentioned that I kind of want to go into, you said think about monetization alongside your community. So what does that mean? How do you, how would you characterize that? How would you characterize, like how you make that decision as a group? And what does the monetization essentially unlock for the community as well?

Well, I. What is it going to bring to the. So whenever somebody starts making a profit because of others, like, there's going to be some level of like, why are we doing this? Right. And, and there's also going to be that, that hesitation to grow. Like everybody's going to be like, hey, this is. We're so great, like, we don't need more people. Right, Right. And we've crossed that bar.

100 members, 200, 300, 400 members. There's always that, oh, we're too big, we're too big, we're too big and you're going to get that pushback. And I mean, the biggest thing that I think that helped us do it together Is one. Once we started monetizing, we started putting all of that money back into more events and more resources, building a team, right? Before that, it was just. It was me, my business partner. It wasn't something that we spent time on. But once you show, like, hey, this is something that we're treating like some kind of business, right? And once you start adding back value by hiring people that help keep things organized, putting on calls regularly, right? Doing, like, events regularly, you'll get that respect from those members of those existing members. And then the new people that are coming in, you have to show that these new people actually bring value to the community.

So, like, a big thing that we've always done is just require, like. And I mean, again, it happened very organically. But now looking back at it, it was very important. We interviewed all those members, right, that were coming in more extensively than members. In the beginning were interviews. They had two interviews, and they were required to share something. Like, the first thing you have to go and, you know, do a big value app. And it's like, you don't just go in and say, hi, I'm here, welcome.

Right? You get a bunch of comments saying, welcome, welcome. That's just noise. And especially it's like you get 15 of those in a month. Again, all you have is a bunch of threads of people coming in. You don't like to see that. So instead of, you change it, like, you know, you write a post that's about, what value are you bringing? Give more, get more, right? And you can introduce yourself in that post. But people start seeing we're bringing in amazing people to this community and the. The people that have been there for a while to kind of, you know, sit back like they've done their part, that they kind of go on to that next phase of, like, volunteer and giving back, which we have those positions in our organization where they can serve on the council, they can serve as a member interviewer, they can now lead a chapter.

There's various things they can do. They lead calls, they lead channels. We've given that opportunity to people that once they've been in the community for a while, they can also just give back in other ways. And they get their questions answered. They get to meet really cool people. So, yeah, so we've.

We've also. We've already kind of covered this, but I'd love to, like, if you were doing it all over again and you're launching a new community, and like we said, there's a bunch of people here who are kind of tuning in from all different partners of the world and.

To hear, like, what are people like? What do people have?

Like, yeah, like it. And for you guys who are tuning in, drop the actual style community, what your community is about in terms of topics, members, any details in the chats, and we'll be able to, like, pick it apart and give you some insight on that. But like, before we get that, Eugene, maybe just from a general sense, right, what are. If you were building a community from scratch in a totally different field, so let's pretend we're not doing Amazon, you're building it around something else. Like, how would you start it from scratch? Would you start on Facebook today? Would you start on Slack? Like, where would you start it? How would you start it? Who would you bring in? And then what would you do before you actually start to get to that point where you can monetize it?

First thing, what is the common denominator, Right? And if you are bringing people together of this common denominator, how much value are you creating these people? Right? So it's like, what is the monetary value you can assign to that that's ultimately going to say what you can charge for it. So if you're bringing together, you know, school teachers, it's different than you're bringing together, you know, like dentists, right? Because, because there's different spending power there. So you want to first understand that. And then you'll also. It'll help you build that community around it. If you're bringing together hobbyists that are doing, you know, flying kites, right? How much are they value are you going to create for them versus if it's like their professional, like, I don't know, people that jump out of planes, like skydivers. Right? So start, start with that, right? Because. Because it'll help.

All the other questions next is, where are these people talking, right? Is this person on WhatsApp? Is this person on Facebook? This person on Discord, Slack, whatever. If it's business people, they're on Slack already, right? So you think about the medium. You want to know, like, what apps are already on their phone, where are they already engaging? Because, I mean, there's a lot of community platforms on there. We've built our own too, but we've learned is you're going to start on a community platform like Circle or Mighty or something. You're kind of dead in the water because you're requiring your members to download something brand new. And it's too much friction. So there needs to be very little friction because all you're doing in the beginning is trying to stimulate that engagement. Then you want to say, okay, these people, what does it take to filter out noise? You know, is it skydivers that have done 10 jumps? Right? Right.

Is it musicians that have sold a label, right? Like, or like already signed a contract or record deal? Like, what is that one noise filter that makes it. So it's like people aren't asking, well, how do I start this? How do I begin this? Right? Because I mean, that's a different type of community. But that's when you're like, you're the educator, you're the. It's a different type of thing, right? It's less peer to peer information driven because it's just everybody listening to that one educator. So you want to find something where there's peer to peer knowledge to be shared, where there isn't maybe a common track of education for this, right? So it's like learning to sell on Amazon. You can't learn that at school, you can't go to college for that. So it's like, what are things? I mean, becoming an influencer, right? You don't have that class in school. So if you had a community, and it's probably become a better influencer, become a better content creator, only for people that have, you know, signed at least 10,000 bucks in the last six months or whatever that bar is, that's how you would start.

And you know, these people already on TikTok or Instagram, you would, I mean, you can't really start something on TikTok, but you get what I mean. Or an X or so that. That would be how I would. That's how I approach.

Awesome. So you want to find out where these people are, you want to find a common interest, you want to set a bar of like where they're doing. And then when it comes to actually like kickstarting the community, what is your involvement? How do you get these conversations happening? How do you make sure? Because I think it's something that's so common where you start a community and you have all these plans for it and then, you know, the community just dies. So how. Why don't you talk me through what's the difference between a thriving community and dead community? And how do you make sure that after going through all this effort to like set it up and do all the things that we just talked about, you don't end up with just a dead Facebook group where no one's talking in danger, Right?

So it's going to come down to consistent engagement so it's like, it's much easier if you're picking a topic that organically has something to talk about. Right. So and that there's ever changing, there's constant news, you know, for us, Amazon's always changing its policies. There's always, the DTC is always changing. There's always something new that's happening that helps. You want to have some kind of regular calls scheduled. I mean like we have weekly calls on some topics to help stimulate more conversations. So it's like in the beginning, I mean you want to have engagement for at least like three months, four months at some level and that'll help build that baseline.

People do like, I mean there's all sorts of things, you know, when's the themed days for theme kind of information or whatever. But at the end of the day it helps, but it doesn't work as much. We've done contests so it's like those have been great. I think one of the biggest things that we have, Member of the month and MVP also like our most valuable post. So every month we award a member that did like, you know, we do a lot of metric tracking. So like if somebody gave like a value post or somebody asked a question or if somebody just answered question, those are all valued differently in our system. And you know, we pick the top three and our council votes on the winner. I mean we had a much more rudimentary thing beforehand but people compete for this, they take it really seriously.

And in the beginning it was like a, we were giving people anything thousand bucks like you know, computers, like random electronics. We, we pivoted now to giving a high end swag. So it's like we give people like a branded Toomey suitcase or like a nice Patagonia zip up like and they the our, our swag has become such an integral part of the community in general. Like people really, you know, they know that this is the only place they can get something nice like that, right? You can't just buy it, we don't sell it. And, and so that helps with, with, with it. Like I said, MVP was the most valuable postings. Like somebody doesn't drop consistent value but they go in there and just blow people out of the water like. 50 comments 60 comments We've had some members like literally solve people's Christmas dilemmas with a small little code that they wrote or a script and with shipping and just kind of moves on its own like that when you implement those things.

Another thing that we've chatted about like offline you and Me was the idea of, you know, not just about having the community that's, like, engaged, but you actually set a criteria for your members in terms of, like, what they have to do. You say, give more, get more, but, like, you actually mean it. And I know, I remember you telling me that, like, you guys actively will kick people out of the group if they're, you know, not doing the right things. And you also told me about, you know, seating in the. In the early days and making sure like, like you're saying to get that kind of community market fit before, you're charging. Like now you can charge, you know, 7,500 bucks a year and you've got a wait list. But before that, you got people in, you seated it. You got those people.

And even you said some of the people in the early days, you'll kick them out if they're not, like, contributing. So why don't you tell me a little bit about, you know, this balance between seating, payment and how you actually make. Keep people engaged as opposed to just saying, oh, I've got this thing for life. And, like, you know, I'm good, and I'm just going to sit here on the sidelines.

Yeah. And we develop now like, you know, a member score that tracks everybody's activity. And we're actively reaching out to people that aren't engaged. I mean, specifically if they're like a member that's not on a. Has some kind of, like, price plan that isn't what we offer now. They more often not just get removed. We try to talk to everybody. You know, some people are having a hard time in their life.

Right. And they were what happened. So, I mean, we've been very active on that. And it's not only that, something we do ourselves. Like, our members are really big on saying, oh, this guy's been in here for a year. They haven't posted anything or what happened to this person or. No, nobody wants. People are just watching and not sharing.

So it's like any day. I mean, our, our community, we have like 80% engagement, right? It's like. So it's like hyper engaged. I take that any day, over 7,000 people with 100 people. Because the quality of that engagement is just super low because the people know just a bunch of watch. So you have to, from the beginning, build that culture. Like, our core values are all centered around, like, I mean, give more, get more, show up. Like, you don't come to an event, you don't get the benefit.

I should probably know all of these. They're on our website. But like group comes first. Like, you know, it protects us from people that try to solicit or like do things on the side. And it's like if it's not helping us as a whole, like sometimes you have to, sometimes you have to get a better, worse deal or wait if the group wins. Right, right. Together, collectively. So we, we've instituted a lot of these like things that have helped set those guidelines and, and members, you know, they really buy into it.

It's important. I, I, they, they, they make a difference and they'll help you along the way and like you have to guide yourself by them if you need it. And it's kind of like country has their, you know, their declaration and stuff. So same thing.

So, yeah, so now you guys are like fully set up, right? You, you've got this community, you've got that flywheel running, you've got applicants. So walk me through now that the fact you've got an established community, you've got community members, they've got practices, they're engaged. There's valuable information in there. Walk me through how you treat the application process now and the onboarding process. I know you mentioned briefly that people kind of come in and they've got a brief bring value in their first post and it's not just like, hey guys, I'm here and here's, here's about me. So just walk me through your, your, your kind of funnel now that things are actually set up.

Yeah, we've, we're constantly, constantly iterating on this because you're playing a dance between getting that applicant to trust you and, and keeping them like entertained throughout it. Right. So we start with a deposit. Then the next step is. So there's very little questions leading up to the deposit, like two or three questions place the deposit. Then there's like a more thorough application. About like 30, 40 questions they need to fill out. Once they're through that application, it goes to the, or it might actually be the person that, yeah, applications first.

Then there's a member interview. So, and this is typically highly valuable to them because like the members, it's, you know, there's no script or anything. It's just like an organic, like they need to find out one or two things about the person. But like all the time we're getting the applicants like, oh, can I get a recording of that? Because it was like so great, like I learned so much. I want to remember what we talked about. And then we have a final interview with somebody on the team. Which is more just like making sure they don't have any questions. And it's like, here, no, now you pay for the commute.

We've done different things in the past. Like, we've done it full upfront and then all the process. And it's just been different times of, like, our growth pattern. Right. When we've done payment up front, you kind of struggle with, like, people that come up the street and they're like, who are you? Why am I giving you 6,000, $7,000? I'm not gonna give you that money right away. When you struggle, when you, when you don't take. Take any money up front, you go through your interview process, you're. You waste a lot of time.

People don't show up to calls like, they have. They have no skin in the game. So it's a balance. Our whole application process, we try to also not make it too lengthy so, like, somebody can have somebody complete it in like a week or two. We have like a pool of member interviewers in different time zones, so it's like they can choose the first available. And I think it's also been important to keep the. The member engaged. It's like member checks for culture fit, and then we kind of do, you know, overall make sure they know what's going on as they come in.

I think that fully answers that, right?

Yeah. And just talk to me a little bit also about where you're, where you guys see this going, because I think one of the trickiest parts with community is, like you were saying, it's, you know, people want value, people want closeness and connectedness. And at a certain point, like, I don't know if communities necessarily scale to a million or something in the same way that, you know, other, like a product can or, or something like that.

So it's definitely not something that's scale. Right. It's difficult to scale people. And if you're scaling it, you quickly lose your identity. And that means your churn is going to go through the roof. I mean, we've been lucky enough to have like, you know, total 8, 9% churn annual. Right. And that's been at our highest, at our lowest are maybe like 3% angle.

Wow.

So. So it's, it's, it's slow, steady growth. Right. You've had average 30 growth year over year. It's not hyperbolic. You can't just throw, you know, it's very difficult to just throw eyeballs at it and have it scale because it can quickly, you know, lose control. But, like, the Way that we see it is now that we're growing, we have these local chapters, right? So like we're penetrating at local levels because at the end of the day everybody wants connection and you know, there's digital connection. But like that in person is that secret sauce that everybody needs despite the fact that times are changing.

But I think, I think you can't like that person to person interaction is very hard to replace that. I mean we've had many members that even like they're very introverted, they've never shown their face anywhere and they're big personalities online. They come to our events and they're like, wow, I be myself, I love it. And they're going to become like die hard members. So it's fun to see that. But yeah, for us the scaling aspect is going into these local chapters and almost kind of think about your franchising your model in a way. And if you look at like, for us like our bigger competitors have been around for decades, like EO YPO, these are general business organizations. They have 10,000, 15,000 members.

Where they win is they just have these hyper local chapters that really know what's going on at that local level. And they're different, they do different things, they run different budgets, they just operate differently, different leadership teams. And it's, it's just so we've kind of allowed our members to lead that. And growing in the local levels is one thing of scaling.

How, how many chapters do you guys have and how many people are in each chapter? Obviously I'm sure it differs by places where there'll be, you know, more, more.

Population density, but 15 or 16 now and we've been doing chapters like three years. So every chapter like the minimum was like 15 people in a chapter because otherwise work like average chapter size is like 35, 40 people. They're not everywhere, right? Like there's not. So I mean we have different products that we're trying out for like cities that don't have a chapter yet and you know, so seems to be, I don't know, we haven't seen the it like progress yet. But I definitely think that there needs to be that to grow. And, and it's kind of you use your, your members, your boots on the ground to be like, hey, you get to 15 people here, you get a budget, we'll give you resources, we'll help you plan these events. And so people.

Awesome. And you know the last question I wanted to ask, how do you, how do you run these things now? Like you said you started on Facebook. I know you've mentioned like you guys are building out a whole bunch of like really crazy software across like multiple different platforms that supports like a really scaled community motion. But are you guys using that now? Are you guys on a different platform? Have you tried other platforms in the past? How do you like manage and run it in a digital sense?

That's the hardest part of this business because any social media platform doesn't want you to own that user. Right. So whereas it's very difficult to get engagement on a non social media platform. You need an operational tool to run it properly. Right. To organize resources. So we've developed a tool called groupos groupos.com and it essentially gives us one place that sits on top of everything we're doing and you know, helps organize it for members like it's their membership hub. It has all the events that we do.

It has all of our video content. Now. I mean we've managed to migrate almost completely from Facebook messenger because I mean we've had hundreds of messengers, like groups for different purposes. It's just, it's impossible to manage. And now we have them in the app and people are chatting like that. That's been a very difficult thing to, to build a chat because people have such a high bar for chat. But we have a document archives. We have all of our provider offers with different statistics that we didn't have before leave reviews for providers.

They could see all their chapter stuff. And it helps us from a platform perspective really manage our users very finely. So like, hey, Tommy went to an event in Chicago. So we recorded some content at that event in Chicago. Tommy sees it because he showed up to. Right. So like, and then he's more like people are more inclined to go to events if they know there's something they're getting. Like we have our, you know, big show like Inspire.

We record all the sessions. They're only for members, member attendees. So a lot of people that aren't members that can come to the event, but then if they want the recording, they become a member. So I get like this app helps us do a few things to run our business more smoothly and it provides value to members and helps keep things organized. That's like the number one thing that I see across the board. Everybody speaks like everything is all over the place. Right. You're using Google Drive, using some Google Sheets, using Eventbrite, like loom, whatever else for the, for the events.

Yeah.

And I think what's, what's really interesting here is it seems like there's kind of this new age style of community that's like, because everyone says, oh, we're building community tools. But community can mean so many different things. It can mean something just like that's like a chat app, like a, a Discord or a Slack or something like that. But also when you're actually running a membership based community that, you know, has really high tickets, really engaged members, chapters, all that sort of stuff, all of a sudden the needs start to, to change. So it's a really interesting space to, to keep an eye on. And the last thing I'd like to ask is like, how do you think about, you know, because I think one of the most valuable things everyone here is like, for castmagic, a lot of people are content creators. Right. So what is the, what is the overlap you see? And what's the opportunity for content creators who may want to pursue community as a way to monetize? I think, and like this is something we were talking about.

This might be one of the best ways to monetize. Right. Like imagine like we're a podcast creator. Maybe someone will pay us, you know, like, oh, hey guys, can I sponsor your podcast for like a thousand bucks here or there? But. And then that's more work that we have to take on and create. But when you're at, when you actually have a community, you're now monetizing the network, the relationships, really the value of like the stuff that you're doing as a content creator. So like, how do you think about it? Communities is like a value capture mechanism.

So I would ask, are you looked into, are there podcasts, communities out there for podcasters that have at least this many followers? Something like that, Yeah.

I mean, and, and that's, this is the other interesting question, which is like, what dimension are you cutting it on?

Right.

Because like, yes, we're a podcast, so we could do a community for podcasters. Or you know, we also like our podcast topic is either in here for uploading, it's content creators, or in DTC bot, it's, you know, building consumer brands. Yeah. So it's like, it's, it's like which direction you want to go. But I just think the opportunity is for communities in general is just the fact that like really a lot of times the value as a creator is like the people you're reaching, the network that you're building. And this is like such a great way to capture value there and monetize it as opposed to, you know, selling out to a sponsor who's like, oh, I'll pay You, you know, this amount for this cpm, and you're like, that's not the point. Because I have a very niche audience around a very specific topic. And you know, now you want me to do, to create a bunch of work by putting out a sponsored asset.

So if you just speak to like, you know, the value of monetizing a community versus maybe other ways creators could monetize.

Yeah, I think like from the space of a podcast, I, you know, all in is a great example, you know, that they, they, they have local meetups, doing, watching parties, you know, they, they can share, like, they can sell merch, they can sell their summit tickets. They can have like an inner circle, right. They can have place where everybody chats. And they are, they are kind of trying to do that. But, but that's an example. You have, you have an audience and you're just putting your audience together. And if they, they, they're listening to your podcast because they have something that they want to learn, right? Typically you're following that same medium. So all you're doing is you're taking those people, putting them together and allowing them to, to have that peer, peer relationship.

And you could have, you know, general, like, you don't need to monetize the memberships. You can at that point treat it like a media company and, you know, have partners in there, right. In a different way and have them act as a, like, you know, kind of a different kind of member with limitations of what they can do. But like, you can have events, so, and you can maybe have like inner group of, that has some kind of bar. Because, I mean, that would be the first thing I would do if I was, you know, from a podcast perspective, how I would approach it. If I was just creating content, I probably, you know, focusing more around like, what kind of content. If I wanted to get together with a bunch of content creators doing the same thing I'm doing. But the thing is, you don't want to niche down to the point of where you're just talking to your competitors because then there's going to be information sharing, right? So it needs to be big enough to allow for people to want to share information.

Right? But for us to Amazon, like there's so many Amazon sellers, all different niches, and when people kind of never really mention their brands. But like, I mean, we have competitors and we have people, like, it always creates some kind of drama or chaos. But if you want to avoid going way too niche, you want to be high enough there. And then another thing is if you Have a good audience. Like they're already listening to you because, I don't know, you have a cooking podcast. They like cooking, right? They want to know about cooking. They can sign up, they can get your exclusive recipes or whatever. Right?

Awesome. All right, so now let's open it up to some Q and A. So if anyone who's tuned in, if you have a specific question about your community, any question for Eugene about, well.

Maybe I'll be back in one minute.

Yeah, go for it.

Go for it.

So we'll just give you guys a couple seconds to drop in the Q and A things that you'd like to pick apart with Eugene, and he'll be able to help you kind of strategize maybe the best ways to either improve on an existing community that you're trying to scale or on, you know, how maybe what the launch strategy is behind a new community if you're looking to launch from scratch. So, okay, I can see Jordan already dropped one in here. And just to cover real quick, Eugene, let's run through the comments and just talk about some of the communities that people mentioned that they have. So for example, Amiel has an entrepreneurship community in Latam. Severine has a personal finance education community. Leanne doesn't have a community yet, but is thinking about it. She's a career coach that helps people land their next jobs. And Sally, save US taxes legally for on Facebook and YouTube.

And let's see. And then Jordan's is don't have a community launch yet. Been sitting on it for a year. But it's a community for business leaders struggling to leverage Gen AI. Yes, Jordan, I was on, on your show. It's a great show, so be sure to check it out. So those are some of the things that, you know, some of the communities that people have. We're going to start with Jordan's question because he has a really specific one.

And guys, some of the other ones I mentioned, if you have a follow up for anything in particular you want to cover, go ahead and drop those in the comments. And I'd love to kind of unpack those with Eugene, but let's start with Jordan. So Jordan is saying podcast advertising for niche audience is crazy. That's why we bundle all our platforms for advertisers and not just podcasts. It gives, it gives advertisers better returns. So Jordan, are there any particular questions that you would have there about the community that you're considering launching again? Eugene, his community there, the idea that he's sitting about is business leaders struggling to leverage generative AI. So if you were approaching that from the ground up, like, what would, what would that look like for you? And here just put my follow up in the Q and A. He has a big podcast audience.

We generally always emphasize free content. I want to launch a community with a free tier than a lower ticket paid tier. What would be your best advice?

Yeah, I mean, I would launch it. I mean, I guess AI conversations are probably mostly like on X. Like you can create those X spaces, I would say. Right. I would start with that. You're gonna again focus on engagement first. So there's so much going on in this AI space and so it's fast changing. So that's great.

The one thing that I feel that there's a lot of, there's a lot of noise, a lot of competition, right? And at one point in this Amazon space, there was so many, so much noise in different Facebook groups. Like everybody was moving more. So think about like, what is that? Okay, you're actually doing this as a business now. Like you are. You have clients. Like I know a few people that have softwares that do do like AI. Like you drop a video, makes a bunch of videos, a couple of those, or they help you write scripts. So like think about the business perspective.

Like what makes somebody that actually is running a business on this. I think it's great to have a free tier. You can have a free tier, but it's, it's easier to manage a smaller amount of people. So like focus on those people because those are people that actually like where the, where they're, they're going to get into this business and they're going to stay in this business. Like think about like that, right? So it's not somebody that's dipping their toe that, that's trying generate AI. In three months they're going to be doing something else because then you're, you're wasting your time with other people. So focus on the people that are in that business, going to stick through with that business, bring those together in some kind of chat. Like I doesn't have to be anything crazy and then try to get those people together in person and you can build on that.

And just to follow up because like I have a good idea of Jordan stuff. He already has a live show which goes live on LinkedIn every day. Jordan, are you on any other platforms? It's also a really large podcast, so it goes on to LinkedIn lives, it goes out as podcasts. So would you say there's like a target number of people from his audience he would try to bring in. Is there a criteria that you would try to establish as a, like a filter for the people who could to apply? Would you put together like an application process to get those people started? How would you think about that?

Yeah, if I was. If I would probably have census in the beginning. If I wasn't sure, like, what is that common? I put together a list and not put together type form, get it sent out, get at least 6, 700 responses. If your community is outside and you probably figure out what is it that people are doing and then decide that next step. Because I mean, you do want to get it right. But I mean, if you're in the business yourself, it should feel you probably have an idea of it too. And you throw in like, hey, does this sound right? Do you associate with this, right. This statement that I'm a generative AI founder that built a product that has 100 users? I don't know if that's something, but you know what I mean, right.

So, yeah, and, and another thing, so I want to get to Claudia's or to Chandra's question in a second, but this is something that we've been doing. Like I said for DTC Pod, that was my first. That's our first podcast that I host, Eugene. It's with all direct to consumer founders that are selling direct. And you know, that was actually why we built Cast Magic in the first place, was because we needed to solve our own problem with the podcast. But, you know, we've been kind of kicking around the idea of community. We're primarily a podcast first. And this kind of ties into Chandra's question.

But if you are podcast native, that doesn't necessarily mean you've got an email list, right? Like, sure. You know, there's some podcasters that, you know, have been very successful at growing an email list, but there's other podcasters who are out there who may be like recording all the time, don't have an email list and don't have a way to get the, the word out. So one thing that we did was when we was trying to build up a wait list for the community because like I said, we didn't want to just like throw everyone or we didn't want to just like throw one person in at a time and then have it sort of be dead. So we wanted to wait. We wanted to collect some data and all of that.

So like I said, 30 diehard people are like, hey, when's this opening? Was it like, when are we. You do.

So that's what you want, right?

Yeah. You want it because you want to have to talk.

Exactly. They want to be able to talk. Exactly. So you want to have that feeling. And one thing that we did was we basically put up like an airtable sort of application form. We link it in our show notes, and also we have a CTA to it. So when we're having the show, we say, hey, guys, we're about to launch our community. If you're interested in it, apply.

The link is in our show notes. And through that, we've got a lot of applications as well as we do have a newsletter, so it goes out through there as well. And you can obviously post on social as well. Do you have any other tips, Eugene, in terms of, like, if you're at that early stage. And here's Tranja's question.

When we were there wasn't any place to chat at this high level. Like, we determined, okay, you're making 10,000 bucks a month. That's the bar. My partner, he went to some other Facebook groups, like, hey, do you mind if I post in here? I mean, it's different times now, but sure. Posting in there saying, hey, there's a bunch of noise, and the place is bunch of noise. Hey, if you actually are doing this business, come join here. It's free, right? Yeah. And that can go to the wait list or anything.

But I mean, at the time we, we got to that first 30 or 40 than a week. Right. Because we posted, so we didn't have to wait for that wait list. And if it's taking you too long to get 30 or 40 and you have such a big audience, it's taking you that long to get people. I want to talk on the topic. You might want to question if that's a good topic. Like, you should be able to really quickly find 30 to 40 people. Right? You should.

You. If you can't get 100 people in a month and a half, two months, then it might be difficult for it to scale.

To scale and monetize. So let's go into Chandra's question specifically. Right. In terms of the. The niche that, that she's in and everything. So we've got. I have a radiology podcast for technologists. My community listens to my podcast at a rate 71%, which is great.

And, and brands have ads with me, but I want to build a community to leverage my own monetization. I don't have an email list yet. How do I begin to take your first step? So is there anything else you'd Add to that, I know we had talked about like the CTA and, and that sort of stuff.

The common radiologists. Right. So like I would then meet radiologists locally. Right. Or connect with radiologists that have, I mean you're already a radiologist so like that's, that's your bar. So you can go pretty wide. And I don't know if they're, I mean they're sure there are like some Facebook groups out there, so you might want to think of like some kind of unique thing, like I, I don't know radiology as much. But there has to be something that makes you different than the other radiology Facebook groups out there.

Maybe it's just the fact that like, you know, Facebook isn't the best medium for those groups because I know they exist on there a lot from the medical field. Maybe it's again like WhatsApp or somewhere else where you're going for that, like next generation of radiologists or something like that. But I would focus on your, you know, taking your core group because they already have a common denominator and just getting them together so they can talk to one another then that's the first thing.

Awesome. Next one from Severin says I haven't launched the personal finance education community as yet. I want to start off paid community, have a fairly large following on LinkedIn, Instagram, other social, YouTube and podcast. Any tips? So it sounds like Severine wants to start. And, and just for clarification here, severing, do you mean you want to start immediately having it paid or do you want to just get started building towards a paid community? Give you a second there and then.

Unless you already have a really big following, it's very difficult to start paying unless you already, you need to, you need to have that list of people. Right? So yeah, so that's the one. If you're a massive brand, right, and you're making an insider circle for that brand, people pay you right away. But I don't, it's difficult otherwise, I don't know.

Yeah, I, I think that's a good point because at the end of the day it's, it's supply and demand and you, you want, you know, you want to create something that there's pent up demand for and I do it automatically as paid.

Then I would probably go like the, the education approach. So it's like I'm selling you a education component, like a course or whatever it is. And as a benefit you are also joining group. And, and if you want to answer Your question of like not having too many people, it's like you can go the, the, the, the route of like the, the forum or the personal accountability group. It's like you're gonna take this course and you're gonna be partnered with everybody that signed up this month or this quarter. Here's your seven people or eight people. And in addition to your course you will, you'll also have a guided monthly call. There's a ton of these like accountability thing that's like you're gonna go deep with these people and that way it's, you're immediately starting, but it's just like you're gonna have, it's more, it's more high touch right away.

And when somebody's paying money for something they have, they, they have an expectation for something, right? Definitely you need to deliver immediately on the promise and if you don't, you have retention issues. So that's why starting free and then having that peer to peer baseline, it's helps solve a lot of problems because well, even if you do nothing, you got something.

Yeah. And I think that's a really great clarification that you just made. Eugene is like at the end of the day, if you want people to pay for something, there's got to, there's an expectation that there's something in there that they're getting. And one way to do that, if you're talking about just leveraging network, it's the fact that you've got that flywheel started. There's natural conversations happening and they can access some of the smartest people in whatever their field is and get their answer right. That's value there and that's why you want to pay to be a part of it. But if you don't have that pre established and you don't want to go through that period of, you know, building that free flywheel, then you need to go the other way, which is typical education. And as a benefit we've also got this community to, to chat with.

So Severine, in your case, you've got, you've got an email newsletter, you've got a super engaged podcast. I would say, you know, you want to start out by, if you want to monetize immediately, just make sure there's something of value to Eugene's point that you can deliver on, on the promise. So see and last, this is going to be the last one unless anyone has anything last that they want to drop in there from. Amiel Said. Thanks you. Thanks Eugene and Blaine. Our IG account somos copiloto went really viral, but we've struggled to turn that virality, virality into community and. Or monetization opportunities.

What would you suggest? And just for some context here, Eugene Mel has a entrepreneurship company or entrepreneurship community or like Instagram Account, where it's a bunch of business tips for entrepreneurs in Latin America. Right. So if that's the goal, what, what would you recommend here? Do you think it's about figuring out what that criteria is, an application process, building up a wait list? How would you approach that? Is entrepreneurship too broad as a topic? Would you, would you, you know, figure out an. Some sort of niche angle or how would you approach that?

There's problems with going niches. Probably going broad. Right. So it's. Something fits. I think it's your audience is already on Instagram. So that's, that's, that's. You've kind of, you have a little bit of narrow legs are following you.

So they probably. There's already some kind of common denominator of your content that's not even going to be there. Right. So, so I, I stick with it. I'm curious, have you started any kind of like, chat, like WhatsApp, like Latin America? WhatsApp is the thing. There's a ton of WhatsApp groups. Have you started a co. WhatsApp? Just a general one.

Yeah, we, we'll wait for a sec. Emil, do you guys have a, a current, like a chat group set up at the moment? Or what is. What does community look like for you now? Like what, what stage are you guys at?

I think the other thing I can just keep going a little bit. I. Since it is entrepreneurship, you do you. You would ideally want to have some kind of bar that you set at this. And then also your other big thing you're going to get into is people trying to like just pitch to one another. Because immediately if they get in there and a bunch of people use it as a platform to just say, hey, I have this. Hey, I have this. So I was like, it needs to be a no, I have this zone.

Like, it needs to be a, hey, I'm doing this. So There is a WhatsApp group for webinars. And then, yeah, so our boot camps again, you have it. So you're selling things there. So immediately that, that people make that association. I came here, I'm being sold, so I'm muting this thing. I don't, I don't want to listen to noise. So we try to be very careful about communicating things that like, oh yeah, you don't allow them talk the one way thing.

So, yeah, you went crazy. You had no application process. You want to have some. Our application process in the beginning was send me a screenshot of your seller dashboard with like a picture of you and like an ID or something. So simple. Send me that. And I think it was like, one question. Great, you're in during this Facebook group.

So. And, and also it's like, okay, we're only. For now. We're only going to let in like 15amonth, and you're waitlisted so 10. So it's like you, you. You gave yourself time. People to come in, and you gave yourself time to police those people and be like, hey, you got to behave in here. And then you set the tone and you're like, okay, these are going to be what our group is doing.

Going to upgrade, reset the values. And then as people get in, it's not all on you to make sure that everybody's following the rules. It's like, we, we. We don't have time to monitor all that. People, people in the group message us, hey, did you see this? Hey, did you see this? Did you know that person did that? So it's like, think about it, like, from that perspective.

Yeah, and, and I think one clarification there, too, is like the, you know, there's a difference between like a broadcast channel and like a. A true community. So, Emil, I think you have the opportunity to probably, you know, set something up, figure out what that common denominator is and that threshold you want to achieve for applications. And I think the cool part is, like, this probably hasn't been done as much in Latam, so you could probably figure out what that criteria bar is for some sort of application process. You know, get people in, get them talking, right. About whatever that thing is, and then start building a wait list. And then, you know, naturally things like your. Your boot camps and.

And your other webinars and stuff will fit nicely into that. That community mix.

People are always thinking about getting scammed, right? So it's like, you want to make it so people don't think they're getting scammed. You want to make it feel like a safe place. Yeah.

Yeah. So, all right, Eugene, this was awesome. I learned a lot. I hope everyone else did as well. You know, why don't you just drop. Why don't you shout out your socials or where people can contact you if they want to get in touch on whether it's LinkedIn, email, wherever, wherever we can find you and group OS and just to Stay in touch.

Learn more. Yeah, I mean, if you search Eugene Cayman on LinkedIn, I think I pop up. I'm going to be posting some videos and content more now about building your community and events and stuff. Because events is really where I community is where I start. Events is where I thrive. Yeah. Or you can check out MDS Co if you're an e commerce entrepreneur. You can check out our event Inspire or Groupos if you search groupos.com sweet.

Well, thanks for coming on uploading today. This was a blast. Hope everyone learned a bunch and we'll see you guys next time.

Bye.