How to make $10k/month from a community - Jordan Godbey

maybe you feel really misunderstood because everyone around you in your day job loves the day job you can't speak badly about it you can't say I want to leave and do my own thing but in this private online community you can what you're about to hear is a conversation between me and Jordan Godby now Jordan specializes in helping creators start build and monetize thriving online communities and so in this interview we talk all about what it takes to build a thriving online community and how you could potentially be making $10,000 a month and even Beyond from an online community a lot of us know what we need to do we just need to sit down and do it so how do we create an environment an opportunity for people just to sit down and do the work and that alone provides massive value for people we talk about the pros and cons of online community as a business model and we talk about a bunch of things to consider if you are trying to make money and trying to build this sort of thriving online community business there will be times in there that it's going to get really hard and you maybe want to give up maybe you only actually want to give up in the moment you know because you actually said I want to achieve that thing but there will be time where it becomes uncomfortable and so if your goal as the Creator is to truly help people then you're going to have to help them through those hard moments as well oh by the way before we get into this episode I would love to tell you a little bit about life notes now Life notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers and it contains my notes from life so notes from books that I've read podcasts I'm listening to conversations I'm having and experiences I'm having in work and in life and around once a week I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers so if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning almost in real time as I'm learning it you might like to subscribe there is a link down in the show notes or in the video description all right Jordan welcome to the podcast thanks man it's great to be here this is going to be fun so uh we are going to give people apparently a road map for how a normal person can get to $10,000 a month through online communities yeah now this seems I did an episode with jcla and I was a little bit like that was more like a coaching session where he sort of coached me on what we do with with productivity lab but I kind of want this to be imagining we've got someone who's like a normal person let's say me when I was 26 and I had a day job and I'm like ah you know I enjoy the job but I would love to build some sort of business on the side and this goal of $10,000 a month seems to be a thing at least on YouTube where people feel like okay if I can get to 10K a month I'll be able to comfortably quit my job and probably most people listening to this if you could make $10,000 a month with a side business you know you probably feel like damn yeah maybe I could quit my job and have freedom and all that fun stuff so how does someone get to 10K a month using a community like where do we start yeah so a lot of times I see people just coming up with an idea and they're like with this work could I make $10,000 a month using this idea and that's not really the best way to do it right you have an idea in search of a problem or in search of someone's dollars and what you really want is to solve a problem that already exists and when you do that you can very easily put value to that and sell people on that okay so you want to solve a problem that already exists um okay cuz a lot of people will be listening to this thinking okay well I mean I've heard of Drop Shipping I've heard of affiliate sites I've heard of selling an online course talks about his YouTuber Academy so I mean maybe I can make it big by being a YouTuber but increasingly they might have seen uh Alex hosi sort of convincing everyone that the best way to get to 10K a month is to start an online community on school or something like what's what's up with that sort of messaging it's a little bit uh obfuscating the the real issue here so I feel that Community is now the new Hot Topic that everyone is talking about and the right platform and how much to charge but Community by itself doesn't actually solve any problems it's not just a Magic Bullet or magic wand and so you know how there's always been a trend of like affiliate marketing Drop Shipping like all of these things and so people get into it because it feels a bit like a get-rich quick scheme or some type of thing that you can run without needing to have a whole lot of skills or experience and so with Community there is a lot of transparency there in terms of you working with your members inside your community so if you don't actually have something valuable to offer them they're going to find that out very very quickly so Community does not just magically solve a problem it is a vehicle for you to be able to deliver the value that you have the experience that you have so maybe you're a coach or maybe you are a course creator and you've realized okay well with my course there are some inherent issues things like nobody finishes the course okay that's a problem why well because all of the people are disconnected and isolated and so they're trying to do a very hard thing all by themselves and it's hard to do hard things all on all on your own yeah so the community then starts to add more value to the thing that you are already helping them with which is solving a problem through your course so by itself the community isn't just some magic container that's going to create value so if someone has no experience with any business thing and they've just got got just got a day job to what extent would you recommend Community as being the vehicle that gets them to 10K a month okay so let's talk about the options that they would have right okay so Community to me is a bit overused and under under understood misunderstood right so it's actually not one thing I see them as several different op and so Community is almost like saying I want to start an online bus okay yeah fine it's like how do I make 10K a month with an online bus like well what kind of online business is this A Drop Shipping Company is this a YouTube you know Channel what are we talking about here are you building a a software product very very different routes and very different um requirements right sure so inside of community there are two main value drivers there's the connection side which is bringing people together and the value comes from the members and then there's curriculum where you're taking people through a process and you're taking them on a journey yeah so for someone listening to this who might not have already drunk the community Kool-Aid what is an online community are we talking like a Facebook group are we talking like an email list are we talking like trying to bring people together in real life like yeah what what are we talking about great question so Community like I said is very overused and it's very trendy right now so humans have been in communities forever since the beginning of time so it's nothing new but what is new here is the online aspect of it okay so I think it's important to talk about what is the difference between audience and Community a lot of people say I already have a big community on LinkedIn it's like no you really don't you have some followers you have an audience but it's not a community so for me Community requires you to be a bit more bought in you've actually opted into something or maybe you've purchased something or you've signed up and you you've said I want to be a member or a or part of that group and so until recently the last few years there hasn't really been any dedicated software platforms dedicated to community and now there are so that's what we're really talking about is creating a private space that is online that is dedicated and designed just to facilitate member-to-member interaction for you to engage with them for you to um deliver resources curriculum all that kind of stuff why would someone pay for a community seems like a bit of a scam well uh I think we pay for communities all the time right like we We join private newsletters or private groups uh we want to get access to people or want to get access to information maybe you're joining a club and so we're doing those things on a regular basis whether it's local you're joining like a religious group or maybe a sports League or uh fantasy football right it's like people want to be brought together with other people that have shared interests shared Visions shared challenges but even shared goals and so communities could be people who are trying to quit their ninet to-5 and become an entrepreneur right so it's like maybe you feel really misunderstood because everyone around you in your day job loves the day job you can't speak badly about it you can't say I want to leave and do my own thing but in this private online community you can because you can be surrounded by people that think exactly the way you do they read the same books they watch the same YouTube videos and so there's that sense of connection and support but then also if that Community is being led by someone who's doing what you want to be doing you're essentially having that mentor and mentorship relationship or a coach relationship where you can be sharing what you're doing uh on a regular basis so you're like hey I'm trying to implement the things you're teaching and it's not working then you can actually get support versus you just read a book and if you can't figure it out well okay you're out of luck Okay cool so like I'm I'm thinking you know this was the thought that we had uh a few years ago now actually when we launched our course the YouTuber Academy um and my team talked me into having a community with it cuz I was like ah who cares about Community cuz for to me like an online community is like I don't really care I feel like I've already got too much [ __ ] going on in my life and I know enough people in real life now who do stuff and real life is broadly better than online but then I was really surprised that people seemed to freaking love the community and I was like oh that's interesting and then six months ago when when we were thinking of launching productivity lab um initially it was going to be a $300 course and then my team again said hey we should really make this a community and I was like nah come on no one no one wants Community turns out people really want Community now that we've launched the thing and you know I kind of got talked into it by my team who did a load of market research um so we mentioned that there is a few different types of online community online community is sort of like online business like what are the different types and how should someone be thinking about this yeah and I think the important thing to think about too is we all realize through the pandemic and everything how isolated and lonely we can all be and how disconnected and so it's a place to go to hang out right where you're not just going there to get entertainment but to really be understood to be supported and to not feel so alone and isolated and so sometimes when you're trying to do a really hard thing the first step is actually that mental step of even believing it's possible right because if you don't believe something is truly possible you know we all see Superstars and we see famous people and it's like yeah they could do it but is this really possible for for me getting into that Community puts you in very close proximity with people that are either doing what you want to be doing or also striving for it and so it makes it feel a lot more tangible and a lot more uh realistic and probable so so let's talk about what those four different types are right so we've got the two drivers we talked about so we've got connection or curriculum so you want to be thinking about if you're starting a community where is the value coming from is it coming from Simply bringing a lot of disconnected people together and that could be definitely a value driver or is it coming from teaching someone and helping them achieve a very specific outcome so if you've done something in your life that other people want to learn how to do and if you can turn that into a road map and a curriculum and a course doing that inside of a community super charges that okay so within each of those two buckets there is a low ticket option and a high ticket option okay and that is going to dictate the way that you're going to run and facilitate the community and the experience inside is like what numbers are we talking for low ticket and high ticket low ticket I would say anything under typically $1,000 or something like $100 per month oh okay cool so under $100 a month would be low ticket and over $100 a month would be high ticket MH I mean ours is $97 a month so I guess you would call productivity lab low ticket lowish ticket it's lowish right but you're charging it up front aren't you yeah a th000 for the year or like 9 and 7 for the year or whatever it is yeah so yours is a bit interesting and we can get into that because I feel that you're charging low low ticket on the price but you're actually delivering High ticket on the experience and so we can kind of talk about what those two okay we'll clip that out and post it as a testimonial differences look low ticket on the price High ticket on the experience okay cool um yeah so four different types yeah so on the connection side on the low ticket we have peer communities yep right so it sounds like what it is hey we all have a similar interest a similar goal a similar dream let's get all together and we can talk about it we don't know exactly what's going to happen it's unstructured y but we know that by bringing all these people together something good is going to happen Okay so let's do like I don't know a a community for people who really enjoy Brandon sanderson's books and do that for like $9 a month sure yeah cool I would join that Community I'll be like sick it's like a bit nicer than the forums because it's paid rather than free um I would join that Community why would you join that Community why would I join that Community because it's cheap enough uh that huh why would I join the community um okay so for me the thing that I get value from is a saving time and so if I can join a community for $9 a month or $100 a year and it's people who are Brandon Sanderson fans I'm a big Brandon Sanderson fan and they are people who are giving me book recommendations for like what next to read that means now I'm using the small amount of time I have to read fantasy fiction to read the good stuff rather than the less good stuff or something to that effect perfect okay so they have just you've essentially bought your time back bought your life back you don't have to read books that are no good of connection orriculum stuff more information more whatever they just want a shortcut to their goal so it sounds like your goal was I want to read really good fantasy fiction the good stuff and kind of avoid all the others yeah and plus I think if I were part of this community and people were doing like I don't know in-depth analyses of the scene the prologue from book five and stuff which has only just been released I'd be like oh yeah I want want to get all over that cuz it would just be kind of to to go deeper in my love for Brandon Sanderson but also to save time with recommendations for other resources i e books so one of the values that that Community would be providing for you would also be this Outlet to have these really deep nerdy conversations with people that maybe you can't have anywhere else in your life right because no one else reads that so it's like now you're completely surrounded by all of these fans and you guys can all nerd out together and feel super cool right yeah 100% yeah exactly super cool is a strong word but yeah so uh another example actually that works really well when you have a large audience so if you're an author and you've written lots of books and you've got millions of fans and followers you can do that low ticket $10 month community and it can work reasonably well okay so another example would be um a B2B marketing Community right let's bring everyone together so exit 5 Dave Gart he runs a B2B marketing Community he's done a lot in the B2B world and so a lot of people have followed him for many many years and he's like hey let's have a community where we can all talk about Cutting Edge B2B marketing stuff and Ai and whatever but there's no expectation that you're going to take courses or that he's going to show up and do all of the teaching it's simply a private place where we can talk about things off of LinkedIn maybe a bit more sensitive a bit more Niche bit more Cutting Edge and it's going to be higher quality and so that's a very easy one to set up because you essentially bring people together and say okay you guys talk but the expectations are quite unknown or low so so how much would that be presum he's charging $30 a month a little bit higher but we're talking low ticket right so then if we were to take that to the highest end yeah that would be a proximity Community okay and so a proximity Community is going to be higher ticket something like ,000 even a month really yeah $1,000 a month so I one and it is a mastermind so I would say masterminds are proximity communities sure and the whole idea is you are getting very close with a smaller group of people and you're meeting much more frequently okay and so you're getting access to other very high quality vetted people whether that's business owners or whatever it might be yep or you're getting access to the leader there the coach someone that you want to develop a relationship or get direct feedback and coaching from sure so if I were to start a mastermind type group where I was doing I don't know weekly or twice weekly Zoom calls I'd be charging $1,000 a month if not more for that yeah um so what community yeah what Mastermind are you paying ,000 a month for it's called seven figureure leap so it's ran by a guy named Dustin rman and there's 20 people in there so you don't have to have tons and tons of clients or customers he doesn't have a very large audience but he's able to provide a lot of value so he has a am group and a PM group that meet every Thursday yep 10 people in each and we know each other so well and we show up every single week together and the goal is that we are solving the next problem in our business so we don't know what that's going to be and that's going to look a little bit different for everyone and so some weeks you may not actually have a problem but you're showing up for the other people and everyone is just jamming on that one person's main issue and helping them have a breakthrough and get clarity and then next week you're like oh now I'm really stuck on something can I get feedback and the amount of help that you can get is so potent in such a short period of time that it's extremely valuable interesting so is the guy who runs this is he like uh considered a mentor or expert here or is he just the guy that brought people together I would say he's also considered the expert and Mentor but much of the time the value is from the other members um he provides amazing value himself but it's really a collective experience okay so that's sort of like a So you you're paying $1,000 a month purely to be in a zoom call with 10 other people who are also paying $1,000 a month not in a zoom call but in a community okay and so we do the we do the zoom call once a week yeah but then a lot of times the light bulb goes off after the zoom ends and it's like oh I had this thought I had this idea and so in those types of programs that only meet on Zoom as soon as Zoom ends it's pure disconnection again for seven more days moment dies do momentum Community acts as a connective tissue between all of those events and so now I can go post something and 24 hours later two other people can respond to it and help me move forward sure okay so we've got peer communities which is low ticket only really works if you already have a big audience so that cuts me when I was 26 out we've got proximity Community yeah which is the higher ticket thing which I feel probably Cuts me when I was 26 out out because I had nothing of value to share at least that's what I thought would you say that's roughly accurate yes I would say you either need to be like for peer Community to work you need to have a big audience for proximity to work you need to have expertise yes proximity communities are one of the hardest to sell because you need to have a lot of trust first you need to almost have sampled value from that person previously before you're ready to spend that amount of money to be closer to because the outcome is quite unknown right and so with Dustin I actually first joined his transformational community which we'll talk about it's called podcast profit accelerator and so it was a very clear outcome of like okay I want to get booked on a bunch of podcasts well he has a system and a formula to do that so I paid for that program which introduced me to Dustin I got to know him I got to like him I'm like wow this guy has a lot of great advice and and coaching and so after I graduated it was a 90-day program he was like hey you can hang out every single week and get even more coaching and advice with all these other people who have also graduated Y in The Mastermind and I was like yes let's do that a lot of people might be listening to this and thinking wow this Dustin guy is such a scammer because he's getting you in with like a cheap thing and then he's upselling you on the expensive thing what's up with that he's DUS in a scammer leading question not at all uh but the first thing was not a cheap thing either he sold me from the expensive thing to the more expensive thing uh so the first program was $10,000 and that was the most that I've ever paid for anything yeah but the promise here was that he was going to 10x the value that I am getting back from the program versus what I paid and so what he's creating is a for me as an entrepreneur a lead pipeline right and so there's only so many ways to get leads being on podcasts that have my audience where I can speak to them for an hour and explain what and build trust and all of that stuff sounds like a pretty good strategy and I did not know the first step in doing that in an efficient way right in a systematized way and so he's done that many many times for himself which is actually one of the first steps so one of the best ways people might say what are your credentials or how do you have the authority to do this well go and get results for yourself first that is the first step is actually achieve something yeah and then if you can help one other person achieve it then you start to systematize it and do it over and over so by the time I met Dustin I think he was on his eighth or ninth cohort that has 10 plus people inside of each one so he's helped more than 100 people do this Y and the results were there so one of his episodes he actually ran a few different businesses one of them was a meat sticks company so yeah like snacks you know protein meat sticks and he did a bunch of podcasts he ended up getting picked up by Walmart and getting put into thousands of stores to sell his Meats disc which was more than a seven fig contract yeah and so it's very possible plausible that that would work for you because it worked for him and based on your product and what you're selling the results could be enormous yeah okay interesting um so that so you called that a transformational community yes is that number three in our list technically number four oh cool what's number three number three is the community powered course so switching over to the curriculum side of things the low ticket is the curric is the community powered course okay so I think a lot of us have taken on online courses by now right a lot of us have also signed up for online courses and we've never completed them uh some of us have bought them and never even logged into them yep and they're sitting on our digital shelves collecting dust yes because they're very exciting right the promise the sales page you can learn how to do XYZ depending on what phase you're in in life you're like that sounds really cool I would love to learn how to record YouTube videos and edit them myself even though I don't really have any intention or need to do that but it sounds really interesting so the problem with online courses is that very very few people actually complete them and even fewer people Implement them and get the results so as a course creator if you truly have this expertise and have this passion to teach others and help others and you're putting all of your time and effort into making the best course ever and you realize like maybe 1% of your your customers are getting the results that kind of sucks uh so there's a better way right and so the better way is by delivering a community powered course so putting that course inside of a community and making it interactive okay what you really want to focus on is implementation with your students okay nobody needs more information we want a shortcut and so even like in productivity lab I think one of the core hypotheses was a lot of us know what we need to do we just need to sit down and do it y so how do we create an environment an opportunity for people just to sit down and do the work Y and that alone provides massive value for people because it's accountability it's like showing up to the gym and doing push-ups in front of the trainer at 6: a.m. when you could do them at home by yourself but for some reason some people choose not to they choose to pay someone else to sit there and watch them and count the Reps I paid a guy to watch the Reps this morning at 8 o00 and it meant I did leg day otherwise it wouldn't have happened exactly so a lot of times yes we need to teach people stuff but we don't need to teach them as much as we think as we think we need to teach them we need to just help them Implement okay right A lot of times people are just afraid to take action or they watch the video it sounds so simple and easy when you're explaining it and you're showing how to do it and then when I go to do it I get stuck or it didn't work exactly like I thought it would now what if you're all by yourself sitting in your room reading the textbook what are you supposed to do how do you get unstuck got it okay so it sounds like so we've got these four types of communities we've got peer communities low ticket proximity communities High ticket peer-to-peer course power Community powered courses which is lowish low ticket um courses and then transformational Community which is high ticket yes which is sort of the same thing was just smaller people and therefore more handholding to help you get that transformation yeah I would say it's like a community powered course on steroids so it's my favorite of the four y because it produces such good outcomes so a transformational course has a very clear specific finish line so you know when you have crossed it yep and you are paying typically a lot of money maybe 3,000 5,000 up to $10,000 and so there is a lot of support there for you could be daily calls there could be coaches accountability Partners um Community managers people that you can check in with to get unstuck but who also will be checking in with you if you disappear got so let's talk about an example of transformational communities one example would be PGA or premium ghost Writing Academy from Dicky Bush and Nicholas Cole yeah he was on the Pod for around too like yesterday awesome yeah coincidentally yeah so when you sign up for this program there is one outcome you will become a premium Ghost Writer which is something that they have coined and they have um created right and so what that means is you're going to be able to sell a educational email course for a price point and find clients and da okay if you are going through this program and you just all of a sudden ghost and disappear they will follow up with you yeah they will email they will DM and what I've heard from them listening to their pod and how they're talking about their program is they are very aggressive at that followup and there's kind of a concern there of like oh are we going to piss people off we're going to annoy them but 90 plus% of the time students members customers are so grateful that somebody cares and that somebody is checking in and the reaction is almost always yeah I've been really busy sorry thanks a lot for checking in I'll be on the call on Wednesday and so if you're someone who really cares about your students success and you want to make sure that you know you're getting great testimonials and case studies then people need to show up and so if they feel like they don't have any skin in the game there's no consequences nobody cares nobody is looking for them then you're going to have a lot of people who just disengage so that's the thing I like about transformational communities is because people are paying more they're psychologically more motivated more bought in y so they want to get the results got but then you have the resources to provide a worldclass experience to help them get the results oh by the way quick thing in case you are interested in starting and or growing and or monetizing a YouTube channel then you might like to check out my part-time YouTuber Academy it is a course that has dozens and dozens of hours of content in it along with templates and worksheets and resources that basically open source absolutely everything that me and my team have learned about growing my YouTube channel and also this podcast YouTube channel over the last seven plus years so you can check that out at academy. al.com that'll be linked Down Below in the video description and the show notes as well feel free to check out the part-time YouTuber Academy sounds to me that Community any of these four uh any of these four um flavors of community this is not a beginner friendly online business to start cuz it sounds like pure communities if their low ticket require a big audience which is not beginner friendly proximity communities require expertise which is probably not beginner friendly unless you already have expertise maybe you've been I don't know revops for three different Tech startups and now you want to build a community of Revels people okay cool you've you've done something and now you're building a community around the thing that you've already done Community powered course well it's really hard to build a business selling online courses if you don't know if you don't have any any value to add and transformation community that sounds even harder would that be fair to say or am I am I not giving the beginners enough credit that they could feasibly make 10K a month with these online communities cuz hosi is certainly giving the impression that beginners could make 10K a month all you know like all you have to do is sign up to school and suddenly you're making all this money like am am I missing something or like like yeah what's what's going on here no I don't think you're missing something the reality is that there's there's just no Silver Bullet right there's no magical hack that if you just sign up for this software tool you're going to make magic internet money that that's what we all that's what we all want God damn it yeah the retention of this podcast episode is just tanked sorry everybody yeah so I am I'm a fan of doing real things for real people and creating real value and helping people achieve transformations in their life when you are all in on that and you're willing to put your name out there and be committed to that communities work really really well because it's bringing people together and you can't really hide you can't really fake it nice okay I like that yeah so productivity lab as a community we're transitioning our YouTuber Academy from just being a course a course with a in bracket there sort of a community on the back end uh into really a proper Community thing most likely fingers crossed um I've Got a Friend Izzy who's a YouTuber I've done a a couple of collab videos on her Channel she does videos helping people learn Mandarin and she's just releasing released a self-paced course that teaches you how to self-study Mandarin I was kind of saying to her have you considered doing a community because I'd be keing to learn Mandarin there's no way in hell I'm actually going to go through the course but if if I was part of a community that was having we calls and there was a bit of an accountability I would probably I would probably pay quite a lot of money for that if I was genuinely motivated to learn Mandarin Chinese and she was she was kind of like H but it's a lot of work it's like uh you know I like the idea of a course being a oneand done thing with you know passive income hash passive income these these Community things sound like quite a lot of work it does sound like quite a lot of work doesn't it yeah and is it I mean I guess you always have to work to make money and even passive income isn't truly passive so I think there's very few passive income mechanisms that will work especially for beginners and especially as their first thing y for me I think active income is the way to start and eventually once you've built up enough following expertise notoriety whatever it might be you can find ways to productize it and turn it into passive sure but the dream of just putting up some type of website or finding some kind of app that's just going to start paying you money passively it's just not very realistic I've never met anyone that's been able to do that yeah yeah that's really the the myth that I think still people believe that there is in fact a Magic Bullet to 10 to get to 10K a month and every time I do these podcasts we title them how to make 10K a month as a WR like oh [ __ ] it's work how to make 10K a months as a service agency oh yeah it's work how to make 10K months with a community yeah it's work good luck it's like you got to work to make money I've never found anyone who's been able to become very successful without working very hard yeah so with communities it's the exact same thing but there is a good side so it doesn't have to consume you it doesn't have to consume your entire life that was actually something that Justin Welsh had reached out to me about so he had been running a community a couple of years ago and it had been great for the members because they were able to get access to Justin ask him lots of questions and get help and support but for Justin side of things um it was a bit consuming a bit stressful A bit chaotic I think partly because of the the the tool the way it was set up was just kind of a chat feed sort of environment so it's very unstructured and everyone's just piling in and so it's like you wake up and there's 100 messages in a row and then everyone tagging you and so you've got all of these DMS plus the direct messages so the other side it's the expectations of when you're actually selling and launching this what are you selling and what is the value so when people don't think through it enough they just say oh I'm launching a community for productivity sign up here here's how much it costs and they would think oh great so I'm getting access to Ali and he's going to answer all my productivity questions and you're thinking no that's that's not at all what it's going to be like so if you don't set those expectations you can have a really hard time so he did that for a while that ended up ending and a few years later fast forward he released a a course earlier this year called Creator MBA and he pulled his audience and he said what would make this course really really awesome and the number one thing that came back from everyone was community and he said oh no yeah not again okay everyone wants another community and so when he reached out to me he was like I want to do this but I want to do it differently than we did it before I don't want this to be the Justin well show where everyone just gets in line every single day and I wake up and there's hundred messages that I have to answer how do we make this a calm easy community that is not going to fully consume me but it's going to create a lot of value for people and so part of it was just in the expectations we said hey this is a community only for customers of the Creator evba so you're going through the course this is a pure Community where you get to talk to one another share what you're working on ask for feedback you know show us your work and then Justin is going to have a few structured events inside the community so he'll do a monthly Q&A and everyone submits their questions ahead of time to give him time to prepare a proper answer research it show examples and so for two hours it's a very high quality event that everyone attends but then outside of that his participation is really seen as like a bonus so he's been able to spend three to five hours a week and still add massive value to the community and it's not taking over his whole life nice do you know how much money he made from this I think I think he was open about it on Twitter um I think it was it like 1 million plus I believe so yeah cuz he tweeted something because we we used him as an example in a video that I released like yesterday where he was I think he's up to like 7 and a half million in lifetime earnings from his course uh courses business over the last like several years um which is pretty cool it's pretty cool okay so Community powered uh sorry Community as a business model not for the faint hearted um but I think in yeah in a world where it's it sounds like it's it's a good add to the I I feel like we need a name for this that we tried to make the name Creator preneur happen like the Creator preneur stack but I think there's something around like the online teacher the online thought leader the online educator or something to that effect that sounds a bit less less [ __ ] than that in that stack there is currently well I make videos and I get them sponsored I make an online course I do one-on-one coaching and it sounds like well recurring Revenue membership community of some sort either as a Community powered course a transformational community a proximity Community I.E a mastermind or a pure Community those are also Now options that online thought leery type people have under their belt is that a reasonable way of thinking about it or do you think I'm being too too Niche with saying that well feels like communities are the thing for like the online thought leader type people I think what communities unlock for those types of people is more leverage so it's a monetization vehicle and it's a way to serve more people at the same time okay so instead of doing oneon-one consulting create a group program and that group program would be inside the community because I think a lot of people might have the perception that one-on-one is the highest value that you can get from someone but it's actually more valuable to be in a small intimate group with that expert because you get to hear what the other members are thinking and what the other members are asking and many times other people will ask even better questions than you are and you're thinking oh damn that's a really good question yeah I should be thinking about that or I'm just going to listen to the answer and Implement that so many times what we've seen like in our program is people will show up for the weekly calls and I'll do a quick check in in the beginning to see who has an immediate problem or a question that we need to tackle this week and some people are like no I'm just here to kind of listen to the conversation hang out hear what you guys are up to I'm working on my business but I don't have an immediate problem but I just want to be in the room because there aren't very many other places that you get to have these types of conversations yeah yeah I would pay a lot to join a community of seven figure entrepreneurs all trying to scale to eight and I'd probably just hang out and chill on most of these calls maybe while going for a walk just to absorb the sorts of things that people are asking yeah because even if I don't have directly a question for I don't know Co Gordon or whatever the thing might be it's like the the fact that other people are asking those sorts of questions and we find this when I do uh Q&A for our YouTuber accelerator program uh most of the cold doesn't actually ask a question they're just sort of hanging out and and listening in and sometimes they'll have the video off some they have it on they might be doing something else but it's like yeah where else do you get to hear from you know Al Abal giving people specific YouTube advice and often people oh actually that thing he said to person X actually really helps me idea and people really value live over pre-recorded right even if it's the best information in the world recorded yesterday there's something about getting to be on a live call with you today yeah because it's just more real time I can ask a question I can get specific advice and feedback from you directly and so if we're on a call if if running a call for an hour and I get three minutes of your time to ask a question and have you respond back that's massive value and so I might be paying $1,000 a year or $1,000 a month for that and for that to happen a few times and to give me an unlock in my business it more than pays for the entire membership nice so let's talk about productivity lab so we worked with you to get productivity lab off of the ground so thank you for all the help on that front you're welcome um what about the process would be interesting for listeners do you think like I guess I'm sort of inside the bottle so I don't really like I don't I we we should talk about the design phase okay and so that's really what we spent the first couple of months on was really the offer of what are we building here and I'm curious to hear what your experience was like on that because I know that we had battered around a bunch of different ideas of you know past week could go down was it going to be an entrepreneur product or a professional product you remember that back in the early days and so it took us quite a while I think to land on exactly what the thing was and out all of the details yeah I think a big part of it was that I knew you know after we did a bunch of internal market research internal market like sort of market research from within our team we sort of we landed on you know this idea of pelaton for productivity or like CrossFit for productivity where you know no one wants another course but you know people like every everyone knows or rather uh I know that I should do a weekly review where I review my week and set goals for the next week how often do I actually do it BAS basically never so like if I was part of a community where every week there was a facilitator taking me through a weekly review I would hop on that Zoom call in a heartbeat and now I'm way more effective because I've just reviewed my week and made a plan for the next week similarly I know I should just sit down and do the [ __ ] work how often do I do it well almost never but if there was a zoom call where I was on there with a few people over Zoom or even people in real life because I like doing little co-working parties in my house um I do way more work than when I'm just sitting there on my own so what's the value of that for me for me because I've got a seven figure business absolutely astronomical like of course of course it's worth it and so it's almost like I was thinking well you know the same reason that I have a personal trainer and or would go to exercise classes it's CU I just don't do the thing on my own and I know I don't need more content I'm not signing up to a personal trainer in the hope that the personal trainer is going to give me a magical magic bullet to sixpack ABS honestly I'm doing it so that I have an appointment that I've prepaid for so I will be there as a sense of accountability and so the thought was what would that look like as a I didn't want to use the word Community I was like oh yeah Community oh God now I'm going to be on the hook and people going to we're going to feel like we have to keep on doing new stuff every single month and blah blah blah blah blah blah I wanted to feel like exercise classes because you don't join exercise classes thinking damn I wish I had more Community you think I rock up to the exercise class and if I want to chat to people afterwards great but the chatting to people afterwards it's on me to make friends rather than on CrossFit to provide a small group intimate dining experience where we can get to hang out so that was the the idea and then in my mind I was thinking okay well I don't I don't like low ticket things um and so I I did I don't like the idea of $9 a month because that's just going to we're going to get too many people for it to be manageable I also don't really like the idea of $30 a month because we're going to get too many people I like I would love for this to be a 5 to 10 million a year thing and if we priced it at a th a year we would have 5,000 members to get to that 5 to 10,000 members can I imagine doing a community with 5 to 10,000 members it's like hm I think so and that was kind of where we we landed on as a you know 5,000 people paying a th000 would would be a 5 million a year asset we can increase the prices over time it means that we can't do the hey you get to make friends with an intimate small group but that's okay cuz that was never really the point now that we're like four weeks in loads of people are asking for like hey you know I wish there was more small group stuff and we're like uh oh what do we do yeah okay so yeah creating those and managing that can be a bit tricky right trying to match people up and all that so you have an option where you could simply let people opt in and you let them create their own groups and we can do all of that inside of circle and make it kind of easy yeah why are they asking for that do you think uh the thing people have said is the word accountability and they would like sort of they don't feel that much accountability being on a zoom call with 50 people but they would feel way more if they had an accountability group with like three four five six seven people where each week they set goals and blah blah blah you know were felt more accountable to that group for achieving those goals are you guys going to do it should we I'm I'm always a Yes Man when it comes to sort of students asking like paying customers asking for something where I'm like well I'm sure we can figure out a way to make it happen my instinct is that I like to so we tried accountability groups with our YouTuber Academy when they were self self-organized and that was just basically [ __ ] show because all it takes is one person to be a dick or like to not show up and suddenly sort of the fabric of the group sort of breaks down a bit uh whereas for our YouTube accelerator we found that a accountability group facilitated by one of our customer success gals was really effective so she would be leading the accountability group every week and it's the same time every week and you can opt into different times times if you want but it's the same group of like 8 to 12 people on a call every week with a coach MH having this small group accountability and that worked really well but that's a 5k offer and so I I'm always trying to figure out ways that we can add more value to people so I'm as I say Pro probably thinking yes yeah we do want to have some sort of small group accountability thing going on so this is where I feel like you're in a little bit of an awkward spot where I said that you are pricing it at a low ticket but you're delivering at a high ticket experience so doing all of that facilitated groups led by your team that's really a high ticket thing right but you're not charging enough for that so then you might say okay well let's make get self-managed and there's ways that you might do that where people could maybe sign up to be the group leader they could apply you interview them something like that and it's like hey you are going to commit to maybe it's only three months you're going to lead this group you're going to do the 12 calls and then at the end you could either choose to go go again or maybe you give it up so there's different ways I think that you could structure that um I've been in a self-led group that worked really well but it was because there was a group leader and they were really committed to it and that kind of thing yeah this is kind of our problem with this and that $1,000 feels like a lot for productivity because and then like whenever I'm like loads of people have said to me that we're charging too little but I always feel like oh but like 2,000 a month 3,000 a year feels like way too much oh my God yeah well okay so it's funny because right before we launched productivity lab your head of product Gareth reached out to me and he was like I don't know if we can launch this thing at a thousand dollars I think it's way too much too expensive right I don't think we have enough stuff in there yeah and so he and I had a really good conversation where I took him through the Journey of what does it mean to uh become productive right what does that transformation look like what is the value that we are creating for people and how much would that be worth in their life and we talked about what would those outcomes be so maybe it's they got promoted at work they got a raise they got a new job they were able to switch careers they were able to sell more clients get more commissions or even just on the personal side of having more time at home having more vacation be with family more exercise right and so we were able to work through all of that and say how are we doing this well we've got a system we've got a process we've got events we've got you know your your productivity road map and all of your um processes and so if someone were to reasonably Implement half of that right or less and just show up get the work done and move the ball forward and Achieve that outcome what would that be worth to them well if someone got a raise you would argue that probably be worth at least five or $10,000 right uh if they were to sell a bunch more clients they can make a lot more money so we want to try to deliver at least a 10x return on what we're charging and so by the end of that call he was like okay this thing is definitely worth a, doar because if you were to achieve any of those outcomes yeah it's definitely paying for itself but you also have to think about we're training and we're teaching a skill that they could likely Implement and use for the rest of their life so it's not just how productive will you be in the next 12 months but what result would you achieve if you changed the trajectory of your life by a couple of degrees over the next 20 30 50 years yeah yeah it always feels weird thinking about what what would this be worth to the student the customer because in my mind I always go to yeah but how much does it cost us to to deliver on to it's sort of cost Bas based rather than value based pricing where it's like yeah I mean it's not that hard for us to put together four daily Zoom calls doing co-working and having I don't know six weekly reflection session for different time zones and having a quarterly webinar and a monthly reflection with me and it's it's not that much work you know feels like feels like $100 a month it's like whoa like you know if you if you watch Netflix they're only charging you $12 a month you know that that sort of thing still still comes comes into my mind even though I've been charging $1,000 Plus for things for a very long time yeah do you see that a lot the sort of fear of fear of pricing High yes absolutely I think it's the number one challenge that um especially newer entrepreneurs face or when someone's moving from say a 9 to5 into being a freelancer or just being out on their own charging is pricing is such an emotional kind of thing because it Taps into like who am I and my value and my experience and what are my credentials and how can I justify this and how much time is it taking me so I am very much a fan of value based pricing and what's interesting about it is it means for someone the value is incredibly high and this exact same program for someone else is worthless yeah that's true right yeah I think often when it comes to price I'm anchored towards students because in my mind like the people I'm speaking to on my YouTube channel are mostly people younger than me I.E maybe someone who's 25 maybe who's recently graduated from uni maybe they're in their first job or maybe they're still a student because we have a large student population watching the videos and then I think like you know I did I did a video with Matt Gray a few months ago that came out on his channel where he was basically encouraging me to do 24K a year and targeted entrepreneurs and there was actually quite a lot of negative reception to that video when we posted it in our YouTube Community tab because there were people in the audience who were like I can't believe you're considering charging us this insane amount of money we we can't even afford $1,000 like how could you possibly be thinking even entertaining the thought of $24,000 like this is just absurd and in sort of intellectually I know that that person is is is just not the target audience if someone can't afford $1,000 they are not the target audience for the product but there's still something about someone saying that like you're you're being a an evil person by having the audacity to charge that much which prices me as a poor student from Pakistan out of out of the out of the equation and it's like I mean yeah it kind of does am I dick for doing that you know that kind of thing yeah like I said it's such an emotional topic right money is so emotional people make what you charge how much imagine when you price your time per hour and and someone finds out like you charge ,000 an hours like I'm making $15 an hour working minimum wage how is it possible that one of your hours is worth a hundred of my hours it just doesn't feel right right and so it goes back to value and what are you able to help someone achieve in that period of time like maybe you're distilling down 20 years of experience that you can give someone in one hour versus someone like you were saying maybe is a total beginner and doesn't really have a whole lot of experience in life so they can't really create that much value or help someone that much in one of their hours um I think about it too like we were just walking through London and going through some of the shops and looking at some of the Absurd uh designer wear and it's like how is this white T-shirt 450 lbs what makes it worth that yeah well someone feels something when they wear that because it has some brand or some logo but it's just a cotton t-shirt right it it it does feel like robbery or who are they to charge that much money right and so it's just a t-shirt just like the $20 t-shirt but for some reason some people charge 450 pounds for it and some people buy it and they feel great about it yeah it's that thing that even though I've been doing this now for four plus years since we launched our YouTuber Academy it still amazes me that like that we can get away with charging so much so much MH and then I speak to other people who are like $1,000 dude that's chump change come on like you should be doing at least 10K if not 15 and I remember so I I was giving a talk at Cambridge a few months ago um when my book was launching and some guy came up to me afterwards and he was like a 19-year-old medical student and he was like Hey you know so I'm doing I'm doing private tutoring on the side and I was like oh how much are you charging and he was like oh I'm charging a lot and I was like oh you're oh okay how how much is a lot what are we talking and he was like no no no I could I could possibly say it's you know it's it's it's it's too much and I was like come on you you know we're Bros you can trust me how how much are you charging he was like charging £45 an hour and I I was like oh this is interesting this is like this guy's like 10 years younger than me thinks that charging £45 an hour is so much that he couldn't even tell me the number yeah and it is for the audience of kids that he's doing private tutoring for £ 45 an hour is a lot but then I know someone who was charging 500 an hour to do private tutoring for the Nigerian royal family they' got money it's like he flying around on their private jet in the summer holidays and tutoring their kids that's a completely different equation and then I was thinking about myself I was like well right now to me charging $1,000 for a productivity lab Community where we're overd delivering so much value with a ridiculous money back guarantee for any reason we'll just give people their money back still feels like a lot and when I speak to entrepreneurs who are doing 10 million plus they sort of laugh at me in the same way that I laughed out loud when the guy told thought that £45 an hour was a lot and it's just so interesting how I I think how money Taps into py you know psychology and emotions and self-worth and limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome and all of these things there are so many people I know who are YouTubers charging like $300 for a course and thinking oh my God how how can I how can I have the audacity to charge $300 for a course um it's just yeah at a at every level it just seems to be a psychology game absolutely and price is one of the best filters that you have for customer selection right so you could take this course whatever you're doing you charge $100 for it it's going to attract a certain audience it's going to attract that student audience who maybe still would struggle to pay for it but they would find a way and that's going to create a certain type of environment especially if it's inside of a community where everyone can interact if you were to take that exact same program and charge 10,000 for it it can be the exact same promise double your productivity but for CEOs doubling their productivity that means millions of dollars and they would easily pay for it and so now you have a group of fewer but maybe more experienced people CEOs versus a much larger much less experienced crowd questions are going to be different problems are going to be different environment is going to be different so it's up to you to really think about who do I best serve right where can I create the most value for people who do I most enjoy serving oh that's a good question yeah I really enjoy serving the entrepreneurs who are at like five or six figures wanting to get to Seven that's a really fun audience for me I could jam out with that audience all day long I don't feel any imposter syndrome I feel like I have value to share I feel like they they're my people CU they've had jobs and they've quit the job so they all have have that life experience of going through that transition none of their friends are in that same boat and so they feel like can't really talk to my friends about this [ __ ] because they all they all have jobs and I love serving that audience um I gave a talk earlier today at adcon and that's that audience and they were like do you want to go the VIP dinner afterwards I was like you know what yeah honestly like it's probably not worth it's not it's not worth my time but it's just fun hanging out people like that who are building businesses and we get to jam on business stuff and life stuff it's just it's just kind of cool I think that's the audience that currently lights me up back in the day like 10 years ago I used to love serving medical school applicants because it was like oh I can help these guys get into med school and change their lives but now I'm no longer enthralled by the thought of hanging out with students really unless they're like very entrepreneurial students um cuz I'm just I'm just playing a different game now and I sort of want to hang out with people who are playing a similar game at a similarish level does that make sense yeah and that's what I love about entrepreneurship is you get to create the game and all of the rules yeah you get to charge what you want to charge it doesn't matter what anyone else says or thinks you're never going to be able to make everyone happy I mean you have a huge audience so you know that probably every video somehow pisses someone off or rubs them the wrong way someone disagrees with something that you say so that's just going to continue to happen forever but it's up to you to get to choose who do I best serve who do I want to work with who do I enjoy creating content for and helping and that's one of the ingredients that you would use when coming up with your pricing have you have you been a therapist for any other creators about this pricing stuff what sort of stuff do you say or what sort of struggles do people have when it comes to pricing so one of the other biggest struggles is that people are fixated on the monthly price they're like okay I want to make this really cool thing it's going to be awesome it's going to have this and this and this and it's going to be 100 bucks a month and I go okay why is it going to be monthly pricing and they're like what do you mean like everything is monthly pricing it has to be monthly pricing right it's like no we have a lot of other options right it could be one time it could be lifetime it could be annual but it depends what are we helping someone achieve so if you're paying for Netflix it makes sense that it's monthly you get 30 days watch as many movies as you want right and then every 30 days you kind of make that decision am I getting value from this do I still want this this is there anything new next month same with the gym you show up and use the machines right University doesn't charge you by the month right it's like ah I think I'll opt out this month I'm not really feeling it you know maybe I'll like go on vacation come back next month yeah it's like no you're committed right you've signed up for the entire year for the entire semester yeah you pay it all up front and now it's up to you to actually show up and do the work they're going to provide all of all of the services but it's now your responsibility to get the transformation and get the out yeah and so if the outcome is going to take many many months or many years why are you charging monthly because for a very long time they're going to be asking themselves am I really getting an Roi on this am I getting the value on this and the answer is going to be no and you're giving them the opportunity to cancel and churn every 30 days and so if someone does have a hardship of money or they get sick or they're going to travel it might start to look pretty enticing to like put things on pause and come back to this later and in the online courses Community coaching world that pretty much means never so you're going to lose them someone listening to this might be like man this Jordan guy is evil are you really saying that we want to lock people into paying for a thing when they might be ill or they might have lost their job or anything like that like we've we've got annual only for productivity Lab at the moment people loot of people are asking us for a monthly or quarterly option and so we're like this Do's this almost like and I'm I'm unsure about the answer for this but almost like it almost feels like the there's a moral question here is it right to charge someone an annual price and I can come up with reasons and we have refund policy and stuff but yeah I'm I'm curious what's your take on like the morality of annual versus monthly pricing well I think the university example is pretty good right I don't know of any University that would allow you to just have a monthly subscription yeah that you can pause and but when someone is signing up for your program you are committing to deliver the full thing to them right you're committing to show up every week to hire your team to do all of the things um and when they're signing up for it they're not signing up for the daily events or the different components they're really signing up to achieve the outcome right and so when you signed up for med school you signed up to become a doctor you didn't sign up for this many science classes and this many math classes right and so it's like oh I think I'll just skip some of these math classes can I have a few dollars back on that it's like you can't really cut it out so you're signing up for the entire thing and for the outcome and what I've seen so uh there's a famous coach brenon bashard and I went to one of his coaching Summits and one of his phrases that really stuck with me is that coaches are paid to push when someone hires a coach they want to be pushed because achieving any type of big transformation is hard and it is going to take probably twice as long as you think it will and maybe even cost you twice as much as as you think it will and so you've said on day one I want this thing maybe it's you want to build more muscle or you want to build a seven figure business there will be times in there that it's going to get really hard and you maybe want to give up maybe you only actually want to give up in the moment you know because you actually said I want to achieve that thing but there will be times where it becomes uncomfortable and so if your goal as the Creator is to truly help people then you're going to have to help them through those hard moments as well and so that might be in on them accountability getting on a one-on-one call understanding like why have you not been showing up you know how can we help you what is it that you need is it a different time zone thing is it a new video that we can create for you but to me it's actually in the heart of service to align everything towards that end goal and they are the one that is voluntarily opting in saying I want that goal and I believe that you can help get me there yeah and so maybe you need to take a month or two off that's okay that's life right like things get really busy we all go on vacation we all get sick but it's not like we quit our jobs every time we get sick or go on vacation and say I'll be back in a few weeks when I'm feeling better it's like no we have these long-term commitments even though life is happening and so that's just the way that I look at it is you want to work with people that are really invested in your program because it's also kind of demoralizing if you as the Creator you've put your heart and soul into building this thing and you get like 500 people to sign up and then next month half of them cancel because they all go on holiday because it's July or it's August and you're like what happened I just returned I just lost half my business it's like oh no they all said they'll be back in two months and then they don't come back right and so you also need a bit of stability right you have to look out for you um as the business owner as the Creator especially if you're trying to leave your ninet to-5 and you're trying to be on your own that can be a really big scary transition and so you want to work with clients and have a business model that supports that and that is going to give you some stability to work with people for the long term yeah I like that yeah it's a it's a voluntary contract people are engaging in they know the price up front and yeah people email us and say hey look my dog died I had an unexpected whatever yeah of course we're going to give them like yeah we don't exactly we're not going to hang on to it sort of in Ransom but yeah there is a difference between having the cancel monthly subscription option available at a click you know for just one click away versus actually encouraging people to sign up for well making it clear that the commitment is for a whole year and not not even just having the one click available but reminding them every 30 days do you want to cancel this month do you want to cancel this month like you're going to probably get a lot of people deciding to click that button when you're constantly asking them to go away to quit so we just like to have one commitment up front of you're going to join this program and this is how much it costs and then you get access for a year and you don't have to worry about it and then we get to spend the whole year working together to help you get that outcome does that sound good and they say yeah cool nice yeah that sounds pretty good when you put it that way um a bit of a niche question but one of the things I've heard against uh one of the arguments I've heard against annual billing is that you don't get a true sense of what your uh churn is in that well we've got 500 people who signed up in May of 2024 we won't actually know what the renewal rate on those people is up until May of 2025 and in a way had we done monthly billing or courtly billing it would have forced us internally to be more honest because someone canceling their subscription is then a vote you know they're voting with their money whereas someone might have signed up they three months of value out of it then they sort of you know ghosted and yeah we reached out to them but they didn't really reply and the the only time we find out that they're not going to renew is the following year and then what if like 70% of the cohort cancels then and now we've uh oh 70% of business is now gone and we didn't know it up front if that makes sense how how would you think about that yeah well I think you always want to be putting new people in the top of the funnel right so you're not just going to sell this one group of 500 people and then serice them for the next 5 years and hope that they just all renew every single year so new people are going to be joining and this is just a super common aspect of business is that people are going to be churning and and dropping out but the other thing to think about too is what is the realistic expectation of how long someone should be a part of the program so for you I feel like what you're actually helping to do is install this productivity system into their life so you're helping them to create these habits and to think bit differently once they've fully ingrained that and are doing that on their own they may not really need to continue to show up to those Collective sessions yeah right and so I would actually count that as a successful outcome of the program yeah so that graduate could go through the whole year they could start to change their behavior change their life start to do this on their own naturally every week reviewing their week doing these Focus sessions counting how productive they are and then at the end go this was amazing cancel yeah right and say thanks Ali this was awesome yeah I'm now way more productive and I have a framework for the rest of my life to use to do better yeah that would actually be a good result so I think yeah absolutely so you can't just use one metric to try to measure and figure out is the business working is the product working is it good or bad right so churn is not really the best metric in this in this regard I think you want to have a qualitative and a quantitative measure so qualitatively we want to be checking in with people let's say on a quarterly basis right like you're 3 month in a productivity lab have you set your life Vision do you have your quarterly plan have you started doing these things right and then by the end they should be saying yes to all of those things or you should be seeing that they have basically disengaged and kind of dropped out for whatever reason life stuff they've decided hey I'm not really that into productivity stuff anymore or whatever and that's okay too and so some percentage of those people will likely renew um but what you could also do is we can continue to iterate on the program and add new value and new things things just like Netflix does you know don't cancel because next month we're going to release this new series and it's like oh I really want to see that okay I'm not going to cancel so if you're able to forecast in the future and say next year we're going to do a live event in London or we're going to bring in a few other speakers or whatever that could be a good incentive for people to want to stick around even if they've already implemented some of the other stuff yeah okay that's interesting um what do you think we should do with our YouTuber Academy at the moment it's a $1,000 single single time payment self-paced course mhm with like free access to the community on the side but the community is a bit like neglected right now and we want to kind of start taking it a lot more seriously and seeing what's happened with productivity lab my idea was oh why don't we just copy copy and paste that same model 997 for the year building a YouTube channel is a long-term commitment so maybe we would allow quarterly pricing for people who just want to see dip their toes in but I don't think we want to go to monthly at all and we just we give the course if it's given that it's recurring revenue and that gives us a reason to update the course make sure we add modules about AI for YouTubers and thumbnails and bonus stuff and we just take the community aspect much more seriously how does that land with you anything you would think about so what does it mean to take the community aspect more seriously probably uh I mean at the moment we have like one Community event each month but we'd probably do a little bit more um we'd probably like we do in real life meetups INF we do do quite a lot for this free community that they get lifetime access to um we have like meetups three times a year often in London uh but also we did one in Austin we did one in uh where else we yeah in Austin um we do like monthly guest workshops I think just it feel to to me it feels weird to be continuing to give so much value for a thing that they are not paying for because they paid one off for the for the course and they're not paying for the community so I'm always a bit like whenever whenever they want the PTY team wants me to do a a community Workshop when was like like you know I'll happily do a meet up and hang out with people in real life but like the thought of being on Zoom for 2 hours to people that bought a course four years ago and are not paying us anymore like that sort of hurts me inside in a weird way am I am I a bad person not at all I had this exact same problem and so what's going on is the incentives are misaligned right someone paid one time four years ago and now they just get unlimited value from you forever like how does that make sense where where else does that exist anywhere in the world it doesn't really so if you want ongoing Revenue then you have to provide ongoing value you're already providing this ongoing value yeah you should be charging for it so I launched a course a few years ago where I'm talking about communities and stuff and it was a DIY on demand watch the videos so I committed this showing up once a week to do these live coaching calls and it just started going on forever but people had only paid one time a very low ticket for this course and then I realized the incentives were totally misaligned and people weren't even showing up so now I'm committing my time to run these calls for free and then people aren't even showing up because they're not even invested they're not even paying ongoing and so they're like well what am I losing I didn't really even pay for this and that became a very demoralizing event where it's like I'm trying to give away value because I said I would because I want to support my customers and then they're not even interested yeah so I switched it to a monthly recurring where after you join the program if you want to continue to get coaching it now people are singue from it and now me and my team are super happy with it and it's going great okay nice yeah so I think you should definitely do something where there's a recurring Revenue quarterly or yearly because there's so much that you could do and so have you thought about this as like a course SL coaching program where there could be feedback there could be other YouTube coaches people on your team that are like yeah this is what we're trying to figure out so we've got our YouTube accelerator which was previously five grand for for a year uh which we want to sort of squeeze down to either five grand or six or seven for 6 months cuz a year just was a bit too long where they were getting weekly office hours with like everyone in my team so there was like two things a day happening where they could just hop on a call and ask anyone of my team questions they had like feedback on 26 of their videos they had uh accountability group accountability calls with one of our coaches there's a lot going on in this program and so we had that and then we've got our YouTuber Academy just $1,000 course and so what we're thinking is we turn the ,000 course into $1,000 a year Community plus course that mish mash thing similar to what productivity lab is and then we keep the 5K 5K for 3 months or 5K for 6 months offering that gives them more intensive support and handholding from the team for that for that short period of time and then they just go back into the community or not you know whatever whatever they want how does that sound yeah yeah I think it's good so people can get into the course for a thousand for a year and have access to the community so everyone else who's going through the course can be sharing updates and asking questions and all that but if they actually want active coaching from your team feedback live sessions then they're paying for the accelerator yes uh I mean I'd probably do we we would probably do live sessions within the community like a monthly whatever Workshop from another YouTuber or you know things things like that but it' be less frequent it would be less frequent probably like once a month whereas if they join the accelerator there's stuff happening every day yeah office hours and things that they can join yeah so it's very clear the separation for me of value if they want to kind of go slowish around other people they go through the course kind of on their own if they want to go a lot faster it's a lot more intense and there's a lot more things that they have access to and they're getting your team's active involvement on a daily weekly basis yeah kind of as as we talk about this I feel like that should just be a three-month program like 5K for 3 months feels like oh yeah well you're we're going to work with you intensively for 3 months to help you level up to whatever stage you need to get to and then great feel free to renew or like just you know go back into the community is there a specific outcome that you can put to that like what would the transformation be of the 90-day program it would kind of be the same as the transformation for the course which is you build your own like YouTube productivity system that makes content creation as effortless as it as it can reasonably be for you and hopefully you enjoy it as well so the 90-day program would be more like basically that's transformation but you actually get support well well you get more one-on-one and group support along the way does that make sense yeah yeah so you have one clear goal that they're all trying to achieve but then you have two paths yes right yeah two different price points and so I think it makes sense it's like hey we've got this gym and you can come and use all the equipment as much as you want and it's great or you can work with this trainer and have all these coaches and have these rooms and have these group programs and you will probably do better you will probably lose more weight or build more muscle maybe get access to a nutritionist you know all of that kind of stuff but it's going to cost five times as much yeah makes total sense yeah okay that seems reasonable yeah it feels kind of weird to be switching our stuff over to this sort of recurring Revenue model it it feels good because it'll be nice but it's also like well it's annual buildings we don't really know how many people renew and like all all all of that sort of stuff it feels sort of like a new area for the business CU I'm very comfortable selling self-paced courses where it's one and done there's not a lot lot of work to maintain it because it's like it's one and done but also yeah if I'm honest about it I think self-paced courses that are one and done don't actually serve the student because there's no incentive for me to update the course that I made a year ago even though stuff has changed on YouTube because like why would I update it what's the point um the courses that we made three years ago are still selling but to me it sort of feels like those should be part of the ,000 a year subscription and so as we add more stuff as more stuff evolves as our processes change because we're also learning we're are updating the stuff as we go along which then makes sense because students are paying for that recurring value I think when you align incentives like that it actually works out better for everyone so you know earlier we were talking about pricing and charging higher ticket and locking people in and is that evil and the morality behind all of that but I believe that there's this kind of pyramid right and so if you are healthiest as a business you have recurring Revenue you have stability then your incentive is to continue to pour into that program and make it as good as possible and to help all of those students succeed so that you have great testimonials and case studies because people will say you know what are your credentials or who are you to be charging this it's like well we've got hundreds of students who are very very happy and who have achieved the promise so it's very much in your best interest that all of them are successful versus okay I've put together this course and it's only a few hundred bucks and you can go watch it on your own and most of them are not going to be successful so let's say you switch to this recurring Revenue a lot of them are going to continue to renew but now you are going to be making the program better and better so your business is going to grow it's going to be healthier and now there might be people saying well I can't even afford the Thousand so that's not fair it's like well you then can take bits and pieces whatever you choose and put that on your YouTube channel right you can still be giving things away for free and the lead magnets you got like a $1 course so you can really serve everyone really well by getting really clear on what those incentives are and what those different offers are but can't serve everyone all at the same time with the same offer yeah yeah I already kind of want to I want to put our $1 course just as a free YouTube video like it's going to be four and a half hours long but there's something nice about that being available for free and if people want they can sign up to the community or the course or whatever we call it the academy um that kind of thing Jordan thank you this has been wonderful um where can people learn more about you and the work that you do yeah thanks for having me man it's been great so we put together a really cool resource for people who are interested in community where it's a bit of a behind the scenes look at how we designed and built productivity liveb with you following our nine-step community launch road map so if people want to check it out they can go to growth community. Ali and they can follow along so if they're interested in building their own Community that'll give them some tips nice thank you that's great we'll put a link in the show in the video notes in the video description and in the show notes if you want to check that out so that's growth community. yeah and they can download that for free no strings attached hbang that's it and then I am Jordan Godby on Twitter and Linkedin sick and we'll put links to all of that as well thanks very much thanks man all right so that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening all the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this if you're listening to this on a podcast platform then do please leave us a review on the iTunes Store it really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that would be awesome and if you enjoyed this episode you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode so thanks for watching uh do hit the Subscribe button if you aren't already and I'll see you next time bye-bye

Make money with the skills you already have: https://go.aliabdaal.com/lbapoddesc Subscribe to LifeNotes 👉 https://go.aliabdaal.com/lifenotes_deepdive If you want to start or grow a channel, check out my Part-Time YouTuber Academy here 👉 https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0bwKb_0 I’ve built a brand new community for like-minded people called Productivity Lab. We’ll have online classes, workshops, and coaching to help you double your productivity. You can find out more here 👉 https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0bwKbw0 If you want to see how Jordan helped us build Productivity Lab, you can find out here 👉 https://growthcommunity.co/ali/ 📚 Check Out My New York Times Bestselling Book Feel-Good Productivity! 👉 https://go.feelgoodproductivity.com/podcast 📧 Sign up for LifeNotes - my weekly newsletter where I share actionable productivity tips, practical life advice, and high-quality insights from across the web directly to your inbox. 👉 https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0bwKnT0 In today's episode, I discuss with Jordan the process of building a $10,000 per month online business through online communities. We delve into different types of communities, the challenges associated with managing them, the misconception of passive income, and effective pricing strategies for membership programs. Enjoy 🙂 00:00 Intro 01:41 The Path to $10,000 a Month 02:38 Solving Existing Problems vs. Creating New Ideas 03:36 The Pros and Cons of Online Communities as a Business Model 05:30 Different Types of Online Communities 09:45 Why People Pay for Online Communities 12:05 Peer Communities: Low-Ticket Value from Connection 15:18 Proximity Communities: High-Ticket Value from Close Relationships 21:32 Community-Powered Courses 24:21 Transformational Communities 27:42 The Challenges 29:36 The Reality of Building and Monetising Online Communities 37:18 Designing the Offer 37:48 The Power of Accountability  45:00 Value-Based Pricing and Transformation 54:36 Navigating the Emotional Aspects of Pricing 58:18 Aligning Incentives with Recurring Revenue 01:02:06 Different Pricing Models for Different Audiences 🔗 CONNECT WITH JORDAN 🐦 X ( Twitter ) - https://x.com/jordangodbey 💻 Website - https://growthcommunity.co/ 👥 Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordangodbey/ 🔗 CONNECT WITH ALI 🎥 YouTube Channel - https://youtube.com/@UCoOae5nYA7VqaXzerajD0lg 🐦 X ( Twitter ) - https://twitter.com/aliabdaal 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/aliabdaal 💻 Website - https://aliabdaal.com/ 👥 Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-abdaal/ 📄SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT Visit the website for the transcript and highlights from the conversation - https://aliabdaal.com/podcast/ 🎙️ ABOUT THE PODCAST Deep Dive is the podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people to uncover the philosophies, strategies and tools that help us live happier, healthier and more productive lives.Want to start your own podcast? We use Transistor! https://go.aliabdaal.com/transistor 🎧 LISTEN FOR FREE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/deep-dive-with-ali-abdaal/id1587142091 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7gZkflCpck1rTixj8M7yHt RSS: https://feeds.transistor.fm/deep-div 🙏 LEAVE A REVIEW If you enjoyed listening to the podcast, we’d love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show :) https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/deep-dive-with-ali-abdaal/ 👋 GET IN TOUCH You can also Tweet @aliabdaal with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you’ve learnt from the episodes and we can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜