✨ MAGIC SAUCE ✨ of top community businesses
Join the crash course and learn the best of what operators of top community businesses have already figured out.
16 lessons. Delivered over email. All free.
(Includes: all the wrong turns you can make and all the shortcuts you might miss)
It has never been easier to start an online community. Circle, Skool, Slack, Facebook, Whatsapp, whatever - it takes 2 mins to spin one up anywhere and invite your members to it.
Bad news: every community is DEAD BY DEFAULT. It ultimately becomes a ghost town if you just let it be.
But we’ve all seen communities where magic happens. Where members seem to be creating value for each other without much intervention from the creator. So how can you recreate this magic in your community?
The benefits of doing so are clear. It will allow you to step off that content treadmill and create value in your sleep. Everyone wants that!
But the way to do it seems to be shrouded in mystery. I’ve been building communities professionally for 4+ yrs and I still don’t know it. That’s why I’ve set out to find the answers.
Here’s my 3-step process:
- Seek the founders/operators who have created this magic in their communities and invite them to my podcast.
- Ask them to spill their secrets in the interview. They teach me things that make me feel stupid for not knowing them earlier.
- Finally, I distill their magic sauce into 3-min lesson of this email course.
Meet your teachers
- Chris Samila from Partnership Leaders
- Rahul Desai from Chief of Staff Network
- Tatiana Figueiredo from Business of Community
- Grace Ling from Design Buddies
- Daniel Vassallo from Small Bets
- Anthony Castrio from Indie Worldwide
- Michelle Varghese from Small Bets
- Clara Ma from Ask a Chief of Staff
- Ece Kurtaraner from Generalist World
- Erin Halper from The Upside
- Charlie Ward from Ramen Club
- Kyle Hagge from Morning Brew
- Ryan Wardell from Startup Sauce
- Shreman Shrestha from Friends of Lenny's Newsletter
So here’s the signup form again
Learn what these community wizards are doing right so you can replicate their success
(Or come back here in 6 months after you realise how easy it is to screw up a community)
Full episodes also available as a podcast
just search for “Beginner Maps” on Youtube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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How to turn a course into a transformational community
Ashley Gore has managed to turn on-demand courses into a community experience that supports 1200+ paying members of Smart Passive Income's All-access Pass community (started by Pat Flynn).
She has created an innovative "accelerator" model that allows her to deliver the benefits of a cohort-based course without the hassle of doing live lessons.
This is honestly a must-watch for course creators who want to add community elements to their offerings and community managers looking to scale their impact.
Building community business for world’s top creators
Jordan Godbey has built communities for world's top creators like Justin Welsh and Ali Abdaal.
He helps them start a new business line by building Circle communities at his company Growth Community. We spend an hour discussing his strategies, philosophies and tactics that you can use to start a $10k MRR community.
If you’re into building a sustainable community business (not a get-rich-quick business), you must listen to Jordan!
How to turn a bestselling book into a community business
Stephanie Baiocchi is the community team of one at IMPACT where she manages the membership behind the bestselling book - They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan.
She single-handedly manages a 3,000+ member community, runs masterminds, hosts 2 annual conferences, and creates manages the on-demand course library.
Frameworks to build a profitable community business
Bri Leever is filled with actionable frameworks for building a profitable community. She has honed them over the years by building communities through her consultancy - Ember Consulting.
In this interview, we explore some of these frameworks. We discuss:
- Why you don't need a huge audience to start a community
- The key differences between "transformative" and "networking" communities
- When to use platforms like Circle vs. Slack for your community
- Strategies for fostering member-to-member connections
- Tips for designing effective ambassador programs
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Lessons from building 8+ communities - hear it from an investor
Scott Amenta might be the most experienced person you'll meet when it comes to building a community business.
He's simultaneously running multiple 7-8 figure community businesses through at Sylva, and building software to help community founders scale.
Building paid communities for top creators like Nik Sharma
Shin Takeda is helping creators make bank by creating done-for-you membership Slack communities for them - with his agency Democratize Knowledge.
Creator funnels their audience, Shin handles end-to-end operations of running their paid community. Obviously the creators love it. But more importantly - members love it too!
In this episode, he discusses his process, strategy and why it all works.
Journey to 50k+ subscribers, $35k+ revenue in 1 year as a creator with a full-time job
Jordan Cutler (@jordancutler) has done what most of us aspire to. He grew his newsletter to 50,000+ subscribers in just one year.
Along the way, he has made $35,000+ in “passive” income, with $20,000+ coming from a cohort-based course on @Maven.
But here's the kicker:
He didn't do it for fame or money. He does it because he genuinely cares about sharing what he is learning and helping others grow.
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Hosting masterminds that lead to a ridiculous retention rate
Ryan Wardell is the CEO and cofounder of Startup Sauce, a private membership for SaaS founders outside of Silicon Valley doing $5k+ in MRR.
This community is special for a couple of reasons:
- It's members are super accomplished CEOs who only have extremely nice things to say about the community.
- The guy who runs it, Ryan, is not a "startup expert". In fact, he has never even been a SaaS founder.
In this episode, Ryan shares his "magic sauce" that has allowed him to get there.
How to host 200+ meetups in 35 countries in one year
Shreman Shrestha is the Head of Community for the Friends of Lenny’s Slack community. This community comes bundled with the Paid subscription for Lenny’s Newsletter and at the time of recording there are 17k+ members in here.
In this episode, Shre discusses how this community is able to organise 200+ in-person meetups per year, challenges with organising a great mentor matching program, working with volunteers and more.
How to build community business that does $400k+/yr
Daniel Vassallo is the cofounder of Small Bets - a private community membership for indie hackers, solopreneurs and wanna-preneurs.
This community recently crossed 5000+ paying members and has been doing $400k+ in annual revenue every year since its inception ~2 yrs ago.
Daniel is a guy filled with hot original takes. He does things differently in this community and it works. Things like charging a one-time fee for a lifetime access or paying guests to do live classes in the community. Or, even the existence of this community itself, which is more than 5,000 members strong, but still very engaged.
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How to build courses that busy professionals love
Kyle Hagge led the community efforts at Morning Brew's Learning division as a Director of Community.
This interview is a “reflection episode” where Kyle takes us back to this time and shares his “magic sauce”. Among other things, he shares how his team decided which courses to pilot, why he chose Circle to host the community and why it's a good idea to automate connections.
Bootstrapping a paid community to 100+ paying members
Charlie Ward is the founder of Ramen Club - a private community of 300+ bootstrapped SaaS entrepreneurs that gives them the support and education to grow their business. In this interview, Charlie shares the origin story of Ramen Club, how he organises the masterminds, how he organises in-person meetups in different cities of the world and more.
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What it takes to build a premium community membership
Erin Halper is the founder/CEO of The Upside - a private community of top independent consultants that gives them the resources and the support that they need to grow their business.
The Upside uses Circle as their community platform. In fact, they were recognized as one of Circle's top performing communities out of more than 10, 000 communities that are hosted there!
In this episode, Erin reveals what she does differently and the mistakes she has learnt from.
Creating a full community events calendar with a team of 2
Clara Ma is the founder of Ask a Chief of Staff, a community membership business that helps Chiefs of Staff level up in their career.
If you are one of her 24k+ followers on Linkedin, you will know how full her events calendar for the community is. So, it came as a shock to me when she told me she and her EA were the only people working on this business.
This episode is a masterclass on building a valuable events calendar in your community.
Don’t try to engage every member the same way
Ece Kurtaraner is the community consultant for Generalist World, a fast growing community membership business that helps generalists grow in their careers.
So, it’s safe to say, Ece knows the secrets of building a community business. Her key insight - "Don’t overthink it, don’t try to make it perfect and keep experimenting."
How to host a memorable online event with a guest
Michelle Varghese is the community manager for Small Bets, the largest private online community for entrepreneurs with over 5000 members.
In this episode, she dives into the practical aspects of running 5-10 live guest classes per month at Small Bets. She shares the best practices she's discovered and the mistakes she has seen other people make.
How a challenge can 5x your community growth
Anthony Castrio is the founder and CEO of Indie Worldwide, a private community of bootstrapped founders.
In this interview he shares his revenue, how he attracted new members in the early days using a challenge, tips for organising a good event and goes deep on the challenges with being an entrepreneur.
How to build a business around a free community
Grace Ling is the founder and CEO of Design Buddies, a free community with 64k members on Discord and a total audience of 150k.
Here she leads a vibrant online community, does in-person meetups around the world, sponsored partnerships, helps designers land jobs and is even organising a conference.
How to build a community business without an audience
Tatiana Figueiredo is the founder of Business of Community - an online school and community that helps founders create profitable businesses by building communities. Treat this episode as her masterclass on building such a business yourself.
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How to turn a free community into a paid membership business
Chris Samila is the cofounder of Partnership Leaders - a private community of 1500+ partnership professionals.
In this episode, he shares how he took it from an email thread → free Slack community → paid membership business.
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Going from 30% to 80% conversion rate. in the application stage
Rahul Desai is the General Manager of Chief of Staff network - a private community of Chiefs of Staff
In this episode, he shares all the little things they did to go from 30% to 80% conversion rate in the application process of their membership.
Back in the old days, we were on a mission to help people carve out a career in community management
So, we interviewed 25+ community professionals from companies like Morning Brew, OpenAI, Notion and Rails Foundation. and asked them how they got their awesome jobs.
You can check out their answers here:
OLD-BUT-GOLD Season 1Learn what other community businesses are doing right
Sign up for the free crash course that teaches you the best of what founders/operators of top community membership businesses have already figured out.
– compiled by your friends at Curated Connections