✨ 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)
Building a community allows you to create value while stepping off the content treadmill. Dream outcome, right?
- Good news? It has never been easier to start an online community.
- Bad news? That community is worthless unless members are creating value for each other.
Creating a community like that is difficult but not impossible. Because we’ve all seen communities where this magic happens. So how can you recreate this magic?
I don’t know. I’ve been building online communities as a consultant for 4+ years and I still don’t know! That’s why I’ve set out to find the answers. Here’s my 3-step process:
- I seek the founders/operators who have created this magic in their communities and invite them to my podcast.
- There I ask them to spill their secrets. They teach me things that make me feel stupid for not knowing them earlier.
- Then, I compile their embarrassing lessons into this email course.
- No audience, no problem (Tatiana)
- How to build a business around a free community (Grace of Design Buddies)
- How to be a bad event host (Anthony from IW and Michelle from Small Bets)
- How to run multiple events per week as a solo founder (Clara from Ask a CoS)
- How to run a successful masterminds program (Erin from The Upside)
- How to create excitement with the application process (Nikki from TCC)
- Free vs subscription vs one-time - which pricing model is right for you?
- Steps to paywall your free community (Chris from Partnership Leaders)
- Low-effort program ideas to engage members (Ece from Generalist World)
- How to create events that engage busy professionals (Kyle Hagge)
- Where members can count on each other (Ryan from Startup Sauce)
- How to build a community for your Pro newsletter subscribers (Shreman)
- Finding leaders in your community and delegate (Ecommerce fuel)
- How to hire community experts (Milly)
- How to unlock viral word-of-mouth growth in your community (Karina)
- How to start a conference (Chameli)
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
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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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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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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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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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:
Learn 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
