The CX 068: Community-Powered Courses (CPCs) with Jordan Godbey

The CX 068: Community-Powered Courses (CPCs) with Jordan Godbey

Jordan Godbey: What's happening is with a monthly pricing, you're essentially reminding that person every single month that they're being charged and you're having them make 12 decisions.

So if they're going to stick around for a year, it's like, "Do I still want this? Do I still want this? Am I still getting value from this?" Instead of just having them make one decision on day one, is this the outcome that you want? Is this the transformation that you want? And do you believe that me and my program can help you get there? And if the answer is yes, then let's commit and sign up and get on that journey.

Jillian Benbow: Oh my gosh. Welcome back to another episode of The Community Experience podcast with myself, Jillian. I'm your hostess with the mostest, and I just had the most fun talking to Jordan Godbey, who if you don't know, he's the official Circle app guy and his company is growthcommunity.co. And he is one of the first people I ever heard use the term "community-powered courses" and I was immediately envious because I was like, "Wait a minute, I do that. That's what I've been working on." But then getting to know him via Twitter and the internet and whatnot, immediately it was like, "This guy's awesome." So I had to have him on the show and I was right. He's hilarious. He's amazing. We have such an in depth conversation about what even is a community-powered course and how important that is and just the changing market of online courses and communities and how this is the best thing ever and we're totally not biased. So stick around. Listen to my interview with Jordan right now on The Community Experience podcast.

Jillian Benbow: All right. I am so excited to get this interview started with my new friend, Jordan Godbey. And Jordan does a little thing called community-powered courses. That is his jam. And actually Jordan, you are the first person I think I heard actually use the term community-powered courses. Because I remember seeing it on Twitter and was like, "Huh! That's what we've been saying." Like, "Where does this term come from?" And so I kind of got to know you there. You're a Circle Expert. Tell us your story, Jordan. Who are you?

Jordan Godbey: Yeah. Thank you for having me on. Excited to be here.

Jillian Benbow: Of course.

Jordan Godbey: So who am I? I've done a lot of things and most recently, now, I am a Circle Expert and I work with coaches and course creators to help them create transformational learning communities. I really fell in love with courses over the last five years or so. Let me take you back to the beginning and let you know how I got here. So-

Jillian Benbow: Ooh, let's go in the way back machine.

Jordan Godbey: Yes. So growing up, I was always kind of the IT kid, the technology guy and just loved building computers. I was the kid that delivered my mom a printout of all of the exact parts and components that I needed for Christmas and it's like, "You need to buy every single thing on this list, please. Nothing missing and no different pieces." So I could build my own computer so that I could of course play the best video games and beat everyone online. It was Counter-Strike back in the day. What's funny is I was just reflecting on it and we had communities back then, even though no one ever thought of them that way, but we had IRC channels. If you remember IRC or know what that is, it was super old school, like chat rooms basically. The Discord people out there will know what I'm talking about. And that's how you found different teams and people to play with.

And so I thought that that was so cool that anyone with a computer could build a server. And then I learned how to copy and paste a bunch of HTML and CSS and make a website out of my bedroom, which I thought was mind blowing that they just let anybody do this thing. And just being exposed to the internet as a young teenager growing up and realizing how powerful it was. It was incredible. It was, yeah, really mind blowing, couldn't get enough of it. And so then time to go off to college and of course I majored in computer science, right? No. So I majored in French much to my parents chagrin and they're like, "What are you talking about? How are you going to major in French?"

Jillian Benbow: Sacrebleu!

Jordan Godbey: Exactly, that's what my dad said. And yeah, I think part of it was I have a bit of a rebellious streak in me and I knew that the logical thing to do would be keep going in computers, but I had learned so much of it on my own, almost all of it on my own and just with other people and the internet. And I really became a self learner and it became really easy for me. So I didn't want to spend all that money to maybe relearn a lot of the stuff that I'd already learned. So I decided what's something I can't really teach myself but I'm also interested in, and that was languages and French. So I never really wanted to be a French teacher or anything like that, but my dream was to combine my love of technology and computers with French and with languages. So I thought, how do I do that? I'll work for a big company and I'll work internationally and that kind of thing.

And funny enough, I ended up achieving that dream pretty early in my life. So my last year of college, I ended up... I lived in France for two years during university and then I ended up working for GE Energy that last year. And so all summer I was in Belfort, France and I was working on this big IT project. And so every day I would go to work and all my colleagues were French and everything that we did was in French. and it was awesome. At the end of the summer, it was like, "Wow, I did it."

But then at the same time there was this letdown, there was this disappointment of I achieved the dream that I thought I wanted to do with the rest of my career, and then I realized this is not at all what I want to do with the rest of my life. So the other thing that I had kind of remembered about myself is I've always had this entrepreneurial spirit. And so that's one of the things that drew me to the internet. And so I started a marketing agency doing digital marketing and I feel like digital marketing is this beautiful combination between entrepreneurship and technology because you're looking at problems and how to communicate them and how to find people and how to create value.

So I did that for a while and the agency life can be great and it can also be super hard and cause a lot of burnout. I felt like I was on a mouse wheel for a long time. And after doing that for about 10 years, realized that's also not what I want to do with the rest of my life. So a client ended up giving me an offer that was too good to refuse and that offer was, "Hey, you're great at digital marketing and technology and all of this stuff, business. We are a bunch of doctors and radiologists. We have the best content in the world, but we don't know how to share it and we want to build an online course. Can you help us build this online course? We'll give you all the content, we'll give you some funding, we'll give you free rein and you can just... You know, can you make that successful?"

I took that offer and said, "Absolutely." And I was looking for a change, I was looking for a switch from services into online products. And so this was the perfect way to start doing that. I ended up building an online course in the radiology space and it was a total trial by fire experience. Learned a lot about building online businesses and online courses. We were on Teachable at the time and we pushed Teachable to its limits. We just had all these ideas and we customized it and customized it. From there, I ended up just working with lots and lots of course creators. So I ended up leaving that job. We grew that from absolutely zero. I set the business model and ended up growing it to over a million dollars a year in about 18 months. When I left, they were doing over $2 million a year. And then I ended up going back into the consulting world and I just started working with lots and lots of course creators.

I loved that model and I loved courses because courses have absolutely changed my life and transformed my life because like I said, my education is in French, something that I don't use at all. So I've had to fill in a lot of gaps on my own, and I did that through online courses. And so I'm a total believer in being able to level up your skills by doing that. And then working with other course creators and helping them share their wisdom and experience with the world was something that I've just been super passionate about.

Jillian Benbow: I love that. It's so fun to hear people's journeys to how they get into community in particular and just like the... I think we all do that thing where we're like, "I know what I want to do." And then you do it and you're like a little disillusioned and it's like, "Oh." So walk us through, you kind of found your way there, now you are the Circle Expert, as you say on your Twitter, and you have your own course about community-powered courses and you've just really found this niche.

Jordan Godbey: Mm-hmm.

Jillian Benbow: How did you get to that very specific place on the internet?

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, so when working with all of these creators, these course creators, and even when I was building that course, one of the biggest challenges with online courses, especially the old school model that I call it or the self-paced model is they're just not very effective at creating transformation and change. They have an abysmal completion rate. And so if you don't complete the course or the majority of the course, you're not going to get what you're looking for out of it. The problem is that they are information based and information heavy and these days we just don't need any more information. Most people kind of know what they need to do. They might be missing a few little details here and there, but really the value these days comes in the implementation and that's where all of the challenge is.

And so I just found that this model, I had used it and I was able to successfully implement a lot of the things I had learned, but I think I'm in the minority in a lot of cases. Most courses have under 10% completion or success rate, which means the vast, vast majority of people are buying these courses and they're not really using them, they're not getting the value. I know I have a bunch of courses sitting on my digital shelf just collecting dust that I thought, "Ooh, this would be interesting, you know, I should learn this thing." And I just never got around to doing it.

So a few years ago, actually, when I was doing the radiology course, I ended up hiring a Teachable expert to help us customize our course and that person ended up being Rudy Santino. And if you know Rudy, he's now one of the co-founders of Circle. So this is how the connection goes back. And what Circle really discovered early on was courses are great, information is great, but it's all about the community and it's all about the journey, the shared experience that we're all on. So that when you're showing up, it's not you sitting in your room all alone by yourself watching these videos and feeling totally isolated. That's just a terrible learning experience. The way to do it is with other people, with support, with feedback, with motivation, with inspiration. And you feel like you're in a tribe, you're in this collective group.

So they identified that somewhat early on and have gone really hard after that. And after working with so many course creators, I really felt strongly that they were right and that they are leading the next wave of online education and coaching and training, which now we're calling community-powered courses. So that's kind of how I arrived here. And so I've really been helping people transform those old school courses into these new engaging, interactive community-powered courses.

Jillian Benbow: I think it's so important to talk about the thing no one really wants to talk about, which is course completion rates. I think you're generous with 10%. I've been on a deep dive looking at academic papers and just like, is there a definitive percentage? 5% to 15% completion rate seems to be the... I can't get any more specific than that in anything I've found. The courses you go and you do yourself, there's no accountability other than your own personal, like however you're intrinsically motivated, which I mean I've also found out that I'm not. So you get hopped up on the marketing or the bonuses you'll get if you buy by this day.

And then because you have lifetime access because whatever, you're cool. And then maybe you look at a little bit of it and you're like, "Oh, I actually have to do work." And then that's it, right? It's one of those things where I think a lot of consumers are kind of like, "Ooh, I won't talk about this." But if you ever ask anyone like, "How many online courses do you own that you have never finished?" Everyone's like, "Oh, so many." It's kind of like the question of like, "How many domains do you own?" Everyone has a handful at least. But then on the flip side, the people creating the courses, nobody wants to sit and watch a masterclass anymore. I don't want to sit and watch video for hours of just someone looking at a camera talking to me. And so it's really, it's just changing the expectation because the market is so saturated to get people to choose your course, to choose your experience, it has to be an actual experience.

Jordan Godbey: Absolutely.

Jillian Benbow: No question. It was just a diatribe of opinions.

Jordan Godbey: No. I mean, I think it's really, really important to understand how things have changed since the early days of online courses. Because I think back to Frank Kern, as someone that always comes to mind, these early internet marketing guys, because it was the Wild Wild West. Anyone can build a course and you can make millions of dollars and you just put it all out there. And one of the things that they use to demonstrate their value was how many hours of videos you're going to get. They're like, "We're going to slam this huge stack of videos on your desk. Look how impressive that is. You're going to get 40 hours of content." Who has time to go through 40 hours of content, right?

Jillian Benbow: Right. I'm like, "Can you show me how to do this whole thing in two hours? Cool."

Jordan Godbey: Yes. So you just pointed out a huge differentiator in today's because you're like, how do you get someone to buy your course instead of someone else's course? And now, people don't want more information, they want a shortcut. How can I get there as fast as possible? Don't make me watch 40 hours of video. Can we get there in a week or two weeks? And does that look like maybe three live sessions? Right? Something like that.

The biggest differentiator is back then, they were trying to differentiate their course by how much content you were going to get. But that's not what people actually want these days. What they want is they want access to the course creator, to the expert. They want to be able to ask questions. They want to get actual feedback. They want to get help and support. And there wasn't a great model to do that until recently. There just weren't the tools. Are you just going to email this person back and forth? That doesn't really work because you're still in that one-on-one type of you're all by yourself model. And so now, being able to do it inside of a community where the expert is able to actually serve 100 people or 1,000 people all at the same time and it almost doesn't take that much more time on their part.

As the community grows, sure, there's going to be more work to do, but it's not like every student is active every day all at the same time. There's still going to be that 80 20 effect of some people are active and other people are doing something else right now, but they're on this collective shared journey with you. So someone might ask a question and then the course creator answers it and that answer then benefits 100 other people who had that same question. So it didn't actually take any more time.

And I think when you're able to say that you're going to get access to me on a regular basis, I'm going to actually look at some of your work and give you feedback, that's hugely valuable. Because a lot of these people would say, "Yeah, we can get on a one-on-one call for a thousand bucks an hour." But not a lot of people would take them up on that. So when you have this community-powered course model, you're able to do so much more at scale and offer something that is really scarce, which is getting actual access and feedback from that person.

Jillian Benbow: I'm curious what you think about what's the difference between what you would call a community-powered course versus a cohort-based course? Is there a nuance between those two?

Jordan Godbey: That's a great question. I think there's a lot of confusion around these two and there's all these acronyms flying around and all these new-

Jillian Benbow: So many acronyms.

Jordan Godbey: So CBCs and CPCs.

Jillian Benbow: MOOCs.

Jordan Godbey: Exactly.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah.

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, so-

Jillian Benbow: That one, I always have to look up, I'm like, "Wait a minute, this sounds like a weird... " Like, "I don't like this word because it kind of sounds like a hate crime or something." I don't know what it is about it, but I'm like, "There's something about this word I really don't like." But then I always have to look it up and like, "Massive Online Courses, got it."

Jordan Godbey: Yeah. So the cohort-based courses, the main difference is that they start at a certain date and end on a certain date and they're typically something like four or eight weeks long, very structured. We're going to have calls three times a week and each week is going to be a module and that kind of thing. And I think of them as a sprint, whereas the community-powered courses, they're more like an evergreen model where there are live events and there's a rhythm and a routine inside of the community, but you can kind of join at any time. And a lot of times the cohort-based courses, they're all delivered live and you show up to all of the Zoom calls and that's how you're getting all of the information and the interaction. Sometimes there's a community component to cohort-based courses, but other times there's not. And it's just the live calls is where all of the interaction and engagement happens.

So on the community-powered course side, you have the community as the foundation, that's the home where everyone is living all day every day. Then a lot of times, there's a pre-recorded course inside of it. So there's content that you can go through self-paced as soon as you join and you can start learning as you're waiting for the live call schedule to roll around. So maybe there's Q&As happening every Wednesday, there might be coaching sessions on Mondays and Fridays. And it's just more of an organic living evergreen environment.

Jillian Benbow: I was partially asking that to see if what I think community-powered courses is the same as what you think, because I feel like you have a pretty strong grasp. And yay! We are aligned, which whatever. If we weren't, that's okay too. But-

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, this is new territory. Everybody has a different opinion and vision and understanding and I'm sure it's going to continue to change and evolve.

Jillian Benbow: Oh, absolutely. As community builders I think we naturally, we like to talk to each other and say like, "Oh, well, I tried this and it worked or this was a flop." And we'll figure it out together just like what works best and we'll figure it out with our communities because as they're going through the things we design, we'll see where the blocks are and whatnot.

Jordan Godbey: Absolutely. That's actually one of the biggest shifts or differences that I see in building community-powered courses versus building the old school courses. So that shift is what you just described is we're going to try things and some of them are going to flop and that's okay then we're going to try other things and they're going to work really well. And in this type of environment, that is really effective because it's live and you're sharing with people through transparency like, hey, I'm trying to build the best program that meets all of our needs. I can't know what all of those things are going to be up front because the world is constantly spinning and changing. So there might be needs that pop up next month that weren't here today. So I'm going to have to adjust how I'm running and delivering this program.

And in the old school method, it's like the waterfall of technology design where you have to build the entire thing up front, it has to be 100% done. You have to build the whole skyscraper before you let anyone inside of it and then you release it and you hope that it's perfect, you hope it's exactly what they needed and wanted, and you hope that you don't get the reaction of, "Nah, that's not what I wanted, that's not for me." Because then you just wasted a ton of time and energy and money and that's a really risky way of doing things.

And so this new model with community-powered courses, I love it because it's so much faster to launch. You really launch with a vision, a transformation statement and saying this is the journey that I'm going to be taking people on. If you're interested in that and you want to come along on this journey, then join today. And there doesn't have to be a whole lot of stuff inside when you join because again, nobody wants the 40 hours of videos on day one. As soon as I join, you literally can't even go through it.

So if you were to say, "I'm going to release two hours of content every single week as part of the program, plus I'm going to be live two or three times a week and I'm going to be in the community where we're going to be able to talk back and forth asynchronously, you're going to ask questions, I'm going to respond. I'm also going to give you guys some interesting prompts or ideas or resources to look at." It's this ongoing thing where it's not overwhelming and you might find out that you thought Q&A is what everybody wanted and actually they want something more like coffee chats and hangouts. Because one of the things that was not possible in the old school method was creating connection between all of the students and participants going through. And I'm continuously amazed inside of my own community that people really want connection.

It sounds so obvious, but as human beings that's one of the things that we value the most. And in this solopreneur world and online creator world, it can be super lonely. Nobody understands what I do. I sit in my room all day on my computer, my parents don't get it. They're like, "You're just making YouTube videos." And so it's actually really nice to have an hour a week and show up with a bunch of other people that are in that exact same situation and sharing wins and sharing challenges and pain and confusions and all of that stuff so that you're like, "Hey, all these people get me. These are my people."

Jillian Benbow: I think one of my favorite things about that, because similar with our communities is when someone has a problem and immediately someone else in the community knows how to fix it and jumps on and helps. So it's like everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, we all do, but you feel safe. You're in an environment where you feel safe to be like, "I can't figure this thing out. Does anybody have any ideas?" And nine times out of 10, someone not only has an idea but they've gone through it before and they just have the answer and just the amount of support, peer support, member support that happens and the acceleration of problem solving because of that, it's one of my favorite things to see in community. And especially with this type of model where it's courses, but it's this dynamic, engaging thing alongside community. It's just magic because if a couple people are working on the same thing, we have this group going through what we're calling accelerators with one of our courses about email marketing, Email Marketing Magic.

And so the fact that people are in the same, it's that sprint model, they're working on generally the same things at the same time but asynchronously, but then they can come together and someone can be like, "Hey, I'm trying to get this thing and ConvertKit to work." Like the lead magnet and the segment, all of that stuff that to me is just like, "Oh! Not my jam." And the fact that someone else might be like, "Oh, I just tried that and this is how I did it." And then the person's like, "Okay, cool." And then they're talking about, "Oh, well, how are you doing your titles," or whatever and just the collaboration. To your point, it's like you don't work at a company where you can have that with a team. It's almost like you're solopreneur team is this peer group. It's really great.

Jordan Godbey: And the listeners won't be able to see the smile on my face. But as you were describing that, literally I was like, it's like magic and then you said it. And so it is an incredible feeling as the community owner or the course creator to get a notification, like this person has a question. So you click on it, you go in the community and someone else has already answered it for you. Like, "What?" They're expecting me to do all the work and me to answer all the questions. You feel like you have this huge responsibility and burden that everybody wants you.

And people coming from a coaching background where maybe they were doing the one-on-one coaching, it's all on you. You have to have all the answers, you got to know everything, you got to have a good response and there's nobody else that's going to jump in and do your work for you so to speak. But in this model, it's incredible how you get this collaboration and you get this serendipity where everyone is like, "Hey, we're all in the same boat here. We're all doing the same thing. We're going to help each other out because we all want each other to win." Like you described, it's this private safe space where we can be really open, really vulnerable and it creates just this incredible connection between all of the members. And every time I see it, it just always puts a smile on my face.

Jillian Benbow: Something I've been thinking about a lot that I love is this model... At SPI, we've done it all. We have evergreen courses. That's always been kind of a signature thing. Last year, we played around with cohort-based courses and then this year, I was kind of like, "We need something that's in between these." Because the evergreen courses, as we know, there's no accountability. So people will get really excited because their marketing's good and buy things, but then if they're not going through the program, even though we have the money, I'm like, "No, I don't like this." If people aren't going through it, we need to do something. And then with cohort-based courses, they're amazing but they take a lot of work and they require a lot of commitment from the people doing them. And then with all that comes a pretty high price tag because there's labor involved and then you're limited to people who can align with the schedule you have set.

And a lot of people have full-time jobs or they're students or they have kids or whatever or they live in a different country and it's 3:00 AM for them. It works and they're great, don't get me wrong. But I just had this, especially for who our customers are, I had this kind of like, "Ah, we need something that solves for more people." And that's where community-powered courses came. And I thought I'd invented something and then it was like, "Wait, other people are doing this." And I think we're all doing it in our own ways. There's going to be little details, but I think it's great to figure out a way to make things more accessible to more people and then also have that accountability piece built in because I think that's the big part that's missing.

You see a lot of accountability in cohort-based courses because people pay a lot of money and it's like it's from this day to this day and then it's over. And so creating this kind of middle ground, I think one, helps more people. Geography becomes less important, time zones become less important, but you still have that accountability. I'd love to hear your thoughts on community-powered courses and the accountability piece, but also then the completion. And when I say completion, it doesn't always have to be like, "Oh, you got 100% through this curriculum because Circle says you did it." It's like the mastery, right? The skill mastery is the ultimate goal.

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, and I think you described that really well that each one of these vehicles, they're all just vehicles to deliver that value or deliver the information or the transformation and each one has pros and cons. So do-it-yourself, self-paced courses are typically pretty cheap. They started off in the early days, really, really expensive and nowadays it's like, "What? You want me to pay $4,000 to watch a bunch of videos by myself? No way. No, I'm going to pass on that." Now, we see it's almost a race to the bottom. No matter how good your information is, how good the content or how much content, you're going to struggle to charge more than a couple hundred dollars.

You see a lot of people that's like, "Here's my $25 course." And if that's your business, it takes a lot of course sales to make your world go around and it's really hard to get a lot of customers no matter what business that you're in. So that model's not great and we know that the success rate is not great on those. And then like you said, on the cohort-based model, super high accountability, you're on Zoom with people for, I don't know, 40 hours sometimes by the end, so it's really, really high touch. But typically, very expensive. So most of them start at maybe $1,000 and go to $5,000, even maybe $10,000 or more depending on what the transformation is.

And I was on a couple cohort-based courses recently. They were kind of hybrids of community-based course. So one was right of passage and a phenomenal course, but I had this surprise trip come up unexpectedly and I ended up going to Europe for a week and that really threw a wrench in that cohort-based course for me. So I ended up missing a week and a half of the live events because they were way too late and I was busy being in Europe and doing that whole thing and then I'm like, "Oh, I'm super behind and it's too hard to catch up." So I got value out of it, but that was unexpected. So they're very rigid. It doesn't take in account life and the unexpectedness that might happen.

That's really why I love the CPC model, the community courses because I feel like they're the best of those worlds. They're flexible. You're typically in it for, let's say, a year. You get access to the community, you get access to the recordings, and you get access to the live coaching and live calls and then you can choose the season that you're in. Maybe you want to go really hard for a couple of months and attend all of the calls and be really active and then things might change where that's not as much of a priority. But then you can always follow up a few months later and get reintegrated and it's more of a longer term participation and involvement. And I feel like typically the prices are somewhere in the middle between the really high cohort-based and then the really low self-paced. So it's just a fascinating model that a lot of people are moving to.

Jillian Benbow: I'm curious, so you mentioned pricing structure. Is that what you recommend for people getting into this, like annual membership pricing?

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, I don't think monthly works very well in this world. A lot of people are scared to charge more so they're like, "I want my thing to be $99 a month." But they still have this expectation that it's going to take the student or the customer a long time to get the transformation on the other side. And I'm like, "Okay, so how long do you think it's going to take?" And they might say, "Oh, probably six to 12 months." It's like, "Okay, so then why don't you just charge for six months or 12 months?" And because what's happening is with a monthly pricing, you're essentially reminding that person every single month that they're being charged and you're having them make 12 decisions.

So if they're going to stick around for a year, it's like, "Do I still want this? Do I still want this? Am I still getting value from this?" Instead of just having them make one decision on day one, is this the outcome that you want? Is this the transformation that you want? And do you believe that me and my program can help you get there? And if the answer is yes, then let's commit and sign up and get on that journey. And there might be some months where you're not super active and others where you're very highly active, but you're going to get the value out of it. If we can get you to that end goal and you're going to put in the time and the work, then it's going to be more than worth it for you.

So I feel like that's the best model from a business standpoint, for that creator to get the value out of all of the time and effort that they're putting in to build that community and all of that content. And I think it's just simple on the customer side as well. Just have them make one decision.

Jillian Benbow: I totally agree. It's funny, I was just on a call yesterday where people, it was like an AMA, people could ask me questions about community and someone asked why we didn't do monthly subscriptions for our communities. I was like, "Because it's a pain." It's 12 transactions instead of one. but also people's cards change a lot. I had no . Idea until I had a membership I was running where it seemed like every month at least one person, either they'd canceled that card and got a new one or whatever it was or they forgot which card they had attached to what and then it didn't work. This was before a Circle had their native paywall.

It's much easier now because now members can just go in and manage their own cards and whatnot. But yeah, it was amazing how many people that maybe just are, for whatever reason, their card was declined and then they got removed and then they're like, "Oh my gosh, did you kick me out? Did I break a rule?" And so we go look them up in Stripe and it was just like, "No, it looks like your card just expired and you didn't update it." And then we have to add them back in and the amount of time that takes on our end. So I always recommend, "Eh, I would do less." Like have less transaction points. Also, anytime there's just things happen and then you're paying all these transaction fees and when you don't need to be and... Anyways...

Jordan Godbey: I agree.

Jillian Benbow: And I think it makes sense to have people commit. That was another reason we switched to quarterly. And with our Pro memberships in particular, we want people to commit for a quarter because we know it's overwhelming when they join and we really just ask them to trust us in this that like, "Hey, the first month is, you're just figuring out the lay of the land. You need to give it a quarter. To get matched in a mastermind group, to find your people, it's not an overnight thing." And so we try to be pretty clear about that, but that is part of why we've gone to quarterly. And that makes sense with CPCs. Now, I just want to be like, "You know a CPC?" If you hopefully are old enough to know that reference. It's a song, everybody. You down with O.P.P.? It's Naughty by Nature.

Okay, anyways, homework everyone that didn't get the reference. I'm aging myself. Interview over. No, I'm just kidding. But yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense to, from the customer experience, the community experience side, really set it up as like there is a commitment when you join this and the minimum commitment is six months, a year, whatever because you can't get that outcome in a month. You just can't.

Jordan Godbey: Exactly.

Jillian Benbow: And it's okay.

Jordan Godbey: It's okay, right?

Jillian Benbow: Yeah.

Jordan Godbey: Because everyone's going to be at a slightly different part of their journey when they join. So some really newbie, beginner type people that are just getting started, there's a lot to learn. And then there's also a lot to do, there's a lot to implement and execute. Like you were saying, set up ConvertKit and do all the automations and all the triggers. That might take someone a day who really knows what they're doing and super comfortable and savvy with that. That could take another person a month because it's the first time that they've ever tried to build a system like that and understand it. And so yeah, it's getting them to commit to the end goal and realizing some people are going to go faster and some people are going to go slower. But our goal is that we're going to help you get to your finish line, whatever that looks like for you.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah, and make some friends along the way. Right?

Jordan Godbey: That's right.

Jillian Benbow: You got that community part built in. Now, you got a peer network where you can ask those questions that your family does not understand because they're like, "What do you do again?"

Jordan Godbey: That's right. And the funny thing is, so many people have made some of their best friends on the internet and it's not that weird anymore to be like, "I met this girlfriend on the internet and they're going to come meet me in real life." 20 years ago, your parents would be like, "They're going to kill you." Yeah, so creepy. Now-

Jillian Benbow: And maybe they would, but I feel a lot safer now.

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, and when you're in these private communities with people for a while, you see them, you connect with them, you're in DMs, you're in live calls, you respond to each other, you really form real connections. And it's based on common interests and commonalities that in the olden days you're supposed to know all your neighbors and that's your whole friend group and community group. And it's like maybe we really don't have anything in common with our neighbors anymore. We work in completely different ways. Some people work online, some people work in retail, in factories or whatever it is. And it's just like there's not a whole lot of shared ground there. But when we find these sacred spaces online where it's like, "Wow, these people understand exactly what I'm going through. They're going through the same things themselves and it doesn't matter that they live on the other side of the country or the other side of the world." This is someone who you really form a real connection and bond with.

And so it kind of ticks all of the boxes. You get the development, the learning and also just the human connection and friendship and camaraderie. So they can be very powerful. And I think that's something that a lot of maybe first time creators or community builders, they don't necessarily push on the value a lot of is that you're going to make some amazing connections and friendships. It's not like something you can guarantee or force, but you're creating this container and a lot of times this beautiful serendipity happens where all of these relationships are formed and created and it's a beautiful byproduct of what you have created as the owner or the founder.

Jillian Benbow: It's so true. I do just want to throw out there, anybody come for me or sue me, definitely use common sense when meeting internet friends in real life. Don't be meeting your Craigslist friends, okay? We're talking a very different thing.

Jordan Godbey: Very different.

Jillian Benbow: This is not missed connections on Craigslist, which is another major throwback. That one I feel like you got. Maybe not the song. Okay, well, this is a great time to switch it up to our rapid fire round. Actually, before we do that, before we do that, I want everyone to know about your course because if anybody is like, "Um, this sounds great, but I don't know where to start." You do know where to start and you bring people through it. So let's plug what you got going on right now because I think people should know about this.

Jordan Godbey: All right. So I have been helping course creators get onto Circle for the last two years or so, even long before there was any actual course features on Circle. So if you aren't aware, Circle recently announced their full-fledged LMS, their course features. So they are a course platform now as well as a community platform and just having an amazing vision and roadmap for where they're going to take things. So it's going to keep getting better and better. But to kind of celebrate the official launch of Circle courses, I built a course called Build a Community-Powered Course and it happens to be on Circle and it's a super meta, meta, meta course where I take people through the journey of what's the difference? How do you transition maybe an old school course or if you're just starting out from scratch, what's the right way to go about building a community-powered course?

There's strategy involved. We talk about things like business model and pricing, but then there's also the tech side because that can be a really big hurdle and challenge. If you don't have the right tech set up, it's going to be confusing and it's going to cause friction and it's going to just kill your engagement. And that's been the problem all along when people are like, "My course is over here and my community's over there on Facebook or Slack." That's a terrible formula for engagement and success.

So my course takes you through A to Z, how to build a CPC on Circle. And we go through all of the best practices that I've learned from working with top creators on Circle. Things like onboarding and automations and all of the different settings and paywalls and all of that cool stuff. And it's a work in progress. So you're not going to have 40 hours of videos to watch when you sign up. There's some pre-recorded stuff there. And then there's community discussions, there's live calls, there's Q&A and support and all that great stuff and a bunch of people just like you in there.

Jillian Benbow: I love that too. We build in public as well, so I appreciate that just by being a member of this course, you get that community experience of what it will be like for your members once you launch your course. So I think you get this kind of just deep appreciation for little details that you might otherwise not have. And you have a support network for when you're like launching your community-powered course.

Jordan Godbey: Exactly.

Jillian Benbow: Meta. So where can people find that?

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, so that's at growthcommunity.co and you'll find a bunch of things there. I also offer a done-for-you service for people that are like, "I don't know, that sounds like a lot. I'm just busy. Can you do it all for me?" Yes, we can. But if you want to learn how to do it yourself, you can join our coaching community and we've got links all over the website that you can find.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. It's a great website. I've been secretly looking at it in the background.

Jordan Godbey: Thank you.

Jillian Benbow: Okay. Now, we're going to do the rapid fire. I wanted to make sure we talked about the course because I get excited in rapid fire and I would feel bad if I forgot. Okay, are you ready?

Jordan Godbey: Let's do it.

Jillian Benbow: Just stretch it out. There are no wrong answers. So I'll ask you a question, it's kind of like first thing that comes to mind response, hence rapid fire.

Jordan Godbey: Short answers?

Jillian Benbow: Short answers.

Jordan Godbey: All right.

Jillian Benbow: And I'll do my best to not ask follow up questions even though I want to, because people always say something and I'm like, "Wait, we can't not address this." So we'll see how it goes. Fortunately, there are no actual rules, so we do what we want. All right. Jordan, when you... And I think I might know this. Jordan, when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Jordan Godbey: I don't think you know this.

Jillian Benbow: Oh, good. Even better.

Jordan Godbey: An astronaut.

Jillian Benbow: Nice. I was wrong. How do you define community?

Jordan Godbey: Wow, that's actually a hard one.

Jillian Benbow: The hardest easy question you'll ever be asked.

Jordan Godbey: Yeah. A place with people like you on a similar journey that support, motivate, and inspire you.

Jillian Benbow: What is something on your bucket list that you have done?

Jordan Godbey: Been to Africa. I lived in Africa for two weeks with an African family in college. It was amazing.

Jillian Benbow: That is amazing. When you say Africa, where In Africa?

Jordan Godbey: It was in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Yeah. When I found out I was going there, I'm like, "What? Where?"

Jillian Benbow: I will have to consult a map after this, but that's amazing.

Jordan Godbey: It was West Africa, French West Africa. It was incredible.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah, I can only imagine. Okay, flip question. What is something on that same bucket list that you have not yet done?

Jordan Godbey: I think it would be a cool milestone to have my company generate $1 million a year in revenue.

Jillian Benbow: That would be a baller goal. What is a book you just love and think everyone should read or just think is great? It doesn't matter if it's fiction or nonfiction.

Jordan Godbey: It's the book that I'm finishing right now, it's called You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero. It is so good. And it's all about money mindset, and money is this thing that everyone has an opinion and an emotion about whether it's good or it's bad or you're greedy or it's evil. But it is a great mindset book. I can't recommend it enough.

Jillian Benbow: Say the name again. You Are a Badass at Money.

Jordan Godbey: You Are a Badass at Making Money.

Jillian Benbow: At Making money. All right. Added to the list. You actually already live somewhere amazing, and I'll let you tell the audience that one. But if you could live anywhere else in the world, where would you live?

Jordan Godbey: So I live in Queretaro, Mexico and it is amazing, but the next place that I would want to live would be Amsterdam. Very different.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah, that's a world of difference.

Jordan Godbey: Yeah. One of my favorite cities in the world. I think I've been six times now and every time I'm there, it's just magical.

Jillian Benbow: I have never been, and it's funny how the... See, I'm breaking my own rules. And I'd love to go, but it's funny how the reputation of Amsterdam as I get older changes because when you're younger, everyone's like, "You go to Amsterdam to party." And it's like, oh, there are no rules, it's crazy. Now, when I talk to people and they say they're going to Amsterdam, it's never... Well, and I can be wrong, but it's never about partying. It's about all the other things. And it's just funny to me how it just, it's constantly a place people love, but for such different reasons.

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, it's funny how it has that stereotype and connotation and I don't even think about that anymore because I'm not too much of a party guy. But the party is really contained in the very hyper center. And every time I go, I find myself getting farther and farther away from the center and it just keeps getting better and better and better. So I love being in the kind of local neighborhoods and the vibe is just amazing.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah, that's exactly... And even when I was younger, people were going to Amsterdam, I'm like, "I'm good." I feel like this is a weird... This is going to become a tragic movie. I'm good with not doing that. And now I'm like, "Ooh, Amsterdam."

Jordan Godbey: You definitely got to go.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. Okay, final question. How do you want to be remembered?

Jordan Godbey: Wow, that is a good one. I want to be remembered as someone who loved his family very well, lived in integrity with myself and doing the things that I say that I'm going to do and being brave and bold and courageous to break through any challenges or beliefs or fears or limitations that might have held me back.

Jillian Benbow: I love it. That's so thoughtful. Oh, this has been so fun. I think you're going to have to come back. We're going to have to talk about community-powered courses again as this becomes more of a norm and just lessons learned and things that we... We can both report out on how it's going.

Jordan Godbey: This was awesome.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah.

Jordan Godbey: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Jillian Benbow: Of course. Tell our audience where they can find you on the interwebs.

Jordan Godbey: Yeah. So I hang out on Twitter, @jordangodbey. I'm also on LinkedIn a bit, also Jordan Godbey. And my site, growthcommunity.co. And I just released a free course for anyone who's interested in Circle. It's our Circle quick start course where we will show you if Circle is the right fit for you, and also help you get started with a lot of the basics.

Jillian Benbow: Where do people find that? At your website?

Jordan Godbey: Yeah, at growthcommunity.co and you'll find it there too.

Jillian Benbow: Excellent. That's awesome. Jordan, thank you so much for being here today. This was a blast.

Jordan Godbey: Thank you.

Jillian Benbow: I'll send you some music links.

Jordan Godbey: Yes.

Jillian Benbow: So after the fact, you'll understand my joke. Like you will understand this.

Jordan Godbey: Awesome.

Jillian Benbow: And that's the interview. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Genuinely, that was one of my favorite conversations I've had. And then I found out at the end, hot goss, that was Jordan's first podcast guesting experience. You would never know. So hopefully you hear him on some other shows. If you have a show, you should invite Jordan to come talk because he knows his stuff. Hopefully, somebody out there listened to hip hop in the '90s and thought my joke was hilarious. Oh, because it was. Just kidding. So that's the episode. I'll leave you with that. I hope you found value in that. Come check out Jordan's course, come check out our All-access Pass if you want to see how we're doing this community-powered course thing. And yeah, I will see you next Tuesday. Bye.

Jordan is @jordangodbey on Twitter and on the interwebs. That's G-O-D-B-E-Y. And of course, you can always find him over on his website, growthcommunity.co or look him up on LinkedIn. Your lead host for The Community Experience is me, Jillian Benbow. Our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our editor is Paul Grigoras. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Theme music by David Grabowski. See you next Tuesday.