SPI 529: An Insider Look at Starting and Managing a Paid Community with Jillian & Tony of SPI

SPI 529: Behind the Scenes of the Community Experience Podcast with Jillian & Tony

Pat Flynn:
So I just got back from Denver and I needed a few days to recover because I hadn't traveled in a long time. But I didn't go to Denver for pleasure or vacation, necessarily, although I did have a great time. I went there for work. And in fact, the entire team went to Denver. All 12 of us were in a conference room for two days. Then we spent Thursday, the day after those two days, hiking in the high elevation of the Rocky Mountain National Park. And it was an absolute blast. It was actually really important for us to meet at this time because of not just planning for the next year. And we have some amazing things coming up, for sure. But a lot of us have never met each other. And I think that's very common with a lot of online businesses, and especially ones that have now built teams and have gotten a lot of help from elsewhere.

We have full-time employees who had been working for the company for over a year, a year and a half, almost two years, who didn't meet any of the other team members in person ever. So it was really important for us to meet. We got to know each other really, really well. We had a lot of great times. I could spend hours talking about all the fun things and the restaurants we ate at, and all the planning that we did. And we'll be talking about that a little bit when Matt and I get on the podcast together here to finish off the year and talk about some of the plans for next year and some of the things we discussed, and how we ran this retreat and all this stuff. So it was sort of a business retreat, but also just a bonding time for us.

But during the retreat, in fact right before we went hiking on Thursday, I brought two of my team members into my hotel room to record this podcast episode. So it's a three-way interview. And I'm speaking with Jillian Benbow, who's been on the show before. She is our community manager at SPI Pro, and she talked ... It was actually an incredible episode, where she came on and talked about what does it take to actually manage a community. But I also brought in another member from SPI Pro, another team member who helps manage our SPI Pro and creates these amazing events and experiences for us, including Audience Driven. Big shout out to Tony Bacigalupo, who's our other guest today.

And we're just going to sit and chat about community. Because community, again, and I cannot stress this enough, is the future of business. Bringing a niche community together to feel welcome with each other, to inspire, to motivate, to educate, entertain, is where long-term business success is going to come from. So we talk about so many things today. We talk about everything from how to manage trolls and haters in a community, to making sure it feels welcoming for everybody. We talk about DEI, diversity, equality, and inclusion. We talk about how to get people going inside a community and get people comfortable with stepping up and having conversations, and making them feel welcome. This is going to be a great conversation for anybody, whether it's a Facebook community that you have that is free just for your peeps. Or maybe it's a LinkedIn group, for example. Or maybe it's a premium community, for your paid courses or a membership of some sort.

So a lot of great conversation today. And I just absolutely love Jillian and Tony. And these were two people who were working with me, that I had never met before this time. We met before coming into the hotel room. But this was the event that we met for the first time in person. And it was just so great. And I love them both so, so much. So sit back, relax. This is going to be a great episode.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast, where it's all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now, your host, he binge watched Schitt's Creek with his wife in a single week: Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. And welcome to session 529 of the Smart Passive Income podcast. My name is Pat Flynn, here to help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too. And speaking of helping more people, I cannot or couldn't have asked for better help within SPI Pro, our premium community, than with Jillian Benbow and Tony Bacigalupo. We talk about a lot of things today. Here we go. You'll love it.

Jill, Tony, welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast. Thanks for being here.

Jillian Benbow:
Hey. Thanks for having us.

Tony Bacigalupo:
It is such an honor. We're so excited to be here.

Pat:
Now you're not not familiar with SPI-ish podcasts, because you're both the hosts of a new podcast in our ecosystem. Jill, why don't you tell us exactly what this podcast is, in case people don't know about it, because you both host it.

Jillian:
Yeah. So Tony and I host the Community Experience, under the SPI umbrella. And we talk all things community. But we also go beyond and do mental health and things going on in the world. But mostly community.

Pat:
That's awesome. Where did the idea for the Community Experience podcast come from, Tony?

Tony:
Well, community's become a topic that a lot of people have been talking about lately. People are investing in community more in business and in a lot of aspects of life, and with good reason, because we're dealing with a massive loneliness epidemic. We've got a lot of issues with mental health, depression. Kids on social media feel bad about themselves. All kinds of things going on in the world. And that was before the pandemic. Community's extremely important. People need to find their people. And if you can help people find their people, that tends to be good business.

Pat:
Who should be listening to the Community Experience podcast, Jill?

Jillian:
Everybody.

Pat:
Everybody.

Jillian:
Trick question. In seriousness, I think anybody looking to create community. And that doesn't mean, necessarily, in a business. That could be in your actual, literal neighborhood community. I think it's a great place to get ideas from other community builders, other people who have done it, other people who have struggled, and just find ways to foster meaningful connection with us on the show.

Pat:
And everybody listening, you should all check it out. Obviously your podcast app's already open, so make sure you hit subscribe on that one. Tony, tell me about a memorable episode that you guys created. Who was a guest, perhaps, that if you were to recommend one episode people start with, which one would it be you think?

Tony:
Well to start with, I think we should just go right to the beginning, with Jillian Richardson. She and I worked together on some initiatives to help with the loneliness epidemic. And she's got just some really great research and statistics that give you a little bit of a background of what's driving what's happening now. So that's definitely a winner.

Recently, I would say, Espree Devora. When we sat down with her we thought we were going to be talking about her building her community in L.A. And we just right off the bat got into overwhelm and burnout and mental health. We just went from zero to 60 so quickly. And it ended up being, I think, an extremely valuable conversation. For anybody whose been in community management for a while, people are going to resonate.

Pat:
Yeah. Espree is great. She's a ball of energy and knowledge. We had her in Audience Driven. So that's awesome. Jill, how about you? Which episode or episodes do you recommend?

Jillian:
I cosign on Espree. It's hard to pick one, because every time it's such a delight. I often think, as we're recording, as someone's answering questions or we're just having that conversation, am I getting paid to do this? I'm getting paid to make friends right now. But yeah, Espree, amazing. And her business is amazing. Also, that episode was just so special because we really just ... we talked about it in a way that I think a lot of people would resonate with, where she's talking about how do I monetize in an authentic way. With T-Shirts, she's like, "I end up just giving them away." But then we talk about does that serve the goals you have, and you can help more people if you have more profit. Just a really good conversation I think a lot of people have either thought about or want to have. So check out Espree's episode.

Another episode we did was Nathaan Demers, who actually works in Denver, works for Digital Health. And he is a PhD, science based person, studying loneliness. So we got to actually look at just the science behind making friends and what it's like as an adult, loneliness, and making connections, and the importance of continuing to establish friendships in real life. So that was a really special one, also because I know Nathaan personally. Hey, Nathaan.

Pat:
It's hard to make friends as an adult. When we're kids, we're in classrooms and they're just there, and we can find the people we vibe with. And I think as adults, I know a lot of people, my parents included, it's like do you go out and hang out with people, especially if you're maybe not proactive with doing that. It can be hard to put yourself in the community and experience what all of us humans want, which is belonging and recognition and what not. What are some of the takeaways from just the episodes together that you've done that anybody listening right now could bring home with them with regards to finding friends and community?

Tony:
I would say that, first of all, it is hard to make friends. Not just as an adult, but for everybody. We've heard this across several guests, that there seems to be a lack of knowledge of how to be a friend, how to make friends, real friendships, across the board in terms of different ages and backgrounds.

Pat:
So, what do you do about it?

Tony:
I would say that first and foremost it helps if you can create opportunities to open up and get vulnerable, whether through going to a particular event that's about improving yourself in a particular way that facilitates that, or just looking for opportunities to dig a little bit deeper, talk a little bit more honestly about what's going on for you, invite the other person to open up, listening, holding space for other people, and inviting them to do the same for you.

Jillian:
I see it too. Generationally you see it. And as parents it's an interesting dynamic because you become, hopefully you find friends through your kids in school. But then what happens when they're out of school and maybe you even move or your friends move? It's something both my partner and I have seen with our parents, and now we're in the thick of with a kid.

I think it's just you have to be okay with rejection. It's like dating. You have to be willing to say, "Hey, you want to go hang out," or whatever. And they might not feel it, and that's okay. And it's not about you. It's about them. But just trying, and putting yourself out there. I think also there's just so many ... if you look where you live, hopefully, there are existing groups and clubs, even as adults. And you can seek those out and maybe find some people with some common interest there.

Tony:
I think also one of the threads we've started to pull on is that wherever there's a stigma, there's an opportunity for community and connection. I wanted to call out Kelly Roberts with Badass Lady Gang, where the whole impetus for her was she wanted to go join a run club but every run club she found, everybody was way too athletic for her and she felt left out. So she started a run club for people who don't really run. And she even basically said that it's mostly a social gathering, with a little bit of running in between. But it struck a huge chord, because there's so many other people out there who want to get out and move their bodies but don't want to feel self-conscious about it. So looking for those places where maybe do I feel a little bit uncomfortable or a little bit like an outcast, maybe there's a whole lot more like me.

Pat:
Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why we, at SPI, created SPI Pro, because there were a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners who felt very lonely and felt like people don't really understand the same language or we can't talk business with our partner so where else are we going to go. And with the lack of in-person conferences, it was very difficult to find those connections. So we created SPI Pro, and you both are very, very involved in that.

For everybody listening, Tony, why don't you start? What is your role at SPI and within SPI Pro? And then we'll get to Jill. But Jill, you've been on the show before and we had a really amazing conversation about managing a community, which we'll link to in the show notes and all that stuff. But Tony, what's your role within SPI?

Tony:
My title's Community Program Manager. And in addition to the Community Experience podcast, I also produce the Audience Driven Summit, which we just ran for the first time. And I also help with the boot camps. So I help facilitate those cohort driven, 4-8 week group sessions, which have just been absolutely incredible, helping people launch their podcasts, their email mailing lists, their online courses.

And then the other thing that I do more directly in Pro is Demo Day. I just love demo day because it helps to close the loop on that loneliness issue for Pros where when you're working on your thing, where's the external accountability? It's very easy, when you work for yourself, to just float on. And so if you have some kind of feedback loop, and a way for us to celebrate what we're doing, with each other, having a day where you can mark your calendar and say, "Okay, I'm going to finish that thing. I'm going to launch it or I'm going to be ready to present it. And my peers are going to celebrate it." It's a very powerful thing.

Pat:
It's like a show and tell, but with accountability. You actually fill out a form, if you're in SPI Pro, to say this is what I'm working on, this is when I'm going to have it due by. And then you have a place to share it. That's how it was in school. And we don't have a chance, as adults, to do that anymore, right Jill?

Jillian:
And this is on YouTube forever. So you better bring a good demo.

Pat:
Oh yeah, that's right. We'll link to the YouTube channel as well so you can watch all that.

Tony:
And there are coworking sessions too, leading up to that day. So it's not just you're on your own. There's times to block out on your calendar when we're going to go into a virtual room, we're going to resolve to work on the thing we said we would do. We're not going to put it off. We're not going to let whatever's in our inbox distract us. And that also helps close the loop.

Pat:
That's so great.

Jillian:
Yeah. It's interesting, the coworking session that was Tony's idea, we use a really cool platform that you can try for free if I can plug it.

Pat:
Yeah, please do.

Jillian:
Just because it's awesome. It's called Workfrom, which Tony had discovered or has a relationship with the founders. And it's great. You create whatever environment. So we created the café. It looks like a coffee shop. You can actually play café background music. You can play music, but also café noises. It really helps you get into that zone. And then it's just a place where if you want to be on camera, you can. You don't have to. There's a chat. But we would just meet there and work on ... set an intention to work on whatever piece of our demo, or whatever project that was.

But what we found, what came out of that was a lot of people said, "Can we keep doing this? We don't just want to do it for demo day." So now we're just playing with the right time, a week, to just have a standing this is the coworking time. And we just show up and we do our SPI work, and people work alongside us. We have a little hello. And again, it's just that ways to find connection with people, virtually, that feel real.

Pat:
And that's Workfrom, is the name? Is that something that lives on top of Zoom, for example? Or is it a completely separate, everybody needs-

Tony:
It's its own thing, yeah. And it's funny, because they actually started out as a completely different thing, to get people to go to physical spaces in real life. And then they started developing this virtual space for their remote team, in part, and also for others. What's nice is that it invites self organizing gatherings because the room's just there, the SPI Pro café. Members of the community could just decide they're going to go pop in there and hang out.

Pat:
Oh, it's always on?

Jillian:
Yeah.

Tony:
It's always on. It's a persistent space.

Pat:
Oh, that's so cool.

Tony:
There's a lot you can explore in that direction.

Pat:
Do people end up getting in there between demo days and meet each other?

Jillian:
So we're still kind of in the beginnings of testing how it works best for our community. But we have an open invitation to everybody to use it whenever, and to self organize in it. I know a few of our masterminds have met in it, just to do something different.

Pat:
That's so cool.

Jillian:
Yeah.

Pat:
I love that.

Jillian:
Yeah. It's really fun.

Tony:
We're just getting started, but this idea of having, I think they call them proximity chat spaces, where you have virtual environments. With Workfrom, it's basically just one room. In other spaces, you have an avatar, you can walk around, you can design a virtual office space or a virtual space. People could have their own areas. So we could conceivably have the SPI virtual coworking space-

Pat:
World of Warcraft thing.

Tony:
Yeah, right. And each mastermind group could have its own little room, with its little emoji over the door or whatever.

Jillian:
Oh man. Could you imagine team tomato across the hall from team celery?

Tony:
It can happen.

Pat:
Our team names for masterminds with SPI Pro are food and vegetables.

Jillian:
Yeah, we started with fruit, I think, and then to vegetables. Now we're on spices.

Tony:
Which makes for really funny shout outs, like when we did Audience Driven and there were pros in the chat who were like, "Team raspberry, team tomato." And people were like, "What are these people talking about?"

Pat:
Part of community is building and developing a culture, and creating a language. How does one go about, Jill, doing that when you're starting out? And it doesn't have to be in person, it doesn't have to be formal, in a circle community. It could be on a Facebook group. But what might one do to start to begin to build a culture that they would like?

Jillian:
I think a lot of it will start to develop organically. You just have to pay attention to what your community wants. My favorite thing to say, ask your community what do they want. So if you're creating a group of people and it's starting small and you're growing slowly, it's letting those people be stakeholders in what the community is. So why are they there? What value do they get? If that's connecting with each other for accountability and brainstorming, like a mastermind, okay let's create some mastermind groups. What kind of groups do we want? And then there are those.

And then any opportunity to let people have the agency to self organize the things within the parameters of that group that are interesting to them is a fantastic way to grow a very healthy community, because people are getting more from it. Why are they there? Why should they go spend their time there over the entire internet? There are cute dogs all over the internet. What's going to get me in this group?

Pat:
Jill, what's your role with SPI? In case people hadn't heard that episode that you were on before.

Jillian:
Yeah, of course. I'm the Senior Community Experience Manager. So my main role is SPI Pro, all things SPI Pro, and community in general. I helped with our great, the big, great Facebook migration, as we're calling it, where we took all of our course communities off of Facebook, and our big, really big open Facebook community. And we created the academy, the SPI Academy, which is our course community, community. And then we have separately, SPI Pro. So we have two robust communities. I'm mostly focused on SPI Pro, but also helping oversee just the bigger picture of the academy.

Pat:
The academy's great. It's sort of an asynchronous way for people to support each other who are within the courses, and some access to our team as well in there. Just another addition to our course offerings, in addition to the office hours that people have with me every week. It's just really great. And it's really cool to see not just the friendships that we've created with people in there, and we're getting to see similar faces. We're in Denver right now, for those of you who are like, "Why is the audio a little bit different today?" We're actually in my hotel room, recording, with this beautiful view of Coors Field just right off our window. And we are here for a team retreat. And we were recapping the year and we're planning for the next few years. One thing that we did the other night, after a long, hard workday, is we met in person with some SPI Pro members.

Jillian:
We did.

Pat:
Right. Which was really fun.

Tony:
That was so amazing.

Jillian:
It was the highlight, for sure. It's so amazing. I'm so looking forward to the pandemic calming down, so that in person can be back to our day to day. Because there is definitely something special about these people you've been connecting with, and then just being able to give them a physical hug and just feel their energy, if you will. Same with the team. A lot of us, Tony and I, this is our first in-person summit. So the same with meeting everybody on the team and getting to make those relationships be a little more real, I guess. Not to say you can't do it all online 100% of the time, but there is something about proximity that's really great.

Pat:
For sure. I mean even in this room right now, the energy between us because we're literally six feet from each other ... And we have a Zoom H6n with three ATR2100 microphones just in our hands. I forgot the pop filters, so I don't know if there's close-ups. But Sorry, David.

Tony:
Sorry, David.

Jillian:
Sorry, David.

Pat:
Whoever's editing this, sorry about that. But no, it's great. This in-person meeting that we had, we had some amazing people come out, Heather and Alex and a few others. But I know there's also people who maybe are a little bit more shy, they don't want to put themselves out there in that way, whether it's in person or online. Tony, what could a community director, community manager do to encourage people to show up? Because when people start getting involved, they start getting invested, not just in the program but in themselves. How do you encourage people to participate?

Tony:
First and foremost, it helps to give people options. And right now we're dealing with that a lot with virtual programming. A lot of people have had to adapt their in-person to online. And video, for example, is a really great way to see each other when you can't be in the same place. But it also can be exhausting. It has a lot of implications, your posture, your environment, all these things that can be accessibility issues. So can you invite people and make them feel comfortable to join just by audio? And it's a lot easier sometimes for somebody to just call into a meeting. They have to go run around, do laundry, clean up their house, whatever, and they can still participate.

And then for people who can't join at that exact moment, can you give people really great ways to engage with your conversation in advance of the meeting, giving people prompts for discussion, catch the recording of the meeting and then catch up on what happened from the meeting, and participate afterward. So you're having these wider concentric circles.

In terms of an in-person meeting, if you want to make that more inviting and more comfortable, then you just have to really be attentive to the intention that you put into how people come into the space, first and foremost. When you walk in the door of a room, especially if you don't know anybody, that can be a very, very difficult thing for people to do, and require a lot of bravery. So can you have greeters? Can you have volunteers? Even just other people who have arrived early. I always had a policy when I was running a lot of in-person events, if you showed up before the doors open time, then you were volunteering to help. That was my rule. Have somebody come and just say, "Oh hey. What's your name? I'm Tony. Welcome. It this your first time? Cool." And just have people there to make that easier.

And then the other thing is facilitating connection between participants. The vast majority of events that are out there are basically consumption oriented. You sit in a chair. The people on stage talk or whatever. And then you leave. And maybe there's some networking open-ended in between. When you facilitate an actual activity between participants, that creates all kinds of opportunity for people to open up in a comfortable, controlled circumstance.

Pat:
So literally just introducing people with each other, for example. Or having a little activity of sorts, an ice breaker, those kinds of things.

Tony:
Simple but incredibly powerful. Can totally transform an event.

Pat:
Jill, on SPI Pro you are on the front lines. You have direct communication and access to everybody in there. And you hear it. You hear all ... I know there's a lot of positive things. But I also know that we don't do everything perfect. What are some, perhaps, constructive things that our very own community members have said to us? And then how have we reacted or done something about that?

Jillian:
Ooh, that's a good one. I feel like we're in an annual review.

Pat:
Kind of.

Jillian:
Kind of. I think something that we see a lot is when people join it is very overwhelming because it's big. We hover around 500 members usually. And that's a lot. And we have a pretty high percent engagement rate. So you walk in and it's a busy train station already in motion and you're just like, "Where do I fit?" And so a lot of people would say I just don't even know what to do that. I don't know how to get started. It's intimidating. It's kind of like showing up to a party where you don't know anybody, and just jumping into a conversation. Not everybody, myself included, has any interesting doing that.

And so we saw it happening. Someone may come to you with a suggestion or a problem, but noticing more than one person. It's like, "Okay, this is coming up a couple times." You start seeing trends. And a lot of it is very anecdotal, because you're having conversations with people. It may not be a survey. Surveys are a great way to get some hard info. And so that was something we recognized. So we created an onboarding email series. We had an onboarding email series, to be fair, but we tweaked it to have some more specific actions to take.

And then we created, on the platform, an onboarding series that we call the New Member Challenge. So there's, I think, nine steps in it. We have a video where I literally go and do all the things. I show, for people who are more visual. We have a list for people who like to figure it out. And then at the end you get a badge for completing it. And it seems silly, but everything we show them has them do an action that basically is teaching them the platform. So I really like that. I also like that we can change it as things come up. It's due for a change right now, just based on feedback I'm getting. People get lost in a certain part of it, so now I know I need to clarify this piece.

So that's a great example. I think with any sort of platform you're going to have limitations with features. And so that's often something that comes up, because everybody has great ideas for features that should exist. And anybody who builds features knows it's not that easy. We use Circle, they're maybe two years. Not even.

Pat:
A year. Just basically a year and two months.

Jillian:
Yeah.

Pat:
We got in before it was publicly launched.

Jillian:
Right. We were the beta.

Tony:
It's really hard to imagine.

Pat:
We got very lucky. Circle is an amazing company. We work closely with them. Matt and I are both advisors now, so we have an opportunity to, with regards to the feedback, potentially help the company go, "Okay, a lot of people would love this. Can we talk about that? Can we unpack that?" And they're a great company that just doesn't go, "Okay, we'll add that to the list." They do the research and stuff. And there's been some great features that have come out. There's a bunch that just recently came out that we are taking advantage of, right?

Jillian:
There are. They now have a paywall that's there's, so you don't have to create your own. If you're doing a paid membership, you can just do it all within the platform, which makes onboarding for your members, everything just super easy. And then you can tier your membership, if you want to have premium. It's really nice. And what they recently launched that I'm super excited about is their events. So before events you would do the promotion of just in regular posts. And now they have a dedicated events availability. I've even noticed, just using the platform as things just pop up, now when you create a post they're like, "Is this a post or an event?" You just have more control and visibility on events, which is huge because a lot of communities, whether it's an on platform type event, live event, in-person, now you can just very easily do that.

And then they just launched their updated member directory, which doesn't sound cool, but Jay and I are giddy with excitement for it because of how you can search for members and just find people, whether it's in your geographical area or who are all the podcasters because I need more guests or whatever it is. It's amazing. Every once in a while we'll do a release and every time they do it it's like Christmas. It's just like, "Oh my gosh. What is this new, shiny thing I get to play with?"

Pat:
It's like a Tesla. You wake up and they're like, "Your car's going to go longer now." It's just out of nowhere. The event feature is great because people can RSVP. You can connect with people before the event and see who's going to be involved, find volunteers, et cetera.

As we finish up here, Tony, I'd love to ask you. You've both been in community for a very long time, in all different ways. And Tony, I'd love to start with you, with regards to where is community going. We want to be where, as Wayne Gretzky says, where the puck is going. And I think a lot of people are now still where the puck is, and that's great. Community is here. There's tools now that can serve us. There's groups like us who want to help others build communities as well. And we have our open circle, hey here's how we do what we do. And there might be some offerings in the future for training or boot camps or courses around this as well. We'll see. But the principles of community are always going to be the same. But where do you think things are going to be going in the future? How might we get ahead of things?

Tony:
Probably first thing, from a cautionary standpoint, is that the word has gotten the buzzword treatment. And this has been happening for a long time and it's going to keep happening and maybe get worse for a while where you're going to have a lot of people using the word community who aren't really building really meaningful communities. And so we might see some snapback from that.

But I think, on the other side of that, it's just going to make the communities that really do a good job of fostering meaningful connection just that much more outstanding and attractive. And what we really want is connection. People want to feel not alone. They want to feel like they've found their people. And they appetite for that is there. And the technology has caught up. We just talked about Circle, which I was astounded being reminded that they only launched last year because you go back a few years, you had things like Ning, even Mighty Networks was getting started. There have been platforms for a while, but sometimes it takes a little while for the technology, the zeitgeist, everything to kind of align.

And I really feel like now we're in a place where the tools are there, the culture is there, the knowledge is there. Building a sustainable community is hard to do. It's very easy to burn out. It's very easy to accidentally wake up one day and find yourself with a 5,000 Facebook community that is just people being toxic to each other. When you started it, it was about something completely innocuous. So there's a lot of pitfalls. But the best practices are starting to take hold.

Where is the puck going? I think it's going everywhere. There's going to be ... the word niche cannot be overused in the community context. And I think there's so much opportunity. And I would emphasize again, where there's stigma, there's opportunity for connection. And that's really where we're going to be able to help people the most, is wherever they feel uncomfortable.

Pat:
I love that. I love thought also of the word niche, and there's going to be more niche communities, very, very specific niche communities. I've seen this in the Lego space, right. There's AFOLs, Adult Fans of Lego. And just adult fans of Lego specifically have community meetups and gatherings and whatnot. And there's a lot of opportunity there. So I would say, for anybody thinking about building a community, don't be afraid to create a little group. It doesn't have to be huge.

I think part of the problem with the fact that the technology is here and there's now people teaching this stuff, is that there's always ... This has happened with blogging, it's happened with podcasting, with video. People want to take the shortcut. People go, "Okay, I'm just going to set this up and automate the whole thing." How would you respond to somebody who's maybe thinking about this might be a quick way to get some recurring revenue in our business, Jill?"

Jillian:
I think just to backtrack a second, because an interesting point. So with community, to what Tony was saying, I see the puck going into explosive growth of what will ultimately be dead communities, because everyone's launching one and not everyone is going to do it right. And so we're going to have a lot of dead space there. and it's already happening. I'm sure all of us have a discord server or a Facebook group or wherever you do your online community stuff that just no one's there anymore. And it falls back to people just, "Oh, community. That's what we're doing now so I'm going to launch it, but then I'm going to walk away." The launch and leave.

Anybody considering it, I would say do you have people. And it doesn't need to be 1,000 people. In fact, I think some of the best communities are actually quite small. I don't think numbers and vanity metrics matter, pretty much at all, unless you have VC funding and now you're answering to Silicon Valley or whoever. Don't worry as much about growth. Worry about quality. So it's definitely a quality over quantity, slow roll, and really finding the people who are deeply interested in whatever it is.

And then you got to show up, because nobody just wants to, especially for a paid community, nobody just wants to show up and it's empty, it's crickets. So you should think about what's the content, how do I want this to work, how do I want people to engage. Is this a place for education? Is this a place for support? Is this a place for cute dog pictures that we rate 12 out of 10? And it can be any of those things. But you have to have a bit of a vision as to what ... when someone walks in the door, what are they getting out of it, not what are you getting out of it. And you have to listen to them, because they'll tell you what they want to get out of it.

Pat:
This brings me up to one more thing that I want to ask you both about, because this is something that's really important to us at SPI. And that's diversity, equity, inclusion, just having people feel like they have a safe space. How do we not create, when we're creating communities, toxicity? Because sometimes just the nature of bringing a certain group of people together who have a certain view could leave a whole bunch of other people out, maybe even subconsciously. How do we approach community in the way that we can ensure that it's great, it's positive?

Tony:
First of all, just on the diversity angle, I'm a white dude. I came up in tech culture in New York. And I saw how easily I could end up in a room with a lot of other white dudes. Even for something I was organizing, even if I didn't intend to, if I am not very deliberate about it from day one, from day zero, in terms of who do I think to reach out to, the culture of a community really branches out from the first few people in the door, which is why starting small is so valuable and so important. Because if you get a really great core of five, 10, 15 people showing up regularly, trusting each other, supporting each other, that sets the cultural norms for the next 100 people that come in the door.

Who are those 10 people that you reach out to? When I'm starting a new community program, I'm very, very careful and deliberate about who I invite to that, because I know each person is going to have a huge affect on that experience. And that's just from a regular tradition standpoint. Then I saw, "Well, okay, who do I want in that room? What do I want that representation to look like?" And if I'm not deliberate about it, I might end up with a room full of white dudes.

So I have to think about, okay, and not just from race or gender, but all different gradations, who can I be reaching out to that I might not immediately be thinking of. But I can be reminding myself, hey you know what, I know a lot of awesome people. If I just go a little bit out of my way and think about who I know, bring in a group of people that can contribute perspectives from all different angles, that's going to be an unbelievably powerful community. And it's going to make it that much more inviting to a much wider cross-section of people down the line. So that's one thing.

And then I think from the avoiding toxicity standpoint, a lot of it has to do with setting the intention and understanding for why you are gathering and how you relate to one another in this community, around that central purpose. So one of the issues we've seen in so many of these super toxic Facebook groups is ... and in a lot of other contexts as well, NextDoor, things like that, is that people join because they have a shred of interest in something like cooking. But the facilitation of how they talk about that subject matter isn't there, so it's very open ended and people can end up just going off on these crazy tangents. Whereas, if it's a little bit more facilitated to say okay today we're going to talk about our favorite omelet recipes. What's your favorite omelet recipe? If you give people a little bit of a structure, then you're steering them in a direction where they're all focused on the topic at hand. And then it's less likely to spiral out of control.

And then of course we could talk about establishing shared values and house rules, and inviting the community to be a part of that, and all of that too.

Pat:
I love that. And that doesn't mean avoid the tough conversations, right, or avoid the tough conversations that need to happen but no we're going to talk about omelets instead and we're going to focus on that. It's creating a safe space for that within the community. Right? So maybe it's a town hall type of situation that might happen. Jill, do you want to expand on this?

Jillian:
Yeah, for sure. As far as, let's do toxicity and then more specifically DEI. Toxicity, anybody whose been around me for more than 10 minutes knows I love community guidelines and moderation policies. And that is something, when you're launching a community, should happen. And it should be fluid. It should change as your community grows, evolves, as things come up. Ours are like that. We have community guidelines that say this is the intention, this is what's cool, this is what's not cool. So already you know, this is what you do here.

And it's a challenge for community builders because social media has given us all the approval, whether it's true or not, to say everything and anything on our mind and be vocal about all the opinions. It's a thing. And community needs to be distinct from social media. And that is one reason, one of many, that Facebook groups, I think, just get out of control easily, because the natural thing to do on Facebook is to make a post about that person that cut you off or whatever. It's a place to just voice all the things in your brain.

So very distinctly saying when you come into my community, when you come into my home here, you take your shoes off. That's just what we do here. So having community guidelines that say that, and say if you are ... depending on what kind of community you are. And some are very notorious for being toxic, like the gaming community in particular is a well known ... I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole as a community professional, because I don't want to deal with the type of behavior that happens in there. And it's kind of okay there. That's arguable. Versus a professional community like Pro, like the way a gaming community engages is not the way we're going to engage, and our community guidelines reflect that.

We're very clear on it's a place for celebrating differences and being open-minded to other viewpoints. We don't talk about political things, that's everything now so it can be hard. We don't talk about things that could potentially spark a debate that isn't about the benefit of this landing page strategy. We may disagree about things like that, but we're not talking beyond that scope. We do, and we're silly and we have fun too. But we very intentionally set the community to that's the expectation.

You have to be okay with listening when someone says, "You know, you have this guideline and I don't understand it." That is great information. It's not clear or maybe someone doesn't like a way something is worded because it's ableist and you didn't realize that. You have to be willing to say, "Oh my gosh, tell me more," and really listen to them. And then not necessarily that one, depending what it is, do this abrupt change. But you really have to know how they come across outside of your little bubble, because it's very easy to be like, "Yeah, this is so clear. Be nice. Be kind. Be open. Done." And someone's like, "Well I don't feel safe here." Having a very open door policy, you have to very trustworthy. People's opinions or feedback and information, that's all a part of it. And it's content that I'm hoping in the next year we'll be sharing more of at SPI. So follow the blog. Follow the courses, whatnot.

The other thing I want to talk about specifically is DEI. And this is a big focus on our team. We are very committed to making sure we are a place people feel safe and welcome. There's a lot of things that are easy to overlook when you are able-bodied, able-minded in all the ways. And I am absolutely guilty of it, because I don't experience the world the way other people experience it. I just experience it the way I do. There are very obvious things you can do, like be mindful of color combinations for people who visually have a hard time seeing screens when the colors are too muted or whatever it is. You can ensure you have closed captioning. And you see this on a lot of platforms now, closed captioning has become more standard of a feature available. We use Loom. Loom has close captioning. We use that for a lot of things. I know, Pat, you use a bunch of stuff that enables that. YouTube, it seems like, just lets you do it now, which-

Pat:
Yeah, automatically.

Jillian:
Yeah, which is fantastic. That's something for people who have any sort of vision impairment is huge. Also transcripts for people, even just considering language barrier. Our community's in English, but not everybody in our community is a native English speaker. So having transcripts and ways for people to consume things that might be different than what we're ... I can listen to a podcast or watch a video, either/or, and I'll get the information. But that's just me. What about other people? So we're thinking about other people. We're asking questions.

And when people bring it up, we're open to their feedback. I think it's huge. I will never be an expert in all the ways to make a community accessible. But I will try my hardest and I will listen and I will take the criticism I need to take to make things better. And I think it's important too, for people who are meeting in person. There's something beautiful about online community because people who have physical disability, it can or cannot be very accessible, depending if typing and visually, that's on the table. But think about that too. Even though we forget, especially behind a screen, but some people may not be able to use their fingers the way we do. So typing on a discord may not be the best place to host a community, if a bunch of your members say, "I have a hard time typing." And then in person as well, obviously. The ADA has done a lot. There's still a lot to go.

I think it's just being open to feedback, being willing to change things to help people just access the community and the conversations. You just have to be willing to listen and adapt.

Tony:
Sometimes the tweaks can be so small and have such a huge impact on the accessibility side. A lot of websites, you can just drop in a WordPress plugin, make some adjustments that give people so many more controls over how they experience your website. And there's an astounding number of people who identify as having a disability. And multiply that by several more who are family members of people who have disabilities. So even just offering that signal of saying, "Hey, there's a little accessibility button on my site." It sends a signal to someone that we're thinking of you, we're thinking of who is coming here and we want to make this a good experience.

Pat:
For sure. We could continue talking about this, and we will, because we're going to continue to learn and to get better. We are a company who really cares a lot about this, and we want to hear from you as well. And we welcome your message. As long as it's respectful, we will be there and listen to you. So more conversations about this coming. And we had a great podcast episode with Dustin Bakkie who spoke about this, very recently. And we'll put that in the show notes as well. But Jill and Tony, thank you so much for being here today. And we're about to ... What are we about to do right now, Tony? What's about to happen when we close this?

Tony:
We are about to hop in the car and go hiking in the mountains.

Pat:
Yes. The Rocky Mountains. So if you're listening to this, send us your best wishes as we have little air available in this high altitude.

Jillian:
Oh my gosh. You guys.

Tony:
We'll be fine.

Jillian:
It's fine. We're going to to Rocky Mountain National Park, for anyone who's familiar. It's beautiful. It's so fun to bring all these sea level silly guys up in the mountains. Welcome to my world.

Pat:
Thank you both. And this won't be the last time we chat with you here on the show. And everybody go listen to the Community Experience podcast. We'll have all the links in the show notes. Thanks again.

Jillian:
Tweet us @teamSPI. We'd love to continue the conversation there.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode. All the links and resources and the link to Jillian's previous episode and all the goodies there are going to be over at smartpassiveincome.com/session529. Again, smartpassiveincome.com/session529. And again, I couldn't be more grateful for Jillian and Tony, and all of you, and everybody in SPI Pro, everybody who's going to be in SPI Pro, everybody who has a community of their own. I hope you got value from this. And I look forward to seeing how you respond to it.

Feel free to hit me up at @PatFlynn on Instagram or Twitter. Or, if you are an SPI Pro, let's start talking about it in there too, because this is all for you. So thanks again. And if you're interested in applying to SPI Pro and becoming a part of the next group and cohort who comes in when we open up the doors again, hit up smartpassiveincome.com/pro. Again, smartpassiveincome.com/pro. The best online community for entrepreneurs. I hope to see you there.

Until then, thank you so much for listening in. I appreciate you. And look out for a Friday follow-up episode coming soon. So hit subscribe, if you haven't already. And I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at smartpassiveincome.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski. And our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income podcast is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.