Today we start with the news of Marc Maron retiring his podcast, and a possible shake up at the New Media Show (two shows with 16+ years). So who will fill their space you?

Bri Leever is a community building strategist at Ember Consulting and host of the show "Dear Bri." I saw her present at a webinar put on by Hearbeat (my favorite community tool) and immediately joined her community (which lead to me asking her on the show).

Full show notes at schoolodposcasting.com/987

Mentioned in the Show:

Ember Consulting

Bri's Community of Community Builders

Heartbeat Community Tool

Circle Community Tool

Mighty Networks

Skool Community Tool

Honeycomb App

Dear Bi Podcast

Circle vs Skool Video

School of Podcasting Community

Takeaways:

• Marc Maron is hanging up his podcasting hat after 16 years, and that's a big deal.
• Having both free and paid communities can actually mess up your growth, who knew?
• If you want a thriving community, you gotta focus on what people actually want, duh!
• Starting a podcast with a small team is totally doable; you don't need a squad of 20.
• Don't be surprised if your free community outshines your paid one; it happens more than you'd think.
• People love talking about themselves, so just ask them questions and you'll be golden.

Mentioned in this episode:

You Have A Message That Needs to Be Heard

You have a message that needs to be shared. Discover the art of podcasting at the School of Podcasting. We teach you to shine a light on your stories, inspiring others one episode at a time. Let your voice be your legacy. Go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/join

School of Podcasting

Live Appearances

I'd love to meet you in person, I'm currently coming to July 12th, 20025 Higher Ed Podcon, Chicago, Ill AUGUST 18-21, 2025 Podcast Movement, Dallas, TX. September 26-28, 2005, Empowered Podcasting Conference, Uptown Charlotte, NC For more information and links, click the link below. If you'd like for me to speak at an in-person or online event, go to schoolofpodcasting.com/contact

Where Will I Be?

Question of the Month

This question comes from the AMAZING Steve Stewart from the Podcast Editors Academy (see schoolofpodcasting.com/pea and yes that is my affiliate link) and he wants to know what steps, practices, strategies, etc you are doing to speak better (with less, um, you know, like, you know crutch words). I need your answer by July 25th, 2025. Go to schoolofpodcasting.com/question

Question of the Month

Today on episode number 987 of the school of Podcasting, we're going to talk about Marc Maron calling it quits. And did you know that having a free community alongside a paid one could actually hinder your growth?

Well, you're going to discover why this strategy often fails and what you can do to ensure your community thrives. Hit it, ladies.

The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

If you're new to the show, this is where I help you plan, launch, grow. And if you want to monetize your show, my website is school of podcasting.com use the coupon code listener.

That's L I S T E N E R when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription. And of course that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. And we're going to be talking about memberships in just a second.

But I realize not everybody's interested. And when I say membership, I mean a community. Now that could be courses and things like that, like I have at the School of Podcasting.

Or maybe you just want to create a nice, safe place for people to hang out. And I realize you might be going up, not for me, but I thought I would give you just a quick little, little snippet to nibble on.

And that is Mark Maron, who has been doing the WTF podcast for 16 years. And the big wow thing that happened with Mark is he had a sitting president Barack Obama on his podcast who came into his garage.

I'm going to say that again. He came to Mark's garage and did his podcast. Now the other thing I want to point out about Mark show is he is a team of two.

He had a producer who also did some of the editing and then Mark did the actual, you know, hosting and such. So if you're thinking of starting a podcast and think, oh, I can't compete with these people that have a team of 18, well, they have a team of two.

I think Joe Rogan might be a team of three. So keep that in mind. And there are many, many podcasters, myself included, that are a team of one.

And so Mark is going to put it to bed sometime in the fall.

I might talk about this in the future as well, but it's probably in the fall because he has to probably fill out some contracts that he had with advertisers. But the other one is it's sounding as if Rob Greenlee may have moved on from doing the new media show with Todd Cochran. We'll wait and see.

But that's the show that's been going on longer than Marc Maron. And so the point I wanted to make here is, number one, these are really popular shows that did not have giant teams.

They served kind of a niche audience, and they provided information you can't get anyplace else. I can't get Todd Cochran's point of view and Rob Greenlee's point of view anytime.

I can get them separately because they're both going to continue on. And Marc Marin's first 20 episodes were amazing, where he interviewed other comedians, and they were talking very frankly and very intimately about.

About things like joke stealing and, you know, treating each other poorly and things like that. So I just say that because who's going to be the next Marc Maron? Who's going to take over that audience?

It's not like people are going to get in their car and go, well, I listen to Mark, but, you know, he's not doing his show anymore, so I guess I'll just sit here in silence. No, someone is going to take that spot. And as you look at the clock, I just realized back in April, I celebrated 20 years of podcasting.

Now I feel I have another 20 years in me. But some people that have been doing it for a while are going to hang up the microphone, and that could be you that takes their place.

That's just the thing I wanted to point out, because they started. Mark started by.

Well, he recorded in his garage, but before he did that, he was on a radio station that had been shut down, and he was sneaking into the radio station to record his episode. So just think about that. Yes, there may be other people that are doing similar shows to yours.

So find out maybe if there's something that they're not talking about that you could talk about.

And then also remember that eventually some of these people are going to quit, and that audience is going to be looking for something, and that something could be you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How long should I wait before I start a community? What should I charge for? What do you think about using Facebook as a tool for your community?

These are all things I discuss with Bre Lever from emberconsulting co. All right, well, joining me via squadcast, I first met her.

She was doing a webinar for Heartbeat, which is a community tool that I use for the school of podcasting. And I liked her so much, I went over and joined her Community over at EmberConsulting co.

And within, like, three lessons, I was like, oh, I have to have you on the show. So, Bri Lever, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Oh, grateful to be here. Thanks for the kind words.

You have a strategy that I was like, oh, we have to talk about that. But before we get to that, if I got this right, there's really kind of two types of communities.

There's either the networking one, where you want a bunch of people to get together and just say howdy and talk to each other. And then there's kind of what I'm calling the transformational community, where you're helping people get from point A to point B.

Is that basically the only two? Are there other types?

Yeah, a great question. So I have a model where I talk about community pretty broadly because I come from actually that's. That's what I call the.

The paid side of the community spectrum. Then you also have free communities that are designed to support a business and by supporting the product or service in some way, shape or form.

So I actually identify four types. But for talking about paid communities, those are the two that I focus in on.

Education centric communities, which we call transformative communities, and then connection centric communities, where the value of the experience is coming from the connections between your members and those I call networking communities. Yeah, you nailed it.

Well. And a free community would be a great resource for content. So what are the other two types then?

Yeah, yep. So. So I basically just have a matrix. And so the free education centric communities, I call these nurturing communities.

And this is where the community is designed to nurture your customers either into a deeper relationship with the product and the brand. This is where, like, the vast majority of SaaS product communities land.

So, like the HubSpot community, where they teach you how to better use HubSpot to become a better inbound marketer. Then on the other hand, you have connection centric free communities. I call these collaborative communities.

This is really where we had free Facebook groups kind of squatting for a long time and kind of figuring out what they were and who they were for and what their purpose was.

Now we see a lot of these collaborative communities actually shifting over into the paid model because they've realized, man, it's a lot of work and it's not always a collaborative community isn't always going to convert your people to become customers like you think it's going to. So there's a lot of shifting in that type of community.

But it's Also, like, oddly enough, some of my favorite communities of all time are collaborative communities. Like the LEGO Ideas community is one of my favorites.

It's where people submit CAD designs of their LEGO sets that they want to see LEGO produce in the future. And all the members upvote what they want to see.

So the value of the experience for LEGO and for the members comes from these interactions and these voting mechanisms between members. And it's tremendously valuable for the company because they've essentially outsourced a section of their product design simply to a free community.

Well, and you're not guessing what your community wants, they're telling you totally.

Yes.

So it's not like, well, we'll try this and see, you know, maybe we'll get a focus group. No, you've already done the focus group.

Yeah.

When do you start a community?

If somebody's just starting a podcast and they're on episode four, is that the time to start a community or is there a best time to start a community or a worse time?

The answer is it really depends. I'll speak first to the paid communities because and especially who I tend to work with as my clients and my members.

So I work with coaches, consultants and creators who are ready to create their one to many offer. Creators are coaches and consultants usually will get started serving folks in a one on one capacity. Creators are a little different.

They might actually like start out with a one to many offer and might not start with that one to one if you've positioned yourself as more of that one to one service.

My recommendation is usually to focus on refining your offer, refining your business, your process for at least two years before you are ready to construct a one to many offer of which community is one of your options.

And that's because it's a lot easier to iterate and evolve and mess up and get better and like grow in your own expertise when you're working with people one on one than it is to do it live in front of your whole community. So we need some authority to be built in the space first. I recommend doing that before you take the step to do it inside of your community.

I would think by doing that for two years you kind of know what people are looking for.

Yes, yes.

And in theory then, because I think the biggest fear of anyone that wants to start a community is you're going to go, all right everybody, Here it is July 1, doors are open and it's just nothing but tumbleweeds.

And you know, exactly.

Is anyone here, here, here just echoes everywhere.

Totally. That's all of our biggest fears. And it's, it's super valid. There's a lot of ways we can address it. But one of the.

But the foundation of like, really understanding who you're serving, the problems that they are facing, how you, in a one on one format, like, help them overcome that challenge. But then when you turn to build a community, you're not just asking, how do I help someone overcome this challenge?

It's how do I create an environment where the people who are overcoming this challenge can do it together? Which is just a totally different layer of skills on top of your expertise.

And if you're trying to overcome both of those learning curves, like understanding your own expertise, expertise and process and how to be an effective community builder, that's a lot to tackle all at the same time.

So I do recommend, like, making sure you feel either you have like a decade of experience in this expertise or you've been serving your clients, you are intimately familiar with who they are and that challenge that you're serving them in before you dive into the community layer.

Yeah.

Cause one of the things that really caught my eye as I was going through your courses is it was like really soon, like two or three, like whatever lesson it was.

And you're like, all right, I challenge you to get, I think it was 10 people, if I remember and call them on the phone or I guess get them on Zoom and not for 15 minutes. It's got to be at least for this amount of time and like, have a real conversation. And I was immediately, I was like, oh, I like this.

This is because a. Even myself, I was kind of like, oh, that's. You know, I've done it in the past, but I'm still, there's a.

There's a part of me that's still a little introverted.

And you're always worried that, like, what if I send out an email and hey, I'd love to have a conversation, and gosh, I think nobody's going to listen to me. And then I send this out and nobody answers. So now I know nobody will listen to me. Like, how do you overcome that imposter syndrome?

And what's a good pitch for that?

Yeah, David. So real. I felt that.

I'm sure you kind of sensed it in my video because I remember putting that challenge together after I was like, I do that every year in my business because the challenges that my members are facing are evolving. So even if you've done, you did it at the start of your business.

When I kicked off my business I actually did a hundred phone calls in 90 days and that is what launched my business. So talk about resistance and being uncomfortable, that was it. That's the crux of it.

And I, I issue that challenge really intentionally because if you're not willing, ready and prepared to have those one on one conversations with your members, it's going to be a pretty far jump for you to be ready to facilitate a space where you're gathering a group of them. So there's a couple like intentions behind that challenge. But for people who feel a lot of resistance to that, I would say a couple things.

One, people love talking about themselves and frankly, I believe it's a gift.

When you are approaching someone with curiosity and empathy, deep empathy to learn from their situation, people also love, they love talking about themselves and they love talking about their problems.

So to actually show up with the gift of being willing to attune to and with curiosity, uncover the challenge that someone is facing, I think is a gift to give to people. And you always can offer the gift and somebody can decide whether they want to take it or not.

I've always been really pleasantly surprised by these conversations. Number one, how willing people are to have them. Number two, how grateful they are to be heard.

And then number three, like what, what sparks from those conversations. And sometimes it can be unexpected.

Sometimes I'll get on a phone call and I'll be like, you know, I thought you were my ideal person, but this is actually like you're kind of in a different space or you're moving in a different direction, or this challenge isn't actually your challenge.

Sometimes we'll have those conversations and I get like breakthroughs and new insights on how the issues of community building are evolving and it changes the game for my community or my offer. So there's a wealth of information to be gained, but you do have to summon the courage to take the step to do it.

Can you think of one that you've set out? Here's the list of people you're going to call and at the end of those calls you went, well, the one thing I definitely learned from this was blank.

Can you think of an example?

Yeah, yeah.

I had one call in particular that comes to mind where they were a community member and they were familiar with my work and a couple other strategists work. And it was so helpful to hear them reflect on the similarities and differences and where they, they, they.

I heard them articulate why they felt in alignment with my strategy. And it came down to like my kind of fundamental method.

Behind community building and like, why people are gathering in your community is because of the, the value that you are providing there, the value of the experience, the environment, the types of people you're gathering. And there's some strategists who would say that people are in your community because you make them feel.

Feel special and you treat them in a way that they feel understood and they feel heard. And while I think that's important, I don't think it's the essence of why people keep coming back to your community.

So to hear this member articulate that and be like, to pull that out and say, yes, I'm really aligned with that way of thinking about community was really insightful for me and it gave me a clue for how to message new members too.

Yeah, anytime you can take their words and work it into your marketing material, you are literally like, that is their native tongue. So definitely use that. Well, the other favorite question that you probably get all the time is how do you know if you're gonna do a paid membership?

How do you know what to price it at? Because, and I know it's a podcasting question and a community question. So it's going to begin with, it depends. But how do you figure that out?

Yeah, yeah, it begins with it depends. The first category we have to consider is, again, what is your community helping them do?

And if it's helping them make money in any way, shape or form, we have certain wiggle room.

If your community is more in the landscape of entertainment or hobbyist or like even some like, self help element, like communities can kind of fall into this category.

You, you are a little bit more limited in what you can charge people because categorically where they are, like budgeting your community membership compared to other expenses in their life is just different than it's not a business expense. It's not something that's going to earn them money.

And so you have to position that investment differently and you don't have as much wiggle room, to be honest. There's some general statistics.

Mighty Networks came out with a report that said generally for us to see good engagement in communities, your membership needs to be priced with at least $35 per month. I've generally seen that anything under $35 a month is generally more in the content category.

Like you might subscribe and pay to be a part of somebody's substack and get like access to this trove of content. But once we're in the community space, there's a different level of commitment and participation.

We are Inviting people to participate as members, not to consume as viewers. And so that's really important that that is reflected in the pricing that we capture up front.

Because if your pricing is too low, it doesn't trigger people to make that conscious decision that, like, oh, okay, this is like enough of an investment that this isn't just like a, you know, I'm signing up to watch these videos. I'm signing up because it's. It's an investment and I'm going to participate here.

And are you going deeper with fewer or are you going wider with more? So depending on the model, the pricing structures can look quite different.

Yeah.

One of the things that always makes me scratch my head is, you know, onboarding is kind of a challenge because we always, no matter what you're doing, it always feels like you're feeding these new people with a fire hose. But the other thing is I'll have.

Because I kind of reach out and make sure you're set up, and then I'll wait a week and just want to make sure everything's fine. And there are times when I'll have somebody who is giving me money and just ghosting me.

Is that a common thing or it's just one of those things that makes me scratch my head. I'm like, well, maybe they signed up and life happened. I don't know. But are there strategies to avoid that?

Yeah, totally. So there's a reality of, like, what we call lurkers in your community. And lurkers is like, I say that not in a negative way.

Lurker is even, like, could be even more active than what you're saying, which is like, they never even log in and they never even show up. And there's always a reality of that in communities. So don't beat yourself up too much. The structure of the community, like, and how.

What percentage of your members might be lurking or not participating or completely checked out, that varies greatly.

And this is like, where it ties into your pricing because you might be, in an effort to be inclusive and make your community accessible to a lot of people, you might actually be pricing yourself in a way that is not serving your members from getting engaged and participating in a way that's going to elevate the entire space. So there's a couple methods for activating your members, and they all have to do with that onboarding experience.

So when a member joins your community and gets active in their first 30 days, their odds dramatically increase of them sticking around in your community and, and being there long term. So what we want to look at is how you are activating your members.

I also like to, for members who like, join and don't participate or don't log in, like, I actually like to kind of push the edge with those members and approach it more proactively and say whether it's like, hey, I haven't seen you, you know, participate. Depending on the community platform that you're building in, you might be able to automate some of this.

Generally how I address it in the onboarding emails is somewhere around email number three. I like to say, hey, you've just completely wasted your money here unless you participate.

The value of this experience, however valuable this space is going to be to your business, is entirely dependent on you and whether or not you show up here.

So if you joined and you've realized like you don't actually have capacity for this, which is a real thing that happens or life happened, that's totally fine, you're welcome. Like you, you can cancel your subscription and rejoin when it's the right time for you.

I find the, the heaviness and weight of a lack of participation in my community is more detrimental than being able to prompt someone to really consider even after joining, is this actually what I want? And if the answer is no, I think we're all better off having that person leave earlier rather than sticking around.

And kind of, it feels like there's a weight that comes with a lack of participation in communities.

Yeah, it's weird because I've talked to some people and they're like, oh, that's the best. They're paying you for nothing. And that just to me I'm like, yeah, but I like to earn my money.

And I did have one guy say, look, consider that a retainer. I love the fact that I can ask you a question and I'm not going to go through your courses.

I just know that I can ask you a question and get an answer within 24 hours and that's what I'm paying you for. I'm like, okay, as long as I'm aware of that.

There you go. Yeah, that's really good. That's really good insight. Yeah.

And you know, if this was just like a one off course where like someone pays you, whether or not they go through it is like no skin off your back doesn't really have an impact. That's fine.

In community, it's different because whether or not someone decides to show up impacts not only their experience and the value that they get, it now impacts everyone else in the community. Because where, if they had shown up, we would have gained from their generosity and their insight and their feedback.

And now with them not showing up, like, the community is worse off.

So I'd rather, like, be really clear and prompt people if it's not the right time or not the right fit, and if they're not able to show up in the participation that is expected and required that they move on. That's just my posture towards it.

Well, yeah, for me, it's quality over quantity.

Yeah.

Well, we haven't brought up the F word yet. Of course. That is our good friend Facebook. There are, you know, I. I have a love hate relationship with Facebook A.

Because they kicked me out of my own group once. And I interviewed Paul G. A couple months ago. He had 84,000 people in a Facebook group. And they went, nope, not anymore. And I was like, what?

And he's like, yeah. Did you appeal? Yep. Nope. So I have. I am not a huge fan of using Facebook for a group.

Is that just because I've heard one too many horror stories or is that something that you like? Well, if you want to go free, it's okay. Or. What are your overall thoughts of Facebook?

Yeah, personally, I detest it. I have a really hard time showing up myself. You're not alone. That has happened to a lot of community builders, and it's.

Several of my clients have come to me to migrate their communities because of the risk of running your community on a platform that you do not own, and you do not own the relationship with your member. That's a really scary, risky place. So a lot of people, it's kind of like the difference between an email strategy and a social media strategy.

With a social media strategy, you are going to where, quote, everyone already is, and you are nurturing.

You're gathering followers, you're building an audience, and you're nurturing a relationship, but you ultimately don't have any control over that relationship. If the platform changed tomorrow, you'd have no, no, say, an email list. You, like, quote, own that email.

When someone has subscribed to you, you own that relationship. And even if your email service provider went. Even if mailchimp went under tomorrow, you could still take your email list to a different tool.

So community building is in this similar phase where, like, kind of prior to up to five years ago, we didn't really have many options of where to gather our communities. So Facebook was the default.

My general recommendation, even for free communities, which my recommendation for free communities does not come by very often, but even when it does, is that you and your community are better served in a home where people feel safe and where you can re habituate the behaviors of your members to behave and interact online in a way that is going to be meaningful and valuable to each other.

And I believe ultimately what we've the behaviors and norms that we've been habituated in in Facebook do not lead us to build community in a way that's meaningful and valuable. I like to say good marketing goes to where people are, but good community builds where people feel safe.

So I can definitely like see some use cases for where it might make sense to build a community in a Facebook group. But by and large, and especially for my clients when we're building paid communities, there's just better technology, to be honest.

Yeah. Do you have. I know you're using Heartbeat for yours, but I know there's Circle and there's School and with a K because you know, they're cool.

Do you have any preference?

Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this and I do have a whole section of like comparison community platform comparison articles. So once we've decided, kind of the first question is should we build in like a social network where quote, everyone already is.

They probably already have a login to that space or should we build like our own space? And those are usually built in what we call all in one community platforms.

So your events, conversation and content is all in one central location usually requires people to create a new login. So there's some friction there. Within the all in one community platform space. There's the two that I build in most commonly are Circle and Heartbeat.

And but I have kind of a quiver of platforms that I keep my eye on and Honeycomb is another one that's like a mobile first experience. School is another one. Actually did a comparison video between School and Circle where I like really ragged on School.

But I've, I've come around to see a couple like use cases where I really think that they are a great option and then the another one that pops up really commonly but that I just sadly can't get behind is called Mighty Networks. They've been around longer than any other community platforms, but unfortunately their user experience just has not. They just have not nailed it.

And it's really hard to understand where to find what you're looking for in there. So that's like the skinny on the platforms. But Circle and Heartbeat are my, my main two that I build.

Yeah, I'm a big Heartbeat fan and I too, I love the people at Mighty Networks. I've talked to Them over there, they're great people. I just.

Lovely.

It always seems just ever so slightly clunky. And I'm like, so close. But, you know, your mileage may differ. But for me, I was like, that's why I went to Heartbeat.

The other thing, obviously, we want our community to interact with each other, but the last time I checked, some people are creepy. So how do you. How do you handle, you know, when people step out of line?

Oh, that's a good question. That didn't go where I thought it was going. Yeah. So there's a couple ways to. To address this.

Like, it's always good to have kind of foundational community guidelines, terms of code of conduct, terms of service, having the basic boundaries in place for people to understand. This is what this community is for. This is what you can expect here. These are the behaviors that are inappropriate and not allowed here. So generally.

And this is again, another benefit to moving into a space like an all in one community platform, and how it can even be a benefit to create your community in a space where people are not familiar with that technology. Because all of the creepy behaviors of Facebook and social media that we've normalized, you get like a reset. Like, you get.

You get to, like, teach people how to talk to each other. There in again, ways that are meaningful and valuable.

So generally what I've found is, like, this is a pretty common problem for people building on major platforms like Facebook. But once we move into a platform like an all in one community platform, it's pretty common for people to be like, whoa, this feels totally different.

We have way fewer issues. We don't have to monitor our members with the vigilance that we used to. So having some of those foundational practices in place are great.

The technology can also impact this. And then the culture that you create in your community greatly contributes to this.

So your members will pick up on what's appropriate, what's not appropriate, and when you are actively and intentionally shaping this, it will continue to go in the right direction.

It's when you are not paying attention and you're allowing behaviors to snowball or to accumulate in your community in a way that is negatively impacting the culture that we have to do some course correction. I definitely have some podcast episodes on that because it's a big topic.

Yeah, you can. I'll have links to Dear Bri out in the show notes. But I'm an old teacher and I would tell my students, I'd put a big clock on the wall, 15 minutes.

I'm like, we Are coming back from break in 15 minutes. If you come back in 17, I'm not getting you caught up and I will get you involved in the next exercise.

And inevitably, somebody would walk in and go, okay, get me caught up. And I'm like, no, you're going to sit there like, you can watch. But.

And then when, when we went on break again and I put the 15 minute clock on, nobody was late. So sometimes you've got to, you know, sacrifice somebody just to like, no, I'm not kidding. Those are the terms, and this is how we operate. And I.

Yeah.

So if you're going to put a boundary or rule up in your community, you best be prepared to stand behind it because your members will test it. And if you fail to stand behind it, like, they'll know that you were lying and they'll know that you didn't mean business.

So, yeah, it's really important to substitute teacher.

They're like, all right, let's test.

Totally. That time will come and you gotta be ready to enforce it.

Yeah.

Well, what are some of the mistakes you see or the most common mistakes you see people making when it comes to building a community or starting a community?

Yeah. Number one is we fall for a freemium model.

So people like the idea of a free taster community that leads to the paid community that's bigger and better and brighter. And the reality of that model is that the nature of community is really full. It's really kind of overwhelming.

And so when your free community is working really well, it's like, this is awesome. Everybody's so helpful. I'm getting all my questions answered. Why would I pay for, like, better conversate?

Like, so there's like, better conversation or like, somebody's asking the same questions, but they're getting better answers Inside the paid community, like, it's just people are like, huh? Or your paid. Your free community is not going well.

And people are like, well, if it's not, if it's not great here, why would I pay to get something that's seemingly better? So I've seen paid communities that are thriving that launch a free community, and it's like a total dud.

Or they have a paid community and the paid community is, like, struggling, but their free community is thriving. So I say pick one, don't do both, because you will, make no mistake, be building two communities.

If you have a free one and a paid one, you've now built not just one, but two communities. So pick one. There are plenty of ways that you can offer people what I call the cheese plate.

So we, we give them a, a pre designated amount of cheese to sample before dinner. We don't give them all access buffet to the, the cheese and charcuterie boards so that they can stuff themselves on cheese before the paid dinner.

Right.

So there's a lot of ways you can do that. That's the first one. The second one is if, if you're launching a paid community, don't test it with a free community.

So, and people do this because they're afraid and they're afraid that their community isn't going to have the right product market fit. They're afraid that people aren't going to show up and so they, they offer it for free.

But if you are looking to build and if the model of community that you're interested in, if your community needs to support your business in a paid format, the most important test you need to run first is are people willing to pay to be a part of this experience? So I see a lot of community builders kind of testing for years with a model that isn't aligned with their ultimate purpose.

And I think it, it causes them to waste a lot of time and set a poor precedent for members when eventually they want to be paid. But now they've set this like precedent of it being free. So those are like two big ones.

But then I see a lot more that kind of tie into the model of the community.

We touched on the four types of communities and I actually have a free masterclass that goes into a lot of depth on how each type of community is positioned to support your business. But also the challenges that come up come with it too.

And it's really important that you know ahead of time what you're signing up for because there's no one right model for your business. It's just a matter of what strengths you want to sign up for and what challenges you're ready to overcome as well.

Is there any way, is it just a case or like, hey, I'm starting a community and if we can get X amount of people to sign up, I'm going to do it and if not, I will refund everybody's money?

Is, is that how you do it or is there a better way to kind of like, you know, test drive it or at least because you're trying to figure out if you have proof of concept and if, if, because I know you can say, oh, we have a waiting list which is free. And so you get 200 people on your waiting list and you're like, all right, here it is sign up and you get three people. So is that the strategy?

Just like, make people pay up front and if, if we get enough, we'll do it and if not, I'll give everybody their money back. Is that really the only strategy or is there another one?

Yeah, there's, there's a couple different methods here. And you, you named a really good one because it is, it does feel kind of like a conundrum.

You're like, how do we sell something that doesn't exist yet? Like, literally, like we're selling them and promising them on this community, but we don't know if we're going to have a community yet.

So one of the, one of the methods you can use, which I, and I love this advice, it comes from Mortiza, the founder of Heartbeat. We actually did an episode on this for Dear Bri, and Heartbeat has added a wait list feature that makes this really easy for you to do.

So in Heartbeat, you can set up a wait list where for people to join the waitlist, they can contribute a small amount or the full amount, and then you list, like, on this launch date, they, they'll be charged either the remaining amount or whatever. They can just come into the community. I love this method for launching a community because it protects you as the builder.

It gives you a little bit of Runway.

And when you're transparent in your communication with those members who are waiting, like, you'd be surprised with how long people are willing to wait even after contributing, like, monetary investment. Kickstarter is like a great example of this. So I do love that method.

Another way that you can test and get a sense for if people are going to join without the wait list or the paid wait list. If you're not building in Heartbeat, that can be kind of a clunky process to like, capture payment before the doors open.

So my favorite way to test a community is to create an event series. And it's almost like a micro mini community program experience.

And I have some, like, recommendations on how to structure it based on the model of community that you're intending to build. The reason I recommend an event series is one, the feedback loop is super quick. They either show up or they don't, and you know it right away.

Two, when they're on the call, you get that feedback you're seeing, like, is this tracking? Are people resonating? What questions are they asking?

So that synchronous experience is super helpful when it comes to getting some of that, that data and that research. And the third element of this, that's really helpful is when it's, when it's an event series and not just a one time event.

You find out, are people willing to come back? Are they willing to show up again? Because it's a different. In a community, you're asking people to come back time and time and time again.

You're not just showing them, you're not just asking them to show up again once. So rather than like, you can always test it like paid singular Workshop. And that's fine.

But what we need to know is are people willing to come back a second, a third time?

So to keep your test really short and really powerful and effective, doing like a two or three event series that's paid, if you anticipate launching a paid community is another great way to get a sense for what the market's going to do with your offer.

Excellent. You're amazing. If this is why I'm glad I had you on the show, I'm like, okay, I'm going to take lots of now I'm going to transcribe this.

There's a lot of stuff I'm like, ooh, that's good, I got to use that. Ooh, that's good, I got to use that. So her website is Ember. That's EEM B E R Consulting. Co, not com Co. You don't need the M, just co.

And Bri is spelled B R I Lever. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Dave.

Schoolofpodcasting.com 987 is where you can find everything, including links to her website. And check out her podcast, Dear Bri, if you want more tips.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I probably don't say this enough, but I really do. Thank you for checking out the show. I got a lot of great feedback with Thomas Umstad Jr.

And really the last couple episodes I've had people emailing me going, hey, that was a, that was a really good episode. So I appreciate that. And if you ever have any ideas of something that you would like to talk about on the show, I am always all ears.

And again, thank you so much for listening and for telling your friends. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting. I help podcasters. That's what I do. And I can't wait to see what we do together.

When you go over to schoolofpodcasting.com join and use the coupon code listener until next week. That's going to do it. Take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.