#232: Dan Andrews – Secrets of building a 1300-member, international community (with in-person events)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Creator Science #232: Dan Andrews – Secrets of Building a 1300-Member International Community (with In-Person Events)

Introduction

In episode #232 of Creator Science, host Jay Clouse engages in an insightful conversation with Dan Andrews, the visionary founder of Dynamite Circle and Dynamite Jobs, and his partner Ian. This episode delves deep into the strategies behind building a thriving, international community of over 1,300 members, emphasizing the pivotal role of in-person events. Dan, a repeat guest since episode #32 in November 2020, brings a wealth of experience from his long-running podcast, Tropical MBA, which has evolved into a robust global community for location-independent entrepreneurs.

Overview of Dynamite Circle

At the heart of the discussion is the Dynamite Circle, a paid membership community born from the success of the Tropical MBA podcast. Dan and Ian share how they transformed their podcast listeners into an engaged community through strategic initiatives:

• Membership Structure: The Dynamite Circle offers various membership tiers, catering to different needs and levels of engagement.

• Services Offered: Beyond community, they provide a remote job board and a recruiting service, with about 50% of their recruiting clients drawn from their membership base.

• Global Meetups: Monthly meetups across different cities worldwide, varying in size from small groups of three to larger gatherings of thirty members.

In-Person Events as Community Pillars

A significant focus of the episode is on the role of in-person events in fostering community loyalty and growth.

• Event Structure: Ian explains that they host multiple types of events, including smaller chapter events, adventurous trips like Antarctica and Kilimanjaro, city-specific gatherings (e.g., Austin's two-day event), and five major annual events in destinations like Phuket, Barcelona, New York, Bangkok, and Playa del Carmen.

• Member-Led Events: Members are encouraged to host their own events, exemplified by the London chapter's annual 100-person event. This model, inspired by TED DCx, relies on a vetting process to ensure quality and alignment with the community's values.

• Operational Logistics: Managing these events requires a dedicated approach. Ian introduces Greg Crabtree’s LER (Labor Efficiency Ratio) concept, stating, “LER is simple, right? It's gross profit divided by direct labor. It helps us decide when to hire full-time staff versus contracting for events” ([06:35]).

Hiring and Team Building with LER

Dan and Ian dive into their unique hiring philosophy centered around the LER metric to maintain operational efficiency.

• LER Application: By maintaining a LER of 2.0, they ensure that their labor costs are sustainable relative to the profit generated. Ian emphasizes, “It’s like, if you're gonna host an event, Jay. I don't want Jay working on that event. I want you to model that event like a professional event organizer is doing it” ([11:22]).

• Flexible Hiring: They leverage platforms like The Mom Project to find talented, contract-based event planners, allowing flexibility and scalability without the overhead of full-time staff until necessary.

Pricing Strategies and Membership Tiers

The discussion shifts to the delicate balance of pricing events to maximize community engagement without compromising profitability.

• Membership vs. Event Pricing: Ian shares, “For our premium customers, we’re pricing our events right now anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500. And then for our standard membership, a typical event will be around $1,000” ([22:48]). This tiered approach ensures that events remain accessible while providing value aligned with membership levels.

• Value Proposition: Events are not just revenue streams but essential for community retention. Dan highlights, “I look at the events as a retention and like love-inducing aspect of membership” ([26:04]).

Speaker Selection and Enhancing Event Content

A critical element of their successful events is the quality and authenticity of their speakers.

• Member-Driven Content: Instead of bringing in external gurus, Dynamite Circle taps into their membership for speakers. Ian explains, “We are highlighting member stories and they’re going to open up the hoods, you know, and share openly with each other from the stage about what worked for them” ([28:03]).

• Speaker Coaching: To ensure high-quality presentations, they employ speaker coaches who work with members to refine their talks. This approach not only enhances the event content but also empowers members to share their expertise effectively.

Sustaining Community Engagement

The longevity of a community hinges on meaningful interactions and continuous value delivery.

• Community Over Algorithms: Ian argues, “I think people overvalue the algorithm and views and likes and general popularity… It matters who’s in your audience” ([41:46]). Emphasizing quality over quantity, they focus on nurturing a community where members can make significant, actionable connections.

• Interactive Event Formats: To deepen connections, Ian suggests interactive formats such as rotating discussion tables on specific topics. “Imagine you have eight podcasters sitting there talking about their challenges… That’s what you want to hear because they’re like two years ahead with their strategies” ([37:40]).

Key Insights and Conclusions

Dan and Ian offer valuable takeaways for creators seeking to build and sustain vibrant communities:

1. Prioritize Community Over Metrics: Focus on cultivating a community with engaged, high-value members rather than chasing vanity metrics like views and likes.

2. Strategic Hiring: Utilize metrics like LER to make informed decisions about expanding your team, ensuring sustainability and efficiency.

3. Event-Driven Engagement: Use in-person events as a cornerstone for community retention and growth, ensuring they deliver genuine value and foster deep connections.

4. Leverage Member Expertise: Empower your community by utilizing members as speakers, which enhances authenticity and relatability.

5. Flexible Pricing Models: Balance event pricing with membership tiers to maintain accessibility while providing premium experiences for higher-tier members.

6. Continuous Iteration: Regularly assess and refine your strategies based on community feedback and emerging needs, ensuring long-term sustainability.

Notable Quotes

• Ian on LER Concept: “LER is simple, right? It's gross profit divided by direct labor. It helps us decide when to hire full-time staff versus contracting for events” ([06:35]).

• Dan on Event Pricing: “I look at the events as a retention and like love-inducing aspect of membership” ([26:04]).

• Ian on Community Over Algorithms: “I think people overvalue the algorithm and views and likes and general popularity… It matters who’s in your audience” ([41:46]).

• Ian on Speaker Selection: “We are highlighting member stories and they’re going to open up the hoods, you know, and share openly with each other from the stage about what worked for them” ([28:03]).

Conclusion

Episode #232 of Creator Science offers a masterclass in community building and management through the lens of Dan Andrews and Ian’s experience with Dynamite Circle. Their thoughtful approach to membership, event organization, and operational efficiency provides invaluable lessons for creators aiming to cultivate engaged, sustainable communities. By prioritizing genuine connections and strategic planning, they demonstrate that thriving communities are not only possible but can be scaled effectively on an international level.

Transcript

[Jay Clouse]

When you started your journey as a.

[Dan Andrews]

Creator, I bet you didn't think about.

[Jay Clouse]

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[Ian]

We have numbers in our business. Like if you go to an event within the first 12 months, your likelihood of staying in the community is like more than doubled. So we see events as like a core brand promise delivery. Like that's where you get the juiciest DC goodness.

[Jay Clouse]

Hello my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. This week I am joined by the legendary Dan Andrews, the founder of the Dynamite Circle and Dynamite Jobs and now a repeat guest. Dan was first on the show in episode number 32 back in November of 2020. I've been listening to Dan's podcast, Tropical MBA since 2014 and that was five years after they started. They started that show in 2009. Tropical MBA started as a podcast for location independent entrepreneurs and has grown into a thriving global community. The Dynamite Circle is a paid membership community that Dan and his partner Ian built from the success of the podcast. And as you'll hear, that community is really impressive. With more than 1,000 members, dozens of local meetups, and five signature events throughout the year, the Dynamite Circle has continued to innovate as a member led Community. And that's what I wanted to talk to Dan about today. I've continued to be impressed and inspired by what they've built with the Dynamite Circle. And I want to learn more about the inner workings of it so I can apply it to the Lab, our membership community for creators. This is actually a two part episode. The second half of this conversation can be found on Dan's podcast, Tropical NBA and will be released on Thursday of this week. If you're listening to this the day.

[Dan Andrews]

It was released, so take a second.

[Jay Clouse]

Go to your podcast app, go to the Show Notes for this episode. Click the link in the Show Notes to subscribe to Tropical mba. That episode will be released on Thursday and you'll thank me later because Tropical NBA is still one of the few podcasts that I listen to time and time again.

[Dan Andrews]

So take a minute, do it.

[Jay Clouse]

You're going to like the second half of this conversation, you're going to love.

[Dan Andrews]

The show, and you'll see that episode in your feed later this week. Okay, that's enough from me.

[Jay Clouse]

Let's talk with Dan.

[Dan Andrews]

To set the context for the listener who may be a little bit less familiar with Tropical mba. Can you kind of give us the high level overview of the business as it stands today, like what aspects of the business exist and what they do?

[Ian]

So we have a podcast, which was our primary channel. That podcast is Tropical mba. The unique angle there was, hey, can you have a legitimate online business and travel the world and grow wealth and have time flexibility like you were mentioning, take a few weeks off or that kind of stuff? Can you spend the summer in Europe, can you move to a foreign country, these sorts of concepts, but have a legitimate online business? So that was the top lead funnel. And eventually folks who were listening to that show, they wanted to start to meet each other. So you're like, okay, we'll start doing events. Eventually that evolved into a private membership called the Dynamite Circle that currently has 1300 members and different membership tiers.

[Jay Clouse]

Wow.

[Ian]

Then the next piece is we have a services element to it, which for now that consists of a job board for remote jobs and a recruiting service which helps people find their next great employee. So I would say like 50% of our customers for the recruiting service are from the membership and it's a higher number for the job board.

[Dan Andrews]

Probably crazy. Okay, so even larger scale than I realized. And within the Dynamite Circle, you guys do events in person events still. Can you talk about the footprint of that?

[Ian]

Yeah. So every month we do about 20 member meetups. They happen globally in Cities, they're anywhere from like 3 members to 30 members depending on the city you're in. We have then what we call chapter events or adventures where folks, we've sent people to Antarctica on 4x fouring trips like that will be like Kilimanjaro. There'll be like five to 15 members go on an adventure together. We'll have city based events like here in Austin. We'll have 40 members show up for sort of a two day thing. And then we have five key events annually that are the ones that we host. So we do Phuket, Barcelona, New York, Bangkok and Playa del Carmen. Also our members host events. So for example, we have a London chapter that's extremely vibrant and they host on the Brand's behalf a 100 person, $700 ticket event in London every single year, which actually has a lot higher demand than just 100, but they limit it for logistics purposes. So we have this concept like we borrowed from TED dcx. So we have like a vetting process that will bring potential hosts in and folks will host events for us all around the world. So we've done over the years. I mean DC has been around since 2011, so I don't even know the number, but it's been quite a few.

[Dan Andrews]

I love that model and it's so aspirational to me. But the capacity to manage the logistics of that feels like inaccessible to where I'm at right now. I can't conceptualize how you manage that. What does the team look like or the operations look like to support five events from the brand, let alone the member led stuff. Can you expand on that a little bit?

[Ian]

Yeah, I mean one of the things that's been really useful to me is this concept from Greg Crabtree called ler. It's a way just to simplify the concept of capacity, which is to say take your gross profit from any given thing that you're selling and divide it by your direct labor. And that ratio needs to be two. And so I think if you want to run events, make your ticket pricing like in line with ler, what kind of capacity? AKA like event planners, you know. And that's a combination of someone at HQ and then someone on the ground. You need someone on the ground that's your local event partner and can you get that ratio to two and can you find the demand within your customer base? And that's basically how we think about it. One of the things I have noticed about events for us is the events part is more trivial than the community part. So we want a community person doing the events, not an events person doing the community. That makes sense. So it's relatively easy with a lot of hard work to learn the event side of things, logistics sides. It's, it's hard work, but it's not like informationally complex, I guess. But the learning curve on the community stuff is a lot harder. How do you communicate with people? How do you treat them? What do you do when you get there? What's the values of the community, the vibe? What's different about your experience than others? Those are the community elements. So we typically want to do that in house.

[Dan Andrews]

Social dynamics are more complex than event logistics?

[Ian]

Basically, yeah.

[Jay Clouse]

So you said you have one person at HQ and then one person on.

[Ian]

The ground for each particular spot. Yeah.

[Dan Andrews]

Are you like basically planning an event at all times throughout the year?

[Ian]

One of the internal mantras for us is it's already six months ahead. So will come to a meeting and say, you know, it's December right now, as we're recording, it's already May.

[Dan Andrews]

What does that mean when you say that? What does that mean to you?

[Ian]

Well, the hardest part about events is getting people to come, you know, and the easiest way to get people to come is to have a clear value proposition well in advance where they can get it on their calendars. So a lot of it is simply getting the information to your clients, your customers, your followers as early as you can. So we're, we're anticipating, you know, we have an event coming up in May. Like that's what we're talking about in our daily huddle this morning we're talking about May, which is kind of nuts. We didn't always used to do that. So that's a big part of it. The other thing is leveraging volunteers. So for our Bangkok event, for example, last year we had 400 people attend, like 345 ticket holders. And I think it was like eight or 10 volunteers. So, you know, that's all part of it too is like, well, how do you recruit a volunteer, how do you equip them with a job to do and stuff like that. So there's just a lot of those sorts of details involved.

[Dan Andrews]

So you do have like a full time staff person that their thing is events.

[Ian]

Yeah.

[Dan Andrews]

What point in the journey did you hire that person?

[Ian]

Well, I would come back to ler, like this is a very attractive position. So for example, like one of my favorite places to hire is the mom project. Have you ever heard about this website? So I think it's a great place for Finance professionals. Because you find like, I'm hiring right now for someone on our finance team. And it's like all these kind of ballers who had a career, but then they're like, you know what? I want to be a mom, but I got this horsepower, I got this brain, and I want to apply it to something. And we have businesses like that that are exciting, they're fresh, they're interesting, they're challenging. And we don't always need somebody full time to hang around on the payroll. It's like, I'll pay you when you do the work. And so I think this would be an ideal way to bring a community oriented event planner into your business is do it by contract, do it by event. It'll be obvious when to bring that person in full time. And that's the ler calculus. So you're just going to look at your P and L, you're going to look at your events line item. And when it's an obvious ler to have a full time events person done deal, I just do it by the numbers. And I'm just going to bootstrap my way into it until I see that number. That's my new thing. Jay, I just.

[Dan Andrews]

I hear this on your podcast.

[Ian]

I just do numbers.

[Dan Andrews]

I know. And you got scorecards.

[Ian]

Yeah, I got nothing interesting for you. Like, that's cool, strategic. I'm just show me the numbers.

[Jay Clouse]

This is good, though. This is.

[Dan Andrews]

Well, here's the thing. Like.

[Ian]

Well, let me just say this before you say your thing. It's like, if you're gonna host an event, Jay. I don't want Jay working on that event. I want you to model that event like a professional event organizer is doing it. And they need to be on that P and L, the budget for the event. And that's how you model it out. There's no sense in tossing a bunch of your time at it. That's a waste of energy and money.

[Dan Andrews]

I find myself. I know you're a fan of Traction, which I haven't read, but I've heard enough about this book that I understand the visionary versus integrator idea. And I'm good at both of these skill sets, but I've held both of them too long. And so anytime there's like an operational thing that I want to do, I just assume it's going to be me. And I know I don't have the capacity, so I don't do it. I need to think from a hiring numbers ler perspective. This is part of the reason I wanted to Talk to you because I see the way that you have delegated and team built around this and it's.

[Jay Clouse]

A muscle I need to build.

[Ian]

I mean the scorecard is absolutely critical for this. It's so simple, it's so boring, Nobody wants to do it. It's a one page document. You sit down and like I think when people talk about team building, it's like all this soft stuff. It's like leadership and training and I got to manage and track and I've got a visionary and they're the integrator and all this kind of stuff. Let's simplify it. Let's take one piece of paper and write down the outcomes that you need in the business on a weekly basis and what the numbers are associated with that. Your only job as the executive is to make sure that those outcomes lead to the company goals. And you need to have a clear numbers philosophy. If I get 25 top of funnel leads, marketing qualified leads, if I convert to this to my sales calls, if this many people come in the front door, if this person creates it, we reach our year end goals. Okay, so we got that all figured out. So now all I need to do is basic top grading stuff, which is how do you evaluate good candidates? I need to find a candidate who can produce these outcomes. And based on my salary cap, which is based on this ler, I'm introducing a lot of gobbledygook here, but love it. LER is simple, right? It's gross profit divided by direct labor. Okay. So my gross profit from this product is this. Everybody that's contributing to that, including sales, marketing, operations, delivery, whatever needs to be at 2.0. So this is my budget for this particular person and I'm going to go out and find the person for that budget. And with us we can hire globally. We have remarkable flexibility in meeting these budgets. Now we're in the interview. Talk to me, Jay, about a time where you've produced outcomes like this in another scenario. Tell me how you did it. Let's go through all the details, let's hypothesize. Here's the input hypotheses that I have. Here are the actions you'll take on a daily basis that I believe create these outputs. Because you know what? I've done them, I've been doing it, right? I know you hired a podcast producer, right? Like you know how to do that. Here are the outcomes, here's the inputs, they correlate, they lead to my goals. This is what you're going to be judged on here's how much I can afford to pay you. Let's get moving. It's just that simple.

[Dan Andrews]

Why does the LER need to be 2.0 and not like 1.1? Why does it need to be so far above 1?

[Ian]

So 2.0 is like, if you model out most small businesses, it's sort of the minimum to get to over 10% net profit after owner compensation after the year. It's sort of a heuristic or like a rule of thumb that when you look at a bunch of businesses now there are models that you need to have a much higher ler because you need a management layer. And so those businesses would be like food services and lawn care services and stuff like that. But because team members that work like, we're kind of like, I don't know, professional services, creators, businesses, our team members manage themselves much more effectively. They don't need that layer. You can have a much lower ratio. I mean, if you have a 1.0 ratio, like you're spending all your gross profit on the labor is not a business. Yeah, you're sort of operating with this startup mentality like, I'm going to put all my money back into this and I think it's going to pay off.

[Jay Clouse]

Right.

[Dan Andrews]

It's assuming an exponential return rather than a linear return.

[Ian]

There you go. I think that's a great way to think of it. And the reality that I've seen is that exponential return often won't happen on the thing you're working on right now. So it's typically best to run those experiments with your own time, which by the way, is extremely expensive because we all can go get high paying jobs right now. So that needs to be factored in as well. Yeah, you know, whatever your market rate is, you dunk that onto your P and L and see how profitable your business really is.

[Jay Clouse]

After a quick break, we talk about hiring the drivers of event growth and what keeps attendees coming back year after year.

[Dan Andrews]

So stick around, we'll be right back.

[Jay Clouse]

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[Dan Andrews]

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[Jay Clouse]

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[Dan Andrews]

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[Jay Clouse]

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[Dan Andrews]

I was talking to somebody who is a really talented fractional operator and we were talking about maybe working together and I looked at the cost to do that and in the near term it would have been trading time stress that I feel for money stress that I would feel hiring them at the rates that they charged. And that was a really tough thing for me to like handle. Because you made the argument a month.

[Ian]

Let me guess.

[Dan Andrews]

No, it was higher.

[Ian]

Wow.

[Dan Andrews]

So which is Kind of where I knit it out. I was like, I not going to tell you rates are unfair. It's just I can't accommodate that. And I don't know that I want to trade time stress for money stress because I think money stress affects me a little bit more than time stress does.

[Ian]

I think that's a great approach if you can manage it, because business is a risky proposition. So you want to drive as much profitability as you can. I think it's a good strategy.

[Dan Andrews]

Going back to some of the logistics or the dynamite circle events part of your empire, do you find that the community drives event sales or that events drive community members?

[Jay Clouse]

I'm sure it's a little bit of both.

[Dan Andrews]

But what does that look like in your mind?

[Ian]

Oh, that's a good question. It feels like a self licking ice cream cone. There's these two dimensions that I often see communities go. The one is in the direction of sort of like informing ourselves in a particular direction. So like mindvalley might be an example of that where we all want to learn this type of information and we're here to like gain access to the information. And then there's other types of communities where we're like here to gain access to each other. And the stickiest form of that is in person, like by a long shot. And so, you know, we have numbers in our business. Like if you go to an event within the first 12 months, your likelihood of staying in the community is like more than doubled. And then I don't have the exact numbers internally for this, but it's like to me it's obvious that they're the most likely to refer somebody to either come to that event or to join the community to see, you know, to talk about their experience at the event. So we see events as like a core brand promise delivery. Like that's where you get the juiciest D.C. goodness.

[Dan Andrews]

And I would imagine that you have a lot of repeat event goers.

[Ian]

We have members who have come to every single event for 10 years. Yeah.

[Dan Andrews]

Do you think the majority of event attendees at this point have already gone to one event in the past?

[Ian]

Yes. So for example, at DCPKK where there were 345 ticket holders the first time, attendees typically will be somewhere in like the high 20s to high 30s percentile depending on the year. So if I had to guess off the top of my head, it's like one in three. As a first time attendee, how do.

[Dan Andrews]

You think about the economics of the events? Because membership itself is a paid product.

[Jay Clouse]

To go to the events.

[Dan Andrews]

You have to be a member or.

[Ian]

No, you have to be a member.

[Dan Andrews]

You have to be a member. So how do you think about the ticket price?

[Ian]

So, by the way, if you run an informational based community versus a connections based community, there's an opportunity to have events be more expensive to the public.

[Dan Andrews]

Yeah.

[Ian]

And then you ROI your membership in the heart of your customer because they get discount access to these events. So that I think is an excellent opportunity. In the case of a membership where you're connecting people and the primary service you're offering is the vetting, it kind of defeats the brand promise. And so in our case, to just.

[Dan Andrews]

Take a ticket from anybody to come in, you still want to vet the people who attend.

[Ian]

I can't sell tickets to the public because my brand promises that I'm vetting everybody that's at the event. So it's interesting as you think about how you construct these decisions have downstream effects. Yeah. So it's a delicate business. I'm tempted to like, you know that podcast episode that Acquired FM did about Costco? So cool. I'm tempted to think of our events as like a Costco model, which is we want the most people to experience our events as possible because that is one of our core delivery mechanisms for the community. Goodness. So we want to price it that way. We want to make our events extremely accessible. Like, so, for example, I'm flying to New York in a few days. This is our premium members. Obviously our gross margins on subscriptions are quite high. So we're not trying to like drive profitability with that ticket price. If it's, you know, $1,500 is going to swing three or four members from coming to that event. You know, I'm not trying to lose sight on the core driver of value for the business by trying to make extra profit on the events. So I think it's a tricky balance between. Really what we're trying to do is have a ticket price where we can sustainably resource the event, to use a wonky term, where we can deliver on the promise that our customers expect. So it's a tricky balance. Like for our premium customers, we're pricing our events right now anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500. And then for our standard membership, a typical event will be around $1,000. So that's sort of where we found that balance, where we can still drive like a meaningful percentage of the community, like 30, 40%. You know, anywhere from 20 to 40% of the community will come out for an event. And we're trying to hit that number. We're trying to get as many community members to come out as possible.

[Dan Andrews]

For context, what's the difference in membership pricing between a standard member and a premium member?

[Ian]

It's 750, 500. Okay.

[Dan Andrews]

What are the biggest cost drivers for events?

[Jay Clouse]

I assume the venue is one. Food.

[Ian]

Yeah. You were talking about like how to make money off of events. I was thinking like, I think a lot of entrepreneurs like really complain about events. And I'm trying to figure out like the good thing about them is the bad thing about them, which is your customers are right there and they're loving it or they're frustrated with it. And I think that that's a virtue. In the end, that's what you want as a founder. You want to talk to your customers. In terms of making events wildly successful. From a monetary perspective, it's.

[Dan Andrews]

That's not even my priority, honestly. Okay, I'm asking what you're trying to do. I'm asking these questions because I. Similarly, we moved the lab from like a capped model where we thought that price alone would be the vetting mechanism we need to attract the right person. That's true most of the time, but not 100% of the time or not close enough to 100% of the time. So we moved to an application vetting model. And I also agree that having in person events is a great way to deliver value.

[Jay Clouse]

So to me, I am also thinking.

[Dan Andrews]

How do I make the events break even at a minimum? But really I look at the events as a retention and like love inducing aspect of membership. And I'm trying to figure out what that model is then with the people that you need to hire, with the cost drivers that you have. Because I don't look at events as a profitable thing unless you're charging really high prices, which don't make a lot of sense if you have members paying a membership fee.

[Ian]

Correct.

[Dan Andrews]

Or doing a ton of sponsors or selling something on the back of it, which again doesn't make sense if you have members paying a membership fee.

[Ian]

There's a third way to make money, which I've seen, which is scale. So like at the typical economics of like a hotel conference, you can really start to make some money, like over 350, 400 attendees. There's just something about like, there's these fixed costs, like there's the cost of doing business when you show up to an event center or whatever. But if you can start to get four or five 600 attendees or whatever, you can really start to drive profitability as well. So all those are off the table for us. So we're simply trying to host an event without, you know, losing our minds and losing our bags. I mean, this is imminently doable for you.

[Dan Andrews]

I agree, which is why I'm thinking about it a lot.

[Ian]

Okay.

[Dan Andrews]

Because I also, to my understanding, a lot of your speakers are members, which I also think we have the opportunity to do because there's so much like wisdom and experience in the membership itself.

[Ian]

Okay. That is fantastic. That's how it should be. And this takes away this whole, I'm going to find a guru and run paid ads and Seth Godin's coming to my conference or whomever. We are going to highlight member stories and they're going to open up the hoods, you know, and share openly with each other from stage about what worked for them. The key there is to have a.

[Dan Andrews]

Speaker coach say more.

[Ian]

Well, just the hardest part about taking members and having them present is that this isn't what they do full time, you know, so. But I think you're going to get a lot better content because you're getting practitioners that are in the field figuring shit out. Like we had this incredible talk at DCBKK this year where, you know, some guy like basically generated a million dollars from a LinkedIn funnel. And he's not like a LinkedIn coach, he's just a guy who did it. And that's what you want to hear because he's like two years ahead of the course or whatever, right? And so he sits down with our speaker coach. You know, he sends the speaker coach a loom. He's like, hey, here's what I discovered, here's what I'm thinking. You have a nose for it because you're watching your members, you're saying, wow, so and so is really doing something interesting. You reach out to them. Would you be willing to do 15min minutes on it? Here's a basic framework and you go back and forth with a loom a few times. You do one call and you give the speaker confidence that their message is going to be received well by the audience. You give yourself confidence as an event coordinator that your content is going to be great. That for me is one of the biggest anxieties of hosting events is, you know, if you go especially with like professional speakers, like I'm going to ask someone famous to come speak, are they doing you a solid? So then like, can you really push them on their content? So I think creating a funnel inside the event that's like people really want to share and they get a lot of benefit from it and they're willing to work hard with your speaker coach, take feedback. That's been a big breakthrough for us and everybody wants to be a part of that because they get a lot from other members and they're like, man, I would love to be on the main stage next year. I would love to have a workshop about what I'm doing. And so that's really worked for us and I think it's just like authentic to what our community is all about, which is like practitioners sharing information with each other and supporting each other. So we're not trying to model what other conferences are doing.

[Jay Clouse]

Do you pay those speakers?

[Dan Andrews]

I assume you pay the speaker coach.

[Ian]

We pay the speaker coach. So I think you can do it both ways. It really depends on how many speakers you're going to have and how much work you're asking of them. But we simply do free tickets, that's it. I don't think we need to necessarily do that. We in the past have not offered free. And there are other companies that have like five figure ticket prices and they don't compensate speakers. I mean, speakers get a lot out of it. That's the pitch. And your job is to make their job easy. Right? Like have message, audience fit. Here's a simple framework. It's only going to take you to do the prep stuff a few hours. Obviously the workload is going to be much greater than that in the end, but the idea is to make it easy to share their story. And I think people appreciate that challenge, particularly if they have time to prepare.

[Jay Clouse]

After one more quick break, Dan shares his thoughts on creating sustainable communities and why community is safe from AI.

[Dan Andrews]

Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

[Jay Clouse]

I am once again inviting you to join our membership for professional creators, the Lab. Of course I am biased, but Andrew is not. Andrew has been a member for about two years now and this was a testimonial he sent me unprompted.

[Ian]

Joining the Lab has been the single best investment I have made in my business and in myself since I started doing this, going solo 17 years ago.

[Jay Clouse]

If you benefit from the conversations here on the podcast, you'd love the things.

[Dan Andrews]

We talk about in the Lab.

[Jay Clouse]

In fact, some of the past guests of this show are members themselves. The Lab helps you keep a finger on the pulse of what's working and what's changing for creators right now. I can tell you about all the things that are included, like all of my courses, including Build a beloved membership podcasts like a YouTuber, the newsletter masterclass. You get a complimentary copy of Creator hq, our operating system built in notion. But the best thing is the people incredibly generous, incredibly kind, incredibly smart and accomplished people are in the Lab. I could go on and on about this, but just know there is nothing more important to me than continuing to make the Lab the absolute best community for professional creators. You can join the basic tier now which is an absolute bargain or you can apply to join our standard or VIP tiers. Just visit creatorscience.comlab to learn more and get started. That's creatorscience.comlab. it's in the show Notes. I hope to see you there. This episode is sponsored by ces. CES is the proving ground for breakthrough technologies from leading brands and cutting edge startups. And now CES puts creators at the center of it all with an innovative new space in the Las Vegas Convention Center. The CES Creator Space, presented by Sony, is a hub designed specifically for content creators and storytellers. Located in the central hall lobby, the space will feature a stage sponsored by Pinterest hosting talks and panels with insights from creators as well as leaders at companies like Walmart, Wailer and TikTok. Topics will include brand partnerships, content rights and AI. Now here's the best part, so listen closely. Creators are eligible for complimentary registration and exclusive access by getting a media badge. I've actually done this in years past before they had this creator space and it has always been a blast. You can be boots on the ground making content at the show with all the newest technology. You'll be able to access the CES creator space during the show January 7th through 10th and even media days happening January 5th and 6th with the first looks at product announcements from global brands. To learn more and register, visit CES Tech, that's CES Tech, to register for complimentary media credentials. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Dan Andrews.

[Dan Andrews]

I think I have the unfair advantage that a lot of, I mean all of the folks in the lab who would be up for consideration for this, they are professional creators. Like they are professional. Yeah, message sharers, you know, which is one reason why like this podcast has worked fairly well is people show up with great equipment. So I think we have an opportunity there. And candidly, I just think this is like the future of my business model because information wants to be free. I think education in the time of AI will get really personalized and meet you where you are. And I think increasingly we'll be asking like is this experience that I'm having, a human experience, is this real? And community is a really powerful thing that is a little bit AI proof.

[Jay Clouse]

Very difficult to do.

[Dan Andrews]

I don't think most people have a nose or a stomach for it. But again, a reason why I wanted to talk to you about it because you've been doing this for a decade and sustaining a community is really difficult. What have you learned about sustaining a community over this period of time?

[Ian]

Man, that's a hard question. By the way, this event thing, man, great idea. I love that you're going to do it. Let's get the dates in the books. I want to know where it is, what's happening. Our team can help you out. Look at your event budget. Having an event budget, gotta have it, right?

[Jay Clouse]

Well, we are gonna do.

[Dan Andrews]

So we have dates for this first one. I'm kind of hedging. What I'm gonna do is we're gonna do two days in front of Convertkit's craft and Commerce okay. Conference so that people have a lot of like built in friends. They can go to that conference afterwards. But also it kind of makes the travel and lodging expenses a little more reasonable because if you're already gonna go there, that's one flight instead of two.

[Ian]

I love it.

[Dan Andrews]

So that's the plan for 2025 is two days for the community in front of this event that historically a lot of community members have gone to anyway. And I think that's going to be great. But then if that goes well, I want to do something a little bit more destination oriented later in the year.

[Ian]

Speaking of, I love that idea of the destination as well. I love being embedded with members. There's something about, you know, even for us going down the playa and just like the time around the pool and just sort of being out of the rhythm of like a normal city and normal, your normal life is fairly powerful. I think being able to bring your family, your partner is kind of a cool element as well and like share the experience. That's a cool part. Creating like a WhatsApp group for the partners so that they can go off and do excursions and stuff.

[Dan Andrews]

That's fun.

[Ian]

They start to think the community is cool.

[Dan Andrews]

That's fun.

[Ian]

That's what you want buy in you, you know. Another thing to consider with this event stuff is you mentioned like information being free and stuff. A lot of times presentations, even from the best presentations are merely conceits for me and you to go talk about the presentation afterwards. Right. We want to discuss what do you Think about what so and so set up there. And so I would definitely look into smaller format discussions where you have like qualified discussions about like YouTube in 2025, let's get eight people sitting here, people that want to talk about finance, people that want to add an event portion. And then you rotate those groups, those discussions. You have to rip people out of them. At least our members. Like, you know, you have to like ring a bell in people's ears and be like, you know, Phil's not leaving, but you gotta go to this other group and start talking about the next interesting.

[Dan Andrews]

So you're saying not like a static.

[Jay Clouse]

Small group of people.

[Dan Andrews]

You think these eight people would gel together. You're saying you have like this rotating cycle of topics where it's like, I'm at the YouTube in 2025 table right now, but in 15 minutes I'm gonna move over to the profit first table. And in 15 minutes I'm going to move over to the email table.

[Jay Clouse]

That's really interesting.

[Ian]

And then even like for a morning, you could message out to everybody that didn't want to speak because they didn't want to spend 20 hours making a talk. And you say, hey, I'm messaging right now. Because you've done something amazing this year. Are you willing to host a 35 minute meetup on the topic in this room? Here's the format. Everybody's going to say yes. Dan, do you want to host a meetup about podcasting? All I need is a five minute topper from you about the number one thing you learned and the number one challenge you're facing, and then send it around the group for 45 minutes, man. Like, it'll be electric. You got eight podcasters sitting there talking about their challenges. So I think at an event for us, what's really powerful. And this sounds like you guys have this vibe too. It sounds like you talked about this kind of element of legitness and non skeezy, giving people a in person place to talk about what's not going well, what's challenging, what they're worried about. That really drives connections and it creates a special. Because we're weirdos.

[Dan Andrews]

Right.

[Ian]

Sometimes it's not cool to go talk about our businesses when we're hanging out with normies. Yeah.

[Dan Andrews]

And also there's like very few places where you feel comfortable talking about your concerns because you're not going to have to share with your employees.

[Ian]

Exactly.

[Dan Andrews]

Your partner might not quite understand what you're doing. You might not want to share some of those with your partner either. So if you don't have a legitimate business partner, it's tough to have an outlet for that type of stuff.

[Ian]

I think that drives a ton of value and it really just drives meaningful, like life changing connections. That last and you talked about sustainability. There you go. It's like, how can you get people to connect? And we watch the same talk is level one, so what can you do to level two, Level three, deepen those things.

[Dan Andrews]

Is there a base level number of attendees that you think makes an event like we're describing viable?

[Ian]

No, I just think the price changes based on your venue type selection. Like, you know, we can go to an Airbnb event, you know, and everybody toss in a thousand bucks and that works. We can all go skiing together and everybody pays 3,000 bucks. That works. We can get 70 people to go to a small tertiary conference room and that works. Or we can rent out the ballroom and charge $500 to 250 people. And that works. So the key thing is, like, you want to simplify with a good venue selection. So what's one venue that can solve 80% of your problems? Maybe you want to have an evening party at a rooftop or, you know, some cool restaurant or whatever. But typically you want that core venue to have a good lobby place for people to hang out, have a great conference room, good rooms. It's just get the RFPs out there, figure out what the price is and work backwards.

[Jay Clouse]

You're saying RFPs, and for people who.

[Dan Andrews]

Aren'T familiar, and for my own assumptions, I'm making it sounds like you're saying.

[Jay Clouse]

RFP2 venues to say we want to host an event.

[Dan Andrews]

What can you do for us?

[Ian]

Yeah, like, hey, I'm Dan from Dynamite Circle. We're looking for an event for these dates or these dates. Here's how many attendees. We need this kind of setup in the conference room. We let them know our format. Like, you know, we want round tables in the morning, we want audience seating in the afternoon, and we want to have 10 breakout rooms the second day. What's our room minimum? And you know, that's a deep dive topic in and of itself in terms of room minimums and all that kind of stuff. But again, like we talked about at the top, in the end, not nearly as complicated as doing what everybody listening to this, it does every day. So those parts are easy. The hard part is, you know, connecting people, getting the right people to come. Those are the hard parts.

[Dan Andrews]

I kind of want to just give you the floor to talk about what you're seeing in the world of mostly community and events that you think people don't get because what's old is new again. And I think we're in a cycle of like creators, online business, new sexy thing. But like really people have been doing this for 20 years. What do you see in the current cycle that you think people are misguided as it relates to community or events?

[Ian]

Well, I think typically I see people overvaluing. It is extremely valuable. But I think in general people overvalue the algorithm and views and likes and general popularity where it's easier to start a business if you're much more serious about message audience fit. So who's interacting with your content in your community is a extremely powerful lever. Like if you do the math right, it's like we've all done the TikTok math. It's like a million people watched my video, then what do they do? Watch somebody else's video, then nothing. Right. And so but if two high net worth individuals read your newsletter about how to open up a bank account in Singapore, the lever of what those two individuals can do is an enormous part of the equation. Even though you got two views that we forget to put into the equation. So I think, I know you do this a lot in your stuff, but I just think in the conversation it's less legible. So people, we don't have like a regular way of talking about it that I've seen. You had a really good case study of a guy who had a successful YouTube channel, but started a second one about notion specifically. And that's a good example of really honing in on who you're talking to and what potential milieu of actions they can take and what's their agency and how that multiplies your numbers downstream. Because when you just look at the platform like I'm going to get popular on YouTube, I'm going to get popular on Instagram. I just see like countless people who are popular on Instagram that are having a really hard time making it. You know, they thought there was like some, there, there, there was some promise at the end of that audience building. So some way to check in on who that audience is as you go along I think is probably undervalued still. And that's an old thing, that's a new thing, that's a perennial thing. And events are a really great way to do that, even if it's virtual. Like if you've got an audience of 100 people and you're doing a live stream or whatever, make it about the audience. Like figure out who they are and what they're biggest problems are. That kind of basic customer development stuff. Then you can model your message after that. So I say this as someone who's built a reasonably sizable business off of a small audience, because we're talking to wealthy business owners. That's basically it. And so I think that's the biggest lesson from my story, is that it matters who's in your audience. Great deal.

[Dan Andrews]

If you want to hear the second.

[Jay Clouse]

Half of this conversation, remember to subscribe to Tropical NBA.

[Dan Andrews]

In your podcast Player, we talk about.

[Jay Clouse]

All things being a creator, the biggest opportunities I see right now, and how I would go about designing a content strategy. The link to that is in the Show Notes. It will be released on Thursday of this week. You'll also find a link to my previous conversation with Dan, which is still one of my personal favorites. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and letting me know Those reviews go a long way to helping us grow the show. I read all of them.

[Dan Andrews]

I say it in every episode because it truly makes a difference.

[Jay Clouse]

If you haven't left a rating or.

[Dan Andrews]

Review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please take a moment to do so. If you want to learn more about.

[Jay Clouse]

Dan, visit his [e-mail] there's also a link to that in the Show Notes. Otherwise, thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week.