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Creator Science with Jay Clouse
#295: Community Building Trends for 2026 with Becky Pierson Davidson [Greatest Hits]
00:56:15
Becky Pierson Davidson is the founder of Affinity Collective
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- [00:00]
A
This grad weekend experience is something that we've continued doing. The last COHORT we had 66% of the cohort show up and we're close to like 100 people in a cohort to give you an idea. And they're traveling from all over the world. Even the people abroad are like coming to this LA weekend.
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B
Hello my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. Today I'm speaking with my good friend Becky Pearson Davidson. Becky was last on the show in episode number 197 in June of 2024 when we recorded with Chanel Basilio at Kit's Craft and Commerce Conference. That episode was all about building raving fans and it was a listener favorite, so we were overdue to bring Becky back. Becky is a community driven product strategist and founder of Affinity Collective, helping six, seven and eight figure online businesses. That's real works with very legit clients, build transformative memberships and courses through design thinking and data driven customer research. She also hosts a podcast called Build with Becky that's a voice note style show all about community. Becky and I share a lot of beliefs when it comes to community and membership based products and she's really doubled down on this over the last few years. So I thought it would be fun to compare notes and see if there were any areas of disagreement between us. And spoiler, we found a couple. In this episode we talk about the current state of online community trends she's seeing in 2026, what successful communities are doing right now, and some warnings for anyone running or thinking about running a community business today. Becky has been a longtime member of the Lab, one of our first and speaking of craft and commerce, we are hosting the Lab's next two day offline event in Boise ahead of Kit's Craft and Commerce Conference again this year in June. We already have over 30 members of the community RSVP'd and we'd love for you to join us. It's only available to Standard and VIP members of the Lab, so to learn more and apply, visit creatorscience.com lab that's creatorscience.com lab. There's a link in the show notes to learn more. We'll get to that conversation with Becky right after this. This episode is brought to you by Circle, the community platform chosen by Tim Ferriss, Dr. Becky Kennedy, and of course, me. If you've been online over the last month, you've probably seen some chatter about Circle Eclipse, their biggest product release in company history. Here are two of my favorite parts of this release First Up Circle AI. Imagine an AI partner that knows your business and runs it alongside you. Not only that, but it has the full knowledge of what you can do with Circle. From routine tasks to strategic work. It's like having the power of an entire team without one. What used to take you days or weeks to build can now be built in just a few hours with Circle AI. Number two, Circle. Discover a marketplace where millions of people can sign up, tell Circle what they want to achieve and get matched with the creator. Businesses on Circle that take them there. Discover already features thousands of the top communities, courses and events on Circle. And for creators, it's a new marketing channel that you switch on with a single click. These are just two aspects of the Circle Eclipse launch. Read about the rest and join the waitlist for Circle AI at Circle so Eclipse. That's Circle so Eclipse.
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A
I see you.
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B
Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney. It's the film critics are calling the best avatar yet. A true epic and completely jaw dropping.
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A
This is the only pure thing in this world.
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B
Return to Pandora on Disney.
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A
It will be an adventure for the whole fam.
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B
And watch the Oscar winning phenomenon at home.
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A
This is sick.
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B
Avatar, Fire and Ash now spread on Disney. Rated PG 13. We're obviously going to talk a lot about community and memberships today, but I thought we would start by defining some terms so everybody is on the same page. So when you say the word community, what does that mean to you?
- [04:14]
A
Well, in the broad sense, community is about bringing people together that have some kind of shared interest or goal. But when I talk about community in the context of my work, I think about community a lot as a product versus as a marketing growth engine to help grow a business or as a WhatsApp chat with your friends about your fantasy football league. I think about it more in the context of treating it as a product in your business and something that you really nurture and improve over time. But I think that's a me definition.
- [04:49]
B
Well, no, this is why it's useful because we're talking to you. So when you say community, we want to know what you mean by that to kind of zoom in on that a little bit more. You've worked with folks who have very large audiences and so what line do you draw between community and audience?
- [05:06]
A
I don't think about audience as community, which I know is maybe a hot take, but it's not a community unless you're like nurturing relationships and connecting people to one another. So an audience is very. I think these are your words actually. Like you always Say one to many or one to one, like it's a very one to many experience.
- [05:26]
B
It's like a one to one many times is an audience relationship. I agree. Yeah. When I say community, I think there are inherent peer to peer conversations, connections, relationships happening. It's all of the connecting points inside of a network rather than like a broadcast. One to one, many times. So I agree with that. Okay, cool. Well, I want to talk today about where community is, where it's headed, where it has left because it's a new year and I do feel, I'm certainly thinking about this more and more in the age of AI. Both because AI feels very anti human in a lot of ways and because I think it's going to have a very destructive effect on course businesses. And I think a lot of people are thinking, okay, this is where I'm moving. Are you seeing the same, Are you seeing community as a rising business model?
- [06:24]
A
Yeah, I keep joking with my friends and team that it's such a great year to be building community as your business because I've been talking about community for years and I think part of it is, okay, if you do the creator thing for years, then all of a sudden you start to see traction. It doesn't happen in the beginning, but I'm starting to see traction and, and I feel that that's both like the moment in time we're in and everybody's talking about community because we're craving human connection more than ever and we're craving to work with companies and businesses and people that resonate with us, that we share values with more than ever. So I'm seeing this like rising tide and I'm also working with quite a few clients right now who have amazing course businesses that are starting to see a slowdown and they recognize that something needs to change and, and we're starting to think about like how do we shift that to a membership model? Because Community is the piece that really is bringing people into this like shared learning experience is going to be what we move to and away from an education like self paced kind of experience that online courses are today.
- [07:29]
B
Do you think that's an easy transition? Is it like the Indiana Jones, we have this bag of gold in front of us and we're just going to swap this coarse bag of gold for a community business model and nothing happens. It just is a seamless transition?
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A
No, it's different for everyone. We're doing this for quite a few clients, but all the strategies are really different. It depends on a few factors. What kind of Programming are you willing to do as the creator if you created a self paced on demand course you probably were chasing, I'm going to put it in air quotes. Passive income, you're looking at, how can I make money while I sleep? How can I not have to show up? I just kind of like publish this course and then people watch it. And the shift is what are they willing to do to actually bring people together, connect them, teach live talk, live run workshops, bring people together virtually in person. And so it really depends on what the appetite is for that. And if they're really excited about that, then the strategy's a lot easier. And if they're not, then we need to get a little bit crafty around how we create programming that gets people engaged and using the course and the community and the content.
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B
I feel like community is very active income. There's certainly some efficiencies to it. But when I think about where I'm spending my time, and not even just fingers on the keyboard time, but even just thinking energy time, so much of it gets soaked up with the lab and our community there. And I think it's certainly underestimated by people who are kind of coming into it, but I think it's even underestimated by people who are doing it. If I try to imagine a world where the lab doesn't exist, first of all, I'm sad. Second of all, I would have so much time and capacity, it's such a beast. But that is a result of how I've designed the space, which is a design in which there are few boundaries, unfortunately. How do you think about helping people find the right community design for what they want to do?
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A
Yeah, I always want to start by asking what their appetite is like, their goals, what they're willing to do, because that's how I would craft. Okay, so if you're willing to show up once a month in the community, we can design around that. I'm also probably encouraging this client to have some sort of support on their team. Like if you're not willing to be in the forum engaging with people or host events or bring people together, then somebody needs to step up to the plate to do that work. It doesn't have to be you. I mean, we have a client who has a large social media following. She actually teaches how to grow on Instagram. And we developed a membership product where there's a different social media coach inside of the membership. And it's all very clear in the marketing, even the sales pitch comes from the coach. That's in the program, because it's really important to me that we're setting really clear expectations in the marketing about what experience somebody's getting. And that membership has really high retention. It does really well. And it's because people are really supported by an incredible social media coach that does that for a living. And so I think there are ways we can always work around what people are willing to do.
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B
Let's dig more into that, because I'm completely aligned with this, and this is why I wanted to have you on the podcast, is because I feel like we're aligned on a lot of things. But also I'm really interested to hear where we're not aligned. I think that could be really fun if we find these areas to be determined. Yeah, I want to talk more about these expectations that you set, because I do find in the world where people are saying, okay, memberships are up and coming, my course business is fading. Let's do that. They just think I have audience. Platforms exist. Throw those two together. People trust me, they will join. But I think the implicit of that very sloppy strategy is that people will close the loop of the expectations you're not setting on their own and will probably assume that they get more access to the creator, the person, than is real. Have you seen this happen?
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A
Yeah. I used to be head of product at Boss Babe, and I remember when I took over the goal setting call, that was a call we had every single month. And the first couple of months it was like a riot because they were like, who is this random person?
- [11:53]
B
And that must have sucked. That must have sucked for you.
- [11:56]
A
Yeah, I mean, I was very aware that they would feel that way. It's not like they're writing in the chat, who is this? Because I'm bubbly and nice. And they were like, oh, this girl's trying. She's cute. Right? But. But the reality is, like, we got messages in the customer service inbox, which my team managed. So I'm seeing that are like, hey, I thought Natalie runs these calls. What happened? You know, and I see this pattern play out a lot. And what I've realized is like, we just need to over communicate. And I also believe we need to make the community, we need to make them part of decisions. Like, we're co creating this community experience. And so how do we do that through, like asking for feedback? Hey, we heard your feedback. You want more goal setting. Like, hey, we heard this. We want to improve this process. We're going to bring in this consistent person that does this every month, you know, so it's like we're responding to the feedback we're getting by making these changes and decisions. And the other thing is just communicating kind of like a corporate change management sort of way. Like, hey, this change is coming and not just dropping it on people, I find is another important thing. Like when somebody logged into that goal setting call expecting Natalie and it was me and there's not a preemptive process there about hey, this is actually who's going to take over the call. Maybe we could have done a couple co hosted three times before she dropped off. Like there could have been a better way to roll that out.
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B
Yeah, it's kind of bait and switchy and it feels this is not calling out this organization specifically, but I do see this from time to time. If people expect that this creator they've built a probably parasocial relationship with at this point, if they expect that creator to show up and they don't. Besides feeling disappointed, the implicit message to that is I don't value this as part of my time from the creator. Which I know they're not trying to say that, but I think that is true. Anything that you don't put your time to, you are saying, I don't value this in this way. And if people thought that was going to be the experience, not only are they disappointed, but they also feel a little bit insulted.
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A
I think there's a balance and this is where I talk about the value perception versus value experience in my work. So if you're setting a specific expectation upfront with your customers, then when they purchase and they're expecting we can say, oh, this person never coaches inside the membership. This is based on their methods. But they're not in their day to day because they're focused on xyz. And if we set that expectation up front, then people know going in and then we can surprise and delight by having her come in and do a quarterly event. And then people are really excited about that. And that's kind of my approach I take is like, we want to set the bar here and then like deliver here. So people talk about it and they're really excited about it.
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B
I see this with sales pages for memberships all the time. And a lot of times when people are building a paid community or a membership and they're, they're saying like, okay, here's what's going to go on the sales page. They're just like loading up this page with stuff. It's like, here's all the stuff. And there's inherent rigidity to that. But Also, my advice is usually like, you need to make the smallest viable promise because then you have so much flexibility and you can do a lot of surprise and delight. But there's like some fear and maybe a little bit of imposter syndrome that comes with making the smallest version of a promise that you can make that is enough to warrant the cost of the membership. How do you help people find here is what the expectation of value should be in this membership.
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A
I always start by asking, what transformation are we trying to serve here? So if we're taking people from A to B, what does that look like? Even in a community of practice like the lab, it's like you're taking people from a professional creator to probably a professional creator that experiments and then grows at a faster rate or something. And so even in a community of practice, there's still a transformation. And so I try to define what that is. And then I'm asking them, okay, what are the key things they need to be able to accomplish that? And so it's always like, these are the things they need to make a purchasing decision. And so usually there's some kind of like roadmap component or curriculum component to that because people want to buy for the outcome. So it's like, okay, you're going to get this thing, this checklist that's going to help you reach your goal. And then you're going to get also a workshop of monthly events. Here's some examples of the kind of events we've hosted in the past, but just sort of like bare bones so that we can really experiment after purchase. But the bare bones thing, they need to make a decision. I always say people buy for the outcomes and for the roadmap or the checklist or the giant red jump button that gets them to their goal that they're trying to achieve. And then they actually do the work through the programming and engage through programming, and they stick around because of the community. So community is often not the thing that they actually buy for. And so I try to think about, like the outcome, the roadmap piece, the resource kind of stuff that we list on the sales page.
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B
Yeah, I'm interested in this word transformation because I do think that is the biggest sales lever that you have when you're building one of these things. I don't think I've articulated that very well or even designed it very well into the lab because I've been kind of resistant to it because ultimately I'm not doing any specific linear teaching in there. Like, to me, really what I'm trying to do is help people who are already close to the edge stay there and learn from peers. Because the rate of knowledge transfer is just so much faster when it doesn't need to be produced into some sort of packaged course type thing. Inherently harder to sell, but pretty sticky. And my fear with people who go the transformation route is they create a really good experience. It's like this linear education, but it's a mostly consumptive experience. And if they're purely thinking the transformation lens, I find that sometimes they have a hard time getting members to participate and interact with one another because they set the expectation that this is going to be a consumptive experience. So how do you hold both things in the design of a space?
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A
I think you found the thing we disagree on.
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B
Please.
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A
Okay. So I believe the transformation part is we want to give them the roadmap, the resources, the course, whatever the curriculum. But people don't actually use that that much. And so the community experience comes into play with the programming. So what that does having a roadmap, or let's say you have a framework, because that's my favorite. Like if a client has a framework, this becomes way easier because we can build your transformative roadmap curriculum based on your framework. Let's say you have a framework and that's the backbone of the experience that gives them a really clear roadmap to follow. And also we can personalize it by identifying where they are in that path. But the programming aspect, which really starts to connect people in community, is the part that gets people very engaged. And there's really clear objectives that make it worth their time to RSVP and show up and do the work and participate. So I'll give you some examples. So on these programming calls we might workshop something. So let's say in my framework I talk about onboarding. I'm going to run a session on onboarding design. We're going to talk all about onboarding and then we're actually going to have people design it on the call and connect and share their onboarding flows with each other and get feedback. They're starting to connect the dots with one another and help one another. And that builds connection because they actually have a shared thing that they're working on versus like forced connection, which we often do too early in community building. So the transformation piece means that there's like a shared path that people are working toward together, which drives connection.
- [20:09]
B
I see. So you're thinking about it more as like less a, very discreet A to B and a little Bit more of a broader, like there's a transformation where that says, hey, join this space and we're going to set up your email onboarding machine. That feels like a very clear, specific, but relatively short term outcome. That at some point, if you do deliver that very quickly, it kind of feels like what's the retention mechanism? Like what's the role of this past this. But it sounds like what you're advocating for is a little bit of a longer term point B that feels a little bit more aspirational and there are multiple destinations within that.
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A
Yes. But I also see the other option you gave, which I would consider more like there's two ways to do this. It's part of their onboarding experience and it's kind of like you can cohort it or whatever, but they go through this like quicker experience to like hit what I call baseline. Because it's like, okay, we're trying to all get on the same page. Let's say we're teaching people email automation.
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B
Yeah. Like set up your email onboarding experience, your welcome sequence.
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A
So sure, that's like a very quick win. So we could make that part of their onboarding experience. And then because everybody already has their email welcome sequence done, then there's a million other things they need to focus on with their email growth. And so then they go from, okay, now they've had a quick win, everybody has that same baseline, they at least have their welcome sequence. And now they're in like a community of practice that is more like the programming is driving other areas of email growth or things that they could be doing.
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B
But in that world, I probably shouldn't just be marketing and selling the community as that first thing we accomplish. Like, I need to have a bigger vision and a bigger promise for what this transformation, this outcome is.
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A
I agree that would be a scenario where that's probably something that would come out of like an onboarding design session which would come after like, what are we putting on the sales page? To kind of like go back to what we were originally talking about. But the broader transformation is how I'd focus on what should we include here and what should we put on the sales page.
- [22:28]
B
So some things that have naturally come up, we've talked about frameworks, outcomes, transformations. We've talked about programming playing a role within it. We haven't talked a whole lot about the role of the forum. How much do you focus on a forum experience? Assuming there is a community forum and whatever tool somebody is using, how much do you focus on that in the design of Memberships right now, it's definitely a core component.
- [22:55]
A
I always think about it from an experience standpoint. So for example, we're just working on like a functional health community strategy and we created a space called case studies. And in this space somebody can share a case study of a patient client, like what they need help with a functional health coach. And they could say, like, here's how I'm thinking of treating this person, or like the protocols I'm looking at and get feedback from this like functional health team to help them, like make sure they're giving their client the best protocol. And this case study space is really specific because we want them to follow a specific post structure. It's kind of like that connection space you just made. Like you have a very specific post structure. So we think about like, okay, what's like the minimum amount of spaces they need? Usually it's very small to start with, but if there's anything specific to the design that we've made like that, like this case study space, we'll add it in. But mostly I try to keep it extremely simple in the beginning. And then we add based on like what comes up. Right. Cause you never know how people are going to behave, what kind of conversations are going to catch on. One of the biggest mistakes I see is people over engineer making a ton of different spaces for different conversation topics and they don't actually know what the conversation topics are yet.
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B
Yeah, I agree with that. Whenever I'm looking at somebody's space design, I'm asking myself, one, what is the minimum viable version of this? Because if you have two spaces that do not necessarily feel distinct, this just creates friction. Do I post in place A or place B? And if you have spaces where the purpose is not clear and obvious, that also just won't get used and it's creating decision fatigue. Looking at it, I do have a lot of people who come in, they have a community, they've done a lot of things right. They kind of understand the promise they're making. People obviously believe in it because they're joining, they're running programming that seems to be aligned with that. But the problem I hear from them is people aren't engaging. And so what's happening there? Most of the time a lot of
- [25:00]
A
people say that they have an engagement problem. And then I ask them, well, what does meaningful engagement look like? And they look at me like I have five heads. And I think it's an important question to ask. Is meaningful engagement that they're just posting random conversations all day long every day, probably not. And so if we think about what does meaningful engagement look like in your community for you, it's probably sharing experiments. Like you want people in the lab to share experiments with one another, to share what's working to. Yes. Ask for feedback and help each other. It's probably not as much random conversation that's not necessarily meaningful, although it is fun and there's plenty of that too. So I like to think about what does meaningful engagement look like in your community before answering that question. Because a lot of times people are really worried about their community being crickets or people not connecting. That might not even actually be a problem. If it is a problem, then I also encourage people to make sure that the behavior they desire is being modeled. So I like to tap ambassadors or I call them plants in the community that are like, hey you five. Like Jay, you could message me and be like, hey, would you mind posting in this new space? I'm trying to get some people using it. This is how I want people to use it. And you could do that with five or 10 people. And then because the behavior is starting to be modeled of how to use it, other people are more likely to step up and do it. Especially people that are less like the super Active or the lurkers. They're more likely to do it if other people are doing it. So getting people to model behavior and set an example is a great way. And not just the creator, but the members.
- [26:39]
B
I find a lot of times it's an expectation thing also where a lot of times when I look at somebody's membership sales page, it does seem to set the expectation that you come in and you are going to be fed what to do. And so what they have people doing is watching videos. Oftentimes they end up stop coming to live programming because that programming is basically just a video at 1x speed. That programming may not be designed to have any type of interaction between people. So the net value add above something that's prerecorded is zero and maybe even negative because I could watch it at a faster speed. And so what I try to get people to think about is setting the participation expectation on the sales page. This meaningful participation. I like that. I like that idea. Or meaningful engagement, setting that expectation of the experience pre purchase. So they come in thinking this is part of what it means to be a member of this space.
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A
Have you heard of the Dreamers and Doers community?
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B
Yes.
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A
Taylor Harrington is the community manager and I've followed her for a while and I decided to join. So I Recently just went through their onboarding and that's something I think they did really well, is they have an application. And in the application you're basically like accepting the terms for, for like what it means to be a member and what the culture is like. And they even describe a few of their spaces and like how they're used and how people help each other. And I thought that was really interesting because I think about this a lot in the onboarding flow and setting expectations in one of your, you know, initial welcome videos. But I love what you said around we need to do it before. And even on the sales page, that's not something I, I see, but I thought it was really interested in the application.
- [28:30]
B
Yeah, I tried to do that. We have a new version of sales page coming out, maybe by the time this episode is ready. But I try to talk about experiments, more on it because that is meaningful participation for this space. And so if I set the expectation before you join that this is a place where we are sharing experiments with one another, I think that's going to net increase that behavior. Something that came out of our town hall last month that we're working on. Not done yet. Somebody asked, how do the best users, best members of the lab, get the most out of it? And I love that question because I think you could go to those people, learn from them and put that into your onboarding and say, these are the ways that some of our longest standing, happiest, most fulfilled members are using this space. Have you seen that done?
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A
Well, I've seen that once or twice before and I always forget about that strategy. But it's so smart. I love that I'm swipe that.
- [29:29]
B
So smart. Even a small thing like, hey, when you introduce yourself, go say hi to the person who introduced themselves before you, or hey, when you ask a question, go into the feed and try to be helpful to one other person who asked a question recently. It's such a low bar and it should be obvious, but just the little nudge, people are like, oh yeah, that is something that I should do. We still do welcome calls in the lab and every time I do one of those, I end the call by saying, hey, you know, I try to tell people, be a little selfish in the forum. And by that I mean I've never seen anybody overuse it because the problem I run into is people are empathetic and self aware and they're like, oh, I have this question, but I haven't been active in the last week, so who am I to go and post in here, try to dispel that right away. But I think you could also go too far there. Because if people are too selfish, then no one's being helpful. But I find if your community is empathetic and kind of maybe type A, just giving them that permission helps.
- [30:33]
A
Yeah, for sure. I also, I was talking to a friend recently. She runs the Flowermoore community. Her name's Ellen Frost. And she was like, I was talking to my member and she told me that every morning she just scrolls through the community when she has her coffee in the morning. And I think those stories are really good to tell too, in this context, which is like, like if you asked me my behavior in the lab, Becky, like, tell me about the last few times you logged in. Because we always learn a lot from people telling their stories. So asking about their behavioral data is really helpful. So saying like, hey, tell me about the last time you logged in. What were you doing? And I would be like, oh, like I wanted to send a message to my mastermind. And then that led me to do this and whatever. And so I think that you would learn a lot from collecting those stories and be like, here's how people engage. Like, Becky reads it every morning with her morning coffee and just telling those little anecdotes.
- [31:25]
B
Masterminds have been such an interesting experiment. I feel like I've done now like six cycles of this going back to my time at spi, which is where I really tried to innovate on this. The interesting thing I saw there, and I still see today, the Mastermind experience increases retention and decreases forum participation. It's like such an interesting trade off that I'm going to make. But I wish there was an elegant way to take some of the insights that happen in these small groups and then report them back to the larger group in a way that wasn't so effortful or onerous on the mastermind leader. But I've just seen it over and over again that masterminds increase retention but then have a negative downstream effect on forum participation because a lot of members are now getting what they need from the membership in that small group experience. And that just becomes the way they engage with the membership as a whole.
- [32:25]
A
I love that post you do every once in a while. That's like, what's working for you right now.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And it might be cool to do a post that's like, share something that came up in your mastermind recently that would be like, really helpful for the group. I think that could be another good thread for you to try this is
- [32:42]
B
something that I've flung too far to the other end of the pendulum on, which was I was trying to decenter myself as like driver of value and education in the community and I think I could be doing more to prompt and start conversation like this. Like the what's Working Right now Posts we used to do even like a self promotion post at some times. Because really I think in a community like the lab, where what I'm trying to do is spark ideas and insight and build relationships, I just need to increase surface area between people. Points of contact between people is really where all the magic happens. After a quick break, Becky and I get into why in person events are so important for communities right now and what's working out there in real life. So stick around. We'll be right back. If you work with clients and you're tired of hearing that the only way to grow is to hire people or work with AI, you should check out Grow Without Hiring, a podcast by my good friend Ken Yarmish. Ken bootstrapped his professional services business to $5 million per year as a solopreneur, and he did it by systematically making small changes, like pitching six figure deals instead of five figure deals, something he has an episode about. I've learned a lot from Ken, and he's worked with some big names. People like Matt Barker, Nasheen Chen, and Laura Acosta trust Ken to sharpen their offers and scale their businesses with systems, and this podcast is his playbook. Every episode is short and tactical, like my Voice Memo episodes where Ken breaks down how real solo operators engineer their businesses. The sales, the delivery, the offers, the systems, all in a market that's splitting between big winners and everyone else. The show is easy to binge. You listen to one episode and find yourself sweeping through the whole catalog. I recommend starting with the episode titled Algorithm Proof Marketing, then hit follow so new ones land automatically. Search for Grow without hiring in your favorite podcast app or go to GWH FM. That's GrowWithOutHiring GWHM. This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs. Listen, this is gonna sound like I'm joking, but I'm really not. I get fired up about software products that offer a generous free plan, and that is what I get to tell you about today. I've been a user of Ahrefs Free for years. SEO has never been my biggest focus, but I like to know how I'm doing, and Ahrefs Free lets me do just that. With an Ahrefs Free account. You can see your website's backlinks and understand who is linking to you. Check which pages and keywords are bringing organic traffic to your site. Use free SEO tools for keyword ideas, backlink checks, website authority, broken links and more. Spot content opportunities for your site and even look up competitor websites to see where they are getting traffic from. All of this without becoming a full time SEO person. To me, creating an Ahrefs free account and understanding your search results is a total no brainer. Go to ahrefs.com free that's a hrefs.com free and verify your website today. That's ahrefs a h r e f s.com free this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required compatibility and availability various 18. And now back to my conversation with Becky Pearson Davidson. I want to talk about offline stuff because I know you have some opinions on offline elements of membership. So where's your head right now with the importance an opportunity for offline experiences?
- [36:38]
A
Yeah, I do this predictions issue every year where I talk about membership predictions and in the 2025 predictions I was like you have to have some kind of in person component to your online community to have high retention and survive the next wave of this. And I think that that's still true. And I saw it play out a lot last year in just a lot of membership starting to add in person components and programs. We have one client. Beyond Connection is the name of the program. It's an eight week program based on Keith Farazi's books and we have a graduation weekend. So it's an eight week program and there's a graduation weekend in la. This is a global community. There's people all over the world and the first time they launched it it was the first cohort or the second cohort I think in December of 2024 and the beginning of the cohort they were like, you know what, let's do a grad weekend. It was just like a thing that they threw in. And I'm saying they because we joined the team in January the following year. So they added this grad weekend and over 50% of people came with eight weeks notice flying to LA and booking places to stay. And this grad weekend Experience is something that we've continued doing and we have over 50% of members show up. I just asked my team for the stats and the last COHORT we had 66% of the cohort show up and we're close to like 100 people in a cohort to give you an idea. And they're traveling from all over the world. Even the people abroad are like coming to this LA weekend. They have to book their own hotels and all their own travel. We're not coordinating any of that. But they get to go to a dinner at Keith's house, which is amazing. Oh wow. And then they get to self organize. So people in the community actually organize events for the rest of the weekend. So somebody will organize a brunch that they all go to. Basically they just have different meetups and people join in on those meetups and it's amazing. And it's really created this eight week program. They stay in the community and the community has over 60% monthly active users a year later after an eight week program. And I think it has a lot to do with the in person piece.
- [38:52]
B
And is that sustaining community? Is that, is there any payment in that? Like are they paying to be in the community or is that just. We run this as a service. If you go into this program, you have access to this community space into perpetuity.
- [39:06]
A
Right now it's in perpetuity, but it's a high ticket program. And so they're, they're paying for this eight week program and then they're in the community experience right now.
- [39:15]
B
So the grad weekend, it sounds like the cost drivers would be anything related to being at the residence. But otherwise there's no cost drivers. So I'm guessing there's no cost outside of the program fee to do that.
- [39:31]
A
Right.
- [39:31]
B
Meaning like a ticket to join. Like you obviously have to book your own travel and lodging. And if you're organizing a brunch, it sounds like that's going to be on the individuals who attend that brunch. But there's no ticket to attend the grad weekend. That is part of the program.
- [39:46]
A
Right? That's part of the program that you get to go to grad weekend, which really means we're all going to be in LA this particular weekend and you guys can do meetups and stuff. And also you can come to this one dinner. You do have to RSVP to that dinner which we organize. I can say it's a four figure investment. It's not like five figures.
- [40:03]
B
Yeah, okay, interesting. Yeah. The economics on in person stuff has been interesting, challenging to figure out, and even just like model, because we have the offline events for the lab, it's 2,000 to $4,000 per year, depending on which tier you go into. And we want those events just to be run at cost. But we do the organizing of the venue space and the meals. And so we think to ourselves we should charge a ticket price to cover that and the swag and whatever else. But I wonder if that's net better than if you had a higher membership price and just ate the cost of the venue and the food. I don't know. There's multiple ways to do it with varying degrees of stress depending on how you do it. But it's been something that we've had a hard time figuring out. What are you seeing as models of offline economics that are working in that same community?
- [41:03]
A
We also have bonding dinners is what we call them, which are around the world, and a member hosts them. We pay a percentage of the booking fee currently, so like I think 20%. And we actually take, we take a payment for the dinner. So it'll be like a prefix dinner. We take payment and then we handle it. And that's actually a switch we just made. And it's working better because there's less like who pays the bill and how do we coordinate it? Which just like isn't the best experience. But it is like a Beyond Connections hosted event that a member is like leading and we're collecting payment for it. You know, we're doing both models even in that community. And I'm really seeing really high ticket masterminds. I'm also seeing like, including a retreat weekend, but they're like, you know, 20, $30,000 that are including like a retreat weekend or two. And usually that doesn't include lodging. So they're basically paying for the event attendance and food for like two days. For what it's worth, I think the way you do it, it totally works. And I think at cost, like the pricing is very inexpensive.
- [42:14]
B
Yeah, I think it's working. It helps the more times you do it and have roughly the same template so you can dial it in. It was really stressful last year because we're like, I don't know what this is gonna cost. I don't know how many people are gonna come. But now we have like a rough understanding of, okay, how many people are gonna come? What are the biggest cost drivers, what do we wanna put into this? And it's gotten easier. But I am thinking about as we grow, I also Want to support more member led local meetups and I would like for there to be no cost for people involved at that. And modeling that out is also something I'm trying to figure out of. Do I just create like a dinner's budget on our P and L for the lab? And when people volunteer to host this, I say, here's our contribution towards it. I don't know. I'm thinking about it. But I do generally think that if you're going to do an online community, the more opportunities you give people to meet in person, just the happier and better off everybody is.
- [43:14]
A
Yeah, you always have like the highest retention from those members. One of our mastermind members in the lab has recently had a meetup for his membership and he said 100 out of 300 people went. Which is amazing.
- [43:27]
B
Crazy. Yeah, I need to get Chad on the show. I should talk to Chad.
- [43:30]
A
Yeah, Chad's amazing. His business is amazing.
- [43:33]
B
Chad's one of those guys. And there's, there's been several folks who've come through the lab in this way where people will join because I'll be like a step or two ahead of them and then they'll just blow past me. They're like, I'm gonna learn from you super quick. And now I'm just going to continue to run and build and crush. And Chad is one of those people. It's so impressive to watch.
- [43:52]
A
Yeah.
- [43:52]
B
What are some more of your hot takes for 2026 of where communities and memberships are going?
- [43:57]
A
I think content drops are dying.
- [44:01]
B
What's a content drop to find that.
- [44:02]
A
Yep. So every month you're gonna get a new template resource masterclass, blah blah, blah, new long video to watch. We have plenty of content in our lives and content's overwhelming. And the number one reason people leave communities is overwhelm. And so we don't need to create more overwhelming libraries of stuff to go through. And so I think that simplification is really in right now. And that means a lot less like dropping new things that you constantly have to do. And this is why I'm so keen on this roadmap process where it's like, here's all the resources you need to be successful. But come to our programming. That's where you're going to do the work and engage with people and less like, we're always adding stuff here. That used to be the thing people thought meant they made their membership sticky. But oh, if I'm always adding new things, then they're going to stick around. But now it's more Connection and programming that makes it sticky.
- [44:56]
B
I heard about a membership product once and it was all marketing executives. So like CMO level people. And the only aspect of this membership was once a quarter they sent out this like fairly detailed questionnaire about like what people are learning and trying and experimenting with and learning with in marketing right now. They would submit their answers individually and then they'd redisminate the aggregated data back to those people and that was it. And super high retention, not an inexpensive product. I mean, we did this last year with our lab report. That was the inspiration for it. But it's so interesting that again, people, when they start a membership, they think, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, value add, value add. And the number one reason people leave is overwhelm, which is probably like some level of guilt of, oh, I'm paying for this thing and I'm not using it. So to assuage my own guilt about that fact, I'm just going to leave to make it no longer attention in my mind. It's. It's crazy. It's a difficult balance to be striking consistently. I'm offering enough value but not overwhelming people with things.
- [46:07]
A
My belief is that people just want to see momentum in what they're working toward or feel good about the direction they're on. And if we can make them, like, if we think about the membership more like creating a feeling, then that can drive retention. So giving them the resources they need to be successful, but also saying like, checking on them, like, hey, remember, I haven't seen you in a few. In a little bit. Last we chatted, you were working on this thing. How'd that go? Just paying more attention to people and at scale, that might mean you need a community manager, great. But just having somebody be responsible for individual connection with your members and making sure that they're. They're plugged in. Because I can't tell you how many conversations I have where it's like, well, I mean, nobody's like doing the work or engaging or showing up, but like, they're still paying, so it's fine. And I'm like, they're gonna cancel. And it's not fine. Like, we're not, we're not spending enough time on customer experience. And when we do focus on customer experience and retention, that's actually how you make a membership grow. It's not like your freebie funnel. So it's really important. And if we focus a lot more on that, I think that's another big shift we'll see is just like people paying a lot More attention to experience because there's gonna be more and more options out there. So when competition gets higher, then we have to try harder. Right. And create a better product.
- [47:29]
B
I wanna get your take on this. My thoughts on retention have changed a little bit recently. I used to think that for somebody to renew their membership at the point where they're making the decision of whether they're gonna renew or not, which is probably some time within 30 days of the renewal date. My thought was they're asking themselves, did I get my money's worth this year? And if the answer is yes, they will renew. But I actually think that's wrong. I think the bar is higher. I think now they're thinking, did I get my money's worth and am I willing to do the same amount of work? Or do I expect that I will get my money's worth again this coming year? Because it's not necessarily one to one. Just because this year prove to be worthwhile doesn't necessarily mean I expect that to be true next year. Like maybe I have exhausted a lot of the material within this space and I feel like it's not going to give me the push I need. Or maybe to make my money worth it, I had to participate to a degree that I do not want to commit to doing this coming year. What's your reaction to this?
- [48:32]
A
I think it's interesting. I'm thinking about Justin Moore. I'm thinking about at the lab retreat when he said that he was sending reports to people 11 months in before their annual renewal come up for like how much they made in sponsorships that year. And I think it depends on the community, I guess, is my answer. Because I think in his case, if they made a huge ROI in their sponsorships, they're going to renew based on like seeing that number. And they might not be. They might not realize how well they're doing. I do my KPI tracker every month, similar to yours, and half the time I'm like, oh, I thought I was doing so much worse. You know, just seeing those statistics, I'm like, oh, actually, like we increased our revenue this month or actually my LinkedIn growth was the best. It's been an entire year. I had no idea. And I've been down on myself for not posting as much. Right. So it's like a really good check in. And I think if we can find a way for people to measure their progress, that's actually a really great retention strategy. And I don't know, I think that's an interesting question. I hadn't really thought about it, like, do people think, oh, well, I don't, I'm not gonna put that amount of time into it next year. And I think this is why it's so important to talk to your members. Because like, if some, if a member has a renewal coming up, like ask
- [49:49]
B
them, this is where it's come from. I've actually had a couple folks who have not renewed who have talked about like, hey, this year I want X to Y and it's been amazing and I'm not renewing my membership. And I've talked to them like, why? And it is like it has been like a time commitment thing. And that's the hardest part about a membership that still has a lot of onus on a forum and interaction because it's effortful. So if extracting the value you're promising is possible but is hard, then that's not going to be for everybody because there's a cost to that. There's a cost outside of just the financial costs to it.
- [50:26]
A
I think that the in person component and connection is what drives retention more than anything. So results matter. But I would say what matters more is the connection to others. And so if the in person stuff drives a ton of really meaningful connection and then if they feel really connected, like if they're in their mastermind and they feel really connected to that group, I think that's what drives retention more than anything.
- [50:51]
B
I think there's just different people need different things. Part of the reason we do the offline event, or this is the original thesis, was I knew there were some people who were just not going to be active in a forum. Like their personality isn't for it, their time isn't for it. And I believed the value of meeting in person is so beneficial that that alone would be a reason why people would renew year after year. And we had conversations at the Affluent event last year where that was said without prompting. So I'm like, okay, that's. That is true. So my strategy has been how do we find ways of extracting the value we're promising that are less and less effort relative to people's personalities? Because you could say that being in a mastermind that meets once a week is actually a pretty significant time commitment. It kind of looks like a lot of effort, but to some people who are just allergic to spending time in a forum, it's just far more preferable. It feels easier. It's a challenging beast. Everybody's different, everybody experiences things differently, they want different things. And it's hard to be Always winning with all people, all the time.
- [51:59]
A
I think that's another one of my hot takes for this year is we need to have more optionality and I think you do a really good job of this. Like for example, you have the podcast feed for members. So if you don't, you're not going to ever show up to a live event. You can listen back to them at 2x speed or whatever on your podcast feed, on your walks, you can go to the in person events, you can opt in for a mastermind, you can engage in the forum. There's like options and I think where community builders get stuck is they're like, oh, I need everybody to participate in everything. But really like having these options available is what helps because you are serving those different personality types.
- [52:36]
B
When you're building communities with folks, what tool stack are you typically using? Which platforms do you bounce between?
- [52:45]
A
If we're building from scratch, nine times out of 10 we're building on Circle. I know we're aligned in this, but it's just the best platform that has forum, events, content, curriculum, like everything in one place. The disparate systems is totally out. We do a lot of migration projects. We're actually migrating an actor community right now that's on Slack and then they have like a Thrive cart system. And it's really interesting because like we were talking about earlier, the different spaces and they have so many Slack channels. So we were like, how do we reduce these? So part of our process is like taking a look at what they have and simplifying and optimizing it as we migrate it over to Circle and like building a better member experience. So yeah, Circle is the main platform we're building on. I have a couple clients on school right now that we're like doing consulting for. Honestly, they're unhappy. They want to migrate. So I don't know. I end up seeing a lot of people move to Circle. I do have a few on Slack though, and I think there's some really interesting Slack plugin tools coming into play. And I think if we dabble anywhere, next it would be with networking communities that are built on Slack that want a better home base with all of their content and some of the structure. Like Tight Knit is an example of a platform.
- [54:06]
B
I feel like Slack could have a significant adoption level for communities and be a pretty decent tool if they had any pricing model that was accommodating to communities. But they just don't make it expensive way.
- [54:19]
A
They don't. Yeah.
- [54:19]
B
Dang. I was gonna do the unhinged Question of kiss Mary Kill of Circle Slack in school. But I feel like I know your answer already.
- [54:27]
A
I'd kill school and I had. Yeah, I had Mary Circle. I'd kiss Slack.
- [54:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, same.
- [54:35]
A
I live there.
- [54:36]
B
Pretty simple on that one. I think you're about to say something and I interrupted you.
- [54:40]
A
Oh, well, I was just gonna explain. That's actually what Tight Knit does for the. I'm like, how do they do this legally? It's interesting, but if you have a free Slack, you can have the archive of your messages in Tight Knit. So you don't like lose content. Cause if you're on a free Slack plan, everything expires after 90 days, which is such a crappy experience if somebody pays for a membership and then there's like no history. So. So yeah, Tight Knit's solving that. I think there's another plugin too. I'm curious about those. I'm curious to see how those evolve in the market.
- [55:10]
B
Yeah, I have the same line of. 9 times out of 10 I land on circle. The 10th time is some chat based tool which is usually Slack or Discord if your community really loves discord already, or WhatsApp if you're international and it's easy. We're up on time here. So I guess my last question to you would be is there anything you believe to be true in the community space, but you don't yet have the data to support, but you're acting on it anyway?
- [55:36]
A
I'm like, but I love data, I have all the data.
- [55:40]
B
And if it's something that you have new data, that's like a surprise, new learning that you want to pass along, that's great too.
- [55:46]
A
I'm still measuring this, so we'll go with this one. The one thing we didn't talk about a lot that I think is a crux of membership success is personalization. And there's not a great solution for this yet. And we're duct taping a lot right now with our clients by doing like quizzes as part of their onboarding that gives them different results, that takes them to like an area that has like a different sort of like resource library kind of thing or checklist or roadmap or whatever. And obviously one to one onboarding calls where you give people specific direction is like the best high touch way to do this, but doesn't work as well at scale. So personalization is going to be necessary for higher engagement, higher retention, better member success. And there's not a great solution for it yet. So we're doing a lot of experimental stuff and I think that my prediction would be that this will get rolled out into software soon.
- [56:47]
B
AI should solve this. Circle should have this solved already. Circle should have better member introductions. Circle should have better serving up of content that'll be interesting to you based on your past consumption and engagement behavior. This should be solved. But they prioritize large scale communities with different needs and that is my axe that I'm going to grind publicly because I have no reason not to.
- [57:10]
A
We'll marry them, but like we're in therapy, we need some support here.
- [57:14]
B
Yeah, I feel unheard. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and letting me know we've had a couple new reviews over the last couple of weeks. I see it, I appreciate it. Thank you. My only goal in life right now is 500 Apple podcast reviews and we're getting close. Those reviews go a long way into helping us grow the show, so thank you. Please consider if you want to learn more about Becky, subscribe to Build with Becky right here in your podcast player or visit her website at Affinity Collective. There are links to all things Becky in the show notes. Thank you for listening and I'll talk to you next week. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com every act of change begins with a neighbor. When neighbors connect through the Feeding America network, small actions ripple into less impact. Feeding America led by neighbors. Give now to annhunger@feedingamerica.org.