The Future of Online Communities with Andy Guttormsen of Circle.so

PodcastServices

Jan 31

Episode 818: Show Notes

A few months ago, I did an episode about online courses and communities and this episode is a fantastic follow-up conversation! Joining me to discuss the future of online communities is Andy Guttormsen, co-founder and CMO of Circle. Throughout Andy’s career and his vast online course experience, he has found that more than anything, people want to connect with others.

There has been a massive shift from one-to-many course popularity to the desire for community-driven courses. People want to connect with others while trying to improve themselves. They crave connection more than ever and this shift has been incredibly interesting to witness. In this episode, we are going to dive deep into what the future holds for online communities.

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The Main Difference Between a Following and a Community

One of the challenges associated with online courses is keeping people engaged and finding differentiation in such a competitive world. There is a huge difference between having a following and having community conversations. A community involves the people in it in the learning experience and enables its members to bring value to each other. Andy likes to call these group experiences signature gatherings. With a following, you produce content and then have little interaction with the people who consume it whereas with a community, people can reply to your content. It’s a two-way street! And you don’t need to have the biggest digital product, it’s not necessary! You can be very successful with something simple.

How to Start Attracting People to Build a Community

You don’t need to have loads of people to start a community. Try to find at least 20 people who you can reach out to who may be interested in being a part of your offering. If you can’t find those 20 people, then you probably shouldn’t start that community just yet. Instead of leveraging insane marketing techniques, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself what kinds of signature gatherings will bring your group of people value, and decide on two to three you can focus on. You also need to figure out if your goal is to monetize directly or indirectly. It’s as simple as that! No need for smoke and mirrors at all, just authenticity.

Why You Just Need to Be Yourself!

You being you is enough! Knowing that simply being yourself should help you sell your online product takes so much pressure off! You can use the fact that you are imperfect to your advantage as well. When your customer knows that you are flawed and human, it helps them connect to you and makes their ‘yes’ even easier for them! As long as you can guarantee some sort of transformation after finishing your course, you are on the right track. People also love seeing how enthusiastic you are about your product so make sure to let your passion shine through!

The Most Effective Way to Onboard People into Your Community

People often spend so much time getting clients to sign up, that the moment they do, the community starts failing. You spend months focusing on how to get people to ‘buy’ and how to deliver value once they’re in but you spend no time on the onboarding piece. That’s a problem! A rolling admission with member orientation and a welcoming process is a great way to help members engage in the community. It also helps to incentivize new members to engage with other members of the community. Even one-on-one calls with new members are an incredible opportunity to create more connections between members of your community.

If you do these few things, you have done a lot of things right in a short space of time and are setting yourself up for long-term success. There are many reasons to open up communities quarterly but there are far more benefits to showing up consistently. You can find a balance by consistently accepting new people into your community and creating mini-cohorts with proper onboarding processes. Creating a community is a lot of work and you need to remember that it will take a lot of blood sweat and tears but if you are willing to put in the work, it will have a huge impact on businesses going forward.

Resources to Help You Get Started

Are you a part of our official Boss Project community? If not, jump on in today right here!
Want to provide an awesome onboarding experience like Andy talked about? We’ve got several easy peasy templates to help you do that in the Creative Template Shop— here’s one you’ll love!

Quote This

“It’s a two-way street with a community!”

—Andrew Guttormsen

Highlights

The Main Difference Between a Following and a Community [0:05:06]
How to Start Attracting People to Build a Community [0:14:58]
Why You Just Need to Be Yourself [0:21:53]
The Most Effective Way to Onboard People into Your Community [0:25:36]
The Benefits of Showing Up Consistently [0:34:18]

OUR GUEST:

Andy Guttormsen

Co-Founder and CRO at Circle.so

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Andy Guttormsen is the Co-Founder and CRO at Circle. He was on the founding team at Teachable ($250m exit), and went on to co-founded Circle in 2020. Circle is now the world’s leading community platform for creators and businesses with customers like Adobe, Webflow, Brendon Burchard, Pat Flynn, Modern Fertility, Harvard Alumni, and 9,500+ others.