Are you building a community or a following?
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Welcome to Issue 11 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about a good brand move that helped grow a small business. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) Hello Reader, You may not know this about me, but I grew up in Cancun. My mom was studying archaeology and my dad was a savant salesman. They met near Mexico City before relocating to Cancun. About 15 years later, they had me. Being raised by adventurous pioneers in a developing part of Mexico instilled a sense of wanderlust from a young age. Though I ended up in journalism, I still think a midlife career change in travel could be in the cards for me. Even though I’m not quite ready to throw my laptop in that magnificent turquoise water, I met someone who has (so to speak). And she’s the subject of today’s issue. Allow me to introduce you to my new friend, Lori Gold, the founder of Explore More Mexico. A travel agent-turned-online business owner, Lori has made over half a million dollars online without doing any of the stuff we're told we need to do. She has no marketing plan, no lead magnets, and pretty amateur branding. She has no idea what conversion copy means. She doesn’t even really understand what a funnel is. (But she does have one—a simple one.) If last week’s newsletter was all about getting better at selling, this one’s about how you can avoid selling at all. A Good Story Lori always knew she wanted a career in travel. Growing up, her family took annual trips to their condo in Miami, where she developed a deep appreciation for warm weather, white-sand beaches, and palm trees. (Bizzare, I know—what kind of person likes those things?) Her first opportunity to work in the industry came right out of college when family friends in Canada offered her a job as a junior advisor for their travel agency. Like most new travel advisors, Lori started off by selling the entire world. (Apparently, you do this for a few years until you hone in on a specific region or area of travel). She went on like that for years and made a decent(ish) commission-based paycheck. Then one day she took a trip to the Mexican Caribbean and everything changed. Lori fell in love with the area around Cancun. And by fell in love, I mean she became completely obsessed. She loved this destination so much that she started selling it like chile-spiced hotcakes. In her best year, she sold over $2 million in travel. (For reference, the average travel agent sells a few hundred thousand a year.) Eventually, she decided to move there. With more than 200 all-inclusive resorts, there was a lot she needed to know. And once she was stationed there, she had tons of information to share with other agents fielding client questions about the region. The travel agency business is collaborative by nature. Peers often share tips and information in general travel-focused Facebook groups for other agents around things like “best practices” for travel advisors or “best foodie spots.” But Lori, with her intense passion, was particularly active. Before she knew it, she was seen amongst her peers as the go-to specialist for the Mexican Caribbean region. Her big opportunity came when the pandemic hit, and Mexico was one of the few destinations that remained open to travelers. Questions about the region started flooding in. And Lori, who already had some credibility as a trusted source of information, became more active in these forums than ever before. There was so much to talk about that she decided to start her own Facebook group dedicated entirely to travel in the Mexican Caribbean—and hundreds of people joined. Every day for a year she posted free information, answered questions, and shared news about what was happening. Once she reached the point of answering thousands of questions a month, Lori recognized there was an opportunity to teach about it in a structured way. And with that, she built her first paid course. A Good Approach As a travel advisor her entire career, Lori knew nothing about building an online business, creating content, or teaching a course. All she knew is that she had a captive audience of travel agents hungry for very specific information who knew and trusted her. So, she slapped together a presentation deck, created a teaching platform on Kajabi, and asked her group if they’d pay $59 to get all their questions answered in a live course she’d later sell as a recording. Um, yes. It also sold like chili-spiced hot cakes. Since then, Lori has created four more affordable courses, and her free Facebook community has grown to over 23,000 active members. After realizing she no longer had to give everything away for free, she started a paid community for agents who wanted to go deeper and get more support. She priced that at $189 a year and has 2,800 active members with more joining every day. (Do the math, and you’ll see she’s pulling in around $529,200 a year on her membership alone.) Lori now has three sources of leads for her courses and membership.
That’s it. Lori says she’s never paid a dime for advertising and never feels like she’s selling anything. She simply gives away good information for free, is trusted for her expertise, and has a reputation that precedes her. A Good Lesson Lori claims she started an “accidental” business and has been flying by the seat of her pants for most of it as a result. When she started, she didn’t have any kind of process or systems. She didn’t have branding or a clue about marketing. She didn’t even have a business bank account to collect payments. But what I love about this “mistake” is that, while important in the long run, you don’t need any of that stuff to get started or scale fast. Lori’s proof that it pays to pay attention to what your audience wants from you. (And to notice when it’s time to start charging for your expertise.) A Good Takeaway Turns out you don’t need to do any marketing to build a six-figure business by yourself—you just need to build a good reputation. But we all knew that, right? Right. So, why do we keep complicating this online business-building thing and talking about lead magnets and funnels and branding and conversion copy? Probably because we’re dense. Or because we're following what we’ve been told to do, instead of following our instincts. If I were to break down Lori’s formula for success, it would be:
Boom, you’re in business. I know what you’re probably thinking: Okay, Renee, but we’re not all moving to the Caribbean to sell vacations during the pandemic and sharing everything we know for free for a year. Also, I don’t want to start a community. But if you’re posting online every day (I see you) you’re building a community. At least, you could be building a community. But if you’re unfocused, you might just be building a following. Here’s how I see the difference: Communities are built for a specific set of people around a specific set of topics. Followings are built when you give into the algorithm and create content that it rewards you for. I could give you a dozen examples of people who’ve effectively built “communities” on social media that buy their stuff when they’re ready to sell. These people include Erica Scheider, Amanda Goetz, and Jay Clouse. These folks spent years giving away free content and building trust before selling anything. You could argue that these people know a thing or two about marketing and creating content (and you’d be right) but the point is that they picked a platform, picked an audience, and gave away free advice without asking for anything in return. They created a desire for people who wanted more. On the flip side, people who simply build followings have less clarity around their expertise and audience. If I’m being completely honest, right now I feel like I’ve built a following instead of a community because I was unclear on the business model I wanted at the start. I’ve always struggled with this one. I love too many things. (And it creeps into my content.) But I’ve realized that I’m most lit up professionally when I get to talk about feelings, ideate with a group of people, and tell stories. So, I’ve started leaning into that, and it’s already shaping new opportunities. Here’s some advice if you’re anything like me and excited about figuring this out: Maybe instead of competing with millions of other people on saturated social media channels, you could take your expertise and share it in smaller, more niche pockets of the internet. (Or offline in real life!) Think Facebook groups, Reddit forums, Quora threads, Patreon channels, Slack communities, Discord—you name it. There’s a world full of opportunities to find or create targeted groups of people beyond LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. There’s probably an untapped niche or opportunity for your business. What could you be an accidental specialist in? Could you be more intentional about it right now? Another key takeaway for me from Lori’s story is the passion piece. While it’s a little more in the “woo woo” category of building a business, for many it’s the driving factor. To me, it’s less about being passionate and more about being obsessed with a thing. A lot of the most successful business owners I know—the ones who are able to show up consistently and build influence and authority over time—are doing it because they have an intense drive to explore that thing. I see this as a shortcut. If you’re interested in something enough, you can quickly create affinity and build a community of people who love you for that thing by talking about it obsessively. How about you? When’s the last time you asked yourself what you truly care about? What lights you up? And are you making connections with people that care about the same thing? Is it:
What I’m asking is: Are you building a reputation you actually want to live up to? If you’ve figured this one out, I’m happy for you. If not, no biggie, let’s keep working on this together. Hopefully, Lori’s story will get you thinking about those bigger questions. A Few Good Resources 1. Pretty sure Josh Specter spends all his free time watching and reading everything on the internet. This one seemed like a good fit for this issue. 2. Along the same lines of today's topic, Tara McMullin makes a case for prioritizing recognition over attention. 3. Erin Balsa, a bold B2B content marketing consultant, just launched a new version of her newsletter and I'm stoked to follow along. Hope you have a good one, |