Hello, and welcome to Bad Community Advice.
I'm your host.
My name is Seth Resler, and this is the show where we ask community professionals to come on and give us their terrible tips and toxic takeaways.
Today, we are talking specifically about a revenue model that's very, very popular.
And so it's tempting for a lot of community builders to use to try and generate some revenue from their members.
But it doesn't work, and we're gonna talk about why.
My guest got her start growing a community into a multi million dollar revenue stream for a brand in Oregon.
Now she runs Ember where she helps coaches, consultants, and creators build thriving online communities for their businesses, Please welcome Bri Leever.
Hi, Bri.
How are you? Hi.
I'm doing great.
How about you? Oh, I'm I'm I'm doing okay, you know.
I'm, uh, I'm you know, overcoming the same cold that I think you are.
We both got it at the beginning of the year.
So You've been taken out, but but will not be held back when we are here.
No.
No.
Absolutely not.
But, um, uh, look, I'm really excited to have you on.
I I do wanna point out that you have a lot of fantastic resources for people who are interested in community building.
Um, you know, you've got a great YouTube channel, but I think the thing I wanna point out, uh, is the podcast, since this is a podcast, on this podcast, we give terrible advice.
You have a podcast where you actually give really, really good advice.
Uh, I've learned a lot from your podcast.
So, you know, tell us a little bit about deer Bri.
Yeah.
Oh, thank you.
Well, um, I'm really glad to see both sides of the advice coin today.
So this will be a lot of fun for me.
Yeah.
But Dear Bri is an advice column for community conundrums, fiasco's, and drama.
So I like to say it's good community strategy, deep fried, and great storytelling.
We pick a letter from an anonymous writer and extrapolate insights, takeaways, how to maybe do it differently next time, um, or how or how to validate what you're doing as a community builder, because sometimes you just feel kinda crazy, hurting cats.
So the podcast covers a different topic every episode and It's a lot of fun.
It's one of my favorite elements of my job.
Very cool.
Well, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because I this is a topic that I've heard you talk about on your podcast, and I love the way you talk about it.
I I I think you talk about it brilliantly.
Um, so I wanna get straight to your bad advice, which is this.
Create a free community that leads to your paid community.
Create a free community that leads and this is what we would call in the software world like a freemium model.
This is like, oh, you get the software.
You can use it for a month, no charge.
And then if you wanna keep using it after that, you've gotta pay for it.
Um, that model works really well in the software world.
Why why does it not work in the community building world? Yeah.
It seems like it's gonna be a great idea.
Um, and I I understand what we think will happen in the community context, but community as a product is quite different than other products and services.
And what's especially different is that most products and services that we are marketing, um, especially in American culture come down to two things, convenience and comfort.
And community, unfortunately, is neither convenient nor comfortable.
And so it's always kind of hilarious to see marketers like myself try to market it to to a society where those are two of our top values.
Why why that sets us up to market community differently than other products and services is because how you posture someone to come into the community has a great impact on the quality of the experience inside of the community for everyone.
So I'm gonna give you an example that'll help elucidate this a little bit.
If you're just selling a course, And I think back to, like, the last course you bought and whether or not you finished it.
Probably did it.
And that's not that's not what you think.
That's is that's a statistically you're No.
But tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I'm gonna yeah.
You could.
You could.
You decide to finish it tomorrow.
Like, I said, I got sick.
Exactly.
Life happens.
Right when you think you're gonna finish that course.
Whether or not you finish it, you're the only one who lost, um, the knowledge and the value.
Like, you paid your money.
You didn't go through it.
You lost the value.
In community when someone, like, opts in to be a part of the community, and they don't end up showing up.
This not just hurts their experience in the community.
It actually brings it impacts everyone's experience because the nature of community is that I'm getting some value here from my connections between other members.
So when we have a freemium model, Psychologically, we're not getting that active skin in the game up front, and people will often come in with a little bit of this, like, free buffet mindset.
They're like, quick.
Get as much as I can or take as much as I can, and it really does your members a disservice and doesn't posture them to be able to give in the community, which is ultimately what greases the wheels of the whole thing and makes it really valuable.
And makes it valuable for that participant.
So you have to think about with with community, you have to think about not just how do I get somebody in.
But in the process of getting them in, how am I posturing them to create value in this community and get the most value out of this community, which often are inextricably linked.
What they give in is tends to be what they get out of it.
So that's just one layer to it.
Um, and I can talk about the other layers, but that's kind of like at a at a high level, psychologically what I see happening, premium.
In other words, you wanna set the expectation when people first enter the community, uh, not only that they're gonna be takers, but they're gonna be givers as well.
Uh, and and the freemium model undermines that.
So It can.
It can.
The other really tricky thing about the freemium model is you are serving two completely different members.
So I have a a free master class where I talk about the four types of communities.
And I I really, um, kinda draw some boundaries around it saying, like, we have free communities.
We have paid communities.
And they really have two different intentions.
Free communities, I call, um, well education centric, free communities, I call nurturing communities.
And the intention of the community is to nurture your customer towards some other product or service or success with your product or service.
Paid communities on the other hand are where the community itself is the product.
And when you combine them into the same experience, And we tend to think, like, usually it starts because we're like, oh, we have a paid community, but we wanna offer people a taste.
So that's why we're gonna give them access for a limited amount of time, or we're gonna give them access to these few spaces, where they can see what's happening.
They'll be teased.
They'll be enticed.
They'll see everything that's happening.
They'll want to then upgrade to the paid.
Which sounds nice in theory.
However, the nature of community is that it's really full.
And if you're doing it well, it's quite overwhelming.
And what I've found happens is instead of getting the right message, to the right person at the right time, which is what a good marketing funnel and sales funnel does.
Community just throws them into the chaos.
And now instead of being able to really um, create a targeted message and a targeted journey to get them to join the community when the time is right.
We're just throwing, like, tons of messages at them all the time, and it's it is like they are one heartbeat away from unsubscribing from all of these notification patience because they're like, well, that doesn't pertain to me.
Well, that doesn't pertain to me.
A good marketing funnel moves towards more targeting.
We wanna get more niche.
We wanna understand our customer even better.
And throwing them into the wild west of a community environment and hoping that they see the event that, like, solves the problem that they're interested in today.
And hoping that that entices them enough to come into the community is just not good marketing.
It's not savvy.
It's not targeted.
It's not specific.
So I would rather invest in marketing systems that get the right message to the right person at the right time about what's happening in the community, but not in this, like, free for all environment where there's just like a constant barrage of information.
So that makes sense.
Uh, on the other hand, I understand why somebody who is thinking about joining a community, um, wants to check it out first.
And and what I always think of, uh, when I think of this is colleges and universities here in The United States where before I enroll or even apply, I wanna go see the campus, see who's on it, you know, uh, these type of people I like hanging out with.
You know, I mean, I kinda went on that, uh, you know, that typical trip with my mom when we went and visited you know, a bunch of campuses.
And I didn't know when I was young.
Do I wanna, uh, you know, a campus with 30,000, 50,000 students or do I want something that's got 3,000? You know, uh, how can I figure that out? So in that kind of situation, how can people check out a community, you know, or how can you offer them an opportunity to see what a community is all about without doing a freemium model? Yeah.
That's actually the perfect example and analogy for what we do and don't wanna do.
So for a prospective student, I don't know about a year university, but in my university, prospective students were, like, gods.
Like, it was like, oh, it's such a big deal.
We love them.
We're, like, doting on them.
Because we want them to come and be in our cult.
Uh, I went to a small all liberal arts Christian university, so maybe it was different.
Don't judge me too harshly.
But, um, that's exactly the difference that I'm talking about, where It's a curated experience.
You have somebody who is, like, partnered up with that new person.
They're walking them through.
Here's our culture.
Here's how classes work.
Like, you're giving them a taste of the culture of the experience, but it's highly curated.
And it's very different from just, like, throwing someone.
Like, if you had a prospective student who came in and you were, like, well, campus is yours, go go ahead, walk walk around.
And, like, just go into a classroom, like, that would be a terrible experience.
They would be like, I don't even know where to start.
I don't even know what types of classes I should be shadowing or auditing.
And, like, how do I just strike up a conversation with someone randomly? So that's actually the perfect example of what we do wanna do, which is a highly curated environment that is designed for the new member.
My favorite way of facilitating this, what I call the cheese plate.
So the other analogy that I use is, like, instead of giving people unending all access, all all and all access passed to, like, the the, um, old country buffet and the cheese board buffet.
We wanna make a cheese plate.
We wanna make a sampler.
And we say, this this little plate that we put together is the best representation of the assortment of accoutrements that we have available for you today, but it's not like they get unending access.
So There's a couple ways you can do it.
My favorite is to leverage events.
Events have a boundary nature to them because there is a start time and an end time.
There's no confusion when you are r s e pinged to join an event.
Like, am I in the community? Am I not in the community? Will I be kicked out of the community? What do I have access to? What do I not? Instead, inviting them to an event or a full day event or a three part series like, um, an event series hosted in your community can be, um, a phenomenal test to run to see, not just if people are interested in coming to one event, but what the show up rate is to the second part of that series.
That time bound nature of the event allows you to run a much more thoughtful experiment where you can actually see and test which variables are getting people to convert into the community.
Rather than just kind of throwing them into the abyss of the community and hoping that they activate at a certain time.
So events tend to be my number one go to for giving people a taste test.
Yeah.
And we should point out that events are great for community building precisely because it it is not, um, I I come from the world of content creators.
Right? And and content creators, you you go somewhere, you build it, you make your movie, you write your novel, you you know, record your your podcast episode and then you publish it, and it's out.
And community is this this act of cocreation where you're not really you think you know what you're building, but it's gonna change over time, and it's going to evolve and events are really helpful for precisely the reason you said, they end.
So so you can try something, and then if it doesn't work, it ends.
But also, in this case, you can let people have a taste and that it and that it ends.
Do you have a preference? I mean, is it normally a series of events that are designed just for, uh, we'll call them potentials, right, potential community members before they sign up? So In this case, it would be like those people who take the tour of the college campus.
Right? And that's an event just for them.
Or do you ever do events that are regular events part of your community? Like, maybe, you know, you have a monthly event for the community, and you just designate you know, three a year that are gonna be open to the public, or maybe anybody can come to one, and then they're out.
Do you have any preference or or do they all kind of work? Yeah.
Both serve different purposes.
So and it depends Again, on where these people are in your funnel, how warm are they to joining your community? I love having a seasonal activation.
This is, like, one of my favorite designs for a membership model, specifically.
When you're membership is evergreen and people can join at any time.
There's never a good reason to join today, so we have to give them a good reason to join today.
So these types of I call them activations.
They can be it can be a single event.
They can be an event series.
But something, um, special time bound that is run-in the community could be challenges.
Something that is designed for your members, but then is also operating as a way to give people from outside of the community a taste of your community.
Now depending on your funnel and how that's set up, sometimes a more robust challenge or activation might actually merit non members still paying even just to be a part of that activation.
And that can be a nice stepping stone, especially if your community is a high ticket community.
Having, um, like, a, a, you know, set aside program that is a fraction of the cost of your full membership, but gives them a taste, but they have more buy in.
That can be a nice mechanism.
But then sometimes these activations, um, actually operate well as free to the public or free for your members, free to the public, maybe for a limited time, And you can use it purely for that discovery purposes.
There's also a lot of value in having more nurturing mechanisms that are just for prospective members.
So you might have, like, a live q and a about your community or, like, one of I mean, for me, one of the mechanisms for me is that free master class on the four types of communities.
I'm, like, in order for people to even be ready to consider joining my community or one of our activations, they have to be really clear on which type of community they are building.
So that's more on demand.
It's not like a live event.
So it's not the exact example that I'm giving, but Those can be really helpful too at the the top of your funnel to, like, help make sure everyone's postured and nurtured to be ready to buy.
When you're talking about these models, does it make a difference? Whether you have a community that is evergreen, you know, something that anybody can join at any time as opposed to, and I'm gonna beat this college university analogy to death.
But it it helps me think about it.
You know, that's an example of a community that you can only join at the beginning of a semester.
You know, you can't join on November 5.
You gotta come in in September or, you know, or or January.
You know, how do you think about that? Is one better than the other? You know, I don't know.
Talk to me a little bit about that.
Yeah.
It's two it's two different models and and formats, um, and approaches to community building.
And each has their own strengths and each has their own weaknesses and heavy lifting too.
So the membership evergreen model, what's really nice about this is you can build more evergreen content that all leads to your membership.
So, like, lead magnets from your website, your podcast leading to your community.
Like, it's as an as a staple offer, there's just an ease that comes in your in your content ecosystem to point to that offer, that is really nice.
You don't have to, like, worry about the timing and the cadence of, like, is it, or is it open enrollment, or is it closed, and what's our call to action, and how do we activate people? People tend to be gravitate to the membership option because, um, it has a seemingly lighter lift in that way because it's always open.
But again, If there's no good reason well, if if anyone can join at any time, then you have to give them a good reason to join today.
So in some ways, it seems like an a lighter lift, but you that doesn't mean you can stop marketing that membership.
Even if you have lots of lead magnets and things dripping in the background, you still need to make sure as if if you're serious about growth in your community and if you're outpacing your attrition rate, You're likely still going to need some seasonal campaigns to add some meat to why people need to join now.
So memberships tend to be a lighter lift, but it it depends on how how heavily you're pushing those seasonal campaigns.
For the cohort, I'm gonna call them cohort based communities.
They're like their time bound.
There's a start.
There's an end.
We bring people in in groups.
These have, quite a few pros associated with them.
One is, like, when you are marketing them, you are full in marketing them.
Like, you have your launch window to, like, accept applications, bring members in.
So internally and for you and your team, it can be it can create some simplicity because there's just a cadence for, like, the launch window, the execution window, the recovery and prep window.
You're not always having to think about every part of the funnel all of the time, and you're not having to execute all of it all of the time.
Some people and teams work better that way.
They kind of need that, They need that deadline of marketing their community and their group, um, as motivation to get it out there.
So if that's you, this is kinda like Yes.
Kinda depends on rebuilding it.
Yeah.
A 100% that to me.
I I mean, I think it also depends on the sort of the nature of the community.
I mean, it there are some times where it is helpful to have everybody going through the community journey kind of together because they all need to sort of You know, it's almost like a quest, and they all need to be on the same path.
Whereas if you have a community, um, you know, I I just, uh, interviewed the woman who runs Art Girl in New York City, which is just a a group of people who come in and they doodle and they do crafts and they create art as a as a way of, you know, just, um, wellness and, you know, and creative expression.
And that's not something where everybody has to be on the same wavelength through the whole journey.
So it can depend on that as well.
Right? And that's what I touch on in that that master class.
So the kind of core way that I think about the different types of communities and models is that education to connection ratio.
By education, I mean a guided intentional learning journey versus connection is where your members are getting value from the interactions with other members.
Now comparing these is a little bit awkward because education is an outcome, but connection is a vehicle to some other outcome.
So in education centric communities where let's say, let's say your ratio is 80% con education, 20% connection.
We're guiding members through, like, we're we're telling them we are going to teach you how to go from point a two point b.
We're gonna hit these milestones along the way, and it's kinda like the big group road trip.
And so for these folks, more of the time bound, like, starting them at the same time, ending them at the same time, more of a cohort model can be a better fit.
Whereas, for communities where a connection is the main value proposition, um, whether it's like the connection is leading to insights on your work and your feedback or practicing your public speaking or sharing your reflections from the art that you made That is a lot more organic.
It's kind of like looking at a city and like this web of connections that are all kind of happening a little bit more serendipitously.
And that doesn't mean that there's not intentional design behind it to lead to very direct outcomes, but it does mean that evergreen container and membership tends to be a better environment to hold those types of interactions because it's not always super linear like it is in the educational journey.
I I like that way of thinking about it, you know, whether it's educational or connection.
Um, let's go back to the events you were talking about.
It's a way to for people to check out the community, see what it's all about.
A, do you do something different in events for, uh, a community that is more educational versus a community that is more about connection? Like, what actually happens at the events? And, b, Um, do you bring existing members to those events, or are they just for new people who are kicking the tires? Great questions.
So, yes, definitely bring existing members because we want them to be setting the pace for the the culture that your prospective members are going to see in the community.
Your existing members will do a much better job of selling your community than you could ever do.
So you need to you need to curate the environment, but do make sure you have some existing members there.
If nothing else, um, like, we've I've seen, uh, event types that where, um, it is the program or event itself is for prospective members.
And we simply invite, like, one to three existing members to come and and speak on or share a story about something specific.
So it doesn't mean that it has to be a full open invite to all of your existing members, but at least intentionally inviting a few existing members.
Will dramatically help your marketing, especially when they are intentionally selected and guided.
Um, I'm sorry.
What was the first part of your question? Oh, different types of What what do we actually do? I mean, so like, yeah.
What are the actual activities at these events? And and I assume you're talking primarily about virtual events as opposed to in person events.
I am, but the same rules can be applied to in person as well.
Um, so for We wanna go back to that education to connection ratio and decide at for your community as a whole, what's the ratio of education to connection? Once you know that, when you are using an event to give a taste of your community, you want that same ratio to be reflected in that event.
So if you're deciding, our community is really 80% of the value here comes from interactions between members and that connection, and 20% comes from um, you know, more curriculum and guided education, then you wanna ask yourself, in this ninety minutes that we have for this free event open to non members, how are we reflecting 80% connection, 20% guided educational journey.
Um, you can play with those fluctuations, and you can, like, once you've done it and reflected it accurately, you can always tinker and say, because what will actually happen, this is, like, a really interesting part of this, especially for connection centric communities.
You often kinda have to trick people into that ratio because they usually will come into the community and what gets them to buy is the education.
But then what gets them to stay is the connection.
So sometimes those events at the beginning of the funnel to get them in have to be more heavily education focused.
But then over time, we start to we we nurture them in, like, the community culture and mindset to see how valuable the connections are.
So you do I'm gonna say, like, you wanna experiment for yourself, but as a starting point, Start with whatever ratio you have decided for the community because that will give you that will give the prospective members a, an accurate representation of what they can find in the community.
Once you get a little bit more confident in this process and you're experimenting with these events to see what's really gonna get people, like, in the door, um, and what's gonna get them converted and set up as good members, um, play around with it and see see what ratio actually works well because it could actually change as they go through the member journey in your community.
You know, there's a, uh, and I don't know if analogy is the right word, but there's, uh, uh, something that I often use when talking about this, and it maps really well under what you're talking about.
Um, when I think about in person events, there are in person events that build audience, and there are in person events that are that build community, that build connections between the attendees, and and you know, for example, movies build audience.
Like, right? The whole point of a go into a movie theater is to get that movie in front of as many people as possible.
And you're literally told before the movie starts, don't you dare, turn and talk to the guy next to you, or we'll kick you out? Right? So movies don't do a whole lot to build community.
Um, as opposed to, like, a speed networking or speed dating with a whole purpose just to meet other people.
And and I find it useful to look at the chairs, look at the seats.
When they're all pointed in one direction towards a stage or a screen.
And this is what you're talking about when you're talking about the education components.
Right? Um, versus when the seats are all pointed at each other, you know, like people are having coffee or they're at at brain date at some of these conferences, you know, where they get to talk to each other about topics that are that are set up.
Um, that's, you know, the connection part of it.
Right? And and you can do both.
I mean, you can think of a conference where there are keynote speakers and there are sessions, and so all the chairs of, you know, it's that education component.
Um, I notice even the conferences that I go to.
I've been going to podcast movement for many, many years.
And when I first went, it was for exactly the reason you said.
I was like, oh, I I wanna learn how to become a better podcaster.
And in later years, the reason I kept going back, I don't even go to the sessions anymore.
You know, now when I go, I just wanna go hang out with all the people because I know that that's the one place where as people are gonna be together.
So I think that's so interesting to hear you say that that people initially might come for the education, but then once they realize, you know.
I don't know what that says about us that that we under value of the connection to other people until we actually feel it.
But Always.
And, well, and it's I don't I don't blame it because connection itself is so slippery, and it's quite like, it just feels so soft and difficult to determine, like, what the outcome is of that, and you don't always know, um, what the outcome is going to be.
So so I get it, especially in our, like, I don't know.
I think our our culture has a lot to do with this too, the culture that we live in.
But ultimately, most mature communities and what I'm what I'm speaking to here with, like, the education connection ratio.
I'm especially talking to the people who are starting out building community because I'm a little bit more rigid and regimented about picking some boundaries around your structure in the beginning.
So that you are really clear about who this community is for and you don't get easily distracted.
Material communities will have lots of different types of activities with different ratios.
And there might be more education here, but more connection there.
Like, that's a very natural evolution of the community to cater to a lot of different types of people.
However, in the beginning, It's going to be a much easier process if you can stay really specific about who this is for and then how we deliver it.
And it's why I tell my clients I kinda trick them and, like, kinda mean when when we, like, first come on to a call and We're talking about this ratio, and I ask them what they think their ratio is.
And oftentimes, they'll say, well, I think it's about fifty fifty.
And I and I tell them so that's the only wrong answer to that question.
And it's not actually intrinsically a wrong answer.
But my recommendation, if you are starting out, is don't that the bad advice is I'm gonna do half connection, half education because that just really it doesn't give you any guidance as a community leader about what to prioritize.
Even if you have in your mind, it's 60% education, 40% connection.
That's just gonna be a clearer value proposition to your members, and it's gonna be clearer when it comes to prioritizing the programming and the content.
You're gonna have a compass.
You're gonna have, like, a direction to head rather than trying to do it all all the time.
So in the beginning, do you encourage people to lean more towards education or more towards connection? Or, again, does it just depend on the type of community you're you're fostering you trying to build.
It just depends.
There's no one right or wrong way to do it.
So sometimes for communities where I found where people are catering to someone who is at the beginning of a journey, and they just they don't know what they don't know.
They're in that.
If you look at the four stages of incompetence, they're in, like, unconscious incompetence or conscious incompetence, if they're in those stages, a more education centric environment tends to provide.
Like, they need a little bit more structure.
Like, they just need to be told what to do.
It's kinda like an elementary school when you're just learning, um, in any subject they're giving you all the rules.
You're giving they're giving you all the grammar.
They're giving you all the artistic rules of design, and it kinda sucks to have to follow the rules in the beginning.
But you have to learn them in order to, like, know what tools you're using.
So beginner communities that cater to someone at the beginning of a learning journey tend to be more education centric.
Um, communities that tend to work with a more mature audience in their industry or practice or skill or whatever the focal point of the community is, um, we'll tend to see more value and their their members will also articulate more value in the connection centric environment.
So that's that's like, very oversimplified version, but it really the only proper answer is it depends.
But the key here is to make a conscious decision about it.
Like, like, put some thought into it.
In other words, don't just go fifty fifty, you know, whatever.
Exactly.
Exactly.
That makes That makes a lot of sense.
Uh, Bri, I could talk to you about this forever, but, uh, I'm gonna ask you one last question before we go here.
Uh, this is something we ask everybody who comes on.
Make a prediction.
What do you think we're gonna be talking about in the community space five years from now? Yep.
Well, I think we'll be talking a lot less about AI.
Maybe this is a maybe this is a controversial opinion.
I think I think that AI will be, like, a really helpful tool and information organization communities.
But I think right now, there's a lot of discussion about AI and, like, how to leverage it in community building.
Um, and I think we're just kind of in this chaotic fervor right now of, like, how it's gonna unfold.
But I think in five years things will settle down, and it's not gonna be, like, kind of the the hype that it currently is.
I think we'll see it very accurately as a tool to be leveraged to make community builders' lives easier.
And, And, like, that's kinda what we use it for.
Right now, they're like, it's gonna change everything.
Um, I don't know.
I'm a little skeptical.
I I I have a feeling AI is gonna turn out to be like email.
You know, like, it was really exciting at the beginning, and then everybody has it and can do it.
And Yeah.
It's a new tool.
Cool.
Yeah.
That's great.
Makes my life easier.
Yeah.
Right.
Um, and I think think we will continue to see this move towards niche communities over, like, broad social media, like, social network audiences.
I think there will there is still a role for building an audit.
There's still value in building an audience, and there will still be people who are doing it.
But I think the majority of, like, deep transformative work is going to shift into these niche community spaces where they can be more properly facilitated and, um, nurtured.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
And, you know, I mean, we're seeing evidence that maybe we've hit peak social media.
Personally, I'm hoping so.
Yeah.
For all mental health.
Yeah.
But but I think to your point, when we live in a world where there's Google and YouTube and chat You know, it's not so much that, uh, you know, I I don't need to know how to lose weight.
Like, I all the information is right there in front of me.
I need somebody who's gonna yell at me or or at least praise me know, yell at me if I don't go to the gym and praise me if I do.
You know what I mean? Um, that that there are things that you get out of a community, whether it's accountability or motivation or encouragement that go beyond just the the knowledge, just the how to.
And I think that becomes more valuable.
So Yes.
Yep.
There and and we spent so much that the social media play is, like, well, we always wanna meet people where they're at.
Like, we want wherever whichever channel they're on and whatever cadence, like, we wanna be able to get our message to them where they already organically are, which I I do see value in that and and being able to get in front of the right people.
However, when it comes to the transformation journey, if someone isn't even willing to, like, step into the curated, um, like intentionally designed home where this transformation is happening.
Do you really think that they're invested enough to undergo the journey of transformation that you've promised them? Or what? I'm I'm not so sure.
So I do think these spaces will continue to get, like, more accessible.
There will be less friction as the tools and technology continue to develop.
And I'm specifically talking about communities built in, like, all in one platforms and where the community itself is its own dedicated home.
But I think we'll we'll only see a rise in participation and, um, people's ability and willingness to enter into those spaces.
Well, that brings us right back to where we started, which is that you're a big proponent of making sure people have skin in the game.
You know? That, uh, yeah.
That's it.
Yeah.
Breat lever.
Thank you so much.
Uh, people can find out more about you at emberconsulting.
co.
Um, a lot of great stuff there.
Uh, and like I said, you've got a lot of great stuff on YouTube, but Dear Bri, And we should point out if you're listening to this.
The BRI is spelled BRI, um, also absolutely fantastic podcast.
Uh, so please go check it out.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate you coming on.
Thanks, uh, thanks for having me.
This was just a delightful conversation.
I love.
This is one of my favorite topics, so you facilitated it beautifully.
Okay.
Thank you.
Uh
