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- How To Scale With Community Led Growth
Each week, we interview real experts about topics you need to know about.
Today we have Lloyed Lobo, author of Grassroots to Greatness and co-founder of Boast.AI and Traction. Lloyed has scaled his entrepreneur community to over 100,000 people!
We’re covering How To Scale With Community Led Growth.
Next 3 weeks:
Sabrina Castiglione (COO at Pento and ex-CFO at Tessian) - How To Use Automation As A Competitive Advantage
Ali Tajskander (Founder of Wishpond) - How To Scale Faster Through Acquisitions.
Lars Albright (General Partner at Unusual Ventures) - How Founders Can Approach Negotiations During M&A
Get Lloyed’s new book, 'From Grassroots To Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community Led Growth' (Bestseller on Amazon).
How To Scale With Community Led Growth
Here are some of the key takeaways from the episode if you’re in a rush!
Not a commodity
Yesterday’s innovation always becomes today’s option and tomorrow’s commodity.
To maintain a lead purely on innovation is almost impossible as the rest of the world will catch up.
Yet if you maintain a human-to-human connection then you’re no longer a commodity. Think about how fanatical Apple customers are about the brand. They’ll buy even if it’s not the best product in the category because of the trust and community built.
Community building is not about the tool
It’s about the emotion. It’s about how can you help them beyond the product or service.
Using a better community tool is often only a marginal advantage. It doesn’t matter massively if you’re using a LinkedIn group or Facebook group or Slack if your community is so engaging that people will come anyway.
At the start, how you do this for your specific community is more important than procrastinating by comparing tools.
CAMPER
Connection.
Autonomy.
Mastery.
Purpose.
Energy.
Recognition.
This 6-step framework builds a community that lasts.
It all starts with connection but people have to feel like they are part of it not just customers. They need to feel like they can grow with the community and there’s something more behind it than you making sales.
Energy is obvious but recognition is overlooked. If your community is helping each other then you need to show appreciation!
Start small
Figure out their goals, desires and aspirations and figure out what’s standing in their way.
I’m part of dozens of irrelevant communities. They are all on mute and I don’t engage.
Lloyed teaches us to forget about attracting everyone at the start because no one will feel any connection. Instead start small and really understand those in your community so you can add more people who fit the tribe and bring the knowledge which helps them.
Passionate volunteers
If you treat your volunteers as an extension of the labor class, they just do their work and leave, they’ll treat it like that. If you give the spotlight to your volunteers… autonomy is giving up your control to give them leadership.
Communities are dependent on volunteers yet it’s tough to find the right people. You’ve got to be willing to give them leadership and growth opportunities.
Lloyed also suggests getting double the amount of volunteers you need because it’s hard to know at the start who truly cares about what you’re trying to build. Reward those who show they are!
Want to appear on the podcast?
Our bar is high because we want our audience to get their advice from the best.
Meet one of these criteria?
For venture-backed businesses, we want valuations of $100m+.
For LinkedIn/X creators, we want 100k+ followers.
For VCs, we want partners with $1bn AUM.
For bootstrapped founders, we want $1m MRR.
If you want us to get someone else on, tell us and we’ll try our best!