Welcome back to Vision Pros Live. This is going
to be fun. This is kind of one of my heroes.
So there we go. This is Carol Tice. Carol, would
you please introduce yourself and welcome to
the show? Thanks, Sue, and my pleasure. I'm Carol
Tice. I built and sold a paid community for life
-changing money, and now I help other coaches,
consultants, and experts to launch their own
paid platforms at Community Growth Academy on
School. I love that. It's so cool to have a community.
It's so underrated, undervalued, and yet having
a community. Well, you tell me, what are some
of the benefits that people see when they have
a community? So my normal STEM speech is more
reliable income with less marketing and the opportunity
to impact more lives. The sort of fourth leg
of the stool is Most coaches and consultants
do not have a business they can sell. They are
the business. And whenever they can't do it anymore,
they close the doors. There is no exit that funds
your retirement in that model. And wrapping your
expertise in paid community is a way to create
a saleable asset. I'm here. I'm living proof
of that. So it's very exciting for people who
have so much to give to the world, a way to really
realize the value they should from their knowledge
and to get to retire. I feel like people should
not have to work till they drop. So I'm excited
to be helping people to build, you know, hopefully
wealth, build a high value asset they can sell
and, yeah, fund their retirement. That's incredible.
I mean, all those solopreneurs out there, take
heed, take heart, listen up. So let's dive right
in. I want to hear about what is your vision
for the people that you're serving? So the people
that I'm serving so far in Community Growth Academy
kind of fall into two buckets. I call them launchers
and ideators. ideators tend to be people who
have some passions and they're thinking about
turning one of them into a paid community so
they're thinking about building a community around
it and they don't they have not yet built an
audience for it so they need to start with audience
building and so it's almost like you're trying
to monetize a hobby which is basically what i
did with my first business freelance writers
down i just wanted to write a blog about how
to earn good money as a freelance writer and
i wanted writers to stop getting ripped off and
it sort of became a hobby gone mad when i wrapped
a community in it and that was something writers
really needed um so they're yeah they're looking
for at um finding a business model for a passion
project of some kind um or and so so that's the
ideators the launchers are Coaches and consultants
who've been doing what they're doing, they're
kind of getting burned out. They're getting tired
of the constant search for those $10 ,000 clients
all the big gurus tell you you've just got to
have. And they are looking for a better way to
earn. They're looking for an exit door out of
selling hours and a scalable business. that would
live off their expertise. And that's what paid
community is. And we've already had members just
kind of go 90 days to launch, and one of them
has already got 500 members. So people who have
been in their field for a long time and just
want to, yeah, impact more lives, not have to
do marketing. Yeah, and would like to set themselves
up with some reliable income, maybe as they get
ready to transition out of their career. But
the thing is that paid community is complex.
So maybe they've heard of paid community, but
they kind of don't even know where to begin to
set it up. Or they have tried and failed and
shut down a community. They have the expertise,
but they didn't do the steps to launching a paid
community successfully in the right order. People
tend to go off in a vacuum and build something
instead of building it in public and bringing
their audience along for that journey. And so
they're coming to me for like, save me time and
give me the shortcut to doing this the right
way so my launch will be successful. And my community
will take off and not be a ghost town and I will
feel happy and not sad. You know, that's that's
pretty much what, you know, the pain point that
they're at is that they they feel like there
must be a better way to go about it. And for
me, that was really the big turning point. I
was a coach. I did want some one on one coaching,
did some small coaching. Not that I didn't like
it. It got OK results. It got. mixed, not consistent
results. And some coaches, I think, don't care
if their people succeed. But if you would like
actual transformation in your people, the peer
element is the missing link. Doing it with other
people, doing the same thing, having the same
struggles, highly, highly more successful. And
that was really gratifying to me. I wanted my
people to actually, you know, go earn better
income and, yeah, be able to have a secure future
because they got my advice. And paid community
hit all of that. And the other big thing for
me that I've realized kind of doing podcasts
is that, you know, I heard all the same guru,
oh, you need a $10 ,000 offer and you need to
learn how to sell that. I don't know if it's
just because I knew most of my people were pretty
struggling income -wise or because I just come
from kind of a lower middle class background.
But I look back now and what I realized was happening
is that deep in my soul, I didn't want to sell
a $10 ,000 thing. I didn't want to ask people
for $10 ,000. It just wasn't me. wasn't resonating
for me. That felt like, ugh, that's a lot to
ask. And certainly the expertise I had ramping
a freelance business to six figures and stuff
was highly valuable. But the question you ask
yourself is, would you rather help 12 people
this year who were $10 ,000 coaching clients,
or would you rather help 1 ,200 people who paid
$25 a month? And for me, it was, absolutely the
second answer. So paid community uses the power
of mass to drive your price point way down so
that many, many more people can afford it and
lots less marketing. Lots easier to sell a $25
thing than a $10 ,000 thing. And for me, that
just, I don't come out of marketing. I came out
of journalism. I'd never sold anything to anyone
before 2008, you know, when I started my blog.
And so having a low ticket, thing was a real
answer to me. And I think for a lot of these
people, it is a relief to hear as well that there
could be a way to charge low ticket and make
more than they were making, which I certainly
did. That's phenomenal. And I mean, it boils
down to impact, you know, to being able to have
such great impact on so many people. you know
that that's really cool because i think so many
of us are heart led we want to cause or help
facilitate a transformation in somebody's life
and make it better you know and we just want
to make an impact on the world we'd like to leave
the world better than we found it you know yes
and um the community enables you to do that at
a scale that you can't in a lot of other business
models and you know i recently got to spend almost
a month in europe And I visited three of my members
on that trip, including one who now lives in
Paris with her daughter. And she literally said,
you know, you changed my life. You gave me the
ability to live anywhere I want, to live the
life I want, you know. And this is what lured
me back into starting another paid community
is that doing this. For other people, I say it's
better than better. It's better than if it happened
to me. It's so incredibly personally fulfilling
in a way that I think you don't get out of a
one -on -one coaching experience. That's amazing.
That's so great. I'm so excited to hear that
you're doing that. I'm a little jealous. I might
have to go check it out. Absolutely. That's so
cool. Well, tell me a little bit about what's
your vision? What do you want this to become?
You know, this is your second thing, second big
thing. You've had careers passed and you had
an exit. A lot of people, Carol, would just go,
hey, I'm going to go play golf for the rest of
my life. You don't seem like the type of golf,
you know. I'm not a golfer, but I did think I
was going to retire. I didn't have this like
vision like I'm a serial entrepreneur. The first
business was almost. just sort of happened organically
so and my vision of my mindset of what i know
is i know about freelance writing and then i
took a meeting with my mentor john morrow first
of all after i sold the business i missed the
community and a lot of business owners who sell
you know you miss that client the interactions
and community is kind of a special kind of interaction
where you really become friends with a lot of
people and you miss making a difference. And
so I was talking with my mentor, John Morrow,
who you may know of from Smartblogger, and he
was starting a new project to help people launch.
And I said, well, I can't do anything with, you
know, I'd love to work with you, but I can't
do anything because I have a non -compete, you
know, so I can't do another community about freelance
writing. And freelance writing is all I know
about. And John said, what did you learn in 12
years of doing paid community for writers? And
I was like, I know about paid community. Like,
it had never occurred to me. You know, it's so
hard for all of us to see how much we know and
how our expertise is growing over time. And then,
of course, I, like, talked nonstop for 10 minutes.
I was like, paid community, I could talk about
this all day, how to fire members. problems and
how to do this and that and oh there's all these
pitfalls and i did this wrong and i could help
people and and we were off building community
growth academy and uh you know i love it i guess
what's exciting me the most is that it's allowing
me to help people across a lot of different topics
and industries and you know paid communities
can be in anything we have people doing stuff
around health and food around marketing for remodelers
around relocating abroad around writing ones
um as well but like so many different it's like
now it's like john showed me how to broaden my
impact so much wider And I guess I guess the
moral to that story is I do business consulting,
you know, talk to your mentors and stuff because
they see things in you that you're not you're
not getting. And that was so true of me. I mean,
my vision for this is just the same vision I
have for freelance writers, which is to listen
to my members and deliver what they need from
me. And that's how we did everything in business
one. And, yeah, it's not about, well, I know
this. I think you should know that. It's, you
know, when should we hold meetings? Please take
my poll and tell me is always my vision. I have
already gotten so much out of this. It's really
hard for me to see where it goes. I actually
haven't decided if I want it to scale big or
not or if I might make this like an exclusive
100 limit kind of environment because I really.
I don't need it to scale having exited. I don't
need it to have 1500 members. Also, it's at a
higher price tag than the previous business was.
So I don't need as many members. And I really
like to work really in depth with people on there's
so many aspects to community launch. And, you
know, right now we're just kind of coming out
of beta with my 30 sort of original. you know,
early members and I've learned so, so much. Already
created a second course. We had a foundational
course that's like the seven steps of launching
and then the first year of running your business.
I already put in Built to Sell, which is all
of the things I learned about how to make this.
a cleaned up saleable business and i did not
do everything right from the start and had to
go back and do a whole bunch of things take myself
out of the branding for instance it was cartoon
me you know that's not a saleable thing that's
you are the brand so i had to learn a lot you
know about that process so i put that in but
the big chunk we're adding now is audience building
okay i just thought i'd everyone who joined would
have an audience ready to go i learned from my
members that some of them need marketing help
to build that audience so they can launch so
now that's that's what we're on now that's incredible
we just did a training on how to make your social
media posts better and i'm just about to do one
about how to be a podcast guest and yeah but
we're adding we're creating like a suite of audience
building ideas you know to think about because
i want everyone to pick kind of two three channels
that they're gonna focus on not 50 not every
social channel there is but yeah to you know
bring some focused audience building activity
so they can uh build up enough people to attract
enough people to open and achieve a critical
mass so that's that's what we're working on cool
what kinds of feedback are you getting that you're
loving um well it's funny you ask because the
the one investment manager who ramped to 500
members right away, said to me that he's impacted
more people in the six months of running this
community than in his 40 -year investing career.
So that's a big impact. And he's someone who's
a contrarian investor, has his own kind of system,
and is kind of an advocate for it and wants more
people to know about it and do it. so they you
know retire with assets unlike most of america
and so that was so meaningful to him and also
he's 80 if i haven't mentioned and he said that
he travels a lot he's very he's fit and healthy
and he goes on three four week long trips and
the paid community model is such that you have
community members who kind of become experts
a bit themselves and you can step away for weeks
and other people can run everything so that's
the other thrill of paid community is that you
know when you're coaching it's like you do you
have to do all the things you know yeah people
are expecting you to show up and coach them but
yeah he does a a like investment kind of screening
product that he puts out he had other people
put it out you know That's amazing. And another
launcher that we had is kind of in the same beta
phase as me. And she came on a call yesterday
to just talk about how grateful she was to just
understand how to operate a community and get
it up and running. And she's really excited by
the potential that it has. And she talked about
how much she's learned and how things she's changing
from listening to members. I love that because
when you have members and they're engaged, that's
a big if they're engaged, right? Yeah. And there's
a lot to that. Yeah, there's a lot. And when
they do, it's like you never have to guess on
anything that you create ever again. Like if
I make this, will people want it? Well, they're
telling you what they want. That solves a lot
of things. Yeah, exactly. I just wish I could
help every frightened entrepreneur who's off
in a corner building something without talking
to any prospects. Just save yourself so much
time and start asking, start telling people what
you're building. Because first of all, there's
magic to that. I call that pre -marketing. What
do you think of the name of my community? What
do you think of these brand colors? Would you
like to come to a live weekly event with this
kind of expert? You need this feedback, and it's
a form of marketing. As you talk about what you
are building, people get interested in it. And
then if you do that right, and this is what we
did with Freelance Writers, then literally the
launch week is like... That thing we've been
talking about together that you said you were
interested in, it's open now and you can join
it. It's just not a hard sell. And that is me.
That is I am not one of these. So by today, I'm
going to sit here for two hours telling you why
you must do it. And having to make 80 special
last minute. Oh, if you do it right now, you
know, just the hard sell. It's not for me, you
know. So, I mean, my vision is to help more people
do that. kind of launch where it's more organic
and you kind of coalesce the community before
you open the doors and then you know the reason
you can sell the community is because a lot of
the value is all the other people in the community
and not you you don't necessarily run around
answering every question members hopefully as
you pick up steam start to help each other and
that's the saleable asset. That's the other,
the library of trainings and events is one part.
And the other big component is that community
that, you know, can live on without you. So they're
helping each other. It's so great. Gone are the
days where solopreneur could not sell. This is
all possible now. Yeah. I mean, the economics
of paid community. have changed so much since
my first business. I was paying 10, 12 grand
a month to webmaster teams to just keep all of
the forum software and affiliate software and
all the plugins to WordPress talking to each
other. And now I pay school $97. This is so funny.
Isn't it great? And that is why investor money
is pouring into paid community platforms because
this is such an opportunity to operate. a business
that like you say that has a lot of heart in
it and passion behind it and allows you to reach
a lot of people convene a community i always
enjoyed the magic of helping people from all
over the world you know being able to connect
people from all over the world it to me this
is like the good and beautiful part of the internet
and and technology and how it's advanced is that
ability because so many people live in a circumstance
in a place in a small town where the thing they're
trying to do nobody gets them nobody understands
what they're doing you know in freelance writers
and people were always coming in and going people
who understand I live in this small town and
people just keep asking me when I'll get a job
and I feel so alone and and they find their people
and as we all know the feeling of community is
kind of in short supply these days in a lot of
ways. And it's so beautiful to give people those
connections. That is. It's not something we can
get in our everyday life. If you were to survey
your neighbors, you know. Yeah, not every community
is best convened in person. There are things
that actually work really well online across
geographies. And I just consider that kind of
a magical way to make a living. it is i mean
it's like spreading love throughout the world
i mean not to sound too frou -frou and connection
and connection yeah real you know real friends
from all over the place yes that's amazing yes
some of my people i visited told me that they
they still call their den accountability buddy
oh this is like you know got to be five ten years
from now right ago so that's amazing yeah that's
something Yeah. So it's like you don't just give
people a gift of knowledge and peer support,
but like new friends and and connections that
are really deep. You know, I think that's we
all need more of that. I think that's really
awesome. I'm glad that you're doing this. Thanks.
I'm kind of excited and happy to be doing it.
It's sort of all a little unexpected that I launch
a new business at age 65. It's feeling really
good. It's feeling like what I'm supposed to
be doing, you know? So cool. And what else are
you going to do? You probably got 30, 40 more
years. So I do come from a very long lived family.
So that is a factor. You know, I do have another
side to my life where I go straight books, but
I can't scale that. Right. That's very, very
one to one. And yeah, having a business you can
scale in this way off your expertise to me is
just. It was an irresistible opportunity to continue
to be helpful in the world. And I'm glad that
you noticed it and you jumped on it. You didn't
just go, you know, not for me. I've got to play
golf. Thank you for being here today. I'm really
happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward. This
is going to get more and more fun. We'll have
more and more engagement as well. We'll invite
people to participate in the show. And thank
you for giving us your time and attention. Have
an excellent time building out your vision and
becoming a vision pro yourself.