After 5 Failed Community Platforms, This One Works with Josh Little & Tim Schmoyer: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how after five failed community platforms, this one works. To drop these value bombs, I brought Josh Little and Tim Schmoyer into EO Fire Studios. And today we talk about how volley is the fastest way to true human connection, how the limits of connection and communication only exist in our minds, and how success is about reaching people and changing lives, not about how much money you can make and owe so much more.

0:33And the big thing for Sponsoring today's episode goes to Josh, Tim, and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward.

1:15Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Tim, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? Good to be here. You know, I don't know if most people disagree with this, but it's been in my experience that most successful people, most of the conversations I see online around success revolve around getting more money, feeling more popular. And I feel like those are actually could make as terrible goals. Like you pursue those things, those things could ruin your life, money and popularity. But I think that they make for amazing tools that we get to use to reach more people and change their lives with the businesses that we're growing.

2:05So I feel like money is not like the standard of success. It's more of like a result of success if success is actually about reaching people and changing lives and not just about how much money we make and how proud we feel about ourselves. So I don't know if those are fighting words for most people, but that's something I feel like I believe pretty deeply when it comes to feeling and becoming successful. Well, listen, Fire Nation, as I said in the introduction, Tim's a pro. You're going to continue to get pro value bombs from this guy. But I do want to kind of change the subject a little bit here and talk about building community.

2:40Because, Tim, building community, it's flipping hard. And over the last 10 years, you've tried pretty much every imaginable way to engage your clients in both group coaching, communities, and frankly, you've kind of had mediocre results. Why has it been so gosh dang hard to build community, even with some of the most motivated creators on YouTube? Yeah, I've been trying to crack this code for a while. When I started on YouTube in 2006, there was this idea like YouTube was a community. And then as time continued to go on, it was more like, oh, each of these channels is developing its own community and things.

3:22and and on one hand i'm like oh okay community should be easy because people want to connect like that's why they're online right that's like one of the reasons they're online and and and what they're what they're here for but the more i was digging into it the more i was like okay all right here's this new program i'm gonna start this membership program i started one that was like built in my website and launched this thing and i got some success you know but it kind of hit this peak and then it plateaued and then it started to decline and there seemed like nothing I could do to turn it around and so I tried it again with a different platform and I've used most of the ones that are out there and and I kept thinking like you know what um I'm finally gonna I'm gonna crack this this code but I kept bumping into the same thing over and over again which is that people wanted access they kept telling me they wanted access to community but um but what I didn't understand is that the way they have community makes a really big difference.

4:20I kept bumping into this issue where it would launch with this big bang. I'd see it really successful, but then there'd be slow attrition over time. And most of these platforms that they had in common was it would be like your face and an icon next to your name. And it was mostly a text-based type of forum or community or Facebook group or something where, you know, it cuts out all the fluff and it's just you typing and asking your question, you giving your feedback. And there was no real connection happening. There was like a solid 20 people, I would say, out of, you know, 600 to 1 ,000 people who would sign up.

5:01And no one just really connected long enough for them to say like, to feel like, I want to stick around this community. and I'm not going to cancel my subscription here in the next, you know, four months, six months, something like that. And so I found this platform that was called Bali that proposed to do something very differently. And that's kind of like got my attention, like, oh, this isn't like a lot of the platforms are all kind of basically the same, maybe a few different features here and there, but they're all kind of doing the same format the same way. It just felt like a hard left turn to me And I'm like, okay, like, let's try this.

5:37So I download this app, I set up this little space in there, and I do a little experiment for it. And instead of what I normally see at the end of our online courses or coaching stuff, whatever, where, you know, people stay engaged for the first couple weeks, and then over time, they kind of slowly disengage. I had a very different experience. Instead of my little experiment with using Bali for our community, it had almost 100 % of the people who signed up were still engaged, actively engaged, almost on a daily basis two months later. And I was like, whoa, wait a minute. What is this? What is going on?

6:15And so then I decided to try a little bit further with our audience, with a little bit broader community that we have and a couple hundred people. And we got the same results. And I was like, oh my goodness. Like, how is it? Like, it just functions so differently and it made community happen so much faster and people are forming like almost face-to-face connection type of relationships. Not instantly, but like maybe over the course of like a few minutes instead of what it sometimes took people a few months to make. and that connection just happened so much faster, so much deeper, that even months later, I still had about almost 100%.

6:56It was like 96.7 % of the people were still engaged two months later, and it was just a game-changer for us, our business, our memberships, our coaching, everything. So that's really interesting to hear, because I had very similar experiences as Tim did, Fire Nation. I mean, you know, when you always had these new things that come up, I mean, there was Meerkat at one point, and then there was like Periscope, And then it was, you know, fast forward a couple other things like, you know, Twitter spaces is, you know, one of those things. And Clubhouse was just before that. And, you know, you seem to have like this buildup where a lot of people flock to these communities and like you have a couple, you know, engagements with them and you do a couple of things on the platforms and everybody likes it and they love it.

7:36And then the next time it's like 20 % down. The next time it's not 20 % down. Before you know it, you're just like, I'm like the only person in the room right now. Like what's happening? Where did everybody go? And so that is something that all creators, Fire Nation, have experienced, Tim, myself, and literally everybody that I've talked to. So we do obviously have, as I mentioned in the introduction, the founder of Volley on the show right now. We're going to bring him on in a second. But before we do, Tim, can we just get maybe a little specifics on that left turn that you mentioned? How? How is Volley different?

8:10Yeah, I think Josh will explain a little bit how it works. But the main difference is that human connection happens so much faster. I'm going to maybe not give away all of Josh's thunder here. But it's video-based instead of text-based. And because it's video-based, I mean, there are other ways to communicate on there. But because it's text or video-based, and you're almost having face-to-face types of conversations, when I'm like sharing a thought in a volley there and let's say like my kid runs through the background that you don't get that type of thing in a text-based format. All that gets filtered out.

8:51But you see my kid run through the background and then I kind of interrupt what I'm doing, show you my kid and my kid's like, you know, banging on a drum. Like those are the type of human connection things that happen on the spot that doesn't happen with text-based communication. It's like the charm. It's the connection. It's what pulls us together. It's like what puts a smile on our face. And when you have that more, quote, face-to-face, quote, type of connection happening, it just builds affinity. It builds relationships so much faster. and the speed of communication happens so much faster. So you get into the app a lot faster or to the platform a lot more frequently than you would have before to catch up, to follow up.

9:35And it just puts everything on steroids in a really good, positive way. Well, I don't think you stole too much of Josh's thunder because we're gonna bring him on right now. And again, I've done a nice introduction to both Josh and Tim Fire Nation. So you know a little bit about them. But Josh, thanks for being so patient. Thanks for hanging out with us today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? And then, of course, let Fire Nation know the specifics of Volley. Like, why did you create it? What was the aha moment? And kind of expand and expound upon what Tim just shared. Yeah, for sure.

10:07I mean, to just put an exclamation point on what Tim shared, I'll just quote one of our users who said Volley is the fastest way to true human connection. And when you say, well, how can that be? And how does that work? Well, just like any conversation, this one, for example, we take turns, except in Volley, we record our turn with a Volley, which can be a video or audio message that get automatically transcribed or a text, a GIF, an image, a file, whatever you need to communicate your message from wherever you are. And funny enough, the light bulb seems to turn on for some people when I describe it as video texting.

10:44And I know that's not a thing. That's a total oxymoron. But it can start to conjure this idea in your mind for what this interaction might be like and why that would be valuable. I can just talk instead of type. And the other person can just view, listen, or read my message on their own time. But sometimes it's actually easier to compare Volley to things we already know. So unlike video conferencing tools like Zoom, Volley is completely asynchronous, which means it doesn't require you to coordinate schedules. You can just say what you want to say and move on with your day. Others respond on their time.

11:21Or unlike chat tools like Slack, Volley's core experience is based on face-to-face video messaging. And like I said, you can still text or send an image or GIF or file Volley, but they take a backseat to richer forms of communication here, which are used predominantly in Volley. And unlike asynchronous video tools like Loom, you may be asking, well, how is this different than Loom? Your Volley is part of a threaded two-way conversation with another individual or maybe in a channel within a space with hundreds or thousands of people that are part of it. And that's one of the things I think we really got right with Volley, the ability to have rich conversations with large groups.

12:01And you can imagine having a Zoom call with 500 of your closest friends. It would be a nightmare. But somehow in Volley, it isn't, especially with the ability to sub-thread it. It just works. And everyone has both an equal opportunity to hit the record button as well as the ability to pick and choose the parts of the conversation that interest them. Fire Nation, we're going to be doing some more deep dives on this as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, let me drop a truth bomb. The biggest bottleneck holding most entrepreneurs back isn't lack of ideas, tools, or hustle.

12:37It's lack of connection. And when I scaled my business to eight figures and mentored thousands of entrepreneurs, I saw the same thing again and again. People trying to do it alone. And that's why I created the Freedom Circle. You've heard me end every episode of Entrepreneurs on Fire by saying you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That's not just a quote. It's the reality of success. The Freedom Circle instantly becomes your family of five and then some. It's a community of driven entrepreneurs ready to pour ideas, connections, and support into every part of your journey.

13:07So Fire Nation, if you're ready to level up and finally create freedom on your terms, head to freedom-circle.com to learn more. That's freedom-circle.com.

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14:20And if you visit my special partnership link, you'll get a free trial. So visit high level fire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's high level fire.com where marketing sales and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. So Josh, we're back and you're an analytical person. I mean, you're a guy that looks at the numbers, you get it. And so this was obviously a very intentional creation of yours. Speak to some of the key insights that caused you to create Volley. Sure, was it the nerdy glasses that took you off? Well, when the pandemic hit, I could see from a mile away that the way we communicate was about to change permanently.

15:07And there is no version of this future that we talk about, this beautiful, balanced, flexible future of work or school or community that any of us want that doesn't require a more flexible way to communicate richly. And the traditional methods won't take us there. And if you really think about it, there are only two ways to communicate. You can either type or you can talk. And technology has only brought us digital versions of these two traditional forms. And when you choose to type, and I'm talking about chat, text, email here, you're choosing to do something not only that you're seven times slower at, but you're also choosing to only send 7 % of the potential of your message.

15:48And it's not, that's why we're doing this interview, that's why we're not doing this interview over email. Not only would it take forever, but we value that 38 % of the full spectrum of communication that tone of voice adds. And then the other 55 % made up by body language. So why would we ever type a message? Well, because it's flexible. We can do it when we want. When we have time, we can batch it. And asynchronous communication bends to our needs, not the other way around. But inevitably, to move any important work or any relationship forward, we need to talk because it's fast. It's rich. It's why we're here talking today.

16:26And it's that instinct that either gets us in a room or on a Zoom. But that means we have to bend. We have to stop what we're doing, wait for others to arrive, deal with technical difficulties, wonder why Josh isn't on the call, see if he's got his headphones in, put up with people who talk too much, people who talk too little. And we ignore all of these bad behaviors because we just assume that these are the taxes we have to pay to talk. But no more. You can now have the best of both worlds. You can now speak your message seven times faster than you can type it using the full potential you have as a human being to communicate.

16:59and five minutes later, I can watch or listen on 2X. And if I'm in a quiet place, I can read it. And because you're not staring at me, I can pause. I can skip back. Or the magic part, I can take time to think before I respond, whether it's 10 seconds just to gather my thoughts or 10 minutes to do some research. Not only can I put the best version of myself forward, but I can give you a more succinct and thoughtful answer. And this is proven over and over in educational research. Now, like you said, nerdy glasses, I could talk for hours about these things. But these are just a few insights I've gained over a couple of decades being focused on finding the best way to communicate and some of the insights that brought me to why Volley and why now.

17:41I mean, there's so many things I want to talk about right now and why I just already love Volley more than life itself. I mean, for one thing, I mean, I'll start kind of going backwards on some things you said. When you're talking to somebody, I mean, people hate silence. Like you can't just sit there in silence when somebody asks you a question and like stare at them. That's like the most awkward thing in the world. It's unfortunate because you should, because you can do exactly what Josh just said, which is think about what you're going to respond before you actually say it and say the first thing you want to respond.

18:07That's why I always love going through the questions with my guests before the interview, because I don't want to surprise Josh and Tim with a question here. They're going to give some half-butt answer to because they hadn't thought about it previously. They don't want any silence to be happening. I want their best answer. And Volley allows that person to give their best answer. and you know just talking about like the speed of things i mean i don't know if either of you two have watched downton abbey i know a lot of people in my audience have but i just got a such a big kick out of how they used to communicate you know they were they were like way off in the in the um you know the the woods the trees the country and they were just hanging out there at downton abbey and they had to write letters that took forever to correspond and then they finally got you know a phone put in like in midway through season like four or whatever it was and now it's like the world changed.

18:53Now they were like getting information immediately, giving it immediately. And it was just like, what an amazing thing. And like, imagine if they had volley, imagine if people at Downton Abbey had volley. I mean, they would have taken over the world. So scandalous. We're going to pass it back to Tim in a second. He's going to give us some of his greatest tips that he's figured out, getting people engaged on the volley community. But before we do Josh, anything else you want to add? You know, I love the 38%, the 55%, like anything else? Well, if you're looking for data, I've got one more just on the point that you're making there, John.

19:26It's fascinating. There's a 200 millisecond gap that exists between turns in a conversation. Now, this is transcendent across all languages, all cultures. We all sense this 200 milliseconds. That's less than a second. That's one fifth of a second. And if I wait just 600 milliseconds, three fifths of a second, you're going to read that as an awkwardly long pause. Wow. So the stakes are high in conversation. We don't know this. We don't sense this. No one except nerdy scientists have measured this. But because of that, while you're talking, there's no way for me to come up with my response in 200 milliseconds.

20:06I just can't do it. No one can think that fast. So while you're talking today, I have to form my response while you're talking, which means I'm kind of listening to you. I'm kind of in on what you're saying. But I'm also kind of in on what I'm saying because I don't want to look stupid. And then while I'm saying what I'm saying, I'm also reading what you're saying. So I'm kind of in on what I'm saying, but kind of in on what you're looking like while I'm saying it, right? So, Vali, because we just do away with this 200 millisecond gap and you can take whatever time you need to think, which educational research, by the way, has shown that it's three seconds is that magic little bit.

20:46and that's almost nothing, but it really is everything. I can be all in on the message that I'm sending you. I can just be all in on what I'm saying. And when I'm listening to you, I can be all in on listening to you at 2X, by the way. So we're going to speed you up because I can listen to speech sped up three times faster, but we'll just end at 2X. But it's very much an all-in form of communication. So sorry, you opened the nerd door there. I jumped through it. I'll step back out now and let Tim speak wisdom and experience. No, don't talk to him. I was making a point. I was making a point. I wanted that silence to be in there so that Fire Nation could all feel the awkwardness, even though they're just listening at a future date of us talking.

21:29They still felt awkward. Tim felt awkward enough that he had to jump in here and say something. He didn't know. He didn't know. Who's going to stop talking? Who's going to talk? Who's going to talk? I'm nervous. You're nervous. And by the way, being somebody that walks my dog six miles every single day, I listen to podcasts and audio books all the time at 1.5 to speed. And when I talk to a person sometimes, I'm like, where is the button I can push on your face right now that's going to speed you up? Because you are talking so slow. I just want to cry right now. And it's my time. I'm trying to go inside to make a cup of coffee or do this or do that.

22:02I'm like, dah. And Volley allows you to do it on your time. Make it happen while you're sipping a cup of coffee. Re-listen. Double speed. Triple speed. Think about your answers. I love it all. Tim, now it's your turn, brother. Give us the tips. Yeah, so we have used Bali in almost every part of our business now. Because it's asynchronous video chat, it's replaced Zoom for us. So significantly fewer Zoom meetings with clients. In fact, our clients are like, I don't think I need a Zoom meeting with you. We just use Bali. We're like, absolutely. Which has opened up our calendar. So our schedule's a lot more free.

22:40And it's also because it's so much faster than a Zoom call. One YouTube strategy just on my team, instead of supporting about 20 clients, can now support about 100 clients in the same amount of time. If that's not like we 5x our revenue potential with one free app. So it's just been it's been amazing. And so since we use it with one-on-one consulting and YouTube coaching as well as our group coaching programs and internally for our team communication and everything, I found four big things that span all of those different use cases, whether it's internal or it's consulting or group coaching or supporting people who are going through your online course or whatever the case is.

23:24Number one, the first thing we found is that it's really important right at the very beginning to set proper expectations for the experience they're about to have. So we usually say two things in this case. We tell people before you get into Bali, it's really easy. You just give them a link. They click it. Boom. They're in Bali. We say two things. Number one, we say don't forget the five Bs of public speaking. John, do you know the five Bs of public speaking? Don't put me on the spot. Just tell us. Well, come on. You put me on the spot. it's be brief baby be brief so it's like we tell people like take a minute take two minutes if you need to start creeping up into three minutes maybe just gotta cancel think about what you're saying the question you're asking and go ahead and just keep it brief so that people are more likely to listen and you'll get a response and we'll give you the answer you're actually looking for and then number two we tell people don't obsess over what you look like over what you sound like over what the lighting is, whether, you know, whatever, just because it's those, it's the rawness that's like I said in the beginning that makes it just feel it's like, that's the, that's the secret sauce.

24:29That's the magic of connecting to people is like, I feel like I'm hanging out, having a conversation, not watching this Paulist presentation. Right. And Tim, can I interrupt there? Like, like, I think the most, the most genuine thing you did, because Tim allowed me to be part of one of his first communities on Volley. The thing that people were fascinated by was Tim feeding his chickens because he would be out feeding his chickens, but talking about thumbnail design or whatever it was. And people were like, Tim has chickens? And then they wanted to talk about chickens. It just connected you to who Tim really is and what else would Tim be doing other than feeding his chickens?

25:04Well, now he can kind of do both if he chooses to. I mean, it says a lot when I messaged Tim about this interview and he said, can we just do this over volley i was like oh well people have done that before actually in fact i use volley as part of my podcast as well um pretty cool not to get off topic but yeah it has tons of use cases so yes we we set the proper expectation and then two we i want to give them like a first step like a job to do uh something that's easy to get like not just like hey you made it you got an account you know but more of like once you get in here like here's the five beast don't obsess and when you get in there first thing what you do is go to this channel called introduce yourself and i want you to literally introduce yourself like just tell us who you are where you're from what you do a little bit about your youtube channel whatever right and so once people get past that first volley and like oh okay i know what to do when i get here they feel confident i'm trying to talk faster for you for your time so i'm like once i get in there i feel confident i know what to do like blah blah blah and then they get in there and they've done it and like oh that wasn't that hard i got it right and then once they get past that that first volley then it's really important number three that me or one of the youtube strategists on my team or whoever's facilitating that that space gets in there and just gives them a quick validates them a quick response like hey i see you welcome oh my gosh that's so awesome i do this too or whatever like we have lots of channels about this here or whatever you know that just giving them sort of doesn't have to be long it's like a you know 15 20 second response it's just like i see you type of thing and and that makes people like oh i saw the magic of getting a response now i know what that feels like and then they kind of want another hit number four the final one then is we've the thing that we've seen do the biggest have biggest impact on keeping people engaged in the long for the long haul inside of these communities on on youtube that we're creating is uh connecting volley with with whether it's coursework that they're doing going through one of our online courses about youtube growth or it is working one-on-one with their dedicated YouTube strategist, or if it's like something, whatever it is, it's like we are integrating Volley.

27:12So for example, if our course says like, here's this thing you're learning and here's the exercise, here's the assignment you want you to do, do this assignment, then on Volley, go and retell us this question or answer this question or do, or get the screenshot of this in your analytics and put it on Volley. Like we're integrating Volley with the course material so that it's, it's like, oh, for me to go through this, I got to go back to Volley. And he's constantly giving them reasons to go back. So with all those and more, it's been game changer for us and our business and our community. And it's finally the thing that's worked really, really well for us.