Community Should Not Be A Grind

0:00So I am here with Amanda Goetz. If you all do not know her, you are going to fall in love.

0:15that I feel like Amanda like I you and I I think we met kind of in passing in a community as a matter of fact um a few years ago and then met in person at an event as a matter of fact uh back in June and I've been such a huge fan of yours from afar and now I'm so grateful to call your friend and somebody who I just admire and think that you are a force for not just being good in the world, but also helping people navigate all of these different parts of their lives and their personalities to be great and have their best year ever. So what are you the most excited about right now? Oh my goodness.

1:03So, so many things. And thank you for that amazing introduction. I'm so excited to be here. Okay. The thing I'm most excited about right now is, and this is going to sound like you planted this in me, but she did not. I did not. I didn't even tell her I was going to ask her that question, by the way. No. Is the community I'm building. I've been a marketer for 20 years in-house and I've built two companies. I've been a founder several times. I sold my last company a few years ago. And I truly feel like I'm at this kind of like halftime of my career and I'm entering to this next chapter so excited to give back to people and help them learn from all the things I had to kind of learn the hard way throughout my life.

1:54and that's what's lighting me up is the one-on-one interactions I'm having with people. So that's what I'm most excited about. I love that. And so you shared a little bit, you know, you have gone from really a world-class marketer. Maybe start with that chapter of your life. How did you become a marketer? What did that mean to What kind of marketing did you do before you became an entrepreneur and now in this latest entrepreneurial chapter? We'll go through all of them. Yeah. My career started a non-traditional marketer. I actually was a marketer at Ernst & Young. So that was the start of my career.

2:41And that took me to New York City from Chicago. I grew up on a small farm in the Midwest. And then I moved to New York City and I did a 180. and I went and managed a brand for a celebrity wedding planner, which was kind of my first like foray into what a CMO does is managing his licensing deals. He had a reality TV show, podcast, et cetera. Wow. And that really kind of like what my whistle on all things marketing. I'm like, I love this, this multi-channel omni-channel. How does it ladder up to this like larger message. Right. That led me to actually launching my first startup, which was a wedding tech company.

3:21And I did that. That was back in 2011 in New York city. I joined an accelerator program. Uh, I really learned what it meant to manage engineers and product and all of that, which I think is really important as a marketer to have empathy for all disciplines within a company. Yeah. And that took me to The Knot, where I was really the first consumer marketing hire because The Knot traditionally was a media company. Does everybody remember The Knot or anybody who's in the chat to The Knot, the premier wedding destination? Yeah, it was the like 20 year old SEO giant in the room. They were there at the original.com days.

4:14And I got to come when the CEO, they brought in a new CEO from Google. And it was transitioning from a two sided or from a media company to a two sided marketplace. I got to lead product marketing, brand marketing, what that looks like. And that's really where I learned what my style of marketing was, which is emotionally connective marketing. How do we take something that is just a day in someone's life and feels very, you know, almost capitalistic, like, you know, how do you spend as much money and make it this thing? And I'm like, And the irony of all of this was I was going through a divorce while I was managing this brand.

5:00Thank God you didn't become one of those people that were like, you know, sitting in the back smoking, being like, oh, honey. Right. Oh, honey. Get a premium. You think it starts out great. Right. So I got to really take this brand that could have just stood for this transactional day and make it about self-love and making relationships work. And how do you build an emotional connection with a brand long before you're actually engaged? And that really turned into the last like 10 years for me, which is I care so deeply about adding emotion into brands and what it stands for and how it actually impacts the end person.

5:53So that's profound. And I was thinking about this a lot this morning, which is this idea of, it's so easy to be in conversations with people today where they think about human beings as an email address. And so now let's go into your next startup and how you thought about taking that emotionally connected marketing into founding again? Yeah. So that was truly mission driven. I, like I said, I went through a divorce. I had three kids under the age of four and then COVID hit and I saw women specifically really struggling. And, and so I created a CPG company. it was a wellness company it was gummies and um it was really gummies were like a very you know gummies are everywhere but it was gummies wrapped with this larger permission for a woman to create space for herself and so it was house of wise and it was empowering women to take control of their sleep sex stress and strength and by taking a gummy you were signaling to yourself that you deserve to get a workout in that day, or you deserved pleasure.

7:10And what we found was this was fully community driven. So we had what we called our wise women, and they got all of our quote unquote performance dollars because it was a CBD brand. We couldn't do paid marketing. And so we actually took all of our VC dollars and we put it into this one channel, which was this kind of hybrid affiliate program, but these women were the backbone of this company and they got to be a part of something bigger. And so we had a Slack channel for them. This was before Mighty, even, you know, this was many years ago now. This was truly like we did town halls with them. They got to meet with our sleep experts, our sex experts, and they saw that this was bigger.

8:03And it's funny because that was truly, I was running a community then, but it was actually a CPG company masked as a real community. And that truly, when I sold that company, I started doing fractional CMO work, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And I'm like, community is my thing. Like that is what I love doing is bringing people in and having an impact. When you see a community that you have had a role in building actually connect with each other, there is no better high. No. There is no better high. And when you then can do it around, you know, such important topics. Like, like, I just want to take a beat, sleep, stress, sex, and strength.

9:01And this multifaceted space for the multifaceted human being. That is profound, Amanda. It's profound. Thank you. And it's, it's my continuing mission. Like it's everything that I continue to push for. And even with office hours. So after I sold that company, that mission still exists and is the heartbeat of what office hours is that there has been no time in my life that external success didn't come from internal growth as well. whoa say that one more time for the people in the back because I think that that was so

9:49important there's not a single time in my life that I can count that external success meaning getting a book deal selling a company I'm finding love again external success didn't come from internal work and leading a community that is both my work to do, but also the work that I want to do with everyone else. What have you found in doing this has been the biggest surprise? the biggest surprise was how much access people want from the community leader and how when you start a community if you don't set those boundaries quickly and manage the expectations because I do believe that if you are, you know, a recovering people pleaser like myself, you're like, well, these people just bought something from me.

10:57I need to go above and beyond to, you know, be there to support them and show them how great this is going to be. That was the most surprising thing that I had to do my own inner work to feel comfortable setting what those boundaries and expectations were from access points. Yep. I, I love that. I'll just, I'll share two stories on that because I think it's such an important, it's such an important point. Number one, in the world of being a creator, the expectation is that it is about you. People are following you. Even the term following is like, it's about you. It's about the work that you do.

11:46It's what you put out there. And because when you're building an audience, it's about the relationship they have with you, not necessarily the relationship that they have with each other. And by the way, you're also told to do it like 18 times a day. Because if you think about it, it's like every platform you need to have organic content. You need to be posting five times a day, multiply that by three or four platforms. And now all of a sudden you're like, I am a content engine that, that, that I have to be out there and it's about me. So now I'm at, and by the way, we're doing that for free because we're trying to build the audience.

12:26And then we think about our funnel. It goes into, well, wait a second. If I'm actually going to charge people for something, it's gotta be for access to me. Right. So now all of a sudden we're the product or the way I sort of think about it is like, like we're the hero. And the reality is that the people who have scaled the most successful businesses, take community off the table. They have scaled businesses that connect people to each other. So actually it's about being a host. Yep. And when you're a host, like a party would kind of suck if you stood up at your dinner party and talked the entire time.

13:13It's a lot more powerful to basically be able to introduce people to each other and say, oh, my gosh, we'll have one table. You know, we'll have a one topic table. But at the same point in time, I really want you to meet this person who I wanted you to be here because you have this in common. And what, what you are not alone in this. So, you know, one of many, um, very high profile creators recently started a mighty network coming from another platform where they did not have success. And in launching a six month program, they thought it was going to be about them. And they had their team lined up.

14:00They had six people lined up to like on this person's team, they had a very large following to answer everybody's question, to be the hero. And this person was going to go live every week. And that was what they thought they were selling. What they realized very quickly was that people were there for each other. There's so many tactical things. I love that you just shared that the hero to host is truly like, my KPIs are now around that. Like how many peer to peer connections are happening? When someone posts a question, how many other people are jumping in? That to me, like you said, the like, nothing feels better than when you see your community connecting.

14:47I remember when someone dropped in the Slack for the first time that two random people who had never met before, literally we're having lunch in, you know, a city. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that was my light bulb moment where I was like, this isn't about me. Right. This is about a shared mission and vision for how we want to live our life. Yes. And we are just, you're attracting those people who want to help each other achieve that. What does it mean to embrace the different roles that we have. And what do you see is like the number one mistake people make who are thinking about building a business while juggling multiple roles?

15:34Yeah. So the biggest mistake I see people make, there's two fallacies. There's the planning fallacy and the urgency fallacy, right? We think that we can accomplish so much more in a day than we actually can, which what does that cause? Guilt and shame. And then there's the urgency fallacy, which we think that everything is significant and urgent when it really isn't. And so everything that I coach on and teach on is around intention and transition. What is the thing that you are focused on right now? How do you give 100 % to that. That's the focus formula, right? All cognitive resources on a singular thing.

16:19So how do you set that intention? And then how do you allow yourself to transition roles? Because who I am in my work mode is very different energetically, value-wise than I am when I'm in mom mode or parent mode. And it's different than how I am as a friend and social mode. And we, we keep talking about alignment. And I think that that is where people get tripped up. Why should be all of these things, right? You are at a holistic level, but you're actually these individual people and transitioning and honor the transition between those different roles that you're playing is so important. Those are the big things that I would say as somebody's trying to balance is about intention and transition.

17:18I think the transition point is so important, especially when it feels like we're not doing enough. I know I feel this way. Like if I'm taking that 15 minutes between lunch and my next meeting. And, you know, my body is actually like, there's this little voice inside my head. That's like, what else could I be doing right now? Like, could I, could I be checking my phone? Could I be checking this? Could I, and I think this is one of those things that is both the absolute hardest because, you know, we're, we're trying to maintain focus and transition between roles when we literally have a casino in our pocket.

18:11A hundred percent. And like, as I think about the future of where we're going and building in the future, I keep going back to COVID, the start of COVID when everyone was home, there was virtual magic that was happening. True connection. I keep thinking about that and saying my community is going to really look at the human as a member and bring back that magic because because I'm working with a lot of solopreneurs a lot of people are home and they just because the world opened back up doesn't mean that they're experiencing true connection. That's why we brought the workouts into it. That's why we do book club and more things that are holistic and not just around, well, what are your KPIs for your business and how is your brand, you know, funneling into that?

19:09Like that is one part of it, but like we're looking at every member as a whole human. And I think that that's just important. And just a reminder that so many people are still experiencing loneliness as they work from home. The normal narrative today of entrepreneurship is that it's hard and it's meant to be hard and you're just not aggro enough if you aren't sort of fully, you know, working every minute of every day and that you should feel guilty. And what I love about this conversation is not only is there a different path and multiple, in the same way that there are multiple front doors into a network of people and every person is their own front door, but you don't have to buy into that bullshit.

20:05And I think one of the things I really respect and value about you, Amanda, is the fact that you have raised your hand as a beacon for people to be like, Hey dudes, it's that this is not the point. The point is not about grinding it out to a, to a moment where it takes a massive toll on your body and it takes a massive toll on your relationships and it takes a massive toll on even your finances. And so I love that. And that's why I want to shine a big fat spotlight on it. There's one other piece that I think is actually really important. And I'm curious how you think about it is the only way we are going to offer entrepreneurship for more people in a way that is light and supportive is by focusing in on software that unlocks relationships between people, that ability, as you were saying, to see more of it, as opposed to telling people that they have to be content factories and that if you're not a content factory, you will fail.

21:21Being a human online, you will attract people who want to learn from you. You are a unique individual with real life experiences. How do you infuse those into what you're creating? Because we don't have to be these artificial robots. So it's not a copy and paste. And I get super excited about the future of content and adding emotion and human back into it. Yeah. Every time we interact, every time I get to spend time with you, I feel so grateful. So thank you so much. and I can't wait to see how Office Hours evolves from here on Mighty Networks. I'm so excited. Thank you so much. I love working with the team.

22:05Thank you. Awesome.

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