From Course To Community In 4 Simple Steps

0:00Gina Bianchini:So many people get stuck at zero and it's so easy to get stuck at zero. First of all, I just want to like grab you and say, all right, we've got this together. We're going to go do this together. You are not alone. And when you're starting with zero, the single best thing that you can do is get really, really clear on your ideal member. Who is the person that needs a community the most right now? And who are you the most excited to bring together? When you can answer that question with the same person, with the same profile, you've got something. So if you are stuck and you're like, oh my gosh, how am I going to launch?

0:46Gina Bianchini:Where's my content? What kind of audience? I just want to take all of those things, put them in a box and set that box on fire. The only thing that matters is who you are bringing together and finding the most motivated people to meet and build relationships with each other. People who are on the same path, specifically people who are in the same transition. That is literally 90 % of what you need to create a successful$1 million business today. You can start with your network, to your people, the people that your people know. And as you start to bring together those first 10 people, the people that those 10 people know.

1:33Gina Bianchini:And the whole point of people magic, this combination of strategy and software, is that that is the only thing you need. Like people don't believe me because most of us, if we're aspiring entrepreneurs or if we're business owners who are spending a lot of our time on, you know, whether it's Twitter or whether it's LinkedIn or whether it's Instagram or whether it's, you know, the 47 newsletters you're getting, it all makes it so much harder than it needs to be because number one, as people, we are drawn to the stories, experiences, and ideas of other people. Value comes from relationships. It doesn't come from content.

2:14Gina Bianchini:And yet, if you listen to all All the gurus who are out there, they're like, where are you building your content? Where are your lead magnets? All of that audience, funnels, social media posts, all of that is noise. The thing that I would do is start with who do I know? What transition am I the most excited to bring people together around today? How do I help people build to their best year ever? How do I go and take the simple formula of a big purpose, I or we bring together so that we can, and start to just bring together 10 people to bring value to each other and recruit new people in? That is what I would do.

3:01Gina Bianchini:The rest is noise. I've now taught this to over 10 ,000 people. And what I will tell you is when you focus on a transition, you will be successful faster. Full stop. In a linear world, in a day-to-day business, it sort of feels like what you do is you show up, take a bunch of steps, you get a result, like somebody pays you money for something, you deliver the product, and then you start over again. A flywheel is different. And this is how a flywheel is different. For example, the reason I love communities, and again, this is a community that can be monetized with ongoing membership fees, so recurring revenue membership fees, a paid course or set of courses that you can get repeat purchases from, a challenge or an event.

3:54When you are building a community, something different happens. You invite in your first 10 members. You are really clear that they're all going through the same transition and your value that you are providing them is, I'm going to take care of all the organizing. I'm going to introduce you to amazing people who are on the same path. We are going to rally a group of first-time engineering managers. We're going to bring people together. We are going to have fantastic conversations. We're going to build a culture where there's absolute confidentiality, and we are going to share our stories, our experiences, our hopes and dreams, our fears and misconceptions, but we're going to do it together.

4:37So what happens when I build that business? Well, I bring in 10 people. Number one, those folks are actually providing value for each other. I'm not producing a ton of content. I'm creating the experiences that people feel comfortable sharing their stories, experiences, and ideas in pursuit of that goal or as they navigate that next transition. So coming back to the flywheel now, I bring in those first 10 people. They start providing value to each other. each and every person has to go and create their own results, but the community is there to create new support mechanisms, new insights, new practices, new habits that just get so much easier to do in a community.

5:27This is what a flywheel is. Those 10 people are probably going to get better results because they are in this community. And guess what happens when people get results. This is happening to me right now with this podcast. As this podcast becomes popular and is well-reviewed and showing up on charts, the number of people I have coming to me right now being like, hey, Gina, what are you doing to create a successful podcast? I want to have a successful podcast. Well, then I can share my stories, experiences, and ideas. That's a flywheel.

6:02Gina Bianchini:If you are building content and you think that you are going to charge for your content, and this is the foundation of what the whole online course industry is based on, the reality is that you're competing with so many other people for someone's time. The way to stand out in 2024 and beyond is to offer something different than content alone. If you go back to first principles, you go back to like, okay, what is it that creates value in this world? Content's like third or fourth down the list. We as human beings are not meant to just consume content all day long. We are here because we learn from other people in relationship.

6:52Gina Bianchini:and the real value is number one in helping people create results and transformation in their lives that they can't get on their own. Number two, it's about creating the conditions by which they can achieve those results and transformation in their lives from relationships that lift us up, that challenge us. People learn from other people. Now, somebody who is skeptical of what I'm saying is basically, well, isn't that my content? Isn't that why I'm here? And isn't that what my audience is learning? But actually it's from conversation that we learn the most. A lecture doesn't change people's lives.

7:33Gina Bianchini:Your short video doesn't change people's lives. Relationships change people's lives. Relationships, especially relationships with more than one person, Relationships that are about surrounding ourselves with people who challenge us, people who point the way to better practices, more interesting habits, things that we can actually start to practice. Create something different than content alone. Now, what do people value? They value progress. They value results. They value experiences. They value novelty. They value meeting new and interesting people that give them energy and inspire them. But most importantly, that they are important.

8:26Gina Bianchini:They are liked. They are loved. Now imagine being able to take that into a world that you create. That is the world of community. And as community shows up as paid memberships, as online courses, as challenges, and as events, you are fundamentally creating value by bringing people together. There is a future-proofing way of taking your course and turning it into something that preserves your price and even lets you charge a premium. And that is to take your course and reimagine it as a set of things that a group of people are going to do together. If you take a step back, the course industry really became about the promise of creating a business that you could set and forget.

9:25It would be, quote unquote, passive income. And the whole idea of it was sell somebody on access to content and hope to get a separate group going that would bring people back into that course and also charge one time for that course. So that's been the baseline of this industry. Now, what has happened is that we now have ChatGPT or Claude or Grok or any of these other ones where instead of sitting there and consuming content, consuming videos, I can go and get a quick answer from an app that gives me sort of instant context. So I don't have to buy a bunch of content. I instead can access something that is interactive, something that is AI.

10:23There is so much that you can do, and it just requires a bit of reframing. And I would say moving to a different model for what you can create and then forget about. There is a movement afoot for a lot of course creators to basically take their course material and turn it into an interactive AI experience. So there's great platforms like Delphi for this. There's even platforms that exist out there like Eleven Labs where you can basically create the AI version of yourself. Those are totally legitimate things for people to do when you got a lot of content and you're like, how do I make it more interesting to get people to interact with and take advantage of all the amazing things that I've created?

11:18So it's a great way if your world is content to think, oh my gosh, I'm going to make an easier way for somebody to interact with my content. But there is a better, much more resilient, I go as far as to say future-proofing way of taking your course and turning it into something that is absolutely defensible, absolutely valuable, that preserves your price and even lets you charge a premium. And that is to take your course and reimagine it as a set of things that a group of people are going to do together. What do I mean by that? It means that for every video that you create, think about creating a challenge.

12:08So less homework assignment or quiz, those aren't working that well. Instead, take your same context, make sure that it's really valuable and is about a transition in people's lives because that is what people pay attention to. The people who are going through transitions are by far the most motivated people to buy things, to contribute to things, to invite new people to things. That is why tapping into a transition is so powerful for creating these kinds of digital commerce and digital community businesses. Then the value of what you are building can still be a course, but instead of it being about passively consuming content or your passive income, it is about setting up the framework for people to be able to tackle these transitions, getting these kinds of results and transformation that come from what you've designed for them together in small groups.

13:08This is People Magic. I'm Gina Bianchini, and we'll see you in the next episode.