Hi there and welcome back to the community podcast. My name is Deb Schell. I'm a creator turned community builder after launching my online community in 2020. I have a passion for online events and bringing people together. I now consult business owners and leaders just like yourself who have a message, their life's work or a vision for helping others transform through their online courses, cohorts or memberships on this interview style podcast who hear conversations with community leaders, passion for bringing people together online. Our goal is to provide you with interesting conversations to inspire you to build launch and grow an online community with energy, confidence and purpose. Let's get started beauty strategy podcast. Super excited today to have a special guest here, Pablo Gonzalez. He has been a leader in the community space for quite some time and is really active about reaching out and making friends at conferences across the US and I don't even know if you've hit some international conferences Pablo, but welcome to the committee strategy podcast.

No, not yet. I'm still, I'm still looking forward to making international friends. I really started going hard at this thing like 2019. Right, so the conference thing is I'm happy to just open back up and I'm in like you know, full full tour right now. I got like four different ones in september and like two in october and two in november, so it should be fun. Thanks for having me. I'm really, I'm really pumped to be here. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm talking about myself. I appreciate you sharing your stage with me. I love the fact that we're having this conversation so excited for your show and I'm excited to hear. So thank you. You got it. Well we I was on that at S. R. Is in the room and mrs in the room and this is a live our last live session with the Fine come here community because we're actually closing the fine come here community in september and I'm just between two recorded podcast episodes just for myself to find a little bit more calm in my life in a lot of ways. And um but I met S. R. And this is how I kind of got into meeting with Pablo is s I was on the call too, and I met him at another conference called the Community Leaders Institute and he was sharing Pablo was supposed to be there, I'm pretty sure, but like something happened with the plane or something and you didn't make it.

But luckily I got to decide, I decided to get a podcast in Orlando and I met you there with your like these. So tell us tell everybody a little bit about you, we'll start there like why you go to all these conferences? What's the deal with that? Let's talk, let's start with that. I am, I Think that relationships are the atomic unit of business, right? So if you're not if you're not out building relationships and and and doing that thing as as an input to whatever you are passionate about, um, you're missing the point. And for me, so a couple of things, right? Like one In early 2019 when I decided that I wanted to build a business, um, I heard this idea that if you're gonna build a business around anything other than the thing that you love doing that, you think you're really, really good at being your activity in the business and being the thing that drives the business. If you're doing anything other than that, go get a job.

All right. So, uh in my head, I'm like, man, you know what I love to do is make friends to people and meet people and I think my superpower is that I fall in love with everyone I meet and I'm a good communicator. So it makes me a great connector and a hype man. Um, so a business where me being able to go to conferences and do this thing uh, is something that I had to build and strategically on, on a more tactical level, the conferences that you and I have seen each other at, I believe that conferences of content creators is a very high r. O I use of your relationship building time, right? Cause I can, I can go to any conference and make 30 friends. Um, and then I'm gonna have to like keep up with them, right? But if you go to a content creator conference a everybody is really fascinating, right? Like, everybody really Cares deeply about something and knows how to talk about it and knows how to, like, you know, get into it and it's real passionate. So it's these wonderful people that have this skill set that I think is the new art of communication, which is content creation.

And everybody you meet, if you meet 30 people and five of them have you on your show, then really you just met 1500 people, Right? So, uh it's uh going to these, like, content creator conferences is a very scalable relationship building technique and all I ever think about is how to build relationships based on that understanding that relationships are the atomic unit of business. So that's how it fits in. You probably have communication. And I would say later in your top five strengths, I would guess. Um maybe maybe even winning others over because I feel like that's another one that that resonates with you. Um it's funny that you said, like, you love everybody. I'm curious if that's true. Like, do you really love everybody that you meet at these conferences? Like, I challenge you there. Like, you know, I don't know if I love everybody, right? But I really do just I I there's a quote by ralph Waldo Emerson, that is in my journeys, every man I meet is in some way my superior and in that I can learn from them.

I I just very much take that to heart. And you said this idea of like getting people, what was that? What was that strength you said of like getting buy in or getting people to like you winning, winning others over is yeah. Which is persuasive being able to communicate persuasively with people and get them on board with an idea pretty quickly. Yeah. And, and, and really Deb what that really comes down to is not really winning people over about me. It's winning people over about themselves. Like I I think that in my like through my Early 30s, everything was like, how can I be the coolest guy in the room? And at one point I got really involved in nonprofits and I started networking with people that were way above my stratosphere in their career trajectory. And it was clear that there's no way that I could be the coolest person in the room because they did not care about my little ace ventura jokes. And at that point my mind flipped. And it was, it became all about how can I make the person in front of me feel like they are the most important person in the room. Um, and again, that comes down to that idea that I see something wonderful and everyone I meet and I'm a good communicator.

So I know how to make you feel special about what you do. And I know how to describe it to the person next to you. Like, oh my God, that is this fascinating person. She was a journalist and actually a community strategist and like, it makes perfect sense because asking question and it's like, how you get to know people and how you get to show value, right? Like I just get it when I see people and then I'm not shy about communicating it and it works out. It's yeah, thank you and thank you for that shout out. That's that's literally we worked together during, we did a bootcamp. So once I met Sarah, he told me about this boot camp, he was doing um I joined the boot camp and get to know you a little bit better and then we hung out at podcast and watched you use some karaoke, which is pretty cool. Um but really this, this whole concept that you've got around being the stage and how you work with clients. Tell us a little bit about um that transition from, okay, I want to go meet people to like, how does that return on your time investment? As in like, are you getting clients from these people that you're meeting? Or is it just like the podcast guesting or or are you looking at, are you going to a conference and then approaching it with, like, I need to get x amount of clients, is there a strategy to it or is it just um pure, I want to build relationships and then see where things happen.

Great question and nobody's ever really given me the opportunity to explain this, right? But again, going back to this idea of building a business around my strengths, I am a world class opener and a very mediocre closer, right? So like I know I know how to get it started and then, and and then what I realized early on was that I, you know, my first kind of content creation, thought leadership stuff was about networking, and one of the questions I got very often about networking was how do I follow up, right? Like how do you go to all these conferences? Are you following up with people? And I suck at that? Right? So I, what I, what I really do is I very much lean into the first impression and like when you're in front of me making you feel really, really special and then I very much lean into content creation because the frictionless way to follow up with you and somebody literally just asked me this last night, he's like, hey man, I notice you don't carry cards and you're just connecting with people on social media. I'm like, yeah man, because I'm not, I'm not the dude that's gonna get your card and then email you two weeks later, like, oh, hey, let's follow up and have a coffee, I'm the guy that's gonna connect with you, make friends with you, you know what, what I what I what we talk about is gonna be valuable to you because I'm gonna give you all my best advice based on the 15, you know, years of like meeting people and trying to figure out what works for them and I'm good at cross contextualizing stuff and then I'm gonna connect with you on whatever social media of choice that you spend time on and oh by the way I post 2 to 3 times a day on every single social media channel.

So like if you met me at a conference, you are now going to see me in your feed at least once a week. So the moment that you're need a Pablo in your life, you're gonna be like, oh I know exactly where to find that dude cause he pops up regularly in the, that I spend the most time on which is looking at my phone like all other people do. Um Yeah, I think that's interesting just to say that that's your connectors strength, right? As a community builder. One of the biggest strengths that community builders usually all have and community leaders have is that they love connecting with each other and with other with other people to each other. So you just mentioned earlier, like, you know a little bit about me. So when you go to these conferences, if they are mentioning something about something that reminds you of me, oh my gosh, you should meet that because she X, Y or Z. Does this thing versus at end and you do that at the conference for other people. So you say oh I just was talking five minutes ago to missy and she has this amazing thing going on, you should talk with her. And I think that's the key to being a really great host in a in a in person space is being able to make people feel seen, be able to make them feel heard and to feel like they're valuable and important and that powerful moment that you give those people in that moment makes them feel very special.

And like you're saying then they will always remember you as the person you made them feel really important or valued or heard. And so that way they can then oh Pablo was this, he has this show or he's doing this thing and they can relate back to you as well. So it's more about that instant creating the ripple effect later, write about how you create that relationship bonds within just a few minutes and in person you can do this and online you can do this as well. And it's a it's a powerful thing that I think a lot of creators, creators and community builders all feel that's important and recognize that it's valuable instead of going up to somebody that this is what happened to me recently as I'm going to more networking in person events and Chamber of Commerce because I joined the Chamber of Commerce and it's very transactional and I've just had a conversation with this lady yesterday about um You know there's just certain groups that you just know that there's going to be the people there that hand you the business card, give your their 22nd 32nd elevator pitch or whatever it is and then be like, Okay, nice to meet you, see you later if unless it's like going to be something where it's a possible client or customer or something and I think what we're talking about is the opposite of that.

Yeah, and there's a couple of things that I want to dig into their right, like Deb you're clearly an awesome community strategist because you realize the fact that the the exercise of community building is really just an exercise and identifying the value of the individual in the community and figuring out how that value can be shared with the other person in the community that is seeking that value, the better you get at identifying value and sharing value, the more you're gonna build a community within all of that as the leader of a community or as a part of a community, your value is gonna be shared as well. But you have to recognize that if you're going for this play, you're going for this community play, that's the move, how do you identify you know sources of value within your community and connected with um inputs that that need that source of value, right? So like very well said and to your point the chamber of Commerce networking event. I cut my teeth on that, right? Like you you were a journalist, I'm sure you went to tons of that stuff I've been doing, you know my, my experience in community creation came from building young professional nonprofit groups in Miami and that was a ton of chamber of Commerce, a ton of economic development agency, you know, a ton of banquets and what not and what I see that the life cycle there is the the younger less seasoned business developers write those rooms stop me if I'm wrong here.

Commercial realtor, insurance broker, commercial banker like like its financial advisor, financial advisor, right? Like just full of those folks, people that do well in those careers are the ones that you're, you're gonna meet a lot of like the the Business card sprayers there, but those are not the top 1% of their careers, the top 1% of their career. You meet them in a you meet them in a networking environment and they're immediately engaging in you, what are your priorities? What are you seeking? What's what's the key to your business, right? Like what makes you successful and they're indexing for that and who they can connect you to because they understand that at these events, it's all about that, it's all about like okay this is what's gonna help you, I know someone that can get you there and if I can make that intro, then I'm completely different than these like business cards sprayers that are just like trying to figure out what you do and what I do. And is there a transaction no next? Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Love love. That's so great. So tell us a little bit about what you do, how you work with clients. I know I learned in the boot camp a little bit about your process. Um so talk to us a little bit about what that looks like. I hope you learned more than a little bit about our process in the boot camp, but you learn the whole process, right? Um to your point, right? So we are the company's called be the stage because we believe that it is much more powerful to be the stage than the star of the stage, right? Like um in another word, it's much more powerful to be a kingmaker than to be a king, right? Everybody that's true. Trying to be excellent and be a king. If you pose yourself as a king, you're a threat and they are going to compete with you if you pose yourself as the kingmaker, they are, they're gonna want to get close to you, right? And you start developing um this network and you know what we specialize in is creating community through content strategies. And for us when you When you have, when you have a group of people and you're trying to like congeal them into a community.

The first thing that you're thinking about is how do I get this thing started? How do I get everybody in a room? And and you know, and once you get past that point and you get everybody in the room, the next thing that you got to think about is okay, how do I keep them coming back to this room and how do I keep them talking when I'm in this room and what we realized, I've reversed engineered all this process from what we were doing for young professionals in like 2010. Um, but what really lies is like a very easy method of getting somebody to re show up to a room and continue to contribute to the conversation is to make sure that in that room you are having a conversation about something that they want to learn about with, somebody that they want to meet. You know, people tend to show up for that. So we specialize in producing these internet talk shows that service that right? It's a webinar but you run it as an internet talk show where you are building a relationship with somebody that the people that you serve, you know admire or want to meet or or want to get to know and you get to be guilty by association with that person and and develop a strategic relationship while folks that show up to the call show up to the webinar show the show also get to be a part of it, they get to ask questions.

It's kind of like a panel at one of these conferences or in the Chamber of Commerce that's interactive. And when you're doing that, you're building these like you're driving these like four vectors of relationship between you and your guests, you and your audience, your guests and your audience and audience the audience. Um and then you're taking that content and repurposing it into podcasts, Youtube, social media, all these different things and the more you do that, the more you realize that People will start showing up, same people will start showing up and slowly but surely there's a cadence where you start to get six people that show up to every call, then 10 people that show up to call then 15. And really by the time that you have like six people showing up to every call, then that 7th and 8th person that shows up one of those to stick around because they're like, oh this is real. Um and and and now that you know that space that you opened up for your community now has an ongoing conversation that can always reflect right? Like I communities all have rituals and all have um shared language and generally will have a stage where that stuff gets like disseminated and what we do is design that stage for you so that you have that ongoing conversation, you have that feeder system into the community and and that ability to, you know, we call it frictionless nurture, right to like be able to like grow these relationships very, very efficiently because you're not just interviewing one person, you're interviewing a person in front of a bunch of other people and creating this like multi vector relationship driving conversation.

Yeah, that's why I really, when I started talking about this at CMm or the clicks event, I was just, I was like, this is great because it's like the perfect combination to me of like podcasting and community building all in rolled up in one is what I felt like when I learned about the program because I was like, how great could it be to like bring guests that not only your podcast listeners want to hear, but maybe people in your community if you're leading an online community and I considered it to be a great community structure that could build habit and keep people coming back every because the biggest challenges I see for clients that I work with is you know, first the clarity peace of like, okay, who are you bringing together? Why and what are we doing? And then once they've got that clarity peace figured out, then it's like, okay, well like you're saying, how do we get them to keep coming back and it's these rituals and and programs that we lead over time that people say, oh this is a valuable space.

I've had people come onto calls and be like, I didn't, you know, after they say to me later, I didn't realize how valuable that call was going to be. I was just thinking it was laughing and you know, I'll show up and see how it goes. And I thought I got a lot more value than I expected out of that. And I think that's what happens when you have this conversation with, like you interviewing somebody asking some really interesting questions because you've got, again, you've got some people behind the scenes helping you recruit some of these people. You've got, you've built a network for yourself with the experience and background you have in the community industry to be able to get these leverage these higher, you know, potential, really great leaders in industry and community come onto your show and then you even offer by elevating these members that are part of the community that show up every and when we say community for Pablo, it's talking about the zoom call that he has once a week. It's just the zoom chat.

So like it's not a whole full blown platform and what they realized quickly correctly from wrong Pablo, but that was the method to success for you was just keeping it really short simple and then, you know, telling them in their email to just come back each week and there's just people that show up every week now on your monday call. Yeah that's uh that's 100% it, right? And you know, at once you get a certain core capacity that that's when you bring in an expert like yourself that can like design the space and move the conversation offline. But I think what people don't realize is that you don't need to have a huge following. You don't need to have 1000 people in a group to call it a community. Right? The the I would say my community Probably has about 25 people that I consider real active members of my community. Of those. I probably get like 9-12 of those on every single one of my shows and other ones that come every so often.

But you know, they're out there posting on linkedin about stuff that they learned on the show, tagging the other person that they learned it from and that like Web effect really, really works, which is the same exact thing we did too. Uh you know, build our first community as a service for J. W. Real estate capital where we did the same exact thing by the end of year one, they you know, attributed $40 million worth of revenue to it. And when we looked back when Esther had Greg who was our client on our podcast on his podcast, Greg made the big distinction that was like, listen man, we've looked at these numbers and we realized that while, you know, we've produced 100 shows and we get 60, you know, they do like two calls a week, they do two shows a week that get like 45-65 people. So it's like 100 plus people per week. But they traced back the idea that the profitability of this like $40 million revenue stream can be traced back to the 25 people that show up every week, right?

Like those 25 people were the ones that bought back in, started reinvesting in them. Then were like telling the rest of the people in the community, like, yeah, I'm in on this, like why aren't you doing this? And it became a competition. They're the ones that become like the people that when someone shows up to a zoom call and they're asking a question that we can't have on the show. They're like, oh hey, I got the answer for you and they're typing it in and then they're saying, here's my number. If you want to talk about how to use your self directed ira to buy rental property, right? Like that stuff is happening every single week in that call. And it doesn't take a big army to to just have, you know, like a group of ambassadors that become your super consumers that then become this like really valuable asset because the the author of super consumers, Eddie um right? Like I have that book somewhere around my head here, um, the author of the author of super consumers, which is a fascinating concept talks about it all the time. There is no, there is no more powerful tool for persuasion than two people that are really bought into whatever you do, talking about how much they like what you do or who you are in front of somebody that's deciding whether or not you're for real, right?

Like, you know, there's no more powerful tool for persuasion for that. And the zoom calls become that, right? Like the zoom calls become this moment where you're just doing that stuff at scale your community, you know, like your community rooms and stuff like that become that, right? It's just like how do you system eyes that piece and you just got to be able to have, uh, you know, like a magnet that is bringing the people that are totally bought in and also some people that are like partially bought in and just got to let them collide. Yeah. And I think you've been re re re adjusting and pivoting uh, continually is what you keep saying because I've been showing up at some of your sessions, I try to get to everyone, but it just, sometimes it collapses schedules every week. I Get it, you're, you're one of those 25 dead, right? But like, like to me, it's it's such a big ask for you to come that like I'm always just so so grateful anytime you show up, but the the other side of that sort is when I invite you to one of these shows, like I and we talk about this in the boot camp, right? Like my invite to this thing better not be come talk to Pablo, my invite needs to be something where you open your and you're like, oh that Pablo guy, this is something I've been meaning to find out about, he just took something off of my schedule, like he just, I was able to cross something off my list by accepting this invite to this because I needed to find out about this anyways, and it's that like real perspective of service of like what can I put in front of you that is valuable to you that moment that's gonna make you want to show up.

If not, it doesn't happen, right? Like you gotta lead with service, I'm interested to know, I don't know if missy has any questions or if star wants to chime in and so I'll definitely open up the floor, but I wanted to just ask, I know you're going to see em X next week, so we're recording this on september 9th uh cmx uh event is in san Francisco, it's a big community leadership, it's like the community Event, right? And they haven't had one in person, I believe since 2019 and 20, I can't remember when the last one was tell us about it, what's what are you excited about? I'm excited. So this whole thing that I just said about content creators, I can't wait to be in a room full of community people. Like I've never I've never experienced that, that the closest thing that I've ever gotten to experiencing that was their their virtual event that I spoke at last year and even in virtual, you just got this feeling right? Like the the chat in that virtual event is the most lively, most supportive, most like virtual hug chat I've ever been a part of.

So I can't wait to be in person with all these people that are so community minded and just nerd out about it. And you know, it's like that that kind of video meme of like chris Farley that was going on during the pandemic was just like up and down the hallway, like, like some aisles like hugging people frantically. I think that that's what it's gonna be and I I literally can't wait. So it's in, it's in Redwood city California, like you said, it's the CM X. Has built the platform and evangelize the thing is this guy, David spinks that wrote the book business of belonging that founded it. They've really championed this community thing and have have created the stage for community and um it's in Silicon Valley. I'm really, really excited about the whole thing, right? It allows me, it's allowed me to set up some really interesting meetings because I'm in that bay area of people, I really, really admire that I've had on my podcast that I now get to meet in person plus I get to go be part of this whole thing. But I guess the easiest way to describe it is like this is where community managers and people that think about community all day long collide with leaders of industry that are wondering whether or not this thing is for them and I just think that that that type of watering hole is very crucial to any ecosystem.

So very excited for it. Yeah, it's so cool. So I had gotten on a call with you during your show earlier this year, you had a session with Pamela Slim who wrote the book that we're currently now reading in her book study and she talks about watering holes and and all of those things. So that term I can attribute back to Pamela Slims and just recently talked to talked about that. Um, and I want to just um say yeah it's it's just, it's great to be in a room when I was at clicks, I'm sorry that I can't go to C. M. X. But when I was at the community layers institute event it was just phenomenal because it was just it community community leaders, people who are doing the work of building an online community, whatever that role is for you, they are always interested in allowing people to be seen valued and heard because they know those basic things are important and so you when you automatically come into a room with people that automatically want to learn about you and know that they need to offer a space for you as well as they know that they can be seen.

It's just an amazing room to be in when you know you're kind of all in that like charge of we're all in this thing together, this community journey, whatever, whatever we're struggling with right now. Like I got your back, it's kind of that thing and it's really amazing. It's sorry you had your hand raised, did you want to chime in? I do I just want to say something about what you just said in connection to everything that Pablo shared, which is obviously brilliant in C. M. X. Everybody's gonna be like that. But in most places it's not and if you come in as that person, if you're that person that gives other people the stage that elevates the people around them, that attracts everybody else to you because you're the one doing it, that's how you win. And that's every everything. Was that Pablo was talking about our tools of tactics to do exactly what you just said right is how do you become the person that makes everybody feel special? That gives the stage to everybody that elevates everybody around them. And if it's not cmx you're gonna be it and it makes you very, very unique versus the guy shouting as loud as possible.

So that's kind of like combining it all together. Yeah, yeah. And you know, the challenge that I'm seeing that we're kind of seeing right now is around monetization and funding because the community leaders institute got bought out by another company and they've now hired a consultant and I've seen several positions change in community leadership, community roles in the last two weeks. And so because it's been so top of mind for me, I'm really curious to hear what your thoughts are, anybody who's in the room here problem asi or its are about, you know, how do we not just prove the value of a community to an organization but to society? Because I think we're at a place where people get it in a sense of, I know I need a community, it's it's definitely a high priority for me. I need to be in certain communities for certain purpose, right?

They ultimately know why it's important, but putting a dollar amount on that and saying this is okay, yes, we need community and here's the investment that we're willing to make or here's the investment that, you know, here's the amount of money to make this possible because the end of the day, everything cause something and so even, you know, having these people building these relationships, building the operations behind it, doing all of those things, a community um a new organization might say, oh we need community, but then they don't even know why they need community and then they don't know what's involved in it and then they want it to happen like in six seconds and then if they don't get it instantly then what happens we don't even know. But that's it's just an interesting because one of the things I talked to Artie about recently in this conversation was people get community, but they don't get why they need to put dollars to it. And I think it's not just for organizations, it's across the board.

I feel like society needs to understand that this costs money even meet up. I read through Pablo, one more thing through Pablo's Call, I met the Ceo of meet up David Siegel and he was on it. I just finished his book, I probably read that book in a week because it was so, it was so interesting because it talked about not really community, but it talked about culture and it talked about transitioning and like really the things that actually happened in conversations with these big organizations but you you're like, I never would have thought that would be an issue and this is, these are the issues that are happening and like the decisions that he had to make massively impacted. You know, hundreds of employees of layoffs and all of these things that like have a ripple effect down. And so one of the big controversies was charging for for instead of switching the format from charging for the host to be able to have the ability to host a community on their meet up platform instead of charging the host saying actually the host really should get some money, but if we can't pay them, we would, we would charge the people participating and they've changed that, they're changing that model.

And so that socially is kind of addressing the fact that we need to invest in this. But I'll stop talking now. Give me your thoughts, Pablo what, what your thoughts are about financial investment with community. There's, there's two things to impact. I'll start with, I'll start with like last first, um, and then get to the community conversation, the more, the more I do business, the more I, the more I attribute value and importance to how much the business model, the packaging of the offer and how it's delivered, like when benefits are delivered, how they're delivered and what the structure of the price point of it affects the overall health of a business. Right. So the idea that uh, meet up changes from, you know, do we charge organizers versus do we charge per individual and all these things like I, for the entrepreneur that is listening to us right now, really look hard at that, right?

Like we recently had to reconfigure our thing and I think this will be a perfect segue right? Like early On, right? Like I I've been I've been punching at this community thing for like eight years and 20 early 2019 was when I really got the language of community creation for business development and all these things. And I've been really trying to sell it for for since then as as that and I got really good advice early in that journey and it was that you got to solve a monday morning problem. And while people believe that community is awesome and they want one, it's generally not the thing that is keeping them up at night that they show up, you know that's not the thing that gives them the sunday scare ea's lack of community, right? Uh Something else, There's a more immediate concern that is making the mansions on sunday night that they got to go solve on monday morning. So within that the offer had to become something that solves that and on the front end that can lead to community on the back end.

And I really believe that that is that is the way that this stuff, I mean there is a certain, you know scale at which community can pay off quicker or not, but community community is a slow burn right? Like hey sc oh does it? Nobody's buying S. C. O. Thinking that it's gonna work tomorrow, it's gonna work in nine months and people are paying extraordinary amounts because they've proven the value right now, can you also as an S. C. O. Company show up and be like well we're also gonna do all this other stuff that's gonna help you like on your website to convert quicker and blah blah blah so that you get the benefit quicker to make those nine months better. That's how we have to think as community strategists. And overall the answer is the community industry needs to be speaking in terms of cost of client acquisition in cost of in terms of pipeline velocity in terms of lifetime value and in terms of average average initial contract price right? Because what you're gonna do is when when we start to value community, what's gonna happen is we're gonna benchmark before and after a community.

And then you're going to look at people that have been influenced by the community that I've had a touch point with the community and segment that and compare that to the rest of your clientele base. And what you're gonna find is lower cost of client acquisition. You're gonna find have higher average initial price point. You're gonna find higher pipeline velocity from the moment they know you to the moment they do business with you. You know time to cash flowing and you're gonna find higher lifetime value and those and those things are what's gonna prove whether your um concept is working or not and that's where we gotta be. And debit brings me back to, it brings me back to my first business that I ever launched was a green building consulting company. And early in the days of green building consulting, I had to speak very much in terms of building performance. It was you're gonna save this much on energy this much, you know this much in heating and cooling, this much in lighting and your you know your people are gonna be this much more comfortable, right? Like you're gonna have less maintenance and these kinds of things until green building tips with this like certification and then after the market was educated on how this was good and then also everybody wanted it.

Now developers are coming in like well I just want this like leed certification make it happen like cool now I can just sell green right? The same thing needs to happen with community. People need to get educated on the value of it until enough people adopted where it's just like well the person next door has a community so I just have to have it and at that point we're gonna be able to just sell community right at that point we're gonna be able to sell sc oh sure. You know your competitor has one, you need one in about nine months, you're gonna see results but because you know you need one, let's go pal, we're just not there yet right? Like we we need to be speaking in terms of of these things and the way that we reverse engineered the model on the offer is yes, you want community, you're gonna have community, but you know what you really want, you really want to meet certain people and you really want to have like this content that you can use all across your go to market channels and all that stuff is a giant headache. I can take that headache away and while I'm taking the headache away, communities coming buddy. Right? So like that's how we sell it and that's and that to me is where the conversation needs to go.

Pretty cool. Sorry I saw you had a comment. I have lots to say but I'm gonna leave it, toss it over to the star because I feel like you've got some good stuff. I just want to add one thing and I'll uh and you need to tell me if shameless plugs are okay or not but uh there okay, okay. So I one of the interviews that I've done recently and I think it's coming out either next or one after that on my podcast is with another guy we met at clicks. His name is Danny Weinstein and he is now the director for community at S. A. P. So a big role but he's done this at that league in other different places and we talk about the buckets of where there's business impact to community and some of the things is what Pablo talks about, which is the income of money, right? It's like, okay, I'm gonna make more money because 123 lower cost of acquisition, higher lifetime value and so on. But he also talks about a lot of back end stuff. So the first thing he talks about again, he does, he did this in doing this in very large organizations where it's very easy to measure because you have all the data on the planet.

So one of them is customer support. So think about how many things that break today for you. Oh, I don't know how to set up my alarm on my iPhone in the new version, you're not gonna open a support ticket for Apple, you're gonna go on a support forum. There's gonna be 50 people asking your question, there's gonna be 300 people replying with videos from the community telling you how to solve the problem that reduces the amount of support people you need for apple in order to support iPhone. So a huge saving is on the customer service side. If you learn how to leverage your community to solve some of the common problems of the service or product that you have. So that's one bucket. He talks about another bucket that he talks about is the quote unquote technical content. So not the content Pablo and I refer to but more like product content so how to stuff. A lot of it that is. Now in the formal documentation of the company is generated by the users. It's just integrated into the overall documentation of the company.

And the third thing that he talks about that again is probably in bigger companies, but it really can influence smaller companies as well is product and service roadmap. Like what's the next thing you're going to offer and that saves you a hell of a lot of money and makes it a lot more accurate. Because what did companies do so far? They did surveys, surveys cost shiploads of money And they're very limited with a reach. Like you've got to address those 25 people that presumably represent the audience that you're trying to target versus I have 200 people in the community, but they are my target audience, they are my real customers and they can tell you what they're missing and what they want to see and what other products that they're using does that they have to use in order to complement yours. So all these aspects are huge dollar savings. that companies can save if they had community in addition to the benefit and additional revenue. So the trick, the tricky part in that is the idea and I, so I think that that language is that language is excellent and it works for a part of the market and it'll work for a certain amount of time, right?

Like again, shameless plug alert in in in my show, we had daniel Logan. I think I think you might have been there for that one. Deb the venue show. Um One of the, one of the heaviest community conversations I've ever had, but she talks about this idea that, you know, on the support side, on the, on the cost savings side, once you reach a level of like homeostasis on the cost savings side, then it just becomes the norm and they stop valuing it, right? So like the support ticket side, once all those support tickets are gone, there's then it's taken for granted, right? Cause that's our psychology, it just no longer exists. So what we do, you know, kind of like the same way that when buildings are, when the government is cutting costs, they think, well why don't we just stop maintenance on bridges that the are fine, that, that type of stuff. Um So, so I agree that that is a major benefit, the product roadmap stuff, major benefit. Right? Like we talked about this all the time, the three of us, how feedback loop is such an underrated piece of community. Um And then the customer service reduction, underrated piece of community.

I just think in the long run, if we're not talking about revenue generation, people are gonna go to sleep at some point, you know, like at first it's like, yeah, we reduced the customer service tickets, That's awesome. We're gonna be super pumped about it. But Q three, you forgot about that stuff, right? Like you're like, well that's already done. So what's it doing for me now? Um So if we're I human beings act in their own best interests and in the most immediate things possible, right? So we really need to get to this point where we are framing this conversation as business growth, right? So you say it perfectly a business is a function of cost of client acquisition plus cost of operations has to be less than or equal to lifetime value. And out of all the things that you can do in marketing and whatever you know like and and and and and sales and and operations, the only thing that drives down costs of client acquisition and increases lifetime value while keeping operations constant is word of mouth velocity, right?

Like that stuff scale if you just have a bunch of people talking about you without you having to work doesn't cost you a dime. So how can you inject that into the conversation that is community building for business development. And those are the metrics right? Like you you told me that early on and it's I haven't found anything better to describe it man, it's good stuff. Yeah, it's great. Great shares and I think I will just um put in some two cents around the difference between people trying to prove an R. O. I. On business for community and trying to prove the R. O. I. And why we need it in life. And I think a lot of the space of where I'm at the book I'm writing right now is creator to community builder. And I've been getting talking with people, I've talked with over 85 community leaders, I've, you know ventured into this space for two years and struggled and and loved it and trying to figure it out, navigate like, well how am I going to do this, but still get paid to do this and like, can I still do this?

And I think what it comes down to or the community builders that I see that are really successful in the creator space are doing is what you're talking about by solving a problem, but it's a problem that's like the people are waking up, but it's maybe not a business problem, right? Maybe it's a, I'm a physical problem, like I'm just physically not feeling well and I don't know why and I need to find a community that now I've been diagnosed with something and is there a community out there to help me? Um yes, there actually is a community out there for these really, even unique, you know, physical and diagnosis issues of that, people have to deal with their whole life and in past they've had to deal with it alone and now there's actually communities that offer this kind of support and I think that's valuable and it's worth paying for and I've been in communities where they've helped me train transform massively and I think it's an invaluable thing, but I think it's hard to put dollars on that and then to market and sell it as that.

Um I think humans are just like but yeah, but like you're saying well but how does this really relate to my bank account? So you're saying from the consumer level, it's hard to quantify. So how how are we teaching people, right? How are we teaching people that this online community space that I'm creating for you to help you solve your anxiety or or your health problems or your relationship problem. Maybe you don't, you don't even know where to start with relationships or you're trying to date and like all that's offering the dating scene right now is you know, virtual dating and that's who wants to do that anymore. And you know, how do we build authentic relationships if they don't exist in our physical space? If I live in a community where I don't align with most of the people in my community. I seek virtual communities and that's where I spend a lot of my time personally because I don't have an in person community in my physical space in pennsylvania where I live that really connects our lines with me, I would pay money to be a part of that.

I don't know that a lot of people would and I think that's the challenge that we face right now is the societal community price tag and why it's valuable. That's a really, you know, I swear Deb and all my quantification about community, I've never thought about that problem, right? Like I, for me, I guess I guess my head always goes to How can I get someone else to fit the bill right? Like which is why I've been so concentrated on this whole like B2B motion of convincing companies that they need to build it because it has these other benefits, right? Like I while I 100% agree with you that it is worthwhile as an individual to pay for community because there is no greater value, right? You know my origin story, right? Like I have a born and raised catholic since I'm like 14, I have these issues with the catholic church, but when my brother passed away and 1200 people showed up to his funeral, I looked around and I go, oh I get what I'm getting here.

It's not this whole like religious doctrine, it's a community and I can never ever leave it. But with that in mind, I think as humans, we have been taught that community is free, Right? Like the same way, the same way that it's really hard for someone to convince someone that they need to pay for your podcast because they believe podcasts are free, you know, but yes, can you make a podcast that is worth paying for 100%. It's just an uphill battle because society has conditioned that community is free. So I think it really comes down to what we just spoke about the offer, right? Like it has to, if if you are charging for an individual to pay for a community, how do you solve their biggest problem immediately the moment that they join, so that they are just like, okay, cool. So what else can they solve for me for a lower price on the back end, right? Like the idea of like that's why we launched our boot camp write or or why, why, why we changed that service because it's like, I can convince you to come to my shows, if I can sell you something that solves a problem for you and prove to you that I have a bunch of great ideas um then you're gonna make time to show up to my show, right?

Like, but I had to deliver everything that I have learned for the last 12 years to you first on the front end for you to then be like, alright then I want to know what you're thinking about from, from monday to friday, right? I think horses or structured programs are much easier to sell in the beginning of a community builders journey, just getting a small cohort together of nine or 10 people and just being like, let's meet you know, and then to find the frequency, let's meet every week at four o'clock and let's talk and do this thing for four weeks or whatever, However people can grasp it, know that it's going to end and then they're like, yeah, sign me up for this time. And that's what I dedicated my schedule. I think it's a harder sell to say. Then we'll keep meeting with us every week for the rest of your life. That's a lot of that's a huge major commitment. So you really have to show. And what happens is in those four weeks, let's say, Or the however long your program is you build a relationship with the people and with the powerful thing about communities is once they've built those relationships, they'll keep coming back and that's what that's what you're seeing with the turnover on the show.

Like you're just you're constantly having people come back around again. Um We're getting up with time and I know we're running into time here and I can talk with you all day, tell everybody um where's the best place to connect with you if they're listening to this podcast? Yeah. So first place that you can connect with me is go leave a review on Deb show. Deb puts a ton of work on this, like, go do a five star review. It it takes you no time. It's a no costing, like just hit five stars, spend 15 seconds writing a description, but if not just hit five stars, maybe even share it right? Like I know that I know that Deb does a lot here, a lot of value. Like connect with her first and and help her get the word out about this. If you want to connect with me, I have, I have a show do I would love to have you there right. The B two B community builders show is uh, is my podcast. I'd love to see you there. If you click into that, then you're going to see that I do them live every single week. So if what we're talking about is cool and you wanna be a part of it, come join us live because I desperately want to be your friend.

So, um, oh, you know the other thing, which I think is uh another one of these like nuggets I like to give to people my name is Pablo Gonzalez, right? So it's like, it's impossible to rank for the john smith of people that have six kids and name them all after themselves. So what I have found is that if you look up Pablo Gonzalez on apple on apple music on apple, you know, podcast or on Spotify, I come up like in one of like the top 123 search results. So, um, it's just a really powerful thing. Like I think you, you can put in Pablo Gonzalez, but at the end and you'll find me, but I just find it fascinating that the audio space, the stuff that we're doing right, putting out podcast is just like really fertile ground to make a name for yourself when you can't google Pablo Gonzalez, you can't link in Pablo Gonzalez or facebook Pablo Gonzalez ever find me. So for those of you that are very relationship driven and wanna, you know, build a brand, like having a podcast with your name on it that you do every single week, like you can still go get like, you know, prime time real estate in audio world, which is which is only growing.

So I just want to give people that idea, I love that, brilliant, very good. And yeah, the community builders show is amazing. B two B community builders show on Mondays at 4 30. so definitely if you're able to join us and then you have a, a special strategy session, so you do a bonus round after you interview somebody, you actually have a strategy session afterwards to like workshop or community challenges or what we're, what we're facing right now as community professionals and I think that is such a valuable time. And so if anybody is like, man, I wish I had somebody to talk to uh come, come to Pablo show, I'm sure he would love to to share his his stage with you for a few minutes and talk with you about whatever is going on because that's the kind of person he is and he's also very amazing at karaoke. So if you do get a chance to ever hang out with Pablo and he mentions karaoke, make sure you go like karaoke and especially do you do any other?

The one song is this year? Yeah, I do, I do. I got a lot of songs that I can act like a jackass in, but the one that I, the one that I am best at being a clown at is total eclipse of the heart. So I always like to start with that because then I win the room and then I get artistic license to go sing Lion King or notorious B I. G or whatever else I gotta do. Alright, alright, so cool. All right, well thank you so much Pablo for joining us today for everybody listening. Thank you again. Please rate and review our show as Pablo mentioned uh and thanks for coming. I hope you have a lovely day, afternoon evening, I hope you're finding calm anywhere that you are today. Take care until next time. See you later. Bye. Hey, this is Deb Shell and I am super so psyched to let you know I am writing a book, big deal. I know maybe it's not for you, but for me it's a big deal. And guess what I'm writing this book for you because honestly, as a new community builder, two years ago in 2020 I had no idea what I was doing and I really got really confused easily.

So I'm going to simplify things for you. But what I need from you right now is to actually help me make this book possible and so you can support me with a crowdfunding campaign that I'm running through. I fund woman. I'm going to have a link in the show notes. Please support me This. This is running from september 1st room through the end of october, so I'm really hoping to reach my goal to be able to write this work style book. It's gonna have worksheets, it's gonna have templates, it's gonna be something that you can actually use today. It's not a course that you have to take for four weeks. It's not a big book that's not going to give you actionable steps. You're gonna be able to take action the same day that you read the book. I'm super excited about this. I've had lots of feedback from clients that this is what they want. This is what they need. So I'm putting it together and I hope you can support me with it and I hope I hope it's going to help you So let me know.

Please check out the show notes for that link to the I fund Women crowdfunding campaign for the new book. I'm writing, it's called creator to community builder. I'm so excited. Thanks for L. P. B. If you've already donated