Ryan Wardell is the CEO and cofounder of Startup Sauce, a private membership for SaaS founders outside of Silicon Valley doing $5k+ in MRR.
This community is special for a couple of reasons:
1. It's members are super accomplished CEOs who only have extremely nice things to say about the community
2. The guy who runs it, Ryan, is not a "startup expert". In fact, he has never even been a SaaS founder.
In this episode, Ryan shares his "magic sauce" that has allowed him to get there.
Resources:
- Beginner Maps, our free email course containing the "magic sauce" of top communities - https://beginnermaps.com/
- Startup Sauce, Ryan's community for founders doing $5k+ MRR - https://www.startupsauce.com/
- Ryan's master list of 320+ places for SEO backlinks - https://www.startupsauce.com/list
- Ryan's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwardell/
- Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
02:43 Startup Sauce stack
05:47 Aha-moment masterminds
07:58 Magic number for a mastermind
10:23 Making introverts feel comfortable
14:30 Magic sauce: matching people
20:18 Facilitation tricks
20:57 Tangent: Hiring a rockstar community manager
23:06 Facilitation tricks contd.
23:50 Giving people a reputation
27:10 Don't pretend to be the expert
28:26 Getting ridiculous retention
30:45 But why $33/month???
33:18 Screening calls for new members
36:29 How he really makes money
42:13 Ryan's future end game
44:00 Why the 5k MRR barrier
48:45 The idea
52:12 First 20 customers
01:01:05 Content marketing miss
