The Exit Five CMO Podcast (Hosted by Dave Gerhardt)

#146: Strategy | Community Building with Greg Isenberg

Jun 3, 2024

Greg Isenberg, CEO & Co-Founder of Late Checkout, talks about the importance of building an engaged community before a paid membership, niching down, audience vs community, personal brand, community monetization, dangers of free services, and transformation of Twitter.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Audience vs. Community

An Instagram page isn't necessarily a community; it's an audience.
True communities possess togetherness, rituals, member identity, belonging, and engagement.

ADVICE

Building a Community from an Audience

Build an audience on an existing platform before launching a community.
Leverage your audience to gain initial members by promoting your community.

ADVICE

Niche Down and Create Scarcity

Start a community by focusing on a smaller niche audience.
Create scarcity and exclusivity through waitlists and private invitations.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Dave is joined by Greg Isenberg. Greg is the CEO & Co-Founder of Late Checkout. Greg has started and sold 3 companies in the community space and has now invested in 50+ community-based businesses.

They discuss

Why you need to build an engaged community before a paid membership
The importance of niching down
The difference between audience and community
The tribe framework
Personal brand and community performance

Timestamps

(00:00) - - Intro
(05:26) - - Building a Community on Patreon
(08:57) - - The Power of Niche Communities
(12:00) - - From Facebook Group to Profitable Membership
(15:22) - - The Impact of Exclusive Communities on Social Media
(18:50) - - The Illusion of Social Media Engagement
(25:15) - - Building a Personal Brand for Business
(28:26) - - Nurturing a Successful Community Within a Company
(29:14) - - Community Monetization: Pricing and Value in B2B Memberships
(32:54) - - The Dangers of Free Services
(38:20) - - Transformation of Twitter
(42:12) - - Navigating Social Media Engagement
(43:29) - - Exploring New Frameworks and Community Engagement

Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.com
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.

Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?

Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.

That’s where Walnut comes in.

Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.

That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.

And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.

Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?

Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!