How to Build a Tribe Around Your Online Education Business with Funk Roberts

In this LMScast episode, Funk Roberts shares insights into his journey as a fitness influencer and entrepreneur. He also shares strategies for building strong online communities by focusing on results and tribe-building techniques.

His mission is to help course creators and membership site owners grow their audience, improve retention, and create engaged, lifelong customers through proven psychological strategies. Funk’s unique Tribe Method focuses on retention and engagement by fostering deep emotional connections, shared identities, and transformational experiences within communities.

Frunk gathered almost 15,000 members to his society, of whom over 10,000 made monthly payments. He also highlights that he’s developing a certification program for people to train men over 40.

If today’s conversation on retention and engagement resonated with you, don’t miss out on grabbing a copy of Funk’s co-authored Tribe Secrets book, where The Twins and I dive deeper into the 27 proven psychological strategies to build thriving, engaged communities while turning your customers, clients and students into a Tribe of loyal customers that never leave you, then Head to www.tribemethod.com to get your copy and start transforming your course, brand or membership today!

Here’s Where To Go Next…

Get the Course Creator Starter Kit to help you (or your client) create, launch, and scale a high-value online learning website.

Also visit the creators of the LMScast podcast over at LifterLMS, the world’s leading most customizable learning management system software for WordPress. Create courses, coaching programs, online schools, and more with LifterLMS.

Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. We’re joined back again on the show with Funk Roberts. Funk is a fitness influencer. He’s an internet marketer. He’s an entrepreneur. And he’s one of the most charismatic people I know on YouTube. Welcome back on the show. Funk.

Funk Roberts: Thanks so much, man. Thank you, Chris, for having me.

Thank you for all those listening. I’m really excited today to yeah, just share some knowledge.

Chris Badgett: We’re going to talk about your online education fitness empire, but we’re going to zero in and focus on building community, building tribes, being a tribe leader, designing tribes. But first before we get into the tribe aspect, give it, if someone hasn’t met you before, what did you do on the internet?

Funk Roberts: Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. So I so I was a professional athlete before then I got, became a, did the nine to five stuff, but I was always in fitness, loved fitness. And then when. Probably 2007 when the YouTube started to take off, I, started to dabble in, blogging and then putting videos up on YouTube.

And I went away to Thailand to train for Muay Thai and realize that a lot of fighters out there who were MMA fighters didn’t really know how to work out. So I created funk MMA. com cause I came back with a, with my mind’s okay. I’m going to create a website called funk MMA. com and this website is going to be where any fighter on the planet, no matter what.

They do can go there and get strength and conditioning came home, funk, MMA. com launched, and it was just posting workouts and videos and all kinds of things. And I had a little, I had a program and that went really well, that, that brand of funk MMA really grew. And. Throughout those years, I’m learning about, I’m launching other programs.

I’m also a metabolic trainer. I would do metabolic training workouts for men and women. So I just throwing out workouts here and there. And then somebody said to me, Hey, you need to do a membership. You need to have a membership site. Put everything in and that’s that monthly revenue.

So I created funk university, funk fitness university. And that went well at first, but I had to, it fell, it crumbled. We don’t have to go too deep in that, but it crumbled because I was using a, the wrong strategy. And then six, seven years ago, I created the over 40 alpha brotherhood. I moved from strength and conditioning for fighters to.

specifically men over 40, because I had a story that, that was similar to a lot of men who were struggling, right? So they were struggling with their weight, low testosterone, et cetera. But I looked on the website and the internet and there was nothing out there. So I created the Over 40 Alpha Brotherhood, but this time I focused on transformation.

I focused on helping them get results. So I built out a one year program, workouts, follow along workouts, nutrition, but really focusing on the brotherhood part of it. And all of a sudden people were getting there when I first launched it, it wasn’t really good. So I asked these guys to come and help implement some, tribe secrets, et cetera, that we’re going to go into a little bit later.

But then I, after 10 months of training, there was 700 people who were still in the membership going, Hey, what do we do next? So I had to create another 12 months and then another 12 months, three years. And the point I’m making is that memberships have been a big thing for me. Of course I’ve done certification courses.

So that’s why I use LMS life for LMS, which I love because I created a certification course for trainers on how to train men over 40 and I also created a certification for metabolic training. So using all of those tools online to. Stay in my niche, but fill it up as much as I can where the weather where there are holes, if that makes sense.

So I’ve been online since 2007. I’ve been In the, following the big, the greats throughout the years and in the fitness industry, I’ve been around forever. Yeah.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And tell us just a little bit more about the results of over 40 alpha. For example, I think I saw you got a two comma club award from click funnels.

You have 740, 000 people on your YouTube channel. I think I got that right. Can you tell us more just about, cause I want people to know we’re going to talk about building community, the scale of the community that you’ve built.

Funk Roberts: Okay. Yeah. Okay. So the over 40 alpha brotherhood program has brought me three two comic club awards over, I think almost, we’re hitting almost getting to the eight, eight figure mark.

I have over 15, 000 members. So these are 15, 000 members and not all of them are paying members because some of them became lifetime members because I would run a lifetime. By the way, this is tip number never run a lifetime membership promotion. Because with a membership, do not do that. Do not do that.

Anyway. So I have 15, 000 active members, about 10, 000 of them or 11, 000 are paying every month between 29, 39 or 49 a month. So you can, it’s almost 300, 400, 000 a month that the membership’s bringing in. And it’s based on. This method, right? Because I, and also the key for them, the reason why I built this membership, the way I have and why it’s so successful is because I focus on the results that these guys are getting, not on the transactions on.

Bringing people in because that’s what I was doing before. Oh, let’s bring people in. Let’s bring people in. I’ve already built out the memberships. I don’t have to worry about those people. But they’re the ones that are going to, they’re going to cancel. So when I switched my focus on being inside my membership and implementing some of these things, that’s when everything changed.

And now, to this day. I created my own supplements. So now we’re talking about different streams of revenue because of the membership. I have my own supplement line that I only sell to my members. And that’s a seven figure business just because of the, because I have a lot of members and they trust me because I’ve got them results and they want supplements.

Also, I have my resistance bands and I have my weight vest because that makes sense for my members. Some people want to move from. Dumbbells to resistance bands easier on the joints because I’m working in the 70s. So you start to see oh, wait a minute. I have all of these I can add more streams of revenue when I have a Membership that’s retention based right?

That’s really truly. Getting results for people and helping transform and including something that, that creates more than themselves, right? Like they’re doing this for more than themselves and that’s what keeps them going. So that’s been great. I’m literally in the beginning of next year, we’re going to be creating a certification for.

For people to train men over 40, but more than just the regular shirt. It’s literally you’re going to be a coach. Because now I have guys in my membership who won’t become coaches. And I did not expect that either, when guys start to retire, they want these and they know so much and they’ve transformed and they’ve learned so much from hearing me every single week for six years.

It’s you know what? I think I can do what funk does. And I a hundred percent, they can, they just need a little bit more guidance. So I will be using life for LMS again to build that coaching certification.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Let’s talk about the audience or the tribe selection process.

You’ve, for example, like one question I have is how did you go from MMA to men over 40? You also mentioned, it was like you you’re over 40, your own. So you’re working with a market you understand cause you’re in that spot too. But tell us about what it means to pick the right audience and how do we do that?

Funk Roberts: Oh my God, this is the most important thing. This is where you have to check your ego at the door like 100 percent but you have to have faith to know that if you’re only targeting the exact people that need what you. Are going to provide to them, believe me, you’re going to not only get them results, but they’re going to stay.

So the reason why I moved from fighters to men over 40, it was because I did that when I was about 46, 47 years old. And I started to think, okay, fighters don’t have a lot of money. So I’m just going to be spinning my wheels here, trying to generate a ton of money on fighters. No disrespect to any fighters.

Cause I do work with the UFC as well, but So I thought, okay let’s go on. Let’s, men over 40 was still something that was in the back of my mind because a lot of my friends were, are now in their forties too. And people are now that are in their forties are asking me questions, but I wasn’t really digging too deep into that at that time.

But then I went online. So I went online to see what was out there for men over 40. And there was still nothing. There was only one other person doing anything for men over 40 at this time. And I went back to my own journey. Because here’s the other thing. When people see me, I’m 40, when I’m launching this, let’s go back to 47 when they see me, I’m lean, I’m ripped.

So guys in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, they’re not going to relate to me because they’re going to think, Oh, this guy’s the next professional athlete. Of course he’s ripped, but I can’t get, he’s not gonna, he’s not going to understand why, but I had a transformation journey. And this is important when it comes to building and attracting the right person, if you have a story of transformation.

So for me, I suffered from low testosterone. I was heavy, like a 39 years old and a big belly. It was 215 pounds. I’m usually 185. I got deep into a depression because the girl I was leaving. Living with, she left me, I started going, partying, doing drugs, and I got really very bad from it.

And it wasn’t until I went to the doctor that he told me, Oh, you have low testosterone. You have testosterone of a grandfather. And I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I didn’t know that testosterone had everything to do with my health, me losing weight, losing fat, muscle energy, feeling better, having that drug because I’d lost all of them.

So when he told me that, and obviously he wanted to provide me with drugs, but because I was a professional athlete, I know I knew all of the negative effects of using steroids. So that wasn’t an option for me. I started to talk about, I asked him, can I do this naturally? He’s a hundred percent.

You just do this, and this. And then I went deep down and I transformed my body at that time from what, 215 pounds to 185. I was in the best shape of my life, which is why I went and trained Muay Thai. I fought Muay Thai. So my forties were like. I was in the greatest shape, I got married in my forties.

I started this business in my forties, but again, I was still doing the MMA thing because, that’s where my heart was at the time. So I just went back to that and I realized that first called my program over 40 shred and it wasn’t. No one was joining and I couldn’t understand why.

And then I realized, Oh, wait a minute, men don’t want to be shredded at this point. They just don’t want to, they got to get rid of this belly fat. They got, they want more energy. They’re maybe if they’re in the gym, they’re having problems building muscle or they’re, they’re skinny fat, they’re very soft.

So I had to change like, what about being over shred? It’s about, being where they’re at, understanding, okay, wait a minute. But I also went through what these guys went through. I had a big belly, I had no low testosterone, I was getting injured. I was having a hard time building muscle.

And I had no energy and drive and I was suicidal and I had depression. So that’s where all these guys are at. And so I changed everything. I changed my message and I made sure that the people who I was targeting, the men over 40, were not the men over 40 that were in the gym because I also realized that those guys already have, Yeah, doing something.

So why would I waste my time trying to convince? I don’t want to convince anybody, right? My goal here is not convincing you to come join. My goal is I’m going to help you with the pain, with your struggles, with your thing, with, whatever challenges you have, but I’m going to create, I’m going to give you a program that you’ve never done before.

Cause that’s the other thing. So first and foremost, I’m really dialing in on who I’m targeting based on my. And my experience, if you have a transformation story, the reason why you’re creating courses or whatever, that’s what you need to lean on. And that’s what you need to target, right? Or if it could be a story that you helped someone very close to you, but you also have to dig into what struggles they were going through, right?

Because that has to connect with people. So when I’m talking about my struggle, so many guys, when they came into the program Oh my God, like I didn’t realize you had that you were, Literally again, speaking to me, I could totally relate to you when you said that you’ve masked your manhood.

Cause that’s one of the things I did. I masked my manhood by going out to strip joints and getting hookers and doing all that stuff because my girlfriend left me and I could, my libido was low. So what do I do? Let’s go to strip joints because that’s going to make me more of a man. Not right.

Obviously not, but that’s as men. Sometimes we do very irrational things. So I can relate to them and I’m very open with everything. So that I think is another thing. I’m just myself. I’m not trying to be a somebody I’m not. So that’s the second thing, just be yourself because you’re going to connect with the people who connect with you.

Not everyone connects with me when I’m, not everyone connects with me. And that’s amazing. There’s other over 40 programs out there where you can connect with other guys who are going to help you. I only want the people who are going to, who, are going to connect with me who connect with my story.

And Yeah that’s the first thing is really making sure that you dial in your target. And here’s another amazing tip is survey your list. It doesn’t matter if they’re your current customers, hopefully you’ve built a list. So survey that list and ask them questions about what their struggles are, what their, what their pain points are, what their goals are, and that will give you a very.

A clear picture of what the top things you should be starting to using in your ads and on your sales page, in your marketing, when you’re talking to people in podcasts, et cetera, that’s how you really dial in on targeting the right audience.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. We’re going to come back to it at the end, but I wanted to plant the seed for later.

Can you go ahead and give us a quick summary of your new venture tribe method. com. So you built a fitness empire and this transformation for men over 40. What’s tribe method.

Funk Roberts: Sure. We just, we have a book that we, myself and the twins, these two twins, Mike and Rick Tielmans, they’re the ones who really gave me more clarity when I launched my over 40.

When I first launched over 40 shred, they were the first to say, you can’t call it over 40 shred. You got to give it a name that will give an identity to somebody. Who are they going to become? So they have these 27 psychological strategies. And throughout the years we have, massaged it to create the 27 tribe secrets.

These are the things that if you implement these into your brand, into your membership, into your courses, you will be able to create lifelong customers, like a collective, a tribe of people who will never leave you. And so not only have we done it with my membership, but we’ve helped other people to do it just, on the side, giving them ideas.

And now when you go to tribe method. com, you can get this book. This is the foundation. It gives you the psychological, each secret, for instance, to give you an example, shared beliefs and values. That’s a secret. You should create shared beliefs and values based on what you have and the value, and they’re going to have those same shared beliefs and values because that’s who they are.

My over 40 alphas, we are different from other men over 40, because we, Treat women right. We look for solutions, not problems. We, there’s certain things that we do and that we believe in. We’re here to provide, protect, procreate. That makes us different. And we all share that same belief.

So we’re all on the same, all 15, 000 of us are on the same. We know what’s going on here inside the brotherhood. So they will, they talk about the psychological Reasons and why that works and how other companies use that same strategy And I in this book will literally show you this is exactly how I used it inside my brotherhood.

So this is a foundation book it’s a pdf and then then we move into helping People build their tribes build their tribes. Yeah, and i’m excited about that

Chris Badgett: Yeah, so go check out tribe method. com. We’ll talk about it more as we go through this, there’s a framework I use funk.

That’s about like what you need to be successful as an online education entrepreneur. And you check all these boxes. I call it the five hats problem. You basically have to wear five hats or build a team around these challenges. The first is being a subject matter expert. You’re obviously a fitness expert.

The second is being a teacher. You are already like a coach and like you had teaching skills and speaking skills and kind of curriculum or training program design skills. Then you have to be an entrepreneur. You got to build a business. And you got to market, you got to sell, you got to build systems. You got to go get all up in the weeds of technology whether that’s ads and websites and email marketing and all kinds of stuff.

But the fifth hat is the one that’s least understood and that we’re talking about today Which I call community building Which is the tribe thing and I look at it before and after the sale like the tribe might be Like part of the product but also you’re building all this community on the front end and goodwill like in all your free stuff and everything Tell us more about just, like the mistakes people make when they’re like, all right, particularly if it’s going to be part of their program okay I’m going to have training, but I’m also going to have a community and I’ll just create a Facebook group, but there’s so much more that goes into it.

Tell us about it.

Funk Roberts: Okay. So listen, when I’m talking right now, everybody listening, I’m not. I’m, it’s not your fault. And I’m not like, I’m not hammering you. Okay. I’m just, but I’m the type of person I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going on. So what are the mistakes? The first mistake is thinking that you just need to put the community up there and people are going to come.

That’s that will never happen. People may join. What are you, what do you expect them to do if you’re not telling them what to do? You’re just putting it up there. And this is probably one of the biggest the biggest challenge that most people have with community. This is probably one of the biggest I’m part of the membership Academy, which is a membership for membershippers.

And that is one of the biggest challenges. How do I get people to engage in my community? So number one, the biggest mistake is just putting out there, not. Doing anything. So what do you do instead? You have to, when you put that community up, whatever you use, I use Facebook, there’s a few things you got to think about in order to ensure that you get engagement.

Okay. So first you, again, we’re thinking, we’re talking about transformation, right? You have to have a transformation mindset when you’re building your courses. That means that you’re not. It’s not about transactions. It’s about what are we going to, what am I going to do to make sure these people get results and that community is going to be very important.

The first thing you want to do is you have to be inside the community. Which means you have to post and what you have to post. What you post is what you want everybody else to post. So if, for instance, we have rituals, okay. That’s another thing, create rituals. Okay. Because. Remember, I have a lot of people in my Facebook group the community portion of it.

So I don’t have to keep, I don’t ever post Hey guys today is I don’t know, workout Wednesday or, Hey, I got a question for you or, we never that never happens. In fact, we had 60, 000 posts likes comments last two months ago. All organic because we have rituals.

Rituals, what are they? So for instance, of course, accountability Sunday, right? So account, but the rituals have to make sense. They’re not just random rituals. The reason why we do accountability Sundays is because if they are accountable, that means they’re planning for the week. They pick their go to foods.

They know what days are the days are going to work out that week. And they know what challenges are. So the accountability is actually a template. What they do is they’ll take a picture of themselves. They’ll post the picture hashtag accountability Sunday, and they’ll go through, okay, this week I got I got a wedding to go to, so I got to watch out for this here are my carbs.

I’m going to buy this week, my protein. So that’s. And everybody does. Everyone does accountability Sunday because the people who do accountability is basically the people who get the results. So that’s one ritual that’s already on Sunday. We already have people posting. The second thing I have, we have is called sweaty selfies.

Okay. What’s a sweaty selfie? A sweaty selfie is after every time you work out, you’re going to just take a picture. With our sign, cause we have signs too and post it. And generally what happens is these guys post the picture. They just say, Oh, I did workout day 12 phase 22, blah, blah, blah, workout, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it’ll just be a picture. I’m so you, if you went to our Facebook review scroll and you’ll see a whole bunch of guys, like looking like they just got beat up, but they all are sweaty. That’s called a sweaty selfie. That’s a ritual. We also have alpha meals. Why do we do alpha? So why do we do sweaty selfies?

Because accountability, right? Like I got my workout done and it also keeps them accountable. Hey, I want to show everybody else. I got my workout done too, right? The meals, alpha meals. So people post their meals and they break down the carbs, the proteins, the vegetables. That’s called alpha meal post.

Why do we do that? Because I know people post their meals and what foods they’re eating. They’re going to be more successful with nutrition. And. If you go to our Facebook group, you’ll see all the meals there. So again, that’s another post. We have birthday burpees. When someone has a birthday, they put up their video camera and these are men, 40, 50, 60, 70.

These are young guys. They’ll put up their phones, right? Not most, not the most technically savvy crew, but they’re getting better. Because they do use their phones more and they’ll do their burpees. And and the only reason why they do that is because I do the same thing. I post my accountability every Sunday.

I post my sweaty selfies, I post my meals. And I do everything like I’m part of them. So funk is the leader, right? This program is not about funk, but funk’s our leader. So if funk’s doing it, we’re going to do it too. So that’s why That fosters the engagement already because everyone is posting, you have that many people, they’re going to be posting all the time, right?

They’re going to be posting their sweaty selfies, et cetera. And then the comments, oh my God, comments. So many people are commenting because remember we’re all on the same journey. So of course, Hey, great. Oh no, maybe someone had a challenge, right? And they had a challenge that, Oh man, today was a tough day.

I didn’t feel like working out, but I still got it done. It wasn’t the greatest. Okay. Awesome. Jim. Oh, that’s amazing. That’s awesome. That’s amazing. So that’s how you show up for your community. You have to be right. You have to mirror what you want your members to do. And then it’ll just start.

That will just start to happen, but you have to be in there for a while. Cause when I first did it, it was, okay, there’s hardly anybody here, but then you’ll get a couple that start to do it. And everybody has that FOMO, right? Everyone has that fear of missing out. They don’t want to be left out when they’re in a collective community of people who are getting results.

So that’s the first thing you want to try to create rituals. The second thing, and I advise every single course creator on the planet to do this is to. I would say weekly coaching calls or lives or whatever you want to call it inside your member Hub, which is for me facebook or bi weekly, but just get on there have a topic just a short topic Okay guys, so we have our brotherhood hangout hanging in the hood every friday 9 a.

m Every single Friday, 9 a. m. We’re in the hood. We’re hanging out. I come with some type of a topic and then I answer questions. So that’s another thing that invokes a lot of a lot of engagement, right? People show up. That’s a ritual. We’ll show up inside your program. Yes. They have a ton of workouts.

Yes. They have all that stuff. But what is your goal creator? You want them to go through the course you want them to finish the course you want them to transform. So showing up for them inside your community makes sense. I don’t spend a lot of time inside my. My, my membership was only 10 hours a week.

And, but the amount of stuff I do in there, we also have something called ask fun. So whenever someone has a question inside the Facebook group, they will put hashtag ask funk. And of course the guys in there will answer the question. We got guys that have been in the, we got alpha OGs. We’ve been in there for a year.

We got alpha savages. We’ve been there for two years. Dream Kings. We’ve been there for three years. We’re going to most likely answer the question, but what, this is a, another great thing for you as a course creator. I, every week I get the questions and then I shoot a video and I answer the questions like podcast style.

Okay, question number one Jim, great to see you, Jim. This is a great question. Jim asked blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I answered the question. Okay, great. Next next. So this week, I think we have 11 questions I got to answer. Sometimes there were 30 questions I had to answer, but we, then we repost those.

That video and the questions inside the Facebook group and tag everybody. Oh my God, I can’t believe. Wow. So I answered my question. I imagine if you’re the creator, of course, or you are a creator or a brand, whatever, and the people who are taking your program, you are the one answering their questions that you wanna talk about co the connection that person has to your brand when you can take the time out and it doesn’t take long.

Plus you’re answering questions, right? Plus AI is. Is going through the roof right now. I’ve answered so many questions that when the next chat GBT comes out, I’m going to load all those questions up into the chat, GBT, and the answers and the videos, all the coaching calls and everything I’ve done, and now I’m going to have a AI, I don’t know, bot or something that will be able to help me.

Get, give people answers because they’ve also asked me for that. They’ve said, Hey, do you have some type of an FAQ quickly that people can use to get questions answered right away? Because we’ve done a lot of ask funks. Like they literally tell like me, I’m like, don’t worry. Chat GBD five. So let’s all.

Again, the engagement that you have and the value that you put inside of your community is what keeps your community strong. And then of course the connections, right? The other good thing is if you use zoom zoom, I do all zoom coaching calls as well with our group. And this is not extra, by the way.

None of this is, Oh, you’re going to be in this tier. Oh, you got to pay extra because right away, you’re putting a barrier in front of what you want people to get, which is a transformation, right? Remember transformation over transaction. Don’t always try to monetize every single thing that you have in your courses or in your program until you have a strong tribe, right?

monetize everything before they even have any connections like this guy wants me to pay even more to do this. And I got to pay this level. No, man, make sure that you get them the information. Believe me, they’re going to stay with you. I have, we are one of the guys in our 90 day tribe. This is my other thing that we’re doing to help people build tribes is Rob, big up to Rob.

Rob, my membership five years yesterday, Rob said, one of the things that I was, I started to realize with funks, Membership. Of course, I’ve used the workouts. I’ve transformed my body. I feel amazing. But I felt my, I found myself buying things all the time. Like I was always buying things from funk.

I didn’t know. And I didn’t even know why I was like, Oh, okay, I’ll buy it. Yeah. And then he realized, Oh, wait a minute. There’s more going on here. There’s more going on behind the scenes. And so he has his own business. He wanted to find out what that was. Yeah. Literally what happened, people will be like, okay, you got this new thing.

Sure. Sure. But what happened? That’s what happens when you have tribe, like I’m an Apple person, right? The new Apple phone, iPhone came out. Of course I’m going to buy it because I don’t care what it has. I don’t care if it’s, yeah, I don’t care if there was no update. I’m going to buy it. Or do we are Jeepers, right?

We own a Jeep. If you own a Jeep and you drive by someone with a Jeep and you do this, they always. This is a jeep wave. It’s called a jeep wave. And whenever somebody in the car, they don’t know what that is. They’re literally blown away. It’s every single person and we drive our jeep all over North America.

And it doesn’t matter where we are. As soon as we see someone that cheap and we do this, they do it back. And we also have a bag of ducks in the back of our car.

Chris Badgett: Cause this from another jeep owner.

Funk Roberts: Yeah. Duck, jeep, baby. So this happened about six months ago. This woman, right? She, her and her friend are in the back.

And they’re just talking. They’re just outside of their Jeep. And we pull up for coffee and my wife goes in to get coffee. And I see this Jeep. I’m going to give them, I’m going to give them a duck. So I got my duck out. Now these girls, these women, like totally the opposite. Like I’m this black guy, tank top.

You know coming up to them. They don’t know who I am And i’m like who owns this jeep and one girl’s a guy on the jeep and I just gave this to her She was like, oh my god I can’t believe this. Thank you so much. And then we had a connection and her friend It’s just like standing what the, why is he talking to this strange black guy like they know each other, right?

And that, the connection that we had based on just giving her the duck and then talking about our Jeeps and just we had, it was such a strong connection. I had a strong connection with that girl. I probably will have a connection with her forever based on the fact that she has or had a Jeep, right?

And that’s how tight, A tribe is a community is even if people don’t know who you are if you do something like we have this as our sign I know that the other day I was outside and a car flew by my house Right and put their finger up like this and said funk and I had no clue who it was And then it came to i’m like, oh my god that person must be in the brotherhood because Only people in the brotherhood would obviously they’re driving.

So they can’t do this, but would know to do this. And so the next week I’m on my coaching call and it was James Eberhardt who lives right over. I didn’t have a clue. He’s Hey, that was me, by the way. I’m like, I knew somebody. So that’s how powerful focusing on you being inside your community so that you can foster that connection inside the community and you should want to be there.

Like, why would you not want to be there?

Chris Badgett: Let’s talk about being a tribe leader. You’ve already said a lot. One of them is you practice what you preach, you participate in the rituals, you like hold the space, like for the call or the community. What else is involved in really stepping into that tribal leader role, particularly because I know.

Many creators suffer from imposter syndrome or, fear of failure, fear of success, whatever. How do you, how does one really step into that role?

Funk Roberts: You have to create, you have to know what your values and beliefs are as a person. Because those values and beliefs are going to be this the things that you will show and let people know and share with your community, because if I value health and fitness, if I value integrity, if I value helping others, if I value.

Laughing at yourself, like not being so serious, but also, stepping outside your comfort zone. Those are the things that I value. Always challenging yourself to be 1 percent better. Always being able to, fall and fail, learn from those failures. Those are all things I value.

Be transparent let people know where you’re at. Those are just all my values. So those are the values that I instill inside. My membership, so the people who are coming in right off the bat, they read the manifesto, they read the virtues, so they already know what they’re getting into. Now I can just be my, myself, right?

And as a leader I’m not, it’s not about me. So again, my program is not the funk Roberts program. It’s the over 40 alpha program. It’s their program, but I need to lead by again, just be by living by my values. And my virtues is number one. Number two, transparent. If you don’t know something, Hey, you know what?

I don’t know that right now, but I’m going to, I’ll find out for you. Cause that’s what a leader does, right? You focus on what you’re doing. I’m going to go get that answer. Or if you’re wrong about something, there’s been times where I’ve been totally wrong. The very next coaching, I’m like, guys, I was totally wrong.

I’m super sorry. That’s a man. I messed up. I messed up and I’m sorry, but that’s what a leader does. They come to the table and say, listen, I messed up, man. I thought it was this, but it was actually this. I’m gonna make, I’m gonna, I’m gonna make the changes or whatever. Be yourself. That is because wearing a mask is so exhausting, right?

Because one day yourself is gonna come up behind that mask and you’re gonna say something that they’re not gonna expect. And that’s gonna be like, what? I didn’t know what the hell, I didn’t know that. I thought you were, but you’re. And then you’re going to lose people. If you’re just who you are, you’re only gonna, you’re going to attract those people.

And then you can be, you can focus on those people leading with your own integrity, leading, knowing that, Hey, if I make a mistake, guys, don’t worry. Listen, I’m going to probably make a mistake, but I will make sure to correct it. Or, so that’s number one. That’s another thing as a leader, having values, beliefs, and making sure that the people who come in have those same values and beliefs in regards to whatever program I’m not talking about because remember you don’t know this, but in my program, I have men from all over the world.

I have people who have different religions, different race, different sizes, different backgrounds, but we don’t talk politics. We don’t talk religion. And we don’t do pop culture. We don’t do any of that stuff. We just focus on. Getting each other in the best health and shape and mindset that we can be all of those things are removed.

And we only focus on the commonalities and not the differences that as a leader, I can really truly focus on building an environment and a program based on that. The other thing is, you have to listen. You have to listen. Not here, but listen to what your members or your students are saying. And if they, one or two or three or five students are saying the same thing, okay, we got to change something because everyone’s saying the same thing, or we got to add something, or we’ve got to, when you listen to your students and then implement what they’re asking for, it is, it’s unbelievable. They’re like, I can’t believe Funk heard me say that we need this.

And now. We have it. Oh my God. This guy’s really cares. Yes. And that’s what a leader does. A leader cares for their community, for their tribe. And so a lot of times, even if you think you’re an, here’s the thing about the imposter thing. If all you have to be is like two steps ahead of everybody in your, and I’m not even joking when I say that.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Like I figured this thing out last week and they’re getting question and it’s I got it.

Funk Roberts: You don’t need to be the expert in the world. You just need to know. Enough about and continue to be open to learning more. So let’s say you’re just new to, and you only know a few, enough to build your course out, maybe have this one course.

And then all of a sudden six people who finished that course say, Hey, I’d like a course on this, and this. And you’re like, Oh, yeah. I don’t know too much about that, but what are you gonna do? You’re gonna go and learn about that, learn what you need, and then as the leader, you’re gonna create that mini course, and you’re gonna give them enough to get the results they want, right?

But the point I’m trying to make is don’t, that can never be a barrier, because you’re gonna know more than everybody joining you, and that’s all you need to do, but if there’s more for you to learn, continue to learn, and this is why. I don’t post on social media and I don’t do that because I don’t have time to, I don’t want to be, why would I, and again, no disrespect to anybody using social media content, no disrespect to content creators.

Okay. Cause I love you’re all amazing, but I’m going to tell you for me, I, I don’t. Understand why I would put and put so much effort into tick talk and Instagram and reels and shorts and all those things to people who I don’t even own, because remember, you don’t own the tick tock followers. You don’t own Facebook.

You don’t own YouTube followers, Instagram, you don’t own those people. The email that I gather, I own, and I can take those emails. And I and here’s one thing I say listen, if you to pay your mortgage today. You couldn’t go to the bank and show the bank teller, the grandfather, right?

Facebook, Oh, I’ve got a million Instagram followers. So you need to pay your mortgage, but you know what I can do? I can shoot an email out for a new program and I can get 10, 000. No problem. Shooting an email out for a program or just have a program that I have. Shoot an email out. Hey guys, the sale for this program and generate revenue.

Take that money and go to the bank. Because I’ve built an email list. And so the point I’m trying to make is when you don’t own those people, but you’re putting so much effort, you’re 80 percent of your time is content. I got to put out content. No. I got to put out content. I got to know wait, I got, listen, we just shot 13 videos.

We’re going to slice them up. We’re going to throw them out there. And meanwhile, you got all these people who are paying you. Waiting for you. Oh, why is he out there in Instagram with people who aren’t even paying him? Why is he out there on Tik TOK? People aren’t even paying him. Why he’s spending so much time over there and not time with the people who love and support and are giving him money.

That’s, that was my, when I built the over 40 alpha brotherhood, that’s a hundred percent what I said is I don’t want to be posting out there. So we only have one ad running. The ad runs to the page. And when people come in, I make sure we onboard them properly. ’cause I gotta make sure that they transform.

’cause I got a $1 trial for 30 days. I have a free one, but I also have a $1 trial. Those people who take that $1 trial, man, they, 60% of them will convert at the end of the month because usually it’s about 60% who start. Because people who start. They’re in. So our whole focus is the onboarding piece and making sure that those people, get results.

And then if I have to learn other things and figure things out, again, I’m here with the people who are paying me and not out there. So I don’t know where I was going with that, but the point I’m trying to make is really think about, I don’t know where I was going with that.

Chris Badgett: We were talking about leadership and stuff.

It’s a,

Funk Roberts: yeah. Spending time to improve yourself as a leader so that you can lead your group. You can only do that when you’re focused internally. Not saying not to do any of that stuff, but a lot of times people start to only focus on the things that aren’t really bringing them revenue because the stuff that brings you revenue is hard, right?

Sometimes it’s very difficult. It takes a long time to build things, but you want that dopamine, right? So let me. Post something because I know that I’m supposed to post content. I don’t know if I’m supposed to, but I post the content and then you’re looking at how many likes he got. Oh man. It’s so fresh.

You guys know what I’m, I know if you’re listening to, exactly what I’m talking about.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Likes aren’t dollars or enrollments or members. No,

Funk Roberts: do a podcast. That’s what I always say. That, if that is the best way to, to connect with potential people, to get out there, to practice, research,

Chris Badgett: like you said like maybe you’re gotta get better at something.

So you interview a guest about that topic and

Funk Roberts: yeah, totally.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Funk is one of the best community builders I know on the internet. So go check out tribe method. com and get the tribe secrets book.

Funk Roberts: It’s seven bucks guys. Like literally this, it’s not the physical book, but it’s seven bucks.

You get a lot of great bonuses, but more importantly, this is like the foundation. And I’m telling you right now, if you go through this book, you will find something there that you’d be like, Oh my God okay, that, that makes sense to me. And it’ll start to give you more clarity. on why certain things in your business may not be working and what you can do in order to implement some of those things.

If you need more help, obviously you can connect with us, but this is the foundation. I’m telling you it’s going to be the best 8 U. S. 7. 95 that you spent in your entire life. But specifically if you have a business or a course and don’t have to have a membership. Just as a course creator, it’ll give you so many ideas.

And it’s it’s amazing. Amazing.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Funk. Thank you for coming back on the show. Go to tribe method. com. Get the book. I’m going to get a copy and we’re going to have to do this again sometime. I love touching base with you as your business evolves and as you help all these people and all this it’s really awesome, but thank you, funk.

Funk Roberts: Thank you so much. And again, thank you for a Lifter LMS, man. Cause that’s been a game changer for me. So I really appreciate you with that as well.

Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at Lifter LMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

The post How to Build a Tribe Around Your Online Education Business with Funk Roberts appeared first on LMScast.