The Startup Ideas Podcast

The Laws of Community Building with Natalie Ellis

Sep 22, 2022

Natalie Ellis, a self-taught entrepreneur who built a community-driven company generating over $6 million annually, joins the discussion with Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg. They emphasize the urgency of starting your community and share five key tests for its existence. Engaging members is crucial, with strategies to foster genuine connection and feedback. The trio explores challenges in scaling a community while maintaining trust and identity, and highlights the importance of a clear mission in cultivating lasting relationships.

01:01:07

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Episode guests

Natalie Ellis

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Highlights

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Quick takeaways

Building a community requires setting guidelines, responding to member needs, and adapting to growth while maintaining authenticity.

Stepping out of comfort zones and pushing through discomfort leads to transformative growth experiences.

Offering valuable free materials, optimizing funnels, and segmenting members drive growth and maximize engagement within a community.

Deep dives

Navigating Growth and Learning Curve

The speaker shares how their lack of background in product management and community building posed challenges as their website crashed with increased traffic. With each milestone, they outgrew their knowledge and had to learn about incorporating a product team and community managers for navigation. Despite the initial struggles, the experience taught them valuable lessons.

How to Get More Out of Your Content

01:19

How to Stay Relevant as a Brand?

01:32

How to Scale a Solo Printer Business Model

01:37

Intro

3min

Navigating the Challenges of Startups and the Power of Internal Tools

3min

Building a Thriving Community

23min

Navigating the Challenges of Building Internal Tools and Communities

3min

Building a Sustainable Community

23min

Building Unique Communities: The Power of Simple Connections

2min

Building Communities Through Mission and Simplicity

3min

Why are you waiting to build your community? In today's episode, we explain why the time is now to start creating, share the five tests to prove community exists, share how to have community members engage with one another, and so much more. Hosts Sahil Bloom & Greg Isenberg, are joined by Natalie Ellis, a self-taught entrepreneur who bootstrapped her way to a community-based company that generates over $6 million per year in recurring revenue. You won't want to miss this episode.

►► Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.com

A SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR

►► This episode is brought to you by Retool https://retool.com/

Retool is the fast way to build your own custom internal tools for your business. With a complete library of 100+ fully-featured, accessible UI components that you can drag and drop into any interface, Retool’s platform lets you build the custom internal tools your team needs, 10x faster.

Thousands of teams at companies like Amazon, DoorDash, and NBC collaborate around custom-built Retool apps to operate faster and better. Also, teams of up to five can build Retool apps for free. We're huge fans of the product! If you want to learn more, go to https://retool.com/

LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Natalie Ellis: https://twitter.com/natalieellis91

Sahil Bloom: https://twitter.com/SahilBloom

Greg Isenberg: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Production & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/

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