Week 44: Play 6 - Community-led growth is faster then investor-led growth

without a community, you are simply a commodity

thank you to over 11,000 of you who read this weekly and share with your friends and family for behind the scenes on building a million dollar business from scratch and beyond. i also include a personal note in the end so i am grateful that you let me do that without judgement.

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a week ago, i shared about how to create a market as one of the 10 go-to-market principles that helped us go from 0 to million in 9 months with two different companies, in different markets with different economic times.

so far, i have shared 5 plays:

play 1: Redefine the problem

pay 2: Your Point of View is your Strategy

play 3: Find you lane of genius

play 4: Become a guide and create a standard

play 5: Create a market

today, let’s talk about community-led growth, which i believe is the fastest path to grow your business.

at the end of the day, we all want to feel is that we belong.

belong to a planet, a country, a human race, a region, a team, a company, a movement all the way to a family.

that is really why gets most of us out of bed to do something good.

but the question is how do we do it, and do it efficiently.

story time:

at terminus in 2015, i wrote a blog called flipmyfunnel and challenged the status quo on LinkedIn.

well it went viral, meaning 5 people liked it in on LinkedIn and that was huge back in the day.

so i bought flipmyfunnel domain for $8 and pulled together a group of companies to sponsor the event.

well, we ended up doing amazing big funnel events across towns starting with 250 people to later 1500 people coming to this new idea called flipmyfunnel.

what was it really?

it was simply an idea that marketing and sales can do better and flip the funnel on how modern companies should doing business.

at GTM Parnters in 2022, we seem to find the same problem.

everyone is talking about go-to-market (GTM) in a way that makes very little sense and seems very myopic.

we think it’s bigger than marketing, sales, customers and GTM should bring everyone together to find a better way to grow, retain and expand with your customers.

so we started a roadshow called go-to-market made simple.

and invited 70ish executive GTM leaders in town to educate and evangelize this new GTM movement.

and now we are on a 10-city GTM roadshow, spreading the gospel of better go-to-market and building the community along the way!

no matter how you grow, i have found that community-led growth as one of the most efficient growth models that is yet to be implemented by most companies.

today, we can’t buy loyalty of your customers.

but we can build a community where they feel they belong and feel safe.

when you do that, they will not leave you that easily and grow with you instead of looking at your software or service as a commodity.

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on a personal note, this week we are hosting 6 grade girls from our church for the entire weekend as they learn about God, build relationship with their friends, and find purpose in their life.

this is them praying at our place with my wife that just melted my heart.

and of course there were donuts and late night marshmallows so there’s that!

come to think of it, that’s a community-led program.

both have clear goals.

to bring people together.

to build stronger relationships.

to have common purpose.

to teach, educate and make people evangelist of love.

no matter in personal life or business, i think we are ALL looking for a place to belong.

the question, i wonder if you and I have found that community?

if not, go join one.

go find your tribe or start your tribe.

because without a community, sooner or later, you are gonna find out, you are running a long lonely race that no matter how much success you find, the joy will find you.

leaderpoint: without a community, you are simply a commodity.