Community and great brands go hand-in-hand. If you want to maximize LTV, build raving fans, stimulate referrals, and create a stable base of customers - COMMUNITY is at the center.

Carlos Alvarez is a legend in the eComm and Amazon seller space. He's been a full-time seller on Amazon for 15 years. He's also in the super-elite club of 9 figure sellers.

He's built the world's largest Amazon seller meetup group. It used to be fully in-person before the pandemic, but is now hybrid, allowing for greater accessibility and participation. And that's not all! He's created a community exclusively for physical product brands as well.

Here's a look at what we cover:

• Why focusing on size alone isn't the way to build a large and thriving community.
• The secret sauce principle of "if everyone is invited, no one is invited."
• The mechanics of building an email list and how to build an engaged community from that list.
• How to structure an offer ladder.
• Tools for building community.
• Plus more!

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Wizards of Ecom

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and I am delighted about today's guest. We go way back. We've been friends a long time in the industry. Mad respect for this guy, Mr. Carlos Alvarez as my guest. He's the host of the Wizards of Ecom, which is, if you did not know, the largest Amazon seller meetup group on the planet. And it's one that you should check out if you're an Amazon seller. He's also been a full-time seller on Amazon for 15 years and nine Figure Seller, which that is a pretty elite club. So this guy knows what he is talking about. And we're going to dive into some fun stuff Today. We're going to talk about community building. We're going to talk a little bit about building audiences on YouTube. This is stuff that's going to be applicable to you and it's going to be a lot of fun. And being on the air with a fellow podcaster is always fun too. So we may just go off the rails and riff a little bit. Who knows? You'll just have to wait and find out. So with that, Carlos, how you doing buddy? And thanks for taking the time,

Carlos:

Brett. Amazing. Thank you so much for that intro. And I've, I've been a fan of yours even longer than as long as we've known each other. So from afar, I think I've even referred to you in some of my events as like, that's my coach. Well, not officially, he doesn't know it. I've just been following his stuff.

Brett:

Dude, I'm thrilled to be your unofficial coach. This is amazing. But yeah, we were trying to remember where do we meet first? I think it was either T N C or Social Media Marketing World or one of those events, one of them, but cross paths and we're like, Hey, this is a pretty cool guy. We got to stay connected. So yeah man. So talk to me about wizards of e-com. Was that built out of just your desire to connect with other sellers or how did that come to be?

Carlos:

Absolutely. I being an e-com seller and me was elementary school dropout, g e d, just by myself and discover eBay, then discover Amazon. It was very solo, it was very working all night, slamming energy drinks, making, I get making sure I get those eBay orders out back in the day. And

Brett:

What was your energy drink of choice? I'm just purely curious here.

Carlos:

It got really bad, man. It used to be like two days, no sleep, had no concept of virtual assistances or processes back then. I wish I did. But it got to the point where it was a cold, I dunno if you know what a ola that is because you come down to Miami, it's this,

Brett:

I haven't seen it.

Carlos:

Short. Styrofoam cup full of Cuban coffee, which is like by itself.

Brett:

Yes. Okay. I had not heard that name. Dude. Cuban coffee is insane, so I don't know how much sugar is in that. So it's like straight espresso basically with lots and lots of sugar. I like the espresso part, not so much the sugar, but yeah, that will keep you up for a couple days probably.

Carlos:

I would get one of those, drop a five hour energy in there and then whatever energy drink I had, I would blend it and I would slam it. It was bad. No, no. But I just, just doing this nonstop by myself and I started getting into building my own brands and building communities in real life has always been a thing. I like meeting even been like that with Amazon wholesale accounts. It was like, if I can get face-to-face with this vendor, I will close. But if you're forcing me into email, I'm just, it's done. So meeting other sellers, I, in building community, I'm very, I don't need to be the guru of the community liable to go out there. I'm fine with being the guide, guide, not guru. And I want to find other people that are doing what I do and hopefully learn from them.

So I didn't know where I fell with my experience level in this and I was like, let's find other sellers if they exist and let's create a meetup, which I had used meetup.com to build other brands for a scuba brand in the past and other things. So I was like, let's just put this thing on meetup.com and maybe somebody will show up. I had four people, I picked a coffee house close to my house and three other people showed up for the next four events. Nobody showed up. And I used to take pictures, I would strategically pose for the picture so I'd catch like a table or two behind me. So it looked like they were part of the group

Brett:

Beat ups going great. Lot of people in the coffee shop today. Yeah,

Carlos:

Can't wait to see everybody again next week. That's all I would say. Right, right, right. Yeah. And it builded, that's

Brett:

Not lying. That's just creative

Carlos:

Ally technically, right?

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. That's so good. That's so good. So glad you kept it up. And one thing I just want to mention about in person events, something, it is kind of lonely to be an entrepreneur. That's true regardless of the industry, but especially a virtual entrepreneur, everything we do is online. Everything we do is digital. And so we don't have the human interaction as much. And I will say even though we, we've been a digital agency since 2010, the best, the longest lasting connections and partnerships and JV opportunities and friendships have all started in person. Either started in person or through a referral from somebody that I met in person or those relationships were just made better in person. And so yeah, you just got to get out there, you got to go to events, you got to do stuff like meetups. It's worth the time. So then when did that really start to gain traction? Because you went from you being the only one in the meetup to now largest meetup in the world of Amazon sellers. When did it really take off?

Carlos:

I think with everything, not just one thing, but one of 'em is consistency

Brett:

For

Carlos:

Sure. I was consistent with it. The other one was feedback. So those first events was whoever was the biggest extrovert, I dunno if that's a good example, whoever was the biggest extrovert that showed up, that was the topic because that person was willing to just interrupt and I mean just completely bully the conversation. And I was just happy people were talking and showing up. So I didn't identify that as an issue. And this has been something that I've, I, I've since learned and it's helped me in all my communities. And that is ask people for feedback on the group, which sounds obvious, but the thing is when you ask 'em or you buy SurveyMonkey, I don't even know if that's still around, but buy some survey tools, you send it out and nobody responds. But I learned that if you tell them what you think is a good idea to do, they all are more than willing to tell you why that's a bad idea.

And I'd say, look, I think it's a great idea if we start meeting at 7:00 AM on Saturdays, everyone would jump in on why that's a bad idea and they'd suggest a time we should meet. So getting feedback from the group here, and this really changed stuff was what are you getting out of the group? And people would say, I'm a beginner, and all we're talking about is these digital marketing tools for the last few weeks that could help Amazon sellers. And sure enough, the last few weeks, the extrovert of those weeks was a digital marketer. So I was like, wait a minute, maybe we need a beginner hour. So we carved out a spot, first hours for beginners, all your beginner questions and then we have a topic. So we started being able to cater for different people. We get feedback and we adjust what time really works.

We tried all those times during the week, which meant a lot of times changing something that worked to test to see if it was better and it wasn't. And then pulling back to what you knew. So I would say a year in, we had a structure that people were like, wow, I wish this existed where I lived. I happened to be in Miami at that point. We started hearing that and then we got reached out to a local newspaper who featured myself and the guys over at Gja and they referred to me as the Pied Piper of Amazon. They published it and it just blew up.

Brett:

That is awesome. That is awesome, man. And that's one of those things where consistency, showing up, putting in the hard work, not quitting when no one shows or not quitting, when things don't go great, eventually you reach a breakthrough or things really accelerate. It's kind of one of those things where the overnight successes that are talked about and celebrated, they're usually years, multiple years in the making and sounds like that was true for wizards of e-comm as well. So I love this aspect of community building and I think this is important, whether you're selling a physical product, whether you're selling accessories or beauty or supplements or whatever, having a community around your product is so powerful because we buy for emotional reasons and we're all craving connection. We want to buy stuff for sure. We also want community and connection. We want the brands and the things we buy to resonate with us and they speak about who we are and how we want to show up in the world. And so lots of valuable things around community. I think it's important for service providers as well like myself. But let's dive into what do you consider some of the fundamentals or the key ingredients to building a community?

Carlos:

I think one of the ingredients, and I might even just be totally plagiarizing this from authors, I've read so much about community that if I say something that sounds super knowledgeable, there's a chance that I read it from someone and anyone listening to this, I am not stealing it. Just you tweak it and you make it to your own. And at the end, you don't know where this thing came from, but there's an author named Priya Parker who wrote a book called The Art of Gathering. It's been very impactful even prior to that book on how I approach community or I was doing something and then reading that book really validated a lot that I was doing. But a really important thing that I took from there is for a long time when I was building community pre wizards of e-comm, I gauged, if you asked me how did the event go, I would tell you it was good if a lot of people showed up and it was bad if not too many people showed up.

And later on I wind up becoming the city organizer for meetup.com and helping other community builders start their communities and making them grow. And something I learned is that meetup is your meetup community or however you're meeting, it's a gathering and a gathering is any time there is three or more people and you need to treat it as such, you need to treat it the same way as if it's 50 people. But if you have three or more people, you have a gathering, you have a community and you should treat it as the valuable thing that it is. So when you change that approach, all of a sudden you're not so discouraged because you only got five and you have to start somewhere. There's so many amazing people in communities I know that just died. They just abandoned them because of that, because that didn't just rapidly grow within the first few months. So that would be a big one. The other one for me is having a secret sauce here is if you have a community and you're waiting for people to join and they're not, the problem is you.

When you just have that community sitting there, it's sort of like everyone is invited and when everyone is invited, nobody's invited. Yeah. So you have to know so true who you want in your community and you need to actively reach out to those people, be where they're at. I'm talking a little digital marketing now. Hang out where your community hangs out. And if you don't know what that is, look for it. More than likely, if you started the community, you are your community. So where are you hanging out? And invite those people to the community. Don't just like, we'll take anyone, anyone that's willing to register and update their profile picture, you're in our community, that doesn't work. That's actually hurting you.

Brett:

That's not a community. Yeah. Is it, was it Groucho Marx maybe that said he didn't want to be a part of any club that would have him as a member, right? It's like one of those and just kind of tug and cheek, but it's like, yeah, if this is available to anybody, then I don't want to be there. I want to be there with people that are like me or with people that I aspire to be like, so this is how I want to show up. This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I want to rub shoulders with. If the community is for that type of person, then I'm in. If it's for everybody, anybody and everybody, then I'm nervous that it's going to be a bunch of time wasters or it's not going to be valuable. And to your initial point, I think this is so important.

If it's the right five people that can be transformational. If it's the right three people that can totally transform your business. We did a thing locally, but when OMG was starting, and then I had two other friends in Springfield, Missouri where I lived, one was starting a business one and had a business a little while. So we did this thing, I can't remember if we call it the think tank. I know we had some stupid name for it, but we just got together regularly and asked each other hard questions and gave each other candid feedback on our business. And it was so transformational and so valuable to the start of the business and it was just like three or four guys. And so if it's the right people that that's all that matters. Are there elements? So I like the way you talk about it's a gathering. If it's three or more, it's a gathering. How do you make it feel, and hopefully this will apply to in-person and virtual a little bit. How do you make it feel like a gathering versus Hey, this is awkward, this is uncomfortable. What are we

Carlos:

Doing here? No, that's a phenomenal question. Yeah, that's a phenomenal question. So I, I'll give you the quick answer, but it's going to sound like a cop out. And then I'm going to explain a little bit. So it's rules. All communities need rules. Your group has to have rules. And a lot of people think when you say that, it means you can't say your political affiliation, don't talk about religion, avoid. That's what they think rules mean. And yeah, there should be something there that says that if that applies in your group. But when I'm talking about rules, I'm talking about how to make it closer. Again, I'm going to take something from an author I read about rules can be something like this and this can make you feel part of something. Like there was this community, I don't remember the name, and I think it had to do with tech.

And there was a rule that said, here's the free food, here's the drink that we have for this event. You cannot pour own drink. You can have somebody else pour your drink, but you can't pour your own drink. So you can create rules like that force this community building and that are fun. And you wind up saying, you're not going to believe this. I'd be like, Brad, I was at this crazy event yesterday in Miami, they had the best beers. We couldn't open our own beers. We had to ask somebody in the community to do this. So you create these rules like this, that's so fun

Brett:

And

Carlos:

It's so fun and endless.

Brett:

It's just rip really quickly. I don't want to derail you too much because this is so good. But I think that in some way that's just a brilliant thing. It's so simple, but it's like it teaches you to say, Hey, it's okay to ask for help and everybody has to do it. So it's acceptable now, but it's okay to ask for help. And actually not only is it okay to ask for help, but when you ask for help, a lot of people are delighted to help. A lot of people are like, oh yeah, love, love, love to crack, open your beer for you. Absolutely. But it also gets the conversation going and it's so many brilliant things there. Okay, that's great example. Keep going with rules.

Carlos:

No so rule. There's all kind of rules that you can create in your community if you try to apply this one, it's probably, maybe it'll work. I think this one's a good one. Maybe this is the Yeah, yeah, right. But this is the equivalent of would you rather do this? What are they going to be talking about afterwards and what are they going to want to come back and experience that? Or everybody look to your left and say hi to so-and-so that's sitting next to you, which happens a lot. Nothing against them, but this is your community. You chose the people that are here. You invited the people that you wanted to this, it's your gathering, it's your rules. Something else Priya Parker said was that a gathering is the temporary suspension of the constitution and you and rules and you replace it with a different one.

So it's like your rules, for example, outside of us getting together for this meetup, let's say you can pour your own drink. Obviously we all can, but we're temporarily suspending that rule. If you want to be part of this community and you need to ask somebody else if that makes sense. When she first said it, I was like, man, this sounds illegal. You can't suspend the constitution. But when you start peeling it back, it makes a ton of sense. So create your rules and that whether it's virtual or in person, is going to go really give you that impact that you're part of something that everybody knows their name, what show is that from? Cheers. Yeah, cheers. Everybody knows your name. So that's what does it now in person for me is my strong suit. I can do this really good in person. My next would be email. So the email community and being able to achieve that on email. Now you have to do different things, but you can do it in whatever channel is the most comfortable for you. Again, I just keep giving you examples that are in person because that's my thing. That's my jam. Yeah,

Brett:

I love this so much. And what's interesting about the rules piece, we all want to know how we can and should behave. We want some guidelines, we want some direction. I remember reading years ago, I thought it was so interesting that kids who play in a fenced in backyard often are in end up being more creative than those who grew up with no fences, no boundaries. And the idea behind that is if there's no boundaries, I maybe am timid or concerned or I'm afraid I don't know what to do. But if they're clear boundaries, I can just go wild in that space. I can create and I can play and I can make believe and I can do all these things and that that's related to kids. But I think for adults it's similar. We want some structure. How do I show up in this group? What's okay, what's not okay, who is this group about? And then when you know those things, you know how you have the freedom now to create within those guidelines. So I think that's super helpful.

Carlos:

Another one, another one is a name you. Yeah, you got to give your event, your group and the people in it, a name meet meetup.com has always done this. And I thought it was it. I thought it made no sense in the world until I started really building out communities. And it has a block. You can't even proceed unless you give someone a name in the group. So if you created a, I'm going to u, I keep using Meetup too, but you don't have to be on Meetup. But if you create a community that's about blogging and maybe you call blogger, everybody in there is a blogger or a creator. So when you write an email or you communicate in person, create, let's get together and let's take a photo that naming matters. The name of your event matters. The name of your group as a whole matters. When you combine all these ingredients, you come out with a really amazing community recipe. So I'm hoping, I love that. I'm hoping somebody listening to this realizes that you just have to do more than just create the event, sit back totally. And wait for people to see the title somehow and join

Brett:

H. How do you think that, let's translate this for a minute to an e-commerce brand. So I'm selling sporting goods, let's just say on online H, how do I do this? So how do I think about that initial thought of, hey, if everybody's invited, then no one's invited, right? And doesn't necessarily matter how many people but the right people and what are the rules I would set up and names and things like that. It how would you translate this for an e-com brand?

Carlos:

Me personally, I would do something that most people won't do, and that is my mind just would immediately go to say I'm into sports, and let's say it's, I don't know, let's say it's, I don't know, cleats or something, right? Yeah. I would immediately say, okay, I'm going to go out there and start either all guys or co-ed, weekend, kickball league. And I'm going to say, where are my weekend warriors at? If it's like, maybe weekend warriors is wrong, but where am I? We were super athletic as kids and we enjoyed this, but never thought of going pro. We had other stuff, but it doesn't mean we don't like sports and we want to get together on the weekend and play some cool sports and build a team so we can join all these different leagues together and scratch that itch that we have and we thought we couldn't do anymore.

So I would think to that. And then I'm like, okay, I'm that person. I sell the gear that goes along with this. And it doesn't mean that everyone that joins I'm going to sell to, I'd be more than happy for them to take a picture of it. I'll probably give them the gear for free and they're probably going to want to pay for it. But s I might be able to sponsor that group and other people ask about it. I'll build an email list on it. I'll sponsor different games and I'll start building the email list and building the community. I mean, I wasn't even ready for the question, but that's how I would do it without even thinking of it. I'd immediately jump to that. Now if that was totally off the table for me, I, I'm not going to go give my weekends up to do it.

I actually think it would be harder, totally doable, but harder. Ryan Die said something years back four, I think it was like four God Covid warps time, no pre covid. So the year or two before Covid 18, 19, he said something about doing things that are not track, that don't really have a trackable ROI or an as easy of a trackable ROI is going to be better. And I think he hit it on the head. And when it comes to building an in-person community and going out there and doing kickball to grow your brand, something as crazy as that, it has a very difficult to track ROI to it versus I'm going to set up an email and I very clearly see open rates, conversions. It's much more trackable, so it becomes much more difficult as well.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. You think about physical store, what's the ROI of having a greeter who really smiles at you? I don't know mean you could probably track it somehow, but it's pretty hard to track and you just know it works. So just do it. Get someone who's cheerful and happy and those sort of things. So let's talk about email groups. You said that that's kind of one of your go-tos, and I think that that seems pretty approachable for price service providers who are maybe like us at OMG Commerce where our clients are all over the country and even international or e-com brand where customers are spread out all over the globe. So how are you building an email community? What are some of the components there and how does that actually work?

Carlos:

Email, you have a lot of options. So you have the actual email itself, which is extremely important, but I feel you need in conjunction with the email, a way for people to interact in a controlled way. Now, I don't want to sound like a dictator here, but in a controlled environment between emails. So for the longest time, for me and almost everyone, it was Facebook. And I love Facebook. I'm not anti-Facebook at all. However, Facebook groups for me, while there's a lot of powerful use cases for them, is not the best place for me anymore to have real time back and forth communication where notifications are not throttled and everyone's seeing your message if they really want to without having to know we're a three step process to make this happen. So the WhatsApp is phenomenal though for it. The problem is WhatsApp caps on the amount of people that can be there becomes very challenging. You'll get somebody that'll post some, get ahold of the link publicly and just post some really inappropriate stuff that you don't see until the morning. I don't want to deal with that. So Telegram is my go-to

Brett:

Telegram. Nice. Yeah, I used it.

Carlos:

Discord even more powerful. But the learning curve for most people on Discord is unfriendly. So Telegram is basically a rebranded. WhatsApp is my best description with a lot more privacy features and a lot more control from the community manager, creator, owner side that you can put in place to make it a pleasant experience all the time. It allows for bots. So once you have the email and you have a place for everyone to communicate between the emails, it now is where some of this flexibility comes in. It depends what your email is about. A lot of people don't do an email list because they're like, I'm not a writer. Some of the best email communities I've seen were just curated content. And the cool thing about curated content is say you have this one Telegram community that where people go that are part of this newsletter to engage with each other, but the curated content might be different areas of it.

I just saw you gave a killer webinar with as a Asez, a Firestone on Google. So say there was a curated AR article from Google in there, but there was another article had nothing to do with Google. You can have these breakout rooms where people can discuss the topic for the next three days. Is this, our suspending of the constitution is we can't post anything in these subgroups unless it's about four or against or whatever about this particular article that came out on X newsletter. So that would be an equivalent that you can put together that I think would be super impactful. And a lot more people I notice engage that way because they're like, yeah, I love this. I just want to tear this up. This Google webinar that Brett and NRA did terrible want to tear this up. It was all

Brett:

Wrong. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Carlos:

No, nobody's

Brett:

Ever said that. But your breakout rooms within Telegram, is that what you're saying? So these breakout rooms. Yeah, totally could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what's interesting, so I've used Telegram a couple times for a couple of different groups that I've spoken at or been a part of. You don't need a tutorial, it just works intuitive. You open it up. Yep, you get going. So totally makes sense. And the privacy piece makes a lot of sense too. So how then are you building this email group? So email group is kind of the consistent content telegram that is the vehicle for connection and commenting and real community building between emails. How are you building this? How are you growing this? I'm assuming a name is really important here too. I'm assuming setting the parameters for who this is for is also important. How are you building that email? Community

Carlos:

Building the actual email list?

Brett:

Yeah.

Carlos:

Yeah. So again, this is one of those ones that's like pick your poison, do what's good for you, don't repeat for me what mine is long form free, long form, high value content. So I'll give you an example. There's a YouTube creator who's probably the name in efficiency nowadays called Ali Abdal, right? So amazing channel by the way, if you haven't checked it out, Brett, it's absolutely amazing. I learned something, I'm some of those channels. You learn bite-sized, digestible things every episode. So Ali Abdal doctor who becomes full-time YouTuber. So he creates these high form, high value, long form, valuable content, it's free. And in there he gives a free resource where it's applicable. Here's my checklist on that I go through before going to bed to make sure I get optimal sleep. He is never, and he's pushing 5 million subscribers ever sold something on his YouTube channel.

Wow. Now what happens is it doesn't mean this guy doesn't know how to sell or it's just like some pro bono thing. When you download that free resource, he sells to you via the email based on what you've sort of self segmented yourself. Hey, I'm into this, I'm into efficiency, but don't blast me on everything efficiency. I'm into this one particular area of efficiency like sleep, which just makes your job easier. I mean you could have community and also community and profits are not you mutually exclusive. They can be in the same sentence. So they self segment and then you start selling to them. So my way of getting people into my community or into my email list is long form high value content. If it was the scuba community, it was scuba lessons and the long form content was going out there for hours out into the water with scuba, with wizards of e-com. It's an divorce worthy quantity of free long form meetup events where I'm getting up there and teaching 12 to 20 times per month. And for somebody's YouTube channel, that could be you. It like everything that goes into building a YouTube channel at scale, you're putting in all that. So for me, that's the easiest way. Nowadays though, there's another way that I don't have a ton of experience on. I've begun experimenting with it. Have you ever heard of a tool called Spark Loop?

Brett:

Spark Loop? I have not.

Carlos:

They just got acquired by ConvertKit and prior to that what they do is they plug into every email service provider out there, if you've heard of it. They're connected with it. And what'll happen is when you someone up for, I want to set up sign up for Brett Curry's email list. When I go sign up, there's an immediate popup, like a modular popup that pops up and it says, if you're into Brett's email, check out these three and maybe it's Ali Abdal and two other people that are on there. So they're helping you feed your email list. I know some people that put email lists out in specific niches and they'll grow that thing to a few thousand emails just through Spark Loop and it's like $67 a month.

Brett:

That's amazing. That's phenomenal. Okay, cool. And lean into whatever works for you. But I think that that's kind of tried and true. It just works. You're giving long form valuable content. Content that people are hungry for. And we've done this too where we talk a lot about YouTube ads and how to grow with YouTube ads and it's kind of complex and especially the creative aspect. And so we've got a guy that's top YouTube ads and examples and templates and here's 16 winning ads. And I break them down and show you why they work and show you how you can duplicate it and things like that. People want that content and they're willing to exchange their email address for it. And then if you can build the community on top of that, now you're delivering even more value.

Carlos:

A side note, if you had a paid email newsletter on YouTube ads, I'd be your first subscriber. So I'm saying that

Brett:

Thing would be massive. I guess I should should consider that. There's one more

Carlos:

Thing. Maybe a discount since it was my idea.

Brett:

Yeah, totally. Founding member, we'll get to get you the founding member discount. Yeah, for sure. So that's awesome. So then you think about, so you're building community, how do you think about strategically monetizing that community? And you want to protect the community and you want it to be valuable and it's a gathering and it's people that you want to hang out with and they want to hang out with you. And so if you don't monetize it, then now you just got a club or that's just a friendly gathering, which is okay, but you need to pride monetize it. But if you try too hard to monetize, you maybe kill the spirit of it. So how do you strategically monetize a group?

Carlos:

Like you said, you have to be very careful. Well, you're gaining trust in your gathering and they trusted you operating under your suspended constitution for different periods of time. So it rapidly builds trust. And if you just say, Hey, everybody say you just discovered this very generous affiliate deal and you just start slamming them with all these deals that they should get and you become salesy, you'll burn the community rapidly by doing that. So there's so many ways to make money with the community. And I would start with some affiliate stuff. It just, because I have no idea, are we talking about a specific community? Are we talking about the sports one? But assuming people here listening to this are in want to do all different kinds of communities, what are some things that everyone can benefit from? I would start with a plugin that a friend of mine shared recently.

It's a plugin for chat gpt four for Instacart who does not want to save time shopping. Maybe you don't like whatever the case may be. Right? Totally. And I would show this prompt that says, create a grocery list with meals, this many meals for a family of excise under X dollars. And then show everybody this. So you see, you let people know, Hey, who's interested in this loom video I put together on how to save a bunch of money and time with your Instacart? Pat Flynn, another one. Pat Flynn did a great example with when he first started, but I think he did one that was like, here's a script that you can use to save a hundred dollars on your cable bill. But had nothing. His list had nothing to do with that, but everyone on his list wanted to save money and he knew they all had cable. So come up with some easy stuff like that and start seeing who buys. Start getting the feedback from that. The next easy spot to move into with communities is digital products. But you can get into physical products with a digital community for sure.

Getting people's feedback on a product before you bring it to market is priceless.

Brett:

And people want do that. People want to give that feedback because they feel like they're helping you and and likely in the process as they're giving feedback, they may consider, Hey, I want to buy that product too. So let's talk about feedback for just a minute. Cause I think this is huge. I love post-purchase surveys. I know people that use no commerce or triple whales got this now where you're asking people, did you find what you were looking for and why did you buy this? And why did you almost not buy? There's a ton of questions you can ask and getting that feedback is incredibly valuable. How do you get feedback from your groups? What's the mechanism there? And then what kind of feedback are you soliciting?

Carlos:

So when you build a community there, I found that there's no way around building it to a point that when you walk into the room, there isn't at least a small reaction of, oh, the principles here maybe sit up a little straighter. Or remember he's the one that painted these walls and everyone acts slightly different. I don't know a way around that. And for everyone it's going to be different, but I don't want my feedback colored even that much. So what I do is, like you said, there's a door greeter, someone that smiles. We have people that are just dedicated to identifying the new members and approaching them so they don't just walk out these same people, they're sit, they're not sitting next to me at the table. They're sitting amongst the group and they're asking, and they get uncolored unfiltered answers. That's so good, so good. So the equivalent in person is that,

Brett:

Yeah. And man, what a valuable thing because everybody, I think whether they're joining a virtual group or in-person group, they're fighting with, am I in the right place? Should I get out of here? Do I need to duck out if there's a break, if there's a quick break, do I just need to hit the exits and get so people have that anxiety or at least that and that concern. And so having people dedicated to making those people feel welcome, love that so much. But also people who are not you and who don't appear to be super associated with you asking for feedback because you're always, even people that are super direct and that want to help and that maybe don't have as much of a filter, they're still going to filter stuff for you because it's, that's just human nature. But they'll give more candid feedback to somebody appear to be the leader. So really great. Really, really great. Any insights, I know we're kind of coming up against time has been super fun, super valuable. You're also doing a lot of stuff on YouTube and we love YouTube ads. We we're actually working on building our YouTube channel only have some strategies now just for fun. But how are you building community? How are you building content on YouTube? Any tips or insights you can share there?

Carlos:

Yeah, I'm going to approach, I'm approaching it the same way in a lot of the same ways I do with the meetup, the in-person communities or the meetup communities in the sense of I'm going, I'm beginning with long form, high value free, long form, high value content. I'm not going to be selling not even a, remember Black Friday or Cyber Monday, nothing. There's nothing going to happen. And the path to that though, because this is a business is going to be free resource. There might also be that I have an annual event online seller crew, so I'll probably drop that in the beginning. So it's like some people are just going to see it, but it'll be free resource, free valuable resource, and then an email sequence that leads to an offer. Or maybe Brendan Burchard, I do his high performance planner, love the guy, but he, hes, he's fixated on this free offer, $7 offer, 49, $50 monthly continuity, 200 to 1000, offer to 10,000, right? So I like the path sometimes for me, the hardest one is that $7? Yeah,

Brett:

What is that going to be? Yeah,

Carlos:

Right. But that's the path I plan on taking with YouTube. The thing that I feel like is going to help me a lot with YouTube is I already have a pretty massive community. And one of the ways I've already monetized, say the wizards of eComm community is we have an optional monthly membership that people get access to all the classes that we've done. Nice. The recordings of all the classes. But one of the perks that comes with it is they get to have unlimited email access to myself and my team, which sounds a lot scarier than what it is. It's actually very scalable. And if you're into content creation and you're saying, okay, instead of just giving you this three line answer, I'm going to build out this amazing thing and I know other people are going to ask this, so I'll already have that piece of content for them.

So it, it's like a flywheel. So I already have, I know what people are asking and I'm going to create content on that. And you know what, maybe it says on YouTube that my chances of ranking to the top of page one on that particular content is not so good, but it is according to my group. And being able to not just create the content but promote the content to my group at the in-person events and via email will give me the jumpstart to that engine on YouTube. So that, that's my YouTube playbook right now. And I'm excited. Hardest part so far has been a teleprompter. You're not using a teleprompter use wonder.

Brett:

Yeah. Because it's one of those things where if you're listening to someone speak in person, you, you're engaged and there's a lot more room for someone to slow down or chase rabbits or gather their thoughts or whatever. People are pretty ruthless when they're watching content online. And if your YouTube video has too long pauses or there, there's too much, it feels too slow, people will bail. And so getting that focused scripted while still not sounding stiff it, it's pretty difficult. But it is necessary I think, in that format for sure.

Carlos:

So is everything else we've done and we've managed to do that. So I don't think the teleprompter kills

Brett:

Us. Yeah, yeah man, this is so good. I'm pretty pumped to build a community here. This is awesome. So then if someone is listening in or watching and they're like, okay, I got to check out wizards of in-person groups, how could they do that? And then what are the virtual group options as well?

Carlos:

Sure. They're their in-person groups. And the in-person groups are also live streams. So you could watch the in persons virtually as well or attend. The easiest way to get all the information on everything that we're doing as far as classes is we have an app in wherever you download apps called wizards of e-com. And you could just, it'll have it broken down by city when you get in there. And then one of the other cities will just be called virtual. So say you don't live near any of the cities that are currently visible, you can just pop into virtual and you'll see all the events. Our podcast wizards of e-comm podcast is on there. I don't do enough talking about the community on the podcast. So the app would probably be better. And wizards of e-comm dot com.

Brett:

That's awesome. That's awesome. And so I'm assuming, do you have more virtual attendees and group members now than in person? Or is in person still the majority? Or do you know off the top of your head?

Carlos:

No, I, I'm going to say there's more virtual just because of what it is. Well, COVID really blew that up. Prior to Covid, we were just in person, but then our community got so close with so many people virtually when we were forced to go virtual that afterwards it was kind of abandoning your brother. So it was like, how do we make this work? And that's why it's a very hybrid effect in an in-person event. Only the speakers on camera up and people online can ask questions. It, it's a work in progress still. And we get feedback and we try to make those improvements with the feedback. Sometimes the feedback is not as fast when it's audiovisual things that need to be changed, but that's what we do. So yeah, the app would be the best place for people to find out everything. The website wizard a e-com.

Brett:

Cool. And then the, I'll plug the YouTube channel as well. It looks like it's just wizards. Ofcom, yeah, wizards of e-com with one M. Obviously if you search for it and misspell it, you're, you're going to find it anyway. But Carlos, man, this was super fun. Love this insight. I knew you were doing amazing things. I did not have all the inside scoop. Now I do. And I'm even more impressed. And so, dude, I got to check out next time I'm in Miami, I got to check out one of the in-person meetups. I want to come hang out, want to come see, want to come see the Gathering and how you do it. So it'd be amazing. A hundred percent. Cool. Alright. Right. Any other asks? Any anything? Any other resources, anything else you want people to check out? Obviously check out the podcast as well. But any other cool stuff you want to point listeners to?

Carlos:

Man, coolest content I consume on the web is your stuff

Brett:

Not already.

Carlos:

If you're not already consuming Brett stuff consume it pays me really good

Brett:

To say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to send a payroll memo right now. I got to get Carlos paid for those comments. So that's awesome, man. Really appreciate it. Tons of fun. Looking forward to round two in the not too distant future.

Carlos:

Thanks. Thank you, man.

Brett:

And as always, thank you for tuning in. Hey, if you listen to this and you're like, man, this would be valuable. I know this person who needs community, who needs this insight, share with him and pass the word along. Would love to be introduced to your friends and I know Carlos would as well. And also, if you've not done it, leave that review on iTunes. Makes my day and helps other people find the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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