Paid Community is a Great Online Business Model for Coaches and Consultants (with Carol Nice)
This podcast episode serves as a showcase for bootstrapped entrepreneurship, featuring insights from Carol Tice, a seasoned business journalist who successfully transitioned into entrepreneurship. Tice recounts her journey of establishing a business aimed at assisting freelance writers, which she ultimately sold for a significant profit. Central to her narrative is the importance of leveraging paid communities and affiliate partnerships, which she identifies as crucial strategies for growth without incurring upfront costs. Throughout the discussion, Tice emphasizes her initial reluctance to delegate tasks, a decision she later recognized as a hindrance to her business's expansion. Ultimately, this episode aims to furnish listeners with actionable strategies that they may immediately implement in their own entrepreneurial ventures.
The dialogue presented in this episode revolves around the entrepreneurial odyssey of Carol Tice, who transitioned from a successful writing career to establishing and ultimately selling her own business. The episode, hosted by Sarah St. John, is intended as a showcase of effective bootstrapping strategies, and Carol’s insights are both profound and practical. Beginning her venture in 2008, she created a platform dedicated to assisting freelance writers in enhancing their income, which culminated in a successful exit in 2021. Carol's narrative is rich with lessons learned and practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs navigating the complexities of bootstrapping their own ventures.
Central to Carol's discussion is the notion of community as a cornerstone of success. She emphasizes the importance of building a robust community and utilizing its resources effectively. By engaging community members as helpers, she managed to significantly reduce costs while simultaneously fostering a collaborative environment that benefitted all involved. Carol candidly reflects on her initial hesitance to hire help, a decision she later recognized as a barrier to her business’s growth. The pivotal moment of hiring a webmaster marked a turning point, allowing her to focus on strategic growth rather than operational minutiae.
In addition to sharing her journey, Carol provides actionable strategies for growth, particularly through affiliate marketing. She elucidates the effectiveness of turning satisfied community members into affiliates, thereby enhancing visibility and outreach at no upfront cost. This model not only incentivizes community engagement but also aligns the interests of both the business and its advocates. Furthermore, Carol discusses the evolution of the paid community model, emphasizing how advancements in technology have drastically lowered the barriers to entry for new entrepreneurs.
As the episode concludes, listeners are left with a profound understanding of the intricacies of bootstrapping and the myriad ways in which one can leverage community and technology to foster business growth. Carol’s experiences serve as a compelling narrative that not only inspires but also equips listeners with the necessary tools to embark on their entrepreneurial journeys. The episode ultimately reinforces the idea that with the right strategies and community engagement, success is not only possible but attainable.
Takeaways:
- The podcast episode focuses on a showcase of successful bootstrapped entrepreneurs sharing their experiences and insights.
- Carol Tice, a seasoned business journalist, emphasizes the importance of building a community to enhance business success.
- A significant takeaway is the value of employing affiliate partners to promote one's business effectively and cost-efficiently.
- Tice reflects on her journey, noting that she delayed hiring help, which hindered her business growth significantly.
- The host encourages listeners to consider the paid community business model as a low-overhead option for entrepreneurs today.
- The episode concludes with an invitation for others to share their stories, fostering a collaborative entrepreneurial environment.
Links referenced in this episode:
00:00 - Untitled
00:44 - Untitled
00:49 - Introduction to Showcase Episodes
01:52 - Launching a Paid Community
02:49 - Bootstrapping Success and Failure
04:09 - Starting a Successful Affiliate Program
05:04 - Transitioning to Community Business Models
Sarah St John
Welcome to the Frugalpreneur podcast. I am your host, Sarah St. John.This episode is what I refer to as a showcase episode where I feature a bootstrapped entrepreneur and they briefly share their tips, tricks, tactics, techniques and tools that help them bootstrap their business and the successes and failures along the way.My hope is that each of these showcase episodes will provide at least one valuable takeaway that you can implement with right away in your own bootstrap business journey. Now onto the episode Hi, I'm Carol Tice.
Carol Tice
I am a longtime business journalist and the author of the Pocket Small Business Owner's Guide to Starting your Business on a Shoestring. After a long time as a staff writer and a freelance writer, I finally started a serious business of my own in 2008.It was a business for freelance writers that helped them learn how to earn more money and I sold that business in 2021 for life changing money.Now I'm helping other coaches, consultants and experts to build their own lucrative paid communities at Community Growth Academy on School When I first launched my blog Make a Living Writing and the paid community that would go with it Freelance Writers Den, I literally did everything myself. The only cost I had was the WordPress theme I was using. It was really, really bare bones.Then I finally broke down and hired a webmaster for a big $500 to do a few things. Once I launched my paid community, I saved a lot of money by making some of the members helpers in the business.So once you launch a paid community that they're paying X a month for, you have something valuable that costs you nothing to give away.So I would do free memberships in exchange for answering forum questions or answering our emails, doing some of the admin work behind the scenes and that really saved a bundle. I'd say my biggest success in bootstrapping is just that.I built my first community Freelance Writer's Den all the way to sale without ever taking outside money. And I did consider it at a couple of points. At one point I offered my webmaster at the time equity in exchange for some things I wanted.But I ended up the sole owner all the way. Which means all the sale money was for me. So obviously that's awesome.I want to say the biggest failure in bootstrapping for me would be just that I didn't ramp up and start paying people soon enough that I was doing it all myself, all myself for too long. And the minute I staffed up with just a full time webmaster, just the first couple of hires, the business just exploded in size.I got my life back and I should have done it much sooner. Best tips and tricks I know so many because I wrote a whole book about this. I'm going to start with getting affiliate partners to sell your thing.If you have any kind of a digital business, that is what really accelerates your growth and you just give them a cut of the revenue coming in. You don't have to pay out of pocket. You're paying out of the members money or out of the sale money.And the best thing to do in the world of affiliates is to if you have paid Community like I did is to turn your members into affiliates. Teach them how to affiliate sell. They are the best recommenders of what you're doing.Even if you're selling a physical product, you could offer people who use that product the chance to affiliate sell and that just really enables you to get so much more reach without spending money out of pocket.My final thoughts would have to be about how relatively cheap it is to do the paid community business model now than it was when I started my first paid community back in 2011. If you are a bootstrapper, give paid Community a look.Because as I ramped that business I was paying thousands and thousands of dollars for tech help and now I'm running Community Growth Academy on School and my overhead is literally 200 bucks a month. It's amazing how done for you.Platforms have transformed this niche in terms of how much you have to spend to create this business and I just really recommend that you check it out and you can check me out on what I'm doing at Community Growth Academy on School and I've got a link to a free case study all about how I built and sold my first business for you.
Sarah St John
I hope you enjoyed that episode and were able to take away a valuable nugget of information that you can implement right away in your own business. If you feel your story would be valuable for the listeners of this show, please visit Frugal show guests.
