Beginner Maps – Details, episodes & analysis

Running Remote is the best case study in building a paid community of practice. Run by Kasia Triantafelo, this is community of 250+ remote work leaders from companies like GitLab, Dropbox, and Zillow who share everything—from compensation strategies to retreat venues. In this episode, Kasia tells how she slowly shifted the culture of this community over 3 years to the one of radical openness. We discuss: • "4 essential touchpoints" for member success • Co-creating knowledge base with members • Her strategy for running masterminds • What it takes to build a culture of trust If you enjoyed this episode, you should sign up for Beginner Maps to get the "magic sauce" of top creators like Carrie - https://beginnermaps.com/ Resources: • Curated Connections, the automated matchmaking platform that Kasia uses - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Running Remote community - https://runningremote.com/community/ • Kasia's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasia-triantafelo/ • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:52 From conference to community 05:26 Who's in the community 10:13 Masterclass on shaping community culture 13:38 Doing things that don't scale 16:30 "Actionable now" strategy 18:51 Emailing members with questions 22:04 4 essential touch points 24:18 Why People Ops is incredible at community 25:40 Co-creating a knowledge base 31:03 Running virtual workshops 35:48 Engagement Challenges in Remote Companies 36:41 Get togethers with Nini 41:14 Masterminds playbook 47:30 Managing Global Timing and Recruiting 56:15 Marketing and Growing the Community 01:02:21 Building community as a non-expert

Building a 5,500+ member paid community isn't easy. Abbey is one of the rare people who's managing just such a community at Health Tech Nerds. This episode is a must-watch for newsletter creators who are looking to turn their audience into a paid community. We cover: - Why direct member outreach drives 10x better results - How to collect and act on member feedback effectively - The power of constant, "annoying" reminders - Why Slack remains the best platform despite its limits - Key pillars of HTN community If you enjoyed this episode, you should sign up for Beginner Maps to get the "magic sauce" of top creators like Carrie - https://beginnermaps.com/ Resources: • Curated Connections, the automated matchmaking platform that Abbey uses - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Health Tech Nerds - https://healthtechnerds.com/ • Abbey's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/petersonabbey/ • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:44 Understanding Health Tech Nerds Community 05:02 From newsletter to community 06:42 Always collecting feedback 12:01 Acting on Feedback 13:49 When to collect feedback 19:18 Key pillars of community 25:47 Hosting workshops 28:47 Setting up Curated Connections 33:57 Onboarding New Members 37:25 Get annoying with your reminders 40:22 Curated Connections vs. others 42:54 Growing the membership 44:09 Tech Stack and Tools 49:22 Why Slack wins 52:40 Hardest part of Community Building 54:40 Advice for newsletter creators

Shin Takeda is changing the game for creators by creating done-for-you membership Slack communities for them. Creator funnels their audience, Shin handles end-to-end operations of running their paid community. That includes events, moderation, content, website, strategy and everything in between required to make sure these communities thrive and customers stay happy. Obviously the creators love it. But more importantly - members love it too! We spent 45 minutes diving deep into his process: - Why communities are the next big opportunity for creators - Shin’s tactics for building engaged, high-value communities - How to reduce churn in paid communities - The tech stack he uses to run world-class communities - Why Slack is still king for professional communities Resources: • Democratize Knowledge, Shin's agency - http://democratizeknowledge.com/ • Beginner Maps, magic sauce of top community businesses - https://beginnermaps.com/ • Curated Connections, the connections tool Shin uses - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Shin's X - https://x.com/shinnosuke_san • Nityesh's X - https://x.com/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:48 What is Democratize Knowledge 06:17 Shin's Journey into Community Management 16:30 Engagement tactics for creator-led communities 22:19 Reducing churn in paid comunities 24:07 Why Slack is still the king of professional communities 28:28 Limitations of Slack 31:19 Shin's Tech Stack 36:02 Final Thoughts

Jordan Cutler (@jordancutler) has done what most of us aspire to. He grew his newsletter to 50,000+ subscribers in just one year.

Along the way, he has made $35,000+ in “passive” income, with $20,000+ coming from a cohort-based course on Maven.

Resources:

• Beginner Maps for more such case studies - https://beginnermaps.com/

• High Growth Engineer newsletter - https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/

• Jordan's Maven course - https://maven.com/jordan-cutler/mid-level-to-senior

• Jordan's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/

• Jordan's Twitter/X - https://x.com/highgrowtheng

• Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/

• Nityesh's Twitter/X - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/

• Ali Abdaal video mentioned in the interview - https://youtu.be/ETA6D3SkAZo?si=6MucSW0yVTbx52wj&t=1261

Chapters:

0:00 Intro 02:43 Time per article 05:27 Not forcing LinkedIn posts 07:14 How Ali Abdaal helps him avoid the rat race 10:49 The Importance of Authenticity 12:04 Journey to 50k subscribers in a year 15:40 Strategies for Newsletter Growth 23:14 Starting a Cohort-Based Course 25:26 Running it while Working Full-Time 26:24 Partnering with Other Creators 31:55 Using Maven as the course platform 41:12 Advice for Aspiring Creators

Ryan Wardell is the CEO and cofounder of Startup Sauce, a private membership for SaaS founders outside of Silicon Valley doing $5k+ in MRR.

This community is special for a couple of reasons:

1. It's members are super accomplished CEOs who only have extremely nice things to say about the community

2. The guy who runs it, Ryan, is not a "startup expert". In fact, he has never even been a SaaS founder.

In this episode, Ryan shares his "magic sauce" that has allowed him to get there.

Resources:

• Beginner Maps, our free email course containing the "magic sauce" of top communities - https://beginnermaps.com/
• Startup Sauce, Ryan's community for founders doing $5k+ MRR - https://www.startupsauce.com/
• Ryan's master list of 320+ places for SEO backlinks - https://www.startupsauce.com/list
• Ryan's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwardell/
• Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

02:43 Startup Sauce stack

05:47 Aha-moment masterminds

07:58 Magic number for a mastermind

10:23 Making introverts feel comfortable

14:30 Magic sauce: matching people

20:18 Facilitation tricks

20:57 Tangent: Hiring a rockstar community manager

23:06 Facilitation tricks contd.

23:50 Giving people a reputation

27:10 Don't pretend to be the expert

28:26 Getting ridiculous retention

30:45 But why $33/month???

33:18 Screening calls for new members

36:29 How he really makes money

42:13 Ryan's future end game

44:00 Why the 5k MRR barrier

48:45 The idea

52:12 First 20 customers

01:01:05 Content marketing miss

Shreman Shrestha is the Head of Community for the Friends of Lenny’s Slack community. This community comes bundled with the Paid subscription for Lenny’s Newsletter and at the time of recording there are 17k+ members in here.

In this episode, Shre discusses how this community is able to organise 200+ in-person meetups per year, challenges with organising a great mentor matching program, working with volunteers and more.

Resources: • Beginner Maps - free crash course on building a community business - ⁠https://beginnermaps.com⁠

• Curated Connections, the community engagement app - ⁠https://curatedconnections.io/⁠

• Shreman's Twitter - https://twitter.com/itsDrDrewithaSh/

• Lenny's community + newsletter - https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/community

• Nityesh's Twitter (host) - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/

Chapters: 0:00 Intro

03:09 Lenny's community persona

04:33 Why people join the community

09:12 Increasing retention

10:52 Shre's story

13:10 Shre's responsibilities

17:52 Member-led city meetups

22:18 Guidelines for meetup hosts

25:29 Finding hosts

26:45 Financials of a meetup

28:21 Dealing with low attendance

31:46 Mentor matching program

37:07 Workbook for mentor and mentee

38:54 Building a great volunteer program

42:49 Advice for creators with audience

48:33 Observing members to get new ideas

Daniel Vassallo is the cofounder of Small Bets - a private community membership for indie hackers, solopreneurs and wanna-preneurs.

This community recently crossed 5000+ paying members and has been doing $400k+ in annual revenue every year since its inception ~2 yrs ago.

Daniel is a guy filled with hot original takes. He does things differently in this community and it works. Things like charging a one-time fee for a lifetime access or paying guests to do live classes in the community. Or, even the existence of this community itself, which is more than 5,000 members strong, but still very engaged.

Needless to say, Daniel has been a dream guest of mine and this is one of my personal favourite interviews.

Resources: • Beginner Maps free crash course on building a community business - https://beginnermaps.com/

• Curated Connections, the community engagement app - https://curatedconnections.io/

• Small Bets - https://smallbets.co/

• Daniel's Twitter - https://twitter.com/dvassallo

• Nityesh's Twitter (host) - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/

Chapters:

• 0:00 Intro
• 03:31 Why pay guest speakers for live classes?
• 07:45 Paying as a filtering mechanism
• 11:45 Daniel's selection process
• 15:49 Hot takes for running a great Zoom class
• 20:22 ROI of a repeat class
• 23:18 Lifetime membership - a great business strategy?
• 32:26 Overdelivering as a marketing strategy
• 34:30 Referrals
• 36:38 Why Daniel doesn't like doing surveys
• 38:45 Case study from a lifetime customer
• 41:37 Negative referrals from churned members
• 42:58 Case for recurring subscriptions
• 44:52 Small Bot
• 52:22 The failed community business
• 57:32 Small Bets origin story
• 01:00:56 New revenue streams

Kyle Hagge led the community efforts at Morning Brew's Learning division as a Director of Community. This interview is a “reflection episode” where Kyle takes us back to this time and shares his “magic sauce”. Among other things, he shares how his team decided which courses to pilot, why he chose Circle to host the community and why it's a good idea to automate connections. Resources: • Our free crash course where you can learn the "magic sauce" of top communities - https://beginnermaps.com/ • Curated Connections, the tool that allows communities to automate connections - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Kyle's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylehagge • Kyle's Twitter - https://twitter.com/kylehagge • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ • Nityesh's Twitter - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:55 What was Learning Brew? 05:36 Deciding which courses to run 10:27 Making a boring old topic interesting 12:53 Alumni Advisory Board 17:56 Transforming students through discomfort 22:28 Recording acceptance videos 24:52 Tracking outcomes 27:01 Engineering connections through automation 29:55 Circle vs Slack vs Zoom 35:28 Creating a party at virtual events 39:39 Breakout rooms 42:02 Final advice for community builders

Charlie Ward is the founder of Ramen Club - a private community of 300+ bootstrapped SaaS entrepreneurs that gives them the support and education to grow their business.

In this interview, Charlie shares the origin story of Ramen Club, how he organises the masterminds, how he organises in-person meetups in different cities of the world and more.

Resources:

• Curated Connections (our tool to connect your community members) - https://curatedconnections.io/

• Get Powerup (Charlie’s Slack app for creating leaderboards) - https://www.ramenclub.so/studio-ramen/powerup-app

• Ramen Club - https://www.ramenclub.so/

• Charlie’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/charlierward/

• Nityesh’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/

Chapters:

0:00 Intro 02:13 What's Ramen Club 10:58 First 10 customers 15:04 Next 100 customers 17:52 Building tools for marketing 21:21 Event recordings to podcast 26:36 Organising masterminds 37:15 Organising local meetups 46:27 Charlie's engagement strategy 50:22 Favourite book on community 52:45 His accountability tool for communities

Erin Halper is the founder/CEO of The Upside - a private community of top independent consultants that gives them the resources and the support that they need to grow their business. The Upside uses Circle as their community platform. In fact, they were recognized as one of Circle's top performing communities out of more than 10, 000 communities that are hosted there! In this interview, Erin reveals the unique strategies she uses and the mistakes she has learnt from to build a premium community membership business. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:54 The idea of Upside 04:49 Starting with a stupidly low price 06:33 The 250-member limit 10:09 Not in it for the money 11:42 Some things that didn't work 16:09 Getting first 20 customers 17:39 3 main sources of new customers 19:44 Switching from Facebook to Circle 24:37 Why Circle worked for her community? 27:31 Erin's 3-person community team 30:53 Directory of content role 33:12 Member spotlight campaigns 34:30 Automating matches between members 39:18 Playbook for running masterminds 49:07 Application process for The Upside 52:03 Welcoming new members 57:42 Erin's big question for you