Paul Jones: Scaling Client Relationships Through Community

Casey Cheshire

00:29Welcome to Connect to Market. I'm Casey Cheshire. Join us as we learn from marketing leaders who are driving founder-led growth.

00:45Here we are. Oh my goodness, we hit the button and we are going. Man, this thing is about to catch on fire. So grab your fire extinguishers and if you don't know where they are, consider this your reminder. Your friendly Casey reminder to go figure out where it is because you're going to need it for this episode and hopefully not anything else.

01:05All right. Who's my guest today? Well, you've seen him. If you're in the community, if you're in the Connect to Market community, he is a co-host with me. He is the community whisperer and I'm excited to have him on here and learn from him. Crack that brain open and just start eating those brains and learning from this guy.

01:24So who is he? Who is he, Casey? Well, let me tell you about it. Let me tell you about it.

01:28So first of all, he is a serial entrepreneur. He's a chief community officer and he's a Connection Chemist, community builder, the ultimate community builder. And he has created over 40 communities. He's even sold some. And your beloved moderator of the Connect to Market community, founder of Bridgio, Paul Jones. Welcome to the show, sir.

Paul Jones

01:48Wow. Thanks, Casey. Good to be here. I'm very excited. I love this whole podcast series. The guests you've had on so far have been amazing. I think this is a really cool movement and a really good paradigm shift that's needed today, right now.

Casey Cheshire

02:03All right. Well, you know what? Let me go ahead and put on the giant foam finger and ask you the question, Paul. The number one. What is the number one thing that marketers need to do in order to connect to their market?

Paul Jones

02:19Connect to your market. So the number one thing is I think you can't go to market anymore. So you look on LinkedIn, everything is go to market, go to market, go to market. And it's like, all right, I got invited to this party. It's a business casual party, but I'm going to show up in, I'm going to go to the party, but I'm not going to go the way, you know, I'm not really going to connect with that party. If you don't know the theme of the party, if you don't dress up for the, whatever that might be.

02:52So big difference between going to market and connecting to your market, that is the number one thing. And oftentimes what I see from building communities for companies, how often people are, they're in the market. They've went to the market. They're there, but they aren't connecting with the market. Big difference.

Casey Cheshire

03:14Yeah.

Paul Jones

03:14In fact, I'm thinking about one client right now. We built them a community. They knew who they wanted to sell to. And if you, if you look at the stats, most businesses, like nine out of 10 businesses are going to fail because they're, they're not going to have product market fit and they fail to go to market in some kind of way. And so the concept of connecting to your market is really important.

03:35I had a client, uh, they knew who they were selling to. So their ideal client persona was solid. They knew they were building for HR, but so, so they were in the market, but the way that they were talking about their solution wasn't connecting with the market. And so that's where marketers really come into play is you have to first understand your persona at a deep level.

04:00And I think it's not understand the pain that we solve. It's understand the entire persona, understand the constellation of problems that that persona is facing that don't even relate to your point solution or whatever, whatever it is that you're marketing that don't even relate to that. So getting down on a deep empathetic level with them and understand the entire constellation of their problems is going to help you message and connect with them much better. You're going to be able to create, you know, sentences. You're going to be able to create sayings that really connect with your market.

04:44Um, another quick story. So I was part of a SaaS, yeah, I was part of a SaaS, um, dental software company and we hired this really great marketer. And for the first six months he spent interviewing the founders, interviewing, uh, employees and interviewing customers. And we were going to conferences and shows a lot. And, um, um, he had come up with these, this, this, this whole like messaging architect architecture.

05:13And we had the, I remember going to a show and I was wearing a shirt that said "Dentists are people too." And yeah, I mean that, that right there connected so hard with the market that people were coming to our booth. Like, hey, how can I get one of these shirts? They were loving it. They, they felt when you connect with your market, your, your ICP is going to feel seen by you, seen, heard and respected by you. So, um, we had just lines of people wanting these shirts because so often you go to the dentist and they're just, people hate going to them.

Casey Cheshire

05:53Yeah.

Paul Jones

05:53Uh, they feel like they want to cause them pain. They're like, no, I am a person. Right. And that is what had come out of that research. So long, long-winded way of answering. There's a big difference between going to your market and then connecting with your market.

Casey Cheshire

06:07You know, the, the imagery of, of going to a toga party dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, right?

Paul Jones

06:13There you go.

Casey Cheshire

06:14But you know what you can, I'm, anyone who's gone to a networking event has probably experienced this in, in real time, in real life. Just, just going into a room of people chatting, you could literally stand in the corner and not talk to anyone. Now, maybe you or I might come over and be like, hey, how's it going? You know, why does this person stand all by themselves? So maybe someone will come say hi, but not necessarily.

06:37And so you could be in that room. Hey, I went to that networking event and you could have met no one. Like the ability to just proximity won't do it. Right. Proximity just doesn't, doesn't cut it. It's, it's kind of like that old fallacy of if you build it, they will come.

06:51Yeah. Maybe not. Maybe not. Yeah. It's not a mythical baseball field. Do you know?

Paul Jones

06:57Yeah. Often they don't come. And plus you don't have angels helping you out.

Casey Cheshire

07:01No, you don't.

Paul Jones

07:02Or whatever those, whatever those baseball players were.

Casey Cheshire

07:06Yeah.

Paul Jones

07:06Maybe I'm mixing up Angels in the Outfield.

Casey Cheshire

07:08That was a good movie. Yeah.

Paul Jones

07:09That was a good movie.

Casey Cheshire

07:10Kid, you got an angel out there. Good one, man.

07:17So, but what, what does it take? What does it take to, to, to do that, to, to shift from going to connecting? You know, how do I start connecting when I get, when I get there?

Paul Jones

07:31Well, yeah, totally. And I think that for a founder, this is where things get hard. Um, I can think about one of the, the first business that I ever built was a paddleboarding business. And I was coming off of, uh, just river guiding in Jackson, Wyoming. And so I took a lot of that idea. We, we moved to Omaha, Nebraska and, and I was out, I was out.

07:55I had actually, we had no money. So I bought this $50 windsurfing surfboard and I was using kayak paddles and I just wanted to paddleboard. It was a new thing. It was just coming on the scene and, and the Midwest didn't really know about it. And I was out on a lake paddling, standing up and cars were just like screeching, pulling over like Jesus walking on water almost like never seen this before. Okay.

08:20And, and that's when I was like, oh, there's, there's something here. There's something that maybe I can, you know, start a paddleboarding business. And so that's what I ended up doing. And, um, when I, I got really excited about it.

08:33And, and so I built the business model and the business model was, okay, we're going to paddleboard rivers. Cause I love rivers. And, and so, um, this is how this is going to work. You're going to show up at the, you know, at the top of the river, we're going to get on paddleboards. We're going to float down the river and we're going to pick you up and then take you back up.

08:50And luckily for me, I had, uh, made acquaintances with someone that was teaching at the local university business school. And she's like, Paul, you really need a business model or a business plan. You really need a business plan. Let me give you the outline. So she gave me the outline and she asked me a whole bunch of questions.

09:06And what was interesting is what I thought the business should be after going through the business plan, it was like, this is, this isn't going to work. I'm going to have to buy a van. I'm going to have to pay someone to sit in that van. I'm going to have to transport people and have insurance for it. So all of a sudden my costs went considerably up. And, and so I had to switch the model.

09:29So I changed the model and the model became, um, you, you meet us at the lake. So, so now I don't have to transport anybody. We teach you how to do it. We go out on it. We take you on a little tour and then we bring you back.

09:41And, uh, that worked like the numbers worked. So from a business model perspective, what I thought I wanted to build turned out to not, it was the same theme, but it turned out to be something nearly completely differently. And it was all dictated by, you know, profitability and the numbers and all of that.

10:00So I think that, um, going to market is very similar. A lot of times we think we put the product first, or we put the idea first. We think it's going to be the solution without having spent a lot of time with our ideal persona.

10:17I've built, at this point, I've built 45 different communities for companies. And I would say more often than not, either the ICP is, the ideal client persona is wrong, or the messaging is, is totally wrong, um, and, and totally off. And so I think that rather than thinking about the solution first, you as a founder or as a marketer have to spend, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta fly in, parachute down behind enemy lines, and you have to spend time there first.

10:55And by doing that, I think that your, your connect to market model is going to change and it's going to morph, and the thing is, is, um, you know, I, I have a few communities when we, we started doing this in 2020, but, um, I have a few communities we're still building today. And what we're finding is that the messaging is constantly changing constantly. So it's not like you go to market and, and then connect with your market and then bounce and then, and then scale. It is that this, this constant, you have to have constant presence, not just presence in the market, but conversations in your market, uh, and, and the, having conversations with your personas and understanding how they're looking at everything.

11:40So I think that that's, that's one is just, is it a, is it a persona problem? Are you in the wrong, are you going to fail? Because you don't have product market fit because are you selling to the wrong customer? But then number two, is your messaging wrong? Is what you're saying to them not hitting, not resonating with them? And I think the only way to get resonance is to spend time in your market.

12:06And really what that looks like, there's a million different things, uh, that, that, you know, that, that can, how that can manifest itself. You can, you can start a podcast, you know, use Ringmaster, start a podcast. Um, that's a great way to have deep conversations with people. You can start a community, um, start building a community. You can start building round tables, whatever you can do to bring your customer to the table, to have real conversations with them is going to yield, you know, massive dividends down the road and save you a ton of time and effort.

Casey Cheshire

12:42Let's talk about one of your favorite ways to connect. One of your favorite ways to spend time. Tell me about, tell me about these round tables.

Paul Jones

12:53Well, this, this is, um, so I guess here's the backstory. I was facilitating a lot of net, executive networking events.

Casey Cheshire

13:02Sure.

Paul Jones

13:02Um, and it was always really fun. I liked doing it in person. Um, I, I remember thinking, oh man, I, I could take this to conferences. Cause I was going to all these conferences and they were a lot of entrepreneurial conferences like SaaStr and stuff. And we would listen to these great speed, you know, speeches and speakers talking about how successful they were, but I was getting the most valuable value from connecting with other entrepreneurs around me and, and, um, chatting with them about what the current market conditions were and things like that. And, um, so I always felt that events could be way better, um, rather than just stage on stage type stuff, but how do we create real connection?

13:45And then I realized, um, as COVID hit, cause I, I was part of these networking, you know, companies facilitating these types of events. And I was looking at the churn on the backend and a lot of people were churning out. And when they would churn out, they would say, you know, I love the events. I love the experience, but I'm not talking to the people that I want to be talking to. I'm not talking to my customer. And that's when I thought, you know, we could build a strategic referral or not referral, but we can build a strategic network for a business.

14:18And one of the, you know, obviously challenges in connect to market is you're building all these relationships. How are you going to maintain those relationships?

Casey Cheshire

14:27Right.

Paul Jones

14:28Right. Dunbar's number is 150.

Casey Cheshire

14:31Can you explain that?

Paul Jones

14:32Yeah. So, um, really great, uh, social psychologist looked at how many relationships we can, we can actually maintain, like how many people can you maintain a relationship with? And, and you're obviously going to have, you know, your family's going to be deeper. There's depth to different things, but, um, in terms of, of the number of relationships you can manage 150 is, is roughly the number. Right.

15:01Um, so when you are a founder or when you are a marketer, you're going to be having way more relationships than that to maintain. And so you, it's going to be difficult for you to have one-to-one conversation. So we have to be able to figure out a way to provide more value to them aside from some, you know, paywall and consuming content. Like that, that is so far away from connect. Um, and so what do we do?

15:31Well, the answer to that is build a community, build round tables, build, create spaces for conversations to happen. I, I like to focus in on, um, create spaces where you can discuss where the sidewalk ends, right? AI takes you, AI can only take us to what we know, but where do we go for new ideas? Where do we go for new perspectives, new awareness?

16:00And it, and it's going to be through social learning. It's going to be through social learning theory, the mutual engagement and uncertainty coming to the table and saying, I'm uncertain about these things. Um, what could, what could be the variables that lead to possible solutions? How do we expand our awareness? And the best way to do that is in a social setting. So I like to create experiences where, um, learning is happening socially, uh, amongst each other.

16:34And it's a unique experience. Um, and that to me is, is really what community is, is community is, is learning from others, um, and helping others. So coming to a table and, and offering even a different perspective. Again, you're not offering an answer because a lot of times there is no answer yet. So being able to explore and, and again, increase your awareness. And so, um, I think that building a community is one of the best ways, uh, to connect to your market.

17:04Because, uh, one of the things that is inherent with, with managing and building the community is, okay, conversations are going to happen. But what are the conversations going to be?

Casey Cheshire

17:17Right.

Paul Jones

17:17The conversations are going to be, hey, is anyone, what's everyone using AI for these days? What's what, right?

17:22And so there's a great book, Influencer, amazing book. It talks about influencing the masses, how to get, you know, behavior change at scale. And one of the keys is, um, this idea of positive deviance. So whenever you have a behavior that you need to change or that people are changing, whatever's changing in their lives, if you look at an end value of people, um, there's going to be a small percentage of them that are doing something differently than everybody else. And they're getting positive results. And this is why we've been so successful as a human species, one, because we're social, but two, because we're able to spread positive deviant, uh, behaviors easily across the network because we're social.

18:16So that's the whole point. And that's the whole idea. And if you think about it, my other point today was your CRM is not helping you connect to your market at all. Um, everyone, it, so, everyone in your CRM there, everyone's just siloed. There is no interconnectedness inside of that thing.

18:33So how do we take your CRM, the thing that's supposed to, ironically enough, it's a customer relationship management system. No, it's, it's really, uh, just a database at this point. Like how is it helping you actually manage your relationships? Well, when we think about relationships at scale, when we're talking about Dunbar's number, community comes in for that win, because it's able to create value. Value for everybody else inside that conversation.

19:00So now it's not about your one-to-one conversations, but it's about your many to many that you create. And you create this space where, where those, if it's under your umbrella as a company, right? You're getting the benefit of creating a space where value is created by the members themselves. And I think this is the future of marketing. This is the future of connection, uh, connecting to market.

19:23I think it's rather than calling through a list and saying, hey, this is, this is, this is the pain you're experiencing. Do you want to buy? It's more so, hey, I want you to come into our community and start having conversations about whatever it is you want to have conversations about. So you get to be the brand that I like to call these companies, broker brands, um, because the value that you're providing isn't content anymore.

Casey Cheshire

19:52Yeah.

Paul Jones

19:52It's connection. You're, you're the one that's brokering relationships, key relationships between people and what, what comes out of a lot of our, we do a lot of virtual roundtables. I like to call them Brain Trusts, or I like to call them webinots, a webinot is the, yeah, is that's the exact opposite of a webinar.

20:15Um, but what, what comes out of those, a lot of the times is people will come to us and say, hey, how much time did you spend on figuring out, uh, you know, who was in my breakout room because I, I needed to hear that today. I, I, I met this person, this is what they're doing. And I didn't realize it, but I needed that to hear that person. And I needed to connect with that person.

20:38And, um, you know, it's random at this point, but that's like that architecting serendipity between people is, and that's the Connection Chemistry of building these types of community events that are driven by social learning is that your ICP comes out of that just by gathering your ideal client personas together, the right ones together. It's like taking two molecules that are very attracted to each other, hydrogen and oxygen, right? You put those in a little confined space and boop, you're going to get H2O. That's just what happens.

21:13So when you start playing Connection Chemistry as a brand and you start to shift your thinking from, I need content consumption to, I want to broker. Who do I want to broker relationships between then? I think it becomes really fun because now it's all about bringing these folks together, creating connection with them. That becomes your value. The value that you're delivering as a marketer. And then you get to learn so much from what's happening inside of that whole motion.

Casey Cheshire

21:44And it's powerful and I love it because you're, you're passionate about this and you know, we both love connection, uh, but the word community, it gets used a lot. And I know I've used community round table, uh, are, you know, this can, can you kind of clear up this cloud? It does, does everything count in community? I know a lot of people, you know, creating a community. What, what are you, what are you doing? You know what?

Paul Jones

22:14Yeah.

Casey Cheshire

22:14Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Jones

22:15Yeah. Good question. Uh, it is overused. It's, it's something I think about a lot, right? Cause like, all right, community is what? It's your local community. That's what we are going to think about. We're going to think about the YMCA, you know, like that's old school.

Casey Cheshire

22:33Right.

Paul Jones

22:34Um, today community is a big Slack channel that, that you're managing.

Casey Cheshire

22:40Right.

Paul Jones

22:41Uh, you know, that could be considered a community.

Casey Cheshire

22:43You're in Canada going down to the Legion.

Paul Jones

22:45Yeah, absolutely. And, and back then, um, you know, there's, there's a, I forget what it's called. Uh, oh yeah. On Netflix, Join or Die.

Casey Cheshire

22:54Join or Die on Netflix. Huh?

Paul Jones

22:55It's a great documentary about essentially, um, what Putnam was describing in Bowling Alone. But basically in Bowling Alone, it was that all of our innovation was driven and has been driven by our connection with each other. So Steve Jobs and Woz met at a computer club and then you get Apple, right? So, and there's countless, countless examples, uh, like that. And so I think all of these things are pockets of community and that's why it becomes so hard to, to really know, you know, like, um, a lot of brands, a lot of big brands are getting into community, building these big Slack channels or Discord channels or whatever it might be. And, um, that's, you know, you're, you're talking about thousands upon thousands and thousands of people.

23:51But at the end of the day, I think that the way, the best way to define community is that it's, it's gathering people together. And the people are the, what bring the value and give the value to each other. So they're the ones that bring the resources and you're just creating space where the connection can happen, where the community and connection cannot be separated. They have to be together. So creating the space where community and connection happen and occur, and it can be done a million different ways. And that's why it's so, such a broad term right now.

24:29Um, and I think, you know, it's probably overused. I think we should probably come up with more descriptive words that, that, that describe certain types of, uh, of different communities. You could argue a club as a community for sure.

Casey Cheshire

24:41Yeah.

Paul Jones

24:42Um, all the way over to a Slack channel. So it's, it is really, really diverse. Um, and to your point, a round table, is a round table a community? Um, I think you have to do some things to, to enhance that again. You've got to create that connection.

24:55So how do you create people continuing conversations rather than just coming around a table, having a discussion, then leaving? How do we create more connection element inside of that? And that's really how you transform something into a community. A lot of what we've done. And a lot of what we do is, um, we, we, we call it building a community, but, but honestly, it takes a long time before you get to that community stage where again, people are bringing resources in, um, and they're creating connection inside of that. Aside from that, it's just events.

Casey Cheshire

25:27Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, just like you could be in a networking room and not actually connect, you, you could create what you think is a community, but it really is just, you know, a mechanism. You know, let's talk tech. Cause I know you're really passionate about this.

25:43One of the first things I asked you and what almost everyone asks me when I also share, you know, this message about community, they go, what platform is this on? Oh, what are you building it on? Oh, have you heard of that, I, XYZ platform? I hear that's, that's the one to use. Which one do you use? You know?

Paul Jones

26:01Yeah. Uh, oh man. Where, where do we start?

Casey Cheshire

26:05You know, those only listening, I think I saw like nine eye rolls in the last half a second from that question. Cause it sounds like you've gotten that question a lot too.

Paul Jones

26:14Well, I think that people, how do I bring this in? So a group that I built, a Brain Trust I built was a group of CMOs and we met for like two years, once a month. And I remember asking them, what's the future of marketing? And they all said community, but I had also built a community of community managers and they were meeting once a month and all the community managers that were reporting to their marketers just hated it because the marketers were chomping at the bit to start sending white papers and start generating MQLs from, from the community. And, and if you talk to a community manager, I love talking to them because they understand their job is to create connection. Right.

Casey Cheshire

27:00Yeah.

Paul Jones

27:00So all of that to say is, I think that most people don't understand what community actually is. And so they look at the tech and they think that the tech is the community, uh, or that the tech is going to bring the community together. And that is simply not true. Like, okay, go, go start a Slack channel and, and everyone thinks it's easy.

27:24Um, go start, go start your little Slack community and tell me how that goes in two months, because there are so many things to think about when it comes to, again, gathering people together. So the tech is, is, uh, it's like, it's like a building so people can come in and it'll dictate the experience, but the building isn't the community. It's, it's the connection. It's the people that are there. It's the conversations that are happening and things like that. So that's, what's more important.

27:56But from a, from a tech perspective, that's another thing that's really hard too, is, is if you look at like community numbers and things like that, like, so traditional community, and I'm talking about, uh, the Slack, not, well, I said traditional, that's not traditional, new age community, Slack, Discord, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You're going to get like, uh, you're going to have a lot of, um, lurkers. Most, most of the people inside your community are going to be lurkers. And then there's going to be a few that are contributors. And that's generally like two to 5%. You're crushing it if you're 5%, 2% is like mostly where you're at.

28:34So if, if you're looking at 2%, most of the content being generated by your community is going to be from these, this 2% of people. In order to get enough content to make the community interesting, you're going to have to have a shit ton of people in there. Right. And so these, these, you know, techs, these, all these different techs, they, like, it's not as easy as building a building. And then it goes back to our angels or our, uh, be build it, they will come.

Casey Cheshire

29:03Right.

Paul Jones

29:04Uh, it's, that's the tech, like, no, that's not necessarily going to work.

Casey Cheshire

29:09Just because you made a, made a group on a platform doesn't mean it will fill itself up.

Paul Jones

29:16Right. Right. And we want to believe that's true. And it's often, and I like, you know, like for me, I, I like to ideate. So I get really excited about thinking about what could be built.

Casey Cheshire

29:29Yeah.

Paul Jones

29:30And just over the years, I've just had to learn over and over and over again, that my impression, my initial thoughts are wrong.

Casey Cheshire

29:38Yeah.

Paul Jones

29:40Use that energy to then connect to market and then shape and figure out what it is it's going to be, but it's going to take, it's going to take some time and, you know, messaging inside of your market, that just takes time. But you, you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not spending the time in the places where your ideal persona is at and actually getting in and having conversations. It would be, you know, you, you use the, an example of going to a networking event, right? And standing by the wall just because of proximity doesn't mean you're going to get value. I would also say when you're at the tables and you're net, you're networking, right?

Casey Cheshire

30:15Yeah.

Paul Jones

30:16A lot of people think that networking is just puking up their, their value prop to everybody.

Casey Cheshire

30:22Wait, it's not?

Paul Jones

30:23Yeah. Right. That's why networking is kind of gross.

Casey Cheshire

30:26Hi, I'm Casey. I make podcasts.

Paul Jones

30:28Right.

Casey Cheshire

30:29Hey.

Paul Jones

30:30Yeah.

Casey Cheshire

30:30Cool. Thanks, Casey. I'm gonna go get a drink. Nice meeting you.

Paul Jones

30:33Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want to be able to, it goes back to How to Win Friends and Influence People. Carnegie, be interested in them.

Casey Cheshire

30:40Yeah.

Paul Jones

30:41You know, Jordan Peterson said people are infinitely interesting. So coming in with a curious mindset and just asking the questions and being curious, I think goes a long way. And most people don't do that.

Casey Cheshire

30:56People are interesting. But if we ask the wrong question, they're not. Or if we aren't curious, like that'll, that'll fill itself up. I just, before we get into that, I just remember that on the tech question, I just remember you saying like, don't even worry about the tech. In fact, don't do it too soon.

Paul Jones

31:16Oh, yeah.

Casey Cheshire

31:17Because that'll kill the community even.

Paul Jones

31:19Yeah.

Casey Cheshire

31:20You know? And wait a little bit.

Paul Jones

31:23Oh, okay. Yes, yes. I have a good example of this.

Casey Cheshire

31:26Yeah.

Paul Jones

31:26So when we first initially start building, it's just Zoom meetings. That's it.

Casey Cheshire

31:35Yeah.

Paul Jones

31:35And what's interesting is all the communities I've ever built, the participants inside the community will inevitably say to my client, we want a way to stay in touch with people in between events. And this is like Ford's quote. If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

Casey Cheshire

32:03Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.

Paul Jones

32:06So what I found when I was first doing this in the beginning, it was like, oh, sweet. Let's spin up a Slack. Let's spin up a Discord. Let's, let's spin up Heartbeat, Circle, whatever it is. And, and let's spin up a LinkedIn group. And, and so we would do it. We would do what they wanted and then crickets.

Casey Cheshire

32:25No one uses it.

Paul Jones

32:27Nobody freaking uses it.

Casey Cheshire

32:28So use the faster horse?

Paul Jones

32:30Nope. Yeah. And, um, so what are they actually asking for?

Casey Cheshire

32:37Right.

Paul Jones

32:38Right. What is it that they actually need? What is it that they are trying to express? And, um, so that's why I say, you don't like, I'm going to build a community. And so then you go and you build some tech and like, there's so much there. Like oftentimes I remember the first, you know, Slack that I ever built. It had like 15 channels in it.

Casey Cheshire

33:01Yeah.

Paul Jones

33:02And I got people in there and then they were immediately overwhelmed. Didn't know what to do. Didn't know what the conversations were. So like, I totally killed it because I over-engineered it. And I, I just was like, oh, this channel would be fun. Oh, this channel would be fun.

Casey Cheshire

33:13Right.

Paul Jones

33:14And so, um, when you're, when you go into that asynchronous world, um, you have to take it really slow and, and, and you should have already spent a lot of time on phone calls, you know, at least 150 plus phone calls with, with the people you want to build a community with. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's why I say, don't, don't ever start with the tech, start low tech, do things that don't scale. You know, we kind of know these ideas.

33:44Um, just make sure that it's, you're spending your time understanding that persona. And what, what do I mean by that? Dude, lately that's changed a lot for me because I've been testing this fractional. I built a fractional community four years ago.

Casey Cheshire

34:01Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Jones

34:04That's how we met. That's right. You, you were always, I always missed. I was always bummed when you weren't on the calls.

Casey Cheshire

34:10Right. Cause I was slightly irreverent and, uh, interact.

Paul Jones

34:13Yeah. You were irreverent. You were interactive. You got the party started. You, you were always just talking trash.

Casey Cheshire

34:19In the chat saying goofy shit. Right.

Paul Jones

34:21Yeah. It was fun, dude. It was really fun.

Casey Cheshire

34:25I'm like, well, this guy's pretty cool. He's not instantly like blocking me from the group. So I guess I'll just keep being me, you know?

Paul Jones

34:34Yeah.

Casey Cheshire

34:34Yeah.

Paul Jones

34:35I liked it. I always liked it. It was fun. I think you probably came to what? Like 12.

Casey Cheshire

34:39Yeah. Yeah. A bunch.

Paul Jones

34:40It was good.

Casey Cheshire

34:41A bunch. It was one of those things where, and see, and so for our own communities that we're creating together now, like I can relate, you know, it's on the calendar. You want to go. And then, or sometimes we're like, oh, you know, sort of neutral to it. If something has to step on it, it steps on it.

Paul Jones

34:59Yeah.

Casey Cheshire

34:59But if nothing was there, I'd go and I, and I never regretted going. Right.

Paul Jones

35:04Yeah.

Casey Cheshire

35:04Um, it had got to the point where after I went to enough of them, I was like, no, this is actually pretty good. But early on, I'm like, I don't know what to expect, but I'm going to go. And I always ended up having some kind of cool connections with other people and a bunch of LinkedIn messages happening, um, and some fun and some fun in the, in the process. So I understand now we create and, and, and my hope is that we create that for, you know, the rest of the people in the Connect to Market community.

35:29So what, what would be your one piece of advice when creating community? Cause I know we're running out of time, but if I, if I were to ask you this, like, you know, terrible question. Cause like, how do you boil it all down into one thing? Like, what do you think you would say?

Paul Jones

35:46I honestly, I think it, I think that the, the best, it's just the mindset of, I want to spend my time here. You know, I enjoy the conversations. I'm thinking about one client in particular right now. They are, they're big. Um, but the founder knows so many of people that aren't even using his service by name. It's because he thoroughly enjoys spending time and having discussions with his ICP.

Casey Cheshire

36:23Like, like, yeah.

Paul Jones

36:26And, and, and they, they, when I look and when I compare them across all my clients, they are doing so well because they're not just looking at the list of community that we're building for them. They are, they know that list of people by name. They've had conversations with them. They're tracking their attendance. They're reaching out. They are truly trying to give value first.

36:49And I, so that's what I would say in summary is give value. It's the Go-Giver mindset, right? Give value first and really enjoy spending time with those, with those folks.

Casey Cheshire

37:03Yeah.

Paul Jones

37:04And that's going to have its own cycle. I was going to say earlier, when you're dealing with a persona and you're doing these phone calls and you're actually connecting with your market, you're going to go through phases. Initially, it's really exciting. You're in discovery mode. You're learning a lot. You're making a lot of great connections.

37:19And then over time, the dust is going to settle and you're going to start to understand what you dislike about this persona. Like you just want to shake their heads and be like, knock this off, you know? Like I hate, so you're going to feel frustration. You're going to feel a little resentment. And so that's you coming into complexity with things you don't understand with that persona. And maybe there's more learning that needs to take place between you and what they're doing.

37:46Um, and then beyond that complexity is the simplicity. It's like, oh, okay. I now truly deeply understand this persona, um, what makes them complex. And now I'm, I can be on the other side of that and just be who we're going to be. Right.

38:02And I think, I think most businesses, because they aren't spending that time connecting to their market and being really curious about them, they're going to come, they're going to come with their little point solution. And like, this is our pain statement and then they're going to bounce off the complexity of the entire constellation of that, of that persona. And they're never going to make it through to the other side where it just becomes a simple message to people or whatever that might be.

38:30So, um, I think that, yeah, curiosity and, and having a giving mindset first and just enjoying, like, I, I was, I was going to start a business. This is no, this is, this isn't, I don't mean to throw shade on, on, you know, there are certain people that you don't necessarily want to sell to. And I just, I was going to start something where I was selling a product to HR. And I was like, after a few conversations, I'm like, I just don't, don't enjoy, um, this, the conversation, like, uh, it's not giving me energy, you know?

Casey Cheshire

39:03Yeah. And maybe as someone else, it does, you know, but same thing with attorneys, you know, when you spend more, uh, updating your agreement with their revisions, then, you know, on the attorney fees, then you do on the, what you get from them. Maybe you don't work with attorneys either, but, uh, yeah.

Paul Jones

39:17And some people are going to fricking love that, right?

Casey Cheshire

39:20Some people will love it. Yeah.

Paul Jones

39:21So, and that's a whole nother thing like that. We could spend a whole nother hour talking about how to build your business around people that are energized by interacting with that type of ICP. I think that's something we don't even really consider.

Casey Cheshire

39:32Sure.

Paul Jones

39:33But there's so much more innovation that can come from that because if you're getting energized by the conversations you're having with folks and you're, you enjoy the topics that are regularly discussed, man, you're going to build, you're going to build better products. You're ultimately going to be a way better company and you're going to make a way bigger difference than just like, hey, I came up with this idea and, uh, I want to sell it.

Casey Cheshire

39:56Right. Night and day different. Paul, as always, you are the man, sir. Thank you so much for coming on here. Where can people reach out and connect?

Paul Jones

40:04Uh, find me on LinkedIn, Paul Jones, uh, love to connect with you there, have conversations and then join. If you're a marketer, join our Connect to Market. Casey's building this awesome group. We just had our meeting yesterday.

Casey Cheshire

40:16It was so good.

Paul Jones

40:17That was great. Man, some great people were there. Yeah. That was awesome.

Casey Cheshire

40:20Absolutely. All right, everyone. This is a, this has been such a great conversation. Paul, again, thank you so much for this. I, so many great notes out of this.

40:29Um, you know, I love when you and I chat, we get inspired. We come up with, we share great stories and, you know, we're creating this really cool thing together, Connect to Market. So thank you.

Paul Jones

40:39Thank you, man. Thanks for having me. Excited to see where we go.

Casey Cheshire

40:42All right, everybody. This has been a crazy, cool, very exciting episode of the Connect to Market pod. We will see you all next time.

40:52And that wraps up another episode. Thank you for joining. For show notes and other episodes, visit us at connecttomarket.com.