Latest / Founder Mode / Turning Audiences Into Businesses with Courtney Spritzer

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Turning Audiences Into Businesses with Courtney Spritzer · Founder Mode

• 0:00
  So community is such a buzzword right now, and everyone says
• 0:04
  that they have a community. And right now what we're
• 0:07
  realizing is people are confusing a following with
• 0:11
  community, and they're two very, very different things.
• 0:14
  Community is really a private place where you're bringing
• 0:18
  people together so that they can interact with each other.
• 0:36
  You're listening to Founder mode.
• 0:37
  Where we talk to builders turning attention into real
• 0:40
  businesses today's. Episodes about audiences, not as
• 0:43
  in vanity metrics, but as foundations.
• 0:46
  Our guest has built, scaled, and monetized communities without
• 0:49
  losing authenticity. Before we bring her out, Kevin,
• 0:52
  you've been building an audience first with the Founder Mode
• 0:54
  newsletter and now with this podcast for almost a couple
• 0:57
  years. What have you learned about
• 0:59
  building audience? Is that more founders should
• 1:01
  think about? To me, the thing that's
• 1:02
  interesting about the audience thing is that I think if you try
• 1:05
  to build the audience, I think you're going to fail.
• 1:07
  And I think like you have to almost just be like, dude, I'm
• 1:09
  just because you have to be authentic and be like, hey, it's
• 1:12
  me. This is what I'm thinking and
• 1:13
  saying. And for me it was this just that
• 1:15
  it was like, I started posting online and then people liked and
• 1:19
  you're like, oh, and then you did more of it and then you did
• 1:20
  more of it and people like, oh, it's interesting.
• 1:22
  And then oh, that's kind of cool.
• 1:23
  And then it kind of turned into this thing where you're just
• 1:25
  kind of like, this is the thing we're just going to post online.
• 1:28
  And I didn't think of it as an audience.
• 1:30
  I more just thought of it was like, cool, I'm writing to my
• 1:32
  friends about stuff that I'm interested in or things that I'm
• 1:34
  thinking or you somebody text me after an episode and they're
• 1:36
  like, oh, dude, that was really good guess, great interview.
• 1:39
  And I think both of those are like just, it's just that little
• 1:42
  bit of encouragement and like, oh, there's somebody out there
• 1:45
  that's listening and that, you know, gave you feedback.
• 1:47
  And if you know, for one person to send it, other people may
• 1:50
  have thought it or maybe they didn't, but it's fine.
• 1:52
  But to me, that was it. And I mean, that was the biggest
• 1:53
  learning was just try and send stuff.
• 1:55
  And dude, some stuff doesn't work.
• 1:56
  Like you send it and nobody cares or they're like, this is
• 1:58
  dumb. And some stuff like, I mean,
• 2:00
  we've both seen it. Like you send something that's
• 2:02
  slightly controversial, Jason, maybe how about you like, you
• 2:05
  know, if AI is making everything sort of like easier that even a
• 2:09
  marketing guy can now build stuff, like what is it that
• 2:12
  matters, right? Really, when you think about
• 2:14
  marketing and distribution and like, you know, where does your
• 2:17
  view of the human still sit in the loop?
• 2:18
  And how does that even change with AI content and sort of AI
• 2:22
  everywhere? Yeah, it's the like AI slop
• 2:24
  debate of, you know, if everybody is a creator now and
• 2:28
  then every creator has AI tools to make stuff.
• 2:31
  Are we all just shouting into the void and it's just the slop
• 2:33
  fest? Or is there like interesting
• 2:36
  things? And it's about like on your AI
• 2:38
  surfacing to you the stuff that it thinks you like.
• 2:40
  All the algorithms are AI, right?
• 2:41
  Like what you see in the as you doom scroll is like stuff that
• 2:44
  you're going to respond to. So in the context of founders,
• 2:46
  the barrier to entry to build stuff is so low thanks to AI
• 2:50
  tools that guys like me can make stuff now that now it really is
• 2:54
  about what's your, what's your distribution?
• 2:57
  How are you going to reach people?
• 2:58
  How are you going to get stuff out there?
• 2:59
  And so if you are somebody that's already built an
• 3:01
  audience, like, you know, Courtney, who we're going to
• 3:04
  talk to today, had built a social media marketing agency,
• 3:06
  so very much knew what it was like to, to create audiences for
• 3:10
  clients. And then in doing so, started to
• 3:13
  build like a pod podcast audience.
• 3:15
  And a female entrepreneur audience is like, oh, wow, I
• 3:17
  have this built in thing. I can go.
• 3:19
  That can be the thing. And I think in the context of a
• 3:22
  tech founder starting a company, if you have 0 followers on
• 3:25
  platforms and you're not posting, you're doing nothing.
• 3:27
  You have no newsletter, no story to tell.
• 3:29
  It's just harder to ship your thing and get people to care.
• 3:32
  But if you're like Kevin here and you have 10s of thousands of
• 3:35
  people reading your newsletter and listening to your podcast
• 3:38
  and you start a new business that's a built in Group of
• 3:40
  people that now can check it out and and are going to hear about
• 3:44
  it as soon as as soon as it's available.
• 3:46
  And so I think that's that's the thing for me, right?
• 3:49
  So, so I don't know. I think there's I think the Moat
• 3:52
  is now marketing distribution more, more than ever.
• 3:54
  Yeah, makes sense. I mean, Courtney's a founder.
• 3:56
  She's really kind of done this right, Turn stories into
• 3:59
  conversations and now a scalable platform, honestly teaching
• 4:02
  others to do a lot of the same. And so, yeah, excited to talk to
• 4:05
  her. Yeah.
• 4:06
  Should we get into? It.
• 4:06
  Let's do it. Courtney, welcome to founder
• 4:19
  Mode. You build audiences, turn them
• 4:21
  into businesses, and then did it again.
• 4:22
  And so today we're talking about, you know, how creators
• 4:24
  and founders can turn attention into something durable and
• 4:27
  honestly, what most people get wrong.
• 4:29
  Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
• 4:31
  Yeah, another, another great conversation sparked by our our
• 4:34
  kind of shared membership in Hampton and you and we'll get
• 4:38
  into this run a very successful community for female
• 4:41
  entrepreneurs. You didn't start with a business
• 4:43
  model. I think you started with just
• 4:45
  conversations. When did you realize that the
• 4:47
  audience itself was the asset? So my first business was a
• 4:51
  social media marketing and influencer agency.
• 4:53
  So my background prior to starting entrepreneur was was
• 4:58
  marketing. And when Stephanie, my business
• 5:01
  partner and I decided to start the agency back in 2011, it was
• 5:05
  actually started as a side hustle.
• 5:07
  We were both working in corporate America.
• 5:09
  Then May 4th of 2012, we decided to quit our corporate for jobs,
• 5:13
  take that leap of faith and and start a business.
• 5:16
  And through that initial journey, we started to create
• 5:21
  organically a community of founders that we could go to for
• 5:25
  support. And then quickly it got a lot of
• 5:28
  traction because of the women that we had on the show, our own
• 5:32
  personal know how in terms of how to market a show.
• 5:35
  And then flash forward to 2020, women were leaving the workforce
• 5:39
  at such a rapid pace. I mean, a lot of people were,
• 5:41
  but the stats really reflected that, that women were or really
• 5:46
  the ones at a disproportionate rate leaving, leaving their
• 5:49
  jobs. And they were coming to us for
• 5:51
  advice on how to grow and start a business.
• 5:53
  And that's when we realized that there was a community here that
• 5:58
  really needed our support. And the information that
• 6:02
  Stephanie and I had gotten to learn over the, over the, at
• 6:06
  that point years into entrepreneurship.
• 6:08
  So that in 2020, we decided to spin off Entrepreneur stuff from
• 6:11
  the agency. We decided that Stephanie would
• 6:14
  run Entrepreneur and I would continue to grow and scale
• 6:17
  social flies. And we've funded everything.
• 6:20
  And then when Entrepreneurs was able to kind of be a business
• 6:25
  that could sustain itself, that's when we realized it was
• 6:28
  time to sell the agency. What an incredible journey.
• 6:31
  But I think, I mean, what's cool like is this sort of gradual but
• 6:35
  sort of deliberate sort of transition from like, hey, this
• 6:38
  is this passion project to something that like is
• 6:41
  meaningful to the listeners to then like, wow, the listeners
• 6:43
  really want something more. And then there's actually a
• 6:46
  business here. Like was there like 1
• 6:48
  monetization idea where you're like, we shouldn't just go after
• 6:51
  that because that would have broken trust with this community
• 6:53
  or with your network or maybe more?
• 6:55
  Definitely a lot of things now where we say no.
• 6:58
  Stephanie and I are are entrepreneur.
• 7:02
  We started this because we really understand how hard it is
• 7:05
  to grow a business, be an entrepreneur, get through all of
• 7:09
  the challenges. So when we created it, we
• 7:12
  designed it to be everything that we wish we had when we
• 7:15
  first started and even everything that we need now as
• 7:19
  founders on their second company.
• 7:22
  We always developed solutions with that in mind.
• 7:28
  We never, we were never like, oh, should we do this?
• 7:30
  Because it's not, it's not in support of the community.
• 7:33
  We were always very focused on what the community needed.
• 7:37
  I think now, you know, sometimes we'll get approach for
• 7:40
  partnerships and we're very, we're very picky on who we
• 7:44
  choose as partners because we don't want to lose that trust
• 7:48
  with our community. We don't want anyone in the
• 7:51
  community to waste time with tools and solutions that just
• 7:53
  don't make sense. So for us, now that we're five
• 7:57
  years into running entrepreneur, it's very important for us that
• 8:01
  we don't put any anything in front of the community that just
• 8:04
  doesn't make sense. I'm, I'm like having a lot of
• 8:07
  emotional reaction to the stories you're telling because I
• 8:10
  also run what most would call an agency and I'm like, should I go
• 8:13
  start a community? This seems pretty cool.
• 8:16
  You've built membership events and recognition programs.
• 8:19
  How do you know when a community is is actually working?
• 8:23
  So community is such a buzzword right now, and everyone says
• 8:27
  that they have a community. And right now what we're
• 8:31
  realizing is people are confusing a following with
• 8:34
  community, and they're two very, very different things.
• 8:37
  Community is really a private place where you're bringing
• 8:41
  people together so that they can interact with each other and
• 8:45
  that's what we've created at at Entrepreneista and how we know
• 8:49
  that it's working is that people are sharing about all the things
• 8:53
  that they've been able to accomplish through the
• 8:55
  connections and the visibility that they get through
• 8:58
  Entrepreneur. We hear it every single day,
• 9:01
  which is really what keeps us going because it's definitely a
• 9:04
  tough business. It requires a lot of energy to
• 9:07
  run a community and you constantly have to pour into it.
• 9:10
  But it's it's so worth it because every day we see
• 9:14
  messages all over social media and even, you know, we even get
• 9:18
  text messages about how entrepreneista has been life
• 9:21
  changing for a lot of women. And and yeah, that's how we know
• 9:25
  it's working. That's awesome.
• 9:27
  And you, you mentioned like not to use that as a kind of a North
• 9:30
  Star metric. What, what are the metrics that
• 9:32
  you look at? How do you know when you know
• 9:34
  you need to kind of steer the ship in a different direction or
• 9:36
  or make a change? Really what we on the community
• 9:38
  side, so we're a media business and a community.
• 9:41
  So on the community side, how we know it's working is that people
• 9:45
  are are joining the membership and they are, are very engaged.
• 9:49
  They're very engaged in our private community platform,
• 9:51
  which we host on Circle and we look at those engagement stats.
• 9:55
  We have been told that our community is more engaged than
• 10:00
  than a lot of others in that platform.
• 10:03
  And people are posting, you know, every few minutes in
• 10:06
  there. We hear stories about when
• 10:08
  people do their intro posts, they get clients right away,
• 10:11
  they set up coffee chats right away, they get visibility right
• 10:14
  away. So that's, that's what we're
• 10:16
  looking at is, is constantly asking the community for
• 10:19
  feedback and and then listening to what they need and making
• 10:23
  sure that by joining they're actually getting meaningful
• 10:27
  results for their business. When you sort of set up and
• 10:30
  design the monetization around that, it's like, OK, there's a
• 10:32
  membership. It's like maybe there's
• 10:34
  different tiers to the membership.
• 10:35
  Do you guys also kind of look at cohorts?
• 10:37
  We're like, hey, we're going to do like an 8 week or six week
• 10:39
  Sprint for something. And that's like extra like how
• 10:41
  do you think about the like the community monetization efforts?
• 10:44
  I mean, the media ones, I get it's like ads and sponsorships,
• 10:47
  but like when you look at like building a monetization plan for
• 10:50
  a community, what is your sort of best practices if you were
• 10:53
  saying does that to somebody out there that's building a
• 10:55
  community, you know this year? So when we decided to launch the
• 10:58
  community in 2021, we already had a following and our own
• 11:02
  private community through our own personal connections and we
• 11:06
  really built the built the initial phase of the community
• 11:09
  off of that. Now flash forward to, you know,
• 11:13
  today our community has over 3600 members and we've added
• 11:18
  additional tiers based on what the community has said that they
• 11:22
  wanted. But when we first launched, we
• 11:25
  launched with, you know, the base level membership, which is
• 11:28
  still similar to like it's definitely evolved in terms of
• 11:32
  pricing and, and our offering. But we still have the initial
• 11:36
  initial intro package, if you will, or initial initial info
• 11:41
  intro membership to the community.
• 11:43
  And then we've added on different tiers, we've added on
• 11:45
  those. We call it power groups is that
• 11:48
  entrepreneur where we do these short sprints where we bring
• 11:50
  like minded entrepreneurs together to solve something
• 11:53
  specific in their business. What we've done is we've brought
• 11:56
  agency owners together to meet for you know, years, which has
• 12:01
  actually turned into several years.
• 12:03
  And those are smaller groups of about 10 women.
• 12:06
  And then we've done some others where, you know, we're bringing
• 12:08
  together women that want to build their own communities.
• 12:12
  And we've done, you know, 8 to 12 weeks sprints, bringing in a
• 12:15
  seasoned founder who has launched several communities to,
• 12:20
  to really lead that group. Really how we've designed it is
• 12:24
  whenever we launch something, we want it to be founder LED, which
• 12:28
  is a little different than how some other smaller groups are
• 12:33
  are run. Usually they're facilitator LED.
• 12:35
  But for us, we really want to give women the perspective of
• 12:39
  women that have actually been in their shoes and done it.
• 12:43
  So yeah, there's and we're still testing.
• 12:45
  We're still, you know, we listen to what the community needs and
• 12:47
  then we Co build what it is. And that's how you run things.
• 12:52
  So you you have this exit, right?
• 12:54
  And and you could have said, okay, I just made some money.
• 12:58
  I sold my company and, and you could have slowed down, but you
• 13:01
  went, you know what, I see this big opportunity, I'm going to
• 13:04
  keep going. I'm going to push harder.
• 13:05
  I'm going to start over again. Basically like you had an idea,
• 13:08
  but you know, you had to start from basically zero.
• 13:11
  What what was that like? What was that thing pushing you
• 13:14
  to build again? Our situation is very different
• 13:17
  in that we started Entrepreneur while we had the agency.
• 13:21
  So we didn't have a break to figure out, oh, what am I going
• 13:25
  to do next because we already started the next thing.
• 13:28
  And maybe if I didn't have entrepreneurs, I would have
• 13:30
  taken, could have taken a break. Entrepreneista has when I, when
• 13:34
  I left the agency, which was last year.
• 13:36
  So we sold it in 2024, left officially at the beginning of
• 13:40
  2025. You know, the Stephanie had been
• 13:42
  running it really without me for the time that we split
• 13:46
  everything up, which was in 2020.
• 13:48
  The agent entrepreneur has been growing so quickly.
• 13:50
  It really needed my support. And I own half the company.
• 13:53
  So I was, I was always going to dive right into it to, to, to
• 13:59
  make it as impactful as it can be.
• 14:02
  I like it, yeah. And I think it makes, I mean,
• 14:03
  it's you almost had this kind of natural thing where it was more
• 14:06
  of a pull than a pusher. Like I'm not going to go
• 14:07
  something. It's like it needs me.
• 14:08
  I've got to go there. That's it's pretty interesting.
• 14:10
  You've said that IRL matters more.
• 14:12
  And I think before the show we were saying that after this,
• 14:14
  you're going to an IRL event. Like why is in person suddenly
• 14:18
  such a growth advantage again? And like, you know, what have
• 14:20
  you seen kind of in your community?
• 14:22
  I do all the in person things. We had brought our Vegas
• 14:25
  community together. We had 30 women, you know,
• 14:28
  meeting up there and then I was just at South by Southwest and
• 14:32
  we Co hosted 2 events. We did an all day event.
• 14:35
  It was about 200 women coming in and out throughout the day.
• 14:40
  Workshops, keynotes, a pool party, private dinner that we we
• 14:44
  Co hosted a breakfast with the Kendra Scott Foundation on that
• 14:49
  Sunday and had I think 150 women there.
• 14:52
  Does that tie into the monetization piece?
• 14:54
  Like is there like the events have a paid ticketing kind of
• 14:56
  thing so that you can cover costs or that's part of the bulk
• 14:58
  membership or how do you, again, I keep thinking like the
• 15:00
  business part of this because I'm just always super, super
• 15:02
  curious. Evan's like, how do you make the
• 15:04
  money? Tell us more.
• 15:05
  What money? How?
• 15:06
  You design this, it's hard, right?
• 15:08
  Like this is hard. Like throwing parties is hard
• 15:10
  and then throwing parties that have ticketing on a regular
• 15:12
  basis and the US, that's hard. Yeah.
• 15:16
  So we're with, we're very resourceful.
• 15:19
  We try to accomplish a lot of things with the same amount of
• 15:22
  effort. So in terms of the business
• 15:24
  model, it's part sponsorships and part memberships.
• 15:28
  We want our membership to be very attainable to as many women
• 15:34
  entrepreneurs as possible, and we're very proud that we've been
• 15:37
  able to attract the caliber of women that we've been able to
• 15:40
  attract, even though the women in the community are at all
• 15:44
  levels. And really what attracts people
• 15:47
  to entrepreneur is the mindset that women helping women really
• 15:53
  just helps the overall women entrepreneur ecosystem and we
• 15:57
  all rise together. So and then we also have
• 16:00
  different tiers of memberships too.
• 16:02
  It's A1 size of one-size-fits-all approach.
• 16:06
  You know, you pay one fee and you get all of these things even
• 16:08
  though you may not want them or need them.
• 16:11
  We've designed it so that you can buy the level of support
• 16:15
  that you need at the time that you need it.
• 16:17
  And we have a base level offering that's very affordable
• 16:21
  so that everyone can stay in the community.
• 16:23
  For, does that mean you can't go to events without going up a
• 16:26
  tier or or does the base level include certain events?
• 16:28
  So with the events, some of them are ticketed.
• 16:32
  So we're doing every two years I should say, although we're going
• 16:35
  to change it next year. We're doing our annual retreat.
• 16:38
  So that is what I'm heads down planning right now.
• 16:40
  It's about can be about 300 women from our community for
• 16:45
  four days at the PGA Resort in Palm Beach Gardens.
• 16:48
  That is a that does have a fee associated with it because it's
• 16:52
  a four day experience for our meetups.
• 16:56
  There are no, if a member is leading it, usually we'll like
• 16:59
  try to bring in a sponsor, but we don't charge our members to
• 17:03
  attend those events. And sometimes we'll allow for
• 17:06
  our members to bring their friends to those events.
• 17:09
  And when they bring their friends to those events, then
• 17:11
  it's an opportunity for them to learn more about entrepreneur
• 17:14
  and join. So that's, that's how we're
• 17:17
  running events right now. We're creating everything super
• 17:21
  fast. So ask me in three months, ask
• 17:24
  me in a year what our strategy book will be.
• 17:26
  But right now our strategy is we monetize the events by allowing
• 17:31
  our members to bring some friends.
• 17:33
  Sometimes we'll keep it members only and we'll charge for that,
• 17:36
  or sometimes they're sponsored. You're also, I think, an
• 17:39
  investor in an advisor, right? What signals kind of tell you
• 17:43
  that an audience can turn into a real business?
• 17:46
  I imagine you're pretty pretty expert in that area at this
• 17:49
  point. In terms of, you know, me as an
• 17:51
  investor and advisor, I'm really looking at the founder and do do
• 17:56
  I feel confident that this person is going to be able to
• 18:02
  deal with the ups and downs of entrepreneurship and, and stay
• 18:05
  committed to what the mission is and, and make sure that make
• 18:10
  sure that they achieve it and there's a return for all
• 18:12
  investors. I am newer to Angel investing.
• 18:16
  I think I started in 2020 and none of my investments have
• 18:21
  exited yet. The only exit exit that I've had
• 18:24
  is my own. So I, I'm all about betting on
• 18:27
  myself. But yeah, for me, when I'm
• 18:29
  deciding to invest, I'm really just looking at the founder and
• 18:33
  do I believe in that person? And then I'm also looking at who
• 18:35
  are the other people that are also investing.
• 18:38
  There are some investors that I know very well, I'm very good
• 18:42
  friends with. When I hear they're investing, I
• 18:44
  like to get involved. How do you think about like I
• 18:46
  did a bunch of Angel investing and over the time it's always
• 18:49
  like, you know, how can I be helpful?
• 18:50
  There's a community angle here, there's an audience angle here.
• 18:53
  Like there are a marketing angle here.
• 18:54
  Do you? How much of that have you seen?
• 18:56
  I mean, for me as an investor, I think about how can
• 18:59
  Entrepreneursta support this? Is this something that I can
• 19:03
  help? Because beyond money, what I
• 19:05
  know founders need is access, connections, visibility.
• 19:10
  And through what we are doing at Entrepreneursta, I can, I can
• 19:14
  give a founder a lot of visibility, distribution and
• 19:19
  connections. When I'm thinking about what do
• 19:22
  I invest in, I'm like, OK, is this product something that
• 19:25
  supports sports, the problems that entrepreneurs are facing.
• 19:30
  So you're pretty open, Courtney, about the hard kind of parts,
• 19:34
  the pivots, the burnout, heartbreak.
• 19:37
  Personally, how do you keep showing up publicly through all
• 19:39
  those things? Meditation.
• 19:41
  So I meditate every single morning.
• 19:43
  I try to meditate every single morning.
• 19:45
  It's definitely not perfect at it.
• 19:47
  I've done a lot of work, you know, myself, gone to lots of
• 19:51
  different retreats. Very big into personal
• 19:54
  development, really getting a handle on your mindset,
• 19:58
  recognizing patterns. I, I try to stay as positive as
• 20:03
  possible and I try to also remind myself when things get
• 20:07
  hard that it's only temporary. And I've been through so many
• 20:10
  challenges in my life and gotten through them.
• 20:13
  And this is, you know, when I'm ever faced with a challenge, I,
• 20:15
  I have kind of like a talk with myself and remind myself of
• 20:19
  that. What are the next generation of
• 20:21
  audience First businesses look like?
• 20:22
  Like how would you do it if you were starting today?
• 20:25
  So everything I everything's about AIAIAI and to be honest
• 20:30
  with you, I feel very insecure when it comes to AI because I'm
• 20:33
  doing everything the old fashioned way, which is human
• 20:37
  1st and I feel very behind when it comes to AI.
• 20:40
  So if I was starting a new Business Today, it would
• 20:43
  probably be something that really leveraged AI, although
• 20:48
  that just right now at least, it just doesn't come natural to me.
• 20:52
  So I also believe that founders need to stick to their strengths
• 20:55
  and not go know where the trends are if it doesn't come natural
• 20:58
  to them. So that would be my advice in
• 21:01
  terms of how we've built the community.
• 21:05
  And if you know, we've launched it as a podcast.
• 21:07
  It started as a podcast and then evolved because we saw that we
• 21:11
  were organically building a following and the following
• 21:15
  needed more support, which a community would would solve.
• 21:20
  I would say I don't know. I would say it really depends.
• 21:24
  Kevin's a kit convert, kit guy, you know, every got their people
• 21:27
  like Beehive, you know, charge. For it though, like people are
• 21:30
  charging for their sub stacks. Well, you haven't said enough
• 21:32
  smart stuff yet to charge. That's the that's the trick.
• 21:35
  I'm. Maybe, maybe you can, yeah,
• 21:36
  Kits, a partner of ours and I'll be at their conference later
• 21:40
  this year, so. Courtney, if we, we asked this
• 21:43
  sometimes because I think the answer is really illuminating,
• 21:45
  like if you had to start a new thing today, like if you, you're
• 21:48
  like, I'm going to found something.
• 21:49
  What's the space that you're most excited about?
• 21:50
  What are you like, man, this is so cool.
• 21:52
  I would build a business in this particular category knowing all
• 21:55
  the things you know and and being through the stuff you've
• 21:56
  been through. So you asked me this question
• 21:58
  earlier. If I had, why did I jump into
• 22:01
  another company when I just sold one?
• 22:03
  And you know, you never want to say never, but.
• 22:07
  Not starting another company. I'm very focused on Otra
• 22:10
  Fredista right now and very excited by the work that we're
• 22:14
  doing for the women entrepreneur community.
• 22:17
  And I today, in this moment, don't have the energy to start
• 22:22
  another business. And I, I don't want to.
• 22:26
  I would love to just continue to give advice to others who want
• 22:29
  to. That said, I could totally
• 22:32
  change my mind. I started a robe company called
• 22:34
  Work Robe. It was a line of robes for women
• 22:40
  that are working from home that was professional on top and you
• 22:43
  know, you're really wearing a robe behind the scenes.
• 22:46
  So for me, I always start businesses based on my own
• 22:50
  personal passions and problems that I'm facing at the time.
• 22:54
  And today I'm very happy with with what I'm doing now.
• 22:58
  And I, there's no, for me personally, there's no business
• 23:01
  that I want to start for other people think that learning about
• 23:06
  AI is very, very important and you should probably start a
• 23:09
  business in that space. It's all I hear about.
• 23:12
  Good answer. So good Courtney, this has been
• 23:15
  awesome. Like where can people follow
• 23:16
  your work or get involved with what you're doing or join the
• 23:18
  community? Yes, you can go to
• 23:20
  entrepreneur.com and you can sign up for our newsletter.
• 23:25
  We should have a weekly newsletter that comes out every
• 23:28
  Tuesday. We have our member newsletter
• 23:30
  too, so I always confuse the days that come out in every
• 23:32
  Monday. So every week you'll get a
• 23:34
  newsletter and then you can join us in the entrepreneurial
• 23:39
  league, which is our private community where we're doing some
• 23:42
  really incredible things and women are growing their
• 23:46
  businesses really, really quickly through the network that
• 23:49
  we have built. And then you can follow me
• 23:51
  personally on Instagram and LinkedIn.
• 23:54
  That's where I'm most active. Courtney, this, this has been
• 23:56
  great. Very honest, very tactical, very
• 23:59
  real. Thanks for joining us.
• 24:00
  Thanks for having me. That was a great conversation.
• 24:03
  Courtney's not just building a community.
• 24:05
  She's built a playbook for how you go from side hustle to
• 24:07
  agency to exit the agency to community business.
• 24:11
  And, you know, looking back, like every step felt quite
• 24:14
  intentional. Yeah.
• 24:15
  And the thing that stuck with me is her clarity on the difference
• 24:18
  between a following and a community.
• 24:20
  A following watches you. A community talks to each other.
• 24:22
  That distinction is everything. All right, Kevin, what are the
• 24:24
  founder mode? Five key takeaways.
• 24:26
  Yeah, top five today. I mean, I guess that you, you
• 24:29
  said the first one. Really.
• 24:29
  This following is not a community, I think #2 is this
• 24:33
  build from your own pain, right? She really was like trying to
• 24:36
  find and sort of explore the stories herself and that her and
• 24:38
  her Co founder sort of used that as the the launch really like
• 24:41
  digging into some of the monetization ideas like monetize
• 24:44
  in tears. You know, one size doesn't fit
• 24:47
  all. And then honestly just be
• 24:48
  testing, right. She's trying different events
• 24:49
  and trying different ideas and open to really see, you know,
• 24:52
  what resonates with the community and how that can be
• 24:54
  work, you know, work. And then I think IRL being a
• 24:57
  growth engine, not just, you know, a cost center of right,
• 25:00
  Hey, you spend money and you throw events.
• 25:01
  It's like, no, that helps bring new people together.
• 25:03
  That helps engage the existing community.
• 25:05
  Pretty and pretty powerful. And then this final point, which
• 25:08
  I think was really interesting on the sort of small groups,
• 25:11
  it's like founder LED versus facilitators, right?
• 25:14
  You don't want somebody just kind of guiding and conducting.
• 25:16
  You want somebody who's kind of been there in the trenches with
• 25:18
  you to have that discussion, but also have that shared history or
• 25:22
  perspective that they can offer to really make a difference.
• 25:25
  If you're thinking about turning your audience into a community,
• 25:28
  or you're already running 1 and want to get sharper about
• 25:30
  monetization, send this episode to a friend.
• 25:33
  And if you haven't already, subscribe to Founder Mode.
• 25:35
  Leave us a review so more founders and operators can find
• 25:37
  the pod. Link to Courtneys work and the
• 25:39
  Entrepreneurista community are in the show notes.
• 25:41
  That's a wrap, because 1000 followers will never beat 30
• 25:45
  people in a room who actually help each other.