How this entrepreneur built a community of 3 million members in 5 years

Imagine this scenario: you’ve spent months, perhaps years with your team building a product to launch and launch day has finally arrived.

What do you do?

Send out an email to friends and family?

Post on Facebook?

Perhaps list it on Amazon?

This is a scenario that, many business owners go through and most of them can agree on one thing: product launches are challenging.

Photo credit: Pixabay

But, what if there is a better way? What if you already had a list of people who trusted you? Some savvy entrepreneurs seem to have found it and it lies in the building of a community before your product ever launches. In fact, this is exactly what Lewis Howes, Neil Patel, Sujan Patel and other successful entrepreneurs do.

Community building has become a hot trend these days, and it’s all centered around the idea that if you can build a community, establish trust, thought leadership and prove you can help them, you can have a nearly guaranteed customer base when launch day rolls around.

Push versus pull marketing

The reason that community building is becoming so popular is because it follows a far different dynamic of selling compared to what companies have done in the past to market their product. Before, marketing was about eyeballs. Newspaper ads, TV ads, and radio which were used in the past follow the push method of advertising. According to data, however, consumers have grown numb to this style of marketing and now pull marketing is where marketers are turning their attention to.

 Before, marketing was about eyeballs.

Instead of blasting your message in front of people that don’t know you, this new style of marketing involves pulling the customer in and establishing a relationship with them, then at a later date, selling them a product or service. This process of relationship-first selling is the reason why marketers are buzzing about communities.

One of the most well-known experts in community building on the internet is Drew Canole, who runs fitlife.tv. Just a few years ago, Drew Canole was in Florida working in the world of finance, earning a six figure salary, and driving around in luxury cars. But despite the success, or perhaps because of it, his personal health was not a priority, and it began to suffer.

The back story

On a particularly stressful afternoon spent at the office, a friend offered him a green juice. The drink was packed with nutrients that he rarely got elsewhere, and he immediately noticed a difference. He had more energy, his mind cleared, and his mood improved.

Three million and growing