👾 Leveling Up 👾

Welcome to Leveling Up. Today’s newsletter is a 4-minute read. 

Here’s what we’re going to cover: 

• Creating the perfect prompt

• Six things you need to run a business

• How much money online communities make

Want a detailed marketing plan to hit your growth goals? Request yours for free here.

Thanks,

Eric Siu :)

Actionable Tip

Looking to create the most accurate prompts for ChatGPT?

Most people ignore AI because they don’t know how to use it.

Here is a guide which reverse engineers the perfect prompt, outlining the structure, clarity and sample outputs.

Check out the guide here (link).

Links You Might Like

Here are some of the best links I’ve found since our last email. 

🎯 Sales

The 10 reasons people buy (link)

💌 Email

50 cold email templates, for free (link)

📊 Social Media

The quickest path to your first 1,000 followers (link)

📈Growth

To acquire or not acquire? (link)

🏢 Business

The six things you need to run a successful business (link)

Deep Dive: Create Your Own Content

There are online communities easily doing around $250k/mo ($3m annualized) and it's kinda insane. 

Most are run through Skool, a program started by Sam Ovens, and heavily invested in by Alex Hormozi.

Here are some examples of the biggest channels on there.

Rank Academy has 242 members charging $999/mo ($241k/mo). They're dedicated to helping French speakers make more money online.

Adonis School has 2k members charging $129/mo ($258k/mo). They're dedicated to, well, what it says below: business, brotherhood, and seduction. No judgment – works for them.

Sure, you can argue that churn is probably high with most members staying 3-4 months or so. But I don't think that's the case with the best communities.

For example, I've been in YPO for 4 years, and prior to that, I was in EO for 7 years. That's 11 years of being in business communities.

The ROI has been insane.

For example, at Single Grain, we recently signed a client doing 9 figures who happened to be a YPOer. The sales cycle was far shorter and they were easier to talk to because of our shared bond. 

The reality is that all high performers want to hang out with like-minded people. People long for community.

Here are the hallmarks of a great community:

• A safe space to have discussions

• The ability for people to connect with one another

• Forums, or small groups, of members that meet once a month to share their wins and losses, and to help each other solve their problems. Yes, like group therapy.

• In-person events

• Satellite networks that form because people have different interests 

If you're able to integrate these elements into your community, your churn is going to be far lower than a typical online community. Why? Because your monthly recurring VALUE will surpass 99% of other groups.

And that's how you keep your monthly recurring revenue up.

I've been a big proponent of these groups over the years because the benefits have been enormous. And now with awesome products like Skool, you can easily create your own community.

Some people choose to charge for their communities, and some people choose to offer a free community to get people indoctrinated with their teachings so they can upsell them later.

There's no right or wrong – just what works for you.

@neilpatel and I recently formed the Agency Owner's Association. Although we're both YPOers, we wanted to have a group dedicated to helping agency owners grow faster.

Throughout the next few months, I'm going to be sharing how we're growing this group organically. Both Neil and I have our primary businesses to run, but this will be a fun 'build in public' case study and I'll be sharing our wins and losses here.

Right now, the group is at about $2,700 MRR and the price is at $149/mo with no long-term commitment. The 'upsell' is an in-person mastermind where people can join Neil and me in Beverly Hills but it's invite-only for people doing 7-figures or more.

We haven't started scaling this yet because we want to nail down the offering before we ramp it. As the group grows, we'll probably increase the price based on the increased value that we'll add over time. 

We have a great community manager that's quarterbacking the thing and I hop on and engage with the group frequently. Eventually, the group will become self-sustaining. 

I have no doubt that this community will break 7-figures over time and since this is our side project, I'm happy to share progress with real numbers over time. 

If you're an agency owner and you want to join the group, you can join here – no strings attached – (link).

How I Can Help You

If you enjoy this newsletter and would like to collaborate with me, there are a few options available:

1. You can apply to work with my agency (link)

2. You can join my Skool community (link)

3. You can apply to join my mastermind (link)

Interested in working at Single Grain? We have some new open roles:

• Paid Media Manager (link)

• SEO Manager (link)