Harms: Today we’re very much focused on Tribe. 

We are working through the process of the BATON system. 

It’s a system where you put an idea, service, product through the process and ultimately makes you a profit. 

We’re moving onto the next stage, which is okay, people are listening to us amazing, how do we get them to go from listening to liking, trusting, and knowing us a bit more in order to maybe think about transacting with us. 

Transacting can be purchasing, it can be giving to a charity, it can be coming to see you speak live, depending on what your informational product is going to be around. 

We spoke about emphasizing the use of a digital product to start with.

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Tribe Introduction

Harms: What is a tribe?

Kyle: We are using the term tribe which has a lot of meaning specifically based on the definition by Seth Godin. 

Seth Godin is an Internet marketer who has been around longer than most internet marketers. He was there in the early 2000’s when internet marketing was a new thing. 

He’s been there through the light and dark of internet marketing, he’s written a number of really good books but the one we’re talking about in particular is tribes.

We’re borrowing his concept of a tribe and specifically he gives the definition of tribe as a group of people who are connected by an idea and a leader. 

We’re talking about bringing together this tribe, community around us based on the ideas we’ve been putting out into the world and getting people to interact with each other. 

To interact with us and deepen that level of connection, trust and them moving people along towards the offer stage.

Harms: One of the things that comes up in discussion is what you mean by tribe? 

How big does this need to be and that’s something we often get. We spoke about the idea of identifying an audience size for one million people. 

That’s a nice indicator to say there’s a market size that exists that potentially you can gain some customers from, the people will listen to you and then you can start to introduce your idea, your business into that market space. 

But what we’re telling people is you don’t need that million. 

Is that right?

Kyle: We start with an audience of around a million, that’s a good rule of thumb for reaching out to the wider world when nobody knows who you are, nobody knows what you do going to about one million people is about right. 

Because you can reach that number of people without spending too much money online.

If you go for a billion people, or hundred million people you need a budget, it requires cash to get to those people. We start with an audience at one million but what we’re talking about now is the tribe. 

Of those million people most people aren’t going to care about what you do, people have other things going on in their life. 

Maybe your message is good for them, but they’re not necessarily going to resonate with it at this time. Maybe they’ll come back to you in a few years’ time. 

But right now of those million people not everyone is going to be interested and that’s fine. The internet and the world is a big, big, big place and we do not need a million people, or hundred million people to make our online business work. Instead when we’re talking about the tribe we’re talking about starting with that million people and filtering it down so we have a thousand people. 

If we get 1,000 people we’re good to go.

Harms: We’re starting with the concept of this is a new business we’re not going to throw hundreds of thousands of pounds at in terms of marketing spend. 

There are companies that do that, but that’s not the purpose of this guide. 

The other question is okay one thousand people is that enough? 

Can I make a business off that? 

Can I make money off that? 

How can you explain this to people?

Kyle: If you think about selling those thousand people one item then maybe not. Maybe it is not a solid business for you to have here, but we are talking about a value ladder, a process that allows us to sell to the same people multiple products or services. 

So at that point once we look at the long tail of those thousand people it becomes a lot more profitable. 

Yes, if you’re selling them a one-dollar ebook and you have 1,000 people that’s $1,000, that’s limited. 

We’re not talking about that, we’re talking about continuing to provide value to sell services. With a thousand people you can still build a very sustainable and profitable online business. 

There’s another article, so Kevin Kelly he is not quite as famous as Seth Godin but is still influential. He wrote an article a long time ago about one thousand true fans. He is talking about exactly this, that the internet is a big place and there are a lot of people out there but you do not need to capture the attention of a sizable chunk of the internet, you just need the tiniest percentage.

If you have a thousand people.

Yes, if you send them a one-dollar e-book that’s only $1,000. 

What if you get them on a subscription offer though and say $7 per month or £7 per month. For each of those people seven dollars is not much, but if you have one thousand of them paying that consistently then you’ve got $7,000 per month coming in. 

Suddenly that’s a sizable income.

Harms: It allows you to really hone this business that you are creating.

Kyle: But to those one thousand people it is not much money. 

It’s a small purchase for them but it adds up to you. If you take it to a $30 a month offer, if you have those thousand people paying you that $30 a month, that is $30,000 a month.

Harms: One thousand becomes more realistic, rather than, I’ve got to get a million people paying £7 per month, so the thousand makes it more realistic and more tangible in terms of achieving this particular goal and also just simply realistic. 

That’s where we want to get to. 

However, there is a warning here, which is to even get to that thousand people requires some work, because often you set out to think one thousand people will come easy. 

No it requires work, and what you do within that work is what we’ve been talking about this week. 

Often we find solo entrepreneurs or freelancers or creative experts working around the £30 mark region because they don’t have the scale or the economy of scale. 

Or they don’t have the desire to have the economic scale of Netflix and Amazon, so there are pros and cons to lots of different pricing strategies. But the focus here is a thousand true fans.

The Idea

Harms: The next part we want to move on to is Kyle, you mentioned the concept of a tribe being connected to you and following essentially you, the idea, the concept of something which is like-minded. 

Let’s hone in on the idea because Kyle mentioned with a million people they’re listening to your message, but when you’re honing in on the thousand true fans you’re getting them to hone in on the idea and you. 

Now there’s a focus and a connection to the idea and you. 

The audience is great and that’s where you’re going to have to create the content machine, when it comes to the tribe this is what really makes a difference because, ultimately, we’ve sifted away the people who may be curious. 

There might be people who are vaguely interested or just scrolling through the newsfeed, but now within the tribe they’re very much aligning with us and what we’re talking about. 

Which is the focus around the idea.

Kyle: We have to remember we are moving people towards a sale as this is still a business. 

We are using our expertise and knowledge to educate people. 

Yes, absolutely. That’s all about giving. We are moving people towards sales and that requires building trust. 

Without trust, we’re not going to make that sale, and if we do have trust that sale becomes really easy. 

Whenever we offer, people tend to lap up because we’ve built this good will and trust over time. The tribe is where what you’re saying needs to match up with what you’re doing, you need to have congruence, extreme consistency between what you’re putting out there, your educational content and then how you are delivering to your tribe. 

The message we’re putting out to the audience is fine but once they start to interact with you it’s not just a broadcast they’re actually going to interact with you.

You really need to nail down how you are interacting, how you are showing up in the world because that’s why they are in the tribe. 

If you suddenly diverge from that people are going to leave. 

Yes you might have people coming in from the audience and they join your tribe but they get there and you’re something else, you’re doing something else. 

There is a mismatch of values, mission, and all that excitement and goodwill, will evaporate very quickly. 

The idea that you base your tribe around is going to be so important and you might not know what is straightaway. 

As you start to shape that tribe and communicate with the thousand people, you need to start thinking about the core of that mission and those values. 

I know it gets a bit floppy at this point

Harms: But this is important to your tribe, their vibe, the way they interact with you will be a true reflection of what you are putting out there. 

So if your tribe is just repelling you that’s a reflection of you. If the tribe is sticking to and saying everything you’re saying is in value alignment with the whole message consistently so far, then that’s also a reflection on you. 

Whether you piss them off or whether you get them to love you, whether they like you, whatever it is, it is going to be a reflection of what you are putting out.

 One of the dangers is to blame the audience to blame the tribe and say this is not the right kind of people, they’re not the people who are going to buy from me. 

Actually that’s going to be a reflection on you. 

Just keep that in mind as we work through this process because if we can get a consistent value alignment with the people that we’re serving, or we hope to serve with our informational product. 

Then we’ve got a perfect match.

Now the next thing we spoke about was very much focusing on selling and the idea that this is a business, yes it’s great to share a positive message with amazing people, but ultimately we need to generate revenue for this, pay the bills, all of those survival things. 

Plus then flourish, and this is a great business to really flourish in, in the sense that you’re selling your knowledge, value, your wisdom with an amazing informational product. Which is a great place to be and a great place to serve people as well as.

Kyle: It’s a nice way to get paid as well. If you’re creating something that’s helping people and you get paid for that, so much is coming together at that point. 

You’re getting paid for doing something you enjoy doing. 

You’re getting paid to help people. It is wonderful.

Selling

Harms:  What we don’t want to do in terms of the sale is we don’t want to jump from the idea and start to sell to people immediately. 

What we don’t have is the likeness, the trusting, them knowing us. 

Instead we want to focus now on the tribe and almost go value overload and focus on serving, giving, helping that particular community. 

The focus right now is not to take money or offer a sale and this will happen naturally.

The expert funnel is very much based on trust and education and becoming an authority,

Kyle: Direct selling does work; it depends on the niche. 

It can work in this niche too but it is not the way we’re teaching. It is also expensive. In terms of examples probably one of the best is Tim Ferris. 

He wrote the four-hour workweek, he talks about online business, passive income, setting up businesses which work while you don’t work. 

Which is what we are aligned with. 

The main thing he does on a day-to-day basis is a podcast. He is just putting out content all the time, he has great guests. They are long form podcasts.

What he is doing there he is not giving it out from the generosity of his heart, he has sponsors and ads etcetera. 

But the big win there is you putting out gigantic amounts of value and people are listening to the value. 

They’re joining his tribe whether that’s via a newsletter or other ways of communicating with him. 

He is providing giving, giving, and giving, and when he does publish a new book he will talk about it on the podcast. He will sell millions and millions of books as he has built up that goodwill over time. 

So that’s the ask. 

Rather than splitting his time between here is a product now pay me, instead he is giving and overloading with value and once a year when his book comes out it’s like, if this stuff is of interest to you I’ve got a book summarising a lot of it and if you’ve been listening to me over the last two years, you’ll probably be aligned with what’s in it. And then his book will probably be in the bestsellers list for six months.

It’s a different way of doing business as it’s not tied specifically I’ve worked now you pay me. Instead it’s give, give, give, give and then a massive explosion of people. 

That’s the model we’re going to be using with the tribe.

Harms: Anything he wants to sell he can sell. That’s the position of authority and expert level he has positioned himself in the marketplace, so that’s where we need to understand this from. 

Because you may still not have identified exactly what you want to sell. 

What’s your perfect item at this early stage? 

It’s an informational product. If Tim Ferris said live hacking 101 as an informational product that would sell like crazy. 

There is no limit on it as it is a digital product, but it would sell out if it was a physical product. That’s the level of an expert we have. 

Again we don’t need to have a million plus download podcasts. 

We just need to maybe have one where a thousand true fans listen to again and again and again because now a percentage of those will purchase what we are selling in the offer stage.

Kyle: We can scale this up into the same level as someone like Tim Ferris, obviously it’s going to be dependent on charisma and other much higher skill levels. 

But we are laying the foundations for that kind of build, whereas a lot of people will try to jump straight to level.

Harms: Just to finalise that point scaling is the network part of the BATON model, so we don’t miss that out, we just don’t dive into it yet because we have to get this part done first.

Philosophy to practical

Kyle: We discussed the idea of the philosophy of the tribe.

Harms: We discussed the foundational element of what is a tribe. 

Why we’re building the tribe, what kind of numbers are associated with the tribe to get started, to get going. Of course we can scale and get large, there is no cap on whatever you want to do, but we are here to help you get started. 

Now let’s get practical with it and talk about some practical ways. In today’s world online digital world what does a tribe look like? What’s the best way to create a tribe? Communicate with a tribe? We want to shift from philosophy to practical.

Kyle: There are many ways to move people from an audience into a tribe. 

All of these can be useful, but we recognise you have limited time and energy. If you have to choose one thing to go with it’s easier to do that and you can bolt on the other methods later. 

Email newsletter

Kyle: The first classic here is an email newsletter. Whenever you go to certain blogs and websites there will be a pop up saying, signup you’ll get this free gift and join our newsletter or join our newsletter. 

This is digital marketing 101 and it works. 

Once you have someone’s email address that gives you permission to deliver and email straight into their inbox with your content, your sales message with whatever you want. Because they have given you your email.

If you were to send out spam emails without getting that consent your email would get shut down very quickly, but by getting somebody to come to your website and say yes.

What we are doing here is permission marketing. 

You need to get somebody’s permission and once they’ve given you permission, you can market to them. 

With email delivery and email servers in particular this is part of how email is built. If you send too many unsolicited emails your email address you are sending from and your email server will get slapped, it will just get shut down. 

Google will stop accepting those emails and they will not be delivered. 

We’re not talking about that; we’re talking about getting people to your website and getting permission to send them emails and then sending them the newsletters.

Harms: When we say right now is the time to send them a newsletter or an email campaign, what we want the focus to be on is again I’m going to anchor back to this constantly is, we’re not sending an email to sell them something. 

We’re continuously reminding them of the value that we are providing or providing value directly by the newsletter.

The newsletter itself is a piece of art, a piece of work that requires to be done. If you’re going to craft a newsletter that is a full-time business for some operations out there, whereas if you are doing what we said yesterday, you’re doing Facebook lives or YouTube lives. 

Whatever platform best suited you. 

Now once you shoot live you now have a recording which lives on your page or your group or your feed, your YouTube channel.

We can leverage this item, this piece of value and share it with them in the inbox.

If they click on it great. 

What we’re doing instead of selling them is just reminding them or making our valuable content accessible to them. 

That is very different from saying I’ve got a new informational product come and buy it. It is a different challenge. 

If you look at Tim Ferris he’s got an email newsletter called five bullet Friday. It’s five bullets which are links of useful things out there. 

Some of those links include his content, his podcast, a book he is currently selling. He may be an affiliate partner with somebody whatever that is, it will feature on that list. 

That’s an example of a valuable email versus just selling hard. So that’s email and it is classic. There are also some cons in the current climate.

Kyle: Every time we buy something online, every time we sign up to a blog and get a newsletter it just increases the volume of emails we’re getting. 

I probably received a couple hundred today. I don’t read all of them and what’s happened because we now receive so many emails, most of our email software, email programs will filter it out. 

Now you don’t want more email, so Gmail filters them into different tabs now.

You have an inbox where people will actually tend to read emails in their inbox, if you get into the inbox great. 

But most newsletters, promotional content will fall into the promotions tab or maybe into the social or notifications tab. 

It depends on how you set it up but there is already this prefiltering which means that if you are running a newsletter, more and more, it’s not going to be going into your inbox.

Which means more and more it’s not going to be read and not effective as it used to be.

Harms: The discussion here is not whether that’s a good thing, bad thing it’s a terrible thing for marketers. 

Especially if somebody has come to you and given you the permission to send them your valuable newsletter or article. 

But we’re just presenting the fact that, that is the case right now. 

We can use lots of tools, tactics, and techniques to try to get into people’s inbox, but they are exactly that. 

How long will these tools work for and tactics work for, until Gmail changes it. 

Because I don’t see them changing the promotion tab back to normal anytime soon.

What they are also wanting to do is, rather than a business benefit from your inbox they want a business to pay them advertising so that they feature at the top of your inbox. 

That being said we spoke about the great things and the strategies to implement which is we prefer you go value orientated and I did mention the fact that it’s more work for people. 

A newsletter is a hard task in its own sense, but there’s also another disadvantage with it which is, it’s a one-way communication.

Kyle: When we are moving into the tribe ideally we want yes, communication from our tribe members. 

We also want tribe members to communicate with us. 

This is when it starts to be a community and tribe members communicate with one another, which means it’s not all about you all the time. 

It is a community that’s growing organically around the idea. Yes, around you but that doesn’t require you to manage every single interaction. With email that doesn’t happen. 

Email is broadcast, it’s me talking to you, and that’s it. It’s not a good way to build a community. 

This is the equivalent of me standing on a box and yelling at people saying, hey, this is what’s important, I’m not listening to hear what they say back to me. 

Think this is a more important problem with email newsletters apart from technical things.

Harms: That being said, it is a strategy that can work. We’re not recommending it as the strategy.

However marketers continue to get results from them, you’ve just got to be a bit smarter. Let’s assume somebody does want a newsletter and would like to communicate with their tribe in that method. We use this within our businesses. 

We communicate and provide information to our tribe via a newsletter within some of the businesses that we operate. 

We’re not against it, we just want to make you aware of the good and the bad as well. If somebody wants a newsletter what’s the best place for them to start?

Kyle: The place you shouldn’t start is a software called Infusionsoft. It is now called Keap. 

It has a really good affiliate program so a lot of people will recommend it to businesses starting up because the person who recommends it gets paid a lot. Infusionsoft is historically being promoted a lot by people like myself and Harms, I’m telling you not to use it because it’s extremely expensive and it has too many features. 

It is very powerful. 

But if you are just wanting to get a newsletter you do not need 80% of the features. 

If you are a big e-commerce site with lots of customer segmentation remarketing etcetera, it’s great. 

Right now you don’t need that and it starts at $150 a month, so it’s too much.

The free and low-cost alternatives to start-up purely just for newsletters are Mailchimp and Awebber. I personally prefer Awebber as it’s cleaner. Mailchimp is the more popular one and they’re fine. 

Something a bit more advanced we personally use Drip. 

It’s like Infusionsoft but much more cost-effective, much simpler it’s more modern.

Forum

Harms: That’s email marketing in a nutshell. 

The next thing is another place to create, to host, to have a tribe be a part of and that place is a forum. Forum is another classic internet place and where a tribe lives. 

They often live on websites, there are websites as well, which operate completely as a forum. 

What are your thoughts on forums as a place to create, build a tribe.

Kyle: Forums are pretty old school. 

We now have things like Reddit which is like a forum on steroids. It’s a nest board. It’s a place where I can post a message and people can respond to that post and discussions start and that’s how a community can form. 

Unlike newsletters a forum allows for interaction. So an email newsletter is me talking to you that is it. 

A forum allows me to post something and you can all comment on it or other people might post and then they can talk amongst themselves. 

You have a lot more community than you do with a broadcast email.

Harms: Community increases and the way for people to interact increases because the advantage of a forum compared to email is, they can now conversate with you. 

If you were a business coach it could be the best HR practices. That will become a topic of discussion within the bigger discussion or the bigger niche, which is business coach. You can get even more granular and talk about different kinds of cases within HR challenges, so that’s the kind of way it would be structured. 

The advantage is people can now respond because most email newsletters don’t really work functionally with a reply mechanism. 

Some do, but most are saying here is a newsletter read this and love this, but I don’t want to speak to you, you can’t really reply to this newsletter. 

Whereas a forum opens the door to a response.

Kyle: One great thing about forums is they have become like a resource because a lot of people who are interested in the niche topic will be discussing it and the forum therefore becomes almost like a fossil record. Here is what we’re talking about and here is the discussion underneath. 

That’s quite interesting. 

One problem with that is because it is so permanent and forums do live for a very long time. People are a bit more careful about responding to a forum. 

You tend to have one or two people dominating which is fine but because some people are a bit more cautious. 

But it slows down the communication.

Harms: The other thing in regards to slowing down communication is the fact that if you respond you just don’t know when others are going to have that dialogue with you.

Kyle: Forum discussions tend to happen over weeks because you post something and someone will respond the next day. 

It’s like trading letters, which is fine, it’s just quite old school and if you want to create a buzz and a lot of excitement to your community forums are a bit slow for that.

Chat/Messaging apps

Kyle: What we’re covering next is something which is almost similar but polar opposite from a forum which is the idea that we can now chat instantly via some of these messenger apps. 

Again, it’s been around for a long time now. 

Those chat apps have evolved to live basically in any kind of platforms that exist. So Facebook messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram now have its own chat mechanisms internally. 

YouTube has a kind of chat mechanism. 

In terms of messaging apps they are probably the most popular.

Again let’s tie this back to building the tribe. 

What we’re talking about here is having a place for people to communicate. What some people are doing nowadays is getting people into chat Software. 

WhatsApp would be the most well-known example. There’s lot of WhatsApp groups popping up right now like local support groups.

Harms: I am in industry specific WhatsApp groups. 

Some of them are small in the context of a thousand true fans, but they’re large in the context of, people in this group are very much in this group. 

They are all interacting, reading comments. I’m in a couple and the smallest is about 25 people, the largest around 200 people and it’s an industry specific one. 

It originally started not so much around an expert individual, but instead off an idea around that particular niche and topic. 

So going back to the tribe concept people are flocking or talking via WhatsApp messenger group around an idea and then within that naturally pops up some experts that’s going to happen over time.

Kyle: That’s how we recommend you do it because you’re hosting the party, you’re the person inviting everyone into the group. 

Because you’re hosting the party you’re one of the experts, the leader of this particular group. so everyone else is there that puts you into a really strong position. 

If you’re also the expert, then it’s a very powerful tool to combine that community.

Harms: One of the big advantages of a WhatsApp group compared to what we spoke about so far is the ability to speak to people is instant. 

You can have a conversation instantly and you can support and serve your tribe very quickly. 

Or certainly there is a great indicator that people have read it so there’s a nice response mechanism there as well.

Kyle: Which is why many businesses are moving away from email towards things like chat messaging apps. 

Also why Facebook purchased WhatsApp, they’re not doing anything with it yet, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if we see sponsored messages. Unlike email we read our messages, we read chat messages whereas with email we do not. 

Because of that a lot of businesses are moving towards marketing via messaging just because it has more attention. 

This is why chat messaging apps have more high levels of engagement, higher levels of actually reading the messages than you would with email.

Harms: One of the disadvantages with that speed also comes a disadvantage which is if you take a forum post. 

It’s there, it lives there, it’s going to have a life. Somebody has curated that response whereas a chap is almost instant. It’s replying from the automatic part of our mind. 

Sometimes the responses become less important, less significant, and also can lead to less serious discussions. 

One of the challenges we have in the Slack group is whether or not it is industry specific, if it goes off on a tangent where everybody is trying to be the funniest person in the group. 

That’s just one of things to be aware of with your WhatsApp group because it doesn’t have a great mechanism of managing the group.

Part of that is the easy ability to instantaneously drop a message. 

On a forum for example if somebody said something funny you probably wouldn’t bother to type lol. 

Whereas on a messaging app even though there are 200 people there you might type lol. Which is a small interaction and on a messaging app fine but if you were to do that on a forum or something a bit slower, it would be a waste of space. 

So discussions do disappear very quickly. Plus, it’s a lot to deal with this. 

The main problem with WhatsApp in particular is that you are all in one channel and let’s say somebody starts a discussion about small business taxation and you actually want to know about that. 

Then somebody else posts a picture of a cat playing the piano and everything goes off on that tangent. 

It is very easy to get derailed by the sheer volume or for the valuable stuff to get hidden underneath the sheer volume.

We use Slack which is a messaging app which is still primarily used by businesses, tech start-ups, younger companies who need instantaneous communication via messaging because email is not really used. 

Slack is a tool that was built specifically for businesses but it is accessible by anyone. 

The main advantage is that when you have a slack channel, you can set up different channels within it. You could have different topics within your one slack workspace.

Which is very different to WhatsApp. WhatsApp is all in one place and it’s utter chaos, Slack allows you to segment off different chats.

You also have control of who can post what, how much you post and you have access to these tools if you need them. 

There’s a lot more power whereas with WhatsApp you do not get that.

Harms: Okay so we spoke about WhatsApp or simple. The advantage is it’s quick, it is one large discussion, it is a very familiar tool as most people are using WhatsApp. You may want to take them from your WhatsApp group to your Slack group. 

That’s one of the options, because Slack is another beast altogether. 

The disadvantages we spoke about now slack for example, is more of a professional tool where I think of this as the next level to a forum. 

It’s professional large companies using it, entrepreneurs use it, start-ups and this allows you the ability to manage focused discussions within specific topics.

Importantly it is free.

It probably comes with a learning curve and most people when approaching something new there is naturally a bit of resistance. 

You want to create a chat environment where you have some organisation, you have some calm amongst the chaos of conversation. 

Because it’s okay to chat to ten people but when you’ve got a thousand true fans in your tribe it’s going to get very busy, very quickly, so something like Slack very much helps.

Facebook group

Kyle: We have talked about messaging apps which are a fantastic way to build your tribe. It’s not the actual method we’re recommending as our top method. The top method is using a Facebook group. 

Using a Facebook group for the majority of you building an expert business is going to be the number one method. We talked about Facebook as the best general way to get out to a large audience because it has the most people on it. It has 1.2 or 1.3 billion users. 

This means that it is very easy to get people into your group, there is a lot less friction. Facebook groups now have amazing functionality, they have been adding lots of cool new stuff.

Two I want to highlight is the ability to go live straight into a group. 

If you’re already during live video as part of your audience work, you can also do live video into groups. 

You can start to do different content for the people who have opted into that group.

Harms: It’s like live broadcasting to a specific targeted audience and it is incredible. 

Unlike your Facebook page, your Facebook personal profile very often, the way it currently works your group members will get a notification that you’re going live. 

That notification appears right on the phone screen and that is extremely powerful. 

That has now allowed you to cut through all of the noise online and get straight to somebody’s screen and tell them you’re live. 

There is another thing called social learning units, which is quite new but an incredible tool as well.

Kyle: Normally in a Facebook group you post things and as time goes by, that post slowly goes down the page, whatever is new or the most active will be at the top. 

Social learning units allow you to make a more structured learning environment, which is useful if you are an expert. You can put in curriculum material let’s say I’m bringing people in based on education.

 I’m able to put them into a group where there’s a structured course of five videos they can go through.

Harms: For example we set up a training programme teaching a specific niche and it was property investors. 

How to grow their brand, how to improve property results, leveraging online tools. Amazing 12-week program.

We actually ran that as a product within the Facebook group and created social learning units and put the daily lessons, live video lessons within the social learning units, incredibly powerful. What it meant was we didn’t have to go create a website, host a course on a learning portal, give people usernames and passwords. 

It cuts all of that friction out and there are pros and cons, but it’s a great way for them to stay familiar with the platform they use, and actually dive into it.

The management of the group. 

Facebook has an incredible panel and ability to allow you to actually manage the group in the sense that you, your admin powers are amazing. 

The amount of detail you get as part of the admin is also incredible. 

Whereas a WhatsApp group you can either kick somebody out or allow them to join the features within a Facebook group are very much you can turn people’s post approval on, you can silence people within the group.

Kyle: This is individual people.

Harms: There are other elements where you can set up rules, if someone breaks a rule another member can flag that person up and say which rule they broke. 

You can automatically click a button which sends them a message saying you broke this rule and then you can then think about a process of post approval.

What’s the power of this? 

It is not so much that you have lots of control, it’s so you can keep your tribe safe from anything which deviates from the idea, concept, and the fact that they gave you permission to share your message with them. 

Rather than getting bombarded by lots of different things they did not subscribe, yet they’re receiving this crazy information, so that’s the power of it. 

That’s a Facebook group.

What to use?

Kyle: Coming back to the idea of the tribe, we are trying to create a space for them to communicate with us and amongst each other. 

It has been around for 10 years and they’ve been evolving over time and if you have been in a Facebook group before a few years ago, if you go to one nowadays it is very different because of the tools because of the powerful moderation ability. 

If you’re thinking Facebook groups are nonsense, not any more. They can be easily controlled.

Harms: What do we recommend or suggest people use? 

We’ve covered tribe, email newsletters as a mechanism and forums. 

Chat and messaging apps as a mechanism specifically we spoke about WhatsApp and Slack and then finally we discussed a Facebook group as another mechanism to host your tribe. 

To form your tribe to get people to a location in which they can interact with you as part of a tribe, rather than be the wider audience. 

How do we take care of them? 

How do we look after them and how do we get our message across to them to at some point gain the trust and the permission to then present them with the offer? 

We’re talking about creating a business here for your information expert product, that is the key. 

So what to use?

Kyle: One is it depends and the second is to use all of them. However, Facebook groups are going to be the best place to build up a safe space for you and your tribe. 

Or messaging using Slack if you want that level of intimacy, the ability to chat with people quickly. You could use both of them as well.

Harms: It also depends on your audience.

Your To-dos

Harms: To dos now off the back of what you’ve learned today is number one, essentially get the infrastructure in place. 

Everything we’ve spoken about is an application, piece of software and you can call them different mechanisms, different pieces of infrastructure. 

Get those in place and you’re not building them from scratch, what we’re saying is, select which one you would like and start to make it look the way, feel the way you want, that’s the key. 

Get it set up.

Kyle: This is going to be your Facebook group or set up a Slack channel.

Harms: Once you’ve identified which infrastructure you want, then go ahead and set it up, look at the pros and cons and then go ahead and set it up. 

Either a Facebook group or Slack channel. 

For most people it’s going to be a Facebook group to start with. That’s the key.

What you have learned so far:

• Understand what a tribe is
• Why does your tribe not have to be as big as you think it needs to be
• How to build your own tribe around your expertise
• Why it’s important not to sell yet
• Tactics to start build a tribe – on a practical level – 4 key areas to get you started
• The best way to get people into your tribe
• What do we do when people enter your tribe?

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