Building Massive Online Communities-with Tristan Ahumada-EP100

During this episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, host Jeff Pfitzer speaks with Tristan Ahumada, the Founder of Lab Coat Agents, for episode number 100. Tristan is the authority of building massive online communities, a true professional in providing value to the masses! Episode Highlights:  Jeff meets most of his podcast guests just a few moments before the podcast goes live, but not this time. Tristan and Jeff actually met when Jeff interviewed Tristan on the Real Estate and Content Ninja Podcast. In early 2012, Realtor.com sold Tristan a zip code package that brought him some great online leads. Realtor.com requested to interview Tristan about his process, not knowing that they were located in the same building. After a successful interview with Realtor.com, Tristan and his family were flown into San Francisco to give a speech to 20k people. Initially, Tristan didn’t think that his speech would take him anywhere with Realtor.com, so his wife suggested that he create a Facebook group. Spending an hour behind closed doors, Tristan and Jake came up with the Lab Coat Agents idea. Tristan was looking to give back to the real estate community, one that had very little technological automation. When creating a community, it’s important that you know it’s going to transcend Facebook. Take a step back and decide what you are passionate about, then pick your niche, area, or idea to build the community around. For the first year or two, you’re going to be the only one there to pat yourself on the back and keep yourself going. After deciding on your community, you need to go pick up your domain name and every social media handle that you can. Whether it’s social media posting or having a partner, you must hold yourself accountable for what you want to do. Real estate agents only have 4 or 5 raving fans when they enter the game; building a community is a long-term process. When people see that you are consistently taking time to give them value, they will begin to trust you more and more. The idea of putting money first is not going to get you through the hard times when you don’t want to do what you have to do. Creating a community means bringing value to its members on a daily basis because it’s what you’re already doing. You know someone is forcing something when they try to monetize before they have built the audience. There’s nothing wrong with making money, but make sure you are doing things in the right order. When growing a community outside of Facebook, many people make the mistake of overlooking their email list. It’s important to build multiple communities like Facebook, YouTube, and an email list in case one of them gets shut down. Think of like-minded people that you can bring in to help when you are building your community. Unless you are someone that is famous, rapid growth is very hard to do these days. Instead of measuring KPIs, you should measure your OKRs, that being, your objective and key results. People feel more close-knit in small communities, meaning the opportunity to add value to your members is very high. Rather than creating your own group from scratch, you can become a strategic part of a massive group. A community is just another word for followers, so with that in mind, you can build one on a variety of platforms such as Disciple, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Mighty Network. Disciple is a company out of England that builds apps that also act as your community. 3 Key Points: Lab Coat Agents got its start when Tristan was asked by Realtor.com to give a speech to over 20k people about his automated lead organizing process. People make the mistake of starting more things than they finish. Consistency is vital to success because the first couple of years are going to be very stagnant. Build your email list by asking everyone that joins your Facebook group for their email upon entry. Roughly ⅓ of the people that join will gladly provide their email as long as you use it to provide value. Resources Mentioned: Lab Coat Agents (website), (Facebook), (Facebook Group), (Twitter), (Instagram) Tristan Ahumada (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, (310) 356-3715) Disciple Drunk on Social Facebook Group StreetText (sponsor) Followup Boss (sponsor)