This week RevGenius threw RevCon, our annual digital conference.

7,000 GTM pros came together for this year’s event: ‘Community-Led GTM’.

We had some incredible speakers talking about the intersection of and playbooks around community, content, influencers, evangelists, sales, marketing, revenue operations, and customer success.

My keynote title was provocatively fitting: ‘Communities are Replaceable’.

We now have over 415 readers of The Community!

It’s my goal to make this newsletter and any community I launch or work with irreplaceable.

Let’s jump in.

The Big Idea

Communities are Replaceable.

New communities are seemingly popping up daily.

Every major B2B SaaS brand also has a ‘community’ or ‘really wants to start one’.

(The picture below is the MartechMap of 11,038 Martech companies - not including all RevTech). Insane!

Despite this, community is critical to your brands’ growth:

How can you both stand out and still solve for influence in the era of community?

Some questions to consider:

• How many of you have a Netflix account or an iPhone and continue to have it (and use it)? Why do you have it and why do you stick with it?

• So why are communities different?

• Name 1 B2B SaaS community that’s built a movement. 2 non-community examples: Dreamforce + Inbound (they’re events but also movements)

• But, what’s the community around them? Have you ever thought about that?

• What is it about Inbound and Dreamforce that makes people come back every year?

• How many communities are we a part of? Why?

Results from the keynote survey:

1. How many communities are you a part of?

   1. 0: 2.2% (2 responses)

   2. 1: 7.5% (7 responses)

   3. More than 1: 90.3% (84 responses)

2. Why are you a member of > 1 community?

   1. Not found my people: 14% (7 responses)

   2. Lack of value: 16% (8 responses)

   3. Dropping answer in chat: 26% (13 responses)

   4. FOMO: 44% (22 responses)

90%+ of folks are in more than 1 community.

I was a bit shocked that FOMO was the top reason why. But it makes sense.

I personally belong to over 54 communities and I’ve founded RevGenius.

I’m active in 1 (outside of RG).

Why?

• Some are for market research

• Some are tactical for quick needs

• Some are to communicate with people who are difficult to get ahold of

• FOMO

Why am I not finding all these in RevGenius?

• Some technical tactical insights are not present in RevGenius.

• Some communities are more specialized for certain needs - ie hiring of not GTM people

• Some have that ‘new community hype’ I just wanna check out - the FOMO effect

I’ve been a part of communities, yet I decided to start my own. The reason was I believed fundamentally community should be different.

If you’ve ever been laid off, looking for a job, or a fractional or solopreneur looking for clients.

Or if you’ve looked for answers to questions that your network isn’t sure of.

How have all the communities you’re a part of helped you with this? Have they?

If the answer isn’t immediately apparent. I stand by what I said - communities are replaceable.

Why I founded RevGenius:

• To help people

• Not to be another Slack channel

• To be inclusive and impact as many people as possible

• To create a space for people to learn collaboratively and help one another

• To facilitate growth - and no I don’t mean numbers. I mean the actual growth of community members.

• To create a community that would truly be a community (not a company disguised as a community).

• For people to feel heard and welcomed and get that feeling of being a part of something bigger than themselves

• As silly as it sounds, I wanted to give so much to the people of the space without asking for anything but paying it forward to others, to harness the power of the universe for our collective growth

Does that sound irreplaceable?

This is what we are working on building RevGenius into.

Building an irreplaceable community

I’m on a mission to really understand how to build an irreplaceable community.

• I don’t have all the answers but over the next 12 months, RevGenius will be experimenting on how to become a community in which you can truly belong.

• I have launched this newsletter “The Community” - this is a personal passion project to really hone in on what really matters in a community.

• In the age of the solopreneur - collaborative growth communities are the future.

The only way to stand out is to build an irreplaceable community that is not about the brand but about the people you serve. When you give people a sense of belonging, you’re building their trust in the movement you’re creating.

2 Resources

I. Evangelist-led growth:

Leslie Greenwood, Founder & CEO of Chief Evangelist Consulting joins me on the RevGenius Revenue Today Podcast. (listen here)

II. Building Communities, Connection, and Purpose in Business:

Lloyd Lobo, Co-Founder of Boast.ai, discusses how community is not a marketing strategy. Community is a business strategy. (listen here)

3 Tools

I. Airmeet

We just threw RevCon on Airmeet. It held up really well this year for thousands of registrants and attendees. We also use it for single-session events. Probably my favorite platform we’ve used for digital events in 2023. (try it)

II. Jasper.ai

Our marketing team at RG swears by Jasper.ai. We use it to create titles, and social posts, and to improve areas of our content. We aren’t the only ones. (try it)

III. Descript

Our content team uses Descript to easily transcribe our podcasts and conferences (like RevCon). Others also rave about it! (try it)

Thanks for reading!

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Reply to this email and let us know what you’d like to see more. And a big thank you to all who made it to this point.

Until next week,

Jared

p.s. What is one important problem you would like community to solve for you?

3 ways I can help you scale your business with Community:

1. Join RevGenius (free).

2. Community consulting for your startup or scaleup (reply for rates).

3. Promote yourself in this newsletter + to my 40k personal following on LinkedIn (reply for rates).