The Power of Engaged Communities

Transcript

Jeff Bullas

00:00:05 - 00:00:59

Hi everyone and welcome to The Jeff Bullas Show. Today I have with me, Teri Yu. Now, Teri Yu is the founder or founded Vibley, which has just been acquired by Kajabi, to shift the mindset within the industry and amplify the power of community. What does that mean? It means that Teri and her co-founders decided that they needed to share the love and actually make it easier for people to create community online instead of the algorithms of the social media giant's making it difficult. She now works with the team at Kajabi to ensure creators can engage with the community and get paid. She's incredibly passionate by the power of community. And we're gonna hear more about that in a minute and would love to have a conversation with you about what creators can do to earn living sustainably, burnout, how creators can avoid it and the startup playbook from idea to ignition.

Welcome to the show, Teri. It’s great to have you here.

Teri Yu

00:01:00 - 00:01:02

Thank you. It's so nice to be here.

Jeff Bullas

00:01:02 - 00:01:19

Now, before we leap into the conversation. I just wanna let everyone know, too, that this could be watched on The Jeff Bullas Show YouTube channel. Just Google The Jeff Bullas Show YouTube and you go straight to it because a lot of people unaware that you can both listen or watch or do both at the same time.

Teri Yu

00:01:19 - 00:01:21

I’m wasn’t aware myself.

Jeff Bullas

00:01:22 - 00:02:01

Okay, Teri. Yeah, I know. That's what I just decided to do. I said okay, I need to let people know that there was The Jeff Bullas Show YouTube channel, and it's got about 7000 subscribers. And so yeah, and a lot of people like to watch rather than listen. So that's good. So, Teri, how did all this happen? How did you start Vibley? Where did the inspiration come from? Because this is always what I find curious, because a lot of people have ideas but never act on them. And ideas are cheap, but action takes effort and time to actually bring to fruition. How did it all start?

Teri Yu

00:02:02 - 00:04:15

Yeah, So when I started Vibley, you know, it was really a problem space that was important to me that I was really impassioned by this mission to spread happiness because we had saw this down trend of people becoming more and more obsessed with their technology in ways that were actually taking away from their ability to be happy. And so because, you know, as I was working in product, Asana, and that was the time when, you know, we did a lot of A/B tests. I was very well learned in the A/B test world. And it became something that was a clear problem to me where, when you're looking at companies like Meta or Snapchat or always like paying companies, what they're really optimizing for is session time and dwell time, right? This is how they get more eyeballs, and this leads to more ad dollars. Therefore, they're always going to try to get you to have more addictive experiences as part of that business model. And so we wanted to create an alternate world where it was really about creating meaningful and social experiences that had real impact to your lives in ways that make you happy over time and sustainably, not just in the moment. So when I started Vibley, it was kind of like mission driven, and it was also based off some experiences I had. So when I grew up in Arizona, my family actually was really poor. Where they immigrated from Taiwan. They came over and you know, didn't have anything. My dad, you know, was washing dishes at the cafeteria. My mom was giving people haircuts and just going door to door trying to find business. And so when they were in that state, what they had was community to really uplift them up as well. So they joined something called the Taiwanese American Association, that was not only just emotional support, but, you know, they help with networking with potential job opportunities. And ultimately, my mom became a real estate agent. My dad was a computer scientist at Intel. So it just really inspired me and just the power of community and how much that can be life changing for people, not just like skill sets, but also career and also, you know, quality of life.

Jeff Bullas

00:04:16 - 00:05:56

It is fascinating because when I started off, started my blog website back in 2009, the Internet was a wild west. I mean, social media was a wild west and you actually were able to create community without algorithm stopping you and also at that stage, the platforms weren't designed to be addictive.

And over time, as they were public companies, the goal was to make more money. So design is actually baked into, almost every social media platform, like we said to keep you on the platform to get used to stay there. And at the end of the day, you are the creator. You're just a product for the platform. And I love your mission, because for me, there's a great book I read recently called, quite a while ago called Deep Work by Cal Newport, and I think it's humans are innately creative. The trouble is that social media wants you to create what I call shallow work rather than deep work. And I think that's where creators and I really sincerely believe that we are all creators as humans, and I think that you, enabling community of creators is just fabulous. So you have this, you've seen real community in terms of the real live world of physical world. And you looked around and you said, I want to make sure people are happy rather than the social media platforms making them unhappy. What did you mean by that? I'm intrigued by that.

Teri Yu

00:05:56 - 00:07:48

Yeah. Yeah. So it's hard because happiness is an intangible quality and, you know, you try to put some measure on it, you know, for the big tech companies, it could have been, you know, the dwell time, how much they're coming back to. It means that they are actually enjoying it. Therefore, you know, that equates to some kind of happiness factor. For us, you know, we knew that model was not working where we saw so many people who are unhappy, you know, 50% of people reported that they were unhappy in life. And it's just getting worse with screen time and more and more like TikTok usage, you know, Gen Z uses take hours and hours of TikTok every day. There's also just Covid has made it so much worse as well. Where we're now, like, used to this habitual staying inside. At Vibley, we were very much focused on creating connections between people. So at first we actually started measuring it by in person events. Like how many people are coming together and actually having a great experience in person. So we had that quantitative measure on it. However, when it came to Covid, that actually made us pivot the company altogether. So we powered over 500 of these kind of events then, because of the pandemic, you know, nobody wanted to meet up anymore. No one wanted to have that in person. And so we had to very quickly shift back to online and really focus on the quality of those experiences which we are now doing through what we call participation in the community. So that means participating in group challenges, participating in events, participating in discussions like actually getting some value from the community itself is what we value as a team now, to make sure that people are getting in Richwood as quality of social connection as possible.

Jeff Bullas

00:07:48 - 00:08:09

Okay, so what I'm intrigued by is what's the ignition to get people to go from watchers to participants? What are some of these things you learned to get people to be actively engaged? Tell us about some of the top things that you and tactics you used to do that?.

Teri Yu

00:08:09 - 00:10:32

Yeah. So we've worked with a lot of creators and many who are, you know, naturally able to, like, pull more. Some are able to pull less. It just really depends on both, like, kind of the true influence as well as their reach, as well as a vertical, but there are some tactics that we've seen work very well, converting people from audience to community, which is, you know, one actually driving real value. So, thinking about okay, if I'm starting a community, what am I actually providing in this that's going to be something that helps someone else, right? What are my members trying to accomplish? And how can I help them with that? So deriving a program around that, make sure that you're actually giving something that's worthy of purchase price. The second is creating urgency. So, you know, having maybe an expiring offer or a timeline which you can join a cohort. All those kind of things will also drive people to take action now, just because when there's no timeline for anything, people are not going to take action as soon and then often forget, you know, especially in this attention deficit economy. We're kind of bombarded by so many things and so many products and so many people. And having that trigger definitely will help. The third is like scarcity and exclusivity, as funny as it is as humans, we all kind of just, you know, love the idea of feeling like an insider getting, like, exclusive information or access or events and so thinking about how to create that exclusivity with your community and your program is definitely something that helps a lot, and then the fourth is social proof. So anything that you can see any testimonials or any customer references or any kind of proof points that drive credibility of why they should trust that your program stands out against the rest is definitely so you know, whether you've been featured on Forbes or you have, thousands of members already in the community or if you have specific customers who are saying like this was the best program I've ever been in. All those things will drive more people to convert from, you know, your followers to someone who is actually a real lifetime customer.

Jeff Bullas

00:10:32 - 00:11:07

Okay, yeah. So that's very fascinating. So really, okay. Create values that people want to actually get engaged, is that correct? That was the first one, scarcity that the words are a time limited offer, exclusivity belonged to this exclusive, maybe even premium club and social proof is the four. Alright, so now you've got this idea. I want to go back to where you actually started. So you got the idea and how many of you were there when you started?

Teri Yu

00:11:08 - 00:11:08

How many?

Jeff Bullas

00:11:08 - 00:11:11

Were you the only founder?

Teri Yu

00:11:11 - 00:12:29

Oh, I see. Yeah, no, we had a co-founder, and it's really nice to have a team around you, although it's not necessary, it just provides more accountability, right? It's a part of the reasons why I worked on Vibley. It's because I know that, you know, getting accountability from peers and your teammates. It drives you forward in ways that sometimes you can't do as well alone. But it's not prohibited either. Like I would encourage anyone who doesn't have those resources to not let that prevents them from starting a business. But I will say that I created my own team. I didn't just sit around and hope like, oh, do I know X or Y person? Where do I, you know, I don't know anyone. Therefore, I don't start. I went out and message people, you know, looked at any kind of market places where that link people up. I looked at many different options to see, like, who is someone that I can actually work with to create a product that's going to accomplish the mission we set out to accomplish. And so, yeah, we worked with the co-founder. We grew together a team, we started fundraising, we raised over 2.5 million, and then we ended up building the product. And, now we've powered thousands of communities and we are now part of Kajabi.

Jeff Bullas

00:12:29 - 00:12:54

So that's fabulous. And it's very interesting to hear about how you went from idea to ignition. Now a little bit more on that in terms of, okay, so you look around trying to find, I suppose, technology platforms that you could use or in existence, and you discovered that you had to build it yourself. Is that what you discovered?

Teri Yu

00:12:55 - 00:15:26

Yes. Yeah, exactly. So we built Vibley after doing a lot of validation. And so that's actually the number one thing that I would encourage any entrepreneur to think about is, think about how you can build a minimum lovable product that validates your hypothesis, or if there are alternate ways to validate your hypothesis, do that as well. So when I say hypothesis, I mean, like, what is it that you think is going to happen based off of the need that we see? So the standard format for hypothesis can be like when, because I believe X, when Y is done, Z will happen. And that gives you the credibility like, I guess the honesty to look back on it and think, hey, okay. I don't know if this, like when I'm taking initiatives like you can always read references and know, like, I'm spending time in the right areas because I'm actually continue to validate that hypothesis. Once you have that, think about ways to validate it, so it could be the building a minimum viable product to start. Or it could be, you know, growing an audience and, thinking about, like validating that hypothesis through an Instagram account or Facebook group, something that doesn't require a lot of, like commitment and money or time, but may be a way for you to see if there's any real interest beyond, just what you think may happen. And some ways to do this are also creating a landing page and, you know, collecting email addresses before you start the business, right. There's no reason why you can't start on the distribution strategy before you actually create and invest money into the product, and I would run Facebook ads or any kind of ads against it to kind of validate. Do people click this? Do people actually put in their email address like, okay, I have a list of a thousand people now who have told me that they wanted this thing that gives you, like, lower risk when you're starting and you're starting forward. Then there's also, things like, you know, like talking to people, talking to over a hundred people. All of them give you the heck yes, I'm going to buy this thing like tell me the link, I want to buy it now. That's the maximum signal you could get to actually start on, forward on your business without having much risk. So hopefully those strategies are helpful.

Jeff Bullas

00:15:26 - 00:15:46

That is really great. I'm always curious about where did you start? And how do you start? So a little bit more on that in terms of, did you create a landing page to see if people would actually put their email address in? And what was the incentive? Was there an incentive for them to put their email address in? Is that how you started?

Teri Yu

00:15:46 - 00:17:05

Yes. So we did start with the landing page and we promoted it in a Facebook group. So that was the initial stages of it. We did not give people incentives on the landing page besides the value proposition, and this is really important. You don't want to give an extra incentive because that will muddy up the signal that you use to determine whether or not this is worth doing, right. So let's say that you gave people $100 for signing up. Do they want $100 or do they want your business, right? So it's better to keep it isolated. The variable should be as clean as possible so that, you know, it's just the premise of what you want to do. So, for example, I am thinking about whether or not I would write a book, confidentially. And so instead of me writing it, right? What if I created a landing page where I had the book title, the book cover pre designed, you know, collected email, justice up front, on a landing page and kind of ran tests against it to see if people actually had interest in the actual concept of the book. Then once I write it, you know my time is well spent instead of the other way around where I write the book after a year, after two years, then people, you know, have no interest in the concept whatsoever, and I, you know, left not as happy as I could have been.

Jeff Bullas

00:17:05 - 00:17:22

I like that. It's really a fascinating, well, insight about muddying the waters so, yes. If you offer a free e-book, you don't know where they want the free e-book. They're actually bought into the idea.

Teri Yu

00:17:22 - 00:17:48

Exactly, exactly. So for the purposes of the test, it's all just about getting the information insight about whether or not this is worth the risk. So you don’t want to give extra things in a different case where you have a landing page and actually, you know, you've already started the business. You're just trying to get as many leads as possible, and that's the goal. And that's different. You can provide all the incentives you want to get those leads because business is business. But in the experience, yeah, you do not want to muddy things up.

Jeff Bullas

00:17:49 - 00:17:53

I'd like that insight. That is really cool.

Teri Yu

00:17:53 - 00:18:43

And so when it works, that's actually why I was so excited to join Kajabi because they have all these tools. So, for example, you can start the landing page, and I'm actually creating the landing page. I’m in Kajabi right now for the potential book, where you collect all the email addresses and then once I have them, you know, from possibly, like speaking at engagements and like, getting interest in seeing how people, you know respond to it, just like in one on one conversations, then I can also start, you know, email drip campaign. Set up these funnels where, you know, I sent the first email asking for feedback or the second email, you know, get people to tell me what other concepts they might be interested in and whatever it is, that can all be set up within Kajabi. And as soon as it's released, you know, I can leverage those tools, just kind of make it part of my business.

Jeff Bullas

00:18:43 - 00:19:33

Alright, cool. I want to get to Kajabi, what it provides for our listeners and viewers in a few minutes. Now, what I'm really curious about is the test, because a lot of people, I think, what we're gonna do with the test, just like you described as we've got to make sure we've got the hypothesis right. We want to test a hypothesis. You want to make it as simple as possible, as low cost as possible so that taking it from idea to ignition is as easy as possible. So what is your level of success? What point you're going, this is resonating. Is there a number? So, for example, when you test, you take a Facebook ad and you drive it to the page and you're going, okay, so you're looking just for click throughs, aren't you? Really? Is that correct? That's it?

Teri Yu

00:19:34 - 00:21:06

Yeah. So it depends on the experiment setup, but you want to think about it before you run the experiment. What would give me confidence that this is something that people actually want. So if you pre define it and you set a success metric, so let's say I want 100 sign ups before I feel like this is worth my time or I want to click through rate of at least 1% before I invest more. Then those can be your success metrics. I would look at benchmarks like when you just Google like benchmark, click through rate, you can find potential comparisons that can give you an early bar of what to look for. I recognise this is like, not an easy early thing, because you don't know what you don't know. Like it's not like you've had previous company history to reference, but use others to try to figure it out. You might want to, you know, message people and ask like, let's say you I know someone who works at a company or has started company like, what was your initial click through rate? Like what did you look at? Those can give you insights, but otherwise, if you have no additional inputs, I would ask, just focus on what would make you feel like you want to invest whatever you're going to invest. So let's say you're spending $20,000 in building a mobile app. What amount of confidence would give you, like the full fuel to be able to move forward? And so that’s $20,000.

Jeff Bullas

00:21:06 - 00:21:27

That's interesting in terms of benchmarks, and benchmarks are like they're so fluid, and they also vary with industry. So, I love the term used before. I think it was because you got a minimal viable product as an MVP, that's tossed around a lot.

Teri Yu

00:21:27 - 00:21:31

MVP that's right and then MLP is just one step above.

Jeff Bullas

00:21:31 - 00:21:49

Okay, so you've got, then the other one, which I think, I don't know if you mentioned it might be hidden in dispatches but Minimum Testable Product, MTP, and the other one, which is like you said a step above is the MLP, Minimum Lovable Product.

Teri Yu

00:21:50 - 00:22:16

I wonder if Minimum Testable Product is the same as Minimum Lovable Product. Because you do need something that's loveable enough to be tested, is part of the concept. You don't want to spend too much time, like creating something that's so lovable that you know it's, you have invested all this time, resources, energy into something that's just not going to work. But I think the concept may be similar.

Jeff Bullas

00:22:16 - 00:22:26

Minimum Lovable Product is where the potential customer loves it, not you. And I think that's the detachment from you loving it. So you actually throw all the money and it's maybe definition.

Teri Yu

00:22:26 - 00:22:29

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Jeff Bullas

00:22:29 - 00:23:01

Okay, so the percentages are interesting. I've come across a company that just basically, as an entrepreneur now, especially online business is you can test almost everything, so the data is going to tell you what works and what doesn't. And then there's just as gradations really works well to sort of works well, so what sort of numbers were you looking for initially in terms of click through, rate was at 1%, was it 5%, was it 10%?

Teri Yu

00:23:01 - 00:23:08

Yes. Good question. It was quite a while ago. So I'll tell you what I recall, but I don’t know how accurate it is.

Jeff Bullas

00:23:08 - 00:23:11

This is not a test.

Teri Yu

00:23:11 - 00:23:51

It’s been five years. So, honestly, it's a hard thing to remember early on, but I think it was around 5% click through rate, because I had looked at benchmarks and so, like, for mobile apps that it was around 2% at max. And so because I was posting in a Facebook group that has, like, higher relevancy, I wanted to know, I want to see something, like quite indicative before I move forward. Just because I knew I was going to invest a lot of my life, a lot of time and resources, so you could kind of look at, like, how much you're investing as a risk reward calculation as part of that decision.

Jeff Bullas

00:23:52 - 00:24:02

Okay. Yeah. I think 5 to 7 is a really great number. Like if I can get five, that's pretty good. And then, okay. Can I change the headliner? Will that get me 7 or 6?

Teri Yu

00:24:02 - 00:24:18

Yes exactly. So if you change the headline to do a different premise altogether or if there was just a slight spin on it and that changes things, you know, you will feel a lot more confident that this next direction is going to be better, for better performing business concept.

Jeff Bullas

00:24:19 - 00:24:28

Yeah, exactly. So the next step is, so you've built this minimal product. What they call it? Viable, testable.

Teri Yu

00:24:28 - 00:24:29

Viable. testable, lovable. Yeah.

Jeff Bullas

00:24:30 - 00:24:55

Okay, So where do you go? Alright, we've tested the hypothesis. We believe on benchmarks that we've seen in the industry or in industries, online industries, that it looks like it's got wings. So when did you go to start looking for venture capital funding to get that 2.5 million? When did you do that?

Teri Yu

00:24:55 - 00:27:34

Yes. So I believe that startups are just a collection of believers that eventually becomes such a mass market of believers that you actually have, like, global product market fit. So, at the beginning, you know, it was all about finding a team for me. So what I did was I ran these tests and I used the information we had around from the test to recruit people, right? That is what I took to our co-founder’s potential teammates to say, look, I'm not just random business idea that you hear a dozen of every day. I have something that, you know, has proof that it's going to potentially work. And so you can really use that as a recruiting tactic as well. Then after I had the team and then we kept building like there was a point where, you know, we needed to start raising money, and that was, when we felt like we could grow a lot faster with the additional resources that we got. And so, it was our pre-seed round that we raised initially 500K, or a little bit over. And it was just us, like we had users, we had creators, we had a product a little bit above the MVP at that point, and we're growing. So that's when I wanted to raise the pre-seed because I knew you put gas on that fire. It could really blow up a lot larger. And so then we kept building within that time frame after pre-seed. And then eventually, we hit enough of our milestones where we're like, okay, I think we can even grow faster, hire more people. Let's get pressed on the gas even more, and that was when we raised to over $2 million round, so I have a different sort of philosophy than the average Silicon Valley founder, I'd say, I really believe in building a product and validating and finding, like, growth and product market fit as much as you can before you go guns blazing trying to find capital. Because I've heard and seen too many stories now of companies that have self imploded because they raised all this money, didn't really have anything and then, you know, weren't able to figure it out, and actually, the massive expenses they incurred from the lack of creativity and out of the box thinking, didn't, you know, just was part of the reason why the business couldn't succeed. An example of this is, what was it, what was that company recently that exploded?

Jeff Bullas

00:27:34 - 00:27:36

There’s a bunch of them.

Teri Yu

00:27:36 - 00:27:41

There's a bunch of them. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Bullas

00:27:42 - 00:28:36

So yeah, I'd like that approach because in other words, you're going okay, we're going to build this minimal viable product. We're going to test it, we're gonna drive traffic to it, and we're going, okay, we're getting 5 to 7% click throughs, for example. But the question I had to on that is the cost of advertising can be prohibitive now because Facebook and other social media platforms have pushed the price of advertising up because they can, because they've got the community they want to reach. With Facebook, for example, there are three billion people. It's targeted, it's great. Did you use any other marketing methods beyond paid? Did you do any referral marketing? Did you do any text marketing? Did you do any team up with other partners that we're already talking to your potential audience that you could leverage? Did you do any of that as well?

Teri Yu

00:28:37 - 00:29:34

Our primary method was actually Facebook group partnerships, to start and we didn't do the Facebook ad nothing as much just because we were extremely, like crash sensitive at that point, but I I think there's a number of ways you could potentially do this. Text marketing is not as efficient as you would think. Maybe if, you know, different like, text blast messaging service. However, texts are really sensitive from a legal perspective, you can’t just text anyone a marketing message. So I wouldn't recommend that so much, yeah. I think between like, today's age, like I would probably start with either TIkTok and or Instagram like thinking about, okay, where are people today? How can I reach them? How can I get the message out to them so I can see whether or not this had legs?

Jeff Bullas

00:29:35 - 00:29:54

Alright. So you raised the money, you say, okay, and I would need to double down on building the product out. And a lot of people don't understand software. Did you understand software? Did you get someone who was a good software architect that could map out the software development journey? How did that go?

Teri Yu

00:29:54 - 00:31:49

Yeah. So I have an understanding of software because I've been building in this for a while, so I worked in startups, I worked at Microsoft, I worked at Asana building product. And so, I know strategically how to go about it, but I'm not a coder myself, like I can do front encoding, and that's about it. And so I needed engineering partners to get this done. And so in Silicon Valley, especially, it's really hard to recruit this kind of talent because they literally have golden handcuffs where they're paid, you know, 300k or above for their job at these big companies. And so how do you convince them that this mission is really worth it or this company is really worth their time. And so, that is all about I think number one holding your message in making sure that you actually know, like, how to pitch in in ways that is resonates. So whether that's with, you know, current trends in the market, any proof points that you have any kind of, you know, credibility that you have, like, those are all things that are going to help you recruit. Same concept, actually, is converting your audience. But yeah, giving them the confidence and then, you know, presenting yourself in a way, that's very much you have conviction, right, because when you're the founder, you carry the belief system of everyone around you, whether that's the first person that you hire, or that's like the thousands person on your team. If you are really miserable and you know not carrying the weight of the confidence of your company, then everyone else like how are they supposed to believe that they're on a journey that's going to make it. So, yeah, using those same tactics that kind of approached and kinda like, persuaded people to join the team, that kind of went there.

Jeff Bullas

00:31:50 - 00:32:02

Cool. Yeah. So, yeah, as a CEO, co-founder, founder of any business, Whether it's just, you know, Silicon Valley startup like you've done, you've got to be the evangelist, don't you?

Teri Yu

00:32:02 - 00:32:20

Yes, yes, the number one job, evangelist right, and that comes with evangelizing the mission to investors, to recruits, to customers like you are the only person who can speak for just how much value your company can bring to the world.

Jeff Bullas

00:32:20 - 00:32:55

And then getting your message right. I'd be interested in asking the next question because that's raised by, I know Melanie Perkins, who is one of the co-founders of Canberra in Australia, an Australian company. They're quite a success story. She actually presented a little workshop I ran in Sydney about seven or eight years ago, and came along and a quick presentation just when they were starting out. really, so, but I remember her telling me, I think, she said, she put together 40 different versions of a pitch deck. How many pitch decks did you put together?

Teri Yu

00:32:56 - 00:33:54

Well, I definitely played multiple versions together, not 40 of them. That is simply amazing. I think she has a, so we both have challenges and fundraising because, honestly, it's not as easy, in my opinion, to raise venture capital as a female, as it is a male, simply because investors are all pattern matching. And they're asking themselves, is this the next Mark Zuckerberg? Or is this the next, like Travis Kelley Cannons and you, as a woman don't look like or exhibit the potential like masculine traits they're looking for to see, like, say that you are cutthroat enough or you're going to bash the walls to make it happen. But in terms of my advantage over Melanie is, I live in San Francisco which is the center of startups, whereas in Australia there's more. There's just, you know, there's less of that like tech optimism, at least from, like investors there or maybe even less investors. Is that true?

Jeff Bullas

00:33:55 - 00:35:20

It's less investors, and also we don't have the population. Australia’s population is 25 to 26 million, right. So I think there's actually more people in California. I think there's 50 million in California, I think, and it's the second. If California were a country, I think it would be either third or fourth biggest economy in the world. So, yes, you're in the heart of essentially one of the top countries in the world where money is tech optimism which is true as well.

So the next question I have is, how'd you get, so you've got the test a hypothesis, you got a minimum viable product, you raise some money, then you start creating the tech and caught up in the storms, raced up to sales and marketing race, and it's a technical arms race as well. You're trying to build a product that's robust works, delivers a great experience, frictionless as possible. When did you get sort of good to a point going, this is really, ignition took off, in other words, said this is really, really working because you mentioned that, I think when Kajabi bought you that, you were getting something like 59% month on month growth. That tells me that you hear the ignition, so when did that happen when you said you got that it is hard to go. We've really got something here. When did that happen? And what numbers were you looking at?

Teri Yu

00:35:21 - 00:36:08

Yeah. So that happened last July in 2021. And we were looking at this growth, like our company objective was all about revenue growth, about participation growth. And we're seeing all the signs point upwards and on a consistent basis. So that's when you know, you really feel like you have something, I think as a founder, I tend to be very, let's say, harder on myself. And so I, prior to that, did I really 100% think that we had something, I don't think so. I think we have proof points that it could be something but the point where I actually felt like, okay, this is real and this is growing is that inflexion point in your life.

Jeff Bullas

00:36:08 - 00:36:13

Right, which was like, you're getting that 50% plus month on month growth.

Teri Yu

00:36:13 - 00:36:13

Exactly.

Jeff Bullas

00:36:14 - 00:36:39

Cool. Now let's move on to the next topic of interest. I'm quite selfish here, I'm just asking questions that I really care about. So, business models, these are interesting because their business models online can vary a lot. So what was the business model for Vibley?

Teri Yu

00:36:40 - 00:38:00

Yes. So since we were a platform for creators to start intimate, interactive communities, our revenue model was actually a take rate. So we made it free for creators to start a community and have a community. However, if they were monetising it and taking payments through our system, we would have a share rate of anywhere from 10 to 20%, mostly 20%. Whereas Kajabi has more of a software subscription model, so creators will pay a monthly basis to Kajabi. However, I will say that after seeing both sides of the world, it is actually way more favourable for creators to pay the subscription service instead of sharing, because once you start sharing 10 to 20% of your business becomes a lot of money that you start feeling resentment for, you know, having to share when you're the one, like, kind of powering this entire business. So, you know, we've had a lot of internal discussions about, like, what are the right models for creators? And ultimately, I do believe Kajabi has the right pricing setup that benefits creators long term, not just, you know, looking at the kind of the short term of getting people in and then, you know, like taking from them in the future.

Jeff Bullas

00:38:01 - 00:38:16

So, seeing Vibley has been brought into Kajabi fold, is Vibley an additional premium add-on option to Kajabi, or is it wrapped up in just the general features?

Teri Yu

00:38:17 - 00:38:44

So we discussed this a lot. Internally, it is completely complimentary to all Kajabi users. So the whole ecosystem coaching community podcast, email, marketing, landing pages. All of that is for a set subscription price on a monthly basis. Not, you know, additional add-ons, with these features. So I think a lot of creators have been really happy about it so far. So I think we made the right move.

Jeff Bullas

00:38:44 - 00:39:54

So now the thing we didn't touch on which, you mentioned in the beginning is that building community is sometimes a tough gig, and we mentioned about the different options to get them to go from lurkers to participants, right. So, we mentioned those for which is value scared time scarcity, exclusivity and social proof. What are the features within Vibley that you also had there and you mentioned things like competitions and other things. What are some of the features that you developed within Vibley to get people to stick, in other words, what's the stick ability? In other words, because one big challenge for any subscription model or any software model online is churn. How do you stop them churning? What are the features within Vibley that you developed and tested? I'm sure over time to keep people from leaving and as well we talked about the engaging, we've gotten engaged. Now, what were the different features within Vibley that you had?

Teri Yu

00:39:55 - 00:40:50

Yeah. So we definitely saw that as people engaged more, they retained more, and that makes sense. I think the feature that we saw the highest kind of engagement patterns was challenges, so that's one of our most loved features. You have this ability as a community host to run group challenges where everyone is on a seven day meditation challenge together or you're doing weekly, you know, growth setting, of goals together or your checking in on a weekly basis, whatever it is, having a way for people to interact, you know, support each other, share their progress, track their progress has been such a huge, vibrant engagement driver and each community. So we really encourage creators to tap into and lean into kind of like, yeah, the challenges through that give you accountability that could you like the actual progression in your skill set that you're trying to learn.

Jeff Bullas

00:40:51 - 00:41:52

When in Vibley, did you also offer facilitators? Maybe the word I'm looking for before, so you must have, as you help people build their own communities and then provide premium communities that they’ve been paid for. And then you took a sniff of the ticket on the way through. Did you provide and work out best practice for those community creators? They're adding value and growing community for themselves, which is obviously your community for communities. So, were there any best practices that you sort of made available, or did you encourage people like you need to be able to facilitate this group and show up every Wednesday or show up every Monday, which makes it that great. But then it's hard to scale because, as a community leader, you are the brand quite often and that's hard to scale.

Teri Yu

00:41:53 - 00:42:33

Yes. Yeah. So we do have best practices, and those best practices do lie in the feature says that we create have today. So anything that drives peer to peer like engagement, that skills beyond just you, we highly encourage. So, of course, videos and lives are available and awesome within Kajabi community slash Vibley now, but the discussions, the kind of like the accountability through challenges is what really makes it interesting. Whereas the creator, you set this up as a one time thing or you set it up, you know, on a like, low maintenance touch basis, but the most of the value that people are getting from each other, not from you.

Jeff Bullas

00:42:33 - 00:42:40

Right. Okay. In other words, the community itself becomes the fire.

Teri Yu

00:42:41 - 00:43:15

Yes, exactly. And that's, everything we've ever wanted to build was allowing people to build those kind of connections between each other to really make sure that they have more, like relationships and fulfilment in their lives to accomplish their goals. It shouldn't just be about the creator, right, we've heard so much about creators having this, like social relationships with their audience. And you know, that's great. Also not sustainable, right, people have something that's actually going to be, you know, life changing for them in ways beyond just you.

Jeff Bullas

00:43:15 - 00:43:56

Yes, totally. And I've experienced that over the years. Is that, otherwise you're trading time for money. You can't scale you, and that's a real challenge. A lot of people are happy with that, but then it doesn't scale, well, if you really want to make a bigger difference and get and scale it to a much bigger community. So, that raised another question in terms of making sure that we're getting to a point where the community is self-sustaining and feeds on itself in a most, in a nice way. I mean. What sort of numbers do you really think you need in the community before it starts to really be self-sustaining rather than create a driven?

Teri Yu

00:43:57 - 00:44:36

Yes. So I can tell you it's not membership count based, meaning it's not how many people are in your community, but it's about the value of the connections themselves. So, for example, we've seen communities that are, you know, 10,000 plus members. We've also seen communities that are, you know, say, like, 20 people and those 20 people communities can actually do extremely well because the members truly are supporting each other, helping each other, check in with each other, helping to answer questions and give tips. And as long as the communities engaged, that's what matters.

Jeff Bullas

00:44:36 - 00:44:41

Okay, so you have engagement metrics that you can measure, Is that correct?

Teri Yu

00:44:41 - 00:44:42

Jeff Bullas

00:44:42 - 00:44:56

What are those engagement metrics? You mentioned some of them, is there a top five that you think are really, really important in terms of getting that community really engaged? Because obviously we're not talking about numbers as metric. That's important. It's actually engagement metrics, is that correct?

Teri Yu

00:44:56 - 00:45:17

Yeah. So in Vibley, we actually have a stat center where it allows you to track things that we've seen as important which is messages sent between the community, which is challenge participation. Those are the two that we really focused on because it allows for that period of peer scalability the way that we discussed.

Jeff Bullas

00:45:18 - 00:45:20

So challenge participation. What was the other one?

Teri Yu

00:45:20 - 00:45:32

It is a messages sent. So how many people actually interact with each other? Participate in discussions? And that's across both DMs and also within, like, this group discussions that are available within them.

Jeff Bullas

00:45:32 - 00:45:37

So there you talk to engagement metrics that you have in your dashboard.

Teri Yu

00:45:37 - 00:45:58

Exactly. Exactly. So just think about it intuitively, right, like all the member who's talking all the time, like post five times a day, participate in all the challenges. They're really getting value from the community in ways that it would be sour for their life if they actually left at that point.

Jeff Bullas

00:45:58 - 00:47:05

Right, that's fascinating. It's really really cool. Just because these metrics for everything and the trouble is with data is that you can be overwhelmed, but so, I think what we as online entrepreneurs into work out is we need to work out data that matters and I was able to talk to someone else the other day in the podcast here. And they said that they would recommend two types of dashboards. This is more for enterprise level than anything else. In other words, you want the big view, and then you may be one more granular view dashboards. In other words, can you create a dashboard that gives us a big picture, which is more for the executives, and then you've got the other one more for, I suppose, people that got to look after the detail every day. So right, so, what I'm curious now about, because I was just curious all the time is overused. I need to find another word, really. So, you've built it, you start to get critical mass. Did you go to market to sell or you got approached?

Teri Yu

00:47:06 - 00:48:26

Good question. So we actually had a series, a term sheet, and we were thinking about whether or not we should continue to raise more capital since we were growing, and this was before kind of the market downturn, and then because the valuation was, like good, but not something that I was particularly, you know, just off the wall is happy about, that's when I started entertaining the offers that came to us. So we did get our first offer, just from our, you know, the people in our network who had seen Vibley grow and had heard about us. And then after that, because I'm more of, like, a maximalist to opportunities, I wanted to see what other opportunities that were out there. So that's when I started, you know, reaching out to companies myself to say like, hey, this is something that we're potentially exploring, which one makes sense to you? At the end of day, we did get five offers, which was really exciting in the last two that were really thinking about, you know, we ultimately chose Kajabi just because they powered over 4.1 billion in creator revenue and one in three creators make over six figures. So it's really one of the only, like companies and the creator economy that is walking the walk and truly empowering the future of work.

Jeff Bullas

00:48:27 - 00:48:29

So are you on golden handcuffs?

Teri Yu

00:48:30 - 00:48:38

Depends on what you mean there, but yeah. Kajabi is not holding me hostage.

Jeff Bullas

00:48:39 - 00:48:47

Well quite often, you know, when you sell something and you're the founder, there quite often like to hang on to you because you're the genius behind the brand.

Teri Yu

00:48:47 - 00:48:50

I'd like to think so.

Jeff Bullas

00:48:50 - 00:50:02

Well, this I think you should be very proud of what you've done and created. And, I like the approach to in terms of, how can you start something as simply as possible tested hypothesis and then take it from there rather than going, I've got a great idea, let's go and get some venture capital, and I think most of time those sort of approaches end in tears, or as if you are a little bit more patient and willing to test first and then hit the accelerator next. Whether you fund it yourself, we'll get someone else to be involved in funding. I think so. I think it's more enjoyable approach, otherwise, you know, when you get a lot of money, and I've heard it from people going once you get a lot of money, there's so much pressure on because now you've got delivering going well, what's hypothesis again? So what you've done, I think, is really, really great approach. And I think it comes back to one of what I see is one of your values in life is to, how can I live sustainably and be happy rather than just make money? Is that correct?

Teri Yu

00:50:03 - 00:50:05

That's a good observation.

Jeff Bullas

00:50:05 - 00:50:09

So what makes you happy?

Teri Yu

00:50:10 - 00:50:44

Oh, my gosh. So I am an extrovert by default. I love being around people. It's why Vibley and now Kajabi mean so much to me, so I just want to be learning people's backgrounds, hearing their stories. I'm sure you get to do this every day, but you know, it's so fascinating to me to just hear different perspectives on things that really like, internalize them and make that part of my journey as well. So I truly believe that you know, everyone has this, like, interesting story behind them, and I'm always on the quest to figure that out. But that gives me happiness.

Jeff Bullas

00:50:45 - 00:51:01

So you're curious. So that drives learning. You stand like you're a great observer and listener. And then, you learned out of that. And then, what I have also observed is that, you not only think of an idea, you actually act on it.

Teri Yu

00:51:02 - 00:51:25

Yes, yeah. A lot of people struggle with the acting part because they get into this decision paralysis where they don't know, you know, what's next or how to act. But once you just go out there and do it and take the first step of whatever it is, you'll learn and figure out if that is the right step and figure, you know, feel better about the next one. So, you know, it's always a small steps that make the biggest difference.

Jeff Bullas

00:51:25 - 00:52:40

I think it may be an overused phrase, but there's joy in the journey and what I mean by that is that, okay, here's an idea to grow what I've started, okay, let's try this tactic. So that's just one thing today. And it's a great book called The One Thing, which, in other words, we can be consumed by so many things. You feel overwhelmed, but we can say I just want to do one thing today that's going to move the dial. Will this work or will it not? And I think that's what I'm really enjoyed, in my imaginary journeys. Will this work? And I'm curious, and data also incentivises me in terms of, wow, okay, I wrote something that actually resonates. And that's what I loved about social media is that no longer did you have the gatekeepers, the media mogul's stopping you reaching a community, you actually, now we're able to reach the community, and that's what you've done with Vibley is that you're going. I really want to create communities that matter, that make a difference, that create happiness. How can I do that? But not be this just all about making money and I think that's the thing as humans, we're all still trying to work out.

Teri Yu

00:52:40 - 00:52:57

There's enough companies out there that, you know, don't focus on that right now. We need beneficial positive companies in our lives. And I think right now is the time where this is, you know, you can do it. You can stand out if you take that first step.

Jeff Bullas

00:52:58 - 00:53:12

So another question on happiness. So what are some of the things that you do every day that bring you happiness, that you choose to do and doesn't have designed your life around? What are some of the things that bring you joy every day? What in your routine?

Teri Yu

00:53:13 - 00:54:30

So what I've learned from this whole entrepreneurial journey is that I thought I was very results focused and all I wanted was to accomplish one goal or two goals or three goals, and it kept escalating where every time I accomplished something, I didn't feel any happier. So, you know, we were featured in TechCrunch and Forbes before. That's all I thought I've ever wanted. And once it happens, I didn't feel any happier because of it. When we wanted to accomplish a revenue goal once we hit it, that didn't make me any happier. I was just thinking about the next thing and worried whether or not we're going to hit the next milestone. And so, you are so right when you say that the enjoyment is literally in the journey itself. It's so hard to realize, but so many founders post exit actually go through severe depression, where they've lost their purpose in life overnight they feel like you know their influence, their purpose is gone. People say all the time it feels like you're losing your baby. Even the ones with, you know, a billion dollar outcomes. And so it really, like at the end of the day, I think humans just want to, like, grow and like, be making progress. And so that's all you can really ask for in your own life. And I think the more that we come to terms with that, the happier we’ll be.

Jeff Bullas

00:54:31 - 00:54:36

It's a paradox, isn't it? You want more but when you get there, you realize that.

Teri Yu

00:54:36 - 00:55:03

Yes. Yeah, I just start preparing myself to all my founder friends who were raising, you know, Series C round or had hit this like hundred million revenue market, you know, it's an endless game that you can play, and at the end of the day, that's just not. That's not truly what makes humans happy. The real happiness comes from your own fulfillment in your growth and the pleasure of, like, building and creating potentially.

Jeff Bullas

00:55:04 - 00:55:15

I totally agree that the joy is in the creating. And as you create you learn and as you learn, you grow. That's worth deep joy sits.

Teri Yu

00:55:15 - 00:55:23

Yes, yes. And it's so hard to realize that but that's truly, truly after this entire experience how I realized.

Jeff Bullas

00:55:24 - 00:55:49

It's just so good to listen to your journey and you experience something and what you've done. Some of the tips and tactics, I am going to apply to what I do because there was some really good ideas. Look, I've seen a lot of them, but I think you put a certain spin on it. In terms of that, I think a lot of our listeners and viewers will love as well.

Teri Yu

00:55:49 - 00:55:58

I encourage you to start validating on Kajabi because it's definitely a place where it gives you all the tools to do that. So if you haven't already, would love for you to join us.

Jeff Bullas

00:55:58 - 00:56:10

Alright, so let's just wrap it up with it, then let's go to, alright. So, give us a quick thumbnail sketch of what Kajabi does and how it enables people to create an online business.

Teri Yu

00:56:10 - 00:57:14

Awesome, so Kajabi is where creators start businesses. So we, you know, we worked with creators like Blogilates with seven million subs. But even creators of all sizes, like DNA show with 150k subscribers or, you know, anyone with even a small audience who's a coach or author definitely, you know, can make a living on Kajabi, so, like I mentioned, we have power over 4.1 billion in creator revenue, and that comes from all the tools that you have available, which is coaching courses, podcast, website, email marketing, community. And we're really excited because this is actually the future of world work is going to be, most people are now entrepreneurs or are, you know, creators in their own right like the traditional model of working at a company is not necessarily what people want to do anymore. And so it's an exciting time to be part of that, like the tailwind of growing number of creators out there and really helping them build a sustainable business.

Jeff Bullas

00:57:14 - 00:57:17

Yeah, and it's never been a better time to start, is it?

Teri Yu

00:57:17 - 00:57:31

Yeah. Yeah. So many resources, tools available to you. You can do anything you want on YouTube. You can watch as many people and learn from as many people as you want, but you could also have the tools at your disposal to validate without taking too much risk.

Jeff Bullas

00:57:31 - 00:58:09

Yeah, because a lot of tools are either low cost or free even and also easy to use. In other words, used to, you know, software is now driving the digital economy. It's like the geeks have inherited the earth. So the reality is that it's never been a better time to start. And that's what I encourage all my listeners and viewers. And thank you very much for coming on the podcast because we try to encourage everyone to start and sometimes I just need a little nudge to get them over the starting line. So thank you very much, Teri, for your time, it's been absolutely fabulous.

Teri Yu

00:58:09 - 00:58:12

Absolutely. It was such a fun time to be here.

Jeff Bullas

00:58:12 - 00:58:13

Thank you.

Teri Yu

00:58:13 - 00:58:14

Alright. Thank you, Jeff.