#295: Community Building Trends for 2026 with Becky Pierson Davidson

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:00:00]:
This grad weekend experience is something that we've continued doing. The last cohort, we had 66% of the cohort show up, and we're close to like 100 people in a cohort, to give you an idea. And they're traveling from all over the world. Even the people abroad are like coming to this LA weekend.

Jay Clouse [00:00:30]:
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. Today I'm speaking with my good friend Becky Pearson Davidson. Becky was last on the show in episode number 197 in June of 2024 when we recorded with Chanel Basilio at KITS Craft and Commerce Conference. That episode was all about building raving fans and it was a listener favorite. So we were overdue to bring Becky back. Becky is a community-driven product strategist and founder of Affinity Collective, helping 6, 7, and 8-figure online businesses. That's real.

Jay Clouse [00:01:03]:
She works with very legit clients, build transformative memberships and courses through design thinking and data-driven customer research. She also hosts a podcast called Build with Becky that's a voice note style show all about community. Becky and I share a lot of beliefs when it comes to community and membership-based products, and she's really doubled down on this over the last few years, so I thought it would be fun to compare notes and see if there were any areas of disagreement between us, and spoiler, we found a couple. In this episode, we talk about the current state of online community, trends she's seeing in 2026, what successful communities are doing right now, and some warnings for anyone running or thinking about running a community business today. Becky has been a longtime member of the Lab, one of our first. And speaking of Craft and Commerce, we are hosting the Lab's next 2-day offline event in Boise ahead of KITS Craft and Commerce Conference again this year in June. We already have over 30 members of the community RSVP'd, and we'd love for you to join us. It's only available to Standard and VIP members of the Lab.

Jay Clouse [00:02:06]:
So to learn more and apply, visit creatorscience.com/lab. That's creatorscience.com/lab. There's a link in the show notes to learn more. We'll get to that conversation with Becky right after this. We're obviously going to talk a lot about community and memberships today, but I thought we would start by defining some terms so everybody is on the page. So when you say the word community, what does that mean to you?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:02:35]:
Well, in the broad sense, community is about bringing people together that have some kind of shared interest or goal. But when I talk about community in the context of my work, I think about community a lot as a product versus as a marketing growth engine to help grow a business or as a, like, WhatsApp chat with your friends about your fantasy football league. Like, I think about it more in the context of treating it as a product in your business and something that you really nurture and improve over time. But I think that's a me definition.

Jay Clouse [00:03:09]:
Well, no, this is why it's useful because we're talking to you. So when you say community, we want to know what you mean by that. To kind of zoom in on that a little bit more, you've worked with folks who have very large audiences. And so what line do you draw between community and audience?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:03:27]:
I don't think about audience as community, which I know is maybe a hot take, but it's not a community unless you're like nurturing relationships and connecting people to one another. So an audience is very, I think these are your words actually, like you always say one-to-many or one-to-one, like it's a very one-to-many experience.

Jay Clouse [00:03:46]:
It's like a one-to-one many times is an audience relationship. I agree. Yeah. When I say community, I think. There are inherent peer-to-peer conversations, connections, relationships happening. It's all of the connecting points inside of a network rather than like a broadcast one-to-one many times. So I agree with that. Okay, cool.

Jay Clouse [00:04:09]:
Well, I want to talk today about where community is, where it's headed, where it has left, because it's a new year and I do feel I'm certainly thinking about this more and more in the age of AI, both because AI feels very anti-human in a lot of ways, and because I think it's going to have a very destructive effect on course businesses. And I think a lot of people are thinking, okay, this is where I'm moving. Are you seeing the same? Are you seeing community as a rising business model?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:04:44]:
Yeah, I keep joking with my friends and team that it's such a great year to be building community as your business because I've been talking about community for years. And I think part of it is, okay, if you do the creator thing for years, then all of a sudden you start to see traction. Like it doesn't happen in the beginning, but I'm starting to see traction and I feel that that's both like the moment in time we're in and everybody's talking about community cuz we're craving human connection more than ever and we're craving to work with companies and businesses and people that resonate with us, that we share values with more than ever. So I, I'm seeing this like rising tide and I'm also working with quite a few clients right now who have amazing course businesses that are starting to see a slowdown and they recognize that something needs to change. And we're starting to think about like, how do we shift that to a membership model? Because community is the piece that really is bringing people into this. Like shared learning experience is going to be what we move to and away from an education, like self-paced kind of experience that online courses are today.

Jay Clouse [00:05:50]:
Do you think that's an easy transition? Is it like the Indiana Jones, we have this bag of gold in front of us and we're just going to swap this course bag of gold for a community business model and nothing happens? It just is a seamless transition?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:06:02]:
No, it's different for everyone. Like we're doing this for quite a few clients, but all the strategies are really different. It depends on a few factors, like What kind of programming are you willing to do? Like, as the creator, if you created a self-paced on-demand course, you probably were chasing, like, I'm gonna put it in air quotes, like, passive income. And so you're looking at, how can I make money while I sleep? How can I not have to show up? I just kind of like, you know, publish this course and then people watch it. And the shift is, what are they willing to do to actually bring people together, connect them? Teach live, talk live, run workshops, bring people together virtually, in person. And so it really depends on what the appetite is for that. And if they're like really excited about that, then the strategy is a lot easier. And if they're not, then we need to get a little bit crafty around how we create programming that gets people engaged in, in using the, the course and the community and the content.

Jay Clouse [00:07:01]:
I feel like community is very active income. Uh, there's like, there's, there's certainly some efficiencies. To it. But when I think about where I'm spending my time, and not even just fingers on the keyboard time, but even just thinking energy time, so much of it gets soaked up with the Lab and in our community there. And I think it's certainly underestimated by people who are kind of coming into it, but I think it's even underestimated by people who are doing it. If I try to imagine a world where the Lab doesn't exist, first of all, I'm sad. Second of all, I would have so much time and capacity. It's such a beast, but that is a result of how I've designed the space, which is a design in which there are few boundaries, unfortunately.

Jay Clouse [00:07:53]:
How do you think about helping people find the right community design for what they want to do?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:08:01]:
Yeah, I always want to start by asking what their appetite is, like their goals, what they're willing to do, because that's how I would craft Okay, so if you're willing to show up once a month in the community, we can design around that. I'm also probably encouraging this client to have some sort of support on their team. Like, if you're not willing to be in the forum engaging with people or host events or bring people together, then somebody needs to step up to the plate to do that work. It doesn't have to be you. I mean, we have a client who has a large social media following. She actually teaches how to grow on Instagram and we developed a membership product where there's a different social media coach inside of the membership and it's all very clear in the marketing. Even the sales pitch comes from the coach that's in the program because it's really important to me that we're setting really clear expectations in the marketing about what experience somebody's getting. And that membership has really high retention.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:08:58]:
It does really well and it's because people are really supported by an incredible social media coach that does that for a living. And so I think there are ways we can always, like, work around what people are willing to do.

Jay Clouse [00:09:11]:
Let's dig more into that because I'm completely aligned with this, and this is why I wanted to have you on the podcast, is because I feel like we're aligned on a lot of things, but also I'm really interested to hear where we're not aligned. I think that could be really fun if we find those areas to be determined. Yeah, I want to talk more about these expectations that you set, because I do find in the world where people are saying, okay, memberships are up and coming, my course business is fading, let's do that. They just think, I have audience, platforms exist, throw the two together, people trust me, they will join. But I think the implicit of that very sloppy strategy is that people will close the loop of the expectations you're not setting on their own and will probably assume that they get more access to the creator, the person, than is real. Have you seen this happen?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:10:02]:
Yeah. I used to be head of product at Boss Babe, and I remember when I took over the goal setting call, that was a call we had every single month. And the first couple of months it was like a riot because they were like, who is this random person?

Jay Clouse [00:10:14]:
And it was— That must have sucked. That must have sucked for you.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:10:16]:
Yeah. I mean, I was very aware that they would feel that way. It's not like they're writing in the chat, who is this? Because I'm bubbly and nice. And they were like, oh, this girl's trying. She's cute. Right? But, but the reality is like we got messages in the customer service inbox, which my team managed. So I'm seeing that are like, hey, I thought Natalie runs these calls. What happened?

Jay Clouse [00:10:39]:
You know?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:10:39]:
And I see this pattern play out a lot. And what I've realized is like, we just need to overcommunicate. And I also believe we need to make the community We need to make them part of decisions. Like we're co-creating this community experience. And so how do we do that through like asking for feedback? Hey, we heard your feedback. You want more goal setting? Like, hey, we heard this. We want to improve this process. We're going to bring in this consistent person that does this every month, you know? So it's like we're responding to the feedback we're getting by making these changes and decisions.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:11:13]:
And the other thing is just communicating kind of like a corporate change management sort of way, like, hey, this change is coming and not just dropping it on people, I find is another important thing. Like when somebody logged into that goal setting call expecting Natalie and it was me and there's not a preemptive process there about, hey, this is actually who's going to take over the call. Maybe we could have done a couple co-hosted 3 times before she dropped off. Like there could have been a better way to roll that out.

Jay Clouse [00:11:42]:
Yeah, it's kind of bait and switchy and it feels— this is not calling out this organization specifically, but I do see this from time to time. If people expect that this creator they've built a probably parasocial relationship with at this point, if they expect that creator to show up and they don't, besides feeling disappointed, the implicit message to that is, I don't value this as part of my time. From the creator, which I know they're not trying to say that, but like, I think that is true. Anything that you don't put your time to, you are saying, I don't value this in this way. And if people thought that was going to be the experience, not only are they disappointed, but they also feel a little bit insulted.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:12:23]:
I think there's a balance, and this is where I talk about the value perception versus value experience in my work. So if you're setting a specific expectation up front, with your customers than when they purchase and they're expecting. We can say, oh, this, this person never coaches inside the membership. This is based on their methods, but they're not in their day-to-day because they're focused on XYZ. And if we set that expectation up front, then people know going in, and then we can surprise and delight by having her come in and do a quarterly event. And then people are really excited about that. And that's kind of my approach I take is like, we wanna set the bar here and then like deliver here so people talk about it and they're really excited about it.

Jay Clouse [00:13:06]:
I see this with sales pages for memberships all the time. And a lot of times when people are building a paid community or a membership and they're, they're saying like, okay, here's what's gonna go on the sales page. They're just like loading up this page with stuff. It's like, here's all the stuff. And there's inherent rigidity to that. But also my advice is usually like, you need to make the smallest viable promise. Because then you have so much flexibility and you can do a lot of surprise and delight. But there's like some fear and maybe a little bit of imposter syndrome that comes with making the smallest version of a promise that you can make that is enough to warrant the cost of the membership.

Jay Clouse [00:13:49]:
How do you help people find, here is what the expectation of value should be in this membership?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:13:57]:
I always start by asking what transformation are we trying to serve here? So if we're taking people from A to B, what does that look like? Even in a community of practice like the Lab, it's like you're taking people from a professional creator to like probably a professional creator that experiments and then grows at a faster rate or something. And so even in a community of practice, there's still a transformation. And so I, I try to like define what that is and then I'm asking them, okay, what are the key things they need to be able to accomplish that. And so it's always like, these are the things they need to make a purchasing decision. And so usually there's some kind of like roadmap component or curriculum component to that because people wanna buy for the outcome. So it's like, okay, you're gonna get this thing, this, this checklist that's gonna help you reach your goal. And then you're gonna get also a workshop, a monthly event. Here's some examples of the kind of events we've hosted in the past, but just sort of like bare bones so that we can really experiment after purchase.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:15:06]:
But the bare bones thing, they need to make a decision. I always say like people buy for the outcomes and for the roadmap or the checklist or the giant red jump button that gets them to their, to their goal that they're trying to achieve. And then they actually do the work through the programming. And engage through programming and they stick around because of the community. So community is often not the thing that they actually buy for. And so I try to think about like the outcome, the roadmap piece, the resource kind of stuff that we list on the sales page.

Jay Clouse [00:15:35]:
Yeah, I'm interested in this word transformation because I do think that is the biggest sales lever that you have when you're building one of these things. I don't think I've articulated that very well or even designed it very well into the lab because I've been kind of resistant. To it because ultimately I'm not doing any specific linear teaching in there. Like, to me, really what I'm trying to do is help people who are already close to the edge stay there and learn from peers because the rate of knowledge transfer is just so much faster when it doesn't need to be produced into some sort of packaged course-type thing. Inherently harder to sell, but pretty sticky. And my fear with people who go the transformation route is they create a really good experience. It's like this linear education, but it's a mostly consumptive experience. And if they're purely thinking the transformation lens, I find that sometimes they have a hard time getting members to participate and interact with one another because they set the expectation that this is going to be a consumptive experience.

Jay Clouse [00:16:44]:
So how do you hold both things in the design of a space?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:16:48]:
I think you found the thing we disagree on.

Jay Clouse [00:16:51]:
Please.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:16:52]:
Um, okay, so I believe the transformation part is we want to give them the roadmap, the resources, the course, whatever, the curriculum, but people don't actually use that that much. And so the community experience comes into play with the programming. So what that does, having a roadmap, or let's say you have a framework because that's my favorite, like if a client has a framework, this becomes way easier because we can build your transformative, like, roadmap curriculum based on your framework. So let's say you have a framework and that's like the backbone of the experience. That gives them a really clear roadmap to follow, and also we can personalize it by identifying where they are in that path. But the programming aspect, which really starts to connect people in community, is the part that gets people very engaged, and there's really clear objectives that make it worth their time to RSVP and, and to show up and do the work and participate. So I'll give you some examples. So on these programming calls, we might workshop something.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:17:54]:
So let's say in my framework, I talk about onboarding. I'm going to run a session on onboarding design. We're going to talk all about onboarding, and then we're actually going to have people design it on the call and connect and share their onboarding flows with each other and get feedback. They're starting to connect the dots with one another and help one another. And that builds connection because they actually have a shared thing that they're working on versus like forced connection, which we often do too early in community building. So the transformation piece means that there's like a shared path that people are working toward together, which like drives connection.

Jay Clouse [00:18:29]:
I see. So you're thinking about it more as like less of very discreet A to B and a little bit more of a broader, like there's a transformation where that says, hey, join this space. And we're going to set up your email onboarding machine. That feels like a very clear, specific, but relatively short-term outcome that at some point, if you do deliver that very quickly, it kind of feels like, what's the retention mechanism? Like, what's the role of this past this? But it sounds like what you're advocating for is a little bit of a longer term point B that feels a little bit more aspirational. And there are multiple destinations within that.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:19:17]:
Yes, but I also see the other option you gave, which I would consider more like, there's two ways to do this. It's part of their onboarding experience and it's kind of like you can cohort it or whatever, but they go through this like quicker experience to like hit what I call baseline. Because it's like, okay, we're trying to all get on the same page. Let's say we're teaching people email automation.

Jay Clouse [00:19:41]:
Yeah, like set up your email onboarding experience, your welcome sequence.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:19:46]:
So sure, that's like a very quick win. So we could make that part of their onboarding experience. And then because everybody already has their email welcome sequence done, then there's a million other things they need to focus on with their email growth. And so then they go from Okay, now they've had a quick win. Everybody has that same baseline. They at least have their welcome sequence. And now they're in like a community of practice that is more like the programming is driving other areas of email growth or things that they could be doing.

Jay Clouse [00:20:17]:
But in that world, I probably shouldn't just be marketing and selling the community as that first thing we accomplished. Like I need to have a bigger vision and a bigger promise for what this transformation, this outcome is.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:20:30]:
I agree. That would be a scenario where that's probably something that would come out of like an onboarding design session, which would come after like, what are we putting on the sales page to kind of like go back to what we were originally talking about. But the broader transformation is how I'd focus on what should we include here and what should we put on the sales page.

Jay Clouse [00:20:49]:
So some things that have naturally come up, we've talked about frameworks, outcomes slash transformations, we've talked about programming playing a role within it. We haven't talked a whole lot about the role of the forum. How much do you focus on a forum experience, assuming there is a community forum in whatever tool somebody is using? How much do you focus on that in the design of memberships right now?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:21:14]:
It's definitely a core component. I always think about it from an experience standpoint. So for example, we're just working on like a functional health community strategy and we created a space called case studies. And in this space, somebody can share a case study of a patient/client, like what they need help with, a functional health coach. And they could say like, here's how I'm thinking of treating this person, or like the protocols I'm looking at, and get feedback from this like functional health team to help them like make sure they're giving their client the best protocol. And this case study space is really specific because we want them to follow a specific post structure. It's kind of like that connection space you just made, like you have a very specific post structure. So we think about like, okay, what's like the minimum amount of spaces they need? Usually it's very small to start with, but if there's anything specific to the design that we've made, like that, like this case study space, we'll add it in.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:22:13]:
But mostly I try to keep it extremely simple in the beginning and then we add based on like what comes up, right? Because you never know how people are going to behave. What kind of conversations are going to catch on. One of the biggest mistakes I see is people over-engineer making a ton of different spaces for different conversation topics, and they don't actually know what the conversation topics are yet.

Jay Clouse [00:22:31]:
Yeah, I agree with that. Whenever I'm looking at somebody's space design, I'm asking myself, one, what is like the minimum viable version of this? Because if you have two spaces that do not necessarily feel distinct, this just creates friction. Do I post in place A or place B? And if you have spaces where the purpose is not clear and obvious, that also just won't get used and it's creating decision fatigue looking at it. I do have a lot of people who come in, they have a community, they've done a lot of things right. They kind of understand the promise they're making. People obviously believe in it because they're joining. They're running programming that seems to be aligned with that. But the problem I hear from them is people aren't engaging.

Jay Clouse [00:23:17]:
And so what's happening there most of the time?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:23:20]:
A lot of people say that they have an engagement problem, and then I ask them, well, what does meaningful engagement look like? And they look at me like I have 5 heads. And I think it's an important question to ask. Is meaningful engagement that they're just posting random conversations all day long every day? Probably not. And so if we think about what does meaningful engagement look like in your community, For you, it's probably sharing experiments. Like you want people in the lab to share experiments with one another, to share what's working, to yes, like ask for feedback and like help each other. It's probably not as much random conversation. Like that's not necessarily meaningful, although it is fun and there's plenty of that too. So I like to think about what does meaningful engagement look like in your community before answering that question because a lot of times people are really worried about their community being crickets or people not connecting.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:24:16]:
That might not even actually be a problem. If it is a problem, then I also encourage people to make sure that the behavior they desire is being modeled. So I like to tap ambassadors, or I call them plants in the community, that are like, hey, you 5, like Jay, you could message me and be like, hey, would you mind posting in this new space? I'm trying to get some people using it. This is how I want people to use it. And you could do that with 5 or 10 people. And then because the behavior is starting to be modeled of how to use it, other people are more likely to step up and do it, especially people that are less like the super active or the lurkers. They're more likely to do it if other people are doing it. So getting people to model behavior and set an example is a great way.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:24:57]:
And not, not just the creator, but like the members.

Jay Clouse [00:25:00]:
I find a lot of times. It's an expectation thing also, where a lot of times when I look at somebody's membership sales page, it does seem to set the expectation that you come in and you are going to be fed what to do. And so what they have people doing is watching videos. Oftentimes they end up stop coming to live programming because that programming is basically just a video at 1x speed. That programming may not be designed to have any type of interaction between people. So the net value add above something that's prerecorded is zero and maybe even negative because I could watch it at a faster speed. And so what I try to get people to think about is setting the participation expectation on the sales page, this meaningful participation. I like that.

Jay Clouse [00:25:50]:
I like that idea or meaningful engagement. Setting that expectation of the experience pre-purchase. So they come in thinking this is part of what it means to be a member of this space.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:26:02]:
Have you heard of the Dreamers and Doers community?

Jay Clouse [00:26:05]:
Yes.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:26:07]:
Taylor Harrington is the community manager and I've followed her for a while and I decided to join. So I recently just went through their onboarding and that's something I think they did really well is they They have an application and in the application, you're basically like accepting the terms for, for like what it means to be a member and what the culture is like. And they even describe a few of their spaces and like how they're used and how people help each other. And I thought that was really interesting because I think about this a lot in the onboarding flow and setting expectations in one of your, you know, initial welcome videos. But I love what you said around we need to do it before and even on the sales page, that's not something I, I see, but I thought it was really interested in the application.

Jay Clouse [00:26:51]:
Yeah, I try to do that. Uh, we have a new version of the sales page coming out maybe by the time this episode is ready, but I try to talk about experiments more on it because that is meaningful participation for this space. And so if I set the expectation before you join that this is a place where we are sharing experiments with one another, I think that's going to net increase that behavior. Something that came out of our town hall last month that we're working on, not done yet. Somebody asked, how do the best users, best members of the lab get the most out of it? And I love that question because I think you could go to those people, learn from them, and put that into your onboarding and say, these are the ways that some of our longest standing, happiest, most fulfilled members are using this space. Have you seen that done well?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:27:42]:
I've seen that once or twice before, and I always forget about that strategy, but it's so smart. I love that. I'm going to swipe that.

Jay Clouse [00:27:49]:
So smart. Even a small thing like, hey, when you introduce yourself, go say hi to the person who introduced themselves before you. Or hey, when you ask a question, go into the feed and try to be helpful to one other person who asked a question recently. It's such a low bar. And it should be obvious, but just the little nudge, people are like, oh yeah, that is something that I should do. We still do welcome calls in the lab, and every time I do one of those, I end the call by saying, hey, you know, I try to tell people, be a little selfish in the forum. And by that I mean, I've never seen anybody overuse it. Because the problem I run into is people are empathetic and self-aware, and they're like, oh, I have this question, but I haven't been active in the last week, so who am I to go and post in here? I just Just try to dispel that right away.

Jay Clouse [00:28:40]:
But I think you could also go too far there because if, if people are too selfish, then no one's, no one's being helpful. But I find if your community is empathetic and kind of maybe type A, just giving them that permission helps.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:28:54]:
Yeah, for sure. I also, I was talking to a friend recently. She runs the Flowermore community. Her name's Ellen Frost, and she was like, I was talking to my member and she told me that Every morning she just scrolls through the community when she has her coffee in the morning. And I think those stories are really good to tell too in this context, which is like, like if you asked me my behavior in the lab, Becky, like tell me about the last few times you logged in. Because we always learn a lot from people telling their stories. So asking about their behavioral data is really helpful. So saying like, hey, tell me about the last time you logged in.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:29:27]:
What were you doing? And I would be like, oh, like I wanted to send a message to my Mastermind, and like, then that led me to do this and whatever. And so I think that you would learn a lot from those, collecting those stories and being like, here's how people engage. Like Becky reads it every morning with her morning coffee or, you know, and just like telling those little anecdotes.

Jay Clouse [00:29:46]:
Masterminds have been such an interesting experiment. I feel like I've done now like 6 cycles of this going back to my time at SPI, which is where I like really tried to innovate on this. The interesting thing I saw there, and I still see today, the mastermind experience increases retention and decreases forum participation. It's like such an interesting trade-off that I'm going to make, but I wish there was an elegant way to take some of the insights that happen in these small groups and then report them back to the larger group in a way that wasn't so effortful or onerous on the mastermind leader. But I've just seen it over and over again that masterminds increase retention but then have a negative downstream effect on forum participation because a lot of members are now getting what they need from the membership in that small group experience. And that just becomes the way they engage with the membership as a whole.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:30:45]:
I love that post you do every once in a while that's like, what's working for you right now?

Jay Clouse [00:30:50]:
Yeah.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:30:51]:
And it might be cool to do a post that's like, share something that came up in your mastermind recently that would be like really helpful for the group. I think that could be another good thread for you to try.

Jay Clouse [00:31:02]:
This is something that I've flung too far to the other end of the pendulum on, which was I was trying to decenter myself as like driver of value and education in the community. And I think I could be doing more to prompt and start conversation like this, like the what's working right now posts. We used to do even like a self-promotion post at sometimes, because really I think in a community like the Lab where what I'm trying to do is spark ideas and insight and build relationships, I just need to increase surface area between people. Points of contact between people is really where all the magic happens. After a quick break, Becky and I get into why in-person events are so important for communities right now and what's working out there in real life. So stick around, we'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Becky Pearson Davidson. I wanna talk about offline stuff because I know you have some opinions on offline elements of membership.

Jay Clouse [00:32:09]:
So where's your head right now with the importance an opportunity for offline experiences.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:32:16]:
Yeah, I do this like predictions issue every year where I talk about membership predictions and in the 2025 predictions, I was like, you have to have some kind of in-person component to your online community to have high retention and survive the next wave of this. And I think that that's still true and, and I saw it play out a lot last year in just a lot of memberships starting to add in-person components and programs. We have one client, Beyond Connection is the name of the program. It's an 8-week program based on Keith Farazzi's books. And we have a graduation weekend. So it's an 8-week program and there's a graduation weekend in LA. This is a global community. There's people all over the world.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:32:59]:
And the first time they launched it, it was the first cohort or the second cohort, I think, in December of 2024. And the beginning of the cohort, they were like, you know what, let's do a grad weekend. It was just like a thing that they threw in. And I'm saying they because we joined the team in January the following year. So they added this grad weekend and over 50% of people came with 8 weeks notice flying to LA and booking places to stay. And this grad weekend experience is something that we've continued doing and we have over 50% of members show up. I just asked my team for the stats and the last cohort, we had 66% of the cohort show up and we're close to like 100 people in a cohort to give you an idea. And they're traveling from all over the world.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:33:48]:
Even the people abroad are like coming to this LA weekend. They have to book their own hotels and all their own travel. We're not coordinating any of that, but they get to go to a dinner at Keith's house, which is amazing. Oh, wow. And then they get to self-organize. So people in the community actually organize events. For the rest of the weekend. So like somebody will like organize a brunch that they all go to.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:34:11]:
Basically they, they just have different meetups and people join in on those meetups and it's amazing. And it's really created this like this 8-week program. They, they stay in the community and the community has over 60% monthly active users a year later after an 8-week program. And I think it has a lot to do with the in-person piece.

Jay Clouse [00:34:30]:
And is that sustaining community, is that, is there any payment in that? Like, are they paying to be in the community or is that just, we run this as a service. If you went through this program, you have access to this community space into perpetuity.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:34:44]:
Right now it's in perpetuity, but it's a high ticket program. And so they're, they're paying for this 8-week program and then they're in the community experience right now.

Jay Clouse [00:34:53]:
So the grad weekend, it sounds like the cost drivers would be anything related to being at the residence, but otherwise there's no cost drivers. So I'm guessing there's no cost outside of the program fee to do that, right? Meaning like a ticket to join, like you obviously have to book your own travel and lodging. And if you're organizing a brunch, it sounds like that's going to be on the individuals who attend that brunch, but there's no ticket to attend the grad weekend that is part of the program, right?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:35:24]:
That's part of the program that you get to go to grad weekend, which really means We're all going to be in LA this particular weekend and you guys can do meetups and stuff. And also you can come to this one dinner. You do have to RSVP to that dinner, which we organize. I can say it's a 4-figure investment. It's not like 5 figures.

Jay Clouse [00:35:41]:
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. The economics on in-person stuff has been interesting, challenging to figure out and even just like model because we have the offline events for the lab. It's $2,000 to $4,000 per year, depending on which tier you go into. And we want those events just to be run at cost, but we do the organizing of the venue space and the meals. And so we think to ourselves, we should charge a ticket price to cover that and the swag and whatever else.

Jay Clouse [00:36:11]:
But I wonder if that's net better than if you had a higher membership price and just ate the cost of the venue and the food I don't know. There's multiple ways to do it with varying degrees of stress depending on how you do it. But it's, it's been something what we've had a hard time figuring out. What are you seeing as models of offline economics that are working?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:36:39]:
In that same community, we also have bonding dinners is what we call them, which are around the world and a member hosts them. We pay a percentage of the booking fee currently. So like I think 20% and we actually take, we take a payment for the dinner. So it'll be like a prefix dinner. We take payment and then we handle it. And that's actually a switch we just made and it's working better because there's less like who pays the bill and how do we coordinate it, which just like isn't the best experience. But it is like a Beyond Connections hosted event that a member is like leading and we're collecting payment for it. You know, we're doing both models even in that community and I'm really seeing really high-ticket masterminds, I'm also seeing like including a retreat weekend, but they're like, you know, $20,000, $30,000 that are including like a retreat weekend or two.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:37:36]:
And usually that doesn't include lodging, so they're basically paying for the event attendance and food for like 2 days. For what it's worth, I think the way you do it, it totally works. And I think at cost, like the pricing is very inexpensive.

Jay Clouse [00:37:52]:
Yeah, I think it's working. It's, it helps the more times you do it and have roughly the same template so you can dial it in. It was really stressful last year because we're like, uh, I don't know what this is going to cost. I don't know how many people are going to come. But now we have like a rough understanding of, okay, how many people are going to come? What are the biggest cost drivers? What do we want to put into this? And it's gotten easier. But I am thinking about as we grow, I also want to support more member-led local meetups, and I would like for there to be no cost for people involved with that. And modeling that out is also something I'm trying to figure out of— do I just create like a dinners budget on our P&L for the lab? And when people volunteer to host this, I say, here's our contribution towards it? I don't know, I'm thinking about it. But I do generally think that If you're going to do an online community, the more opportunities you give people to meet in person, just the happier and better off everybody is.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:38:52]:
Yeah. You always have like the highest retention from those members. One of our mastermind members in the lab has recently had a meetup for his membership and he said 100 out of 300 people went, which is amazing.

Jay Clouse [00:39:05]:
Crazy. Yeah. I need to get Chad on the show. I should talk to Chad.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:39:08]:
Yeah. Chad's amazing. His business is amazing.

Jay Clouse [00:39:11]:
Chad's one of those guys, and there's, there's been several folks who've come through the lab in this way where people will join because I'll be like a step or two ahead of them, and then they'll just blow past me. They're like, I'm gonna learn from you super quick, and now I'm just going to continue to run and build and crush. And Chad is one of those people. It's so impressive to watch.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:39:30]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:39:30]:
What are some more of your hot takes for 2026 of where communities and memberships are going?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:39:35]:
I think content drops are dying.

Jay Clouse [00:39:39]:
So what's a content drop to find that?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:39:40]:
Yep. So every month you're going to get a new template, resource, masterclass, blah, blah, blah, new long video to watch. We have plenty of content in our lives and content's overwhelming. And the number one reason people leave communities is overwhelm. And so we don't need to create more overwhelming libraries of stuff to go through. And so I think that. Simplification is really in right now, and that means a lot less like dropping new things that you constantly have to do. And this is why I'm so like keen on this roadmap process where it's like, here's all the resources you need to be successful, but come to our programming.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:40:17]:
That's where you're going to do the work and engage with people. And less like we're always adding stuff here. That used to be like the thing people thought meant they made their membership sticky. But oh, if I'm always adding new things, then they're going to stick around. But now it's more connection and like programming that makes it sticky.

Jay Clouse [00:40:34]:
I heard about a membership product once. It was all marketing executives, so like CMO-level people. And the only aspect of this membership was once a quarter they sent out this like fairly detailed questionnaire about like what people are learning and trying and experimenting with and learning with in marketing right now. They would submit their answers individually and then they'd redisseminate the aggregated data back to those people, uh, and that was it. And super high retention, not an inexpensive product. I mean, we, we did this last year with our lab report. That was the inspiration for it. But it's so interesting that again, people, when they start a membership, they think stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, value-add, value-add.

Jay Clouse [00:41:19]:
And the number one reason people leave is overwhelm, which is probably like some level of guilt of, oh, I'm paying for this thing and I'm not using it. So to assuage my own guilt about that fact. I'm just going to leave to make it no longer a tension in my mind. It's, it's crazy. It's a difficult balance to be striking consistently. I'm offering enough value, but not overwhelming people with things.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:41:45]:
My belief is that people just want to see momentum in what they're working toward or feel good about the direction they're on. And if we can make them, like, if we think about the membership more like creating a feeling, Then that can drive retention. So giving them the resources they need to be successful, but also saying like, checking on them. Like, hey member, I haven't seen you in a few, in a like little bit. Last we chatted, you were working on this thing. Like, how'd that go? You know, just like paying more attention to people. And at scale, that might mean you need a community manager. Great.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:42:20]:
But just having somebody be responsible for individual connection with your members and making sure that they're they're plugged in because I can't tell you how many conversations I have where it's like, well, I mean, nobody's like doing the work or engaging or showing up, but like they're still paying, so it's fine. And I'm like, they're going to cancel and it's not fine. Like we're not, we're not spending enough time on customer experience. And when we do focus on customer experience and retention, that's actually how you make a membership grow. It's not like your freebie funnel. So it's really important. And if we focus a lot more on that, I think that's another big shift we'll see is just like people paying a lot more attention to experience because because there's going to be more and more options out there. So when competition gets higher, then we have to try harder, right? And create a better product.

Jay Clouse [00:43:07]:
I want to get your take on this. My thoughts on retention have changed a little bit recently. I used to think that for somebody to renew their membership, at the point where they're making the decision of whether I'm— they're going to renew or not, which is probably some time within 30 days of the renewal date. My thought was they're asking themselves, did I get my money's worth this year? And if the answer is yes, they will renew. But I actually think that's wrong. I think the bar is higher. I think now they're thinking, did I get my money's worth and am I willing to do the same amount of work, or do I expect that I will get my money's worth again this coming year? Because that's not necessarily one-to-one. Just because this year proved to be worthwhile doesn't necessarily mean I expect that to be true next year.

Jay Clouse [00:43:54]:
Like maybe I have exhausted a lot of the material within this space and I feel like it's not going to give me the push I need, or maybe to make my money worth it, I had to participate to a degree that I do not want to commit to doing this coming year. What's your reaction to this?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:44:10]:
I think it's interesting. I'm thinking about Justin Moore. I'm thinking about at the lab retreat when he said that he was sending reports to people. 11 months in before their annual renewal come up for like how much they made in sponsorships that year. And I think it depends on the community, I guess is my answer. Because I think in his case, if they made a huge ROI in their sponsorships, they're going to renew based on like seeing that number. And they might not be, they might not realize how well they're doing. I do my KPI tracker every month similar to yours.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:44:43]:
And half the time I'm like, Oh, I thought I was doing so much worse. You know, just, just seeing those statistics, I'm like, oh, actually, like, we increased our revenue this month. Or actually, my LinkedIn growth was the best it's been an entire year. I had no idea. And I've been down on myself for not posting as much. Right. So it's like a really good check-in. And I think if we can find a way for people to measure their progress, that's actually a really great retention strategy.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:45:11]:
And I don't know, I think that's an interesting question. I hadn't really thought about it. Like, do people think, oh, well, I don't, I'm not going to put that amount of time into it next year. And I think this is why it's so important to talk to your members. Because like, if some, if a member has a renewal coming up, like, ask them.

Jay Clouse [00:45:27]:
This is where it's come from. I've actually had a couple folks who have not renewed who have talked about like, hey, this year I want X to Y and it's been amazing and I'm not renewing my membership. And I've talked to them like, why? And it is like, it has been like a time commitment thing. And, uh, that's the hardest part about a membership that still has a lot of onus on a forum and interaction because it's effortful. So if, if extracting the value you're promising is possible, but is hard, then that's not going to be for everybody because there's a cost to that. There's a cost outside of just the financial cost to it.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:46:04]:
I think that the in-person component and connection is what drives retention more than anything. So like, results matter, but I would say what matters more is the connection to others. And so if the in-person stuff drives a ton of really meaningful connection, and then if they feel really connected, like if they're in their mastermind and they feel really connected to that group, I think that's what drives retention more than anything.

Jay Clouse [00:46:29]:
I think there's just different people need different things. Like, part of the reason we do the offline event— or this is the original thesis— was I knew there are some people who are just not going to be active in a forum. Like, their personality isn't for it, their time isn't for it. And I believed the value of meeting in person is so beneficial that that alone would be a reason why people would renew year after year. And we had conversations at the offline event last year where that was said without prompting. So I'm like, okay, that That is true. So my strategy has been how do we find ways of extracting the value we're promising that are less and less effort relative to people's personalities? Because you could say that being in a mastermind that meets once a week is actually a pretty significant time commitment. It kind of looks like a lot of effort, but to some people who are just allergic to spending time in a forum, it's just far more preferable.

Jay Clouse [00:47:24]:
It feels easier. It's a challenging beast. Everybody's different. Everybody experiences things differently. They want different things. And it's hard to be always winning with all people all the time.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:47:37]:
I think that's another one of my hot takes for this year is we need to have more optionality. And I think you do a really good job of this. Like, for example, you have the podcast feed for members. So if you don't, you're not going to ever show up to a live event, You can listen back to them at 2x speed or whatever, right? On your podcast feed, on your walks. You can go to the in-person events, you can opt in for a mastermind, you can engage in the forum. There's like options. And I think where community builders get stuck is they're like, oh, I need everybody to participate in everything. But really like having these options available is what helps because you're, you are serving those different personality types.

Jay Clouse [00:48:14]:
When you're building communities with folks, what tool stack are you typically using? Which platforms do you bounce between?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:48:23]:
If we're building from scratch, 9 times out of 10, we're building on Circle. I know we're aligned in this, but it's just the best platform that has, uh, forum, events, content, curriculum, like everything in one place. The disparate systems is totally out. We do a lot of migration projects. We're actually migrating an actor community right now that's on Slack, and then they have like a Thrivecart system. And it's really interesting because is like we were talking about earlier, the different spaces and they have so many Slack channels. So we were like, how do we reduce these? So part of our process is like taking a look at what they have and simplifying and optimizing it as we migrate it over to Circle and like building a better member experience. So yeah, Circle is the main platform we're building on.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:49:10]:
I have a couple clients on Skool right now that we're like consult— doing consulting for. Honestly, like, they're unhappy. They want to migrate. So I don't know. I just, I end up seeing a lot of people move to Circle. I do have a few on Slack though. And I think there's some really interesting Slack plugin tools coming into play. And I think if we dabble anywhere next, it would be with like networking communities that are built on Slack that want a better home base with all of their content and some of the structure, like Tighten It is an example of a platform.

Jay Clouse [00:49:44]:
I feel like Slack could have a significant adoption level for communities and be a pretty decent tool if they had any pricing model that was accommodating to communities, but they just don't.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:49:57]:
They don't care.

Jay Clouse [00:49:57]:
Yeah. Dang. I was going to do the unhinged question of kiss, marry, kill of Circle, Slack, and school, but I feel like I know your answer already.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:50:05]:
I'd kill school and I'd, yeah, I'd marry Circle. I'd kiss Slack.

Jay Clouse [00:50:12]:
Yeah. Yeah. Same.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:50:13]:
I live there.

Jay Clouse [00:50:14]:
Pretty simple on that one. Yeah. I think you're about to say something and I interrupted you.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:50:18]:
Oh, well, I was just going to explain that's actually what TightKnit does for the— I'm like, how do they do this legally? It's interesting. But if you have a free Slack, you can have the archive of your messages in TightKnit. So you don't like lose content. Cause if you're on a free Slack plan, everything expires after 90 days, which is such a crappy experience if somebody pays for a membership and then there's like no history. So. So yeah, TightKnit's solving that. I think there's another plugin too. I'm curious about those.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:50:44]:
I'm curious to see how those evolve in the market.

Jay Clouse [00:50:47]:
Yeah, I have the same line of 9 times out of 10 I land on Circle. The 10th time is some chat-based tool, which is usually Slack or Discord if your community really loves Discord already, or WhatsApp if you're international and it's easy. We're up on time here, so I guess my last question to you would be Is there anything you believe to be true in the community space, but you don't yet have the data to support, but you're acting on it anyway?

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:51:14]:
I'm like, but I love data. I have all the data.

Jay Clouse [00:51:18]:
And if it's something that you have new data that's like a surprise new learning that you want to pass along, that's great too.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:51:24]:
I'm still measuring this, so we'll go with this one. The one thing we didn't talk about a lot that I think is a crux of like membership success is personalization. And there's not a great solution for this yet. And we're duct taping a lot right now with our clients by doing like quizzes as part of their onboarding that gives them different results that takes them to like an area that has like a different sort of like resource library kind of thing or checklist or roadmap or whatever. And obviously one-to-one onboarding calls where you give people specific direction is like the best high-touch way to do this, but doesn't work as well at scale. So personalization is going to be necessary for higher engagement, higher retention, better member success. And there's not a great solution for it yet. So we're doing a lot of like experimental stuff.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:52:19]:
And I think that my prediction would be that this will get rolled out into software soon.

Jay Clouse [00:52:25]:
Uh, it should. AI should solve this. Circle should have this solved already. Circle should have better member introductions. Circle should have better serving up of content that'll be interesting to you based on your past. Consumption and engagement behavior. This should be solved, but they prioritize large-scale communities with different needs. And that is my axe that I'm going to grind publicly because I have no reason not to.

Becky Pierson Davidson [00:52:48]:
We'll marry them, but like, we're, we're in therapy. We need some support here.

Jay Clouse [00:52:52]:
Yeah, I feel unheard. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. Apple Podcasts or Spotify and letting me know. We've had a couple new reviews over the last couple of weeks. I see it. I appreciate it. Thank you. My only goal in life right now is 500 Apple Podcast reviews, and we're getting close.

Jay Clouse [00:53:16]:
Those reviews go a long way into helping us grow the show. So thank you. Please consider. If you want to learn more about Becky, subscribe to Build with Becky right here in your podcast player or visit her website at affinitycollective.com. There are links to all things Becky in the show show notes. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.