Key Insights From A $400k+/year High Ticket Community

Hi everyone,

Quick reminder - you subscribed to this newsletter because of my post about Foundr+ community.

The goal of this project is to be the most useful newsletter for active Community Managers.

More structure for this newsletter will follow, but in the mean time I wanted to share my notes from Jay Clouse’s conversation with Ryan Hawk, who runs a high-ticket community in the Leadership niche.

OVERVIEW

Owner: Ryan Hawk, host of the Learning Leader podcast

Community Platform: Slack, IRL events

Target audience: Executives, C-level managers

Community size: 36-40 members

Membership fee: $12,500/year

KEY INSIGHTS

• High Curation. Application based. Initially harder because the audience wasn't as big. He personally chooses who gets interviewed. He curates the group - people appreciate high-level of curation. Every person is worthy of being in their network. Usually 12 people per group.

• High Price Point. $12,500 per person - prefers if the company covers it. Sometimes gives scholarships, but almost always has gone bad - they don't have the skin in the game, start making excuses, etc. Stopped doing that.

• Starting Out. The onboarding is extensive, can multiple hours to complete the questionnaires.

• Ongoing. They meet online 1x month for 75 minutes. In between, there are discussions on Slack. 1x a year - Growth Summit, a 3 day in-person event. Sweats about the details of the events.

EXPANDED

The program consists of 3 groups with 12-15 people, Ryan calls them Circles. In the last round, he received 110 applications, did 45 interviews, and 12 members were selected. Currently hiring more coaches who are experienced in leadership training in corporate environments.

All groups meet up in person. Every member of the 1st group renewed. Likes to do one new group a year. All of the members are growth focused but people are from different backgrounds. No 2 people are from the same company creating a safe space.

Slack. Some don't use it at all, others are power users. They might email or text between them, too. Asks them to use Slack during the meetings where they share:

• A professional win,

• A professional challenge,

• A personal win.

Prework - sends before meetings. Encourages side calls between members.

MISC THOUGHTS

Community doesn't have to be a always-on membership. You can build a valuable community business without being always-on.

Ryan’s a quick responder. A commonality in high-performers. Act quickly.