To live a life of options and not obligations on this platform, we are stoked to bring you high performers who are not just chasing and attaining success. But redefining it through, providing above and beyond service. And [00:01:00] most people the knowledge I’m gonna drop this week’s squad is, it might hit a little different, right?

You know it, I’m just gonna call it stop renting attention and start owning relationships. ’cause if you know my background, I do have the real estate background and renting and owning is a couple different things, but most people build their businesses. Borrowed land, social media followers, algorithm driven reach, likes, views, vanity numbers, that’s rented attention and the landlord can change the rules anytime they want.

One nu update, one, update, one shadow band, one platform shift, and poof, your audience is gone. Owning relationships is different. That’s when people choose to stay. When they raise their hand and say, I’m in, when they’re part of something bigger than content, that’s where impact lives and income follows impact.

I saw this firsthand with a coaching client of mine, high performer. Big goals, tons of knowledge, but he was spinning his wheels, trying to get louder on social media, more posts, more hustle, more noise, yet no real traction. So we flipped the strategy. Instead of chasing attention, we built a small private [00:02:00] group, a place where his people could show up, talk, be seen, be coached, no algorithms, no fighting for reach, just real connection.

Within months, his confidence went up, his clarity went up, his revenue went up. But more importantly, he stopped feeling like he was performing for strangers and started leading a tribe. That’s the shift squad, so don’t run attention, own relationships, because when people belong to you. You’re no longer chasing them.

They’re walking beside you and squad talking about building relationships. Today’s guest just didn’t build a community. She built a movement, then sold it. Carol Tice is a creator and founder of Freelance Writers, then a 1500 member paid community that generated over $6 million and ran strong for a full decade.

She didn’t stumble into that success. She engineered it. From zero to thriving, pay from zero to a thriving paid ecosystem before online communities were even the buzzword of they are today. Now she’s back at it again. Teaching coaches, experts, and passion creators how to build powerful paid communities of their own through community growth academic [00:03:00] school.

That’s S-K-O-O-L. This is what, which we’re gonna dive into it if you’re following on Venmo or YouTube. We’re gonna dive into that school a little bit while we’re here, but this is where business meets belonging, where audience turns into tribe, where. Knowledge turns into income. And here’s the best part.

Carol runs this whole operation while traveling full-time in her RV across the Western United States and maybe other places as well. I know where she’s at now. I’m not gonna give her locate around, but I know where she’s at and it is very envious of her. No office, no commute, no permission required, just total lifestyle freedom built from smart systems.

Real value in a community, done right. So if you ever wondered how to turn your expertise into a scalable paid community or li like I like to say, live the laptop lifestyle. If you ever wanted that business to support your life, instead of trapping it, then buckle up. ’cause I’m gonna bring on my really good friend here, Carol Tice and Carol, thank you so much for coming on.

Please introduce yourself to the Time to Shine Today, podcast Varsity Squad. But first, what’s your favorite color [00:04:00] and why?

Carol Tice: It’s really green to the point that my engagement band is actually an emerald not.

Coach Fergie: Oh my gosh. That’s awesome. That’s beautiful too. How long have you been married?

Carol Tice: 44 years in October. That’s amazing. And yes, I was a child bride. Thank you for asking. I was gonna say that I was gonna go there. I was gonna say, were you 12, but too much. But no, it is amazing. I’m so glad that we connected like one, because you’ve like ghost, which I didn’t even really bring up.

Coach Fergie: You’ve ghostwritten books. You did like it all. Like you are a total go-to for people. But I gotta ask you like. Be honest here, like what’s harder growing a paid community from zero or finding reliable wifi in the middle of the desert.

Carol Tice: Definitely growing the community because have starlink will travel.

Like I have no problems. I have no problems there.

Coach Fergie: I love it. So you’ve built communities before and sold, and sold it. It had a lot of revenue, sold it. And community is like [00:05:00] that trendy buzzword right now.

Carol Tice: So hot.

Coach Fergie: Tell me like what is, before we get into a little bit more of your background, but what is the ugly part that nobody sees?

The moment you almost said the might not work.

Carol Tice: The ugly part is if you let it, it can be really all consuming.

Coach Fergie: Sure.

Carol Tice: You have to. Control how much you are giving in the community, or you just wake up every morning and think, oh my God, I have 1500 needy children and I care about all of their success, and I need to be on all day talking to them and it will eat you.

But the flip side is I know community founders who I’ve coached who spend almost no time, they might spend three hours a month,

Showing up live and they have other moderators answering questions. And it’s one of the things I love about paid communities. You can dial up or down your

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: Involvement level,

Coach Fergie: Un, unless you just say something blatant or letting way too much shady [00:06:00] stuff happen, they can’t really shut it down. Like it’s like I explained like I know friends that were big influencers. And they got shut down ’cause of one thing or even a comment. That’s why I always went the email marketing route.

Building my list up is, unless I’m spamming, they can’t shut me down. They’re gonna deliver and stuff.

And

Carol Tice: yeah. But if you’re on a Facebook group, like they just random banned people.

Coach Fergie: Thank

Carol Tice: you. I have some people in Community Growth Academy that are on Facebook groups now that we’re gonna get ’em out of there. ’cause Yeah. I’m scared for them.

Coach Fergie: Yeah. You just met you. Make someone mad from the wrong person. They just shut you down. And with that, if you’ve, like you’ve said, built time and you were like, all your bandwidth was going into a community and they shut it down, it’s like that’s just gone, right?

Yeah. But I gotta dig in a little bit of your background. ’cause we had a little bit of a chat before, like William Morris, like you did some really awesome stuff, Carol. Talk to me about your, come up where you kinda started and then how you got, to the point where you’re.[00:07:00]

Building revenue generating groups. So tell us a little bit about your backstory.

Carol Tice: I started working as a secretary as my day job to support my rock and roll. Singer songwriter Dreams.

Coach Fergie: Really? Okay.

Carol Tice: That’s where I started in writing, was in songwriting, and I was playing clubs in LA and in like my twenties and wow.

Around hitting 30. As a musician, you face a moment of truth because your odds that you’re gonna become a huge international superstar are getting low. It’s really a young person’s game and you have to ask yourself if you’d be happy being what Bob Seger was for 20 years, like a regional act, just kinda subsistence play in your town.

Yeah. Where people know and love you and it never gets any more than that and Right. And back when I was doing it, there wasn’t, Spotify and stuff. You had to get a record deal and. And then I entered and won an essay contest about how hard it is to make it in [00:08:00] LA as a musician. Wow. And I never looked back.

I was like, oh, what kind of writing you can do without worrying whether your drummer will take the overnight party bus to Vegas instead of showing up at the gig or psychedelic mushrooms. And I have total control over what I’m doing. Tell me more. I just really. Went that direction, literally gave my recording equipment away to people and was like, I found a kind of writing they just pay you for, they paid me 200 bucks for that essay and I was like,

Coach Fergie: yeah,

Carol Tice: my life changed forever

Coach Fergie: without divulging. Was this like seventies, eighties timeframe?

Carol Tice: This is like early nineties.

Coach Fergie: Oh, early nineties. Okay. Gotcha.

Carol Tice: Kind of time, I think. Or 89. And I always say I’m like the last person they led in the door as a reporter without a J school degree.

I really learned it on the job writing for the alternative press and then for the Seattle Times.

Coach Fergie: Wow.

Carol Tice: And, then I got a couple of staff jobs, staff reporting jobs I [00:09:00] covered home improvement retailing in the western region for a trade publication. Very glamorous work, going to hardware stores and lumber yards and talking to lumber guys, I love that

Coach Fergie: you say that with a straight face that’s

Carol Tice: very high glamor.

And, then I wrote for the Puget Sound Business Journal. I was a staffer for seven years covering my own town of Seattle. ’cause I wanted to get off the road. I had more, young kids. And then and I loved that job that I was never gonna leave. And then the editorial stuff changed over, turned over, and the party was over there and I was the most high, highly paid reporter.

And they started looking at the budget, laid me off. And I thought I would get another job, but I started freelancing again, which I had done before, and it just went really well and I. Was making, like I, I surpassed my staff writer income.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: And grew my freelance writing income to six figures during the [00:10:00] 8 0 8 0 9 downturn.

Coach Fergie: Sure. Yeah.

Carol Tice: And started blogging about what I was doing, and I was very excited by blogging, which was very hot then. Yeah. And, for me, after

Coach Fergie: was it back then, was it ing?

Carol Tice: No. My own blog. Oh,

Coach Fergie: okay. Got it. Okay.

Carol Tice: I, after 12 years of having editorial gatekeepers, being able to just hit the publish button, amazing.

I was in, and so I wanted to become a really good blogger and figure out how to monetize it and stuff. So I joined a community for bloggers. Okay. And I loved it. I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. I’m learning so much. Their courses are great. Being able to talk to other people who are going on this journey yeah, who are in the same place I am, is so amazing.

I feel so less alone and there ought to be something like this for freelance writers, and I feel like really there isn’t,

Coach Fergie: right.

Carol Tice: Then I sat with that for, I wanna say 18 months or a couple years. [00:11:00] Great. Until I went to the late list Strauss’s successful online business conference in Chicago, SoCon, and got very inspired and came home very fired up to just.

Put the hammer down and launch it. Okay. I’m a very non-technical person, so that was the sticking point for me. I was like, a little challenge. Yeah. I, yeah, I was, I knew how to operate my blog on WordPress, but I knew it was a lot more complex and that I didn’t know how to do it, and I ended up hiring the people from that blog in community to put it up.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: And in 90 days the doors were open. So I’d been building audience with my blog for a couple of years. Had a list.

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: And we went to about 500 members fairly quickly and then got stuck. There were two sort of sticking places where we plateaued.

And that was the first one.

And one of my mentors was like. My dear, you need to close the doors and make it more exclusive and scarce. Ooh. Yeah. And I had seen communities that were like, we are only open one day a year. That is when you can join. [00:12:00] And so I knew about it, but I was like super scared to do it because I don’t like to disappoint people.

And I felt but then people will come and they won’t be able to join and they want to, and Sure. But, but we did it and that’s what drove it to a thousand. And then we were only up in four, six times a year for brief periods

Coach Fergie: to let people in.

Carol Tice: Yeah, to let new members in. Gotcha, gotcha.

And it really works administratively too because otherwise you’re continuously onboarding new people and it is a real energy drain and that allowed us to really focus on members more. So it was a win-win.

Coach Fergie: Do you believe in the slow grow, like throughout most of the stuff that you do, like I’m a I coach from kind of inch by inch.

It’s a cinch right by the yard. It’s hard. So are you like to lean into the slow grow when it’s needed for something that’s gonna last?

Carol Tice: I think at both of those levels for a while I was okay with that level I was like, okay, I have a thousand members that’s like more than I ever imagined this would go to.

And sometimes you are staffing up, like I had a staff of 10 eventually [00:13:00]

Coach Fergie: Nice,

Carol Tice: Behind the scenes, but eventually you’re like we should grow more. And I think around a thousand members is when I started to get approached about selling it.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: And also you, we created a lot of courses, so sure.

Maybe we’re plateaued, but I’m busy making a course,

got other things on my mind. But I started to get approached and having been a business reporter, I knew m and a existed. I knew companies get acquired.

Coach Fergie: Sure.

Carol Tice: And at the time, I wasn’t really thinking about it. I was still and loving the lifestyle it was giving us. My husband actually developed a seizure disorder, right? And that was another impetus for me launching it, was that I was trying to replace his income, which I way more than did. And I. I don’t know. I had bought a five bedroom house on Lake Washington Sure.

In Seattle. And

Coach Fergie: yeah,

Carol Tice: I had a lifestyle I, it was supporting, I wasn’t thinking about it, but I was like what’s your, I started quizzing these people who’d approach me, what’s your process [00:14:00] like? And they’re like we send you this sheet to fill out. I was like, yeah, send it to me. And started learning about what you need to do to sell a digital business. Okay. Things I was not doing, like taking myself out of the branding and having

Coach Fergie: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And

Carol Tice: you don’t see

Coach Fergie: time Scott Ferguson anywhere. I’m gonna sell this thing one day. And that’s bottom line.

Carol Tice: That’s right.

Coach Fergie: Yeah,

Carol Tice: that is right. Right when you every time I go to a coach’s website and it’s named their name.com, I just die a little inside. Yep. I cry because I know they have a non saleable business. They are the business. Yeah. They go on vacation, they’re not getting paid.

It’s a bad situation.

Coach Fergie: Sure.

Carol Tice: And, monthly p and l sheets, I wasn’t doing those. The business was thrown off lots of cash. I knew there was money left for me. I was paying a lot of bills and Yeah. Paying a big payroll. It all seemed to be working out, but I’m not a numbers person. I’m a word person. I’m a writing person.

Yeah. So I wasn’t all, let’s run the spreadsheets on how we’re trending,

Coach Fergie: It makes sense and stuff. [00:15:00] Yeah.

Carol Tice: Yeah. Things like what’s the lifetime value of one of your members and

Coach Fergie: Right.

Carol Tice: Stuff. So

Coach Fergie: you put that together and did somebody approach you or did you. Put it out to that

Carol Tice: multiple Oh, multiple people approached

Coach Fergie: me.

Carol Tice: Okay. And then I hit another point in my life. A couple years down the road where kids were nearing graduating high school, we were starting to think about downsizing. And I was starting to think I had taught what I knew. Like everything, every molecule of information I had about how to get better writing clients and get a raise and do well-paid kinds of writing and stuff was created.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: And I felt a sense of an ending, like I’d created what I could.

And that maybe, we could retire, was my thought at the time.

Coach Fergie: Everyone

Carol Tice: thinks that sometimes. Yeah. I have flunked to retirement spoiler. But so I got approached by a broker. [00:16:00] Who just, I felt like I liked them and like they could actually sell my business.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: They only did digital business. They had experience with the type of business I had. They had a, deep bank of business buyers that Sure. They had a lot of contact.

Coach Fergie: Did they find you or did you seek them out? I forgot.

Carol Tice: Maybe I heard, I think they dinged me.

Coach Fergie: Okay, gotcha.

Carol Tice: I think they reached out to me.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: Others had reached out to me and I blew them off. ’cause they were, whatever, one of those online business marketplaces where all the businesses sell for $20,000. They

Coach Fergie: marketed it and it got acquired then. Okay.

Carol Tice: In the depths of COVID winter, it was a lot of fun.

Coach Fergie: Wow. And that’s

Carol Tice: what it

Coach Fergie: was needed. Like the good stuff,

Carol Tice: it was a great time to sell my business. Sure. And people need to understand that every businesses have a lifecycle and they have a. Inflection points where they’re more attractive and less attractive. And my joke about freelance [00:17:00] writing is that, every time the economy goes down, if a million people get laid off, a quarter of them now want to be a freelance writer,

Coach Fergie: right?

Carol Tice: They’re like, I’m done working for the man. I hate this. I got left up. I got laid off again. This is my third time and I’m gonna I love writing. I’m gonna do that. So yeah, so membership was going up, so my charts were looking good. They were, that graph was heading up into the right the way you want it.

Yeah. And it was a good moment to do it. It was also, of course, incredibly bizarre and terrifying moment in all our lives. And this is like late 2020. Okay. So we’re at the point where we’ve realized that everyone is not willing to go stay inside for six weeks and this is not gonna just quickly disappear and Right.

We’re going into another winter time and I actually, it was so stressful. I actually moved out of my house. And went into an isolation chamber. We had a rental unit in our basement and I moved, it didn’t happen to be rented at the time and I moved into it.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: Because my family is a [00:18:00] lot with two of our kids that are really all of them are special needs and and two, were still at home.

And I was just like, I cannot do your thing right now. I am going away. Because when you’re selling a business, you have two full-time shops.

Coach Fergie: Sure.

Carol Tice: You’re selling the business is a full-time job and running the business. But you have to keep doing really well. I’ve sold a couple business.

Coach Fergie: I get it.

Yeah,

Carol Tice: absolutely. So that the numbers keep looking great and you’re going for several months, more data is gonna keep coming.

So you have these two very demanding full-time jobs, and every minute the brokers are asking you more questions. The buyers are asking more questions. But you know the answers to,

Coach Fergie: so eventually it got, because we gotta push it along here.

It got you sold it and you’re kind moving on. So I gotta ask, decided to sell. There, there’s coaches and experts out there that are listening in right now. I’m blessed to have my competition listening ’cause I listen to their stuff as well. They wanna build communities, right? But they’re stuck at zero.

If you had to start again today with no list, no brand, no audience, what are the first [00:19:00] three moves that you would do?

Carol Tice: It depends on whether you have an audience or you don’t.

Coach Fergie: I said no audience.

Carol Tice: So if you don’t have an audience, you need to be building one. You need people to talk to who know and trust you and would love to be in that community with you.

Not necessarily tons of them. When I launched freelance writers, then I had 500.

Coach Fergie: Okay,

Carol Tice: let’s subscribers to my blog. But a decent chunk of them that you can talk to because the next first thing you’re gonna do is survey them and find out if they’d like a community with you, and if so, what should be inside it and what would they pay for it.

You’re gonna love it and then you’re gonna build it based on what they told you and then you, and you’re building in public telling them about what you’re trying, what do you think of this logo? Yeah. What about this name for the community? And. Then the open is basically along the lines of that thing we’ve been talking about that you.

Told me you wanted it’s open now and you can join it.

Coach Fergie: I love that. Yeah, I love that. Hear that squad like she, if she was to go back to zero, I love it that the, because you’re never gonna [00:20:00] outperform your inner circle. That’s the bottom line. That’s why the people you hang out with are very important in the networks that you build.

So when she said that, start, if she had to go to zero, find people that you know and trust and start there and then survey them what they’d be looking for in a community. And they just get to building it. She dumbed it down so much. Obviously there’s a bazillion steps that are in there as well.

But you know that she knows her stuff ’cause she can just rack that out there. That’s beautiful. So Carol, let’s talk a little bit about money. Okay. Like most creators under price. Over give and they burn out. They’re, they, a lot of times it, and I’m all about give until it hurts So good.

And I was one of those people. So this is a question for me as well, but what’s the biggest pricing or value mistake community builders make and how might they fix it?

Carol Tice: The thing is, Scott, is that paid community works the opposite way of most coaching and consulting, where you’re hearing that mantra, you need a $10,000 offer, you need to get $10,000 clients, right?

You need get ’em to pay all [00:21:00] of it in advance. You’re going after big sales and I don’t know, as someone who was raised very lower middle class. That so felt uncomfortable to me and that was one of the reasons I fell in love with paid community. I don’t come out of marketing, I come out of journalism.

Marketing is not my idea of a good time and I learned how to do it, obviously, but it’s not my idea of fun it, and I would rather spend more time helping my people actually doing, the helping and coaching and teaching and running courses. And so it’s $25 a month. No obligation to leave any time.

Coach Fergie: Sure

Carol Tice: is a lot easier to sell, right percent. And it uses the power of ma, of low price to drive mass adoption. And I’m confident with my particular audience. Freelance writers, like so many of those people are broke. He broke. I’m so confident that I made oodles more money. Yeah.

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: With the paid [00:22:00] community structure, yes.

Coach Fergie: The lower price point that you

Carol Tice: could have. Always

Coach Fergie: graduate them to other things, but the lower price point to have ’em stick around, participate in the community. And bounce ideas. I love that, Carol.

Carol Tice: Keep going. Sorry. And the amazing thing that’s happening now that I have finally plunged into is free community.

And you upsell them from there.

Coach Fergie: Yes.

Carol Tice: And I was raised in an era of online business when. Free was announced. Don’t do free every mentor I had. Do not do free, do a dollar 99 ebook, not free ebook. Make them open their wallets, get them buying from you, you don’t wanna do free. I had that pounded into my head and.

I could only sit around school watching people make 2 million a year off their free communities before I went. Maybe there’s something to this. And the thing is that love this, the free community level addresses the trust crisis that we are all in now. And [00:23:00] so the funny thing is I didn’t really take my own advice launching Community Growth Academy.

I actually signed on with one of my mentors teams. They are experts at Facebook ads and conversion from them. And we were gonna build the audience with Facebook ads. ’cause this is a pivot for me from serving freelance writers to serving people who wanna build communities. And we quickly built a list of 5,000 people and it converted zero.

Like maybe one person joined.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: So little And

Coach Fergie: wait. One per, like you, you built a community of 5,000 people and only,

Carol Tice: no, we built a list off the adsd. A

Coach Fergie: list. Got you. Okay.

Carol Tice: People who got my free case study.

Coach Fergie: Okay,

Carol Tice: gotcha. On how I built freelance writers then. Sure. And it converted like zero. Okay. And it is because people who come in off ads do not really know you and they don’t know necessarily your number one thing.

Coach Fergie: What did

Carol Tice: you say?

Coach Fergie: No,

Carol Tice: And

Coach Fergie: trust. Yeah.

Carol Tice: So I thought they could jumpstart my audience and I could skip that step of slowly building it and we could go fast and it did not work.

And then I [00:24:00] got to step back and look at what was really going on in the community space and in the coaching space.

And I opened a free level for Black Friday weekend as an experiment to see what would happen.

The community just tripled in size.

Coach Fergie: Love it. Yes.

Carol Tice: Instantly. And then at Hormo the head, Alex Hormoze, it says, good guy. These people convert 25%.

So you get these people in where they see your conversations, they see the help you’re giving people, and that is how they come to loan know and trust you

Coach Fergie: right

Carol Tice: now.

So I never thought I would love free in my lifetime. This has been amazing, but you have to stay open-minded.

Coach Fergie: Yeah. In the,

Carol Tice: because the bi the climate changes.

Coach Fergie: Absolutely.

Carol Tice: Things change.

Coach Fergie: Absolutely. Like Gary Vaynerchuk Gary’s always jab, right hook.

He wrote a book that. Or left hook. Yeah, maybe it was left hook for him. I’m a righty though. But it’s like you, you give. And then once they like, and trust, once that trust hits right then you can lay out, hey, I have [00:25:00] this, parts of it. That’s why I even give, a free hour of power, maybe even two for coaching clients so they can see how I can like.

I’m more interested in them than they’ll ever be in me. And everybody knows what they want. They just don’t know how to talk themselves into it. And I’m not a consultant. I would never be like, Hey, Carol do it this way. You’d be like, you’re an idiot. Ferguson. But if I know that the challenge is there my superpower is curiosity.

I’m gonna ask questions to unlock that challenge. ’cause the answer’s in there. So but it’s giving, giving. And then sometimes

Carol Tice: and that’s my marketing angle. Yes. Because I’m not a selly hard sell person, I. A lot of our courses, we would do the first session’s free, just come to it, love it.

And then we’d say, do you see the shortcut? This would give you, do you wanna stick around for the rest of this? If so, sign up.

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: At period. The end, just, that’s

Coach Fergie: beautiful. And then you so simple. I can’t wait. Like I’m embarrassed I’m not in your group. I will be today. But so a harder question here.

Not hard, but it’s a, there’s so many fake community gurus out there. I would love to say their names, but I’m just not that guy, but in [00:26:00] your opinion, what separates a real sustainable paid community from a short term hype group that dies in six months? ’cause there’s so many people that back in 2015, that’s what I ask some of my clients.

They’re all about the dollar and making that dollar. Like all those people back in 2015 and 16 that were leaning on Lambos, right? Where are they now? If you go through and you find them, like no judgment against them, right? But they’re working at a, a job, right? I

Carol Tice: know someone who’s on like their third iteration of trying to be some kind

Coach Fergie: of

Carol Tice: thing and

Coach Fergie: Right.

So what do you see that separates them from for, to that? Because I know that you give the free community and stuff like that, but what else is there? Is it consistency within the community? What really separates ’em?

Carol Tice: I love that you asked this question ’cause there’s a lot of communities out there that have a hundred percent turnover.

Just people come, they leave, they come, they leave because there’s not enough there. There, there’s either not engagement with the commun, the community, people actually [00:27:00] talking to each other, supporting each other. That’s the community part. If that’s not there, people feel like I could just go buy some $15 course of Teachable to do this.

Sure. They’re not getting that. The other thing is just, real expertise, actual experience. What I learned around the community space is there’s a whole lot of people in my space who their expertise is, they have set up communities for other people. They’re, they wanna, and their gambit is they wanna get hired to set up your community.

Coach Fergie: Sure.

Carol Tice: I don’t wanna set up your community. I wanna help you understand who’s out in the marketplace that you’re gonna be competing with. What is your unique angle that con connects with money in the marketplace? And you can build it any way you want. You can, I can help you hire people to do it, but I’m not trying to get a job from you.

And there seems to be a lot of that. And the other thing is there’s always two kinds of experts in the digital world ever since the internet began. And that is, I actually have expertise already. I am years ahead of you. And there’s learn along with me. [00:28:00] I just did this one minute ago and now I’m gonna do this and we can all do it together.

And they don’t really know any more than you do. And I think you see a lot of. Turnover and flame outs in those kind of communities. But

Coach Fergie: learn along with me communities a lot of flame outs. Got it. Okay.

Carol Tice: Yeah. ’cause there just isn’t a depth of knowledge there.

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: Either.

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: And just how much.

Are you talking to members, listening to members, polling members? You don’t just poll your people before they join. Once they’re in, you have another polling group. Yeah. Why are you here? What are you liking? What would, what could we add that would make you love it more? Yeah. When people leave the community, we used to poll them, we’ll give you another free month if you’ll just tell us what’s going on for you.

And we added features.

Coach Fergie: Love it. Based

Carol Tice: on things we got from them.

Coach Fergie: If you were to get in that DeLorean with Marty McFly from Back to the Future it went back to the double deuce, the 22-year-old Carol, like what would you drop on her as a, like a knowledge nugget for her? Not to change too much, but to maybe help her shorten her [00:29:00] learning curve?

And like kind of blast through like maybe quicker. What would you drop on the 22-year-old Carol?

Carol Tice: I don’t know. It would’ve to be 3-year-old me. ’cause 22-year-old me was just into rock and roll. Yeah. It’s just I was not thinking I’m going to be an entrepreneur, like I was gonna put out records or something.

But, the big story of my life is that you can do business your way. If everyone out there is say, is having $10,000 offers, that means there’s an opportunity for you to do something different, that there’s an audience for likely that no one is appealing to, and just I guess the other thing I would just say is community is going to be everything in the future.

Coach Fergie: Yes.

Carol Tice: 32 year maybe could not have imagined how the rise of internet and devices would make us feel disconnected.

And alone. Yes. So much and community is what people need. It’s one of the things I love about RV life is that RV community is amazing.

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: You [00:30:00] should see everyone at the place.

I met now talking to each other, going on hikes together, going out paddling together. But get off

Coach Fergie: that podcast. Let’s go. You’d see so,

Carol Tice: totally. Yeah.

Coach Fergie: How about,

Carol Tice: yeah, this morning I was out letting someone try out my paddleboard ’cause they’re thinking about buying one,

Coach Fergie: yeah. That’s all your vibe attracts your tribe, right?

That’s just how it is. Carol, how do you want your dash remembered? That little line in between your incarnation date and your expiration date, your life date, and your death date on your tombstone, or however you’re gonna be buried or whatnot. But how do you, what do you want that dash to say?

Carol Tice: I always said it was gonna say regular meals when my kids were younger. ’cause my husband isn’t that good at remembering to do that. But my Facebook says wife, mother, and out Jew and entrepreneur.

Coach Fergie: What? Wife, mother and what? Jew.

Carol Tice: Out Jew.

Coach Fergie: Okay.

Carol Tice: You may know that this is an era where some people are afraid

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: To be

Coach Fergie: Wow.

Carol Tice: Who they are.

Coach Fergie: And I, the Jewish community love it. Do things for the intention and not the attention. That’s just [00:31:00] so many people are out there doing that. And that’s where if in squad you’ve heard me talk that if you live intentionally the imposter syndrome goes away because it just does.

And like I used to have a thing, Carol, where I’d be on stage and I’d be like, there’s CEOs, there’s people out there that could spank me with their wallet. What are they gonna learn from me? Luckily, a very seasoned speaker’s like Ferg, what’s going on? And he’s I’m like, dude, do I belong here?

And he’s what’s your intention today? I’m like to have one person leave with my level up, that I have. He’s there’s your lean into that. And ever since then, I don’t have a problem getting in front of people, because I attach my confidence to my intentions instead of my capabilities.

Like so many people do that. And

Carol Tice: I gather the data is that. The only difference between successful entrepreneurs and all the people stuck in imposter is that entrepreneurs feel that and are willing to. Just continue with that discomfort.

Coach Fergie: Yes.

Carol Tice: I felt every course I sold on a live event, I likened it to tight rip walking across the Grand Canyon.[00:32:00]

Coach Fergie: Yeah.

Carol Tice: I was completely terrified. I’m not a seller, anything could go wrong. Technically this course could not sell, and it was just, it’s just the willingness to continue and do it.

Coach Fergie: Love it.

Carol Tice: And I had special needs kids who could have screaming tantrums at any moment while I was trying to do that, in the background.

And

Coach Fergie: resilience is just amazing.

Carol Tice: You just have to get

Coach Fergie: persistence.

Carol Tice: Yeah, you’re just willing to be uncomfortable with it and continue. And the other thing I wanna say about community, that the payoff for going the community direction is the is the opportunity to impact many lives instead of a few.

You can coach 25 people this year for $10,000, or you can. Influenced 14,000 people over the course of a few years. Yeah. Which is what I did in Freelance writers den. Yeah. And that is what I wanted. I wanted to change my industry. I wanted to get a lot of people understanding their [00:33:00] value, charging what they’re worth.

Shutting down scams. And you can’t do that as a high ticket coach.

That’s not, you can’t have that level of

Coach Fergie: good points. I love that you’re saying that. ’cause a lot of coaches, they’ll get in. To the game. They’re like, oh, I won’t, I’m blessed that for now, 16 years later, I can charge, right?

Sure. But I remember doing $5 sessions, man, and I’m not even lying to be like, oh, just buy me a Starbucks. Do that. And now, I’m blessed to, have a solid five figure a month per client, right? But not five figure, four figure minimum. Sorry per client.

And, but it started with. Just really leaning into my intentions of having them, helping them, time to Shine Today. Podcast. Firstly, squad, we are back and Miss Carol. One of these days I’m gonna see on the road and we’re gonna sit down, have a coffee or something, and wrap. And I’m gonna ask you some of these questions and we will ta take 15, 20 minutes on ’em. But today you got five seconds with no explanations [00:34:00] and I promise you they can be answered that way.

You ready to level up?

Carol Tice: I’m ready. You did not tell me there would be a lightning round in mind.

Coach Fergie: You already goes. I don’t tell anybody. Nope. This is it. It’s my show. I’m kidding. So Carol, what’s the best leveling up advice you’ve ever received?

Carol Tice: Hire more people.

Coach Fergie: Yes. So share one of your personal habits that contributes to your success,

Carol Tice: As they say in the Great Leki Show and Chavis.

I am offline for 25 hours in a row, Friday night to Saturday night.

Coach Fergie: Beautiful.

Carol Tice: Try it. You’ll like it.

Coach Fergie: That’s awesome. See me walking down the street or you see me at an event or see me on the road and you are like, Fergie. Looks like he’s in his doldrums. Is there any book that you’ve read that maybe shifted a little bit in your mindset?

Carol Tice: You wanna read a book called the Choice, embrace the Possible by. I think it’s by Edith. Eva. Eggers. I’m gonna look it up.

Coach Fergie: Gotcha. Nope. We gotta keep the lightning round going.

Carol Tice: Eth egger. Yeah,

Coach Fergie: the choice.

Carol Tice: Embraced

Coach Fergie: the hospital. Don, you put that in the show notes [00:35:00] please. Okay. Your most commonly used emoji, if any when you text,

Carol Tice: The wink.

Coach Fergie: Love it. Nicknames grown up.

Carol Tice: My Girl Scout nickname. Five

Coach Fergie: seconds. What’s the nickname? Huh?

Carol Tice: Munchkin.

Coach Fergie: Munchkin.

Carol Tice: Love it. That was on my camp jacket.

Coach Fergie: Love it. Any hidden talent or superpower that nobody knows about until now?

Carol Tice: I have nursed an adopted baby.

Coach Fergie: Wow. Can That’s beautiful. Wow. Chest checkers or Monopoly?

Carol Tice: Monopoly. Got it. Headline for your life.

Crazy old lady starts business.

Coach Fergie: That’s awesome. That works. I’ll take the old off of it. Just crazy lady. I’m just kidding. How about go to ice cream flavor?

Carol Tice: Mint chocolate chip. Usually

Coach Fergie: awesome friends now. Absolutely. There’s a sandwich called the Carol Munchkin.

Build that sandwich. What are we eating?

Carol Tice: It’s like a, probably a good quality cheese with a lot of veggies and pesto.

Coach Fergie: Ooh, love me some pesto. Beautiful. [00:36:00] Favorite charity and or organization you’d like to give you time and or money to

Carol Tice: Democracy forward.

Coach Fergie: Love it. Last question. This one’s a fun one for you.

You can elaborate a little bit on this one, but what’s the best decade of music? Sixties, seventies, eighties, or nineties?

Carol Tice: Ooh. I’m gonna have to go with sixties for that.

Coach Fergie: Okay. Very cool. Very cool. Why?

Carol Tice: Because that’s what we listen to. We have the Alexa. I could turn up any, I could make it play any decade.

And I’d say that’s the one we play the most, even though I love say that. Yeah. Parts of all those.

Coach Fergie: Yeah. When I like, I’ll listen like my, I have awesome team production team when they set the podcast up for me to listen to. And then Bill, I actually build my own show notes. They do the rest of it, the rest of the magic’s them.

But I actually have the seventies on because in the seventies and I have a fun. The seventies. They tell stories, the Eagles, seger, the, those, but I’m a product of the eighties and so much happened.

And so all those decades are just awesome. But Ms. Carroll, how can we find you?

Carol Tice: You can find me at Community Growth Academy on [00:37:00] school, go to the About page and get free stuff and.

Coach Fergie: Check

Carol Tice: it out

Coach Fergie: watching either on the Spotify video or on vi Vimeo or YouTube, like this is, she will have another subscriber here coming up and she gives away a lot of free stuff and free information that’s there.

And so when people join the Community Growth Academy, what do they what can they expect?

Carol Tice: They get a free monthly q and a. Love it. They have full access to the forums and access to the first couple modules in our classroom to

Coach Fergie: Wow.

Carol Tice: Figure out what your community should be, how it’ll be different from what’s already out there.

Coach Fergie: Gotcha. And this is something that’s, I believe is on your website now or something, but is this for them to to get a case study and tell us a little bit about the case study that they’re gonna get for free?

Carol Tice: This is the, in great detail how I built and sold freelance writers ton.

Coach Fergie: Really?

Carol Tice: Yeah. Wow.

All the behind the scenes [00:38:00] insanity.

Coach Fergie: Wow. And that’s amazing. So squad, that’s a excellent freebie because there’s knowledge nuggets that are buried in there. Then I’m gonna dive into it on my flight this afternoon. Absolutely. And also she does have a, her LinkedIn page like I know one of her authors that she’s written for and also a YouTube community as well.

But make sure like you check the show notes, especially for the one I have on screen here. And opt in and get that free case study and then also pop into her school as well. And Ms. Carroll, can you please do us one last solid. And leave us with one last knowledge nugget we can take with us.

Internalize and take option and take action on.

Carol Tice: Think about what you want out of your business. Just talking to you Scott, I’m thinking about how I ended up in community. It wanted to make a big impact. Yeah. Reliable income less marketing. Those are the three legs of my triad.

What’s yours? What are. What are the things that are important to you about how the business [00:39:00] operates and how you will show up in the world and design your business around that?

Coach Fergie: Oh my gosh, that’s, so basically saying design your business how you wanna show up in the world. Like my why is super simple.

It’s to be useful, it’s just, it is, right? And so that’s, it’s actually how I built my coaching business as well. But I didn’t know I was doing it that way until you just said that. So design a business of how you wanna show up in the world. Okay. Lemme see if, alright. Beautiful and squat sorry if we went a little long today, but I’m just super enthralled in like building a community, like a school community is on my radar as well.

I’m blessed all these subscribers out there, which will bring you into the community as well. Maybe even have Carol share in the community a little bit when I launch it. You have to protect your bandwidth. She says, a lot of people pour into the community and that’s all that they live.

They just stay in there the whole time. But get in there, learn give, and then get out and go and enjoy your life. I heard a lot of her say, she worked her day job, but she minded her own business. She was made sure the money was [00:40:00] coming in for the family and building it up, building up while she’s still building a fam or business on the side.

Also, I said it before and I’ll always say, you’ll never outperform your inner circle. Get with people like. Carol, like other people that are out there doing it. ’cause you’ll never outperform anybody. You hear the whole cliche. I can tell you how much money you make, you show me your five closest friends.

It’s the truth and not just the money you make, it’s the family you keep, the friends you keep and whatnot. We can tell a lot about each other with that. If Carol had to start over, she would do the three things and she rattled them off. There was no if she said get around people, and trust, survey them and build it and that they’ll be.

There’s more to that, but just go back and listen to that again. Free community addresses the trust cri the trust crisis. I love that. ’cause so many people in there want to go and blow up this $10,000 offer. Join a community give within that community. And then eventually, once they know and trust you even more, the higher ticket items, they have no problem spending their money on.

And then she reminded us of. Two types of experts. The one that has the expertise that you [00:41:00] follow and get you there are the ones that are like, learn along with me. And I’ve, unabashedly, I’m sorry. I have been that learn along with me on a couple things in my life and it never worked out.

So Carol really called me out on that. That’s awesome. She wants you to do business your own way. If people are doing it, if you can build an audience, if people are out there doing it, you can build your own audience too. Carol’s planting trees. She’s never gonna sit in the shade of with this. She does things again for the intention, not the attention, in.

She’s gonna be remembered as a wife, a mother, and an out Jew, which I have to look that up. But that’s just awesome. And think about you, what you really want in a business, and then get after it from a mindset and a place of service and go serve people and build that business. And that’s what my good friend Carol does.

She loves upper health. She loves upper wealth. She’s awesome. She’s on the road living her life, and thank you so much. I’m so blessed that you came on, Carol, and I cannot wait to collaborate with you in the future.

Carol Tice: Same. I feel like I’m so glad I met you and I’m looking forward to getting to know some of your [00:42:00] people.Coach Fergie: Yay. Awesome. Talk soon.