Why Community Matters More Than Ever Right Now

Jordan: We’re going behind the mic on the For The Daring Growth Seekers podcast. If we haven’t met before, my name is Jordan, and joining us today is Jacqueline, co-founder of Done By Nine.

Jacqueline: We’ve said this before, turning into a couple’s therapy session.

Jordan: It’s the way we spend our lunchtimes at the moment. Right now it’s 12.30 on a Tuesday as we’re recording this episode. It’s freezing off camera. You can see, well, I can see anyway.

Jacqueline: Giving all the secrets away.

Jordan: Yeah, you’ve got the rug on the knees. We’ve got the fire behind us. We’ve ducked away from the office to come home to record this episode, because I guess, for the uninitiated, if you’re first time joining one of these podcasts, the Behind the Mic series is essentially a chance for Jack and I to sit down and share how we’re building our business as a couple.

Jordan: But also not only as a couple, but also in this crazy time that we’re facing right now, which is this AI era. AI is literally disrupting everything that we do in business, from the way we market our business, the way we operate our business, the way that we communicate with customers. So we thought this was an opportunity for us to share behind the scenes of how we’re building and adjusting our business in this AI era, but also the fact that we’re doing it as a couple, and this is our only source of income, and this is what we do every single day. And I thought being able to share that story will be beneficial.

Jacqueline: Well, I think it’s one thing that building relationships have actually mattered to us across this entire journey, right? From the day one of the companies that we started working with, the connection to them and the relationship has been such an important path.

Jordan: That leads nicely into this podcast. The whole reason we’re doing this is to continue with those relationships, and building out those relationships with some of our key people. But also today, what we wanted to focus on was on those relationships and community, and kind of how important they have been to you and I as part of building this business. And even if you think about prior businesses that you’ve run as well, building up those people to surround you, the best kind of people for advice. Just kicking off, how has relationships been important to you, I guess, from your perspective?

Jacqueline: I think it’s been so important, right? It drives everything we build. So our mentors, the people that you talk to randomly at the coffee shop on a Friday morning, right? Some of those conversations can have a bigger impact than what they perhaps know, you know? The right support, the right conversation, it can open up another idea. It can drive growth in an area that you thought, oh, maybe actually, yeah, the consumer is right. The client is right. And I was just thinking about it the wrong way. Yeah, like, that, this is what they want.

Jordan: The challenging of perspectives, I think, some of those conversations, those are usually the golden nuggets. I think sometimes we fall into this category, and I do this a lot, analysis paralysis, where you’re just thinking about a certain idea. And I guess this is getting worse as well, because we’ve got tools like ChatGPT, and everyone’s saying that, hey, you can use ChatGPT as your business advisor. Yeah, you can, but only to a point, because then you can get into that paralysis of literally just thinking. That critical thinking kind of leaves your brain, in that communication and talking with the actual real other people who are actually going to buy your product. And instead, you’re just going to ChatGPT, because it is the easy option.

Jacqueline: Oh, I think critical thinking is at all, right? Even so much in school, right? And outside of education, you learn how to think a certain way to deliver the answers they want. But how’s about challenging that? Like, I agree with this part and this part, but I don’t agree with this, and these are the reasons X, Y and Z. How about we do it this way?

Jordan: Yeah, exactly. And so what we’re trying to do, and what we are doing behind the scenes as well, is we have been slowly building that network, not only just for ourselves, because that has been really important. As you said, we’ve had different business coaches. We’ve been a part of different mastermind groups, different courses. There’s lots of different things that we have tried and got really good value out of. I think it’s about trying different things, getting different ideas, different perspectives, challenging yourself.

Jordan: And obviously, behind the scenes, we’ve been running a very successful agency for the past five years, based out of New Plymouth, so small town New Zealand, and servicing clients all across the country and across Australia as well, which has been great. But we did kind of see a bit of a shift from that hands-on implementation that traditionally we might have stuck to over the past four, five years, and more of a bit of a shift to trying to also build up that community side as well.

Jacqueline: Yeah, well, it moved from, I think you’d say, traditional transactional implementation to businesses wanting that real partnership. They just don’t want to hear from you at the start of the month and the end of the month. They want to be able to touch base throughout the month, and connect on that journey, and bounce ideas off each other. There’s value in it for everybody.

Jordan: Exactly. So that’s why, giving you an insight into our inner thinkings and our inner plannings, why we changed this podcast to For The Daring Growth Seekers, because this used to be called Marketing Mindset for years, but we changed how that is. But not only are we just building and recording these episodes around our podcast and For The Daring Growth Seekers, but For The Daring Growth Seekers is also building out as its own community in itself, and a community of business owners across New Zealand and Australia, of people who understand that there is a big shift in the way that we market our businesses, and that they just get overwhelmed with that shift and how it kind of changes, you know?

Jacqueline: Yeah, it’s trying to pull together a platform and a space where there is purposeful organisation of content or ideas that they want to tap into and to access, or even come to the group and be able to ask a question and see how that plays out.

Jordan: And we saw it a lot with, well, firstly, we saw a shift in maybe October, November last year. We were taking on some new clients, and they were really keen to not only just get us to do it, but we found a shift where people were going, oh, can we actually sit down? Can you show me what’s actually happening here? Can you actually show me under the hood about how these…

Jacqueline: The learnings of it, right?

Jordan: Yeah, how Meta is actually making changes to its platform. How is Google search changing? How is AI changing? They’re actually taking a much better understanding of all those changes that are taking place. And also I’m seeing more and more now that business owners that we’re dealing with are getting much more onto the fact that search, discovery, marketing is changing, and it’s changing really fast, and that people are actually wanting to not only just get us to help them fix it, but they’re actually wanting to understand the thought process, and why we need to make certain changes to the strategy to be able to get there.

Jordan: And I think that’s, again, why I think the power of community has been really important, because it allows us to kind of share some of those inner workings with not only just that business owner, but them taking some of those learnings to some of the other businesses that might be facing that same problem, you know?

Jacqueline: I think it’s definitely that time of year, that Christmas time, that reflection, I think is when we saw the shift. And I also think there’s such a range of clients, and they’re so passionate about what they’re doing, but it’s that hitting the best potential and getting those answers, and not pumping stuff into ChatGPT and trying to get answers and navigate it that way.

Jordan: The other big shift we saw was we’ve run quite a few workshops over the past couple of months, and there’s ways that we have been slowly testing things in the background. And I’d implore any business owner to think about this as well: instead of just launching something straight away, actually testing the market. And we’ve been testing it with jumping in with workshops, and understanding where the pain points actually lie. And what those workshops have done for us is it’s actually got us a room of business owners at each one.

Jordan: So we’ve had three workshops now, six businesses at each one. Not only are we imparting different learnings over to them, but we’re also learning back from them about what their key pain points are, and working with them on that. But also then getting an understanding that, what I saw was the business owners, during the times where we’d break out to sessions to do activities, how much everyone would then talk, collaborate, and everyone would get different results when they did audits of their AI search results and things like that. And the more that people collaborated, the more I was kind of thinking, this is exactly what we need more of, is more of that type of collaboration between our clients, so that we can kind of grow together, I guess.

Jacqueline: Yeah, I think it’s totally like getting out of the business, coming into that safe space, right? Because it’s vulnerability, right? You’re opening yourself up. There’s personal stakes there. You need to remain profitable, but how are you going to do this? And then everyone’s got fears, right? One of my big fears was talking on these podcasts with you. Yes, I can talk about business and stuff, but I’m competing, well, not competing, but having a conversation with somebody who’s worked in radio for years. Being on stage in front of tens of thousands of people. And is that fear of, oh, I’m just Jack, and I’m a part of Done By Nine, or a person in business. It’s testing the waters and coming up with those ideas. Okay, yep, let’s give it a go.

Jordan: Okay, so just reflect on that real quick, because I think this goes back to, what was the shift for you then? Do you think having a peer group, or having some of that support, or some of those coaches that we have as a business, do you think that’s helped with getting you to do more stuff like this, like a podcast, for example? Is it the community kind of pushing, or what is it?

Jacqueline: I think it’s a bit of, I can’t say it’s one key thing. I think it’s a bit of here, there and everywhere. The community thing to me is so far important. It’s probably one of the most passionate things I am about. But it’s also our mentors, and having those conversations, and realising the shift and what our parts can play in that community. And just seeing people, you see so many people come in, and they’re so passionate about their brand, and just helping them, support them along the journey, because it’s consistency, right? It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s about showing up week after week after week.

Jordan: Yeah, that’s very true. And so when we’re building this community, For The Daring Growth Seekers, from your perspective, what are you hoping that businesses are going to say, or that they’re actually going to get out of working with us, or working as part of that community, or attending one of our workshops? What’s one of the things that you would hope that they were actually going to say?

Jacqueline: One of the things that I’d hope that they were actually going to say is that they’ve perhaps had this fear or this challenge, and they were able to break it down, get some steps in place to actually climb that mountain, to actually attack that challenge, and that we’ve been able to support them along the way of that journey.

Jordan: Yeah, of course. And I guess the journey that we refer to here is that marketing journey, especially in that AI era. Because there’s so much, again, it goes back to that analysis paralysis, of having so much information available to you at your fingertips. There’s that thought, that fear of, well, I can’t go to LinkedIn and put a post about this, asking this vulnerable question, because I don’t want to come across as though…

Jacqueline: So public.

Jordan: Yeah, so public. So it’s kind of having that space available where you can ask those silly questions with other people that are facing the same challenges, other people that are growth-minded.

Jacqueline: Feel supported, right? It’s a forever changing market, but you want to be able to belt some ideas around with like-minded people who may be in a similar situation to you, whether it’s the industry or the climate or, you know?

Jordan: Yeah. So I guess what we’re trying to say is that for us, and whatever stage of business you’re at, you may have experienced some great communities in the past. You might have experienced some great coaches, consultants, or just friend groups and people. I guess the main learning we wanted to get across is just try to rely on AI as much as you can, but also remember that there are people still available to talk to, and people are going to give you the best ideas. And using our experience of running these in-person workshops, learning from the businesses that are there, understanding their pain points so that we can adjust our service, learning from the way that we see people interact and how they work with that. That’s all key strategic things that we’re doing in the background to try and build up our business.

Jordan: And I would encourage you to think about doing the same, and think about how you can not only build your own community of people around you to help you grow your business, try and learn as much as you can from trusted people that you have, but also think about using those communities and those type of interactions to help fuel your business, fuel new ideas, and continue to grow and navigate this tricky area.

Jacqueline: Yeah, totally. I think it’s about the connection, right? That critical thinking that you can’t get any other way. It’s being part of the community. It’s showing up and having these random conversations, or jumping into a workshop session and chatting it out.

Jordan: So a couple of things I want out of this podcast, if you’re listening. Firstly, we’re always looking to grow our community and our network of people. If you think that you can offer us some value, please get in touch, because we are always looking to make connections with new people. Whether it’s just jumping on a call, if you think there’s some value that you can offer us, or that we could offer you, jumping on a real quick phone call, five, 10 minutes, where we can just kind of nut out some ideas, that would be epic.

Jordan: The second one is we’re obviously going to commit to sharing how we’re building our community with our business, Done By Nine, on this podcast. So please keep listening to these episodes, because we’ll try to share the ups and downs of how that process goes over the next few weeks as well, and months, as we build it up. And the third thing is, if you are looking for our community, and other business owners who are looking to grow throughout this AI era with their marketing, you are more than welcome to get in touch as well, and we can introduce you to the community of businesses that we’re building, and whether there’s a fit for you in there as well.

Jordan: Because again, I think that there’s some key learnings that you can have in there as well. So three kind of key things that hopefully you’ve got out of this podcast. But the main thing is, yeah, keep learning, keep meeting people, keep chatting with…

Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah, because I think that’s really important, especially when you’re in this bubble, like what you and I kind of sometimes face as well, being a husband and wife. Sometimes we’re just relying on our own perspectives. It’s pretty easy to swim around in the fishbowl, isn’t it?

Jordan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s been really important for us, and we encourage you to kind of do the same as well as you continue. And yeah, hopefully that kind of gets you sparked, maybe going out and just finding one person you can kind of connect with, and get some ideas on, or push just a little bit further. Yeah, do it, because you can get some great results from some of those micro interactions that can really help fuel your business and fuel your revenue, and kind of help overcome some of those challenges as well.

Jordan: But yeah, hey, thanks for sharing. And thanks for sharing about your kind of journey and connections and community. And yeah, we hope to see you again. Please tune back in to another episode of Behind the Mic here on the For The Daring Growth Seekers podcast. We’ll see you on an upcoming episode soon.