396. "You’re Doing Community All Wrong" | Community-Building Insights from Maayan Gordon’s Billion-View Journey

Transcript

Download Transcript Here

Maayan Gordon: 

No matter how busy you are, set aside minimum five minutes to just reconnect with your meaning and your purpose and do that every single day.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard, and I absolutely love our guest today. She is a genius with a really cool story. Her name is Maayan Gordon, and she's got over a billion, a billion video views, millions of followers, and a proven track record of building thriving communities. Now, if you're listening to this and you're going, "Hey, this sounds like an entrepreneurial episode. I don't own my own business. This is probably not for me," hang on because Mayan is one of the foremost experts in community on Earth. And community as humans is what makes us go. 

So whether you're an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, a wantrepreneur, or just love the show, hang out with us today because she has a wealth of wisdom. But I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into her. She's a community building expert. She specializes in helping entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and businesses create thriving online communities that drive engagement, loyalty, and revenue. We're going to have a great conversation today. Maayan Gordon, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today.

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah, it's so good to be back and getting to speak with you. And it feels like a lifetime since we last connected. And I'm really grateful to be here.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Well, we're going to have some fun today. So, I know your story because you and I are friends, and this has been a long time coming. But what's exciting for me on this show is I like to jump into people's DeLoreans and go back in time and figure out what was kind of the thing, the spark, no pun intended in your case, what put them on the journey that they're on today. So, I'm going to turn it over to you and let you tell us the Maayan Gordon experience.

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah. And I think it's really cool a lot of times where we end up starts right at the beginning, even if we go on this crazy route to get there. And so, for me, really, my early years and childhood, I would say, were categorized by kind of an extreme loneliness and not feeling like I fit in and just feeling disconnected in many different ways. And so I tried coping with that in very, you know, traditional ways of I got into drinking and smoking weed very early on, got caught for shoplifting in high school but thank God I was 17. So, I went to like a church communal that gave me community service instead of like a court, and a judge and jail. 

And after high school, I went to college because that was the prescribed route of where I was supposed to go. I wanted to be a veterinarian, had no idea what that really entailed. And when I got into college, I was very bored, still very disconnected and really having a miserable time. At the same time, I discovered that you could make money copywriting without a degree and just being good at writing. And I was making pretty good money. So came, you know, finals for a third semester of college and I had like a mental emotional breakdown and was just crying like every day, not not being able to like make a decision and thinking about how am I going to survive like eight more years of being this unhappy and, like, alone and not enjoying what I'm doing. 

So, I just started dating my now husband and he hit me with some really good logic, which was anything that makes you cry this much probably isn't the right decision. So, I said, that makes sense to me. But what does that mean? What do I do? I can't go live back at home. That would drive me crazy. And he said, "You can move in with me." So, I dropped out of college, moved in with a boyfriend, and was copywriting and again, smoking a lot of weed. And this leads us to the spark you were referencing.

A little fun history for anyone who doesn't know, marijuana in the United States only first started becoming, like, medically legalized, I don't know the exact year, but this was kind of, you know, as I graduated high school, which was 2009 in Denver and like Colorado, Washington State and California, I think we're like the three three states. And I went to school in California. There was a guy in our dorm who had his medical card and he would go to the dispensary and pick up, like, weed for everyone else. So, that was going on. And then, I guess, a bunch of stoners figured out how to make concentrated THC by running butane through marijuana that could be, like, very low percentage THC. And then, you evaporated the butane and you were left with like 80 plus percent THC as like a sticky mixture that we would call BHO, oil, wax, lots of cool, fun names for it. 

And so, being in Seattle, it's where I moved back to after I dropped out, we were doing this. And somehow, even though we were doing outside, butane got sucked into into our house. And one day, we were in the kitchen and the house exploded. It was a flash explosion from gas. So, it wasn't like this big in-the-movies fireball.  It was like instantaneous to the point where I had no idea what had just happened until I put the pieces together and realized my hair was singed and my legs were burned. And so, that was a pretty traumatic event that changed the course of who I was to become and the direction that I went in.

And I'll kind of fast forward through the rest of it because that was really the pivotal setup. But then I went on this journey of entrepreneurship. And the reason that I was drawn to that is because I realized the person I had kind of presented my entire life was not really who I was inside. I was very much shaped by pressures from parents, society, like my environment just in general, and had never developed or been taught like skills for how to harness and deal with my unique attributes, some of which are absolutely advantageous, but also present different problems.

So for example, I think a lot of people will relate to I'm pretty ADHD. And what that means is I can get very excited about things and do really good work on them, but I also can be very unstructured. And so, learning things like how to properly structure my time has been very important. And so, this path of entrepreneurship took me through building a couple different businesses and, eventually, to the thing that I'm doing now and just passionate about as a human being, which is building these communities.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

And so, you've cracked the code on doing this and have leveraged this and your views. There are not many people that get billions of views, right? And so, again, I want to reiterate, whether you're on this entrepreneurial journey or not, community matters in so many different ways. When COVID hit and we all got locked down in 2021, as we came out of that and scientists started researching, sociologists, psychologists, et cetera, started looking at what are the things that people were craving? Community was always there. So, you're an expert and one of the big experts in community. So, talk to us about from your experiences, how you see community, why it matters and let's go from there.

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah, I think one of the big, important core components of community and what makes it really special is contribution. So, in so many areas of our life, we're really looking for what can we get out of something. A lot of times that's in our jobs, right? Whether we're business owners or not, like a lot of times, we're in a job to get a paycheck, right? Or to get benefits or get stability, lots of things. And what makes something really special as a human is when you can give something in a way that's meaningful.

And when I say meaningful, because there's actually, there's lots of ways in which we give that to us don't feel super meaningful and kind of make us feel empty. Like if you give with your whole heart and all of your energy in a way that doesn't feel meaningful, it's going to drive you kind of crazy.  And a lot of us are doing that in our jobs or doing that in our relationships and in various areas. And so, to me, community is about designing an intentional structure, container, system, however you want to think about it, to make contribution meaningful and facilitate collaboration so that it's not just transactional in terms of one directional for that contribution, but you have this… like some of you guys might be familiar with the concept of like circular economy. So, I think community is kind of like a circular economy where what you're exchanging is being human.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

And I love that. That absolutely resonates. But so, from a business perspective - so, now I am talking to the entrepreneurs in the room - why does community matter in 2025?

Maayan Gordon:

Yes. So, it's a very… if you want to distill it down to something very simple and easy to understand, all business results, including the one we're all most interested in, revenue and profit, are driven by human action. You can't make a lot of money without there being human power behind that business. And the thing that most activates human action is community. So, communities energize people to have more just energy and will and desire to take action.

And then also… and you would know a lot about this from a like neurochemical standpoint, how we feel highly impacts our ability to be creative, to execute on things, to collaborate and work together. So, community's like a really incredible catalyst for businesses to not only increase activity but also productivity and efficiency. And all of those things are what are going to be necessary as the world has gotten very saturated in every single market for your business to stand out and be able to deliver at the very high levels of expectations that we've created for ourselves. 

We're really not very happy with even good enough these days because there's just so many options out there. And there's the media, which feeds us all of these stories about the most wild success. And so, that's all we're willing to settle for these days. And good for us but it's a very high bar to achieve. And so, you need mechanisms that are going to empower that and make that possible.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

All right. So, you brought up some of the neurobiology here a little bit and right off the top of my head, I think about oxytocin. You know, oxytocin, the trust hormone, right?  Like we have a lot of data that suggests whether it's your coworkers or whether it's your customers, right, like their oxytocin when it's released promotes trust, right? So, the more people feel part of something, the more oxytocin that's measurable in their bodies, the more they're going to trust you. They're going to trust your business. They're going to trust having a relationship with you. So, this is hardwired stuff, right? It's not that we can't choose to release hormones and neurotransmitters in our body, right? Like this just-

Maayan Gordon:

Yes, right? Yes.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Yeah, that's right. You know, we'll see what kind of a chip Elon can make us someday, right, that might do this sort of thing. But anyway, so you laid the groundwork that there's obviously value in community. You mentioned the media were bombarded by expectations we should have. Social media has really, in a lot of ways, done a disservice to our society psychologically. So, all right. So, I bought in, right? I'm following, I'm tracking along with you. I'm following what you're saying. But now my question is, okay, so let's say I have no idea how to build a community or even if my business is the kind of business that might warrant a community, right? So, talk to us about those in whatever order you feel like.

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah. And this is a question that took me some time to work through as to… we're talking about like, what's the lead domino for community building or the factor that you have to have it or it doesn't make sense to do it. And for me, that is having a connection and alignment with a purpose that you are deeply, deeply committed to, I would say almost beyond reason, right? The thing you want to build, the way you want to change the world, the thing that drives you that passion. Even if it was completely unreasonable for you to pursue it, you would pursue it anyways. You're compelled as a human being towards this thing that really matters to you. 

Having that connection or awareness of what that is, I think is crucial to building community because if you strip away that part from the community building and you look at it just as a business product or tool, it could be successful, but it's going to be much less likely that it is successful and it's not going to be fun. To me, it's like community building should be this amazing, rewarding, fun, fulfilling thing. And if you strip it away so that it's just a sales product, it's not going to be any of those things. 

So, first really being clear, what is the purpose of your community? If you can't answer the purpose of my community is or will be, and that statement makes you feel something awesome and deep and powerful, then you're not ready to build a community. I'm not saying you can't get there, but like you need that in place before even starting to think about, what does it look like? What's the structure? How do I build it?

Dr. Richard Shuster:

So, what I'm hearing is the purpose of the community is not to make more money. The purpose of the community is tied to something intrinsically powerful that you feel strongly about.

Maayan Gordon:

Correct. Money would be a byproduct.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

That's right.

Maayan Gordon:

Yes.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Okay, cool. All right. Keep rolling. This is good.

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah. So, if you've got that right, you're like, "Here's something I'm super passionate about and I feel really called towards," most people, even with that alignment, are still going to be in this space of, "Okay, but how do I build a community out of that? Still, what does that even mean to build a community?" 

And the next part is tricky because you have to go from a completely me-focused perspective of here's what I'm passionate about to an others-focused perspective of thinking about what is it that other people actually need, or want, or would serve them that is related to this topic that the mission is centered around? And it's not always a one-to-one "I want to create this. That's what people want." Sometimes, there's something in a different kind of angle and the community is actually the bonding piece between what you want to create and what other people need. 

So, it's not always like a one-to-one correlation. And so, you have to map out both sides. You have to map out the thing that drives me beyond anything else. And also here's where other people are and what their needs are in relation to this topic. And then, you can see where does the community kind of fit in the middle.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

If somebody is struggling with that piece, like they really understand well their purpose, "Okay. I'm clear, if I have this community, it's going to connect people to my business and my business helps people by doing X, Y, or Z," but the other piece, really tapping into what are the wants, the needs, the desires of which are essentially your customers, how do you find that out if you don't immediately know?

Maayan Gordon:

Here's the thing, you have to talk to people. And that's going to be hard for some people, right? Like, again, we've been, I think, largely sold the idea that what we all want is automation and to let computers and systems do everything. This is a part where, again, you should feel empowered and excited to just get to talk to people. 

I think where people have a hard time and where people can slip up is they'll go in and say, "Great, that means I have to interview people and ask them what it is they want." Asking people directly what they want, I would say, is really the best way to actually find out what that thing is versus if you can create. And this is where having someone who's really skilled at thinking this through, which is what is the conversation topic and structure that's going to have people self-offer the answers to your questions without you having to directly ask them.

And there's a whole field of interesting science around surveys and why sometimes asking particular questions in a survey gives you bad data because of the question itself, but it's a similar thing with businesses. If you ask head on, it puts people in a totally different framework of thinking to answer a question than to be naturally sharing. They're actually using, I think, a lot of times, much more brain power and a lot more kind of intuitive, connective points. 

And so, you really want to structure a conversation that you have with the ideal audience that you think that are going to be the members of your community and then start to find patterns within those conversations. Even if you don't know what questions you're asking, just finding the patterns of what are the topics that keep coming up, what are the emotions that keep coming up when I present this topic, and presenting it in a way of "Here's what I'm really passionate about? I'm gonna share. Now, I'd love for you to share." That's really the way to go about defining that.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

I know this is a loaded question, but in research, when we're doing scientific research, the minimum number of research subjects they say that you should have for a study to be valid is 25. And that's like bare minimum. We really want it to be much larger. How many voices do you need in a room to give you this kind of feedback before you go, "Yeah, I got it. This is what the community should be about," based on your experience?

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah. So, I mean, you phrased it in a really interesting way that just got me thinking. I think you probably get totally different dynamics if you have all of these people in a single room because, now, we've got either social pressure or just the dynamics of other people besides one person who are listening to what I'm going to say. I'm being presented in a social setting. 

So, I might have a different answer for if you've got a bunch of people in one room. So I'm going to… and I haven't thought that through, so I'm going to answer individual conversations as the methodology here in this science experiment. And it's going to be obviously a varied number, one based on your experience and your connection to the topic. So, the more experience you have in a topic, I would say the fewer number of conversations because if it's something you're really passionate about, but haven't had lived experience with other people in that area, you don't have as much inherent data, so to speak, or experimental data that you're pulling from.

I would say it's probably, like, that's a general good number is probably like 20 conversations to get pretty dialed in as a, I wouldn't say the bare minimum, but as like a good minimum to say, "Okay, I have enough here to actually design an experiment that the result is guaranteed going to allow me to iterate and improve and get closer and closer." 

Because that's the real goal. And I think that's really, really important to understand with community building. You're not going to, like, build this finished product on your first try. Community is a living, evolving entity. And so, you just have to start it with enough nutrients and substrate and environment for it to grow on its own.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

I don't think we use the word substrate enough in our vernacular. So, thank you for that. Okay. So, in all seriousness now, we're marching towards something that's really good here. So, we now have defined our purpose and passion. We now have enough collected data from our clients or customers to have a good handle on what are their emotional hot items. Now, what do we do, Maayan?

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah, this is where now you get to start structuring and building. So, from this pool of information, I would say the very tangible step is you think about what are the member benefits of someone being a part of the community. And from a business perspective or a very common benefits perspective of many communities, it would be access to resources and information. It's a very common part of community, both online and in person, right? When you go to your church or synagogue, you're accessing information. You're also accessing support, right? A benefit is having a supportive ecosystem and other people who are going to be there to support you. 

Another is engagement, right? So, support is one type of engagement, but support can actually be psychological without any engagement. Me just being in the room around the people can make me feel supported. Engagement is really conversation or activity that's done together in some format. So, those are some of the common member benefits that you would then map out based on this data that you have. 

And from the member benefits, then you would start to move into mapping and building out those specific benefits. So if you said, "Okay, I want people to have access to information," what information, right?  And I want people to have access to engagement, what type of engagement? Is it going to be conversations? Okay, what type of conversations? How are they going to be structured? So, you get to go from very top level to more and more granular detail. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Okay. And so, once you've done this, now we've basically defined… because what I heard you say is you're defining the value that the group member gets, which means now you attach the monetary value if this is a paid subscription service or rather a paid community. But either way, now, you start… and we're not going to get into specific platforms, which are good, which are bad. 

Maayan Gordon:

Right.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

That's kind of irrelevant. But now, you start building it or working with somebody like you who is an expert to build it for you.

Maayan Gordon:

Correct. Yes. And I think it's important to… because the pricing thing is a really big question or the monetization part is a really big question for people. And there's a lot of different mechanisms. So, one is clearly paid membership, right? So, you have to pay to get access to the community. That's a model that's going to work for a lot of people. For other organizations, it's going to be not quite, again, as direct, where it's going to be, let's say, a thought leadership-based community that builds association with their brand, so that when those people come to a purchase decision point, they're for sure going with this brand that built this community that has served them and brought them so much value.

So, there's a number of different angles to approach it from. And that's, I would say, its own step in terms of before even deciding a price point, it's like figuring out which monetization model makes the most sense.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

That makes sense. Now, you've done this a lot. You've done this at a very high level for many, many people. What are some of the pitfalls that people need to think about and avoid as they're going through the community-building process?

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah, one is to launch too quickly. So, I know quite a few people who got really excited by the idea of building a community, set up a base amount of content or just started setting it up without the thoughtfulness of, kind of, the process that we just talked about.  

And a lot of times, people feel like… like we inherently feel like, "I know what other people want," especially if we have existing customers in our core business. And even if you feel like you know your customers really well, you still have to go through this process of distilling the information down through this different dynamic that you're going to be establishing because just because I buy a product from you doesn't mean I want to be in a community with the other people who are your customers. And so, sometimes it's not as easy as, "Well, I have an ICP for my customer who buys this product or service," the dynamics of what they value in the context of community could be totally different.

So, one is just not going through the process. And this is true of all businesses, right? Sometimes, we just don't go through the process because we get excited, we want to move fast, or we think we already know things. So that would be the biggest one. And that fleshes out most of the other pitfalls, to be honest. Most of the other pitfalls are just not being aware of certain things that you need to really have dialed in information on.

But the other one, which we already discussed, is really not caring enough. And that might be a touchy thing to say but really not just defining what your purpose and passion is and the meaning behind this, but working to stay connected with that. And I guess an example would be like in a marriage, right? You fall in love with someone. Well, guess what, unless you work on staying in love with someone and actively work on creating and recreating that connection, it's naturally going to dissipate because other things in our life happen and make us feel stressed or make us feel all these other types of ways. 

And the same thing is true. You might think, "I found the community and the thing that I'm passionate about. So, now, it'll just feel amazing the whole time," right? And you have to have different mechanisms or activities that constantly reconnect you with actually feeling that purpose and passion.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

You might have just answered what I'm about to ask you, but I've loved this. This has been short, sweet, to the point, and has given us a great intro to Communities 101. Mayaan, as you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests just this one question. What is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah. No matter how busy you are, set aside minimum five minutes to just reconnect with your meaning and your purpose and do that every single day because life is really, really hard and challenging. And I know if I stop doing that, even for a day at a time, I get like all out of whack and demotivated and all these emotions, right, and other things and just connecting.  And for me, I do that through prayer in the morning. But whatever the thing is for you, making sure that that's a part of your day every single day to keep you aligned and oriented, I think is the most powerful thing.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

I love that. Well said, Maayan. This has been a great conversation. I appreciate you coming on with us so much. Tell us where people can connect with you online, find out more about all that you're doing. And we'll have that in the show notes too, but I want to give you a little bit of space here to share that with everybody.

Maayan Gordon:

Yeah, I would say right now the best place is going to be LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile, and I'll give you the link to that. I'm in the process of building out a new website, most likely going to be maayangordon.com. But I'm still early. If you're listening to this, check out my LinkedIn first. If you want to check out the URL maayangordon.com, feel free, but there might not be anything on there yet.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

All right, perfect. And regardless, we're going to have it, like I said, in the show notes at drrichardfshuster.com. So, if somebody wanders onto this episode months down the road, it'll be populated with all your goodness so that we get you covered there. Maayan, this was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on with us today.

Maayan Gordon:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Absolutely. And to each and every one of you who took time out of your day, thank you as well. Very grateful for your time. If you liked it, if you learned something, if you're going to start thinking about how to build a community for your business, go give us a follow and a five-star review on the podcast app of choice that you listen to the show on, because that is how other people find the platform. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post in your feeds using the hashtag, #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.