> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://creatorscience.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Dan Andrews – Secrets of building a 1300-member, international community (with in-person events) - URL: https://creatorscience.com/podcast/dan-andrews-2/ - Published: 2024-12-17T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-10T23:48:12.000Z - Description: Dan Andrews founded the Dynamite Circle and Dynamite Jobs and is now a repeat guest. Dan was first on the show in episode #32 in November 2020. - Author: Jay Clouse - Tags: #podcast, Podcast, Community & Memberships, Events Episode 232 # Dan Andrews – Secrets of building a 1300-member, international community (with in-person events) Dan Andrews founded the Dynamite Circle and Dynamite Jobs and is now a repeat guest. Dan was first on the show in episode #32 in November 2020. with **Dan Andrews**Dec 17, 202443 min [Listen now](#listen) [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dan-andrews-secrets-of-building-a-1300/id1498801064?i=1000680667461&ref=creatorscience.com) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0oxnY64Mds0TpnXq2f7fY8?ref=creatorscience.com) More players Listen in your app [![](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=podcasts.apple.com&sz=64)Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creator-science-with-jay-clouse/id1498801064?ref=creatorscience.com)[![](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=open.spotify.com&sz=64)Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/39j9VhklsBs1aLWtkGTWJT?ref=creatorscience.com)[![](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=youtube.com&sz=64)YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@jay/?ref=creatorscience.com)[![](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=overcast.fm&sz=64)Overcast](https://overcast.fm/itunes1498801064/creator-science?ref=creatorscience.com)[![](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=pocketcasts.com&sz=64)Pocket Casts](https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/creator-science-with-jay-clouse/7db47890-2ff0-0138-96e6-0acc26574db2?ref=creatorscience.com)[![](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=castro.fm&sz=64)Castro](https://castro.fm/podcast/5f8d5083-92f5-4a4e-a83e-29a773baa95c?ref=creatorscience.com)[![](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=castbox.fm&sz=64)Castbox](https://castbox.fm/channel/id2626956?ref=creatorscience.com)[![](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=podcastaddict.com&sz=64)Podcast Addict](https://podcastaddict.com/feed/https%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.megaphone.fm%2FTPG4024225475?ref=creatorscience.com)Copy the RSS feed ![Episode 232: Dan Andrews](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/03ed8d9a-bbe9-11ef-9fe4-27253ff6cb86/image/32efbadb08baac0436092e60221d1e71.jpg?w=640&h=640&fit=crop&auto=format,compress) ![](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/03ed8d9a-bbe9-11ef-9fe4-27253ff6cb86/image/32efbadb08baac0436092e60221d1e71.jpg?w=640&h=640&fit=crop&auto=format,compress) Episode 232 · 43 min Dan Andrews −15 0:0043:00 +30 1× Or listen in [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dan-andrews-secrets-of-building-a-1300/id1498801064?i=1000680667461&ref=creatorscience.com) or [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0oxnY64Mds0TpnXq2f7fY8?ref=creatorscience.com) This week's guest ![](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/03ed8d9a-bbe9-11ef-9fe4-27253ff6cb86/image/32efbadb08baac0436092e60221d1e71.jpg?w=640&h=640&fit=crop&auto=format,compress) **Dan Andrews**Host of TropicalMBA and the co-founder of the Dynamite Circle ## About this episode Dan Andrews founded the [Dynamite Circle](https://dynamitecircle.com/?ref=creatorscience.com) and [Dynamite Jobs](https://dynamitejobs.com/?ref=creatorscience.com) and is now a repeat guest. Dan was first on the show in episode #32 in November 2020. I've been listening to Dan's podcast, Tropical MBA, since 2014, and that was 5 years after they started. Tropical MBA started as a podcast for location-independent entrepreneurs and has grown into a thriving global community. The Dynamite Circle is a paid membership community that Dan and his partner, Ian, built from the podcast's success. It has more than 1,000 members, dozens of local meetups, and 5 signature events throughout the year; the Dynamite Circle has continued to innovate as a member-led community. This is a 2 part episode. The second half of this conversation can be found on Dan's podcast, Tropical MBA, and will be released on Thursday. Dan's [Website](https://tropicalmba.com/?ref=creatorscience.com) / [Twitter](https://x.com/TropicalMBA?ref=creatorscience.com) / [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/?ref=creatorscience.com) / [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA/featured?ref=creatorscience.com) ## Mentioned in this episode [Dynamite Circle ↗](https://dynamitecircle.com/?ref=creatorscience.com)[Dynamite Jobs ↗](https://dynamitejobs.com/?ref=creatorscience.com)[Subscribe to Tropical MBA ↗](https://creatorscience.co/re231-tropicalmba?ref=creatorscience.com)[Join The Lab ↗](https://join.creatorscience.com/?ref=creatorscience.com)[Website ↗](https://tropicalmba.com/?ref=creatorscience.com)[Twitter ↗](https://x.com/TropicalMBA?ref=creatorscience.com)[Instagram ↗](https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/?ref=creatorscience.com)[YouTube ↗](https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA/featured?ref=creatorscience.com) ## Full transcript 7,203 words · click any timestamp to play from there Dan Andrews0:00 We have numbers in our business, like, if you go to an event within the 1st 12 months, your likelihood of staying in the community is, like, more than doubled. So we see events as, like, a core brand promise delivery. Like, that's where you get the juiciest DC goodness. Jay Clouse0:30 Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. This week, I am joined by the legendary Dan Andrews, the founder of the Dynamite Circle and Dynamite Jobs, and now a repeat guest. Dan was first on the show in episode number 32 back in November of 2020\. I've been listening to Dan's podcast, Tropical MBA, since 2014, and that was 5 years after they started. They started that show in 2009\. Tropical MBA started as a podcast for location independent entrepreneurs and has grown into a thriving global community. The Dynamite Circle is a paid membership community that Dan and his partner, Ian, built from the success of the podcast. Jay Clouse1:08 And as you'll hear, that community is really impressive. With more than 1,000 members, dozens of local meetups, and 5 signature events throughout the year, the Dynamite Circle has continued to innovate as a member led community. And that's what I wanna talk to Dan about today. I've continued to be impressed and inspired by what they've built with the Dynamite Circle, and I wanna learn more about the inner workings of it so I can apply it to The Lab, our membership community for creators. This is actually a 2 part episode. The second half of this conversation can be found on Dan's podcast, Tropical MBA, and will be released on Thursday of this week if you're listening to this the day it was released. So take a second, go to your podcast app, go to the show notes for this episode, click the link in the show notes to subscribe to Tropical MBA. That episode will be released on Thursday, and you'll thank me later because Tropical MBA is still one of the few podcasts that I've listened to time and time again. Read the full transcriptClose transcript Jay Clouse2:02 So take a minute, do it. You're gonna like the second half of this conversation. You're gonna love the show and you'll see that episode in your feed later this week. Okay. That's enough from me. Let's talk with Dan. To set the context for a listener who may be a little bit less familiar with Tropical MBA, can you kinda give us the high level overview of the business as it stands today? Like, what aspects of the business exist and what they do? Dan Andrews2:32 So we have a podcast, which was our primary channel. That podcast is tropical MBA. The unique angle there was, hey, can you have a legitimate online business and travel the world and grow wealth and have time flexibility? Like you were mentioning, take a few weeks off or that kind of stuff. Can you spend the summer in Europe? Can you move to a foreign country? These sorts of concepts, but have a legitimate online business. So that was the top lead funnel. And eventually folks who were listening to that show, they wanted to start to meet each other. So you're like, okay, we'll start doing events. Eventually that evolved into a private membership called the dynamite circle that currently has 1300 members and different membership tiers. Dan Andrews3:15 Wow. Then the next piece is we have a services element to it, which for now that consists of a job board for remote jobs and a recruiting service, which helps people find their next great employee. So I would say, like, 50% of our customers for the recruiting service are from the membership, and it's a higher number for the job board, probably. Jay Clouse3:43 Crazy. Okay. So even larger scale than I realized. And within the dynamite circle, you guys do events, in person events still. Can you talk about the footprint of that? Dan Andrews3:56 Yeah. So every month, we do about 20 member meetups. They happen globally in cities. They're anywhere from, like, 3 members to 30 members, depending on the city you're in. We have then what we call chapter events or adventures where folks we've sent people to Antarctica on 4 by 4 in trips. Like that will be like Kilimanjaro. There'll be like 5 to 15 members go on an adventure together. We'll have city based events. Dan Andrews4:24 Like, here in Austin, we'll have 40 members show up for sort of a 2 day thing. And then we have 5 key events annually that are the ones that we host. So we do Phuket, Barcelona, New York, Bangkok, and Playa del Carmen. Also, our members host events. So, for example, we have a London chapter that's extremely vibrant, and they host on the brand's behalf a 100 person, $700 ticket event in London every single year, which actually has a lot higher demand than just 100, but they limit it for logistics purposes. So we have this concept, like, we borrowed from TED, DCX. So we have, like, a vetting process that will bring potential hosts in, and folks will host events for us all around the world. So we've done over the years. Dan Andrews5:15 I mean, DC has been around since 2011, so I don't even know the number, but it's been quite a few. Jay Clouse5:21 I love that model, and it's so aspirational to me. But the capacity to manage the logistics of that feels, like, inaccessible to where I'm at right now. I can't conceptualize how you manage that. What does the team look like or the operations look like to support 5 events from the brand, let alone the member led stuff? Can you expand on that a little bit? Dan Andrews5:43 Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's been really useful to me is this concept from Greg Crabtree called LER. It's a way just to simplify the concept of capacity, which is to say, take your gross profit from any given thing that you're selling and divide it by your direct labor. And that ratio needs to be 2\. And so I think if you wanna run events, make your ticket pricing, like, in line with LER. Like, what kind of capacity, AKA, like, event planners. You know? And that's a combination of someone at HQ and then someone on the ground. You need someone on the ground that's your local event partner. Dan Andrews6:23 And can you get that ratio to 2? And can you find the demand within your customer base? And that's basically how we think about it. One of the things I have noticed about events for us is the events part is more trivial than the community part. So we want a community person doing the events, not an events person doing the community, if that makes sense. So Mhmm. It's relatively easy with a lot of hard work to learn the event side of things. Logistics sides, it's it's hard work, but it's not, like, informationally complex, I guess. But the learning curve on the community stuff is a lot harder. How do you communicate with people? How do you treat them? What do you do when you get there? What's the values of the community, the vibe? What's different about your experience than others? Those are the community elements. Dan Andrews7:10 So we we typically wanna Jay Clouse7:12 do that in house. Social dynamics are more complex than Event Logistics. Basically. Yeah. So you said you have one person at HQ and then one person on the ground. Dan Andrews7:23 For each particular spot. Yeah. Jay Clouse7:26 Are you, like, basically planning an event at all times throughout the year? Dan Andrews7:29 One of the internal mantras for us is it's already 6 months ahead. Like, so we'll come to a meeting and say, you know, it's December right now as we're recording. It's already May. Jay Clouse7:37 What does that mean? When you say that, what does that mean to you? Dan Andrews7:40 Well, the hardest part about events is getting people to come. You know? And the easiest way to get people to come is to have a clear value proposition well in advance where they can get it on their calendars. So a lot of it is simply getting the information to your clients, your customers, your followers as early as you can. Mhmm. So we're we're anticipating, you know, we have an event coming up in May. Like, that's what we're talking about in our daily huddle this morning. We're talking about May, which is kinda nuts. We didn't always used to do that. Dan Andrews8:12 So that's a big part of it. The other thing is leveraging volunteers. So for our Bangkok event, for example, last year, we had 400 people attend, like 345 ticket holders. And I think it was like 8 or 10 volunteers. So, you know, that's all part of it too is like, well, how do you recruit a volunteer? How do you equip them with a job to do? And stuff like that. So there's just a lot of those sorts of details involved. Jay Clouse8:41 So you do have, like, a full time staff person that their thing is events. Yeah. What point in the journey did you hire that person? Dan Andrews8:49 Well, I would come back to LER. Like, this is a very attractive position. So, for example, like, one of my favorite places to hire is the mom project. Have you ever heard about this website? So I think it's a great place for finance professionals because you find like, I'm hiring right now for someone on our finance team. And it's like all these kind of ballers who had a career, but then they're like, you know what? I wanna be a mom. But I got this horsepower. I got this brain, and I wanna apply it to something. And we have businesses like that that are exciting. Dan Andrews9:25 They're fresh. They're interesting. They're challenging. And we don't always need somebody full time to hang around on the payroll. It's like, I'll pay you when you do the work. And so I think this would be an ideal way to bring a community oriented event planner into your business. Is do it by contract. Do it by event. Dan Andrews9:42 You know, it'll be obvious when to bring that person in full time, and that's the LER calc. So you're just gonna look at your p and l. You're gonna look at your events line item. And when it's an obvious LER to have a full time events person done deal, I just do it by the numbers. And I'm just going to bootstrap my way into it until I see that number. That's my new thing, Jay. Jay Clouse10:03 I just, I hear this on podcast. I just I know. And you you got scorecards? Dan Andrews10:08 Yeah. I got nothing interesting for you. Like, that's cool, strategic. I'm just show me the numbers. Jay Clouse10:13 This is good, though. This is well, here's the thing. Like Dan Andrews10:15 Well, let me just say this before you say your thing. It's, like, if you're gonna host an event, Jay, I don't want Jay working on that event. I want you to model that event like a professional event organizer is doing it, and they need to be on that that p and l, the budget for the event. And that's how you model it out. There's no sense in tossing a bunch of your time at it. That's a waste of energy and money. Jay Clouse10:40 I find myself I know you're a fan of traction, which I haven't read, but I've heard enough about this book that I understand the visionary versus integrator idea. Dan Andrews10:48 Mhmm. Jay Clouse10:48 And I'm good at both of these skill sets, but I've held both of them too long. And so anytime there's like an operational thing that I wanna do, I just assume it's gonna be me. And I know I don't have the capacity, so I don't do it. I need I need to think from a hiring numbers l e r perspective. This is part of the reason I wanted to talk to you because I I see the way that you have delegated and team built around this, and it's a muscle I need to build. Dan Andrews11:15 I mean, the scorecard is absolutely critical for this. It's so simple. It's so boring. Nobody wants to do it. It's a one page document. You sit down and, like I think when people talk about team building, it's, like, all this soft stuff. It's, like, leadership and training, and I got to manage and track and I've got a visionary and they're the integrator and all this kind of stuff. Let's simplify it. Dan Andrews11:35 Let's take one piece of paper and write down the outcomes that you need in the business on a weekly basis and what the numbers are associated with that. Your only job as the executive is to make sure those outcomes lead to the company goals, and you need to have a clear numbers philosophy. If I get 25 top of funnel leads, marketing qualified leads, if I convert to this, to my sales calls, if this many people come in the front door, if this person creates it, we reach our year end goals. Okay. So we got that all figured out. So now all I need to do is basic top grading stuff, which is how do you evaluate good candidates? I need to find a candidate who can produce these outcomes. And based on my salary cap, which is based on this LER I I'm introducing a lot of gobbledygook here, but Love it. LER is simple. Dan Andrews12:22 Right? It's gross profit divided by direct labor. Okay. So my gross profit from this product is this. Everybody that's contributing to that, including sales, marketing, operations, delivery, whatever needs to be at 2 point o. So this is my budget for this particular person, and I'm going to go out and find the person for that budget. And with us, we can hire globally. We have remarkable flexibility in meeting these budgets. Now we're in the interview. Dan Andrews12:49 Talk to me, Jay, about a time where you've produced outcomes like this in another scenario. Tell me how you did it. Let's go through all the details. Let's hypothesize. Here's the input hypothesis that I have. Here are the actions you'll take on a daily basis that I believe create these outputs because you know what? I've done them. I've been doing it. Right? I know you hired a podcast producer. Dan Andrews13:08 Right? Like, you know how to do that. Here are the outcomes. Here's the inputs. They correlate. They lead to my goals. This is what you're gonna be judged on. Here's how much I can afford to pay you. Let's get moving. Dan Andrews13:20 It's just that simple. Jay Clouse13:21 Why does the LER need to be 2.0 and not, like, 1.1? Why does it need to be so far above 1? Dan Andrews13:27 So 2.0 is, like, if you model out most small businesses, it's sort of the minimum to get to over 10% net profit after owner compensation after the year. It's sort of a a heuristic or, like, a rule of thumb Yeah. Than when you look at a bunch of businesses. Now there are models that you need to have a much higher LER because you need a management layer. And so those businesses would be like food services and lawn care services and stuff like that. But because team members that work like, we're kinda like, I don't know, professional services, creator businesses, our team members manage themselves much more effectively. They don't need that layer. You can have a much lower ratio. Dan Andrews14:16 I mean, if you have a, you know, 1 point o ratio, like you're spending all your gross profit on the labor, it's not a business. You're sort of operating with this startup mentality. Like, I'm going to put all my money back into this, and I think it's gonna pay off. Jay Clouse14:34 Right. It's assuming an exponential return rather than a linear return. Dan Andrews14:38 There you go. I think that's a great way to think of it. And the reality that I've seen is that exponential return often won't happen on the thing you're working on right now. So it's typically best to run those experiments with your own time, which by the way is extremely expensive because we all can go get high paying jobs right now. So that needs to be factored in as well. Yeah. You know, whatever your market rate is, you dump that onto your p and l and see how profitable your business really is. Jay Clouse15:04 After a quick break, we talk about hiring, the drivers of event growth, and what keeps attendees coming back year after year. So stick around. We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Dan Andrews. I was talking to somebody who is a really talented fractional operator. And we were talking about maybe working together. And I looked at the cost to do that. And in the near term, it would have been trading time stress that I feel for money stress that I would feel hiring them at the rates that they charged and that was a really tough thing for me to, like, handle because you So it made it in Dan Andrews15:47 a month? Jay Clouse15:47 Let me guess. No. It was higher. Wow. So which is kind of where I ended it out. I was like, I not gonna tell you rates are unfair. It's just I can't accommodate that. Right. Jay Clouse16:00 And I don't know that I wanna trade time stress for money stress because I think money stress affects me a little bit more than time stress does. Dan Andrews16:08 I think that's a great approach if you can manage it. Because business is a risky proposition, so you wanna drive as much profitability as you can. I think it's a good strategy. Jay Clouse16:17 Going back to some of the logistics or the Dynamite Circle events part of your empire, do you find that the community drives event sales or that events drive community members? I'm sure it's a little bit of both, but what does that look like in your mind? Dan Andrews16:35 It's a good question. It feels like a self licking ice cream cone. There's these two dimensions that I often see communities go. The one is in the direction of sort of, like, informing ourselves in a particular direction. So, like, Mindvalley might be an example of that, where we all want to learn this type of information, and we're here to, like, gain access to the information. And then there's other types of communities where we're, like, here to gain access to each other. And the stickiest form of that is in person, like, by a long shot. And so, you know, we have numbers in our business. Dan Andrews17:08 Like, if you go to an event within the 1st 12 months, your likelihood of staying in the community is, like, more than doubled. And then well, I don't have the exact numbers internally for this, but it's like to me, it's obvious that they're the most likely to refer somebody to either come to that event or to join the community to see you know, to talk about their experience at the event. So we see events as, like, a core brand promise delivery. Like, that's where you get the juiciest DC goodness. Jay Clouse17:37 I would imagine that you have a lot of repeat event goers. Dan Andrews17:43 We have members who have come to every single event for 10 years. Yeah. Jay Clouse17:47 Do you think the majority of event attendees at this point have already gone to one event in the past? Dan Andrews17:54 Yes. So, for example, at DCPKK where there were 345 ticket holders, the first time attendees typically will be somewhere in, like, the high twenties to high thirties percentile depending on the year. So if I had to guess off the top of my head, it's, like, 1 in 3 is a first time attendee. Jay Clouse18:20 How do you think about the economics of the events? Because membership itself is a paid product. To go to the events, you have to be a member or no? You have to be a member. You have to be a member. So how do you think about the ticket price? Dan Andrews18:35 So, by the way, if you run an informational based community versus a connections based community, there's an opportunity to have events be more expensive to the public. Yeah. And then you ROI your membership in the heart of your customer because they get discount access to these events. So that I think is an excellent opportunity. In the case of a membership where you're connecting people and the primary service you're offering is the vetting, it's kind of defeats the brand promise. And so in our case Jay Clouse19:07 To just take a ticket from anybody to come in. You you still wanna vet the people who attend Dan Andrews19:12 the event. I can't sell tickets to the public because my brand promise is that I'm vetting everybody that's at the event. So it's interesting as you think about how you construct these decisions have downstream effects. Yeah. So it's a delicate business. I'm tempted to, like you know, that, podcast episode that Acquired FM did about Costco. So cool. I'm tempted to think of our events as, like, a Costco model, which is we want the most people to experience our events as possible because that is one of our core delivery mechanisms for the community goodness. Dan Andrews19:51 So we wanna price it that way. We wanna make our events extremely accessible. Like so for example, I'm flying to New York in a few days. This is our premium members. Obviously, our gross margins on subscriptions are quite high, so so we're not trying to, like, drive profitability with that ticket price. If it's, you know, $1500 is gonna swing 3 or 4 members from coming to that event. You know, I'm not trying to lose sight on the core driver of value for the business by trying to make extra profit on the events. So I think it's a tricky balance between really what we're trying to do is have a ticket price where we can sustainably resource the event, to use a wonky term, where we can deliver on the promise that our customers expect. Dan Andrews20:37 So it's a tricky balance. Like, for our premium customers, we're pricing our events right now anywhere from $1500 to $25100\. And then for our standard membership, a typical event will be around $1,000\. So that's sort of where we found that balance where we can still drive, like, a meaningful percentage of the community, like 30, 40%. You know, anywhere from 20 to 40% of the community will come out for an event, and we're trying to hit that number. We're trying to get as many community members to come out as possible. Jay Clouse21:08 For context, what's the difference in membership pricing between a standard member and a premium member? Dan Andrews21:15 It's 755100\. Okay. What are Jay Clouse21:19 the biggest cost drivers for events? I assume the venue is 1\. Food. Dan Andrews21:23 Yeah. You were talking about, like, how to make money off of events. I was thinking, like I think a lot of entrepreneurs, like, really complain about events, and I'm trying to figure out, like, the good thing about them is the bad thing about them, which is your customers are right there, and they're loving it or they're frustrated with it. And I think that that's a virtue at in the end. That's what you want as a founder. You wanna talk to your customers. In terms of making events wildly successful from a monetary perspective, it's Jay Clouse21:54 That's not even my priority, honestly. Dan Andrews21:57 Okay. Jay Clouse21:57 I'm I'm asking these questions trying to do? I'm asking these questions because I similarly, we moved the lab from, like, a capped model where we thought that price alone would be the vetting mechanism we need to attract the right person. That's true most of the time but not a 100% of the time or not close enough to a 100% of the time. So we moved to an application vetting model. And I also agree that having in person events is a great way to deliver value. So to me, I am also thinking, how do I make the events breakeven at a minimum? But really, I look at the events as a retention and, like, love inducing aspect of membership. And I'm trying to figure out what that model is then with the people that you need to hire with the cost drivers that you have because I don't I don't look at events as a profitable thing unless you're charging really high prices which still make a lot of sense if you have members paying a membership fee Correct. Or doing a ton of sponsors or selling something on the back of it, which, again, doesn't make sense if you have members Dan Andrews23:00 paying a membership fee. There's a third way to make money, which I've seen, which is scale. So, like, at the typical economics of, like, a hotel conference, you can really start to make some money, like, over 350, 400 attendees. There's just something about, like, there's these fixed costs. Like, there's the cost of doing business when you show up to an event center or whatever. But if you can start to get 4 or 5, 600 attendees or whatever, you can really start to drive profitability as well. So all those are off the table for us. So we're simply trying to host an event without, you know, losing our minds and losing our bags. Dan Andrews23:40 I mean, this is imminently doable for you. Jay Clouse23:44 I agree. Just so I'm thinking about it a lot. Dan Andrews23:47 Okay. Jay Clouse23:48 Because I also to my understanding, a lot of your speakers are members, which I also think we have the opportunity to do because there's so much, like, wisdom and experience in the membership itself. Dan Andrews23:58 K. That is fantastic. That's how it should be. And this takes away this whole, I'm gonna find a guru and run paid ads, and Seth Godin's coming to my conference or whomever. We are going to highlight member stories, and they're gonna open up the hoods, you know, and share openly with each other from stage about what worked for them. The key there is to have a speaker coach. Jay Clouse24:23 Mhmm. Say more. Dan Andrews24:25 Well, just the hardest part about taking members and having them present is that this isn't what they do full time. You know? So but I think you're gonna get a lot better content because you're getting practitioners that are in the field figuring shit out. Like, we had this incredible talk at DCBKK this year where, you know, some guy, like, basically generated a $1,000,000 from a LinkedIn funnel. And he's not like a LinkedIn coach. He's just a guy who did it. And that's what you wanna hear because he's, like, 2 years ahead of the course or whatever. Right? And so he sits down with our speaker coach. You know, he sends a speaker coach a loom. Dan Andrews25:01 He's like, hey. Here's what I discovered. Here's what I'm thinking. You have a nose for it because you're watching your members. You're saying, wow. So and so is really doing something interesting. You reach out to them. Would you be willing to do 15 minutes on it? Here's a basic framework and you go back and forth with a loom a few times. Dan Andrews25:17 You do one call and you give the speaker confidence that their message is going to be received well by the audience. You give yourself confidence as an event coordinator, that your content is going to be great. That for me is one of the biggest anxieties of hosting events is, you know, if you go, especially with like professional speakers, like I'm going to ask someone famous to come speak. Are they doing you a solid? So then like, can you really push them on their content? So I think creating a funnel inside the event, that's like, people really want to share and they get a lot of benefit from it. And they're willing to work hard with your speaker, coach take feedback. That's been a big breakthrough for us And everybody wants to be a part of that because they get a lot from other members and they're like, man, I would love to be on the main stage next year. I would love to have a workshop about what I'm doing. And so that's really worked for us. Dan Andrews26:09 And I think it's just like authentic to what our community is all about, which is like practitioners sharing information with each other and supporting each other. So we're not trying to model what other conferences are doing. Jay Clouse26:21 Do you pay those speakers? I assume you pay the speaker coach. Dan Andrews26:24 We pay the speaker coach. So I think you can do it both ways. It really depends on how many speakers you're gonna have and how much work you're asking of them, but we simply do free tickets. That's it. I don't think we need to necessarily do that. We, in the past, have not offered free, and there are other companies that have, like, 5 figure ticket prices, and they don't compensate speakers. I mean, speakers get a lot out of it. That's the pitch. Dan Andrews26:54 And your job is to make their job easy. Right? Like, have message audience fit. Here's a simple framework. It's only going to take you to do the prep stuff few hours. Obviously, the workload is gonna be much greater than that in the end, but the idea is to make it easy to share their story. And I think people appreciate that challenge, particularly if they have time to prepare. Jay Clouse27:17 After one more quick break, Dan shares his thoughts on creating sustainable communities and why community is safe from AI. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Dan Andrews. I think I have the unfair advantage that a lot of I mean, all of the folks in the lab who would be up for consideration for this, They are professional creators like they are professional Yeah. Message sharers, you know, which is one reason why like this podcast has worked fairly well is people show up with great equipment. So I think we have an opportunity there. And candidly, I just think this is like the future of my business model because information wants to be free. Jay Clouse28:06 I think education in a time of AI will get really personalized and like meet you where you are and I think increasingly we'll be asking like is this experience that I'm having a human experience is this real and community is a really powerful thing that is a little bit AI proof. Very difficult to do. I don't think most people have a nose or a stomach for it. But, again, a reason why I wanted to talk to you about it because you've been doing this for a decade, and sustaining a community is really difficult. What have you learned about sustaining a community over this period of time? Dan Andrews28:45 Man, that's a hard question. By the way, this event thing, man, great idea. I love that you're gonna do it. Let's get the dates in the books. I wanna know where it is. What's happening? Our team can help you out. Look at your event budget. Having an event budget, gotta have it. Dan Andrews29:01 Right? Well, we are gonna do so we have dates for this first one. I'm kind Jay Clouse29:06 of hedging. What I'm gonna do is we're gonna do 2 days in front of ConvertKit's Craft and Commerce. Okay. Dan Andrews29:11 Conference. Idea. Jay Clouse29:13 So that people have a lot of, like, built in friends. Yep. They can go to that conference afterwards. But also, it kind of makes the travel and lodging expenses a little more reasonable because if you're already gonna go there that's one flight instead of 2. Dan Andrews29:28 I love it. Jay Clouse29:29 So that's the plan for 2025\. It's 2 days for the community in front of this event that historically a lot of community members have gone to anyway. And I think that's gonna be great. But then if that goes well, I wanna do something a little bit more destination oriented later in the year. Speaking of I love that idea of Dan Andrews29:48 the destination as well. I love being embedded with members. There's something about you know, even for us going down the playa and just, like, the time around the pool and just sort of being out of the rhythm of, like, a normal city and normal your normal life is is fairly powerful, I think. Being able to bring your family, your partner is kind of a cool element as well and, like, share the experience. That's a cool part. Creating, like, a WhatsApp group for the partners so that they can go off and do excursions and stuff. Jay Clouse30:20 That's fun. Dan Andrews30:20 Now they start to think the community is cool. That's fine. That that's what you want buy in. You know? Another thing to consider with this event stuff is you mentioned, like, information being free and stuff. A lot of times, presentations, even from the best presentations, are merely conceits for me and you to go talk about the presentation afterwards. Right? We want to discuss what do you think about what so and so set up there? And so I would definitely look into smaller format discussions where you have like qualified discussions about like YouTube in 2025\. Let's get 8 people sitting here, people that wanna talk about finance, people that wanna add an event portion, and then you rotate those groups. Those discussions, you have to rip people out of them. Dan Andrews31:03 At least our members. Like, you know, you'd like ring a bell in people's ears and be like, you know, Phil's not leaving, but you gotta go to this other group and start talking about the next topic. Jay Clouse31:12 So you're saying not like a static small group of people you think, these 8 people would gel together. You're saying you have, like, this rotating cycle of topics where it's like I'm at the YouTube in 2025 table right now. But in 15 minutes, I'm gonna move over to the Profit First table. And in 15 minutes, I'm gonna move over to Exactly. The email table. That's really interesting. Dan Andrews31:31 And then even like for a morning, you could you could message out to everybody that didn't wanna speak because they didn't wanna spend 20 hours making a talk. And you say, hey. I'm messaging you right now because you've done something amazing this year. Are you willing to host a 35 minute meetup on the topic in this room? Here's the format. Everybody's gonna say yes. Mhmm. You know, Dan, do you wanna host a meetup about podcasting? All I need is a 5 minute topper from you about the number one thing you learned and the number one challenge you're facing, and then send it around the group for 45 minutes. Man, like it'll be electric. Dan Andrews32:02 You got 8 podcasters sitting there talking about their challenges. So I think at an event for us, what's really powerful, and this sounds like you guys have this vibe too. It sounds like you talked about this kind of element of legitness and non skeezy, giving people a in person place to talk about what's not going well, what's challenging, what they're worried about. That really drives connections and it creates a special because we're weirdos. Right? Sometimes it's not cool to go talk about our businesses when we're hanging out with normies. Jay Clouse32:36 Yeah. And also, there's, like, very few places where you feel comfortable talking about your concerns because you're not gonna have to share with your employees. Exactly. Your partner might not quite understand what you're doing. You might not wanna share some of those with your partner either. So if you don't have a, like, legitimate business partner, it's tough to have an outlet for that type of stuff. Dan Andrews32:56 I think that drives a ton of value, and it it really just drives meaningful, like, life changing connections that lasts. And you talked about sustainability. There you go. It's like, how can you get people to connect? And we watch the same talk is level 1\. So what can you do to level 2, level 3, you know, deep in those things? Jay Clouse33:18 Is there a base level number of attendees that you think makes an event like we're describing viable? Dan Andrews33:25 No. I just think the price changes based on your venue type selection. Like, you know, we can go to an Airbnb event, you know, and everybody toss in a $1,000, and that works. We can all go skiing together, and everybody pays $3,000\. That works. We can get 70 people to go to a small tertiary conference room, and that works. Or we can rent out the ballroom and charge $500 to 250 people, and that works. So the key thing is, like, you wanna simplify with a good venue selection. Dan Andrews33:56 So what's one venue that can solve 80% of your problems? Maybe you wanna have an evening party at a rooftop or, you know, some cool restaurant or whatever. But typically, you want that core venue to have a good lobby place for people to hang out, have a great conference room, good rooms. It's just get the RFPs out there, figure out what the price is, and work backwards. Jay Clouse34:17 You're saying RFPs. And for people who aren't familiar and for my own assumptions I'm making, it sounds like you're saying RFP to venues to say, we wanna host an event. What can you do for us? Dan Andrews34:27 Yeah. Like, hey, I'm Dan from Dynamite Circle. We're looking for an event for these dates or these dates. Here's how many attendees we need this kind of set up in the conference room. We let them know our format. Like, you know, we want round tables in the morning. We want audience seating in the afternoon, and we want to have 10 breakout rooms the second day. What's our room minimum? And, you know, that's a deep dive topic in and of itself in terms of room minimums and all that kind of stuff. Dan Andrews34:53 But, again, like we talked about at the top, in the end, not nearly as complicated as doing what everybody listening to this does every day. So those parts are easy. The hard part is, you know, connecting people, getting the right people to come. Those are the hard parts. Jay Clouse35:09 I kinda wanna just give you the floor to talk about what you're seeing in the world of mostly community and events that you think people don't get? Because what's old is new again. And I think we're in a cycle of, like, creators, online business, new, sexy thing. But, like, really, people have been doing this for 20 years. What do you see in the current cycle that you think people are misguided as it relates to community or events? Dan Andrews35:37 Well, I think, typically, I see people overvaluing it is extremely valuable, but I think, in general, people overvalue the algorithm and views and likes and general popularity where it's easier to start a business if you're much more serious about message audience fit. So who's interacting with your content and your community is a extremely powerful lever. Like, if you do the math, right, it's like you we've all done the TikTok math. It's like a 1000000 people watched my video, then what do they do? Watch somebody else's video, then nothing. Right? And so, but if 2 high net worth individuals read your newsletter about how to open up a bank account in Singapore, the lever of what those 2 individuals can do is an enormous part of the equation, even though you got 2 views that we forget to put into the equation. So I think I know you do this a lot in your stuff, but I just think in the conversation, it's less legible. So people we don't have like a regular way of talking about it that I've seen. You had a really good case study of a guy who, like, had a successful YouTube channel, but started a second one about Notion specifically. Dan Andrews36:58 And that's a good example of really honing in on who you're talking to and what potential milieu of actions they can take and what's their agency and how that multiplies your numbers downstream. Because when you just look at the platform, like I'm going to get popular on YouTube, I'm going to get popular on Instagram. I just see, like, countless people who are popular on Instagram that are having a really hard time making it. You know, they thought there was, like, some there there. There was some promise at the end of that audience building. So some way to check-in on who that audience is as you go along, I think is probably undervalued still. And that's an old thing. That's a new thing. Dan Andrews37:39 That's a perennial thing. And events are a really great way to do that, even if it's virtual. Like, if you've got an audience of a 100 people and you're doing a live stream or whatever, make it about the audience. Like, figure out who they are and what their biggest problems are, that kind of basic customer development stuff, then you can model your message after that. So I say this as someone who's built a reasonably sizable business off of a small audience, because we're talking to wealthy business owners. That's basically it. And so I think that's the biggest lesson from my story is that it matters who's in your audience. A great deal. Jay Clouse38:28 If you wanna hear the second half of this conversation, remember to subscribe to Tropical MBA in your podcast player. We talk about all things being a creator, the biggest opportunities I see right now, and how I would go about designing a content strategy. The link to that is in the show notes. It will be released on Thursday of this week. You'll also find a link to my previous conversation with Dan, which is still one of my personal favorites. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and letting me know. Those reviews go a long way to helping us grow the show. I read all of them. Jay Clouse38:58 I say it in every episode because it truly makes a difference. If you haven't left a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please take a moment to do so. If you wanna learn more about Dan, visit his website at tropicalmba.com. There's also a link to that in the show notes. Otherwise, thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next week. [ ![](https://app.creatorscience.com/courses/beloved-membership/card.jpg?v=e3738651) Put this episode to work Build A Beloved Membership The playbook for launching a membership people love $399 · 400+ students · 14-day refundSee the course → ](https://app.creatorscience.com/courses/beloved-membership?utm%5Fsource=creatorscience.com&utm%5Fmedium=episode-card&utm%5Fcampaign=dan-andrews-2&utm%5Fcontent=episode) This week's guest ![](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/03ed8d9a-bbe9-11ef-9fe4-27253ff6cb86/image/32efbadb08baac0436092e60221d1e71.jpg?w=640&h=640&fit=crop&auto=format,compress) **Dan Andrews**Host of TropicalMBA and the co-founder of the Dynamite Circle Free every Sunday ### Get the ideas from every episode Join **65,000+** creators reading the Creator Science newsletter. Subscribe Up next [![](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/fddb5382-2101-11eb-a704-a336c39a9b48/image/b6c0d45cbe3a51ab40aed725da7e8313.jpg?w=200&h=200&fit=crop&auto=format,compress)**Dan Andrews – Helping location independent entrepreneurs build businesses and find community**Episode 32](https://creatorscience.com/podcast/dan-andrews/) Ask Creator Science Got a question about your creative business? Jay answers listener questions on the show. 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