The Laws of Community Building with Natalie Ellis

September 22, 2022

AI Summary

5 min read

Natalie Ellis started her first serious business—a supplement line for young women with acne-prone skin—right out of college with no marketing budget and no manufacturing experience. She built it by Googling her way through formulation, kitchen experiments, and small production runs. The business grew fast enough to land in 250 Boots stores across the UK, but the cash flow dynamics nearly killed it: she had to pay manufacturers months before retailers paid her. That experience taught her a visceral lesson about working capital, but it also led her to start posting honestly about entrepreneurship on Instagram. That account grew into BossBabe, a community that has since generated over 25,000 paying members and roughly $6 million in annual recurring revenue from subscriptions alone—all bootstrapped.

Community as product, not audience

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Cold Plunge as a Metaphor for Entrepreneurship** - Natalie and the hosts bond over cold exposure, drawing parallels between the discomfort of the plunge and the startup journey.
2 (07:30) **Natalie's Origin Story: From Supplements to BossBabe** - Natalie shares her entrepreneurial journey, starting with a supplement business and discovering the power of community.
3 (14:00) **The Insight: Community as a De-Risked Product Strategy** - Natalie and Greg discuss how building a community first de-risks product development by taking direction from the audience.
4 (17:50) **The Tribe Test: What Actually Defines a Community** - Greg introduces the "Tribe Test" framework for distinguishing a true community from an audience.
5 (20:00) **Workshop: How to Launch a Community from Scratch** - The hosts workshop building a community around Sahil's newsletter, using the Tribe Test as a framework.
6 (23:00) **Early Community Dynamics: Rules of Engagement and Rituals** - Natalie details how she established culture in the early days of BossBabe with only five members.
7 (26:20) **Scaling the Community: Avoiding the "Eternal September" Trap** - The conversation shifts to the challenges of scaling a community without losing its culture.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Why are you waiting to build your community? In today's episode, we explain why the time is now to start creating, share the five tests to prove community exists, share how to have community members engage with one another, and so much more. Hosts Sahil Bloom & Greg Isenberg, are joined by Natalie Ellis, a self-taught entrepreneur who bootstrapped her way to a community-based company that generates over $6 million per year in recurring revenue. You won't want to miss this episode.

►► Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.com

A SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR

►► This episode is brought to you by Retool https://retool.com/

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LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Natalie Ellis: https://twitter.com/natalieellis91

Sahil Bloom: https://twitter.com/SahilBloom

Greg Isenberg: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Production & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/

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Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-it-happens/id1593424985