Carrie Jones is a community builder, entrepreneur, and community management consultant. She is the author of the “Building Brand Communities” book that distills key lessons to create engaged and effective communities by growing mutual concern, expressing common values, and sharing experiences.

In this interview, Carrie shared with us her tips on how to start and make money as a Thought Leader. Here’s what she said…

“And so this comes down to values and, and a really clear purpose statement, which I have when I think about purpose statements.. You think about the who, “Who do you want to be there and what are their values?” And then the “what”, “What are you going to actually do together?” and then the “why”. “Why should anyone care?” And then within that purpose, you could accomplish that in infinite ways.”

Awesome. Carrie also shared her piece of advice for starting Content Creators out there…

“So what I find is that there’s kind of two buckets of people. One bucket are the people who really are starting from scratch. They have no existing relationships so far, they are not even really sure what they want to build a community around. So we have to really drill down into that more. But much more often, there is the bucket of people who like yourself, have many followers and have an audience, but are ready to take that to the next level and help that audience connect to one another. So it’s not just you as the center point, it’s you being able to then bring all those people together, and help them meet each other. And then from there go from creating an entire network of people. So that’s when the magic serendipity stuff starts happening when you’re no longer the central node, between everyone.”

Carrie also shared her thoughts and advice for a more established Content Creators out there….

“So the first part is deepening the existing relationships. If you feel like they’re not deep already, and one of the things, one of the ways you can position this to, is actually get people on the phone or talking to you more deeply than you currently are talking to them, and to send out some kind of a survey or screener survey. This is very tactical, giving you very tactical information here. And to say, I’m thinking about launching, whatever it is, think about launching, maybe it’s an event series, I’m thinking about launching a Facebook group that will serve around this purpose, and do a really quick survey, and then ask people if they’d be willing to chat with you more after filling out the survey.”

That’s a great strategy!

Before this interview ended, Carrie shared her last words for content creators in general…

“I would say just know that however long you think it’s going to take you to build this incredible, deeply engaged, self managing community… times it up by six, be online and be patient, because every small action that you take in community building matters.”

You read that right. EVERY. SMALL. ACTION. So, just get started!

Carrie also shared her feedback on what it’s like being on the show! Here’s what she said:

“So you’ve asked really insightful questions. And I really appreciate that. I’m not just asked the typical boring questions. And there was also a lot of lead up to it. I talk a lot about onboarding and welcoming and the process of initiating relationships is really the key. And I think you’re doing a good job of that. Right now, you could probably amplify it like 10%. And then you’d be like, Rocket Power.”

Thank you for such positive and encouraging feedback, Carrie. It was our pleasure having the interview with you. Til next time!