Episode Transcript
Kyle James (00:01.08)
Hey, welcome to the AI Chronicles podcast. I'm your host, Kyle James. And today we'll be talking about how a community building services company called Ember Consulting is using AI inside of their own business. And we'll share the exact steps that you can take in order to implement AI for yourself. Now, before we talk about that, listen closely. Are you looking to implement AI inside of your own company or maybe just struggling to get your AI to stop hallucinating? Speak to GPT Trainer.
GPT Trainer literally builds out and manages your AI for you, eliminating hallucinations for good. Go to gpt-trainer.com. I promise you, it'll be the biggest time-saving decision that you've made all year. Trying to set up AI on your own is like trying to build a house from scratch. Sure, you could do it, but the time of frustration is gonna take you to get it finished. It may not be worth it. It's a thousand times faster and safer to hire professionals.
schedule consultation today. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com. Today I have with me on the show, Lever, who is the Community Strategist and CEO of Ember Consulting. Bree got her start building a community and growing it to a multi-million dollar revenue stream for a brand in Portland, Oregon. Now she helps coaches, consultants, and creators build thriving online communities for their business. During the day, Bree is a Community Strategist
and a campervan host by night on the big island of Hawaii. You'll usually find her on, in, or under the water. She is also the host of Dear Bree Podcast. So excited for this conversation. Hey Bree, welcome to the show. How are you?
Bri Leever (01:41.031)
Hi Kyle, yeah, thanks for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
Kyle James (01:43.63)
probably one of my favorite intros. Like I could just picture like being in, in on top of the water. I'm like, that sounds like surfing, scuba diving, swimming, like all the things. Yeah. That's it. That's I was like, perfect. That's so cool. I'm sure that surfing is great out there in Hawaii. Crystal clear water. Man, I'm just ready to take a vacation right now.
Bri Leever (01:50.559)
Dude, you nailed it! Those are like my three things!
Bri Leever (02:01.951)
Oh God, literally like right when we hopped on, I was checking the surf report because we have a like winter swell coming in, which is very rare for summer. I, yeah. So, yep. You're, we're thinking along the same lines. Really? Oh my God. No, I didn't.
Kyle James (02:15.774)
We could talk, I'm actually a big avid surfer. I don't know if you knew that or not. Yes, I love, I picked it up when I was on the East coast for a couple of years. Yeah, yeah. And so, but I live in Texas now and there's like no surf out here. So it's kind of a heartbreak. I'm like, like praying for waves. Come on, please. need waves.
Bri Leever (02:23.84)
that's hardcore.
Bri Leever (02:29.663)
my God. Yes. Well, my partner fiance, soon to be husband is a surfboard shaper. So it's definitely a big, yeah, it's a big part of our lives. We're like, actually, we're going to start a different podcast.
Kyle James (02:40.622)
that's so cool. Man, I feel like we could talk a whole podcast about this stuff. So we should probably talk about AI stuff. Yeah. New podcast starting today. Get ready. Surfing, gore carving, swimming. yeah. That's hilarious. I love it. Okay. So anyways, thanks everybody for joining in us today. So Bri tell us a little bit here, like, like what is Ember Consulting? How did you find it? Give us some background on like how you kind of found the company.
Bri Leever (03:10.557)
Yeah, yep. So I started Ember after I quit my job in February of 2020, weeks before the pandemic hit, if we can all remember back to February of 2020. And the long and short of it is I started talking about what I had built, which was an ambassador program for a social enterprise that turned into the primary revenue stream and 100 % of the growth strategy for the company.
And I started connecting with brands who were very purpose-driven, mission aligned, saying like, Hey, you're, you're doing awesome things in the world. Your customers are probably kind of throwing themselves at you, like asking how they can get more involved when they do that. What do you say? And in the best case scenario, they'd be like, we like throw an affiliate link at them. And I was like, yeah, okay. That's like, that's a start, but there's so much more you can be doing. It's it's such low-hanging fruit to simply gather.
your customers into an online community. So inadvertently started consulting and I definitely have my community origins more in what I articulate today as like nurturing communities or collaborative communities where it's a free community that is supporting a product or service like in some other offer ecosystem. So the community itself is more of a nurturing space to support that product. It's free to join.
And then over the last five years, really transitioned. definitely like dabbled and slept around in all the different types of communities, but now I've landed on the paid community side where I help people build online paid communities.
Kyle James (04:51.566)
Yeah, for sure. And like we're going to talk about the AI here soon, but like what, what is like, cause I see a lot of communities, like my wife, sometimes she'll go through and see like, Oh, this is only $25 a month or Oh, this is only $5 for a month or is this free? And I'm like, man, there's like, how are they making, how do they, how do they keep the lights on? What are some of like the biggest gaps that you see a lot of like communities have, um, that's maybe preventing them from actually taking that.
that next step in revenue building, like within their community that they have already established.
Bri Leever (05:24.297)
Yeah, yep, this is like a whole rabbit trail. I actually, literally today, we dropped a Dear Bree episode that talks more about the model of community. And because there's a lot of confusion around like, what is the role of a community for your business? How the intersection between community and business can look really dramatically different depending on the goals and purpose of the community, but also like,
the goals and kind of natural talents of the person leading it. And then finally, most importantly, what your members are there to get value from. So it's a, it's a big question. I'll address it a couple of different ways. The first is like understanding if your community should be free or paid. And what I've found is when your community is the product, when like there, it's not leading people to some other paid product, you want to design a paid community.
And what's, we're in like a very fascinating time in internet history. We're kind of at that point where if you remember 10 years ago, if you came across an app that like charged you, it was like kind of insulting and laughable. Like, like we don't pay for apps. That's like very silly. And now I like dare you to go into your phone and look at like how many app subscriptions you've like forgotten about.
Community is at that same inflection point that we have been with apps in the past. And that is prior to now, people expected that community was this thing that was available for free. There's always like a Facebook group, a next door group. There's always like something available somewhere that's free. And what we've realized over time is like, well, it could be free, but two things happen. Either you become the product.
Or it's super glitchy, you can't find what you need, you're not actually in the right place with the right people. So now what I've actually found is more true is when people are looking at the prospect of joining a free community, there's a lot more skepticism. Because people are like, huh, like if it's free, then like, what's the actual cost? And I found that people as a whole in our society is a lot more like,
Bri Leever (07:47.071)
they're a lot more skeptical and they're a lot more like, they're very tired of becoming the product. I think in like the wake of Facebook turning us all into the product, we're like very, very skeptical now. And so what I've actually, what that does for us is like, it actually really positions paid communities in a really strong, we have a really strong positioning in the market right now, which hasn't always been the case. So there's a whole framework to like,
working out the pricing of like, it $5? Is it $65? Is it $1,000? And depending on the model, it can look so dramatically different, but that basic difference between free and paid is pretty essential when you're first starting out.
Kyle James (08:28.844)
Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah. It's, like, feel like I'm exactly what you said, Bri. It's like, I'm, I'm a little skeptical. when I find out it is just 20 bucks a month, I'm like, what is this? Either I'm thinking what's the catch or my question is like, is there value in this? Cause like, I'm expecting if it's to be more value, it's going to cost more, but depending on the type of like, I guess the layout you have behind the scenes, like you, if you have the free, then you gotta have something paid that they can get into. it's paid, if it's paid, then it's gotta be like content related and like all the, so.
It's an interesting perspective. And so let's go back to the AI here. you're using AI over at Ember Consulting. like, tell me like, why did you decide to start implementing AI in the first place? And what specific challenges were you trying to solve with AI?
Bri Leever (09:14.143)
Yeah, that's a great question. So Ember, we have two parts, two ways that we serve our clients and our members. So we have people who come to us who are like, we needed this community built right yesterday. And for those people, we have like our done for you consulting packages, like big fancy community builds, and we can get it done quick and we can get it done right. For those clients, like we've implemented AI to make our team more efficient is like the primary use of AI. So that'd be like,
really what you've typically seen of organizations implementing AI on their teams to make comms strategies more effective marketing. it's like having your thought partner and your co-drafter to help with the done for you materials and content, but it improves the quality of our work. So that's on the client side. Then we have people who come to us who are like, Brie, teach us to fish. We have this identity as a community builder.
I'm building my community. I don't need you to do it for me, but I need you to teach me how to do it with you. And so for those people, we have the Ember community where we teach people how to build community. And that's where AI solves a little bit of a different problem. I will be the first to tell you my strategy with AI is in actual execution.
a much smaller percentage than the vast number of ideas for how we could implement AI in the future. But currently, the main way that we use AI, because I have at this point after five years of creating content, I have my podcast, I've had three podcasts, I've had like hundreds of blog posts, so there's a lot of content that exists that's really rich with like my particular style and strategy behind community building.
Kyle James (10:40.846)
You
Bri Leever (11:02.183)
And then you layer over that all that public information with my private community where we have a year of conversations, course curriculum, questions that members are asking to each other, recorded events, like there's so much now like internal gated content behind the community. So again, we're not 100 % there in execution. We're actually like our...
like AI bot is in beta in the community, but the hope and intention is that it's aggregating all of the content so that for my members, when they have a question, they can ask the Brebot. And it's less that like they're gonna get the right answer and more that they're gonna be directed to the right resource. Whether that be like, listen to this podcast episode or like Bre talks about that in this video and here's the framework or like.
feeding some of those frameworks into the bot so that it can guide them through the framework itself. That's the goal. I don't think we're not executing 100 % there, but that's the intention.
Kyle James (12:04.75)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's definitely, there's a lot of use cases out there. And I think, I think for sure, like having the, the, community have access to some sort of like AI, especially when you have so much content and data that like, okay, where do you begin? How do you find it? How do you search for it? Right. Like having that like almost kind of filter through it makes it look like a lot of sense. And they even see like on the, you know, the team, the team aside, right. Like me more efficient, effective. Um, and so like, what would you say is like, as far as, know, like the AI for you on step-by-step process, like what, like.
And maybe, I know you talked about with like client side and maybe like internal side, right? But like, maybe kind of paint the picture of like, maybe the one, one on one or the other. That's like kind of more interesting of like how you have it set up. That's maybe worth sharing.
Bri Leever (12:46.589)
Mm, yeah. Well, so I'll share for inside of the community. And honestly, this is like an area where I'm like, I could use your advice. Because I actually started testing out GPT Trainer because I'm looking for like, what's the next tool because right now we just have it set up as our own bot in chat GPT for.
And we've basically just fed the limited number of content to it. And it's not optimized. It's not great. It was our beta. So the next step for us is going to be finding a tool that we can protect the input and the sources of information more consistently, and getting our team in a process of feeding and training the bot. And that's an area and a gap that like,
I haven't had capacity for, but I'm excited for in the future because it's so critical for it actually like implementing well in the community.
Kyle James (13:46.862)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And definitely. so, um, there's so much right in the AI space that can be done. think, I think exactly what you're saying is like there, because that data is available, it's like, okay, what do I do with it though? Like, what can I create with it or co-create with it? And there's a lot of opportunity there for sure. And so what, like, let's go a little bit back into like, work consulting. So like within your community, as an example, someone comes in and they have access to content. Like what exactly, like.
And I kind of want bounce around here a little bit because you have those like you're working alongside helping them build their community. Like walk me through kind of like that process. Like as soon as someone look, yeah, I think it's cool that you guys are using AI. Like I want to use it as well. But like how many of you, I have a community of, you know, 20,000 people, but like I'm only bringing in like a thousand dollars a month. Like what can I do? Like what, does something like that look like whenever you're working with your clients?
Bri Leever (14:37.435)
Yeah, yep. just to make sure I'm clarifying the question, it's more like how to increase revenue in your community or how you can use AI to increase revenue in your community.
Kyle James (14:46.678)
Yeah, I mean, I would say both, but maybe let's do like first is like the revenue just not necessarily just with AI, but like just, hey, revenue in general, like that you would bring them help them scale that community forward.
Bri Leever (14:58.175)
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. So the very first question that somebody needs to answer is like, what is the model for this community? Once once we have some clarity on that and we are really clear about the value proposition to your members. In addition to discerning, is this free? Is it paid? I have a lot of thoughts on the freemium model. The TLDR is it doesn't work. You can listen to dear Brie episode for the follow up on that. In addition to that, we need to discern is this community?
more education-centric or connection-centric. Every community has a combination of education and connection. However, depending on which one you have more of, creates really dramatic implications for the types of programs that you run in your community, how you will leverage AI in your community, and your pricing structure and your pricing model. Usually people come to me,
And this is like, it's like kind of a joke on my, on my like initial strategy calls because they'll be, I'll be like, okay, what's your education to connection ratio? And they're like 50 50. Cause they want to get like all the benefits of education and all the benefits of connection. And I like kind of laugh and I'm like, so there's no wrong answers here except for that one. Let's see. Mature communities, mature communities can handle like an equal.
Kyle James (16:11.598)
That's the only one. Yeah, you can't do that.
Bri Leever (16:20.017)
an equal scope of education and connection. And if you're, if you are an established community and you're looking to scale, it's one of the easiest places to look. So if you've been a predominantly connection centric community, introducing and layering over some more education centric programs or opportunities or mastermind or like we can discuss all the terms, but introducing that is like a very, it's a
It's a way that you can diversify the types of experiences that are offered in your community and increase the value pretty easily. Well, easily.
Kyle James (16:55.692)
Yeah. So, so we'll be asking this. So education versus like connection there, like I, the education piece, like I've seen a lot of that bidding communities before. they like, what do mean by the, when you say connection though, like what exactly does that mean to, to be like, to pick a side on that, on that record?
Bri Leever (17:07.709)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. I'll define both. So I define education-centric communities as places where you are helping facilitate an intentional learning journey for your members. It's like the communal, like, educational road trip. We're going from point A to point B. You're coming in here not knowing X, Y, and Z, and you're going to leave...
Like with these skills in place and these results, like this is our promise. So it's a little bit more, it's easier to market because there's a clearer transformation. So the value is like the outcome of that educational journey for your members. Connection-centric communities on the other hand, the value comes from the connections between your members. So while there might be education being passed between your members, it's a lot more organic.
Kyle James (17:41.976)
Hmm.
Bri Leever (18:04.337)
Instead of like this big road trip that we're all going on that like this, this expert or this teacher is facilitating. It's more like a, a web of like a city traffic system with like these webs of connections and the value comes from the connections between your members. This gets a little bit tricky to compare because education is in itself an outcome. Connection is not an outcome. Connection is a vehicle to some other outcome.
So connection-centric communities tend to be a little bit more difficult to market in that way because sometimes we're not always clear and your members aren't always clear on what that outcome actually is. And sometimes those communities can be like have really big networks. And so there can be a lot of different outcomes depending on the type of member. Again, it's like this big city-wide network. And so the results are more serendipitous, organic. It's less like.
calculated than an education-centric community. So connection-centric communities tend to take the form of membership communities. It's like where, but sometimes memberships in general will actually be under the guise of a course or education-centric material, but they have an identity crisis. They don't know what they are.
Kyle James (19:25.174)
Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. So that's cool. So it's like the education is like, it's a transformation. The connections, like it literally is what kind of what it says is like it's connecting you. There's a lot of like networking where it's a vehicle to like your end goal, whatever your end goal is. Like you have that in your mind, but the people here are the vehicle to help you get there to where you're trying to go. And obviously them trying to get help from other people and things like that.
Bri Leever (19:40.596)
Yeah.
Bri Leever (19:48.957)
Yes, and common examples of like the outcome or the result or the transformation that connection-centric communities help facilitate are number one, like expanding your network. Number two, they tend to be, they tend to serve, like while education-centric communities tend to serve people who are at the very beginning of whatever the journey is your community helps them like progress on, they're like learning the skills, they're putting it into practice.
People tend to need less training, less handholding as they progress and mature. And what they want instead is a small group of people who they know get it, who they know are asking the same questions and overcoming the same obstacles. Because we get into more nuance. The farther you progress and mature in your own career or industry, you start to recognize you don't need the rules laid out in front of you.
You need a safe place to experiment. You need a safe place to practice. And that's really where connection-centric communities shine.
Kyle James (20:55.128)
Hmm. That's great. So I want to try and like, like tie this back to like the AI, cause you have like a really interesting perspective here, like where you see the value of like in the community groups and, know, talking about these next couple of years, AI is going to change a lot of things. And like, where do you see AI playing like maybe some of the biggest role in your operations and especially like kind of in the community driven educational connection, groups, like where do see it playing the biggest role next?
Bri Leever (21:19.165)
Mm-hmm.
Bri Leever (21:22.611)
Yeah, that was the perfect segue question by the way, because that was right where my mind went. So since we've been talking about education versus connection, I actually think the role of AI is quite different depending on if your community is education-centric or connection-centric. Again, it can have elements of both, but my greatest advice, especially to people starting out, is pick one bucket to start in, because keep it simple, sweetheart. OK, so.
How I see AI playing out in each of them. In education, that's where AI's primary role is going to be to help people find the information that they need faster. People are usually coming in, unless you are like, so often, again, you're guiding them through this journey. It's like laid out in a linear fashion, but really quickly as your community starts to grow, you start to realize you have people coming into your community at different points in that journey.
even if it's like really simple and like really niche, like that's, that's like a natural expansion as your community starts to grow. So leveraging AI to help people identify like where they're coming in at that journey and even delivering like an a la carte plate of these are the, this is the like material, these, these are your gaps. These are your strengths. These are your weaknesses. So this is like your customized curriculum is going to be huge.
Also, just helping people, like more robust search mechanisms in a community. Communities are quickly becoming these like massive hubs of like a knowledge basis where you have like questions and answers being shared all over the place. being able to synthesize that information so that people don't have to like read all the way down to the 20th comment, number one, and then more quickly being able to like find the answer to the question without.
Kyle James (23:06.51)
Hmm.
Bri Leever (23:11.827)
like Slack communities have this issue a lot, especially if they're not like paying for Slack, their history like disappears after 90 days and the same questions get asked and then the same answers get, we want to avoid that in community. Like we want to like build on the like legacy of knowledge that has gone before us. That's like one of the strengths of community. And I think AI has an important role to play in that. So that's the education side. On the connection side, I actually think it's,
Kyle James (23:22.402)
Mm-hmm.
Bri Leever (23:41.681)
it really, it's very different. And one of the biggest ways that I see AI playing a role is in helping us identify like interesting members who should meet. So the best communities that I've been in have had the most manual processes when someone joins. It's like through your application, they, know on the backend, they're like tagging your profile with like all of the information. They're kind of like putting you into like,
any number of different categories. So it's like, okay, you're kind of like in this pool, like subset pool. And you're also in this one and this one. When you introduce yourself, this was from one community in particular, I'm thinking of called the upside. And it's a like world-class community for corporate consultants. And in their onboarding structure, when you introduce yourself, they tell you like, Hey, within 48 hours of posting your intro, which is like pretty in depth, like they get, they ask you to like get to know you.
we will comment and tag like three to ten people who would be interesting for you to meet. And those connections, because this community was like full of like high power individuals, like that comment alone being able to like zero in on like these are the five most like impactful connections you can make in this community, which I know for a fact was like all manual on their back end. I was like, man, this would be this.
Kyle James (25:05.196)
Haha
Bri Leever (25:08.007)
This is where like AI could take some serious workload off of community manager's plates or like, and again, right now it's very manual, but in my community, I'll have somebody ask a question and I'm like, yeah, my members can hear from me with like the right answer, but I'd much rather have like AI look at all the conversations that have happened in the community and say, Latoya, that was like a really good question. Kate mentioned something about this in her show and tell last week.
Kyle James (25:37.518)
you
Bri Leever (25:37.855)
Kate, do you mind chiming in here? Like prompting your members to be the ones with the answers. And right now it's just limited to like what you can remember. And I just think that's a huge opportunity for AI. I don't know how that's gonna work. I don't know who's gonna build it, but like I'm here to sign up for it when it's here.
Kyle James (25:46.606)
you
Kyle James (25:53.702)
I'm here. I'm ready. I'm your first customer when it comes to it. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, I think that's really cool. Cause there's so much, there's so much, like it goes back to like the data part of it. Like there's so much on the backend that you can connect, but it's like when you have one or five or 10 people who are trying to like, you know, like almost like male people way back in the day, like grabbing this mail and put it over here then grabbing that and putting it over there. Like it's, doesn't, it takes, it's a lot of time, right? But like, if you get back to like where AI can kind of facilitate that a little bit.
Then because especially I imagine like within a community when someone comes in the community, that first month is so crucial because they are like, if they can get the most amount of value that first month and that'll extend over into like two, three, four, six, 12 months. But that first month, if it's not like a big value add now they're like, but they get like, Hey, here's a connection request. Here's three to 10 people you should connect with that in itself is like, wow, okay. This was totally worth the investment of my time or my money going into it. You know what mean?
Bri Leever (26:51.615)
100%. Yep.
Kyle James (26:52.824)
So, and as we start wrapping up the conversation, Bri, and it's been great having you. Like, I feel like I've learned so much, like on the community side of things, like where can people go to like, that you'd recommend to learn a little bit more about you and then learn a little bit more about InverConsulting.
Bri Leever (27:06.855)
Yeah. Yep. Well, my top recommendation is to check out the Dear Bree podcast. It's an advice column for community conundrums, fiascos, and drama. So I like to say it's good community strategy, deep fried, and great storytelling. It's wildly entertaining because the messiest stuff happens in communities. And we get some juicy community strategy out of it too. So check out Dear Bree.
Kyle James (27:27.83)
haha
Bri Leever (27:33.927)
Especially with regards to this like free versus paid model. have the latest episode. We're just about to wrap season two, but there's some bangers in there. So definitely take a look. Emberconsulting.co is our website. also the only social space that you'll find me on is LinkedIn. So I'm always shooting off my hot takes on there. And then we have a newsletter, which is where we kind of, we, I share like my
kind of like deepest insights for if you want like a deeper dive.
Kyle James (28:06.638)
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that, Bri. It's great having you on the show today. So much fun. know, hear your perspective on the AI, even on the community sector. And thanks again for everybody who's listening in. And remember, if you're looking to implement AI today into your business, please don't try and do it yourself. The time and stress that AI could cause, it just may not be worth it. Schedule a call with GPT trainer and let them build out and manage your AI for you. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com. Signing off for now, Bri. Thank you so much. You're awesome.
Bri Leever (28:35.561)
Yeah, thanks, Kyle. Appreciate it.
Kyle James (28:37.006)
Have a great rest of your day everybody and see looking forward to seeing everyone on the next episode of AI Chronicles.
