Building Successful Paid Communities with Carol Tice

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the founder of Community Growth Academy, and what she does is she helps coaches, experts, and passionate hobbyists launch and grow paid communities. So I’m excited to be talking to Carol Tice.

Hey, Carol, you ready to rock?

Carol Tice: I am ready.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Rock and roll. We always start off here in a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Carol Tice: Well, I am teaching the paid community model now because I built a previous paid community, two 1500 paying members, and, uh, it generated about 6 million in revenue over the decade. I ran it and then I sold it for Life-Changing Money in 2021. Now I’m teaching how I did all that to, uh.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. So this was, when did you start building that community?

Carol Tice: 2011, the Stone Age of [00:01:00] Paid community. Yeah. I say I’m a community dinosaur.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. ’cause uh, that’s pretty common now. Paid communities. I, I see them all the time.

Carol Tice: Well, there are, because there are platforms like skool, which I’m on, um, that make it easy. Back when I did it, it was not easy. It was a hand coding. You know, I paid thousands to webmasters every month to keep it all going, and it was much more technically complex. Now, super easy and cheap. The, the barrier to entry is way down.

Tim Melanson: totally, totally. Well, I mean, I would love to know about the bad note then, because I’m sure there were some things that didn’t go as planned along the way. You share one.

Carol Tice: Um, uh, in that business. Uh, well, the thing I was gonna say is over time my webmaster made more and more and more and people kept telling me she was overcharging me and stuff, and eventually she made a demand that I. That was completely unreasonable and I had to [00:02:00] fire her. And, uh, we had been together a long, long time.

I loved her like a daughter. And yeah, I paid like half as much when I got another webmaster who was better than, than they were so. It was, it was really a heartbreak. It was like losing a child or something. It was, it was like traumatic. I’d had no, I had no turnover on my team. But yeah, it was a, it was like way I, I, there wasn’t enough profit left at the end of the day, you know, at, as we went along.

The demands got higher and higher and because there was so much to do hand building WordPress things and making plugins talk to each other and updating them all the time and, you know, running campaigns, it was all so much. And I think that gave her cover to just kind of keep escalating what she was charging me.

So it was pretty, it was pretty painful,

Tim Melanson: Uh,

Carol Tice: probably to the tune of a hundred grand or so over the life of the [00:03:00] relationship.

Tim Melanson: a hundred grand, like more than what you should have been paying.

Carol Tice: Yeah. In terms of what I could have put in my pocket if I hired better help. So yeah,

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Carol Tice: did that thing where you become friends with your, with your staff, and they say not to do that.

And there’s a reason they say not to do that is that it does blind you to things. And you start to have less and less of a business head about who’s in what role and what, what their income and what you’re paying them. So yeah, I was pain. It was a lot of pain.

Tim Melanson: So I, I’m, I’m, I’m just curious because I’m sure that this probably does happen quite often, and I’m wondering like, what, how did that look like when, when you started to get word that this person was overcharging, did that conversation come up with that person? And, and then how did that person react to that?[00:04:00]

Carol Tice: Um, I felt like what she was doing was essential to the business and it was. Worth it. And I trusted her. I liked what she produced visually. She really was a designer. Um, was her strength as I learned once I got a real webmaster and, uh, they were like, Hey, all this stuff’s about to break, you know, like apparently a lot was not happening actually, even though I was paying a lot.

So, you know, I’m not a technical person. And that leaves you a little open to be exploited because you don’t really know what you don’t know. So now I pay $97 and everything on skool just works all the time and it’s amazing. I’m very happy.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it’s, uh, I, I think you hit something really good with, so the whole thing about, and by the way, I, I am a webmaster, so I guess that’s my main business is, uh, my wife and I work together. She does, [00:05:00] uh, a lot of the graphic design stuff and I do all of the, like, tech stuff, the programming stuff, and I, I’ve, I’ve had this conversation so many times before.

It’s very, very, very, very difficult to find somebody who can do both, right? Like you’re

Carol Tice: It’s like she was, yeah, she was good at the design and kind of, so she brought in someone on her team to do a lot of the tech and stuff, but

Tim Melanson: That makes

Carol Tice: I don’t know. Um. Thankfully it’s five years, six years in the past now. And, um, life has continued and I was able to say I wouldn’t have been able to successfully sell that business if I had not gotten the new webmaster who cleaned up the backend

Tim Melanson: Oh,

Carol Tice: it was,

Tim Melanson: Absolutely.

Carol Tice: a lot of cost on, on my end in the sale process, otherwise.

Tim Melanson: Well, and, and I think that, uh, I think for anybody listening, ’cause there’s two sides to this. There’s the side of her and there’s the side of you. [00:06:00] Right? So the side of her I am, I, I’m just gonna guess is, is that because I, I, I, I’ve seen stuff, stuff like this before. As soon as things get out of your realm of expertise, all of a sudden you think it’s worth more, right.

Carol Tice: Right. It’s worth a lot to me because it would take me all week to do one tiny thing. So yeah, that’s very how that high value to me.

Tim Melanson: But it’s also high value to her because let’s, let’s look at it from her perspective. So if she’s a, uh, a designer and not a, a coder, and all of a sudden she has to do all this code, imagine how much longer it would take her to figure all that stuff out versus someone who actually is a coder. So all that would be charged out to you.

So it’s possible, and I’m not saying that it is. The fact, but it’s possible that she was not purposefully overcharging. She just didn’t know what she was doing, and it was taking her twice or

Carol Tice: That’s [00:07:00] entirely possible. I don’t really know. Uh, we don’t really talk anymore, so I don’t, I don’t know. I just feel like over time I came to be seen as a real cash cow opportunity. Um, I. To, uh, work with someone in a small business setting and not have to do big corporate, but to earn really well and ’cause I paid everyone on my team really well.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Carol Tice: ’cause that was sort of part of my philosophy.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Raw. Wow. So, so I think, uh, like, uh, what people might be able to learn from that is two things on the business side, on your side, you know, if you are starting to jump out into areas that you don’t know, that doesn’t mean you charge more for it, it actually means you charge less for it, right?

Because I’m, I’m sure if

Carol Tice: That’d be

Tim Melanson: charging you pennies for it right then, you wouldn’t have never gotten rid rid of her. She would’ve, she would’ve managed to keep that position for quite a

Carol Tice: Well, and at one point I offered her equity in the business in exchange for a [00:08:00] project I wanted done, and she turned it down for the cash, which I think, uh, played out very badly for her. ’cause I did have a successful exit that, and I paid out everyone on my team. I didn’t have a, um, written. Profit sharing, you know, agreement with them or anything.

But I, I just based on time of service and what they were earning, I handed people money

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Carol Tice: when I quit

20 grand out the, to my team, just I. No obligation, but I was like, yeah, this wasn’t possible without you and, and you need to find another job now, most of them, and you know, I wanna give you some money to cover that, you know, time of hunting around.

So.

Tim Melanson: Good, good. So what did you, what did you end up learning from that experience then? I.

Carol Tice: Um, well, I feel like that experience rolled into the experience of selling it and really seeing how a [00:09:00] buyer of a digital business looks at your business versus how you look at it. So, and there’s a big difference. Um, for me, I feel like we’ve jumped to the end of my story of the, of the story, but, um, you know, this is something that.

Not many online business owners achieve, especially coaches. Coaches tend to be the business. They’re selling hours. Or small groups and they can’t, if they go on vacation, that’s a week, they don’t get paid. There is no exit, there is no retirement plan. Uh, where they get an exit with a lump of money that sets them up for not having to work.

And that kind of breaks my heart and is, was a big motivator in me starting Community Growth Academy. So what happened in the e, in the exit was that of course. The buyer’s first questions is like, why are all of these people getting paid? All of what is, what do they do? [00:10:00] You know, and who can I cut? What can I cut out?

And this business began it. It served freelance writers, which I was one of, and still am. In my free time, I ghost write books. And I came out of, you know, journalism and writing, and had ramped my freelancing business to six figures. During the 8 0 8 0 9 downturn and, ’cause I was at like 50, 60 and I was like, well I wanna go to a hundred.

And the fact that the economy is crashing and burning doesn’t is a macroeconomic thing that doesn’t matter to me. I’m just one tiny me. You know that I, these things, it’s like when your body surfing, I can just let that wave kind of go over me and Z enter and keep, keep swimming and, um. I gradually became aware that many other writers did not have the, the same attitude I did, that they were starving.

They were writing [00:11:00] for content mills for $5 an article, and I was very upset by that. And I basically wanted writers to stop getting ripped off and avoid scams, which there are a lot of scams to target writers. And I started a blog originally to kind of. Get out, share what I, I knew I wanted to write a book about freelancing and I thought, uh, that would sell a million copies and I’d be rich.

’cause I didn’t know anything about online business or book sales. Um, but eventually I joined a community for bloggers. To learn how to be a better blogger. ’cause I was running a blog and trying to monetize my blog and that’s where I discovered paid community. And I went, this is amazing. I love it. I’m learning so much.

This is a fantastic format and there’s nothing like this for freelance writers. And there should be. And that was sort of the beginning of the journey to starting that community. And so it was really. [00:12:00] Half business, half Hobby, gone mad, I wanna say, um, half Passion Project to, you know, I thought of myself as like a crusader against writer scams and for Fair Writer pay.

And I really wanted to elevate the whole industry. I had these lefty calls, I wanted to influence a lot of people. And that format of, it’s 25 bucks a month, no obligation leave any time allows you to do that. As opposed to selling high ticket coaching and coaching 12 people a year, that’s making no impact on the industry.

So that’s, you know, so I had a lot of that. It’s kind of a, a crusade and also a business. And when a business buyer comes along, it’s only a business, you know, they’re just like, what’s the dollars and cents here? So yeah, they were like, all of these people are too expensive. Some of them are not needed. Um, one of them actually ended up continuing on and the first thing they did was of course raise the membership rate to 40, [00:13:00] which I was always hesitant to do because to me it was against mission, which my mission was to impact as many people as possible.

So you raise the price, fewer people can afford it, and I just never wanted to do So. There were decisions I was making that were not strictly business decisions, that were more about. You know, I was ma to me, I was making enough money. You know, I had a five bedroom house on like Washington and Seattle and, you know, we went on vacations and uh, I felt like I.

I was making enough and I wanted to pay my team well and have a great lifestyle. And, you know, business people are just like, how many dollars can this throw off for me? Um, so they look at it differently. We had a job board. They got rid of it. It needed a manager to get the listings together, so they just killed it.

I thought it was really important. You know, they, they look at it differently than you do.

Tim Melanson: They do. They do.

Carol Tice: And I had some coaching [00:14:00] programs going on in there and I actually hired a business consultant, did 10 grand of business consulting ’cause we were stuck at a thousand members and I wanted to grow to 1500. I’d figured out that was where the math was gonna make sense to sell it, that I needed to grow another 50%.

And she was like, get rid of the, stop selling the coaching program. Stop selling all these other side projects. You have all roads lead to den membership because that’s the cash cow they’re buying. You know, and she was totally right. That’s, I just shut down all my other offers and all roads were join the Dent and you know, that is what worked to get us to 1500.

Tim Melanson: I like to think that, um. There’s sort of somewhere in between those two things, right? Because I mean, would the community have grown to where it was, had you, you know, not paid your team as much or had you not had this crusade, right? I mean, all these things all [00:15:00] led to the point where, you know, you probably worked tireless hours because you had a a big why.

Right, and you paid your people really well, so there was less turnover, so you were worried less about that stuff and they were probably harder working for you. But then once you get that community to a certain point, then I think you had probably, I mean, you obviously had the right idea that you started to transition into, okay, what do I need to do differently to sell it?

Right.

Carol Tice: Yeah, that’s why I built a course called Built to Sell that I have in Community Growth Academy. ’cause you could just, you could set it up better from the start than I did. And also it’s about you not being the branding or the name of it or you know, I did have kind of myself a cartoon. Me was like all around the branding and yeah, it all had to be kind of changed over and cleaned up.

So it was the kind of thing anybody could operate and wasn’t about me. But yeah, that was one of the reasons I wanted to sell. Um, I got the advice from a friend of [00:16:00] mine who also sold. A similar business and she was like, well, just take yourself outta the business, replace yourself in all the roles, and just collect whatever the net is, you know, from that.

And I kind of tried it and I couldn’t, I could not stop caring about my 1500 needy children. You know, I, I wanted them all to succeed and I’m, I’m hopefully at a little bit more of a reserve of a business-like attitude with Community Growth Academy.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Wow. Well,

Carol Tice: but I’ve, but I’m going a totally different direction with it because I don’t wanna scale it big.

I’ve decided it’s going to 97 a month and limit a hundred members,

and that’s it.

Tim Melanson: so you’ve raised a price on purpose to make sure that you’re picking the right people. Right.

Carol Tice: Well, and, and because it’s gonna be an ex, a small, exclusive community, it’s sort of a whole different vibe. And I’ve just learned that, you know. Prepping and launching and [00:17:00] running a community is complex. There is a lot to it, and I’d like to just really support my people. I don’t really need another big exit.

I did that. I’m good. Um, I, I could sell this thing, I guess, but I am not thinking along those lines. This is sort of my semi-retirement, uh, project

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

Carol Tice: that, uh, it’s in a way, it’s my give back. Um. To just try and create the kind of great life that paid community gives you for other, for other people,

Tim Melanson: well.

Carol Tice: it’s amazing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And if we circle back to, you know, your original bad note, which was, you know, getting a little, maybe too close to some of the people in your team, uh, having that attitude of like, okay, I’m just gonna build this to sell even though I may never sell it. It. It probably would mitigate that quite a bit.

Now all of a sudden, you’re making choices. If you are gonna make choices to get close to your team or to pay them more, then these are all very conscious choices rather than just, [00:18:00] you know, oh, well they deserve that, so I’m just gonna give it to them, type thing. Right.

Carol Tice: Yeah, I’d say it’s all, it’s all easier to do the second time, you know, around, you know, I, I always, um, I always felt a little bit like, I, I used to feel it was tight walking, tight rope, walking across the Grand Canyon, you know? Um. I was, I’m not a marketer. I had not sold anything online before I started this, and I just kept.

Pushing myself out completely out of my comfort zone. I would do live one hour events that sold a class that would have, you know, I need to make 50 K off of this riding on it, and it would be so intense. And I had, you know. Three young kids at home, two of whom have special deeds and might just start wailing or anything at any time.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Carol Tice: Um, one of them used to come in and, and put [00:19:00] post-it notes in front of me. I was doing these things and I’d be like, I can’t talk to you now. You know, just, um, I don’t know. It was always just a crazy ride, but literally we never, I think we never lost money on anything we launched. Except for one thing that was towards the end, and that was what queued me in the, I we needed to look at this webmaster.

It’s like she made money and I didn’t.

Tim Melanson: yeah,

Carol Tice: That was a, a moment of insight. Yeah. On that.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Wow. Okay. Well let’s talk a little bit about your jam room. ’cause I see a nice view back there. What’s going on with this?

Carol Tice: So I live in a van. Yeah. Um, we sold our house. We bought the van in 2021. In, in 2021 when I sold the business and we did a tryout trip in it. Thought we really liked it. Um. And we were thinking about downsizing the big house when our kids graduated and the last one graduated. And then we looked at each other and said, [00:20:00] where do we wanna recharge to?

And we were like, I don’t know. Hmm. And so then we started to drive around to try and fi figure out a place that checked all our various boxes and we kind of didn’t. And eventually we came to feel that the RV is, this is the downsizing that I want. And then in 24, we kids kept coming back in, they were bouncing back, and then we hit a point where no one was there.

And literally the next morning, like after when moved out, my husband looked at me and was like, we should sell the house now, should we? And I was like, yeah, probably should. And so we did like a year ago. Summer, like a year and a half now or so. And um, yeah, so we’ve been full-time in the RV ever since.

We’re currently at the epicenter of RV existence, quart Site, Arizona, which you can see a little of back there, just, uh, here on Bureau of Land Management, cheapo land, hanging out, doing whatever [00:21:00] we want. We can bike into town and play bingo or go line dancing or.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s awesome, Carol. You know that that’s.

Carol Tice: but we’re, we’re basically, you know, out, uh, we’re, you have to be totally like self-contained here.

You’re not on electricity or anything. We have solar and uh, have starlink. We travel. That’s my motto,

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. That’s my, my goal. I actually, uh, it’s, it’s been in my long-term plan, like, uh, our kids are now, uh, uh, almost, almost out, I’d say in the next four or five years. Like, uh, they’re, they’re outta out of high school, but still not quite out yet. But I think it’s probably gonna be a similar situation to you.

As soon as they’re out, it’d be like, let’s sell now. Like.

Carol Tice: Well, um, I mean, I’m glad we were still there for the few years that we were, that was probably good. Um. We do have special needs ’cause and they’re sort of slower launchers maybe than, you know, they didn’t sail off to Columbia or something. Um, they continue to need our support, but I have [00:22:00] now solved their problems from the RV many times.

And, you know, we did this last winter as well. Uh, we tend to be in Seattle six months of the year and down warmer places. Uh, the other half.

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing.

Carol Tice: So we, you know, and it’s like we could always drive to Phoenix and get on a plane and go be there if we need to. Um, so yeah.

Tim Melanson: So now, you mentioned earlier that, I mean, a lot of this stuff that you’ve been doing has been fairly new. Like you’re, you’re just sort of figuring out as you go, but like you also mentioned that you hired a coach at one point too. Is this something that you’ve always done? Like have you always been hiring help to, to help you with this then?

Carol Tice: Well, I had mentors from pretty early on on the blogging side.

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Carol Tice: I got into blogging in like 2008. Blogging was really kind of just taking off and becoming a major way to create an audience and, you know, then monetize that. And [00:23:00] I always say I was like discovered on a, you know, virtual bar stool, a drafts by uh, one mentor who, uh.

Is still really a big part of my life. Um, John Morrow, he was then the editor, an editor at Copy Blogger, which was one of the biggest copywriting sites and. He then had me write some things for them and just, it sent a ton of traffic to my blog. Uh, he just, he shared a post of mine to his audience and, uh, he’s a super inspiring person who can only move his face due to spinal muscular atrophy and was supposed to die when he was three.

So, what’s your excuse for not having a successful online business, folks? Um, but what it gives him is time to think.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Carol Tice: All he does is think about how to do this better. And um, so he’s always just this foun of, of [00:24:00] information. He knows everything about his metrics. I was never a KPIs person. And you know, he’s like, you have signed up a hundred people on your affiliate link, and that means 20 of them will buy and one will get a refund.

And I’m like, how do you know that? You know, he’s one of those people who just have his system so dialed. Uh, he’s always like, been like that. And that’s how I ended up with Community Growth Academy is really, he called me up because he was doing this new program called the Hands-Off Creator and where they do the marketing and put up your course for you and you know, do things.

And I was like, well, I can’t do anything else because I have a non-compete. You know, I sold my business and all I know is freelance writing. And he was like, and what did you learn in. A decade of running a paid community. And I was like, oh, paid community. I community. I could talk community day. I love it.

Um, you know. You [00:25:00] need mentors because you just, like, you don’t know what’s in front of your face. You don’t know what, you don’t understand. Your gifts, really, we’re all just head down, grinding it out, you know, and, and the years are going by and you’re not realizing what. Knowledge or accumulating. And as soon as he said it, it was like, I, I just was sucked back into the world of community.

Um, because I did miss it. You know, I, I was gainfully employed, I was ghost writing books and doing well with it. Um, but that’s. Only influencing one person’s business. You’re back to the sort of limited impact, um, and the power of being able to influence that. Literally like 14,000 people came through Freelance writers den in the time I owned it, you know?

That’s really so, so gratifying. This past spring we went to Europe and I got to meet like [00:26:00] four of those members in person who live in Paris and Amsterdam and in Portugal. And, and I mean, one of them was literally like, it’s just not a joke that you saved my, you’ve, you’ve changed my life. You know, it’s very, very, you, you become friends with these people and they become your raving fans on social.

They’re constantly sharing yourself, talking about your ex. Expertise to people. Um, I love this model, so I’m excited to be back, uh, in it and, and teaching it.

Tim Melanson: Well, okay. Well let’s just roll right into that then. So tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Carol Tice: Well seeing people launch, we actually had an early member who was a longtime financial advisor. He’s like 80 now, literally, and had never sold anything online. It was very word of mouth investment manager, and he was in a couple of free Facebook groups talking about investing. Had a book of past clients and he just told them he got in the community.

At first I [00:27:00] told him, you should, you should set up a community. I met him ’cause I ghost wrote his book. So he had a great calling card for setting up a community and I was like, you should totally do this. I think it would be a great way for you to operate. ’cause he sells various things and he could just stick them all in the community and just say, join the community.

Um. He was, at first he was like, uh, no, I don’t really learn anything new. And he ended up hiring a marketer to do his whole launch. He ended up seeing that he was having to spend a lot of time on the Facebook group saying, buy my investment universes of the months, you know, buy my consulting, blah, blah, blah.

And now he doesn’t have to. Now he, he has a 150 KA year income, 600 paying members. It, it really ramped in like just a few months. So that’s what I’m here for is if you are, if you’re a coach or an expert, you have an audience from what you’ve been doing and [00:28:00] you’re tired of one-on-one consulting, selling hours, or you can’t find clients and you’re wondering how to market, your marketing isn’t working.

Um, I actually just did a strategy that I said I’d never do. Um, I opened up a free level. So you can now join Community Growth Academy for free and get started. You can talk in the forums and you can do the first two modules of finding your best opportunity and doing the competitive research to kind of see how to position yourself to be something different in the marketplace.

And, um. It’s just, it, it’s like 25 people joined in the few days that I’ve added at a free level and some of them have already upgraded. So just I, I thought I’d never go there. But there are very high earning people on school with free community pools and they just upsell them. And I [00:29:00] was always a hater of free.

I was taught don’t make your book free. Don’t make your bait piece free. Don’t you know. Don’t sell for free on a, a free book on Amazon, because those people are looky losing and they’re never gonna buy from you. You haven’t made them open their wallet. You know, this is a, a conventional wisdom that’s been around for a long time and in the den.

In my first community, we sold one day, free passes, one week free passes, one month free passes, one year free passes, and tracked them all and they all converted zero. But something has changed in the world of community where this is really working and it’s particularly working as a way to get an audience when you don’t have one.

So it quickly. Because it’s free. There’s no barrier to entry. You know, they get in and they get a chance to meet you and get to know you very intimately. You’re in there every day talking and. They come to trust [00:30:00] you. So I think the reason free is, is on the rise as a viable thing, is because of the trust crisis that you may know we are currently in.

We all know that like half of what’s online is lies. It’s an ai, it’s not even a real person. They’re secretly in the Philippines. You know, you don’t know what’s going on. And it’s a big problem that a lot of us are struggling to overcome. You know, so I think the, the free, you’re in the club, uh, and you get some love and you just get a chance to see what’s going on.

You see the successes firsthand. I already had a couple of people upgrade to paid. So that’s, I guess that’s what I’m excited about is I, I just thought this might be a complete waste of my time and a lot of, you know, people asking questions that aren’t ever gonna buy from me, but that doesn’t seem to be the way it’s working.

So, know, you have to keep [00:31:00] an open mind because things evolve.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, I, I’ve seen that change even just in my interviews with, with, uh, with people because, uh, it, it’s, it has been over the last, I’d say probably year and a half to two years. Ironically, since chat PT was launched that, uh, coincidentally maybe, I guess, uh, that a lot of people, uh, will talk about how number one, that’s how they’re getting clients is by some sort of free community that allows people to get to know them a little bit because that know, like, and trust is very important.

And then on the other end of the spectrum as well, when I ask people about, well, how do you find good talent? And it’s very similarly the same thing. They’ll say, well, I’ll, I’ll look them up, I’ll go join their free community, find out a little bit more about them, and then end up hiring them. So it’s, it’s going on both sides now.

And I, I think that makes sense because people really, like you, say, there [00:32:00] is a trust issue. There’s just so much fake stuff out there that you have to see if this is real. And I mean, so anybody can now, I mean, uh, imagine even now with ai, uh, you know, videos and all this stuff that you could. Literally create a fake video of you flying around the world, right?

And with all these riches and whatever, and, and make it seem like you’re rich.

Carol Tice: in a free community I’m in that I’m kind of spying on, it’s a very large free community that they just upsell into it. Um. They just had a joint venture, you know, training that was like, make an AI of yourself, make it, make a bunch of ads and you don’t have to do anything. And they played some of them and I was just like so revolted.

And I’m, and I’m like, is no one in this 800,000 woman audience thinking, um, AI. Engages [00:33:00] in theft of inter of intellectual property are thinking that, um, because it does and thinking about the incredible energy use, uh, it is consuming and what that’s doing to the planet. Am I the only one disturbed by this?

And because everyone else would seem to be like, what? And, and I thought it, I don’t know. It’s, it’s not for me. Let me say that I’m gonna not be creating an AI video, me to go make videos and oh my God, I don’t know. I, I guess, I think that there are niches maybe where that will work for physical products where you’re showing the physical product and you just put it in an AI wrapper, maybe who cares?

But when you’re selling your knowledge, your expertise. To someone. I, I don’t think so. You know, I don’t think that’s [00:34:00] a way to go, but, you know, I’m a person who paid all Americans and I, I am just not the Tim Ferriss outsource it all to people who work for $5 and then you’re rich.

Tim Melanson: Well.

Carol Tice: you can be rich and still create living wage jobs.

I’m here, I’m living proof and you should do it.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yep. I,

Carol Tice: don’t think in, yeah, don’t think in terms of, oh, how can I rip everyone else off in my work ecosystem? Think what do I need to charge to run this like an ethical business? And that was really important to me. You know, I had been a business reporter, I talked to a lot of CEOs, seeing a lot of businesses run well and badly.

And I, how I operated was important to me and still is.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and I, I think, uh, so there, there are a lot of people that have been on the show that hire people from, you know, Philippines and all that stuff as well. And now the, the [00:35:00] benefit there is that you can pay them much less and it’s still a very comfortable living wage for them. Right? So you’re still paying a, a living wage by doing that.

Carol Tice: I get it,

But

Tim Melanson: like, uh, I, I think it’s one of those, yeah, it’s one of those values things. I mean, if you want to, you know, give back to your community, then why not hire somebody in your community for that living wage? You know, really what it comes down to is, is whether you can set your business up.

To give that money internally or, or externally. I, I know that I’ve been in kind of in a situation where I wanted to hire, but I don’t really want to hire anybody in the Philippines or in India or anything like that. And so what?

Carol Tice: when they don’t do the gig and you’ve sent them a check, you, there’s no recourse

on that. You know? Um, you’re out the bunny and there’s so much, so many stories of flaky situations like that all over the world of Upwork, you know, [00:36:00] uh, heard this guy. I mean, like, never did it or what they turned.

Ghastly bad. You know, you have to go through, kiss a lot of frogs if you wanna pay little to get to someone who’s maybe good and pays little. I didn’t wanna go through that. Yeah. I wanted to hire my people. I had like zero turn turnover

Tim Melanson: yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, and I, I think that that’s, uh, like I’m.

Carol Tice: and I could, I could rely on them to do things, you know.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I think that when you’re starting to deal with out of the, out of the country, then I, I think probably gets a little bit more com well, probably a lot more complicated. Did any do any type of lawsuit? If anything? If something happens, right. And you know.

Carol Tice: Forget it. Yeah. You have no, it’s not happening.

Tim Melanson: Also, depending on your AR area of work, I mean, now actually there’s potentially some privacy issues as well with things going over overseas.

I mean, there’s, there’s lots of, but now on the AI front though, uh, the AI front is one of those things where if. If that’s what you’re looking for. If you need to hire [00:37:00] somebody that’s gonna be less than, you know, you just, your business just isn’t a place where you can actually hire another, uh, local person, then there are a lot of things that AI can help with that it will speed up your workflow quite a bit.

Um, but like you say, I, I, I don’t because I, I actually did, uh, I’m a tech person, so I, I embrace AI big time and I’ve been using chat g PT quite a while for quite a while now. And I just started looking into some of those, uh, AI clones and all that stuff and the video stuff, and I, I don’t think it’s quite there yet.

It, it’s

Carol Tice: For sure not.

Tim Melanson: Still too noticeable. Um, but I can see where it’s going and I, I, I do think that unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how we wanna look at it, that is where the world’s going. We’re not gonna be able to stop that now.

Carol Tice: as a, as a creator of a lot of ip, more than a dozen books of my own, more than a dozen ghostwritten books, um, thousands and thousands of articles. Um. [00:38:00] You know, we need to get out of the Napster phase where I AI’s just ripping everybody off and into the phase where creators are compensated for this before.

I’m going to get real excited about doing something like that. Um, but yeah, I guess. This is, these are all decisions about how you run your business and how you wanna show up. You know, if you wanna use chat GPT to help outline your article or your book you’re writing, you know, that’s behind the scenes and doesn’t hit your credibility, I think.

I think you need to really watch out when it’s things that hit your credibility and your authenticity and showing up in the world, you know? That to me is, uh, you should probably think pretty hard on that.

Tim Melanson: I also have a feeling, well, I mean, I, I, I can typically tell what is written by AI versus what is written by a person. And, uh, I [00:39:00] think that, um, and, and like you say there, there are plenty of things that AI is. Better for you probably should use it for, you know, creating, you know, maybe some summaries things based on an original work.

I mean, it’s gonna just do it so much faster than you’re gonna be, be able to do it, but

Carol Tice: Well, I mean, we’re, we’re all, we’re all interacting with it. Chat bots are asking you questions and we’re, and answering questions for you. It’s like there’s probably no. No person with the internet who is not interacting with it, whether they like it or not,

but I think you have to think about it as it gets closer to your brand identity.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and I think the more people that use it responsibly and also, uh, because I, I. What I fear is that people are going to sort of reject and then if the more people that reject it that have good morals, right, then the less likely it’s going to actually change. It’ll probably just go down that [00:40:00] direction.

But if a lot of good people start using it and start noticing, I mean, one of the things that we’ve noticed is that when chat PD was launched originally it was like this beta thing. It was just, let’s just throw it on the public and see what happens and like they’ll give us feedback. And so the more good people that are using it, the more good feedback they’ll get the, probably the better direction that it’ll go in.

That’s my fingers crossed, so we’ll, we’ll see how that goes, but uh,

Carol Tice: know. We shall see. But yeah, for now, I mean community is sort of the antithesis of using AI though though I gather you can train, you can train an AI to leave your comments in the community and I was just like, that is the last thing I’m doing. You know, just this is, to me, community is about authentic human connection across.

Geography. Uh, bringing people together have a common interest, a common desire need a common [00:41:00] transformation in their lives. And the magic of bringing them together and letting them become friends with each other and help each other from all over the world, and having a robot inserting a robot of answers into that or something, just, I don’t know,

it’s not for me.

Tim Melanson: sit well.

Carol Tice: Let’s just say

Tim Melanson: So, Carol,

Carol Tice: for other people who don’t care as much about the experience they’re giving people in their community, but it’s not for me.

Tim Melanson: yeah. So how do we find out more about you and your community?

Carol Tice: I’m at Community Growth Academy on school, and I usually give, it’s like school. I have to look up to, like the best link for this is to go to, uh. school.com, and that’s spelled S-K-O-O-L. For anyone who doesn’t know school.com/community growth dash academy slash about. That is where the page where you will see testimonials and see [00:42:00] my, me and my video about what’s going on in the community and test and all kinds of things.

Um. See me on other podcasts and talking about community and why it matters. And um, there’s a free case study you can grab on there. There’s a link in the community box that says free case study. And that is the end way too much depth story of, um, exactly how I built and sold freelance writer stand. So if you’d like the full blood blood blow on that, you can grab that.

Tim Melanson: Love that. Right on. Well that’s excellent. So this is gonna be probably, might be the hardest question of the day. Carol, who’s your favorite rock star?

Carol Tice: Ooh,

Tim Melanson: I.

Carol Tice: only one.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, no. You can mention a couple.

Carol Tice: I don’t know, um, bono, um.

I’m listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin lately. They’ve aged really well. You know, [00:43:00] I don’t feel, remember that I was that into them when I was back on my Diandra lawn with my yellow tuta loop radio getting suntan growing up in the San Fernando Valley of LA listening to 93 KHJ. Uh, but, but like over time they, uh.

I don’t know. They’ve worn really well, they’ve worn really well. Uh, the, you know, Roger Alt tree, uh, I’d say

Tim Melanson: right on.

Carol Tice: just to name a couple

Tim Melanson: You are into the classic rock. Of course they don’t make music like they used to.

Carol Tice: They do not, but they make it the way they make it now. And just think 20 years from now, those people who, who are listening to that will be listening to that on the oldie station.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s

Carol Tice: And that’ll be the old rock. And we’ll be dinosaurs.

Tim Melanson: Well, do you know what’s interesting? So I, I, um, I know I don’t have a whole lot of time, but I host, uh, jam Nights regularly and I’ve been bringing in younger bands to, to come play [00:44:00] and it is great. They are playing the classic rock. They’re playing the Led Zeppelin, and it’s so cool to see, you know, the 20 somethings and even the, even the, the high school kids playing Led Zeppelin.

That’s so

Carol Tice: They all, they all know the classic rock from Guitar Hero and cartoon, uh, at the end of animated cartoons. know, like the Shrek cartoons use a lot of classic rock. Um, so it’s like it all gets rediscovered that that’s how my kids know a lot of it, or from us inflicting it on them.

Tim Melanson: It’s probably us.

Carol Tice: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Carol, for rocking out with me today. This has been a lot of fun. Awesome. To the listeners, make sure you, you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.