From 0 to 175 clients (and the lessons I learnt)

Find Your Superpower newsletter 089

Read time: 5 minutes

Topics covered: Community building, customer service, coaching

It has been an eventful four weeks.

On 31 December 2024, I had exactly zero clients.

On 31 January 2025, I had exactly 175 clients in my Mastermind.

For the first month of this year, I was building my plane as I flew it. 

Today, I want to share five lessons I have learnt from running a Mastermind of 175 members for exactly one month, to help other community builders (yes, that is a thing!) grow their own communities everywhere.

1/ Surprise and delight your community early on

I’ve run a strategic communications agency for seven years and I am familiar with B2B client management: the key to long-term client loyalty is to surprise and delight them early on.

I applied my learnings to the Mastermind, by delivering my cadets more than what I initially promised them in my marketing collateral.

A quantitative example: I promised 2-3 live sessions a month, ranging from live workshops to clinics and fireside chats. We are now hovering at 4-5, besides all of the vibrant activities and chats that take place in our members-only community forum.

A qualitative example is the surprise announcement that our Mastermind would include a bi-monthly book club, where all of us read a book I’ve selected and share our learnings and applications. As a book publisher and avid book reader, it felt natural to include a book club in the Mastermind.

PS: there are even more surprises lined up!

2/ Grow by word-of-mouth over paid advertising

I know how to run paid advertising on social media but I have decided not to go down that route if I can help it. I cannot definitely confirm I will never use paid advertising, but for now, my instincts tell me that my community would be a stronger one if our new cadets come from my tribe (AKA long-time readers of my newsletter and posts).

To ensure we stay organic for as long as possible, I have asked for testimonials from my cadets and incredibly, I have already received a bunch of testimonials, some private and some public. More to come, hopefully?

A strong early smoke signal is that 50% of our new cadets from the January intake were referrals from current Mastermind cadets. This signal is particularly important to me because nobody will refer their mates if they aren’t having a good time themselves.

Word-of-mouth is probably the most important aspect to the long-term viability of a community business. 

3/ Involve the entire community in the programming 

I knew early on that I wanted to create a monthly Members’ Forum led by my Mastermind cadets themselves.

Our first Members’ Forum on the Enneagram, led by our amazing Mastermind cadet Kristin Loo and moderated by our community director Samantha Yeap, went splendidly and has inspired us to run even more of them.

I am planning even more community activities, and while this is a 100% virtual Mastermind with members based in cities such as Singapore, Bali, Bangkok, Beijing, Chicago, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Luxembourg, Manila, Melbourne, Perth, Suva, Sydney and Zurich, I will also be planning in-person meetups across the year, including our Find Your Superpower annual summit. In January alone, we had two in-person meetups in Singapore.

We receive real-time feedback very regularly and my team conducts a post-mortem after every live session. I have learnt a lot from January, and I am committed to making every month better than the last one.

4/ Keep your nose out for unique and well-loved speakers 

In January we had some really top-notch coaches and speakers, including brand name expert Alexandra Watkins and Banyan Tree Chairman Kwon Ping (KP) Ho. Many Mastermind cadets reached out to me later saying they benefitted from the brand name clinic and fireside chat, respectively, and shared how much they appreciated the quality of our programming.

Our pipeline of coaches, speakers and workshops is growing by the day, with veteran diplomat and best-selling author Professor Kishore Mahbubani joining us this February to share with us his never-before-heard secrets to writing a memoir at 76.

I can also confirm that my friends Alex Dwek (COO of NAS Company), Professor Jeff Karp (Harvard Medical School), Anna Ong (Founder of What’s Your Story Slam), Crystal Lim-Lange (CEO of Deep Human), and Chris Do (Founder of The Futur) will be running workshops and training us in the Mastermind. 

I thank all of my speakers for showing up for me.

5/ Create a safe space for learning... there are no stupid questions!

Here is a sample of the 100s of super diverse questions we entertained in the Mastermind over the past month:

- Do I need a brand name and slogan?

- How do I get a domain name that is already taken?

- How can the Enneagram help me at work?

- How do I start a business in a crowded and competitive niche?

- How should I prepare my kids for the future of work?

- How do I get out of my LinkedIn "1-10 likes" jail?

- Should I accept this pro-bono keynote speech request?

... and many more!

I am excited to enter the second month of the Mastermind.

Boy am I glad that I switched from a six-week bootcamp model to a 12-month subscription model. 

Not only am I working with my awesome clients for a longer period of time (52 weeks!), which will allow me to track their progress over a year instead of six weeks, in this model I get to learn as well.

By bringing world-class experts into the Mastermind as guest speakers and coaches, I get to be a student again and nothing brings me greater joy.

PS: If you are interested in joining my 175 cadets, our next intake opens on Valentine’s Day (14 February).

Imagine a simple subscription that gives you access to world-class experts and mentors who will guide you on how to build a brand, speak & write better, and make money from it.

Imagine a simple subscription that unlocks an exciting lineup of workshops, clinics, book clubs, members’ forums and fireside chats with expert coaches and speakers, accessible virtually from anywhere in the world. 

That’s exactly what you will find inside the Brand Builder Mastermind.

Are you ready to build your brand in 2025? 

I know I am! 🚀