You build a community in the AI era by investing in people while most companies chase automation. I call it going All In on Community in the AI Era. Start now, lead from the front, hold a consistent rhythm of live conversations, and give your people a place to connect with each other.
- AI will automate more of business, and people will crave connection.
- Community takes time, depth and reps, so the advantage goes to whoever starts now.
- A community has a heartbeat. The leader and a consistent cadence keep it beating.
- Use AI as a tool and keep people at the center of what you build.
What does it mean to go all in on community in the AI era?
Going all in on community in the AI era is my decision to invest in people while most companies chase automation. AI stays a tool that supports the humans who create.
AI is going to automate and outsource so much of business and life over the next decade. Connection gets outsourced along with it, slowly and invisibly. We felt what follows during the pandemic. People start craving connection.
AI has no soul. It can talk back to you. A friend tells you a funny story about what just happened at the gym, and you feel that relatable energy. I love talking with people, helping people and having fun with people, so building relationships is where I chose to invest.
The most valuable thing you can build in the AI era is real connection.
Why is community an advantage in the AI era?
Most businesses rarely play the long game. Automation looks like the easy win, so they will outsource connection and realize it when it is too late. They say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the next best time is right now. Community works the same way. It takes time, depth and reps.
When my business partner Colin Scotland and I started a community called Unlimited, I asked myself where I was putting my chips. They went in three places.
| Chip | Why it holds |
|---|---|
| AI | It helps you do more with less, faster. |
| Community | Anyone can buy paid ads or create a content farm. Your community is the thing nobody can take from you. |
| Self development | When you are always learning and growing, your mindset and what you learn stay with you. |
As I look at the next 10 years of business, the thing that you can never take from us is our community.
Rob Cressy
What makes a community feel alive?
A community has a heartbeat. Being an all in member of many communities showed me four things that keep it beating.
- A present leader People follow a leader. Whatever the leader shares, the members get excited and row the boat.
- Member connection Bring people on to collaborate during the calls, then give them a space to keep that party going.
- A place of value In a social feed, your posts come up next to trick shots, vacation photos and political content. Give people a focused space.
- Life after the launch One community I joined was built around an eight week cohort. After the cohort ended, that community was dead.
How do you build a community step by step?
- Start with your thinking. Ask how you can build a community around what you sell or what you do. It could bring together your customers or people in your industry.
- Find your unfair advantage. Colin and I asked one question before we began: where do we have an unfair advantage? Our answer was AI and self development.
- Serve people in transition. I learned this from Gina Bianchini, the CEO of the platform we used at the time. With AI, everybody is in a state of transition.
- Create around what excites you. Ask what you are excited to share and create around. Your members take their energy from yours.
- Set a consistent cadence. The real heartbeat of our community was two live calls a week, 45 minutes each. People could feel me, hear me and do the work with other people.
- Build in chunks. Everybody starts at zero, myself included. Everything in business is a constant iteration, and community is the same.
Community is something people feel, and they feel it when you stay consistent.
How does a great community leader show up?
My favorite example is Jesse Itzler. I ran the Clearwater Half Marathon put on by the All Day Running Company, a community Jesse leads. Afterward about 30 or 40 of us sat in a sauna village on the beach. Jesse finished his race, came in and asked, "Hey, who wants to go jump in the ocean with me?" It was late January. My hand went up right away, along with virtually every other hand.
Jesse is a leader of leaders in his action. He decides he is jumping in, and then he asks who wants to come with him. Lead your community the same way.
How do you use AI when you build a community?
Stay human first and heart first. AI is the most powerful tool in the world, and I still see it the way I see Canva or a social media scheduler. Be great with it and stay detached from it. At the end of the day the thing that matters is people.
In Unlimited we used AI to be more human and to do more of the things we love to do. I thought of the space as a dojo where members got their reps in and shared their prompts. You can see that kind of room in what an AI mastermind for business owners actually looks like.
Do this today
- Ask the question. Write down how you could build a community around what you sell or what you do, and who it would bring together.
- Audit your circle. Look at the people around you and ask if they inspire you to grow and create new experiences.
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Why I’m Going All In on Community in the AI Era
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Read the full transcript
The most valuable thing that you can build in the AI era is real connection. And while most companies are going to be chasing automation, I am investing in people. And what I want to do is plant some seeds of possibility and help you see what I am seeing by sharing why I am going all in on community in the AI era.
And I'm going to break this down in three different ways. Number one, why I'm betting on community in the AI era. Number two, the advantage this can create for you. And then number three, how am I actually designing this? What does this look like?
So let's start with number one here. Why am I betting on community in the AI era? Because AI is going to automate and outsource so much of what's going on in business and in life in the next one, three, five, 10 years, right? Where things are going to start to become a lot easier and more effortless. Like, oh, I'll just go and have the robots do this, right? So we'll be outsourcing connection.
And when you outsource connection, what inevitably is going to happen is we are going to start craving connection similar to what we experienced during the pandemic with COVID, right? Where all of a sudden people are on Zoom more and there's a connection and there's a heartbeat because we're all in our houses there. Well, now this is actually going to happen with AI and it's going to be slow and it's going to be invisible.
And most people in companies, they're not going to realize the little micro inches that are being outsourced there. And as I see this as someone who is a believer in philosophically human first AI, where we're leading with our heart, I know the rest of the world isn't going to do this. They're going to see the easy win, the shiny win of, oh my God, look what I can do. Boom, I'm going to outsource this connection. Like they always say, marketers ruin everything.
So with that, I'm like, all right, I know this is what's about to happen. So I want to be the person who is investing in people. And why? Because remember this, AI has no soul. Yes, we can talk to it and it can talk back to us in voice. And then soon it's going to be in video. And then what's ended up happening is this is going to be, oh, well, AI can do everything. Why do we need people? It can just talk back to us.
Sure. But you know what it can't do? It can't tell you a funny story about the thing that just happened at the gym where I feel this relatable energy, right? Unless all of a sudden you're like, yeah, Rob, but I'm designing this AI friend of mine who goes and lives its own life. And then it comes back to me and tells its story about its bachelor or bachelorette party or the thing that happened at work. It's like, no, we still want to have that connection because we have soul.
And you want to look forward to seeing someone or talking to someone and having that relatability and have that connection. Because here's the next thing. And we're going to move now to why and how this creates an advantage. Because the majority of people in companies, because they don't see this and because they want to outsource all of this stuff, they're not going to be the ones to take advantage of building community until they do realize this and it's too late.
Well, why is it too late? Because they say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the next best time is right now. Building a community in relationships is something that takes time. There's depth. There's reps. You can't just decide one day as a company, we're building a community and we've got a thousand members right now. No, it's something you get to be intentional about building because with community, it's something you feel.
It's something that you want to be a part of. And I love this because I'm part of the best communities in the entire world. And I'm also creating one myself with We Are Unlimited. And this is such an advantage for us because so many people in businesses rarely play the long game, right? What have you done for me today? It's why automation is going to be so sexy for everybody and outsourcing the connection right there.
So knowing that most people in companies are not going to play the long game, you're like, cool. I'm going to make sure that I'm investing right now in building out the infrastructure, the relationships and getting this conversation going. And with this now, you can start to build the relationships and the people around you and have those conversations. Because business 101, everything is a constant iteration and the same is going to be true with community.
But if you do not have that foundation, you are going to be in a challenge. And that is what most businesses are not going to do. So as it relates to you and your business, I'm going to encourage you to think about, all right, how can you build a community around what it is that you sell or what it is that you do? And start with just your thinking, right? This doesn't mean that you need to go and become the next Tony Robbins. But this is a way of thinking of saying, okay, I know that the world is going to outsource connection.
So how can we be more human first in what we're doing? How can we build a community of people, whether it's maybe it's customers or maybe it's people in your industry doing things like you're doing? Because one of the things that I am doing, and we'll get to this, that how am I designing this is I'm a natural relationship builder because I love people. I love talking with people. I love helping people. I love having fun with people. It's just I'm a connection and relationships person and I love that.
So I want to be the person who brings everybody together, right? To where this is like, hey, Rob's got a party over here with We Are Unlimited. Come on over. It's a bunch of people like you and I. We get down. We help each other. We enjoy. We have a good time. All of that, right? So one of the things that we've been doing is now share my screen right here is we are using Mighty Networks to build out our community in We Are Unlimited.
And this is sort of a look at what we've got right here of I very much think of this as a playground or a dojo or going to get a workout in, right? Where you're getting in your reps. So if you want to create AI art, boom, here's an opportunity where you can share what it is that you're doing or as you're building your business. It's like, hey, what are the use cases? What are the things that you're doing? Let's share those prompts. Let's share those things that we are doing there.
And there's a variety of ways to do this where you say, all right, well, I also want to help people on their journeys for what they're doing. So I've got down here, hey, how you can use AI to build an omnipresent brand. We've got down here Built For The Game, our self-development and self-mastery program all around building better habits, routines, and mindsets to help you be the best version of yourself. Hey, you want to launch a podcast? Boom. Here's how you can build an AI-powered podcast.
So the ability to have the infrastructure to bring a community in where they're like, whoa, this is what you've got going on. And this is just on the digital side of things because the real heartbeat of all of this is we're doing twice a week calls in Unlimited, right? Mondays at 11 a.m., Thursdays at 9 a.m. Talking about the world of, hey, how are we using AI to grow our businesses and our lives together, right?
And with this now, we've got a consistent cadence of this week. We just did our 109th call. Each one's 45 minutes. That's right. In the building of this community over the last year, we have done 109 calls on top of the twice a month masterclasses that were offered, right? So we're doing everything that we can to give, give, give to help people in this AI era because I'm not romantic about this.
I do not have a tech background. I do not have an AI background. It just so happens that I use ChatGPT the first week that it was out in November 2022. And within the first minute of using it, I felt like I used the internet for the first time. I was like, holy smokes, Batman. I see where the next decade of business is going to go.
And the reason that this is important is because I have a detachment with AI despite the fact that I'm a leader in this industry at the absolute tip of innovation, right? And it's a unique balance. And a lot of people are going to be challenged with this. Because they're going to be so AI, everything they're going to be doing is with that. For me, I'm like, this is just a tool. It just so happens is the most powerful tool in the world.
But I see it very much like Canva or a social media scheduler. That's what ChatGPT is. It's just going to be the thing that I'm spending the most amount of time in there. And we have the opportunity to both use it to create new possibilities and make the world better. And at the same time, be great with it and detach ourselves to everyone saying, well, listen, at the end of the day, the thing that actually matters is people.
In my family, in my friends, in the people that I help, in the people that I support. And for that reason, that's why I'm all in on community. Because I want to be around other like-minded people like you who are doing awesome things in life together. Yeah, we're going to use AI. Yeah, we're going to grow our businesses. But we're going to do that the right way. Human first. Heart first. It's like, this makes complete sense. And it's super fun. And who doesn't want to be surrounded by their friends?
So that's why I'm all in on community. I would love to hear from you, your thoughts on this. As we look forward in the AI era, where is community? In your life or in your business. And share your candid thoughts with me.
Transcript cleaned up for reading.