How to Build a Thriving Online Community With Just 10 People

Building a thriving online community doesn’t require millions of followers or a massive social media presence. In my video, I break down exactly how you can start a valuable community with just a handful of people and why starting small is actually your biggest advantage.

The reality is that small, engaged communities often deliver more value than chaotic mega-groups with thousands of members.

I walk through the practical steps to launch your first community and explain the power of what I call “interest cross-pollination.”

The Truth About Community Size

One of the biggest misconceptions I address in my video is that you need zillions of fans or followers to create something valuable. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, massive communities often struggle the most with maintaining value because there’s so much chaos happening inside them. Members get lost in the noise, conversations become fragmented, and the sense of connection dilutes as numbers grow.

From looking at the stats on the Skool platform, I’ve found that all you really need is 10 true regulars. These are people who contribute regularly to your group, who show up consistently, and who engage with the content and with each other. That’s the magic number where real community value starts to compound.

My Personal Experience With Small Communities

I share a personal story in my video about one of the most valuable groups I was ever part of: my powerlifting group. We had just 13 guys, and we would all post every single day with our lifting videos, showing what our workout was and what we were struggling with. Other members would jump in with advice like, “Hey, this is what I did to break out the lockout on my bench.”

It was one of the groups I genuinely looked forward to seeing posts from every single day. The value was so high that I would have paid for access if the platform had allowed me to at the time. This experience taught me that you don’t need a lot of people to make something really valuable—you just need the right people who are genuinely engaged.

Where to Start: The Rule of Three

If you’re wondering where to begin, I recommend starting with three people. Three is on the way to 10, and it’s a manageable number to work with as you’re figuring out your community dynamics. If you get three paying members as you’re starting out, that also unlocks the free training that comes along with the top 10 community winners on Skool.

When the top 10 people fly out for the winner’s event, we’re recording the whole day. If you just get three paying members, you’ll have access to that entire day as though you had won it too and were there with us. This is a massive incentive to just get started rather than waiting until you feel “ready” or until you have some arbitrary number of followers.

The Thousand True Fans Concept

In my video, I reference Kevin Kelly’s famous concept from his work on A Thousand True Fans. People think they need millions of followers or need to become the next Mr. Beast or Logan Paul to have a big enough fan base to make money. But Kelly’s insight was that you only need a thousand people who truly care about what you do.

When you compare a thousand people to the 8 billion people on earth, you realize you can be incredibly specific about the things you’re interested in. If you’re a vegan mom powerlifter who loves cats, there are another thousand vegan mom powerlifters who love cats out there. The cool thing is that you can have cross-pollination of different interests that narrow the audience but also make that audience’s affinity with you so much higher.

The Joe Rogan Example: Interest Cross-Pollination

I use Joe Rogan as an example to illustrate this concept. In my video, I map out how Joe Rogan’s interests include aliens, fitness, conspiracy theories, fighting, and comedy. If you were to say you wanted to start a group about aliens, comedy, fighting, conspiracy, and fitness, people would probably tell you you’re absolutely insane. But here’s the thing: there are tons of people in Joe’s audience who only like one of these topics.

If you like two of these topics, you’ll like Joe even more. If you like all of them, you’ll become a hardcore Joe Rogan fan. This is the power of interest intersection. Whatever you are, you probably have multiple interests. You can create communities around the multiple interests that you share, and people who share those interests with you will join and like you even more because of that unique combination.

Mining Your Existing Network

One of the most practical pieces of advice I give in my video is about where to find your first members. You might be wondering where to start, but the answer is simpler than you think: you probably already have friends. You have people who follow you on Facebook or Instagram. Pull out your phone right now and you’ll realize you have 400 or 800 people in your contact list.

Just text them and invite them to your community. If you invite 800 people to your community—if you invite everyone in your contact list—I promise you you’ll get three members. You’ll probably get more than 10 just from doing that one thing. This is not complex marketing strategy; it’s simply leveraging the relationships you’ve already built.

Overcoming the Fear of Starting

Here’s the hard truth I share at the end of my video: if you don’t reach out to your network, realize that it’s not because you don’t know how. It’s because you’re afraid. And you don’t need to be, because all we’re doing is inviting people to a party. There’s no reason to feel intimidated about sharing something you’re building with people who already know and presumably like you.

The barrier isn’t knowledge or strategy—it’s psychological resistance. Once you recognize that fear for what it is, you can push through it and take the simple action of sending those invitations. Most people never start not because they lack the capability, but because they let fear stop them before they even try.

Getting Started on Skool

In my video description, I outline a clear seven-step process to make your first dollar with a community. First, you create your own community using Skool. This immediately gives you access to the exclusive “Skoolers” community where you can learn from others who are building their own groups.

The next steps include introducing yourself in the community section, watching the course and past recordings in the classroom section, and marking your calendar for the weekly calls. You then use everything you’ve learned to design your own community and start earning and scaling. The platform provides all the infrastructure you need—you just need to bring your unique perspective and the courage to invite people in.

The Value of Specificity

What I want you to take away from my video is that specificity is your superpower when building a community. You don’t need to appeal to everyone. In fact, trying to appeal to everyone will make your community bland and forgettable. Instead, lean into your unique combination of interests and experiences. The people who share that specific intersection of interests will find tremendous value in what you create.

Whether you’re into fitness and finance, gardening and gaming, or any other combination of passions, there are people out there looking for exactly what you have to offer. The key is to start small, focus on delivering value to those first few members, and let the community grow organically from there. Remember: all great communities started with just a handful of committed people who showed up consistently and cared about the mission.