How to Build Community That Actually Drives Growth | Ben Guez, Canary #startup

Welcome to What the Fract. We are your fractional team. And today we break down marketing trends, strategies, and tactics in 30 minutes or less so that you can do the fun stuff like be creative. Hi, Tamara. Nicole, what's happening? You know, we talk a lot about building businesses and about launches and we see, you know, we have case studies. And one of the things that is in every conversation other than AI is community building. And I think that every business owner understands how important it is to like build fans, get a community. Like, I think that's why social media is so important in marketing plans, even when a business really doesn't need to be on social media, right? We understand it, but then there's like a disconnect between, you know, content creators and businesses, I think that I get asked, I don't know, every week, how does a content creator actually make money? Or like, why do they exist? Or a business owner who does not want to be a content creator, but feels like they have to be posting their meals on social media in order to grow their community. Right. And community building, like there's a lot of steps that you can read books about it. There's podcasts, right? There's lots of steps that you can take. But I think the number one step that people miss is that like people want humans. They want authentic. They want to feel like you're their best friend and that you are going to your neighbor to get a recommendation on a product or service or a person. Right. And I'm really excited today because our guest today has really kind of figured that piece out. So I think we'll get some good actionable tips as well as he happens to be a personal friend of mine. And I think that it's really funny because as a content creator, like your first thought when you you see him and you see his work is that he has 800000 social media followers across his his channels and that he does all these funny videos about dating and modern, you know, dating life and being French because that's what he is. And he's been but he's been in growth and marketing for 15 years. He started three startups and has successfully exited one of them. He's bootstrapped startups to four million annual revenue in under two years. And he's building an app right now. And what's amazing is I met him through this like group trip in Greece. And if you could ever guess like what community building is, it's this, right? So I think that we underestimate the content creators of the world. And today we're going to see how that works. So I'm going to invite Ben onto the stage here. Yeah. Hi, Ben. Hey. How are you doing? Doing well. So you heard kind of the start to this. i guess my first question for you is like you what community building what is it to you that's like that's the biggest question i know because um i actually never thought like let's build a community first like i was always like just doing things and then i created like a community just by itself but for me like creating a community just having a bunch of people that you share like things and they can relate to what you're sharing so it can be like in business size or it can be like on the personal size but just create kind of a connection with like what you're saying or what you experience for me it's like let's say it's about dating so i i talk about a lot about dating and then like a lot of my followers they relate and we create this community of like what are we doing in this world and dating sucks and that's like creating some connection so So it's really like creating some connection and like find a way to relate to your people, you know? Because so many people think now like thought leadership is the magic word, right? And I know I use that a lot. I love how you just said that it's about relationships, that community is about relationship because a lot of business owners now are growing their quote unquote community through their thought leadership because as soon they want to sell something to them, right? And I think that's a total transformation and mindset to actually build an engaged community. It's a relationship from the start, not just you should be eating hook, line and sinker all the information that I'm feeding you because I'm so brilliant. Right. It's really interesting. So I'm I'm curious how I mean, I have so many questions for you because especially, you know, talking about LinkedIn. But how did you come into doing the community building? And like what were kind of the natural processes that you found worked as you started to get going? I mean, the way I started is like kind of like by mistake, let's say. It was during COVID. I was like just making some video. I was bored. And then I just grow this community of people following me and reacting to my video. And as you said, it was not really like I didn't have the goal of selling them anything. I didn't sell them anything for two years. Now I'm using it a little bit to leverage for my app. So I get user acquisition from my community. It's not like as a selling point. It's just like, hey, guys, I'm doing an app. You should join. So it was just by sharing a lot of my stories and reacting with them. like, as you say, it's like relationship. Like I feel like sometimes like 400,000 friends, that's just, and I see that comment and I see like sometimes we exchange on DM. And like, it's funny for me to like have all these like relationships because I also like learn from them and they made me laugh a lot. So, and then, so yeah, that's kind of like just by mistake, doing like some bunch of video for some TikTok because I was not really comfortable doing on Instagram, like my family and friends there. So I was like, I'm a little bit shy. So I started on TikTok and then I was like, okay, you know, I don't care, let's do everything Instagram as well. And so it was really smooth. It was not, I was not like planning to do it. It was not like a crazy schedule or I have to do this content or like five content a day. I was like, oh, I'm thinking about something. I'm gonna make a video and it just like grow pretty fast. And because of that, with the engagement and the growth, I was able to do like Nicole said, more like community, like face-to-face. We did like this trip in Greece and more things with like my app. So I was like able to get like a lot of views on my app because of this community. But yeah, it was like very organically, you know, it was very like smooth. You know, Tamara, I think that so many people, like they're looking for that silver bullet, Like post five times a day, you know, post three times on this channel, do these types of videos. Here's the hook that you need. And when you start looking at some of the most successful content creators out there, it's the same thing as business, right? When you sell a product or service to anyone, it has to, you have to build some sort of emotional reaction to it, right? Like that person has to sit there and say, this is me and this will help me in this way, right? And it's the same thing with like building community and relationship and content is like, there's not really a rule, like a steady, like, yes, we can like game the algorithms a little bit. But is there really a rule? No, there's people feeling like they connect with you. Ben, I think the question I have, though, is like your connect the content that's connecting with people that you, you know, accidentally became a content creator with is around, you know, that dating content that you were saying, like those funny videos and things like that. But your business is not around dating. So how have you been able to, like, convert that same, you know, audience into the app, into Canary? I mean, so yeah, can I like, so just to give like some information about Canary, like it's an app where you can learn language using music, but you can also practice with people. So even if it's not really about dating, you could meet someone in Canary that's in French, Spanish. So it's kind of close to my niche, but also talk a lot about being French and like the French culture and the different culture when you live in the US. So a lot of people are following me because I'm French. And they are like, oh, do you teach French? I'm like, no, I'm not a teacher. So that's why I thought that, OK, why not making an app where they can also learn French? And I believe that music is the best teacher. So that's why I'm using music to teach language. And so yeah, I'm using, like, there is some connection with my community and my following with Canary. It's not just about dating. That makes sense. But still, I mean, I think it's interesting because most people want to know, like Nicole said, the magic bullet between, okay, I'm creating a community that is interested in this. How do I convert that community into paying users or subscribers or customers? Because your community is one of the most valuable things, right, to a business pipeline. people like you, they want to support you. And if they like you, then hopefully they like the product that you've created, because there's going to be similarities between, you know, why you created the product and what it has to do with, you know, what you're passionate about. And so that relates to that emotional connection that people have with you and then they have with your product. I'm curious what you think. So like yours don't connect and you're still seeing conversion or there is a connection, but it's not like as direct as like, I'm a marketer and I sell marketing products right um how how have you gone about that to create kind of a successful business um launch and scaling so first of all like it's all about the products um if you're doing like a bad product um no one is gonna is gonna purchase or no one is gonna like log in or sign up to your products so even if they love me if i'm doing a bad product i'm not gonna have like users so first of all make a product that people who cares and and um and people that do and i like so that's kind of the four things like okay you have a community you have an audience uh listen to them listen what's like what's they are struggling with for me like for example uh a lot of people they are telling me oh you're french you know i've been like doing duolingo for like two years i'm like okay nice tell me something and they're like uh so i'm like okay this is like an issue they've been doing like 500 strike on dwelling go but they don't they don't they can't talk so i'm like okay maybe music can help like to remember because lyrics so maybe there's something i can do here and they're gonna and they're gonna like it and they're gonna so i did like mvp i get a lot of feedback and i was i was not making any money first it was like free and then i listened to the feedback i improve the product and then i put the like monetization and the for them like to upgrade with like a premium plan but it was not just like hey you guys you follow me you like me you like my joke just buy this course or buy this app i'm not gonna bring you any value like i'm trying really to bring value to the community so if you're doing like any business and you're building a community you're not building a community to sell your product you're building a community to provide value to the community so it's like the mindset to have you know what value can i bring to the community and then they're gonna they're just gonna buy if it's a good value you know i'm sitting here laughing at this because it seems so simple but it is something no but it's something that i think a lot of people like there's a disconnect there right like you know when we're talking to uh even marketers and big corporations and stuff they're like okay there There needs to be the, like, there's a very direct line from we're posting on social media to we're selling this specific product. And it's not that direct, right? It's as simple as do you bring value to the people who you're connected with? And I love the feedback loops that we're talking about here, too. of like listening to your customer because a lot of times um you know i come from software backgrounds and we used to talk about if you launched um and you're completely happy with what you launched you've launched too late because you're not listening to what the customer needs and wants and the feedback that's going to make the product better um and i think that like you know you didn't start the app until years after you started your community so you really did take time to listen to what they want it wasn't all about what you're just passionate about right like you're not you don't have a degree in linguistics right like you know you actually just listened to a need that was in the market and built it can we switch though a little bit over to like what i mean you were an entrepreneur before did you build apps before in your past businesses my first is my first one okay so what is the thing that surprised you that was like because i know as entrepreneurs when you have an entrepreneurial mind and you've been in multiple businesses a lot of times you see a need and you're like i could do this like got it easy what was like the biggest challenge or thing that surprised you about like starting an app that you weren't expecting it's a completely different game like i'm used to so i had like a couple of like agency marketing agency i did like a sas business um and they uh i did like a think tank also like a startup but mobile app is like completely different i thought that i was going to be like you know easy i'm going to use my trick that i learned from all these years especially in marketing but it's um it's a challenge like it's not that easy and um it takes a lot of time it's a lot of fun as well because you get like so much like um there's so many things to do and so like so many little improvements and so much like if you change one thing you can be like i don't know let's say you're onboarding it can have a big impact on your business so the conversion from like um from your sign up or the the upgrades from a little thing on ui ux on mobile is so important that i think more important that your website or web app so i'm very like i'm having a lot of fun but this is it's very challenging and um and also in the just like on user acquisition is also like It's very interesting to see how to get people from different areas. For example, I've never done any app store optimization before. So now it was completely different things to learn. I see it's different. Paid ads is different for mobile apps. It's a lot of different things. But one thing that I really like is because right now it's like all this software with AI and everything is really fast to code. I'm not a coder, but I'm a developer. But because of AI, you can really build fast. And as you said, now feedback is so important. So, for example, one thing I did that I'm very happy was just put a little button on the profile of everyone. to say, hey, give me the feedback on the app. I'm getting a lot of feedback from this in the call to action. And we can build fast because we have like, you know, like PGI and now like Cursor and all these tools. We can just like listen to the feedback and build fast. So I like this part. Yeah. Yeah, that's impressive. Sometimes just asking for the feedback, right, Tamara? Oh, I'm such a feedback. I love it. That's my jam. Because I think so many founders forget about that process. That they build according to what they want and they think that, you know, they've done interviews and so they think that they know the solution. But then when customers are actually interacting with their product, they completely lose sight of that process and how to integrate it into improvements. I think you're right. Like I've been hearing about the AI tools to help that are, you know, like it's coding, taking the feedback, coding at night, fixed by the morning. Like it's pretty wild that these are simple solutions now that you can put in that when I was creating my mobile app didn't exist. You know, we had to learn through a lot of different sources, but a lot of it was because it was very hard to get feedback on our app with our users. A lot of it was just you would have to look at the data and just be like and really, really concentrate on your funnels and be like, where's the data showing me the hard, you know, the areas that are creating blockers. And now the game has completely changed. So. Yeah, it's a game changer. But on the feedback part though, it's like you have also to be careful because I love getting feedback and also listen to my user feedback. But sometimes like people have like different opinions. So you also have like to have like your own, like kind of like roadmap and the vision of the app. So you're not listening to everyone trying to do like one thousand things and sometimes like feedback just doesn't make like some user like one user told me like why i will use canary as like to learn a language when can i when i can when i can go on the cruise and meet people that speak different language what do you mean are you gonna pay like a thousand bucks to go on the cruise for one week like it doesn't make any sense so it's not something i'm gonna develop in app a cruise I think but you have to be careful with feedback. I'm curious, so when we were doing, we launched our app in 2020 and adoption, converting someone on a mobile app was really really hard, right? Like you just saw the drop of someone interested, ready to sign up and then they get to that, download the app here and it's like your your rate just completely crashed right yeah has that because how people interface how people use technology now and are very mobile first has that changed do you find it's easier what's your what are you finding works and like what tips would other app founders think about so i was talking about this this morning with a different like a guy that did like an app and also sold it um and he told me that so you back like 10 years ago a lot of people they are done being out because it was like kind of like the trend to have a lot of app on your phone now it's a little bit more like challenging because people they don't want like 500 000 apps it was also telling me that all this app store optimization was really like it was way more easier because there was less competition so he said like don't even focus on on that video just do like paid ads or organic content don't try to do a store optimization because you're not going to compete with guaningo for example when people like for like language yeah but from my from what i see honestly like it's not bad to pay on social ads i uh i was able to get download for like 50 cents and yeah it's pretty good and but worldwide so in the us is a little bit more expensive like one dollar one two bucks and yeah so that's so 50 cents is good yeah no i'm i'm happy with that but on paid ads but also also most of my uh acquisition and uh also like monetization from come from organic because that's how i started with also not just my page but also like really the page just for canary and we got like 180 000 followers like pretty quick because it's a content can that can get viral pretty fast so i get like a good kind of uh cac but um but yeah for me i don't really but it's my first app so i can't tell you like exactly or five years ago you know but for me it's pretty good you know talking about this like it's really interesting because i've seen a shift to in when I developed my app and launched it in 2014, VCs and investors were looking at purely just downloads users, those types of numbers. And then I was working with an e-commerce company that developed an app about, I don't know, five years ago now. And the users and downloads were not as big of a number. And really what the number was, was that stickiness, like how many people are coming back in, how many people are opening it daily, how many people are interacting with it. And the interesting thing about apps is that, and this is any product, but apps specifically that could be fun and can also like drive you crazy is really looking at the full funnel and all of the conversion rates, not just, you know, download to purchase, but they, you know, download the app, then they put something in their car. Do they, you know, check out? Do they come back? How many times do they open it? All of those conversion rates and numbers are levers that you can actually pull and change to change your revenue numbers. And right now, VCs are looking at that stickiness number. And when you have a product that's not a need to have, it's a nice to have product where like every day, you know, they have to make a decision whether they pay for that or, you know, something else. There's small things you can do. So like we talking about Duolingo, which is your biggest competitor, one of their things that they are known for is that little bird coming and telling you a million times that you're going to miss your streak or that you're not going to be able to continue learning. And that's why it's become so addictive is that it's become part of people's daily routines. So are you implementing things into Canary? Is that something you're seeing? How do you build a daily routine around your app? so that's yeah right it's the one main thing that this year are they gonna look at um retention and like your like g7 literally like how many how many people come back after one week and after a month it's very challenging because you want to make sure they're gonna come back and you like you bring them value the the gamification play your dueling go is great that's why they're like so successful and it's very sticky uh I think like uh I always say like doing go I'm not a big fan of the way they teach but the way what they did in term of gamification is like it's amazing um so i have to like use some of those components like let's say this trick or like a little like win or prize or progress that's very important because when you do edtech and e-learning you want to see a progress um but i don't want to be like a copycat of the lingo with all this gamification my my angle is more social so what i'm betting on is it's not just the learning that is going to make you come back is also the angle the social angle because you're going to practice with people all over the world you can meet other people all over the world and you can also learn and like share like music and songs with different people so that's more my angle for retention but still i'm gonna have to put some i already have put some gamification but i'm gonna have to improve on the gamification part i think i personally think you're going down the right path because like we've seen in these interviews like people talking about connection authenticity human in this world of ai and so personally we'll have to see in a few you know in a year or something we'll have to come if you come back and talk and see if that actually works but i think it's down the right path tamra what are you feeling yeah oh most definitely i mean that's a people are longing for human connection that social relationship like yeah everything that you're saying is resonating with me um and what i'm curious about is there's a huge discussion now about bootstrapping your company to growth or taking bc money um what is your i've got my personal stance on this but what are what are you thinking with your company it's actually a question i ask myself like uh daily basis i i mean i like bootstrapping because you don't have to give equity so obviously it's good but i'm also like very impatient kind of person i don't want to wait like five years to really have like a good um a good mr or good revenue so i know that i'm gonna have to invest and uh vc are good for this um but like with vc also sometimes it depends of like it's a marriage sometimes you can have like amazing people to work with and sometimes they're going to be like a pen in the hut and you're not gonna like you're not gonna be happy with working with them and i'm someone that i i can stand if someone like uh be a little bit like bossy with me i will lose my stuff so um so i don't know it's um it's a it's a it's a hard choice but i think that if you can do if you can bootstrap you like it's a huge choice if you have like some cash flow directly or some saving and you can just focus on your app or your business you don't have to like raise money don't raise what you're gonna raise but if like you you're doing like ai play and you know it's gonna cost you a lot and it's gonna be like uh smart to to get some vc and even the connection of vc because sometimes they bring value more than the financial side of it so do do do vc but uh yeah if you can bootstrap strap yeah it's really interesting because a lot of the founders that i talk to these days vcs and pre-seed has really switched to pre-seed is asking for customer traction which precede normally meant idea you know potentially moving towards the mvp but you know you're not going to have customers or revenue happening and And so with this switch, a huge conversation I've been having with founders is, well, why would we ever take money then if we can get to customers? Exactly. Why are we going to work with a VC that's going to take a bunch of our money and then make us broke founders until we are, you know, until five, ten years out when we're burnt out? It's such a fascinating conversation. And I'm curious to see when the pendulum switches to more power being in the founders' hands. Because right now the VCs have so much power because they have the money, right? As founders are pushed to bootstrap until they're financially stable in order to get VC money, I believe the VCs will have less options to invest in. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that I think you're right. I mean, like what I generally see is that you either have an inexperienced founder who's like immediately wants to jump to like, I have a good idea. I need an investor. First off, investors also want to see that you're invested in your idea so that you've done some sort of work to actually make it a thing, because they have to get three times the amount of their investment back for it to be worth it for them to invest in a company because of the fact that for years they were investing in companies that misused funds, didn't need the funds, used them in weird ways, and didn't end up with revenue at the end of it. And that's why you're seeing that swing towards we need revenue, we need some sort of stickiness, we need to show that you are invested in this, your users are invested in this, the product is decent enough, and then you're using it for expansion. So I think that like any product that needs manufacturing, or needs quick expansion dollars, that's where you come in. But what's great about waiting is as a founder is that your company is more valuable when you go for that money, which means you give less. Yeah. And I think people don't understand that a lot so i'm i bootstrapped all of my companies except for one um now i'm going into a company where we are having this conversation right now of like do we bootstrap or do we take on the money and it's a back and forth every single day and like then like you said if we can find an investor who understands the vision who we can work with who can give us a very good deal like we're gonna to take on that money um because it'll help us expand at a quicker rate but we could also figure out ways to bootstrap it and like bring in the customers and then reinvest that money into the company and now with ai agents and other ways to get more work from less people it costs less to run a company yeah yeah yeah i agree are you um obviously or do you have a team uh yeah i have two developers because i don't i'm not a developer and i have one community manager it was like social media and stuff that's super important especially if you're building on relationship going back to the content creation and relationship piece of things um i know i'm kind of switching back and forth they all kind of intersect but um i think that uh where i kind of i'm curious about on that piece because you are at a very unique spot that a lot of people never get to i mean 800 000 followers over all of your social medias is a huge number right you've built it i think everyone is a little confused people who are not in marketing are a little confused on how content creators can actually make money um and how they can you use that you know we always talk about like time is money um and people get that concept but influence is money can you talk a little bit about like the creative ways you've seen i know you know other influencers out there other content creators can you talk about a little bit about the creative ways that content creators kind of monetize the influence they have on a community yeah so you have a different way to monetize one is um like some platform they're gonna pay you per view uh one platform that does that is like youtube but to to get to like monetization in youtube is very challenging you need like 10 million views or like thousands of subscribers so i don't i don't even like i don't have like a big youtube channel so i don't get paid uh facebook also does it recently they just like open like monetization and they were pretty paying well because they want people to come back to facebook no one is on facebook tick tock they were doing it now unless i didn't make any money on tick tock and instagram now they used to do like some bonus but it's not that much so you're not really going to make money on the reviews and like unless you are like you know and not be like rich but um you're gonna make money on paid collaborations so like when they're gonna reach out to you like for example maybe like i don't know i'm good learning when you go you want to do it like a video or like dating so i had like some dating app also that pay me for video uh the range depends of your of your like how many how much followers so for example let's say um i'm uh i'm gonna charge because i have like just instagram let's say 400 000 i would charge like 3k 4k for one video uh someone with 1 million followers can charge like 20 000 for one video so that can be a good payout um brand collab uh platform and then you have like the kind of my play or it's not really like um uh it's to not monetize them but creating a product that can be like some use for them and um and then use it your audience as user acquisition and then there is a value on on and this because your company has like now a lot of user and there's like higher valuation or you or they're gonna upgrade and you're gonna make uh you make some money on this so yeah i think that would be like the the the main kind of things um a lot of content creators they're gonna try to leverage with like, I don't know, a lot of creators now, they're building like product, like physical product, like brands, or like fashion brands, or like alcohol, it's a big thing for content creator and influencer to come up with like a new vodka or new whiskey. So that's, that's, that's kind of like their thing. But yeah, mostly it's gonna be a pet collab. Yeah. It's so funny that you both, Nicole and I, started to laugh about Facebook because it, I actually, I haven't been on Facebook in I think three years. And I had to go the other day because we had to open, we had to get a page for, because you have to get a page for your business, right? So I went to get a page and I was like, I don't even know my blog is. I was like, oh my gosh, it's been that long. So I'm really curious who's leveraging it and what it's um tamra i actually have a few clients who if things don't get posted like we'll think about instagram or we'll think about you know other platforms and they're like we need to be on facebook and as soon as we start posting on facebook i'm telling you their numbers are insane so it really comes back to like knowing who your customer is and where they live um the younger generation not necessarily on facebook but if you have like a middle-aged or older like client base like we forget that those are actual still you know paying clients as well i mean they're there they really are i just remember my facebook ad manager account was hacked so many times and people had this that it was a huge problem and so that's why i was just like no we're done with this because i can't keep fighting i used to fight with metal i i hate me like i used to fight them all the time for for stupid reasons i don't know why they're like disapprove some ads and they're like ban me from facebook so i lost my facebook years and i was like okay i'm over this and i only have facebook because my grandpa was on facebook it's not even my parents it's my grandpa so but now he's on instagram so he doesn't need facebook anymore but recently like a month ago i I opened my Facebook and I see like 2000 bucks. I'm like, what? And I realized they were paying us and pretty well. And also, in one month, I got 40,000 followers. So they're trying to push creators to come back. And they're using the playbook of TikTok. They really push the views, and they pay you. So they won't shoot you back, but I don't know. But also, there's a big worldwide community on Facebook. So maybe it's not as big like it used to be for France or U.S., but there's a lot of countries that still use Facebook as their main platform. That's true. Yeah. So funny story about the I didn't realize that my Instagram was connected to my Facebook. So I started posting things on Instagram. And one day my mom was like, oh, so I saw you went here and you saw this person and you did this. And I was like, how did you see that? And she's like, oh, Facebook. And so when I went in, same thing. I was like, all of a sudden my page has all of these followers and all of these like engagement of people I went to high school with people like all these random people. And believe it or not, my Facebook has a higher engagement than even my Instagram does at this point. Fascinating. Yeah. So yeah. So you're doing these. We're doing we mentioned France in the beginning. So you're doing this trip to France. Can we talk a little bit about these trips that you're doing? I think this is a really interesting. I like when people think through creative ways to, you know, engage their communities. And I think the way you're you're doing these kind of they're not masterminds. You're not selling them like a business thing. You're doing these curated trips. And that's actually how we met in Greece on a random catamaran with 10 people we never met. How intimidating was that to kind of start from your end? I mean, I'm sure your followers think they know you as a person. They probably don't. I was a little shocked to know that you're a little bit more introverted than I expected. But, you know, it became a really great opportunity to, like, meet new people. Tell me a little bit about that process and, like, what that was like for you. So it's funny because at the same time, I don't know what happened, one of my videos got viral about traveling maybe, and I got a bunch of travel legends that reached out to me. About like, hey, let's make a trip together in Colombia or France. And one of them, the one I did sailing in Greece, I was like, that's pretty cool. I've never done sailing before. And I want to do it, why not? And I was like, okay, let's see if people will be down to come. So we got a bunch of people to come and I was not stressed or anxious, but I was a little bit curious about what's going to happen because you don't know your followers. You don't know if they want to come for the trip or they want to come just because of you. and you think that they're gonna be a one-man show and i'm gonna have to like entertain them and make jokes and i'm not a clown you know i'll do a video but i'm not it's not my i'm not a comedian but um but i got super lucky um with like the the people we we had on the trip um and it was so much fun and yeah i feel like it was just like building like a community and like we just share like stuff and it was it was not just it was like smart people like all of them were pretty like business minded so we had a lot of fun and then and yeah i was just enjoying that i was not trying to sell them anything we we enjoy greece and now i'm doing it again but this time in france in the castle so i think it's gonna be even like nicer like it was gonna be a bunch of good wine and good cheese uh we're gonna we're gonna enjoy and um and i'm excited so i think it's cool also to meet people in real life i feel like now it's all about online and you don't really you don't really have to exchange and even for canary i was thinking something i really want to do is like little karaoke night in like some some places um like for paris where you can also like you go between people like foreigners that want to speak french or learn french but you do karaoke to learn french with music so all this like little event i want to launch a karaoke night for canary and uh yeah do karaoke uh event so yeah i think we're seeing a swing back towards in person um and but there can't be just digital or in person right like it has to be that connection between the two and um i think that like thinking outside the box being a little bit more creative about like Like it doesn't have to be a one-to-one, like, you know, we sell this, it has to be this right. And, you know, for us, at least for me as a, as a, someone who came on the trip, you know, the first day there was that like anxiousness of like, okay, what's this going to be? Is everyone going to be like wanting Ben's attention? Is that, and then we ended up just all becoming friends, right. And like doing this thing. So if you guys want to come join us in France, What is it? May. End of May. So Ben, if anybody is interested in Canary, they're interested in you, they're interested in whatever it is you're doing, how... not interested in you, you know what I mean. But how can they contact you? How can they like become a part of your community? I mean they can first of all find me on social media and follow me. I have a bunch of links in bio, a bunch of links in the link in bio. So it can be for Canary, it can be for the castle if they want to join, there's a website they can sign up. I don't check my DM, I don't even think that people can right now DM me. So the best would be Canary or link in bio and follow me. Beautiful. And Tamara, how can people find us? Ah, subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on LinkedIn. Connect with us there. DM us if you have any ideas of conversations that you'd like to hear, topics you want covered. We've got our newsletter that keeps you up to date. We're on all the channels like Spotify. We are just growing on every channel. So we are so thankful to everybody who is our community members who are chatting with us and subscribing. And we are here on LinkedIn every week. Yeah. And one last announcement, because this will air really soon, is we have an in-person live podcast event here in Arizona for Arizona Tech Week. If you cannot be in Arizona, we also will be live streaming it. So join us. We'll put the link below. Sign up for the live event, which has limited spots. If you can't make it, sign up for the live stream. We have some amazing speakers all about AI. AI in health tech, AI governance and security, and then just how you can be implementing AI in your business with the AI Surfer team here in Arizona. Other than that, we'll see you guys next week. Thanks, Ben. Bye-bye. Thank you so much.

Most founders don’t need more content. They need a stronger connection between community, product, and growth.

In this episode of WTF?, Ben Guez breaks down how authentic community-building turns attention into traction. The conversation moves from creator-led growth and monetization to customer feedback loops, app retention, and the real tradeoffs between bootstrapping and VC.


For more actionable business tips watch this playlist
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYiidGpUlv1F2qvisrBy84trOZxVR-pja&si=z4exIjHdaC50vL8G

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