Customer research, repositioning, and the launch of a new premium offer.
Carl Richards is a certified financial planner, best selling author of books like The Behavior Gap and The One-Page Financial Plan, and former columnist for the New York Times.
In addition to all of the above, he had built The Society of Advice – a paid monthly membership of approximately 450 financial advisors. It was a successful business, but things were starting to feel off.
A couple of the early members had left, and it bothered him. These were people the society was built for. In some ways, Carl understood why. He had felt the society drift from what it had originally set out to be. In Carl’s words, it had “lost its way.” But, he wasn’t entirely sure what to change to rediscover the magic.
He wanted to fix the existing product and simultaneously launch something new. Something more intimate for a smaller group of people. He had a hunch about what that might be, but he wanted to validate that hunch and ensure that he designed the ‘thing’ this smaller group of people wanted (not vice versa).
I interviewed 16 members across two rounds of conversations. The first round uncovered what they valued, what frustrated them, and what they actually wanted. The second round presented those patterns back and let them correct where I'd got it wrong.
From that, two things happened. We identified what made the membership valuable in the first place and removed everything that had diluted the magic. Then, we launched something new, The Collective, which was co-created with the people it was built for. 19 people joined at ten times the price of the standard membership for ten times the impact.
When Carl and I first spoke, he told me he was looking to make some changes. In his words, what started off as "magic" had gravitated to more of a vendor standpoint. "Too desperate, too grabby, too caught up in the free trial, sign up now world."
He’d get emails from prospective members asking how The Society compared to other programmes, and those comparisons weren’t flattering or reflective of the market he wants to play in. "A piece of me died. Am I really one of those?"
The Society had started as something Carl’s people couldn't get enough of.
In 2019, Carl watched Seth Godin deliver the same keynote at two different conferences during the same week. One for marketers, one for financial advisors.
After the second talk, over breakfast, Carl had a conversation with Seth, asking follow up questions on Seth’s talk through the lens of a financial advisor. As Seth answered, Carl kept thinking: "I wish this was recorded." The keynote was great, but these tailored answers were what advisors really needed.
Shortly after, Carl was speaking at the same event in China as Dan Heath. Both are friends (having shared book agent and publisher). Over dinner, Carl had a similar conversation as the one he had with Seth, asking Dan questions around his keynote through the lens of a financial advisor.
That’s when the idea materialises.
What if he could get smart people – authors, consultants, thought leaders – and have conversations around how their work specifically applies to financial advisors?
But how Carl executes that idea almost happens by accident in London during COVID.
During that time, overwhelmed financial advisors are asking Carl a million questions. So he decides to host a 60-minute call with Jerry Colonna of Reboot to try and answer some of those questions. Over 1,000 people sign up for the call.
After that call, it's obvious people want a place to gather. So Carl started doing it monthly. There was no sales page or detailed explanation. Any attempt to explain it actually caused confusion. It was invite only, intentionally mysterious (like Fight Club) and within a matter of weeks, he'd sold over 300 seats.
Each month, Carl would have a conversation with someone like Morgan Housel or Jennifer Garvey Berger, and filter their expertise through the lens of what financial advisors actually need.
Then, Carl and his team started to make the mistakes many other thoughtful leaders do.
They got caught up in ‘best practice’ marketing tactics. They kept adding more features, count down clocks, free trials. All of which conflicted with who Carl was and what the brand was all about.
They found themselves reviewing churn data and usage metrics, and subsequently making decisions that were pulling them away from the very core of what made The Society magic. It became more about features and deliverables rather than transformation and presence.
As Carl put it, "We did what everybody else does. You add more and more and more. And then you realise that actually didn't slow the churn down. It might have even increased it."
Building a quality community is hard. The chat got noisy, and the people Carl most wanted to serve started to leave. The loudest people making their voices heard weren't necessarily the people he was building for.
Carl was thinking of ripping it up and starting over (though everyone around him told him to be careful. You have a great business model. Don’t break it!).
He didn’t want to break it, he loved what it used to be and it was an important component of his business model. He did want to understand it, though.
He'd been leading small groups in London, helping people ship things they'd been stuck on:
A podcast
A children's book about money
A podcast
The group met weekly for 12 weeks.
Carl was the ‘vehicle’, advising and asking the right questions to help each member get unstuck when they were feeling stuck.
Those three things now exist in the world.
He wanted more of that. He started thinking, "How can I structure my life around serving 50 to 100 of these people year after year?"
But, before making these changes, he asked a question many skip: do we actually know what people want?
Carl told me, “What we want to know is, how do we talk about what this is, and most importantly, what is it and who is it for?”
He’d run customer interviews before for clients, and he’d tried in the past to run them for himself, but it didn’t work.
They don't work when you're the authority.
Members of the group are fans of Carl. His very presence in the room would make it impossible to get clean signal.
So he asked me to go find out.
Carl emailed approximately 25 members of The Society of Advice. These were people he'd hand-selected and considered ideal fit. Current members who loved the society, former members who'd left (the ones whose departure stung).
He asked if they'd have a 25-minute conversation with me, and 16 said yes.
I sent each of them five questions in advance:
Over the course of three weeks, I had a 25-minute call with each of the 16 people. Those calls were recorded. After each one, I went back through the recording to cut, categorise, and curate responses in the respondent's own language. We ended up with 208 individual snippets from ideal fit members, language we could use across sales copy, and the patterns that would feed into product decisions.
I then presented Carl with the first version of a white paper. My observations on who these people are, who they're not, what they love about the society, and what frustrates them.
Then came the part I think was most valuable. I went back to the 16 people for a second round.
This time, I presented the patterns I thought I'd found and asked them to tell me where I'd got it wrong. Some patterns held. Some didn't. One person might have said something in the first call that I'd interpreted as a pattern, but when I presented it back to the group, most of them said no, that's not quite right. Or I'd misread what they meant.
11 of the 16 participated in this second round.
These second calls ended with the thinking behind a new offer, The Collective, and what it would consist of. I asked for feedback on the offer and then asked, if we launch this offer, would you like to be added to a priority list of customers who get the first opportunity to buy.
We ended with a white paper that accurately reflected the thoughts, fears, and aspirations of the people Carl wanted to serve. Not what Carl assumed they wanted. Not what they'd have told Carl if he'd asked. What they actually said when he wasn't in the room, tested against itself twice.
The interviews revealed what made The Society valuable for the people Carl wanted to serve.
It was Carl.
Specifically, Carl's ability to get smart people in a room and ask them questions through the lens of what financial advisors actually need. That was the thing people kept coming back to.
Carl has unique access to people who bring expertise from outside financial planning. These are not the typical people on the financial circuit. Plus, he's a master at facilitating a conversation that translates the outsider's expertise into how it applies to the people in the room.
That was the magic. Everything else had been added on top of it, and it was noise.
The chat was distracting and sometimes off-topic. As membership grew, intimacy shrank. The accountability groups sometimes lacked structure and commitment.
The recommendation was not to add anything, but rather, strip back. Stop trying to be a community platform. Go back to the thing that only Carl can do: have conversations nobody else could have, with people nobody else could get, filtered through a perspective nobody else has.
The Society didn't need to be rebuilt. It needed to be returned to its original purpose. The best single 90 minutes a financial advisor could spend once a month, anywhere.
The research also revealed what a smaller group of Carl's members wanted that The Society was never going to deliver at scale: direct access to Carl, a curated peer group, and the kind of focused attention that only works with a small number of people.
That became The Collective.
This was a group of people who didn't just want to attend a monthly call. They wanted Carl in their corner. They wanted to be around other advisors who would push them, not just agree with them. They wanted someone to help them get unstuck on the thing they'd been carrying around on their mental to-do list, whether that was a book, a podcast, a new service model, or simply getting clear about who they really are.
We used the language from the interviews to shape what The Collective would be and how we'd talk about it. Then we built the launch around the people who had been part of the research.
Not everyone heard about The Collective at the same time.
The first emails went to the priority list: people from the second round of interviews who had asked to be notified first. Then we emailed the interview participants and retreat attendees. Then the wider membership.
I wrote the sales copy for the launch emails and the landing page, along with a draft script for a seven-minute video where Carl told the story of why he was doing this and who it was for. Carl made the script his own before recording it.
Interested members replied and booked a call with Carl. Those calls were originally scheduled for 15 minutes. Almost all ran 30 to 45 minutes. Carl walked them through what The Collective was, why they were building it, and who it was for. He didn't ask for payment on the call. If it felt like a good fit, he followed up with a link to a landing page where they could sign up.
19 people joined this first iteration of The Collective at ten times the price of the standard membership, for ten times the impact.
The priority list converted at the highest rate. The general membership at the lowest. I believe that people want to feel ownership in the thing you build for them. When they do, they're more likely to buy and more likely to spread the word.
A virtual kickoff meeting
Ongoing one-to-one access to Carl
A small private group
A closing retreat at Carl and Cori's in Park City, Utah
Unexpected magic
The Collective wasn't over-designed before launch. Carl and his team launched with the essentials and then iterated based on what members actually responded to.
Twice-a-month roundtables at different days and times, hosted by Carl.
A private group chat on Signal. In a group of 450, chat was noise. In a curated group of 19, Carl explored having it become a valuable part of the experience. The signal was high because the people were hand-picked.
Small accountability groups: seven weeks, one focused goal. Peer-led, not expert-led. Some are themed, like a creative sprint where the goal is to ship something specific in seven weeks: a podcast, a blog, a book outline.
Random in-person dinners when Carl travels, announced in a monthly email to Collective members first.
A role being actively hired: the Minister of Magic. Someone whose only job is to think about every member, every month, and create something magical for them. Books in the post. A poem in an inbox. Things Carl can't promise in advance but that make the experience feel like nothing else.
"For the next cohort, Carl is considering opening with a retreat. Two, maybe two and a half days together in person so people can build real connection before the work begins. As Carl put it, 'If we can get that right at the beginning, then everything else we do has something to sit on.'
I asked Carl what impact The Collective has had. The first word that came to mind was "meaning."
The impact on The Society of Advice was immediate too. Stripping the membership back to its core, removing the chat, and simplifying the format. A small number of members pushed back, but the people Carl most wanted to serve responded the opposite way. The feedback was that removing the noise was one of the best changes they'd made.
When you're the expert in what you do, you're often too close to your own work to see what's genuinely valuable about it. What feels ordinary to you is extraordinary to the people you serve. But you can't see it, and they won't tell you unprompted.
That's the problem I help people solve.
I work with leaders who sell their expertise to uncover what makes their thinking valuable, sharpen how they position it, and build around what their audience actually wants rather than what they assume.
If you're sitting on a hunch about what to build, change, or say next, but you're not sure whether it's right, that's where I start.