Every winner was once a beginner.

The last time Andrew and I went to Uscreen Connect LA, we left with a lot of insight about the problems we had with our membership. If there's something this year's Uscreen Connect showed us, it's this:

We know YouTube, but when it comes to our membership, we're beginners just like you. And as beginners, the only way we can go is up!

Thank you to Rob Balasabas from Uscreen for inviting the KDCC to this event again! We appreciate that Rob and the Uscreen team see our value to join them the second time.

Note: The Uscreen link is an affiliate link. We may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through this link, at not extra cost to you.

Here's what we learned from Uscreen Connect, and how you can start applying it before the year's up.

The first 10 days can make or break a member's commitment.

We first heard about this from Nikita Savrov, the CTO of Uscreen.

If you engage in the first 10 days with new members, they will stay with you way longer.

Later on in the day, Daniel Kosmala from Uscreen gives us a great example. He asks us (not us specifically, but the audience) about our experience coming into the event.

Granted, this couldn't been done to everyone, but the Uscreen team did the best they could to give people an onboarding experience.

It's a great example of what you should be doing with your members.

You've got to lead your members by the hand and show them their first step. Send them thank you videos. Get them to introduce themselves to the community.

If you make them feel special, help them unlock their potential, then they'll stick with you.

And if you can only get them to do one action, you should get them to watch more of your videos.

Don't go off on assumptions, survey your audience.

Intuition can lead us out of sticky situations, but it also lead to assumptions that are based off of our own biases.

In the case of Laura & Gracie from Ground Grooves, when they started their workshop, they expected professional or aspiring professional dancers to be there.

However, the people coming to the workshop were actually hobbyists or folks just looking to move their body. They weren't the same subscribers of their membership.

Ground Grooves didn't know their audience.

You'll never know your audience until you ask them directly.

From what Daniel said during the panel, people love to give you their opinion. People especially love polls.

If your community's on Instagram, make a story with a poll. If they're on YouTube, make a community post.

There will be those who would prefer to keep their opinion in the poll, while others will make comments. For those who comment, reply back and try to go deeper.

What are the pain points of your customer? What are they looking to achieve?

Finding the answers to these questions can help you better funnel potential customers into members.

Don't try to funnel everyone through the same door.

Imagine a venue with 10,000 people waiting to see a show, but there's only one entrance. If you're at the back of the line, how long would you wait before giving up?

That's what it's like when you force everyone into the same funnel.

Different creators need different paths. Some are ready to join today. Others need more to learn, or try something free first.

There's no "one-size-fits-all" when it comes to entry points.

Here are a few funneling ideas:

• Offer free trials
• Get them into your newsletters
• Provide free video content
• Offer a program, like $20 for a 4 week program

Take these ideas, use them for your own and/or develop new ways of entry points. But don't go building multiple funnels in succession.

Take baby steps. Else you'd overwhelm yourself and your customers.

The only way to build community is to be there for them.

This might sound obvious to you, but if it was really that obvious... everyone would be doing it.

This is what the KDCC say to creators...

When viewers watch a video and they see an empty comment section, they might feel a little intimidated to be the first or feel like there's nobody there.

However, if they see you in the comment section and you're asking a question (and also if you ask questions in your video), they're more inclined to comment.

Now apply that to your community, whether it's on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or any other social media platform.

Laura & Gracie from Ground Grooves had a lot of following, but the comments they got were only surface level.

So one of the ways they did to get more people engaged on a deeper level was to gamify. They made quizzes and challenges that encouraged people to participate.

If someone makes a comment, this means that they've made an effort. Most people are lurkers and they're fine with that.

So even if it might be a simple comment like "Great video!", you should reciprocate and the effort and enhance their experience.

Don't simply respond with a "Thank you!". Take that extra 10 seconds to ask them a question to get them to respond.

You should make a minimum of 2 posts a week. Share the cool things that makes you you.

When you get the ball rolling, the network effect will start to happen.

In the Ground Grooves' community, Laura & Gracie's posts weren't number 1 anymore. It's been taken instead by the community.

Community should be a place where people can connect based on their hobbies, and more. But it'll only become this way if you take the time to nurture.

Use AI to help, but don't be lazy and let it do everything for you.

Whether it's AI fatigue or the fear of AI, we've heard it all. It's understandable to feel this way when you see every other company putting AI into their tool or replacing humans with AI.

So it was quite refreshing when we heard how Uscreen talked about the power of AI and how it can save you more time.

This is a stance the KDCC believes in when it comes to AI.

It shouldn't replace every aspect of you, but it should help you move faster and do more with less resources and time.

Here are some examples of what Uscreen members are using AI for:

• Creating an onboarding process
• Training AI to talk like you
• Giving you feedback on your community and brand
• Building AI based on your content to help answer questions and/or recommend videos

Melissa and Ryan of Chemmunity were the ones who built AI based on their content so that the AI would operate like a teacher or coach. If their community has any questions and Chemmunity isn't around, the AI can answer.

Frances Long from Your Book of Memories used AI to ask about other people's channel and why they work so well. She also asked AI about her own channel and why people might not engage with her.

AI helps with their day-to-day operations, helps them find any blind spots, but it never fully takes over the whole process.

The mistakes we've made and how Uscreen helped us.

Every year we go to Uscreen Connect LA, it makes us think: "Oh no. We have so much to fix in our membership!"

Let's go back to that picture of where things break.

Misread audience? Well, we sorta have it locked down on who we're serving, but we could make it more obvious.

Funnel problems? Oh, yeah. We really do only have one funnel into our membership.

Selling features instead of the transformation? We're very guilty of that. We tell people all the features they get with out memberships, but not particularly what they'll get out of it.

Broken email? As the person who writes the newsletter... I have to admit that our onboarding and consistency could be better.

Dull CTAs? Yup. Please subscribe (is that better?)

But even before the event ended, we've got so many ideas and plans to improve this leaky bucket of ours.

We've changed our CTAs, which was often something along the line of "Join the newsletter!" or "Don't miss an update!" to "Get Proven Strategies" and "Get YouTube Advice That Works."

I've made more automations for our newsletter, so that people would get more evergreen content, even when I'm not writing.

Andrew brainstormed the transformation: Go from creating in your bedroom on YouTube, to your business.

We've not started, but we're looking into more ways to funnel people into the membership like this newsletter or through one-time courses, etc.

Then there's the surveys we'll be putting out to our audience. Did I mention we sorta have it locked down? Maybe not so much once we get our survey done.

These are all the things that is obvious to the Uscreen team, but these are eye-openers for us.

Words from Andrew Kan

This event has a LOT of thank you from Ike and I, Allison, John G, Nik, Daniel, Rob, Kylie, Morgan, Marilou, and everyone we met!

We wanted to also highlight the keynote from CEO Allison Yazdian that really stood out to us.

Not only was it a great example of the power of storytelling, but it reminds us all we have a story to tell.

She also shouted out PJ Taei who started Uscreen 10 years ago, and reflected on how far the platform has come since.

She shared her background growing up in an entrepreneurial family and her experience at LTK, a platform built to help creators earn.

Allison talked openly about challenges we all face as creators:

• The constant pressure to stay on the content treadmill
• Dependence on algorithms
• Unpredictable revenue
• Limited insight into our audiences (Depending the platform)

She emphasized that Uscreen’s mission is to change that by helping creators truly own their audience, data, and income.

Their new message makes that clear: “Unlocking potential through the power of video and connection.”

I want to also mention this is something we can improve and bring back to our members.

Ike and I did Pilates for the first time, and I think whenever you try something for the first time it's a great reminder of WHAT it's like to be that beginner, and how we can make change in our membership.

As Ike and I think of what we want to give back to the Kan Do Creators Community, it's a simple reminder that we have a long way to go, and we learn by doing.

We may have some room to grow here, but that isn't a bad thing. It's EXACTLY why we go to events!