Ryan Wardell is the CEO and cofounder of Startup Sauce, a private membership for SaaS founders outside of Silicon Valley doing $5k+ in MRR. This community is special for a couple of reasons: 1. It's members are super accomplished CEOs who only have extremely nice things to say about the community 2. The guy who runs it, Ryan, is not a "startup expert". In fact, he has never even been a SaaS founder. In this episode, Ryan shares his "magic sauce" that has allowed him to get there. Resources: Beginner Maps, our free email course containing the "magic sauce" of top communities - https://beginnermaps.com/ Startup Sauce, Ryan's community for founders doing $5k+ MRR - https://www.startupsauce.com/ Ryan's master list of 320+ places for SEO backlinks - https://www.startupsauce.com/list Ryan's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwardell/ Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:43 Startup Sauce stack 05:47 Aha-moment masterminds 07:58 Magic number for a mastermind 10:23 Making introverts feel comfortable 14:30 Magic sauce: matching people 20:18 Facilitation tricks 20:57 Tangent: Hiring a rockstar community manager 23:06 Facilitation tricks contd. 23:50 Giving people a reputation 27:10 Don't pretend to be the expert 28:26 Getting ridiculous retention 30:45 But why $33/month??? 33:18 Screening calls for new members 36:29 How he really makes money 42:13 Ryan's future end game 44:00 Why the 5k MRR barrier 48:45 The idea 52:12 First 20 customers 01:01:05 Content marketing miss