About the Episode

Eugene Khayman is the COO of Million Dollar Sellers (MDS), an exclusive community for top Amazon entrepreneurs that he helped grow from a humble Facebook group into a thriving six-figure membership of 700 members generating $11 billion in annual sales.

In this episode of "Uploading...", Eugene shares the organic journey of building MDS alongside running his own Amazon brand. He discusses key strategies that made MDS successful, such as their "give more, get more" philosophy, setting a high bar for membership to filter out noise, and delivering immense value that justifies the $7,500 annual membership fee.

Eugene also unpacks the business model powering MDS, including multiple revenue streams from membership, partnerships, affiliates, and events. He emphasizes the importance of member-only perks, local chapters, and a robust software platform to organize resources and drive engagement in a community.

Finally, Eugene offers advice for content creators looking to launch their own paid communities.

Today, we'll cover:
- How MDS grew organically from a humble Facebook group to a thriving community
- The "Give More, Get More" philosophy that drives member engagement and success
- Strategies for filtering out noise and maintaining a high-quality, focused community
- The business model behind MDS and why people pay over $7,000 a year to be part of the network
- Eugene's insights on scaling communities while maintaining their identity and core values
- Tips for building and monetizing your own niche membership community

3 Strategies for Success From Eugene Khayman

1. Set a high bar for membership from the start

The quality of your community is determined by the quality of your members. That's why Eugene recommends setting a high bar for entry from day one.

Rather than simply letting anyone join, create an application process that vets potential members based on specific criteria, such as:

• Business/revenue milestones that demonstrate their experience and investment in the topic
• Thought leadership in the form of content, speaking engagements, or other contributions
• Referrals or endorsements from current members vouching for their fit and value-add

An exclusive, curated membership creates an aspirational brand that people are eager to be part of. It also protects your community from low-value noise and distractions that can quickly derail engagement.

To put this into action, start by clearly defining your ideal member persona. What do they need to "bring to the table" to create a genuinely valuable exchange of ideas and resources?

Translate this criteria into a simple application form and process. Make it just selective enough to screen out poor fits while still easy enough to convert good matches. As you grow, you can continue to raise the bar and further refine your filters.

Remember, the goal is to build a highly curated inner circle of experts—not to scale to the masses at the expense of quality engagement. Keep your standards high and your community will thrive.

2. Structure your community around shared experiences

A community isn't just a group of people with a shared interest—it's a collection of individuals with common experiences, challenges, and goals. Use this principle to guide your community structure and growth strategy.

First, identify the key commonalities and experiences that bind your members together. This could be things like:

• Professional milestones like reaching a certain revenue threshold or employee count
• Lifecycle stages like preparing to sell a business or planning for retirement
• Contextual factors like location, identity, or specific industry niche

Use these defining experiences to set membership criteria, shape your content and event calendar, and guide important decisions about things like monetization and group size.

Consider how you can foster shared experiences that strengthen interpersonal bonds, even as your community scales. For example:

• In-person meetups and retreats
• Accountability or mastermind groups
• Courses and workshops with cohort-based learning
• Special interest or location-based subgroups

When you organize your community around common experiences, you tap into a deep well of affinity and trust between members. This supports long-term retention, meaningful connections, and a true sense of belonging.

3. Give more to get more from members

Want members to stay active and invested in your community long-term? Follow Eugene's key principle: give more to get more.

This means going above and beyond to deliver value to your members. But it's not just about what you as a leader provide—it's about what members offer one another.

Encourage a generous, pay-it-forward spirit by making heavy contributions an expectation, not an exception. You can do this by:

• Requiring new members to share valuable insights or resources in their very first post
• Incentivizing top contributors with perks like special access, exclusive merch, or spotlights
• Providing a range of ways for veteran members to give back, like volunteering, mentoring, or leading initiatives
• Continually elevating the most valuable content, conversations, and members

When participation is the price of admission, you attract members who are eager to learn and share their expertise. This creates an invaluable knowledge base that keeps people coming back for more.

Episode Timestamps‍

00:00 Intro and background on Eugene and Million Dollar Sellers (MDS)
04:45 Current stats of MDS community: revenue, members, ticket price
06:45 Starting a community organically and verifying/filtering members
08:33 Monetization: when to do it and how to create value
14:44 Where to host a new community and who to bring in
17:53 Seeding a new community: starting conversations and keeping it alive
24:02 Application process and onboarding new members to MDS now
26:55 Where MDS community is going; chapters for local connections
30:30 Platforms used to run MDS community; GroupOS app development
33:44 Opportunities for content creators to monetize via communities
38:33 Q&A: Strategies for specific community examples from audience
44:00 Building a wait list and leveraging existing audience for a community
46:02 Options for immediately monetizing a new community
50:44 Turning virality into community; setting criteria and values
55:15 Wrap-up; where to find Eugene on social

Building Engaged Communities: “I think your first objective should always be like that core group of the founding members. For us I think it was like 150 members before we started actually monetizing. But you know, I would say you want to get to 100 members, you want to have at least 40, 50 die hard members that are engaging in there every single day. You want to get at least five to 10 conversations happening a day. If somebody can ask a question and have it answered that same day like that, that's the value creation right there, right? You don't want to be the one, you yourself answering every single question because you yourself, you don't know everything.” — Eugene Khayman, 00:08:33 → 00:09:25

Monetizing and Scaling a Community: “Whenever somebody starts making a profit because of others, there's going to be some level of, like, why are we doing this? And there's also going to be that, that hesitation to grow. Everybody's going to be like, ’We're so great, we don't need more people.’ Right? And we've crossed that bar—100 members, 200 members, 400 members—there's always that, ‘Oh, we're too big, we're too big, we're too big.’ And you're going to get that pushback. The biggest thing that I think that helped us do it together is one, once we started monetizing, we started putting all of that money back into more events and more resources, building a team… Once you start adding back value by hiring people that help keep things organized, putting on calls regularly, doing events regularly, you'll get that respect from those members, those existing members. And then the new people that are coming in, you have to show that these new people actually bring value to the community.” — Eugene Khayman, 00:11:33 → 00:13:03