27: How to Build a Community Without Relying on ChatGPT with Vix Meldrew
I joined a $5,000 mastermind at 4 AM after seeing one random Threads post, and it was one of the best business purchases of my life
It's 4 in the morning, I'm mindlessly scrolling Threads, and I see this post from a woman I'd been following forever but had absolutely no clue what she did for work.
One click led to a free masterclass. That masterclass led to an inquiry form. That inquiry form led to me handing over five grand faster than I've ever made any business decision in my entire life.
The woman behind it all was Vix Meldrew — community building queen, Diet Coke connoisseur, and the mastermind behind some of the most successful group programs I've ever seen.
And after being in her Sales Spice mastermind for almost a year, I can confirm: sometimes 4 AM impulse purchases are exactly what your business needs.
In this episode, Vix drops some serious truth bombs about why your ChatGPT content strategy isn't working, why being more "you" is the actual strategy, and how she scaled multiple programs to 100+ clients while working just 25 hours a week.
Rapid-Fire Squirrel Brain Questions
Here's what we learned about Vix in her round of squirrel brain questions:
If she could gather "nuts" like a squirrel: Diet Coke. (Finally, someone said it!!!)
If her brain had a pop-up ad: Her membership — "Come in and grow your community by 1,000 every 100 days."
If her life came with a warning label: "If she is running, call the police." Because this girl does not run unless she's being chased and about to be murdered.
What she'd win an Olympic gold medal for: Reading Reddit threads at 3 AM. Give her some niche UK drama, followed by Hailey Bieber rumors, followed by a recipe about how a squirrel caused a car accident in Cardiff.
Something she thought she'd have figured out by now: People pleasing. She's 39 and ready to enter her 40s with more neutral energy — not hardened, just less giving-a-fuck-about-the-haters energy.
Her walkout song: "Get Busy" by Sean Paul. The soundtrack to her late-twenties renaissance, and if it comes on, good luck getting her off the dance floor.
Your Community Wants More YOU (Not More Strategy)
We're over here curating, professionalizing, and strategizing ourselves into oblivion when what builds community is the exact opposite.
"One of the things that we resist the most when we are building our businesses online is the fully true expression of ourselves," Vix explained. "We love to over-curate, over-professionalize, over-strategize. But the core of building a community around your personal brand is the true expression of who you are."
Your vision, values, mission, personality, quirks, niche interests, and those weird life experiences you think only you've been through are the things we avoid sharing.
But they're what attracts people to you in a way that no ChatGPT content plan ever could!
Now I know that when you hear "be more you" you immediately think, "Cool, great advice. Now what the hell does that even mean?"
I asked Vix this exact question because I get it all the time: "Sara, how are you so comfortable being yourself online?"
And honestly, I've never had a filter one day in my life. I would like to maybe be less comfortable sometimes! So if you're someone who struggles with this, Vix has the roadmap.
The Social Media Oversharing Scale
"There is a scale of being you on the internet that ranges from nobody knows who you are, what you look like, what you do, to you have shared the contents of your bowels — and you get to decide where you fit on that scale."
Admittedly, the closer you are to sharing the contents of your bowels, the more attention and engagement you're going to get because people are voyeuristic and nosy as hell.
But here's what Vix wants you to understand: you get to choose where you sit on this scale.
If you want to be more on the "nobody knows anything about me" side, that's totally fine. But you have to accept that you're not going to get as much engagement as someone who's sharing more of themselves. That's just the reality.
Vix gives the perfect example of her own approach. If you follow her, you know:
She has a husband and lives in the English countryside
She has a daughter (but has never shared her face or name)
She has a cockapoo named Ruby
She loves Diet Coke, leopard print, and tattoos
She favors music from 2003 (specifically 2003)
She shared her entire IVF journey without compromising her daughter's privacy
She lets you into her personality, values, mission, and quirks while keeping the truly precious stuff private.
So how do you start sharing more of yourself? Start by journaling or plotting out the details you'd be happy to share loads about:
Do you have a specific workout routine you love?
Are you a matcha girl or an iced coffee girl?
Do you have a signature color?
Is there a weekend routine you always do?
Are you renovating your house?
What's the mission behind your business that your community wants to rally behind?
Then, infuse these things into your content.
For example, if you're a pilates girl, take clips of you setting up your reformer, putting on your workout outfit, having your post-workout juice. Use these in your day-in-the-life vlogs or as b-roll for your teaching content.
If someone isn't initially interested in your main message, their entry point might be that shared interest.
She's had people work with her because they both went through IVF. Others chose her because they loved that she shows up in her PJs and leopard print without makeup.
The point is that we need to give people reasons to connect with us beyond just our content.
Those weird little personality quirks you think no one cares about are actually marketing gold!
Stop Overthinking Connection
You just read Vix's advice about sharing more of yourself, and your brain immediately went to: "Okay, so what should I choose to talk about? Let me strategically pick my personality traits."
Stop. Right. There.
You're already living your life. You already have these interests. This isn't something you need to manufacture or decide on.
Here's a perfect example: Someone DMed me yesterday because they saw Lightning McQueen somewhere and thought of me instantly. I fucking love Lightning McQueen, but I never made a strategic decision to "make Lightning McQueen my thing."
It just came up naturally because I genuinely have an obsession with that little race car, and apparently I mentioned it enough that people remember me for it.
So please don't use Vix's advice as an excuse to spend seven to ten business weeks deciding what your "thing" is going to be. Just let the connection happen over what it naturally is.
As Vix put it:
"Connection is real-time, it's raw, it's real. And anytime you over-strategize, overthink, or over-perfectionize, the connection is immediately lost."
The strategy is not being over-strategic.
Both Vix and I get asked constantly: "Can you teach me your Threads strategy? You're doing amazing there!" And our answer is always: we shitpost. That's the strategy. We share from the heart, on a whim, whatever's coming to mind in that moment.
Another mental block that might be holding you back is that you think everything is permanent.
You're worried that if you share your interest in pilates now, people will think you're flaky if you get into running later. Or if you launch an offer and then decide to close it, you'll look inconsistent.
But here's what Vix wants you to understand: being pivotable, adaptable, creative, and experimental are exactly the qualities people look for in leaders they want to follow.
They want to be led by people who are going first.
So just post it, bestie. Change your mind later if you want to. It's really that simple.
Put Down ChatGPT (It's Killing Your Conversions)
Somebody had to say it:
"I love ChatGPT, love AI, love those girls for systemization and how much time they save," Vix started. "But when we're seeing people go into their launches with volume content, consistent daily emails, daily posts, and it's not converting... it's because it was ChatGPT."
Here's the brutal truth: if your launch content isn't converting, it's probably because it's not your original idea. It's not based on your embodied experience or your personal expertise.
You're using AI as a crutch, and it's killing your conversions.
Community marketing requires raw, real leadership. It requires your unique angles, ideas, thoughts, and methodologies. And those don't come naturally to most of us because we've never had to sit down and really think about them.
So instead of heading straight to ChatGPT, Vix wants you to do this instead:
Give yourself a day, give yourself an afternoon, and free-write everything you've done in your business to date:
Every achievement you've had
Every bright idea you've come up with
Every time a post went viral because of an opinion you had
Your unique observations
Your stories, turning points, mistakes you overcame
When you finish this exercise, you'll have tangible assets — your actual intellectual property that you can bring into your content, emails, and podcasts.
Community leadership is about being unique, different, new, and fresh. And that can only come from your brain and your experience.
When you're just asking ChatGPT to "write my launch emails," you're not leaving room for your perspective about your community. You're not addressing the specific objections you know they have in the casual, knowing way that makes people think, "Damn, she gets me."
Use your robot for systemization, sure. But your ideas, your perspective, your voice should be all yours.
Own Your Wins AND Mistakes
Get ready for Vix to call us all out in 3… 2… 1….:
"You have to own your brilliance. You have to own your wins. You have to own your mistakes and what you learned from your mistakes. It's all part of transparent leadership."
If you're the type of person who can instantly recall every failed launch, every client who didn't sign, every mistake you've ever made, but you can't tell me about the lives you've changed or the people you've inspired — why should anyone trust you?
All the leaders I respect are confident. They don't hesitate to say, "I helped this many people make this much money" or "I helped this many people feel better about XYZ."
Vix has this perfect framework for the energy we should be going for.
We don’t feel compelled by the gurus — those untouchable, perfect people who seemed to have it all figured out. But we also don't want to follow the hot mess bestie who's always in drama and doesn't have their shit together.
What we want is big sister energy: someone who's got it together, knows their shit, is clearly a leader you'd listen to, and you know they're only in that position because they've made the mistakes they don't want you to make.
People are attracted to humans who make mistakes, have wins, are really good at what they do, sometimes mess up, and show all the different facets of being human.
How to Start Growing Your Community
If you want to build a community that grows by 1,000 members every 100 days (yes, that's Vix's actual promise), it starts with understanding your pinnacle community member.
Picture hosting an intimate dinner with 15 people around the table. There's one person you're drawn to — you want to hear everything they say.
But also everyone else at the table is similar. They have the same shared goals, problems, challenges, frustrations, identity, and shared enemy.
You need to understand:
Who are they?
How do they move through the world?
What do they care about?
What are their niche interests that bring them together?
What's their shared identity and shared problems?
Once you know this, you bring it to your content repeatedly. You want to be talking to their same problems a thousand times, calling out their frustrations, saying "I know you're going through this" and "Here's how I worked through it too."
Vix spent months in Facebook groups and Twitter chats when she was starting out, just listening to what people were saying about their struggles and desires. She still does this on Threads today — constantly doing market research and hosting live conversations.
Don't fall into the "curse of the expert" where you assume you know everything about your clients.
Your community is constantly evolving, and if you stop listening to them, you're going to miss the mark.
And please don’t overthink the target audience piece. (Are you sensing a theme here?)
Just pick something and start. It's like choosing a target keyword for SEO — you think there's one perfect answer, but you have to just choose one, try it, see if it works, and pivot if it doesn't.
Embarrassment Is a Choice You're Making
Vix hit on something that stops so many people from building community:
"So many of us get caught up in our heads around 'I don't want to create that type of content because no one replies.'"
You've got to take the ego out of that in order to take the embarrassment out of it too.
You're going to have to create so much content asking people questions, putting up polls, starting conversations on Threads, and getting maybe one reply. But when people start replying and you model that you're someone who's open to listening and genuinely wants to help, the engagement will follow.
But you have to sit through the really awkward stage first. It could be weeks, it could be months of nobody replying to get to the place where there's active back-and-forth.
When you're embarrassed about posting a question and getting no replies, you're just assuming what somebody else feels about you.
If you post "What's your favorite [whatever]?" and no one answers, what are you picturing? A whole room of a thousand people pointing and laughing at you? That's not happening. You made it up!
You're the one who thinks it's embarrassing, so you feel embarrassed by it. Nobody else is looking at your content like that.
Embarrassment is like the Princess Diaries quote: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
Nobody can make you feel embarrassed without your consent either. You're choosing to feel that way.
I told a friend recently who was asking why filming in public feels so embarrassing: "Because you decided it was embarrassing."
Whether it feels like a choice to you or not, it is one. And once you stop choosing embarrassment, you can start choosing to show up consistently, ask the questions, and build your community.
Building It in Public: What Worked for Vix's Programs
Okay, this is where Vix spills the tea about how she built her programs, and I need you to pay attention because these strategies are gold.
Sales Spice (The Mastermind): This is Vix's high-touch, mastermind-style program for people scaling from one-to-one to one-to-many. We're talking about getting 100+ clients in group programs, thousands of members in memberships, and scaling sales efforts to enroll people at scale.
Vix had been running a small mastermind of six people for two years, always fully booked, with outrageous results (taking clients from zero to 150 clients, from 13 enrollments to 75 in a launch). She was constantly sharing these client results and what they were learning.
When she decided to open it up to more people, she built it in public on Threads.
Here's exactly what she did:
Posted about transitioning from a small mastermind to a larger one
Shared the concepts she'd be teaching that were working for her current clients
Asked people to vote on the name: "Sales Spice" or "Spice Sales"
Documented silly details like having Spice Girls theme music in the waiting room
People got invested because she made them part of the process.
She exceeded all her goals — was hoping for 10-12 people and enrolled 35 in that first launch!
VOLUME (The Membership): For this launch, Vix went even bigger with building in public. She opened a Slack channel and got 220 people to join. Every day, she gave updates about decisions she was making:
Should we use Circle or Slack?
What should we call it?
What should the promise be?
Which features should we include?
She made it collaborative with those 220 people. Then she gave the Slack channel an early bird offer — 65 of them joined (that's a pretty incredible conversion rate from a free thing). When she opened to public launch, another 55-60 people joined, totaling 120 enrollments.
Here's where Vix zagged while everyone else zigged: while everyone in the online space was saying "nurture your current audience, sell to your current community," Vix said the opposite.
"Actually, you need volume. You need strangers. You need top of funnel. You need visibility. You need to go viral. You need more followers."
Everyone wants the volume, but they're too shy to admit it. Vix was just brave enough to say what everyone was thinking.
Point of the Story
Your community doesn't want you to be more professional — they want you to be more you. Stop over-strategizing and start sharing the parts of yourself that make people say "finally, someone who gets it."
Vix Links
Check out her website
Listen to her podcast
Join her membership, VOLUME
Join her mastermind, Sales Spice
Vix’s walkout song
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This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.