You might find it surprising that Lachy and I aren’t massive fans of building an ‘audience’ online… especially when we’ve spent the last six years doing just that.
But it’s true.
Having a big online presence looks good, but it doesn’t mean it does good.
There is a very big difference between those two.
And that’s not a jab at content creators…
It’s a fault of the system, not them.
Here’s what I mean:
While a community optimises for engagement, participation and contribution…
An audience optimises for passive consumption.
While a community optimises for bonds and relationship-building…
An audience is completely disconnected from one another.
While a community is ‘bottom-up’ and optimises for ‘many-to-many’ communication…
An audience is top-down, with communication only occurring in one direction.
While a community distributes responsibility and ownership to improve the standards, an audience has no skin in the game.
And while a community has a shared purpose…
An audience is, by definition, self-interested.
That’s why we’re moving away from building an audience online… we’re over it and think it’s broken…
Because the internet was never designed for ‘audiences.’
It was never meant to replace the TV… but for some reason, that’s exactly what it’s become.
Everyone is stuck scrolling endlessly, waiting for the next dopamine hit, but never actually engaging, contributing or testing their understanding in productive discourse.
For platforms that use the prefix ‘social’… it’s hardly that in practice.
Now we could go into why or how that’s happened… but the short story is simple:
On social platforms, we’re the product!
There is an old saying:
“Once something develops to an extreme, it becomes its opposite.”
Social media has gone too far in one direction, and now…
It’s the opposite of social.
That’s why we’re changing things up and inviting you to join us in a community called the Athletes Authority Insider.
It’s free to join, and we’ll be sharing the latest insights of what’s working in our gyms — both from a business standpoint, as well as on the gym floor, on the physio table, and out on the field.
We’ll be covering all basis (and I’ll be spending way more time on there, and you won’t hear from me as much over email… because this, too, is very one-directional).
Most importantly, though, it’ll be a community that sparks great conversation, encourages lively debate, and rewards collective engagement (join us, and you’ll see what we mean… the more you engage, the more you’ll unlock awesome opportunities to learn more from us).
This is all the while pursuing a shared purpose of improving the industry’s education standards.
That’s our mission — to be responsible for educating more people in the exercise, sports science, and physiotherapy industries than every university in the world combined.
Yeah, I know… that’s a big elephant.
Do you want to help us take the first bite?
Join us below, and get immediate access to our first free course: “The Athletes Authority Speed System.”
Yes, it’s quite literally free.
Here’s the link:
(when you sign up, check your emails for your invite link… and make sure to check spam too!)
See you on the inside.
– Karl Goodman
