Have you ever felt like you’re shouting into the void online, hoping for more than a like or a DM? You’re not alone—and you’re not doing it wrong. You’re just building it backwards.
In this episode, I sat down with my real-life brunch bestie, Laylee Emadi—a conference host, coach, and the founder of The Creative Educator Conference—to talk all things community-led business. Laylee is my go-to example for what it looks like to serve from the heart while still growing a sustainable brand.
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What Is a Community-Led Business?
According to Laylee, a community-led business is about designing every piece of your business—your offers, your marketing, your systems—around the needs of the people you’re serving. It’s not a formula for quick sales; it’s a long game, one that requires intention, boundaries, and a whole lot of care.
Building an Audience vs. a Community
An audience is who sees your content. They watch, maybe they like, maybe they share—but the interaction is mostly one-directional. You’re broadcasting. They’re consuming.
A community, on the other hand, is built on mutual investment. It’s not just about who’s paying attention—it’s about who’s engaging, growing, and connecting with one another through what you’ve built.
Why does this matter, especially if you’re building a brand rooted in personal connection? Because confusing the two leads to misaligned strategies. If you’re treating your audience like a community—expecting deep loyalty, repeat buyers, or meaningful dialogue without having built real relationships—you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
Laylee emphasizes that true community goes deeper than the numbers. It’s about personalization, ongoing conversation, and creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and supported. That’s what fosters trust—and ultimately, trust is what builds sustainable, scalable success.
So if you’re in this for more than vanity metrics, it’s time to ask: are you curating content, or are you cultivating connection?
Boundaries in a Personal Brand
As someone who is the brand, Laylee gets real about the hard stuff: the guilt, the burnout, and the ongoing work of protecting your time while staying rooted in service.
When your face, voice, and energy are the front door to your business, the boundaries can blur fast.
You can have guilt that creeps in when she can’t personally connect with every single person in her community—especially during large events like the Creative Educator Conference. Despite hosting a room full of people that trust her, she walks away remembering who she didn’t get to talk to. That kind of emotional weight isn’t often discussed, but it’s incredibly real for personal brands.
Burnout, for Laylee, doesn’t come from the work—it comes from the emotional tug-of-war between wanting to show up fully for others and needing to protect her own time and energy. The key, she says, isn’t in withdrawing or becoming less accessible. It’s about being intentional.
That might look like automating backend tasks so she can focus on high-touch moments. Or setting clearer expectations around her availability while still showing up in ways that feel generous and aligned.
Laylee’s approach is a reminder that service and boundaries can coexist—and that protecting your time isn’t selfish. It’s strategic. If your business runs on your presence and personality, your energy is a non-negotiable asset.
The ROI of Connection
Laylee’s business has grown because of her investment in community. Her approach proves that you don’t need a massive following to build a thriving, profitable business. What you need is trust.
People don’t just return to Laylee’s offers because they like her personality (though she’s undeniably magnetic). They return because they know she delivers. Her community is filled with repeat buyers who say things like, “I didn’t even read the sales page—I saw Laylee’s name and I knew it would be worth it.”
That kind of trust is earned, not bought. It’s the result of consistent showing up, listening more than speaking, and building programs that are designed for her people—not just around them.
Laylee’s community isn’t made up of passive followers. It’s made up of engaged, loyal, and action-taking humans who not only buy her offers, but show up for her—and for each other—again and again.
And that loyalty? It’s more valuable than 100K followers who scroll past your content. Because while audience size might boost your vanity metrics, community depth boosts your bottom line.
Connect with Laylee:
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Review the Transcript
Julie: Welcome back to the System for Everything podcast. Just a reminder, your morning routine should include Hydration, gratitude, and at least one mile Panic Spiral. Please welcome my incredible guest, Lely Amani Lei is an educator, speaker, and conference hosts with a heart for serving clients and fellow entrepreneurs through her coaching membership, the Educators Lounge as the founder of the Creative Educator Conference, and.
As a podcast host and coach, she believes in leading with heartfelt encouragement and honest guidance. As a longtime entrepreneur, she’s not afraid to dig into tough topics or transparently share her own experiences. The good and the bad Laylee is passionate about her goal to equip you in your ability to make a difference.
Create impact and to build a life doing what you love. I would like to offer a little bit of transparency here. Lely is younger than me, but I consider her my mentor. We are real life, go to brunch friends, and I trust her so implicitly that I will buy into anything she sells. Lely, welcome to the podcast.
Laylee: Um, that was really sweet also. I love you also. Thank you for having me.
Julie: Okay. Before we get. Started, we are gonna do the system reboot. So a quick little reset to start the episode with some humor and humanity. So what is the most irrational rule you follow? Like your life depends on it? Oh gosh.
Laylee: The most irrational rule I follow, I have to do everything in an odd number.
So whether, yeah, like if it’s work, if it’s personal, I do everything in odds. I probably should explore that, but that’s my rule is that like if I am on a pod, if I’m recording a podcast, I have to hit stop recording on an odd number, or if I answer emails, I’m like, I have to answer an odd number of emails.
Julie: Oh, that is fascinating. Yeah, you should definitely look into that.
Laylee: It’s irrational. I love it.
Julie: Okay. If you could automate one part of your life, no matter how weird, what would it be? Shopping like clo. Like fashion. Like clothing, like style. Ugh. How much do we all wish we had? Shares? Closet. But it was just from a store.
And then what Pop culture moment lives. Rent free in your head. Taylor Swift at.
Laylee: One of her concerts singing, she wasn’t doing anything. Leave her alone in the middle of her song. And so whenever I sing that song, that’s how I sing it.
Julie: Okay. I love that. All right. You have met the personality. Now meet the powerhouse.
Here is my conversation with Le Imadi on the system for community-led business. Layli. What to you? Is community led
Laylee: business to me, I feel like community led business is anything that has, oh, not me repeating that like it’s an SAT question. Well,
Julie: lemme answer your No, I love it. Lemme answer your question about the what question.
Lemme repeat your question back is a really strength.
Laylee: It was very much like, like I was writing an essay. I loved it. Well, Julie, community led business. My business I would view as a community led business. And I think for me personally, I view it as. Everything I do in my business to market my business to creating the products or the services that are in my business.
Everything I do revolves around the needs and the, I guess, desires and the hopes of the people in my community. So I would almost even call it like a. Serv, like servant hearted, which I feel like is like, that’s probably got some like religious connotations, but I am not using it that way. I just feel like
Julie: it does, but I still understand what you’re saying.
You get
Laylee: what I’m saying. Like it’s very much like I’m putting, instead of going through and saying, what is it that, that I wanna teach first? Or what is it that I wanna create first? Or what, what is it that I wanna do first? I think what is it that my community needs first? And then. What within that speaks to me and do I think I can uniquely create for them.
Julie: That is awesome. What do you think are some common misconceptions people might find themselves having when they’re trying to create a community led business, but are maybe coming at it for the wrong reasons or from the wrong angle?
Laylee: I think a big misconception that I’ve run into a lot with a lot of my clients and students is that one that a community.
Or a community led business is like a, a recipe for success or will equate to sales or will equate to something going, well, you know, quote unquote, but I feel like. It only works that way if you are built to be a community leader or it’s something that you actually care about. I don’t think that everybody needs to have a community, and I don’t think that every product or offer or service needs to be community based or community led.
Like I do think that everybody should be, should have community in their lives and in their businesses, but I don’t necessarily think that like every person in leadership or in business needs to have a community-based offer.
Julie: Okay. I love that. So then when people are, again, maybe coming at it from the wrong angle, yeah.
They really need to be focusing on an audience over a community. And how do you kind of distinguish the difference between those two?
Laylee: Oh my gosh, that’s such a good question, Julie. Um, let me repeat it back to you. I’m just kidding. Uh, no, I think, I do think that, I think a, a big differentiator there is like, let’s say you have a product and you wanna figure out.
Who to sell it to or how to, how to craft the marketing. Like that’s when you’re looking at your audience. But I think a community is knowing that you want something that goes a little bit deeper, something that has a little bit more personalization to it. Something that maybe is ever growing and changing, and.
They’re to assist in somebody’s long-term growth versus looking at target audience, target market. And you kind of do have to look at target audience and market when you’re catering to growing your community and you’re trying to create for your community. But it, it goes deeper than that. And I think that it’s, when I think about providing something for my community or growing something within my business, knowing that it centered so much around the people that it serves, I think about.
Long term, is this something that’s gonna help them grow and grow with them or is it something I’m gonna have to do, uh, more like active work around versus am I just creating something that I can sell en mass over and over again? Just kind of targeting one person in one phase of their life, if that makes sense.
Julie: No, it totally makes sense. Yeah. So I think a lot of things that people focus on that are wrong are like those vanity metrics and you know, the Instagram numbers and stuff. How do you define community, like beyond social media numbers? ’cause I feel like so many people out there and you know, even, ugh, influencers, um.
You know, call it their community. Yes. And like, oh, I love the community we have here. And I’m Yeah. You mean the people that just praise you? What?
Laylee: I love my community of hype people. Yeah. I love my community of people who shot my link. Um, no, I, I really, yeah, I get it. And I get it. I get that, like, I feel like if I put myself in the shoes of an influencer, like they really maybe do feel like that’s their community because they’re so nice to them and they feel like they have that love and that joy, and that’s great.
But I’m glad you brought it up because one day. I, I might not be able to use this as an example, and that will be cool. I will take that if it comes, but it’s never been a goal of mine. I’m gonna use myself as the example here. I have a pretty small following on social media and on Instagram, like a small quote unquote following, right?
Like audience size. However, my community, in my opinion, is large and strong and very, very, very committed to each other, um, and to themselves. And I think that’s the difference is like community to me. I don’t care if it’s a hundred people or a hundred thousand people on Instagram. It’s how many of those people are are willing to show up for themselves, for others, for their growth, to participate in conversation, to participate in just kind of being there for one another and for themselves, versus somebody who’s just watching and not really.
Actively participating. So like when I think of a community, I think of the people who show up in my membership every day or show up at the conference every year. Or yes, we are on social like training dms and voice memos and things like that, but like I’ve never even hit, you know, quote like 10 k that, that number that used to matter.
You know what I’m saying? Yeah. The swipe up. I know back when it, back when it mattered. Yeah. And it, it still does matter to so many people. Yeah. And there have been times where it has mattered to me on a purely like, oh, I’m missing the mark. Like, I think I need to probably get this kind of validity. And then I realized really quickly, that’s absolute bullshit.
Am I let to cuss on here? Yeah. Okay. That’s fine. That’s absolute bullshit. And I just think that it’s like garbage. Like I just don’t think it matters when, at the end of the day. I, I am where I wanna be in my business right now, and more importantly, my community is invested in one another. So I think that’s the biggest differentiator is are your people invested in themselves and others, or are they just one sided watching you and like buying the stuff that you’re selling and then never kind of touching base again?
Julie: That that is so awesome and. Exactly why you have the community that you do. I have never maybe in like, you know, the multiverse of like people with millions of followers that, that, that kind of have that like parasocial relationship with them. Yes. But I’ve never, you know, IRL like seen somebody with as loyal of a following is you and everyone does like.
Feel like they know you. They talk to you all the time. You know what’s going on with them in their business. Um, and people just like I do implicitly trust you, like people. Sit in the room for the Creative Educator Conference and buy their ticket for the conference next year, before they have left for the previous year.
Yeah. ’cause of that work that you do, because of what you show them community can be. And I think that that’s very special.
Laylee: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I honestly, I’m very, very lucky to have such incredible people in my, in my group and. In my, my own community that I feel lucky to be a part of. Not even to, to lead, including yourself and people like you.
And I think a big part of that is because I do know, I do make an effort to know as many of them as possible on a deeper level than just like. Oh, hey, thanks for your purchase. Like, you know what I mean? Like it’s, yeah. I take the tra, I do think a huge part of it’s making it not transactional, like making it as it is a, sometimes it is a transaction, but it shouldn’t feel that way because that’s not Yeah, gross.
That’s not where gross, I’m coming at it gross. Yeah. I’m like not, I’m not creating from a place of wanting extra transactions. I’m coming from a place of how can I help this person? And then really showing up to do that as best as I can. So I hope I never lose that, even if I. Do grow, like even as the community grows, because your communities will grow over time.
Like even if that’s not something that you’re pursuing and you can tell by my, by my social media, it’s not something I’m actively pursuing.
Julie: I mean, same, same. I get you
Laylee: right. I’m like looking at my previous posts. You can tell it’s not something I’m putting a lot of time into, but it will organically grow because like you said, we’re also, we’re there for each other because we care about each other and that’s something that I think is.
Is what makes a community special.
Julie: I love that because you are, and I know this about you, that you’re an Enneagram two are, are you a three wing two or the other way jury’s out, you know, uh, some days it could be either one. Those,
Laylee: those twos and threes. I like test as a two. I had, um, actually it’s my at, it wasn’t at.
Our conference when Ashton from Enneagram, Ashton was there. But as she’s gotten to know me, she’s like, oh, I think you’re a two. And so I was like, you know what? If, if Enneagram Ashton says she thinks I’m a two wing three, I’m gonna take it. But I definitely have a lot of three in me.
Julie: Yeah, yeah. But anyway, but having, having that two, that two part in you, that helper that just wants to be there for your community and wants to help them with everything, you know, Le Imadi.
Is a personal brand. Yeah. You know? And now you’ve rebranded your podcast to be like a personal brand. How do you kind of put up those boundaries in community building when you are also the brand?
Laylee: Mm. It’s a very important and difficult question because it’s something that I think I, I’m still working on and having to tackle in different ways every year.
I, in the beginning, it wasn’t something I put a lot of thought into because. You know, the smaller your community, the less boundaries you really like think you’ll need because you just are so like excited to have those 10 people that you wanna really pour into and be there for. And I am in these ways. I really do think that.
That people are right. And I really am a two because I’m like, you can just run me over with your car if you want, and then I’ll help you with your course. Like I just, like, I There’s no, there are, so explain why
Julie: after I ran you over you still helped me. Exactly.
Laylee: Exactly. And I was like, don’t worry about the hospital bills.
I got it. Like, but truly, I, I think it is hard to have those boundaries. And even now, I, I wrestle with a lot of guilt around. At the conference, for example. It’s the biggest like in person thing I’ve, I’ve ever done and, and probably will ever do. I don’t see it getting any bigger, but, you know, you think about selfishly
Julie: good.
Yeah. Yeah,
Laylee: because I want, it’s important to me to know everyone’s name, at least know a little about them. I wanna be able to talk to as many of them as po, as many of the attendees as possible. But every year I leave thinking, oh my gosh, I didn’t get to talk to, I know in my mind who I, who I haven’t talked to and who I have, and.
First year, I like set up some calls with people after just to be like, I didn’t get to talk to you, like I’d love to talk to you. And this year I meant to do that. And like I reached out and I was like, I’m gonna, like, if I don’t email you, you email me and we’ll get a call. Like just like a friendship chat.
And eventually, I do think I’m gonna have to start putting up a little, like some boundaries. Whether it’s like time constraints, I don’t wanna take away the things that are important to me. And I think the things that make me. Unique as a community leader is that I do care. Like I want to actually meet these people and talk to them and hear what they’re doing with their lives, but I’m also one person.
So like those are the boundaries that I think I, I don’t necessarily think you need to pull from the things that are obvious, so like, I still wanna give people the chance to get on a call with me, but maybe my boundary is that I need to have the post-conference checklist be more tasks taken by my team.
So that I can do the personal stuff, like I think those, I think finding where your boundaries are, you know.
Julie: Yeah, no, I completely get that. And I also think that even though you want to be there for everyone, which is so beautiful, you have to like protect your own time and energy. And at some point the, oh, I didn’t get to talk to you also falls on the other party of like, yeah, well they never came up and like talked to me and like, yes, some people are shy, some people have a hard time in that environment.
But for me as a. An eight wing seven. You know, it’s like when I watched The Bachelor and everyone’s just sitting around on the couch that first night and it’s like, well, I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. And I’m like, well, did you even try? Did you go up the couch? Talking to one of 30 people, he’s not gonna come get you.
That’s not how the show works. Yeah. And like, yeah. Yeah. It’s fake, but still. I love it. We’re gonna work on protecting your time a little bit more. Yeah. I’m on it. I’m gonna help you. Thank you. Uh, but when we get into kind of what the ROI of Connection is, can you name or point out any of the tangible ways that your community has helped grow your business?
Laylee: A hundred percent. I think the very first, first and biggest thing is that you will get, I think when you have a community that you actually care about, you get returning customers and clients and students, and that you, that’s how you opened it was you were like, I’ll buy anything she does. And it’s like, yeah, I, I mean, I can’t tell, like, this is the biggest honor I have, the receipts.
She really does. Uh, but the biggest honor in that is that like, it’s not, it’s, it’s you and it’s like. The people in who repeatedly show up where, um, half my testimonials I’ve realized there are people saying, I didn’t even read the sales page, but when I saw Lay’s name, like I knew it was something that was going to be amazing, so take my money.
And it’s like, I used to be like, oh my gosh, wait. No. Read this. Like, you need to know what you’re getting into. And, you know, once, once my community started really saying like, no, like, we know, we know, like, and trust you. You know? Mm-hmm. And, and that phrase I think is used. Flippantly now where it’s like, get people to know, like, and tr but you re if they’s
Julie: truly, and
Laylee: it’s,
Julie: it shouldn’t be because, no, there are so many things that I have bought that I’m like, really wish I’d done my due diligence more on that.
Laylee: Yeah, a hundred percent. And it’s like, but when they truly know, like, like, know you, they know what, what you put into it and they know that they’re gonna get something out of it. The sales process gets so much easier, and for somebody who has a very hard time with selling that ROI is everything to me.
Just that I know that like mm-hmm. I can focus on doing the thing that’s hardest for everybody, which is creating something that’s going to like deliver. Then the second hardest thing being selling like that part’s so much easier and I can really put all of my focus and all of my brain power less in a launch and more in the creation and the like taking care of the people who are going to be purchasing whatever it is I’m creating.
Julie: I love that. Let’s go with final question. How do you nurture people off Instagram? Mm.
Laylee: I think number one is getting them off of Instagram. So, uh, whether it is, and I’m not necessarily even saying like getting them into real life situations because that’s, that’s hard to do and I understand that like, yes, there are easier low lift ways to do it.
You can do like local meetups or whatever, but even if it’s creating on your calendar. Once a week, you have like two hours where you have like 20 minute time slots and their connection call time and like you have a link that you can, if you’re having a great conversation with someone on Instagram and you’re like, I wanna know this person more, like, I wanna get out of the the DMS and really say like, Hey, let’s like talk about what we’re working on.
Or, um. It doesn’t have to sound. I feel like sometimes it’s hard to find the right verbiage where it’s like, let’s find out how we can support each other. I just wanna know you better. Like if you ever wanna like chat with a stranger and like talk about business. ’cause no one else is like, yeah, grab a time.
And it’s so, it makes it easy on them. It puts a 20 minute time limit on it that maybe you can create some cushion around. So if it goes over, it goes over. And if you are like, this isn’t fun, you can stop it. You know what I’m saying? Like it gives you an out, gives them an out and. Just sparks like a deeper conversation than you can get into a DM using Instagram as like a way to open the door and then you have to cra you have to like carve out the time to further the connection.
Otherwise, it never will become any deeper than just Instagram friends.
Julie: You know what? That has encouraged me. I’m gonna go connect with somebody today. I love that. I’m gonna do it. Okay, so now for promo time, tell us about your current offerings. How can we buy them? Where can we find you? Give us all the things.
Laylee: Okay, so currently the, the only real offer I have right now that’s available for people to connect is the membership, which is called the Educators Lounge. And I love it. Highly recommend.
Julie: Yeah.
Laylee: I love it so much. Thank you for the
Julie: recommendation. I will, I will say I, I love like the trainings and stuff. I will say I don’t come to co-working and stuff because for me, I’m just the kind of.
Not squirrel brain, but like honestly, I’m just the jerk that kind of wants to distract everyone. And so I need to just be like, alone. That’s fair.
Laylee: That’s fair. I get it. But you should, you can, you should come to the coaching calls. ’cause I feel like, or you know, if you want to,
Julie: but it’s, I know they, it’s like they always conflict with another recurring meaning than I have.
And so that’s, I mean, that’s on me.
Laylee: It is sad, but I love having you in there. And yes, we have like a library of trainings. We have coaching calls. It’s like kind of stupidly low priced. Like, it’s like, it’s like it really is. I know, I know. I’m working. I we will be raising the price soon, actually, so I don’t know.
But we, you gotta be here first. Get in now while it’s hot. Yeah. Get in now. ’cause you know, like, it, it was stupid low price for the first year just because I, I always wanna make sure that I am. It’s the first year we’re doing it and we’re almost a year in. And so now it’s like, okay, we know what we’re doing.
Um, and then the conference of course, which isn’t, uh, registration isn’t opening yet, but it will open for 2026, probably around September. So you can join the wait list for that. But people can find me@leilima.com and on Instagram at leire imadi.
Julie: Yay. Okay, now your brain is full of Lay Lee’s brilliance. So we’re gonna close out with something short and sweet.
It is time for this week’s system shut down. I cannot stop obsessing over what I perceive to be the dumbest thing ever. Um, I now follow no less than. 10 Instagram accounts that are moms making toddler food. You know, like, oh, we, we hid veggies in here and so we made this little recipe. Or mom like lunchbox accounts and things like that.
My child is four months old. Uh, she eats formula like we’re not even like about to start solids, let alone go to kindergarten. But I can’t stop myself. It has nothing to do with where I am currently at in my stage of motherhood, but I find it very. At least you have a
Laylee: child. I watched the, the lunchboxes. I knew I did it before I had her too.
Yeah. I straight up watched these moms make lunchboxes and like they’re beautiful and like cool and like the, like for the like elementary school age kids. And I’m like, I have no children. I will say,
Julie: I hope I get this right. I can put it in the show notes, correct if it’s wrong, but I’m almost positive it’s at Feeding Tiny Bellies and my favorite part is that she sends her first grader to school.
She shows the night before, like, this is what’s going to school tomorrow. And then she gives his real time feedback on the lunches and he. Is a hilarious child. But thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode@dallasgirlfriday.com slash podcast. Please find me on Instagram at Dallas Girl Friday, and please let me lovingly assault you with my friendship.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast. Until next time.
