Thanks so much for the valuable response and insights, Jess! And omg don't get me started on the ads stuff - you're so right here. If there's one marketing expense my team has cut by 90%, you can guess what it is (and when you don't see a big decline in sales or conversions, that is super scary) - I'm actually planning to write an article about how I spent a crazy amount of money on a specific type of ad-related marketing for 2 years, just because I was too afraid to quit it. And then I did - and the world didn't end. And I could finally realize that you can grow a company successfully and abandon something as seemingly necessary and integral to a marketing strategy as paid ads. More to come on that!

And yes, you're totally right - the reason it worked for this company is that the brand ambassadorship and community-building was so authentic. I think this was before the days of overly saturated and salesly/spammy FB groups and other super sales-focused communities (veiled in the guise of building a helpful network). Once the authenticity is gone, the whole thing just doesn't work - at least not to the magnitude that an authentic version would. Then again, we could go into the whole discussion of inauthenticity online/on social media...that's a whole rabbit hole in itself.