Most people I talk to are astonished when I tell them I spend zero dollars in marketing for my company Unconventional Life’s sold-out business accelerators. Just last week, Inc. Magazine named us the #1 Event for Entrepreneurs To Attend In 2018.

You see, most people underestimate the value of community.

You’ve probably heard you need to have a massive community before you can monetize it—but in reality, it’s actually the quality, not the quantity of your members that counts.

Our community at Unconventional Life is humble in size compared to others, but it’s a force to be reckoned with. We consistently sell out our spots through word of mouth, and research shows that’s the most effective kind of marketing there is.

92 percent of consumers trust peer-to-peer recommendations over traditional advertising.

If you’re looking to grow your company, you may need to look no farther than your very own community.

This week on the Unconventional Life Podcast, I spoke with one millennial founder whose community is the engine of his company. Meet Aristotle Loumis, the founder and CEO of Ellison, a Greece-based, handmade designer eyewear company with an integrated social mission. Ellison offers a $10 VIP Club Membership that grants 50% discounted access to all of its eyeglasses after the purchase of one full-priced pair.

The only catch? Tell Ellison the epic tale of how you lost your first pair.

“Most people lose their glasses in the act of adventure,” Loumis says. “They’re snowboarding, skydiving, honeymooning, tailgating, they’re living life. We believe in the act of losing something you’re finding something bigger, so our call to action is don’t worry get lost.”

Ellison’s “insurance policy” for adventure has attracted a loyal membership base who helped fund its crowdfunding campaign 4x beyond its initial goal, making it one of the fastest and most successfully funded companies on Republic.

Below, learn from Loumis how you can translate your community into capital for your company.

Schroeder: Where did you get the idea for Ellison’s membership model?

Loumis: Picture this. You’d call me on Friday and be like hey Aristotle, I need a couple pairs of shades we’re going skiing this weekend. By Monday I’d get a call from you being like hey listen there was about a foot of snow, it was great skiing, but unfortunately I went off this ramp and while I’m still alive the glasses are not. As a result I’d say to you, hey listen, don’t tell anyone but I’m gonna give you a hookup price. Instead of paying $150 I’d give it to you at $75. I got the idea for Ellison’s model when I started hearing more of these stories. After about 2,000 stories that were submitted I knew we were on to something.

Schroeder: How did you convert these stories into marketing materials for your company?

Loumis: We mobilize our customers as our marketing engines. The only way you get that replacement pair is to tell us a story, that’s all we ask for. We’d say how’d you lose them did you have too many beers at that tailgate? How was that honeymoon did your wife push you off the boat? And then we reward you for that story. We reward our customers for their living experiences, not punish them. They then share their stories organically with their own networks, and everyone knows the best form of marketing is word of mouth. As a result we have a very high retention rate.

Schroeder: What words of advice do you have for entrepreneurs building a community?

Loumis: When you tap into and work with your customers on a very deep level, they are essentially part of the company and they feel like they’re part of the company. While we only have 6,500 members that’s equivalent to 200k+ members for other startups because the retention is so high for us. I’d rather have 10k loyal customers than 10M because they’re interacting with the company and they’re moving the company up. Every new customer we get is obsessed with what we’re doing… not only is that really good for retention but it’s really good for growing it. Our tribe is growing because we’re bringing authenticity and recruiting the people who are aligned with us. Instead of spending money on numbers we’re going for quality.

Schroeder: Tell me more about Ellison’s social impact.

Loumis: When I was participating in Doctors Without Borders, I fell in love with an eye organization called the Himalayan Cataract Project which was giving people their eyesight back. I realized how big the problem was and I wanted to be able to impact that problem. This was around the time Tom Shoes was just getting launched so this one for one model was very innovative. I thought to myself, if there’s a one for one model what if I was to do an eye for an eye.

I knew at the time there was a market gap when I created this. There’s essentially two big players that own the rights to licensing to some of the biggest brand names that everybody buys. What they do is they buy these brand names and then they artificially inflate the prices 10-20x the cost to manufacture them. I knew there was a way to create a better product at a better price, and that’s the idea behind our membership model.

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This article originally appeared on Forbes.com