Hot Seat with Mollie Fagan
Lesson 12 from: Build a Community & Grow Your Standout BusinessTara McMullin
Hot Seat with Mollie Fagan
Lesson 12 from: Build a Community & Grow Your Standout BusinessTara McMullin
Lessons
Class Introduction
21:32 2Why the Market is Primed for Your Community
18:55 3How Community Can Transform Your Business
16:39 4Why This Isn’t About You
24:18 5What Community Means for Your Business
09:12 6Take Advantage of Network Effects with Mighty Networks Founder Gina Bianchini
32:31 7Interview and Q&A with Gina Bianchini
34:53 8Craft Your Community Vision
11:05Craft Your Community Vision Define the Boundaries of Your Community
39:23 10Invite Your Charter Members Inside
19:03 11Create Your Community Story
18:25 12Hot Seat with Mollie Fagan
06:17 13Discover Why People Use Your Community
20:16 14Discover Why People Join Your Community
14:44 15Craft the Right Message (Hot Seat with Nadia Santiago)
15:38 16Make Your Members Feel at Home
16:51 17Design Your Community Onboarding Systems
13:36 18Hot Seat with Ayelet Marinovich
16:08 19Craft Your Member Support Philosophy
14:51 20Craft Your Member Support Plan
08:38 21Choose Your Platform
37:56 22Create Your Member and Contribution Plan
23:01 23Develop Your Community Policies
13:13 24Deal with the Bad Eggs & Misfits
10:19 25Communicate Who Belongs in Your Community
10:56 26Create a Context for Joining the Community
34:47 27Retain the Members You Have
11:50 28Hot Seat with Alice Karolina
15:26 29How Community Can Transform Your Brand
10:14 30Support Your Customer's Journey Through Community
18:54 31Decide Whether Your Community is Free or Paid
21:29 32Leverage Your Community for Other Offers
18:45Lesson Info
Hot Seat with Mollie Fagan
Tell us who you are, what you do, and where we can find you online. My name is Mollie Fagan, and my business is called Real To Ideal. I'm the founder of The Real To Ideal Movement for Evolving Businesses and Revolutionary Leaders. Very good. You can find me at realtoideal.com and that community that I just mentioned is one I'm launching this month. It's called the Real To Ideal Revolution. Awesome, high five, yes! Okay, so what makes this the right time for your community? You told us a little bit before, but tell us again. Yeah, definitely I see the market shifting when it comes to expensive coaching, not just for small business owners, but I mean, you've seen like, the coaching industry is about to blow up, and you know, are we ever gonna be regulated, and I think there's definitely, you know, people are tired of feeling like they've been scammed by expensive coaching that didn't get results. When really it was probably just the mismatch, but nonetheless, that's how people ...
are feeling. Ripped off. All right, perfect, yes. All right, what will members be able to do now that's been hard or impossible in the past? I feel like the way that I have set my community up, with the membership program and, like we've been talking about, the network opportunities, is that they can get the kind of support and the kind of answers they need when they need them. So like, you know, on a daily basis they can check in, get motivation, get inspiration, and just stay excited about what they're doing, and connect with other like-minded people. On a more long-term basis, it's like as I'm working through my business, and I run into an obstacle, where do I go for that answer? Do I have to, like, go Google for it, do I have to find a freebie and download it, and then even that's only like a piece of the answer. Do I have to hire this person or buy their courses to get the full answer? No, you can go through these pathways in the community, DIY it, if you need additional help, there'll be definitely me, like you can book an appointment, book a coaching session. There's gonna be group sessions, there's gonna be virtual work parties where they can work together. I have a Zoom room set up so that it's like at any point in time, they can connect in Zoom, and have a virtual work party to hold each other accountable or help each other out, or you know, just work with each other. Perfect! Yeah. Excellent! That was very easy, you did a great job! Yeah, do you have any questions, are you anticipating any challenges with telling a story? Well definitely some of the same things we've been talking about, is like, how do you get the word out there when you have a small list, or something like that? I'm very lucky that I have a very diehard following who's been kind of like, waiting for me to offer something they can afford. Mm-hmm. So I definitely have my charter members lined up. But the biggest question that I had during Gina's presentation was, when we're talking about a closed community, especially something, like in this case, it's gonna be a paid community, and I'm advertising this as a safe and sacred place to ask questions without worrying about your online reputation being ruined, without worrying about Ideal clients seeing you ask this question and be like, oh she doesn't actually know what she's doing, kind of thing. When I advertise it as a safe and sacred space, how do we then get members to share on social, or how do we share client results in order to bring new members in? Yeah, totally, so one thing is identify the kinds of things you want people to be sharing. So ideally, the thing you want people to be sharing is victories, right? So you want people, when they pose a hard question to the community, maybe something they think they should know the answer to, or maybe just an obstacle that they've run into, they get help, they try something out, and it works. When they share that it works, you want to actually go in there, private message them, leave a comment, whatever, email them, whatever it might be, and say, hey, I'd love for you to share about that victory online, or on social, or email somebody who you know is struggling with something similar and invite them into the community, and here's a couple of different ways to do it. You can tell people what actually happened, like I had this problem, I found out about this person's experience, 'cause we, not advice, right, like Gina said. (laughs) And I did it, and it worked, and here's what the result. So they can tell the whole story, or they can just say, you know, I was dealing with a really tough obstacle in my business recently and I got really brave and I actually told people about it, and it's not like me, and I don't normally share these kinds of things, but I'm in this space that makes me feel really comfortable about doing it. Here's what the result was. Give the result, and then that's what they can share. So that's one way to do it, but you want to really actively manage it. That's one thing that I would say don't try and unworkload that piece of it. Really actively manage asking people to share about the successes that they've had in your community. And then another thing that you can do is just ask for a testimonial from that as well. So even if they're not willing to share it with their network, maybe you can get a testimonial out of it, because testimonials go a very long way in making people feel comfortable about joining. Yeah, and then even just sharing victories internally actually helps people feel more comfortable with sharing in the community, too, or get more excited about it. So the more you can actively manage that as well, and say, okay maybe you don't want to share this publicly, but you could share it with the community. Make sure you follow up. I'm constantly telling people at CoCommercial, follow up with us, let us know how this goes. And anytime someone has a follow up, whether it's in a new post, or a new comment, maybe they share it during a Mastermind call or whatever, that generates a huge amount of excitement and people get really inspired, and shares happen after that, so it's a process. Yes, it's easier in an open community or a free community or a public community where you can literally share a comment thread or something, yes, that's easier. But there are ways around it, too. Okay, cool thanks. Yeah, awesome. Well you've got your story down, that was a great hot seat because it went very smoothly.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Bonus Materials with RSVP
Ratings and Reviews
Ayelet Marinovich
This class was exactly what I needed. It clarified, confirmed, and connected SO MANY more of the remaining dots for me. Tara, as always, is brilliant, energetic and a general joy to watch as she shares her immense knowledge and helps others get to "the nitty gritty" - thank you Tara, and thank you Creative Live!!
a Creativelive Student
Like I said on air... "Wow!" I've been building an online community for about 4 years now, based on what I thought I wanted to my business to be. Now I realize the value of creating a community around my VISION, then building the business based around the community needs and values. What I thought: 1) What people needed from me was my expertise. 2) Members will naturally bond with and engage with one another based on their shared interests and needs. What I learned from Tara: 1) Members rely on me to FACILITATE conversation and sharing. 2) It's my role to be the a connector and mediator. Tara has an amazing presence on stage and is super skilled at drawing out your vision as a business owner/entrepreneur. She makes community building easy to understand. I'll definitely be watching more of her courses. This one alone has changed the way I think about my business and my plan for building in monetization and community building.
user-381fc4
I went from a vague idea of wanting to build a community to having a clear path to take to start building it. I appreciated the focus on the member vs the business model. Tara presented a clear path for creating the plan first, from vision and purpose to creating the experience for community members, to helping members take the journey to how to monetize in many different ways. My brain is full and I'm excited to take action and launch a community that consolidates my current varied business offers. The presentation was thoughtful and well presented. Excellent and highly recommended.