How Community Can Transform Your Brand
Lesson 29 from: Build a Community & Grow Your Standout BusinessTara McMullin
How Community Can Transform Your Brand
Lesson 29 from: Build a Community & Grow Your Standout BusinessTara McMullin
Lesson Info
29. How Community Can Transform Your Brand
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
How Community Can Transform Your Brand
When you start to build a business around, or with, or alongside of a community, you start to see your brand in a whole new way. And, largely, you start to see your brand through the lens of your mission. And another crazy thing starts to happen when you start to build a community. And that is your community, know matter how small, becomes an opportunity to play bigger. So whether you're creating a close-knit community of ten powerhouse clients or customers or you're building a network of a hundred people who are all working toward a similar purpose, or you're building a community of 1, or 10,000 or 100,000 people, you start to see that community as a reflection of a deeper, more meaningful to you and to your members mission. And that mission is actually what encourages you to play a bigger game. We're not necessarily talking here about "go big or go home". We're not talking about exponential growth. We're not talking about doing things that cause your company or you to feel out of con...
trol. But what we are doing is talking about thinking beyond ourselves. That's really what I mean when I say, "Playing bigger". It's about thinking about beyond ourselves, about what we can accomplish as an individual, and instead what your community and your brand, how that can make your mission a reality. One of the other folks that I asked to fill out that survey of communities that I use to kind of inspire the examples, and the questions, and the problems, and challenges that community builders face is Laurence McCahill, who is one of the founders of Happy Startup School. And I just found out about this great community a few weeks ago and they're incredible people, the co-founders of Happy Startup School. And I just, I felt like this reflection that he gave me in that survey really typifies what community can do for you, and even more importantly how community can really transform your brand. He says, "We built a community first and a business second. "We had an agency at the time that paid the bills, "but we closed it three years ago while it was thriving "to focus on Happy Startup School full-time. "Since then we've been on a journey "to build a sustainable business "that allows us and the community "to stay alive and thrive." He had a successful agency and he shut it down while it was thriving to focus on community building. That is awesome and also like that's the risk we're taking here. This is so important, so meaningful. Your mission is so key that you may be willing to eschew some profit for a while; to say no to big clients, to shut something down that's been working. That's what I did, too. That's what a lot of people I know who have built successful communities have done. Guys, this is sort of like the precipice of something huge. And if you leave this class thinking, "Oh gosh, I've got some changes to make "and I'm excited and terrified", well then I have done my job. (audience laughing) Because that's what this is all about. And, as I said, this particular lesson is a personal one for me and I'm not gonna share any like weepy stories or anything like this but as I really put 100% of the focus on building CoCommercial over this last year, I was finally for the first time able to really get into a brand building process. I've been using a personal brand for many years now. People know me as a business coach, or a consultant, a small business educator and trainer. And Tara Gentile has been the thing that we have sold; even when we were offering programs like Quiet Power Strategy or when I was promoting books or other classes, or through my partnership with Creative Live. It was still Tara Gentile. And putting my focus on CoCommercial has allowed me to define something that is much bigger than me. It's allowed me to create a mission that's bigger than I can accomplish on my own. And for me it was realizing the impact, the real impact, that a community like CoCommercial could have and letting that impact be the thing that influenced how I wanted to build our brand. And when I say brand here, of course I don't just mean logo and colors. And hopefully Alice is like, "Yes, that's right. "That is not what a brand is." (laughs) But, you know, the story behind CoCommercial, the way we talk about what we do, the values that we ascribe to, the way we make decisions, the strategy. All of that goes into our brand and how we talk about things and how we represent ourselves. And so as you are considering and going through this process... And, of course, this isn't something that's gonna get completed today. This is something that's gonna be an ongoing process. I want you to start thinking about how your vision, values, and purpose, how your community as a whole, starts to redefine your brand. What does your community say about the brand that is your business or the business that is your brand? What does it say about that? Because building a community, I guarantee, will change, will inform, will transform the brand that you already have. Maybe, you know, I went through a complete rebrand. We built a new website, we had a new brand name. We really started almost from the ground up. You may choose to keep the name, to keep the colors, to keep all of those things. But the meat of it will start to transform as your community becomes a more and more vital part of your business. And even as the vision for your community just becomes a more and more vital way of the way you think about your brand. I have been shocked over the last year as I have pulled back layer upon layer upon layer of how I have played small, how I have limited myself, how I have forced myself to work harder than necessary in building my brand because of me. And I've started to recognize little bit by little bit, layer by layer, all of the ways that the community allows my brand to be so much bigger and more meaningful than it was before. So this is going to be a process and I can't guide you through this. Maybe Alice can guide you through this (laughs). But this is gonna be a process of kind of reckoning and recognition and deep diving into what you really want your brand to stand for. Not just who you are, not just what you do, but what you want your brand to stand for. And the more you can tie that brand, and that story, and that mission, and your community together, the more solid and transformative that story is going to be for everyone else. So I'm not gonna ask anyone to share on this yet unless you're like dying to. In that case raise your hand. But I want you to start thinking about what your community is gonna start saying about your brand. And maybe think not just about right now and what could be, but think about where you're headed. What you want to have, where you want to be a year from now, three years from now, five years from now, ten years from now. Ten years from now your community still exists, your story is still being told, the brand is still there. How is that brand different than what you have now and how can you start living that brand, representing that brand now? Which leads us to the next question. How would you represent your brand differently based on this community that you're building? What kind of story would you tell? What kind of website would you have? What kind of content marketing would you be doing? How would you show up as a company? And also how would you personally show up differently? What would you choose to call yourself? What would your title be? If you're building a community, there's a good chance your title isn't coach anymore, it's not consultant anymore, it's not designer anymore, it's not brand architect anymore. It's something else because now you're the leader of a community. And as your title changes, and as your identity personally changes in relationship to that community, that's gonna cause you to show up differently as well. I don't have any guidance for you here. I don't have any advice. It was simply something that I wanted to kind of get off my chest and also prepare you for because the more you center yourself and your business around this community, the more you're gonna see opportunities to play bigger and the more you're going to see places where you've played small in the past; where you've limited yourself. And those can be frustrating realizations, I know. I still experience it on a regular basis. Like, "Oh man, that was a missed opportunity. "That was a silly decision that I made there. "I could have done something bigger. "I could have done something better. "I could have done something more meaningful." But the more you kind of start thinking about these things now, realizing them now, come to that process of reckoning, as I said, with the times that you've played small or limited yourself and your brand and your company and your vision in the past, the more you'll be able to play big and show up more intentionally with this community that you're building.
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.
Student Work
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