Advice is a Silent Community KILLER

You don't need to do it every day. The key thing is that you do something consistently on the same days every week. Today we are going to cover the weekly calendar. This is how you create a habit for your members and also yourself. When it comes to bringing people back to to what you're building. With a community again monetized through memberships or courses or challenges or events, that weekly calendar is going to be a lifesaver. It is going to create calm, it is going to create consistency. And here's the beautiful thing about a weekly calendar. You don't need to do it every day. The key thing is that you do something consistently on the same days every week. So for example, you might have a weekly calendar where Tuesdays at 9am you have a live stream with chat and office hours, or on Thursdays you introduce the question of the week. Or on Mondays everybody sets an intention and they put it in the comments of a post. I always say just do two, two days. That's all you need. And the key with it is, is that you do it consistently at the same time, on the same day every week for a minimum of four to six weeks. Then you can switch things up, you can add things, you can take them off. But the idea basically is even if your members aren't necessarily showing up to for example, that live stream or those office hours or participating in the chat, every time you do something like that, they're getting a notification. So even if they're just looking at their phone and they're seeing a notification at the same time on the same day, four to six weeks in a row, you are creating a habit and brand awareness for what you're building in your community. So I like a weekly calendar for that reason. I also think that one of the biggest shifts in a lot of creators brains as it relates to what am I doing with a weekly calendar. When, when you hear weekly calendar, you think editorial calendar, you think oh my gosh, I've got to produce a blog, I've got to have my weekly video or my, my weekly content. Basically this is something different. In a weekly calendar with people magic and creating people magic, your goal is to, number one, focus on member contributions. This isn't about people consuming your content. This is about you prompting your members to share their stories, their experiences, their ideas and insights, not consume your content. Second thing, I cannot stress this enough. Be consistent. If it's only once a week, at the same time, on the same day, that is better than trying to do something every single day for seven days. In a row, life gets in the way. You're exhausted and burned out and you just give up. Don't do that. It's better to just. With the weekly calendar, we'll get to sort of the daily interactions. But with a weekly calendar, the key is consistency for again, a minimum of one item a week. But also I like to do too. And it's about getting your members to share their stories and experiences. Now, I want to take a minute on advice because one of the things that I hear regularly from creators who have communities is, oh my gosh, my members are giving each other such terrible advice. So number one, there is a strong sense amongst a lot of creators who are experts in things that like, hey, wait a second, I've spent a lot of time figuring out what I know and why I know it. And so I want people to listen to me. I don't want them listening to each other. In fact, I heard this literally last week from a high profile creator and here was my answer. I get it. However, your role as host is to actually discourage advice. You don't want people giving advice because advice shuts the conversation down. What you want is for members to be able to take a prompt or take a task and to share their story, their experience, their ideas. So the way I like to reframe it is when I see members giving advice to other members, I like to jump in with, that's a really interesting perspective. What's been your experience of how you got to that advice? It's not about leaning back and judging other members. It's really about how are each and every one of your members sharing their stories, experiences and ideas, not advice. So let me give you say three examples of weekly calendar activities. Now all of these are covered in the masterclass session on a weekly calendar, but I just want to kind of highlight a couple. Give, ask. I love this idea. Every, say, Wednesday at 10:00am, a new member profile drops. That is a member sharing their give and their ask with a simple prompt that says now it's your turn. So what I found is that most members have something new to give and something new to ask for on a semi regular basis. So making that a really clear practice in the community will set the culture in some awesome ways. Another great weekly calendar item activity is Dream Bigger. So this is a simple idea where a member can share something they're working on and other members can chime in with their interpretation of what would it look like if that member took that idea and thought about it in a bigger way. Thought about in a 10x bigger way that would be another kind of fun thing to call it is 10x. I love a challenge of the week. A book or a TED talk or a podcast or a product discussion on a weekly basis. The skill of the week, new member introductions, a community roundup. All of these are really fantastic ways of creating something your members not just look forward to, but can really start to build that practice and habit of your community in their lives. And that's the power of a weekly calendar.

Hi, Gina. I'm so nervous about burnout. I know you say by setting this up it will run itself, but I know me and I know I want my hands in all of it. How can I build out my weekly calendar to not be too crazy for me, but but also engaging for my community?

This is so important because the way that community design is set up is that you can have as much work or as little work as you want. And what I would sort of encourage you to think about is set up the bare minimum of monthly themes. A weekly calendar. Again, you can do two days a week. That's all you need. And then we'll talk about daily polls and questions, which is easier than it sounds. We'll tackle that in the next episode. But I want you to consider reframing from I'm afraid of burnout, but I also really like to be hands on to. I want to contribute things to my community that give me energy, not take it away. So when you have this foundation of a weekly calendar just keeping consistent with two days a week, then you can take your energy and invest it in the areas that you love most about running a community. Running courses, running a challenge, holding events. What is that? Six of things that give you energy. It's not do 47 things right up front and every day and be perfect because that's going to blow you out. And nobody wants that. You know who especially doesn't want that is your members. Because what your members want is for your community to exist in the world. They want it. Not only that, they need it. We why do they need it? For results and transformation. For them to be able to build new practices and new habits and to make amazing connections with incredible people on the same path. So it's important for you to just do the things that allow you to offer novelty through monthly themes, offer consistency and build a practice through the weekly calendar. And. And to spark relationships between your members with polls and questions. So if you trust the process, you will not get burned out. And if you feel like you have extra energy, there's things that you want to do. Find those activities that give you again, the most energy, the most joy. That might be talking to your members over chat. It might be holding impromptu live streams where you can have conversations with your members. Or it might be, I love to write. So write. Write a lot, but only if you like to do it. I personally don't. I find writing to be exhausting. I'll do it when I have to, I'll do it when I'm organizing my own, you know, ideas in my head. But for me, where I get the most energy is in talking to people, in helping them think through their ideas for their community. And that's not gonna be for everybody. Sometimes people are like, I'm an introvert, I just wanna write fantastic. Or I love making videos fantastic. Spend your time in the places that give you energy, not drain you because you think you have to do it. So for example, one thing that is really easy to do is to open a thread every week at the same time for give and Ask. So this is basically, hey everybody, what is one thing you have to give the community this week? And what is one ask you have for the community this week now? Does it change week to week? Does it spark contributions from different kinds of members? Another one I love too is pain points. You know, share your pain point for this week and as people can help, go ahead and contribute in the chat or in the comments. So those are some examples and ideas of, of a weekly calendar. And the reason you want a weekly calendar is to avoid burnout. You get more credit by doing one thing on the same day at the same time every week than doing 10 things at different times in different ways. Which again, this is very different than social media, very different from social media. And that's also one of the reasons why a community is so much more engaging and sustainable. And that's today's episode of People Magic. I'm Gina and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to People Magic. Want more of a deep dive on today's topic? Well, check out People Magic Profit, my nine part free masterclass on how to launch your own wildly profitable paid membership and community. Do you have your own burning questions you'd like me to discuss on this podcast? Well, I want to hear them, so leave your questions in the review section and keep tuning in.