The Secret to Community Engagement: It’s Not Who, It’s Why

As scary as it might feel that you don't exactly know where to take the community from here. Lean into People Magic Profit. Lean into the transitions. The best year ever. As opposed to posting things like, hey guys, what would you like to see to be able to like engage or how can I make this more valuable to you? Like all of that. Those are signs of weakness that nobody wants to be a part of. A community where the host doesn't have confidence. Confidence in what they are doing. I'm Gina Bianchini and this is People Magic, where I'm going to show you the absolute easiest way to create a $1 million community. Hi Gina. I've got 40 talented executives in my community, which I'm super excited about. And nothing, no one is talking to each other and I'm having a really hard time getting conversations going. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am so glad we are tackling this because there are even in that very high level summary, the clues to what I think is going on. Number one, the word was executives. So what happened there is that you got excited about the social rank of your members. You got excited about. I'm going to create a community of socially high ranking people that I'm excited to bring together. Now here's the wrinkle. I didn't hear a transition. I didn't hear anything about why they are here and what do they want to get from each other. It turns out one of the fastest paths to failure is bringing people together based on identity alone. Oh, you are a high profile marketing executive. Of course you're going to want to meet other high profile marketing executives. Well, it turns out there are a lot of demands on the time of high profile marketing executives. Worse, they may actually not have a transition that just being a, a high profile marketing executive would create. And so they don't actually know what they're supposed to be doing together or why they join, but they like you, so they don't want to hurt your feelings. So they're like, okay, sure, I'll try this. And then probably what's happening is because you as the host don't have clarity as to what is the transition and why a transition. Transitions create the most motivated people. So when you, for example, would bring together up and coming marketing managers that are really excited to take on their first directorship, their first director role, now you've got motivated people and you have clarity as to why they would join and they have clarity around why they would be a part of this community, who else they're going to Meet and then you just got to navigate things like, okay, what is our framework for getting from marketing manager to director? How do we define it? What does it mean? What are we going to be doing and navigating together? Probably understanding what is the state of marketing right now? Probably also looking at how is it changing? Are there new inflection points that are really going to matter? Are there tools that we can actually start to build with each other around how to think about where paid ad funnels are going, or how to think about how to create new IRL events or whatever it might be. All of a sudden you've identified the transition and therefore can create amazing experiences or frameworks for the members in that community. The other thing I really like about transitions and focusing in on transitions is when you identify who is the most motivated, you will still eventually get to that higher ranked people that you have your own identity around. Like, look at who I'm able to bring together. The big trick though is don't let your own ego and who you think is important. Define who the members of your community should be. The members of your community who are the most motivated are ultimately going to get you the most successful and be the strongest foundation for where you take your community from here. Your membership, where you want to go, how you want to evolve it. The other really great thing about identifying and starting with transitions, not rank, is that it helps you to then be able to articulate the benefits or the results that that person's going to be able to get by being a member. And that is what I call your best year ever. And your best year ever or their best year ever. It's, it's from the perspective of the member, not you as the host. So coming back to our example of the marketing manager, you know who, who's hungry to become a director, you know that their best year ever would be to learn everything that they possibly could learn and have the relationships with people they can have on speed dial, to be able to successfully get promoted to director and then as a director, kick ass, kick ass as a director. So you, you have built into your community as monetized through courses and memberships and challenges and events. You have the reason for someone to join. So number one, they're motivated by the transition. Number two, you're able to articulate their results and transformation or as I like to call it, their best year ever. When you were describing your community, I wasn't surprised because this is why I think a niche. Picking your niche is actually not that helpful. It's really about picking the transition, because that's where the most motivated people are going to be. And then their best year ever is what do they want? What do they want? What are they motivated to be able to do a year from now that they're not able to do today? One of my favorite questions I'm going to keep asking it. The next wave of things that I would want to understand are how are you structuring your monthly themes, your weekly calendar and your daily polls and questions now, again, daily polls and questions might sound hard. They're not. It's been automated. Like we can use AI today, certainly in a mighty network. This is, this is built in to be able to ask really compelling questions that follow a very simple formula, an unlocking phrase, and then the topic such that somebody can answer it in less than 15 seconds. My hunch would be that monthly themes, weekly calendar, daily polls and questions are either pretty fuzzy, they're not particularly motivating because you're missing the transition and best year ever. And then I don't think you really have to worry about the offer and launch because you kind of have already done that. You have your founding members in your community. But that magical first experience I think is worth spending some time on. So the, the final place that I would want to go deep on would be around what is that first member's experience? You know, do, do they have clarity as to why they are here, what they are doing, and, and have you created that sense of here are the other people and here's what we do together? Or have you created, you know, rules or guidelines that are like, don't murder anybody and like, don't be mean and all these things that basically seem like a really good idea, but what happens is it shuts down the conversation before it even starts. So I'd want to just make sure that was not in place. Where it's like, we don't have this and we don't do this and don't murder anybody. And it's more about here's how we get the most value. So it's taking the negative, flipping it to the positive, and here's how we get value from each other in this community. Here are the things that we are setting up to give each other and here are appropriate asks to make of the community. It's great. And then I would also look at making sure where and how there are live events that are appropriate for people to actually meet each other. What are those results? What is that best year ever. And then how do people have clarity around Monthly themes, the weekly calendar and daily polls and questions so that they see progress, they see how they're going to get to that next level, the thing that they want to accomplish, and then making sure that there's a magical first experience. So all of that comes to life from the very first session. The value is clear. I love the fact that you are open. I love the fact that you are curious. As scary as it might feel that you don't exactly know where to take the community from here. Lean into people, magic, profit. Lean into the transitions. The best year ever. As opposed to posting things like, hey guys, what would you like to see to be able to like, engage, or how can I make this more valuable to you? Like, all of that. Those are signs of weakness that nobody wants to be a part of. A community where the host doesn't have confidence in what they are doing doesn't mean that you're not evolving. It doesn't mean that you're not workshopping, doesn't mean that you are not staying open and staying curious and adapting. But the more that you try to get people to engage from a place of fear and a place that tends to come off as weakness, sadly, it's going to get even worse. It's not going to get any better. What's going to get better is getting clearer and crystallizing. Best year ever. One thing that could be kind of interesting to do is to go to your members. And I personally would do it more one on one. If you're at that point where people are like, not exactly sure what the culture of the community is and ask the question, nothing to do with the community. What's something that you want to be able to do a year from now that you can't do today? Who's somebody you want to know? As you think about what would make your best year ever in the next 12 months, what do some of those things look like? First of all, that's a really fun conversation. Second of all, it doesn't come from a place of weakness. It comes from a place of strength. And third, you're going to learn something. So you're workshopping in every single one of those conversations. And that is how you unlock growth. That is how you unlock value for people. But if you come from a place of weakness and fear, it just devolves and spirals down faster and it's just not necessary. You don't have to do that. You don't have to be apologetic. You're, this is not a party that you hosted that nobody showed up at. This is a new community that you are workshopping and you are evolving the value that you're gonna create for those founding members and all the other people that you are going to bring and that your founding members are going to bring into the community as well. That's why the place to focus, number one. The next thing to do is go deep on the transitions. Go deep on the best year ever. Ask these questions. What will come out? The other side is something truly valuable to not just those members, but everybody else that you want to build the community with going forward. I'm Gina Bianchini. Thanks for tuning in. This is People Magic. Thank you for being a part of People Magic. If you want more of a deep dive in any of these topics, but certainly having the framework of People Magic profit, head on over to the website. The link is in the show notes. Have your own burning question about creating People Magic. Well, I want to answer it. So here's what you're going to do. You're going to just drop your question in the review section, wherever you're listening to this podcast, and keep tuning in.