Latest / Build With Becky: Smart Strategies To Grow Your Community-Driven Business / How I'd Test a Community Idea Before Building a Membership

Transcript

How I'd Test a Community Idea Before Building a Membership · Build With Becky: Smart Strategies To Grow Your Community-Driven Business

• 0:00
  If I wanted to validate a new community idea, I actually wouldn't start with a membership.
• 0:05
  I'd start with something like a challenge, a sprint, a beta cohort, like a small 4, 6, 8 week type thing.
• 0:13
  Really like any kind of time bound experience.
• 0:16
  Because with a community you're making a promise, you're like making a promise with your people that this thing is going to exist, that we're going to keep going.
• 0:26
  And what you're looking for, what you're actually looking for is validation to understand people's behavior.
• 0:32
  Do they actually want to come together on this topic?
• 0:35
  Purpose, goal, transformation, community, whatever it is that you're like helping bring people together to do.
• 0:42
  Do they actually want to come together to do this?
• 0:45
  And are they going to show up?
• 0:46
  Are they going to engage?
• 0:48
  Do they get results?
• 0:49
  Are they actually connecting with one another?
• 0:51
  Are they talking to each other?
• 0:52
  And so you want to validate this in like a smaller sort of contained model that you can test for a period of time and then end it and then analyze the results and decide like, okay, does it make
• 1:04
  sense to keep going?
• 1:05
  Do we want to shift this?
• 1:07
  We did this recently with a client.
• 1:09
  So she was, she's interested in a membership, but she had designed sort of like a program type experience.
• 1:14
  Like, okay, I have this curriculum idea.
• 1:17
  It's going to be an eight week curriculum.
• 1:18
  So right now, currently she's halfway through the eight week program and she realized that a community model is, is actually going to make a lot more sense for her people based on the kinds of questions they're asking, what
• 1:32
  they're looking for, how they're connecting with one another, how things are evolving through the lessons that they're learning every week and the progress that they're making.
• 1:41
  It's a long term transformation.
• 1:43
  It becomes a community of practice over time.
• 1:45
  And so it made sense to start it as an eight week program, as a test.
• 1:50
  But now we know, okay, we, a membership is going to make more sense here, community project is going to make more sense here.
• 1:57
  So she's in the middle of the program.
• 1:58
  We've already decided this and now we're in like pivot mode to flip from a program to a membership.
• 2:04
  So her program, people at the end of the program are going to have the founding member opportunity to join the membership and then we're planning a membership launch.
• 2:12
  This is one of my favorite ways to do this because we've got proof of concept, we have a solid programming strategy, we have curriculum, and we have a great start on like who, who founding members might be and
• 2:23
  what they care about and what they're interested in.
• 2:25
  And of course, like, because we're halfway through the program, we're getting feedback from them like, hey, let me know what you think about this.
• 2:31
  Like, what are you interested in next?
• 2:32
  Like, where do you feel like you need more support?
• 2:34
  Like, because you have this group, this that you can validate with your founding people, you can start to understand, like, how should you design this community experience so that it's going to be really valuable so that people want
• 2:46
  to be a part of it, so that they're willing to stay stick around.
• 2:50
  One of the biggest mistakes people make with community design and community launches is that they don't have a clear enough purpose or premise or what is this community actually for?
• 3:00
  And I think when we create this like validation concept in 30 days type experience, a challenge, whatever it looks like we're able to really discern, okay, what is the goal here?
• 3:12
  What is the transformation we're helping serve, what is the practice we're coming together to do?
• 3:17
  And what are the commonalities of these people?
• 3:21
  People who, who's coming into this?
• 3:22
  Who are we attracting?
• 3:23
  And we start to like really get clear on what is this experience we're curating.
• 3:29
  Because especially in 2026, you can't just be like, oh, I'm creating a community for entrepreneurial moms.
• 3:36
  Like, that's just not enough.
• 3:37
  There's a thousand of those out there.
• 3:39
  It needs to be really specific.
• 3:40
  You need to be helping them with a very specific challenge.
• 3:44
  And I don't just mean like niche, niche, niche.
• 3:46
  I mean like what kind of experience are you curating?
• 3:50
  What kind of ways are people going to be supported here?
• 3:53
  What is the frameworks and resources that you're providing people?
• 3:57
  What kind of roadmaps are available?
• 3:59
  How are you handling personalization?
• 4:02
  Because everything needs personalization these days to be sticky and for people to engage.
• 4:07
  They want to feel like this thing was designed for me.
• 4:10
  So consider this like first experience.
• 4:13
  Even if your goal is like, I want to launch a membership, I want to launch a community.
• 4:17
  Start small with curating this one time experience that you can learn from because that's going to give you the data you need to make a really informed decision about how you structure your membership.
• 4:28
  And that's going to make your membership or your community idea much more successful.
• 4:33
  The most successful membership owners and community builders I know started with some kind of challenge or program before they built their membership.
• 4:45
  I think that, you know, a membership is a big commitment.
• 4:48
  Building a community is a big commitment.
• 4:50
  And you have to know that these are the people you want to bring together, that you know what they care about, how to connect them, what is valuable, the frameworks that actually are effective because you've done the work
• 5:04
  before.
• 5:05
  Like memberships are not usually where people start.
• 5:08
  And if you are saying like, hey, you know what, I have this great membership idea and I really want to begin it that way, that's cool, but I recommend you do some sort of like boot camp program experience
• 5:19
  to kick it off.
• 5:20
  Even if you say this is going to be a membership, I'm kicking it off with a bootcamp so that you're at least getting that time bound experience and getting people in the door, you're creating urgency, you're getting in
• 5:31
  founding members that can help you shape it and really like co create what this community experience is.
• 5:38
  If you are sitting on an idea, you don't know if it'll work and you're just kind of like exploring different program concepts, different community concepts, how you want to bring people together.
• 5:49
  I just want you to sit and try to think about, well, what would it look like if it was a 30 day experience or less?
• 5:55
  What would it look like if I was just designing a one off experience to bring people together?
• 6:00
  How would I do that?
• 6:01
  That's a great place to start.
• 6:02
  Number one, from like a mental model, journaling aspect.
• 6:07
  Number two, if you really want to take it seriously and you want to design a curated like beta program the way our client did that I discussed with you earlier, reach out to us.
• 6:17
  You can book a free discovery call in the show notes.
• 6:21
  This is something we can talk to you about, like how do we design a 30 day validation plan, something that can give you real data that then we can design a solid membership strategy from.
• 6:32
  All right, if you're just getting started and you're thinking about what does my membership strategy look like, I hope this was really helpful.
• 6:40
  If you have programs that you've been running and you're thinking about launching your membership, I want you to look back at that program data and think about how that can inform your community design because that's really going to
• 6:50
  help too.
• 6:51
  So book a discovery call with my team.
• 6:53
  If we do a strategy with you, you'll definitely be able to bring all of this data so we can make data driven decisions together.
• 6:59
  And I would love to chat with you.
• 7:02
  Okay, talk to you in the next one.