How to plan a community launch, relaunch, or membership push

Tatiana Figueiredo: So we’re talking about planning a community launch. We’ll talk more about what launch actually means. But spoiler alert, it can be a launch from scratch, but it can also be a community you’re relaunching. It could also be like just doing a membership push in an existing community. So it’s any like kind of stunt that you wanna pull in order to kind of create urgency and bring new members into your community and also like try some new fun things to get new people to know about what you’re building.

I’m Tatiana, a community business strategist. I’m a coach, a teacher, and I work with all community founders. I run something called the Business of Community. And through that we run B A C B, which is a community and a course for people who wanna build profitable community businesses. And a lot of our community members are here because this workshop is actually the first workshop for what we’re calling launch camp within the community.

So we decided to make this one, this one public. So Ruby’s in the community, Sandra’s in the community, a few others will will be joining us also, Diane Avil, shout out all of you guys. So what we’re talking about today is three different things. One, we’re gonna do some vision brainstorming, like for what the vision of your community is. And then we’re gonna do a very specific tactical eight week launch plan. And we’re gonna talk about all the different actions that you can do in the eight weeks leading up to a launch.

And then I’ll tell you more about joining Launch Camp. And if you wanna go a little bit deeper what that could look like within this community. Okay. But let’s start with the vision brainstorming. So if you get my newsletter, you probably saw that I was nerding out on Adrian Marie Brown’s work this week. I really, really love this quote in particular, which is I believe that all organizing is science fiction, that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.

I really think this is true for communities. What we’re doing when we’re bringing people together is we’re kind of creating like this little tiny microcosm of the ideal world that we wanna see. And it really doesn’t matter if we’re talking about running outside or if we’re talking about writing together or whatever, or hockey, whatever the, the community is is still an opportunity for us to create this like potential new world that we want just by connecting with each other and just by having the, the, the connection of those people in the room.

And I think that a lot of us don’t bring this visioning and this kind of language into the communities that we’re building because it’s really scary and it almost feels a little bit like, like you’re bringing your ego into it because you’re saying like, this is how this community is changing the world. So I think we need a little bit of practice in visioning and thinking about the future in, in this way.

So that’s what the question that you we’re trying to answer here is how would the world be different if the commu if your community were wildly successful? Don’t answer that yet because I find that whenever I ask a question like this or like, what is your biggest dream for your community? Or like, what, what is like the wildest, biggest thing that you can think of for your community? A lot of the answers I get is like, oh, it’d be great if the community covered like my cup of coffee or it’d be great if like we had enough members that didn’t complain or it’d be great if like, something like that is not wild and it’s not huge.

So I think it’s the type of thing that we need practice in. So the actual exercise that we’re gonna do is a, is a little bit more gradual. So I got this from a coach that I had a few years ago, Rin Kani, and instead of thinking about like already like this big wild successful vision, we’re gonna just brainstorm it with a wouldn’t it be nice in front of of we’re thinking what we’re thinking for for the community. So we can start really small with this and then, but I’m gonna ask you to like brainstorm as many of them as you can, getting bigger with with each one. So I’m gonna give you a few examples. So for example, wouldn’t it be nice if a community member recruited one new member to join? Wouldn’t it be nice if five people joined the email list this week? Wouldn’t it be nice if we made X amount of money, whatever a big amount of money is for from this launch or a medium amount of money, whatever feels good to you.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had like a big famous person in your niche as a guest speaker in the community? So you can see these are like getting bigger and bigger as you write them out. And then you can go a little bit bigger. So this gets closer to like the wildly successful part of it and like the role that your community has in bringing connection to the world.

So wouldn’t it be nice if we were able to shift what leadership in tech education parenting looks and feels like? So wouldn’t it be nice if your community was able to do that? Like what, what’s a statement that would be nice for your community? You’re not committing to doing it. You’re not saying it’s a goal, but wouldn’t it be nice if you were a part in doing something like that?

And then the next one is, wouldn’t it be nice if we were able to close the income inequality gap by x percent nationally? So maybe you have a community that is involved with that kind of work or a community that’s about careers or training people. This would be kind of a goal to go after if that was what you were doing.

And then the last one, wouldn’t it be nice if Rihanna, Brene Brown, Barack Obama joined the community? So again, I put this like wild example here, not because it’s funny but it is funny but it’s really so that it’s really because we need to practice thinking things that are bigger and the point of practicing thinking these things is not that they’re gonna happen. It’s not that Rihanna’s gonna join your community though, I don’t know, maybe you have a community for up and coming beauty company owners and maybe Rihanna would be interested.

The point of it is not like what you are saying it wouldn’t it be nice to, the point of it is like to just have these thoughts and to think bigger because the more you think these thoughts, the more you get used to it and the easier it is to do the smaller things too. So that’s kind of the idea of doing this exercise. It’s just a brainstorming exercise and the idea is to go bigger.

So take three minutes to do this on your own and then we’re gonna connect this back to your next launch and we’ll we’ll talk about that. Take three minutes to do this first. Does anyone wanna share anything that came up for them? Anything that seems very not probable, seems very probable. Any reactions that you had to writing that about what you’re doing with your community?

Ruby: I’ll show you. Um, I put it into three buckets. Wor like the world, like the impact on the world, like thinking big and the impact on like individual families and then like the impact on each person. So I’m an alcohol freedom coach if you guys don’t know me. And so I would love to move and have a ripple effect on the whole world in some way with this alcohol-free movement. And it starts.

And then for family, I said you could have a ripple effect on your children, like your whole family unit could improve by, you know, stopping drinking and then empower women, specifically women I work with to just live big with self-compassion and maybe get outside their comfort zone.

So I’m hoping to find a community or have a community, women that are looking to find themselves their, so their confidence self-worth. And I would love to have Mel Robbins and Oprah join my community. By The way, does it feel to say that out loud? I actually, I kind of pictured it, you know, like I went, huh, maybe I’ll reach out to Mel Robbins or Oprah and just ask them and then when, I mean when my community’s up and just, just ask them why not. Hey. Yeah. Cool.

Tatiana Figueiredo: Anyone else wanna share what came up?

Unnamed Participant: Yes, I can go here. So I’m working on a, a new community called Building Public University. And so the whole idea is allowing people to essentially tap into what makes them unique and create content that really drives their business forward. So kind of the, the, the, the long shot that that I’m saying is, wouldn’t it be nice if Build and Public University could overtake a like y Combinator as kind of the primary model for creating startups?

So as opposed to focusing on like, you know, who’s getting the most investments from, you know, these like top investors who kind of just have the name recognition instead, it’s all about building businesses that are actually like based on who the entrepreneurs are and, and what they’ve experienced and sharing that experience with the world as opposed to just always being about the, the funding models. So that’s, that’s what I’m shooting towards.

Tatiana Figueiredo: I Love it. One more. Anyone else? Cameron.

Cameron: There I go. Yeah, I have a community, of course creators. So I throw, wouldn’t it be nice if my community had five course launches a quarter from community members that can be celebrated, they could be like pushed out through the socials and people kind of make noise and like look like you kinda like bang the pot and the little apparatus together like someone’s done something. Yay.

Tatiana Figueiredo: That’s a great one. Yeah, I think having these types of goals that are member facing I think make a lot of sense in their really good metrics for us to have in, in in our communities because it really gets down to like that impact piece and the like the, the big vision that you wanna create that only happens if your, if your members are kind of fulfilling their growth journey through, through your community. So I I love that framing.

Cool. So we’re gonna go back to the, let’s see, here we go. So many screens. Um, so, okay, so now go back to this question. After having done the, wouldn’t it be nice exercise and I, I want you to spend more time thinking about this for yourself. That was only three minutes. But really think about like communities are fractals meaning that like you are, you’re the center of it, but then like a few people join and then a few more people join.

So it’s kind of like the butterfly effect, like every action that you take has a little bit of an effect on lots of different people and that kind of shifts things that can shift things for a lot of people. So I’m not advocating for like huge growth and let’s take over the world with these communities, but this, this type of growth is different but it’s just as meaningful as Y Combinator or Elon Musk type uber type growth. Like, it’s a different kind of like very fractal growth.

So I, I encourage you to like really sit with this question and think more about it because you’ll see where your answer to this question comes into lots of different pieces of how you’re gonna market and sell your community. I think it’s the most genuine way that you can talk about the value that, that you offer. And there’s a way to do it where you’re not, you’re not doing it like a Silicon Valley, like we’re all gonna change the world. Like it’s, it’s about you telling like what’s possible from your perspective and inviting people into that possibility. And that doesn’t have to be huge to be very impactful.

Cool. So now we’re gonna move into like the core of what we’re gonna talk about here. There’s a lot of content in this section. So first I’m gonna give you an overview of how I think about breaking down the launch and then we’re gonna go week by week on one way that you can structure the launch and one set of actions that you can take every week leading up to the launch. The point of splitting this into eight weeks is that that’s how you get to have a very calm launch period and have things together and not feel like you can’t sleep. And having these like writing emails as you’re sending them and like fixing things as they’re breaking while you’re launching them.

I find that eight weeks is a really good time period. If you have more than eight weeks, that’s even better. But it’s a good way for you to kind of like let things settle and plan things step-by-step and improve.

So some principles that I follow, what I do is I pick one focus for launching per week. So you’ll see like each week that I’m gonna tell you has a focus, has a theme and the idea is to like get that one thing done for sure that week. And it might be that you have other tasks that week also, but focusing on one primary thing that you’re working on each week.

The next one is plan each task ahead of time. So we’re, after seeing this plan, you can do kind of like a broader planning and then what I do is before the beginning of each, at the beginning of each week I go in and I plan each thing that I need to do that week so that when I’m actually doing the task, I’m just doing the task and I’m not like planning. It’s basically like taking more time than you think to plan ahead. It makes everything a lot easier when it comes time to actually do it.

The next one is through this whole process. Whenever you can take your member’s perspective instead of, for example, taking my perspective or what you’ve seen other communities do, think about it first from the lens of your member and what they already know about you, who they are, the types of problems that they’re facing whenever you see it from there. That should trump anything that I tell you. Anything that you read on the internet, anything that you’ve seen other people do it, make them kind of your guiding light instead of anything else.

The next one is through this process. The idea is like if this is the first time you’re launching is the third time you’re launching whatever the idea is to build this as a process that you can improve later on and reuse. So make sure you’re documenting things that you’re doing so that next time you’re, you’re like being kind to your future self and you’re writing yourself notes and you know what to do next time in, in a better way. So don’t think of it as like a one-off.

Every email that you write you can resend again everything that you, every piece of copy that you’re writing, think, think about ways to recycling it ’cause that’s how you kind of build a system that you can go back to later and you don’t have to like constantly be reinventing the wheel.

And then la lastly, I talk about this a lot. It’s really important to just let go of perfection. I know everyone hears this a lot from me and from a lot of people, but it’s worth repeating because everything is not gonna go perfect. Everyone is not gonna be at the exact right place in your sequence and all your automations are working and everyone is joining at the time that you thought they were gonna join. Things are just kind of not gonna go perfectly the way that that we imagine them, but they can go really well despite it not being perfect.

A thing that I like to bring up a lot about communities specifically is that your community requires you to show up imperfectly because that’s what gives them permission to show up imperfectly and that’s what makes them connect with each other. So with anything that you do, it’s okay that people see the seams, it’s okay that it’s not totally perfect. The idea here is for you to show up as yourself and that’s much better than trying to like create a very polished perfect thing for your launch.

So before I talk about the week by week thing, I wanted to just say a quick note about what Launch Camp is because this is the workshop one for Launch camp. Launch Camp is a program that we’re doing within B A C B, which is the the course and community that I lead. And it, it’s basically because I realized that like a lot of people in the community were in a very similar stage. I e we were all planning launches for like September or October. July and August tend to be kind of slower months. So we were all kind of doing the same things and there was a bunch of new content that I wanted to build for the community.

So I kind of just decided to do this within the community in the context of this launch camp. So it’s kind of like a cohort, but it’s much more chill because it’s summer and I know that everyone doesn’t wanna be on the computer all the time and it includes a bunch of, so everything that we’re gonna talk about here every week there’s a theme and there’s a weekly workshop for each of those themes that includes like instructions on how exactly you’re gonna do that and templates and things like that. And then we’re also starting to schedule a bunch of member hosted co-working feedback sessions, venting and a lot of other things that are, that people you can help each other with.

And you’ll see like in the, a bunch of the weeks, this will come in handy. And then by joining Launch Camp you’re also joining the community. So you get membership to B A C B for 12 months, which includes all our lessons, it includes office hours and everything else. The reason I’m mentioning this now, I’m not like, I’m not fully pitching b a c B to you all yet.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because some of what I’m gonna mention, you might have questions like, how am I actually gonna do this? It might be a little bit overwhelming to kind of go through all of the eight weeks all at once right now. And I’m just telling you launch camp, if you do wanna go deeper within this community, you do have that option.

If you’re, if you’re interested in going deeper, we have some of our members here so you can chat with them in the chat and see, get their, their feedback on it. If you are interested, um, you can go to the website and apply to join us if you apply, I’m gonna talk more about this at the end. But if you apply and join before our official kickoff for launch camp, which is next Tuesday, you do get a little discount and you also get two bonus months within the community. Anyway.

So let’s start. So we’re gonna start, we’re gonna go week by week. I’m gonna introduce the theme for the week. I’m gonna talk a little bit about what it means and like how you should think about it. And then I’m gonna tell you like a set of actions that you should have for for that week.

You’ll get like an outline of this after with the recording. The people who are in launch camp will get like a more detailed plan because it follows the the launch camp plan. But everyone will get kind of an outline of this. So feel free to screenshot it if you’d like, but you’ll get some of this in the, in the outline.

Okay, so goals and planning is week one. So we’re technically in week one. You can consider next week, week one. And the idea here is to like get your ducks in a row and understand what you’re actually doing and like what launch is for you. So the first thing to do is like really kind of sit with yourself and reflect on like what you’re doing here.

So that’s why we started with these like big vision questions. How does this fit into like your business, your community, everything else that you’re doing. So the sit with yourself, think about these reflection questions. What does launch mean for me? What are the skills I need to build to make this successful? What are the strengths I already have that I can lean on for this launch?

For example, if you’re a really good writer, write more emails instead of like posting more videos on Instagram. So things like that. And then what is my big vision and how can this launch be a step towards that? So starting from what we talked about earlier, like what’s your big vision? What are we, what are we going towards?

Like what’s the point of even doing this? This launch would be a small step towards that big thing and reflect for yourself on what that could mean and how you can make this the, the most helpful small step towards that, towards that big vision. So these are the reflection questions and these are the actions that I recommend for your first week.

So set a realistic goal. It could be like a revenue goal or it could be number of members, however you wanna do it. And then also set, set a stretch goal for, for this. So like what would be something that like a number of members or a revenue goal that you would love to hit for this launch. I also, I didn’t put it here, but you should also set your launch date. So your launch date could be like when you’re doing a live event about it, it could be like if your community opens and closes at a certain time, it could be like your enrollment period, but that should be one of your actions for the first week also. And then list out every single asset that you may need to build and assign it to a week.

So we’ll talk more about this in the other weeks, but just write out everything that you need to build between now and when you’re launching. You have two months to actually build it right now. You just plan it and then like in detail, plan out what these next eight weeks are gonna, I’ll say in advance your plan is not gonna go according to plan.

It’s just you’re gonna get behind some of the writing weeks, at least for me are really tough to like actually write all the stuff that you said are gonna, that you’re gonna write. That’s okay because the point is to always go back to the plan and have something to shift. If you don’t have a plan at all, then you’re like, it’s much easier to get discouraged than to kind of like let go of everything. So these are the actions for the first week. Let’s move on to week two.

So week two is a big one. This is a fa about defining what you’re actually selling, what your community offer is and how much you’re gonna charge. And this is early on because you might need to like validate this and do a little bit of testing as you’re doing the other weekly focuses also.

So I’m quickly gonna go through this. This is something that I have a workshop for and if you apply to join B A C B, that’s the workshop that you get access to. Even if you decide not to join, that’s a workshop you get access to. So I suggest, or just email me and I can send it to you. This is a workshop that is about like exactly this, like what your community offer is and what that means about your price also.

But just a quick recap on what it is a community offer includes things in, uh, experiences, things you’re offering in four different categories. So it’s your community platform, learning resources, events, and then wildcard something that is like not even community related but that is included in what you’re offering people.

And there are four different types of community businesses. So depending on which of these different types your primary community business kind of lives in, your offer will change based on that. And that’s what the, that workshop I mentioned is about. So the four different types are membership communities, evergreen course and office hours cohort, cohort based course and group coaching.

And the, it’s important to know what your primary one is, even if you’re gonna do multiple of these because your price point really depends on which one you’re leading with here, spoiler alert here is the, the pricing depending on which one you’re, you’re leading with. So if you’re doing group coaching, you should be charging like higher group coaching rates. The ratios here are the learning to con the connection to learning ratio.

So member com membership communities for example, have a lot more connection than learning, but all of them include both connection and learning in in some way. But anyway, go to that workshop and it’ll tell you we talk a little bit more about pricing in that workshop. Any question so far? I’ve been talking a lot.

You can put your question in the chat and I’ll talk about the actions for week two in the meantime. So the actions that you’re gonna do in week two is pick the primary type of community business that you’re building out of those four and then brainstorm what to offer in community platform learning resources, events and wildcard for the specific type that you picked.

And then start narrowing the member, the member experiences that you can actually deliver. And then depending on where you are with your community, this is also the time to make a validation plan on how you can make sure that what you’re offering is what you’re, your members want. Any questions? You can raise your hand or put them in the chat.

Cool. You will. Well I don’t know if anyone’s raising their physical hand. Joseline good, how are you? Thanks for joining us.

Joseline: Of course, of course indeed. Arielle’s late. Had another meeting. General question, have you seen successful transition from one particular format or category of a community type to another pros and cons? Anything around that that you could speak on?

Tatiana Figueiredo: Yeah, great question. I think it’s really common to see shifting from like one main type to another. And that’s actually what I’m doing in this community. Like we started as very much a cohort-based course because that I didn’t have a big audience and that was like a good, like, it was like there’s content here. You don’t need a big community in order for people to buy into it because they’re coming for the learning and for the small group coaching and everything else.

And then as the course has grown now it’s becoming much more of a, of a membership community. So the way that we market it now is moving more towards membership community and cohort based courses. Kind of like just a part of it that you get. So you get like the membership for a year and that’s just kind of a, a part of it.

I recommend going in that direction and not in the opposite, uh, it’s easier to go in that direction than in the opposite direction because membership communities, as you saw, the price point that people are used to are is a lot lower. So if you start at a lower price point, then you have to kind of climb up. But if you start with something that is like more value and more expensive, then it’s easier for you to kind of back into a more expensive membership community than it is the other way around. Does that answer your question?

Joseline: Yes. And another question that, that I had, which is what’s the progression? And you’re saying start with the, your platinum product and then offer similar to Tesla, give the highest one first and then that underwrites all the other ones so that you can provide more value to a different demographic or a different audience. So yeah, if I understand that correctly, that’s what you were saying.

Tatiana Figueiredo: Yeah, I find that the best approach because then you’re getting people who are really interested in what you’re doing instead of, like, for example, if you start with the free community, it’s not really telling. And if you start with a free community and you wanna eventually sell them something really expensive, the free community is not actually telling you, you don’t actually have your actual audience yet.

So you’re not, you’re building based on a bunch of different people versus if you start with like something expensive, you might have to do sales, it might be less people buying at this at first, but at least you know like, no, these people care because they paid the $2,000 or whatever it is for, for the course.

So I find it easier to go from that and easier to meet your people if you start with the, with the higher end and then you’re being compensated for building out all the content and building out all the community. You’re not starting from, from scarcity. So, so I think that’s a, I usually recommend that approach in most cases. If you have a really big audience that’s different, but if you are still building your audience, I think that’s a, a better approach.

Joseline: I have another question, but I could wait until later on.

Tatiana Figueiredo: Later. Cool. Yeah, we’ll we’re gonna keep going and then we’ll have a, we’ll have a bunch of time at the end for questions also.

So week three is partnerships. So I think of partnerships of anything, anything that like gets you in front of someone else’s audience. I kind of shove into the category of partnerships. So some of the examples here, so if you’re making content for an existing community, so hosting an event for them, writing something in their community, becoming an expert in that community, that’s a really good partnership.

If you are podcast guests on somebody else’s podcast, their audience is hearing from you. And that’s a place where you can talk about your launch, build up your, your audience that way, submitting your, if, if you really like writing like this is where like your preferences also come in. Think about like what your strengths already are. If you’re already.

Writing a newsletter, is there a place where you can submit what you’re writing for to be featured in different places? You can also like partner with a different creator that has like a slightly complimentary thing and co-host events, events together.

And then the last one is like just meeting other people who are doing similar things to you and who have complimentary audiences and just interacting with them publicly on the social media platforms that you’re in. The point of partnerships is not just to be creating content online, the point of it is like you want people to be listening. So who is it that you should interact with in order to get in front of different audiences that you have if you are just getting started, if you have a small audience, I find partnerships the easiest way to get in front of the people who could be really good community members for you.

It’s just the most useful way to like get some credibility from someone and figure out a way to, to, to invite people to join what, what you’re building also. So the actions for week three are to make a list of everywhere members already hang out, write individual notes to potential partners. So don’t spam them, but like dmm them if that’s their preferred thing in, in their platform. Like treat them like one by one instead of like trying to like spray and pray schedule events and interviews to coincide with your launch.

So again, this is to support the launch that you’re doing. I like to make everything kind of evergreen if you can, but it does help if you’re scheduling a bunch of different things around the time when you’re launching, which is why it’s important to kind of set your dates early on and be approaching it with that mindset here. And then don’t forget to follow up because not a lot of people will answer your first email, but they will answer your second or or your third.

So the follow up is a, is a requirement here. And again, this comes earlier in the process in week three because you’ll need some weeks to kind of get these settled and to plan these and to figure these out. But if you focus this week on like making your full list of who your partners should be and reaching out to them and like setting up some of the events, then you’ll be set up for, for launch later on.

We’re gonna go a little faster because I don’t have a lot of time. So week four is about like your landing page and design and, and visuals this week and the following week are the ones that are gonna unexpectedly take longer than you think. So the purpose of your landing page is to craft the invitation that you’re might making to new potential members to communicate that vision that we were talking about.

And also, this is important and it’s unique to community. You have to tell your people what’s expected of them when they join your community. So somewhere on your landing page there should be something like, really want you to join, we’re excited and you’re welcome, but if you do, here’s what’s gonna be required of you. I say this a lot and this is really important for all of your marketing because people should feel like they’re also contributing something and they have to contribute something in order to be in community. They shouldn’t be, they shouldn’t feel like your they’re butler.

So the actions for this week is to write landing page copy, edit with a friend, pick a design direction or a template. Again, keep this simple if you’re just getting started. And then build or edit your landing page. So if you already have a landing page, this is about like tweaking it for this specific launch.

Okay, week five kind of goes along with the landing page because this is about email copy. Email copy is probably the most useful. Email sequences are the most useful thing that you can do for your launch ’cause you’re speaking directly to your people in their inbox. So once you’ve gotten them into your list from the partnerships, from the events that you do once they’re in there, your email copies really what’s gonna invite them to, to, to join your community and tell, tell them more about what you do.

The guidelines, just some quick guidelines on how I think about this. You can, you know, don’t reinvent the wheel. You can echo a lot of the content that’s in your landing page and you should also add a lot of stories about you and or the members in your community.

And these stories should really kind of rhyme with what your big vision is that we talked about much earlier on. So what are like the examples of the possibility that you wanna create that, that you can tell them that are very kind of tactical and very specific.

And the last one is just be yourself and be weird. People really appreciate it. The more I, I like have to remind myself to do this more because every time I do, I get a ton of replies on the emails that I do something that I’m like, that was really weird, why did I do that? And then like, that’s the one that people are like replying to. So yeah, push yourself to be weird.

And that’s where like having a friend to edit with really helps because they can tell you if you’re like crossing a line or if like they don’t get it. I think it’s like a, it’s a requirement in community also be yourself, be weird.

And then the actions for this week is to collect stories of possibility again, from yourself, from your community members. Write drafts of like five to six emails to start and then get feedback from a friend. And then once you have the drafts, just move them into your email service provider and make them your, your sequence in there.

So week six is planning your launch event. So a lot of the, a lot of what, like this is like an example of a very small like launch event for the summer community for when we do this event again in September and October, it’ll be part of a, a actual launch.

And it’s, there are two types of people that we all sell to. They’re the people who like will discover you on a random Wednesday and they’ll be like, oh, I get what this person is doing, I need to like buy this and join them right now. That’s like, I don’t know, I don’t know what the percentages are on this, but I’d say that’s like 25% of people at least of like the pe the people in my audience.

And then the vast majority of people, like 75%, they’ll find you, they’ll read all your stuff and then they’ll kind of like hang around until there’s like a reason for them to like take an action. So that reason might be that they’re like, for example, gonna do a launch and they don’t know how to do it and then they join.

Or it could be a reason that you give them, which is like, come to this event and at this event there’s like a direct invitation for you to join this. So you have to make sure that you’re thinking about those two types of people and know that like most of your people are gonna need like a little bit of an extra push to, to join.

So even if what you’re doing is evergreen and people can join at any point, a launch event can be like a good push to get those people who are just like, I’m not sure and should I join? I don’t know.

Here’s some just like broad ideas on what that launch event could be. So you can do a workshop like this one and then pitch your community. You can do a summit where you invite speakers. This could be a good kind of partnership thing that you also do.

We’re thinking of doing this for this community for our launch next time because this is a side thing. But I think like it would be cool to like not only promote this community, but promote all the other communities that are launching at the same time. So that’s something we’re secretly thinking about.

It could be like a retreat, like a, a virtual retreat where if you’re a coach for example, you’re doing some of your work with people in and calling it a virtual retreat. An open house is something that I’ve seen done really well.

This is where you invite your existing members to like talk about your community and you invite prospective members to that same event and your existing members kind of do the, the, the pitching for you. I’ve, I’ve been to a couple of those and they’re really fun.

Um, and then the fifth one is like one of the other events that we talked about, like a partner event with other people, anything else that.

You’re already planning that could also be what your launch event is. So the actions for this week is Saturday date and time for your event. Pick a platform to take your RSVP, craft the content and your pitch, make slides and other visuals and then practice with a friend.

Okay, cool. So we’ll just finish out the next two weeks and then we can take some questions. So week seven is community ops and automations. So this is where you’re setting up your community platform, connecting your payment, email course platforms, any other tools that you’re gonna use. This is where you’re like bringing it together and building any operation system that you need.

Don’t spend too much time on this if you’re just getting started because a lot of it will change based on how your members actually act when they get into your community. So you just need enough to kind of be on top of things relatively fine. And then you can like build this up as your, your members come in. So don’t worry about building a big, don’t worry, don’t spend too much time on this week. Basically this is a good week to kind of catch up on everything else.

And then week eight, this is where you focus on your member onboarding. So this is where you’re thinking about what it’s gonna look like once people like say yes, I do wanna join your community. What, what are the next things that happen there? So the actions this week are to write emails, test your community platform and then schedule your welcome events. So again, events after people have joined your community, what does that look like?

And then after you’ve done those eight weeks of planning, you should come to week nine and 10. Very relaxed, very calm, everything in its place. All you have to do is actually host the events, hang out with your people, answer questions for people and just be present with the people who might actually join your community. So these are the actions for weeks nine and 10 in this theoretical eight week launch planning plan.

So this again where you host partner events, you can start your email sequence here where you’re, you’re gonna start talking about what you’re doing and invite people to join. You can post on social media, hopefully you have a lot of that already planned and ready if you’re gonna, if that’s gonna be part of your strategy. And then you start promoting your launch event as your main thing that you’re talking about in your emails.

And then throughout this time, I think it’s also really important to connect with members one-on-one, whether or not you have an application for your community. And depending on the size of the community, I think it’s really important to kind of identify whether your community is gonna be for people, for certain people or not. So I think it’s important to connect with them one-on-one if you can before they join the community.

I’m gonna pause here for again, we’ll send an outline of all those actions to you so that you have them. And if you’re in B A C B, that’s gonna be a part of the whole launch camp thing that you’re gonna get. So you’ll get the, the planning document for everyone. Yes, there will be a recording and we’ll we’ll send it out. Cool.

So I’d love to, I’ll answer the question that was in there. I’m gonna answer that question first and then we’ll talk a little bit more about EAC b. If anyone has any other questions, put that in the chat also, what are your thoughts around more social community based on an e-commerce brand slash fan club? Can you say more? Yeah, thank you. Can you say more about that? Yes.

Questioner: So I’m working out with the client that is has, it’s based off of two dogs that teach science. They’re actual dogs. It’s, and I just helped them launch a a stuffy, which is a stuffed animal. It was a pre-order. So we pretty much sold stuff that didn’t exist. So that was pretty cool. So then now I’m like, okay, you need a community to foster this. These people that really love the brand and I’m putting together all their podcasts have a group for that. And so most of the

Communities that I’ve been learning about are all based off of like educational kind of stuff and maybe like gardening, which is fun, but this is more like really, really fun and kind of like community help, helping support each other. We are gonna introduce like trainers that come in and help people train their dogs and animals and cats and stuff like that. So there’s two elements. One element of the question goes back to how you were looking at the pricing model. And then the other is just like, how do you go about thinking about pricing for like a social type of club like that? Does that make sense?

Tatiana Figueiredo: Yeah. So, okay, the where I would start with that is the growth because you don’t wanna build something where like the two dogs for example are like the heads of the community and everyone just wants to talk to the dog scientist to whatever. I don’t know how it works. Yeah, Like you, you wanna build something where people are connecting to each other. And that’s where I go back to the growth journey. So who are these people when they, why are these people following these dogs? Who are they when they show up? And then like what do they wanna become? And then what can you kind of, what can you do to help them along that journey? And that’s like you build the community experience based on like what you can do to help people on that journey to connect with each other. That’s where it would start.

It sounds like they, like, it sounds like an opportunity to look into that evergreen plus office hours option because it’s like an educational thing, right? Like ’cause they’re coming to learn from the dogs or it’s just more fun. There’s a, there’s a variety of different layers to this because it’s a social media profile and if you set a dog account you, you’re just gonna get a bunch of, it’s, it’s a phenomenal interesting thing.

Questioner: So they actually, to add more context, ’cause I know there’s some other phenomenal questions here, but they actually, there’s a book that they’re releasing and the book is pretty much a world where they’re texting the dog and the dog is texting back. So I set up a, a space where every week they get a new chapter of this texting exchange and there’s an audio version of that. So I set it up so that every week there’s a new post about this text and people talk about it. So there’s some, some engagement and then there’s another group that they’re listening to the audio of that text exchange and they’re talking about it and there’s a podcast that they’re actually talking to real scientists and then they can talk about that. So this is all pre-order that we’re setting up and then once the book is there and readily available, then we’ll sell the book. But we’ll already have testimonials of people that have already listened to it step by step and week by week. So it’s a little, it’s fun and engaging and there is some learning component to it, but it’s, it’s mostly like this, this fun kind of community. So that’s, that’s what, hopefully that provides more context to what we’re doing.

Tatiana Figueiredo: So it’s, that Sounds really cool. I, I would launch something that’s like shorter term and more fun at first. Like How do you price that? If you’re looking at the Tesla model of like, like what’s the price point for that? Like you price it. So if whatever you wanna be at for your monthly membership, you kind of sell three months upfront. So if it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be $60 a month, then you build something that’s 180 that is like around 180 whatever. And that is a little bit of community but also involves the different things that you’re talking about. Like chatting with the dog or whatever. Yeah, the fun stuff. ’cause then people can wrap their heads around it and they’re like, oh this is a three month thing. And then at the end of the three months, maybe that’s when the book is launching or that’s when like more things are happening in there and you can, you can incorporate that and then turn that into more of a membership if that’s where you’re heading.

Questioner: Hmm. Okay. Very cool. Well thank you.

Tatiana Figueiredo: I wanna listen to all the… I don’t want to dominate the whole, we could have a how I wanna hear the other question. It does sound really fun. People in the chat are saying it sounds fun also, somebody recommended Carrie’s book building brand communities. Yeah, I great book. Highly recommend that also carrie’s amazing for the people who are not M B A C B and who are here, would it be helpful to talk about it and tell you a little bit more about what happens there?

: I often use it as an example for a lot of these things, including this business model thing. I always like to like break the fourth wall and like just be like, this is all meta to start with. So let’s see. I have some slides. Yeah, I’ll start with the slide. Oh my gosh. So build a community business. Like I mentioned earlier, it started as a cohort-based course and now it’s, it’s kind of like a bunch of different things.

It’s, it is still a cohort-based course, but it’s also you get access to the community for a year in the community. There are office hours. I’ll show you more about what’s in the community in a bit. This is what we’re doing. It’s a year long community experience designed to help you both double your revenue and double your fulfillment as a community leader, which makes me really happy.

I think that, I mean, I’ll just go through what we believe. I have slides for it. I think that connection is a skill and we can practice it together. And that’s the point of being in community with other people as you’re learning about community and connection. Also we can come closer to who we’re meant to be by building community businesses.

So one of our values in B A C B is self-actualization. And we, we don’t hesitate to like talk about like who we are as people and what that means for when we show up in our communities. Because that’s gonna happen regardless of whether we do it intentionally. And I think it’s important for us to know, get to know ourselves better and better so that we can show up for, for our communities as whole people and not as, not, not put our s**t on the people who come to, to our communities. So that’s another one of our values.

And then lastly, I just don’t believe that we have to compromise our values to build a sustainable community business. So I don’t think that you have to resort to like sleazy marketing tactics. I don’t think that you have to be on social media platforms that you don’t feel comfortable in. I think it’s possible to run a business that really feels good for you to run and to have a community that’s excited to, to pay you for, for what you do.

So this is what we believe. This is like, it’s really exciting to like be very upfront with this stuff because I find that the people who we end up attracting are people who like really do believe these things and who are like really good examples of what it means to be these things in, in community with other people, which is why I’m really excited to lead this community.

So who it’s for, it’s basically for all four of those things, of those types of businesses that we talked about, membership, community leaders, course creators, one-on-one coaches or people who are just getting started. It’s for people who wanna put community at the center of whatever type of business that they’re building. So you wanna kind of start with the people who you’re gathering and build around that.

I’m gonna, I’m gonna share straight from the landing page I think because I can talk about like what is included. So when you join B A C B, again, like this is, this is something that we’ve been building little by little and now there are, uh, a bunch of different things that happen in the community that you get access to when you join. It’s a full year of the community. Your, your first full year is a full year and then it’s a live cohort.

So if you join now you get access to launch camp for the next two months. And then you also get to join the fall cohort, which is gonna be at the beginning of October as far as we’re planning as of now. And you get the full cohort experience where you’re actually meeting people. A lot of the people on this call have just gone through the experience.

Through a cohort. It was really nice and it’s been really nice to see them connect with each other and help each other and form accountability groups.

You also immediately get access to all of our video lessons. Our video lessons are in five different topics. The topics are business model, community experience tools and process sales and marketing and missing one leadership. So leadership is again about like who you have to become as a, as a leader in order to lead your community. Those lessons are all there for you. They include worksheets and they’re, they’re, they’re there to help you.

You also get office hours and events. We do office hours. We mentioned it somewhere else on this page. Also, we do office hours at least twice a week. These are usually like a small group opportunity to ask any of your questions that you have. We often like go deep into someone’s community challenge that they’re having and you get to hear both from me but also from other people who are experienced in whatever type of community that you’re building.

So it’s a really, it it’s our main way that we get together every single month. And then there are also a lot of other types of community events that we do, like hot seats. We do workshops where there’s new content that is being presented. Like we, a couple months ago we did this onboarding deep dive workshop, which we’re, we like went through exactly how we do the onboarding for B A C B and we taught the community members how to do it. It’s really fun. It’s like a lot of clicking around on emails. It’s like a choose your own adventure onboarding.

Again, worksheets with every single lesson that you have that you have, you never have to take notes. They’re always worksheets and very actionable steps for you to take. Office hours is mentioned twice a year because they happen both within a cohort, which happens more often and they also happen the entire year that you’re a part of the, of the community at least twice a month.

And then the private community, we are on circle and everything that we have is within one platform. We don’t have the course elsewhere. Everything you can access just from the community platform.

We also have accountability groups. So you can have a, we have a structure where you have a small group that you can meet with or chat with depending on what you’re launching together. It’s a really good way for people to get to know each other. We have three different, three or four different dog communities in the, in the, in the community and they form like their own group and they chat with each other and they, they help each other with what they’re, what they’re doing.

So that’s all that’s included and here we go again. Ah, and another, another image I like to share also, before you join a community, I think you should know like how much work it’s going to be for you or like what, what’s like a typical amount of time that people spend in the community. Like what does it actually look like?

So I like to share this. I think that if you join now, for example, these next two months, I would recommend that you be very engaged in the community as you build out your, if, if you’re joining for a launch camp, you’ll be able to like meet a ton of people and be really like, get a lot of help with the, with the stuff that you’re building in the community. So we’ll have all those workshops, we’ll have a lot of like those member hosted events.

So these two, the two first months that you join I think would be more intensive the third month. Like if it’s September and you’re starting to like do your launch, that’s when you’re gonna be busy with your launch and you’re not necessarily gonna be in the community and then it for the next year. I find that it just, it kind of varies depending on what’s going on in member communities.

And it’s totally okay to like go away for a little bit and come back for the next month. There’s like a normal cadence that you fall into when you come into the community. And I like to say this because I feel like there’s a lot of guilt when people join a Tatiana Figueiredo: The community, and they’re not taking advantage of everything all the time. But I think it’s okay. And I think it’s like an accepted, like if you were only, if you only had time to be a member of one community, then you would be in a cult. So I think it’s important to like, give people time to have a life and do things outside of the community and be transparent that like everything is gonna be there, available for you, but it’s not necessarily something that’s gonna take over your life.

No quotes. So I also like to talk about like what this is not, so this is not for you if you’re, if you really need one-on-one private coaching or consulting, this is like something that we’re really building and doing together in community with other people. It’s not for you if you’re looking to make a lot of money very quickly. Community is just not the fastest way to make money on the internet.

It just takes time and you actually have to wanna do it. It’s just, if, if all you wanna do is make a ton of money quickly, just do something else. Like just launch an evergreen course. It’s just, it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of, like, you becoming more yourself to, in order to do it. Like you don’t need to jump through all those hoops if all you wanna do is make money.

It’s also not for you if you’re not ready for the self-reflection to that point, I, I don’t want to teach people who are gonna use these tools for evil and to build cults and do things that are, that I find sleazy and that are make people feel bad. I think there’s plenty of things on the internet that are already making people feel bad.

So I, I think it’s important that, sorry, there’s a plane going back here. Hope you can hear that. Yeah. Start your own crypto. No, I skipped web three der I’m onto web four. So I, the self-reflection is really important if you want, if you wanna do this the right way and you really wanna build a community for the right reasons.

And then again, like our values are growth and self-actualization. Like when you join this community and you leave, you’re not gonna be at the same spot that you were when you joined. If that appeals to you, that’s great Self-actualization again, like we see building a community as a means for you to become who you should really become.

If those are not values that resonate with you, this might not be the community for you, but if that does sound like you, we’d love for you to join us. If you join again before our launch camp kickoff on the 12th, which is on Tuesday, I believe we’re gonna send you a code for $150 off. And then you also get two additional months in the community.

So you’re gonna get a total of 14 months in the community instead of 12 months. And you also get a one-on-one strategy session whenever you, you join and pay in full. In the strategy session with me, I’d love to take any questions about B A C B. We still have a, we have a small group here, so if anyone has any questions, if anyone wants to share anything that they learned from today, I’d love to hear from you.

How about this one might be, it might not be so a little, but what does the future of community look like? You’re welcome. Um, okay. Remember what I was saying before about like, you should think about what your community’s doing in terms of like this big vision, but really you’re really starting small.

I choose not to engage with questions like that because I don’t think that they matter to me and I don’t think that they matter to the community that I’m building. They matter to people who like are on Twitter talking about community. But I actually think that, which is fine, like it’s fun to have those conversations, but I think that it just like what we’re doing is connecting people and that’s not going anywhere.

It’s never gone anywhere. It’s like something that has always kind of happened in the same kind of way. We’re just kind of like bringing people back to these things these ways and using the internet to do it in slightly different ways. So I think like the future of community is like the past of community. It’s like, I don’t think it really changes that much. If people wanna put like the Metaverse under community or like web three, like NFT stuff under community, I’d rather them not do that. But it’s also like, I don’t think it affects what I do that much, so I don’t think I choose not to spend a lot of my time thinking about stuff like that because I think that the way we make change in community is really to focus on who you need to be to better serve your community and where your community is going.

And you just don’t need billions of people to like buy into what you’re doing in order for, for it to make an impact and in order for it to be a successful community. So I think that’s what is a better way to spend our thinking time.

I hope that answered your question. Oh, you took notes. Thank you. We will send everyone the, the outline of this with all the different actions.

Thank you everyone for coming to an event during the summer where ever when everyone is outside, it’s summer for most of us. I don’t know if it’s, if it’s for all of us.

Thank you again. Email me, hang out with us, apply to join B A C B if you’re interested and we’ll see you on the internet.