Recession-Proof Skills: Building A Magical Community
Episode Description
Community vs. audience, what's better? How can you create Superfans? Can you start your business without a community? How can spellwork help you build a community? All these questions and more are answered on today's pod where Michelle dives into the what and the how of building a magical community to support the business goals of your dreams!
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It doesn't mean that you have to be amazingly skilled, it means that you just have to be down to get your hands dirty and kind of fumble and not know what you're doing and try new things. Building community and focusing on a community, as opposed to focusing on an audience and is really necessary to running an empathetic, intuitive business that centers people and the communal over centering an individual or a product. - Michelle Pellizzon
Understanding how to build community is one of those invaluable recession-proof skills that no matter what, no matter whether you're starting your own business, whether you're joining as a consultant with another brand, whether you're coming on as an employee, it's something that you need to know and understand. It's also something that can't just be bought. - Michelle Pellizzon
It all started with community building. I had no money when I started, zero budget and was doing this thing by myself and definitely didn't know what I was doing. I made a lot of mistakes. - Michelle Pellizzon
As an intuitive business owner and someone who sells things, my job is not to sell you something or to convince you of something, nor is it to convince you of the worth of the product that I've made. All that I'm here to do is help you make a decision. - Michelle Pellizzon
You can't buy a community, you can buy an audience. - Michelle Pellizzon
You can't buy a community. You have to earn a community because a community doesn't stem from parasocial relationships. It stems from real relationships. A community is cool because it's self-sufficient. There's no one individual at the center of it. Everyone is contributing to how the community works and how it grows. It is a living, breathing organism, and everyone has the opportunity to contribute equally. - Michelle Pellizzon
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If you enjoyed learning about building a magical community, check out "Growing Your Audience and Community Intuitively: What I Would Do If I Was Starting From Scratch" where Michelle reflects on all the things she’d do over if she was building Holisticism’s community from scratch. From growing the newsletter to building relationships with Superfans, and allowing her intuition to pave the next steps, this episode focuses on what it takes to build a stellar community of your dreams, and have fun while doing it. Whether you're an intuitive business owner trying to find your people or someone who's looking to cultivate connection, building a reliable community is crucial and, well, highly rewarding!
SHOW NOTES
[00:00:06] Podcast begins.
[00:02:00] The Cusp is our private Hypebeast wellness community, where we talk about products and services and trends in the wellness space. It’s an amazing, growing community, and not to mention that the first two weeks are free
[00:04:00] If you don’t feel the need to join the North Node, but you just like what we do and the way we think, and you want more of Holisticism, then The Cusp is an amazing way to support us.
[00:04:28] Recession Proof Skills: things that are going to be valuable to businesses and brands and companies, skills that every business need at its core
[00:05:27] There are things that we can do without, but there are skills that are absolutely necessary in order to run a business --- such as building community, marketing, copywriting, and conversion
[00:07:25] Anyone can build an audience because an audience is something that you can pay for, but not everyone can build a community
[00:08:00] Building a community and focusing on the community, as opposed to focusing on the audience, is necessary for running an empathetic, intuitive business
[00:08:27] There really is no such thing as free content. Everything is an energetic exchange. Typically it's transactional and there's nothing wrong with that.
[00:09:05] You shouldn't be in a position of energetic exchange where you're constantly giving too much and it's inequitable or it's unequal, or it feels unbalanced. That's not a healthy relationship.
[00:10:15] Everyone who comes to these classes gets an early bird discount to the Profitable Content Creator Lab, which officially opens on April 19.
[00:12:43] Start of discussion on Building a Magical Community
[00:13:00] Community is the vehicle that will get you anywhere that you want.
[00:13:02] When you are aligned in your purpose and in the way that you approach your work, it can be simple. It doesn't always mean it's easy.
[00:16:05] We need not to monetize every single thing that we do.
[00:17:00] Michelle started Holisticism by sending out an email to about a hundred people four years ago, and it has grown to a community of over 75,000 people, with tens of thousands of students.
[00:19:35] Having a hard time making your product stick, or making your service take off? It’s probably because you're focusing more on building an audience than building a community.
[00:21:32] An audience requires constant input from you and engagement from you in order to continue to exist. An audience isn’t bad. It just doesn't leave a lot of space for ease.
[00:23:48] How do you think an audience would respond when things go bad? When things get hard, an audience may bail! We can't fault people for that. It's just that this is how they work.
[00:25:00] You can't buy a community; you can buy an audience. You have to earn a community.
[00:25:40] Community is a living, breathing organism, and everyone has the opportunity to contribute equally.
[00:26:09] When things get really hard, or when you make a mistake, which is inevitable, a community will stand by you. They call you, instead of calling you out.
[00:27:43] You're not here to exist by yourself and do all of the work alone.
[00:27:59] How to pivot from audience building to community building?
[00:31:24] Organically and effortlessly, communities lead to much higher conversion rates.
[00:33:00] There's also a higher retention rate when you have a community because people want to stick around --- could be you or because they love the other people that they've met in this space.
[00:36:23] Your Instagram followers aren’t leads. They are just people who are having conversations with you.
[00:37:21] The other thing about community is that it naturally grows.
[00:37:43] Building a community is very much the same as when you're casting a spell. It's simple. But it's not easy and there’s no shortcut.
[00:38:53] Digital Campfires: it's where people gather and connect, and there's no leader. We're responsible for keeping that flame alive, for feeding it, for nurturing it.
[00:39:23] Where's your digital campfire going to be? People are different, you got to go where your people want to go.
[00:41:21] When something feels draining or depleting, that is a good indicator that that's not a true community because it's all weighing on you.
[00:41:48] Number 2: We need to get clear on what we want.
[00:42:07] You’ve got to get really clear on what you want and what you're creating and what you want the outcome to be.
[00:42:25] Remember that we need to make it easy for people to say “Yes.”
[00:43:04] What's your call to action? What are you asking people to do when they land on your Instagram or your website or wherever it is?
[00:43:26] Most people are going to jump off your website immediately if they don't see something that they like in the first 0.5 seconds, not even five seconds.
[00:46:00] Our job is not to control other people and it isn't to manipulate people. Our job is to help people decide.
[00:47:03] There's a pain when we're in that moment of not having clarity around a choice whether to do something or to not do something.
[00:47:34] My job as a seller is not to get you to buy. My job is to help you decide whether they're right for you or not.
[00:48:16] When I learned that, it changed my whole life because all of a sudden, I don't have to convince people to buy things. - Michelle
[00:49:00] Number three: We have to make space for magic.
[00:51:28] It started to grow faster than any one person could make it grow - that's what community is all about.
[00:51:45] Let people know that they are seen, and they are heard and they're valued.
[00:52:00] Community building can feel scary and intimidating, but if you trust yourself and you trust your own cadence and you trust other people to help you, that you can do it.
[00:53:01] Community is about seeing people.
[00:53:13] Reply to emails with videos. Infuse a little personal touch. Refrain from canned responses, or having assistant writing back for you.
[00:54:11] Leaders empower other people to lead.
[00:54:31] When we empower them to speak and to use our voice, then they become super fans. And then that takes the weight off you.
[00:54:52] We build community by leading by example.
[00:55:00] People will begin to mimic your behavior and you have to be really thoughtful and careful about how you enter your space, how you act in your space because people are watching and they're copying you.
[00:55:20] When you're really making people feel seen and heard, they'll feel empowered to act too and show up.
[00:55:36] Number 4: We need to listen and adapt.
[00:56:08] Increasing your failure tolerance is key to faster timeline collapsing.
[00:56:29] You're going to look stupid. It's okay. It's all fine. We survive.
[00:56:50] You need to be okay failing. As you practice failing more and more and more, you'll get more resilient, and you can't get more resilient unless you fail.
[00:57:00] Be brave and take that big leap and fail. Put yourself out there.
[00:57:27] In order to make money, in order to make sales, we have to get rejected.
[00:57:46] The best salespeople are just the ones who have the highest failure tolerance.
[00:58:00] Listen and adapt. We need to hear what our community has to say.
[00:58:22] We don't always know what the right thing to do. Sometimes we have a brilliant idea, and it doesn't turn out the way we wanted it to turn out.
[00:58:52] At the end of the day, I'm here to fall in love with my people and solve the problem for my people. I'm not here to be in love with the thing that I made for them. - Michelle
[00:59:00] Number 5: Just start to build community.
[01:00:00] Magic is not a shortcut. It makes the road a little smoother. It paves the road for us, but we have to walk down the road.
[01:00:11] End of the episode.
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[01:01:52] We want to make sure that we're on the right path, and we're really delivering what you want.
[01:02:28] Outro of the podcast.
PEOPLE AND RESOURCES MENTIONED
Digital Campfires
Loom
The Cusp
The North Node
Recession-Proof Skills
Conscious Copywriting for Spell Casting on April 9
Launching Your Own Products on April 16