You’re not an overnight success. You’ve cultivated relationships and opportunities that have brought you success - maybe even more than expected.
You’ve created a body of work that you’re proud of, and you understand what bringing people together and empowering them to help each other makes possible.
You’re ready to take the leap and level up your current community into something more powerful and self-sufficient. But finding that sweet spot is trickier than it seems.
When you sit down to turn your big vision for the community into concrete plans for the next quarter, you find yourself thinking:
I’m doing everything in my community, and I’m exhausted
I’m not sure how to build a community that makes an impact and makes business sense
Building a community that really helps people is a lot of work - I want help doing this right
We’re not growing, engagement is low, and I’m not sure what to change
My work has evolved since we launched, and I want to figure out what version 2.0 of the community looks like
The community has grown much faster than I expected, and I need help
You’re ready to break out of online group guesswork so you can gather, connect, and empower your people in a bigger way.
You know you won’t impact anyone’s life by winging it or creating your version of someone else’s paid community.
But conventional wisdom creates low-impact, low-return online communities at an alarming rate. It has also led to a landslide of abandoned communities, closed by group owners who felt "on-call" 24/7. It's required leaders to pour money into labor-intensive communities without a return on investment.
From the outside, it’s hard to understand why, but I’ve been watching online communities for over 20 years. When you can see the big picture, a clear cycle emerges.
Let’s start with a basic recipe for conventional community creation:
- Pick a platform
- Decide on pricing and member perks
- Schedule content
- Hire a community manager (optional)
This front-loaded, content-first plan starts with a surge of excitement and interest around the initial launch - and it kicks off the community burnout cycle.
Did you know?
The conventional approach to building online communities has a 70% failure rate.
Source: Gartner, 2017
This online community burnout cycle can last for years; consuming salary, time, energy, and profit until the business reaches a breaking point.
The simple truth is that paid communities only help members reach their goals and sustainably support a business when they’re designed to.
BUILDING ONLINE COMMUNITIES THAT LAUNCH CAREERS
Michelle Fifis of Pattern Observer improved her monthly member growth by 83% and more than tripled her member numbers.
Michelle and the team at Pattern Observer partnered with Cliqueworthy for over 12 months to resolve member acquisition and attrition challenges.
The community has now helped over 2,700 members on their journey to become professional surface pattern designers. The community is a highly engaged source of artistic growth and inspiration, which has led to several high-value partnerships as revenue opportunities.
THE PROCESS
Curating an impactful experience that both supports your community members while providing ROI for your business can be a tricky balancing act. Here's how I lead clients to the rewards on the other side.
Your core purpose is the big picture vision driving you to create this community.
We’ll find the common thread between all of your offers, and define the impact you want to make in the world. Then we’ll discern what work in the community will be the most powerful and impactful for you as a business leader.
It matters because it:
- Simplifies strategic choices
- Keeps your community on track
Skipping it:
- Risks building the wrong type of community
- Lowers return on investment
This is where we create a high-level, strategic framework that allows your community to land in the sustainable sweet spot.
The space between what your business needs, and what your members value. We get there by marrying your business requirements with detailed custom audience research into what members *say* they want, and what they really need.
It matters because it:
- Provides data that makes fork-in-the-road choices easier
- Intentionally designs for impact and profit
Skipping it:
- Creates long-term bottlenecks and dependency
- Requires leaders to be involved in all decisions
- Forces you to rely on guesswork and intuition at any time the business and community have competing interests
This is how we map out exactly what your community will offer, and how it serves your members.
We keep the focus on delivering high-value content, programming, and events to keep members coming back for more. We infuse everything with your unique skillset.
It matters because it:
- Makes your community irreplaceable and high-value
- Focuses your time and energy on features and content the community will use and recommend to others
Skipping it:
- Wastes time and energy on content and events that members ignore
- Lowers growth, retention, and return on investment
This is how we operationalize the vision.
We’ll choose your tech stack, talk email systems, platforms, and processes. We align the strengths of your internal team with the community workload and select a community manager.
It matters because it:
- Eliminates repetitive manual work, to protect against overwhelm and burnout
- Frees up your time to rest, work on the business, grow the community, and impact more people
Skipping it:
- Decreases member satisfaction and renewals when members can't access content, get frustrated by tricky tech, or slip through the cracks
- Steals focus from enhancing, growing, or enjoying what you’ve built since there’s always a fire to put out or a crisis to react to
HOW I can HELP
Business communities that last don’t leave their future up to chance. They’re designed to scale sustainably, offer irreplaceable support to members, and have a clear strategic framework to make choices for the future.
I work closely with business leaders to lay a strategic foundation that creates energizing communities and impressive results for international community leaders. Here’s how we’ll create a high-impact community that helps others & builds your business together.
Community Incubator
A 90-day experience to help you design & map out a high-impact paid community experience.
Perfect when: your community is a budding idea and you need help bringing it to life.
Community Tune-Up
High-impact, custom consulting to help you fix, optimize, improve and expand the experience in your existing paid community.
Perfect when: Your community is live, but engagement, retention, and/or return aren’t where you want them to be.
Community Accelerator
Long-term (6 months+), custom, strategic partnership for businesses that are ready to grow and expand their paid community with a fractional community leader by their side.
Perfect when: You want a strategic advisor by your side as your team implements, iterates, and takes action on your community goals.
Do you already know you want a community designed to last?
I accept a limited number of clients each year. Working with me requires a minimum commitment of 3 months and starts at $3,500 USD per month.
BUILDING ONLINE COMMUNITIES THAT LAUNCH CAREERS
Christine Thatcher’s community grew from 0 to 1,800 members in less than 6 months. It generated over $126,000 in course sales - a 15x increase – in less than 9 months.
Christine Thatcher wanted to create a free community to help isolated designers find business owner friends for connection and support. Intentionally designing her community allowed her to spend less energy and money on marketing, and more time on premium content creation and connection.
WHAT WE CAN ACCOMPLISH TOGETHER
What’s happened for some of my clients after our work goes live:
It can be hard to find examples of thriving community businesses, or to know what success can look like, so here’s a timeline of what some of my real clients experience after they launch a new community, or make our changes live.
My Clients...
- Have a community that’s immediately profitable
- Bring in membership fees for 20-100+ people
- Generate membership revenue that covers the platform costs, plus some profit
My Clients...
- Generate membership revenue that covers platform costs, core team, plus profit
- Received and landed multiple five-figure pitches to create sponsored content inside their own community
- Built a partnership with an industry conferences, bringing in over $20k for mutually beneficial cross-promotions
- Build momentum as membership grows beyond 150 people
- See word-of-mouth referrals increase
My Clients...
- Have replaced 62% of income with revenue from the community
Consider the stable, growing community revenue to be a cornerstone of their business - Generate membership revenue that covers platform costs, core team, profit, and expanding the supporting team
- Don’t have to drive community engagement, which has become self-sustaining
- Receive and cultivate ongoing sponsorship and partnership opportunities
- Start to explore additional revenue opportunities related to the community, like: retreats, conferences, writing books, adding additional paid courses, and merchandise
These examples demonstrate what some of my clients have experienced, and like in other areas of life, and not predictive or a guarantee of future outcomes.
Two things are true: My best clients care more about people than profits, and their businesses require a strong community business model to have lasting success.
Are we a good fit?
Working with me may be the right fit for you if:
This isn’t your first rodeo. You’re established in your field and have deep knowledge of the community you want to serve
You want a collaborative partner who can help you create a paid online community from scratch or take your current community to the next-level
Your heart speeds up when you think about creating a community that offers massive value to the people you serve, where members can support and learn from each other
You and your team are ready to act, but you need a strategic partner to co-create a plan that’s right for your business
You see the value in slowing down and being strategic in the short term, so your community doesn’t leave member impact, long-term growth, or return on investment to chance
You’re open to doing self reflection exercises, and would look forward to being part of an active co-creation process
Working with me may not be right for you if:
You’re a founder who expects to launch and manage the day-to-day of the community on your own
You want help managing the day-to-day workload of your community, and to interact with members
You feel like having a community could be an added bonus for your business, but don’t want to build a business centered around community
You’re in a hurry to add a community, forum, or membership to an existing learning experience
You want someone to tell you what to create, and are hoping that this requires minimal input from you
You’re borderline overbooked, and have been canceling meetings with consultants or your team to complete what’s essential
Do you already know you want a community designed to last?
I accept a limited number of clients each year. Working with me is a minimum commitment of 3 months and starts at $3,500 USD per month.
What you'll receive:
Everything we do comes together to create a sustainable, profitable, and impactful online community that’s perfectly tailored to you and your members
A community-first business model that’s unique to your business
We’ll define membership fees, length, and features that stir desire in your members, and additional monetization opportunities to create sustainable profitability for your business
A compelling experience designed to keep people coming back and accomplishing goals
We’ll create an experience designed to help members accomplish their goals, experience ongoing wins, and have lots to come back for
Workload balance for a happy team
Happy teams change the world, so we’ll keep yours out of overwhelm by proactively deciding how the day-to-day work is distributed, and build an ops plan to keep it manageable at scale
A high-impact community that’s launched and helping others
At the end of the accelerator, your new community experience will be live, welcoming members and changing their lives. You’ll be a community leader, stepping into the new phase of your business
Done-for-you member and stakeholder research
Stop the guesswork for good, with invaluable research into exactly what your members want and need most
RSVP-worthy events and programming
Using member research, we’ll lay out exactly what content, events, educational content, and programming that members will love, attend, and talk about - and that won’t leave your team swamped
Perfect-fit platform and tech stack
You’ll need a new way to procrastinate, because comparing community platforms is off your to-do list. You’ll choose from custom platform recommendations, and know how the tech will work with your current systems
A team and community that’s less dependant on you
You never wanted to be involved in every decision, event, and piece of content - so we’ll build you the off-ramp you crave. You’ll remain the visionary and curator, but can step out of the spotlight to focus on running the business, and connecting with members
Ready to lead a dynamic, high-impact community?
I accept a limited number of clients each year. Working with me is a minimum commitment of 3 months and starts at $3,500 USD per month.