Sophie Bujold: How do you start making the difference between an approach that'll be good for you right now versus something that might be a for later or a no, that's not for our community at all. And there's really, five big questions. There's micro questions that go with this too, but there's really five big questions that you should be asking yourself.
Again, if you haven't figured it out yet, my approach is really about balance. So it's like, what's in it for this person? What's in it for the member? What's in it for you? What's in it for your membership? And I think it's the same thing here, right? Beyond just. How do I get started? I think it's really important when you're evaluating your options to go what goal is this helping us achieve in the business?
And I say business because I'm assuming that most of you have communities that you wanna make money from. What goals is this helping me achieve? And when I talk about goals, I'm not just talking about money. That is the default goal for every single client I work with is like, how much, what's our revenue target?
Ideally then we have conversations about how fast they want to achieve that. But also if most of you are running these communities as solopreneurs, I dig a little bit deeper into the personal goals this needs to accomplish for you as well. So for some clients I have had everything from I need to create space to have a family.
I. And I need this community to support how I work with my clients to, I want to create an asset that will, help me get into retirement or semi-retirement really comfortably. Like I'm talking about personal goals as well, like that where you're like, this is why you, I want to help people with this, but also this is the reality of how I need it to work for myself.
Because I think. Too often than not, people get really excited about a monetization option and then they realize later that oh, this I need team members to support this and I need tools and I need all those things. So first and foremost, check in with yourself and be like, what goals, what specific goal is this supporting?
Before I jump into it, on the flip side is what member need does it fulfill? So with every. Community that I work in, we map out the member journey and identify when a user is at this point, what are their core needs that they're looking to get fulfilled within that community? And the way we plan out the experience is we make sure that there's something that ties back to every one of those needs so that there's something for everyone.
The same goes for monetization opportunities. We do not monetize something that does not directly relate to a need. The membership has membership and you need to be number one in this. What is it going to help you with? And then from there, I've already talked about it, but what resources will this require?
So hopefully your default mode is what kind of monetization can I do that is going to not involve. Adding a whole bunch of new tools or work, right? We just talked about that. What am I already doing in the community that a partner could easily fit into? It's not about reinventing the wheel, it's about figuring out how the partner can fit really well within the experience you're already creating.
If there are some needs from the members that you know haven't been filled, like for instance, When we talked about this session, we talked a lot about the fact that monetization was a popular topic for a lot of you. It wasn't about creating this whole new format. Of event or workshop or whatever else, it was like, Hey, we do these workshops.
Do you want in? And if I were a paying partner for that, it's the same approach, right? Hey, we do these things. What if we did an exclusive one just for you here? And that was your space within our community to do that thing. So I think really consider that and really consider. The idea you have against what it's gonna take to implement.
The next question is always an interesting one. Do we offer anything that already fulfills the same need? That one is both because you don't wanna duplicate your work, but it's also a really good barometer for, is this gonna cannibalize anything else I'm offering in the community? So if I'm already, Including a piece of this in my standard membership rate, and now I'm doing the same thing in premium.
Will the premium even sell? So really starting to consider is it. Is it offering something different enough that members or partners will be willing to pay for it? And does my membership size support it? So we just talked about this in the examples is really around do I have enough members for the partner to really see the opportunity here, or the r o i or do I have enough.
Value for this offer to members to be really valuable? Is it something that I see them needing that's just not being offered right now? There's a whole bunch of other questions that you can ask, but these are the five core ones that I use to evaluate any of the choices I make within those communities.
So I wanted to pause here and just check in. Are there any other questions that came up? Just talking about some of these questions.
Murtaza Bambot: Yeah, we had actually a couple questions that came in from Courtney about just like resources, swipe files, like even just email copy that you found works well when you're doing this kind of outreach for external partners, external sponsors I dunno if you have anything like that you can provide Sophie.
Sophie Bujold: Not that I can share publicly, unfortunately. Most of the community builders keep it close, but Let me see what I can find and maybe follow up after this. Definitely 'cause it, the goal here is to not, is to be different from other people and really tying it back to the value that you have in your community.
So that's why I'm always hesitant to provide a swipe file for this part because everyone approaches it a little bit differently and these conversations, especially on the partnership side, Usually the most successful ones happen a lot more organically. So if you can find a way to have conversations with people in your industry that you already know or get connected through someone else, start with how can I help you?
Kind of conversations before you start selling to people. I think especially now that communities are growing in popularity. The last thing you want to do is start templating like, Hey, do you want to give us money? It's really about creating something that works for both sides, right?
Murtaza Bambot: And I gotta give a major plus one to that authenticity is really what makes the difference in your ability to monetize or charge a dollar for something, versus charging $10 for something like it is a huge differentiator. Yeah. Yeah. And I would even say like at the starting point and this is just in general, when you're starting a business, honestly, the volume tends to be more important than the actual quality of the messaging.
So work on your messaging, put it together and get it good enough, and then just get it in front of enough people's faces and you'll understand what you need to tweak, what hits, what doesn't hit.
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