How do I know a community is right for my business?

Here’s what I know after designing and building 79 online communities in the past 6 years alone…

Before you pick a platform, price your offer, or map out your curriculum, there’s one thing you need to do first: have 10 real conversations with potential members.

In this episode of Dear Bri, I break down what’s really driving the rise of communities, how to validate your idea before you build anything, and the 3-part framework I use to determine whether a community is right for your business (read: will succeed long-term).

If you’ve been feeling pulled toward community but unsure if it’s the right move, this episode will give you clarity.

And if you’re asking questions like:

Should I start a community for my business?

Will people pay to be a part of a community?

Or, is it too late to launch a community?

Then this episode is for you.

⏳ Timestamps

00:00:00 | Introduction to season 3: Community strategy

00:01:11 | The right time to build a community

00:04:46 | Is a community right for your business?

00:05:15 | The one question NOT to ask

00:08:15 | Real examples of community strategy in action

00:10:57 | How to find your sweet spot [Framework]

📌 Resources Mentioned

Tapestry Community Case Study: https://www.emberconsulting.co/post/case-study-how-molly-mahar-and-stratejoy-built-a-thriving-member-led-community-on-heartbeat

Discovery Guide: https://calendly.com/bri-15/the-community-audit-clone

Season 3 Episode 1: What community model is right for my business? 

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Bri Leever

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Every community builder needs to do one thing. 10 conversations before you launch anything, before you pick a platform, before you decide your curriculum and your pricing, 10 conversations. Not a survey, not a poll in your Instagram stories, actual conversations with real people who could potentially be in your community. And there is one question that you absolutely cannot ask in those conversations because it will lead you to make the wrong conclusions and the wrong decisions. I'm gonna tell you what that question is, but first, let's talk about whether you even need a community at all. Welcome to Deer Brief, an advice column for community conundrums, fiascos, and drama. Season three is brought to you by Ember Consulting. That's my community strategy agency, where we help coaches, consultants, and creators build paid online communities that are good for their people and good for their business. This season marks the first time Deer Bree is available in video on YouTube. So if you want to put a face to the voice, come find me there. The link is in the show notes. And this season is solo. No guests, just me, Brie. And that's because after two seasons of hosting this podcast with guests and 10 years of doing this community work, I've been able to crystallize the most confusing conundrums and darkest dramas into a few simple insights and frameworks, which is what you're gonna find in this season. Simply put, I had too much to say and not enough time. So it's just me and you on this one. And finally, I usually record this podcast from Hawaii Island, so a special thank you to the Kanakamale people on whose land I currently reside. In episode one, we talked about the four types of communities. This episode is going to help you understand when the time is right for you to move and build a community. And then next up, we're talking about community platforms and how to know which one is the right fit to host your community. So make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss any good community strategy. Let me start by naming a few things that you might be experiencing as a community builder right now. You might be looking to build a community because you are simply fed up with the algorithm. You've been showing up, creating content, building an audience, and it feels like you're always one step behind. And I know what this feels like. The moment you think you've figured out the game, the rules change. Social media promised us connection, and what we got was consumption. But if you're honest with yourself, you maybe you feel a little bit afraid and intimidated that everyone seems to have a community now. Like you're a little late to the game, like the window is closing, and maybe you miss that magical time. I want to speak to that because I don't just think we're feeling algorithm burnout. I think it's something much deeper. You're tired of being the sole source of value in your business. Every transformation, every result, it comes from your teachings and your expertise and your accountability to your clients. It's exhausting and it might even be getting a little bit boring for you. For a lot of people, the inspiration to look at a community model comes from a very real pain point of no recurring revenue in their business. Every month is a relentless chase of one-off contracts and projects. And here's something that's very common. You might already be doing the instincts of community. We are communal creatures. You're making one-on-one intros between your clients. You've got maybe a free WhatsApp group going on. You're hosting little workshops and gatherings so people can actually connect. The impulse is there. The formal container is just missing. You might be watching this video with your primary question being, should I build a community? And I want to modify that question to make it just a little bit better. Is now the right time to build a community for my business? And how do I know that I'm doing it right? I want to make the case that we are in a genuinely unique moment. And I want to give you three reasons why. The first is time. Five years ago, a paid community was a pretty tough sell. Think about how we all felt paying for an app versus the free version of an app. The mindset just wasn't there. That has shifted. People now understand what paid access to information means now. They know free doesn't always equal better. And in fact, usually it means worse. There are more communities now than there were five or even 10 years ago, which means there's a proven market. People are paying for community. The behavior already exists. The second reason we are in a genuinely unique moment for community is place. We're living in the wake of an era where the internet promised connection and gave us consumption instead. For the last decade, marketers and businesses have been obsessed with building audiences. And while that's not inherently bad, it's left something critical out. It left out actual belonging. And we've have felt that absence. Society isn't craving more content. It's craving community. That is the window that you're standing in. And our third ingredient in this secret sauce is the tech. The tools have finally caught up, to be honest. Five or 10 years ago, building a digital community experience that actually felt like a community, honestly, the tech was not there. Platforms were clunky, the experience was quite fragmented, and only now do we have the tools to build specifically for this. That matters more than most people are willing to give it credit for. Time, place, and tech. All three have aligned in a way that haven't been there before. So how do you actually know if a community is right for your business? I use what I call the sweet spot. For a community to work long term, it needs to be aligned in these three ways. Number one, it needs to be aligned with your customers. Your members need a compelling reason to show up. Not just because they like you, but because they are actively motivated to solve a problem and your community is part of how they solve it. That's the bar. This is where those 10 conversations I mentioned in the beginning come in. And here is the one question you should not ask. So, Susan, would you join a community like this? People say yes to be polite. They say yes because they actually genuinely think that they will join and they are interested. Then you open the doors and no one buys. The right questions get underneath these polite answers, and it's critical that you ask the right questions in these conversations. I have a proven method developed from concepts in the book The Mom Test. The premise is ask questions that even your mom couldn't lie to you about. And my discovery guide, which is linked below, walks you through exactly how to run those conversations so you come away with real answers, not just hearing what you want to hear. Second, the decision to create a community needs to be aligned with you and the kind of work you want to do in this world. This one is underrated and most people overlook it. Are you an educator or a connector? Do you love to be the one delivering the insights or do you love creating the conditions for people to find each other? Here's the harder question. Are you ready to not be the one with all of the answers? In a community that works, the value doesn't just flow through you. It flows between your members. So if that sounds like a relief, you're probably ready. If that sounds terrifying, that is worth examining. This season of Dear Bree is brought to you by Ember, my community strategy agency. Most of our clients come to us for one of two reasons. Either they are launching a brand new community and they need it done right the first time, or they're ready to make a significant change, either because they've outgrown their old model or they're getting ready to migrate to a new community platform. Either way, every project runs through the same five-milestone roadmap. We look at discovery, making sure your value proposition aligns with your business model in your community and your customer needs. We look at your community business model, the tech you want to use. We dial in your onboarding strategy, and create a robust launch or pivot plan. Every project with us starts with two initial strategy sessions where we get clear on your model, your platform, and exactly what needs to happen next. You walk away with two things. First, a customized ecosystem map. This is where we get aligned on your model, your value proposition, and really wrap our hands around what's going to happen in this community. Second, you get a personalized roadmap scoped for your specific community. We assess where you're at with each of our five milestones and lay out the steps for what you'll need to do to work through each of them. Two calls, two deliverables for $999. When you're ready to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and start building with an intentional plan, book a discovery call. The link is in the description. And when you're ready to find someone to run it, Ember Fractionals can help you find and even certify your next perfect community manager for the job. Link is in the description. Now back to the show. And finally, is a community model aligned with your business ecosystem? A community is not a standalone thing. It needs to be a place in your offer suite or your marketing funnel and your client journey. This is the part that most people don't get clarity on before they dive in. And it's why most communities slowly fade out. Not because the idea was bad, not because there wasn't a great value proposition for the customers or it aligns with the type of work you want to do, but because it never integrated into the business in a way that made structural sense. This is exactly what we did a deep dive in in the first episode of season three, the episode right before this one. We cover the four types of communities and how each one serves a different kind of business and how to know which one is right for you. Check out that next, but stay with me for a second because I want you leaving this video ultra clear on one thing. Ultimately, the only way to know that a community is right for your business is for you to feel alignment in these three areas. And usually the signal that gets you to start thinking about community means that one of these three areas is misaligned and it's knocking on your door. I want to give you a couple real examples of what this actually looks like. The first one is a client of mine. Her name is Molly. She had a program that she ran once a year for a month. She'd open it up, fill it, deliver it, close it, and then start all over again the next year. When we looked at her business together, we saw an opportunity to take what she was already doing and give it an ongoing container, a community that kept her customers and clients in relationship with each other, doing the work in between programs. She went from an annual launch cycle to recurring revenue and the income stabilized, the clients stayed longer. The shift for Molly was recognizing her business ecosystem had a gap that a membership community could fill. And the results were amazing. In one month of sales, she generated over $100,000 in revenue for her annual community membership. I have another client, also ironically named Molly, who had built what she was calling a community, but when we really looked into it, it was functioning more like a group delivery of her one-on-one client work, which is a starting point. But we took it one step further. We worked together to shift Molly's role in the community to move from that of educator to connector and designer of the environment. We created an environment so that members were creating value for each other and not just waiting on Molly to show up every day and every week to provide value. The friction to create a community is very real. If you've been in business for a while now, you're probably like me wary of trends that pop up in the business world. And community can really start to sound like a trend, like it's the thing that everyone's telling you to build. And I want to push back on that framing because that's not what this is. Most of the business models we've built depend on visibility. They depend on the algorithm being good to us, which isn't untrue. You need people to find out about your offer and your business. But if you've been working with a model that starts from scratch every month, you know firsthand just how unstable that can feel. Community is one of the most powerful ways to build a business that generates recurring revenue or a replicable and scalable system that scales your business. Communities create value that outlasts any single transaction and they don't entirely depend on you showing up every single day. That's not a fad. That's fundamentally a better structure. The question isn't whether community works. The question is whether it's the right move for you right now. And if you're sitting here thinking, okay, I'm intrigued, but I genuinely don't know if I'm ready, analyze that sweet spot. Which of these three areas feels the least clear? I have two places I recommend starting. First is with the discovery to make sure it's aligned with your customers. Talk to 10 potential members before you build anything. And the second is to check your community model to make sure it's aligned with your business. So check out the episode about the four types of communities. We take a closer look at each one, how they work, and the kind of business that they serve. Thank you so much for sharing some space with me on this episode. Please like and review wherever you listen. It genuinely helps more community builders find the show. To stay connected between episodes, sign up for the Ember newsletter. That's where I share what I'm building, what we're learning, and the things that don't make it into each of these episodes. It's also where you can hit reply and let me know what community conundrums are haunting you right now. Link is in the show notes. Aloha, and we'll see you in the next episode.