How do you build a community without an MVP?
April 9, 2021
In this episode, we talk about how to build a community around your brand if you don't have a product or MVP.
How do you build a community around your brand if you don't even have a product or you don't have an MVP. So this was the question that someone asked me recently and I think there's a little bit of flawed logic in that question because the assumption there is that if you have something you can if you have something built out of some kind of product you can start rallying people around it.
However, the process to build a community is the same whether you have a product or not. The mistake is thinking that just because you build something people are going to want to come see it. So that old adage if you build it they will come. That is no longer true. That doesn't work for our day before the internet.
Maybe it worked because watching the grass grow or paint dry was interesting. But now there's like so many different pieces of stimulation that's distracting us and drawing our attention all the time if you do build it. So what? There's 1000 other people who probably built the same thing.
So how do you build a community? All right. So, now that we understood that it doesn't really matter whether you have a product or not. This is how you build a community. You build a community first by knowing exactly who your niche is, who your audience is. And once you know who those audiences, you have to pick a journey that this audience person is going on.
So, what I mean by this is when you are picking out the journey, you are tapping into what their desires are. Once you learn what the desires are, Let's take athletes, for example, let's say your customer set is athletes. Well, athletes are all going on several different journeys. There might be some athletes that are trying to win the Olympics that are some athletes that are just trying to compete to get into the Olympics. There are some athletes that want to play division one for a school. There are some athletes that are trying to get recruited out of high school into maybe straight to the pros. There are some athletes that don't want to play in the pros, but they love coaching and they love mentoring and they want to go straight to that kind of role.
So all of these different customer sets, they all have different desires once you know what the desire is and you can tap into that desire then you know that what journey that are going on. So they're trying to try out for the Olympics, you know that this is their journey, this is their goal. And once you know what that journey is, you start building a community around that journey, that's one part to it. The second part of a community is to have shared values.
So among these people that are going on the same journey they might have different value sets. And if you start building a community that revolves around your values as the founder then it's so much easier. So what you do as a founder you start building a community of people that are going on the same journey who share your values and then the way that you entice them to come into your community is to provide some kind of guidance or benefit that will help them on their journey. So what I mean by this is it could be something really simple.
Let's take the Olympic athletes for example. Well if you have a coach in your community that's coach several Olympic athletes and it would benefit someone just having access to this person. You don't need a product or an M. V. P. For you to start building a community just with that benefit alone. And even if you don't have something like that even if you just took an hour sat down and did some research on what the eligibility is for Olympic athletes and you put together some kind of PowerPoint presentation you started giving this out then this is something else that will draw people in because you're saving them an hour of time and you're able to build a community by providing this benefit and this guidance around this customer journey that they're all going on.
And if you want it to be a really tight-knit community you basic community around your values. So everyone in there have shared values and that's it. That's how you build a community. I feel like it probably sounds obvious now that you've heard it out loud, but it really isn't that difficult. You just find out what people are desiring, then, you know, a journey that they're going on. You provide some kind of benefit and guidance and you build a community around your share values. Boom. Bam. I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
However, the process to build a community is the same whether you have a product or not. The mistake is thinking that just because you build something people are going to want to come see it. So that old adage if you build it they will come. That is no longer true. That doesn't work for our day before the internet.
Maybe it worked because watching the grass grow or paint dry was interesting. But now there's like so many different pieces of stimulation that's distracting us and drawing our attention all the time if you do build it. So what? There's 1000 other people who probably built the same thing.
So how do you build a community? All right. So, now that we understood that it doesn't really matter whether you have a product or not. This is how you build a community. You build a community first by knowing exactly who your niche is, who your audience is. And once you know who those audiences, you have to pick a journey that this audience person is going on.
So, what I mean by this is when you are picking out the journey, you are tapping into what their desires are. Once you learn what the desires are, Let's take athletes, for example, let's say your customer set is athletes. Well, athletes are all going on several different journeys. There might be some athletes that are trying to win the Olympics that are some athletes that are just trying to compete to get into the Olympics. There are some athletes that want to play division one for a school. There are some athletes that are trying to get recruited out of high school into maybe straight to the pros. There are some athletes that don't want to play in the pros, but they love coaching and they love mentoring and they want to go straight to that kind of role.
So all of these different customer sets, they all have different desires once you know what the desire is and you can tap into that desire then you know that what journey that are going on. So they're trying to try out for the Olympics, you know that this is their journey, this is their goal. And once you know what that journey is, you start building a community around that journey, that's one part to it. The second part of a community is to have shared values.
So among these people that are going on the same journey they might have different value sets. And if you start building a community that revolves around your values as the founder then it's so much easier. So what you do as a founder you start building a community of people that are going on the same journey who share your values and then the way that you entice them to come into your community is to provide some kind of guidance or benefit that will help them on their journey. So what I mean by this is it could be something really simple.
Let's take the Olympic athletes for example. Well if you have a coach in your community that's coach several Olympic athletes and it would benefit someone just having access to this person. You don't need a product or an M. V. P. For you to start building a community just with that benefit alone. And even if you don't have something like that even if you just took an hour sat down and did some research on what the eligibility is for Olympic athletes and you put together some kind of PowerPoint presentation you started giving this out then this is something else that will draw people in because you're saving them an hour of time and you're able to build a community by providing this benefit and this guidance around this customer journey that they're all going on.
And if you want it to be a really tight-knit community you basic community around your values. So everyone in there have shared values and that's it. That's how you build a community. I feel like it probably sounds obvious now that you've heard it out loud, but it really isn't that difficult. You just find out what people are desiring, then, you know, a journey that they're going on. You provide some kind of benefit and guidance and you build a community around your share values. Boom. Bam. I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
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