3 Community Leader Tips

The Momentum Marketing Podcast

On this episode of the Momentum Marketing Podcast, you are going to learn the three things the community leaders do wrong and what you can do to get it right. All of that and more with my beautiful guest, Miss Jade Olivia.

Hey there, I'm Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing Podcast. I'm a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co-author. In each episode you'll get real world practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two along the way. If you're ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you're in the right place.

I am so excited to introduce my dear friend Jade Olivia to the podcast. Jade. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Hello. Oh, thanks for having me.

She's incredible at cheerleading and building up entrepreneurs and business owners and, and I've gotten to know her over the last couple of years and in particular, she is a community engagement expert. She's really, really amazing at leading communities, taking someone who has a community and just really activating it, and building it up, and helping them grow it. Not only by numbers, but also by engagement. And I think that's so important because, business owners, we try to post or we try to build up engagement and it's just crickets. So it's either a matter of, do we not have the right people in there? Are we not posting the right things? Then as the business owner, you think, like it's all about you and you're the one messing it up. But Jade is gonna share three amazing tips on how to activate your current community. And I'm so excited to talk with her about that today.

So Jade, tell the listener a little bit about yourself, your background, you're also a mama entrepreneur just like me. Tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll dive into the community stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. That was a really great intro. I'm also like, just a regular human. But that's a good way to even like introduce myself because at the core, that's why I care so much about community and making sure that they're engaged and connected. Jillian and I are in multiple groups in communities. We share the same space in, in a lot of places. I'm in her groups and, and other professional spaces. And these communities have literally saved me and given me a home. I'm sure a lot of people listening can appreciate. And maybe you feel the same way too where your people in your circle, like your family and your best friends, they love you. They don't really understand entrepreneur life and they think you're kind of like wild and crazy and maybe you don't understand your ADHD and you know, your propensity to wake up and be like, I'm gonna change the world today. I'm going to do something else. Ok. Now I'm going to do this other thing. And the things that excite me don't excite my mom and my sister is my best friend. And so I inadvertently kind of tone myself down a little bit when I'm around non entrepreneurs or non-ADHD people because I don't want to overwhelm them. And when I'm in communities though, I can be my truest self, I can share my crazy ideas. They're appreciated. They're celebrated when you're crazy. And I've always been kind of crazy. It's so comforting to, to belong. So I care a lot about communities, Jill and I are also automation experts. So we share that expert and we get to bounce ideas off of each other. And again, community rolls in, we get to collaborate and, and share expertise and passions and it's community is everything. It's the best thing in the world.

Yeah. My next question was going to be, how would you define a community? And I think you touched on it a little bit with your response there, is that communities don't just have to be, oh, I created a Facebook group and a bunch of people are in there. Or maybe you have Kijabi and there's a membership portal in there. Or people who have membership sites that people can reply and do that sort of thing. Or Reddit could be a community. Or I belong to a local chapter of a mom's club and that is a community and we have a Facebook group. So it doesn't just have to be digital. How would you define community?

When you think about community? Like the dictionary sense? It's any shared space of people who have common beliefs and values where my business expertise lies in the way community plays a role in people's businesses. Specifically in the format doesn't matter.

It could be a Facebook group, it could be a slack channel, it could be any place on your own website, for example. However, I define community as the place that's number one always on. So people can post and chat and collaborate even when you're not presenting your leadership. And number two, it's primarily a place for them to be on the stage, not for the leader. Which is actually a really, really great segue into our topics. Because, you know, again, Julie and I, we share a lot of groups and spaces and communities. And I think it's interesting when I call this out, people kind of go oh yeah, you're right. When you think back and realize the best communities that you're in are the ones where the leaders don't post.

Very rarely. You're kind of like. Oh, wow, you're right. You know, in mom groups, I'm, I'm in a Facebook group called Moms of Multiples in Washington County because I have twins and I had to learn a lot from them when I first had them. I have three kids. I have an eight year old and two 5 year olds and it's a place that's always on for us to talk. There isn't some moderator that's shoving stuff down our throat all the time. It's for us to be on a stage and, and to share knowledge and support with each other. It's pretty great.

Yeah. And really, you're right. As the leader of that community, you kind of kick, start, activate, get everybody excited and start to create some of that engagement, but then hand it over and say, ok, well, this is your community and you contribute to it and you build it and you make it what it is. And you can look at that as a group of like minded people who are moms of multiples. You could look at it as a slack channel of your team or your employees or your coworkers. You could look at it as a Facebook group. You could look at it as multiple. What's the word medias?

Absolutely.

It doesn't just have to be one place whenever you have a group of connected people that are in the same space.

That is a community.

Exactly. Nailed it. Love it, love it, love it. We're all learning. This is amazing. We segue into talking about the things that community leaders can learn a little bit from. Because again, like I said, as someone who does that, I've built Facebook groups and thought, OK, as long as I just throw a bunch of people in here and I post once a day, I'll definitely get engagement and sales and all the things, but that's not the case. And based on your definition, that's really not what community is, even about.

What a great segue. My first tip of three, we're gonna do three today. Love Jillian's format here. The first one is to make sure you have an objective and that seems kind of silly and obvious at first. But when you really say back and think about it, this is one of my favorite mic drop statements. Is this a community not an objective. It's a format I think the biggest mistake business owners make with their communities in a business is they launch a thing. They have a course. They have a program, they're a coach, they're amazing and they're like, and I'll add community and people will just naturally know how to get value out of it because it's a community. It's where people commune right? Wrong. Like 9.9 times out of 10. Those end up super quick. It and it's just kind of sitting there. It's just a container. The community is the container. It's the format, but it's not the point. It's like walking into a doctor's waiting room and there's no check in desk. And you do I sit down or like, what do I do?I know that I'm here for my health. Cool. Can't wait to learn about that. Who, who do I talk to? Does the doctor ask me questions? If someone were to just randomly plot land in your group? Poof, would they know what the point is, how to engage to get value from it? How do they introduce themselves? How do they connect with people? How do they share, how do they behave? I mean, I hate to say the word behave, but it's kind of true like how, how do I act here according to the leader's objectives?

Again, I'm raising my hand in this as well. Is that OK? I have a membership or I have courses and I want to create a community or a place for people to engage and ask questions. And my objective would probably be some engagement, which is, that's a very vague. The next objective would be a place for me to answer questions when people have them. But then that's leaving it up to them to post and maybe they're a little bit leery about asking questions or am I gonna look dumb if I ask a silly question?

Right. So something like that. Yeah.

And then I think a lot of people like myself or like other content creators would create a community to monetize it. And that's not a bad thing. Like we're in business to make money, but it's also a very self serving objective. If you can take some of those more vague objectives and make them a little bit more focused. What advice would you give for somebody who's like, well, I want to monetize my community or I wanna create, you know, whatever it is, how would you actually go about sharing? How do you set an objective properly? Because I feel like vague objectives just kind of get washed away after, you know, you try it for a week and it doesn't work.

Yeah.

Oh, I have so many answers to that. I'll start with one. There's this phrase that I've adopted, that I want everyone to adopt it too. I'm like running all over the world going.

Everybody starts saying this. And the phrase is “Flip the script” Think about everything you think about your business about what you do about who you serve, everything you do, everything you say, take the glasses off of you and put them on to them and step into their shoes and everything is about them. So if you're gonna craft an objective tip number one is should be what's the objective for them? What are they going to get out of it? My partner, Brian always says, what's everyone's favorite radio station? WIFM? What's in it for me? So it has the objective has to be something amazing for them. And, and if your group is free or as part of some sort of ascension model, you want people to opt into the next level of your value ladder, then the objective should be awareness related, right? You're providing an extreme amount of value just like you would with any lead magnet, whether it's a free call force or free community, you're providing a great deal of value. But ultimately, the value should provide should also open their eyes and go wow, my problem is bigger than I thought I better pay for the next thing now that I'm super smart and I have all this value.

It's sort of just like a natural moving walkway like in an airport or something.

And then secondly, Jillian was asking if I had a freebie for y'all and I do on my website Jadeolivia.co. There is a free webinar I did recently. You can watch the replay for free where we go through an actual objective statement exercise where you answer a ton of questions and then mix and match and fill in the blanks to make it clear. That kind of like I said earlier.

Poof, I entered your community. Oh, wow. I know exactly who else is here. I belong and how do I behave to get value? And it's gonna be awesome. It makes it crystal clear. It's super, super fun.

I love that. That's awesome. So moving on, what is your tip or advice? Number two for things that community leaders aren't doing and how we can make it better.

OK. This one's saucy. I get a little About this one. I get a little sassy. I'm in so many communities that do this and it's not, it's missing the target. I want everyone to not. And it's make sure you're not treating your community like social media. By social media. I mean, like your Instagram account or your Facebook fan page or your Tiktok account on your free organic or, you know, even paid social media. The goal is you create content and you're amazing and you're valuable. And you hope that people engage with it, they comment, they like they share, they forward, they tag people, they do all the things. But in that scenario, all of the quote engagement is in two lanes. It's either them commenting on you or you commenting on them and people aren't really connecting with each other. They're just adding onto a pile of engagements to you. Where in a real community, the best ones, the leader never posts, almost rarely posts. We're all there under their umbrella of thought leadership and we're all there. But we should be the ones posting and sharing our excitement and meeting people and connecting and asking questions and train your people to answer each other's questions and, and give each other a tip. It shouldn't be exhausting for you is the point. And that's what's amazing about this whole strategy that I love teaching because your community should not be a place for you to sit there on a perch and post and talk. You should be over here doing your amazing thing that you're amazing at, good at and working on your courses and your content and your brilliance and your coaching and like, do your thing be amazing. Don't sit there in your community all day, set an objective and get them to talk to each other instead of you doing all the work, it's way more fun and easy that way.

No, it definitely is. And you're right, you as the business owner, there's so many other things going on that need your attention or that need worked on or updating and fixing ads or fixing lead magnets or producing new lead magnets or, you know, making something else happen in your business that like adding another thing onto your plate, like posting in your community is just the straw that's breaking the camel's back. But if you can create a safe environment where people feel comfortable posting and sharing and collaborating and doing all of those things, it kind of runs itself.

Exactly. And in the free groups, a lot of the free groups that Jillian and I share, they're really good. But the best ones are the ones that we pay for and the leader doesn't even post. The leader is incredible and has thought leadership and is an incredible content creator, but they're not standing there hovering over us talking at us. They're, they're a safe space for us to be together. It's, it's incredible.

I have a question for you when it comes to free or paid groups. So I've seen both in terms of rules that different communities or different groups would have for free and paid in communities that I've been a part of, I have noticed that a lot of them, most of them, 99% of them will have some kind of rule that says no links, no sales, no, anything like that. And I just kind of wonder like, OK, I see it from everyone's perspective that you don't want to be in a community that's just constantly like, buy my stuff and that's it. But at the same time to really genuinely have collaborative, supportive community, you need to give people the opportunity to even through DM say, hey, you know, you can't just go in and call DM people.

But if somebody needs what you're offering and you're amazing at it like, yeah, you should be able to get business from this. So how would you go about setting those rules? What have you seen in communities that you manage or are part of that has worked in that way?

The answer is both backwards and forwards. And by backwards, I mean, my, my first tip was to create an objective when you're in a group where the objective is really clear. That includes really good onboarding and telling me how I should ask questions so I can get value right? And I know why I'm here and I'm not just sitting here. So I post my offer. So when you get really clear on the objective, a lot of times that clears up, you know, quote bad behavior in. In your sample Jillian, you were like, you know, I wish that people would ask questions. I have two questions for you and this is part of the exercise. So I'm kind of over sharing, but I love it. Anyway.

Number one, write down your perfect world, what would they be doing? Would they be asking questions? Would they be sharing tips on something they just learned, like write down everything that you wish they would be doing all day and it was buzzing, write it down. And then my question number two for you is, did they know that? Boom, boom, boom, right? That was like another dramatic moment. They don't know that if I were to walk into Jillian's community. And, and I was told like, hey, this is where you ask questions about A, B, C. Here's a great example where user X, Y, Z, posted this really great question. Look how much support that she got. Look at the win that she got and I'm like, yes, I want that. I want that much support and love for the question that I asked. Now, I know how to ask really great questions. I think you'll find. And if any of you guys listening, consider yourself to be a marketer of any kind. Granted, Jillian and I do that, do this for a living. But in marketing, pretty much the number one rule is to assume that the person you're talking to doesn't know anything and they're dumb and you have to have what we call, calls to action.

You wouldn't have a sales email without the words “Click Here” or “Buy Now” or do this or after I buy. Like, Jillian invited me on this podcast. She's like, here's a link, please book by this period of time. Please have these things. I wouldn't know that if she didn't tell me. And I think the common denominators of marketing best practices are the same in the little micro ecosystem of a community. We need calls to action. I won't post questions if you don't prompt me to. And when should you? When is a good time for me to ask you a question? If you're a really great marketer and business owner and leader, you're gonna have a pulse on my progress and know things about me to prompt me to ask the right question. Even if it's privately, if anybody ever asks you a question in a DM say that's an amazing question. Ask that in the community because I can answer it too. But I want to get some other people's perspective on it. So you can prompt people using strategic calls to action in so many different ways. Instead of everyone's nightmare of just sitting there posting and crossing your fingers.

Right. No, it's so true. And I think that comes back to again, you and I know this being in the communities that we're a part of being automation experts, being business owners, we understand how important it is to set expectations up front, whether you're working with a client, whether you're building a community, whether you're on boarding new team members, one of the best things that you can do is to set the expectation for that other person, their behavior or their engagement or even to get them to understand what's possible for them and the value that they're getting from the community or from being a team member of yours or from working with you in business. And so what I see a lot of business owners failing at, in that sense is OK, I've sold you on the program or the coaching or the mastermind or the thing or whatever it is. And then I'm gonna add you to this group and then they add somebody to a group. They do the, hey, welcome Jade to the group kind of post and then that's it. There's no follow up. There's no DM or an email saying, hey, I'm so excited that you're part of this group. I want you to know that if you have questions about this, these are good people to go to post these sorts of things. Here's the group rules, give them something to go off of so that they know what, what, what's possible.Yeah.

And so again, like exactly the same goes, it is in marketing as it is in your community, tell me what to do. And if I'm a really good fit and I, I'm a really great follower of what you're leading, I'll do it. I'm following you. I'm in your group. Tell me what to ask and when to ask and how to ask. That just goes back to what I'm saying. People often are like, oh and, and I'm gonna add community for what to what end, how can I get value from it? These things should not be overlooked. Those are a couple of really great tips. When you ask your question, I said it was both backwards and forwards. What I meant by that was my third and final tip. Great segue again, we're nailing this today.

You got this all day, the third one. And this also answers your question about how to get people to post when and why and how the right way is change your approach, whatever you wanna do, whatever your objective is, maybe you want to teach, for example, change your approach based on getting people to connect with each other instead of you talking at people. I have so many metaphors for this. It's so funny and it really helps paint a picture. So here's one of them. It's like the difference between a lecture hall teaching and a Montessori teaching. If you're just gonna teach, which is awesome. I love learning. I love taking courses. I love all these things. But if you're gonna do it in a community, change your approach instead of just showing up live once a week to talk at me, you can talk at me anywhere. I don't need to be in your community. Maybe that's just a container for exclusivity. But I wouldn't consider that a community if you're just gonna sit there and talk at me in a silo. I don't like that. So change your approach, it's so fun to maybe go live and invite us onto the Zoom with you. So it's still streamed in your group for people who watch it later. But I can meet people and we can share. You can put us in breakout rooms. Maybe you can do like assign us a piece of homework and we have an accountability buddy. There's so many ways you can change what you're teaching. You can still be amazing and be a leader. But if you're doing it in the community, shouldn't it be about them and not? Yeah. So changing your approach is really, really important and you're absolutely right. It really is something that a lot of business owners or community leaders, community owners don't do.

Like I was recently finishing up a new webinar that I have and of course I put, oh, and you'll be added to our book and trying to put a value that thing. And I'm sitting here thinking, OK, well, it's in, it could potentially be infinitely valuable for somebody to get access to me and ask all sorts of questions and network with other people and all this stuff. But I also feel very weird adding invaluable to my offering stack in my webinar because it also kind of feels not disingenuous, but you know what I mean?It just feels a little weird like how do you actually add a monetary value to something like that?

And of course, it feels weird to add a monetary value to a community when you're not giving back to that community and you're not fully engaging that community for sure. And what's funny about that too is that even if let's say your community was like the best, most bustling perfect. Like it's your perfect world community that still is hard to put a price tag on. That is invaluable community has such like a deep emotional meaning to it. And that's why I'm so passionate about talking to the world and on small business owners about like make it about them and connect them on purpose and be intentional about it because the value doesn't, doesn't have a price tag. I think if you're gonna add it in, you know, describing the value when you're, when you're packaging your materials into your perfect offer, then the best place to start is honing in on that objective because you can say you're going to get this, this objective, whether it's a mastery or collaborative forum or team support, you can assign an appropriate dollar on that based on the objective, you know, when things go well, right.

A good because I know that we can't go too long. A really good kind of way to, to tie this all up with a bow is another one of my favorite metaphors. I'm a very like visual thinker if you're stressing out, like how, how do I show up and what do I do? And it gets so overwhelming, just think about, let's pretend it's your birthday who doesn't love their birthday? It's like the best day of the year. Let's be honest and it's your birthday and you're having a birthday party, just be a host at your birthday party. The birth, the celebrating my birth is the objective. And I'm going to invite a bunch of people that I care about and want to spend time with, to my home, the container of a community and I know everybody and everyone's there for a reason, but they don't all know each other. So me as the hostess, or as the the leader, in this scenario, I can take Julian and walk her over to my friend Sarah and be like, you guys are both small business owner moms. Isn't that amazing? And then you guys connect and I can go over here and be like, oh my God, you're a twin mom. I'm a twin mom and we can like talk and have conversations. And so that's what being a lead, a leader or rather when you get big enough, you can hire a community manager to strategically track these data points and be able to connect people on purpose. But it's really just like hosting a part of your house. And so to that point, you wouldn't have a party at your house. Invite everyone inside, sit them all in chairs and stand on a table and be like, hey, everybody come and see how good I look, you know, like that's not a fun party. Everyone's there for me, they're there because of me, but they're all gonna have fun because I made them feel welcome. They walked in, I gave them clear instructions. This is the coat room, this is the bathroom, this is where all the bad classes are hanging out over here. If you like swimming, you can bond with people who like swimming over here and you can kind of strategically pull people together. Have you ever like had a party that was awkward and you were running around and you're like, hi, it's my job to entertain everybody all at the same time in different rooms and it's really, really stressful. That's what a stressful community feels like. So, just have a party in your community, be a great host. Have a point. Tell people what to do, make connections. They'll have a great time. It's just like a party. It's really great.

That's such a good metaphor. The birthday party because you're absolutely right there all there with an objective or for a purpose because it's your birthday, they're in a certain place, your house or where the community would exist if it's in person or digital. And then you want to create that engagement and create those connections because it's not just thanks for coming to my birthday party. Welcome to my TED Talk about me. It's, you know, let's connect to these people and oh, you're also a mom and that's a brilliant metaphor.

I love that and parties are awkward at first and that's OK. But the better attuned you are as a leader and a host to who people are and what they want and what matters to them and how the details you know about them to thoughtfully introduce them to someone that they would have a real connection with the same as it is in real life as it is in business.

Brilliant. I love it, Jade. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing all of your brilliant wisdom about communities with us. I would love for you to share one more time. How can people connect with you?

Yeah. On my everything is JD Olivia dot co. So on my website Jadeolivia.co, you can navigate through the community section and get that replay of the free webinar where I do a whole objective statement exercise. And Instagram, JadeOlivia.co on Facebook. I'm Jadeolivia.co. So it's pretty easy to find. It's pretty consistent. Awesome.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks.

The Momentum Marketing Podcast By Jillian Kendrick Episode: # 21 Topic: 3 Community Leader Tips Contact: [e-mail] IG: instagram.com/automatedmama