E37: How to Cultivate a Community that Buys or Buys In

Have you ever been frustrated when you’ve launched something and no one seemed to want to buy it?

I have a secret for you: growing an audience is the wrong goal.Join me for this fun conversation with Esther Littlefield in Episode 37 of Just One Simple Thing as we talk about how to grow a community instead .... And not just any community, but a community that buys or buys in.

If you are a regular listener of Just One Simple Thing or the Christian Woman Business podcast, you know that we’ve both been talking about creating a community instead of an audience or a platform. We’ve covered the value of focusing on community over platform or audience; the benefits of community, receiving from your community, and we’ve shared some conversations with others who have built communities on various platforms. And now,we want to share with you HOW to cultivate your community.But before we get there, we want to give you a little more context.

We’ve been through some of the struggles of building a business.

We believed we had to reach a lot of people in order to make a difference or earn an income.

But after 6+ years in the online space, we have come to recognize 2 things:

1.You don’t need a huge audience to make an impact.
2.When your focus is on growing an audience, it can be incredibly draining and it can keep you from doing the work you’re meant to do.

The solution is really quite simple:Focus on cultivating a community rather than building an audience or platform.

We’ve discovered a philosophy that forms the foundation of strong communities.

The Cultivate Your Community Philosophy

Community is built one person at a time.As Christians, we value people over profitsA thriving community provides value to all members, not just the founder or leaderIt’s okay to charge for the time invested & value you bring to your community / people value what they invest in.When you have invested in your community, they are excited to pay you to help solve their problems.It’s better to grow deep roots before trying to grow wide.

Applying this philosophy is similar to growing a healthy garden. So we want to share with you what we have termed The Cultivate Method-it’s the 4 elements necessary to growing a thriving community.

You need good soil -that’s the content you create that connects with your community.

You need sunlight -that’s the conversations you have with your community (and that they have with one another).

You need water -that’s you showing up with consistencyto keep things growing.

And you can grow your garden even faster with fertilizer -that’s thecollaborations you create with others.

If you do these 4 things, you can build a thriving community that wants to be connected to you and is willing to pay for the products and services you create.

Of course, you can take what you’ve learned from our podcasts and the other resources we’ve shared, but if you want step-by-step instructions, templates, tools, and scripts, we’ve created the Cultivate Your Community course. The course will be available over Black Friday (Nov. 26) and we can’t wait to get it into your hands. Head over to cultivatecourse.com andif you are listening before Nov. 26, 2021, you’ll be able to join the wait list to get a reminder when it is open.

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