From cold meets to warm greets

Welcome to the Community Coach newsletter, a value packed read
for community builders who love turning cold meets into warm greets - making every introduction worth remembering!

In this newsletter…

📚 Community 101: Icebreakers that create memorable intros

🤖 10X any audio content into quizzes, conversation starters + more!

🥹 Community builder Farza is shutting down Buildspace - what could he have done instead?

👋 Answering your questions: “How can I improve the onboarding experience for my members?”

Community 101: Icebreakers

I love icebreakers - especially when they stir things up.

My advice?

Forget generic questions such as “what was your childhood like” or “what do you do for fun?”. BORING.

Aim for questions that make people go “oooooh good question!”.

• If you could know one of your life's statistics, what would it be?

  E.g. how many times you've had a positive impact on others (big/small), how many near death experiences etc..

• If you could have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? 

• What’s a book or movie that you wish you could experience for the first time again? 

• If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be? 

• What’s the strangest coincidence (or a de ja vu moment) you’ve ever experienced? - Sharing unusual stories can rapidly bring people closer together.

Got a great icebreaker question? Reply and let me know - I love hearing them!

Tool: Castmagic

Castmagic offers online community builders a range of tools to automate more of the content creation and engagement.

The platform's presets allow for easy repurposing of audio content into various formats, including session worksheets, meeting summaries, and blog posts.

The tool also facilitates community engagement by extracting key themes, creating quizzes, and generating conversation starters.

It has customizable prompts for social media, email newsletters, and outreach campaigns.

By automating much of the content creation process, Castmagic helps community builders reduce time on those tasks and focus on other more meaningful ones!

Farza is closing down Buildspace…
What could he have done instead to keep it going?

I was saddened to read the above post by Farza announcing the community he founded - Buildspace (which was featured in one of my first few newsletters) is closing down after many years.

They have accomplished so much over the past 5 years, but anyone who has built communities from scratch knows how hard the work is behind the scenes.

But the sad reason Farza is shutting down Buildspace isn’t due to burnout, lack of funding, investor pressures or the inability to monetize…

In fact - their community would always make $3-5 MILLION ARR from sponsorships alone + over 2 years runway in the bank to keep going.

The sad reason? Because it feels “done” to him.

I empathise a lot with this statement…

But it also makes me wonder: is it right for a community to exist solely due to the founder wanting it to exist?

In the past few years I have been focused on building communities that are sustainable. I was well aware that communities often rely so heavily on the founder or community builder to exist - and it seems such a shame that if they were to walk away that the community would just “die”.

That’s why I built a solid ambassador program for one of my latest (and largest) community. I knew that at some point I would be walking away - but I didn’t want the community to lose the much needed support.

I would have loved Farza to hand the reigns to some of the “super users” in the Buildspace community. Perhaps people who had achieved success from the program and wanted to give back and keep the momentum going for others.

I know it’s not easy to create truly “sustainable communities” - there are many other things that can get in the way of a community succeeding…

However I believe community builders have a responsibility to build communities that leave our ego at the door - and build communities that are able to survive beyond us when we walk away.

Would love to hear your thoughts - and RIP Buildspace!

Answering your questions

“How can I improve the onboarding experience for my members?” 

I recently completed an audit for a community that is soon to go public. One of the questions I was asked to answer was what was missing from their onboarding process.

I had a lot of recommendations for them after reviewing their current onboarding process, but a few things stood out that I thought I’d share in this newsletter:

• Make sure to include your mission/ high level goals in your onboarding process. I see this missed so often and it’s the perfect opportunity to communicate with members the reason the community exists and what you’re trying to achieve

• Think about how the onboarding process if providing you with vital information about your members so that you can customise the community experience for their needs

• Think about your community CRM: once you collect all the information from new members during the onboarding process - what does your community CRM look like? Is it easy to categorise and filter your members based on their goals and other practical information like timezones for live event invites? This will save you SO much time in future.

Got a question for me? DM me on Twitter and ask away. Your question may be answered in a future newsletter (and I’ll reply to everyone who asks).

Until next time,

Carmen
Community Coach

Connect with me on Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn.