I get asked all the time, how do you create a thriving community? And what people are really asking for is what’s the Facebook post that I should be putting up, or what’s the latest strategy or tactic that I need to make my community thriving so that my people stay longer. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not about strategies and tactics. There’s foundational elements that you need to have in place that are going to prevent your community from being strong, sticky, and scaling, in the long run.
So, what are those?
Well, I call it my Community Cultivated™ framework. It’s something that I’ve developed or more like discovered over 10 years of experience in communities, both online and offline and a ton of research because I’m a total nerd and I love researching about communities. What I’ve found is that there are these four pillars or four elements, if you will, that you’ll find in all thriving communities and in successful and impactful movements across generations. These pieces are really foundational. That’s why I want you to listen to these first four episodes before you listen to anything else that I teach you, or before you try to implement anything new for your community.
Because if you don’t have these things, then nothing else that you do is really going to have the impact that you’re looking for. Let’s start with the first part of the community cultivated framework. It’s that first pillar of a thriving community. Now, if you don’t have this, you are definitely going to struggle to scale, but if you have it, it’s like pouring gasoline on a fire.
It’s something that you see throughout history, in all types of communities.
It’s something that takes really diverse groups of people and brings them together. It unifies them. It’s called. Cause is the first pillar of a thriving community and a common cause will Trump a common interest every time. Let me give you an example.
I live in Tennessee and there’s a lot of horse people around here. My daughter being one of them, and you can create a community around people who have a common interest of liking horses. But there are communities that are built around common causes that are much deeper. For example, there’s something called a Tennessee walking horse that there’s a lot of controversy around, and there are people who want to save the Tennessee walking horse. What do you think is the stronger community in the end?
Is it the community of people who just like horses and have that common interest? Or is it the community of people who have a fundamental belief that the Tennessee walking horse community and shows are not right. They are on a mission to save that Tennessee walking horse.
It’s the latter, right? It’s that Tennessee walking horse community, that’s going to be the stronger, stickier community that has more impact in the long run.
That’s because having a common cause generates momentum and momentum leads to action and action creates progress. Progress, right? That’s what leads to results. The thing that we’re selling people on in the end, you’re going to hear me saying this over and over again, but progress is the goal not engagement. I’ll probably do a whole nether episode on that at some point, but progress is the goal.
Not engagement. So, how do you do this? How do you incorporate a strong cause into your community strategy? Well, there’s three things that you need to know. The first is the purpose. The second is the path and the third is progress. I think of it a lot like this, not too long ago I was on a trip to a business mastermind event in North Carolina. I took my family, like I always like to do when I can. And we’ve found out that there were waterfalls in the town that we were staying in.
Of course, being the adventurous spirit, I’m like we have to go hike to a waterfall. We have to let the kids see a waterfall. This would be amazing. So, one of the days we pull into this parking lot and we’re going to go on this hike.
Immediately one of my kids say, why are we here?
What are we doing? Where are we going? What’s happening? They wanted to know the purpose. Why were we in that place?
And as adults, we want to know the same thing. We needed to tell them why we were there. We said, we’re going to go see this waterfall. It’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be beautiful.
You are going to see God’s creation in a new way. We are so excited to share this with you.
We gave them a clear purpose about why we were here, and you need to do the same thing for your people. The second question that they asked once they knew why we were there was, well, how are we going to get there? We would be thinking the same thing.
What’s the path? What do I need to know in order to be able to get there as fast and as safely as possible.
Especially for my son, he is so big on safety. He was really excited to know that there was a trail map and a clearly marked trail path. We knew somebody had gone before us to this waterfall and had cleared a path that would be safe, enjoyable, and probably the fastest and easiest way to get there.
You can provide that same kind of path for your community. Then finally, the third thing is progress. They want to know, how do we know that we’re actually getting closer to the goal ? For kids, this comes out a lot like, are we there yet? I’m hungry.
How much longer? They needed to have a measuring stick of their progress. They wanted to be able to turn around and see, look how far we’ve come. We tried to engage our kids with our senses. Do you hear that?
The waterfall is getting louder.
It’s getting a little colder. Do you feel the mist of the water? Do you see how the river is roaring a little bit more? We’re getting closer.
And then eventually we were so close that we could hear the roar and we were standing right there behind the waterfall. We could touch it. We could feel it. We were wet. It was loud.
It was crazy. And it was so fun. Your people are going to want to know a similar measuring stick of progress. Now, if you’re familiar with my friend and mentor Stu McLaren, this is where his success path comes in.
It’s a great way for you to develop, not only a clearly defined purpose, but a path that has a clear measuring stick of progress as well.
How do you incorporate a cause into your community? You want to be really clear on those three things, purpose, path and progress, and you have to have this, if you want to have a strong, sticky, sustainable community in the long run. This is just part one of the community cultivated framework. It’s the first pillar, which is cause. We’re going to be talking about all four parts in the next three episodes.
You want to make sure to listen to all of them because they work independently, and they work together. You need to be thinking about all four when you’re developing your community strategy and your plan. This was the first one, which was all about cause. How do you unite your people towards a common goal to find a clear purpose, path, and progress for them. In the next episode, we’re going to be talking about the second pillar, which is something that’s really essential, especially if you want to create a sense of belonging, like so many do inside of their communities. So, I’ll see you in the next episode.
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