Anna helped me expand my vision for what’s possible for my online community. They helped me think through — deeply — what experience I wanted to provide for people on the inside, as well as what kind of experience and time commitment I wanted to assume as the leader.
Because of Anna, my community has become a place where people feel comfortable and connected.
Creating A Great Mastermind Experience
When veteran copywriter and copywriting coach Amy Posner joined Community Camp, she was nearing the end of the beta round of her mastermind called Magnetic North.
Throughout the six-month beta, she’d been busy experimenting with the mastermind’s programming, as well as learning what her participants wanted and needed from herself and the group.
Amy had noticed there were certain aspects of the community that were working well and others that needed strengthening, aligning, or removing altogether.
So when Amy heard of Community Camp — Anna’s four-session masterclass on how to design, facilitate, and maintain a paid online community — Amy recognized it as the perfect way to learn more about what makes a community great, as well as determine how she might want to restructure hers before the second round of Magnetic North began.
“Community Camp was my first opportunity to really focus on my community structure,” Amy said. “I had run communities in the past but I’d always just done things intuitively. With Community Camp, I could finally learn how to create a community deliberately.”
Amy said once Community Camp started she was blown away by the content and the teaching — as well as with Anna’s deep knowledge about the topic of community.
“Anna is one of the brainiest people I know — and they are so knowledgeable about community design. Anna has done a thorough study of how people gather and what people need from a community. The content they teach helps you understand it all from the lens of your own community, so you can assess what’s currently working or not — and create a community experience that works best for everyone, including yourself.”
The concept of creating a community that truly works for the community leader was one huge revelation she had during Community Camp.
“I didn’t realize that there were so many different types of online communities,” Amy said. “Anna helped me see that I can structure my community any way I want — and in a way that really works with my time. They also helped me consider what I want for my community in a whole new way, like what I want it to do, what’s my ultimate goal for it, and what I want my community members to take away from it when it ends. Anna helped me see that these things just don’t happen by luck — I’m able to engineer them.”
All of these considerations — as well as hearing how other Community Camp participants were structuring their communities — helped Amy analyze her Magnetic North community in a much deeper way.
And when Community Camp ended, she left with a solid understanding of how she could restructure her community so that it could become more practical and intuitive, as well as how she might deepen the engagement and conversations among the community members.
Community Circle-Ups
Eager to implement as many changes and enhancements as she could before Magnetic North’s second round started, Amy hired Anna for a series of Community Circle-Ups — hour-long coaching sessions where Anna put their full brainpower on the specific and unique needs of Amy’s group.
In each session, they tackled a different feature of community design that Amy wanted to transform, starting with her onboarding strategy.
“The tricky thing about my second round of Magnetic North was that I had six members from the beta round who were continuing on, and then I had six new members,” Amy said. “I was very concerned that the group would feel cliquey for the new members.
“Anna helped me plan for the first meeting with the new group and offered so many great suggestions for how to shepherd the new members in — things that helped to build connections between the old members and the new members right away.”
Next Anna helped Amy get very deliberate about how she wanted her group meetings to run, including the experience she wanted her participants to have as well as what her role was in creating — or allowing room for — that experience to unfold.
“We talked through how to provide the space for people to show up in the way they want and need to in order to have the experience they’re looking to have,” Amy said. “I also learned how and when to step back as the leader and let other people shine. Anna gave me advice as to how much I should be answering questions as the leader, and when I should let other people take over. It was really eye-opening.”
Amy said it was amazing how much they accomplished in their hour-long sessions, and how much she was able to learn in such a short period of time.
“During our Community Circle-Ups, Anna got out the Miro board and went to work, and before you knew it we had my entire program mapped out,” Amy said. “We covered so many things that I’d never thought of when it comes to creating community.”
The Results
Amy said she’s thrilled with the results of how her work with Anna has transpired in her Magnetic North community — and sees the value of it every day inside the group.
“The second cohort got off to a better, tighter start and that allowed the group to gel more quickly and for me to focus on each individual without having to work on the big picture at the same time,” Amy said. “From the onboarding process Anna helped me to create, to the internal programming, everything is now crystal clear and well mapped out.”
“I feel more relaxed as the leader, and the group members have been super engaged. They’re so willing to help each other and they’ve gone deeper and been more vulnerable way earlier than they did in the beta round. The members truly feel connected with each other — which is the whole point of a mastermind.”
Amy said that having now experienced Anna’s top-notch expertise in community design firsthand she thinks it’s a must for any business owner who wants to create a truly meaningful community experience for their members.
“Anna is a master at building community and participated in all kinds of communities. They volunteer in them, organize them, and run them. Anna deeply understands how to deliver an experience that makes people comfortable and willing to show up inside the group.”
Amy was so pleased with her results that she hired Anna to help debrief the second cohort to see what she could improve for the third round — as well as to design a new community that she’s starting completely from scratch.
“I know that I could take weeks agonizing over the data about what to improve or how to set things up, or I can hire Anna. With Anna’s help, I get much better results more quickly and have fun in the process — which is kind of a no-brainer, if you ask me!”
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