No-Fail Community Launch Formulas (Psst—It's SIMPLER Than You Think)

0:02Your ideal members are attracted to the fact that you've raised a flag and said, hey guys, I know you exist and I am going to help you meet other people like yourself.

0:22Welcome to module eight, where we are going to tackle your launch. Now, the reality of launch and really the reality of launching a new membership, I call it the life of a membership or a life of a community is you decide you're going to do it and you get to work with your launch prep. And during your launch prep, anything is possible. It's so much fun to think about and dream and imagine. And yeah, there's some nerves, but it just feels like it's all going to work out and it's going to be phenomenal. Then launch day happens and 98 % of things go right. But for some reason, human nature is to focus on the 2 % of things that aren't absolutely perfect, or they don't look exactly like they looked in your head.

1:10And that causes any of us to come down, or what I like to call the dip. When we're in the dip and that post-launch dip, it's real easy to quit. And it's like, oh, everybody's so busy. This isn't what I thought it was going to be. I'm tired. This couldn't possibly work. A lot of people like it, but those three people said that they were too busy for it. And that causes a lot of people to prematurely quit, or I call it premature failure. But the beauty is when you stay curious and you use that post-launch period of time to workshop, to experiment, to stay open to the fact that your ideal member may not be exactly who you thought it was when you first started, or that their best year ever looks a little bit different once you start to talk to more and more people and you get that first community in place.

2:08And what happens when you keep at it, what happens when you workshop and you experiment and you stay curious, you unlock growth. So for us to even get to this amazing life post-launch through workshopping and on to growth, well, we need to do three things. Number one, we need to create a sales page. Number two, launch. And number three, if you're not already starting with an email list or an audience, I have the simplest way for you to bring your first members into a paid membership. So with that, let's go ahead and dive in. As you think about your sales page, it follows actually a pretty straightforward formula.

2:55Your sales page needs to have the hook or talk about the pain that your ideal member is in. You want to grab people's attention. You're competing with a lot of ideas, a lot of messages that someone's gonna see and really be inundated with. Then your pitch, which is your big purpose, Your ideal member plus their best year ever, which is overcoming those challenges or that pain point or navigating that transition. Then you have your community design plan. This is what am I paying for when I buy this thing? What are we going to do together? And finally, you have your offer, which is the packaging of all of these pieces plus your price.

3:38So let me just show you a few examples of what your sales page could start to look like. This is one for gold comedy. Mentioned them in an earlier module. It's for women and non-binary comedians navigating a career in comedy. So you can see here very quickly who this is for, the big purpose, and what is that offer? The journey of intrinsic health. This is Dr. Zach Bush and what he is bringing together in terms of a community around functional health and wellness. And you can see who this is for, what they're going to get for doing it. And if you actually went further down the page, you can see a welcome from Dr.

4:19Bush talking about what is their member's big purpose, their best year ever, the community design plan, and the offer. Slow AF Run Club, great example of a fantastic sales page that is very effective, telling people who this is for. And the Slow AF Run Club also does a really nice job of saying who their ideal member is. David Meltzer's Road to Revenue, so you know what this is for. It is for entrepreneurs and coaches hoping to master work-life balance and grow their business. Another great example, the Forced Joy Club. This is a community for grievers by grievers. So people going through grief and really navigating it together.

5:05You can also see here in the Cowgirl Artists of America for female Western artists embracing the cowgirl lifestyle. Again, really clear who this is for. And then the rest of the sales page outlines the big purpose, the community design plan, and the offer itself. Animal Soul Connection Circle, it is all about understanding your pets. The image is a pretty good indication of what it's for and who it's for. Finally, I want to talk about something we offer at Mighty that is awesome and that nobody else has it, which is when you are gearing up to create your new membership, you have what we call Mighty Co-host.

5:53and this is how it works. So you basically put in who you want to bring together, who is your ideal member, and it gets to work. It will generate for you some great ideas around your big purpose. It will also give you name examples if you haven't quite figured out what your name is yet for your membership or your community. Then it will offer initial branding. So you're not just staring at a blank screen. And then it continues to go on. There's about six other things that it will build from invite copy to your about page to your welcome article. And in doing this, it cuts off days and weeks before you would start inviting your very first members, or as I like to call them, the founding five.

6:38And so getting in, using Mighty Co-host onboarding, and starting to invite in your initial members where they have things to do, all around answering just one simple question, which is, who do you want to bring together? So really important, great tool that you can take full advantage of and is consistent with what we are talking about here in People Magic Profit. So now let's move on to your launch formula. And the great thing about the launch formula is that it is used by people who are just getting started and by multi-million dollar creators and brands. And it kind of works universally for both.

7:17And here's how it goes. What you want to do is announce your community about two to four weeks before you have a go live event. Your sales page, typically you want to have out three to four weeks before, and then you really make your push two weeks before your new member live event that happens exclusively within your paid membership. Not to everybody. That happens in the two to four weeks before you go live. This isn't a wait list. Think about it more as like the lobby of your membership. And so people can start to meet each other, but you really say this is on when you have your launch event.

8:02And so two to four weeks, sales page, and then you have this concentrated period of emailing people, posting to social media. If you are just starting from scratch and you're not exactly sure who you're going to invite in because you don't have an existing audience, not a problem. This is the time that you actually go out and talk to people individually. And in doing the live event, that is the signal of we are off to the races. Then you want to start workshopping and experimenting that then unlocks growth. So you announce your community, you have your sales page two to four weeks before a live event.

8:44And again, people can be buying during those two to four weeks. They are in the community. There are places and lightweight things that they can do. And then the new member live event and that clear date of that new member live event is the thing that says the membership is now in session. And then you're workshopping, experimenting, and unlocking growth. All right, let me give you some examples of people who aren't just using the techniques of People Magic Profit, but are actually doing it on a mighty network. Dream Club by Marie Forleo. So this is for entrepreneurs and ambitious creatives excited to turn their dreams into reality.

9:25So a month before the doors close on a very special offer, they have their sales page up. Two weeks before, they do a big YouTube live stream. And finally, on their launch day, there is an exclusive member kickoff party. Now, again, the exclusive member kickoff party is just for the people who have purchased. So it's in your community. It is not out there on social media. That happened before that launch event starts. So another example is the Category Design Academy. This is for entrepreneurs, executives, and creators who really want to understand how to do category design, which is a different kind of business strategy.

10:15So a month before they had their launch day, they opened the sales page and the email campaign started. Now, they had a really successful newsletter that they were able to go out and talk to. This is a high-ticket membership over the course of a year. And so they expected to be able to talk to a large number of people and really hone in on who their first 30 would be. So two weeks before their launch day, they had a free live event or webinar to introduce their offer. And finally, on launch day, they had an exclusive member meet and greet in the membership. So you're using that launch day as the start of the session.

11:04So another example is Forever Health. So this is for 30-somethings all around health, wellness, well-being. They actually have an annual summit and a very strong community on social media. So a month before they launched this membership, they announced it at their annual summit. They also had the sales page open and began emailing a special offer that was only available before the launch day. Then two weeks before the launch day was when they unveiled who the team behind it was going to be. So they were able to introduce the co-hosts of this membership. And 10 days before, they really started in on the email campaign.

11:52So again, you want to have the email drip campaign in place for two weeks, so between 10 and 14 days. And you want to be emailing people every day with something valuable, education, snippets about what they're going to find in that membership, and then really making sure that they know when the launch day is. And finally, on their launch day, they had an exclusive member meet and greet as well. So you can see how different kinds of memberships with different kinds of profiles all can benefit from this launch formula. Basically, you don't want to give yourself three months. You don't want to give yourself three days.

12:34It's roughly in that two to four week period of time. And you want to use your sales page, your emails, your outreach to get folks excited and then make it really clear when your membership is starting on that launch day. So those are some good examples of this launch formula. So what are you going to do in that live member event on launch day? So here's what I like to recommend. So number one, you want to share your story. and you wanna talk about the motivation behind your big purpose. Why are you bringing people together that are human beings in this particular transition or navigating this particular kind of pain?

13:17So the second thing I like to do is preview your community design plan. Now, I don't like to tell everybody all my monthly themes. I like to make it a little bit more of a surprise at the beginning of every month. So you want to though let people know what to expect from your community. What are people going to do? What's the culture like? And then finally, you want to spark connections between members. Now, whatever you do, please don't go around in a large group of people and ask everybody to introduce themselves. That is a recipe for disaster. Instead, go ahead and either use the live stream to call it out over chat or use Zoom and our Zoom integration in Mighty Networks to be able to put people in breakout rooms.

14:00But the key thing is you want your members to start to get to know each other. You can also bring somebody on stage with you in a live stream and start to actually ask them questions. So everybody is getting to know each other, not just listening to you. That is what a fantastic live event on launch day looks like. And you can take full advantage of it on your Mighty Network. All right, so finally, if you do not have members, but you are really excited to create your membership, I want to just offer one recommendation, which is do not post to social media and think anybody is going to pay attention.

14:43Instead, I want to encourage you to take advantage of the following formula. You have your ideal member. That is the profile of what you're looking for. You go out and you talk to your people. Then you get recommendations about their people. And as you start to bring members into the community from those two pools of people, you have your community's people. It is so much easier to start with people that you know or the people that your people know than it is to go out on social media where only about 1 % to 5 % of anything you post is seen by all the people who even follow you. So you are much better off starting with the people that you know and building from there.

15:30So that's it. That is how to launch your new membership. And in our final module, I am going to show you what happens after they join, or what I like to call creating a magical first experience. I hope you'll join me.

15:57Thanks for tuning in to People Magic Profit, a nine-part series where I show you exactly how to build the most profitable digital community membership by creating People Magic. And if you want more, I have got a podcast also called People Magic, where we do a deep dive of all of the topics I've covered in this masterclass. Head on over to Mighty Networks where we have got a free trial waiting for you. Until next time, I'm Gina Bianchini and thanks for being a part of People Magic Profit.