The Calm Method

The CALM Method™ has helped me throughout my community-building journey. I will break down the CALM Method™. It focuses on Clarity, Awareness, Learning, and Motion to help you find calm in community building. 

Finding calm has been challenging over the past two years. I’ve learned that adding layers, complexity, and several concepts can create more confusion than clarity. 

The fastest way to find calm in community building is to keep things simple. (Which isn’t easy.)

This framework became what is now called the CALM Method™. I’ve developed and improved it over the years. My goal was to come up with the best way to help myself, clients, and community members quickly find calm. This is especially useful in the process of building, launching, and growing an online paid community.

Clarity of your unique concept. 

Awareness of your validation sources.  

Learning what structure will work best for you. 

Motion through taking action.     

Clarity 

It’s about gaining clarity of the community concept for yourself and empowering your members to understand it. The first step is to focus on a clear community concept and a unique offer. This means you’ve studied the marketplace.

You have a distinct offering based on your life’s work, experiences, or challenges you’ve overcome. You’ve also learned valuable lessons. This process empowers you to stand out and be unique in your community-building journey.

Awareness

You need to be aware of several things. First, confirm your potential members understand your message and community concept. Then, make sure they can validate your idea and express interest in participating. When you speak with your potential members, you learn more about their needs. You’ll understand their challenges and problems. This process helps you begin to build a relationship with them.

But it would help if you asked them what they want to do. Inquire about how they’ve solved this problem in the past. If they only want to watch videos and work independently, there are better solutions than a community.

Alternatively, identify if your ideal member needs a supportive community. This can help them transition during a challenging life phase. Examples include parenthood, owning a business, or retirement. This situation would be a perfect problem to solve in a community.

Learning 

Knowing what members want to do and how they want to participate is a big part of the community-building process. You will learn from your members what kind of structure works best for them. Members of your 4-week course want to continue meeting over six months.

Another type of learning could emerge when you review data from your community and realize that most members need to watch your videos but show up on your live office hour calls.

That means that members are more interested in active communication with you and each other over a recorded piece of content that may or may not solve their problem. You will learn how your members want to know, connect, and participate within your community. 

Motion—After all this work, it’s time to take action! You can assemble your community strategy by putting together the data from your awareness, learning, and clarity. Depending on your structure’s complexity, this may involve designing the architecture. It might also mean implementing a content calendar, managing daily operations, and facilitating virtual sessions. 

Even if you don’t have a team now, make it your goal to get support as soon as you can. Despite promises from platforms that building your community will be easy, sustaining a community requires commitment. Launching a community requires focus and consistency, especially if you are a new business owner and need an established audience.

Focus on establishing your first clients first. You also need time to figure out how to charge. Additionally, building your offers is important.