Your rigid community calendar is quietly killing your engagement.

In this episode, I break down why over-prescriptive programming actually hurts engagement and how to design experiences that balance ritual and variation. I share lessons from my time at bossbabe, explain why generic Q&As and coaching calls quietly fail, and walk through programming formats that are easier to run and more valuable for members.

We talk about topic-specific coaching calls, responsive Q&As, socials, co-working sessions, challenges, roundtables, and welcome calls and how each one serves a different member need. I also explain why lower attendance doesn’t always mean lower value and how measuring the right feedback helps you iterate your programming without rebuilding everything from scratch.

If you want stronger engagement, better retention, and programming that actually reflects what your members need right now, this episode will help you rethink how you design your calendar.

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Most people are not experimenting enough with their programming.

We need both ritual and variation.

And this is where people get really hung up.

So for example, we'll say like, okay, every month we have two coaching calls, or we have four.

We have a coaching call every single week, or we have an event every week, something like this, right?

And one of the problems is like in the marketing aspect, like on our sales pages, we are way too specific.

We say you're going to get a Q and a call, a mindset coaching call, a train, a guest expert led training.

And we're just like very prescriptive about what the members are going to get when they're a member.

And I understand wanting to say like, hey, here's what you can expect and hello, like I love talking about setting expectations.

It's, it's, it's very important.

But we can set expectations by saying we have events every month.

We have events every month.

Here is an example of a calendar for next month and what we're doing next month.

We have events every month and here is an example of three of our most popular events.

So we can give people examples to set expectations that way without boxing ourselves into exactly what we need to offer every single month, over and over.

So a ritual event might be like, oh, every month we have a Q and A and everybody knows they have a Q and A.

But something I learned at Boss Babe actually was The Q&As would sort of start to like drop off in attendance because members would come and then they wouldn't.

Maybe they didn't personally have a question to answer.

And then the questions that were asked by other members weren't relevant to them because it was like too beginner or a topic they weren't focused on or whatever.

And so the problem is we make it so generic by saying like, oh, come to this open Q and A to connect with so and so leader of company.

But then they don't actually get any value from that call.

And so when we made this more specific by saying, okay, you're still going to have a ritual because we're going to do a Q and A every month, but we're going to add a topic to it, then we would have better show up rates, better engagement and more people coming back again and again.

Now let's say you say, okay, our Q and A topic this month is going to be about lead gen on social and there's a couple people that feel really good about that or their strategy or they aren't focused on that right now, so they're gonna skip that call and that we think of that as like a bad thing.

We're like, oh, no, not everybody's coming to the call.

But actually what we did was say, hey, your time is valuable and this is what we're gonna focus on.

If that's relevant for you right now, you should come.

And if it's not, you shouldn't come.

Right?

Or maybe you catch the replay or you listen to it in a podcast feed, but it's not a distraction for you and you're not pissed that you spent an hour wasting your time.

So we can create rituals.

We can create ritual programming and have maybe that Q and A every single month, but we can also be specific about what it's going to include and we can be reactive to what's happening in the community.

So if everybody's asking questions in the community about a new feature in Instagram and we want to teach that new feature in Instagram, then we can create an event about that next month.

And we have that flexibility in our calendar.

So what I wanted to do in this episode is give you some ideas for programming that you can experiment with in your community.

So we just talked about how to make, like, Q&As or some of these rituals more specific.

I'm going to dive into this a little bit more.

So a lot of communities offer coaching calls, and the problem with coaching calls is really similar to the problem I just reviewed about Q and A calls, which is that they're kind of random.

And we'll say like, okay, it's going to be a hot seat experience where people share a problem and they get feedback.

And the same thing happens that happens with the Q and A's, where if it's people aren't asking relevant things to them, it doesn't matter.

And so what I love about this method of coaching calls that I'll explain in a second, is that it really brings in a specific mindset around what we're coaching on that day.

So what I call this is like an effective coaching call that is topic specific.

So let's call this call, let's say it's an hour for just example purposes.

So the first 10 to 15 minutes, as the coach in the community, you can do a very specific monologue, mini training discussion.

You're basically opening up a discussion about a topic and you're setting the topic and you, you set this ahead of time.

You give them a heads up, you say, hey, hey, this is what the coaching calls about this week.

And then your members will respond to that.

By, like, joining the conversation.

Or you could even put them in breakouts.

You could have hot seat experience, but you're doing this, like, mini training, and then you're like, workshopping it with people.

You're going through Q and A's.

This is when you bring the hot seat moments.

But these coaching calls are much more effective because there's like, the specific topic that everybody is focused on, and you can make that topic align to your roadmap.

Your programming, your curriculum, your ip, your methodology.

Like, it can kind of like zoom in on a piece of the puzzle that they're all working through.

And again, we want to be responsive to what the community is asking for.

So if they're.

If everybody's kind of like in a similar boat or struggling with a certain thing, or the majority are, or this topic keeps coming up again and again.

That's how you can decide what the coaching call is about that week.

You can also respond to what's happening in the market or the world or the country or whatever.

Um, I had a client recently who he was sharing with me that in his coaching call, like this month, he talked about vulnerability wounds and his experience with that.

And then they went around the room and discussed this.

And it was a really powerful, moving call that was like, in response to what was happening in the world.

Now, because there's like this flexible programming opportunity where it's like, we're going to have these coaching calls, but they have a specific topic.

You're able to actually respond to what's happening.

And that's the problem that people miss with memberships is like, they're not thinking about what they need to respond to in what their clients need and what's happening in the world.

And they're thinking more like structure, structure, structure.

Like, every month we have this type of call and this type of call, and we.

We make things so rigid that we have no flexibility when the reality is that this is a people product and we need flexibility because people are always going through new things.

We're always needing to reinvent or iterate.

Okay?

So to that point, really, my whole.

One thing I want you to take away from this is we need to be more responsive in our programming to what people actually need.

So I'm going to go through a bunch of other types of events.

So let's say people are really lacking connection or they're saying, like, I want to meet other members or I'm struggling.

I want you to add a social to your calendar.

You don't have to do this every month.

You could just do it one month as a fun experiment.

I'm trying to think.

I think Jay does an event called like War Stories and Whiskey or something, which is, you know, on brand for him.

But basically it's a call that's not recorded.

Socials aren't usually recorded calls where you're just giving people some prompts and an opportunity to share and connect with one another.

It's a really big group.

You can use Brit breakout rooms.

If it's like 10 people or less, you can keep everybody in one room.

But the whole entire purpose is connection.

Giving it a general theme and giving them prompts is important because people, if you just say like, okay, connect with each other, it's too broad.

So you want to really curate the experience with giving people talking topics.

But socials are awesome for driving connection.

When people are feeling lonely, you can see that they're not really connecting with one another.

That's a great way to get them connecting.

If they're struggling with doing the work, getting things done, try adding in a co working session.

Co working sessions are like when you open up a room, a zoom room, and you say, hey, okay, what's everybody focused on for the next hour?

You spend the first five minutes going around and sharing and then you're basically just body doubling.

So everybody's on mute for almost an hour.

And then in the last five minutes you say, how did it go?

And then everybody shares what they got done.

It just helps people get things done, move through the work.

You can make these more specific implementation sessions if you're, you know, especially in a program format where you're like, okay, this week we're learning this thing.

On Thursday we're going to do an implementation session where everybody's going to come and do the work.

That's another way to think about a co working call is like actually working through an activity where you're troubleshooting, helping people, supporting them, answering their questions.

Guest expert led trainings are great, especially in response to my community's asking me questions I don't know the answers to.

Let me bring in a guest expert that can teach this thing that's really powerful.

Challenges are another type of programming.

Everybody's struggling with.

Doing the work, getting the thing done, okay, create a challenge environment that makes people excited to actually participate and do the thing and give them an assignment where they have to do it, create a leaderboard, whatever.

In Chanel Basilio's community, she does like a 30 day LinkedIn challenge where you post on LinkedIn every day and you Share your post.

And she makes like a filtered search list with all the people that are participating so that you can engage on each other's posts.

Everybody has an excellent growth month because we're all engaging with each other and it's a lot of fun and it makes everybody do the work and they see great results.

Like, that's a great challenge.

So you know, curate a challenge in your community to help people get things done.

Another event type I love is like a roundtable or a Mastermind session.

So in a community experience, it's not a fan club, it's not one to many, it's meant to be many to many.

And so giving your members an opportunity to actually help each other is a great way to drive connection and also educate.

So for example, in my membership that I'm launching, I'm learning that a lot of people are struggling with how to manage their members.

So like using a CRM, keeping notes on members, understanding when their renewals are coming up and how to support that.

And so I want to do a roundtable on like member management and CRMs and, and just have people share what they're doing with each other so that they can learn from each other about their, their notes.

And honestly, I don't have all the answers in this category.

I've seen some different examples and like, I know, for example, oh, my friend Andrew that's in the community is doing something really smart with this.

So I know I'm gonna like message him and say, hey, I wanna make sure you're able to attend this event.

Is this a good time for me to host it?

Because this is the topic we're gonna talk about, right?

And I already know he's interested in joining.

So like, this is the way we start to like facilitate these meaningful educational conversations amongst members that really create a true like Mastermind experience.

And you can have a quote unquote Mastermind call in a regular membership.

I'm not saying you have to create a Mastermind, I'm saying that a Mastermind session is where people come and share and help each other.

And so if you can curate that with the experience you're designing, that's great.

And I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of what I'm sharing as far as like, these programming types are quite easy.

Like you're just facilitating and curating an experience.

You're not having to develop an entire like 90 minute workshop training on something which really makes your life a lot easier.

So experiment with your programming.

The last one I'll share is welcome calls.

So when you have new people coming in all the time doing a welcome call, which is actually meant to restate the value prep of the community and set clear expectations for how to behave and just show them what they what they bought, literally do a tour.

Everything that's in your onboarding experience, you kind of repeat on the welcome call that takes the first 15 minutes or so.

And then you spend the rest of the time having them connect with one another, put them in breakout rooms or just have them go around and share why they joined or what they're focused on right now.

Like make it a good prompt.

But you can let your other members join these welcome calls too.

And it's a great way for members to, to meet each other.

And these are really successful.

They drive great retention.

They also, when we added them to a program at Boss Babe, it reduced our refund rate like it has.

A lot of, A lot of good comes from doing these welcome calls.

So I'd highly recommend them.

Most importantly, experiment with this stuff.

But then measure what works and keep in mind that it's not just about attendance numbers, it's about the value that the call provides to that subset of members.

So asking them, hey, what, how would you rate this call?

Did you love it?

What did you love about it?

What could be better next time?

What do you want to see more of?

Okay, I know that was a lot.

This was a long one and very, I don't know, detailed in depth.

So if you want to talk more about this, if you want to create a programming strategy together, definitely check out the show notes.

Book a call with my team and we can talk about your programming strategy.

We can also do an audit for you to look at what your programming looks like and how you can make it better.

And yeah, we would love to chat.

This is definitely one of the areas that really helps us drive the most engagement for our clients.

Okay, talk to you next time.