How to build a supportive online community

Today’s episode of the podcast is a solo episode all about how to build a beautiful, amazing, supportive, loving online community. I wanted to do this episode after listening to someone else in the online world talking about some of the horrible things that have happened to them, which got me thinking about some of the negative things I have experienced. I feel very blessed to not have much experience of this, and this episode reflects on why that might be. As always I’d love to know what you think, and please feel free to share your own reflections and learnings with me, by connecting over on my social media. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST My experience of being asked for a refund, why I didn’t give it, and what happened when I said no My experience of receiving emails from people telling me they didn’t like what I said, and were unsubscribing from my list My experience of someone writing an anonymous nasty blog about me and how I responded Practical things that I have done to to build a supportive online community THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE If you come into the online business world just to make money, it will seldom work, you actually have to care about what you do! Transcript Hello, and a Happy New Year. So you might be listening to this at any other random time of the year and think what you're talking about, but this episode came out on the second of Jan, 2023, so happy new Year if you're listening live. I hope you had a good one. I hope you are, I was gonna say all pumped and excited for the year, but it's the 2nd of January and you're probably still feeling the strains of Christmas and New Year, so you're probably thinking I'm not ready for anything Teresa, which is absolutely understandable. So, isn't it weird? Actually, I was just thinking, if you're new to this podcast, this is me, so I'm sorry. I apologize for my randomness, but I'm literally just sat here obviously recording podcast episodes and I've just realized that as if by some amazing perfectness. My last episode with an interview was last year, and this is the first of my only solo stuff that I'm now doing. And I absolutely didn't plan it out like not at all. I had no idea when the interviews had run out. How weird is that? That is cool I'm glad. So this is it this year pretty much probably gonna be me. So settle in people it could be interesting. At least you got like a bit of relief when we had a podcast interview. I want to kick off the year and I want to talk about how to build a beautiful, amazing, supportive, loving community because that's what I have. I have the most beautiful, amazing humans in my world. The reason I wanted to do this episode is because I was directed to a podcast episode and someone else's podcast episode, and this episode was talking about the fact of basically how horrible the online space is, which, you know, I, I'm not saying it's perfect by any stretch of imagination cause it really isn't, and there are some pretty not nice people in it, but like with any industry to be fair. But they were talking about the online space and they were talking about how basically some of their customers, the problems they've had, how the abuse they've had and like some of the stuff that they said had happened to them, I was absolutely gobsmacked, right? And I'm sat there listening to it and I'm, size wise, I'm probably not as big as this person from a community point of view. I'm not far off though, if I'm honest. And I thought, and this isn't the first time this has come up where I've heard of people who are in this space basically get absolutely, you know a, I'm trying to think of a way to say this without swearing, but a bit of a kicking from their audience and I just, and I, and it kind of blows me away. And I, so I sat there and thought, this is weird. This has never happened to me and then I started thinking like, what is the worst things that happened to me? What are the, what are the things that I can go yet that sucked? This happened, this happened from a upset audience, or an angry audience, or a people doing certain things to me? And I, and I'm gonna talk you through them. There's not loads of them but the and that was the thing there wasn't low to them. So then I thought, oh my God, I've got like the nicest people in my world. Like how did I manage that? And it's something that I say all the time in my club, like if we get anybody speaking in the club, if so, the speakers that we had for saw at the end of last year, I get those people coming in and genuinely saying to me afterwards, oh my God, you have the nicest people. Like supportive and engaged and encouraging and keen to kind of learn and see people succeed and just, it's a really lovely space and a really safe space, and I was thinking to myself like, why is that the case? So I did a little bit of thinking and I thought, I'm gonna do a podcast episode on this and talk about why I think I've got such a beautiful community and why I haven't experienced some of these problems that people have had and why that might be the case or how I've managed that. And it is a bit by fluke, but I did try to work out some things that maybe I do that others, no, I'm not gonna say that others don't do cuz I'm sure that's not always the case but just me, just what do I do that I think helps me have this amazing community. So let me tell you some of the stuff that's gone wrong and the mean stuff. So like, like I said, I was listening to this podcast and this person was literally going, I had an abusive email, I had someone message stuff on my ads saying that I was this that and the other, and I was just like, oh my goodness. So the worst stuff has happened. Have I ever been asked to do a refund? Yes. Once. Literally once. I've never ever been asked to give a refund ever before other than this one time. And basically it was someone who worked one-to-one with me. Well, no, they were part of the 90 day program when it was a group program, cuz I ran it as a group once and I didn't like it, I preferred it one-to-one. And they had a business that was severely impacted by the pandemic and their program that they were on ran through the pandemic and during the sessions, we made plans for the now as in what was happening, but we also worked on when the world gets back to normal, this is how you could approach this, this, and this. Anyway, I was pretty happy with what went on, even though I didn't see the person definitely made some progress. She made some progress, but I didn't see it. As successfully as I would've liked, cuz obviously we were in a pandemic. Anyway, a few months later, she came back to me and said, actually, I've been thinking I'd like a refund for part of it because I couldn't do what it, you know, what was going on because, and she was very polite and nice about it because of what was going on. And I sat and thought about it and I went back and said, no. Which is very brave of me, and I'm really not that brave. But I had to ask myself, did I do the thing that I promised to do when they pay? Yes, I absolutely did. Could I control the fact that during the pandemic she couldn't do some of those things that I suggested? No, I couldn't control that and I did try to help her where she was at. Anyway, so I went back and I said, you know, I really appreciate you reaching out and thank you and this has never happened before, but, um, no, and unfortunately, I'm not happy to refund. However, what I am happy to do is once the world gets better and you are in a better place, I am more than happy to give you a couple of extra sessions so we can review what we talked about during the pandemic and you can start to put them in place. And she came back and she was very happy and thanked me and that was that. So that's the one person who said they wanted a refund. The other, so I was thinking, have I ever had an nasty email? And I've had. I wouldn't say nasty. I've had two emails that weren't happy with me and you know, and I'm not laughing cause it's not funny, but I did an email when Donald Trump got thrown off social media. I was in the point and yeah, okay, maybe this is bad taste now I'm talking about, but I was in the point of selling, build my list. It was just too good an opportunity not to miss in terms of like, and it wasn't even, I didn't comment on what I thought of Donald Trump. I didn't say I agreed or disagreed. I literally named the fact of if it can happen to him, like someone of that size has been thrown off social media and is lost his voice. And that then I went on sort of talk about the fact of, you know, that's why we have email list. So yeah, you could have said it was a little bit bad taste, but it was a fact. It wasn't, I didn't give my opinion on him. Anyway, I had two people email me back going, I didn't like that, and therefore I'll be leaving your email list. And I was again like, that's okay, fine. Like, and the funny thing was I'd even passed that email by a few different people and gone, is this bad? Like, is this, and, and they were very, and they're much, well, I am very cautious actually, but they were like, no,...