Building a Successful Community – Roundtable Labs with Richard Roppa-Roberts

Creating a Winning Community with Roundtable Labs

The Mission to Serve and Help People

You may feel that if you try to sell your clients additional ongoing services, then you’re being more self-serving. So you then have to reflect on that believing you’d be helping them more if you had longer, more engaged relationships with them. Of course, you could help them so much more. That’s how you serve them. If you’re doing it authentically, you will see a big possibility.

You need to be able to share that with them and enroll them to help them on their behalf. You’re there to serve your mission of helping others. Then, you can get that in return because you’re providing value. Framing is really important. If you’re thinking that it feels wrong to try to offer that, then don’t do it. Now, you’re actually servicing those you serve.

Talking About Price and Service Increases

When scoping out an engagement, oftentimes, we’ll see that there’s a discussion about pricing. People should be able to talk about price and service increases at any time. In fact, once your clients get past the clean-up, and they start the monthly bookkeeping, they may find that down the road they want to change service providers, change payroll providers, or create a whole new thing.

So being able to have those discussions about pricing and contracts is very helpful. That’s for planning. Here’s another pro tip: don’t price for today, but do price for six months from now. If you’re doing fixed prices, I suggest always including the unknown cost.

So being able to price them, potentially six months from now, then you’re not regretting the price that you chose six months ago. The way that I suggest looking at that is if you’ve got to look at their books, and you know that they’ve grown on average 20% every year, if you’re pricing for what the work would cost today, in six months, you’re behind.

Creating New Ways to Create More Freedom

You can service so many people, and you need to think about creating a different model to help you out. That’s one of the challenges that a lot of people in this space who have been connecting with and helping those that they serve, they’re maxed out.

They become their own bottleneck, and they need to be doing things in a different manner. They get so busy catching up with a whirlwind. They can’t think about doing new things, and they’re just continually putting out fires.

How to Start a Community for Your Business?

Creating communities is about encouraging people to do what they need to do to further their initiatives in their businesses and in their lives. Communities that have nothing or very little to do with are important. If you feel it is a need for your clients to have their own community, go ahead and start one.

But how do you get started? First, you have to recognize if there is a need.

Is there a need to create a community within your business?

The problem here is that you may have maxed out your time. So the answer is not always to start something new at that point. The answer is to get organized, create efficiencies, look for efficiencies in your employees, and make sure that you are aligned with the goals.

If you’re paying hourly, there are no incentives for your employees to become efficient, no matter how many times you talk about it. They also say that they get more work but fewer hours.

No! It’s about creating a model of repeatable scenarios that can be done over and over again. Doing so will help you take on more clients and have the number of hours you want your people to have.

Moreover, once people hit a certain dollar number or a certain number of employees, they tend to be in their own way a lot. You shouldn’t hire people that you don’t trust to do things the right way. So it’s about creating accountability for getting out of your way, and recognizing that it’s possible.

The biggest thing to be aware of in communities, especially with the cooperative communities, where they’re solving things together, is that you have to drop the notion that every accountant and bookkeeper is more competitive.

There are not enough bookkeepers and accountants to go around for all the small businesses in this country. So there’s plenty of fish out there, and there are plenty of people to work with.

Things to Remember When Starting a Community

The community is not for everyone. Everyone doesn’t need to have a community but what is happening in today’s world is that people work to build awareness with their audience, build a bond, have that rapport and transparency, and connect and let their brands cultivate their own community.

They’re being able to create something that wasn’t even possible a few years ago. It’s a trend that’s happening.

Many years ago, small businesses didn’t have the tools or resources to be able to do it, but now they are able to. If you think it’s too much to do, you don’t have to start it overnight. It can be a start something you plant the seed and think about in the future.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you need to avoid listening to your inner saboteur. You need to have confidence that you can do what you’re setting out to do.

Facilitation is not an easy task. Facilitation of conversation is cutting off long talkers, keeping people on track, and making sure that the discussion is around the thing that you want to discuss, but being open to hearing those other nuances that may be the next topic that you want to talk about.

Being overly agendized is also not good. Let it flow the way that it should. Community is about give and take. It is not about the person who has the mic and being the only person that has the mic. That’s one of the biggest differences.

Start Building Your Community

Building a community around your business can be a powerful strategy for success. By fostering a sense of belongingness and engagement among your customers, employees, and partners, you can create a loyal and enthusiastic following that will support and promote your brand.

A strong community can also provide valuable feedback, insights, and ideas that can help you improve your services, and stay ahead of the competition. Whether you are a small business owner or a large corporation, investing in community-building initiatives can pay off in the form of increased customer retention, brand awareness, and revenue growth.

So, start engaging with your audience, listening to their needs, and creating opportunities for them to connect with each other and with your brand. Your community may just become your biggest asset.