Community Creation & Management | Virtual Wellness Community

When COVID hit Australia 🇦🇺 in March 2020, I was about to launch my new plant-based program designed to help digital nomads stay healthy and eat mostly plant-based while traveling.

With all travel stopped because of the pandemic, it didn't feel right to launch, even though I had worked on creating this program for over 6 months.

That's when I decided to pivot 🔄 and adapt to the current situation and think of a way I could be of help to women during this difficult time.

After some brainstorming, I realized that what we all needed during this difficult time was:

• 👩‍❤️‍👩 Human connexions, as we were all stuck at home
• ✅ Taking actions to take care of our physical and mental health

That's when I decided to launch the

POP UP Virtual Wellness Community



I hosted 3x1h free events per week on Zoom 👩‍💻, based on the 3 pillars of health:

• 🌱 Plant-based cooking/nutrition --> to teach women simple techniques to cook easy and nutritious plant-based meals -> I hosted these myself
• 🤸‍♀️ Movement -> to help women stay active at home and have fun at the same time -> I asked my network of movement professionals to host an array of different classes such as yoga, workouts, handstand, Indian dance, and much more...
• 🧠 Mindfulness & creativity -> to keep a healthy and creative mind -> again I reached out to friends and contacts in the wellness industry to lead breath work, meditations, drawing, doodling events, and much more...

Creating this online space where women could meet up with other like-minded women from all around the world 🌏 and take action towards their well-being was truly magical ✨



Results

• +300 women joined the community 👯‍♀️ - leveraging my personal network, teachers' network, and word of mouth
• We ran over 50 events 👩‍💻 over 4 months
• All events were recorded so people who couldn't join live could still benefit from them
• Many women would come in feeling depleted and low 😰 , and would come out bursting with joy 🤩 and a big smile on their faces.
• Many shared the events of the community were the highlight ✨ of their first lockdown and what helped them get through
• Dozen of new friendships made 💖



Takeaways

• Community is generally highly valued by people and was even more needed during lockdowns - but having a clear message, and solving a strong pain point is what really made this community take off.
• There is no need for a fancy platform to create an MVP, all that was needed was to collect people's emails, share a calendar of the events, and communicate via emails with them - the set of the community only took 2h.
• Leveraging personal networks and collaborating is crucial to growing a community fast.

This was my first experience of creating a community from scratch and what really kick-started my community building and managing career 🚀