I am going to stop spreading myself thin across the internet, and I am launching a member community in Patreon called the Life on Purpose Community. I chose this name because I want one of the overall goals of this community to be nurturing YOUR life on purpose. I want to encourage you to have passion in your life and enjoy your life.

In this episode I run through

What is a patreon?
Building community and where those efforts are best spent
The limits on public content vs private content
Creating a space where content can be more unfiltered
Being a content creator and having to decide where to spend your efforts
Why I chose the name Life on Purpose Community
What exactly to expect in the Patreon

If you are interested in the Patreon, learn more about it here.

Full transcript (unedited)

0:08
Hey friends it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend a counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose Podcast. Today is just a quick episode where I want to come in and share with you about something that I Low-key mentioned the last episode and that is the life on purpose community Patreon. So I mentioned it in Episode 201 that I was having a follow up episode to that podcast in the Patreon and I realized I know it’s not something I shared officially about. So here we are, we’re gonna do that right now. First of all, a question I get often is what is a Patreon? Patreon is a term for the app or the website. It’s the program the program that is used to host a private members only community and many podcasters will talk about their Patreon. And often their Patreon is a place where you get extra podcast episodes that are private. So members in the Patreon can take a special URL from their Patreon group, add it to their podcast player and you can listen to the private Patreon episodes in whatever podcast player you use iTunes overcast Google podcasts. So Patreon is that platform. If you subscribe to someone’s Patreon, then you can view everything they share in the community, you can comment on things, you can watch any special videos that they have shared, any special trainings, downloads, you can be part of the chat there, get the private episodes, whatever they have in their Patreon community. So that’s what Patreon is, I am part of a couple of Patreon I, especially for their private podcast episodes. That’s something that I was drawn to for these specific podcasts I wanted the deeper content that they had. And I take that podcast URL, I put it in my apple podcasts. And I get those private podcast episodes in my normal podcast player. It’s great. As I’m talking about this, I think the first thing I want to talk about is community because to me, that’s why I’m here. Back in 2020, I was running the life on purpose Academy, it was a member community, it was a coaching community, I had monthly lessons and weekly coaching calls, it was a higher price point. And every week, many of the same women depending on who could make the call, they would come onto this call, they would share their struggles, their issues, their questions, they would share support with each other in the chat. And it was one of my favorite things that I have done. It was warm and intimate. And there was so much growth that happened there.

2:48
At the end of that year of running that community, I did close the program for one, the workload had become a bit unmanageable with the way I had set it up. And I was also heading back to school. However, since then, I knew I just kept coming back into my mind that I wanted to have a community again, you know those things that you know, you’re just gonna do them no matter what. It’s just a matter of when and not if, to me, that’s what creating a community is. Over the years, and one of the ways I actually tried to do that was the Facebook group. In the Facebook group, the simple on purpose community, I have shared a lot over the years I’ve shared tours of my closet, and my kitchen and live q&a is with all of your questions. If you go back into that group, you’re gonna see a lot of videos, a lot of photos, I was sharing Tuesday Tips and questions about setting your weekend intentions. But if you’ve been part of a Facebook group, if you’ve run a Facebook group, then you know that the group members don’t see all of the posts. Unless you specifically go into your Facebook group and change the notification settings, you’re not going to see those posts. So the group has almost 1000 people. But the amount of people who actually see my posts in that group is around 10% of the group, depending on the post, and then the amount of people who engage with that post commented on it is even less. I do also want to say I am grateful for the conversations we’ve had there. There’s been great stuff that’s been shared quite great questions that have been asked. We’ve done some great challenges together. We’ve talked about how we dress and doing a 30 for 30. We’ve talked about simplifying the summer and doing a summer of less. We’ve done a lot of fun things over there and I see you and I value that. However, I don’t want to break my back trying to find an algorithm and Facebook when there are other options to deepen community out there. So for a while now I knew I was going to have to leave that platform as a place where I build community and I want that place where we to build community to be someone, something that someone intentionally seeks out, if you’re on Facebook, you’re not there. With the purpose of joining in that specific community conversation, you’re there to just like scroll and catch up. But if you are a part of a Patreon, and you go open your Patreon app, or go to the Patreon website, you’re there specifically to be part and of that community and be engaged. The next thing I want to talk about is content content. The internet is full of content, ideas, tips, podcasts, videos, reels, you can get endless knowledge on any topic. And just to like, while this time we live in, I’m going to be 42 this year. So I’m always just amazed at how much knowledge we have like I didn’t get a smartphone till I was 26. And I was just mostly playing tap fish on it, not not much of substance. So you can go to my blog, simple on purpose, you can find over a decade’s worth of content. If you search the archives, you’re gonna find so much stuff, there’s posts on minimalism, intentional living worksheets on so many things life on purpose, family rhythms, simplifying your life, there’s just so much content over there. And here on the podcast, I share a lot of my thoughts were like over 200 episodes of me talking to there’s a lot of content. And then in the simple Saturdays, email, there is a lot of content. But you know, the interesting thing to me, that I pay attention to is that I have so much more to say, in my mind, there’s a limit on what you broadcast publicly for all of the internet. So having a Patreon, a members only community, to me, that represents a place where I can go deeper, where I can be a bit more unfiltered and what I share, I can share more in terms of what I’ve learned how I work, what I’m in the process of learning, where I can share more of my life, and my own journey as a woman, as a mom as a person. So if you’ve liked the blog, the podcast email, it’s about to get a whole lot richer and raw in that Patreon. A conversation about content also needs to consider the content creator because creating content takes energy and time and resources. And to me this Patreon represents a place where I can condense my efforts and focus my energy into one place. Rather than being a little bit everywhere Facebook group, email, blog, podcast Instagram, I can allow myself to put my energy into one intentional space. Especially now that I’ve been counseling for a while. And that is something that I am growing and enjoying and still want to make space and time for. I need to be intentional about where I spend my time I need to declutter my efforts and my energy and you know, me, I’m all about making things simpler and more intentional. Finally, I want to talk about the name the life on purpose community. I chose not to use the word Academy, which I had in the past, because to me, it’s not going to be that kind of school like setting as it wasn’t that 2020 program. And I chose life on purpose instead of simple on purpose. Because my hope for this community is to really tap into the living, like into the passion that we want to have in our lives into showing up for our lives into enjoying our lives, and into living on purpose. Yes, there’s still always work that we can do on how we limit ourselves, how we avoid our life, how we avoid emotions, and conf...