Ecosystem Mapping - Where are my people?

Yay! We are, we are functioning today on a live stream. This is good. This is good. Thank you guys, everyone. We're, we're live and running. Um, this is awesome because last week we had a little challenge of technology, which is perfectly fine. That's how things go. But today Things are running great and that makes me happy and everyone happy. So I'm really excited to be here on another HCH Chat, our second HCH Chat after our summer hiatus. And we are here today with Pamela Slim. She is a wonderful friend as well as an award-winning author, speaker, and business coach who's been an entrepreneur for over 20 years. Her passion for career and organizational development spans many different work modes. And client engagements. She's the former director of training and development at Barclays Global Investors in San Francisco. I didn't know you were in San Francisco. That's cool. She spent the first 10 years of her business as a consultant to large companies like HP, Charles Schwab, and Cisco Systems. So these really tiny companies. And she worked with thousands of executives, managers, and employees. Since 2005, she's helped thousands of people to start successful businesses. She's built a powerful online presence at Escape from Cubicle Nation, her— and also her first book, a signed— I believe it's her first book, a site designed for corporate employees who wanted to make the shift to entrepreneur. Pam frequently partners with small business web companies like Infusionsoft and Citrix and Progressive to expand and promote the small business market. And her 2 bestselling books, Escape from Cubicle Nation and Body of Work. Pam's working on her 3rd book right now. We're going to be talking about that. That's actually part of the topic for today, which I'm very excited to share, or she's excited to share with you. She owns a startup incubator in downtown Mesa, Arizona, which Courtney and I cannot wait to visit here this fall.

And yeah.

And she is there live from her incubator right now. So Pam, welcome. How are you doing?

I'm doing fantastic. So happy to be here this morning with you all.

Well, thank you for joining us. We are— we're so excited to talk about this topic, but wanted to just ask you, how are you? How are you feeling after all of this great work that you've, you've completed after these 2 great books you've, you've produced, Escape from Cubicle Nation and Body of Work? How are you working through all of this great success that you've had?

You know, to me, the biggest part of what brings me joy in my work is how that it is applied. And so the greatest joy and fuel that I have every day to get up is hearing stories about people who have put to work the things that I talked about in the books. And so I have so many stories, as any author does, of emails that you get. Probably a couple of favorites. One is a friend of mine that now is a good friend on Facebook found my first book, Escape from Cubicle Nation, in a garbage can in Paris, which was just like, that's great. Sounds like a movie, like a garbage can in Paris.

And he was like— What do you think happened? Like someone was like, I do not want to be an entrepreneur anymore. Forget it!

Right, exactly. Right? Something like that happened. Who knows what the driver was? But he happened to walk by at that moment and pick it up and start reading. You know, like, how rando is that? There's a good friend now, her name is Darryl, and she's in the Philippines. And she wrote me after reading, you know, the book and the blog, and she had been working in a cubicle and quit to start her own job, which is called Dream Architects. And now on Facebook, I see all the buildings that she's building in the Philippines. You know, she's expanded her team to like 10 people. So, you know, those are the things that get me going, is seeing the work out in the world being used. That's definitely one of the motivating factors. And You know, it's an ongoing driver every day, right? How can we do what we need to do to contribute to positive change, growth, community development? And God knows we need it today more than ever. So I am up for the challenge and excited by it.

And no one knows more about building communities than you do.

Well, one could argue there's probably a person or two. But—

But the purpose is up today! The

purpose is up today! I'm the

one! That's right.

It's fun Go ahead.

No, I was gonna say, I love, I love the concept of this ecosystem mapping. And I'm wondering if you can give us some insight into where that concept came from.

Yeah. So it's funny, I was just talking this morning with a good friend of mine and a client about really the history of what it is that I have done in my business. And I went way back to realizing that in college, my degree was International Service and Development. With a focus in education as a tool of economic change. And so this is when I was just a fresh-faced, you know, 18-year-old, doing work in Latin America, in Mexico and Colombia is where I did studies when I was in college. And, you know, to me, that's always been at the root of what it is that I've understood the community-based work as being. And so there's been many years of being in community on the ground. I actually am from the Bay Area. I was a 4th-generation Californian before before I moved to Arizona 14 years ago. And so I grew up in Marin, in San Anselmo, and then I lived in the city in San Francisco for 12 years. And I used to run a nonprofit martial arts group for capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian martial art. So I spent a lot of years just walking the streets, talking to people, being in community, and just love that really in-person kind of, you know, hands-on touch. And then being a blogger back in the dog years of 2005, when I started Escape from Cubicle Nation, I kind of was doing my work to connect with other people and see who was there. And it's one of those things, in retrospect, when you look back and start to see, like, what was I actually doing in order to build community, both just on the ground in an actual city or on the internet? There were some core principles that I realized were really powerful building blocks that went way back to my time as an 18-year-old, understanding how community works.

Mm-hmm.

So what I began to really notice is that we gather naturally, as humans, in these natural ecosystems. And they're made up of people who gather together around all kinds of different interests, right, usually around shared values. So you may notice my most excellent R2-D2 shirt right now, which has the flavor of being designed by an amazing Navajo artist called Jared Yazzie from OXDX. Ooh! So I have, I love Star Wars. And if anybody else watching loves Star Wars, but it's definitely like a thing I love. I'll show you, I have a purse that my best friend gave me. That's an R2-D2 purse. I got it for my 50th birthday. And this is an example. It's so fascinating. Ever since I got this purse, so almost a year ago, my birthday is August 28th, I got it for my 50th birthday. Everywhere I go, all of a sudden, I notice who notices the purse. Hmm. And it can be 5-year-olds, which is very frequent. And then it's often 50-year-olds who love Star Wars. And there's this whole, you know, ecosystem of people who are really drawn together based on their love for Star Wars. And as we start to look at it and see, you know, where might be other places that people like those kinds of things? You could look at events like Comic-Con. You can look at things like going to the movie when the new Star Wars movies comes out, you know. And we, we naturally gather

Mm-hmm.

Around shared common interests. So to me, what's the fascinating thing, and this depends on whatever you're trying to do. I talk to a lot of people who want to start or grow a business. I talk to a lot of people who have a book coming out who want to sell lots of books. I talk to people who have nonprofits who want to launch their cause and get funders. I talk to people who are doing crowdfunding campaigns, or to people in corporations that are wanting to attract a certain kind of person into their company. And my, my, my main speech that I'm always telling people is, you don't have to just blanket the internet with information and cross your fingers and hope the right people come. You need to carefully study the natural places where your ideal people already are clustering. And that's the key. When you do that, you save so much time, and you're much more effective in your efforts.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So community is almost everywhere. It's something that even Facebook has dedicated their mission to just this year when they created groups and how they're looking at creating communities globally from a digital perspective. And I'm wondering if you could talk about that. I mean, there's the physical aspect, but there's also the digital aspect and the reality of real community. versus perceived community?

Yeah, it's, it's so interesting because we use that word, we just throw it around with many different connotations. And so one of the ways that, you know, because depending upon who is speaking and who is defining what is real and what is not, right, like part of what we want to do for ourselves is to create a definition of, you know, what do we individually mean as community when we have something that we want to share, right? In the H2H community, you have a particular view of what community means to you. And then you can have indicators to say, this definition of community is very effective. So to me, you know, brands often can use community interchangeably, which means like customers. So sometimes I've had clients that come that are, that are brands, you know, saying, I really want to build my community. And we start to talk about that. And it's like, we're going to run ads, and we're going to do this to attract people. And we're going to have, you know, these kinds of things, which I'm like, wait a minute, that's a little bit different. We definitely, we want to do things in order to get people attracted to what it is that you're doing. But community is about really making connections, getting to know people, engaging in dialogue, making sure that people feel welcome and heard and seen and valued. Community, from my definition, is where, you know, it's happening well, is where it's not the Bryan and Courtney Show, right, as much as we love Bryan and Courtney. Is you start to see, you see really more of the community itself that is engaged, that's having conversations, that's, that's celebrating itself. You're sharing all kinds of things that are happening in your community. And these are ways, I think, where you start to notice that people who are engaged there, they want to go. Just like you don't have to be told to go to your favorite coffee shop. You're like, I'm totally going. That's where I go. That's where I like my coffee. It's where I feel seen and heard. Yeah. And that's the kind of feeling people have.

Yeah.

I love that about being seen and heard because, you know, there's people also talk a lot about communication and oftentimes the definition of that people perceive as one-sided. You know, communication is just blasting out. So do you have any more research or insight into, at least from a human connection standpoint, about that concept of being seen and heard? Is that like a magic formula? to attracting the right people?

You know, it's not a magic formula. It is, it is principles of design. So when you, when you look at— my background's in training and development. So that's what I did when I was, 21 years ago, you know, as a— tomorrow is actually my 21-year anniversary. So I'm remembering back to when I was training and development director in San Francisco. And Yeah, you know, and so you have principles when you know, it's really, that's the cool thing about transferable skills is the kinds of principles you might use to design an engaging and interactive meeting. So many of you probably have been to many meetings in your life, especially if you work in corporate. And you know the difference between somebody standing up in front and just like delivering training and having a conversation where there's opportunities for people to break out and have conversation, There's dialogue back and forth. There might be data gathering that you have before a meeting in order to, you know, kind of get the conversation going. And from that perspective, it's a useful thing to think about when doing community building, to use some of those same principles. Really, what you're looking at is a 2-way dialogue. And so actually, the, you know, people feeling seen and heard and valued is a framework that I was talking about. My friend Jonathan Fields, who runs the Good Life Project— I'm not sure if you guys know Jonathan, but he's an author and does a lot of work. He has a, what, called Good Life Camp that I spoke at last year. And we were talking in that context for community about inclusion and diversity. And when you're in different communities, how can you make sure, you know, like when people are coming into a community, how can they feel seen? And sometimes that means, are they represented? Do they see other people like them in positions of leadership? Do they see other people like them featured in your community as experts? Do they feel heard when they're sharing their views and their perspective on things? Or are they given space to do that? Are they acknowledged? Is it, you know, kind of cut short? And then what are ways in which they really feel valued? Are there ways in which they specifically feel like their perspective is heard and valued and something that is really contributing to the community? So Those are the kind of principles I find that are really important for us. And then looking, you know, at any community, when I, when I came here to Main Street, I'm literally on Main Street in downtown Mesa, which is kind of fun.

Wow!

And, and, you know, one of the first questions I always ask as a community builder, as I was looking down Main Street, is, who is here? Who is not here? And why are they not here? And that's, you know, really great to begin to acknowledge the existing community, but also to get insight into who is not here. And, you know, there's a lot of people who were not here where that's when you start to look at, OK, how can we begin to engage? What are the barriers that might be stopping people from participating more fully?

You know, I'm curious, coming back around the opposite direction, for somebody who wants to find their community, a lot of people are— I see them even on Facebook. And I think this is kind of interesting that They have liked maybe 60 or 70 different types of groups. And I wonder, how do you even keep track of all of that? And in real life, do we really belong to 60 or 70 different types of groups? I doubt it because we don't have enough time. We don't have enough, you know, with life and all that kind of stuff. But we each have probably, I would guess, a certain amount of groups that we can find that we really truly feel like we belong to. Mm-hmm. That this is our place, this is our home, we love this thing. What, what have you heard? What have you learned in that, like, in terms of finding your place, in terms of finding your group?

So part of this is, it's reflective of what most people do, understandably. It's like, maybe if I just like a whole bunch of groups and hang out there and see which one feels good, then I can find my people, then I can find my community. And that's the way a lot of us do it. There's a step before that I think can help in the process for vetting, where you might be interested. And that's really to do more introspection. So who am I? And what are my values and what's important to me? What are the characteristics of a community that I'm looking for at this stage in my life? So there can be a community that addresses very specific personal things I'm looking for. I want to be connected with more parents in my community, right, or other artists in order to, you know, share art. Or I'm a new business person, and I feel very isolated, and I want to know more people. So you want to be thinking about, For which objective are you searching community? And that's why we can be part of a number of different communities that might, you know, address different parts of our life. But when you're thinking about it that way, and you're really looking for, you know, in the past, for communities that you've been part of, either in person or online, what were the characteristics that made it really energizing? And it's everything from, wow, you know, people really showed up, and they had really tough conversations, but it was Everything was really, you know, it was, it felt comfortable to have difficult conversations. And, you know, there was really great moderation. So if ever somebody really started to get into a heated conversation that was unproductive, there was a way to bring people back to a really productive, you know, setting. Or you might notice that, you know, I really get excited being around people who love to create stuff and are just constantly building. And they're not always whining about what's not happening. They like to build. Like, those are my people, right? I love to build stuff. So I don't care what it is, if you're building sandcastles or you're building businesses. Like if people are building stuff, it makes me really excited. So that's the kind of introspection you can have that can then help guide you to say, based on who I am and what I value and characteristics of what I define as a good community for me, how can I then look to some of these environments, maybe peek in for a minute, and see if those characteristics are there? And then I might suggest, you know, sometimes it takes a little while to warm up and really get to know a community.

Yeah.

But where you have some experience and it's really not a fit for you, it's great if you just, you know, shut the door, right? Kind of don't have so many because otherwise it does become overwhelming.

Right. So how about from the corporate side? When, when a big company such as some of the companies you used to work with 21 years ago as of tomorrow, what, what about what, what in those size companies, they are almost as big as as cities, you know, or maybe even bigger. And when we look at those kinds of companies, how are they and how are they not building the right communities?

Do you mean internally? So for their internal employees? Yeah, it's the same. That's the cool thing is companies that are really doing it well understand that they have all kinds of different employees that have different needs and different interests. So you can have affinity groups within companies that cover a range of different ideas. So it could be women in leadership, It could be an affinity group based on somebody's background. It can be affinity groups for people who are, you know, software programmers who want to kind of get the latest, people who love, you know, lean methodologies or whatever that would be. So the companies I see that really do a great job at nurturing community internally are listening to folks in their company, understanding what is important to them, what's a way that they can be providing maybe support for the creation of communities that are furthering individual interests, and in the context of a bigger company, also interests that are, of course, furthering the benefits to the company, because it makes sense, right, that that's where they'd put their interest.

Yeah.

And, you know, every, if there's a commonality amongst any kind of community building that I've seen that's effective, coming in and saying, OK, if, let's say you're a big company, here are our employees. Let's set up a structure where we're going to define the kinds of groups and communities that exist. That's one approach. What I highly recommend instead is to see natural where people are already meeting and say, hey, how can I help? How can I fund what you're doing? Do you need a little extra support? Do you need some coffee for your meetings? Maybe we can clear space in this meeting room in order for you to have more support. What do you need? That's a way of naturally nurturing what's happening. And that's, on the local level, what I did, what I have done this first year here, you know, showing up on Main Street. It was very funny, like a small portion of the internet knows who I am based on the work I've done at Escape from Cubicle Nation. People in Mesa, Arizona, on Main Street had no idea whatsoever. So it was great, because I had to absolutely prove my, my street cred, right, by every, every, literally by every interaction that I had with people, by showing up and being a really helpful community member. So instead of saying, here I am, here are my workshops, come, come, you know, attend my things, I said, what are you doing? How can I help? Oh, you're having a fundraiser for your documentary film, I'd love to host it here. The space is wide open. I'll make the coffee. And that's what I've done all year. And now that's been something that's been really positive engagement.

Oh, that's fantastic. That's a great idea. Just real quick, since we're talking about communities, I would be remiss if I didn't actually say a big shout-out to some of the people that are, that are here that have joined us from, from our community. Ed Ovid just joined us, Carl Davidson, Curt Rayners, Marianne Pfeiffer. Gia Viscuso. Hey, Gia, how are you doing? Ian, um, Calvert. Chris May. Uh, Gigi Blum Peterson. Uh, my, my, uh, slider keeps going here. Um, Peter, Peterkin. Uh, Sean Smith. Uh, I always say his name— he told me exactly how to say it. It's, uh, Fridge Off. Um, he, he always says, um, Fridge Off. Okay, so that's how I have to remember that. Um, Paul Bradley Smith. I think I said that. And so many more. Chris Huer, Mark Phillip, Jennifer Quinn, Manuel Chavaljon, Ford Harada. Welcome, everybody. Hello. We have so many wonderful people here and the list keeps going on and on. I really appreciate you guys being here. We're talking about communities with Pamela Slim. If you're just joining us, we're talking about Where Are My People? Ecosystem Mapping. And this is not just her latest passion, but where she's now focusing her next iteration or next book and her next focus. And we actually We actually have a survey that she's going to be— that we're going to be sharing here shortly that will help drive this conversation. So we'll share that link here in a bit. But I'm just kind of transitioning into how to actually map your ecosystem. How do you start mapping what we're talking about? How would you map this thing and pull it together to make sense of it?

Yeah. So, you know, it's funny, Stacy just posted a question, right, of like, building your own company based on community. She's saying GoDaddy is considering one for customer-to-customer support in growing a business, right, hoping to attract influencers. Yes. So it's kind of an example where you look at a specific objective that you would have, right? The very first thing that you want to do when you're beginning to do your ecosystem mapping is to be defining whoever it is that you're trying to reach. And I always channel our mutual friend Susan Byers' framework for how she talks about audience, which is not by demographics, first, right? You can add demographics later. But not saying, I'd love to reach women age 18 to 49, right? But rather, define your community by what is the problem or challenge that people might have? And in any community, you could have a few different problems, right, that your community addresses. But that, that would be something that would be right in the middle, you know. So you would have, you know, companies that are, you know, doing customer-to-customer support, that maybe lack, you know, common frameworks, or they're, you know, running into problems as they are building their community. So that's really what you'd put in the center of your ecosystem. And then around that, if you can visualize really like a pie, you would look at, for those people, where are all the places where they already might be going for answers to that problem?

Mm-hmm.

So you can have things like looking at what associations do they belong to? Those can be professional associations. What kind of technology do they use? What kind of apps do they use? What thought leaders do they follow? That goes directly to this idea about influencers, right? Or for people who are writing books and sharing knowledge on a particular topic, who are the folks that the people you're trying to reach already think are amazing? Mm-hmm. What are conferences or events that these people are attending in order to solve their problems? Who are service providers? So that can be everything from people who provide, you know, technology solutions to people like coaches and consultants. And you begin to look at all these different areas that people already are going for, or are going to for answers. When we think of community, we often put ourselves in the middle. Right, that we want to be attracting people into our community. Where this way is looking very differently, right? You have the person you want to serve in the middle; you're defining all the other great resources and people who already are working on answering that problem. And then the humbling thing is you and your company or your initiative is one tiny dot in that ecosystem.

Do you have a worksheet that helps people map this out?

That is exactly what I'm working on for the book. So that's, that's really what the whole framework is, is mapping this process out very specifically with questions. You know, that's, I use, I have a whole wall in whiteboards in the other room here in the Learning Laboratory incubator. And so that's a lot of what we do when we're doing this ecosystem mapping, is just beginning to ask questions and look at where people already are. One of my favorite One of my favorite examples of this, and any, if anybody's ever gone to South by Southwest— have you guys been to South by? OK.

Many times.

So many times, right? When I was, I was at South by, this was probably after Escape from Cubicle Nation came out. And I was sitting at dinner with Guy Kawasaki, who is a wonderful friend. He wrote the foreword to my book, Escape from Cubicle Nation. So we were sitting there in the lobby at the Hyatt. Hyatt Hotel, which is right across from the convention center. So we're sitting there, I'm sitting with Guy, which was amazing. Anne Handley from MarketingProfs walked up to the table, right? Anne, with like her amazing content and group of 500,000-million, you know, amazing content marketers came up. Ze Frank, if anybody knows Ze Frank, who I love, who is this internet, you know, innovator, like somebody who's been a hero forever, you know, strolls over to the table. And I'm just like, Wow! You know, amazed that these people are here.

It's a good sign for you, though, isn't it? That's—

Right? You know, then I, you know, then I left. When I left, I was kind of walking away after dinner. And I looked down on the floor, and there was Tim Ferriss, who was just sitting down there. So I just plopped down on the floor and had like a 30-minute conversation with him. Think about what it would take, how many layers of emails and bureaucracy and trying to set up meetings it would take in order to meet those particular people who are obviously very connected. In this case, they're big-time influencers, but are all kind of sharing this, this mutual interest in helping business owners to really grow and really transform the world of work. And in that, whatever, hour-long period, in that one watering hole of the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel at South by Southwest, it was an amazing opportunity to really meet a whole bunch of people. Yeah. So what I often tell people, you know, sometimes that's luck to have everybody show up that way. But for example, as you're thinking about where you might spend your time, and you get really clear as to what would be, of all the different events that are happening throughout the year, where would be the place that would most likely have the most people that are connected to solving the problem for your ideal client? That's where you should go. And in particular, there's always a place where there are many people who come together. For me, it's always been the Bloggers Lounge at South by Southwest. I've had so many conversations and business deals, you know, kick off In that bloggers lounge. It's an example of something that's a watering hole. So within each segment, you know, of associations and events and influencers, that's where you begin to map it out and really see where is the best, the best way to spend your time.

And, and so we've been talking about how to map this out, which has been, you've been so thorough and I really appreciate that. And I think Stacy even said that she appreciated how thorough you've been. And we've got some Other people like Sean Smith, who's talking about how he's building 2 communities under one brand and come in and his approach for that. And Sean, I completely agree. There's so many different avenues and ways that you can come at this. Once you have started to assemble or build your idea of where this community is going and you start to sense your people, your ecosystem starting to build, It's, the work has really just begun, right? Because now you have to engage. How do you engage a community? I know there's not just one answer here, but what is your, what are your thoughts? What's your thought process on how now starting to help build that conversation?

So again, what's really helpful, you think of your overall objective for, you know, who you want to serve and the kind of community that you want to participate in. And we talked about before you do that mapping, how you really want to reflect on, you know, who you are as a way to think about the community that you want to build. Then you want to do another bit of reflecting before you think about how it is that you want to connect and communicate, because everybody is very different in terms of what I call your wingspan for how much community you can handle. I'm what we call a raging extrovert, like on the, you know, +10 on the scale of 1 to 10 side. I love people. I, you know, actively seek them out on the street. I love it when people walk through the door. You know, that's always been my nature since I was a little girl. My family are actually all introverts, and which is very interesting. I did a lot of work with Susan Cain, who some of you might know from her great book Quiet, and I worked with her to launch the Quiet Revolution.

Yeah.

Which is a big site, you know, for, for introverts. And one of the things that I learned in doing so much work with her is that For people who might be more introverted by nature, which just simply means is that your energy is not drawn by connection with tons of people, but rather from deeper conversations, is based on who you are and how you're wired, you want to design your community engagement strategy to work with you. Now, in community, you could see there's a difference between you individually having a community as a person, And you as a business. So if you have a business, and you have many people on your team, that's where you might really want to be strategic, so that you see what your community needs, right? You definitely want to have a presence there. But you can see the difference between somebody who might be a little bit more introverted by nature, who says, I love to be in community; I love deep, rich conversations. And maybe one of the ways I can show up very effectively is to have some very thoughtfully designed times where I can have some deep conversations. I might have something like this, where instead of going and working a room with having a bunch of, you know, really brief, fleeting conversations with a whole room of people that can be very draining for somebody who is more introverted, maybe I want to have some really in-depth community conversations in a hot seat like this, if you were somebody who was hosting a community.

Mm-hmm.

And then you might say, and also what this community needs and wants is somebody who is much more, you know, right in there and connecting with people. So that's where you'd want to have somebody on your team who's looking that way. So, so, you know, it depends. There's, there are ways that you can— I think one of the default things that we often think about, whether we're starting a community maybe for a nonprofit, you know, kind of objective versus a business objective, is immediately saying, I need to create my own. Like, what am I going to create? Is it a Facebook group? Or is it a LinkedIn group? Before asking ourselves the question, do I actually need to create a new group? Might there already be a fantastic platform in which I can come and be a wonderful contributing member and be connecting with other people in a way that's supportive of the person who it does already have the infrastructure for that group? So maybe there's an amazing event that somebody puts on every year, And you can come and you can play a significant role in engaging your community there. Doesn't mean you then have to produce an entire event yourself, unless it is necessary. Because that's something a lot of people jump into. And that's where you can start to feel overwhelmed. And sometimes your bank account feels underwhelmed, because it's expensive. And it's a lot of energy and resource.

That is for sure. So as you're talking, I'm sitting here thinking, I know, I have resting thinking face, I think. But, you know, a lot of people— you mentioned earlier that sort of a core tenet to having an engaged group is to find people with shared values and shared careabouts. Mm-hmm. So I've also heard— or not heard, but gotten feedback like, oh, if you're gonna have a really robust group, you need to have people of diverse thinking So that the conversation isn't just an echo chamber. So what's the balance between that?

So it's a great question, because I think when we start to talk about shared values, it doesn't necessarily mean shared perspectives on all topics. So a lot of the, the higher-level values that you might— I use a lot the, the VIA Character Strengths, V-I-A. It's a, it's a free survey. It's based on positive psychology, and it looks at character strengths across, actually across the world, across religions. And it helps you look at what are some core character strengths that you might share. So there are bigger things. I'm looking on the wall because I have mine listed on the wall always as a reminder, right? Some of my big ones are justice and fairness, love, wisdom, humanity, right? Some of these bigger kind of values. And so within that, I can have a shared value around justice with somebody, for example, right, that may come from a very different perspective. And what's important, I also might personal— personally value, which I do, right, open, honest, clear, direct communication that helps all of us live in some discomfort in order to better understand each other. So that's a diversity of thinking, I think, that can make an effective community. It doesn't, you know, sometimes people are coming together in community because they have a shared experience, and it feels really important and powerful to have people from one shared experience or community together, right? Because part of what they may not feel in the outside world is people who truly understand and live their experience. So there are different objectives and reasons to have community. And that's why it goes back so much, right, to saying, What is the objective of what it is that you're trying to engage? Whenever you're wanting to solve problems and create innovation and come up with innovative solutions, that, to me, is saying, you know, if you have a community that all looks the same, that comes from the same background and experience, you're probably not going to be very innovative in what it is that you're doing.

Mm-hmm.

But that's really up to, you know, any community to decide exactly

And when, when, um, you look at things like, uh, what is it, Pantsuit Nation?

Yeah.

Talk about, uh, whether regardless of whether you agree with their politics or not, it's, it's such a fascinating, um, way that millions of people came together almost immediately and it was a stock ticker. And it was focused around one thing, and yet there's no moderator. Not that I can see. I mean, they may moderate it, but the conversation just lives on its own. That community really drives from almost from the bottom up. Is that what you're talking about here, where you can create that bottom-up conversation where it starts to live naturally on its own?

It is an example of a design of a community, and that actually is a super fascinating case study because, you know, it did spring up at the election for a whole bunch of people in that original case who were excited to maybe see a female president, you know, for the first time in our history. And then you saw a lot of very interesting, powerful, difficult conversation that came after, which looked at the issue of feminism and sometimes the, the exclusivity of just white women feminism, right, to the exclusion of other kinds of perspectives of other women of color and other experiences, right? And so— Right. The fact that it is still going, and those, the fact that the convers— you know, some people stayed in the community, some people left the community. The principles that really lead to, you know, a community that can be self-regulating, I would say almost always, there are people who are involved in a position of community leadership that are paying attention to what's happening, that are doing a lot of, having a lot of conversations behind the scenes. Right? And it's a matter of, if you really have defined clearly, what, what are the shared guidelines? You know, what is a, what are the, maybe some of the rules of engagement that you might have in a community, where the community members will call each other, right, in an honest and thoughtful way, if somebody is like violating those agreements, then that's part of where it can be a little bit more self-regulating. But, you know, it's a, it's an interesting, it's one of the fascinating things about community is what you want is you do want People to feel like this is our place, and it is ours. And you know, we're we're leading and guiding the direction of it. And depending upon what the objective is of you starting a community again to kind of start a social movement, to grow business, to do things you know from like thinking right now here being on Main Street in Mesa, which is probably like Main Streets many other places where you are in Bogotá. Juan, you live in Bogotá. So I love Colombia. So happy to have you here. I lived in Bogotá when I was in college, right? But you know, in every place around the globe, there are people who are trying to accomplish different initiatives, especially in business, right? And you do sometimes need to have a particular perspective. You do need to have folks who are in there thoughtfully facilitating discussion and making sure that folks are having a really positive, you know, outcome. So it's, you know, I'm a longtime consultant when my answer to everything is, it depends. Because there ain't no one-size-fits-all thing at all. It depends on what you're trying to create and what your objective is and who's there and etc., etc.

Yeah, let me, let me ask you this way. Is there— most communities or most groups live only to a certain point. I don't know exactly how long, but, but it's, it's not very long that most groups actually die out. Like, the passion starts, the momentum starts, Everyone's excited. And then, you know, call it month 7— I'm making that up— boom, it drops off. What, in your opinion or in your research, carries a community through to live a long, healthy life?

It is community engagement. It is staying focused on the issues that are of most relevance to people who are in that community. So it's always providing fresh insight and perspectives and keeping a pulse and looking ahead and really providing— I know the communities that I'm involved in that hold the most engagement over time are not just those that might, you know, join together in excitement for an event that everybody attended, right? That's a common one where people might see each other at a live event, and they get all excited to stay connected. And everything for a while is just looking back at that event that happened. At a certain point, you have to say, where are we going? And what are we building? And what are interesting ideas and resources in light of what it is that we're trying to build? And that, to me, is just the freshness. That's why I love the ecosystem metaphor, because it is like a natural system where it needs oxygen and water and, right, like all these natural elements working together. If it becomes stagnant, there are no new ideas, no new members. If there's not this refreshment of really people building collectively towards something for the future, I think that's where it just starts to die a natural death, because it's just kind of repeating the same thing over and over. Yeah. That said, the objective of every community is not to be there forever. It's totally fine, and it's great to have communities that have a certain lifespan. And, you know, they can be the most powerful thing at that time for what it is that people need in order to move forward. I ran a retreat for entrepreneurs called Liftoff with my friend Charlie Gilkey for about 3 years. We did it twice a year, once in Phoenix and once in Portland, where he's from. And we had, so we had 6 groups of entrepreneurs that went through. And we were kind of proud, because for years after, probably for about maybe 3 years after we stopped doing the last retreat, we still had a super active Facebook group for folks who were, had attended that retreat, because they were connected with each other. There was a certain approach, shared approach that we had to starting a business. And it was kind of amazing that it like went on much longer than typical things like that went on. Mm-hmm. But after a while, because we stopped doing it, and we weren't putting tons of energy into that, what, what remained were really strong, natural connections with some of the members. Many people went on to go do work together, right, to be part of the extended kind of community and family. But it didn't make sense for us to continue to put energy and resource and time into that particular community, because it was meant to be for a time, so that people were able to go on to other things.

Do you have any examples off the top of your head that of strong communities that you really admire?

Whenever whenever I have to think of something on the spot, I can never think of it. Ugh, I'll probably think of it five minutes after we get off the call. It's totally fine. You know what's what's really funny is the first thing I was thinking about is and I will I'm sure find good examples of communities down the road of like business ones that are big that have lasted. But I there's a group of friends of mine, Michael Bungay. Stanyer and Eric Stein and Molly Gordon. There's a number of people that are, have been in a mastermind group together for, I think it's been like 10-plus years.

Wow!

And for anybody who's ever been in a mastermind, you know, it's an example sometimes of something that you can be together in a group for a while, and then it kind of fizzles out. And I always look at them as such a cool example of people who have personally and professionally grown through many different stages of business. But it's because of always having that forward focus. They're very honest with each other, and they're working on things that are related to really what's going on in their life and in business. And that's been an interesting, you know, thing to see over time is that kind of super engaged audience.

What about the financial side? I just, this is a great comment that, shoot, somebody just brought up, and I thought it was really good. Here it is, William Hugo Yang. an ecosystem needs a financial baseline or marketplace. What about that side of things? I mean, this isn't— communities take time, they take effort, they take, you know, resources. This is, while it's engagement and it's something that we can quite frankly do that we couldn't do 20 years ago digitally, there's still a financial requirement, I would think, and that's needed. How do you How do you figure out what that is and how to even assign that, whether it's for a small business or even a large enterprise?

Yeah, so it's a great question. And to me, it's the example of where we don't take community as a separate item. So it's not like I have my business and then I'm going to go do some community building because it's the right thing to do. It is exactly at the core of a strategy that you would have. For whatever your initiative is. So if you are somebody who has a nonprofit, right, and you, you know, core of what you do is engagement with people who you're serving, with funders that are funding your efforts, with other service providers in your community that are helping the same kind of audience that you're helping, community building is, is a core part of how you get your work done, how you get your funding done. It is, A belief, and it's a choice, which I don't think I have to convince the two of you, that it's a choice saying, it is much better to be doing long-term human-to-human connections, where you actually develop a heart-based relationship with people who you care about, personally and professionally, as part of the way that you do business, knowing that there are many benefits that come around to business, where you do get funding, where you do have other people, when you know each other, when you're clearly referring business to each other, that it comes back from a financial model, you know, that way. And that's why always before you even consider, you know, starting a Facebook group or hosting an event or something else, you do want to be asking that question: Does this fit within my business model? Does this make sense? Is this the way that I operate? And not every business owner or person, you know, has this approach. And so if that's the case for you, it's totally fine, right? But if you're going to do it, you have to see where your business is sustaining these efforts that you're going to do. You know, some of community building is absolutely in, you could put it in the line item of marketing, right? The more people that know you, that know what you're doing, sharing information from all the events that you're doing, that is driving business to you. That happens every single day. Within my own community. And it's, it's so— I always hesitate to share it because it sounds like I run a cult. I do not run a cult. But my own clients, they started calling it the Pamily, like being part of the Pamily.

Oh,

that's cute. Which meant like they met each other through some kind of connection through me originally. And it's become kind of a joke for us, which is slightly horrifying for me because I'm not a cult. But, you know, it's an example of something that can make me feel really good. in community building is one of my jobs is bringing really great people together and introducing people to each other that do business. And so I would do it whether there were financial return or not. It's the thing I love the most in life, right? Helping to connect allies that are solving really important problems in the world. There definitely is a positive business benefit when people have that positive affiliation to knowing that they might have met at an event. And, and then they're going to be referring business when they know what I do, and they're going to support the kind of initiatives I have. But it's an interesting example in a business model, because one of the things I'm exploring in the book is different types of business models. And you can have what I call an empire builder, which is one approach where really most of the marketing and branding messages that you're saying is, I am the authority. I am the person who is, you know, central to everything that we're doing. Which is funny, Courtney, like as we're queuing up and you're saying, you know, you're the one who, you know, knows the most about community building. Ironically, as a community builder, I would never take complete credit for being the expert about everything, because to me, it's not about branding myself as the sole mentor. It's about cultivating an amazing network of people who I want to introduce my audience to, saying, all of these people have valuable perspectives. So people that might be more community builder types of businesses, by design, are designing their business that way. And then, you know, from that are designing their marketing initiatives that way. And that's where you start to see where your time, effort, and resources have to give some kind of return in order to keep the cycle going.

Yeah. Well, and that's a good point too, because I was thinking as you were talking that sometimes currency doesn't always mean financial money. Currency could be using fair exchange of knowledge or you know, help and support and connection, or just as long as people are feeling like they're in fair exchange of value, that, that also is something that I think could keep the community going. But I'm curious about selling inside of a community. So not everyone knows how to do it well.

Should do

it. Or should do it at all. So what, what is your opinion about selling inside of a trusted community?

So in a trusted community, everybody really understands who everybody is and what the shared objectives are. So when you have some kind of business community, you know, you have business owners that are coming together, it shouldn't be a shock to anybody that people have businesses, right? Like, you know, part of why we're together is to try to drive positive benefit in different businesses, right, and really, you know, create health and economic wellbeing and all of that. You, it's very important, I think, to have norms around ways in which that is done. So when you can have shared understandings, I've seen this done exceptionally well in certain communities, where you might say, for example, we could choose as a business to have a Facebook group. And within some of the guidelines around that Facebook group, here are the ways that we actually encourage you to actively promote your business. So maybe on Fridays, we're going to have a thread where you can say— Hey, this is my stuff. I'm really proud of it. Come buy it if you need my services. And that can be a great norm. You could also say, you know, it's not really cool in general, if people are posting general questions and getting feedback, to be posting all these links to your own, you know, sales pages and direct messaging people selling your stuff. Those are norms that you have around how selling happens. But to me, in a natural, organic business, you're proud of what you do. You're solving a particular problem. You are selling goods or services because you believe in them, and you really believe in the solution that you're providing. And so people who know that are not going to be shocked that you're selling. It's norms that you establish as a community for what's a good way of doing that, that I think is really important. You know, and to me, probably because my audience are small business owners and entrepreneurs, I'm often encouraging people to not be shy about saying, you know, this is my business, and I'm really proud of it, and I love what I do. But just doing so in a way that's not, you know, rolling over somebody. And marketing is kind of like dating. Thank God I haven't had to date in a really long time. I'm happily married. But, you know, you think about it, where the first time you meet somebody, if you just immediately say, hi, my name is Pam. Want to buy my stuff? It's like, ugh! You know, it's like, would you— Yeah. My name is Pam. Would you like to marry me and have 3 kids? That's going to send somebody, you know, running away. And you need to really develop relationship with people. It's where you, as a business owner, have to have a very clearly defined sales process, where you're not ever pushing yourself in person or online. It's based on mutual benefit. And where there's mutual benefit, it's joyful to have a conversation with somebody about what you're selling. I love it, you know, and I was not somebody who was born to be a natural salesperson. Right.

Right, right. It's funny, I was talking to actually Andrew Davis about that just yesterday, a mutual friend of ours that is, you know, he— I was saying, you know, this is when you reach out to anybody and you're saying, you know, pick me, pick me, choose me, then it comes off as inauthentic or as egotistical. And it really hurts the relationship. So I'm wondering, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you tend to that in reverse when you're running a community and you see that going on, when you see somebody doing self-promotion versus education?

So some of this goes back to norms that you've established. It's why it's so important to be doing that, to really think about as a community leader and like something like a Facebook group or any kind of community you run where you do have a way for people to understand what the norms are. I've made the mistake before of not really laying that out clearly, as you have kind of a new member orientation where you'd say, welcome, this is what we're about. This is our mission. This is the way we operate. You know, this is really inbounds; this is out-of-bounds. Because then sometimes if somebody does something which you might perceive to be, you know, a hard sell, they may just not realize that that's, that's not OK in this group. And so if you come down really hard and say, you know, we don't have selling in this group, people can feel embarrassed and ashamed and sometimes mad about that. So having the upfront guidelines is very helpful. And then I think it's like anything, having more of a facilitated conversation where you're just, you're wanting to learn more. And where you see something that feels really egregious, you would pull somebody virtually, right? Maybe in a direct message, or maybe you get on the phone, which is actually always a good thing to do, because it's hard sometimes to really, you know, engage fully just online.

Yeah.

And you'd say, you know, hey, I noticed that this happened. You know, from my own perception, you know, it actually felt a little bit like maybe you were really selling hard. What was your objective? And can you say a little bit more about what you were trying to do? And engage that person in dialogue as a way, just exactly as you would have a performance conversation within a company, right? You, all the rules that you have about giving feedback is just to report specifically on what it is that you observed, right? What did you see? Or what did you hear? What then was the assumption that you made? And then to let them know, here's the impact that it had when I saw it. Did you realize that was the impact? What was your thought? What's a way I can maybe help you to use a different strategy for reaching the objective or the goal that you have? And in some cases, if the person is really not a good fit, you can say, you know what, I'd love to have you here. But let me help you maybe find a community where the style that you're comfortable with is going to be more fitting for you. Because there are communities— I'm shocked sometimes, I don't know about you, you all, but I'm the kind of person, I can be sitting in the audience at a live event where people are doing the hard sell from the stage. I literally cannot physically stay in the room. I just, I can't do it. And I'm always amazed, there are some people who don't mind it at all. And they'll be, you know, running to the speaker at the end of the, end of the event and buying whatever it is that they're selling. So part of what I've learned is there's not a judgment about it. We all just have different perspectives on how to sell and market. And so the important thing is to be selling and marketing in a community that also shares the norms of what feels natural and organic to you. And I mean, the last thing I'll say about that, as a business coach, is sometimes people are using certain marketing or sales methods, not because it is what is really inherent to the way they are as a person, but it's because of the way they've been taught. And sometimes it may not actually feel good to them, nor be effective. So that's where sometimes helping them to find a different way could be very positive.

So Bryan just dropped the link to your survey into the Facebook group, and, um, we could spend a few— the last couple minutes with you explaining what you're trying to do with your research.

Yeah, so we, um, myself and my friend Susan Byer from Audience Audit, who's a researcher, and then Chris Lee, who's also here local, um, we have a survey right now. This is for small business owners or entrepreneurs. And what we are looking at is attitudes towards obstacles. So this is, for us, it's very exciting. We get very nerdy in the research. This has never been studied before in an attitudinal segmentation research study. Hmm. So think about for yourselves, what we're looking at is, as a business owner, what are your problems or challenges? And then what is your attitude toward obstacles? When an inevitable obstacle comes, what is your default? Do you stick your head in the sand? Do you charge forward? Do you get jealous of somebody who doesn't have the obstacle, right? We're really trying to dig in and actually look at what are some of these categories of attitudes towards obstacles, and also to shake up a little bit the belief sometimes that obstacles are purely based on demographic information, like how many years you've been in business, right, or how many employees you have, or how much income you have. One of the fun things of being a business coach for so long is I've talked to people who have, you know, 1,000 employees and people who are solopreneurs. And sometimes their problems are exactly the same, even though nobody would believe it, because one person's making $10 million a year, and one person's making $100,000, right? Right. So part of what we're doing is gathering information for that. We have over 100 partners that we're partnering with to get the word out. So we want as many people as possible to really represent many different communities. And then we'll be sharing the results with everybody who participates, because we want to help ourselves as small business providers to be better at what we do, to help business owners overcome obstacles. So that's the whole way the survey is designed. And I will say, there's a lot of embedded research also for my next book on ecosystems. So personally, I'm also really excited to get a lot of data, so I can start to do some really interesting ecosystem maps. I call it the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, if you've ever seen that, right? Like, how we can start to look at who are some of the thought leaders that might be influencing people and interesting connections between, you know, people who like this product and people who like this conference. So personally and as a team, we really would appreciate any participation if you're a small business owner. And you can share the link. So if you have, if you're in other communities, we'd love for you to share it as well. We'd really appreciate it.

That's awesome. Well, being an entrepreneur myself and a research nerd, I love both of those.

That's right.

Yeah. All right. Well, are there any last questions,

I think we're— well, there's lots and lots of questions, but we've hit our time. And so I think at this point, if you guys do have questions, go ahead and keep, keep them going inside of the conversation. We'll collect those. If we need to answer them, we'll get back to you with that list. I'm sure Pam would not have a problem with that.

I'd be happy to.

Oh, thank you.

Why don't you just real quick let people know how they can get in touch with

Yeah, I'm at pamelaslim.com. That's where all my social handles are.

Awesome, awesome. And, and thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here. Just, just to close out, I thought, you know, if you haven't heard Pam talk, I had a, I had a chance to hear her at a speakers conference in Florida, and she had literally, she had me in tears with her, like happy tears with her and her speech. So not only is she a great business person, but just to hear her speak— if you see her in or around your city, go see her speak. I promise you are going to love it. I was absolutely floored.

Thank you.

And so really, really appreciate your friendship and for you being on this and giving your all and giving your advice here to everybody about what's coming. I do encourage everyone to fill out that survey because it's only going to provide better research and better things to come for everyone. So I have that link in every chat that we have going on. There is no Excuse not to find a link somewhere to do that. Um, but otherwise, thanks again, Pam. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you both. Thanks, everybody.

Yeah, thank you, everybody, for joining, and we will see you again same time, same place next Monday. Cheers, everybody.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.