How Stacey Lauren Is Activating Communities and Raising $1 Billion with Challenges

Christine McDaniel here and I have Stacy Lauren, who is the founder of do the Thing on with me. We're going to talk all about it. Her TEDx talk actually already has over a million views. She did it last year in San Diego. It was the power of community to help you achieve your goals. So you guys can look it up on YouTube. It is an incredible, powerful talk. She started a global conversation around the importance of joining others towards achieving a common goal. I've known her for years. She's a dear friend. She built a super successful eight figure staffing company. She's helped tens of thousands of people get jobs. She's helped companies remove their bottlenecks in order to help them scale their companies. She's just super talented. She is a rock star at building and activating all sorts of different communities which we are going to dive into. And that's really the power behind do the Thing. So Stacy, thanks for coming on to talk more. Thank you.

I'm gonna have you introduce me everywhere I go now.

Chrissy, anytime State, anytime. So for somebody brand, brand new, how would you explain do the thing and what is the thing?

Yeah, you know, it's such a great question because this has been something a lot of people have asked me since I started, which is like, what is the thing? What's coming out of do the Thing is actually like a bolt on to everyone's thing. It's almost like the ultimate collaboration program, process experience. Because partner with other people, it attaches to whatever their thing is. And it's almost like do the thing is like this activator of action and connection and collaboration and it helps everyone's thing get amplified. And that's been one of the most fun things that I've been doing is partnering with other people and helping their people do the thing through this system.

Let's launch right into the flagship activation challenge that has already been used around the world. I would love for you to talk about that one.

It's called find your voice and it's so funny because depending on who I'm talking to, they're like, I don't need to find my voice. But it's like at the core of everything we are as humans, no matter what level we're at, right? Whether we have just gone through some major life transition and we're trying to overcome it or we're coming out of it, maybe we started to write a book or a podcast or we're working for a company and we want to be a leader or we're the CEO of like a $30 million company. We are finding our voice at each level, at each phase of life and we're constantly evolving and we need to involve. We have to be able to take that minute to reflect every time we're growing and we're going through like the growth edge and say, who am I and who do I want to become now? And unfortunately a lot of times, and this happened to me so many times where you're like, wait, what am I doing and how can I do this? Who am I to do this right? But instead, find your voice. It helps you trust yourself in the process. And the reason why this specific challenge has activated so many communities is because it's helping the individual find their voice personally, which then helps the collective in any organization, no matter what the organization does. I've done this challenge now in high net worth groups who have exited seven to eight figure businesses to women who have been caregivers and been caring for others for years and are now re figuring out who they are to even birth moms who place their baby up for adoption and they want to get reconnected to who they are after going through something like that. Recently, I did it in a engineering group who are aerospace engineers and being able to connect them together. And so no matter what group it's in, it takes a shape of its own. And so find you'd voice is really like helping people in community or any organized group be human together so they're able to move together.

It's so funny because now with this framework that you've been building for the last year or two, and I've been lucky enough to be in a mastermind group with you and to see this kind of from a tiny, tiny idea, you know, the last year or two to what it's grown into, which is so insane. And now with this framework, I see that in any sort of environment you're in now, they could totally be doing this challenge. They could do this kind of a challenge. Your daughter, you just sent her off to college this month, so talk about that. Where you were like, oh my gosh, this could have been a challenge.

One of the hardest things about creating something that you know can help so many people. I've become like obsessed with seeing like all the different applications for it. But yeah, for example, my daughter just dropped her off at college, she just moved into her first apartment at the college and I was like, oh my gosh, wouldn't it have been amazing if they could have done some kind of like pre college challenge to help the Kids get to know each other beforehand because, I mean, think about all the conferences you go to or all the different events that we go to, whether it's networks, networking or personal growth, or doing some huge level CEO, group mastermind, depending on what it is. I recently went to Necker island and that was like amazing. And all these different experiences where we're meeting people for the first time. And depending on where you are, I call it a comfort circle. Wherever you are at your comfort circle, and depending on what group it's in, you could actually almost be withdrawn or introverted sometimes, depending on what kind of personality type you are. And it's hard. That's my story. Where I'm naturally introverted. And depending on where I am, depending on who I know is where certain parts of me can come out. Right. And so these challenges are like the activator of a person to really be able to get to know yourself and get to know others on a really deep level. So even if you've already known someone for years and you're doing this challenge, you get to know them in a really deeper, meaningful way, in a way that you haven't met them before and maybe even more open to collaborating and doing stuff with. Or you could be a total stranger and not know someone at all. And all of a sudden you could feel like you're best friends because of the way the connection works within the challenge.

I love that. And then these are 17 day challenges typically, right? Is that how long they run for?

Yes. So the find your voice challenge is 17 days. That's where I really go through this do the thing technology inside that challenge. That includes comfort circles. It includes dares, which are just micro actions, self reflective prompts to help people take action. Then also it has the do the thing formula embedded in it, which was something I identified after doing hundreds of interviews on my podcast and street interviews. Then also I do something called my people party. So it's all baked into the 17 day experience in really simple, actionable steps. Five to ten minutes a day. And then from there people could do five day challenges, seven day challenges, 10 day challenges. It kind of depends on what they're looking for. It brings power to your team, to your community, to your leadership organization, to getting new clients, whatever you want to do. You basically put this challenge with it and then the fire and the momentum happens in the most explosive, cool way.

And then which platforms are you running these challenges on? Is it in Facebook groups? I'm assuming these are online, obviously. So which platforms are you using the.

Most Beautiful thing is it could be on any platform, but it's plug and play where we have challenge hosts that I'm training. And whether I've trained a challenge host within the organization to run the challenge or they utilize one of the challenge hosts that I've trained to be able to help other organizations have them. We've done them on School Mighty Networks, Facebook Circle, Melissa Gilbert, Nicole Hasse. They have a custom app called Modern Prairie, so it's even been done on a custom app before. So pretty much any platform that people are on, we're able to adapt to it. As long as there's some ability to get notifications and tag people, it works beautifully. I mean, there's even opportunities where, let's say the company doesn't have a social platform or something that they're already using. We're able to even do it without it being online. We could do an in person activation as well using the same system, which is really cool.

Have you guys ever done either Slack, WhatsApp or Telegram?

I love that question. I had actually a clinical psychologist, she was the challenge host for a Spanish speaking cohort within one of my bigger challenges, a support recovery program. And they actually did the challenge in Spanish. So they still used my main group as the activator, but the cohort, she did it on WhatsApp and so that was how she delivered all the prompts and things and it worked out great. So that's been one example. I haven't done it on Telegram yet, North Slack, but I definitely am looking forward to trying those things. In addition to Discord is something else I'm looking forward to doing too.

That's a good one too. That's a great one. I know you've shared stories with me personally, but I would love for you to kind of talk about some amazing types of transformations you've seen through these challenges.

You know, it's amazing because no matter what group does it, it's always some huge transformation because each group basically has it take on a shape of its own and a life of its own, depending on what the group's goal is. So for example, when I first did this challenge, it was actually inside of a dating cohort where women were looking to date after divorce. And in this challenge, I remember us all looking at each other after the challenge was over and just being like in shock at the transformation because really, what do you need to do when you're dating, right? You need to be able to find your voice again and be okay with not being on a date with someone like going out without the date. And so that was a huge transformation. Seeing people that were normally stuck on the couch all day long and not wanting to get out without knowing that they were going to meet someone, be able to find their voice and really tap into what matters the most, and then being able to almost, like, be their full self while they're out in the world. I also had this challenge done inside of a bookkeeping cohort where Margie Remmers Davis, she actually ran this challenge alongside of her current program. She wanted to help her bookkeepers get new clients. And in order to get new clients, she wanted them to be able to find the confidence and the courage to be able to reach out to people on LinkedIn. So she used the find your voice challenge as a way to do that. And that was huge transformation, where people who were normally introverted not wanting to reach out to people are now actually doing virtual events. They're even reaching out and posting on LinkedIn and really like meeting with people to get to get clients for their bookkeeping jobs, which is amazing.

Glad you brought up LinkedIn, because people brand groups. I've seen some networking groups that use LinkedIn groups to run the entire challenge, and I just love the accountability. Each day there's a dare, there's something for them to do, each person is posting, and there's that daily accountability of, like, really getting people out of their shells. I think one of the first dating ones, I was in that same Facebook group, and it was so fun to see people coming out of their shells, or if they couldn't do it, they would say, I just couldn't do the dare today. And then there would just be that support from everybody else in the group, which I really thought was amazing.

Love that you brought up the LinkedIn example, because Julie Bennett and her sister Emily French, they're both trained challenge hosts, and they actually did an aerospace engineer find your voice version of the challenge and partnered with somebody else to be able to facilitate it. And it really brought that group really closer together and being able to really tap into who they are, what they're wanting to do in the world. And that's what's so exciting, is when you get to see these communities transform and groups being formed because of it. Now, another challenge we have, it's called the Dream Nudge Challenge. This one was created by Mayor Brighton, who's a dreamlifter. That's a challenge that we actually get to use using this framework. And that's a whole nother set of transformations that happens when people are Experiencing it because they're getting to power up a specific dream that's on their bucket list.

And then I know you have the My People parties, so how do those work into and play into these challenges?

My People is the thing that came from my TEDx talk, which also came from me identifying the formula for how people do the thing. That whole concept of my people is really what I noticed when I ran my very first challenge because I had the formula almost intact of what helps me people actually take action, get out of your, you know, mental baggage and the things that stop us. I ran the challenge and that was when I noticed what I thought was like minded people. Being around like minded people was actually bigger than that because they were in this group with people that had a common goal. Number one, they didn't want their friends and their family and the regular support network seeing what they were posting because they were like, I want to actually grow, I want to reinvent, I want to be able to actually do the goal. And so that was when this whole idea of my people came out, which is being with people who have the same goal as you. So it's a little bit different than your friends and family, your support network, if you don't have the same goals. So even if you're in a company and you have a specific goal, you want to be with people that have that goal. Like even whether it's increasing revenue, improving culture, doing better with your team. The My People party really came out after the TEDx talk when people really grasped onto that idea of My people. The party is basically gathering people in a virtual event, in an in person event around a common goal. So these could be really fun kind of ways that you could do it through like a hot seat kind of a session or just a connection event, or bringing people together through like networking or helping people promote their business. Really any kind of goal that you want to have, and we get to use those throughout the challenge. They actually keep the energy and the activation up where people get to like gather. And it's actually not even just the leader that does it. There's people that are becoming leaders within the challenges because it's part of this comfort circle framework that's inside each challenge where people are doing the My People parties. They're gathering. They're getting more confident and courageous by being able to hold these meetings if they want to and really stretch themselves in different ways.

I love that now you're able to bring this framework into these large corporations to activate their employees, to empower their employees to Teach them these types of of leadership skills. I know now you're even also training the specialized challenge hosts. You even have these specialized ones that you can kind of be that matchmaker, just like you were the matchmaker at Gostaff, your staffing firm actually in the perfect employee with the perfect company. And I feel like you're doing the exact same thing with do the Thing, which is so exciting to see. Talk a little bit about the specialized challenge hosts and what that means for an organization if you bring them in.

Challenge hosts are self employed. They have their own business. This is just an extra training that they get to do. And whether they are trained within an organization to run it like internally with that language that the company wants to use, or it's someone they are able to bring in external that I've trained. There's all different challenge hosts that I'm training right now. Some are specialties, are specialized in sales or small speaking. Different people are like focused on different things. We even have nonprofits that we're partnering with. So corporations, if they want to be able to use the challenges as a way to give back and make a difference, they're able to do that as well. This is kind of the next level is all of a sudden I started to see just the success of the challenges and what it's doing with the people inside of these communities and organizations and the leadership, the leaders that are really being developed. This is like the most amazing thing. I would have done anything to have something like this when I ran my company because we were always trying to figure out how can we help them more, how could we help motivate them, how could we train them to be better leaders? How could we bond them together so they get excited about whatever goal that we have? Right. There were so many times when I set up a sales goal and it was hard to get them engaged towards the goal. This challenge is perfect for that. Or we had inter department fights. Whether it was accounting and sales didn't get along right. I would have loved to have this challenge to help break through those differences and show them that no, we're on the same team, we actually can achieve the same goal.

When you had your staffing firm on Tony Robbins NLP training, what were some of the other organizations you said you paid to send people?

This was actually my biggest lesson for like CEOs. When I was really doing a lot of consulting around that time with people, you would ask me how I built that business and like all the things and I was like, honestly keep our employees. We were really known for retaining employees because we had so many people stay with us for so long. And it came down to giving them personal development programs to keep enriching themselves, which then helps them, you know, do better for the company because they're more enriched personally. While these challenges actually can act as both a personal and professional development experience, there's nothing like it. Like you mentioned Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is amazing, right? You send your employees, you get to go out and do that. This is different because you get to do it inside the company. We also did a company called Crescom that helped with leadership a lot of things with, like, the SA and the staffing, where you be able to train people on, like, different staffing credentials and things like that. This is just another training that could be used as a tool belt. Whether you want to train your internal team and become challenge hosts, or you want to be able to have one of the ones that I've been training that are going into companies and doing this based on that as well.

What does success look like for you? And do the thing. I know you've got just some big numbers in mind, and we'd love to hear it.

I asked this question, I think, like, a few months before I exited the company to my employees and the people that worked for us. And I was so surprised at the answers to what success means to most people, which is not what we think, right? Where it's like, I want to make X amount of money. It was like, no, I want to make a difference in the world. I want to be able to, like, have an impact. I want to be able to know that my voice is valued and that I've mattered and contributed. And to me, that's what success looks like. I'm actually, through this framework and through this whole process of these challenges and being able to have them inside companies and organizations and groups all over the world. Everyone's going to be able to have that kind of success because the challenges are the key to being able to create really deep connection and collaboration and help people do the thing, whatever that thing is that the company or community wants them to do. And then as far as my personal goal, I want to train 3,333 challenge hosts to help deliver this throughout the world. I want to be able to partner with Authors, thought leaders, TEDx speakers, really anybody that has a message in their heart, and then also create a custom challenge with them so that just like the find your voice challenge and Mayor Brighton's dream nudge challenge are now going to be delivered all across the world. Through these experiences, I'm going to be able to take their personal challenge and also deliver it in the same way. And we're going to have an endless amount of challenges built on this system that we're going to be able to use to really activate people within organizations, give value, motivate, really contribute in really cool ways.

And talk about the charity part where some people are putting on these challenges. Maybe they're an author, maybe they're an expert, they run entrepreneur group, etc, where they're like, hey, for, you know, $47, you can join this challenge that we're putting on in the next 17 days, but your $47 is actually going straight to this charity.

There's a few sides to that, which is so exciting. There's one side where, let's say somebody decides to have the Challenge in their organization. Once I say the license is yours to use this Challenge, the money that comes from the challenge is the person that's basically licensing the challenge, right? So if they decide to charge people to participate, or the company's paying for it, or however they're going to be using it, that money gets to be there. So I've had people that use the money to go straight to a nonprofit. I've had other people that used it to fund their own personal mission. I've had other people used it for free because it was inside of $25,000 masterminds already, right? And so they were just giving value to their current members. And so those are some ways you could do it. The other thing you could do is you could get a sponsor for these challenges. And so that could also go to charity, or it could go to the person that's running the Challenge however they want to run it. And then the third way that I'm really excited is really partnering with nonprofits and then also then partnering with corporations and having them put this personal and professional development kind of like system inside their company. And the money would go to the nonprofit, and the Challenge host would then get a percentage of that fee. I'm just so excited about that, because I just believe this is going to be a new way. I mean, think about the funding issues that are happening right now in the nonprofit space. This is going to transform how they raise money for anything that they want. I have a vision to help raise a billion dollars over the next couple years using this framework and being able to have these 3,333 challenge hosts deliver the challenges, and really partnering with companies and nonprofits to bring this into their company and really being able to use it as a personal and professional development experience within the organization.

Well, to hold true to the Threes, your goal is a billion towards charities within three years. So you've got all three, three, three, three. And then you've got the three years for the goal. And I know you're gonna hit it and achieve it. I love kind of the post event challenges because then you're keeping them engaged, keeping them excited whether or not they bought or not. But I guarantee you're then going to pick up some more purchases there that maybe you weren't able to sell at the event for whatever reason the person didn't buy, they weren't fully bought in. But now they're doing this challenge after the event, they're engaged, they're excited, and then they might buy what you were offering from the stage. I think that's an amazing one that I'm excited to see people, you know, implement that type of a challenge into their organization.

I'm so glad you said that because this is a huge kind of gap in the market right now is people are having these really elaborate, really cool, extraordinary events, whether it's a summit, whether it's a big conference or whatever it is. And then at the end of that event when it's over, everyone's so activated. Right. If you could put people into like a post event challenge now you're containing the energy for a specific amount of time, which then opens the door for like being able to continue the conversations, create, create collaborations, have collective action together through whatever the event was about. In addition to being able to also use this as a way to re. Nurture through whatever offer you're wanting people to do or engage with. There's a huge opportunity for just being able to continue with that action that you're trying to design the event around and being able to help people take it on.

That's amazing. My last question to you, is there any last things you want to talk about?

Whatever you guys are doing and whatever you're wanting to do, whether it's for yourself or personally or for your organization, just remember that it's so important to be around people that have the same goals as you. If you're a leader leading people, it's really important for you to help them grow within your organization and help them become leaders themselves. It really inspires the most beautiful conversations and connections when you're able to grow together because then you're getting out of your comfort circle, comfort zone, which helps you get to know each other even better. That would be the biggest thing is just really keying in on why collaboration is important over isolation and how important it is that we're in communities together. I love that.

Stacy. Well, thank you so much.

Thanks so much, everybody.