Boost Community Engagement with A Door Greeter

In New York City, there is a meetup group that is completely dedicated to failure. That's right, failure. Failed entrepreneurs, failed ideas, failed initiatives, failed projects. The whole point of the meetup is that they get together once a month, and one person gets on stage and says, hi, my name's Tom. I once tried to create an app to help college students for fundraise. It was called Student Launcher, and it failed. And then they share the lessons that they learned. I know it sounds strange, but oddly enough, I really love this concept because I think people learn more through failure than they do through successes, because there's more raw honesty in the failure. There's no more skin in the game. So they have to sit back and go, wow, what went wrong? Or sometimes that failure, that lesson hits them in the face because they realize what went wrong. So I want to go to this meetup, and I found the date that worked for me. I went to the place that it was hosted, went in the front door, checked in with the door person, went to the elevator and met one other person who happened to also be going to the same meetup as me in the elevator. We said hi, and we connected. Elevator opens up into a large loft area where music's playing. There's drinks happening, there's food happening, there's chairs set up. Clearly, there's a stage and. And a lot of mingling going on. My newly minted friend and I did not know what to do, so we made our way over to the bar, we grabbed a drink, and he and I started chatting about what he was doing, what he was working on. I shared what I was doing as a professional speaker, and we talked back and forth, back and forth. Having that one additional person to talk to made all the difference to me. Not feeling completely socially awkward in that meetup, because imagine had I never met that person in the elevator going up and I walked into this room and not knowing everyone. I know that this is an extrovert's dream because they would have the energy and love the idea of going around going, hey, my name's Tom. Hey, my name's Tom. Hey, my name's Tom. However, me being an ambivert, that's not my natural. I really have to build myself up to go and do that type of connection. So I have this one person here. I noticed that I recognized the founder of the meetup by the picture on the meetup page, and I wanted to talk to him and say hello and introduce myself, but he was so busy running around trying to set everything up. I noticed there were a few people with these kind of official failure shirts on that I recognized them as being leaders of this meetup as well. However, none of them were available for chatting because they were also running around trying to take care of everything. So no one from the official staff was there to greet us at the door. And I realized had I not met that person in the elevator and they didn't have a door greeter, that that night could have gone completely different for me. And I realized that night also how valuable it is for you and your community to have someone be the official door greeter. You know, walk into Walmart and they have that person that's up front. Now I know that they do that because it also reduces the crime. But this concept of having a door greeter has three major values in terms of community engagement and community retention. The first one is that it reduces the social awkwardness. This kind of setup where I walk in, I know no one is great for extroverts. I was lucky that I met someone in the elevator, but had I not met that person, I would have sat there socially awkward at the bar or sitting down, looking at my phone, waiting for the event to happen because I didn't want to or have the energy to, to walk up like an extrovert and say hi to everyone there. The second big value is having a door greeter. It's like social lubricant for introverts because it helps to bridge that gap for them, to help ease the effort into making a connection. Because otherwise the ramp up from walking in, not knowing anyone and have to walk up to someone and go, hey, my name's Tom, and build that connection, that's a lot of energy, especially for an introvert. So having that door greeter potentially builds that social lubricant for them. And lastly it builds social bonds. If there's door greeters, they're going to start to meet the people as they walk in. And if I walk in and I say, hey, my name's Tom, I'm actually education and I do professional speaking. That door greeter, if they're smart, will have remembered who else they've met throughout the night. And they go, oh, I have someone you should talk to and they can bring me over to that person and build a connection because they say, john, you should meet Tom. Tom, you should meet John because you're both professional speakers and of course we're going to start talking about Beanie Babies. No, I'm just kidding. Professional speaking, because that is a topic that bonds us to together and the door greeter made that connection happen. This simple step of having someone at the door that greets each new person that walks in adds massive value to your event, into your community in terms of engagement. So think about next time you're hosting an event. What can you do to have someone there? Have them connect with each person that walks in, introduce themselves, learn a little bit about that person, then go and try and build the social connection between that person and someone else in the room. So, but they get to know each other. Once that conversation between those two people start happening, walk away. The door greeter goes back to the door, introduces themselves to more people, builds more social connections, and on and on and on and on. In our world, we have a program called Dance Floor Theory. And the first rule of Dance Floor Theory is that the more friends you have on a dance, the more fun that dance is gonna be. A door greeter is an essential element to creating the more friends equals more fun concept on a dance floo and in any community anywhere. My name is Tom. I'm here to help you to engage the people on your dance floor.