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Tag: community

Own your story

Your value proposition may change.

Your origin story will not.

While small businesses may not have the resources needed to build huge international brands, we HAVE STORIES.

Use those stories. Own them.

Stories connect. They can rally communities, encourage investment, and help people remember who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Remember: YOU are the secret ingredient as you build your business. Why? Because no one is creating the way you create.

No one builds as you build.

Your uniqueness is an asset.

Want help understanding your story? Reach out.

Community is good business

When I log onto LinkedIn, I see a slew of “Community Manager” job postings. It’s taken awhile, but businesses have finally realized the value of community. The problem? Building community isn’t easy.

Maybe you’re trying to build platforms to encourage discussion and facilitate learnings. Perhaps you’re wanting to bring together like-minded individuals and introduce professionals with complementary viewpoints. Or you’re needing support yourself and craving the encouragement of those with common interests.

How should you begin?

Revisiting your why can help you focus on the work and your audience — not your own insecurities, anxieties, or ego. No community is built overnight; it takes time to establish trust and reputation within any group of people. And most likely, you will have to step outside of some comfort zones.

Whether you’re growing an online community or building a network within your neighborhood, you’ll be faced with tactical choices. How do you communicate? What are the rules of engagement? Are finances needed? How much energy and time is required from participants? When cultivating community (or looking for communities to join) consider these prompts:

Think of the communities you are part of. How do you show up? What do you gain? What do you offer? Who are you meeting?

Think of the communities you grow. What do they expect from you? Why are they there? What are they hoping to learn? Who would they like to meet?

Let me know how this exercise works for you. I’d recommend a solid fifteen minutes of free-writing. Don’t edit yourself, just go!

What is marketing?

When I changed industries — from social work to advertising — I was skeptical. Why would an international branding agency want to hire me, a M.S.W. (social work) graduate from Columbia?

They did, and here’s why:

Empathy.

They knew I could question: How to analyze behavior and communities, how to look for factors that contribute to the way in which someone sees the world; how to start conversations to learn how people see themselves.

This is marketing.

As part of my social work degree, I had two clinical internships. For the second, I was placed in the counseling clinic of an all-girls college. My experiences prior to this was with drug and alcohol addicts, youth on probation, middle school students. Yet now I was playing the role of therapist in a clean office, listening to educated young women talk about their anxieties and frustrations.

These women had resources. They had money and options and opportunities. Yet their worries were the same as those kids on probation and the middle schoolers who walked up flights of dark stairs in Section 8 housing to go home.

Will he/she love me?
Will my family be proud of me?
What should I do for work?

Since then I’ve worked with Buddhist monks and young leaders in Nepal. Our yearnings are largely the same, but our resources are not.

If we fail to recognize these differences as marketers, we have no chance of winning.

I believe we can use this same awareness to create incredible marketing campaigns — and a better world.

Which audience will I care about?
Who do I want to impact?
Which traits do I want to develop?

brown canoe in the body of water near mountain

Not everyone wants passion

They might say they want passion, that excitement and energy is magnetic and alluring. But they don’t really want it.

Stability is comfortable, and safety is reliable. Passion inserts question marks into shadows and corners. It’s the same with knowledge and education, opportunity and progress; publicly, someone might say they want these things, but do they?

What if progress means stepping away from the known, and opportunity means walking away from those you hold close? What if education creates a gap between you and your tribe? What if knowledge brands you — and not in a positive way: A tree standing too tall, asking to be cut.

Which direction do you choose? What do you chase?

Last year it was 35 acts of kindness. This year: 36 letters.

Getting older isn’t always looked upon favorably, but I’d like to think I’m becoming more confident and more thoughtful each year. On August 6, I turn 36.

Leading up to my birthday, my goal is to write 36 letters. The hope is to share gratitude and inspire generosity and love within my friend circles.

Consideration should be the norm, not the exception, and I believe — now more than ever before — it is our responsibility to make the communities in which we live more tolerant and kind. That’s my birthday wish.

Takeaways from two weeks of “Positive Talk”

14 people from around the world signed up to join me in a small experiment: For two weeks, I would commit to daily discussions focused on Good Things.

I spoke with Italians, Brits, folks in the United States, Sweden, and Nepal. On some days I had to talk myself up for the session; other days I looked forward to thirty minutes of positivity.

At the beginning of each call, I asked participants to rank themselves on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 for on-the-floor depression and 10 for something close to contagious joy). At the end of our call, I asked for another self-ranking. 12 out of the 14 participants reported an increase in positive feelings. The other two reported no change, having already reported high levels of feeling. I, too, found myself feeling better at the end of the calls.

But beyond feeling better, I felt seen. Those thirty minutes became a plug-in of support, encouragement, and connection. Many participants echoed battles with imposter syndrome — “Am I good enough, capable enough, strong enough, ready enough, productive enough, gentle enough, prepared enough?” Time management was another expressed hurdle, but it was rephrased as a goal that could be conquered.

And in all of these calls, it became clear that even when the world seems upside down, we have the ability to write our own narratives. We have the choice to fall into old, self-sabotaging coping strategies or tap into traits that can set us up for something greater. We can choose to see ourselves through a compassionate lens, or we can cling to memories that no longer apply. Our stories can become ones of curiosity and growth.

There’s no telling when or if things will return to “normal.” This experiment, however, reminded me there are many things still in our control. We can make time to connect, and we can train our minds to focus on creation, empathy, and compassion — for ourselves and for others. I’m thankful to all those who participated in this experiment with me.

Try for yourself: Set a calendar of participants (ask friends, family, and colleagues), keep a journal of notes, and record pre- and post- rankings for each call. Let me know how it goes.