Lately, I've been thinking about Communities.

Thread 👇🏽

A community is where people with similar interests hang out. They feel a sense of identity. They feel at home.

In a community, people share common values. They feel identified.
When you build a community, you host the conversation. When you build and show you have an audience. It's not bad, but It's not great.

A community is a two-way avenue. An audience is a one-way street.
With a community you will get better feedback, and new ideas.

With an audience, you are going to push content not ideas.

You can't value your community on metrics. Each user will have a different experience. It's Subjective.
People hang out in a place because they are learning or they are having a good time. Aim to entertain or teach.

Build a space where people want to be.
Develop weekly and daily rituals to keep your users engaged.

Create content that people want to consume, "Breakthrough Knowledge". It's not all about the free promo-codes.
Work with smaller groups to grow new ideas. Exchange feedback about their projects and your projects.

People are in your community because they find value in your product or your brand. Encourage users to talk about their interests.
Make your users engage in the conversation, bring value, and grow new ideas.

Your community will help you build new products.

Users will guide you about what you should be building.

Ask. Ask. Listen. Execute.
Thanks to @gregisenberg @theSamParr @Conaw @visakanv @david_perell @austin_rief for all your insights on community building!

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.