Why Finding Your Community Is Critical For Long Term Growth

0:00All right. So we're going to talk about why finding your community is critical for long-term growth. And I believe I put in this title, Neil, because I can't see you talk about this stuff. So let me go into it. That's so true. I was like, all right, sounds good. Let's talk about this. All right. Well, a couple of episodes ago, we talked about the investors conference and we, I'll just kind of go back into that a little bit, right? So I went to an investors conference called Capital Camp and, you know, I do feel like as a capital allocator, I found my tribe. These are learners. These are open-minded people that they want to get better, right?

0:31So these are like-minded people. And then within Capital Camp, there's a contingent of YPO people, also known as Young Presidents Organization. So let's just call that like a founders group or a peer group. And I got to hang out with those people for about an hour, hour and a half or so. And we had great conversations there. And then I also shared an Uber with a guy that I followed on Twitter, and he had joined YPO recently as well. But our flight got canceled. Okay, so there's a maintenance issue. So we had to go from Columbia, Missouri, we called the Uber, and we took a three hour Uber to Kansas City.

1:02And then my Kansas City flight got delayed by another hour. And then I sat coach on the way home, right? And my point is, I hadn't sat Southwest for a while, but my point is, we didn't mind the flight or we didn't mind all the issues we're going through because we had community, right? And so if you find your tribe of like-minded people, and for example, like Neil and I talk all the time, right? But also because we like business and we like marketing. And so that's why it's critical because you're going to go through a lot of, let's say you're starting a business or you're an executive in a company.

1:30You're going to go through periods where things just aren't going well. and you want to be able to fall back on your friends and people that you kind of consider to be your family because you can talk through these issues, they've been through some of these issues or they can refer you to the right people. It's really the relationships that take you a long way, right? So even though community isn't a thing that Neil might talk about, at the end of the day, though, when he picks up the phone, it's a natural thing for him, right? And so he has a lot of these relationships and he builds relationships differently than how I build my relationships.

1:57Yeah, there's no right or wrong way, but I agree with Eric in which you want to end up building a community or network, whatever you want to end up calling it. And the best way that I found, and it works different for every single person, for me, it's just helping others and not expecting anything in return. That's how I built up my community and network over the years. It's literally just always trying to help others and don't worry about if they're rich or if they're poor, where they're at, and just give and help when you can. And don't worry about what you're going to get back. Literally that simple, nothing complex about it, but it's paid out.

2:28I don't know what multiples, but it's paid out really well for me. And it didn't pay out well for me because it was strategic or I knew that going into it. I just helped others because I enjoyed it. It just ended up paying out because it paid out and it was just pure luck of it. Yeah. I mean, what I'll say is this, the quote that's shared often from this guy named Zig Ziegler, who's passed away is help others get what you want and you'll get whatever you want. And so it's not meaning that you can do that for a month, two months or a year or so. It means you have to do this for decades and decades.

2:58By the way, when you do have an expectation, when you help someone, people can feel it. They can sense it. People aren't stupid. You can say, oh, it's energy or whatever. But people know. I can sense it from a mile away when I go to an event, when someone has an ulterior motive versus someone that just wants to help from the purity of their heart. Because at the end of the day, those people are long-term focused. They know if they keep helping, they keep helping. Sure, most of it's not going to come back to them. but that small percentage, when it does come back to them, it's going to pay off in multiples, right?

3:28And to Neil's point, you can't track this stuff, but you just know that you're on the right track when you're doing it. It feels right. And that's why we continue to do it. Yep. And if you don't build a community, I think you're at a disadvantage towards a competition. You know, your community, your network, whatever you want to call it, they're the ones who can help you grow and really solve a lot of your problems when things are going against you. You may not have the time, the resources, the capital, but if you have the network, the network can help fill in the gaps. Yep. So the final thing is I'll share a couple of practical things that we can get out of here.

4:00But if you aren't a content creator, can you join masterminds or can you create your own mastermind? We've talked about how to do this in the past. You can just go to marketingschool.io and search this. But find your community, find like-minded people. If you can't find it, go curate it yourself. Now, the second piece is going out there and creating content. Well, you might say, oh, I have nothing to create content about. I'm just starting out right now. Well, then document the journey. You can document the journey. And as you build your contacts, look at your phone. Look at all the people that you have in your contact list, A through Z.

4:29Add them all to LinkedIn. If you're doing B2B stuff, share content on LinkedIn. Maybe there's a small subset of people that will actually reach out to you and see your stuff. Maybe they'll want to work with you later. Or maybe you can just continue to keep in touch with them. And you can also use a CRM, like a personal CRM called Dex. That's D-E-X. So I think it's getdex.com. But there's a lot of different ways to do this, right? You can join different groups. You can talk to different people. You can do virtual masterminds as well. You can go create an event. You can do it in happy hour. You can do a bigger event as things compound.

4:57You can create content, but just understand that it's going to be a three to four year plus journey to even get it going. But all these things take time. And by the way, when you're creating content, you actually are helping people at scale, believe it or not. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. and we will see you later.