Creating a Culture of Community to Serve Future Workforce Needs

McLean Robbins: Now, it will be a great pleasure to introduce our esteemed speakers today and before I forget, we are recording and yes, we will be sending out a copy of that recording in just a few days. So first, please meet Emily Leach, founder of The Freelance Conference. Emily has been called a pioneer in the freelance world. She started a Facebook group back in twenty fourteen to collect freelancers, to connect freelancers, and that burgeoned into what's now called The Freelance Conference. Also, she has founded the Texas Freelance Association and she has expanded her events into a virtual and national freelance Business Week, which is the third week of April, MBO has been a frequent sponsor of these events. And we love working with Emily and hearing her perspective. I have one question for each of our panelists as we introduce people today. Emily, if you were filling out a new community profile, what are three things that you would put in your bio to tell people more about yourself?

Emily Leach: That's always a crazy question to me because I do get it quite often is one of the first things to really think about what you want people to see. I mean, this is a short snippet that people are usually seeing in a quick profile. So instead of just saying what your title is, I would spend a little bit of time thinking about search engine optimization, make your title not only digestible but interesting to the person that is potentially reading that. Definitely make sure you put some time into your bio, make it again, make it interesting, maybe even make it a little bit fun. This is a place to I don't know if I go as far as a get edgy, but definitely make sure that people, when they're reading it, they're engaged and want to read to the next line. I mean, it really, as we look at a bio, is it almost brings out the corporate it all of us really lists of how freelancer or whatever you want to call yourself. But have some fun with that bio, because that really is a place for you to show who you are as well as your experience. And the third thing is, man, make sure you have a good headshot. This is not a place to put a headshot of your dog or your cat is beautiful and amazing as those two things. Maybe it's an opportunity for you to show you the pictures as a million words and in your profile, it really, really does.

McLean Robbins: Excellent. And if there's anything that you would share in your bio that's fun about yourself and the fun facts you want to share with the audience?

Emily Leach: Mine is usually about all the stuff that I like to do. I love 4 wheeling. It really shows that I have this adventurous side to myself. You all have to do wild-water kayaking and I drive a jeep. So any chance I get to go off-road, I definitely do that. And I love to sail and I row individual skulls, which kind of give people a feel for who you are as a human being.

McLean Robbins: Wonderful. Thanks so much, Emily. Next, I'd like everyone to meet Maria Ogneva, who is Director of Online Experience and Community at Financial Force before joining financial force Maria's, the global head of community at LinkedIn. And she's also had community initiatives at companies like Simple Logic, Sidecar Technologies and Salesforce. She's an experienced community content and social strategist, a passionate and prolific writer and speaker, and believes in making work and play better with technology. We are so happy to have you, Maria. Thanks for joining us today. And I'll ask you the same thing I asked Emily. What are three things you would add if you were filling out a community profile for the first time? Tips or about yourself, whichever you prefer.

Maria Ogneva: Hi, everyone, thanks for having me. I'm so delighted to be here, so I would say, like on the business side, I would say my three things are community builder. That's really my chosen career, my vocation, something I love. I'm so lucky. I've been doing it for over a decade. I'm customer centric. You can't really be a community builder if you're not. And then I would say I'm also a bit of a risk taker and an intrapreneur if you want, because community work does require that you are often pivoting your strategy, that you are adapting to customer needs. And so people usually when they need a creative strategy, come to me. So I'm all about taking smart risks, measuring the impact and sticking with what works from those experiments. My three fun facts, kind of personal facts. I was born in Russia, so English is not my first language. My favorite thing to do kind of pre covid was to travel. I was well on my way to 40 countries before 40, but then I also had a child. So I have a little five year old boy. So traveling took a little bit of a backseat. But now that he's older, I look forward to showing him the world that I love discovering. And I live in Denver. And so, you know what they say when in Rome I started skiing, so I started teaching myself how to ski. So it's been my second year on the slopes and I'm not good at it, but I absolutely love it. So back to you.

McLean Robbins: Oh, my gosh Maria. Well, you're braver than I am. I tried to learn to ski as an adult and realized I was a lot further from the ground than I thought I was going to be. And falling hurts even on snow but anybody who knows me now is one of my three fun facts. I'm a lefty and I'm incredibly uncoordinated at everything, as many lefties are. So there's that. Next, let's meet Miles Everson. Most people know that Miles needs no introduction. He's our chief executive officer. But for those who are unfamiliar, Miles joined MBO in twenty nineteen after serving as the Global Advisory and consulting CEO for PwC, where he led the company's Asia Pacific Americas Advisory and consulting businesses. So, Miles, a question to you. What are you going to add to your community profile?

Miles Everson: So few things. And first, thanks to all the panelists for being here and for the people attending. So I'll be a bit quick. But first of all, obviously, professionally, what are you good at? What your talent and I think my primary talent in this came from a client of mine once that I'd worked for about a decade, was that I'm good at taking complexity and breaking it down in a way that you can actually get changed, get driven through an organization because people kind of freeze in the face of uncertainty. And so when you break down complexity, you can actually get some traction on the personal side, kind of three things there. I've summited Kilimanjaro. I've been on six of the seven continents in the world, and I've seen four of the seven natural wonders of the world. So I got some work to do. I'm going to get to the last three and then I. I hang my shingle, if you will, in Austin, Texas, with my wife, Julie. So. That's all, I'll stop there, I could keep going and stuff, but that's it. That's a good thing.

McLean Robbins: You've kept it at the top of the facts list here. I know you could go more, but I want to get over to Jake Mckee, the community guy. And I'm not saying I'm saving the best for last, but I am saving one of my favorites for last, although I love everybody on this panel. Jake is the founder of Community Five, a consultancy focused on helping organizations assess design and optimize their online communities and fan engagement programs. He has worked for some truly fantastic companies, including one of his own that he sold to PwC in 2012. And he has previously run communities for both Apple and Apple and Lego, both truly iconic brands. Jake is going to be assisting with the moderation of today's panel. So, Jake, I'm going to turn it over to you for the same question. Tell us what you done to your community profile. And you're probably going to want to come off on mute.

Jake McKee: Oh, sorry about that. I think, boy, I'd have to start by, you know, my first descriptor would be not as cool as Miles. That's some that's a good list of fun there. So, you know, I'm going to move quickly through mine because otherwise I'll be long winded about the joys of community and how important it is. And what we just saw was actually some community building among the group here. You know, I know more about you than even most people I've known before. But, you know, the funny thing is that as I was thinking about this, my three keywords, my three tags were dad to a teenager. Yes. I'm rolling my eyes when I say that. And photographer and food nerd because I feel like especially these days with so much covid for so long, those were kind of the three things I was I was doing most of my life on outside of work. So but I always think these exercises are fun from a community standpoint, just because of the reminder that community is about people and it is about storytelling, it is about connection. You don't get any one of those three without the other two. It's real hard to connect to somebody if you're not telling each other stories and if you're not really connecting on a personal human level. So it may have seemed like an interesting activity that had a lot of content. But I think it's important as we start talking about community and creating cultures and communities is who are the people we're creating with.

McLean Robbins: Excellent, thanks, Jake. Now, I know you and Miles know each other from days at PwC. So do you guys mind start talking about how you guys get to know each other? And maybe, Miles, you could kick us off with some of the ways that we're talking about building community here at MBO partners.

Miles Everson: Yeah, great, so, yeah, Jake and I met each other, it was about ten years ago. At the time PwC their consulting business, we wanted to get into the customer experience and design business and we weren't in it. And Jake and a few of his co-founders had gotten started with a really cool business down. And I guess it'd be North Lamar or South America or remember any more Jake and Austin. And they were doing some really awesome stuff for clients. And so they joined PwC and Jake and I both he left a couple of years before I did, and then I left. And now we continue to do some business together. And we're obviously here today. So we kind of came from two different ends of the spectrum. He came from a creative side of his business. And I came out of an accounting firm. So who would ever imagine that an account and creative would match up so as the power of personal connection. When I think about today, you know, there's a couple of there's a few things going on. And this is about primarily how do you build a sense of community in your workforce and your future workforce. And so a couple of the trends that are happening and things that have happened in the past is number one is during the financial crisis. And twenty seven and eight, I was busy doing financial service work and we learned it just became evidence, I guess, or confirmatory, that the amount of value that humans were putting on their virtual communities was extremely high. And I say that because a lot of the defaults were occurring in home mortgages and 30 years ago it would have been an embarrassment to default on your home mortgage. So it was the bill you always paid. But during the crisis, we saw people default on mortgages, on their phones, but they weren't defaulting on their connectivity, their phone bill. And being able to be connected to their virtual community because the relevant the kind of the relative importance of my online virtual community social community was so important that you wanted to make sure that you stayed connected to it. And then now you see with what's happened with covid, obviously people have gotten a lot more used to working and not just working, living in a kind of remote, less human direct interaction. And so I think as you sit back today and you say, what does it mean in our business here at MBO, we're connecting independents so that they can make their livelihood. They can do the work they love, the way they want and have control to do that and. I would say it's probably the second most important thing to independence is to have some sense of community because it can be really lonely when you're an independent, whereas when you're a full time employee, you have a bit more of a structured community to be around. So when you don't have that as an independent. It's really important for companies to help fill that, because from a company perspective. If you think that you can drive, be competitive and win going forward by having just a full time captive employee base, you're kidding yourselves because the most valuable companies on the planet today have massively extended workforces that they're leveraging and they're building communities to just think of the on this call. The other three panelists have worked for some of those companies. Jake did work at Apple. Emily did work at Facebook. Maria did work at LinkedIn, Salesforce financial force. All of those are extremely valuable, you know, creating companies and they've done it and communities important to all of them. So I think there's there's a business reason and there is a human interest reason here to really dial in on how do you make communities work. So I think we'll have a really good conversation. And maybe I'll flip it to Jake if you want to pick up on. He's going to kind of drive us a little bit here today and we'll chime in as well as we go through it. So and we'll take questions. If you got a question just fire it up on the chat and we'll make sure that we get those answered right away. We're happy to flex what's of interest to people.

Jake McKee: And, Miles, I think I think the point about it touching a lot of different parts of the business to lots of different types of businesses is an interesting one. And we've seen and we're going to be talking a long time about the impacts covid what it's done to the to the community dynamics. And, you know, there are a great many PhD papers in the process, if not ready to get started on what's happened in the last year, because a lot of ways it kind of broke our bubble of belief about what people are really interested in, what they really want, what they're willing to put up with the value of both having the flexibility to work at home and not have to drive back and forth to the office and the desire to get the hell out of the house and drive back and forth to an office. Right. And I think that we're all sort of trying to figure out now where do we go from here and what's the reality of what's happened now that we're starting to reemerge and back into the world a little bit? And, you know, Emily, I'm really curious what you're seeing from the freelance crowd, because I do find a lot of people saying, well, you know, I'm having conversations about new gigs, new full time jobs with companies who just don't want me to move somewhere in the middle of covid. And they were saying, no, no, we still want you to move. And we're hearing a number of those sort of stories about people saying, no, I'm going in a different direction. But also, by the same token, you know, freelancing is fun when you can offset it by going out to beers with your coworkers. What happens when you can't do that? Maybe, maybe a job that's so bad, right? So is this a blip where we're going to see an even out or what do you see with the freelance community in general? As far as where we go from here?

Emily Leach: I would say that I feel like I am so steeped in freelancing. I mean, I'm going on my 30th year of writing a freelance business, so I may have a skewed position on that because I surround myself by people that live the same sort of lifestyle. And when you're when you write a freelance business, you are the business and you are your life. And so most of us find a way to integrate the two. And it's not so much that they run side by side as they is your business and your life literally kind of does this. And what are the things that I saw change the most in running a freelance business and chatting with other people that were running them in my communities and things like that was that they actually felt like it was easier. A lot of running the business became easier because more of our clients knew how to use them that they didn't know how to use before they begin to learn how to use some of these tools. And because they were having to use project management tools and communication tools with their staff, that it actually made it easier to work with your freelancers. And so in a lot of ways, it made our world more. What's the word I'm looking for? More seamless. And the one thing that I did can't take away from us, like you said, was going out and having coffee and things like that. And so what I find kind of interesting right now is, you're right, a lot of people are like going, oh, things are starting to open up. We can go back to "do I want to" "do I need to" maybe this new normal, if you will, isn't really that bad. And I was just looking for what I used to have because I was used to having it and now I'm used to having this and finding out what the new integration is going to be. This is a question that we're asking ourselves is there was a reason why we had we needed to separate from each other for health reasons and things like that. So maybe we need to find a way forward that keeps some of that distance, yet still allows us to come back together and chat face to face. Because, like I said, that's a human piece of the human element that we do need somewhere where we have another pandemic. I believe that we will at some point in the future. It isn't. So there is we don't have the backlash that we had this time because our lives are more designed to be able to manage it better. Does that help answer your question?

Jake McKee: Yeah, it does. And Jason, put in the comments that is presence still taken this long for us to figure out what comes next. But on one hand, yes, I think there's a lot of companies are just for far too long and maybe even still are sort of saying, well, we'll just figure out how to get back to normal. La, la, la, la, la. Fingers in the ears. But I also think that there's been some stages to the pandemic, too, that if you look at the last year or so, you know, it's been at least three or four or five stages of where we're at right now. And when we were starting this time last year, everybody was just like, don't even think about it. Just go home. Well, that's very different than what we're dealing with now, which is how do we come back out? How do we do that safely? What are the social dynamics? And I think that the one thing that I think is important is to remember that we are on a path that is so uncertain and relatively quick. Right. We're talking about a couple of months, cycles. And, you know, I think Jason's point is a good one, not because we haven't solved the overall issues, but I think because we haven't really said as an industry, as industries, as cultures of business cultures, how do we start thinking about community, community culture, community dynamics, social dynamics inside our companies in a much better way from everybody, from diversity, inclusion down to marketing down to support? I mean, everybody involved has these different dynamics. What can we do remotely? Where does it help? How do we get past some of our hangups that we've had in the past about security? And, you know, I remember the beginning of the pandemic. You know, being forced to use teams of some of my clients and teams was not in the same spot it was now. But it was it was the right thing to do because they're a Microsoft shop. Right. So that wasn't the right answer either at that time. So, you know, I'm curious, you know, the on the financial side, too, especially, there's a whole lot of different dynamics. I feel like when you when you have to schedule an appointment to go to the Wells Fargo branch, we just don't need to be going to the Wells Fargo branch. What else can I do remotely but weigh in here on the on the community dynamics. And I bring up the financial side, but maybe have a broader view too.

Maria Ogneva: That's a good question. So from a community perspective, we have definitely seen a huge growth in like how our customers are utilizing our community. So our community is primarily online. But we had an offline element of force where we had user groups and people could get together and kind of talk about best practices and how to be successful. Obviously, that is no longer happening. We're still doing kind of like real time meetings, but obviously everything's on zoom. But we've definitely seen a huge rise in people wanting to connect. And it wasn't just because people were like stuck at home and had nothing to do. I think people's jobs have fundamentally shifted, right. How our customers work with their customers has changed. And so people's jobs, the content of their jobs, not just where they did their jobs in the office versus at home, but the content of their jobs and kind of how businesses run their operations have changed dramatically. And so in times of great shift and in times of great uncertainty, where you go is your community. And so I feel like it's really been a boon kind of for the community industry in that way. I often wonder about what happens when we all go back in person. I think there is like a certain magic to being able to meet digitally in real time, but like not just with people in your town. I really do hope that conferences, for example, are able to retain some kind of a hybrid model where we're able to really attract and stream content to just a much wider group of people. Right. Like our user conference at financial force, like got bigger and now all of a sudden people from all over the world can attend, whereas before, like, you have to get on the plane, you have to go to Vegas, not everyone can afford that not everyone has that in their budgets. So all of a sudden, it's just a lot more equitable. And also like the voices that you can bring in, again, like you can't not everybody is just able to drop everything they're doing and get on a plane. And so there are conferences that I've attended as an attendee. I've been able to cover a lot more ground. Right. Instead of being able you can only go to so many in-person things. Right. Just because of money. And also, like, you can't be in two cities at once. Right. And so but now, like, all of a sudden I can even go to two conferences in the same week if the time allows. Right. And so I think as I think about what's next, I really hope that we don't throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater and just do everything in person again that we think about it from that lens and really think about how we can use what we've learned in this time of not being together, but being together on the Internet, how we can apply that to make things more widely accessible, more interesting and more equitable.

Jake McKee: Emily, I know you run a conference and you like to be. Yeah, weigh in here.

Emily Leach: I definitely want to because I'm glad you brought that up Maria, because it's like there has been years, many years I've been in this event space. I used to design text events back in Albuquerque and down in Corpus Christi, Texas. And one of the things that we kept playing with is how do we incorporate those that can't make it in person so that it is an experience for them and it isn't watching, you know, talking heads. And some of it was technology wasn't quite there. This last year is forced technology to open up some of those other concepts and in ways of engaging with each other on top of the fact that so many people have had to actually go do it. Now they know how to use the tools. So it was kind of both sides, right? The technology wasn't completely there. We didn't have enough people that knew how to use the tools that they would use the tools. So it always felt like no matter how hard we tried to integrate the person with the virtual, the virtual always got bad in the stick. So I'm actually super excited that as we move into these hybrid conferences, we're looking at probably still doing the freelance conference virtual this year, but just for safety reasons and a lot of other things. But we'll see where we are or where that ends. And then twenty, twenty two will absolutely be a hybrid event. So I think it all boils down to experience and the tools bringing the opportunity for that experience to allow more of these hybrid spaces to open up.

Jake McKee: So let's switch gears here then a second. So lots of really good stuff happening, lots of interest. We're seeing massive amounts of community job openings pop up all over the place. That's an interesting sub-subject that we'll get into later. OK, so a company has gone through this process go with they've seen their employees go virtual. They've tried to keep them connected to each other. They've been working on virtual events. If they were going to start with a a strategic process to figure out, OK, now that we're re emerging, we need to put some energy into making sure that we do not just whack a mole-like this. Where would they start?

Maria Ogneva: Where would a company start with their community initiative?

Jake McKee: Yeah, and how it relates to not just that, you know, sort of the outbound community we think of communities, but also their internal.

Maria Ogneva: Yes, I think there are so many different flavors of community, right, there is employee community, there is a freelancer community which is kind of in between a customer and an employee. There's a customer community. There is user communities who are not even your customers, their passion communities like there are all kinds of communities. What you had to start really depends on like your end goal, like what are you trying to do with this community? And by the way, just because everyone's doing it is like not a great reason at all. So if that's what you're trying to do, I'm going to, like, coax you off the ledge and maybe you don't need a community, maybe you're not ready for it. And that's fine, too. But I would pause it that most businesses can really benefit from that way of working and that way of relating, helping people to relate to each other in a networked way. It makes your business a lot stronger. It helps you think about things in a very different way. And so and just be like just a lot more agile and successful. So the very first thing I would do if I was starting from scratch, first of all, I would ask myself, like, who is this community for? Secondly, like, what are my goals? Why am I starting this? Right. So maybe if you are like a product organization, whether it's tech or consumer products, and your goal is to really, like, let people know about your products and how people are using your products and how very how much fun they're having with your products. That's a marketing community. Like potentially that's part of your marketing strategy, right. Where you're offering a bit of that social proof. Right. You're closing deals. You're helping move your customers. If it's B2B through the funnel, it's going to look very different. You're probably going to need a very different set of technology than you would for a support community. So you think through that, right? If you see your product company looking to kind of argument your support with a peer-to-peer kind of question and answer and really lean into self serve. So you can, like, scale your business in a very authentic but also very impactful way like. Right. That's your community is going to look very different. You're going to be you're going to be meeting very different KPIs. And so as you're thinking about like what your community is for, what your goals are, what you use cases are, I always recommend like to really start with like one or two use cases, really nail those. All the decisions that that you will make will really come from that platform selection. Platform selection should never come first like that. You want to kind of decide like what you're doing and how are you doing it. I'm like kind of what your roadmap would look like. And then you start talking about platforms and then also how you going to measure it. Right. Because at the back end of every initiative that includes community, you need to be able to say this was successful, this was not successful. This strategy or this program that we're applying to community worked or didn't work, as you remember in my bio, I said I experiment a lot. If you can't measure your experiments, whether there are large experiments or small experiments, it's like, why even do the experiments? Right. So, like, you need to constantly understand what is happening and how what you're doing is impacting your business and like the way that you execute your community, whether you know, whether you start on Facebook, LinkedIn or you build like an online community that's on your own domain, you are tooling should be able to allow you to measure the impact that you are bringing to the company and then. Yeah, go ahead.

Jake McKee: So, to Miles, talking about the impact you're seeing and you talk to a lot of businesses and a lot of freelancers, for that matter, throughout the course of the day. Talk to me about impact and what they're looking for at this point in the world.

Miles Everson: So I'm going to first make what I believe is an important distinction and it's easy to kind of confused when you're thinking about community and what you want to do with it. So I'll get to your impact point, so I think it's really important to be crystal clear that there's a difference between a cohort and a community. A cohort is a group of people of common characteristics that I can measure. A cohort can become a community, but a community is where the members feel like they belong and they care for each other so you can define a cohort and not get a community. And I think the challenge in the world of the worker. And companies trying to attract the best workers in the world. Are you confusing cohort for community? So you say I'm going to create a community of everybody that lives in a certain area, makes a certain amount of money, has a certain skill type, what you bring that cohort together and they don't care for each other and they don't feel like they have a sense of belonging. You don't have a community. You have a cohort. It's much more clinical, the community has an emotional component to it that extends well beyond kind of traditional business mindset of how I think about the economics of my business. And so when you think of the impact, you want to win the hearts and minds as well as winning the economics that come with that. And I think for companies to do that, frankly, I mean, Emily, you are effectively a community organizer from the ground level up with free come. People come to you because they want to be there. They belong, which is different than I defined a community and therefore it's a community. Community has to be embraced by the membership. I say members, I'm like the people who are part of the community. That's how I see it Jake. And so the impact is both the it's not just the concrete hard numbers. It's also the do people feel like they really belong and do they care for one another. When you do that, you'll get the economic benefits on the back side.

Jake McKee: Yeah, I love that cohort versus community, and I even think that there's big cohorts and there's small communities, too.

Miles Everson: Sure.

Jake McKee: There's lots of stages in between because you can have to your point, there's a really interesting dynamic that might happen where I just don't like the cohort. Right. I show up, I do my work. I may or may not have a need to connect with them. There's no there's no purpose to that. And let's be honest, I know we can all sort of speak to this in some form or fashion, but building community is hard and it's expensive and it takes some time. You know, you don't just even in the cohort model, you know, you still do an Icebreaker, right? We did an icebreaker this morning just to kind of get us flowing. Right. And most of us know each other in some form or fashion. Right. We still have to kind of get into the mood, much less to do something that's going to last and be adding business value six months or six years from now. So I think that's an interesting way to think about the cohort on one end of the community on the other. And there's lots of stages in between. And to Maria's point, what's the goal? How much do you want to push this? Where do you put investment and how much investment? But understanding? If you want something more than just a random group of people doing some random work together, you're going to have to put some energy into that. You're going to put some emotional energy into that, not just business energy, right?

Miles Everson: Yes, I do think. Yeah go ahead Emily. I'm sorry.

Emily Leach: Oh, I get to that point. I was going to say so awesome freelance gigs is where everything started for me. And we have now we have just over eleven thousand people in there. And to Maria's point is, what did we want to come out or what did I want to come out of that? And for me it wasn't a, you know, a financial goal as much as I wanted to create a space that freelancers could come and interact with one another. But people that were looking for expert freelance help could come and find it on a very local level. And it grew. But it took not only me being in there and literally feeding some of the gigs in the beginning for people to find it. So I was going and finding people and projects and putting them in there. But it was the rules that we created, right? No self promotion, no sales here. It's not we're not here to sell to each other. We are each other's community. And I'm not your target market. And so rules are really important and have to be applied. You can't just say this person can do it and that person can. It's across the board.

Maria Ogneva: Absolutely. I would also say, Miles, I love the point that you made the cohort versus community, I would say that how you define the group of people that you want to come to your community actually could be instrumental in creating a community or not. Right. So you want to think about like, what are people's goals? So one of the questions that you guys prepared for this talk is like what makes a community focused company? Right. Like, what are the brands that are doing it? Well, and one of the examples you listed is Peloton. And I and I really like that example, because even though I'm actually not sure how well they do community, they're a brand that, for example, like kind of cracked the nut on like, what do I need now? Right. Bring like minded people together, like, I want to get fit. But then also it's not just like the goal of today, but it's like my larger goal, like I want to get fit. I want to do this class and have fun in it. But why. Right. And so, like, it's like that whole concept of five why's. You want to get really good at asking like, this group of people that I want to bring together want to convene in my community. What do they need? Why? Why? Why? Right and that helps you get to like the part of us that's like a part of our identity. Right. Let's say like the freelancer community, like you want to bring people together so that they're successful being freelancers. Why? So they can make money. Why do they want to make money so they can have like the financial freedom and they can care for their families. So you kind of always want to peel back the onion and really design kind of your member journeys around that. And also that will tell you, like, how to cast your net as far as inviting people and whom you invite is actually just as important sometimes as whom you don't invite, because for your community to be a really, really like the kind of community that Miles talked about, like there has to be a purpose. There has to be a sense of belonging. And so that's sometimes not knowing how to exclude certain groups like it cannot be and everything for everyone kind of thing. Right. And so I think being able to kind of blend like, why do I want to build this community versus what do my customers need or want and my members need? Why do they need that? Why do they need this other thing? And kind of building this almost like a Maslow's pyramid of higher hierarchy of needs and really understanding that that helps you build that community where people do belong and they are participating. Not just like to get a quick answer to a question, but it is part of their identity. Right. Like the way that they're that they behave in their the way that they kind of meet to the challenge of working together, learning from each other, that should be very much like part of their identity. And if you can crack that nut, that's when you get community instead of a cohort.

Jake McKee: Yeah, that identity piece is so crucial because if you can get the identity piece in place, you're much less likely to lose somebody to another company, because this is my team, as I have defined myself as part of this team, you're also able to get much more enthusiasm and excitement and therefore productivity out of there, out of the work, because, again, it's who they are. It's what they want to do. They want to let down your team. And, you know, the mantra I've had for 20 years of building community projects is everybody goes home happy. And I know McLean heard me say this, Maria heard me say it, Miles heard me say it, and Emily you know. But the idea is that there's an exchange here. Right. That I have to understand is the company what the members want, need and are really excited about. And they have to know I understand it. And by the same token, they have to understand what I need. And I need to be brave enough to say from a business standpoint, here's what I need. And what's funny is that business people often get you kind of skip the five whys. I love that Maria. You know, they get the one why. Well, they want to you know, they want to their engineers, they want to get help from other engineers on how to design things. And that's part of it. But they also want to get that support, the connection that the identity piece of, you know, we're all here working on stuff that's hard and that feels good to me. I can't go home and talk to my wife about quantum mechanics, but I sure can talk to other quantum mechanics, industry people about how hard this is. But they also business people also get really hesitant to say, here's what we need out of this deal. Right. But I came up with this mantra in Lego, because I kept saying I'd get on stage and I'd announce a new product and I'd say, hey, if you like these things, help us sell them, talk it up, promote it. And they did. And we sold them. And then we could make more of them. Right. And I made that very clear. That is what it is. I was trying to get out of this. But I also couple that with a very clear definition of my understanding of what the community side wanted so that they couldn't come back and say, well, jeez, you don't even get me. Why am I supposed to help you if you don't even understand me? So it's it's it's a real everybody goes home happy mantra. It's got to have both sides of that and both sides have to be open and honest about it for it to work.

McLean Robbins: Jake you know, we have a lot of people on the audience today who are not necessarily in community facing roles. And so I'd like to ask a question of you and your community experts here on the group, which is, as these people are thinking about communities. Interesting. Maybe I want to start one at my company more, maybe three things that they could think about to make the business case to their greater teams, their executive level peers about how, how and what they can expect to get from a community network. What are some maybe three things they should consider before starting at.

Jake McKee: Yeah, Emily, start us off. You did really good with the three things earlier, so you can only think of three bullet points. Like I said, go for it.

Emily Leach: Yeah, OK. Thank you. So thank you very much. I yeah, I was about to raise my hands like this. I want to do this. I think if you're going into it, asking yourself what can I get out of it, you probably shouldn't start a community because it already shows that you probably don't have the mindset that you might need to create an effective community. I would change that question around and say what? What our. Sorry. Trying to articulate this. How it our company be better off or our customers, if it's customer facing, how would they be better off if we had a community that was what that was safe that was engaging, that they brought the customers together. And going back to what Maria was saying earlier, why do they want to be together? What are they going to take away from that? And it's how do we become an integrated part of that conversation and culture that we're creating? And that's know I think the whole title of this was The Culture of community, if I remember correctly. And you have to be able to embody that culture before you can get your community to reflect that culture. And so if you go into it wondering what I'm going to get out of it, then I don't know if you're going to be very successful creating that culture. So I don't know if I did 3 things.

Jake McKee: I love it. Maria and Miles weigh in.

Miles Everson: Yeah, I'm going to kind of get it directly towards this balance of. But the total workforce, right, so I think in many, many not, I think I know from conversations that many, many freelancers and independents. It's I'm going to say it's lonely. Because companies treat their employees very differently than they do the independents that are creating value for them. So the first question for me is, am I going to define my human capital assets through legal definitions of employee and contractor. Where am I going to define my human capital assets in a way that causes them to have loyalty, pick me everything else being equal, they would come to my company to do work and some other one. We happen to call that client a choice. And so that's a really important decision in my mind, is what are you doing to make the independents feel like they are cared for and they belong because the many, many of the most successful independents in the world, they only have six half a dozen clients that they serve routinely. But yet in organizations, the structure, just the way they engage, they get treated like a transaction instead of a human and an asset. So HR. has all kinds of special programs to make employees feel good. It's not the same way with independents at most companies. And so it's got to be a conscious decision, and again, I'll kind of maybe I'll get off my soapbox after this comment, but many, many, many highly talented people choose to be independent. And if you as a company, choose to treat them like a transaction, you are cutting yourself off from a massively powerful asset to your company. And so you've got to change that mindset and that should be part of to me. Maybe if there's an objective when you start with it, Emily, is it to me that the objective is, am I creating an environment where people feel like they're cared for and they have a sense of belonging here? Right. As opposed to something more mathematical.

Jake McKee: I've often said for years now that the UNHR kind of the same beast in this particular story, but I've always said that legal job is to reduce risk to zero. Business job is to reduce risk as low as possible, with reward as high as possible in a ratio you can depend on. Those are two very different worlds and different mindsets and different approaches. And so often we don't remember that on the business side and fight for a ratio we can defend. We just sort of ask the question, is it legal? From HR our standpoint, the policy, whatever it might be? Oh, we can't do that. Cool. We're done now. Right. And it's the same thing as challenging your doctor when you go in and they say something odd, you're like, that doesn't sound right. Oh, I'm not I don't have a medical degree. I can ask that question. Yeah, you certainly can. You may be wrong, but you can certainly ask and give more details for yourself. I think that's one of the things that, you know, from business culture side that we really have to start doing a better job of. It is looking out for those freelancers and not just sort of saying, well, H.R. said that they're legally treated different we can't invite them to the company Christmas party. Is that true or is that just reduced to zero mindset? Right. You know, that's a whole different set of stories. So, you know, Maria Miles said the word lonely. And I from a community manager standpoint, I know that word thanks to you.

Maria Ogneva: Yeah, so. Ultimately, that's the kind of the reason why people join communities, right? It's sure they may arrive there to get an answer to a question, but they stay for the community. It's where inherently social creatures, just like biologically. And so our desire to be part of a group is like very, very primal. And that's why we have kind of like these remote emotions, like fear and shame right there. They're designed to protect us and to keep us like when we were hunting in groups and tribes, like, you have to be part of a group. Otherwise you get eaten by a lion. Right. And so I think we kind of that has like we no longer live among lions, but that psychology hasn't changed. Right? We even those of us who are introverted, like I'm a total introvert, but like you still yearn for community. And as I mentioned before, it's during times of change and kind of upheaval is when you really reach for your community. And so I think that that really resonates. I think as much as you can help your customers, your partners, your freelance partners to feel part of something bigger beyond like the transactional thing that they maybe came there to do. That's really what it's about, you know.

Jake McKee: Absolutely. Well, speaking of feeling less lonely for everybody, where can we find you? Where can we keep up with you after the session ends here in just a couple of minutes? Emily.

Emily Leach: I would say, LinkedIn Emily Leach. Grab the LinkedIn and get it up there in the chat.

Jake McKee: Awesome. Maria?

Maria Ogneva: LinkedIn, probably a good option for me as well. I'll put my address on the top as well.

Miles Everson: I would say the same thing, Jake. I think that's fine. I'm fine. Go on. Instagram.

Jake McKee: Excellent.

Miles Everson: But Twitter as well. Yeah,.

Jake McKee: I'm putting my name in chat as well as we speak. Well, so as we wrap up here, I know we've only got a couple of minutes left. McLean jump in if we've got some questions we need to answer. But otherwise, I'm curious, what's your single take away quickly point? My mind is definitely this idea of, you know, the big cohorts in the small communities versus the whole timeline of cohort community. That was a really fascinating insight. Miles, I'm going to quiz you more on that offline because I write the book on the new book I'm working on. So we'll talk more about that one. But that was really a fascinating point. Thank you for that, Miles. What was your takeaway from today?

Miles Everson: Look, I think the takeaway is you have four of us on the phone together, we're we all four on the DC we together, we've never talked about community. And I think that we've had a lot of play back and forth with one another, which is I would say to me, the primary take away is. The need to be thoughtful about what were are your communities now, where they naturally forming? I mean, it came up in the chat, too, that a lot of times you have communities that are forming in your organizations or around your organizations naturally. If you try to do too much structural rigidity around it. It's probably not going to fly. Emily talk about some rules, those are like governance, not nitnat nittynatty rules or governance level type rule so.

Jake McKee: Cultural direction is always what I call

Emily Leach: Yeah, it gives the community the place to decide if they fit there. This is the place that they want to be. And once they buy into the governance, the rules, and they understand that they're there because it makes this place safe and they then become the governing body. Now, it's not a me. The voice of God is what we call it in the space, saying you're wrong or this or that. It just gives us our boundaries that we've all agreed to play with then and live in this space and.

Jake McKee: Maria, what about you?

Maria Ogneva: My takeaway is that there are so many different flavors of community, just look at the people on this call today. Our experiences are also vastly different, but we're kind of bound by the humanity of it. Right? Like the units of each community is a person. Right. You're bringing people together. And it's the same psychology that it's that's at play. And if you can meet people's needs like they will, like whatever business goals you have, like you will meet them. But you also really have to understand what people need and that that is true. Like if you strip away like everything, like the tactical piece of it, like how you do community, how you measure it, where it lives and all of that, what is the purpose like if you strip all that away, it's kind of the same. And so we're all we all have more in common than the not. That was my takeaway.

Jake McKee: Awesome. All right, McLean, I'm heading back to you to give us your take away and then we close this up.

McLean Robbins: Oh, well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed listening to each of you guys today. I think what I've taken away from it is that there's a lot of different ways you can build community, and I particularly enjoy it. Miles, I'm going to sort of piggyback on one other side of the cohort versus community portion of it. I don't think you should mistake Like-Minded Groups for our community. And I think a lot of our client organizations can potentially learn from that as they start thinking about how to actually go from cohort to community as it can be a journey. But thank you, everybody, for today. As we said, we will send the recording out in just a few days. You can watch past events on our website and we will be back with a force in September after we take a little summer break for the series. So thanks so much. And we'll see you also. Have a nice afternoon.

Miles Everson: Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.