Tom Ross:

You're cranking out consistent content and you're trying to shout about your brand, but you're in a bubble. No one knows you and it's this catch 22, right? If you have no audience, you're going to struggle to spread just by word of mouth. You're going to struggle to get in front of fresh people. And so one of the best ways to do that in a controllable and repeatable way is to show up and provide value to other audiences. So what are we doing right now? I've joined Chris who has a larger Twitter following than I do on Twitter Spaces. We're now chatting to 100 plus people, and I get discoverability from doing this.

Chris Do:

We're talking about how to build community. I can't think of a better person to have co-host this conversation with me other than Tom Ross of Design Cuts. He's got a book called The Community Manual. I, along with many other people, are featured in the book, and so you can read it. I believe it's 100% free, right, Tom?

Tom Ross:

It is indeed. And thank you so much.

Chris Do:

And I'm going to suggest that we lean in, listen to Tom a little bit. So without further ado, I'm going to turn this over to Tom.

Tom Ross:

Thanks Chris. Yeah. I think first and foremost, it's important to understand what community is and there's a lot of different definitions. I talked about this on The Futur's YouTube, but I think one of the strongest definitions of community in its truest sense is a platform or a place where like-minded people can actually interact and talk to one another. An audience is more one-way street. So when we post on our Instagram or we put out a YouTube video, that's typically considered more of an audience play because it's your audience consuming your content more passively. But something like The Futur Pro Group, which Chris runs, or Learn.Community that I run, these are closed spaces where like-minded people can come together, they can chat. And even when I'm asleep or Chris is asleep or we're on vacation, the community can continue to thrive without us. So I think that's a really important distinction.

But even if you have no intention of launching a closed community, you still should be thinking about community because you can have an audience with a strong sense of community. This is where perhaps you're making it more immersive. You're involving your followers and your fans. You're listening to them. You're trying to make it more of a dialogue. You're trying to involve them, build with them, et cetera. And this is very, very powerful too. And I think both Chris and myself have done this. Even before we launched our closed communities on Circle, even before we had things like Facebook groups, we had a strong feeling of community around both of our companies and both our brands. And this can be equally powerful. So they're different and they're distinct things and it's important to understand the difference, but I think you should focus on both.

And you've probably seen communities become a bit of a buzzword. Authenticity. Everyone's shouting about community. Community's the future. You should build community. And I think it's important to get very clear on how to do that. And Chris, I don't know if you agree, but the deeper I go into this topic, the more I realize there's a lot of transferable lessons from general business and marketing and human principles. So it's not this kind of scary, esoteric thing that doesn't map to anything else in life. Actually, a lot of the principles are transferable. A lot of the stuff which myself and Chris talk about on a regular basis. And this is things like getting the foundation right in terms of the value proposition that you're promising people. It's being intentional about the people you're trying to reach, not catering to everyone and being selective and trying to create a great profile of your ideal member or ideal person.

It's about picking the right structures for your community, being intentional about where to find members, where to go after them, being intentional about picking platforms, how to appropriately price and not underprice yourself, how to market, how to scale, how to manage those people, how to keep up with engagement. There's a lot of topics to unpack in community, and I'm sure we're going to dig into a lot of that today. But what I am noticing more and more is that the business stuff that I've talked on for years totally maps to community and often imposter syndrome, mindset struggles, underpricing yourself, a lot of these very common issues map to community building and community builders too. I don't know if you've experienced that, Chris, whenever you talk about community. A lot of the questions are probably stuff you answer kind of day-to-day anyway.

Chris Do:

Yeah, but you know what? In case people have some questions about how we're doing what we're doing or what it is that we are actually doing, maybe we can do that because I don't want to make any assumptions that people know you or me and the communities that we're building. And you might find some differences in terms of how we structure our own communities. So Tom, how is Design Cuts set up? You said you've surpassed 800,000 community members. That seems like a ginormous number. Is that even possible? Can you give us the high level overview of what the Design Cuts community is?

Tom Ross:

Yeah. And again, this comes down to the right definition. We have over 800,000 members. This is people that have created accounts with us. But of course not everyone's active and not everyone's in every single community space. So we have these fragmented closed communities and niche communities. Within that, we will have tens of thousands of people attend some of our live events, for example. That's a community space where people can come together, interact in the chat and so on, and form friendships. We have our Circle community, which is now getting towards having thousands in the next few months. I think we're around 1500 members, and we launched that quite recently. We have Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members.

So community can actually start to be almost this ecosystem where you get these little pockets of ... It could be different platforms within your community. It could be predicated on interest. So for example, we have a 10,000 person strong Procreate Facebook group. That's not relevant for every single one of our members that has an account, but for the people super into Procreate, that's a great place for them to hang out and spend time. And I believe you've got these different pockets with The Futur as well, right, Chris? It's not just The Futur Pro group. You have these different platforms.

Chris Do:

Yeah. And I think I separate those two things. And maybe I'm not understanding this correctly. I'd love to get your opinion on this. We're coming up on 1.8 million followers or subscribers on YouTube. I think there's a conversation that's being had there, but I'm not quite sure it's the community that you've described earlier. I have a few followers on Instagram and on Twitter, but again, it seems to be it's like one direction versus bidirectional. And the real place where I would consider we have a community is the Futur Pro group, which is in Circle, which we have I think close to 700 active paying members. And that's the only one I would consider under the classical definition of community. Am I getting this wrong? Would you have a different understanding of this?

Tom Ross:

No, I think that's right in the strictest sense. And so it's the same thing for us. Arguably we have tens of thousands of community members living in hardcore community spaces, but then we have a bigger audience, I guess you could call it. So in your case, you have followers. In our case, we have members with accounts and so on, but they're not all interacting in these closed community spaces and so on. But again, this maps to a sense of community because Chris, as you know, I featured you in my book, The Community Manual. A lot of what we talked about was how The Futur builds community at large. So I would argue your community is much bigger than the several hundred members in The Futur Pro group. There's probably a lot of people listening now watching your YouTube, et cetera, that identify as a community member.

And we get the same thing at Design Cuts. Long before we launched closed groups, Facebook groups, et cetera, people would rave about the community, being part of the community. And I think that's where this sense of community is often predicated on things like a sense of belonging, a sense of shared values, et cetera. And what I've talked about in the book, in the case study featuring Chris, is how to cultivate this sense of community intentionally. And one of the strongest things you can do is have a very clear mission statement, and this is what The Futur do so well. They talk about this mission of impacting a billion lives, this one billion minus one. And this is incredibly prevalent right on the homepage of their website and from the word go, often people that discover The Futur, they get very emotionally invested, very mentally invested in that mission. They buy into it and they see other people buying into it. So even if they're not a paying member in The Futur Pro group, they self-identify as like I'm a ... Is it a futurist, Chris? Is that the term you guys are using?

Chris Do:

Yeah. There's a bunch of terms we use, but futurist sounds pretty good to me.

Tom Ross:

Awesome. So again, I think with community, I always like to be very specific where possible, but it's not always black and white. So you have these distinctions of audience and community, sense of community versus natural community platform. But I think community can become quite a holistic thing. And so The Futur community, I would say it's definitely bigger than 700 people. And the Design Cuts community is definitely bigger than a few tens of thousands or whatever it might be. It is broader. We have a broader mission, we have a broader impact. People are buying into various degrees. And it's the same thing within closed community spaces. It's an ecosystem. People will drop in and out. You'll get power users, passive users and everything in between, and they're not going to be fixed for life. Some people might be super active for a month and then they go away and they come back three months later. It's this kind of organic, always moving, ever-changing thing. And I think that's one of the things where people can struggle to understand it and define it because it isn't fixed.

Chris Do:

Okay, so here's a question for you, Tom. Is it necessary as part of your definition of community to have some kind of gate so that you have to opt in and you have to be let into the community? Or does anyone who identifies as part of the community, can they just say, I'm part of the community?

Tom Ross:

I believe the latter. And an example of this is, for example, Trekkies. You have different levels of engagement. So if you're a Star Trek fan, you can go to a convention and you can pay to show up. But equally, you may self-identify as being a Trekkie, being part of the collective. And that could vary. That could mean that you're more of a passive consumer of the show and the vision and everything behind it, and you buy into that. Maybe you drop into some online discussions from time to time. Maybe occasionally you duck into a Twitter discussion or a Twitter space or a Facebook group and then you get more deeply involved and you go to one of these conventions or maybe you go to a local meetup and then your life gets kind of busy. So you go back to being a more passive consumer of the show and self-identifying in that way.

None of these mean that you are a better or worse community member. It's not about better or worse. It's about this fluctuating levels of engagement and identification and belonging. And I think as important as it is to quickly try and define these things, often it's just about trying to cater to all the different types of people as best we can. It's about trying to intentionally improve how we're catering to our community, trying to refine our mission and just put our best foot forward. Because I would say if we get too hung up on definitions and trying to pin people down, that can become problematic.

Chris Do:

Okay. There's probably, in my mind at least, some separation between what I would consider a casual fan, a hardcore fan, and one who's actually on the inside of some kind of paid membership community. And there's just different tiers. I think we're just going to lump them all together as part of your larger community. But for me, there's some separation there just by the level of engagement and how much commitment you've made to being a part of that community. So if I watched the Star Trek show just based on your description, I can consider myself a Trekkie or a Star Trek fan. I've never gone to a Star Trek convention. I don't buy Star Trek memorabilia, and I really don't participate in any of the way except for in the consumption point of view. So I would consider just level one of engagement. Level two is actually when you go do something, when you physically are there or you're participating in some kind of way. Perhaps it's joining some kind of discussion forum where you're actually now having your voice heard, you're sharing your opinion, you vote something up or down, you follow someone and you're engaging with their content.

I would consider that probably level two. Level three is probably something where money exchanges hands where they paid to be part of a community. And probably level four is that the community gets so exclusive that the entry price or the gate is so high that only a small select group are part of that. And I think of somebody who's like Tony Robbins where he has ... I think they refer to them as the platinum members where it's only a handful of people who are able to participate in very exclusive things, specifically with Tony. So there's just levels of commitment and engagement. What are your thoughts on that?

Tom Ross:

Yeah, I think that's exactly right, and various people have spoken out about this quite a bit. I own the book Superfans by Pat Flynn, and that very much is in alignment with what we're talking about right now. David Sphinx in his book Business of Belonging talks about this curve of engagement and this maps to virtually any business or brand that's trying to build community. So even Airbnb is one of the examples he cites and you go up this curve of engagement from initially being a casual user. Maybe there's been a couple of times that you've actually hosted a property or being a guest rather at property. Then you get enticed to actually host your property and then you can become a super host and then from there you get closer and closer into this community and this ecosystem and actually have some impact on what the company's doing.

Chris Do:

If I'm listening in on this, and I don't necessarily consider community a buzzword. It's been a thing since I think humans learned how to cooperate with each other. There's a community and then we have shared values. We look out for each other, and this is how that spirit of cooperation has led us to the 21st century. Why we have cities and we have models of currency that we believe in, we follow laws that we all kind of agree to. But what is happening is with the different social media platforms, our ability to build community at scale is unprecedented in history. In fact, when you have an idea and you are pretty consistent about showing up for this, you can build community or a sense of community or a group of people who are interested in the same ideas as you really rapidly. And that's a nice thing to do, and I think that's wonderful, and that could be the beginning and the end of your ambition. But if you want to build a community where people show up for you in terms of paid coaching group or when you're speaking at an event that they show up for you or they buy your products in a way to support you in allowing you to do what you do, how does one do that if we don't already have a decent size following? Can you give us some insight on how to begin?

Tom Ross:

Yeah, absolutely. So just to clarify, Chris, are you're talking about a closed community? So not so much building an audience on social media, but if I have no audience, how do I launch a closed community?

Chris Do:

Yeah, that's about right. Or just how do I build a big enough community where they can support me? Kevin Kelly, one of the co-founders and executive editors of Wired Magazine, wrote this very seminal piece of work, which is actually referenced in the book Superfans. In fact, I think Superfans is really taking Kevin's article and blowing it up into a full-size book. And Kevin says that in order for us to survive as an artist, to live a creative life, we don't need millions of fans or millions of dollars. What we need is we need 100,000 fans who are ... I'm sorry, is it 100,000 fans? 10,000 true fans.

Tom Ross:

1,000 true fans.

Chris Do:

1,000 true fans. It's getting even smaller. See, look at that. You need 1,000 true fans to be able to support you in what you do so that you can earn $100,000 a year net profit. And so it's actually not even that many fans that you have to build, but for some, even having 1,000 true fans who are willing to spend money to support you is not an easy thing to take on. So whether it's part of a paid coaching group or not, it could just be a T-shirt or postcard, some color presets for Lightroom or something like that. They're willing to support you. So how do we do that, Tom?

Tom Ross:

That is the question. I'm going to talk kind of more holistically about how to build audience as well and how to build some of those fans. And obviously that maps to community. There's a lot of ways. I think first and foremost, you need to have strong foundations. Because ultimately people are not going to want to show up, follow you, support you, and join your community if you're muddy in terms of what you're offering. So I would always start there. I think you need to be clear in answering those fundamental questions. Who am I serving? Who am I showing up for? Who am I trying to attract and what is the reason why they're going to support me? What value is in it for them? And those are some of the biggest questions you need to ask in business and indeed in community. And I think far too many people half know that or just jump the gun and skip that step and then wonder why they're struggling to find any traction. So I would always start there, once you've done that, realize that it's a game of patience. So if we're talking about accruing 1,000 fans or a considerable audience, it takes time. And both myself and very much Chris are living proof of that. Chris, how long have you been building audience for? Because you have these millions of fans and followers now, but it didn't happen overnight, right?

Chris Do:

It did not happen overnight. I would say officially, the very first video I posted on YouTube was in January of 2014, and it was just dipping the toes in the water. I wasn't really thinking about any long-term plans, but that would be the beginning.

Tom Ross:

Incredible. So coming up on a decade. There's a lot of years there. And Chris has been very consistent and very prolific in doing that and very intentional. He's got a clearly defined value proposition, very clearly defined idea of who he's trying to cater to. Specifically often teaching business to the creative industry, to the creative community at large. So all of these things are in alignment, but even with that, it's taken seven years of just consistent grafting and putting out content at scale. And I know how hard Chris works on this. But that isn't enough. And Chris, you may not know this, but whenever I start talking about distribution, your name comes up. So for anyone that doesn't know, distribution is intentionally getting in front of existing wider audiences. And this is so essential because otherwise what happens is you're cranking out consistent content and you're trying to shout about your brand, but you're in a bubble. No one knows you, and it's this catch 22, right?

If you have no audience, you're going to struggle to spread just by word of mouth, you're going to struggle to get in front of fresh people. And so one of the best ways to do that in a controllable and repeatable way is to show up and provide value to other audiences. So what are we doing right now? I've joined Chris who has a larger Twitter following than I do on Twitter Spaces. We're now chatting to 100 plus people and I get discoverability from doing this. Hopefully I'm going to make some good points, provide some value, and some people may follow and support me. And this is something that I see Chris doing very well. In fact, Chris, you're literally one of the best people I know at doing this. I'm almost trying to follow in your footsteps by ramping these efforts up because whenever I do something like this with Chris where we have a call, he's like, "Oh, I got to go. I got four more of these this afternoon. I've got a Twitter Spaces, then I'm doing a Clubhouse, then I'm doing a podcast interview." And you are just relentless with your distribution efforts, which means that every single day you're picking up new fans and new people that have never heard of you because you're getting in front of new audiences consistently.

Chris Do:

It is a lot of work, Tom. I'm not going to lie. It is a lot of work. And at first I have to tell you that as an introvert, as a person who was not used to hearing my voice, volunteering to speak at anything in a classroom, even at my company or with clients, it's been a long, long journey to get to this point in which I'm actually looking forward to it. But I want to share one other thing with you because I think there are a lot of introverts in the creative space, is that for me, after I do one of these conversations, I am wiped out. I am drained of energy. These things do not energize me. But this is the work that you need to commit yourself to and mentally prepare for. There's lots of things that you can do to make it a little bit easier for you, and I am happy to share that if people have questions about how you as an introvert and as one who's not used to being seen or heard, how you can overcome some of these things and tips and techniques to develop your voice and how to use the distribution networks that are out there to help you gain an audience and build up your brand and authority. Back over to you, Tom.

Tom Ross:

I would actually love to hear that if you're happy to share a couple of pointers now because an extrovert, so after these I run into the kitchen and say good evening to my wife, and I'm hyperactive. I get really energized. Which is weird, right? But I do not know how you do it because even for me as an extrovert, when I do hours and hours of these, you get physically sapped of energy. So if you're getting mentally sapped too, how on earth do you manage that, Chris?

Chris Do:

Yeah. Okay, I'm going to talk about that in a little bit. Maybe this is a good time, Tom, for us to do this. I'd like to invite Michael to the stage. How do you want to contribute to the conversation today around community?

Michael:

Thank you so much, Chris. I actually had a good question for you, which was more so how do you resuscitate a community that's dead or that seemingly is dead? How do you get people to get back on that vision with you? I think that was the question I wanted to ask you as well,

Chris Do:

Tom, how do you resuscitate a community that's gone stale?

Tom Ross:

In terms of how to do it, I think it can be that kind of phoenix moment, right? You're rising from the ashes, and I would use this as an opportunity to take a breath and set a firm new direction for what you're doing and you want to get your community and your followers invested in that. So I don't know if you're going to be doing exactly the same thing that you did before. Maybe you want to have a small pivot or adjustment or something like that. I would in public build with your community. I would share that very openly and get people bought into that new mission. And to be honest, after that, I think it's just about consistency. Because if you start posting quality content every single day again, or whatever's manageable, in two months, four months, six months, no one's going to remember that you took a break. And I've seen this time and time again.

You get that initial return to it and it feels a little strange and you need to get back into the rhythm from a content creation standpoint. And maybe your audience, some of them are kind of fallen off, but it's just the game of consistency. Think of it like a diet. If you fell off and became unhealthy, it doesn't mean you're never going to be healthy again. It just means it might take a little period of time to get back to that, and then you have the rest of your life to keep up those good habits. So there's more I can share, but yeah, that would be a good starting point. What I would say, just a little tactical final note here, you could do some fun stuff with that to give a little jolt, a little spark into the start of this new journey.

So what is not that exciting is just you pick up posting again like nothing happened. What could be exciting is that for that first week that you're back, maybe you commit to doing something manageable like a 15 minute or a 30 minute live each of those days and you turn it into a bit of an event week. So you're there forming deeper connections with your people, really trying to re-engage them and involve them in some interesting ways. Just something different that isn't just adding to the noise or just completely repeating your approach previously. I think often it needs that little push when you get back to it just to wake people up and go, "Oh yeah, I remember Michael. He's back. He's doing some interesting different stuff."

Chris Do:

All right, next question comes from this idea of how does an introvert, someone who's shy, who's not used to speaking or being seen, how are you able to create content and what is the approach versus say someone who's an extrovert. As a pretty shy, socially awkward introvert, one who for most of my teenage from birth to about 20 years old, I would rather be invisible than to be seen. I want to let you know that it's very hard for me to start conversations with people when I'm invited to parties and events, even speaker parties, I dread going to these things and it's very difficult for me. So I'm going to share a little story and put this in perspective for some of you. I desired to build connections with people. I don't want to die a loner. I don't want to be the kid in the room that's in the corner by himself thinking, God, nobody cares and what do I do?

And it's very difficult. And if this is you, I'm going to give you the secret sauce to how you can overcome this. Eric Edmeades talks about this in The Secret of Public Speaking or something. He gave a talk for Mindvalley Talks and he says there's something called the stage effect. That when you're on stage, you have an unfair advantage when you're facing the audience. And we all know this. First of all, you're most likely physically elevated above people on stage. You are sometimes two to three feet above everyone, and they do this so that we can see you. And you are literally in the spotlight when everyone else is in literally the darkness. And so you have this huge advantage and he talks about this formula. He said that the quality of your presentation plus ... I think it's times not plus, but plus the size of your audience equals your level of attraction.

There's something strange, this phenomenon, that when we get together and we see someone on stage, the power of their attraction or their draw is multiplied by all the people around us. We have this communal experience together and we're seeing this person. Why do I share any of this? Because as an introvert, it's the easiest way to get people to come and talk to you. I know it sounds really crazy. I would rather go through the personal torment and the nerves of going up on stage and doing some public speaking so that afterwards people will feel like they know me and will connect with me so that I don't have to figure out how to start these conversations. I'll tell you what kind of weirdo I am. I'm at Adobe Max many years ago. It's my first Adobe Max ever. And I hadn't registered for any of the events, so they're all kind of booked up.

So all I could do was wander the hallways. As I was waiting to figure out what to do, the doors opened up to these different rooms where speakers were speaking in and a flood of people would come out and they're making their way to the venue, either grabbing lunch or just checking out the exhibits. And I stood there and it was kind of interesting because people would then, "Hey, I love your content. Saw you. I really appreciate what you do." They were just throwing out things as they're walking past me. And I think that is one way we as introverts can actually build connections with people is through public speaking. And I hope that idea helps you a little bit. Over to you, Tom.

Tom Ross:

Yeah, I think that's super smart. Kind of shifting gears slightly, but within this topic, I think one of the best things you can do in business in general is position yourself in the right way. So to kind of follow on from your speaking analogy there, I think when you're actually building something that can be impressive or meaningful or high quality in public, it has a similar effect. And people are often worried about how do I network? How do I reach out to high-worth individuals? All that kind of Linkedin BS. And I think the best thing that can happen is inbound interest where people are coming to you. The next best thing outside of that which you can do is operate on a more similar level to the people that you're trying to connect with. So it's really hard to go and approach someone that's infinitely more successful or established than you are because they get bombarded every single day.

But when you look at Hollywood A-list actors for example, they're generally friends with each other more than they're friends with some random stranger that wants a piece of them or part of their time because there's this built-in credibility. And so the same way Chris gets up on stage and gives a talk and people want some of his time, which is inbound, equally, if Chris wants to go and connect with another community builder or another business leader, it's going to be a lot easier for him to do that because he's playing at their level compared to someone with 10 Instagram followers. It's not impossible, but it's infinitely easier.

Chris Do:

Okay. Gio, go ahead.

Gio:

Hi Chris. My question would be, how do I handle my own uncertainty to onboard people onto something that I feel is valuable and cool, but I'm not really knowledgeable and I feel sometimes just like I'm not going to do it, but I kind of feel like I can and I should, but I don't because I doubt myself, I guess. How do you overcome that doubt? That's probably the best way to put it.

Chris Do:

Okay. So let me see if I can rephrase the question and then I've been taking notes here, so we'll answer this in a little bit. But Gio wants to know how can he start teaching sharing what it is he knows even though he has a healthy dose of imposter syndrome because he knows things about something else, but he might not know as much about what it is that he wants to talk about and how does he overcome that doubt? Is that about the gist of the question, Gio?

Gio:

Yeah. That's the emphasis of it.

Chris Do:

Okay, we'll go over to Ben. Ben, do you have a question or something you want to contribute?

Ben:

You mentioned you've got 1.6 million subs and your stated brand purpose is teach one billion people how to make a living from doing what they love. Is that right?

Chris Do:

That's correct.

Ben:

So there's a difference between telling a billion people and teaching them. So my question is what are the challenges that The Futur is facing in relation to that goal strategically and how does it relate to scale and community?

Stewart Schuster:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Chris Do:

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Stewart Schuster:

Welcome back to our conversation.

Chris Do:

Tom, let's tackle that first question from Gio and hopefully everybody else that has raised their hand to speak and hopefully you're in a place where you can actually speak, otherwise, I'll move you back down. Okay. So Tom, why don't you tackle the first question from Gio?

Tom Ross:

Sure. Gio, thank you for the question. I think obviously imposter syndrome is incredibly common, whatever space you're in. I think part of the opportunity is to share in public, build in public. So as you learn, become a documentarian. Start documenting the things which you learn and there's tremendous power. You don't need to be at step 50 in your journey. Even if you're at step one, two, or three, to someone that is behind and earlier than you, someone at step zero who's curious, your lessons from step one, two and three are going to be invaluable to them. If anything, there's tremendous value in the fact that you're closer to their journey. Often when people are like 20 years in, they misremember how tough or how convoluted or confusing something was at the start of their career. So the fact that you're living it right now, I would document all of that.

There's a guy I've been connecting with recently called Jay Klaus. He was publicly documenting his effort to breed consistency on Twitter. So he started the Tweet 100 challenge. Within that, he publicly documented how the challenge was going. He showed up every day for 100 days and other people started using #tweet100 to participate. So 100 days later he has over 1600 people doing this challenge with him. He's now launched a premium community off the back of it and he's got a ton of new followers and a genuine community has formed just from him sharing publicly. He could have done all of this quietly. He could have been learning about Twitter and doing it under the radar, but because he was so public, it allowed people not only to learn from him but to buy in and it benefited him and his brand.

Chris Do:

Gio's question is a very common question that a lot of people have, which is I don't feel like I'm an authority, therefore I'm not going to do anything until I become an authority. And so you sit dormant for a really long time while you put in your 10,000 hours of practice and learning and research. But there's a huge opportunity that you're losing out on, an opportunity cost, if you will, because when you're ready to emerge, that will be the first time you're really introducing yourself. The different or the preferred way to do this is to just recognize this one idea. Everyone is an amateur at one point. Everyone is an amateur at one point. If you come to the conversation not pretending to be more than you are, that you're transparent, you're vulnerable and you're real, I think you're going to onboard people so they don't sit there and question you like, who do you think you are? You don't know anything.

I'm, at my heart, at my core, a graphic designer. That's what I studied in school. And so my identity is very strong, it's very confident when I speak about things about graphic design. But as you may know, the thing that more people know me about today is when I talk about marketing, when I talk about content creation or sales and negotiations. Things I did not study in school. There's always this thing that bubbles up inside of you to say, well, this isn't my core identity. Who am I to be doing this? So I make sure if I'm going to enter in a room, I'm going to speak to business people about sales and marketing, who this is all they do, what I try to do is I lean in on the part that makes me unique and different versus the part that I'm trying to be more like them.

So I'm going to bring in a creative angle and I'm going to present it in a way that only a designer or creative person would talk about these things. And I want to bring that energy and that enthusiasm in. So when you're still learning, disclose to people. This takes away a lot of the fear. Just let them know, "Hey, I'm actually doing a lot of research and I'd like to share with you what I'm learning as I learn it." And what happens is you gain authority by articulating your thoughts. And we all want to be seen at some point, I think, as an expert versus an amateur. And you can just do this one piece of content at a time and to realize it's a long journey and it's okay that people question you because you're questioning yourself. And you've disclosed that so it's not like a case of the talented Mr. Ripley. You're not afraid to discover this horrible secret about you because you've already told them I'm learning. And I find that when you do that, it takes away a lot of your internal pressure to speak like an expert because in truth, you're not. I hope that helps you, Gio.

Gio:

It does help so much, man, because what I realized as you guys are saying is that documenting it and upfront telling that I'm on the journey rather than trying to say this is the right thing or that. Maybe that's how I should start every post or anything. Always putting that disclaimer upfront so that I feel comfortable and people might feel ... Yeah, that sounds on-spot.

Chris Do:

Okay. Every journey has, I think, three components to it. The start, which is when you decide to actually take action on what it is that you want to do. There's that middle part and Scott Belsky calls it the messy middle. Seth Godin will call it the dip. And then there's the destination when you actually arrive. So many of us are afraid to talk about this journey only when we're at the destination, when we know everything is worked out. Because it doesn't require any bravery. There's no guessing. There no I don't know exactly what I'm doing. But the parts that are most interesting and the parts that are overlooked is that messy middle or the dip in which you struggle and then it's the dark night of the soul and you're questioning yourself. That's where there's a lot of tension and conflict. And if you're a fan of story structure, Robert McKee talks about this. No conflict, no story.

And so in our pursuit to try to build community to enroll people in our story, we just tell them at the end, it all worked out. See what a genius I am. See all the smart decisions I made. Because we don't have to worry about them judging us. But the best part was the part that most of us skip over. And I have to tell you, I have a pretty large community of 700 people who I'm trying to help tell their stories, but this is the part they get hung up on the most. Because they feel like if they share this part where they struggled, where they didn't know what they were doing, where they either were fired or made some horrific mistakes or lost a client because of some stupid thing they said or did that no one will look at them as an authority.

But it's the exact opposite. When people are so confident, so comfortable to tell you, here's how I f'ed up this job. Here's where I screwed up, here's where I lost money, here's where I zigged instead of zagged. When you tell people so clearly like that, they actually think higher of you because you must be a very confident person to be able to say these things. So the opposite is true. Trying to hide your failures and your struggles makes you seem less confident while speaking about your failures and your struggles actually helps you to at least in the eyes of the beholder, gain in confidence. So it's kind of really weird.

All right. Let's go to our next question. Ben said, okay, you have 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube. It's a metric. And then you have this other stated goal of impacting the lives of a billion people, teaching them how to make a living, doing what they love.

How are you going to be able to do this? What are the challenges around teaching? Now, Ben, I'm with you. I make no delusion in my mind that having almost two million subscribers does not equal two million transformations. I don't think that at all. How am I going to do this? I do not know, but I am as part of my identity a teacher. And so what I'm trying to do is to impact the lives, give them the tools that they need to be able to solve their problems. Not to memorize scripts or copy a formula. That's not really teaching. It has to be the transference of knowledge so that they can apply it in a creative way to a problem they have yet to see. That to me is the hallmark of a good teacher. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to need the rest of my life and maybe multiple lifetimes to be able to accomplish this.

I'm not sure. But what happens when I set such a big, hairy, audacious goal, a BHAG, I have to think differently. I have to think when a school asks me to speak or do a workshop for three students, is that really moving the needle? Is this going to get me to where I need to be? So having those clear goals helps me to make different decisions. If you have goals like that, they become filters for what you should and absolutely should not do. And I think that helps to give me clarity. I also think about when we're on platforms like this, I may impact the life of two people or one person and that person goes on to teach and to share. And I know it's kind of funny math, but I would then consider that part of the billion mission. I don't think literally I can teach a billion people, but I can teach enough teachers to teach more people and then that's how we begin to make this change. And you know what? If I fail at 500 million by the time I'm dead, I can still go to the grave knowing I've done something good in my life.

Ben:

So it's like a north star basically.

Chris Do:

Absolutely.

Ben:

You say that to yourself. It reminds me of the Godin thing as well. It's just like you tell everyone you can. Whoever listens, they've got to run with it. And Gary Vaynerchuk says it as well. He's just like, "Not everyone's going to like my style, but if I just shout loud enough for long enough, people will get it and they'll spread it as well." And something else you said reminded me of the model of DIY, do it yourself, done with you and done for you as well. It's sort of a content approach to that where it's like you give people the tools to do it themselves. Say, here's how it's done. You kind got that with the pro group as well, I guess. It's like [inaudible 00:41:58] do with you.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Because seeking advice isn't all that effective. You tell somebody what to do. More likely than not, they actually don't listen to you, they fight you, and then they can solve that exact problem when it peers again. But when the problem is different, they haven't actually learned it. And it's a difference between memorization and actually absorbing a lesson and being able to make different kinds of decisions. Those are the tools. So really I focus on tools. Not literally tools, but things that help people to get unstuck or to see a problem in a different way. You mentioned the word reframe. It's one of my favorite words. To reframe what it's looking at. So then the solution becomes a lot clearer to you.

Ben:

Yeah, mental models.

Chris Do:

Thank you, Ben. Okay, let's do this. Bradley, you're up next.

Bradley:

Hello. I had a broad question. I'd like any thoughts that everyone had. I work at a cooperative for ... It's a grocery cooperative. And I was just wondering ... We're very focused on community and I'm wondering even at that small scale where we're pretty local, what's everyone's thoughts on the cooperative business model in terms of this conversation?

Chris Do:

Tom, you want to take that one?

Tom Ross:

Being perfectly honest, I'm aware of, but not in depth familiar with the current cooperative business model. That being said, I think there's tremendous power in local communities and indeed smaller communities. And where it's this kind of grassroots thing, it's on a smaller scale, you can just build such depth with those people. And I think something which is highly effective on a local level is where you're organizing local events and these kind of time-sensitive things which bring people together in an intentional way. I think it's not always enough when you have smaller numbers of people just to have this collective mission or something that you're showing up for. I think you actually need to organize very specific things such as events to bring people together. I don't know if that's helpful, Bradley. That's my initial thoughts, but I'm going to mute and think on this as the question unfolds.

Chris Do:

Yeah. I think the two co-ops ... There's a grocery co-op where we used to frequent close to the office and then there's a much bigger co-op. I believe REI is considered a co-op and I'm a member. I pay to be part of the group and when I buy things there, I get dividends. They give me money back. And I think the general concept is we share ownership of a thing. And so they're not solely focused on making profit. They want to get the things that the community needs and to support the local community, but also to give you back some of your purchases. Is that the general idea, Bradley?

Bradley:

That is the general idea. And I guess most of my thoughts were based around this idea of we're not all going to touch a billion people's lives, but as you said, we can have our part to make it happen overall for everybody. And I think there's something to be learned from that model even if you don't fully endorse it.

Chris Do:

So given that Tom and I are relatively unfamiliar with the core business model, can you frame that question in a different way that maybe we can contribute more too?

Tom Ross:

And on the back of that, I'd love to know what are you currently doing to build community? Why are people bought into this? And then we can maybe think of ways to amplify that.

Bradley:

Some of the things that we do is we have ... Every co-op basically signs up with seven principles and it's like concern for community, helping other co-ops, democratic control, member supported. So the people who use the co-op are the owners of the co-op. Along those lines. It's all just a general set of guiding lights for every co-op, even outside of your own co-op. And it seems like I joined onto this call because community is my job, is owner services, being concerned about the community. So I'm very interested in this conversation in general. And I know-

Tom Ross:

Bradley, sorry to interject. Where do your people come together currently? Where are the spaces for this community?

Bradley:

We have a grocery store that the people in my area go to and we do events and things like that as well. But that's the gist of it is one specific thing. REI is a cooperative and it's the same idea. It's all mountain climbing and hiking and outdoors oriented.

Tom Ross:

Got it. So it's in a physical space. Outside of physically being there or attending an event, is there any community that happens in the downtime between those moments?

Bradley:

Oh yes, absolutely. We partner with a lot of other groups that are also doing events and we work together with other groups to do things all the time. There's a national chain of co-ops that we all work together to share burden of marketing and stuff like this and this model of helping each other.

Tom Ross:

Cool. Because there's two big things. I mentioned events already. I was going to mention something along the lines of what you just talked about. So I guess to Chris's point, in framing your question, is there a particular struggle? Because it sounds like you have something great in place. You're already doing some fundamental things you'd expect from this type of community. Is there a particular community related struggle?

Bradley:

It is very hard to get such a nebulous idea of what co-ops are out to people. Even as this conversation is proving, it's really hard to narrow down what the gist of the message is. Even though it feels simple, it turns out to be complex for us.

Chris Do:

I just think about this because Tom and I are building communities at scale, so I'm thinking about the local model and what we can both learn from each other. And I think there's something to be said for this. Prior to the pandemic hitting, one of the things I was trying to do is create a physical clubhouse where members of my community who had access to it, people I could trust, could come by and hang out and be part of this and participate and meet and hang out with other similarly-minded people. And I think that's really cool. This idea of giving back to people who belong to your community some portion of what it is that you spend is intriguing to me. I have to think on this a little further. But then I think since Tom and I are here, maybe what we should be talking about is how you can leverage other kinds of social platforms and tools so that your community can exist beyond the physical interaction that they have in the store or the events that you produce. Maybe there's something there. So Bradley, if that were a question thrown back at you, how would you respond to that?

Bradley:

We do try to do that as well, yes. To varying levels of success. Being local, there's no way we are ... We don't want people from three states over or from another country. They're not going to be able to come to the store and shop so it's hard to go to scale, but I think that there's a lot that we can apply from other people's models as well. So I am very satisfied with the answers that I've gotten so far. I wasn't expecting a revolutionary thought out of nowhere.

Chris Do:

Well, thank you. I look at REI as probably, at least in my mind, the largest co-op I'm aware of. They run a national operation and there is ... I don't know if you guys know this, but they actually do sell slightly used or worn things just to help not put things into the trash heap. And I think it's kind of important. And I've been on a couple of different expeditions. Not expeditions. That's too big of a word. But REI organized events where they find a guide and we meet up somewhere and we go overnight backpacking. And they do trips abroad, at least prior to the pandemic. And so I think that's kind of neat. They can act locally, but they can also leverage other kinds of tools. Newsletters, virtual events that we can get together and we can talk and we can share ideas. I think anything you can do to strengthen the bonds of the people you define as your community. So you have a geographic limitation because it's not realistic or desirable actually for people to drive across state or more than 30 miles to go to your store and shop.

And so what can you do to strengthen the relationship you already have with those people and to use the tools that are available to you on social platforms to just deepen that.

Tom Ross:

Yeah. And my final thoughts are I would take everything that people love the most that makes the co-op special, bottle it, figure out a way to put that in an online community. So kind of similar to what Chris wanted to build in real life. Let's say you call it the co-op online clubhouse or something like that. And then have some kind of mechanism where people have to have discovered it on a local level. So for example, if there were ads throughout the co-op where people could scan a code on their phone and that was the secret unlock that got them in the clubhouse. Because I think what most co-ops and local businesses do is pretty boring. They slap up a Facebook page and it's not a community and it's not very interactive. So if there was this extension of the co-op experience in a secret online space, which you had to unlock and access via a local level, then the two becomes symbiotic because then you can host online events. You can host in real life events. You can promote the in real life events in the online space and vice versa. And it starts to feed each other. And as Chris says, it continues that experience in a more ongoing, permanent way, even outside the physical location.

Chris Do:

Jimothy, you're up next.

Jimothy:

I have a question regarding the field of mental health and building a community in the social media age. So for example, in my country, there are some very prominent organizations that have been in the field for a while. They have a huge following. They have people who trust them and know them. And in the mental health field, you need that kind of trust so that people can come and see you. People can engage with you on many different directions. And other than that, there's also a lot of players in the mental health field. So you'll find there are mental health advocates, there are people who are mental health lived experienced survivors. So everybody is speaking and I feel like there's a lot of information floating in this field, in this profession. So I think my question then goes, how does a beginner, somebody who's just graduated from university, they're just getting into the profession, what do you think some of the things they should apply to become more of a signal than a noise in this entire space? And above that, I want to say thank you for the work that you do. I have recommended your work, Chris, to every designer that I know, so thank you.

Chris Do:

Well, thank you so much. Okay, so you were talking about something about mental health and community, about how you can reduce the noise and increase the signal, especially at the beginning parts of your content creation or your knowledge base, right?

Jimothy:

Yes, exactly. Yes.

Chris Do:

Okay, great. I think we talked about that a little bit, so we should be able to answer this question pretty straightforwardly. Okay, so let's move on to Ingrid. Ingrid, what's your question or how do you want to contribute?

Ingrid:

I share a lot of knowledge online. I just have not much public reactions on those type of knowledges I share on my online platforms, but I do have private messages and those are really interesting questions that I answer to those peoples. But those are questions that can totally be answered within my community because I bet some other people have those questions too, but they tend to privately communicate with me rather than post it publicly. So my question is how do you get them to publish it publicly so everyone can see those questions answered?

Chris Do:

Wonderful. The topics that you talk about, is it something that people would find professionally embarrassing or personally embarrassing?

Ingrid:

No, it's just online marketing.

Chris Do:

Okay. All right. It shouldn't be that. Okay. I know how to answer that question. Great. So your question is you have no problem sharing content, but you're finding that you don't get a lot of engagement except for in the DMs. But you're like, I want to have this conversation publicly. It doesn't help me as much and doesn't help others when it's one-on-one. Is that right?

Ingrid:

True that.

Chris Do:

Okay, beautiful. Thank you very much, Ingrid. All right, let's circle back here from Jimothy's question about mental health signals noise. She's at the beginning of what she's trying to do and she's not quite comfortable doing that. So how can she focus in on that, Tom?

Tom Ross:

Yeah, I think the question was really how do I break through the busy noise of content overwhelm. And I think there's two ways which I think about this. One is to synthesize. So if there's a space where there's a lot going on, it's information overload, you're likely not the only one experiencing that. And I think if you're the one willing to collate it, organize it, weed out the good information from the bad and synthesize it into some kind of consolidated summary, there's tremendous power in that for you and also others. So for example, whether it is mental health or web 3.0 or any of the topics that have been discussed, I don't necessarily have the time to go spend 17 hours digging through good, bad, and average advice. But what I do have time for is to see a Twitter thread, for example, of someone that's done that. They've publicly said, this is not my ideas, but I've spent 17 hours digging through them and I've consolidated the best findings very succinctly into content for everyone.

I see this model work all the time. So that's one way. The other way which is arguably harder is differentiation. So whenever there's a busy space, you have to zig where everyone else is zagging. You have to order and analyze how other people are behaving and what they're doing with community, what they're doing with content. And then you intentionally do it in a very different disruptive way. And that's a whole topic in itself so we maybe don't have time to unpack that, but that's the two ways I think about this question.

Chris Do:

Good job, Tom. I think the thing that I see a lot are people who submit carousels for me to post and share, and it feels, oftentimes what they do is they literally just read something and command C, copy, command V, paste, and there is no voice in there, there's no personal experience and there's no real insight. And so I just feel like it's just people regurgitating content all the time. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but it's not the content that turns me on. If you think about the kind of content that makes you excited that you feel like there was a breakthrough, do your best to reverse engineer what's happened to you emotionally, what you're reading, how you feel in the moment, and try to extrapolate the structure in which they were able to use what's underlying the content itself. Did they begin their post with something super emotional where it was like a cliffhanger?

How did they hook you into reading the rest? Why did you continue to read all of it versus just stopping and going on about your day? Was it an image they used? What is it about that image? Ask yourself a lot of those questions and then that becomes a pretty good framework. Jim Rohn said famously, success leaves clues. All we have to do is bend over and pick it up. And so if you study the greats and the great is up to you to define whoever that might be, really break down what they're doing, analyze it, reverse engineer it, and that becomes a very good blueprint for you to be able to create content that's more signal and less noise. I hope that's helpful. And now we're going to move over to Ingrid's question. Thank you very much, Jimothy. Ingrid's question is about sharing knowledge online, low interaction. People jumping in the DMs, but not really willing to have the conversation publicly and it's not really scalable for Ingrid. Tom, what do you say about that?

Tom Ross:

I love this question because I experience this all the time. Not just on social media, but in Learn.Community, my closed community, I constantly have people DMing me, private messaging me with a question. My answer without fail is, are you willing to post this publicly in the forum? Because I want to answer you, but I think we can help more people by addressing this publicly. So my simple answer would be ask and I'd be surprised if people were like, "No, I refuse to. I only want to talk to you in private." Normally people are very amenable to the idea of getting help but helping others in the process.

Chris Do:

I'm the same way, and I think people aren't always super comfortable asking questions publicly because maybe it's not phrased properly or they just don't want other people to know that they're asking these kinds of questions. But what you don't realize is that people have very limited time. They're not in the business. They're giving you free coaching consulting advice in the DMs. Plus it takes a long time to write your response. I think you have to just give them a choice. And I love what Tom just said there. For me, I like to give people a choice. One, you could book a session with me and I could do this privately, but it's going to be quite expensive to do one-on-one. Or you can ask this question publicly or you can join me on Twitter Spaces or a Clubhouse or a live stream somewhere, and you can ask it openly that way.

That way we can help more people. That's the intention anyways. Mostly because as you guys can predict, it's the same questions that are being asked over and over and over again. And so at least if we're going to answer the same question again, maybe 10, 20, 50 people who needed to read that today would've seen it as well. So we want to help those people, and that's the only way you can teach and impact at scale. So especially with your topic of marketing, it seems, Ingrid, that people would be more open to this. Perhaps it's them needing some help. And so if you consistently get the same kinds of questions or problems and you're tired of answering them, what I would do is create a piece of content to say, "I'd love to help you. Here's a problem when you send me a question in the DMs. It's really hard because I don't have context. I'd rather have a conversation or I'd like to help more people than just the one person in the DMs." And so that then becomes a thing that you can just point people to and create a little keyboard shortcut. And that way when you type in a few letters, it gives them the URL to that specific video or that post and they can read that and that even saves you even more time. Was that helpful to you, Ingrid?

Ingrid:

Love it. Just ask it. Yeah. Couldn't think of it myself.

Chris Do:

There you go. Okay. I'm not going to take on any more questions from the audience right now. It's almost time for me to wrap up here. But before I do so, Tom, are there any other final nuggets, words of wisdom that you want to share with people on Twitter here?

Tom Ross:

I will simply say this has been a blast as ever. I love the questions, the insights, and thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Stewart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced by me, Stewart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Borrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sanborne for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It'll help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better.

Have question for Chris or me? Head over to thefutur.com/heychris and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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