dangerouslyawesome

I write a lot about IndyHall on this blog, but I don’t think I’ve spoken at any great length about another local organization, Philly Startup Leaders. I’ve recently joined the organization as part of a newly formed advisory board, along with a number of other people from various local organizations that support and contribute to the local scene, as well as others who have been long-time fixtures and observe Philadelphias growth from another vantage point.

Philly Startup Leaders, like IndyHall, has modest beginnings: started by a couple of people who had or were involved with startups to discuss the challenges of being a startup in Philadelphia. Those early meetings, all held over beers as far as I’m aware, have transformed into a strong mission for the Philadelphia startup community:

“…above all else, startup entrepreneurs need each other.”

So what’s been fascinating to me has been watching IndyHall and PSL, two different communities grow alongside each other with similar purpose and vision. Lots of crossover has taken place. We share a number of members. Some of us have worked together. All good, healthy things for the ecosystem.

The PSL board has done a great job of growing membership, creating and evolving new events for the membership to participate in, crafting a manifesto, and providing the primary venue for community: the PSL-Talk e-mail list.

That e-mail list, a phenomenal resource for the community, seems to also be one of it’s greatest weaknesses.

There’s currently a flare-up (well, it’s currently as public as the e-mail list is…another issue…and it’s persistent in back-channels) about “self promotion and sales” in the list. When a new thread author, or an existing thread responder, posts something that is less about contributing information to the community and instead, advertises themselves as the solution to a specific problem, they receive a slap on the wrist (public or private, at the board’s discretion). The response is usually something like this one, from PSL co-founder and president Blake Jennelle:

Steve, you could have sent this solicitation to Yasmine directly. Promoting your consulting services is not appropriate over PSL talk. This is your public warning as per the policy you see in the footer. If this happens again you will be removed from the list.

The policy in the footer that Blake refers to reads:

The PSL Talk List is /not a sales channel/.  If you use the PSL Talk List to make a sales pitch to the community, you will be warned, publicly. If you do it again, you will be removed from the list.

I want to be clear and say that I understand why this rule is in place. Lists that are primarily solicitation, job postings, and the like do a lot of harm to the balance of “has” and “needs” of a community.

I liken it to the situation that IndyHall has with recruiters and job-postings. We wanted to make IndyHall a place and a community where people can be more effective at getting their work done. If the ecosystem becomes a place where people can come to get work, vs a place where people come to do work, the has/needs balance gets out of whack.

This is a tricky situation to deal with, for a couple of reasons. First and formost, the LAST thing I want is to be the person, or organization, that gets between a person and the opportunity of their lifetime.

When there’s contact from recruiters, startups, companies, etc about the talent at IndyHall and their availability, we explain that we’re an organization that provides physical space and community resources to our membership, as well as a highly collaborative environment that they can use to get their work done. Work exchanges hands all the time, but we don’t get in the middle of it. If you [recruiter/startup/company/etc] is interested in coming to IndyHall as a member, to use the space and community resources in the same way as anyone else who walks in our door, we welcome you!

So rather than police their intentions, which are to find a candidate for the job they have open, we frame it appropriately. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from walking in the door and joining IndyHall. So long as you can work from anywhere, pay your membership, come on by.

What’s nice is…because the culture is established by the existing membership, most anti-culture behavior sorts itself out. Rather than police culture, which is a very top-down way of looking at things, we carefully frame the situation.

If that person, whoever they are, feels they aren’t getting what they came there for, odds are, they came for the wrong thing. And most importantly, they won’t come back.

So, I came down on Blake’s response in the e-mail list where he slapped the so-called service provider on the wrist for an infraction that I’ll keep referring to as “anti-culture behavior”.

Someone who specializes in the topic of a question responds, and it’s sales. Someone who’s novice (or less experienced) responds, and it’s a-OK. Does anybody else see the problem here? I think there’s a difference between letting the group know what you do (within the list, which is the only unified point of membership of PSL) and overtly selling it to the group. What happens when someone asks about office space, and someone other than me recommends IndyHall? What if that person is a member of IndyHall? Is it better if they aren’t a member of IndyHall? It’s not me selling, but they’re selling for us (without my direct influence). What happens when somebody asks for help, like in this case? Experts aren’t allowed to be responded to in public discourse? What does that accomplish? I know that a LOT of energy goes into keeping this list anti-sales, and don’t think that I don’t understand why. Maybe if that energy went into focusing on what this list is, instead of what it’s not, the message would be clearer to people joining PSL. I don’t think the barrier to entry is to high or too low, I just think that you’ve put up the wrong barrier.

I admittedly painted some broad strokes, for the sake of illustration. But I made my point, and framed in the context of this post, I think it makes even more sense.

So Blake responds:

All Steve had to do was answer Yasmine’s question over the list and let his expertise speak for itself. This would have been a much more effective sales pitch. Alex, when you share your expertise on workspaces, when Wil shares his expertise on SEO, when Aaron shares his expertise on marketing, that unquestionable adds value to the list. It’s when you send a solicitation, beyond giving freely of your expertise, that people get annoyed. PSL talk is about helping each other for the sake of helping each other. That’s the culture that draws so many people to this community, as to Indy Hall. That’s the culture that we care so much about protecting and nurturing. That’s what PSL IS about.

Which, again, I completely agree with. Except this part:

That’s the culture that we care so much about protecting and nurturing.

I think it jumped out at me because I said something very similar in an unrelated conversation with Sean Blanda, co-founder of TechnicallyPhilly just yesterday.

Blake and the PSL board have always taken the approach of policing, posting signage (the footer warning), and warning/banning offenders.

What concerns me about this approach is that I don’t know if you can protect and nurture culture at the same time. By protecting it, you’re not letting it build up its own cultural defenses, which would truly be nurturing it into maturity.

My most recent post to the list encouraged Blake in two directions: first, to take some of the board-only-back-channel-discussion into a public forum, and make the most of the smart problem solvers he has as peers in his community. Second, to focus on what PSL is and stands for, instead of trying to keep out everything that it isn’t. Since, Blake has started a new thread doing just that, in which I’ll be sharing this post, as well as participating in the group discussion as much as is appropriate.

I don’t have the exact solution for PSL. I’m not a genie. And believe me, I’m far from perfect.

But I do know that policing culture is historically ineffective (culture’s going to go where it wants) and if the PSL board and the community it represents put more energy into nurturing than protecting, the solution would likely begin to materialize as a much clearer, and more sustainable approach to the problem.

About 3 weeks ago I announced my departure from Round3 and that I’d be pursuing new work as an independent consultant. The main reason for that announcement was my decision to put focus on continuing to grow IndyHall with Geoff while finding other projects and teams to consult with regarding their user communities, as well as social business practices.

I’m really, really stoked to announce that I’ve teamed up with Anthillz.com, a Philadelphia startup founded by Blake Jennelle. Blake is also the founder of Philly Startup Leaders, and we have become friends over the last year through the similarities that our organizations’ (PSL and IndyHall) goals share.

Anthillz is building out tools to help freelancers and independents manage their reputations by organizing client and peer feedback and helping generate measurable statistics that can help in freelancer searches, as well.

Where do I fit? Well, besides my obvious interest in the value of freelancers and doing things that make it easier to be an independent, Blake and his team realized there was value on community marketing as well as using member feedback to drive their product design process. I’m being brought in to help advise and lead that process, all along the way helping be a liaison for the community and the management team. I’m there for the community, and there for the team, when they need things and will help facilitate interactions between them.

My favorite part? Read this part of the position description that Blake and I drafted together:

When there’s a tension between his roles of representing the company and advocating on behalf of the community, the advocate should take the side of the community.  Any company has the natural tendency to give extra weight to its own interests, and the Community Advocate is an essential counterweight.

Blake wrote, this not me, but it’s attitudes like this that makes me have hope for company leadership in general. Blake and his entire team are as excited about this new partnership as I am.

I look forward to being able to share our findings as we continue to develop Anthillz as a product and a community, and encourage you to check it out and feed back as well!

I’ve got a couple of other similar projects and partnerships in the work, and am excited to share them with you as they unfold. Stay tuned, everybody!

The last few weeks have been VERY good to IndyHall and some of our other grassroots creative friends. One of the leaders of those groups, Blake Jennelle, asked me about the response from press. He asked if the recent spot on CBS Morning News, or the Philadelphia Business Journal piece, had yielded a lot of phone calls or inquiries with interest.

Frankly, they haven’t yielded much more than a bunch of congratulations from friends and family who were excited to see us recognized. And it’s something to keep my mom off my back about my lack of finishing my degree. All of which I’m EXTREMELY appreciative of. It’s ridiculously humbling to get this kind of credit when it’s due to way more people than just me. It’s also validating that the work we’re doing is being seen by a more mainstream audience. I’ve said before that I think coworking is about much more than just what we do at IndyHall, and what others do at their coworking spaces…it’s not about where people want to work, it’s about how.

But that’s not my point. At least not today.

So, what is the point?

My point is, a little spot on the email newsletter Daily Candy actually gave us WAY more response from new interested parties. Like, a lot. Tripled our highest traffic day on the blog, and more than a handful of phone calls and visits from new people who read about us and were interested in spots.

I’ve got a couple of theories why this somewhat “counterintuitive lesson in niche marketing”, as Blake so eloquently put it, occurred.

Link Love? Not here.

First is a basic fault of mainstream press, and one that I’m hardly the first to note: mainstream press does not link. Period. They keep eyeballs on their own sites, and have ZERO interest in sharing link love. It’s absurd, but it’s true, and eventually as the they’ll catch on, or they’ll die off. Either way, the problem will be solved, and nothing we do is going to change them.

Net Fishing vs. The Heavy Artillery

The more important reason, I think, simply has to do with the niche we market to, and who viewed the pieces of press. Both the CBS news, at 7:30am, and the Philadelphia Business Journal, are NOT primarily consumed by work-from-the-couch indies. So again…lots of eyeballs, little audience relevance.

It’s the difference between casting a net, and harpoon fishing. It seems that the Daily Candy piece, however, was like having a multi-harpoon-launching-fishing-gatling-gun.

We still love mainstream

Theres an immense amount of value of getting the coworking message to the masses. Ultimately, this movement is (I hope) going to shape their futures, and they should know we’re coming. Also, some messages need the attention of the masses. Mainstream press isn’t going away, don’t think that for a second. I’m just saying that in some cases, it may not be the place you should put your focus first.

If you want people to care, you have to show them that you care, first. And freaking mean it.

But apply this to your business, organization, or idea: rather than cast a net of press releases, think hard about your target(s). Casting a net takes a whole lot of energy with very little yield. Diligent and clearly targeted messaging, however, yields much greater results with the same amount of energy.

So next time you’re trying to get your idea out there, chew on this: try finding thought leaders in that target audience, and get friendly. Give them the attention they deserve. Read up on them. Hand craft emails. These people deserve your attention, since you’re asking it of them. Sending them a canned message is going to fall into the pile with all of the other canned PR. It’s worthless. It really is.

If you want these people to care, you need to prove that you give a shit about your own message. And I’m sorry, but a canned press release doesn’t scream “I care”.

Even though your target for making your message reach a widespread audience are “influencers”, because they can change winds, thought leaders tend to be more approachable, and guess who the influencers turn to for their next “big thing” to influence.

You got it. The thought leader that you planted a seed with.

Focus.

Bursting out to the masses with every little move you make, if you think about it, kinda turns into a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario. What happens when you actually DO make a move that’s notable.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t share your every move. I do it on twitter. I do it on the IndyHall blog. I do a fair amount of it here. But those are all opt in messaging, and the people who receive it are people who want to. If I’m lucky, some of those “followers” are thought leaders and influencers, and…

I guess that’s how we ended up in mainstream press in the first place.