Three Lessons from the First Year and a Half at People & Company
Reflections on starting our three-person community strategy practice.
We walked into the office of our first client. Taped on a conference room door was a handwritten sign: “Reserved for People & Co.” It was official. We were a real company.
Here we go.
In November 2016, I started People & Company with Bailey and Kai.
Our aspiration is to help organizations bring clarity to the murky work of building a community.
With every client, we tease out:
What’s the goal for this community?
Who do you serve? Who are your “hand-raisers?”
What stage are you in? Are you trying to spark a fire or stoke the flames?
What’s your strategy and how do you measure progress?
P&C across climates, NYC → SG.
In our first year and a half, we’ve worked on community strategies for users, volunteers, and advocates. We’ve spent time with all sorts of passionate people—surfers, CEOs, caregivers, retail employees, and educators from Singapore to Conshohocken, PA. Fortune 500 to startup nonprofit.
Along the way, we’ve had two hospital trips, countless chicken wings, and a healthy number of team surfs. 🏄🏾
In short, chapter one of People & Company has been fun, challenging, and a daily reminder of the power of people.
Reflecting back, here are three things I learned.
Kai taking most of these photos.
Bailey in the zone.
Me seeking comfort from a lamp shade.
1. Trust the process. If the process isn’t working, call someone to make it better.
Austin Kleon perfectly captured the roller coaster feeling of working through a project with this diagram (that he stole from Maureen Mchugh).
From Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon.
Like Austin, we’ve had our share of “Dark Night of the Soul” moments.
As an external partner, we’re brought in to figure out how to help a community grow amidst looming obstacles.
We use our framework, Spark✨ — Stoke🔥 — Scale🚀, to deduce the stage of development a community is in and what we do to fuel the fire.
Still, navigating an organization’s challenges can sometimes feel like a maze where there’s a person at every turn saying, “Don’t go that way, we already tried that.” 🙅
Which makes sense. If the answers were obvious, you wouldn’t hire us.
Deep breaths, Kevin.
If I could teleport to 2016 Kevin, I’d tell myself three things:
First, buckle in — don’t lose your cookies at the first sign of trouble.
Second, trust the process — do that next interview, take that second meeting. Forge onward with faith.
Third, if you’re running in circles, bring in fresh eyes. Phone a friend. (Thanks, Sarah, for that one time.)
Me, in a corner.
I can’t emphasize enough the power of a killer outside opinion in your darkest moments. In Mindset, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck writes this about fostering a growth mindset:
“Process includes more than just effort. Certainly, we want children to appreciate the fruits of hard work. But we also want them to understand the importance of trying new strategies when the one they’re using isn’t working. (We don’t want them to just try harder with the same ineffective strategy.)
And we want them to ask for help or input from others when it’s needed. This is the process we want them to appreciate: hard work, trying new strategies, and seeking input from others.”
Casual team convo. I had food poisoning.
2. Doing Research = Kickstarting Relationships
I thought I was a social butterfly, but then I met my business partners.
All three of us are serious friend-zoners — we each have our own way of slipping into the friend zone with strangers swiftly and undetected. And we take pride in meeting and connecting with new people.
At first, I thought this was just our personalities. It turns out it’s also a secret to how we operate.
Paul Santos, a client and friend who runs Wavemaker Partners in Singapore, reframed my thinking (paraphrased):
“Your community work is about building relationships. Your framework is: meet someone, get to know them, figure out how to do something together. It’s building relationships at scale.”
Paul dropping knowledge on Bailey.
When we do research — when we have conversations with engaged users/fans/customers — we’re not only absorbing insights. We’re also kickstarting important relationships with an organization’s most passionate people.
We call these folks hand-raisers. They’re the people who raise their hands to take on a bigger role for the cause. They’re a community’s potential leaders.
Cultivating relationships is an aspect of our work that we’re good at and don’t take lightly. We feel we have a responsibility to approach our interactions with a community’s hand-raisers with care and friendliness 😀.
Why? Because the P&C thesis is that people who care are more powerful than people who don’t.
Organizations underestimate what’s possible when you equip and empower your core constituents. Hand-raisers are precious gems. They’re any community’s greatest asset.
As Bailey puts it, “Great community building is not about management. It’s about cultivating leaders.”
3. We are people first.
At a consulting internship in college, my boss told me:
“You can’t make partner unless you have ten table-pounders. Ten leaders at the organization who will pound their fists on the table in your defense at a meeting.”
This last year and a half with Bailey and Kai has reminded me about the significance of going deep like that with select people.
At P&C, rule number one is: “We are people first.” Our personal wellbeing and the wellbeing of those we care about is more important than this company.
In the short time together, our team has shared homes, met each other’s family, cooked dinners, won and lost clients, thrown gummy bears at CEOs, cried, laughed, fainted, danced, bowled, bled, tried new foods, surfed, and even started a fan club for a large bony fish.
You can watch the sizzle reel here.
Shout out to Ru at Surf Simply for the photo and crash-course coaching.
The hardest times bring you closest, and frankly we faced two terrifying experiences in our first year and half.
On a work trip, Bailey passed out next to me on a train from Boston to New York because of a heart condition. The train halted, paramedics came onboard, and we rode in an ambulance together to a hospital in rural Connecticut.
We are people first.
In December at our team retreat, Kai was hit by a car while walking on the side of the road. What the f*ck? One minute we’re ordering drinks at a tiki bar, next minute, we’re hailing 911 because our friend is lying on the ground unconscious with his head covered in blood. He was knocked out of his shoes. I saw his skull exposed from the wound.
We are people first.
Bailey has since zapped away the extra electrical pathway in her heart thanks to the marvels of modern medical technology. Kai has healed from the 18 staples in his head (with a rad scar). ⚡
Those heavy experiences solidify for me that while People & Company has work to do — clients to (find and) serve, processes to iron out, and projects to realize — what we’re here for is really the people beyond the company.
When all this ends, our relationships are what we walk away with. Taking care of each other, our clients, and the people we serve is what makes this work meaningful.
So, what did I learn?
It’s simple. Treat people like people.
That’s what it takes to build a community.
Thanks to Bailey, Kai, and Yoko for feedback, edits, and all that other good stuff.