One of my private clients, whose business is doing well, in the low six figures annually, suddenly came to me and announced that despite some of her intentions to expand her business, she realized her real need was around community and relationship.
She’s not alone. In the middle of Facebook, Twitter, and every other form of digital connection, I still hear a crying out for community.
My client, along with so many other people I know, feel like they are constantly putting out effort just to keep their social calendar full of people they love. It happens to my family, too. I forgot to reach out, and suddenly the weekend is just me, Holly and the boys.
Those kinds of weekends are fine sometimes, but I know that the juice of friendship and enough social connection is a big part of what keeps my heart full.
Here’s why community is important to your business. I’ve talked about how a sustainable, successful business needs to be held in a network of loving, caring relationships. Friends and community keep you nourished so you can meet your clients and customers with a full heart of generosity.
Those same friends can give you support when things are a struggle. Have you ever invited a friend over to keep you company while you clutter-cleared your office? If not, try it, it works wonders.
One key to community is freedom. Specifically, giving up freedom. The less energy you need to put into maintaining your community, the more you can put into showing up for and with your community.
A great example is that great, fading tradition, the Sunday night family dinner. In resurrecting a tradition like that, you give up the freedom of choosing what you want to do on Sunday night. But what do you gain in return? And what does your business gain in return?
Here’s some suggestions for you:
- Create your own “Sunday dinner” tradition.
Who do you know and care about that you would like more community with? Whether it’s once a week, once every two weeks, or once a month, how about inviting them to a regular shared meal that’s on your calendar for the next year, and doesn’t have to be recreated?
- Work time as social time.
One of the biggest insights I took from Eric Brende’s fantastic chronicle of a year living with Amish community was that more traditional communities didn’t have a lot of “free” time for socializing, so to speak. But they did share a lot of work together, such as in barn-raisings, or other common efforts that require more hands on deck.
Do you have projects around your home or garden that would be more fun shared? What if you started a habit with your friends of having work parties as shared social time?
The more you fill up with love, community, friendship and nourishment, the easier it will be for you to grow and develop your business.
I’d love to hear if you have a lively, nourishing community, or if this is one of your struggles? What are some ways you can make sure you, and your business, are nourished by real, live community?
With love and appreciation,
Mark
p.s. Sacred Selling still has openings
Next week we start Sacred Selling, and over seven weeks I’m going to teach dozens of people how to have engaged heart-felt conversations with potential clients, so that you end up with more “Yeses” and get paid!
If you want to stop having an empty client calendar, or stop giving yourself away for free or too little, come join us. How many new clients, or clients at your full price, would you need to pay for this course? One? Two? Then what do you do with the money and clients you make after you’ve paid the course off?
Take a look and join us: Sacred Selling 2013
19 Responses
I live near a spiritual community, the Findhorn Foundation, in Scotland, and am associated with them, as are many who live locally. And what a blessing it is! I belong to many sub-communities, including a face to face MistressMind group, all who also belong to the Findhorn community. This group and many others feed my heart, soul and body, enabling me to offer that connection to others in their businesses (I work with spiritual entrepreneurs to help them gain more clients while doing what they love). It’s essential to me to practice what I preach, and my community connections really help me in doing that. Great article, Mark, thank you!
Jane- I had temporarily forgotten you were connected to Findhorn! That connection, and the wealth of your other connections, is beautiful and inspiring.
HI Mark! I have a dancing community in the city that sort of grew around me as I started to go out dancing to music I love all by myself!! I can be out on the dance floor and all of the sudden people begin joining me. We really enjoy each other’s energy so much! I have the women’s community that has formed around my teachings as well and that feels so sweet, deep, and connecting. Even though I am needing more of a business support community, I haven’t been participating in the Alumni community because I just didn’t have the time for much interaction. I’m beginning to see how helpful it would be for me to start engaging a bit there and so will take small steps to do so. I’m looking for the recordings of the alumni calls and can’t find them. I would like to put them on my ipod and start feeling the connection. Thank you for all you do and your shinning spirit!
Hi Daina- I’m so grateful that you have the community you do have, and even more grateful that you want to connect more with our Alumni Community! If you need help finding something, just fill out a priority request on the site, and we can help you. There are different calls- try looking under “Spiritual” for “Spiritual Nourishment Q&A calls” and you’ll see the recordings there.
Nice contribution. I’m not a great cook – so guests and I cook together. Much more fun – and we eat healthy food with a lot of love put in. Do you remember how delicious the food was when people still put love and pride in?
Best wishes,
Monika from Holland
I certainly do remember, Monika- as clearly as if it were yesterday, which it was, thankfully! I love cooking with other people- I’m glad you get that.
Your article was to the core of what’s important in these times. And, what’s relevant to us all in moving into the future through broadening our community life, and working together to bring the necessary changes and transformation for a better future.
These are ideal circumstances – having such social life and possibilities of sharing and supporting each other.
However, there is one key element it doesn’t speak of.
Right now, there are millions of people in our culture alone who have no community, Who have no close friends, colleagues, or even family members with whom they have real relationships or a vital sense of connections.
Some of us are seeking answers to that dilemma, the dilemma of living in a time where community is so important to thriving and moving into the future, and yet where it is the hardest to find community. Of living in a time where through the internet, seemingly everyone is connected to everyone else. But are they really connected?
Through the media and the world-wide internet, never before has the image of Community possibilities been so bantered, written and talked about. And yet, for millions of people, the reality of having close friends, being congenially connected to any family member, or belonging to a neighborhood, a town, a city, a group of like minded people, is further from their notions of possibilities than ever before.
Quite a dichotomy in our Time wouldn’t you say?
Mary- I’m so aware of what you write here- it’s very heartbreaking. When I was a paramedic, I remember thinking to myself many times that the only reason someone had called 911, truly, was that they were lonely and had no one else. Yes, there was a medical complaint, but with family and friends around there would have been no reason to call 911 for the flu, for instance.
Mark, your post resonated with me – and you and your readers may be interested in a wonderful website that’s aimed squarely at helping people rediscover and deepen meaningful friendships (in a day & age when people are reporting less and less sense of community). It’s called Lifeboat – lifeboat is a metaphor for the number of people with whom we can sustain meaningful and intimate friendship. Here’s the website: http://getlifeboat.com/.
Since I read Lifeboat’s research, I have recommitted to nourishing my closest friendships, and I have noticed big shifts as a result. In the past, I’ve tended to take my close friends a little for granted, and to fill up my social calendar with “loose tie” connections – dinner parties with people I’d like to get to know better, etc. But I’ve admitted to myself that those connections aren’t as nourishing, and that some of the time I invest in them could be better allocated towards feeding the stronger & more intimate relationships I already have.
On the business front, I’ve been actively seeking more collaboration opportunities and finding it really liberating! I find that when I reach out to colleagues and tell them what I need, I often find happy synchronicities – for example, I’ve been thinking of putting more video content on my blog, and have been feeling daunted about it, but when I shared that with a colleague of mine, I suddenly realized that the two of us could do a video chat about a topic that’s relevant to both our audiences and it could be fun and easier for both of us. Many hands making lighter work, and all that.
Disclosure: The people behind Lifeboat, Tim & Alia, are acquaintances of mine – but they aren’t selling anything and neither am I. I just think what they’re up to is important and wonderful.
Lauren- how awesome a resource is that? What a wonderful story- and an important insight. It’s definitely a question I have- how much to commit to close friendships, and how much to stay open to new ones.
Hi Mark! Totally agree with the “sunday tradition” idea. I play basketball once a week and then go out afterwards to a local bar with 4 or 5 of the guys I play with. It’s very informal and has a nice, regular, community rhythm to it. And seeing other “tuesday night groups” there every week – the dart playing people, the softball teams, etc. – adds to the feeling of being part of something bigger than just me.
Michael- that’s sounds so fantastic. I notice that I’ve been wishing I could do something like that with the folks I see at the gym, but we meet at 5:30am for our class, and after that people are off to work. There is an ultimate frisbee group – a bunch of Buddhists – and starting to work that back in after 4 years of intense parenting little ones.
Hi Mark~
I’ll take another tact here. I see that the whole conversation around the “need for community” can get hyped and romanticized. And yes, I need community like most human beings. But I also see the seduction of being drawn away from what might be a need for a rich interior life and the fear of being alone. I don’t think being alone is a bad thing. At all. And sometimes I am just a little suspicious about how much is one needing “community” or is one lonely. I speak here after leaving a spiritual community that was the center of my life for 23 years. Interestingly, it’s been the result of Remembrance practice and engaging with HOB and entering into a deeper connection to the divine that has brought these ideas about the subtleties of community to the surface. A quote that has been working inside me for months is: “Never less alone than when alone.” And as for the Amish, yes, they are indeed a close knit community bound by faith and tradition and also their practice of “shunning” those who do not conform is nothing less than a searing to the soul. Creating community, navigating community, maintaining community takes great skill. Especially if we want to heal the damaging effects community can have when we sacrifice ourselves too much in order to belong. A therapist said it quite well once to me: we ideally want to move in our lives from dependence, to independence to interdependence.
This blogpost, Mark, was a lovely reminder about how much I love to do “service hanging out”. I tell my friends if they need a ride somewhere, or help decluttering etc, then call me! It’s one of my favourite ways to *be* with my friends, being of service. We build a stronger friendship along the way, and we don’t need to make “extra” time. (It “kills two birds with one stone” <– I don't like this saying, but I don't know how else to say it).
As for the Sunday night dinner — I'm a big fan! I love that sense of routine, of being able to lean into an opportunity that's already been created. It's so hard these days, with everyone's busy and flexible calendars, to coordinate times to meet!! Having something in the calendar, in advance, brings so much peace to my soul.
In terms of business community, it's something I've been brainstorming for a while. I find it hard to get to in-person events, so I've been looking into online options. The problem with a lot of online communities is, because they're asynchronous (ie. not in real time, e.g. email and forums), the conversations/connections feel unnatural (like a conversation dragging on for days that would in real life be over in 5 mins!). Or, if it's a live community event, it takes time away from the work you feel you "should" be doing.
I've been brainstorming ways around this, and created a "shared office space" online product for my community. I love to see how it build connections amongst people while still getting work done at the same time — the sense that a bunch of solopreneurs feel a part of a wider community on a daily basis.
And, of course, as you know, Mark, I'm a big fan of the Alumni Community and the Opening the Moneyflow community. Having those spaces to *be* and to connect are nourishing. And the phonecalls scheduled into my calendar are my business "Sunday night dinner".
Meg, I’m really glad to read what you wrote here. I agree with you – it’s easy for us to surround ourselves with company because of the fear of being alone. There’s a quote that I like, something like “It’s possible to be in a room full of people and feel utterly alone”.
For me, it’s a quality vs quantity thing. I much prefer to be on my own unless the community is really nourishing. And there are times when the community IS nourishing, but I still prefer my own company, the introvert in me needs recharge.
Dependence to independence to interdependence: wow, I have often thought of this, in those exact words, but never heard them out loud before. Thank you for sharing — it really grounded me.
Thanks so much for this reminder Mark. It
Anne- awesome and important perspective to remember- not just for individuals, but also for folks who are planning events, how to account for different needs? You should write us a guest post about networking/connecting from this perspective.
I would be honoured Mark, thankyou, yes I will 🙂
Hi Mark,
I notice that my comment seems to have disappeared, but here’s the link to my guest post that I finally wrote!
http://heartofbusiness.com/2014/sunflower-can-teach-us-connection/
🙂