Can I Ask My Community for Money?
Tim spoke about the growth of the House of Beautiful Business as a guest of Remote Daily.
*Can I ask my community for money?*
No idea why Felix Zeltner and his fabulous team at Remote Daily thought I might be the right person to ask! 
Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the refreshingly candid conversation and the opportunity to share how we grew the House of Beautiful Business into a global community of more than 50,000 professionals who are passionate about making business more alive, more joyful, more humane, and shaping a new world order that is more exciting than liberal bureaucracy and tech-autocrats’ retro-sci-fi-futures.
Some points I took away from it:
🔥Most groups that call themselves ‘communities’ are just branded networks fueled by self-interest or audiences united by shared objects of attention.
🔥Borrowing from M. Scott Peck’s theory: Communities start as ‘pseudo-communities’ whose members are attracted by a shared purpose and rhetoric, but they only become real communities with lasting bonds once they’ve experienced adversity or an existential crisis together.
🔥Any vibrant community is characterized by three qualities: intentionality (a theory of change, no matter how small), identity (a sense of belonging based on exclusivity—“if everybody’s family, no one’s family”), and intimacy (a sense of emotional authenticity among members).
🔥People rarely pay only to become a member of a community—they pay for discrete products, services, or benefits the community offers to them, e.g. access, knowledge, status, connections, collaborations, transactions, experiences, co-ownership, support for social change.
🔥Money is not the only currency of course. Communities can trade in attention, time, or energy.
🔥When you ask for money though, don’t beat around the bush—be honest, transparent, and direct.
🔥Heeding my own advice, please join us as a paying member of the House of Beautiful Business; become an investor, partner, or donor; get your pass for The PolyOpportunity, our year-long initiative; and/or work with us! ☺️