Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth! This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from Berkeley is Charles Vogel and Charles is going to be speaking about his new book, Building Brand Communities. You want to hold that up for the listeners. There you go, How Organizations Succeed by Creating Belonging. Boy, do we need that today? Because there's so much in the way of, hey, we can connect on the internet, but are we really connecting, just make some kind of mockery of things. With that being said, Charles, what I really want the listeners to know is how influencing people through in your case, a lot of these examples that you're making kind of social media things and building communities is working. And in your case, let me let the listeners know a tad bit about you. He's now works on leadership development and community building is used to support operations with firms like Google, Airbnb, Amazon, Twitch ServiceNow meetup and the US Army. He's a founding member of Google vitality lab, a project to innovate healing to address global health problems that plague our air. He's also offered three books, The Art of community storytelling for leadership, and building brand communities, which is the one we're talking about. When he was 25, he served in the US Peace Corps in northern Zimbabwe, near the Congo. And he left home he looked forward to meeting people as brave and adventurous as he wanted to be. The village has welcomed him generously. And he felt lonely many nights and in new place with different languages and different foods. And I think this is part of his story that comes through in the books after the Peace Corps, he moved to New York, where he learned to produce and write starting and insufficient skills and resources. He became an independent PBS documentary called The New Year Baby, tell story about a family escaping Cambodian genocide and becoming American. And it screenings have started new conversations, and a key there, building community and creating healing for countless families. He is, like I said, joining us from Berkeley this morning. And if you want to hold up a copy of that book again, Charles, that would be great. There we go. So we'll have a link to that on Amazon for everybody to get a copy. Charles, you know, you tell the listeners about your personal journey about building communities and friendships, and a bit about your first book, The Art of community, and how it really dovetails into this new book, building brand communities because this was the predecessor, predecessor book. You have a co-author on this book that I want to mention her name, it's Carrie Melissa Jones, and I want to give a shout out to her as well. Because the first book was all yours. This book was a joint effort of you working together with Carrie. So tell us a little bit about it, how you got here from The Art of community to building brand communities and what that journey was like.

Charles Vogl
So just want to make clarify, I served us Peace Corps in Zambia, not Zimbabwe.

Greg Voisen
Okay.

Charles Vogl
And then to answer your question about how the how I, what led me to write Building Brand Communities after the success of Art of Community. So rfunay came out. And we didn't know at the time it came out that we would experience such continuing degradation of connection in our culture here in United States to give a sense of scale. Subsequent to that book coming out. The our Attorney General Vivek Murthy released a front page article in 2017 in Harvard Business Review, as the front page article, alerting the business world that they need to pay attention to the crisis of loneliness in America. Subsequent to that he released an entire book about the loneliness epidemic in America. And then we had the pandemic. So it turned out there was a big slide and as I went around the country, talking people in leadership roles about the importance of bringing people together around shared values and purpose, especially in this world. Only era. The questions that kept coming up was, well, how can I do this in a way that's good for my organization and not just good for me or the, my friends, or people I play sports with. And there were answers to that. But I hadn't written that book. And Carrie had a lot more experience talking with people who are working in for profit organizations that were making investments, because inevitably, it takes time and money to bring people together in ways that matter. And so she was a really great resource and letting me understand what what's going on out there. And even more importantly, perhaps, how are people really getting it wrong? That they, they take the time, and they spend the money, and they either aren't effective, or even worse, they create something toxic? And I can give examples of that. And that's why we wrote that book.

Greg Voisen
Well, and it's true. I mean, you know, you cite a lot of different examples in this book, people that are trying to build brand communities. Can you tell us what you mean by brand community, and the ways authentic communities serve organizational goals, and war Onan, in this case, more meaningful investments? Because it doesn't matter if it's Facebook, or it's Google, or it's Twitter, or in this case, x. They're all building communities in some way, right?

Charles Vogl
I think I think they would all like you to believe they're building community. And maybe they are by somebody's definition, just not by mine. So in my, in my work for the purposes of growing leadership, we define community, as a group of people who share mutual concern for one another. That's it. And at this point, in my work, I strictly work with people leadership roles, both formal and informal. And when we talk about building community, we're talking about what how are we doing the things that facilitate knitting together those relationships of mutual concern. And everybody I know who's been a successful entrepreneur says, of course, you need your team, no matter if it's a small team or global team, to care about each other, and not be throwing each other under the bus or competing with each other in ways that it's a zero sum game in the organization. So they understand right away, you need to make investments and bring people together in ways that they care about each other. Want to talk about a brand community, we understand that in my work, I defined a brand that promise an identified and identifiable organization that promises value. And in that way, a brand can be an educational, brand, political, social, sport, and obviously commercial. And so all of my work applies to all of those organizations, because all those organizations have some group of people internal and often asked, also our internal external to the organization, that the organization is going to be stronger if those people are connected in ways where they care about each other. And so you didn't mention my works used by Google. For a few years, I worked with Google, because at the time, they were thought leaders at Google deemed important for the future of the company. And it was important to the company that those thought leaders come together in ways that make them tight knit such that there can be collaboration that couldn't, couldn't happen otherwise. And it's easy enough to buy a meal and put people in a restaurant. But what else to do to help knit together those relationships. And that was what I was helping them do. And even though Google is literally a global organization with over 100,000 employees, there are groups that they want to invest in, in particular, because they understand those relationships are important, and not just that group, but I was working with that group through the pandemic.

Greg Voisen
The question would be Charles, for monetary gain, or for more social purposes, meaning to really build a community, your definition of community might be quite different than what the ultimate end goal is, of some of these organizations. And I'll use your example. Yep. I've always been a big believer in you launch Menard, and Patagonia, and what the brand stands for and you talk about a brand community you're in it's a successful brand community. Because when you really look at how they've used the internet, hold people together for environmental concerns, don't buy my jacket, would you speak about that example and maybe even throw in the Lululemon example, as organizations that have a higher purpose and means for building a brand community?

Charles Vogl
I can so we need to step back a little bit and acknowledge that there are a lot of people who say they're building community because they understand that we are as a people are lonely, and they're advocating for committee building skills, but there's at least two schools and the first one is what I like to think as my school which is we are teaching ideas and principles and leadership methods that When we use them, the people who are participating, when they participate, leave more healthy, more resilient, they contribute more, and people contribute to them. And my guess is Greg, if you think of joining any community next year, be it professional or spiritual or athletic. What you want to happen if you invest your time, is you become more healthy, more resilient, and contribute more and get contributed to, am I right about that?

Greg Voisen
I would say for me, yes, that's right. Well, I don't live in that, I do find this whole loneliness epidemic as an emotion. And the way in which I deal with this emotion has to do with a whole set of beliefs that I carry, and how I then evaluate and determine which organization I would become aligned with this result of that. And I think most of my listeners are going to be in the same position they're going to do, they're going to do a tremendous amount of analysis behind the scenes, before they actually make a decision to align with some community. That may be pardon me fake.

Charles Vogl
Right? Well, that's why I want to distinguish that approach from the alternative, which are people who see their in building community. But often, their only goal or overwhelming goal is to extract something from us. And usually, that's our time, attention and money. I already know exactly how many organizations you want to get involved with Greg that call themselves a community. But what they want from me is your time attention and money. Correct. But usually, when we approach with an extractive goal and community building, it's going to be short lived. And often the bragging isn't actually about building community. It's about lists lists, the people who showed up lists of people who spent money, lists of people who give us their attention. There's nothing wrong with lists, but in my work, that's not a community. And we call those organizations that brag about having community, but really, they have largely lists, Mirage communities. And we have to distinguish that because when I talk about a community, and people are thinking about Mirage communities, and my work becomes irrelevant, and they're confused, how I'm an expert on this stuff. And so my work doesn't promise that it will necessarily generate revenue. But but everybody I know who's run a successful organization. And, you know, I know people have run globally famous organizations this point, they know that for an organization to be resilient in dynamic marketplaces, or things like pandemics, you need to have a team looks out for each other. And Marissa King, who was at the Yale School of Management, and is now at Wharton, has written a fantastic book called Social chemistry, where she articulates the research that shows when people have friends at work, when you have multiple friends at work, that's a community, all kinds of magical things happen for organizations, one of which is accidents go way down. And let me tell you, it's not rocket science, if I'm unsure what to do, and I have friends at work, I asked them, What do I need to do such that we don't create a disaster instead of guests and hope nobody notices that I made the mistake. Right? That sounds pretty profitable me when your team makes way less accidents, because they're helping each other out. When we look at health care, and we look at, for example, the strain that nurses are under, in that makes a big difference when they care about each other. And they're connected, rather than nurses dropping in, and hopefully, they can figure things out in a new place on a new chef. Right. So this is extremely valuable organizations, but you need to be mature enough to understand that this is an investment. Not necessary, like marketing, where you put money in and look for the money come out. But you are building a team that can handle a changing industry. And I've noticed the organizations that reach out to me are usually have certain criteria. One is their high stakes outcomes, which is often code for people die if you get it wrong, you know, health care is one of them. They're in dynamic market, they're in dynamic contexts, which is to say the, the manuals from 2018 no longer apply. And lastly, they're competitive, which is to say you can't be lazy and expect everything's going to work out. And that's why those brands that you listed use my work because they're in those contexts.

Greg Voisen
Well, defining factors. So, you know, I mentioned to, obviously Patagonia and Lululemon. Yeah, but could you for the listeners because your definition of a brand community is significantly different than what maybe others might be defining as a brand community? What it'll help our listeners to have some real world examples. So look, it's it's I realized that I said, Patagonia, I said Lululemon, what are some of the others that you think are shining of xiP examples of making a difference and helping people to really connect to solve some of their own person little projects

Charles Vogl
I'll say that I really admire the investment that Airbnb has made. You know, they almost invented a whole new industry, which is to say, individuals inviting strangers into their home, that they meet on the internet. That didn't happen at the scale. That does now before everyone views on the size scene, and I know that they've made a global investment in creating communities, specifically, among their hosts. And they do that a number of ways. First of all, they've they have community builders that are tasked to a certain regions to integrate hosts with each other. And when that happens, those hosts can support each other as the market changes. My favorite example was, there were more Chinese tourists coming to Australia than before. And it turns out, Chinese tourists wanted different amenities, rice cooker slippers, that kind of thing. But the Airbnb hosts were aware of this. And Airbnb couldn't track the trends as fast as the hosts on the ground. But because there was a network there of hosts that were trying to support each other, the hosts were able to support each other. And of course, it built the business and even more importantly, made the experience of these families who are hosting much more smooth. And I'm actually attended an Airbnb host Summit, where Airbnb brings together hosts, and gives them experience where they can learn from each other, they can learn from the lessons that headquarters has learned as learning from and the organization actually learns, what do our hosts need to be successful in the contemporary dynamics of the market. And when I tell you, if you're a competitive Airbnb, you're gonna have a hard time catching up, when the people were providing their inventory, feel connected, provide the real world information that the company needs to build the right tools. And there's a feedback loop going around where that those people providing inventory are getting the resources they need to adapt to an ever changing market is very, very impressed.

Greg Voisen
That's a that's a, that's a good example. I mean, I asked you, for example, that's about as good as you could, you could really give people to show how the Airbnb hosts came together to solve a problem and help one another, to solve this problem. And I think that's good. Now, in the book, you know, you discussed empty versus meaningful engagement. You stayed that meaningful engagement experience only by members, not organizations? How would you measure the depth of meaningful engagement? And can you reference in your case you referenced Yelp, who was able to create a meaningful engagement? And I think, you know, look, if I'm lonely, and this is an epidemic in the United States, and I'm seeking somewhere to belong in a community, I'm going to want to have huge meaning from that not emptiness, right. And, you know, I think we dance from community to community, because we don't really resonate or find out what that community offers in the way of support or what it is that one might be looking for. And sometimes, and I'd say most of the time, I will say this, it's the people that have the highest degree of emotional intelligence to be able to connect us together.

Charles Vogl
There's definitely skills on how we can show up when other people are together, since we can connect with them. As far as ensuring that there's a meaningful experience, I'll say that we as hosts, are inviting others to come together, be it an Airbnb Summit, or just a gathering of soccer players, we need to make sure that our participants experience what I call the three promises, whether we want to or not, we have to deliver three promises. And the first is that they have freedom to come or not come set differently. There's no coercion involved. I can invite you to my home, Greg, maybe to beat a bunch of other authors. But as soon as I coerce you and say, If you don't show up, Greg, we know you're not a team player. And that's going to impact like, that's no fun at all I do is take with freedom. Right? All right. So there needs to be freedom, no coercion. The second thing is, when you show up, Greg, you need to have an opportunity to connect with the other people there. In the conversation you want to have or said differently, I better not prescribed that entire time with people talking in a microphone or, or fulfilling an agenda or mining you for information. I gotta give you freedom to have a conversation where you can connect with those other authors. And the last thing the connection is is the second part. And then the last thing is, you need to grow in some way that you want to grow, personally. And in my work we say, it helps you grow into be who you want to be. Because I know you're a successful podcaster. I don't know, whether talking about new technology, new formats, new search, optimization, new interview techniques, I don't know which, or any of those are going to be helpful to you. Those are all very different talking about microphones and talking about questions. But if any of those help you grow in the way you want to be a Media Creator, then that would help you grow. And those are radically different events. So one things we can ask is, when I invite Greg to something, how am I making sure I'm delivering all three promises? Because if any of those is missing, no question, are you freedom to say no connection when he's here, and growing in some way, if I miss any three of those, any of those three, that event is now lousy, and you're probably not going to want to come back.

Greg Voisen
I would agree with you on all of those. I think that that's a nice elixir, those three, and I and I look at examples. You know, I look at my age difference between you and I is pretty severe. And I was speaking with my son who's 40. And he goes to these Fit for Life meetings with Aubrey Marcus. And it's a community of people that do cold plunges and talk about spirituality, and they connect. And every one of those three elements that you just spoke about, is what is offered to go to one of those events. He that's why he's going back. Right? And he keeps coming back. And I always wonder, though, from a gender age perspective, are there differences between what might attract somebody like myself who's 69 years old? Sure, to an event versus somebody who's 37 to 40 years old to an event? Because I'm most likely, maybe not going to attend a fit for life event,

Charles Vogl
you want to jump in an ice bath?

Greg Voisen
I don't mind but probably not? Probably not?

Charles Vogl
Well, that's, that's a great question, Greg. Because the works that I'm talking about these principles work broadly, quite frankly, around the world. It's up to us as the hosts to understand what our participants longed for. And inevitably, there are power dynamics to consider their cultural dynamics to consider and then aspirations of growth. I mean, the way that you wanted to grow at 30 Greg is very different than where you want to grow now. So I'm going to invite you in it better look different. And because we haven't spent time for me to understand what how are you hungry to grow? And and quite frankly, by the way, that could simply mean just make friends and other people who are successful media makers, that might be enough for you to grow in the ways you want to grow. Right? You don't need anything laid out in a platter, you just want those relationships? And if so then getting in a room with there's pizza and cold beverages might be enough might be, right. So I can't speak to you know how it's different between you and your son. But I can say if I think I wanted like Greg and your son to an event, I better understand in what ways do you want to grow. And

Greg Voisen
that's the point I was trying to make is that I think there's such a diversity out here and building a community. There are so many communities that are built, but the ones that are long lasting, and do something, let's just look at it. As a Rite Aid, AAA supports people that are having pain around alcoholism, it's been around since the 20s. It continues to grow and support people. And that's because there is a pain point a problem. But I think that all of us has a pain point and we join a community as a result of in your case, you're saying nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone. If that is the case out of 400 plus million people that means there's 200 million people out there that are seeking some place. Oh, it's far worse than

Charles Vogl
that, Greg? Oh, you are right. And it's far worse than that. According to latest research, half of Americans have three friends or less. And one of the six American men have no friends. Think about that. Greg, when you go to the grocery store, and you look around half those people do not have four people to call, who are friends to provide a favor. Right?

Greg Voisen
That's, that's an eye opener.

Charles Vogl
And the reason that's important is we need to understand that's how much hunger there is around us, for us to get good at bringing people together in ways that matter. Yeah. And when you're from the people around you have between zero and three friends. If you create those pizza events, if you invite people to sit on the beach at evening and they make two more friends because they know you, that is a life changing shift.

Greg Voisen
Well, one of the things that your book addresses obviously, is how social media influences this and social media. As you said, it's fantastic for promoting community or an event. A, I'm attending an event Saturday as a result of somebody sending me a flyer on social media. But it's, it's lousy at knitting together relationships to create a deeper community. And I always tell people, you know, is it breadth or depth? Granted, my podcast reaches a lot of people, but how many people are really going to pay attention to the podcasts enough to go buy the book, and dig into it deeper? And that's the same thing with us as souls walking on the planet? How are we going to make a deeper social connection? How does social media management differ from the core work of building this brand community? And I mean this sincerely from the standpoint of most people, and you said it 20 minutes ago? Oh, well, Google, and Facebook, and these other acts? Well, they may be thinking they're building community. I will tell you, I think many of them I'm gonna make a bold statement. I think many of them have done more to create more divisiveness. Yeah. People than they have to create community. And research on that. Yeah. And so, look, if if Elon Musk says, hey, look, I have a platform here. I can let anybody say anything. Now we're talking about our rights of freedom of speech. You know, this is very complicated, very messy. Right? How would you address this building a brand community versus having social media be a place for that, too, is a con, it's actually a duality. In my case, I look at it as good and bad.

Charles Vogl
So this is where the term recipient is important. Because I think a lot of people who brag in some cases, brag to my face by building me online are really bragging about a list of people who are following them. And there's nothing wrong with a list of followers. And it's a list of followers. It's not a community, if we define community, my work as a group of people who share a mutual concern. I don't know when people listen to your podcast, Greg, but I pretty convinced that there's at least 100 of them, that you don't follow regularly to make sure their kids are safe. And, you know, their home was warm guarantee. And they're not going to call you when they have a moving day, because maybe you'll pack some boxes. Right, right. You know, social media is fantastic about connecting us with lots of people who don't care very much at all about us. And we know that the research shows the original research was done in 2013. But I think it's the true still holds today. largely speaking, if not entirely, the number of followers we have on social media does not improve the quality of our life very much or at all, at all. And we know that a single digit number of friends in our immediate space radically improves the power of our single digit of friends and in our immediate space radically improves the quality of our lives. Yep. So when we understand that, how that's how it affects our lives, it's pretty clear where we want to invest our energy. And quite frankly, I'm off of social media. The research showed to me that it makes my life worse. And so I don't want to test anything, it makes my life worse. And I spend a lot of time sitting and sharing meals with people who live around me. And my life is fantastic. And I often think about the friends in my area, who are going through tough times, which could be a financial challenge, medical challenge, a family emergency, and I make sure that I reach out to them and that we spend time physically together. Because that's what actually makes my life and their lives rich. And I'm not distracted by people who don't care about me. Well,

Greg Voisen
you know, if you say something quite fascinating, not too long ago, Dan Buettner was on here with the Blue Zones cookbook. And I, I look at the work that he's done through National Geographic and looking at longevity, whether it's an Asian community or a Greek community, or whatever it is, and you look at the factors that are there, and everything you've just mentioned, if you made a comparison between a Blue Zone, right whether the blue zone was in Asia, where the blue zone was in Greece, yep. The similar factors about a religious belief or spiritual belief, let's just call it spiritual belief, not religious. A close knit community of people caring about one another. A diet and we're getting into the diet part because you're about health, where the group the vegetables, fruits, vegetables are grown together in community frequently and share A community, right? So we're going back to the old days when the farmers here in the United States used to do things like that, which now it's all industrialized. You look at also movement, these people moved right now, and I'm maybe not taking this off track. But I'm kind of come back to the main point here about the community, those sense of communities and the length of time those people stayed together as friends. Okay, just, hey, here's Charles, on the other side, how long is a friendship going to last with somebody in that community that you got? It was significantly longer than anywhere else in the world? Right, these blue zones, Blue Zones in particular? Which leads me to this next question. You know, you had a section of the book about understanding the stages of community maturity. And you tell a story about Alison Lee Lee, is it at Fitbit. Understand that she needed what you needed from her founding members? Right. Now, I used to be a Fitbit, where I'm not anymore. Can you relay the story of what people and who they're really trying to build a community community need to understand from the story? I think the story was fascinating. You actually

Charles Vogl
haven't reviewed that story in well over a year, and so they can't

Greg Voisen
remember. Okay, mine. Okay. Well, it's not fresh in mind, either. But I will say this, that this particular woman, from what I remember about the part in your book that was like, there was a little slice, and I don't have the physical copy of the book. So I don't have a means to get to it very quickly here, knew what it was to really build a community. And she did so successfully. And I look at all of these companies like Garmin and Fitbit and Google Watch and Apple and whatever. Let's take apple, for example. Do you believe that Apple has been a successful company. And this may sound rhetorical, because when I say it's gonna sound silly, built brand community.

Charles Vogl
That isn't part of their success. You know, when we're talking about one most successful companies in the history of companies, I think there are many, many dissertations talk about what went well and poorly. And also about just the time in history,

Greg Voisen
let's just talk about the Apple Watch, and how it builds community with other people that, you know, they're doing look, because Strava that's an app that people use it ride a bike, or they do physical exercise, they actually try to compete against one another for health, fitness goals and reasons to that. So going down that line, we have companies either investing millions and millions of dollars to try and build wellness communities with inside of their company. So people will change behaviors, so that there'll be fitter and won't ultimately, in the end cost the company more money and medical claims costs. Let's face it, this is a huge industry has been for some time and continues to grow.

Charles Vogl
So I can't speak to the success of those we call virtual fitness communities. And I'm very suspect about their efficacy. And how much of that is about being part of the community. And the truth of matter is helping Americans become more fit is a Herculean challenge. And nobody's figured out because the first person who figures out would be a gazillionaire. Yeah, in a year, you know, so that nobody's figured it out. People are bragging about figuring it out. But there's a lot of evidence they have it, right? Because if you take the 1/3 of Americans either are diabetic, or on the way being diabetic, and you had a way to turn that around, we would all know about it. My wife is in that industry. And that's how I know nobody's figured it out. Because there's a lot of desperation to do that. Other part of the apple experience that I'm familiar with, and I could talk about community is the success in resourcing and organizing brand fans to help one another, and to be a resource to new Apple fans. So in a long, large part of Apple's history, and I think this is still true if I have a problem with an Apple product, which can be very complicated given the software. There are many people in the internet who will help me or have written a resource to help me, but I've never been on Apple's payroll. Right. And there's a couple of ways look at it that one of that is Apple's fantastic manipulator, to get people to do work for them that help Apple customers in this case, Charles. Another way to look at that is they've been able to resource people to be a contribution to the other people in the world they recognize share their values and purpose values, meaning they're enthusiast about Apple's products and their services and they want to be a contribution to others. And you can't do that unless there's a forum to be a contribution. Right. And that there is some kind of training that they can get so that they can understand how the products work. And if Apple hadn't invested in that, at all, or well enough that I couldn't find those people to be contribution to them. And, and I just be a frustrated customer.

Greg Voisen
Right? Well, you know, look, the whole arena of brand community learning, you have to be a continual learner and very curious, you're seeking these things out on the internet, you're seeking groups. And I know many of my listeners do this. That's just who they are. You could say for in one case, that the Insight personal growth podcast, is a community of support of podcasts that are around personal growth, wellness, spirituality, and business. And in essence, I think the people that come in are regular listeners to the show. I have built a community in some sense now, where you actually move it to another level is okay, it's great to do a podcast with you and post it up there and then put a blog entry on it and see how many people do it. But then how many people actually make a comment? How many people get engaged as a result of the podcast? Right. So that's, that's the biggest thing. And it's also, as you said, the code to crack to help people mutually kind of connect. And I've not seen very many podcasts that have done a very good job of that. Very good job at all.

Charles Vogl
Well, even those who may do a good job, it's a small fraction of their bigger audience that's engaging. Yes,

Greg Voisen
it is. It's a very small fraction, right, exactly. When you see a list, but my list isn't, if I looked at my list of substantial people that comment, and provide accolades and do whatever, it's a very small subset list to the bigger lists that actually listen.

Charles Vogl
Yeah, my guess is it's no bigger than 4%. That's

Greg Voisen
right. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah. So you know, this book that you have, I believe, is really fundamental for people in organizations and or individuals that are seeking to build brand community because you actually kind of go through. And at some degree, there's, it's a little bit of a historical perspective about how this is this has grown on the internet and how it's built and the way in which you and Carrie have approached it. Could you provide the listeners with three takeaways from the book and also tell them about the you have some great worksheets that you've included in the back of the book, to help them in the process of building a brand community? And I think they're really quite helpful. You know, I looked at those worksheets, I looked at the questions that you had. And I think, for my listeners, yeah, go buy the book, just if all you wanted to do was build the brand community and have the I'm gonna call it the template, or the fundamentals of what Charles was talking about. It's in those worksheets. Can you speak a little bit about him?

Charles Vogl
About the worksheets? Or you said,

Greg Voisen
takeaways from the book? Well, it's a it's a compound question.

Charles Vogl
All right. Well, unfortunately, I haven't reviewed the worksheets themselves in some time, I know that when we wrote them, we put a lot of time knowing that knowing that people really care about this stuff, and it makes sense organizations, I know, the first worksheet here I'm looking at is about selecting your founding members aren't really understanding when I'm being started the beginning. And there are people who want to go approach to join me in creating community, be that enthusiasts or professionals or work along to recognize what are the qualities I'd be looking for, so that I'm not investing in people who just are fundamentally compatible with what we're trying to do? And long list of there that you can,

Greg Voisen
can look at how do you correlate that, Charles to people that go on a Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and support some project and build community around the support of that? How do you look at that? I know, this is again, a very weird question, but not really well,

Charles Vogl
I think this is really important. We need to not conflate ideas. You know, my work is very specific. I care about people caring about each other, and then getting all the results that happen when we're surrounded by people who care about us. Not Most of which is we're more resilient, more powerful, you know, a list of donors, or a list of new customers is great. It's just not what I'm talking about. Okay. And, you know, someone who would want to, you know, if 100 People are willing to buy your product, because you listed it somewhere. I think that's fantastic. I don't know that's a community that sounds like a list of customers to me. And I hope you have a bigger list next year, but that's just not what I'm talking about.

Greg Voisen
Now. I get it. I totally get it. And I think that's fundamentally where you draw the line. And it isn't like an Indiegogo or Kickstarter or any kind of thing where somebody's going to crowdfund, really, you're talking about it the true essence of this very meaningful understanding, helping one another as a community. I but I, but I also think, and I'm not certain of this, I'm just going to use my own take on this, that there's kind of levels inside these brand communities. Absolutely. We call those inner rings. Right, right. And so what are those inner rings, because the inner ring is going to be tight knit group, kind of a less, less tight knit group and a real loosely knit group. You know, it's

Charles Vogl
a little bit more complicated than that. And it's important when we're inviting people in and organizing to understand that. So every community that we'll talk about mature communities, right, and you mentioned earlier that you were admiring how we talked about the evolution of communities. So when we finally have a mature community, what usually happens over years, we always have visitors, people who don't know if they want to join, they don't know what we're about. They don't know what our traditions are fine, but they're still coming by. And they need to have a particular experience, then we have people who are novices, where they're new to the community, and they don't know as much and so they may not be that involved, and they largely want to be participate because they want to grow themselves. And we have what we could call designated members, people who have crossed some kind of threshold, so that we know really clearly that they're inside, and they know how things work. Then we have elders, and those are typically the people we find who are teaching. So if you're part of a sport community, there are people who are teaching how to do the sport. And then the people who are largely learning, there's some gray there, obviously, but you're not usually teaching unless you're an elder in the sport. And then we have what I call the principle elders. And these are the people who are often the deciders of what is community about. And very often they have the power to decide, well, who's who's allowed to be in and who's not. So for example, if I'm on your, if I come to your podcast community, Greg, and I'm really there just to get more leads for real estate business, you probably don't want me coming around very much. It's you're trying to bring people together to become better at creating helpful media. And if what Charles really wants is a longer list of leads, then he shouldn't be here. And at some point, someone should ask for us to leave in that case. Well, the principle elders, usually the one who has the power to do that. And the reason it's important to distinguish this is you have to treat them differently. Right? Someone who's an elder needs an opportunity to teach, because they're past the part where all they want to do is learn a new trick, learn a new method, learn the history. And I my guess is at your age, Greg, you're involved in organizations where you want to contribute to the maturation of people who are not as experienced as you are. Exactly, exactly. And if I don't give you that opportunity, because I don't recognize you, as an elder, you're gonna leave, you're gonna find somewhere else to do that. Whereas when you showed up at 25, you're looking for the way to teach other people you're looking to figure out how do I get my foothold in this industry or sport or, you know, region. So that's why we have to distinguish so that we, as the hosts recognize, okay, they need different things, let's give it different things. And then as you said, some people are connected. So we call those segments. So if we were you and me, Greg, were to create a podcast community, some people are gonna talk about health, some people may be talking more about spirituality and sacred spaces. Some people may talking about more about extreme sports, there may be crossover when we all be talking about health and community. But clearly the extreme sports people are going to have more tight bonds and more commonality than they are with those talking about spirituality, you know, on balance. And that's okay. That's what it looks like. As long as we have shared values and purpose, in this case, want to create media that helps people grow. We can come together. And we just, we just recognize the segments.

Greg Voisen
Well, when you're building any community, I think fundamentally, what's so important is the motivation for doing so. The driver behind that, right, because anybody out there today with a computer, and an account, can go start a community and start getting people excited about this or that or the other thing, right? Fundamentally, though, in your case, the way you're defining brand communities, is you have a clear definition of the types of individuals and the motivations behind them, or lack thereof, meaning, not having a motivation to extract as you said, dollars, my attention, right, these kinds of things. And I think, you know, most people realize, and they're aware enough and astute enough and aware to understand it, most of the stuff that's out there, a lot of it It is about how do I get your attention? How do I extract your dollars? You know, how do I do that? How do I make a transaction, there's a big difference between a transaction that someone might create this way through a brand community, then somebody who's really genuinely interested in supporting you, with compassion and support and love like you're doing in your community, you've done a great job of defining the difference for my listeners this morning. And I think for all of my listeners, if you want to hold the book up again, we could tell you to go get a copy of the book, we're gonna put a link in Amazon, building brand communities, if you are thinking about it. And you like fundamentally, what Charles had said about building a community, what I would call with huge meaning, right, huge meaning is the key here, versus just a community to extract another name and get a resource so that you can go prospect, someone else, you probably should buy the book, and take a look at the way that he's done it. Any parting words at the end here, Charles, want to leave listeners with? Well,

Charles Vogl
my understanding is your listeners show up because they want growth, right. And it sounds from what you described, to be bigger contribution, people in our time. And we all need to be remember when we're out in the world, that we are surrounded by people who are all together living in this loneliest era, maybe of human history. And so we are surrounded by people who want us to get better at connecting the people around us. And when we do that, even at seemingly simple, innocuous ways, we can radically and do radically change people's lives. And that's available to us all the time.

Greg Voisen
Well, you have done a great job of explaining it, the book does a wonderful job. For my listeners, either go out and get the art of community or get this book building brand communities. Either way, it's going to give you a sense of what you would need to build a meaningful community. One where the motivations in my estimation, were not financially driven. And I would say that, but are more about a social impact that you could make in some community, whatever that might be. I know people talk about social impact investing, I've had people on here. So what they're doing is they're saying, Oh, I'm investing my dollars to make things better for a certain community of people. And I get that. And I think on the other hand, it's meaningful to give money to a nonprofit, because I have a nonprofit. And I respect and honor everybody that gives that, but it's really truly, exceptionally meaningful. If you actually participate, like you did in the Peace Corps, to actually go make a difference and pick up a shovel or put build a building or do something else. That's why I always said that Jimmy Carter's foundation for the building houses for people was just a wonderfully concept it built community. It brought people together, you were working for a good cause it just had all the elements and factors that you that you'd want to have inside one. So thank you for your time. Thank you for making this place, a less lonely place for us to be in by building communities with meaning and significance, compassion, love and understanding. I appreciate that.

Charles Vogl
I'm delighted to be here, Greg. Thanks for inviting me.

Greg Voisen
Thanks, Charles.