About a year ago, I received a DM from a complete stranger.
One of my followers retweeted an early blog post I had written.
Tanner found it, read it, and reached out to share his appreciation.
“Wow, that’s really cool that he reached out like that,” I thought.
Nobody had ever done that before.
After DMing a bit, it turned out Tanner was building something called, “The Community.”
It was a digital space for a handful of coaches to share their articles, communicate and build relationships. We were all content creators that were pretty “small” in terms of audience size at the time.
One of the “rules” was to show appreciation for other community members’ work.
Retweeting, liking, publically commenting on articles that other community members wrote helped get more eyes on it. If one person from outside of your current network clicked on it… Who knows, they might like it, DM you and build a professional relationship with you.
There was an asymmetrical upside to doing what we were doing. Retweeting someone’s article took 2 seconds but could introduce their work to 200 coaches. Our audiences and impact grew.
It was my adult-life introduction to positive-sum games.
However, I had learned a lesson or two before.
Communities Help
Think back to when everyone didn’t buy everything from Amazon. Back to when you were a kid.
Your dad took you on a trip to “run errands.”
You went to the local hardware store and then over to a small-scale lawnmower shop because it needed to be fixed.
Your dad introduced you to the guy that ran the shop. He was nice, warm, and offered to help as best as he could.
This is what communities do. They support each other and play positive-sum games within the community.
You buy your lawn care stuff from Gino. Gino shops at your hardware store. He supports you, you support him. He helps feed your family, you help feed his.
There’s No Competition if You’re Not Competing
A few years later, my Dad’s hardware store started selling some lawnmower parts. In some cases, he no longer needed Gino. And he could help his own store and buy from himself now. But he still went to Gino. Because there was a relationship. And because he was not competing.
Most coaches think coaching is a zero-sum game. But you can decide if you’re competing or not.
And it’s way more fun to see coaches as friends and not adversaries.
Some of the friends I met in Tanner’s community are around my age and coach hockey. Meaning one day we might be applying for the same job. We could “compete” but instead we choose to “collaborate.”
We write articles together, connect on Zoom, work on projects together and even help each other find jobs.
And one day we are both going to apply for the same job. And one of them will get it over me… And I’ll be excited for them.
I wasn’t always like this. But you’ll feel better about everything in life with this mindset.
Meme Stocks
Building wealth can be a positive-sum or zero-sum game. Look at the “meme stock” trend.
One group wants to play a positive-sum game and help others build wealth. The other side wants to keep it all for themself.
Coaching can be a positive-sum or zero-sum game as well.
We can choose to help others, recommend jobs, collaborate and share ideas.
Or we can choose to keep our thoughts to ourselves, bad-mouth other coaches, and only engage in things that are self-serving.
Who will you be? Let’s frame up the 3rd example.
Hollywood or Silicon Valley?
Are you going to be a “Hollywood Coach” or a “Valley Coach?”
Coaches can learn a lot about the games we should be playing vs. the games we shouldn’t, by looking at 2 industries in California. Movies and Tech. Here is what venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said when he compares his two groups of friends:
On His Valley Friends…
I hear it all the time from people who come to the Valley, from people who come from LA or New York or DC, and they come to the Valley and they join one of these companies, they become part of this ecosystem, you always hear the same thing three years later, which is, I never realized what it would be like to be in an environment in which people genuinely want to help each other.
They genuinely want to help each other advance in their careers in a way where it's not out of:
because they want something from you in the moment
because they have some hidden agenda.
But every entrepreneur has experienced this. You know, I'm starting a company, it's like people come out of the woodwork and say, "Hey, can I help? Can I send you my friends? Can I do this? Can I introduce you to this investor? You're having a security issue. Can I come in this weekend and help you figure it out?" There's this incredible pay-it-forward ethic to the whole thing.
On Hollywood Friends…
Hollywood is famously the exact opposite. If there are two people in Hollywood and they're friends and each of them is trying to make a movie, the famous thing is one of them will happily knife the other. They'd rather lose the friendship than see their friend make the movie.
So like in Hollywood, the reason why they're so mad at each other all the time is because there's only so much financing for so many movies. There's a very large number of people who want to make movies. There's only a small number of movies that are going to get made. And so basically it's like a zero-sum kind of mentality.
Marc on Positive Sum
In the Valley, there's no practical limit on the number of new ideas for tech and there's no practical limit on the number of new startups. And by the way, there's no practical limit on the number of people who can participate. There's no practical limit on the number of people who can learn to write code, learn to do all the other things involved in building these companies. And so there's this sense and a track record that validates this, there's this sense of there's no limit. If I have a friend, and his startup succeeds, mine can also succeed. And in fact, we might succeed together. In fact, we might really help each other along the way. It's a positive-sum view of the world.
Who will you be?
The Community Players you Should Check Out
Tanner disbanded “The Community” to work on other projects and start a new professional position… But the players are still here.
Check out the community members who have impacted me most:
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