Community Not Competition:
Why do I share some of my best tips for Sex Geeks and business owners? Why do I care -even if you’re not a professional Sex Geek like me- if you’re successful creating a business and living a life you love?
I think it makes for a better planet when people are being more self-expressed and are better able to communicate their wants, needs and desires. Lord knows my Mother and Father’s marriage wasn’t filled with delicious self-expression and collaboration. It was filled with slamming doors and dysfunctionality. And the wisdom I sought out that helped me NOT turn into my parents when I fell in love, also JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE useful wisdom for those of you in more conventional jobs and traditional (or not so traditional) looking relationships.
In the business world, many experts feel and act competitive. We’ve been taught that to get ahead, we need to hoard our ideas, and trample others in our industry. We’re taught to think there isn’t enough to go around and that we must snatch up resources before you do.
That’s the old mindset. It’s a myth that’s been floating around for centuries. But it doesn’t actually give you the biggest bang for your buck. (I said “bang!”)
If I’m spending energy keeping you down, and hiding my best practices, I don’t have as much energy to create new ideas or grow my business. And, if I don’t have powerful peers, I don’t have people to collaborate with, share ideas and best-practices with, or cross-promote with. I have to reinvent the wheel and push the cart myself, and constantly drum up and hustle my own business… I don’t have community. I feel alone. I feel protective. I get stuck in the mentality of scarcity, which leads to exhaustion. The exhaustion turns to resentment… Resentment leads to bad customer service and career burnout.
Sound familiar?
On the other hand, if I encourage my peers, share my best practices and encourage them to grow (and they do the same for me), we all win. There are PLENTY of people who need help with sex ed and relationships. They estimate that in the next 3 years, 3 Billion (with a “B” folks) new people will be online for the first time in their lives (80% of them on Smart Phones, btw, so make sure your business website is Smart Phone and Tablet accessible, people!).
The hypocritical irony of relationship educators preaching for couples to be generous with each other and not source all their relationship needs from one person while we hoard our clients from the lone towers of our business fiefdoms… If we model for our followers that there’s great information out there on a topic and who else to follow, there will always be clients who will want to take more than one seminar, read more than one book on the topic, or buy more than one DVD… Why not send them to the educators you respect? THAT is good customer service!
Back to books… How many of you have more than one book on your favorite topic? How many of you have more than 10 books? 50? I know people who havehundreds of books on a single topic. Once one of us opens the door, people get hungry for more! Show them which doors you like the most…
If we take the abundance mindset, and realize that there is plenty for all of us, and that there is strength AND better business in numbers… Then we can collaboratively grow the market together. The more successful anyone is, the more successful we all can be. Think of the person out front as the one blazing the trail. We’re all blazing trails in our own unique direction, but if we intentionally intersect those trails then we begin to give our clients more choice and more opportunity to anchor lessons and learning, WHILE we get more potential customers to hear our messages. The road becomes less lonely and we all get more “traffic,” so to speak.
For those of you in “traditional” jobs, how does this apply?
When we start being cooperative and collaborative, we tend to enjoy our jobs more (it’s stressful hiding and protecting all the time!) and our bosses tend to love seeing us being helpful. Once our colleagues get over their shock, they tend to want to reciprocate. Think of it like this… Would you rather approach a co-worker who was agreeable and open, or one that was shut down and closed? Which one are you going to want to collaborate with? Which one would you recommend for a promotion?
Yes, there are people online and in the office who will “steal” ideas; who put others down to get ahead. But that catches up with them eventually. And in the meantime, the people who are generous and caring are usually having a better time, are more well loved and respected, and are coming up with even better ideas with their new friends. Ideas they don’t have to implement alone, resenting their customers and colleagues, blazing a trail to Burnout-Ville.
Know anyone like this?
Sometimes we need to be the change we want to see in the workplace. We can set the tone in the office and online. Who could you give a boost to today? How could you help another educator get a leg up, or compliment a co-worker to your boss? It may be as simple as a tweet congratulating someone on a presentation, or a “nice job” to a colleague. I know I love it when people share my newsletters and retweet and share my posts. It lets me know my community is supporting me.
How are you going to build community today?