Lessons - From Refugees to $100M Exit | Lloyed Lobo - Community Building Expert

In this lessons episode, explore why the future of successful businesses will be built around community rather than commodities. Discover how to choose the right type of community based on stage and purpose, understand why clear mission vision and value sustain long-term growth, and uncover how aligning passion with service creates leverage that fuels durable companies. So I want to go into to one more point that you sort of danced around but you didn't get into because you had spoken about you know if you don't love helping people you don't love building people and by the way the camper framework I think is completely valid and makes a lot of sense. So I just I wanted to say like that is something that I think is incredibly useful internally. I love that you're using it for community as well but I still want to go back to community another point on that. So you mentioned if you don't love serving people and helping people don't build community there's other ways to build your business but ultimately your belief is and we're on the same page here that the future of business will be built around community. I think that will differentiate businesses and allow them to achieve levels of success that a commodity based business would not be able to achieve easily and even more so in the future but how do you actually again the question everybody asks you how do you actually build community. So say you're say you're down for this you you you subscribe to it you do want to help people you understand that you want to serve a community you want to make people better than when they first found your product and that's something that you subscribe to you just don't know how to do it. So what is what is that step one for an entrepreneur that starting a company and is like I want to build my company on a community framework what do I do next. Definitely so the first thing to understand is you know I went through those six steps right those are the ethos you need to keep in mind because that's what people create but then after that you got to differentiate and understand the types of communities there are two types of communities one's a community of practice where you're bringing people together who share a common goal of learning about a specific field or a common passion like writing motorcycles and then there's a community of product which is built for users to ask questions about your product get insights and stay connected with the company. So it's really important to start with the community of practice because especially if you're not a product market fit right you're early on it's important to start a community of practice that's what HubSpot did right helping people become better digital marketers or gainside did elevating the profession of customer success and helping people become better customer success professionals if you don't have a product or your pre-product market fit you got to build a community of practice if you build a community of product when you're pre-product market fit and you're hawking your product all the time people might see that as contrived right they're like these guys are just wanting to sell me stuff. So the step one is understanding what kind of community do you want to build do you want to build a community of practice or a community of product and now within each of them there are different type of sub-communities like a pool community or a hub community or and so on what one of the best ways to build a community is where there's person to person interaction not just a one to many so people within the community can interact whether or not that central figure lives or dies right so it's very important to have that personal to person but the step one is focus on building a practice community of practice to elevate that field of learning or field of passion. Number one very important especially if you don't have a product or your pre-product market fit. Number two is a line you know you need to understand the purpose the mission the vision you got to write these down and a lot of people say man you have bullshit things that people write in the wall it's bullshit you can't build a long lasting sustainable company right so for me it's it's funny years ago I wrote down my purpose mission vision values personally and it's it's funny the two kind of companies that I built both and traction align with exactly that right why purpose in life is to enable innovators to change the world why every dollar spending innovation returns 20 to the universe vaccines robots clean drinking water is a function of innovation if you're not innovating you're gonna die my vision is to accelerate that innovation be the accelerant of that innovation so then how do I do it right through content through connections through community to capital so let's unpack that a little bit to provide these innovators one of the biggest reasons why innovators fail is they don't have access to resources simple content connections community capital right and so create a community that provides that and then I created both to provide entrepreneurs to get access to innovation funding and government incentives right so those are companies I built from from the purpose my innate purpose and then the last thing is what are your values I think it's very very important because if you values tell you how you behave every waking hour your your mission tells you what you do every day your vision tells you what you will be as a result of that like what will the world look like right and then your purpose is why do you exist what is the forever but your values are really important and for me my values are impact passion teamwork right those are an empathy key things and so I realized that for me those things are so important it's so important to have impact impact over power and money people who hunger for power destroy relationships people who just focus on money make short-term decisions this is like the like the Wall Street people who focus on impact can change the world so impact passion passion because you know I've seen as oftentimes people would they lack an experience 10x overcompensate with passion teamwork because you can't win alone you win together you lose together great great outcomes are are a result of many people collaborating not just one and empathy empathy is really really important if you don't have empathy you can build good products you can build lasting companies and so you know you need to understand that those two things right what are you building what kind of community what what is the purpose the mission the vision the values because the thing is this those things are important although they're hard because it sustains right you don't build something that start and stop if you're just doing it to get something out of it then you start and stop it's important to internalize what is your purpose and so on then you got to figure out who is your ideal customer profile can I ask you something can I say on the quick before before before you so how did you figure out yours how did you figure out yours and you made sure that they sustained across both of your companies so it's it's funny I didn't make sure they sustained across both my companies it's just my behaviors caused me to go in no but that means that you've found that means that you found things that were valid or else you wouldn't have they wouldn't have so you know I often tell people when you're in an interview don't ask somebody what do you what do you create at what do you not create at just observe them right because people will bullshit anyway but when you observe them so I often found myself what do I love doing we're like even if I didn't get paid to do it and for years I didn't get paid to do it I would keep doing before I started traction I was doing community building at startup weekend I used to facilitate fly on my own dime I ran a pre-accelerator called startup next I was doing all this community support stuff every time that drove me and the things I hated were like you know things that actually paid the bills like doing financials and all that stuff like you know what let me pause your first second like what am I missionary what am I right so so then you realize it and trust me this works right what are the things you procrastinate on you should never do them if every week you hit snooze on your Google Google email like I have this thing where I block either counter times or I mark emails under it and the things that I keep putting snooze on week there's like some stuff that's been snooze for two years almost every week right dude I think exactly what you're talking about I know exactly what you're talking about I have emails sitting in my inbox right now you just said that and it's like motivated me to like just delete them and never talk because I know that I don't want to do the every Friday I snooze like bi awake bi awake right and so you got to realize the most important thing for a founder or any creator let's just say it right is leverage so what are the things that you know you're passionate about when passion meets profession you become Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan right when passion meets profession just think about that for a second when passion meets profession is not work anymore you're Michael Jackson man you love dancing you love shooting hooks right and so you got to find that and for me it was helping others and it just didn't come innately I think it was my upbringing a lot to do with the Gulf War my parents grew up in the slums in India in Mumbai and my mom had 10 siblings they didn't have their bathroom anytime I'd go there there would be some stranger staying in their house because Mumbai is like the New York City of India and I asked them like what do you have the stranger staying here like why you guys don't have room and and I'd often hear that you know if you help enough people get through their destination you'll get to your destination those people may not help you but the karma comes back and so like a lot of the life is what how you behave as part nature and part nurture a lot of it this part nurture right and so I'd seen that growing up and so just very naturally I would do stuff and people would tell me like you know throughout my career like what are you doing like volunteering here and the why are you like wasting it like what are you doing and then I came to a conclusion after a couple of failed startups that this is my life's mission man and this is what I like doing right even now at both now both raise the 23 million dollars USD series A we did a hundred million dollar fund to fund innovation and R&D and all my time is spent running traction everything else I procrastinate on so so you eventually come to the conclusion what do you love doing versus what you're okay with doing and what do you hate doing and if you can surround yourself with people fulfill your gaps so you can do what you love doing then you'll you'll have a happy life forever so that's how I came up with it.