Hi, Jamie here,
Happy Sunday to 57 motivated, ambitious, career climbers living all over this incredible world.
Here’s one quick tip on how to start a professional community that will help you explore new career opportunities.
Today’s issue takes about 3 minutes to read. Enjoy.
Chimborazo, Ecuador
When you decide to make a career transition, you’ll need to develop new expertise and skills, and a new network to help you in your journey.
Today, I’m going to explain to you can create your own professional community to help with all of these things are more.
Unfortunately, most people don’t bother.
People prefer to learn and build in private
They also struggle with their new project or career because they:
Think it’s better to go alone
Like to avoid being vulnerable in public
Belive their existing network is good enough
Prefer to learn in private by paying for courses
I built my own professional network of 100+ professional coaches in less than two months to avoid these mistakes by following a very simple approach.
Here's how you can do it, step by step:
Step 1: Find a topic you’re interested in
You will never fully invest your time and energy into something you’re not truly passionate about.
So find something you’re interested in!
I created my community around a topic that I wanted to learn more about - “Marketing a coaching business”.
Even if I could find just a few people to join me, I’d be:
Sharing
Learning
Connecting
Improving my business
There was no downside.
Step 2: Fish in the right streams
To build my community, I had to find people to join me... So I first worked out where those people were.
In my case, I utilised a group with fellow alumni from my business school where I completed my coach training.
Think carefully about where people like you can be found and use those channels.
Avoid posting or blanket messaging on LinkedIn to your existing contacts.
You want to find new people to work with and learn from.
Step 3: Match students with teachers
I knew I had a topic that people were interested in and I had an initial community of around 20 people.
We could share ideas with each other.
But I wanted us to learn from the best...
My next step was to connect with experts. This meant coaches further along in their journey and marketing specialists.
I used my existing contacts and contacted people I had learned from in the past to ask them to speak on a call with my new community.
If you ask people with expertise, you’ll find that they are often willing to share it. Don’t be shy to ask.
My community went from 20 people to over 100 when I advertised the fact we had specialists coming to speak to the group.
Step 4: Set the ambition
You’re almost at the stage where you have the community you want. But you need to turn the initial hard graft into something easier to manage.
Yes, you’ll need to be active initially:
Connect with members of your new community
Speak to future guests
Be a leader
But make sure you set the intentions of the group.
I made it clear from the outset that I wanted my community to be something that everyone can contribute towards, not just The Jamie Dru Show!
As a result, other community members are now:
Putting forward new ideas
Connecting with future speakers
Offering to cover me as host for calls
Set the intention you’ll get your community functioning as a team, not as a one-person project.
TL;DR
Choose an interesting topic
Find members in the right places
Connect with experts who want to share
Set the ambition for the group at the start
You’re all set to get started with your own professional community.
Good luck!
If you enjoyed reading this newsletter, the best compliment you could pay me would be to share it with others on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Thanks,
Jamie
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