I was talking with the people who were building up Twitch, there was a point where they invited a certain number of users to be what they called the partner.
And I was told by a Twitch executive that when they reached out to these people to call them partners, that a number of them cried because the invitation was so powerful.
Hello, and welcome to the Art of Community Conversations.
I'm Seth Resler.
I'm the founder of Community Marketing Revolution, and this series of conversations is inspired by the book, The Art of Community by Charles Vogl.
Charles is the author of this International Best seller, and we are doing these conversations because there is a brand new second edition coming out with 25% more content.
In addition to that, Charles is also the co author of Building Brand Communities, which won an Axiom Business Book Gold Medal, and his work has been used to develop leadership and programs at Google, Airbnb, Twitch, Amazon, and the US army.
He's also presented at the Yale Leadership Institute, the Harvard Law School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, among others.
And so I want to welcome Charles.
Charles, thank you so much for being here.
It's so exciting we get to talk about this and share ideas we think are important to people who wanna learn about them.
Yeah.
I love this book, uh, and it has inspired me so much, you know, and and this concept of community.
Uh, and we're gonna continue this conversation here today because your book has in it seven principles of community.
And we're gonna go through them one by one in each conversation.
But before we get to today's station, or today's principle, uh, you we do wanna point something out that this is not necessarily a checklist.
If you're a community builder or a community manager or trying to build a community, uh, you know, how should people think about this as they approach list of seven principles.
Absolutely, Seth.
You know, the book is, you know, hundreds of pages at this point, and, uh, it has no less than seven important principles, which obviously resonated around the world.
I'm disappointed when I find out someone picks up the book and they think that a checklist of everything they need to do to make a community work, be that a community of athletes or students or coworkers, because that's just ridiculous.
It's true that when we find very, very mature communities been together for decades or hundreds of years, we'll find, uh, levels of each of these principles operating at some level, but, uh, it doesn't need to be that every community that gathers, uh, around loving books or loving, walking in parks has to have all seven principles used all the time.
The metaphor I like to use is, um, if we're making a dinner, we don't go to a cookbook and make sure that every dinner has fried food, broiled food, sautéed food, boiled food, grilled food.
That would be ridiculous.
Uh, you can have a fantastic meal with things that are only baked.
Right? And if that meal is great for you, that's great.
And if you want to be a cooking master if you want to be able to make meals with any ingredients at any place, it would be good if you understood more than one technique.
Can you understood what a broad range of cooking might include as far as techniques? But that doesn't mean that every meal needs to have a long checklist of cooking techniques.
And I think of the book that way.
Also, once you are familiar with these principles, when these things show up in a community naturally, like people want rituals, or, um, there's a different levels of participation in our rings.
You can recognize what's going on.
Instead of just thinking that's curious or funny, you can understand there's a long tradition of these principle showing up.
And you can protect those things when they show up as opposed to, you know, just thinking it's, uh, well, it's a funny thing that's happening.
So I hope that's helpful.
That is helpful.
Uh, in part because think you just took a lot of pressure off my Thanksgiving cooking.
I feel like I don't have to do quite so much of everything now.
Uh, alright.
Let's take a look at the principle that we're gonna talk about here today.
And that is the initiation principle.
And you actually have a definition of this in the book.
So I wanna go ahead and bring that up.
You say an initiation is any activity that's understood as official recognition and welcome into the community The initiation helps members understand clearly who's part of the community.
It marks the completed journey over the boundary and into the inner ring.
And we talked about the boundary principle in our last conversation and the importance of allowing people to visit and then when appropriate shepherd them over that boundary into the community, into that inner ring.
Mhmm.
Can you give me some examples of some initiations that do that in various different communities? Oh my goodness.
There's so many, and I love them.
Uh, so we know that when people go to summer camp, often there's a ritual involving song and costume for people who are new to the summer camp.
I know that when people go to Burning Man for the first time, there's a ritual that's an acted by rolling in the dirt.
The first time someone comes on to the playa to participate in Burning Man and schools around the world.
There's convocation.
Uh, it doesn't have any pure academic function.
But it's the time where they bring students together at the beginning of the year and have a ceremony.
A ritual that says, we are the students, we are the people who are gonna participate together for the new year.
Churches, um, for example, baptism is the of initiation, a formal initiation into a tradition, and we can go on and on and on.
When we talk about initiation, what I like to say, uh, quickly is they don't have to be deeply involved.
Uh, there are very old traditions that have very involved initiations that involve robes and songs and, uh, candles, and, uh, simply just, uh, having a warm hug by an elder that says welcome.
We're so glad that you're choosing to be part of our community or our group can be a profound initiation.
One of the things that you talk about in the book is symbols and tokens and the role that they can play in initiations.
Talk a little bit about what those are, you know, and what you mean by and what you mean by tokens.
And then give me some examples.
So symbols are a representation of a values and idea that's relevant to a community.
So, you know, the military is a great example because there are lots and lots of symbols, and there are lots of patches and insignias.
They all have a great deal of meaning.
And, uh, I think everyone knows that there are units in the military that it's a great privileged to wear the symbols of that unit after earning a place, uh, after selection and certain level of training, um, in all branches of the military.
And so the symbols indicate both to the the person who's being initiated, and if people understand it outside to the world that they're formally part of that community, but it's actually not important that people outside the community recognize the symbol.
In fact, there are a lot of organizations that have relatively secret symbols in the sense that they can those symbols can be in the world, but others don't know what they mean.
The reason symbols are important initiation is a token is a type of symbol that we give to someone that they can take with them that represents that relationship.
And, you know, most people I talk to have a token of a relationship sitting on or inside their dresser that was given to them, uh, by someone they care about, uh, maybe in a very, um, innocent, not very intentional way, but that rock or that coin or that souvenir from a trip has become a symbol of the power of that relationship.
When we understand the power of symbols and the power of tokens, which are symbols we give to someone to take with them to represent relationship, tokens are often a very powerful part of initiations where the person who, uh, is welcomed in is given a token to take with them to remind them of that relationship.
And in the book I write about my journey to become a peace corps volunteer where I had to leave my family, leave the person I was dating, uh, leave the work I was doing, and then I literally traveled to another continent, started learning another language, spent months in training, and there was a day where there was a ritual where I would become a peace corps volunteer.
And at that ritual that involved someone from the state department, I was given a pin with the peace corps logo on it.
And that pin was not special from any other pin, the these were logo on it.
You could buy them probably buy the hundreds, but that particular pin was special to me because it was the pin I got on the day that I was formally uh, made a peace corps volunteer after months of training and changed my whole life to do that.
And that was a token I could take to remind me that I was part of the peace corps service.
One of the reasons this becomes so important and you talk about this is you talk about the crisis of belonging.
And this idea that, uh, sometimes people feel like even though they they do belong in the community and they are welcome in the community, they don't know that, or they don't feel that inside, or they almost have, like, this sort of imposter syndrome about that, and that these symbols and tokens can do a lot to alleviate that.
I mean, talk a little bit more about that.
Well, when they're missing, Seth, it can be very confusing to people, uh, are they really an insider in I'll give you an example.
When my wife and I moved to the West Coast, after graduate school, and we were looking for a church to be a part of, and we were attending a a very large church in the San Francisco area, We hadn't formally been part of a church for years because I had been studying a religion at, uh, graduate school, and so was really deeply involved in spiritual studies and didn't need more of that on the weekends.
And, uh, I wasn't really excited to then become a member or at least, uh, explore membership.
And this church didn't have a very sophisticated way of doing that.
They invited us to go to this room on the grounds and literally fill out a car that I think was a three by five car that asked for a name and, like, our number.
And then once we filled it out, someone said, okay.
Well, you remember.
And I just remember, uh, noting how lame that was.
There was just no welcome There was no sense that I was invited to something new or there was acknowledgement that, uh, you know, this is a commitment we were making to participate and contribute to live out, um, a sense of community with other people who were participating.
It was literally just filling out a little a little form.
We weren't looking for something grand, but if you could imagine if there was just, um, you know, exchange of words of meaning between an elder in the in the church at us, if there was a token that was given to us that acknowledged that, uh, we had spent time considering what we were doing and wanna participate more.
If there's a series of events, even once a month that said, here's a new member series that we have so you can learn about the history of the church or how it's structured and how you get involved, that would make a profound difference when we want, uh, others to feel really connected to us after they've considered and thought, wow, I wanna grow with you in whatever that way is.
Educationally, athletically, politically, uh, civically, we want them to recognize that we recognize that this is a commitment on their part at some level.
And that, uh, after they've committed, at whatever level they are that something has changed.
And so providing them some kind of token doesn't have to be valuable.
It can even be profoundly symbolic.
It could be, for example, it's an athletic event and, you know, you're gonna be wearing bandanas when you're hiking.
That's a perfectly good symbol.
Just something that reminds them that, uh, there's a connection there.
It's a signal to the to the world and to the person.
And, yeah, you know, I I don't know why I thought of this as you were speaking.
Um, one of my favorite movies is Ocean 11.
You know, the with the, uh, the remake with George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
And I'll never forget listening to the DVD commentary.
And the whole idea is it's a heist film, and the first half of the heist film is them kind of practicing and working out how they're gonna do the heist.
And then they actually start the heist.
And I'll never forget, uh, in the DVD commentary saying, you know, we realized that there was a scene missing, and it was a small scene.
It was just a scene that said, we've moved, we're no longer in the practice run and setting up for this heist.
The heist is now begin beginning.
And and so they went back and they shot this, maybe five second scene with Carl Reiner where he's just like, yep.
Okay.
Let's go.
And I feel like in some ways, that's kind of an analogy to what you're talking about, where there is this moment, this initiation where you go, okay.
Yep.
You're done visiting.
Now you're in, and and let's go.
And you need a scene or a symbol or a token or something that says, yeah, it's on.
This is happening.
Yeah.
Another way to describe the same thing, Seth, is we need a punctuating moment that acknowledges the transition.
And, you know, I see it like this.
I'm afraid people get hurt, think that I mean something really grand.
People just think rituals need to be, uh, dramatic, and they don't be.
And I love the fact that you picked a an example where in the narrative that they were trying to tell, it was a five second scene, but just indicated, okay, something has changed.
And it punctuates the preparation, uh, to the execution.
Uh, you mentioned just a moment ago that the symbol is a sign to the world, it can be assigned to the world.
And for example, military insignia are.
Uh, maybe even a P score pin is.
It doesn't have to be.
If I'm part of a swimming group, we talked about swim swimming groups last time, you know, it could be that, you're given a swimming cap, uh, once you've agreed to six months of training with the group, right, or you've agreed to pay dues, whatever it is you're with the group.
And the rest of the world may not recognize what that swimming cap is.
But that transition to swimming cap will remind you when you go swimming or prepare to go swimming that, hey, I'm part of this other group of people that swims.
And in some level, we're in this together.
And that can be enough.
You know, I come from the world of music.
I'm, you know, former radio broadcaster, and one of the places where I have seen that there isn't, uh, an initiation is in fandoms.
And so you have these debates over, oh, I was fan way back when before they were big.
This had the other thing, and somebody else will say, you know, oh, no.
No.
No.
I'm a true fan, even though I just came to the party recently.
Uh, and what I noticed is missing is there is no line of demarcation.
There is no initiation.
No activity that says Now you're an official fan before you were just kind of in that visitor ring that we had talked about.
Uh, are there, um, you know, what happens when you don't have that initiation? What do you see? So there's two levels of your question.
Uh, the first one is why does it matter that someone knows that there's a demarcation with fandom? And my guess is when you were noticing the arguments about who's the true fan, The reason that was relevant at all is there was a sense of who's actually contributing to the success of the music, uh, and even the enjoyment of other fans, like, who's bringing costumes or or making the concerts more fun or ensuring the band is getting promoted in ways that are helpful in their markets kind of thing.
And if you're not, if you're just a consumer, like, you're not a true fan since that you're part of this community that wants this music, this lifestyle, this identity to thrive.
And part of being a fan, certainly a hardcore fan, is finding a community.
And what I mean by that is gathering with people who we believe share some of our values.
A lot of choosing our music is about choosing a tribe or finding a tribe.
And I think your point is good one that there's no initiation in the sense that there may be a question is someone, well, when do I really fit in with these cool kids? At what point do they really welcome me as a peer and understand that I wanna contribute and I'm enthusiastic about this lifestyle or identity? And so when we don't have a new initiation, There can be that longing with someone who is showing up, who is contributing, who is making sacrifices to participate, but they don't know.
Like, am I really part of this? Are they just allowing me to show up and not asking me to leave? Which could be fine, but many of us want people who are participating with us and making sacrifices to feel that they belong and recognize they belong.
And we may be in a place where we recognize that they do belong, but they don't get it because there's no associations.
Big question there.
And so what we see happen is, uh, people create their own initiations, uh, something that, uh, we don't intend to be initiation now as grasped as that.
So for example, when I was talking with the people who were building up Twitch, some years ago, there is a point where they invited a certain number of users to be what they called the partner.
What that meant was they had a different relationship in creating content for Twitch.
And this had nothing to do in the minds of the Twitch administrators on how real these Twitch users were.
It was just a matter of acknowledgement that they were creating something good enough that, you know, Twitch wanted to collaborate with them to make sure their work continued getting made.
I was told by a twitch executive that when they reached out to these people to call them partners, that a number of them cried because the invitation was so powerful.
Well, here's the thing.
These people were already making content, and it was already on Twitch.
And they were already members of Twitch making content that was of quality.
But the invitation from headquarters was still so meaningful they cry.
And what was going on there is it told them it told the content creators that you are actually a part of this and we value you even though their contribution hadn't Well, how much more powerful would it have been if Twitch had been able to offer that acknowledgement without having to choose this very special relationship but had just provided initiation to people creating content earlier? It costs almost nothing and it was profoundly meaningful.
And it was honest.
Right? These are people who are, uh, contributing.
So we can recognize when there are people contributing who look like they wanna be part of it that we have a very simple, maybe even inexpensive way of punctuating their relationship so that they know they're part of it.
And we just call that initiation.
When you're talking about the tokens, for example, um, I assume it becomes really important that the token is only available through the initiation.
So let's say, for example, that it, uh, I join a community and they give me, uh, you know, like a a patch to wear on my, you know, jacket or whatever.
I assume it becomes important that that patch is not something that I can just go to Amazon and buy.
Right? That it is So Seth, that would be ideal.
Uh, so, for example, of, you know, that I'm a term piece of our volunteer and I travel around the world often to sacred sites.
And there's a certain kind of hat that I like to wear because I can crush it.
It goes in my bag.
It's the color of dirt, so it never looks dirty, and it gives me a lot of shade when I'm in hot places.
And I could buy a hundred of those hats online tomorrow.
Uh, if you were to start dirtying with me to sacred sites deep in the jungle, Seth.
I can imagine a time where, uh, you schedule time, you spend the money, you get the insect repellent.
And sometime on the fourth day, I say Seth, uh, instead of someone who just casually says, you know, they wanna go to see architecture you've gone to the deep places full of mosquitoes with us to honor these places.
Uh, here's a hat that I've learned over the years.
It's been very helpful in keeping me safe and comfortable when I'm going to faraway places I'd love for you to have this because you've shown yourself to be a really committed supportive companion in this lifestyle and in this journey.
And my guess is, uh, I've said that correctly and you really want to travel with us, that hat will have special meaning to you because it came for me, uh, in this particular relationship, even though all your neighbors could buy one tomorrow, which is to say it's not important that it is absolutely unique because who it came from and the relationship that it lived in makes it special.
It could be more special if this hat had embroidery on it, maybe even a coated phrase, a quote of a adventure we like, that we knew it's, uh, source and its import, but no one else did.
So it is great if they're unique, and it's not necessarily, uh, required.
Is there value in taking people who have already been initiated into a community and sort of renewing their creation.
Uh, I think about, for example, people who renew their vows when they get married.
Uh, is that something that you see happening in communities? Absolutely.
Uh, but you'll need to call it a renewal per se, although that's a perfectly good thing to do.
We you could just call it an honoring of their commitment or their participation.
So, you know, if you've been traveling with us for ten years, there's every reason that that at the ten year mark, we take a moment around a campfire, open a bottle of whatever it is, Seth likes to drink.
Maybe, uh, pull out our hats that we wear when we're in the sun fighting mosquitoes and, uh, share a toast.
It says, you know, Seth, uh, this is acknowledged that for ten years, we've been going to far off places that are important us to honor the people and the places that, uh, we think are sacred in our special to us.
And that could be really powerful without having to you to ask you to renew your commitment, if you will.
But the idea here is the same, which is that, um, you know, sometimes people aren't sure whether they belong, and even through an action like that.
Because sometimes things change, you know, things evolve.
Things move.
Other people come into the community or or leave or go or whatever.
Mhmm.
And so people, you know, just because at one time, they have a crisis of belonging doesn't mean that they'll never have a crisis of belonging.
Sure.
And an action like that can just do the same thing that the original initiation did, which is that reaffirm them that yes, you belong here.
Right? Absolutely.
I think it's a great idea.
Uh, you know, later in the book, we talk about rites of passage, and one right of can a passage can be, uh, going from one inner ring to another.
And my guess is if we've been traveling to sacred sites for ten years, you're at a place where you're helping others do that safely and, um, respectfully or said differently, you're now an elder teaching others.
And, you know, one ritual we could have is acknowledging that you have grown to be this person who's now supporting others in finding sacred sites and, uh, creating experiences there that are meaningful for them.
Is there anything that makes an initiation not work or less effective or Oh, my goodness.
Mistakes you can make? Oh, my goodness.
Seth.
Absolutely.
So the first one which I see all the time is people who mistake giving of a symbol.
They mistake that transactional.
I see that in corporations a lot where the corporation will print, for example, hoodies with their logo.
Then these are hoodies that cannot be purchased, right, because they're made internally by the company.
They wanna give them to people who've really helped the company, maybe volunteer to events or help promote or something.
And the hoodie could really work great if I came to you and I said Seth, we've been really working hard to we'll just talk about this.
Share ideas of community around the world for people who are feeling lonely, wanna bring people together and do that powerfully.
You've really participated in that.
We know you've helped us reach thousands of people.
We know you've made a difference.
Please have this hoodie that, uh, we've printed so that it'll remind you that we're connected and when you wear it, you'll know that you're participating and reaching people around the world in ways you think are important.
Like, that could be powerful.
Right? Cause it's a monitoring.
Another one could say, hey, Seth.
Because you helped us promote this thing, um, here's a hoodie.
And what I've done is I've made that transactional.
You're getting a hoodie because you gave me or did something.
And that absolutely destroys the warm feelings we call it internal motivation that you had in participating because I'm making it look like I'm just dealing your contribution down to the value of a hoodie.
30 when you may have spent days and days preparing and sharing it with your networks and talking warmly about this, you know, when you're out in the world, and that's all worth way more than $30.
And I made it seem like, hey, that's worth $30 to me because I'm giving you a hoodie.
And it just drives me insane when I see people confuse promotional materials, like things with logos on it, with honorific, uh, gifts.
That's what makes a token a token.
Right? Mean, is that it's a symbol of something and that when it stops That's right.
That's not transactional.
It becomes transactional.
That's really interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
So what other mistakes have you seen? Uh, another one is to make something so extravagant in the effort of making it fun that it becomes silly and it doesn't have any meaning.
So I was advising one organization that had brought together people from far away who were very important to this company's mission.
And these people were not strictly employees of the company, but they were participating in an important way that's important for this company to have a footprint.
It wasn't Yelp, but for example, Yelp reviewers.
Who do a lot of reviews, yelp needs them to be successful, but they're not yelp employees.
That would be a good example, but it wasn't yelp.
And they invited me to this event they'd hosted to celebrate and educate and honor these participants And they created this event where they had us go downstairs and the employees of the company created a hand bridge that we all walked through while there was cheering going on.
And I can imagine that was fun.
It except nobody knew what the meaning of the Handbridge was.
We were told that it was something that the company just liked to do.
And so it just came across as silly because we were all adults, not at summer camp, and we were at this global multibillion dollar tech company with people creating a hand bridge and cheering with no meaning.
So one of the mistakes was they didn't tell us what the meaning of the action was.
And the other one was that it was so extravagant and silly.
Like, we didn't know how to participate or what to do with that, whereas they could have picked something far more subtle and then given it meaning, and that would have been more powerful.
Alright.
That's great.
So, any other mistakes pitfalls that we should watch out for that you've seen? Another mistake that I've seen is there's inconsistency in when people are invited to have an issue.
Like, somebody may you need to commit for months or years and really contribute, and then somebody else is the friend of a friend and they show up twice and, like, they have the same initiation.
They get the same hoodie, right, or they they're invited to the same event, And then what it does is it waters down the significance of that experience.
Even if it's a matter of getting the hoodie and being invited, you know, to a barbecue, if you see somebody's, uh, boyfriend is offered that after they show up twice, but then we know that we had to participate for two months and showing you how to be safe, you know, when we're outdoors with you, and then we have to show that we're willing to do the research.
Like, it just waters down.
And I've seen that happen.
Where they say, well, these are our friends.
So we're gonna dismiss the standard, if you will.
And that's not to say the standard needs to be very hot.
But if you're gonna have a standard, for example, if we're gonna create a Temple Safari community, And the standard is you need to travel with us for ten days.
You need to show that you can prepare, show that you'll do your research, show that you'll contribute, and that you're not just dead weight in a tourist when you're on these safaris, then that's the standard.
And it's not a matter of the next person who just loves temples.
It's like, oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, absolutely.
Here's the hat and, uh, come on.
Alright.
So that is the initiation principle.
And, of course, the book is the art of community.
We have five more principles that we're still gonna talk about.
I'm looking forward to those conversations.
Uh, hey, Charles, thanks so much for joining me for this.
It's exciting to talk about this, Seth, and, uh, thank you for helping us share these ideas widely
