GREAT ADAPTATIONS

COMMUNITY – CONVERSATION – CONNECTION
I’d hate for you to miss it, so I’m going to tell you a story about how everything has changed in our virtual world. It happened quickly, like everything in technology, and now of course it seems inevitable. It is absolutely a good thing. Rejoice!

The Internet has grown up. It was loping along behind old paradigms, while the global community of web users made their way through a bunch of learning curves. Here’s our online world as I see it:

The Three Cs:

Community: The group that belongs to you. You create it out of your own deep interest, your skills, experience, and passion. Your community looks to you for information, honesty, entertainment, and love. Wow.
Conversation: Being yourself, being trustworthy, offering consistent and valuable content, speaking from the heart, facilitating the community’s conversation with thought-provoking questions, responding to their comments.
Connectivity: Your facility with technology. Optimizing what is available so that you are able to create the community and engage the conversation with the greatest possible ease and consistency for everyone, including yourself.

WHAT COMES OF IT:

You can take those three concepts, each an ocean unto itself, and turn them into a very nice living. That’s one benefit. You can also put yourself into it, as I was showing in the definition of Community, as the whole person you are. You can bring your deep love and passion to the table, articulate it for your community, and be paid for sharing your knowledge.

WHAT IT TAKES TO DO IT:

Thanks to online teachers like Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, and Jeff Walker, among quite a few others, this process is being articulated so well we can all have access to it now.

Short version of the answer: It takes your interest – elevated to a passion, an investment of time (investment can be translated to focus and commitment), a few dollars (most of it is free), some soul-searching (as in “what am I really all about?”), and courage. Nothing more. But you can’t get out of the soul-searching. You will have to give it up from the core. That’s what makes a community love you, trust you, and want to pay you for your knowledge. And that passion I mentioned? That’s what carries you, and makes your imagination, creativity and innovation available.

WHAT’S YOUR PLAN?

So now that you know that you can learn to present your offerings to an eager public and enjoy your own online community, what are you gonna do? It’s good to have a plan. Make a short list with little steps and don’t forget your breathing. Just step out there.

Suzanna Stinnett