It’s been over a week since I had a conversation about social entrepreneurship with twenty like-minded individuals in Traverse City, Michigan–people who believe in the idea of "doing well and doing good."

What I took away from that experience:

Lesson One: Dive in, the water’s fine. A Bigger Voice sometimes requires that we act in order to further our thinking. When faced with the idea of presenting to a group of strangers, I found myself clarifying what A Bigger Voice is, in a way I hadn’t before. For months, I had been working on the Crystallize phase of A Bigger Voice Model (formerly referred to as Full Expression.) This includes understanding how my life story has led me to this work, word-smithing what the outcome is when A Bigger Voice is as big as it can be (the answer to the question, "So, what?"), finding the nuggets to hit upon when explaining what A Bigger Voice is and is not, and honing the wisdom of A Bigger Voice (e.g., what makes it distinct and innovative.) These are not small questions. And yet, knowing that I had a deadline moved me into a creative space that helped synthesize all the discussions and emails and message threads and musings over the last 9 months.  On the plane, I wrote down these principles of A Bigger Voice:

•  Do well and do good. A Bigger Voice is about profitability + social good.
• One voice can start a community. A Bigger Voice is intended to serve the innovator with remarkable wisdom. Like any good jazz combo, one individual provides an idea that others can riff off of for a many-to-many conversation.
• Community creates stunning results. The tapestry that’s woven from conversations with others is where the big payoff occurs. What we can create alone is miniscule compared to what we can create together.
• Sustainability requires monetization.  Monetization comes from creating value in the free marketplace. Without this, all the work of A Bigger Voice is for naught–the community, the innovator, the cause is not sustainable.

Lesson Two: Creating a community requires knowing one another. My goal in going to Traverse City was to plant the seed for a community–one that resonated with the ideas of A Bigger Voice. Over half the time spent at the gathering was in getting to know who was in the room–the depth of participants’ passions and their experiences in pursuing those passions. Individuals talked about three decades of building communities, about speaking around the world on the importance of fresh water, about using mentors to lift the poor out of poverty, about exploring belief vs. truth, about changing the ways in which we learn as adults. Can you feel the excitement of being in a room full of people like this?  That’s where community starts. By knowing each other more deeply.

Lesson Three: Communities will naturally shape their experience. During the two hours of our time together, the participants added in pieces to the experience that I hadn’t thought of–as small as standing up while introducing fellow participants, as big as deciding that they wanted to meet again as a group in the near future, as innovative as creating a book club flavor by reading a recommended book before meeting again. It was thrilling to see this unfold before my eyes.   

Lesson Four: By focusing on community-building, ideas for monetization naturally emerge. It was not my intention to make money from this gathering. Yet I came away with a clearer understanding of how A Bigger Voice, when launched as a business, can provide value in the marketplace. I could see where participants struggled, where things felt fuzzy or frustrating, where they were hungry to learn more. These are all clues for monetization. I came back home with a clearer place of where to start creating a revenue stream, and the pieces that would build off of that starting point.

I have a belief that the strongest communities have both in-person and virtual gatherings. It’s my hope that the community for A Bigger Voice will follow this model. Traverse City was my first experiment and I plan to do more. I’m planning on visiting Houston in November, for a similar type of gathering.

Why Houston? The answer goes back to why Traverse City and points to one of the tools used in the Build Community phase of A Bigger Voice–networking. I went to Traverse City because of Dave Murphy, who knew other connectors in the area, like Marguerite Cotto and Elaine Wood, my hosts for the gathering. The three of them tapped into their networks to get the word out about the gathering. In Houston, I’ll be tapping into a friend who I met just last year, a fellow panelist at the Texas Conference for Women, Laura Bellomy.  She’s an uber connector of strong, creative women in the Houston area as well as a blogger.  Laura has been running a tight group, aptly named the Power Chicks, for many years.

Which brings me to Lesson Five: Use your network to kickstart a community. It’s so much easier and more enjoyable.

My thanks to Dave, Marguerite, and Elaine for hosting me and continuing to dream with me. (That’s me with Dave in Traverse City.)

My thanks in advance to Laura for helping me further my dream in Houston.