Role Models

10 online tribes I am proud to be a member of

November 22, 2014 by Thomas Z Lukoma Leave a Comment

Over the years, I have become interested in the concept of building a platform to amplify a message, service, product or movement. After sitting on the fence and soaking in content but not doing anything with it, I decided to create MoreThanAHut Solutions to force myself to DO. I needed a real life vehicle through which I could implement the ideas that I was reading about and see how they worked in the ‘real world’.

As I tried out my ideas on my early set of clients, I realized that one of the most important things to identify upfront before embarking on platform building is the tribe that you are going to engage. Find a group of people that buy into your vision and have voluntarily decided to follow you.

Without a tribe, your platform is merely a soapbox and probably will not gain much traction.

Today I thought I would pay homage to ten online platform builders that have or continue to inspire me about what is possible. There is a diversity of methods used to build and engage their tribes, but the key component that is a unifying thread across all of them is that they consistently create compelling content.

Their content has certainly compelled me.

So in no particular order, here they are:

#1 Steve Dotto of DottoTech

I never thought there were other people in the world that got as excited as I do when I discover a new to-do list app – until I discovered Steve Dotto. He has a YouTube channel that has become my go-to resource for finding out about all the wide variety of apps and techy tools that get me excited to explore.

Its not only his content that I find compelling, but the way in which he delivers it; he really loves this stuff and I find a kinship with him each time I watch one of his videos.

Yes, I know … I’m weird.

#2 Ramit Sethi

When I originally read Ramit’s blog, I was turned off by the very thing that eventually enamored me to him – his ‘in-your-face’ brashness. I mean, who calls their blog ‘I Will Teach You to Be Rich’? But thankfully, behind the initial image, there is a significant depth and resonance with his ideas about personal finance.

Perhaps the thing that I admire the most about Ramit though is his masterful use of email marketing – I have never experienced anybody else who has such a deep understanding of segmentation and building a funnel of marketing through email. What I like about him is that everything he does is based on experimentation and analysis, so its not just fluff but ideas that have empirical data behind them.

#3 Tim Ferris

My introduction to Tim’s platform was actually offline. His bestselling book The 4-Hour Workweek was an encyclopedia of ideas that challenged my status quo and what I thought was the way things had to be. I read the book at the same time as a colleague of mine who is an even bigger tribe member than me (she refers to him as ‘Timmie’) and we still reference ideas from his book today.

His online tribe is where the real magic happens though – he was engaging with his tribe through his blog even before he wrote the book.

#4 Daymon Peterson @ Daym Drops

Daymon Peterson is a regular guy who’s funny that decided to make his own ‘gourmet reviews’ of fast food. He took what started out as a way to quell his boredom by shooting ‘home reporter’ videos and grew it into a major platform that now includes hosting a show on the travel channel doing what he loves on a larger stage. It all started by his own unique way of describing a french fry in this review he did of Five Guys Burgers.

“You bite the fry and the fry bites back! That’s when you know you have an OFFICIAL french fry.

#5 Fake Grimlock

At the time of publishing, I think it is still true that only a handful of people know Fake Grimlock’s real identity. He has successfully built a following on Twitter with an alter ego because he has a unique delivery of content that actually has a lot of weight and wisdom with it. He is also an illustrator, so providing visual complements to his ideas helps. I was so fascinated by his work that I signed up for his Kickstarter campaign – and he did not disappoint.

Here is one of the goodies he sent to me during the campaign that I still have up on my wall:

#6 Joe Penna a.k.a Mystery Guitar Man

I don’t need to say much about this guy – just watch this:

#7 Michael Hyatt

Michael Hyatt literally wrote the book on Platform Building. His book, along with Seth Godin’s Linchpin, were the starting framework for my ideas around platforms and impact.

#8 Rhett & Link

If these guys don’t make you laugh, I don’t think much can. I was introduced to their platform by an appearance they had on the George Lopez night-time talk show where he showed the video below that was made by them. At the time, their claim to fame was that they made high quality local video ads for small businesses.

They have since grown their tribe to millions of viewers on their YouTube channel, which includes a daily show called ‘Good Mythical Morning‘. If you haven’t seen some of their epic rap battles like here and here – then you are in for a treat.

#9 Sacha Chua @ Living An Awesome Life

I love Sacha’s blog. It is an eclectic mix of creativity, art, geeky topics and most important of all – sincerity. I was honored to have a Google Hangout with Sacha almost two years ago and can say with complete confidence that she is the same person in person as she is in the blog – she truly values learning and sharing above all else. We spoke about platforms (this was around the time I was really trying to figure out what platforms meant to me) and I pointed her towards Mike Hyatt’s book. Since then, I have seen her expand into doing more with Google Hangounts and continue to engage her tribe in interesting and novel ways.

#10 John Stepper

Final contribution to #wolweek from @JonHSAUK it is from @johnstepper excellent book pic.twitter.com/xnfm21IV1B

— Helen Sanderson (@HelenHSAUK) November 21, 2014

For the past three years, I have recieved an email in my inbox every Saturday morning from John’s blog that I look forward to reading. His consistency of publishing a post once a week to that blog is what has cemented his presence in the mind of his platform. I just recently helped him launch a separate website to build out a movement that came as an offshoot of his blog and with the momentum he has behind his book, I am excited to see his tribe explode in growth and impact.

#11 to …

Though I listed ten platforms here, there are numerous others that come to mind, so this is not a definitive list, but just the ten that have had the most significant impact on me in the recent past. My goal is to dig a little deeper into them and study the ways in which each of these platform builders charted their course – with the hope of distilling more ‘nuggets’ for you on how best to build your own platform and thrive.

Madiba

December 6, 2013 by Thomas Z Lukoma 2 Comments

I remember in my second year of high school in Botswana, we had a history teacher named Mr. Wilson who was determined to help us gain an appreciation for the importance of understanding the past and its impact on the present. He didn’t want us to just memorize the information for the purpose of passing the tests – he wanted us to care about the content and make it our own.

One of the ways in which he achieved this goal with me was a series he took us through about three historical figures: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. With each of the figures, he took us through their background, how they rose up in leadership of a movement, the sacrifices they had to make and ultimately, how they changed the world.

I remember reflecting on how interconnected these three historical figures experiences were with each other. Martin Luther King Jr. was greatly influenced by Gandhi’s ‘non-violent’ approach to protest and the earlier part of Mandela’s leadership applied the same principles. Prior to his civil rights work in India, Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa where he developed many of his political views and methods fighting injustices in Mandela’s native land.

All three challenged a ‘status quo’ that at the time seemed insurmountable and ultimately triumphed, not because of their wealth or military power – but because of their strength of conviction which caused a movement of people to rise up that eventually could not be ignored.

In 1989, when we studied these figures, two of them were already dead and the one who was living was still serving an unjust lifetime imprisonment sentence. We did not even know what Nelson Mandela looked like because all the photos released of him at the time were pre-prison.

Our visual image of him was the young man in his 40s with a part in his hair that we saw on all the ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ posters. So we studied him like a ‘past’ figure because we did not know if he would ever be released.

So I remember very vividly the following year when it was announced that he would be released. Our school came to a standstill as everybody let it sink in – that day no class really studied – we just rejoiced.

And then on the day that he was released, we spent several hours watching a television shot of a gate as we waited for him to emerge. There were several delays and it only built the anticipation of who he would be after all these years.

Was he a frail old man and a shadow of his former self?

Had he lost his regal stature and magnetic draw because of the unmentionable horrors of imprisonment?

Would he be bitter and seek revenge on his now vanquished tormentors?

Thankfully, the answer to those questions was no, no and absolutely not. He emerged and lived an amazing ‘second chapter’ to his life that most people could not manage in a single life. From uniting a country that was on the brink of civil war, to bringing Africa its first World Cup, his imprint has resonated throughout the world over the past two decades.

Even within my family his impact has been tremendous. I think this post by my sister this morning gives a very good summary of the breadth of his reach. I love the picture that she used in her post because I am so thankful that our visual image of him today is that imprint that she used when she designed the jacket – rather than the ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ posters we grew up with.

This post was originally posted in my personal blog @ komasworld.com.

Google Hangout with Sacha Chua

May 28, 2013 by Thomas Z Lukoma 2 Comments

On Friday I had a Google Hangout session with one of my favorite bloggers, Sacha Chua, who writes the blog “Living an Awesome Life.” This was a new experience for me in reaching out and networking with a fellow writer who I have been following (and admiring) from a distance. Despite my nervousness prior to the Hangout, it was an awesome experience (pun intended).

A few weeks ago, I made a concious effort to engage more on the places that I have an online presence and so far I have found the experience to be quite rewarding. Part of that experiment is to actively comment on blogs where the author is covering a topic that I care about and feel that I can contribute to the conversation.

In Sacha’s case, she blogged about some questions she was asking herself about the direction of her blog and I felt that a lot of the issues she was reflecting on were in line with the Platform theme I have this year. So I wrote a long comment in response to the post and was quite surprised when she offered to do a Skype call or Google Hangout to discuss the topic further.

I did not know what to expect when I joined the Hangout on Friday but she immediately put me at ease with her calm and humble nature. We covered a wide range of topics at the beginning of the call – from some of the challenges of communicating with family that lives overseas, to how much we both love learning new things.

When we moved into the meat of our conversation, there were three key areas that we covered:

One: How can Sacha reach more people while staying true to her ‘brand’?

A consistent theme that emerged while talking with Sacha (and something that I share with her) was her desire to remain authentic to her ‘true self’ through the process of building out her platform. For her, building her platform is not about fame or increased profits. She genuinely loves sharing with people about things she learns and helping those people ‘live an awesome life’ in whatever way that means for them. She has a good income from her offlilne consulting work and doesn’t feel the need to focus on monetizing.

Although she is already very active on the main social networks and has a pretty good following that she shares her thoughts, ideas and help with, I recommended Michael Hyatt’s book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World as good reading for thinking about all of the aspects involved in building out a platform. The book has a lot of focus on building a platform to mass and monetizing it – two things that I know are not focuses for Sacha right now – but I thought the framework he provides would be a good template to use.

Two: What type of things make sense for Sacha to ‘package’ from the topics she covers in her blog posts?

In addition to the book suggestion, my personal recommendation for Sacha on how to reach more people was that she looks for ways to ‘package’ some of her content into ‘bite size pieces’ that people who are not blog readers could consume and still get the ‘essense of Sacha’. Some of the work she does with Sketchnoting is an excellent example of this and she has already had a very positive reaction to one of the topics she has started packaging in that way.

In addition to sketchnotes, I suggested she consider creating free ebooks on some of the other areas she consistently covers on her blog like ‘The Quantified Self‘ and her ‘5 Year Experiment‘.

Three: How can Sacha help people who are starting out or trying to be more consistent writers / bloggers?

The last topic we spent a lot of time on was sort of a ‘therapy session’ for me. Sacha asked how she can help people like myself who are either starting out with blogging or desire to become more consistent in their writing. My honest answer was that I didn’t know what would help since I was still trying to work it out for myself.

We spent a long time talking about what we both agreed was the root cause of a lot of the main struggles in becoming more consistent (The Resistance) and something Sacha said stuck with me and I think will help me going forward. I asked her how she keeps to such a prolific posting schedule and whether she ever feels a pressure that she is going to let her readers down if she doesn’t post.

Her answer was that she would be letting herself down.

In addition to a forum for sharing, Sacha really sees her blog as a holding place for her thoughts because she doesn’t ‘trust her memory’ and because she sees the blog that way, regardless of whether or not somebody reads a post she puts up, she continues to write because it helps her work through her thoughts and organize them. This perspective on the process of blogging is very freeing because it helps me to avoid some of the second-guessing and perfectionism that makes me inconsistent.

As a practical follow-up to our discussion, Sacha is going to pilot a Google Hangout session in mid-June and I agreed to participate as one of her ‘guinea pigs’. I am looking forward to that session and using it as motivation to get back on a consistent schedule so that I have some good questions for her during that talk.

This post was originally posted on my personal blog @ komasworld.com

How passion works in guiding your path

March 26, 2013 by Thomas Z Lukoma 1 Comment

“Follow your passion”
“Your gifts will make room for you”
“Do what you love and the resources will follow”

A few days ago I had an interesting conversation with a junior in college who called me because she was distraught about how many rejections she was receiving for her applications to internships. She was baffled by what was going on and was seeking advice on how she could generate more success in the process.

On the surface, she was doing all the right things. She submitted her resume to all the right companies. She had an internship the prior summer that told a good story about how she was a good fit. And her academic major was in the right lane for the jobs she was seeking in Financial Services.

Something wasn’t quite adding up.

So I decided to ask her a few questions, starting with the easy ones like ‘what is your GPA?’ and ‘what do you do for extracurriculars?’. This helped me to identify some reasons why she may have not been seeing the success she expected.

But the question which really helped me to diagnose the problem was when I asked her:

“What are you passionate about?… what do you really want to do?”

She started off by answering about how passionate she was about ‘Sales and Trading’ and how she felt her skills and background really made her a good fit for this… but I wasn’t buying it.

So I rephrased the question:

“What do you geek out about?… what is the area in which you get consumed to a point that is almost weird to other people?”

“Well, I would say development.” Because of prior conversations I’ve had with her I knew she was talking about economic development – specifically in Africa.

“Tell me a little more about that.”

“I don’t believe microfinance is the answer…”

“Really, why?”

For the next few minutes we had an engaging back and forth dialog that culminated in me commenting:

“I bet I could get you into a heated argument about microfinance and you would enthusiastically take me on.”

This was nothing like the discussion we had about Sales and Trading. With this topic it was clear that she truly cared

… and I was buying it.

So I asked her another (somewhat leading) question:

“Do you think you are on the path you are on because its what you see everybody else doing and not necessarily what you are here to do?”

“Probably…”

“And, do you fear that if you followed the Development path, you wouldn’t make any money?”

“Yes”

I could now fully relate to her dilemma because of my own journey.

‘Inspirational’ phrases like the three quotes at the beginning of this post have been a source of continuous anxiety and stress for me for years. I have never been able to fit my skills, experiences and interests into a neat box. This is especially stressful coming from a traditional African family where only certain academic pursuits are considered acceptable to pay attention to, while other things that are more artistic or unconventional are seen as impractical and a waste of time.

My situation was compounded by my strong interest and aptitude in Math and Science because I was just as strong in the ‘hard subjects’ as I was artistically. So it was not a simple choice where I should focus. I was not like my older brother who knew from his early teens that he wanted to be a doctor.

In fact for several years I wished that I was horrible at every subject but Art or Drama so that it was more obvious what I should spend my life doing.

But there were no such easy answers because when you have interests and passions that don’t naturally line up to an existing ‘career box’ you always feel like you are fumbling around in a dark room trying to find an ever elusive light switch.

For years I searched for this light switch using different approaches:

pursuing architecture because I thought it would be a natural blend of my art and science skills until an internship after my freshman year where I realized it was the wrong path
diving head first into Film Animation as a major in college because I had never experienced the validation of an artistic pursuit being my main focus
applying to (and landing) a job as a management consultant because I wanted to ‘keep my options open’ in terms of career paths and a career in animation was not viable for somebody who needed a work visa to stay in the country
operating a freelance writing business when my management consulting career ended abruptly until I realized that I did not enjoy the stress of ‘cranking out’ writing projects on spec
a failed career as a mortgage broker at the height of the real estate boom in which I realized I was no good at commissioned sales

I could list several more examples of my journey, but the main point is that somewhere along the way I realized that I was trying to find a light switch that did not exist – I was trying to solve the wrong equation. I thought that I needed to figure out what career path my passions translated into and then I would catch my stride.

One of my current favorite bloggers, Sacha Chua, calls this “the myths of a sudden calling.”. In a recent article, she articulates my ‘light switch’ odyssey very well:

“When people wish for passion, I think what they’re really wishing for is certainty: the knowledge that this, here, is exactly what you are meant to do, that intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world values. The certainty that this is the best way to spend this moment in time, and the ease of not having to make yourself do something or fight distractions.”

“Passion doesn’t strike out of the blue.”

Reading this article was a confirmation of a change in my approach over the last few years that I have found to be much more successful. Rather than trying to predetermine what ‘box’ my passions are indicating, I have surrendered to the understanding that passions are more like a flash light than a light switch. They illuminate just enough of the path ahead for you to move forward without giving you the full picture. But as you move that flashlight around, you discover more about your purpose and it becomes easier to determine whether you are veering off course, or whether you are operating closer to your ‘sweet spot’.

Passions on their own are useless though if you don’t do the work of focusing, creating and shipping.

You have to deliberate less than you act.

You have to experiment more than you plan.

And you have to see failure as a source of educational data, rather than an embarrassment to be avoided.

My final piece of advice for my college junior friend was that she has to pause whatever path she has followed to this point and take a detailed inventory of where her passions really lie. And then taking those passions as a starting point, she has to face her fears and take actions that will give her useful feedback about her path. Over time, these series of steps will start to form a clearer picture of her purpose and she will be able to use each experience to inform the next successfully.

I find writing is an excellent way to do this kind of inventory – so I suggested she do a “stream of consciousness” piece of writing and see where it takes her.

I am sure she will surprise herself with what she finds out.

This post was originally published on my personal blog @ komasworld.com

Angst and The Resistance

March 20, 2013 by Thomas Z Lukoma 4 Comments

Last night my daughter was reviewing her homework with my wife when my wife noticed that she had not done the writing assignment correctly. It was a very simple assignment that she had done several times before. She was given a list of words and she had to create three sentences that used all the words.

In her first version of the assignment she had used the wrong form of one of the words and ignored using some of the others.

So my wife asked her to do it again and the tears began to well up in her eyes:

“But its too hard”

“Why won’t you help me?”

The ensuing soap opera lasted almost an hour. She went into her room and sat staring at the paper but writing nothing and complaining about how it was too hard.

Her younger sister, trying to be helpful, suggested a strategy:

“Why don’t you think about something you like and then write about that.”

Her suggestion was met with indignant venom “I tried that already and it didn’t work!”

I doubt she had.

So I made another suggestion:

“Why don’t you take out a blank piece of paper and write out a few sentences to try out some different ideas.”

More resistance: “I already did that”

“When?”

“When I first wrote it.”

“So you haven’t done it this time around?”

“No.”

“So take out a piece of paper and try.”

So she took out a piece of paper and I left her at it. Several minutes later when I returned, she had written one sentence and couple of words but was back to pouting.

“This is too hard. Why won’t Mummy help me?”

In the end, my wife told her that it was up to her whether or not she did it, but she would have to face up to her teacher tomorrow if she didn’t do it. This morning it was unclear whether she ever did the assignment.

Besides the inherent melodrama of an 8 year old, what was going on here? My daughter has had an ease with words since she could speak. She reads at several grade levels above her own. And almost every day she writes a story and gives it to us as a present.

The issue was not that the task was unreasonable, or too difficult. The problem was not that my wife refused to help her.

I believe her problem was The Resistance (or as Seth Godin refers to it, the lizard brain).

The Resistance is that part of our brain that aggressively fights against you every time you want to create something or do a piece of work that really matters. The Resistance hates art because art comes with risk. Art comes with a possibility of painful rejection if somebody does not like what you made. If somebody does not like the work that you poured your heart and soul into.

The Resistance believes that its noble cause is to protect you from that pain so it puts at the forefront of your mind the possibilities for failure and minimizes any vision of success.

When my daughter was faced with the simple task of creating something new The Resistance made sure she forgot about all the times she had done this before and convinced her that it was too hard.

But this is not an ailment that only afflicts 8 year olds – it is something that I constantly struggle with and watch other highly talented and intelligent people fight.

It comes in the form of procrastinating on moving an important project forward by focusing on imagined future roadblocks instead of dealing with the work that needs to be done now.

It comes in the form of overloading your schedule with a long list of important things to do, when you know in the back of your mind that you are avoiding that one piece of writing you have to do or that one phone call you have make.

It comes in the form of never giving yourself time to pause and reflect because you will realize that you are putting up smokescreens.

Writers call it writers block.
Salespeople call it call reluctance.
Busy people say they are overwhelmed.
Perfectionists say they have to do some additional work on it before its ready.

What they are all saying without using the words is that they are scared.

Scared of their own potential to make an impact.
Scared of their own ability to change the status quo.
Scared that if they truly stepped out and did the work, they would become accountable for the results and people would expect them to keep producing. But because The Resistance has convinced them that they are inadequate, they fear that even if they are successful the first time, they will be unable to repeat the results.

My daughter was scared.

And I am often scared.

But I am learning that if I am truly going to live out an authentic life that reflects my true potential, I have to fight The Resistance and win.

The good news is that The Resistance is much more bark than bite. It can be countered by taking some simple steps and building habits around them.

Step One: acknowledge The Resistance and expose it for who it is. Make a point to start watching yourself and questioning why certain things that are important to you are not getting done. Ask yourself the question: “What am I resisting?”

I’ll give you a hint … your first answer to that question is probably wrong. Especially if it has nothing to do your emotions and what you fear. Once you start digging deeper and getting to the core of your resistance, you have a good starting place.

Step Two: find evidence that contradicts the fear and emphasizes the opportunities for impact and positive change that you could have if you did the creative work you are avoiding.

Step Three: do the work. Take action and keep taking action. Then ship. Hit the publish button. Press send on the email. Pick up the phone and have the conversation.

Step Three is the only way to truly counter The Resistance. Because by taking action you disprove The Resistance’s theory that you cannot or shouldn’t do it.

This blog post is just as much for me as it is for you. Publishing it is me countering The Resistance and determining within myself that I have things to write about that matter and need to be written.

I wrote this post on my phone during my commute to overcome my excuse that I don’t have time to write. And it worked.

Writing this post is also my notice to The Resistance that I can see what it was doing with my daughter but I will have none of it. I will teach her how to defeat it.

And she will win.

What are you resisting?

For more reading, see Seth Godin on the resistance.

This post was originally posted on my personal blog @ komasworld.com

My sister’s tribe

February 14, 2013 by Thomas Z Lukoma 1 Comment

Yesterday, my sister who passed away last year would have turned 35. Ten days before her 34th birthday, she left us suddenly and for the first few days after after she was gone I kept thinking to myself how unfair it was for her to go so soon. How could somebody so young, who seemed to be finally hitting her stride in her life and career, get snatched away so suddenly. It felt like she had so much left to do.

That was how I felt until I encountered her tribe.

It started with a Facebook page created by one of her dear friends and then a WePay donation account I set up to simplify the process for anybody who wanted to help financially with the costs of repatriating her body to Uganda and other funeral related expenses. Within a few hours both pages went viral and exploded with activity. People shared story after story of how Phina had touched their lives and donation after donation came in from all over the world. It was an overwhelming outpouring of love and concern for a grieving family – but it was also an amazing illustration of the impact one person can have on hundreds (possibly thousands) of people in a relatively short time.

In 33 years she had cultivated a tribe from her early days in elementary school in Botswana all the way to her graduate studies at Tufts University in Boston. Whether it was a high school friend who remembered her from their soccer team, or a college friend who remembered how she took then under her wing, there was a remarkable consistency in the depth of emotional (oftentimes life-changing) effect her life had on others.

And she did it all without having a Facebook or Twitter account. Without having a lot of money to her name. Without coming from a powerful family with connections. In our highly networked and connected world, she was one of the few people who still sent birthday cards and ‘just thinking of you’ notes to her friends and family.

Her wealth was her endless capacity to love others and she did it with a gentleness and humility that is very rare today.

Though I miss her dearly, I no longer feel like she was ‘snatched away’ too soon. I believe that she completed her mission here and her work will live on through all the people’s lives that she changed.

As I reflect on her tribe in the context of my focus on building platforms this year, it is very clear to me that it is not the tools or methods that you use to reach people that matter the most – its your heart and the generosity with which you share it.

This post was originally posted on my personal blog @ komasworld.com