Stop Networking and Become a Superconnector

Anything is possible when kindred spirits come together in a community. In this episode of Let's Fix Work, Laurie has a great conversation with a dear friend, a cult legend in the online-community building world, Ryan Paugh.

Laurie and Ryan share how they met, what Ryan’s role is as a community builder, and why communities are essential in fixing the broken wheel that is work.

• After a few years of working for corporate America, Ryan dove into the startup arena where he felt his passion for helping others would contribute more. This was his first step in his epic entrepreneurial journey.
• He created Brazen Careerist, which started out as a community for young professionals looking to find their place in the corporate world. Long story short, Brazen was a success but eventually rebranded into an SAS technology product, which now serves as a peer-to-peer speed networking platform.
• As the product pivoted, Ryan decided to walk a different path. He kept the burning passion to create better communities to support the next generation of highly driven leaders. He eventually became the co-founder and COO of The Community Company.
• Along with his business partner and co-author of Superconnector, Scott Gerber, they went on to build several outstanding communities. You know brands like YEC and the Forbes Council which includes the Forbes Human Resources Council. These are places where members are encouraged to support, engage, and pick each other’s brains.
• Why did Ryan focus on community building? Well, everyone is part of a community in some way or another. We are social beings after all. Ryan believes that in being part of a community, we are given the opportunity to learn and impart vital lessons and experiences that nurture us into the people we are now. He says, “Give,” because he believes that there’s so much more to living than just getting something.
• Networking is broken. People aren’t meant to be boxed up in a simple transaction of give and take. We are much more complex than that. We have feelings, aspirations, and lives outside of the grind. This is why Ryan feels work has more... work to do in a community and culture building aspect.
• Work is broken because it has been reduced to a means to an end; a paycheck for hours, nothing more than a simple transaction of, “if you do this, you get this.”
• As a veteran community builder, Ryan believes that a good community must have an element of trust from the top-down. He dives deep into this “building relationships that matter” philosophy in his book, Superconnector.
• We can make our work communities better. Ryan and Laurie are aware though that most people are still stuck in the old ways and find processes to be difficult to build and even harder to implement, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Ryan Paugh

Superconnector

Twitter

LinkedIn

The Community Company