Do you want to be the kind of space that banks on the fame of your members to attract other members or do you want to be the kind of space that enables your members to become famous?
It’s an important question to ask yourself.
What happens if you do the first one is you compromise the needs of your members in order to attract the famous clients. We did this at Impact Hub by making a not-so-good deal with a startup accelerator. By the time we realized that both the deal and culture fit were bad, it was too late. We were under contract. The community is still recovering to this day.
When you merely try to attract famous members, neither the famous members nor the non-famous feel any loyalty. The famous will go to the next coolest space as soon as something goes wrong or you’ve been outshined (or simply because they’ve gotten too big). The non-famous will feel undervalued, even slighted, because you’re sacrificing their needs for fame.
Contrast that with endeavoring to make your members famous. When you help your members in this way, you are the Linchpin, the connector, an indispensible hub in the network. In fact, Brian Meece of RocketHub is speaking about his experience with this in a few weeks at the GCUC conference.
How do you make your members famous?
It starts with finding out what they need, even if they don’t know they need it.
It ends with a valuable connection to a key partner, mentor, investor, or experience.
Somewhere in between those two, you worked your generous ass off.
