- Three strategies to quickly create
a startup community in your city.
That's what this video is about.
If you're starting off,
or you've been in your city for a while,
and you feel like you don't know anybody like you,
then this video is for you.
It's something I'm ridiculously passionate about
and something I discovered a few years ago
when I moved back from living in San Francisco
to a small town in Canada where I grew up, to raise my kids.
I realized I knew more entrepreneurs
in every other city in the world
than I did in the city I was living in.
After a year of finally figuring out
the routine and schedules with my kids,
I thought to myself, I've got to get to know more people.
So I went on a mission.
First, it started off with a Facebook post.
I posted on Facebook,
who do you know, who are some of the entrepreneurs
that are growth-minded that you admire in this city?
And I was really surprised that
there wasn't a lot of responses.
There was maybe a half a dozen names mentioned,
but I figured there's got to be hundreds,
I mean, I live in a town with a 100,000 people,
they've got to live here.
And I started picking up the phone and calling people,
and I quickly realized that nobody had the list,
so I wanted to create the list.
The list of the people,
to me growth-minded meant
that you had aspirations to double your business
within the next three years.
So, I started building this spreadsheet,
and over a three week period,
I cold called 179 entrepreneurs.
I wanted to get to know them.
I got their names.
I sent these cold emails that pretty much said,
hey, I'm Dan Martell, here's my cell number,
I've got a quick question,
I'm free now if you have five minutes.
And people would actually respond, it was ridiculous.
And I sent this to some of the most
notable entrepreneurs in the city.
And what I was trying to accomplish
is just try to understand their story.
What were they passionate about,
why did they start that business?
It was really important for me to
find people that I shared values with
so that I could then invite them to something.
And what I did is I created an event
and I would suggest,
this is the first thing I'm going to suggest that you do,
you can create a dinner or an event,
but you can also create both, at the same thing.
So what I did is I created an event.
I called it the East Coast Kitchen Party
and it was 48 people that I felt needed to know each other.
Out of those 179 conversations,
I whittled it down to 48 people
and I created these tables of eight.
And it was a dinner, and I promised them three things.
One, amazing food.
Two, incredible people that you're going to meet
that you don't know.
And three, a speaker that's going to amazing.
So regardless if the food was bad,
a guarantee the speaker's going to be amazing,
but I knew all three were going to be great.
And I did charge them like 80 bucks
just to cover my costs
because I wanted to get them committed.
And I brought those people together
and I'll tell you what happened as a result was incredible.
We had an amazing speaker,
a woman named Shaa Wasmund.
If you don't know her, check out shaa.com.
shaa.com
She came in and she delivered a message
about how we really need to start looking at the community
and giving back, and people that have had success
need to take an active role in
mentoring and sharing with others
and she challenged everybody at that dinner
per table, before the night was done,
to agree on a date and a location, a restaurant,
to meet again in the future over the next four weeks,
and everybody committed to doing that.
I can't tell you the impact that it had in our community
and personally on my life.
Where now I feel I have a peer group
of people that I never met before
that are now good friends,
people that I recently took vacations with,
people that I call when I'm having a struggle
and I want to bounce some ideas off of,
and I feel like I've really found a new sense of community
in the city that I grew up in.
And I want to share with you guys those three strategies
in this video.
The number one is obviously create an event.
Figure out either a dinner, it could be eight people,
it could be as elaborate as I did with 48 people,
it could be maybe just a meetup,
a technology meetup with other tech entrepreneurs,
whatever it is,
just create some opportunity,
some reason to reach out to people
and bring them together.
The second is,
reach out to notable people.
People in your community that own the car dealership,
own the malls,
people that you read about in the newspaper,
older people, I call them the elders.
Folks that you may not necessarily
have a chance to come across throughout your day
because I feel like
those are the people that have experience,
that have been building companies,
maybe second, third generational type companies that
really have a passion for upstarts,
people that are just getting going
and bring those people together,
so notable people are really important,
they're part of the, to me,
the ingredients that need to go into creating this event
to make it spectacular.
And the third thing, I think that is most important,
is to play matchmaker.
One of the things that I love to do when I organize dinners,
I did a video recently on creating Founders Dinners,
is I love to introduce people that I know
should know each other but haven't met yet.
So what I did when I created this dinner,
is I asked them,
hey, do you know this notable person, that notable person,
usually the answer came back,
well, I know of them, but I've never met them.
So what I did is I put them together at a table.
I really tried, and this is though,
because again, I come from a small town
and there's only a handful of
growth-oriented entrepreneurs.
I really tried to make sure that people at the table
at least 50% of those people out of eight, so four,
they didn't know it would be the first time
they met those people.
And I even assigned a moderator,
there's a bit more structure,
but I really don't think it matters as much as
creating the event, reaching out to notable people,
and playing matchmaker during the dinner.
And it could be as simple, again, as a dinner
or as elaborate as an even like I did.
Doing that for you, as an entrepreneur, in your community,
will really help you
create that sense of community
especially when you don't feel like you know people
or you're having a challenge
it gives you a reason to
kind of bring people together
and create a lot of value for everybody.
I don't think there's one person that would have said that
that wasn't one of the most spectacular nights of the month,
if not their year,
I know it was one of the number one things I did that year
that really helped me feel
a new connection for my city and my community
and an opportunity to give back to a lot of people
that had gave back to me,
all these notable entrepreneurs,
even though they weren't official mentors of mine,
what they created in this part of the world that I'm from,
really inspired me to go out and live a bigger life.
And that's what I want to challenge with you guys,
is to live a bigger life and a bigger business.
I want to thank you guys for watching this video.
Leave me a comment below.
If you plan on organizing something like this,
to create a startup community,
let me know what it's going to look like,
if you've done this,
tell the story in the comments below.
I read every one of them, and I respond.
I would love to hear from you,
and I'm excited that you're here watching these videos,
I'm really grateful
and I'll see you next Monday.