Why listen to me?

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I have been involved in community building even before Facebook and the social networking phenomenon started. I have close to over 20 years experience building and harnessing actual communities with a deep-rooted insight into the dynamics of group psychology. These experiences have taught me how to create situations and scenarios that best capture the collective power of the individuals to create a synergistic and beneficial environment for everyone. It’s amazing how things start to fall into place, once you figure out how communities work. Today, I would like to share a few of the experiences I have had with you to give you a peek into my past.

My first experience of group dynamics as an African tour guide:

I started out working as a tour guide in Africa where I first learned the importance of group dynamics. These were safari tours with groups of 18 people who each paid a good $12k for a one month tour to visit different sites in Kenya, Tanzania and the outskirts of Uganda. People usually came alone or as couples and hadn’t met the rest of the tour group before. The peak of this trip was a 5 day hike deep into the a mountains that bordered Uganda, Zaire & Rawanda to visit the gorillas in the wild (of ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ fame), this was back in the days when Rawanda was at war and Zaire was a refugee camp.

Although I would agree that most of the people who came to this trip were already adventurous by nature, but the interesting observation throughout my first 6 months was that the passengers either had the time of their life or they would come back threatening to sue the company because the experience was so bad. Because of the living arrangements there was nowhere to hide, making the outcome all or nothing at all, everyone either had a great time or everyone had a poor experience. I found this fascinating. It’s what got me really interested in group dynamics, leadership and the community building psychology.

It was not long before I realized the difference came down to trust. I noticed certain individuals (let’s call them ‘alpha’ people or ‘natural born leaders’) were not secure in their own position within the group, resulting in sabotaging the group leadership which resulted in a split faction within the group that undermined the groups ability to remain positive in trying situations. The groups with the split faction would experience unhappy tours, whilst those without friction would have the time of their lives. In the beginning every trip used to start with the risk of a pot luck - either the groups gelled wonderfully or they ended up sabotaging each other. This is based on very common human psychology: Depending on the group dynamics when certain people that are used to playing a particular role back home were put in the position of being a passenger amongst a group of other passengers amidst an adventure in a dangerous environment, they felt threatened. To counter this feeling I noticed that these people would have a tendency to go against the establishment, against the rules and the tour leadership to reinforce their need to feel in control. Add a number of environmental challenges (like Malaria, an aids epidemic, blistering heat with water clean enough to swim in) to that, and the magnitude of this emotion amplifies.

Once I could see what was going on I could find ways to fix the problem. As my mentor in business would always say to me;

“The population is made up of a few goats and a lot of sheep. Goats are animals that like to find their own way. Sheep like to follow the crowd. A Shepard is someone capable of influencing a few goats, who can lead the sheep into following them”

During the course of time I spent there, I perfected ways of better managing this dynamic which lead to the last 8 tours (1 month each) ending on high notes with fantastic group bonding. It all came down to identifying and involving the alpha people from the start. A night before the tours, we’d have a dinner at a restaurant with games, activities and trust building exercises that helped me identify the alpha males and females within the group. I got these people on board and made them each responsible for different roles - big roles such as handling money, taking care of food, managing the firewood and packing the truck etc. By turning these people into leaders within the group they would gel and support the tour’s leadership rather than exercising their natural urge to lead by going against the tour and my leadership.

All other factors were constant - the same gorillas, the same landscape, the same truck; only the group dynamics were different for each tour. Other guides didn’t have my leadership program in place which resulted in their tours remaining hit and miss in the outcome - I did because of my interest in harnessing the group dynamics. This factor alone was what kept me motivated, and as I just mentioned, 100% of my tours in my final year ended with a 100% approval rating from all of my punters which was unheard of before.

Extending my experiences into Sydney:

I brought this understanding back to my home country and built an accommodation network of properties for working travelers and backpackers. The company was called ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ (SWTE) - it started with nothing and was built into a network of 15 properties with 30-40 backpackers living in them at any given time.

This was a very competitive market with every other accommodation operator (10,000 beds+ within 1 km square within the Sydney central area ) fighting for a share of an extremely competitive market. Instead of throwing ourselves into the competition we turned the tables around by thinking outside the square and changing our business model. By the end of it; our properties ran at 97.7% occupancy year round with punters paying us $25 non-refundable deposits to get on a waiting list for a bed in our properties in peak season whilst the rest of the industry continued to fight over what they could get into theirs. The difference between what we started to do and what other accommodation providers were doing was that we were building a culture, we started our own tribal language and everyone wanted to belong to the “Sleeping With The Enemy” tribe.

It was a unique model where each property was managed by one of the occupants. Anyone who wanted accommodation with us had to stay for at least one month. We had 30-40 backpackers in each building on their own - without any formal management, cleaners, or any other staff. We appointed one backpacker as a house captain to lead each house.The industry was skeptic and even said that “I was crazy” - but I was out to prove the power of collective efforts and community. It was a big risk for us, but we knew that a lot of people used to stay for 2-3 months in hostels that were setup for nightly or weekly accommodation. We needed to build a place where the 180,000 longer term working holiday visa holders could call home and we needed for the stay to become an experience of its own. Here’s a video you can watch, shot in one of our 15 properties. You decide if we achieved the result we intended:

Since the house captains (house leaders) had an important role in keeping peace in the house - we treated them like royalty. They had DVDs, videos and TVs in their separate rooms. The idea was to win their heart and soul so that they could enforce our rules and policies on the rest of the tribe.

The houses were divided into zones that people shared as common areas for which they were responsible for cleaning. We had everyone sign-in to our website and accept responsibility for keeping one common area clean along with their bedrooms. I had a team that would go down to each house 3 times a week for inspections. We built a scoring system where ‘clean’ zones got 10 credit points, ‘averagely-cleaned’ got 5 points, ‘acceptable’ got 0 points and dirty zones got negative 10 points (-10). People responsible for zones that accrued a net positive score at the week’s end could buy free stuff via the SWTE Reward Card - they could use it throughout Sydney to get cheap pizzas, beer and traveling coupons. We got this free stuff from companies who wanted to sponsor and advertise with us - instead of taking cash, we setup reward cards instead where advertisers would give free stuff to our lodgers to earn them points that they could then spend to buy advertising with us. Remembering we had 340+ working travelers living in our properties for an average of 6 weeks, each one having lots of friends in town.

However, this reward/fine structure wasn’t the key element that gelled our households - it was the subtle peer-pressure that was formed to conform to the house culture. Based on the cleanliness scores, we’d have ‘Household Premierships’ each month. The collective scores of each individual within a property would be averaged into a house score that would fluctuate with every inspection. Premiership winners were taken to a nightclub in a hire bus where on arrival they would have confetti and champagn sprayed all over them by occupants of our other 14 properties as though they had just won a world cup. The house captains (house leader) would be immortalized on a wall of honor within each house with their photos and the house rating under their captaincy.

If we ever picked a house captain who wasn’t the natural born leader of the pack within the property at the time, that property would go wild. The only way a natural born leader living in the house who we didn’t secure as our representative could assert their instinctive leadership was to lead the pack away from the house captain we chose and challenge our systems.

The way we dealt with this is by identifying natural born leaders early through parties we would promote. Everyone wants to go out where the party is going to be and the party is usually found where the lead personalities end up. Through our cross promoting accommodation and parties, we were able to identify our next leaders months before our current house captains were leaving.

We allowed house captains to select their own replacements for the job and instead of telling them who to pick we trained them to identify the right natural born leader for the job, we instilled enough pride in the leadership role that they wanted to hand the reigns back to the person best suited to carry their house spirit beyond their tenure. Departing house captains would groom their replacements 6 weeks out from their departure to ensure the hand over was smooth.

This model gave us total control over 340+ backpackers through just 14 solid relationships with natural born leaders amongst the 14 different groups. The natural transition of leadership, along with the culture built into each of the properties that were all referred to with names like “The Zoo”, “Aquarius” & “No 96″ helped us to perfect a business model that many considered impossible (30 to 40 backpackers living in 15 properties that had no staff on site). Our lodgers were expected to stay a minimum 4 weeks and incentivized to stay on for 2-3 months through cheaper rates, we harnessed what was natural within a group dynamic allowing the unthinkable to take place. 30 to 40 (18 to 27 year old’s) living, cleaning, cooking together under the leadership of people who were born to lead them through a series of lieutenants who were loyal to the people they respected naturally. You could never force 340 people to behave themselves, coordinate their shopping and cooking and clean their properties this way through rules or processes, it worked out of respect that was derived from a pecking order we harnessed through observing what came naturally. People would interview me asking me how we did it. I would say, it’s simple, people want to live well, they want to do the right thing for each other, they want respect and they want to respect. We just provide a shared living environment that has no place to hide. Individual contributions towards the community were transparent, we published each housemates cleaning score ( a reflection of their contribution) on the internet after house inspections. By doing so we turned cleaning into a competition rather than something to avoid.

The level of influence we established through strong relationships with 14 influential leaders within their peers extended way beyond accommodation to entertainment. A local Sydney hotel would provide dinner and drinks for my staff and our house captains every Friday evening. This meeting became an exclusive house captains meeting where we would discuss issues in any of the properties and award cash bonuses to house captains who had led their houses into better than expected results for the week. It was also a time when they became promoters. We would ask them what event they would like to organize and the city was their oyster. By allowing them to take ownership of our events from the time a decision to promote an event was made we were assured of their commitment towards making the event a success.

Collectively my 14 house captains organized monthly fancy dress harbor cruises, club nights and dance parties for 500-1000 people, no invitations just word of mouth passed down from 14 people. Our ability to do this was achieved because of the relationship between my management team and the house captains, passed down to a relationship between house captains and their lieutenants, down to the lodgers in each property, down to their friends within the general community.

It was amazing to see how everything fell into a self-balancing system. As long as we had the loyalty of the natural born leaders of these tribes, we could lead them to behave in a way that was right for all constituents by following the rules and procedures we put in place to serve their communities. Every house would strive to be the cleanest. Everyone would go to the events we promoted without second guessing and everyone that was involved at all levels (from the top down) would be financially rewarded for their contribution towards the events promotion through multi-level ticketing commissions.

This network grew organically into us promoting events with capacities up over 10,000 people and more through similar networks. For 8 years we would still meet our 14 house captains on a Friday night and have them name their event, any event they wanted to promote each month we would arrange the venues, licenses and funding for a big slice of the pie on each event. As our network became better known for our ability to move so many people in such a small turnaround, every other promoter in town wanted to work with us which lead to even bigger and better events. Our business grew massively whilst we continued to manage our revolving door of 14 house captains and their lodgers the same way, year in, year out. Our promotions company attracted a bigger and bigger following which lead to our events becoming bigger and bigger events. Not once did we loose focus on what was bringing us our success. The same fourteen relationships. As we became more successful the role of a house captains became more valuable; the more valuable the roles became the better caliber of relationships we commanded. The better caliber of people our inner circle of 14 consisted of, the better and bigger deals would come our way.

I always wanted to move online to better exploit this underlying concept of communities and group dynamics where it can be extrapolated into exponential growth and earning prospects without physical restrictions across space and time or the high capital costs of growing an offline business. I don’t work on whims, I have been perfecting the art of community building for over 20 years now, and I am excited about starting a movement within an online community of people from across the world. I’d love to hear your thoughts on communities, cultures and tribalism in the comments. Let’s get the ball rolling into our anticipated book launch.

Do you know who you would want your house captains in business to be? They don’t have to be 14 or 10 or 8 - whatever the number. These are people you can share with, collaborate with, trust and build collective value with. In doing so, you should build momentum in your endeavors as a group who add value to one and others efforts which in itself will begin to attract other groups to follow suit - I am not offering a magic wand here, I have a vision to bring people together from across the globe to form powerful aliances built on respect and trust so that every small thing that each of us does carries a greater potential of influencing a larger audience than if we did it alone. Please, start inviting your circle of trust to the table, have them follow these posts so that we are all on the same page.


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| Promoter One, Sleeping With The Enemy, Social Traffic, Social Traffic Pages

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