Penny Power:
There was no doubt that we had to help to shape some people's attitudes to being in a community. People have lost a sense of belonging. They don't feel significant to others. their self worth is low. They're lonely with a hybrid world. You don't have that when you're in a community
James Robert Lay:
Greetings, and Hello, I am James Robert Leigh, and welcome to episode 294 of the banking on digital growth podcast. Today's episode is part of the exponential insight series. And I'm excited to welcome Penny power to the show. With 35 years of experience and knowledge in business. Pity has a desire to make a positive change in business culture, and in leadership. And our mission is to support companies to build community first cultures so that every person they feel heard, they feel understood. They feel appreciated, which is exactly what Penny and I are going to talk about today to guide you, dear listener, that you can guide others at your bank at your credit union. Roger fintech. Welcome to the show. Penny, it is great to share time together with you today.
Penny Power:
No, it's fantastic. Well, you've invited me to talk about my favorite subject. So I am delighted. And you're making me feel heard. So you know, what could be better? Well,
James Robert Lay:
You know, before we get too deep into community, and connection, and bringing people together through technology, what is good for you right now, personally, or professionally, it is always your pick to get started on a positive note.
Penny Power:
Well, actually, I've just come off a zoom with a very large technology company, based in Seattle, and it was very interesting, talking to them about the subject of community. Because it's a subject that I have banged and banged on about since 1998. And I actually talked to this lady who's feels like she's, you know, well, walking up a very steep hill trying to get it understood in her company. I said, it's been a test for the last 25 years for me to keep, you know, to keep get evangelizing subjects, which finally, is being talked about, and is becoming really understood to a certain extent. So what is really good is I am getting a lot of inquiries from people asking me to either speak or help with creating some strategy on how to create community in their organizations, either internal ones, or external with their stakeholders. So I'm enjoying it. Finally. I mean, yes, I have been involved in community building it myself, and therefore I had some level of self empowerment around that. But now to have other companies starting to realize it's important, that's exciting.
James Robert Lay:
Well, I do see its importance, particularly through the lens of financial services. Here in the US, we have a tremendous amount of quote unquote, Community Financial brands, community banks, family owned banks, credit unions, etc. And I think historically, they have viewed community through the lens of the physical world, zip codes, location, city, state, province, etc. But you bring up a very good point, when you're talking about community. And I appreciate First, your dedication, and playing a game and decades, 25 years, to have the commitment to have the dedication, the discipline to this particular subject matter. That, as you said, is starting to gain more awareness. I want to roll the clock back just a bit 25 years of how you got started on this community building journey, and then we'll leap back to the present moment and gain some more perspective of the differences between community and network to provide more clarity for the dear listener. So take us back in time, 25 years,
Penny Power:
I will So 25 years 1998. So I was 33 over just calculating now. So in my late 50s Now, the Internet was really emerging. So we had e commerce and E procurement. And my career to that date I had been in the IT sector But my career could have been in any sector to a certain extent, because I really loved leadership. And I was aware of the fact because somebody told me that I was a servant leader. So a servant leader is somebody who leads in order to serve others. And it was it was a very natural state for me. And I'm not saying that in any form of ego state, it actually evolved because when I was 19, and I joined the IT industry in 1983, I had absolutely no desire at all to be in business, I actually wanted to be in something more caring based, I was wanting to become a physiotherapist or work with cerebral palsy, children tricked into the business world. Whilst I was waiting to get into have a place to study that at university, my first day going into business business world felt very alien to me. And I definitely thought this was just going to be a seven month journey. But I was very lucky, my first boss gave me the opportunity to bring my sort of whole self into the work and, and be very emotional, and really seek out deep relationships with my clients. And I had a very different style of the way that I found business in terms of my first order came because I sent some cough sweets to a guy who had a terrible cough. And, you know, I just didn't use scripts it was I just love people, I have a genuine love. And I tend to emotionally bond I remember being out doing field sales for the first time when I was 20. And because I obviously didn't go into physiotherapy in the end. And as he got up to say, goodbye, this guy, I just gave him a hug. And, and the look quite shocked. And but to me, I've always been in a very tactile family, and I'm a tactile person.
James Robert Lay:
I want to pause you real fast, empathy, caring people centric even to the point of having a level of awareness that your first sell came from simply being aware that someone had a cough, they had a pain, and you wanted to provide a path to resolve that pain. And as a result that helped you and it wasn't even a pain for the business. It was a pain for them personally, that helped you to get that sell. So I think that's an important part to just queue in, because that's going to lead into I think deeper level actions going forward.
Penny Power:
Yeah, that's really good. James, you articulated that beautifully. And the thing that's really critical here is it was not done with any agenda or forethought on this at all. And it was interesting. My first when I got promoted to my first supervisory position, the people who has promoted above have been in the company a year or two longer than me. And they were obviously very uncomfortable about that. And I sort of took each person into a separate room. And basically I was supervising a tele sales group. And I said to them, how can I help you in your in your career aspirations? And one of them said, Well, I want a company car and she was quite shitty with me about it. Okay, let me go and find out how I get you a company car and I went off to my boss and said, How do you get a company car in this company? And he said, Well, you have to achieve these targets in telesales. Then you get into fuel sales. So I rushed back to her and said, Look, Nikki, if I help you, if we achieve these targets, you will get your company car and she said, Well, that's great. And that was first time she had that moment of clarity. But of course by her and I working together for her to achieve that. We achieved great results as a team and yes, so this was when I was first called a servant leader. And you know many people know the book by Robert clean Greenleaf about servant leadership. And it's to interesting on the 10 principles of servant leadership. Number 10 is build community. And so as I did build a great career in the IT sector through watching the mainframe, become the desktop on your office desk. And then it was in 98 when the internet was really starting to take off and it was the procurement in E commerce that I said to Thomas, my husband, who is the most phenomenal networker. He introduced the concept of networking to me I'd never working in a company in the 80s it I wasn't aware of the term networking, but he's just got the most phenomenal heart for connecting people. Very unconditional. And in the most frighteningly credible memory for people and positions and jobs that they hold and the skills they have. And he was he was matching people into jobs all the time. And I said to him, you know, this whole growth of startups and this whole.com world, there's gonna be so many people working from home building their businesses, and they're gonna get lonely. And I'd really love to create a community for them. And so we created a company called Academy, and that was the first social network in the world. So a little bit later came rise, and they were California based. linked, LinkedIn came four years later, Reed Hoffman was actually one of our members. And so we created the academy, and very much friendship. First was Friendship first commerce. Second was the mantra. And we charge people 10 euros or $10, or 10 pounds to use it. So we really introduced very early on in the early 2000s, the concept of software as a service, actually people paying to access. And we introduced the concept of groups, and we call them clubs. And overnight, I remember creating the code and saying to our members, on a blog on our site. Tonight, we're creating the ability for you to create clubs, and people will say, what's a club? And we'd already taught most of them what a blog was, you know, saying that a web log, you know, we're talking real history here if yes, we separated our blogs on the front page of our website, social and business. So you could write Robert James Robert lake would have a social blog, and he clever business blog. So it would be like Facebook and LinkedIn before they were invented. And it was interesting to see that the social blogs got far more traction. So the who you are, was far more powerful than than what you do. Who you are built the trust, and then people got interested in what you do. Anyway, overnight, 275 clubs were born. And, you know, I've got to keep reminding the listener this this concept did not exist.
James Robert Lay:
1994 the internet kind of reaches the mass consciousness of humanity. Yeah. July 5 1994, Jeff Bezos begins to transform the way that we're going to shop and buy. Yeah, for decades to come. May 18 1995, Wells Fargo launches the very first online banking platform. Yeah, 1997 Netflix's born 1998 99. You also now have Napster as well with music. So there's a lot of massive transformation happening. But what you're doing is you're looking back to the example of the cough drop is you're looking for the the common patterns of pain that people feel and experience and looking for cures and solutions to ease people's pain to ease people's suffering, which is then at the heart of the servant leader who you just are naturally, except you're able to do this at a scale that was not possible before and then with the collaboration, and I think that's another kind of key underlying theme here. The collaboration coming from the community, but it also started with your husband as well. Who is this? You know, networker, this, not natural networker. And that's where I want to pause just for a bit because back in the day, quote, unquote. And I also want to give you and your listeners some context of what's going on, in my experience, because in 2002, I was launching an early, quote, unquote, social network to solve a very specific problem for university students. My friend, Robin Harris, we went to high school together. He's at Baylor University of Texas. I'm at the University of Houston, Clear Lake, he calls me up and he said, Hey, you know, that college bookstore, said, yeah, so you buy a book for $300. And then you sell it for $10. Back to them, the economics don't make sense. He said, What if we found a way to connect students together with students to trade books, to bypass the bookstore? And so we built a university community of about 10 to 15,000 people at Baylor University called Bear swap.com. And it was students connecting with students and not just swapping books, but swapping video games and whatever that they didn't want. If they're moving out, they had a way to get rid of it. And if you think about back, cortical back in the day, it was called social networks or social networking. So let's pause here because in your opening perspective, you shared that there's a difference between community building and and networking, where where does this begin to delineate?
Penny Power:
The fascinating what you did I mean, your real early Forerunner on understanding this stuff. And, you know, it was really exciting pioneering time, wasn't it? So we were emotionally building this business. Because Thomas was Thomas's, the Brand Builder, the person going out, finding the people spreading the word about it, going all over the world doing it, I was looking after the culture of it, and welcoming people and giving people a sense of love and belonging and togetherness, and setting the culture and actually bringing out the best of every individual, because everybody wants to be a good person. And everybody wants to bring their best out. And and when you give permission for that, and you create a culture for that, it's quite phenomenal. So there were, there was a very interesting is essentially, at one stage, I was going to study the psychology when I had a place actually do psychology at university. And it became the psychological study of the way people behave. We see it big time now, you know, from the people who are aggressive, nasty people through to the people who are trying to be business people, but they haven't, you know, they're so passion led that they don't know how to actually create a business. And so we had this, you know, the highly transactional people, you had the trolls, all the way through to very emotionally driven people. Ultimately, you're trying to get people to learn to network, as a verb, with one another, but with a culture of community. And so how would I define community community gives you a sense of belonging. So people will say, and I listen out these words all the time, I use such and such a network, like I use LinkedIn, I wouldn't say I belong to LinkedIn. People will say I use LinkedIn, but they will say I belong to and they you say, I belong to Academy, and it became so interesting watching the citizens. And I think there's a big part of this topic is, it's about the citizens, as citizens feeling empowered to make this community beautiful, and also become protective of it like you do at home in your own town or village. So they even came up with a term for what they are, they would say, I'm an economist, and they started to wear their academy badges when they went out networking to lots of things, because it stood for something, and you're a community as to our values and stand for something and for the citizens to be very proud that they belong to it very different to using it as a utility in your business. So, you know, there was no, there was no doubt that we had to help to shape some people's attitudes to being in a community. And actually, this was where we had such high level values around this, that in a way we became unstuck. Because when LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter, so we'll look at the timeline, LinkedIn, and two, so we were nine to 98, LinkedIn, 2000, to Facebook, 2004, Twitter, 2008, etc, etc. This was the birth of networking online. And it was also the birth of social media. And we saw the change from social networking to social media, from conversation to broadcast. Yes. And people ultimately, in business, people are looking for shortcuts, how can I be most productive? You know, people wanted to start delegating to somebody in their company that would do their digital marketing, they started to disconnect. And they certainly didn't think that building relationships was going to give them enough back in a quick enough return. So people would come on, and they'd be looking for instant return on investments. So we had a heyday around 2005 to 2008. Fantastic. It was just the most phenomenal business, the subscriptions were great. The atmosphere was great. And then we started to get more churn people leaving because they couldn't be bothered to make the effort. They were saying, Why do you charge and we weren't charging, because we were wanting to be mega wealthy. And there's a whole new story. Another story in my book that I've written businesses personal chapter two is called being broken. And it's the whole journey that we went through the and how it ended up breaking us. Identity and our finances, but
James Robert Lay:
it's the dark, it's the dark, it's the dark night of the soul. It's you. You have to really journey through the lows of the lows. And as an entrepreneur myself, I emphasize with this
Penny Power:
Yeah, and I think it's when you check and say, Do I want to, you know, there was some many moments that we could have shifted our values and our beliefs and created a very different way. SNESs but we didn't. And at the end of the day, you have to live with yourself. And this is why at the top of the show, when you said How you feeling this is why now is so exciting for Thomas and I, because now, people have lost a sense of belonging, they don't feel significant to others, or self worth is low, they're lonely with a hybrid world, their human needs, their human emotional needs are not being met. We have a you know, I'm an advocate social media, absolutely. But we also have massive phone addictions and comparison problems and mental health challenges from it. And community, you don't have that when you're in a community,
James Robert Lay:
When you're talking about networks, social networks, social media, I use LinkedIn, when you're talking about this idea of a community, it is a place of belonging it as a place of identity. And to go back, you were you were connecting people, you're giving them that sense of belonging, that sense of identity. And then something happened, like you said, 2008 2009, the transaction became the primary focus, not for you, not for your husband, but I would say maybe just more of a macro level. But we're seeing the pendulum, I think begin to shift the other way to where the transformation of people is far greater value than the transaction of dollars and cents, through the lens of banking. And that's where I look at, at, at community institutions, community organizations, bringing people together to connect, say, for example, personal passion topic of mine, you share that you're an accidental entrepreneur. My last real job was waiting tables and playing in a punk rock band 20 plus years ago. And if you think about local community, financial institutions, community banks and credit unions supporting the local businesses by really facilitating that sense of belonging, and then we'll, what about the quote unquote, the return? Well, that's a lot of time, that's a lot of investment to facilitate that. And I'm like, Well, you take time you invest time to go to the chambers of commerce events, and you meet people in the real world. What if you're able to take those in those connections at a local level, and then just bring them back? And you have that sense of belonging at a at a greater scale? Yeah. Thinking about the experience here. And everything that you've learned. And now that the pendulum is swinging back the opposite direction? Where do you find leaders struggling with what it takes to establish, expand and ultimately grow community as part of their brand?
Penny Power:
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. Because I think one of the things that makes me useful to know is that I have commercial and business acumen, you know, I have come through the business world. So whilst I have, you know, if you cut me in half, you know, there's, there's the emotional penny, and then there's the business Penny, I believe in community led growth. And I believe that businesses need to find a model within community that makes financial sense to them. So I talked to somebody else who contacted me earlier about doing some speaking. And then they started talking about their own organization and how they've attempted to do community. And they said, but we didn't have enough resource and money to keep the community going. And unless you make it financially viable, and I'm very happy to talk about our case, study around, please, unless you make it financially viable, you will never give it the attention in an organization. So you know, there are commercial metrics when it's an internal community. And there's commercial metrics when it's working with the stakeholder community. And I absolutely love brainstorming and working out that strategy. So the thing is that once you know, when, when Chris Anderson wrote the book, free, and the world went free, and the expectation of the consumer went free, it was a very dangerous path that we went on, then, you know, and of course, some people have managed to shape that freemium model to very well in their organization. Some people have got very confused with what should be free and what should be charged and they haven't created the right strategy. And for us, we were charging and it meant first of all, that as soon as you take a payment from One, no matter how small it is, there is a financial commitment, there is a thought somebody gets that card out of the wallet or double clicks on their phone or whatever the payment, there is a transaction taking place, which creates consideration as to how much I am willing to contribute, and what do I want to gain from this? And what's so commercial, they have to be commercially viable. That's the first thing. And I was we were very worried when we saw the world going free, not because of our business model, but because it was creating a different attitude towards this world that said, Tim Berners, Lee could could envisage. So the other commercial, I think what you were alluding to is commercial. And let me explain our case study. Really, please. So we decided, I'll take you on a little bit of a journey. So Thomas and I from 2012, when he Academy just could not survive any longer. Financially, it just it we became the beautiful pub, I think anybody in the world knows what a pub is. Lovely English pub with this leather sofas that were a little bit cut, and the fluff was coming out of them in the, you know, in the fireplace was a bit grubby, we became that place that people loved stepping into it felt safe, but it wasn't squeaky clean code, but it was lovely. Okay, yes. And some people we had 650,000 members in the end that did not want us to close, but they at the same time, they were saying why should we be paying and it was a real mess then. So in 2012, it came we decided let's we've got to bring it to a close. And Thomas and I went into the we call our wilderness years where I started another couple of businesses, Thomas, the non exec King, and consulting and speaking and we started some mastermind groups to help some business owners because we love being around business owners. And, and then COVID struck. And in so COVID struck in the pandemic in March 20. And around about the summer time, people were started, when they realized this was gonna go on a bit longer, people started contacting us and saying, I need a sense of community again. And will you start a community again, the next morning, I woke up and I turned to Thomas and I said, we can do community again. But let's only do it for 100 people. Okay? Because what we discovered with Academy was Academy was actually made up of about six and a half 1000 groups. We all had on average, around 100 people in them, either, you know, the Houston group, the New York group, the Dubai group. And we realized that actually, if we could create a group of 100 people, we could create the type of intimacy between us and them because he Academy became a machine. So we create the intimacy we can, we can actually interview people and make sure that they know that they're going into a community and that the ROI is not going to be instant. So we can look for people that have community value. So we charged 249 pounds, so what roughly $300 a year a month for this. And we have created the most phenomenal community. So what that gives us is 25,000 UK pounds. So I don't know what it's $30,000 a month to provide a community that has massive resources in it. Thomas and I can give a lot of our time to it.
James Robert Lay:
I want to highlight this for the dear listener because a CEO might be listening at a Community Financial brand, Chief Operating Officer of someone CFO, a CMO. community does not have to mean 1000 10,000 100,000 People for it to be viable. Because what you did with BIP 100 Are businesses personal. It's 100. People. Yeah, just 100 people. Now, I want the dear listeners do do a blue sky exercise. Imagine if your Community Financial brand that is serving a niche market, let's say small to mid size business entrepreneurs. You facilitate a community that supports these 100 entrepreneurs at a local market level. Yeah. Where else might they get those connections? And I think that's the key takeaway right here is community I think we think Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, massive global, but you're looking at a different approach of exclusive because now it comes back to the point you're making before this is where people really feel that sense of citizenship, membership belonging. Let's dive into that there when you're talking about citizenship.
Penny Power:
Yeah, that's good. That's good. And yeah, I think anybody's, you know, we all got obsessed with building the unicorns building scale, you know, Thomas and I were on that path. But actually, we have to look, when we're building an app, or when we're building community, you have to look at it from a citizens point of view. So if I use the metaphor of a pub, again, if I'm if I go into a pub, and I walk in, and there are 5000 people in it, and I'm fighting to get to the bar, I'm not going to enjoy it as much as if it was a fewer people, and they remember my name. And they knew that what drinker like this is about, we really have to look at community from a citizens point of view, and, and turn the model on its head completely on his head, which is what are the pains and the needs of our citizens? And how by serving those, will we support our organization? Yes, how will it work for us? And how can we create the financial model that adds so much value to our business, and it might be, it might be we work with talking to one organization that wanting to serve product managers across the country across the world, particularly because of the product that they that they're, they're delivering. And, and so that's going to be a community of product managers. But it might be that we find other sets of commonalities that put them into different groups. Give them that sense of significance and contribution. So so if I talk further now about how that works within bit, 100 Thomas's and my role is to curate great people into this community in the same way that if we were running a village, or a town, we would want to say, come and live in this place. Because there are great people here. Feel safe, you're going to feel loved, you're going to like what goes on, you're going to love the different coffee shop the bar there this this. So ours is about bringing in experts, people who are service delivers and have a particular expertise. And they are global. So we've got some in Houston, we've got them all over the world, our members, because they can deliver their service globally. Yes, we have to remember that all 100 also have their networks and their connections behind them as well. So our job is to curate great people. Our second job is to create the right culture so that when they arrive, they know what to expect that nobody drops litter in this town. And there's not much crime here and all of that we create the culture that nobody's going to be abusive, everybody's here to be kind. So we say, the diversity of expertise, but the commonality of kindness. So when somebody joins bid, the first thing they say to us, when we ask them how they're getting on is, I cannot believe how kind people are here. Even though penny they were going to be kind I can't believe her Kenya, we also have a set of values of Don't, don't forget this as a business community. So we don't want you giving your expertise away to one another. So you can give advice, you can spend 15 minutes listening to someone's challenges, you can connect them to someone, but do not erode your, your capacity to make money by being here. And so there is. So a marketplace has taken place just like I could love the lady that runs the coffee shop in my local town. But I'm gonna pay her for that coffee. Yeah, yes. So So and then we say, we're running some virtual events. So we run three or four zooms a week with different different themes. So we run on a Monday evening, GMT, we run, our daughter actually runs it. She's a very powerful high performance coach, she does one on flow, how to get your business and it's very much looking at you as an individual and how you can enjoy your business more. Tuesday morning, our son who's a, an expert in neuroscience, he's done a master's in neuroscience, he does a mental well being morning. So really helping people to improve their mental state around the understanding how they can influence their brain chemistry. We do a podcast where we interview our members live on a Wednesday and on a Thursday members do skill sessions for one another. So you could come in and do a skill session, for example, on digital growth, you know, how do you how do you manage that? And by doing that you're contributing to the community giving your skills for an hour and a half, but you're being spotlighted. And people really know what they are. And then we have face to face events. So we run the events, but there are lots of gaps in our town, where who's running the tennis who's running the cricket, who's doing this who's doing that? And the citizens come forward and say I would like to run this. And so we've got somebody who does mindfulness on a Monday we've got somebody who doesn't mastermind 90 minutes, whatever their expertise is, they can form those events and we put them in our calendar. So the citizens that are being empowered to make this town better. And that is really important for the growth of so that everybody grows within it, yes. And citizenship because everybody wants to contribute to one another.
James Robert Lay:
Citizenship leads to ownership. And what I'm hearing, as a potential opportunity for the dear listener, is think about community as a facilitation opportunity to attract the right people. And those people within the community, once again, let's say you bring together a community of entrepreneurs at a local market level, and behind them back to your point they have their their people that they have relationships with. And then most importantly, as a facilitator, the work to create content and facilitate connections, yeah, becomes that of the citizens or the members, because they have now taken ownership to take what you have established, and make it even that much better going forward into the future.
Penny Power:
Exactly, exactly. And so we have to look at community as the best example of what you would see in the offline world, a place that you love to live. And if you take that to another level, you think some people move into a town, and they're not highly social, they won't go to the pub, but they do knock on people, the neighbors doors and have a glass of wine, well, that's they will enjoy having one to ones with one another and we don't judge visible, they don't come to the zooms, that's their best way of contributing. And some of our members get highlighted as they pass business. They're one of our members. They found 17 suppliers within bid. And they said to us, I bid it, I don't google it, when I'm looking for an expertise, I bid it. So it's a citizenship mindset that's really important. What is critical here is that we are all getting a little bit fatigued with the exhaustive nature of social media and the hustling. We look on LinkedIn. I'm a great fan of LinkedIn, I use it every day. I connect with extraordinary brilliant people. But we all see the people that are hustling for business on LinkedIn. And we're exhausted with it. And so community is now the antidote to that. And it's also the antidote to loneliness, and a sense of not being important to anyone. And many people suffer huge self worth and sense of lack of worthiness for attention. And when you come into a community, and you are given the attention, it's amazing. I want to leave a look, I think we're coming to the top of the show, but Daniel Hammond who beautifully introduced us, came and stayed with us, and came to church with us to our church. And he was telling us how, in his church, they have healing circles. So when one person is in pain, they don't just go and sit and do a prayer with one of the other people, they actually form a healing circle around that person of at least three people. And I thought that is really powerful, because they've realized that to put three people around one person has much more impact in the healing of that person than just one person. Because the sense of people caring, and really making you feel worthy. And giving you ideas and innovative is much more powerful than just a one on one approach.
James Robert Lay:
So just to start to tie all of this up, and I would always like to leave with one question. Community brings people together to connect, connecting leads to new collaborations that fill capability gaps that that we might not be able to have filled otherwise, or we would have taken a lot longer. So there's a shortcut there back to your example of a bid member finding 17 suppliers, they don't google it, they believe it. I love that. And that that collaboration, leading to new capability ultimately increases the confidence of everyone who's involved in this because sometimes they're giving sometimes they're receiving, but I'd be willing to bet, particularly within the BIP community, they probably give far more than they take and that's where Joe polishes in the back of my mind, who wrote A fantastic book, what's in it for them? And he always says life gives to the giver, and takes from the taker. On that note, what would you give? What would your recommendation be for the dear listener today? To who? Like I'm connecting with this, and I can see how we could we could build a community of like minds around the common purpose around the common bond for a particular market within maybe our physical community. And maybe we do it with 100 people, maybe we do it with 50 people, maybe we just start with 10 people and scale up from there over time. What can they do practically speaking right now, in the present moment to begin to make for progress, they don't get overwhelmed. As all future growth starts with a small step today.
Penny Power:
So the first step is that when people apply, we've had over 3000 people apply to join, but 100 Thomas spends time with them on Zoom. And the majority of people say I want to join your community, because I want to give but I don't need any I don't want to take from it. And we say to them, that if we built a community of 100, people that only want to give, who would they be giving it to? People have to be willing to receive a piece haven't got a level of vulnerability, if their ego is still not allowing them to say I need help. They are not suitable to a community. So their first step for any Brown says it, you know, you've got to be vulnerable, the first step is starting to know that you can ask for help and that your vulnerability does not affect your credibility. You cannot be a community member, if you're not willing to receive as well. And the other thing is that I wrote a blog in 2001, called Emotional wealth leads to financial wealth. A lot of people are totally transaction LED. But I can absolutely swear to you case study after state case study. If you join a community, when your emotional wealth grows, your financial wealth grows. And you've got to believe that and take that step.
James Robert Lay:
Wow. On that note of giving and receiving, if someone does have a question, they want to connect with you. You have a book, businesses personal what is the best way for them to a connect with you be get the book?
Penny Power:
Well, the book is on audio, because I think a lot of people like that as well as print so they can get that businesses personal, is actually sort of a part of the journey of understanding our inner self preparing you almost to be part of a community. And it was it was a very honest story of my journey in entrepreneurship, and some of the mental health mental health challenges that I needed to overcome to become stronger and things. I'm actually writing my community book now, in terms of getting hold of me. Well, I'm very happy to give my email address. If it's abuse, it's penny at Penny power.co.uk. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. I am i I'm very happy to very quickly go on to WhatsApp with people. I love WhatsApp. So and and equally, I'm very happy to send a PDF copy of my book to someone if that's easier for them as a gift. And I've just say, I'd also say look inside yourself anyway, because we are pack animals. We are we have spent too long acting like lone wolves. And if you're just looking into your inner self, you have the capacity to build a beautiful community or to be a beautiful citizen anyway. But if I can help anyone I'd be delighted to
James Robert Lay:
Penny you have been a tremendous help today. You have helped me I know that you've helped those who are listening around the world. So thank you for sharing your knowledge. Thank you for sharing your wisdom thank you for sharing your experience. Connect with Penny learn with Penny grow with Penny Penny. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of banking on digital growth.
Penny Power:
Thank you James. It was wonderful.
James Robert Lay:
As always, and until next time be well do good. And make your bed
