Tribes

Seth Godin, the world-acclaimed marketing guru and author, uncovered in this book how come today’s top brands have to make tribes around their cause in order to expand and promote both their ideas and items.

He talks about how come attempting to reach out to each person with your cause, the way the majority of large companies are continuously trying to do, only results in inferiority and a lack of emotion revolving around your idea of the brand.

This text outlines, in a step-by-step format, how any person is able to make and head a tribe and how to utilize that strong force in order to alter the status quo and make a new future.

You’ll find out:

How come tribes are the future of growth and why they could possibly change the world
How to be a solid leader of your own tribe
Home come today, there aren’t enough heretics and yet there are too many sheepwalkers

Whether you know it or not, you are already part of a tribe.

For millions and millions of years, people had been a part of a tribe, regardless of whether they were religious, ethnic, or political. It’s only natural as us humans have a need to be a part of a group bigger than ourselves.

In fact, you’ll find tribes all over the place and regardless of whether you know it or not, even you’re probably a part of one, whether you’re a staff member at your company, a part of your religious community, or a fan of your favorite musical artist or group.

However, what exactly is a tribe?

Every tribe has got three parts to it: a group of people, a shared cause, and at least one leader that represents and manages the tribe.

Take, for instance, Wikipedia. The greater portion of the work for the site is done by a group of approximately 5,000 contributors and editors. Each one of them work together in order to bring to life the shared cause of Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales: a vision of openly accessible, communally made information.

That being said, the most crucial part, in this case, is the common cause. A tribe’s common cause helps guide its members to embody both the tribe’s values and ideas as ones that are their own. The internalized stimuli turned those in the tribe into driven believers versus people who are simply followers.

A tribe’s cause, which is either the desire to or refusal to change, can be anything whether it be environmental justice, a political campaign, or just a collection of Apple enthusiasts that believe in the dominance of their favorite consumer electronics.

Tribes have always been here with us, but thanks to today’s technology, the amount of tribes is increasing at alarming rates.

This has been made possible thanks to the Internet; tribes used to be local, but now, due to the capacity of the internet and since social media plays a big part, geography isn’t an obstacle anymore for tribal expansion.

In addition, due to social media, a tribe’s impact doesn’t directly correspond to its size, but rather to the cause that it stands for and how it utilizes communication technologies.

How come?

This is due to the fact that today, true sustainable growth comes from those that really love your cause, stand for your values, and play the social media melody for you.

Don’t engineer your ideas for the masses: make it exclusive and meaningful for a distinct group of people.

The past marketing melody was to try to get out to as many people as possible with your items. However, today, things are different and this text will outline how.

A lot of businesses have remained in the past and continue to pay attention to creating items for everyone, which is a method that can result in earth-shattering outcomes.

For instance, Nokia had once been the most successful mobile phone business worldwide. However, when smartphones came about, they didn’t make it onto the boat and to this day, they haven’t been able to recover.

Not long before the smartphone market had emerged, there wasn’t one business that had the technological benefit, despite some believing that Apple had it due to their success.

So, where exactly did Nokia go wrong?

Nokia had stayed with their previous model; trying to create the cheapest mobile phone possible that each person would want. The issue with making an item that’ll make everyone happy is that almost each time, an uninspired item that people won’t mind using, but they definitely won’t fall in love with it. On the contrary, Apple decided to make a new type of phone that the majority probably wouldn’t like, but that several people would absolutely love. The thing is, when one person loves something, they tell their friends and soon enough- it’s the birth of a new tribe.

Apple was smart to make an exceptional item as tribes aren’t created from uninspired causes.

Today, people aren’t satisfied with off-the-shelf ideas any longer. A strong cause has to embody a personal, exclusive, as well as meaningful story that people are able to identify with. In addition, it has to cry freshness and let people become directly involved with the movement. Essentially, a meaningful cause scratches an itch that hadn’t been scratched well enough.

With today’s technology, everyone can form and lead a tribe.

Regardless of whether it’s a viral YouTube video or the newest idea of an influential blogger, getting out to people has never been simpler, cheaper, or more efficient.

So, what does this exactly mean?

It means that even you’re able to get out to people by creating a new tribe.

First things first, you need to understand that people have to be able to communicate profoundly about their common cause. As a result, communication can’t only be vertical, meaning that it’s between yourself (the leader) and each tribe member, but rather horizontal, meaning it has to happen amongst tribe members.

Thanks to today’s technology, you’ve got everything necessary in order to assist in the progress of vertical and horizontal communication. Sites, blogs, as well as social networks let you disperse your cause as well as offer the room and the tools necessary to let your tribe talk amongst one another, spread ideas, and organize everything. For instance, you can utilize Basecamp in order to organize projects and Twitter in order to share quick updates about various developments. On top of that, those sites let you establish ground rules for those that want to participate and line everyone up with your shared vision by establishing certain goals.

Take, for instance, CrossFit.com, which is a website where fitness fanatics are able to connect and swap their fitness routines, knowledge, along with many other things. CrossFit certification courses all around the states sell out in weeks, even months in advance and more and more trainers are opening up gyms in order to help out with the increasing demand of the CrossFit tribe.

All of this is managed via one central site.

This was all done by the work of Greg Glassman who is also known as “Coach”. He knew how to be the leader of a tribe by telling his fitness stories and offering people the ability to connect with one another on his site.

If you have a meaningful cause and the will to lead, people will follow.

Have you ever tried to figure out how many people are part of a movement? The answer: around 1,000, which is the number of real believers that is required in order for a group to keep on moving forward.

However, how are you able to get that many people to follow your cause?

You need to get into something that people are truly interested in.

Making a movement is all about structuring a current yearning in a way that tribe members are able to connect with one another and create a movement under your own leadership.

Bill Bradley, a former U.S. Senator, outlines it as a movement that’s got three elements: a text that narrates the story of the future that you’re attempting to create; a connection between the leader as well as the tribe and throughout all of the tribe members; and some to accomplish- the less limits, the better it is.

However, more often than not, possible leaders don’t understand that a movement can’t revolve around money. If you want your cause to be a success, there needs to be a meaningful story about something that is actually worth having conversations about. Too often, though, groups only provide context around something to do, which hardly generates any conversation.

So, what needs to be done in order to make a movement?

Take, for instance, Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and his award-winning global warming documentary titled “An Inconvenient Truth”. The message from the documentary quickly turned into a movement impacting the entire world. However, what Al Gore had stated about both climate change and our society wasn’t new information; that information had already been 30 years old when he had first begun.

Then, how come the idea began to take off all of a sudden?

This is due to the fact that it needed a leader that was able to organize people into an organization that already understood what the correct thing to do was. Al Gore had distributed his movie for free to thousands of people because he was a firm believer in it and understood that by offering others the opportunity, they’d end up joining him. As a result, he ended up as the leader of the tribe.

In that case, what is the secret to making a tribe? You need to create a story to those who are willing to hear it. Allow them to connect as a tribe; be the leader of the movement; and last but not least, make a change.

When forming a tribe, don’t worry about making it grow - concentrate on tightening connections.

The larger the tribe, the better the tribe, correct? For the majority of leaders, that seems pretty accurate.

However, they couldn’t be further from the truth.

At least in the early days, the biggest advantage that a tribe could have wouldn’t be its size, but rather the various connections amongst the members, the leader, and the world outside.

Indeed, a tribe’s got four various communicative directions: leader to tribe, tribe to leader, tribe members to each other, and tribe member to outsider. In contrast, normal marketing diminishes in comparison as communication happens in essentially only one direction: the business to the market.

The most crucial aspect of those directions is the communication that happens amongst members. That’s where shrinking a tribes comes into play.

By shrinking a tribe, you bring members closer to one another by assisting in the progress of communication and strengthening their shared bonds. You can make this happen by turning their shared interest into a strong goal and by offering a platform where members are able to connect with one another with ease.

You can also just rein in the power of insiders as well as outsiders. In order to make a feeling of togetherness, you need to create a culture of insiders, which unaviodably blocks other members. This lets the tribe separate itself from various other tribes and make a tighter sense of internal recognition.

For instance, via his obsession with secrecy, Steve Jobs quietly made many rumor websites in which Apple fans talked about new items. The websites assisted with bringing Apple fans together and it created a level of both anticipation and curiosity about new items at a level greater than that of any other business.

Therefore, don’t forget that the main job as a leader is to organize as well as intensify your tribe. However, what else helps make a solid tribe leader?

Leadership is about stepping into a vacuum and creating motion.

Management is mainly about getting the task done. However, leadership revolves around change and this means that they have to go where no one has been prior: into a vacuum.

In order for a tribe to be created, there has to be a certain change that people would like to see happen. That desire for change needs to come from a specific discomfort with the status quo, from a feeling that the world is missing something. A leader goes right into that discomfort zone, also known as the vacuum, and begins to organize everything that way people will go after him.

Leaders do that even though they have to take some risks because of two factors: they have a lot of faith in the cause and they understand that innovation is always more useful the sooner it can happen, therefore, the sooner the better.

However, with all of this discussion about leaders, you may be asking yourself, “I get that it’s great for those who are charming and well-known, however, that’s not me so what does it take for me to be a leader?”

You need to change your misconceptions.

In reality, leaders are, first and foremost, generous and as a result, they are viewed as charming.

Today, a lot of people have the idea that you must be well-known or have lots of charm and flair in order to be a leader. However, indeed people, and that includes your possible tribe members, can quickly figure out whether or not your motivation is real and unselfish or whether you’re simply egotistic.

True leaders are generous and pay a lot more attention on giving rather than getting. This is why Al Gore had made his documentary available for free and how come the artist that created the infamous Obama posters, Shepard Fairey, shared his idea free of charge. They believed in the basic value of their cause and thus, got others to believe in them as well. Today, Al Gore’s movies have been shown to hundreds of people all around the globe and the price of Shepard Fairey’s work has significantly increased ever since the 2008 U.S presidential election.

To make the world a better place, we need more heretics and less sheepwalkers.

We’ve read how rewarding it can be if you’re a tribe leader. If that’s the case, though, why isn’t everyone trying to be one?

The answer is quite easy.

There are way too many sheepwalkers on this planet that have been trained by both school and society to follow direction and steer clear of change. They’ve been taught to hold their heads low and pay attention to their own things, just like sheep. The sheep are well-educated, but they’re still sheep.

Therefore, this world needs to see more heretics, which are those who question the status quos and dogmas that exist, taking action without asking whether or not they can actually do something. Organizations need to have more heretics that promote change from within since should you hire really great people and allow them the freedom that they need, they will do incredible things. Tribes need to have heretics as leaders in order to go into new territory and try to assist with changing the world.

However, why aren’t there that many heretics?

The thing is, the media has brainwashed us with a stories about heterics that are filled with tales of unavoidable downfalls and self-delusion. I mean, who would take the risk of defying the status quo?

You can get over that fake tale by reprogramming your idea of it and getting rid of the fear surrounding it; remind yourself that everything that you believe in is risky, but that the world both requires and demands that change that you’re attempting to make.

Fear is what stops us from altering our ideas into a reality and flipping over the status quo. However, with today's technology, you no longer have an excuse as you don’t need power or money in order to make a change. Therefore, take it up a notch and begin leading your own tribe.

Final Summary

Surrounding each and every one of us are tribes that are looking after leadership. Today, with the help of the internet, anyone is able to take a step up and become the leader of their tribe; these are the leaders that we need so badly to guide our world and its tribes into a greater future.

Practical advice:

Whenever something bothers you, go big with it.

The next time that something ends up bothering you about the status quo, instead of just sitting there and remaining quiet, you need to use your voice and create a manifesto about the greater future that you want to see. Afterward, post your message online and share it with as many people as possible.