Ep. 49: Finding Your Tribe

Build Your Tribe

In this episode, I share my experience being part of a tribe, even as an   introvert.

This past weekend my blogger bestie, Mikelah Rose of Style & Vibes hosted a Caribbean Blogger Meetup and it was great. It was good for me to connect with my other Caribbean content creators as I continue to cope and make my way back to getting on with life and business. 

This episode:

1. I cover why finding your tribe or professional association is important.
2. Provides tips for finding and making the most your tribe including professional associations.
3. Possible challenges some of us face with finding tribes.

Share your experiences with finding or building your own tribe.

Photo credit: ©Natty D Photography www.nattydphotography.com

Transcript

Hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Carry On Friends podcast. As always, I’m excited that you’re listening. And I’d like to first thank everyone for their kind words and words of encouragement, truly appreciate it. So, before I get into the main topic, I want to just do a few announcements and reminders. As always, we are on social at carry on friends on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, if you haven’t already done so, you know, just link up and let’s follow each other and communicate on Facebook or Instagram. And you know, let’s have the conversation off air to right. If you are joining the conversation, use the hashtag COF podcast, COF podcast, use the hashtag tag me and you know, let’s chat it up. Also, I want to send a big shout out to my indie creative network family. This podcast is a part of the indie creative network. Check out my other podern family gyal cast, big therm, straight out da den, seriously podcast, a whole bunch of other great podcast by, you know, people of color content creators. So that’s really amazing. Also, if you have any questions, as always send an email Hello at carry on friends, right? So we’ve got business out the way and I want to jump right into our topic. 

This is supposed to be a mini so let me see how much I can get in. Right? If you go a little longer than it’s a little long minisode, but either way. So the topic for today is finding your tribe. And I was kind of I liked the idea initially, but then I was like do Caribbean people said tribe we say we crew we say family but either way, tribe mi go use it. Because you know, you kind of get it the general meaning of it. Right. So this past weekend, December 10, there was a Caribbean blogger meet up and my good friend Mikelah mi sistren mi blogger boo. She hosted the New York meet up. And there were so many other Caribbean content creators that came out. And it’s always good to be around your island people, right, especially if they’re in the same field. And it was just really nice, the vibe, the energy sharing and encouraging and, you know, helping people with each other with strategies for our respective platform, and I thought it was a great way to remind everyone or the audience that you need a tribe, you can never do anything by yourself, right? 

And I want to be very clear your tribe isn’t really yuh social friends, right? My social friends are completely different from us, my success friends and min nuh really want, I want to be clear that it’s not that my social friends aren’t my success friends, but it’s just a term that people use, right? My social friends, I don’t necessarily talk business with them because they’re my friends, I know them from I was growing up and mi nuh waah talk work with them, our business with them, our platform with them. And you know, they don’t probably don’t want to talk about it with me either. So I don’t pressure them. 

But this particular tribe that I’m referring to are people who are going to support you, as you push to grow your brand, your business or your career they’re who you’re going to talk and chat off them ears or, you know, send one bag of email, whatever, however you communicate Slack, however way you communicate, but they’re really essentially because you have some commonality in terms of where you’d like to go from an entrepreneur perspective or a career perspective. And you are coming together as a group as a tribe to support each other in those endeavors. Right. 

So I mentioned successes before I like I said, my social friends my personal friends, my childhood friends. Dem always want to see me successful, but a few episodes. But last year on this time, I had Julian Gordon on the podcast love Julian is also Caribbean American. And he has I’m part of his mastermind group. But he defined what’s considered success friends and social friends, right? So your success friends or in this case, your tribe, right your tribe, which is different from your girlfriend, or yuh breddrin dem. Where you go out with and you watch movies, a chill with your tribe, right? And, you know, do something crossover sometimes, like, you know, Mikelah is in my tribe, but she’s also you know, my social friend. And you know, not everybody will be able to do both, right? But the reason why Mikelah and I can do that because Mikelah was in my tribe first before she became my social friend. So you could have someone in your tribe and be a social friend, but it’s very hard for someone to be a social friend, and then kind of go into your tribe. It’s, you know, there might be some, some people might disagree, but I kind of find that it’s a little bit harder. So anyway, Julian defined what he considered to be social friends and success friends. And I just want to read an excerpt from that. So he said, your social friends are the ones who want you for who you are, they like you, because you’re funny. They like that you could play video games, like you could hang out, you can watch scandal, you can do fun stuff right? But your success friends are the people who see you for who you could be. And eventually, they are pushing you towards that goal. So you’ve come together because you want to share this goal of you want to be a successful podcaster, or you want to be a speaker, or whatever it is, right? So they’re always going to there. They’re like your accountability partner. How are you doing on this goal? You can’t watch scandal. If you want to make this goal, you can’t do this. They’re the ones that are going to say, maybe you need to cut out the party a little bit and finish this or, hey, let’s work together. So together, you know, we can help each other be successful? No, while I’m raving and saying that, you know, I love my tribe. I love my accountability partners and yay to success friends. I do understand there are some challenges, right? 

For some people, believe it or not as much as I have the podcast, I’m an introvert, right? So I can do this, I could talk I could be a social butterfly and everything. But I do like my quiet moments. And I like to retreat inward, I like to reflect and, you know, I can be by myself because that’s how I, you know, I energize, right? So I understand for those who are introverted, you know, going out and finding a tribe isn’t, you know, our first instinct, but it’s what we need to do to kind of get out of our shell or get out of our way. Because in order to grow and be successful, we need to interact with people, you know, our set our, our success isn’t, you know, it’s not in a silo, we’re not by ourselves, you know, there are other people who will always have to play a part in our success in some way, shape, or form. So I understand that if you’re an introvert, it’s kind of not what you would like to do. It’s not comfortable it feels exhausting just thinking of it. And I, I can really empathize. And all I can say is just make small steps, really, and truly, because I am speaking from that, making small steps, set a goal for yourself, you know, for an introvert, I think the first thing you have to do is, you know, understand that not because you’re an introvert doesn’t mean that you can’t hold a conversation, and you probably hold conversations with people you’re more comfortable with, but it takes time to get comfortable. 

So understand that, you know, meeting people and having a tribe doesn’t mean you hit it off the first day. And then you’re like, you know, business besties, it’s going to take time to build that relationship, do it the normal way, but make an effort to connect with other people and understand that you know what, it’s going to take some time, it can get awkward, I feel like I’m socially awkward at times. I know you and I don’t feel like saying hi, in Caribbean or in Jamaica, they’ll say sometime-ish ehh, okay, fine, I’ll accept that. I’m not saying it’s the greatest, but I’m working on it. So those are some challenges for anyone who’s trying to build a tribe. And I know the tribe part sounds more like an entrepreneurial thing. 

But also, it’s for when you’re when you’re in a career, it means joining a professional association. And that too, I can speak to, I mapped out the professional associations are I was going to join. And I mapped out what committees I was interested in joining. Because, you know, the association itself is huge, and it will have hundreds or thousands of members. But committees are usually smaller. And, you know, by joining one that’s interested, interesting to you should also kind of be a first step for a conversation starter and you interact with a smaller group, again, they don’t have to be your bestie, but you make an effort to interact, and to collaborate. Because that’s the first step you’re building on that it’s, you know, relationships, whether it’s tribes, whether it’s, you know, colleagues, they aren’t overnight, they take time. So this is no different, right?

Sometimes we feel like we’re just alone, we’re in our feelings, or we feel sorry for yourself, trust me, mi go through that sometime to, and that’s kind of where the tribe where the accountability partner comes in. But I really feel like once you do find that, you get tremendous support, you find and it’s a trial and error. Sometimes it workout. Sometimes it don’t for whatever reason, but when you do find that right fit, it has so many possibilities. So many The other day I was doing an interview, and someone asked, What’s who’s the one person that influenced you, or, or I can’t remember, influenced you or helped with your career. And I’m like, I can’t think of one, you know, I have my I mean, I have my family and you know, that’s automatic. But I wouldn’t be as far as I am, if I if it weren’t for my accountability partner, a mastermind who collectively make up my tribe, and my other content creator, blogger, friends, they make up my tribe, and they push me because sometimes they see things in me that I’m doubting in myself, because I’m having a bad day work, something’s stressing, you know, all these little triggers that, you know, you’re in feelings, I feel like you can’t do anything all of a sudden, you know, they see and they’re like, Girl, stop your choopidness, depending on which Island person I’m talking to. And all of these are just human emotions that everyone goes through. And that’s why you need your tribe, because they know what you’re doing they know the hustle they know the grind that yuh a try, you know, move towards and they know, and they’re just going to encourage, and sometimes they’re going to be in a similar feel, sometimes they’re not going to help you and to give you a perspective. 

So I want to encourage everyone, you know, if you haven’t already done so, you know, look towards getting your own tribe, if you’re in your career, join a professional association, you know, you should be already planning this for 2017. And if you haven’t already done so that’s fine. We you know, add it to your list of things to do, you know, so you can have a buss out year for 2017, because I had a buss out year for 2016. And I can’t wait to talk about that. But I want to leave you with this one quote before I go:

Think of your tribe, your success friends or the colleagues that you’ll meet at your professional association, as a friendly alliance with one or more persons who will encourage one to follow through with both plan and purpose. And that’s a quote from Napoleon Hill. 

So that’s where I’ll leave you for this minisode I’m excited about being part of a tribe and I can speak to all the benefits from it. And I’m sure people have some other experiences with it. And as always, you could join the conversation tell me how that was at carry on friends. You can tweet mentioned let’s have a discussion. I’d love to hear from you. You could also send me an email you could send an email at Hello at carryonfriends.com and I look forward to hearing from you. So until next time, walk good