How I Bootstrapped a Global Community

At this year’s Community Rebellion Conference, Milly Tamati discussed her experience bootstrapping a global community from a remote island in Scotland, with a population of just 178 people. 

📽️ To watch Milly's session, as well as the other sessions from the conference, click here.

Last year, Milly was working at a startup with the title of Director of Miscellaneous. One day, updating her LinkedIn profile, she wondered why she didn’t feel valuable among a sea of other LinkedIn profiles. She was an amazing generalist, great at wearing many hats, and had a wide variety of skills that she could bring to the table. She also knew she felt restricted when trying to put a label on herself. When trying to find a career community, she didn’t fit the mold of any of them. So, she started looking for her people - the problem solvers, the big picture thinkers, the ones who have reinvented themselves over and over; she began to find them. 

She started with micro-actions, 1-to-1 interactions. As she met more folks like her, so began the “eyes light up” moments. There was often instant camaraderie of finding someone who understood the struggle and who has been where you are. She immediately knew she had to run towards this - immense momentum. Within 4 weeks of having the idea, Milly quit her full-time job to build something for generalists. 

Community building is an intricate tapestry of skills and strengths, tapping into strengths like empathy, bringing people together, making people feel heard and seen, and  skills that vary from moderating to marketing to content creation, etc. What was super clear, was that she wanted to bring generalists together, and the foundation of this was building a strong foundation in community. 

Community values

Milly started thinking more about the why behind the community she was looking to build:

• Why is this compelling? 
• Why should people care? 
• Why will someone make time for this? 
• What is going to make a dent in someone’s life and have a positive impact? 

The Generalist World community stands out in many ways, but at the root of its uniqueness, is a founder who dared to take a different approach and believed that builders are everywhere. Pushing back on mainstream advice to ‘do a job you love’, Milly encourages folks to ‘do a job they’re proud of’. 

Milly explained that her business has community at its core, prioritizes people over profits, and rejects the “growth at all costs” model. She then described the three foundations of the Generalist World community: 

• Outcomes are greater than engagement
• Trust equals currency
• Community-led

All of these values tie back to Milly’s overarching “why” -- to help other generalists move further and faster in their careers, and to find their place in the world. 

Outcomes over engagement

A common KPI of community is engagement - how often are people posting and responding? How active are people in the community? Again, pushing back on mainstream advice, Milly chose to focus on outcomes over engagement. 

She told a story of a community member who didn’t seem to be engaged. However, because they continuously watched, listened, and put into practice what they learned from the community, they were able to negotiate a 16% pay raise. This outcome is the kind of result that told Milly she was on the right track with her approach.

Generalist World is never meant to be a place that adds a burden, or more noise to someone’s life. The goal was quality, not quantity. Outcomes should be memorable, and meaningful. It’s factors like this, deeper transformations, that make communities sustainable long-term. 

Trust = currency

The currency of community is trust, and the good news for community builders is: it can be engineered. 

The Generalist World community started as a freemium platform. However, soon after launching, Milly decided to change the business model from freemium to fully paid. 

By making the community 100% paid, Milly was able to provide a higher-quality experience. She also showed her community that she was creating a product exclusively for generalists (not companies, not advertisers, not recruiters - just for generalists. The early days are all about doing things that don’t scale. As GW’s first Christmas approached, she sent 100 personalized videos to the first 100 paying members of her community. By doing something meaningful and memorable and going the extra mile to do what others wouldn’t, this is what helps your community stand out and proves that you’re genuine. 

Community-led

Finally, Milly discussed the third foundation of the Generalist World platform - being community-led.

Every event hosted by the Generalist World is led by its members. Milly has also started hiring from within the community for help with content creation and business development. Milly  believes peer-to-peer is the future.

When describing her community for generalists, Milly said that members are intrinsically motivated to contribute because they know their ideas are valued, and that when they need something, GW is a trusted place to get support from trusted people. She concluded by noting that a rising tide lifts all boats, especially for groups who have been traditionally overlooked or misunderstood, giving them a space and a platform to come as they are and grow together has enormous value. As we approach the future and as a society tackle some enormous problems, we need diversity of thought - people who think differently and approach the world differently. Milly believes generalists and specialists working together, leveraging their unique skill sets, makes for better teams, organizations and societies.  

About Milly Tamati

Milly Tamati is the founder of Generalist World, the community & educational platform for career generalists. For the past 8 years, Milly has been building businesses around the world. Today, Milly resides on a remote island in Scotland (seven hours away from the nearest big city) alongside a population of just 178 residents.

Connect with her on Linkedin or Twitter. https://www.linkedin.com/in/milly-tamati/ https://twitter.com/MillyTamati 

Build your own community

We were thrilled to learn from Milly at the 2023 Community Rebellion Conference, and we hope you were too.

If you are looking to build your own community, Talkbase is a community tool to help you keep track of your community members, run community programs and events, and measure the impact and value of the community. Sign up for a free trial today.

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