BRX Pro Tip: How to Build Community Locally in Real Life
Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I want to talk a little bit about community building, but I want to put a couple of qualifiers there, I mean, locally and in real life.
Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think a lot of people just forget about this, and they’re all all online all the time and they want to build these kind of vast networks around the world and all that, and that’s fine and good. But you have a neighborhood, you live somewhere, you work somewhere, I think it’s important to invest some time to build community locally in real life.
Lee Kantor: It’s so important to the community when there’s more people actively and enthusiastically supporting and celebrating that local community. So, building a strong local community in real life is a great way to foster connection, resilience in the sense of belonging, and here’s some simple ways that you can get started to sustain that kind of vibrant, engaged local network.
Lee Kantor: Number one, you know, be the change you want in the world. Host some regular in-person events like a meetup, a workshop, a block party, a potluck, a dinner. Bring people together and encourage interaction. I mean, anybody can do this. You can do it in your house. You can do it in your office. You could do it in a restaurant that your friends with the owners.
Lee Kantor: Number two, encourage the people that are interested in doing this thing to take on more roles like, you know, first, put it out there and you try to kind of the emperor that gets this thing going. But as soon as people start saying they want to get involved, make them get involved, give them roles, give them jobs to do to be the connectors or to encourage the host to integrate other newcomers and build this kind of welcoming atmosphere and environment.
Lee Kantor: And then, you know, together you can collaborate on projects. They don’t have to be work related or business. They can be community gardens. They could be local art installations. It could be a neighborhood cleanup. Support small businesses to strengthen local ties and improve the area for everybody.
Lee Kantor: We’re kind of spoiled because Business RadioX is kind of a cheat code to make this happen. You know, we have access to a lot of people within the community and we see a lot of people in the community regularly, so we’re a logical person that could be doing this in every local community. And then, every episode that we record in one of our studios becomes a mini networking meeting that brings together people in real life.
Lee Kantor: So, if you want to be a community builder in your market, connect with us, we have some ideas that we might be able to help you make that happen.
