I talk a lot about building a brand community.

But I haven’t shared much about how I apply that strategy to Cat Johnson Co.

Here’s one aspect:

In the past year, I founded Coworking Convos, released my first online course, launched and grew the Marketing Lab, and am now collaborating with marketing coach Karina Patel across all my projects.

Karina and I coach and support members of the Lab; we host webinars, workshops and talks; we create a ton of content; and we connect with countless space operators doing important work in their communities.

In the next year, we’ll streamline and further all these projects and launch a new one we have in the works.

We’ll also create things we haven’t even thought of.

The Heart of Cat Johnson Co

See, the heart of Cat Johnson Co is not me.

And it’s not our team.

The heart of Cat Johnson Co is not even our why.

It’s our community.

Unwavering Focus

Cat Johnson Co changes, grows and evolves.

What doesn’t change is our unwavering focus on our community of coworking space operators.

The other day I was doodling some ideas and I came up with the above diagram.

In it, you can see that the center of everything for Cat Johnson Co is community.

Community is our guiding principle.

It’s the bullseye of our focus.

Moving out from the center, the next ring expresses the benefits of being part of a community:

• Belonging
• Growth
• Purpose
• Transformation

The next ring lays out how we give people these things through Cat Johnson Co:

• Resources
• Events
• Content
• Ideas
• Inspiration
• Connection

It’s not until we get to the outermost ring that we get into the what of Cat Johnson Co.

These are the actual projects and products—the tangible things we do to actualize the inner rings:

• Marketing Lab
• Coworking Convos
• Cat Johnson Co blog
• Coworking Out Loud Newsletter
• Coworking Content Alliance
• Coworking Out Loud Podcast
• social media
• video
• trainings
• talks

The outer ring is where we interface with our community.

By design, it is the most pliable.

The outer ring shifts and evolves and changes. It’s informed by the needs, ideas, engagement and feedback from our community.

Freedom to Change

It would be a grave mistake to put Convos, or the Lab, or courses at the center of Cat Johnson Co.

Doing so would be to force our will onto what we think Cat Johnson Co is.

We don’t want to do that.

Instead, we let our community inform what we do and we give ourselves freedom to course correct, to change direction, to rethink our plan, to continually simplify and to reprioritize.

We keep things flexible…and focused on you.

When you see the words, “A Cat Johnson Co project” on something, you can know that it is created in a spirit of service and a strive for excellence.

This company is built to serve you.

Your Center

So, who is at the center of your diagram?

Is it your products or your people?

Make sure the focus is on your community—on the people you serve.

That way you’re free to create, pivot, try things, learn things, and even fail, without jeopardizing the integrity of your company.

Further together,
Cat