You're listening to Foresight, a podcast about making work better.I'm your co-host, Mark Edgar, a former consultant and coach who now works as a chief people officer on a mission to make work more human.
And I'm Naomi Teitelman, a former big firm consultant and HR executive now striving to make work better, one organization and one leader at a time.
Every week, we'll discuss the latest trends that are impacting the new world of work to help you be a better leader for the future. Welcome to Foresight, a podcast about making work better.
I'm one of your co-hosts, Naomi Teitelman, and I'm pleased to welcome our next special guest to our show, Erin Halper.
Erin is a self-proclaimed champion of independent consultants and founder and CEO of The Upside, which is the number one community where consultants build, scale, and advance their businesses and themselves.
I met Aaron personally through my friend, Wendy Thomas, who convinced me to join The Upside a couple of years ago when I didn't quite understand what a digital community was and why I needed one in my life.
So fast forward two and a bit years, The Upside not only has been an amazing community for me personally in support of my consulting work, but has also been a huge inspiration for the community we're building in Foresight+.
So welcome to Foresight, Aaron.I'm so excited you're here to chat with me today about the power of community.
Thank you so much for having me.I'm so honored that you invited me and I cannot wait to dive in.
Great.And before we do, we do like to start each of our episodes with a check-in question.
So Erin, my question for you today is, given Halloween is coming up in just a few short days after we drop this episode, what's the best Halloween costume you've ever worn?
I have to be honest, I don't think I've actually worn the best Halloween costume.I think it's my kids that have worn the best Halloween costume.
And I think the best one we ever did, and now they're too old for this, but back when they were really, really little, the best one we ever did was my son at the time he was four, he dressed up as Michael Jackson with like the mirrored glasses and he had like a black sequined suit.
and the one-year-old dressed up as the chimpanzee.So they were Michael and Bubbles, and I have the picture.It's hysterical.So yeah, I would say that was probably my best creation for Halloween.
That's amazing.And, you know, we were catching up before the show about, you know, when we grew up.And so that costume probably was pretty common when you and I were, you know, in school, in elementary school, but probably not as much now.
So it was probably a super creative costume.I'm sure you didn't see any other Michael Jacksons with bubbles. walking around the Upper East Side or wherever you were going trick-or-treating.
And I made them the glove, you know, I made them a white glove with wax, like the whole thing.And it was really, again, they were so little, it was really more for a laugh for our generation, not so much.
I had, so I grew up in Montreal in Canada and we didn't have access to a lot of a variety of costumes there so we'd make our annual trip to Plattsburgh New York which is our cross-border shopping destination and so we always had the best costumes growing up and one year I was a rabbit in a hat so I had a big wire hat around me
But, you know, as I think I was probably like 13 at the time, not great for, you know, social purposes to be a big black hat.And one year I was a can of Diet Coke and it was an inflatable costume, which was really innovative back then, right?
Like back then we were wearing still like the cutout masks with the smocks most years.So that was, that was, those were my best costumes.And I used to love Halloween.I don't know, as an adult, I'm not a Halloween person.I really don't love Halloween.
I was up until I had kids and then it wasn't really fun because you couldn't really do the whole sexy nurse thing anymore.Right.
Yeah.Yeah.You got to be a role model.
The suburbs.Yeah.The suburbs just kind of take the wind out of the adult Halloween costume.One year, my husband and I, we did Axl.Axl and Slash.Love that.I was obviously Slash.And he was Axl.That was a good duo.We try to do things together.
We did the Richard Gere, we did the pretty woman thing one year.You know, we tried to do like the duos.
Oh, that's fun.My daughter's a duo this year.She is going to be Luigi and her best friend is going to be Mario.And my son was one of a duo with his cousin when he was about like two years old.
But unfortunately, that costume doesn't fit Jory now because the ages don't line up.So we'll have to buy a new Luigi costume.
I'm sure you'll figure it out somehow.
We'll figure it out now.You know, now we have Amazon.Exactly.Exactly.All right.Well, we digress into Halloween.Happy Halloween to all of our listeners. Let's get started into the content for today.So let's start with you, Erin.
Can you share a little bit with our listeners about your journey to where you are today and what inspired you to start The Upside?
Sure.Well, it's a complicated and long journey, but it started with about a decade career in private equity in New York City. I found myself just wanting more flexibility.I had just gotten married.My husband was a business owner.
He had total flexibility.And I thought, you know, I'm going to start my own consultancy, not knowing any better, of course.That's what I did.
And what started as this desire for more flexibility turned into a need when I was pregnant with my first son and I found out he was going to be born with a serious heart condition that required multiple surgeries to repair.
Now he's a healthy and happy teenager now, but it didn't start out that way.And all of a sudden my world got flipped upside down and I found myself constantly at doctor's appointments.
Then he was born, constant doctor's appointments, hospital visits, surgeries. And I was sitting in the PICU one afternoon with my laptop in hand, and this was many years ago before people really worked from a laptop like that.
And I looked around the hospital floor, which was all glass, everything was in glass, and I saw a lot of rooms where parents weren't with their children, their babies.The babies and the kids were alone.
And I walked around the floor and I thought, God, you know, first I thought, what's wrong with these parents?How can you not be with your child?
And then of course that quickly passed and I realized, oh my gosh, other people have to work or they have other children, they can't be here.And that's what planted the seed to what would be my biggest business idea of my lifetime
Fast forward seven more years, I stayed a consultant.I loved my clients.I loved my work.And it became, you know, the 2016 election, around 2017, I saw a lot going on where I started seeing a pattern of people dropping out of the workforce.
I'd already moved to the suburbs.We live in a commuter town to New York City.And A lot of people were saying, this is just not worth it, like commuting back and forth, I'm not seeing my family.
And they said, God, Erin, you work from home, you work when you want, you can be there for your kids, you kind of have the whole balance thing and you make good money, how do you do it?
And what I thought was kind of simple and not that big of a deal, apparently was really hard for a lot of people.
The more I saw that happening, I also saw the multi-level marketing movement start to pick up, which I felt was sometimes predatory, especially on women and moms and promise this balance of a life and own your work and you have your own business.And
I thought, you know, we can do better than this.There has to be more options out there.
So originally I started The Upside as a way to match clients and consultants, but that business model quickly transformed into what it is today, which is a community for independent consultants who want to join forces and go further together.
Amazing and so like I said in my intro I didn't really understand what a community was.
When I joined The Upside Wendy had you know spoken of The Upside so highly for such a long period of time and I was like but why do I need this like why this and not just looking stuff up on the internet and not just you know reaching out to the two people I do know who are consultants who can help one another out and she
She talked about some of the resources that she gets in The Upside, but also spoke just about the community aspect of it, which was really hard for me to grasp until I actually jumped two feet in and joined The Upside.
So how have, I know you started, you know, I joined The Upside when Upside was already on Circle, which is our current digital platform, but you started it kind of from, you know, bubble gum and paperclips a little while ago.
So how have you seen the concept of community evolve over time? And I guess a follow-up question to that would be, what does it mean to you today, and how has your definition evolved over time?
Yeah, well, I think, first of all, digital community was not really a thing five years ago, 10 years ago.It was really, really a new concept.I mean, still, it's hard to explain what it is. as you know, but it was a really new concept a decade ago.
People truly did not understand it.And there weren't tech platforms that were built for this type of business.So everyone, including me, we are all like, you know,
with glue and paperclips, you know, piecing together a tech stack and hacking different solutions because there really weren't solutions for our types of businesses.
So a lot of us had Slack groups or Facebook groups, and we're using Zapier and all these things to try to piece together our companies.Today, the involvement I've seen is, or the evolution I've seen is that now
community is not only being recognized as a real viable business model, it's being backed by venture funding now, which has a whole other conversation.And there's all this tech now designed just for community builders and sophisticated tech.
There was always tech for it, but now the tech is very, very sophisticated and is designed specifically for this business model.
Yeah.And I would also add during the pandemic, we only had access to digital community.
And now that we've seen the other side of the pandemic, thankfully, for a few years, you see this kind of multi prong approach where, yes, you do have a digital platform to keep people together.
But then, Erin, even in the upside, you see these ad hoc grassroots in-person meetups spark out of the connections that are built on the platform.So anything else that you've seen kind of evolved over time since you went from Facebook
to only the ability to be on Circle and now post-pandemic times.
I mean, it has evolved so fast and so much.I mean, I could talk to you about how the upside has evolved from those times.I could talk to you how the industry has evolved from those times.So, tell me which piece is most interesting to you.
So most interesting to me is from a community, you know, if I'm looking for a community, how do I go about searching for a community?And what types of aspects would I discover in those communities?And how has that evolved over time?
The biggest evolution I've seen is that communities are now inching over to Silicon Valley and the tech world. In other words, they're being looked at and evaluated like a high growth tech company and not as a community, which it's its own silo.
It's its own thing.It is not, it doesn't, community does not operate the way a SaaS company operates and you can't scale it in the same way.And I think there's a big differentiator between community and a business network.
Learning, they are very different things.I personally, this is on the record, I personally don't believe in venture-backed community.I think if a community is venture-backed, it's not a community, it's something else.
And that's okay, there's a place for that.Communities are by nature intimate.That's the definition of a community.I can't think of one traditional
community, you know, call it traditional from 20 years ago, like what you would call a community that large scale.Would you call the United States a community or would you call Canada a community?No, it's a country.
Call your neighborhood a community?Yes, intimate.So that's a really big shift.And I think when people are looking at communities and evaluating whether they want to join one, I think they need to ask, first of all, do I want community?
Do I want learning or do I want a business network?And those are three really different things and they do overlap a little bit.Every community has something first.So the upside is community first.There are other ones that are network first.
There are other ones that are learning first.It's all about a learning platform and then you get put in a community.Community is our business.I think the second thing is values.
A lot of communities don't share their values or haven't even thought about it or don't even put those out there.When you think again from 20 years ago, the definition of a community, they're shared values.
Think of your neighborhood, the shared values that your neighbors all have in common, living in that one area, what they value.Shared values is really, really important.
It's something that we put front and center because I think if you don't align with a community's values and how they run their community, you're not going to like the community.It's not going to fit.And then finally, the leader.
I wanna know, if I'm joining a community, I wanna know how involved the community leader, the founder is in the actual day-to-day of the business and interfacing with members.
When you're in a community where the founder is uninvolved and they're running it behind the scenes and scaling it as a business, that's going to be a very different experience than when the founder is hands-on, is with their members, leading their members, their fingerprints are on everything.
very different experiences depending on what you're looking for.And also, if you don't jive with the leader, if you don't gel with them, if you don't like what they're putting out there, you're not going to like the community.
Yeah, such important points.We talk a lot about the difference between a community and a network as well.Community is more about kind of building those relationships that you may not need now, but you may need down the road.
And even if you don't need them down the road, they make you a better person. almost, right?Like you strive to build relationships for the long game versus a network or a business network or networking that are focused on either content or learning.
Again, not a bad thing, just a different thing.And you may feel a bit more transactional in those communities, right?
So I think the tough part for me when I was looking into joining The Upside and I hadn't been part of a digital community was, you know, why do I need this?Why does it matter to me?
Not to embarrass you or put you on the spot but I did connect very much with you and your vision and your values and even though I don't go to every event that you put out there, not nearly enough events, I wish I could go to more, I still value my relationship with the upside and with my leader in the upside very very much and that's what
That's what makes me want to stay and that's what makes me want to be a part of the community.So why does being a part of a community matter?A little bit of a softball question for you.
Well, I would say, why is it not?How could it not matter?I think human beings intrinsically are tribal people.You know, we are people who need one another, especially now more than ever.
And in all aspects of our lives, we have some form of community as we grow up.When we're children, there's our school community, and even within the school community, we have our classroom community.
Go to high school, we have clubs that we join of like-minded people who enjoy the same things.You go to college, maybe you might join other clubs, or you might join a fraternity or sorority, if that's what your school's about.
Finding like-minded people so that you are you have that tribal feel, you have those people that you can lean on, whether it's for social or academic or even community service.
And then you graduate from college and then you have your work people, you have your company.And if your company is really big, you have your team and your department.Those are all forms of community.
If you are part of a church or a synagogue or a mosque, those are communities.We are part of communities anyway. Why wouldn't we be a part of community for the thing we do most of our days?Most of our days we're working, whether we like it or not.
We are at work eight hours a day, possibly, sometimes more, sometimes less, but we're spending such a huge part of our day at work. Why wouldn't you want community around that?And I think also when it comes to community, it's a very big distinction.
And going back to what you said before about, why do I need this?I'm not sure why I need community.Community is not for everybody.Community is for people who want more.
It's a certain type of person who desires growth, personal growth, professional growth.They desire more.I find that when people say to me, like, yeah, I'm good, I'm just gonna like, kinda like,
you know, I'm in a holding pattern, I'm just going to keep things as they are, then the upside is not going to be a fit because the upside is going to push you to think bigger, think differently, evolve, try new ideas, push out of your comfort zone.
It's for people who want more and probably always will.It's just that type of person.Complacency and community don't necessarily go together that well.
And I would even challenge to say that even in a church or synagogue or mosque setting, it's the same.Those people are looking for not only community but more, a higher power, a higher level of spirituality, whatever it is.
So community to me is about wanting more.
Yeah, that's a great point.And what what I hear sometimes people say is I don't have the time.Right.And so I hear you saying that you need to make the time if you want to grow.So how do you see being part of a community outside of our day jobs?
You alluded to, you know, our work network is our day job.Our day job is our community.Also, we have a community at work, of course.But how do you see being part of a community outside of our day job enrich our experiences within our day job?
Well, the day job, whether it's a business, you're a business owner or an employee, is an echo chamber.That's not helpful for bigger thinking and pushing for more.
When you learn from others who have different backgrounds or different geographic locations, different industries, different types of companies, depending on what kind of community you're running or what type of industry you're in or what type of job or business you have,
The diversity of thought leadership is what pushes you to create some of your biggest ideas.And when you are just leaning on your internal community of your clients or your company or your teams, that's an echo chamber and it does have its value.
There's no doubt about it, but you need outside perspectives as well to push you harder and spark those ideas.Not to mention if you're a leader, if you're a team leader, that's an extra echo chamber because you're really not going to get the same
level of colleagues from your team, because you're their boss, as you would from other peers who are at your level or higher.
Great answer.Thank you for that.So let's double down on that one.Where have you seen being part of a community really impact or change someone's lives, someone's life?
I mean, you see this in the upside, I'm sure you have countless examples, but any example that you want to share?
I mean, I'll give you as an example. You, when I met you, you, first of all, couldn't even understand what a community was.And because of the upside, you're now building one yourself.
And that never would have happened if you hadn't joined the upside, if you hadn't been surrounded by people who pushed you to think differently and think bigger about your business model and what you wanted to build. I think that's the key.
I always say one person is a door to all sorts of unknown opportunities.
When you join the type of community that will intentionally connect you to the right people, not just throw you in a membership directory and say, have fun, but really is intentional about the people inside and about who you're going to meet and putting you with the right people,
that community is going to push you into ideas, into growth that you never would have thought about before you had joined.
So to me, you are that perfect example because I know you wouldn't be running this business or even this podcast if it wasn't for some of the people you met inside The Upside.
Yeah, and by the way, listeners, that was not a planted question at all, but you've made me reflect, obviously I've reflected about this a lot, but Future Forward was started off the sides of our desk, Mark and my desk in 2016 as an annual conference.
And we really never had a way to keep people together.In our mind, we had a community, but I don't think in our community's mind, they were part of a community, right?I think they saw themselves as going to a great learning event
and then going on their merry way, never connecting with each other, and then coming back at the next annual event.
And so when I joined The Upside, it clicked for me that this is exactly what we need to keep our thread going and keep our community cohesive in between these events.
And while we do still do amazing events and bring amazing thought leaders to our community, to your point, we are very mindful of who we put into our community, who we welcome into our community.
And Erin, one of my favorite things in the upside is the power matching, right?
And that's something that we're gonna strive to do once we grow a little bit bigger is really being, we already do it organically, but matching people with people, because we do believe that the one-on-one relationships that come out of a community are one of the three most powerful ways you can connect with people.
Agreed. Great.So how can people get the most out of their community experiences?
Like what are some do's and don'ts that you've seen when people join a community and they're like, not for me, but like you could have done something different or, you know, who are your superstars in your community or imagine the superstars in your community and what do they do really well?
I think that they understand the ROI of a single action.They understand the ROI of a single relationship.They don't say to themselves, I can't go to everything, so I'm not getting full value.
They're saying, I don't need to go to everything all the time.I'm too busy for that. I know if I go to one mastermind a month, that pays for itself.
I know that if I opt into power matching and meet a new person and I build that relationship, it's worth it.And we call it our members recipes for success and everyone has a different recipe for success.
Communities are not designed for you to do everything or show up all the time.It would be too big of a time suck.
They're really designed for you to create your own adventure and self-reflect on the actual value you place on the results you've gotten.
you know, not to put you on the spot, but what value, what financial value, monetary value would you put on the ideas that have come out of your experience from community into the right person?
Or maybe there's someone in the upside that's become a really close friend of yours.What financial value would you put on that?Most people would say it way exceeds what the membership fees are.
So I think to make the most, you have to have that self-reflection and have that self-awareness and say, what am I getting and what value do I put on that?
where would my life be if I didn't meet that person in that community, if I didn't have that new friend, if that person hadn't introduced me to that other person, and so forth.
I think a lot of people look at it like a checklist of benefits and not these priceless new trajectories that they're on as a result, a direct result of a person or an event inside that community.So really, really important.
And again, communities aren't business networks.Communities are not supposed to be transactional.So I think how to make the most out of it is showing up with no agenda, no transactional agenda.I think when people show up
with the, even if they're following the rules in some way, shape or form, in their hearts, they're there to get business and get something for themselves.I don't think they're going to do well in the community.It's not the place.
They should be in a business network.
What are some of the triggers that indicate we should be seeking out or leaning on our community?So either joining a new one or leaning into the ones that we're already part of?
Well, start rejoining a new one.Everyone should be in a community.It's just a matter of which one you are in and how many you are in.But everyone should be in at least one membership community.It can be a co-working space.
It can be an events driven community.It can be a digital community, a local community, a global community, a learning community.It can be any type of community.But if you're not in community in some way, shape or form, you're complacent.
Like, I just can't live my life that way.I am not a complacent person.I never have been.I'm always looking for more.I'm always looking to achieve excellence.I think if you are someone who is growth-oriented, then you need community.
If you're, and you mentioned this, you took the words right out of my mouth, if you're looking online for answers or if you're asking your two or three friends all the time what their thoughts are, that's a sign you need a community.
One or two people's opinions is not enough data for you to make a really good decision.
If you join a community like yours or a community like The Upside, you're going to get dozens of answers and thoughts from people from all sorts of backgrounds who are at a certain level.It's curated.
You know that they're at the top of their game because they're in the community and it's a curated group. If you ask your cousin Amy what her opinion is or what she charges for that service, who's to say she's the one who knows the answer?
Who's to say, even if she's confident, that she is charging enough for her services?And I think just gaining the confidence.
If you feel like you aren't totally confident in every decision you make, which nobody is by the way, if you want a different problem, then you need community.Great ones.
So Erin, many of our listeners are HR professionals.So I'll lead the witness a little bit with the assumption that HR does need community.Why do you think community is important for HR professionals in today's context?
Oh, my God.First of all, HR professionals are already community builders.They are building their own communities, or at least they have the opportunity to build community within their companies.And so community builders also need community.
Make it the best they possibly can to make the impact that they all want to make.They're in the people business. Whether they realize it or not, they're already curating community when they hire people.
They're already running community as they build programs within their company.They're already doing it, but we all know it can be done better.We all know that you can learn from others who are testing and trying different programs and approaches.
We all know you need a gut check when you're hiring people, like to be able to just go and ask a question about an anonymous person, say, hey, I don't know, I'm feeling X, Y, Z about this.What are your thoughts?
priceless, and it helps you do your job so much better and enjoy the job and see a new type of purpose and impact in the job when you have your own board of directors, so to say, in your corner who you can always lean on.
Here, here.And again, that was not a planted question or answer.But thank you, Aaron.That's that's exactly the way we think about it as well.There's a lot going on for HR professionals right now.Our listeners are all very well aware of that.
I'm sure the whole world is very well aware of that.And we need one another.We need to reach out to one another.
And we need we need one another to lean on and sometimes to cry on each other's shoulders and sometimes to celebrate and sometimes to get new ideas.So so thank you for that. We are getting too close to the end of our time together.
So we like to end each of our episodes, Aaron, with a feel good.What are you feeling good about today?
Oh, my God.Well, you're interviewing me at the start of school, and I've got an eighth grader and a fifth grader right now.So I am feeling good about having two, quote, seniors.
So two kids that this is the last year of their schools and they're going to be graduating out to the next level.So I am really just holding on to elementary school, holding on to that eighth grade as tight as I can.
I'm excited to see what that year brings for my family, for my kids.You know, it's like I said, it's the second week of school right now.So that is what is getting me jazzed at this moment.
That's great.And by the time we launch this episode, you will be a month and a bit into school.So into more of a rhythm.We talked about how this time of year is extremely overwhelming for parents.
And so hopefully we'll be through the very overwhelming part as we head into Halloween and the sugar rushes that come with that.
I'm looking forward to it.I'm more of a, I'm a sour patch kid.
Yeah, I do too, but they kind of hurt my tongue after a little while, but I digress.
I don't know how many you're eating.Too many clearly.Too many clearly.
Well, Erin, thank you so much for spending time with us today on Foresight.Before we sign off, can you just tell our listeners where they can learn more about the great work you're doing?
Sure.We are at betheupside.com and I send a weekly email out called the Wednesday Wisdom.
So if anyone wants to sign up for that, I focus on work culture, confidence, knowing your worth, pricing, and all the challenges that come with being an independent consultant.
Amazing.Well, thank you so much again, Erin.And until next time, everyone take care. Thanks for listening to Foresight.If you enjoyed the episode, we would love to hear from you.Leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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