Welcome to the Mindshare community!
This is a place to ask questions, work through business challenges, and share ideas as it relates to selling your expertise.
The following suggestions and guidelines are intended to make the community easier and more enjoyable to use
The 80/20 Rules
1. Peers, not prospects
This is a peer group—not a prospect group. If you’re sending unsolicited DM’s, pitching services, or otherwise trying to use the community as a prospecting pool, your membership will be revoked. Please report anyone you see doing this.
2. This is not a distribution channel
It’s fine to talk about things you’re working on. It’s fine to ask people to help spread the word about your new thing (do the same for others!). But this isn’t a place to publish or promote your content.
Anything you do share should be valuable to the community and not self-promotional. If you’re not sure, just ask me (Kevin) before sharing.
3. Be kind
There’s zero tolerance for rudeness or disrespect in any manner. Be kind or be quiet!
4. Be specific
Need help with something? Ask a specific question that doesn’t require a book to answer.
Asking for “general feedback” on something is too easy to ask and too hard to answer. Small, specific questions get the best responses.
5. Be helpful
If you want others to offer feedback or help you with your questions, help others when you can.
The best way to help people is to share your experience, not offer advice. I know, it’s hard. We’re advisors. But your experience will be a lot more helpful than advice.
6. Use threads
To keep conversations organized, please use Slack’s thread feature to reply to messages and keep topics in one neat area. It makes a big difference as conversations grow.
To reply in a thread, hover over (or press and hold on mobile) a message and click the chat bubble (Reply in thread):
Getting Started
- Upload a photo and create a short bio.
- Introduce yourself and tell the group a little about what you do.
- If your favorite business topic isn’t being discussed, bring it up!
- All are welcome to contribute regardless of their experience level. If you want to hang back and lurk, that’s cool, too.
- We expect that we’ll treat others with respect. We encourage debate; we ask for patience, and we remind you that you’re here to learn and that means being open a diverse set of ideas. See the Code of Conduct below.
- Please resist the temptation to get into lengthy discussions about non-business topics
- Nobody in the room is an attorney. Please be extremely cautious about giving or receiving anything resembling legal advice.
A few details
- No one has signed an NDA to participate in this group, and you should not presume anything you say here will remain private, so act accordingly. Protect IP and legally-protected information.
- If you want to publicly disclose anything discussed here, use Chatham House Rule as the guideline (“participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed”).
- Membership in this group is a privilege, not a right, and you can be kicked out at any time. See the Code of Conduct below.
Code of Conduct
The Short Version
Be respectful of other people, respectfully ask people to stop if you are bothered, and if you can’t resolve an issue contact an administrator. If you’re being a problem, you can be kicked out of the room.
The Long Version
Respect
Mindshare is an intentionally positive community that recognizes and celebrates the creativity and collaboration of independent members and the diversity of skills, talents, experiences, cultures, and opinions that they bring to our community.
Mindshare is an inclusive environment, based on treating all individuals respectfully, regardless of gender or gender identity (including transgender status), sexual orientation, age, disability, nationality, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or career path.
We value respectful behavior above individual opinions.
Respectful behavior includes:
- Be considerate, kind, constructive, and helpful.
- Avoid demeaning, discriminatory, harassing, hateful, or physically threatening behavior, speech, and imagery.
- If you’re not sure, ask someone instead of assuming. No, really. Just ask the administrators. We’d rather hear from you than hear about something you said or did after the fact, and we are here to help.
- Don’t be a bystander. Role model respectful behavior, but also help to address disrespect when you see it.
Resolve Peacefully
We believe peer-to-peer discussions, feedback, and corrections can help build a stronger, safer, and more welcoming community.
If you see someone behaving disrespectfully, we urge you to respectfully dissuade them from such behavior. Expect that others in the community wish to help keep the community respectful, and welcome your input in doing so.
If you experience disrespectful behavior toward yourself or anyone else and feel in any way unable or unwilling to respond or resolve it respectfully (for any reason), please immediately bring it to the attention of an administrator. We want to hear from you about anything that you feel is disrespectful, threatening, or just something that could make someone feel distressed in any way.
We will listen and work to resolve the matter.
Apologize for Mistakes
Should you catch yourself behaving disrespectfully, or be confronted as such, listen intently, own up to your words and actions, and apologize accordingly.
No one is perfect, and even well-intentioned people make mistakes. What matters is how you handle them and that you avoid repeating them in the future.
Consequences
If the administrators determine that someone is behaving disrespectfully, the administrators may take any action they deem appropriate within this Slack team, up to and including expulsion and exclusion from the room.
As administrators, we will seek to resolve conflicts peacefully and in a manner that is positive for the community. We can’t foresee every situation, and thus if in the administrator’s judgment the best thing to do is to ask a disrespectful individual to leave, we will do so.
ADMINISTRATORS
The administrator(s) of Mindshare as of November, 2022
- Kevin Whelan
Thanks
Many thanks to Michael Lopp and Jonathan Stark for influencing these guidelines.