Building real bonds amongst diverse groups of strangers 💖 Sophie Mona Pagès, LVRSNFRNDS
Listen on: Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Overcast, Pocketcast, RSS
Read: Transcript
Episode at a glance:
GUEST: Sophie Mona Pagès
COMMUNITY: LVRSNFRNDS
HOSTS: Marjorie Anderson & Kevin Huynh
“Society is losing something when we don’t share our weirdness with one another. You're losing something when you have someone at your table and they don't share what makes them different. One of the purposes I have in life is to create spaces where people will share what is interesting about them, and why they are different.”
- Sophie Mona Pagès
Show Notes
As a Moroccan immigrant growing up in France, Sophie Mona Pagès grew up feeling a bit “weird” in her complex identity. She craved a space infused with diversity, inclusion, intimacy, modernity, and beauty.
Instead of waiting for such a space to appear, she created LVRSNFRNDS herself. The 20 attendees at the first event in East London were people Sophie found on dating apps who she “would be happy to spend an evening with.” She asked them to fill out a form if they wanted to attend, spend 15 minutes with her on a call, and gathered fun facts about each attendee to spark conversations. The group was diverse across identities and ages, and meaningful relationships were sparked. The night was a success.
Today LVRSNFRNDS gathers people around the world, to fight loneliness and enable meaningful connections of all kinds. Hand-selected members have access to events where they’re asked to contribute their voice to conversations on intimacy and relationships.
In March 2020, the community traded bars for virtual rooms. We’ll talk with Sophie about developing a playbook that captures shared values, facilitating online conversations, and why this work matters to her.
Just like when building a fire, there’s an order of operations you can follow to cultivate communities that burn bright.
In our book, Get Together: How to build community with your people, we take you through three stages of building a community: sparking the flame, stoking the fire, and passing the torch.
Here’s Sophie on the second step, stoking the fire.
Communicating and practicing shared values.
At the beginning, it felt like a natural step to craft community guidelines. The guidelines set out as an invitation of how people could show up. They are the basic requirements. But, Sophie realized “it’s not something that we can do on our own.” Sophie crafted a playbook with LVRSNFRNDS members that articulate the nuances of the values lived out.
Together they have documented how-to resource on inclusive language and having good conversations plus the process for accountability for acting in opposition to the values. They acknowledge in the playbook that people mess up and created a system to talk with members when they do something wrong. Then, empower them with the tools to do better.
Attracting new folks.
You can’t skimp on the onboarding process. It’s where trust is bred. You can say you have a safe space but how do people really feel in it?
LVRSNFRNDS continues to select new members based on their shared values and intent.
Because the bulk of what happens sits behind closed doors in membership-based communities, members don’t always know exactly what they are walking into. LVRSNFRNDS onboards new members, hosting introductions to one another and the shared values so they have a shared foundation.
Going virtual.
Figuring out how to create a space in real life that is diverse, inclusive, and intimate takes time and attention. Doing so online brings a new set of unique challenges. When Sophie made the transition online she “empowered everyone to be a host.”
Where nonverbal cues would typically prompt conversation in person, Sophie asks members to speak explicitly — inviting people to speak who might look hesitant and for the extroverts to be mindful of their airtime.
They have employed the “fish bowl” method so that people can show up as themself — introverted or extroverted. The concept is simple: if you want to speak, leave your camera on. If you just want to listen, turn your camera off. This allowed people to engage at their own comfort level.
Get Together is produced by the team at People & Company.
We published a book and work with organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider as strategy partners, bringing confidence to how they’re building communities.
Stay up to date on all things Get Together.