In the spirit of “this is not a freaking non-profit,” I’m launching the heck out of these this summer.

I will be asking you to help. (More on that later.)

Meanwhile, sign up now to get on the First Dibs list & you’ll be the *first* to know when these programs go live!

#1 – Build Your Tribe (prelaunch May 25-27, 2010)

Create relationships. Build a tribe. Engage. Join the conversation.

Yeah, but what does that mean? How do you actually do that?

In BYT I’ll teach you both the technical steps as well as the strategy behind each step of building your tribe.

You will find & nurture a tribe that resonates with and buys from you. Because of who you really are.

Building my tribe changed everything for me – especially as I launched a completely new business in 2009. All my successes, the money I’ve made, the joint ventures and opportunities and friendships and masterminding – it all came from that tribe.

We’ll be focusing on five tactical areas for building & nurturing your tribe: social media, email, deliverable content, blogs, and live interaction.

Here’s how it will work: BYT will be a virtual self-study program delivered via video/audios & pdfs, broken down into short lessons. You’ll also get video tutorials on the technology and case study interviews with both experts as well as regular people you haven’t heard of who have got results. I’m probably going to throw in more stuff too unless someone stops me.

It will be freaking awesometastic. The prelaunch is in less than 2 weeks. #yay!

Get on the EPW First Dibs list to keep up with the latest on Build Your Tribe and everything else I’m launching this summer.

(More on Find Your Truth, the Advanced Video Series, and The Quickstart Video Program coming soon)

If you have anything you’d like included in BYT, or anything else you would like to learn from me or need help with, leave a comment below!

Related posts:

1. Behind the Launch of Build Your Tribe
2. How to Decide if You Should Buy Build Your Tribe
3. #1 Resource in Building Your Tribe (& you’re missing it)

But in the age of social media, of being able to connect with people via twitter, facebook, phone, email, skype … why do we need to go to live events at all?

Why go to seminars and conferences to learn? Why not just learn new stuff via information products and

Why do we need in real life?

Are you coming to SXSW? Make sure we find each other!!

And … what have you got out of meeting people in real life?

Related posts:

1. Surrendering to F*ck3 & Other Nightmares of Live Events
2. EPW Live Ep1: Why Live Video & Behind the Website
3. EPW Live Ep2: Launch Strategies & Lessons Learned

For those of you who are not into personality tests or typing, INFJ is one of the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types (you can taken an online test here to find your type).

Now I don’t believe that Myers-Briggs gives all the answers (nor hand analysis or finding your words or any of the interesting explorations into which we can define ourselves), but whenever I am freaking out & I share it with another INFJ, unlike most people, they understand.

I’m not going to go into the full explanation of personality types, especially since I’ve known my type for 20 years and I’m still learning and don’t consider myself the expert of all things psychological.

But I’ll give you the short version of what it means to be an INFJ, at least for what I’m talking about here.

INFJ stands for Introvert (as opposed to Extrovert), Intuitive (as opposed to Sensing), Feeling (as opposed to Thinking) and Judging (as opposed to Perceiving).

INFJs are known as the Confident, the Protector, the Mystic, the Counselor.

“INFJs are gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive individuals. Artistic and creative, they live in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities. Only one percent of the population has an INFJ Personality Type, making it the most rare of all the types.” (source: INFJ personality page)

We are regularly mistaken as extroverts.

Probably because we are so interested in people and concerned with the state of the world, we seek connection and interaction with others, unlike many other introverted types. We love learning about people, we love figuring them out.

That’s one of the reasons I became an entrepreneur, a writer, a coach. Because mathematics, chemistry, law, finance … all of those were pretty easy to get after a while. But people, their complexities are never ending. I will be able to spend my entire life trying to figure people out, and will never be done, never be board.

Another INFJ trait – we listen.

I can’t tell you how many times people I barely know have chosen to share their secrets with me. Speak truths they have never spoken. I don’t know what it is that I do, but there is something about me that invites confidences.

But regardless of how outgoing we seem, we are true introverts.

While we love people, we are sensitive.

You freak us out when we are exposed to you in mass quantities. We need alone time to find ourselves, to reenergize, to fill ourselves back up so we can give to you from our overflowing.

Yes, I hide in the bathroom at networking events. Yes, I’ve taken off early from parties without saying goodbye to anyone. Yes, I must have time alone every day. Yes, I’ve even spent entire weekends away from the company of other humans … well, except for a bit of texting and social media.

And it’s not because I don’t love you.

It’s because I can feel your energy, I can see into your souls.

It’s because I care about your problems, where you are not in resonance with your truth. It’s because I can’t fix everything and feel that I may have failed you in some way.

And while we INFJs may know lots of people, we will only share our souls with a chosen few.

The thing is, I’m everything or nothing with the people I love.

With most of you that I love, I keep you at a distance to protect myself. This may be a physical distance, where I break off most connections to keep negativity at bay. Or, we may spend time together, have fun, do projects together, go on adventures … but that’s only a part of me.

On a rare occasion, after much research and consideration and an intuitive hit that the person has integrity and caring, I decide to let someone in. To trust them with my soul. But I don’t know how to let someone in a little bit. If I let them in, it’s all the way.

So to most of you, those in my outer circle, my followers, friends, clients, readers:

Even when am hiding at the networking event, when I can’t talk to you, when I don’t reply to your email or @ reply or comment or DM, that does not mean I don’t care about you. On the contrary, I do care. Perhaps too much. But I have to protect myself, reenergize myself, keep a certain part of myself safe behind a wall, to have anything left to give to you tomorrow.

We can have fun, go on adventures, tweetup. We can have amazing conversations, debate controversial issues, gossip about the latest mistakes by the big gurus. I can help you with your business, share resources, give advice. I’ll speak my truth in videos, write my truth on my blog and twitter, tell the whole story.

But there is a certain part of me you may never get access to. You may see it, read about it, resonate with it, but there’s only so much of me that I can give.

To my inner circle, my best friends, my confidants, to anyone I trust with my soul:

You’ve got my everything, an unlimited amount of listening and insight and help, of fun and laughter and adventure, of caring and creativity and courage.

I accept and love you as you are, I support you in your insanity, I believe in your vision, I stand by you equally in your greatest triumphs and when I think you are making colossal mistakes.

And I will be brutally honest. Tell you all of my insanities. Speak the whole story, even the parts where I am embarrassed and worried about what you will think of me and scared that you may be upset or hurt by what I have to say.

I’ll call you on your bullsh*t. Hold you accountable to what you say you are going to do. Hold up a mirror so you can see who who you truly are.

I’ll protect you from the world. Create a sanctuary, a safe place for you to be 100% yourself.

All I ask is the same in return.

Which is a freaking big deal, actually. I get that.

And if it ends up that you can’t do that, then I’m pulling back.

Not because I don’t love you. Not because you did anything objectively wrong. Not because there has been some grand betrayal.

But because I can only be everything or nothing.

If I let you in, it must be all the way. And the only way I have anything to give is if I keep myself from constantly falling apart.

So let’s get back to what I was thinking about at 3:30 am.

Well, I’m not going to tell that story yet, because it has not played out. And I don’t even know what the freaking story is yet. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s everything. I’m probably being an idiot.

Either way, it will make a great paragraph or page or chapter in the yet unwritten Live Your Truth book.

I wrote this post as therapy.

To understand where I’m drawing the line and how my truth fits into the equation and what it all means.

I feel better after writing this.

But I don’t have an answer.

To those of you who are also sensitive, and/or to those of you who are also INFJs, you know exactly what I mean. I’m not sure if we are blessed, or cursed, or called to be how we are, but you understand my particular brand of insanity, and I thank the powers that be and the social media gods for bringing us together.

#thatisall

–

If you are also an INFJ and/or a sensitive person, let me know. I get you.

–

Next Steps:

• Join us in the private Facebook group for us INFJs to learn, share, and connect with each other –> INFJs Are Awesome.
• Watch the free streaming video class called “How INFJs Think” where I debunked myths about Myers-Briggs and INFJs, explained why INFJs are sometimes seen as extroverts and were our blind spots are hurting us, and shared how to develop your preferences over your life, including turning blind spots into strengths –> How INFJs Think
• Leave a comment below or contact me directly with your thoughts, feedback, or questions.

I’m so happy we are all finding each other.

Related posts:

1. EveryDay3: Turning a Corner

Every Thursday night in my Junior year of college, a group of us girls would run back from night class to gather in Mindy’s dorm room, drink illicit margaritas, and revel in the details of a romanticized version of New York City life.

The scenario portrayed on the 1990s TV show “Friends” seemed perfect.

A group of singletons living in the big city. Alone, but together. Always someone to share the events of the day, have a drink with, or support you when your non-secret lifelong crush didn’t love you back or when you were giving birth to your brother’s triplets conceived by artificially insemination.

But that never really happened when I got out into the real world.

Yes, obviously I had people I hung out with in law school, work friends from the law firm, and acquaintances here and there from my daughter’s playgroup or the local business networking event.

But I never really found my people.

People where I didn’t have to play a part. Where I was not restricted to doing just what I “should” do. Where I didn’t have to hold back a part of my insanity so I fit into the norm of the group. Where I could share not just the positive stuff, but also all of the crap of my life.

So, I figured that the magical support structure I had envisioned was just that. Fiction. A fantasy.

Fast foreward to one week ago from today.

I was home alone, chatting on Twitter & Skype, working on some tasks for The Live Your Truth Project 2 and planning a weekend of untold productivity & video creation.

Then the phone rang.

It was my ex-husband. Our 4 year old daughter had suffered second degree burns on her leg from scalding hot water at a KFC and was being transported via ambulance to the Regional Burn Unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

So before I ran off in a frenzy to meet them at the ER, I invoked my support structure.

No, I didn’t run over to a neighbor or call a family member.

I updated my Twitter account.

“going to the ER: ex called to say that my daughter has 2nd degree burns from hot water spilling on her. will update.” 12/4/09 7:55 PM

Over the last 7 days I live tweeted my entire experience as the mother of 4 year old who has 2nd degree burns over 10% of her body.

Almost fainting as they cleaned her wound. Her refusal of pain medication, flabbergasting the hospital staff. My sleeping on the worst bed that had ever been invented. Her grilling the surgical resident on the risks of waking up during the procedure. Our nightmare of her needing surgery to attach fake skin to her wound, and relief when we found out three days later that the surgery worked. And our joy a few hours ago when she took her first post-burn steps down the hospital hallways.

The amazing thing is that I didn’t have to do this alone.

As soon as I sent that first tweet, dozens, hundreds of @ replies, DMs, and text messages immediately came in offering prayers, energy work, and positive thoughts … and asking how they could help.

And these were not empty offers.

I had Allison Nazarian (@allisonnazarian) on permanent text message alert, available for constant updates & to vent every untwitterable compliant, doubt, internal struggle, and self-punishing thought.

Sarah Robinson (@sarahrobinson) recruited a San Jose local Karmen Reed (@kickofftopic) to deliver my much missed Starbucks mocha to the hospital. Total surprise. And, they got the order right.

Balloons delivered to the hospital from Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) & Alison Kramer (@nummiesbras), providing decoration, floating punching bags, and a discussion starter for my 4 year old to entertain her guests (aka hospital staff).

Ori Bengal (@couchsurfingori) texting with original offensive-to-normal-people jokes about burn units to distract me that first long night.

And that’s just the beginning.

Hundreds (by now, thousands) of well-wishes & thoughts & offers for help via Twitter @ reply and DM, Facebook comments & wall posts, multi-day Skype conversations, emails, blog comments, text messages, flowers, gifts, offers to run errands or pull strings. From clients, friends, family, readers, followers. People I’ve known for decades and people with whom I have never directly communicated before this week.

And almost all of these people I either met for the first time this year on Twitter or they were casual business colleagues who became real friends via social networking.

Yes, I’ve got new clients using social media. Yes, I’ve got speaking gigs and joint venture opportunities from blog and Facebook posts. Yes, Twitter has been my ultimate business  mastermind.

But it is the deep personal/business relationships I’ve developed using Twitter, Facebook and blogging that are profound.

It’s been where I found my people.

It’s been where I brought my Friends fantasy into reality.

And it did not happen by accident. It did not happen overnight. It did not happen using some magical strategy taught by the leading social media gurus.

It’s actually just simple common sense.

But while we were all born with common sense, somehow it was socialized out of us along the way.

So here are 11 reminders as you navigate the mysteries of the social media revolution to get you back into living your truth. So you can find your people.

1. Give a sh*t about people.  If there was nothing else that you take away from this post, this is it: care. Really care about people. Who they are. What they want. Their dreams. Their problems. Their greatest fears. What makes them excited. What rocks their world. If you really, really give a sh*t about people, you will never go wrong. In social media. And in life.

2. Treat your “friends” as if they were your friends. When we crossed the line from having prospects & leads to having friends & followers, some marketers continued to market in their slimy way and others stopped marketing entirely. Obviously, neither extreme is effective.

Here’s the social media promotion test: if your “in real life” friend had a problem that you knew you could solve, would you tell them about how you could help them, or keep silent? Of course you would tell them.

If that’s the energy your self-promotion comes from, then tweet/post/email it. You’re not shamefully (or shamelessly) promoting yourself. You’re making sure your friends are aware that you can help solve their problems. You do us a disservice by hiding your brilliance. Let us know how you help.

3. Let them know you’re listening. The difference between 10,000 followers and 4 million followers is irrelevant. Seriously. It’s all about the relationship you have with your followers. Or friends. Or subscribers.

Ask questions. Answer @ replies. Reply to blog comments. Join the Facebook comment stream on your recent status post. Reply to emails. Let people call you. People want to feel like they are being heard, that their opinions, their stories, their passions really matter. But make sure that you’re not just listening in silence … to develop a relationship, they must know you are listening.

4. Join the conversation. So what if you don’t already have a bunch of followers/readers/friends? (don’t forget, *all* of us started with 0 followers on twitter.) What you do is join other people’s conversations. What are they tweeting about? Where is the debate going on in blog post comments? Who posted an interesting link on Facebook?

And these conversations don’t all need to be about business. Actually, most of them won’t be. They’ll be about regular life, the stuff you would talk about if you were meeting for coffee or having drinks in vegas. About travel. Kids. Dogs. News. Coffee. The latest preparation strategy for bacon. Creative uses for duct tape. Methods for killing ants using all organic ingredients. Share your resources, stories, opinions, laughs. Join the party.

5. Speak the things that everyone thinks but no one says. Everyone is walking around with a thousand things they are thinking but not saying (tweeting, blogging) out loud. And I know this because, for some reason, people tell me about their unspeakable things. And while I would never reveal any one’s unspeakables, when I see a trend, a common internal conversation, one of the reasons I’m on this earth is to bring that conversation into the open.

Not only is entering into the conversation in people’s heads a brilliant method for writing great copy, it’s also a way to skyrocket to leadership of a conversation — simply be the first to say what everyone thinks. People will be grateful & empowered to speak their own truth. You will be a nexus for a movement, an influencer of the big idea.

6. Be vulnerable. There’s a lot of talk about being authentic and transparent. And yes, I try to be both of those things. But so many people resist authenticity as a cliche & transparency as sharing too much information, I want to give you another way to think about sharing enough to bond you to your community.

Share the whole story about something. The bad side of what didn’t work out. The truth of the project that failed. How your business is great but your personal life has gone to heck. What’s not working in your business. And of course, share how you are turning it around, the lessons you have learned, what you are changing for next time.

My videos sharing how my business did not make a profit & how I was getting divorced, and my blog posts on being a crazy person and the bad side of transparency, were the most commented on & read of anything I have shared. Everyone has stuff that does not work out. There is always a “whole story” … sharing yours builds trust & endears you to your audience.

7. Tell a story. Every communication you have should tell a story. Every blog post, podcast, video … and even every tweet. The collective work of all of your content should share the story of you, and your business.

Yes, you can tell a story in 140 characters.

Not the whole story, of course (and besides, telling only part of the story creates a great cliffhanger). But you can share how the smell of these cookies baking remind you of your great-grandmother. The fact that you are not just buying shoes, you are buying your 45th pair of shoes. How you are not just hiking, you are climbing your 27th peak and can’t wait to read the peak log to find out who has gone before you.

Everyone loves a story. We as humans have been bonding over stories since we first sat around the original campfires. That’s how we bond with our children, and what we love to hear from our grandparents. Share your stories, and we will listen.

8. Don’t believe your own bullsh*t. When I go on someone’s bio or twitter profile and it says “social media expert” or “social networking guru” I involuntarily cringe. Why? Well, either they are trying to B.S. that they are an expert (when they are not), or they have some expertise but have lost touch & become lame know-it-all’s, unable to learn or listen.

Stay humble. No one knows everything. We are all still learning. And besides, everything keeps changing.

Find people who know something you don’t. Share when you screw up. Acknowledge when people with less experience or notoriety get it right (sometimes newbies have perspective we don’t, anyway). Be open. Pay attention.

9. Have fun. This is real life. And real life is pretty freaking ridiculous. Real people are ridiculous. Every kind of human, opinion, race, religion, political party, business model, theory, lame marketing campaign, and insanity is rampant through the social media universe.

So instead of spending time being offended or getting into a hot debate, have fun. Laugh it off. Share your own ridiculousness. Tell us how you are an idiot. Get over yourself & get real.

10. Be patient. The above “going to the ER” tweet was about my 19,000th tweet. Assuming around 100 characters a tweet, that’s over 300,000 words. Enough raw content to fill at least 6 or 7 books.

You will not get profound results from being on twitter for 5 minutes a day. You will not develop relationships from a few weeks of implementing a social media plan. Building relationships takes time, energy, and effort. Adjust your expectations. Make the investment.

11. Take it to the next level. Chat on skype. Talk on the actual telephone. Text message. Email. Have coffee, drinks, lunch. Connect at seminars. Tweetup.

Social media is a low transaction cost, highly scalable method to start a conversation and create a bridge between your other connection points.

But only by connecting in real life (IRL) can you feel the energy of the other person, who they are being, their presence. That next level is where life long friendships and business partnerships are made. Connecting IRL is what has changed my life (… and that’s a story for another blog post).

So has social media worked for you? Are you getting any results from Twitter? Are you still looking for your people? Please, share your story / questions / comments / feedback below!

Related posts:

1. My Fake Friends
2. EPW Live Ep2: Launch Strategies & Lessons Learned
3. Speaking, Bullsh*t, and Billionaires: Post-#Shine Wrap Up pt 2

More of what I learned after 5 days in Las Vegas:

I might be a real speaker.

I have a complex. (Okay, I have a few complexes, but let’s just deal with one at a time.)

I don’t think I’m a real speaker.

Yes, I regularly speak at live events. And I tell stories, make people laugh, teach them amazing content, and hopefully inspire them to take action on what they have learned.

But I’ve never been paid to speak.

You know, the person who gets paid $3K or $20K or whatever the heck people get paid to keynote an event. I’ve just done the free speaking, where you are supposed to be happy to be there so you can share your information & maybe add people to your list or sell stuff from the back of the room.

I have friends who are real speakers. They get paid actual checks (Do people still get actual checks? Either way, they get paid actual money.).

And I thought you magically get tapped to be part of the club once you become really good. Or maybe after you are President of the United States or save kittens from dying in Antarctica.

But as I was sitting in the audience listening to the keynote on Thursday, I realized that dude, I’m better than this chick.

I mean, yes, she started a company that she sold for millions and has a compelling story about her journey with cancer. But this woman’s success was based upon a lie, a bit of luck, and selling her business before the market changed. Her presentation was devoid of reproducible content, lessons that people in the audience could apply to their own business today.

And just like back in 2003 when I was inspired to start my financial business after I realized that I’m smarter than Suze Orman (there’s another blog post waiting to happen), I realized after watching this woman that I am a pretty good speaker already.

The only reason I’m not getting paid to speak is because I don’t think I should get paid to speak. Because I believe I’m not real.

Wow, as I wrote that last sentence I started to cry. Frak me. Well, at least now I know one thing I’m working on in 2010.

If it worked yesterday does not mean it will work tomorrow.

There is a business theory that reproducing what was successful in the past is a way to be successful in the future.

Now that’s not a completely insane idea, and in a slower moving world, it probably (maybe?) worked.

So today we go to events and listen to people who were successful yesterday, and they tell us the secret strategies & tactics of making their millions (or ahem, billions).

And tell us that if we do not follow their advice, then we are fools.

Bullsh*t.

If the only way to success was modeling tactics that worked in the past, we’d still be riding horses, taking ships to europe, sending checks via airmail, and turning on the news to find out what happened yesterday.

Cold calling would still work. Brand advertising would still work. People would still click on banner ads.

Technology & tactics change. And today, they change at exponential speed.

Even more so, the strategies that worked yesterday don’t necessarily work today, because technology has changed the sophistication of the customer.

People no longer respond to the push. They respond to building a relationship. Especially in a service based, personality based business.

Sorry to break it to you, billionaire, but twitter and facebook are not a waste of time.

Building relationships is never a waste of time. And twitter/facebook/blogs/social media are powerful tools to build those relationships.

Can you waste time on social media? Obviously, just like you can waste money on branding and printing fancy business cards.

Do we have something to learn from what worked yesterday? Yes, because some principles of business & how humans work still apply today.

Telling an audience of 450 entrepreneurs that twitter & facebook are a waste of time is a gross oversimplification and a violation of trust.

Psst … twitter & facebook relationship building leads to 90%+ of my revenue. What a waste.

Bullsh*t does not work on social media.

Now we are getting into pet peeve territory.

If you follow me on twitter, you know that my style is hands on. No automation. No assistants tweeting for me.

Why not outsource? Think of it this way: would you pay a virtual assistant to go to a networking event on your behalf?

Would you pay the assistant to dress up in your clothes & put on a wig and pretend to be you?

No, of course not. That would be total bullsh*t. Fraudulent. Creepy. And would totally not work.

Then why would you have someone pretend to be you on twitter?

Now there is a way you can use staff to manage your social media, answer questions for you, or even have their own accounts to handle customers service. That’s a brilliant way to leverage your time & provide even more relationship building opportunities with your community.

Having others tweet as if they were you is just gross.

So when Ali was on stage on Friday morning and this tweet allegedly from her came across my iPhone, I called bullsh*t.

(in case you can’t read the graphic, the tweet from @alibrownla reads: “@barbaracorcoran so excited to meet you today and have you speak to my audience at #Shine. We have so much to learn from you!” and it is dated 9:25 AM Nov. 6th)

Ali was obviously not tweeting that as she was on stage. Either she had an automatic service tweet that out (somewhat lame) or her staff was pretending to be her (ick!).

So here I’m sending a message to Ali’s team (that they probably will not listen to, since Ali’s mentor thinks twitter is a waste of time):

You. Are. Doing. It. Wrong.

And that is why you are getting mediocre results from your social media efforts.

Leverage Ali’s time, yes. Use staff to answer customer service issues, yes.

But either Ali tweets out as herself, or she shouldn’t do twitter.

And … the CEO of a personality-based business who wants to be big must engage her audience.  The most simple & inexpensive way to engage is through twitter.

#thatisall

(stay tuned for part 3 of the post-#shine wrap up, including: “The real magic happens outside of the seminar room.” & “It is possible to be married for more than 10 years and still have sex every day.”)

Related posts:

1. Do It With Your Eyes Open & Be Awesome: Post-#Shine Wrap Up, pt 1
2. Magic, Energy & Ecstasy Outside the Seminar Room: Post-#Shine Wrap Up pt 3
3. Riots, Bullsh*t, and Calling It What It Is