Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

You might not realize it, but belonging could be the missing piece to your success. Think about it. Whether it's in business, relationships or life, feeling like you truly belong can change everything. And today's guest, Dan Berger, has spent his entire career building businesses that bring people together. Dan founded Social Tables, an event planning platform that helped execute over 1.5 million events per year before he sold it for $100 million. Now he's building Assemble Hospitality, a new concept designed to create the ultimate space for corporate retreats. But Dan's journey to understanding belonging started way before his success in business. As an immigrant adopted kid, he faced many challenges around his own feeling of belonging from a young age.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:43]:

And instead of letting them define him, he built a process to help others find belonging in their lives.

Dan Berger [00:00:48]:

And I learned that belonging is a fundamental human need. I always say you need personal belonging before you need professional belonging, when people are engaged or committed because they see what they contribute is having an impact. And after they are committed, there's belonging.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:01]:

Today, he's here to share that process with us. How can you create belonging in your business, your team, and your own life? Stay tuned, because Dan is about to break it all down. Welcome to the Creator's Adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey, everyone. I'm Brian McAnulty, the founder of Hedge platform. Let's get into it. Hey, Dan. Welcome to the show.

Dan Berger [00:01:28]:

Thank you so much for having me.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:30]:

My first question for you is, what would you say is the biggest thing either that you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Dan Berger [00:01:40]:

I hate answering these kinds of questions because my wife gets mad that I don't include her in the answers. But the reality is that I had 41 years before I met her, so I can get away with it. I think the answer is quite simple, and probably most people think of it intuitively, and that's essentially getting time to do what you want to do. And that's only unlocked because of financial freedom. And for some people, it's a lifestyle business because they get paid to do what they love and they get a salary and they enjoy it and keep. Keep doing it, you know, for infinity. For me, I really enjoyed what I was doing. But once more, employees got involved, investors got involved.

Dan Berger [00:02:22]:

I lost that a little bit. So I would say that selling my company allowed me not just to make money, but also to fall in love with an industry that I didn't realize was actually deep in my heart.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:37]:

Yeah, that's Interesting. Yeah. So you, you sold your company for $100 million. That's really insane number. And I'm curious, back when you first started it, did you already have ideas of like, well I really enjoy this, that's why I want to work on it or did you feel like, oh this is just a good opportunity to make money and that's why you picked it?

Dan Berger [00:02:55]:

Yeah, I would say the most influential book I've read prior. I guess it happened a little later after selling my business. But you know, it's funny like I feel like a lot of people are only able to communicate their life trajectory after life has happened a little bit. So what I mean by that is reading Simon Sinek's Find your why helped me crystallize what my life has really been all about, which is bringing people together and essentially doing the community thing before was called community and that started in a treehouse, you know, growing up with friends and moved to like it moved to a little bicycle gang that I had with some friends. It moved to like online gaming and my gaming clan and it was called before that name was changed to team. So I've always kind of enjoyed bringing people together and doing cool stuff. And essentially that industry I fell into and realized I love is hospitality. And I think hospitality is in human nature.

Dan Berger [00:04:00]:

We all have some hospitality related value or skill and I think that most creators should lean into that in order to build authentic communities. So. So to answer your question, I never knew I wanted to build something even though I was building community. And only once I started my business as a side hustle did I realize, oh, I'm creating community here. And I created multiple layers of community. I created it for employees, I created it for, for customers. I created it for. And our software was used to build community because it was event planning software.

Dan Berger [00:04:37]:

So it's pretty cool that all those things came together even though I wasn't planning it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:42]:

Yeah, yeah, I, I can relate to that as you're saying that that like I've realized myself along the way that whether intentional, subconscious or, or not that there are certain things that I do that it makes sense because it's connected to something that I, I used to do when I was younger or like I had interest in or I was good at. And it's kind of just an extension of that in some ways that I'm doing now.

Dan Berger [00:05:09]:

What's an example of that, Brian? What's what comes to your mind?

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:12]:

Like there, there's examples in big and small ways, I guess like more like a fundamental sense Like, I love building things. Like I was obsessed with Legos as a little kid and like, and figuring out how things worked. And that translates really well into today of like building, building software. I just really enjoy creating that. And also I think things even like in the, in business itself of like building the platform that I've built today, I think it only came up to be because of all the experience I had before I started as like a web designer, graphic designer, started building websites, then web applications, and then I built some web applications where they kind of were platforms where it wasn't just me selling to the end consumer, but it was to a business and the business would then have their own customers and heights. Platform works just like that as well. And so I think it's often that a lot of the experiences that you have leading up to whatever you're doing now allows you to create that thing that you do today.

Dan Berger [00:06:17]:

Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I totally agree. And software is cool like that because the time to value, if you will, the time to see what you're building is instantaneous.

Bryan McAnulty [00:06:28]:

Yeah, yeah. So you wrote a book called the Quest, the Definitive Guide to Finding Belonging. Can you take us back to a moment in your life when you first realized that belonging wasn't something you could take for granted?

Dan Berger [00:06:47]:

So I am. I like to think about my life and again, hindsight is, is a real kind of blessing. I like to think about my life as a series of belonging traumas. And everybody's got a trauma. I don't use that word lightly. Everybody's traumas or everybody's traumas is valid because it's your traumas or your maximum pain level. And you know, some people may experience some terrible things, some people not so much. But at the end of the day you only know what you experienced.

Dan Berger [00:07:16]:

So my belonging traumas are really. There's three of them. The first one is adoption. I was adopted. I was given up for adoption when I was two days old. I was adopted when I was five days old. So from the moment I was conceived, if you will, my biological mother was essentially communicating to me through hormones that I don't belong here in her womb and subsequently in her life because she made the decision to give me up quite early. In addition to that, that, you know, that created heightened cortisol levels in her and it just was passed to me.

Dan Berger [00:07:52]:

And I haven't been an anxious kid or an adult or whatever medicated adult now. And the second belonging trauma is when my dad, my adoptive dad abandoned me and my mom. My bend in Me essentially when I was 2 years old. And it wasn't just like a divorce, it was just like cutting off, because whatever, like, I don't really know why, but most likely he was just sick of waiting for a kid. And they waited 10 years to have me. And by the time the marriage was falling apart, so I was abandoned by my dad. And the third is immigration. I immigrated to this country when I was nine.

Dan Berger [00:08:24]:

I came here from Israel. I didn't speak a word of English, and I was kind of thrown into this new society, new culture. And I did what, you know, academics call negotiating identities. And, and many actually, many people actually get this wrong. People who are not born here, but come here in childhood are 1.5 immigrant immigrants, generation immigrants, not one first generation, because you get two identities essentially. So first generation immigrants are people born to immigrant parents. So I was a 1.5 generation immigrant. And I didn't never felt like I belong in this country until much later.

Dan Berger [00:09:01]:

Wrestling between Israeli, American, American, Israeli, like, who am I? What am I? So I was belonging less from, from the beginning. And I realized that belonging I felt was, was my, was a fundamental need that I have. And as I began to research the topic, I spent three years researching the topic. I deal with a lot of imposter syndrome, so I needed to really become an expert on the topic. I read over a hundred academic papers, dozens of books, all kind of related and adjacent to the topic. And I learned that belonging is a fundamental human need. It's independent of any other need that we have, and it can be measured and acted on. So I wanted to give people the process that I created for myself and how to find belonging and the difference between my work and everybody else's.

Dan Berger [00:09:53]:

The last thing I'll say on this is that I actually lay out a process that people can follow. And it's unique to every person because there are different paths you can choose on that process. And many of the adjacent works on the topic don't do that. They are very spiritual in the nature.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:12]:

Yeah, yeah, I'm curious about this. I want to find out more kind of to help our creators and our audience understand, like in terms of any communities they're thinking of building themselves, but also for themselves if this can help them. Because I think everybody wants to be a part of something. And I, I can see lots of ways where people struggle with belonging in all kinds of different areas of their lives. So what does that process look like exactly? Can you take us like through a little bit of it?

Dan Berger [00:10:45]:

So the first thing I'll say is that you cannot create belonging unless you feel it in your personal life. We'll talk about your audience in a second. And why what they're doing is actually a path to belonging. They may not know it, but before that, I think I always say you need personal belonging before you need professional belonging. And this was a mistake I made in my last company where I essentially, you know, not even just making them drink the Kool Aid, I took their head and shoved it in the Kool Aid and like waterboarded them with a Kool Aid. And I was like, if you don't bleed pink, which was our color, like you don't belong here. And. And I will hold it against you.

Dan Berger [00:11:22]:

And I didn't realize is that different people find belonging in different ways. And the way I break it down is very simple. There are four belonging Personas. There are eager belongers represented as chimpanzees. There are anxious belongers represented as meerkats. There are reluctant belongers represented as snow leopards. And there are independent belongers represented as wolves. And just those animals usually conjure up the idea of what it is.

Dan Berger [00:11:48]:

A chimp is running around having fun with a ton of people wanting to be included. If they're not included, they feel bad. Anxious belongers seek validation and they still want to be in a group and around people. Reluctant belongers, these snow leopards are running around looking for a mate and then, you know, basically live a solitary life. And independent belongers can kind of go back and forth. They can either be alone or they can be with other people. So what comes up for me when I think about the audience of creators and makers who I just have so much respect for because they are doing what they love and sharing it with other people and essentially bucking the trend, if you will, that existed prior to this, this birth of the creator movement. And much like they say it's lonely at the top, I imagine it's only for creators because they're having usually conversations with themselves.

Dan Berger [00:12:46]:

So a community is a wonderful way to kind of hack that. And the first thing I'll say is that what creators usually most likely they get belonging out of having they feel belonging through one sided relationships where it's a one to many relationship. So you know, if you have an audience of 10,000, you're not going to build a relationship with each person, even a thousand. So you have a one one sided relationship. And that gives them a sense of belonging. And likewise, by the way, their audience finds belonging through parasocial bonds where they essentially don't know the person, but they feel like they know them. So that's the first thing is kind of like understanding where you find belonging and kind of fitting that into your lifestyle. And that's very important, I think, for makers.

Dan Berger [00:13:41]:

And then obviously, when you upgrade and you kind of have the community or you have the masterminds or whatever kind of other adjacent income streams that you may choose, you really need to think about what the community DNA looks like when you build it. And I say that because that word is so trite. It's used so much, it's thrown around. You know, I buy insurance and I'm part of the insurance community. I buy a toaster and I'm part of the toasting community. It's ridiculous. And I. If you'd like for us to go this route.

Dan Berger [00:14:19]:

I'm going to pause in a second. I have some qualifications for how to create communities that are authentic and genuine.

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:26]:

Yeah, yeah, I do want to hear about that because I think there's creators out there who are at a stage right now where they feel, okay, people have told me that it's good to have a community either for leads or for selling access to it or including with their product, but they don't know exactly, like, what it's supposed to do and how it's supposed to serve people. And they don't understand that part about, like, the DNA, like, what is it actually gonna do?

Dan Berger [00:14:53]:

Yeah. So I'm gonna just. If I look to the left, it's because I'm referencing my book. I don't want to screw this up. So I'm going to talk about two different things, actually, three different things. The first thing is what I call the qualifier test. Basically, a community. The better.

Dan Berger [00:15:11]:

The more qualifiers you have for a community, the better it is. So if I buy home insurance and I'm part of the home insurance community, that's very lame. But if I buy home insurance for an area like that is prone to fires or flooding, that's a little more interesting. If I buy home insurance for areas that are prone to disaster in homes, that of families that have most of their life savings in the house, that gets a little more interesting, you know, so the more qualifiers you have for the community, the better it is because the people in it can relate, even makers. When we go to conference, I'm not a maker. I say, when y' all go to conferences, you're. You know, just because you're a maker or creator doesn't mean you're like homies with everybody, you know, so the qualifier test is very important in order to build a community that. That feels authentic to its members.

Dan Berger [00:16:02]:

Related to that, by the way, is the idea of conscious exclusivity. You can't just get in. You got to have some sort of. Some sort of barriers to entry. And again, there could be different communities, right? It can be just like all the people who purchased this. Like, you know, you bought this, so you might want to talk to these other people, whatever. So a really good community has four aspects, and this is based off of research by McMillan and Chavez. And they talk about the four criteria of a great community.

Dan Berger [00:16:35]:

The first one is membership. And you need to kind of earn your right to belong. You don't just. Not everybody gets membership. You know, it's like a country club. That's not racist. The second is influence. And that's where, excuse me, people in the community can influence the direction of the community because that way they get buy in.

Dan Berger [00:17:01]:

You know, maybe they communicate to the creator what they want their next course to be. Maybe they communicate to the creator what products they should work on. Maybe they get. They're involved in feedback. Customer advisory boards are perfect example in larger companies, the next. And by the way, customer advisory boards are usually just ways to appease your largest customers. That's so silly. It should be include everybody to really give input on the product.

Dan Berger [00:17:26]:

The third is reinforcement. And that's when communities have this kind of positive feedback loop that happens because as you experience these things, this membership, this exclusivity, this influence, whatever, you're more inclined to engage and participate. So there is this kind of reinforcement that's taking place and a flywheel is activated. And finally, the fourth piece is there has to be a shared emotional connection. And that's basically a feeling of belonging, like, I care about you and you care about me. And that's this kind of symbiotic relationship between members, member to member. The third piece I wanted to touch on is the type of community that exists. There are many different types of communities, you know.

Dan Berger [00:18:14]:

You know, not just like there's not just kind of customer community. There are communities of interest, people interested in the same thing around hobbies or pursuits. There are communities of action where people come together to achieve a specific mission. There are communities of practice that goes a little bit beyond interest, where it's like, we actually do this thing. We're not just interested in it. There's communities of place that's generally related to geography or mostly geography or some space, and then communities of circumstance. It's like we are all here. Maybe we're all mourning or maybe we're all, you know, whatever.

Dan Berger [00:18:51]:

And then I'm in 12 step program. So I'm, I'm there in a community. I have an, I have an addiction and I'm there because I'm with other addicts. That's circumstantial. And finally, community of belief. And that's something we share a certain kind of belief or, or around ideology. So those are the six types of communities. A framework that I built on that was developed by Richard Millington.

Dan Berger [00:19:14]:

So that's, that's how I think about communities.

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:18]:

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think that all sounds great. How, like, what advice would you give to somebody as far as, like, how to facilitate that in a community that they're building? Yeah, so, and there's, I'm sure there's so much you could say there, but.

Dan Berger [00:19:31]:

Like, so I think in order to do that, you need to first think of yourself as another member. You're not just the leader. Like, what would you get out of it 10 years ago, five years ago, when you were just pursuing this thing or was just an idea, what would you have wanted? You know, and the problem is that, you know, so I'll give you a very small example. I'm a hobby. My hobby is reef keeping. I have several saltwater aquariums and you know, it's a lot of, a lot of things to maintain. And when I've joined reef keeping communities, there's people who are like, you know, ask silly questions. There's people who make fun of those people who ask silly questions.

Dan Berger [00:20:15]:

There's people who just come in when they need something. I mean, we've all been on these forums where some people have a ton of badges and some people have like two posts. So, you know, I think the first thing is like, think about what you would want and that's the first thing. And forums kind of try to do this. I remember like V bulletin back in the day where all these kind of like, they try to do this when it was like all kinds of sub forums and groups and that's a bit overwhelming. So first thing is think about what you want out of the community. The second thing is take, you know, define what you are. You can't be everything to everybody.

Dan Berger [00:20:49]:

So you, and you may want to think about communities as products. And I know many of your, many of your listeners and customers and users do this, but it has to be, it has to create value in that somebody would pay for it. I mean, nowadays people are inundated with subscriptions, why would somebody pay for the community? So there has to be value. And I would say, like, finally, like having, you know, one of the things I do, I run a men's group, and one of the things I do is I have a Q4. Every Q4, I do an engagement survey to make sure people feel like they belong. And I measure that on annual basis. So I think a feeling of belonging is exceptionally important. And that's that kind of shared emotional connection that I talked about.

Dan Berger [00:21:31]:

And that can be done in numerous ways. But I think it starts with hospitality. Which brings us back to what we talked about early. How do you welcome people? How do you create a warm place? How do you create warmth, a culture of reciprocity? How do you enforce your rules? And how do you create your rules and enforce them? Like in my men's community, if you don't show up for an event once a. We have three events per quarter. You don't show up to one of them, we ask you to leave. So how do you enforce your rules to communicate there's value here and take it seriously and that all those things are exceptionally important? The are just some examples. If anybody wants to talk about.

Dan Berger [00:22:11]:

I'm happy to. I don't. I'm not a consultant. I don't charge for any of this. So people want to, you know, hit me up. They can. Any social or any email. You'll find me online.

Dan Berger [00:22:19]:

But those are some of the things that come to mind. I mean, it's such a big question that requires more thinking for me.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:26]:

Yeah, yeah, no, that's. That's excellent. So back to, I guess, entrepreneurs themselves then. I think definitely many feel isolated at some point in their journey. And as somebody who's built and sold a company, what advice would you give to founders who are kind of like, struggling with that feeling right now?

Dan Berger [00:22:48]:

I don't think it takes a genius to know that there is an isolation epidemic in this country specifically impacting men. But we cannot have to go there. That's not our. Our topic here. And so I think the first thing is, is thinking about, you know, understanding that this is part of a larger kind of thing. And the way I think about it is I think about a fuel tank, and I call it the belonging fuel tank. And this tank, unlike other tanks, takes other fuel tanks, takes any kind of fuel. It can be ethanol, it can be diesel, it can be unleaded.

Dan Berger [00:23:27]:

And each one of these fuels represents a different belonging strategy. And I can tell you that most, most likely every person has some emptiness in their tank. You know, some strategy may give you 5%, another 10%, but we all have this kind of emptiness. Maybe 1%, maybe 5%, maybe 25. And each one of those and each that emptiness is an opportunity to create more belonging. So for creators, they're probably doing because they want to be of service. They want to share their knowledge, they want to share their life pursuit, their, their product that they spilled. They put blood, sweat and tears too.

Dan Berger [00:24:11]:

So perhaps somebody wants to move into coaching, you know, because they get, they, they really enjoy the services component of that. Makes them feel like they belong that one to one relationship. Other people may want to go from coaching to community because they want to have a more one to many. Other people still want to make go move to retreats or off sites, you know, where they bring people together in a small group. My new business is essentially boutique retreat centers in urban areas. So you know, with like 10 rooms. So maybe they want to do that, maybe they want to go even more one. One to thousands or you know, one to a ton, not just one to many.

Dan Berger [00:24:51]:

And they start doing courses. So if you're feeling lonely, there are a few options. The first option is understand your fuel tank and fill it up either with the examples I gave or things in your personal life that may be missing. The other option, I think, and that'll be like kind of complementing your professional routes through your personal routes. The other thing that comes to mind I just completely forgot and hopefully will come back to me, you know, another idea, another idea by the way is perhaps a horizontal kind of mind share of other creators in that space. I think a lot of people kind of don't do that. Oh, I remember it was. So that's another idea is kind of creating horizontal communities, not just vertical communities for your thing.

Dan Berger [00:25:42]:

And then finally, you know, I don't think, I think there's a lot of pride in creating something on your own. I know I certainly have it. My initial idea for a book was supposed to be for. I called it founding Alone. It was for solo entrepreneurs. And then I realized nobody wants to hear my story. But for me maybe thinking about how to bring on kind of what I call late co founders or. And to.

Dan Berger [00:26:09]:

To create founding moments and just Jack Dorsey, the four, the founder of Twitter calls it. And how do you, you know, because that's really cool because you have that, that product market fit and then you're just like. And you may want to bring in people who are less, you know, risk of, you know, or a little more risk averse. And they'd be. They want to join you in this founding moment. So perhaps bringing on people and not to be, you know, stingy with equity and all those things. I think it's really important because going back to, like, the community aspects, people need feeling the skin in the game. They need influence and all those things.

Dan Berger [00:26:42]:

So I would think about potentially bringing on partners later on when you feel like you're alone.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:49]:

Yeah, yeah, I like that. And I feel like I've realized that recently and seeing some newer entrepreneurs talking about, like, going through that of, like, how do you get over, like, feeling so alone or like, not having connections to people? And I think some of the things that help, like, when you're just starting out, first of all, it's when you start getting customers, when you have no customers at all, it's really hard. And so I think this is another reason why, like, we always tell people you've got to, like, validate your idea, get it in front of people, try to get somebody there. And, like, it doesn't matter if they're paying you less than the beginning or whatever, but once you've got that feedback loop going, that's so motivating. And it goes from like, oh, I guess I'm kind of working on this thing, but then you kind of get off it for a little bit and you kind of don't know what to do with it. But when you have customers now, the customers are asking for things and there's problems and there's things you've got to keep fixing and working on, and that's one part. But then you continue on with that. And if it's just you, yeah, they can still feel lonely.

Bryan McAnulty [00:27:55]:

And like, for me, another thing that helped is, like, what you're talking about here, I think, is like, having a team. The team's better than only helping you grow the business. It's somebody that you're somebody or multiple people that you're building the business with.

Dan Berger [00:28:12]:

You know, two things come up to me, come up for me when you. When you're saying this. So I'm going to say something controversial. Feel free to disagree. And I'm sure many of our listeners today may disagree. I am not sure the title entrepreneur fits somebody who's alone. And to me, a more fitting word is freelancer or perhaps the solopreneur. But I have a hard time accepting that word.

Dan Berger [00:28:39]:

For me, the bar was even higher. Personally, I wasn't an entrepreneur until I sold my business. I'm not a serial. Even though I have multiple businesses, I'm a serial entrepreneur. Now I'll have to have multiple sales to be a serial entrepreneur. And for me, that, that, that bar, that high bar made motivated me. And I was not comfortable being called an entrepreneur because even, you know, some kid with lemonade stand as an entrepreneur, and everybody's like, oh, I knew I was an entrepreneur when I sold Girl Scouts cookies. So I have a little bit of an issue with that word.

Dan Berger [00:29:09]:

Can I share with the other thing, or do you want to respond to that?

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:11]:

Yeah, well, I guess my thoughts about that would just be. I. I don't find it so particularly controversial. I guess the thing that bothers me in particular is that, like, when a solopreneur will, like, feel like they're doing it as, like, it's a badge of honor to suffer. But, like, you can. You can hire other people. Like, there's no. There's no, like, there's no special award that you're gonna get for, like, going through that yourself.

Dan Berger [00:29:42]:

It reminds me, like, when people are like, how are you doing? I'm so busy. Oh, my God.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:47]:

Yeah. So then. Yeah, what's. What's next that you're gonna say?

Dan Berger [00:29:51]:

The other thing I was going to say is that, you know, your point about, you know, you know, the minimum viable product and, like, pivoting and all that stuff, those are classic stuff that you can read in by Steve Blank or you can read, you know, in. In Eric Reese's Lean Startup. But I will say, kind of the way I think about it is one's ability to separate this, to find the signal from the noise. And I just imagine kind of like, you know, you know, seti, like the Search for Extraterrestrial Life. They, like, basically send out radio signals and they, like, look for, like, patterns from aliens. It's kind of like that you're going to find, like, a dot out of, like, millions of dots that, like, are pointless and just noisy. But finding that dot and then drawing a line and being able to move that line and move the needle to. Towards something that actually sticks.

Dan Berger [00:30:39]:

And if I was still doing social tables, I mean, listen to this. I. People ask me about the founding story of social tables, and I. And I say, well, I was going to a wedding. I wanted to see the seating chart. I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I saw a digital seating chart with Facebook profiles around the table? Great. And everybody's like, oh, that's an amazing idea, man. Wow.

Dan Berger [00:30:55]:

Wow. And they're like, well, guess what? It didn't make me any money. We were selling it like 49 a pop per event and, like, made no money. So even though it sounds, like, interesting and like, awesome, we, we had to move really quickly to realize actually, wait, we're not B2C. We're business to business B2B. And then we're like, wait, we're not this, like, seating chart software. We're actually floor plan software. Oh, we're not just floor plan software.

Dan Berger [00:31:18]:

We're sales software and so on and so forth. So it's. It's this, it's this. It's that. You know, what you talked about, listening to customers, all that stuff, that's basic, but it's about not. Not what you're saying is basic. It's, it's what everybody gives advice for. That's like 101.

Dan Berger [00:31:32]:

201 is, like, moving fast, breaking things and finding the signals through the noise, in my view.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:40]:

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So as you grew that company social tables to 120 employees, what were some of the, like, intentional ways that you created culture and belonging in the company? And any, like, challenges or stories about that of making people feel better included?

Dan Berger [00:32:03]:

Okay. So the first thing I would say is, like, why I created a company. And that's because I felt alone. You know, surprise. I was walking my, I was, I was like, after grad school, I had the crappiest consulting job. I was commuting an hour and a half by public transportation every way. And I got to the office and I was sitting around doing nothing, literally, you know, in a random desk. So I was walking my dog one day about six months into this job, and I met my, this guy named Matt.

Dan Berger [00:32:44]:

We ended up starting social tables. I ended up parting ways with them six months later. But I, I, I credit him with pushing me off the cliff. And then I realized, like, that's what I loved. I loved, like, sitting down with Matt and, like, you know, iterating. And I'm like, you. I'm like an engineer. So I built it and I kind of had to, you know, did that.

Dan Berger [00:33:02]:

So the it, it started. Well, it started as, like, a need. I want to know. I was going to a wedding. I want to know where the cute girls were sitting. So I thought about this idea. Then I met Matt. I, you know, I had a list of ideas.

Dan Berger [00:33:14]:

I was like, how about this one? It was either that or like, like an app that told you how long to microwave meals for. So anyway, so it started by my desire to have belonging and actually interpersonal relationship with Matt. Like, just like homies. And then I started building a team and I had like. And that was more fun. And I was like, whoa, this is so cool. And like, for a long time, by the way, I thought about my successes, like number of employees and it's actually not, it's like revenue to ratio to employees. And then I realized we were getting bigger when we were sitting around a table and we, you know, like a happy hour one day and we couldn't, we had more than one conversation at that table and I was like, whoa, this is so cool.

Dan Berger [00:34:02]:

And then I got to 40 employees and I was like, less fun. Then I got to 100. I was like, oh shit, this is really, really tough. So I think my sweet spot's 40. Who knows, I might be able to now like with more wisdom, do more. But he asked a question about how I created belonging. So I would say, or you know, a culture of belonging, if you will. So it started with like me and Matt, like just being iterating together.

Dan Berger [00:34:27]:

I moved to like a team of really awesome people who we know were passionate about startups and young and all that. And this is like 2011, 2012. So hustle porn wasn't, you know, described as such and it was like okay to do. And then I realized I was doing a lot of things that actually create belonging because of this need that I had because I was always alone. And what happened was my. All my belonging paths, interpersonal relationships, casual encounters with random employees, you know, when you bump into each other, self esteem and feeling good, talking to events and talking to employees, group membership of being a part, these are all belonging paths. You know, being a part of, you know, the hospitality industry and all these associations, all this gave me belonging. And as soon as I sold my company, it was gone.

Dan Berger [00:35:17]:

And I was like, wow, I put all my eggs in one basket when it comes to this fundamental need to belong. And then I had to start all over again, which is how I came up with the process I wrote about now. How do you create a culture of belonging? Well, I came up with a five, you know, five, what I call the critical path to a culture of belonging. There's five steps. The first step, surprise starts with hospitality. It's making people feel warm, welcome and accepted. Second part is safety. And that's basically once people are, you know, kick their shoes could take, you know, kick their feet up and take their shoes off, they feel more safe.

Dan Berger [00:35:49]:

And once there's safety, there is engagement and people kind of start engaging in the company and giving and influencing it and giving, you know, that feedback loop is activated. After that is commitment. When people are engaged, they're committed because they see what they contribute is having an impact. And after they are committed, there's belonging. Each of those can be measured. I think it's on my website. I publish it for free. I also have give out free chapters.

Dan Berger [00:36:15]:

So there's that chapter available if people want to read it. It's the bonus chapter in the book. But that's how you create a culture belonging. Each one of these things has tight things you can do everything from like AMA with execs to you know, like everybody being a receptionist instead of having a secret, you know, a receptionist. So those are some of the things you can do to create a culture. Belonging I think is very important. That to me, by the way, Brian came intuitively, you won't hear me show off too much, but that's something that I, because I never had it, I really wanted to give it to everybody.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:50]:

Yeah, yeah, that's excellent. So if you could ask everybody to take kind of one small action after this episode to strengthen their own sense of belonging, what would that be?

Dan Berger [00:37:03]:

I knew this question was coming and I purposely did not think about it. I would say that it would be beneficial to adopt a belonging mindset. And all that means is basically thinking about whatever you're doing and realizing does this make me feel like I belong? That's it. And I have like a five step kind of test. I can read it off real quick. I think it'll be helpful to the listeners if I can find it. I'm looking to the left because I have my, my book here to cheat because I don't want to misrepresent what I share. But basically, come on, let me just.

Dan Berger [00:37:53]:

I know what work to look up. Okay. So I call it the five Cs for evaluating your belonging paths. So again, just to remind the audience, I was asked what to do about belonging. And I said have a belonging mindset. And what that means is just thinking about things from a belonging perspective. Belonging lens. Does this give me belonging? And the way to answer that is very simple.

Dan Berger [00:38:26]:

There are five Cs you can apply. Certainty is the first, like instinctively, intuitively, do I feel good about this path? You know, are my college friends like, am I certain they're like the right people for me right now? Like I'm still feels a little toxic, whatever. So that's certainty. The second is charged. And that's the question is, does participating in this, in this path gives me energy? If it does not, if it's depleting Draining may not be the best one. Connected. Is it possible for me to show up genuinely and participate in a way that's authentic to me? Because belonging is all about being seen and accepted for who you are and feeling and experiencing that next is celebrated. Like, do I take pride in participating it? Do I tell people about it? Like I shared about my men's group or I talk about social table? You know, do I.

Dan Berger [00:39:14]:

Do I celebrate this, this, this path and then finally championed. Do I recommend it to other people? Do I, do I do I do I endorse it? So those are the five things I recommend people think about when having a belonging mindset.

Bryan McAnulty [00:39:30]:

Yeah. Excellent. All right. Well, Dan, thanks so much for coming on the show. Before we get going, where else can people find you online? You.

Dan Berger [00:39:38]:

Yeah. So my my website is danjberger.com B E R G E R and that has some links to the book and some free chapters and a belonging quiz you can take to see what Persona you are with free advice on what to do. And that's. And then on every social I'm at Dan Berger, so no J at D A N B E R G E R and my email is danjberger.com and I look forward to connecting with whoever wants to.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:07]:

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Dan Berger [00:40:09]:

Thank you, Brian.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:10]:

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