Kevin Vogelsang: Community Connections - The Vogel Labs Performance Meetup

For someone trying to achieve something big, there's a tricky balance to strike: time spent with one's community and time spent getting your hands dirty and doing the real, honest labor. 

For an early-stage tech entrepreneur, it's tempting to go to a lot of events and spend a lot of time hob knobbing with investors.  In fact, it's so tempting that I'd say a lot of younger entrepreneurs go overboard with it and have a hard time striking the right balance.  Time is limited.  Every way you spend your time is an investment.

A few months ago I started something called Vogel Labs, and it's a bit of a funny concept.  Vogel Labs is not a singular place.  Vogel Labs is a community of purposeful people--people that are trying to accomplish something important, whether they're a startup founder or a teacher.  Vogel Labs provides infrastructure to help facilitate this community and develop a strong network.  Some of this infrastructure may be the "Labs" that provide things like workspace.  Some of the infrastructure also includes simple programs for getting knowledge flowing within the network and maintaining strong community connections.  The goal is to create a close a close-knit and focused community of great people that are willing to help you. 

One of the programs we’ve started running is called The Performance Meetup.  It’s a simple but powerful concept.  Each week, we get together and talk about what we’ve accomplished, our goals going forward, and what we need help with.  We also inevitably have some free-flowing conversation that allows all the knowledge we have in our heads get spread around.  People can join remotely, so we aren’t limited by geography or difficulties travelling to a single location.  It’s great to be able to hear from someone in Egypt working on sustainable energy systems, or from someone in Africa working on delivering better healthcare in Rwanda.

We’re still getting the format down, but it has already lead to some great conversations.  I know it has also allowed me to stay in better touch with people I already know.  Purposeful people can be quite busy, and it’s easy to lose track of each other—consequently, we often end up trading many strong connections for a lot of weak ones.

The Performance Meetup is an inexpensive, time-efficient way to stay connected to your community.  I encourage you to start your own, or join in at Vogel Labs.  If you’re interested, shoot us an email at Purpose@Vogel-Labs.com and follow us on Twitter @VogelLabs.

Kevin Vogelsang is an entrepreneur, writer and founder of Vogel Labs. You can follow him on Twitter @KevinVogelsang or check out his blog at KevinVogelsang.com