Nola Simon - The Janus Oasis Community

[00:00:00] Nola Simon: Welcome to the Janus Oasis I'm Nola Simon. I am the CEO of Nola Simon Advisory. But I'm also the host of the Janus Oasis. And so I'd like to announce something that I've been working on for a little bit. And people were being paying attention may not be surprised about this, but maybe you have only been in here and there and haven't necessarily listened to all the podcasts and haven't necessarily read everything that I've written.

[00:00:26] Nola Simon: I made a lot, so it's completely understandable. What have been, looking at building is building community around the podcast. So the work that I do honestly, is bigger than just hybrid remote work. The mission that I'm really on is how do we build a future of work? That is going to be better. How do we bring the best in the past, into the future?

[00:00:50] Nola Simon: Show that we've got good solutions for right now, but also something that's sustainable for five, 10 years from now. I'm looking at, the environment I want to [00:01:00] work in. I want to look at the environment. I want my kids to look to work in. And just, how do we make it better? Because I think the gift of the pandemic is that we've had the opportunity to really in a lot of ways, have some time to consider.

[00:01:15] Nola Simon: What we want to do when we. Have the choice. Autonomy and flexibility. And choosing the work that's going to fuel us and help us thrive. And, even consider the longer lifespans a lot of people are having. I My dad's 90, I never thought that my parents would live well into their eighties and nineties. So what does that mean for me? Am I looking at a career that's going to span.

[00:01:42] Nola Simon: Several more decades. And what does that look like? So I think there's an opportunity to really look at. Hybrid remote work. But also what we want work to be like, is it in the office? If it isn't an office, what does that look like? How is it fair for people who can't necessarily work [00:02:00] from home? Their work is in person. What types of innovation are out there? What does this mean for leadership?

[00:02:06] Nola Simon: How does management change? What processes and procedures are needed? And how do we do it completely differently? How do we build community around small communities? Not necessarily cities where offices have always been, there's a larger impact than really just what the work is. And it's what does this mean for families, which is this mean for social constructs?

[00:02:28] Nola Simon: Friends and you know how you actually interact with your coworkers. There's a lot of discussion topics that are. Really. Interesting. But what I'm actually noticing is there's a lot of people talking about these things. But there's not necessarily a lot of interaction and engagement. And I'm looking to see whether we actually, if we move this actually off public spaces. So I love LinkedIn.

[00:02:57] Nola Simon: But LinkedIn is public. So you have a concern [00:03:00] about your return to office or the hybrid proposal that your management team is designing or. You just have questions that you want to ask, but you don't necessarily want to ask them for the whole world to see I'm looking to see whether we create a community that's not necessarily public that has a gate.

[00:03:16] Nola Simon: And actually even like further gates that are involved so that you can. Ask these questions in a safe space, get answers from, people that you know, that you trust. Meaning me. It's my community after also, hopefully if you're considering joining your you've know enough about my content to know and trust me.

[00:03:35] Nola Simon: And really have the opportunity to discuss those questions. In a way that you might not ask anywhere else. And so that's really what I'm considering is like the bigger mission. How do we go from really what work is right now? What it's always been into? What. Could it be, what does this look like? I've been taking a lot of futures.

[00:03:57] Nola Simon: Thinking courses and running [00:04:00] scenarios and simulations. And how do we integrate that into the work that I do? There's a lot of ambiguity that a lot of these things don't necessarily have the answers. And so it's great to actually have a space where we can actually talk about things and get feedback and discuss and get different insights and perspectives because everybody has something valuable to contribute to this discussion. It's a societal change. It's a societal shift. It's not just something that's solely impacts.

[00:04:29] Nola Simon: Corporate workers who happen to have the ability to work from anywhere to work remotely, to work on the road work. In an office in all different ways, right? Like you have family members who would, my husband is a contractor. He can literally work from everyone else's home except our own. He, and I don't work in the same way at all. And yet my work impacts him. His work impacts me and that's true for everybody.

[00:04:55] Nola Simon: I think that there is an opportunity to really build [00:05:00] the conversation. My podcast exists. The Janice OASAS is my podcast. They've got 20 episodes now. It's having some success. A lot of podcasters give up after just a few, because they don't necessarily get that engagement.

[00:05:13] Nola Simon: It's hard to engage with a podcast. I've been trying to get people to write reviews for me. And just so I can see if I'm on the right track, if I'm talking about things that people are interested in. Just to get a level of feedback or commentary and I'm not getting that. So it's like, how else can I get that?

[00:05:28] Nola Simon: This is a way that I can. Get that feedback craft Interesting topics and stories that people want to hear about. And do it in a way that really allows you to engage in common back and we all learn together. And that's really where I'm hoping for. Now. What this is going to look like. It's going to actually be hosted on mighty networks.

[00:05:50] Nola Simon: And then I am just in the process of crafting this There is going to actually be a cost to actually enter. It is going to be fairly minimal haven't [00:06:00] necessarily decided on final pricing structure just yet. And just in the process of creating all of this. But what you pay for it, you value it. And so again it's not going to be a huge amount to really access the community.

[00:06:10] Nola Simon: But within the community, I want people to feel safe. And so I want to know that anybody showing up is actually committed to the community and really. Interested in contributing positively. So my free stuff is still going to continue on LinkedIn. It's not like I'm giving up writing on LinkedIn or Twitter or any of that public, social media.

[00:06:31] Nola Simon: But for the community to get, I want to make sure that if you are actually entering the community are committed to making it a positive place. And so a gate actually makes sense to me. Just because it demonstrates commitment that you're going to actually value something that you're going to pay for. If you're just nosy and scoping it out, you're probably not going to pay for it. You're probably just going to stay on social media. So that's the theory with that.

[00:06:57] Nola Simon: And then with inside the community, I'm looking at [00:07:00] creating a course. I think that there's an opportunity and an interest in how you actually take a personal brand. And it's not necessarily how you actually crafted from a basic point of view, although there's a huge market for that, but that's not what I'm interested in. Once you've got that once you've got the basic understanding of how you use a personal brand, how can you elevate it and use it in an intentional way to really draw that visibility and.

[00:07:26] Nola Simon: Use it productively to combat that misconception that unless you're in an office, unless you're actually in front of people. You're never gonna get a promotion. You're never going to get a raise. You're never going to get prime. Assignments, there's different ways to do that these days.

[00:07:41] Nola Simon: And I think that there's an opportunity and an interest in that level of education. So I'm working on a course around that. And then the other thing that I'm looking at creating, there's an opportunity for committees. And so this is an extra level of private. Discussion [00:08:00] so that you can  create committees that you would have to apply to actually enter and honestly pay an extra fee to actually get in there too, because again,

[00:08:09] Nola Simon: What you pay for you value. And again, it's not huge amounts of money then I'm talking about. But I'm thinking of creating different committees. One for like regular employees who are interested in innovation and change. They're the leaders who don't necessarily have the title, but they see. Different ways of doing things and how can they influence when they don't actually have power. So community like that.

[00:08:32] Nola Simon: A committee like that. And then of course, for management. And or leaders, because there's an awful lot of pressure on regular managers to be able to do everything that they were supposed to be able to do before. But then. Also be responsible for motivating and coaching in a way that they've never been trained to do.

[00:08:51] Nola Simon: How do you do that when your organization isn't necessarily even understanding that there's a need for that? And I think that [00:09:00] managers need extra support as well, too. So I'd like to be able to offer that to you. The other thing with LinkedIn, a lot of times the best practices that you're only supposed to post once a day.

[00:09:10] Nola Simon: I'm finding that limiting and because the topic is huge, there's so much to say there's so much to, to consider. And I don't necessarily want to have everything like that filtered by an algorithm. I want to have an understanding of whether there's interested in it, whether there's not interested in it. And if I'm building that within a community that I own.

[00:09:30] Nola Simon: I get immediate feedback on whether that's going to be something that's valuable to talk about further. It's really good to have helped me craft. Content going forward as well. So that has a way of influencing what I write about as well too. There was opportunities for polls getting an understanding of

[00:09:49] Nola Simon: What people really value and really feel or topics that they want to talk about. And what gaps are out there that organizations and employers [00:10:00] just don't. Realize there are problems, right? This is how we're talking about it. This is why we're going to do it. And this is

[00:10:09] Nola Simon: What I'm thinking. So I am interested to hear any feedback, so I will post this on LinkedIn and Twitter and everywhere else and see if anybody has some different ideas about what I could add to it. When I get struck from it. Whether there's value in the idea and whatnot. Feel free to tell me, because this again is a community.

[00:10:26] Nola Simon: I'm operating it and opening it. But it's something that grows and. Becomes its own thing. I've run communities before. I'm actually I created a next door community for my immediate area. I've run communities internally at organizations. I found it an employee resource group. So I've got a really good understanding of what it takes to actually run a community. And I know it doesn't necessarily take.

[00:10:52] Nola Simon: A whole lot of time from the community manager, which will be me. Because the community itself also engages and adds [00:11:00] content and it becomes this whole thing. This is also going to be one of the cheaper ways that you can actually work with me. Most of my work is going to be with organizations.

[00:11:08] Nola Simon: Individuals can book calls with me, but that's going to cost $497 us. So this is a way that you can actually engage with me in a way that's not necessarily going to cost a whole lot of money. It allows me to make sure that I'm budgeting my time wisely and getting compensated for that. So that worked for me, that worked for you.

[00:11:28] Nola Simon: But overall it's like, what can we create? Together. That's going to have a larger impact. Because these topics can influence things and change around the world. And depending on where the audience is. So I'm hopeful that together, we co-create a future. That everybody wants, and we have a platform to do it because the best ideas that we come up with, and we can take to social media and write about them there so that is. My [00:12:00] current project. I hope to hear from you. And so I'm hoping that I can create something that allows us to have those types of conversations. So anyways, that's my podcast announcing the Janus Oasis community.

[00:12:20] Nola Simon: I'm excited. Hope you're excited. Thanks. Bye.