Holding space (Ricky Weekly #54)
This is where I share 3 things every week with my friends and anyone else interested.
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A picture from my life:
I went to the park with Vibs and his kids. 2 out of 4 of us had a great time 😂
Thing on my mind:
Let’s talk about “holding space,” which feels like a much cooler way of saying “organizing,” “facilitating” or “hosting” and puts more emphasis on the space. I dig it.
Some of you know that I’ve always loved bringing people together, but most of you don’t because it’s a part of me that I’ve ignored for most of the last decade as a startup founder. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been trying to bring some of my holder-of-space self back. When I took time off in 2019, I organized a series of Founder Dating dinners. Then I started a new startup with David and all of that went to shit again…until now. These days I’m doing a lot of holding space. Let me tell you about three of them.
This is a group of hilarious founders from “Startup to Standup,” a group I organized where they’re going from having never done comedy to having a 5-minute set in six weeks. We spend two hours together with each other every Sunday morning and I love every moment of it. I borrowed the “cohort” structure from cohort-based courses because the peers in the cohort, the time constraint, clear goal, some semblance of structure and expertise, all make it easier to convince busy people to invest time. People are so busy they find it hard to invest in even a hobby. I think this is one way to create “clubs for adults.”
This picture is from a surprise birthday Zoom bombing. I was hosting a Flow Club session on my birthday two weeks ago, and a bunch of friends showed up in my waiting room looking to be admitted. I was so surprised! After Alberto suggested a purposefully out-of-sync happy birthday song, I realized that everyone was here for me, but Zoom doesn’t have any of the normal social cues to keep it from becoming boring quickly, so I switched into holding space mode. I stumbled around in the beginning performing some bad jokes…then we decided to do a tear down of the new user registration flow on OnlyFans (don’t ask), then I made sure to talk to every person, and tried to come up with topics more people might enjoy. Basically it felt like hosting a talkshow. I got a taste of what it feels like to be an influencer or streamer who goes live just to chat with their fans. I’ve always found that kind of weird because they’re not even talking to another person, but usernames in a chat box, but it’s definitely a skill to make that entertaining.
Finally, I’ve held space through 30 or 40 Flow Club sessions and the response has been amazing. We’ve collectively logged thousands of hours of productive flow, and people are clamoring for more because they get more done in Flow Clubs and love the positive vibes. Flow Club is a new startup I’m building and it could be the “Peloton for your brain” or the “WeWork for WFH.” I’m writing this newsletter in a Writing Flow Club right now. We’re so early we have limited capacity at our sessions, but if you sign up on the Flow Club website and I’ll try to get you in ASAP.
Now that I know you can create virtual spaces that not only rival their IRL counterparts, but can be even more desirable, I’m very excited about what we’re building.
Piece of content I recommend:
Stanford Engineering Hero Lecture: Morris Chang in conversation with President John L. Hennessy on YouTube
I know about TSMC because it’s probably the most important company in Taiwan, but I didn’t know much about its founder Morris Chang. This man is truly impressive (he’s 83 in this video!).
🤗
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As always, you can find out what I’m thinking in more real-time on Twitter and my essays are on my website. My latest essay is called “Why I use Spotify for podcasts (and you will too).” My primary focus (and where I focus) is on Flow Club.