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Natalie Franke and Being Built to Belong (Part 1)

John Farrell: Can you tell me a little bit about your book, Built to Belong?
Natalie Franke: Absolutely. Built to Belong is about discovering the power of community over competition in a world that tells us to compete … in a world that tells us that individual performance is of the utmost importance, that pushes us to be the best rather than our best—the version of us that we’re called to be. This book takes a unique stance on the idea of competition by saying that competition is not inherently bad. It gives us so many benefits, but we’ve shifted as a society, as a culture, into this negative competition, unhealthy overdrive.
The hope is to bring people back to community. To see the potential in fighting for this opportunity for us to rise together in entrepreneurial landscapes, in parenting, in all aspects of our life that have now begun to feel like competitions. It looks at different intersections of the conversation from small business ownership to social media usage, and so on and so forth.
The underlying premise here is that there is enough joy, success, and all of the wonderful things to go around. That we aren’t competitors, but rather a part of a greater larger community when we embrace that, when we really see the potential and not only stepping into being the best version of ourselves rather than just trying to win the gold medal, and also seeing the opportunity to celebrate others who are on their own journey in all aspects of life and business. That gives us this opportunity to rise and to thrive together as the collective and really emphasize this opportunity here for community over competition.
JF: Is that the overall message you hope readers take from your book?
Natalie: The biggest message I hope readers take from the book is that they don’t have to continue struggling with competitive cultures and this feeling of “us versus them.” That we can truly rise and thrive together. That’s what community over competition is all about. That’s really where the book sort of stemmed from … this hashtag I started on social media, #communityovercompetition, that now has millions of uses and originated with that mindset challenging the fact that we’re told we have to compete, and instead encouraging us to view one another as community.
JF: What was the genesis for the hashtag that was the inspiration for your book?
Natalie: The hashtag led to the community, which led to the book. The hashtag was very much the genesis for all of this. It was a moment where I was tired of comparing myself to other women, specifically on Instagram. I was tired of feeling like in the small business world that everyone was my competition. No one was sharing information, no one was really supporting each other. Even the idea of networking was like, “What can I get out of you?” versus “How do I step through the door to serve others?”
How do I walk into a networking opportunity and instead of going at it for myself, I walk into that room saying, “What can I do? How can I show up to serve? How can I support?” It was sort of that lack of—truthfully, in the entrepreneurial space—that lack of servant heart and leadership. I didn’t see leaders who were really in this to fight for others. It was always kind of bringing it back to personal success and individual achievement. So, the hashtag was an outcry.
The hashtag was a post that I shared on Instagram back in 2015 and it was in that moment—I was a full-time wedding photographer—it was, “Listen. I’m tired of us competing. I want community. I need community. We are built for community.” And the challenge was, “Can you use your platform today to share about the successes of another person? Can you use your Instagram account,” which is the specific platform we were using at the time, “to post about a competitor in your space, specifically within the small business world?”
I thought maybe five people would do it. Maybe a handful of people would share, but it was a couple dozen and then a couple hundred and then a couple of thousand. Then, before we knew it, there was such momentum around this concept and this hashtag of community over competition that folks were asking for a community. They were like, “How do we actually bring this to life?”
That’s how Rising Tide was born … from those conversations. We built the Rising Tide Society on the idea that the rising tide lifts all boats, and it has since grown. We now have over 70,000 community members around the world. All of them are small business owners, a lot of them women in business. We have meetups now locally. So, hashtag to community to knowing that this needed to be a book that reached beyond the small business space.
JF: Obviously, there is a need and a desire for community. Why do you think that is?
Natalie: We’re created for community. It boils down to the fact that God created us to live, to work in community with others. In the writing of this book, I did a lot of research specifically in neurological and psychological journals and kind of where some of this wiring stems from, ultimately saying, “Look, we are wired to compete.” Human beings are wired to compete. We have a desire to survive as an individual and as a species, and that pushes us to perform, but at the same time that duality exists where we are also wired for social connection, wired for community, and we thrive in community. With the absence of that in isolation, human beings fall apart.
We talk about it a lot in the book, but loneliness can be as devastating as smoking 15 cigarettes a day to your physical health … to your physical health. I think it stems from, if we look at this from a biblical perspective, we’re created for one another. We’re created in the likeness and image of the Lord, and we are created to do life together. We are not meant to go at it alone.
If we look at it from science, all evidence in all directions points to the fact that human beings perform better when they are a part of the collective and when they engage in supporting the collective and being an integral component in their communities. Somehow with where we’ve landed with technology, we claim to be the most connected generation of all time.
I’m an elder millennial, but in my group of friends we claim that we’re more connected than ever before, but I believe in many ways we’re actually more disconnected than ever before. The same technology that gives us an opportunity to connect from anywhere with anyone also presents new challenges that if we don’t address correctly can give us the false hope of community without the depth of relationships that we are built for. I think it depends on which way you want to lean into, like what is the evidence? Why are we created for this?
JF: What role does social media play and how can readers change the way that social media makes them feel about themselves and others?
Natalie: I love this question. The reality is social media is not going away. I think sometimes we try to separate our physical and our digital lives, but the truth is for a lot of us, we live in an integrated space where our world is both physical and digital. In order for us to navigate social media in a way that brings us the fulfillment that we’re looking for on these platforms, we have to stop consuming and we have to start creating and connecting. If we approach social media with the only objective being to keep ourselves distracted, to scroll endlessly without intention, then we are going to scroll endlessly into comparison, into feelings of loneliness, into negative conversations that leave us feeling like everything is sort of lacking that depth that we desire. But if we pick up that same device and we look at social media platforms with a different lens, with a desire to connect, with an intention to actively reach out to people that are a part of our lives, whether that’s our digital lives or our in-person lives, and also to create, to share what is happening in our world to be open, to be even vulnerable. That really is the key.
I reference a psychological study in the book that’s backed by science. It’s not just in my personal experience. Leading into that, I talk a little bit in the book that for years I was not vulnerable on social media. I used it only to share the highlight reel of my life … the good. What was going on in the business and how the community was succeeding, but behind the scenes I was really struggling.
I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor in my early twenties. I was told just a few months before my wedding to my high school sweetheart that we may never be able to have biological children because of this brain tumor. I was terrified at the thought of sharing that with the world. The concept that I could possibly reveal something that was so consuming and so difficult for me to navigate with others in a public space was foreign to me.
I looked at social media as a place where we celebrate the good or we only share the highlights, and it wasn’t until I found out that I needed brain surgery to remove my tumor about three and a half years ago, that I decided that I needed to open up and be honest about what I was walking through. Not just with the people in my personal life and my close circle, but ultimately with the world. I needed to come forward and be open.
What happened was both the scariest moment of my life—going in for brain surgery—but also the moment I think God really transformed the work and the impact that I was having through that. He used that specifically to refine me in ways that at the time I couldn’t see, and I wasn’t enjoying, but in retrospect to open up and to be vulnerable and to come completely clean to say, “Hey, I’m a human. Here’s my struggle. Here’s what I am going through.” And to witness the way in which community carried me through my darkest moments. To witness the fact that community is strongest in the struggle. Not in the celebration, not when things are going well, but when we need one another, when we can’t function without the support of others.
Going back to your original question, I think it’s about the intent with which we engage. Are we just distracting ourselves from life by scrolling? Or are we picking up these devices saying, “I want to see how so-and-so is doing. I want to connect with these friends I haven’t talked to in a while. I want to check in on my church. What’s going on? How can I get involved?” We have this intent to do, to act, to be engaged. That makes all the difference.
Then one other part of that is when we do show up, are we willing to bring our full selves to the table or are we going to continue to bring a facade of who people want us to be, who they expect us to be? And I think there’s really magic in the mess, not just in the miracles, not just in the highlights, but in sharing the realities of what life is like because that’s where human community really shines.
…
Order your copy of Built to Belong: Discovering the Power of Community Over Competition by Natalie Franke
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John Farrell
John Farrell is the Digital Content Manager for inspiration.org. In addition to having written more than 1,000 articles, press releases, and other pieces of content for Inspiration Ministries, NASCAR, Lionel, and Speed Digital, he authored The Official NASCAR Trivia Book: With 1,001 Facts and Questions to Test Your Racing Knowledge in 2012. John is a graduate of Appalachian State University and lives in Concord, N.C., with his wife and two sons.
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