I often think about the THPL community and the role and purpose that each of us play in getting others engaged in the THPL lifestyle / mission. It would be great for the community to grow larger and make a bigger impact on more people than are connected to it today. The issue is not whether THPL is a good aspiration. It would be hard to argue that it is not good to take the themes of Life, Learning and Fitness and develop them more. In fact, there are many people who want to live a more THPL centric life but have reasons of priority, choice or timing that keep them from making it central to their life. So, the question to all of is how much effort do we put to getting people in the community. The position that seems, for now, to be the most advisable is to make the choice be driven by someone who shows interest in THPL. That when we do see, or feel interest, that we then go into action. But we do it as an advocate or influencer – not a seller or zealot. The main difference between advocacy and influence is the share of voice we bring to the conversation. And some of it relates to our role and confidence in the THPL life. Think of it this way there are a limited number of influencers – these are our top THPL members, and that advocates have influence, but not at the initial scale of an influencer/thought leader. What it comes down to is that both influencers and advocates are crucial to the community it is just a varying levels of commitment and involvement. What I think we aim for us to have all of our members be advocates and we have a handful of us who play the role of influencer. In this way we can help bring more people to the THPL life and community and to do so without burden or discomfort to the community members. The key overall is to grow our community and keep each of us thinking about how we can do that in our own way and in our version of THPL

Loving life hanging with influencers and advocates

Ciao

Joe