WHAT’S YOUR WHY? DEFINING EVERYTHING FROM YOUR SWIM SCHOOL’S ENVIRONMENT TO YOUR MARKETING CONTENT

I was once asked to write a guest column for Forward Florida: Economic Development News. The assignment was explained to me this way: “We will be highlighting business horror stories from CEOs, leaders, entrepreneurs, and influencers who will share how they overcame that challenge.”

With my husband’s and my company Florida Swim Network, we had some plenty of horror stories. We routinely had twelve-hour days poolside, sweating it out in the Florida sun while attempting to keep our broadcasting equipment dry and cool, and there were many, many times my husband Joe and I looked at each other and asked, “Why are we doing this again?”

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BY BESS AUER COMMUNITY BUILDER AT UNIO

YOU MUST ANSWER THE WHY Answering that question -- Why are we doing this? -- is key, not just to you, but to your community, too. If they don’t know why you are doing something, then they won’t care that you are doing anything at all. The Why is what makes you relevant. The Why is where the power lies, so stop right now and ask yourself, “Why am I building this community?”

Therein lies the Unio. What is your intention in building this community?

Some answers are easy. It’s my family. I was assigned to this team by my boss. My livelihood depends on it. Other answers are not so easy, even if your livelihood does depend on it.

For Joe and me, Florida Swim Network started as a hobby. We started live streaming swim meets long before it was the norm. Periscope and Facebook Live were still years away and Justin TV and Ustream were in their infancy. Nobody had thought to live stream any age group sports yet. But there we were, broadcasting the races and treating young athletes like Olympians.

However, The Why didn’t immediately click for us. We thought we were just live streaming swimming.

It wasn’t until the end of that first year after we finished broadcasting a Junior Olympics meet, that it finally clicked. A parent named Eric Ordaz came up to us with tears streaming down his face. His teenage son had just completed a spectacular meet, and Mr. Ordaz said to us, “My parents live in Panama and have never been able to see their grandson swim. They just saw your broadcast and got to watch him for the first time ever.”

Then it hit us. Like a tidal wave: That was The Why

WHAT ARE YOU REALLY DOING?

If someone had asked us for our Why before the encounter with Mr. Ordaz, Joe and I may have said we were in the live stream business. We may have said we covered competitive swimming. But what became obvious after Mr. Ordaz pointed it out was that our real purpose, our real business, was connecting families.

Florida is a transient state with new families coming and going each year. Today’s children live far away from their grandparents, and extended families can be spread across the world.

We enabled these far-flung families to come together. Parents who were serving overseas got to watch their children swim in championship meets, like Will, Pat, and Drew Tabor’s mom, who got up in the middle of the night in Afghanistan to watch her boys swim and join us in the chat room. She was able to give a shout-out in real-time as they swam, and the boys could then hear it as they watched themselves swim on the replay. We allowed parents in Italy and South Africa to watch their children swim for colleges here in Florida, and we made it possible for other swimmers to go live on air to wish “Happy Mother’s Day” to their grandmother in Spain. One time we lost wifi, and I knew a swim dad who had been working in India for six months was tuning in to watch his son. We eventually found wifi again, and after the triathlon was completed, we put the headphones and mic on the swimmer to talk to his dad in India live for several minutes. It was their first time seeing each other face-toface in months. Those are meaningful connections.

We were not really marketing swimming. We were marketing love and family.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN TO YOUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS?

Our swim families came to rely on us. We were asked by teams to spread the word to the swimming community about coaches’ deaths, swimmers’ suicides, and fundraisers for terminally ill swim parents. We mourned those tragedies right along with our swim families. But we also celebrated the good times, too.

Take Olympic swimmer Caeleb Dressel. We covered some of his first swim meets as a young teenager, conducting his first-ever interview. We were there for his high school state championships, and we were there when he signed to swim at the University of Florida. We were also there when he set his first American Record, and we were the first to interview Caeleb when he made his first Olympic team in 2016. And we were there in Rio when he won his first Olympic gold medal. In fact, Caeleb’s family ended up staying with us in our house in Rio because they waited too long to find a place to stay!

The swim network Joe and I created was there for some of the most memorable events of Caeleb and his family’s lives, just as we were there for our other members’ entire lives. We documented their meaningful moments, and we had the honor of being the platform swimmers could use to share these special times with their extended families and swim clubs back home.

That. Was. Our. Why.

To our swimmers, we meant communication, camaraderie, and support. To the families who tuned in, we provided poolside seats for the important moments of their loved ones’ lives. To all of our members, we meant something critical: connection

Use The Why

Once you are sure of The Why, whether it is making learning fun or connecting families or whatever else compels you to build community, everything else can be weighed against it to keep you going forward with intention and direction. There will always be stumbling blocks, but that headache you are experiencing right this very minute? Whatever that problem is that you are having, community-wise, push it up against The Why and see if it is an obstacle that is worth overcoming. Then keep moving.

Evaluating against the Why is important for businesses, too. If you are a brand, ask yourself about that piece of content you just created. Does it align with The Why? Does it further The Why? If so, use it. If not, don’t. Period.

That new marketing slogan? Does it convey your Why? Does it tell your fans why you are doing what you do?

Everything, from business practices to marketing content, must evolve from The Why. If it does, decisions become easier, the path becomes clearer, and your fans become more loyal.

REWRITE (OR WRITE) YOUR MISSION STATEMENT

First, have your leadership look at WHAT service you actually perform (not what you sell). For example, if you sell cleaning products, what is the service for your customers? You deliver a clean, safer environment for their families, right? If you sell software solutions, what you sell isn’t so much the software as it is the ability to make your clients’ lives easier.

Next, have your employees define HOW you do what you do. If you’re a cleaning products company, perhaps you deliver products in sustainable packaging or in a convenient monthly box subscription. If you’re a software service, perhaps you bring superior round-the-clock tech support to your clients.

Finally, get those surveys and customer polls ready and ask a few key questions to see just what you do for your customers. WHY are they fans? What do they think you do for them?

Once you have the what, how, and why parts fleshed out, you are ready to write your mission statement. And to do this, you want to follow the basic formula that is similar to “We do X for Y by Z.”

At Florida Swim Network, our mission statement was: “We connect families, swimmers, and coaches around the world by creating interactive live streams and social media content.”

For FLBlogCon, our annual blogging conference, our mission was: “We’re Florida bloggers helping other influencers hone their craft in a safe, inclusive environment.”

Small Team Mission Statement

For our microcommunities -- the corporate work teams, the school classrooms, the family communities -the same principle applies to the what, how, and why. If you define your Why and take the time to write a mission statement, you will be amazed at how clear your path becomes in everything you do once you place the Why as the shining light to guide you.

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