Human to Human: Building Community with Alex and Cristina

EPISODE 79

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.
 
Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. Let’s dive in.

Cristina Amigoni: Let’s dive in.
“Authenticity means freedom.”
“Authenticity means going with your gut.”
“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”
“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”
“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”
“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”
“It's transparency, relatability. No frills. No makeup. Just being.”

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to another episode of Uncover the Human. We are here once more in studio alone. Welcome back, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Besides, my kids are right here outside getting some toys to play with. They may or may not come on the podcast sometime soon.

Alex Cullimore: I have a cat throwing a toy around here somewhere by himself. He's pretty upset that I'm not doing this for himself. Here we are.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. We’re going to talk about community.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Community has been a fascinating portion of our journey with Siamo, and it's been just an ever-expanding idea of how powerful it is. Let's talk a little about community. What comes to mind first, Cristina, when you think about community?

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, so many things. But as you were introducing the topic, I realized how when you make certain decisions and use certain words, they manifest even if you don't know how they will manifest. So, something even as simple as our company name, Siamo, which means we are in an Italian, It’s a great company name. There was a whole meaning. There's still a whole meaning behind it. But when we came up with it, it was more of a future state than a present state. It was a vision. It was a dream. It was a hope that the WE would actually be that powerful and that motto of our daily lives. And now that we're in it after a couple of years, it's like, “Oh, wait. We created the WE of the name. It exists.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Suddenly we’re in a we.

Cristina Amigoni: We're in a WE. And not a Nintendo game. Even though it may be.

Alex Cullimore: Maybe.

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe. We don't know that.

Alex Cullimore: It's true. We talked about it back when even before we had a podcast. Before we did anything, we were like, “Let's talk about it.” When we finally came up with, settled on this as the company name. We danced around a lot of things that had to do with connection and had to do with the humanity and just getting that social nature, we've turned it into exactly what we think want it to be, which I think is the power of using words. You kind of put an idea in your brain. You're kind of accepting yourself of, “Hey, this is kind of how I'd like this to work.” And then when you get opportunities that would open that door, it's very easy to say, “Oh, yeah. Well, let's open that door.” Which takes decision fatigue way down and change excitement way up. And you get to slowly create the things that you wanted to create, the future that you thought about and put a word to at some point. We thought about connection working with human nature. We thought about how humans are social and how together. And the fact that we always were dependent on each other, because that's how we evolved. We always were dependent and will be dependent, and we can work better as a we, we came up with Siamo. And now we have a whole much larger community we've gotten to be plugged into, which is honestly probably one of the best parts about our entire Siamo journey is finding this community of all these people that want to make things better for the world, for people. It is our we. And it came out of just having this idea of a we that we listened for. We listened for the little things that were available, and it's much easier to choose those things when they pop up.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, very well said. We'd listened for it. We created it. We had no idea how to create it. But I think we went to what made sense for us. What was organic. And between the pandemic and between wanting to do a podcast and other things, the organic way for us was just one person at a time. It wasn’t to start with a big bang, “Okay, well, the WE has to have 100 people. And they have to meet once a month. And they have to be this type of person. And this is what happens when they come together.” Hence, listen to our changeable podcast recording before this one on those plans and how well they work out. It was more about what's the feeling? What's the experience we want to have? What are the feelings things we want to have when we think about a WE? And those feelings were really to connect as humans. Was to find other people that we could have very insightful and learning conversations with. It was to find people – We didn't even have really a goal for the conversations themselves. It was just about connecting. It’s like how can we connect? And the best way to connect is curiosity. It’s finding people that want to share what their passions are about and see what happens. Some of them, we've gotten very close to. Others, they're great partners and great community members, but the connection piece is with all of them.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I love it. I’m going to put that on the wall. The best way to create a connection is through curiosity. That's going to put on our virtual office space.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: It's a great point. And the way – In kind of saying, almost a paradox, but it does fit with our mission. When we were starting a company, we kind of wanted to say over how do we want this to go. And one of the things we wanted was to build a community. So, we simultaneously wanted some amount of our own autonomy and direction while building a larger network, and partnership, and community. And that's worked out incredibly well. And I think about our conversation with Angela Heyroth, and she was talking about the gig economy and how, basically, you can replace a large portion. And it's a great – There's the ability to let people specialize in what they want to specialize in. Everybody can contribute their gifts. And you get more out of it. And you can let this be kind of on a gig basis. And that's what we've started to create with our network of partners now. We have people we can bring in on projects. We can bring them in for workshops, for one-off things, for one on one coaching, for full projects as just the help that we need. And we deeply appreciate having all these people around. And we get this chance to be part of this network of semi-autonomous, semi-connected companies and people. And it's been kind of incredible to see that grow.

Cristina Amigoni: It has been.

Alex Cullimore: I would like –

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, go ahead.

Alex Cullimore: Actually say I'd like to come up with a less horrifying analogy than this. But it's kind of like a petri dish. Like, you just kind of like you leave something there and suddenly it's growing. I'd like it to not be compared to mold. But there is something really cool about you just plant an idea and one day you're looking there's gross mold on top of it. I need a better metaphor.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, yeah. Could we go over the seed metaphor of –

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, that's much better. Let’s do that.

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe a seed of aspen trees, since they're all connected.

Alex Cullimore: A grove.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, their own trees, but they're also part of a much bigger network. And they are all connected that way. And actually, there was a just – I want to find this quote that I saw this morning that says – When we started this, again, it was our vision. It was a dream. It was words. But it was words. But it was more than that. It was the energy, I think, that we put into “we believe in this.” We have no idea how it's going to go. How long it's going to take? But we believe in it. And then we kind of let it go after that. But this quote actually is found very inspirational this morning. It says, “You wouldn't plant a seed, and then dig it up every few minutes to see if it has grown.” So, why do you keep questioning yourself, your hard work, and your decisions? Have patience. Stop overthinking. And keep watering your seeds. Which is a lot of what we did. I mean, we questioned ourselves. We had doubts, all of that. But we also left the seed there. We never took the seed out and like, “Nope, you don't work. Sorry. Find another seed.” And then dig it up every morning and then wonder why it's not growing.

Alex Cullimore: That is a much better metaphor than mold. And also, just a better metaphor in general. That actually would have been a pretty good metaphor in our change podcast as well, because that you do have to plant seeds. And you do have to have the patience to see where, how and when it's going to grow. Because at some point, generally, with the patience and the nurturing, and the not digging it up every 30 seconds to see what's happening, you get buds, and you get a flower, and you get a tree. These come out with patients in time. And I cannot truly reiterate enough for people how difficult it would have been to try and plan for this. We didn't know how to create this. We didn't know – And I think part of the reason it has succeeded is because we didn't get caught up on that. We didn't say we have to have 400 people by next March or this whole thing is a failure or whatever. Like, we didn't set exactly those. We just set the intention. When you have the intention, you can attach things to it as you find them on the way. And it's a lot easier to build it organically. And it wasn't the core thing that we had to do to keep running. And we also wanted to do things like a podcast, and a podcast became then a vessel of that original aim, that original goal. And you do all of these other things, and you look back and your seed is growing. It’s come out of the ground.

Cristina Amigoni: And even the podcast. If I think about us starting the podcast, our initial intention wasn't to build community. It was just to have conversations that we were already having and might as well record them and put them out there and see if anybody else finds value to them. And even the idea of having guests wasn’t immediate. I mean, it was, again, a vision, a dream, a hope. When and if? One day we want to, we can bring on these guests. How about we make a list that just in case we need it? It was that plan B piece almost. And then the guest turned into bringing other guests, and they turned into partners, and they turned into community, and they turned into people that we work with on their projects and their client work and people that work with us on client work. They turn into clients, potentially. And sometimes they are. Clients can also be podcast guests, and vice versa. And so, all these things sprouted that we had no idea were going to happen just with the focus of we want to live in a week. It wasn't even we want to build a WE. We want to live in a WE.

Alex Cullimore: That’s two kind of important parts. First, because you already said, the best way to create connection is curiosity. And that's what ended up being the growth here. We have things like the podcast. We're just curious about doing a podcast. We wanted to do it. We wanted to have these conversations and document them and have some idea and see what could spread from it. And then we were curious about guests, and we just kept the door open. Then that became connected to the larger other portion of getting that we. And I love what you said about wanting to live in the WE, because that's one of the things they talked about and things like – I think it's Atomic Habits. They talk about, you want to change something, you have to have basically an identity change. It's not I want to quit smoking. It's I want to be somebody who doesn't smoke, right? So, you're living as a nonsmoker. Not as somebody who is struggling to let go of this. Because if you want to live as somebody who’s struggling, you'll live as somebody who’s struggling. When we put our intention to live in the WE, it became – Like, the identity was there. The identity desire was there, at which point you work on the community. And it becomes such a feedback loop that we couldn't have predicted the ways that it would work. But I can recommend now in retrospect that method of building. That you get that curiosity. You find that just, “Hey, I want to just connect with people, connect with people.” And you get a whole network. You get a community. You get partnerships. You get work. You give work. You have this just ecosystem that starts to feed itself. And it's really incredible to watch this growth grow and to be part of it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it's so true. It really brings the infinite mindset to building a business, I think. Because like you said, like, you give work and you get work. And it's not with that transactional intention. So, you don't just connect with people because you want something from them. The connection itself is what we wanted. There wasn't an ulterior motive. There wasn't, “Oh, they'll recommend me,” with people that go to them. So, let me just be in touch with the people that will recommend me. Or I can hire them as contractors. So, let's only be in touch with the people that I can hire as contractors. Or whatever it is that the business motive behind it is. Our motive to connect with people is to connect. We literally do not have ulterior motives. We don't have expectations. We don't have any of that. We just want to connect. We just want to have the conversations. We want to have the happy hours. We want to brainstorm and learn and have support. And that's it. And that then turned into, “Hey, I've got this client that will be perfect for you.” Or, “Hey, I've got this project. Can you guys help us out?” And we do the same thing. Like, we've got this request. We've got this project. We've got this workshop. And we need extra help. Or it's outside of our scope right now, our realm. Here's a reference. Why don't you go do it?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, and I can't express enough how exciting it is to give people work. That's something really I didn't know it much before. I've always worked within companies. And companies all have this kind of weird silo, like, “We're the company. And everything else are competitors,” or whatever. Those are vendors. Or whatever the box you're going to go put somebody in is. But the excitement of being able to give people work is incredible and something I wouldn't have known going into this. And I love what you said about like this was – Like, the intention was just to connect. It kind of reminds me of what the Siamo journey at the core has been. We just decide some kind of intention we want to do. And then we ended up building the pieces that you would need in a business by default. And it's incredible, because you don't have to sit and stress about exactly what you're saying about like, “Well, which connections can I use for clients? Which connections can I use for contractors?” Wait, it's not really about that. And the relationships have changed. Some people we have as connections, and we're going to use their services, and just by chance of having learned more about them. Some people, like, we just want to talk for a little bit. We’ll see them for a bit, bring them in as a contractor. Later they’re a client. Later they’re a contractor. Again, it doesn't matter, because you're not trying to put a box on it. You're just staying in touch. And that was this – It reminds me of our intentions every time we start a project. We tell people, like, “Hey, we're here to give you some tools. Transition out. We want you to be able to run on your own.” And every time this ends up manifesting as us kept being called to come back in and do more. Because we're there just to do the value portion of it. And then it becomes valuable enough, people ask you back anyway. And it was never part of the strategy. It was literally part of our strategy to not be pigeonholed. We honestly were like, “No, I don't want to step up on a project for a long time.” And so, we were like, “No. No. No. We absolutely want to do this in a way where we hand this off.” And it became something that was a valuable business development tool that we felt just as backwards into –

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And because like you said, like the focus was never to sell. We don't have conversations to sell. We don't want walk into a project with the idea of like, “Oh, how can we make this into a multiyear client and multiyear project? And how can we drag it on or find other areas to solve and all of that. We just go in with –

Alex Cullimore: What fires can I light to go put out later?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly. What fires can I create on the side that didn't exist before so that I can go fix them? Or even what fires can I find that were not the intention that we were brought into? And it's not like we ignored them. We point them out. But we don't point them out in the sense of like, “Hey, we see that. We can help as well.” We kind of point them out as like, “Hey, you've got that going. Somebody may want to pay attention to it before I present the house. Just pointing it. Just saying.”

Alex Cullimore: Just saying we're all in this house right now, and I don't want it to fall over.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. I know. That will impact what we're doing over here. So, can somebody do that? Or keep an eye on it? Yeah. But it’s that. The intention was always they bring us in, they have a goal. We work hard to help them reach that goal. And that's it. The intention is also you can do this without us. If you're still doing this with us after way longer than we need to be here, then we didn't do our job. We didn't provide our value. And so, that goes back to where are we here to do? Sell or provide value? If we're providing value, at some point you will not need us and want us around. You may want us. But you will not need us.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. But you'll think of us when you have another project sometime down the line.

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe or maybe not. And that's fine, too.

Alex Cullimore: I don’t mean that even as an intention. I'm just saying like, if we can do this right, and if we can actually support, it's a lot easier to think about the people that have helped you when you're like, “Oh, I need some help again. Think back to the person that stubbed your toe on a bunch of things that made you really angry. That's not the first thing you think of when you need something. And again, this was not the intention. It wasn't to make this like, “Oh, yeah, we're going to make sure that we're valuable this way. It's just we wanted to do the work that way.” And then, by default, this authenticity is what has carried us in both ends of this. The authenticity of just kind of wanting the connections that became – Because why would it not end up just being a symbiotic relationship and not for work reasons? That is one of the things that you people support each other on, because work is a big part of our lives. We support each other just as people. You do these to your neighbors. You do this with everybody. We are there to support. Work happens to be an angle at which we also support people. We help them. They help us. We help them with their personal stuff. You have happy hours. Like, there's just – The authenticity of the connection is there. And the authenticity of we're here just to work and solve. Like, that’s what we'd like to do. We like to do this weird, complex problem solving that occasionally is frustrating and occasionally is incredible. And just that's what we want to do. So, you approach it from there. It's kind of hard to go wrong. And it's hard to give yourself enough courage to do that. But if you want a community, authenticity and curiosity really can't be beat.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I love what you said, and I'm going to butcher it now because it's been long enough to remember which words you used. But poster number 10 on our future office, talking about putting intentions out in the universe, and then the universe comes back and smacks us in the face with them. It’s one that actually happened. And you’re like, “You asked for this. You were there too.” Like, “No. No. No. I'm actually not ready. Hold on.”

Alex Cullimore: Oh, crap.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. So, yeah, poster number 10. And you said something, like, we’re just there to support the people, to help as people. It's not about business to business, business to – It’s not like b2b, b2c, c2c, x2x. I don't even know what alphabet were on at this point. It’s just how can we support the human? It's truly, I guess, h2h is a new thing. It’s truly human to human. There is no ulterior move. There is no transaction that's expectation. There's just, you're human, I'm a human. We're in this world. How can we support? And support sometimes is having a happy hour? Sometimes it's listening. Sometimes it's sending recommendations of clients or other services that we use. Anything.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And within that 10,000 times, we have an amazing support system of like vendors that we use that have been incredibly helpful like in producing this podcast, in doing social media marketing and helping us with all kinds of things. And all day long, I will happily pass out that reference. Because, my God, they're incredible. They do great work for us. And I'm so grateful. And that's exactly kind of it. We did this as like, “Hey, we could use some help.” We found people who we can connect with. And they do incredible work, right? Why would I not pass that on? This human h2h thing is, I think, hard to immediately get into for a lot of people, because it requires letting go of the expectation that you're doing something the right way to get some specific end. It's about you'll find that, again, because you have the intention. And you'll be listening for the things that help you build the things that you want to build. But you just do it through the curiosity and the allowing things to grow organically. Again, not even in a business sense. It's just growing relationships, because it's good to have relationships. We're a social being.

Cristina Amigoni: We are. So, when you focus on that first, the rest kind of falls into place. It’s like we don't have to do this alone. We can't do this alone. It's not even we don't have to. We cannot do this alone. So, let's just expand. And whatever it is, there's another human or other humans that can help us through that. And we can reciprocate. And so, when the intention is just to maintain a relationship just to connect, and I said, the possibilities that come out of that are infinite. We still don't know what possibilities are. We still get podcast guests that come back to us. It's like, “Hey, I'm starting this whole new project at this new company. I want to talk to you guys.” Awesome! Never the intention. Never asked. Never expected it.

Alex Cullimore: We led it with curiosity. We now know about what they do. They know what we do. And, of course, I want the help on that. I don't want to try to become the expert on everything. It will never work. I want to learn about lots of things just for curiosity’s sake. But I know I can't do all these things. And the more you do it, the more you realize what you kind of want to do. And then you want the support system. You want the other people to help you out on the areas that they really like. You either can't do as well or just don't have interest in doing now, or you really would appreciate the help with. And, man, it's been such a powerful – And I think the reason it's hard is it does take some vulnerability to do that. You have to let go of some of the expectations. And that's not easy at all, especially since every article you have that’ll be put out on LinkedIn or something will be something like you're talking about the b2b, b2c. This is the new b2c strategy. Here's this. Like, here's this very narrow window of like – And it's not that they aren't helpful thoughts on that. But if you don't allow that to be part of a larger picture, or allow some flexibility, it's very easy to miss opportunities. And it's very easy to miss growth as a person, as a human.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. And it's true. Like, if you function in that narrow mind, well, your world just got narrower, a lot narrower than it could have been. If everything is a transaction – Our friend JC Quintana talks about that. Relationships, they can be transactional relationships. They're not going to be long lasting when they are transactional relationships. And they're only going to give you exactly what you buy or what you sell. And that's it. And it's a lot easier to move on from a transactional relationship than a human relationship, where the transaction is not the core of everything. The transaction is not, “Oh, I only hear from that person when they need something.” Everybody has that. Everybody knows that. And it's fine. Sometimes, maybe it's the right timing. Maybe it's the right situation to say yes. And the rest of the time, though, you're probably going to go to the ones that reach out to you because they haven't heard from you in a while. And they just want to know how you are as a human. Those are the ones that you bring on as partners. Those are the ones that you will give work to that you cannot do as a company or you want to refer clients to.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And again, it's addictive to do it. Like, the second you get to help the people that you're already connected with, like, It's a great feeling, and not one that I couldn't have predicted that beings as impactful as it has been. It's just so incredible to get the chance to hand things to people, because then you're like, “Oh, my God. Here's this person that I really like, that I want to see succeed, and I have a chance to help them do that.” And that’s incredible.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. One of my biggest learning lessons in my career, and it does come from one of my very first jobs, one of my very first bosses. So, he did make an impact. He told me 20 – Way too many years ago. 20 some years ago. He told me to never become indispensable in a job. Because if you're indispensable, you're not promotable. And at that moment, I was in my mid-20s, and becoming indispensable was an identity of like, “If I'm so indispensable, they can never get rid of me.” Especially as I was saying layoffs happen around me. So, I'm like, “That has to be a goal. Become indispensable.” Make it so that they absolutely cannot function without you. And the minute he told me that, kind of like it was one of those seeds. Like, he planted the seed. It was very much inception. He planted the seed. And I couldn't quite get it. And I didn't get it for many years, until I realized how liberating, and satisfying, and fulfilling it is to work yourself out of a job. And that's what he meant. He meant be good enough. Do all the work to learn and be great at what you do. But also find a way to start. When you get to that greatness, when you get to the expertise level, or to that level where things are functioning on autopilot almost, that's when you start looking at how you transition out of that. How can you move your skills? How can you help grow a team? How can you help somebody else pick that up? So that you can work yourself out of a job and move into your next adventure, into your next learning, to your next growth, into your next role? And so, when I think about community, I always think about that infinite mindset includes that. That infinite mindset includes the fact that so and so in our community, yes, come to us if we can help. And then let's figure out how we stop that. How do we grow ourselves out of that in a way that helps both of us?

Alex Cullimore: Mm-hmm. That's really good, and another piece that requires some vulnerability. Like, you have to be willing to say, “No, I want to become not needed. I don't want to become like –” And having that trust that there will be more to grow into. And it sounds scary when you put it that way. But if you think about the flip side, you can then – The flipside is you try and become indispensable. And now you're going to feel stuck because this is the thing you can do really well. This is the thing. Now, what else can you do? It starts to feel like, “Well, then maybe there isn't anything else.” Or, “I couldn't do it as well as I do this? And how can I –” Then you're stuck in a different loop. And maybe that's fine. Maybe that's exactly what some people would love to do. Personally, I love the growth portion of it. I love the option to go do the next thing. And I want to see what else is out there. And I want to – And that requires keeping some of that, essentially, internal faith that there is something next out there.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, definitely. Well, and from a community point of view, it switches from people reaching out and making that connection, because they want to, rather than they need to. Where do you want to be? Do you want to be in the need to? And sometimes we do. Sometimes we do want to be in the need. Do they need to be in touch with me? Because I provide all the skills that they can get easily somewhere else. That's great. That's awesome. And that helps learning. That helps growing. It helps financially. It helps in many other ways. But then there's the pool of people that are the want to.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And that's so much more powerful, and takes patients to get to. And that's, I think, the part that is difficult to accept if you haven't gotten to do it. And I feel very lucky that we are – I'm not going to say on the other side of it or something. There're not two sides of a coin. We're in the growth of this. This is still a work in progress, but we can see the pieces that are reality of it. And it's easier now to know and look back and see the dots that connect. And it wasn't about trying to connect those dots specifically. It was about casting a large enough understanding of community that we could connect these dots. And there's still so much more growing to do and a lot ambiguity to let yourself do that. And that's uncomfortable. And I have absolute empathy for anybody who feels that that is uncomfortable. It is. It's difficult. It's hard to feel like, “Oh, I don't even know what fog I'm wandering into.” But having a community makes that a whole lot easier.

Cristina Amigoni: It definitely does. Yes. And I have another quote, since, apparently, this is the quote episode.

Alex Cullimore: This is a quote episode.

Cristina Amigoni: The other quote, this is where my tea bag that I drank a couple of days ago, and I liked it. So, I kept it. And now it's – Well, the tea bag is in the trash. But the, quote, the piece of papers. And it's, “The unknown is where all outcomes are possible. Enter it with grace.”

Alex Cullimore: Oh, that’s nice.

Cristina Amigoni: So, that function – This works for both this community episode and the change. Why change is hard episode. Go listen to that one.

Alex Cullimore: I’m going to try and look this quote up. I'm going to butcher this if I try and do it. Let’s see if I can look it up. The Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart I've been listening to, which it's a great book. I think I'm going to have to read it, because there's so many definitions that visually I think is a lot better. But one excellent quote that I'm going to absolutely butcher. She quoted it from somebody else, I think. But it's that we have this emphasis, especially in like American culture, on this very much like rugged individualism, which is like kind of when it runs rampant, it becomes the opposite of community. And the community still has autonomy. It still has the independence. It still has individuals. But this rugged individualism of I don't need anybody tends to run rampant. And we believe that then connection and community are almost to be avoided. Not even like the transactional ones. You should be able to do everything entirely on your own. But she was talking about how, as a social species, the goal and the purpose and the meaning in life comes not from becoming autonomous. It comes from becoming the person people can depend on. And not that you have to constantly do like caregiving tasks. Not that you're constantly just helping everybody else out and you wear yourself down. It's that you have that capability and the mindset of the contribution back to the hole. That becomes meaning and purpose in a social species. And I don't have the quote on it. But I'll see if I can find it for our show notes. It's buried in the book somewhere.

Cristina Amigoni: That's great. Yeah, definitely. I have the book. And I started reading it. I have to start listening as well. Because we like some Brene in our lives.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it's good. It's a great book. And it's got lots of great – I think it talks about so many definitions of emotions. And it's worth the investigation. But it's all very dense one for it, because there's so many definitions, which are all great linguistic help towards describing and using your own mental mindset. But that's an entirely different podcast. This one is –

Cristina Amigoni: This one, we’ll stick to community. So, go find your community. Build your community. Figure out the first person you're going to reach out to. Who’s in your community?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And if you want to know where to start, you can always reach out to us, because we're going to be curious about it anyway.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. We don't have a formula. Our formula is just reach out. Be curious. Find out what people love. What they’re passionate about. H2h, which is not some sort of new water. It's just – Yeah.

Alex Cullimore: Two hydrogens and a hydrogen.

Cristina Amigoni: I’m not sure what that makes. A balloon that flies through the sky? Yeah, h to the third.

Alex Cullimore: It probably doesn’t exist.

Cristina Amigoni: No. Well, thank you for listening.

Alex Cullimore: Very ambiguous. But –

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And it cannot be planned.

Alex Cullimore: Get curious and get authentic, and it’s a lot easier to find your community. Well, thank you guys for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. We will be back soon with another episode. Enjoy.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, thank you. Bye-bye.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo podcast.

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara; and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood.

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas or questions. You can reach us at podcast wearesiamo.com, or at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. We Are Siamo is spelled W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others and always uncover the human.