🔥 Presence vs. performance: In Community #104

Your weekly spark centering entrepreneurial leaders, creators, and culture-makers from the rising majority

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🙌🏽 Welcome to In Community.

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Every community has a frequency.

Some people show up tuned in. Others show up turned up — projecting what they think is expected instead of bringing what’s actually needed.

Most of our industry can’t tell the difference — and that’s the problem.

For years we’ve rewarded the performance of connection: the branded moment, the choreographed authenticity, the “talking to culture” instead of talking with humans.

Even inside our own careers, especially as executives and marketers, performance became our default survival strategy. We learned to deliver brilliant work while suppressing the parts of ourselves that didn’t fit the room. We learned to read the air, not disturb it.

But something is shifting — in our teams, in our audiences, in our communities.

People are done being audience to a performance. They want presence — the kind that’s rooted, consistent, unedited… and accountable.

👉🏽 Performance wins attention. Presence wins alignment.

And alignment is the new currency.

This is the next evolution from everything we’ve explored — the quiet flex, momentum gaps, the migration of meaning, and magnetic conviction. Those were about how we move. This is about how we show up.

Because presence isn’t passive. Presence is strategy.

It’s the difference between a brand that taps culture and one that holds cultural weight. Between a leader who’s impressive and a leader who’s trusted. Between community as audience and community as asset.

🙌🏽 Quick pause — I need your presence here

I’m building out deeper conversations on my YouTube channel — the ones I can’t fit in these newsletters — and I’m pushing to hit 1,000 subscribers in the next two weeks. But I’m only 20% of the way there.

If you’re here every week, absorbing, thinking, sharing — I’m asking you to show up there too.

👉🏽 Subscribe
👉🏽 Comment
👉🏽 Share it with one colleague

Your presence expands this entire movement.

So stop for 5 seconds and hit subscribe.

And make sure to catch the latest episode out today, featuring Junmian Sun, Managing Director of the Shorty Awards, the original awards for content creators and social media, growing year on year.

Tune in. Subscribe. Be part of the movement.

📌 The P.R.E.S.E.N.C.E. Framework™

For Community-Centered Marketing That Actually Lands

P — Proximity
Are you close enough to the community to understand what they actually care about, not just what they signal online?

R — Resonance
Does your message land emotionally, not just intellectually?

E — Embodiment
Does your brand (or leadership) practice the values it publishes?

S — Shared Ownership
Are community members co-designers, not content props?

E — Emotional Credibility
Can you hold the uncomfortable truths without deflecting or sanitizing them?

N — Narrative Memory
Do you honor the community’s history, not just its trending moments?

C — Continuity
Are you consistent when no one is watching?

E — Energy
Does your presence match the community’s rhythm — not mimic it?

Presence isn’t a feel-good concept. It’s the operative difference between buzz and belonging, impressions and impact.

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  • Blend cultural insight with strategy

  • Build visibility that’s aligned, not performative

Get in on the early-access — get early pricing and the opportunity to help shape the curriculum.

👉🏽 Sign up here. 

🔗 The real shift

We don’t need leaders who perform connection. We need leaders who carry it.

Leaders whose presence does the work before the strategy does. Leaders who know that community isn’t something you impress — it’s something you invest in.

Here’s to showing up in the rooms we’ve earned, the communities we love, and the futures we’re building.

And for more on how your presence can show up at work in a different way, head over to the latest in Wellth, a piece exploring the art of intrapreneurial wellness, by Zachary Walker.

✅ Now Hiring

What you asked for, delivered.

Is someone you know considering what’s next for them? Here are a few roles with people hiring across the network. I’ll be adding roles here every week, so stay tuned and make sure to spread the word.

💥 Content & Community Specialist — Hue (I extended the deadline for this!)

And before you go, consider who else might value this newsletter and what’s coming up on YouTube. Make sure to fwd this newsletter onward to them too. They can subscribe here for more directly in their inbox. 🔁 

In community,

Fahad