🔥 Proximity Matrix: In Community #118

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

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🔥 And now, for your weekly spark.

This morning, I joined the Eid prayer in Washington Square Park. Thousands of strangers, one hour, one community. What I saw there — and what Imam Khalid Latif said under the arch — stayed with me all day.

Most of what we call community isn't community. It's sorting.

By zip code. By algorithm. By who earns what we earn, went where we went, works where we work. We end up in rooms full of people who reflect us back at ourselves — and mistake that familiarity for belonging.

The industry does this constantly. The same people at the same events talking to the same circles. Sorted by access, by prestige, by proximity to power.

That's not community. That's a comfort zone with a guest list.

Real community — the kind that actually builds something, sustains something, changes something — is a choice. It's showing up for people who don't share your story but share your values.

The rising majority has always understood this. We've never had the luxury of building only within our own reflection. We've always had to build across difference — across culture, class, background, and belief.

Not because it was comfortable. Because it was necessary.

That's not a disadvantage. That's the most valuable community-building skill in the industry — and most people who haven't had to develop it by necessity are only just starting to learn it now.

🎥 A room where you matter — are you in it?

My YouTube channel is built on exactly this — conversations across difference, with CMOs of the world's biggest companies, exited founders, and creators building movements. People who don't all look the same, think the same, or come from the same place. That's intentional.

Don’t scroll past this message — because the more subscribers, the easier it is to get great guests to join us and share their stories in ways you won’t see anywhere else.

If you believe in what this community is building — subscribe now and be part of it early.

👉🏽 Subscribe here.

📌 The Proximity Matrix

What does it really look like to have proximity vs. community — in practice? Use this framework as your guide.

Proximity

Community

Passive

It accumulates around you without intention, shaped by your zip code, your industry, your algorithm, and who already looks and earns like you.

Active

It's built deliberately, across difference, by people who choose each other based on shared values rather than shared circumstances.

Comfort

It's consistent and comfortable, but it's built on sameness — and sameness limits growth, especially when conditions around us shift.

Conviction

Its foundation isn't convenience — it's conviction, mutual investment, and showing up even when it costs something.

Fragility

When we need our network to actually move something, it doesn't — and what should be strong may simply break. And then what?

Resilience

When necessary, we bend but don’t break. We’re more creative and capable of doing bold work together, having always had to build this way.

The question worth asking this week — about your network, your team, your brand's audience — isn't who do I have around me?

👉🏽 It's who did I actually choose? And more pointedly: who chose me back, across difference, when they didn't have to?

That's where the real community lives. That's what's worth building.

The algorithm may keep sorting you. The industry may keep organizing itself by access, proximity, and prestige.

Choose differently anyway.

That's always been how the rising majority builds. It's how we've survived. And right now — it's how we lead.

✍🏽 The easiest way to start showing up for yourself

Share your thinking, your perspective, and your point of view. That's how you build the kind of visibility that shows your community the values that drive you.

I use Stanley to make that easier. It learns your voice, helps you be more consistent without starting from scratch every time, and gives you weekly analytics to make it even easier and better. I was one of their first 100 users and have been impressed with how the team has really shown up.

If you've been meaning to show up more consistently and keep putting it off — this is the tool that removes the excuse.

✅ 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.

ICYMI last week:

💥 VP, Influencer Strategy — Weber Shandwick (multiple other roles)

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