The upcoming HustleSpace will feature a section called Teach or Take that look at businesses and operations that went left field and will attempt to teach that existing operation or show others how to takeover and do it bigger and better than the incumbent. Almost all of the time the incumbent will always stick to their ego and pride and this always create opportunity for new cats to come in and just take over.
In this article, we will cover an entity called the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe and the people behind it and a phenomenon called the Clique of Death that destroyed so many black social organization operations in the past and current present and this Clique of Death seriously need to be discussed for future black entrepreneurs to avoid and protect themselves from this destructive contagion.
The Nomad*ness Travel Tribe
I mentioned the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe in a previous article about travel resources for the sistas. I’m going to be honest – I not sure what the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe purpose for but what I do see broadcasted more than anything is ego/pride/elitism/clique. The “I got more stamps than you stuff” like that supposed to mean something to something called “High Council” remind me of the old days of #blaklife and other black Internet social clubs of the past 20 years where cornball and average looking black folks think they special and hang out with each other for meetups.
It look like the original purpose of Nomad*ness was a webisode series on blacks who travel or expats and that is actually impressive. But today it look like Nomad*ness is about meetups, once-in-a-while global meetups and a social media element. Now, the Nomad*ness web site is pretty impressive and they also have a Facebook group – ok, this is why we writing this article because the Facebook group is where Nomad*ness screwed up big time.
I honestly think Nomad*ness even though I don’t know what they about if they are a travel-related social club or whatever is actually a good thing and it does have benefits. Black travel and expat lifestyle among African-Americans is growing. However, the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe is infected with something called the Clique of Death that is a serious problem. Due to the nature of the Clique of Death which makes its victim hide behind ego/pride and inbred-chatter among their clique, I cannot speak to them directly because the “High Council” will predictably convince themselves that they are alright and they good – black folks always do that.
Instead, me and you going to use the teach or take format to analyze this organization and how the Clique of Death manifest and destroy so many good social organizations ran by brothas and sistas with good intentions who allowed their ego/pride blinded them to not see the Clique the Death manifest. And we are going to try to teach Nomad*ness Travel Tribe how to fix things or we going to teach you guys how to take the whole hustle from them which is actually not a hard feat.
The Clique of Death
The Clique of Death is when a poor leader allow their social organization manifest into a “clique” resulting in a slow downhill deterioration and marginalization of their whole operation. The marginalization is very slow then boom, things crash instantly. How the Clique of Death manifest is when an entrepreneur create a public-facing social organization and the people patronizing their organization or entity confuse themselves as being part of an elite group. Then these people start to believe they are the ones who support/love the founding entrepreneur and entity more than anybody else. Then the group of people who become followers of the entrepreneur start talking among each other forming a clique and they idol worship the entrepreneur and organization and try to act as an autonomous region within that entrepreneurial organization.
This is not a new phenomenon and is a topic in business leadership discussions all the time for example (http://www.leadergrow.com/articles/51-leaders-must-bust-up-cliques) but once again, this Clique of Death is something not taught in our black community and our black leaders and black entrepreneurs keep failing to recognize when individuals in their organizations turn into cliques. You can look historically at the Civil Rights Movement organizations and if you study everybody from the SCLC to the NAACP board of election process, you will see the formation of cliques that keep these organizations internally divided and marginalized and ineffective to do real business. Even Martin Luther King children created a clique between the King brothers and King sisters if you want to go there.
Let’s look at examples of how the Clique of Death infect and destroy organizations within the black community:
Club/Lounge Establishment. Entrepreneur opens up a night club or lounge and regular patrons show up and they all begin to know each other. Then over time, those patrons begin to think this is their spot and they give anybody they haven’t seen before coming to the establishment a dirty look, the same look you will get when you walk into that local pool hall on the other side of town. Then that clique start judging new club/lounge patrons making them feel uncomfortable and excluded and the new patrons eventually leave and never come back. Now, that entrepreneur running the club lost revenue and having a hard time getting new patrons because of the existing clique that manifested in their establishment.
The Black Church. You see the church where they have a new pastor and the pastor actually create a “clique” atmosphere of worshippers to defend the pastor when the pastor want to use the church money to buy a Cadillac Escalade. So someone new arrive at the church, see the pastor is full of crap or see one of the “clique” elder members of the church full of crap and the new member call them out. Does not matter if the calling out was justified, the “clique” circles the wagon and attacks the new person and try to kick the new person out. But the church need new people tithing to keep revenue coming in to grow the church but cannot because of the elder member “clique” that is there judging everybody not part of their “clique” turning away new streams of tithing revenue.
Hip-Hop Entourage. A hip-hop artist work hard working his way up to having his songs on the radio, got a music video and doing shows. The hip-hop artist then get an entourage of cats who become a “clique” and then what happens is one of the dudes in the clique is all the way in Cleveland talking about he reppin the hip-hop artist currently on tour in Europe and punch another rapper entourage in the jaw up in a club in Cleveland creating a beef where someone eventually get shot and killed. Or the entourage is dissing up and coming artists and taking advantage of the hip-hop artist female groupies and over time, the hip-hop artist sales go down, get bad press and get dropped by the labels and airplay because this hip-hop artist wanted to have a clique or an entourage.
Strip Clubs in Atlanta. I see this crap in Atlanta black strip clubs so much, it’s almost mind-boggling – the strippers actually form a clique among themselves! The strippers actually clique up and go out on the floor as a clique and they got some fancy name or crap like that. Then you go to the strip club and see these clique of black strippers hanging around the same brothas when a new guy just arrived and he sitting with $1500 in his pocket wanting to drop it but guess what? You see the clique of black strippers just talking to the same regular brothas who ain’t even paying the black strippers, they all just over there talking. So these black strippers be going home broke and these black strippers be telling the rest of yall they making money when they was doing nothing but running their mouth and cliquing up all night long with the regular cheap entitled patrons instead of working the floor.
All of these examples are known as the Clique of Death where brothas and sistas create cliques and it marginalize the money making game and the growth game and keep cats business operation stagnant and headed downhill. True leaders became successful once they recognize the Clique of Death and how dangerous it is and learned to avoid it at all cost and they have grew. You see how Steve Wynn Las Vegas clubs operation and pay their DJs $200,000 a night because they focus on being mega clubs and everybody is allowed in – no cliques. You see how these mega churches like World Changers focus on tens of thousands of members paying tithes and not allow a clique to manifest to affect all those thousands of tithing worshippers and Creflo Dollar flying private jet planes, not just riding Cadillacs. You see how both Jay-Z and Beyonce drop their entourage which was just a clique and they basically went solo and making their own big moves without a clique or entourage.
If you look around the black community, you see the Clique of Death has infected business everywhere. Walk into a small black business in the hood and a brotha is hollering at the sista behind the cash register and she giggling at his jokes while a real customer is standing there waiting to do business. You go to the barbershop and the barber is cutting a “regular customer” running his mouth about sports holding up the other customers making them wait when a barber only make a fixed amount of money in a fixed amount of time. And as always, these same business seem to go out of business and complain black people don’t support them or black people are cheap when they failed to recognize the Clique of Death took over their hustle.
Nomad*ness Travel Tribe and the Clique of Death
The Nomad*ness Travel Tribe has a Facebook group and in that Facebook group, they have black folks coming around posting irrelevant shit trying to get a conversation going saying this is “travel related” and then there are other topics that erupt in some kind of emotional irrational flame war. Well, one of those flame wars involved me. Yall know I can handle myself but then the moderators wanted to show their ass and tried to come at me. Look, I’m not going to get mad at them moderators who are also part of the Nomad*ness “High Council” because you have to notice something – look at the business and recognize when cats running the show bringing their emotions to the table.
You have to look past all of that bitchy stuff and realize the business angle and let me explain. What happened is one of the Facebook group moderators did not stand down when another Facebook group moderator made a statement and that moderator kept running his mouth. While the Steve Aoki looking moderator was talking, he slipped up and let a professional like me discover that “High Council” at Nomad*ness are not running a real tight operation with a true professional code of conduct. What I observe from these “High Council” moderators behavior was ego and attitude being broadcasted and I instantly saw something is not right here.
Then as I noticed all of these catty ass black women in the group trying to come after me and I sat back and observed nothing but a circle jerk of black folks in another Facebook group talking to each other like they best friends and trying to treat me like I’m some excluded person to the whole group. Yes, what I just explained to you are the clear signs and symptoms that the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe has been infected with the Clique of Death through their Facebook group.
If you notice something in the image above, notice Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook running advertisement for Southwest airlines and another travel excursion ad while these guys showcase their ego/pride as moderators in the comment section. I hope you peep that more than anything.
Teachable Moment for the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe
What I recognize instantly is the people or “High Council” or whatever they are – these cats claim to be social media experts but they made a very bad social media mistake. These social media experts created a Facebook group and they got themselves in over their heads and I hope you recognize this also. See, when that one Facebook group moderator should have realize while running his mouth is everytime he posted his stupid comment, Facebook will “bump” that entire thread to the top of the list for the rest of the members in the Nomad*ness Facebook group to see the flame war. And what happened is dozens of other people started seeing the flame thread, the message stay at the top for others to see and join in the flame war and chime in. And this vicious cycle keep going because ego/pride prevents black folks from letting a discussion in a Facebook group just die off and want to have the last word.
So here is the teachable lessons for the Nomad*ness Tribe now we know they are infected with the Clique of Death:
Transition to Facebook Page. The Facebook group was the wrong social media forum to start with and do not create a Facebook group unless it is a topic everybody can collaborate on or you know how the API works and you can programmatically add/remove users. What is most important to take away is you own a Facebook page – you don’t own a Facebook group. Theoretically, Facebook can give the moderation to someone else and someone else can moderate the group and kick the other “High Council” off. Facebook pages can be controlled by the person who create it and send a controlled message. Look at successful Facebook pages like Black Girls Killing It or Humans of New York and you will see huge followers who can comment but cannot control the flow of information.
Return Focus to Web/IPTV Operations. It is obvious the “High Council” moderators are distracted and too focused on Facebook group and have to step in and handle some of the flame wars and stupid questions. The Nomad*ness tribe should return to their original purpose of creating a blog or an magazine (that can be sold and published) or a book for black travelers and also create an IPTV show for SmartTV watchers and there are plenty of other travel-related shows on IPTV Smart TVs and Roku settop boxes. Return to that format of selling media and information to a black travel consumer market and use only Facebook to publish news to the Facebook page and leverage Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram in the same format. Center everything on the Web and IPTV operation.
How to Take from the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe
I’m going to be honest – I truly believe from my 20 years of experience seeing these black digital lifestyle socialite people like the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe show up, these people will cling to their ego/pride until the Clique of Death fully manifest and everything around them go to shit. And even worst – the same “clique” that was boosting these people ego will straight “crew hop” and started supporting someone else like a bandwagon chaser the very next day. They also appear to be some New York cats and those NYC cats just can’t drop their pride/ego so that is even a better advantage. So I wouldn’t bet on Nomad*ness Travel Tribe doing anything but convince themselves they doing the right thing and that makes the perfect scenario for you or someone else to take their hustle.
If you want to take the hustle away from the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe, you simply stay focused and not get distracted into the Clique of Death. Another secret is this – you don’t need to travel all around the world and you can sit right there in Tupelo, Mississippi and take the hustle away really quick from these uppity recreational travel snobs. While Nomad*ness brothas and sistas are running around the world taking selfies and posting it up like we supposed to Facebook like their pics and admire them, you go ahead and focus on establishing strong media channels and products and service to sell to the growing black travel and expat community.
Remember the golden rule of hustling – if it does not make money it does not make sense and let the Nomad*ness Travel Tribe focus on distractions like elitism, how many stamps they got, clique meetups and flame wars on Facebook group format. You focus on the growing black travel industry and make sure you have a strong foothold and brand. Here is what you should do and we already covered all of this on Dream and Hustle in detailed:
Create a Web Site as Your Hub. Your web site should be similar to our upcoming HustleSpace that focus on providing information and intelligence on black travel. Do not be too black where you want to claim Egypt as part of the African Diaspora like Nomad*ness tribe get distracted with. From your web site, you setup the IPTV and the global journey travel experience we will talk about later and also you use social media only to update information and redirect users on social media back to your web site. In other words, create a Facebook page and only post updates and links and you post the same links on other web sites like the 56,000 Black Professional Network Facebook I’m managing to promote to a professional black audience.
Create the Global Journey Experience. Work with a real established travel agency (doesn’t have to be black-owned) to help you create customized excursions that brothas and sistas can prepay and have installment payment plans. Nomad*ness tribe is only doing a few a year and their “High Council” is making sure the “council members” attend so everybody can clique up. Instead, you run dozens of those excursions a year or even a month and let you and the travel agency book the hotels and airfare and group excursions. You don’t run this on black identity – you run it on black experience like South African house music festival or something like that. You don’t have to be part of those trips, you can have someone else be the guide or captain of that trip.
Custom RFID bracelets. We spoke about creating custom RFID bracelets but you also want to do this and let me explain why. Nomad*ness probably got a bunch of cutesy t-shirts to hustle like everybody else but like Tommorrowland EDM festival, if you are a traveler and you receive a homemade Esty style bracelet that signify your trip to South Africa with others who on your trip also have the same RFID band, that is a special keepsake. The RFID can be a URL that point to your web site to describe the journey so maybe a child or grandchild can see the RFID bracelet and look up what their mom or grandma did while on vacation.
VIP Loyalty Program instead of Cliques. When you have a business, you focus on loyalty programs with rewards, not social cliques. Create a loyalty reward system and that removes the clique elements. Cliques are created when you have no gamification system in place such as a loyalty programs or points. Your best customers are the ones who do the most business, not the ones who talk too damn much and judge others.
Create the IPTV Show. If you have a Smart TV or a Roku or any of those settop boxes, you will see travel channels with on-demand viewing of video files. Create your own IPTV show with your logo and introduction and ending and a guest host who can talk before cutscenes. Research these IPTV video shows on your Xbox or Playstation and also on your settop and you should see how easy it is to create a 3 minute to 10 minute program. Then you use that media to promote all over the place and you will be in a league of your own.
Takeaway : Fight the Clique of Death At All Cost
The most important takeaway from this article as a black entrepreneur is to understand how the Clique of Death can take over a hustle and destroy it. The biggest symptom of the Clique of Death is incorporating socialite activities into your business hustle. You may see this Clique of Death highly visible among the black boule characters and I will ignore the light-skinned curly hair signature of the boule and just say you may want to look at one of the “High Council” members, the female one. But in other examples, you see how the Clique of Death infects ghetto churches, black night clubs and black strip clubs and also barbershops and salons.
Real business leadership and mature entrepreneurship involves focusing on the goal and having a way to fund the goals and fund the people who are working on the goal. And it also must be understood that business is competitive with others trying to fight for the same food to eat at their table. You must never become distracted allowing your hustle to become a clique. As you see here with Dream and Hustle, there have been several attempts by cats thinking they can “clique up” in the comment section over the years and I shut that shit down each and every time as this is my blog and my operation. You have to learn to be the same way about all of your business – that is your hustle, your money coming in and you make sure your operations stay focus on the mission and the money.
Nomad*ness Travel Tribe established their entire business operations on being socialite and created an environment for the Clique of Death to manifest and we have told those cats how to deal with their problem and that is getting rid of the Facebook group that is a liability to them. However, victims of the Clique of Death are blinded by their own ego/pride and convince themselves they are right and they listen to the clique members tell them they are right and attack “outsiders” who question their operations. So as far as we concerned, Nomad*ness Travel Tribe been briefed and what they do is on them but fully expect them to defend their ego until the Clique of Death fully marginalize their own operation and they be another cute “back-in-the-day” story of how black folks hooked up online and did things.
You on the other hand should recognize the opportunity in black travel. For example, me and the 3rd Strategic Institute is headed to China in a few months on business visas and what I plan to do is have a true business travel group with yall cats hopefully next year. I’m not interested in black folks cheesing and smiling taking selfies crap – I want us brothas and sistas to go to China and seek to open up global trade lines to our hoods and local businesses and we tour manufacturing plants during the day and enjoy the skyline by night. I can tell you right now, I have zero interest in going to another country and hang out with African-Americans cheesing and taking selfies, I’m travelling to open up trade lines for the hood and my enterprise operations and I want cats coming along with me on the same mission, real talk.
When it comes to your black-owned business or operation, always be about the money and the mission. Focus only on the metrics and if you hitting your numbers and never get personal with your customers to the point they feel they can act any kind of way with your hustle operation. You should already concluded the “High Council” is facebook friends with their members – that is pretty obvious there. Black entrepreneurs need to understand that the 20% of your customers that does 80% of your business does not relate to sales volume and growth – what you need to sustain your business. You need to focus on making sure the 80% of your customers get to do at least 1% of business for your business to grow – the subscription-based model of 5,000 users paying you $19.99/month. That is the real rule you need to understand and avoid the socialite crap and the Clique of Death at all cost.