By Greg Hudson – Illustration by Colin Spence 
Sean Moffitt has been in the pub, working on his computer for two hours already. It’s not that I’m late meeting him, it’s that he was early and he didn’t want to waste any of the day, so he set up his laptop at one of the tall tables next to the open door. A makeshift corner office, perfect for him to finish a chapter of the book he’s writing.
He’s working the waitress, though not in a flirtatious way. He’s noticed the other waitresses take their cues from her. She says she just has a big mouth, but he doesn’t allow it. As he reels in the lengths of power cords for his computer, he assures her she’s lead influencer. Whether she understands the marketing lingo or not, she can tell it’s a good thing. It wasn’t so much a compliment at all. It was almost a note to himself. Moffitt is always looking for that kind of connection.
Moffitt’s professional life is this incident times a thousand. According to the unofficial body that regulates this sort of thing the guy is a guru of word of mouth marketing. His day job is running Agent Wildfire, where he blends religious-speak and an understanding of how communities work to help companies build positive buzz to build their brands. He’s part evangelist, part community organizer. However, after work is when things get interesting. He runs a not so secret society, practicing what he spends his life preaching about: The League of Kickass Business People.
A couple of years ago, Moffitt was speaking with Mirabel Palmer-Elliott, who worked in the publicity department for Rogers. Impressed with each other’s rolodex’s, they decided to meet at Globe Bistro, a trendy restaurant in Toronto’s Greek neighbourhood. “I told him I would bring the 15 coolest people I knew, and he would bring the 15 coolest people he knew, and we would just see what happened,” says Palmer-Elliot.
That was the first embryonic gathering of the League of Kickass Business People. The name owes itself to Palmer-Elliot. Before Moffitt and this meet up, she had dreamed of making a similarly ass-kicking business-themed group for women. At The Globe, a fitting name for an inaugural networking get together, there was no specific purpose other than to meet. Now, the group is more focused. It’s about hearing and sharing ideas that are hopefully inspiring, ready to ignite. But aside from the content of their kickass meetings, however creative they are, there are lessons to learn simply from watching a group like this grow. It’s a parable for networking in general.
“If you want a good way of describing the League of Kickass Business People think Fight Club meets TED,” describes Adrian Salamunovic, the brains behind some truly innovative home décor at DNA11 in Ottawa, and a past speaker at a LOK function.
That description smacks of spin, which isn’t surprising considering the group. Not to mention the fact that describing it thusly breaks the first and second rule of Fight Club, which in turn simultaneously breaks all the rules of word of mouth marketing. Still, it’s close to how Moffitt sees the League.
“I would love for us to be the TED of Canadian business,” he says. It’s a good goal, both for content, and implicit size. TED, the massively popular non-profit group dedicated to spreading ideas globally, is too unwieldy for Moffitt. His networking brainchild needs to be smaller, more focused. “Right now, two years in, we’re in the awkward adolescent phase.”
With approximately 4,000 members, some more active than others (including me, who signed up as part of the story), and an active presence in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, with Calgary and Montreal coming soon. His goal is about 10,000 members, 8 corporate sponsors, and a solid core of supporters in all five cities. There is a problem with growth though—if too many people are involved, doesn’t that deplete the coolness?
Right now, the league tries to be selective. Everyone seeking membership has to be approved. It’s aided in that by having a name that doubles as a natural filter. That is to say, it takes a certain level of confidence to identify oneself as being a kick ass business person, and it’s their hope that that confidence has been earned. Mostly LOK targets directors, managers, people in charge with creative ideas—and apparently young journalists.
But in order for a group like this to work, to really communicate about ideas to connect thinkers from different industries in a more meaningful way than a Facebook group, it has to be somewhat tight knit, or at least potentially so. It’s a balance they are very conscious of, Palmer-Elliot explains.
Even though the group has 4,000 members Moffit points out that each function is still very manageable, with 100 or so people showing up to hear creative speakers, and of course to network. As for the site, it’s monitored regularly to guard against people using it as a platform to push their products.
“This networks main concern is that people won’t be getting pitched to,” says Erin Bonokos, who was set up as the League’s community leader after she was hired as an intern at Agent Wildfire. “We’re very mindful of who is coming in and what is being said. We aren’t a sales network.”
It helps that, unlike other networking groups, they don’t focus on one industry, even if it seems that the league is a little heavy on marketers. According to Sean Wise, business professor at Ryerson, that’s very good. Wise is the author of How to be a Business Super Hero—there’s something comic booky about the League’s name, which I why I turned to Wise. “As to what comics teaches us about putting a team together, well I rely on the original teen team, the Legion of Superheroes, for guidance. LSH only had rule for new members….each member had to have powers and/or skills not already on the Roster. Imagine if each new team member you recruited for a venture had skills not yet present….sounds good to me!” Wise says.
By Moffitt’s count, they have at least 25 different disciplines represented, from engineers to artists. Including people like Adrian Salamunovic. By his own, and Moffitt’s estimation, he’s a fine personification of the League: A young entrepreneur who has dabbled in science, design and business, collecting like-minded acquaintances, citations in magazines and appearances on television. And, even though he was brought in as a speaker, he’s been able to use the League in exactly the right way.
Moffitt noticed Salamunovic’s work, which involves blowing up a client’s DNA and printing the pattern on canvas, and asked him to speak at an LOK event. While at the engagement, Salamunovic met the people involved with Kids with Cameras, the charity organization featured in the Oscar-winning documentary Born into Brothels that gives children cameras to help them express themselves. Now, at the end of May, he’ll be auctioning off work he made as a result of that partnership at a charity event in Toronto. It’s the perfect connection: creative, caring people hooking up to be creative and caring, but it only happened because they were given the means.
“We won’t make any money off of this,” Salamunovic says, “but that’s kind of the new business paradigm. You give value first, then returns come second.”
Even without immediate profits, it’s hard not to be excited about something that is based solely on putting a bunch of cool people together in a room and watching them inspire each other. In a way, it’s the perfect usage of social media—it takes the connectivity that the web provides, and grounds it in events that are as real as rolodexes.
“I hate the word social media,” Moffitt says, “It’s meaningless really. It’s like the word love. It means too many different things. It’s really just a tool, it’s only as good as people using it.” Of course, the same can be said for the League, too. Moffitt is such that he makes you want to be a part of that tool, too. It’s enough to make me work harder, just so I can make it into the team.
Category: Work
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