Wait a minute!, you may say — why am I suddenly writing an article about a specific business of an Internet coach?
Because I’m not!
You see, the world really is full of Internet coaches, and they all have their communities of one or another kind, which is good. The people who engage with such a community will often feel heard, helped, and happy.
The coach has some kind of background knowledge to share with their followers, the community members, and, additionally, they spend some time and energy on being there for the members, doing something that can help the members structure their efforts towards whatever the community is about, which is often covering all of people’s needs.
The community is the people in it, not the coach. While the coach may be facilitating it, the community itself consists of all the relations and mutual activities between the members. And the very feeling of belonging.
I have written about communities before, and I think it should be clear that I am not against those. See, for instance, this article:
Because of the many coaches who want you to pay for being part of the communities, it can easily look like there is always just a strict business plan behind any of these.
There often is, and it is often mainly about making money. But sometimes, you’ll run into a concept that isn’t (only) about that.
It may take some time to develop, some efforts in various directions and an analysis of their effects, to see for the founder what this can become. Maybe it was meant to become another income stream, or maybe it was meant to display some skills that could then be promoted elsewhere.
But along the way, the community gets its own life. Because the bonds between the members grow tighter, and because the members sometimes behave differently than the community founder had imagined. Some offerings and services are more appreciated than others, and something quite mundane often becomes the main attraction — such as a chat forum or a list of contact information.
What seems to be most likely to survive from the palette of services, are the facilities that help establish a connection when people need each other. In other words, a platform that can offer help and assistance, undisturbed, away from the buzz of a typical social medium.
That’s what a good community mainly consists of. Not so much the fact that the coach spend time on each member and share wisdom and advice, and not so much the provided templates, courses, and other useful tools, even though such features are valuable too.
The members feel that they can help each other, because they have something in common. For every community, this can be something different. Often it will be the wish to become successful and “grow your Substack”, but there can be some more profound commonalities, such as for the Multilingual Writers’ Community (MWC), where the glue consists of — multilingualism.
Every person on this globe who wants to become a successful writer will need to write well. How that is defined vary, but in the age of the Internet, writing is very often to be done in English. Anyone who doesn’t have English as their native language will feel like an outsider, or outright be treated like an outsider, in many different contexts.
At times, being an outsider is an advantage, such as when an actor has an exotic accent — think about Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sophia Loren — and this somehow adds to their popularity. But at other times, less so. Many of us have experienced a somehow discriminatory behavior from, e.g., editors or the panel of a writing competition, because they couldn’t see beyond the knowledge that this was a non-native writer, no matter how good the writing actually was, thereby missing the gems that this particular piece of writing may have held.
So, in this community, members have this together. But otherwise, they are all kinds of people, with many different skills, different positions in society, different jobs, different backgrounds, and different problems.
The interesting thing is that when first people feel tied together by something, they are more inclined to offer their assistance to each other. Like, “okay, you are also multilingual, so I’ll help you with your bookkeeping” — or maybe less outspoken, maybe smaller bits of help, but still. The assistance we offer each other isn’t just about the commonality that brought us together, it can be anything.
I wonder how many multilingual writers exist in this world? And, in particular, such who need or want to write in English, which is not their first language?
According to Wikipedia, there are up to about 2 billion people who can speak English, of which about 400 million have English as their first language. Corresponding to about 25% and 5%, respectively, of the Earth’s population.
The 1.6 billion people who speak English, but as a second language, are all potential members of the Multilingual Writers’ Community :) That is, if they are professional writers.
The share of professional writers can be difficult to calculate, since people may write as a profession in itself or as part of another profession. Many jobs require an employee to write something, and if this is a significant activity, requiring good skill in writing in English, then they are in effect professional, multilingual English writers — and potential members of the community.
By the way, it’s interesting to consider, given these numbers, if, perhaps, the number of highly skilled non-native English writers could be higher than the number of native English writers? Certainly, the non-natives will have to spend more energy on adding that second language (and for some it’s even the third, or fourth, or…) to their resume. The non-natives also spend a solid amount of time during their lives on comparing expressions between different languages, and they pay attention to cultural differences. All of this simply because they have to, but it adds to their skills.
All members of the MWC are highly skilled in English, and some of them are as fluent in all aspects of English as a native. So it is not so much about language skills, except that we have to prove our skills more often than natives — and having that extra level of command that can come from additional training, on top of already good skills, may be exactly what it takes for us to get accepted when writing in English.
I believe that people will seek the communities where they feel that they belong, when social media continues their development towards doomscrolling platforms without any real social interaction.
We do need social interactions, and that counts for almost every person alive. We do not have the same needs, though, and very many people find it intimidating to publish their thoughts in a forum where billions of strangers may see it or ignore it, may think anything about it.
It is more safe and more life-confirming to publish in a smaller forum with people who share something with you already, with whom you can feel connected — a dedicated community. There, you can be yourself without fearing anything, because there is a friendly atmosphere and the others understand you and want to show it, being affirmative and supportive.
This particular community was founded by Philip Charter and was, initially, for paying members.
Now, Phil has decided to make it free for everybody! That is, instead of a payment there is a requirement to qualify for it, so that not just anybody can become a member. The qualification is as simple as answering a few questions, and then Phil can take a look and see if the aspirant seems to fit in.
The point of a qualification is that it would otherwise be too easy for large amounts of spammers and scammers to enter, which has been seen in other communities, and this usually ruins them.
If you are not a multilingual writer, you may seek a community that circles around a different topic. You may be a Star Trek fan, or a collector of coins. For such major areas of interest, there are no doubt a plethora of communities to choose from. But of course, you may be more special, having less common interests, a less common background — which could speak for becoming part of a community of people more like you.
I am not sure which other communities exist, but there may be one for you, or, otherwise, this could be the time for you to start one.
It should be appropriate, based on my own life experiences, to suggest that you will look in the same direction as Phil has done, trying to find something that can sort people — in the good way — so that the community will consist of people who can find that common ground they need, and so that the community will not be flooded by people with little interest in the topic, who perhaps are there with a hidden agenda.
A membership fee usually works but can be problematic for those with a limited economy, and it also requires some administrative work, so the application process with qualification could be a good alternative.
Good luck if you go that way! You will most likely enjoy it.
All of this is my own words, my own thoughts and feelings, just to inspire you.
I may want to try digging a bit in the community world, to write more articles about the phenomenon, so please feel free to mention any of these that you know of, and your experience from the area.
You can find the Multilingual Writers’ Community here:
It had another entry point previously, but that link is not in use anymore:
https://englishwritingcoach.uk/mwcommunity
The community link doesn't seem to be working anymore.
Great article. I read and write in English and Spanish - but Spanish is my second language and I struggle more with writing in it. I’ve never had reason to practice. However it has been useful many times to understand what is written in a different language, and to communicate with them!