Climate soloists unite!

As a member of several climate-focused online communities, I’ve been surprised at how little content there is for your average climate-conscious soloist.

A few weeks back, WorkforClimate sent out an email communicating that, while they threw their doors open to everyone in the early days, they’d now be focusing on just ’employees’, and building tools, training and mentoring for them to build climate resilience from inside the walls of companies.

A very awesome, bold, strategic move that means they can focus their efforts on a specific type of enviro-champion.

That communication also said that anyone outside of their new focus would be respectfully removed from membership, and encouraged to find a more suitable community to support their journey.

I fully support their move – but for me, it was yet another online community that I kind of meshed with, but would effectively be shutting it’s doors.

As someone who’s worked from home for over a decade, I’ve always had eyes and ears open for supportive online communities for soloists, particularly ones with a focus on climate.

WorkforClimate (now focused on employees), as well as WorkonClimate (30k members focused on various areas, mostly climate tech startups) were the closest I came to finding those communities.

But WfC “closing it’s doors” has triggered something new that’s been bouncing in my head for some time.

In the absence of another more suitable community to join, it’s given birth to a new one focused entirely on the climate-conscious lone ranger.

It’s called The Climate Collab for Soloists and is currently taking in founding members to help shape it’s future.

Here’s what it is so far:

• An online community specifically for folks flying solo on a climate journey to connect with, learn from, and support each other.
• Other communities have lots of job opportunities, but soloists don’t need jobs, they need clients
• There’s a lot of talk about transitioning employee jobs to climate jobs… sometimes it’s relevant to a soloist, but more often they have to retrofit that learning to their business, and as soloists there’s just not enough detail, support, or resources to do that
• Some soloists have figured some climate stuff out and are really keen to share it with others like them
• Soloists need to be allowed to promote their business – perhaps they don’t have the networks that large companies have, or a constant flow of referrals and leads (and it seems thanks to slimeballs and spammers, now almost no one allows business promotion inside of communities or groups anymore)
• A lot of the training and workshops are more relevant to larger businesses, not sole-traders and freelancers
• Soloists want to be a more climate-conscious, but don’t really know where to start

The Climate Collab aims to address at least some of these, hopefully all, and hopefully many more to come.

It’ll start as a Slack community, and be guided by the members as to where it goes – I’m aiming to have regular input and training from experts in finance, marketing, business management, and any others that folks want to hear from.

More info is here, as is the link to join.