When a client asks for my help, one of my first questions is: “Do you have relationships with the people you want in the community?”.
If the answer is yes, we can begin working on the outreach and developing a small group. If the answer is no, we need to go through a 3 month pre-launch strategy to gain the permission and trust of these people.
Don’t skip or lie about your answer. If you don’t have relationships then you have to build them before you want them to do something. That’s part of community building.