The importance of narrowing the Mission and Ideal Customer Profile for your professional community: the "Mexican Professionals in Germany" story

The best professional communities I've been part of are those who have a clear Mission and Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and focus on providing value to that ICP.

The majority of professional communities struggle with this. Most want to be inclusive and attractive to a larger audience, especially at the beginning. Therefore, their mission and ICP are loosely defined. The issue: they fail to narrow it down and, therefore, their focus becomes unclear, the value they provide becomes limited, and their traction dilutes.

Nailing down the mission and ICP is, in my view, one of the most critical factors for the success of any modern professional community and it is important to get it right from the beginning in order to attract the right people, set clear expectations with those who join from the get-go, and build a solid foundation for long-term growth.

To show this, in today's article, I write about my own personal experience on this topic, the learnings along the way, and some great examples to use as an inspiration.

The origin of "Mexican Professionals in Germany"

A short personal story: I migrated from Mexico to Germany in March 2014 for family reasons (my wife is German) and have settled in Germany for the long run: I became a German citizen, bought a house, have two Mexican-German children, etc. Next month I will actually be celebrating my 10th anniversary!

As it happens to many Mexicans abroad that I've met, I became shortly after arriving an "Ambassador of the Mexican culture" in my host country, Germany, and tried to connect with other fellow Mexicans. This led me to three big realizations:

1) Mexico has the second largest diaspora worldwide after India. Based on data from the United Nations, there are over 12 million Mexicans, born in Mexico, who have officially migrated abroad (India has over 16 million). I became one of them.

2) Germany hosts the fourth largest Mexican community abroad. As you may imagine, the USA hosts, by far, the largest one, with 11 out of those 12 million (over 90% of Mexican abroad). Canada is second, Spain is third and, to my surprise, Germany is fourth, hosting over 17,000 Mexicans.

3) There are over 20 Mexican associations across Germany, with only one focused on work and career. Mexicans love to party. We celebrate together the Independence Day, the "Dia de los Muertos", Mother's Day, etc. Unfortunately, from a professional perspective, there is little collaboration and support. The only community with a professional orientation that I found was the "Red de Talentos Mexicanos en el Exterior" (today the Red Global MX), a global community of Mexicans professionals abroad. Below you can find an overview:

After those realizations, I engaged with the Germany chapter of the Red Global MX. A few months after, in November 2014, I became Vice President.

Timing couldn't be better. Between 2016 and 2017, the governments of Mexico and Germany organized a "Dual Year". Mexico and the UK conducted a Dual Year the year before. Therefore, expectations were high and the engagement was incredible! In this video you can get a feeling of what this "Mexico - Germany Dual Year" was like:

At the Germany chapter of the Red Global MX, we got in motion 16 different projects to contribute to the Dual Year. I personally co-created and co-led two of them:

1) A series of interviews with outstanding Mexican professionals in Germany. Conducted jointly with Jana Arcega , an incredible Mexican filmmaker and creator also based in Germany. Here you can see the trailer:

2) A book of Mexican professionals in Germany. Dr. Ana-Luisa Pi?a-Hernández , a renowned Mexican neuroscientist in Germany, came up with the idea to create a book where all Mexicans working in Germany, no matter the discipline and location, could meet each other. I tagged along, joined Ana Luisa, and built a team to make this a reality. Here is the first video, created by Yanira Jigetsu Rodríguez , which we released to invite the Mexican community in Germany to participate:

Fast foward to June 2017. Unfortunately, we faced complications to complete and release all interviews. I learned the hard way how difficult it is to do high-quality video interviews and the post-production required. Nevertheless, we did manage to release three of them with Weston Hankins , Bianca Monroy , and Enrique Meza Garcia , which you can find here:

www.mexicanprofessionals.com/interviews

On the other hand, on June 15th, 2017, we published the book "Profesionistas Mexicanos en Alemania" including the profiles of 167 Mexicans across Germany who trusted in us. You can find the e-book here:

The feedback about the book was incredible, in Mexico, in Germany, and abroad! We even received a recognition by the The Elders Foundation as part of the #WalkTogether campaign to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the group's foundation and the 100th birthday of Nelson Mandela, The Elders founder.

This led Ana Luisa and myself, together with two of our co-authors, ?? Victoria Navarro and Yanira Jigetsu Rodríguez , to create a spin-off of the Red Global MX to continue and grow to this project beyond the Dual Year. The spin-off: Mexican Professionals in Germany . To formalize it, we also founded in October 2019 OmniSavy , a company in Germany which served as an umbrella for Mexican Professionals in Germany and as the foundation in order to replicate this same model with other Mexican communities in other countries, as well as with other professional communities. We did this all on top of our full time jobs, our families, and other commitments, and financed it with our own personal money (we bootstrapped the company entirely).

Fast foward to June 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic hit and the world turned upside down. But this did not stop us. We managed to publish a second edition of the book, this time in English, and with such an incredible quality, that it is still, until today, one of the things I have created in my career that I am most proud of. Here you can see the e-book:

In addition, we hired a team of four to help us build an online platform to facilitate the creation of future books and the connection between members and also to offer a wider portfolio of products and services to help Mexicans in their professional development in Germany. You can see an overview of all of the events and activities we did in this website:

www.mexicanprofessionals.com

Closing "Mexican Professionals in Germany" and OmniSavy

Until now, it all sounds great, right?

Unfortunately, in December 2022, Ana Luisa, Yanira, Victoria, and I decided to close Mexican Professionals in Germany and OmniSavy.

This was heartbreaking to all us. To me, it has been one of the lowest points in my career and in my life overall. During more than seven years, since we started back in 2015, but especially during the three years of OmniSavy's existence, we placed so much effort, so much love, to make this community flourish. Unfortunately, we had to take this difficult decision since our jobs, our health, our financial stability, our families, and many other things dear to us where at the borderline.

So, what went wrong?

As first-time founders, we did many mistakes (I could literally write another book with all of them). In addition, our personal priorities changed. Nevertheless, after doing some deep reflection, I have personally come to the conclusion that:

"we were spread too thin"

"Mexican Professionals in Germany" sounds niche and concrete enough, right?

It is not.

As you can see in both books above, the community of Mexicans in Germany is extremely diverse. There are Mexicans who arrived a few months ago to Germany, while others have lived here for 20+ years. Some came in a priviledged situation, sponsored by their employers as expats, while others arrived here only with their backpack trying to make their way from scratch. Some love Mexico and have a deep connection to Mexico while others are running away from it. There are artists, scientists, business people, teachers, etc., each with a very particular set of needs from a career perspective. And so on.

Trying to serve all of them, is simply impossible.

We actually learned that those who valued most our work and contributions, those who were willing to pay our membership and fees, were those that less needed it: established executives and professionals who were already on a successful path on their own but saw in us a way to give back and contribute. We all shared the mindset that, as coined by AJ Hikes in her fascinating TED talk:

"if you want to truly succeed, you need to lift other while you climb"

See Amber's incredible TED video here:

Many who most needed help, those who where struggling, were reluctant to engage and to invest in themselves.

Lessons you can take away

This story, my story, hopefully made you and other modern professional community builders realize how important it is to narrow down the Mission and ICP of your professional community from the beginning.

Here are some additional lessons:

1) Start small, and then expand, not the other way around. It is best to be selective at the beginning, than the other way around. Attracting members to your professional community will become natural and almost effortless once you found your niche and start showing traction. Starting too broad, calling everyone a "member" from the begining without the proper due dilligence, is risky. Removing members is very difficult. People become entitled and will not easily let go their "priviledges", even if it is just a "title". So be selective and make sure that everyone who joins your cause shares the same mindset and set clear expectations upfront.

2) Make it clear from the beginning that members will be expected to invest time and money in the community. Even if it is not clear at the beginning how much time and how much money is required, set this expectation upfront. Communities have costs. Communities also need time to get things done. Nothing will happen without the active contribution of the members. If people are not willing to invest time and money, they are not the right ones to join you.

3) Set a clear mission from the beginning. At Mexican Professionals in Germany, we set the mission to "help Mexicans in their professional development in Germany". That made it clear from the beginning to everyone that this was about work, career, and growing together as professionals.

4) Co-create the foundations of the community with the early members. Having a clear mission and starting small allows you to surround you with people who share the same mindset and values. But that is not all. Make sure they are actively contributing to build the foundations of the community. We are all super busy and are physically distributed. But async work does wonders. Tools available today like WhatsApp for instant messaging, Loom for video messaging, Notion for knowledge management allow you to share updates, make sure everyone is up-to-date, and helps get them engaged.

This post has been a summary of 7+ years of hardwork commited to a deeply meaningful experience which was building Mexican Professionals in Germany . I hope it helps you and inspires you in your own path.