Meet Liz Winston

We recently connected with Liz Winston and have shared our conversation below.

Liz, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

I’m a big believer in the concept of “identity capital.” Identity capital is the collection of experiences, accomplishments, and skillsets that give you a sense of who you are, what you’re good at, and what you’re capable of. Spending time doing things we enjoy and that build our sense of agency, is a self-propelling form of personal power. Seeking out experiences that build identity capital gives us a sense of “self-efficacy.” When we pursue identity capital, we gain evidence that we have the skills and moxie needed to pursue our goals and work towards reaching our dreams.

Like any other kind of capital, identity capital accumulates faster once you have some. The more we use the skills we most enjoy using and the more we do things that we didn’t originally think we could do, the more identity capital we build. It’s like charging your phone on airplane mode for your confidence.

While our self-esteem ideally should be distinct from our accomplishments, I don’t think you can really self-care or self-talk your way into self-esteem and confidence. But, we can all pursue experiences that give us data that we have more agency than we thought we did and we can have the impact we want to have on the world, and that’s identity capital.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m the organizer of People Who Thrive, a new community I’m building to help cultivate community and interdependence among New Yorkers. People Who Thrive is a monthly event held at Fabrik, a coworking/ community space on Vestry Street in TriBeCa. At each People Who Thrive gathering, a speaker talks for ten minutes about a time in their life or their career when they asked for help, and receiving that help had a profound impact. Then, everyone in the group has one minute to share their elevator pitch, an “ask” (something they need help with), and an “offer” (a way they can be of service to others). When the floor is open for one-on-one conversations and networking, it’s easy to walk up to someone who can help you, someone you can help, someone whose vision is inspiring, or someone who you might want to be friends with. After the meeting, everyone receives an invite to the People Who Thrive slack, where there’s a static place for people to re-state their elevator pitch, ask, and offer; follow up on connections they made at the event; and reach anyone who has ever attended a People Who Thrive gathering and joined the Slack.

There’s this notion that very successful people became that way because they put their heads down and put in the hours as they pursued their goals. But hyper-independence isn’t actually that effective; trying to get something started entirely by yourself without using relationships or having mentors is about as effective as cold-calling. With the exception of people who were born into privilege and connections, asking for things is the way you get the things you want in this life. Asking for things can feel anxiety-provoking and vulnerable, but thankfully making asks is a muscle that builds with use. Part of the purpose having a speaker talk for 10 minutes about a time when they asked for help is that it sets the stage to help people feel safe speaking in front of a group and asking for help and being vulnerable with one another.

There have been three People Who Thrive gatherings so far, and there’s one scheduled one Wednesday a month for the foreseeable future. The group is typically a mix of Big Tech professionals, entrepreneurs, self-employed service providers (design, marketing, product), and working artists. It has been extremely meaningful to find out that people met at a People Who Thrive gathering, and they got together IRL to talk about their careers or invited one another over to their house for dinner. That’s the goal. The “ask” one shares at a People Who Thrive gathering also doesn’t have to be professional in nature. At the second People Who Thrive event, a woman who is an addiction counselor shared that she was looking to be introduced to someone who was on Survivor, because she was making an audition tape. I cried out, “This is why I started this group! There’s a woman on my block who was on Survivor.” I want people to have a place where they can put any ask out there, that helps them build a life of their own design.

My long-term goal is to build People Who Thrive into a robust network of interdependent communities, and the Slack channel can connect literally anyone who has ever attended a People Who Thrive gathering. I want to make it as easy as humanly possible for someone who has an enterprising idea or a big goal to get plugged into the information and resources and support system they need, so they’ll have an easier time getting started and making progress towards their dreams

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I am an intensely optimistic person, and this has a direct impact on my professional life and my relationship to entrepreneurship. If I get an novel idea or if a friend or colleague or neighbor is entertaining a potential venture, I’m quick to say, “Yes, you should run with that” or “You should absolutely test-drive that idea.” It’s always worth it to try. At best, you run with your idea and do the thing you wanted to do! If it doesn’t work out, at worst, you gained experience and identity capital and data for the next time you want to achieve lift-off. Also, the beauty of this age is that if you have an idea, it takes $50 and a free afternoon to power up a Squarespace website, a newsletter, and a few social media accounts so you can see if your idea has legs.

I’m a big believer in the concept of “core competencies” and doing things in your “zone of genius.” If you focus your time and attention (and ideally, the thrust of your professional life), doing things that come fairly naturally to you and using skills you enjoy using, you’re going to be so much more successful and experience so much more enjoyment in the process. I don’t think there’s anything more pernicious than the idea that work is “a means to an end”— we spend the lion’s share of our hours on this planet working, so it’s to the benefit of literally all involved to do something you’re good at and that you like.

I am not a perfectionist and I’ve found that to be extremely helpful in this life. While polish and process are important (and polish and process help your client/ customer/ end user/ event guest to feel safe and feel like they’re in good hands), things don’t have to be fussy or obsessed over to be wonderful and appreciated and worth doing.

Just start. If you wait until you feel fully ready or fully equipped, you may never feel that way and may never start. If you take your first few “Bambi steps,” you’ll often find, “Oh! I can totally do this” and you’re on your way. Also, no one expects the level of perfection that you probably expect from yourself and virtually no one will notice the missteps that you might beat yourself up for. Just start.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

I am! I am looking to meet and connect with folks who want to brainstorm and take action on how we can build community and combat the loneliness experienced by so many adults.

Here’s why I see community as so important. Let’s look at a few shows and movies with household-name popularity: Seinfeld, Friends, Harry Potter, Golden Girls, Rent, and Ted Lasso. These are very different media brands. While they all have loveable characters that we’re eager to root for, I think why they’re all so popular is because they are about people living interdependently and living in community with one another. All of these stories are about friends who live together or very nearby one another, who live in walkable communities, who either work together or are deeply invested in one another’s success. We didn’t follow 10 seasons of Friends because we were curious about whether Ross and Rachel end up together (can we agree that, by 2025 standards, Ross is a kind of a bad guy?); I think people watched Friends because those people had something that most people deeply want.

The isolation experienced by most adults, especially New Yorkers, is a function of capitalism. Most people in New York City, whether they are high-income or the working poor, work really demanding jobs and they spend 25 – 60% of their take-home pay on rent. Many people have to push themselves to schedule a single drinks date with a friend on a Friday night and they feel a sense of relief if their plans fall through. People are isolated because they’re exhausted. While we’re probably not going to overthrow capitalism and the normalization of entire lives built around creating value for the owning class in my lifetime, we can make it as easy as possible for people who don’t have the bandwidth to build a friend group from scratch to tap into community and a support network.

Remember that meme last went around last summer that said something to the effect of, “Does anyone want to go outside and play after work?” That’s the kind of world I want to help cultivate. I have some ideas on how to do this, and I’m eager to connect with anyone who has a kernel of an idea, who wants to get plans off the ground.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.PeopleWhoThriveNYC.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-winston/

Image Credits

Credit: Lea Palmieri