Wild Minds Weekly: Why Your Community Will Fail

Hello friends,

It's frustrating when you're first starting. You have a deep understanding of why your project is important, but you can't understand why it's so difficult to get other people invested in it, why you keep running into problems with conflict amongst community members, and why people lose interest.

So here's what you need to understand if you want your project and community to succeed:

1) People are inherently selfish.

The sooner you understand this, the easier time you'll have working with people. 

That's not to say that people are bad and just out for themselves, but rather that when people have the choice of choosing between 1) mutual benefit, 2) their own benefit, and 3) someone else's benefit, they would probably choose the first two over the latter.

It's a natural way of being. And it's not a bad thing.

Whenever you act in the interests of someone else it's likely because 

a) It's mutually beneficial - either through material reward or spiritually through the deepening of a relationship or shared sense of purpose.

and/or

b) You view the other person as an extension of yourself - your partner, your close friends, and most strongly, your children.

If something is of completely no benefit to your "self", it would make sense to invest your time elsewhere.

So what does this mean in practice?

Last Saturday, my friend showed me his 5-acre farm—off-grid power, thriving herbs and fruit trees. As we shared coconuts from trees he planted in 2020, he told me that the hardest part wasn't the infrastructure or the food production. The hardest part was the people.

You can only build a project on the generosity of volunteers for so long.

Not because people don't care, but because life is chaotic and challenging, and people will reach a point where they need to invest their time in something that gives them at least some return.

The only difference between the people you want to be involved with, and the people you don't, is their time horizon.

Short-term thinkers will cause you problems because they'll choose their own immediate benefit over a greater delayed reward. But long-term thinkers will work with you towards a mutually beneficial outcome. But you need to incentivise long-term thinking and give people a stake in the outcome. 

Burn the phrase 'Mutually beneficial" into your brain. 

You'll form better relationships and make your life a hell of a lot easier. In any great relationship, both people need to contribute in a way that leads to greater reward than either of them could achieve on their own. The benefit doesn't have to be monetary; it just needs to be valuable to them. 

Which leads me to my next point.

2) You need an offer.

If you want people to invest in your project, they need to understand what they're getting in return, that's your offer. Just because it's a holistic project rooted in a deep sense of purpose, fulfilment, and security does not mean the principles of business don't apply. You need sales, marketing, and an irresistible offer. 

You need to convince people that this is the right thing they should be investing their time and money in, instead of spending it on something that brings them immediate gratification.

This is why having a vision is so important.

You need to have a strong, clear vision that people want to buy into, which means you need to be thinking long-term as well. 

Your vision forms the foundation of everything, from how you allocate your energy and time to how you promote your project. Ultimately, it will determine the type of people you attract.

Start with your vision, then use that to figure out what you can offer others.

If you want specific guidance on how to turn your vision into a thriving community project that sustains you and your community for the long haul...

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To your freedom and prosperity,

Rob

Wild Minds Community

PS. If you want to meet like-minded people or get involved with projects, but you're not ready to launch your own, then start in Wild Minds Network (this is how I met my friend)

Click here to join Wild Minds Network