Many Microschool founders don't realize the importance of community building for their NFT projects until it's too late.
Community-building fosters connection. The act of sharing becomes a very empowering practice that can turn into a source of motivation, inspiration, learning and support for the people in the community.
Building a community is important because it helps to create a safe and trusting environment, it allows for the sharing of knowledge and experience, and it builds collective strength towards shared goals.
We'll be discussing this topic in more depth. Thanks for listening!
In this episode of the Coaches Who Build Worlds Podcast, you will learn:
What does it really mean to build a community when you are creating an NFT for your microschool?
Why is community building important before you think about a community token?
What are some challenges to building a community for your token?
What if I don’t want to build a community right now or work with the community I currently have?
However, building a community around your NFT project can be challenging. It takes time and resources to find a dedicated leadership team and to get members to participate without alienating smaller demographics.
Community building is an important part of cultivating trust and creating connections in any group or organization. It helps to build a sense of kinship and belonging, which can help members feel valued and accepted within the group. This, in turn, can lead to better communication and collaboration among members. Additionally, community building activities can foster shared interests that cross group boundaries, creating a sense of collective purpose and identity
The challenge in building community is taking the time to gather people together and getting them to exchange and connect. This process can be time-consuming, but it's essential in order to build trust and loyalty. Additionally, it can be difficult to get everyone to participate without alienating smaller demographics.
Collective learning leads to strengthened goals and objectives. When people in the community feel supported, they're more likely to take risks and experiment with new ideas. This can lead to innovation and creativity, which can benefit the entire community.
Community building is essential for successful NFT projects. Whether you are building a microschool or launching a new health initiative, strong community engagement and participation is key to your success.
If you're not ready to build a community right now, there may still be ways that you can start cultivating connections and collaborating with others in your field. We'll talk about that more in part 3 of this series.
Many Microschool founders don't realize the importance of community building for their NFT projects until it's too late.
Community-building fosters connection. The act of sharing becomes a very empowering practice that can turn into a source of motivation, inspiration, learning and support for the people in the community.
Building a community is important because it helps to create a safe and trusting environment, it allows for the sharing of knowledge and experience, and it builds collective strength towards shared goals.
We'll be discussing this topic in more depth. Thanks for listening!
In this episode of the Coaches Who Build Worlds Podcast, you will learn:
What does it really mean to build a community when you are creating an NFT for your microschool?
Why is community building important before you think about a community token?
What are some challenges to building a community for your token?
What if I don’t want to build a community right now or work with the community I currently have?
However, building a community around your NFT project can be challenging. It takes time and resources to find a dedicated leadership team and to get members to participate without alienating smaller demographics.
Community building is an important part of cultivating trust and creating connections in any group or organization. It helps to build a sense of kinship and belonging, which can help members feel valued and accepted within the group. This, in turn, can lead to better communication and collaboration among members. Additionally, community building activities can foster shared interests that cross group boundaries, creating a sense of collective purpose and identity
The challenge in building community is taking the time to gather people together and getting them to exchange and connect. This process can be time-consuming, but it's essential in order to build trust and loyalty. Additionally, it can be difficult to get everyone to participate without alienating smaller demographics.
Collective learning leads to strengthened goals and objectives. When people in the community feel supported, they're more likely to take risks and experiment with new ideas. This can lead to innovation and creativity, which can benefit the entire community.
Community building is essential for successful NFT projects. Whether you are building a microschool or launching a new health initiative, strong community engagement and participation is key to your success.
If you're not ready to build a community right now, there may still be ways that you can start cultivating connections and collaborating with others in your field. We'll talk about that more in part 3 of this series.
Hello. Hello. Hello, hello. Hello, and welcome to the coaches. Who build worlds of podcast. My name is contesse, Louise, Cooper. And I am here with the loveliest like I am. So as much as I get sad, right? Because people do not get to experience, but your boy that I get to experience having a co-host like I do, like, Yeah, I don't get the energy, the feeling that I get time that I come on here to record this podcast and it makes me a little sad inside. Oh my goodness. We got to do a reality TV show. We absolutely wonderful co-host. Would you like to introduce yourself? Yes. I'm dr. Kimberly, Douglas. And I'm also a culture bills world. So I'm excited to be here and just feel very fortunate to be able to do this podcast and especially with Contessa, you know, people don't understand. Like I feel bad for people who like, are forced to do podcasts and I really don't want to we do this because we actually Joy, yes, we do. And you know, I was thinking about so you and I've been working on some It's lately where we've been doing a lot of reflecting. And so, you know, we started collaborating. It's going on two years now. I didn't realize that, but Facebook apparently, is keeping up with it. I didn't realize it's been going on two years, but like it became more intense back in October of 2021. And the conversation has got richer and richer. Because we know each other better. We really good at coming in on cue, even though there are no queues and being able to go where the other person is going. And so I just look forward to more and more episodes. It's like we grow as individuals, but we're also growing in the relationship between to Columbus, and I'm really excited about that. Great. I'm like, you know, if you were in Corporate America, you would probably be my work wife. All right, so let's get into it. So we've been talking about micro schools. And this is our, our mini-series micro schools. And dr. Kimberly did an amazing job and I last episode of describing. What a micro school is. Dr. Kimberly to recap. Can you like to go over that? Just a little bit? I don't want to go through it like d cuz we did that last episodes. Okay. You know what you need to do, right? Don't listen to that. That's right. That's right. They'll go back and listen to the episode because there's lots of information that will be very useful. It will provide context for the conversation today, as well. As the next episode. Please take time to do that. So we talk about micro school. You can look at it from two different ways. So you can think of it in terms of K-12. You can also think of it in terms of adult learning. So, the K-12 version is, Micro school could be a school within a public school or a school within a private school. For example, if you have kids who are very sensitive to sounds and different things, you can put a microscope within the school, so that they have a different schedule that the Bell doesn't ring as loud. Or it could be based upon a type of app academic track. So, it's a school within School. However, most of the time, when people use it in the K-12 context, they're talking about cool outside of the traditional school and it may be a homeschool tutorial where or homeschool Co-op, where you have multiple fat, multiple families that get together and they put together a micro School based on nature or based on a religious belief or religious beliefs or based upon and certain academic tracks or based on certain values and experiences. They want their children to have. In my son, went to what I would call a micro school when he was And he goes to one. Now that I have starting 2020, and in that micro school, it's it cater specifically to teenagers. So they start later, they have bigger breaks throughout the day and they have a variety of learning opportunities and try to give the children, the teens more choices in what happens with them academically, and just trying to help them be decision makers. Now, you can also think of a micro school for Adults, so you might hear it called like a micro Academy or you might hear people talk about micro-credentialing and that's where you can go take a single course or you take a set of courses. You may get a certificate for you may not or maybe part of a bigger academic program. But the thing is, is specialization or it's a special interest where you pull out from the bigger population. You move people along a certain track trying to achieve certain goals. Awesome. Excellent. We also talked about, you know reasons why you want to tokenize your micro school and some challenges. We're not going to go again into it in this episode go and listen to the previous episode. And this really want to talk about community building, it comes to having a micro school and when it comes to Tokenizing, your micro school. And so the first question I kind of want to throw at you. I have my own answers, but because of the MC here, the Bell was the DJ will was the MC. Right? Right, right. Early to do some turkey like it is never and also twerking will reset. Hope I get this right. The vagus nerve. Yes, when you are having, when you're kind of in this hyperdrive and overwhelmed twerking is a good way to really bad. All right. We'll get 30 more seconds. All right, what does it mean to you? Dr. Kimberly to build a community when I personally think Community. I think about people gathering around a shared cause or a shared interest. Then I think of people putting a resources together putting, you know, focusing their energy focusing. All these resources for a shared outcome, a desired outcome. But Community can be tight, or it can be loose. So, it could be people who meet on a regular basis. We do week or month to month, or it could be people. People who gather for a single event and then disperse I've been looking at some things lately, really talk about hashtags. And when you look at who's using these hashtags, it suggests that there's a public or a community growing around this hashtag. It doesn't necessarily mean that the community would do something. So when I say from from a tight Community to do a loose community, That definition can span from people who get together to actually achieve certain goals to people who happen to just show up in the same place. So people use It term vary widely. This wasn't what I was going to say earlier, but you really had me thinking about some loose communities, that we are part of right now that we probably don't even recognize that were in a part of. Like if you are in a neighborhood you're in a community whether or not you speak to your next door neighbor or not. You are and a loose. T. If you work at a particular building on a particular floor, in a particular complex, moon in a loose Community. Yes, through and talk about rezoning your neighborhood even know what, you know, you're in a community here. Absolutely absolutely, but there are also communities around belief systems. It's absolutely right because every Sunday, every Sunday moment, could see communities coming together mornings, on holidays. You see communities coming together to celebrate belief systems and especially on social media. Communities will come together to denounce these belief systems. To tell you about your belief system. So those are so loose communities when I think about community and Community, is really important to me several reasons because I'm a black woman. It should out of certain faces become urgent because I have a chronic illness. Community spaces are important to me because to me it's signals. This is a place where you belong, right? So I'm glad you brought a thing about being a black woman and having a chronic illness because Community. Can me using the same hashtag but it also can be that you're engaging with the collectivist behavior, you know, meaning that the group comes together. Yes, some of you could really Sprint ahead and just do things on your own and be fine, but the idea is that you're able to go further and do more when you put you combine your resources and you combine your efforts and I was go ahead. Go ahead. You're you're you're kind of missing. We got to the next part. So I just want to throw it out there and then let you finish talking. Okay, I'll get about now. We've kind of switched over kind of segue into why community building is important. Dawn dr. Kimberly, so, let me take a little commercial break here beginning, and I'm sure that, you know, you've talked about this in other spaces, and I was just sitting here listening to us, talk about community. And how what we're doing is making this very digestible to people who want to understand about tokenizing communities, about any of tease. This is a very digestible way to come to that information. And then I was reminded that we were ranked number 23 by feet. Stop. Our podcast was ranked number 23 out of thousands of podcast for based on criteria having to do with freshness of material, you know, connecting with our audience know. Things like that that podcasters do and I was just sitting here thinking this is exactly why. yes, this is exactly why because Everybody is not think the people hear about in empties, they hear about tokens and they know something, they probably see the people you and I connect with problem. No, it's something. They should probably do but people understand what they mean by community. And so, this is a nice way of easing into the conversation and talking about what it means to have the resources to back your community. Yes, and it is important. We'll get to why it's important later. But let's continue down this path. Why Community is important? So, yeah, and that's good to hear us talking about collecting this action. Community is important, because It's important for basic survival number one. So if we look at whether you want to look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, or if you want to look at think it's the Blackfoot tribe that I think mr. Maslow borrow from, if you look at the bottom of those triangles previously, so I'm sorry, of course you did. I just want to acknowledge that right. I tried to move past a true face. Oh, it's so at the bottom. You know, we have these conversations. You got to be able to eat sleep drink, you know, your basic physical survival. And what community does is, it'll it supports you in your basic. Your basic human survival beyond that, when we start to talk about your, your need to, to belong to have self-esteem, things like that. And we start to talk about values and we start talking about coming together for shared causes and you know, one of the reasons it's really challenging to put communities together for Action, is because a lot of our basic needs are met or we believe that they can be met. So now a lot of our communities look more abstract. It's about going to a space and talking about something it's not necessarily about action, but in some cases it still is about action in the action. Action could be in the political sphere or can be in a social sphere. Could be a church. Could be all these places, but when it comes down to it, what community does is it helps you get what you want and that includes the feeling of connecting to other people. Another thing of that community building can do for a micro school for an organization. It shows other people that you can be trusted just by LT. It makes me think that. Okay, if I give to this project, if I put my effort into this nft, then we're I don't have to worry about you disappearing tomorrow. He's right, because I know that you were here for this purpose. You have a mission. You have a vision, you list bowls. I feel like I can connect with them and then we can have this long-term growing connection relationship together. So I feel like I'm in touring in a relationship with you because you have This community because I don't know about you, but they're I've been scammed before. Sure. Yes. Yes. I bled. Probably everybody listening to this has been. Yeah, so I know that my time, my effort, my resources, my hard-earned money is really going to something. That means something to me. So, We talked about community building and whether we're talking about a hashtag or we're talking about a well-established well-structured Community, you know what holds Us in place. And so then you start to talk about things like a charter or you start talking about bylaws or you start in some of that, you know, makes people roll their eyes, but then for other people, other groups, that those things are the glue that hold them together, in addition to the relationships. And making sure that we all understand what the ground rules are. We all have a clear understanding of what you're supposed to do in this space and those things. So those the relationships help. Trust, there are instruments. There are tools that help structure the relationships so that people can move safely in and out of the community. One of the things that's really popular. Right now. Our crypto communities are down, and I'm a number one of them. And the reason why people are really enjoy the idea of a doubt. Ow, it's because the trust is in the computer code. So, the doubt is the decentralized was the, a decentralized autonomous organization or yes. I always forget the, a sometimes. It just means that no one person. Has all the power, right, right, right. Things like voting things, like who gets paid things? Like, what projects are we going to work on is all worked out through computer code and that gives you a level of trust within that. when you walk into it, knowing that you matter and your voice matters, so the girls are really interesting to me because In the United States, we like to talk about transparency. And as a former bureaucrat, who was good at bureaucratic. We love to throw the word transparency, Iraq, but to be honest. Transparency is not possible in every situation. You can have some degree of transparency, but bureaucrats administrators, they can't for legal reasons. And also, for For their own reasons. Cannot share every single thing with you. And also, everybody doesn't care about every single thing. But when I think about something like a decentralized autonomous organization, if we say we want transparency. This is the kind of thing that helps support that because we all can see exactly what's happening. We all see the transactions, we Are clear about what our ownership is? And so, that's another layer that can be added onto communities to help build that trust. That's also a challenge. Hmm. Yes, it is. It is definitely a challenge to building communities is, how do we I want to trust each other. Hmm. How do we get the community to trust us? Mmm-hmm, but these systems and plays that goes along with our values. And you know, you mentioned earlier about microscope tools and some of the homeschooling communities that are out there and Some of these communities are unschooled communities, and so thinking about structures and things like, that. That could be a challenge that can be a challenge because they like the loot that Dad talked about a loose Community. They are people. Who are put in the same physical space but their ideas about schooling have to do with no structure at all, but they still. What's interesting is they still have to have a structure to the community around the school because a lot of them want the nonprofit status and if you want the nonprofit status, you have to have structure. And you know how I feel like I the thought of structure, the stock thought of you have to do XY and Z is, that's not something that I love understand. The reason why you have to have these things in place. I understand why you have to have this Foundation because anything without a foundation Will crumble, you know something that occurred to me yesterday. And talking to you. Yes, ma'am. Is that people have to give you a really good reason to agree to struction? Like it has to be a compelling reason? Mmm-hmm. You will do structure which you ain't no, do it for the average Moe. No, you can test when I say you not, you are ready. You can just have to have a really good. There has to be a very compelling reason to decide that you're going to enter this type of arrangement and follow a certain outline, your do it, but it's got to be compelling, right? And I would rather not do it if I don't agree with it. It's just it's just you happen. But if I decide to get into this community, this relationship with you and I agree. To the structure that everyone says is needed in order to community Thrive and be successful. Then yes, I'm gonna do it. And so well, I guess what I'm saying here is that don't get into these online relationships. Without having your boundaries and without really knowing your values. Yes, that's, that's important. So that's another challenge, right? You got to know you. Yes, you do. Because, you know what? When I first started showing up on Facebook, I joined some of the trash. Some of the artistic HD sensory processing, parent groups. And it's just, they are sick. They are bloody. Those are some of the bloodiest groups on Facebook. And what would happen is, you would have this person who just discovered these groups, who would come in and word vomit all over the whole group about something that just happened with their kid, and they realize now, or I got a group, I can tell this to And they are expecting a certain type of community their expense. So they don't make their expectations clear because they're, you know, at the moment, they're just in their feelings so they don't make their expectations clear or what they want from people like and even sometimes. They do tell you what they want. That doesn't matter. But they don't say they will. I just want to vent or this is a fan post or whatever. They just start talking and so what happens the ball just start picking at the carcass. And they come out. They start giving advice, they start criticizing, they start critiquing and that is happening because that person entered that group with a notion of what it means to be in community. And they then they may have showed up that day. They might have laid in the cut and just listen for the past month or even two years, but they had a notion of what the community was supposed to do for them. But everybody else didn't share that same notion. And so, I'm thinking I'm looking at my notes here and that connection between what you're saying, and another challenge that you may have a building. Your community is getting members to participate. Yes, right. Because a member like that, that you just described have no problem coming in, and we're committing body about this experience. However, you may have other members who are just On The Fringe there, out there. Sitting there observing mhm. Safe for them as they don't act right other member, but they know that they need a community. They don't know if this is the community for them. So as you're building out your community, some of the most successful communities that I have been a part of how structure, right? They have rules. Rules. They have this is how you behave in this space. So you're not harmed and that you don't harm others, right? And I think it's very important that you just don't engage with the top 10 people who show up every single day. They're going to do that regardless. They don't need hand-holding. They don't need, they don't know her team. They're going to show up and they're going to do what they do, which is take over a community, right? You have to figure out how to engage with that other 90%, Right? Right. Exactly College, especially for a small community, where it may just be one person, right? Who's trying to build this community great. And so, that's where the intention comes in. Like, what are you actually trying to do in? This is something that I'm doing myself, you know, so these are things that contestant on both are experiencing or have experiencing have experienced and just trying to figure out, you know, what am I doing in this space? What do I expect others to do in this space? What is acceptable in the space? When is unacceptable in this space? When I look back a year from now, two years from now, what do I expect to see? What will I have wished, you know? What should have happened here? That did happen here. That didn't happen here. So that's really important. And the structure is a big part of that and it in this part of the structure is how do you structure the effort? How do you structure the behavior? But also how do you structure the resources within the community share resources? Yes, because building a community takes time. And resources on the same as it was there's one more time building a community takes time and resources and many times especially with smaller communities. You may have one or two people who are in charge of building that Community not recognizing that it's a whole full-time job. Yes. Right. Well community. So here it is. You're trying to run your micro school, right? All the administrative stuff that you got to do. If you have, you know, teachers and faculty and and whoever else that you may need to manage, you have to do that. And now you have to build this community. And I know that some of you who are listening who have Micro schools. Online academies are like test. I don't want to build a community. Mmm-hmm. I don't have it in me to build a community. So, can I still tokenize what I already have? And so, I'm just going to rewind back to the very beginning to say that you already have a community. Great. Yes. We're good, man. But you already have but use what you got. That's okay, but, you know, yes, so like if you have a co-op of school, a co-op or if you for kids, you have a community, or if you have a, an academy for adults and you're sharing the same space with other coaches, then you have a commune, you have a defective community. Yes, and so, one of the things I love about black women in particular, is that black women know how to make something out of nothing. Nothing? And so, I don't want you to walk away from this thinking, I have to build a community because you already have one and the most best falafel and ft projects. The most successful tokenized microscope tools have Community. Mmm-hmm community. Go ahead. Dr. Kimberly. Oh, no, it's oh, yeah, so, she's just thinking about. So I'm thinking about the community itself. But also, you know, one-time events or a particular need that you have with among a group of people. You can tokenize that experience, for example, and we'll get into this more next week. Talk about fundraising, right? So, you know, talk about the people. I'm important part. The relationships are important, but the resources are also critical and maybe if we're trying to do fundraising for a particular school or a particular kid, then the community grows up around that particular effort. It may be part of another larger Community, but you can with tokens. Clearly see the relationships that are built around or that exist around a particular school or a particular person. And so just to kind of tap into what we're going to talk about. In The Next Episode. You have a micro school and I'm going to do any math thing, you have after school and you may have a small one with Tim's. It's and so, you're going to do this fundraiser. And you going to tell all ten of your food was, hey, we're going to do this fundraiser. Using n FTS, go tap into your personal Community. Hmm, right? It's not happening until the community that you have at school. They're their own personal. Wish me is that your reach just multiplied. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that is exciting. I had a flashback some damn chocolate bars. It's cool. I was thinking, I was thinking it was either that or girl scouts Girl Scouts. V know how to work their Community. Yes, they do. And this is something that they do annually. Like, you know, what is Scout cookie time. People are so conditioned, Girl, Scout cookie time that they look for. That's right. There's a were my cookies this year. All right. All right. This is the same type of excitement and anticipation. You can create with your community, right and your nft use and I love to see it. I love this is exciting because the possibilities. So if you think about traditional fundraising again, I'm really excited about this trip, but I'll say this just kind of skimming over the top of it. If you think about traditional fundraisers it, Really? Limits, they really limit what you can do. The opportunities to exchange something with people are very limited is limited to confuse is limited to Chocolate. But think about the skills that it takes to go out and sell chocolates, think about the skills. It takes to unite people around your common calls. There are different ways to do that. Now, they put us you your child, be the People who run the event. Put you more in control of the exchange of value. Yes, using NF T's is such a personal way. Of connecting with communities and I'm excited to see how we're going to be using this more and more and more in the future. So I'm gonna do a really quick recap of what we thought. And then I'm going to ask. Dr. Kimberly to get some last and final thoughts. Okay, and so we started off with doing a recap of last episode again. Listen to the previous episode about microscope so you can catch up right? We don't want to leave anyone behind and if you have any questions, we could all be both of us can be reached on social media. We talked about what it really, what community is what? It means to build a community about why this is important for micro schools, for online communities, for organizations, if you're a business coach, Coach, you need to pay attention to this with challenges that you may face and rafting up with. What if you don't want to build a community. We're going to go into really answer that question and the next episode. So, dr. Kimberly bring us on home. Okay. I've seen him, think he is retard. This this whole conversation is about exchanging value. So we talked earlier about trust and safety and that's what community provides you. So, as a community leader. I think it's important to recognize that people are looking for that umbrella where they can, you know, hover under it or huddle under and get that safety, get that comfort with their belongings. And so you as a community leader, and McGinnis, Today, I am working through things. I'm parsing out in my brain is when people show up in your communities. What does it feel like to have people who are offering the most participation? The best participation the most idea participation. And what? A feel like to have people who are apathetic or who kind of hanging the cut lurker may just be a there to observe because you're going to have both of those and especially if the community is based on values and shared beliefs as opposed to very specific action. So that's the thing, the structure has a lot to do. It has everything to do with the goals that you intend. If there is a specific action that you're expecting again, you're going to have a range of people who are more involved or less involved. But when you're talking about a long-term Community where you are working out a charter, you are working out bylaws, you're doing all these different things. Imagine who you will be in their Community as the community leader, or one of the community leaders. Imagine who you will be with the most ideal participation, in Imagine who you will be and what you need. Get when there is the least ideal participation. One of the things that I want to leave our listeners with is being a community leader. Means allowing of the community to have a voice. Mhm. And so, you may have started off your community thinking this community is going to be a b, and c and your community may grow and say, but we care more about XYZ. Right? Right. So the question is, are you building this community for you? Are you building the community for your members? And so on to leave you with that. Thank you. It's a great though. So much for listening to the coaches who build worlds with kontest Louise Cooper and dr. Kimberly Douglas and your call the action. The thing that we want you to do more than anything else is to share. Share, share help us to amplify our voice. Allow us to be a part of your community. D hearing this podcast with others who you feel may find Value. Thank you so much until next time. Bye.