3 Questions to Scale Your Community Globally.
What 10 Days of Silence taught me about Scaling Community!
The Dharma Institue is a global movement with 341 locations in 94 countries, of which about 202 are permanent Vipassana meditation centers. It’s a global community.🌍
However, S.N Goenka - one of the founding teachers didn’t specialize in facebook ads, google analytics, or follow Gary Vee and hustle his way to the top to create these communities. 😂
So in this post, I aim to break down why I believe this community has spread, and how you can actionably apply that to your community using three core questions. 🎬🏆
Context: The center’s first course is a 10 Day Silent Meditation retreat that has attracted some extraordinary individuals including:
1. Tim Ferris has a Podcast with over 700 million downloads. 🎙
2. Yuval Noah Harari who goes yearly to the retreat.. and is the author of Sapiens and his books have sold approximately over 35 million copies in 65 languages📚
3. The CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey, and this is what he tweeted about the experience he had:
1. Practice Universal Values Daily! 🛠
Universal Values - Eg. Resilience, Truth, Presence, Progress, and Service, etc.
Why Universal?
As these are traits around the world people want to have… so if you can start with universal values, your community is more likely to go global.
The next step is about turning these values into actions, and those actions into daily practices, and then those practices turn into desired results and a way of life.
As that’s essentially what vipassana mediation is aiming to do from my interpretation. You aim develop the values of presence, equanimity, compassion, truth, love and pruify the mind.
After the course through thier recomended daily dose of 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening. This helps develop the values daily during a dedicated time.
At the Constant Student (Which is where I’m helping build community if you are new to the newsletter ✌️)
We are using the community platform Circle, and in it, we are experimenting with 5 Daily practices to build the core values of a Constant Student, and people can opt into doing all five or only one. Here are the examples:
1️⃣ Stillness(10 mins) - Each member can post that they have done a practice of stillness, it could be a meditation session, a long walk with no input, uninterrupted writing, yoga, etc anything that helps cultivate stillness and peace of mind. Value Practiced = Present moment awareness.
2️⃣ Insight (10 mins) - Each member can post insights they have received from a book, podcast, documentary, or researching a field of interest they are in, or listening to one of Joe Wehbe’s Podcasts which helps with learning and clarity. - Value practiced = Learning
3️⃣ 1MIA - This is the most 1 most important action for the day. Everyone wants to do what they know is most important, and you can be held accountable and receive help on it - Value practiced = Progress.
4️⃣ Slingshot (5 mins) - This is about turning the worst-case scenario, or something that someone struggled with into the best-case scenario. - Value practiced is Resilience (It is an easier way for people to be vulnerable)
5️⃣ Open 1 Door for someone - This is an encouragement, that when members jump in the community they are constantly reminded that the “best way to open doors for themselves is to open doors for others”… Which is done through commenting, giving feedback, and looking for useful resources to help one another - (Value practiced = Contribution)
Our members want to develop all of these values, we are just cultivating the platform and environment that helps connect them with other members to turn their values into actions, which lead to results. With a minimum of 10 to 15 mins per day, they can be held accountable for being present in the moment, learning, making progress, being resilient, and contributing to something bigger than themselves.
Q1 - What daily practices can you create for your member’s core values to create results? 🚀
2. Special for you, Stupid for someone else!
Specialness spreads messages and scales communities.
Why?
As special is specific.
Two people don’t find the same two things special.
For me 10 days of silence felt special that I was doing it, I was deep down the rabbit hole of mediation at the time.
Yet my dad questioned my sanity, and said Liam are you stupid?.. we were coming out of a Covid lockdown, why would you want to do that?
It was my dad’s stupid and it was my special.
That’s the kind of thing that spreads and scales.
A question to reflect on is what to make something special is what is the Ultimate Result your community members are after?
For example with the 10 Day Silent Vipassana Meditation - its aim is to bring someone to the deepest level of their mind, and to show them a path to liberate them from their suffering, and give them real peace, real harmony, and real happiness.
That’s a fucking big promise, yet it had my curiosity and has most people’s when they hear it.
I’m not saying you promise those things - as you are not the Buddha… (If you are please send me a message after this 😉)
Yet what would be the ultimate result, and experience for your highest return community member? - Then how can you actually work on delivering that for them.
Is it earning 100k a year doing what they are interested in?
Is it traveling around the world with a group of like-minded people they feel respected by?
Is it inner peace?
Discovering a new way to solve cancer?
Eliminating poverty or disease in the modern world?
How do you connect them to their hero’s?
An example of this:
What ignited the momentum for the Constant Student Community with a special experience of 9 everyday people, with most of them strangers to one another coming together during a retreat, which was coordinated by Joe Wehbe and Scott Mkeon, that ended up creating an amazon bestselling book 18 and Lost? So were we and getting blurbed by Seth Godin - an Education Thought Leader + Much More.
THAT’S SPECIAL.
Yet the truth is that specialness didn’t happen in a moment.. the bestselling book couldn’t be promised, yet each person could write one chapter… and hard work took place. The point is to understand what your community members’ ultimate result is, and how you can create a special experience for them to get there… even if you don’t know what it is, aim to come up with it and then refine it as you get feedback. As if you can help your community member achieve their ultimate result, then they will see your community as their ultimate community.
Q2 - How can you work on creating the Ultimate Result for your Community members, through a special experience? 🌠
3. No Human Is Limited. - Do Long-Term Challenges Together.
There is a reason why navy seals, and war veterans… and people who have shared extreme physical, mental challenges have some of the deepest bonds.
The goal as the community builder is to work out the optimal scale of challenge your community members would like to go through to qualify to be in the community, and whilst in the community itself. I think about challenges on a scale of 1 to 10.
0 - Absolute comfort and ease all the time - The Wall- E People.
10 - Hunger to be challenged intensely, and test limits - Eliud Kipchoge - Marathon Runner.
During the 10 Days of silence - with the meditation times being from 4:30 am to 9:30 pm at night, with sometimes it being peaceful, and at other times it felt like a marathon for my mind and my emotional world that I just wanted to end.
Despite having some very challenging emotions that come up, I made some of the deepest connections I have made, even though I only spoke to other mediation students for 2 hours on the first day and during the last day.
I was invited by Waqas one of the meditators to the weekly meditations sits, and I ended up staying the night at Girish and Girima’s house after an evening meditation and we had fun, deep and curious conversations until around 12 or 1 am.
Less than one week… and a mini tribe had already formed. 🔥
Meditating for 10 days isn’t easy, yet we believed in the long-term benefits and respected each other’s commitment as soon as we were in contact with each other.
At Constant Student - I believe we are trying to develop the closeness of Friends BUT.
We are more like friends on a mission - Like Harry, Ron and Hermione.
As at the Constant Student, we support young creatives, entrepreneurs, thinkers, emerging leaders who have dreams and want to change the world. They want to contribute to making the world better by 1% in some way, shape, or form.
We have had the Book in a Week Challenge, and now we are excited to kickstart the journey for new community members with a 2 Week Exponential Careers Challenge - which will be out soon, and is required to gain acceptance into the community.
Scaling your Community Globally with 3 Questions:
Q1 - What Daily Practices can you create for your member’s core values to create results?
Q2 - How can you work on creating the Ultimate Result for your Community members, through special experiences?
Q3 - What is the optimal challenge to harness and bring the power of your community together?
Remember to Uncover your Truth.
Thanks for reading
Liam
P.S (If you are interested, I’m writing a more detailed written piece on the 10-day experience itself from a more personal perspective - I can send it to you privately if you comment below).