Think of what rituals you could invite into the entrance and exit of your community gathering. And if you’re open to sharing, I’d love to hear all about it at @love.radha and #belongbook!
Morning Ritual in Japan
Starting in 1928 and continuing in many parts of Japan today, Japan’s national radio station (NHK) would broadcast rajio taiso, which means “Radio Exercise.” When people tuned in at the appointed early morning hour, they’d hear a simple piano tune guided by a masculine voice directing them in ten minutes of calisthenics. Whether they were in school about to start class, at a car factory ready to assemble cars, or at the bank before the markets opened, they’d stop what they were doing and exercise together. I genuinely believe some of Japan’s success as a country is attributable to this simple morning ritual that united the whole country. And it has certainly contributed to the long Japanese life span!
Growing up, my sisters and I went to Japanese school every Saturday. Before classes started, our whole school (several hundred Canadian–Japanese kids) did rajio taiso to wake up our bodies and get ready to learn. All these years later, while my Japanese has gotten rusty, I remember how connected I felt to my classmates each time we moved in unison before starting our day. So a few years ago, carrying forward the ritual, I introduced rajio taiso to our Daybreaker’s HQ team. Now, just about every day at our office in Brooklyn, we do Japanese calisthenics together. At this point our whole team knows it by heart, and it’s been an incredible way to create camaraderie in the office and get our blood pumping at 3 p.m.
A—Aesthetics
We often overlook the importance of aesthetics as it relates to attracting the right community members for you. Aesthetics do matter in community architecture. Colors, fonts, logo designs, materials, look, and feel all play an important role in creating community. Think about it: Why do doctors wear white coats? Or fans wear team jerseys? Or business folks wear fancy suits? We all wear costumes and assign meaning to what we wear and how we present ourselves. We believe in the aesthetics that have been assigned to our roles. It’s no different if you’re a community! Aesthetics give you a sense of familiarity that this is your community and that builds camaraderie. It also helps you to decide if the community is right for you. The name of your community also matters. It should be memorable, unique, and inviting. It can take some trial and error. Say it out loud again and again. Get other people to say it. Make sure the words sound aesthetically pleasing to the ear. I’ve seen too many incredible leaders launch communities without a distinct aesthetic, and they often fail.
If you want to create a viable community, pay attention to design. At Daybreaker, we spent weeks defining our color palettes, fonts, logos, and design aesthetic. Aesthetics take design into account in both two and three dimensions and include the spaces in which we gather. The question to ask when thinking about aesthetics is “How will this make someone feel?” It all goes back to energy. What kind of energy will the aesthetics of your community inspire?
Define the aesthetics of your community. Think about what you’re designing—from the sound of the name of your community to your logo and where that logo will appear (website, business cards, T-shirts, etc.). Do you want to communicate excitement, empathy, trust? After you’ve determined the feeling, think about the look of it—colors, fonts, applications, and space. If you’d like help with the name, talk to someone who tends to be articulate and creative with words. For help with the look of your community, find someone whose clothing style or home decor you admire. A sense of style tends to run through all the visuals in a person’s life, so it should be easy to spot.
W—Why + What?
When I’m advising on building a community, I always start the conversation with these five questions:
1. Why do you care?
2. Why are you the right person to lead this community?
3. Why should this community exist?
4. What other communities or affinity groups can you align with?
5. Why will this community be sustainable over time?
1. Why do you care?
Why is this community important to you? Can you stay excited about this community for a long time? Every successful Community Architect I meet has a story about why their community matters to them. For example, my friend Jesse became deeply passionate about meditation after seeing the healing powers of the practice in his own life (overcoming anxiety), so he took it upon himself to organize group meet-ups for his friends to meditate together every month. His passion and dedication were contagious, and friends shared his meet-ups with other friends. Within months, he had built a community of several thousand meditators in New York City and launched a meditation community called Medi Club, which continues to thrive today. When your passion is authentic and clear, your community feels it and wants to be a part of it.
2. Why are you the right person to lead this community? Are you the trusted messenger?
You probably know the answer to this in your gut, but ask yourself the questions anyway.
Are you willing to do the work it takes? Do you have the stamina and the passion? Gently acknowledge if you’re operating from a place of insecurity or fear (Red Ego) or if you’re ready to listen to your Green Ego, which is focused on generosity and abundance.
Write down three to five good reasons why you would crush it as a comunity leader. Prop yourself up! Brag about yourself!
Gently recognize if your reasons for starting a community are truly authentic. What are your motives? If it’s only to make money, it will never work. If it’s because you’re hanging out with the Mean Girls and are comparing yourself to others and want to create a community because your arch nemesis is, it will never work either. It has to be pure and authentic for it to really work.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Our biggest limitation is fear, and it’s not real. Fear is made up in our heads. Fear and empathy in many ways are BFFs. Sometimes, the more we care about others and the bigger our hearts, the more fear holds us back because we don’t want to disappoint. How can we lead a life that is both empathetic and fearless?
Chew on that for a second.
3. Why should this community exist? (What is the purpose of this community?)
There’s an important distinction between why a community is important to you and why it should exist in the world. Ask yourself, “What purpose does this community fulfill for my neighborhood, or for the world?” What is the ultimate goal of this community?
There is a wonderful community called the NEXUS Global Youth Summit. The purpose of this community has been crystal clear from the start: The children of the wealthiest humans on the planet will inherit trillions of dollars from their parents over the next twenty years. Many of them have expressed interest in funding projects that will benefit the planet and all the humans on it—not just the top 1 percent. NEXUS helps pair young, wealthy inheritors with social entrepreneurs who are building these world-changing businesses and organizations. The NEXUS community now has thousands of members globally and hosts an annual summit at the United Nations in New York City. When a community has a specific goal with a clear mission in mind led by passionate Community Architects, it catches fire.
4. What other communities or affinity groups can
you align with?
As everything takes inspiration from other things, there are hundreds of communities and affinity groups that could be complementary to your community. If you want to start a “Tea drinking community that reads Shakespeare,” the obvious communities to connect with are tea drinking groups and Shakespeare groups. There are 442 tea groups happening right now around the world on meetup.com alone! Start exploring and participating. Refresh your Four Stages of Community.
5. Why will this community be sustainable over time?
Do you have a long-term plan in place for your community? How are you evolving? The best communities think abou
t the present and the future. In order to keep going, we built a robust organization for Daybreaker with a comprehensive training manual and a well-organized team in Brooklyn. While community can feel like a squishy concept, it requires systemization to grow and sustain. Every community is uniquely different, and as such, all systems require thoughtful execution.
L—Language
Language is our most powerful form of communication, yet we don’t always have the necessary vocabulary.
I used to think “words” and “language” meant essentially the same thing, until it hit me:
Words are a collection of letters that convey meaning so we understand each other, while language conveys energy so we feel each other. Energy—which in the case of spoken language includes tone—often gets lost on email. We hastily and thoughtlessly text one another, using emojis to replace language. We easily get hurt and inflamed because we have lost our language sophistication in our quest to simplify, emojify, and swipe. I’ve had my feelings hurt and have unintentionally hurt feelings too, in my hasty “doing seventeen things at once” text messages to friends and colleagues. I’ll reread texts that I sent to frustrated or upset friends and not recognize myself in the exchange. As a student of efficiency who gets excited when I’m showering and brushing my teeth at the same time, I started thinking about taking a breath before sending a message to check in on my energy and language.
We are complex creatures and when we oversimplify and minimize language, we hobble communication. Recently I reread letters I wrote to friends and lovers when I was twenty years old—before smartphones, Facebook, or any social media came into the world—and I was astonished at the difference of depth of feeling in my writing compared to my one emoji thumbs-up responses today. Since there’s no denying the benefits and the convenience of our smartphones, my question becomes:
“How can we honor technology and the incredible opportunities it offers us while continuing to develop the potential of human language?”
Our MC, Elliot, is the Voice of Daybreaker. We have long discussions about language style. Before events, we think through how to share our collective message on the dance floor in a way that feels thoughtful, fun, and authentic, and will inspire our community to let go. We can’t be too preachy. We can’t expect everyone to come to the dance floor with the same energy, so we have to be inviting and encouraging to those who are more tentative and also honor those who are ready to daaance. To figure this out, we looked at our Core Community, did a deep dive into our Core Values, and created a language style that married the worlds of nightlife and personal development. As such we include language that’s inspiring, fun, and encouraging as well as language that’s underground, mysterious, mischievous, self-expressive, and thematic.
It’s not always about being succinct and efficient. It’s about how the words flow together to create a language style that makes someone feel the intended feeling. It all starts with intention.
My simple rule of thumb in developing a language style: Split the difference between what you want to say as a human, artist, or community and what your community longs for in their lives. When you define your Core Community and Constraints, you will know whom you’re talking to. If you’re only ever catering to yourself and don’t care about your community or audience, it will be tough to grow your community. And if you only cater to what others want to hear, you won’t convey your personal passion and vision. Your messaging will be vanilla and “safe.”
Here’s my challenge to you:
Define your language style for your community today, including why that style is right for your community. Think about how words matter but also how language is even more influential.
A community, like a garden, needs consistent nurturing and loving attention.
chapter 7
Nurture Your Community
Ten Foolproof Ways to Keep Them Coming Back for More
I think of creating new friendships and communities in similar ways to planting a garden. The first several months require the most dedication, care, nurture, and support before the plants are strong enough to survive and multiply on their own. Then, as the garden grows, new variables are introduced and we adapt. As long as the garden exists and continues to grow and evolve, it requires thoughtful tending, with weekly waterings and monthly prunings. It’s a great metaphor for community building. There’s no time for playing hard-to-get and being “too cool for school” here. Your plants won’t survive! Following are ten foolproof ways to nurture your community that have served me.
1. Be Present and Listen
With all the digital distractions in the world today, humans crave connection. If you show interest in other humans and get excited about their lives, they will want to keep hanging out with you. You can feel when someone is paying attention to you, and it feels good! Also, share praise and pay compliments where it feels authentic. Don’t hold back compliments out of shyness or potential awkwardness. To hear a genuine compliment just feels good—for both the giver and the receiver. But even more than that, focus on the beauty of simply being present for the other person. Dropping in, sharing praise, and truly listening. If you can do this, you’ll have friends for life.
2. Take Initiative and Be Accountable
Community is built on intention, energy, and ACTION. Have the courage to reach out! Be proactive and true to your word. Don’t be flaky. Accountability is key to building community. We live in a time where we cancel on each other, have a hard time “committing,” and wait for others to “do it first.” Have the courage and keep taking initiative! When you are dedicated to showing up daily, weekly, or monthly, your friends and community can count on that and, in turn, will start showing up for you too. At Daybreaker, we have dedicated ourselves to showing up monthly for our community to dance, connect, and self-express before going to work. We take our community presence very seriously, and this accountability has helped us grow to twenty-five cities across the world in less than four years. People want to be a part of something they can count on. And then that community reenergizes us when we are tired or down. It’s a beautiful cycle. So show up and be present when you do. Your community will recognize that and will be loyal to you too.
3. Eat Together
Food is an essential part of life and vital to community building. We gather around food for every aspect of life, from family meals to sports, weddings, camping trips, birthday parties, festivals, and everything in between. Taking hospitality and food seriously are surefire ways to nurture and sustain your community. And it’s one of the ways to be a Five Sense Friend! Getting creative with food can include a beautiful dinner party, but it can also be as simple as snacks for a meeting. Even if cooking isn’t your thing, find a way to convey love, respect, and commitment by having a little something to eat together.
Some ideas:
•A Communal Question. My best friend Max hosts dinner parties where he has prepared questions ahead of time. He lets everyone know that part of the dinner conversation will be dedicated to the question, allowing each person to share with the whole table, rather than with just the person next to them. In every case, it has led to a more connected experience. Having a few questions to choose from and deciding which ones to use based on the energy of the group will make for a more connected conversation. There’s a wonderful community-building card game called “Vulnerability Is Sexy,” which tees up interesting questions to break the ice and go deeper with one another.
• Do It Together. Another idea is preparing a meal together—setting the table, chopping veggies, and cleaning up inspire teamwork and belonging through participation, and I’ve seen many strangers become friends through this. Often, Eli and I will only buy ingredients from the grocery store for our dinner parties so everyone can participate in creating the meal together.
• Black Tie Tuesday. Two of my dear friends and I organize a “Black Tie Tuesday” dinner every few months.
Life is far more fun when you change it up! Alfredo, Philip, Eli, and I invite friends to dress up in fancy attire to eat at a casual restaurant. It’s hilarious for everyone involved—including the waiters and bartenders! Try it!
4. Give Gifts
Giving gifts shows thoughtfulness and intention, and that goes a loooong way. Imagine walking into a conference room and instead of just boring white tables and a PowerPoint presentation, there was a scroll wrapped with a ribbon at every seat, containing a playful poem reflecting the values of the company. Or what if you started working at a new company and before your first day of work, three team members sent you a playlist to listen to on your way to work, a book to read, or breakfast treats to fuel you for your first few days! Our friend Jesse recently sent Eli and me hot sauce in the mail. He knew that Eli loves to cook (and I love to eat!) and out of the blue he sent us the most amazing hot sauce from the city he was traveling to for work. We were so touched by this that we must have told twenty different people, and now they think of Jesse as a great guy. Another friend, Molly, recently sent me a beautiful handwritten card in the mail just to share encouragement to get through this very book! I welled up receiving it. While I’m also grateful to friends who have sent emails and text messages showing support, the gift of Molly’s time and intention was especially moving. These things cost next to nothing and foster a sense of belonging that reverberates through the whole group.
5. Inspire Fun, Play, and Adventure
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