Experiment: Engineering an Abundant Community
Now I'm working to show abundant systems instead of just talking about them
I’ve been talking a lot about abundant systems and what the downstream effects are. But what does an abundant system look like in practice?
As I’ve been working on ideas related to these systems, I got a request at the beginning of the week that gave me the perfect idea. My best friend, and the creator behind the ADHD + Mental Health community that I’ve been a member of for years, asked me what it would take to build a mobile app.
He wanted to give the members of the community a way to easily access the videos and podcasts he puts out. I had started talking about an experiment that could take YouTube videos and convert them into blog posts, and we were talking about ways that could help the community find personalized content based on their needs. We’ve got all sorts of stories; what if we could connect people to the stories that would help them the most? And then connect them to the people who had lived those stories?
That’s when it hit me: this is the perfect opportunity to create an abundant system.
We had a community of people. It was valuable for everyone who was a part of it, and there were some layers to it. There were people at the edges of the community; those who had been on the podcast and shared their stories. Then there are those who come and go, sometimes showing up to the weekly get-togethers but pretty seldomly. Finally, there was a group at the core. A few people we get almost every week.
There is definitely value in the community. People have a place where they can be themselves fully. Not have to conform to the expectations of the world. That’s one of the hardest parts of being neurodivergent. There’s a lot of energy lost. I know that all too well.
This community is a big reason I’m doing a lot of the things I’m doing. I’ve met a ton of incredible people who have all sorts of varied interests, knowledge, and skills. And almost all of them have had issues with jobs at some point in their life. Many are entrepreneurs, because it’s the only way they could truly be themselves. Others want to be, but are having trouble getting started. Their knowledge isn’t always conducive to starting a business.
But what if the business piece could be abstracted away? What if they could focus on what they already knew how to do, and have those skills applied to “productive” work? (I hate the word “productive”, because I don’t think that’s a valid way to look at work, but it’s a good placeholder for “economically valuable”, or work that can be converted to money.) That’s the ultimate goal.
As I’ve been thinking about the design of an abundant community, I’ve tried to draw on the communities I’ve gotten the most out of.
Abundant Communities In Action
First of all, there is Foster. Foster is powerful because of its focus on the people first and foremost. Everyone is empowered to tackle their writing with their own approach, with some simple ceremonies to help the process in the form of writing circles. Then they have the cohorts that allow members to dig deeper on specific topics as required, help with matching peer mentors, and offer some mentorship from more experienced writers. It’s all opt-in, based on what each individual has capacity for. There are a lot of shared resources available by drawing on community members to run sessions, become contributors, and help grow the collective.
Second, there is Buildspace, specifically their Nights & Weekends program. We just kicked off season 5, and I’ve been reminded how powerful this group can be. First of all, it’s a free program. They focus a lot on not being gatekeepers, and in fact, call people out for wanting to know the “acceptance rate”. It’s not about rejecting people, it’s about giving them the opportunity to succeed. They have 80% of people fade away by the end of the program each time, but that’s part of the process. The results aren’t based on who had the right credentials, or had done the right things in the future. It’s all about the present - if you put in the work, if you see the results, you are the one who rises to the top. It’s all about progress. That’s a huge difference from pretty much every other system - whether it be employers rejecting applicants, schools being exclusive, or any other kind of scarce system. It’s an abundant system - taking all applicants and seeing what they can do. The latest session had 60K people apply and 17K people attended the kick-off livestream. They know how to get attention, and they use that attention to highlight people doing cool shit. I respect that a ton. In fact, I’ve even got my 9 year old joining me this time! He wanted to learn to code and share what he’s doing on his Youtube channel, so he was really excited about the idea of being part of this season.
Next, there’s Sublime. It’s a product, but it’s also a vibe, a community, and a movement. It’s probably the only tool that I’ll occasionally forget about, because it’s not constantly poking me for my attention. But when I need it, I remember it, and I’m always overjoyed to rediscover it. It’s such a breath of fresh air in the current world we exist in. It’s how products should feel, and that’s the vibe I’m looking to bring in with all the products I build. Everything is carefully considered and the user is always at the heart of every decision. That’s the way it should be.
Finally, there’s Lobow Spark. That’s the ADHD/ND community I mentioned at first. I’ve seen this community start from nothing. And I’ve never seen anything else that was driven purely by will. Lobow is a force of nature. He brings so much energy into everything he does.
He reached out to me on Twitter early on in my journey of self-discovery and asked me if I wanted to share my story on his podcast. I took him up on that, and since then, he’s been my closest friend. In fact, we’ve taken the online offline a couple of times now. For why he does this, watch this video:
He took a traumatic experience in his life, and turned that into a mission. Now, we’re looking to scale that mission up, because it’s painful to see so many people suffering. It’s amazing how powerful a friend can be. If there’s something that being part of this community has taught me, it’s that, no matter what, I’m not alone.
And when I was at my lowest point, I felt completely alone. All I wanted was some support, and I had nobody to turn to. Now, I know I’ll never have to experience that again. That’s such an incredible feeling. I want to help the world feel the same way. That’s something worth scaling.
Forget doing things that don’t scale. Do things that are worth scaling.
The Approach
There are a couple of different ways I’m approaching this experiment.
First of all, I’m exploring community as a way to launch products. I’ve got a number of ideas related to sharing information. So I’m building out a lab I can use to demonstrate tools that I believe have some value. I’ll use this to launch ideas to a community with an idea of where they can be valuable. And I’ll let the community run with them. If people can pull together enough interest, I’ll build the tools into real products, or even just offer the tools as support to people who want to offer services. An example of that is the Youtube video to blog tool.
My suggestion will be to try a couple of different things:
Find a YouTube channel that might benefit from a blog component and offer to convert all their videos into blogs. By using the tool, they’ll be able to also generate revenue for the community, which will then go into converting all the existing videos into blogs that can help people.
Create a blog for a different audience - repurpose information from YouTube videos for a completely different audience. Link back to the original videos as a way to show credibility and provide traffic back to the source.
As community members figure out what works, I’ll be sharing their stories and helping others recreate those results. That’s the idea of the lab - perform experiments, attempt to replicate the results, and publish findings.
I’ll also be pulling some inspiration from Foster - if people can deliver extremely good results on the tool, I’ll bring them in full time to help things run and grow. That’s the future of hiring, not a dumb application process where people submit a 1 page document that AI reads and uses to filter out the people who didn’t follow unwritten rules of what looks most valuable. Do the work and get rewarded for it. Sourcing people from the community so I know they know the product, the mission, the vision, and the plan.
I share everything I’m doing and why. If someone wants to be part of it, I welcome them to do so.
So, for the lab, I’m going to be running things on a credit basis. Since there’s a definite cost associated with using them, I need to make sure I can create a lab that’s sustainable until I can achieve some level of funding that will allow me to perform some of the larger research projects I have in mind. But credits are something I can offer relatively freely for things that benefit the mission. So I’ll be offering all sorts of ways to get credits as things evolve and I’m looking for people to help in specific ways.
The easiest way to start with credits though is to subscribe as a paid member of this community. I’ll be giving bonus credits to everyone who signs up here before the lab is fully live. It’s getting closer to being ready and will be open to signups within the next week.
Over time, I’m hoping this turns into a key case study for the book. I’m going to showcase how abundant systems can be used to strengthen communities and create positive-sum effects going forward.
If you want to be part of this movement, I welcome your support!
For more on abundant communities, I shared some longer-term visions of abundant communities on my Youtube channel:
If you want help designing abundant systems for your community, I’d love to learn how I can help!
Book a call here: