Community Building: Leadership, Values and Ownership with Steve Savides

Ever wondered what it takes to build a thriving community? Join us as we demystify this topic with our guest, Steve Savides, who brings with him a wealth of knowledge from his diverse background in business, coaching, and community building. We dive into the essential elements required to foster a robust community, such as establishing trust, fostering good leadership, setting a clear vision, and aligning values. Steve also enlightens us on the concept of leadership which, contrary to popular belief, can be about service and empowerment rather than a guru-follower relationship.

Digging deeper, we unearth the importance of shared values and the significance of having well-defined entry and exit points in a community. We explore the fascinating world of coliving communities, their benefits, and how they skillfully bridge the gap between living alone and living with others. Drawing inspiration from Seth Godin, we discuss the concept of finding our tribe to optimize our community experience. 

In the final leg of our conversation, we venture into the realm of distributed ownership and governance in coliving communities. We discuss how this model encourages people to invest time and money in a manner that suits them - effectively lowering the barrier to entry. We also consider the potential advantages of decentralised ownership and governance within a community. Tune in to our enlightening discussion and learn how community, connection, and shared values can transform the way we live.

Transcript

Daniel: 0:12

Welcome everyone to ColivingDAO Insights, this is your co-host, Daniel, and today I'm joined by my co-host, Gareth, as well as our special guest of the day, steve Savides. He is a business leader, entrepreneur, coach and facilitator. We're very excited to have you here today, hi Steve.

Steve: 0:32

Hi, thank you for having me.

Gareth: 0:35

Hi folks, good to be back and Steve, welcome to the podcast. And Steve is also a good friend of mine and he has a very rich and varied background in business, coaching and community building. So we're going to dig into that background and just ask a few simple questions. To begin with, steve, if you could tell us a bit about your past experience with community building? Community building is a really important element of what we're aiming to build at ColivingDAO. It's not just a place to live, it's all about community living and creating thriving communities. Some people are really interested in intentional communities or building communities that have an aim to make things better in this world, so elevating human consciousness and enabling people to be their best selves and those on a really powerful transformation journey or personal development. So you could just start by telling us a little bit about your past experience with community building or being a part of some of those intentional communities.

Steve: 1:40

Yeah, thank you. Well, my community experience, really, when it goes back to growing up in South Africa and being part of various Christian communities and organizations that were focused on different things, as religions are Typically, the intention was always to give back for the communities that I was involved in and later on, in church building, I ended up in Latvia and then later on after that, when I came out of the church, I've been involved in several other kind of community groups and part of that also has been from a business perspective. So I've been involved, obviously, in large businesses as well as small businesses. I say obviously it's not obvious to the listeners, but within big organizations and also within startups. I've been involved in community building from that perspective and how leadership works, and some fairly alternative communities.

Steve: 2:51

So getting into yoga and martial arts and then also into the embodiment communities and communities that are really focused on how we are from a deep, intrinsic perspective. So that's been a really interesting flavor. And then, most recently in 2020, I started an online men's group, which was phenomenal, and we built the foundation of that and then eventually gave that over to Pasco, who's been building the men's circle From there. He's really taken everything that we did. A number of the original founders are still there with him on the board. So it's been a real journey of seeing how community works from inside out. How does leadership work? What are the good, bad and ugly warts, and all of communities from every angle.

Gareth: 3:52

That's great. Thanks very much. So from all that experience, which is all at different scales from small to large, as well as the challenges of community building, it's not all smooth. Sometimes it can be quite tricky to get it right and get the ingredients right. What do you think the essential ingredients are to building a thriving community?

Steve: 4:15

Wow, the essential components. Seth Godin, I think, has got a couple of really interesting things there in some of his work, but for me trust is one of the deepest components. Good leadership, I think, is important and that leadership needs to be collaborative and understood by everybody so you can lead in a circle that's certainly that was my phrase for the men's circle, where it was a co-created space when you do have certain expertise in people that really are leading particular things. But it's always much richer when everybody's participating in the leading of that particular thing. A clear vision, a clear alignment of values those are super important things. So for me it's all of those things come down to trust and I can talk quite a bit about trust if we want to go down that rabbit hole.

Daniel: 5:26

Awesome. Yeah, it's a very interesting point and I'd love to expand a little bit on the concept of leadership, especially this forms of leadership that are not necessarily what a lot of people may think about when they first hear of communities. Some people have this idea of communities where there is a guru or a leader and everyone is following the leader, and then people have this strong communal element of following the leader. But this relationship it may be in some cases quite unhealthy, as history has demonstrated. So this is something that may put some people off when they think of community, but obviously doesn't have to be that way. So what can you say about leadership, and a leadership that doesn't have to be like the guru-follow-it relationship?

Steve: 6:16

Yeah well, one of my favorite books on leadership is actually it's a very short book by John Maxwell and there's a famous quote by John where he says culture eats strategy for breakfast. So he's a for those who know John Maxwell as a leadership guru. But the book is the 21 indispensable qualities of a leader and it's a really great little book. It's a very short, very concise, and he just goes through these 21 characteristics of a leader. And we've maybe heard of the servant-hearted leader, the leader that's there in service, and my experience having worked with just so many phenomenal leaders, from leaders of billion dollar businesses to leaders of companies of two the heart of service has to be a key asset for the leader, a key focus for the leader. If we're not serving the goal, then it's really some sort of a dictatorial or guru type model. And in the guru model I mean that happens a lot. Obviously. I saw that a lot in the church and the religious organizations and I've been involved in other organizations which have a very strong kind of ideology or belief system, and what tends to happen there is people, they give up their autonomy, they give up their power and it's much easier to give the control to somebody else, because then you're not responsible. And so for me, leadership really is about empowering people, and again, that sounds very cliche and twi, you know. Yeah, of course, but it really does come down to those basic fundamentals. And I said in the beginning as well about trust and values. If you don't have a shared sense of values and you don't have really clear values, then you're going to get lost along the way, and so a leader really elicits the self-leadership and autonomy from everybody to make sure that you stay close to the values and the mission. Like, what is it that we're actually doing here? You know, and if you don't have a goal, then that's exactly what you're going to hit right, and if everything is a party, then nothing's a party, you know. So, again, lots of nice statements there around. You know being really clear, and I think, gareth, you said intentional, intentional communities, or Dan, maybe it was you you know being really intentional about what it is that we're doing here and staying close to that, and then when we see things that are unraveling, it's calling things together.

Steve: 9:07

And, at the risk of being very long-winded in the reply, I just wanna quickly just talk about trust and, as a leader. There's this thing about bringing people back to trust, building trust and from the science of trust and the work of trust, trust is three things, which is integrity, benevolence and ability or capability. Those are the three pillars of trust, and that's the same. Whether you've got individual trust, so how do I trust you? How do you trust me?

Steve: 9:38

Organizational trust, which is trust in an organization or a group of people, now to trust broadens out, and then generalized trust, which is trust at a national level, or really big facets of trust, and so you get these three layers of trust with the three pillars of trust. So that's already quite a mental picture, right? And then in that people have done a lot of work, and Patrick Lencione is one of those people. He's written a book and done work called the five disfunctions of a team and he's got a pyramid and at the bottom of the pyramid is trust. And the second layer of the pyramid is conflict and avoidance of conflict. And I think a lot of what happens is people are scared of conflict and community involves conflict and challenge, and when the values push up against one another and the people push up against one another, and if you can't move through that second barrier, then you're never gonna get to the top of the pyramid. So that's a little bit about what I've seen in leadership and community over the years.

Daniel: 10:49

Yeah, that's a brilliantly put and in fact they're very much resonate with the idea of a leader. That is not someone who's to be put on a pedestal. I believe that a leader is very much of a catalyst for someone that really contributes in effecting a change, a transformation or simply stewarding the community towards a shared purpose. And you mentioned conflict, which is a very interesting topic as well, because one of the main objections that I hear from people with little community living experience is oh, I would not wanna be in a community because what if I don't get along well with the people in the community? So what can you say about that, starting from the way the community is formed potentially formed around something with certain values, and so on going into the way the communities are managed and so on?

Steve: 11:39

Yeah Well, if somebody doesn't want to be in the community because they don't wanna get into conflict, then the community is not the right place for them, right? I really think it's about an opt-in process and people have to buy into something. So it's this process of inviting people in and the way that you do that is sharing the common vision and the common values. So for people that are saying I don't wanna be in a community because it's gonna involve really I guess there's a fear that I've heard you say there which is being seen or being accountable, then that's really a challenge and I think people need to go in with their eyes open. You can't. There's no way.

Steve: 12:32

If you try and convince somebody to do something, then they can be sort of unconvinced. They need to be. It needs to come from the inside out that I believe in this community. I believe in the vision of this community, I believe in what the purpose of this is and I'm willing to be a part of that and have my voice heard, to hear other voices and to keep coming back to the central principles that we have in this community.

Steve: 13:01

So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think what you really want in a community is people that really wanna be there, and sometimes that happens very naturally and organically, which is what we really want where people find themselves involved in a community and realize, wow, this is a great place, this is a real good fit, this feels amazing and this is where I wanna be and express myself. And those are the best kind of communities. And in that, if you don't have then really clear points which are sort of very clear entry and exit points around understanding that community, you can build up a lot of false expectations or sense of unmet expectations, and I think it was Shakespeare that said expectations are the root of all heartache. So, yeah, it's again people expect things and the way that you do that is clear. Again, leadership comes down to clear communication.

Daniel: 14:05

Absolutely, and I'm a firm believer in communities that are not just put together for the sake of it, but rather be together because of a sheer sense of purpose or, a, very least, shared values.

Daniel: 14:19

I don't think people should live in the community it's just because they don't wanna be alone, or just because it's more efficient and so on, and, yes, these are advantages, but fundamentally, as humans, we really wanna know and understand who we are about to surround ourselves with. So I firmly believe, for example, in the themed communities, where there is a specific type of people that are welcoming to the community, so that people know who to surround themselves with or, at the very least, having shared values. I mean, I'm not suggesting everyone needs to have the same exact profile. Of course, diversity is also something to be celebrated but having a clear intention that's why we talk about intentional communities or a clear purpose that is shared this is something that certainly helps people overcome conflicts as well which is something that can be learned at some point and also minimize the occurrence of conflicts in the first place, because people are there for potentially very similar reasons. Gareth, you wanna add anything on this?

Gareth: 15:20

Yeah, we spoke before about the benefits of a co-living community in particular, right?

Gareth: 15:26

So when people say, oh, I don't want to live in a community because I don't want to get too involved in decision-making processes, don't want conflict and so on and the complications that go with that, One of the benefits of co-living is that you do have a private space as well as a public space. So by living in a co-living community in particular, it's not that you need to be involved in the community necessarily like every single day, right? You don't need to be having dinner with 10 people, for example. You don't need to go to every event that's on in the community. You can have your own private space and dip in and out of the advantages of a co-living community as and when required. So that's another way to kind of handle things, yeah, so what do you think about that in the context of co-living, Steve? Having that private space versus the public space, does that help people sort of bridge the gap between a small flat share or living aloney even, which has downsides? You know the isolation aspect of living alone.

Steve: 16:34

Definitely. I mean, I think that that's a very attractive aspect to it. I think that would appeal to me, certainly. I think you know to Dan's point and your point, people are lonely.

Steve: 16:46

I've been actually just recently, I've sort of bought a few books and exploring ways to pull together some of my many areas of work around my next step and certainly from the social impact, social innovation side of things that I get involved in, and so I've been looking at this thing about community and purposeful community. You know what is the purpose and the community of purpose? And so, on one hand, yes, we want to be involved in communities where we feel like we're a part of something and we're not alone. But, as you've said, we also want our own space, and for some people that looks like a physical space where it's a self-contained unit. I have my own garden or their shared gardens, and I want to be able to pick and choose. You know, for some people it's like I want to live in, I want to share a room, or I want to share an apartment or whatever it is, share a space or a shared kitchen, and there's a lot of benefit to that as well, I think, for me what it really comes down to and, as you were both talking, there's that saying as well you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time and if you want to be, you can't be everything to everybody. So it really is about finding your tribe, and I think that was Seth's work was around tribe and building the tribe.

Steve: 18:18

And again it comes back to that thing of opt-in, like who are the people that fit in this community? Who are the people and why do they want to be here? And another one is Simon Sinek start with why and really great, great brands started at that center point of starting with why and other brands start from the outside in the what and how. But really what you want to do is come back to the why and I think if you can tap into people's why and it's really clear, then people are going to be like this is why I want to be here. I want to be here and people have different whys and the community will have a main why and I think having that why very clearly articulated to everyone's buying into the big why and can plug their whys in, because certain people are going to want to just not be seen, but just there in the background doing the thing.

Steve: 19:17

One person is in the gardening, or another person really enjoys doing admin, or another person likes cooking, or there's a creative musical person, or the creative people or hang out in one area and the science geeks hang out in another area, the tech people. So people can find their individual whys and there's always a few, a few people in the community that are kind of the glue that hold together these other people. But those other people are generally the people that make the community work. In my experience it's always the people that are the super quiet, not really seen, nobody really fully notices that they're there, nobody realises just how pivotal they are in the community and usually they're like the type man on the enneagram.

Steve: 20:13

But you know these people are when they go you don't really even notice that they left. You like, oh, they left, because the charismatic people, you know, the two or three or four people that are connecting these pods together, are the people that you see. But they're connecting together, these really deep people that are the solid, foundational people that are sort of the bricks of the community, and you need both of those kind of people, and then you need lots of people. You just need people to form around that, and if you don't, then again you've just got a few isolated people that are drifting along. So yeah, community, it's hard, it's not easy, but it's definitely worth it.

Daniel: 20:58

So we spoke about some of the key ingredients in communities, which is great, and one of the main features we're building a co-living that was well is to give the ability for community starters to effectively create new communities, attract people into their communities and be part of a federation of communities as well. So can we expand a little bit more on what it takes to start a community from scratch? So, be it around some sheer purpose, be it around a specific location and people living together, what does it take to create a community and what does it take to make things happen from the beginning?

Steve: 21:43

Yeah, what does it take? Well, it takes an idea and it takes people. It takes one person and one person and then they come together and then you build people around that and it takes effort and action. I think there's an aspect of selflessness to it. You know, I guess we give more than we get in the beginning, and we constantly do that, and then we get more than we give. But the only reason we get more than we give is because we're burning ourselves up in the process, and I'm going to give an analogy, a picture of that in a second. But we're giving fully of ourselves and we're giving more than we're getting. But because of that, as a group, we're getting more than we're giving. And the picture for that is for those who've been.

Steve: 22:43

I hope everybody that's listening to this has sat around a fire, especially a fire out in the African bush, which is where I kind of grew up, or just out in nature somewhere, and where you get coals and you put coals on the fire, and fire is like nature's television. So we're all sitting around. It's pitch black. Maybe you can see the stars. If you're in England it might be drizzling, but it's OK. You're huddled and the fire is roaring and everyone drifts in and out of the silence and then into bursts of little conversation or song or whatever is happening around the fire. And it's just the beautiful sharing sense of the warmth from the fire. And if you imagine that one of these coals and the coals of the people, if you take a coal out of the fire and you just put it on the side on a brick or concrete block or something away from the fire, that coal very quickly just turns gray and cold and you can pick it up with your hand. You'd have to have picked it up and taken it with the tongs and put it on the side because you couldn't touch it with your hand. But when you put it back into the fire you may be able to pick it up with your hand, maybe very quickly, but it'll be cold, it'll be lifeless, it'll be on its way to being extinct and lifeless.

Steve: 24:10

As soon as you put that coal back into the fire, it warms up, it lights up and it becomes indistinguishable from the other coals. It just immediately becomes red hot. And that's what community is. The further away you are from the center of the community, the colder it'll be, the deeper in and closer into that fire you get, the more you're going to burn. The other part of that analogy is the coal consumes itself. It's giving to that fire, and so we're giving to everybody that's around the fire. We're burning ourselves up, we are literally being consumed. While we're in that fire, we're literally giving of our life source, but in doing so, the sum of the parts, the whole, is greater. As a result of it, the other parts of the community were just cold pieces of coal. We were blazing fire.

Gareth: 25:07

I love that picture you've painted there, steve, and it really talks about, I think, some of the main themes we've drawn out here. Because the individual experience, you know you become cold and separated if you're on your own too much in life and your living arrangements, for example, and then being part of a co-living community, you can be one of those coals in the fire. You can even take that analogy further and have each coal, as for example, in Coliving DAO we'll have a network of co-living communities or a federation. Each coal could be one of those Coliving DAO communities and together they burn brighter. Together, you know, they're really making connections and energy between each other.

Gareth: 25:51

So there's always this trade-off between being alone and being a part of a community, whether it's your family, you know everyone has some sort of community your work colleagues, your family, the friends that you grew up with. You're never alone. It's just how much you choose to engage with your community or even build a community and start a new community, as you said, with an intentional community and being around the campfire and nature is there's something really deep in the essence of what it is to be human and to be part of something bigger than ourselves and this kind of. It's kind of like the origin of human society. Right, a community is the origin of human society. It's the way we, it's what's enabled us to build a civilization.

Steve: 26:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's. I mean, you know the three of us all live in London and you know, geographically we're not very far from each other, are we, gareth? I mean you and I, but it's a few miles really. But whereas you know out in the in Surrey, you know far, and where I'm from and my kids are in, you know far, and when we're working it's a bit easier to get to everybody, in London you're always an hour from everything, even when it's really close and even though you know we're really good friends and we want to see each other, it takes, it's challenging, and there's something about this closeness and proximity of being in a community and there's something about being, you know, being close to one another physically, but also in intention. And again, you've spoken, both spoken about intentional community. What is it that we're doing? And I think people can be, people can be not alone, but they can still be lonely. And I think there's, as you were talking, again, I had this thing about vulnerability. You know Brené Brown's work around vulnerability and there's an essence in community which is about being vulnerable, being seen, you know, and we don't want to be vulnerable because we don't want to be seen, Because if I'm seen, then you know I have to take accountability. I have to own up to, you know, the fact that I'm not perfect. Shock horror, right, or there will be conflict and I don't want to navigate that conflict. I don't have the tools that are necessary.

Steve: 28:19

So you know, dan, going back to your original thing about leadership and how you create community enabling and empowering people with tools to be able to deal with conflict and people have to invest. That's the other thing you know and you need to be explicit. If you come to this community, you know you need to invest. If you don't invest, it's not going to work. And investing doesn't mean money, you know. It means time, it means effort, it means being at some of the community gatherings, it means there's some stuff that it's opt in, you know, and you can opt out at any time of certain things. But it's going to notice if you're not showing up, if you're not dealing with conflict, if you're not dealing with your stuff, if you're not accountable. And you know people don't like the word accountability, but it's a powerful word and a necessary word, I think, for community. So I think there's a place for some pretty strong structure when you want things to be loose and evolve, but you also really need things to be clear and defined.

Daniel: 29:25

Awesome, yeah, and I feel there's a lot of advantages in having this proximity, something that Gareth and I experienced as well, living in the co-living spaces for many, many years. What I also wanted to touch upon is the advantages of a different type of community, let's say, a remote or online community, a distributed community, which is also part of the experience of being here at ColivingDAO. In fact, we are currently offering NFTs that effectively let people into the community. We're building, as well as co-living communities around the world. We're building a wider network, if you wish, or wider community of people that are not necessarily living together, but they are connected online, and they are connected by the fact that they're part of the same project when we're an order. So what can we say about this slightly different type of community? Online community.

Steve: 30:23

Well, I mean, I think that's exciting and powerful. As you know, I mentioned the Men's Circle which I built in 2020, and that was all online. It was in lockdown. I started it by accident. Really, I've done men's work over the years, lots of men's work and lots of community work I think Gareth knows that a bit more. But being in groups where you facilitate groups, that was clearly a need and where people could connect together, and so I was part of an online group in Facebook and I'd met a few other people, and so I just said I'm going to host a circle which I call the Open Circle. At some point I've got the opencircleorg I hope I still got that domain. I want to take all of the learnings and put that into the website.

Steve: 31:21

I'm a really big believer in just giving things away, so if we give stuff away, then everything gets better. So I started that online and about 12 men showed up and it was a men's specific circle. It was for men and we'd modeled it before we demonstrated. We'd recorded how a men's circle is hosted. There's a particular format, and I've built and developed some process around that as well, and two weeks later, a few men came, and then two weeks later, or it was going to be a month later, and then eventually it was six men that were showing up regularly, and so what we decided to do then was not invite any more men, we just kept it as a closed circle. And so for another three or four months we met every. We started meeting weekly. Every week on Wednesday at 7.30 we'd meet and we'd meet for 90 minutes. So it felt like a good amount of time for the six of us to kind of go through things. And then we built that into a process and that I think now the men's circle has got 60 plus paying members. You know, and again, you know, pasco's really built that. So just to credit where it's, you right, we built, we built it up to a core base of men and we had, by the way, those men that that you know. We had this sort of evangelist type people, the charismatic people, and then we had the people that were the sort of mainstay people that just showed up every single week that you couldn't have done things without of another. There's a few men that I'm smiling about that, that are there just. But that worked and it worked online, and I think there was a moment in time, because it was covered.

Steve: 33:08

But people are. You know, people are Willing. Now. The technology is available, the people are used to it. You know things are in the cloud. I think travel is easier, so it's exciting. You know, there's a community that's online, that's in Portugal. It means I can physically go there or if there's people that I have an affinity with, that I'm connected to and and that happens, there's two or three communities that I'm involved with right now where people are all over the world but we say in touch, what's that makes it easier? So I think people are definitely Ready for that and for the deepening of that, and we need more of that, and I think what you guys are doing by tying the online and offline world together, making it distributed, using Software and blockchain and and good architecture to do that, I think, is it's very much needed, very powerful, and I think I think you'll do very well with it and I want to be involved.

Gareth: 34:02

By the way, You're involved, steve, you're involved. Yeah, we love that. The hybrid aspects really important. So we're building an online community right now of backers of NFT, backers that believe in the vision of a federated model of co-living communities and you know we very much want all of those online Backers of the online community to come into the be a part of the physical spaces in the future or to meet us in person in the future. So, yeah, I'm a big belief, we're a big believer in the hybrid model of utilizing all the tools that are available online and offline. So it's not only about the online community. That kind of brings us back Full circle, I think, to looking at the ColivingDAO model of a federation of co-living communities, each their own independent, autonomous community, but also interconnected with the other ColivingDAO communities and, and to connect that to what you spoke about, how you build a thriving Community or an intentional community. How do you think the ColivingDAO model enables the building of thriving or intentional communities?

Steve: 35:20

In terms of the, the whole model. You're not just talking about the software piece of it, but the whole architecture that you're building, the hybrid model, everything.

Gareth: 35:30

Yeah, the the, the model of just simply a network of physical co-living communities that are interconnected.

Steve: 35:41

How does it? Well, I mean again, I think it's it's about having a clear vision and and I think that that's something that Is important you know, we went we spoke about it in the beginning around the, the, the why. You know, why are people here? So One of the things that people can do, and part of the why, is I can, I can be a part of this and I can buy into this in this distributed model, using technology, so I can put some, some money in, I can put my time in, I can start to Be a part of this in a way that suits me, and I think that that, in that, you're enabling people To be involved quite easily, and I think that that's a really powerful Model because you're lowering the barrier to entry. It makes it super easy for me and you're really meeting people where they are.

Steve: 36:33

I mean, we do live in a distributed world. We do live in a world where I don't want to just always be in London, and if I am in London, I don't just want to be in my apartment, and if I am in my apartment, I want to be able to just go and sit in the gym and I want to go and find places and spaces that are meaningful to me. I want to, you know. You know I don't you like to run my my ex was a bit is a big runner, but I want to cycle. So an example of of you know what I used to do with her was you know I've signed up to the Santander bikes and I think I've met a couple of times and the sun was out on the camels and and that's that same distributed architecture. Because I pay 20 pounds a month, I've got I can have unlimited one pound rides and I can just go, get a bike and cycle to where you are and then dock the bike and I'm off.

Steve: 37:27

And to me, I think the co-living down model speaks to that. It speaks to being able to drop in and plug in and then I'm building the community. I'm part of the community. I can drop into the calls, the group activity that's online. I can see that there's a community that's here in London. Actually there's one in East London, there's one in West London and actually there's one further south in the UK, which is where I'm gonna be, because I wanna go and co-work from there for a while. I'm going to the States or I'm going somewhere else. So I think what you're doing if I'm not understanding it all correctly and understanding your question correctly you're really enabling me to really be a part of the community and be a part of the globally shared values, but you're giving me a lot of choice in how I engage with it, and I think that's incredibly powerful and I'd love to hear if I've understood it correctly.

Daniel: 38:22

Absolutely, and we do believe the element of keeping choice is very, very important. We're not looking to give people the only option of melting with one community and that's the end of their choice. In fact, not at all. I think the beauty of combining the power of a physical community, where physical proximity is a thing, with the fact that there is a whole network, a distributed set of communities, a federation of communities, where people can really plug into whatever they need at any given time, so keeping flexibility, keeping as much or as little independence as they want, which is really critical, I think, in this day and age where there's a strong sense of individualism, which we're not trying to completely change, we are incorporating that in the community of living. So, as usual, we are creating a non-dualistic solution where people can keep what they like about their individualistic self and at the same time, plug into communities to an extent that they see fit.

Daniel: 39:36

Another big part of what we're building at ColivingDAO is the ability for people to be co-owners in each community and in this way, potentially own a piece in the entire federation of communities as well, or own more or less of the community they choose to spend the most time in. That's again their choice and we have a strong element of shared governance as well. So we're not creating this traditional style of community where people can come and go but ultimately there is one centralized decision maker that sets the terms for what the community is like, but with a big element of decentralization both in ownership and governance. We see a lot of potential and a lot of advantages to this model. So how would you describe the introduction of decentralized ownership and governance in the broader frame of communities?

Steve: 40:38

I think it's a phenomenal idea. I mean, I think, with the fact that you're clever, I mean there's no two ways about it. Like just I know, when Gareth sent it to me before I'd looked at the white paper and the website, and I looked at it again this morning before I got on the podcast and then just even in the conversation. Now I'm sort of sparking off and firing and realizing just how clever the model really is. And I think, yeah, the thing about ownership and the fact that you've got multiple layers. So, as you were talking, again, what was really clear to me is the sense of there's multiple layers to this. And I can, if I invest in this, if I get into the NFT and I'm part of the software architecture, I'm immediately part of the rest of the architecture, I'm part of the co-owning, I'm part of the co-living, I'm part of the community space and I mean I guess I have a question as to what does it mean that just anybody can buy in and then can the whole thing get diluted? Because now I've got owners that aren't really involved in the community but are physically and buy in. So I don't know how that works exactly. I'd love to hear about.

Steve: 41:59

I think it's a phenomenally powerful thing that you're creating, because it makes me feel like I am part of a group global community, which is, you know, think global, act local and, just as we've discussed, I'm involved in, right now, three or four communities. There's a community that's based out in mainland Europe and they have one particular flavor of things that they do and I really enjoy that community. And then there's a yoga community, and then there's a whole community of breathwork coaches, and then I've got another community. I've got two or three business communities that I'm involved in. You know, there's menswear communities. So I'm involved in communities that are sometimes overlapping, but they're discrete, different communities, and I don't have to. My LinkedIn community is just one community and I don't have to use them all the time. But I know that there's people that I can call on over there, that I can go to and have a conversation with, and so I think, again, what you're doing is you're providing an interweaving of the ways that I can be involved with community that's how I'm understanding it and yet owning a place.

Steve: 43:27

I think that's very appealing to people. I think that you're also broadening the base, as I understand it, of people that will be able to participate because I don't have to be a breathwork person. You know, I can be a business person and I can come and join your community. I don't have to be a business you know, engineering person to be part of this community. I you know. But if I am, I can still fit in and I can fit into two or three things. So that's how I'm hearing it, but again, have I understood it correctly?

Daniel: 44:01

Absolutely. Yeah, we really love the way you put it. I appreciate your words as well, and this whole conversation has been extremely insightful. Any final thoughts, Steve, before we wrap up?

Steve: 44:16

I have so many thoughts. I'd love more questions and to ask questions. Yeah, I mean, I think it's exciting, I think what you're doing is needed. I think the fact that you're bridging together the digital world and the hybrid world I think, gareth, you said again both of you used that term I think is phenomenal. I think it's exciting. I think clear purpose and vision, clear communication you need some evangelists out there and you need some doers, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves and as funding and things come through, then, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing this thing grow.

Daniel: 45:04

Fantastic, and thank you so much, Steve, for being here as well. It's been a very insightful and inspirational, Gareth. Any final thoughts?

Gareth: 45:14

Yeah, no, just to thank Steve for coming on and giving us such a rich conversation into the nature of community and what's important community and how to build a community. It was really great. Great to have you on, steve and great to have a friend on as well.

Steve: 45:31

Thank you very much.

Daniel: 45:33

Awesome. Thanks everyone else for listening as well. Great to have you here. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and see you next week. Thank you.