How I Built a 35,000 Strong Learning Community as an Introvert | Siddharth Rajsekar | Episode 6

If you had asked me 10 to 15 years ago, would you be able to really build a community? My answer would have been no. Because I'm a super duper introvert even till today. And little did I even imagine that we would be able to build a community of 35, 40,000 people from all over the world who are learning online, who are growing online, and who are making progress online. And the best part is I have a very small team. We are only five, six people, and it's completely virtual. So how does it really work? In this video, I want to talk about the nuances and the granular level, nitty gritties of what does it take to build a vibrant learning community. A community that is aligned in vision, that's aligned in values, in a community that is loyal, that is focused, which is progressive, positive, and a community that's very infectious, that really helps others also get on the bandwagon to move forward and make progress in their lives. You see, today a lot of people use the word community in a very loose way. They may just have some people who bought their products and they use the word community, but that's not community. Community is something much deeper. Community is an emotion. And when the emotion is so strong, that's what creates the learning to happen. That's what makes others move forward. So in this video, I want to break down all the elements of community building and where I got the inspiration from. I'll start with that. Then I'll be getting into the mechanics of community. What are the elements of making a community a community? What are the aspects of it? And towards the end, I'm also going to give you some other tips on how you can start your own community, how you can start building your own community, irrespective of whether you've built a community or not. So let's go back to where I got this bug of community building. It was year 1996 in my home. We had two people who came and they conducted a spiritual house program for the first time. It was my father, my mother, my brother and myself, along with these two others. And we started reading a book. It was called the Science of Self Realization. We read a paragraph and then we would discuss. And there was a process that I learned at that point. It was called dua. D stands for discovery. U stands for understanding. A stands for application. So you would read a paragraph, then we would discover something, then we would understand that. So we would discuss and, you know, share ideas, and then we would also discuss about how we can apply that into our lives. It started like that and then Slowly we had five, six people join that House program, that group. It became 20, 30 people. And it came to a point where those people who had come, their kids also started to come for that house program. So I started a separate class only for the kids. We were like 10, 11 year olds and we were reading the Krishna book and reading about his pastimes. And it was. So my journey of community building and facilitation started at age 10. I did not know about that. When I reflect back, I'm able to think back now. This whole concept of community building, I got it from my spiritual master. His name is His Holiness, Jayapataka Swami. He's one of the leading sannyasis in the ISKCON movement. And he, along with many others, they built a very vibrant community in a town called Mayapur, which is three to four hours from Kolkata. So when I was a small kid, as I was growing up, every year during my summer holidays I would go to the city, small town, it is a completely like a spiritual city. And I would see people from all different parts of the world. We had Americans, we had Russians, we had Japanese, Chinese, Indians, north, south, east, west. All of us coming together for a common vision purpose. We'd pray together, we would dance together, we would have prasad together. And my upbringing as a child were these influences where I truly understood the concept of unity and diversity. I understood what is really community. And of course there were other aspects to the community as well. You know, there are two sides to the coin. On one side we had all the positives, on the other side we had other negatives. Power struggles, leaders who wanted a people who did not like each other, people who did not get along with each other. All of that came with the movement. So growing up in a congregation, I understood the power of community as I was growing up. And then later on when I got into the music industry, it was a completely different world, a different community altogether. So when I came to Chennai, when I was doing my sound engineering over here again in my class, we had people from all different backgrounds, all different cultures, from different parts of the world. And it was such a tight knit group of friends that we had. And I understood even in music there are so many sub communities. My wife, she's a Carnatic musician. I know the Carnatic world is a community of its own. I was in the house music world, in the electronic music world. And I saw there's an amazing community over there. I was also in the rock music space. I used to play in my school bands. And there were so many communities where so much into the rock music itself. So I understood that any community that is tight knitted, whether it's a spiritual community, a musical community or a business community, there are some attributes that are common to all of them. And I've analyzed all these different community models over the years. So after music, I got into business communities. I was a part of bni, which is known as Business Network International. It is a referral network where you can give business to each other. And for five years I learned some of the core principles of a business community based on the principles of givers gain. You know, the more you give, the more you receive. Again, back to the concept of karma and what goes around comes around. I learned a lot of those principles in the Business Network International. And I was also able to understand, even within the business networks, how people would operate. Some would get along with each other, some would not get along with each other. There were many subgroups formed within the main group. Now all of these things are a part of our human nature and how we evolve and how we connect with our fellow human beings. And then I also gone to marketing communities. I started to sell products. I was in network marketing for a few years. I learned a lot about self development over there. And I also learned to face rejections because then I would go and ask people to buy a product and they would say no, I would face the rejections. And I learned so much. And that was in my early 20s. So when I analyzed all these different types of communities, spiritual communities, music communities, business communities, marketing communities, I decided to put together a system where I want to take the best elements from all these communities and the elements that were not so good in these communities. I decided to create systems to overcome that. So I want to take the best and, and find ways on how those problems would not happen. And usually if you see the problems that would normally happen in communities are power struggles where leaders would want to take control of their groups, misalignment between leaders, where they lose focus on the bigger purpose. And also some other struggles where the processes and the systems and the rituals and the habits are not so strong, where the community disintegrates and they implode. So there's no strong value system in the community. When the value systems are not strong, it implodes. So that was my background on from where all I have learned community building through my practical personal experience. So when I started the Internet Lifestyle Hub in the year 2018, I thought, let me create something where I bring in all the best elements of all of them. So now I'm going to decode the elements. The first element to building a thriving community is there has to be a purpose for the community. If you look at all the communities that I've been a part of, there's a common vision, a common purpose, a common mission that everybody's looking at, okay? And when people lose focus on the mission is where the problems actually begin. So the first attribute of a vibrant learning community is having a clear purpose and mission for the community. So, for example, in ilh when I started the Internet lifestyle hub, I was very clear that I want to reignite and rebuild that spirit of Nalanda that used to be there many thousands of years ago. So Nalanda University was the wisdom capital of the world. Of course, there was Takshila, there was Nadia, there were many other universities. Even down south. We had so many learning centers where people would come from all parts of the world and learn. But Nalanda specifically, it had more than 2,000 teachers and 10,000 students. And they would teach all kinds of disciplines, and people from all religious backgrounds would also come and learn, and they would debate and also argue. But for the sake of the truth or discovering the truth, it was not about fighting with each other, for the sake of fighting with each other, saying that I'm better than you. It was never from that space. So when I was analyzing these different learning ecosystems, I came to understand that ecosystem that thrived so many years. In fact, Nalanda, I think, survived three, four centuries. They grew, and it was one of the the biggest learning institutions in the world. So the reason it survived so many centuries is because of the common vision, common purpose. So I thought, why not incorporate that as an idea in my community right from the beginning? The second attribute of a learning community is the element of gamification. Now, what do I mean by gamification is even when I started my spiritual journey and going through, you know, those house programs that I said in 1996, there was an inbuilt gamification in my spiritual path. So they would say that if you chant one round every single day, you would be at a particular level. Then if you chant, say, four rounds, it would be next, then eight rounds and 16 rounds. And then when you consistently chant 16 rounds of that mantra every single day for a consistent period of time, then you would be eligible for the next, you know, to taking shelter of the guru. And then you actually submit yourself to the guru, and then you get initiated into the formal process of that lineage. So and even if you look at, in our country, let's say in our, in India, right, there is a gamification and many of you do not know this. We have the Padma Bhushan awards, you have the Padma Vibhushan awards, the Bharat Ratna awards. All of these are a part of the gamification of the country. To inspire every citizen to be the best and to do the best and to contribute to the world. So I understood that to build a vibrant community there has to be some kind of a gamification and different kinds of levels. So then I designed this. I said if anyone is coming to the community, the first thing is they need to get an award for completing tasks. So I do something called as a hackathon. So if people complete all those tasks in three months and when they launch their business, they get a freedom finisher award and then the next milestone is a result based award by them implementing my system. If they're able to achieve a result, in my case 3 lakhs, if they achieve in revenue, I give them something called as a hall of fame award. And we're given hundreds of these awards over the years. And then from there we have one more level which is like a superstar award. We give the 1 crore champion and now we're giving the 100k award, the 1 million award. Those have crossed $1 million. And at this point as I'm recording this video, we have given more than 3510 crore champion awards which is amazing. So when people get into the community, they're entering a game where learning becomes the outcome. I'm going to repeat that. When people enter your community, you should invite them to a game where learning becomes the outcome and that's what makes them move, move forward and make progress. So the second element of community building is to have gamification where it's activity based, result based and a superstar award that you give. Now the third attribute of a vibrant learning community are rituals. Just like in my spiritual organization or even my business organization, we had specific rituals. We would do specific things on a specific day and the habits that everybody would follow. So I took those ideas from my spiritual movement. In our spiritual movement we had an ABCD ritual. So A stands for association. You would associate with people within the community. B stands for books, we would read all the scriptures regularly. C stands for chanting. We would chant the mantra every single day. And D stands for diet. We would only eat food that was offered to the Lord. So we had this spiritual practice and I follow this even till today, I thought okay, why not? I incorporate some kind of ritual which is applicable for everybody who's coming in. Because when you're building a learning community, people are going to be coming from all different backgrounds, different religions, different cultures, different, different paths, different processes. And you need to be very inclusive when you're building a learning community. So I incorporated three, four rituals. Number one is anybody who comes into our community, they need to write their goals every single day. Two pages of goals. That's the first. Second ritual is everybody needs to listen to this audio called the strangest secret in the world. It's by Earl Nightingale. It's a 1956 audio, amazing audio. In 30 minutes, people understand the power of the mind. The third ritual that I get everybody to incorporate in our community is beside listening to the audio. They need to listen to their own affirmations. They got to read their own affirmations. And these affirmations actually help them reprogram their mind. And it's so simple that even if somebody has no experience, they listen to this. They do this every single day. And before they know it, within three, four months, they are completely rewiring their internal system. So that's the rituals part. And besides that, we also have other, other rituals where we meet every single week. They ask me questions and many other things. The fourth attribute of a community is the vocabulary, the words that you use in a community. So in our community calls, everybody types mpty for a new person. They're like, what is this mpty? Mpty is more power to you. Okay? So when anyone comes in, they rest, they greet each other with that way or anyone has made any achievement, we use some vocabulary like that and I use a lot of other words like bio, bring it on, bo bulb on. If they're learning something new. So I created my own vocabulary or my own set of words where now many people are using those same kind of words in other communities, where now people are able to identify, okay, they're a part of this community. And I again got this idea from my spiritual community. So we would use, we would greet each other in a particular way, we would use specific words in our spiritual communities that only we would be able to understand. So when you're able to create an identity based tribe where people are able to identify that through the language that they are a part of the tribe, there's a sense of belonging that is there. And finally, the fifth attribute of a vibrant learning community is the way that you nurture your community. Because if you're not nourishing and nurturing the Members of your community, online and offline, they will leave. And, and even though you nurture, there will still be people who leave where life takes over. But still when you show up and when you're doing that consistently, people will come back. So in my community right now, people are coming back after four years, after five years they've been attending my calls. So what are the nurturing elements? The first thing is what I call as the inner circle call. Every Thursday I do an inner circle call where people come into that call, I answer questions and I reiterate on what is our mission. I give them clarity to go out and do whatever work that they're supposed to do and give them all the actions. The second call that I do is the hackathons. So the hackathons are an action oriented call where I nurture them, I teach them for one hour and I make them implement for one hour. It's more like an implementation call. So the hackathon is to help my community members build skills and the inner circle call is to help the community members build faith in themselves, faith in the system, faith in the mentor and faith in the process. And these two are very critical elements to community building. And besides this, every six months I do live events because online we can do only so much. But when they come to a live physical room, which I do in Chennai, in Leela palace every six months we have our freedom business retreat, Freedom Champions retreat. We have 800,000 people in the room we meet every six months. When they come and meet each other, it's pure magic. And then there in that retreat, I share different success stories of people. You know, all the students have achieved different kind of results. And in that live retreat I give awards and we have different kinds of awards. The hall of fame award, the Diamond Club award with the 1 crore champion award, the 10 crore champion award, the 20 crore champion award, we have all these different awards. So when people, new people come into these events, they are like blown away and they say, next event I'm going to be coming to receive an award. So they are so tight into the community and these events inspire them to a whole different level that they are not only loyal to the community, they are so dedicated to the process and they actually end up getting results. So now that you've understood what are the attributes of building a vibrant learning community, let me close this by telling you why this is important. See, today we're living in a world which is so connected digitally, anyone can message anybody in any part of the world. We have WhatsApp we have social media and everything else, but in such a connected world, the sad truth is people are so disconnected with themselves. The biggest epidemic right now is loneliness. If you look at the teenagers and you look at even the adults, most of them are going through loneliness. And mental health issues are on the rise. And according to me, I feel that the only tangible solution to this problem is these vibrant learning communities. Like today, when people attend my calls, a lot of them say that, you know, I'm getting a lot of knowledge, that's fine. But I feel at home over here. I feel that I can be heard over here. I feel I'm in a space where I'm not judged. And giving that kind of an environment is priceless today because everywhere you go outside in the world, people are judging you left, right and center. And when people can find a safe space, an oasis, a safe haven where they can go to where they can learn, they can express, they can share their ideas in a non judgmental space, that's where transformation happens. So the reason why I want to inspire you to build a community like Nalanda, like Dakshila, like all these different learning hubs that used to be there, but just that now it has been. The new avatar now is creating your own digital hub and you can have physical experiences. The reason I'm inspiring you that right now through this video is because this is needed in the world. With AI growing on one side and technology booming on one side, the world is going super fast. AI is making our life easier. AI is our co pilot in many ways. It's a teammate. AI is a teammate that can make our life easy in so many ways in terms of generating content, scripting stuff, planning our day, analyzing our life, it can give us so many suggestions. AI is fantastic. But the next frontier of education is human to human connection, is peer to peer learning where every human, every person, if they can be a part of some community where they want to improve in some area of their life. For example, if anyone wants to improve their money situation, they can join a community where somebody is teaching about money principles. Somebody wants to improve their health, they can join a health community. Somebody wants to improve their relationships with their family and their kids, they can join that community. Some of you who want your kids to learn different skills, art, drawing, painting, put them into online communities and connected to offline experiences. There are so many ways. In fact, I have students who are doing massive online trainings completely online. I have one of my students, she teaches pencil, sketching, art and she teaches completely online and she has more than 2,3000 students. One of my other students, he teaches flute online and he has more than 10,000 students. And the question that he had in the beginning was, can I teach flute at scale online? I need to see that person because he's very used to the offline method of doing it. And when he came into our community and applied my community building systems and the peer to peer learning systems, he was able to quickly adapt online, get on Zoom, breakout rooms, facilitators. And that's another thing about community building is when you empower your top students to teach other students, that really takes the load off your back. You don't have to be a superstar. So we have many examples like this in our community of people who are teaching all different topics by building their own vibrant learning communities. So here are the steps for you to start building your community. Step number one, I would like you to click the link in my description and join my community to see exactly how I'm building it. Step number two, find your niche, design your curriculum and put it all into action in the next 90 days. Step number three, by you getting feedback from other people and by you doing one to ones with many others who are interested in the topic that you want to teach, take their feedback and improve your community in the next 12 months, I want to see you build a community of at least 500 to 1,000 people, which is very easy to do in today's day and age. And by you doing that, you're not only going to be improving yourself as a person, but you're going to be helping many others. And according to me, the best way to learn is to teach. Because think about it. When you read a book just for yourself, yes, you will learn something. But when you read that same book to teach it to others, your focus and attention is going to be much higher. And by you teaching it to others, you're going to imbibe that knowledge on a much deeper level. So the best way to learn is to teach, and the best way to grow is to build a community. I'll see you in the next video.