Hey Reader,
The other day, I read a newsletter from Joe Pulizzi titled “Stop Trying to Build a Community.”
And honestly, it hit me harder than I expected.
(You can read it here on LinkedIn)
When I say it hit hard than expected, it is not because I disagreed with it. I didn't. I agreed with it. Joe is a pretty smart guy and I tend to agree with a lot of what he said.
It was also not because we're literally building communities right now - The EDUpreneur Community and our newly re-launched Teach Better Academy Community.
The reason it hit hard is because I realized we’ve spent years making this same mistake at Teach Better.
When we first started Teach Better, we didn’t set out to “build a community.” We just wanted to connect with educators, support them, and hopefully help them reach more students.
The community aspect of it happened organically because there were real relationships being built, shared struggles being discussed, and real people coming together who genuinely wanted to help each other.
But somewhere along the way, I think we started trying too hard to create that community.
We built things. A lot of things.
We created courses, live events, conferences, podcasts, live streams, more live streams, catchy program names, creative new ideas, more live streams. (Yea, there were a lot of livestreams).
To be clear, most of those things were valuable. Some were really successful. And I don't regret any of them. The Teach Better Conference was so much fun, the 12-Hour Lives were always a blast, and live streaming "Cocktails & Randomness" with my buddy Dave Schmittou...wouldn't trade that for the world.
These things helped people. Like, genuinely helped a lot of people.
But lately I’ve been asking myself a hard question:
How many things did we build because people truly needed them...and how many did we build because we thought “this is what a community company should do”?
Honestly, that’s a really uncomfortable question to sit with.
Because I think we slowly started confusing community-building activities with actual community. And those are not the same thing.
A conference is not a community.
A Facebook group is not a community.
A subscription with a bunch of online courses is not a community.
A livestream is not a community.
Those are all containers in which community might be found. They could be the place or places where people in a community come together, but they aren't the community.
Community is what happens between people.
Community is what comes when we build trust and connection, provide support, and create a place where people feel seen and understood.
Community is knowing there are people who truly get what you’re going through.
Ironically, one of the clearest reminders of this for me is the EDUpreneur Community.
That community didn’t come from us having an idea and then engineering it perfectly.
It started accidentally in a mastermind for school leaders. A few of them mentioned wanting to do some entrepreneurial things and I got excited to help.
We started meeting every week or so and eventually we needed somewhere to organize everything, so we found a platform for it.
It didn't come from our team creating the group on Circle. We created the group because the community needed it.
It grew because educators who were building something wanted a place where they could talk honestly about the challenges, the ideas, and the frustrations, and celebrate some of the wins...with people who understood them and understood the new journey they were on.
That connection came first. The “community” followed.
[You can join the EDUpreneur Community with your first month free here.]
And honestly, I think this realization is a big part of why we recently relaunched the Teach Better Academy.
We didn't relaunch it because we needed something new or because we wanted new features or more stuff to worry about.
We did it because people were telling us they missed what Teach Better used to feel like.
They missed the community.
Not the community as a product, but rather that feeling of belonging to something. The connection, the conversations, the support. The feeling of knowing you aren't alone.
I think the lesson here for all of us building things online is this:
You cannot force community into existence. You can only create spaces where genuine connection has a chance to happen.
You cannot force community into existence through products and programming. Real community is the result of authentic trust and shared experience, not a product or platform.
We spent years trying to build community products...when what people really wanted was connection, trust, and a space where they could learn, grow, and feel seen.
I hope this helps.
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~ Jeff
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I appreciate you.
Jeff Gargas
COO / Co-Founder, Teach Better Team
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P.S. When you're ready, here's how I can help:
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