The Business of Belonging, David Spinks (8/10)

Rating: 8/10

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🤔 Pre Read Exercise: What Do I Know About This Topic/Book?

• I run Seed Club Ventures, which, by name, is a “VentureDAO,” but it’s ultimately a community (of investors). Plus, we invest in communities/DAOs and community/DAO infrastructure and tooling and were launched in partnership with Seed Club, an accelerator for tokenized communities and DAOs.
• Sooo… I have a decent understanding of the trend towards community building and some of the fundamental building blocks required in order to build, develop, and grow a community, but I don’t really have a drawn-out theory around this, no really “in the weeds” or specific advice other than general business tips and hacks.
• I’ve heard a lot of great things about David Spinks via Discord and Twitter, and this book stood out to me as essential reading for someone in my role.

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. A “how to” on how to use community to make more money and grow your business
2. An end-to-end explanation of how to start, build, develop, and grow a community
3. Very short, efficient, and accessible book with a lot of focussed, practical advice

🎨 Impressions

If you want a TLDR of this book, just watch David’s presentation at OnDeck.

David Spinks is the founder of CMX - essentially a community for people launching and managing communities.

I liked this book because it’s grounded in David’s professional experiences and diverse knowledge base. I also like this book because community is something David’s been working on and passionate about for decades, and he’s seen how it’s evolved with tech trends and is therefore aware of the dynamic and ever-changing technological floor we stand on.

Another thing I really liked is that David emphasizes that community for the sake of community is no use and that if a community has no purpose, it’s not worth your business’s time. From the beginning, he makes clear the purpose of this book is to make evident why focusing on community, as a business, will make you more money and justify its existence in terms of return to investment. This was good, but I would have also appreciated at least some focus on general vibes and fun. I know it’s out there already and not his unique domain expertise, but it still would’ve been cool to include.

I would have liked David to outline more deeply how a community can be a business in and of itself – his focus is mostly on how existing businesses can develop powerful communities (e.g. Salesforce, etc).

I didn’t rate this book a 9 or 10 because: a) it wasn’t super mind-blowing or memorable, b) the writing was a little stale, c) despite being short and accessible, I feel it could have been a series of blog posts / written in 100 pages.

🔍 How I Discovered It

• David’s around Twitter and Seed Club’s Discord.

🥰 Who Would Like It?

• People running businesses with a product to sell
• Community professionals
• People thinking about communities in the context of business

☘️ How the Book Changed Me

• Made me more conscious of how significant and influential each action a community leader takes has on the community (ripple effects)
• Will make me more conscious of how I behave, what and when I say, etc.