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Episode 7 - But Why?
64 Plays1 year ago
Dylan and Steve talk about why Discord is such a different platform and push folks to answer the hard question: why are you doing this?
Join the Nervous Discord! http://discord.gg/uwFfB5387v
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Transcript
Challenges of Playing String Instruments
00:00:00
Speaker
That was very sneaky starting to record when I was mid-thought. Yeah. Yes, indeed. So here's the thing. Barre chords are the worst. Yes, they are. I actually hate barre chords. I think the problem is that my fingers, when one of them is completely straight pushing down, my other fingers are like, our work here is done and don't want to do anything.
00:00:21
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we both play ukulele, you play banjo, I also play bass, and I've started kind of playing guitar again. And I am hot trash at the guitar. And it's specifically because there's too many goddamn strings. It's true. There's too many strings, even sometimes like on the five string banjo that I play, I run into a little bit of the
00:00:48
Speaker
Like, what do I do when I get down enough, far enough on the fretboard to get to the fifth string? And I'm like, I just ignore it. That's what I do. I just ignore it. It doesn't need to do anything. I mean, there is sort of a jingly aggression present in the guitar that is just sort of impossible on bass and or ukulele and or banjo. There's a thing that you can do there that feels deeply, deeply satisfying.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah. It's interesting on the banjo because I play the claw hammer style, which means I play the fifth string every time I play as a separate note. So it gives it that steady constantness that you don't get on like a ukulele or probably even a guitar really, unless you're getting into some more of like the claw hammer style on that. Wow.
00:01:33
Speaker
I mean, I know exactly two things, three things about the banjo. This is what I know about the banjo. I know Steve Martin plays the banjo and I know Jack and I know shit. That's it. Those are the three things I know about the banjo.
00:01:47
Speaker
So
Cultural History of the Banjo
00:01:48
Speaker
here's a fun fact. The most interesting fact I learned about the banjo when I started playing is that it is a evolution of a traditional African instrument that was brought over by slaves from Africa. And so it's traced back. It's like musical lineages.
00:02:04
Speaker
is hugely American. Banjos weren't invented anywhere else. They were invented in America, whereas most other instruments were like, this came from this country that we then stole. This was created to share stories and songs of the people that were forced to come here. So the African instrument that it's like based off of, what's the difference between that and what we know is the modern banjo?
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, so then this is very basic and probably partially incorrect, but the way I understand it is most of the African type banjos were two and three string made with a gourd or some other kind of naturally grown thing versus the American banjo which was using some sort of skin stretched over like a drum basically. I think the original banjos in the US were two and three string
00:02:51
Speaker
gourd based instruments. I actually have a whole book on it but it's written by smart people and I'm not smart enough to read and understand it because they use big words I don't know. I really like the phrase two and three string gourd based instruments. Yeah there's still people who actually make gourd banjos that you can order that are pretty nice they just have a very different sound. Get the fuck out of here for real? Yeah maybe maybe next year I'll get myself a gourd banjo.
00:03:15
Speaker
Is that the historical equivalent of like the cigar box banjos? Like cigar box guitars or like a washtub bass? Kind of, yeah. It's a similar thing. I think it is just more of a traditional how the instruments were originally built in like Africa. And then it just kind of slowly became, you know, Americanized with more modern equipment and design things. But yeah, it's a fascinating instrument. History is weird as shit. History is weird as shit.
Podcast as Privileged Viewpoint Outlet
00:03:45
Speaker
Well, I'm Dylan. And I'm Steve. And we are nervous.
00:04:11
Speaker
Oh, shit. This is great. There are very few things in this world that make me happier than living up to my full potential as a pretentious white dude with a podcast.
00:04:24
Speaker
Yep. It's true. It's, it's one of the things I've been going for most of my life is how to live to the fullest of my pretentious white ass wholeness. And I think this podcast is going to allow us to do it. I think this podcast 100% is, is allowing us the opportunity to truly be the irritating white men that we are.
00:04:45
Speaker
And I think one of the funny things about that is, you know, we're just being clear and honest about what this podcast is about. And it's it's about us telling you how things should be and you should listen because we know what we're talking about. Yeah. Like every white bearded male.
00:05:03
Speaker
in the tech industry. I just have a mustache now. Don't you be putting me in that weird beard situation. All right, that's fine. I mean, I'm maintaining the full beard, though, for both of us, so. I appreciate that. Anything for you, buddy.
00:05:17
Speaker
And I think what we want to talk about today is the importance of telling your community what the community is about, not just assuming they'll figure it out.
Community Purpose and Communication on Discord
00:05:30
Speaker
Right. Clarity. So we're trying to be pretty open and honest here about what this podcast is about, which is to say that this is literally too
00:05:39
Speaker
moderately well-off privileged white guys who have somehow stumbled out of being broke-ass street performers and stumbled into being moderately successful dudes in the American tech industry and
00:05:55
Speaker
We like running communities on Discord. That's it. That's what this whole podcast is just going to be us running our dumb, big, flappy fucking mouths about community because we've decided that that is the coolest thing in the world. And so that's what we're going to do.
00:06:13
Speaker
And what this means or how you can apply this to like your community is by making sure that you know, before you start your discord community, what you want the purpose of that discord community to be. And I think I can say discord community three or four more times in this sentence, if I try discord community. So let me ask you a question. How many potential client meetings have we had where we asked them the very simple question of what is the point of this thing?
00:06:43
Speaker
and they didn't have an answer. Pretty much all the time. Yeah. It seems to be one of those things where Discord has become this shiny potential thing for corporate businesses to use to get more customers, grow their customers, whatever idea they have. And so they're like, we're just going to start a Discord. It's going to be awesome. And then they do that. And it's not awesome. It's really hard. And they don't understand why that is.
00:07:11
Speaker
This is a common problem in pretty much any industry, right? People have a strong tendency to do things without asking themselves why first. They'll start a business and they'll assume that the point of the business is just to make money. Well, there's a million and one things that you can do to make money. Why are you starting this business doing this thing?
00:07:34
Speaker
Why are you starting this community around this topic? What is the actual point, purpose, and function of this community? And if you can't answer that, then you probably need to do a lot more work before you
Managing Discord vs Traditional Social Media
00:07:48
Speaker
call dorks like us. Right. Or call dorks like us and know that we're going to expect you to have answers to those questions and we're going to keep pushing until you're able to answer them satisfactorily because
00:08:01
Speaker
If you don't, then what you're creating is a community that has no purpose and you're going to be in a constant fight to get people to give a shit. Yeah. People need purpose in the same way that like a business needs vision, right? You need to have somebody at the top who has like a clear idea of what this thing is supposed to do.
00:08:23
Speaker
That's really how everything in this world works and community is certainly no different. There needs to be a person in charge who has a clear idea of what the goals are and
00:08:35
Speaker
These are not like internal only goals. Like this is not the kind of thing where you and your like internal team sit down and you're like, what do we want this to do? And then you list out all the things you want it to do. And then you go great. And then you lock it away in a little notebook and jam it in your company fire safe and then never speak of it again. These goals need to be directly communicated to your community because otherwise they don't know why they're there either.
00:09:02
Speaker
with a lot of servers, and it's even, I'm sure this is true in the broadcast social media as well, where on broadcast social media, you throw a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and then once you figure out what works for your audience, you double down on that. With a Discord community, you have to know what you're gonna throw at the wall before you throw it at the wall, because otherwise you could potentially alienate your community, and since you're not just sending it out into the void,
00:09:30
Speaker
It's not going to help your brand if you're just like, we're going to be a community that's about discounts or we're going to be a community that's just about cats and then pivot. You're going to lose all the people who are there for the cats. Yeah. This is kind of a common growing pain that we're seeing, like across many, many different kinds of companies.
00:09:47
Speaker
that are trying to make the move into Discord communities is that with all the rest of their social, what they've actually become accustomed to, whether they understand it or not, is they've become accustomed to creating content around an algorithm. And that's what they're doing, right? Is they've realized this channel, this channel, this channel, this channel, all these channels are ruled by an algorithm. And so what they're doing is they're creating content specifically to make that algorithm
00:10:16
Speaker
go forth and get them sales. There's no algorithm on Discord. It's literally just you. It's the equivalent of that nightmare you used to have where you show up for class naked and there's a test that you didn't know about and you have no pencil and you're just completely unprepared. Like showing up on Discord, you can't just sort of assume, well, if I do this one thing that worked last time, it's just gonna work. Like it doesn't work that way because this is,
00:10:42
Speaker
This is a community. This is like a live, constant, ongoing, back and forth conversation with people. And it's people, their needs change, their interests change, their attention changes, their wants change. Like everything is going to continuously change about this community. And man, I got to tell you, it is a lot fucking harder to maintain a conversation with a large group of people than it is to just pay attention to the algorithm and throw out something that it's going to pick up.
00:11:11
Speaker
Right, and so, Steve, how do you make it so your community knows what the community is for? How do you actually do that? Why should we tell people that shit for free on a podcast? No! Ooh, smart! Cross my phone! Like and subscribe! Cross my phone with silver, motherfuckers! No, um...
00:11:34
Speaker
I mean, yes, awesome. That would be great. But yeah, what you need to do is this is this is part of the process, right? And this is something where if you start a Twitter account, everybody has the assumption that you're going to use that Twitter account to do what everybody else uses their Twitter account for, which is to blast out updates and announcements about your brand. Okay. That's what you would normally use a Twitter account for. But what you would normally use a Discord for is conversation.
00:12:04
Speaker
And it's not a given what that conversation is going to be. It's not a given in any conversation, in any relationship with people, like what is going to be expected from one moment to the next. So what you have to learn how to do differently.
00:12:19
Speaker
with Discord as a platform is you have to actively and openly communicate your ideas and intentions to your community at all times. In the same way that a business plan is intended to be a living document that changes as the business changes, as the industry changes, as the customers change. In the same way that consent is like an ongoing act.
00:12:44
Speaker
Community is an ongoing act. There are ongoing needs and everything is going to change relatively quickly and constantly. And the only thing that you can really count on with your community is that if you stop listening for the briefest of moments, you are going to lose them.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, and this is this is the trick. You know, we say you need to have a plan about what your community is about. And then Steve says, but it also changes all the time. And this is all super, super true. And it can be just as annoying as it sounds because you can't just make a plan and say this is what we're going to do and then walk away and assume that's going to happen.
Feedback and Strategy Adaptation
00:13:23
Speaker
It is a cycle of, hey, we want to talk about this thing. We want to talk about this new product we have launching. We had the designer come on. He talked about it. It was really exciting. Everyone should be excited about it. But then you need to listen to your community, see how they react to that so that you know in the future, oh, this kind of event was super popular. Or no one liked that. So let's not do that again. How else can we make people excited about our product?
00:13:51
Speaker
Um, especially since on your discord, those are going to be your current customers, not new customers. So they're the ones that have already liked your stuff and have a vested interest in your success. So how can you make sure that they're getting what they need from the discord? Yeah. I mean, and let's be really clear here too. Like we use the word community a lot, but man, we've been talking to some companies lately that have definitely kind of, they're struggling to understand what that actually means, especially in this sort of context.
00:14:21
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of companies that we've talked to lately that they believe that reading the comments on Instagram is community. Occasionally replying to the comments on Instagram. That's community. No.
00:14:35
Speaker
That is not, that is you broadcasting something and then occasionally responding to the replies to it. You know, that is you standing on a balcony and addressing the crowd and one heckler yells something and then you say something back. That is not community. That is still just broadcasting. I mean, this is real community and you have to be, you have to be confident and secure enough in your brands, in your goals and in your messaging to understand
00:15:04
Speaker
that when you stand out in a group of people and you're all standing and speaking to each other at the same level, that you're not always gonna get back what you're expecting or what you hope. And you need to be ready and willing to listen to that. You need to be ready to re-examine all of your own biases and all of your own initial motivations and respond in a way that actually makes sense, not just to you, not just to your vision, but to what your community actually wants.
Goals and Control in Discord Communities
00:15:34
Speaker
And the nice thing is, is that when you're starting to build out your community and thinking about a Discord, there are wonderful people like us who can help you once you have that goal of like, this is what I want the community to do. We can help you build a Discord that allows you to do those things and help you brainstorm ideas and help you come up with pivots when it becomes necessary.
00:15:56
Speaker
But if you don't have an end goal for the discord, it's going to be really hard to come up with a plan that allows your company to benefit from having a discord. So in conclusion, damn it folks, listen, just listen.
00:16:13
Speaker
It's pretty simple. Well, it's simple to say it is legitimately hard to do. This is one of the things about this kind of community platform, this kind of community media that is the most difficult is that you really have to understand that part of running a successful community is giving your fans, giving your customers some degree of ownership over the direction of the brand and the direction of the business.
00:16:43
Speaker
You're admitting that you are open to allowing them to help steer things a bit. And as a small business owner, as a brand owner, it's a really hard thing to relinquish that kind of control to the mob.
00:16:58
Speaker
Essentially, you know, you're just, you're letting the crowd decide things for you, but you got to trust that your audience is there for the same reasons that you are. And trust that when you build something, it can be greater than the sum of its parts and community really can be the thing that elevates your brand far, far beyond what you ever could have imagined. Strong agree.
Episode Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:17:23
Speaker
Well, thank you for listening to the Nervous podcast.
00:17:28
Speaker
Seriously, subscribe if you haven't already, give us ratings, all that stuff. That'd be great, we'd appreciate it. You can join us in our Discord, check out our website, and see us wherever we show up. Yep. Everybody have a great day. Alright, bye kids.
00:18:08
Speaker
Bye!