FOR LOCALS AND LOCAL LEADERS

How to get people behind your idea

Most community projects that stall make the same mistake. They bring people in too early.

Someone has an idea and gets excited. They call a meeting. Twenty people show up with twenty opinions.

The idea gets watered down, a committee is formed, and six months later nothing has happened, because nobody owns it.

No Better Place sets out a different order. Test it cheaply first. Then start with one person.

Test it with as little as possible

Before you put serious time or money in, test your idea with as little as possible.

• Can you do a trial run? A weekend. A month. A single batch. Something small enough that failure costs almost nothing.
• Can you find one customer, one user, one participant? You don't need a hundred. You need one person who isn't your friend or family to engage with the idea genuinely.
• Can you build a basic version with what you already have? No new equipment, no new premises, no new funding. Just what's in the shed, on the laptop, or in your skill set.
• Can you measure something? Count it: how many people came, how much was sold, how many enquiries. Data beats hope.
• Can you learn one thing from the test that tells you whether to keep going, adjust or stop?

Bring people in when you can show

Bring people in when you can show, not just tell. When you've done the test and it worked. When you've written the vision and it's clear.

When you can say: here's what I've done, here's what it proved, and here's what I think we should do next.

Start with one person

Say you've got a small proof of concept. You've been carrying the idea for months, and now you're ready to move.

Don't call a public meeting. Call one person: someone you trust, who'll tell you straight. Show them what you've built and ask, what do you think?

They might say: I've been thinking the same thing.

Now there are two of you. Find a third through real conversations with people you respect.

A crew, not a committee

The team forms slowly. It's a crew rather than a committee: people who believe in it as much as you do, and are willing to put in the time.

You meet at the pub, at the kitchen table, in the car on the way to somewhere else. There's no constitution or logo. There's a shared conviction and a willingness to do the work.

People will throw rocks

The right people will lean in. The wrong people will find reasons why it won't work. Both responses are useful.

The first tells you who your crew is. The second tells you what objections you'll need to address.

Someone will say it's too risky. Someone will say it's been tried before. Someone will say the timing is wrong.

That doesn't make your idea a bad one. People only throw rocks at things that are moving.

Three to five people

Your job is to find three to five people who see what you see, and build with them.

The rest of the town will come around when they can see the results. Or they won't, and that's fine too. You're not running for office. You're building something.

The full guide, No Better Place, is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.

You can build your own plan at cultivatefarms.com/plan.