Show notes
Gabriele Donati spoke about his work with TimeRepublik, the world’s first purpose-driven social network. TimeRepublik offers a global online platform for users to provide services in exchange for TimeCoins that can be used to purchase other services on TimeRepublik. With a global reach, TimeRepublik built a strong online community of users that value their social network platform. Lately, People Helping People podcast episodes are focused on how to build a stronger audience and community around your business, so this conversation with TimeRepublik reflects that theme. Alongside building a community, the business is shifting expectations people have for in personal interactions. Gabriele described TimeRepublik’s function as “a digital platform where you can exchange time instead of money.” He followed up, explaining that there’s an idea of taking money out of the equation: “It’s because we are more interested in creating relationships between people rather than transactions.” Gabriele emphasized the process of building trust between users, and how those bonds open doors. Unlike currency exchanges that can be “one and done”, the service-exchange approach on TimeRepublik starts a mutual effort on both sides to fully communicate. In the beginning, the platform was made to be global one-on-one exchanges, then, the team realized how powerful the exchanges become when given a common space. Users of the platform can create groups/ communities to connect with people of a similar interest. Groups allow for people to find each other much more easily, while strengthening the bonds in the interactions. Gabriele gave an inside look at a project involving principles of TimeRepublik within companies. In the project, staff were placed in a small group and told to offer a service of one of their passions, not what’s considered their traditionally “professional” skill”. Gabriele gave an example of what happens when people gloss over what is considered a passion, talent, or hobby. Sometimes society is so clear on sticking to an imaginary limit we place on ourselves that we forget the things that help our different traits shine. On the actual platform, people are more than happy to help once they identify their talents. Gabriele jokingly expressed how the team needs to remind users to post requests for help themselves. People come willing to help, and almost forget that they can request a service. Gabriele shared that the trend is mainly from users being excited to be on the platform, and he also mentioned that part of it may come from stigma. Gabriele expressed that culture sometimes relates asking for help as a weakness, which creates the unnecessary stigma. Another reason for the trend connected to the thought that once you ask for something, you are immediately indebted to give something. We both agreed that society can choose more empowering perspectives. By allowing someone to help you, you are gifting that person the moment of happiness they get from helping you. There’s a mutual reciprocity, which leads back to the relationships and trust needed in community building. If you would like to learn more, visit their website. Read Full Transcript Adam: [00:00:00] Welcome to People Helping People, the podcast to inspire greater social change and give you ideas on how to take action. I'm your host, Adam Morris. Today, we're speaking with Gabriele Donati who co-founded TimeRepublik, Switzerland with his high school friend, Karim Varini after learning about the power of time baking and exploring how to grow a global community on the internet. TimeRepublik, founded in 2012, prides itself on being the world's largest time bank and the first social network that actually makes you happier. They have over a hundred thousand members in a hundred countries with people connecting and sharing their time. What fascinates me most is their approach to building a successful community online. This is a question that so many social entrepreneurs have when they're launching their business. So I'm excited to dive in. Gabriele welcome on the podcast. Gabriele: [00:00:47] Thank you for having me. Adam: [00:00:48] Can we start off, can you tell us a little bit about TimeRepublik? Gabriele: [00:00:52] TimeRepublik is really a digital platform where you can exchange time instead of money. So this is like the shortest version that I can give you. The idea of taking money out of the equation. It's because we are more interested in creating a relationship between people rather than transactions. So today technology is an amazing tool to create transactions, but they're forgetting about the relationship part, which is basically our goal. Adam: [00:01:18] Why is this form of TimeBanking helpful for individuals? Gabriele: [00:01:22] Time But 10 banking has been around for many centuries, actually. The modern inventor it's Edgar Cahn, is actually in DC is still alive is 86 years young. I think, around there. And he basically creates a time banking mostly to help the disenfranchised. So it became a more of a movement of volunteer movement to help the elderly do or the veterans or disenfranchised. This is a great idea for us because, when we decided to create a space where money was out of the equation, as I said, we did it really know time banking, and then researching it, we found out this, the system was already available. And the amazing things of time banking is that one hour it's equal for everybody involved. So no matter what you do, no matter if you're like a surgeon or a musician, your hour is worth the same. And it's not like saying that, were giving you a value or we'd like flattening the curve of the values. We're actually saying we're not so concerning measuring the values of people's skills, but you're more concerned in measuring the relationships. In creating relationships, which for us is the most important thing, because only through relationship, you can generate trust between people. And once you generate trust, then everything is possible. Really the spectrum of possibilities. Once you know, you trust me and I trust you. It's much greater, you become part of my family, my community, and I opened so many more doors to you once we have that. This is what really time banking is about. And that's why we adopted the same model for TimeRepublik. Adam: [00:02:59] I have a question on just like how you build that trust when somebody uses the platform what's that experience like when somebody comes in. Gabriele: [00:03:06] It's pretty challenging because the barrier of entry. It's much higher than let's say creating engagement. like on regular social media platforms without mentioning any names, TimeRepublik, it's not necessarily just to, or to post a silly joke or a meme, you really have to be engaged, so you really have to do something. So it's, let's say to start the process and to find the diamond, that, that precious thing, it requires a little effort. And not, once you create an exchange, let's say, because someTimeRepublik, I should say it may be a little bit, how it works. Basically, you registered on the platform, you fill out your profile and then we give you some time coins, which is just a fancy way to call the currency of time. One time coin equals 15 minutes. And then we basically gift you a five five hours, which is 20 time coins. And then you can start spending those time coins by posting requests. Let's say you need a logo for your business. So you need some legal advice. Anything you need, you can post a request and then you can pay the people that help you with that, with those time coins. It really looks like a service exchange platform, is like task rabbits or like those services exchange platforms. But the service exchange is really the excuse to start something else, Right. You can, of course, you get something because your logo gets done and pretty nice, because we have some great graphic designers on TimeRepublik, but also it starts a new relationship. You recognize it only once, once you try it. And once you find it, because it's funny because we're so used in the market economy, that anything you do, I, let's say I exchange a fee, a service with you. As soon as I pay with money with feared currency is like saying, Okay, our relationship stops right now. You get, I got what I want, I pay with what you want and that's it. Bye-bye right on TimeRepublik one's time is involved is exact opposite. We start with a service exchange, you helped me and I get something from you. And instead of stopping, this relationship, I say, Okay. this is basically we lay the foundations to create something more meaningful, something deeper and not in a new agey way. I'm not saying, kumbaya now we're friends, as I said, you only experienced it once you try it, because we are so used to get like money for anything that once. You have this awkward moment that, okay, I did something, you did something, and I pay you with this time that, it's really not tangible. Okay. Is this, what is the catch? What's happening now? You know what and, nothing happens, that's it. We just create something deeper with this person. And we see that. Just how people communicate with each other. Let's say we did a semantic analysis of the word count of the chat, the typical chat on TimeRepublik and typical messages on chat on other platforms. And on TimeRepublik is like the word count is three times more. Adam: [00:06:08] Wow. Gabriele: [00:06:09] So it means that people take more time to express what they need to be more appreciative. And to tell you a little something more about, about themselves, and this is really what we valued. It's, this is why we created TimeRepublik. And that's how we designed the platform for you to, to do that. As I said, we don't have likes, we don't have a wall where you can post pictures where you can. Know, tell us everything about your life, but we just give you a tool to basically exchange real things with people. Adam: [00:06:42] It sounds like that generates a much deeper connection between people when it's not just a monetary exchange because you're actually showing up and giving your time. Gabriele: [00:06:52] Absolutely. And this is, what we're really about. That's what human beings are for, but again, technology, and I don't want to, blame everything on technology because it's a paradox. We are a digital platform, but. We forget that what makes us happy is really helping somebody else. If you strip down all the BS of relationships between people, what really makes us happy to help you and you get a benefit and, I put a smile on your face. This is really Yeah, basic human dynamics. We're a social animal, social animal means that, we're helping each other, but what makes us, that's what gives us meaning and purpose. So technology is not doing that anymore. So Facebook, promised us like in 2005 that it was going to connect the world and everybody thought that everybody would be much happier. We've connected. Wow. I can connect with everybody. And the first part is, they did it amazingly because that's what they did. The, 80 billions people on Facebook. So this is great. As I said, I'm not criticizing Facebook at all because the first part was fundamental and they did agree the second part to make us happy. It's. It's just, it failed us, there's just not enough to connect with technology. It's just not enough to create, do those connections. You really have to go a step further. And this is, what we're trying to do with TimeRepublik to create basically a social network with purpose, which is a paradox nowadays, because social media is basically purposeless or leveraging on the dynamic that everybody knows, like narcissism, voyeurism. And so forth that just creates more alienation and more solutide and loneliness and depression. There's plenty of studies that shows that kids are much more depressed if they spend eight hours on Instagram to show to look at people's lives. Adam: [00:08:55] That makes a lot of sense. One of my friends, Jay Clouse recently was talking about this where, everyone, he follows on Instagram. He's curated to be like people he looks up to. And so people that are much better than him. And, he's doing great stuff, but he said, all of a sudden he has all of this, anxiety around his own performance because he sees all these other people doing really much better. It's very easy to forget that you are where you are and so that makes a lot of sense. But I think this point that you make we're really happy when we are helping somebody else. Like that is a really important point. I've been involved in a course called Creativity and Personal Mastery. And Dr. Rao has this, the spiel where he says, anytime that you're in a fight with somebody or angry or upset you're living and then a me-centered universe where you're focusing on yourself, and if you shift that to another center universe where you're looking at, Hey, how can I contribute to somebody else and take yourself out of that equation then, know, all of a sudden there's nothing to get angry about because it's not about me. And so it makes the sense that, Hey, when you're helping somebody, all of a sudden, it's not a transaction of what am I getting? It's you know, you take that, oh, I'm getting this and I'm giving money. And all of a sudden it's we're sharing time. Gabriele: [00:10:08] Yeah. As I said, it takes a little longer and it's not as challenging as I said, we've been around for nine years, as I said earlier we did all the possible mistakes. Like every startup, but we still around, so it means that we're doing something right, is we will actually creating something that people need. Otherwise, people wouldn't use it. But it takes a lot of effort. And at the beginning, we wanted to scale like Facebook or like Instagram, right then. We would see, like only two people using it. Then the 20, 2000 and 20,000 is never enough. But, it's, once, once you realize that the community in TimeRepublik or people that you're dealing with is so much more powerful. It's so much more meaningful, you can get things done. I replied to this request three days ago. Was this girl, I think in Portugal, she posted a request that she wanted to create a round table to talk about spirituality in general. She was not very precise. And I replied to that request because I've been doing some reading lately that I wanted to share with her. So she replies back to me like the day after saying, listen, I got overwhelmed by your replies. So what I'm thinking of creating like a zoom meeting. So we can all get together. So I don't have to do this one one-to-one exchange so we can all share together. And that's what we did. We met on Monday and we spent like an hour and a half just talking about these things. And and then she decided to create a community on term Republic on that topic, because it was so successful. And it's incredible. The people you meet, the level of. Of thinking and intellect that these people had. I I was talking to strangers on every corner of the world and going pretty deep into the discussion. And I said, man, this is incredible. It's something that I never experienced on any other platforms. Of course you hear it from me, I'm the founder and CEO TimeRepublik. It seems that I try to sell your product, but, as I said, you just have to try it and see it for yourself. You constantly meet people that just want to, To do better and to go to the extra to, to express, something that is much more meaningful than,…
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