Navigating the Spectrum of Tiny Living Community Models

In this episode, Laura Lynch and Jill Kanto discuss the transformative power of tiny living and intentional communities. Jill shares her personal journey into tiny living, the challenges she faced, and the benefits of living in community. They explore how intentional communities can address societal struggles, enhance mental and physical health, and create a supportive environment. Jill provides insights on how to start an intentional community, navigate power dynamics, and the importance of shared values among members. The conversation highlights the growing interest in community living as a solution to modern isolation and the desire for deeper connections. In this conversation, Jill Kanto and Laura Lynch discuss the nuances of creating intentional communities, particularly in the context of tiny homes. They explore the spectrum between transactional and intentional community models, the importance of community leadership, and the dynamics of ownership. The discussion emphasizes the value of conflict resolution as a means for growth and the necessity of effective decision-making tools to foster collaboration. Jill shares insights on permaculture principles and encourages listeners to seek knowledge from community experts.

For full show notes and more information visit: https://bit.ly/4086fHJ

Go to www.altamericandream.com

Transcript

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It takes a brave and independent mindset to go tiny. If you are trying to figure out your tiny pivot, this podcast is here to inspire and connect you with the other unconventional, gritty, inspirational people within this community. I am Laura Lynch, your tiny house friend and host. On this show, we are always going to come back to money because as a financial planner, this is the question I hear the most. How do I make this work for me financially? Well, that's my jam, so jump in, let's go. New episodes drop every Thursday. a little disclaimer to get started with this episode. I am on the road. Got to speak at a financial planner conference about tiny houses. So not in my studio. So apologies for any audio glitches, but I thought this conversation was super valuable and that we had to do it anyway. So welcome Jill Canto to Last House, More Mula podcast. Super excited to chat with you today. You and I connected in Colorado at the Colorado house festival and that was awesome because I had been on your website a lot before that so thank you for being here. Thank you for having me I don't know if I remember you telling me that you had been on the site before so I it's really good to hear that you found it useful and I so appreciate having you having me here and meeting you is one of the highlights for me at the Colorado tiny house festival I very excited to meet you and you are my lifeline because that was such an ad hoc last minute endeavored for me to go to that festival and you are my coffee supply. So I really appreciate that. Yeah, that was awesome and super hot. And I just had so much compassion for you out there camping as you know, all the other people staying in their in their vans and ambulances and whatever it was. It was a thing. It was 102 degrees. My tent was a sauna. It felt like a sauna at different points. It was it was an interesting experience. But anytime art is throwing a a festival it's worth going to. So I'm very glad that I went. Yeah, that's awesome. So Jill, if you will, would you introduce yourself and the work that you do within the Tiny Home community? Sure. My name is Jill Canto. I went Tiny in 2015 and I've had a really difficult time finding parking and that led to me developing the site, which is now called choosetiny.com. It was, it had a much longer name before search tinyhousevillages.com. And so choosetiny.com started as a listing of tiny house parking spots with a focus on communities and neighborhoods. I have a, background is in studying intentional communities and I've lived in a small intentional community for the past eight years. And for the past, since 2013 or so I've, so it's past 11 years, I've been visiting and studying and going to conferences about tiny house communities. so the website is It includes all types of parking spots, especially with tiny houses. We can't be too picky and exclude because it's, while it's much better, I'm finding a place to park. We want to keep as much information out there to help people, but it is, it is for the purpose of the site is to help people, but also to point the needle towards the benefits of intentional communities, the tools for intentional communities so that people ultimately can have the option of living intentionally should they want to. So this is a point of mutual interest that we have in that as listeners may recall, I did a six month permaculture design course during which a lot of talk about intentional communities and cultivating that and how that adds value to the community's life and the individuals who live in it. Share with us kind of. Why it is that you have dedicated your personal time, because this isn't your full-time gig, right? Working in the tiny space, but this is a personal project for you. Why is it so important to you to get the word out about Intentional Community and Tiny Living? Well, Tiny Living for me was a lifeline. I was a newly divorced single mother of two small children, and there was not enough hours in the day, nor enough money in my bank to make it work, despite trying. I just kept finding my health spiraling and I wasn't getting the quality time that I wanted with my children. So I went tiny under exigent circumstances for the financial aspects, but I like to think that I would have gone tiny eventually for the other reasons, like the social, the full living community would be the social benefits, but also the ecological benefits where you're living a gentler life, you're reducing your carbon footprint in many ways, not just by living in a smaller space. If you move, you don't have to go through the entire moving process of all the boxes and getting rid of stuff and getting new stuff. And the lowered electrical usage and water usage. Those are the reasons I went tiny. Why I help other people is because, well, I've always been somebody that really enjoyed being in the giving space. get a lot of, I mean, it's in a selfish sense. I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. Seeing. when I'm at these festivals as a speaker, seeing a spark go off in somebody's eye when I'm imparting information on them. And I can see their life arc just got nudged in a little bit of a different direction. And there's really nothing that compares to that. It's a little bit addictive to know that your existence has helped somebody else. But on top of that, was, in the past, I'm a web developer, so in the past I'd been doing a lot of help with animal rescue and other like... environmental projects through web development. And I was just realizing that these problems are just getting bigger and bigger and I'm just trying to plug holes. So I thought living tiny and especially living tiny intentionally in community is recreating the structure. So those holes don't happen as much. So it felt like a more strategic way to try to leave an impact. Yeah, so let's dive into that a little bit more in terms of how you see community living, solving, plugging those holes. What are the benefits that you see why does community living appeal to you? So I think that the way that our society is currently set up leaves a lot of people in struggles that aren't that if things were restructured, their struggles wouldn't happen. And then without the tools to even recover from a lot of those struggles. So I think that the current setup that we have, it's going to take a long time to create enough change where that's not happening. And I think that tiny house communities or living, even just living tiny is an interesting current method that you can survive within that type of imperfect structure that we have. And also, something that can move the needle towards fixing the imperfect structure that we have. I think that some of the benefits of living tiny, did you say just living tiny or living tiny in community? I have one. Okay. I think some of the benefits of living in community. Well, so there's, could, this is where I could get really nerdy and this podcast would last about three hours. So I'm going to try to stick to high levels because there are so many ways that you can structure a community, the, The takeaway is that you are reducing, it's like permaculture, you're increasing the yield, you're reducing the labor and you're benefiting the health of the local environment. And so if you replace that with people, you're reducing the labor of the people, you're increasing the mental, physical and emotional health of the people and you are increasing the benefits of everybody that's living there. So on a more granular... granular level, what that looks like is depending on how high of an interdependence level that you're having, what you're sharing with these people. So you can set up a community where you're still moderately independent. know, everybody just has like a shared vision of why they're there. And there's just a minimal required interdependence that can be fine. That might be what some people are looking for. Other people might want a very high level of interdependence, more like in like in an Amish community where they're building each other's houses, know, raising barns and such. so you can, they're one of my favorite communities, not a tiny house community. But, and I just got back from an intentional communities conference there, it's called Twin Oaks in Virginia. And they commit 42 hours per week of labor to the community, but they get all of their, they get their meals cooked. They get their laundry cleaned. They get their houses maintained. They get their cars maintained. They don't have that second and third shift that you and I would have once we're done work. And then we got to go, well, for me, I've got children, know, tend to children, the house maintenance appointments, all those things that we have to do that. you know, that even living tiny, it's easier when you're living tiny, but it's still there. When you're living tiny community, it's even more minimized. So you are really maximizing your free time. Studies were done at Twin Oaks and other intentional communities, and they found that the mental health was much sturdier there and that the physical health was sturdier. So they have, there's a collection of intentional communities. under the umbrella called the Federation of Egalitarian Communities and they have like a shared insurance and their insurance premiums are so low per person because they don't have much mental health or much physical health issues. there's some like there's there's definitely some pros and cons of way that they have their their insurance set up. It's not perfect, but When you are sick, you don't have to work your 42 hours if you can't. If you can only work half of them, if you can work none of them, you have that time to recuperate and to heal. And also, loneliness is a huge epidemic that we're facing within the United States, especially the older you get. You have to really work hard to maintain social connections. Not like when you're in school where there's just people around you all the time. And Maslov's needs, think community social connections should be... right at the top of that, know, diet, sleep, community, communal connections. So, I mean, and there's, there's more, but I don't want to keep this like five hours long. If you have any particular ones that you think that I might not have hit that you'd like me to expand on, be happy to. Yeah. I think that those are, you know, great ideas to spark the. to spark curiosity around intentional community because it is something that many people are longing for. We feel very isolated, perhaps in our single family homes and our communities where we drive in and close the garage door and don't ever get to know our neighbors. And yet the reality is for all of humanity, we had lived in village and community and had created community support networks. mean, I think I've. mentioned before, like the idea around, you know, having a nest egg of dollars to take care of us in retirement. The advent of the 401k did not happen until the year that I was born. So, you know, in the past we took care of our family members and those in our community as they got older instead of expecting those people to pay for all the services and care that they needed, which, you know, paying for services is the whole... whole different, you know, thing that happy family and friends care for you. there's one, if you wanted to move on, I did have more that I just thought of that I wanted to add, but if you want. So I was, I was going to say that there are some, you know, there's so many benefits to living tiny. are also challenges and space is a big one of them, but getting rid of some of your stuff and then like living more minimal lifestyle is one, one solution that we can apply to that. But when you're living tiny. And you get a wave of benefits. But when you're living in tiny community, it potentially it's all of those benefits because let's say that you have shared buildings or shared tools, shared assets, you're pulling labor, you're There's so many examples from Twin Oaks, they pull cars, they pull bicycles, they pull musical instruments. So many things that you have access to that you don't have to store in your tiny house. so you're not reproduced, like you're not reproducing where everybody has their own lawnmower, everybody, you know, all of that type of stuff. So you are. potentiating the benefits and navigating some of the hurdles of living tiny so that it's removing those pain points, not pain points, but it's the small cons of going tiny, it's alleviating those. Yeah, I love that because it's so unnecessary for all of us to own a lawnmower and a weed eater when we only use it for two hours a month. And then we all end up throwing those things away at some point. And it would be far more useful if a pool of people had access to those tools and they shared them and maintained them together. And then they wasted them together instead of us all creating our own massive amounts of Yeah, and you have to be responsible for maintaining it if it breaks or anything of that sort as well. And as example, think that lawnmowers should be wildly less used than they are now on the topic of permaculture because grass is food for lambs and sheep. That's why it's a good thing. I mean, were native grasses in the United States, so I'm not saying that grass is the... enemy, but to have ornamental grass out instead of food is wild to me. Or even like in communal areas, just having steppable plants would be so much better to me than having grass. But that's such an aside. Yes, I agree. I'm often anti-mowing. The grass is not like turf. I'm like, it grow because I love the flowing grass for the prairies. and I don't have to cut the grass because I live in community and somebody else is doing it. Yeah. Awesome. So. If someone says this is a curious topic I've never really explored this idea of living in intentional community or if it's been running across their Instagram feed as it is mine how everybody's posting things like can't we just you know You know leave it all behind and go buy some land and live in a place with all my you know good friends It seems to be a common trend. How would one Go about learning about how to start and set up and legally structure perhaps an intentional community. So with my tiny house, I built my tiny house without ever stepping foot in another tiny house because I was building my house under duress. I don't recommend that approach for building a house and I don't recommend that approach for building a community. I would recommend visiting communities that are out there. So if you go to choosetiny.com You can, some of the filters on this, the shoe tiny.com has a lot of filters and some of the filters are culture. So you can pick intentional community under that. Financial, you can pick if there's, if there's like a work share for paying for the cost of living there. There's a few other filters. There's also ic.org and that's the letter I as an intentional, the letter C as in community.org and they are strictly listing intentional communities and. I've actually been in meetings with them and in the directories for much throughout Europe. We're looking at ways that we can all combine the backend of our website so that we can serve globally the lists of intentional communities and tiny house communities. So that's really exciting for me. But this is the book that I always recommend. It's Creating a Life Together by Diana Leaf Christian. Have you read it? You're nodding your head like you're familiar. I'm working through it. Did you not find it amazing? there's so many, there's so many missteps that you can take when you're trying to start a community. And this is just such a lovely, like, like just a guide that will give you all the high level information you need. It's an easy read and it points you to where the deeper information is for any one particular topic that you might need to get through. And a lot of case studies and it for me, it's, it's just, I recommend it to everybody that I, that I come across at the communities at those speaking events. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, there's definitely some great resources out there. And you're so right about going in and experiencing it yourself because we are brought up in a very individualistic culture. And so to make that change would probably be on the scale of going from, you know, a regular house to a tiny house. Like it's a pretty big shift. But it's a spectrum. So community is about what the people that want to live in that. that particular community, it's designing it around what they want. Just like you would do in permaculture, you're designing it around what your needs and wants are. when I go to Twin Oaks, they're fairly hippie, naturalist, which I love, but that might not be everybody's cup of tea. But that's okay. That doesn't mean intentional communities aren't for you. That just means that intentional community isn't for you. There's still so many tools and wonderful... takeaways you can still receive from visiting there. At Twin Oaks though, they do have an intentional communities conference every Labor Day weekend. And it's a weekend of workshops for learning how to live in and or start a community. And it is so invaluable. And at the beginning of every workshop or every conference that they do, they have a meet the communities segment where one person from each forming or existing community will get in a long line. And they get 60 seconds to pitch the themes and the location and if they're accepting members and then they let people know where they're going to be sitting for the next two hours. And then you can just speed date the communities. And so this is great if you want to create a community or live in one. So you can go out to the ones that pique your interest. You can go visit them and ask them questions about, about joining if that's of interest to you or about recreating what they're doing. and also setting up times to come visit if that's something that you would like to do in the future. So I don't know of anywhere else where you can get that type of experience that quickly. And while you're there, you are temporarily an intentional community within an intentional community because each person that's there is required to do one two hour work shift. So you are self, the whole conference is self-sustaining. And it's just, it's a really nice experience to build that community glue on a, like on over three days. you get to experience what building community glue feels like. And the more that you're invested in each other with that glue, the more you care about the outcome of the people that are around you and the stronger and healthier and more resilient your community becomes. So it's just a really nice ad hoc experience of community for those that haven't had it. And that you do have options to visit several communities nearby as part of your weekend as well. And I also, I have tools on my website. One of them in, and I'd like to further develop this, but one of them is a, it's a Google form that you can have all of the people that are interested in starting a community with you and fill out. And it just gets a, and you can, and it's just a model. You can use it, but it's just a model for creating your own. It's just a quick way to get an idea of like the deal breakers and the different expectations that people are hoping to have within this community, because it is very hard to have those conversations about, cause you're, it's like trying to found a company. and marry 30 people at the same time. it's so, you've got the odds stacked against you and interpersonal relationships, we're not, as a country, we're not strong on those. So it's a lot to navigate. So it's just a quick tool to get a visual representation of where everybody is instead of having a million meetings and finally getting to that conclusion in a much clunkier way. So I recommend, and on that topic, like there's a formal consensus as the decision-making model has a lot of. tools within it that help move discussions really quickly. And it's a great decision-making model that empowers people to feel like they are part of the ship that's sailing as the communities. It's a great model to start with. There's other ones as well, but even if you don't adopt consensus, formal consensus, I recommend looking at some of the tools just so can have fast, effective meetings. Yes. Yes. I think that's one of the big challenges, of decision-making. and getting the community on board with things. And also power dynamics. It seems like I'm reading in the Starhawk book, right? This case study of sort of power dynamics, like the power that the founding members have over others and kind of how you deal with those power dynamics and the resentment caused by preferential treatment perhaps and things like that. that's, whoo. So that's why I recommend having, so with the community that I'm in and I just happen to have a benevolent dictator in my community, you know, there's a woman that owns the farm and she is just an amazing person. She lives here. And I just lucked out that I just have like the most wonderful family that owns the community I'm on. But there is a power dynamic. As wonderful as she is, I find it difficult sometimes to bring things up to her because she's my landlord effectively, even though they're family to me, you know, there's still that invisible power dynamic. So what I recommend when people are starting communities is looking at the people around them and recognizing that the people that they're starting with might not be the people that they end with. And that's okay, that's healthy because learning as you're moving along and learning what it is that are important to you for the core concepts for your community. other people learning that their core concepts don't align is the best thing for you. And that's not, it can hurt and sting, but that's net win after the fact because you want to, your core group needs to, let me put it this way, every person that you're bringing on as a member is putting a hand on the steering wheel. So you want to have whatever the core principles of your community are. You want those people to share that. And so it's important to get that defined. And it's a win knowing that you've been able to define that. And each person that puts their hand on the wheel is going to see it a little bit differently. And that needs to be looked at as a blessing. Diversity is strengthening. So bringing in those different skill sets is important. But having misaligned values for the core principles of the community is not a benefit. And let's ask more Mola, we hear so many stories of people living unconventional lives. Each of them is literally building their all American dream. Are you tired of putting your dreams on hold because of money? Well, let's fix it. I have a two part offering that is here to help you. First, I'm going to give you access to my financial freedom calculator so that you'll understand your numbers and have a tangible starting point. This is free. And then second, we'll book a session to figure out your finances so that you can live your alt-American dream as soon as possible. This is paid. Why am I giving you something for free? Because I'm passionate about empowering people to choose an unconventional path. So let's work together to figure out money so that you will know that you've officially taken action on your plans. This offering is for you if you're unsure of your cost of living or how much savings you might need. You don't know what money move to make next. You dream of an unconventional life built on your terms. You're seeking a permanent solution and not a one-time motivational boost. You want to learn about money from someone who shares your interest and breaking away from the norm. So what do you think? Are you tired of starting sentences with someday when I then go to all American dream.com and get the financial freedom calculator. Thanks So, I wanted to talk to you about this and you and I have talked about this a little bit before we scheduled this recording. The reason why I find this topic to be so personally important to me right now is that we are planning some tiny house parking on acreage that we just purchased in Southern Colorado. And so that. project is under development and I would like to move that in the direction of intentional community as opposed to just having a community where people are coming and paying rent because I want to live in community and have the benefits of having my thrive around me as it were. So it seems like if you kind of put these two options on the scale of like you know just Creating parking and having, because there's a lot of people like me out there thinking about creating some parking or community of some sort. So you can make it a very transactional world where it's just very much about, you know, some land, creating some parking, give me a rent check, or doing the hard and heavy work of creating intentional community for the benefits of that. How do you compare the two in terms of know, what do you, how do you think about that in terms of the pros and cons of the two ideas? Yeah, so like I think that there's a spectrum as far as you can be somewhere like to one extreme to the other where it's just a complete people-based model and all the way dialed up to a business-based model. I think United States is a pretty evident picture of what an almost entire business-based model looks like. And I think that that is a big reason that we have all of these holes that need to be plugged. So even if you set up a community where you might not benefit at all financially, as far as like building wealth, you are impacting the wellness of the nation and leaving a better place potentially to your children and grandchildren if you should you have them or just paying it forward to the next generations. So I think that if we're able to look out, like if you look at the countries that are more cooperative versus independent, they put the we above the me and we tend to put the me above the we. So just from that like zoomed out scope, there is still a benefit to you if you're not building wealth, you can't take the money with you. So if you are trying to do something that is benefit, you know, long-term benefits, but from if you are creating a place that you're going to live in, obviously there's so many benefits like what you're seeking that immediately outweigh it, the ability to share that space with people that become your extended family instead of people that are, you know, an income stream for you. So these are people that will invest in you and invest in your life in a way that's much more than financial. In my opinion, I think you would become much wealthier than you could be financially by. having a tribe surrounding you. And if nobody, I don't know if your typical listeners would have any experience in community or kind of a deluded community where they have a strong group of friends that don't necessarily share space. But I think that if you have experienced that and you feel that resonance inside of you, that kind of contentment and peace and just like you're surrounded by a bubble of safety, I don't think that people can put a dollar value on that. there's more that I want to say on that. It's going to take me a moment to, so if you could ask me some questions, because there's definitely some more that I want to say on that, but it's not coming to mind right now. Yeah, for sure. So if someone is thinking about the tiny home communities specifically and kind of comparing, you know, whether or not they want to create intentional community or and more transactional based community and they're specifically focused on tiny houses. Are there a lot of tiny, you mentioned on your website, you've got some tiny communities that are intentional. Are there intentional tiny communities that they can connect with and sort of learn from other tiny communities that have done it this way? Yeah, there are some out there. There's one that when I went to, after the Colorado Tiny House Festival, headed out to Durango because Durango is popping with some tiny house communities. And I visited a couple of the communities that were not intentional, but benevolent leaders and one where the person lived there. And I think that that makes a huge distinction if the person lives there or not. It really makes a difference on what that community is going to look and feel like. and how much that they were going to try to invest in the experience of that community. But fortunately, there was just some really good people that were creating communities out there as well. But there was one community that I didn't get a chance to stop by, but she was absolutely adamant that I couldn't take any pictures or anything of that sort. And I 100 % respect that because she said that the we is above the me. know, like she wanted, she said the happiness of the people living in this community is utmost importance. and their safety and everything that they want that is like the purpose of this community. So, and I was so excited to hear that. think that was Marlin. I'll double check. I think it was just outside of Durango. Marlin, Tiny House Community? Something of that sort. And I think it was like a blend of the two people's names that started the community. And to circle back about the power dynamic between the founders and the people living there. I wanted to say that I think that that can largely be navigated healthily if you put in the decision-making models and the conflict resolution policies that empower everybody where everybody's voice has the same weight. And if you are going, if you're using your property to go tiny on, I know, and I have property as well that I can legally put a tiny house community on. There's something inside me that doesn't want to let go of that. like it's, but it's mine, you know, it's mine. I don't want to let go. And like, it's, it's, it's like, like, do you know what I mean? Like you just bought the land too. So maybe you're experiencing the same thoughts, but I'm, but I'm also sitting here thinking like, there's so many things that I'm just, that I'm just in touch with my life right now. What am I holding onto land that I'm not even living on that other people, and that I don't have time to flesh out and develop myself alone right now. Like I could be harnessing other people's energy to create this community together. And then. this could potentially resolve a lot of the points of discontentment within my life. So I think that that's an important thought to take because we have such an ownership model here instead of a share model. Yeah, that is the air that we breathe. Literally, right is that individualistic ownership competitive culture and I think that's one of the things that's so terrifying about bringing people into your into your circle and that closer way is that we're all infected with that. And so the work of creating a we above the me is so. intense and has to be like, you have to have a really long view and you have to be very patient with the process and you have to like accept imperfections and you have to just, you have to like be very focused on the end goal of creating a healthier lifestyle and more enrichment for yourself in an intangible way and That is just so counter to our culture that it makes it daunting. Yeah, I think it's really smart to start with a very small core group of maybe two, four, five people that share a vision. Get it really nailed down what it is that you want and then develop your membership process and take the membership process through like a break protocol where you're trying to see under what conditions that process will fail to catch some of the concerns that you might have. and then revise it until you think that you've got a pretty good system in place. Use the resources that are out there, like Diana Lee's Christian's book, and then slowly bring people in and then give them a provisional membership where they're not voting right away. They're not participating in the diplomatic or in the for a period of time until they're getting accustomed to the rhythm and the flow and the nuances that you're trying to create within that community. And then once they have a good hold on that, then they can switch over to. being part of the decision-making model. And I think that bringing people on slowly is important. I've seen communities where they take too many people in at once and that the culture that's been established is like if there's a rhythm, a wave, it's like other waves crashing into it and it turns into a new wave. And that can be good, but if you've created this particular wave because it's what you want, having all these waves crash into it can cause chaos and mayhem. I've seen schools that are completely reframed, redone from the structure that we have in our modern schools. And it's like a children led, independent learning type of setup and it's a wonderful system. But they only accept so many new people at a time because they want the new kids coming in to see the existing model and what it's like. instead of having a wave of people coming in and changing the model. Because those children actually vote on who the teachers are and they're super empowered to make all those changes. So having new kids come in and not realize what the benefits of different teachers are under that model that they're not familiar with, they could radically disrupt what's been created. So I would start small and put those precautions in place that you think might break the system. So we have talked about some of the long term benefits and the methods and strategies with dealing with interpersonal conflict. Is there anything that you wanted to add to the group dynamics topic or the topic of longer term outcomes and benefits? Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a lot that I could say about conflict resolution. I think that. anybody that's coming into the community needs to understand that conflict's going to happen and that isn't inherently a bad thing. Conflict is something that can make two people come much closer together or a group of people because if you are navigating conflict in good faith, you are making yourself vulnerable. The other person is making themselves vulnerable. You're sharing your experiences, your pain points with them and they are Hopefully through empathy, they're able to understand your perspective on things. But so there's so much that I could cover more on conflict resolution. And I'd like to hit a couple of those really quickly. When you are moving into community, it's really important to understand that conflict is going to happen and that is okay. I think a lot of people see conflict as a failure and that is not what it is. are, humans are messy creatures. We are emotional. have different perspectives on things. So conflict is really a valuable place that people can strengthen the community glue. When you are approaching conflict in good faith and with appropriate tools, you are making yourself vulnerable with the other person or group of people and they're doing the same and you are able to empathize with them and see their perspective to see the pain points through their eyes as they are doing with you. So that is building community glue in that sense. And then you're looking for ways to find the win-win where it's not, well, he gets what he wanted or she got what she wanted and that, no, it's not that you're not looking for that. You're looking for how can all of our needs get met through this conflict? What is the solution that's going to satisfy everybody? And so it's a creative brainstorming process and that formal consensus is as well, it's looking for those solutions that empower everybody. It's so hard to think of like, 30 people are never going to agree on one thing and it's a no, they're not. But 30 people can agree on a set of principles that's going to like benefit all of them. And some of that is give and take. you might, somebody might, a decision might be made for the community that you're like, I don't love that decision, but it's not going to personally impact me. But I know when I have something that's really important to me, if it's not going against the, you the foundational principles of the community that they'll have my back and my needs will get met on that one. I think those are great points. In fact, I was just listening to the audio book version of the subtle art of not giving an F. And that's what problems are, you know, and the problems that we have in life, right? We have a million problems every day in life. We really view problems as or failures too, as some sort of law in our character that we have problems or that we have failures. And really if things, if we had no problems and new failures, we would have no growth, no growth at all. Right. You never grow or learn anything from successes, wins, and you know, easy breezy life. We only learn and grow as people through problems and conflict is a problem. And so we never, if you get along with somebody and everybody plays nicely, nice all the time, and there's never any addressing of differences, then nobody ever has the opportunity to learn anything or to grow at all. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so there's one other thing I wanted to add, and then I want to hop on to that last thing that you're saying. The other thing is that setting up prevention for conflict is important as well, setting up policies that help clearing the air. So there's like there's a community called ACOR, not a tiny house community, they're in touch. No, actually, I think they do have a tiny house there now. They are an intentional community in Virginia. part of the FEC that I mentioned, the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. And they have a process called the clearness process. so they, every year and ad hoc as needed, they will say to somebody, you know, I need to get clear on something. And so it's a, you're creating a culture of ahead of time of knowing that this is for the benefit of everybody that you are sharing the feedback and the critical feedback for. creating growth and for building community glue. And there's another tool that I absolutely love. It's called The Withhold. So just to go back to clearness, you're sharing the issues that you're having with the person. And it's not with the person, it's with behaviors of the person, you know? So it's never an attack on the person. It's something that they've done or are doing. empowering somebody with the knowledge that they're doing something that's harming you is such a gift because Most people want to not be harming people around them or want to be able to have at least know that their actions are impacting somebody else like that. But to jump back to the withhold, we all have egos and a withhold is such a beautiful tool where you can say to somebody, I have a withhold that I'd like to share with you. Will you accept it? And if they say yes, then you tell them what your grievance is and they have to sit with it for 24 hours before they can respond. So. 24 hours later, you guys can talk it out. But that gives you the chance, the receiver, the chance to go through the thought process and all that you go in the emotional responses of where you're defending yourself. was like, well, wouldn't, I would never, or I didn't do that. You all those thoughts where you're, and then you get to elevate yourself back to the we over the me. So it gives you that space to do so. And the other thing that I wanted to touch on that I've started talking about, but haven't really dived into about formal consensus being such a stronger process and really harnessing the growth mindset from everybody around you is if you don't come up with an immediate win-win solution, there are so many tools that you can use to bring the people within your group to find the win-win solutions and proposals very easily. And one of them is, I don't know if you saw my talk at the Colorado Turninghouse, I know you went right after me, so I don't know if you caught the beginning of it where I had everybody stand up in a mock. community and we did, I said, we're going to do a, we all pretend we all live in a community and we're going to pretend that we have an issue, that we're trying to see what we're looking at, rather see where people are on it. But if you've ever sat with friends in a circle trying to hash this stuff out, it's like two hours go around and you've just basically only gotten past the introductions of what everybody's name is. like, it's just, it's so inefficient. So the problem that we selected was dogs. There was a concern about dogs within the community, whether we should allow dogs within the community. Now in Colorado, of course, everybody has dogs. It's kind of like a rule if you're gonna live there. so I had everybody stand up and I said, okay, to this left pole over here, that means you are zero, like you're 100 % against having dogs in the community for whatever reason. And then this pole over here, you are 100 % on board for dogs within the community under any conditions. So, staying along this line so we can get a quick visual representation of where everybody is. And then once we saw where everybody was, then I just went through the different criteria and said, okay, so, and I asked the people on the bottom and, you know, what's your concern, the people on the top and what their concern was. And then so navigating that concern, I said, okay, well, what if we did, had had leash laws and one of the concerns was like dog poop everywhere. So, what if we had some sort of a policy that you had to pick, that you always had to pick up dog poop and there was like a dog park where they could run. unattended. And so like I just had them stand in the spectrum again. And it was just, it was just lightning fast. They're just going through the different proposals and the hearing with people's problems were with it and proposing solutions. And then if you get to a point where that's reaching a stalemate, you're not able to dial it all the way down. You can take the person all the way near the zero and the person all the way near the hundred and say, you guys go think of a solution for the two of you, come back to the next meeting and propose it. And then we'll do the spectrum again. So it's just so fast. You don't just sit there and just hash it out like for hours and hours and hours and get nowhere and get frustrated. So it's just, and that's just one tool out of so many within the formal consensus and prospect or principles. Yeah, I love that. And I think it really pinpoints the fact that everybody's on the spectrum somewhere instead of being at the polls because you know, I have three dogs and I still wouldn't be at 100 % right? Because I know. how much trouble they can be. And, you know, I have concerns about other dogs and my dogs. And I mean, nobody is at one extreme or the other. But we have so much more in common than we do separating us, especially, I think that's so important to focus on now as we get more and more divided. So it's really interesting to see those poles within a community where people fall in and to keep finding the more and more we, you know, the more you narrow it down with different. solution. It's really rewarding to see that happen. I'd love to see that more on a national level of how we can remember that we're so much alike people that like other people that we would that we have other in our minds. Yeah, that's so true. So this has been such a great conversation about intentional community and the challenges and the benefits and kind of the nitty gritty details of how to you know, set one up and I really appreciate your particular expertise and passion on this topic. Is there anything else you wanted to add, Jill? I don't consider myself an expert. I consider myself an enthusiast, loud enthusiast. So there are so many other people that you can download this type of knowledge from. So I would encourage people to seek them out and to go to the Intentional Communities Conference or to go to ic.org. So go to my site, choosetowny.com and that I have so much more that I want to do with my website. so, but it is a passion project that I do on my own time. So I'm the bottleneck. If anybody is interested and volunteering to help with it, they can go to choosetowny.com slash discord. And that will take them to a discord server where they can pop in and say that they're interested in helping. And I wanted to leave people that are considering developing communities with some, you know, thought. some homework, some brainstorming homework. And that is if they're not familiar with permaculture to try to familiarize themselves with it and understand that permaculture principles, they were developed for growing food, but those principles can be, if you replace some plants with people, they are incredibly powerful for setting up a community that's going to be vibrant and healthy. And if you're familiar with zones, I would love for somebody in creating a community to consider each. within the tiny house community as a zone zero. And for those that aren't familiar with zones, there's zone zero through five, and you're setting things up physically in proximity to how often you would use them. So zone zero being your house, zone one being something that's immediately outside your area. And I would love to see people develop more of that, what that would look like in a community setting. So Laura, I'm gonna pass that to you, everyone starting your community. And then zone five. is where you are leaving it natural so that you can, because in permaculture you are mimicking the way things would naturally grow in that area. And so I would be really interested to see what that would look like in a tiny house community, whether that's just leaving a natural area for people to experience or if there's something else that where we can extrapolate that to people within their community. So just some closing thoughts if I had more time that I would love to brainstorm and see what will come out of it. Yep. Well, I'm super excited about the idea that so many people are out there, you know, seeking this kind of knowledge and trying to create ways that we can live in a more, you know, mutually beneficial, in gentler way. I love that you use that word because that's on my, on my immediate radar of the life that I want to create. So thank you, Jill, for all of your thoughts and wisdom there and for being on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. was such a delightful experience. Thank you. Hey, thank you for taking the time to listen to Less House More Moolah. I have another free resource on my website for you, the Unconventional Values Quiz. In just two minutes, you can pinpoint your style of freedom seeker, security guardian, adventure enthusiast, or community builder. Check it out at thetinyhouseadvisor.com. And one more thing, podcasts don't have algorithms like social media does. They only grow by word of mouth and reviews. If this podcast is helpful to you, would you please post a review on your podcast app and tell a friend who is trying to live a values-based life? It would totally make my day. Please see the show notes for important disclosure regarding the tiny house advisor LLC and this episode.