Full Transcript for Joshua Zerkel On Why 'Community' Is Essential For GTM Success

00:04:22.891 I found that there was an organization of people who do the same work that I did. 55 00:04:22.931 --> 00:04:29.616 And so I went to my first professional association meeting, and that's when I really first experienced what community could be. 56 00:04:30.117 --> 00:04:38.343 Where you have people who otherwise would never meet, don't work together, but share a common experience or passion or purpose or thing that they do. 57 00:04:39.284 --> 00:04:43.587 And I was really inspired by that and the feeling that gets created. 58 00:04:44.047 --> 00:04:51.932 And so for me, my professional journey to community really started in that professional association where I eventually became the president of the association. 59 00:04:52.393 --> 00:04:59.718 And I really liked the operationalization of how do we build this community? 60 00:04:59.798 --> 00:05:03.260 How do we strategically plan for the member experience? 61 00:05:03.320 --> 00:05:05.942 How do we make sure everyone is getting value out of it? 62 00:05:06.980 --> 00:05:11.822 And from there, that led me into building communities at organizations. 63 00:05:11.902 --> 00:05:16.364 Like I did this at CBS News and Evernote and Asana and others. 64 00:05:17.325 --> 00:05:27.069 And I really enjoy the person to person nature of community where in business, especially in building business communities. 65 00:05:28.073 --> 00:05:30.294 the customer is often referred to as this entity. 66 00:05:30.454 --> 00:05:31.854 It's like this nameless, faceless. 67 00:05:32.094 --> 00:05:32.454 User. 68 00:05:32.815 --> 00:05:33.295 The user. 69 00:05:33.315 --> 00:05:33.815 The user. 70 00:05:34.655 --> 00:05:35.455 I hate that term. 71 00:05:35.495 --> 00:05:36.136 Yeah, me too. 72 00:05:36.296 --> 00:05:41.257 Yeah, it just implies that they're taking, but really the customer is the one that's giving. 73 00:05:41.297 --> 00:05:46.219 So I think of how most companies think of this nameless, faceless entity. 74 00:05:46.279 --> 00:05:49.900 And I like to be the one that's helping put a face where there wasn't before. 75 00:05:50.420 --> 00:05:57.743 And helping people inside the company understand when we're talking about the customer, I actually can give you a name of a real customer 76 00:05:58.384 --> 00:06:01.449 And we can talk about what their real life experience is because I've met them. 77 00:06:01.649 --> 00:06:03.532 Yeah. 78 00:06:03.552 --> 00:06:09.662 And that I think is one of the greatest benefits of community is rehumanizing something that has become dehumanized. 79 00:06:11.259 --> 00:06:11.979 It's interesting, right? 80 00:06:11.999 --> 00:06:19.405 That idea of you find community as a network of solopreneurs and come together and realize that's what's missing. 81 00:06:20.045 --> 00:06:21.866 But also, what era was this? 82 00:06:21.966 --> 00:06:25.729 When did you become the president of this organization? 83 00:06:25.829 --> 00:06:28.972 This was in the early 2000s. 84 00:06:29.432 --> 00:06:29.812 Okay. 85 00:06:30.493 --> 00:06:33.235 And you were primarily working in software or... 86 00:06:33.748 --> 00:06:37.830 Yeah, I was so I I've always worked in or adjacent to the tech world. 87 00:06:38.831 --> 00:06:50.157 And when I started doing productivity consulting, professional organizing work, that was in the early 2000s after the initial tech bust here in San Francisco. 88 00:06:50.177 --> 00:06:50.597 Yep. 89 00:06:51.298 --> 00:06:53.579 And I had to figure out, OK, this isn't working out right now. 90 00:06:53.619 --> 00:06:54.379 What else can I do? 91 00:06:54.399 --> 00:07:01.023 And that's what led me into productivity consulting and then thereby into our professional association. 92 00:07:01.500 --> 00:07:01.720 Huh. 93 00:07:02.301 --> 00:07:04.722 It was a super interesting time because I remember this. 94 00:07:04.942 --> 00:07:09.786 Like I moved to New York in 2004, post Twin Towers, right? 95 00:07:10.386 --> 00:07:11.227 The city was weird. 96 00:07:12.608 --> 00:07:16.030 And I think the whole of America was kind of like weird at the time. 97 00:07:16.290 --> 00:07:19.472 And the tech ecosystem was doing two things at once. 98 00:07:19.553 --> 00:07:27.118 From what I recall, there was this like boom bust kind of excitement where I think like at least in Silicon Alley, I remember like the boom. 99 00:07:27.598 --> 00:07:37.541 all the shops on Broadway and people that kind of were still hanging on to doing stuff in New York were feeling like the suits wouldn't buy their wear. 100 00:07:37.601 --> 00:07:39.482 So they need to figure out new positioning. 101 00:07:40.062 --> 00:07:44.084 And then there was like a micro rebirth of like torrenting at the time. 102 00:07:44.124 --> 00:07:45.004 That was like in New York. 103 00:07:45.044 --> 00:07:45.724 That was a big thing. 104 00:07:45.744 --> 00:07:48.045 And LimeWire was like hiring up and growing. 105 00:07:48.645 --> 00:07:52.189 And I remember taking trips to the valley and seeing the whole different thing. 106 00:07:52.209 --> 00:07:57.033 And one of the people I know who used to cover this beat was Om Malik. 107 00:07:57.654 --> 00:07:59.095 Do you remember Om from GigaOM? 108 00:07:59.716 --> 00:08:03.219 And then TechCrunch and then, you know, he's now True. 109 00:08:03.279 --> 00:08:05.001 I guess he's a partner in True. 110 00:08:05.701 --> 00:08:06.782 And this was one of the things. 111 00:08:06.842 --> 00:08:09.825 I remember going to Ohm's office and it was this buzz of activity. 112 00:08:09.865 --> 00:08:12.647 We're talking 2004, 2005 in San Fran. 113 00:08:13.328 --> 00:08:19.473 And the scene was hot with a lot of, I think it was a very experimental time in tech. 114 00:08:19.513 --> 00:08:22.335 People weren't necessarily packaging what they were building as SaaS. 115 00:08:22.615 --> 00:08:24.197 The nomenclature didn't quite exist. 116 00:08:24.717 --> 00:08:26.639 That didn't exist at that time, not yet. 117

00:08:26.699 --> 00:08:31.362 I think the only people talking about this at the time, I kept hearing from, like, then there was, like, people in Boston. 118 00:08:31.382 --> 00:08:33.084 Like, I think it was Boston, right? 119 00:08:33.424 --> 00:08:34.105 No, maybe not. 120 00:08:35.025 --> 00:08:36.467 Jason Freed, Basecamp. 121 00:08:37.087 --> 00:08:37.247 Mm-hmm. 122 00:08:37.828 --> 00:08:43.852 And I remember, like, they were talking about this idea of, like, the software Freed of install and how, like, cloud or... 123 00:08:44.933 --> 00:09:13.190 server-based software was going to change the whole world and productivity was about people coming together and and that that mix of kind of like i think this rebirth of the post boom bust cycle coming into that hacker ethos of the early internet and you know software now being liberated from installs and being able to connect people users um that was like a new era for this whole idea of of community developing online but through the web i think right where 124 00:09:13.770 --> 00:09:18.795 Maybe in the pre-2000, it was like IRC-based chat. 125 00:09:19.475 --> 00:09:27.002 Yeah, this is when we really start seeing the rise of dedicated platforms and tools for communities. 126 00:09:27.542 --> 00:09:32.307 Typically at that point, however, communities, at least ones that were online, 127 00:09:33.587 --> 00:09:37.291 from companies were typically seen as primarily for support deflection. 128 00:09:37.891 --> 00:09:43.517 It wasn't really seen as, oh, this is a place for us to really connect people, to engage them. 129 00:09:43.557 --> 00:09:47.040 It was more like, okay, how do we scale support so we can have it cost less for us? 130 00:09:48.141 --> 00:09:54.187 Not that that isn't valuable and it's still one of the valuable outcomes of building community, at least within the tech world. 131 00:09:54.527 --> 00:09:57.150 But it was a, I would say a very, 132 00:09:59.365 --> 00:10:01.565 uninspired beginning for what community could be. 133 00:10:02.106 --> 00:10:04.866 It was the most, what's the most basic thing we can get community to do? 134 00:10:04.906 --> 00:10:06.326 It's like, oh, support deflection. 135 00:10:06.386 --> 00:10:06.606 Great. 136 00:10:06.626 --> 00:10:07.467 Let's do that thing. 137 00:10:08.407 --> 00:10:15.888 It didn't capture what I would frame as like the community zeitgeist of what's possible, all the ways that people want to and can engage. 138 00:10:15.948 --> 00:10:16.668 It didn't capture that. 139 00:10:16.908 --> 00:10:17.909 Not at the time, not yet. 140 00:10:18.669 --> 00:10:24.910 So at that time, if you, if you remember, what were your personal frustrations with this and where did you want to see this stuff go? 141 00:10:26.190 --> 00:10:31.512 I always think of things like from my perspective, selfishly, I want to be able to do whatever I want within a community. 142 00:10:31.912 --> 00:10:39.755 I don't want I don't want the community program to tell

me what I can't or can't do in terms of how I engage with other members. 143 00:10:40.015 --> 00:10:40.195 Right. 144 00:10:40.355 --> 00:10:49.358 And so I think my frustration at the time was that the tooling, the tooling just wasn't there yet to have broad based, comprehensive. 145 00:10:50.065 --> 00:10:57.260 community engagement ecosystem, especially not one that helps power the go to market motion the way that it can. 146 00:10:57.400 --> 00:10:57.721 Sure. 147 00:10:58.122 --> 00:10:58.603 Sure. 148 00:10:58.763 --> 00:11:00.908 Now we have this notion of community led growth. 149 00:11:01.692 --> 00:11:06.275 That wasn't even remotely an idea at the time when I first started working in community. 150 00:11:07.415 --> 00:11:28.828 I think there was also this kind of question in that period of, and it still exists, it still exists, and definitely in startups all over the world, the question of enterprise emulation mode and how rapidly scale companies questioning what their culture looks like are typically, which establishes the relationships across the board with customers, with vendors, with anyone with staff. 151 00:11:29.608 --> 00:11:37.976 But often cases come up against their largest in-segment competitor that might be an acquisition potentially down the road or something, or acquirer. 152 00:11:38.417 --> 00:11:44.282 And they're saying, well, how can we be more like them so we can steal customers away and fly under the radar? 153 00:11:44.522 --> 00:11:46.144 We're not just two kids in a garage. 154 00:11:46.164 --> 00:11:46.724 We're legit. 155 00:11:46.744 --> 00:11:48.085 We have $25 million, you know. 156 00:11:50.888 --> 00:12:02.979 And so part of that is like, you know, this risk mitigation question of like, okay, well, if we empower our community or if we enable our staff and our customers to be brand advocates, how do we control our messaging? 157 00:12:04.100 --> 00:12:04.220 Yeah. 158 00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:08.564 And that's where we often see community referred to as the competitive moat. 159 00:12:09.125 --> 00:12:11.367 Like I built the moat around my kingdom via... 160 00:12:12.498 --> 00:12:17.902 I would frame it as the community as cannon fodder when the enemy is approaching. 161 00:12:18.662 --> 00:12:25.626 I think there is a world where a company empowers and engages its customers. 162 00:12:26.167 --> 00:12:30.890 They're so excited about the product and what it's delivering for them that they advocate for it. 163 00:12:31.010 --> 00:12:37.754 And they become a really unassailable, impossible to replicate competitive advantage for sure. 164 00:12:39.715 --> 00:12:40.556 The flip side of that, 165 00:12:41.193 --> 00:12:48.638 which is often at odds with how most companies think, is that doing that takes time because you're building relationships. 166 00:12:49.398 --> 00:12:51.340 And most relationships don't get built overnight. 167 00:12:51.980 --> 00:13:10.132 And so companies that want to have, if they want

the competitive mode or they want the competitive advantage or they want the engaged customers who advocate on their behalf, what they also have to be ready for is have an appetite for time, which is usually not what most companies have. 168 00:13:10.881 --> 00:13:23.388 However, the smart companies that have really seen great success with community have invested early in building it out so that it scales alongside the growth of the company. 169 00:13:24.209 --> 00:13:29.191 And the ones that are less smart see what that company did and say, I want that community also. 170 00:13:29.331 --> 00:13:30.552 How do we turn it on? 171 00:13:31.032 --> 00:13:32.073 It's not quite that simple. 172 00:13:32.828 --> 00:13:43.341 So on that note, it's something that I've been scratching my head about for decades, which was, I forget her name, but there's this deeply impassioned entrepreneur that founded Ning. 173 00:13:43.461 --> 00:13:44.222 Do you remember Ning? 174 00:13:44.783 --> 00:13:45.083 I do. 175 00:13:45.163 --> 00:13:49.608 So Ning being a SaaS product for community builders who want to build their own community. 176 00:13:49.649 --> 00:13:52.272 You don't need to do the software development, just use Ning. 177 00:13:53.012 --> 00:13:58.417 And that was very exciting for people who were supporting it in the early days as venture capitalists and others. 178 00:13:58.737 --> 00:14:00.319 And then it didn't quite go anywhere. 179 00:14:00.399 --> 00:14:02.861 And then the rebirth of it is Mighty Networks. 180 00:14:03.562 --> 00:14:03.902 That's right. 181 00:14:04.162 --> 00:14:04.362 Right? 182 00:14:04.983 --> 00:14:16.753 And I've been watching that whole space for a long time because professionally with my studio that I ran for just over a decade called Design Guru here in Toronto that specialized, we had a whole methodology by the way. 183 00:14:17.273 --> 00:14:23.796 And the methodology was emulated from the Project for Public Spaces in New York, which is an urban public space think tank. 184 00:14:25.297 --> 00:14:26.978 And the methodology was placemaking. 185 00:14:27.038 --> 00:14:39.364 So you take a mixture of observational analysis when assessing the community sensitivities around space and stickiness around space and feeling of ownership and emotion and all these things. 186 00:14:40.305 --> 00:14:41.946 And then you take observa... 187 00:14:41.986 --> 00:14:46.508 So it's a mixture of observational analysis and then first-person data and surveys where 188 00:14:46.948 --> 00:14:55.653 But there's a whole matrix with how that data meshes together to then provide insight into how to redesign or redevelop space and turn it into a place. 189 00:14:55.893 --> 00:15:02.657 And that transformation, of course, being where a space becomes a place because it means something to the people that use it. 190 00:15:03.457 --> 00:15:11.802 And they have a functional expectation as well as like emotive comfort level expectations of the experience

of that place. 191 00:15:12.822 --> 00:15:21.831 Um, so yeah, I had moved to New York to digitize that methodology and then brought it back to Toronto and had a studio that was all inbound for like over a decade. 192 00:15:22.572 --> 00:15:29.999 Um, and I found it very interesting that, you know, I thought of the world's largest public space as being, you know, the worldwide web. 193 00:15:30.859 --> 00:15:33.622 And of course, we've seen a couple of these cycles of commercialization. 194 00:15:34.542 --> 00:15:54.518 And the things that customers in the pre-commercialized or in between the two troughs of commercialization, which is, I would say that like dot-com era, the 1999 kind of millennial crash, and then the next wave being social internet 2008 onwards, like Facebook+. 195 00:15:55.838 --> 00:16:11.322 That trough there was really interesting because a lot of organizations were saying, okay, cost, they were comparing digital space still to physical space and saying, if we typically roadshow our products and services, it's going to be very expensive. 196 00:16:11.342 --> 00:16:12.183 There's a lot of moving parts. 197 00:16:12.203 --> 00:16:13.343 We're going to go to conferences. 198 00:16:13.383 --> 00:16:15.123 We got to wait for that conference to be held. 199 00:16:15.563 --> 00:16:18.044 Digital space could let us bring people together. 200 00:16:18.104 --> 00:16:20.565 And it was still thought of as an experiment. 201 00:16:20.885 --> 00:16:21.225 And I think, 202 00:16:21.725 --> 00:16:32.219 When clients came to us to build solutions, we built private social networks that were internal at organizations, that were external for all sorts of different stakeholders. 203 00:16:33.080 --> 00:16:38.367 And they were all context-sensitive solutions for each community that we were assessing and developing for. 204 00:16:39.087 --> 00:16:43.211 So really cool, like, you know, geeky, brainy work to do these things. 205 00:16:43.931 --> 00:16:46.314 And, and some of them are still around today. 206 00:16:46.414 --> 00:16:52.539 Like in your neck of the woods is a university called the California Institute of the Arts, CalArts. 207 00:16:53.260 --> 00:17:05.030 So my team designed and developed CalArts' first CMS solution for, that took 200 plus independent, discrete websites and mashed them into a single database. 208 00:17:06.770 --> 00:17:10.791 with all this robust permission control and planning. 209 00:17:10.831 --> 00:17:29.575 That was a six-month just planning engagement on the front end of that engagement to look at who in the university needs to publish versus communicate and how do those two things interrelate to support the means of educating people. 210 00:17:30.696 --> 00:17:35.542 And so this is before like web class tutorials and stuff were a hosted software solution. 211 00:17:35.582 --> 00:17:38.266 We were building that stuff into digital classrooms. 212 00:17:39.187 --> 00:17:41.550 It was all built on Drupal, open source

software. 213 00:17:42.431 --> 00:17:43.152 So super flexible. 214 00:17:43.172 --> 00:17:44.133 You're trying to get me back now. 215 00:17:44.313 --> 00:17:45.054 Right, right. 216 00:17:46.456 --> 00:17:55.542 But that was a glorious era because I think it was like those, some of the early SaaS social networks were coming out or I would say like the Ning type thing. 217 00:17:57.062 --> 00:18:00.545 People weren't able to procure digital community. 218 00:18:00.585 --> 00:18:06.948 They didn't think of it as a product suite or as a functional expectation of digital interfaces. 219 00:18:07.409 --> 00:18:09.350 So we were able to experiment and build custom stuff. 220 00:18:10.050 --> 00:18:14.115 And then, so I've kept my eye on what we used to build all through today. 221 00:18:14.575 --> 00:18:25.547 And I see, I love your thoughts on this, but I see the uptake today in the marketing of these sorts of turnkey digital community platforms. 222 00:18:26.588 --> 00:18:43.718 uh, aimed at, um, creator class, like aimed at independent yogis, health fitness trainers, uh, and makeup, beauty experts, uh, all of these sorts of people about as being tools to monetize their community. 223 00:18:44.398 --> 00:18:44.478 Um. 224 00:18:45.934 --> 00:18:58.137 Yeah, I've seen a huge rise in what I frame as persona based communities, because I think there's the creators, but then I think there's the people who just are personalities and do a thing like the yogis, etc. 225 00:18:58.157 --> 00:18:58.357 Right. 226 00:18:59.258 --> 00:19:01.718 These all have a place in the world of community building. 227 00:19:02.258 --> 00:19:15.382 I see a very distinct separation between that sort of persona based community and a company based community, because at the end of the day, the persona based community is really centered on the person, the creator. 228 00:19:16.127 --> 00:19:17.868 the independent practitioner, et cetera. 229 00:19:18.048 --> 00:19:18.288 Right. 230 00:19:18.488 --> 00:19:22.369 The company-based community is really centered on the product, not the person. 231 00:19:23.449 --> 00:19:26.591 The similarities are still, they're still there. 232 00:19:26.651 --> 00:19:32.192 It's really finding people who are like-minded, who want to come together around the product or the person, whatever it may be. 233 00:19:32.212 --> 00:19:32.793 Yeah. 234 00:19:32.973 --> 00:19:35.013 Including really engaging experiences for them. 235 00:19:36.954 --> 00:19:44.857 My concern, if I'm being completely honest, is with the persona-based communities, the only way they're monetized really is when people pay for a subscription. 236 00:19:46.943 --> 00:19:51.844 in the broader world, I think most of us hear about subscription fatigue all the time. 237 00:19:52.124 --> 00:19:52.345 Yeah. 238 00:19:52.885 --> 00:20:00.187 I think in order for these persona based subscriptions to really have a place, there just has to be tremendous value that's created by being part of them. 239 00:20:01.067 --> 00:20:03.348 What that is and what it would look like, I frankly don't know. 240 00:20:03.368 --> 00:20:05.988 That's not the type of community that I personally specialize in. 241 00:20:06.188 --> 00:20:06.388 Right. 242 00:20:07.129 --> 00:20:11.930 But I think if you are a creator, if you're a persona, if you're a practitioner, you're, 243 00:20:12.607 --> 00:20:16.130 The tools that are available to you now, we've never had a making like this before. 244 00:20:16.650 --> 00:20:25.457 To make it really super easy, completely turnkey, as you said, to build out something for your own audience, that's truly unprecedented. 245 00:20:25.477 --> 00:20:25.717 Right. 246 00:20:26.298 --> 00:20:35.445 Then it becomes up to you as the leader of these communities to make sure that what we're creating has tremendous value to the people who are taking part in it, whether it's free or paid. 247 00:20:36.286 --> 00:20:39.168 You're still transacting with someone because you're asking of their time. 248 00:20:39.449 --> 00:20:43.252 You're asking them to spend time with you and your community and the other people in it. 249 00:20:44.252 --> 00:20:45.753 Everyone's time is super valuable. 250 00:20:45.874 --> 00:20:56.242 So I encourage everyone, whether you're building a persona-based community or you're at a company, think about what would be worth it for you if you were someone who was thinking about participating. 251 00:20:56.382 --> 00:20:59.164 What would be worth it for people who are part of the network now? 252 00:20:59.224 --> 00:21:00.305 How can you make it more worth it? 253 00:21:01.075 --> 00:21:01.395 for them. 254 00:21:01.515 --> 00:21:11.724 And I think that's a notion that's often missed by community builders in general is the time that we're asking of people to spend with us as part of these communities. 255 00:21:12.385 --> 00:21:18.930 I think oftentimes, especially in the world of building company communities, which is what I specialize in, it's like, well, it's free to participate. 256 00:21:18.950 --> 00:21:20.952 Like, yeah, but so what? 257 00:21:21.092 --> 00:21:23.774 There's a lot of things that are free where I could choose to spend my time. 258 00:21:24.295 --> 00:21:26.617 Why would I want to do it here instead of one of those other places? 259 00:21:27.204 --> 00:21:32.007 And really thinking about the value creation is probably the most important part of the job for a community builder. 260 00:21:32.627 --> 00:21:34.729 And I think it's a huge responsibility and you see it. 261 00:21:35.849 --> 00:21:41.673 I mean, you see it a little bit in YouTuber culture where I think coming out of the pandemic, we saw this burnout. 262 00:21:42.814 --> 00:21:50.238 Burnout videos being a trend where like product reviewers, especially they were going through a lot of content because product was coming out even faster. 263 00:21:50.339 --> 00:21:52.420 And then you see it like even now today with the AI stuff.

264 00:21:52.980 --> 00:22:09.352 where people who think that their responsibility for communicating the latest, greatest, cool thing with their community of audience, of subscribers, and then, you know, whether or not they have a platform to bring those people from YouTube into to engage with them in different ways. 265 00:22:11.173 --> 00:22:20.842 that fatigue of the responsibility of constantly, and I think this might be a thing here, constantly entertaining, and that might be a kind of like a dysfunction. 266 00:22:21.002 --> 00:22:35.755 Like the purpose of a community builder is not necessarily to be the center of attention for a thousand people or a million people, but instead to enable those people to find solutions and interact with each other and act as almost a facilitator more. 267 00:22:37.192 --> 00:22:37.572 I think so. 268 00:22:37.852 --> 00:22:40.654 I think it's a combination of, I would frame it as edutainment. 269 00:22:40.935 --> 00:22:46.278 No one's going to come to your content if it's boring, so it needs to be at least a little bit entertaining or interesting or of value. 270 00:22:47.159 --> 00:22:49.020 But I think you hit the nail right in the head. 271 00:22:49.040 --> 00:22:57.026 The real value that we have to offer in presenting people with information is to make it useful, educational, informational, so that they can act on it. 272 00:22:57.786 --> 00:23:03.270 And there is so much information available to all of us at any given moment for whatever it is that we want to know about. 273 00:23:03.855 --> 00:23:24.750 This is where I think community really has an edge, because if you present information to people that's useful and valuable, and you give them an opportunity to talk about it with other people who care about that same topic or trying to understand it better, that's where you create a really self-reinforcing flywheel of people contributing, people talking, people learning, then people contributing, talking, and learning. 274 00:23:25.491 --> 00:23:27.172 It goes on in perpetuity if you do it well. 275 00:23:27.975 --> 00:23:29.136 Doing it well is really hard. 276 00:23:29.216 --> 00:23:30.016 That's the challenge. 277 00:23:30.516 --> 00:23:32.337 And not everyone is a fantastic content creator. 278 00:23:32.397 --> 00:23:33.558 Not everyone is a great writer. 279 00:23:33.578 --> 00:23:38.180 Not everyone wants to be on video or whatever their channel choice may be. 280 00:23:38.741 --> 00:23:46.285 And so figuring out for your audience, what would be of value to them via what channel, what method of delivery? 281 00:23:46.925 --> 00:23:54.249 And can you be the person or can your team be the people who create that and create it well enough that people want to continue to come back to it? 282 00:23:54.750 --> 00:24:06.474 So let's talk about more according to your expertise is the company community, the company-based community, and also the community-based company. 283 00:24:06.494 --> 00:24:07.434 Maybe I'll flip it around. 284 00:24:08.995 --> 00:24:22.379 So how can companies from your vantage utilize the power of bringing stakeholders together, whether it's customers alone or other participants in someone's business, inputs, people inputs, 285 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:28.025 and get them kind of engaged with each other around the brand. 286 00:24:28.305 --> 00:24:36.153 And let's start with keeping that brand central in the community before we talk about leveraging the strength of that. 287 00:24:37.194 --> 00:24:42.600 Yeah, I think generally people come to brand-based or company-based communities 288 00:24:43.835 --> 00:24:44.655 For a couple of reasons. 289 00:24:44.875 --> 00:24:47.296 One is probably that they like the brand. 290 00:24:47.436 --> 00:24:52.597 They like whatever the brand represents, whether it's the product or the ethos or how they do what they do. 291 00:24:53.257 --> 00:24:56.978 So having a brand that's strong, frankly, really helps a lot. 292 00:24:56.998 --> 00:25:01.959 I've been super, super fortunate in my career, and I recognize that this is just a stroke of luck more than anything. 293 00:25:02.399 --> 00:25:07.780 But when I was at Evernote, this was a brand that was at the time globally loved. 294 00:25:08.565 --> 00:25:12.808 And people knew it, which made my life a lot easier as a community builder. 295 00:25:12.868 --> 00:25:15.750 And they wanted to talk about it, which really made my life easy. 296 00:25:16.350 --> 00:25:18.952 At Asana, people in business recognize the brand. 297 00:25:18.992 --> 00:25:20.293 They see the value in it. 298 00:25:20.433 --> 00:25:21.994 If they use it, they tend to really like it. 299 00:25:22.074 --> 00:25:29.238 So these sorts of things, anchoring the brand at the center of the experience is really helpful if you have a brand that people like. 300 00:25:29.679 --> 00:25:33.241 There are lots of companies that people don't like the brand. 301 00:25:33.917 --> 00:25:41.400 And they may have a product or service that you either have to use because it's like what your company offers as your productivity suite of choice. 302 00:25:42.421 --> 00:25:47.043 Or it's been inflicted on you by some other decision maker at your company that you have to use this thing. 303 00:25:47.903 --> 00:25:49.004 Those companies have brands. 304 00:25:49.864 --> 00:25:51.905 How people feel about them might be a different story. 305 00:25:51.985 --> 00:25:59.328 And so you as a community leader need to understand the context of your brand and how it might show up in people's lives and how they feel about it. 306 00:25:59.861 --> 00:26:17.365 But once you do that, I think regardless of the type of brand you have, you always have an opportunity to create experiences for people that help them go deeper, help them understand why things get developed or why there's a new product and how you might want to think about it using it in your world. 307 00:26:18.286 --> 00:26:22.146 Or just have people

in the community meet decision makers at the company. 308 00:26:22.987 --> 00:26:25.487 There's so many ways that you can involve community members. 309 00:26:25.807 --> 00:26:28.048 And one of the things that I think about is... 310 00:26:29.478 --> 00:26:31.719 The community is, it's just people, right? 311 00:26:31.819 --> 00:26:33.599 It's all, it's people talking to other people. 312 00:26:34.379 --> 00:26:43.801 And when you have that, and when you center their experience around the value that they're getting from your brand, that shows up in your business in so many different ways. 313 00:26:43.841 --> 00:26:50.983 It shows up in the marketing conversations where people are advocating and talking about your brand on social media without you doing anything. 314 00:26:51.403 --> 00:26:52.703 They're just doing it because they like it. 315 00:26:53.263 --> 00:26:57.984 It shows up in sales conversations because oftentimes if you're at an enterprise company, for instance, 316 00:26:58.684 --> 00:27:06.768 You're talking with the decision maker, but that decision maker is being influenced by other people within the organization who've already heard of your brand or have used your product at a different company. 317 00:27:07.889 --> 00:27:09.510 And later on down the cycle when 318 00:27:10.595 --> 00:27:18.799 they're adopting your tool or trying to spread its use, having a champion on the team that really likes what you do, they're gonna grease a lot of those wheels for you. 319 00:27:19.259 --> 00:27:36.348 And so a lot of the benefits from the company perspective and what they get from community are really horizontal across the entire customer's journey all the way through when they become super champions and start talking about your product to your product team to share insights into what's working and what isn't. 320 00:27:37.128 --> 00:27:39.069 talk about it at their own networking events. 321 00:27:39.610 --> 00:27:45.653 There's just a lot of goodness that gets created there, but it's not without work on the company side to make those things happen. 322 00:27:46.334 --> 00:27:48.835 If you're lucky, you have a brand that people really love. 323 00:27:49.115 --> 00:27:49.736 That's amazing. 324 00:27:49.976 --> 00:27:52.117 That's not mandatory for making the community work. 325 00:27:52.918 --> 00:27:55.099 It helps a lot, but it's not the only thing that makes it work. 326 00:27:55.439 --> 00:28:00.823 What really makes it work is being strategic about what your organization is trying to 327 00:28:02.602 --> 00:28:06.465 Learn from the community and what value you're trying to exchange with them. 328 00:28:06.525 --> 00:28:08.867 There's always a balance with community members. 329 00:28:08.907 --> 00:28:09.708 It's like a piggy bank. 330 00:28:10.268 --> 00:28:11.790 You put money into the piggy bank. 331 00:28:12.390 --> 00:28:17.655 In the community world, that means giving them access, giving them resources, talking to them, giving them tools. 332 00:28:18.195 --> 00:28:20.117 And then periodically you take money out of the piggy bank. 333 00:28:20.377 --> 00:28:21.838 So you want to buy something. 334 00:28:21.918 --> 00:28:24.040 If it's a piggy bank, you crack it open, you take some money out. 335 00:28:24.951 --> 00:28:28.953 In the business world with community, maybe you want to ask for customer stories. 336 00:28:29.053 --> 00:28:32.294 Maybe you want to run an advocacy campaign. 337 00:28:32.794 --> 00:28:37.016 So you have to create a lot of value for the community members in order to extract the value from it. 338 00:28:37.816 --> 00:28:44.059 I just had a conversation with a more junior community builder recently, and they're excited about community. 339 00:28:44.079 --> 00:28:45.700 Their organization is excited about it. 340 00:28:46.220 --> 00:28:53.803 But when they went and did their stakeholder conversations of all the different leaders within the community or within the company who are trying to 341 00:28:54.760 --> 00:28:59.984 understand how to leverage community, all of them said what they wanted to get from the community. 342 00:29:00.665 --> 00:29:03.507 How can we make the community work for me and my organization? 343 00:29:03.567 --> 00:29:04.108 It's taking. 344 00:29:04.808 --> 00:29:06.150 And that's natural. 345 00:29:06.170 --> 00:29:07.170 That's how business works. 346 00:29:07.771 --> 00:29:14.897 But what every leader needs to understand is that you only get to do that taking once you've done a bunch of giving. 347 00:29:16.045 --> 00:29:24.011 And that's a new motion, I think, for most organizations is this value exchange, this concept of we do a bunch of things with them and for them. 348 00:29:24.392 --> 00:29:28.014 And then once in a while, we can take things from them or ask for things from them. 349 00:29:28.835 --> 00:29:33.078 And they're happy to at that point because they've gotten a lot of value from being part of the community. 350 00:29:33.118 --> 00:29:35.020 But you have to start with value creation first. 351 00:29:35.513 --> 00:29:35.713 Right. 352 00:29:36.334 --> 00:30:01.413 And I think it's interesting because I think there's cultural, of course, implications or cultural norms that are not necessarily beneficial that kind of form this sort of take, take, take mentality in corporate culture where, you know, if everything is kind of tied to a balance sheet and tied to the bottom line, often cases, at least from day one, you know, there's... 353 00:30:02.033 --> 00:30:20.308 Whether you're a bootstrap company, and that's because you don't have the resources at your disposal to be able to afford the time to invest in relationships, or if you're a venture capital company and then you're growing and it's skill at all costs, you know, in this, let's call it like what, pre one year ago mode? 354 00:30:21.870 --> 00:30:37.943 Where you have to get to that next funding round and to justify it, you're adding bodies and

you're not taking the time to do the things that would make your company more sustainable, like develop the enterprise relationships for large scale sales if you're B2B and that kind of thing. 355 00:30:38.763 --> 00:30:42.267 Um, so people are always in time deficit, I feel like in at work. 356 00:30:42.627 --> 00:30:48.833 And, uh, I totally agree with you that often cases, like I was just talking to someone last week about this. 357 00:30:49.614 --> 00:30:58.002 Um, I have this bubbling kind of narrative in the back of my brain that one day will be a book and it's all about, um, kind of. 358 00:30:59.857 --> 00:31:11.786 Challenging secularism in a sense and talking about how like in the back of people's brains, there's this like all of these, you know, religious ideology that is generations old passed down in the back of their head. 359 00:31:11.846 --> 00:31:15.009 And and what is the all seeing eye if it's not God? 360 00:31:15.069 --> 00:31:15.810 You know, it's. 361 00:31:16.630 --> 00:31:22.896 It's certainly like data and data analysis, you know, powered by AI and surveillance systems and stuff like that. 362 00:31:22.916 --> 00:31:30.242 So whatever the politic around the all seeing eye is, I think there's a consciousness of it that people have. 363 00:31:31.123 --> 00:31:38.530 And the question of, you know, how you keep yourself, you know, in check with what your personal moral guidelines or any other kind of. 364 00:31:39.250 --> 00:31:53.721 systems of values that you hold to propel your momentum in life, you know, becomes, I think, something that culture at companies is now only able to assess. 365 00:31:54.281 --> 00:32:08.172 So like, you know, in the kind of 1970s organization, you'd have this top down hierarchy and various managerial strata to be able to set performance guidelines, KPIs and stuff for various teams. 366 00:32:08.252 --> 00:32:10.494 And the teams go out and they crush and they get rewards. 367 00:32:11.295 --> 00:32:17.460 And it's that constant, OK, we're moving forward together as a team because all the little micro teams are moving in the same direction. 368 00:32:18.160 --> 00:32:23.662 And the rat king will be beneficial, pass down the gold at the end of the year. 369 00:32:25.103 --> 00:32:30.004 But yeah, now in the more distributed architecture of companies, I think people are having to be more self-reliant. 370 00:32:30.024 --> 00:32:32.685 They're going to have to be more self-propelled. 371 00:32:33.005 --> 00:32:37.547 And with that becomes this quandary of like, how do people find fulfillment through work? 372 00:32:38.387 --> 00:32:40.007 in a way that is sustainable. 373 00:32:40.108 --> 00:32:48.029 Not everyone has the, let's say, the same outcomes of the owner of a company or the foundation team, especially if we're talking about startups. 374 00:32:48.890 --> 00:33:03.053 So this question of throwing away the career track and at the same time being present in the moment within your position to add value necessitates a reassessment of what time really is priced by. 375 00:33:03.753 --> 00:33:22.167 And I think smart companies already, like a lot of our clients, we talk about this all the time, where they're setting time aside, whether it's a chunk of the week or it's a chunk in everyone's day, or it's an indication of half of your time is to be invested in a way that's totally of your own direction. 376 00:33:23.487 --> 00:33:28.588 So setting performance by capacity, but also ones want for more personally. 377 00:33:29.668 --> 00:33:36.469 And in that, I think there's a lot of opportunity for developing community within organization and then as a tool for the organization. 378 00:33:37.650 --> 00:33:39.050 Sorry, that was very long-winded. 379 00:33:39.830 --> 00:33:41.370 No, I'm right there with you. 380 00:33:41.390 --> 00:33:45.631 I think there's a lot of opportunity for... Well, it's like with all things community, it's like-minded people. 381 00:33:45.671 --> 00:33:50.272 I think finding the people who share these same values and ethos and recognizing that the... 382 00:33:52.820 --> 00:34:01.164 I wish it was still the case, but the clear career path and trajectory that once existed, I don't know anyone who still has. 383 00:34:01.184 --> 00:34:07.607 I mean, I work in tech, so maybe I'm a little biased, but that fundamentally just doesn't exist in my world anymore. 384 00:34:08.388 --> 00:34:10.409 All of us are essentially work mercenaries. 385 00:34:10.769 --> 00:34:11.770 It's funny you use that phrase. 386 00:34:11.790 --> 00:34:14.251 I've been using that phrase a lot in the last couple of months. 387 00:34:14.951 --> 00:34:15.692 Yeah, it's a... 388 00:34:17.120 --> 00:34:18.881 I wouldn't even frame it as a sad state of affairs. 389 00:34:18.941 --> 00:34:20.062 It's just kind of how things are. 390 00:34:20.822 --> 00:34:28.466 And the truth is, it's weird because for anyone who's ever worked at a tech company, most companies kind of frame it as like we're a family until we're really not. 391 00:34:29.146 --> 00:34:34.689 And if you've gone through a couple of boom and bust cycles, you know what being a family looks like until it's not. 392 00:34:35.449 --> 00:34:44.874 And it's it behooves each of us to figure out if I really need to look out for myself in my career, how can I navigate? 393 00:34:45.328 --> 00:34:47.909 the ever changing landscape of today's world of work? 394 00:34:48.329 --> 00:34:57.673 How can I find like-minded people along the way who can be my community as I move from place to place, because that's typically what work is going to look like for most of us at this point. 395 00:34:58.534 --> 00:35:07.377 And how do I make sure that I'm feeling connected both to the company that I'm at and giving it my a hundred percent and recognizing that no jobs are forever anymore. 396 00:35:08.077 --> 00:35:14.080 And where can I build my, my professional and my social structure to help support me wherever

I end up working? 397 00:35:14.711 --> 00:35:23.859 And that's, I think, one of the ways that community can come into play is by building these networks that are not tied solely to the place that you work, but to the professional that you are. 398 00:35:24.240 --> 00:35:24.420 Right. 399 00:35:25.641 --> 00:35:25.841 Right. 400 00:35:25.921 --> 00:35:32.187 And professional development and mentorship can often, in cases, not be driven within organization regardless. 401 00:35:32.467 --> 00:35:39.814 So one of the things that we've been advocating for here at Startwell is that our member companies, or companies, I should say, that are customers, really, 402 00:35:42.876 --> 00:35:53.626 enable their teams to be able to go out and seek mentorship opportunities and seek these sorts of professional communities to engage in. 403 00:35:54.086 --> 00:35:58.850 And it's funny because that had to necessarily, that led to us hosting. 404 00:35:58.970 --> 00:36:04.155 So this year I've started hosting a number of chapter organizations that are professional communities. 405 00:36:05.216 --> 00:36:14.702 to give them the structure, to give them the infrastructure of saying, okay, well, once a month, I'll give you a pro bono or in-kind kind of venue to use to gather 100 people. 406 00:36:15.422 --> 00:36:16.883 We'll create content out of that. 407 00:36:17.684 --> 00:36:24.108 And, of course, there's stuff to talk about with how those two connect, right, content and community and marketing. 408 00:36:24.688 --> 00:36:37.583 Um, but leave it aside to just say, uh, now I have these tentpole dates every month in the calendar that I could say to my customers, well, those three guys from your senior executive team would love to meet peers that they can soundboard stuff off. 409 00:36:38.084 --> 00:36:40.407 Bring them on Tuesday, bring them on Wednesday, send them over. 410 00:36:41.188 --> 00:36:44.912 Um, and that's been huge for, for all the people that we've engaged in that way. 411 00:36:46.356 --> 00:36:46.936 That's amazing. 412 00:36:47.036 --> 00:36:50.999 And I mean, frankly, you're very fortunate that you have an amazing space to invite people into. 413 00:36:51.039 --> 00:36:52.100 That helps a lot. 414 00:36:52.220 --> 00:36:52.460 Right. 415 00:36:52.600 --> 00:36:52.801 Right. 416 00:36:53.001 --> 00:37:09.713 And finding these communities that are professional associations, that are other networking groups that aren't tied to a specific company, even if it's sponsored by a company or a couple of companies, it lends to the community motion of we're creating value, irrespective of the company. 417 00:37:10.053 --> 00:37:10.273 Right. 418 00:37:10.613 --> 00:37:10.793 Right. 419 00:37:10.893 --> 00:37:12.695 And I, as a person participating, I'm, 420 00:37:13.497 --> 00:37:29.164 can get value out of meeting other people, hearing from other organizations, hearing from leaders, learning and exchanging ideas, irrespective of where I happen to work and I'm meeting other professionals in the same field or other fields than me that share the same ideas. 421 00:37:29.744 --> 00:37:31.565 It's incredibly helpful and super valuable. 422 00:37:32.276 --> 00:37:35.077 We're finding that, of course, even for our client engagements. 423 00:37:35.117 --> 00:37:38.357 A lot of companies are saying, okay, this is the big word for the year. 424 00:37:38.858 --> 00:37:43.019 Leave aside people changing their plans because of politics and so on. 425 00:37:43.899 --> 00:37:45.939 A lot of companies are saying we need offsites. 426 00:37:45.959 --> 00:37:51.440 We've gone through that cycle of pre-pandemic, everything was full tilt forward. 427 00:37:51.941 --> 00:37:53.241 Then the pandemic was the pause. 428 00:37:53.701 --> 00:37:55.882 Then it was remote work, then hybrid work. 429 00:37:56.042 --> 00:38:02.023 Then we need a mixture of physical space and non-physical, but we're suddenly a global company and we didn't plan on this. 430 00:38:03.543 --> 00:38:07.905 And we need to bring all the folks together to at least align in real life. 431 00:38:08.845 --> 00:38:10.645 And everyone's budgets are different. 432 00:38:10.665 --> 00:38:20.068 So some teams that come here once a year will do a full team urban retreat at Startwell, and then they'll go off to Mexico or something at another point in the year. 433 00:38:20.728 --> 00:38:26.553 And then other teams are like, might be a 200 person organization that does a full team session here. 434 00:38:26.693 --> 00:38:29.195 And then once a month, they've got smaller teams. 435 00:38:29.715 --> 00:38:33.578 And once a week, they've got like a five or 10 person teams that are here. 436 00:38:34.159 --> 00:38:39.423 So how people are learning to use space to support their own internal community at organizations, 437 00:38:40.303 --> 00:38:43.346 is actually quite heartening because it's exploratory. 438 00:38:43.527 --> 00:38:52.776 We're in a whole new phase of this, but it enables a new way of challenging, I guess, the hierarchies that are implicit in like everyone being in one space every day. 439 00:38:53.516 --> 00:38:55.078 You know, people have- It needs the playing field. 440 00:38:55.378 --> 00:38:55.739 It does. 441 00:38:55.819 --> 00:38:58.842 People have privacy when they need it for their own conversations. 442 00:38:59.222 --> 00:39:02.345 And that can really strengthen culture and subculture at companies, right? 443 00:39:03.198 --> 00:39:04.339 Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that. 444 00:39:04.359 --> 00:39:06.680 I'm thinking back to my team at Asana. 445 00:39:07.841 --> 00:39:10.562 Community, because of the nature of the company, was global. 446 00:39:10.582 --> 00:39:11.963 We had customers all over the world. 447 00:39:12.003 --> 00:39:22.669 And so my team, even pre-pandemic, I had people all over the world, which meant that there was no one time of day or one place that would work for us to anchor the team in. 448 00:39:23.470 -->

00:39:29.073 And so my challenge was, how do I build community amongst my own community team when I 449 00:39:29.540 --> 00:39:32.863 we're not and likely will never all be in the same place at the same time. 450 00:39:33.183 --> 00:39:33.423 Yeah. 451 00:39:33.683 --> 00:39:37.586 And in the seven years I was at Asano, there was never a point where we were all in the same place at the same time. 452 00:39:37.626 --> 00:39:38.887 Never in seven years? 453 00:39:39.247 --> 00:39:43.330 Never in seven years where all of us were together in one room at the same place at the same time. 454 00:39:43.791 --> 00:39:45.232 But what was interesting is that 455 00:39:46.098 --> 00:39:55.604 we leveraged a lot of the tools that frankly are available that weren't available previously to help build connection between our team as a whole and between individuals. 456 00:39:56.164 --> 00:40:00.747 That took a lot of frankly, pretty deliberate planning on my part in order to do that. 457 00:40:01.307 --> 00:40:08.011 But what was really interesting to me was during the pandemic, you know, all of us were just squares on the screen. 458 00:40:08.111 --> 00:40:10.472 It was like literally even playing field. 459 00:40:11.273 --> 00:40:14.175 And all of us had equal voice in meetings, all of us, 460 00:40:15.328 --> 00:40:21.172 if I had my team in Europe that I was on a call with, along with my team in the U S all of us were even, it was equal. 461 00:40:21.472 --> 00:40:21.672 Right. 462 00:40:21.892 --> 00:40:33.919 And then when we went back into the office post pandemic and my team in Europe, they were just faces on a screen when my team in the U S was sitting there in the meeting, automatically the dynamic shifted. 463 00:40:33.959 --> 00:40:35.600 It was no longer an even playing field. 464 00:40:36.421 --> 00:40:42.865 And the feedback from my team, even the people who were in the U S was it felt better when we were all together, 465 00:40:43.837 --> 00:40:47.660 on screen as one, rather than some were here and some are there. 466 00:40:48.341 --> 00:40:53.285 And the, the inequity became literally in front of us level parents. 467 00:40:54.357 --> 00:41:08.580 Yeah, it's something that we've been dealing with here as well, where the nature of how you bring people into the room that's virtual is like, there really isn't a technological solution to do it properly when the external folks are distributed. 468 00:41:09.220 --> 00:41:15.462 So we've been kind of working with a bunch of our larger customers to say, okay, gather there, gather here, gather there. 469 00:41:16.142 --> 00:41:31.498 And if everyone's in their own kind of cluster, then it's a lot more fun, even though it may be weird when it's not presentation time to dial into a particular cluster to watch them on screen. 470 00:41:32.199 --> 00:41:38.466 So we're kind of working on this distributed model of showcasing where each cluster does presentations. 471 00:41:39.066 --> 00:41:41.668 And then for

social time, it's social time in that cluster. 472 00:41:42.088 --> 00:41:46.691 But that's also something to do with this IRL programming, which is social time is really important. 473 00:41:47.932 --> 00:41:54.336 And you can't socialize through a screen on this like one-to-one feel on a one-to-many implementation. 474 00:41:54.356 --> 00:41:54.836 It doesn't work. 475 00:41:55.557 --> 00:41:56.017 It's hard. 476 00:41:56.037 --> 00:42:05.623 I mean, we used tools like Gatheround to help us with that, which was awesome to help us do some of the more friendly level socialization one-to-one and within a group. 477 00:42:05.803 --> 00:42:06.764 Okay. 478 00:42:07.124 --> 00:42:08.225 It's still challenging. 479 00:42:08.979 --> 00:42:17.430 This is an unnatural mechanism that we are all using now to varying degrees, trying to make it feel more natural. 480 00:42:17.450 --> 00:42:18.972 It's a challenge. 481 00:42:19.592 --> 00:42:20.173 It's a challenge. 482 00:42:20.233 --> 00:42:20.674 It's a challenge. 483 00:42:20.714 --> 00:42:25.600 And like fundamentally, I think it's this whole thing of like, yeah, you know, uh, 484 00:42:27.105 --> 00:42:30.866 A lot of it is to do with the aesthetics of the means of communication. 485 00:42:32.627 --> 00:42:39.989 Like increasingly I find myself not on video calls and just on audio calls only, you know, turn it off the camera because now you're so much more free. 486 00:42:40.189 --> 00:42:45.210 You know, looking at you cause we're having a conversation one-on-one, I'm in a studio, it feels natural, I'm used to the camera. 487 00:42:45.711 --> 00:42:48.791 But yeah, otherwise I would wanna move. 488 00:42:49.052 --> 00:42:51.352 I'd wanna take you with me to the couch and talk to you. 489 00:42:51.392 --> 00:42:53.233 I'd wanna move to the kitchen and cut some onions. 490 00:42:54.253 --> 00:42:59.040 So that doesn't feel natural, certainly not for me, with FaceTime on my phone. 491 00:43:00.081 --> 00:43:01.583 And I see it with my daughter who's seven. 492 00:43:02.004 --> 00:43:04.908 She doesn't want to talk to her grandma in different parts of the house. 493 00:43:04.928 --> 00:43:06.210 She's like, no, I'm done. 494 00:43:06.530 --> 00:43:07.351 I don't want to talk to you. 495 00:43:07.391 --> 00:43:10.596 And then my mom is like, how could you be like this? 496 00:43:11.424 --> 00:43:12.485 And it's really funny. 497 00:43:12.505 --> 00:43:18.347 It's because she just innately is like, I'll talk to you in person when I see you and that'll be good enough. 498 00:43:19.248 --> 00:43:29.492 Okay, let's talk about this idea of how companies can leverage the strength of content to inform communities. 499 00:43:29.612 --> 00:43:39.617 And then maybe if that's a feedback loop where then they can kind of like use communities to solicit guidelines for what to create to support the community. 500 00:43:39.897 --> 00:43:40.417 in content? 501 00:43:40.497 --> 00:43:41.038 Absolutely. 502 00:43:41.138 --> 00:43:50.422 So I, one way to think of community is as a channel, another marketing channel, just like social media would be a channel or paid digital ads would be a channel. 503 00:43:50.842 --> 00:43:53.923 Distributing to and via community is another channel. 504 00:43:54.044 --> 00:43:57.325 And so in order to distribute something, you need to have content. 505 00:43:57.725 --> 00:44:06.769 So I am a big proponent of creating both community specific content where it's things that are designed just for people who are more engaged than the average customer. 506 00:44:07.030 --> 00:44:07.170 Right. 507 00:44:08.504 --> 00:44:13.105 for forked versions of campaign content, educational content, et cetera. 508 00:44:13.865 --> 00:44:26.488 So you don't always have to reinvent the wheel and create something from the whole cloth, but knowing that this is a different audience than your broader customer base by them being part of the community, by definition, they're raising their hand saying they want to be more involved. 509 00:44:26.908 --> 00:44:30.249 So recognize and reflect that in the content that you give them. 510 00:44:30.429 --> 00:44:36.890 So this could be something like if you're doing, let's use a tech company as an example, like a product launch. 511 00:44:37.492 --> 00:44:49.859 You typically have a bunch of content that you create that you're going to be distributing on social and sending via email, create a slightly different version that you give to community members and maybe give it to them a week before the general public is going to see it. 512 00:44:50.020 --> 00:45:01.847 So you get them invested and involved in the launch that's coming and you give them assets that you would encourage them to share on their own social media, but you make it templatized so they can edit it on their own. 513 00:45:02.407 --> 00:45:04.028 So this type of content package, 514 00:45:04.630 --> 00:45:08.733 It's a really great way to engage the community without having to create a bunch of new stuff. 515 00:45:09.234 --> 00:45:12.136 But then there will be other things that you might want to create for the community. 516 00:45:12.176 --> 00:45:22.905 Maybe there's a guide that you could create for them on how to talk to their teams about your product, or a guide for them on tips and tricks from other community members on how to use the tool. 517 00:45:23.485 --> 00:45:30.111 So this is where you can start creating a more circular motion with community where you ask them for their input, 518 00:45:30.840 --> 00:45:37.108 Maybe you create some content from it, then you give it back to them in a reformatted way that other community members can make use of. 519 00:45:37.869 --> 00:45:44.618 You can also use community members' ideas when you ask them to contribute to specific user-generated content. 520 00:45:45.197 --> 00:45:47.759 So this is a thing that I think a lot of communities like to do. 521 00:45:47.959 --> 00:46:00.767 And I think it's a

smart thing to do, which is, let's say you have a contest about share your best ideas for using our product, and then we're going to make an ebook out of it, or we're going to make social posts from each person and showcase it on our own social media. 522 00:46:01.722 --> 00:46:05.165 It's a way to help raise the profile of your community members. 523 00:46:05.225 --> 00:46:08.148 Most people want to feel recognized and be seen as experts. 524 00:46:08.528 --> 00:46:19.739 So you can really create a circular motion if you do this well, where sometimes you give them content, sometimes you ask them for content, and you always highlight and celebrate when they've created or shared stuff along with you. 525 00:46:20.413 --> 00:46:22.576 I think those are both excellent approaches. 526 00:46:23.097 --> 00:46:36.857 And I think on the second one, I feel like a lot of companies who may not have expertise in crafting their own kind of communications that are not just like SEO targeted crappy blog posts. 527 00:46:39.257 --> 00:46:42.218 they're a little apprehensive in their first steps of this. 528 00:46:42.378 --> 00:46:50.859 Because on one hand, again, it's about kind of vulnerability of brand to give it up to the community to say, hey, we don't know what you want. 529 00:46:50.959 --> 00:46:53.240 Just tell us and we can work on it. 530 00:46:53.260 --> 00:46:57.961 Because we know stuff that will help you, but we don't know what you need. 531 00:46:58.221 --> 00:47:05.402 And I think the expectation amongst especially newbie marketers is that you have to always know what everyone needs all the time. 532 00:47:06.062 --> 00:47:07.663 Yeah, it's not realistic. 533 00:47:08.243 --> 00:47:11.104 No, no one, no matter how experienced knows everything. 534 00:47:11.304 --> 00:47:16.447 And assuming that you know what your people want all the time is really a fool's errand. 535 00:47:17.227 --> 00:47:18.167 Just ask them. 536 00:47:18.427 --> 00:47:26.791 It's the number of times I give this advice to people is astonishing to me because I'll talk with community leaders who are like, I'm not sure what my community wants. 537 00:47:26.831 --> 00:47:28.852 We've tried like doing this and this and this. 538 00:47:29.012 --> 00:47:31.193 And then I'll say, have you asked them what they want? 539 00:47:31.813 --> 00:47:32.854 Most of them say no. 540 00:47:32.874 --> 00:47:33.374 Right. 541 00:47:33.414 --> 00:47:33.894 So it's. 542 00:47:35.007 --> 00:47:38.029 Shortest path between point A and point B is the most direct route. 543 00:47:38.069 --> 00:47:42.493 The most direct route with community members when you don't know what they want or what they need is just ask them. 544 00:47:43.013 --> 00:47:43.593 They'll tell you. 545 00:47:44.234 --> 00:47:51.219 That doesn't mean you have to do every single thing that they say, but it will at least give you some direction of what people want, what they need. 546 00:47:51.259 --> 00:47:56.403 You could run a survey and make it as structured as you want to collect the information that will be actionable for you. 547 00:47:56.463 --> 00:47:58.644 But honestly, just ask people. 548 00:47:59.557 --> 00:48:00.397 It's so much easier. 549 00:48:00.877 --> 00:48:21.882 It's funny, and for anyone in the audience that watches this and is kind of still scratching their head on this topic, I don't know if this works as a validator, but just to prove how willing people are to engage with brands, personal or corporate, around this idea of co-creation and access to knowledge. 550 00:48:22.623 --> 00:48:27.984 You look at LinkedIn and the catfishing that happens constantly, I don't know if that's the right phrase, where someone's like, 551 00:48:28.864 --> 00:48:32.387 We decided to do this and we learned this amazing thing. 552 00:48:32.447 --> 00:48:36.411 And here are the first five pages of my 100 page ebook. 553 00:48:36.891 --> 00:48:44.618 Just reply, add me as a contact, you know, like friend me and then reply with this word and I'll send it to you. 554 00:48:45.059 --> 00:48:47.441 And you see thousands of people responding. 555 00:48:48.341 --> 00:48:54.724 And those people may not know who that person is, but they're going to form an alliance with them, connect them. 556 00:48:55.184 --> 00:48:59.085 That's the power of the motivation just to get the content that they want. 557 00:48:59.105 --> 00:49:00.246 100%. 558 00:49:00.326 --> 00:49:05.988 And this is part creating really valuable content or at the very least really engaging hooks to content. 559 00:49:07.228 --> 00:49:08.409 This is like marketing 101. 560 00:49:08.429 --> 00:49:10.470 Maybe there's just the sizzle and not the steak. 561 00:49:10.610 --> 00:49:11.310 Who knows? 562 00:49:11.590 --> 00:49:15.392 But either way, it's engaging enough to get people to take the next action, which is... 563 00:49:16.861 --> 00:49:21.944 And then from there, you can build out that network of people in whatever way you as the organizer see fit. 564 00:49:22.044 --> 00:49:27.167 But never doubt that people are invested and want content that's relevant for them. 565 00:49:27.527 --> 00:49:29.288 But if you don't know what that content is, just ask them. 566 00:49:31.369 --> 00:49:31.789 So true. 567 00:49:32.390 --> 00:49:36.772 How does this apply to video resources or different kind of like media formats, do you think? 568 00:49:38.083 --> 00:49:39.123 I mean, I think it's all the same. 569 00:49:39.203 --> 00:49:46.545 I mean, video is much more challenging to create just in terms of production level and time, et cetera. 570 00:49:46.625 --> 00:49:52.066 But I think when it comes to community, you can ask for video testimonials. 571 00:49:52.106 --> 00:49:54.967 You can ask people to create walkthroughs. 572 00:49:55.427 --> 00:49:59.127 People often do this already online on places like YouTube all the time. 573 00:49:59.728 --> 00:50:03.048 If you have a more curated community, you can help guide some

of those people. 574 00:50:03.088 --> 00:50:06.269 You can give them resources to help them do it effectively or effectively. 575 00:50:07.073 --> 00:50:12.038 Equip them with facts that they may not have behind the scenes of like, oh, actually, here's how this thing works. 576 00:50:12.799 --> 00:50:15.541 And you can help promote any video content that they might create. 577 00:50:16.482 --> 00:50:22.748 Creating your own video content for them to use is also very, very helpful for them because they may not have those resources themselves. 578 00:50:23.045 --> 00:50:23.265 Yeah. 579 00:50:23.305 --> 00:50:29.308 And that's, again, that's something that could fit into sales motion type stuff too, or like, you know, product, uh, education. 580 00:50:29.908 --> 00:50:40.272 If you're, if you have B2B software and it's an enterprise client, you know, there's going to be like, you've sold a thousand seats, create some thing for one person to then replicate it or pass it on. 581 00:50:40.952 --> 00:50:41.593 Absolutely. 582 00:50:41.653 --> 00:50:43.434 Um, it's very interesting. 583 00:50:43.554 --> 00:50:45.014 And I think, um, 584 00:50:47.375 --> 00:51:02.805 Is there anything you want to say about that kind of like this, like, I don't know how to describe it, but the idea of a kind of like unified approach to revenue and to customer retention and community development, how they all stitch together, sales, marketing? 585 00:51:04.166 --> 00:51:10.210 Yeah, community is a horizontal motion that sits underneath and alongside every part of the customer's journey. 586 00:51:10.290 --> 00:51:16.714 So I think if I were a go-to-market leader, I would think about how can community help with acquisition? 587 00:51:17.428 --> 00:51:29.036 awareness, adoption, conversion, retention, and then advocacy, every single point throughout that lifecycle, I would sit down and think through with each of those stakeholder functions. 588 00:51:29.396 --> 00:51:29.576 Yeah. 589 00:51:29.996 --> 00:51:37.181 If we have a group of people, how might we be able to interact with them and create value for them at this particular stage? 590 00:51:37.942 --> 00:51:43.105 And then what are the outcomes that we might want to get from doing that at this particular stage? 591 00:51:43.125 --> 00:51:43.225 Yeah. 592 00:51:43.788 --> 00:51:56.277 I think there's a mistake that happens in most organizations where if community sits just within marketing, the only outcomes they really care about are the marketing specific outcomes like awareness and acquisition. 593 00:51:56.757 --> 00:52:00.099 But that's only one part of the entire customer journey. 594 00:52:00.520 --> 00:52:03.021 The customer doesn't care about your org chart. 595 00:52:03.442 --> 00:52:04.983 They really don't. 596 00:52:05.243 --> 00:52:08.205 They are not interested at all in which team community sits within. 597 00:52:09.226 --> 00:52:12.388 They're interested in solving for the problems they have at each stage of that life cycle. 598 00:52:12.952 --> 00:52:20.557 And so if I'm a go-to-market leader, I would think about how do I put community and really think about it as like one person's experience. 599 00:52:20.957 --> 00:52:24.839 How do I put that one person's experience at the center of this entire journey? 600 00:52:25.420 --> 00:52:32.224 And what can I do from the community perspective to help enable that and create value for the customer throughout that? 601 00:52:32.645 --> 00:52:51.567 How do you think, and maybe there's some examples that are top of mind for you, but how do you think companies are suggesting, as part of that kind of harmonized sales marketing and other approach to leveraging the power of community, how do you think companies might be using... 602 00:52:52.708 --> 00:53:04.196 the fact that they have an active and engaged community and a value for community in their customer acquisition strategy, like letting people know that being a customer means being part of something. 603 00:53:05.097 --> 00:53:12.122 I think smart companies recognize that community is a value add to whatever their product or service is, right? 604 00:53:12.282 --> 00:53:15.604 It's a differentiator, it's an amplifier, it's an accelerator. 605 00:53:16.085 --> 00:53:19.207 And for a community members and potential community members that, 606 00:53:19.898 --> 00:53:23.719 It helps them get more value out of whatever it is that they're signing up for. 607 00:53:24.380 --> 00:53:29.841 The smartest companies are putting that into their marketing, putting that into their sales top track. 608 00:53:30.302 --> 00:53:39.665 When you become a customer, you get access to this community that has X number of members and X amount of conversations and all these resources. 609 00:53:39.705 --> 00:53:46.547 And here's the different resources that you get and include a couple of testimonials from existing community members who've gotten a lot of value out of it. 610 00:53:47.286 --> 00:53:50.408 So it's like any feature of a product. 611 00:53:51.009 --> 00:54:07.620 If you think of community as a product under your umbrella, sell it alongside the rest of the things that you're selling and include it as part of that conversation as one of the things that differentiates your offering from your competitors who may not have the luxury of a community that they're creating for their customers. 612 00:54:08.460 --> 00:54:13.604 It means something to customers to know that there's other people that use your product or tool and other people that they can talk to. 613 00:54:14.344 --> 00:54:31.174 There was something you said once on stage about the scale of the content base that you guys had for Asana, for the user-generated content and otherwise content that I guess you guys produced and published for the community in a hub, in some sort of community portal. 614 00:54:31.614 --> 00:54:35.737 And it was like a gargantuan amount of articles that I recall. 615 00:54:36.057

--> 00:54:37.078 It was a lot, yeah. 616 00:54:37.378 --> 00:54:41.060 And a huge number of users that participate as well, right? 617 00:54:41.080 --> 00:54:41.180 Yeah. 618 00:54:41.570 --> 00:54:47.559 Yeah, we had when I was at Asana, close to 700,000 people actively participating in our community. 619 00:54:48.040 --> 00:54:48.540 Wow. 620 00:54:49.001 --> 00:54:56.252 Accessing resources, sharing ideas, having conversations, in addition to the people that were coming to our events online and offline. 621 00:54:56.632 --> 00:55:02.234 And how did those, what were the dovetails that you saw between the in-person events? 622 00:55:02.334 --> 00:55:07.196 Because I assume the bulk of them were software training and pre-training, like early stage training. 623 00:55:08.156 --> 00:55:09.557 And then, you know, the community. 624 00:55:09.657 --> 00:55:19.481 So did they work in that way that you would offer IRL for people that are looking to learn and get familiar with the brand and the product? 625 00:55:19.921 --> 00:55:22.882 And then they would have the resources to be handed off to the digital community or... 626 00:55:23.513 --> 00:55:23.953 Exactly. 627 00:55:23.973 --> 00:55:25.234 It would work in parallel. 628 00:55:25.294 --> 00:55:29.215 So we would have the people like to learn and connect in different ways. 629 00:55:29.695 --> 00:55:35.617 There are some people who will only learn if they are sitting with their butt in a chair in a classroom. 630 00:55:36.297 --> 00:55:38.378 There's others that are happy to do it online. 631 00:55:38.498 --> 00:55:40.199 They have three other windows open, right? 632 00:55:40.339 --> 00:55:44.860 And still others want to just page through something step by step at their own pace. 633 00:55:45.621 --> 00:55:51.563 And so we offered all of these different options for people because there is no one right way. 634 00:55:52.603 --> 00:55:52.683 And 635 00:55:53.285 --> 00:55:57.766 the way that they would intersect is it was actually the same content just expressed in these different channels. 636 00:55:58.086 --> 00:56:01.648 So it meant for us, we didn't need to create three completely different sets of content. 637 00:56:01.668 --> 00:56:04.729 There's a core content that we would use across these different channels. 638 00:56:05.089 --> 00:56:11.971 We would often test things out channel by channel and see how they'd land and then adapt them for each of the other channels that we were using. 639 00:56:12.751 --> 00:56:22.554 And then we would always, if for instance, someone came to a course that we hosted at StartWell, there was a forum thread that those people could go to, to have further conversations about what they learned. 640 00:56:23.123 --> 00:56:32.997 So we tie these different community elements together, the education, the experiential part of being in person, the online component where you can have the conversation. 641 00:56:33.637 --> 00:56:37.242 Again, it's just one person at the center of it, one member, their experience. 642 00:56:37.923 --> 00:56:40.587 Having all of that tied together makes it easier for them and more effective. 643 00:56:41.503 --> 00:57:01.542 It's so interesting, you know, like considering customer bases, especially like user base, community members for software that's productivity based where people want to learn and constantly learn and then have questions about how to use this and how do I do it this way and how can I have this situation. 644 00:57:01.562 --> 00:57:01.822 Yeah. 645 00:57:02.263 --> 00:57:04.345 The power of community is very key. 646 00:57:04.385 --> 00:57:16.160 And I think this approach would sound a little bit refreshing and perhaps daunting for people that don't come from that background or have a different need for building community. 647 00:57:16.180 --> 00:57:17.202 But the idea that you could... 648 00:57:17.742 --> 00:57:32.285 you know, take a group of people that may not have met, but were together at an event, and then literally like share the list of guests, but do it in a way that they're all together and they can keep the connections alive. 649 00:57:32.325 --> 00:57:40.907 And I think that's really interesting because a lot of people, again, when they consider events as part of their marketing budget, they're, 650 00:57:41.407 --> 00:57:53.073 and they're thinking of pushing media on people, and then following up with the salespeople who then go and data mine those contacts post-event, you miss out on so much value. 651 00:57:54.274 --> 00:58:00.437 Yeah, that's a really old-fashioned way of thinking about things is like, what can these people, how do we convert them right away? 652 00:58:00.777 --> 00:58:05.039 What information can we extract from them to make that process bigger, better, faster, easier? 653 00:58:06.340 --> 00:58:07.500 That's just not how people buy 654 00:58:11.082 --> 00:58:18.966 Where, where, and when people buy, we it's hard to determine, but what we can do is build relationships with them, show them value and help them learn. 655 00:58:19.727 --> 00:58:29.572 And part of that is us making sure that they, from the company perspective, that they understand what it is that we do, the pricing and packaging, the features that they might or might need or might not. 656 00:58:29.832 --> 00:58:29.992 Yep. 657 00:58:30.452 --> 00:58:33.734 And part of it is us connecting them to other customers or potential customers. 658 00:58:34.234 --> 00:58:36.956 So they can talk about the problems that they're solving and learn from one another. 659 00:58:37.656 --> 00:58:38.977 And, you know, we can do that in a forum. 660 00:58:40.477 --> 00:58:42.178 We're not giving out their email addresses. 661 00:58:42.218 --> 00:58:45.520 It's like you go there if you want to, you have conversations if you want to. 662 00:58:46.100 --> 00:58:47.421 And if you don't, that's okay too. 663 00:58:47.461 --> 00:59:03.210 There's other ways for you to learn and engage,

but it's building up this whole ecosystem around recognizing how people actually engage with customers or with companies today is very different than in the past when they would just contact sales, have someone have a conversation and make a decision. 664 00:59:04.122 --> 00:59:10.059 know there's the the adage of the rule of seven that it takes seven touch points before someone is ready to make a purchasing decision 665 00:59:10.962 --> 00:59:14.903 It's a misnomer to think that the salesperson is the one that closed the deal. 666 00:59:14.923 --> 00:59:20.944 And maybe before that, they saw a billboard, they saw an ad, they read an article on a completely different third-party website. 667 00:59:21.365 --> 00:59:24.145 They asked some people in their network about the product or service. 668 00:59:24.185 --> 00:59:25.866 They came to a community event. 669 00:59:25.986 --> 00:59:29.146 Which one of those was the one that made them make the decision? 670 00:59:29.607 --> 00:59:31.847 Impossible to say because it was all of them together. 671 00:59:32.467 --> 00:59:39.749 And so this is a much more modern relationship, trust-based way of thinking about go-to-market. 672 00:59:40.851 --> 00:59:46.858 And it's a fascinating thing because I think a lot of companies, especially if they're early stage SaaS, they're talking about scale growth. 673 00:59:47.158 --> 00:59:57.831 And scale growth is something that is almost, I think, impossible to do sustainably without a value for community and for enabling your customers to take a... 674 00:59:58.411 --> 01:00:03.872 feeling of ownership over their use case of your product or service. 675 01:00:04.212 --> 01:00:10.614 If they're just expected to consume it, then it's not something that's going to help them. 676 01:00:10.734 --> 01:00:12.134 And we see it a lot in Canada. 677 01:00:12.174 --> 01:00:24.297 We see a lot of this approach to unicorn status, fueled by this lie that firstly digital marketing works, or I should clarify, paid ads work as like- They do. 678 01:00:24.477 --> 01:00:25.198 They don't anymore. 679 01:00:25.238 --> 01:00:26.138 They don't anymore. 680 01:00:26.358 --> 01:00:27.058 They don't anymore. 681 01:00:27.618 --> 01:00:40.894 And so you can't access user bases to easily just, you know, it's like you can't raise money to pump into ads alone, you know, and then customer service reps to like handle phone calls. 682 01:00:41.595 --> 01:00:47.362 Yeah, I think these techniques did work at one point, and that's why they're still part of the playbook. 683 01:00:48.333 --> 01:00:51.374 just don't work or they don't work as well as they once did. 684 01:00:51.414 --> 01:00:57.557 And they're far more expensive to implement and maintain and run in an ongoing basis than they once did. 685 01:00:58.037 --> 01:01:00.218 There's just too much competition for eyeballs and attention. 686 01:01:00.518 --> 01:01:02.419 So everything costs more and is more complicated. 687 01:01:03.239 --> 01:01:12.743 I think from my experience, the people who work in the more scaled digital go-to-market strategies function more on the pulling levers 688 01:01:13.697 --> 01:01:15.659 world, not the relationship building. 689 01:01:15.779 --> 01:01:28.354 So this notion of it takes time, it takes trust, it takes relationships is really foreign to most traditional, well, traditional in the terms of like tech world marketing sense. 690 01:01:28.394 --> 01:01:28.554 Right. 691 01:01:28.794 --> 01:01:30.156 Glengarry Glen Ross people. 692 01:01:31.085 --> 01:01:33.046 Yeah, it's just, it's very different than what they're used to. 693 01:01:33.086 --> 01:01:34.247 And it takes more time. 694 01:01:34.887 --> 01:01:38.849 And so while it costs less money, it takes longer. 695 01:01:39.189 --> 01:01:44.752 And in the world of unicorns, time is not usually the currency that they're willing to give up. 696 01:01:45.947 --> 01:01:54.734 So let's talk to some practicals that people watching this might be inspired to go and build out for their own community solutions. 697 01:01:54.794 --> 01:01:58.077 So is there a tech stack that you would recommend or tools? 698 01:01:58.137 --> 01:02:03.501 I know, again, 20 years ago, we were talking about solutions starting being like maybe discussion forums, right? 699 01:02:04.153 --> 01:02:09.557 Yeah, I think it depends on the organization and what you're trying to achieve and what the pillars of your program are. 700 01:02:09.997 --> 01:02:17.242 So if you are just creating forums, which that's fine, that is a community method. 701 01:02:17.943 --> 01:02:21.325 There are many, many forum tools available that let you do just that. 702 01:02:21.926 --> 01:02:31.713 However, I would encourage people to think about there are many ways that your community will want to interact with you, your company, and with each other. 703 01:02:32.634 --> 01:02:40.178 I am a bigger proponent of community tools that recognize the comprehensive array of ways that people want to connect. 704 01:02:41.119 --> 01:02:47.663 And there's a new breed of tools that are designed from the ground up to put the member at the center of the experience. 705 01:02:48.203 --> 01:02:56.188 And that experience can be across events or forums or resources or getting more education or connecting in conversation with one another. 706 01:02:56.208 --> 01:03:00.330 These are the tools that I would recommend at this stage because 707 01:03:01.148 --> 01:03:11.296 From a community leader's perspective, every time you add a new tool, if you're doing the point solution path, it's a whole nother set of headaches because you have to try to connect the dots between these tools. 708 01:03:11.316 --> 01:03:16.000 You have to work with your legal and your security teams to procure them and maintain them. 709 01:03:16.100 --> 01:03:18.001 And it's a lot. 710 01:03:18.261 --> 01:03:21.344 And so the fewer tools you can have, the better. 711 01:03:21.504 --> 01:03:29.150 So

think about what the breadth of your community program might look like, then try to find a tool that can cover as much of that as possible 712 01:03:30.013 --> 01:03:30.593 Thank me later. 713 01:03:30.733 --> 01:03:31.913 Your life will be a lot easier. 714 01:03:32.474 --> 01:03:36.774 Any particular software is that are recent that you've seen kind of evolve that are interesting? 715 01:03:37.595 --> 01:03:41.195 I'm a big fan of for like person based communities. 716 01:03:41.335 --> 01:03:46.436 I think circle is really great for business company or brand based communities. 717 01:03:46.536 --> 01:03:48.317 Gradual is really amazing. 718 01:03:49.457 --> 01:03:52.258 These are two tools that are thinking about community from a different perspective. 719 01:03:52.358 --> 01:03:59.219 They're targeting different parts of the market and the ones that they're targeting, they've adapted their solutions for quite 720 01:04:00.014 --> 01:04:00.214 Nice. 721 01:04:00.654 --> 01:04:05.556 Lastly, uh, we didn't really talk much about, uh, you and what you're doing now, but. 722 01:04:06.576 --> 01:04:08.417 So I am on sabbatical right now. 723 01:04:08.437 --> 01:04:11.418 I'm doing some advising and consulting, which has been really amazing. 724 01:04:11.938 --> 01:04:17.920 I've also been writing a book about community led growth, which will be coming out later this year, the community code. 725 01:04:18.780 --> 01:04:27.943 And in a precursor step to that, I've been doing a lot of writing and content creation of my own around my thoughts, experience, and some interviews that I've done with other community leaders. 726 01:04:28.363 --> 01:04:28.503 Uh, 727 01:04:28.830 --> 01:04:33.852 community and where it sits on Substack, also called the community code. 728 01:04:34.332 --> 01:04:34.872 Very simple. 729 01:04:35.832 --> 01:04:36.833 That's been really fun. 730 01:04:38.373 --> 01:04:41.434 Sharing my experiences, what I've learned, my opinions. 731 01:04:41.554 --> 01:04:44.015 I have a lot of hot takes on community building, as it turns out. 732 01:04:44.575 --> 01:04:53.158 And so I've been talking a little about what I think works and what I think doesn't and how the community world can evolve to better meet the needs of our changing business landscape. 733 01:04:53.842 --> 01:04:57.925 You've seen a big evolution in this whole space in the last couple of decades. 734 01:04:57.965 --> 01:04:58.905 So there's a lot to share. 735 01:04:59.706 --> 01:05:06.070 I particularly like the sub stacks, uh, depth, uh, and, and in each piece that you write, you're, you're spending time doing it. 736 01:05:06.130 --> 01:05:14.175 And I think it's, uh, it's exciting to see those, uh, those posts get shared because everyone, uh, has a lot of insights to, to dig into. 737 01:05:14.215 --> 01:05:14.535 It's good. 738 01:05:15.003 --> 01:05:15.723 I appreciate that. 739 01:05:15.743 --> 01:05:18.945 I'm really writing it for not so much community builders. 740 01:05:18.985 --> 01:05:22.186 There's a lot of content already targeted at folks like me who do what I do. 741 01:05:22.987 --> 01:05:35.593 It's really designed for people who might be cross-functional partners to community teams, stakeholders internally and externally, leaders of companies who are thinking about whether they should build community and why and what that might look like. 742 01:05:35.913 --> 01:05:38.154 Because no one's talking about community to these people. 743 01:05:39.294 --> 01:05:40.175 Big, big miss. 744 01:05:40.475 --> 01:05:42.336 So if no one's going to do it, I'm going to do it. 745 01:05:42.596 --> 01:05:42.836 Nice.