Chris Samila is the co-founder of Partnership Leaders - a strong bootstrapped business that provides community, connections and resources for partnership professionals. This episode is supported by Curated Connections (https://curatedconnections.io/) - a simple matchmaking tool with an easy-to-justify pricing. In this episode we discuss: Organising conferences and city-wide events with a volunteer-led strategy What does a partnership professional do? How Partnership Leaders (PL)...

This episode is supported by Curated Connections (https://curatedconnections.io/) - a simple matchmaking tool with an easy-to-justify pricing. --- Nikki Thibodeau is the Senior Manager of Community and Customer Advocacy at Calix. She is also the founder of The Community Community - where she is building a safe space for senior community professionals to grow, together. Previously she has worked in various roles, rising through the ranks of the community team at Shopify. In this episode,...

Jessica is the Head of Community and Events at Hampton - a private and highly vetted community for founders and CEOs started by Sam Parr. She has more than 7 years of experience building communities of startup founders at venture funds and startup accelerators. This episode is supported by Curated Connections (https://curatedconnections.io/) - a simple matchmaking tool for communities with an easy to justify pricing! In this episode - 00:00 Teaser 01:28 From Teacher to a Community...

Madi Pignetti is the Head of Community at Contra - a commission-free freelancer marketplace. But she was a software developer before this. In this episode she shares how she made the pivot and what her work today looks like. Show notes: 00:00 Teaser 01:50 What is her work as the Head of Community at Contra 07:30 Measuring the contribution of community towards the Contra business 12:43 Personalities more suited for a community manager role 17:19 How experience as a developer makes her more...

Amanda has been led by what she found interesting throughout her career. So she completed a 6-month coding bootcamp last year, after having spent 20 years in events and marketing. In a recent career pivot, she joined the Rails Foundation - a non-profit dedicated to supporting the Ruby on Rails ecosystem, as the Executive Director. What is Ruby on Rails? It is a web development framework that has been used to create tools like Shopify, GitHub, Basecamp, Twitch, Airbnb, Twitter and thousands...

Marcie Walker is the Head of Community Engagement at Gatheround - a startup building a fun, new online events platform that makes virtual events actually fun. In this episode, Marcie shares all the lessons she has learnt in building herself a career in community building. Some things we talk about: 00:00 Teaser 04:50 How work in community is dependent more on what the community needs rather than your title 13:32 Virtual vs In-person events 16:59 What Marcie is working on now 23:21...

Jenny Weigle is a strategic consultant who has worked with some well-name brands like Airbnb, Google, Sephora, Visa and many many more such household names - and helped them build their online communities. She has been building communities for more than 10 yrs and has helped more than 100 brands in this time. So, if you are a consultant or someone who wants to become a consultant, Jenny is a perfect role model. In this episode we discuss: 00:00 The highs and lows of building your...

Ben Lang is the Head of Community at Notion. He attributes almost all of the opportunities that have come his way to the side projects he has built out of passion. Believe it or not, The International Hummus Day is his creation. And so, in this episode we talk about: 00:00 Teaser 01:43 Power of side projects to open up opportunities 16:42 Decentralised approach towards the Notion community and why it may not be the best approach for others 22:24 Community building lessons learnt at...

Casie Tennin is a Community Builder and a Certified Life Coach. As a Community Builder, she has built communities for fast-growing startups like Masterclass and TaskHuman. As a Professional Life Coach, she helps individuals make scary pivots in their professional and personal lives. “We spend so much of our lives not being in touch and in tune to what our heart wants, but to what society tells us to do,” says Casie. So we asked her how to not spend our lives that way. And she give us an...

Rahul Desai is the General Manager of the Chief of Staff Network - a community membership for Chiefs of Staff to network and learn from their peers in the industry. He the person responsible for making this business profitable while delivering a great member experience. In the 6 months he has been in this role, he has already lead the team to take the conversion rate of interested applicants from 30% to 80%. So if you are managing, building or planning to build a community membership...

If you have wondered about a career in community operations, this episode should help you understand what it is, how Tiffany broke into it and how you can too. Tiffany Oda is the COO of Talkbase - a young startup that is building the community CRM for startups. In this episode we talk about: 00:00 Dealing with community layoffs, Community Operations 101 with Tiffany Oda 06:49 Dealing with layoffs 18:44 What Tiffany is up to at different times of the week 25:18 What is Community Ops 39:12...

Murtaza Bambot is the cofounder and CEO of Heartbeat - an awesome platform for building online communities. It combines the powers of Slack, Notion, Luma, Meetsy, Zoom and other platforms that community builders often need to stitch to get a functioning community. In this episode we talk about: 00:00 How Murtaza keeps it together when times are difficult 03:40 Favourite communities on Heartbeat 09:34 Heartbeat's community Hearth - how it started and how it helps them 19:47 How Murtaza...

Jakob is the cofounder and CEO of Butter - a startup that is bravely going against the video conferencing incumbents like Zoom and Google Meet by building a fun, interactive and delightful video conferencing tool. In this episode: 00:00 Looking at salary as points in the game of life does not make sense 01:50 How Jakob's career plan did not work out 08:35 Risk and reward early in your career 14:21 The fundamental step/skill to build a product-based startup 19:21 Deciding when to shut...

Ben Regier’s career is unique. Previously, he has served in the US Marine Corps and has been a store manager at Starbucks. Now, he is pioneering community-led sales as the Community Development Representative at Commsor. In this episode we talk about -  00:00 The client that will buy only from Ben  09:17 One thing you absolutely need to do in a community-led sales role  11:56 How to handle NOs  15:15 Most difficult part of his job  16:53 Lessons carried over from service in the US...

Sophia Haq is the founder and CEO at Muslim Women Professionals (abbreviated MWP) - a non-profit that promotes the empowerment of Muslim women globally. Here, she is building a community where diverse women can embrace their Muslim identity and build professional skills through mentorship, networking, and guidance. That's not all. She's also the Senior Program Manager at XRC Labs - venture capital firm and accelerator. Here she builds curriculum, spearheads community development, maintains...

Derrick is the community manager at Thrive TRM. He pivoted into the community industry in 2022 after 11 YEARS of experience in the sales industry. Chapters: Thinking about what brings you the most joy How he found out about community and got his 1st gig Shooting your shot Getting real with C School projects Process vs Goals Mindset Adding points to the scoreboard Rapid fire round --- --- --- Links and Resources: Derrick’s LinkedIn -...

Sharath Kuruganty has worked with some iconic community led companies like Product Hunt, OnDeck and currently Threado, where he is the Head of Community. A fun fact - Threado’s co-founder, Pramod Rao was guest no. 2 on this show. So this conversation has been a long time coming. What made it happen this time is Sharath's recent win where he sold his side project Shoutout to a UK based product studio. He started building this project about two years ago and reached $30k ARR with it. In this...

Bri Leever is the founder of Ember Consulting where she helps companies as their Brand Community Strategist working to create a community out of their superfans. In this episode: 0:00 Teaser 9:02 How Bri got clientele for 1.5 years in 90 days 17:30 A repeatable playbook for you to get your 1st client 28:42 How can you use a community to acquire more customers for your business 32:09 On the diversification of income 43:34 Pricing clients 55:54 Rapid fire round  --- ---...

Shre is the fractional Head of Community for Lenny Rachitsky’s paid community of 10,000+ product-minded people - one of the most popular paid online communities. But that’s not it. He has pivoted away from lucrative careers in management consulting and at big companies in his pursuit for more meaningful work. Today, he is a consultant and describes himself as Dobby - a slave elf from the Harry Potter world who freed himself. In this episode: 2:50: Why he has “only taken paycuts” 10:10:...

Gabrielle Leith is the Community Manager at Grapevine. She has a really interesting career path going from working in films at Toronto Film Festival to getting her first community role using a side project she started - Supper Club Cinema. In this episode - 4:50: How she started a side project in community building 16:55: Getting her first job before she even knew about community management 19:17: Why side projects are a great way to discover your passion 25:30: How she found her latest...

Mac is an entrepreneur, a visionary and the originator of the community-led movement. He is the founder and CEO of Commsor and Community club - 2 names that everyone in the community industry is familiar with. In fact, every guest that we’ve talked to has attributed getting help from the Community Club community when they were starting out in the industry. In this episode: (01:21) - The stupid little hackathon idea called “Commsponsor” (08:52) - Starting Community Club before even...

Erin O’Neill might be the first community professional who planned her transition into community management. Almost everyone you’ll meet in the community industry, has accidentally fallen into their first community job. But not Erin. She decided that she wanted to switch her careers, discovered community management and succeeded in moving into it! Today, she is the Head of Community at RevOps Co-op. In this episode: (1:52)  - What motivated Erin to switch her career (6:00) - What...

Prashant Mahajan is the founder and CEO of Zeda.io - a startup that’s building a super app for product teams. Previously, he had been a rockstar Product Manager at multiple high growth startups where he’s built products that have touched the lives of millions of people. What’s interesting about him is how generous he is with his time. He often spends his time writing posts on LinkedIn or Twitter, doing podcast appearances and giving webinars to talk about his journey being a founder and...

Taylor is the Head of Community at Groove - a support community for people who work for or by themselves. All over the world, people use Groove’s mobile app to instantly connect and conquer their to-dos alongside each other. Taylor is an extrovert, through and through. She loves bringing people together. She loves building workshops, facilitating events, mentorship programs and more. Right out college, she started her career building powerful learning experiences with Seth Godin at AltMBA -...

Rae is the Head of Community at Topknot - a startup that provides an online personal development club that helps millennial women and non-binary individuals move forward in their personal development and growth journey. What I find super interesting about her is that this is not only her first official community role, but also her first role in a tech startup! She is coming to the community space after a long and varied professional background spanning non-profit management to business...