In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with David Siegel, CEO of Meetup, Author of Decide & Conquer, and Host of the Keep Connected podcast. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. They discuss the best practices and values for CEO and community leaders in decision-making. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, and CEOs. Timestamps: (05:43) - David's intro and his current role at Meetup (09:27) - The Meetup experience (17:57) - Changing the game (26:00) - Decide and Conquer book (36:00) - What is a decision framework (45:12) - Going with an imperfect plan over a perfect plan (49:31) - Building trust when entering a new company (54:15) - Empowering versus micromanaging people (58:01) - The future of Meetup (01:00:05) - Rapid-fire question round Notable Quotes: “I happen to have grown up with an extremely strong sense of community” “Building a community is about building a quality experience” “And I consider one of my most important jobs as a community leader is to be as transparent as possible so that other people around me are not surprised” “Trying to fit a narrative into principles is much less interesting than creating the principles after you already know what's meaningful and less meaningful” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. What's your favorite book to gift or recommend to others? How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie 2. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one piece of advice to the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? Find joy in your day-to-day life as that joy can help set you off for longer-term success. 3. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Sardines 4. Who in the world of community would you like to take out for lunch? Angela Duckworth, author of GRIT 5. What is the most important metric that you look at when looking at the health of a meetup? The number of connections that we create between people. 6. What's the weirdest Meetup group? Hugging groups 7. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? Fantasy baseball