Beginner Maps (Nityesh and Piyush)

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 business, you should continue listening.

We talk about -

00:00 Teaser
03:12 A peer support group for Chiefs of Staff
10:35 4-tiers of spend on communities
14:47 Getting member close rate from 30% of interested applicants to 80%
21:44 Nailing sales interviews by being process oriented
28:39 Need for laser focus as General Manager @ Chief of Staff Network
37:04 Routine Roulette
44:27 Selling Upslope as a solo-founder to get to his current job
52:28 How Rahul thrives as an introvert
56:03 Servant leadership
01:01:46 Building out the generalist side
01:06:19 Advice for 20 yo

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Links and Resources:

Chief of Staff Network - http://chiefofstaff.network/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=click&utm_campaign=beginnermaps
Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/
Amp It Up - https://ampitupbook.com/
Stolen Focus - https://stolenfocusbook.com/

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Tatiana Figueiredo is the founder of Business of Community - an online school and community that helps founders create profitable businesses by building communities. She has helped multiple people start thriving community businesses. So, you can treat this episode as her masterclass on building such a business yourself. She discusses her journey of turning her consultancy into a scaleable community business, how you can take the first steps to build your community business and how to grow it. This episode is made possible by Curated Connections - a tool we created to increase the value of private membership communities by creating networking programs that run on autopilot. Try it in your community - https://curatedconnections.io/ Links: - Business of Community by Tatiana - https://businessofcommunity.co/ - Tatiana’s Twitter/X profile - https://twitter.com/tatfig/ - Tatiana’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tatianaf/ - Get notified about future episodes here - https://beginnermaps.com/ Chapters: 00:00 Turning a consultancy into a community business 07:05 Look for signs of a community need 10:03 Why you don't need an audience 16:33 Steps to start a community without an audience 22:26 Case study 26:31 But you do need a professional network 28:20 It's crucial not to overpromise 30:23 Connection to learning ratio framework 32:50 What if you already have a big audience? 36:50 Creating premium content: bad strategy for creators 41:50 Find your unique growth channel

Erin Halper is the founder/CEO of The Upside - a private community of top independent consultants that gives them the resources and the support that they need to grow their business. The Upside uses Circle as their community platform. In fact, they were recognized as one of Circle's top performing communities out of more than 10, 000 communities that are hosted there! In this interview, Erin reveals the unique strategies she uses and the mistakes she has learnt from to build a premium community membership business. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:54 The idea of Upside 04:49 Starting with a stupidly low price 06:33 The 250-member limit 10:09 Not in it for the money 11:42 Some things that didn't work 16:09 Getting first 20 customers 17:39 3 main sources of new customers 19:44 Switching from Facebook to Circle 24:37 Why Circle worked for her community? 27:31 Erin's 3-person community team 30:53 Directory of content role 33:12 Member spotlight campaigns 34:30 Automating matches between members 39:18 Playbook for running masterminds 49:07 Application process for The Upside 52:03 Welcoming new members 57:42 Erin's big question for you

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 empathetic in her current role 25:30 Routine roulette 29:40 How she stayed optimistic after quitting her full time developer role and not knowing what to do next 37:00 From an ambassador to landing a full time role at Contra 46:09 Resources for people getting into community 49:48 One action item to get the ball rolling --- --- --- Links and Resources: Madi's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/madi-pignetti/ Contra - https://contra.com/?userType=independent Building Brand Communities - https://amzn.eu/d/dblwmNS The Art of Gathering - https://www.priyaparker.com/book-art-of-gathering SuperHi - https://www.superhi.com/ Community Club - https://www.community.club/ --- --- --- Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter. We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format. So go to http://beginnermaps.com/ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Max is the Community and Customer Support Lead at SuperHi - a startup that teaches people code, design and project management skills.

What's most interesting about Max is that if you visit his personal LinkedIn, you’ll find that the experience section is a smorgasbord of careers. He has done everything from project management, website design, business coaching, freelancing and community management.

In this episode, we dive into:

• What a typical week at work looks like for Max
• How he got his first Community Manager job without knowing what community management is
• How being an active community member made him the number one candidate for a new job posting
• How he learnt the ropes of community building on his first job
• Why he is so active in the Community Club Slack
• How Max created opportunities for himself by reaching out to the CEOs of companies he knew
• Max's journey from a Web Design Freelancer to a Community Professional
• Dealing with Imposter Syndrome by creating a "wins" folder
• Working with a Community Coach for professional development
• Max's strategies for creating work-life balance

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Carrie Melissa Jones shares the blueprint for building successful online communities. Carrie is the author of Building Brand communities, founder of the CMJ group where she offers consulting services to organisations like Discord, Google and Airbnb, creator of her own community membership for community builders and leaders and a Youtuber! In this episode we cover: - Sneak peak into Carrie's own community setup - Platform selection strategies - Creating effective welcome experiences- Why automated matchmaking works (100% NPS!) - Preventing creator burnout If you enjoyed this episode, you should sign up for Beginner Maps to get the "magic sauce" of top creators like Carrie - https://beginnermaps.com/ Resources: • Curated Connections, the automated matchmaking tool - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Carrie's website - https://www.carriemelissajones.com/ • The CMJ community - https://www.carriemelissajones.com/community • Carrie's Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@CarrieMelissaJones/ • Carrie's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carriemelissajones/ • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 03:09 Transitioning from Cohort-Based to Evergreen Community 06:14 Evergreen Community Benefits and Inspirations 11:13 Inside Carrie's Workspace and Tools 21:41 Mini Masterclass: Starting a Community Without Burning Out 28:42 Simplifying Your Approach 29:49 The Impact of Leadership Vibes 30:50 Co-Leadership and Avoiding Burnout 33:02 Engaging Your Community Members 36:37 Choosing the Right Platform 37:14 Importance of automated matchmaking 51:57 Carrie's academic background

Building a 5,500+ member paid community isn't easy. Abbey is one of the rare people who's managing just such a community at Health Tech Nerds. This episode is a must-watch for newsletter creators who are looking to turn their audience into a paid community. We cover: - Why direct member outreach drives 10x better results - How to collect and act on member feedback effectively - The power of constant, "annoying" reminders - Why Slack remains the best platform despite its limits - Key pillars of HTN community If you enjoyed this episode, you should sign up for Beginner Maps to get the "magic sauce" of top creators like Carrie - https://beginnermaps.com/ Resources: • Curated Connections, the automated matchmaking platform that Abbey uses - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Health Tech Nerds - https://healthtechnerds.com/ • Abbey's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/petersonabbey/ • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:44 Understanding Health Tech Nerds Community 05:02 From newsletter to community 06:42 Always collecting feedback 12:01 Acting on Feedback 13:49 When to collect feedback 19:18 Key pillars of community 25:47 Hosting workshops 28:47 Setting up Curated Connections 33:57 Onboarding New Members 37:25 Get annoying with your reminders 40:22 Curated Connections vs. others 42:54 Growing the membership 44:09 Tech Stack and Tools 49:22 Why Slack wins 52:40 Hardest part of Community Building 54:40 Advice for newsletter creators

Anthony Castrio is the founder and CEO of Indie Worldwide, a private community of bootstrapped founders. In this interview he shares his revenue, how he attracted new members in the early days using a challenge, tips for organising a good event and goes deep on the challenges with being an entrepreneur. - Learn how people build community businesses - https://beginnermaps.com/ - Join Indie Worldwide community - https://indieworldwide.com/ - Join the 100 in 100 challenge - https://100in100.co/ - Anthony on X/Twitter -   / anthonycastrio   This episode is made possible by Curated Connections - a tool we created to spark more conversations in private communities through 1-on-1 networking programs. Learn more here - https://curatedconnections.io/ Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 01:59 Discussing community Revenue 02:46 $7k in one month 04:14 Challenges in Growing a Community 05:03Strategies for Attracting New Members 06:47 Word-of-mouth 11:10 Organising masterminds 15:08 On hosting a good event 20:11 100 in 100 Challenge 23:13 Origins of the Community 23:45 The Freelancing Journey 24:29 Building Relationships and Communities 26:12 Organising community Challenge 29:58 Starting with 500 followers 34:44 Personal discipline stuff 37:08 The Freelancing vs Full-Time Dilemma 41:59 Relationships vs Audiences

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 of other apps that millions of people use every day.

In this episode, we talk about her journey and how she got here - 00:00 Teaser 02:01 Rails Foundation: what and why 07:41 What does the executive director of a non-profit do? 14:43 Difference between working for a non-profit vs a for-profit 21:27 How a curiosity to learn a new thing got Amanda the role of Executive Director at Rails Foundation 25:51 Routine roulette: A typical week for Amanda 31:40 Big things about producing an in-person event 35:38 Getting speakers for an event 37:37 Making networking in events easy 39:05 How Amanda got into events 41:23 What not to do when organising a conference 43:22 Key to generating serendipity in your career 48:37 Advice for people building a community for developers 51:44 Applying for 10 jobs vs focussing on that 1 job you really want 55:14 One action item for listeners --- --- --- Links and Resources: Amanda's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandabrookeperino/ Rails Foundation - https://rubyonrails.org/foundation --- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

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Ece Kurtaraner is the community consultant for Generalist World, a fast growing community membership business that helps generalists grow in their careers. Along with this, she also works with Rosieland - another private community for community builders. So, safe to say, Ece knows the secrets of building a community business. Her key insight - "Don’t overthink it, don’t try to make it perfect and keep experimenting." Learn more about how she thinks building a community business in this episode. Connect with Ece: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ecekurtaraner/ Connect with your host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ --- This episode is made possible by Curated Connections - a tool we created to spark more conversations in private communities through 1-on-1 networking programs. Learn more here - https://curatedconnections.io/ --- Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 02:32 Who joins paid communities? 07:00 1. Log everything you do from day 1 10:05 Process for member-led events 16:01 Do a dry run 19:58 Saving 8 hrs/week 22:45 Don't shy from repeating things 25:14 Don't create engagement - create a calm community 29:05 When to shut down an experiment 31:57 Don't expect every member to engage in the same way 35:30 Low-effort engagement programs 35:47 1. Curated Connections 36:04 2. Coworking session 39:03 3. Member map 40:20 4. Member highlights 42:42 5. Event summaries 43:16 6. Local city meetups 44:28 7. Slack AMAs 45:30 8. Async happy hour 46:09 9. Book/podcast clubs

Mac is the founder/CEO of Commsor and Community club - 2 names that everyone in the community industry is familiar with. He is an entrepreneur, a visionary and the originator of the community-led movement. 

Commsor provides software, strategic services and education to help companies unlock the power of community-led growth. Every guest that we’ve talked to has attributed getting help from their "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 having a LinkedIn account
• (17:21) - 9 months, 50 investor meetings to raise the pre-seed round
• (22:00) - Was he bullish about the community-led vision in the early Commsor days?
• (25:30) - How running a Minecraft server prepared him for building the Community Club community
• (35:45) - Why a 4000-member community is Commsor’s most important asset
• (40:30) - How you should sell to your community without turning members off
• (44:00) - One of the biggest mistakes businesses made in the last 2 decades
• (48:07) - What leverage can a single community manager have?
• (52:30) - Which community does Mac most enjoy as a member

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Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

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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 fascinated her about community management

(9:10) - How she revamped her Linkedin and connected with 40+ professionals

(18:03) - Raising kids, making dinner and going for walks while doing a full-time job

(22:51) - Managing a community of practice you know nothing about

(24:21) - Asking for mentorship from strangers

(28:30) - Chaos of working at startups

(37:44) - How to take advantage of a community of practice as a member

(42:37) - What’s next for Erin?

(45:11) - Rapid-fire!

You can connect with Erin on her LinkedIn.

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Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

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Daniel Vassallo is the cofounder of Small Bets - a private community membership for indie hackers, solopreneurs and wanna-preneurs.

This community recently crossed 5000+ paying members and has been doing $400k+ in annual revenue every year since its inception ~2 yrs ago.

Daniel is a guy filled with hot original takes. He does things differently in this community and it works. Things like charging a one-time fee for a lifetime access or paying guests to do live classes in the community. Or, even the existence of this community itself, which is more than 5,000 members strong, but still very engaged.

Needless to say, Daniel has been a dream guest of mine and this is one of my personal favourite interviews.

Resources: • Beginner Maps free crash course on building a community business - https://beginnermaps.com/

• Curated Connections, the community engagement app - https://curatedconnections.io/

• Small Bets - https://smallbets.co/

• Daniel's Twitter - https://twitter.com/dvassallo

• Nityesh's Twitter (host) - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/

Chapters:

• 0:00 Intro
• 03:31 Why pay guest speakers for live classes?
• 07:45 Paying as a filtering mechanism
• 11:45 Daniel's selection process
• 15:49 Hot takes for running a great Zoom class
• 20:22 ROI of a repeat class
• 23:18 Lifetime membership - a great business strategy?
• 32:26 Overdelivering as a marketing strategy
• 34:30 Referrals
• 36:38 Why Daniel doesn't like doing surveys
• 38:45 Case study from a lifetime customer
• 41:37 Negative referrals from churned members
• 42:58 Case for recurring subscriptions
• 44:52 Small Bot
• 52:22 The failed community business
• 57:32 Small Bets origin story
• 01:00:56 New revenue streams

Michelle Varghese is the community manager for Small Bets, the largest private online community for entrepreneurs with over 5000 members. She has also helped in managing some iconic communities like Write of Passage and The Pathless Path. Along with this, she is also the creator of "Turn your layoff into a sabbatical" course, host of the Build a Wealthy Spirit podcast and a frequent writer on her Substack newsletter. In this episode, she dives deep into the practical aspects of running 10+ live guest classes per month at Small Bets. She shares her tips on the best practices she's discovered and the mistakes she has seen other people make. --- Interact with Michelle's work: • Join her course - https://maven.com/techies/layoff-to-s... (for people who want to leave an uninspiring job in the corporate world, take a break and recreate a life that's aligned with their values) • Join Small Bets - https://smallbets.com/ • Build a Wealthy Spirit podcast and newsletter - https://www.buildawealthyspirit.com/ --- This episode is made possible by Curated Connections - a tool we created to spark more conversations in private communities through 1-on-1 networking programs. Learn more here - https://curatedconnections.io/ --- Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:10 Intro to Small Bets community 04:36 One time fee for lifetime membership 06:35 Founders must engage in their community 09:55 Paying guests for teaching classes 12:35 Structure of a class 14:19 Asking Qs in between 17:28 Why slides are good 21:00 Hosting memorable events 22:30 Ask the first question 23:22 Don't wait for attendees 23:59 Camera - on or off? 28:39 A chill host is a bad host 30:19 What best communities do 31:24 How to interrupt over-enthusiastic guests 35:21 Moderating an active Discord 38:13 New channel or a thread? 40:22 How to curb sales in community 45:49 Lesson from the Art of Gathering 47:43 Scrappy vs. high-end experience 54:48 Tools used by Small Bets 57:03 Michelle's community

Bri Leever is filled with actionable frameworks for building a profitable community. She has honed them over the years by building communities through her consultancy - Ember Consulting.

In this interview, we explore some of these frameworks. We discuss:

• Why you don't need a huge audience to start a community

• The key differences between "transformative" and "networking" communities

• When to use platforms like Circle vs. Slack for your community

• Strategies for fostering member-to-member connections

• Tips for designing effective ambassador programs

• Top lessons learnt from doing Community Dissections

Resources:

• Submit your fiascos here - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSetFlKX2aZ3kskqoZiWuOvd5sbs7qOUSScw3Wtk9yxEq93xGQ/viewform

• Use Curated Connections - https://curatedconnections.io/

• Bri’s previous interview where she shares her journey of starting her consultancy - https://youtu.be/URWyR0qKvAg?si=k08Gt7T9qQG_i2V7

• Join Bri’s cohort - https://www.emberconsulting.co/join-community

• Magic sauce of top community creators - https://beginnermaps.com/

Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:39 About Curated Connections 03:33 Bri's new community 05:47 Balancing Consulting and Community Building 08:19 The Value of Live Sessions in Community Building 10:28 Starting a Community Without a Big Audience 14:28 Designing the community 21:38 What type should you create? 25:34 Circle, Heartbeat, Slack vs Facebook 31:00 When to Invest in an All-in-One Platform 32:16 Choosing the Right Platform for Your Community 34:33 Engagement Strategies for Different Community Types 38:20 Fostering Connections 42:50 Ambassador Programs 50:12 Insights from Community Dissections 55:35 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

As Program Director at On Deck and now founder of Next Careers, Anthony Nardini has helped 1000+ senior operators navigate career transitions. In this episode, he shares his playbook at Next Careers, where senior execs pay $2k to join a community that helps them land their next jobs — and 60% of them refer their most talented friends. With 700+ applications for 100 spots per cohort, his secret is extreme curation and high-touch service. This is a must-watch for anyone building high-end communities or cohort-based programs. If you enjoyed this episode, you should sign up for Beginner Maps to get the "magic sauce" of top creators like Carrie - https://beginnermaps.com/ Resources: • Curated Connections, the automated matchmaking platform that Anthony uses - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Next Careers - https://nextcareers.co/ • Anthony's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonynardini/ • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 03:05 What's Next Careers 04:46 Creating a supportive environment 07:07 Onboarding and Core Values 08:34 Anthony's journey to Next 13:15 Selection Process and Criteria 16:54 Interview Logistics and Alumni Involvement 19:19 Structure of a 30-min interview 26:43 Having confidence in your offering 30:28 Volunteer program 35:24 8-week cohort to evergreen model 40:49 Connection and Mastermind Groups 41:00 Quick Asks Session 42:06 Structure of Practice Sessions 44:53 How to ensure Quality Feedback in breakouts 47:13 High Production Value Community 48:39 Big Asks Session Structure 52:26 Experimenting with Community Formats 56:27 Automations behind the scenes 01:02:49 Team Structure and Operations 01:05:14 Referral Strategies 01:09:10 Forwardable Emails and Referrals 01:12:15 Final Thoughts

Scott Amenta might be the most experienced person you'll ever met when it comes to building community businesses.

He's simultaneously running multiple 7-8 figure community businesses through Sylva, and building software to help community founders scale.

Listen to this episode to understand:

• How he identifies healthy community businesses as an investor

• Why Slack is still his preferred platform (despite its flaws)

• Why data enrichment is crucial for personalization

Resources:

• Curated Connections, the app Scott uses to automate connections - https://curatedconnections.io/

• Scott's new product Miitra - https://www.joinmiitra.com/

• Chief of Staff Network - https://www.chiefofstaff.network/

• Scott's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-amenta/

• Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/

• Beginner Maps crash course on community building - https://beginnermaps.com/

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

02:13 Understanding Healthy Community Businesses

03:28 Engagement Metrics in Community Businesses

05:15 Total Addressable Market and Growth Opportunities

08:51 Scott's Journey with Chief of Staff Network

11:00 Challenges and Opportunities in Community Building

11:48 Sylva's Role in Supporting Communities

12:34 Community business buying checklist

15:42 Revenue Streams in Community Businesses

17:05 Good communities vs bad ones

23:41 Not happening on LinkedIn

24:58 Pricing Strategies for Community Businesses

27:18 Growing a community business

30:54 Tools and Technology for Community Management

35:10 Why Slack?

37:43 Other tools

42:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Ashley has managed to turn on-demand courses into a community experience that supports 1200+ paying members of Smart Passive Income’s All-access Pass community started by Pat Flynn.

She has created an innovative "accelerator" model that allows her to deliver the benefits of a cohort-based course without the hassle of doing live lessons.

We spent 75 mins exploring her community management workflow in this interview.

Resources:

• Curated Connections, the tool to create connections in your community - https://curatedconnections.io/
• Beginner Maps, magic sauce of 20+ top community creators - https://beginnermaps.com/
• Connect with Ashley - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleynlagrow/
• Connect with Nityesh - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/
• SPI All-access - https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/all-access/

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 action item. Don’t forget to grab it at the end of the episode.

In this episode we also talk about:

00:00 How to build a career that makes your heart sing with Casie
03:42 Doing what makes your heart sing
13:24 What is coaching and how can it help you in your career
22:56 A teacher in Spain to CMGR at Masterclass
32:38 Networking with leaders at your dream company
39:08 Tactic for connecting the dots from your past
43:01 Is there even a need to go to college?
47:24 Dealing with being laid off and still deciding to be a digital nomad
53:35 A three-part strategy to make your job application stand out
57:48 Active listening
01:03:38 Top 3 resources to break into the community industry
01:07:09 One action item for the listener to break into their dream role

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Links and Resources:

A Wandering Casiedilla - https://awanderingcasiedilla.com/

Coaching With Casie (web) - https://www.coachingwithcasie.com/

Coaching With Casie (mail) - coachingwithcasie@gmail.com

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss - https://amzn.eu/d/1wOM305

Buzzing Communities by Richard Millington - https://amzn.eu/d/gJh7NKb

CMX - https://cmxhub.com/

Otta - https://otta.com/

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Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

So go to beginnermaps.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

John Faulkner-Willcocks built a 250+ member paid community in just 4 months with an astonishing 1.5% churn rate. His inspirations? On Deck and World of Warcraft (yes the video game). He's the cofounder of Open Org, a paid community for progressive People & Culture leaders who believe in the radical new idea of leaning into transparency as a way of building companies. We spent an hour diving deep into his "transparency playbook" for building highly engaged communities, including: - How they get 3-5 high quality responses within hours for every question - Why he prefers a monthly pricing model over an annual one - Giving personalized onboarding quests to new members - Why they chose Slack over other community platforms - Running community hackathons - Lessons from World of Warcraft If you enjoyed this episode, you should sign up for Beginner Maps to get the "magic sauce" of top creators like Carrie - https://beginnermaps.com/ Resources: • Curated Connections, the automated matchmaking tool - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Open Org community - https://www.openorg.fyi/community • John's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfw/ • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 03:46 John's Productivity Hacks 10:04 Who's in OpenOrg 12:11 Competing with free HR communities 19:16 Onboarding new members 21:16 Building a mini database of members 24:21 First 100 customers 27:23 Embracing Transparency with pricing model 32:04 Member Selection 36:21 Secret sauce: Personalized Quests 41:18 Why Slack wins as the Community Platform 44:55 Building an extremely engaged community 50:08 Community hackathons 55:35 Lessons from On Deck 57:46 Lessons from World of Warcraft 01:01:29 Final piece of advice

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 Marine Corps 
• 24:27 Hard lessons learnt as a Starbucks Store Manager 
• 28:19 Getting his first remote job 
• 41:24 Future of community-led sales 
• 48:48 What veterans need to know about entering the sales 
• 53:45 Rapid fire round  

--- --- --- 

Links and Resources:  

Ben’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benregier/

--- --- --- 

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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 relationships with the portfolio companies, and many other things.

So, you can see how Sophia lives and breathes community.

We talk about:

• 00:00 How Sofia's childhood experiences affect her knack for community building
• 08:16 Running a Non-profit vs Running a For-profit
• 13:38 What gets her going when work gets exhausting
• 25:58 How do you start a non-profit
• 27:43 Getting a role at XRC by abandoning 10-year plan
• 35:27 How to get mentors when you have nothing to give in return
• 39:59 Day-to-day job as Senior Program Manager @ XRC
• 43:31 Biggest challenge working at XRC
• 53:09 Rapid fire round

--- --- ---

Links and Resources:

Sofia’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofiahaq/

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

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Clara Ma is the founder of Ask a Chief of Staff, a community membership business that helps Chiefs of Staff level up in their career. If you are one of her 23k+ followers on Linkedin, you will know how full her events calendar for the community is. So, it came as a shock to me when she told me she and her EA were the only people working on this business. This episode is a masterclass on building a valuable events calendar in your community. --- Sign up for the free email course where we operators of top community businesses, like Clara, teach you their unique magic - https://beginnermaps.com/ --- Resources: • Connect with Clara - https://linkedin.com/in/clarama/ • Ask a Chief of Staff - https://askachiefofstaff.com/ • Connect with Nityesh - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ --- Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:04 Who's in her community? 03:48 Origin story of the business 07:10 Is the market too small? 09:18 First 10 → 100 customers 10:36 Charge from the beginning 13:06 Leaning on word-of-mouth 15:38 Posting on LinkedIn to start discussions 19:59 Masterclass on managing an events calendar 26:21 In-person events 28:32 Meet her team 29:42 Selling tickets to community events 33:16 Afraid of community going quiet

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, we discuss:

• Nikki’s “unidentified superpower”
• Community Manager work vs. Community Lead work
• Starting The Community Community
• 150+ applications on community launch! How?
• Making a community valuable without making it busy
• Dream Team and Co-lead
• Someone got her dream role over her at Shopify
• Going to Harvard and being the top candidate
• Tips for job seekers
• Asking for a higher salary
• Most recommended resources

Resources:

• Curated Connections - https://curatedconnections.io/
• Nikki’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikki2987/
• The Community Community - https://thecommunitycommunity.com/
• CMX Masterclass - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUC9Vz9R3tpJwpRgHMyH_PASlVDNw3_DB
• Common Room Blog - https://www.commonroom.io/resources/
• Jenny Weigle - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyweigle/
• Venia Logan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthavlogan/

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 - https://www.linkedin.com/in/derrick-chiu/
Generalist World - https://www.generalist.world/
Cirkel - https://cirkel.co/
Rosieland - https://rosie.land/

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

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Kyle Hagge led the community efforts at Morning Brew's Learning division as a Director of Community. This interview is a “reflection episode” where Kyle takes us back to this time and shares his “magic sauce”. Among other things, he shares how his team decided which courses to pilot, why he chose Circle to host the community and why it's a good idea to automate connections. Resources: • Our free crash course where you can learn the "magic sauce" of top communities - https://beginnermaps.com/ • Curated Connections, the tool that allows communities to automate connections - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Kyle's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylehagge • Kyle's Twitter - https://twitter.com/kylehagge • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ • Nityesh's Twitter - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:55 What was Learning Brew? 05:36 Deciding which courses to run 10:27 Making a boring old topic interesting 12:53 Alumni Advisory Board 17:56 Transforming students through discomfort 22:28 Recording acceptance videos 24:52 Tracking outcomes 27:01 Engineering connections through automation 29:55 Circle vs Slack vs Zoom 35:28 Creating a party at virtual events 39:39 Breakout rooms 42:02 Final advice for community builders

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 episode:

• Creating Shoutout
• How to approach selling when you are not a salesperson
• Building in public aka Power of the internet
• Moving to the US
• Working with Naval Ravikant
• How to pay bills while working on side projects
• Rapid fire round

--- --- ---

Links and Resources:

Sharath’s website 👉 https://5harath.com/
Sharath’s Twitter 👉 https://twitter.com/5harath
Shoutout 👉 https://shoutout.io/shoutout-new/
The Angel Philosopher 👉 https://theangelphilosopher.com/

--- --- ---

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Ryan Wardell is the CEO and cofounder of Startup Sauce, a private membership for SaaS founders outside of Silicon Valley doing $5k+ in MRR.

This community is special for a couple of reasons:

1. It's members are super accomplished CEOs who only have extremely nice things to say about the community

2. The guy who runs it, Ryan, is not a "startup expert". In fact, he has never even been a SaaS founder.

In this episode, Ryan shares his "magic sauce" that has allowed him to get there.

Resources:

• Beginner Maps, our free email course containing the "magic sauce" of top communities - https://beginnermaps.com/
• Startup Sauce, Ryan's community for founders doing $5k+ MRR - https://www.startupsauce.com/
• Ryan's master list of 320+ places for SEO backlinks - https://www.startupsauce.com/list
• Ryan's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwardell/
• Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

02:43 Startup Sauce stack

05:47 Aha-moment masterminds

07:58 Magic number for a mastermind

10:23 Making introverts feel comfortable

14:30 Magic sauce: matching people

20:18 Facilitation tricks

20:57 Tangent: Hiring a rockstar community manager

23:06 Facilitation tricks contd.

23:50 Giving people a reputation

27:10 Don't pretend to be the expert

28:26 Getting ridiculous retention

30:45 But why $33/month???

33:18 Screening calls for new members

36:29 How he really makes money

42:13 Ryan's future end game

44:00 Why the 5k MRR barrier

48:45 The idea

52:12 First 20 customers

01:01:05 Content marketing miss

This episode is sponsored by Curated Connections - a simple and powerful matchmaking tool to make communities more connected.

---

Logan Kilpatrick is the first Developer Relations hire at OpenAI - the company behind the revolutionary product ChatGPT. He has been responsible for working with the product teams on new launches, creating and maintaining developer documentation, running the developer forum, hackathons, events and managing the ChatGPT plugin store. In this episode, he discusses what his role at OpenAI looks like, how he went from being a Machine Learning engineer at Apple to Developer Relations Advocate at OpenAI and his tips for people looking to transition to a career of developer relations:

• Will developers become obsolete due to ChatGPT?
• Deep-dive into the Dev Rel work at OpenAI
• How Logan uses ChatGPT at work
• Dev Rel or Software Development? How to choose?
• Logan's transition from an ML Engineer to a Dev Rel Advocate
• Doing unpaid volunteer work to get his first break
• Dealing with rejections
• Get an unfair advantage by creating a public verifiable track record
• What's next for Logan?
• Logan's #1 resource? Jono Bacon
• Who he learns from on Twitter
• 1 action item for you - the listener

Pramod is the cofounder and CEO of Threado where he is building the "Command Center" for community builders. Threado gives community builders superpowers by allowing them to get actionable insights, automations and workflows to manage their communities.

Before Threado, Pramod was the VP of Marketing at Zomato - India’s largest food delivery and restaurant discovery company. He joined them as their 13th employee and went on to build and lead their Marketing team for more than 8 yrs.

And then in 2019, he quit to start his own high-growth startup.

In this episode, we dive into:

• Pramod's recent $3.1M seed round and what it will unlock for Threado
• How Pramod bootstrapped Threado to an MVP and a stellar team of 25
• Community and content playbook that Pramod used to launch Zomato to new cities
• Why Community Manager was Pramod's first hire in a new city
• Joining Zomato as their 13th employee when it was still called FoodieBay
• 7 startup ideas that Pramod explored before landing upon Threado
• Support systems that helped Pramod navigate this chaotic period of figuring out his next big idea
• Why sharing your secret ideas creates more opportunities for you
• How Pramod did user testing to pivot Threado to a completely new product
• Threado's marketing philosophy

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

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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) charges their members
• Creating resources that create a strong hook
• Why they use a paid Slack to host the community
• How he turned an email thread into a community
• Building culture in the early days
• Charging for a free community
• Reducing churn
• Tech stack for running the PL business
• Chris' hiring philosophy

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 Notion

28:57 How to start with angel investing

--- --- ---

Links and Resources:

Ben Lang - https://benlang.me/

International Hummus Day - https://hummusday.com/

Giving away your legos - https://review.firstround.com/give-away-your-legos-and-other-commandments-for-scaling-startups

The All-In Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/2IqXAVFR4e0Bmyjsdc8QzF?si=b3996ae0fcc44f27

How I Built This - https://open.spotify.com/show/6E709HRH7XaiZrMfgtNCun?si=6bdf9240fa424495

The Knowledge Project - https://open.spotify.com/show/1VyK52NSZHaDKeMJzT4TSM?si=a23837c2373d4105

The Tim Ferriss Show - https://tim.blog/podcast/

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

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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 How flywheel marketing can justify RoI on your community efforts
• 28:50 Routine Roulette
• 33:11 Getting the job at Gatheround by writing her own job description
• 46:08 Advice for 20 year olds
• 01:04:58 Resources for community building
• 01:06:50 One action item for listeners

--- --- ---

Links and Resources:

Gatheround - https://gatheround.com/community

Community Club - https://www.community.club/

Noele Flowers - https://www.linkedin.com/in/noeleflowers/

Sarah Greisdorf - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahgreisdorf/

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter. We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format. So go to beginnermaps.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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 

--- --- ---

Links and Resources:

Bri’s LinkedIn 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannaleever/
Groove (co-working app for solopreneurs) 👉 https://www.groove.ooo/
Designing Your Life (book) 👉 https://amzn.eu/d/46mBTbe

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

So go to beginnermaps.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Jordan Cutler (@jordancutler) has done what most of us aspire to. He grew his newsletter to 50,000+ subscribers in just one year.

Along the way, he has made $35,000+ in “passive” income, with $20,000+ coming from a cohort-based course on Maven.

Resources:

• Beginner Maps for more such case studies - https://beginnermaps.com/

• High Growth Engineer newsletter - https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/

• Jordan's Maven course - https://maven.com/jordan-cutler/mid-level-to-senior

• Jordan's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/

• Jordan's Twitter/X - https://x.com/highgrowtheng

• Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/

• Nityesh's Twitter/X - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/

• Ali Abdaal video mentioned in the interview - https://youtu.be/ETA6D3SkAZo?si=6MucSW0yVTbx52wj&t=1261

Chapters:

0:00 Intro 02:43 Time per article 05:27 Not forcing LinkedIn posts 07:14 How Ali Abdaal helps him avoid the rat race 10:49 The Importance of Authenticity 12:04 Journey to 50k subscribers in a year 15:40 Strategies for Newsletter Growth 23:14 Starting a Cohort-Based Course 25:26 Running it while Working Full-Time 26:24 Partnering with Other Creators 31:55 Using Maven as the course platform 41:12 Advice for Aspiring Creators

Jordan Godbey has built communities for world's top creators like Justin Welsh and Ali Abdaal.

He helps experts start a new business line by helping them build Circle communities at his company Growth Community.

In this episode, he discusses his strategies, philosophies and tactics that you can use to start a $10k MRR community.

Resources:

• Work with Jordan at Growth Community - [https://growthcommunity.co/](https://growthcommunity.co/blueprint)

• Curated Connections, the app to send automated 1-on-1 introductions - https://curatedconnections.io/

• Jordan's $10k MRR community blueprint - https://growthcommunity.co/blueprint

• Jordan’s interview with Ali Abdaal - https://youtu.be/cMUyhYi3iOU?si=icVCiOWKXTvQLlgf

• Magic sauce of 20+ top community creators - https://beginnermaps.com/

Chapters:

0:00 Intro 03:40 Who are Jordan's Customers 06:41 Collecting killer testimonials 10:41 Jordan's journey 18:46 First 10 clients 23:24 10k MRR community blueprint 24:33 Peer community 28:41 Creating Member-to-Member Connections 34:18 Starting from Scratch 35:06 Proximity Community 38:38 Starting a Mastermind Community 41:19 Kicking off peer-to-peer conversations 43:53 Balancing Community Management and Content Creation 46:28 Why Circle 50:19 Creating a Compelling Offer 53:10 Afraid of community going quiet? 01:00:01 Handling Community Churn and Longevity 01:04:41 Community in the world of AI

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 Professional

08:17 Managing digital and in-person experiences at a community of founders as someone who is not herself a founder

22:08 Routine Roulette

27:43 Landing a role that was never posted

31:52 When community is the business and not just a bonus

39:55 Why women should not be concerned they won't be taken seriously if they are nice and gracious

43:29 Advice for job seekers

50:10 Two books that inspire her work

54:50 Action item for the listener

--- --- ---

Links and Resources:

Curated Connections - https://curatedconnections.io/

Jessica's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spivack-lowenstein-52b2a962/

Hampton - https://joinhampton.com/

Grand Central Tech - https://www.companyventures.co/grand-central-tech Community Club - https://www.community.club/

Community Hacked - https://www.communityhacked.com/ The Vendry - https://thevendry.com/

The Art of Gathering - https://www.priyaparker.com/book-art-of-gathering

Unreasonable Hospitality - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60018618-unreasonable-hospitality

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

So go to http://beginnermaps.com/ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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 Quickest way into Community Ops
46:13 Learning resources for Community ops
53:44 What should a 20-yr old with no experience do
57:46 Getting a mentor who is invested in you
01:01:29 Building your personal brand

--- --- ---

Links and Resources:

• The CommOps Gal (Tiffany’s Blog) - http://www.thecommopsgal.com/
• Community OPServations - https://tiffeoda.wixsite.com/commopsgal/community-opservations
• Talkbase (Community CRM for startups) - https://talkbase.io/
• Community Club - https://www.community.club/
• CMX Community - https://cmxhub.com/community/
• Talkbase Friends - https://talkbase.io/community
• Cassie Mayes - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassiemayes/
• Jamie Langskov - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamielangskov/
• Andrew Claremont - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymci/
• Erica Kuhl - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericakuhl/
• Brian Oblinger - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianoblinger/

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

So go to beginnermaps.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Running Remote is the best case study in building a paid community of practice. Run by Kasia Triantafelo, this is community of 250+ remote work leaders from companies like GitLab, Dropbox, and Zillow who share everything—from compensation strategies to retreat venues. In this episode, Kasia tells how she slowly shifted the culture of this community over 3 years to the one of radical openness. We discuss: • "4 essential touchpoints" for member success • Co-creating knowledge base with members • Her strategy for running masterminds • What it takes to build a culture of trust If you enjoyed this episode, you should sign up for Beginner Maps to get the "magic sauce" of top creators like Carrie - https://beginnermaps.com/ Resources: • Curated Connections, the automated matchmaking platform that Kasia uses - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Running Remote community - https://runningremote.com/community/ • Kasia's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasia-triantafelo/ • Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:52 From conference to community 05:26 Who's in the community 10:13 Masterclass on shaping community culture 13:38 Doing things that don't scale 16:30 "Actionable now" strategy 18:51 Emailing members with questions 22:04 4 essential touch points 24:18 Why People Ops is incredible at community 25:40 Co-creating a knowledge base 31:03 Running virtual workshops 35:48 Engagement Challenges in Remote Companies 36:41 Get togethers with Nini 41:14 Masterminds playbook 47:30 Managing Global Timing and Recruiting 56:15 Marketing and Growing the Community 01:02:21 Building community as a non-expert

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 consulting.

In this episode, we dive into:

• How a serendipitous conversation with a cofounder made her join Topknot as their first employee and the Head of Community
• What Topknot does and who it’s for
• Being an “a” at your job vs. being a “the”
• What does her work at Topknot currently look like
• Being a coloring book artist who is given a blank page
• Moving from a “Ready, aim, fire” mindset to “Ready, fire, aim”
• What it means to fail forward
• How being intentional helps her in networking with community builders
• Resources that helped Rae as a new community professional
• A 4-question Rapid-fire Round!

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

So go to beginnermaps.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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 role at Grapevine through CMX Slack

30:30: Why feeling personally connected to the mission of the community makes your job easier

34:50: Working as the solo CM in a 40,000 member community

40:52: Pros and cons of working at an energising role in a startup

48:41: Is CMX a scam?

55:00: Rapid-fire round

— — —

Teaser of Gaby’s side project, Supper Club Cinema: https://youtu.be/iUs0E11X9R8

Connect with Gabrielle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielleleith/

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

So go to beginnermaps.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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 previously, being a PM without a traditional MBA degree.

In this episode we dive into:

• (1:30) - Why he spends time mentoring strangers
• (4:40) - Why you should or should not do an MBA
• (8:53) - One mistake Prashant did when managing employees
• (11:16) - Raising $1.5M on just a story with 3 characters
• (12:56) - How to validate your idea and why it’s not important?
• (16:49) - Moving from a builder’s mindset to a marketer’s mindset
• (18:45) - Books that have taught him about thinking from first principles
• (21:49) - Writing when you have something to say
• (23:41) - Rapid-fire!

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

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Taylor Harrington 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 - the company that pioneered cohort based courses even before Zoom had the breakout features.

In this episode:

(1:29) - How Taylor identified her mission of creating the opposite of loneliness in the world

(9:24) - Why she started following a non-traditional career path

(11:10) - How she started working with Seth Godin right out of college

(14:43) - How to make your online events better than IRL events

(21:58) - What she learnt working with Seth

(25:08) - Why Taylor joined a startup in another continent as their first employee

(38:21) - What her work as Head of Community looks like

(42:09) - Taylor’s secret sauce for creating a great gathering

(52:59) - AMA!

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Here are links to some people and resources that Taylor spoke about:

• The Ground Truth workshop by Dana Ray
• The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan
• Priya Parker’s guide on running better hybrid events
• Seth Godin’s blog
• Partiful - the gathering creating app
• Nick Gray’s book on the 2-hour Cocktail Party
• Finally, Groove is an extraordinary, free app for solo workers from all over the world to instantly connect and conquer their to-dos alongside each other. You can use this link to start using Groove right now.

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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 shop
26:43 Camaraderie with Co-founders: Building 2 companies without ever being in the same room
29:57 Why is Jakob all in on Butter
42:14 Product-led vs Community-led
45:57 What a founder values in an employee

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Links and Resources:  

Butter - https://www.butter.us/
The Mom Test - https://www.momtestbook.com/
Startup School - https://www.startupschool.org/

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Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

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Charlie Ward is the founder of Ramen Club - a private community of 300+ bootstrapped SaaS entrepreneurs that gives them the support and education to grow their business.

In this interview, Charlie shares the origin story of Ramen Club, how he organises the masterminds, how he organises in-person meetups in different cities of the world and more.

Resources:

• Curated Connections (our tool to connect your community members) - https://curatedconnections.io/

• Get Powerup (Charlie’s Slack app for creating leaderboards) - https://www.ramenclub.so/studio-ramen/powerup-app

• Ramen Club - https://www.ramenclub.so/

• Charlie’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/charlierward/

• Nityesh’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/

Chapters:

0:00 Intro 02:13 What's Ramen Club 10:58 First 10 customers 15:04 Next 100 customers 17:52 Building tools for marketing 21:21 Event recordings to podcast 26:36 Organising masterminds 37:15 Organising local meetups 46:27 Charlie's engagement strategy 50:22 Favourite book on community 52:45 His accountability tool for communities

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 consulting business with Jenny 02:44 Discovering a natural community builder instinct 09:47 What does she do as a community strategist 13:48 FAQs about life as a community consultant 15:28 Highs and lows that come with your own consulting business 19:27 Routine Roulette 24:08 Doing a social media marketing internship in 2007 29:12 Lessons learnt form a failed attempt at consulting 32:14 Social media management Vs Community management 39:54 Starting a consulting business for the 2nd time 47:30 Getting clients and marketing 59:06 Working through the imposter syndrome

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Links and Resources:

Jenny’s website - https://www.jenny.community/

Momentum Consulting Course - https://www.consultingsuccess.com/momentum-consulting-course

Community Consultants Collective - https://www.communityconsultants.life/

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Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

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Grace Ling is the founder and CEO of Design Buddies, a free community with >64k members on Discord and a total audience of >150k. Here she leads a vibrant online community, does in-person meetups around the world, sponsored partnerships, helps designers land jobs and is even organising a conference. In this episode, Grace does a deep dive into how she started this community, how she grew it and how she turned it into a thriving business. This episode is made possible by Curated Connections - a tool we created to increase the value of private membership communities by creating networking programs that run on autopilot. Try it in your community - https://curatedconnections.io/ Links: • Join Design Buddies - https://designbuddies.community • Partner with Design Buddies - https://forms.gle/6nVjUHHBa3NgtsZHA • Grace Ling on LinkedIn -   https://www.linkedin.com/in/graceling

Shin Takeda is changing the game for creators by creating done-for-you membership Slack communities for them. Creator funnels their audience, Shin handles end-to-end operations of running their paid community. That includes events, moderation, content, website, strategy and everything in between required to make sure these communities thrive and customers stay happy. Obviously the creators love it. But more importantly - members love it too! We spent 45 minutes diving deep into his process: - Why communities are the next big opportunity for creators - Shin’s tactics for building engaged, high-value communities - How to reduce churn in paid communities - The tech stack he uses to run world-class communities - Why Slack is still king for professional communities Resources: • Democratize Knowledge, Shin's agency - http://democratizeknowledge.com/ • Beginner Maps, magic sauce of top community businesses - https://beginnermaps.com/ • Curated Connections, the connections tool Shin uses - https://curatedconnections.io/ • Shin's X - https://x.com/shinnosuke_san • Nityesh's X - https://x.com/nityeshaga/ Chapters: 0:00 Intro 02:48 What is Democratize Knowledge 06:17 Shin's Journey into Community Management 16:30 Engagement tactics for creator-led communities 22:19 Reducing churn in paid comunities 24:07 Why Slack is still the king of professional communities 28:28 Limitations of Slack 31:19 Shin's Tech Stack 36:02 Final Thoughts

Shreman Shrestha is the Head of Community for the Friends of Lenny’s Slack community. This community comes bundled with the Paid subscription for Lenny’s Newsletter and at the time of recording there are 17k+ members in here.

In this episode, Shre discusses how this community is able to organise 200+ in-person meetups per year, challenges with organising a great mentor matching program, working with volunteers and more.

Resources: • Beginner Maps - free crash course on building a community business - ⁠https://beginnermaps.com⁠

• Curated Connections, the community engagement app - ⁠https://curatedconnections.io/⁠

• Shreman's Twitter - https://twitter.com/itsDrDrewithaSh/

• Lenny's community + newsletter - https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/community

• Nityesh's Twitter (host) - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/

Chapters: 0:00 Intro

03:09 Lenny's community persona

04:33 Why people join the community

09:12 Increasing retention

10:52 Shre's story

13:10 Shre's responsibilities

17:52 Member-led city meetups

22:18 Guidelines for meetup hosts

25:29 Finding hosts

26:45 Financials of a meetup

28:21 Dealing with low attendance

31:46 Mentor matching program

37:07 Workbook for mentor and mentee

38:54 Building a great volunteer program

42:49 Advice for creators with audience

48:33 Observing members to get new ideas

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 thinks about hiring as an early stage founder
28:11 Day to day work as co-founder at Heartbeat
36:24 How Murtaza learnt to code even after failing coding classes in college
39:46 Why Murtaza quit building to focus on selling
43:55 How to nail down sales as an introvert
49:53 Homeless but keeping it all together by being mission oriented
58:54 Building your (interconnected) network
01:05:29 Doubling down on what works

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Links and Resources:

• Heartbeat - https://www.heartbeat.chat/
• TOGKnowledge - https://www.joeedelman.com/togknowledge-community
• The Cat and Dog Coexistence Club - https://www.praiseworthypets.com/
• Founding Sales - https://www.foundingsales.com/

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Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

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Kyle is the Lead Community Manager at Morning Brew - one of the world's fastest-growing business media companies that was recently valued at more than $75M. Kyle helped them in launching their first ever paid product: a cohort-based career and skills accelerator.

What's remarkable about Kyle's story is how he got here. Before working as Lead Community Manager at the Morning Brew community, he had been a podcast producer, an entrepreneur, a high school coach amongst other seemingly unrelated careers.

In this episode we dive into:

• How Kyle conducts events with amazing guests where the community is super engaged
• How he got this job at Morning Brew - his first official role in the community industry
• Kyle's number one skill for making career pivots - storytelling
• Why being a beginner in a new domain can be your competitive advantage over experts
• Kyle's Personal Monopoly
• What's up next for Kyle in his career?
• How Kyle makes long-term bets on his career while being present in the moment

--- --- ---

Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

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Stephanie Baiocchi is the community team of one at IMPACT where she manages the membership behind the bestselling book - They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan.

She single-handedly manages a 3,000+ member community, runs masterminds, hosts 2 annual conferences, and creates manages the on-demand course library.

We spend an hour diving deep into her playbook for building a thriving community around a bestselling book.

Resources: - Curated Connections, the tool to foster authentic connections - https://curatedconnections.io/

- Stephanie’s guide to online community management - https://www.impactplus.com/online-community-management

- They ask you answer book - https://marcussheridan.com/they-ask-you-answer/

- The Membership Economy book - https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-membership-economy/

- The Art of Gathering - https://www.priyaparker.com/book-art-of-gathering

- Stephanie's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniebaiocchi/

- Nityesh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nityeshaga/

- Magic sauce of 20 top community creators - https://beginnermaps.com/

Chapters: 0:00 Intro

04:22 Community Structure and Membership

07:04 The 'They Ask, You Answer' Framework

08:44 Adapting to Market Changes

09:32 Stephanie's responsibilities as a Community Lead

13:29 Favourite communities

17:03 Community platform of choice

19:24 Notification blindness problem

21:34 Getting members to open an email digest

24:36 Creator to community

26:29 Scaling a community

30:08 Free to Paid Memberships

33:17 Hosting Mastermind Sessions

37:03 Challenges with Masterminds

40:28 Anti-lesson for masterminds

41:39 Events and conferences

44:14 Making events memorable

46:07 Don't start with administrative stuff

48:18 Fostering Community Connections

50:34 A strong end

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: Does he compare himself with his peers from college?
• 13:42: Why quitting a job shouldn’t be too scary in your 20s
• 18:35: How Shre realised it was time to move on from his big startup idea
• 26:15: How he went from member to Community Manager at Lenny’s community
• 40:00: Being “Dobby”
• 41:20: How he pitches himself to new clients
• 46:30: How he finds opportunities that have not been posted publicly
• 51:22: Rapid-fire round

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Thanks for listening! If you have come this far you’ll love other episodes. But you probably don’t have 1 hr every week to listen to all the episodes. That’s why you should sign up for our newsletter.

We recently started it to share the key insights from these conversations in a more digestible, readable format.

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