Hello, and welcome to Bad Community Advice. This show is all about terrible tips and toxic takeaways. I'm your host. My name is Seth Resler from Community Marketing Revolution, and today's episode is for anybody who is just getting ready to launch their online space, their online community. I've got some horrible, awful, terrible advice for you. I'm excited for you to hear it. My guest is the CEO co-founder and community manager for a company called Tightknit. It is the first platform transforming Slack into an all-in-one community platform. After a decade of launching customer community platforms at Salesforce and Air kit.ai, he set out to fill in the gaps in Slack with things like forums and gamification,
event management, AI search, and everything else that a community manager would want to turn Slack into a community platform. Please welcome Zach Hawtof. Hi, Zach. How are you?
I love this. Thank you for having me, Zach. I appreciate it. Well, thank you so much for being here. Uh, you know, before we get to your terrible advice, and I love your terrible advice because I've, I've witnessed this mistake. I've seen it, I've been a victim of it. Uh, and so I really wanna get to it. But before we do, um, I wanna talk about, uh, you know, a little bit about what you're doing with tight knit, because so often when somebody is looking to launch a community, they're looking to build their
online space, their digital space, where people can come together and connect. One of the first decisions they've gotta make is, do I build a space where people already are,
or do I go and build something over here that's completely separate? Meaning, you know, hey, I I got a lot of people who are on Facebook or Discord or, or they're already using WhatsApp. Should I just go ahead and do that?
Uh, or do I go and get some other proprietary community platform where I can build something completely separate and there's trade-offs involved. You know, I think if we were talking about real estate, we would describe this as location, location, location, right? You wanna put your rest, you know, do you put your restaurant in the strip mall where there's already a lot of people there?
Uh, or do you go build it off somewhere? And
there's trade offs involved in the sense that if you are building it on a platform that already exists, you do get that traffic that's already there, but you probably can't customize it as well as you want it to. You know, you, you may not integrate with your other tools, you may not be able to get the data that you need. Uh, or do I build it over here where I can do all those things,
but now I gotta get people over here and how do I do that? And, and so I wanna ask you a little bit about how you think about that, especially as it comes to tight knit.
Yeah, I mean, Seth, I didn't know I start, start this show with so much good advice. Uh, but I think the key thing there is, uh, you've gotta meet your members where they're right. I think, frankly,
if you're not thinking about how your member interacts from a day to day and trying to find everywhere you can to
bring them closer to you, then you're really missing the key point, right? So, like you said, uh, a lot of community managers we run into, they get really excited about features they're excited about, like the community platform that they're building, and then they build it 30 miles outta town. So it is exactly like you said, it's a location, location, location problem. Uh, my, my grandfather was a real estate broker, and he, you know, he used to always talk about, yeah, you make all your money and when you buy a piece of property and where it's going to be. And that's the same concept with community building, is that you find that some communities that might not be as, you know,
arguably good, if that makes sense. Like they aren't as well structured meet their members so close that they end up exploding in engagement because it, the friction to actually get folks into the space is so low. There's no logins, uh, there's no extra, like, learning of new tools and creating that environment is really important. So,
uh, when we started Titan Knit, we, we said, we actually just wanted to build the best community platform for B2B professionals, SaaS creators. And we said, how do we do that? Well, it's not going to be out in some distant land. We're gonna build this where those folks live from what we call their nine to five, not their five to nine. How do I meet them throughout their day and help them build their careers in a tool that makes sense? And Slack was the leading contender. It's the one that most of us used from day to day. It's the, it was the number one community management platform without ever stating it was a community management platform. So we said, Hey, this is the sleeping Giant. How do we take Slack, untie its hands, and give it events, gamification, onboarding,
to really create that community feel? Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, and it's so interesting because I, I mean, I've even read it certain times, slack has said, we, we aren't a community platform. Uh, and, and so I'm curious, did you,
did you ever consider anything else other than Slack? Or was that always the one, um, and as you were first starting to lay this out, what were you sitting around going, okay, these were the, the key features that we need in order to really make this suitable for a community?
Yeah, I mean, we, you know, we did a lot of research in the beginning. We,
we always have, a lot of people have ques, probably the biggest question that we get of other platforms, uh, is Discord and with a close second is WhatsApp. And the reason we early on, uh, disqualified those from, like our initial tool set was one, uh, discord
by its very nature is still a gaming platform community, right? It is built for gamers. It is built for, uh, creating spaces for them. And what happened in about 2020 is their, their founder basically said, actually, we could be everything to everyone. We can create this space that lets open source communities come in and build their environments. And you're still seeing it done today. But about a year and a half ago, he actually kind of left as the CEO and they brought in Activision Blizzards, uh, like I, uh, I forget his previous role at Activision Blizzard, but really focused around building an a business building, the advertising business of, of Activision Blizzard. And so we kind of looked at that as writing on the wall that they're going to pin back to gaming, uh, that they're going to pretty much stop innovation in the external community space and really focus in the future on advertising and building out a space for gamers, uh, because at the end, they need to be able to hit those multiples before they go in IPO. And so we are looking two years out, always, not just like where we are today. So we do believe there will be a lot of Discord communities that suddenly realize Discord iss not soc too compliant, uh, it's potentially gonna start advertising to their members. And we're already seeing it today. You know, I, for instance, showed up on Discord and got, uh, a perplexity ad, but I'm not in the perplexity community. I'm in the, the Arc browser community. And so the fact that I'm seeing these ads for a competitor wall showing that I'm in this space is already kind of a bad sign of what's to come.
Uh, we really do like, like WhatsApp. Uh, we use it a lot for, like, I use it a lot for communities of my own, but I think the key thing for WhatsApp is it doesn't scale very well past a few hundred members. Uh, and then the other problem is really a security problem for a lot of these bigger B2B SaaS is that you can access everyone's phone number. Uh, and so because of that, it ends up creating an environment where it has to be a very high trust community. And if you want to build a space where, you know, in sales or in marketing, and making sure that your members feel that they can trust joining this space, that losing kind of their, you know, the wall that most folks build around them from a sales perspective, it just becomes a little bit tough. So Slack, because it's SOC two, because it's built in a way that is privacy first. Uh, we thought this is definitely the, the best foundation for our platform. And we're starting to actually offer a, a space where, you know, you have a community where, say your customers aren't on Slack,
usually some of 'em about 20% just use tight knit to interact with the community itself. So we're finding that we are creating this digital layer where we can actually just meet your member however they want to participate.
Yeah. Uh, I noticed that the other platforms that you were talking about there, um, are also what we might call chat first or chat forward platforms, meaning that, um, it's really driven by the, the most recent interaction, um, as opposed to some community platforms where it is you need a home for Evergreen resources, you know, so there's a difference between, um, I, I don't know, let's say we have, um, you know, a, a diet or an exercise group where, you know, people don't necessarily need a whole backlog of 300 videos of how to do X, y, and Z. They just need the encouragement and the motivation and to be able to get in there and to talk to other folks. And so you would use something like a chat forward platform, whereas if you're doing something like, I, I don't know how to launch a podcast, maybe then you want a bunch of tutorial videos in a library and, and you need something that's more evergreen. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about that when it comes to community design?
Yeah, and I, so I used to work for one of those kind of what you would call a, an old school digital farm, right? So at Salesforce, we, you know, helped build community cloud, which supported your Fortune 50 communities. So Disney, home Depot, Google, these massive global digital forums. And when I was at Salesforce, I was actually,
funny enough, our team Slack admin, I was like that classic story of like, how do we get Slack into the ecosystem, start having conversations internally at work. And then when Salesforce acquired Slack, I kind of saw this moment of like, we can take what we've done with this digital old school forum, take the engagement communities, the conversational communities, uh, and just to, to call out the key wins of why you would want one versus the other. A conversational community is really high in engagement, building deeper connections, being able to activate individual members. And a digital forum is much better for discovery, right? It's this ability to take hundreds of thousands, if not tens of thousands of pieces of content and allow members to discover them and then start interacting. So the, the wall is much bigger in terms of how much content you can store there. And so when we were thinking about this, we actually said, why choose is, kind of how we put it, is like, why can't we take the engagement layer of Slack and create a digital archive inside of a tight-knit forum to be able to bridge both of those so you don't have to pick between a highly engaged space and a highly discoverable space. And so, uh, you know, what we've been able to do is take that content and create this, you know, forum, whether you're have a public site for SEO, uh, a, an A-E-O-G-E-O-A-I-O whatever, whatever acronym we're coming up these days for, uh, ai, but actually having that so the rest of the internet can find and discover these amazing conversations about your product, about your service, about the community that you're building, or a private community where you have a space where folks that just wanna log in, search and discover old content, they can do that. They can see events, members, groups, you know, just being able to find out what is your community all about. And so I don't, I think they're, we're moving towards a world where we'd still, engagement communities are probably growing faster than ever. This conversational space. We're finding that those are growing faster because really AI has pushed us into these spaces. We're looking for engagement with humans, and we're trying to find ways to build better, deeper connections with others just like us without, uh, you know, having AI answer every question for us. And so that's, that's the big drive, and we want to be able to still bridge the gap so folks can get all the, the wins that they were getting in the previous era of community without losing it as they move to a Slack first ecosystem.
Yeah, it's interesting as you are talking about that, one of the things that I'm thinking about, uh, especially when you talk about
the impact that AI is having, uh, is actually the conference space, the live event space where, you know, it used to be that, uh, one of the main drivers for going to a conference was the content, the keynote speakers, the sessions, things like that. And now that we are in a world where we have, you know, not just YouTube and Google, but also chat GBT and Claude and, and so on and so forth, I don't have to fly across the country and take days off of work to get the content. I can get the content, you know, anywhere. Um, I'm increasingly going for that engagement, for that connection with other people. And so it's interesting to hear you talk about that in the digital space, because we're also seeing it, uh, in, in the live space, is the, is the
people want that connection. And,
and I have to say, I mean, we, we had this long talk, my co-founder, I, Stephen Cook, we, we sat down, we talked about this, right? Tight knit sells a digital community platform. But one of the long plans for us is how do we create both great URL experiences, as we call them, and IRL experiences, right? So how do we make sure that it's not just one layer, that when I come to an event, I can have this pre-event digital side to introduce people to make sure we have plans going, we're,
you know, we're I, I'll talk a little bit about an anecdote of what we're seeing right now, and then on the post-event side, how do we keep those conversations flowing, right? We've run a great event, people want to connect with each other. Uh, it's, it's amazing to be able to set up a digital space so that you can keep the conversation flowing so folks can continue to take all the amazing connections and learnings they've had from a live event and bring it online. So,
uh, what we are doing right now, we're actually hosting our first conference as a company. It's going to be a micro conference of about 60 to 70 community builders here in New York City. And so we're bringing in the top community builders from actually around the globe. Technically folks are coming in, flying in internationally, and we have no speakers, which is also very unique, right? We are creating solely a mastermind small group discussion, uh, really focused on making sure that you're getting the right introductions to the right people. And so ideally, we have everyone leave this community conference having met 50 to 70% of everyone in the room, and making sure that at least the ones that we know they have to meet for X, y, and Z, that we've been able to create those introductions. And so,
uh, we we're really excited about this. Our, the people, we've, we've actually sold 60 tickets. We only have 10 tickets left. So clearly a lot of people are very excited about this as well. Uh, and be able to build this space for folks to form these deeper connections and then carry on the conversation. So just to like, call it out, right? Folks are already setting up dinner plans inside of, we set up both a Slack channel and a WhatsApp. Uh, so folks are already setting up dinner plans with each other. Uh, I do really believe that after the event, folks are gonna, you know, post and try to say, Hey, I really had a good time. I really learned a lot about X, Y, and Z. We'd love to learn more. And so I'm really excited to kind of
just dog food, what we've been able to build and explore how we can build more IRL elements to the product. But at the same time, I have to mention, right, like
a lot of people try to over-engineer this stuff. A lot of the work of building a great community is so human first. Technology is just a multiplier.
It is not the solution. A lot of folks try to buy tech to solve like the human problem. It really has to come from you, the community side, to create the space for folks.
Yeah, I, I love that. And I love the, uh, the way that you're thinking about URL and IRI, I may, may I steal that, I'll attribute it, steal it, it's yours.
Go for it. Thank you. I love the way that you've set that up, but it, it, it helps me when thinking about building communities digitally to really think about real life communities and the things that I'm actually involved in. And I find those analogies so helpful. That actually is gonna bring us to your bad advice. Uh, this is,
this is the worst advice you've ever gotten, which is build lots of channels before your launch, before you launch your community. And I, I, I think we're talking to people who are about to throw up the, open the doors to their community space for the first time,
and they're probably of that mindset of, oh, I, I wanna have people talk about all these different things. And so they go in and they set up these sub spaces, whether they are rooms or channels or whatever the, uh, nomenclature is for your particular platform. But they'll go in and they'll set up a bunch of things and we'll go, oh, well, you know, if you're
setting up a sports fans communities, we'll go hockey, uh, and we'll do, uh, one for soccer and we'll do one for, uh, you know, roller derby and, and all these things. Um, with the idea that people are going to come in and then go talk in all these channels. Talk a little bit about how you see this mistake being made and why it doesn't work.
Yeah, I mean, and Seth, while, while we've kicked off the real estate side of it, I'm gonna continue on those analogies. Like, if you are hosting a party and say you want 2000 people to come to par your party, I know it's a big, big party,
but as people show up, what do you do? Do you spread them across every room? Or do you get them all in the kitchen? Right? When the first 50 people arrive, you want them to be in one room. You want all the engagement in one single space, because you don't want to lose the, what I call community density or community gravity. You'll see online there's a bunch of different terms for it,
but that's the element that you want to create. You want everybody having a good conversation in the kitchen. And then as more folks arrive, you start to fill up a space, it gets uncomfortable inside of a single space, you start moving them to different spaces within the community that really makes sense for them. So you can start creating different spaces that are catered to what folks want to create. But what we often find is a lot of community builders, they've got 40 channels. They're like, we want one for this, and one for that, and one for this over here. But the, the issue is that like they're thinking in scale and community. You have to think one to one, especially in the beginning. You have to be able to say, this is a servant leadership job. My job is to introduce every single person as they come through the door and say, Hey, this is a space made for you. Here's what we're talking about. How do we bring you into the conversation? And then as they begin to explore and develop, that's when they start to kind of comb off into other spaces that are much more curated for the concepts that they want to be a part of. But if you, you know, introduce someone and say, Hey, here are 40 rooms for you to go check out, they're not gonna know where to go. Right? And I think that's the, the element of community building is that when you first start, you have to be uncomfortable. It has to be an uncomfortably close space. There's 800 topics happening in one channel, but because it's all together, it creates this element of, you know, not being the only one in the room having a conversation with yourself. And it allows people to really feel seen, which is another important part of community building, is just making sure folks know that when they say something, there are others there to actively see it and contribute back to it. So
I'd say I tied in a lot of,
uh, good community advice into that, into that bad one, but definitely do not
put everybody into a hundred channels because they won't know where to go from there. So keep it uncomfortably close, build that, that community gravity and density so that folks are actually engaging with each other, and then allow them to wander over time.
You know, as you're talking about density, I'm thinking about something that, uh, a lot of nightclub owners will do, which is that, uh, you know, in early in the evening when the nightclub first opens, nobody wants to walk into a dead nightclub where there aren't people, like, if that density is too low, people are like, oh, this is lame. And so you'll see a bouncer outside who will literally make sure that there is a line and will not let people in, even though there's a ton of space inside until they reach that sort of critical mass. And then they let people in to make sure that the, the place is full. And so people walk in and go, oh, there's activity, there's stuff going on in here. Because that's what you want people to see when they walk into your space is, is activity. Um, some of this I think comes from, we have talked on this podcast before about, about another piece of bad advice, which is idea that
if you build it, they will come. That sometimes what happens is people kind of, uh, hold themselves up and they architect the whole thing, and then they throw open a grand opening to their community members instead of getting people involved, uh, right from the beginning and helping them think about that. And I think some of this comes from, oh, I'm gonna predict what my members want in all these separate rooms or these separate channels, and then I'm gonna make them, instead of asking the members,
Hey, what kind of channels do you need? Um, is that what you recommend? I mean, how, how do you think about starting to open up more channels when you do hit that density and that critical mass?
Yeah, and I mean, we, we've learned this through the mistakes that we've made, right? We, we made channels that customers never wanted to post in, because we're like, oh, obviously they're joining our space to learn about X, Y, and z. And I clearly, I've mentioned X, Y, and ZA lot. We don't just teach, we teach real things, not just letters, but, um, I think the
exactly that, right? Like you'll thought, you'll find, you'll see it, you'll actually, some community members are actually so well aware of what's going on. They will say, Hey, can we start this channel?
And it's not always a yes, right? You wanna see like, oh, would people be open to a channel like this? And you, I think a lot of community managers are actually afraid to ask. Uh, sometimes the best way to do this is just to ask in a big channel, like, would this channel make sense for you?
And if folks are saying yes and saying, here's what I would wanna put in there, then go and do it, right? That's when you have that critical mass of folks that want to go and create that space, it's also creating a space for themselves. There's a little bit of an ownership aspect that every community manager has to give up, right? Your job is to help the community build itself. How do you, uh, give people the, the agency to be able to say and ask you questions then and kind of decide the fate of the community? And it's very hard to kind of give up a lot of that ownership over time. But that is the goal. Your goal is to help it, help take yourself and remove as much of yourself out of the community. I do,
I do believe, and this is maybe also,
this is also advice that I never would've known until we started this company, but most folks don't know that when you're first starting a community, it is actually a lot about you. It's weird to say this, you are the community. A lot of folks join the community because of what they believe you can provide in it. And over time, that is less and less of the case. But in the beginning, it is a lot of a founder brand, if that makes sense. And so folk, a lot of community builders, uh, it, they kind of back away. They're like, no, no, it's about the problems that we're solving. But it's not exactly that. It's about how do you approach the problems, and then over time
you can create a space where, where the ownership starts to move out to other members, to other chapter leaders, to ambassadors. And they'll tell you what they want to go create in the space, and you can kind of give them the agency to go do so. So I agree that's like what, what you want to be able to see happen is in those bigger public spaces, the kind of ability for folks to come together and say, here's what we want this to become. And you to be able to give up a little bit of the ownership to say, absolutely, even though that wasn't my idea, I'm willing and able to create this because I believe it's a good space for us to build within the community. Yeah. I, I wanna underscore what you're saying there. 'cause it's, it's subtle, but it is important. Let's say for example, I'm in a chocolate lovers community
and I'm not a community. How do I get in that
I need to get in there?
We all get every other Tuesday we get together, we just eat chocolate love. Um,
you know, but, uh, I'm in this community and, and I'm not the community organizer, the community manager, um, there is a difference between if the community manager has created a channel that's just dedicated to Cadbury,
you know, versus if I as just a member say, Hey, I'm a big Cadbury fan, can we create a channel that's dedicated to Cadbury? Um, the difference is if if it comes from my suggestion and then becomes a reality, i, I am gonna feel that ownership that you're talking about, and I'm just a little bit more likely to post and to participate and to invite other people. You know, I, I wanna see it succeed 'cause it was, it was my idea, or I had, you know, some sort of contribution to make there. Uh, and I think that that's, that's really important to see that. And so it's, it's in some ways you don't want to create the channels, not just because people may not know where to go or you may not reach density, but in some ways it's just a way of holding back on it is an opportunity for you to give ownership to your members, right?
Yeah. And I, I think that it creates a little bit of, um, self-selection and controversy. And I like, here's a good example. As the chapter leader for the Chocolate Chili channel, the, uh, dark chocolate and a little bit spicy channel, something I feel very strongly about, right? I would love to be a part of that channel to learn about the best chocolate in that category, but hell no. Am I joining the milk chocolate, uh, channel over here? Because that's just not me. I'm in the chocolate community. I'm a big chocolate believer. I've always been pro chocolate, but I'm definitely not gonna fall into certain channels that I don't want to participate in. So
I think that that element of, um, when you find someone who
actually has very strong opinions about a space, right? They are like a good example. They love chocolate,
but they, they don't like milk chocolate and they really like chocolate. That's spicy. That's a very unique niche thing. But there's also probably, you know, a good chunk of folks that are in this, this community that want to be more participatory in the smaller space that's much more catered to exactly what they're going for. Like when I say I like chocolate, it's not all chocolate, it's my chocolate. And I think
one, I love this analogy because it's, it's good for everyone who gets it. My co-founder, Steven, I'm gonna call him out, doesn't like chocolate. I know, it's shocking what everyone listening, I know it's crazy. I'm calling him out publicly. But, um, yeah, he's, uh, he's, he would not be in this community. And that I think is another good indicator of like, who you want to create a space for. Not everyone should be in your space. That is, that is an
I I'm gonna steal all the bad advice, Seth, if I keep talking. But the other one is you should not build your community for everyone. I think there,
the, the thing that I always tell people so early on is you wanna create a really identifiable niche. Uh, and I usually say three different indicators. You can do, uh, communities of identity, you can do communities of practice. So, you know,
I actually have this worksheet that I hand out to folks and I say, uh, how do you create a community for the type of folks that you're going for? And one of the, one of the ones I did was like, I wanna start a obviously not me, I'm imagining like a, a scenario. I'm gonna start an
Asian, uh, marketers in New York City, right? This is a community of identity. It's a community of, of like practice, and it's a community of location. But I've created a space where I now understand how many folks would want to be in this community. I have an ICP as we would call it, which in the product world is an ideal customer profile, and the community world is an ideal community profile. So I understand that there's somewhere between 50 to a hundred thousand Asian marketers in New York City. Now, how do I go and find those folks? Is kind of the next step. You've created a way for you to understand who, who is the right individual to join this. And then even with within that community, there are additional layers and slices that you can create. So, um,
it, it is that level of detail that you need to think about with your community building. And it's okay to also start with that identity, max it out, and then ask the community, Hey, would we be open to, you know, additional groups that we can bring in? Maybe it's not just marketers. Maybe we can go Asian sales or go to market in, in New York City, right? And so we can start to identify additional umbrellas that we can start to build out. So that's the level of, um, specificity that I try to tell people to create. And it's okay to put that on paper. Like it is. A lot of folks don't want to exclude folks because community building, especially the folks that build in that space are the most inviting, empathetic people, but not actually
who your community is for, is going to hurt you in the long run because you, you lose the ability to understand the identity of your members. And the, the marketing is actually built around
the ability to create and understand who, who's able to join. So of course, you should be inclusive. You should make sure that this space isn't just like, um, you know, only folks that fall into that category. It's more of the belief, how do I up? And, you know, again, I'm gonna tie back to the one, the worksheet that I usually do is like, how do I uplevel the Asian marketing in New York City ability, even if I'm not Asian, even if I'm not a marketer, and maybe I might not even be in New York, New York City, but if I believe in that cause and maybe I can be part of the community to uplevel it, then I, then I fit into that bill. Yeah, I, I, I think that's important. I mean, Priya Parker, I believe calls this thoughtful exclusion, this idea of not everybody's allowed in your space. You know, going back to the chocolate space, if you don't like chocolate,
you can't come in, right? And it, it doesn't mean that we're, uh, you know,
based on arbitrary characteristics saying that certain people can't come in or not. This is the mission of the community is to enjoy chocolate. And if you don't enjoy chocolate, sorry, you don't know if you're not a parent, you can't join the parenting community if you're not, you know, whatever it might be. Um, and and what's interesting is that you're right, that happens within the channels too, that like, if you don't like spicy chocolate,
you don't belong in the spicy chocolate, uh, uh, which by the way, I would, I would be very interested in that channel.
Um, I, one of the things I, I, I also wanna point out is that, um, channels emerge over time. You know, I, uh, over the years have been involved in, uh, podcast movement, which is a podcasting conference. And, you know, I've watched it grow over about a dozen years, and in the beginning,
there were not a lot of podcasters, and so we were just so excited to find somebody else who actually knew what a podcast was that we all gathered. And then as it grew, and as podcasting grew, you started to see these subgroups pop up, and all of a sudden podcast editors wanted to talk to podcast editors as opposed to podcast hosts who might want to talk to hosts, or, you know, a personal finance podcaster might wanna talk to other personal finance podcasters
or podcasters of color, or, or, or so on and so forth. And so, in some ways, the emergence of these channels reflects
the growth of a, of a community and the maturity of a community. And so they emerge over time. And so you don't,
it, it's okay to let them emerge. You don't necessarily need them all right out of the gate, right?
Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite, uh,
this is, this is a community, whether you know it or not, right? The, everyone kind of knows it. The YMCA is exact, is my favorite example of this, because in the actual name of the YMCA is the Young Men's Christian Association, if I tried to join the YMCA back in the day, I would not have been able to join. I am not, I'm Jewish, so I wouldn't have gotten through the sea. Uh, but as time has gone on, right, the YMCA opened its doors to additional and more and more communities, right? It no longer became a space that was just what it started. As it expanded and expanded to kind of bring in more of an umbrella. And now virtually everybody can join the YMCA because they've been able to create a space for old, for young, for Jewish, for Christian, for white, for black, for men, for women. And so you've been able to see the evolution of a community that started as a, a very, um, exclusionary space, right? And eventually expanded to realize that they can actually serve everybody and what it stands for. And, and when we think about A-Y-M-C-A, a lot of us think about literally the community center of, of like a, a, a space. So, um, you know, there's a lot of good examples of this, and it's not just the YMCA, but I think that's a,
a really clean one for a lot of folks to think about because of how it started and how it expanded over time to kind of be a larger umbrella. And there, that is one of my favorite examples of a longstanding community that has rebranded year, like decade over decade, as it's kind of gone through the iterations of thinking about, oh, we stand for much more than the identities that we originally serve, and this identity element of the community. We stand much more for how do we create a community space for folks that are, you know, within the community.
I know the word community, I'm using it, uh, in two different ways, but within the literal community of our neighborhoods. Yeah,
yeah. You know, and I think this also underscores the idea that, um,
especially if, if you're somebody like a content creator, we are used to this idea that we have total control over the thing, and then we publish it and we let go, and it's out there and it's done. You know, that, that the podcast episode is up, the YouTube video's out the email newsletter's, and we're onto the next one. And when you're building a space, that's not the case that it, it in a sense is never done. It is constantly evolving in response to the needs of people. And so it can grow. And so if you find, hey, you know, we're not just young men or, or Christians anymore, we can, we can invite other people into this space or even within the space, things can pop up. But, uh, it, it's, it's different, you know? Um, it's sort of like owning a company. Like the company you, you wind up with is, I'm sure you're finding out is never exactly the company you think it's gonna be. At the beginning, my mom told me that, you know, when I bought a house, she said, uh, you know, you're never done. It is always, you're gonna redo every room, and then when you finally get to the last room, you're gonna wanna redo the first room. That's, that's kind of what building a community is like. Do we have the same mother? I don't know.
We, yeah, yeah. My mom literally redo off it's ongoing process right now, you know? Right, right.
And, and, and you get to that, but, but you are, it is a constant evolution and it's constantly changing, and that's okay. That doesn't mean you did it wrong in the first place. It's that it's that communities evolve over time, right?
Communities evolve over time. I mean, I think that's the, um, and, and I think that's also goes back to what, what we started with of like, a lot of folks want to build what is the YMCA today? They wanna serve everybody, and they don't think about how did we start, how did, what was the first group of individuals, the, uh, the first hundred avid fans, um, that we can create within the space that are going to evangelize the space for us? I mean,
you know,
I've been, I've been working in the community space so long that I, you start to see this, this element through
all of the things that we work with throughout like our normal day-to-day lives. And I think we try to draw these clear lines in the sand of, of human behavior, but it, it, it works across business, it works across family, it works across religion. Uh, there are all of these spaces where the, you, you tend to find they start small and then they grow bigger and they start to find ways to expand. Sports is another great example. It always starts with a few very avid players. And as time goes on, you find that, that, that, you know, there are additional folks that they try to bring under the umbrella. So it, it, you know, if we think about that, my bad advice in the beginning of build a really small, dense group of individuals that so strongly believe in what you're building, and then find ways to expand to larger ones. I think the way that I would position it back to our chocolate analogy, don't start a chocolate community. Just don't start a spicy chocolate community, because when you start to say those words, you start to find that people identify so much faster with what you're building or disqualify themselves so much faster, and the ability to create the avid element of what you're going for. So if you are a creator, I have a friend, a good example
she wants to create in the, the fitness space. Uh, she's a, a young Indian woman here in New York City, and she has this opportunity to be able to create content that will cater to not just the millions of fitness folks that may not resonate with what she's creating. There's, she has the ability to find and create a content niche that would actually allow her to more quickly find her members. And so,
uh, another good call out just 'cause I do think the creator market has a very unique lens of this, uh, be being a creator. Let, I actually, I'm gonna switch us real quick to an interesting talk that usually give about audiences versus communities. And I think this is an important distinction to make as well. So a lot of creators I find, call their community. So call their audience a community. And what they don't realize is they haven't built a community yet. Not everyone even needs a community. Sometimes you can only, you only want an audience. And here's, here's really the identifying matrix of it. And there's, there's three different types that I, I kind of have identified. You have your pure audience. This is,
this is everyone who's listening to this podcast that doesn't engage back. You are listening, you're hearing, you're taking in content. Uh, I have never met you, potentially, you're just hearing me speak. And you're maybe taking these ideas and you're exploring how you can incorporate them into your life. These are the, these are authors, these are, this is, you know, actors, you have an audience that you've built around your business. Then there's an engaged audience. This is,
you know, going in, let's say Instagram, going into the common thread and actually replying to members of your community, creating that, that one-to-one experience between you, the creator and, and the audience member themselves, and giving them access to really experience you as an individual. And then there's a community, and this is where things expand because it doesn't just become, you know, an Instagram common thread. It becomes, how do I not only take the conversations that I'm having with my members, but create conversations between them? And I have, I usually always have to call out Taylor Swift as a good example of this. There are literally communities built around discussing Taylor Swift, right? And I think that the element of sharing in this collaborative environment of, uh, understanding that it's not just about this media personality, but it's also the culture that this individual creates. That's, that's what you need to think about as a creator, is is there a conversation to be had?
Uh, it doesn't al it doesn't need to be about you, right? That she's a, she's unique in the sense that it is about her and the, the, the kind of world building that she's created. But is there a community that, a discussion topic around the content that you create that you can really bring together? And that's when you start to create a community around your audience, around that engaged audience, and then into a deeper kind of community space. And you can really think about it, uh, for folks that are just listening, I'm drawing a funnel with my hands, uh, at of the multiple layers, right? You have that top of funnel audience, the discovery element, the engaged audience. Oh, I'm finally interested enough to ask some questions of the indi, you know, the creator themselves. And then finally, I'm bought in. I'm a fan. I need to, I need to get more, I need to be able to have a discussion about this topic. That's when a community makes sense. That's when you're creating a space where you can scale yourself, you can scale your business, and you can actually charge more. And we, I, I'm actually gonna call a, a friend of mine. So Molly Godfrey runs the Impressions community. So she started as a consultant doing one-on-ones, uh, for building LinkedIn content for, for women. And so she was helping women kind of uplevel their community, or sorry, their content on LinkedIn,
and then realized a lot of these women wanted to meet each other to learn like where they were struggling or how they could help others. They become experts in some sense, or, you know, kind of uplevel black belts in the category.
And Molly created the impressions community so folks could join, interact with each other, and she charges a membership in order to be there, but it actually helps her scale all of the knowledge she's created and help others be able to interact with each other, support themselves. And so I really love that approach to
creator turned community builder.
Yeah, I do too. And, and we could talk about this at length, but, uh, let, let me ask you one last question, and this is the final question that I ask everybody at the end of these interviews. Um, make a prediction five years from now. Yeah. What do you think we're gonna be talking about in the community space?
Yeah. Uh, I love this one. I, I'll, I'll, I'll bet that in five years, so one of my favorite quotes of all time is we overestimate what we can do in one year, and we underestimate what we can do in a decade. So I usually go into this and say, oh, in 20 years, but it might, I might be wrong, it could be in five. What I actually see happening
is we're finding the creator market, especially in my world, which are what I would call these B2B creators, these professional creators that build around roles, they build around careers, they focus on content that's helping people uplevel their day-to-day jobs. And these founders, these B2B founders that are building the technology to enable these new roles to enable, uh, these individuals to really create the work that they want.
I don't think these are different in five years. I think the same individual that ends up building the technology, and the one who I call them conductors, that's actually the name that I, I love to say, is they are taste makers. They are so knowledgeable, uh, in the space, they're able to stand who to bring into the space, and they bring these folks together and they say, Hey, let's go solve a problem together. And
that's what I'm super excited about, is being able to find and serve this new form B2B creator that's also building content
and creating product. Because in the future, I think building product is going to be as easy as creating content. Not to say creating content is easy, but the fact that I think in the future, the ability for everyone to do both is going to be viable. And you're gonna find that the more niche you can get is gonna be how you build your initial both audience, community, and customer base. And that's where I see the next five years, especially as AI makes technology much more democratic in terms of how folks can create.
My hope is that we start to find these new businesses that do it all, as I would say they are, they are media, they are community, and they are product that are building towards one common goal for a unique niche group of individuals.
Yeah,
I love it. That's fascinating. So, uh, I guess we'll see whether that comes to pass. Um, Zach Hoff, thank you so much. Uh, it is tight knit. It allows people who want to take slack and really put this extra layer on it to build a community. People can find out [email protected]. Thank you so much. I've love this, uh, you, you, you know, for a, a podcast and a show about bad community advice. There was so much good stuff in there, and I really appreciate you coming on and, uh, and talking with me.
Yeah, thank you for having me, Seth. And yeah, I mean, just to call it out like you're doing an incredible job here just to see what you've done with this community. Uh, it's really exciting and yeah, I think there's, there's so many more community managers that we need to see out there. It's such a, it's such a growing space that most folks don't know about, and I appreciate that there's, there's guys like you making the content to really take folks from zero to one. So thank you for, for letting me on to give you, uh, as much bad advice as I could.
Um, so hopefully it's, hopefully some of it's wrong and people learn the hard way.
Well, thank you, Zach. Appreciate it.
Uh oh.
