Hello, and welcome to Community Case Studies. This is a show where we take a look at how belonging is really built. I'm your host. My name is Seth Wesler of Community Marketing Revolution, and in this episode we're doing something a little bit different. Normally I bring guests on who have an established community, and we talk about how they built that community. But in this case, I'm actually bringing on an established community builder who is in a situation where they have built communities in the past, and now they're tasked with building a brand new community. And we're gonna find out what she's thinking as she does that. What are the first steps? Where do you start? How do you figure out what's already in place and where do you go from there? My guest is a longtime leader in the podcasting space and a champion for independent creators. After nearly two decades of the industry, she's now focused on helping creators build sustainable values, driven work through her mentorship programs and her media platform. Multimodal e she's the creator of the ELEAGUE and Creative Sovereignty Sessions, where she works with established creators, navigating growth, burnout, reinvention, and long-term vision. She also works alongside the team at Captivate as Creator success and community manager supporting independent podcasters inside their ecosystem. I wanna welcome my friend Elsie Esteban.
Hi Elsie. How are you?
Hi, I'm well, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. That's so fun. Oh, I, I'm so thrilled that you're on. You and I have been friends for a long time. We've had an opportunity to work on a number of projects over the years, and you have recently landed at Captivate. First of all, congratulations.
Thank you. That's absolutely fantastic. So, I wanna talk to you a little bit about what you're doing there, but before we do, let's dive in a little bit into your background, because you've been a podcaster for a long time. I mean, you're one of the, the OG names and podcasting. I mean, if, if people have been around podcasting for a while, they know you. They, they may have met you because you're at all the events. Uh, but not only have you been involved in podcasting for a long time, you've really been a community building in various fashions over the years. Talk to me a little bit about that and where those two things have intersected. Talk to me about how you've been building community and the different things that you've been doing.
Yeah. You know, it was, I don't, I'm not exactly sure how I ended up here in a lot of different, from a lot of different ways. And now when I'm looking back, you know, when you asked me this question, I was like,
oh my gosh.
And I have to go back all the way to when I, I was teaching yoga in Los Angeles for about 10 years or so,
and, um,
you know, when I started to teach the yoga,
people would end up coming to my classes all the time. Like, I, I remember very specifically, I had a level one yoga class Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays at 2:30 PM which is a really weird time slot. And usually it's not necessarily a coveted time slot for yoga people because most of the, because you get paid per,
you get paid a very, like, sort of like a small, like $30 or $50 if you're lucky. Um, at least at that time in the, you know, early
s um, where you show up and teach a class. And then though, the way that you do make money with classes is when the people actually start to show up. So you start to get like, money over that. If there's x amount of students that show up to the class, the two 30 classes in the middle of a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday are not usually well attended classes.
But for whatever reason, you know, folks started to come to my Monday, Wednesday class, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you know, yoga classes at two 30. There were level one classes and people really, really loved them. And I started to build an audience there. At that same time
I got into podcasting. I got obsessed with podcasting. I was teaching many, many classes, um, around town. And I started to record my yoga classes because that's what you do when you go into podcasting. You just wanna record all the things. So I would wear a little recorder, and I decided based on the feedback that I got from the people that showed up all the time that they said, I wanna take you with me, is what they said to me. And I was like, oh, okay. And so I thought, I, why not record myself and you can take me with you. And I started this podcast called Elsie's Yoga Class. And so folks used to then that podcast, because I was one of,
I think I was the first,
uh, uh, audio audio yoga teacher
who had a podcast
and woman. Uh, and so I, people started to understand my voice. Like I started to get recognized, this is like in 2006,
where I would go into different places. Like if I would go to like a yoga, uh, workshop, or I was traveling to a different state and I was walking around and people would hear me, they literally would say, they would look at me weird. And I had, I actually was here that one of the last times that this happened, I had just moved to Asheville, um, and I was walking downtown Asheville and I was talking to whoever I was talking with, and I had these people look me straight in the eye and go
like,
you know, that look like as if they're recognizing you. And they passed me by and then they ran back and they go, are you lc from LCC class? And I was like, yes.
That is so weird. It happened to be in three separate states. And so anyway, all that to say, I started to build audience. I started to build, um, community. 'cause people would come and meet each other and they'd started to be become friends showing up at my classes. Um, and then it started to expand even more because of the online conversations that were happening with me. I had people who would drive to come to my yoga classes who had only practiced with me virtually. And I, I was like blown away by that. Um, I would've continued on doing that, but then I had life circumstances that sort of took me outside of the yoga world, fully into the podcasting world. And I started working at, um, at Lipson. And when I started working at Lipson at that time, I was really fueled by the, um, I think the inspiration that I experienced through the yoga community and the, the fire that I had from my people. And that I saw that same sort of, um, vibe from the podcasting community at that time too. So I would become,
I was very involved in showing up in spaces and,
uh, uh, joining and sending audience, uh, excuse me, audio feedback to podcasts and, um, emailing shows and responding to, uh, other podcasters calls to action about, you know, do this for me, review the show, send me voice feedback. Like, I was the one that was like, yes, I will do all the things for you 'cause I love you. And, um, and so I became very, um, enthused and in that enthusiasm I started to do a lot of posting for Lipson and naturally started to bring a lot of sort of attention to the company based on my enthusiasm for building community.
Yeah. Um, and so yeah, I remember those early days too. I mean, you know, this is back going on 20 years ago, and, and you were just excited when you, there was somebody else who knew what a podcast was. Uh, I remember the first time I saw you, it was speaking at, uh, podcast movement. I think you were leading a session in, I wanna say Fort Worth, Texas, uh, Uhhuh a long, long, I think it was the second podcast, maybe like it was a long time ago, uh, when, when I first encountered you. And the space has changed so much over that, that time. But I wanna ask you about something you said there, because
you used two different words, and I want to get your sense of how you think those two things are different. You talked about audience
and you talked about community,
and, you know,
podcasters are often building audience, they're building fans, people who consume their content. You've done that, but you've also built community. You talked about building a space where people can come together. Can you elaborate on kind of the difference between the two?
Yeah, I think part of it is whenever you start to bring that audience, it's about the,
it's, it's, to some, the first time for me, it becomes more expansive as in the audience can be
larger, is sometimes the way that I see it. Audience becomes bigger than yourself. Bigger audience is isn't as personal in the sense of you look at somebody and you know who each person is. That to me is more of an audience where it's like, there's people listening to you that you don't know who they are. Whereas for me, with the community aspect of it was me being able to go to my classes, and then I would see everybody and greet them by their name and go like, Hey, it's so good to see you here. You know, Hey, you know, John, Hey Marian, how's it going? I'm so glad you're back today. How was the party? You know, that you were going to, how did that work out? And in that respect, it's the, the difference is that, and then the other layer to that community is when I would sit back and watch them, and then they would connect with each other and they would start to talk with one another while they were, um, in class, or they, there were memories. There were co-created memories of events that happened that they, we collectively would remember all of those things that happened.
Um, and sometimes you can build that memory off of an event,
and sometimes you can build that memory off of relationship with the media or the content that you are creating.
And when I say that, it's like, um, for she podcast, 'cause that was another, um, community that I built.
Jess and I had a podcast called She Podcast. And we talked about so many different things. We were very transparent of our lives, especially as young moms. At that time. We were very irr, irrelevant, irreverent about the way that we talked about all the things, right? Especially within podcasting. And there were many silly moments, many heartfelt moments, many very meaningful, uh, poignant moments that we all had in the show. Like Jess and I had in the show.
Our
audience,
when they were listening to us, had experiences with us when we were having these
conversations with each other.
Then we had she podcast live,
and we had she podcast meetups. So she podcast live was a, a conference just for, uh, centering women and non-binary individuals coming together.
Um, and then we had a lot of she podcast meetups within larger conferences. And when that audience got together during these meetups and during this conference, they had
lived memories of experiences with Jess and I that were,
you know, what is it? What is a parasocial? Right? But that connected them. They, that was the thing that connected them, and then they bonded based off of all of those experiences. So it is very multi-layered
as it pertains to what, uh, audiences and what community is. But lot of them have to do with a little deeper thing. It's like a identifying factor. It's a deeper identity that they have. It's something that, um, they've, they've felt sometimes it has to do with an emotional or a feeling thing that brings them to a place where they have pre-chosen that space to be the place that they belong.
And once they do that, they open into the community world.
I wanna ask about a word that you use there that I think is very interesting, which is co-creation. Mm-hmm.
Um,
and, and when we are content creators, when we are building audience, we're creating it on our own. I mean, obviously if you've got a co-host, you're creating it with them, but you're not creating it with the audience members. You know, I go and I make my film, or I write my novel, or I write my email newsletter or film my YouTube video, and then we publish it and it's released out into the audience's hands, right? And I'm done with it, and I'm onto the next podcast episode, the next email newsletter. Right. Um, that's how it works with content.
When you are building a community, it really is an act of co-creation. It is something that you are doing not for your members, but with your members where you're bringing them together and that space evolves and develops and, and sometimes goes in directions that you don't know what's gonna go in because it is that feedback. Um, can you talk a little bit about the, and how you've seen that and the various things that you've done?
Yeah. You know, I think one of the,
I have to say that podcasting is
what taught me about that feedback.
I didn't know prior to podcasting that
you could have a relationship
with the content creator, because I, I come from the sort of,
you know, legacy media world, um, of the Hollywood
type of thing, right? Where you, you do TV shows or even radio where yes, there were call in shows and things like that, but there was always the,
there's the host or there's the actor and they are doing that thing. And then you are the fan and you stand back. And once in a while they will, you know, you'll win something or you'll get in on a call, or you'll get a signed autograph or something like that.
Whereas with podcasting,
the every podcaster, at least in the early days that I, when the podcast that I was listening to, all of them had a call to action to get feedback to them. And they all were sharing either a number, a phone number, or, or an email address, every single one.
And so, and then they would feature voices coming in
all the time.
And I thought, oh, that's very accessible. Oh my gosh, I wanna try that.
And the very first time that I sent
like a new, like an email to one of the podcasters that I was listening to at that time,
when he read my email,
that was like a life changing experience for me. It, I was
just blown away by that experience. And just the fact that this person recognized me, named me, and answered my question and took his time to do so, immediately created a feeling
of, uh, loyalty towards that podcaster. It gave me something so enormous, which was very, it was very, to me, mutual, it was respectful because he answered my question. And from my end of it, I was like, wow. He saw me
even though it was all audio, obviously. And,
and we became friends. And that is sort of how I experienced that over and over and over again with a lot of different podcasts. And they would all talk to each other and they would all introduce sort of me to each other, and, oh, that's my, you know, that's a listener of my show. She's really great, blah, blah. And they would often talk about the, the people that were listening to their shows amongst themselves while recording, like recording their podcast. So that created sort of a cohesive, recognizable back and forth of information. And so I always thought, Hmm, this is really interesting. So moving from that beginning stages, I can now,
I feel it is essential for always to have that open dialogue, which is the feedback that I give to a lot of content creators or a lot of, especially podcasters, to have a place where they are actually engaging with their audiences, not for engagement sake, but for actual dialogue back and forth, to get that feedback to them because it is so valuable when it comes their way. It is so essential, and it allows for the other person to feel that kind of loyalty to somebody who's really, truly listening to them. Um, and so that's like step one, even when I was working over at Lipson, I remember very specifically, um, it was in the early Twitter days, and
there were, you know, they, I I trolls have always been a thing, obviously in online spaces, um, people being annoying and people being negative
has escalated as of nowadays. 'cause now it's like really out of control. Like, it just feels, there's a lot of entitlement that comes out of it. Whereas we're at the beginning stages
when we do, we would get sort of like more critical negative feedback. I would go out of my way to engage with everybody who was having an issue, and I would go into their dms and I would engage with them that way. And most of the time that ended up becoming a very respectful acquaintance of their work and my work. And there was a lot more grace, um, between company and between folks that use the product. And, um, that mutual respect was what I found to be the thing that allows for community and good vibes to really grow in spaces like, um, like the online world, which we have right now.
Yeah.
So you've gotta create a, you know, a safe space. And I think sometimes that, that phrase gets, you know, looked down upon, but it, it really is important. And it doesn't just mean, Hey, I'm not gonna get stabbed if I co here. It's, it's, I feel comfortable
opening up and connecting with other people here. Right. I mean, that's what we're, we're talking about.
Talk to me a little bit more about she podcasts and how that evolved from content to a space that you created. What did that look like in the early days? Were there things that you tried and worked and you learned things? Were there things that you tried and they didn't work? And so you shifted, uh, and why was that so important? Why was that needed in the early days of podcasting?
Yeah. I think it's still needed. It's just that I, I don't believe that the ecosystem that we had at that time exists anymore, which is a little bit sad, and I might,
you know, talk about that
here. But, um,
you know, that that space, actually, the idea of that space came from Jessica Erman, who is my
co uh, everything, my co all the things that we created together within, uh, she podcast. And it really was her,
her sort of, um,
drive to,
to create the actual Facebook group.
So we were at New Media Expo and, um, at New Media Expo in, it was in Las Vegas. We were sitting around and we had met a few other
women podcasters that we had sort of connected online, and they were there as well. And we had a dinner that was really lovely for all of us to sort of talk shop. And we had never had that experience before. And so that was a little, that was like a big catalyst. And the other aspect was the fact that we were attending a lot of the sessions, and collectively the feedback that we found is that a lot of the sessions that were, um, being talked about were very male centric, and they were not addressing a lot of the needs that we, at that time, especially, a lot of us on that, in that table were
moms, young, young, young kids. Um, and there was not the space in our lived experience at that moment to be able to execute on the, on the strategies that were being presented. They were all very cookie cutter, very like, do these things and then you'll get whatever, right? And we're like, well,
I don't even know if I can record consistently. You know what I mean? Just because it's, our life is chaos. And so the ability for us to just commiserate and talk about the realities of our lives and how to make what we had work. So it was so much more helpful than the actual sessions that Jess was, you know what? We probably need to have a place where we can talk, just we can talk. And she started just inviting her friends, like just friends that she met there, people that we met at that knew meet X well, this was like
a handful, you know, like 10, 20, maybe 30 people that she just wanted to get people together. And then,
um, I was in the mix just like starting to get to know Jess, and I said, well, I know a lot of people. And so I invited a bunch of people to come in there. And in those early days, it just became such a safe space for us to go to, to ask questions that we needed to ask for ourselves that we felt weren't being even answered in the other, uh, podcasting groups at that time. This was a Facebook experience, by the way. And so that's what started it. It started at that, it grew really fast without us doing anything. So
that's the hard part about the early days in a lot of things. Or when you do that one thing for the first time and it really hits where you can't say it's because we did these things that that's why it worked.
I can tell you that the biggest shift happened when we
grew
way big. Um, and when I say like way big, I would say, like, at that time,
I think once we started to hit
over 10,000,
10 to 15,000 people in the group,
or, you know, yeah, people, 'cause those are, I mean, you would hope that there were people, but they were walking the group. It just became a lot more,
um, less curated. Um, we didn't have as much time to help with what was going on in the group. And I started, I was also having another job at that time, and then we were trying other things to sort of monetize. We were never monetizing the group itself.
That was like a free experience. And what I started to notice, and I think what really hit like a really an inflection point, right around 2020, because there were the group contin. That's when like all of a sudden, this, by the way, all this started in 2014, just to give you context,
uh, when that group was established when we got to 20, and then we had she podcast live in 2019, which was again, a huge thing where people actually bought tickets to go to an event that we put together and had, it was the, it was the third largest podcasting conferences, a conference out of the gate in 2019, which is like
unheard of. We had, I think around 700, 8, 800 like people there in that one,
like in 2019, which was astounding. So that like, took us to a whole other level. And then what ended up happening in 2020 is like, you know, the world sort of exploded in so many different ways,
and the capacity to manage online conversations became extraordinarily difficult at that time.
And I don't believe we had the infrastructure to address the needs that the community had at that time, versus all of the needs of our personal lives going on. And the ability to scale safely became a lot more, um,
uh, there's a word for this. It became more of a liability. That's the word. Yeah. Um, because of
just, there was just so much, there was so much happening. So that's when it started to become a little less,
um, I don't know what the word is in that. Like,
um,
intimate, I think intimate. Everybody knew each other. And there were so many algorithms that
switched things. Like people didn't know who we were. People didn't know who the rules were before everybody knew who Elsie and Jess was going into that group. I mean, it was our group. Every, you know, it's like people knew us, but then when it started to scale up, there were so many people who did not know who we were. They didn't know what our vibe was. They didn't listen to our podcast. They had no idea what the lore was behind our lives. So everything that I told you before about having those lived experiences, everybody knew each other. That started to sort of erode
because we didn't have that much breach. And it was,
you know, obviously I think there were operational. I think that there were a lot of issues around that, but also there's stuff you can't control, especially things like algorithms
where they were no longer pushing like the she podcast content to our own people. People didn't see our own posts, meaning coming from Jess or coming from me. And the algorithm really, really skewed towards, you have to be in Facebook, you have to have all these friends, and then the more people engage with your content, the more they're gonna see the content that you post. But there's people, like,
sometimes you don't have time to be going in the group all the time in order to get the algorithm to know who you are, you have to do other things and you just, you know. So that really shifted the vibe inside of she podcasts at that time. I, I think it's such a fascinating case study in what happens when
communities grow and, and get really big and, and, and when they move on. And, and, you know, one of the things that starts to happen, and, and we've seen it in the podcasting space, you and I, that again, at the beginning days, you were just excited when there was somebody who you could be like, oh, you know what a podcast is? What microphone do you use? And then now as podcasting is so big, it's like email. Everybody's got a podcast. Uh, you start to see these smaller groups emerge, oh, here's the editors mm-hmm. Hanging out over here. Or Here's the podcasters of color hanging out over here. Or here's the personal finance podcasters hanging out over here. Because that's a way to recapture that intimacy
when it just gets, when it just gets too big.
Let's talk about what you're doing now at Captivate, and, and I know this is a new role. You're, you're only a couple of months in, um,
talk to us about what you are doing there. What is your role now at Captivate and, and explain what Captivate is?
Yeah, so first of all, captivate is a podcast hosting, uh, and growth platform. So it is, you know, you, you have your, your podcast hosted. There are media files hosted with Captivate, and then you get an opportunity to go to all the distribution places that we all know and love for in podcasting. You know, Spotify is Apple Podcast, YouTube, and things like that. It's all like within the, uh, the Captivate ecosystem and all of those things. And also what's really lovely about Captivate in the backend is that
it is like a marketing suite in the backend. There's a lot of things that I, that I think Mark was very much a visionary as he sort of built Captivate Mark Askwith because
he saw that content creation isn't necessarily back in the day content, especially for podcasting. You would just do the podcast and then the marketing that you would do was like, I just released my latest episode, and you would just put it out there and people would find it. It, because it used to be that way, right? People would just find the show and you would build audience basically
by doing nothing.
And then obviously things started to change and there was a lot of bigger need from podcasters to do more with their episodes once they publish them. Like, you know, they understood the titles and descriptions and like how you promote the show. And like all those different things that, um, podcasters also need to learn about in order to get or grow their audiences, or at least be seen by their, the potential audiences and Captivate in terms of their ui. And the, and, and when you go in there, it has like all of these lovely tools for optimizing for SEO and being able to like, have these like snippets that are the best thing ever where you can just update one time, like a call to action that always goes to the bottom of your show notes, and that is
dynamically inserted into all of your episodes. So like, if you change your number, if you change the call to action, like, sign up for my blah blah, versus going to the other call to action that you've had before, it like dynamically shifts it all in through your entire, like show notes, which is
duh, like amazing. Like, it's just like little tiny things like that that are really helpful for, um, marketing your podcast and, and being able to put your stuff out there. Okay. So that is what Captivate is. Um, now
what I'm doing right now, I'm the creator, success and community manager, and my goal there is really just everything that has to do with community, everything that has to do with, uh, um, uh, education and moving those things together in a way that helps the podcasters keep podcasting, which is something that I've been doing since the inception. And part of this is done through a couple of, um, key keystone content plays or Keystone strategies that Captivate has. One of them is in and around podcasting, which is a podcast about podcasting that I co-host with Rob Welch. And also, um, we have other voices that are coming into the mix. That's part of what I get a chance to develop, to be able to have more voices inside of that podcast about podcasting. Those are a little bit more, um, industry conversations, a little bit more news, a little bit more nuance, a little more like, you know, sitting around and having a deep convo about podcasting.
Um, and then there is the Growth Labs, which is the educational side of it all, where we have extra people come in and teach something very specific, very oriented, or have a conversation around a very thought, thoughtfully, um, uh, placed something or other that is, um, necessary for podcasters to know about right now. As well as positioning us as, or like, maybe I would do one where I'm talking about community or maybe something that Danny from our, our head of support, who is an incredible, he's just amazing at his job to be able to come in there and teach something very specific about how to use a tool or how to be able to get the most out of Captivate or something like that, that is very centered on the product itself. That is another aspect of the Growth Labs. And prior to me coming on board, the Growth Labs were part of the sort of backend of Captivate. So if you became, if you, um, hosted your show in Pot Captivate, you came into the, you know, you signed into your account, you went inside the dashboard, and within the backend of Captivate there was like this whole slew of education that was available to you by the Growth Labs. There's like so many guests that they've had in there, some expert people, some men amazingly, uh, great content back there, but nobody sees it unless you go in the backend and you see the stuff. So now we're moving sort of a lot of that behind the scenes stuff that we had there only available for Captivate people
front facing so that you more people can find it and it's much more visible. Um, so it's not necessarily new. Everything's just becoming more revamped and moving up. So those are the, some of the core components of what I'm moving, um, forward there. The community aspect is engaging, basically for me. I can't say all podcasters, but I feel like
podcasters that are just really curious about
making their, their podcast work and, and wanting to test things out and are that are willing to have harder conversations around their own visibility. How do they build their audiences? What are the things that they can make the better where they are choosing to step into a community that's gonna be able to help them do that.
Yeah.
So you've talked about some of the content pieces, obviously in and around podcasting and, um, the Growth Labs, which teaches people how to, you know,
do podcasts and make better podcasts. Um, and those are some of the easy pieces that you could do on your own right from the, from the rip, uh, because it isn't necessarily co-creation. And, and I think in your case, you were inheriting some of those things that already existed mm-hmm. And taking them on.
Let's talk about that connection piece. Um,
is there a space, I mean, you had mentioned in some of your other communities there were things like a fa a Facebook group, or there were in-person events. Does that already exist? Is that something that you are looking to build and do you know what that looks like yet? Are you still in the process of figuring that out? What have you already done? And, and, you know, talk to me a little bit about, you know, that space building where people are actually gonna come together and connect. What could that look like?
Yeah. In my, uh, right now, one of the key things that I started to sense a couple of years ago is that
as it pertains to community building, in having that
lived experience and that co co-mingling of things together where we bring people together and we let each other know each other,
um,
I feel that it's a lot harder to do that on
digital platforms. Before with the Facebook group, it actually did fill to me every time I went into she podcasts, the
OG section of it all, it, it really did feel like
very comfortable and it was like we were there together.
Whereas now it all feels the same. The UI
almost in everything is the same. And I'm as in like, you know, from Slack channels to Facebook groups, to Discord channels, to, um, all of those, or even regular Instagram or regular like Threads or X or wherever it is, you're hanging out LinkedIn,
it all has the same ui
and the same be physical behavior
from people.
And so it's very hard to say, I am in a Slack channel that is
my community,
versus
I'm in a Slack channel that's for my job.
Like, it's, it's the same you want, there's very, you can't make the difference, right? So my goal is to be able to
start to get folks engaged through the content where I get a chance to start to learn about people, who are the ones that show up, what types of conversations they're having, what are the questions that they're giving me, and then slowly start to see where we can
work together,
really establish deeper conversations. And I've started through more experiential things. Like I just let a meetup, which it was really a Meet lc meetup, and the goal for that meetup was actually twofold. Obviously it was work related, because that's what I'm doing. I am working for a company and there are, are things around being able to speak about product and let people know about all the things. And, you know, that's part of the deal inherently.
But
I also thought,
I'm coming in here not knowing
who folks like who captivate users are. Uh, these are people that are new to me.
Um, I'm probably new to them
and I wanted to get to know them. And I also wanted to see the product through their eyes because I am also new to Captivate. So I get an opportunity to see things. And I started to know every time I logged in to the platform, I was always going like, you can do what?
No way. I was constantly excited. I'm still constantly excited when I go in there and I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever. I wanted to talk to other people to see how they were using the platform. I'm sure they know how to use it much better than I do. So the Meet Elsie Meetup was about that. It was me asking questions, uh, to them about the platform, like what are some like key things that they really like? What is their workflow? Like what, what's the deal? Tell me all about it. Right? And then to be able to go, um, and I, I placed it in this way, like, I guess as a product person you would say, like, what is it? Like, you know, getting critical feedback about product and all that kind of stuff. But the way that I framed it was like, okay, so we've talked about all the good stuff that we've heard from Captivate, which was amazing. Now the, what's that little pebble in your shoe? Like, what's that little thing where you're like, you know, you put in, you're like, oh my God,
and you have to take your shoe off and you have to throw the pebble out. You know, like, what's that for you about the product? And so I gotta, it was great because if you place, if you position it that way, you allow people to go like, yeah, what is that thing that's kind of annoying? And you do it in a way that allows for the respect of everybody there, but also we're collectively working together to make the best experience possible, because we all have things to do, right? We all, like, we, we all have the, the goal of this is to create
our own communities, our own, uh, you know, work putting out there to engage folks. And so it was really lovely to get to know so many folks. Um, and they were, there was so much engagement and I was able to see, I, I saw so many other people who were showing up with podcasts I'd never heard of. And it, I'm always so delighted to talk. I was so high after that meetup that I was just like, I wanna have more of those. I wanna have more of those. So yeah, that was, that was really amazing.
So I wanna, uh,
highlight two things that I think you said there. Number one, you went in listening, you didn't Yeah. Go in talking, you know, this wasn't, uh, uh,
Hey, I, I'm gonna give a speech about who else he is and what I'm doing here. You really went in asking questions, but the second thing I, that is really interesting to me is that you did this through events and these were, this was an online meetup. Yeah. Um, but you didn't go in and immediately set down permanent structures. Here's the group, we're gonna build it on Discord or Facebook groups or Mighty Networks, or Circle or whatever. You said, let's just do an event and, and talk to people. And I assume part of that is because
the event ends. And so it allows you to get that feedback and figure out what the next step is.
If you, even if you don't know it, you know that, that it really is about information gathering for you, right?
Oh, absolutely. And I think part of it too is that you always have to think as somebody who's building things, you have to understand the capacity, not only your capacity as sort of like a community leader, right? As a manager of the community, but also to understand the capacity of the team itself. Like, everybody has a job and they have things that they're doing
to get the work done. And you ha in order to build community, you have to understand how much time things actually take to build,
how much time it actually takes to
have the eng engage the con. 'cause communities have content. It's not just about,
you know, showing up. Sometimes it is, but even then, let's say I'm doing a community that I, let's say my community is a weekly meetup that we have, um, open for podcasters to show up.
Okay.
Seems simple. Like you're showing up, but, but actually it's not as simple as that. There has to be a plan every single time you're showing up. How are you gonna get people engaged? How are you gonna get people to do the thing that you're supposed to be doing here? Like, what's the goal of when we get together there, there has to be a level of guidance in there because they, we, because you're setting up an experience, and I think that folks think like that experience is easy to do. It is not. It's an energetic
shift. You have to be ready for people to be there. And you also have to be very front, very sort of future seeing
what are things that could come up that could derail this. Like, 'cause I've had them all happen.
Sometimes people take the mic forever, and it's like, when are you gonna be quiet person? It's time for you to get off the
stop talking. You know, I've been there. There's times when
it's crazy, right? Yeah. Sometimes there's like all kinds of weird sounds going on where like somebody doesn't have their like,
thing muted and it's disruptive to everybody. And, um, you have to be able to mute everybody. Like you have to know the tools that you have available to there, there's people in there sometimes that are like
having stuff happening in the chant that's derailing what you're trying to have a conversation within real life. So you, there's so many different, uh, boundaries that you have to set from the beginning so people can actually engage in a and feel like I know where I am.
And then you also have personalities that tend to take things over.
Um, so you have to understand the chemistry of the people in the room.
It's just a whole, it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. I remember very specifically going back to my yoga days when I was doing so, like live event, like live teaching, right? And there were times when I would plan my class, uh, we were gonna be working on, let's say I'm gonna be doing handstands today, we're gonna work on getting people to do handstands, and I'm gonna walk 'em through the whole thing. And I had a plan and I was like, this is what we're gonna do. And then that day somebody comes in and they're, and I go, I always, always go like, does anybody have any, I would go one-on-one to new people. Do you have anything going on in your body that I need to know about? And sure thing, most of the time that person would go like, oh yeah, I just had shoulder surgery
and I'm recovering.
I'm like, oh, great.
I can't, oh my God, how am I gonna teach this class now with this person with shoulder surgery here? So I had to be able to, you have to be able to adjust and be able to know what you need to do when you have things like that happen when it's things are derailed. Like how do you bring people back together anyway, that's just one experience for that. So meaning somebody has to do that job and there's all of these other things to do. What, how are you gonna promote the event? Who's gonna be doing the graphics for it? How are you gonna put the description out? Who's gonna be, you know, scheduling the reminders out? What platform are you gonna be using using to remind people to show up? How much social are you gonna be doing? Are you gonna be investing any kind of paid marketing to be able to get these events out? Are you gonna, you know, there's like all of this other operational stuff that goes along with it. It's not just like, let's do it. So for me, looking at the capacity and starting to learn what my capacity in my job is,
doing all of these things
and adding a layer of a community, whatever that might is, might be
what does that look like? What does it look like for year one,
for year two for year three? And being able to slowly build that out versus let's just open up a Discord channel. Let's just have, you know, weekly meetups. Let's just be That's a, that's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot.
You are also in a unique position where,
you know, I think a a lot of organizations, the way this happens is they buy into the concept of community and then they go, okay, we need to hire somebody to run the community. Let's go find a community manager, or whatever. Mm-hmm. Um, in your case, it was, you found yourself on the market and they went, oh, Elsie's available. We gotta get Elsie over here because you know, you, they obviously you're very highly thought of in the podcasting space. And they came to you and said, what do you wanna do? And, and you kind of said, well, you know, I'm, I've been doing community. Um, but that in some ways puts you in a different position because you are doing community in an organization that is really, uh, uh, about audience building. How do you
get buy-in on the concept of community? How do you get people a, on board and, and understanding what you're doing, but also recognizing that it is a bit of a different mindset from audience building. And so how do you interact with that as you're dealing with other people in the organization?
Yeah, you know, it actually was, I think it wasn't necessarily that I, um, you know, I, yes, I was available,
but I think I was available for the job that they had in mind already. So it wasn't like all of a sudden I was like, this is what I wanna do. It's like, it was, it was sort of like
synergy, right? But in terms of what the
community aspect of it,
I think that that's a very, very important question to ask because
when leadership isn't sold on what community is,
it's very hard to sell that.
And
once they buy in,
it's very challenging to find metrics to measure the impact of a community,
because there's a lot of nebulous net metrics as it pertains to, is this working or not?
Based on,
you know, the way that we measure click through rates on newsletters, right? You can very easily see when people are opening the newsletter or what's working, adjusting all kinds of stuff. Like when people are clicking through stuff, you could see the data right in front.
Whereas
being able to capture
the,
the impact of community on a product is a little bit harder to do. And you have to set a lot of tools to be able to do that.
Um, and that's the kind of stuff that I'm really thinking through
as I set this up. Because what I'm envisioning
is the community itself is not a
place, like, I'm not wanting the community to be like a Discord channel. Like that's not what it is to me. I want a general vibe of the Captivate podcaster, somebody who really vibes with the brand to know, oh my God, I belong here. I love this work. I love showing up for the meetups. I love the growth labs. I really listen to in and around podcasting, I consume the newsletter. Or even just taking a little snippet of all of those things and knowing the minute you touch anything that we put out to go like, oh,
this is great. And so we gather, it's kind of like, I just imagine it like, um,
you know, when you're fishing and you have those big,
those big nets, you know, whatever nets on the ground, and you're just like this and you're like, oh my God, I caught all the, like, right, you caught all the fish that you needed to do it, but you're putting a really long wide net into it and they slowly keep on coming and coming and coming because of the,
the ecosystem of work that we're putting out there. Because the
overall vision is centering community. And I think that that's what I have the most is to know that regardless of where, that's why I set up like one email that was like one of the key things I really asked from the beginning. We have Captivate, we have community at Captivate fm
that is the email address for
all of the things we're doing.
So Insta for in and around podcasting,
that's the email feedback for the show. If you want to get any, if you want any us to answer or any questions or cover any news or whatever, email community at Captivate f fm, if you are watching our expert sessions on YouTube when we're streaming and there's something that you really wanna get to us, or you really wanna suggest something or you whatever it is, just saying like, that was amazing and you missed it, or whatever,
you email community at Captivate fm, if you have, you know, if we're doing anything that in the meetup, that's what I asked for. Like afterwards I go like, Hey guys, if you really enjoyed this, I'd really,
you know, really would love any more feedback about any of this stuff, especially how this went and whatnot. Email [email protected],
because that way I can see that conversation coming in and I'm able to then have like a, a collective view as to what people are looking for, because I'm not,
some people may not show up. I'm not a show or up to community spaces, I just am not that. But I am a very big community person
and I vibe with the people that I love.
And so I wanna be able, and I know that there's more people like me, and I know there's other people who really do want like a physical place. I wanna be able to provide a little bit of that in all the different places. But it's about how you, you, you build with community centered first and the content comes to support that. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So, and, and that's how I move into it, because then we're just gonna get stuck on
where do we put it?
Are we gonna use a Facebook group? Is it gonna be Discord? Is it gonna be school? I don't know. How are we, you know, it's just, it just, I just don't wanna spend time doing that.
I wanna spend time building it. And then I, and I've seen that sometimes when you begin the process of doing, of getting that initial momentum, they will start to slowly show you
where they move,
and then you're able to go, oh, I get it when I come fishing. I gotta go on this part.
Uh, I love that analogy. That's such a, a great analogy. Um, I could talk to you about this forever, uh, but I'll ask you one last question. For somebody who finds themself in a situation similar to yours where they are tasked with going into an organization that exists, and now we they wanna build community,
what advice would you give them about what to do first? Like, where would you start?
I actually have a, you know, I, I have this huge mind map where I started to, to do an audit of all of the existing things, right? That I had going on in there. And it, for me, it was really like what I have, it's a big overarching question for myself when I started to get this together, is,
is the community primarily for customer acquisition or retention?
And yeah, this is obviously for a SaaS company, so you have to think about that too. What are, where are you building community?
And I currently, this is, this is a SaaS company, this is a product online company. We're trying to, uh, you know, acquire people to
buy the product. Um, that might be like for your podcast, for a podcast for, um, what else has community sort of situations like things like the library, that's like some of my libraries to me, like public libraries are amazing. They build a lot of community through events where they have a lot of people that show up right there. And so what I would ask the library then is like, what is the goal of this community? Is it for people to check
to get, uh, a new library card?
Is it for people to use the space?
Is it for, um, you know, building the actual content inside the library? Maybe you wanna build people to come to the children's section and really engage with the toddler, like story times. Maybe that's something that they're really looking to do. So you have to get very specific as to why this community is building and, and why, right? And, and how to get those people in, in the door. So that's the first thing. So no, regardless though, is it acquisition? Is it that you want more people to come in? Or do you wanna keep the people there? And you have to figure out, I know most of us want both,
and I get that,
but I want you to be really honest. That's what I would say to people. What, which one out of those two is the one that's really important right now
for you?
Because that's going to guide how you build everything else, um, outlining everything out. And that gives you an idea of, especially at the beginning of how to get that retention moving. Meaning in the sense of like, how do we address the pain points from the people who have been here forever that already have the loyalty? And also, what are things that are missing from people who could possibly come to, you know, visit the library, but, uh, don't know enough. So you, you can start to see like, what are the different places we can actually, uh, create the content or create the discovery engine, I guess, for having people step into the type of community that you want. That's like one of the key things. I think overall, when you're tasked to do that, to ask whoever your higher up is, if it's
do you want acquisition or do you want retention? And if they say both ask, which, if you were to only choose one though, give me one that is more, even if you give me like 70% acquisition, 30% retention, or 50 50, you have to start to think like, okay, if it really is 50 50, then we have to really outline the measurement of how we know. And the other thing I'm gonna say before we move forward is, before you start to build anything,
you have to know what your baseline is
because,
oh my God, I cannot even tell you how hard it's been to like, build things and not have that data because you don't have any receipts. And, and what do I mean by that? You know,
I, I guess I'm gonna get a little, like randomly personal here, but, um, let's talk about hormones.
Let's, and so in order to, let's talk about hormones. So here's the thing,
like in order to
know
what, like what kind of like HRT if people know, like, especially for women of a certain age, there's been a lot of talk about hormones, about like, you know, taking estrogen and, you know, progesterone, testosterone, like all of these things in order for your body to, you know, work optimally, whatever.
But you don't know how much you need to take if you don't know what your baseline is. Like, you have to know what your, at least where you're starting from to see what that number is so that you know where you gotta go. And you can't just, that's, you can't just start taking something even with like iron levels or even if it's like, you know, whatever insulin levels, you gotta know where your baseline is
before you know where you gotta go, or if things are working. If you just start taking things and you're like, okay, I think it's all working.
We don't have enough information here to understand data is important. So the first thing is we have to set a baseline. There are x amount of people signed up for the newsletters. If there's like, you know, uh, at least look like, let's look at the average response to
anytime that we post anything on the Facebook, on the public Facebook page. Like even if you have no community, like what's going on on the Facebook, on the social channels, that to me is also community. Let's start with, okay, X amount of engagement here. Okay, this is how many people are opening up the newsletters. Okay, that's great. This is how many comments we're getting on blogs or whatever. You know, this is how much response we're getting whenever we, uh, send out an, uh, an email from the support channel, the, you know all of those things. Talk to the support teams, talk to people, dealing with people in the library. How many times do people open up, like, you know, library cards,
where are we start? What's the bottom part of that? How many people lose their library cards? How many people don't know are going to that page? Like how to get a library card, how many phone calls you have. Like you have to have something to measure
and see that before you start to see what you wanna build.
So if I'm hearing you right, it's know where you wanna go
and know where you are. Yes. Before you can start figuring out how you get from point A to point B. Correct. Oh my gosh. Look, I talked for like 20 minutes on that, and you're like, just know here and do this. Like, you're gonna go these things. That's I, I'm a, I'm a summarizer. Yes, yes. I,
I, you know, before I was a podcaster, I was a radio guy and we have 15 seconds to say things and then we gotta, you
know, it's called Hitting the Post when you talk right up to where the lyrics kick in and, uh, and then you stop talking right at that moment. So I need to know that
I went that unless you get a cure song. If you get a cure song, then you've got like a minute and a half to talk at the beginning. Oh my God. That's hilarious.
Uh, Elsie Escobar, uh, thank you so much. This has been, uh, like, I loved hearing about all this. Uh, this has been fascinating. I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing all of your insights with you. And congratulations on the new job at Captivate. Oh, thank you. I'm so excited. So, you know, join the community, hang out, follow us on social,
check us out on YouTube. We'll be doing things like, you don't even have to join as in like, go to a different place. Just see what we're doing. Cool.
Well, we'll, we'll be watching and participate and hey, if you have any questions or anything related to Captivate email community at Captivate fm.
All right. Thanks Elsie.
You bet.
