Twitter Space with Amine Hammou

Good morning, Twitter and community friends.

Welcome to aligned venture design for community builders.

Just give us a second, a quick, quick, second to set up.

I'm going to go ahead and share a thread to this space so that

you can drop your community link.

We can share some resources with you while we're speaking with you.

I think Amine has joined.

Hello.

Let me go ahead and make him our co-host for today.

Perfect.

Okay.

If it's all right with you, I mean, I'm going to go ahead and introduce myself

and then you can intro yourself as well.

I'll give a little background on the creator innovation process and venture

design, and then we can just get into it.

I can ask you some questions about your community and yeah.

Just have a party, right?

. Amine: Sure let's do it.

Thank you so much for having me Jordan.

Of course, of course.

So if you have not met me before and whether you're here,

you're listening to the replay.

My name is Jordan dacha and I'm a tech founder venture advisor.

And just overall multi-passionate creator with a platform every

day, innovation, which is made to connect creator entrepreneurs that

value high signal venture and self development, resources, connection, and

strategy mixed in with a little fun.

My background.

Was in the music industry.

When I first started out in marketing, um, I've been in a lot of creative

fields, then moved into the tech space, going back to school and learning,

coding, um, becoming the tech founder of my own venture, um, jumping in on

other new ventures and sustainability.

And in several other industries, I tend to be kind of, um, an industry jumper because

I love solving, uh, similar problems in different industries, especially around.

Creative and tech coming together and the community experience.

And what I love to do now is to advise other ventures that are starting up,

whether they're started by a creator or another type of founder, um, I love to

create content under everyday innovation.

So through my newsletter, on my socials, all about innovation itself

and how it applies to not only your venture, but also in your life.

And I also just launched one to one advisory called sessions, um, where

I take a lot of this and pull it into small bite size sessions to work with

fellow founders or creator printers.

And I just launched my community everyday innovation.

Um, it's in beta on circle and would love for you to join those

links are in my bio, but let me go ahead and pass it off to Amin.

And of course, while we're entering, if you want to drop your community link,

Um, at any point or your newsletter in, um, in the thread we'd love to

hear from you and get to know you.

So am mean I'd love to hear from you a little bit about yourself and

a little bit about your community.

Ooh, thank you so much.

I'm not sure if I will keep up with defense, the intro as yours.

I'm not that good at giving my seven introduction, but here we go.

Uh, my name is I'm from Algeria.

I am 24 years old and I am actually a founder of a brand orchestrate community

where we help misfits rare breeds and rebels find their voice and in a way, give

them a place to fit in and eventually to create a word where every voice is heard.

So technically I am more about, I'm more of a people pleaser.

I'm more of a person who likes to like get energetic from helping other people.

So maybe that's why I'm not good at introduction as I should be.

But yeah, that's who I am right now.

And our community is literally one week from being a full one year of launch.

And it's a membership based community.

And you can find all about that under the Brent orchestra.com.

I would drop the link somewhere into Twitter later, but yeah.

Thank you so much, Jordan, for having me and I'm so excited.

For this conversation and where this goes.

Of course.

And honestly, it's taken a while for me to even create an intro

because I'm so multi passionate I'm like, Hey, do you wanna see?

like, what part of this am I going to share here?

Because sometimes it sounds a little crazy.

So I've, that's something that I've just worked on over time

and I'm still working on it's.

Uh, it's a work in progress that's for sure.

Um, so yeah, I, like, I mean said we've both, you know, have started communities.

I'm certainly not a community expert, but it is something that I've been a part of,

or I've noticed that I've created around.

Um, a lot of times when I've worked either with brands or I have

been working on any sort of these projects, community is so essential

to being able to innovate, right.

It's not just a solo project.

So when we're innovating in a community, this is.

The that's really kind of the meat of how all of this happens.

We're individuals, we work on our own process, but then collectively

we can create more impact.

So, um, when we're talking about, so I put align venture

design for community builders.

So what does that mean?

I'm kind of coming in from this space of, I love to be able to help shift a

perspective, come from the strategic angle and allow people who are creator printers.

So whether you're a community builder for yourself for a brand, whether you're

consulting others in this space, I just wanna give, um, you know, some.

Different perspectives on how you can approach that.

And I'm gonna bring one in today that I've been working on for a while that applies

to some, I call them creator printer spaces so that, um, you know, it kind of

blends and melds that idea of innovation in your personal creative process, as

well as in the venture design process.

So.

What do I mean by venture design?

Um, there actually is a framework out there called the venture design process.

Um, that's not exactly what I'm referring to, cuz that's really

a lot more specific it's related.

So that's very, you know, lean ventures or you're iterating and

it's, it's, uh, related to the design, like design thinking frameworks.

But, um, when I talk about venture design, I think about more of a

multidisciplinary study of how do you create a venture or approach a venture

in a way that not only takes your customer mind takes you in mind, takes

the context of the environment we're working in the market in mind and using

multidisciplinary approach to do that.

So whether it's utilizing multiple frameworks or looking into new types of

platforms, just being aware and informed and taking that all into a space where

you can organize that and, and think about that in a very meaningful way.

So, um, ventures, I also think are often businesses, but I've also found

that community projects, product offerings, creative endeavors, or

even pivotal personal goals will fit the bill of what a venture is.

So in this age, kind of, of the creator sole printer economy, we wanna have a

model that's inclusive for innovation that takes into account the synergy,

the process of the individual, um, collectively as we work together

and just in our larger community and how we show up in these ventures.

And especially because we're working in a space where we wanna be socially

conscious, ethically conscious, but then we also have to monetize, right.

We have to make money.

We have to create a great, um, we have to create a great experience for our members.

So this kind of where I'm going today is the creator innovation

framework, which I think.

We'll address a lot of that for you, and I've actually linked it in the thread.

So if you look at the thread, that's pinned on my profile.

Um, I also believe I've shared it to the space itself.

You can take a little peek.

Um, I made a little infographic gift of kind of outlining it.

Um, I will be releasing some really cool, um, canvases soon so that you can use

it more in real time, but this is just as a visual representation of it now.

Um, but basically it's laying the foundation for what I call innovator OS,

which is a broad framework within which you and your team can design strategy,

take an honest assessment or reflect, which is so important in innovation.

You wanna reflect on how you're doing, what's gone, right?

What's not gone so right.

Um, all while working the pieces together.

So just as a summary, whether you're designing your community for your brand.

Another brand a cause cultivating your own community, taking into the account, the

experience of your ideal community member.

So if you're thinking of personas, if you're a designer or, um, brand

strategist or advising others as a community consultant, this approach

can give you, you know, just the working model to play around with and

experiment with to see, um, if you can take that innovation into your space.

So, um, I'm gonna be kind of walking.

I mean, if that's good with you, uh, through some of this kind of picking

your brain, if that works for you.

So it's kind of workshop style.

Um, anyone who joins us, you're welcome to raise your hand or if you have a

question, um, there will be more content coming from me on the specifics of a lot

of these little sections, but I'm just gonna jump into it with a mean and ask

them a few things if that works for you.

Yeah, please do.

I'm curious to know, to learn.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um, again, if you wanna reference kind of what we're, um, talking about,

there is a little graphic that's in, um, that's connected to the, uh, thread

on Twitter, that's on this space.

Um, so I'm gonna kind of walk him through it, but it's very, uh, high level detail.

So, um, you know, when you kind of follow along or you're listening,

um, or later on, um, there'll be a reference to more of the details of this.

So I'm just gonna walk you through.

Um, so I mean, So there at the top of this, there is this kind of

context and influence for, um, you know, for this whole experience.

There's the creation, the experience, the impact when you have a venture, right.

And there's the context and influence.

So I'm really curious for brand orchestrate, what was kind of the

context in which you created it?

Like, what was the environment that you were seeing?

I know you're talking about misfits and kind of these rebellious, um,

identities that are coming together.

Um, probably looking to do some of that identity development.

I'm curious to see, like, what was the context when, in

which you were creating this?

Yeah, for sure.

Um, so our community specifically during the whole year kinda

changed, it changed the context of what is it for and who is it for?

Uh, but basically how we started the context was to.

Make it really common sense where it's around branding and marketing people.

And we are trying to have them like learn skills around business

development, pricing, project management, um, running branding workshops,

and really hand on hard skills.

And eventually after short period of time, I realized that that's

very well, let's say common.

And a lot of people are already doing that.

And that's, that's not the thing that I want to be known for.

So eventually I shifted that quickly to be more around soft skills and

how we make decisions and how to think differently, how to develop

like unique, thoughtful ideas.

So we went and transitioned from hard skills into soft skills,

but we still serve the same code and code branding industry.

So hopefully that answers the, the.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Um, so really you brought up a great point.

A lot of this is always going to be evolving, right?

So a lot of the time when we are doing kind of getting into the later piece

of it, like the impact when you're doing measurement and analysis, a lot

of this is looking at feedback and seeing how can I feed this back into the

context and influence what's changed?

Has, you know, the political environment changed has my identity

changed because that's a huge thing.

A huge piece of, uh, innovation is, has your identity, the brand identity,

the company identity changed over time.

And how can I implement that into the next actions that I take?

uh, when you were going kind of into this soft skills, hard skills,

um, you know, and, and now that the context is more like that.

How do, how have you started to, I'm gonna bring this into kind of the first stage

of it, which is the, um, kind of more the creation stage there's pieces under that.

Um, how did you start kind of ideating, um, into this new space?

So looking into the, kind of more of the soft skills, because since that

hasn't been touched on as much, how did you start, um, coming up with some

new ideas to serve your community?

Yeah, well, um, I actually started to look into more of my own journey

and like, I started to get into more of what's my purpose and why should

they even bother helping other people?

Because I dunno if you noticed this Jordan and, and Zach, Zach says you're here.

Thanks again for joining.

Um, but it's around.

Us as community builders, we tend to have that spirit and like thing in us where we

are more of a Generos kind of being where we like to build a culture of generosity.

We try to help other people as much as we can.

And we stop thinking about why, why we are.

Trying to help other people.

And for me, it was because I lacked that specific environment in my own growth,

in my own like environment and, and house and, and like career in a way.

So eventually I started like picking up on the things that I learned personally.

So at that stage, I was like, okay, since I don't have a growth

environment, what should I learn?

What, how can I fix this problem?

So I started really gaining and watching a lot of like scary

V videos, motivation mindset.

And I started applying those into my day to day job into my day to day living.

And eventually that shaped me as a person that shaped my beliefs

and my, in a way, my habits.

So during that journey, I acquired so much skills and knowledge.

In order to go out there and chase a career and try to do things like design

and marketing and, and branding for, for clients, but all that journey.

I, I, for some reason I took a blank eye on it and I started like creating

a community just on the last step, just on this serving client side.

And that was not helpful because I was able to do that only when

I had those skills that I built in through, through the years.

So eventually I took a step back.

I observed how I developed myself and my own thinking and,

and how I grow as a person.

And I was like, these are the things.

Um, make me a better branding person or better service provider.

And it was a, a lot around values around, um, identity building.

Like these are the things that built my agency and I was like, interesting.

So what if I can shape the community around the same values?

So that's from one side I'm actually giving value and from the things

that I personally experienced.

So I'm not trying to copy someone else out there, but from the

other side, um, I'm not trying to hit multiple birds in one stone.

I'm not trying to chase two or three different jobs.

I'm really just trying to do one thing with the same skills, but

maybe just different audiences, maybe just different projects in.

So, yeah, that's, that's in a way how I could answer this question.

That's awesome.

And that leads me right into, um, actually along the bottom, you'll see

a there's the context and influence, which kind of shapes the venture design,

which kind of shapes the problem shapes, however, whatever you're approaching.

Um, there's the context.

So that's kind of think if you're thinking, what, how is it shaping it?

How is it influencing it?

And then the foundation really is the kind of the knowledge bank that you have

below that and the systems in place.

So these are the things that support the venture.

So there's the shaper kind of the context influence and then

the, the foundation, um, which is really kind of the support of it.

So when you are talking about how you're gathering a lot of these skill,

these kind of new skills and developing yourself and, um, looking into maybe new

systems or ways of approaching things, or even if it's maybe the tech systems

that you have, maybe finding some new things that support you, um, getting

into, um, You know, new communities that maybe can support your personal journey.

You can take some knowledge from you have support to ask questions.

These are all really important aspects of venture design.

Even if maybe it's not in the super active process, it's the thing that's feeding it.

It's the thing that's fueling your actual creation.

So, um, that was awesome that you were, you were talking about that because,

um, as you kind of started to shift into what are my values, what's my identity.

Um, all of this, the knowledge that you're gathering, the skills that

you're gathering, the, um, the kind of context you're putting around it

with what, what am I, who am I, and, and how am I shaping this venture?

Um, you can approach this entire process in a way that you can start

to make decisions from your identity, your brand, the community identity.

Um, so as you kind of started to.

You know, you're starting to ideate into this new space.

Um, and you're trying to architect now kind of, okay, so how am I

going to, you know, build out and design this, you know, let's get

into more of the experience side.

So there's design and composition too.

Um, that is really more so we can, I'm trying to kind of not go through every

single part on this, but the design and composition really are kind of how you

take the ideas and how you're architecting it behind the scenes, creating kind of

an MVP, um, pulling, pulling it into a space that people can absorb, but

then let's get into the experience.

Cuz honestly, I feel like the community is really about the touchpoint of experience.

So let's talk about how did you, um, how did you decide initially and maybe

how have you decided to expand your community, um, through implementation?

So implementation in this, um, space really is what platforms are you on?

How are you connecting.

With, uh, with new people, how are they finding you?

Um, I just wanted to ask to see what those are, because I think that might

be a great indicator of the values that you bring into your space.

Yeah.

Perfect question.

So early on, before we actually launched the community, I was

doing some like a bit of research because it's a healthy practice.

You don't want to just launch a community just for the sake of launching it.

You want to be making a community for the right people and delivering the

right value and showing up where they.

And eventually as a brand strategist, I was really into the strategy

itself of where can I show up and how can I find them and how can

I talk to them in a way that they feel like they want to be talked to?

Um, so eventually like pre-launch we were doing, I were doing

personally a lots of interviews.

Um, I was trying to reach out to public influencers and, um, people in the

branding space specifically in the niche that I was working on or am sorry.

And I was reaching out to them and asking if they are open to a live

interview, just because I was curious, like that was one of my values.

I was a hell of a curious human being and I like to learn skills.

From people are doing the thing, not from reading books, not

from watching them talking.

I want to be the one actually talking to them.

So eventually I did that for, um, two or three months or something, or even,

I, I believe even like four or five months, I don't even remember exactly

that the period of time, but I talked to so many people and eventually

I grow some sort of an audience.

I started like having some followers on Instagram.

I started having people who believe in what I'm saying on LinkedIn.

So really a lot of Instagram, LinkedIn spaces, social media, specifically,

and those people were like, we want to learn more about this.

We want to hear more conversations.

We want to have this problem, or these problems solved.

Like, could you help us?

And eventually I turned those conversations into a focus group.

So I literally created an Instagram group with 30 people.

And those 30 people are the most active ones who are joining each

single conversation I was doing online.

And from that.

Created a beta version of the community we launched in last September, 2021.

And it was a beta version of it.

And people were so excited.

And since we created that Instagram group on, sorry, on

Instagram, we created the group.

Technically we were using a lot of Instagram as a lead magnet

for the community itself.

But again, once we started growing the community and I started changing from

hard skills to soft skills, I started seeing some sort of a gap and some sort

of a difference where my conversations on LinkedIn specifically were gaining

way more attention for that topic than what I was doing on Instagram.

So eventually we shifted that.

And right now, if you can all see, like on my Instagram profile,

I barely post any contents.

I'm not active a lot there.

And I try to be as active as I can on LinkedIn, because

that's where my target is.

So a tip for everyone who's listening.

If you want to spend efforts online on social media, you better make

that effort on the place where your listeners are, your target clients

are your target community members are.

So yeah, for me, it was mainly Instagram and LinkedIn.

And then the, maybe the next question is on like, where is the best place

to host the community for them?

I didn't really like try to find the best platform.

I just asked them.

I told them what is the best place for you guys?

And I listed a list of tools like slack circle, um, discord, Facebook

group, and that initial beta launch.

They all voted for slack.

And right now we're still, our community membership is still hosted on slack.

So it's really that's that, that's how we tackle that.

Finding the niche and the platform for the community members.

Thank you so much.

That's actually such an interesting.

Recount, because I'm dealing with the same thing.

I know, um, you know, Instagram has always been just BEC coming

from more of a creative background.

And then in tech, I really loved kind of the, the bridging,

um, on Instagram for a while.

But then I started to see that really my traction was starting

to come a lot more from LinkedIn.

And I used to joke a while back that LinkedIn was like the least fun place

to make content, but that's really kind of where, um, you know, where

I was moving into in the future, that's really where the community

building was happening around this particular space and innovation.

Um, even though I wanted to kind of bring it to a more democratized

level where people could speak more freely about it and use it in, in

a lot of their personal processes.

Um, I noticed that, you know, sometimes we have to kind of get out of that weird

identity space of, oh, I, you know, I I've been on Instagram forever, or I

like expressing myself in a certain way.

Sometimes that's not always aligned with the community.

Sometimes it is.

But sometimes you haven't even really given yourself the chance to do that yet.

So thank you for that because, um, I'm actually going through kind of

a similar, um, A similar shift where I'm moving a bit more to LinkedIn.

I moved, uh, part of my newsletter to LinkedIn as well.

And I got, um, a ton of subscribers right away.

And I was like, wait, I haven't even been that active on here, but this really

kind of was resonating the, this, the things that I had put out there, um,

were really getting a lot more traction.

So you have to just be open.

Open to that thing.

Oh yeah.

Well, more, more thing to that is like, don't try to

overcomplicate the execution part.

Like I, I didn't know that the ideal member were on LinkedIn at the

beginning, but after I put it out there after I started like ideating

and testing things out and seeing what works and what doesn't, because

a lot of people, especially when we're trying to launch that big dream

project, big launch of the community, big da da, this da, da, da, whatever.

We try to overcomplicate simple things.

Sometimes it's better to just try it out, out there and test it out.

So if you're active on, on Instagram, test the community on Instagram, maybe you

will have more response, but if it doesn't quickly adjust and try another thing, but

what you don't want to do is you don't want to be like trying all the things

to make just one that from work, because that's just TDS work and that's just not

where you will find the most results.

But anyways, Rob, let me know if we can, maybe through the,

the people who are listening ne Zach, like I know you guys are.

For community builders.

So I'm really curious about what you think and how you found your target audiences

for maybe your communities as well.

Yes, absolutely.

I actually was gonna invite them up, um, up to speak as well.

So I totally agree with you.

I'm all about experimentation.

So that's what, um, if you join after we were talking about this, I do have.

I'm coming in more from a framework perspective and strategy perspective.

Um, so I'm not personally a expert in community strategy,

but I am working on, um, creator innovation, um, venture design.

So they have the little model.

That's the cute little thing that's attached to the thread,

um, that you should be able to see through here, um, where you can

kind of model out this process.

So we were just kind of exploring pieces through it and I was

looking into his, um, his approach.

But now that you all are here, I'm, I'll invite you up for speakers.

If you wanna come in.

Um, I'm really interested in the experience piece, which

is I say implementation.

So that's the launching and distributing kind of your in.

Particular niche the community itself, um, and finding your people

as well as the communication.

So speaking to them directly, we haven't gotten into that yet.

So I'm gonna let you guys come up and speak.

If you wanna share, um, how you actually went about looking into whether it's the

experimentation of it, how you figured out where you were going to be sharing

and meeting your ideal community member.

I'd love to hear from you.

So I'm gonna let, I'm gonna invite you both up as speakers.

If you'd like to jump on, please feel free to speak.

Um, otherwise I can get in with a mean on some of the communication aspect, but I

think I've invited both of you to speak.

So, um, if you'd like to let me know if you get that,

I'm

happy to jump in.

Yes.

Thank you.

You know, this kind of like social media discussion.

Resonates quite a bit for the community that I run.

So I run a group that helps people break into tech and it was kind of accidental.

You know, I was always thinking about community, but I, one day just woke

up and did this, like LinkedIn post talking about my struggle and my

story, and if other people wanted help.

Um, and that post place really, I didn't really have many people on LinkedIn.

And like LinkedIn now is my number one channel.

But at the time maybe I had like 400 people and I had over a hundred people,

message me um, and I did this like 18 one on one meetings, uh, coffee meetings, and

I just thought, okay, well, there's all these people with this similar struggle.

Let's get them together.

And over a couple months we finally did that and we started on slack,

um, which was a new experience to me.

And then just kind of went from there.

It took us.

We had just this Google form that was all our community had.

It was just this Google form that people would fill out.

Um, and then we would onboard them into slack.

And then we started thinking about what we stood for and building out kind of actual

marketing and landing pages and emails.

But for the longest time, it was just me kind of posting on LinkedIn

and a Google form and a slack channel is how we went about it.

Um, and we've been doing it for about a year and a half.

And we're about, there's about 700 people in that slack, but I'm

about to shut the slack down and we're moving into circle actually.

So, um, yeah, LinkedIn has been between LinkedIn and being, and

posting on a continuous basis.

Um, particularly things about my struggle and how it relates.

Um, and then.

Actually building up the communities, LinkedIn.

So that's been also a really strong outlet, um, as well, which we

started only like six months ago.

Um, but I think it's helpful to have both the community having

content going in yourself.

I.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for sharing.

And that's so true.

That was kind of the inspiration behind, uh, creating this sort of framework

as well, because truthfully we're the we're blending in between kind of our

personal process and how we create and the actual venture design process.

So venture design doesn't have to be complicated either.

So like Amin was saying, you don't have to overthink it.

The fact that kind of your creation process in the beginning was kind

of ideating putting something out there, composing it quickly, um, in

this whole space where you're just putting it into a Google form, that

kind of MVP sort of experience.

Um, that's really kind of the, the crux of how we innovate.

We start at these spaces where you can get, um, into the core of.

What, uh, what is actually working?

What are people responding to?

Um, and a lot of times I love that you said that it's kind of this

accidental, um, this accidental launch or this accidental, um, discovery.

And I think that that's why you can't overthink it too much, either.

In the sense of, you just have to kind of have fun, put, um, you know, put

some of the content in different spaces.

I know am mean, you mentioned Gary V.

Gary is a huge proponent of doing some long form and then

putting it into different spaces.

And I feel like that's how I kind of happen upon, uh, kind of the LinkedIn

space, cuz I already had a newsletter and I'm like, let's see if I can put

some of this content on LinkedIn.

You know, why not?

it's already there.

Right?

You can repurpose it, you can put it in different spaces.

And it was just really, um, getting that feedback and, and implementing

it back into my, um, my strategy in general and just making it

easy to create in a new space.

Um, so I, I know, um, Zach, you were saying.

That you were, um, on slack.

I know am mean you're on slack too.

Right.

And then, um, Zach, you're moving to circle.

I'm currently on circle.

I was doing a lot of beta testing for them back in the day.

So honestly I just started it there because there was a certain

level of comfort that I had and I saw kind of where the company

was going and I really liked it.

Um, but I'm curious for both of you, I know am mean you were, you had asked me

a couple questions about circle as well.

Um, what prompted maybe Zach first that shift to moving to circle?

Is it maybe because it's gaining some more traction, is it just some feedback

from, um, people you're interested in?

Is it kind of your process and creating for a community?

I'm just curious as to, um, you know, why the switch from slack to circle?

Yeah.

So I think about a year in, as there was more people in slack, um, And

we're, we, we might bring slack back, but treat it as like a true

communication app, like a chat app versus trying to host our community there.

Um, it's slack is, um, too synchronous.

Um, meaning you have to be in the moment in the community to get

the value from the conversation, which can be good for connection.

Um, but very, very difficult for new members.

To find Val the value that was already had in previous conversations and hard

to direct them to those conversations.

Um, you know, a as we did, we did our community was every Wednesday

night we met, um, for a couple hours.

Um, and we recorded all these events and I had them on this Google drive and it was

just like so difficult, but when people onboard into the community, I'm like,

okay, where are you at with your journey?

Uh, and I tried to, I wanna point them to people, conversations

and resources that'll be helpful.

Um, and I just couldn't do that with the technology that we had.

Um, so that's one was just, I felt like we were on this content treadmill

and I couldn't, um, be able to, um, leverage previous content in

order to support people, uh, two.

Is, um, being able for people to find each other in slack.

Like there's no real member profiles that are kind of there.

Um, but it's difficult to, uh, profile people and people to find each other,

particularly if you have different roles that you want to highlight.

Uh, so that was really important to us.

And then third is analytics.

So I had, no, I have no, it's very difficult for me to know who's been

engaged, who hasn't been engaged.

Um, it's just really interesting because over the last month we've actually

been given a free trial of slack pro.

And now I can see the long tail in my community.

Let's say there is like 700 people in there.

There's like over 350 or 400 people that haven't logged in for like 60 or 90 days.

Um, so being able to understand who's joining, who's not.

Um, and then lastly, Probably, this is what made the community pivot is

we're moving from a completely free community into like a subscription

model where we have some public stuff that's free, but the actual

intimate community experience is paid.

Um, so having that paywall infrastructure is really important.

So, uh, between just being like the ay nature of slack, being able

to find people, the analytics and payments, like all those things

leads me as a community builder to have better tools to support them.

Um, that being said, circle is much more like form based.

So I find the posts are better and they have more context, uh, but more difficult

for people to connect in real time.

So I think that's gonna be something that we're gonna have to experiment going

forward of is this are still people can connect, um, in a more real time basis.

Thank you so much for that.

Um, actually just from a hot tip, I know that they are working on a chat feature,

so that's just something to keep in mind.

I'm hoping that they will, um, implement that in the next few months,

but I just saw that in kind of the beta , um, just being in the beta loop.

So I know courses are coming up.

Um, that is one aspect that I know that they're launching and they've gotten a

lot, a lot of requests for some sort of.

It to go along with the kind of asynchronous content to have something

where people can interact in real time.

That is something that they're looking to implement or they're testing, right?

Like it should be coming up very soon in beta.

So, um, yeah, so hopefully that will, will come up in time

to, um, serve your community.

But this kind of just shows how important kind of that implementation

is for the experience, not just meeting people where they're at, but

also looking at the venture itself, looking through what you're doing.

If, if you're getting the proper measurement or analytics coming

from it, that's huge piece, especially as you get into growth.

Growth stages.

And then just looking at that full onboarding process, I could totally see

how, when you're in slack at first, you're getting a lot of that real time value.

And especially as it's smaller, you can respond to threads or

people are asking questions.

You can just get that, um, immediate kind of support that you need, that

co-working almost support that you need.

But then over time, you're like, oh man, there's a whole lot of hidden value,

you know, up a month ago or two months ago that I wished people could access.

and definitely circle, um, can address that.

So it's so important to have like a really great relationship with

the tech that you're using too.

And to understand how you work, how your community works and kind of what space

is going to be the best for you to, you know, to really realize your goals.

So that's awesome that you've been able to look into that and I'm hoping, um,

that they will launch that piece soon.

Um, I know for, they do have lives.

So if you do wanna host some of those Wednesday night, um,

meetings in there, you can do that.

Um, but I'm hoping that they have the chat soon.

I mean, I know you're on slack right now.

How is that going for brand orchestrator?

What are you seeing right now as opportunities for you all?

Just because I'm curious.

Um, just because you've been building it for about a year,

Yeah, well, oh my God.

Slack is such a love and hate relationship.

I am definitely on the same side as you guys were, I'm thinking

of moving towards circle.

I was planning to start with circle because I personally liked

it at the beginning, but then the community members voted for slack.

So I was like, ah, I need to let them make this decision right now.

Eventually they like.

There is a saying where you don't always like the client doesn't

always know what they need.

Um, so technically you don't always have to do everything they say.

Um, but let me try to make this super analytical in a way.

So for me, I want to take this more of a challenge.

Like I took this, sorry, I took this more of a challenge for the last year

was where I was like, at the beginning, we had a lot of engagement issues

within slack, even though the number of our community members are very slow.

So I was like, okay, what's wrong?

Is it the actual platform?

Or maybe there isn't enough value that lets people log in and show up because

I've been part of other circle communities and they've seen what that looks like.

I've seen dead circle communities where no one shows up, no

one comments, no one engages.

And I've seen super engaging circle communities.

And it's really all about value.

If there is enough value, people will show up.

Even if the platform itself sucks.

So that was one thing I slowly start to fix that.

Um, another thing is you, you kind of need to do, we like current, like, I

dunno if it's weekly or monthly, doesn't matter, but you have to do check-ins

to the members in individually because no matter the platform, no matter how

many members you have some people, for some reason, they might just Desi

decide to turn off all social media, all platforms and go do something else.

It could be because they are going to have, um, maybe a marriage or a baby,

or maybe they are too busy with work, or maybe they want to be more productive.

It doesn't matter.

You have to check on them and see what's wrong because.

And again, this also relates to the point where Z was making on

analytics because slack definitely doesn't give you a lot of analytics

to know who's active and who's not.

But even then, again, since I took it as a challenge, I found ways to solve

most of the problem problems that the platform doesn't give natively.

So there is a tool called burb where you can automatically send

like DMS and see who's active.

Who's not, there is so many other tools out there to, to figure out

the analytic part, part story.

There is another tool called Mik, I believe, which is to do like one-on-ones

connections between the members there's donuts, which is a slack integration.

So anyways, there is the tech to solve most.

Techy problems.

Um, but yeah, I personally never liked the user experience of slack.

Um, the payments or the pricing of it, isn't really accurate because

they want you to pay for the whole workspace instead of like each

member pays for it or something, or like a common plan, whatever.

So I never like the slack pricing.

Uh, but yeah, I am still thinking of moving to circle at some point, and I'm

maybe even gonna partner with them for a virtual summit that I'm going to house

at the beginning of January next year.

So we'll see how that goes, because we might actually use circle as a

prom for that ritual summit as a space specifically there, um, as for the chat

feature, IM uses like more of a feed, which is which sucks because you cannot

really track the conversations and find things that you are looking for,

but I'm using Instagram for the chat.

Because we still have the same community, dispatch it in, in multiple online

platforms, we have an Instagram group.

We also have a new LinkedIn group that we just recently created.

I still need to figure that one out, but overall, we finally use notion for

like content storage or content savings.

So if you miss a conversation or you miss, um, video recording or something,

we created the full dedicated members based on notion for everybody to quickly

access that and search for it and find it.

But yeah, it's a whole tech space around one community.

And I think circle could probably just do all of that in one place.

And yeah, I don't see why, why would you go with this or that it, it

truly depends on where your target is and where you feel Mo mostly

comfortable like managing the platform.

So, yeah, that's my answer.

A tedious one,

sorry.

No, it's a no, not tedious at all.

Not tedious at all.

Um, no, it makes a whole lot of sense and I really am loving kind of the,

because I know, um, I know Zach was saying that you're introducing a lot of

people to tech tech is a huge piece of a lot of my content too, just because

I came from a creative space, went into tech space and I really kind of

love bridging that gap between I'm like super indie hacker type of person.

I spend a lot of time with developers, so I have that space.

And then I have like the branding and marketing where I kind of came from.

So I love bridging those.

I love bridging those spaces together.

So I love having the tech conversations because now tech is

like our partner in our business.

It's really kind of how the whole so entrepreneurship and, uh, creator

economy, um, has really been able to take off because we have this amazing

tech, um, that can solve a lot of these issues for us and give us the analytics

we need and give us the experience, um, that will best suit our community.

And even for myself right now, my community is super beta.

Like not even really like lightly announced.

And I'm in, in circle.

I really was hanging out in circle to test things out.

Cause I just thought it was awesome.

Um, and again, I was doing a lot of beta stuff for them too,

and more from the text side.

So, um, circle for me, what I really loved about it was I host.

I, I have kind of blog slash newsletter on ghost so that I use that particular

platform for my newsletter and for, you know, just hosting some content.

So I have newsletters that are sent out through ghost, but

they also live on the site.

So members can log in and look at it.

Um, I have it monetize it.

I have it free right now.

Um, but what I love about circle is I could use that same content and

use it as posts in the community, or add maybe a little bit extra for

people who were in the community.

So that's my experience of why I wanted to start there, um, even before really

asking, cuz I think of when I was asking at the time, um, circle was still

kind of new and I just wasn't getting.

You know, the ability to create content the same way,

um, in these different spaces.

And I wanted to keep that long form feel.

Um, so that's why I personally chose circle, cuz I just was already hanging

out there, testing some stuff out.

Um, but then also I really just loved, you know, that whole process of being able to

have that content that was already there.

So the people didn't have to necessarily go over to, uh, the website to read

the latest, um, newsletter post.

They could read it in circle.

So I could just E easily cross post over, over there.

Another great solution for anyone, you know, who may be listening,

um, or something in between is Luma does have communities too,

and I've played around with theirs.

And it's pretty interesting.

So if you are hosting a lot of events, especially, and you create

a community on there, there are really interesting features,

especially with tagging and cohorts.

So if you want to have a pay wall, believe you can do that for, um, different aspects

of the community, or it may be for the community itself, but that's just another

in between just because I know Luma is a free, um, free option to start with.

So, um, I think they take a percentage, um, I believe unless

you're paying for the pro.

So what's really great about that is you can, um, have people pay for specific

events or to have access and they connect to discord if that's more your thing,

but I'm just throwing that out there just because I was like, oh man, I wish I knew

about, um, maybe Luma a little while back as far as the community aspect of it.

Um, but that's just another, that's another option, but I wanted to ask you

guys, um, cuz we're in that experience section, the communication is such a

big deal in not only getting people to know about your community, but

communicating within your community.

So that's something that I'm trying to learn a little bit more

about just because I'm of course in beta and I'm really kind of.

Putting up content that I'm already putting out into the newsletter, which

again is also a community, but it's, I'm trying to put this into a new space where

you're trying to engage more people.

So, um, I'll go to Zach first, if you're open to it, I just am curious to see how

your communication is out in the world to attract aligned community members.

And then also, how do you keep communication up within the community so

that, you know, there's, there's those conversations going all the time and

value being added to the community itself?

Yeah, it's a, a great question.

I think, you know, how do we interact with our members, uh,

generally through LinkedIn?

So we'll be boasting on the careers and tech social.

We have our monthly, um, Newsletter that's really, uh,

dedicated around the community.

Um, we also do like public events, I guess.

So that's a way to attract people into what we're doing, uh, in the community.

Like the moderation of community is such a it's it's like more art than science.

I find, um, the key, I don't know that I've found and it's, it's

always so difficult is how do you get people comfortable reaching out?

Um, I find, uh, strategies to do that is in the events itself.

If you're in a breakout room with someone and they're asking a question, getting

them to re-ask that, um, you know, online in the community, um, But it's

always interesting cuz you, you, you see your own behavior in communities.

So it's like, you can't expect everyone to be asking things all the time.

Um, but I think, you know, recently I'm part of a community and that owner

of the community, I posted something on social on Twitter and he said, Hey,

you should post that in the community.

So I think you're always trying to like facilitate bringing people

back to the community to get value.

And then as discussions are happening, it's just a important to give space

to people, to discuss instead of just kind of answering everything.

And then secondly is just tagging, uh, the right people to continue the conversation.

Um, I think that's, it's definitely more of an arts and science

and knowing who's gonna respond and who's gonna, um, show up.

Um, cuz the worst thing you could do is if you're just like

consistently posting and no one's interacting and I think as community.

Managers and builders, we, we will tend to overpost.

Um, and then it just seems like it's a one way stream.

So actually creating space, uh, is really important.

And then continuing to think about who else should be answering

this question instead of myself.

So I don't know if that's like even a, a really great answer, but that's

why I found that has worked for me.

No, that's extremely helpful.

I think that you're kidding the nail in the head where you feel like you kind of

have to overdo and over, um, You know, produce as maybe a new community builder

or new community, especially when it's small, because you feel like you need to

fill the space that's happening in there.

Um, but sometimes that can backfire or maybe fill a feed that, um,

people will see less of the value because you're starting to kind of

space things out, um, especially probably in the community itself.

So let's say you are hosting on a platform like circle or in, um, in on Luma,

wherever you may have your community, um, versus maybe social where, um, you

can still engage with not only your community, but the larger community,

um, and just kind of pull people in.

But I love that idea of just having people re-ask in the community is great.

I think it also shows.

Um, you know, that you value that, you know, their input and their, even if it's

a question, um, because it means that this is helpful for other people to learn from.

And I totally agree with getting other people to ask questions

that kind of empowerment.

Um, that's what I'm really trying to do, especially in the betas, get people in

who are knowledgeable, who are experts in some of these areas that I hope to,

um, collaborate with them, you know, whether it's on some templates for the

community or, um, you know, being able to just bring their expertise to the space

because I've, I'm very lucky to have a, a wonderful network of people who are

from various backgrounds, just because I've been able to work in several spaces.

So leveraging that for leadership as well within.

That's thank you so much for your answer.

And I mean, um, I'm curious to, to hear how you approach the communication

process just out in, on the socials or out, um, trying to align with potential

new community members as well as kind of just in the community itself.

Oh man, there is a lot, I, I love where Z said is more of

an art world in there in science.

And I tend sometimes to way over deliver way overdo the thing of

communicating to as many people as I can.

And yeah, I do it in so many ways.

I have a newsletter.

I actually have to, I have one which is specifically for the community

where it's all about events, workshops, promotions, stuff like that.

And I, uh, I recently just created a subst stack newsletter where

it's more about content creation, more about my thoughts and how.

Like, like literally just content of value for, for the community.

So that's just one.

I also show up a lot on LinkedIn lately, specifically, I post like once to twice a

day, uh, I try to get into conversations and I notice that for my community

specifically, since we're serving mostly shy creatives and introverts

who don't like to reach out first, I tend to be the one reaching out a lot.

So I started like developing that habit of even as myself, I am more

of an ambivert, so I'm not, I'm not really that extroverted, but I do reach

out to people who I think need, need my help and need a community help.

And eventually I build that relationship with them.

And then, and then I invite them to, to join the community.

That's usually how, how most of our effective sales funnel work.

Another one is, and maybe Zach already mentioned this, which is

like during the actual events.

So we do host a lot of virtual events.

Um, we have public events that are based on like webinars and guest,

speaker invites and stuff like that.

We U we leverage the guest speakers audiences to grow our own audience.

And we try to pick up the guest speakers who are either suggested by the

community members or who are into the same niche where we're trying to serve.

Um, eventually diversity is good, but diversity should be more on the

personality of the speakers rather than topic or the niches, because you

don't want to be showing up everywhere and trying to hit multiple audiences.

You want to understand first, like one persona at a time.

Anyway, anyways, um, so we do that a lot to do a lot of visual events.

Um, and we also have, and this is the thing that I'm slowly

struggling with because.

From one side it's valuable from the other side, you don't have a lot of S and DS.

So here's how, here's what I'm saying.

So we do public events for guest speakers to gain like marketing material,

but we also do private membership, only community member led event.

So it's either something very inclusive just for the community members.

Either I run it or even the community me, like we pick a community member

who's very active to run their own sessions within the community.

And that's good.

Like that makes us more exclusive and more valuable.

But we do not have a lot of people showing up to, I dunno if it's our own value or I

dunno if it's just because we are small as a community together, but that of itself,

like once we do that and some people show up, we really create strong relationships

and, and conversations with the members.

Um, so small circles for my specific target audience, which

is like introverted people.

They like that.

That's where they open up.

That's where communication really happens.

Um, you also do casual.

Promotional events where it's like a community open tool or a like pitching

some sort of a service behind the community event or behind a virtual

event from guest speaker, whatever.

And usually that also gets us some leads.

Um, but yeah, that's how we show up.

We do a lot of content out they're on LinkedIn newsletter insights, slack itself

create inclusive spaces for the members.

Um, but even then I think if you're okay, this is very a bold

statement, but if you're not charging enough for the membership, people

might not see it as variable.

Therefore they might not assist and show up for, for some of the events that

you literally created just for them.

So I am literally in a phase where.

I'm thinking a lot of adding a zero to the membership.

Like right now it's $150 a year.

I'm thinking of making it to thousand $500 a year just to get the right

people and to make them commit to their own growth and commit to the

events that we host just for them.

So, yeah, that's, that's some of the ways that we communicate with both

our target and our community members.

That's awesome.

Thank you so much.

Um, for sharing that, and I think I'm an ambivert as well.

So, um, it makes a lot of sense.

A lot of that one on one reach out is so important, even on LinkedIn

commenting value, um, under posts that make sense, same with Twitter.

Of course.

Um, those are always great strategies.

And as far as the charging.

That's a really cool part about circle too.

Just, you know, kind of to keep nudging you in that direction.

is that you can actually have those, um, those different spaces.

So you could actually even experiment with having something that's at the

current level that you're at right now.

And then, um, start to have more of these higher value spaces that you can

even have more intimate events, um, or even more niche, intimate events.

So if you wanna do one, you know, really kind of, you wanna do a brand sort of, um,

intensive and mastermind kind of thing.

Um, you could probably create something like that as well.

So that's really exciting.

I hope that you can add that zero to it because that's,

um, you know, I think that'll.

Really, really fun to see kind of who shows up and the value that comes there.

And even with those small sessions, you can always replay them.

Um, and they are in that archive.

Um, which I think is, is great because I'm sure you're saving a lot

of the videos and sharing them back with your, um, with your community.

I know I've seen that.

Um, so yeah, I, that's a great, that's a great strategy.

To kind of wrap it up since I know we're getting close to the hour.

Um, really that last little impact piece is we talked a lot about it,

about, um, being able to correctly measure things and using the tools like

burb or Mitz, you know, donut, some of these other things to connect and

also, um, you know, receive feedback.

And then, um, taking that feedback and thinking about it

and saying, what does this mean?

Is this something, what can I take or leave?

What can I implement?

What can I implement now versus later?

Um, just knowing when you want, when and what you want to reintegrate, or is

it something that you're feeling that kind of gut instinct of I'm getting

the feedback from myself as my own community member, that this is something

that we need to change, or at least I need to bring it up to the group.

So, um, being able to approach all of this in a way that is.

Strategic.

Um, we all have different strategies of looking at it, but sometimes making it

a little bit more simple and connected to how we're personally creating at

any given moment is probably going to be a really great connection point in

attracting aligned community members.

So I'm so glad that you guys joined.

I want you to just, um, shout out, um, you can, Zach can go first, just

shout out your community, um, and where they can find you just because

I'm gonna keep this recording.

So I just wanna be able to make sure that anyone listening can uh re-listen

and find you, even if they're, they're not able to click on you for some reason.

Yeah.

Well, good.

Um, our community is called careers and technology and innovation.

Uh, you can find us on your website career in tech.ca or on LinkedIn by searching

careers in technology and innovation.

Um, yeah.

So if you're interested, if you're in a different career and looking, get in the

tech, uh, come and say hi, or you can just, you know, message me over social.

Thanks.

Awesome.

And am mean, go ahead and, uh, share yours for

everyone.

Yeah, you can find us@brentorchestra.com or just type on Google search.

Brent orchestra.

You'll find me or the community over there.

Thank thank you again, Jordan, for hosting this space.

Thank you Zach.

For contributing.

You guys are awesome.

Yeah, both of you're awesome.

You can find me@everydayinnovation.io.

Just look everyday innovation up on, on Twitter or Instagram,

wherever you might be.

Um, but the community is galaxy dot everyday innovation.io.

If you wanna join, I have it open for, uh, short period of time.

Just sharing it in these little spaces here.

And then, um, going into next year, there's gonna be a whole lot more value.

That's added along with collaborations and probably a little bit of a cohort.

Um, you know, Uh, cohort venture strategy together.

So are people who are creating new ventures going into the new year.

So I'm excited to share that with you.

Thank you so much for coming today.

Both of you, there was so much value.

I was writing a whole down a whole bunch of notes just for

myself, so I really appreciate it.

And yeah, I look forward to connecting with you all soon.

Um, actually AMM and I have a Instagram live on Thursday, and I'm gonna be

kind of going through a lot of similar pieces of the creator innovation, um,

process, but we're gonna be focusing a little bit more on taking, you know,

your own personal innovation process and your values, all of that, um, to

attract people into your community and attract collaborators, um, so that

you can have that support as you grow.

So thank you so much, everyone have a great day.

Thank you.

All right, everybody.

See you in traffic.

Bye bye.

See you.