Get Together

“We need people to see the power they have in themselves to make a very small change that can compound over time.” -  Nate Nichols 

Nate Nichols and Steffi Behringer are life and business partners and the founders of Allyship & Action. The Allyship & Action Summits took the advertising community by storm these past few months. 

Like many others, their creative agency, Pallete Group, faced challenges when the pandemic hit. But they flipped the challenge into an opportunity, producing Freelancer Cyber Summit to connect freelancers and to “learn WTF is going on in the advertising industry.”

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Nate and Steffi spun up the Allyship & Action Summit as an urgent source of information on allyship, providing tangible next steps on anti-racism for ad land. The summit and supporting Slack groups and workshops connect allies to Black creatives and allies to learn and continue the conversation. They are also calling  on major brands and organizations to sign the Allyship & Action Pledge, “a commitment to transparency with a common, core code we use every time we enter into our business transactions.”

Today on the podcast, we talk with Nate and Steffi about how they responded to uncertainty with action and filled a need for a community within their industry that promotes, facilitates, and pushes conversations related to anti-racism.

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

• The power of language. What it means to be an ally.
• Sending a signal. Getting the word out through partners.
• Creating a brand and telling a story.  How they brought Allyship & Action to life in a raw, unfiltered, honest way.
• Design choices. Allyship & Action’s secret sauce--making the audience feel as close as possible when meeting virtually. 
• Building with. The transition from live events to an ongoing conversation initiated by the community. 

👋🏻Say hi to Nate and Steffi and learn more about Allyship & Action and Palette Group.

📄See the full transcript 

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.

“We really lean all the way in for our community so they can feel that they're working with somebody and not working for us.” - Jonathan Carey

Atlas Obscura is one of the few community-driven travel platforms.  

The site focuses on the hard-to-find wonders and oddities of the world, from a church with Frederic Chopin’s heart in Poland to an abandoned Eurostar train covered in graffiti in France, to the Ottoman Bird Palaces (yes, ornate mansions for birds!) hiding in Istanbul. All of the 20,000+ discoveries are sourced by their community and published in partnership with “A.O.” staff editors.

Jonathan Carey is Associate Places Editor and Community Headmaster at Atlas Obscura, editing the places people submit and jumping into the forums to encourage conversation. He has developed an eye for spotting what suits the “A.O.” voice and can guide community submissions to the site so they fit the Atlas Obscura lens.

In this episode we talk with Jonathan about capturing and supercharging contributors enthusiasm by designing around natural instincts and treating contributors like staff members.

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

• From user to team member. How Jonathan first got involved with Atlas Obscura.
• Why Atlas Obscura exists. An outlet for people who want to share what naturally excites them.
• “Build with.” Noticing the interests and desires of community members to help build the community up even stronger.
• Feedback loop. Creating guardrails for submission and keeping contributors in the loop as if they were staff writers.
• “That’s so AO.” Spotting the people most excited about what the platform has to offer through the depth and nuance of how they communicate.
• Hand-raiser stories. A superuser writes a book of the adventures they chronicled and how an email from a 7th grader sparked an art and writing prompts series at the beginning of quarantine.

👋🏻Say hi to Jonathan and learn more about Atlas Obscura.

📄See the full transcript

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.

“Community means there's a reason why these people are here, irrespective of the platform.” - Nadia Eghbal

If you haven’t heard of Substack, you will soon. The company is just three years old and growing quickly. 

The co-founders came together to see if they could solve a problem: helping writers earn a living directly from their readers. When readers pay writers directly, the founders realized, writers can focus on doing the work they care about most, not what editors, algorithms or advertisers deem valuable.

Substack resembles the email newsletter tools you’re familiar with, but with a crucial twist. When readers subscribe to a Substack, you have the chance to pay the author for their work–maybe $3 a month, maybe $10 a month. With economies of scale, these paying subscribers can really add up for writers and for Substack, which takes a 10% cut of the revenue writers earn. Some writers have turned Substack into their full time gig and earn into the six figures, while others are using Substack as a reliable anchor of income.

We spoke with Fiona Monga and Nadia Eghbal, two of the early team members at Substack who work with the writer community. In their own rights, each have led impressive careers that add dynamic value to the Substack team. Having worked in publishing and at Instagram, Fiona understands how creators connect directly with growing audiences. Through Nadia’s past experience working at Github and writing Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, she’s developed an appreciation for the power of documentation to scale know-how.  

In this episode, Fiona and Nadia share the systems and signals they have in place to notice and nurture best practices on the Substack platform.

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

• Pinpointing their “kindling.” Writers with the potential to go independent were the kindling that sparked Substack’s community.
• Defining Substack’s “why.” How the Substack founders got clear as an organization on why they were bringing writers together.
• The platform vs. its communities. The community investments for Substack aim to increase the number of direct relationships writers have with each other, not with the Substack team or brand.
• Scaling support. How the Substack team manages their time with inbound requests, helping people help themselves and each other at scale.

👋🏻Say hi to Fiona Monga and Nadia Eghbal and learn more about Substack.

📄See the full transcript

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.

“We know that there is a tomorrow and we want to be able to prepare our girls and our community for what that tomorrow looks like. Not only prepare them for it, but make sure that they have a hand in building it. ” - Isis Miller

Throughout her biotech engineering career, Kimberly Bryant was often the only black female in the room. Kimberly’s experience wasn’t rare. In fact, it’s the norm. Black women make up less than 0.5% of the leadership roles in tech. 

As Kimberly watched her young daughter Kai grow a budding interest in gaming and coding, but with no spaces to explore or develop those interests alongside people that looked like her, Kimberly decided to take charge. 

Kimberly and her colleagues at Genentech put together a six-week coding curriculum for girls of color in 2011, conducting the first educational series in a basement of a college prep institution in San Francisco. In a few years, the operation transformed from a basement experiment into a global non-profit with 15 chapters supported by volunteers under the name Black Girls CODE. 

Today we interview Isis Miller, who joined the organization earlier this year just before COVID-19 struck. 

We’ll talk to Isis about how Black Girls CODE has gone virtual with online workshops and career panels that reach out to 1,000 students per week and what a meaningful partnership with Black Girls CODE means.

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

• Defining a holistic “why.” Learning to code is only part of the Black Girls CODE experience. People engage because it’s a space for girls to be inspired, motivated, and build confidence in addition to coding skills.
• Developing a community ecosystem. Programming engages not only girls who want to learn to code but also guardians, those that support them.
• Going digital. Zoom tricks that have kept Black Girls CODE true to their “why.”
• Honoring the moment. How Isis has created space to honor joy and trauma in grieving.
• Partnerships. Entering into a partnership is about building with–creating value that is not possible in one organization on their own.

👋🏻Say hi to Isis on twitter learn more about Black Girls CODE on their website.

📄See the full transcript

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.

“Community is not transactional by nature. Humans seek to connect on a deeper level. They're looking for validation or for support or for something bigger than themselves.

Now that community is such a buzzword. Everyone wants it and they want it quickly. We have more levers than ever, and they work. But when you growth hack with incentives, what you gain in volume, you erode in authenticity.” - Laura Nestler

In 2007, Laura Nestler responded to a Craigslist ad that “was either as sketchy as it sounded or her dream job.” Fortunately, it was her dream job with a little startup called Yelp. 

She started as the community manager in Portland, Oregon, and would go on to spend a decade with the company refining their community playbook and living in cities all around the world, launching Yelp communities in new markets. 

Now Laura is the Global Head of Community at Duolingo, a platform that hundreds of millions of people around the world turn to to learn a language. Before COVID, Duolingo users were hosting thousands of in-person language circles around the world each month. Laura shared how she did over forty iterative tests before Duolingo landing on this shared activity.

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

• “Protect the source.” This guiding principle at Yelp ensured the community was a central focus.
• Community doesn’t happen through growth hacking. Social incentives are different from business incentives.
• The role of a community manager and executives are to tell the story of a community's value.
• Test and test again. Get something out there and make sure you are not solving for a personal bias. Laura tested and iterated on 40 events before they landed on Duolingo’s language circles.

👋🏻Say hi to Laura on twitter @LauraNestler.

📄See the full transcript.

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.

“When you work in community, you get to be the person who thinks about the customer all day long, who thinks about people, who thinks about how they connect.” - Cindy Au

Cindy Au set out for a career in academia but soon found herself as employee #9 at Kickstarter. Back then, the community team would review and help write each project submitted to the site. Later as their VP of Community, she oversaw the evolution of Kickstarter as it grew from 50,000 users to 10 million. 

After her experience at Kickstarter, Cindy launched the first community program at Zagat, the restaurant discovery platform. Now she’s the Director of Community & Engagement at Brainly, the world’s largest peer-to-peer learning community.

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

• Cindy used the insights from her PhD in English to define the undefined space of community.
• Walking in the shoes of the user--how Cindy launched a Kickstarter campaign with her sisters and published Canine Chronicles
• Celebrating subsets of niche users at the Kickstarter Arcade
• Thinking like a newspaper--creating leaders in categories of expertise
• A side project (DimSum Club) that sent a signal to other DimSum lovers and was a catalyst to a new role at Zagat
• How Brainly is gamifying and incentivizing natural competitive instincts of students

👋🏻Say hi to Cindy and learn more about her work.

📄See the full transcript 

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.

“Ask your community: What they want to see out of the company to make them feel supported? I don't do anything until I talk to the community or reach out to them or say, ‘What do you want to see next? And then I make that a part of my plan.’” - Shana Sumers

HER Social App is the largest social community and dating app for LGBTQ+ womxn and queer people. Unlike other dating apps that tend to end the user journey when people find a partner, HER is also a place for users to return to for queer friendship and conversation.

Shana Sumers is the master behind the community at HER. She started as an ambassador of the app and now serves as the Head of Community, helping launch and grow it to over five million users worldwide.

She also co-hosts her own podcast, Bad Queers. And she worked as a music therapist for 5 years before joining the tech world, which influences her approach as a moderator. 

On the podcast Shana shares how she doesn’t do anything without consulting her community first and how she has gone about making difficult decisions on the HER social app forums, where people would list their dating preferences that were sometimes phobic. 

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

[0:45] Intro to Shana and why the Get Together team is excited to interview her

[3:23] About HER and how Shana got involved on accident

[4:50] Creating space for LGBTQ+ womxn and queer people 

[6:44] “This pride is different” - highlighting intersectionality of community

[9:26] “There is always more you can do” - taking ownership of inclusivity

[11:40] Serving as an outwardly facing leader and creating accountability internally for leadership

[14:50] Company's Shana admires for taking accountability in 2020 - Ben & Jerrys and Rihanna’s Fenty

[17:37]  Separating your platform from your work identity and managing personal life as public facing figure of your company

[19:45] Transformative moment with members 

[21:15] Decision making *with* the community and sourcing ideas

[22:39] Supercharging superusers and revamping moderators program 

[24:40] Moderating difficult conversations

[28:45] Writing and updating community guidelines 

[30:38] Why language matters and other learnings from background in music therapy 

[32:40] Behind the scenes of Bad Queer podcast, "a show for people who feel like they came out of the closet and got placed in a box"

[36:00] Creating talking points for community forums 

[38:06] Shana’s wish for the world ✨

👋🏻Say hi to Shana and learn more about HER social app + Bad Queers

✨Learn more about our correspondent Maggie Zhang on her blog, Commonplays.

📄See the full transcript

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.

“When you learn in community, your brain grows so much faster than it would on its own.” -  Berna Anat

Berna brings hype to an otherwise “hella male, hella stale, and hella pale” financial space. She creates videos, writing, and hosts talks that encourage, support and celebrate those of us who struggle with personal finances. 

This work is personal for Berna. Growing up a first-gen child of Filipino immigrants, money felt like a taboo topic. Berna set out to change that. Today she’s a writer, producer, speaker and “Fin-fluencer.” 

Berna's devotion to creating content over the last two years bred fertile ground for a community. On the podcast she shares how she tested and launched a brand-new monthly membership program that connects community members to one another for financial learning and friendship. 

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

[3:43] Berna’s origin story--growing up the  daughter of Filipino immigrants, talking about money was a taboo. 

[9:40] Sending a signal--Berna’s first share behind the curtain of her personal finances.

[14:47] Role modeling the funky energetic vibes and vulnerability that her community has adopted.

[19:25] "Why"--Learning, and the power of doing so in community.

[24:30] Shared activities--Berna uses Instagram and Hella Helpful workshops to reach women-identifying millennials of color and all people left out of financial conversation.

[30:40] "Translating” financial language so it's fun and Berna's community will actually want to listen. 

[35:50] Membership--Why Berna is starting  a new "Hella Helpful" membership.

[37:50] Rituals--"budget date night" and hype texts for members.

[40:50] Building a thriving Slack channel *with* members. 

[46:00] Pinpointing founding members and inviting into the group so they feel safe.

[48:00] Role modeling vs. community management. 

[53:45] Berna is given the magic wand and makes her wish ✨

👋🏻Say hi to Berna on Instagram and learn more about Hella Helpful here.

📄See the full transcript

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.

In this behind-the-scenes interview, Dee Reddy of Intercom asks Bailey why the team at People & Company focuses on communities and how the teams has shifted coaching organizations to harness the power of community in a time of pandemic. 

You can tune into the original episode on Intercom's website.

Some key insights that Intercom noted:

• There’s a lot businesses can learn about community from grassroots organizations. Many of these have, for a long time, operated remotely in innovative ways.
• A key strategy for nurturing a community is to build with people, not for them. Bailey spoke about this in her original conversation with me.
• As people around the world get to grips with not gathering in large groups, the online world offers an opportunity to bridge geographical distance.
• Digital first companies and teams are in a really good position to get creative about fostering community online, whether it’s with clients, colleagues, or family.
• If you’re a leader, ask yourself what has changed with what people are coming to you for. Consider those shared activities or things that you may have done in person, and try to design experiences for those people in an online capacity.

Special thanks to Intercom for giving us access to the audio to share directly with our listeners. Check out their podcasts!

You can subscribe on iTunes, stream on Spotify or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice.

“Hi, Bree, it’s Mariah. Mariah Carey...Please tell the fans thank you.”

In 1999, 16-year-old Bree Nguyen was hired by her idol, Mariah Carey, to do something urgent: get Mariah on Total Request Live (TRL). 

Why hire a 16-year-old fan? Bree figured out one thing that music executives were unclear how to venture into: internet fandom.

If you’ve read our book, you may have already heard a snippet of Bree’s story and we don’t want to give it all away. In this episode Bree tells us the extraordinary story of how she first met Mariah and joined her team. Then, how she created a framework based on immersion into fandom that she would later repeat for artists like Michelle Branch, Ashlee Tisdale, My Chemical Romance, and Lincoln Park. 

👋🏻Say hi to Bree on Twitter.

📄See the full transcript

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 

🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.

We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. 

And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.

Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.