As creative director Tim Duijf joins us talking about the true champion mentality. The commitment and teamwork it takes to build a community around influencers.

After earning his bachelor in economics from the University of Maastricht in The Netherlands, Tim started making videos on Youtube, after no success he was forced to work by his parents. He started his professional career as a teacher in economics, which he enjoyed. After a few months of teaching his students noticed his videos and started to go around the school and the neighborhood. After gaining a few thousand subscribers, Tim decided to quit his job and start making videos full time again.

After a little over 2 years gaining almost 300k subscribers, Tim was burned out and wanted to work in the shadows. He started out as content specialist for Riot Games and after 2 years got the chance to work for his idol, Dr. Disrespect. He has now been there for over 4 years as creative director, helping the brand pop out to the Doc’s community.

In this episode Tim talks about his reasoning of wanting to work in the shadows, the how and why one should listen to his community, how companies and influencers should work together to create a brand, and the internal cooperation necessary in order to provide content for the community.

Jeff Lovejoy from the Zalando Future Talent Program on the importance of letting a community grow naturally, organically and not have an external driving force.

After graduating from the University of West Florida, Jeff did some insurance work before working 13 years at Enterprise Rent-A-Car where he started out as branch manager and made his way through 14 promotions as talent acquisition manager for the department head of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

He then moved onto FDM Group where he was the European and North American Recruitment Manager. After 3 years, he decided to join the startup scene at N26 and SumUp respectively where he was Future Talent Programme Manager for both. After Corona hit, things weren’t the same and decided to take his talents to Zalando where he is now talent acquisition lead and manager of early careers.

In this episode Jeff talks about the Future Zalent Community, a community full of interns working, students, apprentices and graduates starting at Zalando, which he manages. The impact a manager should have on this community, creating awareness of the community, and how the community builds around the brand are all explained in this episode.