Unscalable

How do you host an in-person community event or mixer that people actually come to, and keep coming back to? David Nebinski, founder of A Chief of Staff, shares the exact two-hour format he uses and how he got his first events off the ground.

AI is making it harder to tell what's real online. That's exactly why in-person rooms are worth more than ever.

Based in New York, David has hosted 70+ live podcast events, mostly in his own apartment, and has produced 500+ podcast episodes. He explains how one hallway conversation turned into a recurring mixer series, and how a newsletter and podcast keep people connected between events.

In this episode:

• How to start your first event with friends, low stakes, and about 10 people
• David's two-hour mixer format: four 30-minute blocks of arrival, short attendee talks, small-group mastermind, and meeting someone new
• Why attendee stories beat paid speakers, and how to pick a theme people will open up about
• How to fill your first event by attaching it to a conference where people are already travelling
• How a newsletter, podcast, and video build trust before people ever meet you
• How to think about podcast ROI when the return is relationships, not revenue
• Why personal video messages have been David's most unscalable habit for eight years

Plus a quick-fire round: the ideal mixer size, the name tag debate, and the fastest way to ruin a live event.

Key takeaway: Start small with people who already know, like, and trust you. Keep the cost low, watch how people respond, and let them tell you when to run the next one.

Find David and A Chief of Staff:

• Website: https://www.achiefofstaffpodcast.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidnebinski/

Join the next live recording and ask your own questions: https://swarm.to/community

Unscalable is brought to you by:

• Swarm (https://swarm.to): the video-first home for communities of practice. Every episode is recorded live inside Swarm.
• StoryPrompt (https://storyprompt.com): collect stunning video testimonials from your customers with one magic link.

Subscribe to Unscalable on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts for conversations with the people betting on the human stuff: trust, community, and real relationships.

Chapters:

00:00 Why human connection matters in the AI era

00:29 Meet David Nebinski

01:28 What chiefs of staff do and why they need community

02:55 How David's mixers got started

04:52 Adding a newsletter and podcast after events

06:42 Using video and YouTube to build trust

11:02 Why niche content wins on YouTube

12:28 How to structure a mixer for engagement

14:25 Why in-person rooms matter for learning

15:22 How one connection can change your career

17:15 The two-hour mixer format, block by block

20:16 How to host your first in-person event

22:40 Using fast feedback to improve your events

24:36 Why behind-the-scenes content works

28:56 Building trust through personal stories

34:38 How to measure podcast ROI

39:34 Niche audiences and trust in the AI age

45:15 Being human as a competitive advantage

47:10 The emotional reward of hosting

48:36 Why you should do the unscalable things

#communitybuilding #communityevents #podcasting #networking #unscalable

Sarah Noel Block is the founder of Tiny Marketing and believes that you don’t need a big team to have effective marketing. If you have the right marketing strategy, even TINY teams can have great results. And she’s proven this over the last 7 years by stepping in to help small B2B companies grow with less.

In this episode, we talk about:

* How to grow an audience when you're starting at zero

* The big marketing mistakes you’re probably making

* What an effective marketing system looks like

* The Tiny Marketing Framework

* The best AI prompts to use in your marketing

* How to adopt video in your marketing strategy

🎁 StoryPrompt Giveaway 👉 Get a FULL YEAR of StoryPrompt for free!

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple, or search “Unscalable” in your podcast app, or watch on YouTube.

Links mentioned on the show

* StoryPrompt Giveaway: Get a FULL YEAR of StoryPrompt for free!

* Tiny Marketing

* Sarah’s LinkedIn profile

* Gavin’s LinkedIn profile

Thanks to StoryPrompt (our sponsor).  StoryPrompt helps you boost customer loyalty and engagement using asynchronous video. Capturing stories, testimonials, and attention is as simple as sharing a link. Sign up to get 20% off all plans.

Brittany Garlin and Alexus Brittain are both on the Marketing Team at Vista Social. Brittany is the Head Of Marketing and Alexus heads up Social Media. Vista Social is a social media management platform, similar to Sendible that seemingly came out of nowhere in the last year and now has over 1.4 million social profiles under management.

In this episode, we talk about:

* How Vista Social got started

* How they leveraged community to boost their growth

* How they position themselves in an extremely crowded market

* How they’ve been able to iterate so quickly on new trends like AI and TikTok

* AI and its impact on the future of social media

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple, or search “Unscalable” in your podcast app, or watch on YouTube.

Links mentioned on the show

* VistaSocial

* AgencyVista

* Brittany’s LinkedIn profile

* Alexus’s LinkedIn profile

* Gavin’s LinkedIn profile

Thanks to StoryPrompt (our sponsor).  StoryPrompt helps you boost customer loyalty and engagement using asynchronous video. Capturing stories, testimonials, and attention is as simple as sharing a link. Sign up to get 20% off all plans.

Jonathan Swead is the founder of EVD Analytics. In this episode, we chat about the key sales and marketing analytics that your business should be tracking. We also talk about how Jonathan is using video to acquire new clients. And of course, we touch on AI and how it’s likely to affect SEO in the next few years.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple, or search “Unscalable” in your podcast app.

Links mentioned on the show

* EVD Analytics

* Jonathan’s LinkedIn profile

* Gavin’s LinkedIn profile

Thanks to StoryPrompt (our sponsor).  StoryPrompt helps you boost customer loyalty and engagement using asynchronous video. Capturing stories, testimonials, and attention is as simple as sharing a link. Sign up to get 20% off all plans.

My wife, Martine Hammar joins me on the pod for a special episode. She has recently published a children’s book and I chatted to her about the process.

In this episode, Martine talks about:

* What inspired her to write a children’s book.

* What message she hopes to convey through her book.

* Why she decided to self-publish.

* The process of writing a book, from idea to bookstores.

* The challenges she faced during the process and how to avoid them.

* Resources you can use to write your own book.

Links mentioned on the show:

* A Little Piece Inside Me Is Missing

* StoryPrompt: Video Engagement Platform

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple, or search “Unscalable” in your podcast app.

▶️ Or, watch on YouTube.

Full Transcript:

Gavin Hammar: Martine thanks for joining us on the show. So you're a mom,…

Martine Hammar: Thanks for having me.

Gavin Hammar: you're helping me build story prompts and you start up from the ground up. I'm just curious.

Martine Hammar: Well, for me,…

Gavin Hammar: What inspired you to write a children's book in the first place?

Martine Hammar: it kind of had nothing really to do with working together and sendable, you know, and story prompting that type of thing. It's just a kind of feel that sometimes in life, we go through things that We might not even realize at the time that can actually help people. And I think it's only when you actually stand back and…

Gavin Hammar:  You.

Martine Hammar: reflect on things that and speak to people that you realize that You'll experience can actually help someone else and that's exactly what I went through. And that's what led me to create this book. Should.

Gavin Hammar:  So what message are you hoping to convey to the book? Then I mean Obviously you have some sort of story you want to tell some underlying theme to the book so maybe for listeners who haven't seen the book which most of them. Haven't, what's, what's the main sort of messages message that you're trying to give across in the story?

Martine Hammar:  Okay, well, let me go back a little bit. So, basically, what happened with with me in my life so in 2020, we were in lockdown, obviously a bit and everything. Now, I mean, you obviously know the story being my husband, but basically so Gavin and I moved from South Africa, our families win South Africa. And we were based in the UK. So we were really far and I think lockdown and covid, made people feel a lot further suddenly we couldn't just go, it wasn't overnight to see our families. So anyway, we got through the year and it was amazing and like we all reached December and I remember even saying to you We've nailed it. You know, this was a challenging year, we've done it, we managed homeschooling working from home have you know, transforming sandable into a remote company. We nailed it. And then basically I got a phone call to say that my mum had started coughing.

Martine Hammar:  Didn't think anything of it. You know, I remember talking to her and her saying, Oh, I must wash my vegetables. When I do any grocery shopping and they say to, you know, what? UBS neurotic as you want, we're fine. Whatever but please be, as neurotic as you want. So there she was, ironically washing her, you know, bags and vegetables and deliveries and everything and me laughing behind her back, but at least she was looking after yourself. So anyway, she started coughing right around her birthday, 69th birthday. And basically what happened was the next day, she was, unfortunately asthmatic, and the next day, she went into hospital because her sets weren't great and the doctor was concerned and even at the time we were like, It's fine, you know, you're being, you know, you're in the right place, you're with the doctors, they'll keep an eye on you. Now, granted, this was, I went to the beginning of covid, but it was the beginning of a new wave, especially in South Africa. My dad also head coach at the time, but thankfully, he was able to stay home.

Martine Hammar:  So she went into hospital and the whole time, you know, we had such an amazing relationship, she had and she was incredibly close to you and I she was incredibly close to our children, her friends. You know, she had an amazing support system. Very very well-loved member of the community in South Africa and you know, in our lives. So she kind of carried on the same, the same optimism, the same sense of humor. Everything she was sending me videos and photos of the cardboard. She said that she was eating in the hospitals, you know, the same banter. This everything was the same just unfortunately she was in hospital but it didn't let her spirits never never dropped at all. So so we were chatting all the time and then suddenly we got a message to say she needed to spend more time on her stomach. So then messages slowed down a bit, then she was moved to hide opinion see and was on a fast flow. I think it was called messages dwindled. A little bit that way and slowly slowly slowly.

Martine Hammar:  This person who was so much in my life, every minute of every day, I used to call her in traffic just to talk about nonsense or I would call her because the kids had some silly thing. They wanted to say, you know, this person started Unfortunately, vanishing from my life, like, you know, I didn't kind of know which way to turn. I was just so used to her being there for me and sharing things and having involved in our lives. Especially in lockdown. She was despite the the distance. So then, unfortunately she was moved into the ICU and they had to put on a ventilator. And suddenly, I went from this person who I spoke to every minute of every day, even in hospital to suddenly nothing, just no communication whatsoever. And for me,

Martine Hammar:  It just was, everything was all wrong. Not only should I have been there. I hadn't seen her, since December, 2019. I should have been there with her. I wasn't, I couldn't even speak to her. I was stuck in the UK, she was in South Africa. I couldn't get on a plane. Everything just wasn't right. As I said a world love member of the community should have been surrounded by people. She was on her own just it wasn't right. Nothing was right. And then unfortunately so basically three weeks after she started coughing, we got a message to say that she had passed away all on her own. I mean, this is like, if I had to think to myself, what I would never ever wish on anybody, it's this because it was just so black messed up. Basically, like I even remember saying to you, like this is not the way this is, can't be the right way. This can't be the way it happens. It just wasn't right. Like, this person was so crucial in my life this just wasn't right and obviously my

00:05:00

Martine Hammar:  Rathers. I have two brothers. Also, they weren't with her. My dad wasn't with the best friends, no one. So, So basically, it was like this. You know, it's kind of what I explain this. It's basically the Jewish religion allows you to have seven days where you said shiver and you just Think about things. I was so grateful for that. I never realized the importance of that but I was actually able to as much as I wasn't able to go. I mean, I wasn't even at her funeral, which is madness, really, but I was able to kind of spend their time Grieving, and you know, we were moving house at the time, which is, I mean, so I'm saying like I couldn't make the stuff up like and selling sandable at the time. So um, it kind of gave me this week to kind of focus just on what I was feeling and everything and

Martine Hammar: It took me about a year to kind of really come to terms with what had happened with the shock of not being there, with the shock of…

Gavin Hammar: It.

Martine Hammar: what was, you know, how my heart was ripped out of my body, basically, and ripped into a million pieces to and not being able to go only way into a year later, which was a story in its own. Because I assumed, I'd be able to have a smell and her clothes and everything was gone, you know, I just missed that whole time. So basically, it gave me that time to kind of focus on a year later. It's still kind of raw. And and that's kind of the reason that this book came about because the book let me put a backstory. Yeah, the books called a little piece inside me is missing, it's a children's book and the reason I wrote it is because even as an adult people would say to me, How are you, how are things, how you finding things, and I'd say, You know, I'm okay, I'm okay, like

Martine Hammar: You have to get on with it, you over to your family, you go to yourself, you're over to the person more than anything, the most selfless person in the world would not want me using up my time and energy thinking about her when I've got people and a business and kids, you know, family and friends. And, you know, my own mental health. She wouldn't want me consuming my time thinking about her and…

Gavin Hammar: If you.

Martine Hammar: and not coping. So that's the thing you get on with it. You have to you over to them and you owe it to yourself and your family as I said. So that's the thing. So I would say to people, You know, I'm okay. But the thing is, there was always just this little piece of me that will never be the same. It's all will always be missing. And the thing is, is that even if somebody said to me, I'll give you a magic pull to make that little piece.

Martine Hammar:  Not not hurt anymore. Not not remind you of the person. Make you feel better? I would never, ever, ever take that because the thing is what this little piece represents to me. Is the fact that this piece is missing, means that I loved and I was loved. And for me, that why would I want to feel that? Why would I want to forget that? Like people say grief gets easier as you get on as you get, you know, as it goes by, I don't believe that at all. I just think you learn to deal, you learn to get on with it. How can this piece of inside me? Vanish, how can it just go away? And I forget if I had to forget that, I was loved and had this relationship with my mom. I would never forgive myself. Like, I always want this piece of me missing to remember how much she meant to me, and how much how real our relationship was. And so, basically, that's how I came up with the story for the book, but I wanted to adapt it to make kids feel okay about this process. Like when a child

Martine Hammar: Somebody close to them. It's very different than when an adult does. But the thing is for a child is it's the same kind of process of there's this little piece missing, but there's ways that you can make that piece not hurt as much and…

Gavin Hammar: If?

Martine Hammar: you can make yourself feel better by remembering the person and by talking about them and never forgetting them and never had never being a taboo subject in our house. So obviously, so I've got, well, we've got two daughters. So one was very little at the time. She was only two. Very matter of fact. She she didn't really understand unfortunately, but we had an older one who's 10 now, she was

Martine Hammar: Eight of the time and she was absolutely torn apart by this because of her amazing relationships, she had with my mum. And, you know, when I read her this was when we discussed the story together it kind of opened things up for her because she didn't recognize that she had that feeling. And once we were able to talk about it, she realized that that's actually what she was feeling. She just didn't know how to articulate it and because of that,…

00:10:00

Gavin Hammar: If?

Martine Hammar: we, as I said, we talk about things. Like we we still, you know, my mom because she was so like she had a great sense of humor and she was she didn't mind us mocking her. So we still do that. We don't suddenly feel like, we can't say those things that made us laugh at the time because that's the right way of respecting her. And that's the way that you can make this, this whole not hurt. You can, you can fill it with these funny things. These amazing memories is great experiences that make you not miss the person. Yes, but also treasure the time you had with them.

Martine Hammar:  So yeah, I hope that answers a question. I'm sorry for lengthy.

Gavin Hammar: Yeah, that's Yeah, so obviously it was it came about as a result of your mom being unwell and…

Martine Hammar:  Yeah.

Gavin Hammar: the sudden loss. So, if you were to just explain, like, where did the idea for the book actually come from, like, obviously this, this thing happened. He had these issues you were dealing with. Obviously, our daughter was a dealing with it. We're all dealing with it. What, what did you decide to sit down and come up with the idea and start writing the book was, It was a couple years later, was it straight after it happened? Where did you get this idea?

Martine Hammar: So, a definitely wasn't straight after because it took me a while to process it. And it took me a while to kind of put my feelings into words and to kind of almost recognize how I was feeling and articulated. So it was about Nick coming up to two years after it happened. And I've always loved writing, I wrote a blog about called Scarred for Life. When our daughter was at when she had multiple livesaving surgeries, I kind of documented the journey also not as it happened but later on. So I've always I've always enjoyed writing. I've always founded an amazing outlet. So I didn't kind of think too much of it. I just kind of wanted to get something down and then I wanted to see what would come from it. And then when I,…

Gavin Hammar: You.

Martine Hammar: when I kind of wrote it down and I thought actually, hang on, this could

Tim Bennetto is a software developer and indie hacker. He’s the founder of a social media scheduling platform called Pallyy with over 24,000 users and 700 paying customers.

In this episode, Tim talks about:

* How DMs helped Pallyy grow by 10X after 2 years.

* His approach to acquiring new customers.

* The importance of knowing your customers, not just listening to them.

* Why you don’t need a unique idea to start a business.

* How staying small he helped him grow Pallyy.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple, or search “Unscalable” in your podcast app.

▶️ Or, watch on YouTube.

Links mentioned on the show

* Pallyy

* Tim’s Twitter profile

* Gavin’s LinkedIn profile

Thanks to StoryPrompt (our sponsor).  StoryPrompt helps you boost customer loyalty and engagement using asynchronous video. Capturing stories, testimonials, and attention is as simple as sharing a link. Sign up to get 20% off all plans.

Melissa is the Cofounder and CEO of eWebinar, an automated webinar solution that helps customer success teams deliver personalized training and onboarding at scale.

Melissa has spent twelve years in startups and built three successful companies without venture capital backing. Her previous startup, a real estate tech company, was acquired in 2019.

In this episode, Melissa talks about:

The lessons she learned from her last company, Spacio, that she's bringing with her to eWebinar.

Building a business as a non-technical founder.

The reason she's choosing to stay bootstrapped.

How she went about bringing on her first 100 customers at eWebinar.

Why she believes you need to work more creatively.

The future of sales.

Links mentioned on the show

eWebinar

Melissa’s LinkedIn profile

Gavin’s LinkedIn profile

Thanks to StoryPrompt (our sponsor).  StoryPrompt is the easiest way to send and collect personal videos. Capturing stories, testimonials, and updates is as simple as sharing a link. Sign up for free.

Jeremy Moser is an entrepreneur and CEO of uSERP, a 35+ person SEO firm serving high-growth technology companies like Monday.com, Robinhood, and more.

In this episode, Jeremy talks about:

How he went about getting case studies for uSERP in the early days.

How his agency increased Monday.com's traffic by 1,570% with SEO.

The new marketing trends he's most excited about.

How SEO and short-form video works together.

Links mentioned on the show

uSERP

Jeremy’s Twitter profile

Gavin’s LinkedIn profile

Thanks to StoryPrompt (our sponsor).  StoryPrompt is the easiest way to send and collect personal videos. Capturing stories, testimonials, and updates is as simple as sharing a link. Sign up for free.

Kate Bradley Chernis is the Founder & CEO of Lately, which uses AI to generate high-engaging content in your unique brand voice that is customized to target any audience. As a former rock 'n' roll dj, Kate served 20 million listeners as Music Director and on-air host at Sirius/XM.

In this episode, Kate talks about:

How Lately uses AI to help customers produce content.

How she helped Gary Vee get a 12000% increase in engagement.

How Lately achieves a 98% sales conversion rate.

What she would do differently if she were starting a new tech company now.

Her thoughts on the future of AI.

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple, or search “Unscalable” in your podcast app.

Links mentioned on the show

Lately.ai

Kate’s Twitter profile

Kate’s LinkedIn profile

Gavin’s LinkedIn profile

Thanks to StoryPrompt (our sponsor).  StoryPrompt is the easiest way to send and collect personal videos. Capturing stories, testimonials, and updates is as simple as sharing a link. Sign up for free.

Tobias Günther has been an entrepreneur and a CEO for almost 20 years. He started 4 companies, including Tower, a Git Desktop Client with over 100,000 customers, that he sold in 2021.

He is now focused on the human side of business and how we can make our work lives not only successful, but also sustainable and meaningful.

In this episode, Tobias talks about:

• Where the idea for Tower came from and why he decided to sell
• The benefits of selling your company through a broker vs going direct
• What he means by the human side of business (and why he’s so obsessed with it)
• How to build a culture of trust in a remote-first world
• Why small companies are such beautiful places to work
• Why Gavin wants to keep StoryPrompt small
• Why we struggle so much as founders as our companies get bigger
• How to hire for cultural fit in a smaller organization

Links mentioned on the show

• Tobias.co
• Culture Code 
• Reinventing Organizations 

Connect with Tobias

• LinkedIn

Connect with Gavin

• LinkedIn