In this podcast, we'll be exploring Leslie's journey as a community builder. Leslie has been passionate about communities since before COVID and her experience in Pavilion only furthered her dedication to the cause. 

• Jeff talked to Leslie about how she established mission, vision, and values with startups, enabling them to create authentic and meaningful communities.

• Leslie discussed how she believes in customer journeys that lead to evangelists referring others in by micro wins throughout the journey.

• Jeff and Leslie also discussed Word-of-mouth marketing and how it is particularly relevant in the digital age, as well as understanding the competitive landscape and personas when rolling out a new one.

• They also had a fascinating discussion about the effectiveness of gamification in communities, and how internal intrinsic motivation leads to better engagement levels than external extrinsic rewards. 

If you are considering a community-building project or running an existing network, grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea, silence your phone, and listen to this informative episode – You won’t regret it!

 Transcript:

Jeff  01:15

So we're gonna get going here, Leslie, thanks so much for joining me today. See, it's so much easier, I don't have to then go hit record, right. So yeah, usually get some conversations going. So Leslie, I've admired from afar for a while, just just a ninja on community. But instead of me saying that wants to take a minute or two and just say why you're so passionate about communities, and then we're just gonna get deep into it. Actually, let me just do one quick thing. So this is gonna be a different approach than if anybody listened to the Jay Nathan interview where that was a kind of a how to sell software that's community related and get some ROI story out of it. We're just gonna go a little bit more into the grassroots element of communities in the the people aspect of it, I should say, almost. So with all of that, over to you as

Leslie  02:04

Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me on, too, by the way, glad we met in a community. Talking about community so. So yeah, I guess if you the reason I'm so passionate about community, I think it's always been a part of my life. But, you know, right. Prior to COVID, I joined pavilion, a community for go to market leaders, just as a member because I was going to be my it's gonna be my first time having a CES role that reported into sales. And I didn't know what and

Jeff  02:34

started running it.

Leslie  02:35

No, no, no, no, I didn't know what to MQL or an SQL was. So I was like, I think I know what this stuff is. And so I'd met someone in pavilion, and he introduced me and so became a member and then started helping them grow the Dallas chapter and eventually just decided I loved it so much, that I pitched myself off to the CEO of pavilion and said, I think you should hire me. And, you know, I did that for a little bit over two years. And that just the connections that I've made in the things that, you know, personally, I've had the opportunity to be part of like, someone getting their a job after being laid off for a year, you know, being their first call. After that, you know, the baby pictures that I get, and just the I mean, the friends that I have made, I mean, I can go anywhere in the world and have coffee with anyone. And it's insane. And I mean, these are people that I mean, they're truly people that I call my friends, there are people that I would probably are on my 3am Something bad happened. list. And you know, I now,

Jeff  03:37

right? Say that again, you have to bury a body and you know who to call.

Leslie  03:41

Yeah, that's definitely who I'm going to call so I mean, just like my personal experience with community and as I you know, expanded into my role it turned out to be almost half community role and half Customer Success role. And as I put tradition out of transitioned out of pavilion, I decided what do I like best and honestly, if I could never do a QBR for the rest of my life, I would be happy and I will sing the praises of community all day long.

Jeff  04:09

Again, such a bad rap these days. I got to talk to Bob. I don't know if you know, Bob, my name is

Leslie  04:13

Bob Lawton. Yeah, yeah. Good friend of mine. I

Jeff  04:16

asked him say what is the you what? Because I'm gonna, we're calling it something. And he was on my podcast. So you too now have a sacred bond together. You're both podcast interviews.

Leslie  04:27

Yep. I met him at a retreat. A couple left. Yeah, the

Jeff  04:33

one on Utah

Leslie  04:34

Yes. CS 100. It was amazing.

Jeff  04:36

Yeah, I wanted to go but I got very sick when I was out at Gainsight pulse because my immune system seemed to just not be doing so well after being locked in the house for two years. So Oh, no. But you're so right on. Being able to go anywhere and everything with just a community. We'll use pavilion as example. We had our Boston meetup last week, and it was fantastic. stick right when you meet so many people. It was great. Yeah, absolutely. So. So let's talk about creating communities. Right. And this is now you've moved into this is what you do, right? People pull you in? How do we create a community? Right? And what are some things that you say? Well, before we get into that, we have to absolutely make sure it's this, right. And stead of just like being some, hey, we're doing community stamp the stamp on it and things like that, right? Are their core tenants that you just preach? And people like, oh, there it goes, Leslie, again, on that thing? Right. But like,

Leslie  05:38

oh, yeah, yeah, there are a few things. I mean, my general, you know, the people that I work with our startups, you know, usually see to be. So I mean, we start with things like mission, vision and values. Tell me about your mission, vision values of your company. Let's see how we take those and put those into the community. I mean, those, you know, if we want to put an acquisition community want people to come and be part of our brand, if they're not, now, we want them to know what it feels like to be part of our brand. And we can do that through the community. So like, it starts out almost like basic startup advisor, conversations. The other thing is, you know, I love it when the CEO starts the conversation, because it needs to be a top down initiative, as I mean, you probably know, and all the listeners probably know, it's not something we're going to just stand up. And now we're gonna He's gonna see our Oh, he or she's gonna see ROI, and in three months, and they're gonna be like, oh, man, we should have done this sooner. It's like, No, this is, you know, we're gonna plant a seed that we're gonna water. Yeah, yeah. And tend. And so if the CEO is not fully bought in that this is a long term initiative. Like, that's something that we're going to talk about, actually, before we even get to an engagement.

Jeff  06:45

Yeah, absolutely. What are the things that that ticked you off or not like, like, make you mad, but like, when you hear you're like, that's the wrong reason for starting a community.

Leslie  06:57

I mean, if it has anything to do with direct sales, I mean, direct sales, direct marketing, like I want to community, so I could just market into them. Well, you will not have a community for more than maybe three months, and then it will die. Because no one really wants to be marketed to and if you've seen or not seen yet Mark Shaffer's new book called belonging to the brand. I think the last part of it is called why communities, I'm gonna just make this up white communities, the next frontier of marketing or business. But you know, that's he says, That's exactly, you know, this community is the new marketing. And if you're gonna go take these old standards of sales and marketing and try to like, push them into your community, you're actually just like breaking the whole process from the beginning. But I highly recommend that book.

Jeff  07:46

I'll put it in the show notes as well, too. And going on vacation next week. So maybe I'll, I'll pull it up in the old Kindle to go through. So that's one of the yeah, I've typically we're communities really popped up for me in the CS LAN recently, is everybody's saying it as an SI as an alternative, but you can't scale without community. Now, I was wondering if you had a point of view on that.

Leslie  08:11

Yeah. I mean, I think if you're talking about you're scaling CS, without Yeah, stealing CS without community, I mean, you of course can but it makes it a lot easier. I mean, you want to know what your I mean, every CSM, every VP of CS CCO wants to know, what are my customers really thinking? Well, guess where you can find that you can find it in a community, I can see what they're thinking because they're writing it. They're telling it to us, they're telling other people. So you can get a really good gauge for you know, the tenor of how your product is working. And, you know, really good community manager can take all those insights. And you know, push it to the right departments, so that they're able to make much better decisions. product can be in there. So if you imagine like you're a CSM, and your product leaders are in there, and then you've been telling them that something's buggy. But now they're hearing it from the clients. Like, oh,

Jeff  09:05

I know. Exactly, you know, like, what they're actually talking about it in here about how shaky This is right now. Maybe you should go do something about that instead of building the next 10 dream features that you want, right?

Leslie  09:17

Yep. 100% Yeah,

Jeff  09:19

I was actually part. And I did this I wasn't didn't even sort of associate as being community, but going to really pay myself a 2008 area of stuff, worked in a very technical product. If it was in these days, it would be considered like an API, headless sort of solution. Everything developer focused. And we wanted to create the developers network just to get developers in there and talking with each other and everything. Let's just say there was a strong pushback from some of the founders and some of the core development team, that this would sort of give away everything right like that because So there's going to have a question on a allowing people to talk about stuff is one thing. And then B is this, how do you feel about open access for people? If they are not currently customers?

Leslie  10:17

You know, depends on the it depends on the goal. And it depends on the product. You know, I think there's a different mindset in this world now to where there's, there's just enough to go around. And I think in the case, that you're talking about the, you know, if you're developer, if the developers were your customers, how better to show them how amazing you are, then have them in there. Guess how, you know, somebody goes in with a question and answers your code question for you? How much faster Are you able to develop? I mean, that's, that's why people love, you know, developers love developer communities. It really depends. It depends on what the subject, you know, the subject is, I mean, if you, let's say, you're, I don't know, let's just say you're a, you're a Reb ops company, you have a Reb ops product. But you want to assemble a group of Reb ops leaders, you know, thought leaders in the space industry experts, etc. And you bring people in around the thought leadership, and the company feels more like the sponsor, which is really how I kind of think about it a little bit like you are the sponsor of it, you're enabling it, you're making people feel good about it, then sure, I mean, in that case, bringing people from outside because guess what they're gonna see your thought leadership, they're going to see how you care for the customers, your customers are going to naturally talk about the product if they're happy. And then they're like, Oh, I've been thinking about buying XYZ, you have it, right? Who's Who's your best word of mouth? I mean, that's, it's your customers. And, you know, one of the things I guess maybe you asked me earlier, what's the thing they're like, Leslie, God, again. Evangelists, you know, I mean, like, that's those, that's where you brew your evangelists. And that's where your evangelists start to do. Their first work, is just having a conversation of their own volition that came up naturally. And they're helping you close deals. And they're just doing it because they want to. So that's,

Jeff  12:11

that's, it's so funny. I'm so glad you brought that up. Because when we do customer journeys for people, people always, you know, think we're going to stop at renewal. And I'm like, why would you stop a renewal? What you just said, is where we stopped with my stock phrase, and Jeff saying, and again, thing is, it's like, we're not trying to get these customers renew, we're trying to get them on stage at your next user event. And they're talking about how critical it is, and that they would fight to the death with their CFO about keeping your software like that's, that's what you want, right? It's not always going to happen. But shoot for it, right, like, go for the front row parking spot. It's not there, you know, drive few lanes back or something.

Leslie  12:51

So I mean, that's, that's the whole theory of like, the name of my company, you know, Chief Evangelist consulting. And there's a lot of different types of evangelists out right now, like the kind of like Chief Evangelist of no accompany, but this is like grassroots. You know, you can take John and sure, maybe some, Jane's will end up being your speaker at your desk kayo. But maybe they're just the one that answers questions, they'll take a reference call, maybe, you know, they'll they'll tag you in a post on LinkedIn, just because they're happy, or they had a great experience. So it's like these little micro wins. And I think that's where the industry b2b is kind of a little bit missing out in thinking about these really small units, that all of this grows from, it all grows from incredibly happy customers who will talk about you, but we talk about, like plg, and all these LGs. But we don't think of the building blocks of those. And they all start with one thing, which is, you know, these customers that hopefully you're turning into evangelists, I love the micro

Jeff  13:55

wins thing, I just think of some current situations. I've been in where everybody was pushing for the big go on site with the video cameras and the production and the drones overhead and everything. And it's like, what makes more of an impact that or somebody sitting in your community saying, No, you gotta use it, trust me, it's really great. Or, Hey, look at this little piece of snippet I just wrote to do X, Y, and Z or something like that, just that organic thing where we're suddenly I remember, our marketing team was going in there. And they're like, this is where we can get our quotes from, or, you know, obviously, they're gonna reach out and do the right thing and everything but like, but just seeing the conversations that happen, like, first of all, Oh, my God, people are actually talking about our stuff. Like we've actually gotten somewhere and maybe arguing over ways of doing things as well, too. Absolutely. That's a great, that's a great concept. Yeah.

Leslie  14:47

One of the things that I get a little bit of like pushback on sometimes, like, well, how is that scalable? You're gonna treat your customers in a certain way. You know, how is that scalable, scalable, because one evangelists will make 10 more for you. They refer Somebody in and the statistics say that one, if you're referred in, you're four times more likely to refer somebody else. So you don't have to think about this and this big like, oh, well, we scale it and put it on a spreadsheet and all this kind of stuff because the act itself scale. A good portion of it on its own.

Jeff  15:18

You know, that's, that's fine. Because you talked about pavilion. Yeah. Somebody referred me in. And I don't know, I don't think it's super unnatural to refer somebody else and either as well. Yep. Totally not sponsored by pavilion, but maybe I should go off and talk to Mercedes, my CSM and CFOs. Just getting this great. So what are some if there are not others, but like, we talked a little bit about the the evangelist and just being very human centered boots, talk a little bit more about the ultimate importance for brands for this besides the Hey, we have a community like, where do you think goes that underlying, if you had to sell this to a CMO or CEO, that ultimate ROI story, they're gonna get out of community?

Leslie  16:04

Yeah, I mean, again, going back to that book that I talked about, and I think I've heard lots of people talk about this on LinkedIn that like, the standard marketing channels aren't working the way they used to work. You know, I'm not going to consume ads the way I used to consume, I'm not going to, you know, read your emails that you send me. And so it just, it has to evolve into something else. And word of mouth marketing, it really just goes back to, like, we're really just new is old. Yeah, this is the same as

Jeff  16:35

Yeah, my friend had a company that sold for a lot of money. That was word of mouth marketing. And that's exactly how they did it, and that old platform around it, but soon as you said that, that's exactly what it's about. Yeah.

Leslie  16:47

Yeah. It's just, it's really going back that way, because we're just I think we're just all smarter about marketing. And, and then if you think about, like, even going to restaurant, like, if I'm like blue best restaurants near me, there's no chance I'm gonna go to a restaurant unless I've looked at how many reviews they had. Read some of them, and then decide what I'm, you know, where I'm gonna go?

Jeff  17:08

Absolutely. And then order as well to like, that's what we're now like, Who will the now we go to Yelp? And then we decide to go there. And they'll be like, well, what are the best dishes people are talking about? Right? Like, you know, I'm not gonna ask the waiter anymore. I'm gonna look on Yelp and see what the best thing is.

Leslie  17:22

You could probably ask chat GTP. You, they would probably tell you now.

Jeff  17:27

That's a good point. I use Jasper myself to great program, because I don't have to have to fool around and know all the other stuff. It's yeah, it's a great tool out there. Absolutely. So what else are we missing here? When we talk about, you know, really think about this, as I know you're going through and you're doing this for somebody right now you're rolling a new community out from scratch, right? And I know. And by the way, if anybody's interested, go to Lesley, she can do this for you. did not ask me to say this. But I know that she's excellent. Thank you. So so let's just think about this. The easiest way to talk about you're rolling out a new community. core tenants, right, making sure. X, Y and Z are there, right? What are some of those core tenants there?

Leslie  18:09

Yeah, we have to have a we have to have a point of view. We have to understand, you know, just a community around a product isn't going to bring people in unless you already have a beloved product like notion or HubSpot or Salesforce. Obviously most of us are not notion HubSpot or Salesforce. So we have to differentiate ourselves, we have to understand what the competitive landscape looks like. We have to understand, you know, what the personas are in our community, like who is our buyer? Like you said earlier, you're talking about a developer community, I'm not going to offer a developer most likely a spot on my podcast thing on stage, you know, like, those things aren't as valuable as maybe saying with a CFO, you know, like a FPN a person. Whereas Goodness gracious when I was pavilion, I know how to push all you revenue, people's buttons. I mean, I give you a stage, I call you out on a LinkedIn message, I think even a public channel, I give you a chance to be on a panel. And you all are like, Oh, Leslie, you're amazing

Jeff  19:11

that these people have high egos and need to be stroked. No, no,

Leslie  19:15

no, but their their personality is such that they would like a little bit more to be seen as a thought leader, or they would like a little bit more spotlight. And there are people that that is not their, you know, their motivator. And so like understanding what your community, yeah, understanding what your community how we motivate your community, because you have to really think about that. Like I said, buy in, and then we just have to get into, you know, project planning in execution. And there's, I think, last I looked at my last project plan, there are 57 different items we need to actually accomplish. For before we could launch or there's some post launch but like probably 50 items to launch a community.

Jeff  20:03

So not buying the software and sticking your logo on the top left corner,

Leslie  20:07

no. Or even worse, we're just going to open up a slack. And we're going to open up a slack and just let everybody in and everything it's like you have to have, there's code of conduct, there's a theory of how you're going to moderate How are you going to take care of your customers. You know, there's just so many things that you have to decide before you can even open the doors and then you're going to open doors on a soft launch folks, not a full launch

Jeff  20:32

point right there as well. I've failed launch the community too. I was wanting to be a quick little thing out there for professional services, people to talk without all the CES, people jumping in on it. Like we just wanted our own little area. And didn't do it the right way. I still have high hopes still in the Slack channel. So as soon as you said Slack channels like oh, so we'll talk about that. Maybe I'll find some David again, no, didn't want any monetary or anything out there. It was just sort of, like, hey, we just need a place to talk. Exactly. Yeah.

Leslie  21:00

Yeah. And that's what that motivates a lot of people to start that. Yeah. The other thing real quick, and I know you have another question is like having someone dedicated to the community.

Jeff  21:11

So who's got the ownership over this? Right? Like, if we think about departmental or whatnot? In them, you know, okay, what resource you're going to put on that? Where does that usually fall in marketing? Is it CS is?

Leslie  21:25

It depends on the community. So you there are different let's say it's called the spaces model. There are, what is that six different types of communities? So support, product, acquisition? C is content. E is engagement, and then last s is success. So it depends on what type of content, what type of community you're building. So of course, it could land under CES, but I'm saying most likely, most of the customers that I'm working with is more of an acquisition, engagement, play. And so we're usually under marketing is usually where I'm seeing it. But you know, I'd love that one day it changed. So it was, you know, a sea level title reporting to the CEO, like that would be my dream. Oh, Chief

Jeff  22:08

community officer.

Leslie  22:09

Yeah, let's go. Yeah,

Jeff  22:12

I think community space out of that, I can't remember what their product was there. We share a building with them. The question that I had is not as applicable. So it's gonna come out as a total non sequitur, by the way. So. But when you were talking about getting this going, and having it be grassroots, and not so forced, the only thing that kept popping up in my head? And I'm not sure if you're familiar with this, are you familiar with the, the Carter versus Wikipedia study that came out a long time ago. So essentially, same time, Microsoft, I believe, launched in Carta, which was, you know, let's take all the encyclopedias and put it online. And then essentially, at the same time, people were like, Let's start Wikipedia, right? There was this and you would now know you're gonna, I can see the light going off in your head, like, yes, there was this point in time where Encarta was a total failure, like compared to like Wikipedia. And it was because it was organic. It was grassroots, people felt like they just wanted to contribute. They were getting money out of contributing, would you be there. But suddenly, some people see it as a badge of honor, that they've created X amount of articles and things like that. So I have, like, that's a data point, I'd love to hear. You're sort of sort of talking about that for a little bit.

Leslie  23:31

Yeah. I mean, it's that's community. I mean, it's basically community led growth, and you've brought people into your mission, which is why we start with mission vision values, because if you can bring people into your mission, you're gonna have a much better chance of having them want to participate, you know, with you, in that. So yeah, that's a great, that's a great example of that. So yeah, no, I actually have heard that before. That's, that's a great story. Actually, actually,

Jeff  23:58

I haven't heard it for like, a long time ago. And then I was like, almost gonna switch over to Google. And like, was it encouraged again, but like, it was, it was, but it was, I think, when that like, the first wave of community stuff came out, and like, you know, whatever era we were in, or something like that, like, yeah, this case study, and I was, you know, for me at the time, I think it was when I was when we were putting together that developers network were like, no, look, people will want this and they're gonna, you know, then all the gamification comes in. And so I'm not sure if people still do like the gamification on on community. Is that a helpful thing that works?

Leslie  24:29

You know, I think so. I've not done anything with gamification just yet. I mean, I think it's interesting. You brought that up, because I was just finished reading drive by my man,

Jeff  24:42

I wrote it to I can't remember

Leslie  24:43

Daniel Pink, Yes, Dan Pink, just finish. And so that was the whole difference between internal intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, how it works, you know, how intrinsic motivation compares, when can you use extrinsic motivation, motivation, and then Unlike there's some if ands or buts you know, and I guess for, you know, a lot of what we're talking about, it's not prime for extreme extrinsic motivation, like, I'm not doing a repetitive task over and over again, that's going to get me, you know, that's going to take me past the monotony, because we're talking about a lot of, you know, right brain thinking and a lot of creativity and extrinsic does not work on that as well. There's he cites lots of interesting studies in there, and actually how it diminishes motivation when you do that. So I think, I don't know, I don't I haven't, I don't know that I've experienced enough to make a solid judgment, all my thoughts. But that definitely made me think about, you know, how do you motivate people to do these things? And like you said, you know, the people at Wikipedia, they do it because they want to, and they do excellent work, because they want to not because someone's giving them a token, or a star, or $1. So

Jeff  25:58

yeah, no, I'm, I'm I, you know, we're all different people. But I hate gamification every is you can imagine for somebody who's working on lots of internet projects over the last 20 plus years, like, as soon as that came up, I was like, oh, no, like, those are in the same room where people are like, how do we make this go viral? Right. And it's just, yeah, let's just do the right things. And then the right things will happen and everything.

Leslie  26:21

Yeah, yeah. I think gamification works a lot in those support communities, because you want people to answer questions over and over again. So that makes a lot of sense to me. But on the ones where it's like, you know, I see, you ask a question like, Hey, Jeff, I have been there to, you know, do you want to grab a coffee? That's a little bit different. I don't know that you paying me or give me a token or whatever, that wouldn't change my output?

Jeff  26:45

I'll do it anyways. Right? Yeah. It's kind of like nice to have I going to read it. And I'm like, Oh, how many up votes? I like, who cares? You know what I mean? It's just to me, if there was any time, I don't know that you've had to deal with this. But have you ever had to like, recharge a community as it had a good bump at launch? And then it just starts sort of declining? I'm curious, like, what would be some of those factors that that might cause like a declining community?

Leslie  27:14

Well, one would be and I am in the middle of doing one of those. One, yeah, one would be not having appropriate resources. People think I'm going to set it up, and we're going to get going and customers or people are going to start talking and then I'm going to be hands off, we're going to let it run.

Jeff  27:30

So the assumption of what we hear out there is like you just launch and walk away and all the magic happens, right?

Leslie  27:35

Yeah, no, it's totally not going to happen. I forget who posted about this. I think it was Heather fey she's the one of the community people. Leaders at sixth sense. She's like, if you build it, they will not come. Pretty much point blank. So yeah, so I think that's it. I mean, it takes a lot of it's, you know, it's a good six, seven months to even start to see other members help members. And before that, it's hand to hand combat. I mean, I to go back to a story with the team at pavilion, we had a team of 16 at one point, and we did over half a million slack messages. Now, granted, we didn't have all the right technology we should have had. But um, you know, it's like, it's one one Jeff wants to meet so and so let me introduce you to together it's like you have a question, we'd let a sale and well no one answered it, let's tag someone else into the question, simply get an answer. So there's a lot of hands on. And if you're not investing in that, that's the other thing is I don't I won't work with anybody who's not going to have a business be full time, but a dedicated person on community because it's not, it's not gonna work. The other thing is, maybe you haven't done your research and you don't know what motivates your community or what they'd find value to begin with. So it needs to be some good research on that

Jeff  28:51

persona work, or just just basic persona work? Absolutely.

Leslie  28:55

There's gonna work and also like, you know, really just me I do a lot of interviews. So it's like, what, you know, are you in other communities? Now? What do you like about them? What would you like to never see again? What is something you thought of it? You'd love to see the community? Why? And, you know, what, what could this community solve for us, like, really, truly understanding the challenges that a community will solve? Because if there's not, you know, tangible outcome and value for the member, they're not going to keep coming? Yeah. So, so yeah, those are some of the some of the reasons but also, like, we've seen community migrations also, you know, it's like migrating anything, you know, but that's, that's some of the challenges too.

Jeff  29:34

I had this question that I was going to ask, but then I saw something in your eyes when you were talking. So I kind of think I know the answer. Let's see if I'm right. And I was gonna say, when do you get that smile that you know, things are going right. And I think I heard you say I saw your work when you said when the first instance of community people helping each other was

Leslie  29:56

community people helping each other or one of the communities is already launched, they work within Canada, and it's, you know, for international founders moving to Canada, and having them, you know, send a success story or post on LinkedIn and tag the company. I mean, that's, that's huge for them to feel like, you know, that company is part of their journey. So like, you start to see that little spark of emotional connection. It's like, you got it, you know, that's what you're that's what to me, that's what I'm looking for.

Jeff  30:30

Yeah, there's LinkedIn, a community

Leslie  30:33

linked in, you could have a community on LinkedIn, I would not call into the community. I think LinkedIn is a, LinkedIn holds my audience. And if someday I wanted to build a community, I would build my own community, and I would bring that community into an own community. So like, for me, LinkedIn is a rented community. I'm playing on your space, it is not an owned community. So I probably would not call it a community may disagree with me. But I'm not going to trick

Jeff  31:02

question because as soon as you mentioned LinkedIn, I'm like, huh, there's there are community ask things going on in there. But there's a lot more going on in there as well, too, as we all now so yeah, yeah. Secret algorithms, of course, and societies.

Leslie  31:18

Those algorithms,

Jeff  31:19

so I'm always cognizant of time, because, you know, the people are usually just, you know, walking their dog and wanting to log in here, what we're doing, what have I missed him? Do we not cover any of those sort of core tenants of committee, I knew went over everything that I think we've talked about before, but just doesn't look like I think you might have gotten them from from what I'm hearing.

Leslie  31:41

I see. I think we, I think we got it. I mean, ya know, it's like, CEO by in proper expectations, dedicated community manager, and really, the desire to create a point of view on how you want to treat your customers, I'm sure you you also run into that in customer success is like, people are selling, selling, selling, but they haven't truly defined what their point of view is, what their customer experience is going to be beyond, there'll be onboarding, and then you will use the product in I'm sorry, that's not going to that's not a point of classic.

Jeff  32:15

Do you need success criteria and make sure the customer is getting meaning that success? And you're saying, you know, through every stage through every handoff, why are they buying the software and what outcomes they're expecting to see. And then constantly going back and making sure that that's happening? And then you can't renew? Or upsell? If you haven't done that, essentially? So yeah. And how does

Leslie  32:37

that happen? So it's like, not only just that, but like, how does that? How do we want to make to have the what are the things we're going to do to church? And sometimes that's the heart, you know, like the harder stuff. And sometimes that's a soft stuff, like we will make our customers feel x. So

Jeff  32:55

that's great. Well, listen, it's wintertime, not exactly where you are in Dallas. But what is I think I know what it is. And you're gonna make everybody up here in the Northeast cry like what your what your wintertime activity is, like, I'm gonna, you know, we have a outdoor winter bird feeder where we got this like big fake squirrel and now all the winter birds go and eat off. It's amazing. I should take a picture of it. But yeah, that's it. We sit out, we'll drink our coffee, and we'll just watch these these birds come in and feed off. But that's, that's the thing I look like in February right now. That's what keeps me going.

Leslie  33:29

Yeah, well, today, you probably will hate me. I was in between calls. I sat outside, in my lawn chair in front of my pool, watched it sparkle. And just love the sunshine just lets

Jeff  33:42

a little blanket and gloves on. And in a winter. No

Leslie  33:46

white sweater. And, ya know, was beautiful.

Jeff  33:51

That's amazing. I'm jealous while being Texas next month. So I'm looking forward to

Leslie  33:56

some more awesome, awesome. It'll be even more be like summer here for you.

Jeff  33:59

I can't wait. Well, I'll make sure I bring some short sleeves, but can't present in short sleeves, though. But well, it wasn't widely. You're so gracious with your time. And thanks for coming on and talking about sort of that other side of community, which is the sound the more necessary stakes besides just get the software, button everything. So I'll make sure to grab all the places where people can find us Where where are you normally hanging out? If you're not working on communities?

Leslie  34:26

You're probably I mean, you'll find me on LinkedIn. So you can always DM me on LinkedIn. That's the place to find me unless you're in one of the other communities that I'm in which is like six.

Jeff  34:37

Awesome. Well, thanks so much. Hold on one second, and I'll make sure we just square off on a couple of things and we'll talk to you soon