[00:00:00] Mikkel: is community led growth really a thing you should be doing?
[00:00:03] Matt Volm: the amount of effort that you need to put in for the amount of engagement that you get back in the early days is, incredibly outsized, meaning like you need to put in tons of effort intentionally to drive engagement within your community early and often in order for people to engage back
[00:00:24] Mikkel: that's Matt Volm, co founder and CEO of RevOps Co op. And he makes it crystal clear what problems you'll face if you'll choose to build a community for your business.
[00:00:35] Matt Volm: Inevitably you wind up with bad actors, people will start showing up with less than ideal. Intentions. And so now you think like you're in this great spot where like things can start to naturally and organically happen. And like, you can just like sit back. Now you need to start like investing your time and resources into moderating all of the stuff
[00:00:58] Toni: Before we jump into the show, today's is to you by EverStage, the top sales commissions platform on G2, Gartner, Peer Insights,
[00:01:08] and Trust Radius with more 2000 reviews from customers like Diligent, Wiley,
[00:01:14] Trimble, and more.
[00:01:16] Visit everstage. com and mention Revenue Formula unlock a personalized sales compensation strategy session with one of EverStage's RevOps experts.
[00:01:27] And now, enjoy the show,
[00:01:28] Mikkel: What's that jersey you have in the background?
[00:01:31] Matt Volm: Yeah,
[00:01:31] Mikkel: like a number one. I don't know.
[00:01:33] Matt Volm: yeah, and it says RevOps on it. It's from it's from the folks over at Traction Complete. They are one of our community partners. And when they joined they're like, Hey, you know, what's your address? Want to just send you a little something. I was like, that sounds good. I was expecting, you know, like coffee beans or
[00:01:50] something.
[00:01:50] I don't know, you know, and then this like Jersey shows up and I was like, this is awesome. So, so yeah, I was like, I got to put this somewhere in the office. So yeah.
[00:01:58] right now it's just over the chair.
[00:02:00] Mikkel: So you're going to get one of those what do you call it? Like the frames to put it in?
[00:02:03] Matt Volm: I
[00:02:03] Mikkel: And then sign it.
[00:02:05] Matt Volm: Yeah.
[00:02:05] Mikkel: what's going to happen is
[00:02:06] Matt Volm: And then auction it off.
[00:02:08] Mikkel: And you're gonna get 10 more jerseys now from every conceivable vendor, No, that's awesome. It's, it's so funny. I feel like merchandise, for the most part, it's a miss. And then, you know, obviously grateful when you get a good bottle of wine, but then I never remember who sent it.
[00:02:29] Toni: But no one ever gives you a great bottle of wine. No, it happens once.
[00:02:32] That just doesn't, I don't think that actually happens. Matt, wonderful to have you here. I think we should just jump right in there with maybe tell us a little bit, the story of how you came to creating a community, right? Kind of, because I think there are really a couple of interesting twists and turns to it.
[00:02:50] And I think that should be the first thing the audience learns.
[00:02:53] Matt Volm: Yeah, so in typical, I'll say startup fashion, where we are right now as a company is certainly not where we thought we would ever be when we first started. So I started this current company about four and a half years ago. And originally the idea was we were going to build. So, we were going to build a product called FunnelIQ, which was essentially end to end go to market analytics.
[00:03:20] So previously I was at an early stage startup as the VP of BizOps. And every, every Monday we would always get the various teams together to, you know, review, you know, Metrics, KPIs, talk about what we did last week, our game plan for the current week. And, you know, everyone like always spent hours putting these manual spreadsheets together.
[00:03:40] And then we spent our meetings mostly arguing over the data, whether it was right or wrong. And this is right when kind of RevOps was starting to bubble up, if you will. And I was
[00:03:51] like, you know, like, there's got to be a better way. Like, I shouldn't need. Like a data engineer to be able to like give my marketing leaders and my sales leaders and my CS leaders, the, the the data that they need to bring to these meetings and to be able to run their, their teams successfully. And so that was kind of the idea behind FunnelIQ is like, Hey, you know, let's productize that, right? Like, let's
[00:04:16] bring, let's put the power into the hands of revenue operators to be able to you know, deliver. Metrics, insights to their stakeholders you know, without needing engineering resources.
[00:04:27] And so we raised pre seed and seed on that idea and we started to, you know, kind of build our product as any software startup would. And one of our angel investors was was like, Hey, you know, you should think about starting a community for people. People in, in RevOps. And I was like, that sounds great, but what's a community?
[00:04:48] Like, what do you even mean by that?
[00:04:50] And you know, he like kind of told me some things, right. On like what he thought it meant or essentially I was left with like, you can define it any way that you want, but the recommendation for the community was, you know, Hey, like RevOps is this new profession and like with any new profession people need. Resources, help, connections, and you know, community can be a place that can provide them with those, with those resources. So, we were like, hey, let's start a community as part of our, Go to market efforts with FunnelIQ. And so we decided to start a community. We decided to separately brand the community rather than call it like, you know, the FunnelIQ community.
[00:05:32] Cause we didn't want it to be tied to the product. We did want it to be this separate, you know, kind of independent thing that could deliver value to people in revenue operations. And then through that, right. We would be able to learn about. People in RevOps, the problems that they had, we'd be able to kind of make them aware of our own product and solution, right?
[00:05:54] And so that was the origin, I guess, of RevOps Co op and why we started the community in the first place. And originally we just started it as a Slack group and a newsletter. Uh, That was, you know, Those are the two programs that we ran for, for the community. And then, you know, in typical startup fashion, we continued to build our software product.
[00:06:16] We brought our product to market. We had some paying customers, but just nothing where we ever found product market fit. And so a little over two years ago, We kind of got to the spot where I was looking at things and I was just like, man, you know, like if we continue down this path, you know, we probably got like another 10, 12 months left.
[00:06:36] And then, you know, like money's out and you know, there's no more company to, to be left with. And I was like, so we can do that. Right. Or, you know, we can kind of cut the cord now and sunset the product and kind of go back to the drawing board. And so we opted to do the latter.
[00:06:53] And so we sunsetted the FunnelIQ product and decided to just focus on the community as our business and see if there was a business to be had there. And that's really been the focus ever since for the last two, two and a half years now has been just community building and growing RevOps Co op to, I think we've got about 15, 000 plus
[00:07:12] members now, kind of all over the globe.
[00:07:14] Toni: And the if, if I saw this right, you also founded a company and maybe it was in the same context of building software for community itself, right? Kind of that, that happened probably in parallel to your experience with Viral Ops Co ops, kind of seeing all of those pains, what kind of, you know, what they are around and then trying to fix that.
[00:07:32] Can you tell us a little bit maybe about that journey briefly as well?
[00:07:35] Matt Volm: Yeah. So I, I did, I guess I did kind of skip over that a little bit in the middle. So I mentioned when So when we sunsetted FunnelIQ and we went back to the drawing board, you know, at first I was like, okay, we've got, we still got our community RevOps co op and I was like, well, let's see if there's a way to right.
[00:07:51] Drive revenue, monetize anything that we have with the community. And then we'll kind of evaluate other problems that we see in the market and maybe our own unique like viewpoint and like superpowers as a team to see what other problems might be worth. And so, at the time this was before the economy and the markets have really shifted, right?
[00:08:17] From, you know, like the venture market was still hot, right? Like, crypto was still popular, right? Like everyone was still moving to Miami. Like, so this was like right before
[00:08:27] all those things all those things changed. At the time, what we saw, we were like, hey, you know, like, we've got this community. We started it as part of our own go to market efforts. A lot of other companies had started their own communities as well. And we looked at a lot of the products that were out there, these community platforms, and we were like, you know, honestly, like, they just kind of suck. Like, we've used some of them. They weren't good. And so we were like, let's build a product for ourselves, a community management platform. Platform product, right, for ourselves. Solve our own problems and then we'll bring that to market. And so we started working on that idea. We were calling that product Atomic and we built a product and we were using it ourselves and it was delivering a lot of value. And then the market shifted. And within like a month or two, like these community teams that we were planning to essentially sell into, they were the first ones that were let go and like being part of RIFs.
[00:09:28] And so now we had the opposite problem as we did with FunnelIQ. So with FunnelIQ, we knew there was a market and RevOps was growing. But we weren't able to solve the problem that like we didn't have the right recipe, the right, like, we just couldn't figure out like the right product to solve that problem and deliver value in a way that we could build a business on. And so there we, we were like, Hey, you know, there's market potential, but we couldn't figure out like what the product was. Would look
[00:09:56] like to solve those problems. With Atomic, we realized we had the opposite problem. We had a product that was super valuable for us. And we did have a handful of users that were paying us and we're very happy with the product as well. But once the market shifted, it was like, there's no more, like, there's not, there's just not a very big market for this, right? Like not a lot of people are going to be operating these. Slack communities and, you know, kind of running these things as part of their own go to market efforts, the ones that will still exist are going to be, you know, like more of a, like a side project or a side hustle typically.
[00:10:33] And so it's like, you know, there's not a huge market potential for this sort of product. And so ended up making the same decision with that of like, Hey, you know, we need to, Sunset, this, this product. Now, the difference there with FunnelIQ is we actually, we are still using the atomic product internally.
[00:10:52] So it's basically like a internal product that we built for ourselves. And I think between like. AWS and like, you know, the other like random miscellaneous charges. It costs us like a hundred bucks a month or something, right. To keep it, keep it running, but it still does a lot of automation and other things for us.
[00:11:09] So, very valuable, you know, kind of internal product, I guess that we're, we're, we're left with. But yeah, that was the, call it the, I don't even know what pivot that would have been, but yeah, it came to the same conclusion with Atomic as we did for, for Funnel IQ.
[00:11:24] Mikkel: So, I mean, this story seems a bit familiar, doesn't it? You, you have to admit, we've gone through a similar exercise. What's what you know, could be salvaged from the company? Was then this show, which also has a community. So, I mean, Groblox was in a
[00:11:41] Toni: similar space as Funnel IQ. That's kind of what he's kind of referring to.
[00:11:44] And you know, as, as part of building Groblox, we're like, how should we do this? And then we kind of built the show and now we kind of took the show out and, and doing something else with it actually. Yeah. But I was, I was actually, no, kind of, you have a, you have a question, right?
[00:11:56] Mikkel: Yeah, no. So I think We basically now have a person on this show who's managed to build a successful community.
[00:12:02] And I've, and I, by the way, know this, I'm in there lurking. I'm not super active because I'm not a RevOps, I guess, but I'm in there and I can just say is one of the more active communities. Usually what people then probably would proceed to ask you, Matt, is, well, how do we build an awesome community and where should we go?
[00:12:17] I actually think it would be more interesting to maybe talk about why shouldn't folks be building a community right now? Because you kind of also mentioned it was one of the first things folks cut. So I'd be curious to hear what are some of the things where you would go like, Hey, actually, I don't think you should do it.
[00:12:33] Matt Volm: Yeah.
[00:12:34] Well, so one, it's I mean, building any business or product, right, is pretty hard. But I'll say like building a community and then building a community business is like, I don't know, uniquely hard for a couple of reasons is you know, like one now, especially now there's a lot of, I'll say like, there's a lot of options out there for people when it comes to communities.
[00:13:00] Communities and so I know. You know, like one of the things that like we hear often from members and other folks is like, uh, you know, like, I just don't want another Slack group, right? I
[00:13:10] don't want another, like Slack icon hanging out. I'm in my Slack that I need to like go to. And my response to that is like, that is totally okay. I get that 100%. And so what that means for us is like, we need to offer a variety of programs or ways that members and folks can can get involved and participate in the community. Some people love the Slack group, right? They love being able to Go in there, ask a question, and like, immediately get a bunch of different responses. Other people are like, you know, there's so much activity in there, it's hard to keep up, right? It's noisy, I just don't want another thing. And so it's like, okay, well, you know, then we need to offer you other ways to participate in the community, other programs, right? So we have our newsletter we have digital events that we do, we have in person events that we do, we have courses, we have a knowledge hub, we have our conference, right?
[00:14:05] So, Now you're in the spot where like you need to offer a variety of different like programs, right? Which are hard to maintain and, you know, hard to execute on and right? Like deliver value on all of those things. So that's one. The other thing I'll mention is or a second thing I'll mention is community engagement, especially like when you're first starting a community, is really hard.
[00:14:34] And the amount of effort that you need to put in for the amount of engagement that you get back in the early days is, incredibly outsized, meaning like you need to put in tons of effort intentionally to drive engagement within your community early and often in order for people to engage back, get value, and then ultimately get to this tipping point that you want to get to, which is your effort then shifts from Like trying to drive engagement that's there to now moderating
[00:15:09] the engagement that is taking place.
[00:15:11] So that's another thing where, right, like in the early days, I was there, you know, in our Slack group trying to like ask questions, drum up engagements, respond to every introduction that would pop up, you know, leave a bunch of like Slack emojis on everything you know, with digital events and elsewhere, right, like trying to get people to, Register and attend and, you know, engage.
[00:15:33] And so sending out all of these like LinkedIn DMs and Slack messages, all this stuff, right? Like you do all this work. And then eventually you get to this point where as more and more people start coming in, right? You're like now engagement starts to naturally happen, right? And you're like, Oh, this is great. But then guess what? Inevitably you wind up with bad actors, right? Like people will start showing up with less than ideal. Intentions. And so now you think like you're in this great spot where like things can start to naturally and organically happen. And like, you can just like sit back. The first part of that is true.
[00:16:09] The second part is not. Now you need to start like investing your time and resources into moderating all of the stuff that is there. And I can give you a few examples of like some crazy shit that people have tried to pull within our community. So like. One example uh, this actually happened like a couple of months ago uh, someone joined and kid you not, within 10 minutes started to send a DM to literally every person in the Slack group basically like pitching them on their product.
[00:16:40] They were like, Hey, I'm person XYZ. I'm the co founder of this company. This is what they do. You can learn more here. And like, would you like a demo? And so like, all of a sudden I started to get like a flurry of like, like spam reports. So, I, you know, like I kick this person out of the community. Then they sign up, again, with a different email address.
[00:17:04] And manage to, like, sneak their way back in and start the same thing starting to happen. So, like, there's no automated way to, like, track for stuff like that or to, like, prevent stuff like that from from happening, right? So, like, that's just one example of, like, things that cost time and energy. And actually another thing this was, like, a year, two years ago, someone joined the community They were working at like a revenue technology company and you know, like started to ask some questions about like our, like sponsoring stuff and like different things.
[00:17:41] Right. So I was like, you know, kind of giving them idea and like some ways that they could get involved, what they could do as a member, what they could do as a partner. Then, you know, like I thought we were going to get to a deal, right? Eventually they kind of just went dark on me. I didn't think anything of it. And all of a sudden, like a couple of weeks later I get another, I get like a spam report from a user. They're like, Hey you probably want to know about this. This guy just DM me asking if I wanted to join his RevOps community. And I looked and it was this guy who was like all interested in our partner program and stuff.
[00:18:12] And so clearly he like joined our community, was sleuthing around to just like collect as much information as he could, cause he wanted to go and like build his own community for his company. And then he started to like invite. Everyone who was in our community to join his community. Again, like, I get reports of all this.
[00:18:28] So, like, those are just two examples, like, of things that you know, are like
[00:18:34] wild that you need to worry about, right? But, like, another example of, like, why the community building thing is not easy. And then the third thing that I'll mention, this is, like, Whether you're trying to build a community as a business like we are, or if you're building the community as part of a strategy that you might have for your own company is like things like things cost money, right?
[00:19:00] Like your time is valuable, right? Like I need to pay people to moderate our Slack group. I need to pay people to create content for us. None of these things are free, right? But the expectation from the members and from other people, right, is like a lot of this stuff, right, that we deliver, like, the expectation is that it should be free.
[00:19:23] So now you're in this conundrum where it's like, to create a community that's valuable for members, there's the expectation for a lot of people that, like, that stuff should be free for them. But in order to Deliver on that promise, like you need to spend money and invest in order to do this. And so you're in this constant like push and pull that is different than any software or digital product where it's like very obvious that like people would expect to exchange, you know, like money for
[00:19:56] what they get in return. Like community is not that way. And so those are three challenges, right? Of like building a business and running a community that. Are simply, yeah, they're not easy.
[00:20:09] Toni: Would you say, I mean, you mentioned, hey, RevOps was pretty early on back then, and therefore it made sense to create a community around it. It might have been one of the reasons why, why this worked out for you. Do you think, you know, is that a, is that a valid way to go about it? It's like, oh, there's a new role, probably new, new communities necessary.
[00:20:27] Would you, you know, If someone was considering to build a community as part of that company, not, not necessarily kind of to build a community as the co you know, company itself. Would you say that that's a good way of reasoning through this? Or would you even, even in that case, you're like, you know what, don't do it.
[00:20:42] You know, don't, don't build a community yourself.
[00:20:44] Matt Volm: Yeah, I think it's actually very, well, so I'll tell you stuff about our story and how we kind of lucked into this and then I'll end with a, like a thing about how I think, you know, you can approach this in the same way you would with any product that you're
[00:20:58] building. So, for us with RevOps, Again, like hindsight is 20 20.
[00:21:03] So, I want to preface this, like I was not some visionary that had all of this in mind when we started things. But as I look back, I think the things that worked out in our favor and where we really lucked out are one, like you said, Toni, RevOps is, it was a new role. Right. And so, it was this new thing that was taking off and If you look at the RevOps role, there's a couple of things that are unique about it.
[00:21:30] One is that no one goes to school to get a, you know, like a degree in revenue operations, right? And so with this new role, it meant a lot of people were learning on the job and they were learning as they, they went. And so naturally, then you start to ask yourself, like, am I doing this right? Is there a better way, right?
[00:21:51] You start to kind of look and search for ways to do your job. And then the other thing that worked in our favor with RevOps is that typically they were small teams or teams of one. And so when you were faced with those questions of like, how should I do this? Is this the right way? You look around and you're the only one at your company doing it, right?
[00:22:10] So it's like, okay, like who the hell should I ask? Right? I, I have no idea. Right? And so then again, you go out searching that sort of thing.
[00:22:19] And then the third thing was COVID and the pandemic meant
[00:22:23] lots of people were working from home sitting in their home offices, right? And so now you're in the spot where you have no formal education or revenue operations.
[00:22:31] You're learning on the job. You're typically the only person at your company or one of a few that actually do it. And you're in your home office and you're like, How on earth, you know, I've got all these expectations, right? How can I do this better? How can I execute on this in the best way?
[00:22:46] And a community was a great resource for them because it gave them access to other people like them, other, right?
[00:22:53] We were writing like blogs and doing these digital events, right? So people now had access to all these resources and people to help them do their jobs better. And there weren't a lot of any other you Call it like communities or quote unquote products like them, like us that were out there in the market for people. And I think that's the, like the other thing that I'll mention. So if you're in a spot.
[00:23:18] Where, you know, again, you have a company, you're building a product and you're like, Hey, I think there's an opportunity for us to build a community to help, you know, drive loyalty, awareness, right? All these things that you know, community can do for you is like one you know, you've got to look at what other options people have. Like, are there other communities, right, in the same way that you would if you were trying to solve a problem and solve it with a digital solution? Approach community the same way of like, what's the problem that you're going to solve
[00:23:47] for these people? And then what solution are you going to offer them? And understand the competition, right, that might be out there in the market. And that's where, you know, like, there's always.
[00:23:59] Opportunity and I think the the biggest thing for us that we did and I think where people could see opportunity today is You know, like there's that saying the riches are in the niches.
[00:24:09] So it's
[00:24:10] like find your slice and Like stick to it, right? So for us from the very beginning it was all about rev ops all the time So if you joined and you wanted To, you know, like you were more into like, I don't know, sales development and like, you know, how to write the best, like cold email, you know, you're probably not going to get a whole lot of value from RevOps Co op, but you know, if you wanted, if like, if you're super into like email deliverability and like how to set up all the things and integrations, right.
[00:24:42] To like, make sure you're not landing in spam and increasing your open rates and reply rates, like that stuff is talked about all the time. In our community. And so for us, like we've stayed really true to that, even though you could be tempted to try to like broaden to again, like either grow or like get more people in or appeal to more type of people. So I think that's the other thing, like for anyone, any companies who might be looking at starting communities today is like the same way you would with a V1 of a digital product
[00:25:11] is like start narrow, right? Like, and just like stay hyper focused on that. And that'll be the thing that'll really drive value. For your members.
[00:25:20] Toni: I just wanted to comment on this and then you can, you can go for the next question here, but it's like, you know, when you, when you think about communities, you think about dbt labs, right? They build a massive community and then blew up. I think Figma did the same thing, community, and you know, then it blew up.
[00:25:35] And there, there are a bunch of other examples for that. And go to market partners then also came out with community led growth, right? So it's like, oh, there's. This is apparently a way to build pipeline and to help a company kind of increase. So this is, this is the allure for people. It's like, Oh, wow, this is, you know, it's not only inbound and outbound.
[00:25:52] I can do something else now as well. But I think what you kind of said there is also what, what went through my mind when, when we were actually thinking about this back in the day was. It's, it's really like a product that needs to reach product market fit in order to achieve that kind of what's missing with the people out there, you know, what is it that you're going to deliver?
[00:26:11] And yes, you need to think about it like product market fit, which means it's going to be extremely painful. It's going to be really difficult to get there. And don't just think opening a Slack channel, sending out some invitations and boom, you have a community that is not how it's going to how it's going to work.
[00:26:26] But over to you, Mikkel.
[00:26:28] Mikkel: No, I don't know if you have a comment back on that.
[00:26:30] Matt Volm: No, just, it's exactly what Toni said, which is like, you wish that it just took inviting a bunch of people to
[00:26:38] like, again, join an email list or like get into your Slack group to to have a quote unquote community. But it's a lot harder than that. And then the other thing that I'll mention is,
[00:26:49] For anyone, any companies, again that are either looking at like starting their own communities or participating in communities you brought up like the ROI and like the, the, the pipeline builder. So, you know, like one I don't want to say the like attribution and measurement of this stuff is like impossible, but like, you know, don't expect to, to be able to like clearly trace like X number of. deals or pipeline that you've sourced from the, the community because it's like, well, you won't be able to, it'll be really hard. Right. And so like, I'll just give you a couple of examples of some of the things that, that we've seen to like, to prove that out. So one was talking with a member a couple of weeks ago, and they were talking about CPQ and they brought up like one of the the companies that is a partner of ours in the, in the community. And they were like, Oh yeah, I, you know, I saw the like the new partner announcement that you had on them a couple of months ago. And just recently we like decided to to like start looking at a new CPQ provider. So I like I actually just took a demo. With them last week just went to their website, right, like signed up for a demo. And then I asked the our, our partner about that. And they were like, oh yeah, no, they just, like, it was marked as inbound on, on the, the demo side, right? And so it's like, that's one example of like, you start showing up in places, like existing communities, or you start your own. Those sort of things are going to happen all the time.
[00:28:24] And that's kind of the point, right? Is like you start to show up in consistent ways in all of these different channels that drives the outcome that you're looking to, to achieve, but it's not going to be directly attributable or,
[00:28:37] or measurable. And then the other thing that I'll mention is and this goes typically like against the the natural tendencies of anyone in sales, which is.
[00:28:48] You'll actually deliver the most value through community by not mentioning or pitching your product at all. Instead, just lead with the category expertise that you have, which will generate the product outcomes that you're looking to drive. So one of our partners a couple months ago through the community, they have this software that helps you with financial planning. And like your revenue operating model, basically. And so we did a digital event with them. Where they just talked about like the building blocks of a successful financial plan and a revenue operating model, right? Like how you can build this in a spreadsheet. They literally did not mention their product at all, even though their product basically automates all this stuff for you. And the week after the event, the digital event with them, I saw them in person and I was like, Oh, Hey, how'd that, you know, how'd that event go? We did last week. They were like, it was great. We didn't mention our product at all. And we've already gotten like 10 demos. And so like, those are the things that with participating in communities, again, whether it's your own that you start or one that you decide to to, you know, partner with is like, those go against the, like the expectation or the natural tendency of any marketer, any salesperson, which is like, okay, I've got to get comfortable with maybe not having a lot of, Attribution to pipeline or closed loan dollars.
[00:30:13] And I need to like get comfortable with leading with my category expertise and not mentioning my product at all in order to be successful. Like, but those are actually the two things like that will make you the most successful through any community strategy that you deploy.
[00:30:27] Mikkel: It's just so funny. Like you mentioned earlier, bad actors, and I was going to go like, yeah, if you'd build this as a company, the bad actors, guess what? They're going to be your sales people. In some cases, they're going to be like hounding that community and pitching. And also you're probably going to have conversations happening there that you kind of don't want happening such as an alternative to your solution, to be quite honest, that, you know, it might be a thing that you then just need to, to kind of figure out what to deal with.
[00:30:53] And it's really
[00:30:54] Matt Volm: Oh yeah.
[00:30:55] Mikkel: I kind of wonder, like, is, is there, is it legitimate to start a community with the sole purpose of building pipeline? Honestly, just based on what you said, it's like, Hey, you shouldn't do any selling you know, that, that kind of thing. Do you think that's perfectly fine? And how would you even, you know, go about that then?
[00:31:15] Matt Volm: Yeah. Well, I think the, the way that I always talk about, Like brands or vendors or products, right? Participating in communities, whether it's their own or an existing one is, you know, you can get value in really three ways. So pipeline generation is absolutely One of them Pipeline Influence is another, and then just overall awareness, right?
[00:31:40] Air cover for
[00:31:41] all of the other things that you're doing, whether it's ABM or outbound or any of that stuff, right? Those are like three concrete ways that you as a company can get value from participating in communities. But like I said, the way that you'll accomplish those three things are different than the way that you go to market through any other channel, which is, you know, like I said, leading with the expertise that you have. It's recognizing that in that Slack group, for example, when someone asks a question about CPQ, you may or may not be brought up. And if you are, you might be alongside a bunch of other competitors of yours. And again, like, then you're like, your natural tendency is that you want to like, I don't know, you know, dive in, right?
[00:32:28] Start to like, talk about like why you're different and like how you're better, right? But that's actually like, if you do that, that is the thing that will actually make you look
[00:32:36] most poorly to those people there. And so, instead like in those cases, right? Like, You know, like loop in customers that you have, right?
[00:32:47] Like, let them do the talking do the talking for you. You know, like respond or like, reply to things that are relevant maybe in that post. Don't bad mouth your competition, right? Like don't, like, don't try to hard sell or pitch anyone right there, like in the Slack thread, like that stuff's not, not going to work. But like learn from all the stuff that's there, right? If someone, for example, like if someone asks a question about a category, right? And a bunch of people respond and no one mentions your name, like learn from that, right? Like why, like, you know, be like, why are we not, why are we not mentioned at all?
[00:33:22] Even though like, this is our category, right? So, there's a lot of value that you can get from,
[00:33:27] Customer discovery, learning about the way that your your prospects potentially talk, the problems that they have, right? How they interact, how they engage, like that can make you better at going to market through all the other channels that you have.
[00:33:41] And then, like I said, give you another avenue to deploy your category expertise and subject matter expertise, which is really how you can be most effective in communities.
[00:33:51] Toni: one of the ways I was thinking about building, you know, what would be the upside of building a community, because I agree with all of these things, by the way and, and I think primarily it's actually an awareness play it's less so the other stuff, even though the other stuff sounds more valuable, the way I was thinking about it was like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we had someone that knows our brands or kind of knows the community, and then they invite all of their friends.
[00:34:13] And then they suddenly also know our brand, right? So that's what, what I was kind of thinking about there you know, what the value would be, but, but be that as it may. So we, we talked about some of the macro events that happened that helped you, right? RevOps inception, and then, you know, really kind of the increase of that.
[00:34:28] We, we talked about COVID et cetera.
[00:34:31] Do you, you know, it's, it's hard to almost avoid this topic, but do you think with the, with the current, you know, Gen AI and all that stuff, do you think that people flock more to communities actually because of some, some of the more synthetic content that's online and it's harder to differentiate?
[00:34:48] Like, is this a, is a real comment? Is it, is it real LinkedIn posts and kind of drawing more to the, Hey, no, this, This clearly is a person, you know, in the community. Do you see a trend there or is this kind of I'm just making up things.
[00:35:01] Matt Volm: No, so I think well, so one, I'll answer, I'll answer first with some data, and then two, I'll, I'll give you my kind of thoughts or opinions on that. So, so we are, so over the last what, like four, four and a half years now we have basically been adding about 75 new members per week to the community since, So like that hasn't changed really at all.
[00:35:26] And that happens through people joining, inviting their team members, their friends, their colleagues. That happens through people seeing our own content on the internet, right? And so like people are people are joining at the same rate that they have been for the last four years or so. I think mostly because one RevOps is Expanding outside of the United States.
[00:35:49] So a lot more countries or companies in other countries outside of the U. S. are adopting revenue operations. And the other thing we're seeing is RevOps is expanding outside of software and technology companies. So a lot, a lot of the newer members that we're getting now are at an increasing rate outside of software and technology, which is very different than it was before. And I think Again, like all companies, like we've had to certainly evolve as time has gone on. I mentioned how we started as a Slack group and a newsletter and then added some, you know, digital events. And a lot of the stuff that we were doing was just digital. But now we've added a lot more in person stuff to the mix.
[00:36:34] So we have, you know, RevOps AFR conference. You're going to be speaking at the
[00:36:38] event in Berlin in June. We have a U. S. event in New Orleans in May. We do a lot of small group in person events, you know, we're doing like some of these like small group dinners in places like San Francisco and Seattle and elsewhere. So I think the main thing that people are kind of, I don't know if craving or like have demand for now is like The human to human kind of peer to
[00:37:02] peer connections. And even like post COVID, right? Like, you know, even though that's the spot we're in now, again, a lot of people are still either working from home or in this hybrid environment, revenue operators at least are, you know, still typically small teams or teams of one. And so while AI and kind of gen AI is definitely like, there's just a lot more noise. Digital noise around those things. I think that's driving people to actually want a lot more like actually person to person connection now than it ever has before. And so we're just trying to, again, like through our community, at least give people a variety of ways to. To achieve that, to get that in person connection, whether it's through these conferences, these smaller group in person events, or even just like, you know, peer to peer matching and like connections that we can make and facilitate through the community, maybe over Slack, maybe over LinkedIn, right? But like, yeah, connecting people, right?
[00:37:56] You know, where it's not like there's a robot on the other side.
[00:38:00] Mikkel: I also kind of wonder like, so when we started this show, we, we looked at each other and we said, Hey, we're going to give it a year because that's probably what it's going to take. And I also imagine just having heard the story of, Hey, initially you're going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting with the engagement until you can kind of let go.
[00:38:16] And it's, it's moderation. How, how long do you think it will take on average? Like let's say you would be your rule of thumb in terms of how long would it take until you start seeing some results if you want to do it as a business? And what mindset do you need to start this thing with even?
[00:38:33] Matt Volm: Yeah. Well, I think as a, as a founder of Anything, I don't know. Someone asked me this question like a couple of months ago. They're like you know, well, how did, like, how'd you know when, when you made it? And I was like, yeah, I never know. Like I have no fucking idea if I made it. I don't know if I'll ever know when I make it because right.
[00:38:56] And like, you guys know this, like starting companies, right? Like, It's a little like day to day, week to week. You're like, you know, like that's the mindset that you have to have is like, I don't know if this thing will be around tomorrow. Right. So like, what else can I do today? Right. To like drive value, create value, like make this thing exist tomorrow. So like that's kind of the mindset that I've had from the very beginning. And it's literally just like, You know, let's try new things and you kind of go into those with the expectation that they're not going to work and you're going to have to like move on to the next thing that will work and somehow be okay with literally doing that every day of your life over four and a half years.
[00:39:35] That's been my experience now. And still being in that spot where you're never comfortable that things are working, even if they are working. Cause again, you, you know, like you've seen it before. Like you can't take any of that stuff for granted. Markets change, businesses change world leaders change, right?
[00:39:54] Like you don't know what's going to happen that's going to impact the thing that you have now. So starting anything new, I think like, again, whether it's an internal initiative at a company or something that you're going to start on your own for yourself, that's kind of like the mindset you've got to approach it with is like, you know, do something for yourself today to drive value for. Tomorrow and know that that's essentially what you're signing up for and it's never gonna feel Comfortable and you've got to be fine Knowing that right gonna get knocked down on your face every day and you got to get back up and try it tomorrow Yeah
[00:40:33] Mikkel: for a while and very popular is HubSpot user groups. guess we could kind of clarify that as a community. I don't know if they have a formal channel where people interface, but they have meetups, they have specific news going out to that group.
[00:40:47] I just wonder if that's a, maybe a more feasible way to go about it for some companies at least to think about that because then they, you basically shed the weight of and maybe you don't, but bad actors but you do still get the challenging conversations now in a Slack channel, right? I don't know if you've, you've given any thought or reflection into that kind of dimension, because we've, we've at least discussed it from usually a acquisition you know, point of view.
[00:41:11] And I think when you look at go to market partners, when you stack community led growth along with outbound, it just, it just becomes an acquisition thing,
[00:41:19] Toni: right?
[00:41:20] Matt Volm: Yeah.
[00:41:20] Yeah, so if I was starting a software company today or if I had a software company, I think there's there's, I don't know, this is the way that I would, I guess, look at community. So, I think you can serve prospects and customers through community. And you brought up the HubSpot example, right? So, I'm sure you've seen a lot of companies that do their customer support
[00:41:44] through Slack.
[00:41:46] Toni: Yeah.
[00:41:47] Matt Volm: So, you know, so one, it's like, people are already there, right? They're typically using that app to do business and do their jobs already. So why not deliver customer support and kind of customer success through Something like Slack which means, right, have a separate Slack workspace.
[00:42:05] You can invite those people there. Your CSMs can be in there, right? You can take, you can do support tickets, the whole deal. And there's other software products out there that can help you, help you do that. Right. So if you're going to take that approach to customer success, which I think is a smart one, then it's like, well, why not, you know, maybe branch out, you side of your customers and whether you make it product specific, like a HubSpot user group or category specific you know, like, like we did right with RevOps Co op, right?
[00:42:36] Maybe aimed at your, your persona or your ICP, you know, like you can start like we did, right? You have a Slack workspace and you have a newsletter that has some unique and valuable Content like that can be a very good starting point for a community. And now you, if you're inviting people to the Slack group, for example, you're now winding up you know, in a place where you have your customers and your prospects now in the same place. And again, you know, you just keep assuming you continue to grow, get more customers, more customers start getting added to that, right? And so then you're now creating this kind of natural environment where people can naturally. interact with each other and you're delivering value to both. And you know, in a very, I don't know, logical way, right?
[00:43:20] Where you're delivering customer success and customer support to your customers. You're delivering kind of thought leadership, category expertise that you have to your prospects and you're creating. This natural environment for them to connect and engage with each other, which is also very valuable for all of them that's there.
[00:43:38] So I think that's one unique way that people could look at community building today.
[00:43:43] Toni: Yeah. And, and I kind of just commenting on this, maybe also to um, to
[00:43:47] Mikkel: sunset the show, as you said it last time.
[00:43:50] Toni: We wanted to cut that out to kind of maybe kind of slowly and the episode actually is also. So what I'm also hearing is not, you know, community doesn't equal Slack or Slack group or Slack conversation or something like this, but there are many different ways to go about building a community.
[00:44:07] They, I think the. You know what you said there in the end sounds like a really cool natural way for many organizations to try and, you know, not necessarily kind of build a community for pipe gen or for, you know, awareness purposes, but to still have a place for people to meet and, and, and, and yes, still, you know, serve a business purpose.
[00:44:26] Right. So I think there are pretty cool different ways around it. If you do want to build a community to, to kind of build awareness and Just know it's a lot more difficult than you think, right? I think that's, that's the other message coming around here from from Matt here today. And I think, I think that kind of rounds it up pretty nicely.
[00:44:43] Did you have another take away, Mikkel?
[00:44:45] Mikkel: No, I was just going to say it's it's great to get someone who built a successful community to come on and say, Hey, Toni. Here's like all the reasons you shouldn't do it. So now people can decide, are we actually going to do this thing or?
[00:44:57] Toni: And because he would never do it because he knows how to position you know, his, his product in the best way.
[00:45:02] If you want to engage with you know, RevOps folks, I think there's no better way than to do it on RevOps Co op. Maybe join, you know, as a, as a sponsor you know, I don't know, probably do this for the events or for the channel and so forth, you know, just hit up Matt I'm sure he has plenty of options for you to
[00:45:19] potentially do this. Matt, thank you so much for spending some time with today and enlightening us and our listeners and have a good day to you and have a good day to everyone. Listening. Have a good one. Bye bye.
[00:45:29] Matt Volm: Thanks, Toni. Thanks, Mikkel.
[00:45:31] Toni: Bye.
