Jared from RevGenius on the role of communities in a remote business world

Kishore: 

Welcome to backstage with Zuddl. I'm your host Kishore from Zuddl's very own marketing team. And this is a podcast where we share eventful stories from thought leaders across industries, to give you epic insights into the world of events and beyond. Welcome back guys. Here we are with episode seven. Now with each episode, we've put out our communities slowly growing and getting stronger. And that's awesome. So thank you to each one of you for listening to Backstage with Zuddl. While I talk about communities, I should tell you about our next guest, uh, who was featured on this episode, Jared Robin co-founder of rev genius, but instead of me telling you what it is all about, let me just take you to the conversation. Let's go. So Jared, welcome to backstage with,

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Jared: 

Hey, it's nice to be here.

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Kishore: 

How's it going? How's the week starting off for you.

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Jared: 

It's starting off. Great. I'm healthy. I'm happy. It's sunny in New York city and, uh, excited to be here.

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Kishore: 

Awesome. Likewise. So to start off with, I think, uh, one of the things that our podcast listeners would love to know is how, uh, re genius was born. I was looking at some timelines, uh, in some of your YouTube content, and I noticed you were born around the same time that Zuddl was. So was Virginia also something that was born out of the pandemic situation?

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Jared: 

A hundred percent. Yes for, for, for a couple of reasons. One, because I didn't have a job so I had more time to make this baby, um, you know, come to life. Right. And second, I do believe that, um, the climate during the pandemic made community more necessary than it's ever been, right. People were outta jobs and they needed a place that allowed them to go to help them find jobs, to help them find empathy for what they were going through to help them to learn in this hard climate, how to secure a job, the new way, how to personally, brand on LinkedIn, how to sell market operate, et cetera. So I do think, uh, it was the perfect storm, so to speak.

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Kishore: 

Sure. And, uh, I also saw, uh, I was just watching some of the videos where I think there was a deck where you mentioned, you kind of imagine rev needs to be somewhere between a social network and a private community. Right.

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Jared:

So, yeah. Um, I think community is essentially a social network with a little more, um, tightness.

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Kishore: 

Hmm.

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Jared:

A little more, um, people like trusting one another, quite a bit more in a community than social. Hmm. People not trying to sell yeah. To one another and don't get me wrong. It happens. But in general, not mass, um, selling and people just wanting to give to one another, um, selflessly. So that's, that's where, um, community sits in my opinion, but it is very social. It has the, you know, the interaction between humans, between people. Um, but the goal isn't necessarily to get engagement and bring that funnel. It's more to help with the current needs. You might have learning as you might need and achieve, uh, the goals at hand, whether that's to learn, to get a job, to get a mentor, etcetera. And I think, um, community does that marvelously and, and frankly, uh, LinkedIn, if used well, could has a lot of those aspects as well.

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Kishore:

And that's somewhere where you guys also started, right. LinkedIn was a part of your vision. Yeah.

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Jared: 

Yeah. We, we realiZuddled, um, there was a lot of noise on LinkedIn and people wanted a little more personal of, uh, connection with folks than they were getting in LinkedIn or other social networks. Hmm. But make no doubt about it. Like there's community on LinkedIn, there's community on Twitter, there's community on Facebook, um, community transcends platform. So for sure, uh, we took it away from social media and brought it to slack because we found, um, our members liked that.

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Kishore:

And, uh, just for someone like me, you know, who found out about communities over the last year or so? Uh, what was like the, of community? Did it have a relevance before the pandemic? Was it big then?

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Jared:

So community as a whole has been around since we were born. Right. You know, communities within the schools, you have clubs, you've gone to fraternities, sororities, um, parents, community for all the kids at the school. This is church, religion, religion, some of the biggest communities, right?

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Kishore: 

Yeah.

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Jared: 

Community as a whole has been around probably since the beginning of time, the beginning of our lives, we've seen it everywhere.

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Kishore: 

Sure.

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Jared:

Community evolving from something that's just to support your yourself outside of work. Right. Cause a lot of the communities out there support you outside and, and there's meetup groups, there's been meetup.com since the beginning, there's been events and there's titles of the groups that could be a community. Um, but the bridge for leveraging community for your job and your professional life, um, certainly has doubled down the past few years, right. Where community is a business model and it's evolved. Um, I believe it started from the business model standpoint from people that like to throw events, remember sales hacker did a wonderful job at that. Still do, um, meet up groups that charged per tickets that was there. And a lot of them were side projects or side hustles from other folks, bringing people together. Um, and, and very event driven community is still very event driven. Um, but you're seeing it, no cost, easier access, more accessible, more digital through the pandemic. And now you're also seeing it at least through RevGen and rev league tied towards outcomes.

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Kishore: 

Right.

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Jared:

And often like, like for instance, uh, tomorrow we have a hundred people signed up to get into SAS sales at no cost. Like that's pretty cool. It's a three part series. We've also launched cohorts where we're taking 50 folks a month to get them into software sales and they're not paying a thing. So now community is starting to get tied towards outcomes and helping people, um, and know or low cost.

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Kishore: 

Sure. And, uh, I mean, uh, one of the things that you guys run, uh, on a large scale is events. Right. Um, and can you tell us a bit about the nature of these events?

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Jared: 

Yeah. So up until now, they've been digital only. And, um, but, but as the pandemic opens as our resources open, we do wanna have in person events too. And we we've had some, a little, a little bit of that. So digital events are big. Um, there's, you know, we, we have some with sponsors and we have some with just our community members, but the, the focus is the same. Right. How can we best help our community members? What's awesome about digital events is it gives more access, easier to more people around the world. Sure.

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Kishore: 

And, uh, with respect to, uh, I'm sure over the two years, even your organiZuddlation is growing, uh, how has the model been for you? Like the work model? Is it hybrid or

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Jared: 

So our company is fully remote. Okay. And it looks like we're gonna be fully remote forever,

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Kishore: 

Right

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Jared: 

100% remote. Um, we're north America based because we do need some similar time Zuddlones.

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Kishore: 

Mm-hmm

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Jared: 

But we're fully remote.

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Kishore:

Okay. So I would imagine, uh, yeah, a lot of your day to day stuff also involves like heavily on tools, like Zuddloom, cetera, to kind of network and engage with each other. Yeah.

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Jared: 

You're a hundred percent right. Zuddloom, slack, WhatsApp, text message, email.

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Kishore: 

And, uh, as someone who is actively involved in running events, um, I think something that we've also seen over the last two years is, uh, initially it was for a lot of companies. It was to just get an understanding of the virtual realm to kind of adapt temporarily. But now we are seeing more and more companies wanting a bit more quality and better production at their events so that they don't end up looking like a normal meeting. So, uh, have you also kind of, what's your perspective of that?

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Jared: 

So my perspective is the day we started rev genius two years ago, almost to the day there was too many events and it wasn't that there was too many events as much as it was to the same target person coming from 20 different sources. So they were getting emails from here, emails from here, LinkedIn's from here. And there was no aggregation to that. So it wasn't that there was necessarily too many events. I think there was just too many avenues that they were getting the same event and they just needed something easier. So we're like, why don't we just do that? Um, over time there have been too much everything, um, too much noise, too much social media posts saying the same thing, too many events. Um,

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So, and when I say too many events, too many like fluff like events, so how do you create something of substance that's gonna drive outcomes and how do you entertain through the event or two big things. So like you could have the most entertaining event and probably drive some folks, but like people want outcomes cuZuddl it's their time. They don't just want to be entertained. And frankly, digitally, there's a ceiling for how much you could be entertained. There's no cotton candy being held, handed out. There's no free margaritas or anything like that that you have in person. So your time is so, um, valuable. And um, so yeah, you could have surveys, you could have a nice UI and all that, and that is important. Um, but what's equal, if not more, is making sure that you have topics that your audience is interested in, but also that help drive outcomes from just sitting through that 30 minute or one hour presentation or half day or full day conference

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Kishore:

And and uh, yeah, one of the things that we picked upon is something that we reflected back to our school days where the most interesting sessions in school were the most interactive ones. So, and a one way session is even more boring virtually. And so everything from training to workshop, I mean requires an extra effort either with the right tools or somehow to kind of get the participation from all the attendees because serious it's really easy to Zuddlone out virtually. Right?

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Jared: 

Yeah. I just had, um, a webinar with about 20 awesome women in a sales mentoring capacity and it was just on Zuddloom and it was cool cause I hopped on and I'm like, wow, I see all their faces, which is, which is pretty rad from a presenter standpoint. Right. I said, listen, I'll tell you like what I've done and all of this. Cause that, that, that was part of that. But like, I want to say right now, start putting your questions in the comments and just ask me like one of the beautiful things about an intimate like round table environment is giving everybody a chance to speak and answer your specific questions. So if I were to create a presentation, um, for my speech, it would be very one sided. Um, I could guess what'll help most people based on what's helped to other people and, and probably knock it out the park. But adding that element of interactivity was everything. And I had one woman stump me on a question which was real and, and I followed up with getting her a resource that could actually help her with a certain complicated sales process that I didn't really understand, um, because of regulations and things like that in, in like the hospital world, for instance. Um, so we were able to draw deeper connection with the audience just on Zuddloom, um, just by how interactive it was.

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Kishore: 

Okay.

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Jared: 

And Zuddloom's a very normal platform. It's not like subtle in terms of how nice, but, um, the interactivity was big and, and everybody got some, you know, more out of it than if it was just one way.

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Kishore: 

Yeah, for sure. And, uh, as we see, I mean, even, even we, as we do our research for like content to market, etc, we, we are seeing a growing relevance in like since I write content, I've joined a few slack content communities. Uh, whereas the, our social media person actively follows a lot of social media event communities. So, uh, according to you, I think you'd be the best person to kind of, uh, give us, uh, like a foresight into where this is going in terms of the future of community and the role it plays.

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Jared: 

Oh man. I, I think, I think the future of community is gonna be more massive and more micro. I think community is gonna be as easy as five people on a WhatsApp group, certainly a hundred people I'm in WhatsApp groups like that.

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Kishore: 

Right.

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Jared:

I think community is gonna have less structure, less names called rev genius and just people that all serve around the same need. And I think it's gonna be even more personal right now in slack or WhatsApp or discord. That's an app where people could reach you one to one. I think that's gonna continue. I think that's gonna double down. I also think that people, you know, with the emergence of web three, um, people are gonna have equity in the communities that they're in. They're they're gonna have decision making ability in the way the communities go. And I do think community is gonna solve for a lot of big challenges. One being on top of my mind is education in the us pretty decent education system, but it's, you know, I'm, I'm helping PE educators leave education and with bureaucracy and, um, teachers wanting to get out of the space since COVID like the future is unknown for, for, you know, really leveling up education.

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Jared: 

And I think community is in one of the best situations or positions to help. I think community is going to help quite a bit with a lot of the social challenges in the country and in the world at, at scale, I think that's gonna be big. And I think that's the evolution, um, for sure. I, I really, really do. And I also think there's gonna be a lot more micro communities where fo like star Patriots and, and make enough to not have to work for somebody else. So I think you're gonna have the spectrum community to solve major world challenges and community to solve personal. I don't wanna work for somebody else challenges, which you're already seeing quite a bit.

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Kishore: 

Wow. That's awesome. So, uh, by micro in this context, uh, you mean more focused, right?

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Jared: 

More, less people, more focused.

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Kishore: 

Okay. Okay, awesome. Yeah, that's kind of the, uh, similar to the pattern that we are usually seeing in events as well, where companies earlier went big, um, and pre pandemic, of course you would have like an all round company conference, et cetera. But I think what companies are doing now is they're having more focus like micro events, like this particular department has a more productive micro event. And I think that approach leads to more intent and more engagement. So yeah, I think that's a common pattern that they're seeing there as, as well in terms of events, employee engagement and stuff like that.

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Jared: 

Yeah. And, and, um, dark social, so much business decisions are made. Right.

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Kishore: 

Right.

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Jared: 

Like before you'd get advertised to then later you'd ask somebody that you were close to what's the best, is it Zuddl or Zuddloom or whatever. Right. And now you'd ask a few people very close, like just a question, and they'd respond based on your exact use case and knowing you, right. Like, oh, because you just need meetings only it's gonna be Zuddloom. Oh. Because it's big conferences only it's gonna be subtle.

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Kishore: 

Right.

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Jared: 

And you're seeing ICP bring down. Right. Your ICP two years ago might have been marketers. Yeah. And then it became field marketers. Then it became social media event throwers for series B companies that have under 20 people in their department or whatever it is. So like everyone's, nicheing down.

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Kishore: 

Yeah. Wow. It's nice to, uh, see how universally the, the moment is happening. Um, and that's the kind of perspective you get from these exchanges. So that's pretty awesome. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, in general, um, do you, I'm sure you attend a lot of industry events, uh, in relation to the business you are in and are you seeing like a comeback of the in person thing, uh, in the us?

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Jared: 

Absolutely. Um, for sure. Um, in structured events Hmm. Dinners, you know, like intimate gatherings that are niche down chili pipe is doing a great job of that right now where folks are just like getting these niche down dinners with their ICP versus everybody together. Right. Uh, SASters throwing big events. They do a great job with that. Always have, they've brought it back. Some are faster than others, but it's an interesting time. What I'm seeing is, you know, in addition to, in person events, more tools to connect all the tools people have in community, whether it's two different, uh, video tools, cuZuddl they all have to right. Um, a slack or discord, et cetera, email of course, CRM of course, um, forms, et cetera, to understand granularly engagement of their members. And this is big. So I think, you know, we talk about throwing events, but we also wanna measure engagement and understand that it's not just in slack, it's on LinkedIn. It's not just on Twitter, it's on discord. It's not just on subtle it's on Zuddloom and it could also be an email and it could also be on your website. Right. And it could also be talking to a chat bot. And I think understanding people, you can't just look at one channel.

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Kishore: 

Hmm.

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Jared:

You have to look at everything. And the people that look at everything the best understand their community or their audience or their prospects or their customers the best. Okay. And have the same data across all.

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Kishore: 

Got it.

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Jared: 

And I think, I, I think those that do that are gonna be able to best understand who to target when

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Kishore: 

Right.

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Jared:

And, and best increase engagement across the board because let's be real. Someone might like settle over Zuddloom. Somebody might like neither and you have to appease them as well. Right. Cause cuZuddl sure's on, on WhatsApp talking to all the field marketers or field marketers marketing for the win gongs group on slack. And, and we need to understand, um, that you are engaged. Right. It's just non uncertain channels.

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Kishore: 

Sure. That's quite an

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Jared: 

Awesome question. So I think, I think, I think that's important no matter what comes out, cause there will be something else and the next year you're gonna be like, Hey, what about hybrid? How are you measuring it?

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Kishore:

Right.

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Kishore:

Uh, this is something just from a curious marketers, uh, perspective. Um, what kind of, uh, if you can just give us a hint of the conversations and ideas, uh, that you see in your marketing community groups and uh, how they're like finding value through community.

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Jared: 

So geeZuddl, um, community is dark social. So like everyone knows you have to be there. Some folks are figuring out how to measure it and understanding you can't necessarily measure it in groups without attribution. Um, but then you could go how you can do it is on channels like LinkedIn through posts, kick at your take attribution from there, draw commonalities and correlation that these people are also in communities and, and, and, and try to figure out leading indicators like that. That's, that's one thing that's big. Um, you know, the, the big gifting is massive for events, you know, make no mistake about it. Like better topics, better platforms, but gifting at the front end, right. Is big, is big. Um, and, um, what else is big is like advisory boards for companies. You see it with chili Piper, you see it with dually, you see it with Sendo. So amongst others,

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Kishore: 

Right.

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Jared: 

Where they're getting, um, their power users or people in the space or leaders and either making them advisors or influencer ish and, and putting that out there. So like leveraging people in influencing type of capacities is working with the best people out there, specifically on LinkedIn.

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Kishore: 

If you had to describe how the demography splitters, do you see people from like all over the world, uh, coming in and joining these communities

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Jared:

A hundred percent all over the world is right. Um, outside the us and M is massive. India is massive. Canada's massive. Um, India's got a wonderful market, um, for software as a service as it's, it's craZuddly. It's so good. And, and folks from India I've seen amongst Europe and India are amongst the most active, like not English as a first language folks in English driven communities, like so much so, and it's great.

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Kishore: 

Wow. That's an interesting trend.

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Jared: 

Yeah, it is. And it's great. It's awesome. And I've built so many friends from India and the media as a result. Right.

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Kishore: 

Uh, the, the other thing I saw, I mean, since Zuddl's also fully remote, I'm just like telling your personal story of how I use community was I was looking for, I think there's this community called digital Noma on slack, uh, people who recommend places where the WiFi's good. So you don't have to worry about that part of staying connected to your work. So yeah, even non-work wise, I'm seeing more, more avenues where you can find like sources, you can rely on rather than just like a travel agent or something, you

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Jared: 

Know? Absolutely. And, and I think more and more people before they even create a product, realiZuddle how easy is to create a community. Right. Right. So digital nomads might create the best, might create the Airbnb for figuring shit out along the way . Uh, but until then people are just talking to each other and we've seen communities, um, lead to products quite a bit.

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Kishore: 

Right.

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Jared: 

For all sorts of things.

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Kishore: 

Hmm. I think it kind of adds up in the way we make decisions in daily life. Like we always check with our inner circle first. And so this community kind of works as our extended inner circle, which is the trust is the same, like as you trust your brother or your best friend. So that's quite a interesting human phenomenal.

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Jared: 

You're asking me questions right now. Like we've known each other for a while. The case, the proof is right here. Right.

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Kishore: 

Well, I'm glad. And uh, yeah. I mean, that was the last question for the day. Anything else you would like to share, Jared?

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Jared: 

No, I appreciate being here. Appreciate the time, the product, all of that. Uh, if anybody wants to connect with me, revgen.com to sign up for RevGen, there's no cost, um, linkedin.com/in/jared Robin, or you could email me@jaredrevgen.com, all of that and more, um, would love to see you in our community.

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Kishore: 

Awesome. Thank you so much for taking time on a Monday to talk to us and I hope you had fun because I did .

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Jared: 

This was great. I really appreciate it.

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Kishore: 

Awesome. Cheers. You have a great week, right?

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Jared: 

Take care. Bye

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Kishore: 

Bye.

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Jared: 

Bye.

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Kishore: 

This was backstage with Zuddl. If you'd like to hear more episodes, don't forget to subscribe. You can also listen to our episodes on Spotify, Google, or wherever you stream podcast. Don't forget to visit Zuddl.com to know more about how you can begin humaniZuddling events.

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