Breaking: Online Community Consultant Discovers Brand New Concept (Again!)

[00:00:04] Announcer: You’re listening to Community Signal, the podcast for online community professionals. Here’s your host, Patrick O’Keefe.

[00:00:19] Patrick O’Keefe: Hello and thank you for listening to Community Signal. Our release schedule is pretty random at this stage as I manage being a dad. I don’t see this changing, but we’re still here. On this episode, we’re talking with Jenny Weigle about humbleness around sharing ideas in the community space, self-promotion among community consultants, and the one-sided nature of community roadshows. Thank you to Jules Standen, Jake McKee, and Phoebe Venkat for supporting our show on Patreon. If you’d like to join them, please go to communitysignal.com/innercircle.

Jenny Weigle has been creating, executing, and reviewing strategies for online communities for more than 10 years. She’s worked with more than 100 brands on various aspects of their community strategy and implementations, including launch, migration, programming, and planning. These brands include Airbnb, Google, HP, Intuit, Pinterest, REI, Samsung, Sephora, Splunk, StubHub, and Visa. When she’s not geeking out on community strategy, Jenny spends time in Los Angeles with her partner John and stepdaughter.

In her personal life, she is a proud member of a number of communities, including Southern California Gator Club, Spiritual Sisters of Los Angeles (which she founded), Oak Park LA (for CrossFit), Sofar Sounds, and D23: The Official Disney Fan Club. Jenny is a Patreon supporter of our podcast but that doesn’t have any impact on her being a guest, as you’ll soon see from our discussion.

Jenny, welcome to the show.

[00:01:35] Jenny Weigle: Thanks, Patrick.

[00:01:36] Patrick O’Keefe: It’s a pleasure. Back in October, I had Tim McDonald on the show and we talked about his search for a liver and his fight against colon cancer. I’ve known Tim for many years, but you and him are really good friends. I felt since there is an update to the story that it would be cool to ask you to provide it. Can you talk about what’s changed with Tim?

[00:01:56] Jenny Weigle: Yes. I hope Tim doesn’t mind me sharing. If you follow Tim McDonald on any social media accounts, you’ll see-

[00:02:00] Patrick O’Keefe: He’s already talked about it.

[00:02:01] Jenny Weigle: -his updates as well. Yes, and it’s all great news. Thanks to his efforts and his campaign, he was able to find a living donor, and the procedure took place in May. Tim is back home and he is healing. He is on social media again, and he’s posting his progress. He looks great. I was going to say something to him even and say how great he is looking in all the pictures he’s posting. He actually made the comment, I think maybe on Threads, that a lot of people are complimenting how great he looks. Glad to hear this positive thing that happened.

Another thing that came out of it too, Patrick, from all his efforts with his campaign was that people would contact him and want to be matched for liver donation. If he wasn’t the right match, he would still try to find them a match. I believe those efforts are continuing now formally to hit the website he has created. I don’t know the exact details on that, but his community-building skills really did lead to something not only miraculous for him but it’s been benefiting other people too.

[00:03:03] Patrick O’Keefe: That’s awesome.

[00:03:04] Jenny Weigle: Beautiful story. Oh, so great.

[00:03:06] Patrick O’Keefe: Thanks, Jenny. Tim, if you’re listening, and I’m sure you will, so glad to hear the news, follow the news. His website is TimsLiver.com. Wanted to share that update.

[00:03:14] Jenny Weigle: Thank you for helping to spread the word on that. Appreciate that.

[00:03:18] Patrick O’Keefe: Of course. Jenny, you’ve had a desire to be a guest on this show for a while, and I would say that I first heard about that maybe a couple of years ago. When I reached out to you in June, you told me that the reason you had never approached me was because you told yourself you would only do so if you felt like you had something very different to say and you hadn’t yet reached that point in your mind that you felt like you were doing a good job evangelizing the space, a good job bringing people into it, a good job for clients, yada yada, but that you didn’t think that you were saying anything different or new that wasn’t already being said by other consultants or thought leaders in the space.

First, I found that to be refreshing because I’ve seen plenty of consultants and resources pop up over my 25 years and throw a logo on something, the commitment curve, the activity ladder, the mountain of progression. How many different upward-facing shapes can we throw a logo on? I’ve seen a lot of that and I’ve seen people claim something that has either been claimed decades ago or really no one should be laying claim to. It also spoke to me in a different way because it’s a feeling I share. I started writing a book back in 2003 when I was a teenager that came out in ’08 and I haven’t written one since. Despite offers, despite ideas that I’ve had, there are numerous reasons for it.

One of them is this feeling and it’s almost like a fear or an insecurity, how I describe it in myself, about whether or not I am saying anything that’s worth saying. Drake has a song from 2009, Brand New. At one point he says, “I paint what’s going through my mind, racing against myself when I’m a couple of steps behind. That’s why I gotta ask, is anything I’m doing brand new?” Now, Audrey Graham is talking about relationships, but I think that it applies here as well– I don’t want to age you, but I think you are within a few years of me. I think one of the reasons is age, at least in me. I think it does something to you that makes you more timid in sharing and it makes you question yourself more. I think I have also become more jaded by many of the things that I have seen crop up around me. That’s me and that’s a lot to unpack there. I think for you, what makes you question the newness of your ideas and what you’re sharing?

[00:05:28] Jenny Weigle: I’d like to think that I keep myself on the pulse of what’s happening in our industry. I definitely make that effort. I know when I’m reading something new I like to take it in and digest it, see if it applies to my clients, see if it could apply if it’s something they’re not doing, have I heard it before or is it something that’s a new take on this? If you see me re-sharing things on social media platforms, it’s usually because I’m in agreement with the thought leadership or I’m saying that, “Hey, this is saying something a little new.”

When it comes to questioning the newness, there are very few things that happen in our field today that make me pause and say, “Wow,” either to myself or out loud. When I’m putting out my materials and what I’m personally working on, I’m just doing what’s top of mind and mainly it’s influenced by what my clients need at the time. Maybe I’ve created something for them that’ll be repurposed and help a lot more people. That’s the kind of thought leadership you’re going to see coming out from me via my Substack or my social channels. Also, something that does differentiate me, but is not new in any way is, I really do want my clients to have fun working with me.

I really try to make our virtual calls as lively and interesting as possible. As much as virtual calls can be. Is that new? No, but I always want to leave people with something to remember in a positive experience or positive engagement with me. I think when new thought leadership is coming out, if it’s leaving me with a positive feeling and a positive outlook towards something then it usually has a lasting impression to me in some way. It’s neat to see, the evolution of this field in that there’s many thought leaders out there. I don’t think a ton of newness is happening, but I do like all the different perspectives and I’m glad to see new perspectives being shared on things.

[00:07:21] Patrick O’Keefe: Again, I think it’s really humble perspective. I think it’s refreshing. I think it’s sometimes what stops someone from putting themselves out there as is the case with this podcast, as is the case with other things. It’s something that I think other people are sometimes less concerned about, to put it kindly. We talked a little bit about this privately, about putting yourself out there and self-promotion and when to make an ask or present yourself in a way without coming across as pushy or pitchy.

It’s interesting ’cause on one hand when I hear your answer, what I hear is, “Yes, I’m a business person. I’m working for my clients right now. They pay the bills. I’m a full-time person. Of course, what I’m working on, I’m not just gesturing to the public about these ideas and look at what I’m doing. It actually is centered in a paycheck that I’m actually working with people who are paying the bills, and that’s who I care about first and foremost is my clients,” which makes perfect sense.

There is this group of consultants of any field, it’s not just community, that are very much about, I don’t know, creating a lot of content. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not really authoritative, but they see it as authoritative and they want to be seen as authoritative, and they feel like that is their pitch to make when they’re consulting with people.

It’s interesting because I think that sort of humility can sometimes make it so that you aren’t out there as aggressively as some others, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a lot of opportunities out there and a lot of room for people. I assume that sometimes the people who are out there in that way turn people off and maybe those people who are turned off, those potential clients run to someone like you.

[00:08:56] Jenny Weigle: Perhaps. They’re welcome to. I do think there’s a lot of new consultants out there. I still consider myself a new consultant. I’ve only been doing this for two years, I’m still learning a lot. One of the things I spent the majority of my time on in my first year was building up my own presence so I could obviously be found in search engines and have my thought leadership out there and have a Substack going and so forth. I did spend a lot more time really trying to get my perspective out there. I think maybe one of the reasons we see a lot of that is because there are so many people stepping their toes into this field.

I get that. I get that from the perspective of if you’re going to step your toes in this field, you want to get as much information out about your thought leadership, your expertise as possible. I think that might be contributing to why we’re seeing so much more of that now and so heavy on it. I have to say, as I started to build up my portfolio of clients became less and less time for that. I’ve definitely got a lot of ideas, a lot of Substack articles that I haven’t had time to write out and really flesh out. That’s because my clients are keeping me busy, but I’m grateful for the busyness.

[00:10:09] Patrick O’Keefe: People who are busy doing the work aren’t always able to talk about it. That seems like an example of that. It’s funny you mentioned the newness of it. This isn’t a community example really, but obviously Threads launched recently from Instagram/Meta. They did some clever growth hackery, my terminology, things to bring people in, the followers on Threads being tied to your Instagram followers for example, very ego-stroking. “I’ve got 100 followers. I better say something.”

It’s interesting because when I use Threads, because I’m on there, and why not? I can– whatever. When I was using Twitter in– I think I got into it in March of ’08. When I was using Twitter the first time, I felt something special about the connection that it created with people. I think it was tied to South by Southwest and it was a moment in time.

I don’t feel that with Threads. I don’t feel anything special about it. I feel like it is another platform with a series of features that are fairly expected. It doesn’t have that feeling. There’s nothing new to it. It’s fine. It’s just another attempt at the same thing. From a company that maybe I’ve seen enough of and used enough in different contexts of my life personally and professionally, it is fair to say that there’s not a whole lot new out there.

I think it’s fair to say with community and with a lot of disciplines that the ideas tend to circle back over and over again. We’re not the first people to talk about that, but we’re not the oldest people to talk about that. Okay, there’s a generation or two before us that has the same feelings. It’s funny because I literally on LinkedIn– what was it? I literally just saw a post from someone who said something like, maybe not identical, but it was like this, “Community building is the buzzword of the moment.” [chuckles] I was like, “What?” I was like, “I guess. Is it again?”

Yes, it’s great. It’s fine. I think I have a similar perspective. I love new people, genuine new people. I think because there’s also this group of people that is chasing the latest dollar where they think it is, but I love genuine new people who are really interested in the work and love to do it. I don’t want to kill their buzz on their love of it and what they’re discovering in the moment. It’s not like I respond to these people. I don’t react, I don’t comment, I don’t say anything. In my mind, I think of saying something maybe, but I delete that mind comment.

It’s that balance because I think it’s harmless until they start Columbusing it, until they become Christopher Columbus and they discover this thing that’s already there and then they try to take credit for it. That’s the part where it’s like that’s less fun, when you go from someone who’s like, “Oh wow, this is great. Oh wow, this is great. This is great. This is great. Oh wow, I came up with this and I just got here three weeks ago.” I’ve seen it enough now where I think that it bothers me less. I don’t know, there’s not really a question there, but it’s just an observation on how this space repeats itself over and over again. I think that’s natural. Ultimately, it’s good because it means it’s still happening.

[00:13:09] Jenny Weigle: I really love your comment about the special feeling you had when you first used Twitter. That resonates because I too can recall first using Twitter and thinking how different, how unique, and especially for meeting up at things like conferences or even being on vacation, and how the hashtags pulled people together in a way. I”m enjoying threads but it’s not the same kind of feeling. I think you’re right. I am just glad for a new safe space that was like what Twitter used to be. We’ll see if that remains. Since you’re talking about the special feeling of newness, can I ask you a question, Patrick?

[00:13:45] Patrick O’Keefe: Sure.

[00:13:46] Jenny Weigle: Have you had any of these feelings with any of the new AI tools coming out? Have you had that, “Oh, new. It really wows me. Has that feeling come back with any of the AI that’s out?

[00:13:57] Patrick O’Keefe: No, I don’t think so.

[00:13:59] Jenny Weigle: I was just wondering. [chuckles]

[00:14:00] Patrick O’Keefe: Here’s the thing. I think there is opportunity there. AI is not the same for me as crypto. It’s not the same as some other general buckets. AI is a tool that’s already in place and been in place, whatever, machine learning, and so on and so forth. These are all tools that have been deployed in community environments and moderation environments for years now. I think there are opportunities where it can be helpful. I’m worried about what I see as creative outputs and how AI works with creative output. I would not limit that to the idea of music and art.

I would say that it’s writing of any kind. I look at most work as creative in some way. For example, easy example, you may have seen me post this on LinkedIn, but I get these invitations now, you probably get them too to contribute, to articles on LinkedIn. It’s like, “Contributed to this.” They call it a collaboration article and it’s about a topic. One of mine was about online moderation metrics. I click it and it says, “This is an article written by AI, whatever, and you can contribute by essentially adding an in-line comment into the article. They invite whoever had, I don’t know, moderation as a skill in their bio, whatever.

I look at this, and I can’t help but think, “I might be responding to something that learned off of something that I wrote 15 years ago.” I don’t know that that is necessarily a positive. I’m worried about elements of communities where creativity is usually needed. Easy example is the writing of content, the writing of posts, the writing of conversations, how those things start. I’m worried about everyone sounding the same. I’m worried about everyone getting the same prompts. I’m worried about everyone rewriting their posts using the same tool that learn on the same data set, and will all move them closer to the same center.

I think ultimately, that’s the death of community, is the robots talking to the robots. That’s not a fun thing. That’s if not the inevitable conclusion, where we’re being pushed when LinkedIn says, “Oh, use AI to optimize your profile.” Okay, everyone does that, so everyone has the same profile. They use it to optimize your posts. How do you get a best answer to your question, which seems good? Then, when everyone does it against the same criteria, it just becomes uniform, and I think some beauty is lost in that.

I am optimistic about opportunities to make repetitive tasks easier and more efficient. I’m optimistic about good moderation applications that take care of common use cases and also truly heinous use cases. I am optimistic about that sort of thing. Yes, nothing has really wowed me yet. I remain ready to be wowed, ready to have feelings about things. I’m not a pessimist, but it’s tough because ChatGPT dominates the headlines right now. To me, ChatGPT, I’m not yet convinced that it’s a positive as it currently exists. What about you?

[00:16:48] Jenny Weigle: I’ve had clients ask me if I’m worried about my job because of AI and things like ChatGPT coming in. I’ll tell you why I’m not. I’ve actually gone into ChatGPT so far and asked it in many different ways to write out a one-year strategic plan and to create a lot of the things I create for my clients. Now, what it has provided is some excellent outlines for things and some things that I’ve even taken ideas from like, “Oh, that would be a great thing to add to my outline,” and so forth, but it’s all so vague to our field. One of the reasons my clients hire me and would hire any other consultant is because they want someone dedicated to their needs.

They don’t want this very generic strategic plan. They want one that pertains to their business, their goals. Until ChatGPT gets to that point, I do feel like I’m always going to be able to have a job hopefully, because it’s not going to write out something so specific to my clients at this time, at least to the version that it’s in. Not worried about that just yet. I am worried a little bit of loss of individuality, to the point you were making, a little bit of loss of authenticity.

I wonder how it might affect people making connections within communities because sometimes, the best way is that people make connections like someone is seeing and resonating with what another person has posted where they really like the way they have phrased something or a resource they’ve added. You might want to connect to that person only to later find out, “Oh, yes. I used AI for that,” so diminish the connection a little bit. I don’t know. It’s all speculative right now, but that’s my concerns with it. I haven’t had any special feelings towards it or any wow moments. I have only had like, “Oh, this could be a nice tool. Okay,” like when Zoom came out, “That could be a nice tool to add.” [chuckles]

[00:18:36] Patrick O’Keefe: The way I’ve thought about it before is you never want to be surprised by AI in a sense. People use AI assistants. You might email with someone a year or two ago, and they’d be using an assistant for scheduling. It would present as a real person, and I think that there’s an opportunity for a loss of trust when you pretend. I think it’s best to just say that you’re talking to AI and not give it a name. Let’s not call her AI Jenny or Patrick when they sign their message and say, “Hey, thanks for contacting this person. I am Patrick, Jenny’s personal assistant. She’s available from 1:00 to 2:00 on Friday. Would you like to book it?” I say, “Yes,” and I think that’s a real person.

I want to go back to something we were talking about a little bit with the consultants and putting yourself out there. It’s one thing I’ve observed, and again I feel like we’ve discussed this one-to-one, is self-promotion amongst consultants. Not only in the sense of trying to present yourself as that authoritative presence that we talked about, a be-all, end-all authority of wisdom, but just really in the cheesy sense, in where if someone asked you a question, some people will always answer with a link to something they wrote. I speak only for me, but I dislike it very much. I’ve been writing about this stuff, and I could link to anything I wrote. Heck, I can write a new thing. That’s what a lot of people do and that’s even worse, is when they write a new thing to then put into your comments that they link to.

Now you’re hiding your face, but I’ve never seen you do that. If you’re doing that, stop it, Jenny but I’ve never seen you do that. I’m not saying– this isn’t about you. The question I was going to ask you is how do you avoid falling into that trap of everyone wants to treat every comment section as lead gen for their consulting business. When you’re one person, I get it, it’s the hustle so to speak. You’ve got bills to pay, kids to feed, et cetera. People do this, it’s constant links to themselves. Twitter replies, “Oh, I wrote an article about that six years ago. Oh, I answered that exact question on my blog last week or in my podcast.”

We’ve done two hundred shows by now. I’m sure I’ve answered most things. I would never link to my podcast in a post I wrote in someone else’s comments but that’s me. Jenny, this is actually a praising question for you. How do you avoid falling into that trap of just linking to yourself? How do you remind yourself not to do that?

[00:20:48] Jenny Weigle: Am I going to disappoint you if I tell you that I have done that before? I have.

[00:20:52] Patrick O’Keefe: No, I hope not but context matters.

[00:20:56] Jenny Weigle: [laughs]

[00:20:56] Patrick O’Keefe: Context matters. There may be spaces where that is something that is encouraged or wanted. I can think of specific communities that might encourage people to link to articles they’ve written, et cetera. If you are telling me that you show up in random people’s comments with links to articles, yes, I’ll be a little disappointed Jenny, but it’s not the end of the world. If you’re telling me you have a friend and you have an established rapport and you link in the comments, then you know your relationships. Anyway, I don’t want to jump on your answer. Go ahead. Disappoint me.

[00:21:24] Jenny Weigle: You are right in that it’s not a common practice of mine, but I have done it before and I can think of specific times on LinkedIn to specific instances where the question being addressed was not going to be a quick comment by any means, and it was something I had elaborated on in a Substack article. I thought I was doing the person a favor by addressing it and then saying, “Hey. For more details, look here.” There’s another time when I really did want to be a lengthier comment because of time. I was heading out or something and I thought, “Oh, I’ll just link them into this because it’s in, I thought, one of my sub-articles anyways.

You’re right, context matters. You never know the situation someone might be in. ‘You know what, the consultants that do that, I can only assume they’re maybe how I was just starting off and doing anything to get my name out and to show that I have a perspective on this. I have a thought on this. Look, I’ve gone deeper into thought on this. Maybe that’s why they’re doing that today.

[00:22:24] Patrick O’Keefe: You’re working real hard to defend people that you didn’t need to defend here.

[00:22:28] Jenny Weigle: You said context matters and I agree with you on that. Who knows the reason, but I’m sure there’s a good one or maybe there’s not and there’s just some people who really, really, really want to promote themselves.

[00:22:40] Patrick O’Keefe: I think those are fine. I’m not disappointed. What I would say is that I think the people that are most impressive, more often than not, most contexts, are the people who do spend the time to write a good response in the medium where the post was made. That literally could be taking something that you’ve written and customizing it for that comment.

I think that ultimately, in my perspective, that’s how you can reach most people where they are in a good thoughtful way. If it’s you and a link you’re fighting with consulting-wise as a consultant, like someone posted a link and you posted a thoughtful comment that people can read on their phone in the medium they’re on and like it there.

I tend to think you win as a consultant versus the link, I could be wrong. No, I’m not disappointed. It is interesting because I think there is this hustle mentality that can dominate consulting sometimes and I think that’s why sometimes people are driven to that. I’m sympathetic, just don’t do it to me. [laughs] I’ll say another thing you can do is you can always DM someone. That’s what I do.

If I wrote something and I really think will help them and I’m doing it for their benefit and not for mine to drive traffic to my page, I’ll just shoot them a DM and say, “Hey, I don’t know if this is helpful, or not. I didn’t want to put it out there but I wrote about this and maybe it’s helpful, maybe it’s not.” Who knows, maybe even they shared in their initial post because they appreciated that you reached out to them and you get that link at the top. Who knows? That’s another strategy.

[00:24:05] Jenny Weigle: It is. You’re right. There are people doing some tactics like that out there. There’s also some great things happening out there with consultants that aren’t talked about a lot. When I entered this field, my first client was another consultant who needed some help and wanted to bring me in on a project. I continue to get referrals from other consultants as well.

There’s a lot more collaborating than the competition. That was a surprise to me stepping into this. I don’t feel like that’s talked about enough. I think because we’re all wrapped up in our world of trying to build our businesses and run our businesses, but it was really a beautiful thing. I still see it today. I hope the new consultants are seeing it too. There’s a lot more sharing. What’s the saying about pie? It’s not about– hold on, I’m going to get this right.

[00:24:48] Patrick O’Keefe: Pie’s a zero-sum game, Jenny. I’m sorry to disappoint you. Pie is a zero-sum game. There’s only so much pie. Do you mean a rising tide raises all ships, that sort of thing?

[00:24:55] Jenny Weigle: Yes, something like that.

[00:24:57] Patrick O’Keefe: Okay.

[00:24:57] Jenny Weigle: With pie, so it’s more fun.

[laughter]

[00:24:59] Patrick O’Keefe: A rising pie raises all stomachs. Speaking of your Substack, I was reading your Substack and in March you wrote a piece about the hospitality books that made you a better community professional. That spoke to me because I grew up around the hospitality industry. Of my parents and two brothers I am the only one who has not worked in some capacity in hospitality, and my dad has been in the industry my entire life. I really believe that it has informed my perspective and how I approach my job as a professional. What speaks to you about the hospitality industry? What did you draw from those books that you tied to your work?

[00:25:33] Jenny Weigle: It wasn’t really evident to me until I particularly got into the Danny Meyer’s book. As I’m reading it and he’s talking about growing up in hospitality too, and I’m thinking, “Wait a second, hospitality, restaurants, and gathering places for those purposes that are around forever and were the original community spots, the original physical places for community to happen, in many cases, yes.” I also actually credit churches and religion for being some of the earliest in actually being those physical places where people came together.

There were so many things. I was in awe that I turned each page of Danny Meyer’s book because he paid so much attention to wanting to know his customer’s preferences, their likes, and dislikes, what was relevant going on in their lives at the moment, what would bring them in the door, what would keep them from coming. These are all things that community managers are concerned about with their online communities as well. What’s going to get people to come and visit and post and what’s going to get in the way of you doing that?

All these things and I started equating what was happening in real life through his book to online communities and found so many synergies. It was a real pleasure to read and he’s got a lot of parts that are big on management and leadership that were also a real pleasure to read for not only that environment for, again, I found synergies to the community environment.

That’s why I actually felt compelled to write about it. I feel like every community manager needs to read this and get inspired by the work and the skills that community pros are executing every day. They’re happening in other mediums and you can get inspired by that too. If anyone needs some inspiration right now, go to a restaurant, talk to the manager, talk to the bartender, talk to your server, and find some synergies.

[00:27:13] Patrick O’Keefe: I think it’s interesting because I think the same is true for other aspects of hospitality numbers and data too. It’s maybe not the friendliest example or maybe it is, but there are TV shows out there about saving restaurants, bars, hotels. I think there’s a show called Hotel Impossible. There was Bar Rescue, obviously, Kitchen Nightmares, and shows of that nature. Even Marcus Lemonis’ show, I forget the name of it, from years ago.

One thing that some of them were very specific about was numbers, and it was about foot traffic flows this way and at this rate, and if we do this then this happens, and we do this and this happens. There’s really some relevance there to how you look at how communities ebb and flow and how they work. I think hospitality is a great thing. Any parallel industry or any other space, it’s never apples to apples. It’s never exactly the same but there’s a lot to learn from there around the customer experience and how you model an experience and a community.

I think customer service as a philosophy should influence how you talk to community members, and how you close the loop, and how you deal with abuse reports, ban appeals, proactive messages, random questions, everything. That’s why like for me, it’s always difficult when I run into a platform that for either deliberate choice or just because of scale, you can’t talk to them. It’s not even about touchy-feely human stuff that I think a lot of community people fall into and I love as much as anyone else but it’s like good customer service, community members, our customers, they should be able to ask a question.

It may not be the answer they want, you may not be able to satisfy them, the community member is not always right but they should be able to ask and they should be able to get a response. We talked about Meta earlier. Good luck ever talking to someone at Meta about an account. I had my account hacked, maybe you’ve seen me post about it on Facebook and it was done in a very creative way. If I hadn’t been doing this work for 25 years and had people who read my book, in other words, if I didn’t have a high degree of privilege, good luck.

Like, “No use, Patrick. Your account’s gone. There’s no one to talk to.” I do think that there’s a lot to learn from the hospitality processes and how they approach their work, and how they deal with people in the moment, and how they deal with customers who are not having a great day, how they deal with people who are very difficult and having a bad day and how they center around having a goal. Where do we want to convert this person to? Are they saveable as a customer and how do we get them to that point? I’ve had a couple of weeks here of just customer service experiences in the range of awful to great. It’s just a reminder about how those things impact, how you feel about a brand or a community or being a part of something. Yes, I think it’s a great call out by you to tell people to check out hospitality, and hospitality blogs. Maybe I’ll need to talk to this Danny Meyers and have him on, and invite him to come on the show.

[00:30:15] Jenny Weigle: Oh, please do. I would support that. I also think the other two books that I read as well, the one from the Disney Institute and the one by Nick Gray, they also made me think about community in different ways, still within the realm of comparing it to hospitality. They’re very much worth it, especially if anyone is looking for something that is a non-community book, but you still want to learn from. Those are good suggestions.

[00:30:37] Patrick O’Keefe: In between a brand side role where you started a career builder, and your role now full-time consulting, you spent almost eight years at companies that sales software. Some of it is Salesforce, some of it at Lithium/Khoros. The last five, more than five of that time was spent at Lithium/Khoros. I talked to a fair number of people who work in a software business in the services side, and there’s all sorts of things that can be difficult about that. A common thing that people talk about is just the fact that they can’t go deep enough with each individual client, they have to move on to the next customer that needs help in the moment, they might have a wide portfolio of brands, et cetera. For you in your time there, because that’s meaningful time at a meaningful software company, what was the worst part of working in services? What was the most challenging part of working in services at a software company?

[00:31:28] Jenny Weigle: I’ll tell you, it’s hard being a billable resource, and that is the area that I fell in. I was lucky that because of Khoros’s popularity and reputation in this industry, we had a number of clients. I always had a full booking of clients and accounts I was working on to help with their strategy or help them get launched on the platform. Because of that, though because I was so busy, there were a lot of other things creatively that I didn’t have time to do. There were a number of blog articles I wanted to help contribute to Khoros. Again, didn’t have the time. Not only have the time but I could’ve taken time. It would’ve gotten into my evenings and my weekends.

[00:32:06] Patrick O’Keefe: In other words you didn’t have time.

[00:32:07] Jenny Weigle: Yes. There were a couple instances where I was able to make the time, and the managers I had were always supportive of it. They also knew and I knew, the clients came first. I did want to put the clients first but instead of prioritizing me authoring some blog article or leading a webinar idea that I had. What that did though for me was build up this backlog of ideas which I eventually finally started to write and realized I had all kinds of topics in mind.

When I did go out on my own I had that to go to. That’s another reason one of my Substack was so busy in the beginning because I was sitting on so many ideas and so much content that I thought could benefit all of my clients, all of the field and just didn’t have the opportunity. The skills I gained during that time working with some of the biggest brands in the world, that was amazing, but it is tough being a billable resource especially when you’re going on years and years of doing that.

Of course I was only at Khoros for a little over five years, so a lot of respect for the people who are in a role like that for a number of number of years, because it’s no fun filling out a timecard every Friday, that’s for sure.

[00:33:12] Patrick O’Keefe: That’s actually pretty long in my experience. Five years plus in that role is like that’s a long time for sure.

[00:33:17] Jenny Weigle: I had colleagues at the time then who had been there much longer, and I really respect that. Professional service is a tough area to be in. It, of course, can be very rewarding. If it hadn’t been for the skills and the connections and the level of the brand names that I worked with, I wouldn’t have felt so confident about going out on my own. I probably would have anyways, but maybe not as confident about it. This is not on my LinkedIn so it’s hard to spot that in between my time at Salesforce and Khoros, I did try to go out as a full-time freelancer and I was not even framing it as consulting.

I thought I want to live a more flexible life and I want to be a freelancer 100%. I failed miserably in those efforts. Then I went to Lithium Technologies and was like, “Wow, this place is great. I want to stay.” As the years went on there was a little something in me that kept gnawing at me that said, “Try it again Jenny. You learned, you failed and you learned. Try it again. See what happens.” Once that feeling took over, there was no stopping it, and so it was very tough to walk away. I’m glad that I did, I’m glad I remain a referral partner to Khoros today and have good relations with a lot of my colleagues that are still there.

[00:34:29] Patrick O’Keefe: I was on your resources page at Jenny.Community. Also, one thing that flashed to mind but I didn’t bring up in the moment as you’re mentioning how you were building your brand up, and getting yourself out there when you would to consulting is you’re the only person besides me that I know has a .community. I’ve had patrick.community for a very long time since they first came out. It sounds like you’ve had this one for a long time, because I’ve known you by for years now. I was on your resources page, and I came across the Community Roadshow template, which is useful and helpful, but it got me thinking about how often I’ve heard people talk about road shows with regard to community pros and community managers and community builders where they had to go and get cross-functional buy-in from different stakeholders to use all the business oracular here. How little I’ve heard about us being invited to road shows from other departments because they need our buy-in. Isn’t that annoying?

[00:35:19] Jenny Weigle: That’s a pretty fascinating observation. You’re absolutely right. We’re usually the ones having to knock on the doors and not be invited. Gosh, now you bring that up, it’s making me a little angry. We’ve got work to do. We’ve got more work to do. I hope that we can change that even in the next few years. Do you think other teams are doing the same kind of roadshow as the format of what you saw in that template that’s on my website, or they’re doing something so different they don’t even think to bring in outside people outside of their own teams?

[00:35:50] Patrick O’Keefe: That’s a good question. In other words, this is how I take it, is there an insecurity among community professionals that we desperately need the buy-in for our programs to survive? We’re used to thinking of our new efforts as needing to have a roadshow where other departments might feel more confident or more secure in their existence where they feel if they have a great idea, they just go ahead and do it and, of course, you’re going to fall in line because we’re a company.

I don’t know. It’s interesting. I’m not against the idea of the roadshow. I’m not against the idea of talking about the work. At CNN, we didn’t have a chance, but what I wanted to do was to have a quarterly call that anyone could hop on where we talk about our moderation of Interview Club, which was a feature we had, and demystify, even though it wasn’t that mystified and there was documents you could read and it was all everywhere, how it worked. I wanted to do that so that people would have confidence in how the system works.

I think at core everyone should be doing something like that. I’m trying to think if I even heard the roadshow as a vernacular in other departments. It has to exist. I’m sure other people do it for all sorts of things. Maybe it’s my own bias because of the work that I do, but I’ve only ever heard it in this community sense. I think it comes from a good place.

[00:37:01] Jenny Weigle: If I may offer another take on it even.

[00:37:03] Patrick O’Keefe: Yes?

[00:37:04] Jenny Weigle: How many other teams at an enterprise, B2B company, for example, need to involve other teams because their work crosses so many different areas? When marketing is coming up with their plan and budget, they want to propose for the next fiscal year, it’s usually just what marketing needs to get done. How often do they need to be cross-functional? Not too often.

A couple of things do come to mind of who is cross-functional. I think customer success teams. I think if you are a customer success manager, you could be fielding questions that touch any area of the company. You never know what your client is going to ask of you and you’re expected to fulfill and get back to them with solutions or responses. I think of customer success as one of those extremely cross-functional areas just like community. Of course, HR is a given because they have to work with all the teams.

I can’t think of any other areas that have to rely on it and the approval of things on a level like community has to because you can maybe have to get approval for certain initiatives that will obviously touch so many parts of the company. You do need the stakeholder over here to approve and that stakeholder over there.

[00:38:10] Patrick O’Keefe: I think it’s something worth thinking about as you’re working through this roadshow concept is what other departments are doing. Jenny, it’s been a pleasure to have you on. Thanks for making time for us today. Always a pleasure to chat.

[00:38:21] Jenny Weigle: Thank you, Patrick. Pleasure to be on and a pleasure to keep supporting the show. I very much enjoy it.

[00:38:27] Patrick O’Keefe: Thank you. We’ve been talking with Jenny Weigle, CEO and community consultant at Jenny.Community. Her website is jenny.community. You can subscribe to our newsletter at jennydotcommunity.substack.com. You can find her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/jennyweigle. For the transcript from this episode plus highlights and links that we mentioned, please visit communitysignal.com. Community Signal is produced by Karn Broad. See you next time.