The Community Experience
SPI Media
What makes a community flourish? How do we build vibrant, supportive online communities? Can brands and organizations facilitate authentic connection through community?If you’ve ever found yourself asking these questions, you’re in the right place. The Community Experience was designed to explore all things community and to help community facilitators design online communities that thrive, whether yours is a niche community based on fandom, or tied to a personal brand or business. Each week, join host Jillian Benbow to learn practical strategies and insights from people on the cutting edge of community building, as well as a peek behind the curtain into the inner workings of our own branded online community, SPI Pro.We believe that community-driven content and commerce is changing the landscape of work and life. Through unbridled curiosity, we believe we can help the world increase the impact potential of online communities. Join us for the ride and embrace the experience! New episodes drop every Tuesday, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 24, 2022 • 48min
Neurodivergent Considerations in Community with Rach Idowu of Adulting with ADHD
#041 Rach Idowu is a young woman living in London who was diagnosed with ADHD later in life than we often expect. And she's made it her mission to raise awareness of neurodivergence and help other adults understand if their struggles with attention may be the result of undiagnosed ADHD. So, if you're a community builder, why should you care? Because, well, people are different, and they have different needs when it comes to learning and interacting. It's crucial for us to understand where our members are coming from, what they struggle with, and what makes it easier for them to participate in our communities. Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx041.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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May 17, 2022 • 52min
Accelerating Friendship through Shared Experience with Kyle Hagge of MorningBrew
#040 Is there anything Kyle Hagge hasn't done? (Okay, there's at least one thing, as you'll learn in today's lightning round.) Kyle is an action-oriented community leader. He talks the talk, and he's walked the walk for organizations like Marquette University, the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee, AmeriCorps, Ballot Ready, College Possible, and Morning Brew. He's a treasure trove of knowledge on topics as varied as the importance of local activism, relationship building as a precursor to learning, the power of cohort-based programming, and the utility of discomfort in facilitating human bonding. Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx040.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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May 10, 2022 • 32min
Aligning Your Membership Fee with your Community's Value with Pat Flynn
#039 You may recognize today's guest—the one and only Pat Flynn. He's our first repeat guest, in fact, and he's here to talk about overcaffeination, maple syrup, and how many copies of the LEGO DeLorean he just bought. Oh, and some exciting things coming in the world of SPI Pro. Including a price increase. We're all about transparency here, and SPI Pro is still a screaming deal, even once prices go up on May 17. Jill and Pat talk about why we decided to increase prices, why Pro is still very much worth it, and why you need to align the price of your community (and anything you're selling) with its true value. Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx039.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
May 3, 2022 • 57min
Trust Starts with Listening with Zahra Ebrahim, Co-founder of Monumental Projects
#037 “When we talk about community and belonging, who are we talking about belonging with? What are we belonging to?” That's just one of the thought-provoking ideas posed today by Zahra Ebrahim, a Toronto-based public interest designer and strategist who's focused on deep, community-led approaches to policy, infrastructure, and service design. Together, Zahra, Jillian, and SPI's co-CEO Matt Gartland explore the differences and commonalities between digital communities and on-the-ground activism and community building. They discover some juicy points of intersection—including how to create communities that aren't static, and what it means to be "together." Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx037.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
May 2, 2022 • 42min
Bonus Episode: Making the World a Kinder Place with Valerie Hamaker of Generation Xhausted
Lead host Jillian Benbow recently chatted with Valerie Hamaker on her podcast, Generation Xhausted, and we wanted to share! In this chat, Valerie shares her experience in SPI Pro (the community Jillian runs) and support communities, and the two discuss the profound power of digital communities, finding wholeness and healing, and more.Find out more about Valerie and her work at ExhaustedGen.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Apr 26, 2022 • 52min
Communication through Demonstration with Kat Gordon of The 3% Movement
#037 What does it mean to be an advocate? How can leaders set an example when it comes to mental health and self-care? How do we fairly distribute the gains and burdens of a rapidly evolving work culture? How much should we even be working?These are some of the massive questions Kat Gordon is taking on as the visionary behind The 3% Movement, an organization she founded after recognizing that only—yep—3% of creative directors were women, and very few were people of color.Kat has done and is doing some amazing things—and SPI's Director of Operations, Sara Jane Hess, joins Jillian today to soak up Kat's wisdom and share some of her own insights on building a better, more inclusive machine wherever you work.Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx037See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Apr 19, 2022 • 54min
Connecting Through Shared Loss with Mary Horn of The Dinner Party
#036 In community building, it's easy to fall into the trap of building something for everyone. It's sometimes essential to create a community for a specific type of person going through a specific thing. As a young adult, Mary Horn lost her mother to ALS, and her grief led her to The Dinner Party, an organization that provides community and connection for younger people who often lack grief support options. As a staff member and eventually director of community experience, Mary has helped guide the development of a community—really a community of smaller communities—where people can find support and build relationships, where they can listen and be listened to, and feel less alone. Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx036.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Apr 12, 2022 • 38min
Failure Is Your Friend with Carlos Zimbrón of F***up Nights
#035 For Carlos Zimbrón, founder of F***up Nights, getting up on stage and sharing the story of your biggest failure is something more people should be doing. Because the act of sharing our darkest moments with others can have surprising, even amazing effects. Today you'll learn the story of an organization built around a… unique event model, and how Carlos and the other founders went from attracting five people at their first event, to expanding to thirty-five locations within a year, to losing some of those locations as they tried to monetize. But as you'll also learn, peaks and valleys like that are baked into the ethos of F***up Nights. The through-line of this episode is that any community can benefit from creating space for its members to share their challenges and failures. Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx035.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Apr 5, 2022 • 53min
The Sweet Sounds of Well-Run Musical Gatherings with Rafe Offer of Sofar Sounds
#034 There's just something about live music. Something that can't be replaced by any other experience. Sofar Sounds is a global network of chapters of small intimate gatherings, where people get together and listen to music. The plot twist is that they usually don't know who they're going to be listening to until it happens, and the venue is not your typical music venue. It could be a home, or a church basement, or a carpet store. Rafe Offer is the man behind Sofar, and he's here today to share the Sofar origin story, how to create a cohesive, intimate community experience in more than 300 chapters across the globe, and the time he gave someone hilariously unnecessary professional advice. Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx034.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Mar 29, 2022 • 48min
When Free Community Is Good Business with Mac Reddin of Commsor
#033 Mac Reddin runs a company called Commsor, which builds software for community teams, and runs a community for community builders called the Community Club. They're showing community leaders how to “flip the script,” to build communities at the core of the business rather than in service of the business or the product. And their software helps put community data in one place so it's easier to work with. They're even using NFTs in ways that help people feel like more valued members of the community. Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/cx033.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
