Connecting the LGBTQ+ Tech Community with Stefan Palios
Episode 10
Stefan is a co-founder of Venture Out which is Canada’s largest tech and entrepreneurship nonprofit organization. Venture Out connects LGBTQ+ people to opportunities, mentors and each other.
These days, Stefan spends his days helping scaling tech companies and VC firms with content marketing. He also publishes Remotely Inclined, a newsletter about remote entrepreneurship.
Stefan has raised over $1 million for LGBTQ+ nonprofits and charities since 2013 and built an incredible sales model for Venture Out.
In Episode 10, Stefan and Marsha take a deep dive into growing a community through partnerships, data and feedback, diversity and inclusion, impactful content, and so much more.
“Community is a chosen home for something specific. I love that you can be a part of as many communities as you want and as many communities as fit a facet of who you are.”
- Stefan Palios
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A huge thank you to Origins Media Haus for producing this podcast. You can find them at:
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Episode Transcript:
Marsha Druker 1:15
Thanks so much for joining me today on Create Community, Stefan! I am so excited to chat with you.
Stefan Palios 1:20
Thank you for having me.
Marsha Druker 1:22
So I know that coming out was a big part of your journey to finding belonging and community. What was that experience like for you?
Stefan Palios 1:29
So I did come out when I was about 18, just before I went to university, and for me, that was part of finding community because you can't really find a community if you don't know who you are. So it was that weird process of I had to understand who I was, there was that journey earlier on, and then kind of accept who I was and let people know who I was. That was the coming out portion in order to later on find community. And that obviously was a big part for me around sexuality and my identity in that way. But that process broadly of understanding who I am and coming to terms with who I am and then letting people know, has been a trend across everything in terms of me finding community and finding who I like and what I like, and the dreams that I want to chase.
Marsha Druker 2:13
Absolutely. So when you finally made the decision to come out, was there a sense of relief, or what did you feel immediately afterwards?
Stefan Palios 2:22
Fear, to be perfectly honest with you. I think that a lot of folks in the LGBT community feel this on some level when they're coming out, like on one hand, yes, it is really empowering. But then on the other hand, you know, I didn't know if my parents were going to be okay with it. Spoiler alert, they were. My family's been incredibly supportive, but I didn't know if that was gonna cause a problem in the future. If other people that I met were going to dislike me or something to that effect.
And when you have these types of questions yourself, you're just questioning yourself a lot, and that can lead to a lot of insecurity. And so I kind of carried that with me, but ultimately, it was thinking about that process and kind of going through the fear anyway. That helps me later on with community building initiatives. While I was an undergrad, I went to Yale, and then later on in Canada when I came back home, and I was with Out on Bay Street, volunteering and helping to build Venture Out from the ground up.
Marsha Druker 3:14
Super cool. What did you study when you were at Yale?
Stefan Palios 3:18
I studied economics, sociology, which is a really fancy way of saying, "Why do people do the things they do in business?" So sociology is the study of social formations and how that influences action. And then I put an economic lens on that. But I also did a diversity and inclusion lens, just as a personal preference. And the thesis that I actually submitted was original research on the factors that influence LGBT inclusion in the American corporate world, because I was obviously in the United States. So that was a bit of what I did there, driven by this question of why do people do the things they do?
Marsha Druker 3:50
I'm trying to explore that through this podcasts as well - how do community builders become community builders?
Stefan Palios 3:55
It's a weird question, sometimes.
Marsha Druker 3:57
Yeah, I feel like everybody kind of stumbles into it in their own unique way.
So while you were at Yale, what extracurriculars were you involved in? I know that was a big part of your university experience.
Stefan Palios 4:08
Yeah, I was in three main communities at Yale. I was on the track and field team, I actually was a shot put and discus thrower. I was involved in the international community. You know, I'm Canadian, we're very close to the United States. But I was really connected with the rest of the world at Yale. So the Europeans, the Asians, the South Asians, Africans, Middle Eastern folks, etc. So I loved that community and got very involved and then post coming out, I got very involved in LGBT community as well. And I helped to bring a conference called IVQ, which is a LGBT conference for students to Yale l and we actually hosted it in my junior year and I was in charge of all of the sales and all of the sponsorship. It was actually my very first foray into both community building as well as sales, oddly enough.
Marsha Druker 4:56
That's super cool. And from there, how did you end up starting your career and your entrepreneurial journey?
Stefan Palios 5:03
People were doing their job searching in 2013 because I was in the class of 2014. And around 2013, fall senior year, everyone's getting jobs. And I'm like, okay, you know, my gut was just telling me, you need to be in Toronto. Like, for whatever reason, that was the gut feeling. So I started looking for jobs in Toronto, and I landed at a small consulting company that my sister's friend's older brother worked out. So he kind of referred me in for an interview. And I got the job. And it was HR consulting. So it was all about helping people with their talent strategies.
My research around diversity and inclusion came in pretty handy because 2014 / 2015 was Wednesday, D&I was really big, or rather started to get very big. And then I thought that I knew everything that I needed to know. And I was a confident young man, and I was going to start my own business. So I ended up leaving that company at about the end of 2015 and trying to start a business or recruiting company in 2016. I thought I was doing everything right.
And then fast forward, it was a complete and utter failure. It cost me about $40,000, including a lot of debt that was included in that money. It destroyed my mental health, destroyed my physical health, I gained, I think 30 or 40 pounds because I couldn't afford healthy foods. So I was just eating pizza at meetups. And that's how I got started to answer the real question. I was in consulting in Toronto. And then I tried to launch myself into entrepreneurship, which despite being a failure itself, got me into the Toronto tech scene, which is where I've been ever since.
Marsha Druker 6:29
It's an incredible journey that you've had. And I know that we originally connected over your failure for Fuckup Nights Toronto, but I am really curious about the framework that you developed, you called your "Five Fucks". Tell me a little bit more about that. How did you develop that and what is it?
Stefan Palios 6:45 The “Five Fucks” Framework
Absolutely. So it was the culmination of a couple articles that I read, and I'm super blanking on who wrote them, but basically the premise, there were two things one was: Don't try to have goals, build systems instead. So it was a bit of a shift. To say, look at your inputs and look at general outcomes you want. So understand the general direction you want to head but otherwise be flexible.
And then the other one was an entrepreneur, who happened to be a working mother who was also caring for her own mother. So she had all these priorities. She had a multi million dollar business to run with employees to care for. She had kids to care for and she had an elderly mother who needed care as well. And she wrote a really fascinating piece about how she prioritizes things instead of time. And so she doesn't say, you know, nine to one is my time for x.
She instead says, in my day, I am going to have dinner with my kids. I am going to take my mom to her doctor's appointments, and I am going to accomplish you know, x thing for the business today. And the way she described it was pretty much letting life fall around her. She allowed herself to be consumed by life except for those three to four things that were her non-negotiables.
So I combined those. And I said, you know, okay, what do I give a fuck about? So I said “Five Fucks” because I said, those are the five things that I give a fuck about those are my non-negotiables. And then I took the system's thinking analysis and said, Okay, what little actions or little thoughts that if I do those things on a regular basis, I'm living like I give a fuck about the things I say I give a fuck about.
And that was the entire basis of the my five bucks framework and it was physical health, financial health, mental health relationships and an emergency fuck because I read a third article that said you should never plan yourself for 100% capacity because then you'll never have extra capacity for an emergency and you'll always feel bad if you have an emergency. So I said okay, 20% of my life is dedicated solely to emergencies.
And at that time, I was, you know, overweight, I had poor mental health. I had poor financial health. So I'm like, Okay, I think at any given point in emergency is just going to be more capacity shoved into my other four goals.
And that was the “Five Fucks” framework that I'm incredibly proud to say actually got me completely out of debt within a year, it's bolstered my savings, I'm thankfully able to save a good chunk of money now, I've got significantly better mental health. I got a relationship shortly thereafter, and I've been with my partner for over two years now. So it's been quite transformational since 2017, when I develop that framework.
Marsha Druker 9:27
I feel like so many people could apply that and shut apply that I'm super inspired by it, and I'm definitely going to start applying that. And I love that leaving that 20% for emergencies. And then, you know, once you're kind of out of the woods like that 20% maybe so necessarily for emergencies, but almost like leaving it for just other opportunities that might come up. If you're stretching yourself too thin. You're by default, saying no to other things that might pique your interest.
Marsha Druker 10:02
So shifting gears here, I want to chat about how you built Venture Out. And how did you get into it from that experience? And what is Venture Out?
Stefan Palios 10:13
Venture Out is Canada's largest LGBT tech nonprofit. And we operate on a mission to connect LGBT people to the education, the resources and the opportunities, which also includes networks to either get into tech via getting a job at a tech startup, or starting their own company. So it's tech as in job or entrepreneurship. And I got involved because I was actually involved in another nonprofit called Out on Bay Street, which had a mission to connect LGBT students to jobs in banking, consulting, and law. And I joined the organization in 2014 / 2015.
When I graduated from Yale and moved to Toronto, it was just volunteering and I led sponsorship because that was my skill set that I learned at Yale, and Albert's who was the president of out on Bay Street at the time, was getting a lot of questions from tech companies saying, you know, we want to reach out to LGBT people we want to connect. But we're not really comfortable being at, you know, Out on Bay Street because Bay Street obviously rings about finance and banking and consulting. And that's not what tech was all about, you know, tech was on Spadina at the time.
And so Albert came up with an idea to run a standalone event. And it was going to be Canada's first panel on LGBT entrepreneurship. And it was during pride 2016, which was a massive, massive pride festival. And I helped to moderate that panel. And I was just a volunteer that put my hand up. And then Albert and I were talking and we said, we want to do this. And then Jeanette Stock, who came on board as the third co founder with Albert and myself, was actually on the social media team at Out on Bay Street, and we kind of looked and said, like, we think she's the right one.
She had a lot of really amazing experience working with charities like jack.org and was an amazing customer success mind and we said, You know what? We think you can really drive this and we want to support you. And so we all fell into our natural roles. I knew sponsorship, because I was actually leading the sponsorship team for Out on Bay Street at the time. And so I said, I will go around. And I was also freelancing for BetaKit. So I was frequently at events in the tech ecosystem anyway, because by that time, I was thinking about my business shutting it down, because it was failing and like looking at the tech ecosystem about getting a job. And so that naturally worked for me. And then Albert was a really smart, organizational mind. So he thought about the administrative side of things.
So that was how Venture Out got started. It was just this idea of people asking us how they could get involved and how they could be part of something but not liking the current structure. They didn't feel that connecting with Out on Bay Street was the right move for them. And so we created space for them with Venture Out.
Marsha Druker 12:50
I love that. I feel like that's how the strongest communities actually come to be when you know, you're looking for something to scratch your own itch and it doesn't exist. That's the best time to start it because I think, you know, if you're looking for it, so are other people.
What's the community side of Venture Out look like? How are you connecting the community members to each other, in addition to bringing amazing content and events to them?
Stefan Palios 13:10
It was kind of two-fold. I had a portion and Jeanette had a portion and Jeanette did an amazing job where she actually went content first and started to design pre emptive schedules because we launched with a conference. So we didn't launch with any other events, we kind of took that one standalone event and said, If you like this, you're going to love the conference. And so we brought a team together. And then Ben Winn who is another amazing person, runs a community called Customer Success In Focus. And he came on board as our first marketer, and he leveraged his own connections to get a little bit of PR. So we had a PR agency helping us a little bit pro bono. So we had the traditional like launching a new Venture Out initiative because actually at the time, our tagline wasn't Canada's largest LGBT tech nonprofit. It was Canada's first LGBT tech nonprofit and so then did that Jeanette as a leader was designing content so that we could advertise it and say, like, come for this. And then in my role from a community perspective, every time I would talk to an employer or a potential sponsor, I wouldn't just say do you want to sponsor? I would say, do you have any LGBT employees that you think would be interested in coming? Are you trying to recruit LGBT talent? Are you trying to connect with LGBT people?
Because the other part of the ecosystem is if you look at the large corporates, many of them have specific LGBT groups. You know, all of the banks have LGBT employee resource groups that are well funded. Startups don't have that. They either don't have enough people, or they don't have the budget, or they just don't have the time. Venture Out became a little bit of a, "hey, you know, we've got a lot of amazing people coming" and it was this interesting thing at the beginning of basically telling every group that every other group was going to be there. So they all showed up.
And that was really it, it was the big risk, the content side was saying, "Come here for the amazing content. Oh, and by the way, employers are going to be there". And then when I was talking to employers, it was, "Hey, come and recruit, oh, by the way, your colleagues are going to be there." And then we went out to the press, it was, "Oh, by the way, major community builders are going to be here and community leaders are going to be here". And then going to the speakers. It was like, "Hey, you know, we're going to provide these other people". So it was just building our own domino set. And not lying... we didn't promise anybody anything. But we said like, here's what we're building. Here's the vision, are you in everyone else's coming? And as we started to get some confirmations, then obviously we could build a little bit more. And that's what led to our first conference that had I think, 400 people.
Marsha Druker 15:43
That's fantastic. So that brings me to my next question. It's super impressive. You've raised over a million dollars for LGBTQ+ nonprofits and charities since 2013. How did you build the sales model for Venture Out?
Stefan Palios 15:57
Absolutely. Partnerships were and are vital. And my secret there is not allowing the sponsors to dictate everything. Basically, that million dollar number's spread over four or five different nonprofits and charities. And it's over approaching seven, eight years of work. So it's not just Venture Out. But the Venture Out model became this really interesting thing of how do we get people in the room. And when it comes to money, people get really touchy. And we knew that we couldn't go to a massive organization, because that's not the community we were building.
And I remember this conversation with Jeanette, where I was like, Oh, you know, I've got a couple contacts at this big company in this big company, I think we might be able to get them to write for 4/5/10 thousand dollar checks, and we sit down and we're like, very excited about that potential. And she goes, "we can't do that". We have to build for everyone in our community. And we considered startups a part of our community because our mission was to connect LGBT people to startups. It wasn't necessarily to connect them with big corporates, because that's what out on Bay Street was already doing. So staying incredibly true to who we wanted, and then thinking, Okay, how are they going to want to be involved? So our first sponsorship tier was $250. It was such an easy commitment that anyone could meet, or almost anyone, even pre-revenue startups could justify that level of expense.
And I'll never forget, I had a conversation with someone who was really interested in the concept and then went like, "Look, Stefan, I'm just going to level with you. We don't have budget. So you know, if you're expecting a 5k check, it's just going to be no". And I said, "Actually, our sponsorships start at $250". And the person goes, "Are you fucking kidding? Yes, we're in like, why didn't you lead with that?"
And so it became thinking very consciously about two things who we actually wanted in the room. So not just chasing money, but chasing who we wanted in the room, and then thinking okay, how can we make it incredibly easy for that person to say "yes". And that was the initial lead up of the venture out sponsorship strategy. And you know, we did have higher level tiers, and there were thankfully some amazing companies. But if you couldn't afford that, then you had a lower level. The other thing that I did from a strategy perspective (chatting with Albert and Jeanette about this and the initial co-founding team) was to recognize what those people needed. So what we needed from them was money, but we had to obviously charge less because they couldn't afford massive deals yet, and we were unproven. You know, a lot of people were taking a risk, so we had to lower the risk profile. But then it was a question of, we couldn't just copy the Out on Bay Street model, which was a lot more focused on recruiting. Whereas with a startup, it's like, well, you know, maybe they're not recruiting or if they are, they're looking for one person.
And if they aren't recruiting at that time, or they don't know, so a lot of startups are like, I don't know if we're gonna be recruiting in four to six months. I would love to say that we are but I can't guarantee that and I can't put spend against that. So we started thinking and we said, okay, well, what do you want? And it became very obvious that they were like, well, we want talent branding, like we want people to know that we're around. But we also just want general marketing. When we go to something, we want it to be almost like a trade show, like, is there potential to close a client? Or is there potential to meet someone new? Is there potential to recruit a senior level talent from one of your speakers? Or am I only talking to your attendees?
And that got us thinking and someone on my team Meg did a really amazing job, they created a survey. That was a question of like, what do you actually want to Venture Out? Are you here just to be here? You just want to show up and be part of the community. Are you here to learn about LGBT inclusion? Are you here to recruit? Are you here to brand yourself? Do you want to be known in the community for something else? So you're trying to market what you're trying to sell so we started thinking like a business, I went to our business sponsors and said, “Hey, it's $250 bucks first off, so that's an easy conversation to be had right now, but also, here's who else is coming. These other companies are going to be here and you can network with them. We're not just saying come in and then disappear.” So we kind of decoupled the traditional sponsorship wins from our cost base.
Marsha Druker 20:16
Yeah, I think it's so intuitive now that you sort of look at it this way. But I think a lot of communities try to have a one size fits all package. And I think it was really where I switched my thinking with Fuckup Nights Toronto when I went after sponsors in a way that I really treated them as partners. And when I created something that wasn't just a one size fits all thing, but really catered to their goals and their needs. That's when I started seeing success with it, too. So it's so important to kind of switch your thinking and start thinking of creative ways that you can engage your partners.
How did the Venture Out community evolve and grow after that first conference, and what were some challenges that you faced along the way that actually helped you grow?
Stefan Palios 20:58
It started actually with a really robust feedback survey which Jeanette sent one out to all of the attendees on a content basis. And then Meg and I worked together on one for sponsors. And we boiled it down to three key questions from a sponsorship perspective. Before the conference, we asked, "What do you have budget for?" And that's how we discovered people actually didn't want to recruit. They wanted to, you know, market and network and everything that I just explained before the conference, we said, "What are you trying to get out of this?" And that's how we understood what our confirmed sponsors wanted. And that's where we got things like booth placement, etc. After the conference, it was, "Did you get what you told us you wanted?"
So in that way, there was a lot of continuity from pre-sale all the way to customer success. And Meg really championed that and did a wonderful job. And so from the sponsor perspective, thankfully, many people said like, "yes, thank you so much. You made me feel special. I learned a lot. I met somebody, etc." And we actually had a really amazing story where Borrowell met their Head of People at Venture Out. (And they've kind of connected before, I won't take full credit.) But it was a really proud moment for the conference.
And we kind of had a similar situation with the content side. We were designing all this content, and we were only marketing based on the content. So if you came in, because you saw an advertisement for a talk, that meant you wanted that content, which is great. So afterwards, we said, "Did you actually like it? Was this what you were expecting?" And thankfully, we had largely very positive, but a few people were like, "Okay, well, one, it felt rushed. And two, you know, I didn't see the kind of representation that I was expecting" kind of like a do better, you know, not terrible, but a do better step up kind of thing. And I think that was probably the biggest challenge going into year two, because we won were established, it was like, ooh, Venture Out, but then also on a sponsorship perspective, people wanted to see more as well and we wanted to make more money, you know, $250 sponsorships is not a sustainable business model.
So we wanted to increase our prices. In order to do that, we had to really demonstrate value. And thankfully, our sponsors liked our approach and did believe that we were providing value, we'd become a known entity, we had a great conference. So we were able to increase our prices and continue that model. But it was only because of all this feedback. And those are some of the challenges that came up. But they were challenges to our process, which actually felt really good. Because when people are challenging your process, they're subtly implying, I like what you're delivering, I just need you to deliver it better. And that's really, really validating.
But as we built the community and established it over time, the key question was, we need more and different. So we partnered with Google, Twitter and LinkedIn, I believe, for a pride feature in June where it was one big event in June, because people are saying March alone is not enough. And then later on, people said, okay, we don't only look for jobs in March, so we launched the Venture Out career fair, where sponsors of the conference were allowed to come in and just, you know, recruit more, because as these companies were growing, they're going to need more people. And then the most recent one that came out with the Venture Out community was newer LGBT entrepreneurs saying this is great, but you know, we're not recruiting and so we don't need the talent side of Venture Out.
And we knew the very specific content of the business building seminar is not going to really resonate with an average attendee. So we ended up launching through Lisa Durnford, who was one of the founding team members of Venture Out and has led this initiative with Taylor Bond, who was another fantastic early team member. They led the Venture Out entrepreneurship initiative, which unfortunately got a bit disrupted due to COVID, but launched with an accelerator model specifically geared towards helping LGBT entrepreneurs with their next step.
So a little bit was about the identity portion of how you bring your identity forward, particularly in potential investor conversations or with big potential customers, but a lot of it was specifically focused on business things. So: do you need to be in an accelerator, should you be fundraising, how do you bootstrap more all the way down to the nitty gritty of like, do you need to set up a bank account because you have a new idea and you're not ready yet.
Marsha Druker 25:08
I love what you brought up about just listening to your community. I think that's something that a lot of people miss. And they kind of try to just guess at what the community wants and you know, put together things that their team is interested in working on, but at the end of the day, then it's not a community, then you're just an events company, or you're putting together a conference, and there's definitely, you know, space for that as well. And I think that's awesome. And there's great content that comes out of it.
But if you're trying to build a community, a key thing is to listen to them. And I think it's so important what you said about, you know, when you just started out, we're just focused on March and during that conference, then because that seemed like the perfect time to be doing that type of event, but your community showed you that they're looking for programming and for ways to connect throughout the year.
That was a big thing for Fuckup Nights Toronto as well. I thought that, you know, maybe we should take a break over the summer. I'm not sure if you know, people are going to be coming out to events and I actually had my busiest event season last summer, if you're bringing something unique to market timing doesn't matter as much as bringing the community together and bringing them programming that they're actually going to care about.
So shifting gears again, I would love to get some of your advice for community builders. You're a pro at gathering data and feedback and really using it to improve programming and your sales process. Do you have any tips for people that are just getting started? What are some of the key metrics that community builders should be looking at and reporting?
Stefan Palios 26:39
Absolutely. So when you are doing data collection, you've got to think about it for the whole process. And I'm really sorry if you're already at the end state, but when you ask someone if they liked something, or if they value it or their ideas for you, then it needs to be based in something. So simply saying, did you like could get some prompt response. You’ll get people responding, but they're more likely to respond more generically and say like, “Yeah, sure I liked it.” But if you level set ahead of time where you ask, “What are you looking for from this later on?” You don't have to ask, “Did you like it? You can ask, did you get what you said you wanted?”
And that makes it a much more grounded conversation. And that's where you can get some amazing ideas. And in the Venture Out context, that's where we got the ideas that eventually led to the career fair, the pride event, the accelerator, and it was through collecting this ongoing feedback of saying, you know, you said you wanted this did you get it and they go, “Kinda, it would have been nice if this other thing was available”. And overtime, you collect all those ideas, and then you can funnel it through your organization's mind and create really new and amazing things.
Marsha Druker 27:44
All of those things are so key. And I love what you said about starting the data collection process throughout and at the beginning of launching your initiative. I think a lot of people don't even think about it at that point. They're so focused on putting together the event or whatever it is, but it's something that you can start implementing moving forward. That's such a great tip.
Marsha Druker 28:03
A lot of communities are struggling right now to monetize and to sell sponsorships during COVID-19 for virtual events. Definitely a challenge that's on my mind as well. Have you seen any creative approaches? And do you have any advice for getting over objections?
Stefan Palios 28:17
Yeah, so I think that the value conversation is going to be even more critical. So if you are only ever a heartstrings donation, then your community is definitely going to be at risk. But that doesn't mean that you can't evolve and can't pivot a little. So in this case, I would say, you know, think about what your community can actually offer. And I would say if there's a structure of three things that I think about, one, think about what your community can offer, in the same way that a conference, a recruiting conference can also be a networking conference, and can also be branding for sponsors just by showing up. We didn't have to change the structure that was just a different value perspective.
See what your community has disposal, you know, when people come together, those opportunities can happen. The next thing I would think about is your value delivery mechanisms. So in Venture Out’s case, our value delivery mechanism was an in-person event that's no longer feasible. So you can either think about doing a virtual event, you can think about restructuring it. And you and I have kind of talked about this from a Fuckup Nights perspective where you mentioned how you're not going to do as much of the lightning talk and go back to a bit of a fireside AMA because it's more conducive. And that's the third pillar that you need to think about is, again, what do they want? And how is it going to be delivered with your mechanisms? So part of the reason why people love to Venture Out was the side conversations and the different kinds of talks that are going on and the little networking events at the end.
So simply hosting a virtual event wouldn't quite do it. You've got to think about the selfish reasons that your sponsors are giving you money, and think about how that can be delivered, and the potentially annoying part is that may not be delivered in the same way, virtually as in person. And what I mean by that is an in person event naturally allows for side networking, drinks, talks, etc. A virtual event doesn't allow for that. So what you might have to do is create different pathways for different value delivery. But if you start with the value that you offer, which hopefully you already know, because you've already asked, “What are you hoping to get out of this?” and you've already gotten a bit of data on? “Did you get what you wanted”, but even if you're brand new, think about the value you deliver in person.
And then think of what pathways are required to deliver that value virtually, that will help you defend yourself in the conversations where you're saying, we're still delivering you the value that you signed up for in a slightly different way. And as long as you are very able and willing to communicate that with them, have conversations with them and get their iterative feedback because maybe they don't see that value is being delivered in the same way, then you're going to have a much stronger chance.
Marsha Druker 31:06
Yeah, absolutely the key word has value. And you know, whether you're putting together an in person event or you're doing something virtual, you can always find the value and look at it from a different perspective and get really creative with it. And again, just, you know, keep asking for feedback, and really listen to what your partners or your potential partners are telling you. And that's going to set you up for success.
Marsha Druker 31:24
So as a journalist, and as a writer, do you have any tips for how communities can create and leverage great content?
Stefan Palios 31:31
So one, don't be afraid of user generated content? “UGC”. It could be something as simple as “Hey, community, if you want to publish a blog, go ahead, send it over”. But you can also do a more structured version, where, you know, let's say you're a Slack based community or an email based community, you send a note and say, “Hey, I'm writing an article about x. Do you have an experience you'd like to share?” Send me a note about that experience. And then you can collate that content and put it all together in an article and get some good content out there that's community driven, and easier for you to produce than having to sit and do something net new.
The other thing you can do is any form of roundup based content, where you can say, you know, the best articles this week about x. So, you know, the best articles this week about LGBT inclusion are the best articles this week about, you know, Fucking up and Failure in Business and putting that out to your community. So it's, again, a value delivery. And the third thing you can think of is actually interviewing your community. So if you are a conference event, and maybe do interviews with speakers. Venture Out did that - we did Q&A interviews with our speakers, you can interview different community members on a community spotlight feature.
But the foundation to think of in this case is what value are you delivering through your vision? And then how can content help you do that? So in Venture Out’s case, we want to connect LGBT people to networks resources and each other in the tech community. So doing Q&A feature with our speakers who are LGBT entrepreneurs in the tech space makes perfect sense because the average person who's either attending our event or can't attend, but is reading our content is going to see that person and think I'm learning something from them. I'm seeing myself in them and there's still a win. So think about the value that you want to deliver from a vision perspective, and then look at how content can accomplish that. But then three structures I mentioned, user generated, planned, UGC, like kind of structured UGC versus community features and roundups are just easy ways to actually get content out there. Even if you're not a writer.
Marsha Druker 33:36
Especially for teams that are volunteer lead, I think, you know, those types of approaches where it's like a roundup or user generated, that's such an approachable way to get started.
Marsha Druker 33:54
So shifting gears again, I want to spend a little bit of time chatting about your personal community. What are some communities that you're a part of? And why are they meaningful to you?
Stefan Palios 34:04
I'm part of a few. So I took Growclass and Sarah actually has a community of alumni. I like that because it's kind of like minded professionals. So if I've got a growth related question, I can pose it. They're also cheerleaders, you know, we cheerlead each other on which I really like. I am a member of a variety of Slack groups. I won't go into all of them, but one that I particularly like is called “No Code Founders”. It's specifically for people who can't code but who want to build technology products and do so with no code tools like you know, even WordPress as an example of a no code tool and a lot of cases or Card or all of these newer companies coming out where I'm actually trying to teach myself how to build a whole app without writing a single line of code. That's a difficult learning curve for me.
So this community keeps me motivated helps me feel good. I'm also a member of a community called Indie Hackers, which is all about the solopreneur like the small time builder, just trying to make my way in the world as an entrepreneur, you know, I'm going to do it. myself, I'm going to build for myself going to be a solopreneur, kind of a newfangled word for self-employed, but explicitly using technology to scale.
I'm incredibly passionate about remote work. I started working remotely on purpose, but in a weird way, because my company in 2017 started as a side hustle. So I had to work remotely because I couldn't go see a client, right, I had a 9-5 job at the time. And I just wanted to start writing about that, because I felt like there was an opportunity to have a voice around clearly pro-remote work. And so I started Remotely Inclined, and that community is now over 220 members.
Marsha Druker 35:38
That's awesome. And you know what, again, it's not about the size of the community. I don't think that's how it always should be measured. It's about the value that you're bringing to them. And you know, those 220ish people are getting so much value from that newsletter and from being able to be connected to each other.
Marsha Druker 35:52
Outside of your professional communities, how do you choose your people? Are there any personal communities that are meaningful to you?
Stefan Palios 35:59
So when I think of non work communities, I default to digital. So that for me is just a thing, which has been very helpful lately, of course, since we can't all see each other, but the people that I really gravitate towards are people that I can talk to about any topic where, you know, we can even debate but then when it's over, it's over. But also the people who you don't talk to you for a while, and then it still feels like no time has passed, you know, I've got a couple of really close friends that I consider very close that I really, really am happy to have in my life, but I actually haven't spoken to in a while. And I don't have a consistent type of friend except the consistency that they're all really smart people. Most of them are smarter than me. So that's always helpful. And there are people for whom being friends is a bit of a deeper thing.
Marsha Druker 36:46
I know exactly what you mean and really similar for me, I have friends that I've met in different parts of the world and we don't chat that often. But when we do pick up the phone or you know, jump on a video chat, it really does feel like no time has passed and you can't really put your finger on it, you just feel like you click with some people.
So my last question for you is, and I ask this of everybody on the podcast, what does community mean to you?
Stefan Palios 37:08
Community is a chosen home for something specific. And that could mean you know, in the case of no code founders, it's my chosen home for people who want to talk about building things and that can't code because I absolutely identify fully with that. With Indie Hackers, it's the future solopreneur millionaires of the world. And that is such a cool community. That would be what it means to me. It's a chosen home for something specific and I love that you can be a part of as many communities as you want and as many communities as fit a facet of who you are, which is super cool.
Marsha Druker 37:44
I absolutely love that definition. Stefan, thank you so much again for joining me. It was great chatting with you.
