How to Build a Community in 2021 with Greg Isenberg

Travis King (0:01)

Welcome to the Community builder Podcast. The world is our classroom, and every moment is an opportunity to understand human connection at a newer level. On this podcast, we'll explore the minds of active community builders as they strive to leave their imprint on the world.

I am your host, Travis King. Yeah, I'm excited, man. I know we've been connected on Twitter for a while, and exchanged some tweets here and there. Yeah, I honestly just wanted to catch up with you, and A, see what you're working on, and what you're excited about. And definitely would love to dive into some of the stuff you're doing with the Late Checkout sub stack, and kind of like what you're up to, because I know you're up to something over there. And also just dive into anything that you're curious about, or that you're currently thinking about.

Greg Isenberg (1:15)

Yeah, man, I mean, I got a lot of thoughts. If you want to hear, I got a lot of thoughts.

Travis King (1:22)

Man, these are my favorite episodes, because when I can help unlock thoughts, I learn so much. So Greg, I'm here to learn, man.

Greg Isenberg (1:33)

I mean, where do you want to start? Where should we start? I mean, basically, the entire society as we know it is being rewritten. This is probably the biggest consumer shift happening right now in the last 15 years, 10 years, really since the app stores come out. And there's not enough people working on startups to fulfill the needs. So I'm looking at them like, this is going to be the renaissance. Like this is going to be one of the most interesting time periods of all time.

And you're going to see many just new companies come out. And I'm just, you know, I'm kind of sleepless, to be honest.

Travis King (2:30)

So basically, if you could ask one thing from the heavens or the universe, you would say, bring me more resources so I could build more stuff, is what I'm summing that up to.

Greg Isenberg (2:41)

I mean, yeah, I'd love to clone myself, if you know anyone who could do that. Or just find people to have key insights. My whole thing is communities. So if you have a key insight in a particular community, you could probably build a startup around it, and you could probably make at least seven figures from it.

The time to do it is now. So what I'm looking for is just connections to people who have a deep insight about something. And, you know, I saw a tweet today. I think it was like, I don't know who said it, but it was like 2010 Like, you know, it's all about like the gig economy. 2015, it's all about DTC. 2020, it's all about community. And I think that's it's finally happening. The shift is finally happening. So, yeah, I'm excited that it's here.

Travis King (3:50)

Yeah. I think you brought up a bunch of interesting points that get me thinking a lot, because this is a space that I kind of stumbled into when I was working at Meetup. So I'm sure you know Scott, right? And like all the work he's done. And as I started exploring, I was like, what is this space? Like, what is community? Why do we have, you know, some people calling businesses out for how they do communities? And you've got other people that are building direct to consumer communities that are really focused on the people, have nothing to do with products, right? And I just started to get curious. And I also had this belief like two years ago that communities are the solution to a lot of the problems that we're facing just as a society.

And so as you kind of talk about ways that it's kind of the reckoning and it's a way for people to kind of start from scratch, like if you could give someone a very, very simple blueprint for how you would go about tackling a vertical or how they could identify a space or an insight that they're probably not looking for, like what would be some things that you would tell them?

Greg Isenberg (5:05)

I mean, the first thing, well, first of all, I want to back up for a second because you brought up Scott. So Scott is, you know, was the co-founder of meetup.com. Dear friend of mine, and he took me on one of these Meetup tours.

Travis King (5:27)

Will you go to different Meetup groups?

Greg Isenberg (5:29)

Yeah. So I knew Scott was like, sent me an email at like 12 PM and he's like, hey, what are you doing at five? And I was like, I don't know. He's like, come with me on this Meetup tour. What is it called? Is it called a Meetup tour? It's called something like that.