On Compounding: Building CLG2 with Zach and Ruthie

David Nebinski (0:04)

Hey, friend, it's David Nebinski here in Brooklyn. Hope you're having a great day. It's a little bit rainy here. And yeah, I wanted to share about a new project that I'm working on. It's actually kind of a continuation of a prior project. So I'm co-hosting the Community-Led Growth Conference on Friday, October 2nd in New York. I'm co-hosting it with Zach Hawtoff, who he and I co-hosted the first Community-Led Growth Conference on Friday, March 13th, here in New York in 2026 So just a couple of months later, we are now hosting CLG2. And this time we have a special co-host. Her name is Ruthie Berber. She attended CLG1 in March 2026 We both have collaborated with her on a bunch of different events and seen each other at a bunch of different events, mostly community-building events. We both have gotten closer. We all have gotten closer through Fabrik, which is a third space for community-builders and just an overall social spaces ecosystem with multiple locations. And, yeah, so we're super excited to be hosting CLG2 at Fabrik. So check out Fabrik if you're not familiar with it. Definitely, if you're a community-builder, great place to host events, et cetera.

And, yeah, this is a fun little project. As part of, or while I've been building up A Chief of Staff, the company and community and platform for Chiefs of Staff, where I host monthly A Chief of Staff mixers for Chiefs of Staff in New York. And so, yeah, this has been a fun project that is a couple of weeks out. But it's been great to work with Zach again on this and with Ruthie, obviously as well. And I think this is also just.

A symptom or something that I've been noticing and been trying to do more and more of over the last year, which has continued to work on things that can kind of compound and can keep going and growing and with people that I want to keep working with. And so the first CLG in March was a big project for Zach and I, and it was a really big project for me in the beginning of my earlier stages of my solopreneur journey.

And it was a big success. And we really felt the momentum and the energy at the event online and in the group chat since. And that was sold out and it was highly produced. It was basically a conference for community builders that we wish that we would attend and we couldn't really find anything else like it. So we did it. And we weren't sure if we were going to do it again in 2026 We both have a bunch of stuff going on. And then things just kind of came together in a really like beautiful organic way.

I was catching up with Ruthie on a Saturday as an unplanned phone call way. And we both had been talking about how I just still didn't seem like there was a lot of high quality events. And she had talked about how much value she got at CLG. And we were just kind of throwing around ideas and why CLG2 might work and some of the maybe partnerships that we could maybe form up and kind of make happen. And so we started riffing on this a little bit more. And we kind of floated the idea by Zach.

And we weren't entirely sure what it might look like. Maybe it was something more like something that I've done before. We weren't sure if Zach was going to be involved and kind of what that would look like. Again, like I knew he and I had been continuing to talk, but also just I knew he had a bunch of stuff going on. And so we suggested it to Zach and kind of wanted to get his opinions and his thoughts. And I wasn't sure if it was going to be like underneath the CLG brand and umbrella and how his company might be involved, et cetera. And Zach was just like, let's do it. So that's the kind of legend that he is.

And so then, yeah, so this basically really come from the summer. So I think it was like late June is when Ruthie and I reconnected about it. And now here we are. I'm recording this on September 13 So definitely lots of things to kind of figure out upfront of who's doing what and how we might work together and what are some of the key steps and key partnerships that we needed to go forward with it and some of the economics and stuff. And we got that all figured out upfront.

And then we've kind of announced it in August, mid to late August. Thankfully, there's a lot of already existing assets and group chats and kind of marketing opportunities, like people that went to the prior one and email list, etc. And so, yeah, we've been kind of pushing on this. All three of us have a lot of stuff going on, but really felt a lot of momentum with CLG and thought that CLG1 and thought that there was an opportunity to do CLG2 here in New York. So kind of in a little bit of like a lower lift way of a conference that's still very peer-to-peer, attendee-led, and that's what people want, that's what I would want, and so that's what we're putting together for about 50 community builders, so people that are full-time community professionals, founders, etc. We've got some really great partners and sponsors that help making this possible, but I'll probably share more about them later on.