Year Two: Scaling a Community-First Business with Cristina Ciaravalli

David Nebinski (0:02)

Hey, friend, it's David Nebinski here in Brooklyn, here at the Portfolio Career Podcast, where we take ownership of your career and design a life that you want to live. This conversation is with Cristina Ciaravalli. She's the founder of and CEO of Valli Ventures. And wow, it was amazing to talk with someone who is a few steps ahead of me.

And she's in year two of building her community-based business. She does events, advisory, and recruiting. So yeah, she's got multiple revenue streams. Shout out to Spencer Rosen for officially introducing us. So yeah, it's just really great to chat about kind of building this business. Events and scaling and just, yeah. So if you're interested in building a business like this, like this episode is definitely for you. You can learn more about the podcast and my learnings through my newsletter at davidnebinski.com/newsletter.

So excited for you to build and grow your portfolio career. Here we go with Cristina. Hey, we just recorded a podcast and now we're doing round two. This is the official one though.

So I'm really inspired by all the stuff you've been doing, all things community. And I also, as someone who's been recovering from an injury recently, I think it's, I've been getting invited to fitness oriented events. I'm like, no, I can't. But you host fitness oriented events.

Cristina Ciaravalli (1:36)

Yes.

David Nebinski (1:36)

What do you love about doing that?

Cristina Ciaravalli (1:38)

I think it's nice to have a place that founders can get together. That's not one, after work. We typically do the workouts in the morning. So that's a nice mix up. And two, there's no drinking involved. It's not in a dark private room, which those events are great. But it's good to have a healthy fitness focused alternative. And I find shared trauma, like a various boot camp class, is a really good way for people to get to know one another.

David Nebinski (2:01)

Okay. Were you very athletic growing up?

Cristina Ciaravalli (2:05)

Played a lot of school sports in high school.

I cheered in college. So I do love a good football game, basketball, the World Cup. This summer was so fun. Yeah, I got to go up to Boston for the Scotland game. It was as outrageous as it looked online. So, yes.

David Nebinski (2:24)

Was there a fitness workout event this week?

Cristina Ciaravalli (2:28)

No, we didn't have one this week. I'm waiting for everyone to get back from their various summer trips. But we typically do things like berries, boxing, yoga, Pilates, and we try to keep them small, like 10 founders at a time. So that after the workout, we can all have a coffee and sit down and introduce each other. And one thing we ask everyone to do is share an ask with the group of 10

And that is actually, I think, more powerful than the, this is what my company does portion, because you'll see someone across the table be like, oh, I actually raised from them. Let me introduce you. Oh, you need a distributor for that. I have a guy. And it's just fantastic to see the magic that happens from actually sharing a genuine ask or something that someone knows nothing about. And there's an expert sitting right next to them.

David Nebinski (3:08)

And this is as they're maybe throwing up after the workout?

Cristina Ciaravalli (3:11)

Correct. Drenched with sweat, sipping an iced matcha. Exactly.

David Nebinski (3:18)

Wow. Okay. Like I say that of this, I've really come to realize, to notice over the...

So I'd say I definitely have been hosting a lot more events post-pandemic than I did pre-pandemic. And I think that I've grown a lot as a facilitator. And I think one of the things that I have realized is people do want direction, and they like prompts, and they...

Yeah, so leaning into the share and ask or has been well received when I do that, and it sounds like you've seen the benefit of doing that as well. And obviously, the people that attend, so too, so I just wanted to say that I've gotten more and more comfortable with like, say this, ask for this, share this, like, can you do this? But I haven't said, only after you've done a five-minute sprint on a treadmill, a five-minute mile sprint on a treadmill. So, and would you say this is like a core, and I know you've got a beautiful kind of umbrella here. Is the workout events with Founders, is that like a core event that you do?

Cristina Ciaravalli (4:44)

Yeah. So under the Valli Ventures umbrella, we do quarterly supper societies, and those are those private dinners where you get to sit down and break bread and really enjoy the evening. And then we also do these Founder workouts. We call that Founder League. I actually inherited it from a dear friend who worked in BC, and this was her way of sourcing new leads. And so the community has grown tremendously over the last, I think we're almost at five years now, which is wild in New York, but it's about 700 Founders total, and they're from all different disciplines, all different stages. Some are exited, some are bootstrapped, some are venture backed, like it's crazy. But we like doing the workouts because that sort of spans the network of people who want to bring other people along for the physical activity of going to the class.