The Hidden Growth Engine: Why Community Is Your Most Underrated Marketing Advantage
What if your community was more than a support system—and became the heartbeat of your business growth? In this energizing episode of the You World Order Showcase Podcast, Jill Hart sits down with Josh Zerkel, Head of Marketing & Community-Led Growth at Gradual and creator of The Community Code, to explore why connection is the secret sauce top brands are using to scale impact, not just income.
You’ll discover:
- Why connection beats conversion (and builds trust faster than ads ever could)
- The difference between being a community leader vs. a builder
- How Substack and platforms like Gradual are creating relational—not just transactional—spaces
- Why communities like Apple, Figma, and Salesforce inspire fervent loyalty
- What solopreneurs and conscious coaches can learn from global brands
If you’re tired of expensive ads and surface-level marketing, and you’re ready to create deeper, more meaningful engagement—this one’s for you.
📍 Mentioned in the episode:
- Josh's Substack: thecommunitycode.com
- Gradual platform: gradual.com
- Connect on LinkedIn: Josh Zerkle
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Email us at support@hartlifecoach.com and let’s co-create visibility that aligns with your soul.
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Grab a free Client Acquisition Audit and I’ll show you exactly where your message, offer, and CTA are leaking conversions—and the 3 fixes to turn your podcast/Substack into a client pipeline.
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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcript
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What if your community wasn't just a support channel, but a strategic growth engine in this episode? We dive into how top brands have turned engagement into global impact and why community might be the most underrated. Go to market advantage you're not using yet.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Learn what's working, what's not and how to unlock real roi through community-led growth. Hi, and welcome to the uworld order, showcase podcast where we feature life, health and transformational coaches and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, the coaches alchemist on a mission to help coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice, monetize their mission and get visible leveraging podcasts and substack.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Today we are speaking with Joshua Zirkle. Josh is the head of marketing and a community-led growth at gradual. A community platform that helps organizations turn engagement into insight with 20 plus years of experience. Leading programs at top brands like Asana, Evernote, Cbs News and Heygen. Josh blends strategic clarity with a people 1st approach to scale impact. He's also the founder of community code. A substack dedicated to unlocking the power of community
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: led growth. Welcome to the show, Josh. I'm really excited to chat with you today.
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::Josh Zerkel: Thanks, Jill, happy to be here.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: All right. Here's the big question you ready?
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::Josh Zerkel: I'm ready.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, what's the most significant thing in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going.
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::Josh Zerkel: I'm biased. But I really think the biggest thing that we can do is connect into other people.
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::Josh Zerkel: My whole work is all about building connection, building community community in all of its various colors and forms. But I think fundamentally, we live in a world that is inching towards disconnection, and the more that we can build connections, retain those bonds and really understand other people, the better the world will be.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I could not agree with you more.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We started out in tribes. We have families, we're community creatures, and when we start trying to be the best at everything, and nobody is the best at everything. In fact, they've done studies where you know valedictorians who are like
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: super great in school. They usually aren't like the best in any one field when they get out of school, whereas you know the
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the math nerd, who fails horribly at English and other social skills. I'm stereotyping here because, you know, all math nerds aren't that way. But you know, just we, we have this picture of somebody that's just like so singularly focused. Those people take us leaps and bounds beyond what somebody who is a generalist could ever do. You could look at the medical community. It's the same way. It's just like
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: as as individuals, those
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: when we're singularly focused on what we're really good at. We need community because we need, you know those those computer nerds? They have moms to help them with the other things. They can't exist by themselves. And I think we all, if we could just embrace what we're good at
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and and accept help and community is a great place for helping each other. You know you throw in what you've got, and let others throw in what they've got.
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::Josh Zerkel: I agree completely. I think community offers balance. I'm good at something. You're good at something else. I know about something you know, about something else. I enjoy something. You enjoy something else. We can actually have conversations about these things and learn from one another and help one another, and whether you're building a community in your personal life or in the business context, the concept is the same. It's people of
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::Josh Zerkel: who are all different from one another, but maybe share a common interest or a common need, coming together to help get everyone what they need at the end of the day, by collaborating, by sharing ideas and by being there for one another. And I've been fortunate in having been part of many communities, and now leading and fostering many communities to see the power that happens when people come together. It's when we start
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::Josh Zerkel: thinking we can do it all on our own, or that we should be on our own. That's when we start running into trouble. Communication breaks down. We lack awareness or knowledge, and we make a lot of mistakes, big mistakes and small ones, and community isn't the end. All be all solution for everything. But it can really help with that specific challenge.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. And and even if you're starting a community and you feel like you're the leader.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: No one is ever really a leader in a community. You're just another person who maybe is pulled a bunch of people together. But I personally find communities that really thrive and grow are communities where you may have had one person that says, Oh, let's bring a couple people together, and those couple people also bring people together, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: then then they start mushrooming, and you know it's the Mlm. Model. But you know it's the Mlm. Model for a reason they work.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You get connected with people. Linkedin's the same way. That's that's their whole model is that you're meeting people on different levels, connections.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah, I frame it as I'm I'm never a community leader. I'm a community builder, and I. I build the foundation. If there's nothing there. I'm going to create the framework. I'm going to start recruiting some of the people who I think, might be a good fit and might get some value out of and can offer value to the community. But I can't control what happens there. I'm not the figurehead at the the top of it. I'm the person that helps build it so that other people can help grow it and get value from it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: A good example of this in business is Apple.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: When Steve Jobs 1st started it, Steve Jobs lost his job. They fired him because he built such an interesting community, and but the community itself decided it was going to go in a different direction.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So he had to go out and build a different community.
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::Josh Zerkel: Definitely. Yeah, I think, especially if we're looking at the the business world and the tech world, the
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::Josh Zerkel: the waxes and wanes, the various paths that community takes in support of and sometimes against businesses. It's really interesting to see those dynamics at play. I, personally have been very fortunate to help build and foster communities at a number of really amazing organizations, both large and small and just interacting with the various community members talking with them.
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::Josh Zerkel: helping them understand what we're building. So they feel like they're part of the family, but also celebrating them as part of the growth and recognizing back to them that a lot of the growth has been due to them and their evangelism and their connection with one another. That's a really amazing thing that I think is really unique to community it. It takes something as hard and and sterile as here's a computer
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::Josh Zerkel: and builds the personal element around it. I don't know that apple would be where it is today, without that community that was built in those early days, and the fervent passion that they carried with them throughout the decades. And that's all due to community.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah, there's great branding there. The products are amazing. But it's the people element that's really carried it forward for so long.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and and the people both on the consumer side, but also on the production side.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And that's how great brands are really built.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And there are are no brands that really come to mind. Maybe Microsoft.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But that aren't feverently built by both the consumer and the production company being in
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: in a, in community with each other, you know, one listens to the other, one supports the other. It it kind of goes back and forth. Amazon is a good example of that. They got where they got by building community of of people affiliates
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: people that promoted their products for them people that brought products to their platform for them.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I mean it. It Amazon is all about community. That's how they got where they are.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah, there's a lot of interesting examples of of very community forward organizations. Those included. One that comes to mind is figma. Figma is a design tool, like the suite of tools from adobe. But what they did differently at the very beginning was they put community at the center of their growth model, and from involving community creators, designers. At a very early stage they were able to very robustly build out.
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::Josh Zerkel: I would say, fervent, insane levels of brand love. People love figma. They advocate for it. I went to the Figma Conference a couple of years ago, and at most conferences. There's like a swag booth.
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::Josh Zerkel: but the line for the Figma swag boot, where people would actually pay money to buy a figma T-shirt or a bag, all of which were beautifully designed.
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::Josh Zerkel: The line was literally wrapped around the Conference center. That's how excited people were to be part of this community, and whether you're building a community for your personal life for your spiritual life or your business.
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::Josh Zerkel: That concept of. I want this excitement around the thing that I'm building. And I want people to feel really invested in it. That's community.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, it's an energy, and it gives life to an inanimate
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: object or subject. But it the energy is the life force behind it, and it. It can ebb and flow, and you can kill it. But you can also grow something really amazing and beautiful with it.
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::Josh Zerkel: Absolutely. What's interesting right now is, I'm I'm in conversation with many AI companies that are very interested in building community around their brands. It's pairing this highly technological tool and the capability of something that's designed to augment the work that we do
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::Josh Zerkel: with people, actual, real life. Humans who are learning about how to use these tools are excited about talking about them, interested in the possibility of how we can pair these 2 things together. The people part and the tech part. And so even with the the most cold technology that's out there that some people feel really strongly about one way or another, there's ways to really leverage community to humanize it
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::Josh Zerkel: and and get the people who are really interested and want to learn together around it. And this is true for so many of the different types of organizations I've worked with over the years.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's it's 1 of the most misunderstood and missed
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: things available to businesses out there that people just don't even really
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: think about that. They? They hear about marketing. And there's there's
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: traditional ways of doing things. But really, community is where your brand is at. And if you can't generate that human to human element
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: in what you're doing, you will fail and you'll have.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You'll have problems. I I'm involved with a company right now that it's experiencing these problems because they don't understand that element of it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Drag them kicking and screaming until, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I know, you guys are all tech nerds, and you're in Singapore. But really.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: we just want to know that you're real and that we're part of something really big and special
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: beyond me, just standing out there saying, you guys, this is so great.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah, it's interesting. I think community is, is broadly misunderstood or understood only to a small degree. Part of it is that if community builders do our jobs. Well.
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::Josh Zerkel: the the visual outcome of community is what's often seen as fun, like, there are pictures of people. At events, there's happy posts online.
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::Josh Zerkel: All the work is underneath to make that happen. And the fun is the outcome. It's not the impact. It's the impact on the individual that's part of the community. But the business impact is deeper engagement with the brand, better advocacy, engagement with the product or tool or service, all of the tangible results that the suite of business leaders really care about that impact the top line or the bottom line.
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::Josh Zerkel: But the experience of creating the community is often the only parts that's visual is like, oh, there was a fun event. Great!
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::Josh Zerkel: What most decision makers and business leaders don't see is how that actually impacts the business.
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::Josh Zerkel: Positively.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: When you talk about Figma's line around the whole convention center to buy swag swag is advertising.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Every time somebody wears one of those T-shirts. It says.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: this is how great this company is. I'm wearing it on my apparel. I'm a walking billboard. Ask me about it. You know people that don't know about figma will say, Hey, what's that?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You've got another salesperson going.
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::Josh Zerkel: Even if if your business isn't like flashy and design oriented or customer facing like on the B to C business to consumer level, there's still opportunities to create really, really fervent communities like, think of salesforce like
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::Josh Zerkel: this is a company that makes business to business tools. These are not sexy. They're needed, but they're not sexy, but they built an incredible community around them, where people are super proud to wear the hoodie or the T-shirt and put on their profiles that I'm a trailblazer in the salesforce community.
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::Josh Zerkel: No, regardless of of what the thing that you're offering is.
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::Josh Zerkel: There's people, real humans that are interacting with it.
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::Josh Zerkel: hoping hope you're probably if you're a business owner hoping that they're buying from you.
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::Josh Zerkel: they're people. And when there's people, there's the opportunity to create connection.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. And it's the connection comes first, st then the problem solving
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: cause. You know that old saying, people do business with people they know, like and trust
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it's still applicable. We still want to know who we're dealing with, and whether we want to support them or not.
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::Josh Zerkel: I think that's actually more true now than it has been in years past. There's with the array of misinformation, disinformation, lack of trust and truth that a lot of people feel when people are making purchasing decisions, especially, they really want to know that they're buying something that they can trust.
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::Josh Zerkel: And if you can't like trust, like a marketing message, or something that a salesperson is telling you.
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::Josh Zerkel: oftentimes you go to people that you know and say, hey, what are you using for this? What's what's your preferred vendor? Who should I be talking to about this problem? I'm solving.
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::Josh Zerkel: that is all word of mouth advocacy that comes via community. And so, while marketing and sales are still really important, brand awareness happens through a variety of ways
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::Josh Zerkel: having community as part of the go to market model
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::Josh Zerkel: helps augment all of that that's already happening, because it it taps into that natural human
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::Josh Zerkel: proclivity to know, like and trust.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And help each other.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Human beings like to help each other.
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::Josh Zerkel: Do.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: If you're part of a community, you feel like, you know, you want to help the community be really good.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and because because it gives you that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: that endorphin that kicks in when you're like
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: being useful, and we all want to be useful and helpful. And we want we want things to
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to work.
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::Josh Zerkel: I fundamentally believe most people want to help one another. They may not know exactly how or when, but in communities it's it's a an easy avenue to make that happen. If you know someone needs help, you see them posting a question, or you attend an event, and someone raises their hand, I think it's it's in most of our nature to want to contribute, to want, to assist, to want to help, to want to add value.
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::Josh Zerkel: and community is a natural way to make that happen.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And for companies on the top side of it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: being part of a community, allows you to get really up close and personal with your consumers and listen to what experiences they're having. So you can
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: your product to meet their needs. That will change over time. If you're disconnected from your consumer. Yeah, you can do research. But there's nothing like a community that you can just
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: hey, how do you guys feel about this?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you'll get feedback. Because again, people want to feel like they're contributing to something meaningful. And the more that the company listens to their community, the more their community is going to come alive and and feed them information that will just help them further.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're cold marketing, because you know who your customers are, and you can find more people like them
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: understand the other communities that they're attached to, so that maybe you can. You can move your marketing to something that's sort of side to what your your base of community is
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: interested in.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah, absolutely, fundamentally, in any business of any size, whether you're a solopreneur coach or creator all the way up to the biggest fortune, 100 companies. You want to know who your customers are. You want to listen to them. You want to understand what their needs are, so that you can better meet them. So you can have real conversations that are impactful for them, that you can build services or products that really meet their needs.
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::Josh Zerkel: You do that by having a a format, a forum where you can have those conversations, whether it's live in person, whether it's online, that's almost immaterial. But conceptually, you want to have a spot where customers can go to share with each other and with you what's working, what isn't what they want, what they need, what's missing
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::Josh Zerkel: and having that facilitated via community makes it feel safe for them to do that.
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::Josh Zerkel: It feels very different when you're part of a community
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::Josh Zerkel: sharing your ideas sharing your input offering feedback than it does when you're in like a
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::Josh Zerkel: user interface study or some sort of
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::Josh Zerkel: like customer interview, where it's like very pressured you're you're pressured to perform the act of being a customer.
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::Josh Zerkel: It's very different than when you're in a community, and you naturally have a challenge or an idea, it comes up and you share it.
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::Josh Zerkel: So that level of connection and feedback in that loop of we're the company we're giving you a spot to connect and talk to one another. You share, we take your feedback, we listen to it, and then we come back to you with what we're building or how we're responding.
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::Josh Zerkel: It creates that dynamic trust
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::Josh Zerkel: amongst the the business and the customer who's part of it, because you don't have a business without customers, and you don't have customers when there's nothing to buy from a business it it's a cycle, and having the conversation be part of that cycle, one that has a foundation of trust is really really critical.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It also allows you to make sales in a way that isn't like direct marketing sort of of selling
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: when you're answering questions, and when you're providing real value to the community as a business owner.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you're you're letting them know. Hey? We heard you. And this is what we're developing. You've got a natural line of customers that are going to be ready to make that purchase when it comes out, because they were asking for it. You've created something of value to them
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: for them. It's like, Well, heck, yeah, I'm gonna buy it.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because I this is one of the things I I have conversations with people who don't yet have communities about is well, we already have sales. We already have marketing. What do we need community for?
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::Josh Zerkel: I I don't know about you or or the people who might be watching or listening. But I don't want to be sold anything anymore. I want to naturally decide what I'm going to buy. The way that I decide is by asking people around me looking at online reviews that are posted by other people
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::Josh Zerkel: checking on social media, doing my own research. By the time I get to a salesperson, if at all. The decision has already been made. In most cases I'm just using them to finalize the deal. And so I think most of us are kind of past the point that we really look at marketing message. We're past the point where we're asking to be educated by a salesperson. What we're looking for is.
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::Josh Zerkel: I want to trust this brand. The way that I trust this brand is by understanding the value that they're creating for me, even before I make a purchase. And community is a great way to put your company's content. Your organization's ideas, if you're an independent solopreneur, your thought leadership out into the world and get feedback on it from a community of people that you can build who can then trust you? And when they're ready to make a purchase of whatever it is that you offer. They're already part of your family.
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::Josh Zerkel: and so the Trust is already built.
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::Josh Zerkel: Without that it's it's really tougher to make that leap, because if you think you're just gonna win by putting out marketing messages and hiring a bunch of salespeople.
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::Josh Zerkel: it's diminishing returns at this point.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is. You can see that on Facebook, I I've watched sales.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The sponsored ads. And in the beginning
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I know that these people. They have big sales teams, and they put up their ads, and they spend their
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: $300 to get a lead, which is about how expensive it is right now, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: in the beginning it it's self liquidating. They they make enough sales to afford that kind of advertising, but as they're making, if they don't adjust their offer.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Their leads dry up because they're not adjusting to the market. And they're not really listening to a community. They just have this idea, and they're just gonna sell their one little widget, or course or thing
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: but it it becomes a law of diminishing returns, because there's only so many people in in your buyer pool.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: unless you're listening to that buyer pool. The people that have already purchased from you, and you're continuing to grow them and become customers on a different level. You know, the reason apple comes out with a new phone every year is because
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: they listen to their community and their community wants different things, and so they line up every year
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: for miles to buy, to to give Apple another. You know 1,000 2,000, whatever their prices.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah, it's like, please take my money there. It's beyond loyalty. It's like, Here's my cash. Please take it. Which is amazing. An amazing level of brand loyalty and trust. And I think every every organization, no matter how big or small, from the solopreneur up to the biggest organization.
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::Josh Zerkel: It's it's behooves us if we're running any sort of business to want to create that level of trust.
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::Josh Zerkel: If I'm a solopreneur, I want that fervent level of brand advocacy for me, and what I offer, just as Apple does for what they offer, and you do that by creating tremendous value for the people who are coming to you
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::Josh Zerkel: value before they make a purchase and value after. And every with everything in between. That's how people really come to care about you and your brand. Of course, the baseline is, have a great product or service, but what's what else is around it? What else can you offer around that to help people get more out of whatever it is that they bought from you to help them understand how to leverage it as part of their work or their life, that sort of content, those relationships, that knowledge is one of the things that you can do via community.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And they they interact with each other. And they they form relationships with each other. So it's not just like it's like a little click that you become part of. And you have friends, and you have, like the secret handshake. And you know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: couple users are like they're. I'm not an apple user. But I know apple users. And they're like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm only going to use apple products.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Oh, yeah, it's like, Pry, this iphone iphone out of my cold, dead hand. Good luck! And you know that that's a level of brand loyalty. That is.
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::Josh Zerkel: All businesses, regardless of size, should strive to achieve that level of. I care about this thing so much, and I care about the ecosystem around it, including the people who are part of this community. It's interesting that you mentioned, like the relationships that are built because in more than one instance, in the communities that I've been part of and have built.
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::Josh Zerkel: there have been people who've met each other and started businesses together have started relationships together, and it starts with that shared. You know, we're in this thing together. This, we're part of this bigger thing. We have common interests. Sometimes the interests are business aligned. Sometimes they're personally aligned, and sometimes it's just like, Oh, look! Let's just have a conversation, and it it runs the gamut. But
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::Josh Zerkel: the that is one of the fundamental differences between community and other forms of let's call it marketing. Go to market.
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::Josh Zerkel: Most traditional methods are really transactional. Like, we put up a Facebook ad, you click on it, you become a lead. We sell you something. Community is different. You enter a conversation. Maybe you post something. Other people respond. The company responds, and then the conversation continues. It's relational, not transactional. And because of that, it often requires a different kind of work
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::Josh Zerkel: to keep it going and to make it happen. It's not as one directional, it's more multi-directional, which introduces some complexity. But it's much because of that multidirectional nature. The ties that are woven are much stronger
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::Josh Zerkel: and provide much more value and impact over time.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think, substacks doing that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: their model. And and that's what I really love about substack above any other platform that I've been part of, and I've been part of a lot of them over the years. Substack is is community driven first.st
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::Josh Zerkel: Is.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're not about advertising. There's no advertising over there. They only make their money when you're making money, so it doesn't feel predatory
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: like a lot of places do.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And there
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the community that they're building is about. We all want to help each other. It's like, you know, I'm I'm about sharing whatever I can share, and I
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: promote other people. I'll tag other people. It's just like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and you can have conversations with people. People write stuff over there, and you can say, Hey, but what about this? Or Wow? That was so spot on, or you made me think about something.
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::Josh Zerkel: And.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I had somebody post a note the other day. It was. It's like we shouldn't call these notes. We should call them little therapy sessions because times they are. You're just like Wow, you. You gave me an experience in, you know, Haiku format
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: just.
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::Josh Zerkel: Love it. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, publishing my own sub stack. The community code has been really interesting for me, because I I mean, I've been a community builder for a long time.
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::Josh Zerkel: and it's interesting to be part of a community to enter into an established world and also try to build my own
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::Josh Zerkel: smaller community within it, of people who are interested in my specific topic and my voice, and the the way that people connect on substack the authenticity that they bring to it, because so many of us are creating content which is inherently a vulnerable place to be. You don't know if people are going to like it, if they're not how they're going to respond, etc. There's just a tremendous amount of support amongst people there to to really foster this thing that all of us are creating together.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. And it is, it feels like we're all working together. And I think part of the the vulnerability that we feel when we create content is also the kindness that we offer to other people who are creating. Content that we're working with you don't get the the snipiness that happens in other on other platforms.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: even a blogging. You know, people can leave you really harsh comments over there because they have nothing to nothing at stake.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: whereas on substack.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're writing, too.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It'd be nasty because no.
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::Josh Zerkel: Oh, it! It creates a virtuous cycle because it
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::Josh Zerkel: you write a nasty post. People are going to go to your profile and see who you are and what you're writing about. You don't want to do that. You want. You want it to be a positive place, and so I found it to be wonderfully positive in a sea of Internet that is mostly not.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it's not about everybody agreeing and confirmation bias which happens a lot, you know, to protect yourself. You have to just like be in this cocoon of confirmation bias, people who have
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: kinds of thoughts and wacky ideas, or, you know, profound ideas, just ideas, thoughts about stuff
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: or research that they've done that they just want to share. It's not like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know, they don't have to be right. It's just information. And you can get actual information and make your own come to your own conclusion.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But you don't have to be right.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's not.
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::Josh Zerkel: There are many versions of right.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yes.
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::Josh Zerkel: Have it!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Guess.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yes, there are, and nobody has the corner on it.
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::Josh Zerkel: That's exactly right.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's nice to be in a space where you can. You can be curious and not have to
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: feel like you have to defend yourself.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah, it's it lacks the vitriol of most other forms of social media
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::Josh Zerkel: on substack. It's it's a pleasant place to be.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It really is. And and their algorithm works in a way that really encourages new people to come. And Google's given it all the love. Right now all platforms go through the Google love period, and they're like smack dab in the middle of it. So really, now is a great time to investigate substack.
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::Josh Zerkel: Even even as a participant, just to check out what's there.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Read
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I I have a I have a getting started guide. If it's free, I I give it to anybody that subscribes. It'll just like help. You get started because it's not super intuitive. But you know, once you get past the basic setup, it's it's a great place.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yes, a valuable resource. Take advantage of it, folks.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. So tell us about the community that or the company that you're working for graduate.
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::Josh Zerkel: Yeah. So I'm I'm a busy person. I lead marketing and community here at Gradual, which is a community management platform, gradual.com. And here we offer a tool that lets you if you're building a community mostly, this is designed for businesses of varying sizes. Create a community that's robust with conversations, collections of content, courses.
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::Josh Zerkel: events, and so on. So that's 1 of the things that I do. And I also write about community building on my sub stack, which is the communitycode.com.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And and you also write over on Linkedin. So.
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::Josh Zerkel: I also post on Linkedin? Yes, I'm I'm basically everywhere. So if you're looking for me, you can find me at thecommunitycode.com, you can find me@gradual.com. You can also find me on Linkedin. Just look for my name, Joshua Zirkle. I think there's only one pretty easy to find.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, that's perfect, and we'll make sure we put those in the show notes so that people can find you easily.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it's been great chatting with you, Josh.
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::Josh Zerkel: This has been a delay. Thank you, Jill, and thanks everyone for tuning in and and watching and listening.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To learn more about the community code. Consider subscribing to Josh's substack over at thecommunitycode.com. And if you're interested in the community building platform. That is gradual.com, and you can find Josh on Linkedin at Linkedin. Slash in slash, Josh.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and like, I said, we will put those in the show notes so that you don't have to remember them or write them down. Right now, thank you for tuning in with us today. If you have a podcast or you're interested in starting one, be sure to reach out to us at support@heartlifecoach.com. We love to help spiritual entrepreneurs and coaches, amplify their voice and monetize their message.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and offer a variety of ways to do this leveraging substack, join us for our next episode, as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world, start today and get visible.
