Latest / Unstuck Pod / How to Leverage Community Engagement for Growth (Julia Psitos and Jamie Schneiderman)
Transcript
- Jamie: To start for everybody, For people who don't know you, who don't know what you do, could you share more information about you the business? Let's start there. Julia Psitos: I don't wear one hat. I wear lots of hats. My day job I work as experience and excellence leader at a prop tech company. I have two major side hustles. One is that I run the WeWork Alums community, which is meant for any past employees at WeWork. And I have recently started a venture called Go Link Up. which helps people unlock their network and find hidden job opportunities. Jamie: That's fantastic. Okay. after we'll have to make sure we put all the links in and everything so people can find you and stuff. let's talk. on one of the of stuff that you're working on, let's talk with, let's talk about Go Up, Cause it's, it's new and it's, and how new, when did you start it? where are you at? What's on there? Julia Psitos: All right, the idea for Go Up actually started about a year and a half ago. It was inspired by the WeWork Alums community. It was about how do you bring value to a community and keep the members engaged. And in my experience was it's not enough to host a community, you need to bring value. And the idea was the value is going to be opportunities for job seekers, but the magic is the opportunities are connected to Alums in the community. we took that idea, I met with a wonderful product leader named Ginger Dollywall, and she said, what you're doing is a product. we thought about how do we take that use case and bring it to audiences that need that type of support? And we came up with not only job seekers, but actually universities and colleges who want to keep engaged with alumni, but often struggle to scale their resources and career services centers. How can we help bring additional support? to especially the Alums that might be coming back to find job opportunities. that is where we're starting. The consumer is as of today. end January, more of a full launch in February, with some in-person events for job seekers. And we're already speaking with colleges that might interested in piloting the product. Jamie: Amazing. That's fantastic. I'm just making notes. There are some other things that actually want to talk to you about after off of this, but this is great. That's very cool. ⁓ I this is amazing. Okay. tell me a little bit about the team. ⁓ what it looks like, I don't know you, doing this as a bootstrap. Julia Psitos: Thanks. Jamie: raise money? How are you about this business? Julia Psitos: Yeah, as I know, businesses today are started by one person, two people, know, maximally five. It's really incredible what you can do. I'm the founder. I'm main person working on this, especially on the go to market side. Ginger Dollywala is my product leader. She's a multiple time founder. Definitely my right hand when it comes to related to the product. And we have an engineering team in India. called Smart Sense that's helped us actually develop and build the product, everything from design to actual production and development. Jamie: That's Okay. Fantastic. Wow. that's great. And you call this a, side hustle or you've talked about a series of side hustle. let's just make sure we cover this. a lot of the folks that are listening will also do the, I'm trying to, what percentage of time, effort, energy is here on your other activities. Julia Psitos: Yes. Yeah, I would say today, I'm hours plus in my day job like most folks are. I would Go Link Up is closer to 16 hours a week and then my WeWork Alums community is pushing five to 10. Jamie: Okay, you just have a light relaxing schedule when you're 60 hours locked in before you get started, before anything else, That's amazing, okay. Julia Psitos: Ha That's why the side hustles have to be fun, that way it doesn't actually feel like work. Jamie: I think I love that a side hustle has to be fun. And what would let me ask this question What would the side hustle have to look like? Roughly, I even mean dollars But what does it look like for it to not be a side hustle for it to be an everything that you do? Julia Psitos: Yeah, the thing is, I grew up in a family with two entrepreneurs and somehow it made me risk averse. I like having the steady, the job, the pay, the benefits, all the things. I like that stability. I think for me, the ⁓ financials have to make sense. to be an even swap out, which is extremely hard. know it will take more time to build in order to get to that point. And I just generally like being a part of a company as well. I like the idea of keeping it going and the portfolio career. It's not just what I'm doing in the nine to five. It's also the things I'm doing on the side. Jamie: That's okay got it makes sense and that and I think that's It's it's interesting. It says shifting when I say it's a shifting world around What you do what you can't do I talked to my son about when I started you couldn't do Couldn't start up anything or do anything on the side. It didn't exist. It wasn't possible. ⁓ let's talk little bit about you started or you started the WeWork Alums, let's talk a little bit about that because you've been doing that for longer. That's all. I just want to talk a little bit about that. And how did that get started? What did it look like as grew it? what does that mean? Julia Psitos: you I've been thinking about the WeWork Alumni community since 2017, when I joined WeWork. and I thought about the people leaving the company and how naturally they would be future customers. We should, definitely maintain that connection with them and keep engaged. And There wasn't really an appetite for that internally. Eventually, we did get something. We were able to give memberships to the online community at the time. But it didn't really get to where I wanted it to be. And then I was there during the downturn for WeWork, and I knew layoffs were coming. And I woke up in the middle of the night in November 2019 and I said, "There's still not a place for everyone to go." And In the middle of the night, I created the WeWork Alums LinkedIn community and have been building it in a grassroots way since that day. Today we're almost 5,000 members, with the members, engaging on 50% % of them engaging monthly, which is really great engagement. And It's definitely a side hustle I'm super passionate about and have loved building it. Jamie: Wow. That's amazing. I think 50, that's incredible numbers, that's unbelievable. Let's talk a little bit about what you're doing with them. I want talk about a couple of How are you, How did you grow that community? How do you continue to grow the community? And then another one is how do you engage the community? There's people who are I have people, but I don't know what I'm doing to engage them. What are you doing? It's working. Julia Psitos: Yeah. I started by inviting, the thing that LinkedIn groups is not necessarily a product that LinkedIn is heavily invested it's a little bit tricky to navigate. You have to connected with a person in order to invite them to the group. It started with me connecting with every alum I could potentially think of in a pretty manual way getting people into the group. That was the first thing. And then It was Okay, now that they're in the What kind of content are we going to are we gonna put in there to make it engaging? And first it was real success stories, maybe people reaching out, seeing if anyone knew of any opportunities, people hiring, those types of things, but very Today, I continue to grow the group by using a tool Phantom Buster, where I am sending out invites via LinkedIn to former Alums and inviting them into the group in order to continue to it grow. And that's worked really well, that's really helped that process be less manual. The engagement piece really came in when I thought about, we need to have value, we need to have a reason to keep coming back. And started in the form of weekly job boards. And the job boards were specifically opportunities to go and work with Alums at whatever company they landed at. it was, this person is hiring for this role at this company, connect with them if you're interested. I have five to 10 opportunities at a time. I was asking the community to help submit some of those opportunities as well. It wasn't consistent enough for me. I scaled it back. I didn't do it every week. It did bi-weekly and now I'm at a monthly cadence. But the opportunities that are coming through that I'm sharing with the group, I know that they're hard to find opportunities. And I know that those Alums would be elated to hear from another alum to come and potentially come and join their company, that has been, I'd say magnetic. And ⁓ get messages all the time, how can I get my job on the job board? And been, that's what people back and that's what keeps people engaged. Jamie: Okay, that's awesome. mean, it does. Obviously that's a high. interesting. It's a high level of, of interest engagement around jobs. I get that. That's a thing, but not everyone's looking for something all the time. You still have a large percentage of people who are coming all the time. ⁓ Julia Psitos: Mm-hmm. Yes. what I say is maybe they're not looking, but they might be hiring. They want to put their job there. whether you're hiring or whether you're looking, there's a reason to come and check it out. And maybe you just want to see what people are up to or where they are. And that's another reason to come and look. Jamie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's great. No, it's been. is there anything else that you're offering there? that's the prime. get it. I get the engine and I get the primary thing. Is there anything else that's there for them? Julia Psitos: Yeah, yeah, I've always offered ⁓ pro-brono career coaching to anyone in transition in the alumni community. they can book time on my calendar. I it the next big thing. And we just have a chat to really help them ⁓ get back excited about the or make a plan for the search. that's something I've always offered. And then the other thing I like to celebrate within the content in the community is are many WeWork alum-turned-founders that whenever they're sharing stories of launching their businesses or raising a round or an acquisition, whatever it is that they're doing, I like to celebrate that news in the channel as well. Jamie: Fantastic. love it. hold on when someone gets free pro bono career coaching, when do they find time in your calendar? Cause I last time I checked was pretty busy, On a weekly basis. I can help you, but it'll have to be in 2028. Sorry. Just kidding. I'm just joking. I'm just joking. Julia Psitos: Thank No, it's not that bad. I actually, ⁓ I'm a big fan of meetings. I pride myself in having free space in my calendar. And there's always time to book and, know, I'm very lucky to have a supportive, a boss and ⁓ who, is a of my side hustles. And, as long as the work gets done, we all figure it out together and we make it happen. Career coaching is one of my favorite things to do, I'm almost never turning down that conversation. Jamie: amazing. It's an area, by the way, of personal passion as well. ⁓ I can to it. I think it's fantastic. I think it's great. I ⁓ think that's I think it's awesome. Okay, let me do this. you're working on a variety of different things, but two of the things, your hustles, are, interconnected, They're still about helping people find... what's next, whatever that looks like, A chunk of it is. you're building there's a passion around let me try to dig something. makes it easier to push through challenges when you face challenges. let's talk a little bit about what challenges you faced. in your side hustles, one just got going and just got live. The other one that you did in the middle of the night when you got told, no, no, no forever. And then decided to do it. But a little bit about what you've done to push past that and, ⁓ keep growing, which more than just effort. ⁓ Of course the efforts there, what else? Julia Psitos: Thank Yeah, would say I'm not shy about asking for help. I'm blessed to have a wonderful network of all of people that have all types of superpowers. definitely when I've stuck, I've asked for help. I've asked for feedback, asked for thoughts and opinions. I would say I'm also ⁓ very forgiving on myself, empathetic with myself if something doesn't get done by a certain time or I don't hit a goal that I've set for myself, it's okay. okay. I'm definitely not hard on myself. And ⁓ do that I doing multiple things. ⁓ And it's not be perfect all the time. having reasonable pacing and deadlines and ⁓ milestones, I think has been along the way. We work alum group. came more naturally. Growing it took me a while to figure out a rhythm, the right content to bring value took some time to sort as well, but I would say it's a little bit more natural just because I know my audience well. Building Go Link Up has been more of a learning experience for me, which I'm really grateful for. I love learning just because I've never built a product before. I'm really lucky to have a strong partner in Ginger to figure that out. really lucky to have an amazing team that we're working with in SmartSense on the development. But I would say just understanding how long things take and things that might feel super easy to me, hey, let's add this or let's, that's completely That's a different concept. That's a different field. it's been fun both learning what is easy and what is hard when you're in ⁓ development with an engineering trying to push out a product. Jamie: Amazing. I love that. That's fantastic. The number of times that founder goes, well, can you just do this? Why not? Just do this. That's not simple thing to ask. Why not? It seems easy. you like to code it ⁓ or build it whatever? Julia Psitos: Yeah, it's true. But then there's other things where, going through the QA, you're looking ⁓ my gosh, ⁓ this is we had fix this. And then ⁓ the next minute they're it's fixed. Right. Well, how did you fix that so fast? ⁓ Jamie: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Some things that seem like they're really hard, some things that seem they're really easy and it's not, ⁓ don't get it in that. Trust me. ⁓ Julia Psitos: I just trust. Trust is the biggest thing that I have to deploy when it comes because I definitely don't know what I don't know there it's just all about trust. Jamie: I love it. think it's fantastic. I think it's great. on Go Up, how in your world, how clear are you today about the problem that you're solving, who you're solving it for, whether that solution is exactly focused for that group? How clear are would you say, on those things? Julia Psitos: ⁓ so clear. ⁓ I been doing career coaching and helping people in the job search for over a decade. And I say if anything, it's more broken than ever. Right. ⁓ The way I'm talking about it is you have it's easy to apply for jobs thanks to AI. And it's easy for companies to review resumes thanks to AI. That means that you have AI talking to AI, the humans are out of the mix, and an extremely frustrating for the actual humans, the recruiters and the hiring managers. And the is clearly broken. When you look at how people are actually getting jobs, it is still through networking and connections, and yet there's not an intuitive way to make the match. The other thing that's going on right now is that because the job market is what it is, companies aren't investing as much as they used to in job boards or promoting opportunities. And it's really hard to go find the position. You're talking about going to every career page, looking for the job that's good for you. Yes, there's things you can put on top and there are AI tools that are helpful, but then you have to do the work of, well, do I know anyone there? this is an opportunity to take your network, ⁓ unlock look at where... people in your network even are working. There's not an intuitive way to do that today. And then know at those companies who's hiring and what positions might be a good match for you. Jamie: love it. That's fantastic. All right. That was great. well, I know just going live with it. ⁓ there's a, whole regroup we'll have to do at some point to hear how it's going. But, for the sake of everybody here, where they find you? and find what you're doing. Everybody who's listening here. Julia Psitos: Yeah. Yeah, if you're going to find me, it's always going to be on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, ⁓ I two to three hours on every single day for professional or personal reasons. find me there for sure to find Go Link Up. ⁓ You can us at golinkup.ai. There'll be a link there for our app. There'll be a lot more information coming via my LinkedIn page, our Go Link Up ⁓ LinkedIn page as stay tuned and if you're in New York City, I will be doing live sessions where job seekers can come and really understand and start to use, go link up and see how they can unlock their opportunities and understand what their network looks like. Jamie: Awesome. Amazing. All right. Well, thank you, Julie. I appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time. We'll have links in, I'll add some links to the description and for everybody who's watching and listening, thank you and we'll see you on the next episode. Julia Psitos: Yes. Amazing.