Latest / Content, Briefly / The Future of Superpath with CEO Alex Hilleary

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The Future of Superpath with CEO Alex Hilleary · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [on-hold music] Hey, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. We have a little bit of a different episode for you today.
• 0:13
  I'm having a guest on the podcast, and he is the CEO of Superpath, [chuckles] and that person is not me. So this is sort of a surreal moment, but as you may have seen in our announcements last week, I sold the business.
• 0:24
  I sold most of the business, I should say. Alex Hillary is the new CEO and owner of Superpath. I'm staying on as a minority shareholder, an advisor, and a contributor, so I'll still be doing the podcast.
• 0:35
  I'm actually gonna be writing some blog posts, which is something I really haven't done in a while and am excited to get back into. And then, of course, I'll be hanging out in Slack.
• 0:42
  But it's a big change for Superpath, for me obviously, and we use this podcast as an opportunity to talk about it. You know, we- we sort of talk through the story of, like, how did this happen?
• 0:51
  How did we start talking about this? What did the deal look like? What can you expect now that Alex is taking the helm?
• 0:58
  He has a bunch of awesome ideas, and you'll see improvements coming to the membership pretty much immediately.
• 1:04
  Alex also just today sent me a draft of a survey he wants to run in the community, just sort of collect feedback from people, kinda get a sense of, like, where can it be better, what do you like, et cetera. So Alex is...
• 1:15
  I honestly feel is the perfect person to lead Superpath through this next chapter. You know, he's a founder. He sold a business.
• 1:22
  He spent the last, gosh, I don't know, six, seven years working on community and content, so he understands this world.
• 1:29
  He's sat in the content seat before, has built and run successful communities, and so this is not some, you know, PE deal where it gets chopped up and, you know, someone wants to squeeze cash out of it.
• 1:41
  Like, Alex wants to run the business. Like, so, you know, he's going to be there kinda sitting in the driver's seat. And I'm so excited about it.
• 1:49
  And, you know, I get to observe that, cheer for him, support him, and also be a member again, which frankly I'm really excited about. Anyways, I won't tease this one anymore.
• 1:58
  But before I go, just wanna say thank you so much to all of you who listen to this podcast, who get our newsletter, who are members of the community, who have sponsored it, who've been our customers.
• 2:06
  There's just so many people who have been part of this journey, and I'm just so immensely grateful to all of you. So with all that said, please enjoy this episode with Superpath CEO, Alex Hillary. Hey, everybody.
• 2:18
  Jimmy here. Kind of a surreal episode today. I'm gonna interview the CEO of Superpath, and for the first time in five and a half years, that person is not me. [chuckles] So Alex Hillary, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:30
  Welcome to Superpath, I guess. You know, wow, there's so much to talk about, but let's just get into it. Please say hello. Awesome to be here, Jimmy. Yeah. Yeah. Introd- introduce...
• 2:39
  So, like, you know, people have started to see you in the community, like you've met a lot of people, but like say hello, introduce yourself, like, and, and let's get into this. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:47
  So great to meet you all. I'm Alex, and I've met a lot of people over the past few months. I've been helping out in the Superpath community.
• 2:54
  But like Jimmy said, taking over in the role of CEO of Superpath and pumped to meet you.
• 2:59
  It's such an awesome community and space and just been great meeting people over the past few months and excited to keep building here. Yeah. Wow. Me too. I feel like let's...
• 3:09
  We should tell a bit of the story behind all this and then- Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, I think then the kinda like the obvious question people will have is like, "Well, what's next?"
• 3:17
  You know, like, what plans do you have? And we should get into that too. Yeah, for sure. You wanna kick it off with how we connected here? Yeah, yeah, let's do it.
• 3:24
  So you first joined the Slack community in 2019, and back in that day, it was not called Superpath. It was called the Content Marketing Career Growth Slack Group, which I cannot apologize enough for.
• 3:38
  [chuckles] Like, what a terrible name. And I was still at Animalz. It was a side project at the time, and so you were very early on this.
• 3:46
  And then- Well, I think even, even further back than that, though, like I was following your stuff from when you started posting at, at Animalz, I think is when I first came across you, is I was in at the time...
• 3:57
  So this is probably 2018.
• 4:00
  I was in a full-time content marketing role doing the thing at an early-stage startup, running our blog and everything there, and I came across your stuff in Animalz, and I was just immediately obsessed.
• 4:11
  I read everything that came out from you at the time and built a lot of our strategy based off of, uh, a lot of your posts from, from back then. So that's where I first... It was probably like January 2018.
• 4:23
  I was looking back at your posts there. I think that was where- Yeah, that was the first-- That was when we launched the blog. Yeah. Wow. So you were really early on that.
• 4:29
  [chuckles] We literally launched the blog January 2018. That's-- It's funny you say that 'cause Animalz is just such an important part of the Superpath story for many reasons.
• 4:37
  But, you know, like, because I spent, you know, three and a half, four years there, like, did a lot of publishing on the blog and, you know, really that Animalz audience became the seed of what later became Superpath.
• 4:50
  You know, it's like when I left Animalz to work on Superpath full-time, I sent a tweet out, I sent a LinkedIn post out to the followers, you know, which I had mostly accumulated through the work I'd done at Animalz.
• 5:00
  Said, "Hey, I'm doing this new thing. Sign up for the newsletter if you wanna stay tuned." And, you know, that was the start of the whole thing. But s- so then, like, you reached out. I checked my email.
• 5:10
  It was like 2022, I think. You, you shot me- Yeah... an email and said... Actually, no, you shot me a Twitter DM and said like, "Hey, you know, I'm working on this community stuff at ChartHop.
• 5:19
  Like, do you wanna jump on a call and do some brainstorming?" So we did that, I think, twice, and I actually looked back. I have notes from the call.
• 5:25
  You had sent over some ideas of some stuff you were thinking about building in the community space. And, you know, looking back now, it's like we were thinking about a lot of the same things. Yeah.
• 5:35
  You know, even back then, like the work that you were doing... And actually, maybe you can talk a bit about the work you were doing at Gather, which is the company you co-founded, which was then acquired by ChartHop.
• 5:43
  You know, the content and community were, were core to the work you did there, and it's just interesting to reflect back and think about. We were kinda working in these very parallel tracks going back quite a while.
• 5:53
  Absolutely. So fast-forward a little bit. So I was in a content marketing role. I ended up actually from there co-founding an, an HR tech startup with two other co-founders.
• 6:03
  I was kind of the, the go-to-market co-founder there.And I mean, we did a very, like, content-focused go-to-market strategy at the time. What's interesting is that evolved. So this is 2019, 2020.
• 6:17
  It's kind of the early stages of our startup there. That content operation evolved somewhat organically into a community. So beginning of 2020, like pandemic times, we're working in the HR space.
• 6:30
  You know, it was very similar to content marketing now that's experiencing a ton of change very rapidly. That's what was happening there.
• 6:38
  And so I was jumping on a lot of these calls with folks in people operations, a lot of like solo heads of people at startups and, you know, connecting them to each other and sharing ideas about like how to navigate this, you know, very different world where they're like trying to run an HR process outside the office for the first time.
• 6:56
  I ended up building like a one-on-one program, starting a newsletter to talk about the different conversations I was having, and it evolved into like a community that helped us build trust.
• 7:04
  So it was kind of a marketing operation there. But ag- I think the whole thing being like it was a space for people. It wasn't like to talk about our brand specifically.
• 7:14
  Our brand was just hosting a space to have these conversations. A, a few years after that, so that became a big part of our marketing operation.
• 7:21
  We built the People Ops weekly newsletter and the People Ops community from there, and we were actually acquired. Our little HR tech startup, we had a team of six.
• 7:31
  We were acquired by a later stage HR tech startup called ChartHop. It was mainly a product acq- acquisition. My two co-founders were the product folks. So I kinda had to...
• 7:41
  They were going in to build our product into ChartHop, and I had to kinda craft a role for myself and had really enjoyed the community, and I was joining kind of a bigger marketing operation there.
• 7:50
  So I was like, "Great, I'm just gonna take this community concept and go build this into kind of our brand strategy at ChartHop and continue to work on the newsletter and the community."
• 8:01
  And I had the chance to do that there at ChartHop, and it was such an interesting time, I think, post-pandemic, a lot of different professions.
• 8:08
  Like I saw this happening because, you know, we were talking, but I was also talking to a lot of other kind of community leaders.
• 8:15
  There was just this big motion in the 2020, 2021 world of like the idea of these like professional peer communities.
• 8:23
  I mean, now looking back, like there are, in the HR world, like I could tell you, I could find 50 of them for you. Like there's so many now.
• 8:32
  At, at this time is when a lot of the first ones were formed, and so I think like our conversations came out of, you know, whether like I was doing it on behalf of a brand to some people, like you were doing it independently.
• 8:43
  That was really cool. It was a really fun time to just share learnings with each other because I think everybody was like, "What should these spaces look like? How do we design programs that help serve people?"
• 8:52
  There's just a lot of commonalities between them, like regardless of what industry you're in. So I always found that just... I mean, I fell in love with it.
• 8:59
  Like, I loved designing these spaces and saying like, "How do you take really busy people and help them find the right other people to get their questions answered?"
• 9:08
  And it was a fun challenge, and I also love surrounding myself with other community builders and be like, "How do you handle this thing?" So yeah. Yeah, totally. That was such a crazy time.
• 9:17
  Like when I started the initial version of this in May 2019, it was really... I, I had no intention of creating a business. I just had this feeling of like, okay, everybody's remote now.
• 9:27
  Like there are very few meetups and like if you don't travel to conferences, which even if you do, it's like once or twice a year. Like how do you stay in touch with your friends and colleagues in the industry?
• 9:39
  So I thought, I'll just spin up a Slack group and invite like 10 people. And uh- Yeah... like here we are, you know. Like s- that was six and a half years ago.
• 9:47
  But like it was just obvious even then there was such a demand for it, you know. In the meantime, a thousand, a million Slack groups have come and gone.
• 9:59
  You know, [chuckles] I wasn't the only person thinking about that, obviously. Which is funny to think about, like that problem still very much exists. Like- Yeah... how do you stay in touch with people?
• 10:06
  And then like, okay, once the people are there, like then what? You know, now there's... And you have, if you have the time and resources and freedom to do it, there's so many other ways you can support the industry.
• 10:15
  So it's really cool that you were doing like basically the exact same thing for a different group of people. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So then you shoot me an email over the summer and say like, "Hey, let's get...
• 10:25
  Like let's catch up. It's been a while." So we like jump on a call to, to catch up, and we're talking about all this community stuff, and you kinda let me know, like you're planning on launching your own community.
• 10:35
  Like you're gonna build a business in this space. And, you know, one conversation led to another, led to another. We're like, we're vibing. This is cool. Like we have-- we're thinking about a lot of the same things.
• 10:45
  And then at some point during those conversations, you raise the idea like, "What if I became a partner in this business with you?" You know, or, "What if I even acquired it from you?" And I was like, "Wow." That...
• 10:55
  It just caught me off guard. Like I just wasn't expecting that, you know.
• 10:58
  And it took me a minute, maybe more than a minute, it took me days, a week or so to kinda like mull over that thought and be like, "Well, you know, we should explore this. We should explore this."
• 11:07
  'Cause frankly, I had always imagined that if Superpath was sold, that it would go to a SaaS company.
• 11:12
  And then we've had that conversation a couple times over the years, and typically the way that conversation went was, "Oh, well, we want this thing, but not the rest.
• 11:19
  So, you know, w-we're gonna chop it up basically so that we can have the marketplace, or we can have the Slack group, or we can have the courses and con..." or whatever thing that that person, company wanted.
• 11:31
  And I had never had a conversation with an individual who didn't wanna do that, but actually wanted to kind of take the baton and run with it, you know, sit in the driver's seat. You know, whatever cliche you wanna use.
• 11:42
  And there w- I will admit though, there was a part of me that was like, "Does he really wanna do this?"
• 11:46
  And then when I shot you an email back and said, "Okay, let's talk about it," you were like, "Okay, I booked a plane ticket. I'm coming to Vail."
• 11:53
  And so we had this awesome day where we sat in a room together for like 10 hours and flipped the business upside down. Like we... You know what I mean?
• 12:02
  I can't even tell you how self-conscious I felt, because as like a one-person business owner, like there's no checks and balances. I just do things the way I do them.
• 12:12
  And-To just, like, have the spotlight shone on, like, every little corner of it was just, [chuckles] it was brutal.
• 12:19
  But it was cool too because, like, you bring your own perspective, you know, based on all the experience you have, you know.
• 12:25
  Like, obviously, like, some of the stuff that I do is like there's a reason for it, but some of it is just like, well, no one, no one ever told me I couldn't do it that way, so I just did it. And it was fun.
• 12:33
  And then we went for a run. Oh. You know, went on a nice trail run. We went out to dinner. We had just, like, an awesome day. We wrecked me on that run.
• 12:39
  [laughs] We just had this, like, awesome day hanging out, talking business, and obviously that was, like, a incredibly strong signal to me. Like, wow, he's really serious about this.
• 12:47
  Like, he's really thinking about this as, like, not just an investment, but, like, something he wants to dedicate, like, probably years of his life to, you know? And I'd be curious, like, y-your perspective on that day.
• 12:58
  Yeah. I mean, pulling back the curtain a little bit, I don't even know if I've, how much I've shared with you on this, but it was interesting.
• 13:05
  This summer I decided I wanted to, you know, I'd found the community work very fulfilling, wanted to kinda go off and go back into builder mode again and kinda start something from scratch.
• 13:15
  And so I was giving myself a few months to go, kinda go explore.
• 13:20
  Was thinking about getting back into, like, the marketing world and stepping away a little bit from people operations world, just 'cause I think marketing's just at such an interesting moment right now, and I found the challenges very, very exciting in the marketing world.
• 13:33
  And it also, you know, transparently felt a little bit more authentic to me. One thing that was weird, I loved my time in the people operations space and the people I worked with.
• 13:43
  I was never an HR person, and I always felt like no one made me feel this way, but I always was, like, a little bit of an outsider and lacked a little bit of authenticity there.
• 13:53
  I think a lot of the best community people are people that have had that role before. And so kind of coming back to marketing was something that made sense for me.
• 14:01
  But as I was kind of going through this process in the first few months, I was realizing, dang, it is a lot harder to build an audience from scratch right now than it was when I did this five or six years ago.
• 14:13
  Like, the whole thing of building the audience in the past is built on, like, the back of LinkedIn and, like, that's changing. So it's just so much noisier. Like, like, I mean, a lot of people have built communities.
• 14:24
  This is something I, like, grappled with a little bit, that this provided such a great solution to, which is, like, I think that community design is, like, my kind of calling here for my next chapter, and it's work I find fulfilling.
• 14:37
  And yet I, you know, was thinking, do we need more community? Like, there's so many people doing this, and in my mind I'm like there's still...
• 14:47
  This is evolving right now, and, like, I wanna work on, like, what do community products look like in the next five years, and how is that different from the last five years?
• 14:54
  But, like, you know, going in and building an audience from scratch, I was gonna build, spend like a year just, like, building an audience in the marketing world so that I could build a community and do all this kind of thing.
• 15:04
  And then, so I wasn't thinking about an acquisition, but when the conversation popped up, it just made sense on so many levels because I'm like, what I wanna do is work on the product, not, like, build a brand from scratch and be one of, you know, a ton of people trying to build, uh, followings and brands from scratch.
• 15:23
  And so I think when we started talking, it was just very clear that what I wanted to work on was the stuff that you're working on every day in Superpath, and I think that the stuff that's gonna help drive Superpath forward into its next chapter.
• 15:38
  So it's like I could plug right in here, and then I think from there, just, like, us knowing each other, me having been a content marketer in the past, all that stuff, it just clicked on so many levels. It did.
• 15:48
  Yeah, it did. It did. And I feel like, like if I'm being... If I, like, step outside the business and look at it objectively, like, it needs new energy. It does.
• 15:56
  Like, when I started the community, like, 2019, that was kinda like the side project years, and then, like, fall or spring of 2020, it's like the, the shadow of COVID kind of hung over it for so long.
• 16:08
  A-and in some ways it was, like, the perfect moment to create an online community because, like, well, we're all home, you know.
• 16:13
  Like, you know, we all need support from each other and, like, ways to communicate and, you know, even just, like, s- many of the early conversations in the first iteration of Superpath were just about, like, what's everybody doing now that, like, COVID has changed everything, you know?
• 16:26
  'Cause it was, like, no, there was no playbook. Nobody really knew. Right. Right. You know, and then, like, you know, as a founder, it's just like over time you fall into habits. You know what I mean?
• 16:35
  You fall into, like, certain ways of doing things, and that probably keeps blinders on you. Like, you know, are there opportunities for, like, ways we could have supported the community differently?
• 16:44
  You-- initiatives we could have launched that, like, just aren't on my radar.
• 16:46
  Like, that, to me, like, that's why having someone come in with a brand new perspective, tons of experience doing this type of work, is gonna be awesome for the community.
• 16:56
  So I'm excited now because as we shared in a- some of our announcement stuff, like, I'm staying on as a minority owner. I'll be playing kind of an advisor role, but also contributor.
• 17:04
  Like, I'm gonna write some blog posts, which is something I'm actually really excited to do 'cause I haven't done that in a while.
• 17:08
  It's cool to keep doing the podcast, but, like, I also, like, get to be in the member seat again, which I'm really excited for.
• 17:14
  Like, I'm just really excited to, like, have a different experience with Superpath, and then hopefully, like, you know, the things I learn I'll be, like, feeding information to you, you know, as you're thinking about, like, how do we kinda like design and evolve this thing.
• 17:27
  Yeah, absolutely. When I passed off my community and I ended up passing it on to other people at ChartHop, it's a very cool moment to be like, "I am fully out of this process, and it's happening."
• 17:37
  Uh, I mean, it's something about, like, this thing I created lives on beyond me, which is, like, a very- Yeah, yeah.
• 17:43
  It's a very cool feeling that I didn't think about until the same thing, you know, happened to me, so yeah, absolutely. Totally. Totally.
• 17:51
  So that was, like, all over the summer, and then we spent the last couple months, like, working a deal out. It just takes time. You know what I mean? There's a lot of, there's a lot of detail.
• 17:59
  There's lawyers, there's accountants, there's due diligence, whatever. There's all these, like, things you have to sort through. I feel like it was...
• 18:07
  It reminded me a bit of selling a house, you know, except that it all feels, like, way more personal. You know?
• 18:12
  Like, when you, like, shine that spotlight on everything, it's like it, it's not just like, oh, the house is that way because that's how it was built.
• 18:18
  It's like, oh, I built it, so if it's that way, it's because of me, for better or worse. You know what I mean?
• 18:23
  But one thing-It gave you and I this opportunity to work together pretty closely, have a couple tough conversations also, which I think was really important.
• 18:31
  And I think we learned that, one, we work really well together, we communicate really well together, and we both have the best interests of the business in mind also.
• 18:40
  And I feel like you and I did an awesome job, like, sort of like looking at it from that perspective of like, what's best for Superpath, you know? And like, let's keep that as the end goal. And we did it, you know?
• 18:50
  Like- Yeah. We made it happen. Yeah. It's always a slog. I've been on, I guess now both sides of this from my previous startup getting acquired and then going through this. It's always a slog from a process standpoint.
• 19:02
  But yeah, it was just really cool.
• 19:03
  I feel like we were connected the whole time, and obviously it's great to just have like, it's just us two kinda talking about the future of the community, what it should look like, those kinds of things, and not just like all these other stakeholders involved of like, you know, what do the investors have to say about this?
• 19:17
  You know, what do, what do like, you know, all, like, all these employees have to like, how do we, you know? Yeah.
• 19:22
  And, and so I think it was a very, you know, it was a cool experience to just be like, great, we're both pretty aligned on what we want the outcome of this to be.
• 19:29
  It's just working through the execution of it, which again, [chuckles] it takes longer than you think it should. Yeah. [laughs] Do you wanna talk a bit about some of your ideas for Superpath and what people can expect?
• 19:40
  And also, I should call this out. I think this is just like extremely important.
• 19:43
  As you just like ahead of you saying this, you know, there's a trend in the world right now of enshittification, you know, where like things get worse over time, but they don't get cheaper.
• 19:54
  They actually get more expensive. And, you know, this is not like a private equity deal, you know? Like, I have a friend whose company was recently acquired by private equity, and it's just like a mess.
• 20:03
  And it's like enshittification is exactly what's happening.
• 20:06
  They're like pumping capital into it, squeezing every dollar out they can, and like, I just wanna be like extremely clear with everyone that that's not what's happening. You know what I mean?
• 20:14
  Like, for you, obviously this is an investment. At the same time, it's not like you're just gonna sit in the control tower and press buttons. Like, you're gonna be in the business, like running it day to day.
• 20:25
  And anyway, so will... Yes, please talk about, talk about it. Like, what are you thinking for the future? If you wanna share specific stuff, great.
• 20:32
  If you wanna keep it more high level, that's all good too, but like, I think it'd be helpful for folks to understand, like, what is gonna happen now. Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:39
  Well, I mean, I think first, you've built an awesome, awesome community and product here.
• 20:44
  And one thing that I'm really wanna be careful about is, you know, I come in from like, I've been building communities, have a lot of ideas about how to build communities, things that work and don't work, um, but every community is also very different.
• 20:57
  And every kind of culture of community members need something different.
• 21:01
  And so I wanna be really careful about, one, stepping in and providing value where I can, being really additive to the space, but also just like having a lot of conversations. And it's been so...
• 21:13
  I mean, having the past three months, I don't think we said this specifically, but in the process, the sales process, I have been in the community for the past three months in a part-time capacity, but like meeting a ton of community members and getting to work on everything, so it's not just like day one, uh, you know, I'm in there for the first time.
• 21:32
  But I think those conversations with community members is so important to understand what people are getting value from, how they think about the different parts of the space.
• 21:41
  There's a lot of stuff that's going really well, and my intention is that it, we just keep on going. I mean, Eric's done a great job stepping in and running the newsletter.
• 21:51
  He's managing a lot of the Slack space right now. Him and Chloe getting involved in the podcast. Wanna keep all of that stuff going. And so there's a lot of things you will see that aren't changing.
• 22:01
  I think one of my kind of big things out of the gate that, that I wanna work on a little bit more, this is something that's really energizing to me, is in particular the pro member programs.
• 22:11
  So whether it's like tweaking some things about the design of like the one-on-ones or finding new ways.
• 22:19
  I mean, I think one of the big things that, you referenced this before, it was like communities like this were built out of like the, the pandemic era. They were all online. Right now we're seeing a big movement.
• 22:28
  I mean, there's a lot of interest in doing more in-person things, and I think you're seeing that across a lot of other communities out there. So how does that work in this space?
• 22:37
  Well, there's some interesting constraints in that this is a very global community. I think I polled everybody, at least in the pro space, and there's not... I mean,
• 22:46
  it, uh, people are spread out [chuckles] across different metro areas, right? Which is awesome, and at the same time it's like an interesting constraint there.
• 22:54
  But, like, would love to be doing, and we will be doing in-person events. Eventually, we're gonna find a way to engage everybody in the community worldwide.
• 23:02
  Probably gonna start with some of the big metro areas, but bringing that in as an element so that we're not all online, because I know a lot of people have been in here, especially in the Slack group, that have known each other for years and would love to meet in person, and so finding ways to do that.
• 23:15
  So a lot of, I think, what I wanna focus on out of the gate is that experience, and then finding ways to, to support Eric and Chloe in kind of being faces of the podcast and the newsletter as well, supporting that kind of the media aspect and then being additive there.
• 23:32
  So I'd say the big thing is, like, consistency in what's working really, really well, and then just trying to add things on and maybe make a few design tweaks based on recommendations from everybody in the space. Nice.
• 23:45
  That sounds awesome. We've done a handful of meetups over the years, and, uh, I have walked away from each of them feeling so warm and fuzzy.
• 23:52
  Like, it's just so awesome to meet people in real life and hang out and chat, and like, it just completely changes the way that you might communicate with them online too, like, because you now have a, such a better sense of who they are.
• 24:04
  Yeah. You know, and also you mentioned Eric. I feel like this is a good moment to just call out Eric and say thank you.
• 24:11
  You know, Eric has been part of Superpath since I think 2021 was when we first launched our marketplace, and I put out a call for writers, and Eric was the first one that I found and started working with.
• 24:25
  AndOne of our customers, Doc, that, that... He was the writer that I paired up with Doc, and like a year later, I got an email from the CEO of Doc being like, "Eric's awesome. Can I hire him?"
• 24:35
  And so then Eric still works there. He's been at Doc for a couple years now.
• 24:38
  But he stepped in big time when my son was born almost two years ago, like covered me so I could take some time off, which I really needed to do, and was just incredibly helpful for my family.
• 24:50
  And it's just, like you see Eric a lot. He writes a newsletter, which is always awesome. He's in Slack a lot, but i- you know, he does so much work behind the scenes too to make Superpath run.
• 24:59
  You know, like, no one has contributed more to Superpath than Eric.
• 25:03
  And when you think about like the various roles he's played as like writer on the marketplace, then customer on the marketplace, then community manager, then content creator, you know, now kind of doing a bunch of like, kind of admin and behind the scenes type stuff.
• 25:15
  Like, Eric has just been so fantastic to work with, and he's still here. He's not going anywhere. Like of-- A lot of what makes Superpath tick is because of Eric. So anyways. Anyways, I won't get too...
• 25:27
  I won't get any more drippy about that, but thank you, Eric. You're awesome. Yeah. I mean, Eric, Keisha, Chloe, everybody.
• 25:33
  I mean, there's been so many people that have made this process a lot smoother 'cause it's like, you know, as we're going through the sale process, [chuckles] there's a lot of moving pieces.
• 25:42
  And just having such an awesome team supporting the Superpath operation and like having consistency across this, I mean, the fact that hopefully, you know, a lot of y'all didn't realize this was happening the whole time it was happening is really a testament to the team and their ability to kind of like continue to keep the operation up and running fully as we go through this transition.
• 26:06
  Yeah, totally. A- you know, speaking of Chloe and Keisha, like, you know, when Eric took over the newsletter a couple years ago, that was kinda like the first time I was like, "Oh, wow. I should do more of this."
• 26:17
  Like, one, it's just like a diversity of voices. You know, it's really important. But two, like I don't have to do all of this myself. And so, like now all the people who play important roles in Superpath are members.
• 26:26
  You know, like Eric being part of the community and then taking on a contributor role kinda paved the way for Keisha, who's been in the community forever, who now does like customer support and operations, for Chloe, who co-hosts the podcast, and for you too, as the new owner of the business.
• 26:42
  Like, everybody came from the same place and like k- appreciates what the community means and handles it with care. You know? Like, we haven't brought anyone out, in from the outside.
• 26:52
  Not that we wouldn't, but I'm just saying, like we haven't needed to because there's so many like willing people in the community who wanna contribute. Yeah.
• 26:59
  That's something I'm excited about as well is like finding ways to pull even more contributors from the community. I mean, interesting thing to point out, like I probably won't be
• 27:09
  kind of the same face of the community in the way that you were, Jimmy, and, you know, continue to... Like, we've got Eric, we've got Chloe, bring some more people in, hopefully, in the near future.
• 27:18
  But, you know, I see myself as a little bit more behind the scenes. Uh, not that I won't be like around. Like, I'm sure you'll see me on the podcast, but like I'm not becoming like the podcast host tomorrow, right?
• 27:31
  I wanna work on the systems and the operation and the design and find ways to elevate a lot of the community members in, in just the way that, that you've been doing here. That's awesome. The future's bright, man.
• 27:42
  I'm so excited for... Well, I'm excited for a couple reasons. I'm excited to see what you do. I'm excited that I get to be part of it.
• 27:47
  I'm excited that I get to sit in the member seat and like get value from all of this stuff too. So, you know, thank you, Alex, honestly. Like, it's just been so fun working with you so far.
• 27:57
  I'm so excited to, you know, kind of take on this new role and cheer you on and support you however I can. So this isn't really g- I feel like I'm saying goodbye. I'm not.
• 28:06
  Like, I'm gonna be around, but it's just kinda like this moment to reflect and, you know, express some- It, it's a good reflection moment. Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, you've built an awesome space.
• 28:15
  I'm very excited for this next chapter.
• 28:16
  I'm excited to get-- I mean, part of this whole thing was like the chance to continue to work with you, Jimmy, and like obviously somebody that I have followed and like known for a while.
• 28:27
  And, you know, that's something that was very compelling to me as well is like, I'm like, "This is somebody I could totally work with." And so excited for the next chapter of working with you and working on Superpath.
• 28:38
  And yeah, it's a cool moment. Awesome. Well, thanks, Alex. If you haven't already, Alex and I have each published our own kind of announcements on this. Like me, it's kind of like the reflective version.
• 28:48
  Alex, yours is more like the looking forward version. I would encourage folks to go read both of those, and I'll put links in the show notes to make that easy. We'll put a link to your LinkedIn in the show notes.
• 28:57
  Also, Alex, I would encourage people, whether you're a member or not, follow Alex, just stay in touch with kinda like what's going on. Join the newsletter too.
• 29:03
  Like, if you're not on our newsletter, you should definitely go join that because like it's kinda like the drumbeat of Superpath in many ways is, you know... Eric writes it.
• 29:10
  It's funny, it's helpful, but also, like he curates the best threads from Slack. He keeps people up to date on some of the events we're doing.
• 29:17
  Some are for members, some are for everybody, so it's a great way to stay in touch. Anyways, all that stuff will be in the show notes. And next week, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming.
• 29:25
  So anyways, Alex, thanks so much. And to everybody else, appreciate you, and we'll see you in Slack. Thanks, Jimmy. [upbeat music]