Context First: Community Converts – Turning Skeptics into Champions

00:00:00:06 - 00:00:24:14 Joshua Zerkel Hello everybody. Welcome to context first with gradual. Today's conversation is community converts turning skeptics into champions. I cannot wait for this one. I'm John Circle head of marketing and community here at gradual. In case you are new to gradual, it's the all in one engagement and community platform to generate context across go to market and turn connection into lasting business impact.

00:00:24:16 - 00:00:56:03 Joshua Zerkel As we begin, please drop your questions into the Q&A and we'll get to as many as we can live. I really encourage you to participate and so does our speaker. We'll continue the conversation after the event in the forum. Emma. Now I am excited to introduce today's guest. Please meet my friend Ashley Williams. With over 15 years of experience, Ashley has launched an LED strategies across every corner of community, including advocacy, distributed events, programs, user voice and listening, in-person and virtual events, as well as online community management.

00:00:56:04 - 00:01:18:13 Joshua Zerkel You name it, Ashley has done it. She has scaled communities globally at three companies, including Class Dojo, Airbnb, Wix. Leading Distributed Start, leading distributed teams across North America, Latam, EMEA and iPAC. Most recently, Ashley joined Stripe as community lead and is building out a new community marketing function there. Welcome, Ashley.

00:01:18:15 - 00:01:20:20 Ashley Williams Thank you. It's great to be here.

00:01:20:22 - 00:01:29:24 Joshua Zerkel I am so thrilled for this topic and to have you presenting it. So maybe you could just talk a little bit about why you're excited to talk about this particular topic before.

00:01:29:25 - 00:01:46:22 Ashley Williams Yes, absolutely. I think it's actually one of the topics we struggle with most as community managers. And I'll talk about that more in my presentation. But, you know, every time I meet with a community manager, for example, Josh, you and I were at CLG conference a few weeks ago, I hear this as a theme over and over again.

00:01:46:22 - 00:02:03:27 Ashley Williams I'm struggling to get, my stakeholders internally to understand my work. I'm struggling to get buy in. So it's something I'm really passionate about sharing because, I've learned a lot from my mistakes over the years. And I've been doing this for long enough that I now have a lot of tips and tricks that can help.

00:02:03:27 - 00:02:09:20 Ashley Williams And so I love sharing it with others because I know it is something a lot of community professionals struggle with.

00:02:09:22 - 00:02:23:09 Joshua Zerkel Definitely. And I think the, the concept of like, we know the work is valuable, how do we help the people we work with understand as well? Is near and dear to the heart of every community leader. So without further ado, I will let you take it away.

00:02:23:11 - 00:02:52:16 Ashley Williams Great. Okay, I'm going to share my screen. As you know, it's always a journey. All right. Like Josh said, I'm Ashley. I lead the very new community team at stripe, but I've been doing this for a long time across other brands like Airbnb, Class Dojo, and Wix. And one of the things I've been most proud of over the last 15 years of building communities is my ability to take skeptics at the companies where I've been working and turn them into true community champions.

00:02:52:18 - 00:03:17:17 Ashley Williams And actually, when I made this presentation, I reached out to a couple of a couple of those converts and asked if they could share a quote. So this is actually a quote from my former colleague Ed from Airbnb. And he said, for the longest time I questioned the real business impact of community, then actually proved me wrong time and time again over many months, with a masterfully executed build out of our Airbnb Experiences community program that it evangelize hosts, helping us to scale our account management work.

00:03:17:19 - 00:03:35:22 Ashley Williams So it's a great example of somebody who, when I joined Airbnb, he really didn't understand why I was there, what value I was driving. But by the time, he left Airbnb, he was actually one of the biggest advocates for community work. Why? It was really critical to the business. So now I'm going to give you a few tips about how to do that.

00:03:35:24 - 00:03:57:13 Ashley Williams So I'm gonna go over three key principles. So the first one is always ask. The theme here is being constantly curious and proactive. The next principle is that companies change. And you should too. We'll talk about how to evolve as your company evolves. And then finally, the last one, which can be a little spicy, is that your self righteousness isn't serving you.

00:03:57:15 - 00:04:16:14 Ashley Williams And we'll talk about what that means in a second. So first up, always ask. I talk to a lot of community managers who struggle with understanding, oh, nobody's told me how I should be showing my business impact. Nobody's been telling me my KPIs and the sort of sassy response I have to that is nobody will tell you.

00:04:16:21 - 00:04:41:13 Ashley Williams And the second you start to embrace that, you're actually empowering yourself. You need to be the one to go out and figure out what is the value you're driving to the business and how you're communicating it. And the first way to do that is just to really understand the lay of the land internally, of where you're working. So the first place to do that is actually when you join a new company or there's a lot of these things are things you can do even when you've been at a company for years.

00:04:41:15 - 00:05:02:12 Ashley Williams So first off, when you join a company, you're often given a list of people to meet with. Definitely meet with those people, but you shouldn't take it at face value. You should do your own investigation about who's on different teams that might be relevant to you, and then proactively reach out to those other people as well. Then you should actually meet with them and ask them what their hopes and dreams are for community.

00:05:02:12 - 00:05:23:23 Ashley Williams Ask them directly what do they want to see out of community? What are they hoping it'll achieve? What are they hoping it'll unlock? That'll give you a really clear sense of, you know, what people's expectations are, how you might meet them or not meet them. Who might be confused about what community is. And that way you know that from square one and you're not trying to get it months down the line.

00:05:23:25 - 00:05:43:22 Ashley Williams You should also then ask them, what is one other person you should meet with? That's another way to keep expanding beyond that original list you're given when you're hired. And then afterwards, you should actually do the work of sitting down and mapping out directly out of these conversations. Who do you think we're going to be? Your champions? The people that just get community and are going to be supportive from square one?

00:05:43:24 - 00:05:49:23 Ashley Williams And who are the people that are skeptics, but might take a little bit more work to convince.

00:05:49:26 - 00:06:14:04 Ashley Williams But don't stop there. Even once you've been at a company should keep being curious. Keep investigating who your stakeholders are and how you can drive value for them. First off, you should constantly stay informed. Be proactive about scheduling regular meetings with your key stakeholders. Stock slack channels. Keep an eye on like what people are saying is important, what their goals and challenges are, and read update emails too.

00:06:14:04 - 00:06:35:01 Ashley Williams So really, stock other teams and dig into what they're struggling with or talking about. And also proactively ask them. Ask them, say how could community support your team? How could community solve your challenges? What are you struggling with and then also why you should stay close to your champions of people that are going to be your supporters. You should really lean into your skeptics.

00:06:35:03 - 00:06:58:12 Ashley Williams Actually spend more time with your skeptics. I think this one is especially hard, especially I think a lot of community managers tend to be Enneagram to a little conflict avoidant. I know I can be, but actually the more time you spend with your skeptics, the more likely you are to convert them. I actually had this happen to me this week, where I had a colleague who was frustrated and confused about some of the work we were doing in community.

00:06:58:15 - 00:07:11:28 Ashley Williams I hopped on a call with him yesterday, and by the end he was super excited about the work we were doing and wanted me to come and actually present to his team. So it's always worthwhile to spend time with those skeptics because you can convert them to champions.

00:07:12:00 - 00:07:34:07 Ashley Williams So that was principle one. Principle two companies change and so should you. I added a bunch of blog post headings here because as community managers, we spend so much time talking and writing and thinking about how do we prove the ROI of community, but something we don't talk about often enough is that actually this isn't constant. It isn't constant from company to company.

00:07:34:09 - 00:07:58:14 Ashley Williams It changes depending on the company in the context, but it also isn't context constant within an existing company. So when you're at a company over many years, the goals and challenges of the company will evolve and your community strategy should evolve with them. I actually like to give the example of my time at Wix, because I was actually there for seven years and I was there through very key pivotal changes in the company.

00:07:58:17 - 00:08:16:25 Ashley Williams So when I joined Wix, it was actually just a 100 person startup. It was tiny. And so at that point, really marketing was a handful of people. And so the goal for community at that point was actually to drive grassroots word of mouth marketing and community was really impactful in that we ran we ran a co-working space in New York.

00:08:16:25 - 00:08:47:18 Ashley Williams We ran events. We partnered with various communities that had target audiences, and that was really, really powerful. But then in 2013, Wix went public. The company grew dramatically, budgets grew dramatically, and then the marketing department started doing things like Super Bowl commercials. And at that point when you're doing a Super Bowl commercial, commercial grassroots, you know, word of mouth was a little bit harder for me to show the ROI compared to, say, a Super Bowl commercial, at least in the context of Wix.

00:08:47:21 - 00:09:17:13 Ashley Williams And so I started doing research and like, what are some other pain points the company was struggling with? And I learned that at the time, we actually didn't have a user research or any kind of feedback team, and the product teams were really struggling with understanding the user's needs and how to meet them. And so I actually proposed pivoting our team from being focused on more of a marketing motion to actually move us into products where we actually started engaging users around specific products so we could develop, feedback channels for all the different product teams.

00:09:17:16 - 00:09:40:16 Ashley Williams And then from there, that actually then evolved into a world where we said, oh, not only we can we gather feedback, but we realized that we're actually helping to bring users through the product funnel. So we started to actually, fine tune and adjust our content to really think about product adoption and attach. And so we really went from this place of, okay, community is driving new users.

00:09:40:16 - 00:10:02:07 Ashley Williams We're sitting in marketing to a place where communities gauging existing users first to get their feedback, and then eventually to actually drive them through the product funnel. So this is a great example of, you know, seven years of the company. The company's priorities changed, and the way that community needed to meet those priorities needed to change with it so we could stay relevant.

00:10:02:09 - 00:10:20:11 Ashley Williams And you need to keep using those always ask principles to help you keep that evolution going. So stay on top of your company's macro strategy. And when it's changing, same thing stock slack channels, read email updates. Be really aware of what's happening in the company and not just in your team or department, but actually across the entire company.

00:10:20:17 - 00:10:37:12 Ashley Williams Because sometimes you might even need to change which department you're in, or which departments you're working with or your focus altogether. And that's okay. It'll be easier to do that if you have a clear business case for it. Proactively offer those solutions and pivots. Don't wait to be told, hey, actually, now I need your team to do this.

00:10:37:12 - 00:11:04:15 Ashley Williams You should suggest it. Really own the narrative. Own the future of your work and your team. I know also that can be intimidating though. It's like actually suggesting something. You know, a change in department or change in priorities can be intimidating. One way to kind of gently ease into that is actually starting with a pilot. Start with a pilot, then you have really strong results and data that you can share out that bolster the proposal you're making for how your team should shift.

00:11:04:17 - 00:11:33:00 Ashley Williams And then the last spicy principle, your self-righteousness isn't serving you. As community managers, we get questioned a lot. Our roles are a little ambiguous. Often we're a small team. It isn't like, you know, product marketing or product where the teams are massive and it's really clear what they do. And also our work involves a lot of, you know, navigating and engaging with people and I think because of that, we get questioned a lot.

00:11:33:00 - 00:11:53:27 Ashley Williams And often our first response and I can admit that can be me too. Our first response often is, you don't understand my genius. Or you get frustrated or you get defensive. And what I'd actually suggest is flipping that on its head instead of taking that moment and, making it a suck on your energy. Think about how you can take that moment and make it an opportunity.

00:11:53:29 - 00:12:23:02 Ashley Williams So first off, be patient. Like I said, what we do isn't obvious. And that's okay. We need to actually adopt an educator mindset. I give the example again of my colleague this week who I got on the call with. It would have been really easy for me to start that call. Being angry with him or defensive. But instead I took that educator mindset and I said, you know, let's actually talk you through what the community strategy is and what the team is doing, and that's what helped turn him from that skeptic into a champion.

00:12:23:05 - 00:12:46:10 Ashley Williams Also, overcommunicate all the time. It is so powerful to share regular updates everywhere. At stripe I do a bi weekly update. I post it on slack, I send it by email. And it's actually amazing. My updates have become a little famous at stripe, even getting featured at companywide meetings. When I did it, it felt like I was shouting into the void initially.

00:12:46:10 - 00:13:08:12 Ashley Williams But just in the last few weeks, it's actually been clear how powerful these updates are and driving awareness for the rest of the company. For my team also cut through any ambiguity and slack. If you start to see tension or confusion and slack, immediately schedule a meeting. Sometimes things can get lost through the cracks. When you're chatting on slack, we're moving quickly.

00:13:08:17 - 00:13:27:18 Ashley Williams It's really worthwhile to take the time and meet someone. That's often the difference between someone being confused and someone being really excited about your work. And then finally take every possible opportunity to present internally and constantly offer it. Any time you have a meeting with someone who said, oh, now I understand what you're doing, this work is super interesting.

00:13:27:18 - 00:13:49:07 Ashley Williams You should then say, hey, actually, would it be helpful if I gave this presentation to your team or, you know, your broader your broader department? You should really think of yourselves, yourself as your own teacher or salesman for the work you're doing and be your own internal champion. So what's the unifying theme here? It's perpetual motion. It's being proactive.

00:13:49:10 - 00:14:10:12 Ashley Williams Should never wait and just hope someone tells you what to do or how to prove your value. You should be constantly being proactive and finding opportunities and seizing them and proposing them so that you can find those champions and create them. And finally, before I and I just want to give a few, just like lightning round quick tips that I found to be really effective and practical.

00:14:10:14 - 00:14:28:06 Ashley Williams So one is create a one on one doc and deck, about your work and keep them on hand. Then you can share them quickly, have them ready to go. This is always so powerful. And if you lead a team to share those with your team as well, I'm actually creating new versions of these for my team this week, actually.

00:14:28:08 - 00:14:53:29 Ashley Williams Perfect. Your elevator pitch. You should know exactly how you describe your program in just a few minutes. And that put should definitely include the value you're driving for the company as well. If you're creating written updates. No big blocks of text. This one is very, very practical, but it's very, very critical. I can't tell you how many teams I see will have these big, long prose blocks of text.

00:14:54:02 - 00:15:15:13 Ashley Williams People just glaze over. You should have bullet formatting, break it up, keep things simple. Numbers oriented in every doc you create include a list of stakeholders involved so it's invisible. Another thing I think we often get is community managers. Is has blah blah approved this. Just go ahead and put that at the top of your doc. Here's all the people that have approved this.

00:15:15:13 - 00:15:34:21 Ashley Williams And then it also shows how much buy in and internal stakeholder alignment you've already driven. Right at the top of your doc. And related, you should start to really deeply understand the frequently asked questions that you get from your colleagues and pre answer them either in your docs or in meetings, so that you address those concerns before they even come up.

00:15:34:21 - 00:15:50:13 Ashley Williams And then you can spend more time talking about the value you're going to deliver versus spending all that time addressing confusion. And, you know, gray areas in your strategy. And that is all for me. Quick and bold.

00:15:50:15 - 00:16:09:21 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, that was great. Thank you everyone. Feel free to drop your questions in the Q&A. Oh Jason has on already. All right. Great. Any tips for finding the time for internal promotion of community efforts versus the never ending need of the community? All the things that they ask for. Do you prioritize community work to focus on internal comms?

00:16:09:21 - 00:16:12:02 Joshua Zerkel That is a great question.

00:16:12:05 - 00:16:28:18 Ashley Williams As a very good question. You know, I set aside this time very intentionally, and you should make it a ritual. So just like, you know, you find time to have one on ones with the team you're managing, or you find time to have one on one with your, one on one with your manager. You should just put it in your calendar.

00:16:28:18 - 00:16:49:04 Ashley Williams And I do actually, I have, you know, a 30 minute block. And also my updates are template sized. So I've created a really good template. So I'm not creating something new every single time. I'm just kind of plugging in each time to this template I've created. So that's also something else that makes it quick and easy. So I schedule that 30 minutes once a week.

00:16:49:06 - 00:17:11:27 Ashley Williams And it's become a ritual for me every two weeks. And it's truly paid dividends. A few weeks ago, Stripe's CEO showed my update email in a companywide meeting, which was a very exciting surprise. And so I can't emphasize enough how important these, updates are, even if initially it may feel like you're shouting into the void.

00:17:12:00 - 00:17:24:21 Joshua Zerkel That's great when you think about skepticism towards community building, and there's typically a fair amount of any organization. Where does it usually show up first, and what do you think is underneath it?

00:17:24:23 - 00:17:48:08 Ashley Williams I think it's usually actually and you know, it's so funny that I have this example from this week. It often isn't animosity. It is. It's it's often less oh, I think community is bad or wrong. It's usually just confusion of they just don't understand what community is to begin with. And if they don't know what community is, then they don't know why it's important or why they should care or how they should engage in it.

00:17:48:11 - 00:18:21:14 Ashley Williams And so having a really crisp elevator pitch on what you're doing, why it's important, why you developed the strategy you did, and then also quickly pivoting into. And this is why I think it's meaningful for your team or how we might collaborate bridging that gap for them. And so that's what I've seen. Usually, people who don't work in community or haven't been at a company where community is important in the past, may just not get what it is, or they think it's something like events or they've kind of just given.

00:18:21:14 - 00:18:32:18 Ashley Williams It's shorthand for, oh, it's you send emails to users. So it really often is just they don't know what it is. And if they don't know what it is, they can't know why it's important or valuable.

00:18:32:20 - 00:18:51:00 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. I found in my experience also, if people understand what community is at all, which is a big if, it's whatever it was it their last organization. So however their last organization define community and how it worked with their business is their notion of what community is and should be at all companies, because that's all that they've typically seen.

00:18:51:00 - 00:19:16:26 Joshua Zerkel And so oftentimes where we feel like everyone should just get it, which is a very dangerous assumption to make. Most people, if they get it, they get what they got before. And so it's our job to help them understand. Here's what it looks like in this organization. Here's what we're building towards now. And here's based on the feedback that you're telling me how it can serve you, specifically, that story, I feel like, in my experience has landed a lot better than, well, you just don't get it.

00:19:16:28 - 00:19:42:09 Ashley Williams Exactly. And also being sure to emphasize not just the what, but the why. To your point, community is going to look different at different companies because like we were just talking about, you know, the strategy needs to evolve for that specific company's goals in that moment. And so starting with the why helps as well, because it then couches the what and much more helpful business context to.

00:19:42:11 - 00:20:05:01 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. One of the things that you touched on that I thought was really interesting and something that I echo in some of my own writing that I've done, is serving multiple teams goals via community. That is really, a laudable goal, but in practice it can be really hard. How do you design a program that actually meets multiple business goals, rather than a single team's set of goals or initiatives?

00:20:05:04 - 00:20:30:06 Ashley Williams Yeah, I think, you know, and I've had the luxury of building a lot of communities from community strategies from scratch. And I know it's harder when you've inherited a strategy, in a role. But I'm a big believer in establishing community strategies, where you think of community as a platform. So similar to how like marketing or design support, lots of different teams and lots of different goals and can work across different pillars and products.

00:20:30:08 - 00:20:52:26 Ashley Williams I think community should work in some degree like that. How can you put together a foundational infrastructure for the community where it can be leveraged, mobilized, engage to meet lots of different business goals? Often what you see community managers do, and I think it's hard to because of like executive level pressure that happens. They they join, they're told, okay, customer support is my goal.

00:20:52:26 - 00:21:18:15 Ashley Williams And so they over engineer a community to be just towards customer support. But then when the company pivots or the executives pivot and suddenly it's like, actually, no. Now our focus is word of mouth marketing. It's so much harder to pivot versus creating a strategy where it's like, okay, we're going to create this like atomic unit of human connection, of how are we bringing our users together and connecting them with the brand in a way that it is agile.

00:21:18:15 - 00:21:30:07 Ashley Williams And so you have that foundation, but it it can meet lots of different goals because you've created this, you know, platform versus creating something that can only meet one goal at one given time.

00:21:30:10 - 00:21:50:12 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I really resonate with that as a community, more of a horizontal function that can serve different parts of the business in different ways at different times, rather than the community. Just this one thing, and it's designed to serve this one organization because the truth is, community can be and do a lot of different things. It's like amassing a group of people, then just pointing them in different directions.

00:21:50:14 - 00:21:59:28 Joshua Zerkel It doesn't have to be only one. It's actually. Yeah. Ignacio, thank you for your question. What is the difference between community and audience?

00:22:00:01 - 00:22:28:06 Ashley Williams Yes. This is like a top community manager like, feels sort of question. So you talk to an audience, you talk with and facilitate conversation among a community. So an audience, you are not it is not a two way or many to many relationship and audience. You are just pushing content at them. They consume it. They may comment on it or give feedback.

00:22:28:12 - 00:22:52:14 Ashley Williams Whereas with a community you're actually bringing peers together to engage each other. And so with the community, the role a brand serves is not the like talk or, or the, you know, deliver or, but it's more the facilitator, the platform that brings people together. So it's more a function of being a gardener, so to speak.

00:22:52:17 - 00:23:12:17 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I agree, I the way that I sometimes frame it is an audience. I'm speaking to a community I'm speaking with, and it's the difference of the relationship versus the one way. And oftentimes in communication that I've had with other marketers who are used to one way marketing communications, they send an email that goes out, people click or they don't, or I create an ad.

00:23:12:17 - 00:23:25:14 Joshua Zerkel People see it, they do something where they don't. If community, if we do our job as well, we do something. Then people respond and then the conversation continues. So the motion is very different to what people get out of. It is also very different.

00:23:25:17 - 00:23:42:25 Ashley Williams It's so true. I, the one that cracks me up every time I join a new company, is inevitably there's somebody I meet internally who says, oh, we have a community. I'm like, oh, that's great. Tell me more about your community. It's like, oh, well, it's really hard to send an email here. So we started a slack channel so we can just send updates to our users.

00:23:42:25 - 00:24:04:10 Ashley Williams So it's always so hard because it's like, I what I don't want to dampen the enthusiasm. And this is where we go back to educator mode versus defensive mode, which is so hard for us as community managers. But it's like actually that is in the community. That's a communication channel and that's valuable. But community is something different and can be even more powerful if you in it.

00:24:04:10 - 00:24:11:08 Ashley Williams And so I do see that a lot of like, oh, emails hearts, we open up a community, but it's really just a way to get around email.

00:24:11:10 - 00:24:38:02 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. I think there's a conflation between community and communication channel. And for people who are used to channels as how they work with customers and prospects and audience, it's very hard to understand that it's just a channel what you do with it. You can build a community in slack, but you can build a community in anything, and it's really about how you approach the building and the relationships, not how we communicate the message to people solely.

00:24:38:04 - 00:24:56:06 Ashley Williams Exactly. And I think similarly, and I've been seeing this as we've been going on the journey of, identifying a platform and building out the online community for stripe is. But I think you also often see, stakeholders say, okay, well, they want to start with the platform. They want to start with, like, okay. To your point. They want to start with the channels.

00:24:56:06 - 00:25:17:09 Ashley Williams It's like actually, you know, going back to this idea of community as platform, it's like what is the foundational infrastructure. So you actually have to create the community strategy first. And the platform and the channels should serve. That should be laddered up to it. It should be, you know, you should have design thinking principles when you're creating this versus like, okay, we start with the channels and then the strategy fits that.

00:25:17:09 - 00:25:20:15 Ashley Williams That's reverse engineering it in a way that's unhelpful.

00:25:20:18 - 00:25:29:00 Joshua Zerkel I agree, I think it's just easier for people to land on the tangible first, like what channel, what tool like, but we we don't even know we're doing it.

00:25:29:02 - 00:25:29:24 Ashley Williams Exactly.

00:25:29:25 - 00:25:37:18 Joshua Zerkel It's hard to dog people back from there. And sometimes it's like talking people off the ledge. They've already committed to what it is that they want, but they don't actually know what's underneath it until we get it.

00:25:37:26 - 00:26:00:25 Ashley Williams And I yeah. And I found having a strong vision helps with that. You know, like having a a very strong point of view and strategy and going back to the why why this strategy? How did you land on this strategy? And being a very effective storyteller so that, you know, you can say like, here's this big, bold vision, and everything will follow.

00:26:00:25 - 00:26:07:07 Ashley Williams Whereas if you don't have that clear point of view and vision, it's a lot easier to get lost in the channels conversation.

00:26:07:10 - 00:26:18:02 Joshua Zerkel Definitely. So we have time for maybe one more question if someone wants to drop one in the chat. If you don't, I'll ask one in a spicy one of my own.

00:26:18:06 - 00:26:20:03 Ashley Williams Ooh, we love spicy.

00:26:20:05 - 00:26:32:05 Joshua Zerkel Okay, so in absence of anyone dropping a question, I'll ask one. So we've talked about turning skeptics into champions. Has there been a time when you were not able to convince a skeptic and turn them into a champion, and if so, what happened?

00:26:32:08 - 00:26:54:25 Ashley Williams Oh, that's a great question. You know, I I've been very I think it's less I've been very lucky and this is maybe showing like how spoiled I am. I've always been able to turn skeptics into champions. However, I have had some where it took many years to do that. And so I will say I always eventually converted them.

00:26:54:25 - 00:27:16:15 Ashley Williams But there were some that took a lot more convincing. And I think often what it was is they needed to just, they needed to feel the individual impact for their team, their goals. And they needed to see like seeing is believing. And I think often it just took longer. And kind of going to back to your question of like, you know, community meeting everyone's goals.

00:27:16:15 - 00:27:40:10 Ashley Williams I think that's part of the challenge is that like part of how you can turn skeptics into champions is helping them see how you're meeting their goals, but you're not going to meet everyone's goals every day instantly. And then also to I think that, to be honest, the part of where I give the advice of like, lean into your skeptics, the skeptics that I often have the hardest time with, it's because I avoided them.

00:27:40:12 - 00:28:01:16 Ashley Williams And I think that's like the mistake I learned from over and over again. When I look it in the eyes and I take the time to have the meeting and I have a compassionately candid conversation with them, it always actually ends up being amazing, and they end up becoming a champion. When I take the time to invest in spending time with them, talking to them about it, sometimes it's multiple conversations.

00:28:01:16 - 00:28:22:19 Ashley Williams And so I do think the times that's why it's one of my number one learnings, the times that I failed or took longer, it was because I, I was like, oh, this is their they don't like it. This conversation is going to be it's going to be conflict. It's going to be uncomfortable. And then I avoided it. Whereas every time I've leaned in to those uncomfortable moments, it's made all the difference.

00:28:22:21 - 00:28:42:02 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I think the the toughest skeptics doesn't mean that you can't convert them. You may not be able to convert them all the way. However, it's always worth taking the time because you're going to learn a lot in those conversations that can help inform how you communicate with lots of other people. And hopefully you do get to convert those people in some fashion.

00:28:42:04 - 00:28:53:11 Joshua Zerkel Last question from Jake. Jake asks, can we see the stripe community to see how actually configured our platform? Thank you both, by the way. You're welcome. Actually, when we take a look at the stripe community.

00:28:53:13 - 00:29:11:11 Ashley Williams It is launching in hopefully June, where actually we are using gradual. We're very, very excited. So we're currently working with the gradual team to build it out as we speak. We just kicked off work two weeks ago on the build. So hopefully it'll launch in June July this year.

00:29:11:13 - 00:29:26:27 Joshua Zerkel So stay tuned. Look forward to that. Yeah, we're looking forward to it as well. All right Ashley thank you so much. This was awesome. I really enjoyed our conversation. And I think you shared some wonderful nuggets with our audience. And Ashley where would you like people to find you online.

00:29:26:29 - 00:29:42:12 Ashley Williams Yeah. So LinkedIn is always the best place to connect with me. So feel free to, you know, request to connect. Reach out to me if I don't respond immediately, it's just because I tend to get inundated on LinkedIn. It might just take me a little while, but I do try to get back to people who reach out to me.

00:29:42:12 - 00:29:44:02 Ashley Williams So please feel free to reach out to me.

00:29:44:02 - 00:30:02:26 Joshua Zerkel They're great. I can tell everyone that Ashley is a wonderful resource and has been awesome as partner in my career, so thank you Ashley. Thank you all for attending as a reminder, you can continue the conversation in the forum AMA inside the Gradual Community Forum. And as always, we have many more events coming up. Please check those out as well.

00:30:02:26 - 00:30:14:02 Joshua Zerkel And the gradual community. Thank you all for attending. Thank you Ashley for speaking. Thank you liane in the background for helping make sure things run smoothly and we will see you all at a future event. Thank you so much.

00:30:14:04 - 00:30:14:26 Ashley Williams Thank you.