Sign in or Join the community to continue
Executive Insights with Gradual: The Playbook for Building Strategic Value Through Community
Posted Oct 30, 2025 | Views 87
# Format: Event Recaps
# GTM Strategy
Share
Speakers
Brian Oblinger
Strategic Consultant @ Brian Oblinger | Strategic Consulting
Brian helps brands engage their customers to increase satisfaction, lower costs, and generate more revenue through the power of community. He's recently worked with Airbnb, Greenhouse, Hubspot, Salesforce, Techstars, and many more. Brian is also the co-host of In Before The Lock podcast and the founder of Community Strategy Academy.
+ Read More
Joshua Zerkel
Head of Marketing & Community @ Gradual
Josh Zerkel is Head of Marketing & Community-Led Growth at Gradual. A recognized leader in community strategy, he has built and scaled programs at Asana, Evernote, HeyGen, and CBS News that have driven millions in pipeline, global engagement, and cross-functional impact. He’s the author of The Community Code, and a trusted advisor to startups and enterprise teams building community-powered growth engines.
+ Read More
SUMMARY
Join Brian Oblinger, trusted advisor to Airbnb, Greenhouse, Salesforce, and more, for a fast-moving conversation about how executives can turn community into measurable business impact. We will explore cross-functional success stories, practical tactics for influencing strategy across the organization, and where community is headed as a go-to-market lever in 2026 and beyond.
+ Read More
CONTENT & TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:09 - 00:00:26:11 Joshua Zerkel Hello everyone, and welcome. Welcome to Executive Insights with gradual and today's topic, the Executive Playbook for building strategic value through a community. A passion topic of mine as well. I'm Josh Zerkel, head of marketing and community here at Gradual. In case you are new to the world of Gradual, it is the all in one engagement and community platform to turn conviction into lasting business impact and grow engagement beyond your product.
00:00:26:13 - 00:00:43:10 Joshua Zerkel Before I introduce our guest expert, just a quick note. Please drop your questions in the Q&A and we will get to as many as we can today. This event is being recorded and we'll send it out to everyone after. After the session ends, you will still be able to ask questions and share your thoughts in the forum AMA, which Brian is in.
00:00:43:13 - 00:01:07:20 Joshua Zerkel We'll share that link later during the webinar. And now, without further ado, I would like to introduce our guest, who I'm very excited to have. Brian Unger helps brands engage their customers to increase satisfaction, lower costs, and generate more revenue through the power of community. Yeah, he's recently worked with Airbnb, greenhouse, HubSpot, Salesforce, Techstars, and many, many more.
00:01:07:22 - 00:01:17:03 Joshua Zerkel Brian is also the co-host of the In Before the Lock podcast. One of my personal favorites and the founder of Community Strategy Academy. Welcome, Brian.
00:01:17:05 - 00:01:20:25 Brian Oblinger Hey, thanks for having me. And, hello to everyone out there.
00:01:20:27 - 00:01:43:00 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, thanks for being here. So today we're talking about showing value to executives and creating value from community. This is, I think, a perennial topic amongst community builders, and one that so many folks seem to have real challenges with. Before we get into the list of questions I want to ask you just generally, why do you think this is such a challenge for folks?
00:01:43:03 - 00:02:05:26 Brian Oblinger Wow. I think there's a few things. I think one is we are still. Believe it or not, a fairly relatively new, you know, comer to the business, let's say. Even though we might say, hey, community has been around, we've been doing this since the late 90s. It's also the case that, you know, we just need to continue to do more to help people understand it.
00:02:05:27 - 00:02:29:12 Brian Oblinger You know, events like this are one thing. The other thing is, how do we do it inside of companies? I think the second bit there is traditionally community professionals or practitioners have been focused on building the community and growing the community, and not so much the business side of it. Right. And, and sort of digging into the details of that and calculating ROI and having conversations with executives.
00:02:29:12 - 00:02:37:25 Brian Oblinger So I think we've made progress, you know, on all those things. But, much more to come and hopefully, you know, conversations like this help, help push it forward.
00:02:37:28 - 00:02:57:03 Joshua Zerkel I think so, too. I mean, when I've talked with people in the community space and ones who are thinking about entering it, and with cross-functional stakeholders and leaders, the way I like to frame it is we need these in the same space to where customer success was maybe 15 years ago, when it was a new function that was what was this thing that was going to sit between sales and support?
00:02:57:03 - 00:03:18:09 Joshua Zerkel Why would we need that? We already have those two functions, and now every company that offers any sort of SAS product has CSW. It's just a given. One day I don't know which day. Hopefully one day soon community will be is equally as well understood and earned its spot. It's been creating value for business in a way that's equally well understood, without having to explain it every single time to every new leader that comes in.
00:03:18:11 - 00:03:19:02 Joshua Zerkel Yeah.
00:03:19:04 - 00:03:20:00 Brian Oblinger Yeah.
00:03:20:02 - 00:03:30:09 Joshua Zerkel So, Brian, how should we think about creating value through community and what do they need to support community for to have real maximum impact?
00:03:30:12 - 00:03:55:28 Brian Oblinger Yeah. You know, I'll go back to kind of the I was thinking as you were doing my intro there, you know, I always have this phrase about, you know, why community. It's like we're lowering costs, we're driving revenue. We're, you know, building efficiency in the org. We're delivering experiences. You know, those things. And that's really at the end of the day, what we need to say and what resonates with with leaders, right, is we need to speak their language.
00:03:55:28 - 00:04:15:02 Brian Oblinger And oftentimes, you know, community folks will. And and trust me, I've made this mistake more than anybody. So I'm not not picking on anybody, other than myself. But, you know, you show up in a meeting with an executive and you start talking about, you know, engagement or page views or posts or likes or, you know, whatever the case is, and they kind of glaze over, right?
00:04:15:02 - 00:04:33:22 Brian Oblinger It's like, okay, cool. Like, what does that mean? I don't really know. You know, if you show up though, and you say, hey, we believe that community is contributing to a X increase in retention, right? Or something of that nature, depending on who you're talking to. The message should obviously change. Then all of a sudden you have you have folks attention, right.
00:04:33:22 - 00:04:53:03 Brian Oblinger So every day when I go and talk to executives, I'm always thinking about, well, who am I talking to? You know, it's the chief marketing officer, it's the CEO, it's the VP of success. It's the SVP of support. It's the chief product officer. You know, the story kind of changes for, hey, you know, here's here's what community is, here's what it's good for.
00:04:53:03 - 00:05:01:17 Brian Oblinger And ultimately here's what we can do to help you. Right. And I think answering the what's in it for me is, is actually the the whole ballgame here.
00:05:01:19 - 00:05:18:11 Joshua Zerkel That's the whole ballgame with every executive you talk to ever, I think is really, as you said, speaking their language, which I, all of us who have worked in community, I think have had this challenge at one point or another is helping them understand what it is we do through the lens that they care about the most.
00:05:18:14 - 00:05:35:23 Joshua Zerkel And it really is. It varies so much from stakeholder to stakeholder and executive to exactly how. What advice would you give to community builders or community leaders for how to ferret out what messages will land the best with these different types of executive leaders?
00:05:35:25 - 00:05:53:29 Brian Oblinger Yeah. You know, I always talk about, I think, showing up in those conversations and, you know, saying, well, here's what we're doing and here's how it's going to help you, you know, is probably less effective than doing the other way around, which is show up and say, what are you working on? You know, what are your goals for this year?
00:05:53:29 - 00:06:13:09 Brian Oblinger What's the big challenge? What are you trying to solve and let them lead you actually to the answer? You know, you might show up in a product conversation where they say, hey, adoption is not as high as we would like it to be. And that's a goal that okay, great. Like, here's, you know, here's what I'm doing over here with community and here's how we might be able to contribute to that.
00:06:13:09 - 00:06:36:24 Brian Oblinger That might be, you know, a bunch of different things. And then you can list them out and, you know, start to build some rapport there. So, you know, I can tell you that same story for, for marketing, for product, for support, for success, for, you know, whoever, you know, I kind of like to show up and let them tell me what their challenges are and then try to pair community as being part of the solution.
00:06:36:24 - 00:06:58:13 Brian Oblinger Right? Not to say it's it's going to solve all things. But I think that's that's the great thing about community, right? I think this gets like sometimes lost or forgotten is that we can and do do all of those things. It's not a silver bullet in the sense that it's going to solve every business problem, but it it's uniquely able to solve many of them.
00:06:58:15 - 00:07:16:11 Brian Oblinger And so that's why we keep talking about it, you know, that like it's like, why do we keep trying to do this community thing and all these companies like, because it turns out that when you do it properly, you can have pretty broad impact across, you know, the whole organization. In many ways. And so that's why we keep making a run at it.
00:07:16:11 - 00:07:37:24 Brian Oblinger That's why we keep doing these webinars. And that's I think part of what the conversation needs to be internally too, is right. It's this thing that we have. It's this tool, to help us deliver across the business, not just, you know, in one silo or another, but how do we think about what those two, three, four, five, six use cases might be?
00:07:37:27 - 00:08:00:11 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I think community is one of the ones, one of the few parts of a business that is truly horizontal, where it can touch and have impact on many different parts of the business, many different stakeholder works, and help customers in an array of different ways depending on which lens you put on it and which ways you resources and the things that you build and as you said, it is uniquely positioned to do that sort of thing.
00:08:00:13 - 00:08:11:14 Joshua Zerkel Maybe you can share, at least in the experience that you've had and some of the things that you've seen a few examples of, of ways that this has played out successfully, especially Cross-functionally.
00:08:11:16 - 00:08:40:29 Brian Oblinger Yeah. I mean, there's so many, I guess, to pick a few, you know, the support use case, everybody's like, we're so tired of it. We've heard it a million times, but it still is a thing, you know. And you show up in companies and we figure out, hey, you know, what's your cost per case today? You're, you know, doing phone calls and chat and tickets and all of these things, some of which, you know, will persist forever and always, no matter what anybody tells you.
00:08:41:01 - 00:09:09:29 Brian Oblinger Shout out, I we'll talk about that later. You know, but it's like, okay, well how can community help, you know, truly make this better for the customer? You know, like, we may, you know, we'll get some value out of that will reduce our costs, that kind of thing. You know, so I'm thinking about the time when I actually worked at a company as the VP of community, and we were saving the company, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of like 15 to $25 million a year on just pure support costs.
00:09:09:29 - 00:09:30:18 Brian Oblinger And that was before we got to the marketing value, the success value, the product value. You know, on the other side of it, you see a lot of CSS related use cases right now. So a lot of folks that I work with, that's what we're really kind of driving at and focused, is how do we build a better enablement, right.
00:09:30:18 - 00:10:04:10 Brian Oblinger Onboarding enablement, experience self-service. You know, there's all these different, buzzworthy, you know, phrases that we've come up with. It all kind of mean the same thing, which is how do we take what used to be a white glove, 1 to 1 CSM interaction and actually make that, a one to many or many to many, you know, self-service onboarding and enablement, education, you see a lot of the marrying right of like academy to community now, which I think is the, the correct posture.
00:10:04:13 - 00:10:27:00 Brian Oblinger And we see that work. Right. We can we can look at cohorts and we can say, hey, the you know, the customers that are active in community, you know, it's different across different companies. But a lot of times the story is like, hey, people that are active in community are two more likely to renew with us, or they're more likely to on board faster or be, you know, have a higher NPS, for example.
00:10:27:02 - 00:10:41:09 Brian Oblinger And so, you know, we've kind of been able to prove some of those out along the way. You start with one and then you stack a bunch of those, and the next thing you know, you got a pretty compelling story about, you know, look at all the ways we're delivering value with this, this community thing.
00:10:41:11 - 00:11:03:25 Joshua Zerkel I really love that because it it really is that stacking. It's not the we do the one thing, it's we we do many things and we can create more and more value. The more surfaces we touch, the more ways we help customers be successful. But it doesn't happen automatically, right? The community? Forget what I know. Shocking. The number of folks I've spoken with that are like, well, we can just turn on the slack channel and like, it'll do its thing, right?
00:11:03:26 - 00:11:24:10 Joshua Zerkel Like good luck if that's your strategy. I think a lot of this comes from execs not really understanding what they need to know in order to resource a community program strategically, incorrectly. What do insects need to know? What do they need to think about? If they're thinking of spinning up a community program, or if they have one that isn't performing the way that they expect?
00:11:24:13 - 00:11:30:10 Joshua Zerkel What do they need to know about how to strategically staff it and resource it so that it can be successful?
00:11:30:12 - 00:11:47:12 Brian Oblinger Yeah, but before I answer that, I do just want to say one thing, which is I think we often position this as executives don't get it, you know, they don't understand. And what I would say is, I'd actually turn that back on everybody and say, that's our fault.
00:11:47:15 - 00:11:48:10 Joshua Zerkel It's our job.
00:11:48:13 - 00:12:10:21 Brian Oblinger It's not their job to just get it. You know, we have to do the education and anything worth doing is going to be hard and, you know, is going to need doing. So just to sort of, put on my, my disappointed dad hat, you know, for, for everyone out there that, that is, you know, in that mode, it's like, hey, we need to get on our horse and teach them, right.
00:12:10:21 - 00:12:38:05 Brian Oblinger And that's on us. So with that said, you know, I think coming back to these compelling stories to say, hey, you're trying to hey, executive, you're trying to reduce cost. You're trying to, you know, have quicker time to value, you know, on a product trial. You're trying whatever those, you know, core business outcomes are coming to them with a compelling story to say, here's what you're trying to solve.
00:12:38:08 - 00:13:04:24 Brian Oblinger Here's what community can do. Here are some case studies or stories, you know, from other companies who have done this and what, you know, like have some actual proof points there that they can look at and understand, and then say, hey, look, you know, we're not going to get to that level. Maybe tomorrow. I'm not going to save $20 million overnight on support costs or I'm not going to drive, you know, $50 million of revenue next week in community.
00:13:04:27 - 00:13:28:27 Brian Oblinger But here are some, you know, reasonable steps we can take. And so I think you have to do a little bit of both of setting that high level inspirational. Here's where we could be and here's what other orgs have done. And here's, you know, where we think we can go with it. But then equally balancing that with here's what we're doing today, here's what we're doing tomorrow, and here's what we're doing next week, you know, so you can start to sort of build the like, here's what the roadmap is.
00:13:29:04 - 00:13:42:25 Brian Oblinger Here's what it's going to look like. And set expectations that it's a long game. But we're also going to check back in pretty frequently with our experiments and help people understand that, I think, is what tends to resonate best, with that audience.
00:13:42:28 - 00:14:01:09 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I found that as well. I think, well, everybody, not just execs, wants to be excited about what's being created. They want to see the vision I found also with. Exactly. You need to explain to them tactically what you're doing so that they see how how you're building towards what that vision will be. And I think you are 100% right.
00:14:01:11 - 00:14:19:16 Joshua Zerkel What most people I found who enter this field of community building myths, at least in my opinion, is they're really excited about doing the work of working with people and building community. They're far less excited about all of the internal politicking that you need to do in order to really make a program work, and I think that's like 50% of the job, at least in my experiences.
00:14:19:18 - 00:14:37:08 Joshua Zerkel If you're in an organization and you're building a community and you're fostering this, what can be an amazing go to market channel, a lot of your work is you get to explain what you do to a lot of people who may not be familiar with what community is or what it can do. And I think we and I say this broadly, you have an assumption that everyone just gets it.
00:14:37:08 - 00:14:53:11 Joshua Zerkel Everyone knows and they really, really don't. And so that is the job is if you want to do this work, be ready to explain yourself. And at some points I feel like there's a string you could pull on my back and I could say the same thing over and over about, here's what's community is and here's how we're building it and why.
00:14:53:13 - 00:14:58:19 Joshua Zerkel But you need to be really good about articulating that, because if you can't, you're going to be stuck.
00:14:58:22 - 00:15:22:10 Brian Oblinger Yeah, I'll just say this when I have these professional, you know, sort of mentoring, coaching type conversations with, with practitioners, this is what I say is that you can make whatever decision you want to make, right. But there are consequences. And oftentimes we hear that word we think negative. There are good consequences as well. And so, you know, if you sort of say, hey, I don't want to participate in all that corporate stuff, I'm not interested.
00:15:22:11 - 00:15:44:11 Brian Oblinger That's fine. Like, that's that's a decision you can make. But you also have to understand what the consequences of that are, right? And I think that that's, you know, a tough place for a lot of people. It's like, oh, well, they don't want to do it, but I have to do it, you know? So it's sort of like you, you just have to make a decision about who you want to be in what you want to do, and then, you know, at the end of the day, you have to own the the outcome, whatever it is.
00:15:44:13 - 00:16:03:06 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. Speaking of outcomes, I personally think community is an amazing strategic go to market lever. Or it can be, when built properly within an organization that understands what it can do and how it can impact. How do you think community as a strategic go to market lever will look like in the year to come? And beyond?
00:16:03:08 - 00:16:32:03 Brian Oblinger I mean, we're already seeing, I would say, the last 4 or 5 years, a pretty big shift from community being a much later in the life cycle of a customer. Right. More of that support function, you know, kind of thing. Too many companies and startups putting it in the forefront, right, and using it as a way to do some of those experiments, you know, early on, understand who their ICP might be.
00:16:32:05 - 00:16:57:18 Brian Oblinger Try some events, try some, you know, online experiences get a sense of what what their prospects are customers may actually want. And then, like I said, using it for okay, like now you're a customer. We're going to use community as an onboarding mechanism, an education mechanism, a way for you to connect with other people like you is is a really, you know, important message in the go to go to market part of it.
00:16:57:21 - 00:17:15:21 Brian Oblinger So I think we're seeing that shift that it's you're finding it much earlier, in the customer journey. And, and people finding success with that. I also think, I know we're going to talk about I know everybody's tired of AI, but I'll just say this here is that my core belief is that we're all going to be AI to death, right?
00:17:15:21 - 00:17:34:23 Brian Oblinger Like we're it's just everything is going to be AI. And I think what you're starting to see is a lot of companies positioning their community very early on, even as a leading message, before you're ever a customer, really, of saying, hey, we're an authentic company and we're going to prove it to you because we have this community full of other authentic people.
00:17:35:00 - 00:17:54:26 Brian Oblinger And that that actually, has become a competitive advantage, you know, to say, like, we are humans and you are human and we will human together is like somehow a message that is like and by our software on the back end of that or whatever the, you know, product or service. So I think you're seeing that start to unfold and peek out now.
00:17:54:26 - 00:18:17:02 Brian Oblinger And I think you're only going to see that increase over time, that people are going to want to buy into things where they feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves and something, you know, that that has a human element to it. I think companies that are going all in on AI, everything, like I totally understand why I get it.
00:18:17:02 - 00:18:35:29 Brian Oblinger I live in reality here, you know, but without the, you know, sort of that counterbalancing like and also we have this community human element over here. You know, I think is a is a bit of a mistake, self-serving for me to say that given what I do for a living. But that's how I'm seeing it kind of unfold at the moment.
00:18:36:02 - 00:18:46:06 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, that's totally fair. I mean, you touched on this a bit, but how should executives and community builders be thinking about community strategy as it relates to AI specifically?
00:18:46:09 - 00:19:09:03 Brian Oblinger Yeah, yeah, we'll put some, I guess, links in the chat or whatever. I've written a lot about this lately, obviously. You know, thinking about it like everyone else to give you the highlights of all of that. Like I just said, I think the human, you know, part of it is going to be extremely critical. I also think that a lot of people are, you know, sort of confused currently about how AI works.
00:19:09:03 - 00:19:33:09 Brian Oblinger There's a lot of these, you know, kind of like hot takes on LinkedIn and whatnot, where it's like, community's dead, like it's all going to be AI bots. And it's like, well, where is the content coming from on which they are training those models that then become the chat bot, you know? And when you go to most communities, what you find is that let's talk about like in this case, like a product SAS, you know, kind of type of community.
00:19:33:11 - 00:19:58:10 Brian Oblinger A lot of what is discussed there is things that aren't covered in your existing, you know, knowledge base or help center or support tickets, you know, that you've amassed over the years. It's a lot of workarounds. It's a lot of, you know, more of the more of the why, more of the what, the when, the who, where the support stuff that you already have on which you're probably already training your models and chat bots are more of the how, right?
00:19:58:10 - 00:20:24:10 Brian Oblinger How do I do this? What switch do I flip? And so there's still a, you know, unique sort of prospect there of having people come with their knowledge and lived experience and sharing that on them, which you can take that data and make your models better. The last thing I'll say here, just from a factual kind of standpoint, to give people a sense of this, I've talked to a bunch of companies that have communities about this to say, hey, what are you seeing in the data recently?
00:20:24:12 - 00:20:44:14 Brian Oblinger And some very big, well known. You all use them every day. I'm sure companies have told me there's sort of this, double edged sword that's happening, which is that when they go to Google Analytics or some day when we get, you know, similar business tools from, like the ChatGPT and the clods, right, to be able to see that what they're seeing in Google today is two things.
00:20:44:14 - 00:21:09:28 Brian Oblinger One, that community content and results are being surfaced at a rate like 3 to 5 x more in the search summaries, the AI search summaries. Right. Than they were in the ten Blue Links model before. So all of a sudden your content is worth way more than it was before, and is now a leading way for you to get in front of people as they're searching.
00:21:10:04 - 00:21:36:01 Brian Oblinger We've just moved to the front end of your community to Google and Claude and ChatGPT. Right. At the same time, what they're saying is, hey, but less people are clicking through because they're getting the answer. They're but the people who do click through are like ten times more valuable now because you've sort of filtered out the people that weren't deeply serious or committed or whatever sort of the Google Home page level.
00:21:36:03 - 00:21:52:28 Brian Oblinger And so the people that do click through are your your target audience and the people that are really interested and you should be catering to so it's a really hard discussion to have with executives because it's like, hey, and all of the data from the community side of things, it's like our page views are down, our number of users are down.
00:21:52:28 - 00:22:08:29 Brian Oblinger You know, overall engagement might be waning, but it's as valuable or more valuable as it's ever been. And so it's like, how do you square that circle? So this is the kind of education we need to have, you know, and the kinds of conversations we need to have with folks so they understand. It's not like, oh, are engagements waiting on communities.
00:22:08:29 - 00:22:19:08 Brian Oblinger Just shut the thing down. It's like, actually, you may have less of it, but it's way more valuable than it ever was before. Which is a very nuanced conversation to have.
00:22:19:11 - 00:22:29:24 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. This is the breadth versus depth conversation that, yeah, depending on the organization that you're in and building community for, it might be extremely welcome or might require more explanation. Right?
00:22:29:27 - 00:22:30:25 Brian Oblinger That's right.
00:22:30:27 - 00:22:35:19 Joshua Zerkel So speaking of authenticity, we have some real humans here with us today in attendance.
00:22:35:19 - 00:22:37:28 Brian Oblinger Fellow humans of Earth. Well, first the humans.
00:22:37:28 - 00:23:01:11 Joshua Zerkel Well, the humans. Joseph. Warren, Cory. Piper. Kesha. Brooke. Nikki. Brian. Paulina. Michelle. Some of these folks I just saw personally last week at one of our events. So great to see you all again. If you have a question for Brian, please drop it in the chat. Piper added one. Piper asks Brian, you mentioned experiments on the way to the long game.
00:23:01:11 - 00:23:10:12 Joshua Zerkel When you're talking to executives, is there a common experiment that you find yourself returning to again and again? Piper.
00:23:10:14 - 00:23:32:12 Brian Oblinger Yeah. So so I think, again, it depends on who you're experimenting with, you know, is it product? Is it marketing? Is it support? Is it success? Is it you know, who are partners? The list goes on. I think once you know that answer. So just to give you some of those, you know, so if marketing comes and says, you know, hey we're having a conversation, they might say, hey, we're trying to build more top of funnel.
00:23:32:12 - 00:23:53:01 Brian Oblinger We're trying to convert more people. We're trying to get more awareness. You know, you might say, in that case, okay, well, let's do an experiment to see if we build some content that is in that direct. Let's say it's like thought leadership content or industry level, you know, kind of content or let's run a a small event like we're doing here, right?
00:23:53:01 - 00:24:12:13 Brian Oblinger Like that's kind of the use case for what you guys are doing here is a meta, you know, thing, right. Can we do something somewhat quickly and somewhat cost effectively? You know, and just see who attends and how did it go? And did we get any, you know, nibbles off of that? And does that build any pipeline?
00:24:12:15 - 00:24:41:03 Brian Oblinger You know, for product, you might say maybe we just do like a really small online cab, you know, we spin up a group and we invite ten of our most passionate people, and we prompt them with one thing that we're trying to figure out on our, you know, how do we prioritize this, these roadmap items or how do we, you know, those are the kinds of things where an executive in each one of those groups can say, okay, that's actually a relatively low lift from my peers or even no list, right?
00:24:41:03 - 00:24:58:16 Brian Oblinger If it's like, you know, Josh is out here doing all the work and I'm just sort of, you know, send me the report afterward and tell me how it went, you know, and like, what did I get out of it? So those are the kinds of things where you just try to do something somewhat quickly and small, but still impactful and build that rapport over time.
00:24:58:16 - 00:25:13:21 Brian Oblinger And then once you've had a success or to you can parlay that either with that executive or with other ones, you could go to support and say, hey, look, we did this thing with Josh, you know, a couple weeks ago. And like, we kind of got some success. We think, you know, we're going to do some more. We'll come back to you.
00:25:13:24 - 00:25:36:13 Brian Oblinger But why don't we try something like that, you know, and you just kind of keep building those up until, you know, you have pretty good buy in. And so it's all really about proving it right. If we just show up and say, like, I need ten of your people's time for 80 hours a week and you work for me now, that usually doesn't go over well, as opposed to saying, hey, we're going to put in some work, we're going to do some things, we'll come back to you with the results.
00:25:36:16 - 00:25:45:15 Brian Oblinger And guess what? If it fails, that's on me. If it succeeds, like you get to own the success of that thing. Wonderful message to everyone out there.
00:25:45:18 - 00:25:55:23 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I think that's always appreciated. Nikki asks, how do you balance keeping up your momentum with executives without becoming really annoying?
00:25:55:25 - 00:26:16:04 Brian Oblinger Yeah. Read the room in a in a in a word. You know, like, I think some executives want a lot of updates. I want to know what's going on, I want detail, I want to know if I'm getting, you know, the bang for my buck. I think other ones are. Just give me the CliffsNotes version of this thing, you know, just go do it and tell me what's happening.
00:26:16:04 - 00:26:36:08 Brian Oblinger So I guess what I would say is there's no one size fits all, you know, approach on that, but it certainly helps regardless if you're communicating a lot or a little or somewhere in the middle, it certainly helps if in each one of those communications you're bringing value. I think that's the most important thing, you know, and it sounds probably trite and whatever.
00:26:36:08 - 00:26:55:16 Brian Oblinger But, I just try to make sure that whenever we do communicate, there's something that matters to them and is important, and they feel like they're getting value from it as opposed to, you know, maybe feeling like their their times being wasted or you're just touching base 14 times a week or whatever the case is. Right? You can imagine the value.
00:26:55:16 - 00:27:16:16 Brian Oblinger You know, I've been an executive at companies, and I always remember the volume, you know, of things coming at you all day, every day. And you're trying to parse what's important, what's not, what needs my attention, what isn't. And the people that brought me value. More often than not, those were always the first emails or slacks I clicked on, you know, because it's like, all right, this is going to waste my time.
00:27:16:16 - 00:27:25:25 Brian Oblinger This is interesting. I'm getting something out of this. They're helping me be successful. So, you know, I guess basic advice, but probably the right one.
00:27:25:27 - 00:27:39:01 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, kind of the inverse. What's the biggest mistake that execs and community builders make when it comes to bringing community into an organization? If you had to choose one for each?
00:27:39:04 - 00:28:00:23 Brian Oblinger I think on the executive side, it's probably not setting the right expectations or managing expectations. There's a tendency to say like, this is the new hot thing we're doing, and it's going to be awesome, and we're going to get ROI in like six weeks. And, you know, we're going to, and then it kind of fizzles and maybe it doesn't feel quite right, you know?
00:28:00:23 - 00:28:32:03 Brian Oblinger So I think the the man at the setting and managing of expectations, knowing that community is a little bit of a longer game perhaps, than some other things you might do. Which executives, you know, always want to know how what's the fastest route to victory? Which makes sense, but I think managing that's important. Probably the same on the practitioner side, but I think we've already covered, like, the main one is just are you participating in the business or are you, you know, connecting what you're doing to the business outcomes?
00:28:32:06 - 00:28:35:02 Brian Oblinger And if you're not, then you're probably in trouble.
00:28:35:04 - 00:28:46:12 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I agree completely. Last question goes to Joseph Bryan. Why do you feel community is not yet further or fully integrated into all functions of an organization?
00:28:46:14 - 00:29:01:11 Brian Oblinger Well, we'll have to do a whole nother webinar on that one some time. But I think the it's a good question. I think the short answer is, there's so many moving parts in an organization. Right. So I think we've made progress. I think a lot of people have worked at companies now that have community and have success.
00:29:01:11 - 00:29:22:27 Brian Oblinger And so it's it's less of a hard sell than it used to be. As your as you're doing the cross-functional work, you know, people will point to like, oh yeah, like I saw that at Salesforce. I've said, you know, like there's some there's some proof points that people have seen. So it's less of a hard sell. I think the reality is that every company talks about, you know, we're customer centric, we're customer focused.
00:29:22:27 - 00:29:56:08 Brian Oblinger And when you get into the nitty gritty details of that, I would say that, you know, it's probably not as true as, as people would hope that it is. So, I think we just need to keep working at it. We need to keep proving the value. Every company has their own, you know, sort of like politics and leadership issues and other things that are happening that might contribute to how come we haven't, you know, fully squared the circle over there on, you know, in success, but we're more successful on the support side or the product side or whatever.
00:29:56:10 - 00:30:13:01 Brian Oblinger So there's probably just general company reasons. You know, for that. And our goal should just be to knock down as many of the use cases as we can. And will it be 100% on every company? I would say highly unlikely. Just due to the nature of leadership and other things.
00:30:13:03 - 00:30:18:12 Joshua Zerkel Well, Brian, thank you for that. Brian, where would you like people to find you online?
00:30:18:14 - 00:30:35:18 Brian Oblinger You know, I'm on LinkedIn. Brian, on Blogger.com, there's a bunch of free resources on there. You mentioned the podcast. There's a bunch of Free Academy stuff. You can download all my slot. I get just give everything away for free, guys. So you can all just go get it, make yourself smarter, throw your name at the top of it.
00:30:35:21 - 00:30:38:12 Brian Oblinger And hopefully it helps people move this thing forward.
00:30:38:14 - 00:30:58:12 Joshua Zerkel Brian, thank you so much, Leanne. Thank you behind the scenes for co-hosting along with me. Please continue the conversation and ask your questions with Brian and AMA. The link is up at the top of the screen, and you can also find [email protected]. Thank you everyone for attending and we will see you in the Gradual Community. Bye for now.
+ Read More
Like
Comments (0)
Popular
Watch More
Event Replay: Executive Insights with Gradual: Essential Community Strategy for Focused Impact
Posted Nov 12, 2025 | Views 51
# Format: Event Recaps
# Community
# GTM Strategy
Event Replay: Executive Insights with Gradual: Making Community Matter Internally
Posted Feb 05, 2026 | Views 35
# Format: Event Recaps
# Community
# GTM Strategy
Executive Insights with Gradual: Unlocking the Revenue Engine Hiding in Your Community
Posted Oct 30, 2025 | Views 28
# Format: Event Recaps
# GTM Strategy