How to Build Evangelists for Your Brand with Leslie Greenwood

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Well, thank you, Katie. I feel very privileged to be here and I'm amping up my energy just to match you here today.

Hey, that, that'll be fun. But just know I'm a 1 upper. So if you come up and I'm going to go up, it's just going to be the net. We're going to be Billy Mays by the end of this.

I'm competitive, Katie, what are we going to do there?

Challenge me. Anyway. Okay, back to this. Back to this. So you, you know, recently have come out to really focus on this idea of evangelism, right? How to build evangelists and this idea of evangelist led kind of growth. So start just with a basic definition, right? When you say evangelism, when you say evangelists, what does that mean?

Yeah, evangelists in my mind are completely different than ambassadors. And you could call them advocates, but in my mind, like if you think of ambassadors, they are probably paid or compensated in some way. Evangelist is completely grassroots. And while there are many chief evangelists out there that I've had the pleasure of talking to, Jen Allen, Ethan Butte, among others, I'm talking bottoms up. So that's top down. Most people can't afford a cheap evangelist on their payroll. And so I'm talking bottoms up. I'm talking about how do you take care of your customers in a way or build a community in a way, provide an experience, connect with your customers in a way that they will want to go out and naturally speak about your product without you telling them to do it.

Right. And so what, you know, we'll start with kind of what you see companies doing wrong. And then we'll get into like, what to do, right? Because most companies say, like, you know, we take care of our customers, we care about our customers, but it doesn't create evangelists, right? It doesn't create that. So, like, where, where are companies missing when it comes to this idea? Because you say it. And I bet everyone listening goes, yeah, that'd be great. I would love to have my customers evangelize, but no one's close to this yet. So where are people going wrong with this?

I think when they think about either building community or starting with their. If they're a newer founder and they've got their first set of earlier adopters. They don't think about how it feels to be a customer of theirs or how it feels to be a community member of theirs. That is an intangible that you can multiply many times over. And. And they don't think about. I think they think about the why and they think about the value they're giving, but they don't think about the value beyond the product. I mean, people want to connect with a product. It's not like you said, it's not the way it used to be. I don't just buy your product and I'm cool with it. I'm not going to talk about it. If I just buy your product and I use it, I'm cool with it. If I buy your product and I feel a sense of connection, you've gone above and beyond and given me something extra that wants me to attach feelings to you, then I'm going to shout you from the rooftops and I'm going to do it without you asking. And that's a lot of what. You know, when I was at Pavilion, the kind of machine we built was how to build this flywheel of evangelist who went out and talked about us for us.

And it's interesting, you said something there that I didn't anticipate and I want to see if it was a slip or you actually mean it. He said, people want to connect with the product. Where I think people want to connect with people, right? So I think about, like, Pavilion, right? I can't tell you how many people I've said, are you in Pavilion, right? They're like, I'm looking for a job. Are you in Pavilion? Right? Like, oh, are you? Like, but, you know, wasn't paid to do it, right? But it was because it was the people, right? It was like the people like you, the people like Sam, the people like lg, where it's just like that relationship's there. So, like, keep going down that path, right? As a case, because people are buying the product, how do you make them connect deeper with the product? Or is it. How do you connect them to people? I want. I want you to go a little bit deeper.

It's both. It's both. So it connected the product through the. Through the company. What I mean, the product needs to solve a deeper problem. Being connected to the product means that you have some. Like, there is a value of the company. So, like, when I'm talking to new people that want to build a community, the first thing is like, why what are your mission, vision and values? How does that go down to the community? And, and that could be a product community or a people community. So it is, I think when I said product, it was a little bit vague, but that it is the people, because it's the people that are going to make the connection. The product has no soul, the company has no soul. It's the people inside both of those that are going to make the, make the difference.

Okay. No, I love that. And I think even more and more, especially in more of a remote world, people are hungrier for this connection. There's like something missing for a lot of us right now. So now you defined evangelism, which I like. We're going to come into the how of that. But you've also said the word community a few times. Can you also define that? Because there's a lot of companies out there like, yeah, like, oh, let's build a community and they put up a Facebook page or they've got a LinkedIn group and that's it. Or it's another Slack channel. So, like, when you talk about building a community, what do you mean?

Yeah, I mean a community where people are helping each other. People are helping each other. And whether that, I mean, the end goal is you want the members of the community, whether a product community or a networking community, you want the members to help each other. That's gonna take about six plus months for you to actually see the natural traction on that. In the meantime, it is the employees and the people that are dedicated to the community that are going to make that happen. So in a community, that's the eventual long term goal that you want to have. But. And it's just about giving value over and over and over again. And I will tell you, the conversations I've had, I think probably over 50% of the conversations I have, and they're like, I want to build a community. And I ask why? And it's crickets. And that is, I mean, that's. You're dead before you started. It's not a community if you don't have people helping each other. It's. It's not a community. That means that definition of community is people helping each other.

Okay, Yes. I love that. Right? They see a blog post, they write a book like, oh, need to build a community. They go, okay. And they never thought about why they needed to do it or what that end goal is. So. Okay, so let's come back to evangelism first, because I think that's something a lot of people like. It's starting to pop up more and more, right? You're seeing like these chief evangelist roles, right? But again, that's an evangelist. That's a chief evangelist, right? That's going and getting, you know, some big name, right? Pay them to go through it. Where what you're talking about is that groundswell movement of like, how do you create evangelists out of your, you know, customer base? So, you know, do you have a framework or like a step by step kind of process of like, okay, we're trying to create evangelists. Walk me through kind of that process, right? I come to you, I say, hey, Leslie, I want to build some evangelists for my company, for my product. What are the steps you start to take me through?

Yeah, the first place is we're going to go. You have evangelists, number one. You already have them. You just may not know where they are. They're not always your loudest people. They're not the ones raising their hand. They can be. They can be. But sometimes the people doing that, it's out of a different motivation. So it's not where you think they are. You're gonna. First we're gonna identify them. Where are they hiding in your ecosystem? One, the first and easiest one is your founder. If you've treated your employees right, they're gonna be your employees. If. And then it's your. It's your lurkers. It may be your lurkers. It's the people that. I mean, you know, kd, we're both in a couple communities. I know you're not in a lot. I'm in more right now just for research. There are some. I never open, but if I come to your community at least once or twice a month, my time is limited. I'm. I'm somebody you should be talking to. And most people don't pay attention to those lurkers. The other side of that is looking at, like, if you have a product and you have Pendo Data or something like that, and you have a customer you're unsure about, they're not using their seats up. Who's your super user? It may not be your champion and it may not be your economic buyer, then how do you engage that super user to evangelize within the company to bring more users in, which makes you stickier. So the first step is identify. The second step is engage. So how do we engage those people? And part of that is knowing your Personas. You know, you may have a community, but you may have multiple Personas. Maybe you have engineers, and then maybe you have sales and marketing people, which are totally different people, let me tell you. Just a little, just a little, Katie. And so, you know, you got to figure out how to engage them and that's going to depend on their Persona. The next thing is empower them. Like, once you've engaged them and you've given them a little bit of love and like started to make that feeling, that connection, then it's, how do you empower them? Give them resources, enable them to, to have what they need to go out and talk, talk about you. And then the last one is amplify them. Everybody loves something special, whether it's a shout out, Hey, I really appreciate so and so has been super active answering all these questions in the community. I love it. I just want to know, I let. Let you know. I appreciate you. Is it a, Is it a LinkedIn post? Is it inviting them to a webinar or a podcast or something like that? And you know, we all have our internal motivations and there's going to be something besides. It's not the money, it's not a referral fee that makes people evangelists. And so that's where you've got to find their motivators and, and lift them up so that they're continually getting value. I think I just gave away all my secrets, Katie.

Oh, please. First of all, information is easy. Execution is not right. People pay you for the execution, they don't pay you for the information. So don't worry, you'll be fine there. Because the next part that I want to ask, right, and it's an ugly question, but you'll get what I mean when I say ugly, which is like, how do you do this at scale though, right? So like, okay, like I am a company, I've got 10,000 customers. Like, how do I build evangelists? Like, how do I engage at scale? How do I amplify at scale? How do I empower at scale?

Well, I'd say the first thing. If you have a community, it's going to be much easier for you because you can do that in mass. You know, there are tools that you can. I didn't know there were these tools. I can send a private DM to 300 people with a tag on it within Slack and tell them something special. I had no idea you could do that. There's technology for that. And so I can be very prescriptive. So that's one way to scale. Two is going back to your, let's see, what do you call it? Like tiering. So who are Your most important customers or who is your most verbal, active, you know, activists right now. So it's, it's really thinking, we don't have to do that to everyone. There are strategic ones. Because my, my experience and my opinion is I make one evangelist, you're going to make 10 more. Those 10 are going to make 10 more. And then we're going to, we're going to go from there. So if you do that right from the beginning, you're creating a flywheel of evangelists. And what happens is, is that it's actually, there's studies and statistics that if you are referred in. So I refer you somewhere, Katie, you, you join or buy, you're actually four times more likely to refer others. So just by coming in as a referral, you're more likely to refer. And so that's where we start looking at the compounding effect of doing that. Now, there will always be maintenance. You know, you will always be have. Someone will still have to be in there giving love to the community, giving love to your customers ongoing. That could be your CSMs. They could do it. Just take maybe a slightly more personal approach. Another thing is, I mean, there's a time when scalability doesn't matter. I mean, I'm talking to a lot of earlier stage founders. I don't, you know, I don't always need to worry about scalability. Let's do this right and then let's figure it out on the other side.

Yeah, that's why, like, I didn't want to ask the question, but I wanted to ask the question because, like, I hate scalability. I hate that word. I hate how people focus on it. Because people focus on scale, not success. They'd rather scale a bad community than have a successful smaller community. And so maybe I actually had this backwards. So it's kind of coming up in your answers. So it sounds like it should be community first, then evangelists, not evangelists first and then community. It's kind of been layered in your answers a little bit through it. So is that the right way to approach, to start with a conversation community and then focus on evangelism? Or is it the like, can you start with evangelists and go to a community?

I think you can go both ways. So one of the founders I'm talking about talking with, he has 10 early customers. He also has 200 people on the waiting list to get the product. Guess what we have, we have evangelists. We have evangelists waiting in action. So we're not going to build a community first. We're Going to amplify and identify and get his evangelists going. Then we will build a community around it. And then we can talk about the products, we can talk about the new releases and get everybody fired up. The other thing, and this one is, does have to do with the community, but it's. You wouldn't have to have a community is they do have an advisor program. Well, it's small. There are a hundred people on the wait list to be part of the advocate or ambassador program. Guess what? Let's go activate those people. Let's tell them they're special, let's get them going, and then let's use them as references to close deals for the rest of the year because they're excited and they want to do it. We're just not tapping into their power. So there's, I think there's multiple ways to do it. I don't think it has to be through a community. A community may come from it. If you do it right, people are going to want to be part of your community. But you don't have to start with that.

Got it. Okay, so then let's make that shift then to community. Okay, Right. Of like. Because that's another word, right? Oh, build a community. It's like, what does that mean? Right. And you, I love the way you define right as community is helping each other. I made a mistake. I built a community against my even best wishes. Right. I didn't want to do it, but I got advice from some people like, oh, you gotta build a community. So I built a community.

Right.

I built a Slack channel. And it was the absolute bane of my existence because it was not a community. It was open access to kd. It wasn't a community. Right. And so it was not the community helping each other. It was just me talking to people and people hitting me up. Right? Yep. So talk about how to actually build a community. Right. Where the community is helping each other. You mentioned in one of your earlier answers are like, customers helping customers. Right? Back to kind of how I talked about it in the intro that how. Right. A salesperson is never gonna be able to talk about the how as well as a customer because the customer actually uses it. They actually do that. So let's now go through. Okay, well, how do you build a community? That one is engaging, right? Cause like, you and I talked about this on the road. I'm like, I literally go into pavilion and that's it. Like, I don't go into any other ones. And even that one, I probably wouldn't even go into that much if it weren't for the roadshow and the courses I'm teaching and what else? So let's talk about how to do this in a way that engages, that gets people involved and like starts to become self sustaining.

Yep. Well, it's never going to be fully self sustaining. I think that's a myth to begin with. I had the pleasure of talking to Erica Kuhl, who, you know, launched the Trailblazer community at Salesforce. And I asked her when I was first looking at this, like, what's the one thing, like, if you looked at through all your community launches and you saw a thread through any of them, she's like, there's probably a lot of things, but one thing is a full time community manager. It'll never, you'll never do enough that it's just going to like go on its own. So I guess that's one first myth that this is an investment and it's a long term investment. So, you know, some of the things, like I talked earlier, it's like, what are the values of the company, values of the community? You know, what will be your competitive advantage over other communities? So how are you going to differentiate yourself then? What challenges do your community members have that you're going to be able to solve? So you have to continually give value. You don't give value once, you have to continually to give value over time. I love this, I think I heard it from somebody else on LinkedIn. But there's a difference between giving value and received value. So I can give you all the value, but if you're not receiving it, you're not attaching it to the community, it doesn't matter. So it's like, you know, what is the received value and how are we going to make sure they receive the value? And then, you know, we got to start with 10 to 20 people. If we're starting from scratch. I want you to list 10 to 20 ideal community members and then tell me what about them makes them ideal. I want you to talk to all of them and maybe talk to more like, I have another one. They're going to probably try to talk to at least 50 or 60, but then of those 50 or 60, if I were going to take, take those 50 and like, if I could just clone all of them, who are the 10 to 20 people that I want in my community? I mean, I can tell you from pavilion, I could name 10 to 20 people right now that if I could clone every single one of them, I'd make the best community Ever. And maybe I wouldn't have to do a lot of work because I, they, I know they already understand. They understand the values, they understand what they're getting and what they're giving. And then the other thing to think about is the business outcomes. So people say, I want to do a community, but they don't think about what, what are the business outcomes? If you're not, if you're a product community, you know, is it for support, for success, for product, for content? So there's many different types of community you want to build, or is it just you want to build revenue through membership fees? So you really have to. There's got to be a business outcome, otherwise your community won't last because your company will not continue to support it.

Right, okay, so I like that and I love that idea of starting, like, with the ideal. Like, and how would you clone them? What, what should you look for in, like, those founding community members? Like, what, what is a prime? I guess call it Persona, not in terms of title, but like, what would I look for? Like, okay, these are the types of people I would want to build my community around.

Right? I'd say if you're thinking about like a networking community, I want, I do want a certain amount of engagement. I want someone who understands the value of the community. I want to, I want them to understand what this. The, like we said the true definition of community is that you're there to help others and others to help you. It helps if they have a magnanimous personality. Of course, it helps if they have like a great following or something like that. So, I mean, if I could wrap everything in there, I'm like, I want. Well, I want KD who actually gets in there and talks and answers questions and talks to people, and people are helping you in return. But that's a unicorn, you know, So I want, I want some parts of that to help build the first community members.

Got it? Okay, very cool. And so then now that you get it going, how do you get it growing? Right? So, because again, you see a lot of these communities, like they do their, their launch, right? And it's like, oh, new community. Everyone's like, woo, yay, congrats, new community. And they get in there and it is like the first 30, 40, 50, and then just nothing. It stops growing. Right back to that earlier point, we didn't create evangelists. Like, how do you then. How do you grow a community? And then I want to talk. And this might actually, I'm gonna ask both questions because I think you'll pick which one matters most. How do you grow the community or how do you get the engagement going in the community to that help grow it? Because I could see both sides contributing. So I'll throw two questions at you, which is breaking all the podcast rules.

There you go.

And see, see which way you take it.

I'll be talking about candy corn and dog treats in a minute. If I get lost. I would say it's again, you've got your 10 to 20. So you've kind of got a good group of people. You have hopefully taking care of them in a way that they would never expect from a community. Um, so for example, at Pavilion there was a time where we called every single member that joined. Didn't matter where in the world they were, didn't matter how much they paid you. We had a one on one call with anyone who would, who would take the time to, to have it, just to welcome them, tell them I see that you're a CRO. There's a couple channels I would like. You know, is there anything I can do for you? Who, who would you like to meet? So it's like one on one. And honestly, in a normal company I'm never going to talk to a person with a couple thousand dollars acv. I might put you on a tech touch, but that was unexpected because that's, you know, at that level investment you're not expecting, you know, enterprise level service. So I make sure that you've taken really good care of them and then I would start activating them, get them out there in the wild. I would. You definitely have to have a content calendar. You know, you should have at least 30 days of content before you've started. If you've done your research, you already know what they want to talk about, what their pains are, what they think the value is of the community. You just take that and you, you put a content calendar out and then you have to be. There's a lot of hand to hand combat at the beginning too. It's like, oh, you have a question on this. Oh, so and so is an expert. Can I connect you? So there's a lot of that going on at the beginning and I think if you do a lot of those things right, you're going to see some natural traction. And I would also say start tracking your referrals from the beginning so that you don't have to back in to tracking your referrals later. I don't know if I answered your question, but I hope I got close. Yes.

No. 100% because that's where, you know, a lot of them, they struggle with one or the other of both, which is one. They don't know how to grow it. Right. But it's not growing because there's not engagement. So they don't know how to get the engagement needed to grow it. And so it can kind of become this, this self, you know, containing like issue there.

Well, it's valuable and so then how much value?

So then how do you do that though? Right? So you talked about a community manager. How do you manage a community, right? Whether it's you, whether it's a. Like what does that mean? Because you see these roles popping up all the time too. Like I'm a community manager. You go, okay, what does that mean?

Community managers right now are almost like Kleenex. You call it a Kleenex, but there's 75 varieties of tissue. That's what I think it is. Because I looked at community manager jobs, I either report to marketing, to the chief customer officer, maybe hopefully to the CEO and my job is to do LinkedIn posts and social media posts and do events. You know, it has nothing to do actually with the day to day, hand to hand part of the community. I think you have to have someone that it can't necessarily be the personality of your community, the Persona of your community. You got to have someone that's engaging, you got to have someone that knows customer service. So when someone asks you a question, you give them that and like, hey, what about this too? Since you're asking this question. So there's a lot of emotional intelligence that has to come into that. So I think, I think it depends but for me at the beginning you at least need someone part time to manage the day to day. Unless the founder or the, you know, community launcher is going to be in there every day making sure that things are facilitated and going on a, on a regular basis.

Okay. No, I like that because that was how I felt too, is, you know, I do believe I want to build a community again, but the right way.

Yeah, right.

Not build a community around me. That was my first mistake. It was around me. Dumb. I want to build a community, you know, for Frontline and second line sales leaders. Right. And like really focusing there. But then how to like kind of build that up over time. Now let's flip real quick back as before. We start to wrap up around now again back to evangelists. So we talked about kind of how to do it right and you know, find them right. Engage, empower and amplify. Let's go a little bit deeper then on that. Empower and amplify, right? So, okay, so I've got some people, right? Like my 100 true fans, whatever you want to call them from. From cabinet. I've got my few. How then do you empower them, become evangelists? Because a lot of what you see out there is either nothing, right? It's like, oh, I've got these great people. We don't do anything to empower them. Or it's like, you know, $500Amazon gift card, if you send us a referral, right? And people are like, what? Like, it almost actually pushes people away from doing it. So then how do actually guess another E word? And maybe there's a reason why it's not in there is like, how do you encourage evangelism? Or like, how. How do you get that flywheel going as well?

I'd say the first thing is, like, you got to talk to them. You got to talk to them and figure out what. What motivates them. Because I think this does come from some intrinsic motivation. It's not going to be extrinsic motivation. So it actually kind of ties into the amplification. So do they, you know, do. Would they be. Would they want to be on a webinar? Would they want to be on a podcast? Would they want to be interviewed for a blog post? Something like that. So thinking about, you know, what value, it actually goes back to what value you're going to give them, and then do they assign value to it? So then do they assign, you know, that they have reach, received the value, and then give them those opportunities, you know, provide the opportunities. You know, many people aren't going to raise their hand and step up and say, oh, hey, can I be on a webinar? Can I be on a podcast? You know, well, maybe they do for you, Katie, but for most of us, they don't. They don't do that, right?

So game build a brand. Eventually it pays off, right? And that's funny enough. Like, it's a quick sidebar. But everyone always loves to ask me how I built the brand. Very rarely do I ever get asked, why. Why did I do this? Right? You know me actually better than a lot of people do. You got to see me on the road. I am not the center of attention. I do not like working the room. I do not like all eyes on me. I get up on stage, do my thing, and I find a corner while I'm shaking hands on the way out, right? But everyone loves to ask, well, this is not me, right? I have a podcast, I have a LinkedIn following. I'm writing a book. Like, all that's not who I am. But the reason why I did it was for what you just mentioned, which is I wanted access to people. I built the brand because I wanted access to people. I wanted to be able to reach out to someone and then respond, Right? And it was for people smarter than me, right? I wanted to be able to reach out to the Dave Brock's of the world and go, hey, I'm having trouble with this. What would your advice be? And being able to open those doors, to go through it. Whereas now, when everyone's trying to build these brands and full circle back to talking about your communities, it's like, it's always about monetization.

First.

It's like, oh, we got to build a community so we can make money from it. We got to build a brand so we can sell courses to make money from it. Where it's like, no. Like, if you have a different and better version, it actually tends to work out in the long run more. And so I guess the last point, then I want you to go just a little bit deeper on, then amplify, right? So you, like, engage with the amplified. That's like the webinars, right? Or like inviting them just to get their name out there. Is that kind of what you mean?

It could be that.

It could be.

I mean, it could be as simple as sending them a personal note, you know, giving them the opportunity, like you said, giving them the opportunity to speak. But, like, maybe they just want to be tagged in some comments. You know, if you're a super. If you're a user evangelist for, let's say, email, like Jesse, you let. He loves when you get tags. He gets tagged in a. In a thing that's beneficial, that's motivating to him. I don't have to put him on a stage to get. To get, you know, his kind of. The kind of amplification that's valuable to him. I did want to. Can I. Can I be that podcast host and send something back to you?

Say, what now?

I want to send something back to you. I have a question.

Oh, of course. I was like, wait, send something to me. Like, yeah, that's fine.

No, no, no. So like, you talked about. You built your first community, you know, for and about you, but. And you just talked about your why. People don't ask you your why. And it's like, that's. You take your why and then you turn it into Your community. And that's where you're gonna see. You're gonna see the value of that 100.

I. I look back at that 100%, and it was like, why did I do it? Because people told me I should. I was like, oh, fine, that's a horrible way to start a community. Yeah, right?

It doesn't live your mission, vision and values.

No, it was not aligned. Not at all. Not at all. And, like, now I have a clearer idea of why I would start a community and what I would want that to be. And it's more focused on them and not on me. And I already know that will be a better community.

Right?

And it's. These are the things that people don't think about, right? And you just go in and just do it blind, and then it doesn't work. One thing, though, and anyone that's worked with me knows this is, I'm okay trying something twice.

Sure.

A lot of times leaders and reps, they'll try something once, it doesn't work and they scrap it forever versus looking at it and going, why didn't it work? Maybe if I address those this time, things would go better and I can actually make that progress. So I'm going to do it again, but I'm going to do it with somebody's help, AKA maybe the person that I have on this call. Because I've also learned there are people better at everything, right? Where it's like, I know what I'm good at. Cool. There's things that I'm not good at. Well, work with people, rely on people, learn from people that are better at those things. And that again, now you're starting to talk about a community which also, like in SaaS, has, you know, really gone the wrong direction as a community, was very, you know, symbiotic. You had the baker, you have the blacksmith, had the farmer, you had the banker, you had, like, you know, you had the roles and it all supported each other. Where now, like in SaaS, you have SDRs and specialized, and you have the SDRS just here, and you get your AES, you got CS over here and then marketing over here and engineering over here, and it's so siloed that it's not a community even within companies, which actually is hilarious. And we don't have time to go deep enough on this. But most companies aren't actually a good community, which is pretty hilarious when you.

Think about it, which is why not everyone can turn their employees into evangelists, right?

And like, you see it, like, you see it when it happens, when a company has evangelist employees. Right. Well, like they name themselves, right? Like. Oh, like they've got a name for themselves. Like we call each other poppers. Right. Like a patient pops. Like we are poppers. That's what we call. Right. Like in that community can be built within a company. And so. Oh, man, this is. This is phenomenal. We're probably gonna have to do a part two on this because we can only go for so long, which I've learned my lesson on as well. It's like, we can only go for so long, but I can bring people back. So you know what's coming though, right? Yep. Because the name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better. I have this weird idea, right. It fits actually quite well in this idea of like community. Right, Right. But like, if we were more fulfilled, had more energy, took better care of ourselves, that the sales would be better because of that, that the communities would be better because of that. What would your Live better advice be for people listening?

I'm going to put just an asterisk at the beginning that I am still working on this. And it is stop apologizing and be your authentic self. I've spent way too many years apologizing for being outspoken, being bossy, being like too much of a driver. And that's me. And that's just how I'm going to live. And I mean, there are times people, I don't know if it's their ego. And granted, I do mess up. I will say some stupid crap and. But I'm really open for someone just to say, oh, Leslie, that was rude. I'm like, oh, really? I didn't know that. So. Or being over emotional, like, no, I'm pretty smart. I know my feelings. I mean, sometimes they do. They go. Go a little bit. But you know, I'm going to let go of a lot of that self doubt and just be who I am and whether people are like it or not. I guess maybe that's why this consulting gig will work for me, because you can choose not to work for me and I can actually choose not to work for you. And I'm just gonna be living out loud, Katie, getting sassy.

I love it. And it's a lesson that I also learned, say about four years ago, I think is when I really started stepping into like my authentic self. And it's amazing what that does. Just amazing in terms of how you live, the weight that you carry or don't carry because of it. When you stop trying to please everybody and go, I'm gonna please the people that are aligned with me, and that's it. And if they hate me, then they hate me. That's okay. They were gonna hate me anyway, so I don't need to worry about them. So I love that, especially the stop apologizing part, because that is one too. People apologize for being themselves. Think about how backwards that is. Like, oh, I'm sorry. You know, I'm just this way. It's like, no, you just are that way. Apologize for it. Okay. We're okay here. So I love that. So, okay. So, Leslie, where can people learn more about you? Where are you putting out content? Where are you evangelizing this idea of evangelism? Right across, like, the. That the world. Where can they find more? And that was a quick call, y'.

All.

I'm about to be a student of Leslie. I signed up. She's got something coming on. Of course I signed up. The moment I signed up, he was.

He was the first one.

Let's go. First student, let's do this right. But where are you putting out content? Where can people find you?

Sure, you can find me on LinkedIn, Leslie Dash Greenwood. That's it. You can find me at my website, which is the chief evangelist dot com. And we'll put in the show notes. I assume the link to my course teaching that on Maven, it's cohort based and very small and very interactional. So it's not. I'm not gonna be lecturing at you.

Love it. Love it. Well, I am so excited one to be in there because I want to learn, right? Like, I can only learn so much in 30 minutes. So I want the full suite on how to do this because I do truly believe the companies that do this will win. And I don't think there's any way to argue that. If you have company A, that has no evangelists and no community, you have company B that has a community and evangelist, both internally and externally. That's no contest.

100%.

You will grow bigger, you'll grow faster. And something you even talk about, you know, talking about your course more efficiently. Referrals close at the highest rate. They're the cheapest cost of acquisition, and yet nobody tends to focus there. And so this, this is the future. Y' all get in on it now. Dive in. Learn with me. Leslie, thank you so much for your time energy engagement today. This was amazing.

Thank you, Katie. It's been a pleasure talking to you as usual.

Hell, yes. We'll do this again soon. You know it. All right, we'll chat.

All right, Bye.