community building in 2026 for the worlds largest staffing company | building the brand ep. 25

Alrighty, one more trip, one more. I, I promise this is the last trip.

Heading to Atlanta. Torque community team all hands.

Me, Jason, and Brianna are going to get in the room. I'm going to It's gonna be great. It's gonna be a heck of a time. Driving down, listen, there's always a little bit of like, I did the math, 30 minutes to the airport, an hour before you board, that's an hour and a half, then 30 minutes to board, that's 2 hours. By that time I could be more than halfway to Atlanta. Not to mention, you got the shutdown going on with airlines. So driving down, gonna get in Atlanta at 8 o'clock at night. 8 o'clock tonight. We're gonna grab some dinner real fast, do a little work, um, and get ready for a busy, busy next few days in Atlanta.

Alrighty, we are here.

Origin Hotel. Not much of a view. Not much of a view. That's okay, I'm tired.

I'm gonna get some work in tonight.

It's 9 o'clock, 8 Central, so I still got about 2 hours in me. And we're gonna prep for tomorrow morning.

It's gonna be a good one. Pumped.

Anyways, day 0, we're here.

Let's have a good next 72 hours in Atlanta.

Good morning.

Ready for a full day out of the hotel. Listen, this is not an ideal way to start the morning. I have no hot water. And the shower pressure feels like someone's peeing on me. But the good news is, is I'm gonna start my morning by hanging out with my boy Andy Hutzel from Ronstadt and enjoying some Onyx Coffee and some good cold brew. So let's, let's go make this morning a better morning. All right, well, slight pivot. Andy is sick. So Andy, sorry you're sick, brother. Sorry you're sick.

Gonna miss you.

I'm still out here because this place has got banging cold brew and a legit breakfast. I do have a call with our Austria office, so that's pretty cool. And so then I'm just going to meet up with Brianna early. But before that, time to get some breakfast. All right, so we always do 2 cold brews, one for here, one to go.

This place is great.

Look at this. Look at this.

Look at the vibe.

Alrighty, we just finished up breakfast. Um, uh, shout out Kelly Vaughn for coming to join me. Um, we had a great conversation with her. I'm just catching up with her. I had a great call with our Austria office. Um, you know, again, what we're building at Torque and the content in which we give out and the value that we provide is tremendous.

And, uh, the folks over in Austria were just floored with just all the virtual events we do and the content We do. And so we're gonna try to help them kind of get up and running, provide them some content that they can kind of give to their group. Torque hasn't rolled out quite yet to Europe, but we can still help them and kind of operationalize them.

So now I'm at Brianna's house. We're gonna go hang out, get some work in, do some calls, and really start our 2026 planning. So let's get after it.

This is legit too.

It's on his. This is. This is mad.

See how fast she got away from? Torque, torque, torque. All hands is going great.

We got ice cream.

Yeah, we do.

Watching you eat ice cream is just a joy.

Larger picture that you want to kind of talk about how we approach in-person events next year is where we get that like kind of buzz, like, oh, the Torque Boys are here, you know, like that, that's not a booth, you know, it's like that like rumor. Oh, did you see Taylor got his ass bit by the dog? Like, like again, that's, that's not sponsorship. I, and I was talking about this on a stream. the other day as far as like how we're going to be sort of realigning how we look at in-person events because we seem to get more traction from the, the in-person or like a meetup than a $20,000 booth.

Mm-hmm.

I think when it comes to virtual events, like, I don't see anybody else doing what we're doing. I think that's one thing we've done really well with like Tech Commute Guidance Counselor 2.0. When we were at Commit Your Code, like 50% of the folks that came by the booth said they know about us from the virtual streams, which is why I think we, as we continue to grow the community team, like We need to have people who have streams because I think, again, the way Torque is viewing community is one-to-many, and like the way to do that is through virtual streams. The way I look at community efforts is like if you're a college football offense and you find a play that works, keep hammering that play until somebody makes you stop, like stops you. That's like what resume reviews are for us. Resume reviews are our trick play that nobody can stop in that like Everybody wants it. Everybody shows up. It's a really great value add for us, and we just need to keep hammering that home.

The amount of times someone came up to me in Latin America and they're like, "Where is Taylor?" What do you mean? Where's Taylor? I'm here. You have me. You don't get Taylor. You get me. But the community engagement—they remember how we make them feel. They remember that we did not make them feel. small, that we poured into them, that we gave back, that we showed that we genuinely cared. And when we do that, oh my goodness, who cares what other brands are around? They care that you made them feel seen. Simple as that.

Considering, again, this was a department that didn't exist last year, and for us to be able to implement multiple different initiatives out of, again, thin air, a lot of it went really well, I think is a testament to Everything that Taylor's been trying to put together.

So I gotta document this because young Taylor like would be fascinated with this. Look at this. This is all deep fried Oreos. All of it.

It makes my tummy hurt just looking at it. Alrighty.

We are done the Torp meetup. Uh, it really was a fantastic time. Uh, got to see some old friends, made some new friends, had people laugh at my jokes, which was great. Uh, and now we are, uh, we're heading out. We're heading out. We're heading out. Who's that? Who's that?

Oh hey!

Oh hey!

Community Brad.

Hey, where are we going?

Boba party.

Rooftop boba.

I'm a big boba guy.

Yeah, you look like a boba guy.

Do I?

I feel like you're gonna make me hit it.

Straight. What do you mean? Why? I'm gonna back into this. No, no, no. This is gonna work. Well, for one, you're not going into the right spot. How is that even—

No, here, stop. Hold on.

What? Stop. Go. What are you doing? Oh yeah, that makes sense. Hold on, I need it. Don't do it. Don't do it again. Oh God!

Because of my pride, I'm not sure if I got room for you. Okay, do you? Me still not sure.

Morning, Atlanta. Day two. We got a full day of planning, which I'm super pumped about. We started getting into it yesterday.

All right, now let's go this morning.

Good morning, pumpkin. Morning. I'm just saying I'm glad you made it. We don't need to complicate it.

We love conferences. I feel like again, people are always looking for ways to connect. So what if we came up with something that is a bracelet that again people would wear for brand awareness, but it's also like builds a benefit to it?

I love that. Do they have them? Yeah, so like 24/7, if you wear the 24/7 brand, it's like, you know, you are an athlete, you're an entrepreneur, you work hard. Health, fitness. What I want the Torque brand to be is like kindness, empathy, you know, really wanting to help people in their job search, you know, willing to, you know, I, I still think Pat Clark is like the epitome of, you know, he isn't even an ambassador and he's out here doing resume reviews and helping us set up our booths, like helping. Like that's what I want, like the Torque. So it's like, but for me it's like when you see somebody wear 24/7 or if you see somebody wear like A Mint in New York, you can, you can, you can go up to them and be like, oh, like, you know, you like 24/7 or you like Mint in New York? Like, tell them about how you got to know them. And I want that to be us. Like, oh, you're, you're wearing Torque gear. Like, who do you know at Torque? And it's immediately, again, it's kind of a nod. It's that wink wink type, type thing.

How'd you think the last, uh, 36 hours went, man?

Man, I think it was really good to just like hash out a bunch of stuff that that we've been like talking about online for months and months and months. Huge props to Bree for being so organized.

She's, she's, she's not in the room right now, so—

I said it to her multiple times.

No, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we— yeah, yeah, well, we're saying that because when she's not in here, in that we still think she crushed it. We're not saying it just to her face.

Yeah, the organization of the meetings over the last 2 days definitely kept us on task, and I feel like We got a lot accomplished.

Are you excited for 2026?

I'm very excited for 2026.

I mean, if we could pull off half of what we talked about, I think it'd be pretty impressive.

So today we had a great retro.

Yeah, we did.

Just a lot of 2025 looking back and then looking forward to what we're doing in 2026. It was really fun when I kept getting, you know, Taylor and Jason back on track.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're very grateful for you.

But, uh, we talked a lot about our team. How do we really improvise And not improvise, but how do we make our team better and stronger? How do we do more? How do we show up better for the community? How do we make more impact and focus on the most important part of what we do—the people?

I love it. I love it. You did great. Hey, fist bump. Don't leave me hanging like Jason did. Appreciate it. Yeah.

Let the birds fly. Saw birds. I did a damn thing. I made a stir fry. All that chicken made it to a stir fry.

When you hurt the one you love, that's the worst kind. Hello, hello, good evening. Back at the hotel for an amazing dinner. Um, I inhaled it in full transparency.

Probably the best Middle Eastern food I've ever had.

Amazing day. Um, I'm gonna try to like download a little bit more tomorrow. There's so much to talk about, to be honest with you. There was so much stuff we talked about and so much stuff to do. Um, It's given me anxiety. There's, there's just so much stuff to get better at, to improve.

Um, you know, we have started to gain a lot of steam over the last few months of like how we run in-person events and how we do manager—

like how to manage things internally and processes. And, you know, admittedly, I, I used to think I'm a process guy and I'm really not. So that's why I'm great to grateful for Brianna.

Um, but you know, we have a lot of processes to improve on. So, um, but anyways, it was, it was a great, great day planning. We got 2 hours tomorrow, um, before, uh, we hit the road. Um, so looking forward to bringing you along for tomorrow morning. Um, but, uh, man, just excited, excited for 2026.

And, uh, yeah, gonna work a little bit more, watch some vlogs, get some inspiration, just chill.

And we're back at it tomorrow. Y'all have a good one.

Good morning. Last day. You know, it's funny. It is 8:19 in the morning. Packing up. Heading to Atlanta Tech Village to have about 2 hours worth of meetings around our in-person event strategy next year.

Then we're going to do a laid-off lounge.

Then we're gonna hit the road. So good morning, and let's have a good, let's have a nice little morning.

Here. Hey. Hey. Three.

I think there's a difference between activity and going to events in LATAM or parts of the U.S. To be present and show up. But I think the way you build community is like we did what we've done in Guadalajara, where it's we hammer home Guadalajara, right? So we've hammered home Guadalajara for this last year, 4 times last year. So then it's like we need to like pick a place and then like focus on that place. We do have a ton of— we have a ton of people on the platform in Brazil. I do know that.

Like the fact that we haven't done anything in Brazil yet So, you know, maybe we look at conferences, maybe look at a conference for Brazil.

Maybe we, maybe we don't do an Argentina, maybe we do a Brazil. I know we have a lot of people on the platform in Argentina, but I think it's being intentional. So like, we're going to Mexico City for Talent Lands, you know, Ximena's thinking about going to Mexico City, Furze's already in Mexico City. So maybe we start hammering Mexico City next year.

Because if we, if we just bounce around, like, we're not gonna really make any—

I mean, there, like, there's a reason why we can throw an event in Guadalajara and we get people to show up every time now, because we've done it 4 times in a year. So it's like, okay, we have that in our quiver. Where do we go next? It's kind of like touring, right?

Being in a band, it's like touring. Alrighty, we are an hour outside of Atlanta at no other than— can we see that? Buc-ee's. Listen, listen, if there's anything about me, I'm gonna stop at Buc-ee's. Anyways, an amazing last 2 days in Atlanta with the team. I know I recapped a little bit, but, you know, really kind of the, the really the key things we're driving home on is processes, tighter content strategy. Um, tighter event strategy and a focus on swag, merch, and ambassadors. Like, that's— that was kind of the general thing, you know. One of the things I, I, I read an article, uh, Bandit Running, who I pull a lot of, uh, inspiration from even though I'm not a runner, they do an amazing job with community. And they said something that really resonated with me as we kind of headed into these last 2 days is that they treat their ambassadors, whatever they call them, their ambassadors, like they have a Bandit email address, right? And like, that's kind of like the thought I had coming into this meeting in Atlanta. And really what we did is we kind of came out of it with some amazing ideas on how to empower our ambassadors to be an extension of the brand we're building and who we are. So really excited to really try to Get our arms wrapped around that in 2026. But that's it. No more travel. Baby number three is gonna get here. Dustin number three is gonna get here in December. So no more travel content for the time being. We're gonna operationalize some travel content from the other team. So I'm excited to see that. And just an amazing time in Atlanta and pumped for 2026.

I'm gonna go eat my. I'm gonna go eat my buckies. There are millions of boys and girls in this whole world.