In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Pablo Gonzalez, Co-founder, and CMO of Be The Stage and Co-Host of the B2B Community Builder Show podcast. Pablo comes from a rich background in community through the nonprofit world. Now he works with many B2B companies and small to midsize businesses. This podcast episode dives deep into relationships and will introduce the concept of the “Relationship Flywheel”. Pablo and I discuss how to create a community around events and use them to create content, nurture leads, and turn those leads into paid customers. Who is this episode for? Community managers and beginners who want to join the field of community as a career. Three key takeaways: 1. The purpose of Community in human life and business: Community is a group of people that are willing to make your problems their own problems. It is the greatest value one can create for people because it opens up opportunities for professional connections and personal discoveries. Influence can come as a byproduct when you are looking to serve other people. Community events can provide content to serve and help people across the customer journey. Adapt the mindset of giving and use it to fuel your content marketing efforts. 2. Community events for content marketing: Recording Q&A’s, webinars, AMA, and other events produce great content to repurpose for social media, blogs, and more. It also helps break down geographical barriers to your influence and helps professional relationships across the globe. It helps drive community at scale, increases pipeline velocity, generates revenue, and makes mass feedback for your product possible. Optimize such events to be about conversations around key topics in your niche and not just around your brand or the product/service you provide. 3. Value, connections, and content - The Relationship Flywheel: Figure out what your audience cares about beyond what you are trying to sell - they are your content pillars. Find connections in your industry who create this content for themselves and/or will create it for your events. Create a periodic event to bring people together and ensure that you enable interactions among the audience, hosts, and guests during that event. The content created this way will be shared among the audiences of your guests. It will grow your connections and your brand. Use stats around this content to figure out points to indicate when the leads are marketing-qualified and/or sales-qualified. Notable Quotes: 1. “If you're driving those four connections while you're creating the content, making it a relationship out of content, then when you repurpose it, it plays better. People own it. ” 2. “The simplicity of having a weekly event and making that drive whatever you're doing, you can save money on however many salespeople you're going to need. And invest a little bit of that money, as the small business owner, into providing these events.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life? Venezuelan Arepas. 2. Favorite books to read or to give to others? Play Bigger by Ramadan, Pratt, et al and The Road Less Travelled by M Scott Peck. 3. Favorite rapper? Outkast. 4. Wildest community story? Speaking at CMX Summit where he became associated with Seth Godin. 5. Number one conversation starter? “What brings you here?” 6. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? No, but he wants to. 7. Who in the world of community would you most like to take out for lunch? Gary Vaynerchuk. 8. What's one community product you wish existed? An all-in-one tool that helps turn conversation recordings into multiple types of content. 9. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? The community around a specific surfboard shape called Mini Simmons. 10. Tweet-sized life advice? It is more valuable for you to try to be a kingmaker instead of trying to be a king.