The CX 056: The Ever-Evolving Community with Richard Millington, Founder of FeverBee

The CX 056: The Ever-Evolving Community with Richard Millington, Founder of FeverBee

Jillian Benbow: Hey, everyone, Jillian here. Just a heads-up, this episode contains some explicit language and may not be appropriate for younger audiences.

Richard Millington: The analytics you get with most platforms isn't great. We pull data from the API directly, so we get exactly all the data we need. And then we start figuring out exactly what kinds of behaviors lead to people engaging more? So if you took a sample of members, you see what discussions they engage in, what activities they participated in. Compare that to the people who didn't stick around for a long time, you'll know exactly what to guide the next member to.

So when we have case studies where we've tripled the level of engagement or retention, that's how we do it. Not by the guesswork or the intuition of the digital dark ages from before, but by having this enlightened, data-driven approach.

Jillian Benbow: Well, hello and welcome to this episode of The Community Experience Podcast. I'm Jillian Benbow, here to bring you amazing guests and talk all things community. And this week, I am talking to the one, the only, Richard Millington, who has been in the community space for longer than I have. And the first actual book I ever read on community building was his book, Buzzing Communities. So I've known his name for forever. He's also the founder of FeverBee. And they do all sorts of community research and notably help more enterprise communities I would say, for the most part, establish what is their community, help set them up. Small names in the biz you've probably never heard of like Apple and my favorite thing, Facebook, and lots of big SaaS, sassy type organizations.

So Richard comes from a different perspective than who I often talk about because Richard is primarily focused on these larger communities that are often free or often customer support adjacent. Obviously, Apple. We talk about the Apple support community because I love it. And it's my go to example of a fantastic customer support community. So enough about me recapping what we talk about. Let's get into it. I think you're going to love this episode because Richard is just a really interesting person. His perspective on community is great and he definitely walks the walk. So let's go at it.

Jillian Benbow: Welcome to this episode of The Community Experience Podcast. I say this every week, but for reals, I'm so excited because we have one of the OGs in digital community building, strategy, all of the things. One of his books is the first one I ever read when a long time ago, a decade ago, I was trying to up my community manager game. Richard Millington, founder of FeverBee and author of many books, welcome to the show.

Richard Millington: Hey, good afternoon. Thank you for having me on the show. I don't think I'd describe myself as an OG, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

Jillian Benbow: Funny story. I knew your name from just community, read the book, and it wasn't until much later that I actually saw a photo of you. I assumed based on your presence and the things you were doing, that you were a 60 year old professor. And no, I think you're younger than I am. Much younger. You are legit.

Richard Millington: I mean I'm ... How old am I now? I'm 37. Is that young? I feel old now.

Jillian Benbow: Hey, compared to me, yes.

Richard Millington: The interesting thing is I wrote Buzzing Communities, the first book ... When was that? 2012? So 10 years ago now. It's around this time that it was released. And it's funny when people come up to me and say, "Hey, I love the book." And honestly, when I read through it, there are parts of it where I'm just like ... I cringe. I'm like, "Oh, I was so naive and innocent back then. And we lived in such a simpler and calmer and more sane world." I was talking to someone about this and they said, "It's okay if you look back at what you wrote 10 years ago in cringe. It's more worrying if you don't."

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. If you're like, that is excellent advice.

Richard Millington: And that has stayed with me. That has really stayed with me all this years. So hopefully I've grown a lot since then, but I think some people still get value from the book and I'm definitely proud of how well the book's done. So yeah, thank you for that and I appreciate you saying your kind comments.

Jillian Benbow: Oh yeah, of course. Well, it's funny too. The cringe. I had a blog back when blogging was cool, if it ever was, I don't know. But a personal blog, not what we think of blogs today. And it was about running because I had gotten into running and my goal was to run a marathon. I forgot all about it and one of my friends recently brought it up But it reminded me about that blog. And I went and looked up a post from it and was just immediately like, "Burn it down. Nope. This is off the internet right? This is off the internet. No one can find this ever." So cringe.

Richard Millington: I don't know if LiveJournal was a big site in the USA where you're from. At university, I kept this LiveJournal account of just all the havoc we were getting up to and all those kind of things. And then I lost access to the account and LiveJournal wouldn't give it back to me. And for years it's just sitting there. It's almost like a ticking time bomb. And I had to wait for LiveJournal to die for that to disappear off the web. But patience is a virtue and now it's gone.

Jillian Benbow: There you go. Nothing's ever really gone from the internet, but at least Google can't search it and put it ... Oh, this name. Let's put this on the first page.

Richard Millington: Exactly.

Jillian Benbow: Well, R-I-P. Cheers to all of our personal blogs of the early aughts that thankfully have all gone the way of MySpace. Also glad that went away.

Richard Millington: Yeah, for sure.

Jillian Benbow: Well, believe it or not, we're not just here to talk about reminiscing, but it's a great thing to point out. 2012 online communities versus today, it's a different world and 10 years from now, I think further even, especially with Web3 and just all the things happening. Once again, we'll do this again in 10 years and be like, "Can you believe the stuff we said?"

Richard Millington: Can I jump in and make a prediction here?

Jillian Benbow: Yes. Do it.

Richard Millington: This whole Web3 thing, I don't know where you are at. We haven't really spoken before this call. I think it's a total waste of time. I say this. I've done research of people that participate in communities for over a decade. I mean, hundreds of interviews, maybe a million survey results. And not one person in all this time has ever said, "What I really want is a decentralized database that hosts this community." No one has ever said that. And honestly, I just think it's a bit of a red herring. I feel like it's going to get a lot of hype. I feel like we're going to look back at it and think, "Oh yeah. Remember that time when people were buying digital pictures of monkeys for a year's salary? That was weird." Like the way we look back at the '80s today perhaps. I feel like that's what we're going to be thinking about in 10 years time. Anyway. Sorry I interrupted you.

Jillian Benbow: No. It was a very juicy interruption. And I've got to be honest, I agree. I have not wrapped my head around it. I will never buy a digital outfit. Said it here first. If I have to eat crow on that, cool. But no, I'd rather have a IRL outfit. I don't get it. It makes me feel old. I don't get it and I don't care to. Kind of like my parents with rap. It's just not happening for me. And to the people who are into it, that's cool. But diversify your investments.

Richard Millington: Do your thing.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. You do you everyone, if that's what brings you joy. I like the idea of potentially giving artists a new way to expose their craft and what they do. I like that side of it a lot. But it's just not my wheelhouse so I'm not involved. I'll sit this one out.

Richard Millington: I think it's got some really exciting use cases in a very narrow range of fields. And I think artists and royalties are really interesting. I think secure databases ... All that stuff seems interesting. I won't pretend to be an expert. But when it comes to the broader community industry and people are like these DAOs where everyone's going to get together and vote on organizations. I'm like, that sounds like chaos. That absolutely sounds like chaos. And I'm not sure we want that. I think there's something to be said for good leadership in an organization, in a community. And if you get everyone voting on every issue, I think that's the reason why most countries have representatives that we vote to represent us rather than having that direct democracy on every issue. And I think communities are going to be the same.

I think when a community is well run, you have a leader that really cares, a leader that can balance the competing interests of the majority against the minority, a leader that can understand where the community needs to go. And the interesting thing here is, like I said before, we've done a lot of research and there's so many times when we do research on a client's online community and they will come back and say, "Oh, we want the community to go back to the way it used to be." To some before time. And it's not possible. Maybe the technology was old. It's out of date. The budgets have changed. All these things have changed. But that's what members want. And I wonder what happens when you let people vote? It's like if a musician with an audience let their audience vote on what kind of music they wanted to play at each concert. They'd be like, "Play your greatest hits," every single time and they'd never produce anything new ever. And so I think for community to reach its potential, you need a leader that can see that potential and navigate in that direction. And so I think it's an interesting experiment. I think DAOs are an interesting experiment like communism. But I'm not sure how well it's going to go.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. It's interesting, as you're talking, I'm like, if I had to be a president, who am I? Am I authoritarian or am I a dictator or am I cool? And depending my answer on who those people are, depending who's listening, they'll have different ... We all have our opinions on-

Richard Millington: Your three options were authoritarian, dictator, or cool. Those are the three options?

Jillian Benbow: That's it. I'm going to go with dictator.

Richard Millington: Man, the state of politics in the USA. I mean, wow.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. Anyway, we need beers for this conversation. I'm curious. Just jumping back to the state of community and 10 years ago to now, and even in Buzzing Communities the advice or the things you talked about then versus now, what do you think the biggest change is?

Richard Millington: There's a professional class of community manager that has emerged. Kind of like what we were talking about just before this where you've got people that are managing small communities for small businesses, their passions, their hobbies, people with a Shopify based business and a community they're building around that, which is fantastic. And I think Buzzing Communities is actually like ... Or in my opinion, might help some of them achieve their goals. But I think the biggest change I'm seeing is that there's this professional group of community managers that have evolved that work at the top companies in the world. And I think they're very much focused on proving the ROI of those communities, integrating it deeply within the business. And I think there's a whole new set of tools and platforms and technologies that have emerged around that. I think member behaviors have shifted a lot as well. I think social media has, for better or worse, completely changed how people engage with communities today. And it's ironic. I follow a lot of people on Twitter in this space and there's a lot of people that are tweeting don't build your community on social media. Use a forum. Use a hosted platform where you have control.

And that's great, but they're tweeting that. They're not putting that in a branded online community. They're putting it on Twitter. And a lot of the discussions I see in this space are on Twitter, they're on Facebook, they're on social media channels. And I think the hardest thing today is getting people to go to a dedicated platform that you control. There's a lot of benefits in there for you, but it's so much more difficult. And I think a lot of people that are advising not to use social media seem to spend a lot of time on social media advising that. And there's a reason for that. Because on social media, you can grow your audience. You can grow a profile. You might tweet something that might reach a million people if it goes viral in some particular way.

And so I think the challenge is what's a unique benefit of a hosted community if that's your approach? And I'm talking about any dedicated place. That could be a Facebook group, although there's some differences there. But any dedicated place. What's a unique benefit that a member can get from sharing advice, content, asking questions there compared with any other channel? And I think that's a question that everyone has to answer. From the biggest brands to the smallest businesses in the world today. I think that's a question that you have to answer if you want to build that kind of community.

And there's many models for building a community. We just talked about one specific one. You can build a community where people just feel a part of it. I engage with a lot of great people in the community building space. I wouldn't say we have a dedicated place for it ironically, perhaps, but we're on Twitter, we are on Facebook, we meet out there. There's still a community, but it's not like this is a designated place. It's more of a broader feeling. And so I think finding the right model and finding the right purpose is the biggest change because social media's changed so much and it's easy to launch a community and end up with a ghost town if you're not careful.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. And I think a lot of people are in that boat right now where it's like, oh. And even if there was some momentum, especially during the pandemic when everyone was stuck at home anyways, now they're competing with the outdoors and travel and all the things that we didn't have available to us for a while and people are like, "I do not want to spend another minute staring at a device. I want to go travel. I want to see family." And it's interesting this pendulum swing of access and competition. I completely think that if you run a paid community, it should not be on a social media platform. So I'd be remiss not to discuss this a little further because I'm always saying it and you have a slightly different take than me so I think it's interesting.

But I agree with what you're saying is we all use social media to find our audience. And then I think the puzzle piece is the converting audience into community members. Those are two different groups. So how do you talk about it and get people to engage and then get them to take the next step of, okay, so now we're going to go off Twitter where we connected and bonded and I'm going to have you come onto this platform where you have to have a login and maybe there's an app, maybe there isn't and it's a whole different place. I'm curious your thoughts on just how to do that. Have you seen success for people or are you just like not worth it? What's the trends you're seeing?

Richard Millington: Well, let's talk about paid communities for a second. A community, I just want to make sure we share the same definition, where you pay for membership for that community. And that's a very unique use case. There's communities for hobbies where people don't pay. It's just there for them. But when people are paying for a community, it creates a very unique dynamic. The problem that I see over and over again with these paid communities is that they become more like a magazine subscription. Where there's a lot of content that gets shared there and the people running them are often a little bit insecure. So they try to cram as much content as possible and then they end up with the Netflix issue where you're like, "Oh, there's a lot of junk here to find the stuff I want." And it becomes a detrimental impact. And I think if you're having a paid community, you have to think about what is that pay barrier? What is the incredible value that that pay barrier puts up that these people can't get from anywhere else?

Because you could talk to people on social media if you want. And so the pay barrier might be a privacy one. That's perfectly fine but just be aware that anyone can create a Facebook group. It might be that there's a particular need where you just want the top people in the industry to engage with each other. That's an interesting model. I like what socialmedia.org do. They have a really fantastic model for that. But then you've got to be promoting the exclusivity of it. And the challenge there is that it can't be exclusive if you're letting everyone in. And you can't have the best of both worlds. So if it's paid, you have to think about what is a unique value from that community that people can't get from anywhere else? And content is okay, but just be aware if content is what you're relying upon, it's a magazine subscription with a community attached and not a community in itself.

And so I think when these paid communities work really well, it's when they build on regular events and activities for people to engage in. It's when they filter and curate the best content that's out there today. Not try and push as much content into the channel as possibles so that people feel like they're getting a lot. But try and save people time, save people money, make it more convenient because a digestive source of top information. And when they get access to the top people and brands that are out there. If the top people in some industry are participating in one community, I want to be in that community too.

So you have to build this unique dynamic that's so powerful and gets people really excited and engaged. And I think the challenge is a lot of people think they have it and maybe they don't. But audience research is your savior here. The more research you do, and I mean genuine research, the more you're going to figure out exactly what members do and don't want. And even asking questions. What are the issues that you want to resolve? How often do you have that issue today? Where do you go to resolve the issue? Why do you go there? Answering those four questions alone will get you so much further down the line of what you should be creating and building here. It'll get you a concept which is going to explode to life rather than one that's going to stagnate and just not go anywhere.

Jillian Benbow: I love that. Just plus one to everything. It's so true. I work with a lot of people who are either launching or have paid communities and that's their business. They have some sort of subscription model. People get something out of it like you were saying. There's something unique that the members get out of it that makes the payment valuable, hopefully and then some. A common impulse for especially newer community builders is to just over deliver with lots of events and content like you said, and all of these things. And then they quickly get into this unsustainable model that they cannot scale because they're already at a max. They're spending all their time in the business, doing events, talking to people and they realize, "Oh my gosh, I don't have time to do anything else. I need time." And often financially in a place where they need the revenue that they're getting just to keep the doors open so they can't afford to hire help and it's this whole thing.

And so I'm always reminding people to just calm down. This isn't you show. You're creating an environment where people want to connect with each other and then you can have signature programming and events, but it's not on you to be every day giving a thesis on whatever the topic of the community is. But it's hard. I think people get nervous that they're not providing enough value. So it's nice to hear someone else in the biz reiterate the things I say. See, I know what I'm talking about everyone. Told you.

Richard Millington: I think the important thing there is quality. I know paid memberships where they do two big events a year and that's it. That's the only thing that they do. And the model works because the events are so good and they bring all the right people together and they're well facilitated and it works. And so if they can get away with that ... And we're talking about sites that charge maybe 10 grand a year for membership. They target a very high audience. That's an extreme example. And I think every time you put out something that doesn't get a lot of attention, doesn't resonate, you're doing more harm than good. And the way to improve a lot of communities isn't to continually adding stuff, but to remove stuff as well. So when people go there, it's a prioritized list of all the things they want.

So I'll give you an example. We were working with one client that had a paid membership site maybe two months ago. And we looked at the questions that were coming in. And a lot of the questions were like recommendations. Does anyone know what company can help me with this? Does anyone know how to set up the configuration for this? Et cetera, et cetera. And when you get a lot of questions like this, you're like, "Oh, let's just have a recommended vendor list." Everyone can leave their reviews on it and suddenly you've got something that delivers unique value that people can't get from anywhere else. We had people that were trying to recruit others in the industry. Okay, well there's a job board that makes sense for that. And so you can slowly tackle each need, adding something high value. But when we do one of these things like a vendor list or review section or classified section or anything, we keep it updated.

So instead of adding a new content, new article, new article, new article, it's often better to go to the stuff that's already quite popular and improve that because that's what people are going to come back to again and again and again. So you don't need to have an overwhelming amount of content for a community to thrive. What you do need is to make it easier, more convenient for your audience to achieve their goals. And really, I've said it again, you've said it, quantity of content is not what people care about. Quality is. Always.

Jillian Benbow: Always. Always. For sure. Do you think there's a difference? We focused on paid communities, but then the flip side is unpaid communities, which again can run the gamut. These can be anything from ... I like to use Apple's support community as an example because there are Apple staff in there, but there's just a lot of Apple enthusiasts and it's free. If I have a problem with my Magic Mouse, I know I can get the answer. It's probably already been asked and answered. But if not, I can create a post. So an example, that's a really big free community versus maybe a person starts ... And it often starts on Facebook. I know this. Especially for free. A group about a ... Maybe it's a parent support group or a hobby, like you were saying. As someone who leads a free group, whether it's part of their job or just a passion, do you think it's a similar expectation? Obviously I think quality over quantity should always be the go to, but is there any nuance between paid and free?

Richard Millington: Yes. But I think we need to separate things a bit further here. Because I think a paid membership site or a paid community where you're paying for access, that's when high quality, convenience, I think that kind of thing is key. Exclusivity is key. Finding that reason I think is key. I think for customer support communities like Apple ... One of our past clients actually. But Apple, they are fantastic at being a place where people go. They ask questions, they get an answer, and then usually they leave and they don't come back until there's another question. And there's often a debate about whether these are really communities or not. I don't care really. But I think it's important to recognize that the dynamics of these communities are always about people with questions needing a place to get answers. It's critical that that dynamic is understood.

And then we're talking about those sites that are public, but not dedicated to customer support or not even dedicated to support questions. We have, say, Mumsnet here in the UK where moms can engage with each other. I'm sure there's sites for dads and others as well. But places where people can go to talk about the topic, ask questions, and then it's more about that sense of feeling that you have with each other. Sure you might ask questions and you get advice, but it might also be a place you go to and be like, "I'm having a tough day. My kid spent all night whacking me on the head with a shoe." It's the kind of place where you can just let rip and people are going to be like, yeah, I've had a tough day. And there's an incredible value in that. And that emotional support value is very different from other kinds of value.

When we think about values of community, we think about the core thing that people get when they participate. And a sense of belonging is one, but it's not the only one. Support is also important. Exploration is also important. You can explore a topic with one another. Communities about running, for example are often about that. Exploring different trials and paths and techniques and all those kind of things. And then having a sense of influence. People can get together and change things in the world by working together. And those four things seem to be the main value drivers of a community. And the challenge is really to figure out which of them you're doing. Because there's such a big difference between a paid membership site and a customer support site or question driven site and then those other sites where people just feel like this is where I belong. This is where I can talk about what's driving me nuts today. This is where I can chat.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. I think personally my favorite communities and the ones I love ... I've done some consulting for a few and just love to help are the peer support communities that are specific to either a behavioral health thing or a life stage. So caregivers. Caregivers in general. But caregivers of family members with Alzheimer's as just a niche example. Those types of communities are where I've seen the most magical support and just camaraderie and the sense of, I see you and you see me that I think is so special. It's a nice reminder of humanity in a way. And it's a nice reminder that technology used for good can be so amazing and getting rid of geographical barriers and getting people together who can really, really support each other on a level that we wish we could, but we just don't have that life experience. Anyways. Rambling. But those are 100% my favorite communities to help and support.

Richard Millington: I'm an optimist still. I think communities have been through the wringer over the last couple of years because I think it's easier to report the negatives than the positives. I really believe that. And I still engage and get so much value from so many communities today and almost everyone does. Almost everyone I know is part of at least friendship groups on WhatsApp. And those are incredible communities, but no one talks about it. It's not going to be an exciting media story compared to what this group of right wing gamer crowd did. That's always going to get more attention. And I don't want to change our attitudes or our minds just because we don't like the way that term community is being used because no one gets to decide what that term is or what it means. It's up to us to define it. It's up to us to own that.

And I think we're pretty good at that and I don't want to change the language. I don't want to change the terms. And I still want to be optimistic because I just see people getting so much value from communities every single day and I think it's so exciting to see how this industry is going. And there's issues for sure. There's issues everywhere and we can't overlook that. But overall I think the positives so far outweigh the negatives. I just wish we could find a way of getting that message through a lot better than what we do today.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. And to be clear, I think there are way more positive communities and interactions out there than awful. I know just with my own experience working with digital communities, something that makes me really happy and no one can ever take this away from us is that if you're a closeted gay kid growing up in very deep conservative, rural area, it used to be an incredibly lonely experience. And I think that it's ... I'm not going to discount that. It still is. But now you have an outlet in your hand to connect with mentors, with other kids going through the same thing that maybe don't live in your area, but now you can talk to someone and share experiences and the positive mental health impacts of casting that larger support network, especially to teens, but to everyone, to adults. We're all lonely in our own ways.

And so giving people that opportunity, I think is just one of the best things to come out of digital communities and this technology. It's really special to me. I hold it dearly. Things can get tough in community. It's a messy job. It's a messy thing because you're dealing with people and people are messy inherently.

Richard Millington: I think we're in this middle period of where the regulatory guardrails concerning how you have people being able to speak freely within a group, but actually not being a place where people are subject to hate and finding the balance there. I think there's a very loud and very noisy debate that has to happen. I wish it was happening in a nicer way, but it's a debate that has to happen. And I think we're in that middle period where soon we're going to have some regulations there that'll provide a little more balance. I don't know whether we want that, but I think it's going to happen. And I think after that, it will take a lot of the issues that we have today not completely out of our hands, but will provide some guardrails that we can work with. I think we're getting there. It's a slow process, but I think we're getting there.

Jillian Benbow: What do you mean by regulation? Do you mean actual government authorities saying you can talk about this, but not that? Elaborate on where you think it's going.

Richard Millington: I think there's laws proposed in the UK and Europe that are beginning to define what the barrier is here.

Jillian Benbow: Is this for hate speech?

Richard Millington: Yeah. You know section 230 in the USA? So basically a crude way of saying it is that it lets people say almost anything they want online and platforms like Facebook don't get the blame. And so it limits how much they have to moderate. And they still do a lot of moderation, but no liability fundamentally. And there's a pro and con of that. The pro is that law that protects Facebook and big tech also protects you and me. If someone says something bad in our communities and we're not sharp enough on it, should we be held responsible for that? That's the challenge. I think what we're seeing now in response to everything that's been happening in the last couple of years is that this doesn't make sense anymore. This law was like 1997, '96. It's so far before everything. And the idea that-

Jillian Benbow: Even before our blogs.

Richard Millington: Yeah. Even before the blogs. So I think what we're going to see is regulation in this space. And I think that's going to be ferocious. It's an absolutely ferocious debate. But I think we can agree on some guardrails. If you threaten to kill someone, there's got to be stronger protections than what there is today. I know it's illegal already today, but it becomes ... There's nuances in that and there's all kind of issues. And I think what we're seeing is laws in the UK where they're trying to define ... I don't like the way they're written at the moment, but they're trying to define what is and isn't allowed and who do these laws apply to, where big technology firms are subject to unique laws that may be smaller companies aren't. And I think that's where we're going. And the USA I figure is going to go the same way eventually. You folks have a very different concept of free speech than what we do so there's going to be differences there. But that's cultural and there's pros and cons of that too. Yeah.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. So actually a previous episode, I had a lawyer come on to talk about legal liabilities of community. Wesley. Yeah. With Wesley Henderson. So anybody listening, if you haven't listened to it, go listen. Because we talk about what the first amendment really means and we also talk about just the liabilities of keeping a small community going. Protecting yourself, but protecting the community. Obviously you have terms of service and community guidelines. It's up to you and your community to say, "Hey, this is what's cool and what's not cool," and people need to agree to it. So I feel like that's how we've been doing it. At least small potatoes people. That's how we've all been doing it. Although frankly, even big tech companies I've worked for, similar. They just have more dedicated terms of service. But it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

Richard Millington: I think that's the right way of doing it. But even within that, it's your domain so you get to set the rules. I think that's fair. There's a limit to that as well. But I also think if you are setting the rules, there's so many gray areas in what you allow and what you don't. Is swearing aloud? I know some people with that that'll say yes and some will be like, no. And to them, the answer is really obvious. If you allow pseudonyms within the community, what's your limit on that? If you have Jackhammer69 as a pseudonym, is that allowed? But here's the thing, if it's not allowed, that's fine. I support that. But how do you define what is and isn't allowed? It gets into this weeds where the bigger you get, the more problematic it becomes. Is political debates allowed? And if you allow it, why not religious debates?

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. Where does it end?

Richard Millington: At some point, yeah, you've got to draw the lines and people have to be on board with that. And the bigger you get, the more problematic it becomes because at a certain point, people just want to fight. They just want to be like, you are against me because of this. And you've got to figure out where the lines are. So yeah. I think it's going to be a challenge.

Jillian Benbow: People like to get loud too. It really is. This actually brings up something that I have been noticing and talking about more and more. I think there's something here that I want to explore more in general, which is what I'm calling digital etiquette. And it's really interesting because how do you tell someone like, hey, you just don't get it? Short of calling them a boomer. How do you teach people how to behave in the appropriate way without them feeling just completely bullied and picked on for just being themselves? It's something I'm noticing more and more as more and more people join different communities. And I don't know what the answer is, but it's definitely on my radar as something and something my team talks about. How can we create resources or how do we update our onboarding or whatever it is for our members so that this is more clear?

Richard Millington: Yeah. I think there's two things to bear in mind here that are very important in the context of this. One is that the people that take the time to read the guidelines aren't the people that will break them.

Jillian Benbow: It's so annoying.

Richard Millington: If you are that kind of person that reads the guidelines, you're fine. You're a good person.

Jillian Benbow: You're good.

Richard Millington: You're fine.

Jillian Benbow: If you are concerned ... If you ask yourself, am I a narcissist? I hope not. You're not. A narcissist will never ask themselves that.

Richard Millington: And so I bear that in mind. People change the guidelines and wonder why it hasn't changed their behavior. But if I honestly think about all of the apps and tools I use in communities I've joined, I don't think I've read the guidelines of any of those sites.

Jillian Benbow: You're saying a lot about what kind of community member you are.

Richard Millington: Right. There's only one place where I do any trolling whatsoever but I won't tell you.

Jillian Benbow: Oh. For the after show.

Richard Millington: I think the other thing to bear ... We can talk about it later if you like. The other thing I think to bear in mind is with any group of people, not everyone is going to behave or not everyone is going to behave the way, based upon your experience and culture you expect them to behave. In the building I live in now ... I live in a high rise building. There must be hundreds of people that live in this building. And one day I went down into the lobby, it's late January, and I saw five Christmas trees in the lobby that people just ditched because they're like, "Okay, I guess this is a solution of what you do with a Christmas tree." I'm like, that's not the etiquette here. But some reason they thought it was. I'm also interested that they all did it on the same day or one person had five Christmas trees in their house. But it's also the gym.

Jillian Benbow: There's so many questions.

Richard Millington: It's also, if you go to the gym, most people get the rules. And there's also a lot of unspoken rules with the gym as well about personal space and all those things. But people from a different background, different situation or vantage point are doing what makes sense to them and they violate that all the time. And also some people are just ... They just have characteristics and attributes that are going to be challenging in any social situation. And so beyond a hundred members or so you're going to get 2% or 3% that are going to be problematic and it has nothing to do with the guidelines. It just has something to do with just the way it is.

So I'd bear those two things in mind. That said, the rest of them, that's the group you can work with. The people you can be like, "Hey, this is a situation that happened. I want your input and what's the best way to resolve this situation so you have some input so you're bought into it. Then let's try and agree on a solution together. If not, I'm happy to make a decision on that. But let's get to a place where we've had that debate and everyone feels heard at least." I think that's a way of going about it. It's not going to resolve every issue, but making people just feel heard. I think that's a critical thing.

Jillian Benbow: Oh totally. I remember my family lived in China for a few years and it's vastly different. And this was the '90s so this was pre blog. This was a long time ago. And the cultural differences and of social norms and social etiquette are very different. Going into that situation being like, wow, personal space is not a thing here, but it's totally normal for them. So it's a me problem, not a they problem. I'm putting myself in their culture so I need to adapt.

And if, as community builders, it's part of the job. Having the conversations, talking to people, walking it through. And sometimes they're very ... I mean I recently had a situation like this and it was very uncomfortable, but it had to be done and the person actually chose to leave because they decided this just wasn't the right fit. And I agree with them. I'm glad they came to that conclusion for their benefit. If they were able to stay and stick within what the boundaries of what our community is, that would've been great, but they didn't want to do that and so they opted to leave. It was a very peaceful end to a stressful situation and I think they found a better fit. But that's part of being a community manager is having those conversations. And again, if they would've wanted to stay, I would've worked with them, but they decided it wasn't the best fit. Which I was like, "Great, let's find you a good fit." Because ultimately that's what we care about. It's like we want you to find the right community for you and it wasn't the right community for them. It happens.

Richard Millington: One of the challenging things culturally that I see is humor and how it's interpreted very differently. And this is also a very interesting debate between Americans, Australians, Brits, European. I'm lumping all of Europe into that. But Europeans. Even really small things that are funny in one culture are very, very offensive in another. When you see a-

Jillian Benbow: I'm probably guilty of that.

Richard Millington: When you see a discussion and someone says, "Oh, fuck off." That could be interpreted in ... That could be like, "Oh, fuck off." Or it could be, basically ... I'm not going to repeat over again your podcast, but no one has the tone or the context or any of those things so they're just reading it however their culture tells them to interpret that. And they can go from zero to 100 really fast based upon how they interpret comments like that. And I think humor is a challenge. You don't want to ban people being funny, but no one thinks that they're not funny. Or I guess some people do. But it's these rules in communities where ... I had this debate a while ago where someone says, "The only rule that you need in a community is don't be asshole." And I'm like, well that's ridiculous because no one thinks that they're being an asshole.

Jillian Benbow: No one's like that's me.

Richard Millington: Yeah. People think that they're being funny. They think that they're responding to provocation. They think that they are answering back. They think that they're being irreverent. They think that they're being the person who says it like it is. Everyone has a reason. And so you have to start defining these things a little bit more in detail and trying to understand the tone and the context and all these things. And I think it's interesting this debate has been so much about moderation because I think moderation is a challenge because setting the rules and enforcing them are very different things. Having the rules is one thing, interpreting how they're applied to very unique situations or challenging is another thing entirely. And I think, yeah, culturally, there's so many challenges.

Jillian Benbow: It's true. Global communities, again, I love them. But it does create an extra set of ... Time zones. Time zones are the bane of my existence in trying to create live programming that works for many. Yeah. It's a great point and I've definitely seen many jokes go awry or they don't land the way they're intended and then it creates a whole rift and it escalates. And so the best thing is to be ... Without airing everyone's dirty laundry, of course. You want to take things private for the sake of people. But you also want to be fairly transparent about, "Hey, I'm removing this post everyone and this is why." Or making a post to be like, "I think this conversation's gotten a little off. I think we all mean well. Let's get back to what we do best." However-

Richard Millington: That's a great response.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. And that's one of my go-tos. Fortunately I don't have to do this much anymore. Our community that we run now, it's all professional entrepreneurs so the spats and misunderstandings are pretty minimal compared to ... I mean, I have some amazing stories I will never share on the air. I could be a mediator if I had the energy. But yeah, I think it's just hearing people, seeing people, like you said. It's all just human. How would you treat it if it was in person right? Similar thing. I'm all over the place. I'm just so excited to talk to you. It's so fun.

Richard Millington: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Jillian Benbow: Just to wrap up, I'm curious, what are you excited about in community right now? What's really your focus or something you're just paying a lot of attention to and excited about happening in the community world if anything?

Richard Millington: This is going to be the nerdiest response I can give.

Jillian Benbow: I love it.

Richard Millington: I'm so excited about the data we're getting access to in communities today. If you think about how a town council would manage services in their community, they do surveys, they do polls, they do research. Most people managing a community often of equal size do none of that. They play it by ear on what they think or what they feel. And what this often means is that they're only engaging with the top members in their community and doing what they want to do. And so you end up with a community that's just serving the top people in that community. What FeverBee, if you don't mind the plug, is doing at the moment is so much more exciting stuff with data in terms of looking at when do people join? How long do they last for? When they leave, why do they leave? What is a specific intervention we can put in place in that? What kind of UX research can we do to improve that community? How do we measure the return on investment of that community in a very statistically valid way?

And I think the more we explore this data ... And there's great tools like Orbit and Common Room that are coming along, where you can see how your members are engaging inside the community and on social media as well and how that interacts with each other. The more we can figure out exactly what we need to do to build the right kind of community. How do we keep people engaged and participating? How do we drive more engagement? I think being data driven is a lot more exciting than the Web3. It really is. We've really haven't scratched the surface much here. And once we do, the data we have access to is just infinite really. It's absolutely infinite. That's what I think is going to happen. I think our ability to be data driven about this is going to be a game changer.

Jillian Benbow: I agree completely and could nerd out about this a ton. At FeverBee, what are you doing with this? You're researching the different tools and whatnot. And then are you creating your own tool or are you creating a publication about it? Where can we follow along the research you're doing?

Richard Millington: Well I post a lot of blogs on feverbee.com sharing the latest data that we've collected. But fundamentally what we're doing isn't using ... The analytics you get with most platforms isn't great. They'll tell you if more people are engaging or not, but they don't give you the level of depth of insights you need to have different segments and see and track them over time and see exactly what each segment needs and how to target them automatically. That's where we are I think doing our best work. I think we pull data from the API directly so we go through the analytics. We get exactly all the data we need. We unpack that. And then we start figuring out exactly what kinds of behaviors lead to people engaging more? So if you took a sample of members, you see what discussions they engage in, what activities they participated in. Compare that to the people who didn't stick around for a long time, you'll know exactly what to guide the next member to.

So when we have case studies, and you can find them on a site, where we've tripled the level of engagement or retention, that's how we do it. Not by the guesswork or the intuition of the digital dark ages from before. By having this enlightened, data driven approach where we can really get all the data we need in one place, analyze it in statistically valid methods and then build out that whole member journey, activities, understanding exactly how to engage each group to achieve the biggest impact. So yeah, feverbee.com is probably the best source. Also, if you get my latest book, if you don't mind the plug, Build Your Community, that has all the latest insights and data and all those things that we've collected for 10 years.

Jillian Benbow: Build Your Community. Got you. Yeah, I noticed you have a couple books I haven't read so now I got to keep going. Add to the collection.

Richard Millington: I have way too much time on my hands, I guess.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. It's amazing. Good for you. Okay. Final question before we go into the rapid fire, the best questions of all. But I'm curious ... And this is a very loaded question so I acknowledge that. What do you think ... As I'm asking this, I already know you're going to be like I can't answer this. Do you think there's a number one metric to rule them all in community? If people could only choose one metric to look at, whether it's active in the last 30 days or all that, is there ... If someone's just getting started with metrics and is like, "I'm so overwhelmed," what would you recommend? They look at?

Richard Millington: So typically for a big brand, there's all sorts of complex methods of measuring ROI. I think most people listening to this, so people that run maybe smaller communities or not like the Microsofts or Apples of this world, I think just looking at the number of people that are visiting each day. It's not perfect, but it gives you a good insight in when and where people are getting value from that community. I think if you have to add one more metric, because I think two is good, is a basic community satisfaction survey. On a score of one to five or zero to five, how satisfied are you of your community experience? If you do a poll of that twice a year or once a year, it'll give you a pretty good idea of how you're doing. If you can improve the satisfaction people have with that community, that's the easiest thing to do. If you want to go more advanced than that, then there's a lot of really interesting data and techniques that you can find on my site. But I think just the satisfaction and the level of engagement, those are two pretty good metrics to track.

Jillian Benbow: I like that. And I agree. Community metrics. If they could only poll themselves.

Richard Millington: Just running a poll isn't difficult. You can even do it externally and just put a link in the community. If you have no budget, there's external tools. Even Google can let you just run a simple form.

Jillian Benbow: A Google form.

Richard Millington: Yeah. And you link to that. It's not ideal, but it'll give you good data to work with. There's no shame in that. So it can be quite simple to get this kind of data.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. Yeah. I love a poll. I would challenge everybody listening, whether Google Forms, SurveyMonkey I think people still use, Pollsify is something that works well with ... I know it works well with Circle. I think it might work well with Mighty Networks too. There's a ton of different tools. Typeform we use a lot. So everybody, homework. Let's all go poll our communities. A little satisfaction survey.

Okay. I've taken up a ton of your time. Let's go into rapid fire. I will try not to ask follow up questions and thus eliminate the point of rapid fire, although I will want to. Richard Millington, when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Richard Millington: First, I wanted to be a scientist, then I wanted to work at SeaWorld, and then I wanted to be a journalist.

Jillian Benbow: Okay. I lied. Follow up question. Did you want to be a dolphin trainer at SeaWorld?

Richard Millington: No. I was at SeaWorld once and there's this guy ... I can't remember how old I was. Seven or eight. And there's a guy whose job it was to feed the sharks and I just wanted that job. And so my parents are really kind. So I went up to him as he's doing his job over the fence or whatever. And I was like, "Excuse me. How do you feed the sharks? How do you get this job?" And he says, "Walk straight ahead." Into the shark tank thing.

Jillian Benbow: Into the tank.

Richard Millington: Which is a really harsh thing to say. How cynical can you be in this world to tell someone that?

Jillian Benbow: Wow. Jaded. Yeah.

Richard Millington: Yeah. So I chose against that career.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. Fun reflection. Well, you may answer this in an upcoming question about bucket lists, but first, how do you define community?

Richard Millington: Yeah. Oh man. People get so caught up in that debate. I say it's a group of people who engage with each other around a common topic online. You can get really complex about relationships and common shared purpose and all those things, but I think the deeper you go there, the more you exclude a lot of the communities I engage with and are my clients so I take a very broad definition. Other people are different. Like Carrie Melissa Jones, who you should look up, has a fantastic book. She's got a more narrow definition about the true purpose of community. But it's more about what end of that continuum do you think you want to be on.

Jillian Benbow: It is the hardest, easiest question I ask but you did great. Okay. Whether or not you have an actual bucket list, pretend you do, what is something you would consider bucket list that you have achieved in your life?

Richard Millington: Oh man. I remember I made a list when I was 21 of the list of things I wanted to do. I wanted to start a business. I wanted to write a book.

Jillian Benbow: Check, check.

Richard Millington: Check, check. I wanted to stay in a water bungalow so I did that when I got married on the honeymoon. I recommend it by the way. It's amazing.

Jillian Benbow: It looks amazing.

Richard Millington: I'm trying to think what else is left. I did most of the things I wanted to do, but now ... This is going to be the answer you want. Now, if I make a list, it's more not things I want to do or have, it's more the mindset I want to be. It's more about happiness, satisfaction, having a supportive group of friends. It's all about that happiness answer. Trying to think of one thing on the bucket list I still really want to do. Honestly, I want to have an amazing apartment in London. London is a really expensive city. And where I live now is fantastic. But there's one thing, I want this overview of London. I want the penthouse apartment. I don't know if I'll ever have the resources to do that, but it's on the list. You never know. Oh. Also at one point I wanted to travel around the world and I spent a year doing that as well so there aren't really that many things left. I've been very lucky honestly.

Jillian Benbow: Okay. Very important question though. Have you fed sharks?

Richard Millington: No. I've been trying to avoid that every time I swim now. That's been my overriding concern.

Jillian Benbow: Haven't dropped some chum in the water from the water bungalow?

Richard Millington: You know what? There was this place, I think it was like Typhoon Lagoon in Orlando, where you can swim with sharks. And that was the closest I got. Yeah. I've never had that experience of feeding sharks.

Jillian Benbow: That is the situation where you don't want to feed them. When you're swimming with them. You don't want to be the food.

Richard Millington: Yeah. But I mean, the lawsuit on that would be amazing wouldn't it? They let you swim with sharks and you get eaten by sharks.

Jillian Benbow: What could possibly go wrong? We forgot to feed them.

Richard Millington: That would be an interesting case.

Jillian Benbow: Right. Well, you answered my follow up question, which is something on your bucket list that you have yet to do, but want to. Obviously feed sharks, but also the penthouse in London, which I hope you do it.

Richard Millington: It's a very materialistic answer. I'm aware of that.

Jillian Benbow: That's okay because you also had all the happiness and fulfillment so we'll take it. We'll take it.

Richard Millington: What's yours? I have to ask what's yours?

Jillian Benbow: Which one? Something I want to do?

Richard Millington: Yeah, something you want to do.

Jillian Benbow: I really want to witness the Aurora Borealis or the Northern lights in person, which is probably silly to you because of where you live. You have closer access. You're much higher in the hemisphere. But we went to Scotland a few years ago and we're up in the Highlands and I was like, "Yes, it's going to happen. We're close." And then I remembered that it never really gets dark in the summer in Scotland. It was like 10:00 PM and light out. And I was like, "So I need to go to sleep."

Richard Millington: Can I share a secret about this? And I don't know how many people know this. I did this in Norway two years ago. Went way up to Tromso in the north. Amazing place. And they took us out at midnight two hours outside of the city so we'd get it. And they take us out to a coach and then we get outside and we look at the sky and we wait for it to happen. And after half an hour I was like, "Oh, okay. I guess it's not going to happen tonight." And then the tour guide was like, "Oh, it's really good tonight." And I'm like ... All we saw are these white, wispy clouds. And what I never realized, and I guess I should have done, is that the human eye doesn't capture the same spectrum of light as a camera does. So all of the photos that you see of these amazing streaks of light across the sky, aren't what you actually see in person. And so I don't want to dump on your dream, but I would like-

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. Too late.

Richard Millington: Be prepared for this. It might not be the experience that you're expecting.

Jillian Benbow: Good to know.

Richard Millington: And I've had people say that I'm wrong and they've seen amazing streaks of light. I think they're fibbing or our tour guide lied to us and I'm an idiot. But as best I can tell-

Jillian Benbow: I guess it depends what drugs are legal where you do it and then that'll determine the level of colors.

Richard Millington: That's the way to do it. That's the way to do it.

Jillian Benbow: Back to the research. Well, I hope to prove you wrong, but I do appreciate the heads up because I'm like, "Okay. I have to go back but in winter when it's dark all the time." Which is not my jam. Well, thanks for asking that. Yeah, that is on my list. Also to just be filthy rich and not have to work, but I think I'll see the Aurora Borealis first.

Richard Millington: Living the dream.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. I mean, if we want a material one, that's my material one. It's just to be grossly loaded Powerball winner and just spend my time giving money to charity.

Okay. I'm interested for this one. What is a book that you love and you wish everybody would read?

Richard Millington: Oh, man. I had some great answers to this-

Jillian Benbow: Or a book you just read that you liked if it's too ... Yeah, it's a big question.

Richard Millington: Everyone should read. What was the last one that made a major impact? Ah, there's a book. I think it's by Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks. I got through that.. That was pretty interesting. I thought that was a good book. If you're just looking for a gripping read, like a genuinely gripping, fun read, I think Endurance. It's a book about Shackleton's adventure in trying to reach the South Pole. And it's so absolutely incredible how they survived that it makes everything in your life a lot easier. Whenever I'm having a bad day there's two things that cheer me up. One is knowing I'm not in that situation. The other one, if I'm honest, is failed marriage proposals on YouTube. It's harsh, but oh man, it just makes me realize I'm not having that bad a day.

Jillian Benbow: That's good to know. I'm going to put that one in my back pocket. I'm going to need to see some failed proposals. Excellent. Just looking at the cover of that book is scary. So I can only imagine.

Richard Millington: Which book? Endurance?

Jillian Benbow: Endurance. Yeah. I do not want to be on that boat. So yeah, those are-

Richard Millington: I can throw another book in there. A weird one that some people might know already. This is a very weird one. The Courage To Be Disliked.

Jillian Benbow: Ooh.

Richard Millington: The Courage To Be Disliked. Yeah. You either love it or you hate it. I think it's a book of Japanese origin. A little bit controversial, but it stuck with me for sure.

Jillian Benbow: I like it. That's totally up my weird alley so I'll just ... The downside of this podcast and asking people this question is my backlog of books I want to read is just pronounced, but winter is coming so lots of dark nights ahead to read. All right. So you live in London, you live in the UK. My favorite city. If you could live anywhere else in the world, where would you want to live?

Richard Millington: Berlin would be way up there. Reykjavik I really like. Maybe Thailand as well. Thailand is a place I try to go once a year. It's where I go to relax and scuba diving and all those things. So yeah.

Jillian Benbow: Those all sound lovely.

Richard Millington: One of those options.

Jillian Benbow: Yeah. It's a good shortlist. I like it. Okay. And now, for real, final question, how do you want to be remembered?

Richard Millington: That's intense.

Jillian Benbow: It is.

Richard Millington: Someone asked me that once before and I couldn't think of anything at all. And I was like, "Well, I want to live forever." So I don't want to give that answer because I feel like it's cheating. How do I want to be remembered? I like to think that I help people. I don't always know how, but there's some nonprofit work that we do that I'm really proud of. Yeah. I like to think that we help people and we had an impact. So I don't have a more specific answer than that, but it'd be nice to just be like, yeah, there are some people we helped. That'd be nice I think.

Jillian Benbow: I think it's a great answer. Yeah. Excellent. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you again so much for coming on the show. I'm still just tickled pink that this is happening. So I really appreciate it. Where if people want to learn more ... They know go to FeverBee. Anywhere else you want to point people? What are your social handles to follow you on the Innerwebs?

Richard Millington: Yeah, sure. I think my LiveJournal's gone so that won't help. And let me just say actually, thank you so much for having me on the show. It's genuinely been fun and interesting and different so I really appreciate that. In terms of learning more about me, www.feverbee.com. I don't think we still need to put the www, right? I feel like people have got a handle on that part now of a web address.

Jillian Benbow: The triple dub. Yeah. I think people can figure it out, but they know now. HTTP://.

Richard Millington: Yeah. So feverbee.com, [email protected] or Twitter, @RichMillington.

Jillian Benbow: Excellent. And it's Rich's blog at FeverBee where you still blog in the modern times, correct?

Richard Millington: That's where I try to drop the knowledge bombs for sure.

Jillian Benbow: Oh yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. Have a lovely evening in the wonderful city of London and hey, who knows? Maybe we can convince you to come back.

Richard Millington: I hope so.

Jillian Benbow: And that's the episode with Richard Millington. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found value out of this conversation. It was such a delight to get to actually talk to Richard and talk community. And it's funny because some of the stuff we were talking about, it reminded me just how much in the last decade plus community has evolved and what it looked like back when I started ... I've lost track. I just say 10 years, but it's been probably 13. I don't even know. But talking about how I think what's really interesting is the evolution of tools and technology specifically for community. We didn't have those 10, 15 years ago. We had Facebook groups. If you worked for, like I did, a big tech company with lots of money, you had a custom built platform that either kind of worked or sort of worked and you were very beholden to product and the product team and always kind of, I don't want to say fighting, but always advocating for improved features, new features that product was always rolling their eyes a full rotation in the back of their head because that was just one of many things they had to keep running.

And once the house is built, you can't necessarily move a wall. You know what I mean? Sometimes the structure that the community was built limited community features. And now we have all these different platforms. Obviously we use Circle. But these much more plug and play platforms that didn't exist back then that allow a community builder who's maybe been in real life and is switching to digital. We don't have to do the Facebook group anymore. You certainly can, but you don't have to. And if it's a paid group, don't you dare. Have you learned nothing from me? Just kidding. You do what works for you, but I'm not joining your paid community if it's hosted on Facebook and I'm probably not your target market so that's also fine, but don't do it. Seriously.

No. Kidding aside, I think the conversation with Richard was fun to talk about where community was, where it is now, where might it be going.

The other big takeaway I had from talking to Richard was just going back to some really basic principles that are so important. And the thing that we talked about a bit that stuck out to me is the power of the survey. I love a good survey. Actually, my team, we've been talking about how do we create essentially a survey program in our communities where trying to figure out what's the cadence.

Once the data, the responses are compiled, where are we putting them and what are we looking at or looking for? What's our level of engagement we're expecting? I'd love to do more beefy annual survey that's longer and takes more time and we have more of a campaign around to get people to fill it out and participate. So we can see from that member lens, are we doing the best we can. Because we have a big busy community and have gotten feedback that it can be hard to find what you're looking for or just get overwhelmed with where to even look. So how can we leverage what our members think or what their experiences are to figure out solutions?

So surveys. I am personally going to be leaning into community surveys a bit more. You'll probably hear me talk about it more. Thank you for indulging me, but also what are you doing? Are you surveying your community on the regular and what does that look like? I'd love to hear. I've talked to a couple people recently about this and it's fun to hear what everyone is doing. So you can hit me up on the Twitter sphere @JillianBenbow. You can also hit @TeamSPI, but tag me in it too so I see it. I don't always see that @TeamSPI's. And yeah, I'd love to further conversation. And with that, have a wonderful day. Thank you for listening. Please like, and subscribe. Share with someone who might be interested if you feel so comfortable. And on that, I will see you next Tuesday.

Learn more about Richard and all the work he does over at FeverBee. That is feverbee.com. And of course you can hit Richard up on Twitter and on the socials he is @RichMillington.

Your lead host for the community experience is me, Jillian Benbow. Our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Our senior producer is David Grabowski. And our editor is Paul Grigoras. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Theme music by David. Grabowski. See you next Tuesday.