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Curate and Scale a Remote Community with Abhishek Bose

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February 11, 2021 01:47

00:00 / 28:12

Dive into how creators can curate and scale online communities as a key
monetisation and engagement lever with Abhishek the chief curator of the
Remote Indian Community. Abhishek is the creator of the RemoteIndian project -
A vibrant community of more than 1400 members in India, some of whom are
working at Doist, Gumroad, Gitlab, Prisma etc. This community enables Indian
professionals to help each other navigate, balance and grow in a remote
career.    Insights from the episode can be translated in context of a
specific show, target audience and value to be provided.   The idea of
normalising remote work in India came after Abhishek found a lot of joy
working remotely as a Ruby on Rails developer in 2016. But he also realised
that loneliness and lack of information is a big problem in remote work and he
thought it would be more fun to solve these unique challenges as a group.
Reach out to Abhishek - Remote Indian - https://remoteindian.com/  e-mail -
[email protected]   Reach out to Naga –  Twitter - @n1n3stuff /
@PassionPeop1 (https://twitter.com/ThePassionPeop1 ) Facebook - The Passion
People Podcast email - [email protected] Instagram -
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Transcript [00:00:00] Abhishek: [00:00:00] I was always curious about this
question, that, okay what is a good life [00:00:04] the interesting part is
now I actually feel heard and I feel understood. And that's the great part
about, , building a community you're scratching your itch, but then you also
realize there are so many other, , human needs, which are being fulfilled.
[00:00:20] The biggest of which is, , being connected with each other
[00:00:23] I wanted to. Take this microphone that I had, and  give it now to
the community  you don't want to be a place where you're the only person
holding the microphone. [00:00:32] I want to keep it as open and accessible
they might,   feel that social debt of sorts to support the community
[00:00:38] Naga S: [00:00:38] H ey Abhishek hello and welcome to the
passionate people podcast. [00:00:41]Abhishek: [00:00:41] Hey Naga, It's my
pleasure to be here. [00:00:43]Naga S: [00:00:43] Abhishek in the current
season. We're talking about creators and how they're monetizing in the context
of COVID and in, in the spectrum of monetization. I believe that community
creation is a very important aspect that a lot of creators either miss out on,
or don't think about it in the right way. [00:01:00]The reason I'm excited to
be talking to you is because you have successfully,  , conceptualized an idea
for a community and scaled it to over a thousand members. So I'm really,
really looking forward to our conversation. [00:01:13]Abhishek: [00:01:13]
Thanks. Thanks for having me, man. [00:01:15] Naga S: [00:01:15] Super. So I
think a good place to start would be just to give our listeners a background
of who you are and also some background on remote Indian and we'll take it
from there. [00:01:24] Abhishek: [00:01:24] I'm a computer science grad passed
out in 2010 and started off working in an MNC.  This was quite a while back.
[00:01:34]I knew that, , this was something which I was always curious about
this question, that, okay what is a good life and somewhere,the feeling was
that going to an office job and,  not having any say in where you could,  ,
work from. I, I felt that wasn't right. [00:01:54] And obviously I am a guy
who likes to pursue my curiosities or [00:02:00] pursue my questions very
seriously. So, that's how,  this whole journey started. It took awhile, but
after three years, I really decided that I needed to shift paths, learn Ruby
on rails, on my own followed a bunch of people on Twitter and. [00:02:16]Saw
that, , they were   developers like me who were making remote , work for them.
And I knew that this was something better than what I had   so that's how  I
started off with my remote journey and in August, 2017, I was working out of a
coworking space in a tropical Island called Colandra. [00:02:43] This is in
Thailand. And I was,  feeling really blessed and this was not the first time
that I had this overwhelming feeling of joy. I had,  , spent two years of
working remote till then, but My fear was that this joy could be short-lived.
I wanted to build some resilience into this, this joy. [00:03:04]So one
example that I,  would like to give is what happens , if my client goes away
or if I lose my job. when I used to speak to my friends their answers weren't,
, very helpful. they would say that you could reach out to recruiters or you
could,  , LinkedIn is a platform that you could use, but then I knew that, the
journey that I was on, it would not work out for me. [00:03:28] And. That's
where, , the idea of remote Indian started it was just a, way to build some
resilience into this remote working career of sorts. And I thought that if I
could be connected to folks who were working  in similar companies  that way,
if they had any open opportunity in the company, chances were that I could
have, , first dibs on it. [00:03:51]So, yeah, but over the past three years of
running the community,  I started this in August, 2017. So I've been doing
this for [00:04:00] more than three years now.  The interesting part is now I
actually feel heard and I feel understood. And that's the great part about, ,
building a community you're scratching your itch, but then you also realize
there are so many other, , human needs, which are being fulfilled. [00:04:17]
The biggest of which is, , being connected with each other.  That's pretty
much, , my story now and we have grown to more than thousand members,
obviously Covid had some role to play there. And as you can see, a lot of
people have now started working remotely and let's see, I think I'm quite
excited to see where, we can go with this [00:04:41]Naga S: [00:04:41] Are you
also continuing your remote job currently or taking care of the community? a
full-time gig? [00:04:47] Abhishek: [00:04:47] I was working till the end of
last year.  I felt that. Remote Indian was something which could be my life's
work. And I had  this financial runway of sorts. Like I had some savings,
which I could, take a leap of faith here by,   trying to see if remote Indian
can be sustainable and. [00:05:08]Yeah, I think this was the year where I, I
hadn't planned that, things were like there would be a pandemic and all of
these uncertainties would come about, but I'm happy to say that this has also
been a great learning experience for me. Like just focusing only on one thing,
which is remote Indian, I think helped me to clarify a lot of ideas.
[00:05:31]Naga S: [00:05:31] You mentioned about having a financial runway
that allowed you to take the jump. Can you elaborate a little bit in terms of
how you thought about it? How long this runway span and why that linked gave
you the comfort? [00:05:45]Abhishek: [00:05:45] Definitely. I am from a very
, normal family. [00:05:48] In my family, nobody understands what I do for a
living. So in order to have that Let's say sanity, I would say like just
having a a [00:06:00] safety net of sorts. [00:06:01] I think that gives you a
lot of , confidence to teach, to do whatever you want to do. So I didn't want
to,  I have that thought behind my head that, Hey, I'm actually, , I don't
have money to pay my bills and things like that. So I had saved around one
year of , my living expenses. [00:06:19] And that's, that's how I kind of
reasoned about it. That if I can get to these nimble number, which was, , $500
MRR, I think that was my minimum viable income. So I thought if I could raise
that number by the end of end of 2020, then. I can, look at doing this more
seriously. Otherwise the idea was to go back to a remote job and do this as a
side project of sorts. [00:06:46] [00:06:46]Naga S: [00:06:46] And are you
close to that number right now? [00:06:50]Abhishek: [00:06:50] Yeah. I just
crossed that number, 10 days back. So yeah, quite excited to finally it is
that milestone and  it might seem like a very small number, but for, for me,
who has been trying to figure this out and make this sustainable, I think this
was a very big win for me. [00:07:10]Naga S: [00:07:10] , can you walk us
through the process that you went about in terms of scaling remote Indian
from. , from this, you essentially right to where it is today, how did you
think about the values that the community stood for and what were some of your
thoughts at the start and how, how are you thinking about the same thing?
[00:07:30]Abhishek: [00:07:30] As I mentioned right at the start, it was just
about. Building my own network of sorts. Like I was kind of building my own
LinkedIn rather than using LinkedIn as a platform. I was kind of, , under the
impression that I needed to do this, my own way. But over this period of time,
as I've, started to enjoy [00:07:53]This idea of building a community, the
three things that have worked for me, one of the first things [00:08:00] was
having some rituals. So the examples that I like to share your is  we have.
These zoom calls every Saturday wherein I would either invite a guest and we
could talk about a very unique challenge. [00:08:17] So that was one of the
things that, , build that habit, around which, the community could be built.
The second example for a ritual would be the weekly newsletter that I send
out. That was again, helpful that. I, was resurfacing the most valuable
conversations happening in the, in the community because a lot of people
wouldn't, , necessarily check Slack every week. So for them, this newsletter
was a way to kind of, catch up with what things are going on. So these rituals
were very important. I think every community needs to have some rituals which
can hold the community together. [00:08:53]Then the second thing, which I
would like to mention is that I. Highlighted the folks whose, whose behavior I
wanted to promote in the community.  There were some people who have been very
integral,  pillars  in this community and just giving them a voice or
acknowledging their behavior. [00:09:14]I think it gives you that That freedom
or license to, , also feel that, okay, you're part of this and that's
something , which has, , helped me a lot. So every time somebody has sent a
pull request or every time somebody has collaborated with me on a particular
project, I have, made it a very clear intention of,  giving them a shout out
or maybe sending them an Amazon voucher or something to, , make sure that this
is,  ,  what I would like. [00:09:42] I don't want to be the lone Wolf here.
And third it's a thing, which is important to me is that , being very
authentic, I did not want to do something which felt uncomfortable to me. I
knew for sure that if this was [00:10:00] going to be sustainable, then I
cannot, , be trying to be something which I'm not   someday,  that facade will
go away. [00:10:08] And that's where I knew that I did not want to be very
outgoing. I was comfortable in one-to-one conversations. So that's the medium
which I chose and. I felt that helped me to,  sustain because we go, sometimes
you won't get burnt out. Right. If you're trying to do something, which is
very different from what you are. [00:10:28] These are the key ways.  I've,
tried to make this work. [00:10:32]Naga S: [00:10:32] Ritual that helps keep
the community together. Incentivizing good behavior. And staying true to your
authentic self. Like these are the things that have worked for you. Can you
also share some of the things that you tried that did not work.
[00:10:44]Abhishek: [00:10:44] I used to think in that solution mindset,  I
would learn something new. There will be some  no-code platform maybe, which I
came across and I thought that, Hey, why can't they use this to , build a
member directory of things like that. [00:10:57]But later on, these things
wouldn't work out and that's, that's something which, which I realize. Second,
I would say was the idea of having these body goals. The intention was to,
connect people within the community, but I realized that it was a very passive
way of doing it in the sense that people had to take the responsibility of
Making sure that they can book a calendar reaching out to the other person,
things like that. [00:11:27] So I would say generally,  things that have
worked out where I have been very active and. The places where things haven't
worked out wherein I have tried to, , scale too early, like I've tried to
build a product Institute a system even before,  qualifying that there is a
problem. [00:11:46] So I think that's a great learning on this. Yeah.
[00:11:50] Naga S: [00:11:51] That makes sense. So, in terms of your journey,
right? If I'm, if I'm drawing a parallel to what a creator does versus what
you do, typically creators [00:12:00] go. Through this  creating content,
distributing content, creating a community around the content. [00:12:06]
However, I think your journey is unique in the sense that you created the
community and then you're creating content that caters to the community,
whether it's the weekly newsletter, whether it is, how do you keep the
community engaged by having these regions? [00:12:20]Abhishek: [00:12:20] As
of now, I think that's the,  system that I'm following wherein I'm using
whatever content is being created in,  Slack to create my newsletter . But I
would say that these  different stages  earlier I used to write a newsletter
where the content would be. [00:12:36] Fully created by me. So initially I
will,  for any community to work out, you need to have a, and number of
people, again can be a number between hundred and two 50, depending on, , how
the early adopters are. So in, in my case, I started off with a newsletter
wherein I, I used to just. [00:12:59]Write down my experiences and  talk about
the challenges that I faced or, the thoughts that I had,  over a period of
time, I think,  it became a little narcissistic and I realized  I would burn
out doing this and that's where the shift happened when I wanted to. Take this
microphone that I had, and I wanted to give it now to the community and, , I
wanted them to ask, , but again,  there's a time and place for this. I would
say we can keep switching between content and community. You don't want to be
a place where you're the only person holding the microphone. [00:13:34] And.
You also want to make sure that maybe, ,  the community feels that they also
have a voice and they are being heard. Does that make sense? [00:13:43] Naga
S: [00:13:43] Yeah, absolutely. It makes a lot of sense, because like you
said, when you're making a lot of the  content yourself, right.
[00:13:49]You're trying to bring about certain insights. You're trying to
bring about so many things that may be there, or you could be imagining them.
What you're doing is you're Meta curating the newsletter, right. From content
that's already [00:14:00] there, that the community has already made that I'm
sure makes people feel heard and , feel like they're recognized. [00:14:06] I
remember one of those weeks where I was one of the top contributors and I was
like, Hey, it made me feel nice.   Seeing your name, they're feeling
recognized and I'm sure that, , it's going in the right direction because I
definitely felt good being there. [00:14:18] That's something that I've
specifically noticed in remote Indian,  I've been a part of communities in the
past where all of the communities have always been focused on themselves. It's
all about taking, however, remote Indian is a first place where people were so
willing to give. And that is something that really in my mind set it apart
from all of the other communities that have been a part of in the past,
[00:14:41] they're so willing to answer a question to hop on a call  really
support each other. So what, what was it that you did apart from, having the
ritual , incentivizing the good behaviors? Was there anything else that you
did in order for the community to. [00:14:54] Always be in this pay it paid
forward kind of mindset. [00:14:56]Abhishek: [00:14:56] I'm not sure what has
worked to be honest, but I genuinely feel, , one of the good things which I
did was having these lenghty phone conversations with some of the members the
early members and stopped doing it because now there are so many people.
Earlier, I used to just ping them , on Slack and just start a conversation.
[00:15:19] And then I would call them up. And in fact those were the places
where it  solidified the first  pillars of the community.  A community cannot
stand only on,  the shoulder of,  one person. [00:15:34]So people  embody that
spirit and. Then over a period of time.  They transferred that same spirit
with, with other members. And that's how  spirit has been carried forward.
[00:15:48] Yeah. [00:15:48] Naga S: [00:15:49] In a lot of ways, it really
just seems like a startup, right? Because your first few hires decide a lot
about the way the culture of the organization is shaped. And it seems like
it's similar in [00:16:00] community building as well, because what you've
essentially done is that you've set the tone. [00:16:03] You've set the
context, you've set the values that you hold dear. And you've made sure that
the , earlier adopters of the community are able to follow that. I know that
those are the efforts that are now paying off as the community scales
[00:16:16] Abhishek: [00:16:17] In my case, I would say that there have been
very, lucky breaks which have happened. And I'm, I'm grateful that, , I've
come across people like you who have come into the community at the right
moment and, share your knowledge. [00:16:32] And that's how things have
evolved. [00:16:33] Naga S: [00:16:33] Well, one of the other things that I
also wanted to get a thought, is  what are the things that  people should keep
in mind when they're growing their community, maybe from like the first few
members to the first 50 or a hundred. [00:16:45] And then how does that evolve
over time? Because I'm sure that, two years down the line,  your priorities
are different than from where you started and they're going to be different. ,
as you grow, [00:16:54] how do you see that transition? And what are the,
different things that, you focused on till now? And what will you be focusing
on in the future? [00:17:00] Abhishek: [00:17:00] I think, ,  the, the most
important thing for any person who is doing this from scratch would be to. The
a hundred or two 50 people, that's the magic number, which of sorts where in
the community actually feels like a community. Nobody wants to hang out in a
ghost town. Right?   . [00:17:17] Great part about building your own thing.
You can make a lot of mistakes and just say that you learn from them. So if I
had to do it again, I would definitely, , focus more on distribution. I would
say if you are creating value, I think an example would help you in remote
Indians case. [00:17:35]One of the things that,  could have been done or,  ,
like it was done to some degree was curation of knowledge.  There's so much
content being thrown around on the internet about remote work. So if I had to
really get my first hundred or,  get the attention of first a hundred to two
50 people, I would spend some time creating value. [00:17:57]Curating this
content. I think that's the [00:18:00] easiest way to spark, a conversation of
sorts. And once you have those number of people, I think then the, the
question is that if you , sometimes an audience makes sense. You can just, ,
keep it as a, as a newsletter of sorts. [00:18:15] The important question is
that   do you feel  the value of the project going to increase. If you
activate all these nodes,  there are two 50 people now in your newsletter and
let's say, , you give everybody a voice now, if they feel that, okay, now we
also can participate in this process of creation.  That's the way to go about
it.  I did it to some degree, but it took a really long time for me.
[00:18:37] I think it took me almost two years to get to 250 members. So
that's something which  I would,  say is one of the key learning points,
getting to your first 250 members very quickly.  , you can use Twitter,
Instagram, , any of the places where folks are already hanging. [00:18:52]How
things have changed. I feel that there's, there's this constant dance between
being very personal.  Having these phone conversations  with specific members,
so you have to keep that element also there, but at the same time, you have to
also think about scale. [00:19:09]So there's this constant,  dance that any
community manager has to do   you don't necessarily want to, take that
personal element away, but at the same time, just to make sure that more
people can find value, you have to start thinking in those elements. So that
could mean instituting some systems that could mean,  identifying people who
can run the community on your behalf, you don't necessarily need to be the
only one who moderates the community. [00:19:38]. You want to identify other
leaders as well.  Iterations are the only way to, , figure it out what works
and what doesn't and feel if you can do these small experiments.
[00:19:49]That helped me a lot.  I would maybe ship a small product and see
whether it resonates with the community or not.  Do these zoom calls almost on
a,  weekly basis. At the [00:20:00] end of the day it's it's consistency.  How
consistent you are, how persistent you are with this. [00:20:04] Naga S:
[00:20:05] You said it's about bringing value to the community. And initially
you brought value to the community by curating content around remote work. And
right now I see value being driven to the community by the numerous  remote
work opportunities that get posted on the sander, the ability to interact with
experts and get that clarified, which could. [00:20:25]In most other
circumstances would be paid advice,  and people are only giving advice because
it's that important in community. Now, the community members are deriving
value. You've got  a critical mass of 250 people or a thousand people. How
should. Community managers think about monetizing because in the start you
mentioned that you've hit kind of  a target milestone of $500 of MRR.
[00:20:49] It is an interesting way of putting it, but  how did you think
about monetization and, any thoughts in terms of how community managers should
think about value and how that value can be translated into  monetary
contribution for the community manager, especially for folks who want to do
this for time, like you. [00:21:07]Abhishek: [00:21:07] This is definitely the
thing that I've struggled the most.  I've seen many people run, paid
communities where. They would just have a paywall of sorts that if you want to
join the Slack community, you have to pay this membership fee. I wasn't sure
that, I could do that because I don't have that pedigree [00:21:27]so that's
one of the things that I realized, and I also,  read this book called gift
economy. And there's the other, another one, which is big magic. So the big, I
guess, learning that I've gotten, , from, from reading these two books is that
creativity shouldn't be responsible for paying my bills. [00:21:51]So now what
I'm trying to do is using a donation based business model, and there are a
couple of products which are,  my favorites. One [00:22:00] is Wikipedia and
the other is Khan Academy. I think those two products have shown the way
[00:22:06]I am experimenting with this similar kind of model because for
different people,  will find different utility out of it. Right. And secondly,
I want to keep it as open and accessible. For some members, they might not
have the means right now, but they could use the community to improve their
financial situation later on. [00:22:28] They might, feel that social debt of
sorts to support the community. That's the thesis of sorts. And recently I
came across this Version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for a creator. This
was shared by Le Jin. If she's the one who  coined, the term Passion Economy.
[00:22:47] So what she says is that the  first level is the fulfillment that
you get from creating. That's where somebody has to start from.  You cannot
start from monetization, for any creative project. So one has to,  Have that
fulfillment, that should be the number one reason for creating anything.
[00:23:02]then you go on and build an audience or a community. And the third
level is, which is basically,  Nirvana. So it's, this is monetization.  If we
can crack that bit. I think you have reached the top level and it's
definitely, a blessing, if you can get paid [00:23:20] Still a long way to go,
man. I feel this is, this is just a start. People are figuring out different
ways and models and not one way can necessarily,  be considered the golden
standard of sorts. So for me, I'm, going with this idea of the gift economy,
I'm trying to put out work, I'm trying to,  share as much knowledge , make as
many  connections as possible. [00:23:46] The thesis is that people will find
enough value to become patrons. And that's what has, happened. I now have
more than 40 patrons who are, supporting me. So there's no fixed amount that
you have to pay it's depending on what they feel,  the [00:24:00] value that
you're getting. [00:24:00] It's a very interesting kind of a model. And I  I
would like to,  double down on this. [00:24:05]Naga S: [00:24:05] As we wrap
up our episode for people who are listening in where can they join the Remote
Indian community and get to see and experience the magic that you do that. And
also , any closing thoughts. [00:24:17]Abhishek: [00:24:17] I think people can
go to the website, remote indian.com. [00:24:21]That's the main landing page
for the community. And once they sign up there, they will receive an invite to
the Slack group. That's essentially the home of the remote Indian community
right now. Closing thoughts would be that we are kind of living in an
Renaissance era of sorts where, this is a Renaissance era for creators, and
I'm quite excited to see, , the possibilities that more and more platforms are
being built. [00:24:50] It's essentially becoming easier to do this as a full-
time thing. So I am quite curious and excited to,  see how the world, the,
passionate economy or the creator economy evolves [00:25:06] Naga S:
[00:25:06] fantastic. I think you've shared some really great insights, basic
things in terms of hiding that creators are curating. The first community need
to keep in mind and also, , a lot of good input in terms of what worked for
you and what didn't. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Read more
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