why do people keep doing this w/ kelley griggs, founder of britepeer

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me social media at tdsntdesseyn. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. that's why I'm here so. All right here we go. Oh shoot. We're live. Hello everybody. Good morning. I'm a little slow this morning. We're going. We're getting it. Say hey. Very excited. You know what listen I say this all the time. I don't really have any buzzword. I don't really have any like word replacements. I'm always excited.

The reason why I'm excited every day is because I get to talk really fucking cool people like Kelly. And this is my job. Like literally I'm so blessed that gun has allowed me to be a professional, I'd never. If you would have told speech impediment Taylor in the fifth grade that you're gonna run your mouth for a living online, I would have stuttered and laughed at you at the same time, but here we are. So for those of you who welcome, good morning, happy Monday, I know it's gonna take a second to obviously get people in here, but really excited to say, hey, this is a networking platform.

We're gonna talk about community. Kelly is very passionate about community building. And we're gonna talk about today, but one of the big things about community building is networking, right? You need to be present, you need to say, hey, so please do that. Kelly and I would love to hear from you. I know also LinkedIn, I'm gonna check LinkedIn too. All right, cool. Here we go, sweet. I was getting worried. LinkedIn's had some major lag, so. All right, so say hey, all right, so we got people in, so that's good, that's positive. Second thing, ask questions. In my opinion, I think Kelly does a fantastic job of being very authentic, true to herself, and creating community around that.

And so, again, this is gonna be more community-focused conversation so please ask questions. And again, TikTok, thanks for tuning in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Also, I wanna let y'all know, a little strategy real quick. Kelly, we're gonna get some social media strategy real quick. I am not streaming anymore to YouTube. So you have to catch the lives on pretty much and a platform but YouTube, we are undergoing a massive, massive data dump, I guess you could say, on YouTube. And we're getting rid of a lot of my content. We're gonna restructure a lot of my content on YouTube to make it more digestible. YouTube is kind of a wasteland for me.

It's been three years of just crazy amount of content. And so we're gonna edit that. That's just a quick announcement. What else? Say hey, ask questions, be engaged. Let's see here, what else? I wanna give a shout out to that conference, the official coffee sponsor of the show. drinking it right now. I'm drinking half cap. So half of it is Clark sells that conference. The other half is decaf Clark. Once you get decaf beans, I'll have fully that conference in my cup. But until then it'll be half cap for now. Also again, shout out to Gunio for just honestly providing me just a great place to land.

I appreciate appreciate the team of time. Robert's good to see you Mike Brady, John Joseph Chris. It's good to see you. It's good to see you. All right. I think that's everything. I'm going to feel a little discombobulated this morning. But can I help you? How are you? I'm great. I'm great. Everything's wonderful. Starting off Monday. Doing wonderful. I myself have mushroom coffee. So I was about to ask you, are you a coffee? Because I know a lot of people are getting off coffee. My wife's off coffee. I know there's kind of this trend. I know. I know. I was always a child. I don't know if I could do it.

Like, like if you told me I had to go pure decaf, I'd go be even pure decaf, but I just love the taste of coffee so much. But you're off. Have you, were you on coffee and got off coffee? Yeah. Because that looked like. Yeah. Yeah. So it's having like two, three cups a day and it's just too much for me, my little heart. No, listen, I get that high anxiety. You know, one of the reasons I'm not that y'all really care. We're just going to chit chat it up for a second. I did a little physical like two or three years ago. and the girl that I was doing it with, she was like, hey, are you stressed a lot?

I was like, yeah, always, why? And she was like, your quarters all levels are through the roof and this will hold another conversation for health and fitness. But essentially I've been trying to bring my quarters all levels down and I have. And a lot of that is half-calf and decaf, but also when I do speak at conferences, I am full-calf and I am just ready to go. So I'm John. Well, I have to say, I haven't given up coffee yet. I just sort of incorporated mushroom coffee into my daily routine. And then when I go out and meet people, I still drink coffee. But I've noticed ever since I moved, I don't know if this is placebo or if this is real, who knows, but it's working for me, so I'm gonna keep doing it.

Whenever I drink the mushroom coffee, it feels, the taste is pretty good. I've rise, I don't know, mud water, any of those would work for us in Madics and other ones. Anytime I drink it, it took a while, okay, it took like a week to get used to it because it is like a much more mild taste. And you're gonna taste it and be like, this is water that's like slightly flavor. You know, at first you're just like, it's not the same. It's because it's not, it's just not. After, if you give yourself maybe like three or four days on it, you start to really enjoy it.

And now I choose it over coffee because it just makes me feel really good throughout the day. I don't know how to describe it, but it makes me feel like awake, but like in a slower, it just feels slower. It doesn't feel like a lease. Instead of just caffeine, it just gets you in the head and then you're just like dizzy for about four hours and you crash. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I like it. I like it. Well, we'll see. There might be like something coming out in two years. It's just like, it's all a lie and it doesn't nothing for you. Sure. Sure. We'll see.

Yeah. So sorry. So let's dive in. This is not a coffee or mudwater podcast. This is a community and job search podcast. So Kelly, let's get to people what they want. What do you do? Who are you and it will go from there? Yes. So I'm the founder of a Slack bot called Bright Pier. It's a company. Beyond that, I run a community. The community is called Startup Nash. And the community piece has been a baby of mine since around 2019. And we've just sort of exploded from there. and we've sort of moved into, you know, we've been growing for the past like four or five years.

And then most recently we've come up with a product. So I want to talk about both of those things today. Yeah, I love that. So so one of the things so Kelly and I were chatting backstage and I was like, what do you want to talk about? And we said she was talking about commuting. She was like, she was like, yeah, I want to talk about people like, why do people keep doing this? And I was like, that's a great title to the podcast. So that's obviously what today's title is. So Kelly, why community? Why do people keep creating them? What are your thoughts on the people creating them?

Are they mostly good? Are they mostly bad? Interested to hear your honest thoughts and feedback this morning. Love it. I love it. So I'm just going to give you my experience. Okay, so because I think there's a lot of stuff at play. I think like maybe post pandemic could be at play. I think, you know, the world, the way the jobs are changing could be at play. And then, you know, city issues like But for me, back in 2018, I was looking for a job. I was also pregnant. We were on... Do you remember getting on daycare waiting lists? Do you remember that? We're still on.

I mean, I mean, like, I have a three-year-old and like, literally, we visited a school and they're like, you have to sign up now. And we were like, what? It's nuts. Yeah. It's insane. It was so insane. And I know you live in Hendersonville, but we were in Davidson County at the time. We finally got our first son into daycare in the middle of the pandemic in Hendersonville. We had to go outside of Davidson County, go to Hendersonville to like, yeah. Oh, it's crazy. So that really kicked it off though for me because, you know, I was, I had this little, you know, little infant with me or, you know, he was, he was growing, but you know, this was his first year of life.

I did not have a job. I, I had to do it my way. I had to, I had to play to my strength. So that was my first strategy when I was looking for a new job. I have to play with my strengths. I can't go to a coffee shop and meet. I can't network the way that I used to do. I can't show up at these events. And instead of thinking about all the things that I couldn't do, I tried to focus on, okay, well, what can I do? I'm a marketer. I know how to get online. I know how to get people together.

Or wait, was it? Yeah, I see Chris Jar, yeah, it's crazy. I wish there, oh, side note, I wish there were way more daycares and Davidson County and surrounding areas. If you want to make money, do a daycare. Yeah, yeah, try at least. Or even drop off care, like anyway. Something. Yeah, so it turned into, well, at first it was a newsletter and it was called launch letter. That was like the first iteration of this. And I profiled people, just like leaders in the community. Some of them were CEO, some of them were startups. And then that, I quickly, it's not that I didn't get bored of it.

It was really interesting and I liked the people. But I kind of thought like, okay, this is still just like, it's me talking to these people. They're, I did it in a really clever way. I did, I just gave them a text interview. The questions were the same every time. It wasn't something that I had to like get on the phone with them and talk about, they just pulled it out and I would publish it. So that was the first thing I did. then I quickly thought like, okay, I wish these people could just talk to each other because it would be cool if I could do more networking and less interviewing.

So that's how it morphed into, what if I just like got my buddies on Slack and we just like talked through tech and startups and yeah, problems and solutions and stuff like the daycare thing, like maybe we could, you know, maybe this, maybe the Slack is about just like solving problems together. Yeah. So that's how it started. And then that eventually got big enough where I invited someone onto the Slack. And she got on there and we were talking about problems and solutions. And she, I don't know how it led to this, but she dropped the job posting in the Slack and was like, hey, by the way, we're looking for a product marketing manager.

And I was like, oh, this is like, this is me. like this is, wow, this is cool, this is me. And I applied and I got it. That's awesome. So it kind of, it solves my own immediate problem. It solves the, hey, I'm doing it my own way. I can't go to network with people. Let's do the community and then the community led me to the job. So I guess it's like part one. You know, it helped me find a job in a different way. So if you are, for some reason stuck at home, you're caretaking, you're caring for a child, caring for a parent, caring for a spouse, or you're just doing something, you have a part time job and you want to change careers, you just don't have the time to like do something in real life.

You know, maybe starting some kind of community is worth it on a personal level. Yeah, 100%. I want to gather so many ways to take this my brain spending. So yeah, so let me ask you this. What are your thoughts on community right now, and especially meetups and conferences coming back. You know, I spoke down in Atlanta last Wednesday. Yeah, had a great conversation with the two guys who run that meetup. And we up so they speak internationally a lot. And we were talking about you over in Europe and how everybody's wide open conferences are booming in Europe. Like the more like more and more conversations are getting started in booming.

Meetups are crazy out there. And then over here, it seems like no one wants to leave their house still. Conferences are still suffering in the U.S., meetups are still suffering in the U.S. I've talked to a lot of conference organizers are struggling. Why do you think that isn't again? There's no wrong answers. Hot takes only on this Monday morning. Hot takes only. Okay. Hot takes only. But like why do you think, and Robert by the way, I see your question. I'll get to it here very, very soon. So I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? Wow, that's a fascinating question. The immediate answer is, I think that, well, look, I can only pull from my personal experiences for Nashville.

I know for me in Nashville, I got two young kids, so that's maybe part of it, where I'm just like picking, I still want to be in real life with people. I really do. It's the thing that like, there's something that I miss about all the time having something to do and somewhere to go, I have to be very, very careful with the things that I'm accepting to do because, you know, 5'30, 7'30 is now like prime, bed, bath, storytime, hanging out with my kids. But that's not to say that I like, I want to go. So I try to plan, I try to strike a balance personally.

But I think there maybe are some issues depending on what city you're in. You know, you may have just realized in the pandemic, oh, traffic traffic is terrible. Like I don't like driving an hour and like going to this thing or especially you and I up here in Hendersonville, Gallatin area. Yeah, absolutely. Like down to Franklin, you know, I'm probably not going to go to Franklin for very many things. I say that was a swift. It's got to be hosting a meeting and people and I'll go down there. Right. Right. Definitely. So I think for some people it might just be a small change and you know where they are and what they're choosing to do but that said um I think people got too comfortable being at home yeah maybe yeah I mean I think it would be good for some people to maybe like get out a little bit you know like this one talked about at the meetup last week in Atlanta is as they were saying you know so meetups originally you were already at work.

So I worked in Brentwood, I worked in Brentwood for nine of the 12 years, right? I was in the office. So it's like I was already down there and I was gonna hit traffic. So I would just text my wife like, hey, I'm gonna go to a meetup. And that's what we talked about at the meetup last week. It's just like, everybody was already out in the office. So then people would just be like, hey, honey, I'm just gonna stop by this meetup and just grab dinner there and just come home. But now we're all at home and we got to put our pants to leave the house.

Yes. Yes. It's yeah. It's a nurse. It is a mess. It is a mess. It is a mess. Y'all get out of the house, support your meetups, support your conferences. Support your local meetups. Definitely. Definitely get out. Seriously. All right. So let's dive into, I still want to keep talking about community for a second. Yes. Yeah. Let's keep going. Yeah. What makes a good community? Right? Like what is a community? Is it big? Is it small? What makes a good one? Talk about that. I think the best ones just have goals. Like they know what they're going after. See, so first, so I started mine under like odd pretenses.

It kind of pivoted. I call it start of Nash. So I had something in mind of like, hey, I want to talk to the community that I have interest in being a founder. There was something there. But you know, my my secret goal was like, oh, maybe I could get a a job from this. And I achieved my personal goal. But then, you know, I saw this other, it was like I wasn't done yet. Like, okay, so I got a job. That's cool. But I named it startup Nash. Aren't I supposed to be doing something with startups and Nashville? Like, so, you know, having goals and understanding what the group's purpose is, what people will be getting out of the the group when they join, what their expectations might be and how the group is deciding to fill those expectations.

I think that's it. That's the most important part. Because if you get in there and you don't have a goal, you got a lot of people sitting around, they're not really sure, groups are kind of hyped up right now. There's the curiosity factor. They want to get inside to see what's going on. But once you get in, this is how a lot of groups die. like communities die within, they can die within minutes, you know, because they go dead. And part of it is because you've got a community that sounded really cool on the outside, but then you let everybody in and you didn't really have a goal.

And that's tough. Yeah, 100%. So there's some questions here I do want to get to. Robert, kind of going, oh, this is kind of going on the networking on LinkedIn side. And again, if you all have questions, please ask them, because we'll be glad to answer them. When networking on LinkedIn, should I limit my connection request to just a tech field of checks at the mall, John comes in here and goes, I wouldn't turn on anyone. I've had two tech jobs for companies that would be considered non tech companies. I'm sure you're here. Here are your thoughts, Kelly, on this. I have thoughts, but you're the guest.

So I'm going to let you talk about it. Yeah. So, so he's, he's asking, should I accept anybody? Should I limit my connection? Basically. Yeah. Oh, because it's a strategy. I get to ask this a lot. Like what's your strat, what's your LinkedIn connection? I mean, there's a strategy. This is a great question. So I usually accept, if they are a real person, who I scan them for like, if they're selling me something. And it's so hard nowadays too, because everybody's like, I don't know if this is just me, because I'm in the founder world, or if this happens to everybody, probably happens to everybody.

But people will tell me like, I'm the founder of sales, greatbigsales.com or something like that. And I'm like, okay, you know, are you setting or are you not? That's my first thing. Of course, it's probably everybody's first thing. But in terms of tech and non-tech, look, I think it's about interests. Like I'm interested in Nashville as a community. So I probably would accept, I definitely would accept people who are not in tech, but they're from Nashville. And they like have gone to a couple of events. I recognize them definitely because like, they need help too, they need work too. They know people too. It's still kind of small town mentality here.

And if you're thinking bigger on a regional or larger scale, which you should, to me, if you're non-tech, you could do your own extra vetting. But if you're in a tech field and you're looking at a non-tech person, I like to look at like, oh, well, what is their strategy like? Like, what are they doing? Are they just interesting? Are they talking about things that's gonna teach me something? So that's just my personal way of looking at it. Yeah, I had TikTok comments. Sean comes in here, my LinkedIn strategy, just throw everything to the wall and see what sticks. I mean, listen, I get, so I always bring up the job search and dating.

My wife and I met on Tinder, okay? As men, there's two different Tinder strategies. What are they? Swipe on everything or be selective, right? And so again, it's what you wanna do, Robert. I think right now, I think the wider the net, the better, right, wider the better. Yeah, I'll see you here. Jeff so going back to meetups here and again Sean thank you for that thank you for that comment He just goes swipe baby. Um, so cost of travel added to the necessity to travel when events were fine virtually You have a broader pool of speakers doing virtual as well as no one Yeah, I mean I think it's interesting I mean I want to give a shout to the North Atlanta JavaScript user group I mean they hooked me up and covered my travel down last week and you just don't see a lot of meetups doing that And so I definitely think like the ease of virtual is good, but I just Kelly, how does a virtual meetup create community?

Yeah, that's a great question. What's your biggest piece of advice for that? So to me, it's all about, so this is also a difference between LinkedIn and then maybe private or semi-private groups. Like I would consider startup Nash, like semi-private. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you still gotta like submit and like to get on, you just can't handle it all, right? Exactly, exactly. So a big difference is on LinkedIn, and you know, people are using LinkedIn, however they want to, but the tendency of LinkedIn is sort of like, here's what I did, or here's what I'm doing, or here's what I'm working with. And sometimes in these, like, my private groups, it's more about what you need to get done or like asks and offers, it's not so centrally focused on like, it's almost like Instagram versus other platforms.

Like on Instagram, you're showing the very best version of your personal life. And on LinkedIn, you're showing the very best version of your professional life. I think people maybe if you watch my vlogs Right your blogs are so great. That's why I did it. That's why I did it. Yeah, cuz you're cutting the noise like that's genius It's genius and then in startup Nash. It's more like here's what I need to get done like who can help Who can I who's who can help me or like what can I offer? so and I Don't know it's just a it's a different way of like looking it's a different way of looking at things So in terms of virtual events and like how that might help, I always run a virtual event of somebody.

Like people will ask me, I might get like two or three or four requests of like, hey, like can someone help me go over my resume, for example. And this is a real situation where a couple of people were asking me because they just had big tech layoffs. Well, I know someone in the group who does like free resume review. So I was like, hey, like could you do like a webinar or something about like free resume review and like go over a couple of these people's resumes. She was like, yeah, that would be awesome. So it's just much more intentional and it almost like comes from the group first.

And then I make a virtual thing and it's supposed to be giving back to the group. It's just a little bit different way of doing things and honestly it has mixed results. Like sometimes it works really well. Sometimes not as many people need the thing as I thought and we just sort of go from there. So this is an interesting thing, Steven. I'm really glad you brought this up because this is something we're doing at Gun I.O. Do you all think where a meetup is hosted effects participation? So I will tell you this, Stephen, I've had this conversation and I'm just going to say this out loud.

At Gun I.O. we want to be known as a luxury, if there is a luxury brand for engineers, we want to be known as that. All of our meetups are going to be at swanky spots, right? Our last meetup is at the top of the Grand Hyatt. we're already looking at for those of you, we're doing another, we're calling it the saloon because we're a little gun IO type situation, right? We're gonna have that bad idea probably in East Nashville. So my friend Alex Birch opened up a wine bar. I would check it out. We're gonna do a really cool hip spots. I think people are tired of meeting in another office space after working in the office and getting pizza.

Yeah. And so what we're doing at gun is we are not, We are not gonna have a average meetup. We are not gonna have speakers. We want you to network and have a chance to meet great engineers in a really, really bad asset. Thoughts Kelly? Sorry. I had to go. Yeah, well, first of all, I'm ready. I'm ready for the saloon. Yeah, you are. Yeah. I'm ready. No barrel guns. But yeah, I agree. You gotta get, it's gotta be a different environment. It's gotta be like. I think you were tired of that. I think that's why I think a lot of people, a lot of this is failing.

Yeah. I mean, it feels like, if it feels like work, you know, you're making the move get out of your house like, feeling the last thing people want is just like, Oh, this feels exhausting. Like this is exactly the same as going into an office. So yeah, and be mindful of parking. So I'm really particular about my events. We pick places where the parking is easy. Listen, listen, listen, listen, if parking is not easy, I'm out. Don't invite me to your party. Right. If parking sucks, we, it ain't happening. Right. So it's not, it's not, it's, it's getting harder too, and Nashville for that. And yeah, that's the way where'd you say it was any snack?

Where's the bad idea? It's in one of the churches that got demolished. It's over there by Do you remember where flower shop used to be? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Over there. Okay. That's cool. Yeah, that's great. Let's see here. Yeah, John, connect with everyone all the time. Sean, I see you on TikTok. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, we'd love to come on your podcast. Let me know. Let's see here. Chris, hey, Chris, shout out for the new We're all big dog. Shout out for the new role. I see you. Do you have something to say? Sorry. I have one more thing. It's one more thing.

I gotta do some shout outs. So, so we can know. We're not ending yet. We're not ending yet. No. Good, good, good. Good, good, good. You shout out. Just tell me, just tell me. Okay, so one cool thing about Startup Nash is there's a lot, you know, and by the way, if people in here want to join Startup Nash, it's free to join. It's on Slack. What's the like website or URL? Yeah, it's www.startupnash.com. I'm gonna throw it up in banner. Yeah, and look, I know some people, I saw someone from Nebraska on here. Look, it's being a Nashville, it's not a requirement. A lot of things are local, so we talk about local issues, local things from time to time, but you're more than welcome to join.

But yeah, in Start of Nash, there are a lot of cool founders. And I just wanted to pretty quickly talk about just a few of them. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so Rhonda Kamen, she was one of the first members of Startup Nash before, like, I wanna say like first 10 members of Startup Nash, she's amazing. She owns this place called One Shop Nashville. It's a bodega, collects, connects local and filmmakers with new intramers. She's also the founder of Perfectly Cordial. I don't know if you've heard of that. It's like mixed, it's not mixed drinks, it's mixed, premixed. I think so. I think they're really clean like branding.

Yeah. Yes, she does a great job. She does a great job. Brian Daly, I don't know if you know him. I know that name. OK, so he's also, I think he's an admin on Nash dev. OK. Brian, oh, Brian is amazing. He used to be the CTO at Strata-Zan. Now he's the founder of Calendoristic. It's org-wide meeting metrics. So it's pretty cool. I got to try it out. He's great. You should definitely interview him. He's cool. Well, I was about to say, I actually need a guest for Thursday to be honest with you. I need my guest bail for unicorn founders Thursday. So if you don't mind firing off an email after this and maybe we can get a one.

Yes, absolutely. Sharon Burgess. So she's in an incubator with me. She made all cooks, founder of all cooks. It's an app community making meaningful connections around love of food. We're making a dent in security. All cooks at app.com is her website. And then David, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I always read his name online. I should have asked for pronunciations, but vet verify. So you may know them because they won 3686 pitch competition. Oh, did they really? This year. Yeah, yeah, this year, yeah. Yeah, they won the pitch competition. It's vet verified. It's a technology company that delivers instant verified proof of pet vaccination. And then one more shout out, Kato, Neil.

Man, she's awesome. I love Kato. I love Kato. Yeah, teaming, building teams at work. So these are just like a few people I asked like, hey, who's here? Like who can I talk about? These are a few people that reach back out to me and said like, you could talk about me. But there's tons of us. There's 560 of us. And the whole thing about startup Nash is look, you don't know about the startup community at Nashville. Join startup Nash. are here. We're talking about it. We're talking about our startups. We're talking about how to solve problems within startups. So, that's what it is. There's so much talk to you about.

Real quick, I want to go to your post. So, all right. So here's what we're going to here's how we're going to wrap it up. We're going to talk about this. One thing we're going to talk about bright peer for a second. Yeah. Yeah. And then we're going to end on a few questions that I asked, right? Real quick. You posted something about the startup scene in Nashville and why it sucks. You actually didn't say that specifically. Those are my words. I do want to say that. I'm so glad I did. And I said, because there's no marketing, there's no community. And I think you're fixing a community aspect.

When I say marketing, I mean, as a city, I think the city of Nashville sucks at marketing. Like I didn't even know about that 3686 conference. Like there's got to be some sort of, and maybe there is, maybe I'm not a part of it, but there's There's got to be a newsletter or something for the Bitcoin conference was here. I didn't know about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got to do a better job at saying like, here's all the upcoming events. Here's all. Man, I used to do that. I used to do that when I used to write. I wrote a blog about all that.

I'd sign up. I'd sign up. Yeah. So anyway, yes, you're right. You're right. You're going to get me in trouble, but you're right. You're right. We could do better at marketing all this stuff. and there's probably ways to do that. And it's so wild. I feel like I grew up in the scene. Like I came from Kentucky and I moved here. And I worked up. What part could that be? So I'm originally from Georgetown, Kentucky. Shout out, Lexington, Kentucky area. I went to school at Western Kentucky University. So. So it's a life for a year. Really? Yes. All the best people go to Western. It's just a fact.

They're like, just to give you a story. It's okay. So anyway, yeah, I feel like I grew up in the scene and Nashville's startup scene. And I've seen a lot. And some of the things I think we could do better is connecting each other, you know, talking about what the scene is doing, what's going on here. But over all of those things, because there's a lot of promotion out there, over all of those things, ways to actually help each other. Like I think we're lacking little connections, ways to meaningful connections, ways to actually help get stuff done. So that's just my personal take though. Other people probably have like way different.

Way different. Yeah, and again, I mean, I definitely get trouble, but I do think, you know, obviously between you and Zapp, Haley, I'm asking you, she's been on the show. You guys are kind of like my two, you know, core people for the startup scene. Yes. I've learned is there is a pretty bustling startup scene, but again, like no, no one's talking about it except at least in my opinion for for those two. So yeah, we got to get out. We got to get out of our little bubble and get into the mainstream world. Yeah, I mean, if tree falls in the woods and no one hears it.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's kind of the same thing. It is. It is. So I want to I want to talk really fast about bright here. So like bright here kind of tries to help solve that problem and tries to like. like maybe the first step of solving that problem. So in our community, we realized, hey, everybody's here, there's 560 people here, but like we're still internet strangers. We don't really know each other. Slack, you know, Slack isn't telling us what we do. Slack isn't connecting us. We're just a bunch of strangers in a chat just like in the old days. So I came up with this idea.

I was like, well, what if I put, like what if I prompt people? because I'm good at connecting. You're good at connecting. Haley Zapowski's good at connecting. We're all connectors. And it dawned on me like other people are not good. That's not a strength of theirs. Not everybody has that. It's just a few weirdos that have that. And we do a good job at connecting people, but we can't go out in the world and connect, even though we want to. Like we can't go connect all the people, even though it makes us feel good. Like we just don't have the bandwidth to do that. So I was like, okay, what if I made a bot or something that connected people by skill in the group?

And that way, if people have asks or people have offers, they can get matched with somebody else with the same ask or offer. And it's almost like Tinder, actually, like where you can match or pass with people, the people you pass on as an expert, they'll never know that you passed on them. But when you do get a match, it's like really cool. And that's where you, there's a whole booking link where you can like book them directly from Slack. So my goal with this is to like actually get people together and actually get them talking one on one. I love that, I love that, awesome.

Cool, all right, last few questions. Yes. So basically one, what do you do outside of work that brings you joy? Oh, two things. hanging out with my kiddos and my family and my family, my parents and my siblings and all of them. I love hanging out with my family. I do a lot of gardening too. Not this year, this year was bad year, but usually I picked up this gardening hobby and I really, really, I'm starting to enjoy it. My wife picked up too. She loves it. We have a little thing out here. It's fun. I've seen your, I've seen your, because I've seen your blogs.

It's amazing. Beautiful. Beautiful. The second thing is, anything you're reading, watching, that you're observing in the market that you want other people to know outside of obviously bright peer and startup Nash. Ooh, that's such a good question. There's so- You wanna get someone else to shout out. Ooh, there's so much going on. Ooh, colleague, that's such an overwhelming question. I just started Rocket Fuels, that's a book I'm reading. Brian Daly suggested that book to me. as far as like what's going on in the broader world. Hoo, call me. Look, I think people are gonna continue to waffle on in person and virtual stuff. I think maybe the more important thing to focus on is intention.

You know, like we could, there were people who were definitely working remote before the pandemic. But you know, if you're forced to go remote and you're back now in person. Or you have the option to be back in person. I think a lot of people are gonna choose that option to be back in person because they were very uncomfortable with being remote to begin with and they felt like they were forced into it. So if you wanna work a remote job or you wanna be remote, I guess in my super limited experience, you might wanna go with a company who started out as remote, who were very intentionally went remote and has the commitment to work on that because no matter if you're in person or remote to me, it's they're both hard to keep employees engaged, to keep them, they're morale, you know, culture is, it's just a different way to do your business.

So that's just my personal take on the remote versus like in real life. And there should be combinations in my opinion. I'm not saying hybrids gonna work for everyone either, but like seeing everybody doing an offsite, doing something like that's how I see that world in particular. Absolutely. Last question if you wrap up here and again thank you all for hanging out with us today. This show is called Guidance Councilor 2.0 because we had Guidance Councilors of Middle School High School and College but now as adults we don't really have anybody to talk to about just general career advice. What would be your biggest piece of career advice to young Kelly?

Oh man, keep writing Southern Alpha. So I was a writer when I came to Nashville. I wrote about startups and that got me all my connections that I used today. Shout out to Marcus Whitney and Walker Duncan and Jamie Hoffman and all those folks, towns Duncan, you know, for better and for worse, like it got me in here. Now I can't leave. I can't do anything else. I can't not be an entrepreneur. Like it flung me, it threw me in here. And now, and if you're really stuck and you're just like, I don't know what to do with my life, think about writing about the industry you wanna be in or in an industry, something that just interests you.

like just consider maybe like writing or doing a podcast or some sort of media because that just that action gets you so far. I love it. Yeah, I'm going to say this too. I'll wrap up right here. If you are looking for a way, if you are not a connector, no. Yeah, if you're not a connector, you don't like to get out there. Being a facilitator is huge. Right? So what Kelly just said, Kelly was a facilitator of people of things. And so even if you don't want to put out content, if you don't want to like and comment and all that stuff, I get it, but do do something to give back to the community.

Um, and I think being a facilitator is another great way to network without putting yourself out there all the time. So it is, it is, Kelly. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Stay on real quick. So I can talk about you out there, but y'all, thank you again. We're turning to guidance counselor to point out this morning. Uh, we have a crazy week this week. So tomorrow Kevin Griffin, Kevin's out of Richmond. He's run, um, the Richmond, uh, um, engineering meetup or conference for a Little bit. He's a Microsoft MVP, he's an incredible guy. Wednesday, Brian Morrison. I met Brian Morrison at that conference.

He's incredible. Thursday's unicorn finders. And Friday, very excited about this. I have the former head of design at Headspace on the show on Friday. So very excited to catch up. His name is Frank. What's his last name? Frank. I don't know what was last name. Frank, Frank Bach. Frank Bach. So he's coming on the show Friday. So anyways, y'all have a great one. Kelly, thank you so much. We'll see you all in a while. Peace. Peace. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finish an entire episode.

So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it. Please. Like right now. unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. You need to reach out to me at Tdaston on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.