Community Building Strategies for Teams & Customers: Insights from Becky Davidson
Episode 18
Ready to create meaningful connection—whether with your customers or your team?
Many leaders know that community is important but don’t know where to start or how to do it well.
In Episode 18 of The People Success Circle, Mindy East sits down with community and product expert Becky Davidson to explore community building strategies that actually work—both inside your company and beyond.
Whether you're leading an HR team, running a business, or developing a membership program, this conversation is packed with insights to help you build connection with purpose.
Tune in or read on for practical takeaways you can start using today.
In Episode 18 of The People Success Circle, Becky Pierson Davidson shares with me actionable ideas to bring people together in meaningful ways.
The difference between surface-level engagement and genuine community connection in both customer and employee experiences
Why community isn’t an “add-on”—and how to integrate it into your product or workplace strategy
Common mistakes companies make when building community (and how to avoid them)
The power of customer research and co-creation in building better products and stronger employee programs
Real-life examples of thriving communities—and the key elements they share, from onboarding to programming
Tips for choosing the right community platform for your team or customer base
🎧 Tune in to discover practical, people-first community building strategies you can use right away.
🔗 Helpful Links
🌐 Mindy’s website for business consulting: https://www.limerockcareerco.com
🎧 Listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts
Episode 18: Watch or Listen
Key Takeaways From Episode 18 with Becky Pierson Davidson
Community Building Is a Strategic Advantage—Not an Add-On
One of the biggest mistakes I see (and have made myself) is treating community like an extra feature instead of a core part of business success. Becky reminded us that real community must be built intentionally—whether it’s for your team or your customers. It’s not about launching a forum and hoping people show up. It’s about designing for connection and embedding it into the experience from the start.
Customer Research is the Missing Link in Product Success
When Becky talked about her time at BossBabe, a lightbulb went off for me. So many businesses—and even internal teams—skip the research step and jump straight to building. But if we don’t truly understand our people’s pain points, we risk creating the wrong solutions. I’ve learned that asking the right questions (and asking “why” more than once) leads to better products and better engagement.
Great Communities Share a Clear Goal and a Safe Space
Whether it’s a membership or an employee group, a thriving community gives people a sense of home. That means creating psychological safety, clear participation guidelines, and a shared goal or transformation. Community building strategies that work long-term prioritize human connection and a path forward—not just constant activity or daily posts.
Start Small: Appoint a Community Champion
If you’re wondering how to get started, Becky’s advice was simple and powerful: assign ownership. You need someone to champion the effort—whether it’s an HR leader managing employee experience or a team member curating a customer space. Start by identifying who you’re building for and initiate one-on-one conversations. You don’t need fancy tools to begin—just clarity and commitment.
Choose the Right Platform for Your People
Community tech doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does have to be easy to access. Becky walked through several options—from Mighty Networks and Circle to Slack-based tools like Tightknit. The key is to match the platform to your team or customers’ habits and keep the experience simple, mobile-friendly, and connected to your overall goals.
People First, Profits Follow
If you’re struggling to get leadership buy-in, here’s what I remind my clients: when the people side of the business isn’t working, everything suffers. Sales, service, retention, culture—it’s all connected. When you invest in your people, you build the foundation for long-term success. And it all starts with seeing what’s really going on behind the curtain.
🎧 Want the full story, examples, and action steps?
Listen to the full episode of The People Success Circle for more insights on building a thriving culture that drives results.
Read the full transcript
Mindy:
Thank you for joining me on this week's episode of The People Success Circle podcast. I'm joined this week by my friend, Becky Davidson, who is an expert in community and products. Thank you so much for joining me, Becky, and taking the time to be here with me today.
Becky:
Yeah, I'm really excited. I'm excited to chat about community.
Mindy:
Yes, as you and I talked about, it really is important for employees to have community at work and then also for customers to feel a sense of community. I consider you the expert in the customer community side and me the expert in the employee community side. So bridging that today in this conversation is just going to be so insightful for me as well.
Becky:
I'm excited.
Mindy:
I'd love to start out by asking you if you could briefly walk us through your work experience and tell us about what led you to being a community and product expert.
Becky:
Okay, so I love to say that I started my career as an architect because I went to architecture school and then I did a full pivot into working in tech. I worked in architecture for a little bit and then I moved out to Silicon Valley. I was really into technology—even my thesis in architecture school had an app component to it. So I think I've always had this interest.
I went out, learned UX design—which essentially helps us figure out what we should build, how to really serve our customers, and understand their pain points to develop the right solution. I talk a lot about building the right thing.
I did this bootcamp school, earned my certification, started freelancing, and eventually started working at an agency that did custom software development for everything from startups to Fortune 500 brands.
While I was there, the company grew a lot. I was one of the first 50 employees—pretty small. By the time I left, we had gone through an acquisition. Now there are thousands of employees. When I started, I was a junior product designer. When I left, I was a principal-level product strategist. So a lot of growth happened really fast.
Projects I loved the most had some kind of community element. One was an app that helped families on military bases connect with each other and their local community because they were always moving around.
Mindy:
Yes! I love that. I think you know that I'm a military wife. My husband's a retired Marine. That is such a valuable and cool project.
Becky:
Yeah, it’s still out there today. It’s called Base Connect. Another project was to help aging adults or seniors keep their independence longer. There was a community element of creating their family network that could contact the senior using special applications and smart devices in their home.
Then I started working on big Fortune 500 projects, leading development teams, and defining the products. It was a different type of work, and I missed that original early-stage, community-startup-type work. I started pursuing that in my side work. I picked up a teaching job at General Assembly, where I did my certification. I started teaching visual design and user experience design—10-week, part-time cohort-based courses.
I joined a bunch of different memberships: Section School (Scott Galloway’s company), BossBabe, and Jake Klaus’s membership. I was totally diving in. When BossBabe posted a Head of Product job, I had turned on that LinkedIn notification. I got the notification while on a walk with my sister and husband, and all I could think about was my application. I went home, recorded a video, and ended up getting that job.
I was Head of Product at BossBabe for a year, managing their membership and programs. Then I left, started consulting, and now I've built an agency where we design, build, and manage community products—memberships, programs, anything community-related. Most of our clients are education-based creators and creator-led brands.
Mindy:
I could totally see a company hiring you to help with a membership—even a free membership for employees. So much of what you do transitions over.
That leads me to my next question: when did you realize that community was the missing ingredient in a successful company?
Becky:
I had a huge aha moment while working at BossBabe. I was doing a research project to get to know our members. I was looking at the data around their revenue and how long they had been in business, and I saw a huge disconnect. I thought, "They should be more successful than this by now."
We were teaching a lot of marketing skills—offer creation, workshops—but we weren’t teaching product development the way I had learned it in tech. I saw an opportunity for entrepreneurs to understand how to build products methodically: doing customer research, taking time for ideation, not just jumping to the first idea.
At the same time, I saw large companies building the wrong things because they weren’t talking to their customers. That’s what community is about—connecting with your customers, building what they actually need, and bringing them along for the ride. It’s a co-creation journey.
Mindy:
I’ve learned that firsthand—and somewhat the hard way. I’ve had my business for four years, and only recently started approaching product development the way you teach. I just went to your retreat, which was amazing.
So often we build something we think our employees or customers want. But when we actually ask them and do the research, something different comes up.
Becky:
There’s a theory from Six Sigma called the “Five Whys.” You want to ask “why” five times to get to the root cause. One lesson is following up with deeper questions. Another is that you can’t directly ask your customers what they want. You have to understand their problems and then come up with solutions. The Henry Ford quote says it best: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
Mindy:
Absolutely. I love that quote. I feel like I need it on my bulletin board!
What are some mistakes you see businesses make when it comes to building community or improving customer service?
Becky:
The number one mistake is slapping community on as an add-on or bonus feature instead of integrating it into the core experience. It should be part of the company culture—not something no one logs into.
Another mistake is creating a beautiful forum without prioritizing connection. Community only exists if people are actually connecting with each other. If there’s no plan for that, what’s the point?
Mindy:
Right. It’s not “if you build it, they will come.” It’s more like, “If you build it, you better help them connect.”
What are some characteristics of a thriving community?
Becky:
People are connecting and coming back again and again—it’s sticky. I compare it to my Oura ring. The more data it collects and the more I engage with it, the more invested I become. Communities work the same way.
I call it the feeling of home and belonging. People feel safe, welcome, and like they belong. And while some think success means daily engagement, it’s really about creating space people want to return to.
Also, there needs to be a shared goal or transformation. That’s why I love education-based communities. There’s a roadmap, clear outcomes, and opportunities to learn and practice together.
Mindy:
Yes! And on the people side, that’s what increases employee engagement—being part of something meaningful. That link between community and engagement is so clear.
If a company has never invested in community, where should they start?
Becky:
Start by identifying your primary customer persona. Bring people in that group together—to learn from them and connect them to each other.
For internal teams, start with one-on-one conversations and look for someone to champion the effort. Appoint a community manager or champion internally. It can’t be an afterthought—it needs ownership.
Mindy:
Yes, I’m seeing that in a membership I’m part of. They just hired a community manager and it’s made such a difference.
Can you talk about choosing community platforms or software?
Becky:
I’m platform-agnostic, but I’ll share what I’ve seen. Sepi (our mutual friend) uses a free Facebook group and hosts her paid membership on Mighty Networks. It’s great because it includes a forum, events, and courses.
My go-to recommendation right now is Circle—it’s clean and has great UX, which matters a lot to me. Other newer options are Skool and MemberUp, which are simpler but have fewer features.
For internal teams, Slack might be more effective than an intranet forum. A tool called Tightknit builds on Slack and adds archives and events on a website.
The key is ease of use—especially on mobile.
Mindy:
So true. And yes, there are so many new tools coming out, and platforms like LinkedIn haven’t caught up with that functionality yet.
You mentioned you’ve joined several communities—what’s one that really stood out?
Becky:
Jake Klaus’s membership, The Lab, is hands down the best. It’s for professional creators. I’ve been in it for years and always renew. He prioritizes connection through mastermind groups, customer experience, and regular feedback.
This year he even added an in-person event at cost, which is so rare. It’s only two days, super affordable, and 30 out of 300 members are going. That’s a great turnout.
I’ve learned so much from being in his community—it helps me give better advice to clients too.
Mindy:
That’s exactly why I asked! It’s so important for us as leaders to experience community ourselves.
Becky, as we wrap up, how can people get in touch with you or start working with you?
Becky:
If you need help building community—or if you already have one and want my eyes on it—check out my agency: affinitycollective.co. You can also find me on LinkedIn as Becky Pearson Davidson or on Instagram at @buildwbecky.
Mindy:
Awesome! I’ll include all of that in the show notes. Thank you again, Becky. This has been such an insightful conversation.
Becky:
Thanks for having me on. This was fun.
