Building Community that Drives Business with Joshua Zerkel

In this episode, I'm joined by Joshua Zerkel – community strategist, former Evernote ambassador turned community leader, and author of The Community Code – for a conversation about what it really takes to build community that drives business outcomes. Joshua's path is anything but typical. He started as a power user and advocate, writing productivity books about Evernote before eventually joining the company and helping scale its community as it grew from 100M to 200M users. From there, he went on to build and lead community at Asana, turning it into a global program spanning forums, ambassadors, experts, and hundreds of events – all tied to real pipeline impact. His work centers on a simple but often misunderstood idea: community is just relationships at scale. We talk about why community is so often undervalued inside organizations, how to translate its impact to business leaders, and the constant tradeoffs between depth and reach. We dig into the messy realities of building community inside companies – from navigating trust during Evernote's privacy-policy crisis to responding to backlash and actually listening when your users push back. Joshua shares what breaks when companies stop listening, why "personas" often miss the point, and how to design community programs around real people instead. We also explore the role of events as a community engine – how to think about formats, why in-person still matters, and what separates meaningful engagement from surface-level activity. Along the way, we touch on the fine line between community and cult dynamics, and what companies like Peloton get right when it comes to creating real connection. If you're building community, trying to prove its value, or thinking about how relationships translate into growth, this conversation is for you.