GE 97: How Espree Devora ‘Scales’ Non-Scalable Outreach Like Personal Followup

espree devoraHi everyone, today we’re talking to Espree Devora, creator of WeAreLATech, an online community that acts as a bridge to help people in the LA startup community (and those from outside) form a deeper connection with everything in LA startup life.

She’s got some great insights on the purposeful and accidental strategies she used to grow her podcast, and how harnessing the power of a pre-existing community to bring unity and cooperation can really resonate with a target audience.

Teenage Entrepreneur Turned Community Builder

While she was growing up, Espree’s father had a home office. And since he was an early adopter, she was always really interested in technology.

She was also a bit of a tomboy, so in her teens, she wanted to create a tech sports company to unite both of her passions. Establishing and growing that business was a massive journey from having an idea, to making it a reality, to building a team and raising money, to working with pro athletes like Tony Hawk and Shawn White.

But, with the journey came a lot of mistakes, so she wanted to create a concept that protected the 18-year-old version of herself from spending $10,000 on consultants or losing hundreds of thousands of dollars from poor business decisions. Her hope with WeAreLATech is that it will bridge budding entrepreneurs with the resources they need to save time and money, and to make good business decisions.

How WeAreLATech Works

For example, if a brand-new, 18-year-old, naive entrepreneur landed at LAX without a single clue of what to do, he could turn to WeAreLATech to help figure out which events to go to, find investors and co-founders, the good programming courses to check out, along with more basic stuff like setting up a website.

WeAreLATech’s assets consists of a podcast, a calendar of events, and a mobile that’s in private beta (but is easy to get access to).

Serving a Pre-Existing Community Rather Than Building One From Scratch 

Espree says that the WeAreLATech community already existed (there were already plenty of tech startups & tech entrepreneurs in LA), she just gave it a website and a unifying name. The community itself was not something she created.

Rather than having fragmented pieces of the LA tech community spread across the city in Venice, Pasadena, Santa Monica and other neighborhoods, she wanted to create a community and a mobile app so people in one localized community could know what’s going on in the others.

So instead of spending time building the community itself, she has to spend time creating awareness that the unity and the assets she’s created exist. She does this primarily by podcasting and moderating panels.

Also, everyone that signs up gets a personal email from her to actually know who they are, and she says the personal connection helps a lot.

It might not be scalable, but being genuine is very powerful.

Growing a Podcast

Since Espree had already started moderating panels, she saw podcasting as an extension of that, and it ended up being the perfect solution to get more press coverage, rankings, and to spread the word about WeAreLATech.

One thing in particular she’s done to help her grow a podcast is to not wait until it actually exists to start talking about it.

For example, she’ll be launching a Women in Tech podcast soon, but already has an email list for that audience and 1,000 followers on Twitter.

Her existing podcast, though, has already been featured on the #2 spot for New & Noteworthy.

She said she accomplished this by focusing on a very niche audience (rather than a broad one) that people could feel connected to, and by being lucky enough to get around 20 positive reviews almost immediately.

And in line with not waiting to talk about something until it launches, she kept the podcast private on SoundCloud for a little while, and the only way people could listen to it was if she gave them the URL. So once the iTunes launch came around, she already had an established, happy audience.

Growing a Listener Base Organically

Rather than thinking so much about metrics or paying attention to Google Analytics, Espree tries to email each new listener who signs up within 24 hours to find out how they found out about her site and podcast.

The journeys people go through to get to her podcast are rally crazy, and are pieces of information she could never glean from any analytics dashboard, no matter how good it is.

For new podcasters, Espree recommends paying attention to getting good reviews, and looking at the reviews of podcasts similar to yours to find out what people like about others’ podcasts.

And, as cliche as it sounds, being candid, open, and honest really helps people connect with you and become a part of your story. By sharing her story from start to finish, and asking for advice and tips when she needed them, people automatically became a part of her fan club and rooting for her success.

A Podcast Ranking Secret: List Similar Podcasts in Your Byline

This is a trick I take advantage of too, and it’s to list out podcasts or podcasters in your byline after you write “Similar to:”

For example, my podcast photo might show up if someone searches for Tim Ferriss, so I can basically leech off of his popularity for more search traffic.

How LA Tech Has Changed in the Last Five Years

Back when Espree was running her sports tech company in Santa Monica, she used to host Entrepreneurs Anonymous nights in her office, and remembers when two founders of Coloft first showed up.

They opened a Coloft in Santa Monica somewhere between 2009 to 2011, and had a community first, profit second business model.

They helped spread the energy and community of the LA tech culture, and more accelerators and co-working spaces started popping up, and more people began moving to the area for the purpose of starting a company.

The Advantages of Starting Up in LA

Espree lists four reasons why LA is an advantageous place to start a business:

  1. It’s more affordable
  2. Entertainment
  3. The beach
  4. Some of the best technical schools = some of the best technical talent

Advice to her 25-Year-Old Self

“My intuition is my oracle.”

By this, she means that she made a lot of bad decisions when she was younger because she thought she was an idiot.

Even though her gut told her certain things, she didn’t follow her intuition, and she went with what she thought more experienced people would do. She spent loads of money on consultants who ultimately brought in nothing.

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