Bella is a 14-year old Chihuahua. She runs the house.

I was early to the internet, discovered gaming communities, and was immediately hooked. I've done every job between volunteer moderator and VP of community. I've also been on all sides of the industry — end user, platform vendor, practitioner, and consultant. I've been fortunate to ride the wave for 2+ decades. I'm so grateful that I get to do this for a living.

Learning the business side of community. It didn't come natural at first. I had to work pretty hard to soak it all in, blend it with my community building knowledge, and drive outcomes for both sides (customers and companies).

I'll also say that doing anything for as long as I've been doing community building can be really challenging. There were so many points in my career where I could've taken different paths or moved on to other things, but I stuck with it. I'll admit that at times I think about leaving it behind to do something new, but the sense that there's still work to do compels me to double-down again and keep pushing.

Trying as many things as possible helped me gain perspective and understand the nuance of what we do and how it impacts people and businesses. My best advice for anyone out there is to sample as many types, sizes, ages, and focuses of communities as they can. Don't be a one-trick pony and assume that's how it works everywhere, in every situation.

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Shift your mindset. Stop looking at it from your perspective. Understand members' needs and build programs that help them achieve whatever it is they want. If you do that, they'll often become more engaged and then you can achieve your goals. It sounds easy, but people struggle to make this mindset shift, especially with the pressures of business creeping up behind them.

It's about people, of course. Community is a vehicle to help people achieve their goals in life and work. It's as simple and as complicated as that.

Same as my answer above about what helped me develop in my career — get exposure to as many different aspects of community building as you can, as quickly as you can. That knowledge and experience will help you build better communities.