Dave and Brenna from MeetUp on JTBD Radio

In this episode of Jobs-to-be-Done Radio, hosts Bob Moesta, Chris Spiek, and Ervin Folkes sit down with Dave and Brenna from Meetup.com to talk about how the team folded Jobs-to-be-Done into Meetup’s well-established usability testing practice. They trace the backstory from first seeing Clay Christensen’s milkshake video, to listening to the mattress interview on this show, to actually running Switch interviews with real members walking through the Meetup usability lab.

Along the way they share the specific jobs people hire Meetup to do, the subtle anxieties around joining a group and attending an event, and the debrief, analysis, and share-out process the team uses to spread findings across the company. Read on for the key takeaways and the full transcript, organized by topic with short explainers of the core concepts.

From the milkshake video to a real Switch interview

Announcer: Welcome to the latest edition of Jobs to be Done Radio where we discuss how to apply the jobs to be done framework to understand why consumers switch from one product to another and ultimately how to get more customers to switch to your product. And here are your hosts.

Chris: All right, welcome to the latest edition of Jobs to be Done Radio. I’m Chris Speck as always I’m joined with my partner, Bob Mesta, and Ervin Folkes. Hey guys.

Bob: Hey, Chris.

Ervin: Hey Chris.

Chris: And today we have a couple of very exciting guests. We’ve got Dave and Brenna from Meetup.com. So you guys learned about Jobs to be Done at a Switch workshop in New York over the summer, in May. And we thought it would just be a great idea to get you guys on. I know you’ve been using it quite a bit, and sharing the insights around Meetup and continuing to do interviews, and that’s always exciting for us to hear. So we’re really stoked to just you on to kind of hear how you are using everything, and how it’s been going. So welcome, guys.

Dave: Thanks.

Brenna: Thank you.

Chris: So give me a little background. Before you came to the Switch Workshop how much did you know about Jobs to be Done? How did you end up finding the workshop and kind of give me the back story?

Dave: Sure. Meetup has been well known for their [usability], so we bring in a lot of people into our Usability Lab, which Brenna runs. So we’re always having people who use Meetup come into Meetup headquarters to talk to them. And one of the things I saw early on was the milkshake video that Clay Christianson gave. And I was always fascinated by that. But there’s never any kind of meat to go with that, and so it’s kind of like, oh, that would be awesome if I knew what to do. And then what ended up happening was that I think somewhere over Twitter someone mentioned the mattress interview that you guys did on Jobs to be Done Radio. And once I listened to that that really was the spark like, oh, wow! You know, this is great. We could do this. You know, we have people coming in; we do have these questions about what’s going on, and why don’t we try that. And then right away I think I talked with Brenna about that, and then right away I had some anxiety. Speaking of forced to do it, it was like yeah, this is a great idea, but I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m scared. So one of the things that happened was let’s do this Jobs to be Done thing, but let’s wait a little bit. That was my first reaction–let’s not do it because I don’t really know what I’m doing.

Dave: But then I guess the force was just seeing people come in every day, you know; watching people come into Usability every day and being like wow, this is a missed opportunity. We should really, really try this. And so I talked with Anna and Brenna. They both work in qualitative research here at Meetup, and kind of said let’s just dive in. Do you remember some of our earlier interviews?

Brenna: Yes, I remember. I listened to the podcast and I thought, okay, I’ve got this. People do this all the time, no problem. But I guess what I felt like was different before we went to this workshop was the analysis piece of it, because I personally didn’t really look at the analysis materials. I guess it hadn’t really hit home, because this is different from how I currently do interviews, but you know, the fact that you are putting this timeline in and going so far back to the person you’re interviewing’s experience with regards to the subject you’re interviewing about, so I was totally onboard to give it a try. And I think it was kind of fun to just try and it was great because we interview so many people and user test with them all the time, and we always try new things. And sometimes if they don’t go well or if it’s different from what we thought, the interviewee never really knows; it’s just sort of something for us to realize afterwards. So we love experimenting, so I thought that was great. But then afterwards at the workshop that was when the framework itself really hit home a little bit more than it had previously when we were trying it.

Diving in feet first: the debrief and the commercial

Chris: So did you try to like wing it? Because it sounds like you’re in a different position, right? Because a lot of the people that we talk to are like, you know, I’ve sent out some surveys and I’ve done some quantitative stuff, but we’re actually going in and saying, look, you need to sit down face to face with the consumer. And they’re kind of looking at us like, I don’t want to do that–that’s terrible. But you guys are in the opposite position. It’s like we’ve got a stream of people walking through this office you know all day or all week that we can just change the conversation a little bit. Did you try to go in and just say, hey, let me ask some different questions, after you heard the podcast?

Dave: Yes, absolutely. It was kind of like diving in feet first. And some of the first interviews I remember afterwards that the debrief time was just like kind of a mess. I’d think, oh, I shouldn’t have asked that. A lot of it was kind of like thinking through like what are we doing, you know. But it was a lot of fun, too. I have to say that’s one of the most enjoyable things about being a product manager here at Meetup is that you get to talk face to face with real members all the time, which is great. We hear real member stories all the time. So that’s one of the awesome things about really getting down to interviewing people, is that you heard their stories.

Brenna: We’d finish an interview and the person would leave the room; I love that, only the form, when we first started talking about it, because you know, I would love to hear what they got from that. And it was really great, because sometimes we’d pick up on the same key things that were just so obvious you couldn’t wait to talk about it. And other times it would be great to hear something that he’d picked up on that I hadn’t thought of before. So the analysis part, the (inaudible) was so fun, and that was really a great part of the experience.

Dave: We’ve kind of developed a little bit of format effort for debriefing where we talk about the timeline, and we try to build the timeline together from our notes. We talk about the four (inaudible), so we got each other’s four quadrants of the forces diagram. I talk about what forces we saw, and then we’ll ask each other, do you think you could play the role of the person that we just interviewed?

Chris: Awesome.

Dave: And can you be in their shoes? And then we try to come up with a commercial together for that person. We’d ask questions about, why do people join Meetup? Why are people joining Meetup? And we also ask organizers why do people become organizers with Meetup? So each time we’ll try to tailor a commercial in our heads about, imagine there are a bunch of sad people, you know, alone in their rooms and then maybe they’re dreaming of hiking or something like that, and so we play out this commercial that will play for that particular person and see if we can capture what we think are the forces and the context that will push them forward to join Meetup, or (inaudible 07:47) which is fun, too.

Chris: Yes, that’s just awesome. We’ve been doing that for a while and it’s just one of those things where it pulls everything together, but it also cements the story in your head. So you end up naming that person by the commercial you create, you know?

Dave: Right.

Chris: Very cool.

Finding the patterns: triggers and the time of the week

Chris: So one of the things that we’re all about are like patterns. How often are you hearing the same story or the same set of forces or situations? Have you gotten to the point where you’re able to detect, like, yeah, it’s like one of those things where they’re like ten minutes into the story or twenty minutes into the story and you’re saying, oh, yeah, we’ve heard this before. This is a very kind of discrete job.

Brenna: Well there are definitely things that we started to pick up on after a while. One instance is we would see people who were told about Meetup by a significant other, which was something that was funny. And it was just a really great tie up that we’d keep seeing. I think the more compelling one we saw, and sometimes you have to dig a little bit to find this, but people who were sort of triggered to look at Meetup by a certain time of the week. So for instance someone who was looking for a job; he joined Meetup on Monday morning, because it was Monday morning and everyone else was going to work, and the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere but his roommates were made him want to sit down on his computer and try to find a solution. And another guy we talked to joined Meetup, was new to New York and didn’t have a lot of friends yet. So it was maybe Thursday or Friday night and that time of the week rolled around and he realized he didn’t have any plans for the weekend, no one was texting him.

Dave: No text messages. That was the trigger.

Brenna: Yes, no text messages on Friday night. So then that sort of triggered him to again start looking for a solution. And that was the interesting thing that we thought of, and that was a really interesting way to slip people up, because there seemed to be some . . . to the extent that we could (inaudible 09:50) out the jobs we found that there was certainly looking for a job job, and then my friend’s job, and so it was interesting that the time was . . . and the great thing about that was we can look at their Meetup account and see what time they joined, and sort of verify it. Because sometimes people report it. It’s funny when you ask really specific questions, like when did you join Meetup? What time of day? What day of the week? And we could actually go back and validate that and say, oh, that’s true, actually. In some cases it wasn’t true.

Browsing versus joining: the anxiety of the button

Dave: That’s one thing that’s interesting that we found. So since we had this data we could actually verify things. One of the things that we heard was that, oh, yeah, I joined a whole bunch of groups, right. So when you go to sign up for Meetup you can join groups. The model is that you join groups and then you go to events that are in the groups. So one of the things that we heard was like, oh, yeah, I had this burst of joining and I joined like tons of groups, and things like that, all at that one session. But then when we would actually go back and look at the data and their perception of time was like off–it was compressed. So actually what would happen is that maybe they joined a couple groups on that one day, and then a day later, or two days later, they would actually join a bunch. But in their minds it was all one burst–it was like one continuous stream of joins, which is actually not what they did, and we found interesting.

Chris: So have you gone through and had conversations around what the implication of that is, because they see it as one event in time, it sounds like?

Brenna: I think one thing that could be possible is that when they joined Meetup–and I’ve seen a lot of people experience this in user testing–a lot of people are kind of amazed and excited about just everything that’s available to them. But looking at all the groups is different from actually saying, I want to join this particular one; I’m going to click the button and become part of this group. So one of my theories is maybe people just are confusing that feeling with, well, I’m looking at all this stuff and there’s so much to go through, with actually joining a group, which only a certain number of people actually take that step and join a group.

Chris: Right. So it’s the anxiety of pushing that button, you know.

Dave: Right.

Chris: It’s the whole thing of when do I actually do it? Do I want to join? Do I not want to join? What is this really about? And so at some point maybe there’s not enough information there, or to be honest, they haven’t asked themselves enough questions about what they want to do, and so when they click that button it’s like, what am I getting myself into? And so there might be something you can add to say, let me ask you three questions about what you want to do and why you’d want to join this group, and then we can help you align, to set the expectation. Because to me it sounds like it’s the shock or the act of looking the shopping part where people are trying to go, do I want this much commitment, or do I want this much input? Do I want this many people? I mean, there are just a lot of decisions before you kind of click that button, you know.

Chris: The other thing, is the experience of being in a group different enough from just looking at the group? Do you know what I mean? When I click ‘join’ is it like fireworks and I’m getting a bunch of emails and I get my . . . because it sounds like it’s almost like they can’t remember if they joined or not. So is there a big enough change when they actually cross the threshold?

Brenna: Yes, that’s a good point. And I can remember lots of cases where people didn’t remember which they joined, or if they told us they joined something but they didn’t. So I think that could be possible as well, that maybe it doesn’t feel as emotional to them or something when they press that button.

Dave: Right.

Chris: It could be that the job that they’re doing right there is actually browsing rather than joining.

Bob: Right.

Chris: So they think that they’re joining, but they’re actually just interested.

Bob: And that might be what you think about is a two buttons instead of one. One is like, you know, just follow the group, and the other one is participating with the group. Because it’s like, and it might be that they need that middle step of watching the group to figure out whether it’s for them, and you’re asking them to commit when they don’t know enough yet.

Dave: Right.

The real anxiety: attending the event

Brenna: And actually to further complicate things we learned that for some people there was less anxiety about looking at groups and joining groups, but so much more anxiety about actually attending a Meetup event.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

Brenna: And so we are finding that that force was so strong and even though the force to join Meetup seemed really compelling and strong, (inaudible) people were saying things like, this is the perfect solution for me, or how come I didn’t find this earlier. But then those people had never attended an event. And when we got down to it we learned that their habits were just so strong that they didn’t feel like leaving the house, or both. It could also be that the event was just so anxiety provoking that they turned to another solution that was a little bit easier.

Chris: I’m curious; was the anxiety around, and you don’t have to share if you don’t want to, but was the anxiety around who they’ll be if they actually joined the group? Or was the anxiety around meeting a bunch of new people who were in the group? Did you dig into that at all?

Brenna: Yes, but I have a feeling it was more the being at the Meetup event and we heard a lot of different things why somebody would be anxious about going to a Meetup event. And a lot of it was just around feeling awkward or uncomfortable. We had some people say their English wasn’t good enough. There were a couple of people who spoke English as a second language, and that was really interesting to hear that couple of times. And these were people who actually came to Meetup because they were from other countries, and wanted to meet Americans, because they felt like they were stuck in their bubble of their own culture. But then when you got down to it they were so anxious. Well, that was one of the reasons they cited; that their English wasn’t good enough, and so both of these people we interviewed said that they sort of retreated back into their current friend circle, that consisted mostly of people of their culture, because that was a lot easier.

Dave: We also heard at least a couple cases of where someone was to the point of going to the group, but they stood on the sidewalk across the street to monitor it, and even wait like a couple of light (inaudible 17:30) before they mustered up the courage to cross the street. So there’s some of this like, I need to use my eyes to vet the group. I need to look and gather courage or gather information to overcome my anxiety. And I’m just going to stand across the street and see who shows up before I make that move.

“I need to use my eyes to vet the group. I need to look and gather courage or gather information to overcome my anxiety. And I’m just going to stand across the street and see who shows up before I make that move.”Dave, Meetup

Chris: That’s fantastic. It’s like window shopping, like you’re going to peak into the restaurant and see what the crowd is like, and I’m going somewhere else. So the interesting thing is like when we’re in like the retail space and we do like packaged goods and stuff like that, you’ll see people kind of add up and anxiety and then there will be like elements of pull that allow them to cross those anxieties off, right. So it’s like you know, I don’t know if this thing’s going to function the way they promised, and then all of a sudden they’ll start talking about the return policy–like, I still don’t trust that it’ll work, but I know I can take it back so I can kind of cross that anxiety off. Have you been able to talk to people at that level of depth that have actually overcome the anxiety, just to understand it–like, I was up against it, you know, and then finally something dawned on me and I was able to overcome it?

Brenna: That’s a good question. Actually it felt–I’m trying to think of the people who did attend Meetups. I don’t know if we have anything like that, because I’m thinking of one person in particular who joined Meetup, joined the group, ICP to a Meetup within maybe 15 minutes. He was really ready to do this. And he didn’t have anxiety, but it seemed . . . and I actually don’t know what it was that made the pull stronger for him. Some people just seem to have the will or something, but I’m not sure.

Dave: In one case I can remember where someone was like, yeah, my significant other is not disapproving of me not being engaged and things like that, but I can tell. You know, I know that if she comes back and I’m still on the couch through the whole day. . .

Brenna: Yeah.

Chris: Right.

Dave: So there’s a little bit of that pressure there.

Using the future to pull people through the anxiety

Chris: So there’s a little bit of a trick that we always do; you’ll talk about the timeline and then you’ll start to project forward and say, what was going on afterwards? Because sometimes you don’t get that anchor; sometimes it’s an event in the future, like, yeah, if I have to go home and tell my wife I didn’t go, oh, my God. I’ve got to go in there. So the thing is there’s always a cause. So sometimes when you’re digging through the story up to the event, sometimes when it’s not making sense it’s like, all right, there has to be something in the future; what is that. And then they start saying, well, what else was going on? And that’s where you’ve got to play it out and say, well, what would your wife have said, or who else did you tell you were going? Sometimes there’s just that future-orientation that pulls them through it because it’s like, yeah, I don’t want to lose face in the future, and so it’s a fear of what would happen if they didn’t go.

Dave: That’s good.

Chris: I’m just going back to your comment about the person across the street and the person who was kind of like English is their second language. And again, people ask, so what do you do with that? So I want to just kind of throw some ideas out there of can you create like a mini-Meetup, which is no more than ten people. That allows people who don’t want to be overwhelmed by too many people around them, and says, we’re going to run a mini-Meetup which is ten people, so it allows people who have those anxieties of large groups the ability to kind of interact at a completely different level. And so it makes it more exclusive or more intimate or something like that. And it’s just an idea of when you start to see these patterns it’s like, all right, how do I reduce that anxiety. And again, I’m not sure you can do that or not, but I’m just trying to make sure people can connect. Because they see observations like, well, what do I do with that? And so, to me, I want to make sure that we can close that loop and help people understand that once you see it, there are different things you can do.

Chris: Well, my head went with when you said that, the idea is maybe if you change the form factor even. Instead of the Meetup warm-up; this is going to be a conference call. All you’ve got to do is pick up your phone and just call in.

Dave: Oh, that’s a great one.

Chris: And say to everyone, we’re just going to talk. And that way you’re not physically there, you didn’t have to actually get off the couch, but you can kind of talk to people and kind of get the energy of the room going. Use a Google Group kind of thing, or something like that, where it’s a visual kind of Meetup or an auditory Meetup, or it could be just a Skype or video chat kind of Meetup that’s just so many people. That allows you to kind of say, hey, what about this. The thing is I think it has to be designed from an interaction perspective of, like we do warm-ups, like, everybody come up with one idea about this. So you make sure you get participation around the table. But I think those are really important observations, but how do you translate them into requirements or service requirements to say, how do I help break down that anxiety, or how do I create more pull, or how do I make it more. The other thing is knowing that there’s a future event, a future thing. It might be, tell two people that you’re [interviewing] and who are the two people you’re going to tell you’re going to the Meetup?

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: And so now you create the anchor in the future to say, holy crap, I told them I was going to go and now am I going to go? I’ve got to go. They’re going to ask how it went.

Brenna: We actually interviewed someone who lied to her mom about going to a Meetup. She had told her Mom about it and her Mom called her.

Dave: When she was supposed to be at the event.

Brenna: Yeah.

Chris: But that’s an interesting energy that we can leverage or figure out how to again help people make progress, because think about it as you’re helping them to connect and connect socially, and build content if you will. And the notion that they can’t help themselves, so what you can you do to kind of coax them down the road. Because they’re not signing up because they don’t want to, it’s just like the heat of the moment that says, yeah, I just can’t do this. And it’s like, all right . . .

Dave: It’s easy to back out, right? It’s like, I’ll just stay here and keep working or go back to what I was doing.

Chris: Right.

Levels of consumption: the big hire and the little hire

Bob: So in their situation what’s the big hire, what’s the little hire? Because it seems reversed in my mind.

Chris: I think the big higher is just signing up for Meetup, and the little higher is it could be a medium higher would be the groups that I joined and the little [highers] are the actual meetups I go to.

Chris: Okay.

Chris: Well, there are different levels of consumption, and we’re going to bucket them together or not. But there’s signing up, there’s joining a group, and there’s actually committing to a Meetup and then there’s attending one, right.

Brenna: Yeah, and people drop off along the way.

Chris: And so to me, we always spend quite a bit of time talking about consumption, what is consumption really look like? And it’s like what do they get out of it if they just sign up? Do they have more confidence, do they feel like they’re now connected to things, and then what’s the consumption when they go to a Meetup and what’s the transformation function like. I walked in this way; I had the Meetup and I walked out this way. What’s different about me, and how do I know I consumed? And we got a lot of this from like doing an education work where you’d talk about a student and the teachers would say, I taught the lesson, but the student actually didn’t change at all. And so there’s obviously no consumption of education when the teacher teaches and the student doesn’t do something different. And so it’s trying to think about what’s real consumption in this case.

Brenna: Yeah.

Chris: At the different levels; the big hire consumption, the medium hire consumption, little hire consumption type of thing. As you start to dig into this it’ll help you not only with the low-hanging fruit, but it really will help you refine the offering you’ve got.

Brenna: And actually one thing I was thinking about when you were just saying that is another pattern that emerged is for a lot of people who did not actually attend a Meetup and may never attend a Meetup, they would tell us, oh, I joined a Meetup, I joined this group, and you know, I told my brother about it. He would love a Meetup. I told my friends about it, and they would totally love a Meetup. So it was funny that that person was a big fan of Meetup, joined, and even said to us, I don’t really think that these events are for me, or something. So they are consuming it in a way, and sharing it, but they are not actually committing or attending a Meetup.

Chris: Yeah.

Brenna: So that was really interesting to see.

Chris: I wonder how much the Da Vinci principle plays into that; the Da Vinci principle being the idea of–Leonardo Da Vinci had a lot of paintings and projects he never finished, because of his mind. Once he saw it in his mind that he completed it, for him it was done. I wonder how many people are just like that. For me, just signing up for the group, I’ve already taken this step toward progress, you know.

Chris: I actually go back to (inaudible) business software last week, right? And we saw Cathy Sierra, right? And the whole notion of don’t build a bad-ass app; help your user be a bad-ass. And the notion is that by just joining up does it make him a bad-ass to say, hey, I joined Meetup and it did this. It was like, wow! Meetup. You should know about . . . and it gives them the power to bring new things to the group, even though they never really go to any of them, but it brings the news and makes them feel like a bad-ass. So I just throw it to Cathy, if you haven’t seen it, Cathy Sierra has on the Business of Software site, like, a talk around how to get away from just building features and benefits into apps and focusing on helping your user be awesome as opposed to your app being awesome. It’s a really good talk if you have a change to see it. It’s something always good to check out.

Usability testing versus Jobs-to-be-Done interviews

Chris: One of the other topics I want to talk about is kind of how you’re using the insights. And I think where I’d like to start is that I don’t know if there are any right answers to this, but I’ve had a lot of conversations up to this point with software groups that are interested in understanding the differences between like user testing, usability testing, and like concept testing and prototyping. Have you changed because of this, because I guess I don’t have a real good understanding of what the test were like before Jobs to be Done, but I have this vision of, you know, show us how you would join a group, and the understanding kind of the barriers to that–like that true usability. Is that what you guys were doing before, and how do you categorize it?

Brenna: Yes, we actually use a variety of techniques in our user testing program. So it could be something like, we could do an interview. And before Jobs to be Done I had some interviews before with people who (inaudible) me that maybe we were testing out new concepts that was for branding people. So I would do maybe a 10-minute interview, saying, how did you find out about Meetup? What were you looking for? But not as in depth as this, because this would take more time, and I wasn’t a (inaudible). But yes, we would test that. So we did a little bit of interviewing, and of course we would also test things that were more on the usability side, so if I asked you to complete a test, can you complete it, and can you use our app, and does this function work the way you would expect it to? So it’s really a spectrum of techniques that we use. But what’s different is that this would be, I’ll have somebody in for 45 minutes to an hour, and show them four different projects, interview them a little bit. When the jobs to be done it was for some people it was really the entire session, it would be 45 minutes or so of just talking about starting from one action when they joined Meetup and then tracing it back. And not necessarily tying in any product ideas or concepts, maybe we would mention something we’re working on if it was relevant, but really just having them tell us their story.

There is a catalog of actual interviews along with analysis available here.

Dave: We try to focus in two main camps initially, just kind of how like our product teams are aligned. So we wanted the story of how if you were an organizer how did you become an organizer. Like what was the timeline from the idea of, hey, I can organize something, and how did they get onto Meetup? So one of the things that we found was that we kept going further back, trying to figure out what actually was their job. So at first the job was like, well, when did the first idea of joining Meetup and becoming an organizer come in? But really, we had to roll that back even further, because the idea of becoming an organizer might have been bubbling much further up the timeline than the idea of joining Meetup and becoming a Meetup organizer, if you will. And the other problem that we tackled kind of, was joining. So why did people join, and RSVP? I guess that’s two, right? We tackled why did they join . . .

Brenna: And RSVP emerged from the joining, because they saw so many people who were so excited about Meetup and joining, but were afraid of RSVP.

Dave: And so those were kind of like the two problem areas that we were tackling at first, and now we’re kind of experimenting about what is the job that guests do. Because I’m really interested in the idea that some people will plus one to a Meetup. So why do they plus one to a Meetup? What are they doing? So we’re doing some interviews about what is the job that guest does?

Turning insights into prototypes and tests

Chris: Give me a little bit on how the insights have been used, because I know you guys are sharing it out. Have there been any concepts or prototypes or any sort of solutions that have sprung from these? I know it’s fairly new, because it’s just over the summer, but I’d be interested in hearing about that.

Brenna: Well, the first thing that we did is we presented it to a company, or at least at Meetup we had this internal Meetup group where you can schedule a presentation anytime and invite people. So we did a couple of presentations, one on the creating a Meetup group interviews we did in one of the joining Meetup interviews. So that was our first step, and then we just sort of shared the findings and started to see what kind of ideas people had and where we could go with this. We had a couple of ideas that we put into user testing that were around–something around joining. Because the thing that we found was there were so many ways that we can try to address the issues we found. And another thing we were thinking of is it seemed like a lot of people were joining the wrong groups; they were joining social groups that were a little bit too general for what they really were looking for. They were looking for friends, and some of these groups were too big and intimidating. So we took a couple of ideas and put them into user testing. I feel like some of the plus one research is sort of also related to the Jobs to be Done join stuff that we did, because a lot of people found about it through your friend, and bringing a plus one could potentially alleviate some of the anxiety about attending the Meetup. So that’s part of it. But it’s hard because some of the things that we found in our interviews were–and maybe this is what a lot of findings are like–but they almost seemed like big problems to tackle, like wow, our Meetup starts, so anxiety rises, and they say, oh, my God! That’s our whole model, people going to Meetup events. So it’s pretty big. And like I said, there are so many ways to approach this also. And it’s not; because we have such a good user testing program, so people coming in we can show them anything. But I think I would like to try more things, but that’s what we’ve done so far.

Dave: Also, with the guest research we’re doing right now, part of the idea is that we really want to focus on the timeline of when people think about inviting guests. So what we’re doing now is some experiments around social confirm emails. So right after you RSVP for a Meetup, you know, we want to hit you with the idea that you can send your confirm email to a friend. And so we’ve been user testing this as well, and this is kind of coming out from the idea of the timeline. When do people want to invite friends? When does that idea come and when can we hit them? So for some people, one of the things we heard was interesting, but I guess we haven’t heard it again, but one thing that was interesting was that one person said like the Meetup is an excuse to meet with a friend. And so the job was the Meetup was just an event that he could use as an excuse to invite their friend to, and he could catch up with his friend. Another interesting thing from that was that this particular person would invite the friend at the last minute and it would depend upon how likely that person was to reject them.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: So if it was a high likelihood of rejection the invite would come last minute, so that there was a built-in excuse, like oh, I’m sorry, I’m not giving you enough time, and I fully understand if you say no. But would you like to go to this Meetup with me? And the more likely they were to say yes, it would be further out in the timeline. So those are kind of the things that we were thinking about and how you can hit somebody with the idea and see them with the idea at the right time.

Designing for non-consumption and multiple jobs

Chris: So this one of those things, and I guess I want Bob and Ervin’s input on this, too. This is one of those things where I’m hearing you say this, and it’s like if I’m running the business and I’m the CEO, I want like a whole–and maybe this falls under you, Dave, because I know you’re kind of on the product side–but I want to whole group of people devoted to anxiety reduction. Like this is a big enough thing where it’s like, here’s the group. There’s a designer, a developer, somebody on the testing side, somebody on the insight side, but it’s like your metric is reduce the anxiety, get people in the door, and we’re going to figure out how to measure it and you’ve got prototype test concepts, push things out, and just try to dial that in. Is there anything like that going on or is it just an idea?

Dave: No, it’s absolutely going on. Like each of the teams have a different focus here. So my focus right now is on that Meetup experience and so that’s why we’re trying to delve into the role that guests play. What is the job the guest plays. So we’ve actually done some interviews, came up with an idea. We put it out for testing and we’re rolling it out as a split test, with all sorts of different copy as well, so different people get different types of copy that we think hit different types of jobs that they’re doing. And we want to see which one the people respond to and those kinds of things. So it’s all in the works right now. It’s actually being put out right now.

Chris: I have two thoughts. One thought is to try to study or capture the information about multiple meetups, and to see if people can actually see Meetup as doing several jobs as opposed to Meetup is my place where I find my friends, and LinkedIn is where I go and find my business colleagues; versus somebody who says, I can use Meetup to do three or four different things. Like, where is the switching between jobs, so they can see Meetup as something bigger that just that one or the first one that they did. And so, part of it is the real growth is going to come from two areas; getting people to see that I can use Meetup to do several jobs as opposed to oh, I’m doing this, yeah, I’m going to go hire Meetup to do that. But it can do several things. The other though is I think Chris’s point is the notion of non-consumption. How many people want to go to a Meetup but don’t? And so what’s holding people back because that’s where you go. Just by focusing on the people who go and making a better experience, it actually might be like in Jason’s terms like you’re going up market and making it better for all of those people. But you just actually create more and more anxiety for those people who are at the low end going, God, I can barely get out the door. I’m afraid to go out the door. And so my thinking is that how do you make sure you balance that and do you build a sub-brand or a different kind of architecture that says, you know, like I said, Meetup mini for those people who are trying to reduce anxiety and Meetup [uber] for those people who are like, it does a lot for me, so something along those lines. Because what I would be afraid of is that I would get stuck in a hole there where Meetup just does one job, and I think Meetup does a lot of jobs.

Dave: Yeah.

Sharing the findings across the company

Chris: I know you guys touched on this before, but what’s the formal share out process. I thought I heard at some point you were doing like a weekly deal, or a monthly deal. Is there a lot of structure around that when you share out the interview findings to the group?

Dave: Well, like Brenna mentioned, we have an internal Meetup that everyone is subscribed to. And as we find our findings we’ll put out an event where all the findings are being shared and then everybody who is interested in it will come and we’ll present the findings and there will be talk about it, and there will be discussion about it and idea generation that comes from that. So every time there is something we’ll put that out. And people will join in to kind of bandy about the ideas. And it’s been going great, actually. The first few, people have really focused on anxiety. And I think that really was eye opening to people. We found that this anxiety force is keeping people from making progress, and so people are really responded to that. They really keyed off on that and really talked about that a lot.

“We found that this anxiety force is keeping people from making progress, and so people are really responded to that.”Dave, Meetup

Chris: So give me some kind of like the dimensions of it. How long does it take; is this an all-day event, is it a half hour, is it you guys just kind of talking and describing things, or are you playing video or audio clips? Give me the feel of the room a little bit.

Brenna: The presentation portion was maybe 25 or 30 minutes. We had a series of slides. We started off by just explaining the framework a little bit, and then that got into jobs, and the force it is, because that anxiety force was a big finding for us. So we talk about the force. And we didn’t show any video, but we had just a lot of quotes from people that were pretty powerful, that we included, and once we presented that. I mean, I feel like this is the way a lot of our presentations go, at least when I present research findings here. But I’ll get halfway through the presentation and then the debate and the discussion just becomes so vibrant that that’s pretty much all we focus on. So I think that’s what happened with this one. Because people choose to go to these events, I mean, the need for the employees to participate in the presentations, so there was a lot of ideas. And like Dave was saying, it’s a great time to have a chance to just think about a problem that in a different way might not have thought about before, and think about how to apply it to the product. So it was a really fun time.

Bob: Awesome.

Chris: So I think that’s going to be just incredibly helpful for a lot of people listening, because I talk to more and more people that were in the interviews and this is so mind blowing. What do I go do? And one of the things I keep going back to is that Meetup has this great process where, give them a little information about it, and it’s up to the people to decide whether they want to attend or not. But it’s just a method to kind of get that knowledge back out into the organization. I think you guys have really cracked that open.

Ervin: Yes, that’s great; very cool.

Advice for getting started with Jobs-to-be-Done

Chris: Well, thanks a lot for joining. Any final thoughts or things you want to leave with? I know we should say, you know, if you’re in New York, join the Jobs to be Done Meetup. I know you guys are still holding those. One actually just formed in Toronto as well. The first one will be on November 20th. So we’re trying to spring those up.

Bob: I have one final question for them. What’s the one piece of advice that you’d give somebody who is kind of listening to the podcast, but is where you were at before you came to the workshop? And I don’t want to hear like, come to the workshop, but I really want to hear, what’s the one . . .

Chris: But they should come to the workshop.

Bob: No, I’m not trying to get to that. What’s the one thing that’s like you want to tell someone, because you’ve been I’ll say through the looking glass, looking back is like, okay, do this, or don’t worry about that.

Dave: I would encourage them to just jump in and find people who are also doing Jobs to be Done in your area and just reach out to them. I’m sure they would be happy to share what they’re findings have been.

Brenna: I just have one more thing. I think all the people we interviewed had a really good time, and really liked talking to us. I know at first I wondered if it was going to bore them or tire them. Are they going to think it’s weird? But I think everyone was a really good sport and we always had a good time with every interview.

Chris: So it’s something to look forward to rather than dread. I think that’s what we hear from everybody that’s gotten good at doing repeated interviews. It’s like, I know the person’s going to love talking about it, but those first couple of, it’s man, I’m going to look like a fool, and they’re going to think I’m weird. It never pans out that way.

Ervin: My thing is, if you’re listening to the podcast and you really want to try to do this, I think one thing is to see if there’s a Meetup in the area, and if you are a user and you’re doing this and you want to start a Meetup, my thing is go to Meetup and build a Meetup . . .

Bob: Start one. The hashtag jtbde. You know, if you’re in Chicago or San Francisco or anywhere in the world and you’re going to start it, throw it out on hashtag jtbde and chances are you’re going to have somebody join up. So yeah, and I also want to say you guys should follow Dave on Twitter at Mark Sweep. Brenna, What’s your Twitter handle so people can follow you?

Brenna: Mine is.. I am, Brenna.

Chris: Awesome. Fantastic. Thanks for being on guys. This was awesome, and we’ll hopefully talk to you soon.

Brenna: Okay.

Bob: See ya.

Ervin: Thanks, guys. Bye.

Chris: Bye.

Show notes and links

Here is a list of items referenced in this episode:

• Be sure to follow Brenna and Dave on Twitter.
• Check out the JTBD MeetUp Groups in New York City and Toronto (more cities soon to follow!).

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