What Webflow Conf Meansfor the Community

0:00Janne Parri: Okay, Rick. So, Webflow Conf is still fresh in our minds and there was a source, there was a marketing features, there was quality of life updates, all the things. But I'm curious to hear what do you think is the impact for the whole community?

0:16Rick Bossenbroek: Fair question. It was super nice to be there in Boston and experience these live and I think the first sounds that I heard that everybody was excited about something fresh in general. I think what the Webflow community kind of needed this even though offline we have a really strong base of people that really want to connect with each other and meet up throughout the world throughout the global leaders program. I think the big digital community was a bit like frustrated. Slack got away. We got a new platform. How do we continue further?

0:48Rick Bossenbroek: And I think with this new platform, Webflow is taking a step of course towards the builders and the marketeers that are building locally instead of only in a environment that's closed down basically. Yeah.

1:01Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. There again is still quite a few open questions about the source and all the things but I feel like we were waiting for something concrete. We kind of got something like the demo of source, but there's still like all the question marks and I'm like just waiting when we actually get to use it. I want some confidence around the source and some answers to those questions. Would you agree?

1:29Rick Bossenbroek: I definitely agree and like my questions are mostly like okay, how is the Webflow community evolving around this, right? like how is this going to be a Webflow community to a source community or is it going to be like an in between and I think also the Webflow NPs still have to figure that out themselves right like we have to give them some time to figure out like how can we like move on as a whole community together towards this new way of working basically so I think the new software that they launched is really helping with that but still there's It's a little bit of a blank in between like how do we cross over?

2:09Rick Bossenbroek: Do we cross over? Is Webflow still going to be a thing as a community? Is the Webflow global leader program going to change? Is going to be like a source program? Like these are the questions I have in mind right now, but I'll be patient. We'll wait for the answers and we'll just find we'll find out. Yeah.

2:25Janne Parri: Yeah. In the meantime, we can speculate. The one big thing obviously relating to community was Timothy Ricks getting a job in Webflow. And he also did a video and in that video he had this quite interesting opinion or idea that actually the source can open Webflow for many new users. Like if people have been building static sites they might use the source and that way could also be open for the Webflow community.

2:57Janne Parri: So there is also that like in a way growing or positive side of source. What do you think of that?

3:04Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, once you see it from that perspective, I think that really makes sense in a way. I think that markets would be a little bit smaller because most of these people would like have like a self-sustaining way of working, right? they already were developer probably back in the days but still like having an entry level for a platform a CMS that's using or like gathering data on a way that's that's working for you. Yeah, of course every developer or like smart developer that's trying to do marketing is going to keep an eye on it or maybe take the leap of faith and connect their local people to it. Yeah.

3:43Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. that might not be enough for someone to actually consider themselves as a part of like a new especially Webflow community. I don't know. We'll see. Again, one more thing to look after.

3:57Rick Bossenbroek: But they're so welcome. Like I just love people from all different backgrounds like experience in development or not any experience. You can see like also during our events we did a little build challenge for example and people started just building whole games with Webflow MCP. So that was really cool. Yeah. So there are kind of two sides now of this of the story like the cloud with Webflow creation which is actually super strong and now the new movement or going more to a source way of working. Yeah.

4:27Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. So many interesting things. But before we go any further we have to do little intros. So you are now listening to Webflow and Friends podcast. My name is Janne Parri and my guest today is Rick Bossenbroek. He's a community first design founder and you'll see in a bit what that means. Rick is located in the Netherlands. He runs a studio called Uncode, but that's not the only thing that he does. You guys probably know the already mentioned Webflow global leader program.

4:58Janne Parri: Rick is one of those global leaders. He actually was also a nominee for a builder of the year award at Webflow Conf this very year. And on top of building a Webflow community in Amsterdam, Rick is also a co-founder in Day 42, which is a European builder community aimed at people who are building or planning to build something while having a day job or studies. And on top of that, there's runclubs.nl, which is a platform, you guessed it, for running clubs.

5:33Janne Parri: And I'm hopeful that we get to get to that too because I kind of wish there was a running club in our little town here in Finland. But yeah, Rick, I guess I can call you a community guy. So, how did you end up hosting all the meetups and building all sorts of communities?

5:52Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, thank you for the introduction. I yeah I think it started while I was in college still I was invited by a friend to join a work and meet of a young creators community in the Netherlands like the young entrepreneurs 30,000 people all together and they do events regularly and then I was like wo there are people like me like I was always the only one in the class that had like little bit of ambition I would call it but like I didn't know there was such a community and Then I found out and I was like, "Okay, I'm going there every time and every time." And for me that was like magic.

6:29Rick Bossenbroek: I want to be there more often. And I started helping them with the events. And from there on I grew eventually into board and from board I like I basically tried to change everything after co to try to build it up again because all the events were down. Of course, we didn't have anything anymore and we had to restart. So with my design background, I just try to make everything to make everything look as beautiful as possible. So I try to attract the people via social media with videos and yeah, social media templates basically to come to the events and that's how I basically started with being more like an extrovert than introvert because I was really like I don't want to speak to any people.

7:14Rick Bossenbroek: I just want to sit on my at home in like my computer and yeah from there on I was hooked about like bringing people together basically and especially bringing people together in this space where everybody felt that they belong there right like just like the web community once you once you're in it you're like ah wa this is so cool there are so cool people everywhere and once you meet them in real life you're like wa this is even cooler so at that point me and a friend started the no-code community in the Netherlands in 2021 something like that 20 maybe we just figured out after a couple of years how Webflow worked and yeah we just saw something coming like if we really love this tool that's from America across the ocean I think a lot of other people in the Netherlands would love this so our idea was like to create a community where we come together every now and then we just opened Google Meet and everybody started joining yeah it was super and all the people that are like you don't know them but like I was searching them on LinkedIn on the group in Flux for example Flux Academy.

8:23Rick Bossenbroek: All the Dutchies that I found I just tried to send them a message like hey we're trying to build a group of Dutch Webflowers and saw that you're Dutch and Webflow and brought them together and from there on when we got like 40 people it started having that network effect and I just love having network effects because it's just super interesting how you can get across like the cold sort cold start problem maybe if you know the pro the book but it's like super hard to bring something to life but like also make it make it work, right?

8:55Rick Bossenbroek: Like not just yeah, let it let it go. But having everybody telling other people at agencies, freelancers, just telling about the community was really helpful. And a lot of people were very skeptical just like people were skeptical nowadays about certain things. But yeah, that's basically how it started. and with the Webflow community we've met Webflow in Toronto during a wise conference and from there on I think we were became global leader and I started organizing all the watch parties for Webflow Conf in the Netherlands did that in Utrecht and in Amsterdam all different places and yeah from there on we just continued on sometimes doing a little bit less sometimes a little bit more just fluctuated a little bit yeah

9:39Janne Parri: That's so cool and yeah everybody knows the feeling when they go to a meetup, they have been working like months on end with their own computer and when they actually go out and see like-minded people, it's it's super exciting. So, I get the get the like feeling. But I'm curious, how has the experience of the global leader program been for you? Have you got gotten like much help from Webflow side and what does the whole program like mean?

10:10Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah. Yeah. At first it was of course a little bit finding out how what and where and can we get reimbursed or not. So I didn't at the beginning I didn't really look into that like to get reimbured but eventually web offered a really good new global leader program which basically refunded all your cost for the for the events to a maximum because you get like a budget every year. so you basically have to divide it for yourself like okay if I want to do like six or eight or 10 events in a year I basically have like $300 to spend on location and yeah food and drinks something like that.

10:47Rick Bossenbroek: So with that it was a little bit easier to organize all these watch parties and yeah you also started to notice that a lot of global leaders popped up in around the world. So you really felt like, oh, there's really something going on everywhere from India to Peru to Mexico to Germany and all people would just want to bring people together. And it's also cool to see again that you have a community of global leaders, right? Like little literally a Slack group of global leaders that you could share your event to and you get feedback from or inspiration from what to do.

11:22Rick Bossenbroek: And at this stage of course like we just mentioned briefly like it's a bit unknown how to how it continues further but like I think nothing's changing of course in that terms we can just still do the events and bring people together but yeah so I'm I'm a bit optimistic but also I had my questions of course. Yeah.

11:41Janne Parri: Yeah. Totally. There's as said there's a lot of questions, but if you if you were like making decisions on the global leader program at Webflow, if you had all the strings, all the power to do whatever you want, what would you do at this point? How would you like develop the program?

12:01Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, I would first blow the community team again at Webflow. I think it's a bit of a yeah undervalued it needs more attention. I think there were like two great people that just left in the past 6 months at web community and I don't know it feels like there's all things go to one person right now and that could be fine but like I feel like if they're really serious about community they should really invest in it more and in the global leader program as in yeah doing some regular check-ins with each other like how are you doing what is happening there what's happening there how can we support you and of course that comes with a lot of admin administration and support from Webflow.

12:43Rick Bossenbroek: But that's I think the thing that's needed to be like continuing this program. Yeah. Properly.

12:49Janne Parri: Do you have do you have like a chat of global leaders and is it like active? Do you chat with other global leaders often?

12:57Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah. So actually I chatted with Chris after one of the two members left. I was like okay we're we're completely lost in the dark here. Let's just connect and try to gather as much global leaders as possible. We create a WhatsApp group and have a short link with each other for any updates about that. So we did that and now we have like mostly from Europe global leaders so we know what's up and for example we did I did an event for the build challenge. I made a whole presentation. I just shared the presentation with everybody and they could just reuse it for their event. So it's a small things but yeah it's definitely helpful to have a direct line with each other.

13:33Rick Bossenbroek: And now also Jos from Webflow is joining in the chat. So we so he knows as well like how things are running. Yeah.

13:40Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's I can just imagine that it's a good channel to voice one's thoughts and ponder about things. But okay, that is not like the only community as has been said. So I'm kind of curious like if we start with day 42, like what is day 42? I guess I kind of said that in the intro, but did it did I get it right?

14:06Rick Bossenbroek: I think you did a properly good job because a lot of people still don't know what it means, you know, of course. So basically what I saw two years ago with my co-founder is like we have a lot of talent and a lot of potential here in Europe and around the world and we want to help people to literally like unlock their potential like find their idea and that's the idea that matches the lock and then you know from there continue on building a real startup and how we do that is by doing again events build nights build cafes where we just drink coffee focus hours and demo it and It's in a way a room full of people who want to finish something has been postponing something and want to be inspired by other people building other things.

14:53Rick Bossenbroek: So it's just basically a big accountability community at the moment.

14:57Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. Which

14:58Rick Bossenbroek: Is super nice. but we're actually thinking of rebranding the name to a more like overlooking name. So day 42 really came from 42 days of building together just like a marathon. If you just run your marathon alone, you won't be energized as much as you're doing it together. Right. That's a bit of the metaphor that we're using. And apparently it's also 42 is the answer on the universe and everything. I didn't know that.

15:26Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. Yeah.

15:28Rick Bossenbroek: Exactly. Exactly. So I don't know. That's how the puzzle a little bit came to it or that's how the puzzle fell into place. And I just naturally started organizing events and that really took off. We just one event we had 260 signups for like 100 places and I was like we kind of need a bigger space. Yeah.

15:49Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. So is that like in person and online or one or the other?

15:54Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah. So the events mostly are a physical in Amsterdam, but we also have a program that we're doing like a cohort basically of 6 weeks for 42 days where we would help people with two calls a week to like mentor them also from external expertise also from external expertise and yeah so do a fixed set of weeks and have a start and an outcome so people really have something that they and work on afterwards.

16:26Rick Bossenbroek: And the longer term vision is of course to help like mostly European builders to unlock their potential and with that like create more startups, create more innovative products, hardware, software, it doesn't matter. It's like the only thing that's holding you back right now is you, right? That you just need to screw up your like not screw up, you just need to top up your ambition. And w with that you can Yeah. Yeah, you just need to work and focus on that goal.

16:57Rick Bossenbroek: Building is not the issue anymore, literally.

16:59Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. And I think that Europe needs something like that. Like it's it's boring how many big tech companies come from the States. And also like I have a personal thing like I live in Finland and our beloved neighbor is Sweden. And Sweden has a couple of like big companies like Spotify, Klarna, IKEA and they are your more handsome big brother.

17:30Janne Parri: So we kind of in Finland would need some motivation some of that like day 42 energy back here too. But I'm I'm curious how is all of this like possible? Did I understand correctly that you have some sort of funding from some organization or how does that work?

17:50Rick Bossenbroek: Well, at the moment I basically work so hard for with my agency that I try to keep up with that three days or four days a week and the rest nights and weekends it's this program and the events of course are not every week. So we just try to like at this moment keep the community as engaged as possible. ask them what their struggle what they are struggling with, what are their bottlenecks, how can we help them with the bottlenecks for example and yeah and make the events like really kind of special like okay a masterclass about distribution like how do you get your idea to a customer otherwise it's just a product that's never seen the light right or how do you make it a business how do you commercialize your idea instead of just making it for free always like I always do like It's it's super fun to be in a room where learning is literally by doing what you're doing that night.

18:45Rick Bossenbroek: And I personally myself use the RunClubs.nl example as my own startup, but we'll get into that maybe later. Yeah. So, it's more of a mixture between experiences and accountability to working together on your own problems. That

19:01Janne Parri: Is that is great. But do you have like partners? you kind of have to have a venue for a in-person meetup. So, how can you arrange those? do you have like, in a way, sponsored segments? I'm like thinking that I would love to have something similar. So, I'm curious about all the details.

19:22Rick Bossenbroek: Okay. So, yes, we have partners. Mollie is a big one from the Netherlands. They are like a payment provider European alternative to Stripe. And what they're giving us is space and the food at the space and they have a really big like sutaran where we're always welcome basically because like a lot of companies in Europe also really want this want the youth to be like be focused on Europe don't go away to America or other countries where your talent is also needed but we really need it here and that's why all these companies also embrace our like little like initiative but at this moment we're trying to go to a next step and find a bigger office like a basically I'm I'm going to give it away.

20:07Rick Bossenbroek: We're going to build a built house and we want to we want to we want to bring those built houses through Europe. But first, of course, we need to start somewhere and that's in Amsterdam. and from that built house, we'll do events, the seasons, and also for the people that are really ambitious, we'll put them in the house, you know. So, we'll have like a big hub of people that are building something, drinking coffee together downstairs, co-working together there, and Yeah. Maybe have you heard of Corgi Cafe?

20:38Rick Bossenbroek: Something like that. Like, you're always welcome as a builder and you know what to expect there, right? Yeah,

20:43Janne Parri: That's so cool. That's so cool. Yeah.

20:46Rick Bossenbroek: But in terms of partnerships, we kind of course on the lookout still for making this happen and that's our top priority at the moment. Yeah.

20:54Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. I'm like thinking ahead of when you when you start to have all of those houses around Europe like again that Sweden popped into my mind that if you're going to do a Stockholm build house, you have to have a Helsinki build house. Yeah. preferably like before Stockholm if you can but yeah that is just my bias but that sounds super awesome and I would love to visit a house like that and yeah it's again that community part like we are we have been so like used to working on like our own little cubicles or homes with our computers obviously that's a great thing but as I said when you when people get together that's like a totally different experience and I feel like even people who have at some point experienced that tend to forget it and they are like thinking do I have the energy to go that meet up or anything like that but

22:00Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah you have to go afterwards it's you always have to go like if you're if you're doubting it you have to go and then if it if it sucks you can just go home sure yeah

22:11Janne Parri: That's true too. Okay. Bringing it back to Webflow Conf. I guess you didn't host a watch party because you were in Boston and what was the what was the energy back there?

22:24Rick Bossenbroek: I did set it up like a little bit and I let Aaron host it because I really thought okay we cannot not let it happen. So, I'm I'm very grateful that Arin wanted to host that and yeah, so it was at my one of my partner co-working Stardog and they have a really great space on the top. I think it was a little bit too big for the people that showed up, but still it looked very fun and also people like Dennis Neber and were there good friends of ours. Yeah, looked fun. But I was kind of glad that I was just sitting at the weapon stage.

22:57Rick Bossenbroek: I was like, "Okay, this is also very very cool."

23:01Janne Parri: Yeah, totally. I can just imagine I haven't been to any Webflow comps, but I'm feeling a bunch of FOMO of that. But maybe next year. But you were also nominated for the builder of the year. So I got to ask how did that feel? How long did you know about the nomination or did you find out whenever everybody else found out?

23:25Rick Bossenbroek: No, I got a email from the community lead back then like that I was nominated and they just needed my profile picture. I was like, okay, let's do it. Nice. And I was like, yeah, super nice. So, it's so much more fun to go somewhere and you know that you're like, whoa, I can I can win something. But like I think Sandeepsingh was the winner eventually of the of that category. So, yeah, I've met him there as well. So, once again, congratulations to him. But I just yeah, I admire it. I see there's a little thank you from Webflow from all the work that has been into in a couple of years.

24:01Rick Bossenbroek: So yeah, definitely appreciate it. Oh,

24:03Janne Parri: Totally. Totally. And you were in a good crowd so to speak like the finalists all of them were like serious builders of their own communities. So there were there was Chris Skitch who runs the London meetup for example. So, it's something to get even to the finals.

24:24Rick Bossenbroek: It's not nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I realized that as well. I think it's it's it's an honor to be on the list. Definitely. And it even did it really mattered if I win or not. I knew the people were there, you know, like I just knew the people that I've seen before in London conferences were there. And yeah, that's that's the most fun of it. Yeah.

24:45Janne Parri: Yeah. I want to talk more about the communities and the run clubs, but since we are on the Webflow Conf, I got to ask a nerdy well a bit nerdy question. What were your favorite announcements? Like did you did you check out the builder keynote or was it all about source for you?

25:05Rick Bossenbroek: I actually missed the builder keynote. I think a lot of people missed it. so I was kind of bummed that I also I missed the whole Timothy Ricks thing, but like yeah, so the two main new marketing features in Webflow itself. I was really kind of hoping for something like that. I actually had a call in the morning before the conference with a client that were like, "Yeah, we want to do a campaign like this. We need a form like that. Just two landing pages, AB test them, and that's it." I was like, "Okay, we can do that.

25:35Rick Bossenbroek: We just do it and build it in Webflow and have the form sent to Microsoft Dynamics. Kill me now. Sorry. But yeah, it's it's so for me that was like, okay, this is a really good step for marketing teams that want more control on creating new campaigns that I have set templates, the blogs that they want to use and they want they can yeah get together and do it themselves. I'm a really strong believer that everybody should be able to do to like edit those website themselves even though you don't have like the web knowledge.

26:08Rick Bossenbroek: So I really try to push my clients as well like hey did you know about the MCP already? Have you tried it? Do you need some more explanation because I really believe that dependency on me is a blocker for all my clients. And when these solutions also arise, you I really love going with them and offer them to my clients directly. So, I'm really glad with these new features and also that you can see how the AI is changing something or who is changing what, you know, that's also kind of important in the coming years.

26:42Rick Bossenbroek: So, I think even though they're small and not really booming or something, I think they're pretty good. Yeah.

26:48Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. and marketing and advertising is a big thing obviously and important for every website person to know and our clients need those features again they are not yet out so I'm like again hoping that they are great and actually the marketers are excited to use those when I watched the main keynote obviously there was all those marketing features and it was marketer that marketing this.

27:20Janne Parri: Yeah. And us as builders might have been like a bit what's next? What's that? Yeah. We were waiting for the source and maybe some quality of life updates. I was just wondering if they would have made a longer keynote. If they have would have put the builder keynote at first, all the builders would have been excited. Then there would be those marketing features and then there would have been the source like it kind of maybe would have been a better response for the whole thing. But the marketing thing is not a new thing.

27:59Janne Parri: We have for long known that Webflow is big on the marketing Mhm. side and all those clients that actually have a marketing team. So that's logical, that's good. But yeah, obviously there's the core community who just wants the builder like features

28:16Rick Bossenbroek: Like the one thing that I said to like if Webflow would have made the Analyze or Optimize plans cheaper two years ago a lot of more people would have used those features and would have gained more data right so I think everything is going to come down to data with the data you can improve like Nikon days you can run the agents in the future like that's of course it's already here but let's say they've made those plans like accessible for everybody like freelancers that they want to use it instead of like it's only for big marketing teams then you would have more website that would already be like sticking around with Webflow and would be transferring more websites to source but afterwards it's easier to talk about it but like I think I would have loved to have a Google Analytics in my own website and properly used it but like the price just hold me back right

29:08Janne Parri: Yeah totally I'm I'm with you on that Like I tried Webflow Analyze on my site but then obviously I have to do the cookie content thing and what gets filtered out of that the data was so small that it was basically nothing I didn't there was not enough value for me but if there's two things as you said if the Analyze would be cheaper that would be obviously more accessible for more people builders included And then there's the whole GDPR, well kind of not GDPR, but the cookie management thing in Europe.

29:49Janne Parri: And that's like the worst part of my job, setting up those cookie banners. I hate that. And I wish that there would be a smarter regulation on those things. But yeah, that's that's my rants. I'm hoping that someday we will live in a better future where not every damn website needs to get your consent. I think any thoughts of that

30:13Rick Bossenbroek: Like Europe push it towards the browsers now, right? Like in the future the browsers need to ask the consent for the website. So yeah, exactly. Yeah, that would be a better option. So we are not doomed to build all these custom nice and hacky things. Yeah.

30:28Janne Parri: Yeah. And way back some years ago, it kind of was that way, but the default was for the cookies and advertisers to do whatever you want. So, yeah, maybe it could be like that. The default is like do not use any like first party advertising cookies. Yeah. Or something like that. And now nowadays there's obviously so many like companies, so many websites and there's no way that anyone can actually regulate if people are doing those consents correctly.

31:04Janne Parri: So there's already like a huge amount of gray area and people just like doing whatever they want even if they have some sort of popup. And yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a mess. It's a mess.

31:15Rick Bossenbroek: It is. It is for sure. And also all the solutions that are now on the markets like even a friend of mine is building his own. But I personally love to use like a simple analytics that has no better needed right like just a privacy first Google Analytics and I just love that setup and it's easy to do and let's go. Yeah.

31:35Janne Parri: Yeah. Totally. I'm like nowadays I'm like trying to give that option to my clients too. like it's so much better for the user and often times especially the smaller clients they never like open the analytics or maybe once a year they like check that what was this app and what kind of numbers do I have here and yeah and if and when you have the cookie popup thing the content the data that you get that doesn't represent the whole picture so it's in a way bad data so

32:11Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah. All right.

32:12Janne Parri: I'm I'm getting like angry.

32:13Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah. True. Even now I got asked like if people don't accept the cookie banners, the HubSpot forms don't send. I'm like that's core functionality that you need, right? Like but okay cookie banners. I could talk about this for hours. Definitely like

32:29Janne Parri: Yeah, but I'm not sure. Do you do you know that is there anything going on with the regulations on an EU level or anything any proposals drafts or anything that could fix this? Any ideas? Yeah.

32:44Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, so actually what I said about like the that the browser should host it, I think that's from EU regulation draft or something that they're working on in Brussels, but I don't have the specifics at the moment or what the status is or something.

32:59Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah, let's hope that there's there's some wise folks in Brussels doing something about this. I guess they have their hands full with all the AI things. How they regulate AI? Oh my god. Yeah,

33:13Rick Bossenbroek: Welcome to Europe.

33:15Janne Parri: I kind of I kind of like that. Okay, we take this privacy thing seriously, but obviously especially the cookie content thing that comes so close to my day-to-day work. So, it's it's irritating and sometimes those regulations are just not up to date or there's like total loopholes and so on. So, yeah,

33:39Rick Bossenbroek: Makes sense. Yeah,

33:40Janne Parri: I didn't know that this would be one topic for today's episode. But yeah, maybe we could go back to the community stuff and I'm like curious how has all the community work like reflected or Mhm. has there been any like benefits that you have seen on your business? Like do you get leads or do you do you like see any benefits?

34:07Rick Bossenbroek: For sure. Yeah. So like I said, I think once you grow a community, you grow your like personal brand as well, right? Like if your face is connected to the community, you yeah, people see you as like one of the founders of the community and like with that also maybe a experienced guy like experienced Webflow expert and I think that helped really much like with people saying I know a guy and then no. So I had a lot of leads like that and a long time I didn't do like any marketing even my website it just it's just it has a nice opening but the rest is like I really need to update that for example

34:46Janne Parri: I have the same thing

34:48Rick Bossenbroek: I think the impact on my business is not per se very measurable but it's it's helping me grow as a person and helps me grow my business in that case right like it's it's makes me not being afraid to approach people not being afraid to network with people on network events where I'm just as a guest and I don't know just on terms of content sharing I just I just love having a vision about something having trying to do the pioneering before it's mainstream right like somebody has to do it and somebody has to discover how these new things work and I'm lucky I'm kind of young still 27 I basically grew up with no internet but then internet came on the phone and like I It's it's such a I'm such lucky to be born in 1999, right?

35:37Rick Bossenbroek: And with that, I just absorb every new thing. That's basically what I'm super good at and how I can also help people from zero to one, clients, startups, whatever. That's just that's just literally how community building affected my day-to-day life. I'm super grounded in it. So if you would ask me how my day is for example when I work I try to do focus blocks in the morning but in the in the midday mostly it's like someday just managing arranging new things for events all and about so of course hosting communities is time consuming don't forget that it's not like you set it up and it works you have to work hard for it you have to put in the time put your love and energy in it and yeah just don't try to make like a like a Bali vibe drop shipper or community because it's like that just annoys me really much that there are people that are creating communities for basically for themselves only, right?

36:36Rick Bossenbroek: Like that's the wrong thing to do because you are Yeah. You're it's not for you yourself. You're just basically creating a space where people are like you are welcome and want to want to be. So, and the side effects is that you grow as a person and grow as a business. That's how I see it. Yeah.

36:53Janne Parri: Nice. Nice. That is beautiful. And if you if you had a totally new what idea for a community and you decided to act on it with all the experience and knowledge that you have about the communities, how would you get a new community started? What would you do first?

37:11Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, I kind of found my secret sauce a little bit. I guess I always try to do events first like about an topic about an idea and for that event I try to invite people that I know or don't know that are in the space that would interest them and most of the times it's a niche topic or not all the time like build a community is of course very broad but with focusing it on postponing things or like you know or running clubs or van life even people are more interested in coming to a specific event on specific speific theme for example.

37:45Rick Bossenbroek: So I accidentally started another community for van life like 3 months ago.

37:52Janne Parri: Accidentally started. Yeah. Whoops.

37:53Rick Bossenbroek: Because in my head, you know, I was like, I have too many communities. This is I already have three, you know, like I should I should quit. But once it's in your head, you cannot get it out. So I did an event with all van life with like 10 vans in on a camping in the Netherlands because I believe people in the Netherlands should just experience van life in outside like in foreign countries in Portugal and Spain. It's very different I know but still I think it's about the people right coming together at meetup and having a good time sitting around the fire like detoxing from their phone.

38:27Rick Bossenbroek: And I really think life is supposed to be a little bit like that as well, you know, like have a have some good offline time and really bond with people, do games and such. And so we did the first one and they were like, Rick, you have to start your Instagram. I was like, no. I was like, not again. And then I started it and I immediately made a little video of that meetup of just vans slamming their door closed. You have every sound was different. old fans, new fans, and that immediately got me like 200 followers.

39:00Rick Bossenbroek: We're like, "Okay, what to do?" So, we actually have a big event today with 25 fans, 30 people. We're hosting a big dinner tomorrow. It's It's super fun. Like, yes, I don't make any money with it. I just try to make it equal and maybe find some partners in the long run. But like, yeah, I try to have a little thing for starting one, I guess. Yeah.

39:23Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess if the free communities are your jam, like you probably have thought of like how could you do how could you make them like organic so that they would like sustain themselves. So any insights on that thing?

39:40Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, for sure. Like for this van life community for example, I just made a website that gave them the ability to host their own meetups for example. So I don't want to be the one that does everything. I just want the community to go out meet with everybody and whenever they want. but just want to make it like in an overview. And for the other communities, I think how having like a group of 20 people that are like your core members, invite them to a WhatsApp group, say what you're up to, share how you're organizing the event, share what's going wrong.

40:15Rick Bossenbroek: I really love doing that and people really value the transparency that giving on that. So basically like a fixed user group is good. Yeah.

40:25Janne Parri: Yeah. Totally. I'm again getting excited. I have had so many like people on here who have talked about like amazing communities that they have built and I have always been that I should get something started to be part of like some something local.

40:42Rick Bossenbroek: You know what my mother would say to you right now? Just do it. Like literally there's nobody stopping you of not doing it. And there is I don't think I have heard some Webflow or some kind of community around builders in Helsinki yet or around Helsinki. There's always opportunity and room. So if it's not you, who else would do it like you, right?

41:06Janne Parri: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. We did try once with my friend Felix from Helsinki, but the show up was not great, but we could try it out again. Maybe it could just start out of like a with a couple of friends if we can get like five friends to enjoy a beer like start from there and or something like that.

41:28Rick Bossenbroek: What would it be about like Webflow or more like building in general or

41:32Janne Parri: Yeah, I don't know. Like Webflow would have been like my default answer like maybe a year ago, but now there's all this turbulence in the in the community. So I'm like thinking would it be would it be more broad? Maybe I kind of see two lanes. It could be about like more development or technical stuff or AI stuff or maybe like towards the design side the more creative stuff. Yeah. Or something in between weird super general.

42:04Janne Parri: I don't know. Or the maybe the first agenda would be to decide what is this about.

42:10Rick Bossenbroek: It's literally you can go crazy. You can get a crazy name. You can do something that's never been seen before. Of course, you know Slush and they have all weird side events, but if you would make a community about building Finnish people, I don't know, like some something that like catches their attention and also feel like, okay, there's something in it for me and it's free and there's beer. I'm definitely keen to come. But like, say to yourself, what kind of crowd do you want? What do you like to see the room filled with?

42:42Rick Bossenbroek: Is it just men drinking beer? Sure, make a picture and drink beer together and put it put it put it on socials, but that's literally how it work. And if you don't, if you want to have a mixed community of female and men, just make sure that the first event has that and make them a picture because that will evolve in something more like that. Otherwise, if you start from the wrong foot, you would have a man only community or a female only community. And in my take I really you really I'm really trying to get in the middle because there's what where the magic happens. Oh,

43:14Janne Parri: Totally. Yeah, maybe the just men drinking beers is not great for anybody or even less for my personal brand. But yeah,

43:24Rick Bossenbroek: But like you could do say like, oh yeah, we're we're dropping by cool companies or drink a coffee or drink a beer and we're going to work on cool stuff, right? Something like that.

43:35Janne Parri: That is true. That is true. Yeah, I really really get something started. Oh yeah, there are those co-working spaces. I have been thinking that those would be open for hosting like a little meetup, maybe even free of charge. So that would be a good place to place to start. And they have an interest of like being on the radar of like freelancers and small companies who need a little office space. So that would be cool.

44:02Rick Bossenbroek: We literally have like 20 co-working spaces we can go to for a build cafe or a build event. They are begging for us like Yeah,

44:10Janne Parri: That is not that is good to hear. Okay, we need to talk about Well, we need to but I want to I want to talk about the run clubs.

44:19Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, sure. Runs.nl

44:21Janne Parri: Is the domain and obviously it's a kind of this directory of run clubs in the Netherlands. Mhm. How did that get started and what's the situation right now? How far along are you with that project?

44:40Rick Bossenbroek: Yes, RunClubs.nl is one of those things that I when you see a problem and immediately think of a solution and in my head the first thing to do is check the domain name availability, right? Yeah. So, I was just I was literally running. I was like, why are there run clubs like so scattered around Tik Tok and Instagram here in I just want an overview what's happening tonight and where can I join right that's the main goal so I just checked runclubs.nl, it was free, and then I checked runclubs.de, is Germany and England and like all the European domains and the US was also free and also Australia so I was like okay this is a big market I love running this could be something I could provide the solution for since my Webflow and builder experience.

45:26Rick Bossenbroek: So what I did first two years ago is just create a list and once again try to reach a lot of people, run clubs in this case to say like hey I'm just building a list of run clubs in the Netherlands. Would you be would you like to be featured? You're one of the first. Let's make something cool together. Just basically like try always to find a win-win. And from there on when you hit like a magic number between 30 and 40 clubs it goes on. So that's good. Run clubs are the perfect example of network effects. you have something to talk about during the run, after the run, and yeah, so you can imagine it went quite quickly and I have like 16 to 17,000 views a month, maybe 8,000 users that are just visiting and then like 500 active users.

46:10Rick Bossenbroek: So, it's going quite well, but as a designer and as a yeah, community first founder, good is never enough. And I think there's a lot of opportunity to grow this is something more international. So this was more like a proof of concept. I'm trying to find yeah not funding but maybe a partner to with some money to do like a little investment in a domain name and then grow this basically through throughout the world and eventually become a Strava competitor. And why I would want that is because Strava is very generic in a sense that it does all the sports.

46:46Rick Bossenbroek: And I think having a fixed run clubs solution for organizers, for runners, for brands is something that's kind of needed and I see a lot of opportunity in. So at the moment I'm rebranding a little bit. I built a very nice gradient in the background, but nowadays gradients are not really done anymore since it's a AI slop. so I just tried to put a lot of effort into the design. I just converted it to like a cloud project Supabase and such.

47:20Rick Bossenbroek: So I have a lot more flexibility building it and also like I basically created a run OS with like a social media system for ideas and then Oh nice. Yeah for the web app for the app and what else am I missing? More like analytics. So okay, how is it performing? How much ARR do we have? Nothing. No. So yeah, but that's the biggest struggle like how will you make people pay for something that's valuable to them?

47:52Rick Bossenbroek: And I don't want to just charge them. I just want them to feel this is something that saves time. So I'm now building a MCP server so people can connect with Claude to run clubs. I don't know. And then right like this that are ideas that you need to be a business about right now because like any other thing anybody can build. I think I already saw like 10 new competitors that are trying to be in Google and have their full website full of ads literally full of ads. You cannot use it. Oh But try to steal all the traffic, right?

48:23Rick Bossenbroek: And like okay yeah you do you but that's not like sustaining. Yeah.

48:27Janne Parri: Totally. Totally. And this goes like deeper than I thought. like I visited the site and I was like awesome, we need something like this in Finland too. didn't Google if there is anything but yeah I didn't know that you are having like apps and MCPS and all of the stuff so

48:46Rick Bossenbroek: It's a bit hidden though that's true it's not really launched yet that's true yeah

48:52Janne Parri: So what kind of things you already have if this is completely new for the listeners like you have a do you have a back portal for the run club organizers and what was the integration to social media and what about like when you mentioned apps are those like mobile apps and what is there

49:16Rick Bossenbroek: Okay so in short I have built a whole platform first I wanted to do it with Memberstack on Webflow but I really felt okay this AI movement is really going so much faster than I would do manually so I switched I put on Clerk for authentication that really helped a lot it's just super easy to set up with and Yeah, from there on I just built my own platform. So basically you have an onboarding as a create your profile. Once you create your profile, you are asked like, "Hey, do you want to start your own run club?" And if you say yes, you would have just like Luma, create your own calendar basically, right?

49:52Rick Bossenbroek: Like just a overview. You put your brand in, put your name in. And once you have that, you can actually start publishing events. And what people don't really what these clubs or some clubs realize is that this platform is relatively new, but always show in Google search results also the AI. Oh and I search in ChatGPT and Claude because this domain is so good it will automatically pick the first on my website. So, I might have just had a lot of luck, but so basically what this means is if you're active on my platform, you would serve all your users and find more runners automatically because if they search either on Google or Claude, it will show up and if you have active events running, you can just easily plan them for two weeks ahead.

50:42Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, you will show up. You will be active. You will you will attract new members. And of course it's not a lot but it's still like maybe four or five that are coming via runs of southern. So that's the that's the idea. And of course the idea is to have all run clubs as active as possible on it. So they have one hub one members overview one hub where they can make a social media assets for their promotion. I have not built that yet, but like for now, I just made a how do you call it like an AI at your run service.

51:16Rick Bossenbroek: So you can just screenshot all the details of your Instagram post, put it in my runtime AI and then it would automatically like get all the details and create your event and you will say okay yes I want this event how many times? 12 times for the next two weeks, 12 weeks and then you're out. I mean, of course, I want them to come back more often, but at this stage, it's it's it's in that stage at that moment. And where it's heading is where I want them to have the membership experience, so they know, okay, who's coming, who went to the run actually.

51:48Rick Bossenbroek: So, I want them to be able to check in like maybe with an NFC chip on a on a whites or something or whatever. And then the user will send a notification or a check-in signal maybe via the app. that I've built. So the iOS app and yeah so you get data and I think that's the most important and that's what you not cannot get with Strava.

52:10Janne Parri: Yeah totally. Okay I'm again getting excited. I didn't know that I would get excited about the run clubs, but totally I would I would love to join our local run club. But you mentioned the advertising and I'm like thinking that it would be just fine if there was like one or two ads and they would be highly specific. Like I do not mind if there's Adidas or Nike or Sony like advertising on the side. So that would be totally fine.

52:41Rick Bossenbroek: And I really try to be high standard with these ads. So you don't get to see any rumble, right? You just want something that's a win for you, a win for me, and a win for the brand. So that's why for now, like it's it still has not no ad there because I just don't always like the things that are coming to me. I mean, it's money of course, but yeah, I don't know. I'm just a little bit conservative about it. Yeah,

53:05Janne Parri: Totally. Totally. And it's it's like user experience. It's super important especially when you start out well when you grow that might if you degrade the user experience that might be called encitification but yeah that is totally a wise move. I'm like fascinated about this. So just getting started. That's so great. Yeah. Yeah. And if there is like any like major brands or even smaller brands like the ones that mentioned like there's a like opportunity here clearly so they hook you up.

53:47Rick Bossenbroek: They see it definitely like I but it's it's so hard to convince them because they're always like counting like oh how much does it cost per click and of course that makes sense but like my ads are not really they should work force and you can do it but I think this is more on a value based proposition that I'm like okay you can be the partner of run clubs in the Netherlands like and we can hook you up easily to do a marketing campaign with different run clubs you we will pay these different run clubs as Well, we can just do some product activation.

54:20Rick Bossenbroek: We can do maybe even the biggest run club of the Netherlands, you know, like all those kinds of things. Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah. So, there's another opportunity. True.

54:30Janne Parri: Yeah. Yeah. The advertising is one, but I think that they should just snatch you up like make an offer that you cannot refuse like maybe buy the whole thing you included. So, yeah.

54:44Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah. Yeah. But yeah,

54:45Janne Parri: I'm not making those decisions. But looks to me like that's that's like

54:50Rick Bossenbroek: They could do it opportunity. Yeah. But I just I'm not done, you know, like this is just the Netherlands still and I think a lot of good brands want to be international focused. So I first want to grow and that's why I want to buy the domain name that I'm looking for and then we can go nuts. Yeah.

55:12Janne Parri: Yeah. Totally. Totally. Totally. So interesting. Flabbergasted. Yeah, flapper. My flappers are officially gasted. Any other communities I should know about like accidental or like purposeful?

55:26Rick Bossenbroek: No, I don't think so. Like no, but I try I really try to like keep it to more downside now like not do too much. Let other people handle things if I if I can't. yeah, house. I know.

55:41Janne Parri: Yeah, I'll guess I'll I'll question you tomorrow again and we'll see if there's something big that you have coming up.

55:49Rick Bossenbroek: Yeah, but it's it's literally it's like I'm trying not to lounge everything so people don't get the idea that I'm doing too much. I like the intro for example, I was like, "Oh, no. Please stop here."

56:01Janne Parri: Yeah. Too much. That is that is true.

56:04Rick Bossenbroek: It's important to focus. Yeah. Oh,

56:07Janne Parri: Totally. Totally. But then again, like especially nowadays when you have so many opportunities, it's hard to pick the thing you want to focus on. So it's kind of a this dilemma of too many options. Yeah. So okay, I guess this is a good place to like land the play. There's one little weird section at the end, but before we go there, if people want to check you out, maybe even message you or follow you online, where should they go?

56:39Rick Bossenbroek: I think a good place is either Instagram or LinkedIn. Both are Rick Bossenbroek. If you try to spell that. Yeah.

56:49Janne Parri: Yeah, that will be that will be the title and I will obviously put all the all the links in the description.

56:56Rick Bossenbroek: Thank you so much. Yeah.

56:58Janne Parri: Okay, to the last section. I always ask the guest if they have any idea of what the last section is about. So Rick, do you have any idea what it is about?

57:11Rick Bossenbroek: Could be something vaguely about how you see the future maybe and how something like that. No, no,

57:17Janne Parri: No, nothing so profound. So the last section is this weird finish section at the end. And Nathan Huening actually came up with a good name. It's it's now called Finnish line because I will give you a line of Finnish like a saying or metaphor or something like that. I will translate that to English and your job is to guess what that means. So are you ready for your Finnish line?

57:45Rick Bossenbroek: Okay. Tell me. Tell me.

57:47Janne Parri: Okay. Firstly, in Finnish it is and in English it is to act like you live in a field like a farm field like field.

57:58Rick Bossenbroek: Live in a field. Okay. Do I have to rephrase it now or No,

58:03Janne Parri: You should just like guess what that means. If I say to you that person is acting like they live in a field. So what does that mean? What that person does?

58:13Rick Bossenbroek: It feels like that somebody in the office is sitting too long on the toilet or somebody who is walking with their bare feet in the city or something like that. Yeah. Oh,

58:25Janne Parri: That would be Yeah, that's that's a nice guess. Totally wrong, but a nice guess. I like that idea. Like grounded. But yeah. Okay, I'll I'll I'll end your agony. The answer is actually to be very messy or disorganized. So they have all the things all lying around. So they are living in a field where there's no matter how you live basically. Some of these have logic, some of them are totally weird and random. But I it is just a little section at the end because yeah, it's a saying and I have to root for our little country somehow.

59:04Janne Parri: So this is my way.

59:06Rick Bossenbroek: I love it. I love it. Okay, Rick,

59:09Janne Parri: Thanks so much for being a guest. this was awesome. And for the listeners, watchers, we'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye-bye.