Episode 1324: Building Real Connection in a Digital World with Lea Rosenberry

What if the key to growing online is not attracting the largest audience but creating a place where people genuinely feel connected and want to return? In this episode of Sharkpreneur, Seth Greene interviews Lea Rosenberry, Head of Community at Chatter Social, who explains how the platform evolved from a content-focused social network into a community-first environment centered on live interaction and meaningful connection. She explains why community can be more valuable than audience size, how data helps identify the behaviors that keep people engaged, and why making newcomers feel welcome is critical to long-term retention. Lea also explores live podcasting, virtual events, creator monetization, personalized onboarding, and how Chatter Social hopes to foster more authentic human connection in an increasingly AI-driven digital world. Key Takeaways: → Strong online communities are built on connection and belonging, not on simply producing more content. → Features such as video, live rooms, screen sharing, and groups can help users find and connect with people who share their interests. → Community platforms can become more effective by using real user behavior and engagement data to guide product decisions. → Podcasts can become more interactive when hosts bring live audiences into the experience and invite listeners to join the conversation. → Creator monetization tools, such as peer-to-peer tips, can help increase both engagement and platform retention. Lea Rosenberry is the Head of Community at Chatter Social, an interactive streaming platform that brings people together in real time. A lifelong educator and IT trainer, she has spent her career helping others adapt to new technologies and build confidence in the digital world. She now applies those skills to cultivate vibrant, supportive communities where people feel connected and empowered to thrive. Connect With Lea: Website: https://chattersocial.io/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chatter_us/ X: https://x.com/chatter_us BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chattersocial.io

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Sharkpreneur Podcast with Kevin Harrington and Seth Green. Kevin Harrington is the inventor of the infomercial, one of the original sharks from the hit TV show Shark Tank, and has generated over $5 billion in TV and digital direct response sales. Seth Green is the world's first trusted authority on cutting-edge direct response marketing, a bestselling author, and the only three-time marketer of the year nominee. On the podcast, Kevin and Seth interview sharkpreneurs who share straight talk on what it takes to explode your business.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Forty-nine faces looked to him in triumph. Over the last 12 months, they had each taken turns and promoted his business for a week at a time, driving over $987,342 in revenue. What if you had a network of 50 centers of influence who promoted your business every week for a year? Grab your copy of the number one Amazon bestselling book, The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Business with a Podcast at 33% off the Amazon price by going to ultimatenpodcastbook.com. Again, that website for 33% off the Amazon price is ultimatenpodcastbook.com. Welcome to the podcast. This is your host Seth Green. Today, I am super excited to welcome Leah Rosenberry to us, where she is the community

• 1:20Speaker 01

  manager of, well, technically, she's head of community at Chatter Social. Leah, thank you so much for joining us.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Our pleasure, and I've become a big fan of your platform since being brought to it by Adrienne, one of our podcast producers. Let's go back in time a little bit, though. How did you get started? Because you weren't head of Chatter Social back in the beginning.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  I was not. I was not. It was a serendipitous kind of thing. I am actually a lifelong teacher. I'm a math and statistics professor. I always was the one to help out with tech and things like that for the other professors. And so I ended up getting a job at Penn State as an IT trainer. So I was teaching other people how to use, you know, which turned out to be crazy and very valuable during the pandemic, let me tell you that. And then Chatter opened, and so I got on the platform, and I loved it and everything like that. And my natural thing is just to always teach. I'm a teacher at heart.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  And so Nelson Apeg, the founder, was really frustrated one day after a town hall because people were like, how do you do this? How do you do this? And so I raised my hand. I thought twice about it. I'm so glad I didn't. I raised my hand and I said, you need people to teach people how to use this platform to have what we called Chatter 101 sessions, and I want to do it. And he called me afterwards, and we talked for about five minutes. He said, let's go. And we did. And so from there, it just kind of took on a life of its own, and here we are.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  That is absolutely incredible. So let's, for our folks who don't know, what is Chatter Social?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, Chatter Social is, so we kind of started one thing, and then we're super data-driven, so we sort of have morphed into something else. At first, we were very content-focused. We're a social audiovisual platform. And so we were focused around content, and let's make sure we have some of this, and some of this, and some of this. And then, over time, it turned into the important thing being the community. And so we ended up actually having a longest room competition and some September, I'm sorry, some December events, not this past December, but the year before. And the people who participated in that ended up to be on the platform every single

• 3:57Speaker 02

  day, almost all day long. And we were like, oh, my goodness, it's about the community. It's not about the content. And so since then, we've been kind of transforming things and focusing on community. And I can tell you that the absolute best place to host a community today is right on Chatter.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  All right. So what is it about Chatter that makes it so different from a Facebook or a school or some type of other platform?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So again, it's that community focus. School is community-focused as well. I mean, I'll, you know, I'll say that. But what we do on Chatter is the way that the groups are set up. That's what we call them as groups. The way that people can interact within rooms and things like that. We can have live rooms. We have video. We have screen sharing. We have different things that really can make people find their people, make those connections, and then, because of the platform, find them easily again. So the way that we kind of notify people when other people are on the platform and the way that, you know, groups are set up and things like that, it just makes it really

• 5:07Speaker 02

  sticky and really easy to find your people, and then people get hooked.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Awesome. Easier to find your people and getting hooked are two very, very important things.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  You've got some big differences between another supposed community network that came out around the same time, Clubhouse. Talk about, I don't know if Clubhouse is even still around, honestly.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  It is. It is. Yeah. Yeah, Clubhouse. And in fact, we are here because of Clubhouse. Nelson, the founder, was a really big creator on Clubhouse. And Clubhouse made a change in October of 23, I believe, might have been 24, and changed the way they did things. And overnight, people were instantly kind of disgruntled about that, the change that they made. They, basically, your friends or your followers were all gone. Like, they didn't, they didn't want to focus on that anymore. And so that really kind of shook it up and made people, you know, kind of think twice and things like that.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  And so I was in that room, and somebody said, why don't you just create your own platform? And Nelson didn't say anything. He was a builder. He's a, he's, he's not a tech guy, or well, he is now, but he wasn't then. And he just kind of kept it quiet, kept it close to the vest, started building behind the scenes, you know, finding people to do everything, learning about everything. And about nine months later, Chatter was rolled out, and here we are.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  And you, of course, also go beyond just audio.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. Yeah. And that's what I was going to say. Like, one of Nelson's skills is, he's like the tech and the, and the vision, and I'm the people, right? And so with the tech and the vision, he's a gap filler. He, if he sees a gap in the market or in the product or in the whatever, he fills it. He finds a way to fill it, and that's really, really helpful.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  He should actually be some sort of business consultant, because that would help other people as well. But that's, that's what it does for us. And so he filled those gaps. He, again, gave the, you know, we added video. We added screen share. Kind of the things that people wanted were, that were not available on other platforms, we incorporated into Chatter, and so here we are.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Here we are. So we're at a point in human history when we've got more ways to communicate with each other than ever before. Why do people feel so disconnected then, and how does Chatter help with that?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, and that's a really good question. And I, anyway, this is like a thesis for me.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  I think Chatter, I believe Chatter is going to change the world. That might sound crazy and pie in the sky, but I'm telling you, I believe that. I, the connections that we make on Chatter are different than the connections other places. You know, Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all those places. It's sort of like you talk, and then the other person comes back later and they talk and things like that. Live is different, and live focused on community is even more different than that. And so I think when people are getting more into AI and more into kind of like, I mean, come on, some of the, some of the responses people give on social media are written by AI. It's not even a real, like, you're not even commenting back to somebody. It's crazy.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  And so I think that we're gonna, we're gonna kind of fill that, fill that need. Long-term, way down, I can see Chatter being in a nursing home. I know this sounds crazy.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  And, and my, you know, because people, you know, maybe their family's far away or something like that. I can see people being able to talk to other people. We've had cases on the platform now where when somebody was in the hospital and recuperating, it just gave them a sense of caring, and people would ask about them and things like that. I think we're going to transform education the same way.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so big plans.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  That is awesome. What have users done with Chatter Social that, you know, you didn't anticipate?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Well, people are bringing podcasts, which I think is a very cool thing.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  So podcasts, podcasts, sorry.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  No, you're good. Podcasts are being transformed in a way if people want them to, because you can have a live audience. So you can do the podcast with just a, you know, just, you know, two people or whatever you're having set up, even if it's one person. And then towards the end, you can bring people up and you can have a conversation. You can choose whether to include that conversation as part of the podcast or not, but it just adds an entirely new kind of facet to that, which is really cool. People are bringing conferences, like the one that you mentioned where we met was the SWAT and Order Conference. People are doing conferences online. And so they are bringing people onto the platform, lining

• 10:05Speaker 02

  up speakers like they normal do, normally do, you know, inviting people from outside and so forth. And so it's really given people options that they didn't have before. And as we out roll out more stuff, honestly, we kind of get these ideas and do the thing and offer it. And then the people are the ones who take it in a certain direction and do what they want to do. We have people cooking dinner together, right? So kind of like a cooking show, somebody tells, you know, before the cook, you know, before the, before the room is going to happen, people can go buy their ingredients, they can all cook dinner together and things like that. It's just really, really, really amazing.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  That is awesome. And I apologize that my, that was Nelson going off on my phone.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  So

• 10:48Speaker 01

  I apologize.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  He would be going off on my phone, but no, he knows where I am.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  So as someone who has watched thousands and thousands of communities build, what's the secret to making a newcomer feel welcome and like they belong?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, really great question. And again, data driven. So we've found that if a person comes on the platform, gets in a room on their first day, that they'll be on the platform a week later. So we're identifying with data, these kind of sticky factors, and we're using those to help people make those connections to then, you know, keep the platform relevant, make people feel good about their communities and things like that.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Does your platform offer advertising?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Not yet. It's on the roadmap. We haven't, we, it's, it's one of those things we talk about. And I'm sure we'll get there eventually, but it's not, we're still building. It's not, it's not, uh, it's not, not here yet.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  And we should certainly talk about putting our podcasts on your platform.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Every, every entrepreneur is being told to build an audience. Um, should they actually be focused on building a community instead?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely. 100 people in a community is worth way more than 10,000 people in an audience, right? Those community members are connected to you, will go to the ends of the earth for you, will do whatever you ask them to do. They'll show up. You, when, when people start doing their podcast and things like that, or having regular rooms, Christmas Day, we had all kinds of people on there. And it was because you see something pop up, you get a notification or whatever about somebody having a room and you just stop in. Um, you can have it in your ear during the day. You can, you know, be fully participating and talking and things like that. It's, it's just, it's, it's amazing.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Are you allowed to disclose how many users Chatter has now?

• 12:40Speaker 02

  You know what? I don't have a, so I don't have a, we, we focus more because just the, this is just the way it is, on daily active users, monthly active users like that. And so I will tell you, we rolled out a feature just a little, about two weeks ago. Uh, nah, it's probably closer to a month now, um, called Rocket Chats. That's one of the things that Chatter has that other platforms don't have is a really nice monetization, uh, plan. And so creators can earn money and things like that. So, um, we, instead of being all for the host or whatever, we've introduced peer to peer, what we call rockets, or kind of tips, if you want to think about it like that. And that has driven our, our stickiness

• 13:25Speaker 02

  through the roof. And so, um, every time we kind of do one of those things where we know we hit something, then we iterate on that and go from there. So our, uh, daily active users, weekly active, monthly active users within the past months have doubled and even tripled. And so that's what we're looking for is to keep that going.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Hockey stick growth. Awesome.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  You got it.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  How are you, how, how is Chatter marketing itself? How are you spreading the word?

• 13:52Speaker 02

  You know, it's really funny that you say that. We don't do marketing traditionally yet. Uh, we probably will someday. If you think about communities, they, you kind of have a community and you bring it with you. When we have millions and millions of users, you'll be able to build a community from the people who are on there. But for right now, the easiest way is find existing communities, show the community leader why Chatter is the best place for them and the easiest place to build, and then bring them in. And so that's what we've been focusing on right now. We will do ads again at some point, just like regular, you know, one-off and things like that. And I've been teasing Nelson, um, that I want to have a Super Bowl commercial one of these years, but yeah, not yet.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  You, you've helped so many people, um, build their communities and be a part of something. What's your biggest challenge now?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Biggest challenge?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  I guess getting more people. Just, just, just building and building and building and building is what I would say. The people who are on the platform love the platform. Um, the people who are new, uh, so here's, here's another thing that we've just redesigned. We've redesigned the onboarding experience. When we were talking about before about being more focused on, on content, we just assumed that everybody wanted to be a content creator in a way. And that's not what everybody wants, right? Some people want to be a content creator, a, a community leader, and other people just want to find a great community. And so we've, we've split our onboarding so that we ask a couple of questions and kind of focus more

• 15:32Speaker 02

  on what the person wants, uh, what the individual user wants. And, um, you know, that's been, that's been really successful as well. Getting people to see the right things when they get on the platform, again, uh, helps with the stickiness and getting people where they should go and things like that.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  I bet. Your passion is obvious. What do you like best about what you're doing?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Listen, I love computers. I love people. I love teaching, right? This is my whole everything tied up into one. I'm a helper. And so I love to, you know, like, whether it's teaching people how to use the platform, or somebody's, you know, in a jam and needs to do something. And so I, it's just that I can, I can help everybody. I can help Nelson with the building. I can help the people on the platform. And so yeah, that's it. That's it for me.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  What do you want Chatter to look like in the next five years?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Uh, huge, in a, in a good way though, not huge for huge sake, but thriving communities where people know that this is the place to build and this is how you do it. And, and, um, people being able to find their people. Uh, again, with the authenticity, people not feeling, like people feeling like they make real connections on Chatter and not just sort of peripheral, you know, here's my picture and, and, and that kind of thing. Definitely, uh, the, the connections for sure.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  I love that. Any, any future plans for like Chatter meetups in person?

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Oh, we, we've been talking about that since Chatter launched. Uh, I don't know if it'll ever happen. I'm sure it'll happen at some point. We, I have to tell you, users meet up, but there hasn't been any, anything official. But, uh, yeah, I, oh my gosh, I would love that. I would love that. Chatter events, right?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Concert and Chatter will be there and all the people. And yeah, that'd be amazing.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  That is fantastic. For our folks watching and listening who want to learn more and get on the platform, where do we send them?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Go to the App Store or the Play Store and so search for Chatter Social.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  All right.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Download the app and come on in.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  This is Seth Green here with Leah Rosenberry from Chatter Social. Go get the Chatter Social app. You'll find me on there. Leah, thank you so much for joining us.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Thank you, Seth. This has been great. Appreciate you.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Our pleasure. Thank you all for watching or listening. We'll talk to you or see you next time.

• 17:56Speaker 03

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