🔥 The Group Chat: In Community #116

Your weekly spark centering entrepreneurial leaders, creators, and culture-makers from the rising majority

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🔥 And now, for your weekly spark.

Your network will celebrate your next move. But who knew it was coming before you announced it?

Joel Paulino is in his next chapter. Senior Director of Marketing at Verizon — a role that reflects years of disciplined, intentional work. And the first people he told?

His childhood friends. The ones he’s had for three decades. In their WhatsApp group.

I had to sit with that for a second. Because in an industry obsessed with networks, rooms, and access — the first move this senior marketing executive made was to go back to the people who knew him before any of it.

"They've always been incredibly supportive," he told us in his Wellth feature. "They're great at reminding me to pause and celebrate the wins."

And then, inevitably, they asked about discounts.

That's community. Not the polished version. The real one.

We talk a lot in this space about building community — community as strategy, community as currency, community as the thing that separates brands that endure from brands that just exist. And all of that is true.

But there's another kind of community that doesn't get enough credit. The one that predates your career. The people who knew you before you had a personal brand, a title, or a point of view worth monetizing.

For many of us — especially those of us who've had to navigate spaces not built for us — those original relationships are doing more structural work than we acknowledge. They're the ones absorbing the pressure we feel like we can't always show at work. Celebrating the wins we downplay in professional settings. Keeping us tethered to who we actually are when the industry starts pulling us toward who it wants us to be.

That's not background. That's bedrock.

🎥 The In Community YouTube channel is where conversations like the one with Joel live in full — longer, deeper, more honest than a highlight reel.

If you've gotten something real from this newsletter — subscribe to the channel. It's five seconds, and it genuinely strengthens the center of this community.

👉🏽 Subscribe here.

Here's what I keep coming back to: the leaders I've spoken with who carry the most authentic gravity — not just influence, but actual rootedness — all have some version of Joel's WhatsApp group. A thread. A table. A set of people who existed before the resume did. (Or in some cases, a group they had to build afterward.)

And the ones who've lost themselves, or lost the plot? They often lost that first.

So here's a framework worth sitting with — not about building community, but about protecting the one you already have.

📌 The Original Community: What It Does That No Network Can

It holds your baseline. Your original community remembers who you were before the wins and the titles. That memory is protective. It's harder to drift into performance when the people closest to you know the unperformed version of you.

It gives you permission to celebrate. As Joel put it — they remind you to pause. High-achieving professionals, especially from the rising majority, are wired to keep moving. The people who cheer you from before you had anything to prove are often the only ones who can slow you down long enough to actually feel the win.

It tells you the truth. Not the board-room version, not the LinkedIn comment version. The you left your headlights on version. Original community doesn't have a stake in your brand. Which means they can say the thing no one else will.

It keeps you honest about why. When the work gets hard — and it will — the question underneath is always why am I doing this? The people who knew you before this career existed often hold the clearest answer. They remember what you cared about before the industry shaped your priorities.

👉🏽 So go back to your group chat this week. Not to recruit them as consumers of whatever brand you're working on — though Joel's friends would probably appreciate that. Just to remember that the community you started with is still one of the most valuable ones you have.

Roots before reach. Always.

Read Joel's full feature — including his thoughts on self-awareness, authentic leadership, and why a hammock at the beach is his non-negotiable reset.

📝 Pro Tip: Get to Know Stanley

One of the things I get asked most about is building a professional personal brand through content. If you've been wanting to post more consistently on LinkedIn or Instagram but feel like you’re hitting a wall or unsure of where to start — or if you could use a shortcut to writing product descriptions, captions, emails, or scripts, tap Stanley.

As one of Stanley’s first 100 users, I’ve seen the team build a product that really stands out — and they’ve taken my feedback directly throughout, to make it even better.

So I’m sharing it with you now. Use my link here for a free trial. It comes with strong analytics built in and intuitive ways to build, whether you’re new to this or more experienced.

💰 GET PAID: 2026 Marketing Salary Guide

The gender pay gap widened last year. First time in 20 years.

Women overall still earn 83 cents for every dollar men make. That's $11,550 less per year. And for women from the rising majority? It's worse.

👉🏽 Black women: 63 cents.
👉🏽 Latina women: 54 cents.
👉🏽 Native American women: 52 cents.
👉🏽 Asian American women: as low as 50 cents, depending on community.

I’ve developed the Marketing Salary Guide to bring visibility to reflect real pay ranges for different levels and roles — so you never have to wonder if you’re leaving money on the table.

✅ Now Hiring

What you asked for, delivered.

Is someone you know considering what’s next for them? Here are a few roles with people hiring across the network. I’ll be adding roles here every week, so stay tuned and make sure to spread the word.

💥 Director, Growth — The Vitamin Shoppe (multiple other roles)

💥 Sr Manager, Organic Social Strategy — PepsiCo (multiple other roles)

💥 Product Marketing Manager — TikTok (multiple other roles)

ICYMI last week:

💥 Sr Director, Consumer Strategy — Visa (multiple other roles)

💥 Sr Manager, CRM — Pfizer (multiple other roles)

And before you go, consider who else might value this newsletter and what’s coming up on YouTube. Make sure to fwd this newsletter onward to them too. They can subscribe here for more directly in their inbox. 🔁 

In community,

Fahad