Behind the Build
Behind the Build is a candid conversation series with the people behind thriving communities. Most communities look polished from the outside — this show goes inside. Each episode, we sit down with one founder and dig into a specific win: the real numbers, the honest decisions, and the messy middle that made it happen. No theory. No highlight reel. Just the actual story.
Hosted by Circle — the platform powering some of the world's most successful online communities. New episodes monthly.
Episodes
6 episodes
The honest truth about building a six-figure community business
Four years ago, Jessie Montague wrote one honest Instagram post to a couple hundred followers and half expected silence. Today, Honest Hounds has over 1,000 active members, 100 neutral walk locations across the UK, CPD-accredited courses runnin...
The freemium pivot that unlocked 6K members
Joana Rocha and her co-founder had 400,000 social followers and a paid community that wasn't getting traction. Nobody was joining. Nobody was engaging. The pivot to freemium changed everything—and the conversion system they built inside Circle ...
From courses nobody finished to a six-figure community business
Ernie Svenson had courses lawyers were buying but not finishing. The problem wasn't the content—it was the isolation. When he built community around those courses, everything shifted. Members started showing up not just for lessons, but for eac...
How to run a 2,000 person summit entirely on Circle
Rachel Starr didn't just host a virtual summit. She ran a three-day, 2,000-person event with 22 sessions, daily live panels, and a private podcast, all inside Circle, all without a single tech issue. Then she used it to launch her paid membersh...
From idea to six figures in one year—with zero churn
Twelve months ago, Tom O'Reilly had an idea. Today he has a six-figure membership business with 950 members, a 100% renewal rate, and 10 to 20 active conversations happening every week—driven by members, not just Tom. He grew it using three mar...
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How a free daily writing ritual became a $500K community business
London Writers' Salon started as monthly meetups across London. Today it's a global community of 1,800 paying members generating half a million dollars annually—built around a deceptively simple ritual that happens four times every single day. ...
