Speaker 1: 0:11

Well, hey, welcome back to the Vero Beach Podcast. I'm Brian and I'm Shawna, and today we're talking to Danielle from Vero Beach Neighborhood and that's a Facebook group and we're at your gift shop location.

Speaker 2: 0:23

VBN Beach Shop and Gifts is where we're sitting.

Speaker 3: 0:25

It's relaxing colors and beautiful decorations and smells delightful.

Speaker 1: 0:30

What does it smell like? What would you? How would you describe that?

Speaker 3: 0:32

I would say it's like a slightly floral, but it's just kind of a beachy smell.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Yeah, yeah, does it have a name? No, it's just calming and peaceful, and I think it's mostly from the candles that we carry from Wild Ascent. So it's just a, it's a nice marriage of all of those, those scents.

Speaker 3: 0:50

It's like not overwhelming and a natural smell, so I love that.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Is everything in here local?

Speaker 2: 0:54

It is. I do source from 30 local businesses, although it's my wholesale gift shop. If I can get something locally, I really do try to do that.

Speaker 1: 1:01

Awesome, awesome. Well, and I love the colors in here too. We always try to kind of paint the picture People haven't been in here. What is this color, shauna? Because you know I would call it probably light blue.

Speaker 3: 1:10

I would call that robin's egg blue. What do you call it? Oh, I call it sea glass like a sea glass green.

Speaker 2: 1:15

That's so much better.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Okay, I like all that and I have to say I love your backdrop wall here right behind. Is that where your register is at?

Speaker 2: 1:23

It is yes, a little photo op Awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Awesome, I love it. I love it. You're really thinking ahead here, sure.

Speaker 2: 1:28

Yeah, it's important. All the details are what makes the whole pie right. That's right.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Well, danielle, for those that might be listening that don't know who you are and probably a lot of people do- because you have this very popular Facebook group which we're going to get into.

Speaker 2: 1:43

Maybe take about 30 seconds to tell us a little bit about yourself. Okay, so I'm Danielle. I am the VBN lady, I guess, as it's called now. It's really important to me to be able to invest into the community in a bunch of different ways, and so Vero Beach Neighborhood, which I've created, has really done that, and so I'm very proud of that whole work, and so my family moved here about 10 years ago full time. My family's been here about 40, 45 years, so I've kind of watched the genesis of Vero Beach happen, and it's really been very interesting. And so that's why VBN is so important to me, because it helps me keep Vero Vero, while also welcoming all the new people, because that's super important as well.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Oh, that's cool. I love that. Yeah, and we're new so that's, very welcome. Now, we've been coming to Vero since 2014. So we're we're new residents. Okay, but you know the area, we know the area but we've gotten to know it even more with doing the podcast. So we're excited to be able to sit down across from you and get to know more about your story and how everything got started. I'm thrilled to be here so Well, okay. So I know you have the Vero Beach Neighborhood Facebook group. How did that get started?

Speaker 2: 2:47

There was another page a long time ago that was really specifically for crime related incidents. But people kept asking all kinds of stuff and the person who ran that page was an acquaintance of mine. I said I'll just start a page. It can be like a dumping ground, essentially. You just tell people if you want to ask about nails or hair, you go over here. And so they were like, yeah, that would be a great idea. Well, within the first week we had so many people I said I bet we can do something really special with this and that it's just really taken off. So it's been gosh eight, eight years now, which is sounds insane to say, but and we're up to 74,000 people at this point, so it's incredible.

Speaker 3: 3:22

Yeah, wow, it's a wealth of information, you know, especially being new to the area, and when you're wondering about certain places or whatever. Yeah, it's really. It's got some interesting stuff. I've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Yeah, thank you. And there's a lot of different personalities on the page that make it really very special. There's a lot of different dynamics that make it as cohesive, you know, as it is. And so I love that feedback, that especially people who are new, because I think we've all been new either to a new team, a new school, a new state, something, and you're like, gosh, how do I make friends, how do I meet people? What are the jokes? What do people do? Where do I go? Where do I not go? And so to have VBN be that water cooler space is really amazing.

Speaker 1: 4:00

That's cool and I like how you said that. It's a water cooler space. It's a place people come together and just chat and I know Shauna's write Like. There's some really good writers, I bet you can guess who I'm talking about.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Is it a man? Yeah, is it Mike Peruta? Yeah.

Speaker 3: 4:22

Yeah, it is. I love the posts that he puts on there and you know, obviously like the stories that he tells about his son and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Now were you surprised that it took off so fast.

Speaker 2: 4:33

I definitely was, because really, like I said, it just was supposed to be this kind of catch all nonsense page, but because we had so many people, I was like let's do something really special, and it was just about Christmas time. So we started the Christmas giveaway, which is now, and also in its eighth year. Um, we give away about $20,000 every year and maybe a hundred thousand dollars total over all the years that I've done it, and so businesses just choose to sponsor that. The minimum is 100. They can always go higher than that, and everything that's given to me is given to a random winner on the post that I put up for that business.

Speaker 2: 5:02

So the very first year that we did it, I went and used my own money and just bought some gift cards to some local businesses. I remember my husband being like this is the best thing who sponsored this, and I was like you did. So he hates that story, but I love that story. And so from then, other businesses were like this is cool, we want to be involved, and so that's really what makes Vero so special is, everyone really wants to see. Most people want to see other people do really well, and so it doesn't matter. You know the people at the top, whether it's air conditioning or painting or podcasting, they're all supporting each other. You know they're not. There's a healthy competition, as opposed to tearing each other's faces off, which we don't like to get into.

Speaker 3: 5:39

Yeah, We've noticed that and heard a lot of people talk about how generous people in this area are so many of them and so, yeah, I'm glad you said that too, because it's it's neat to be new here and to be learning so much about businesses, people, everything.

Speaker 1: 5:54

Is there any particular post or anything that you use like? That has always just kind of stuck with you.

Speaker 2: 6:00

Not any one in particular, necessarily, but anything that becomes VBN legend. So whether it's Corn Snakes or Pizza Joyce's Dock, Battle of the Berm, the Corn Snake Festival, like all these different things, and what I really love about them is that there are people who don't necessarily get out very often, aren't sure where to make friends, but they can all be in on this gigantic community joke, which is really I think it's a really fantastic way to be. So there's some people like I don't like that.

Speaker 2: 6:25

It's like, well, keep scrolling, but for everybody else like there are literally tens of thousands of people that understand what's happening, and we're happy to explain it. If people are like, hey, what's this? We what's happening, and we're happy to explain it. If people are like, hey, what's?

Speaker 3: 6:38

this. We love to introduce new people to that, and so thank you for that offer. I was just going to say I've been seeing the Corn Snake Festival posts and I was trying to work out whether it's a real thing or not. And I was pretty sure it wasn't. But yes, please explain.

Speaker 2: 6:51

It is a completely virtual Vero Beach Neighborhood Festival and it's held on June 31st, which we understand is not an actual date. That is the purpose of the festival. And what's very cool is adults, we should be adulting, but this is what we're doing. On the Internet, they come up with these hysterical titles of like they'll have like movies or events or all of these different things, and everyone kind of jumps in and you know, it's almost like a giant brain child, right? So you have people who start certain posts and then you have other people who jump in and you're like, oh my gosh, that's genius, yeah. And so it becomes. Every year it gets a little bigger and a little bigger. And so this year, with the gift shop, we actually have merchandise, we have Corn Snake Festival t-shirts.

Speaker 2: 7:36

So yeah it's just whatever, but it's fun and it's clean and it's happy and it makes people smile and I like that.

Speaker 3: 7:43

Did that start? Because people constantly post like is this a venomous snake that I found? And it's always a corn snake it.

Speaker 2: 7:51

Did People do post that? And Mike Pruda was actually the one who said who started with Black Racer, very friendly, and that turned into Corn Snake, very friendly, and from that it's become like it's now a legend. And now we have this festival and, like all this nonsense that you know, I love that. You know, we're in our 40s and 50s and this is what we're doing and it's fantastic. I love it.

Speaker 1: 8:10

I can relate to that. There was snake out in the courtyard today. I'm like a snake, she's like it was a black snake. I'm like, yeah, it was a snake. She's like they're harmless. Black snakes are good.

Speaker 2: 8:20

They're friendly.

Speaker 3: 8:21

They're going to keep the rats you hate away.

Speaker 1: 8:28

Yeah, like I think it was our son. I don't know how old he was, probably like when it right around. Yeah, I was like around eight or 10. Came in with a little snake and it looked like it was like the size of a worm. It was tiny. He showed Shauna at first and she said you need to go talk to your dad.

Speaker 3: 8:38

He wanted to keep it. He wanted to keep it.

Speaker 1: 8:39

And he showed it to me. I was like absolutely not, he's like dad, it's so small.

Speaker 2: 8:42

I was like nope nope, nope, for now it's small. Yeah, I don't want a snake in the house. I think most people come from Florida and they see snakes. They're like, ah, you know, murder it. But really a lot of them are very gentle and they're very nice.

Speaker 3: 9:00

And the black racers are one, the corn snakes are another, and so Sadly, that is not Brian's excuse because in Ohio we had lots and lots of friendly snakes and garter snakes everywhere, but he's just doesn't like them. So I'm the authority I mean not in real life authority, but just in our home authority on snakes Like, don't worry, it's fine, I've done my research, I know what to worry about.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So what are some of the other events that you listed? Because, like you're listing all things, I'm like I've never heard of any of these.

Speaker 3: 9:27

I think it was all fake stuff.

Speaker 2: 9:30

It's all fake. Some of it's stuff that has actually happened right. So we did do a pizza crawl one year and we will eventually bring that back again.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Explain that Cause like okay, snakes, you had me ready to run for the door.

Speaker 2: 9:39

Pizza Okay, I'm ready and I'm really crawling for it.

Speaker 1: 9:41

I will crawl for pizza.

Speaker 2: 9:43

So, uh, basically we rent um a large like bus, limousine, whatever, and people pay to go on this and we line up pizza shops and we go from literally from pizza shop to pizza shop, we eat pizza for like eight hours and then each place I have a little voting card and then I have a little trophy at the end. So we did that. We did that pre-COVID and just because the world's been kind of crazy and accelerated, we haven't done it again, but we will definitely bring back the VPN pizza crawl at some point. Joyce's dock is another one. That is a real situation. That happened. A guy was fishing with his son. The lady said I own the water. He goes. You absolutely do not own the water, you own the dock. She sprayed him with a hose. She was arrested. It went completely viral and then everyone in town with boats, floats, jet skis, the sheriff's office all went out there and they had a fish Joyce's dock day. And so she's still in jail.

Speaker 2: 10:30

She, you know, she, I don't know if she was there or not there, but she doesn't leave. I don't know if she was there or not there, she doesn't leave. I don't even think she lives in Vero anymore. But again, it's one of these things that just starts it like has this weird genesis on VBN and it becomes this incredible, you know thing that everyone kind of knows about and can participate in.

Speaker 1: 10:45

I absolutely love that the pizza crawl is a real thing.

Speaker 3: 10:47

It is a real thing, it is coming back so yes, and can we buy advance tickets?

Speaker 2: 10:52

You will be my first call.

Speaker 3: 10:53

All right, all right, all right, you'll hear. Eventually, probably. We have a little ad spot in the podcast and the whole point of it is that Brian is spending so much money on pizza that we need some support.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Just give $3 a month to the podcast and you'll be good.

Speaker 2: 11:49

Even you can sponsor an adult child who loves pizza.

Speaker 1: 11:52

Yeah, so, danielle, what's what would you say has been like the most surprising part about building this local online community? I've seen with with Facebook groups, where people will start them but then they'll try to control every element of it and the community can never have a voice there. But you're you're doing something right here.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Thank you. Um, it's a very delicate balance in terms of everyone has their, their leanings, where they hail from what they think. So every day I have to take myself out of what I think and believe and say, okay, I'm in VBN. This is the set of very basic rules we've set. As long as they're following those rules, they can post and comment and do whatever. So if it's any one of those violations or a shade of that violation, we just remove it. If someone's in danger, we don't want people to dox people.

Speaker 2: 12:39

But the most important part is that you're on it all the time. It is my full-time job to be on VBN and so there's a lot of people who start groups and do whatever, and I don't know that there's. If they want it to be VBN-esque without stealing my business name, right, you have to be on it and you have to be on it all the time. I mean, there are no vacations. I have not had a vacation since I started this and even if we're going away or I have a conference, the phone or the computer are right there. It's constant work because VBN doesn't sleep, so I don't really sleep and so that's what makes it. You have to be on it all the time and you have to not be afraid to curate it in the way that you think is the most beneficial for the community.

Speaker 2: 13:19

And so there's people like, oh, that's terrible, she's a dictator. So they just got me a sign from my desk that says VBN, dictator. I'm like this is great. Like you have to be willing to curate that. Like I think, going back to the fact that we are all supposed to be adults, right, you have to understand the room that you're in, and VBN allows most but not all. And so if you want to talk about national politics or use the F word or, you know, be disgusting, like this is just not going to be the room for you and that's okay.

Speaker 2: 13:45

And so I think the number of people that we've removed from the page is like less than 1%, 0.1%. There's not even a full percentage point of the entirety of the thing. So our numbers are good. The page is healthy. Yeah, I think you always. I always put blinders on Right, so I get blinders on. You got to do the work, like I'm not looking for fame or fortune or any of these things. It's the good work that. And if other things come from that, then that's just because the page is healthy and that's where it needs to be.

Speaker 3: 14:13

That kind of leads into my question Do you have anyone to help you?

Speaker 2: 14:17

admin wise, I do. I have a team of a few moderators. I have a couple of what they call group experts on Facebook, so they don't have insight into the back office work of VBN, but they have a different vantage point than we do and so they monitor from the front. And then I also have Mike Peruta, who I absolutely chased around the internet until people like you chased us around the internet. The only person I've ever chased around the internet is Mike Peruta, because I saw him commenting on other pages and I watched him literally get removed from multiple group pages.

Speaker 2: 14:47

I was like these people do not understand that. He's well-written, well thought out and he's not making fun of anyone's person. It's situational. I was like this guy is smart and he's quick and he's funny. So I was like hey, want to be a moderator, hey, want to be a moderator. And so I just chased until he was like fine, I'll be a moderator. And I give a lot of credit to his wife, shannon. She's lovely. We love her Because the hours that are put into VBN are just innumerable. Same thing for them they go on vacation but and he can jump off his phone, but it's. It takes a lot of patience.

Speaker 1: 15:18

So I give a lot of credit to his wife for hanging tough for us Well that's awesome and that's pretty amazing with that many people people in the group over you know, over 74,000 people that you've removed less than 1%. Yes, that's had to be, you know, blocked. So if you're in that less than 1%, you could be sore about it or you could say, hey, I'm in that less than 1%.

Speaker 3: 15:38

You're unique, you're an elite group, you're just not allowed in the group.

Speaker 1: 15:41

But hey, that happens Like you know what I mean. That is part of it, that moderation, because that's what keeps a group healthy. We moved here in January and started getting settled in and we're trying to figure out, like, how do we connect with the community? We want to get to know people more and more business owners. That's when we're like, hey, let's do the podcast. We've been like this podcast is new, but we've been doing podcasts for over three years, so it's not new to us, it's just a new podcast. A lot of people are asking, really, like we're not creating Facebook groups? We saw your group and we're like we don't want to like you guys are doing awesome. We don't need this Like you got.

Speaker 3: 16:13

the community already has that, and why reinvent? Yeah, we don't need to invent something.

Speaker 1: 16:17

So we are on Instagram but I'm like but we'll just focus on Instagram, we're not doing anything like that because you guys have a great following. What would you say you have learned about yourself since launching this Facebook group?

Speaker 2: 16:29

I have incredible patience. I really, growing up, thought that I was more of a hothead and didn't have. You know, I was like I want it now, like I didn't have a lot of patience, but I've really learned. I have, like incredible, you have to have incredible patience. But that always really shocks me. It shocks my mom too. So shout out to my mom, like it was like how are you doing this? I go, I don't know, I don't even know. But yeah, I think that's really important. I think it's important to understand where people are coming from. Not everyone gets on the internet every day because they've woken up in sunshine and flowers and that people have a lot of stuff going on in their lives, whether it be work related, home related, whatever it may be. And I think a lot of people comment and sometimes if you see an ugly comment, a not so friendly comment, we try to just meet them where they're at. So if deleting the comment, we just delete the comment, like we don't need to punish them forever.

Speaker 2: 17:16

you know for that in this space, but sometimes even just talking to them like so I'm a Bible thumping Christian, which is not a secret, but it's, as a kind word turns away, wrath Right. And I think that that I make sure that that plays in my head frequently, because sometimes people are like raw and I'm like, oh okay, understanding that I had the ability to eviscerate someone in writing or verbally is not always the position that I think God wants me to take in the position that he's placed me in, and so it's very important that I replay that verse in my head and I go okay, something is clearly happening with this person, because this is not the normal human reaction to like where do I get dinner tonight? You know like, and so it's really important, and I think that also helps in my own personal ministry to people, because if you're going to tell people you're a Christian, you got to be a Christian, and so that's really important to me as well.

Speaker 1: 18:00

Sometimes I think we forget that there's real people on the other side of those feeds and I've always kind of looked at that like, no matter what tool we're using, it's like a digital touchpoint into somebody's life so we can help decide, can we help make it a little bit better, but then also realize that we don't really understand what they're going through at this time. So I love to hear that you're approaching a group like that as well.

Speaker 2: 18:19

Yeah, I think it's really important. I mean, there is a time and a place like I'm like oh, I hate that and you're do need to be just like verbally nuked and removed. And some things I think just in Americana are like listen, it doesn't really matter what you're going through. This is crazy, what you just said, that's so disgusting, and so we mitigate those or we handle those. But I would say on the whole, 99% of the time, like I think it's really important to. What better way to tell people that you care? By letting them express who they are within a set of rules, but also being kind. So that's important.

Speaker 1: 18:56

I love that too, that you pointed out that what you learn most about yourself during this time is that you've learned that you have more patience. So I went to a lot of conferences and you know a lot of people are seeking like I want to get a bigger following, I want you know 100,000. I want a million followers. I want to get a bigger following. I want you know 100,000. I want a million followers. If you get there, you have to make sure that you're ready for that, because not only do you get that many followers, when your followers grow that much, you can get a lot more negative comments and stuff. So you have to prepare yourself to be patient, and maybe you haven't grown because you're not ready for that yet. No, it's a huge, huge component, because you know, with the good also comes the bad. All right, well, that wraps up this episode, and next episode we're going to dive into what the day-to-day looks like at the Vero Beach neighborhood.

Speaker 3: 19:37

Catch you next time, neighbor.