Behind Closed Doors: How India Taught Alyssa McGinn the Business of Gathering | Ep 65

In Episode 65, Samuel sits down with Alyssa McGinn, founder of Behind Closed Doors, a company built around one idea: the best opportunities in life don't happen in public. Alyssa's path to getting there is genuinely unpredictable, and this is a conversation worth listening to if you've ever tried to network at a networking event and felt like something was fundamentally broken with the whole premise. Alyssa grew up in Texas, studied journalism at the University of Missouri because she wanted to be the next Erin Andrews on an NFL sideline, graduated with the degree, and then moved to India. For five years, she and her husband did church planting through house churches and ran an import-export business helping companies source manufacturers across cultural and communication gaps. What stayed with her from that time wasn't the business - it was how Indians approach hospitality. In India, the guest is sacred. Your whole household rearranges to make one person feel welcome. She came home to Kansas in 2020 and hasn't stopped thinking about that gap since. Back in Wichita, Alyssa joined her mom's company, Influency, a data and analytics firm serving middle market clients that her mom started in 2006. She treated those six years like an MBA, getting reps in sales, marketing, and business development in a space she didn't naturally belong to, and learning more that way than any classroom could teach. She also couldn't stop starting things on the side. She launched Wichita Professional Advisors, a B2B networking group that now has two chapters, and an M&A community gathering that consistently pulls close to 100 people a quarter. Both were born from the same frustration: there was no room where the right people could actually find each other. The pivot to Behind Closed Doors started with a business coach who pushed her to look at the pattern. Every spare thought she had was about gathering people. The founder's dinner she hosted. The happy hours she organized. The way she would walk into a room and start mentally placing people next to each other. The coach asked one question: do you believe the best opportunities in life come from behind closed doors? She said yes, and the name stuck. The business now serves three types of clients - creative entrepreneurs, deal makers, and people with virtual audiences who want to bring their communities into the same physical room - with a model that ranges from planning only, to planning and hosting, to a full year-long event partnership for firms running something like a multi-touch fundraise. The second half of the episode is a live brainstorm where Alyssa helps Sam think through a Killer Growth podcast annual gathering, and it's a useful window into how she operates: one clear outcome before anything else, less is more, assigned seating as a non-negotiable, and no lazy hosting that just opens the room and hopes something good happens. Learn more at https://killergrowth.com