The Unexpected Path to a $1M Membership with Gina Bianchini

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Created with John Ushai. Today, we'll be breaking down the unexpected path to$1 million in membership. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought Gina Bianchini into EO Fire Studios. Gina is the CEO and founder of Mighty Networks and a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the book, Purpose, Design a Community and Change Your Life. In today's foundation, we'll talk about the most important business you can start this year.

0:36We'll talk about how to build a community that is well built, an ideal community, how to tell if your community is successful, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Gina and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

1:14Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Gina, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. First of all, thank you for having me. You know, here's the thing I think is interesting. I think that there's so many platitudes out there about like what it takes to be successful that a lot of people don't follow. And the one thing that I think people increasingly don't follow, that is just the thing I found to be so, so effective is start with what you can do for other people and the value that you can create in other people's lives and success will follow.

1:59So, Fire Nation, as you can tell, we are in store for an episode that will be on fire because we're talking about the unexpected path to a$1 million membership. Now, let's be honest. We all have a plethora of so-called opportunities that we can pursue in this day and age with entrepreneurship, just the online world, AI, all this crazy stuff. what do you believe is the most important business that we can start this year? A paid membership, I believe, is the single most effective way to create and grow a million dollar, not just in revenue business, but in profit business because of a variety of reasons that we can go through in our time together.

2:49Yeah, let's talk about a couple of those right now because I do want to move into AI in a second. But first, let's touch upon a couple of those key touchstones. I think that really important one is what can you build and what can any of us as entrepreneurs build today that is different than what everybody else is doing? Because what we know about human nature is that people are attracted to novelty and they pay for progress. And when they pay for progress, they're also paying for how do I achieve my goals? And then what's really interesting is that people pay attention to what they pay for. So when you start to sort of look at like, okay, well, where are we in the world?

3:35Well, number one, there is an unlimited, infinite amount of content that is out there. And so many entrepreneurs have been taught that content is king, queen, prince, princess, jester, and everything else. And so we start from a place of I have to build an audience. I have to have content. And my probably most controversial perspective or point of view is that content is actually work for a lot of people. Your content is creating work for other people to consume it. And what doesn't feel like work is building relationships with other people, especially at a time and a place where we as human beings are kind of getting bad at people's stuff because we're spending so much time consuming content.

4:34And so I want to just make the case, and it turns out that there's a lot of an increasing number of examples behind me of paid memberships or really building communities where it's not about I talk out at you, I produce a bunch of videos, I produce a bunch of content. My online course is just content only. People consume it and talk back to me and no one's talking to each other. Instead, what is working and is only going to get more and more valuable and easier and effective to do is I'm going to create a community where people are meeting and building relationships with each other. And I'm going to monetize it as an entrepreneur, either as a paid membership or an online course, where again, it's about a course or a workshop that brings people together and makes those introductions so that people are supporting each other through the easiest way to actually create customers, which is working with people who are in a transition.

5:44I'll get to that in a moment. Online course challenges. Challenges are incredibly effective, not just in terms of bringing people in, but also getting them incredible results. And finally, events. We're hungry for whether it's virtual, but increasingly in-person connection and opportunities to come together and have experiences where we actually can meet people and not just meet people, but meet people who are extremely valuable in terms of relationships, in terms of being able to share their stories, their experiences, their ideas that help each and every one of us realize the results and transformation that we want to have in our lives.

6:33So starting with community, monetizing community in one of four ways or all four ways, paid membership, online course, challenge, events. And this is now a opportunity that is highly differentiated. The software to support these kinds of businesses is getting more and more sophisticated, which means it's easier and easier to do. and because you are helping people navigate challenges, navigate transitions in their lives and you're providing them a way to meet and build relationships with other people, you're able to create something that is highly differentiated from other people that are stuck in the past and stuck in the world of, I just need to create more and more content and the value of what I'm building or offering is in the number of hours of video content that I have or the number of courses that I can offer.

7:40And that is a really bad way of creating successful businesses. The much better and more effective way of creating successful businesses is zagging when other people are comfortable in the status quo. Trying new things that offer people not just results and transformation, but getting results and transformation in increasingly interesting and novel ways that not everybody's offering. Fire Nation, there are so many value bombs that Gina just dropped there. I want to touch upon a couple that I think were writer downers. I know I wrote them down. Number one is you need to understand at the core, people will pay for progress.

8:27That is such a key phrase to understand. I also love that phrase of people will pay attention to what they pay for. So understand that. And you combine those two things and you have that understanding, you're on your way to building one of those successful communities instead of just one of those run-of-the-mill communities that has endless hours of quote-unquote video content to consume with no interaction within that community. Now, I want to move on, Gina, because we have a lot to talk about today. And I only want to spend a couple of minutes on this next topic because we could spend hours on it because it's such a buzzword right now.

9:00And that's artificial intelligence. What is its impact on how we think specifically about communities? A lot of people that are in and around the creator economy think about AI as it's going to help me produce more content. And the content that AI is producing today is mediocre. It's the content that comes from recognizing patterns across the average set of people, which is fine. Except when everybody has access to generating mediocre content, it's mediocre. And it's undifferentiated. So the way that we approach AI at Mighty Networks is using and harnessing the power of AI and advanced technology.

10:01So it's sort of we mung the two together to make the most relevant connections and build the most valuable relationships between members, between people. So what does that look like? That looks like surfacing similarities between members. It looks like offering ways through natural language to encourage people to build relationships with each other through introductions, through the creation of relevant groups, being able certainly at some point in the very near future to even use AI, which is basically, you know, data and natural language to host events. Like you can actually get a very long way towards dynamic events that really lean into AI to do all of the hard work of reminding people and surfacing who's going to be at an event together.

11:07And all of those things that allow for people to spend more time with more interesting people, create more valuable relationships, and ultimately nurture those relationships that they are building with new people. If we zoom out, the reason so many communities feel mediocre or just feel like they're just not that valuable, which is, again, one of the places I get skepticism of like, why, why are people, why would people pay for a community? Well, most community platforms, the vast majority of community platforms were all built for people who don't, who, who already know each other. And the most valuable communities are those that introduce people to each other.

11:51So you see the gap. The gap is between platforms that were built for people who already know each other. And that includes professional communities like Slack or Facebook groups were built for college students and college students who like might have an interest together. And it's been used for all of these other purposes. Or on the personal side, you see something like Discord, which is really built for gamers that already knew each other to be able to play games together. and they do it extraordinarily well. But in all of those cases, it is not about surfacing the most relevant members to each other.

12:32It is not about creating memberships or even courses or challenges or events that are about introducing the most relevant people to each other, breaking the ice and bringing them back to be able to do things together that are going to get people in a community to have practices that allow them different outcomes, allow them to build new habits that just are nearly impossible to build on your own, to have insights into how to navigate your professional career or your personal interests in ways that are exceedingly valuable to people. Well, Fire Nation, you can tell that we are just getting started on this topic of building communities.

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15:16Over 7 ,000 global companies like Atlassian, Flow Health, and Quora use Vanta to manage risk, improve security in real time. And right now, Fire Nation, Vanta has a special offer waiting for you of$1 ,000 off at vanta.com slash fire. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash fire for$1 ,000 off. All right, Fire Nation, we are back. And Gina, I just want to dive right in. So in your opinion, in your experience, what is an ideal community? To me, the ideal community is one where someone can show up and instantly be surrounded by the most interesting people to them for that particular purpose that they joined for.

16:07Whether it's the transition they're navigating or goal that they have or interest that they want to explore. And not only are they surrounded by the most interesting people, the most relevant to that particular moment in time, that particular challenge, that particular purpose, but then also those people are stoked to meet them. And the reality is that there is so much that we can now do to create those moments that just feel like you're looking around and you're like, oh my God, these are all people I want to know. And I can see almost instantly in my first experience how this is a place that is going to make a profound difference in my life.

16:55To me, that's the ideal community. And then one that delivers on that promise. So sets the promise up and delivers on it. But I know a lot of my listeners right now are saying to themselves, man, this all sounds awesome. This is some great advice. I mean, I'm really seeing the image and the vision of a community coming together in my world with everything that I've heard, but I don't have an audience. I don't have people right now that follow me, that listen to me, that look up to me. I'm not an authority figure. I'm not a quote unquote influencer or a guru. So do we already need a built-in audience to build a community?

17:28No. And if anything, one of the most powerful ways of hosting a community is by basically saying, Hey, I'm on the same path. I have the same goal. I have a similar purpose. I want to explore this area. And what is the most important thing to have when you're launching or hosting a community is a clear purpose, which is made up of two parts. Number one, an ideal member. This is the person that needs or wants your community the most right now. And it follows the ideal member follows a very simple formula. It's a human being in a transition because people in transitions are the most motivated to participate, to join new things, to buy things that are important to them.

18:23And that is the ideal member. The second piece of the formula for a big purpose, uh, or the motivation for a community is the progress they want to achieve their best year ever. So an ideal member, human being in a transition plus their best year ever, which is essentially results plus memorable details equals a big purpose. And if you are starting from scratch, tapping your own network, your own people and their people, and then there's people's people with a really clear big purpose, that pitch, home run. Anybody can create a community that is extremely valuable. You don't need a lot of people.

19:08You don't need a lot of content. You need a clear purpose. And the desire to basically raise your hand and say, the role I'm going to play here is in bringing people together. And what we go and do together, it's going to be up to each and every one of us to create something really special together. So I love that, Fire Nation. And a couple things I want to repeat because I think they're so important to realize is you need a clear purpose, that ideal member. Now, who's that ideal member? They need it. Why? Because they're probably in some sort of life transition at that moment. That life transition being a key factor to the success of getting that member to say, you know what?

19:51This community is worth my finances, my effort, my time, my energy. Now, as a great Peter Drucker says, what gets measured gets improved. So Gina, we've done all this stuff that we've been talking about throughout this entire interview, but how can we actually tell if our community is successful in the moment? Are people paying for it? Are they joining? And then if they join, are they building those relationships with each other? So one of the things that my data science team at Mighty Networks was able to do based on, again, the millions of pieces of data that we have is they could look at and predict with 93 % accuracy, whether a community will succeed or fail.

20:37And it is based on one factor and one factor alone. And that is not content. That is not your expertise, what kind of guru you are that's starting the community. Again, monetizing it through one of those four ways, paid memberships, online courses, challenges, and events, but it's whether or not members are building relationships with each other. Are members contributing? Are they DMing each other? Are they answering the questions that you're putting into the community? That member, not just member contribution, but the members interacting with other members is what is the most important thing to get right in a community.

21:17And the beautiful thing is when you have your ideal member and you offer that promise of their best year ever, that is results and transformation with memorable details, they are showing up knowing what they want to get and knowing what they have in common with the other members in your community. And that is ultimately what has allowed us at Mighty Networks to deliver truly extraordinary engagement. And from that extraordinary engagement has come extraordinary profit. Fire Nation, I love that can really come down to something that simple. Is your community engaged? Are they engaged with the content?

21:57Are they engaged with each other? Are they DMing each other? Are they messaging? Are they becoming friends? Are they becoming accountability partners? I mean, think about these things that you can actually maybe push along and set them up for success at the beginning with a couple of these things. And Gina, you've dropped so many value bonds when it comes to communities. What is the one thing that you really want to make sure our listeners get from our conversation today? Relationships are more important than content. Gina, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more about what you have going on, I mean, there's mighty networks I want to briefly have you touch upon because Because when I hear other people talk so passionately about a course, about a community, about a software, about a product, wherever that might be, I'm like, there's something there.

22:46And that's what people do when they talk about Mighty Networks. I mean, when you use a product and you love it enough that you have to rave about it, that's such a good sign. So talk to us about that and how Fire Nation can learn more. Mighty Networks. And then you can find me on just about any social platform. The one I probably spend the most time on is LinkedIn, not because I'm boring, but because I have a largest audience probably there. But fundamentally, we're doing something different at Mighty Networks. We are a different kind of community platform, one that really is about creating what we call people magic.

23:25And it's those relationships between members that ultimately get folks the best results and create that word of mouth marketing, that viral growth. That means that if you create a community on Mighty and you monetize it through, you know, one or all of the four ways that anybody is monetizing communities today, those handful of members, your founding members, not only are creating incredible value for each other, but then are also the people that are building that community, which means you don't actually need an audience. And we do it in a number of different ways that, you know, happy to share more of interest.

24:07But I think the thing that are what we call hosts of the people who are creating Mighty Networks and those members of those Mighty Networks, they can instantly feel that it is a different kind of community or membership or course or challenge or event experience. experience and that's what we strive to do because for us it is about ushering in a new era where more and more people are spending more and more of their time in incredibly valuable communities where they're actually able to meet people who are on their same path and build relationships that are extraordinarily valuable. Fire Nation you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you've been hanging out with GB and JLD today, so keep up that heat.

24:58Links to everything we talked about is at eofire.com. Just type Gina, G-I-N-A, in the search bar, and the show notes page will pop right up. And Gina, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Gina for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals, huge goals, which is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. And we're talking step by step.

25:29Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I will catch you there or on the flippity flip side. The next wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.