1 Oct 2026 · 9 min
Gena Bianchini argues that fear of empty seats keeps creators from launching paid communities. She cites 10-person mastermind groups charging $50,000 for four months, showing that community value comes from deep relationships and life transitions, not audience size or content volume.
We have communities on Mighty Networks that have 10 people in them, and the hosts are charging $50,000 for 4 months. In all of the questions around how am I gonna get new members and how do I make more money and how do I do this is the fundamental fear that is preventing you from putting yourself on a path to $1 million, which is, Oh my gosh, what if I host a party and no one shows up? Because no one wants to necessarily say that out loud, it shows up in a lot of different ways. It shows up in, oh, I need X before I can do Y. I need an audience before I can have a community. I need an email list before I can have a community. If I have 100 members on an email list, I need 1,000 members on an email list. If I have 1,000 members, I actually need 10,000. If I have 10,000, I need 100,000. There is safety in feeling like I'm preparing for my business. But the reality is that you can create a valuable community that you can charge a high ticket for the smaller it is. We have communities on Mighty Networks that have 10 people in them, and the hosts are charging $50,000 for 4 months. What is a community with 10 people? It's a mastermind. And for some reason, the term community makes someone think that you need to have hundreds of thousands of people to make it valuable, and that you could only charge $9, what Netflix charges. I want to disavow you of all of these false beliefs. These are myths. I have the data behind me that I can give you permission today that just with your network alone, just with your people alone and the people that your people know, you can create a community with just 10 people and you can charge a premium for bringing them together. So what's the secret? The secret is people magic and the 9 simple things that are really that easy. So many people get stuck at zero. If you are stuck at zero, first of all, I just wanna like grab you and say, all right, we've got this together. You are not alone. And when you're starting with zero, the single best thing that you can do Is get really, really clear on your ideal member. Who is the person that needs a community the most right now? Who are you the most excited to bring together? When you can answer that question with the same person, with the same profile, you've got something. So if you are stuck and you're like, oh my gosh, how am I going to launch? Where's my content? What kind of audience? I just want. to take all of those things, put them in a box, and set that box on fire. Because the only thing that matters is who you are bringing together and finding the most motivated people to meet and build relationships with each other. People who are on the same path, specifically people who are in the same transition. That is literally 90% of what you need to create a successful $1 million business today. It's not about your content. It's not about your ad funnel. It's not about your video sales letter. It's not about your social media following. It's not about the number of email addresses that you have. You can start with your network. So your people, the people that your people know, and as you start to bring together those first 10 people, the people that those 10 people know. People don't believe me because most of us, if we're aspiring entrepreneurs or if we're business owners who are spending a lot of our time on, you know, whether it's Twitter or whether it's LinkedIn or whether it's Instagram or whether it's, you know, the 47 newsletters you're getting, it all makes it so much harder than it needs to be. Because number one, as people, we are drawn to the stories, experiences, and ideas of other people. We want to learn from other people. We want to build relationships with other people. And yet, if you listen to all the gurus who are out there, they're like, where are you building your content? Where are your lead magnets? Where is more content? You need to be posting on 6 different platforms 5 to 10 times a day. And by the way, you need to learn all of these different video styles and text styles and all this How do I know this? Because this is what the gurus are telling me. I know what is out there and what I'm quote unquote supposed to do. And here's the thing that I know. If you would drop me anywhere today and asked, okay, Gina, what is the fastest way to $10,000 a month in revenue? All of that audience funnels, social media posts, all of that is noise. The thing that I would do is start with, who do I know? What transition am I the most excited to bring people together around today? How do I help people build to their best year ever? How do I go and take the simple formula of a big purpose, I or we bring together so that we can, and start to just bring together 10 people? Start to bring together those 10 people to bring value to each other and recruit new people in. That is what I would do. The rest is noise. Now, is this a controversial perspective? Absolutely. However, I also have the data of about a million— no joke— a million online courses. Challenges, paid memberships, and events behind me. And what I know to be true is that we are in a moment of fundamental change. Why? Because the software that is driving things like connections between members, the ability to build relationships between people, it is getting more and more sophisticated. And because of that, it is getting easier and easier for you to create a business that is fundamentally based on creating relationships between people, or what I call people magic. And because of this, it is more important for you as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, to understand people's motivations, especially people's motivations when they're in a transition. Because when someone is in a transition, they are most likely to pay money. They are most likely to join something. They are most likely to contribute. They are most likely to bring in new people. And so this is different. This is controversial. I am not saying things that you're going to hear from a lot of other people who, even when they are believers in community, they're giving really bad advice. Like, the difference between finding your niche and choosing somebody in a transition— I've now taught this to over 10,000 people, and what I will tell you is when you focus on a transition, you will be successful faster. Full stop. So if you are sitting there at zero, And aren't sure where to start, or finding yourself making those, you know, those— I'm not gonna call 'em excuses, but they look and sound a lot like excuses. I wanna point out that you are in a transition too. And the transition that you are in is someone who is motivated to go from 0 to 10. That's all you have to do. I'm Gena Bianchini. This is People Magic, and I will see you in the next episode. Woo!
