How This CEO Is Transforming Community Building

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. Hello, Gina. This is Larry Wydell. And we're just going here. I figured we dive right in. So I looked at your resume, your. All the notes we have. It's just an amazing amount of things you've accomplished in a short period of time. And let me just tell you what I like about it is you've had incredible success, but then you've had the other side of it, too, to where things kind of the rug got pulled out from under you. One thing to have success and then have the rug pulled out, money. But when you've had your face on the COVID of 4 or Forbes or some of these different magazines and been in the Star and then kind of had to regroup, it's a challenge. But it's a, it's a good thing, you know, because you learn things that you wouldn't learn otherwise. So thanks for being on. Let's dig in. You were right. Now, you're currently serving as the founder, chief executive officer of Mighty Networks. Yes, And I'm pretty sure I got familiar with them with the Ark ETFs and that group along, you know, a while back, back when they were the ants. Meow. Before. I think they went through their comeuppance a little bit over the last couple of years. But anyway, I'm really curious. Why don't you tell everybody what you're doing right now? That's so exciting. And then we'll dig into how you got there and all that.

Great. So I run a platform called Mighty Networks and we give people a way to create what we call people magic. And what that means in practice is we serve brands, entrepreneurs and creators who want to bring a community online course, challenges, events, coaching together in one place under their brand. And what makes a Mighty Network special and different than anything else out there, whether you're thinking, oh, a Facebook group or a course platform, or Slack Discord, you name it, a bunch of other things that are out there is that we create people magic. We use advanced software, we use automation and, yes, AI to surface the most relevant and interesting members in your community or course or paid membership or event or challenge to each other. So my team came to me last year and it was fantastic. They basically were like, gina, we have the data. The thing you've been saying for a while now that the Most powerful businesses today are created through a network of people that get more and more powerful and more and more valuable to every member. With each new person who joins and contributes, they could show with 93% accuracy that a community paid membership, course, you name it, is made or broken, successful or fails based on one factor alone, and that is member connections. How frequently people talk to each other, how much people are actually communicating in the chat or in the comments. So we have gone all in at Mighty Networks to be able to use software and really push the envelope on making a community run itself and not only making that possible, but making it extremely valuable. So we have hosts, as we call them, on Mighty Networks who are making anywhere today. We have more $1 million communities than any other platform and that is a million dollars being generated with 98, 99% margins because the software is doing all of the work to introduce members to each other around the purpose, around the reason they're coming together in that community.

Yeah. Now let's talk about that. Yeah. There's. It's a bottomless pit of interesting things you've raised.

I love the fact you're calling it a pit.

Yeah.

A fascinating tapestry.

Yes. And it's. What a wonderful pit. It is. And so the thing is wonderfully interesting of topics. And so the thing is like, how did a beautiful young lady like yourself get involved in becoming such an expert in this field? That seems so complicated. It's just like, where did you come from?

Well, I, first of all, thank you, I appreciate that compliment. Turns out you can be a beautiful young lady and attracted to really complex and interesting topics, but I believe in.

You're a kiddie. That's a revelation.

We have, we have more than one purpose. No. I grew up in Cupertino, California in the 70s and 80s, so I was always around the power of technology. That was something that we were raised on. Plus I grew up in a very tight knit community. It turns out if you want to create innovation, if you want there to be new solutions to things, bringing people together who are curious, who have a common interest, a common passion, a common goal, and giving them not just the time and the space to tinker and discover, which was what Cupertino was in the 70s and 80s, but to also find and do interesting things with each other, that is what unlocks innovation. It's why most new things have come out of a scene. A scene, whether that's Seattle grunge music or whether that's the enlightenment, whether that is Silicon Valley. You have these moments in these times These communities. And that is really how things get unlocked. So for me, being from there and being surrounded by systems thinkers and people being able to showcase.

Surrounded by systems thinkers.

This is.

This is not a phrase that I know that I've heard often, but is very, very illustrative.

Yeah. Well, when you think about what is engineering, it is understanding how a system works, Whether that system is a car, whether that system is a computer, whether that system is people and an organic set of people coming together to achieve something, to build something, to invent something. And so being around systems thinkers and having my own fascination being with people and specifically, like, how does something go from being nothing to something? How do we have a world and a culture where smoking was the utmost sign of sophistication, to smoking being something that sophisticated people do not do? What are the dynamics in creating new cultures? That was always the thing I was the most interested in and remain really interested in. How do you create systems of people that really allow each and every one of us to live a more interesting, a more fulfilling life? Well, it turns out there's a formula, and there. It turns out that there are really cool and interesting ways to find your people.

Obviously, this is a thing. And that has gone. Been worked down through history from Greece and Athens, or you had all these thinkers there, and you had the Renaissance. You had all of these people in Florence, you know, the hotbed of all of that art and painting and all the studios there. Greenwich Village with a music scene in Paris with the artists, you know, all.

The scientists and scientific exploration of London in the 19th century. Yep.

Yes.

Everybody knew each other.

Motown came out of Detroit, you know, the neighborhood. Obviously, this is a thing. And this is a thing where what we talk about on this call and why the kind of guests we get are people who wanted to do great things with their life, are excited about doing great things with their life. We attract people like, I don't want to live average. I want to do something great. And I feel like I've got the capacity. They need some direction. I need some ideas. And the best way to pick that up is, like, you said, get. You know, this is another informal version of what you're doing, which is getting. Because the thing is, like, what happens, why this works? Okay? I'm selling people on what your validity of your thing. The reason it works is, like, I don't know what. You know, like, if someone comes to you and they. They're wanting to ask you questions and they need to know things, like, you don't really know what they don't know and they don't really know where. They don't know. But the thing is you can, as you talk, I heard this phrase a long time ago, magic can happen where it starts to bubble to the surface. And that's what happens in these communities. But if you're not talking, magic can't happen if the talking's not occurring with interested people. And one thing I think that would be helpful when I say, you know, a pit of tavik is like, you know, to establish a framework. How big, how big this is like talk about the size and scale of events and communities and things. Like there are things where people get on and they have conference calls with hundreds of thousands of people, chats with it, talk about how big this thing gets and how it can get that you've seen, you've learned, you're involved with it, your software enables people.

Yeah. So we absolutely have mighty networks that, that have hundreds of thousands of members. We also have Mighty network.

What that means is someone, Bob Smith has a thing where, you know, whatever, and a lot of people, horse trainers, a lot of people are interested in that. And so he draws interest. Now that develops into a network. You say mighty networks creates a network. Like Bob will have his network and you'll say on many of these single networks, hundreds of thousands of people will be in there. And they don't know about all your other networks, they just know about this one.

That's right. It's very similar to having your own website or if you have ever seen or heard of Shopify as a platform for e commerce and everybody has their own store on Shopify. The same thing is true for a mighty network. The difference is that a mighty network is there to bring people in, have them create accounts and meet each other in pursuit of a 30 day challenge or in pursuit of or consumption of an online course, or for a paid membership or we actually have a lot of live streaming and events. So in your example for Bob Smith, the network is not around celebrating. Bob, Typically what it is is Bob basically saying, hey, I'm gonna bring these people together because they are going through a transition. Those transitions, if you take nothing else away from this conversation, the absolute best businesses in 2024, 2025, the next five years and beyond start with people who are hungry to meet each other because they are going through the same transition. And that has been a concept that as we've gone out and really started talking to people about that we call people magic and people magic profit. That has been incredibly popular because so Much of entrepreneurship today is, oh, start with your niche. Niche down. It's all about niches. The problem is that no one really can kind of get their head around, oh, what's my niche? And is it big enough? Is it small enough? Like, what is it for us? Especially because we're dealing with people and people businesses are by far going to continue to be the most lucrative, and I'll give you some examples in a moment. But because it's about people, it means bringing people together gets radically easier when you can raise your hand if you're Bob Smith and you're like, I'm going to bring together all of the experienced doctors who want to figure out what their next chapter is, what do they do? They're not going to retire, but they don't want to be doctors anymore. So what? And how can those doctors meet and build relationships with each other in pursuit of a process, a program, a framework for them to be able to figure out what it is they want to do next? Or if you're starting a floral business for the very first time, you probably would like to be successful. You would probably like to avoid mistakes that other florists, it turns out, have avoided. So you may join a network and you would pay a membership fee or you would buy a program or a course. This is what we do at Mighty Network. So I'll just give you an example of sort of how some of these are structured. So we have, on average, people setting up a mighty network and other people coming in and purchasing access to that mighty network because it has courses or a membership or challenges or events. And it's on average $48 a month or nearly $600 a year. That's the average. So that means there are people that are charging a lot more than that and people who are charging less than that. But this is not about celebrating a creator. This is about how do you create a really compelling, durable business that essentially helps people of the same path navigate a transition together.

Okay?

And people will spend a lot of money on that.

Okay, now, what are the kind of things that people are able to do once they get their network and their community going? And I mean, connecting people from different countries. You talked about live events, streaming. How successful are these live events where you get. Everybody gets a thousand emails with. Come into my conference register for. We have 800 speakers and the best of the cream of the crop. And you never heard of any of these people, but supposedly the geniuses and whatever and come on in. And Neil Patel has got religion now. And so Neil Patel is doing AI and he's always hammering to get you on another two day conference with all the speakers. And so let's just one example.

But that's, that's obviously a hypothetical example, Larry.

Hypothetical? Yeah, that's a hypothetical.

You're like, I just looked at my inbox and that is what I have. So let's talk about that. So that is really about. I talk out at you, you talk maybe back at me. But no one's actually building relationships in a two day summit. That is live stream. We have live streaming because our hosts, as we call them, those are the brands the entrepreneurs or the creators do want to run live events occasionally, but with a different intention. The different intention, and that intention is to get members to meet and build relationships with each other. A lot of the people that are running really large online events, which are essentially webinars, which are essentially lead magnets for you to buy their programs, which is absolutely fine. Yeah, but we're talking about something slightly different. And I think it's really where the world is going to continue to move, which is smaller and more intimate groups of people who are on the same path, who have a host or a guide setting up for them a framework, a quest to go on if you want to be fun about it together with each other. So for example, the idea that you could design the next chapter of your life, at the end of the day, for you to design the next chapter of your life, again, that transition, you're going to have to do something yourself. You can't just sit back and listen to 14 speakers and great, you get inspired. But like, what then what, right? So the then what I think is going to become more and more profound and more and more valuable for more people. And what is that? So that is okay. I want to define the next chapter of my life. I join a mighty network within that mighty network. The host of that mighty network is giving us a framework for the questions to ask yourself. And I can see who are the members near me, who are the members like me, who are the members who care about the same things. And we are able to easily find each other so that we can take those questions, do them together, share our answers, share our stories, our experiences, our ideas, even potentially share what we have to give and what we may have as an ask for other members. And now all of a sudden, think about it this way, you're a creator in social media or you're running these large seminars with 14 inspirational speakers. Well, the people that are there, a percentage of them are going to join your program, which might mean that they're buying a lot more content from you. And maybe, just maybe there's like a Facebook group over to the side or Slack group over to the side somewhere. But the likelihood that anyone is going to consume that content that they've purchased is relatively low. Not zero, but relatively low. Now here's the problem with that. If you and this is why people have done high ticket, high ticket sales is you want to get that one time purchase of $1,750 from a set of people coming out of that massive summit or that massive seminar. But then if they never, if it feels like work and they never finish it, guess what they're not going to do? Buy from you again. So what we've seen and why some of the very large creators use mighty networks is because they understand that by making those connections between members that creating that people magic and giving people something amazing to do together, they are going to get longer retention. They are going to get people therefore better results. People are coming back not for their content, but for the other members. And ultimately what happens when any of us get results and transformation in our lives that we can't get on our own? We talk about it and we talk about it to whoever will listen. Which also means that your existing members are going to be able to bring in new members who will also get great engagement, longer retention, better results, better results leading to word of mouth that then bring in more people.

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Notes.

I'll tell you, I know there's a lot of people out here thinking, okay, I've got the yada yada. Conceptually, I don't know how it would apply to me. It sounds like it could apply to my situation. However, one thing we need to point out at this point that it is big and it's like we used to. I was in a manpower development business for 40 years and we have lots of meetings. And you find that most of the learning in person meeting, you know, at big events happen in the hallways. People, you know, in the hallways was where the light bulbs seem to go on most of the time and are in the hotel rooms. You know, on the second or third night when everybody's kind of relaxed and you know, just going over everything. Or in the bus ride, you know, you have people, car and bus rides, they would come from six, eight hours and on the buses they'd have these long conversations and the light bulbs go on. So I see the value of it. I don't see how to go from start to make it happen. But what I do know is that you know how it works. And let's just say one thing, that this is big. This is something that probably I've got a guy named Randy. He's a young guy and he started. I think he's immigrant from somewhere and Hispanic. He's Hispanic family. But the thing is that he started a car wash thing and got himself a van and put things on the side. He's got him and his buddy, they do a great job. Well then he started to do some youtubes, little simple how you do car, car detailing. And he became a huge hit. Before you know it, he's on CNN as a young entrepreneur of the year. And Randy, he's a big. He becoming a YouTube star. Now. I could see Randy building himself, extending this another step to where he gets it from all over the world at all socioeconomic levels, wanting to. You know, my father was a big washer and waxer of the car and I did not get that gene. I do believe in genetics. It skipped a generation. My oldest son has that gene and. But I do not have it. And my youngest son doesn't have it. But there are a lot of people who have that. And with Randy putting this on YouTube, little simple type things and he just become this phenomena where the car product, people are going to him and everything and they saw him on YouTube and. And they want him to promote their stuff. So I could see how that could go tell people how big this. I just want to establish in this comment that you can figure it out, it can happen and people are doing it. You started Mighty Network.

Let me just address that. So you're thinking about big in terms of like, can you get 200,000 people on a live stream together? And I want to offer a different way of thinking about it.

I'm just talking about big in terms of. Justify your time.

Yeah, well, let me. Let Me, I'm going there. So hold your car washes.

Okay.

As I mentioned, but it might have gotten lost is we have more $1 million communities today with 99% margins being created. And it is because when you are charging $600, 1,000, $5,000 per year and providing value from that, that comes from being the person who brings others together. These businesses get big fast. So it may be thousand people paying you $1,000 and we have those in spades. So some of our biggest networks are anywhere from 15 to 20 million dollars a year with 99% margins, which means you are keeping more and more of that money for yourself than paying it because you have to scale a big team. So coming back to Gary is imagine that he could in addition to showing the how tos, also talk about how to buy and run a car wash. Because when you can buy and run a car wash successfully and you're bringing in, I don't know if that's a half a million dollars a year, you're probably willing to spend $1,000 to be able to make sure that you're building it as efficiently as possible, you're marketing it as efficiently as possible, you are hiring people and running it as efficiently as possible. That is where people are really making a lot of money today is in these professional networks, health and wellness networks and, and then other important interests, these other life transitions. You can imagine. Why would somebody pay 1,000 or even $5,000 to be a part of a network of car wash owners who are actually helping each other build successful businesses? Especially because it can be, as you said, people all over the country or all over the world. And there's a lot of similarities in terms of how they're going to go get customers, get customers to bring in other customers and the like.

And this turns into for you at Mighty Networks it says and I'm sure these numbers, when we get them, they're always wrong because they're later put because.

We certainly didn't give them out because we haven't talked publicly about it.

But it's like 3 supposedly 370 million in creator earnings in 2023.

Well, that's true.

That seems like a big figure.

Yes. And it's larger today obviously.

And now what is creator earnings? 370 million.

That means. Yes. So that basically means that all the Randy's out there who are running their mighty networks, when you add up how much money that they are making on our platform, it is north of $370 million today.

Unbelievable. And so your this is not Your first rodeo on this, you started co founded a company called Ning, which is a global platform for creating social networks. And how is creating social networks different than creating communities like what you're talking about here?

Yeah, it's basically the same thing. The only difference is we were doing that in 2007-2010 and mighty networks is taking advantage of all of the intelligence and all of the most modern software to be able to make those relationships work between members in new and interesting ways.

Well, what we like to do here is to pick the brain a little bit of your journey. And it's like because along the way, right from the beginning, you made choices. We all have choices, forks in the road and you don't end up in a place like you are unless you gotta get out. Most of them have been right. Maybe they're not all right, but most of them are right. And so what informed your decision? How did you grow up and look at life? What were you thinking about as a young person growing up and what attracted you to where you say? This is really fascinating for me. And what did you think about? Were you an athlete growing up?

I was, yeah. So I was an athlete. I always knew I was going to run something and I was super entrepreneurial as a kid.

Why was that? How do you come up? Because how do people get. I always knew that I was going to be a leader, I was going to be in charge of things. So like, where does this come from?

Certainly the family I grew up in. Yeah, my father kind of could walk into just about any room and figure out what was needed to lead the room. So that was always something that I saw modeled. And I wouldn't say I had his skills or talent for doing it, but it was just always something that was.

How old were you when you noticed he had that ability?

I don't remember a time and a place where he didn't. And he was a high school history teacher and then a school administrator and he was a coach. And I remember going to the high school that he taught at when I was just a little kid and I would just. It looked really fun and he was having a good time.

Yeah.

So he also followed his passions, as did my mom. And so I always had models and role models of people who were curious and engaged and excited about trying new things or building new things and going. When they did something, they did it to the, to their full effort. And so I just always saw that. And I would say there were high expectations for. My grandparents also lived around the corner from us and were really involved in the community in Cupertino. And it just always felt like something that was fun and exciting to do, which was. But I also feel like it just was something that was never in doubt for me. I don't know. I wish I could say that it was a lightning bolt came and struck me down, but that just wasn't the case.

It's funny that you were at Cupertino. You know, all the Apple devices come with the watches. The home base is time and Cupertino.

That's true.

There might be something in the water there or the mentality there or the neighborhood there, but it was safe to say that you got. You learned about winning and being successful and doing well at an early age, and that was attractive to you.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

And so what did you. When did you start to take on your uniqueness, you know, as far as your skill set, your really primary interests, Any role models?

Yeah, I have no idea. I have followed my interest and my curiosity ever since I can remember. And I found it in things like I was saying earlier, biographies, history, political science, and just like, how do things work and how do people work? I was never interested in psychology or sociology necessarily, because I thought that the people systems was the thing that was really interesting. But, yeah, so that was my interest. I loved sports. I played college field hockey and soccer as a kid. I played a lot of soccer, and then I started playing field hockey in high school. And I loved sports. And I remain somebody who loves sports. And I think being on a team is truly one of the best things that we can possibly do.

Well, I bring this up occasionally. My Apple computer and all of that came from the San Francisco Homebrew Club, and they worked off the Altair 8800, which was the first computer. And that computer was invented by my cousin Edward.

Oh, that's cool.

Down in Albuquerque. And Microsoft, the name Microsoft came from Bill Gates and Paul Allen winning the contract to put the software on that little box. And so the name of the company was Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems. And so Micro Software, that's where that came from. And so my cousin Edward was obviously pretty bright guy. And he told me as I was coming up getting ready to go to school, he said, follow your natural curiosity and beware that all this institutional learning has the effect of beating that out of you, and you kind of lose that. But it's your natural curiosity that's going to lead you to what you're supposed to be doing in your life and. And what you could be great at where did you think? You know, but you have to give yourself a kind of permission to follow that. Did that you think came from your parents?

I don't know, honestly. I mean it certainly. My parents certainly helped. Yeah, they modeled being curious, they modeled being engaged in the world. Yeah, I was always pretty self motivated.

What was your first job that you got in and really started learning some things or that was a difference maker, you think?

Well, I mean probably right out of college was the first truly. Well, it was the first job full time job I had that wasn't a summer internship. And it was at an investment bank called Goldman Sachs. And I was one of the first high technology group analysts in the San Francisco office when it was like four people and then the Internet happened and it was just an incredible, incredible experience. So I was incredibly fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, surrounded by the right people. And I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

Well, you said something that you noticed. You were always interested by communities or people groups or people systems and how that worked. I don't think that's a concept that occurs to most of us to even notice, especially, especially not at a young age when you're in leadership. You have to get people together and figure out how to move them. It's smaller versions of Walt Disney World. I've always enjoyed going to Walt Disney World and seeing how they move masses of people. Man in the mass incredible. Man in the mass is totally predictable. Man as an individual is totally unpredictable. And so it's really interesting to observe how these big corporations have figured out how to manage the masses. But you noticed that interaction, I think. What about that did you notice and what intrigued. Why do you think you were intrigued by that?

What was intriguing about Goldman Sachs?

No, about the idea of communities and people groups and the power of that.

I grew up in a very tight knit. So I grew up around the corner from the Homebrew computer club. And that was not rare in Cupertino in the late 70s, early 80s, everybody if they were interested in something. There was the model A car club, there was the mini lop rabbit or the guinea pig breeding club. There was anything you could imagine. There was even something called Lyceum where you could learn how to make candy or about extraterrestrials or all these amazing things. And that was just Cupertino in the late 70s and 80s. And I think that what I saw and what I observed were people that were curious and engaged in the world. They were also. It was A very engaged community. My grandparents had moved there to open a nursery because it was all orchards and agricultural. They moved there and opened their nursery in 1950 and. And they were members of the Lions Club and the Deora Women's Club. And all of that was what I was born into. And so I saw community work not only overall, but also related to your interests and your passions and your goals and what you wanted to accomplish, whether that was as educators or as local business people and small business owners as well as guinea pig breeders and where. So that was always. That was like oxygen to me. And then When I was 11, my father was killed by a drunk driver when he went on a National Guard trip to Jackson, Mississippi and just never came home. And thank you. But what was so powerful about community. And I think, really, I think that the intellectual puzzle of people and how they do what they do, and you said it so beautifully, as a system, they're relatively predictable, which means you can build things for them. But the way that community is there to lift you up when you fall is also extremely profound. And I think that there is no other dynamic in our lives that is the first place you go when something great happens and the first place you go when something terrible happens. And it's one of the reasons why I think taking advantage of modern technology and what is possible to create community just again, what we do is so important. We can hear all the stats and all the hand wringing stories about loneliness and loneliness epidemics, but the only way we're going to actually address that is to bring a community renaissance back that take advantage of those things that I lived in my life and you lived in your life when you could meet people and we were actually better at people stuff because it wasn't necessarily all being generated or filtered through a supercomputer in our pocket.

Right. And what led you to co founding a social media company?

I didn't. No, we're not. I've never like what I do. And the kind of software I build is not social media. Social media is. I talk out at you. I'm focused on building the biggest following that I can. You might talk back at me, but no one's actually talking to each other. That's social media. What I build and my team builds is social networks. And networks are about how do I meet the most interesting and relevant people who are on the same path, who want the same things, who want to live through or navigate the same transitions that I am in right now, who I can learn from, that I can build relationships with that I can go on the path together. That is very different than I'm going to create content five or 10 times a day, I'm going to post it and I'm going to watch my view count.

How did you notice that? Because you obviously noticed it early on because you started ning in what, 2005, something like that. What were you noticing that caused you to say, we've got to go in a different direction, we got to provide something different?

Oh, we didn't. None of us knew. None of us who were building things in 2004 knew that we needed to go in a different direction. So the story is that I was in a community, a very tight knit community here in Palo Alto. I was running my first startup which did advertising tracking, measurement and optimization that we ended up selling. And as part of that, in our sort of small, tight knit group, Reid Hoffman was a good friend of mine and was like showing me all of these really new and interesting things that were being created like Friendster and MySpace and all of these new. And he was really passionate about it, which is why he started LinkedIn. And then separate to that, I was good friends with Marc Andreessen who sat on the board of that first company, that advertising company that I was a co founder of. And I was learning all sorts of really interesting things from him. And I was like, hey, my friend Reid is doing all this cool stuff and have you checked out all this like user generated content and you know, these really, really early social networks? And he was like, that's awesome, was super supportive and you know, then came to me and was like, hey, what if we created a platform for creating social networks? So instead of one big monolithic social network or three monolithic social networks, what if similar to the browser and similar to unlocking millions of different websites, there were millions of different social networks that could be created. And that was the genesis and founding of Ning. It turns out Mark is a very smart guy and we were just off in terms of what the software could do in 2007 versus what the software is going to be able to do in 2027.

Right.

And that idea was simply ahead of its time. And so the reason that I started and continue to be more bullish on creating your own community, your own social network, very much the same ideas, the language has changed a little bit is because people love people. And now the software is getting sophisticated enough to play the role of amazing host in people's lives. So being able to, because think about it, it's like the best parties that you've ever been to or the best events you've ever been to. You walk in and the host of that party immediately is like, oh, my God, Larry, I'm so glad you're here. I really want you to meet Gina because you guys have this interest in common. So what does that host have? That host has two things that now software has the ability to. To do even more effectively. That host has data and natural language. Data and natural language. And that host can make connections both obvious and not so obvious when they have data and then they use natural language to make the connections. So what we are doing at Mighty Networks is building the software that can play that role of host, which has all sorts of benefits. You get to meet amazing people, you get to go on quests together. You get to see and experience different ways of living your life and navigating transitions that otherwise we've moved away from doing it in community to this idea that you're going to just consume a bunch of video content online and maybe add some comments, and that's going to be how you learn anything and change your life. Well, we've never learned anything or changed our lives that way. We have only learned things and changed our lives in community with other people. And so that's why I'm so passionate about what we're doing at Mighty Networks and how we're doing it with people. Magic is because this is taking advantage of what is now possible that I've been patiently waiting for in some level for many, many years.

How about sharing what it's like from that initial thing you became? This is a booming, growing thing and all the media's looking for the sizzling people out there, sizzling companies. So it says you might be offended by this. They said that you became the it girl of the social media companies. You're on the COVID of fast growth, let's say, yeah, fast company, and a staple on the speaking circuit where I'm sure you got the glowing introductions and everybody is just, you know, you're a hero. And what did that do for you? What would you tell people? Because if people, you know, I like to prepare people for success. People are all the time preparing for failure. But the deal is if you research your idea, you get in, you have the energy, you hit it right, you just might screw up and be a big success. People have done that, you know, and that can happen to you. And so what is it like to where you get this rush of success? We're so used to getting rushed with negativity that all of a sudden you go into a thing where you're rushed with positive feedback and you're everybody's role model.

And I mean, let's be clear, what you really do as you raise your profile is you put a target on your back and people want to tear you down. And so I think the most important thing is, and by the way, there's plenty of people who are nice. It's just, it's. I don't know, I think it's somewhat irrelevant. I think at least for me, having a profile, I would say helps get, especially today, it helps you attract attention to your ideas, your purpose, your mission, what it is you're building and how you're building it. It's incredibly empty if you don't have a bigger purpose for what it is that you are trying to bring attention to. I would say, and the other thing, it's fine. I would say it's. It was never my end goal and it still isn't my end goal. What is much more interesting to me is creating software that hasn't been created yet and building it out in such a way that it can have a profoundly important impact on people's lives. Both the people who are creating these networks and those people who are joining and participating in these networks. And, and so I just think about that kind of attention, media attention again, like in a world that is rapidly changing in terms of the kinds of what it means to have attention. It's a byproduct that if it can be used towards my mission, I will do it. And otherwise it, well, like we referred to early on, refer like, great, fine, but it's not what's important to me.

Well, you had, you had the chance to start over and regroup and I'm sure you have some real clear ideas of what was going to be important to you and what was a smarter way or better way or more efficient way of building the company this time around. What were some of those thoughts, priorities that you had? Non negotiables. Things are important to you, things you're going to do, make sure that your team was going to do, things you were not going to allow. What are first things that just jump into your mind like on that time?

Look, I had a fantastic experience at Ning. I learned more than I could have ever learned in any other professional setting. I truly believe that. So for me, it wasn't like mighty was about regrouping, it was about continuing the mission. And it was about continuing the mission in ways that would allow us to take advantage of the latest technology to do the things that had not been done before. And we're just getting to a point where they are possible now. So that was my experience. What I would say is it was never about the cultural pieces. It was never about, like, I need to be a different kind of person or a different kind of leader. Certainly growing up and maturing is always awesome. Like, that's fun. There were two specific strategic things that were important to me in starting Mighty Networks. Number one is that we were a SaaS company, not an advertising driven company. Ning thought it was an advertising model when it was a SaaS company and we just didn't know it at the time. The second thing, what does that mean?

What does that mean? What did you just say to me?

Yeah, so what that means is that at Ning, when we were growing and we reached nearly 100 million people around the world, 300,000 active Ning networks on a monthly basis, we had a way. We didn't have a revenue model other than you could buy $36 worth of. You could turn different things off, but we had $36 that you could spend with us. Well, IBM had a intranet for its company and its partners on ning that had 500,000 people in it. 500,000 people in an IBM intranet. And we charged them a grand total of $36 a month. That's what I mean.

This is work. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. But at the time and the place, and certainly within Silicon Valley, it was a belief that only you had to be free and run ads. That was the model. We did not know that. It was actually that model of being a platform for creating a social network, actually that was something people should pay for and there should be transaction fees and all the things that we do at Mighty Networks today. That's okay. That happens.

Yeah.

And then the second one was being mobile first. So that basically means making sure that we're structured and we're still a very flexible platform at Mighty Networks, but that we are flexible. And you can have your own iOS app, you can have your own Android app, and your own web app. At Ning, we only had the web app.

I see. Let me shift gears and find out. Where are you talking from today? What part of the country?

I'm in Palo Alto, California. So I'm about 25 minutes north of where I grew up in Cupertino.

Wow, you're just really adventuresome. I tell you.

I've left at various points, but I am very happy in Palo Alto.

Okay, and tell us about yourself. Are You a family person? I know you're a family person in.

The community, but certainly, yeah. Oh, I'm married and I live in Palo Alto.

Kids?

No.

Okay. And so is your husband in business with you? I mean, have you learned?

No, he is not. We very happily have separate careers.

Yeah. And what can you say to people about that? That's good about that? What have you learned about. What's the wisdom in that?

I don't know that there is any. I think the amazing thing is being like, I've done entrepreneurship as a single person and as a married person. I prefer the married person, but it's just because I feel like I'm married to the right person. It would be a disaster if you're married to the wrong person. And the wrong person is defined by not supportive, not very patient with the hours or the intensity or the distraction, and doesn't believe in the overall mission, which is, you know, in my case and probably most entrepreneurs case, really important to them.

So you did have a lot of wisdom on that. But those are things, you know, it's very good because people are going in and out of relationships through their lives and everything. It's good to kind of regroup and have reset your mind about, okay, how am I going to look at this thing? What am I going to be looking for without getting overly detailed, you know, to get the priorities straight. Now, what is it like to be on a big time, a board of director for a big time company like Tecno? Is that right? You're $3 billion company or something like that. And so what is that? What is that?

I love it.

What is that like? What does that do for you? Is that a plus or. Or a dragon?

Oh, it's absolutely a plus. Imagine you have an opportunity to see how other businesses run and to do so in a way that is great in terms of my learning, but also that I can contribute something. So I think it's one of the most fun things I do outside of my new networks.

And you have 8,000. It shows here that you've had 8,000 people taking your masterclass to over 10,000 now. Over 10,000 created your masterclass on community design, which is a proven framework for growing a community. Talk about that. How long have you had that and how long did it take to catch on fire and everything?

Yeah, so I started it in 2019. 2019, I think. And it took off kind of right away. It also was the foundation and the basis for what we've now gone on to do with people magic and people Magic profit.

Gene, I appreciate all of the insight and I'm excited about where your company is headed. I do think for a lot of reasons that I could go on that this is the direction. It's like an extension of podcasting and blogging and all of that stuff. So a much better extension, by the way. And so I see the thing. The only thing is I'm jealous that I don't have one and so I'll probably be harassing you with for information.

That's perfectly fine, Perfectly fine.

I'm having to fight jealousy all the way through the call. But I really think you're on the money and I congratulate you for coming up with this and providing the service because I know you're. The thing is you try and make an impact in life and provoke people to greatness. That's the idea of giving back. But if you can do that through your occupation and pull people together, get great people talking about great ideas, great things can happen. But then what you have, you created community away where that can happen naturally and actually exponentially, which is what is really intriguing to me about what you're doing.

So that is certainly the goal.

Yeah. So I wanted to. I can't endorse what you're doing any higher than that, but I would say that I like to give my guests the final word. And so we will have some people have listened all the way through this and I like to give them a special reward for listening through. And so you have anything on your mind that you'd like to leave people with who want to do something great in their business, in their career, and some kind of parting comment.

Yeah. One of the things that I've seen teaching community design and people magic profit to so many people over the years and also just having a front row seat to the most successful multimillion dollar businesses on Mighty is just how quickly people get in their own way. They are too quick to comparison, too quick to fear, too quick to oh, everybody's succeeding and I'm failing. Too quick to confusion, oh, I don't actually know what I'm doing. And what I have observed in terms of the people who have been the most successful, they embrace the unknown with joy and curiosity. Not a sense of perfection or not trying to find reasons that it won't work, but enjoying the moment and the act of discovery and the act of the act of risk taking. Because most of the things are not actually.

Where do you put your mind? You know, that comes up. I'm very familiar with what you're saying, but where do you put your mind to allow yourself to do that while you're going through that frustration? You got to throw your mind somewhere.

Yeah, I would rather. What? I realized we just did something for the first time a few weeks ago called. We did our first summit online summit. And leading into it, I was like, oh, well, what if we should we still do it? Like, is it the right thing to do? Whatever. And I realized I was like, I'd rather be embarrassed than afraid. I'd rather be embarrassed than afraid. And for a lot of people, they'd rather be afraid than embarrassed. And because being embarrassed is like, that is absolutely the only risk of being doing something new, you might be embarrassed.

Yeah.

And so the places that I like to put my brain are curiosity and learning. Meaning, what can I learn from this moment? What can I take away from this experience? And I found when I can reframe that and be curious, the fear is channeled into something really productive.

Yeah. And another way of looking at it like that is like, say to yourself, I'm at a point. I'm at a point. I am at a point because it's like. And that's a point where I can either move forward and learn something or back away. Like you said, I'm afraid of whatever. But when you're at that point, you work yourself through what you know, and you're at the point of what you don't know. And so if you keep on charging, you're probably going to learn some things you didn't know and probably use that information the rest of your life. So, great insight, Appreciate that. Wish you the best, and look forward to talking again and seeing what new adventures you're going to get in with the mighty, mega mighty networks.

Thank you.

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