Part 1 - Meet The CEO Turning Communities Into Cash Machines

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, but back when they were the answer, 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 pit 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.

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

Yeah.

So everybody knew each other.

Motown came out of Detroit, you know, a 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 for their life, are excited about doing Great things with their life. And 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 topics like, you know, to establish a framework, 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 have hundreds of thousands of members. We also have Mighty Note.

What that means is someone, Bob Smith has a thing where, you know, whatever and 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 any 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 that's just one example.

But that's obviously a hypothetical example, Larry.

Hypothetical? Yeah, that's a hypothetical example.

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 streaming. 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. With a different intention. And that intention is to get members to meet and build relationships with each other.

Right.

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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