In this episode, I was lucky to have Shannon Paris as a guest on this episode. As a member of the Mighty Networks team, Shannon offers a SaaS product to help people to establish, foster, and expand online communities. Shannon shared her journey with the company founder who had monetized her network by creating a community and took the business to the next level by showing others how they could do what she did. Shannon explains details about the product, and she also delves into how the structure and strategic deployment of a successful community can drive profit.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What an online community might look like as part of your business plan
• How a service-based business can use an online community as an asset, not just a place to hang out and talk to each other
• The ways that a community can help you promote sales and expand your sphere of influence
• The benefits and differentiators of hosting a community on a platform other than the social media giants
• The importance of having a “Big Purpose” for your community

Connect with Erin to strategize how you might use an online community to help make your business scalable and saleable.

Bio:

As an impassioned advocate for small business owners & creators, **Shannon Paris** believes in the life changing power of ethical entrepreneurship and community building. Shannon is Community Strategist with Mighty Networks, a premiere SaaS platform for creators and brands to start and grow communities they own. She works exclusively with Network Hosts building communities in the Mighty Pro plan - helping them bring to life their fully branded communities on the web and native iOS, iPad and Android apps. Before joining the Mighty Networks team, Shannon served as Community Advocate & Operations Director with Founder Tara McMullin at The What Works Network—a community of practice where experienced small business owners take decisive action to build more effective, sustainable, and profitable businesses one day at a time. She’s still providing leadership to the community - now known as The Network - and examining what it means for an online community to shift from expert-led into a community-led/self organized model. She loves the synergy that comes from leveraging her years of managing, experimenting and iterating in her own community into strategic community design for other Mighty Networks Hosts. Formerly, Shannon was a buyer for Ten Thousand Villages, a fair trade retail non-profit organization. There she studied the effects of business ownership on developing economies through collaborative relationships with artisans working on handicraft and jewelry product design and capacity building. When she’s not working, she’s either singing and playing the ukulele, or taking in nature in her sleepy river town of Marietta, in Lancaster County, PA.

Connect with Shannon:

Online: https://www.mightynetworks.com/

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shayshay.paris/

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-paris/

We would love it if you would consider supporting Shannon’s favorite charity: https://www.revolutionlancaster.com/

Connect with Erin and find the resources mentioned in this episode at hourlytoexit.com/podcast.

Erin's LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/

Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videos

Music credit: Yes She Can by Tiny Music

A Podcast Launch Bestie production

Hello ladies.

Welcome to the hourly to exit podcast.

Thank you for joining me today.

I am so excited to have Shannon Paris with me from night mighty networks.

Hi, Shannon.

Hi, Erin, how are you?

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Yeah, I'm very excited.

We go a little ways back first meeting, uh, when you were with, Tara, uh,

at the time she was Gentilly, right?

Or.

I think she was Gentilly

Yes.

Yes.

became Tara MC Mullen.

Yeah.

Uhhuh

Now with CoCommercial at the time now, uh, what works.

And so I was very excited to have you here because we love to talk

about building assets with our service based business owners.

And so with your work at Mighty Networks, I'm like, Ooh, this is gonna be so good.

So please introduce yourself to our audience.

Let us know a little bit about you and what you're up to.

Yeah, sure.

As you mentioned, I'm currently working with mighty networks.

We're a software as a service platform for community building.

And, um, I came to my networks, it's always a flowery path when

I'm telling my story anyway.

From a background studying architecture to years in retail, having my own

brick and mortar store, uh, and then for about a decade, I was working for

a non-profit fair trade organization.

We were working internationally with artisans and makers to

bring their products to the North American marketplace.

So we were working internationally, but then we were working domestically

with a chain of retail stores.

So eventually I was a buyer and I was working directly on the ground in

India with our partners on capacity building and product design, materials

and techniques, relationship building.

And then I got laid off.

And I made a lunch date with my old friend Tara Gentilly and we were

just talking about our lives and the world, I was kinda like, I need a job.

And she was kinda like, I need help.

And from there we realized she was in the process, had just launched as she'd

been a very successful business coach

for many years, she calls herself an internet grandma, but had really

decided in 2016, 2017 to double down on this idea of community building

as the product, as the place where instead of her always being at the

top where it would be a space to build a peer to peer connection network,

where you could leverage the seasoned experience of a whole bunch of different

business owners, not just her, right.

To take all that wisdom and have it be shared.

And I'm a community builder in anything I'm doing.

I like to bring people together and so she felt like she could teach me this

digital online business stuff, because I already had the people skills to

make people feel welcome and help them facilitate relationships inside the

four walls of our online community.

So from there I became a full-time community advocate inside, like you

said, it was called CoCommercial, then it became The What Works Network.

Yeah, I was doing operations for her behind the scenes and, um, just loved it.

You know, we grew from about 400 members to about 700 members over the years and

just iterated and experimented and tried all sorts of different community building.

Approaches.

So just most recently, as I was sharing before we got on the call, Tara decided

in her life and her work, it was time to take a step back from community building,

just due to her own personal direction, some mental health and other issues.

And at that point, there was an opportunity to sort of collaborate.

We had this deep, deep relationship with Mighty Networks and on two

fronts where I actually shifted into a full time with Mighty Networks

now serving as a strategist, helping other people build their communities.

And also them taking over sort of a sponsorship role of our, what

works Network kind of shifted.

They took ownership essentially of her network.

Um, so yeah,

Fantastic.

What is a community strategist?

Like, what does that mean?

I think what makes a strategist who's working in community.

It's not just brand.

It's not about just selling it's what's happening once you've already got

those people who are deeply committed and almost evangelized around a shared

interest around the kind of results and transformations they're interested in

sitting together with other people around.

The community strategist is working with that population of people to say, how

do I make them have the best experience possible now that we're together?

I mean, there's certainly the front end.

You all have to get people in, right.

That's absolutely part of the business, but what I'm working on with people

specifically is helping 'em get launched,

and then how do we optimize the experience of your members on this platform?

I mean, in general, it's about facilitating relationships, coordinating

we call it community design.

When are you posting?

How are you inviting people into a deeper level of conversation around

this shared interest, this big purpose that's brought you together?

What kind of touch points are you giving people throughout the week?

How do you meet people where they're at and invite them to contribute

to this fabric of the community that we're building together?

I love that.

You know, this is the second conversation I've had today, where

people, where someone was talking about the experience, which I feel

like talking about, you know, customer experience or community experience.

I feel like I didn't hear people talking about the experience like five

years ago was I have this service,

and is it good or is it bad?

But they're not making sure people are being taken care of

throughout that whole journey.

And so is this something new in the industry or is it a, my networks thing or

is it just, you know, this is the nature of how communities are built in 2022?

I think online community has definitely grown and evolved

over the past 10 years, five years.

And then especially in the past two years.

Right.

So Gina Bianchini who's our founder absolutely has been

thinking about community hardcore for five, 10 years now herself.

And, it's more than a Facebook group, it's not just like you're

slapping together a space.

It's something that's where you're curating experience, where you're

really designing what people are going through, especially nowadays

with like zoom fatigue, right.

And two years of having to be online.

And how do you differentiate within that?

And, I think in business, in general, especially with small business owners and

service based business, we're thinking about how do we consider the whole human

in this experience, right?

Like you can't just leave, especially when your kids are home, you can't

just leave that at the door when you go into your office, right.

Or, or your dog or your cat, you know, whatever it may be.

Right.

We had to be whole humans coming to the table for both our businesses, and

then the same as you build a community.

Like,

there's been so much toxicity out in community building, whether it's

from the systems that we operate in, whether that's the patriarchy or white

supremacy or, you know, whatever that is capitalism, like, I think we're

all in the space of examining that.

And so being intentional about honing the culture you're creating.

It's culture making inside a community.

And there are plenty of communities out there that aren't doing that, but

I think that's what differentiates and I think that's what would

be purposeful for small business owners and service based businesses.

Yeah.

Well, let's back up to like, tell me more about Mighty Networks

generally and what distinguishes it from other types of communities?

Yeah.

So, Mighty networks is a software as a service platform that is

designed from like the ground up to support community building.

I mean, it has a lot of nice features.

It is like aesthetically very pleasing, but you have an

activity feed, like a form.

It's got some similar qualities to what you might experience when

you're inside of a Facebook group in sort of that social network feel,

but there's no ads.

All the members are, to whatever degree you determine is important,

curated so to speak, right?

Like you can have a public community, but you can also, you

know, have an application process, however you wanna set that up.

There's a course feature inside of my network, so you can have

small groups, so you can have sub spaces within your big, main space.

You can host events from within you can live stream inside of mighty networks.

It's been evolving and evolving, but there's so many features that are really

designed specifically to encourage community like, you know, you could, name

specialties so you could know who else in your community is a therapist, right.

You could know who else in your community is in your region.

Like you can set it up so that I could learn who is near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

so there's just like, as you dig into the features, you see that

they're really geared differently than like a website, so to speak.

Is there a cross pollination, like I know there are no ads, but if let's

say I'm in the, what works community.

Be able to see other communities that are in there or are they

just completely separate?

They are, for all intents and purposes, completely separate.

While I'm inside my community, that is what your experience is and, a

kind of a key part of that is the data stays inside those four walls.

So there are no third party people doing anything with the data, with the

emails.

There is, you know, no crazy algorithmic stuff going on behind the scenes.

We, as a company, don't do anything with that data either.

So, so both the owner of the community and mining networks as platform, we

don't do anything with any kind of data.

Now I will say we have an app.

It's a universal app, that's called the mighty networks app and from within there,

you can search for other communities.

Oh, okay.

So if I'm a member of this, right, then I could also

search for your community, you know?

So it's easy within that app to get to other communities.

Then at our enterprise level, it's more of a fully branded experience and you

actually can have your own dedicated app.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Okay.

And is it white labeled for your enterprise clients or?

We say fully branded, because there are some places where

you might see mighty networks pop up, like in email notifications, et

cetera, just because of regulations.

So we have to sort of say who we are in, in that regard, but in general,

many folks do approach it from almost like from a client host perspective.

They're thinking of it as a white label experience.

Yeah.

At.

my networks or something

Right.

Exactly.

Think of us as a tech

Okay.

it.

Got it.

All right.

My experience with mining networks is the, what works, community and

yeah, and very easy to navigate.

I, you know, being able to label like your specialties, I thought that was

so helpful, especially, you know, among that community of, you know, finding out

who is, you know, who knows marketing, who knows, you know, different things.

And so, and I think, you know, cause I'm currently.

A member of a few slack communities, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna trash

slack or anything, but, I guess the simplicity of slack is maybe the beauty

of it, but when you need more, if you want like more interaction and, um,

among the community members for them to understand each other better, you know,

mighty networks is definitely, obviously a much better option than slack for that.

Yeah, I think it's a different experience entirely.

Right.

And, and there's absolutely other competitors out there that are

offering different experiences and there's ways we can grow.

Yeah.

I mean, the slack becomes more of a forum type experience, right.

And you have your channels.

I now work for the company, but I was an evangelist, so to speak.

I was a believer.

I loved the experience.

There's just something really positive about coming into a mighty network space.

And it took me years to sort of identify.

It was like being out of that sort of toxic social media world, having a real

concentration around a specific interest.

And yeah, I don't wanna slam slack.

We've actually even crafted some smaller product community experiences around

like a mastermind where that happened in a slack community, like a short term.

And it was great and it had its positives and its negatives.

I think the reach can be broader without feeling overwhelming inside of a Mighty

Network versus inside slack, for instance.

Yeah.

And, and what you mentioned earlier is, because we all been kind of stuck, you

know, at home and spend so much time online, like having like a different

experience, that's kind of richer, more intimate, is super important.

You know, I, I'm definitely a zoom burnout, you know, although I'm enjoying

my time here with you and, uh, but you know, having, that place, you know, cause

you don't like even a LinkedIn, which is my social media option of choice.

Like I don't quite know what I'm gonna run into even on LinkedIn and it's not even,

you know, anything compared to the others.

And just kind of having that place where, you know, like, okay, this

is my community, like literally, and kind of understanding the expectations

are all set, their rules there's, you know, there for a common purpose.

And so that is kind of the lovely part of having,

having

Yeah, and I love that you framed it in terms of not

knowing what you're gonna run into.

And I think that that's your experience as a member of a community.

And as a host, it's such an opportunity to create that experience, right?

Like to create a set of expectations around this thing that you all

are passionate about, right?

Instead of left field political.

Right.

Whatever polarizing conversations that can be disheartening

or, or just even being pitched to, right.

I don't wanna pick on any sort of platform.

It happens in all the platforms, but, you know, you can determine

how that happens in your space.

Like getting to the value of, is it a no pitch space?

Is it, is it a place where you pitch in a specific way for it to be healthy or

there's a space where you can pitch or a job board or, you know, there's just so

many ways you can approach that, that's suitable for both yourself, your business,

your members, and that experience

you're wanting to create, those results and transformations.

Yeah.

Well, you definitely pushed a button with me with the pitching.

You know,

what I found I was trying to figure out is, you know, I was promoting the,

uh, launch of the podcast and, and, you know, we were looking at LinkedIn

groups like, you know, cause you know, you're a member of LinkedIn groups, but

there's something happening on this one.

And like, you know, should we post something in the LinkedIn groups?

And I can tell you like immediately, like sudden.

Pitches like just random pitches started coming in.

So it is nice to have a no pitch zone.

I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah.

So our, our audience is, you know, female founders

of service based businesses.

And I wanna make sure that, and almost all of them have some sort of online

community that's, you know, maybe informal like through, you know, their

connections on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, little more formal

through an email newsletter list.

I don't know that anyone really talks about their community, like as an asset.

And I want to like dig into that, like how a service based business

can use like an online community as an asset and not just as a place

to hang out and talk to each other.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

So like to your point, I think it's not just a space to have nice conversations.

Uh, and another thing I think about with smaller service providers, it's not just

a place to house your courses, cuz that would be another space where there's a

lot of tech platforms being used is like learning management services, right?

Like your Kajabi and your think if fix, but their community

piece isn't necessarily.

Robust.

Right.

So that's another place where there's an opportunity.

If you are offering courses to enrich that entire experience by building like,

people can watch a video on their own.

People can read the content on their own.

It's how do they process that and how do they move forward with that?

So that's where community can really serve to make a more enriching

experience around your courses.

Those relationships though, that are built in there, people are having

conversations and they're getting to know each other, they feel less alone.

I mean, if you can help your clients feel less alone in the world, that

is like, is a huge reason why they're gonna come back to you again, right?

If they know that you're a person they connect with, if there's other people

like them that they can connect with, I mean, they're just gonna be, you

know, involved, invested, and engaged in what you're creating for them.

Um, yeah.

And networking, of course, for your members, Is valuable because they,

even if it's a no pitch zone, there is organic back and forth that happens

where relationships that blossom into future business partnerships,

or, you know, it could be just an event or a coffee chat, or there's

just so many things that can happen.

And honestly, I would say one of the reasons why a community can

be really great is because you're leveraging those connections without

you having to do all the work.

It doesn't all rely on you then.

Right?

It's it's scaling, but not scaling.

And the next thing you have to do is do a group offering.

The next thing you'd have to do is build an online course.

That can be part of it, but you're scaling in the value that you're building

that, like, it's not all dependent on Erin pushing out all the content all the

time, because Erin says something, but so does Sarah, so does Jane, and then they

have this deep conversation about their thoughts around this thing that Erin said.

And suddenly this community has now become exponentially more valuable as each

person that network effect spreads out.

That's just as valuable.

And it, that means you didn't have to do all that work around that.

So that's why it could be hugely.

We, we say really the value in a mighty network is in those connections, those

conversations, and ultimately the contributions that your members start

to make, they will start to put their own posts up and share their experiences

generously.

And it is a place where you can house your courses and groups, et cetera.

I wanna go back to, cause I had not heard about

community as a way of scaling before.

I'd never heard of put that way.

Like that, basically you're increasing your impact by facilitating like

these conversations around the topic.

You're scaling anytime there's somebody else kind of helping

spread your message, right.

Or helping spread your learnings.

So having that, that community that helps you do it.

I think that's really interesting.

I never looked at it that way before.

Yeah,

I love that.

It distributes value, right?

It distributes value.

It distributes the work, the creation, like you're thinking you're co-creating

versus having to do all the creation.

Yeah,

Oh, I like that.

All right.

So you mentioned, and I wanna dig back to this, like about what happens

with the data in your community.

It's not that we don't keep data it's we don't do anything

with the data.

Right.

Other than determine like our revenue.

Right.

You know, and we have policies online that, that are available for anybody

to read around how we handle all that.

But yeah.

We're not marketing with them to any third parties or anything like

Gotcha.

All right.

Beautiful.

And then for the host of the community, what type of data

can they get from the community?

Oh, yes.

I love this.

And we can go in a couple different directions with this.

I mean, I think there are some non like numerical, you know, lots and

lots and lots of anecdotal data that you can get from a community.

I guess we call it the qualitative feel free to correct me.

I'm not

always great with my terms here.

Right?

Because you're gonna be listening, listening, listening as the host.

You're just gonna be witnessing the conversations that are talking about

the things, people are gonna be bringing up what's important to them, right?

More than you having to create an idea, build a narrative, make up your own idea

of what you think is important to them,

every day you have people in front of you who are gonna be talking

about what's important to them.

So if it's the conversations they're gonna be talking about their needs,

their problems and their successes.

Right?

So all of that is right there in that space.

In the language that they use, that you

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Right?

You can just, you're just gonna be tuned into what's like relevant today.

There'll be new input every day.

You'll be getting feedback on products that you put out there, right?

Like with you decide to open up a mastermind within that space, right?

You can do a beta test.

You can iterate, you can experiment, you can bring in founding members.

You can ask them to do it

at a discounted rate or free, or whatever makes sense for you in your

business model and the value you're delivering and instantly get input

on how to iterate this, to make it your, you brought in your basic viable

product to your most viable product.

Right.

And you can adapt as you go, right?

Like you can just tweak, tweak, pull different levers around it.

I feel like one thing I would say about mighty networks is it's

really built for experimentation.

You can just play with the different features and how you have it set

up and where you're sending people.

Cuz I'm talking to hosts every day.

And I am telling you, I hear new ideas.

I see.

an infinite number of ways you can set up community and products and

offerings, et cetera.

So

I can imagine that would almost be, you know, the shiny

object syndrome would be magnified.

Like someone said this and they need to have like, okay, it goes on

the list, but, you know, make sure

Yeah.

I mean, from a few different levels, I mean, as a host, you always have to be

saying, what's the big purpose here?

How do we always tie it back into the results and transformations that we're

working towards together as a company?

Um, mighty networks, like the features and everything like that, that we get in.

We are listening, listening, listening.

I mean, we treat our clients as a community unto themselves.

Right.

I did wanna share.

To the quantitative.

We actually do have a really rich set of insights, we call it, but it's

analytics.

So you can see active members, you can see how many members are contributing,

like percentages of host contributions versus member contributions,

who's coming in from what platforms, are there opportunities

to get more people using the app?

Things like that.

Heat maps of activity time, so you can figure out when should

I, you know, host events.

And then deeper, like what.

Are your top hosts?

Who's clicking on what, et cetera, et cetera.

So you actually do have a deep set of quantitative, um, analytics

that can help you set benchmarks.

Tell the story, understand the story you wanna well determine what story you wanna

tell, understand from those insights, how well you're doing on that, and then adjust

and experiment and then you can keep checking those and checking against those

benchmarks that you set for yourself.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Like data and insights are, you know, basically 21st century gold, right?

I mean, everyone.

Wants to know what the data says, decisions.

They wanna know that the decisions are data backed.

And, uh, and, and we need that data.

I mean, even though like a lot of us and myself included, don't consider

myself as like someone like who's data driven, but at the end of the day,

like, yeah, you know, kind of am, you know, I'm looking at, you know, my

likes and my comments and my LinkedIn.

I'm looking at, you know, my email subscriber list and when you have

like another source such as the very sophisticated types of data

and the insights that you can get through the money networks community.

It really helps inform like really every part of your business.

And when we're looking at it in the context of building a company that is

scalable and saleable, which are real challenges, when you have a service based

business, when you have an expertise based business, like how will a potential

choir know that what you're doing can be replicated, you know, and having the data

is one of those ways you do it, like.

Yeah.

I see it play out that way.

You know, where individuals in smaller businesses are doing it, and the proof

in the pudding to me is the way I see it play out for bigger organizations.

So we have some universities, nonprofits, huge organizations that have different

kinds of communities on Mighty Networks,

and they, they have to be able to tell that story.

They have to be saying, this is like definitely engaging our

stakeholders in a different way.

And here's the, here's the industry benchmarks.

And here's how we line up against that.

They have to sell it to get the

grant, to get continued backing for it, to get buy-in from the board, you

know, just to get the, the, whether it's seed funding or whatever it is.

I'm thinking of a small group of like four financial advisors, you

know, Australia who Wanted to create a space for financial advisors to

be able to connect with each other.

And they started out in Facebook groups, started out in LinkedIn

groups and all of the, the moderation.

Here's another thing, the amount of moderation that has

to happen in those spaces,

unless you have a real tight handle on it, like of who you're letting in.

But generally so often in social media, the object has been

growth like in those groups.

So like between the moderation and what their clients expected, their

members wanted a premium experience.

So they're like we have to get serious.

They tried to build something on their own.

It was expensive, it was clunky.

So they were like, we're gonna do this.

So another arm of this that I wanted to kind of introduce to you here as

another way people are using communities nowadays, especially from the small

business owner coach, like kind of segmented service providers, is at

B2B model in a couple different ways.

So for instance, this group of financial advisors, it's a free network

for financial advisors.

But the people who serve financial advisors wanna get

in front of these people,

right?

So they're not selling their data, but if they have an event,

these bigger companies can get in front of their membership, right.

And be sponsors of a larger event that those members can then attend for.

Right.

So you now have an audience

of 4,200, 10,000 people

potentially could even be small.

It could be 300, 400 people.

Right.

But they have those numbers in the data to show that.

Or we have other B2B models where I'm thinking of a established,

well known, leadership coach.

And we have quite a few communities that are doing something similar

to this, where they're business, coaching, leadership, coaching, career,

coaching, ways of working coaching.

And they're working with companies, you know.

They're working with, uh, I'm gonna just make something Nike, right.

But they create a subspace for Nike within their community.

So Nike gets its own group where Nike employees get a curated, personalized

experience for that company.

And in some cases, the companies can be really involved in that space too.

It's not just the coach delivering the content into that space,

but they are charging a premium to that company.

Because they've made the container.

They've established the culture and now it's kind of like renting

space and delivering their content.

So it sort of expands what a community can be just in like, as far as being one

dimensional with the activity feed, you can bring other players in and create

a really beautiful experience for that company or organization and their people.

Yeah, that, that reminded me two, you gave two examples that

reminded me of a couple of things.

One on the access to the community.

You know, I have, um, experience in the market research field as well.

And you know, one of my clients, um, works mostly with like pharmaceutical

companies that, and they will need access to specialize either doctor,

um, populations or patient populations.

And they will have to go on to say, you know, a Facebook to find a sickle

cell anemia, like support group in order to find those patients.

And, uh, and so if you have a community that's, you know, this kind of specialized

population that people want access to.

That, that is another way for you to yeah.

You know, provide value to both parties, you know, providing access to your

community and your community, you know, giving them a voice in different ways.

Yeah.

And a two way street kind of way without just

selling your members' data.

But like just saying like, Hey, we have, co-created something valuable

here, and this might be interesting

to you, you know, or some of those organizations are spinning up groups,

like, you know, um, I'm thinking of a large health organization who spun

up a group for frontline workers.

Right.

And so that has had some traction and some movement, even though these are

very, very busy people, obviously, but now there's other organizations under

their umbrella, you know, sub-organization that have seen what's happened here and

are like, Hey, can you do that for me?

You know?

So yeah.

I mean, there just goes in a lot of different ways, but I think

there's transparency and, um, honoring of boundaries within that

at the same time.

Yeah.

And back to the selling your business element, like, you know,

when you program your own community.

I mean, that is, makes it very complicated to sell actually, cause people don't

wanna buy custom software unless, you know, there's something they can monetize

directly, but they don't want your, your background based on custom software.

Cuz then it's very hard for them to integrate it with whatever they're

doing or they have to undo it.

So when they have a, a, you know, if you, if they, if your community is based

on a SAS platform that they can just

acquire, beautiful.

beautiful

It's turnkey.

Yes, exactly.

That is so much better than trying to figure out, what did they do here.

Yeah.

And I will say like, especially at the pro level, but even in, even in our business

and community, um, tier one thing, I think that really differentiates many networks

in at least in my experience over as both a customer and now as a, an employee

is like, The level of service customer service, like the fact that you could hand

something off, but there's a team that's been involved at the, at the software

platform level that could help you take that on and turn it into something else

is, is highly.

Like, I mean, if I was taking on a new company and I knew that, cuz I, I mean,

we see it in turn with clients, um, like with key, like say, you know, there's

the founder and the visionary who's.

Come up with the idea, but they're always gonna have implementers and there's

often turnover in the implementers

Yes.

Mm-hmm

and sometimes the founders are really removed from

the day to day, but we're there to say, don't worry about this.

We gotcha.

We have some courses, you can take that DIY, you can have a call with us, multiple

calls with us, we have the strategists and we have folks that you can talk to,

you know, in a tech support hotline.

Right?

So like having that, knowing that that transition is possible,

I think adds to that value

as well.

Absolutely.

I love

that.

Well, as we start to wrap up, is there a number one tip you would give to the,

someone who's new to building community?

Like how do you get, I mean, I know as a strategist, it's the whole

experience, but how do you get started?

Ooh, this is such a good question.

How do you get started?

I really, I I've used the term a few times throughout this call, but

getting clear on that big purpose.

It's the first place we start in our, we have a community design

accelerator, that's a course you can take, but I come back to it.

I came back to it in this call a few times,

I come back to it in client calls all the time.

What are the results and transformation you wanna take people towards and

getting specific within that, right?

You have to start there so that you understand who it is, that's coming

in the door so that you can start messaging around that so that they

can then self-identify that they are that person, that this is the place

they should go to for those results and transformations and to save time

and to, you know, make progress.

So.

I think getting really clear on why would you bring people together?

I've, I've talked with this few different folks in our, in our space

where even though they've committed to the mighty networks platform,

they're still thinking about it.

Like it's just a place where I'm gonna throw my courses

Mm.

Mm-hmm

and I'm like, it's not built for that.

It's built to have community around and conversation around that.

So, you know, redirecting them towards.

That.

Why would somebody come in there?

Why is anybody gonna log in to one more place and hang

out in one more online space?

It's gotta be about that

big purpose.

Right.

I love that.

Well, thank you.

So as you may know, uh, hourly to exit, we are committed to helping build

an economy that works for everyone.

And so we love to talk about people's favorite charitable organizations

that further the mission.

And so I'm wondering if there is one that you would like to.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, I am on the board of an organization called revolution, Lancaster I think

it's revolution, lancaster.com.

we are social enterprise working with women who are experiencing transition

and homelessness, and we are working together on learning jewelry making

skills, and they craft jewelry,

and then we sell that jewelry wholesale and retail.

We have an e-com site, and so it's really an opportunity to make supplemental income

Fantastic.

The reason I also love it because a big part

of the mission is community.

It's also about not feeling isolated, getting together with other women who are

experiencing similar things as you and learning, it's a workshop that happens

every week and the women come together.

And so they get to know each other and can swap stories, et cetera.

So

sounds

what I'm passionate about.

fantastic.

Are you you're in Lancaster Pennsylvania.

Yeah.

Uh,

So, uh, is there a offer of perhaps that you might like

to share with our exit community

I didn't come with an offer, but you can always visit mighty

networks.com to find out more information.

Everything's on there.

It's a pretty cool website, uh, so you can learn all about the different

product pricings and things like that.

We also have a mighty community.

So you could experience the software yourself and become involved in the

conversations that other mighty hosts are having inside our mighty community.

And so where can people find you if they wanna find out more?

Oh yeah.

You can find me on LinkedIn, Shannon dash Paris.

Well, this has been wonderful.

Thank you so much.

I know everyone got a lot of value out of today and I hope they think about

community differently and, uh, and understand the real value, both social

and economic value in having community.

So

Yes, Erin, thank you for opening up this conversation.

It was exciting to learn where you're at and what you're bringing into the world,

and the fact that you brought community into that conversation is so exciting.

So thank you.

I

appreciate it.

All