August 31th, 2020

Here we go. All right. So welcome everybody to the Cyber Call number 17. Gary, you want to give us a, Hey, I don't think Gina's ever heard that. Hey, Amazing. So we have the awesome Gia Bianchini. Am I, did I get it? You nailed it. All right. It Gina, but you were close enough on that. So like, was Gina, GIA, Gina? Totally, totally down. This is great. I was so focused on the last name. I forgot. I know. We've all been there. We've all been there. Fair enough.

Okay, so real quick, a few housekeeping things. Number one, we have the awesome Annie Ballou with us. Uh, pinch hitting for Kyle. He had something come up. Annie, thanks for joining us. Um, and as always, Gary Pika and Wes Spencer. Um, so a few quick housekeeping things and we'll get right on into it. Um, as I mentioned a few times for two weeks now, the Cyber Nation is live. I have it in the call to action. And the Cyber Nation is a reality because of Gina's company, mighty Networks.

This is the platform, um, that it's on. And I have to tell you firsthand, I was on another platform and I was so excited about, um, that, you know, by the way, we're at over four, 500 people in two weeks. Gina, um, on that. Awesome. Yeah. But I was so excited. I'm, I was, I was. Well, I'm gonna see if she's on LinkedIn, I'm gonna reach out to her. And you responded and I'm just, you know, very grateful that you're with us, so thank you. My Pleasure. Yeah.

Um, the other thing, and I'll put some of this stuff in the chat, I'm gonna do my best to stay focused right now. 'cause my first few, I have the first few questions today with Gina, but, um, I'm gonna put up, um, the incident response planning session, um, that we have with True Methods. Um, we're gonna have Wes, Chris Lair, and Mike Beard, and it's going to be on actually the components for building your incident response plan.

So this is hands down in the weeds, but something tactical that you guys are gonna be able to walk away with. All right. Um, I'm gonna put a poll out there shortly on if you're using social communities to build, you know, your, your network, et cetera. But Gina, can I start off with you?

And, you know, I want, you know, I was gonna sit, you know, I, I've, I've listened to Tim Ferriss and had to have the right interview and ask the right questions, and I got a little esoteric there and you, you kind of got me back in the swim lane, so I appreciate that. But, um, can you give the folks out there that may not know you a little bit of background on, on who you are and Sure. And what you focus on? Yeah.

So, you know, my, my love, my passion, I, I think some may actually say bordering on obsession is how do we create communities that can come together online and in the real world to master something interesting or important to them.

Like in a nutshell, like I am, I'm fascinated by the questions of how, how do we move beyond kind of the, the awkward adolescence that we are in right now where this ability to connect and build deeper, more meaningful relationships with, with each other has kind of been stunted by a, a, a model that is really optimized for audiences, optimized for capturing and keeping our attention, not necessarily in the best ways, but more like a casino.

And where, and how can we sort of transcend what that is to come together around the things that are most important to us and make these kinds of new communities taking advantage of what software is capable of doing so much better than anything that we are, are living through today. So I started working in this area of communities built around a topic or an interest or a passion all the way back in like 2004.

And, and, you know, fast forward, this is Mighty Networks is now my second platform that we've actually taken to scale. My first was a, a platform called Ning, which gave people away in very early days, like coming out of like MySpace before Facebook was, was, um, available to everybody creating your own social networks for anything. That was really our, our, um, our, our mantra. And we grew Ning from 2007 to 2010 to 300,000 active Ning Networks on a, on a monthly basis.

Nearly a hundred million people using the platform around the world for every conceivable interest goal. You know, really the, the whole entire range. We sold that company and I started Mighty Networks to really be the next generation of what's possible when you can create a destination community away from the noise and clutter of social media and kind of what's going on in the world to really be able to focus in on a, on a specific topic. And that's what we do with Mighty Networks.

Um, so we are, we are growing very rapidly right now. We were already growing pretty fast and, and certainly with, um, you know, the, the hellscape that has been the last six months, you know, we have seen one bright spot has been the growth in people joining Mighty Networks, creating Mighty Networks, bringing their communities to a mighty network to really go deeper and, and master their particular topic together. And that's what brings me here. So Very, very cool.

And, and if I read or heard correctly, 75 countries now, or 78, 78 mm-Hmm. Okay. Might actually even be higher as, as, um, you know, the thing that's beautiful, even though we're just, we're only in English today, but what's beautiful about the internet is people can use it from all over the world, uh, and they do even when it is in English. That is so cool. Um, a little, little, uh, off topic just real quick 'cause I I want to ask you this.

So you mentioned the explosion, you know, certain technologies and industries have covid just vaulted, you know? Mm-Hmm. And, and it sounds like you've been a beneficiary. Like what kind of growth, you know, have you seen or you were here and then Covid hit and now you're Yeah. We'll, we'll Triple Revenue this year, uh, just to kind of give you, you know, give you a sense.

We, we went from, I mean, we we're over double, uh, in terms of new networks that that show up, upgrade and become, you know, really successful Mighty Networks, um, from February. And it's actually been consistent throughout the whole time. We also did a big release like three days before everybody went to shelter in place. So it's like a little hard to tell, but, you know, it's, it's been, it's been pretty, pretty fascinating how fast it's growing.

But, you know, there's a reason for this, which is if you take a step back and you think about what is this moment, this moment is basically we are, we are fast forwarding, um, and accelerating trends that were gonna happen anyways. So things that we're going to happen five years from now are happening, you know, today. Mm-Hmm.

And what's also really interesting to me is, you know, people, we've written books, we have, you know, blogs, we have content marketing, we have all these things that are like, you know, this five mistakes every such and such makes, right? Mm-Hmm. Well, the thing about this moment and, and any moment of massive change is that all of those playbooks on some level get thrown out the window. Right?

And so when you think about what, what we're all doing right now, especially around the topics that are important to us, our career, our health, wellness, uh, parenting, education, personal finance, retirement, I think, you know, certainly you can just living in the Northern California over the last month as radicalizing so many of us towards like, Hey dudes, we need to do something about the climate.

Um, because this is not that cool to get a preview of the apocalypse as we've been living through both wildfires and covid, um, in some, in some pretty substantial ways.

So, so when you just think about, well, how have people for, you know, millennia navigated new situations, uncertain situations, situations that don't really have an easy and, and obvious thing, you can go and Google well through a community, through coming together with other people to navigate this moment together and create new solutions and new playbooks and new rules of a particular industry or a particular lifestyle instead of lifestyle choices, a specific and particular spiritual practice.

This is the moment where a community is actually more valuable. And, you know, we, we, we have seen and are living through daily how powerful communities are sometimes, you know, really used for evil. And we certainly think, um, you know, in the context of Mighty Networks, how can we use it for really productive and really important topics that are things people really wanna invest in, both their time, their money, their focus, their energy.

And those tend to be, you know, unique, vibrant communities that are led by a creator, have strong leadership associated with them, where the goal and, and that there is a clear goal and clear benefits to members to master something interesting or important to them. Yeah. Right. You, you said they're either more, they're more valuable or more dangerous right now. 'cause it seems like the ones that are more dangerous, they tend to have what you talked about, a clear leader and a goal.

Um, so making that happen. Yeah. Right. I the ones that are more valuable for sure, you know? Yeah. Like, that's really important because it's also, you know, it that enables you in and of it, it's itself to move from, from quantity to quality. 'cause that's the other problem we have with community. There, there are so many myths about communities today that, like, it's not a real community unless you have hundreds or thousands of members, which just isn't true.

It's a real community when members can come together and there's a clear norm or a clear culture that is enabling them to meet their goals faster than they could do on their own. And that can happen with five or 10 people. And so I think that that is, is a really important distinction. And one, you know, that makes it actually really possible to do some cool technical things that, you know, we're doing today. But so many things we have planned.

When you make two assumptions, the community is built around a purpose and the community is built around a creator. Like you get to do so many interesting, fun things that we're gonna be able to start moving even faster to today, towards today. Very cool. Um, just one or two more questions before I turn it over to Gary Gina.

Um, first off I put, if people wanna learn about Mighty Networks, I put it in and, you know, I always said to everybody on this show, uh, Gina, like, we're coming up to 2100 in our community for the cyber. Yeah, thank you. That, um, you know, we're not gonna sell them. I'm not here to, Hey, go pitch Mighty Networks, but I am here to tell you to, to look at it. I I I'm just passionate about what you're, you're doing. 'cause what it's doing for us and our community.

So I want people to look at it for themselves. Um, can you talk to us about the difference between the monolithic social networks, you know, we all know who they are, the Facebooks, the Instagrams of the world Also Facebook. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and the difference of, of something, you know, like you said, even like you're seeing growth in the 30, you know, these smallest 10, but 30 people. Like, what's the difference? Why, what are the trends you're seeing? Yeah.

So, you know, I, I think the problem with a monolithic, one single monolithic social network, that is what we're seeing today, which is people are not monolithic. People are unique and interesting. And, and if anything we are, we are the safest.

Where we're the strongest is in lots and lots of distributed, some could even say fragmented, smaller communities that can go deep and, and be very connected to people versus this very high level of like, optimized for speed and, and attention and adoption. That's not really working that well for, for, I would say us kind of more generally.

And, and when I say us more generally, people that look for the good in other people that are for focused on, you know, how do we realize our full potential as opposed to tearing other people down. Mm-Hmm. Um, how do we look at, you know, what, what we can build as opposed to what we can destroy? Um, how do we look at ways that we can, you know, we, we are so far past the point of, um, bridging conversations around, you know, politics, for example, on major social platforms.

If anything that, that everybody seems to be happy on those platforms with conversations that divide us. And I don't think, I don't see a way for that to change anytime soon because it's been a massive business, uh, that's been created and nobody walks away from a massive business that's been created. The only, the only way monopolies and businesses that are really, I think, eroding people's trust in institutions and each other, um, is really gonna be to create a new model.

And so I believe that model is one that's distributed, that is creator led. You know, we now have hundreds of millions of creators around the world that have a large enough email list or a large enough social media following where they can spin off and people will come with them to create their own community away from the noise and clutter of social media that really has, has has, um, um, stalled our ability to focus, um, and, and really jolted what's possible for us as people.

Because all, all the, you know, the goal is, is to keep you in front of that slot machine, right? And the thing that keeps you in front of that slot machine is outrage. And so we, you know, and, and I think this is the thing that kind of gets forgotten, is Facebook groups, for example, which are supposed to be the, you know, the bright shining city on the hill for Facebook.

Um, except they haven't really invested in them outside of a, a couple of ad campaigns in 15 years, um, or, or longer actually. And, and the reason is that in a Facebook group, you're still interacting with it in just three second chunks. So you're interacting with a Facebook group that might be for something really positive, you know, the algorithm controls it. Hmm.

The algorithm actually, like who sees what, when you as the, as the group, you know, admin have no control over that, but you think you've got all this great engagement because you are, you're getting told by Facebook that it's, you're getting all these views and you're getting all these enga, this engagement, well, real realistically, what people are seeing is, uh, a post whizzing by them in their, in their feed in between a bunch of misinformation, a bunch of outrage even for things that are true.

Uh, and it's, it's unclear how that's healthy. It's unclear how that is going to be the focus that's gonna enable us mastery over the things that are most important to us. And that's why we're starting with the most important interest, career, health and wellness. You know, the other things that, that kind of can all be grouped together of something I'm willing to invest in something.

I'm willing to invest my time, energy and, and probably our most precious resource right now, which is attention. Yeah. So, you know, when you just start to think about, I mean, my, my favorite example of this, or the saddest example of this is there's a, there's a really thriving yoga community on Mighty Networks called Find What Feels With Hula. And it's, it was started by a, a creator who has a really large YouTube following, uh, and the channels yoga with Adrian.

And they had a 25,000 person Facebook group that what they were finding was when they would post questions or people were, you know, contributing to this yoga Facebook group, the responses would be as, as the community leader, put it hot, like angry. It a yoga community. It really, it's yoga. Yeah. Wouldn't you think by definition you would, You would. Yeah, exactly. But think about it.

So, so if you think about it, it's like if you're interacting, like it, it's a little bit like if like a kid is coming up, you're like in a fight with somebody and your kid's coming up to you, I don't have a kid, but kid's coming up to you, you're like, mom, mom, mom. It's like, what are you doing interrupting me? You know? It's like, that's, that's the energy of, you know, of Facebook.

So they, they moved to a mighty network, and not only did they grow faster after they moved, but they asked the same exact questions and got completely different answers. Oh, wow. And, you know, sure, mighty Networks is a great platform, but fundamentally, it's also about just getting off of that outrage engine.

You know, getting away from doom, scrolling, getting away from, you know, having this heightened sense of, of outrage and anger and being able, when you can focus, it's like, you know, there's a reason why we don't have offsites in the middle of Times Square. You know, it, it, you need to have some focus to, in order to bring a community together, establish norms.

And this is actually really important as you're creating a community, especially today, you have to be very explicit about what we're gonna do together, what are the benefits members are gonna get, and then how are we going to get them together so that people don't show up and they're like, oh, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. I don't wanna look like a jerk.

I don't wanna look like that person who like comes in and is like, so having that clarity of, of norms and culture, once you have those two simple things, what, what am I gonna get from this? And how am I supposed to get it? Um, communities can thrive off the mainstream social platforms that are really about division today. Well, so, and, and, and here's what I'm gonna say, and I'm gonna hold back on a few of my questions, uh, Gina and, and kind of transition to Gary, but few things.

One, what I want to convey to everybody out there is, you know, for me, the cyber nation is something that I'm hoping that becomes something to enable others not. And I don't mean to put myself on a pedestal. What I mean by that is if you can, you know, be a, a kind of a, a community leader, your M-S-P-M-S-S-P in your neighborhood, and build something on your community platform, I want people to take the content to help drive, you know, cyber awareness.

You know, we've got tons of content, we're creating great content. So I just want people to know what's on my mind to help everybody. Um, in transitioning over to Gary, um, I, you know, I, I worked for Gary for five years, Gina, and, um, I heard about how you're up early 5:00 AM ish, uh, take a piece of paper, lay things out for the day, hit the gym. I'm a huge fan there. So we got that in common. Um, but, but you, you talk about one of the things is getting your team all set for the day.

Um, and, and the top three things you focus our focus, flow, and purpose. And when I worked for Gary, he always had a daily huddle. Okay. And, and, and it really was critical to our success because, you know, especially as his company grew, you know, you couldn't know early on, you know, it was just a few of us.

I could pick up the phone and go to Gary, but as you scale, that's, that doesn't become, so anyway, I just, I'm gonna turn it to Gary because, um, you know, I really loved reading about, you know, your, what's important to you as a leader. And, and I think it's kind of synonymous to how Gary runs his businesses. So, Gary, how about, I'll let you take a little bit from here. Yeah. Well, listen, comparing me to Gina, I'll take that as a definitely as a compliment.

First of all, uh, in 20 minutes you've been on, I can figure out why your companies are real successful. Um, and the comments that we're getting here to people pick up right away that you're passionate about. You're not talking about your company, you're talking about really important stuff, like your purpose comes through so clearly of who you are. So, um, that's really refreshing to see.

And when we think about this, I mean, it's great you painted it from that big, like, what's happening in the world? 'cause this is so, it's so much of what's happening in the world. Mm-Hmm. Uh, you know, right now for us, we, I'm looking, I'm thinking about it from two perspectives. One perspective is, you know, we want to build this community. Andrew is the leader right, of this.

And, um, it's really important, the mission that we're doing, um, because we're under attack, you know, small businesses and MSPs are under attack right now, um, from a lot of investment in a lot of cyber criminals, uh, criminals. So one, any advice you would have, we got off to a pretty good start. Andrew's done an amazing job with it.

And then the second piece of it is for the, for, um, the people that are on today, the IT providers, the MSPs, uh, about, they wanna build, they wanna know how to learn how to build and need to build, like community, customers, pros, prospects, people working together. They have a lot of information to help small businesses, not just about security, collaboration, A lot of great things. So any kind of guidance you can give from both perspectives.

Um, and then I have a couple of follow up questions. Sure. So in terms of just guidance around building a community and, and certainly keeping it safe, you know, one thing that's really interesting to me is this whole notion of, and, and why I'm such a believer in the community led by a creator, a strong leader.

And actually, I was having a conversation with somebody who's been a long time at, at Facebook groups two weeks ago, and what she was saying was, the difference between success or failure in a Facebook group is the effectiveness of the, the group admin. So here's what I think really in interesting.

So this is not a, uh, this is not a, oh, well, easy for mighty Networks to say if, you know, they have, you know, they may have all the time in the world, like, I'm super busy, like, how am I supposed to have a a, a community? So if we just all take a step back, um, number one, when the, the norms of social media do not have to be the norms of your community.

And I think that's really important because basically what social media has become is a, is a ongoing sustained A, B, C-D-E-F-G test of how to weaponize conversation, weaponized conversation. So what it, it became really clear to me that, that there's the equivalent, and I wish I had like a snazzy word for it, but I, I think this, you guys will appreciate this, but it, it's the equivalent of a DDoS attack, but with, with conversation and content.

So if you think about what's, what, what it, and it's not just trolls, it's this sense of, um, think about how it's all been, you know, we, we as we, we as a society, at least in the US have grown up with this sort of sacred, um, this sacred respect for free speech that has been weaponized against us. It's not free speech to just completely hammer with an unlimited amount of content and points that somebody is making with distraction.

What about is, and me, you know, Trotsky memes, you know, and, and then what you have is the creator or the, or the moderator being like, oh my God, am I like shutting down free speech? And here's the thing I've learned is yes, you are. It's not, this is does not have to be free speech. You do not have to allow everybody on the planet to show up in your community and have a political conversation, especially if it's off topic.

And so, what I believe very passionately as you can, you can tell, is, you know, unless the point of the community is for politics, and there's a, a use case and a model for that, the point of a, a community for your customers or your, your profession for getting better, uh, you know, and and choosing to, to build practices around your health or, or your wellness or spirituality, is to stay on topic. And what you can do at that point is to say, you know what?

There are a zillion other places for you to take that conversation. Please go. Then if, and, and, and I've done this, so for example, during, you know, during the height in June of, um, you know, of, of Black Lives matters of George Floyd, you know, we put out a, a post after a few days, you know, to, to ensure that we were thoughtful about it. That that where we stood as a company. And I immediately got four people out of thousands, uh, attacking the fact that we had said anything.

And it was, what about this, what about this? And, and, and decent people were trying to engage. And I realized very quickly that's not what they were there for. It wasn't to engage, it wasn't to share and have a collaborative, you know, uh, conversation that moved a topic forward. It was to DDoS attack that particular threat with all of these messages that work extraordinarily well to shut decent, normal people down. Hmm. Yeah.

And what I, what I, I came in as the, as the host, and I said, you know what? No, like for the, for the folks who have a problem with me, essentially keeping this on, on, and on track, I will give you a refund. And this is not the place for this. And by the way, this was a company announcement, and that is the point of, of our mighty host community, but we're gonna keep moving on towards making people successful with Mighty Networks, and this is how we're gonna go.

And within, within four hours, we were back on track Yeah. In four hours. So it, I, I really look at this as like, one of the things we have to do is give ourselves permission to be sensors. Like, that's like, yes, you can be, you can sensor, because your goal is to keep, keep the conversation and keep the journey to towards mastering something interesting or important together on track and this notion.

And, and you can make your community private, you can make your community paid, but you do not have to put up with people that are there to weaponize conversation. Yeah. That can happen in social media. That doesn't have to happen in your community. So I, you know, I don't know if that answers the question or just provide some additional food for thought, but that was the thing that really kind of came to mind for me as I thought about what does guidance look like?

So having that bigger purpose, having, you know, what are you going to get from this community and how are we going to get there together? You can set those things up. And they don't even have to be rules. They don't have to be guidelines. It can be, here's what we do and here's the, here are our, our our norms. You are not following our norms.

And you can go and it, and, and it's, you know, one of the benefits of having your own community is that it makes it really not that efficient to troll or to do these conversational DDoS attacks, which is not like a thing, but it's just like, that's the way it showed up for me. You know, where I'm was like, yeah, oh, this is a DDoS attack, except with people actually just continuing to post that is what they, that is what they are doing to shut it, to shut it down.

And I think, Andrew, I look at it from cyber nation standpoint, and, you know, little easier to do, right? Like, this is really a community of people that have the same kind of passion purpose, right?

Uh, and I think about, uh, as an MSP in those businesses that I've owned and trying to get, you know, community going, I think it's just a, a, a unique time right now that we've seen it from sales and marketing, uh, for MSPs because business owners, um, they need a lot more information than they need it before. Um, that we have a unique view on as providers. 'cause we deal with so many customers. So like, I think it's fertile ground right now to create some communities around business leaders.

Mm-Hmm. Ones that have both. But again, you have to do it with the purpose of making all those businesses better. Not trying to sign new managed and service agreements. Although at some point you'll probably meet more people and be a connector and, and that will be one of the results. Well, and, and, but it's the mistake people make where it's not content marketing. This is pure, it has to be pure apart. This Is not, this is how pure apart building relationships with each other.

It's not repurposing your, your content marketing. It's not repurposing your social posts. It is, it is, okay, we're gonna go on a journey to master something interesting or important. And I, I create the scaffolding of that is kinda how I think about it. It's like, I, I'm gonna create the framework that we're gonna use for that, but it's your contributions that's gonna bring it to life that's gonna make it vibrant. So sharing stories. So a couple of, of tricks, tricks of the trade.

One is generally speaking, if you can focus in on the up and comers in the organizations that you serve and want to serve, you will get a much more engaged community because they are the ones who are highly motivated to learn, to build their networks, to be able to show up to their bosses. Especially right now when so many of us are like, you know, working from, you know, our, our homes and there are fewer and fewer ways to, to, you know, rise above and to generate awareness.

If you get the up and comers first and you focus on them first, it makes the more senior people wanna be a part of it. And specifically as a way to leave a legacy, as a way to impart wisdom. If you start with the older people or you know, more experienced people with more responsibility, they have less time and they already feel like they have established networks.

So they need a community less, so they're more likely to come and, and contribute to a, a c community where they feel like they're gonna learn something. But, but that the engagement is already there. It's like the social proof. And so you can basically get, if you get the up and comers, you can bring the more senior people, but if you start with the more senior people, it's a much higher probability that you can't get any engagement.

And then you're ignoring the up and comers, and then you basically are stuck and you're like, oh, I guess that was a failed experiment. Let's go back to using, you know, a forum for customer support and call it a day. You know? And that's not what a community Is for you. Just, yeah. Right. You have to zoom out and say, right, the failure might have been a symptom not. Right. Right.

It's not you, you, so I always think about it as like, you've got your big purpose, you know, I'm bringing these people together. What are we gonna do together and what are we gonna get for doing it together? And the more general you are, especially with senior people, the more they're gonna basically be like, oh, that sounds great. I'm a little busy right now. And then you're like, oh, I guess everybody's busy and they're not busy.

You just haven't hit the bar yet on what are gonna be the benefits to them for joining your community? And then what are they gonna do together? Like, what's the time? You know? So it's, we're gonna, you know, for example, we, I'm going to bring this group of people together and who they are so that we can as quickly and as efficiently as possible, give you a snapshot every week of what are the most important topics or the, the, um, where we think the world is going for X, y, or Z reason.

But the up and comers are the ones that are typically more motivated than senior people for, for a professional, um, for focus community. Uh, so Andrew, I, I don't want to hog, uh, time up, but I had one last question. Is there any simple kind of like, or not, um, kind of metrics that you look at, like how many people in the community, what the engagement where you can kind of get feedback to say either A, how you're doing, or b, what you maybe should be doing differently?

Yeah, so I, I think that I, in general, because I am obsessed with this question of how does a new community get started and then how does it grow over time? Um, so I'm gonna answer this question a little bit of a roundabout way. So, so, so, uh, indulge me for a moment.

So one of the other things I was gonna say is, you know, because we have all been using social media for so long, so many times when we start, like if we start a new Slack channel or a Mighty network or whatever, it's like, oh, well, if I just throw a bunch of people together, they'll know what to do. Hmm. Because we've been using social media for so long that it's like, oh, well, you know, people know how to communicate, they don't. So number one thing is to start with what's the big purpose?

What are people gonna get as a result of being a member of this community? And how are they going to get it by very clear, here's what we do here, here's what we do here. So in that context, you can't be at the this level of like, oh, well, I need more engagement. Well, why? Like, if people were like, super engaged, but they weren't doing the things that would be beneficial to them, what's the point?

So, I I, I think it's less about metrics, especially upfront and more about do you have the structure in place and what can you be doing to ensure that you're delivering on the promise? You know, it's, it, it could be something like, you know, people are sharing their wins, you know, do they feel comfortable, you know, asking questions, but they might not, they might just be comfortable answering a poll or two. And they're Like, for losses, right? Yeah. Sharing their losses.

And, and that's where you as a creator are modeling accessibility, vulnerability. What we do here, I'm gonna share with you my wins, but I'm also gonna share my losses, or I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna be like, you know what? I don't feel like gonna work today. Like, this whole thing is hard, like, I'm gonna power through, but like some days we just don't feel like it, um, whatever, whatever it might be.

But it's really important to be authentic, and it's really important to be, to be vulnerable, but show, and here's how we master this together. Here's what we do together. So it's less about metrics you're Saying. I, I think the metrics then can fall out of those things. But what I observe is people are like, I need more engagement. But, but why?

And then I look at their numbers, I'm like, you've got amazing engagement from a weekly active user number and especially weekly active user on monthly. We've been told that the numbers that we have to have are daily engagement. Well, daily engagement at a casino is, is is actually really horrible. Like, you don't actually want daily engagement at a casino.

If you could have weekly engagement with something that's like, wow, I just got a lot of value from this kind of call, uh, would you be okay? And then that person can go live their life. Why is that bad? What's wrong with that? You gotta, you wanna make a habit, but maybe the habit is, Hey, on Tuesday mornings at 9:00 AM we do this and that, you know, those are the things that are really important.

So there are some metrics like, you know, th when you get 30 people showing up, basically at the same time, basically 30 people in 30 days, you have enough volume and enough potential for those relationships to kind of take on and self-organize. Um, so that's a, a good kind of rule or, or, or metric. Um, but again, you can have some, you know, you start something from scratch with 10 people or five people.

And if there are weekly calls and a weekly challenge and people are posting their results from that weekly challenge, whether that's a, you know, a big purpose statement, whatever it might be, we teach a, an a course called the Communities I masterclass. And, and we use this model. I don't care if people are in there every day. They are, but that's not the point.

The point is, are we creating a habit and a weekly habit for people where they are associating what we are building with something that is important that they, that they walk away and they've learned something. But this notion of like, it has to be daily engagement. I don't know. Yeah. I question it. Very cool. Alright, Andrew. I took up a lot of time. No, it was great. It was great. And the, you know, a lot of great comments in the audience.

I, I asked a poll question just real quick here, Gina, about, um, are people using social communities to engage their prospects and customers of those? That answer? It's interesting. Uh, you know, I, I'm pleased that like almost 40% said yes. So that's a really good sign.

Um, I'd love to know, are they using, you know, the mega these, you know, massive things that we talked about, like the, you know, the, uh, Facebook's, LinkedIns, so et cetera versus the, um, but, um, Andy, let me, uh, you ask a question or two and uh, we'll probably cut, cut 'em down just a little bit. 'cause I really want, I hope we get some good questions from the audience, and I wanna certainly want Wes to engage as, as well. Gina, this has been great. Thank you. Absolutely.

Yeah, definitely. Thanks so much again for having me, Andrew, uh, of course. And everyone on this cyber huddle. Um, but just a question for you, Gina. Um, you know, a lot of our members are in the MSP community. They're, you know, they're business owners.

And, um, I think at one point you had mentioned, um, maybe not on this call, but in some of the other things that I've seen you on, you've mentioned, um, that some of the most successful, uh, businesses use the power of networks and the network effects. Um, are there some examples and a few things, uh, that you felt made these companies so successful? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. I, I mean, yes. I mean, there are really sort of five key factors. Um, and we teach a whole, uh, course on it.

Um, and you know, number one is you gotta have a big purpose. You have to have a lot of clarity. Like why does this community need to exist and why does it need to exist in such a way that people would, would dedicate some time to it? It doesn't, again, it doesn't have to be every day, but dedicate some time and space in their lives to it. And that's where it really does seem to come back to important interests, which you guys are, you know, it's what people are doing for their livelihoods.

So, you know, the, the notion that one, and, and most of the time when people are doing something in 2020 for their livelihoods, it's because there's a, there is a, a bigger, you know, a bigger purpose to it. It is, it's not just to make money, it's to help people. And these are, you know, professional relationships that really do have a, um, a deeper connection to them, which is towards this bigger purpose. So bigger big purpose is super, super important. Like, who is this community for?

And it, it tends, the more specific you are, the more successful you're gonna be. Because what people are listening for is, is this for me? So if it's like, oh, I bring together all people of earth or anybody who's like struggling in their day, someday I'm struggling, sometimes I'm not. But like, who is this for too? And then a a lot of clarity. And so typically with communities, what people do is they're like to learn, share, and grow together. Mm-Hmm.

Um, well that's, might as well be like adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. It means nothing to anybody. So we have a whole set of things that you can actually, you know, replace that with, you know, two, define together what it means to have a, uh, strong cybersecurity infrastructure in the most efficient way possible.

And so that we can have confidence that what we are, um, you know, the business that we're building is protected, but also that we're going to be able to stay on top of everything in, uh, you know, everything that's going on and the right moves to make in a market that is rapidly changing. And an environment that, you know, is, is like playing three dimensional chess. Um, so you see kind of like, okay, that sounds kind of interesting. I'm, I'm like, this might actually apply to me.

And then what we talk about is the second pillar of community design is the year in the life. Where are your members gonna be a year from now if they join your community? And do those things that we just articulated. So it's like working backwards over, over the life of, of your member or the year of your member. And then this ability to say, well, if my members can accomplish these things over the course of the next year, what could I accomplish over the course of the next year?

It's, it's start starting with your members. Super, super important. Third thing, monthly themes a month is right about the amount of time where you can go real deep on something. And typically topics, you know, that are a monthly theme, it's not something that, that, uh, you know, you could just simply Google, you know, or it's like, it's a great content marketing article.

It's more like, you know what, like biggest threats or, um, or, you know, best practices is, again, a little bit of that like Charlie Brown adult want, want, want, want, but, but you know, there's a number of different ways to say it. But so 12 months of themes, third thing, and this is the really, or fourth, fourth thing, fourth totally, totally. Um, essential, which is the weekly calendar on Tuesdays at 9:00 AM we do this on Thursdays at 4:00 PM we do this.

And picking the same time every week is really important. Making it every week is really important because it's better that you do two things for four weeks and really sort of start to build that habit over the course of, of a week. That's where the magic happens. It's so much easier because then you, So what would be an example of that? Right? What would be an example of, of something on the weekly calendar? Yeah.

So for example, in our community design masterclass, and I'm not pumping up the community design masterclass, it just works really well on weeks that, so it's a five week course that we run, and we always have on Tuesday mornings at 9:00 AM our topic session. We use Crowdcast, we, we show up. It is always at the same time. And when there are weeks when we're not doing it, which it's, it's rare, but I feel like I, like my arm got cut off. That's the power of a weekly habit.

And, and so even if people aren't joining you, you're also marketing. Like they know that like if, you know, even if they're not engaging, but they wanna start, let's say it's six weeks in the future, they know that 10:00 AM you know, or 9:00 AM on Tuesdays is a time where they could drop in. And so that kind of consistency in your community is really important.

It also really helps you if you're running a community because you don't wake up on, you know, Monday morning and you're like, oh shoot, what am I gonna do this week? And the community I like, you know, like, you just don't have to think about it. So you set it up, you do it, and then you just keep jamming. The last thing is, I'm sorry, wait, sorry. Before you to the last one, could that be as simple as knowing that, you know, every Tuesday at 11 o'clock someone's gonna be on live?

Like, it could just be like a live about that week's topic or something? Yeah. Okay. And the topics are monthly, but you could break it down. Yeah. Like sub topics for, you know, what are we gonna talk about this week? Gotcha. So, and then what we do in our masterclasses is every week has a challenge. So that could be another thing. It's like on Mondays at 8:00 AM we have great fanfare for that week's challenge.

And then the last thing, the fifth thing is, uh, daily or regular polls and questions. And the, the goal of the polls and questions are to start to build relationships between members. So one of the biggest things I see in mistakes people make is they're, they're like, oh my gosh. Like when they wake up that, you know, first thing on Monday morning, they're like, oh my God, what am I gonna do in the community this week? I don't, I hadn't even thought about it.

Like, this is such a pain in my butt. Like, it's so much work. You know, that's what like, you know, not if you set it up in advance. Now here's the other thing that happens. So at that moment, what somebody does is they see an article that's been shared and they're like, oh, that's great. I'll share this in the community. And then I'll basically ask the question, Hey guys, what do you think? Then it's crickets. Nobody is talking, nobody answer. And then, and then basically, mm-hmm.

You're like, this is so much work. I'm like, totally giving up. Everybody's too busy for this. And meanwhile all that's happened is that you gave your members too much work to do because you didn't wanna do anything. And there's something so much better, which is like a simple poll that they could answer in like 10 seconds. And then if they wanted to have that quick win and then go into the comments, then they're meeting each other.

When you share an article, the, the, the member has to go out and read it. And by the way, that's alongside 15 other articles that got shared by them or to them that morning. Whether it's the three text threads that they're in with their friends or, you know, things that are in their email. So you just gave them more work and then you gave them this open-ended respo, you know, well, what, like, do I have to look smart, especially to my other like MSPs?

Like, and then you like the amount of things that people have to do in their head versus like, um, what's one thing you're doing this morning? Or What's one thing you have on tap for this week, uh, that's the most important to you? One thing, just answer it quick, not, Hey, what do you think? So, you know, that's the type of thing that shows, uh, when you have those five things in place, you can create a self-organizing community that's really not a lot of work.

Um, so much faster and so much easier than, than, you know, Hey, let me throw a bunch of people, you know, in, in a place in like, let them figure it out. And, and by the way, if they don't engage after I've thrown them together, then it's, you know, it's the software's fault or it's their fault. Or I guess everybody's just too busy and none of that's actually true. So, Dina, I'm gonna trend Oh, go ahead. Go.

Oh, I was just gonna ask really quick, is that, do you mind if I ask one more question? A really one, I know I don't wanna eat into West's time too much, but fine. There was an interesting comment in the, um, chat. You know, Dustin was talking about how it helps to have some focus maybe around a specific vertical or around a specific passion.

Um, but, um, and, and that works for a lot of people, but we also have a lot of members of our MSP community where their end clients actually do service, you know, many different industry verticals and things like that. Sure. You know, is there, by the Way, my doorbell just rang and it's actually something that I will be right back for. Yeah, Yeah. So, So no, go ahead.

So what we'll do is, um, just 'cause of time, I really, um, wanna get transition over to Wes, Annie, sorry, it's, It's, oh yeah, no problem. So how about this, Andrew? I actually only have one question for Gina, so I, we can wait till she gets back. One thing I would like to do, I'd actually rather seed my time, most of it over to what you guys want to ask. So I know some questions have, have come through, and Annie, you were just asking one that was good.

Um, if you guys wouldn't mind to use the ask a question sometimes that your questions get buried in the chat and it's hard for us to scroll back and come to it. So if you've got a question you wanna ask, pop it into that. Ask a question so we can make sure, I know I can, but I, Wes can as a, as an attendee, can you turn your chat into a question as well? Yes, yes. Okay. It does give me that option. I never use That.

Like I, for example, I think Sonny, uh, Sonny Lowe, you, you, I, I saw something you put up. I thought it was really good. And, uh, did you get that Amazon delivery you were hoping for? You know, it was not an Amazon delivery, but I would take the mood of this amazing call to a very sad place. My, my friend passed away suddenly and that was literally someone, the mortuary delivering his ashes. So I like, I would never have done that for anything else. No.

But I Knocked out with something where I was like, I'll be right back. Anyway. No, Gina, first off, thank you for like, first of all, you had the wildfire, you know, you and I were communicating and like, I know you had a lot going on. So first off, thank or condole, it's my pleasure. And, and the wildfires and covid and man, can we just fast forward 2020 or so? So, um, I, Annie, I wanna come to you.

Let me just make one statement if I could, and then transition back to you, Annie, I, you mentioned polls, Gina, and I gotta tell you, they are fantastic. We use them, we started using them. And, um, just to kind of tie it together. 'cause it, it does dovetail into your question about vertical versus horizontal. And, uh, so, um, I had asked the question, uh, Gina, Hey, what is the most important training for you in your business? For example, is it around security policy, right?

Is it around, um, packaging and pricing, you know, your offerings? Is it around things like ethical hacking? And anyway, point being is it was wonderful. I mean, we got tons of engagement and we found out that there's two really important things to the community. Um, it was around security policy, which, you know, we're gonna deliver one of those security policies and get, dig into it with Wess and team and Gary around incident response.

Um, and I hope we can talk about your cyber, you know, just your view on it. And then the other was around, um, packaging and pricing, which mm-hmm. You know, for 15 years has been the number one question Gary has gotten, uh, about building a business and managed Yeah. Services. So anyway, Annie, you were mentioning about vertical versus horizontal. So let, let me come back to you.

Yeah, I was just saying, you know, um, can we, can our MSP community, can they still create communities themselves with their clients, even though they service potentially multiple, um, verticals, maybe around some common interest, like, like being secure amidst, you know, the pandemic or something like That? Yeah, so, so absolutely. But I do think that, you know, vertical doesn't mean industry you, unless, unless that is the, like, they're so different.

If anything, what we find with, with, again, our, the community, we run around this, this concept and framework of community design, the fact that people are doing communities for summer, for, uh, career, summer for health, summer for spiritual practice, actually makes it so much more interesting and so much more vibrant because they're all learning from each other. But what do we have in common? It's the fact that we wanna create a community so valuable, we can charge for it.

And so well designed that it essentially runs itself. That's our, our, our big purpose. So it's, it's less about thinking about a community as horizontal or vertical. I think that that's a little bit of a, of a false choice. It's going and finding, um, what is the thing that is gonna be our topic, our reason for being and our reason to come together in this community. And then who and how do we serve? Who do we serve the best first? Who needs this the most?

Like, and I would all caps this statement right now, and it doesn't mean you can't expand it later. And this is again, something that, that really, when, when you embrace the fact that you don't have to be for everyone day one, if you're for the people who need you the most right now, and you get that right, you can always move and, and, and include more and more adjacent profiles of people.

But you want what we call your ideal member to be as narrowly defined as possible, but it's less, it's less by vertical and it's more, you know, who are the people that cut across, potentially cut across different industries, but what do they have in common and what do they need help with right now?

Where it's, where a conversation like this with people who are coming at the, the problem or the challenge or the topic from related places where we can all, you know, we can all learn from each other. That's what it means to master something interesting or important together. Cool. Wes, let me, uh, let me let you take it. And I think, yeah, um, you know, really, really good segue because every, I think to to, to your point, Gina, people want to be secure.

You know, all these small businesses, they might be different verticals, but they wanna be secure, they want to be efficient from a work from home environment. If there's one guy that knows about security, it's Wes Spencer. So Wes, what do you got through? So, Uh, Andrew, I'm gonna go off script. Gina, thank you for joining us. I've taken a lot of good notes and there's a lot of good takeaways from this. I really appreciate you spending some time with us.

We have maybe three minutes left and I wanna give the rest of it to, uh, the audience. Some good questions have come in. Just one question for you. You've been talking a lot to us about purpose of, you know, what's the reason for being, and I, I think my question for you is two parts is who sets that initial purpose? Is it the creator slash founder of the community? Is it the community itself? And can that purpose change and evolve over time.

And if it can evolve and change, how do you know when it should change and how it should change? I would love to know your, your feedback. Yeah, so I, I am a big believer in the most successful communities have a strong point of view that can change and adapt to things over time, but it has a strong point of view and that, that, that strong point of view may change. But, but again, when we're all so busy, if, if your entire community has the vibe to it of like, Hey guys, what do you wanna do?

Like, it's like, well wait a second, I don't have time for this. Like, if, if you want me to do all the work, like I'm a member, you gotta have a point of view that I wanna be a part of. You wanna have a personality and a brand and a purpose that I wanna be a part of. I was thinking about it as like, I don't know, what do you wanna, where do you wanna go for dinner? I don't know. Where do you wanna go for dinner? It's like that. It's, nobody wants that. Nobody wants that.

So I, so I, um, I believe that the creator or the founder should be doing ideal member interviews and listening for how members would talk about or see the value of a community, which is different. And, and, and Andrew, I think you just did this with you, you, you, you set the tone for, or that you set the, the big purpose, but then within that big purpose, what and how you deliver on it can be adjusted, it can be adaptable.

'cause the whole point at that point is, is that you've, you've invested the time and energy in figuring out what are the benefits that people want, what do they wanna do together in order to get those benefits? And then how we get there can change over time. And that can be a, a collaboration and co-creation with members.

But I, I, I'm always a big believer of like, Hey, here's what we're thinking, getting feedback and then adjusting as opposed to starting with, Hey guys, what do you, what do you think we should do this month for the, the themes versus a poll that's like, Hey, these are the three themes that our candidates, let's vote. And I will, I, you know, and we'll, we'll unveil the next monthly theme, you know, on, on Thursday at 4:00 PM when we do our monthly theme unveiling session.

Well, you know, we, Wes just to, to her point, Gina, I think that's so great because it, what you just said kind of flows in from the cyber nation built on the, on your platform to the cyber call. 'cause it could be, hey, this month's about incident response or this month's about security policy on the cyber call. And then we blend it into topics and conversations and polls and content into the, is that, are we getting, is that the intent? That's exactly right. That's a great way of putting it.

Very cool. Quick question. Um, if we can, um, I know we're at two, one after, can we ask a question or two? Yeah, let's do, let's do a Few questions real quick. Real quick question. Let's do one question 'cause I do, no, my meeting was at 1130. Okay. Real, real quick. Uh, two questions are here. Uh, first question comes from John, is there a way to integrate Mighty Networks into an existing community?

For example, you have a client portal for your MSP and you want add Mighty Networks without a separate, so I guess she wants SSO and in essence into that. So a lot of these MSPs, Gina, they'll have like, you can come in and see your tickets, your invoices, et cetera. So have you seen that? So we do have SSO for the most part, um, though what we have found to be the most successful model is linking between the two. Okay.

You know, again, if it's valuable enough, people are not that worried about having another login, especially if it is a great experience that you have your own notifications and things like that and it's you so you, between branding and linking back and forth, it actually works pretty well. But we do, we do offer the ability to do SSO as well.

And it's, it, what we've actually found though is for the most part people are like, oh yeah, it's actually just easier and like a better experience just to use it without it. Got it. Got it. Okay. Um, I'm gonna, I think I saw Dustin's there and I think how can you automate HR task? Um, I think it was more of a statement, but, um, Gina wrapping things up. First off, again, thank you so much for your generosity of time. My goodness.

Um, I'm gonna get this, you know, out so that people can see it. Um, Gary closing thoughts and, and for Gina, and No, this is just super valuable from a whole bunch of perspectives. Like again, it's great when I get to walk away with a bunch of notes, but what I would wanna share to our audience is to think about this in a lot of ways they can build community. And look, I basically built my MSPs on becoming part of the community in a valuable way. Right.

And everything else just kind of happened for me. And, and it's kind of like how you become a rainmaker, right? You do it, you ask nothing in return. You're not doing it to drive sales. And it's the most effective way to build, you know, to build your business from this standpoint. Besides other things you do for lifestyle, it may be, but from, again, knowing the MSP model and there's no better time to do it than right now. This is a unique window that's open right now, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, well we'll close it out there, Gina, anything you want to share? And, and you don't have to, I don't mean to put you on the spot. Um, I'm, I'm a huge fan. No, this Has been great and you guys have been super prepared. I love the conversation that's going through this and I just, I'm grateful for the time and you know, thank you for using Mighty Networks and you know, I can't wait to see what you guys all do together.

Yeah, well we're very grateful for it and grateful for your time With that, everybody, have a fantastic day, Gina. Take care and Thank you. Thanks Gina. Thanks everyone. Take Care. Thanks Amy. Thanks Gary. Take care. Thanks everybody.