Did I just become best friends with a company? In this episode of Built For The Game, Rob Cressy shares thoughts on the world of community building, how Mighty Networks has become an foundational part to what we are building at Unlimited, and how the leadership of their CEO Gina Bianchini has been inspiring and impactful.
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Built For The Game with Rob Cressy
Discovering Magic in Community Building with Mighty Networks
Did I just become best friends with a company? In this episode of Built For The Game, Rob Cressy shares thoughts on the world of community building, how Mighty Networks has become an foundational part to what we are building at Unlimited, and how the leadership of their CEO Gina Bianchini has been inspiring and impactful.-Ways I can Help:* Develop Your Self & Business. Get Ahead With AI - Join Creating Unlimited: http://www.creatingunlimited.com* Let's Be In Conversation & Co-Create T...
- Duration:
- 24m
- Broadcast on:
- 12 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
What was the last time that you were legitimately excited to work with a company? More often than not, you don't have something come top of mind. But for me, right now, that answer is with Mighty Networks. What's good? I'm Rob Crassie, and I want to share some positive energy and magic with you about what I'm seeing in the world of business, where I'm putting my chips on, and how building a community and connecting people is part of that. And the inspiration behind this episode come from some interactions that I've had with the Mighty Networks CEO, Gina B and Keeney, as well as their team. And let me start from the very beginning. Two months ago, myself and my business partner, Colin Scotland, we started a new community called Unlimited, where it is a combination of two things, artificial intelligence and self-development. And we asked ourselves one question. We said, "Where do we have an unfair advantage?" And we're like, "Well, in the process of building our businesses as entrepreneurs, if there's only two things that we went all in on, making ourselves better, as well as artificial intelligence, these are areas that we are not only experts at, but we are leaders in, and we would love to lead other entrepreneurs and business leaders in leveraging those two things in their business." So we decided to take both of our resources, our courses, our tools, everything we've ever created, we combined them and said, "You know what? Let's do twice a week calls and offer this up to people who want this support and growing their business together." And in the process of that, some magic started to happen. And as many networks like to say, "People magic started to happen." And the call started to get more people on it. And we started to build something really, really phenomenal there. And up until that point, we were using Facebook as our community platform because we did not want to have too much all at once to overwhelm people who were just starting. But about one month ago, we said, "You know what? It's time for us to bolt on the next layer of this community with Unlimited." Side note, if this is something that intrigues you, I encourage you to join us, go to creatingunlimited.com. So what we did was, Colin had been using Mighty Networks for his thriving serve community for a while, and he loved it. And in looking at this, we said, "You know what? We have an opportunity to make what he's already created more robust." So let's bolt on the Unlimited community on top of that. And for me, I've always been a community builder, something that I did in the sports side of things, the bacon sports back in the day where I built sports communities, sports bedding communities. I'm a natural leader, I'm a go-giver, I'm energetic. I love connecting people together. So the very first thing that I did, I'm going to share my screen because this is the launch pad of everything. It is, I just did a simple post on LinkedIn saying, "Hey, if you build a community on Mighty Networks, I've been part of one. I'm looking to talk about tips, best practices, optimization, because I'm all in. We're all in on Unlimited with our community, and I'm new to Mighty Networks. I'm not new to communities, and I'll get to that in a second." So as part of this, something ended up happening. First off, Mighty Networks, the company, responded to this LinkedIn post, "Hey, Rob, we host weekly sessions that gave me a link to get some more insight." Then I look, and I also have a message from Gina B and Keeney, their CEO and co-founder. "Hey, nice to meet you, is there anything in particular you'd be interested in hearing about?" Immediately, I was like, "Whoa, there is something different about this company, which, oh, by the way, I am brand new to using them." Not only did their team respond, but their CEO responded, and I was like, "Wow, there is something good going on here." Well, once they open up Pandora's Box and start responding back to me, game on, because now I'm going to be a natural go-giver in relationship builder, and all that I do. And because community building is top of mind for me, I'm not going to deep dive, because I want to and will be the best that there is out there. And I even send Gina a message saying, "We will be a success case study for you and Mighty Networks." So this sort of opened the door to things, and then naturally, what I do is I go over to Twitter, and I follow Gina and see what she's doing there. And she talks about this brand new podcast that she has called People Magic. How to build a $1 million community, and big shout out to Gina and the Mighty Networks team, because as you can see right here, it is number nine on the Apple iTunes podcast charts right now. So here, I'm sitting here being like, "All right, well, what's going on in this world?" And I start listening to the podcast. And very few times in my life, do I hear something? Where I'm like, this is legitimately created for me, where I'm taking notes, and I'm about that second brain life to begin with. But once again, I'm all in on this, the community building being the best. So with what Gina's sharing from the intro episode, and I've only listened to two episodes, I'm going to listen to all of them because we're going to implement everything that she teaches. I'm just hearing this, and I'm like, "Man, the language that she is using, the way that she is helping her audience, whether it's someone who's not using Mighty Networks yet, or somebody who's building a community right now. It is so specific and so tactical in the big label moment for me, in the very first episode was all around your target demographic, your ideal client, and it being people in transition. And so often, we live in the world of coaching and entrepreneurship, and many people go from, "I'm doing one thing too, I want to become a coach." That was something that for me, I never set out to become a coach. I just lived like one for more than a decade before I started to get hired to help people be better at business by being better at life. And in our unlimited community, we're starting to notice that there are people who are working a job who say, "You know what, I've got a greater calling, and I want to become a coach." Well, great, Colin and I, we specialize this because that's both our journey as well as what we do on a daily basis. And Gina shared that people in transition, and the example that she gave is so often people in coaching, they want to go after the CEOs, but they always say, "I don't have enough time." But it is the people that are layer below them who they want to grow, they have something inside of them that they want to make better. Immediately, the light bulb went off for me, I was like, "Let's go." How does this apply to our world in unlimited AI self-development? So in the world of AI, this is brand new. Everybody's in a state of transition with this. Colin and I, among other things, are experts at marketing, brand building. So we now look at the lens of, "Wow, how can people take their traditional marketing, their traditional brand building, and how can they use AI to speed up the process, create better results, or as I like to say, more with less faster?" And there is one super important key that is going to weave through all of this, both of them limited as well as mighty networks, which is why I have such a connection to this company right now. And Gina likes to talk about this as people magic. In unlimited, we get the world of AI, but really for us, it is all around how we can leverage AI to be more human and do more of the things that we love to do. And of course, we're, yes, ending this by creating a community of like-minded people who want to grow their businesses and lives together. And they say, "You know what? I'm on this continuous journey of learning and growing. I want some other people on this journey with me who are doing similar things." Because ultimately what we all want is more connection. And immediately Gina and mighty networks displayed to me their ability to connect with people. This people magic. And I'm like, "Let's go." Because at the top, I said, "Where am I putting my roulette chips?" Well, this is very simple for me. And I always share this. Number one, I got a lot of roulette chips on AI. I use Chad GBT the first week it came out back in November 2022. And in the very first minute of using it, I was like, "Oh, I feel like I just used the internet for the first time. I'm all in. I see what the next decade of the world is going to look like. I want to be a part of this." And for the majority of people, they sit there and they're like, "Oh my God, I can create a blog post that sounds like Daffy Duck." I'm like, "How do I turn a dollar into a dollar 50?" Immediately my lens for how I saw this completely different. I'm all about business growth because to me, this is just a tool. And I see similarly mighty networks. Mighty networks is a tool for community builders to bring more people together. I don't believe they're selling a tech platform. I believe they're selling a platform that helps build connection. And I love the language that they use the word magic. One of my declarations, I speak every single day. I am that I bring magic to life. And what I do is I envision myself speaking. It is sold out arena and all of the people that I've had a positive impact on. And then I leave that stage and guess what? My magic is still there because I have the ability to positively impact people's lives, whether I'm there or not. And I think back to one of my friends and someone who's been a big part of my world from a mentorship side of things, who calls me the magic man. And I love it. Shout out to my boy Mike Rezio. He's like, "Oh, the magic man, you bring magic to life." Boom. So now we got some people magic over there. We're creating some magic right here in Unlimited. Once again, if you're vibing with this, we would love for you to join us. Go to creatingunlimited.com. So in the process of doing all of this, we've been very much building our airplane with Unlimited as we are flying it. It doesn't mean that we don't know what we're doing. We know absolutely know what we're doing. But in taking something from zero to one to two to three, you have to do this thing in chunks because it's kind of a lot to be building out a community and tools and resources and a platform and twice a week calls and all of that stuff in the best way possible. We get to do these things. So here's our original thought process around community building. And we knew that roulette chip number two that we wanted to do, building a community. Why? Because in the world of AI, we are about human AI. Because I know where things are going to be going. Because people are going to be automating so many things. There's going to be digital twins. There's going to be deep fakes. There's going to be what is the difference between what's real and what's a robot? From a podcast to a video to written text to anything. And we know lowest common denominator is going to happen for the overwhelming majority. So we'll use the Pareto principle. 80/20 rule. 80% of the people in companies out there, they're going to use AI the wrong way. They're going to automate all of it. They're going to use the writing. They're going to remove the brand heartbeat. On the flip side, there's going to be the 20% of us. And quite frankly, it's more likely to be like the 1% of us who are going to say, cool, we see that, but AI is a tool that supports us, the humans that create to do more with less faster. And then what we are going to do is invest in other people. Because as I look at the next 10 years of business, the thing that you can never take from us is our community. You can buy, pay dad, you can create a content farm, you can do all of that. But no one can take from us the twice a week calls that we're doing and unlimited, where you can feel me, you can hear me, and you can do this with other people. And that is what Mighty Networks is helping us build. So boom, there's another chip on community building. And then the last chip, of course, being self-development. And this is something that I learned right out of the gate with entrepreneurship. I'm sitting there over a decade ago at zero, no clients, no website. I just became self-aware that morning where I was like, whoa, everything's on me. And I was like, wow, no one's going to tell me what to do, what to eat, what to work on, where do I work at, any of that stuff. And upon that moment, I was like, whoa, I got to learn and get better. And if I'm someone who is always learning, always growing, always getting better, no one can ever take from me, my mindset, and what I learn. From that, I'm like, oh, well, just specialize in personal growth development as the number one thing that you do every single day. And by design, you will automatically be better and create all of your dreams because that is literally part of the process right there. And because of that, self-development is the other chip that we're doing. And I would encourage you to think about yourself, whether it's you or the company that you're working with right now, AI, self-development, and community. Where are those living in your world right now? And if you're sitting there at zero or one or at low numbers, that's okay. Because everybody starts at zero, myself included. And the key is being around other people or other companies are getting the right content to help you accelerate that. And that is one of the things that Gina and Mighty Networks are doing such a good job of, which is creating that connection for me and saying, listen, I know you're on this growth journey. I have a goal of helping 10 million people. Colin and I are building a multi-million dollar community in business. So this isn't just some little thing that we're doing. We are all in, all in, chips on the table and to find a partner out there to help support you in that vision of being all in, man, that feels so refreshing to me. Because one of the biggest challenges of community building, and I know this as being someone who has been part of communities, because I am, I am the best community member because of how all in I am, because I know what it's like to work in a fifth third bank call center making $10 an hour in a computer with no email or internet access. When you have a dream of working for an ad agency and being creative and you're living literally the opposite of your dreams for a long period of time, a decade of my life in corporate America, I did not enjoy what I was doing. Therefore, now that I'm living a different life, I am willing to do whatever it takes to make this stuff happen. So as we think about the communities that I'm a part of, I'm there to number one, learn, I want to learn from the best in the world. That's what I always do. That's what I love about learning from Gina because immediately right away, I was like, she's best in class at what she does. I am learning from her and mighty networks. So I've been a part of communities in Facebook, Discord, Slack, Circle, now we have school. And what have I noticed about all of them? Well, the majority of them, there is a major flaw. Well, number one, most of them starting at the top of the food chain, the person running it is not active in the community, because usually it is someone that is a business leader who's crushing, at least in the worlds that I'm operating in, we're talking eight, nine, ten figure business owners. So I would say this tongue and cheek, you can't expect that person running a billion dollar company to be engaging in the Facebook group. I get it. The challenge is, a community has a heartbeat. And with a leader, people follow. So whatever the leader is sharing, man, you get excited. Let's go. We're rowing the boat. We're like, Braveheart, I'm in, let's go, let's go. But then when the leader is missing in the community, it misses part of it. So that's happening in some of the best communities that I see. The people who are part of the communities, they're good. But usually the teams running them or the people at the top, there's something missing. And what I often hear is it's like, listen, we're running other businesses, not just this community or there's group or this mastermind. And that's cool. And I get it. But I'm someone who's about this life who loves running communities, who loves helping people, who loves doing these things. So there's always been a little something missing with me there. Number two, the majority of communities are run on Facebook. Why? Because it's the most accessible to the people in terms of where can I get people the content? Because, yeah, for example, I've been a part of a community on circle. And it was fine because it was part of a cohort. The challenge is after that eight-week cohort, that circle community is dead. Number two is now you've got to download circle for the first time. You've never used it. Now you're learning it. You're like, I'm not really sure if I'm about this life. Well, then you've got the word of AI in crypto or like, oh, let's move over to the discord over here. It's cool and all, but discord was something that was new to me. That's very tech first. But once again, not everybody's using it. Then you've got Slack over here. Slack to me is great. I use it for business communication. But when it comes to building a community, one of the challenges can become is information overload or shiny object syndrome. So one of the challenges of having a Facebook community is your post may be coming up in a feed next to trick shots, people on vacation, political content. You name it. So now there's a misplaced focus in what's going on there. And the same can be true with Slack where now someone's feeling like we're doing business. And I get there's good Slack communities out there. There's still something that was missing there. And with everything that's going on with school, I get what it is. That wasn't my lane. So when Colin brought, hey, let's just take the mighty networks community that I've already built. And let's bolt it on and make it better. And I'm going to share my screen real quick with you guys. What we have right here is we built out a very simple structure with unlimited. This is version 2.0. We are only two weeks into launching this version of it. But we wanted to think about and we came from this place first. Number one, what are we excited to share and create around? Because if we're not excited, then everybody else isn't going because we are the leaders of said community. So boom, nice and simple structure. And of course, Gina and the mighty networks team has created a lot of good content to help with this. And of course, we're going to refine what we're doing. But we've got a space for the community, winter circle, book club, self promotion, feedback. We want this to be a place where, all right, there's not ads for anything. We don't got to work. We don't have to worry about organic reach. It is literally a place of value. You have a question, drop it in there. You have a thought or something you want to share, drop it in there, something going on in your life in the world of AI. We got that self development, we got that. And then we know that there's a large majority people in our community that are coaches or entrepreneurs. So we decided to build out some resource specific areas, finding your ideal client, getting more leads, creating your resistible offers, pricing and packages. And then of course, building a powerful brand. And as I look at my journey as an entrepreneur in these communities, I've always wanted more. There's always been this hunger and this desire for structure or to take what happens in the conversation on the calls to the next level. So often many of these communities can be seen as guru based or omnipotent leader based where we're holding them up on this high pedestal of like, you are the person who's done the thing that I want to do and you are the best. It's cool. And I enjoy learning from those people because I love learning from outliers and the best in the world. But the thing that's oftentimes missing is the connection between the people in the communities. And so often you can be on a call with a bunch of people and you never know who they are and you never get the opportunity to connect with them. And I was like, well, that is dumb. I don't believe in that. Let's instead bring the people on to collaborate on the calls. And then after the call is they have the space to keep that party going. And of course, like I said, we're one month into building this out. And our vision, this thing's going to go from 20 to 100 to 1000 to 10,000 plus because we want to create positive impact in the world. And whoa, I'm feeling good little nature boy Rick flair me right now. I'm excited because this is what I love to do. I love helping people. I've always wanted to build a community with a world class structure in it. Mighty networks is the first time in my life where I feel like I'm building that on solid ground. I'm not renting this ground from Facebook or Instagram or something else, which is going to limit organic reach. Instead, boom, we are all in on this platform. And it feels good to know that there's a partner there who is led by a CEO who believes in people who wants to share and help and do things the right way. So I sent this as a DM voicemail to Gina yesterday just sending some good vibes saying, thanks for all that you're sharing. I'm picking up on your guys magic. And she said, hey, if you ever want to share what you're doing publicly, we would love to we would appreciate it. Well, guess what? That's what I do. I'm somebody who takes action. And I love getting the word out. So that's the inspiration behind all of this. And I would love to hear from you. Number one, what communities are you a part of? And what are the things that you notice that make them stand out from the leaders to the structure to where are you getting the best value? And the number two, of course, is if you want to grow your business and your life together and AI and self development are two areas where you want to grow, I encourage you to join us at unlimited go to creating unlimited dot com. And I love hearing from people I love connecting with the best in the world. So if this resonates with you, slide into my DMS and let's have a conversation. You can hit me up on Instagram LinkedIn or Facebook at Rob Cressy or shoot me an email. Rob@robcressy.com sending tons of good vibes your way. Hope you have yourself amazing rest of the day.