You’ve seen LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups, you’ve seen social media platforms like X, but when it comes to building community online, now there are specialized apps that give you way more options. But how do you even get started? What does success look like?
In this episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations, V2's Roger Courville, CSP invited a conversation with Mike Henry Sr. because he's built groups and communities in a variety of online media. Mike's a former VP of IT, the original founder of LeadChangeGroup -- a leadership media destination, a power user of LinkedIn groups, and now is the founder and Chief Instigator of faith-based Follower of One, a community of Christian business peopl who use a commercial private community app called Mighty Networks.
In this conversation you will learn how to:
- Recognize the importance of controlling the platform environment
- Understand the flywheel effect in communities—invest time and resources initially to build momentum that can later become self-sustaining
- Choose between a “many-to-many” or “few-to-many” model
- Set a clear purpose and mission for the community
- Encourage organic member engagement through small, regular actions
- Create genuine relationships by engaging members personally
- Develop terms and boundaries that inspire positive interactions, ensuring shared values and mutual respect within the community
- When to use a variety of communication channels like emails, text messages, or even calls to maintain consistent, personalized engagement
- When to consider the shift to private, brand-owned platforms, allowing complete control over the community experience and fostering deeper member loyalty
Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
Keywords: #CommunityEngagement #PurposeDrivenCommunity #MemberConnection #FlywheelEffect #CommunityPlatform
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UN-EDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: You've seen LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups, and you've seen social media platforms like X that. Kind of do some community building in a way, but when it comes to building community online now There are even specialized apps that give you way more options, but how do you even get started? Hello and welcome to lessons from building online communities, and I probably should even say with a real practitioner My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of thought leader conversations Sponsored by the crew here at virtual venues where you can instantly scale your virtual and event hybrid You production team with a crew that helps you focus on the strategic and the messaging, something other than the tech and the logistics, but we're not here to talk about us.
And I'm excited to welcome to the virtual stage, Mike Henry senior, and I've known Mike for a good bunch of years, and I'm I'm excited to have him here because he's not the guy that wrote the book on building online communities. He's the guy that's been in the trenches doing that kind of thing, right?
Groups and communities in a variety of online media, but he's got a corporate background, former head of IT in I think that's kind of where you sort of retired from, so to speak, uh, original founder of a, uh, of an organization called lead change group, which was a leadership media destination. And, uh, I think that's what you were doing when I first met you.
In fact, Mike and I kind of got to know each other on Twitter first, um, wrote a book while he was there. I've noticed that he's a power user of LinkedIn groups. And now. He's the founder and chief instigator of this faith based community called Follower of One, which is a community of Christian business people who use a commercial app called Mighty Networks, and it's a great app.
I actually am participant in a couple different communities using Mighty Networks, and I really love it. Mike, Glad you're here. Tell us a little more about what you do.
[00:01:50] Mike Henry Sr.: Yeah, I'm glad to be here. I, uh, I'm, I'm excited because I really believe that this whole idea of community is taking new shape around the technology.
And so it's great to be a part of it. It's great to see what's going on.
[00:02:08] Roger Courville, CSP: You know, well, as I mentioned, ironically, a bunch of years ago, we met on Twitter and I watched you as you tackled LinkedIn groups and, and then, you know, this media company, And this time around you chose to build community using the Mighty Networks platform.
If you could go back and teach your younger self something about building an online community, what would that be?
[00:02:30] Mike Henry Sr.: Well, the major reason behind using Mighty Networks is because we wanted to control the environment. Uh, Facebook and LinkedIn are quick to change. In fact, it was right after I started the lead change group that LinkedIn made a big set of changes, group rules.
And, um, and so we existed in the lead change group as a LinkedIn group for the longest time. I even tried other community software platforms like BuddyPress and a couple of other things, but it was just always a struggle because the technology was so new. I happened to find the Mighty Networks people, right, just a few weeks before we decided to launch Fallout World 1.
And my passion behind all of this is just wanting to hang around with people who feel the same way as me about things. and oftentimes you can't find a group that's already convened the way you feel if your brain doesn't work quite right, like mine doesn't. And so as a result, I, I just, I, you know, I read Seth Godin's book, Tribes, and I've been starting them ever since.
[00:03:42] Roger Courville, CSP: Oh yeah. What a, oh man, I haven't thought about that book in a long time. That was a great book.
[00:03:47] Mike Henry Sr.: Yes.
[00:03:47] Roger Courville, CSP: And I mean, and that's obviously people connecting with people is kind of the impetus for you. social media and that kind of thing. And, you know, today is not a commercial for Mighty Networks because there are other, other platforms out there similar to, similar to that, but in addition to, to, um, being a place where you can connect and communicate, there are other things that you can do, like launch courses or Mike does a live stream weekly, um, which is, you know, an interesting connection between community and even, you know, what, what, um, You know, what we do and with virtual events and live streaming and that kind of thing.
Can you share in a sense what have initially motivated you? Was there some anything else besides reading tribes? Was there this just go ahead?
[00:04:33] Mike Henry Sr.: Yeah. So my, my initial passion was about living out leadership at every level in the organization. What tends to happen or what I've seen happen is, is the upper echelons of different groups of people get organized quicker.
than the lower echelons do. The lower echelons typically are busier. They have more things going on. They have less discretionary time or resources. And my initial pass was with trying to help leadership help people realize that wherever they were in the org chart, they were responsible to be a leader.
And that was the main message behind the lead change group. Um, in 2012, uh, and I had to start taking a full time job. I wasn't making any money. I hadn't figured out a good way to monetize that platform or those connections. And we wrote a book called The Character Based Leader, which is now out of print.
We were having a lot of fun. Nobody was making a lot of money from what we were doing. And so I took a full time job as the vice president. for a technology company here in our area. And, um, I kept wondering about this process, but also I had met a bunch of people who were Christians who wanted to do something with their faith.
And so it just kept percolating around in my mind. I looked for a long time to see if someone else was running a community, an online community for Christ followers and couldn't find one either. And so about the time I decided to start one, um, not long after I got it started, the music stopped at my old employer and there was no chair for me.
And so I started working on this full time and, uh, and I've been doing some contract work and working on this and, but you meet people all over the globe who are in your target market. and the, the distance, you just put a screen in between you and them. You and I met for several years and it was over GoToMeeting or Skype or whatever the tool of the day was, then Zoom.
And, um, and so I just think God's been doing. been moving people through this transition for a long time. And the better we are at getting a screen involved, the easier it is for us to not let logistics impact our ability to connect.
[00:07:06] Roger Courville, CSP: So I realized that, uh, you know, I mean, an online community has the same challenge as any other multi sided marketplace, right? If you're going to start an e, you need sellers to attract buyers and you need buyers to attract sellers. So there's this flywheel effect. When starting an online community, what are those key factors to consider in terms of either, either getting people there at all or attracting the right kind of members for your, you know, for the community?
[00:07:39] Mike Henry Sr.: Yeah, that's a great question. So my, all of my struggles have been in this uh, area of much, many people define community. Some communities are a small subset of creators feeding a large subset of consumers. And I would call that a few to many or something community. I always wanted to create a many to many community.
I wanted every individual to be both a producer and a consumer, similar to eBay. You used an eBay example. I didn't want there to only be. 10 people posting material into this community and hundreds or thousands of people consuming it. It wasn't about the material as much as it was about the people. And so I think that's one of the first core things that we need to consider.
Are we trying to get a bunch of people to consume our content? If it's content that we're creating online or consume our products, if we're trying to create a community of people who all use the same kind of pool or drive the same kind of car or something like that, that's a fewer to many model, not a many to many model.
And you have different tools that enable that. like Kajabi, for example, and the other course based platforms. Many of them aren't real good about helping the consumers of any of that content connect with one another. It's more about connecting with the author. And, uh, and so I think that's a first priority is deciding what kind of community you want to create.
If you want the community to bring value. And in many for profit businesses, they want it to be a smaller source of content creators. but you're still trying to get your customers, uh, creating value and content for one another in there.
[00:09:31] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. It sounds like, it sounds like some strategic planning and understanding what you're trying to do, because probably arguably there's more than one way to do it.
To use an analogy from the world of, you know, webinars and virtual events, you know, that I've been in for a long time. Um, sometimes it's okay to use the platform as a means of broadcast, right? You're talking One person on the stage to, to a bunch of people in the audience, but interestingly, we know from science and particularly in the world of adult learning that, that people learn more effectively when they are active participants, as opposed to passive participants.
And that's why I say, for instance, Uh, learning and development as a, as a corporate function have been so powerful with using two tools like, you know, zoom or Adobe connector or whatever, because in addition to delivering information, we're connecting peer people, peer to peer, particularly like in breakout room.
That's a powerful part of an experience because now to your point, people are connecting with people and, uh, you know, cause I can get content anywhere in a way, but when I get to know. Mike, who's many states away from me, or over time, you know, you, you get to know people that show up to the community and there's Jack in Israel and Amy in Michigan and Bonnie in, in, uh, you know, Arizona.
And now you start to, you know, Actually know them and know their names and say, Hey, you know, get a private chat going, Hey, you just got married. How? Congratulations. Kind of, you know, this kind of stuff that we would do is, you know, way, uh, this one normal people do. And that I think is, is powerful and it's sticky to be fair.
It takes time to get there. It
[00:11:18] Mike Henry Sr.: does.
[00:11:20] Roger Courville, CSP: Uh, and this may or may not be a fair question because you know, you, you've just been this practitioner who just has been figuring it out, which is part of why I love, love hearing your story. How do you establish a clear purpose and mission for an online community? Why is that important?
[00:11:38] Mike Henry Sr.: Uh, it's absolutely important. It's kind of interesting because I probably haven't communicated ours that clearly either, even though it's, you've heard me talk so much, we've talked so much together. that um, it's in there. Uh, the clear purpose in community is everybody brings their own values and their own uh, their values line up with their effort.
And so if their values don't overlap your values, then their effort won't work. contribute to your solution. And I think that's one of the things that I'm learning. For example, uh, I list that I do a podcast, even though I haven't really done a live podcast in a long time, I've been doing some live streaming in our community, but people find that I'm a podcaster on LinkedIn.
And then they send me this message trying to get me to have them as a guest on our podcast. Well, if they're not talking about faith at work, I don't have a lot of interest in having them on our podcast. But many of them don't even do that much research. And it's because they're trying to do something totally different than what we're trying to do.
And so I think that's why it's so important to have your mission clear. Um, we've stated that our goal is to help people integrate their faith and work. Um, And it's less about work and more about faith. I don't know that I've communicated that as well as I probably should, but I think the better that we communicate that, the easier it is for people to decide they want to stick around.
And if they're not going to stick around, it sounds a little arrogant, but if they're not going to stick around, I'd love for them to figure that out sooner rather than later, because it's just, everything becomes more expensive or harder if they don't.
[00:13:24] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, it's a way of honoring people, right? I mean, it's kind of like having, clear description on an event that you're going to have, right?
I mean, if you don't come to my event and I've clearly described it, well, I've just helped both of us because, and that's okay. You know, that's, I think that's a way of honoring people's, you know, you know, honoring them as, as, as people whose time is valuable. You know, I, I mentioned that I'm, I'm part of another community that also uses mighty networks and I actually personally love it how I can just log into one app and switch between them.
But what came to mind was you were describing that is, you know, you use the term values and you know, our audience might as marketers might think in terms of like a persona or um, target, but that could be demographic. But. At least in my experience, it has also been, if not more importantly, psychographic, right?
The other community is based around these kind of educational cohorts where you get a coaching certification at the end, but it's, but in the process you develop relationships with other people in the cohorts and it then remains an active community and that's part of the vision for the community. I happen to know the founder and.
Even in between cohorts, um, because you can come back and, and, you know, take other, you know, participate again if you want the, there have been times, and I just did this actually a month ago, I just dropped a message going, Hey, I miss you all. What, you know, anybody want to connect and, and had a couple of people go, yeah, let's do it.
And, you know, we set up a zoom, zoom call and, and we could have just chatted in the community, but I think Uh, probably more importantly, a catalyst for, you know, that becomes a landing place for I'm not a big fan of the words birds of a feather, but the reason we're in that community versus another community is because we've got something in common and it's not because of our age or our location or, or demographic things.
It's because we have a common interest and we build each other up in, you know, by way of participating. I am both and a giver.
[00:15:31] Mike Henry Sr.: Yes. I think that's, what's so cool about it is too. I think every business, once they realize that they're more about the result, they create than the product that, that, that they sell that gets that result.
Then you can be, you can build a community around the results and you're one of the products in there. And now all of a sudden it becomes that much bigger than just us and our customers. And to me, that's, what's exciting about the community is it makes our, our impact. bigger in, you know, just focusing on the larger picture, focusing on mobilizing believers in our case, or, um, helping coaches be more effective.
And, uh, this is one of the tools.
[00:16:23] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. And one of the things that I've experienced in both communities and, and, you know, I imagine our listeners have probably seen this in, you know, a LinkedIn group or if, if they're hanging out and participating. Mm hmm. is that we build each other up, right? That doesn't have to be a spiritual concept.
That can just be, that can just be a human concept. Because if I just had a bad day or I haven't been getting results and then I hang out and Mike tells me about how he was getting results, that, that's inspiring. It's motivating. It creates momentum. Just encouraging. What strategies have you found most effective for growing an online community organically?
[00:17:05] Mike Henry Sr.: Well, uh, so one of the things that we're learning about now, Mighty Networks allows us to live stream in there. And so we're doing two live streams a week in that environment. I'm having trouble being consistent enough with them. I keep messing up my own technology and double booking my own time slots, but I'm still working on that.
There, I think the other one is just being attentive to the people. Mighty Networks that are in there, making it a point to send a text message or to reach out and connect, not to always be selling, but asking, you know, and fortunately in our faith based community, you can always pray for people, uh, which I think also matters.
But if you're not in that space, then still trying to find ways to help those people. Uh, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're making another purchase, just being a genuine helper. We naturally reciprocate. And so we're, what we're doing is we're creating a win win opportunity because we give the win away first.
And I think that's the way it's made to work. We get to be the kind of people we wish we were, and then other people start becoming the kind of people we wish they were.
[00:18:27] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Was it, um, Zig Ziglar, who said you'll get what you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.
I
[00:18:36] Mike Henry Sr.: think so. I don't remember either, but yeah.
[00:18:39] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. I think that was Zig Ziglar anyway, but, but his point is just be a value creator, right? Just, just, um, leave every conversation with somebody going, dang, I'm glad I ran into that. And in many ways that's easier to do online than, than just doing it in person, because, you know, you're hanging out in a, in a community with people who, who have something in common with you, whatever that happens to be.
I mean, that could be the community for marketing strategy. I think, I don't remember if marketing profs has like a community, but it's part of why, you know, organizations like Content Marketing Institute have. Big conventions or something like that, right? People get together and hang out. And that's not wrong, that's beautiful, but it's once a year and it costs you a couple thousand bucks,
And as opposed to being able to, um, hop into something, maybe even ask a question, um, and, and find other people who may just commiserate with you, right? I got about a 2,500 person like Facebook group for, for, you know, virtual presenters and facilitators and, mm-hmm. . You know, sometimes there's a lot of activity.
Sometimes there's not much. But when somebody shows up and asks a question, they get killer answers because they're talking to other practitioners in the space. How do you keep members actively engaged over time, especially when their initial excitement begins to wane? Is the answer for that any different than the answer you just gave?
[00:20:09] Mike Henry Sr.: Not really. Um, just trying to connect with them individually. So we, we are trying to use more channels. I'm actually trying to get better at scheduling different channel interactions. So I text somebody this time and I send them an email another time, or I give them a call. Um, I started using a calendar scheduler.
I believe that's probably the best 10 a month I spend is having a link to my calendar and all my emails so that people can schedule appointments with me. And, um, and I think, uh, also just for me, it's, um, I pray about this stuff. I ask God for ideas and, uh, sometimes he gives them to me. You never know when you're gonna, I've sent a text message to somebody today and it was very well timed.
Just, Hey, how are you doing? I hope things are going well for you and they're going through something particularly difficult today. Sent me a note back thanking me and giving me some suggestions about how I prayed for them. So it's, um, you just never know. Um, what you try next might be the right thing.
You maybe you've tried it five times before, but the timing wasn't right. And so the easier I think it becomes to try certain things like sending a text message, then the more obligation I have to try them. I'm, I want to be about raising this particular bar. And so if I take the day off, I didn't do anything to raise that bar today.
[00:21:50] Roger Courville, CSP: I know that you also have a community manager, a follower of one. Are there any particular ways that you approached giving them instructions and or boundaries with regard to, you know, how to engage people being purposeful about community building?
[00:22:07] Mike Henry Sr.: Actually, we talk about it a lot and it's a lot trial and error.
I, I feel like I'm I think I have the least tolerance for screwing up the same way twice. I would like, if we're going to make a mistake, let's make it fast, learn from it fast and make a new mistake next time. Now we'll make the same one. And so there are a lot of people that think that the last time is the way that we're supposed to do it.
And Chris is not necessarily like that. She's, she's learning, everybody's learning. And so she's done a great job at the mechanics of our cohorts. We do these two week cohorts and now some six week cohorts in our community that are designed to kind of help people put their faith to work. And Chris has done a really good job of helping me make that easier to repeat.
And Dale, who's another friend who's helping out in the community, is also helping me with the technology of making those easier to repeat. Because we're trying to scale them. And, uh, and so, but also I think there's a natural giftedness for connecting with people and engaging those people and certain styles match with other people and, um, and so we're just, we're fumbling through it, but we're, Trying every day.
And so try not to make the same mistakes again is kind of our default behavior.
[00:23:37] Roger Courville, CSP: You know, I was just, as you were just describing some of that, I was just thinking about, okay, how does this apply to that corporate marketer or somebody who says, Oh, well, I love the idea, but I've got too much on my plate or something.
And at least one thought that came to mind. It would be like one of the strategic decisions you might need to make, not unlike leadership in any other capacity, which is, how much am I going to try to control versus how much am I going to let it go? And the reason it came to mind is because, you know, within mighty networks, you can run classes, you know, right?
So I can, I can see, in fact, I think it's probably almost imperative in some way to for like a corporate executive to say, okay, I'm going to put this out there. And, and that means sooner or later, somebody is going to put something on the platform that I wish they didn't put, right? It's not unlike adjudication that social media platforms have to go through, but enabling people to connect with people is press.
I know you've thought through that, given that yours is a faith based community, you know, have you, um, this may or may not be a fair question, but has it, Have you thought through what are the boundaries of, say, letting people just put stuff out and, you know, for the sake of sharing and connecting, as opposed to kind of keeping an eye on what they're putting out there and sharing and connecting?
[00:25:06] Mike Henry Sr.: I, we have actually the, um, I haven't, so the honest answer is I'm not all the way through. So I'm thinking about it, but I mean, but I'm not all the way through it by any means. We have, we probably have some ground to cover in our terms and conditions and things like that. Fortunately for us, um, people have given us a lot of grace or they've just gone away.
And, um, we've had to ask a couple of people to stop doing what they were doing. but um, because there's a lot of things, for example, there are a lot of things that want to identify with Christianity that aren't really directly identified with Christianity. So we have to be very careful about some of that stuff.
And so that's one of these things that I've kind of keeps me awake at night, but I want to do a better job of of setting up terms and inspiring particular behaviors that raise all the ships, not lower them all. And, um, and so I, I'm, I'm hopeful that that continues to work well. I, you know, I know we live in a world that has the possibility of tension, but I don't want to be ignorant.
And I also don't want to be naive about that. We want to be active about it. And so we're, we're generally trying to moderate and examine what's going on. There will come a day and we're getting pretty close to it in our community where we can't see everything. And, um, and we are working to try and get more volunteer moderators and start training members of our community to pay attention to what they're seeing so that they can help us, uh, make things known.
We also do a lot of, in our cohorts, we encourage Zoom calls and we know that the, uh, eventually there will be enough cohorts to where there won't necessarily be follower one staff people on every Zoom call. And, um. And so that's, you know, one of those things that we continue praying about. Hopefully we'll, we'll grow into that as we get into those spaces.
[00:27:23] Roger Courville, CSP: You know, one principle that came to mind as you were just talking about that is one that I've faced when I was teaching people how to make virtual presentations and my response would always, uh, I learned to, to respond by saying, what would you do if you were in an in-person presentation? Uh, example.
Well, what if I take live q and a at the end and let people unmute themselves? But somebody starts at talk, talking about one of my competitors. What would you do if you were in an in-person presentation? And I think every, every executive listening to this would, would probably see instantly, oh yeah. If I hold a, a, a, a user conference for my, for my users and I got 800 people that show up, what would you do in an in-person conference if there were two people standing in the hallway talking about your competitor?
Well, you might do something, you might not do something, but you can take that as a beginning place of understanding your own corporate culture or your own, you know, T's and C's or lack thereof. And, uh, to apply that into an online community. Cause at the end of the day, we're still talking about people connecting with people.
I
[00:28:37] Mike Henry Sr.: think that's great advice and pretty much that's what, when it comes down to it, you only have those kinds of choices to make, you know, it's because there's not a lot of time to react when things like this start happening and you, um, you either are successful or you learn.
[00:28:58] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, that's a good way to put it, right?
That's not failure. It's learning.
How do you measure success in your online community? I know Mighty Networks has a decent amount of reporting and stuff. What metrics or indicators do you find most useful?
[00:29:15] Mike Henry Sr.: Well, and we're watching some of those metrics and indicators and trying to tie them to certain things. But what we've kind of just, our informal measure of success, is people praying for their coworkers.
And so we don't have a good way of measuring that. So I'm not asking people to, you know, run a tally on their iPhone and then text it to me at the end of the day. But, um, we, we do look for people who are sharing content in the community and who are engaging with each other. And we're trying to do things to kind of spur that on, but I don't want to create a bunch of behaviors that are not aligned with the goal that we're trying to create.
And so, um, It's, that's still a little informal, but we pay attention to the number of people who are active and the number of those people who actually contribute something into the community. It might be a response or a like or a heart or a thumbs up or whatever it is. Uh, could be a private message or something like that, but just counting the number of people who are engaging with the community every day.
[00:30:24] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, which is, I haven't looked at the numbers around social media platforms like, you know, pick your social media platform, but you know, whether it's daily active users or monthly active users or, or something, some thing, uh, some of those measures are not just, I think they're useful to look at because they are, it's indicative of group or community behavior.
Right. And you can add in, you know, say now, how might this apply? And in my space, um, I know that different platforms. One common thing in, in social media, I guess I'm curious to know if this is what you found true because I think it harkens back to something you already mentioned when you demonstrated the little pyramid, right?
Your, your active user base, you know, you've kind of got the power users at the very top and then you've got those who show up monthly or daily, weekly or whatever like that. And then you got a bunch of lurkers who, who might not contribute anything, but they still show up and. And watch what's going on.
Um, have you, have you noticed that similar kind of behavior? I mean, is that common in, in your space?
[00:31:34] Mike Henry Sr.: Yeah, we do see that. And we also see people kind of dropping out off over time and getting some of those people back seems to be kind of difficult. It's, um, There's one of the pressures that I feel is we do our cohorts once every two months and we probably need some better activities going on in between those two month periods that are not like necessarily a live stream.
They don't require as much of a time commitment as a live stream, but they give people a chance to engage. And one of the things we've been talking about is getting better at asking poll questions or doing things to, to offer people suggestions and ideas. that they might not have considered, um, offering other resources or telling them about other members.
That's why one of our live streams is actually just a introduction to another member in the community. Uh, just trying to come up with ways to create little five and 10 and 15 minute ways to engage with the community and help people remain connected until they choose to do another cohort.
[00:32:46] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, that's a good idea.
I remember, I remember seeing that go by at one point. It's like, Oh, meet Bill. Yep. Yeah. Can you share a success story or a moment when you realized your community had made a significant impact?
[00:33:03] Mike Henry Sr.: Um, so you actually mentioned one of them. Uh, we have a school teacher who found us, uh, they found a, and it helped them get back into church after years, but also they went on to start a Bible study in there.
school with their co workers and a bunch of their teachers are involved. For about, um, six months, that person was very involved in our community and credits a lot of the people in the community with helping her to get more engaged with her faith again. We see opportunities like that. We have, we had one friend, you were actually on the call with me.
We talked about sending someone a text and he got off the early call that evening, texted somebody, got back on the late call to tell us how perfectly timed that call, that text message was for his interaction with his friend. And so, Uh, I, you know, God does all kinds of things,
[00:34:08] Roger Courville, CSP: correct me if I'm wrong.
But as I remember it, he, he just reached out to like three people he hadn't talked to in like a couple of years or something like that. And Hey, I'm thinking about you, you know, and the person came back with like, Oh my gosh, this couldn't be more, you know, I'm sitting in the, you know, my, my daughter's in jail.
I'm at the bail bond office or something like that. Yeah, it was. So what advice would you give to marketers who are looking to start or grow an online community is part of their strategy, realizing they got other things going on.
[00:34:43] Mike Henry Sr.: Um, well, so one of the advice that I even have to take is get help. Don't do it yourself.
It, it really, for you to be invested, you have to have taken care of a lot of other things first. And so there's a lot of moving pieces. One of the things that I regularly even pray about is finding good community people, people who want to be engaged in the community. I really think it's a skill that's still.
requires more of people than it probably pays for, but it's growing. And I would be telling marketing graduates to, if you're, if you have a knack for community, if you have a curiosity in people, tell people that you're in the community management space and start trying to do this more and find communities that you want to invest in.
Because finding the people who really want to invest in that community, I think that's the key.
[00:35:41] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. Uh, and you and I've had this conversation before offline, so this will be a repeat story for you, but that just made me think of. Story I read, it was actually a series of articles in one copy of Harvard Business Review.
And I forget if it was four, five, six years ago. I'm sure you can find it online. And what they were looking at was how there is now, you know, the, both the science and the business model behind, you know, multi platform economics, right? What What are you, what's going on? Um, you know, cause when, when all this stuff started 20, 25 years ago, um, everybody's like, how, how are these.
com companies getting these crazy valuations and whatever? And they start, you know, financial people's actually started to figure that out. One of the key takeaways that I still remember was them interviewing a VP of marketing, uh, for one organization. I forget which one. And she talked about the nature of the flywheel effect, right?
And just we don't, she even said, we don't know what that number is. Is that 10, 000 people on the platform? Is that 200 people on the play? We don't know what that number is. We just know it exists. And we can, we can act with faith or confidence that, that if we keep, Pushing that will get to this flywheel effect.
Right? And maybe use eBay as an example again. Right. At some point it now becomes known because buyers and sellers are attracting each other. Whereas I'm sure in the beginning they had to, they had to push till they got to that, till they got to that point of momentum. So. Just out of curiosity, at a gut level, does that strike you as true for communities where, where you're trying to make things happen?
[00:37:26] Mike Henry Sr.: Yes, as a matter of fact, um, also I think it's important, you know, that made me think of one other thing too. It's important, maybe a strategy that we didn't talk about is making sure that, your, uh, that you tailor to being if you're consumer focused or if you're business focused, because that's something that's kind of a shift that our organization is going through a little bit of right now because of the fact that we marketing directly to churches to help churches do our cohorts.
And so I think it's understanding what you're trying to accomplish, but yes, pushing for that flywheel. I really believe there's. No way to overestimate the value of the flywheel when it's running, when it actually takes over the momentum. Right. It's easy to underestimate it until then. And, you know, I don't want to give up.
And so how do I keep investing in turning the flywheel? Well, um, I'm trying to get other people to speak about it. I'm trying to get, you know, other folks to wear the brand or to do something or to, you know, we shoot a lot of videos asking people their opinions about what we've done, because I think those play well in the community too.
So yes, I think that flywheel effect is very valuable and I'm still betting on it. I don't think we're aware there's any going to be any coasting going on. Right.
[00:38:56] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. I mean, the. Uh, another angle that I recall from that Harvard Business Review, staying on that theme of the flywheel effect, the platform economics were very similar in a sense to the economics of publishing, right?
You've got a heavy cost in the first copy, copy number one of the new movie you just shot, costs you a hundred million dollars. The second copy costs you. 75 cents, right? Yeah. In a similar way, there's an upfront loaded cost with getting to that point of, of in a self, in a sense, self sustenance. And there's no such thing as perfect frictionless.
It runs forever at no cost, but your marginal cost goes from a lot to a little, uh, at that point. So, um, that is a laudable thing to pursue.
[00:39:53] Mike Henry Sr.: Yeah. And that's exactly where we are. I mean, you and I are talking now, but you know, you've been through this whole experience with me. It's taken us seven years to do 45 of these cohorts.
We're doing seven or eight of them in the next two months. And so our flywheel is beginning to spin faster. Right. And I'm trying to make sure that I don't actually get flipped over in front of it and run over. But you know, we got, that's what we're doing.
[00:40:24] Roger Courville, CSP: Looking ahead. Last question here. What trends do you see in online community building that marketers should be aware of?
[00:40:33] Mike Henry Sr.: So, um,
I'm not sure I do. I, one in particular I think is probably true is there's a lot less hype. I think it will become more and more private. And more and more controlled. Part of the reason why we partner with Mighty Networks is they have like a Mighty Pro version that's white labeled. And it's my understanding that we would have a standalone instance of the application.
And, um, You know, the advantage of control is important to us because I don't want somebody changing the rules on us, um, I think that will grow. I think as more and more businesses find that this is a valuable asset to have a community around their brand, then it will, it will become more something that the business is trying to control, but also entice people to engage in and be around their app.
I think you see it more with fast food restaurants. They're selling, giving you all the coupons. Now you get a free set of French fries or whatever. I I'm hoping that they end up bringing some community aspect to some of that with some of these. Otherwise we're going to get totally apped out.
[00:41:52] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. You know, because I'm in two different communities just on the Mighty Networks app, I find that really useful.
And interestingly, even as you were answering, I realized that I would have answered in a really similar way, right? Because of the changes, what you don't control. First of all, if you've never tried it, you gotta go through a certain set of hoops just to be able to live stream to LinkedIn. All right. Uh, Facebook recently changed their group, uh, policy or, you know, controls around being able to live stream into, uh, into a private group.
And, and, and marketers, I think will just relate to this. We've often talked about owned versus rented properties, right? How much time am I going to spend on rented properties like Twitter or X or, uh, LinkedIn versus driving them to the property that I own and therefore can control the messaging. I can create the experience that I want.
And to me, that's probably a. When you actually get into some of the features that's available in a private app, um, relative Facebook group. Now I can control the experience instead of always be beholden. Even if you're okay with them changing, you still, you still don't get to build a Facebook group the way you want to build a Facebook group.
You've got to operate it the way Facebook operates it. And being able to pick and choose, um, The way that you wanna design an experience for your community. Um, mm-Hmm. , I think is, is under discovered. Right? And that's agreed part your story, part, part of what you discovered along the way was like, ah, I got a lot, not use the word control, but I got a lot more control.
But I, I can do things differently. Yeah.
[00:43:35] Mike Henry Sr.: Yeah. And the platforms are growing up. There's a, somebody, a friend of mine referred me back around to what is now like the great grandchild of the old buddy press. And it's a managed app. And, um, you know, it's probably very powerful. It looks like a great community platform.
It just, um, you know, it's, I think, There will be more and more competitors. There'll be some gelling, but also what we're going to do is we're going to, these corporations have a lot to gain by having this community. If everybody that, um, drank a particular brand of soft drink, we're all in community together.
That would be valuable to that organization, but it's going to be a significant investment making it happen too.
[00:44:27] Roger Courville, CSP: In some ways, you just made me think of this. In some ways, that kind of investment has already been being made in certain sectors, right? I mean, how many, how many, um, user groups or user conferences or various, you know, things like that have, have existed for, for years?
We get everybody together because why? The one thing they have in common is they use our software or use our product and, um, yeah, that's a great point. Mike, are there any questions I should have asked you that I haven't?
[00:44:56] Mike Henry Sr.: Not that I can think of, Roger. I, this has been a blast. It's, I appreciate talking with you.
You and I have been thinking about and agonizing over this stuff for a long time, so I'm grateful.
[00:45:08] Roger Courville, CSP: Mike, besides being able to find you at followerofone. org, uh, any other ways that, uh, Do you prefer to connect? So
[00:45:16] Mike Henry Sr.: I'm Mike Henry SR, no punctuation, just about everywhere. Twitter and LinkedIn and all those places.
Happy to connect. Um, I, I'm, I love connecting with people and I'm happy to help any way I can. So. Love to connect.
[00:45:34] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, Mike, thanks again for a little bit of your time today. And when this goes live and we'll post to post it in our blog, we'll also cross link to, to your website and your LinkedIn profile, et cetera, et cetera.
So thanks again to, on behalf of Our sponsor, thanks to Mike Henry. And thank you again to our sponsor, virtualvenues. com, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team. We'll catch you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations.