Gina Bianchini — How to Build & Design Communities That Run Themselves and Why Community & Culture are the Future of the Creator Economy

“There is something incredibly powerful when the design is for connection versus the design is for content. Community is designed for connection. Social media is designed for content.”

— Gina Bianchini

This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Gina Bianchini (@gbianchini / @ginab), CEO and Founder of Mighty — Where creators, entrepreneurs, and brands build digital communities and courses with cultural software. She is also the author of the new book Purpose: Design a Community and Change Your Life.

In 2019, she also launched the Community Design™ Masterclass, where over 8,000 people have learned how to build a community so valuable you can charge for it, and so well-designed it essentially runs itself.

Before Mighty, Gina she was the CEO and co-founder of Ning, a pioneering global platform for creating social networks she started with Marc Andreessen in 2004.

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Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA.

Resources Mentioned:

The Art Of Asking A Great Question | The Secret to Community Engagement

1,000 Creators Predict 2023 | From Mighty

Community Design Accelerator

(02:35) - What role “purpose” plays in culture

(07:59) - How she refocuses a community to think about the depth, rather than expanding, while building a business 

(13:57) - How she knew years before that the market would need a software like Mighty Networks

(16:18) - How she learned the ideas of community

(19:06) - Second-order effects that come up with thinking about community, from a cultural perspective

(22:55) - Why she’s confident that anyone can become a creator

(28:47) - The revelation that the biggest revenue earners on Mighty Networks had an average of 8,500 social media followers

(30:32) - Difference between audience and community

(33:52) - Compounding results in a community

(43:25) - “I am an introvert, I don’t know if I should build a community” — How she handles these statements 

(46:19) - What to do in the first few days and weeks of building a community

(53:58) - What a 5-star community looks like

(59:02) - How to create loyalty within the community

(01:03:38) - What it looks like to manage a community at scale

(01:05:25) - How her thinking about business has evolved since she started

(01:08:10) - How she became so well connected in Silicon Valley

(01:09:17) - Did she face imposter syndrome?

(01:14:18) - Community leaders that inspire her 

(01:16:32) - What she’s excited about in the upcoming years and Mighty Network’s future