We Discuss Mighty Networks vs Circle What You Need to Know
Join us as we delve into the pros and cons of Mighty Networks and Circle in our comprehensive video comparison. Whether you’re a business owner, educator, or community organizer, this video will provide valuable insights to help you choose the right platform for your needs.
Don’t miss out on this essential discussion before making your decision! Watch our video now to gain clarity on which platform is best for you.
With Special Guest Marcia Chadly of Chadly Creative Consulting
#1 – Marcia, can you give some detailed info about your background and some of the services you offer to people connected to helping them build a great online community-focused website?
#2 – What are some of the biggest general challenges you see your clients have connected to building out a thriving community-focused membership website-based business?
#3 – What are the most significant similarities and differences that you feel people need to know and understand between Mighty Networks and Circle?
#4 – What are the most important things for someone to know about using the Mighty Networks platform?
#5 – What business tools and services do you use to run your business daily that you could recommend to the audience?
#6 – If you return to a time machine at the beginning of running your own business, what essential advice would you give yourself?
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The Show Main Links & Notes
[00:00:00.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to another membership machine show. I’ve got a great guest, Marcia. She’s also laughing at my jokes, so it looks like it might be a good chat.
[00:00:10.980] – Marcia Chadly
It’s going to be fun.
[00:00:12.360] – Jonathan Denwood
She gets my English humor. Funny enough, Marcia, some guests get the Bunny look. They don’t get my English humor. It’s a required taste, I do understand. We’re going to be discussing everything to do with my networks. I’m going to do my countdown, and we will go into the podcast show. Hopefully, some people might join the show with some comments. They’re always welcome. Three, two, one. Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine show. This is episode 57. I’ve got a great special guest. I’ve got Marcia Stanley with me from Shardley Creative Consultants Consulting. We’re going to be talking about all of Finn’s mighty networks, and we’re going to compare it to another great platform, Circle. It should be a great show. We’re going to go through a few of the aspects and some of Marcia’s insights. She’s got a feast of knowledge around the subject. Marcia, would you like to give us a quick 20, 30-second elevator pitch about yourself and what you do?
[00:01:34.480] – Marcia Chadly
Sure. Absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me on. This is a lot of fun. I love talking about community and mighty networks, so I’m happy to be here with you, Jonathan. A quick elevator pitch is that I help solopreneurs and small businesses build online communities and teach courses. I will talk about this a little bit later in a shift using the Mighty Networks platform, and I help them use the Mighty Networks platform and tailor it to their specific situations.
[00:02:07.440] – Jonathan Denwood
That sounds great. Like I could say we’re going to be talking about some of the broader subjects, about building community, and then we’re going to talk about some specifics about how Marshier compares it to Circle and maybe broaden out, talk about the various platforms. It’s going to be a feast of knowledge. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back, folks. As you know, I’m a lover of WordPress. Last year, I’m going to try and have Brinner to the rope, Damaskas, bring the show. I don’t think I’m going to succeed, but we’re all about giving information to our listeners of about all the types of solutions and platforms. But if you want to build a WordPress, we have a great list of plug-ins and resources. If you’re looking to build your membership site on WordPress, you can get all these free goodies and special offers from our sponsors by going to wp-tonic. Com/deals. W-p-tonic. Com/deals, and you find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for?
[00:03:34.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that page. I’m sorry to disappoint. I’ve made it a practice in my life to disappoint, but there we go. No, I haven’t. All right, Marcia. How did you get into this particular area? What’s your more detailed background story about how you got into consulting people about building effective community websites around mighty networks?
[00:04:07.350] – Marcia Chadly
Right. Well, I’m glad you asked because that’s an entertaining story. It’s actually a COVID-19 plot twist.
[00:04:14.940] – Jonathan Denwood
We like a twist.
[00:04:17.400] – Marcia Chadly
Yeah. It’s not something I saw coming and it’s just lovely. So as I said before, I support solopreneurs and small business owners as they use the mighty networks platform and really tailor it to their situations. And this plot twist really brought together a lot of my background. So my tech background as a software engineer, my creativity as an artist, my experience developing, designing, giving workshops, and also teaching facilitators to do their own workshops. And Forefront, my ability to explain technology in simple, easy to understand manner and in words so that people feel comfortable using it. When COVID hit, actually had an in-person center geared more for personal development, running my own business in the background, helping other small business people with their technology. Covid hit, and we had to shut down the in-person center and left a lot of people in the lurch because the people we were working with didn’t know how to use Zoom. And it was really obvious that as we all went home, we’re going to have to know how to use Zoom to connect and maintain community. So I flipped my YouTube channel and started doing Zoom videos. The first one I did was how to use Zoom for the first time, and then I started doing how to host Zoom for the first time and helping people host.
[00:05:46.370] – Marcia Chadly
And those videos went viral and took off. And I started working one on one with small business owners, first to use how to use Zoom, and then to develop their own mighty networks, an extension of that, because now you need community. Fast forward to now, three years later, and I’ve helped dozens of people with mighty networks, and that’s solely where I’m focused, just building online community. Right now that’s using the mighty Networks platform.
[00:06:17.080] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. How many years were you in the software side of the world?
[00:06:21.630] – Marcia Chadly
I was about 13 years.
[00:06:25.750] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. In what particular areas you might be working?
[00:06:28.040] – Marcia Chadly
I was doing software development for the programs that electrical engineers use to lay out and test integrated circuits.
[00:06:36.770] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. And how did… So was your degree in engineering or.
[00:06:41.970] – Marcia Chadly
Computer science? In software engineering. So it’s a combination of electrical engineering and computer science.
[00:06:48.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, wow. There we are. Very impressive. Interesting journey. What led you to choose Myty Networks? I’m interested in that because you must have looked at all the platforms and you probably tried a few of them. What was the attraction? What was that spark that said, Why are you that way? Because you’re going to put my flag?
[00:07:18.990] – Marcia Chadly
Okay, well, so I actually at the time had a WordPress website, so I have used WordPress, have done that, and I put that together myself, had some different plug-ins, eventually hired somebody like you do to support all the updates and the blah, blah, blah behind the scenes and do a little bit of custom coding that I didn’t want to bother doing at that point. And this is the fall before COVID hit. I was part of a group of entrepreneurs and heard somebody talking about mighty networks. And I was looking to do more online classes. I’d done a little bit with Zoom. This could be a really good way to create community, and connection. I investigated the platform, it was founded and run, put together by Gina Bionkini, looked at her background, and she was part of Ning. I knew about Ning Community Platform from years ago, and so I was really impressed with that. I kept looking at the company because I wanted to make sure it was a company I could trust, and I thought they would be able to do what they’re saying they could do, started helping an organization that I was part of use it.
[00:08:35.360] – Marcia Chadly
Through helping them and taking the courses that Mindy Networks was offering, I really fell in love with both the software and the team and their approach to building it. They really walk their talk, ask the host what they need, communicate with the hosts, and I really appreciate the platform.
[00:08:55.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, wow. There we go. That was a polished answer. I’m very impressed. I wish I was that polished.
[00:09:01.550] – Marcia Chadly
There we go. Lots of people ask me, my clients ask me, Why do you use it? I get practice talking about that.
[00:09:09.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Community in the membership, building a membership business community over the last… There are certain concepts that seem to grab the wider community. A few years ago, it was game-advisation. At the present moment, for the past couple of years, it has been community to build more value in your membership of a community. How would you explain to yourself the one or two key concepts about what that general term community actually means?
[00:09:59.960] – Marcia Chadly
So that’s because I’ll define community and membership so differently. To me, community is about the interaction of the people in the group together and the sharing of their wisdom together, I like to compare it to an audience. So in our old paradigm that we’re used to, we have a leader or a teacher and an audience or participation, and the connection is an interaction is generally between the leader and the audience members, not the audience themselves. But with a community, the interaction and the value is enhanced by the connection of the people in the community. So if you’re talking about a learning experience, there’s still content there, but the results that people get from the content is deeper and better because they’re interacting with each other, keeping each other accountable, giving each other new ideas and inspiration. And the person leading the community is not so much a leader and a guru on top, but guiding and nurturing everybody to find their own answer rather than giving them the answer.
[00:11:24.700] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Yeah, I see where you’re coming from. What do you think some of the biggest… You’ve done all this consultation and helped many people, and I watched some of your videos and I was impressed with your content, and I thought I wanted… We’ve got some fabulous guests coming on the show in the coming months because I want to broaden it out, what we cover on the show. What are some of the patterns, some of the consistencies? Obviously, all your clients are a bit different, but normally when you’re helping a lot of people like what you do, you see some patterns around some of the biggest challenges that they bring to you. What are some of the patterns that you’ve noticed?
[00:12:20.470] – Marcia Chadly
Well, one of them is that paradigm shift I’m talking about. We come into mighty networks with our past ideas. So whether you’ve had classes on Thinkific or some other platform, or you’ve been doing them on Zoom and using Facebook for connection with either of those, you come in and you say, Okay, I want a mighty network. I want it to have a course. I want it to have this community. And you’re really still thinking about the material, the content as being the value and the people coming in as participants and the way that you approach it and interact with it is in that way. So one of the things I like to do for my clients is help them shift out of that into understanding how to really create a real community and create that engagement. And part of that is stepping back from having all the answers and instead, knowing how to encourage other people to share their wisdom. It doesn’t mean you don’t provide content. You still have content, but you use that as a tool rather than the value, and it becomes part of the whole proposition. So that’s a mind shift thing.
[00:13:32.030] – Marcia Chadly
The other thing that people come in and have trouble with, first of all, I help them with the technology of the tool, some of the options. What does it mean in particular? What would work best for their situation? Normal kinds of things like that. And then there’s also, how do they launch? There’s that, okay, I know where I want to go. How do I get there and make that happen? So we can look at how you… One of the other things I think is a mind shift about launch is I like a sunrise launch rather than a lightning strike. So you don’t just open your doors and you expect everybody’s going to come in, but you’ve set things up to gradually unfold so that the actual launch, where you’re publicly launching or something, you already have things going in.
[00:14:21.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Your network. I’m so glad to you. I love that term. I’m going to memorize that. A sunrise rather than a lighting. Do you like that? Yeah. I’m so glad you brought that out because I was going to ask you a question about that, because so many people… I think with all these platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, endless, aren’t they? When somebody comes to us and they haven’t… I call it building your initial tribe, I call it Goodman’s book in his term. I think when somebody says, Well, I’ve got this knowledge and I want to build a membership and a community, and I say, Have you got content on YouTube? Have you got any following? Have you got anything on Facebook? And they say, No, I haven’t got anything. I’m building it from the ground up. Alarm bells start ringing. Because I think unless they’ve got a very large budget, they should have been working on building some type of tribe before they look at something like mighty networks. What’s your feeling about that?
[00:15:45.420] – Marcia Chadly
I think that depends. Yes and no. So you can. It really depends what the person is trying to do. You can start really small with mighty networks or Circle or one of those tools. It’s a matter of your expectations. So if you set up something smaller and then get those people excited about what they’re doing, so they invite people. So the idea being that the more people in there, the more everybody gets value out of it, so grow it slowly. I mean, that’s another part of the sunrise.
[00:16:15.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they’re your evangelists.
[00:16:17.550] – Marcia Chadly
Aren’t they? Yes, yeah. And because it helps them, like LinkedIn even. The more people on LinkedIn, the more we all benefit from. So we like to say to people, You want to be on LinkedIn. So if whatever you’re doing in your community helps your community members enough, they’re going to reach out to other people that they want to bring in to grow the community. Now, nothing is simple or silver bullet. It all takes work, but it’s possible.
[00:16:46.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Another thing I’ve found, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this in your consultation, is that people want to build out what I call a war and peace scenario. For understandable reasons, they feel by building out a massive course with massive value, that that’s going to help them be successful, where I think it’s really… We all make assumptions. I’ve run about three successful businesses in my career so far. I’ve always run my own business, and I’ve always made semi-assumptions, quasi-logical. There was some logic to the madness, but a lot of those pre-assumptions have fallen to the waste, to the sidelines. I think it’s really important to get your first group of students in and find offer value, but also talk to them and find out what are the particular areas where they struggle with the most. I find there’s a lot of people do the opposite. They build this very elaborate course. I’ve had some people, they’ve been at it for over a year building out their courses. Even though I’ve consistently advised them that just get the first course and get your students in. What’s your feelings around this?
[00:18:32.370] – Marcia Chadly
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you said. For some people, the act of building the course is what they really like to do and what they know how to do. I feel that for myself sometimes like, Oh, putting that together was so great, and now I got to do it. But you’re right. You really need to know what your members want and need, your ideal, I like to say your ideal investing member, what they want and what would help them. And one of the best ways to do that, I mean, you can start by talking to some, but to do what you said and to have a small thing that you pilot and get feedback and grow with, plus you get everything out there and started, we really don’t know. We can imagine what we think is going to work, but we won’t know until we try it. And so if you get it out there and try it, then you can adapt and adjust and grow it into what really helps based on the feedback and the interaction from your community, which is really the whole definition of community too.
[00:19:35.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think the other factor where definitely, Myty Networks has an edge over WordPress is that probably WordPress is what I call shiny ball syndrome. It’s a feast of different plug-ins and solutions. If you want to go down the WordPress route, you can spend six, seven months researching different plug-ins and installing plug-ins and try it out, building a real Frankenstein and just do a enormous dive, which is really quite enjoyable but doesn’t help you with the end result, where my team network, especially if you’re consulting people, it limits their ability to do a endless dive in solutions. Can you see where.
[00:20:46.140] – Marcia Chadly
I’m coming from? Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that before, but there would be a smaller box. And then working with consultants with their two eye, we can make that box smaller to help you make decisions. That couldbe… You’d just at some point have to put your toes in the water and just go in and try it.
[00:21:07.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Because it’s all linked to what the previous thing we were talking about, the endless course building.
[00:21:14.100] – Marcia Chadly
There’s.
[00:21:14.840] – Jonathan Denwood
The endless technology building because it’s quite enjoyable and it avoids that moment of actually launching and finding and attempting to get students from marketings tough, isn’t it?
[00:21:31.460] – Marcia Chadly
Yeah. That’s a good point. There’s all kinds of ways to avoid that launch and actually trying something because you don’t want it to fail.
[00:21:39.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. You don’t want us to think that you’re a fraud. We all have these worries, but it is really important to get something out the door and start getting some feedback, isn’t it?
[00:21:58.770] – Marcia Chadly
It is, and failing is feedback. I mean, when something doesn’t work, you adjust and you try. I mean, my own network, I’ve had it open for over three years and has changed significantly over the course of three years. And because I try different things and when I first started, I was like, Oh, yeah, I can work with people on Zoom and mighty Networks, and at the same time, I can work with my former clients and give them workshops in here and have that be like examples to the other people. Pretty quickly, I’m like, No, this is way too much. I got to simplify and do less. And I just have kept simplifying until finally this year, I’m like, I’m only going to be helping people use the mighty networks platform. Yes, I could help you with Zoom, but I can’t do that and really help people deeply in the way I want with mighty networks. So you just try something, see what fits, what works. And mighty networks has good analytics, mighty insights, so you can actually see what’s going on.
[00:23:00.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Behind you. I do like that, mighty insights.
[00:23:02.340] – Marcia Chadly
Mighty insights. That’s their trademark analytics. But they actually are fairly good. I like them. I can get a lot of information out of them. You can experiment, try things, play and be curious. Those are all take you great places.
[00:23:17.170] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s the other thing people got to understand. I’m terrible about creating my own words in the last year. I’m notorious in the WordPress community and the wider developer community. I suffer from… Sorry, suffer is wrong word. I have a little bit of dyslexia, so I’m notorious about my… I created this word, nicheifisation, or… Is that a bit of a bias, isn’t it?
[00:23:48.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Nicheifisation, okay. I think it’s really important when it comes to membership combined with community that it’s ahave a thing linked to this war and peace syndrome that I mentioned. I think it’s linked. They attempted to have a very broad-focused audience, where the truth is you can make a very profitable living with a very focused target audience, can’t you?
[00:24:22.850] – Marcia Chadly
Well, not only that, but you can help your members find you and be more successful by targeting them. It doesn’t actually limit. Somebody else is going to see what you’re doing and say, Oh, if it works for them, it’ll work for me too, and they’ll self-select in. But it does. It’s really difficult if you’re too big an audience, even if you think, Well, I can do it, which I tried, and I’m like, No, I can’t do it. That nicheification, I’m going to remember that, that is important.
[00:24:52.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, giving yourself it, you give me sunrise and lightning, so I thought I would give you a chance. Thanks.
[00:24:58.440] – Marcia Chadly
I like it. I don’t know if I can say it, but I like it.
[00:25:02.530] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, practice. That’s quite perfect, doesn’t it? A example of this is a friend of mine that runs one of the biggest learning management plug-in solutions in WordPress, Lifter, LMS. Chris Badget, he’s a personal friend of mine. He interviews, got his own podcast and it’s an example on his own Lifta website. He’s got somebody that uses it, youralyses his product that has a membership community website and they teach party musicians how to manipulate balloons. And they got over, it’s a worldwide and I think they got about 5,000 members.
[00:25:52.100] – Marcia Chadly
Wow. Yeah. The niches are so interesting. I love the different clients I’m working with.
[00:25:58.700] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s been… What’s been, in one or two of the most surprising clients that come your way that have been successful, that stick in your mind, the subjects or the niche that they have?
[00:26:12.390] – Marcia Chadly
Well, at the beginning of the year, I worked with a person who knew nothing about technology. Really, he was part of a movement of what’s called small building among real estate development. I’m not going to do justice explaining it, so I’m not going to try it, but you can look them up. And so I learned a lot about building small and how it’s beyond not just tiny homes, but it’s how do you develop and how do you make… It’s really a good corollary between online communities, like how do you make real in-person community and have that work? So that was one of them. Another one is a company, a small business in the UK, and they work with schools, educators, teachers on bringing play into the classroom, and they have hundreds of schools that they’re working with.
[00:27:05.610] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, sounds fantastic. Well, we’re going to go for our middle break, folks. I think we’ve had a good… We covered quite a bit of territory in this first half. In the second half, we’ll be delving in comparing my networks with Circle. Do not worry, Marcia knows a ton about it. It’s going to be, like I say, a second half feast. We will be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back, folks. I’d like to point out if you do want to build your membership community website on WordPress, and in my opinion, it offers the best ownership of your entire business, but others have different opinions. We must face it, folks. Why don’t you have a look at hosting and being a partner with WPtonic? We just specialize in membership, learning management system and community-focused website using buddyboss, and we love you to be part of our tribe. Marcia. Obviously, you’ve got Circle and you’ve got mighty networks. When you have people coming to you saying, We’ve looked at mighty networks and we’re looking at Circle and we haven’t made our mind up. How do you explain? Because when I first approached you, you said, Well, you’re a WordPress person, Jonathan.
[00:28:43.200] – Jonathan Denwood
And I said, Well, we do discuss other platforms last year because there isn’t a perfect platform.
[00:28:50.720] – Marcia Chadly
There isn’t. You are right.
[00:28:52.190] – Jonathan Denwood
There isn’t. Because you were mentioning in the second half a couple of niche clients you helped. The first one you brought up, you said the person didn’t have any online experience at all. The small home, small.
[00:29:08.850] – Marcia Chadly
House- Building small, yeah.
[00:29:10.520] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t think WordPress would be a great solution for them, honestly. Unless they wanted to spend a bit of time and learn it, it would be easier to go with an online platform like Myty Networks. They’re going to waste a lot of time. They’re going to end up being one of those clients that we talked about, where I talked about they got sucked into all the plug-in choices, all the technology feast.
[00:29:44.570] – Marcia Chadly
Right. Instead, he was able to buy… Before we were done working, I think we started in December and by June he had 300 people on his site and he’s now got over 500.
[00:29:55.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Wow, he’s done well, isn’t he?
[00:29:58.450] – Marcia Chadly
Yeah, he is-.
[00:29:59.240] – Jonathan Denwood
With your.
[00:29:59.780] – Marcia Chadly
Help, Marcia. -pick and run. Yes.
[00:30:02.360] – Jonathan Denwood
This person comes to you and they’re looking at mighty Networks and they’re looking at Circle. What do you explain are the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms to somebody that’s coming for that initial consultation from you?
[00:30:18.500] – Marcia Chadly
Sure. Well, first of all, I’ve been using mighty networks myself and with clients for over three years, so that’s where most of my experience is, so I let them know that. This fall, I decided I really wanted to know more about Circle myself personally, so I started a free trial. And what I did was recreate my mighty network in Circle the best I could. So I used the two different popular plans, the mighty networks business plan and the professional plan in Circle. They’re very comparable, about the same price, similar features. And my mighty network is not the simplest thing in the but it’s not really complex. It’s medium, so that’d be a good example. A lot of the same features in mighty networks and Circle. You can have an activity feed, you can have a chat room, you can have an event list and calendar, member list, ordered content like you would use for a resource library or courses. They both have both browser and app access, which I find super important. Even though my particular audience for my network or other small business people that have computers, it’s still 40 % of the time people are on their phone app instead of on their browser interacting with my network.
[00:31:44.750] – Marcia Chadly
So it’s a huge percentage. And if your users are not small business people, they may not even have a computer anymore. A lot of people just have phones and tablets. So I really like having the app access… They both have. They both have what they call spaces, both Circle and Mindy Networks have spaces, and that’s where everything happens, where people engage or they get information. They both have a navigation bar. If you’re in the browser, it’s in the left-hand column, and you can organize your spaces. That’s called a collection in mighty Networks terms, and it’s a space group for Circle. Those are similar. But where you really get to the difference, one of the differences is, mighty networks has a couple other features that are handy. You don’t have to have them, but they have a page feature, which is like a web page. You can just provide information, and they have a single event instead of the multiple events and calendar handy for webinars. You can get around it by using a single event in the events listing. So you have those two options. But the biggest difference is in my networks, a space can have multiple features in it.
[00:33:06.170] – Marcia Chadly
It can have one of every type. So if I’m putting together a membership area for a community or even for a course, I can have an activity feed in there or a chat room, whichever way I want people to be able to interact. I can have my ordered content and a table of contents, whether it’s resources or course material. I can have the member list. I can have events for live or in-person events. I can all in one space. And that’s at mighty networks. In Circle, you have to have a single space for each of those things. So your navigation bar gets bigger very quickly if you’re on the browser and in the app, it’s even clunkier to navigate around because the person’s in one of their things in circle, they’re in the activity feed, and they have to remember, Oh, how do I get to the lessons? I got to scroll back to this other page, the navigation bar, and pick material and go in and look at that. And then for the events, I go somewhere else. And it’s clunky to switch back and forth between the page, but they also have to remember and know those options are there.
[00:34:16.400] – Marcia Chadly
We’re in mighty networks on the phone app at the top of the screen you have across the top choices for your different features. So you can just move back and forth really easily and you can see that they’re there. So the navigation and ease of the use to the members is so much better in mighty networks that that’s my first recommendation. Unless you have a really simple membership or maybe one course, in which case it doesn’t matter that the feature is so much that the features have to be each in their own space like they do in Circle. The other thing was that the Circle plan that I compared with the one that they recommend has a limit of 20 spaces in it. So in my mighty network, I think it was 12 or 13 spaces, but when I created it in circles, since I had to split out all the features, I got over 20. I was like, I don’t know, 24 or 25, so I couldn’t even fully recreate it. So unless somebody’s doing something really simple, I’m going to recommend my new networks.
[00:35:24.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. Any other mind you differences?
[00:35:27.430] – Marcia Chadly
At that point, that stopped me.
[00:35:29.980] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s the end of it.
[00:35:31.540] – Marcia Chadly
Yeah. I just can’t recommend it. Now, I cut things out of the sight of my eye. This or that is probably a little better in circle. This one’s better in my new networks. They each have things. So it’s going to depend. I recommend, really, if you’re not sure, if it doesn’t matter about the number of space that features in this space, start a free trial of each and play with it a little bit. They basically do very similar things. The other thing that I know mighty networks does that Circle doesn’t is they have special posts that are polls and questions that are very visually attractive and interactive for people to respond to. I’m sure there’s things in Circle that my new network doesn’t have. I just know, is it? I know, is it? I know, is it? I know it’s better than Circle.
[00:36:25.260] – Jonathan Denwood
I got the impression with Circle because I did a show with one of my leading team members, where we were looking at the alternatives to buddyboss. We discussed a little bit about mighty networks and Circle. To me, Circle, the way they pitched it when they initially launched it and still do is a bit like Thinkific or Learnable is you get a lot of people that have a main website and they run Thinkific. They run one course on a subdomain. It’s a bolt-on scenario. The way Circle pitched themselves initially was that you could run a community and you could run a WordPress main website and you could Bolt Circle as a subdomain and run it as a separate, where Mite networks, because it’s been around a lot longer, it really pitches itself as a Swiss Army knife solution similar to Kajabi.
[00:37:39.270] – Marcia Chadly
I consider Kajabi and my own networks very different. That’s the other thing I have some people come on and say, I’m looking at Kajabi and I’m looking at my networks.
[00:37:51.690] – Jonathan Denwood
I was tempted to jump in, but I’m going to shut my mouth and let you continue there. I’m notorious for what you did last year. I’mt going to let you… Go on, off you go.
[00:38:02.190] – Marcia Chadly
Okay. First of all, mighty networks can be a subdomain like you described with Circle, and I actually recommend to most of my clients that they have a separate website. In fact, some people sell their mighty network access to the network or to some of the spaces, courses, or memberships through their website and then bring people into the mighty network. You can do it that way. You can charge through the platform. The small building, the mighty network I was talking about, that is his standalone everything. Although he’s going to eventually get another website, but he started from there, so it can be done on its own. Kajabi, I think, is a whole different thing because they have built-in funnels and lead pages and do this. I haven’t used it myself, but I have a friend that uses it, and so it’s really built, structured for business approach to things. Mighty Network does not do that. And the other thing about Kajabi, so if you’re looking for that, I want this, then Kajabi is a good fit. And it has a website, it’s different. But they’re trying to add in community, and the community is, from what I’ve heard, very frustrating and not really good.
[00:39:27.630] – Jonathan Denwood
I have a friend- They bought a.
[00:39:29.930] – Marcia Chadly
Startup company. Yeah, they did. My friend’s trying to use that too, and she’s pulling her hair out.
[00:39:35.520] – Jonathan Denwood
But- It must be nice to have hair. Yeah, isn’t that? There you go. I’ve still got a little bit.
[00:39:42.730] – Marcia Chadly
Mindy Networks came from the other direction. It started with community and then bringing the courses and the content into it. It has a richer, fuller engagement community aspect and it’s building on and adding in the courses. There will probably be some things about.
[00:40:02.370] – Jonathan Denwood
If you- Well, it’s so interesting and I can tell that you’re a very knowledgeable and a very sincere individual. I just get that buzz, that feeling from you. But it’s just interesting how your honest mindset, because the things that you see as strengths around Martin and its focus, which I totally agree with you. I actually see as it’s weaknesses. We got a very honest different… Because you’re coming from a different pathway. Because obviously, I’m one of these horrible WordPress people. I come from this. It’s so interesting.
[00:40:52.730] – Marcia Chadly
That you- It’s not horrible. They’re just different and they.
[00:40:56.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Work for different people. I was thought of being diplomatic there. Yeah. Interest.
[00:40:59.860] – Marcia Chadly
Everything is needed for different things. You’re excited to geek out on a whole bunch of different plug-ins, whereas people I’m usually working with are like, I don’t know. I just want to know what to do. I want somebody else to take care of this. I want somebody else to make it work on the app and all the different browsers, and I don’t want to have to do updates. It depends on the person and what they have going.
[00:41:27.550] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, just like that individual in the first half that you talked about, like I said earlier on in the second half, unless they wanted to go down that path, I would send them your way. Because based on my experience, those type of individuals, if they want to get a course launched, we do, we can set something up, but we’re not going to go that path because we’re about mighty networks. Now, the thing that interests me about your comments in the beginning of the second half was about the actual app scenario. Now, based on my experience, obviously, a lot of people really get fixated about the app before they even got their first course done. Obviously, with a fully responsive website and there are some ability to have it fully accessible on a tablet or on a mobile phone, in some ways I feel that it’s a bit of a… I’m struggling from the right word here, Marcia. They get fixated a bit about the app situation a bit. But I suppose because it is white-labelled on the 39 and then the business plan, I think you have to go to the top tier if you want the one totally white-labelled.
[00:43:14.260] – Marcia Chadly
Right. If you want white-labelled, you have to go to Mighty Pro. I don’t recommend that for most people.
[00:43:20.000] – Jonathan Denwood
How much is that? That’s on.
[00:43:23.670] – Marcia Chadly
Price-on-request, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s price-on-request. I think it’s over $10,000. We won’t go there. You need to have a significant investment that makes sense for what you’re doing, and it does for a lot of people. Now, so most people on the mighty networks, business plan and community plan, if you’re on that, and even Path the Pro, you’re using the mighty networks app.
[00:43:51.610] – Jonathan Denwood
You can actually- It’s there anyway, so you don’t have the problem of making the decision, really, do you?
[00:43:59.110] – Marcia Chadly
Right. No, no, it’s there. And so more and more people are belonging to multiple mighty networks. In the mighty networks app, it’s actually very easy to go back and forth between all the different mighty networks that you belong to.
[00:44:14.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. Obviously, you’ve got your bias and I’ve got my bias, but I think what you were really saying about when you’ve tried both is that in functionality and UX and usability terms, Mightie network is just… They’ve got the functionality and the UX at a more polished, usable level where Circle still feels that they’re still finding their way. Would that be a fair summary?
[00:44:50.460] – Marcia Chadly
I don’t know if Circle is still finding way, but they’re not at where Mightie network is, so I’m not sure if they’re going to continue to improve. That would be a great idea. What I don’t know about is in their software underneath what they’re doing, how easy it is for them to expand the space from one thing to multiple things. That’s one of the things my head goes to as an engineer is like, Well, it would be great to do that. And it’s always easy for those of us in the outside to say, Well, just add in those other things. But it can be interesting on the underneath side. So that I don’t know. But yes, I think the goal for both companies is probably the same. And the other thing I don’t know about Circle because I haven’t been part of that community is how the team works with the hosts of the Circles and listens to them and grows and learns from them in the way that I know mighty Network’s team does.
[00:45:47.670] – Jonathan Denwood
So are there any trends in the community, in the mighty Network’s community in general? Are there anything you’ve observed in the past year, the past three years? Any trends that you see building? Any things that people are talking about a bit more lately when it comes around this whole area?
[00:46:14.820] – Marcia Chadly
I think it’s the idea of the shift into how do we use these tools, because we have them now, to really deepen and improve the user results and transformation and experience. It’s a whole new thing. It’s like I moved last year. So I moved to this new place, new house. I took everything that I thought I would need from the ways I used to do it before, come into the house. And after I live here a while, I’m like, Oh, there’s something I never even would have thought of in my old place, but I could do that here. So I need to rearrange, get some different stuff, get rid of some stuff. I think using the platforms, and now more and more people are starting to use these platforms, we’re going to start sharing this whole new paradigm shift and it’s going to become the current status quo rather than what we’re moving into.
[00:47:16.530] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think the other factor is, and I just wondered if you’ve had these discussions, some of these build some community on YouTube, because you get a lot of people using TikTok, YouTube, and they go the patron route. They set up a patron and they might add Discord, which is a strange… I’ve got to love… Well, I hate Slack. Well, I use Slack all the time, but I still hate it because I think it’s a dog’s breath of a UX design. But Distold is another strange beast, isn’t it? But they are in that You have a YouTube patron and they bolt on a Thinkific thing to it. You get the picture. Why do you get a few of those discussions, people thinking of going that route? Is this.
[00:48:19.240] – Marcia Chadly
Making any sense? There are some people that approach mighty network from that way, and that’s what they want to do. I’ve had a couple of clients recently say, I’m once a patron thing. I also have had a client that’s like, I’m moving away from patron. I want to go into a more mighty network.
[00:48:34.680] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you think triggers them? That was the thing I was trying to… I think you can see where I was coming from. I don’t think I did a great job explaining it, but I think you’re getting the gist now. What interests me is what do you think in your own mind has triggered them to want to look at something mighty network from that what I’ve just described poorly, but I did a reasonable job.
[00:48:59.690] – Marcia Chadly
Well, I think part of it is because based on my limited experience being a patron, you really don’t get… It’s really about you supporting somebody financially and they’re giving you things. So it’s that leader to audience participant thing rather than the community. So they’re coming to patron because they really want their people that they’re working with to be able to interact with each other and for them to interact with them, and you just can’t get that on patron. The other thing is, and this I’m not exactly sure of what you can do on patron, but in mighty networks on the business planet and above, you can download your email list for your members. You own more of it than you do on Facebook or Discord or patron to my understanding of what those.
[00:49:58.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Platforms are. Yeah, I think you’ve really highlighted it there. Thanks so much, Marcya. You’ve really zeroed in. It’s that email ownership, isn’t it? I think a lot of the value is building up that email list, isn’t it? Which a lot of the patron, you don’t. Yeah, thanks for that. When it comes to some tools or online services, what’s a couple of things that you might want to bring to the conversation that you utilize daily, weekly, or monthly that you really rely on?
[00:50:38.930] – Marcia Chadly
Well, Zoom. I use Zoom for all my live calls, especially coaching, but also within the mighty network. I use, right now, my mail program, which I actually use much less now that I’m in mighty Networks than I did before. I’m currently using Mailchimp, but I’m in the process of considering switching to ConvertKit because mighty Networks has just announced an integration with ConvertKit where you can bring your members over immediately. Right now, what I’m doing to bring my members to Mailchimp is I use Zapier, so I’ve got that going all the time. That’s another handy one. I love using a calendar, so I use Acuity. Calendly is also a good option, though, so I don’t recommend one of those over the other. I’ll just say, Oh, the one I’m having fun with right now is ChatGPT. I’m really enjoying playing with that in terms of interactive. I almost have a conversation with it. I want to have a challenge in my network about this, and what do I do? And they’re like, Oh, no, I don’t really like that. What if we change this to that? And I can go, I think one of the ways that I learn and I like to process things is by talking, so I can almost talk to it and have it respond back and I can work things out that way with ChatGPT.
[00:52:04.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think we were in the early days, but I was listening to Professor Galloway, and he has a successful podcast and they developed a question-answer chat that mimics his style of talking and replies. I think in something like my networks, that scenario, you can see that building, can’t you? That probably might have some value.
[00:52:36.370] – Marcia Chadly
Mightn’t it? They are actually building their own version on top of ChatGPT, whatever they’re calling, those things that you can play with now. They’ve integrated some AI tools into the platform itself, especially for people starting their initial network to help them get up with something that they can then adjust.
[00:52:55.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. Obviously, I’ve been living in America now for over 15 years, but obviously I’m English in my accent and my temperament. I’m a big fan of Doctor Who and The TARDIS. Surprise, surprise, Marcy.
[00:53:14.150] – Jonathan Denwood
If you could go back in your own TARDIS maybe at the beginning of your career and you could just give yourself a little bit of quick consultation to yourself, what would be one or two things you wish you knew at the beginning that you know now?
[00:53:32.050] – Marcia Chadly
Well, first, if I.
[00:53:34.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Could have David- Don’t take over the podcast with English person.
[00:53:38.000] – Marcia Chadly
Yeah, I want to have Davidennet come back with me because I would love to meet him much earlier in my life. But really, I think the key thing, and it took me several years to really hone in on this, was that there is no one answer, there’s no silver bullet. You need to find your own answer. And to do that, you need to explore other people’s answers and listen to them and maybe even experiment with their answers. But then you have to adapt it and make it yours.
[00:54:09.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s very insightful. What was the person you mentioned before I was interrupting you, wasn’t I? I apologize.
[00:54:19.540] – Marcia Chadly
No, that’s okay. It’s hard to talk online.
[00:54:22.840] – Jonathan Denwood
It is. I like my little quibbs and it’s so difficult, isn’t it? Because there’s a time delay, isn’t it?
[00:54:29.770] – Marcia Chadly
Yeah. David Tenet, was one of the Dr. Who’s, wasn’t he?
[00:54:35.300] – Jonathan Denwood
I think so. I’m old.
[00:54:36.810] – Marcia Chadly
I actually connected with him through the show Good Omens, and I just love that show.
[00:54:45.280] – Jonathan Denwood
There we go. You can’t be a Dr. Who. Can you listen to some viewers? There we go. Marcia, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and so evident your knowledge and wisdom?
[00:54:59.760] – Marcia Chadly
Well, I have a website, chadlycreativeconsulting. Com, and then I offer information about my network’s platform on my YouTube channel, which is also Chadley Creative Consulting, I have a free, mighty network that is like a showcase to model different ways to use the mighty networks’ features. That is at https://www.chadlycreativeconsulting.com/
[00:55:25.850] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, and hopefully, you might come back sometime in the new year or later in the new year. Because I think we’ve had a fabulous discussion. I think we’ve covered a lot of stuff.
[00:55:34.720] – Marcia Chadly
It’s been great fun. I enjoyed it a lot. This was my first podcast guesting, so it was fun.
[00:55:41.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, well, I try to keep it on track. I can wander off. That’s why we have some pre-planned topics that we had a discussion about. But it’s more to keep me reeled in, Marcy, because I can go on a tandem very quickly. But I think we’ve done a reasonable job here, and I think we’ve shared some insights. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We will be back next week. I’ve got another fabulous guest next week. I’m on the roll here, and it should be another fabulous discussion for listeners and viewers. We’ll see you soon. Bye.
[00:56:23.600] – Marcia Chadly
Bye-bye.
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