Erin Austin01:08

Hello ladies. Welcome to the hourly to exit podcast. Thank you for joining me today. I am so excited to have Shannon Paris with me from night mighty networks. Hi, Shannon.

Shannon Paris01:20

Hi, Erin, how are you?

Erin Austin01:22

Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Shannon Paris01:25

Yeah, my pleasure.

Erin Austin01:26

Yeah, I'm very excited. We go a little ways back first meeting, uh, when you were with, Tara, uh, at the time she was Gentilly, right?

Or.

Shannon Paris01:36

I think she was Gentilly

Erin Austin01:37

Yes. Yes.

Shannon Paris01:38

became Tara MC Mullen. Yeah. Uhhuh

Erin Austin01:41

Now with CoCommercial at the time now, uh, what works. And so I was very excited to have you here because we love to talk about building assets with our service based business owners. And so with your work at Mighty Networks, I'm like, Ooh, this is gonna be so good. So please introduce yourself to our audience.

Let us know a little bit about you and what you're up to.

Shannon Paris02:04

Yeah, sure. As you mentioned, I'm currently working with mighty networks. We're a software as a service platform for community building. And, um, I came to my networks, it's always a flowery path when I'm telling my story anyway. From a background studying architecture to years in retail, having my own brick and mortar store, uh, and then for about a decade, I was working for a non-profit fair trade organization.

We were working internationally with artisans and makers to bring their products to the North American marketplace. So we were working internationally, but then we were working domestically with a chain of retail stores. So eventually I was a buyer and I was working directly on the ground in India with our partners on capacity building and product design, materials and techniques, relationship building.

And then I got laid off. And I made a lunch date with my old friend Tara Gentilly and we were just talking about our lives and the world, I was kinda like, I need a job. And she was kinda like, I need help. And from there we realized she was in the process, had just launched as she'd been a very successful business coach

for many years, she calls herself an internet grandma, but had really decided in 2016, 2017 to double down on this idea of community building as the product, as the place where instead of her always being at the top where it would be a space to build a peer to peer connection network, where you could leverage the seasoned experience of a whole bunch of different business owners, not just her, right. To take all that wisdom and have it be shared.

And I'm a community builder in anything I'm doing. I like to bring people together and so she felt like she could teach me this digital online business stuff, because I already had the people skills to make people feel welcome and help them facilitate relationships inside the four walls of our online community.

So from there I became a full-time community advocate inside, like you said, it was called CoCommercial, then it became The What Works Network. Yeah, I was doing operations for her behind the scenes and, um, just loved it. You know, we grew from about 400 members to about 700 members over the years and just iterated and experimented and tried all sorts of different community building.

Approaches. So just most recently, as I was sharing before we got on the call, Tara decided in her life and her work, it was time to take a step back from community building, just due to her own personal direction, some mental health and other issues. And at that point, there was an opportunity to sort of collaborate.

We had this deep, deep relationship with Mighty Networks and on two fronts where I actually shifted into a full time with Mighty Networks now serving as a strategist, helping other people build their communities. And also them taking over sort of a sponsorship role of our, what works Network kind of shifted. They took ownership essentially of her network. Um, so yeah,

Erin Austin05:15

Fantastic. What is a community strategist? Like, what does that mean?

Shannon Paris05:20

I think what makes a strategist who's working in community. It's not just brand. It's not about just selling it's what's happening once you've already got those people who are deeply committed and almost evangelized around a shared interest around the kind of results and transformations they're interested in sitting together with other people around.

The community strategist is working with that population of people to say, how do I make them have the best experience possible now that we're together? I mean, there's certainly the front end. You all have to get people in, right. That's absolutely part of the business, but what I'm working on with people specifically is helping 'em get launched,

and then how do we optimize the experience of your members on this platform? I mean, in general, it's about facilitating relationships, coordinating we call it community design. When are you posting? How are you inviting people into a deeper level of conversation around this shared interest, this big purpose that's brought you together?

What kind of touch points are you giving people throughout the week? How do you meet people where they're at and invite them to contribute to this fabric of the community that we're building together?

Erin Austin06:40

I love that. You know, this is the second conversation I've had today, where people, where someone was talking about the experience, which I feel like talking about, you know, customer experience or community experience. I feel like I didn't hear people talking about the experience like five years ago was I have this service,

and is it good or is it bad? But they're not making sure people are being taken care of throughout that whole journey. And so is this something new in the industry or is it a, my networks thing or is it just, you know, this is the nature of how communities are built in 2022?

Shannon Paris07:15

I think online community has definitely grown and evolved over the past 10 years, five years. And then especially in the past two years. Right. So Gina Bianchini who's our founder absolutely has been thinking about community hardcore for five, 10 years now herself. And, it's more than a Facebook group, it's not just like you're slapping together a space.

It's something that's where you're curating experience, where you're really designing what people are going through, especially nowadays with like zoom fatigue, right. And two years of having to be online. And how do you differentiate within that? And, I think in business, in general, especially with small business owners and service based business, we're thinking about how do we consider the whole human

in this experience, right? Like you can't just leave, especially when your kids are home, you can't just leave that at the door when you go into your office, right. Or, or your dog or your cat, you know, whatever it may be. Right. We had to be whole humans coming to the table for both our businesses, and then the same as you build a community. Like,

there's been so much toxicity out in community building, whether it's from the systems that we operate in, whether that's the patriarchy or white supremacy or, you know, whatever that is capitalism, like, I think we're all in the space of examining that. And so being intentional about honing the culture you're creating. It's culture making inside a community.

And there are plenty of communities out there that aren't doing that, but I think that's what differentiates and I think that's what would be purposeful for small business owners and service based businesses. Yeah.

Erin Austin09:03

Well, let's back up to like, tell me more about Mighty Networks generally and what distinguishes it from other types of communities?

Shannon Paris09:13

Yeah. So, Mighty networks is a software as a service platform that is designed from like the ground up to support community building. I mean, it has a lot of nice features. It is like aesthetically very pleasing, but you have an activity feed, like a form. It's got some similar qualities to what you might experience when you're inside of a Facebook group in sort of that social network feel,

but there's no ads. All the members are, to whatever degree you determine is important, curated so to speak, right? Like you can have a public community, but you can also, you know, have an application process, however you wanna set that up. There's a course feature inside of my network, so you can have small groups, so you can have sub spaces within your big, main space.

You can host events from within you can live stream inside of mighty networks. It's been evolving and evolving, but there's so many features that are really designed specifically to encourage community like, you know, you could, name specialties so you could know who else in your community is a therapist, right.

You could know who else in your community is in your region. Like you can set it up so that I could learn who is near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

so there's just like, as you dig into the features, you see that they're really geared differently than like a website, so to speak.

Erin Austin10:34

Is there a cross pollination, like I know there are no ads, but if let's say I'm in the, what works community.

Be able to see other communities that are in there or are they just completely separate?

Shannon Paris10:45

They are, for all intents and purposes, completely separate. While I'm inside my community, that is what your experience is and, a kind of a key part of that is the data stays inside those four walls. So there are no third party people doing anything with the data, with the

emails. There is, you know, no crazy algorithmic stuff going on behind the scenes.

We, as a company, don't do anything with that data either. So, so both the owner of the community and mining networks as platform, we don't do anything with any kind of data. Now I will say we have an app. It's a universal app, that's called the mighty networks app and from within there, you can search for other communities.

Erin Austin11:32

Oh, okay.

Shannon Paris11:33

So if I'm a member of this, right, then I could also search for your community, you know? So it's easy within that app to get to other communities.

Then at our enterprise level, it's more of a fully branded experience and you actually can have your own dedicated app.

Erin Austin11:50

Okay. Gotcha. Okay. And is it white labeled for your enterprise clients or?

Shannon Paris11:56

We say fully branded, because there are some places where you might see mighty networks pop up, like in email notifications, et cetera, just because of regulations. So we have to sort of say who we are in, in that regard, but in general, many folks do approach it from almost like from a client host perspective.

They're thinking of it as a white label experience.

Yeah. At.

Erin Austin12:20

my networks or something

Shannon Paris12:21

Right. Exactly. Think of us as a tech

Erin Austin12:24

Okay. it. Got it. All right. My experience with mining networks is the, what works, community and yeah, and very easy to navigate. I, you know, being able to label like your specialties, I thought that was so helpful, especially, you know, among that community of, you know, finding out who is, you know, who knows marketing, who knows, you know, different things.

And so, and I think, you know, cause I'm currently. A member of a few slack communities, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna trash slack or anything, but, I guess the simplicity of slack is maybe the beauty of it, but when you need more, if you want like more interaction and, um, among the community members for them to understand each other better, you know, mighty networks is definitely, obviously a much better option than slack for that.

Shannon Paris13:11

Yeah, I think it's a different experience entirely. Right. And, and there's absolutely other competitors out there that are offering different experiences and there's ways we can grow. Yeah. I mean, the slack becomes more of a forum type experience, right. And you have your channels. I now work for the company, but I was an evangelist, so to speak.

I was a believer. I loved the experience. There's just something really positive about coming into a mighty network space. And it took me years to sort of identify. It was like being out of that sort of toxic social media world, having a real concentration around a specific interest. And yeah, I don't wanna slam slack.

We've actually even crafted some smaller product community experiences around like a mastermind where that happened in a slack community, like a short term. And it was great and it had its positives and its negatives. I think the reach can be broader without feeling overwhelming inside of a Mighty Network versus inside slack, for instance.

Erin Austin14:13

Yeah. And, and what you mentioned earlier is, because we all been kind of stuck, you know, at home and spend so much time online, like having like a different experience, that's kind of richer, more intimate, is super important. You know, I, I'm definitely a zoom burnout, you know, although I'm enjoying my time here with you and, uh, but you know, having, that place, you know, cause you don't like even a LinkedIn, which is my social media option of choice.

Like I don't quite know what I'm gonna run into even on LinkedIn and it's not even, you know, anything compared to the others. And just kind of having that place where, you know, like, okay, this is my community, like literally, and kind of understanding the expectations are all set, their rules there's, you know, there for a common purpose.

And so that is kind of the lovely part of having,

having

Shannon Paris15:03

Yeah, and I love that you framed it in terms of not knowing what you're gonna run into. And I think that that's your experience as a member of a community. And as a host, it's such an opportunity to create that experience, right? Like to create a set of expectations around this thing that you all are passionate about, right?

Instead of left field political.

Erin Austin15:31

Right.

Shannon Paris15:32

Whatever polarizing conversations that can be disheartening or, or just even being pitched to, right. I don't wanna pick on any sort of platform. It happens in all the platforms, but, you know, you can determine how that happens in your space.

Like getting to the value of, is it a no pitch space?

Is it, is it a place where you pitch in a specific way for it to be healthy or there's a space where you can pitch or a job board or, you know, there's just so many ways you can approach that, that's suitable for both yourself, your business, your members, and that experience

you're wanting to create, those results and transformations.

Erin Austin16:13

Yeah. Well, you definitely pushed a button with me with the pitching. You know,

what I found I was trying to figure out is, you know, I was promoting the, uh, launch of the podcast and, and, you know, we were looking at LinkedIn groups like, you know, cause you know, you're a member of LinkedIn groups, but there's something happening on this one.

And like, you know, should we post something in the LinkedIn groups? And I can tell you like immediately, like sudden. Pitches like just random pitches started coming in.

So it is nice to have a no pitch zone. I'm sure.

Shannon Paris16:40

Yeah, yeah.

Erin Austin16:42

So our, our audience is, you know, female founders of service based businesses.

And I wanna make sure that, and almost all of them have some sort of online community that's, you know, maybe informal like through, you know, their connections on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, little more formal through an email newsletter list. I don't know that anyone really talks about their community, like as an asset.

And I want to like dig into that, like how a service based business can use like an online community as an asset and not just as a place to hang out and talk to each other.

Shannon Paris17:20

Mm-hmm, yeah. So like to your point, I think it's not just a space to have nice conversations. Uh, and another thing I think about with smaller service providers, it's not just a place to house your courses, cuz that would be another space where there's a lot of tech platforms being used is like learning management services, right?

Like your Kajabi and your think if fix, but their community piece isn't necessarily. Robust. Right. So that's another place where there's an opportunity. If you are offering courses to enrich that entire experience by building like, people can watch a video on their own. People can read the content on their own.

It's how do they process that and how do they move forward with that? So that's where community can really serve to make a more enriching experience around your courses. Those relationships though, that are built in there, people are having conversations and they're getting to know each other, they feel less alone. I mean, if you can help your clients feel less alone in the world, that is like, is a huge reason why they're gonna come back to you again, right? If they know that you're a person they connect with, if there's other people like them that they can connect with, I mean, they're just gonna be, you know, involved, invested, and engaged in what you're creating for them.

Um, yeah. And networking, of course, for your members, Is valuable because they, even if it's a no pitch zone, there is organic back and forth that happens where relationships that blossom into future business partnerships, or, you know, it could be just an event or a coffee chat, or there's just so many things that can happen.

And honestly, I would say one of the reasons why a community can be really great is because you're leveraging those connections without you having to do all the work. It doesn't all rely on you then. Right? It's it's scaling, but not scaling. And the next thing you have to do is do a group offering.

The next thing you'd have to do is build an online course. That can be part of it, but you're scaling in the value that you're building that, like, it's not all dependent on Erin pushing out all the content all the time, because Erin says something, but so does Sarah, so does Jane, and then they have this deep conversation about their thoughts around this thing that Erin said. And suddenly this community has now become exponentially more valuable as each person that network effect spreads out. That's just as valuable. And it, that means you didn't have to do all that work around that. So that's why it could be hugely. We, we say really the value in a mighty network is in those connections, those conversations, and ultimately the contributions that your members start to make, they will start to put their own posts up and share their experiences

generously. And it is a place where you can house your courses and groups, et cetera.

Erin Austin20:23

I wanna go back to, cause I had not heard about community as a way of scaling before. I'd never heard of put that way. Like that, basically you're increasing your impact by facilitating like these conversations around the topic. You're scaling anytime there's somebody else kind of helping spread your message, right.

Or helping spread your learnings. So having that, that community that helps you do it. I think that's really interesting. I never looked at it that way before.

Shannon Paris20:50

Yeah,

Erin Austin20:50

I love that.

Shannon Paris20:51

It distributes value, right? It distributes value. It distributes the work, the creation, like you're thinking you're co-creating versus having to do all the creation. Yeah,

Erin Austin21:02

Oh, I like that. All right. So you mentioned, and I wanna dig back to this, like about what happens with the data in your community.

Shannon Paris21:11

It's not that we don't keep data it's we don't do anything

with the data. Right. Other than determine like our revenue. Right. You know, and we have policies online that, that are available for anybody to read around how we handle all that. But yeah. We're not marketing with them to any third parties or anything like

Erin Austin21:30

Gotcha. All right.

Beautiful. And then for the host of the community, what type of data can they get from the community?

Shannon Paris21:39

Oh, yes. I love this. And we can go in a couple different directions with this. I mean, I think there are some non like numerical, you know, lots and lots and lots of anecdotal data that you can get from a community. I guess we call it the qualitative feel free to correct me. I'm not

always great with my terms here. Right? Because you're gonna be listening, listening, listening as the host. You're just gonna be witnessing the conversations that are talking about the things, people are gonna be bringing up what's important to them, right? More than you having to create an idea, build a narrative, make up your own idea of what you think is important to them,

every day you have people in front of you who are gonna be talking about what's important to them. So if it's the conversations they're gonna be talking about their needs, their problems and their successes. Right? So all of that is right there in that space.

Erin Austin22:29

In the language that they use, that you

Shannon Paris22:31

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Right? You can just, you're just gonna be tuned into what's like relevant today.

There'll be new input every day. You'll be getting feedback on products that you put out there, right? Like with you decide to open up a mastermind within that space, right? You can do a beta test. You can iterate, you can experiment, you can bring in founding members. You can ask them to do it

at a discounted rate or free, or whatever makes sense for you in your business model and the value you're delivering and instantly get input on how to iterate this, to make it your, you brought in your basic viable product to your most viable product. Right. And you can adapt as you go, right?

Like you can just tweak, tweak, pull different levers around it. I feel like one thing I would say about mighty networks is it's really built for experimentation. You can just play with the different features and how you have it set up and where you're sending people. Cuz I'm talking to hosts every day.

And I am telling you, I hear new ideas. I see. an infinite number of ways you can set up community and products and

offerings, et cetera. So

Erin Austin23:36

I can imagine that would almost be, you know, the shiny object syndrome would be magnified. Like someone said this and they need to have like, okay, it goes on the list, but, you know, make sure

Shannon Paris23:47

Yeah. I mean, from a few different levels, I mean, as a host, you always have to be saying, what's the big purpose here? How do we always tie it back into the results and transformations that we're working towards together as a company? Um, mighty networks, like the features and everything like that, that we get in.

We are listening, listening, listening. I mean, we treat our clients as a community unto themselves. Right. I did wanna share. To the quantitative. We actually do have a really rich set of insights, we call it, but it's

analytics. So you can see active members, you can see how many members are contributing, like percentages of host contributions versus member contributions,

who's coming in from what platforms, are there opportunities to get more people using the app? Things like that. Heat maps of activity time, so you can figure out when should I, you know, host events. And then deeper, like what. Are your top hosts? Who's clicking on what, et cetera, et cetera. So you actually do have a deep set of quantitative, um, analytics that can help you set benchmarks.

Tell the story, understand the story you wanna well determine what story you wanna tell, understand from those insights, how well you're doing on that, and then adjust and experiment and then you can keep checking those and checking against those benchmarks that you set for yourself.

Erin Austin25:10

Yeah, that's amazing. Like data and insights are, you know, basically 21st century gold, right? I mean, everyone. Wants to know what the data says, decisions. They wanna know that the decisions are data backed. And, uh, and, and we need that data. I mean, even though like a lot of us and myself included, don't consider myself as like someone like who's data driven, but at the end of the day, like, yeah, you know, kind of am, you know, I'm looking at, you know, my likes and my comments and my LinkedIn.

I'm looking at, you know, my email subscriber list and when you have like another source such as the very sophisticated types of data and the insights that you can get through the money networks community. It really helps inform like really every part of your business.

And when we're looking at it in the context of building a company that is scalable and saleable, which are real challenges, when you have a service based business, when you have an expertise based business, like how will a potential choir know that what you're doing can be replicated, you know, and having the data is one of those ways you do it, like.

Shannon Paris26:20

Yeah. I see it play out that way. You know, where individuals in smaller businesses are doing it, and the proof in the pudding to me is the way I see it play out for bigger organizations. So we have some universities, nonprofits, huge organizations that have different kinds of communities on Mighty Networks,

and they, they have to be able to tell that story. They have to be saying, this is like definitely engaging our stakeholders in a different way. And here's the, here's the industry benchmarks. And here's how we line up against that. They have to sell it to get the

grant, to get continued backing for it, to get buy-in from the board, you know, just to get the, the, whether it's seed funding or whatever it is.

I'm thinking of a small group of like four financial advisors, you know, Australia who Wanted to create a space for financial advisors to be able to connect with each other. And they started out in Facebook groups, started out in LinkedIn groups and all of the, the moderation.

Here's another thing, the amount of moderation that has to happen in those spaces,

unless you have a real tight handle on it, like of who you're letting in. But generally so often in social media, the object has been growth like in those groups. So like between the moderation and what their clients expected, their members wanted a premium experience. So they're like we have to get serious. They tried to build something on their own. It was expensive, it was clunky. So they were like, we're gonna do this. So another arm of this that I wanted to kind of introduce to you here as another way people are using communities nowadays, especially from the small business owner coach, like kind of segmented service providers, is at B2B model in a couple different ways. So for instance, this group of financial advisors, it's a free network

for financial advisors. But the people who serve financial advisors wanna get in front of these people,

right? So they're not selling their data, but if they have an event, these bigger companies can get in front of their membership, right.

And be sponsors of a larger event that those members can then attend for.

Right. So you now have an audience

of 4,200, 10,000 people

potentially could even be small. It could be 300, 400 people. Right. But they have those numbers in the data to show that. Or we have other B2B models where I'm thinking of a established, well known, leadership coach.

And we have quite a few communities that are doing something similar to this, where they're business, coaching, leadership, coaching, career, coaching, ways of working coaching. And they're working with companies, you know. They're working with, uh, I'm gonna just make something Nike, right. But they create a subspace for Nike within their community. So Nike gets its own group where Nike employees get a curated, personalized experience for that company.

And in some cases, the companies can be really involved in that space too. It's not just the coach delivering the content into that space,

but they are charging a premium to that company. Because they've made the container. They've established the culture and now it's kind of like renting space and delivering their content.

So it sort of expands what a community can be just in like, as far as being one dimensional with the activity feed, you can bring other players in and create a really beautiful experience for that company or organization and their people.

Erin Austin30:06

Yeah, that, that reminded me two, you gave two examples that reminded me of a couple of things. One on the access to the community. You know, I have, um, experience in the market research field as well. And you know, one of my clients, um, works mostly with like pharmaceutical companies that, and they will need access to specialize either doctor, um, populations or patient populations.

And they will have to go on to say, you know, a Facebook to find a sickle cell anemia, like support group in order to find those patients. And, uh, and so if you have a community that's, you know, this kind of specialized population that people want access to. That, that is another way for you to yeah.

You know, provide value to both parties, you know, providing access to your community and your community, you know, giving them a voice in different ways. Yeah.

Shannon Paris30:59

And a two way street kind of way without just selling your members' data. But like just saying like, Hey, we have, co-created something valuable here, and this might be interesting

to you, you know, or some of those organizations are spinning up groups, like, you know, um, I'm thinking of a large health organization who spun up a group for frontline workers.

Right. And so that has had some traction and some movement, even though these are very, very busy people, obviously, but now there's other organizations under their umbrella, you know, sub-organization that have seen what's happened here and are like, Hey, can you do that for me? You know? So yeah. I mean, there just goes in a lot of different ways, but I think there's transparency and, um, honoring of boundaries within that

at the same time. Yeah.

Erin Austin31:48

And back to the selling your business element, like, you know, when you program your own community. I mean, that is, makes it very complicated to sell actually, cause people don't wanna buy custom software unless, you know, there's something they can monetize directly, but they don't want your, your background based on custom software.

Cuz then it's very hard for them to integrate it with whatever they're doing or they have to undo it. So when they have a, a, you know, if you, if they, if your community is based on a SAS platform that they can just

acquire, beautiful.

beautiful

Shannon Paris32:20

It's turnkey.

Erin Austin32:21

Yes, exactly. That is so much better than trying to figure out, what did they do here.

Shannon Paris32:26

Yeah. And I will say like, especially at the pro level, but even in, even in our business and community, um, tier one thing, I think that really differentiates many networks in at least in my experience over as both a customer and now as a, an employee is like, The level of service customer service, like the fact that you could hand something off, but there's a team that's been involved at the, at the software platform level that could help you take that on and turn it into something else

is, is highly.

Like, I mean, if I was taking on a new company and I knew that, cuz I, I mean, we see it in turn with clients, um, like with key, like say, you know, there's the founder and the visionary who's. Come up with the idea, but they're always gonna have implementers and there's often turnover in the implementers

Erin Austin33:15

Yes. Mm-hmm

Shannon Paris33:16

and sometimes the founders are really removed from the day to day, but we're there to say, don't worry about this.

We gotcha. We have some courses, you can take that DIY, you can have a call with us, multiple calls with us, we have the strategists and we have folks that you can talk to, you know, in a tech support hotline. Right? So like having that, knowing that that transition is possible, I think adds to that value

as well.

Erin Austin33:44

Absolutely. I love

that. Well, as we start to wrap up, is there a number one tip you would give to the, someone who's new to building community? Like how do you get, I mean, I know as a strategist, it's the whole experience, but how do you get started?

Shannon Paris34:00

Ooh, this is such a good question. How do you get started? I really, I I've used the term a few times throughout this call, but getting clear on that big purpose. It's the first place we start in our, we have a community design accelerator, that's a course you can take, but I come back to it. I came back to it in this call a few times,

I come back to it in client calls all the time. What are the results and transformation you wanna take people towards and getting specific within that, right? You have to start there so that you understand who it is, that's coming in the door so that you can start messaging around that so that they can then self-identify that they are that person, that this is the place they should go to for those results and transformations and to save time and to, you know, make progress.

So. I think getting really clear on why would you bring people together? I've, I've talked with this few different folks in our, in our space where even though they've committed to the mighty networks platform, they're still thinking about it. Like it's just a place where I'm gonna throw my courses

Erin Austin35:10

Mm. Mm-hmm

Shannon Paris35:12

and I'm like, it's not built for that.

It's built to have community around and conversation around that. So, you know, redirecting them towards. That. Why would somebody come in there? Why is anybody gonna log in to one more place and hang out in one more online space? It's gotta be about that

big purpose.

Erin Austin35:32

Right. I love that. Well, thank you. So as you may know, uh, hourly to exit, we are committed to helping build an economy that works for everyone. And so we love to talk about people's favorite charitable organizations that further the mission. And so I'm wondering if there is one that you would like to.

Shannon Paris35:53

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I am on the board of an organization called revolution, Lancaster I think it's revolution, lancaster.com. we are social enterprise working with women who are experiencing transition and homelessness, and we are working together on learning jewelry making skills, and they craft jewelry,

and then we sell that jewelry wholesale and retail. We have an e-com site, and so it's really an opportunity to make supplemental income

Erin Austin36:24

Fantastic.

Shannon Paris36:25

The reason I also love it because a big part of the mission is community. It's also about not feeling isolated, getting together with other women who are experiencing similar things as you and learning, it's a workshop that happens every week and the women come together.

And so they get to know each other and can swap stories, et cetera.

So

Erin Austin36:49

sounds

Shannon Paris36:50

what I'm passionate about.

Erin Austin36:51

fantastic. Are you you're in Lancaster Pennsylvania.

Shannon Paris36:54

Yeah. Uh,

Erin Austin36:55

So, uh, is there a offer of perhaps that you might like to share with our exit community

Shannon Paris37:01

I didn't come with an offer, but you can always visit mighty networks.com to find out more information. Everything's on there. It's a pretty cool website, uh, so you can learn all about the different product pricings and things like that. We also have a mighty community. So you could experience the software yourself and become involved in the conversations that other mighty hosts are having inside our mighty community.

Erin Austin37:26

And so where can people find you if they wanna find out more?

Shannon Paris37:29

Oh yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn, Shannon dash Paris.

Erin Austin37:33

Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. I know everyone got a lot of value out of today and I hope they think about community differently and, uh, and understand the real value, both social and economic value in having community.

So

Shannon Paris37:49

Yes, Erin, thank you for opening up this conversation. It was exciting to learn where you're at and what you're bringing into the world, and the fact that you brought community into that conversation is so exciting. So thank you. I

appreciate it. All

right.