In this episode, I was lucky to have Shannon Paris as a guest on this episode. As a member of the Mighty Networks team, Shannon offers a SaaS product to help people to establish, foster, and expand online communities. Shannon shared her journey with the company founder who had monetized her network by creating a community and took the business to the next level by showing others how they could do what she did. Shannon explains details about the product, and she also delves into how the structure and strategic deployment of a successful community can drive profit.

We’ll cover:

What an online community might look like as part of your business plan
How a service-based business can use an online community as an asset, not just a place to hang out and talk to each other
The ways that a community can help you promote sales and expand your sphere of influence
The benefits and differentiators of hosting a community on a platform other than the social media giants
The importance of having a “Big Purpose” for your community

Connect with Erin to strategize how you might use an online community to help make your business scalable and saleable. hourlytoexit.com/podcast.

Erin's LinkedIn Page: www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/

Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videos

Favorite Excerpt

More About Our Guest

As an impassioned advocate for small business owners & creators, **Shannon Paris** believes in the life-changing power of ethical entrepreneurship and community building.

Shannon is Community Strategist with Mighty Networks, a premiere SaaS platform for creators and brands to start and grow communities they own. She works exclusively with Network Hosts building communities in the Mighty Pro plan - helping them bring to life their fully branded communities on the web and native iOS, iPad, and Android apps.

Before joining the Mighty Networks team, Shannon served as Community Advocate & Operations Director with Founder Tara McMullin at The What Works Network—a community of practice where experienced small business owners take decisive action to build more effective, sustainable, and profitable businesses one day at a time.

She’s still providing leadership to the community - now known as The Network - and examining what it means for an online community to shift from expert-led into a community-led/self-organized model. She loves the synergy that comes from leveraging her years of managing, experimenting, and iterating in her own community into strategic community design for other Mighty Networks Hosts.

Formerly, Shannon was a buyer for Ten Thousand Villages, a fair trade retail non-profit organization. There she studied the effects of business ownership on developing economies through collaborative relationships with artisans working on handicraft and jewelry product design and capacity building. When she’s not working, she’s either singing and playing the ukulele or taking in nature in her sleepy river town of Marietta, in Lancaster County, PA.

We would love you to consider supporting Shannon’s favorite charity:
www.revolutionlancaster.com/

To learn more about starting an online community, check out Mighty Networks: www.mightynetworks.com/