Gina Pell: Community is the new social

Gina Pell, a digital media pioneer, runs an exclusive Facebook group with 27K members and a private professional women's network featuring world-class leaders, from early-stage entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 executives.

Gina has built companies, audiences, and communities. She observes a significant shift happening online that will impact us all. Discover why she believes social media is transforming into something the world truly needs, especially now.

The What Alliance: https://www.thewhatalliance.co/
What Women: http://thewhatlist.com/

Transcript

Intro: [00:00:00] From Silicon Valley, the heart of startup land, it's Getting2Alpha. The show about creating innovative, compelling experiences that people love. And now, here's your host, game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach, Amy Jo Kim.

Amy: Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram promised us a convenient way to stay in touch with the people in our lives. But they've turned into noisy, ad-driven platforms that seem like they're always trying to sell us something.

And that's why media pioneers like Gina Pell have turned to community platforms like Mighty Networks to create small, curated communities supported by membership fees, not ads. Here's how she sees it.

Gina: Do you want to create impact? Do you want to create scale or both? And for me, I got to a point in my career where I just wasn't really interested in scale. I didn't want to just like build this company, get a billion registered users. I was really looking to create something more of impact.

Amy: [00:01:00] Join me as we explore what it takes to run a robust online community and find out why Gina fully identifies as a perennial. Let's get into it.

 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the family. I am here with Gina Pell. 

I'm especially grateful to be here with Gina because community building is a thread I've been pulling for decades, and I'm still learning. Gina is an online media pioneer and an expert community builder. And she's one of those people that really surfed the whole shift from producing content to engaging a community. And I bet that's why a lot of you are here today.

So we're here to dig into what makes community building work today and why community is the new social. So I actually want to start with that Gina, because when you told me the last time we chatted, community is the new social, I couldn't get it out of my head.

And I started thinking about exactly what does [00:02:00] she mean? And I started looking around and seeing how right you are. Where did that phrase 1st come up for you? What sparked that? 

Gina: Yeah, I also think that it's important to distinguish, like, when I say communities and social, that's because I'm coming from a media background.

And a lot of my fellow media people, when we talk about the future of media, which has been really dismal, we've been talking about community by way of membership and looking at membership as a new way to think about our readers or the people who are in community with us rather than curate these communities or curate readers, and then allow advertisers to have access to them. 

Let's talk about communities and new social. I think the real question to consider if you're even going to buy that is, do you want to create impact?

Do you want to create scale or both? And for me, I got to a point in my career where I just wasn't really interested in scale. I didn't want to just like build this company, try to go for the moonshot, get a billion registered users. [00:03:00] I was really looking to create something more of impact.

And to do that, you and I have a mutual friend called Gina Bianchini who runs Mighty Networks. She's the founder and creator of Mighty Networks. And it was actually Gina who came up to us after being part of our community of readers. And she said, you guys should think about creating a private membership, and it was like, it was the first time we actually even considered it. And then we launched it in 2020. 

Amy: So social media has changed during the time that you've been working in it. Right? And, I mean, part of what you're talking about with the moonshot versus the sustainability is about VC funding, right? And that whole dynamic, but social media today, looking out at the landscape, you've got this Facebook group with last I looked over 23,000 members.

Is that correct? 

Gina: Right. 

Amy: So that's, I mean, oh my gosh. 

Gina: Yeah. And that's just self creating. We don't even put any energy into growing that. It just grows user by user. 

Amy: And then you also [00:04:00] have a private membership that's curated. 

Gina: Right. 

Amy: That's creating a lot of value for a group of people. And you're also thinking about how to integrate social media into what you're doing.

So this dynamic you're talking about with scale versus provide value. How are you seeing that playing out with today's social media landscape? 

Gina: Social media is not going to go away. Social media is actually just heating up and the creator economy is it's a growing sector that's going to get even bigger.

It's going to double by 2027. And it's going to be 250 billion dollars this year . That's like amazing, right? 

I think 

when I talk about community versus social, I'm just looking at what social media used to be and what social media had set out to do, which is connect us to the people that are friends, people that were interested in, have us post engage.

And now it's just really a place where we're just being sold to constantly, right? 

So, social media as we know it, as users of social media, let's say [00:05:00] to connect with others is broken. 

It basically is using our attention to sell us ads, to keep us addicted, to decide what content to show us.

We don't even get to see the people that we're interested anymore, because the algorithm is showing us something different. And with the AI, it's going to get even worse. 

Or better if you want to be served up cats all the time, which I do. People who own the social media, they have complete control over who can participate, who is censored, what you're seeing.

It's overrun with spam and bots. And so, when I go back to community, are we talking about community around a brand? There's many brands that are constantly cited about. That they have the best communities online like Apple and like Lego and Nike.

But looking at community from the sense of somebody who doesn't sell physical tangible products, people who are let's say coaches, professionals, like medical professionals. You look at like the rise of Andrew Huberman and Dr. Peter Attia and what they've been able to create, the community they've created around their content. 

And so, like to [00:06:00] back all the way up to, my background starting in, I'd say like indie media in my Splendora days, is that my partner Amy and I discovered that there was community that was growing around our content. And that was very surprising to us. And we didn't, we weren't able to see that until we started having in person events.

And then we actually got to see the people that were following our content. I have so much to say. It's like, there's a big jumble in my brain. So I don't want to just start pontificating for hours. So I want to, kick it back. 

Amy: Well, I can help you thread that needle because everything you're talking about goes right into my interview questions.

One of the things about you that is very special and somewhat unique, you and a few other people as you really have made the shift from media creator with an audience to community builder. And you just talked about a pivot point, a moment, which is having your first live event. Oh, this isn't just an audience. This is a community, right? 

And there's some really basic [00:07:00] elements of community, which is they can connect with each other, not just with you. If it's an audience, it's like a bullhorn, right? It's one to many. A community, there's often a bullhorn or a pivotal figure or some flow of new content to give people something to talk about, but it's really connecting them to each other, that is the point of the community, right?

Gina: That's exactly right. And Gina Bianchini, I keep mentioning her because she created Mighty Networks. And do you remember when Gina said something, maybe it was like 5 years ago, she was like, I'm going to take on Facebook and people are like, oh, okay, go for it. Mighty Networks is a platform for people who are building communities.

And Gina says, the best brand communities experience member-led growth benefiting from the energy of members, instead of just relying on top down growth from the brand. That's something that my partner, Amy and I, were hoping for when we built our community. we built our community is that.

We were always, it was directional. It was just one way we were pushing out content all the time. And every now and then we'd get some user [00:08:00] feedback through email or something, and then when social media came, we'd get likes and comments, but it really wasn't this e nergizing loop coming back to us.

And now that we have our communities, we learn so much from the members inside our community, that we are co-creating the community with the members and often co-creating our businesses. And not to even mention what goes on with our personal lives. 

Amy: Well, what does go on with your personal life?

Gina: Okay, let's get TMI here. Our communities are mostly female. And so what's going on with our personal lives is menopause. We saw the rise in menopause discussions inside our female communities. And the Facebook communities where we have tens of thousands of people in the Facebook communities, we are using it as a listening tool to see what women are thinking about and talking about. And then taking those topics and putting it back out there in the form of media. So our communities have become our listening tool. 

I think another very interesting point is the monetization of communities. The media business, the way we knew it dried up.

 99 percent of our [00:09:00] business now is fueled by membership. So it's membership revenue, which seemed like a pipe dream. Even back in 2019, because people were paying maybe 5 a month for content. 

And now we're charging 3,500 a year for our most private community. And then we're thinking about launching communities that aren't 3,500 a year, that are lower in cost. And we're starting to see communities like Puck, I don't know if you subscribe to Puck, but that's about, I think it's 200 or 250 a year. That's really quality journalism that, I'm willing to pay more for and feel like I'm part of a community by reading it. 

Amy: So much of it comes back to the business model, because on social media, there's a reason you're being monetized because your attention is the business model because it's free.

So that works for a lot of things, but what you're finding is the market for this other thing. What's really interesting to me is that before you and I chatted a few weeks [00:10:00] back, all through 2024, I've been seeing this shift from spending a lot of time on social media to going into smaller communities.

A really good friend of mine in gaming disappeared from social media. She stopped posting and I saw her in person and she's like, I'm in a few discords. They have like 30, 40 people. That's where I'm spending my time, it's really working for me. And I saw bits of that with so many other demographics and just people I was talking to and I'm not sure what it means.

Social's not going away, but the need for a curated community of some kind seems to be going up. 

Gina: Oh, definitely. 

Amy: I mean, and you're seeing that in your own business, right? 

Gina: Yeah, absolutely. But then again, if this conversation is for business leaders and professionals, it really depends on which sector you're coming from.

I have many friends who are actually selling physical products and social media works really great for them. TikTok is working fantastically for them. Instagram took their business to the [00:11:00] next level because it's seamless shopping, right? You don't have to leave that.

And there was some study I read last year where like 90 percent of people make decisions based on user generated content on how they engage with the product. So to me, if I was selling a product, of course I would continue to be on social media, but I would do something more with my own customers creating content for me on social media. 

I find the whole discussion interesting and it's been sanity saving for me to get off of social media. I just quit Instagram in 2022 because our business was driven by email subscription, free email subscription, and also by subscription to our private member communities.

And us posting on Instagram was bringing us nothing, like there was no conversion there. And so it didn't make sense for us, but it does make sense for thought leaders. It makes sense for products. I mean, it makes sense for a lot of people.

It just didn't make sense for us, but I think I was saying to you a couple of weeks ago that I'm actually beginning to [00:12:00] rethink my relationship with social media. And maybe I was throwing the baby out with the bath water. And it was that LinkedIn post that you just did the other day to talk about this podcast talk that we were having it was like a little light bulb went off and I thought, huh.

I mean, I hated Instagram for our business. TikTok didn't make sense for our business. But maybe LinkedIn could potentially be a place for us to resurface again. And so that's something that we're looking into. 

Amy: How many people listening in have had similar thoughts over the last six or eight months?

Have you been rethinking how you use social media? Gina, I have. I think a lot of us are rethinking social media.

My 17 year old daughter said to me the other day, I think I might delete the TikTok app. And I said, really? Why? And she said, well, I just feel like it's more addictive than it's worth than the value it's giving me. And I'm like, Oh my gosh. And she's on Snapchat and all that. But just the fact that she's thinking about it.

I work with startups all the [00:13:00] time and run a lot of research where we do outreach and find out what social media channels are you spending time on these days so we can know how to do discovery, where to place ads, et cetera.

And I've seen this big shift away from Instagram and away from Facebook like you've experienced. And toward YouTube. It's like everybody's on YouTube.

And then I saw a report recently that YouTube has more hours than all the streaming services combined. So I feel like there's something about YouTube that is a place that almost everybody seems to go to for their different needs.

Gina: Here's something really interesting I heard yesterday on a marketing roundtable that we had from one of our allies, one of our members. Her name is Tyler Chow and she has a YouTube channel, I think called, at the creator's attorney, and she was the one who suggested to all of us on the call. She challenged us to write a little something on LinkedIn every day and to tag people. And she was trying to explain the algorithm to us. Like, for [00:14:00] instance, she was saying LinkedIn seems to favor selfies. Have you heard that? I never really posted anything on LinkedIn. I just would lurk on LinkedIn, see what my friends are up to, like things.

And I posted about this podcast yesterday on LinkedIn and I got a lot of play from it. I was really surprised. And it's kind of addicting, like, Oh my gosh, people are out there actually listening. And I've been off Facebook, even though we run the private groups on Facebook.

 I personally been off Facebook, I think since 2017 or 18. But I do miss that sharing of, I don't know, like deep thoughts by Gina Pell, and LinkedIn seems like the place to do it. But Tyler was also telling us about YouTube and that she is an attorney for creators to help them get more money, get better contracts because she used to be a lawyer at Disney.

And she was also saying that YouTube is exploding. And especially if you're a woman over 40, over 50, she's like, if you just talk about anything on YouTube, you could probably grow your channel very quickly. You look at [00:15:00] the over 50 women influencers who teach you how to put makeup on, or over 40 women who are talking about menopause.

I just thought that was really interesting. Because I haven't really thought about YouTube lately, but I'm starting to think about YouTube more. 

Amy: YouTube's extremely valuable for us and our channel's growing. We're about to hit 10,000. Anyone who's interested in this kind of content, this conversation with Gina, subscribe to our channel.

We do innovators, entrepreneurs, and anyone who's trying to put out something great for the world. A lot of what we do is talk about people's origin stories, how they created something. And I want to delve into that.

But right now, I'd like to hear the story of how you created your membership community. Cause I know you had a lot of doubts. You were trying something new, but how you grew it and how it changed, because it was smaller when it started, now it's bigger. 

It's several years later. It's growing. It's thriving. You just had this awesome meetup in it, right? Round table. So what's that story of how it started and [00:16:00] grew? And how did it change as you hit different growth milestones. 

Gina: Well, I could say that where it actually came from is when we started, it was back in the day when we started doing in person events and seeing that there were actually real people reading our stuff, what they were like, and the more that we did in person events. And then we had to charge for it because doing in person events is very expensive. 

We did two in person events, one in 2018, 19. And because we were doing it at George Lucas Skywalker Summit, and it's incredibly expensive to do it there, we just thought, it'd be so cool to be able to spend the night here with 60 people. 

And to deeply engage in more of these conversations about leadership and life, but it would be 2,500 a person, whoever would pay that and that sold out immediately. And that gave us this aha moment, like, boy, maybe we could connect people on a deeper level all year long, rather than just, one time at an event.

And that's how we shifted. I mean, and then 2020 happened and the entire world shut down. That's how we shifted thinking [00:17:00] from doing these big public summits to focusing on a private membership for leaders who are interested in scaling or helping other women scale their businesses. And we decided to do it small because we were more focused on impact than we were on scale.

And we knew the kind of women we wanted to focus on because ultimately, when you're a community leader, you have to do what feels good for you.

 I remember Elisa saying, if this isn't pleasurable for you and Amy, my partner, to build, then it's not going to work because you two are writing this. And it's a lot of work by the way to build a community.

Gina: So you have to really love it. And we really love it. 

Amy: Can you break down a little bit, a lot of work part? And I don't want you to say anything uncomfortable, but I think the reality of what it takes to build a community and like maybe how that changes as it scales is incredibly valuable to understand.

Gina: I mean, I think the work up front that you do to build a community, which is really meditating on what it is you're trying to build and who you're trying to build it for. I think 

in order for a [00:18:00] community to really work well, it has to connect to a bigger purpose than just, I want to make some membership revenue off of my members. We really wanted to help women reach another level, whether that was a pivot, whether it was taking their company to another level, whether they were experiencing a personal pivot or professional pivot.

And it feels really good for us to do it. My partner, Amy and I sat down and just asked each other why. It's like, I want to build this community because that's why. And what ultimately came down to is because when we help other women achieve what they're looking for, connect them to what they need, achieve 

what 

they want to achieve. It makes us feel better. It makes us feel good. That's it. 

Amy: What led you to focus on women? I'm really curious. 

Gina: I never thought that would be my path. But I started in a tech company and it was led by a woman, but I mostly worked with male engineers. And then when I started Splendora, we had a mostly female team, almost an all female team, except for maybe two guys.

And it was just amazing working with women. And we've had a career in the last 25 [00:19:00] years of working in women's media and just working with women and meeting other women because we were working with women. And it just became our niche.

Amy: Happy feedback loop. 

Gina: Yeah. I didn't set out to to only work with women, but it turns out that. Like, I guess what we used to say is women behave differently when they're together alone without any other, when they can just let their hair down, I suppose. It's a different dynamic when you have a mixed crowd, maybe, I don't know, maybe that's not like very PC to say, but no, I mean, gender is also changing. So I think like women identified, yeah, I mean, that's just how it's been. 

Amy: Well, and it opens up the ability to talk about things like menopause, right? Which would be sort of wouldn't necessary in other communities or it wouldn't be as comfortable, but it's interesting how your career evolves. And I think we all find our genius zone, right? If you're navigating, there's something about this that you're genius zone. 

Gina: Yeah. You mean working with women? 

Amy: Yeah. And I also think you're a master community builder. And of course, you're learning and you're growing and you're trying, but I'm just looking at your results [00:20:00] and we're all imperfect in some ways and amazing in others, right?

And so I'm curious if you have maybe just a tip or a tidbit or something that comes to mind about what you've learned from all the experiments you've run, building communities, keeping them engaged, keeping your paid community, your membership community engaged, keeping the free community engaged, which probably, as you said, takes less now.

What are some of the things you've learned about what works for keeping people engaged? And maybe did you ever like try something you thought would work and it was a dud? That's an amazing story too. 

Gina: Like a million times. Yeah. I could just like spend the next three hours on that.

Well, I'll first tell you the number one tip for running community is that you have to be part of it. Period. That's it. We've tried creating communities, like creating the envelope for a community and then just hoping it would just work by itself and it just doesn't work by itself.

My advice would be, 

if you're going to create a community, you should be a member of that community, deeply a member [00:21:00] of that community. The alliance that Amy and I created we are absolutely members of that community and also recipients of the wisdom that we receive from that community.

We give to it and we get so much from it. So 

I think 

I started to hate the word authenticity because it's now such a buzzword, which is such a shame 

that the word authenticity is now just like some buzzy marketing term. 

So I like to call it real or reality. And I think, especially with AI coming up, like having real interactions, meaningful interactions is what creates great community. 

Some things really didn't work for us, Amy and I are still trying to figure out how we're going to deal with this, but we worked with brands and advertisers and sponsors for our whole careers and we're trying to figure out, is there a way that we could also have brand sponsors and advertisers in a very relevant way help us support the community. I'm not sure, because we've made some mistakes there before that were just really huge mistakes. And it's like doing things that are not aligned with your values right? 

And that's another thing. It's like, if you're going to create a community, you [00:22:00] must have rules for that community and then you must enforce them. And so we have values for our community. We have a vetting process of the kind of people that we're looking for and that they are aligned with our values. And that helps keep the community aligned. 

Amy: How do you find new members? What channels? 

Gina: Through other members. 

Amy: Only through a lot of word of mouth. 

Gina: No, it's only word of mouth. Yeah. So we stayed underground until just a few months ago where we opened up a LinkedIn channel for ourselves.

And we did that so that we could create a platform to amplify what our members are doing inside the alliance so that it doesn't have to be so top secret. We used to joke that it was like Fight Club. So we're starting to rethink just how private we want to be. And it's a work in progress. 

Amy: Interesting. I love that you're always considering, always tweaking, always looking at how to move things forward and keep it fresh. Keep it relevant. I mean, that's probably why you're here [00:23:00] talking to me running a successful community, right? It's just the ability to do that.

So I don't know if you know this, Gina, you may, but before you and I ever met in that room talking about Sarah's company. Before we met in person, I was a big fan of yours. I followed you online and you coined this term perennial, right? 

Right. I think some of you did. 

Gina: How many of you know that Gina coined the term perennial? 

Amy:  I I loved the meaning and the message of it. I felt so seen. I felt it felt aspirational. What sparked that? Like, how did you come up with that? 

Gina: Yeah. What sparked it was being totally rejected by every advertiser we went to pitch in 2016. We just wanted to bring back the newsletter component of what we used to do in our former life. So we thought we'll just create this cool newsletter based on the things that we're thinking about. And we'll get it sponsored by the brands that used to sponsor us back in our Splendora days.

And then we went and we pitched to all of these brands. And they said, are [00:24:00] you gearing your media towards millennials? And we're like sure. And they go, unless you're a hundred percent focused on millennials, we can't support your business. So I wrote that piece and it was a 750-word piece on medium because I was angry and I thought it was such backwards thinking if the best technology companies in the world, like Google, Twitter Facebook, Apple, if they're targeting you based on your behavior and not your birth year, why are we continuing to think of the world as generations?

And so I wrote that like out of anger and it just went totally viral and it continues to go viral today. A professor at Wharton just wrote a book called the perennials and quotes me in it, which is amazing because I wasn't thinking I'm going to write this and then I'm going to trademark it and I'm going to charge for it.

I just wanted to, like dandelion seeds, spread it out there in the world and see what happens. And the amazing thing is like a perennial itself. It continues to pop up all the time. There was a book written in South America a couple years ago. I wrote the floor to perennials and marketing.

I think that perennial [00:25:00] thinking is very much at the heart of how I think, I'm always thinking with curiosity, like, huh, I wonder if we tried this, if that would work. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So far, the what Alliance, what we've created, which is always hovering around 200 members is the most satisfying thing we've ever created. All of our careers, it's just been amazing to create it and also to be a part of it. 

Amy: That just makes my heart sing. 

Gina: Yeah, it really does. 

Amy: I just want to follow this up. Please define what is a perennial?

Gina: A perennial is somebody who's constantly pushing against the growing edge, so there's plenty of people who they get to a place in life and it very understandably. Life is hard, maybe there's illness or, they have a lot of things to overcome.

And when they get to a certain point in their life, they're like, okay, cool. I'm going to just coast here now, because I have everything figured out. And I define a perennial as somebody who doesn't define themselves as certainly not as a generation, somebody who continues to grow and learn [00:26:00] and push against the growing edge.

And also, I think most importantly, that when things, when the chips are down to know, just like perennials that they'll be back and it's self selecting, you can choose your own relevancy. Being a perennial or thinking perennially is really not for everybody. There are some people are like, Oh, no, I could never, I can never do that.

I get it. There's no judgment there. But yeah, so that, that's the way that I define perennial and it's just cool to see that it resonates with a lot of people. 

Amy: Well, it sounds like you built a community out of perennials. 

Gina: Yeah. Everything that we do and the people who have the same values that we do are perennials.

So I would say every single member inside the Alliance are perennials. I would say most of those 23,000 people who are in the, what women are private Facebook group are perennials. And they're constantly learning alongside each other and helping each other grow. It's really cool. 

Amy: This was awesome. I just, I want more like this. 

Gina: Thank you for joining. You could be anywhere doing anything and you chose to join this talk. So [00:27:00] I'm grateful. Thanks for joining us. 

Amy: So thank you all. Thanks again, Gina. Take care everyone.

Outro: Thanks for listening to Getting2Alpha with Amy Jo Kim, the shows that help you innovate faster and smarter. Be sure to check out our website, getting2alpha.com. That's getting[number]2alpha.com for more great resources and podcast episodes.