Tech Talk: Membership, Community, and Forum Software feat. Samantha Pointer Foxx

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the off systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis

Chris Davis 0:31
welcome everybody to another episode of The all systems go podcast, I am your host, Chris L. Davis. And listen, everyone, I I feel like I’m cheating in life sometimes, because you all are about to be part of a conversation. That happens all the time. When it comes to talking shop with respect to automation, that is all about tools. We share clients stories as well. But there’s always this ongoing, ever growing, never ending conversation around software. And I get to talk with some of the best minds in the space internationally around the world all in the community come together. So for this episode, I’m doing that with one of my most tenured and most experienced certified partners. And we’re going to talk about member ship software, I should say memberships last community for some of you that synonymous and I want to use this episode to really talk about the options that you have at your disposal. When it comes to making the decision of whether or not I need I want to do a membership. And if I do do a membership, do I need community? A community capabilities along with it. So today, we have back on the podcast, the best certified partner that I could think of? I’ve been talking, we’ve been talking tech for years. And it is Samantha. Samantha Porter five is back on the podcast. And for those of you who are new, and are like oh wow, what did she do? Let me read a quick bio. And then we’re gonna dive right into some of the most prominent membership and community software and just have an open conversation invite you all to listen in. All right. So Samantha point of Fox is a certified automation service provider and owner of Samantha Samantha pointer enterprises in the founder of Sam’s Tech Academy, she helps small business owners and CEOs who need marketing systems automated but don’t want to touch the tech or do it themselves. Stop touching tech everybody. You don’t have to really don’t. Okay. Her from audit to automation service connects strategic planning process documentation, technology, automation, implementation, and data to help organize to help organizations optimize and grow. I can vouch firsthand, I’ve seen many people Samantha’s way, they’ve all come back satisfied. And I am excited to talk about this topic with you today. Samantha, how are you doing?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 3:28
Hey, I’m doing great. Glad to be back. And I’ve been taking notes. That’s my, my jam there.

Chris Davis 3:35
Yes, yes. So everybody, I’m gonna give you some insight. I’m a bit off right now. And the reason being is because this, this is what happens. Before we recorded this. Samantha mentioned a piece of hardware technology that she has upgraded to that I felt immediately was greater than my heart technology that I’ve most recently upgraded to. So everybody, I went off and was researching St. Chris focus come back into where we are present day so Tech Talk never stopped. So Samantha membership software, community software. First, tell me your first experience with a membership site. What what do you remember what that software was?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 4:29
Probably going to date myself. Yeah, so it my first being inside of a membership site was oh, at least 20 years ago and it was like PB networks. I think it was like some proprietary. It reminded me of the Yahoo clubs that they Yeah, yeah, who dot com. Yeah, it reminded me of that, but it was very far. Bear like it was, like you, you had a thread, everybody talked to thread and, and there was no and you could share a file that was about it. There was no video, no audio, none of that. So that was like my first time being in a membership software with the organization I was with. And like I said, That was over 20 years ago. And every updates, there was no, of course, there was no apps or anything like that. So you got update to be an email that, hey, somebody said something, and then you’d have to log back in to there to respond. So

Chris Davis 5:49
yeah, yeah. And, and mine was, I actually believe my first membership site was Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula. I didn’t even know what membership sites were before then. And you know, you log in, and it was kind of like a forum, and they used it to connect people. And then I don’t know how we were connecting. After that, I think maybe Skype or some other way, because zoom wasn’t around, probably Skype. And then I just started purchasing more and more, Brendon Bouchard stuff, and everything. And everybody was using, like Kajabi. At the time was, I didn’t even know what Kajabi was, or some platform. So and then I got experienced with WishList Member, I think it was like a guy who was selling graphics. So he would upload them to WishList Member and you would log in and get all of these new graphics. So I’ve had experience that’s like my intro into membership sites, what would you say now, because what I want to do is talk about membership sites, talk about community, then then talk about them together. But what have you seen from then to now, as some of the major progressions in membership site software, that many business owners should know about are leveraging effectively now,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 7:12
mainly being able to connect Mobley like on the go, so it needs to have an app that you can get, and that isn’t a Facebook or social media driven. That’s the main thing, and also the ability to like, you know, share files, videos, go live inside of it, you know, and what you could do on social media, I’ve seen a progression now them giving those putting that in, membership, things where you can actually go live inside of your membership platform now. So that’s the progression I’ve seen. Most cuz you know, you people are on the go. And I shouldn’t have to sit at my desk to get the information I need, you know, again, we’re not stuck in the house. So yeah,

Chris Davis 8:11
yeah, yeah. And now add to it, I think some of the top progression I’ve seen is the ability to integrate with your CRM software like that, that came out of nowhere. It wasn’t something I was thinking about, like, it wasn’t on my radar, like one day, they’ll integrate with CRM software, but then you started seeing, you know, like, you go from wish lists, and then I had some experience with member mouse. And these are all kind of like roll up digital access paths, right. In fact, now that I’m saying this, I’ve actually built membership sites with practically all of these trying to find my way in figuring out like, what does my membership offering, you know, look like? And I found, you know, I Digital Access Pass was probably one that I wanted to work so bad, because I I liked the people behind it, but never really got it in place. But you know, this is all like he planned like your silver, gold, bronze, and that set access to everything. And I can’t remember what year it was. But Infusionsoft was the one that led the way it was like, I remember 360 It was the first time where they could take a tag and then integrate whatever tags you have with access to your website, which I believe for marketers opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Yes. So you take that membership functionality, and then we had social media come and blow up. Right social media, everybody now is on Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, whatever the case may be. So now there’s this community aspect. And let me not forsake forums, I think forums, three

Samantha Pointer Foxx 10:06
AOL, Yahoo.

Chris Davis 10:09
Yes, forums was like the way that you interacted online. This was before blogs, everybody, there was a day in time where the internet was without blogs. And you did not have comments, there was no way to comment on an article, believe it or not, the web, the World Wide Web used to look like that. So these forums were like, next level, it was like, Oh, my gosh, I can communicate with other people. Right. Thanks, Bayes, right, every now and then maybe you can interrupt this bitmaps? Yeah. So this, these are things that have evolved over time, right? And then you come into the social age where it really just kind of reinforced and introduced the power of community. Facebook went from pages to groups, and now everybody’s like, Oh, I want to have my own community. And then you started seeing software pop up, I think Ning and I enjoy engine was like

Samantha Pointer Foxx 11:14
part of a name. I think that was one of the first ones to challenge Facebook.

Chris Davis 11:20
Yes, right that, and that’s important. We’ll talk about that later. But you now have software that is focused on community and like one of the top ones right now is circled. There’s a lot of internet marketing influencers that use it. And it’s, it’s been used in a lot of varieties. I know you’re familiar with circle, what, what is circle for those of us those of the listeners that don’t know, and then what are some other kind of like circle esque software you’ve seen out there.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 11:55
So circle is basically just a standalone software or app that you can set up. Set up a group, it has paid, you can do a paid membership or free, you invite people to it, they download the app, or they can access it through a browser. And really is like a simplified. I mean, it reminds me of Facebook groups without all the noise mazing. So you can have topics on the side, it’s real organized, you can organize by topics, you can have different like spaces inside of it, and delegate people to different spaces, you know, so it’s like levels of membership, whether it’s free or pay. They also have like a learning management system built in. So if you want to offer courses through there, they had that built in today. So it’s really just been evolving. I’m in a few circle spaces. And what I like is I can toggle between all the different providers spaces I’m in without leaving and having to login with something different like that. I love the convenience of it. Some other community software out there like heartbeat, like I was telling you before, I’m in a mastermind book club, and they’re using heartbeat, and it’s an app, and you just it reminds me of circle and it’s organization but it’s really clean interface. And then there’s you know, you get notifications, somebody says something, you get a digest, if you have that setting on to your email, if you’re not in there, it has video capability. And just from a user standpoint, I like it’s really clean, and I don’t have to go hunt for the information I’m looking for. And then there’s mighty networks, which you know, I was part of your group with that. There’s another client I have who has mighty networks. So again, different spaces, everything’s organized, you can use tags to you know, find your topic, I guess hashtags to find your topics and to talk and and there’s an app so which is again important to me, you know, being on the go I need to be able to access it. So yeah, those are some of the commands community software that I’ve you know, had experience with.

Chris Davis 14:54
Yeah, and I’ll say I, you know, to see circles kind of rise or their takeover of the space has been interesting because you can always tell the leader by who follows. Right. So circle was the first main software. And perhaps they borrowed it from some other platform that but I don’t know of any other platform that was more prominent than them that had that left sidebar, where you organize everything. It was so sticky, that mighty networks later, I mean, years later, it took them a while to figure it out, like, Oh, this is how people want your community to look. So then they shifted their whole interface, I think earlier this year, over to that side bar navigation, look and feel, which I think added a lot of value to mighty networks. So everybody, I’ve got extensive experience with mighty networks, I’ve used it, I may or may not still be using it at the time of you listening to this. I’ve also referred like enterprise clients to them. So there’s a few things. Let me let me get on my mighty networks rant for a second. So first off, remember everybody we talked about Ning Ning was like the first social network outside of Facebook, the founder, Gina, I’m gonna butcher her last name, so I’m not even gonna try to pronounce it. But be Gina be. She is the founder of mighty networks. So she took all of that experience and built mighty networks. Here’s my issue. I think mighty networks is created for those who want a beautiful visual experience for their audience, and are very low in technical capabilities and expectations. Mighty networks matches that group of people just fine. And it’s because it’s more like a closed off system. It’s hard to get data out of there. It doesn’t play well with anything external. It doesn’t embed things besides their list of dedicated apps. So they don’t have like a HTML embed where you can kind of put anything in there. So as a advanced marketer, one would say, Well, Chris, why did you use them? Well, look, everybody at the time I made the choice circle wasn’t around. There was no other community software, right. So so here comes circle. And everybody I’m telling on all everybody in my community, I’m telling on all the members, because most of them are using circle. And they’re always talking about these features and how you can track progress and what people are looking at, send it over to air table and land of the wonderful for foreign automation professional. So I ended up drooling over what they can do. And then I come back to look at mighty networks and it just like

Chris Davis 17:55
yes. And no matter how many times I’ve like, told them about hey, look at these features, circles doing this, isn’t it, they just have no interest in really unlocking that software to be geared towards marketers. So when we talk about community software, everyone, you really have to if you’re in that decision making process of like, ooh, which one should I pick? You have to really think about, if you need it for marketing purposes or not needed for marketing purposes. I think all roads primarily point to circle. Because of how they built it. They built it with marketers in mind. If you want something beautiful, clean, simple. There’s other solutions, right? Like you said, heartbeat Samantha just showed me heartbeat looks super clean, super clean. And it looks very neat. Very on brand easily. Right? Upload your logo and be like, yeah, it matches my website. Right? It probably has more simple interface and functionality. But we have these two now coexisting Samantha membership and community. And it’s a big overlap, because he mentioned circles got some membership functionality, so does mighty networks. And the one that we haven’t really talked about is a WordPress based software. Right. So there’s all kinds of forum software out there for WordPress. I don’t want to get into that. But buddy boss or buddy boss platform, I don’t know what they’re called themselves nowadays. But they’ve been very aggressive. They’re probably the most aggressive in the WordPress space. If you’re looking to do a WordPress website and have that freedom of control and everything else. Buddy boss is the only software that I’ve seen that plugin to do that and some of them have you I’ve never joined. The crazy thing is I’ve never joined bought anything that was delivered on BuddyBoss have you

Samantha Pointer Foxx 19:51
know, and I was just thinking I was like, for the people who, like were mired who have won or press? You know, I think there was like, optimize. Optimize Press was another one. Yep. That I used and yeah. But then, again, you needed something that wasn’t you was tied to a specific platform that needed to work whether I was on, you know, my own WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, whatever, you know. So that plays a part into it also, but I have not been a part of a buddy, or gotten anything from that. And, yeah,

Chris Davis 20:42
that was interesting to me, because I’m actually intrigued in I want to know how that experience is, right? There’s a couple of things with it being in WordPress that just come to mind naturally is that you’re going to have to have some SMTP plugin so that you can send email reminders, right. So that’s the thing. I tried this, oh, my gosh, wait a minute, everybody. I tried this. When I first launched my membership site. What I wanted this is back when I had the mentorship programs. Remember this? I had forums in the actual website, and I was using BB press. Yeah. If you are familiar with BB press, everybody, it’s like the most vanilla stale software, it looks like Windows 95 When you install it, so it requires a bunch of CSS to and back then mentions didn’t work. So you can add anybody that notifications were a little funky. So I tried it everybody, it just didn’t work well. But from what I see with Buddy boss, they’ve got like a nice skin over that baby press. And it looks more functional. It looks like it. I just have never as much as the company seems to be growing. I’ve never interacted or known somebody who’s actually used actually, I know one person that might still be using it. I’d have to check in on the business. But other than that, I don’t know, I don’t I just I’ve seen way more circle and mighty network communities in the wild. Then then WordPress based BuddyBoss. So

Samantha Pointer Foxx 22:32
it’s all about that CRM connection, you know, people are trying to own their own data now. So yeah, it’s in, you know, once he was taken away from social media, you getting information, you had to go to other platforms, where you’re one to one, you know, get information and and know what your people want and not have to pay for them to even see the stuff that they came there to get, you know. Yep.

Chris Davis 23:01
And, you know, one thing that’s that’s helped me over time of choosing between this software is it really depends on how you want your members to engage. Right? Because we also have what is it? Khurana uses it?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 23:26
Oh, yes. Member about

Chris Davis 23:29
member vault? There it is. There it is. Member vault which gives you a it’s interesting, because there’s actually more than I’m thinking about my good friend, Natalie, Natalie, Lucia, she’s got access ally, Ally, Ally, access ally. So there are that? How do you navigate the space everyone? So what what I’m learning what I’ve learned in my experience, is that it really depends on how you want people to engage. So like member vault, a lot of membership sites now are more so resource focused, right? You go in and it’s well organized for resources that you need you want access to, right, and then the community part comes in if you want to actually offer peer to peer engagement, right. But the two do not have to coexist. No, and this is one of the things that I’ve literally been doing with the automation bridge community is saying well wait a minute. I’ve got peer to peer which I think is extremely valuable, but also have all of these resources and I think for my business case, it became a bit detrimental trying to put it all in one right or I was trying to make mighty networks do everything it was like okay, here’s the office I was replays and links to this doesn’t it?

Unknown Speaker 24:55
Get overwhelming

Chris Davis 24:59
is just Built for it, they want you to use it like that. They’re like, look, you can charge for plans and give access. But it’s all janky on the back end, compared to marketing software. So I even had to make that decision and say, You know what, I want to have a membership experience where you can quickly and easily access Well, organized resources, take courses, all of that, and then add on the community. Exactly. And if you want to engage, you can but you can still get value from the membership by just getting the ongoing populate. I mean, we upload stuff weekly, you know, so there’s always new content. So it if it helps, as as we’re talking about this, everyone, you really need to get clear on do I need community or do I need membership? And the third one would be do I want forum? Right? Because form is right in the middle between community and membership, right? Is form. It’s still personal, but not as open ly communal, like community software, like circle and all of that. So there’s options out there, I had a friend who was trying to do a Facebook group, Samantha. And I asked about our audiences, it was like, wealthy people like millionaires and all of that. And I said, stupid question. Are wealthy people on Facebook? Right, like, just, I don’t know, I’m not yet that wealthy person, you know. And she paused and she was like, actually, you know what? They’re not. And I was like, it feels like they will be at like exclusive clubs. Traveling. It just feels like they would have their own network. You know,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 26:52
even at LinkedIn groups you get in, but I had LinkedIn groups, too. And zero engagement. Nobody’s logging in.

Chris Davis 27:03
Yes. It seems very that

Samantha Pointer Foxx 27:07
their meeting? Yeah.

Chris Davis 27:10
Absolutely. And when I said that, she was like, You know what, you’re right. I meet a lot of them at coffee shops. So I was like, Well, I know, somebody told you to start a Facebook group, because that’s just common speak now, hey, you just started a Facebook group and did it. Right. I said, But not only do I think they’re not on there. But also don’t think that other people want to be included with other people when we talk about like,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 27:36
oh, that they’re struggling, you get what I’m

Chris Davis 27:39
saying. So you have that consideration. And now you look, you’re not looking for a community software, you’re looking for a membership site where every one a, a person can log in, and have their individual experience. And it’s not connected to anybody else seeing what they’re doing. Right. So I think this is such a good conversation to have. Because I don’t think people are taking the time to compartmentalize that too, and understand how to use it. Now we flip it and look at a que que PCC has been on the podcast a few times. She’s one of our power partners and good friends. She’s got an active campaign on a community, you definitely want people to engage in meet and share. You know, that’s a whole different use case there. You know. So I think those are important things. And then when you factor in connecting to the CRM, I mean, that’s a whole nother level. Let me share with you all right now, you cannot do it with mighty networks. Don’t try. It’s not even worth trying to hire a developer just just migrate to another platform. You can’t do it with circle. You can’t do it with access ally as well, because there’s WordPress base. But those are the few that I know of community software off the top of my head. Oh, member vote. I don’t know if I would consider that community more than membership. You know, software,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 29:06
or membership. Yeah. Community. I was even thinking about Thinkific they added a community piece, which basically looks like a forum

Chris Davis 29:18
for right Kajabi did the same thing. It looks like Yeah. So so so it’s interesting,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 29:27
like discord and slack. Okay, I’ve seen a more uptick in discord. You know, when I’ve joined different things. It’s like, okay, join the group on this court. Yes. Again, it’s very busy and fly by the seat of their pants. Yes. As organized to me. As you know, some of these other like circle and stuff where it’s more organized topics. You’re really just dropped in on conversation? Do you know?

Chris Davis 30:03
Yeah, yeah, business owners are hijacking discord. Right? It was meant for gamers connect with Twitch and all of that have a server to talk to your viewers or the people who watch your game streams. And business owners came in there. And I believe it started with like, stock stock market folks, because they would have these discord channels and share their their trades and all of that. And I think it just caught on because there were certain stipulations around like stocks in those types of businesses on Facebook, even on some of these other platforms. Whereas I guess discord didn’t have those restrictions. What I’ll say is this, Discord continues to confuse me my brain, as much as I love slack. Like I use Slack every day, I just

Samantha Pointer Foxx 30:58
follow that Discord is like,

Chris Davis 31:01
it’s just I can’t put my finger on why it’s so mad that I’ve been I’m in a mastermind that uses it. So I have to learn it. And I’ve been in this process of learning it for about a year now. And I don’t know if it’s just we have too many channels and are not organized enough. Or if Discord is just a confusing platform for those of us who are over the age of 2830. And up we used to using software, a certain type of software, and it just may be out of our generation and just causing us to shift in and really adapt. But the promises this it’s got a tech side to it that I think has strong implement implications for marketing. I met with a young man who was like creating discord bots. And these bots based on what people would do, it would actually be able to go out and like send data out of discord and do some other things. So I was like, Okay, that’s interesting. I would like to know more about that. So I think bots in discord are something that to if you can dive in and learn. And by the way, if you’re listening to this and you’re like Oh Chris, like I need to show you what these bots do Oh, let me show you how my Discord. We’ve got a new email address specifically for the podcast. Holler at automation bridge.com. So that’s h o l l e r at automation bridge.com. Send us an email right there. Like what was that? Caller No. H O ll er, at automation bridge.com. And send me some use cases, if you’re using any of this software, by the way, and you’re like, Oh, this is how I’m using it. We love collecting use cases. And seeing it helps us better recommend software when we know how other peoples are people are using it or have used it. But I’m really looking forward to learning more about discord because you know, you have mid journey have mid journey and how you can use that to create follow that, you know,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 33:20
I’m trying to think of the community I just joined. I think it might have been an affiliate community and they’re like, this is our Discord channel hop on in there. Yeah, yeah. But yeah,

Chris Davis 33:32
I’ve seen a tech company starting to use it too. So I joined a it was an AI podcasting software free account. And then it was like, join us on Discord. And I joined the discord. And what I did like about it is they had different areas that you could talk to different people on the team. So you could talk to the product team, you could talk to the devs. And all of that. I actually felt like that was if the software was good, I would have kept using it. But it wasn’t. But for the limited time that I was in there, I felt like I got I got responses from like the developers. So if that’s the case, then there. Yes, yes. So that brings us to actually like SAS company communities. Right. I think by default, a lot of them are on Facebook groups. Just let people come in

Samantha Pointer Foxx 34:32
and then on Slack now.

Chris Davis 34:34
Okay, so you’ve you’ve seen a few on Slack.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 34:38
Even you know, like, yeah, yeah, it’s like they’re moving over to slack. Keep has started like a Slack channel, you know, for their partners because they’re like, you know, maybe let’s talk more in here for the people who don’t like Facebook or whatever. So I think Have you seen more people run communities in tandem in two different places, but sharing the same thing, because I know Kate did that for a long time, her Facebook group and her circle matched. So until she made the transition fully. So you might see a lot of that now to

Chris Davis 35:19
yeah, I’ve actually seen a few. This is the thing, I feel like I’ve seen communities in all software except buddy boss. And I’m not trying to talk down on buddy boss, it’s just, I feel like they market to me so much. I use their theme I one of my websites, I actually use their theme in like it. But I just have never experienced from a user perspective, somebody’s using it. But um, Slack is slack is interesting, because I love it. And it makes sense to me in a business use case where we’re collaborating throughout the day. And I’ve joined a few Slack channels that that were like, like you mentioned, like keep and you know, all of these other. Yeah, ActiveCampaign has one as well. So I actually like it. It doesn’t necessarily give me the community feel more than like a special discussion and question q&a type.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 36:18
Customer service even, you know,

Chris Davis 36:21
yep, yep, yep. So you do have that as an option. I know, there’s, there’s quite a few people that used that have you slack that have gone away from it. And I think primarily because of the pricing structure. Like you’re literally paying for every member. And as that membership grows, you’re paying for a seat. So again, you’re abusing the software. Slack is not community software, but what to do,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 36:52
as such, patients.

Chris Davis 36:55
Hey, should solve That’s right, good community software, communication. Software. That’s a great differentiator. And I’ll say this, I’ll say this, Samantha.

Chris Davis 37:08
I’m also seeing a trend, more niche specific, where they’ll release software. And inside of that software, there’s some community aspects which are using like groups. I think groups are just the updated way of saying forms. Yes, right. Like, it’s like, boy, young man, it’s like, it’s technically the same thing.

Chris Davis 37:39
more mature and distinguish, right? So I believe that we owe some respect, pay to form software that has paved the way for like these threads that are now called groups, and you can have conversations with them. But my wife’s trainers shout out to Brandon McAfee. He has a nice app. I forget the name of it. But he’s got an app. And it has all your fitness stuff in there. But then it has groups that you can join groups about certain topics, if you’re trying to build muscle, lose weight, do this. So now, without being on Facebook, and it’s mobile friendly, I can get access to the trainer as questions, do all of these things. So it’s like it does have have a very community feel, you know, because you can add pictures. I think when you start adding pictures and videos and all of that from users that other users can view by default that makes it community by default,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 38:39
I think you’ll see that a lot in fitness in the fitness world and fitness, because that’s committed that’s community based, like you want other people to cheer you on and you cheer them on and everything. So a lot of different apps I’ve had has that community feature has the video feature has the on demand feature that connects to the YouTube channel in the alerts you know.

Chris Davis 39:08
Yeah, I say this, everybody. We talked about integrating with your CRM. I am I have no I hold no shame in no secret with the software that I use and love to do that is called WP fusion. There’s others like I said access ally, Min barium active member 360. I actually support all of them. If somebody came to him was like, Hey, I’m using Membury. I wouldn’t be like, Oh, yuck. What’s that? Right? Like? It’s all good software. They all just do it do the same thing in a different way. And I’ll say this, one of the things that I like about WP fusion, which I think is so forward thinking in the vein of connecting your membership, and potentially your community software with your website is that you can, it can pull data to populate fields in, push it to your CRM from your website, right? So when I have, let’s say, my membership site is on my WordPress is powered by WordPress. And let’s say somebody fills out a form of gravity form or a any type of form to give me information. I don’t have to use Zapier. I don’t have to use anything, I can ask that I can have it sync immediately. Once it’s captured, it goes into my CRM system. And I think that that is not talked about enough. Power, the true power? Yes. So I think that I don’t know if I would ever be able to have a membership site that doesn’t do that.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 40:54
Yeah, yeah. I just can’t see it. Because that is important that helps you to make the decisions in your business. Yeah, and needed to know what to provide next, you know,

Chris Davis 41:07
what to provide next. And I look at, you know, like the Kajabi is, and the Thinkific. I think you mentioned, I think even teachable is adding like this community feature in on the surface level. And in some business use cases, I do think that it’s just enough, as a marketer is I just would, I would just like to know, when the last time you logged in, you know, what was the last thing that you guys thread you visited? Or did you get in? How far did you get right? Like, I have mine set up with WP fusion, that by default, I don’t have to do anything extra. Whenever a video was uploaded to the website, and someone watches it, it informs my CRM, hey, they started. And when they finish, guess what? It informs my CRM as an event that started in a finished? Am I using any of this data? I’m not using all of it, I’m using some of it. But Samantha? How many times have you had a client come up to you? And you’ve asked them? Hey, have you been collecting this data? And you’re like, No, should I have? Like, yeah, so I would rather the data be there waiting for me to discover a use case for it, then discover a use case and not have the data. So these are, listen, everybody. We’re just talking shop here. These aren’t important considerations for you all to be aware of when you’re out here selecting software, especially when it comes to membership sites, community in that space in between forums. Have you seen out in the wild a standalone forum? I feel like they’re always coupled with a membership or community software.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 43:01
Ah, um, that PBN networks, one, which is basically a form it is standalone. And I’m thinking about this affiliate. I can’t think of the name of it, but it was for affiliates. But it was standalone. It was a forum. So you could, you know, talk amongst yourself, but I can’t think of the name of it. But other than that, I don’t know that nothing big name that, you know, you see a lot of I can’t think of anything off the top of my head like,

Chris Davis 43:39
yeah, yeah, I know that there’s what is it called? bulletin something bulletin? Right. And then I know, there’s XenForo. And there’s software out there. But you know, when I go to the websites, they don’t do a real good job of like, showcasing who’s NuGet you know, I can’t get a list of forum

Samantha Pointer Foxx 44:01
is probably used in internal, you know, specifically type of, I don’t know, business category, right. You know, the general businesses aren’t just looking for that alone. So

Chris Davis 44:19
yep, yep. So I, I have a forums hold a special place in my heart. I still am. Like, I’m still pro forums. I just don’t see a lot of people use them. Isolated, right, like to them to themselves. I joined a membership group. And they have more of like a resource membership site. But they did have it. I think it’s ip ip board. Oh, yeah. AP board is what it’s called. They have it integrated with IP board and it’s like single sign on. So once you sign into WordPress, you’re also signed into that. And that’s like their community, and its techie is techie. So I feel like that fits. I don’t feel like that would fit perhaps in a more visual, right industry, right? Like, they’re gonna want to put pictures in a feed and you know, like stuff and share. So it’s just interesting.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 45:21
You know, visual head looks is important, you know?

Chris Davis 45:24
Yep. Yep. So, in a day and age where people are trying to figure out, do I need to be on social media, this my best opportunity to reach? I’ve always been of the mindset that you need to create your own platform and own it. Yes. So whatever that looks like, hopefully, some software that we’ve mentioned today, has been has helped, like, oh, wait a minute, maybe look into that, or perhaps you are looking at should I use mighty networks a circle as a marketer? And I just answered your question, because mighty networks is not marketing focused. Right? Maybe you were you were looking at starting a membership site, when you’re realizing like, oh, wait a minute, I want my people to see each other and communicate. So now I know you need to go community first. So so these are just again, this is an open conversation, and an ongoing conversation on Office Hours next week, we’ll probably have something new to bring to the table. Always new players emerging. But I feel really confident in the current stack that I have and some of the technology that has been used. Again, I’m looking forward to seeing if there’s a marketing use case for discord bots, I pretty much have slack, where it needs to be, there is always room for a disrupter, somebody to come out and say, hey, look, you can do all of this that you can do here, here, here. And we add this for marketers, right? Like, I always have that I feel like these conversations, if you’re in like a finance industry, or interior decorating, like my wife, I think these are a lot easier to create. You think like you look at heartbeat, wood interior designer wouldn’t love how beautiful that

Samantha Pointer Foxx 47:11
looks? Yeah,

Chris Davis 47:12
right. And then I’m thinking if if my CPA had a Slack channel? Would I engage with that to get answers about like, my taxes and things of that nature? Or would I want to be in a more Facebook group, where we’re all learning together? I don’t think so. I think I will want more of a dedicated communication channel to just say, Hey, can I write this off? Right now, now from there, and they may be like, we always get these questions, we want everybody to see them. So perhaps you have like a communication channel. And then you have a team that creates like an FAQ, our most answered questions are, you know, whatever. And that’s somewhere else, you know, like, there’s ways around,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 47:59
use case for select, as far as your service provider, having each client have their own channel, where you and your team can communicate, you don’t necessarily have to invite the client to that, but you and the team are communicating about that particular client, that way it doesn’t get lost in a bigger channel or whatever.

Chris Davis 48:22
I agree. I agree. I like that use case. And it would kind of mirror the project management space, client facing project management space, and no more emails back and forth. I can be very asynchronous and make sure that things get moved for that. That’s that’s a simple one. Samantha, but I think that’s real powerful. Yeah, right, that that may have been worth the price of listening today. You know, setting up that slack channel for internal purposes, to collaborate, you know, and communicate because what what we talked about was membership sites, community sites, communic, Keishon, membership software, community software, communication, software, forum software, all four of these, you just need to know you should or at least now you’re aware, right? Which one should I be thinking about?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 49:18
This, get it? Because somebody said you got to do it. You know, please. Your business might not need a group. Your business might not need a community.

Chris Davis 49:29
Yes. I mean, and we all we all learn.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 49:33
Like, really are the is the business on it all day. We talking to chatting it up? No, we’re working.

Chris Davis 49:42
Now that you say that, I want to I want to share a unsuccess story. And that was I created that exact thing that you mentioned on Slack. I ended up creating it in mighty networks for a client and I created this space and say, Hey, you can log in here and you know, you could watch things and keep track of what we’re doing. I it was kind of like a community project management space. And I tell you, the person may be logged in two times, pay full price for the service log in a couple of times. And I’m not the type that’s just like, oh, well, if you don’t, if you don’t log in, hey, my bad. I want you to get the transformation. Right, I did this so you could engage and get the transformation. But then I just had to realize, you know, when you’re talking to a certain type of business owner that that a certain level, there’s just some things that they don’t care to do.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 50:37
Right? Don’t have time,

Chris Davis 50:41
I probably would have had better success setting up a Slack channel saying, Hey, we have questions post here. Right, you know, probably would have been much more effective. So

Samantha Pointer Foxx 50:53
quizzes like I’m texting

Chris Davis 50:54
exists exactly as on my phone, I can, you know, be out and about and still, you know, send a message

Samantha Pointer Foxx 51:02
or learn nothing. That’s the thing. I’m fine. And business owners don’t want something new technical, they have to learn to engage with the

Chris Davis 51:12
Excel. Yeah, that’s a good one. All right, Samantha, this has been great. As we’re talking more software comes to mind, and I don’t know, I can’t keep spinning it off. Right. But there was one. Steve, he’s a community member. Click que Leq. I’ve got no experience with it. But when I checked it out, there are a few. I think, like, I forget his name. He’s in overseas. Jack James James Schramko. I think he’s like, the main promoter of it. So it’s all in one membership, software that they probably added community. So as you all are looking, think about this? Is it community first software with membership capabilities? Or is it membership, first software, with community capabilities? At least we’re thinking about it that way should help you in your decision making. Especially if you know, and you’re intentional about building either membership, our community that’s going to help navigate that. So, Samantha, they’ve listened and what if they’re like, Okay, I get it, but I still need help. comfortable or confident doing this myself? Who’s there to help me navigate this technical, logical terrain? Where can people get in touch with you find out more and potentially leverage you for that type of need?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 52:45
Well, you can find me on my website, of course, my home base organizing guru.com I can help you strategize and pick the right technology for you based on your goals, your business goals, and set it up for you. So you don’t have to touch the tech or learn the tech.

Chris Davis 53:04
Touch the tech touch it. So we’ll have

Samantha Pointer Foxx 53:11
media so as a CSP automate Sam automates Yeah, you can find me online, but organizing guru.com is the best place to find all my information. Get on a call with me and let’s just talk.

Chris Davis 53:29
Great, great. So that’s in the show notes, everyone organizing guru.com. And we’ll have her social profiles in there as well. So you can connect with Samantha Samantha always, thank you for coming on. This is like my second or third time this week seeing you so again, I’m spoiled. I’m spoiled everybody. These are the type of conversation in the brains that I have access to. So thank you, Samantha. To all of my listeners, thank you for your listenership. This is a new word that we’ve created on the podcast listenership. I’m gonna look it up, it may already be in existence, it doesn’t matter. It’s a word that I love using but thank you for your listenership and your time, hopefully something was said today that helps you move your business forward that much more, today and tomorrow, and to everybody, all of my community and listeners holistically, continue to automate responsibly my friends.

Chris Davis 54:27
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly, and you can access them all at all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the off systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis

Chris Davis 0:31
welcome everybody to another episode of The all systems go podcast, I am your host, Chris L. Davis. And listen, everyone, I I feel like I’m cheating in life sometimes, because you all are about to be part of a conversation. That happens all the time. When it comes to talking shop with respect to automation, that is all about tools. We share clients stories as well. But there’s always this ongoing, ever growing, never ending conversation around software. And I get to talk with some of the best minds in the space internationally around the world all in the community come together. So for this episode, I’m doing that with one of my most tenured and most experienced certified partners. And we’re going to talk about member ship software, I should say memberships last community for some of you that synonymous and I want to use this episode to really talk about the options that you have at your disposal. When it comes to making the decision of whether or not I need I want to do a membership. And if I do do a membership, do I need community? A community capabilities along with it. So today, we have back on the podcast, the best certified partner that I could think of? I’ve been talking, we’ve been talking tech for years. And it is Samantha. Samantha Porter five is back on the podcast. And for those of you who are new, and are like oh wow, what did she do? Let me read a quick bio. And then we’re gonna dive right into some of the most prominent membership and community software and just have an open conversation invite you all to listen in. All right. So Samantha point of Fox is a certified automation service provider and owner of Samantha Samantha pointer enterprises in the founder of Sam’s Tech Academy, she helps small business owners and CEOs who need marketing systems automated but don’t want to touch the tech or do it themselves. Stop touching tech everybody. You don’t have to really don’t. Okay. Her from audit to automation service connects strategic planning process documentation, technology, automation, implementation, and data to help organize to help organizations optimize and grow. I can vouch firsthand, I’ve seen many people Samantha’s way, they’ve all come back satisfied. And I am excited to talk about this topic with you today. Samantha, how are you doing?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 3:28
Hey, I’m doing great. Glad to be back. And I’ve been taking notes. That’s my, my jam there.

Chris Davis 3:35
Yes, yes. So everybody, I’m gonna give you some insight. I’m a bit off right now. And the reason being is because this, this is what happens. Before we recorded this. Samantha mentioned a piece of hardware technology that she has upgraded to that I felt immediately was greater than my heart technology that I’ve most recently upgraded to. So everybody, I went off and was researching St. Chris focus come back into where we are present day so Tech Talk never stopped. So Samantha membership software, community software. First, tell me your first experience with a membership site. What what do you remember what that software was?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 4:29
Probably going to date myself. Yeah, so it my first being inside of a membership site was oh, at least 20 years ago and it was like PB networks. I think it was like some proprietary. It reminded me of the Yahoo clubs that they Yeah, yeah, who dot com. Yeah, it reminded me of that, but it was very far. Bear like it was, like you, you had a thread, everybody talked to thread and, and there was no and you could share a file that was about it. There was no video, no audio, none of that. So that was like my first time being in a membership software with the organization I was with. And like I said, That was over 20 years ago. And every updates, there was no, of course, there was no apps or anything like that. So you got update to be an email that, hey, somebody said something, and then you’d have to log back in to there to respond. So

Chris Davis 5:49
yeah, yeah. And, and mine was, I actually believe my first membership site was Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula. I didn’t even know what membership sites were before then. And you know, you log in, and it was kind of like a forum, and they used it to connect people. And then I don’t know how we were connecting. After that, I think maybe Skype or some other way, because zoom wasn’t around, probably Skype. And then I just started purchasing more and more, Brendon Bouchard stuff, and everything. And everybody was using, like Kajabi. At the time was, I didn’t even know what Kajabi was, or some platform. So and then I got experienced with WishList Member, I think it was like a guy who was selling graphics. So he would upload them to WishList Member and you would log in and get all of these new graphics. So I’ve had experience that’s like my intro into membership sites, what would you say now, because what I want to do is talk about membership sites, talk about community, then then talk about them together. But what have you seen from then to now, as some of the major progressions in membership site software, that many business owners should know about are leveraging effectively now,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 7:12
mainly being able to connect Mobley like on the go, so it needs to have an app that you can get, and that isn’t a Facebook or social media driven. That’s the main thing, and also the ability to like, you know, share files, videos, go live inside of it, you know, and what you could do on social media, I’ve seen a progression now them giving those putting that in, membership, things where you can actually go live inside of your membership platform now. So that’s the progression I’ve seen. Most cuz you know, you people are on the go. And I shouldn’t have to sit at my desk to get the information I need, you know, again, we’re not stuck in the house. So yeah,

Chris Davis 8:11
yeah, yeah. And now add to it, I think some of the top progression I’ve seen is the ability to integrate with your CRM software like that, that came out of nowhere. It wasn’t something I was thinking about, like, it wasn’t on my radar, like one day, they’ll integrate with CRM software, but then you started seeing, you know, like, you go from wish lists, and then I had some experience with member mouse. And these are all kind of like roll up digital access paths, right. In fact, now that I’m saying this, I’ve actually built membership sites with practically all of these trying to find my way in figuring out like, what does my membership offering, you know, look like? And I found, you know, I Digital Access Pass was probably one that I wanted to work so bad, because I I liked the people behind it, but never really got it in place. But you know, this is all like he planned like your silver, gold, bronze, and that set access to everything. And I can’t remember what year it was. But Infusionsoft was the one that led the way it was like, I remember 360 It was the first time where they could take a tag and then integrate whatever tags you have with access to your website, which I believe for marketers opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Yes. So you take that membership functionality, and then we had social media come and blow up. Right social media, everybody now is on Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, whatever the case may be. So now there’s this community aspect. And let me not forsake forums, I think forums, three

Samantha Pointer Foxx 10:06
AOL, Yahoo.

Chris Davis 10:09
Yes, forums was like the way that you interacted online. This was before blogs, everybody, there was a day in time where the internet was without blogs. And you did not have comments, there was no way to comment on an article, believe it or not, the web, the World Wide Web used to look like that. So these forums were like, next level, it was like, Oh, my gosh, I can communicate with other people. Right. Thanks, Bayes, right, every now and then maybe you can interrupt this bitmaps? Yeah. So this, these are things that have evolved over time, right? And then you come into the social age where it really just kind of reinforced and introduced the power of community. Facebook went from pages to groups, and now everybody’s like, Oh, I want to have my own community. And then you started seeing software pop up, I think Ning and I enjoy engine was like

Samantha Pointer Foxx 11:14
part of a name. I think that was one of the first ones to challenge Facebook.

Chris Davis 11:20
Yes, right that, and that’s important. We’ll talk about that later. But you now have software that is focused on community and like one of the top ones right now is circled. There’s a lot of internet marketing influencers that use it. And it’s, it’s been used in a lot of varieties. I know you’re familiar with circle, what, what is circle for those of us those of the listeners that don’t know, and then what are some other kind of like circle esque software you’ve seen out there.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 11:55
So circle is basically just a standalone software or app that you can set up. Set up a group, it has paid, you can do a paid membership or free, you invite people to it, they download the app, or they can access it through a browser. And really is like a simplified. I mean, it reminds me of Facebook groups without all the noise mazing. So you can have topics on the side, it’s real organized, you can organize by topics, you can have different like spaces inside of it, and delegate people to different spaces, you know, so it’s like levels of membership, whether it’s free or pay. They also have like a learning management system built in. So if you want to offer courses through there, they had that built in today. So it’s really just been evolving. I’m in a few circle spaces. And what I like is I can toggle between all the different providers spaces I’m in without leaving and having to login with something different like that. I love the convenience of it. Some other community software out there like heartbeat, like I was telling you before, I’m in a mastermind book club, and they’re using heartbeat, and it’s an app, and you just it reminds me of circle and it’s organization but it’s really clean interface. And then there’s you know, you get notifications, somebody says something, you get a digest, if you have that setting on to your email, if you’re not in there, it has video capability. And just from a user standpoint, I like it’s really clean, and I don’t have to go hunt for the information I’m looking for. And then there’s mighty networks, which you know, I was part of your group with that. There’s another client I have who has mighty networks. So again, different spaces, everything’s organized, you can use tags to you know, find your topic, I guess hashtags to find your topics and to talk and and there’s an app so which is again important to me, you know, being on the go I need to be able to access it. So yeah, those are some of the commands community software that I’ve you know, had experience with.

Chris Davis 14:54
Yeah, and I’ll say I, you know, to see circles kind of rise or their takeover of the space has been interesting because you can always tell the leader by who follows. Right. So circle was the first main software. And perhaps they borrowed it from some other platform that but I don’t know of any other platform that was more prominent than them that had that left sidebar, where you organize everything. It was so sticky, that mighty networks later, I mean, years later, it took them a while to figure it out, like, Oh, this is how people want your community to look. So then they shifted their whole interface, I think earlier this year, over to that side bar navigation, look and feel, which I think added a lot of value to mighty networks. So everybody, I’ve got extensive experience with mighty networks, I’ve used it, I may or may not still be using it at the time of you listening to this. I’ve also referred like enterprise clients to them. So there’s a few things. Let me let me get on my mighty networks rant for a second. So first off, remember everybody we talked about Ning Ning was like the first social network outside of Facebook, the founder, Gina, I’m gonna butcher her last name, so I’m not even gonna try to pronounce it. But be Gina be. She is the founder of mighty networks. So she took all of that experience and built mighty networks. Here’s my issue. I think mighty networks is created for those who want a beautiful visual experience for their audience, and are very low in technical capabilities and expectations. Mighty networks matches that group of people just fine. And it’s because it’s more like a closed off system. It’s hard to get data out of there. It doesn’t play well with anything external. It doesn’t embed things besides their list of dedicated apps. So they don’t have like a HTML embed where you can kind of put anything in there. So as a advanced marketer, one would say, Well, Chris, why did you use them? Well, look, everybody at the time I made the choice circle wasn’t around. There was no other community software, right. So so here comes circle. And everybody I’m telling on all everybody in my community, I’m telling on all the members, because most of them are using circle. And they’re always talking about these features and how you can track progress and what people are looking at, send it over to air table and land of the wonderful for foreign automation professional. So I ended up drooling over what they can do. And then I come back to look at mighty networks and it just like

Chris Davis 17:55
yes. And no matter how many times I’ve like, told them about hey, look at these features, circles doing this, isn’t it, they just have no interest in really unlocking that software to be geared towards marketers. So when we talk about community software, everyone, you really have to if you’re in that decision making process of like, ooh, which one should I pick? You have to really think about, if you need it for marketing purposes or not needed for marketing purposes. I think all roads primarily point to circle. Because of how they built it. They built it with marketers in mind. If you want something beautiful, clean, simple. There’s other solutions, right? Like you said, heartbeat Samantha just showed me heartbeat looks super clean, super clean. And it looks very neat. Very on brand easily. Right? Upload your logo and be like, yeah, it matches my website. Right? It probably has more simple interface and functionality. But we have these two now coexisting Samantha membership and community. And it’s a big overlap, because he mentioned circles got some membership functionality, so does mighty networks. And the one that we haven’t really talked about is a WordPress based software. Right. So there’s all kinds of forum software out there for WordPress. I don’t want to get into that. But buddy boss or buddy boss platform, I don’t know what they’re called themselves nowadays. But they’ve been very aggressive. They’re probably the most aggressive in the WordPress space. If you’re looking to do a WordPress website and have that freedom of control and everything else. Buddy boss is the only software that I’ve seen that plugin to do that and some of them have you I’ve never joined. The crazy thing is I’ve never joined bought anything that was delivered on BuddyBoss have you

Samantha Pointer Foxx 19:51
know, and I was just thinking I was like, for the people who, like were mired who have won or press? You know, I think there was like, optimize. Optimize Press was another one. Yep. That I used and yeah. But then, again, you needed something that wasn’t you was tied to a specific platform that needed to work whether I was on, you know, my own WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, whatever, you know. So that plays a part into it also, but I have not been a part of a buddy, or gotten anything from that. And, yeah,

Chris Davis 20:42
that was interesting to me, because I’m actually intrigued in I want to know how that experience is, right? There’s a couple of things with it being in WordPress that just come to mind naturally is that you’re going to have to have some SMTP plugin so that you can send email reminders, right. So that’s the thing. I tried this, oh, my gosh, wait a minute, everybody. I tried this. When I first launched my membership site. What I wanted this is back when I had the mentorship programs. Remember this? I had forums in the actual website, and I was using BB press. Yeah. If you are familiar with BB press, everybody, it’s like the most vanilla stale software, it looks like Windows 95 When you install it, so it requires a bunch of CSS to and back then mentions didn’t work. So you can add anybody that notifications were a little funky. So I tried it everybody, it just didn’t work well. But from what I see with Buddy boss, they’ve got like a nice skin over that baby press. And it looks more functional. It looks like it. I just have never as much as the company seems to be growing. I’ve never interacted or known somebody who’s actually used actually, I know one person that might still be using it. I’d have to check in on the business. But other than that, I don’t know, I don’t I just I’ve seen way more circle and mighty network communities in the wild. Then then WordPress based BuddyBoss. So

Samantha Pointer Foxx 22:32
it’s all about that CRM connection, you know, people are trying to own their own data now. So yeah, it’s in, you know, once he was taken away from social media, you getting information, you had to go to other platforms, where you’re one to one, you know, get information and and know what your people want and not have to pay for them to even see the stuff that they came there to get, you know. Yep.

Chris Davis 23:01
And, you know, one thing that’s that’s helped me over time of choosing between this software is it really depends on how you want your members to engage. Right? Because we also have what is it? Khurana uses it?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 23:26
Oh, yes. Member about

Chris Davis 23:29
member vault? There it is. There it is. Member vault which gives you a it’s interesting, because there’s actually more than I’m thinking about my good friend, Natalie, Natalie, Lucia, she’s got access ally, Ally, Ally, access ally. So there are that? How do you navigate the space everyone? So what what I’m learning what I’ve learned in my experience, is that it really depends on how you want people to engage. So like member vault, a lot of membership sites now are more so resource focused, right? You go in and it’s well organized for resources that you need you want access to, right, and then the community part comes in if you want to actually offer peer to peer engagement, right. But the two do not have to coexist. No, and this is one of the things that I’ve literally been doing with the automation bridge community is saying well wait a minute. I’ve got peer to peer which I think is extremely valuable, but also have all of these resources and I think for my business case, it became a bit detrimental trying to put it all in one right or I was trying to make mighty networks do everything it was like okay, here’s the office I was replays and links to this doesn’t it?

Unknown Speaker 24:55
Get overwhelming

Chris Davis 24:59
is just Built for it, they want you to use it like that. They’re like, look, you can charge for plans and give access. But it’s all janky on the back end, compared to marketing software. So I even had to make that decision and say, You know what, I want to have a membership experience where you can quickly and easily access Well, organized resources, take courses, all of that, and then add on the community. Exactly. And if you want to engage, you can but you can still get value from the membership by just getting the ongoing populate. I mean, we upload stuff weekly, you know, so there’s always new content. So it if it helps, as as we’re talking about this, everyone, you really need to get clear on do I need community or do I need membership? And the third one would be do I want forum? Right? Because form is right in the middle between community and membership, right? Is form. It’s still personal, but not as open ly communal, like community software, like circle and all of that. So there’s options out there, I had a friend who was trying to do a Facebook group, Samantha. And I asked about our audiences, it was like, wealthy people like millionaires and all of that. And I said, stupid question. Are wealthy people on Facebook? Right, like, just, I don’t know, I’m not yet that wealthy person, you know. And she paused and she was like, actually, you know what? They’re not. And I was like, it feels like they will be at like exclusive clubs. Traveling. It just feels like they would have their own network. You know,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 26:52
even at LinkedIn groups you get in, but I had LinkedIn groups, too. And zero engagement. Nobody’s logging in.

Chris Davis 27:03
Yes. It seems very that

Samantha Pointer Foxx 27:07
their meeting? Yeah.

Chris Davis 27:10
Absolutely. And when I said that, she was like, You know what, you’re right. I meet a lot of them at coffee shops. So I was like, Well, I know, somebody told you to start a Facebook group, because that’s just common speak now, hey, you just started a Facebook group and did it. Right. I said, But not only do I think they’re not on there. But also don’t think that other people want to be included with other people when we talk about like,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 27:36
oh, that they’re struggling, you get what I’m

Chris Davis 27:39
saying. So you have that consideration. And now you look, you’re not looking for a community software, you’re looking for a membership site where every one a, a person can log in, and have their individual experience. And it’s not connected to anybody else seeing what they’re doing. Right. So I think this is such a good conversation to have. Because I don’t think people are taking the time to compartmentalize that too, and understand how to use it. Now we flip it and look at a que que PCC has been on the podcast a few times. She’s one of our power partners and good friends. She’s got an active campaign on a community, you definitely want people to engage in meet and share. You know, that’s a whole different use case there. You know. So I think those are important things. And then when you factor in connecting to the CRM, I mean, that’s a whole nother level. Let me share with you all right now, you cannot do it with mighty networks. Don’t try. It’s not even worth trying to hire a developer just just migrate to another platform. You can’t do it with circle. You can’t do it with access ally as well, because there’s WordPress base. But those are the few that I know of community software off the top of my head. Oh, member vote. I don’t know if I would consider that community more than membership. You know, software,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 29:06
or membership. Yeah. Community. I was even thinking about Thinkific they added a community piece, which basically looks like a forum

Chris Davis 29:18
for right Kajabi did the same thing. It looks like Yeah. So so so it’s interesting,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 29:27
like discord and slack. Okay, I’ve seen a more uptick in discord. You know, when I’ve joined different things. It’s like, okay, join the group on this court. Yes. Again, it’s very busy and fly by the seat of their pants. Yes. As organized to me. As you know, some of these other like circle and stuff where it’s more organized topics. You’re really just dropped in on conversation? Do you know?

Chris Davis 30:03
Yeah, yeah, business owners are hijacking discord. Right? It was meant for gamers connect with Twitch and all of that have a server to talk to your viewers or the people who watch your game streams. And business owners came in there. And I believe it started with like, stock stock market folks, because they would have these discord channels and share their their trades and all of that. And I think it just caught on because there were certain stipulations around like stocks in those types of businesses on Facebook, even on some of these other platforms. Whereas I guess discord didn’t have those restrictions. What I’ll say is this, Discord continues to confuse me my brain, as much as I love slack. Like I use Slack every day, I just

Samantha Pointer Foxx 30:58
follow that Discord is like,

Chris Davis 31:01
it’s just I can’t put my finger on why it’s so mad that I’ve been I’m in a mastermind that uses it. So I have to learn it. And I’ve been in this process of learning it for about a year now. And I don’t know if it’s just we have too many channels and are not organized enough. Or if Discord is just a confusing platform for those of us who are over the age of 2830. And up we used to using software, a certain type of software, and it just may be out of our generation and just causing us to shift in and really adapt. But the promises this it’s got a tech side to it that I think has strong implement implications for marketing. I met with a young man who was like creating discord bots. And these bots based on what people would do, it would actually be able to go out and like send data out of discord and do some other things. So I was like, Okay, that’s interesting. I would like to know more about that. So I think bots in discord are something that to if you can dive in and learn. And by the way, if you’re listening to this and you’re like Oh Chris, like I need to show you what these bots do Oh, let me show you how my Discord. We’ve got a new email address specifically for the podcast. Holler at automation bridge.com. So that’s h o l l e r at automation bridge.com. Send us an email right there. Like what was that? Caller No. H O ll er, at automation bridge.com. And send me some use cases, if you’re using any of this software, by the way, and you’re like, Oh, this is how I’m using it. We love collecting use cases. And seeing it helps us better recommend software when we know how other peoples are people are using it or have used it. But I’m really looking forward to learning more about discord because you know, you have mid journey have mid journey and how you can use that to create follow that, you know,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 33:20
I’m trying to think of the community I just joined. I think it might have been an affiliate community and they’re like, this is our Discord channel hop on in there. Yeah, yeah. But yeah,

Chris Davis 33:32
I’ve seen a tech company starting to use it too. So I joined a it was an AI podcasting software free account. And then it was like, join us on Discord. And I joined the discord. And what I did like about it is they had different areas that you could talk to different people on the team. So you could talk to the product team, you could talk to the devs. And all of that. I actually felt like that was if the software was good, I would have kept using it. But it wasn’t. But for the limited time that I was in there, I felt like I got I got responses from like the developers. So if that’s the case, then there. Yes, yes. So that brings us to actually like SAS company communities. Right. I think by default, a lot of them are on Facebook groups. Just let people come in

Samantha Pointer Foxx 34:32
and then on Slack now.

Chris Davis 34:34
Okay, so you’ve you’ve seen a few on Slack.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 34:38
Even you know, like, yeah, yeah, it’s like they’re moving over to slack. Keep has started like a Slack channel, you know, for their partners because they’re like, you know, maybe let’s talk more in here for the people who don’t like Facebook or whatever. So I think Have you seen more people run communities in tandem in two different places, but sharing the same thing, because I know Kate did that for a long time, her Facebook group and her circle matched. So until she made the transition fully. So you might see a lot of that now to

Chris Davis 35:19
yeah, I’ve actually seen a few. This is the thing, I feel like I’ve seen communities in all software except buddy boss. And I’m not trying to talk down on buddy boss, it’s just, I feel like they market to me so much. I use their theme I one of my websites, I actually use their theme in like it. But I just have never experienced from a user perspective, somebody’s using it. But um, Slack is slack is interesting, because I love it. And it makes sense to me in a business use case where we’re collaborating throughout the day. And I’ve joined a few Slack channels that that were like, like you mentioned, like keep and you know, all of these other. Yeah, ActiveCampaign has one as well. So I actually like it. It doesn’t necessarily give me the community feel more than like a special discussion and question q&a type.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 36:18
Customer service even, you know,

Chris Davis 36:21
yep, yep, yep. So you do have that as an option. I know, there’s, there’s quite a few people that used that have you slack that have gone away from it. And I think primarily because of the pricing structure. Like you’re literally paying for every member. And as that membership grows, you’re paying for a seat. So again, you’re abusing the software. Slack is not community software, but what to do,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 36:52
as such, patients.

Chris Davis 36:55
Hey, should solve That’s right, good community software, communication. Software. That’s a great differentiator. And I’ll say this, I’ll say this, Samantha.

Chris Davis 37:08
I’m also seeing a trend, more niche specific, where they’ll release software. And inside of that software, there’s some community aspects which are using like groups. I think groups are just the updated way of saying forms. Yes, right. Like, it’s like, boy, young man, it’s like, it’s technically the same thing.

Chris Davis 37:39
more mature and distinguish, right? So I believe that we owe some respect, pay to form software that has paved the way for like these threads that are now called groups, and you can have conversations with them. But my wife’s trainers shout out to Brandon McAfee. He has a nice app. I forget the name of it. But he’s got an app. And it has all your fitness stuff in there. But then it has groups that you can join groups about certain topics, if you’re trying to build muscle, lose weight, do this. So now, without being on Facebook, and it’s mobile friendly, I can get access to the trainer as questions, do all of these things. So it’s like it does have have a very community feel, you know, because you can add pictures. I think when you start adding pictures and videos and all of that from users that other users can view by default that makes it community by default,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 38:39
I think you’ll see that a lot in fitness in the fitness world and fitness, because that’s committed that’s community based, like you want other people to cheer you on and you cheer them on and everything. So a lot of different apps I’ve had has that community feature has the video feature has the on demand feature that connects to the YouTube channel in the alerts you know.

Chris Davis 39:08
Yeah, I say this, everybody. We talked about integrating with your CRM. I am I have no I hold no shame in no secret with the software that I use and love to do that is called WP fusion. There’s others like I said access ally, Min barium active member 360. I actually support all of them. If somebody came to him was like, Hey, I’m using Membury. I wouldn’t be like, Oh, yuck. What’s that? Right? Like? It’s all good software. They all just do it do the same thing in a different way. And I’ll say this, one of the things that I like about WP fusion, which I think is so forward thinking in the vein of connecting your membership, and potentially your community software with your website is that you can, it can pull data to populate fields in, push it to your CRM from your website, right? So when I have, let’s say, my membership site is on my WordPress is powered by WordPress. And let’s say somebody fills out a form of gravity form or a any type of form to give me information. I don’t have to use Zapier. I don’t have to use anything, I can ask that I can have it sync immediately. Once it’s captured, it goes into my CRM system. And I think that that is not talked about enough. Power, the true power? Yes. So I think that I don’t know if I would ever be able to have a membership site that doesn’t do that.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 40:54
Yeah, yeah. I just can’t see it. Because that is important that helps you to make the decisions in your business. Yeah, and needed to know what to provide next, you know,

Chris Davis 41:07
what to provide next. And I look at, you know, like the Kajabi is, and the Thinkific. I think you mentioned, I think even teachable is adding like this community feature in on the surface level. And in some business use cases, I do think that it’s just enough, as a marketer is I just would, I would just like to know, when the last time you logged in, you know, what was the last thing that you guys thread you visited? Or did you get in? How far did you get right? Like, I have mine set up with WP fusion, that by default, I don’t have to do anything extra. Whenever a video was uploaded to the website, and someone watches it, it informs my CRM, hey, they started. And when they finish, guess what? It informs my CRM as an event that started in a finished? Am I using any of this data? I’m not using all of it, I’m using some of it. But Samantha? How many times have you had a client come up to you? And you’ve asked them? Hey, have you been collecting this data? And you’re like, No, should I have? Like, yeah, so I would rather the data be there waiting for me to discover a use case for it, then discover a use case and not have the data. So these are, listen, everybody. We’re just talking shop here. These aren’t important considerations for you all to be aware of when you’re out here selecting software, especially when it comes to membership sites, community in that space in between forums. Have you seen out in the wild a standalone forum? I feel like they’re always coupled with a membership or community software.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 43:01
Ah, um, that PBN networks, one, which is basically a form it is standalone. And I’m thinking about this affiliate. I can’t think of the name of it, but it was for affiliates. But it was standalone. It was a forum. So you could, you know, talk amongst yourself, but I can’t think of the name of it. But other than that, I don’t know that nothing big name that, you know, you see a lot of I can’t think of anything off the top of my head like,

Chris Davis 43:39
yeah, yeah, I know that there’s what is it called? bulletin something bulletin? Right. And then I know, there’s XenForo. And there’s software out there. But you know, when I go to the websites, they don’t do a real good job of like, showcasing who’s NuGet you know, I can’t get a list of forum

Samantha Pointer Foxx 44:01
is probably used in internal, you know, specifically type of, I don’t know, business category, right. You know, the general businesses aren’t just looking for that alone. So

Chris Davis 44:19
yep, yep. So I, I have a forums hold a special place in my heart. I still am. Like, I’m still pro forums. I just don’t see a lot of people use them. Isolated, right, like to them to themselves. I joined a membership group. And they have more of like a resource membership site. But they did have it. I think it’s ip ip board. Oh, yeah. AP board is what it’s called. They have it integrated with IP board and it’s like single sign on. So once you sign into WordPress, you’re also signed into that. And that’s like their community, and its techie is techie. So I feel like that fits. I don’t feel like that would fit perhaps in a more visual, right industry, right? Like, they’re gonna want to put pictures in a feed and you know, like stuff and share. So it’s just interesting.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 45:21
You know, visual head looks is important, you know?

Chris Davis 45:24
Yep. Yep. So, in a day and age where people are trying to figure out, do I need to be on social media, this my best opportunity to reach? I’ve always been of the mindset that you need to create your own platform and own it. Yes. So whatever that looks like, hopefully, some software that we’ve mentioned today, has been has helped, like, oh, wait a minute, maybe look into that, or perhaps you are looking at should I use mighty networks a circle as a marketer? And I just answered your question, because mighty networks is not marketing focused. Right? Maybe you were you were looking at starting a membership site, when you’re realizing like, oh, wait a minute, I want my people to see each other and communicate. So now I know you need to go community first. So so these are just again, this is an open conversation, and an ongoing conversation on Office Hours next week, we’ll probably have something new to bring to the table. Always new players emerging. But I feel really confident in the current stack that I have and some of the technology that has been used. Again, I’m looking forward to seeing if there’s a marketing use case for discord bots, I pretty much have slack, where it needs to be, there is always room for a disrupter, somebody to come out and say, hey, look, you can do all of this that you can do here, here, here. And we add this for marketers, right? Like, I always have that I feel like these conversations, if you’re in like a finance industry, or interior decorating, like my wife, I think these are a lot easier to create. You think like you look at heartbeat, wood interior designer wouldn’t love how beautiful that

Samantha Pointer Foxx 47:11
looks? Yeah,

Chris Davis 47:12
right. And then I’m thinking if if my CPA had a Slack channel? Would I engage with that to get answers about like, my taxes and things of that nature? Or would I want to be in a more Facebook group, where we’re all learning together? I don’t think so. I think I will want more of a dedicated communication channel to just say, Hey, can I write this off? Right now, now from there, and they may be like, we always get these questions, we want everybody to see them. So perhaps you have like a communication channel. And then you have a team that creates like an FAQ, our most answered questions are, you know, whatever. And that’s somewhere else, you know, like, there’s ways around,

Samantha Pointer Foxx 47:59
use case for select, as far as your service provider, having each client have their own channel, where you and your team can communicate, you don’t necessarily have to invite the client to that, but you and the team are communicating about that particular client, that way it doesn’t get lost in a bigger channel or whatever.

Chris Davis 48:22
I agree. I agree. I like that use case. And it would kind of mirror the project management space, client facing project management space, and no more emails back and forth. I can be very asynchronous and make sure that things get moved for that. That’s that’s a simple one. Samantha, but I think that’s real powerful. Yeah, right, that that may have been worth the price of listening today. You know, setting up that slack channel for internal purposes, to collaborate, you know, and communicate because what what we talked about was membership sites, community sites, communic, Keishon, membership software, community software, communication, software, forum software, all four of these, you just need to know you should or at least now you’re aware, right? Which one should I be thinking about?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 49:18
This, get it? Because somebody said you got to do it. You know, please. Your business might not need a group. Your business might not need a community.

Chris Davis 49:29
Yes. I mean, and we all we all learn.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 49:33
Like, really are the is the business on it all day. We talking to chatting it up? No, we’re working.

Chris Davis 49:42
Now that you say that, I want to I want to share a unsuccess story. And that was I created that exact thing that you mentioned on Slack. I ended up creating it in mighty networks for a client and I created this space and say, Hey, you can log in here and you know, you could watch things and keep track of what we’re doing. I it was kind of like a community project management space. And I tell you, the person may be logged in two times, pay full price for the service log in a couple of times. And I’m not the type that’s just like, oh, well, if you don’t, if you don’t log in, hey, my bad. I want you to get the transformation. Right, I did this so you could engage and get the transformation. But then I just had to realize, you know, when you’re talking to a certain type of business owner that that a certain level, there’s just some things that they don’t care to do.

Samantha Pointer Foxx 50:37
Right? Don’t have time,

Chris Davis 50:41
I probably would have had better success setting up a Slack channel saying, Hey, we have questions post here. Right, you know, probably would have been much more effective. So

Samantha Pointer Foxx 50:53
quizzes like I’m texting

Chris Davis 50:54
exists exactly as on my phone, I can, you know, be out and about and still, you know, send a message

Samantha Pointer Foxx 51:02
or learn nothing. That’s the thing. I’m fine. And business owners don’t want something new technical, they have to learn to engage with the

Chris Davis 51:12
Excel. Yeah, that’s a good one. All right, Samantha, this has been great. As we’re talking more software comes to mind, and I don’t know, I can’t keep spinning it off. Right. But there was one. Steve, he’s a community member. Click que Leq. I’ve got no experience with it. But when I checked it out, there are a few. I think, like, I forget his name. He’s in overseas. Jack James James Schramko. I think he’s like, the main promoter of it. So it’s all in one membership, software that they probably added community. So as you all are looking, think about this? Is it community first software with membership capabilities? Or is it membership, first software, with community capabilities? At least we’re thinking about it that way should help you in your decision making. Especially if you know, and you’re intentional about building either membership, our community that’s going to help navigate that. So, Samantha, they’ve listened and what if they’re like, Okay, I get it, but I still need help. comfortable or confident doing this myself? Who’s there to help me navigate this technical, logical terrain? Where can people get in touch with you find out more and potentially leverage you for that type of need?

Samantha Pointer Foxx 52:45
Well, you can find me on my website, of course, my home base organizing guru.com I can help you strategize and pick the right technology for you based on your goals, your business goals, and set it up for you. So you don’t have to touch the tech or learn the tech.

Chris Davis 53:04
Touch the tech touch it. So we’ll have

Samantha Pointer Foxx 53:11
media so as a CSP automate Sam automates Yeah, you can find me online, but organizing guru.com is the best place to find all my information. Get on a call with me and let’s just talk.

Chris Davis 53:29
Great, great. So that’s in the show notes, everyone organizing guru.com. And we’ll have her social profiles in there as well. So you can connect with Samantha Samantha always, thank you for coming on. This is like my second or third time this week seeing you so again, I’m spoiled. I’m spoiled everybody. These are the type of conversation in the brains that I have access to. So thank you, Samantha. To all of my listeners, thank you for your listenership. This is a new word that we’ve created on the podcast listenership. I’m gonna look it up, it may already be in existence, it doesn’t matter. It’s a word that I love using but thank you for your listenership and your time, hopefully something was said today that helps you move your business forward that much more, today and tomorrow, and to everybody, all of my community and listeners holistically, continue to automate responsibly my friends.

Chris Davis 54:27
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly, and you can access them all at all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends