Why Mighty Networks Added Up for Aligned Accountants

“I hoped 30 members would join. The first month I had 180.”

Erica Goode

Founder

When Erica Goode transitioned from Fortune 500 to full-time parent, she created an equation. While her kids were small, she would work two hours per week, and with each year she would add two more hours. Sure enough, as her kids grew, so did her client base. But still limited to only single digit hours, she honed her systems to ultra efficiency — shaving off time like an Olympic sprinter.

“I was rich in time with my kids, but I wasn't in time for work,” Erica says. “If you've ever had kids, you know that when they go to preschool, they're there for like an hour a day.”

With each passing year, Erica solidified her process, which turned into a perfected 15-hour work week strategy. Hoping she could help other business owners looking for more time to spend with their families, she decided to share what she had developed in a 10-day series on LinkedIn. The positive feedback was immediate. She turned the series into a newsletter, which sparked an e-book. Her inbox filled up with e-mails from grateful, curious fans. Then, Erica had an insight that led her to Mighty Networks.

“This is how I felt: I was hosting a dinner party, and I had set up tables for two in all the different rooms of the houses,” she said. “I would go to each of those rooms and have these great conversations. But what I really wanted was everybody to sit at the same table and have the same conversation because they were all so similar, and they could learn from each other.”

She started looking for a home to host Aligned Accountants, her online community for solo accountants trying to balance the books with work and life.

There’s no shortage of online communities in accounting and finance. Erica had seen some of them in action on another platform, but when she tried launching her own community with their tools, what seemed like little hindrances hinted at bigger obstacles.

“I saw the hiccups and things that frustrated people,” Erica remembers. “They were really dumb, small things, but things that mattered. Like their autocorrect doesn't work on my mobile device. I thought, ‘If I launch a community for this group, I will not have this irritating thing.’ I did a lot of research, and I landed on Mighty Networks as the place for my community to sit.”

When she launched, Erica hoped 30 people would join. If 50 people did, “that would be insane,” she thought. In just one month, she had 180 brand new members.

Although Erica didn’t know what would happen when she launched her community, she knew exactly what she wanted it to look and feel like. Unsurprisingly, she had receipts on her audience and an instinct about what her audience would pay to have one place to talk to and learn from each other. She offered founding members a $50 monthly membership; for anyone who joined after the first month, the price went up to $75. As soon as she announced it in her newsletter, she had a flood of interest.

“There's a lot of noise in social media about growing fast and big. Sometimes it can be phrased like, ‘If you're not doing that, then you're less than,’” Erica explains. “The promise for Aligned Accountants was: you’re going to be around people who get it. What you're doing is important and you're in a group of people who also believe that.”

Aligned Accounts members cheer each other both in the community’s online discussion space and at live, virtual meet-ups that Erica can record and store in a library with Mighty’s Events feature. Another feature that moved Eric to choose Mighty Networks: Courses, which gives hosts an easy way to package instructional information.

“Sometimes there isn’t time for an hour long video, but I can watch six sections of that video if they’re five minutes long,” Erica says. “I really like that Courses tracks a member’s progress so that they can come back when they’re free.”

It may not seem possible, but Erica still puts her money where her mouth is and maintains her own 15-hour work week. With Mighty Networks’ capabilities, she doesn’t need to hire external help to grow her vision, and she can focus on her members instead of wasting time on technical issues. If she wants to bring in a new feature or try a different way of presenting information, it’s easy to make a change.

“Mighty as a platform is so solid,” Erica says. “It's actually such a relief to have one less thing to think about. I don't have to worry about Mighty. The community exists, and it's set up for me to just keep building on top of it.”

In her community’s discussion space, Erica and her members are always talking about something new in their industry from AI to fractional roles. But they also celebrate each other’s wins just as much with emojis flying as soon as someone posts about acquiring their first client or having time to see their kid’s hockey game.

"I feel less alone, which was the whole point,” Erica says. “When you're isolated as an entrepreneur, you assume there are people like you out there, but you don't know where they are. I'm just so grateful that I get to be a member of my own community."