“ We have an evergreen flow of selling memberships every week. That was revenue we never would have seen before. ”

Hollis Carter

Founder

Hollis Carter knows the name of his community is weird. But he didn’t set out to create just another entrepreneur mastermind. After attending at least two networking events a month for a decade, he decided to create the kind of entrepreneurial meet-up he always wanted to attend but didn’t exist — one he hoped was more about ideas and support instead of pitches and ego-stoking. In his mind, “more baby and less bathwater.”

“I always thought those events were valuable, but I also thought they could be done better,” Hollis says. “It always felt predictable and formulaic so it felt like school, not peer to peer."

After 10 years as “the guy hanging around in the lobby,” Hollis had gathered an incredible group of friends by making a deep connection with one or two people instead of speaking to a crowd or handing out business cards like parade candy. When he launched Baby Bathwater Institute’s first event, he had the following to make it the special weekend he had hoped for.

“I was surprised. Once I got momentum, all of a sudden I was like, ‘Oh, half the people here are more successful than me, but they're just trusting me to host it,"’ he says. “I had to make sure not only did they get business value, but almost more importantly, that they felt a sense of belonging and that the time they're spending was worth it.

But Hollis will be the first to tell you that the events business is a rollercoaster, emotionally and financially. To keep BBI more steady, he and his team decided to try a private membership model on Facebook, then they tried to move their members to a private platform two times, but he pulled the cord when both attempts couldn’t deliver the quality experience he wanted.

“When we did sales calls with all the platforms we were considering, Mighty Networks was the only one that felt like it had a team of people who cared about where they worked,” Hollis says. “It also felt like Mighty prioritized member connection instead of just one person driving a narrative for a bunch of other people.”

Hollis didn’t build Baby Bathwater Institute events for just anyone. From the beginning, he vetted attendees with thorough applications and preliminary phone calls to make sure they were the right fit for his personality-driven gathering. When he decided it was time to leave Facebook, he knew they had to translate the quality they promised with events to their online membership. Mighty Networks delivered on that, but also provided such a positive, private space that Hollis felt he could change his admission process.

“Another big reason we switched to Mighty is because our culture is strong enough that we’re comfortable adding a member to our community before they attend an event if they do a good phone interview and we’ve researched them,” Hollis explains. “I didn't feel comfortable just having them go straight into our Facebook group as their first interaction so I only sold memberships in a big chunk because we only offered them after members attended at least one event. Now, we have an evergreen flow of selling memberships every week. That was revenue I never would have seen before.”

With year-long offering separate from events, potential members have more incentive to join Baby Bathwater Institute because they don’t have to arrange travel or worry about schedule conflicts. But still, Hollis has seen an impressive conversion of members wanting to attend gatherings because of the people magic they experience in the community.

“People signing up for events has increased a lot because other members who are going are showing their excitement,” he says. “Having Mighty has made us more efficient, which ends up being better for the cost of running our business as well as overall revenue.”

It sounds strange, but Hollis doesn’t want the entrepreneurs who come to Baby Bathwater Institute to learn more. Instead, he wants to give them an virtual space to support each other.

“They actually need to learn less because they get distracted and try to do too much,” he says. “What they need is peers to validate them. They need to be inspired and challenged."

With that framework, Hollis wanted BBI’s membership to provide a distraction-free alternative to social media, one-to-one coaching, and networking events all in once space. With Mighty Pro’s features, he can see it happening. Millennial entrepreneurs who once balked at the idea of their Facebook group, love logging into BBI’s private community space and app.

“My goal is for us to live on the home screen of their phone,” he says. “Most of our customers have a budget for a coach, a psychologist, networking, and ongoing education. If we cover even 80% all of those things in one place, the budget they have to spend on us is nothing compared to all those things combined."

BBI members pay $1,250 a month or $15,000 annually, and they have access to major discounts on events. Because they can buy tickets for nearly half-off, attending two events nearly covers the cost of the membership. But what ultimately brings people to BBI’s membership and keeps them there isn’t the perks — it’s the people magic.

“We've had multiple people get married. We've had multiple business partnerships start. Recently, there were two members in Greece who met up for multiple dinners,” Hollis says. “I like supporting people who are doing their own thing, in their own way, paving their own path. Mighty Networks was the only company that gave us our own roadmap so we could see where we were going.”