$0 to $100k in less than 3 weeks: new Skool community success story

This breaks down exactly how we went from 0 to $100k in cash collected in less than 3 weeks with our new Skool community.

This is my first post in here, after 1 week on the platform. And I'm LOVING what Skool is doing for my business so far!

For context, we’ve been selling $25k-$100k packages organically using social media DMs for the last few years, focusing exclusively on helping successful entrepreneurs sell their knowledge online through building a brand on social media and automation.

Although we’re only selling access $1.2k billed every 4 weeks or $10k upfront of the year…

Using Skool has allowed our members to get results in 1 week that would usually take 2-3 months in our 1:1 containers. This is crazy. And here’s how we had such a successful launch:

First - we knew WHY we wanted to have a Skool community.

As the founder of the business, while it was nice to have days where you collect multiple six figures, my goal was to shift the business from “hunt and kill” to living by our values of freedom and fulfillment.

All our payments from the past were via wire initiated on the client's end, meaning there were often big delays on us getting paid.

Having to constantly hire consultants from McKinzie (etc) as we added additional clients to our business was becoming something I was resenting, and having a huge and stressful sales team just wasn’t “it” for me.

Two - we needed to come up with a proposed value proposition.

To launch successfully, we had to create a hypothesis as to why members would choose to join.

Importantly, however, we knew this was just a hypothesis and we had a plan of action prepared if our marketing didn’t match up with the reason why people were buying. This is critical to remember for later on in this post.

Three - we built a one-page sales page (OPSP)

We always do this whenever we launch a new product.

It’s the way we’re presenting that product to the market (the “offer”).

We made 0 promises, guarantees. Actually, it was pretty soft. But I wanted to see if it would sell.

Four - we decided what our conversion mechanism would be.

We love doing one-to-many live trainings because the feedback is instant and the engagement is huge.

We did a training on the 7 Areas of Impact which shows business owners exactly how to self-diagnose the actual problem in their biz so they can fix it. We knew this training works really well for a more sophisticated business owner.

And at the end, we made a soft CTA to apply.

Minutes before going live, we decided to call it a “Mastermind” because we hadn’t come up with a name yet… Little did we know what was about to happen…

Five - we vetted applications

Instead of letting people buy right then and there, we filtered through to make sure our first 49 Founding Members were “dream members”.

We set the expectations before applying and made it very clear who we are and aren't looking for. This ensure that those who join are those who'll engage and get results.

Six - they paid to get on an interview

After their application was approved, in our CRM (MyScaleSystems), we added a tag to their name which sent out automated texts and emails which pushed them to book a 1:1 interview.

As the founder, I personally interviewed the first 49 founding members to make sure they were a 100% fit and aligned with our values.

They put down $100 to get on that interview with me which meant there was only 1 no show out of everyone who booked.

If they weren’t a fit, we refunded the $100 or got access to a course from us. 0% of people we didn’t approve took a refund, all of them took the course. Everyone we accepted joined and the “close” was super simple - not only because I already had their card info on file, but because they were literally selling themselves on why they should be accepted on the interview.

We filled these 49 spots in less than 2 weeks.

Seven - we surveyed them before we got started (and set a specific start date)

We asked them questions like “why did you join,” “what outcomes do you want to get to,” and “who are two high caliber individuals you could refer to Impact School?”

This gave us everything we needed for our marketing material.

And it’s how we realised we were totally on the wrong path.

Out of all 40 or so members who completed the survey, only 1 mentioned they had joined for the vetted community (which we were thinking was our key selling point in our hypothesis above).

Actually, ALL but one of the members had joined:

To sell your knowledge/expertise online (in a leveraged/semi-automated way)
To get out of doing so many things in your business that drain you and to find ways to replace yourself without frustrating team members/expensive agencies who just can't seem to do it as good as you
To become the authority in your industry and build an audience that love you

Thankfully, we had prepared for our hypothesis to be wrong, and now knew exactly what we needed to do to market this in the long run.

We changed the name to The Impact OS. And now we’re positioning it as the blueprint to million dollar freedom through selling your knowledge and expertise online.

And because our start date was a few weeks out, we had time to change and pivot our existing plan.

Eight - we put all members into “Board of Directors”

Based on their revenue, goals, and location in the world…

An executive coach from our team facilitates monthly Board Meetings (on top of the rest of the live calls that happen throughout the week)

Our members are loving the exclusivity and doing “meet and greets” for each board has really helped us kick things off with a bang.

Nine - we’re running a “30 Day Cash Injection” challenge starting tomorrow with huge prizes

We want to get people OBSESSED with engaging from day 1 and it seems to be working. One of the prizes we’re giving is to the person who shares the most wins. This is already giving us a ton of new testimonials!

Ten - time to get scaling!

So far, we have done zero paid ads, sent a handful of emails to our list, and barely even spoken about this publicly. But we were able to rapidly get all the data we need to be able to get this to scale!

Instead of scaling something which was just a hypothesis, we have the feedback from 50+ paying members who have told us exactly what they want and why they joined us.

Our aim from this point forth is to scale and I’d love to hear any tips from other Skool users who have below 4% churn.

Thanks for reading this and I hope this helps anyone looking to take their Skool community to the next level!

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