IRL vs ORL - Engagement · Skool Community

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IRL vs ORL - Engagement

I'm in this Bunco group. I still remember this first time I went. I have trust issues y'all. I was really guarded and was ready to face fake women. I was ready to sniff out any hidden agendas to get me to buy tupperware or sign up for insurance. That didn't actually happen. Like at all. That was last January. I've been faithfully to every Bunco night. I created a halftime for any of us who thought a month was too far in between to wait to see each other and laugh. It's so good to laugh. And now, we meet up for any reason at all. And we always laugh!

What does this have to do with Skool? GREAT QUESTION - Let's get into this.

Skool was created to bring 1 billion people here to find their tribe, their community. Keeping that focus in mind, in a community, do people only talk about the weather? The high school football team? The price of eggs on Sundays? NO, people talk about anything that has to do with the people IN the community. One group of people get together in this building for this purpose and other people get together on this field to kick this kind of ball around. YES, you are building a community around a common interest. But in order to really grow the community, you have to give connections across and beyond the interest.

"People will leave a product, but they won't leave their friends"

I've joined over 100 communities in the last 8 months. I've seen so many posts about engagement here in Skool Community. Synthesizing what I've seen across thriving communities I've joined is one common theme.

_______________________________Genuine relationships____________________________________

My IRL Bunco group doesn't just play Bunco. We talk about life. The good, the bad, the ugly and the crazy. My favorite OnlineRL groups don't just talk about making money online or steps to heal trauma. We talk about life. The good, the bad, the ugly and the crazy. Space is given to be accepted just as I am instead of expecting me to share with toxic positivity that everything is great. Sometimes it's not. And that's ok too. And sometimes I might not have anything to say at all because I'm in the midst of processing the information I'm taking in within the community. I would be called a lurker and some would want to kick me out after 2 weeks because of my level of participation. What if I don't know how to participate in your community yet? What if I don't know enough about the topic and I've been ridiculed or banned in other communities for asking too many questions? And now, not enough questions.

As a teacher, my first week with kids was 80% team building, getting to know you, fun activities and 10% curriculum (+10% administrative headcounts and school rules). I didn't have a lot of classroom management problems because I established a baseline of care for who they were as human beings, gave them a safe space to be accepted and created connections they didn't know they had before walking into my room. Classroom rules were always toward the end of the week and I would generally have the kids come up with what we would all agree on. Our "norms" or "class rules" or "way we are going to treat each other". You are NOT kids. So I'll throw out the adult cliche's now...

people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
we don't stop playing because we grow older, we grow old because we stop playing.

💗What are you doing to nurture your community members when they first arrive to your community?

➡️If you tell me the only thing you are doing is sending them to an impersonal START HERE course, you are doing it wrong. That would be like stating the rules to a room full of people on the first day and expecting they comprehend and comply.

What are you doing to share how Skool's platform and culture is different than the messy, ad laden feed determined by an algorithm?

How are you setting your community up to be different than the old group on the bad place?

Are you sharing the joy of Skool and why you chose to be here?

💸What if money was the bi-product of how well you onboarded your community members?

How would you handle their transition then?

🥰I believe wholeheartedly in the mission and vision of Skool. More than anything I care about people thriving here. Close relationships and community are slowly fading IRL and if it takes the ORL to bring that back into the IRL, then let's grab ahold of that mission and make it a new thing with a new way of being about it.

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