Hello everyone, I want to illustrate the importance of a free community with this game plan. Many who are new to Skool wonder whether they should start directly with a paid community to quickly make money, or if a free community would be better at the beginning. If you are aiming for long-term success, I definitely recommend starting with a free community. Once you reach about 100 members there, you can slowly build a paid community. The free community usually generates the most inquiries and commitments for the paid community. If you start directly with a paid community, you miss the chance to gain members through the free community. Additionally, through the discovery search in Skool, you automatically and constantly receive new members for your free community (for free), who can later transition into the paid community. Please let me know if this all makes sense to you. This is my Gameplan and the free community has the biggest impact. If you have questions, write me an DM or a comment lg Calvin

One thing that my Skool community members LOVE is coming together for projects that benefit us all. Here are a few of the challenges and projects we have been working on and have planned (shared with permission from our members). Let me know if you have any questions or something you want to share that has been working well inside your Skool group. PS - If you'd like help setting up or growing your Skool community from scratch, send me a DM 📲 skool.com/@jade with the word "SKOOL" and I'll answer any Q's you have :) *** You can now access ALL my most popular Skool posts on sales, marketing, mindset and Skool (AKA The Wizard Library 🧙‍♀️) on one post 👉 HERE 👈 Enjoy! 📚 ***

I wrote this as a blog post that has images and tutorials on certain things (you can read that here https://entreresource.com/skool-tips/) but here is the summary so you don't have to jump over there if you don't want. #𝟭 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗨𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 (𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗘𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝟲) If you don't plan on having unlocks, you really aren't getting most of the benefits of Skool. Seriously, the unlocks are the heart of the program. The gamification is what drives engagement. More engagement leads to a better community. Engaged members see better results, which leads to word of mouth marketing for you which means, you guessed it, more sales and less churn! I mention level 6 specifically here because that is the level that requires above average, consistent engagement. However, it's also realistically obtainable. The best thing you can do is have unlocks at each level eventually. I'd start at level 6 though and make it something that is genuinely awesome and then do the others after. #𝟮 𝗨𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝘀\ Don't let the words "Classroom" or "course" fool you. Unlocks don't need to be courses. They just need to be delivered in the same style as a course. They will always appear in the classroom area, but they can be things like access to events (in-person or cyber) or downloadables (PDFs, eBooks, Worksheets, etc). For my unlocks, I have courses, bonus videos and useful spreadsheets. They include a training video and a link to open and copy the spreadsheet. This is what that looks like on the inside. Get creative here, you could also offer things like free software or discounts on other things you offer. That's big "win-win" as it could drive additional sales off Skool. If you want to deliver a digital download like an ebook or cheat sheet, you'll just need to host it somewhere. If you have a wordpress website, it's very easy. You can learn how to host your files and make them downloadable for free here.

I've been using the internet since I was 6 years old (I'm 34 now) but I still prefer in person events > Zoom calls and I know a lot of my Skool community members do, too. This is how I use my Skool community to create affordable in person events every month & then upsell people into my private mastermind. Step 1: Grow my free community. Every other day I make a post on social media asking my audience if they want one of my helpful freebies (like a PDF, mini course, etc.) so they can make their business dreams come true faster. When they opt in to get the free thing, they're automatically invited to join my free Skool community. (Note: I never actually ever say: "JoIn My FrEe ComMuNiTy!!") Step 2: Hold nothing back. I give my free Skool community members everything I give my paying clients except for direct access to me & my team. Free community members get all the same info & course material my paying clients get. Step 3: Invite to in person event. I invite the members of my free Skool community to come learn with me in person for a 1-day. Example post. People who want to come join a waitlist (I use Jotform) and wait to be contacted. The cost is either $1,997 or just $197/month if they join my paid Skool community. (Note: In my paid Skool community, people get weekly Zoom call access to my team + monthly Zoom access to me.) Step 4: Collect payment. For the people who are a good fit, we either send them our Skool /about page where they can pay the $197/m or we send them a Stripe invoice for $1,997. Step 4: The event. We rent a venue on Peerspace, provide lunch via Whole Foods, and record the event with iPhones. Step 5: The upgrade Near the end of the event, I let everyone know about my private coaching program where they can meet with me once per week on Zoom to get results even faster.

Just hit a record month & made $200,000 USD from my free Skool community. Total ad spend: less than $5,000. Here are 2 mistakes I see 99% of people on Skool making, including many Skool games winners who I spoke with in Vegas last week. • Mistake #1: Not having a free Skool community. Going directly from an ad/social media to a paid group looks sexy on paper, I agree. But the reality is: A free Skool community nurtures leads & gets them to convert at a rate like nothing else I've ever seen. With a free Skool community, you can nurture leads in 4 ways: 1) The DM's (auto-dm to kick things off) 2) The community feed 3) The classroom 4) The calendar All without ever coming across as salesy! • Mistake #2: Telling people to join your free Skool community. I used to tell people to "jOiN mY fReE SkOoL cOmMuNiTy!" but nobody was joining :( I thought it was an issue with Skool. But then I started doing something insane... I started leveraging human psychology and talking to people about their DREAM OUTCOMES and frustrations. I started saying stuff like: "If you want to achieve <dream outcome> in <X timeframe> without <pain/effort/frustration>, click here to download my new free training that shows you how." And then I'd link them to my free Skool community. Guess what happened? People joined by the TRUCK LOAD. Turns out, nobody gives a 💩 about your free Skool community - until they're in it. To get them to join in the first place, you need to use bait. The best bait I've found? Free (GENUINELY HELPFUL) stuff like courses, pdf's, etc. that help people achieve their specific dream outcome in a specific time frame without a specific pain point. Hold nothing back in your free content. Give give give. Upsell the DFY/Done-With-You implementation - but give away all the DIY instructions. Growth has been insane ever since I started taking the above 👆 seriously. $200,000 in 30 days!!! Hope this helps, Ted P.S. I've attended 5 Skool Games events in Las Vegas and even a lot of the top winners don't know this stuff... but once they implement it, they make even MORE money.