So I've got almost 14,000 members in this free Skool community. Won the Skool Games three times. And built the entire thing with the idea that: Generosity is my growth strategy And I'm about to say something that makes me sound like a guy who just discovered fire lol. Here goes: Free is wonderful ... and I was asking it to do a job it was never built for. Let me explain. For years my model was the one everybody runs. Free group. Post daily. Go live. Nurture everybody. Be helpful. Eventually a few of the warm ones book a call and some of those say yes. And it WORKED. (I'm not knocking it. I still have the group. I still love the group.) But here's the thing. A free community is amazing at a few things: 1. Getting people in the door. 2. Letting them hang out and get to know you. 3. Building trust over time. 4. Simple path for all your free resources Know what it's NOT built for? Deciding and activating. Nobody walks into a free group and decides anything. They lurk. They like a post. They "save it for later." (Later never comes. Classic.) So you end up doing what I did ... using sales calls as the decision mechanism. But you end up on calls mostly with lovely people who were never going to buy. And meanwhile you're posting every day for thousands of folks just to book a couple calls with lookie loos. Anyway - About 5 months ago I tried something that felt weird at first. I kept the free group exactly where it was ... And added a low ticket workshop community. Low ticket. one time payments. Workshop Every week. Real work happening live. People pay a little to be in the room. That's it. Here's what happened: The people who paid showed up. (Shocking, I know.) They showed up ready to decide. Because they'd already decided something small when they paid. The one time payment paid for the ads. So traffic stopped being a thing I was scared of and became a thing I could predict. And the workshop is where I make my weekly offers.