For the right business with a Skool group, there is so much potential for Skool's Growth Boost program. I love watching groups take off and thrive with that lovely tailwind! Because I grow primarily with collaborations, my business is not one of them at this moment. Many of the "Skool Network" attributed individuals, as it turns out, are not truly thanks to Growth Boost and/or Skool marketing on my behalf. GROUPS THAT DO WELL WITH GROWTH BOOST: - Bring in a lot of outside traffic - The humans who show up, often join (high conversion %) - Extremely clear niche and "target" "avatar" (But let's be real... they are simply lovely humans who are a good fit for what we offer. The marketing lingo can sometimes feel so very inhumane!) BUT. I have a whole different situation right now. 1️⃣ I love collabs and will be ramping them up. This is my favorite way to grow because when a new friend arrives they are ALREADY connected in a way. So it feels lovely to drop in. 2️⃣ ALSO FYI: We have the affiliate % turned up to 50% for now, and that feels like a great way to grow! AND 3️⃣ IS THE REAL CHARM / A QUICK ATTRIBUTION STORY. It's about a friend I adore. He's a super cool guy, and I joined his paid group. But before I did, I waited and got his direct link. He DM'd me the link, I joined his group at that exact second without clicking anywhere else. Guess who got the attribution? SKOOL NETWORK got it. Whattt?! Right now a lovely team member at Skool is looking into this to understand because that's not the intended design. BUT -- I don't need her to do that research for me to know with 100% certainty exactly what I did. I was intentional about the whole thing. Making sure that I clicked the message then joined his group directly and immediately from his direct link. He's my friend and someone I want to learn from, not some rando who's group got placed in my face. This leaves me with some real questions about attribution. THAT + MY SITUATION DOES NOT MEAN: 1. This glitch is consistently happening (my hope is this was an anomaly) 2. Growth Boost is bad 3. YOU should turn it off for your group

As mentioned on Tuesday's Skool News, there would be some wonkiness and changes in Discovery. We now have a new algorithm. What I believe is that Skool's new efficiency score is almost exclusively what is determining the ranking. It looks at conversion rates, traffic, income and revenue, but also the Growth Boost percentage (we have the option to slide from 30% all the way up to giving Skool 70% of our revenue in order to get more traffic). And perhaps other details I've missed or simply am not privy to. In practice, that means that "trending" is almost more like an auction or marketplace for how much revenue a group can bring to Skool, rather than a more traditional meaning of how popular something is. This is way more than popularity. The 30 communities on page 1 more or less show which groups Skool's algorithm currently sees as the most profitable / "efficient" to promote. THE FORMULA IS LIKE THIS: Expected value per visitor ≈ Conversion rate * expected customer LTV * Growth Boost percentage (and then some other bits that surely factor in, like the amount of traffic a group is sending to Skool) MORE PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS - A lot of the Platinum program folks are there (meaning: those supported by Skool's platinum program, with at least 1/3 who were in it) - Many have huge audiences and are likely sending a lot of traffic to Skool - Most didn't have tiers OR had simple tiers dynamic (24 out of 30 didn't have tiers, in the top 10 NONE of them had tiers!) - ZERO free or freemium groups - Many of the groups are way more expensive than just a couple weeks ago what you'd see on page 1. Now the average entry price is around $100 - The majority have at least 100k followers - Vast majority have strong promises or guarantees --> first client in 90 day, $1k/day, $2k/mo, get hired, get funded, hit $100k/mo, close on the first call, money-back guarantee - More than 2/3 have an annual plan and those are often steeply discounted I created a spreadsheet documenting all 30 communities -- including their rank, prices, tiers, membership, owner audiences, annual discounts, links, and several calculated comparisons. I've shared the complete spreadsheet inside Focused Founders. An AMAZING group of humans, many of whom own Skools and are highly collaborative lovely founders!

Did you see the freemium experience upgrade? This went live today. 1️⃣ the "plans" page is visible BOTH for members AND non-members (example with mine: https://www.skool.com/focusedfounders/plans) PERFECT TIMING for us because we have a huge special this month! 2️⃣ that's what is shown when they click "join group" as well --> now potential members see BOTH the free option and paid tier(s) the moment they enter the group. This is HUGE. Great for transparency and a better likelihood that your new members upgrade right away or in the future. I'm a HUGE fan! Anyone else with a freemium group who loves this news?!

There's so much more to the story, but I'm headed to an IRL meetup and need to come back to this to share the full scoop. I'm not even concerned about potentially paying commission to Skool that's not "correctly" attributed. I'm thinking way bigger than that. But for now... If you're seeing this post and have insights on it, share yours in the comments! (You don't have to love it, but I always appreciate staying respectful!! 😅 P.S. My traffic looks about the same for these couple days with it back on, but again... thinking bigger and longer here...!!! OH the mystery! 🫠🙂

When you're in a community that you don't set the "rules", and someone responds with a straight up AI comment, how do you respond? (We're talking, no human to be found...) My personal challenge with this mix is that: 1/ it's crystal clear when it's AI 2/ I didn't start a conversation with ChatGPT 3/ there's a human who stuck the comment there 4/ I don't want to be rude to the human 5/ but it feels just really messed up that the human isn't there in the comment This is especially weird when I've seen the same human around, with actual human comments. I'm 🤖 navigating this 🤖 journey that's 🤖 unfolding while 🤖 cultivating real AF 🤖 lived experience and an 🤖 evolving tapestry with... Let's be honest here. I'm sitting here with almost zero patience for how weird AF it feels when the comments sound like that but worse because they weren't written by a human making fun of the ridiculousness that humanity is dealing with. They are shared by a human who didn't show up for the conversation, and yet I still want to be thoughtful toward the human... who is in there SOMEWHERE. [this was originally posted in Connect & Collab. With 172 comments, this conversation was LIT! 🔥]