We're so glad you're here. 👋 If you're building a community and wondering... - Why aren't my members engaging? - What should I improve first? - How do I build a community people don't want to leave? You're in the right place. Skoolology is a learning community for community builders who want to stop guessing and start improving. Together, we study what works, test ideas in real communities, and learn from each other's experiments. Before we talk about your community... Let's get to know you. 👋 Your first step takes about 10 seconds. 👇Drop ONE WORD in the comments below. It might be: • A value you live by. • A word that describes the community you're building. • Or simply a word that's meaningful to you today. We'll create something special from your word and welcome you personally. ❤️ We read every single one. Your next step When you've posted your word, head over to the next pinned post and take the 5-minute Community Snapshot. It will help you discover exactly what to improve next. Welcome! Donna & Todd Learn. Build. Lead.

Potatoes become ice cream. Pumpkin seeds become tofu. And tomorrow... @Jenny Rader-Bakos is letting us into the kitchen AND behind her community build. 😂🌱 Jenny is the creator of Rooted & Wild, where she’s turning 15+ years of kitchen experience, her own remarkable personal journey, and her love of whole-food, plant-based cooking into a growing community. And we want to know what’s happening behind the scenes. How is she turning what she knows into experiences people value? What are her members teaching her? What’s working? What’s changing? How is she thinking about monetization? And what is she still figuring out? Remember, this isn't an interview. It’s builders talking building. And knowing Jenny, I suspect we’ll have some fun along the way. 😂 📅 TOMORROW, Friday, August 21 ⏰ 1:00 Central 🔗 Zoom link is in the Skoolology calendar Come listen. Ask questions. Join the conversation. Or just pull up a chair and learn alongside us. 👋 Know another builder who would enjoy this? Invite them along! They don't have to be a Skoolology member. Can’t make it live? We’ll record it and share the replay. Tomorrow we’re not just learning about Jenny’s build. We’re learning FROM it. ❤️🎙️🌱

So you want your community to appear in Skool ads through Growth Boost, the program that puts communities in front of people on Meta. What does it actually take to get picked up? I'll walk you through what we did, what we changed when it didn't work the first time, and what our early numbers look like. We're only a day in, so treat this as a progress report rather than a case study. The playbook is the part you can use today. ⸻ HOW THE MONEY WORKS Skool pays for the ads. In exchange, they keep a 30% affiliate fee on anyone who signs up through them. That's why your price point matters so much. Skool needs the math to work on their end before they'll spend on you. Skool has said $7 a month is really the minimum for that math to work. Anywhere from $7 to $97 has been shown to run consistently. That's a wide range. So the real question isn't whether your price qualifies. It's whether your conversion rate holds up at the price you picked. ⸻ WHERE TO FIND IT Growth Boost is on by default. There's nothing to turn on, only something you can turn off. To find it: 1. Go to your owner's dashboard 2. Click Discovery 3. Scroll to the bottom Worth knowing, some owners turn it off on purpose. If you're already running a solid advertising program of your own, you may not want misattribution where Skool gets credit, and the 30% fee, for a member you brought in yourself. ⸻ WHO'S REALLY DECIDING Switching to a paid community raises your odds of showing up. Can a freemium community with a free tier and paid tiers get selected? Yes, but it's less likely. A fully paid community makes the financial math easier for Skool. Here's what most people miss. Meta is mostly in control here, not Skool. Meta optimizes for whatever performs best on its own platforms. Put simply, your community shows up when three things line up: → Your image gets traction on Meta → Your conversion rate holds up against other communities → Your price point lets Skool break even on the ad spend

We talk about a yes like it's the finish line. Someone joins, someone says yes to your help, someone trusts you, and we celebrate, as we should. But there's a quieter thing that happens in that same moment, and almost nobody names it. I remember the first time one person asked me for my personalized help. A former colleague invited me to lunch, said she wanted my opinion on a few things, and I honestly didn't think much beyond that. Just two colleagues catching up. And then, over lunch, she told me she'd love to work with me, that she wanted my coaching. I was genuinely surprised, the good kind of surprised. This was someone who, from the outside, seemed to have it all together. And she was sitting across from me saying, in her own way, "I trust you to help me." Alongside the honor of it, and there was real honor and real gratitude, came something that felt a lot like fear. Because a yes asks something of you that a no never does. A no, you feel, and you move past it. A yes, you have to carry. This person had just handed me her hope, her belief that I could actually help her get where she wanted to go. She'd chosen me. And in that moment, the quiet thought underneath the honor wasn't only "how wonderful." It was "What if I let her down? What if she trusted the wrong person? What if I'm not enough for this?" Here's the thing. You feel this too, every time someone trusts you. When a member joins your community, when someone signs up for your help, when a person finally says yes to what you offer, they're doing exactly what she did at that lunch. Handing you their hope. Believing you can help them get where they're going. Every yes you receive carries that same quiet weight, because every yes is someone choosing you. If you've felt that, the strange weight tucked inside a yes, you're not doing anything wrong. That weight is love. It's what happens when you genuinely care about the person trusting you, and it's proof you take the responsibility seriously.

Every review pulls three specific ideas out of a community. Not compliments, but named mechanics with enough detail that you could build one yourself. Each idea comes with four things. A rating. Best of the best, Exceptional, or Really good. We rate each idea on its own merit rather than against the others, so a community might have three top-rated ideas or none at all. A time to implement. One afternoon, one weekend, or ongoing. Knowing an idea is excellent tells you nothing about whether you can do it before Friday. A watch out. The condition it depends on, because most good mechanics only work above a certain size or with a certain kind of member. Steps. Numbered, in order, ending with one number to check after thirty days. Then three questions aimed back at your own community, and one instruction: pick the question that made you least comfortable and fix that one thing. You do not have to read all of it. Give it five minutes, check the "best for" line under each idea, and you will know which one is worth your time and which two to skip. (5 minutes to decide your direction) That decision is the point. Read every word and it only takes about twelve. We still score communities across substance, kinship, onboarding, outcomes, leadership, money, and engagement. We just do not end reviews with the number anymore. A score you run on your own room tells you where to work. A score we publish about someone else's is only a verdict, and a verdict is the one thing you cannot act on. Access First Reworked Review Here P.S. There's a pre-built AI prompt you can use at the end of each review. Let us know if you have any additional suggestions on making these more useful. We'll be dropping this at an average of every other day. @Lisa Vanderveen