OK... who else cried on Skool News? Sam & Kirby had tissues ready (THEY KNEW!). I just sat here with tears in my eyes but kept on flowing to type up the recap. The "best post ever" below is the one that got us all crying! NEW FEATURE: SPAM RISK SCORE This is already live! (personal note: my main community is freemium, this has been a HUGE help already!!) ROADMAP/IN PROGRESS: - Risk Score is now at V1, more is coming soon. Huzzah! LOVE YOU SKOOL! - Notification improvements. A lot of people complain about notifications. The more groups and interactions, the more notifications. They're working on it tho! - Traffic Sources: Where are people coming from? This is a HUGE project. No one has ever had THIS level of visibility. Working on it for 6 months at this point. Estimated release date is early February. Will even show conversion rates from one source to another! ROADMAP/UP NEXT: - Moderation tools. Will give us the option to auto-approve low-risk members! Also working on SMS confirmation to be able to post in a community (as an OPTION) - Page load speed. The more people who use Skool, the slower it gets. (It's growing fast! "Every two weeks, Skool grows by more than it did in its first four years!" ~Sam) ("The lesson there is just 'don't quit!'" ~Andrew Kirby) ("Inspiring!"~Sam) ("Thanks!"~Kirby) - Languages incoming on Discovery SKOOL OF THE WEEK! (see screenshots) - Gert Leroy with the Underwater Squad - He's super rocking tiers with $3k MRR ($9 entry point + upgrades) - Super cool to see this --> he's got the Skool link EVERYWHERE! - "Gert! What a man!" ~Kirby "BEST POST EVER"(!!!!) (see screenshots) - Shout out to Glyn Dewis (Photography Community + Photography Creative Circle) - His community made this stinkin' amazing video for him. THIS is what made us all cry! FIND IT HERE* (*you must be a member of Skoolers to see this post, but the video is shred inside the YouTube video attached to this post)

OK, Skoolers!! Are you sleeping on the affiliate program? IT'S SO GOOD! I've had lots of conversations about affiliates this week, and I want to start one right here and now. Because we're ALL community builders, I bet that what I'm about to describe matches many of YOUR personalities too?! PERSONALLY... my business model is built on relationships and collaborations. One of the cool parts about communities is that we get to grow *together*. All of my easiest successes have been built on the foundation of collaborations (guest post swaps, affiliate programs, co-hosted workshops, promoting friends offers, giveaways to gamify sharing and make it extra FUN). AND ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, WE WON THE SKOOL GAMES!!! But here is the crazy part that's super related to this conversation... when I did the numbers, it was super emotional and humbling and just freaking AMAZING to see it in black and white... 🎉🎉 WE WON FROM REFERRALS! 🎉🎉 The numbers PROVE IT = without referrals, we would *not* have won. Our sweet little group of only a few hundred members had 183 members join with affiliate links (I just looked it up). More than half! 🫶 I want to share some tips BUT ALSO if you are doing well with too, please don't hoard your good ideas. Share them with us!! ➡️ SOME TIPS TO GROW WITH AFFILIATES: (some of these might be obvious, just feels like they need to be said anyways) - RUN FUN AFFILIATE CONTESTS! We've done a couple merch contests for top affiliates, and this just feels FUN! I want to do something fun again soon but haven't quite decided if we'll switch it up. Our members did vote on wanting merch, so it was fun to just do the same thing a second time. (We do so love Skool!) - HAVE FUN, TIMELY EVENTS HAPPENING. This makes it easy for a member to say "hey, there's [xyz] happening tomorrow/next week/whenever!" - MAINTAIN TRULY SOLID RELATIONSHIPS. When friends and colleagues "know, like, and trust" you because they see you showing up with the goods day after day AND caring about them for real... it's a given that they will want to send friends your way. Just like you will do the same in their direction! This is nature! - HAVE A GREAT GROUP. You need to have a genuinely good group for this to work. It has to be fun, active, and generous! In my opinion, it's also super important to avoid engagement bait posts and instead keep the community focused on meaningful connection and growth for your chosen community topic. - ALLOW + ENCOURAGE AFFILIATE LINKS. We are promo-positive and affiliate-positive. The culture is wayyy too strong for it to get spammy, thank goodness. BUT basically... our policy is that if you are sharing about a group, affiliate links are ALWAYS OK. (It's the default anyways when you click the "Invite people" button in Skool.) - RELATED TO THIS, ENCOURAGE *SHARING* WITH THE LINK. I tell members often... when you share... I hope you will use your affiliate link because I want to be able to easily thank you!