To recap...I buy $100 gift cards to local restaurants and auction them off on my local Facebook page with 5020 followers. The idea is this gets me in conversations with business owners I want to work with. In this example I paid $100 for the gift card...it sold for $73...which means it cost me $27 to get a conversation with someone I can help. You can see how it worked in Round 1 here This time I had the full participation of the owner. She promoted the auction on her page and allowed me to offer the winning bid price to all the bidders. The bidding started at 7PM on Sept 10 and ended at 7PM on Sept 11. 7:03PM $1 Casey 7:03PM $5 Lynne (Winner of Auction 1) 7:09PM $15 Loreen 7:25PM $50 Andrea 8:28PM $51 Donna 8:38PM $55 Colleen 8:39PM $60 Mary 8:48PM $65 Sheryl 10:26PM $71 Casey 10:33PM $72 Sean September 11 3:25PM $73 Andrea The winning bidder paid me immediately. I sent the follow up offer to the other bidders with an expiration date of September 19th. They'll have to show the personalized certificate I DM'd them to claim it. Just had one say she's going to go buy one this week....another one said "will do". Unfortunately, this restaurant doesn't have a way to send a link where people can buy a gift card online. I spoke with a Toast rep yesterday and he doesn't believe they can create a link which would allow a restaurant to sell a $100 face value gift card for less than face value... $73 or whatever. I told him to put that in the suggestion box. It would allow their clients to create their own groupon-style promos and keep all the money themselves. So, I love this method of getting in conversations with business owners. I'd pay $27 all day for those conversations. Step 2 is getting them signed up as a client. Any questions or suggestions welcome. You can see the auction here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Ejy8Qqx4V/

One of the sneakier ways to grow a Skool community might have nothing to do with getting more members. Someone shared that they started using Skoot about two weeks ago. They set up one pretty boring automation: When a member’s payment fails, remind them. That’s it. In two weeks, it helped recover 10 members. About $240 in MRR. And I think the interesting part is why those members were about to disappear. They didn’t necessarily want to cancel. Sometimes the card expired. Sometimes there was a small payment issue. Which means those 10 people weren’t really “churn.” They were customers who wanted to stay… but needed a nudge to fix something. Makes me wonder how many Skool owners are spending all their energy trying to add $240 in new MRR while quietly losing the same amount through stuff like this. More content, outreach, ads, and sales calls. Meanwhile, some of the easiest revenue may already belong to you. You just haven’t collected it yet. That’s one use of Skoot I hadn’t really thought much about before. Worth checking your failed payments and seeing how many of those members could still be saved.

@Tan Hopper and I are putting something together for you... But... We're wondering if it's too small potatoes? 📰Skool has made some SICK changes recently... Which makes it dead simple to add $500 monthly (give or take)... Recurring income to your community in 30 days... ✅Whether it's one you just start... or... ✅An existing community you've already got. $500 recurring is just month ONE. It's super passive too. (No Zooms, calls or service delivery required.) Does $500 a month every month to start... 👉Get your motor running at all? 👇👇👇

Reason #154 running a community is my #1 fave investment. AI Fatigue Don't ya think that the MORE AI there is... ...the MORE peeps will want to hang out with real peeps? The internet STARTED as Bulletin Boards, Usenet groups and forums. It's not a matter of WHEN an offer or product dies... And many products are dying FASTER with AI... But I ask? What will be even MORE VALUABLE? What will LAST another 20 to 100 years? People connecting with and helping people. Does that mean I think we shouldn't have AI products, services and software? Not at all... I'm saying... The product WILL die. To THRIVE long-term... We want to focus on PEOPLE. Agree? Disagree? Rooting For Ya, Travis

Here is the original post about this. I bought a $100 gift card from a local business and planned to auction it off as a way to get the attention of a local business I want to work with. Ran the auction from 7PM Aug 22 to 7PM Aug 23. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19L7GiQsKX/ 14 bids from 9 different people... Aug 22 7:07p - $1 James 7:10p- $25 Lynne 7:16p - $30 Kim R 7:25p - $35 Dan 7:27p - $50 Lynne 7:40p - $55 Casey 8:05p - $60 Jess 8:05p - $60 Tracy 8:27p - $61 Mary 11:49P -$62 Casey Aug 23 10:20a - $65 Darra 11:15a - $75 Lynne 3:15p - $76 Casey 6:57p - $77 Lynne A change from my original plan is to take the winning amount and buy (in this case) a $77 gift card to another business....calling it "Auction It Forward". Sadly, there was no participation from the restaurant. Email and DMs have gone unanswered. If I happen to hear from them. I'll update. For this next auction, I will communicate with the business BEFORE I buy the gift card so I get participation.