There's a pattern I keep noticing in community-building spaces. The loudest voices are usually selling something adjacent. Which means their advice is always slightly bent toward whatever got them to the sale, not whatever got you to month six. The people who've 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗮 𝗦𝗸𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 are usually quieter. They're still in the middle of it, dealing with slow weeks and members who ghost and engagement that randomly dies for no clear reason. That's the gap. Not information. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁. When someone who's done it tells you something isn't working, they know what that looks like from inside the thing. Not from a case study. So: when you've gotten advice about your community, how often did the person actually have one? 👇 If you're building, growing, or even just thinking about starting a Skool community, that's exactly who Skooligans is for. 24 owners who've actually done it. Posts don't disappear without a reason.

There's a specific feeling you get when your post gets pulled without a word. Not anger. More like embarrassment. Like you did something wrong and nobody will tell you what it was. I've watched it happen to people who were genuinely trying. Asking real questions. Sharing something half-formed because they didn't know how to shape it yet. Gone. No reason. No DM. Just gone. And here's what that actually does: it trains people to stop posting. 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗮𝘆. 𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺. When we were figuring out what Skooligans should actually be, that kept coming up. Not as a feature we wanted to add. As the thing we were trying to undo. So we made one decision early and held it: if something gets pulled, you hear why. Full stop. That's not a policy we wrote down somewhere. It's just what respect looks like. The other thing we kept coming back to was the guru problem. Most places you go for help with your community, you're getting one person's take. One framework. One success story being reverse-engineered into advice. We're 24 owners. Varying sizes, varying niches, varying levels of "figured it out." When you're stuck, you're not getting one answer. 𝗬𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺. Someone who launched last month and someone who's been doing this for years and someone whose community stalled at 200 members and someone who blew past it. All of them, not just the loudest one. The question I keep sitting with is this: how much of what makes a community feel safe actually comes down to whether members trust that someone's paying attention? 👀 Not moderating. Paying attention. There's a difference. If you're building, growing, or still just thinking about starting a Skool community, this is the room where posts don't disappear without a reason. Come in, ask the thing you've been afraid to ask somewhere else. LINK HERE

Most communities lose people in the first 72 hours. Not because the content was bad. Because nobody 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗻. There's a principle in social psychology called identity-based belonging. The short version: people don't stay where they feel like a guest. They stay where they feel like a *member of a category they already identify with*. *𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 👀* This is different from "welcoming" someone. A hotel welcomes you. That's not belonging. Here's the reality. The moment someone can say "I'm the kind of person who belongs here," the retention math completely changes. They start showing up differently. Contributing instead of lurking. Defending the space. Recruiting their peers. I watched this happen at an addictions treatment centre I worked in. The staff who stayed longest weren't necessarily the best-paid. They were the ones who'd started saying "we" instead of "they" within their first few weeks. Small shift. Massive signal. It happens in Skool communities too, and the window is narrow. So here's one thing you can actually do this week. Rewrite your welcome post. Not to say "glad you're here." Write it to 𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆 your members are claiming by joining. Something like: "You're here because you don't build communities the way everyone else does." That's not flattery. That's a mirror. Give them a sentence that lets them see themselves in it. 🪞 When they can repeat that sentence to describe themselves, you've got something stickier than any course or challenge or gamification point ever built. The belonging comes first. Everything else is downstream of that. What did your own welcome post actually say when you launched?

The black sheep thing. Not a metaphor. The actual experience of being the one whose ideas got dismissed, whose energy read wrong, whose posts got deleted, whose whole way of moving through the world just didn't fit the template everyone else seemed born knowing. I spent years assuming that was a character flaw. Turns out 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝗻𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲 running in an environment built for a different one. We Have Something Different for YOU. Lot of us over 40 carry a long history of that. The jobs that didn't work out. The rooms we got quietly edged out of. The thing we built anyway, despite all of it. 🐑 I'm genuinely curious who else in this space has that thread in their story. Not looking for a trauma dump, just a real moment of recognition. 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲?

Well, @Faith Adebayo our moderator extraordinaire would tell you millions because we are a public group and we get indexed by both search engines and AI "things" like ChatGPT and Claude, but just this last month, we had more than 9,000 visitors to the community. How cool is that?!?!?! Oh, and we are getting dangerously close to hitting the 2k mark of genuine Skool group owners as members! Know anyone you might want to refer????