The online class starts in 3 hours and 40 minutes. If you're not yet a premium member, upgrade and join us in the class. The freemium thing ends on Wednesday. And on Saturday, the 4th of July, anyone who hasn't upgraded will no longer have access to the community. If you joined to get something out of it, upgrade and join the class!

My Sunday is wide open. What about shifting the online class to Sundays? Timing is up to you guys -m I can do morning, afternoon or evening - just SPEAK UP! We can start tomorrow... but I need you to SPEAK UP! If it works for you, post a few time windows and let's figure out one that can serve the most members. Let's do this!

Long before I ever even thought of starting this whole Skool thing, my wife got tickets to Phantom of the Opera for tomorrow evening. So, as you can understand, I will not be doing the online class tomorrow. Let’s talk about switching it to earlier in the day on Sundays. That would be easier for me. - M

Hey folks, I've been super busy, so I haven't had a chance to post last week's online class video. I will, and soon. On another front, I have been thinking about discontinuing the so-called "Freemium" thing with Skool. We now have nearly 100 members but only a handful of members have upgraded. The online group class has had only a few attendees, making it tough to ask my own students to make time for it. I still think it could work but right now, there seems to be zero motivation for people to upgrade. From my perspective, I would like to commit enough time each week to not only have more online classes but also to fill up a library of lessons that members can access. But I'm not interested in doing that for free. This is how I make my living... The 4th of July is coming – the 250th birthday of our nation . I remember the 200th back in 1976. It was great. Anyway... should be a relatively easy date to remember. On July 1st, I will end the whole freemium thing and switch to a paid-only model. And on July 4th, I will remove any community member who has not upgraded If it turns out that basically no one upgrades, that's fine. I'll gradually wind things down with the community aspect and leave it in place as a portal for my courses. And for those members who have paid in advance for a year, we'll arrange private lessons to compensate you for your much-appreciated support. If you want this thing to work, speak up! Talk to each other. Get more members to upgrade. It's only $37 a month. If we can get two thirds or more of the current free-tier members to upgrade, I can dedicate time to online classes and recording lessons and make it worth everyone's support. It's up to you.

We're getting the Online Class dialed in. Tomorrow, we be doing it slightly differently - using the Skool "call" option as opposed to the Skool "webinar." Fingers crossed that this different option makes it more organic. Also, as pretty much everyone agreed, it's important to keep your microphone muted unless you're needing to respond to a question or ask one yourself. That should minimize or eliminate any feedback issues. Beyond the Online Classes, though, what can I be doing/providing to incentivize the community members who are presently on the free Standard tier to upgrade to Premium? As you might imagine, I ask for a very simple and pragmatic reason –– If this platform can serve as a source of income for me, that incentivizes me to turn more time and attention to it. And I would not have started this community if I didn't want to do that. So, with the understanding that I do, indeed, want to bring more value and benefits to you, the community member, please let me know exactly how I might best do that. I added the option of taking private online lessons the other day and I'll teach the first on Thursday. Again, I have the school space 24/7/365 and I can have a student or two present to demonstrate with, so if you're halfway around the world from me and you want to learn, get a training partner and share the cost of doing privates with them. Joe Hyams - the author of Zen In The Martial Arts and a former private student of Bruce Lee – trained privately with me (exclusively) for 20 years.