Hi @Sybil Hall 🤗 Welcome to Skoolology! 🌟 We're so excited you're here. You've built communities, created products, and helped so many people, so we're especially looking forward to learning alongside you. I know one of your biggest goals right now is growing your community, and that's exactly what we're exploring together here. Skoolology is our living research lab. We'll be testing ideas, sharing what's working (and what isn't), and helping each other build communities people genuinely want to be part of. I hope you'll jump into the conversations, share your experiences, challenge our thinking, and let us cheer you on as your community grows. Welcome! We're so glad you're here. 💙

The "Promote-Friendly" Skool Classifieds Group That's Beating the Rest So Far We've published our initial results from testing across several "Classifieds" Skool communities. You can read the full page-by-page breakdown at the link below, but one group clearly stood out initially, both in the comments we received and in the bang for your buck for most members. To be fair, joining any community can pay off if it connects you with people who help you grow or who turn out to be the right-fit clients for what you offer. Want to see which Classifieds groups came out on top so far? Check out the full review here. Thanks to our own @Jean Day McCarthy for suggesting this type of review. What have your own results been when advertising in these groups?

We had our first Research Lab Live today, and we left that call buzzing.🐝 Here's what struck me. The word "outcome" doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. It depends on where you're standing when you hear it. For someone who already has a community up and running, an outcome is something they can picture clearly, because they have real people in mind. The conversation gets specific fast. For someone earlier in the journey, still shaping what they're building, an outcome is a different kind of thing. It's about their own next step, their own clarity. Same word, different starting line, and here's the part I love: ❣️ Both are exactly where they're supposed to be. There's no better or worse place to be standing. There's just your place, and the next step from it. We also admitted something we all share. We overthink. 🤔 We wait for the plan to be perfect, the idea to be fully formed, the timing to be right, and while we wait, nothing moves. So we started talking about experimentation instead. Not "get it right." Just "try one thing and see what happens." That reframe changed the whole energy in the room, and before long, people were getting genuinely inventive, and a little cheeky, about the experiments they might run. And there were a few real aha moments. The kind where you can almost see someone's thinking shift in front of you. Those are the moments I live for. But honestly, the ideas weren't even the best part. The best part was the room. People showed up open. They asked each other real questions. They connected. They reflected out loud, and each walked away with one small experiment they chose for themselves. (Todd also kept us laughing, which I've come to expect.) 🤣 That kind of room is not something you find in most communities, and it's not something we take for granted. This is what I hoped this would become. Not me teaching from the front, but a group of builders who genuinely care whether their members succeed, figuring things out together, each of us a little further along than we were an hour ago.

Today, I didn't post in other communities. Instead, I took a step back. Over the past couple of weeks, I've gathered observations from community case studies, from conversations with builders like you, and from my own experience. And today reminded me of something: Research isn't only about collecting more information. It's about making sense of what you've already learned. Here's one thing that surprised me this week. When I ask how we know our members are making progress, so many of us reach for the same evidence: activity. They log in, they comment, they show up. But when we describe what we actually want for them, it's something else entirely. I keep noticing that gap, and I don't think I'm the only one sitting in it. One thing is already becoming clear to me. This isn't about finding the "best" community. It's about uncovering the principles that help members succeed, no matter what kind of community someone is building. Before we come together tomorrow, I would love to hear from you. 💙 What surprised you most this week as you watched your own community? Even one small thing. Thank you to everyone who has shared, challenged my thinking, and asked good questions along the way. You're shaping this research just as much as I am.

We've spent the first couple of days this week noticing. Watching our communities. Sitting with hard questions instead of rushing to answer them. That slow looking matters; it's the whole foundation of what we're doing. Here's the quiet trap of any kind of research: you can study a thing forever and never touch it. I see this in community builders all the time, myself included. We wait until we have the perfect plan before we help someone. The perfect onboarding, the perfect post, the perfect program. And while we're busy polishing, the member who needed one small nudge is still sitting there, waiting. Most meaningful outcomes don't start with a perfect plan. They start with one small step. One honest conversation. One question asked out loud. One member, one nudge. Here's today's reflection, and it's pointed at them, not you: 💙Where might perfection be slowing your members down? 💙Where are they waiting to feel ready before they begin, when really, they just need permission to take that first small step? Sit with that today. Notice where someone in your world is stuck at the starting line. 💚One more thing before you go. Tomorrow, everyone in the research is invited to hop on a call together, where we'll take all this noticing and actually do something with it. This first one's open to all of us. More on that tonight. ❣️I'll be out and about today. May be slower to respond. ❣️