6 years ago, I had my first back surgery. I was stuck in bed for months. Couldn’t walk. Couldn’t work. Couldn’t distract myself with “busy.” When you can’t move, you think...And I started asking bigger questions. Like.. “Why am I working the way I do?” “Who am I building this for?” “What kind of life do I actually want?” It took 3 more surgeries to really get it: The real cost wasn’t the pain. It was how I was spending my time. I realized I’d built a business that depended on me feeling fine. In the end, that wasn’t a business. It was a liability. So I stripped it down, and rebuilt it around simplicity, leverage, and margin. I made it a business that fits the life I want. I realized that you don’t need to burn out to prove your value. The most important is you need to build like someone who matters. Because life *will* slow you down eventually. Might as well build something that works before it does. I'm not sharing that part of my life for sympathy, I wouldn't wish 4 surgeries on anyone. But I also wouldn’t trade what they taught me, about time, value, and resilience.

Curious to know, what are you guys recent wins? What are you working on at the moment ? My recent win is lowering my lead magnet ads cost per lead by 25%! I'm now at $1.9/lead (the concensus states that we should aim at < $2.5/lead.) Sure I can do better, but I only have a $5/day budget so that's already good. Working BTS on a tech project (still related to offers and clarity ofc), as well as workshops. More on that soon. What about you?

Hi, y'all. I've seen a trend in many a community, and I'm wondering what your opinion is. Basically, the community owner offers to give some kind of freebie and tells the members to post a comment with a specific word. Something to express interest. Yes Me [ insert item name here ] Then they DM the info to anyone who does it. Anyway, I figure that they're doing this in order to drive engagement because people will tend to like everyone else's comment. How do you feel about doing something like that? It strikes me as a cheap way to create engagement to work up the discovery ranks. Not a fan of that regardless of how effective it might be. I want actual engagement. 😋 Also, comment TIRAMISU if you want Sylvain to share his recipe!

I'm getting a bit known around here and on Skool for advocating MVP, feedback loops and all ^^ Mind me, after 15+ in the startup world, that became a second nature :) Running a Skool community is also a process of trial and error. I rewrite my about page, adjust my VSL (this is what I hate the most btw), or change up my onboarding or DM script, then check how it works. And if I'm not tracking what you change and why, i'm just guessing. And guessing in business is a no-go zone. So I track (not efficiently enough, more on that later) everything I change or tweak and try to see my community as a living system. Every update I make could have a effect, so I track (on Notion) all versions of: - My bio - My communities descriptions - My communities about pages - My welcoming questions - My Auto-DMs - My follow-ups OK this is where I stop to highlight that, the mechanic's car always being broken, I don't track as efficiently as I should. Because I should have a sh*t ton of tracked metrics on how many calls I took, my conversion rate, and so on. (which is dumb because I love analyzing data 🤷) I version every change I make, but I still rely on my memory to know how many members I had, where I stood out in discovery, what my conversion rate was (that one being a 7-day rolling window it's a bit tricky anyway), etc.. So, don't be like me, don't do things halfway! Please, keep track of: - What did you change? (be specific) - Why did you change it? (what were you trying to improve?) - What happened next? (better? Worse? No changes?) The point is always to test, learn and adapt (the famous Deming's wheel, Plan, Do, Check, Act) To stop making random changes and start learning what works. The Deming's wheel and the whole agility methodology is made to "capitalize on experience". When something works, you can replicate it. When it doesn’t, you’ll know why. I'm starting tracking my data impacts better, (better late than never, even if IRL that can cost you a LOT), with a database linking the changes to Skool's main KPIs.

I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you! My background is in municipal water engineering, hospitality, and my latest passion project is my community for empowering personal growth and driving transformation via book wisdom. My 2025 goals are to make lots of new connections and to learn a ton of new stuff!