5-6 years ago, the Vegan Gym started building communities on Facebook. Today they are running 8 separate communities on Skool, and they cap each one at 100 members. I recently talked with Daphne Bascom, their COO, and she shared how this academy model works and why they made the switch to Skool. It's pretty interesting. Why Cap at 100 Members? Most community builders think about scale as just adding more members to one community. The Vegan Gym does it differently. "We try and keep our communities around 100 clients so that our coach to client ratio is about one to 20, one to 25, so that we can maintain those close connections," Daphne explained. When a community reaches 100 members, they do not keep growing it. They launch a new one. That decision comes from what they have learned works. Daphne told me that "100 size is about a sweet spot that we've identified in terms of coaching, client, community closeness." This approach to community size management helps maintain engagement rates and member satisfaction while scaling operations. How the Academy Model Works Here's their community structure: • 1 parent community (Vegan Superhero Academy HQ) • 8 child communities with names like Avengers, Guardians, Legends, and Titans • About 100 members in each child community • 4-5 coaches per community • 16 total coaches across all communities Each community receives twice-weekly group calls, one-on-one coaching sessions with assigned coaches, and weekly masterclasses delivered by their coaching team. Daphne mentioned they practice what they call "unreasonable hospitality" in each community. The smaller community size makes that personalized approach possible. As she put it: "I feel like I know everyone in that community." This model represents horizontal scaling rather than vertical scaling—instead of growing one large community, they create multiple smaller communities as they expand. Why They Moved from Facebook to Skool The Vegan Gym transitioned their communities from Facebook to Skool after consistent feedback from their community members.

@Kat Kuczynska is building a research hub for parents with children diagnosed with autism, and she's using Skool to do it. 💪 In this interview Kat and I talk about: - Taking messy action - Communities as research hubs - Founding member feedback - Perfectionism - Bringing experts into your community - If you know someone with autism or you are curious about how to build a community around a true research project, this episode is for you. 👇

For those who may have missed my post in Skoolers, here is my interview with the legendary Sam Ovens. Having an opportunity to sit down and chat with Sam about Skool was a real gift, and some of the things he said around the topic of community building and the early internet really struck me. He's a thoughtful guy with deep insights around how online community has evolved. For those who responded to my earlier post asking for questions for Sam, I did end up asking him all of your questions! They just didn't make it into the final edit. I will post them here when the time is right so stay tuned! If you haven't seen our interview yet, check it out! 👇

This is the place to find the latest interviews with your fellow Skoolers - from community owners, to admins and operators. Please introduce yourself below! p.s. How many communities have YOU made on Skool?