I'm excited to announce that our May Leaderboard Winner is @Lara Knutzen 🏆 Not only has Lara been consistently showing up, but she has also been adding tremendous value to this community. In fact, Lara isn't just the winner for May—she currently holds the title of the most active member in the history of this community! 👏 To recognize her contributions, I've decided to create a special reward this month. Lara will receive a one-week pinned post where she can showcase and promote her audiobook-focused community. 👉 🎧 FRIENDS OF AUDIOBOOKS I love supporting members who are actively building something and giving back to others. 👉 I also want to give a special shoutout to all of our Level 6 members. Reaching Level 6 takes dedication, consistency, and a willingness to engage with and support others. Your contributions help make this community what it is. ❤️ Because of that, I'm excited to announce a new Level 6 unlock! ⭐ Level 6 Reward: A FREE 24-hour pinned post in the community. OTHER LEVEL 6 MEMBERS - @Gemma Coles - Gemma launched her book AI for Busy Professionals on Amazon not too long ago, I highly recommend you go and check it out and also jump in and join her skool community Smart Skills Academy @Sybil Hall - Sybil is also a best selling author but also sells products on Amazon FBA if you want to seek her excellent knowledge make sure you find her at Income without Burnout @Jeff Baer - Jeff is not an author but has a really great software solution to build out bio pages for your social media and create custom QR codes to have readers go from your book to your community or somewhere else. Check it out at Bio Builders

I'm curious to get a read of the room and learn a little more about what everyone here is working toward. What is your main goal with your book? 📚 Is your goal to support or grow your business? 💰 Is your goal to create an additional stream of income? 🧠 Is your goal to get your thoughts, knowledge, or story out into the world? 🏆 Is your goal to build authority or become known for something? ❤️ Is it something more personal? ✨ Or is your goal something completely different? There’s no right or wrong answer here. Everyone comes into self-publishing for different reasons, and I always think it’s interesting to see what’s driving people. Drop your goal below 👇 I’d love to see what everyone is building.

Here in the US we are celebrating Memorial Day - thankfully where I am north of Chicago we are having beautiful weather and I am planning to do some more clean up around my house today and playing with my son outside. He has been asking me all winter to do WATER BALLOONS. Now, would finally be a good day for that! 🗓️ UPCOMING EVENTS - I am in process of putting together the JUNE calendar, but I just wanted to give a heads up on May 27th, for my premium and VIP members, I will be holding a live book formatting workshop. You can check that on the calendar here. I will also be traveling✈️ to Rome 🇮🇹 for the first time ever. In fact, it's my first trip to Europe, and I will be solo traveling. I will be away June 4th through June 12th. I will have my laptop with me and be able to pop on and engage in the community occasionally, but I will not be doing any live events during that time frame. Hope everyone has a wonderful start to their week.

One thing I think people are going to regret is NOT starting their own Skool community sooner. When I got started back in 2024, there was no $9 Hobby Plan. I’ve been paying the $100/month plan ever since. I could downgrade now, but honestly, the affiliate feature alone has been worth keeping because it gives members an incentive to share your community and bring in new people. That has absolutely helped this community grow. Another thing I’m noticing? Skool is investing heavily into helping communities get discovered on the platform itself. Right now there’s still opportunity because the platform isn’t completely oversaturated yet. The earlier you build, the easier it is to establish momentum before thousands more communities flood in competing for attention. Now obviously I’m not a Skool insider, but personally, I wouldn’t be shocked if the $9 plan doesn’t stay around forever. If you can lock that pricing in now, there’s a good chance future-you will be happy you did. So if you’ve been thinking about starting a community… stop overthinking it. Yeah @Greg Junge @Todd Rosenthal @Vicky C @Lisa Jeffries - I'm talking about you 😉 Open the group. Start posting. Start building relationships. Start learning the platform. Why wait when it’s only $9/month? ➡️ START YOUR COMMUNITY NOW

🔥You get out what you put in. I wanted to take a few minutes to recognize some community members who are taking what they’ve learned and actually putting it into motion. Results don’t happen because you join a community, buy a course, or save a post. Results happen when you take action. 📣 @Gemma Coles (my VIP client) launched her book in less than 8 weeks. She’s already seeing sales, working on gathering reviews, actively marketing her book, and she's already thinking about the next one. That's publisher thinking. @Pat Terrell followed the lessons inside Premium and used the step-by-step process to get her book published and live on Amazon. @Gale Bates started by moving her planner from only being sold on her own website over to Amazon KDP, making it easier for people around the world to buy it. Since then, she’s already moved into launching a children’s book and has plans for more. @Tara Adler joined the call last night where I was able to help with some keyword research (replay coming soon 👀). She’s actively working on multiple books at once... and no, not ideal Tara is just an overachiever 😂 @Jim Flach has some great ideas in the works and decided to start with a children’s book in his niche so he could move through the process more quickly and learn by doing. 🎉 There are many people in this community making progress, and every small step matters. Whether you're writing, researching, designing, publishing, or marketing — movement creates momentum. The people taking action are moving closer to launch goals and sales goals. The people sitting on the sidelines? Those goals stay exactly where they are. "You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to become great." Drop a comment below and tell us: What is ONE thing you're working on right now? 👇