After getting feedback from this community and others, my current strategy is to have a free tier and a $9 subscription tier, with another tier to be added at some point in the future. It's important that this not get salesy, at all, period, since I have many corporate clients' employees on the site. Nor can I deploy common engagement tactics, as they will turn off corporate employees. Therefore, the current line of thinking is to deploy an AI education and charity model, where 40% of subscription fees (after Skool fees and credit card fees) will go to charities sponsored by the community. There will be a select few charities based on my direct relationships: I sit on the board of one (youth mentoring); my friend, former NFL great Herman Moore, has a charity; and I belong to an organization that sends teams into areas damaged by natural disasters like hurricanes, flooding, and earthquakes. To clarify, this is a for-profit business structure with a large giving component. I will publish a high-level cost and giving structure, for example: Subscriptions − Skool Fees − Credit Card Fees = Eligible Revenue for Giving. Then Eligible Revenue × 40% goes to designated charities. The balance funds the community's educational mission. The idea is that by subscribing to the community, you support free AI training for all, gain access to advanced training modules through a voluntary subscription, and a portion of your subscription fee goes to sponsored charities. Open to thoughts. Thank you.

Skool went down for a few hours this morning. Outages happen, sometimes because of the platform itself, sometimes because of the services it relies on. When Amazon's hosting goes down, hundreds of thousands of sites go down with it. Skool is back online, but this raises a bigger question: if your platform goes down, how do you reach your members? How do they reach you? Most Skool community owners collect contact info in their three signup questions. Some use two of those fields for phone number and email. You may have noticed our three questions focused on you and the communities you wanted reviewed, not contact info. That was intentional. We wanted to learn who was joining and how to serve them best. Collecting contact info was always on our roadmap, especially as we launch paid plans. We'd planned to write this post anyway next week, but Skool helped drive the point home early. So what should you do? The safest approach is using two of your three signup questions for email and mobile number. If you only have one spare field, ask for mobile. Email open rates keep dropping, while text open rates run above 90%. If you don't collect contact info at signup, build a way to collect it later, once members trust that you won't spam them. And for paid clients, collect as much as you can, including social links. It can be as simple as this: "Thanks for being a member of Skoolology. We didn't collect personal info at signup because we wanted to learn what you needed most and earn your trust first. But things happen, like platforms going down, so we'd love a good mobile number and email. We'll only use them for emergencies, like a Skool outage, and we'll never spam you. Just securely message @Donna Thornton or @Todd Thornton with your info and we'll add it to our offline database. Takes less than 30 seconds." One more thing for Skool owners: please download your member info regularly and store it somewhere safe, off your platoforms.

Q: Is today's live Q&A mandatory? A: Only if you like growing your community. 😄 Q: What if I'm stuck? A: Perfect. That's what Q&A is for. Q: What if I'm not stuck? A: Even better. Come share what's working. Q: What should I bring? A: A question, a notebook, or your favorite beverage. Q: How do I RSVP? A: Drop a 🚀 if you're joining us or a ☕ if you'll be listening with coffee in hand. See you soon!

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Are gift card giveaways a good way to drive engagement! Something simple like, “Giveaway: Help Me Pick the Next Series, and Win $25 Amazon Gift Card? After members submit ideas, one winner will be randomly selected. Thoughts and feedback are welcome.