First of all, this post isn't even really ABOUT Joe. It's about - WHY everyone's talking about Joe - WHY this matters to the rest of us And I'm totally going to answer these questions for you. So here goes...! BTW. Joe being Joe DeFilippo, maker of Skooly. ➡️ #1: WHY IS EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT JOE? - Joe listened to what people were looking for, and he solved the problems by making those things exist with his fancy pants programming skills (examples: native-like audio shares in Skool, bookmark posts within Skool, easily make your own GIFs so others can share them in Skool, and actually a bunch of other stuff) - He made the price insanely affordable (like, I cannot believe the price is going "UP" to $9 because really this COULD cost way more!!) - He also just keeps on making things better (example! I asked for the voice transcription to be available in Hungarian and Portuguese, and WITHIN 24 HOURS he added those languages!) - SO. About the growth and "talking about Joe" side, a few days ago, I made the first of several posts in my group about this to spread the word. Already more than 10 friends from my group signed up right away, AND some other friends piped up to say "yes yes yes! it's great!" Joe made a point to thank friends for spreading the word. - Joe's not making a huge thing of the affiliate stuff. But we all know that the price will go from $5 to $9 next week, and it feels like a nice time to get friends in there quick! - WHEN SOMETHING IS REALLY GOOD, and people WANT AND NEED THAT THING, it's easy to spread the word! So it's been more than a little crazy to notice that now in the last couple days, there seem to be posts about this everywhere! And I'm not sure, but I think he's gotten something like 40-50 new members in the span of a few days! ➡️ #2: WHY THIS MATTERS TO THE REST OF US! - Make the thing people want. - Offer it at a fair price. - Keep making it better and LISTEN to feedback. - Thank the friends who are spreading the word! - You don't even have to make a big thing about your affiliate program. When you have a great thing, YOUR PEOPLE WILL SHARE!

OK... who else cried on Skool News? Sam & Kirby had tissues ready (THEY KNEW!). I just sat here with tears in my eyes but kept on flowing to type up the recap. The "best post ever" below is the one that got us all crying! NEW FEATURE: SPAM RISK SCORE This is already live! (personal note: my main community is freemium, this has been a HUGE help already!!) ROADMAP/IN PROGRESS: - Risk Score is now at V1, more is coming soon. Huzzah! LOVE YOU SKOOL! - Notification improvements. A lot of people complain about notifications. The more groups and interactions, the more notifications. They're working on it tho! - Traffic Sources: Where are people coming from? This is a HUGE project. No one has ever had THIS level of visibility. Working on it for 6 months at this point. Estimated release date is early February. Will even show conversion rates from one source to another! ROADMAP/UP NEXT: - Moderation tools. Will give us the option to auto-approve low-risk members! Also working on SMS confirmation to be able to post in a community (as an OPTION) - Page load speed. The more people who use Skool, the slower it gets. (It's growing fast! "Every two weeks, Skool grows by more than it did in its first four years!" ~Sam) ("The lesson there is just 'don't quit!'" ~Andrew Kirby) ("Inspiring!"~Sam) ("Thanks!"~Kirby) - Languages incoming on Discovery SKOOL OF THE WEEK! (see screenshots) - Gert Leroy with the Underwater Squad - He's super rocking tiers with $3k MRR ($9 entry point + upgrades) - Super cool to see this --> he's got the Skool link EVERYWHERE! - "Gert! What a man!" ~Kirby "BEST POST EVER"(!!!!) (see screenshots) - Shout out to Glyn Dewis (Photography Community + Photography Creative Circle) - His community made this stinkin' amazing video for him. THIS is what made us all cry! FIND IT HERE* (*you must be a member of Skoolers to see this post, but the video is shred inside the YouTube video attached to this post)

OK. I want to share what could be BY FAR the most EPIC way to get paid advertising that WORKS to attract amazing SUPER-Skoolers into your world! But first. This really requires a touch of the back story to connect the dots and add context. - October 10. I woke up with an INTENSE thought about a group that I needed to open. (This would go on to be Connect & Collab.) - October 11. I opened the new group really quietly and first invited friends and clients to join. I decided to stay focused on word of mouth this time. - October 19. We started our FIRST group challenge, and it was LIT. Our members LOVED IT!! (There are STILL members going through it!) - October 21. Evelyn started the Skool Traffic Challenge, and I get even BETTER at tracking metrics! I GOT THE STAR DURING THE CHALLENGE!! - Anyways, over the last two months, we grew to hundreds of members who are freaking AMAZING. I wake up excited to come to Skool. (I mean, I do other things too. I have a full life most days. BUT I LOVE SKOOL and love my group so hard.) - But before yesterday, I think our biggest growth day was 12 members in the same day. That's still 12 whole humans but nothing crazy! - Flash forward to FRIDAY. I'm in this guy's EPIC group (it's called "The Skool Hub" and is highly recommended if you want a place where you can promote your Skool group anytime!!), and I see he has a new program where you can pay to pin a post. I figured. WHY NOT? THIS IS A GREAT IDEA! I snagged a pinned post straight away! - IT WORKS LIKE THIS: you pay for a pinned post in the classroom, then pop him over the text. He posts it FOR YOU so that the notifications go out to his thousands of members who are following him. And then it is also pinned for 24 hours!

This seemed like suuuuch a good idea, but I'm so focused on my communities that I'm not so sure I have the bandwidth for this now. Hard to say the right thing to do!! I'll make a decision by end of day today!! Meanwhile, we WON THE SKOOL GAMES! Sure would be nice to blog about that! 😅🫶🤠