I run one of the biggest tech communities on school that makes six figures a month with just a 5% churn. And today I'm going to walk you through step by step how to start a school from scratch and get your first 100red to a,000 members. And at the end of the video I'll take you through the number one mistake that destroys communities and how you can avoid it. So if you're a course owner, you're a content creator, or you are simply looking to crack some million-doll deals and make money online, grab that coffee and let's lock in. Just over a year ago, I quit my full-time job to go allin on entrepreneurship, and I knew nothing about school at the time. But since then, I've met Alex Aozi and Sam Ovens multiple times. I've interviewed highlevel entrepreneurs like Dan Martell, and I've built a network of other entrepreneurs and schoolers doing over 100K a month. And today, I'm going to break down everything I've learned in that year. And if I had to start from zero, how I would get to my first a,000 paid members. And I'm going to share everything I've learned in that journey so you don't have to spend a year like I did to figure it all out. Before we talk growth, we have to touch on the number one thing that stops people making progress. And that's not committing to one niche, one offer, and one community. So, let's not over complicate this. You can make a success on anything from school, be it your passion or your profession. I've got clients in pickle ball, AI automations, and chess and beyond. All you need to do though is pick one and commit to this. And don't worry, we're not married to this. In a hundred days time, if we can't make a success of it for whatever reason, we can always pivot. But the big thing that's going to hold you back from making progress, it's not committing to one community. So right now, pick a community and let's commit to it for 90 days. Let's talk about the four stages of growth. And we'll tag each one method, the channel, and the cost. And if you do all four steps right, it's going to be impossible for you not to grow. Most communities will never get past their first five members. This is going to be our big priority. The method is going to be outbound. The channel is going to be outreach through DMs, LinkedIn, and email, and the cost is going to be zero. Now, stage one is going to be very proactive. At this time, I'm not worried about your group growing on autopilot. This is going to take good old-fashioned elbow grease and outreach. Hey, Simon, I'm starting a new community about X. For lifetime access to the group, would you join for some exchange for feedback? And then reach out to your friends, your family, your colleagues, your current and past clients. You will have in your phone book your first five to 10 founding members. So make sure to drop them messages on LinkedIn DMs and email and get them first five to 10 members. And once you've got them, there's no point doing it if you don't do this next thing. And that is get feedback from them. Ask them their goals. Ask them what they need support with. Really give them the VIP experience and blow them away with value. But once you've collected all that beautiful feedback, use that to shape your offer in your school community. From here, you can just scale the group from outreach alone. One of my friends and clients, Jason, actually scaled to a 100 members just through outreach alone. The next step is to turn every member into a salesman. And what does salesmen love? They love commission. And our goal here is to get our first 50 to 100 members. The method is going to be referrals. The channel is going to be an affiliate link. And the cost is just going to be a percentage of the upside of that client. You want to give all of your members a percentage of the lifetime value of a new member. And on school, the best practice is around 40%. What you want to do is proactively reach out to all your founding members with their affiliate link and encourage them to invite five plus members into the community. And the big cell here is they're going to get 40% plus of the value of that customer. And really remember here, cuz this sounded crazy to me to start, you would prefer to have 60% of business than 100% of nothing. And this is going to be business that you're never going to see otherwise. So really encourage this member to try and get your first 50 to 100 members. And when you get some progress of this, people are actually signing people up for your affiliate program. Give them bonuses, highlight them, really promote them into the community and encourage this affiliate program. Our goal here to get to our first 100 members. Now, we're getting serious and this is where the magic's going to start happening. What we want to do is build a nice steady flow of incoming warm traffic because the last two stages have been more outbound and really proactive. We want to get passively members coming in. The method we're going to choose is outbound. The channel is going to be YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. And the cost is going to be $100 to $200. So, you want to pick one primary platform to post on and carve out a small budget for thumbnails, for editing, for equipment, and for that time to post. Now, there's a 100 platforms that you can actually post on. How do you pick the one that's right for you? Well, you're in the info product space. You sell information. And so YouTube is going to be your best friend. And what you want to do is post how-to content, search friendly content with a few builds and lifestyle day in the lives thrown into the mix. And once you've got a nice steady consistency and a nice momentum on that one primary platform, pick a secondary to support it. So if you're in the tech and AI and automation space where we target business owners, LinkedIn is going to be a really nice supporting platform. If you're more aesthetic and lifestyle, Instagram is going to be a really nice choice for you. And some of the goats on the platform like Nick Serev, he does Instagram to YouTube to school and that's going to be your flow. The supporting channel drives traffic to your main channel where then you warm them up and sell them on your offer which is hosted on school. And my community that I've just set up has a 30% conversion rate. I only need 300 members to visit the page to get 100red members. So, this is super scalable once you get the momentum and the consistency. Stage four is where we're going to get 500 to a,000 plus members and really scale the group to infinity. We're at a crossroads here. We either choose compound mode, which is we just do more outreach, we do more referrals and we do more content, or we go growth mode and we reinvest hard. If you choose growth mode, the method is ads. The channel is going to be meta ads, so Facebook and Instagram and YouTube retargeting. And the cost is going to be 30 to 50% of the 90day value of a new customer. Now, this is going to a thousand% work. As long as you've got some good creative, decent with the targeting, you don't go too crazy on the cost, you can take your group absolutely intergalactic, and the sky is the limit here. But a bit of a watch out. We built a group with over a thousand paid members and we didn't do a single ad. It's all outreach and content. So, you don't need this. And actually, if you're just starting out, I would encourage crack organic content and community building before we then reinvest into ads. If you do decide to do ads, this is going to,000% work. Someone who's a prime example is Evelyn Vice. In a big month, she'll make half a million in a singular month through her offer. And primarily where that growth is coming from is ads. But what she's done right is she knows she's a good community builder. So once she spends money to acquire a new customer, she knows she'll keep them. you won't lose them through churn. So, if you do decide to go this method, do your organic content, take your best performers and use that as an ad and then the people who've come on your platform or visited your social who've not bought, retarget that content to them to sell them on your program. But just make sure you've got a world-class offer so you're not spending money and losing them immediately. So, here's a recap of the fourstep strategy. Number one, we're going to do outreach to get our first five to 10 founding members. Then we're going to bolt on an affiliate program to scale to 50 to 100 members. Stage three, we're going to start creating content to get that warm traffic in and get our first 200 to 500 members. Now, once we've got money flowing in, we're going to reinvest hard into growth mode and do ads to scale to a,000 members and beyond. Here's the number one mistake that destroys communities so you can avoid it. When you get a new member in, they're really eager to stop making progress and make that transformation that they join the group to get. But if the onboard's unclear, they don't know where to start and the road map is unclear, they're going to cancel in the first seven days. And that's because most communities don't have a good onboarding process. You need to send them an automated DM. Show them the road map, that 90-day transformation that they join the group to get. Get them on a call. Get them connected with other people. And importantly, get them a quick win in the first seven days. And once they're excited, you want to upsell them to your annual offer and lock them in for 12 months. And if you want to learn how to build and run a world-class community, check this video out here. And I'll see you in the next one. Woo!