something that I believe a lot of people need to learn and that's how to learn how do you educate yourself and how do you pull information that you see and take action on it either immediately or like learn how to communicate it with people I am so excited for today's episode I think this is a really good one because Ryan is an ideal example for monetizing your personal growth journey in the weirdest but also really really cool way Ryan is school famous with his GIF Community he'll talk a little bit about what threats he's all pulling in the background in a second but he's not only doing that uh he also has a very sophisticated B2B offer so we're going to talk a lot about weird ways to monetize your personal grow journey and then strategies for retaining your customers welcome Ryan it's so amazing to have you in the show hey thanks for having me on Ryan could you please for the person listening give a little bit of a crash course background run through of how did we get here how did we get here wow so I started my journey on school at the start of the year I took two weeks to really think about what do I want to do with my current skill set I have a background in the film and televis ision industry in the marketing industry doing creative ads working with agencies and at the start of the year I wasn't really happy with everything I was doing I was doing a bit of sales I was just chopping and changing a lot and kind of found out about this thing called school and it was like January 15 I think I created my or or January 17 I created my account on school and I wanted to jump into being a growth operator now I did the growth operating thing for a bit and partnered with a few different people and nothing really hit so I don't know if that's based on me just not knowing it right or the right audiences or finding the right people and I got to a point it was April 11th where I was like I kind of want to do my own communities and April 11th is like a key a key metric on my activity heat map in the school profile because that was the first day that I realized how valuable points could could really be on your profile in the school community so April 11th was the start and then it was just every day since then I've been taking a day off I think less than about 12 hours of like engaging and commenting and connecting with people and from engaging in in and from you know meeting people like Goose on the platform and connecting with Dave and connecting with you and all of these conversationalists on the platform kind of Brad GIF in a way which is school.com DG and we realized that you didn't need to actually offer anything at all except a little bit of entertainment value and that's kind of how we started to learn about community and from there we just just every day just always talking engaging and connecting with people and I think GIF was really the the change of direction for us on the platform because points and everything are good but they don't really bring money so we launched a $1 Community to monetize which I think is only now just kind of profitable which we're about to make very unprofitable in the very near future with a couple of new things that we're doing but yeah I we kind of just got here from from being active on school I love the hosi saying more equals more and so I kind of took that literally and just engaged with as many people as possible that's so cool I think there are few things that I want to just clarify for the person listening in a second before that I want to explain to people that while the GIF Community which really is a community where everybody is just sharing gifs maybe you can explain that a little bit better it's I think my favorite Community after the school games uh community and I've never seen anything like this before but I'd love for for you to explain it from your perspective but then that is basically like a skill building for you and lead generation Community because you're now working with school game winners like myself to to help them with their attention yes well the Gift Community is pretty much just to post gifts and the the concept actually derived from I think we were the the whole concept around GIF was almost to to almost mock school now don't get me wrong I'm the biggest lover and believer in school but we we saw and you can kind of feel it we had this ability to see the same information everywhere which is this rigid approach this very I like to say the words unified approach because Goose goose brought the rainbows and we we kind of brought the mockery side to to the platform and so GIF was um inspired by something I wrote on a whiteboard which was I saw all of these strategy posts you go in the school community and everyone's got their new strategy and do this and do that and I just put on a whiteboard how to make a billion dollars post gifts and that night at 2:30 in the morning I registered school.com DG and created the community with Dave because I was at Dave's house at the time and I woke up and I was like Dave I did something I spent $100 last night on a community just to post gifts and from there we've managed to get yeah School Games winners uh Sam ovens is in there you know School Stories uh team and staff are in there and they all contribute as well and I think Sam says it best where it's like when everything is so serious sometimes you just need to laugh and that was that was one of the key lines I think that really were about it and because of the mockery and they they did it in the the one day for for the school games in for the April winners where you know we have we have the unlockable reward which is at level 9 you get kicked from the community and so we kind of we've made it all backward our leaderboards are the school leader boards but they're reversed my username on school is literally NB it's not a serious username and so we just took the seriousness out of everything we were doing and did it at like an extreme extent with GIF and from that has just been you know people have literally stayed and I have to remind myself that hearing this stuff you have to really because there's so much of it is like really how do you take it in and process it and and hold I guess you know a bit of empathy for it because people have literally said because of GIF I've stayed on school just because it was fun or they got to engage with someone and that leads into as you were just mentioning around retention it's how do we build a great culture of people on the platform how do we make things more engaging or make things more fun and one of the easiest and fastest ways to boost engagement is to ask people to share a gift of something how do you feel about Mondays use a gift to describe it's so much better than words because it's it's a visual element there's no audio it's really easy it's really quick and you can convey an emotion really really fast and it's easy for people to do it try it in your community right now while you're listening to this podcast hi what is your favorite City use a gift to describe it and just watch it work it just always seems to work it boosts your engagement and people connecting because it's a little bit more fun and it's more colorful and the experience overall is just better inside of the community when you use gifts I can confirm that from my perspective because I am I'm more like a Lisa Simpson kind of type when posting I take everything serious when I post but I more think that it's supposed to be like that because you know you're you're the mentor and you're support supposed to support and since we started to work together we did we up were ranking up in the discovery which means the group is clearly more engaged the vibe is like very different and I just want to dive into the the serious offer that is underlying this so everybody can of understand what is happening there so you joined school you're seeing that there's actually an unmet need for Joy laugh you know relaxing a little bit while building your business which is really important so you started the GIF community that that led to more people loving School in general brought you a lot of attention from some ens and with that of course also from you know other school players that take it very seriously and they were thinking how is he doing it and how can I potentially do it so he came up with an offer that is the opposite of the $1 offer which is the cheapest offer you can make it's the $999 offer it's kind of the most expensive one you can make and now you're helping people that kind of nail their subject matter and to also nail the community aspect and what I really love about that is when I said I want to give it a go with you guys I was a little bit afraid because the the moery is intense and while I'd love to witness it it's not my style so I was a little bit afraid that I don't want to ever do something in my community that doesn't feel authentic but what I saw is that you can take those Concepts the things that you can do intuitively in your own way but there's like an underlying principle of why it works right and so I think that that's a a huge gift when you can learn from somebody who executes something so intuitively and so quickly as well and you can just test it in your own way so that I think that is a key when something doesn't come naturally to you to go to someone and especially if they have the Horizon to be able to describe and and process it hey Evan here I just quickly wanted to hop on to encourage you to sign up to my newsletter when you do that you'll not only be informed as soon as a new episode drops but you also get access to my my exclusive growth goodie bag that is a collection of Highly valuable resources provided by our guests and myself tools strategies case studies templates and so much more that will help you to grow and monetize that growth Journey if that sounds fair then click the link and make sure to sign up to money letter can you talk a little bit more about how you're translating the learnings that you make in the GIF Community into processes for everybody else to tap into in their own way that's such a good good question I would like to start that I think with something that I believe a lot of people need to learn and that's how to learn how do you educate yourself and how do you pull information that you see and take action on it either immediately or like learn how to communicate it with people so one of the things I've always been able to just do is see something and just understand what it would look like if I did it like this or like this or like this and so you're so right before where you want to be your authentic self in your community and we've got other clients that are the same and I I have a almost a memory for what I see on school I memorize most posts where I I know everyone's first and last name on the community everyone's like oh who was it's like that was Denny lito and that was it you know it's kind of that's the name and I always can pin where people have posted with about a two to three month radius on school now and I was on a conversation today with Daniel illis and it's about making the community more uh professional he likes the professional approach and so a lot of the times when someone sees the GIF and sees all of this funny unserious stuff they're like oh is it just going to be kids and memes inside of my group no because that's not the feel of your group if I look at your group it's just I can see what you're going for and so I referenced your post um around um spending time with Denny um and away away from your husband and connecting with people in the school games you share this beautiful post around your relationship and so I read that post and I connect in with it but I'm also looking at and whether or not it's intentional or non-intentional it's how do I take this piece of text and communicate that to someone that might need that inside of their community and it was the same with with Daniel today which was here's this post and it was just an instant click of like resonation around yes that's what I want my group to be like because they have other serious like serious serious entrepreneurs that might not spend time in there so what makes them tick and so a meme is probably not going to do it it might but what gets them engaging and it's usually something relatable and so I just said to him and this is a great question to ask yourself when you're thinking what do I want to tell people about exactly what would you want to tell people about what did you do on the weekend would you want to share that no I don't want to tell anyone that okay what' you do at work did did something funny happen at work oh yeah there was this lady did this thing and blah blah blah share it if that's what you feel comfortable doing because you have to leave from the front you have to tell people and so we have the job of looking at a community and going what is this culture what is this feeling and for some reason it's pretty easy I can usually just go to the first 30 the first 30 posts on a on the first page and just instantly I'll be able to go this is it and I've been doing it with like the school games the school Community the other day I posted the most random I I said where is the mundum I think it was and and Andrew Kirby and I went back and forth speaking in a completely different dialect in comments and the reason why like it's it's funny because I know what I'm doing with it is because I posted it when I saw 30 posts that were sort of opinion sort of value but there was no engagement on there because of for whatever reason it just didn't hit and so it's just really just a flat dead screen post this I just went out of the blue and just posted something stupid and it worked and it had like 70 comments in like 20 minutes and because it's like everything else it's like there's too much business okay now it's too much fun I've been on the other side where there's too much fun not enough business and so I'm like value post here we go like here's some new information and yeah it's it's a constant battle between why you do what you do uh we got a we got a client and they referenced the first thing about me was the Fast and Furious parody video and I remember two days before sitting there and going okay I'm starting to work with some really serious entrepreneurs who were doing massive figures and running big businesses do I want to be known as running a fast and furious video two days later C's coming through because I built a fast and furious video I was like you know what I will be more silly why not if it's working it's working but I don't I don't have the that's not the only way that I think and that's how I share and communicate with people's communities yeah I think it's so interesting I think when you sent me the message Matthew Thompson recommended you and obviously I have like the highest opinion of him as well but I've been curious before because I was looking at it and I was like something's working but I don't get it and then that in combination with Math's recommendation I was like and obviously I see the value of retention right so maybe we also explain to the person listening why it's a complete no-brainer for for especially somebody with a community my size to invest in retention so which should touch base on that as well but I was just seeing something is working there I don't get it there's the recommendation we should start working and then I was really positively surprised about the sophistication and the thought that goes into it and the data that um is underpinning so in all honesty is this something you already developed for yourself or is it because you're now servicing basically what you do and then maybe we can also talk about why investing in a retention program is brainer at what level and what you can do before you are at that level okay okay so the first one is I like adding the sophistication yeah so at the first one I think is um when did sophistication come into this or was it always that serious I feel like I get and like don't get me wrong I sometimes I do shoot from the hip but sometimes I've always tried to look at things as being a bit more of a sniper in this sense that it's I think it's my quick decision making to know like it's almost like giving a punch line when a friend says something and you go that's what she said like that's as like that Split Second decision making where sometimes it it gets me back in the butt but the other day I saw I reference Goose because he's just such a good conversationalist with what he does on the platform and he did a post about 100,000 members coming to the school community and the third line from the bottom it says you can steal my idea if you want to it was in reference to inviting more members to the school platform and bringing people here and hanging out but I was like I'll take it literally and I just copied the whole post word for word and just did the exact same post again and it did exactly what I wanted it to which was to have someone screenshot it line in line being like he didn't mean that and I'm like I know like I'm I'm not just doing stuff you know but a lot of people don't get it too so I have to find the balance sometimes around what I'm going for and I always knew I was going to crack something I just didn't know what it was especially with school it's always around how do you I just spent so much time on the platform and I was like I'd rather go broke than have to get a job somewhere else before I figure this out so it's always been a little bit serious but then as well you know there is there's a time and place to have an unfunny com go to GIF just go and hang out and GIF like if you if all you saw was GIF or you didn't see a value post for me or you just saw funny stuff sure you might not take me seriously but then click the yellow button in retention that'll be a completely different vibe because you have to approach things differently when you are speaking with different people around your work your business but we always try to keep it fun we're dealing with bigger issues so you have to it's like playing um I play Ice Hockey so it's like like playing ice hockey in Beer League versus playing ice hockey at the National Tournament completely different ball game and so you can play funny and silly and hang out but as soon as you play that rank above that division above you have to level up quick to play at the same level and it's kind of the um it's one of the best ways I think in business to level up fast is to not that I feel like I'm over leverage with the clients like we're working with like I really understand this stuff but if you kind of throw yourself that little bit out of the water that little bit out of depth where you're almost like if I got them I would be nervous but I'm confident I can deliver a good result and I want to be able to deliver a good result the amount of like lessons and Knowledge and Skills that you will start to refine not learn refine and deliver in a way that you've never delivered before will happen from getting people that are almost that just that one step above where you want to be and that's the whole thing around surround yourself with the people that you want to be like and be the the brokest or the non-sm smartest person in the room otherwise you're in the wrong room that's that saying especially with school work with people or engage with people that are doing the $50,000 a month Mr because you will learn things from them it's just how you take those learnings and then Implement into what you're doing I love this I love all of that and I think that when you built the relationship before right so when you engage with the person before and you're you're adding value to them because even if somebody is above you like as in that maybe they have reached some things where you want to go there's always ways in which you can add value with a meaningful comment or you know you're just appreciating what they share or something I think that's something that people forget and through that you naturally build a relationship with someone like I know my supporters in the school games and I've even supported them some behind the scenes you know playing because I felt I felt the relationship because they have engaged with me so much as well and I know that I'm not the only one there so plus also when you've built the relationship and then when I decided we that we will work together I also knew that you just starting the service and I'll have a lot of grace and patience for figuring this out together so I think that's that the relationship building was right and the expectation setting was right as well definitely I think that's what it's about right it's if you want to dedicate yourself especially to school I think a lot of people don't understand the opportunity I hate seeing someone who's not I think Hamza said this back on a video he was like me and my brother look at people's activity maps and if you don't have a green bar he like showed it was like three or four months worth of just pure green and he's like looking at all these people I think it was back when I hadn't just gone completely ballistic on school and he's like we laugh at these people that aren't active sure people have got their time and their everything but it's like if you aren't where you want to be and school is is like I If you've ever told someone about school you your friend family member anything and your activity status doesn't have more than 10 activities a day what are you doing like what are you doing with the five minutes when you wake up in the morning and you're having your coffee that you can't go and comment on five people's post and engage with them or speak with them or if you want to work with someone do it I've been watching school like a hawk since the start of the school games I've known everyone's mrr who they were what their offer is everything I've watched every School Stories podcast I've watched every video on it I've watched all of Max's content I've watched most of your content I've watched everyone's stuff and with that I implemented at the same time I literally just took a strategy one time I just sat there and watched the podcast and then just regurgitated what I learned into a post on school and it performs well I just made the most of my time learning everything and then just put it into that I just took more as more and went with it and more people need to do that you will get where you want to get and I think especially you get so much out of I think I think I'm so passionate about school right so we had our business on Facebook and we still have it functioning well my business partner she's still fully set up with funnels and then getting people on Facebook and will also keep it but since I played in the school games and since I've been part of that community I just can't unsee it and i' I've never been in a place like this where there's really and it people always say you know join a community of like-minded people it's the first time that I'm joining communities of like-minded people as people enthusiastic about growing actually showing up putting in the work and it's so inspiring uplifting it really keeps you going and the relationships that you built like you said it's sometimes for me I don't I don't laugh at people like at all I more feel like heartbroken because I'm like you're leaving so much opportunity on the table because you come into community and you have this here we are now entertainers mentality when you're only getting out of a group free or paid what you're putting in right because it's still on you to consume implement but also to to build the relationships because there's more than just getting customers from that relationship right so for example my business partners where we now have my partner where we now have a profit share together 20,000 payman family members she was a student first but she she couldn't be ignored because she was so she was you know putting in the work and she was so good and always helping others so I think that it's it's sad for people to to come in there like with this consumer mindset I think definitely I have a little retention strategy for the podcast it's like a live one to do it right here oh we got a bunny rabbit that's perfect so for everyone that's actually sat here and listen to the podcast so far can you go and comment bunny bunny rabbit in the comments but don't tell anyone why you're commenting it the reason why I'm going to tell you this and you guys can use this when you send a loom video to your team and you need them to watch it about 85% I learned this from from Victor he's part of the anim shreds Community one of the other people that we work with 85% of the way through tell them to write bunny rabbit which you're all going to go and right now below this video so we know that you have actually watched this video and taken action leverage this strategy inside of your school Community classroom videos inside of your other videos that you're doing a podcast leverage this same strategy and use it um because if you are here and you are listening to these words then we know that you have and maybe we'll do something special for you I don't know we just came up with it on the fly but leverage it something special for bun it's a good way to see if your uh if your team especially can your Lo videos that you give to people that's such a good one can we do like a rapid fire engagement hack shooting do you have a few more aces up your sleeve that you can share yeah definitely um okay I have you have a really small community right so it's like five people in there what do you do DM everyone and then ask them to make a post inside of the community or or make a post and tag each of the five people and say I need you to do this for me right now and it's like ask them a simple question and make them comment now to boost the engagement from the comment you will respond and when you respond you say something along the lines of thank you for commenting whatever it is ideally it's an open-ended question get them thinking get them writing something where they can increase their comfortability with your group the idea behind it is when they comment and this is how you should always respond wow I really love this ask question about response or if just ask another question you get it Evelyn I will not lie I did this on a zoom call today on your post where someone wrote something about family and your response didn't have a question I'm kind of throwing you under the bus here on this one and on the call I I wrote a question underneath it that said I didn't say anything at all it was how do you manage your time with your family I got a four paragraph response under your under the same comment from it just to prove asking a question at the end of something engages a response I haven't gone through and responded to it because it's like really deep about how they manage time that's all you need to do just ask them a question just be curious into into what those members are doing I feel and maybe others struggling with that as well I hope uh or I don't hope they struggle with it but I think think it might be relevant so I have major kind of concerns reaching out to somebody and asking and so I feel like you do this naturally really well so maybe you can help me break a limiting belief there and the other thing is it sounds like oh you should ask an open-ended question and it's like really technical but what it actually does is you ask an openend question you get a beautiful reply and you're like oh I love this person that's awesome I didn't know so it's like I think that's also your hacks they kind of make you mechanically do something but then some kind of really human and kind and nurturing emerges so I wanted to just give that context for people that you're doing it with an intention to engage but what actually happens is you build a real relationship exactly I mean what a really good strategy I think if you leverage it as well what is your favorite book my favorite book is this what is yours oh my favorite book is Harry Potter awesome what was your uh key takeaway from Harry Potter or do you like do you like her writing style did you read all seven did you have you watched the movies you know are there's five questions that you can ask and they're all interesting and you kind of like yeah I want to know just like just be curious with with your members in terms of reaching out in terms of people that are that are concerned I think these limiting beliefs that people have and this is like a good way to this is how I almost have completely beat procrastination without any sort of course or anything is I just consistently reminded myself and I still do but I don't need to do it in in a way that that triggers the brain response which is when I look around am I where I want to be like yes I've got family yes I've got a great relationship I have things in life take a monetary value do I have a Ferrari outside no I do not okay so then maybe that's one of my goals am I traveling the world right now that I've been telling myself I was going to for the last three years no okay so if I don't have what want out of life and I'm really really want that why am I not doing the things that are going to get me there so would you rather sit there in that fear of not engaging with someone to risk losing everything that you've told yourself you're going to get for the rest of your life probably not it seems a little less scary because if you remove it and just go all I need to do is Click enter a great way to look it is there's a spider on the wall and fear is if fear is the cup this far from the spider it's so easy to get to here and this is the spider on the wall and all you need to do is that it's that one jump just to cover the spider and so many people just can't push the cup over on top of the spider doesn't mean you have to kill the spider or anything but that's kind of like what it is like dealing with the fear of doing something is like you can just type the message and then all you have to do is push return so just push return I think that the limiting belief but below that is like people actually don't want to hear from me like I don't want to bother them and so it is like if they are engaging then they're doing me a favor and I don't want to withdraw from our relationship so I rather not build it in the first place so I just you know speaking it out loud it's it's like that's really silly because it's B basically just fear of being rejected like not having that response or not having somebody commenting how did you deal with that or what what would you recommend for people who are I literally have people in my group that are like I don't want to start a membership or a group because I'm so afraid that nobody will engage yeah you have to want it right like you got to want people to engage I hold a lot of empathy for everyone that's ever joined a community and posted and then never got a response from their Community manager that one hurts more right imagine someone paid you real money that's a right like they've joined a community they've posted and they didn't get a response imagine that would you let someone Post in your community that they pay money for and you don't respond to them everyone says no but people have done that and it's not necessarily just the community manager when you get to this scale and there's a a whole bunch of extra stuff in there imagine no one responded you got members in there you got people engaging you've help people but just this post just lives in lives in school page 65 land that no one has responded to and that was that person that person was getting over that fear that you have as a community manager and so it's almost like if you're scared no one will respond to you then just respond to everyone else right they're probably going to respond or ask a question there is probably to be honest there is probably a lot of notifications and posts that I have not seen or responded to because I have too many to respond to because with the way that notifications are set up with the way that it's all put together and so like just ask a question to spark a conversation and if it doesn't work ask another one like how many times has things not worked no one was good at this when they first started no one knew how to communicate with someone no one you you don't know how to cook a beautiful goat cheese creamy pesto pasta with al dante the first time that you try no it doesn't work you have to keep doing it multiple times so just ask different questions ask different things and then I I don't I don't care as much it doesn't because I do it so much I will just message them and be like dude why didn't you comment on this I have got people that pay my lower ticket offer yeah I've literally hit up 9 10 11 times being like where are you what are you doing why are you not engaging not with myself just to make just to keep them accountable like you you told me you're committed to this journey do it and so I think a lot of people just need to get out of their own way it's the impostor syndrome it's the I'm working on my offer for five six weeks yeah just just months often yeah months just stuck just can't hit publish we launched a Comm like you're in retention it's not a community there was nothing inside yeah you but as well this is what we're going to fix and we know it instead of spending time on everything else we went and did the one thing that made sense which was to work with people because it's better for us to spend more time in your community than it is in our own but we spend time in GIF because that's hard of gift we have to lead from the front if we want people to post a certain way they do the culture in there a month and a half ago was nothing like it is today you know we got people sharing videos of things telling us their life story doing all of these amazing things and contributing to the community and you know sometimes it's it's like someone will post the most beautiful post and just out of out of the the the gift out of me comes out and i' be like okay and that's all I will respond because it's it's kind of funny for that group you know sometimes we value self-promotion other times we definitely do not value it and so it's you kind of just work on you know what you need to do and and bring to the bring to the community and just hit publish like seriously it's not the end of the world it's going to be fine you're not you not going to you you will get up the next day other people if you're published before just be just start doing it or test it in the school Community go and comment on my post I will probably resp on to you yeah yeah I think there's so like a few really really cool lessons maybe for the first one is start being part of communities and just engage with other members there to kind of practice engaging right then I think also when you publish and nobody sees it it's like it's not embarrassing because nobody saw it I remember when I was first live on Facebook I was like all I was sweating so much I was completely my back was completely wet I was so nervous then there was one person tuning in and I was getting like really excited and then like a minute later they left I was like after that I was like that was so embarrassing and a few months later I was like that was not embarrassing because actually nobody saw it so nobody sees it nobody is like there and be like oh yeah that post didn't get any comments right so I think that that's also something it's like nobody sees it nobody cares and eventually when you just keep getting out people will respond another quickfire one so now we have the community okay only few members you reach out by DM you really talk with people which I think you're excellent in is like you just see beyond I think many people don't see beyond the online business they don't understand it's still just people right that we're interacting with on a daily basis okay now we have that now we build a community but maybe we we're good at growing it but now it fell asleep right so how do we re-engage a community or do we start a new one that's a question I get all the time yeah difficult I mean the same thing is is to reach out wherever like if you really really want them I find I find a sleepy Community is usually only when it's free okay because you get more Buy in I have 99% engagement in GIF it's a dollar to join like people pay money to be there but I also hound them like I never let them get sleepy and so what a lot of people just do is they just remove the people that aren't engaging if you aren't like you don't keep sleeping people or you know dead bodies in the community they go to the morg so just get rid of them because they're not contributing anything and they're just another number now in saying that leverage that number like run a marketing strategy bring a bunch of new people in and then get rid of the people that don't do anything would you give them like another chance talk to them reach out and be like uh cuz I saw I think it Dak buckton he was was uh having a removal campaign from his community I got the emails but I think the the personal message would have been even more powerful like if he would have reached out to me and be like EVN why are you in the group and not engaging I would be like I'm so sorry I'm going there now you know I feel like a personal message is also a big big pool yeah there's there's a lot of strategies that we could leverage and do but we have we just have such a big belief in making sure everything is based on school like if you can't do it on don't do it that's that's how we kind of go about what we do like we're very very particular with like how we operate on the platform and so yeah DM everyone it it depends on how valuable they are to you right if they're a free member and they're not engaging and they haven't been active in six seven days like honestly good luck like they're not going to come back six seven days in a free group already like if they haven't been active like on the platform activity status is based on when you last dropped into school right and so if they're in three or four different groups and they haven't been active in a week like they're not coming back because well they they might they might have something on but it's it's rare right and so if you look at your members and like usually the most time it's like levels one two one and two are the most cancel rate heavy people that don't post that don't like anything that don't engage they're not worth it it's just like spending your time on just get the right people in there because then those people stay with you the whole time and they buy anything that you want to sell and so you don't really get anything out of it sure you can like reactivating a dead community no you can do it with five people you can get five people that you just connect with and just maybe 10 five to 10 people and you just speak with those people and just trust the process that more people will come into it like it starts small the whole thing around reactivate the the 200 people that aren't communicating just pick five people and see okay cool no one really did it like hey can can you show up every day I'm kind of here by myself and I want to spend time with you and see if they come back the next day and so just just kind of like one by one bring them back in because what a lot of people just they just do one post or one thing and you see it once and then you jump into an experience that isn't designed to have it because if it was there they wouldn't have left in the first place and they wouldn't have gone sleepy and they're now turned off school and they don't want to be here anymore so again it really is about their experience if feel was so and so good because I can also see your perspective now because honestly I think I personally also would have sunk cost right I would have be like oh this community there are already so many members can't be the case that I can't get them to engage anymore at the same time you're write it's better to have five humans you really talk to and you really have the relationship you can see the the right culture than to trying to turn this like a big sinking ship around so that's very very interesting and I think it's really a really really cool Insight that just gave me a bigger H moment now when it comes to the culture if you kind of missed the train building the right culture in the beginning what would you say there is culture instill in Reverse or is it also better starting over if you haven't managed to get the right culture in this is kind of part of the retention model that we're looking at is if your members are churning you either are missing usually two things your product and offer isn't right so consuming the content is or they or it is so good that they've consumed it and you are missing Community or you're missing community and so what we're building is great experiences for the member that joins on day one because I feel like a lot of people build their Community when you join GIF GIF is a classic example of almost what not to do for a new member because there is all of these inside jokes that won't make any sense because you haven't been there three days ago when Matthew said one thing and then I posted about it today to respark that conversation that 15 people out of the 200 understood doesn't make sense and so what we're building is the start here flow that allows them to just slowly start to interact and understand the platform and connecting and get them to meet a community manager or a community um leader or someone who's active and engaged inside of there and then they get to engage on one of your post and then you respond and then they get this they're brought into this thing and so the the big issue is people have all of this churn because there is no culture because the culture is them selling to new people and that's all they focus on they're just stuck on marketing and promoting and marketing and promoting and they don't care about anything else except for we just generated $20,000 in new sales but I have you know 40% of leaving every month and it's like you CU because they don't want them to be in there it's like you if people just real that you could just sell once for like a couple months and if you just focused a lot of your time on speaking to the people you already sold you almost realize that you don't like your goal is 10K a month so sell to 10K a month and then just stop and just focus on those people and get the product right hosi released a video on this yesterday okay just focus on your product just do your product stop worrying about more sales and more crazy stuff if you've got the capacity go for it sure but if your product isn't good then people are going to churn and so you just end up in the same freaking hamster wheel that you've always been in which is just generating new sales and new sales and new sales it's like door knocking you give your best performance your whole life whereas you could have just given a great performance brought them into a great culture that you worked really hard on and just took a little bit longer before you decided to scale and then you go so that's where everyone is it's they've just scaled way too fast and they have nothing for a member to be a part of because everyone's either they're either not focused on anything at all or they're too focused on the hardest hitters and they forget about the new guy that's just come through and intro because you always get immune to the numbers on the screen but it's like everyone's a person and it's like if you paid for something you'd want to be valued so value everyone that joins your community and that's a hard thing to crack at scale but we're working on it it's also such a different skill set as well right I feel like with the communities I've built over the years A lot of it is kind of personal value alignment with a lot of members right so there's a certain culture emerging from that at the same time there is my skill set is also in marketing for example so naturally you know you do more of what you're good at and what comes easy to you and I think it's such a product is such a blind spot for many people from that perspective that you think that your coursework and content is the product you forget about the community because you feel like the community you just set up the group and then you answer questions in there and then I have delivered community so I feel like the the point that I have not fully you know brought it up into my awareness is that community in itself is a complex product with how you set it up and I feel it's the first time that I'm really I'm really understanding is on on a much deeper level and I'm really seeing how the your product is not just the coursework and the content and then you answering question but it's also the culture and it can it can naturally emerse to like a certain extent but then you'll eventually Plateau out right because you're not thinking those small Loops through where where okay when somebody comes into the world how are they onboarded not only in this is how you get the result from the course but this is how you get the experience in the community so that's super super Val why do you pay for school like what keeps you coming back to school every day like really I think it's the school games Comm I mean it's obviously my offer Builders right so it's my members as well but I I also have them on Facebook so maybe I have to say it different the reason why I love logging on to school and coming back versus with Facebook I really just come back for the members it is the feeling that I think it's the likeminded people so I think it's the people exactly yeah it's just people because they've built they've built a product like the framework of the school games yeah they mentioned it in the one day one course one cl well yeah one course one call one Mastermind and then Kirby added one product right so if you start to think about your community this is some real Source here H if you start to think about how that is built out you're like I've been engaging in here every day for two months and it's so much fun and why is my community like this and then you go and look at your 17 different classrooms of all of this information and all of this crazy stuff that's in there like sure it's it's valuable and it might be needed if it's more complex but there's one call a week that's a Q&A call where your question might not even be answered there's a community section where you'll probably get met with a few gifts from me and there's a a mastermind for when you win a challenge that's on a leaderboard that's leveraged in a way that rewards you with something and then there's the product which you just use every day so just do the same thing and like that's it's so simple when you put it down and it's just like I learned this from a psychologist he posted in school I do forget his name one topic one course one problem and one dream outcome it's just like just simplify it down just strip it back do they need this no okay delete it Sam does it eliminate automate hire someone to do it for you those three things so I'm always just start everything with what can I eliminate do I need this no so my my whole thing with with school is I just use school it's a $100 a month and I just use the one platform because I do it I am bringing on a data thing because we are somewhat limited on the data and we need to be able to see our churn rates properly at any given day historically crazy stuff I'll share that with you soon um but yeah other than that I'm just like just do it on school just do it on school no emails no marketing deleted Instagram Facebook all of it off my phone I just use school because it's all you need in order to run a business and it works so yeah you kind of just got to break it down and just look at what's actually working on the platform and usually it's um stuff that horos is doing and Sam's doing and Kirby and Sid and all of those people you ask yourself why your community is not like those communities and it's because you probably just haven't looked at it you haven't actually understood what they are doing you haven't consumed their knowled and just go on oh it doesn't have to be crazy so all of our communities almost don't have classrooms because they are Community it's in the name you build it's school is building community and a couple of classrooms so just build community the amount of stuff you can get from Community is insane I think it's so important to highlight the Nuance for people here because um yeah I've been building memberships and from a perspective for coaches and course creators right so for them it was for coaches it's a little bit more of a scalable vehicle and for course creators it's a little bit more of a sellable and lifetime vehicle right so but they coming from a perspective of I have this expert so I think that that's sub audience of people who are building on School uh it's like they come from this perspective of I have expertise right and so now I'm looking for the right container of this expertise for this expertise so I feel like this is a lot of people who struggling to fully understand Community as the product yet this is where they're coming from right because they product has always been their expertise and knowledge and at the same time this changes so much right now with AI as well so there's this Paradigm Shift towards Community as the primary product and I think that that's something we'll see so much and the people that are submersing them themselves now in community they just get the edge because when you talk about Sam uh you know or other people you really learn between the lines you don't learn of course all the live q&as that Heros gives Etc you learn a lot from what he says but I feel like you learn even more from seeing how they do it right because you much replicate it I love that saying a great super great example for all the digital offer Builders out there that are looking to learn or or or whatever it is that they're doing do as they do do not as they say example when you are on Facebook and you see an ad and it is a guy in a suit selling you on his organic Tik Tock strategy live webinar where you can join for free that will sell you his course at the end of it so you can learn how to make $10,000 a month with Organic Tik Tok what did I say at the start where did you see this guy what was he doing he is on Facebook promoting an ad selling a webinar where he sells you on his course don't do organic Tik Tok do a Facebook ad that sells someone on their on the live webinar that you sell on your course for whatever it is that you are selling right like it's like break it down hosi great example I need to book myself 40 sales calls a week and sure at the start it's beneficial do that but if you are trying to sell something to someone that might be like low ticket or a course or something do as they do they do not knock on a door or book people in on one-on-one calls where they give their best performance it's like a movie it's a a feature fil you watch it after nine months worth of work of generating marketing and content sure you have to be in that position where you can do that but bring 10 people into a group coaching call or something and sell and you might sell three you might sell four 40% conversion but you spent the same amount of time bringing 10 people to one call where you could sell everyone at the one time because that's what they do so just copy what they do not what they say except for hosi definitely listen to what he says because it really works um heed a lot of what he did right so basically when you watch his videos it's just like I did this so many times now if I was to do it one more time this is the proper version to do it so I feel like a lot of it just reporting and I really love this kind of content yeah it's just it's just get out of the and I've been there before it's like get out of the shiny object syndrome like if you if you think you know what you're going to do then just go and do it and usually it's just sell it so just go and sell it you don't need extra stuff you don't need you know I I try to not say for me the easiest process and and what has worked for me is this is my offer Evelyn do you want my offer this is what it's about I can help you no okay awesome why not because of this reason okay well if I did this would that work done like here is my thing buy it if you don't want it don't buy it it's okay I will go to the next person until someone buys it and then I will do the same thing that happened for me that time again and then if it doesn't work I will do it again just to make sure it doesn't actually work again if it was a fluke if it was luck if it was something and then I'll do the next thing until I'm happy or until I've I've done it there's just no Pro this just sell just put it out to the world tell your friends hosis dos it all the time go to your cont list how many more times do you need to hear it they get passionate about it because so many people would would get their first dollars online if they just kind of put the product there and which just like hey it's $7 I think you'd get a lot of value from my community I'd really love for you to be there I'm not too sure about the price I don't really know what I'm doing but I want you in there and I can just I want you to give me feedback at $7 a month send a hundred of those out to people right like do the work just put the numbers on the pap but and just make it happen and you'll be like oh my God I can't believe it worked and it's just like I can because you just did it it the reason it worked is because you just took out your phone and found 50 people on Instagram and said I think you'd be a great fit for this I'd love for you to be a part of it it's my first few beta members it's $7 a month I'd love for you to join and you will wake up and you will probably have money and if you don't guess what do the same work again till it works that's all you need to do is just tell people about your offer right I feel like your secret superpower is just being not afraid of rejection at all or managing it extremely well so maybe we can conclude all of this with your secret sauce around stop being afraid of being rejected and and doing the thing what would you say I I just don't have time for rejection like seriously like does it really matter someone drops a hate comment on the video okay cool like whatever you spend time doing that like I don't care I just I just don't like to let things like affect me just takes up too much mental space it's like I've got things to do I've got work to do has anyone that's been successful sure maybe in the past and like things do affect people I don't want to detract from that I think people having feelings and everything is valid and sure there's been stuff that's been said before that can be hurtful but like at the end of the day like do you remember that person that sneezed at the grocery store that you thought was kind of weird how they held their nose and rub their snot on their shoulder that one time 2 and a half years ago no when you judge that person the other day because they wore a shirt that you didn't like you don't really remember yourself doing that and so do people actually remember you doing it like you're so like there's everyone's world is like so big and all these people care about it and stuff I like I don't know what my girlfriend's doing right now like it's like you know she could she's doing her own thing I don't think she's you know she knows I'm doing a podcast it's cool but the guy that lives three houses down I don't think I've ever seen in my life and so if he saw me outside and he didn't like what I was wearing would I even know and if he said something to me would I even know so why hold on to it like just spend time with your loved ones and just go and do the work because you wouldn't be in this game if all you did like you can't be in this game if you can't start you have to do it you going to get rejected it's okay like does it really matter like everyone's been rejected you ask a girl if you want to go on a date and she says no and it's like okay like that's your answer like at least you know like you'll never know unless you try unless you just take the risk yeah I don't know it gets me sometimes it's hard to communicate because it's like just do it in saying that in saying that though I do struggle to hit publish sometimes on aom video I am not I am not so like Bru toied with it all I can get nervous but I think I've just worked on that click that fear on the spider of just just going I need to shoot Loom videos today I need more clients that's my goal if you want to have money in your bank account and you have a process of doing it then do it and yes I'm going to get rejected there's been people that have not responded to my loom so I've sent probably like five follow-ups which a lot of people would be like that's a lot and they haven't responded it doesn't bother me I don't care because I know I can help these people if they want my help they will ask for it and then I'm also not going to let them get in their own way for not having my offer that's the other thing as well if you know you can change people's lives and you know what you do and you believe in it is going to work for people why would you let them walk away so true like it's like it's like you have it's like you have the bandage for the guy that's bleeding out would you not would you just just on sorry sorry I don't I um I don't do band I don't need the bandage I'm going to die but I don't need the bandage like you be you literally would not even care what they said you'd be like get on the ground I'm bandaging you up this is the thing so just bring that energy into your work life into what you do it's just it's it's a muscle you just just got to keep doing it you have honestly just go and get rejected a thousand times go up to people and ask to for something just seek rejection seek the fear just step right into it and make it happen for yourself and you will you will start to get out of bed and be like o the world is looking great today who can I go and get rejected by because yeah I don't know just believe in yourself just do your thing make it happen and everything will work out in your favor if you just give it a crack and just hit publish you know it'll be good thank you so much thank you Ryan that was awesome and we do have a goodie bag for the show I would love to know if you would like to contribute something for the goodie bag maybe like a TW sheet or any kind of sort of resource that could be helpful is it a digital digital goodie bag it's a digital goodie bag yeah not physical not physical we got some cool stuff coming for the uh for GIF I was like that could be cool free resource for the community do I tell them what it is we don't have to yeah I got I got a good one we're not telling them though okay perfect so they have to sign up and also I will link the GIF community in below and for retention I feel like uh people should talk with you if they are good fit right because it makes sense at a certain level so is it okay to also link your school profile do it send a message me on school that's that's honestly where you can find me these days it's almost like if you don't talk to me on school I will not talk to you back so you will get rejected perfect okay thank you so much Ryan um bye for now bye-bye