How To Get More Paid Members From Your Free Community

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the simplest path is usually the best choice

... and despite skool's infancy - one path for growth and monetisation has shown itself to be the simplest and "best" (*so far)

running two groups

one free
one paid (high ticket)

--- and focusing on converting as many free to paid as possible

a reason this is so simple is it removes almost all friction

growing the "free" community is relatively straight forward

as long as there is something of high value in it for people, they'll join

and the rate and size of some people's skools reflect this

a few of my members run this model and see great success in filling their free groups

but that's where they hit a sticking point

they can get people INTO their free communities ...

... but getting them across to paid is a challenge

that conversion event becomes the constraint

the good news is this

there's a very simple solution for that too 👇

... and it's the one that makes people the most money

now, this solution is all about THE RULE OF ONE

when people enter your free community there is ONE THING and ONE THING ONLY you want them to do

all the focus is placed on them doing this one thing

all roads lead to them doing this one thing

all paths lead to them doing this one thing

--- scheduling a call (or, if you're like me, responding to a DM)

this call is technically a triage call

... but you frame it as a value call

a call that helps them:

discover how they can get the most value from the community
get 1:1 support from you
get quick wins

now, your intent for the call is different

it's to identify if people are a good fit for your paid offer

you want it to be 15 to 20 minutes long, and your whole intent is to

(a) build a relationship with the person

(b) identify where they are

(d) if not, plant the seeds for their ascension in the near future

HOW DO YOU GET THEM ON THE CALL?

as I said earlier, you make sure all roads lead to them scheduling the call

some great tools people have used to implement this include:

making it the only action they can take in their welcome DM they automatically receive when joining
having it in the first few sentences of their "welcome post"
making it step 1 in the "start here" module of their classroom
locking the entire classroom until AFTER they've had their call

once you'd done that, the aspect to oprimise is this 👇

the INCENTIVE to schedule the call

said another way --- WHY should they schedule the call ... what's in it for them?

at the moment, one framing that's working well is personally being walked through the community so they can get quick wins within the first week

it looks a little something like this ...

"if you're serious about achieving [desired outcome] - scheduling your welcome/clarity/integration/community name/celebration/strategy call with me is the best thing you can do

it's just 15 minutes long and I'll personally walk you through [community name] so you get exactly what you need. we'll also chat about where you are and what you can do to see some quick wins this week"

by underwhelming people and telling them to do JUST ONE THING when they join your community, you greatly increase the number of people who do it

the better your framing and "reasons why" to schedule the call, the better your booking rate will be

that all comes down to solving the incentive problem ...

... and make sure people are getting things they actually value on the call - not things you think they'll value

if not many people are booking in, you either need to:

improve the reasons why/incentives for scheduling the call
make sure scheduling the call is front and centre for them when they join your community

hope you found this educational piece insightful

nick

p.s: if you're like me and you like things to flow with ease, prioritise getting them to respond to a DM. this means using a SPEAR structure (short, personal, expecting a reply). from there, you can essentially conduct the "triage call" in the DMs and in your own time. this completely removes the need for them to schedule a call, and getting a response is often much higher than leaving the ball in their court to click the link, find a time, enter their details, etc ... I've found the DM is much lower friction)

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