Communities

How to grow a Skool group to 500+ members in 14 days

by

Yesterday, I sent out a handraiser email asking my readers if they have a Skool group with 500+ members. Results:

A handful people replied to tell me NO.

Precisely ZERO people replied to tell me YES.

I found that surprising, because a few weeks ago, I sent out similar handraiser email and asked my readers if they have an email list of 5k+ subscribers.

I got dozens of people replying YES to that.

Maybe some of my readers have Skool groups with fewer than 500 members. Maybe they have groups on other platforms than Skool. Or maybe folks on my list are primarily concerned with email, and have no interest in running a group, on Skool or anywhere else.

About that last option, back in 2025, I wrote the following:

“The people who do a good job running communities will have the same advantage that, say, a business that emails its customers regularly with interesting emails and desirable offers has over a business that emails stupid coupons at holiday time with nothing else in between, except maybe a ChatGPT-generated listicle.”

I still stand by that. In fact, I’ve doubled down on it, and now I have two Skool groups, rather than just one. Each of my Skool groups has made me tens of thousands of dollars over the past year.

The thing is, there is plenty of genuinely valuable info on how to write emails and make money from an email list.

There is not so much info on how to manage people in a group, get them engaged, and get them to gladly and even eagerly hand you money.

Yes, there are a bunch of new-baked Skool experts promising to teach you how to be Skool experts, if you would only join their Skool group for would-be Skool experts. so they could finally have some proof to show their Skool-expert system works.

But there’s not a lot from people who have been running groups for, say, 10+ years, who have made millions of dollars per year via groups, who have spun up dozens of new groups and made them successful.

And with that, it is now time for me to once again promote Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community, of which I am a card-carrying and paying member myself.

Travis has been running groups and communities for 10+ years.

Out of everybody I have seen manage groups, nobody is as good as Travis in terms of 1) engagement and interesting group content 2) the ability to pull money out of a group.

Travis’s Royalty Ronin community is a paid group of about 500 members. Last year, Travis pulled out more than a million dollars out of it, and the majority of that was not through membership subscriptions. Rather, it was by partnering up with members, licensing his courses to members, and by running auctions to sell his new offers.

Last month, Travis ran an auction where the offer on auction was a brand new community that Travis would create, stocked with 500 members, which the auction winner would run and monetize with Travis’s help.

Two days ago, the winner of that auction posted the following inside Ronin:

===

$540 monthly recurring. 519 members. 15% conversion.

From scratch. In 14 days.

That’s what Travis Sago’s Netflix Method did for Leads on Demand, the Skool community we built from zero (I say we…Travis is building…I’m doing the documenting!)

If you’ve got a community that’s gone quiet, or you’ve been putting one off because you just don’t know where to start, this is the step-by-step.

===

… and then came the step-by-step (part 1 of 4).

I am going through this step-by-step carefully, and I am going to be applying it to my groups.

If you’d like to go through it yourself, Travis offers a 7-day free trial to Ronin (the “Netflix Method” is currently pinned as the top post inside). If you are interested in growing, running, or monetizing a Skool community, and you want to learn how the best that I know is doing it:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Looking for two Daily Email House partners

by

I’ve got a free Skool group called Daily Email House.

It recently crossed 500 members.

Last winter, I ran an auction in the group and the winning bid (by the “Fractional CMO Whisperer,” Nick Bandy) came in at $31k.

I am now looking for two partners for Daily Email House, to help me run the group and to share in the profits.

If you are interested, you can find more details here:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/looking-for-two-daily-email-house-partners

Likes are cash, but better

by

A while back (and now for all I know), there was an online business guru who built his brand on the slogan:

“Likes ain’t cash”

Except, likes are cash, or actually better, at least if you know where to look.

Today is Monday, which is quickly turning into my day to promote Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community, of which I myself am a paying member, and have been a member for over two years.

Travis’s Ronin community is about making money online.

It’s very engaged, just as it is, even though the entire group is only about 500 members. People post and comment a lot every day, as does Travis.

And yet, Travis will soon be running a month-long contest to get members to post even more, to comment even more, to engage even more.

The winners will be determined by — you guessed it — likes.

As for the prizes, they will come in the form of licensing rights to Travis’s IP (most of his courses and trainings sell for $2k+), in the form of distribution to Travis’s audiences (I’m guessing Ronin, plus Travis’s other Skool communities, and maybe his email list), as well as Travis’s help running the campaign.

In other words, the winner will get a product to sell… an audience to sell it to… and Travis’s help in selling it. And frankly, I don’t know anybody online who is as good at running sales campaigns as Travis is.

Insert a saying here about how you cannot lead a horse to water, but you can teach him how to fish—

—you know what I mean. Cash is nice. But cash + evergreen assets + newfound knowledge on how to sell those assets is much nicer.

Of course, there’s great value in winning Travis’s contest even without the official prizes.

If you don’t know what that value is, then you must be less of an egomaniac than I am.

All I can say is, I myself keep swinging back and forth between the idea of not participating in Travis’s challenge (I have enough to do already, without competing in a contest that involves lots of posting and commenting) and participating in it (I would love to win, just so I can inflate my ego, and the prizes genuinely sound nice).

Anyways, I’m telling you all this for two reasons:

1. Reason one is to promote Ronin. Maybe you are curious to see this contest unfold. Or maybe you yourself want to go into Ronin, and start implementing some of the stuff that Travis teaches there, and report on your results. In my experience, that kind of content always gets the most likes. If you dedicate yourself to it for a month, you have a legit shot at winning, and you have a legit shot at making tens of thousands of dollars even if you don’t win, simply by implementing what Travis teaches.

2. Along with being an expert in running sales campaigns, Travis is also an expert in community management. This challenge idea is one that you can try for your own community in order to boost engagement and to get a ton of content generated for your group for free. (Travis has more such ideas inside Ronin.)

Anyways, Travis’s contest kicks off in a few days. If you’d like to try out Ronin, either to observe the contest from the sidelines, or better yet, to participate, Travis offers a free 7-day trial, which you can find here:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you sign up for the trial to Ronin and then write a post inside the group to introduce yourself, write me a message and let me know. I have several bonuses with your name on them.

Going it on your own

by

Yesterday, in a restaurant in Barcelona’s Eixample district, I organized a “direct response dinner.”

6 people (ok, 6 guys) where there, all of whom work in direct response.

There was a copywriter for an ecom retention agency… there was the owner of a big dropshipping business… there was the head of ops for a lead gen agency… there was the owner of a dating info biz… there was Thom Benny’s business partner Elmo… and there was me.

Over fish curry and ground beef, we talked about what’s up in life and business.

Halfway through the dinner, we switched seats to switch up the conversation.

At the end, everybody stood around outside the restaurant and talked some more and exchanged contacts. I announced I would make this a regular event.

A few years ago, I gave a presentation in Brian Kurtz’s Titans XL group. After that presentation, Brian and I exchanged a couple emails, and he invited me to join Titans myself.

I wrote Brian to say thanks, that I can see Titans is a good group, but that I know from past experience that I don’t function well or last long in groups. I said that even though I know it’s not smart, I always end up going it alone. To which Brian replied:

“Not that I need to teach you anything, John…but whether it’s my group or someone else’s (or one you manufacture on your own), “going it on your own” is a huge mistake.”

That has stuck with me for years. It was a key motivator for why I decided to create my Daily Email House community, and later, why created the Monetization Mastermind. It’s also why decided to organize the dinner last night.

I’m kind of weird and awkward whenever I’m invited to other people’s stuff. I don’t really participate. I look for any excuse to skulk out.

I could tell myself that’s silly, and wait for myself to change and become a better, more sociable, more well-adjusted person.

Or I could simply work with what I’ve got, and figure out how to do something with it. In my case, that’s meant following Brian’s advice, and “manufacturing” groups and communities of my own.

I’m telling you this because maybe it applies to you as well.

Maybe what applies is the specific idea that, if you don’t function well in other people’s groups, then you should manufacture one of your own.

Or maybe what applies is the broader idea to stop waiting for yourself to become a better person in order to get what you want. (Business coach Rich Schefren phrases this as, “Put your business goals ahead of your self-development goals.”)

Final point:

I personally knew everybody I invited to dinner last night, with the exception of James, the head of ops for a lead gen agency.

I had never met James before or interacted with him in any way. I invited him because he is inside Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin group, and I figured anybody who is in Ronin is ok in my book and is worth meeting. (James turned out to be great.)

Royalty Ronin is the only group I’m a member of in any meaningful way, and the only group I’ve managed to stick around in for more than a few weeks. (I’ve been in Ronin for over two years now.)

That’s not because there’s magic inside Ronin that makes me into a chipper and regular participant. (I rarely post and I comment even more rarely.)

Rater, I stay inside Ronin and I keep lurking there because I’ve learned so much from Travis Sago, both via the ton of expensive trainings that he makes available for free inside Ronin… and via observing Travis and what he does. (This is stuff that might or might not make it into future expensive trainings, but it’s yours free if you only pay attention.)

If you wanna see if Ronin could work for you, whether you participate in groups or not:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you do make it past free trial and stay inside Ronin, write me an email and let me know. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

Daily Email Open House

by

This Thursday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I’ll get on Zoom for a bit of Daily Email Open House:

To hang out, maybe have a beer, and answer questions about sending daily emails… making a $1k+ offer… and using your list to pay for a house.

If you’d like to join me or get your questions answered live, here’s where you can sign up:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/daily-email-house-live-qa-call

Free welcome sequence for small businesses

by

I recently met Liz Wilcox, and I’m gonna spend the rest of this email selling her to you.

Liz is fond of wearing large glasses, where the frame is of different colors for the left and the right eye.

She was once a contestant on the TV show Survivor (Survivor 46).

Today, Liz runs a paid membership for small business owners who want to do something with email marketing, but don’t really know what to to do.

Inside her paid membership, Liz teaches email marketing, has expert speakers come in and teach also (I will be speaking in May), plus, as the the main selling point, she gives members weekly templates and swipes for their business’s email newsletter, so they can get it out in minutes instead of hours or never.

Like I said, Liz’s membership is for business owners who have heard of the power of email marketing, but don’t really wanna write themselves… don’t wanna hire a copywriter either… don’t wanna entrust this to a VA… and yet want to get the benefit of regular communication with their prospects and clients and customers.

So how much would you pay for such an incredible and spectacular email marketing membership, which slices, and dices, and makes julienne fries?

$999/month?

NO!

$99/month??

NO!!!

$19/month???

NO! NO! NO!

Liz charges 9 whole bucks per month for her email marketing membership. And get this. She has… 4,000 members of her $9/month membership. At those numbers, she has the margin to make sure she can provide and deliver great templates, great trainings, and great everything.

But I’m not here to sell you on Liz’s membership. Not really, not yet at least.

All I really wanna do is just point you to Liz’s “Swipe Swipe Baby” lead magnet. It’s an entire templatized welcome sequence, plus three weekly newsletters, which you can plug into your business right now if you want.

When I initially talked to Liz, I asked her what lead magnet of hers I should send folks to.

She said, “I only have one. It’s six years old, and I’ll never create a new one, because it just works.”

And why not? Liz’s lead magnet is in fact the perfect magnet for prospective leads for $9/month membership.

So if you want Liz’s free welcome sequence templates… if you wanna know more about Liz (lots of Vanilla Ice references on her site)… or if you’ve been intrigued by her $9/month membership… here’s the front door, fully free to walk through:

https://bejakovic.com/lizwilcox

Am I ditching daily emails in favor of communities?

by

Yesterday, I sent out an email about how my bank cancelled my debit card while they ship me a new one. I also dramatically stated I’ve been living on 200 euro in cash until my new card arrives.

In reply to that email, I got an offer from long-time reader, fellow Barcelona resident, and occasional coffee buddy named Matthias (not sure he wants me to share his last name). Matthias wrote:

===

Hey John, just read your mail. Similar happened to me last month. If you need some cash, let me know, then I can meet you for a quick coffee or sth.

===

Also yesterday, at the end of my email, which was really about how my Amazon book sales have cratered after I stopped paying for ads a few days ago due to the cancelled debit card — and dropped from 19 a day (last day of advertising) to just 2 a day (a couple days ago) — I asked readers to buy my book on Amazon, either because they are curious about it or because they want to help me goose sales until can get ads running again.

I have been promoting this book since May. I have written dozens of emails driving readers to the Amazon page for it.

Most of my best and most dedicated readers and customers have already bought this book.

And yet, I still made 11 new sales yesterday, and from what I can tell, all or close to all of those came via my email.

I’m telling you this because lately I’ve been talking a lot about the Skool community I’m running, and in particular the auction I ran last week inside that community.

(Maybe you heard? The winning bid in that auction was $31k. In case you haven’t heard, don’t worry, because it’s a fact I will be repeating several hundred more times before 2025 runs to a close.)

About that community and auction:

After the auction completed last week (with a $31k winning bid, just in case you forgot), I got lots of feedback and impressions from people who witnessed what went down.

One such bit of feedback came from Howard Shaw. Howard’s a Partner at Chester Toys, a UK toy wholesaler that’s been in business for 60 years. Howard also happens to read these emails, and he wrote:

===

I think what showed during the whole auction was the affinity with your group – which I guess in no small part is down to people ‘knowing you’ from being on your list.

===

Howard’s absolutely right.

Communities are great, and it’s been fun to build up something new.

But the fact is, my community wouldn’t exist had it not been for this email newsletter.

Not only in terms of members who form the core of the community, and who joined via these emails… but also in terms of engagement by those folks, which is there in large part because of the relationship that these emails have built up.

Fortunately, I don’t have to choose between having a community and an email list. It’s easy and profitable and fun to have both.

But if the direct marketing gods forced me to choose only one, then for all the reasons I’ve listed above, and for many other reasons besides, I’d choose an email list, and I’d MAIL IT DAILY.

Now, if you want some help with MAILING A LIST DAILY, and sticking with it for the long term, I’ve got just the thing to help you.

It’s my Daily Email Habit service. Speaking of:

Earlier this week, I got on a call with the winner of the auction I ran last week, Nick Bandy. (Nick’s winning bid, for the third and final time, at least in this email, was $31k.)

I grilled Nick about his current job (fractional CMO with a $12k/mo retainer), his life history, his list (about 800 people, all added since this spring) the offers he’s making the people on his list via daily emails, and then some.

At the end of our call, which lasted about two hours in total, Nick said about Daily Email Habit, which he wants to promote to his own list as well:

===

That’s why I said Daily Email Habit so enthusiastically. I literally wouldn’t have started any of this if I didn’t buy that. I enthusiastically endorse this. It’s one of the best things I ever spent money on.

===

If you wanna find out more about Daily Email Habit, or get going with this enthusiastically endorsed service today, so you can build up your own stock of human relationships with folks who support and drive on everything else you want to do online or offline:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

He auctioned his CAT?!?!

by

Yesterday in my Daily Email House community, I announced the winner of the prestigious “Inaugural Pool Party Funniest Comment” award.

The lucky winner was audio-engineer-turned-newsletter-operator Filip Stilin. Filip’s winning comment was:

“Subject line: He auctioned his CAT?!?!”

(In case you’re wondering why Filip’s comment was possibly funny, I could explain it, but would that make it funny now? I suspect no. Such is the nature of humor. You had to be there.)

Filip’s prize for writing this funniest comment are A) a physical copy of my favorite comedy book, which has influenced my writing as much as any copywriting or marketing book I’ve ever read, and B) the pleasure of seeing his comment turned into an actual subject line in my email today.

Now here’s the point, and why you might feel this email is anything beyond an inside joke run amok:

The whole idea for this “funniest comment” contest came up as a suggestion during the auction I ran last week, by one of the auction participants.

It was a suggestion I immediately adopted.

That’s because the biggest thing I’ve learned over the past year of running a community is to stop trying to do everything myself… to start asking for feedback and guidance and input… to let people participate and shape the direction of the group… instead of hitting them over the head repeatedly with content and “value” and then wondering why nobody’s engaging.

It’s kinda opposite of how I run this newsletter, which is guided exclusively and jealously by my own standards and tastes and preferences.

That’s not to say I can never adopt others’ suggestions in these emails. In fact that’s what I’m doing today with Filip’s subject line.

But that’s all done in line with the core concept of this newsletter, which I’ve realized is about performing real magic, about turning ideas into reality, about casting spells that make living, breathing rabbits appear.

That might sound grandiose, and maybe it is. In any case it’s true.

For example, the spell for today was “Apply a suggestion coming from the audience.”

Tomorrow’s spell might be something else.

This spell-based approach has been profoundly valuable to me in running this newsletter, and has made this newsletter 1000x more fun and educational and ultimately profitable than it would have been otherwise.

If you you wanna find out more about this “real magic” way of running a newsletter, and of the power of turning ideas into reality, I have created a course all abut it. It describes my approach in detail, gives lots of examples, and maybe encourages you to apply the same in your own world. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The “magazine model” for your paid membership or continuity offer

by

A couple days ago marked the 1-year anniversary that my Daily Email Habit service has been going out, day after day after day, to members all around the world.

Following that announcement, a new subscriber to Daily Email Habit wrote in and asked:

===

Wow. Happy Bday to your DEH!

I am curious to see the first seven. Any chance to send them to me?

===

My response was some icy staring across the Internet, a bit of finger tapping on my desk, followed finally by a cold hard NO.

Like I’ve been telling people since I launched Daily Email Habit:

I don’t send out previous puzzles to new subscribers. The idea is Daily Email Habit works like a magazine subscription — you get the issues that go out from the time you subscribed, and not before. It’s a way to encourage people to sign up now rather than later.

After hearing my cold hard no, the DEH subscriber above replied to say:

===

I know. I was just curious to see how it started. I respect your answer. It sounds fair and smart.

===

I’m a-telling you this because this week, I launched a new 1:1 coaching program.

On Tuesday, I got on the first call with one of the coaching clients who already signed up. Let’s call her Ms. X.

Ms. X runs a paid membership and wants to increase the number of paying subscribers and reduce churn.

But like lots of other people who run memberships, she has so far been promising new subscribers access to everything inside her membership, including all the stuff that happened before they subscribed.

But what’s the incentive to join today… when joining tomorrow will give you everything you get if you join today, plus some more stuff… plus you get to hold on to your money for an extra 24 hours?

Not much incentive.

Fortunately, Ms. X already came to that conclusion before she even got on this coaching call with me.

At this point, her bottleneck is technical. Her membership software makes it hard to restrict/allow access to different members like this.

My Yoda-like suggestion was, “Many simple option you fail to see.”

I suggested some low-tech ways to deliver content that’s only available to current members. Ways that make it easy to test out this idea for impact. If this magazine model makes a difference, as it most likely will, then Ms. X can worry about the long-term tech later.

A magazine model is something to think about if you too are running or are thinking of launching a paid membership, or really any kind of continuity offer.

Not only will treating your membership like a magazine give people a legit reason to sign up today rather than tomorrow… but it will give them a reason to stay signed up instead of churning (thinking they can always come back later and get everything they missed in the meantime)…

… and if your subscribers are anything like my subscribers, when you introduce and stick to this “magazine” rule, you might hear them say, “I respect your answer. It sounds fair and smart.”

In other news, I have already signed up a few coaching students since launching this coaching program a few days ago. I am also looking for a few more.

The coaching I’m offering is specifically about list monetization, or as I say, about using your email list to pay for a house.

The coaching is 1:1, and runs for a year.

It’s also reasonably low-cost, because accountability and whip-cracking are not a part of it.

In order for me to be useful to you at all with this coaching program, I need to see you have some runway already.

In case you’re interested, hit reply and tell me a bit about your situation with your list.

Specifically, I’m interested in things like how many people you have on your list… how many new people you’re getting in an average week… what kinds of offers you’ve made so far… and how that’s gone for you.