Hypothesis: Communities aren't built one post at a time. They're built one person at a time. We'd love to celebrate birthdays in Skoolology! If you'd enjoy a birthday shout-out from the community, share your birthday (month and day) below or send me a DM. Oopsie. Probably should just send a DM since this is a public community. My bad. I have yours recorded if you've shared. Feel free to delete, if you wish. :) Completely optional. We promise not to count your candles... unless they're trick candles. Then we're counting. 🎂😂

When I built my first online courses, I knew they were good. That's the part people don't expect me to say, but it's true. I could see the value in them clearly. I knew what they could do for someone who actually went through them. So when it came time to set the price, my struggle wasn't that I doubted the work. It was that I was afraid they wouldn't see it. I kept imagining the person on the other end deciding it wasn't worth it, feeling let down, thinking they'd paid too much. And that fear did something quiet and costly. I lowered the price. Not because the course was worth less, but because a smaller number felt safer. If I charged a little, no one could feel cheated. I was pricing to protect myself from their judgment, not to reflect the actual value. And in the moment, it felt right. It felt humble. It felt kind. Here's what it actually was, though, and it took me a while to see it. I had quietly let my fear of not being seen as worth it set the price. The number wasn't measuring the course. It was measuring how safe I felt being valued. And those are not the same thing, even though they feel identical when you're staring at that empty price field. And the low price didn't even protect me the way I thought it would, because it wore me down. I over-gave to make sure it felt worth it, poured extra hours into implementation, bent over backward so no one could feel shortchanged. I'd priced it low to feel safe, and then quietly worked myself ragged trying to make a low price feel like enough. The discount didn't come out of the price. It came out of me. Let that one sit for a second, because if you've ever done it, you know exactly what it costs. The low number doesn't save you anything. It just moves the bill somewhere you can't see it, into your hours, your energy, the slow wearing down of giving too much for too little. You pay it either way. You just get to choose whether it comes out of the price or out of you. I think this one lives in a lot of us who build communities, because we can usually see our own value just fine.

@Des Dreckett Welcome to Skoolology! 😊 So good to see you here! I remember you from U2U, and I’ve followed bits and pieces of your YouTube journey, too. You’ve been busy building and experimenting! I smiled when I saw your 30-day win... more traffic. Nice and specific. With everything you’ve already been testing around YouTube and community, I think there could be some really interesting conversations around that here. Skoolology is very much a place where we learn from one another, test things, share what we're seeing, and figure out what actually works. Really glad you found your way here, Des. We're looking forward to learning more about what you’re building and where you want to take it. 💙

One of the perks of joining Skoolology is a complimentary 15-minute Golden Ticket Session with Todd, me, or both of us. It's not a sales call. It's simply a chance for us to get to know you, learn about the community you're building, hear what you're hoping to create, and see how we can best support you along the way. Every conversation has been different, and honestly, they've become one of my favorite parts of Skoolology. 💙 So if you haven't scheduled yours yet, send me a DM, and we'll find a time that works for both of us. I'd love to meet you and hear your story. ✨ If your Golden Ticket could unlock one thing for your community, what would it be?

"Rather be lucky than good any day," as my father-in-law would say. First Short Done! 900 views in 24 hours. Crazy! This is my first YouTube Short, and I appreciate the encouragement @Avinash Khatri to just try it - leveraging content from my writing. I was sharing the exchange with a good friend, and how I really needed to start creating videos for YouTube. Long story short, he invited me to his studio and we just talked. The video was captured in StreamYard, and then StreamYard created the Short. I was amazed! Again, really appreciate this community.