Here a quick summary of my takeaways from todays event. Themes Find something you like and add it into your community to create conversation, fun and banter. Think Mario, Pokemon, Iron Man, A Fruit, just something relatable that becomes an inside joke. Emotions Communities are about emotion. How do we make people feel being part of the community? Hang out with people like you would your friends. Be yourself! Categories Make it fun with emojis. Ideally one word, one row. You know you have too many categories when the 'More' shows up. Less is more. The Three C's Being Clear and Charming or Clever wins over traditional value. The idea is to use personality in a way that is authentic genuine and caring. Classrooms First 3 classrooms could have a fun banner that stretches over the 3 cards transitioning from one to the other. Small details like this create a wow factor. These three should teach members how to post, how to comment in the community and give a free gift. Unlock each class using levels. This builds engagement and culture. Levels Use Emojis to show a theme. Different fruits are fun 🍆🍓. The goal...to make it interesting and relatable to the community. If 🍌 was Level 9, people will want to be that. Fire (from @Jen Ritchie ) Giving people a free gift/call if they earn the Skool 🔥 award/emoji on their name. Incentivizes members to engage and 'win' access to the owner on a call. Could be paired with items/courses or bonuses as well. Engagement Trumps Member Count Small communities can rank higher than huge communities on the Discover page. How? High engagement. An active community has activity, people are posting, showing excitement and having fun. Free Community Goals Turn members into ideal clients. Thought it might be useful for all. Feel free to add more in the comments below. 🧡

@Goose Dunlavey @Rositsa Aleksandrova @Angelika Vetter In another group there was a Challenge: Connection ~ Connect Deeper! I know I have only interacted with a few of you...I thought of a "sorta" late Intro to who I am... ========================================================================== The Heat Never Left: How a Chef’s Fire Became a Copywriter’s Craft The first kitchen I ever worked in smelled like steel, ambition, and the sharp heat of eagerness—that restless hunger to prove I belonged. Fryers hissed like impatient dragons, pans clanged a language only the tired could understand, and the ticket printer spat out orders faster than any sane person could breathe. Somewhere in that chaos, I learned the first real truth of craft: you don’t rise because you’re comfortable; you rise because you stay. Lesson One: The Kitchen Never Leaves You Those twelve-hour shifts carved something permanent into me. You start each day the same way—hands on steel, eyes on flame, a prayer that the rush won’t break you before the dinner crowd. You measure your worth in plates returned empty and compliments you’ll never hear because you’re already plating the next order. But when you live long enough in that kind of intensity, something happens: the line between instinct and identity disappears. Timing, patience, presentation—they’re no longer techniques; they’re reflexes. You begin to hear the rhythm of service in your pulse, the cadence of creativity in the scrape of a spatula. Craft becomes muscle memory. Service becomes instinct. Once you’ve learned to give your all, you never unlearn it. Years later, when life pulled me away from the burners and the shouting and the rush, I thought I’d left that world behind. But the kitchen never really leaves you. It lingers— like smoke in your clothes, like grit in your soul. And eventually, it whispers: Find another fire. Lesson Two: The Bridge Between Two Worlds