Why We All May Be Going Back To Skool (Skool Review & Humor)

I’ve been in the “make money online” and digital game biz for a while now. If you have too, then you know how much the rules have changed in the last two years.

With the social media and Google algorithms changing it up every two seconds and AI pumping out mass content, the future of online business is clear.

Only authentic, true personal brands will stand out amongst the AI mediocrity, which is where this Skool Review comes in.

And this is not a bash against AI- quite the contrary, as I use it daily to automate systems and it allows me more time to spend on quality work.

But after a few years of freelancing and consulting, I was really craving and missing that connection. So with humor and a laptop, off to the community building I went 🌐🤝. And Skool recognized the need for this too, and in perfect timing fashion, Skool came out of the woodworks competing against the big dogs and gaining massive wins.

Because Skool has created something special. Whether you’re looking to teach a craft, a technical skillset, or growing a bookclub (guilty!), there’s no denying the Skool community growth.

So if you’re looking for the ultimate community building platform to bring everyone together, here’s my no BS opinion after spending I think? two years on the platform as a member and a builder.

Okay Sam, What’s Skool?

It’s easy. If Sam Ovens and Alex Hormozi had a baby, oh wait. They did (along with Daniel Kang). It’s called Skool.

Basically, Skool is like a Facebook Group on steroids. And I can say that because I’m a pharmacist.

Okay, all jokes aside, Skool is not an “online course” platform; it’s really a community-building platform.

While many people join a Skool community to learn something, it can also just be to have fun. But keep reading because I’ve listed some of the coolest communities below to give you an idea of how versatile these online communities can be.

Succesful Skool Community Examples

Alright, let’s check out some fun leaders in the space to give you some examples of what you can grow with Skool.

If you don’t know, MRR is how much monthly recurring revenue these groups are making (AKA how much money they make EVERY month).

1. Grow With Evelyn- 81K MRR in 27 Days.

She’s often mentioned within the Skool Games, and for good reason. She won the games (a competition to drive the most sales from new customers each month) in Februrary 2024 and teaches an amazing approach for funneling traffic.

2. The Billion Dollar Circle

These guys are helping teach about finance, with a goal of helping create 10,000 millionaires. And they’re crushing it.

3. Adam Enfroy’s Income University

If you’re looking for a blogging course or way to make money online, Adam & his co-founder Colin have created a pretty successful community on everything blog-related. They’re actually how I first found out about Skool as they migrated their Facebook group over.

4. The Family— Even Jason Derulo Is on Skool

Okay, in what world for only $9 a month do we get LIVE Q&As with THE Jason Derulo? This is honestly incredible, I’ve never seen such amazing access to a musician before who clearly cares about his fans. Kudos to him.

Skool Dashboard Drive Around

Let’s do a quick Skool Review Drive Around, so you have a better understanding of what I’m talking about and what it looks like.

Here’s what it looks like when you log into Skool:

As you can see, it defaults to your Community Feed where people post any comments or questions (similar to FB or Reddit feed). At the top, you can actually toggle to a different Skool community if you’re part of more than one.

Okay, let’s look at the navigation bar.

Tab 1: Community Feed- Basically Your “Home”

The Community Feed is very straightforward. You can write comments or posts. What’s nice is that you can organize them by filters, as you see below. There’s also an option to pin important conversations to the top, which makes it really user-friendly for group members.

You’ll notice there’s a blue dot to the left when you haven’t clicked or interacted with a post. Also, whoever their UI/UX designer deserves a raise because I love how attachments like GIFs, images, and videos show up to the right of the text. It means less scrolling and more quickly scanning through comments.

Like any other platform, you can like 👍 and comment 💬 on posts.

Tab 2: Classroom – Your Content Home

Think of the classroom as the “central hub” that holds all of your assets for your community. You can add as many courses as you would like to your community. For instance, if you’re talking about digital marketing you may have a course on SEO, another on Instagram, etc.

When you click into a course, you then have steps or “modules,” as they’re called. As you can see, the navigation has a user-friendly interface, making the learning experience a breeze. You can click a “check” mark every time you complete a task or module, with a nice progress bar at the top.

Tab 3: Calendar (Super Nice To Have)

When you toggle over to your calendar in your own community, you can add video meet and greets. Just connect it up to Loom or Google Meet and you’re good to go.

Tab 4: Members

Skool offers the opportunity to DM other members in the group, which is similar to what you can do in FaceBook groups. I’ve found it a really great way to network with people that are trying to do similar things as you. I’ve actually met quite a few people that I’ve kept in touch and we’ve helped each other out long term.

Tab 5: Leader Boards

So far, you’re probably thinking that this just looks like a prettier UI/UX version of FB, but I would say the gamification effect sets this apart from other groups.

You Move up different levels based on how much people interact WITH YOU.

• So, you don’t get points for just spamming the group with a bunch of garbage.
• Other community members have to like or comment on your posts to get points, meaning you need to create value.

And I think that’s what’s great about Skool. Out of the five or six groups I’m a part of, I find that there’s higher quality community engagement because of this.

From A Skool Community Member Perspective– What I Love & Don’t Love

So I’m part of five different paid communities on Skool. I’ve been part of TONS of online education courses and communities across Kajabi, Thinkific, FB Groups and other platforms.

For me, personally, Skool is my absolute favorite hands down. And this just comes to their mobile app is so user friendly. The communities that are being built are just really well done. The UI/UX is soooo easy, my five year old would be able to navigate it. Here’s a few more reasons why I love it.

Love #1. It Just Positive, Which Is Totally Refreshing

This may have to do with the groups that I’m in. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re paid groups, which tends to weed out the crazies, but the group discussions are much more meaningful, supportive, and positive.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just so tired of the negativity, the trolling, and bashing I keep seeing from randos on a Facebook group or Instagram Reel. It’s really easy to hind behind your fake profile picture, and I just don’t see a problem with this in any of my groups.

Love #2 The Most Intuitive Platform On The Market.

I’m a sucker for a good UI/UX design. It’s probably because I’ve been bred by Apple, but if I can’t easily function it within sixty seconds, I’m annoyed.

Hence, Kajabi. While this is not a bash to Kajabi, as I do think it’s a great platform, I did not find it nearly as user-friendly as Skool.

Love #3 It’s a COMMUNITY builder, and the Networking is Chef’s Kiss.

This is great for those looking to create courses revolving around business, digital marketing, or anything where networking is key.

But if you’re looking to bring the community to real life with annual meet-ups, etc, then Skool is a great place to build that new community online before you bring it off-line.

Here’s how many people achieve this:

Love #4 Mobile App Super Easy To Use

I do a lot of learning from my phone, and I think most community members do as well.

So to be able to watch video on my phone, listen while I’m driving, or get chat alerts to my phone is plain expected in this day and age and they do a great job of this without too many alerts/notification bells going off to give you alert fatigue.

Love #5 I Can Scan For Keywords Throughout The Community

I use this feature a lot, but let’s say I needed to know more about creating a ConvertKit campaign that I know was covered, but I don’t remember what course or what module it was in.

You can easily search for a keyword in the community or just specifically the classroom to find the material you need (all videos have transcripts too!)

Don’t Love #1 DMs & Groups

This is silly, but I DM a lot of people between groups. I wish it said the name of the group I know that person in so that I can remember and get better context before opening the message. I’m like what are we talking about haha.

And honestly, that’s the only thing I would fix from the user standpoint.

From A Skool Community Builder Perspective- What I Love & Don’t Love

As I’m building a community from scratch right now, here’s what I’ve encountered thus far about what I’m loving.

Love #1 It’s a flat $99 a month.

You CANNOT beat this. It’s a monthly flat fee for Skool pricing, with none of this gimmicky “level up” pricing.

Love #2 Landing Page is Simple and Easy to Build Out

Alex even says they’ve done a ton of A/B testing, so just go check out Alex’s page and he’s told us in the Skool Games himself to analyze the structure and then make it your own (obviously don’t copy it).

Love #3 New Upcoming Features

In the last call in Skool games, a little birdy said we would be getting Apple/Android Pay and Affiliates. This is actually a HUGE dislike of mine at the moment, because I love using influencers to drive traffic and I need to be able to make members affiliates to my paid group.

Don’t Love #1 Like a Website, You Better Drive Traffic.

Ultimately, this is not like Facebook. People won’t just come to the search bar in Skool (not yet anyways) to find what they’re looking for. So you need to drive email funnels, social media, and get people over to your community. So there’s definitely a lot of legwork to do in the beginning (TBD if I can achieve this myself).

Don’t Love #2 No Native Video Hosting

You need to use Loom or Google Meets, or create the video in another software and upload it.

But I’m actually okay with this, because I really love Tella TV when it comes to filming my course material and YT videos (check them out for their easy video editing and next level features), so I probably wouldn’t use it anyways for course creation. I would love this though for Live video calls and events.

No Affiliates For Communities (Yet)

So I’ve asked and this is coming. I want to be able to give a percentage (say 30%) to influencers in my space for referring a member over to my community. BUT this is apparently on the roadmap, so anxiously awaiting this.

My Final Thoughts On “Going Back To Skool”

If you’re like me and wanting to build an online community, then Skool hands down in my opinion is the way to go. I think right now it’s not super well known yet, so it’s best to get in quick and early before it takes off and someone else in your niche starts dominating.

Also, their conversion rates and memberships are supposedly higher than Shopify. So they do a really great job of doing everything to help you succeed, like no need to connect Stripe payments or develop converting landing pages, etc. It’s literally made so you can just. start. building.

If you feel like this review helped or need more info, I also made a YouTube Skool review if you’re more of a visual person.