How do you go about connecting deeper to your online community before school?

#184 · the scientific way to beat procrastination (used for 40+ yrs)

How do you go about connecting deeper to your online community before school?

Connecting deeper to my online community before school was really about doing the same things I do now on School, just on the platform I was growing—YouTube. One big trend I had, that few others my size did, was responding to nearly every YouTube comment on the main channel. I kept that up until around 30–40k subscribers, which is about ten times more than most people stop at. The key insight for me is having some element of two‑way communication. That’s why the daily updates channel works so well, and why I’ve grown to almost 12k subscribers in 183 days of consistent posting. As long as you can create some back‑and‑forth, it humanizes you, moves you from a pure creator archetype to something more approachable and equalized. I try to do that by replying to YouTube comments, joining other people’s Schools, commenting in their Schools, doing Q&As, sharing knowledge drops and value drops. Those are the main parts.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Client Acquisition

Besides YouTube, what other strategies have you used to grow your school group, especially without running ads?

I would never launch a community without first securing distribution; I frontloaded that distribution through my YouTube channel. Once the channel had reach, I started the school group. The biggest factor in its growth is simply showing up every day — I’ve posted consistently for over 300 days, missing only a handful of days for travel. That daily consistency builds trust and goodwill, which has translated into strong momentum: in the last week alone I added 25 K monthly recurring revenue, far outpacing other communities that only managed a fifth of that. The steady presence, not any ad spend, is what drives the growth.

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youtube ↗Marketing

Could you break down where you started with your social media profiles, whether you were running them all at the same time and cross‑posting, what specific strategy you use for each platform, and what advice you’d give a beginner making $5‑$10k/month on which organic strategy to grow and monetize that traffic through school?

He runs one of the largest school communities generating about $300,000 per month while working roughly 90 minutes a day himself. He tracks brand growth across major social platforms on a page. He started YouTube on February 1 2024 growing from about 100 subscribers to over 45,900 by February 1 2025. He launched Instagram in early 2025 and LinkedIn a couple of weeks before the video. His daily updates channel began about 194 days prior. His four main content methods are YouTube (oldest highest value) daily updates Instagram and LinkedIn (experimenting). He does not manage LinkedIn himself; a helper creates content based on YouTube videos following a waterfall approach where YouTube is the core platform and other platforms repurpose its content. He does not run all platforms simultaneously; he started with YouTube then added Instagram then LinkedIn. For beginners he advises that YouTube remains criminally undervalued. The key metric is total minutes of content watched: YouTube averages about five minutes per view (≈300 seconds) while Instagram averages around five seconds giving YouTube a roughly 60× advantage in monetizability per view. Consequently his YouTube channel drives the overwhelming majority of school signups with Instagram contributing only about 2–3% and LinkedIn similar to Instagram due to higher consumption time. He also shares that after recovering from a shoulder injury his confidence and gym performance improved dramatically making his life fantastic.

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youtube ↗Marketing

Can you explain the difference between your school community and your YouTube channel?

All the information in my Maker School is free. The school community adds daily accountability and organizes that information into a clear roadmap: day one do X, day two do Y, day three set up emails, day four send five Upwork applications, day five do this, day six do this. It also includes Q&A, a network, and a monthly call with me where you can ask any question (time permitting). In short, the community holds your hand through a business model, offering structure and support beyond the free videos.

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youtube ↗Marketing

What made this YouTube channel successful and how can those lessons be applied to other niches?

It’s not just luck. While timing helps, the real driver is a repeatable production system. I focus on a 1‑to‑1 ratio: spend about an hour creating a video and get an hour‑long finished product. Previously I spent ten hours for a half‑hour video, which was unsustainable. Consistency and efficiency let me publish daily, building a library that the algorithm rewards. I also studied body‑language techniques from Joe Navarro’s book, which helped me create engaging content like the body‑language channel. The key lever is producing decent‑quality videos every day for the long term, rather than chasing perfection in occasional uploads.

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