What's the difference between managing a community with a daily Q&A text post versus a weekly call?
The daily Q&A is text-based: I go through the vast majority of community posts each day and answer questions myself. For example, I recently welcomed a new member named Joseph from New York who loves tennis, gave him a wave, and engaged with his post. I'm very active in Maker School because many communities unfortunately get you to sign up, charge high fees, and then the founder disappears, leaving you without support. In Maker School, I personally respond to most text posts. The difference between the daily Q&A text posts and the weekly Zoom call is that only about 10-15% of members attend the calls, whereas roughly 90% see the text posts. Since I focus on efficient value delivery, I prefer the text posts where the majority of people see the content, making it a better mechanism for value transformation.
The daily Q&A is for my community product called Maker School, which is the simplest design path to getting your first AI automation customer and is often ranked number one or two in the school games. I made a video explaining how I did it, which is one of the more popular videos on the daily updates channel. The difference is that the daily Q&A is text-based: I go through the vast majority of posts in the community each day and answer questions myself. In contrast, the one call per week is a Zoom chat where only about 10-15% of the group attends. With a 2,650-member group, that's roughly 200 people on calls, whereas about 90% see the text posts. I find it more efficient to provide value where the majority of people see it, rather than relying on the smaller, more engaged call audience.
Right now I do one weekly call inside Maker School. There's also a bi-weekly event run by a friend and colleague, Connor Kaplan (a sales pro), who does live sales roleplay for free, out of goodwill and for the exposure. For my other community, Make Money with Make, I run two events: a 25-minute “agency hot seat” where I sit someone down, have them share their stats, and walk through how to improve their business live in front of everyone else — part live consultation, part accountability, part letting people see how I think through business problems. There's also a weekly office hour, plus a Friday fireside chat hosted by another friend and colleague, Santi.
I wake around 5 a.m., handle community management (30–60 min), then record a daily update. After that I manage Platinum and Maker Zero communities (5–10 min), record main‑channel content or write a script for the next session, have lunch and hit the gym, then spend a 3–4‑hour block on growth‑focused work (personal brand, businesses), followed by sales activities, then fulfillment/consulting work. My day is built around large growth blocks because I view growth as the most important activity. I also track growth rates financially, aiming for ~0.55% daily to compound sign‑ups, and note a ~72‑hour lag between viral content and new members.
It's a good question. I'm the automation guy, yet I manually update a janky Google Sheet each day because the value isn't just the metric—it's the awareness and reflection it brings. Spending about 30 seconds daily yields far more value: I notice trends and spikes in follower growth that make me investigate causes. If you had many metrics and worked with a company, you wouldn't do this manually every day—it would take too much time—but as a small portion it's fine. I had meant to mention Mr. Beast because we're collaborating. I recently hung out with school friends Marty, Ryan, and Michael; Marty has over 5 million YouTube subscribers, Ryan about 160 k Instagram followers, Michael many millions on Instagram. It was cool to watch the local cactus squad and discuss optimizing school as part of a big challenge. School is going well; I'm in the platinum group for educational creators with 100 k+ followers, where we help each other grow. I comment on posts for five minutes daily and have reached number two on the leaderboard, meaning I'm a valued resource; people constantly ask for my opinion. I achieved this with little effort—just voice‑transcribing posts and noting my thoughts (X, Y, Z) in 15–30 seconds per post—yet I now get massive exposure. I love giving value and seeing how communities make interaction easy and human‑focused. The free school community is thriving at 7,400 members, and we've celebrated two members hitting 10 k‑month milestones. Each day I review new posts, quickly scanning for obviously AI‑generated content (e.g., a YouTube‑video‑style post) and delete it, then ask if it's truly a YouTube video; if so, I delete it. I must be trigger‑happy for time, but the rest of the community is great: I spot AI‑generated posts, remove them, and spend about five minutes leaving a few comments. New members often feel uncertain; seeing that success is possible encourages them. The no‑AI‑post rule has raised discussion quality. A recent post from Rodrigo looked suspicious due to odd M‑dashes, but he noted it was a Google translation, so language may explain it. I appreciate Nick's style—no hype, straight talk that works. Regarding a journey‑maker school example, I noted it was obviously AI, less tinkering, more doing, and deleted it. I can give a reason for deletion, but my rule is two strikes: first AI‑post gets benefit of doubt, second results in removal. I've become familiar with AI writing patterns, so I ban them aggressively, keeping the community high‑quality. I also sprinkle in posts as needed, though the top‑level look lets people market low‑value offers in the intro tab (e.g., 'Hey, how's it going? Do you want to make money online?'), which I only see when reported; then I ban the offender. I enjoy the community and will defend it with my Warhammer 40K sword metaphor. Direct messages have become a burden—many users just say thanks—so I read them but don't reply to stay true to my promise. Reading 40–50 DMs daily makes me reflect on how far one person can go; I might be the only one sustaining this volume for over a year. I use AI everywhere except for the actual coaching deliverable and my personal presence, which I haven't replaced, preventing the perception of being fake. It's an interesting thought experiment: could I scale the community to a million members a month while still managing it alone? Possibly, but we'll see. My stats show slowed growth (0.11 %), then a rise to 0.66 % after a Maker Zero boost to 7,500 members. I plan to add an email‑address question to Maker Zero to capture all member emails for promotions, accepting some leakage as inevitable. I'm aiming to return to the top three rank again.