Back to Skool

It’s hard to believe kids will be going back to school soon, but here we are.

Before I finish this newsletter, I hope you’ll join them.

But instead of school, I want you to go to Skool!

Update on the Pivot

Yep, still pivoting to a longer form newsletter, but running a bit behind.

I’m back today to keep the momentum going and to share a couple of interesting tips with you.

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Why You Need a Hopper

When I wrote the Invisible Selling Machine, I didn’t say anything about this concept.

How could it get any better?!

Well, I don’t know, would you like to 2x or 3x your conversions?

Is that better enough for you?

I thought so.

Defining “Hopper”

“Hopper” is just another name for a container, but think of it as a temporary place where you store things and frequently look in on them.

The things we’re talking about are your subscribers.

Specifically, a segment of your subscribers.

Or even just people that you’ve attracted from outside your email list.

And a hopper is just another word for a community.

Like a Facebook Group.

But we’re starting to like Skool better right now (more on that later).

The Hopper Value

Why do you want a hopper?

Many reasons.

First, it’s baseline useful to “clone” your data (your list) into more than one place. You can’t be too sure, right? Things go away unexpectedly sometimes.

Second, you’ve just added an interesting new channel to talk to those people. It’s no longer a predominantly one-way, en-masse communication. It’s now two-way, interactive, and more frequent.

And third, you can create hoppers from hoppers and have hyper-focused conversations.

All this to say, you should be able to sell more of your existing offers and iterate faster on your new offers.

But Why Call It Hopper?

I mean, it is a fun name, right?

You put folks in the hopper and then you interact with them.

Let them percolate and simmer in there.

And then occasionally pull out some stew (sales)!

But Wait, There’s More

There’s a subtle new capability that becomes more possible now.

This takes some explaining, but that’s why I’m here for you!

When people don’t buy from you off your list, how close or far away are they from buying?

You don’t have an easy way to know, so you let them be and move on.

But what if a few of those people needed a question answered or even just a quick reminder?

A few of your words get them off the fence and into your sales column!

This is something you could not as easily do from your email list.

It’s Not Easy

I’ll be honest, it’s not as straightforward as it sounds.

You have to identify the people that are on the fence and need your words. But can we agree that’s a solvable problem?

There are ways to segment subscribers on your email list.

And there are ways to observe interactions in your hopper communities. Things like Likes, Views, Posts, etc.

It may not be easy, but it’s doable.

These are the people you need to talk to as mentioned above.

Does it make sense?

Identify the fence sitters, talk to them one-on-one, and get a yes (sale) or a no (closure).

More, More

In your hopper you can also leverage this new two-way conversation capability that you have.

A two-way conversation helps you:

• Do more frequent world-building
• Test interest in an upcoming offer
• Make offers.

As you do with your email list, you’re pulling people into a new belief system through various world-building techniques.

Your hopper enables you to post and interact in a rich way which accelerates progress toward your sales goals.

If you’re thinking about making a new offer, you can use a sequence of posts to gauge interest and iterate.

It’s just a tighter feedback loop.

And what you learn can be fed back into your email list content if it makes sense to do so.

Hoppers For Others

As is the theme of my newsletters, what you can do for yourself, you can do for others.

Or, what you can’t do for yourself because you don’t have a big list asset, you can do for others for a piece of the pie.

Find someone with an email list and a successful set of offers but with no hopper community. Propose that you do all the work to build them a new revenue stream.

Why Skool?

So why Skool vs. a Facebook Group?

Or Circle or Mighty Networks?

The truth is, you can make it work with any of those options, but Skool offers a few advantages in my humble opinion:

• Simple and clear interface. It’s just not as cluttered and really, really simple to set up.
• Gamification. Built-in gamification hooks increase engagement and participation.
• Low chat friction. At this point, you don’t have to be a follower to chat one-to-one.
• Sovereignty. I don’t want to be one of those people, but I think we can all accept that depending on Facebook Groups is unwise.

And at the risk of undermining my credibility, Skool offers an affiliate program that pays you $39 per month for each community that you refer.

If you use none of the above concepts, you could also just figure out how to compel people to create Skool communities.

Wrapping Up…

School isn’t such a bad thing, right?

A couple of last unrelated things:

• I’m in the process of building a referral agent site as discussed in the Real Estate Caddy; stay tuned
• I’m rebranding this site sometime soon to digiassetbuilder.com; I hope you’ll join me there.

Live long and prosper.

— Bill

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