This 23-year-old makes $230k/month on Skool

So Nate, you're 23 years old and you're currently making $220,000 a month. About that, yeah. [laughter] Yeah, it seems alright. It's like, yeah, it's just like a normal Tuesday in the office. Yeah, it's right there. And you're doing it all in school? Yeah. Yeah, that income's coming from school, yeah. What's your community about? It is about AI automation and specifically building AI automations for people that don't have a technical background. Wow. That's kind of the key. How'd you start? I got started from YouTube. I was working full-time in automation and that was like, you know, no AI. It was Goldman Sachs. It was, you know, lots of red tape. And I had seen all this AI stuff going on and I just basically thought about the fact that in all these products I was doing, I would have loved to be able to like just send some data to ChatRBT and have it come back with like an answer. And that's when I kind of fell into the rabbit hole. And my plan originally was to like dive into this stuff and pitch it to my team at work and like see if we could like, I don't know, start a new like initiative there. And when I kind of just realized that wasn't going to happen, I just started making YouTube videos. And it really was kind of for fun to start, you know, I kind of knew from college that my, like the way that I really learned things was when I could explain it to people. And so making the videos was just kind of fun. And then people started emailing me, hey, can I get that template or hey, can you show me how this works or hey, can you build this for me and I'll pay you. And so that's when I kind of decided I probably need to have something on the back and to grab these people that are showing interest. And that's when I spun up the free community and just kind of started getting people in there and giving out the templates. And you've one of the biggest free communities on the planet. It's like, what like a hundred and 75 dollars people in there? We just said like 180, 180,000 people are in there. And it's a, it's a really interesting point that you made about how a lot of people I think build something and then hope somebody comes. And what you said was you just started doing stuff for fun and that people started asking. Right. And I would guess that a reason why you have that big of a community is because you built exactly what people were asking for and then just sort of like, here you go. I made it. It's free. Yeah. I already know you want this. So head on in. Pretty much. It opens up. New guesswork. Yeah. Exactly. And I think at the time, you know, the space has evolved in the past year. A ton. But at the time, a lot of the other creators out there doing any specific templates were putting those behind to pay wall. And I think because of all of the stuff I was doing, I was just putting out there for free, I think that really helped at the beginning. But what's also interesting is I don't know the exact numbers because of, you know, the matrix coming in. And I think that we're getting some better dashboard and stuff now. But yeah, but you were real happy about that. I don't know. Except that you're like, yes. That's freaking good. That was beautiful. I mean, I just, I want to know because now that the free community is number one in tech and number two overall, I think. But I just want to know how many people are coming from discovery. Right. And because that would be really, really cool to see. And I, you know, I have a feeling it's a large number of people. So you got built up this awesome audience on YouTube. You're like also how lucky that your team didn't say yes to your ideas. Oh, yeah. And it sucks. It's like, can you imagine like, it's like the crossroads words like, hey, neat, that's a great idea. Can you like do AI automations for golden socks? It's like, or you can go and make like 220 K a month. Did you actually get it to them or were you like, this will never work? And I'm not even going to talk. I talked to some of my mentors there and some people like, so you think you like put it out there. You're like, we can do this. I did. And the one that got away. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a bit why school like, how did you come across school? I'm like, why did you decide to like jump in instead of like, you could have built an email list or you could have built this? It's like, what was it about school that you were like, yep. Yeah, it's a great question because I was looking at some other stuff, you know? I remember there was a conversation with, I was having with WAP for a while. I was looking at circle. Shot at? Shot at to the boys. Now I was looking around. Really what it was was my niche. At that point, I was a, you know, I still am, you know, big fan of Liam Olley and he had a free school that's pretty big. And I think first of all, just the name school. It's like, what are you going there for? You know, it's very clear. It's, I mean, you go there for like an educational reason, but then you get in there and there's, there's community. There's people. So I think first of all, the name is just very like, you know, this is what it is. It's clear. But then when you get in there, it's like simple, you know, I tried circle and I just didn't love the way that it was like the experience of an admin side compared to the member side was a lot different. But on school, it's like if you're an admin or a member, you still kind of see the exact same thing. And I don't know, less is more. And that's kind of why I decided to go with it. And now my whole ecosystem is going to be wrapped up in there, you know, the free school to the low ticket and we're kind of working on doing like a higher one too. So just keeping everything in that pipeline and, you know, all my, all my DMs are in the same place. Everything's easy. So let's go through the entire that whole ecosystem, right, starting from the top because for somebody that's just getting started. The first question, well, I'd say the order is what, what do I make a group about, right? So you got to that point and you didn't have a tech background really. I mean, what were you doing at Goldman Sachs? Automation. So no code, low code tools, but my background was in like data and like business analytics and marketing is what I said. Okay. So you had, you had a touch there. You started making your YouTube videos about it. People were interested. You were like, well, cool. I got to send them somewhere. What does that look like? Like, how do you take those people and get them to school? Like is that, is that a difficult process? Is there a, like, what's going on? Yeah, it's a good part. Like, how did you get people in your free community? Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. Pretty much like I said, when I started, it was, I realized people wanted the free templates. And so in my mind, it was, let me just put those templates somewhere. And you know, this could have been like you said an email list or a discord or something like that. And when I started to throw them in school, I started to realize, okay, people are coming here for the templates. But now they're talking in here. You know, they're asking, they're asking me questions, they're asking other people questions. And it's almost like you've got like your Reddit community of people that are so hyper obsessed with something. But then you can also have like resources there. And so I really like that. And actually, it's funny. I had a conversation with my main guy for school, kind of my growth operator is what I call him. And we were talking about what we want to do with this free school community. And we were looking at like conversion rate and how we're able to get traffic there. And he brought up a good point. He's like, you know, I think if we just did like our own landing page and we had a different opt in message where people didn't have to go sign up through like school, we could probably get more emails. And I was like, yeah, you're probably right. We would get more emails. But what is like the vision here? Is it just a big email list or is it a big email list, but also like a movement almost? And I think I'm so happy that we got the name AI Automation Society. Because I feel like that's like a, like I said, kind of like a movement. And so the bigger vision here is to build like a culture, a group, build a brand around it that doesn't solely rely on me is kind of like what I want to do. And that's one of the things I'm really excited to look at doing in 2026 with the brand, you know, it's not just a big email list. It's people and it's really cool to see. I'll just drop in like a random poll on a Wednesday. And people will get so fired up about it. It's actually you guys might not care about this at all, but in the tool I use, we're actually like on the edge of our seats right now. I think you're about to pull this poll, this poll, man. So N and N, the tool I use to build these agents and animations, you know, they've got like your light mode and your dark mode. The school's got its light mode and it's dark mode. And it's like actually a big deal. Light mode users will defend light mode till they die. And same thing with the dark mode users. But anyways, what happened was N and N did an update where they made their dark mode darker. And I wasn't a big fan of it. But so I vocalize that in the free school. And I put three pictures, new dark mode, old dark mode, light mode, and I made the poll options like, yes, it's too dark. No, I like it. And like, I'm a light mode user. And I started getting roasted. Because I voiced my opinion about I don't like this new dark mode. And then people started fighting about, you know, if you're a light mode user, leave the community. It was just like, this was awesome to see, you know, put it all in one place. Yeah. I like that society idea as well. Like we were chatting to Sam a few days ago. And on the podcast and he was saying, hi, like the old social media way, it's like one person on a YouTube video, just like dumping information. But then like the new way with school is like, everyone gets to chat and interact with each other. And that's like where the fun is. And it allows you as a creator to like, you get the party started and then you can like step on it. And you're like, dude, the party's still going like this is freaking off. It's an interesting comparison between what starts the party and what keeps the party going. Because I think the thing about school is you could say, you know, with your setup, it was almost like people came for the courses, but stayed for the community. That was the difference. And it's, I think most people don't think like, oh, I just want to get around other people that are doing this. They think, oh, I just want that thing that Nate showed me in the video. Right. I want to get this thing done. And then I'll move on to the next. But then once they get started down that rabbit hole, they realize, oh, I need more support or I need to bounce ideas off of somebody else. And so when you have that back end, it's like, oh, look, it's already here in the same place. And I feel like that's one of the things that simplifies the process so much is not having to leave and go find people somewhere else. Because when I got started with all this stuff, like a few years back, that's exactly how it was. You'd be like, there's a course here. There's people over here. There's a video here. And by the time you go through all that, it's like, you don't even know what's happening. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. No, I mean, you're absolutely right. I realized how much I didn't know about people and about communities from building one. You think that if you can drop as much stuff as possible, people are going to be like, this is so valuable. I love it. But really, it's the reverse of like, there's too much I'm going to get out of here now. And that was like a huge well. There's a lot of things that sound so obvious once you realize, but they're not like intuitive to go do if no one told you. But no, you're absolutely right about the whole, they stay for community once they come in because of something else. And that's specifically, I realized that a lot more in our low ticket paid community. Because that one really like, people don't typically join for upfront for like that networking bounce ideas off feedback loop thing. They just want the full courses that we've gotten there. They do sometimes come for like the tech support, which is something that we offer as like a value prop. In this space, you know, just in the AI space, things are moving so quick and you just have no idea. But being able to not only like get questions answered with other people, but I think the biggest thing that I've realized is you get a sense of like, you get drawn back down to reality in a good way, you know, because in the in the make money online space, you see these crazy numbers. And I think it's cool. But I think what else that does is it makes people that want to start have like these misaligned expectations where they think, you know, this person just made half a million dollars in six months. So if I'm not making, you know, even half of that in six months, then I'm a failure. When in reality, it's like, you guys have you guys seen that picture? It's like this guy's like, he's like digging for diamonds. He's like this far. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he like turns around because he just like gives up. It's like one of those things in my mind. If they would have went into it thinking, I'm not going to make any money for two years, but then I'm going to make tons of money. They would probably make money within those first two years and be happy, but it's just like the expectations are just like always expectations. That's what we see. And like you see this with your school community as well. It's like if someone's goals to like make enough money on the side to pay for their mortgage or to pay for their food, it's like, that's awesome. You know, you don't need to be making like four trillion dollars a week. It's like, yeah, you can start small and then that's the thing that gets you closer to like the bigger diamond mine that you're talking about. Yeah. And then I think about that from a sustainability perspective with business because the, one of the biggest things is people that say that they're just trying to get into business and they're just trying to hit, you know, whatever the objective is when the real victory, most of the time for all of us, is not getting your school community to $200,000 a week. It's keeping it at a growing level or whatever it may be on a continuum because the real win of business is staying in business, right, just keeping things open. But I think something that people would find very interesting that are maybe one step behind or feel like they're 100 steps behind you. When you started that free community, did you have a game plan for how you were going to monetize it or did you just start it because you wanted to provide value? Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing. I'm shocked by that. I'm going to be all right. Well, that's why I'm like the golden socks. I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to be a golden socks hot list didn't have a plan." It's like, "Are you serious?" It's not just that though. I think, like, I'm curious, as you, did you start when you were 22? Were you 23 when you started? I was 22. So you were 22. The natural thought when you're 22 is probably like, "How can I make money? You're leaving a job," which is wild to think you left goldman at 22. When did you start? Twenty-two. Twenty-two. You started at 22. That was only there for like two months. Oh, that's awesome. You can get wrecked, by the way. But so at 22, you were like, "I'm going to make this free thing and give all this stuff away." That's not like a logical. I think that's where a lot of people get stuck and it's interesting. I have my own story from a few years back where I did something similar and I think I was probably motivated to do it by podcasts like this where I saw people saying, "Give a bunch of free value." But how did you get to that point where you were like, "Other people are making people pay for this? I'm going to give it away for free as a 22-year-old who didn't really have any real experience up to that point." Yeah. I think at that point, my goal was I'm going to build an AI automation business, the B2B business. That's where I'm going to dive into and that's where my money's going to come from. At that point, I was kind of operating as a freelancer. Like I said, people would. I didn't even have any CTA in my description of the videos. It was just like my email. People would email and say, "Can you work with us? Can you help us build things for our business?" Or, "Hey, that template was cool. I'm going to have it." This is like your OG YouTube videos. Thank you. Okay. That's when I realized, "Okay, I need a place for both of these type of people." I started freelancing for the businesses and I started chucking the templates in the school for the people, the consumers. I said, "Yeah, I didn't realize that the B2C education was going to be the more scalable and also the one that I find more enjoyable." I was working as a freelancer for a while. I then worked as a developer for a different AI agency. Then I left that and built my own. That's kind of like the goal that everyone who joins the free community, that's kind of what they want to do. Is they see that path and they want to first start freelancing and then they want to build their own business. That's really the end promise now of the paid one is learn all the technical skills, then learn the business side and then go get your first automation customer. So the free community is like, "Hey, come hang out. Get a couple of templates, enjoy the society." At what point did you decide to start your paid community? And then what was out of bite in the early days and how was out of all? Yeah, you know, I definitely jumped the gun with the paid community. I started it too early. I. Classic. What? That was a little bit. That was like, "I have a tree of just done that." That's like, yeah. That's done that. I just jumped the gun way too early. I'm like, "Okay, yeah." Yeah, okay, so define that. So what did your situation look like? What was the trigger point? The trigger point was. My free community was hitting on was near 500 maybe. Like it wasn't massive, but out of that 500, there were people that were constantly DMing me and asking for kind of the secret sauce, I guess you'd call it. And so I realized, "What if I just, you know, set up a place that was much smaller and this is where we could dive into some of that more advanced stuff?" The idea was it was going to be for more advanced people. It is now evolved into, honestly, it's more for beginners, but I jumped the gun because when I set that up, I didn't think that so many people would want to join. I thought that it would be like maybe 10, and it would be like a cool little circle of us 10 that would chat every day. And when hundreds of people started to come in, I was like, "Oh, I do not have enough fulfillment in here to handle these people." And I didn't have a full course built out yet, and I didn't have a schedule for things. And then I think I overcompensated. I locked myself in my room for a week. I filmed 24 hours a day, dropped everything in there, super unorganized, just modules everywhere. And I was also doing a live call every single day. And I did a live call every day, an hour live call every day for maybe five months, like a way too long. And it was, I started to see the point where less and less people were joining every time. And then as soon as I dialed everything back and I restructured all the material, like all the material, but instead of like eight modules, just put it all into one. And that alone made people stick longer and feel better about it and felt like there was a more intuitive learning path. This is like the most classic schools. Dude, it's textbook. And I could name it. I mean, I've done it. He's done it. Yeah, I could name, I could say here, name everybody else. I could name a thought. It's like people that have doubled. It's like, all right, I want to make money. So I'll do this thing. Oh crap. My thing was better than I expected. Now what do I do? And then you overwhelm everybody. Yeah. And then you kind of readjust. And I think people could probably watch this and learn from that. But at the same time, I think everybody kind of just has to go through that a little bit. And just like, you know what? At least you sent it. Because if you hadn't sent it or if you had waited and been like, let me record 400 hours of content and then drop it, then you would have just wasted all that time with no feedback. And then it would have been even worse. Yeah, literally was just sent to like Luke today at breakfast. I was like, dude, I'm like embarrassed about myself. I should have known better. It's like to not go so fast. It's different. It's different with a third person. Yeah. And it is. And it's like you, you got to like turn the stone over. You got to like go down the path. And then like have the like grace for yourself. Or it's like, oh yeah, dude, well, like I wouldn't have got this far if it didn't take the action. And now we got it like strip it back. And it's like, then we go again. And like, it's totally cool. So how did you after like jumping the gun with the paid community? How did you start to like walk it back? And dial it in. Yeah, I think what it came down to was at that point. So the first school games of 2025, I think that was I would have came in, I don't know, March, something like that in that time. And that's when I started really picking some other people's brains to understand like, what is the customer experience like when someone joins? And I just realized there was a lot of things that I didn't have in place. And so that was kind of like a big wake up call. I think really though what started to make the real difference for me. And I don't think that everyone needs to do this, but just bringing in someone else to have like another pair of eyes on everything. And that really, really helped because at the end of the day, like the main thing that I was looking at doing and like, you know, before I go to bed every night, the last thing that's on my mind is like, what's another YouTube ad I can make? Or like, the status of my next one. Because if the YouTube starts to die, then like everything under kind of starts to crumble, since that's kind of like the main top of funnel. And so having someone where like they're 100% of head space is pretty much just the community. And getting to, you know, hear all this other feedback and things like that, I think that really helps. I mean, there's so many, so many things that we started to implement just like as simple as, you know, actually, and I don't know how scalable this is in the long run, but going to talk to people that leave and just understanding why. That's like obviously a very obvious one and then figuring out actually, this is one that I think I really did way too late is like four months in, five months in. I didn't know what my ICP was. It was like, anyone that was interested, yeah, that's an ICP, but like that's so broad. What's an ICP? Yeah, let's answer that for people. What's an ideal client profile? So basically, who is the perfect person? Like if you could create a human being to join your community? Who am I making this for? Exactly. What's their gender? What's their age? What's their occupation? Like all that stuff? The closer you get to that, the better. Yes. Yeah. And so you then, what? You took a step back and how do you then figure out what is the answer to that question? How do you find that? I started running some like forums, Google forums that I would email to everyone in there. Not everyone obviously filled them out, but a good amount of people did. But also, if they didn't fill it out, they're probably not the ICP. But if you're not an action taker, you're off the list. So I took that data and I tried to analyze like, what do they like? What do they not like? And what was really interesting is like, it's really shifted to because when I first started making YouTube videos, it was like 30 to 50 year old white males and that was it for a long, long time. And that's been broadening out, which has been broadening everything else. And I think it's still shifting a little bit. But now it's very clear to us that our ICP is someone that upgrades to annual in our community. So now we talk to them a lot to understand what do they like, what do they want. And also we try to understand like their tech background or their position at their current job and things like that. But I think before you get to a point where you can really dial it in, you just have to like talk to the people in there, I think. I mean, ideally you already know when you set it up and you have like your offer and you have like a core promise and you can kind of build it around that. But I think the beauty of it is that you can kind of let that evolve as you learn more and as you go as long as you're like thinking about, you know, as long as it's top of mind, I'd say. And it's like real life relationships. Like the cheat code is just like, apply it to real life. So you have like a bunch of people out of party in your house. And there's people that you like there that you want. You would like to do it. I would love more Ryan strokes out of my party. And it's like, dude. Not guy, ball. But it's like, I don't even want him into my house. So it's like, you don't want to optimize for ball. You want to optimize for Ryan. And he like, Hey, Ryan, like you're pretty cool guy. It's like, do you have any friends? It's like, how do we get more Ryan there? And you can do that with like Google forums. You can do it without anything. It's like, just look at the people that you love being in your community or who get your results or who are super engaged or whatever. And it's like, okay. That might be an indication of what an ICP would be. And it all goes full circle with school because you set it to beginning. You build a free community because people were asking for a place to put this stuff. And now you're saying as you grow your paid community, how are you determining what that looks like by finding your ideal customer and then building what they're asking for. And I think that's another really important thing because I would be willing to bet. And I guess you've kind of proven this by what you did that what your community would look like if it was completely up to you versus what it actually looks like. It's like not even the same product, right? And that's that's something like people are going to watch this and they're going to go out and build something that they think like, oh, this is perfect, right? This is going to be the dream. And the reality is you're going to be wrong like 9.9 times out of 10. But the cool thing is that you started so that you can get that feedback and then you can take that feedback loop to create what you have now, which I'm assuming is a pretty gnarly iteration away from what you started at just because you're actually listening to these people. Yeah, no, 100%. Like, when earlier in this in this chat, I said that I thought this space was going to be for advanced people. I thought they wanted the secret sauce and they were already like really, you know, knew what they were doing. But then when we had it tailored for that, the beginners were turning out because they had no idea what everyone was talking about. And we realized, well, 99% of the world right now is a beginner. Right. So let's maybe get some beginner from a very dressable market. It is. I think 99 versus the one that's taking, yeah, like it billion potential customers. I think we could probably work with that right? And you do have one of probably one of the most large, addressable markets right now with the newer product in AI space. Sure. Right. Can we get into some technical business numbers here? Yeah. But before you do that, which it will be like super fun and we'll have a great time, I think it's really important for people to like, you love this stuff. Like it is your passion. Yeah. Go and start an AI automation school. It would like suck. Yeah. Yeah. Because even if somewhere I like upskilled my, I just don't care about it. Yeah. So it's like you have to find a topic that actually lights you up. So like why is it your passion? Why is like automation your passion? And then why have you discovered that working with more of a beginner audience, you get more joy from that than working with advanced people or freelancing and like physically doing the service yourself? Those are great questions. Why do I like automation? I'd say, you know, I had an internship at Goldman before I worked there and in the internship is my first time I ever did any sort of automation project. And the way my brain works, it's like you have, you have an issue in front of you and there's a million ways you could solve it, but you get to kind of figure out how you want to solve it. And then once you put those pieces in place with automations, you kind of just like let them run. And you obviously, especially with AI, you have to monitor them and like that's where we get technical talking about that kind of stuff. But seeing the like the fact that you can build something and then every day it will just kind of work on its own. Like that was like just really cool for me to understand that I could design something like that, especially without code. And yeah, I don't know, it may sound just very nerdy, but I just think that that's so cool. Like the way that you think about, I don't know, it's like it's just solving problems because it's not always automation. Sometimes it's like people come to you because they have this weird issue in their business, but maybe the answer is like a product that already exists, like a $20 a month subscription. But just being someone that people come to because they're like this guy is a problem solver. And that mindset of like just let's analyze what we have here and figure out what the best next step is. That's kind of what I really enjoyed. It's like a modern day, Marlin. It's like you ever see that like cartoon is like the Sorcerer's apprentice where he like gets all the like brooms to just like sweep up constantly. So it's like it's a form of magic. It's freaking awesome. I saw one of your videos too where you said something about that. You said you were working at Goldman, but then you were building automations and that was what you loved. And I think your quote was something like, I wonder if I can just do what I love. And make the same amount of money that I make here, right? That was kind of what prompted the shift for you. And that's, I don't know. That's like the coolest thing. It's like the coolest thing ever, yeah. Because that's, I think that's similar to my story and I feel like that's, I don't know, I don't want to define the American dream here, but that's kind of the dream, right? Like, people think they don't want to work. And I think we all know as people that like could kind of choose to work or not to work, but all we do is work. That's not that people don't want to work, is that they don't want to do stuff that they hate. Right. And so the realization, and I think the, the unlock that school has created for a lot of us is that, yeah, you 100% can chase your passion and make money off of it. And it's not going to be easy, but you're going to wake up like motivated and actually enjoying doing it. That's pretty cool. Yeah. No, it's so cool because that passion, it's literally infinite energy. It's like a cheat code. Yeah. But that's, that's so important because, yeah, what I said there was like, the reason why I said that in that video is because people, they do it because they think it's like, you know, they see the opportunity as far as like money. And if that's your only motivation, it's just not going to work. So it was like, yeah, if I could do this all day long and make the same amount of money, I'd be so happy. And I obviously work significantly more hours now, but it's like, it doesn't feel like it, but work, work. Yes. Play. Do it. Sometimes it's work. But the other thing about like, yeah, you can work a certain amount of hours, you can have all this, but the passion thing, why that's so important is because like, I think all of these communities, okay, we're not not 100%. But like the stuff I offer in mind, the stuff that other N and N or A automation creators offer inside their communities, it's pretty much the same. Sure. They've got tech support, they've got courses, they've got, get your first client type of education. Mm-hmm. But the reason why mine is growing and the reason why those creators are growing there is because that passion is so contagious. And if people see that passion, like that's your moat. It's just your energy, your passion, and that fires them up, you know? Yeah. They follow the leader. Yeah. And it keeps you going over the long term. So you survive long enough to like experience success and go to like a huge level with it. But then also it's like because it's a community product. It's just like fun or vibes. Hang out in a place where like everyone's super passionate about the thing. Fun or vibes. Fun or vibes, bro. What's your sports team? Eagles. Eagles? Right. So it's like when Nate was talking about the N, it, N, change of the color. I was like, you know, it's like whenever something cool happens with your sports team and you just want to like talk to friends. Do you want to find people that are passionate about something with our list of the value behind that thing? Right. Anytime you share a niche perspective on something and somebody agrees with you, it's like the open. Yeah. You're like, no way you care about that thing. And you're right. That's why, you know, not to get into sports. But that's why when of Eagles fancies and other Eagles fan on the street, they're immediately friends because they're just passionate about the same thing. And that's why they take a trillion of those people or 180,000 in a community. Then all of a sudden it's like, holy crap, there's a lot of people that are passionate about the same thing. And then they're all being led by somebody that has the passion at the top, which is pretty. And then on the poll in the comments, whenever you find another light mode user and you're like right or die light mode people, it's like, I've found my people inside my people. It's like hardcore connection and belonging. You're a small group business numbers. Let's freaking go. Yeah. But even I think before we get into the numbers, something that's more relevant than the numbers, I think is the time because we're talking about doing what you love and like finding this freedom. And this is something I think I don't know if I'd say I struggle with it, but I'm just curious for you. So what we've talked about so far is like, this is kind of where we get into the business, these stuff, I guess. So top of the final would be where the heck are these people finding you? And for you, that is more or less YouTube. And then they come from YouTube and they join your free community because you have a link under your YouTube videos for your free community. Is that right? I'll post every video I go. If you want it for free, go there and grab it. Just straight to your buy pitch of the free community. So you send them to your free community and I'd say that has worked pretty well. Yeah. There's a lot of people there. I don't say anything about that. And then they get in your free community and then what about being inside of your free community makes them want to join your paid community? Do you have like CTAs? Do you make posts? Are you like pretty salesy? Is it just kind of an organic thing? Yeah, it's pretty organic, I'd say. I think there's a lot of drip feeding, kind of like constant nurture, but it's very subtle. Something that we recently started doing is we're getting testimonial videos from people in the paid and it's obviously on our about page for the paid. But we do like weekly wins. And so we highlight out of the community, what are the coolest things people have done that week? And when we put those weekly wins, the pin post every week in the free community, they can see what people in the plus community are achieving. And then I pin a comment down there. It's like if you want to get wins like these, become a plus member. And then I don't know how much the pin drive is. This is pretty slick. That is smart. I do this very similar thing, but I don't win a comment. So I'll probably do. He just got some game. Probably take that from you. That's nice. So yeah, that means you show him results. So you take wins from the paid, you put it as a pinned post inside the free. And like, is it a video? Is it taxed? Like how do you show the wins? It's usually just a big text string of all these wins stacked on top of each other. And then like a three minute testimony video from someone we interviewed that week or a recent week. Just a bunch of proof. And you do that like once a week every Friday. Yeah, we had a big one today. Wow. Love it. Yeah. Okay. So here's what I was getting at with all of that. You've got three main things and probably more things. But if we talk about the YouTube, the free group, the paid group, and then I don't know, whatever other AI stuff you're doing, what does your pie chart look like? So how much time are you spending on YouTube? How much in the community and how much on whatever other stuff? That's a really good question. It's a really good question. Because I think the biggest struggle that I've had in the past year or so has been spread too thin across different things. Yeah, that's why I'm asking by the way. I want you to tell me what to do with my pie chart. Well, I would say there's a difference in my mind between like headspace and also like explicit time work massive. And also everything for like one hour of YouTube work can like over time continuously feed people everywhere. So it's like that is where I think that's like my 10X most valuable thing. If I made a YouTube video in a day or I made like a video for a community in the day, I'd feel more productive about the YouTube video. Because I know it's like going to do a lot more in the long run. But I would say maybe like a five to 10% deliver would be the free group. It's pretty much I come in every few days and drop a poll or I make a post about a new video stirrups and yes calls a ruckus. Pretty much. Yeah, do something like that. The paid community I've got, you know, some live calls. I do at least an hour a day of like looking through the threads and responding to things and making sure that people see my profile picture interacting with with people. I'd say maybe that's like a good 30%. I guess that gives us a lot of extra room to work with here. We're at 10 and 30, I think. So 60 left. Yeah. Yeah. Now right now I am still navigating some stuff with my agency. That sliver is going to become constantly smaller and smaller as I scale these educational initiatives. But let's just say for now, let's just call it like 10 20. You're not adding any new clients just servicing existing. Is that kind of the vibes there? Yep. And just getting more abstracted from my roles and responsibilities. Okay. So you're not doing less. You're just hiring. Correct. Yeah. So just to be like super explicit, you also have a business that provides services like you will make automations for businesses like is that simple enough? Correct. Yep. And because you love the whole school thing, you want to do more and more of that. And so you're just starting to like wind that down slash remove yourself from it. Yep. Okay. Go check. Okay. I got a ton of time on that. Yeah. Yeah. We'll call it 10. So that gives us 50% until the left. And then I'd say a good, it'll always be 30% at least YouTube, you know. And the good news is like all of my time in the free community or in the paid, I can almost kind of count that as YouTube time because that's what gives me all my ideas. Yeah. And that's how I understand what videos I need to make things like that. Everything is content. Yeah. It really is. It really is. So, um, ideas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, my, all of my tutorial based videos, my educational YouTube videos, I do all of it still. So like the, the building, the filming, the editing, thumbnail creation, all that. I've recently started to work with the team to help me with like some of the more business videos. If you've, you've seen those that are like, you know, really polished with the editing. But I would say at this point, the remaining time so that last 20% is going towards building that higher ticket offer. And so that's kind of my main, the main thing really taking up head space for me now is that because we want to launch that in the new year. Um, and that's going to be a much bigger team that has to be around it. So that's cool. You're allotting, essentially allotting time for vision. Yeah. But you're just planning. You're not, you're not doing anything that's like necessarily producing right now. Yeah. Perfect. And again, down the barrel of the camera, it's like, Nate is making 220,000 dollars a month with an ecosystem. If you have one school community right now, it's like, your pie chart is probably going to look very, very different than it's. Well, I think, I think, no, but that's what I think is important because you're right. I think their pie chart will look different. But out of all the percentages you just gave us, the biggest percentage was what? Lead generation. Yeah. Right? And you can, you can call it leads. You can call it top of funnel. You can call whatever the heck you want. But the layman's term is you're getting people to join your thing. Right? So many people will create the classic is like create what you think is going to work, which we've already discussed is not really the move. And we all kind of sucked at that part. Create what you think is going to work and then sit there and be like, now what do I do? And the answer is very simple. It's don't waste all of your time creating what's going to work and just go find the people that want this thing and then just spend all of your time going to get them. And I would even ask, this is going to be hard on percentages. But like if we were to go back a year ago, I'm guessing that your pie chart was even more YouTube because you didn't have these other things to service. And it was just, I want to make this thing, but I got to get people in there, right? Yeah. I'm before you had the paid community. Obviously, you spend more time in the free community because that's just like pie pie charts work. Yeah. So it's always going to move around. How much does your community cost right now? It's like really good question. I've got like four people that are helping me out with it. We've got some people on, you know, like a, basically a fixed salary. My growth guy is on a rev share. So his is kind of subject to how we do that month. But I would say, I would say we're probably 25% of the revenue is expenses. Cool. How long did you make it before anybody else was working with you? How long did you go solo? I was at 70K a month when I brought on some people. That's app. Again, that's important to note because 70K a month to be clear, that was my full time salary as an engineer for the year. Let's go say that. I was a high school. But that is, but that's really, I was like, you speak in the other K year, but. But that's, so you were solo doing that, which again, this goes back to the ecosystem that you're talking about with school is that, you know, so many people come from other places and they're like, man, you know, I had 25 different sales people or whatever and blah, blah, blah. But then you get on school and because it's all in one place, because it's simple, because it peels back all those layers, you're saying that you would just make videos to send people to your school community and then you made them made the paid version of it and you hit 70,000 dollars a month before you even brought anybody on. That's right. That is right. Yep. Wild. Okay. So, and now you have not that many people working for you, right? That you said three, four? Yep. Four. Four, including you or four, not including. Okay. So, a five man team generating quick math. You can do it, bro. How do you think? Uh, $2.5 million a year. Something like that. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In that range. Very crazy. And essentially, you know, 75% margins, something like that is what you're saying, which is another bonus of the school space, I think. But what did your, what did your progression look like when you created the community? Because another thing with launching a paid community is like, what do I, what do I charge for this thing? And then once you make that decision on what to charge, where did you go from there? So like, what, what did you, what was your starting like thing? How did you get there? And then what happened from there? Like what happened between there now? Yeah. Yeah. So right now we're 94 a month and 799 for the year. And I started at, I don't remember all the annual prices, but I started at 49 a month. And so basically doubled. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I think the 49 a month was too high as well. I think I jumped the gun and priced it too high. Perfect. Check it out. Perfect. And, and, and what happened? It worked out. Did it work out? So yeah, maybe you could have done it better, but who the heck cares? Because most people just think they could have done it better and not do anything at all. Sure. Yeah. So we'll take it. And also when it was 49 a month and for the first six months, I was, my pie chart was way more in that community. I was spending multiple hours a day in the community doing things and answering questions, things like that. But when I was running it at 70K a month, I was doing all the tech support. And this was probably maybe a thousand people in there. So I was spending multiple hours just fixing people's problems in there. And yeah, I mean, also just a quick aside, like speaking of an incredible one-man team, I don't know if you guys have talked to Nick. But his one is, I mean, I've got a few incredible one-man teams on this. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. And I think his pie chart also, because of that, he does spend a lot more time in the community. And when I've talked to him, he does, you know, he just shows up. That's his whole thing. He puts a link in the YouTube videos and he just shows up. But yeah, I started at 49 and then I was kind of bumping it up by five bucks every month, every quarter or so. When we stored, I was kind of doing it based on member milestones at that point. Because I thought, oh, I'm a genius. If I put a member milestone in the about page and people see the price is going to go up at that number, then I'm going to get more people. And I think the reason I got to 49 a month was because I just looked at other creators in my space and what there's reprised at. And so I just kind of got to that number. I do think I did it too high. Like I said, I wish I would have grandfathered some people in at like way lower. We do have a few people still in there that were on the 49 was cool. But most of them are gone. Yeah, it's crazy to see it now. And I bet a lot of those people wish that they stay right. And you're like, I told you it was going to go up. And you did it. You didn't listen. Now you're trying to come back. Something better than like what you did. Maybe you've changed it. But last time I checked. So when tears dropped, you had your monthly annual annual just as like separate tears. Like the clarity, like it's beauty check. There was two things. Like monthly or annual. It's like so clean. I remember clicking on your group and just being like, wow, it's like so clear what the value prop is between these two things. And it's just like way better than trying to upgrade to annual before tears because it's like people are like, how do I even do that? It's like, where is it? Where is it? Where is not? It's like, mm-hmm. Yeah. We still are. We still hold that. And I think that we probably will. I mean, it's just like, it's so easy. And you know, that is kind of like I mentioned earlier, that is the goal is we want to get as many people into the annual as we can. And then obviously that brings down churn and increases probably the lifetime value of them. We don't really have enough data yet to know for sure. But when you kind of take the, you know, total revenue in our numbers and our churn, it probably does increase the lifetime value. So it's just kind of a win-win. And then people aren't constantly thinking about every month, like should I renew or like, what's coming up on next month calendar? They just know they're in there. And then they can just check in with it stress-free. We had a really, really cool post from one of our best members. So we have this thing where if you hit level eight, you get free lifetime access. And we have two people that have hit that. And obviously they've just been amazing members. But he made a really cool post about how he replaced all of his social media doom scrolling with that community and with AI communities. And that's obviously why he shot up a leaderboard and he's got his own community now. And he's not doing it in like a, you know, a snakey way. But he's such, he's so active in all these other communities that people just join his too. And the other guy who uses that method very effectively. But yeah, his post was awesome. He just, he showed how much better he feels mentally and also just like, you know, how much more he's learned because before bad, if he wants to just cool down with some scrolling, he just scrolls in school communities rather than on Twitter or TikTok and all that kind of stuff. And now his, his community is kind of like, that's the focus, like micro content, being able to absorb it really easily. And yeah, I thought that was really cool. And gets focused value out of it. You know, I think an interesting thing on scrolling because that's so relevant, especially for this guy is that on school when he's scrolling, unlike anywhere else, unlike the other, you know, big platforms, if he's in your community scrolling, he's not going to get distracted by today's news or some update from a friend he hasn't seen in 10 years or, you know, something that the president just did. He's getting distracted by like sick AI automation. Because if he's in your community and he's scrolling through it, that's the only thing he's going to see. Like he's going to see a people, a community of people that are passionate about one thing and not get distracted by anything else. Bro, social media is Times Square. School is a world garden. There you go. It's like, whoa. Beautiful. Wow. The other one I know is, how are you making sure you don't repeat the classic mistake as you're building the high ticket product? So you drop the gun and then you probably jump the gun again. It's like, how do you like, we know. We know. Yeah. Let's do it. Oh, with all the lessons that you've learned, how have you approached building out the new high ticket offer based on the classic mistakes that we all make? That's a great question. Because it is like a cycle. There have been times I've made a mistake and then fixed it but just didn't learn from it and made the same mistake again. You know, it's like this. I can't relate. But yeah, it's a really good question. I think what we're going to do is, you know, it all came back to trying to figure out our ideal client profile beforehand and figuring out the promise of the offer. And what we realized is, probably our ICP are people in the low ticket. And specifically the best people in the low ticket. So what we're going to do is like get them to go through first and basically be our beta users because we already trust them. We have so much good will with them that they will give us on a feedback and it will still provide them value. So if we can just kind of put them through in a way where that does take up a bigger split of my pie chart for maybe a couple months so that I can dial that back and not have that stress about it, then yeah, that's kind of the way that we're going to look to scale that thing. And why even do a high ticket in the first place? You can say to make money. That's totally fine. But like versus scaling what you already have. Yeah, how do you make the decision between those? Oh my goodness. What is this a therapy session? You guys are taking my language. I'm not sure. Exactly. No, like this has been big ticket goes brrrr. The reason I reacted like that is because that has been my conversation for the past four months. The first time I thought about doing a high ticket was in May. And now it's almost December. So I have been going back and forth for forever. This is great character development in this story. You didn't feel sanded. It's like you learned the lesson. Yeah, you could have launched four months ago. Because it was the whole thing of like, you know, if you're already making money doing something and you don't feel like you've saturated that or used all the plays in the playbook, why don't you first do that really well? Do that more. Do better. And then move on to the next thing. And so that was kind of the first, the initial thoughts. Now we feel like we have that running pretty well. We definitely haven't used up all the plays in the playbook there. But I'm also trying to start, you know, thinking about, what am I seeing in the market? And what also like brings me joy at the end of the day. And that's being able to see people go through something that, you know, I put together and real results. And obviously with this high ticket program, we're going to see much better student wins than we do right now. You know, we're seeing great stuff, but it's going to be a lot better. And also I think I'm going to be able to actually feel like I had more of an impact. And so that's kind of the idea there is like, this is going to bring me 10x more stress. Like there's no doubt about that. But also hopefully the other side is that it's going to be 20x more satisfaction from it. And the best thing is, is like, you can't do it wrong. You can always change it. Yeah. It's like perfect. Yeah. And the more money people pay you, the more stress there always is, which is a big variable. But I feel like I think we could all say that another aspect of it is like just building on the challenge. Like you feel like you have this challenge. And I'm not saying you've conquered it because I'm sure you don't feel like that. But you're like, okay, I've done this challenge. I've built something we're getting the results. And now you just want to challenge yourself again, right? It is fun. Yeah, it is fun. It's a video game. And sometimes I question it because this is the questions they hit all of us because I have the same. I had this this week. I was like, why am I doing this? And then I decided not to. But sometimes, you know, I do it. Sometimes I don't. Yeah. Enjoy the challenge. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, it's so fun to have an idea and like build it out and then watch it, watch it grow and learn from it and continue to change things. And I think there's another piece of it, which is, you know, we've really been trying to understand why do people leave? Sometimes it's just out of our control. Sometimes, you know, it's just a, it's a money thing, but also maybe you can go back and forth and say, well, them telling me me it's too expensive really just means not valuable enough or like whatever reason is we had been seeing though, like, I just wanted more. I wanted like deeper education. So I wanted to join like a program that had more coaches and a higher touch experience and like a real more accountability. And so when I started to realize that people were leaving because they wanted more, but basically, you know, like all the DMs of, do you have like a one on one mentorship or the reason I laughed is because my DMs of like these loom guys that are like, oh gosh. Yeah, you know, like you're missing out on X amount of money. If you don't have a high ticket, I can help you build it out like that's also like one of the little subconscious things that is kind of hitting me. But more so was people that I like telling me if you had that, we would do it. Yeah, you want to go deeper in the relationships with the people in your society. It's hard if you know that somebody wants something that you could provide that would help them and you're not providing it. Right. That's the other side of your head that's like, well, maybe I should just do it because they want it and I can do it. So did you ever think you'd be making over 200 K.M. I did not. I don't do your friends and family thing. If they even know. Do they know? The ones that are interested enough, we've outed him now. We've outed him now. Well, I saw the clips. The ones that care enough can do the math and they know roughly. But yeah, I mean, I think the thing that shocks me the most is when people, regardless of like 50 K month, 200 K month, whatever K month, like usually the goal when people go out to do something is like 10 K month. I feel like that's kind of the number, the goal rocket emoji. Yeah, exactly. And when you hit that number, I think that's when people realize there's like an opportunity. And I think specifically like people that are my age, you know, I graduated in May of 24. So people that are my age are even younger that aren't trying to utilize AI or learn it even if they don't want to become an entrepreneur or whatever it is. But understanding that like that is going to be a valuable skill set and they're not like looking into it. That's kind of what's shocking me. But yeah, I think a friend and family are very, very happy and very proud. You can crack me from wrong. Like we all have different desires. We all want to make certain amounts of money on all that cool. We love that. Four people. That's great. Love it. Great. My experience is like, you hit a certain point and it just becomes like multiple numbers of case. Yeah. How important is it for you now to just like enjoy and have fun and like love what you're doing versus like, dude, I got a grind to get 10 K a month to cover all of my basics. Like dude, your basics are very much covered. So how do you think about long term and passion and money and fun and like enjoying your life versus like trying to hit some sort of specific number? Yeah. It's a really good question and this is something I've also been thinking about a lot and because of the high ticket, you know, when I started talking to some people about it, what they said to me was, this is probably going to, you know, whatever multiple, let's just say 10X revenue, but it will potentially 5X your team, 5X your stress, maybe even 10X your stress. So like it's a balance. And so when you take money out of the equation, like what is it that I want to do? Like who is Nate? You know, and so that's when I really started to think about when I do wake up and I want to go like, and I have something to do, what is that that brings me joy and that is the like I said, just kind of like being actually involved and helping people do something. And so that's why I decided that this was going to be something that I'm so excited about, you know. Dude, we're excited for you. Build your perfect day. Dude, 23 years old. Yeah. It's phenomenal. It's like, I turned 30. He's like, back when I graduated college in May of 24. Yeah, it's like, dude, like when you're sitting where I am, it will be seven years from now. It's like, how, when you close your eyes and you think about like how exciting the next seven years are going to be, I like where you can go, where you'll be at 30. Like that is just fun to think about. Legal endless possibilities. Dude, it's awesome. It's super exciting. And you know, recently I, so I told you guys, I'm in Chicago. That was, I only moved to Chicago, I moved back to Chicago like in July. So not too long. And Chicago, it is like way more expensive than I was. I was in Salt Lake City. I love Salt Lake City. I love the mountains. I love being close to California. It was really, really affordable, super cheap. And I pay a lot more for just like living now in Chicago, but I am able to go see my best friends like every day. And my parents are right down the street. And I can go see my puppies. And like having that back, even though I'm not like a huge fan of the Midwest, like I really love mountains and I want to be in the warmer weather. But right now, like just being surrounded by like my support system and my friends and family, it's like that is, that's what else it's all about. This is the entrepreneur arc. It is. He's created the arc. We've been talking about it all week. And I think this is the entrepreneur arc combined with school because the entrepreneur arc is like, you have this good thing, but then you desire more. And so then you go start making money and you're like, I got to move to one of these places where you save the money and like then optimize the taxes or whatever. It's very relevant. And then eventually you're like, you know what, screw that. I just want to like hang out with my friends, you know, and be happy. And you end up doing the, uh, whatever that mean is where you get back down on the other side. Dude, it's just the heroes journey. It's like you always end up back at the shire. It's like, that's how it works. But the other part of that here's journey is that connection to school, which is what you just talked about. You aren't building a high ticket to 10XU revenue. Right. And you're not even really living now based off of your 200K as crazy as that is. But like, what are you doing? So you're trying to optimize for the things that make you happy and the things that solve problems for people. And money is just a lagging indicator. If I can say that, it's a lagging indicator of the results and the actions that you're putting in. And that's the difference, I think, between school and everything else is that so many other places people are so focused on making money that they're creating products and systems and everything else based on how can I get as much money out of one person as possible. And on school, it's different. Because on school, it's so much more about like, hey, I actually enjoy being around these people. And yeah, sure, some people might pay you because you probably provide them 10X more value than you're charging anyways. But that's not the whole point. The point is, these people need something you're creating it and you're solving problems. And having fun doing it. Which, it sounds like a good life to me. No. I mean, you know, that just goes back to like what we were talking about earlier with the free community and the way it's been growing and what it is now. And when we had thought about like, should we just do a different opt-in page to get more emails? It's like, no, I like the name. I like what I see in there. And this is a one year old community in a space that is going to be the biggest paradigm shift we're going to see. And so what could AI automation society become? Like, it becomes a place of music and ask that very question. It's our own country. It's like, it's our own country. I mean, there's 180,000 people in there. That's like probably more than the population of the city I was born in. Dude. We're getting somewhere. Yeah. I think the other thing that really gives me a lot of joy is, you know, I quit my job. I was working in my bedroom for months. And I really like to connect with people. And I've been able to go to different places and travel and connect with people that I've been talking to online for a while or that have, you know, they're all brought together for some AI event or whatever it is or like the school games, you know, like, that's my, those have been my favorite activities in the past year because you're just meeting people. Like, even after this, I'm going to go get dinner with some people that are in my community because I was like, hey, I'm going to LA. Like, who's in LA? And that's just super cool. And like, what I imagine being able to do at some point is like just throwing massive and person events for a automation society or the plus group or the Heitzker group and things like that. I think that is just like what really gets me excited to think about how early we all are to this community building shift, this AI shift, all of that. And especially in a world where what I'm teaching people essentially is to get rid of humans. I literally was just as just about to say, you have the craziest cross because in a world where we are losing sense of reality because of AI, you're like, yeah, but what if we build a community so that we don't lose track of each other in the process. Yeah. No, it's a little give and take. Exactly. And I think that is like essentially people have that narrative. I've always tried to take the narrative of like people use AI to become super humans rather than we're bought in. We're like fully bought into that idea. Yeah. But no, I mean, it's like this weird shift too. Like for example, I just had a conversation with some creators the other day about how good these AI thumbnail creators are becoming. But as more and more people start to use those, even though yeah, you may be able to like get rid of an editor or a thumbnail designer and save yourself some money, then all of the thumbnails are going to look the same. And then people are going to go back and crave the uniqueness of a human touch. It's like human touch will just kind of always do certain things better. And you know, already having that place of maybe you come in because you don't, because you want something, but then you understand the value of community and that's what brings you back or that's what gets you to stay and things like that. But super bullish on the idea of just humans being able to talk about the random weird little things. And dude, and like in my opinion, school is the most human place on the internet. Yeah. I mean, it will become the last bastion of society. It kind of feels like it, right? Like it feels like the only place I can go where I know, I know for sure that I'm talking to like real human beings that actually care. And like we just listed all of these different creators on school, right? Where you're like, yeah, you know, Nick makes a billion dollars. And what does he do? He spends his time just talking to his community members. What do you do? You're in there talking to your community members. It's the only place where it's like, if you were on, I don't even want to name the names of other places. But if you were on other places, you would probably be questioning like, is this actually Nate I'm even talking to right? But when you're on school, it's like, no, we're all just hanging out. Like we know that these people are here. We know that everybody is a community already. And you don't have to worry about like, is this another freaking bot that I, you know, not even an actual human being that I'm talking to. You were probably there, but I remember one of the Hermosing Masterminds. He's like, yeah, I was just hanging out with like some billionaire friends and like, they went up to a whiteboard and they wrote two things on the board. It was like, this is the future of business. AI and IRL. It's like AI will gobble up everything that's not human. And then like everything that's human will remain. And it's like, you're doing, you have a business that this boat. Yeah, it is pretty fun. So freaking cool. It's a little fun. Oh, Nate Brooks, thank you. It's awesome getting your story. I appreciate you giving up the time. And yeah, excited to hang out with you. It's cool to get your question in. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Have a fun with you guys.