A few years ago, I had an idea.
I wanted to create somewhere small business owners could go for practical business and digital support. Somewhere they could find useful information, learn new skills, ask questions and get help without everything being hidden behind a paywall.
The idea itself wasn’t particularly complicated.
Actually building it was.
I’ve experimented with different platforms, created courses and resources, run webinars, changed direction more than once and invested a considerable amount of time and money along the way.
Today, that idea has developed into AI Growth 101, my online community for small business owners and startups who want practical help using AI.
It’s still relatively early days. I’m not writing this as somebody with a community of 50,000 people who has cracked some secret formula for overnight growth.
I’m writing it as somebody who is building an online community right now.
Some things have worked. Some have taken much longer than I expected. And I’ve already learned quite a few lessons that I wish I’d understood when I first had the idea.
So, if you’re thinking about creating an online community of your own, here’s what I’ve learned so far.
The idea started long before I discovered Skool
My original idea for a business support community probably goes back three to five years.
I wanted to create a hub where people could access useful information and support for free.
At first, I tried building it myself.
I’ve worked with websites and WordPress for many years, so technically I could create something. I experimented with membership plugins and different ways of organising courses, resources and content on my own website.
The problem wasn’t necessarily whether I could build it.
The problem was the complexity.
Every additional feature seemed to require another plugin, another setting or another thing that needed maintaining.
Eventually, I realised something important.
If I found the system complicated to manage, what would it be like for somebody simply trying to learn from it?
That changed the way I looked at community platforms.
Why I eventually chose Skool
I didn’t immediately jump to Skool.
At one point, I joined a mastermind programme with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi and experimented with the platform they were using. I liked some aspects of it, but at the time it was costing around £1,000 a year.
For something I was still experimenting with, that felt like a significant commitment.
I also looked at Circle and several other options.
Eventually, I came across Skool.
What attracted me wasn’t a huge list of advanced features. In fact, it was almost the opposite.
It was simple.
That mattered to me because I wasn’t just thinking about myself as the person running the community. I was thinking about the people using it.
If somebody joins because they want to learn how to use AI or improve their business, they shouldn’t need a training course just to understand the community platform.
Skool gives me somewhere for discussions, somewhere to organise learning resources and courses, and a calendar for events. It also includes points and levels to encourage participation. Skool Help Center
It keeps those things together without making the experience unnecessarily complicated.
So far, I think choosing simplicity was the right decision.
Creating the community was the easy bit
You can technically create an online community very quickly.
Building one is different.
One of the biggest jobs for me has been creating and organising the content.
In a previous role with Superfast Business Wales, I delivered webinars and digital support for Welsh businesses. That gave me a good understanding of the questions small businesses ask and the areas where they often need help.
However, having knowledge and turning that knowledge into useful online learning are two different things.
I’ve had to create courses, guides, downloads, webinars, challenges and other resources. Then I’ve had to organise everything so that somebody joining the community can actually find what they need.
That hasn’t necessarily been difficult.
It has been time-consuming.
And I think that’s an important distinction.
When people think about starting a community, it’s easy to spend all your time thinking about the platform, logo, name and membership price.
The bigger question is:
What will people actually find when they get there?
Don’t wait until everything is perfect
There’s another side to this.
You can spend so much time creating content that you never actually launch the community.
I’ve certainly been guilty over the years of wanting things to be more complete before putting them in front of people.
However, I’m gradually learning that an online community doesn’t need to be finished.
In fact, I’m not sure a good community ever is.
New questions appear. Technology changes. Members need different things. New resources get created and old ones need updating.
AI Growth 101 today looks very different from the original idea I had several years ago.
I’m sure it will look different again a year from now.
So, create enough value to give people a reason to join, but don’t wait until you’ve built everything you could possibly build.
You’ll probably discover what people really want only after they arrive.
Getting members is only the beginning
This has probably been one of my biggest lessons.
You can get somebody to join a community.
Getting them to participate is another matter entirely.
I’ve been pleased with the engagement figures inside AI Growth 101, but I’d still like to see more conversations between members.
I post regularly. I ask questions. I share resources. I run events.
Yet people can still be reluctant to comment or start a discussion.
At first, it’s tempting to look at that and think something isn’t working.
However, I’ve learned that quieter communities aren’t unusual.
Research into online communities has found for years that many members prefer to read and observe rather than actively contribute. The often-quoted “90-9-1” principle suggests participation can be heavily weighted towards a relatively small number of active contributors, although later research has challenged those exact percentages. ScienceDirect
That doesn’t mean the quieter members aren’t getting value.
They may be reading posts, watching lessons, downloading resources or attending webinars without ever writing a comment.
I’m trying to remember that.
At the same time, I want to keep making it easier for people to participate.
That’s something I’m still learning.
What’s actually helped the community grow?
AI Growth 101 is still in its infancy, so I wouldn’t pretend I’ve discovered the perfect growth formula.
However, a few things are beginning to work.
One has been webinars.
I’ve run online events for years, so webinars are a natural way for me to teach something useful while introducing people to the wider community.
Another has been my free Digital Marketing 101 book.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting with using the book as the first step rather than immediately asking somebody to join a community they’ve never heard of.
That makes sense when you think about it.
“Download a useful free book” is a much smaller decision than “join my online community”.
Once somebody has found something useful, I can introduce them to everything else available.
It’s still early, but that approach has been encouraging.
The other thing that helps is simply continuing to show up.
There probably isn’t a particularly exciting marketing hack hidden in that answer.
I changed the focus as I learned
The community also hasn’t stayed exactly as I originally imagined it.
It began with the broader Digital Growth 101 idea.
Over time, I’ve increasingly focused the community around practical AI for small business, and it has evolved into AI Growth 101.
That’s been another lesson.
When you’re starting something, there’s a temptation to appeal to everybody.
More people must mean more opportunities, right?
I’m increasingly convinced the opposite can be true.
If your community is for “anybody interested in business”, it’s difficult for somebody to know whether it’s really for them.
A narrower focus makes the decision easier.
AI Growth 101 is for small business owners and startups who want to understand and use AI practically, without the jargon and hype.
That’s much clearer.
And, if I were starting again, I would probably get to that level of clarity sooner.
Building a community costs more than the platform fee
There’s another part of building an online community that isn’t discussed enough.
The cost.
I’m not simply talking about the monthly cost of Skool.
There are advertising costs, software subscriptions, webinar tools, website costs, content creation and, perhaps most importantly, your time.
So far, I estimate I’ve invested more than £3,000 into developing and growing everything around the community.
At the moment, I haven’t had a direct financial return on that investment.
I’m comfortable saying that because I think we need to be more realistic about building things online.
You don’t create a community on Monday and automatically have a profitable business by Friday.
At some point, however, there does need to be a business behind it.
My focus so far has been building the community, creating useful resources and learning what people respond to.
The next stage is working out how I monetise parts of what I’m creating while keeping the core community useful and accessible.
That’s another experiment.
I’ll probably write about that one in the future.
Give it longer than you think
I’ll admit something.
I’d like AI Growth 101 to have grown faster.
But that’s probably because I want most things to happen faster.
The reality is that communities take time.
People need to discover you.
Then they need to understand what you do.
Then they need a reason to join.
After that, they need a reason to come back.
And eventually, some of them may start contributing themselves.
Those are several different stages, and they don’t all happen at once.
Research into online brand communities also suggests that engagement can contribute to stronger commitment and word of mouth, which reinforces why building genuine participation matters rather than simply chasing a large membership number. DOI
I’d rather eventually have a smaller community of people who genuinely find it useful than a huge membership number where nobody participates.
That’s something I have to remind myself of occasionally.
If I started an online community again, what would I do differently?
If somebody told me tomorrow that they were thinking about starting an online community for their business, I’d give them a few pieces of advice.
First, get clear about who the community is for.
Don’t try to cater for everybody.
A smaller group of people who share a genuine interest or problem can be much more valuable than thousands of people with very little in common.
Second, be active yourself.
You can’t create a community, disappear for three weeks and wonder why nobody is talking.
Especially in the beginning, you need to create the conversations, welcome people, answer questions and give members reasons to return.
Third, make it useful before worrying too much about monetising it.
Give people something worth joining for.
That doesn’t mean you should never charge for anything. I’m now looking at how paid workshops, services and other offers can sit alongside my free community.
But there needs to be genuine value first.
Fourth, keep things simple.
Don’t build a complicated platform simply because you can.
Think about the person using it.
And finally, give it more time than you think it will need.
That’s probably advice I still need to take myself.
Creating a community is easy. Building one isn’t.
That’s probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned.
The technology is the easy part.
You can create a Skool group, Facebook Group or another online space surprisingly quickly.
But a platform isn’t a community.
A community develops when people start getting value from being there. It grows when they return, participate, ask questions, share experiences and eventually help each other.
I’m not pretending I’ve got all of that figured out yet.
AI Growth 101 is still growing, and I’m still experimenting with what works.
There are things I’m pleased with, things I’d like to improve and plenty I still want to try.
But perhaps that’s the point.
You don’t build a community and finish it.
You keep building it.
And if I had to reduce everything I’ve learned so far to three pieces of advice, they would be these:
Keep it simple. Give it time. Don’t try to be everything to everybody.
That’s what I’m trying to do with AI Growth 101.
And I’ll let you know how it goes.
Want to see what I’m building?
AI Growth 101 is my free community for small business owners and startups who want practical help using AI without the jargon or hype.
Inside you’ll find free learning resources, practical guides, live events and a growing community of people learning how to make AI useful in their businesses.
Join the free AI Growth 101 community