I’ve recently made a big – and surprisingly meaningful – shift behind the scenes: I’ve finally stepped away from Facebook and moved my membership and community over to Skool.
This change is part of a deeper season of simplifying my business, choosing what truly supports me, and creating a space that feels calmer and more intentional for everyone involved. I can still grow organically and have fulfilling engagement with my products.
In this episode, I’m sharing why I made the switch, what it means for my work, and the very human feelings that came with taking this risk.
Prefer to read the transcript? Click here
Ruth Poundwhite [00:00:00]:
I have finally left Facebook, and in this episode, I’m sharing why I am moving some of my offers over to Skool, why I love the platform, and beyond that, how I’m taking a risk to shake things up in the name of simplicity and choosing what supports me. Welcome to the Soulful Sales show, where we talk about believing in the value of your offers, getting them in front of your right people, and selling more of what you do in your unique way. Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the Soulful Sales Show. So I actually didn’t know what I wanted to talk about today, so I had a chat with ChatGPT and I asked it, what have I been working on lately that I could talk about in the podcast? And the answer was so obvious, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself. So today I am talking about a big shift that I have been making behind the scenes and that is moving my membership and my community over to a platform called Skool. And those of you who have joined the platform seem very interested in this transition. And actually a lot of people are very excited after experiencing this new platform. So I thought it would be helpful to share why I have made the choice.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:01:09]:
A bit about the platform, but also what it means in terms of simplifying my business and choosing what is right for me. And of course, some of the feelings and the fears that have come along with making this shift behind the scenes of my business. So firstly, let me talk about why I wanted to move away from Facebook, specifically. So I had for years considered moving away. It’s always an objection when people sign up to offers, do I have to be in Facebook? I don’t want to use Facebook. It’s always an objection. But I do see that the majority of people are there. So I was really reluctant to move to a different platform because it just becomes another thing to check.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:01:47]:
Right. And I know from my experience that when groups have moved to other platforms like Circle, I have just forgotten to log in. And I’ve always preferred it when the group has been on Facebook, despite the fact that Facebook has a load of drawbacks as well. So, for one, as the owner of a group, they took away the ability to schedule to groups with third party software. I used to go live in groups with third party software. They took that ability away. Going live in Facebook was super glitchy for me. No matter what browser I used, no matter how I did, it was always super glitchy for me and I really hated it.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:02:25]:
So I ended up never doing it. Not That I am huge on going live anyway. But it was frustrating because I do want to do it sometimes. More than that, though, it’s really about the same reason that I have quit Instagram is that when I go on Facebook, I get pulled in to random other stuff. I compare myself to things that I’m seeing there. I. Or I just get distracted and forget what I was going to do. And that, for me is really the biggest thing, the biggest downside of Facebook, the biggest downside of being on Instagram.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:02:58]:
I also found that I was not excited to post in my main free group on Facebook because it had kind of become a bit dead. And part of that is like this vicious cycle of me not sharing enough. But it’s also because Facebook does not share with my followers. It doesn’t share with the group members. I don’t know about you, but every time I go on Facebook, I see posts from groups that I’m not even in, and then I miss posts from groups I actually want to see that I’m in. And the Facebook algorithm is very, very frustrating. So, yeah, there are lots of reasons why Facebook was not the one for me in terms of a free community. But I’d always been so reluctant to move away because, like I said, most people are already on Facebook.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:03:41]:
So it’s not another thing to remember to check. However, having said that, I have been on this platform called Skool, and it is spelled S K O O L. I do have an affiliate link in the show notes for you to join. Actually, let me get that link for you now. So the link, if you want to sign up to Skool and give it a whirl, is ruthpoundwhite.com forward slash L. Forward slash Skool, S K-O L. But I will put that in the show notes as well. So, yeah, I had been part of this platform, I think, for a couple of years now because of other creators using it and hosting their courses there.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:04:15]:
And I have gradually joined more and more groups there. And I was 100 lurking, like basically not posting anything. But I do like to learn by lurking. And I realized that there was something different about this space. There was something that did make me want to log into it did make me want to check it, and it actually felt very intuitive to use. And the nicest thing about Skool is that people are actually nice there. Like, yes, there are definitely spammers and bots, and that is a bit of a problem in any group, but the discussions that people are having feels like old Skool Internet. You know, when the Internet was not so horrible.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:04:57]:
Really, really nice. You’re also not bombarded with a feed like an algorithm. You just go to each individual group one at a time so you’re not distracted by everything. It’s not like the experience I just described with Facebook and feels very clean, intuitive. And the engagement on Skool is great because they deliberately reward engagement. Now, like I said, I am a lurker. I love to lurk, but the way Skool is set up does make it fun to not lurk and to actually engage. So I just got such a good vibe from being on Skool.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:05:31]:
I loved the way that people, the energy that people had, but also the way that classrooms were laid out and I had been in a few key groups that drew me back and I was kind of observing what those group members were doing for a while. I mentioned that I had issues with Facebook, which is where my free group was hosted, and also the community for my paid membership. I also have issues with ThriveCart. So ThriveCart Learn is the platform I use to host my courses. And side note, I am not moving all of my other courses over only my paid membership. The problem I had had with hosting my paid membership in ThriveCart was just that it all fel very cluttered and hard to organize. And I just love the interface of Skool a lot better. So it works in terms of the community space, but it also works in terms of hosting the courses and the classroom.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:06:22]:
Why I decided to make the switch was partly because of those issues I had with the other platforms, but really it’s because I am in a season of streamlining, simplifying. I just decided to close my lower tier soulful growth club. My seven dollar membership is no longer available. I mean technically it is on my website and I must take it down. It is closing at the end of November. I decided to close that. I decided that I no longer wanted to have a separate free group, a separate paid member group. I wanted to bring everything together.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:06:55]:
I decided I didn’t want to have a separate place to log in for the community, a separate place to log in for the course content of the membership. I wanted it all together. So basically I’m in a season of streamlining, simplifying and asking how I can better support my people by better supporting myself in terms of where I have to go to check in with them and give them the content that belongs in the membership. It was also a really conscious decision to decide to have a proper thriving community. Again, like I said, I had had this free Facebook group. There are about 2,000 people in there, by the way, but it was kind of dead. And a lot of that was to do with my energy, but a lot of that was also to do with the algorithm. And I was kind of okay with that because it wasn’t the core part of my marketing.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:07:41]:
And I always say this. The core part of my marketing and sales, how I nurture my audience, how I sell to my audience, is 100%. My email newsletter. I have my podcast to connect with you on a kind of human to human level where you can hear my voice and, and my thoughts and everything. I have my email list for the like, if there was nothing, if there. If I could only do one thing in my business, it would be email marketing for certain. So I don’t need a community. But I was really.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:08:09]:
I always say, like, I get the nudge and the nudge means like an intuitive kind of idea that I want to change something up. And I had the nudge about the community for a while. And I had been thinking about this decision for a while and what really swayed it for me with Skool specifically, aside from everything I’ve already said, is that you can also grow organically on Skool. I’m not going to go into all of the details here. I will say that if you want to properly dive into this, then sign up to Evelyn VI’s group on Skool. It’s called Grow with Evelyn. You can Visit that@ruthpound white.com Evelyn that is my affiliate link and she has a Skool traffic challenge in there. So you can get a free trial of her membership on Skool and do the traffic challenge.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:08:54]:
And that will teach you a lot. But basically there are different ways that you can grow and be discovered from within the Skool platform. One of the ways is kind of the old Skool. You know, posting in other people’s groups and just like people will be intrigued and check what you’re doing. You actually have a kind of profile with a bio on Skool, which I love. Which when you’re in a group, people can just hover over your name and see it right there, which is really helpful. And you can, you know, link to your stuff there, link to your groups there. There’s also a discovery page, which is really powerful.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:09:29]:
And my group is climbing up in the rankings every single day, which is really, really exciting. So there are ways to grow organically on Skool as well. Evelyn also teaches a method for running Facebook ads to Skool. So I really decided that it would be a place to have everything all in one, to have better engagement, to really establish a proper community in my business again, and to give myself more options for growing organically. And the way that the group model works on Skool is that it is set up to have a free tier with a paid tier, so people will join the group for free. But if they want to upgrade to the membership, if they want more of my support, if they want the membership calls, if they want the membership courses, they have to pay. And they can do it all within the platform. Skool also handles the payments, it handles the churn, it handles failed payments.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:10:23]:
Really, really powerful. It also handles the tax. So there are lots of benefits of running the paid community there as well. And, you know, a couple of people I already knew had their own Skool communities. A few people in my mastermind group, they had moved people over. Significantly fewer people in the Skool community than their old community, but significantly more engagement, which is exactly what I wanted. And this is exactly what I have seen in my own community as well. So having said all of that, it all sounds like a really smart business decision.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:10:52]:
It almost feels like a new era in my business. And I wonder if I’m understating it all. Under the surface of all these kind of strategic decisions was this thought, like, am I really ready to, like, step into this and really use this as a vehicle for growth and connection in my business? And this is probably why I sat on the idea for several months. As well as that, I also had some doubts around it. My number one doubt being how is this going to affect my paying members? Yes, I had 2,000 people in my free Facebook group and I knew that not all of them would move over. But, you know, that’s a free group. Some of them, some of my paying members have paid for an annual membership. And what if they don’t like it? You know, and that’s actually, you know, a feeling that comes up regularly for me.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:11:36]:
As much as I coach people through these kind of feelings as well, I have doubts as well about, like, people not liking the way that I run things in my business. But. But having been in business for such a long time now, I know that I cannot make decisions in my business based on me guessing what other people will think about those decisions. I also know that if I am truly thinking through a decision and making it in the best interest of myself and what I believe to be the best interest of my paying clients, that most of them will trust me with that as long as I can trust myself with that. So I did have doubts. I was worried that some members wouldn’t move over. I was also concerned that you know, Skool, you benefit so much from the simplicity of Skool, but the cost of that is that it is really not customizable in some of the ways that you may want. I there were some features missing.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:12:32]:
Like for example, I couldn’t manually assign people to be in the premium paid tier after they had joined as a free member. Luckily, Skool has implemented that now couldn’t move over the payments automatically. So some of my members are going to have payments through Skool. Some of them still have payments through ThriveCart. I can’t do things like trials and special discounts in Skool, which is a big limitation I think. But it’s okay because I’m still going to run that through ThriveCart and then I will use Zapier to give people access to Skool if they buy through ThriveCart. But these are just the kind of things that you have to to think about when you’re moving platform, right? Another big drawback is that Skool does not allow scheduling of posts. Like I was shocked when I found this.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:13:13]:
I just thought it would be such a given that they would have it. I didn’t even think about it. And one of the things I love a lot about Skool, especially as someone who uses ThriveCart where the team behind ThriveCart are not open about things, they’re constantly deleting posts about people who have bugs. Their customer support leaves a lot to be desired. The team behind Skool are so transparent. They do a weekly update called Skool News every single week. I love it. And they share a lot of their reasoning behind why they make the choices they do, including reasoning for not scheduling posts is because they want Skool to be a true community space.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:13:48]:
Now I have found ways around it like don’t get me wrong, I want it to be a true community as well, but someone with limited capacity. There are some posts I’m going to have to schedule so I found a way around it using AI. But that is a very legitimate concern and it was a very legitimate concern of mine. So yeah, Skool is limited in a lot of functionality, but it’s all for a good reason and the vision that the creators of Skool have. And it means that also it works very, very well and is very intuitive and easier to use. But yes, I had a lot of doubts about what people would think. Now let me share with you what has happened since I’ve moved over. So at the time of Speaking, I am two weeks into my Skool journey.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:14:32]:
I had 200 people in there by week one and I’ve now got over 300 people in there What I have found is that the number of people moving from my free Facebook group over to Skool has been pretty low. Only about 12%, which does feel a bit scary. Having literally just closed that group today, I did have a moment of oh my goodness, am I really leaving behind these 2,000 people to now have a group of 300 people? But that’s just the fear talking because the truth is I don’t want those 2,000 people if they’re not paying any attention. Right. It’s a waste of both of our time. So it’s really about quality over quantity and we know that to be true. But I’m just having to remind myself of that in the moment. 80 of my paid members have moved over so far and I would love to get to 100.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:15:19]:
I have had one member specifically tell me that they don’t want to move over. Everyone else has just told me they didn’t see it yet or they haven’t got around to it yet. So I’m hoping that I will get more and I am going to have the content is still going to be hosted in Thrive cart for a while for the people that haven’t moved over. But this is my biggest concern, getting the paying members on board because they are paying me to be in the membership and I want to do deliver that service to them. And by the way, I didn’t actually say this before but I, I also questioned about having separate groups on Skool like one for my free group and one for my paid members and I decided to deliberately combine them into one group. My concern was that it would water down like it would devalue the support that members saw they were getting from me in a community group. But actually I decided that a boosted engagement across the board and more, you know, more people to support them as well as me is is only a benefit and I will because Skool now has the functionality for me to mark people as paying members. I can see when they’re a paying member and I will give them more support and in depth coaching.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:16:26]:
I’ve made that boundary very clear in my Skool community that if you’re a free member, you know, quick fire questions about my offers, fine, but I’m not going to offer you in depth responses and coaching but for my paying members I absolutely will. That was just a side note, but yes, the, I would say the overwhelming feedback has been positive. I know that it’s probably easier for people to share their positive feelings than it is for them to share their less positive feelings. A few members have said that they were Hesitant to move over. Some of them have said that they were really hesitant at first, but then very pleasantly surprised. Some of them are still getting to grips with it. One of the drawbacks of Skool is that it does by default send you a ton of notifications. Like every time I make a post in the group it will email you and stuff that is within your control though.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:17:12]:
You just need to go into your settings. But having it as a default I think can be a bit much for people. But yeah, I think that the over overarching feedback I’ve gotten is that people are loving Skool. Either they were already there, it was great to see how many people were already there, or they’re really excited to have discovered this new space on the Internet that’s actually nice, that actually works as clean, intuitive and has that old Skool Internet vibe. I’m just going to share with you a comment that one of the free members made and she gave me permission to share her words. She says, as you know, I hesitated to move over with your free group simply because I did not want to add another platform to my tech stack. In the past, when groups moved to places like Mighty Networks, they lost me for that reason. However, Skool feels completely different from any of those other platforms.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:18:02]:
It’s such a breath of fresh air and actually a joy to use. I feel like it’s the first real alternative to Facebook. Hurrah. And I have done things to support my members, you know, like recording a video tour of the platform. I’ve personally emailed the members who haven’t moved over yet, scheduled reminders. I’m also trying to make it clear that they can lurk. They don’t actually even need to use the community. They can just see it as the place where they log in to access the course.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:18:28]:
You know, if that’s what feels better. I think one of the things that puts people off joining is that Skool requires you to create a bio when you first sign up. You can just put a dot or an emoji or something if you don’t want to do that. But I know that it is a bit of an extra step for people to take. So I am still working on educating people about Skool and seeing what happens with those paying members and making sure that they can still access the content off Skool when they haven’t moved over yet. So far. I have also noticed in the group that people are posting new threads, they’re asking questions. I just love it.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:19:03]:
It’s really, really lovely. The posts themselves don’t have as much formatting as Facebook Which I kind of like. It’s really not video heavy. I love that. I absolutely love that. I don’t have to think about all the graphics and the videos like oh, what a. How much mental capacity is freed up from that. I just love.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:19:24]:
It suits me very well. And you can have different categories of posts as well so it makes it easier to find stuff. There’s also a really, really good search function and you can have a free classroom so you can have kind of onboarding for free members in the classroom where you say start here, introduce yourself here, here are the rules of the group. And then you can have other courses in the classroom that are set to be visible only to paying members. So it all works really well in that sense. So I hope this has been helpful. If you are new to Skool I would really recommend joining my group and checking it out and lurking and seeing if it’s a platform that you like. I am very excited by this move because I feel like I have, I have gotten into Skool at a stage where it is still fairly new but it is growing at rapid speed.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:20:11]:
I could see, I can see it really, really taking off. I mean I’m. I’m in early enough to have secured the username at Ruth, so that shows you how early I am in there. Like no numbers or hyphens or anything, it’s just at Ruth and I love that. But there are a decent number of people already there and it’s growing at rapid speed so I’m very, very excited by it. So if you’re someone who is thinking about specifically memberships and communities, I think that it is a good way for you to like a good thing for you to do to join a community, lurk or post, see how it feels and see if it might be worth you thinking about. I’m not suggesting you should be moving all of your courses there. Some people have.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:20:55]:
I’m not planning to do that at the moment. Firstly that would be a huge job for me but I’m kind of happy with ThriveCart for hosting my regular self study courses but for the membership it wasn’t what I wanted it to be and I just, I’m so happy now to have everything all in one place for the membership and yeah, come join the group. Let me get the link. So if you go to ruthpoundlight.com forward/community you can join the group for free. Like I said, please don’t be put off by having to make a bio. Yes, it will help you to make a bio because you know, people Might check out what you do, but if you don’t have the time and energy, just put an emoji in there, right? And yeah, the soulful. It’s called the Soulful Sales Group. Did I even say that? It’s such a lovely space.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:21:36]:
My aims for the space are for it to be a place where we can feel safe to open up about doing business and marketing in a. In a way that honors who we are as unique individuals. I am the kind of leader of the space, but I actually have the vision that it’s not about being polished and me showing up and teaching you stuff there. It’s more about sharing from along the way in the journey, which includes me sharing and the other members sharing and also, you know, being okay to be imperfect and share the human side of things. That is really the vision I have for the space. I also have a behind the scenes so Skool diary. So some of the stuff I’ve already shared with you in this episode, but I’m going to share, you know, updates on how I’m growing, updates on what I’m doing to grow organically on Skool. You know, I’m probably going to be setting up Skool Facebook ads to get people to join my Skool as well.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:22:24]:
So I’m going to share behind the scenes of my strategy and my results. So if you join, you’ll get free access to that. I also have a free training called Quiet Visibility, which is all about getting over your visibility fears and showing up in a way that honors you. It’s a really, really foundational core training to my entire philosophy and I’m giving it to you free in the Skool community. So I’d really love to have you just go to RuthPoundWright.com community to join us in Soulful Sales. And you know, the other benefit of this is I’m bringing everything under the Soulful Sales brand. I have the Soulful Sales show podcast, the Soulful Sales Free Community, the paid premium upgrade, the Soulful Sales Society. And I also have the Soulful Sales Summit.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:23:07]:
Oh, which by the way is coming back in 2026 and applications are open. I’m going to put the link in the show notes to that because it’s too much of a long link to read out. But the applications will be open until the 10th of December, so you have some time. If you want to apply for that summit, I would love to have you speak and I always encourage you to be brave and share your idea, even if you feel nervous. And one of my business buddies actually shared to me that my summits are among the best and she does a lot. She says my summits are among the best in terms of the leads she’s she gets and the experience of being in the summit. I get rave reviews from my summits, both from my attendees and my speakers and this will be my sixth summit, I think. So I know what I’m doing and my intention is always for them to be transformational events both for me, my speakers, my sponsors and my attendees.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:23:58]:
So if you want to be part of that, then go to the link in the show notes and read more and you can apply for the Soulful Sales Summit. All right, that is my update about Skool. If you want to follow along the journey, go join my community and you can read my behind the scenes Skool diaries. I am really excited for this next chapter in my business and really properly having a community again. I love it. Anyway, catch you next time. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Soulful Sales. If you have a moment to rate and review, know that it really does make a difference.
Ruth Poundwhite [00:24:31]:
And if you would like to carry on the conversation, then you can connect with me in the free Soulful sales community@ruthpoundwhite.com community or my personal favorite, join me inside the Soulful Sales society membership@ruthpoundwhite.com membership and keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.
“I really decided that it would be a place to have everything all in one, to have better engagement, to really establish a proper community in my business again, and to give myself more options for growing organically.”
Show Notes
I have finally left Facebook, and in this episode I’m sharing why I am moving some of my offers over to Skool, why I love the platform, and beyond that, how I’m taking a risk to shake things up in the name of simplicity and choosing what supports me.
This shift has been brewing behind the scenes for a long time, and it feels both exciting and vulnerable to finally talk about it. After years of feeling drained by Facebook’s distractions, limitations, and lack of genuine connection, I knew I needed a space that felt more aligned with how I want to work and show up.
Skool has been that breath of fresh air – a cleaner, calmer, more intuitive platform where real community can thrive.
Beyond the tech, this move is really about honouring my own capacity. I’m simplifying, consolidating, and choosing the path that supports me so I can better support the people inside my offers. Taking this risk has brought up fears, of course, but it’s also opened up a new level of clarity and excitement for what’s possible.
What I Talk About in This Episode:
- Why I finally left Facebook for good
- What I love about Skool’s simplicity
- How I’m simplifying my business behind the scenes
- The fears that came up during this transition
- What this new chapter means for my community
Links From This Episode:
- Join the Free Soulful Sales Community
- Create Your Own Community on Skool (affiliate link)
- Join Evelyn Weiss’ Skool Community (affiliate link)
- Apply To Speak At the Soulful Sales Summit
- Sponsor the Soulful Sales Summit
- My Black Friday & Cyber Monday Sale
- Soulful Sales Society Membership
Thanks for listening!
Find out more about working with Ruth 1:1 on your business strategy & self-belief to grow your audience & make more sales your way.
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