How Tom Ross Doubled His Community Engagement and Retention With Training Pathways

**Tom Ross** (0:00)
People inherently don't know what they don't know, which means if you just dump them into an unstructured community, expecting them to know exactly what they need help with, it doesn't tend to happen. And so I found that having some kind of structured learning was a great starting point for a lot of people.

**Jay Clouse** (0:29)
Hello, my friend, welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. My guest today is Tom Ross, the founder of Learn Community, where he helps community builders design learning experiences that actually stick. Tom's clients have reached millions of people and generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue, and Tom is a long-time member of The Lab. His membership is six figures and growing.
Tom's been building online communities for two decades, and in this conversation, we get into some of the most tactical, counterintuitive lessons that he's learned along the way. We talk about why closing the doors to your membership can make people want in more, why an application process might be the strongest sales lever you're not using, and an innovative approach to onboarding that I'm absolutely going to take inspiration from.
But the part of this conversation I keep thinking about is what Tom calls learning pathways, his reinvention of the traditional online course. He rebuilt his own onboarding to fix the completion rate problem, plaguing course creators everywhere. His own course completion went from 20 percent to 50 percent, and he did it by weaving AI agents, worksheets, and even some custom software tools he built himself directly into the learning experience so people actually finish and actually stick around afterwards. If you're running a membership, a community, or thinking about how online education is changing, this one is packed with ideas that you can steal. We'll get to my full conversation with Tom right after this.
This episode is brought to you by Circle, and if I'm being honest, much of the Creator Science business is brought to you by Circle. That's because Circle is a platform powering The Lab, a membership community for professional creators. The Lab is the beating heart of our business, which means Circle is absolutely essential. So many of you listening to the show are already inside The Lab and have experienced Circle firsthand. I was actually a beta user of Circle back in 2020, and obviously I'm still using it today. I can't imagine hosting The Lab anywhere else. And that's because it's truly a tool that continues to evolve and listen to its customers. Let me tell you why I love Circle. It's the most user-friendly, admin-friendly, and fully-featured community tool on the market. That's my very strong, very honest opinion. Even if someone has never been in a Circle community before, they have no problem quickly learning how to use it. And that is one of the most important aspects of any community tool. And Circle grows with you. It's dead simple to get up and running, but it's so robust that as you need more and more control and specificity, Circle provides it. In particular, their built-in automations just keep getting better and better. Learn more and start your own free trial of Circle at circle.so. That's circle.so.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:09)
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**Jay Clouse** (3:42)
Tom Ross on the show, Overdue. Good to have you here. Excited to chat all things community. You are the community guy. Do you feel like you've settled into that identity like Tom Ross community guy?

**Tom Ross** (3:53)
I do. Thanks for having me on man. Yeah, I've been looking forward to this and I kind of see you as the community guy. So we're a couple of community guys today having a geek out.

**Jay Clouse** (4:01)
Just a couple of community guys. Which leads me to my first question. What do you think is the prognosis for communities and memberships now middle of 2026, moving into 2027? Is it too late?

**Tom Ross** (4:13)
No, it is definitely not too late. But I think you and I are probably pretty aligned on this. Right? There's been a boom in communities. We've both seen it, but with that comes a boom in communities not done well.