Nicolás Forero

Author, Raising Free Learners ft. @flowidealism. CMO @socraticexp. Helping alternative schools stop being the best-kept secret. St. John's College, MA (nerd).

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

https://t.co/kCNTc1oojS

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

A friend I respect recommended it. LATAM 7-8-figure infoproduct and agency owners will be there giving talks and the usual. A few international people like @neilpatel will be there.

I've been working with the US since I was around 20 and have zero LATAM friends despite being Colombian, so I figured I'd fly for a few days and meet some people.

If there's anyone I think you should know, I'll make sure to connect you. lmk if you ever pass around CDMX (current home base).

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

@thekevinmcp @flowidealism Free book here :)

https://t.co/J8M56m9gjS

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

Mexico's education experiment, broken down:

1. Dissolved INEE (independent evaluation body) in 2019
2. Eliminated Mejoredu (its replacement) in 2025
3. Launched a new curriculum nationwide with no pilot
4. Textbooks arrived two months late
5. Teachers told to "manage as best as they could"
6. PISA math scores: 395 vs. OECD average of 472
7. Budget: $19.7 billion on infrastructure by 2030

No one is measuring whether any of it works. UNESCO calls it walking blind.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

https://t.co/kCNTc1oojS

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

Going from a 30% close rate to 24% would require four times the ad spend to get the same number of students. More salespeople. More teachers. CRM upgrades. Twice the content effort. A video producer.

A 6-point drop in close rate does not feel like much until you run the math on everything downstream.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

When you get the right families, teachers like working with them more. They stay longer. They refer people without being asked. They speak well about the school. We have families at the Socratic Experience who are on Twitter at all times highlighting how much they love us because the fit was right from the beginning and the experience matched.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

There is no education side and business side. EVERYTHING IS THE BUSINESS SIDE. If you do not provide value, it does not matter how much you believe you are changing lives. If people leave and you say they did not understand the value you were providing, the end result is the same. The school cannot fund itself and eventually it closes.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

Something that works: every month, close to the time of charging, each teacher sends a short note to each family. A note highlighting something that was happening at the beginning of the month and a change they noticed. A before and after. Most schools only email families with bad news. This one email gives families language for the value they are getting.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

When I was about 11, I said to a friend that it smelled like rain. A teacher walked over and said something like: it does not smell like rain, it smells like wet ground. I would think you would know that, given how smart you are. THAT was the level of investment some teachers had in their students. Their own beef came first. Learning came second.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

Business is a game of doing business at all times. That is what is stressful about it. If every single day I send LinkedIn DMs, or cold emails, or produce daily content, or put out YouTube videos twice per week, I am gonna be likely to get clients this week, this month, and over the next six months. If I market for two months and then go dormant for two, the pipeline dies. There is no way to skip that.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

There was a period where I worked 14 hours a day, every day. I neglected friendships. I had a very lonely experience in college. I messed up my hands from overtyping. It got to a point where it hurt to wash dishes. I do not think I would love to repeat those periods. But I also have immense gratitude for having tasted freedom. Once you taste it, you cannot go back.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

8,000 people landing on a page. 300 filled out the form. 80 booked a call. The school was losing three-quarters of interested families between the form and the phone.

I changed two things. Simplified the form from eight questions to four. Embedded Calendly inside the form so families did not have to re-enter information on a second page. Bookings went from 80 to 147.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

I keep a spreadsheet of every message I send and every response I get. Acceptance rates, reply rates, dates, what changed between versions. Most school directors I talk to cannot tell me their open rate, their close rate, or how many families dropped off between the form and the call.

You cannot fix what you have not measured.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

Mexico dissolved its two national education evaluation bodies, launched a new curriculum with no pilot and no training, and is spending $19.7 billion on school buildings with no way to measure whether the kids inside them are learning to read.

Conviction without evidence is not education. It is an ideology that cannot self-correct.

Full breakdown in the article below.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

https://t.co/kCNTc1oojS

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

A school spending five figures a month on ads was closing 4 to 7% of families who spoke to them. We changed the words used to describe the school. Close rate went to 23%. Ad spend dropped from five figures to about $4,000 to $6,000 a month.

Less spending. More of the right families. Tuition stayed the exact same.

https://t.co/KbTUne9f0F

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

When I was in high school and wanted to study graphic design, everyone told me that was a bad idea because every graphic designer was broke. When I said I wanted to study software engineering at 15, a teacher who was an engineer and was broke convinced me not to. Because if he was broke, I would be broke too. That is a completely dysfunctional way to think about a career. And it is the default advice kids get.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

I have been working since I was 19. I save 80 to 90 percent of my income. I have been cheap for years. It was not until I met the person I am going to marry that I started wanting to experience things. We leave the city once a month. We go to dinners. We play board games at places where you pay for access. I read Die With Zero and it reframed everything. I am 27 and I have never splurged on something I wanted. Going to Japan in September and MIGHT get a Grand Seiko.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

Your competition is not the school down the road.

Your competition is a parent with a living room, a teaching cert, $10,474 in state funding, and five families who trust her.

Full breakdown in the article.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

https://t.co/fzCnRDiG7i

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

The play:

Mexico has 30+ Waldorf schools, most started by parents, zero government funding

Homeschooling is legal in practice, no compulsory attendance law blocks it

Expat hubs like Merida and San Miguel de Allende have co-ops, drop-in academies, and Montessori programs multiplying

The government pledged $19.7B on infrastructure and eliminated every evaluation body

Families who care about outcomes are building their own schools because the system stopped measuring outcomes

The country spending the most on buildings is creating the biggest opening for living rooms.

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

https://t.co/kCNTc1oojS

[Nicolás Forero @MrNicolasForero]

A tweet will not change your life. But a tweet might incline you to look at something longer form. That might be a blog post. From there, you might look at an interview. That might lead to binge watching a YouTube channel. It is the accumulation of material that creates conviction. Not any single piece of content. That is how people actually make decisions.