Latest / The Daily Writer / Only 7 People Showed Up

Transcript

Only 7 People Showed Up · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, good to see you today.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me for this episode.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just like me, you're probably really busy.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've got family responsibilities, social obligations, you've got TV shows and movies you want to catch up on, and probably you have some random home projects that you still have to complete.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: But in the midst of all that, you have writing that you also want to get done.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, conventional wisdom says something like this: be more productive by saying no to as much as you can so you can make more time for writing.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand the wisdom and the logic of that, but today I actually want to suggest that you consider doing the exact opposite.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I challenge you to say yes to the next interesting invitation that somebody offers you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let me share a quick story.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: From 1996 to 2004, I was the worship pastor at a mid-sized church in northern Illinois, and one of our worship team members was a talented young woman who played guitar.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I left that church in 2004 to teach at a college in North St.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Louis, but we kept in touch occasionally, and by 2018, she and her husband had moved to a different city, and she was working at a local library, and she asked me to come and speak at a small writing workshop that she was putting together.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I drove about three hours to do the workshop, and we only had seven people show up.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now I had fun doing it, and I always loved teaching and doing workshops, no matter how many people show up, but in my heart, because I had driven such a long way to do the workshop, I thought it was kind of a bust because so few people were there.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: However, I could not have been more wrong because one of the attendees was a junior high math teacher who also did writing on the side, and we had a great conversation after the workshop.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: When she heard I was building a ghostwriting business the next year, she actually was the one who introduced me to my very first paying ghostwriting client.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happened was that that single conversation changed the entire trajectory of my business.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And getting that first client gave me the confidence to keep going and to keep building and to keep growing.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, life has a way of putting really interesting people and opportunities in our pathway if we lean into the curiosity and just say yes.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I would love to hear from you about what interesting opportunities or people you have said yes to and how that has changed your writing or your life.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can shoot me an email at Kent at KentSanders.net.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I reply to every message, and I would genuinely love to hear from you.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, my friend, that's it for today, and I'll see you next time.