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5 Surprising Lessons from Launching the Daily Writer Community · The Daily Writer

0:06
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Writer.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: Each weekday, we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer: creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with writers and teaching that helps us apply what we're learning.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, it has been quite an eventful week here at the Daily Writer.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: This past week, I did an official public launch of the Daily Writer community.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: And I know that I've mentioned it several times already here on the podcast.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: And I even did a full episode a couple weeks ago sharing all about the Daily Writer community.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: But this past week was the first time that I really put it out there on social media, and I shared it more widely than I ever have.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: So on this episode, I want to share some behind the scenes lessons of creating this group and what I have learned from it.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: And this really goes to the whole point of what this podcast is all about, which is continual learning.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Of course, I share content, I share, you know, teaching material, I share lots of stuff on this podcast because, well, essentially, there's eight episodes coming in every single week, which is which is a lot of content, I realize.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who are sticking around to listen to all those, I really, really appreciate it.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: I know it's a lot of content.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: But I also want to share the things that I'm learning as I go through this process.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: So I don't, I don't just want to be like forward-facing on this podcast and always kind of sharing things that you should be doing in your life or sharing, you know, lessons and uh content.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: I also want to share what's going on behind the scenes as I try to build this as a business and as I am creating content, as I'm learning lessons and so forth.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: So that's really what this episode is all about.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: I want to share with you some things that I have learned as I have launched this community and built it over the last few months.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you have not yet heard of the Daily Writer community, this is a membership program for writers.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: The purpose of this community is to help writers develop the habits and mindset to be more successful in their writing.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: This is for writers of every kind, whether you do blogging, books, client work, screenwriting, sermons, copywriting, or whatever else.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: This is a generous, positive group of writers who inspire and encourage each other and take action toward their goals.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: And this group is intentionally small.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: It is capped at 100 people total ever.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: And the idea is not that we're necessarily growing huge in numbers, but we're growing deeper in our skills and in our community, and we're growing higher as we reach bigger goals.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: So growth doesn't necessarily just happen in numbers.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's one thing that I've really tried to address with this community is that I think that's a false metric in many ways.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes you'll get involved in a group that has like 2,000 members, and only, you know, about 5% of those people are actually engaged, and everybody else pretty much feels left out.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to do the exact opposite with Daily Rider.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Instead of growing large, I want us to be small, but yet grow very, very deep and develop our skills and develop our relationships and really become a truly high functioning community.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the basic gist of what the Daily Writer community is all about.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And if you're interested in joining us or finding out more about it, you can go to daily riderlife.com slash community.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, before I share some lessons that I have learned from this community launch this past week and over the last few months, I want to introduce a new segment that I'm going to be doing each Sunday, which is our weekly wins segment.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: Every Friday in our Daily Writer community, we do wins, goals, and challenges.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Essentially, I put up a post in our group and I ask people to share what's one win that they've had this past week, what's a major goal they have for the coming week, and what is the challenge they're facing right now.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: And we do this so we can help each other, so we can be accountable and so we can put our goals out there and say, this is what I want to accomplish.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, a big problem in the the writing world is simply that people are isolated.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: People are working by themselves, they're trying to figure things out by themselves.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And if you're only ever relying on your own skills, on your own ability to figure things out, you're not going to really get very far.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Even if you're a highly motivated and intelligent person, there's only so far you can get on your own power.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: So a big part of this group is helping each other to pursue bigger goals that we can never achieve on our own.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: So, with that said, each Sunday here on the podcast, I want to highlight a few of those wins that people have shared in the group so we can showcase the awesome work that some of our members are doing.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: First up is Ken Hanneman.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And Ken shared that he reached the halfway point in his first draft of his book, and he finished chapter six.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: He also said that he got two blog posts up on his new blog.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: So, Ken, way to go.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: That is awesome news.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Ken has been working on his first draft the last few weeks, and he is speeding along at a phenomenal pace.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: He's put in the consistent effort to keep things moving, and I have been amazed at how much he's gotten done simply because he's taken action.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Jared Odell said, I wrote most of my lead magnet and got awesome input from you all for my book on the group call.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, with the call, Jared is talking about one of our weekly calls that we do.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Every month we do a guest expert call with the group.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: And our friend Jennifer Harshman, who's an editor, she taught this past week on how to mind map your book.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: And we use Jared's book as sort of a guinea pig, and Jennifer did a great job helping us see some possibilities for Jared's book.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: And now that I'm mentioning Jared's book here on the show, of course, now he's got to be committed to doing it because I'm sort of publicly putting it out there.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: Jared also mentioned his lead magnet, and a lead magnet is a resource that you give away on your website in exchange for people's email address.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: So great job, Jared, in making some progress on both of those fronts.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Ashley Rescott said, I introduced my Enneagram series about my book characters.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: So Ashley's working on a book that involves characters that are based on the Enneagram, which is a popular personality type assessment.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's a super creative way to approach characters in a novel because, by definition, the Enneagram focuses on different types of personalities.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: So as she's going through this sort of wheel of the Enneagram and picking characters that relate to these different personality traits, that is a fantastic way to create some interesting characters and also to bring some diversity of personality styles and all kinds of different things into her novel.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: I am super excited to see where she goes with this because that is an innovative and super creative way to build your story and to inject some personality into these characters.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Now, Ashley is also doing videos to introduce these characters, and she released the first one this past week.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So way to go.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: I know that video is very time-consuming to create, and she is putting in the work to build her audience and create some excitement about the book.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: So that is really, really good marketing.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: Ashley, well done.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Awesome job.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Then finally, I want to share a win from Ruth Heinzman, who is also in the Daily Writer community.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Ruth said, I finally finished the blog post I was writing to reflect on my favorite treasures from 2020.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: So a little side note here, Ruth does a weekly email called Treasure Hunt Tuesdays.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: She also said, I include a few books and podcasts, as well as other little things that stand out as blessings from what was a challenging year in a lot of ways.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: I think it is helpful, especially as the new year is starting out with more chaos, to remember some of the unique and unexpected ways God has provided to help spur on our faith moving forward as well.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: Also, last week I submitted a guest post for someone else's blog for the first time.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Ruth, congrats on submitting a guest post.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: That is absolutely fantastic.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad to see that you're branching out.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: One major thing to notice about the way that Ruth approaches what she does is that it's very centered on readers.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: She really puts a lot of time and effort into thinking about what would be helpful and meaningful to her audience, which is awesome.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: And there's an important lesson there for all of us.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: We write not just for ourselves, but for other people.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, those are just a few wins from our daily writer community from this past week.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: And I would say if I had to sum up all of those, it is simply the power of taking consistent action.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: It's just showing up and doing the work day by day and week by week.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: That's how you get the results.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly what the Daily Writer community is designed to do.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: I am so proud of these friends and the amazing work that they're doing.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's only going to keep getting better and better and better.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Again, if you'd like to check out how to be a part of the Daily Writer community and to join with this amazing group and start making better progress on your own writing projects, you can go to dailywriterlife.com slash community.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get on to the main thing that we want to talk about in today's episode, which is five surprising lessons from launching the Daily Writer community.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Now that you've heard some wins from a few of the members, let's go behind the scenes and and uh peel back the curtain, if you will.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna share some things that I have learned from launching this group.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Now, I do want to say this.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: I I want to mention that these lessons are surprising because they're things we don't often think about as writers.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to put your head down and just focus on getting the work done as a writer and and not really look at the larger picture of what you're doing.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely guilty of that myself.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's easy to do when you have a podcast and client work and you're writing your own books and you're uh you have a community and you have these various plates that are always kind of spinning.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: So these are lessons that I seem to be learning over and over and over again.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And I often feel like this journey of creating a business around writing is sometimes like three steps forward and a step or two back many times, just because of the natural mistakes and the speed bumps that you're hitting along the way.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: But I think that's kind of like the learning process with anything.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Five surprising lessons from launching the Daily Writer community.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Number one is do your market research before you launch something.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: This is a surprise because when you do your market research, you will learn things that are unexpected.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: And just to give you some context for how I started creating this community a few months ago, basically I had an idea of what I wanted this group to be and the type of features that I wanted to include.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: However, I also felt it was important to ask some other people what they thought and to get some input on it.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: So I had probably 25 or 30 conversations with people just asking what they would include in a community like this.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: And I learned a lot of valuable things.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Then when I went to do a private beta launch in early December, I went back to many of those people and offered an invitation to join the group because I had used many of those ideas.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, this applies to books or anything else that you're launching.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: It's important to make sure there's some kind of market for the product that you're creating.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: And this is a step that many of us creative types like to skip because it's time consuming and it doesn't feel very creative.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: But I really encourage you to dig into this and put your business owner hat on when you're thinking about offering something for sale.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: So make sure to do your market research before you launch something.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Lesson number two when you launch, you will be surprised by the people who will ignore you and also surprised by the people who will support you.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And this has really been a surprise on both fronts the last couple of months.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: I have honestly been a little surprised at the people who have quote unquote come out of the woodwork and either been interested in the daily writer community or they have shared posts about it or somehow expressed interest.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Many times these were people who I either didn't know or I had not talked to or connected with in a very long time.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: And I guess that was just a little surprising just to think, oh, I had no idea I was even on their radar screen or that they were even sort of aware of anything that I was doing related to writing.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: So that's been very, very cool and very encouraging.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Now, on the flip side, here's what I think is just as interesting.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: There have been some people who I assumed would want to join the community based on what they said they wanted.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: A number of people who have talked to me about writing over the years, uh, people who I assumed would be a natural shoe, and they didn't respond to messages or emails.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: They just kind of like ignored me or put me off.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: And I don't take any of this personally.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh by the way, I'll talk more about that in just a minute, the idea of not taking stuff personally.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: But I understand a lot of this has to do with money.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, whenever you charge money for something, even if it's just a little bit like what I'm doing with the founding members of this group, I mean, this is not that expensive.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you involve money in something, it creates a clear dividing line.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: So if you have built something worthwhile and you're charging a fair price for it and you've done your marketing the right way, over time people will sign up for it.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: And it will oftentimes surprise you who is interested and maybe even more so who is not interested.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: I find this all very fascinating because I love learning about marketing.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: I love the learning process of doing anything new and of launching something.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: But I do have to admit that I've really been sometimes surprised by the people who I feel like I keep going back to this point, but I've been really surprised by people who say they want to learn and they want to grow, they want to write a book, they want to do this or that with their writing.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And then I build this really cool community and I offer it for this extremely low price.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, considering all the value that I'm giving.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: And here I'm just being totally honest with you.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: It really kind of never ceases to surprise me sometimes the people who say, Yes, I'm so interested in this.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: I want to grow, I want to do this book or whatever.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: And then I say, Okay, well, here I've created this thing that's gonna help you do that, and I'm I'm giving you an amazing deal on it.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: But then they're like, Oh no, I'm not really interested.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: And I guess I maybe not I'm naive a little bit.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, people sometimes think I'm kind of a happy-go-lucky sort of a guy.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, I just kind of assume the best about people generally.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: So it always surprises me when people say they want to grow.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Then when you have an opportunity to do it, then they don't actually want to pull the trigger.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to kind of be aware of that as you launch your stuff, whatever you're gonna be launching, whether it's a book, whether it's uh maybe you're gonna launch your own community at some point.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'll launch a membership of some kind, maybe you will build a product or create a course or launch a podcast.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: So just be aware that sometimes people say they will support you, they will act like they want to grow and do do different things, but sometimes they don't actually want to pull the trigger.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: I'll talk more about that in a minute, but uh I feel like I'm going on and on about this point, but it's something that that really does surprise me.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Um I guess I sort of take people at pa at face value sometimes, and maybe I shouldn't.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I'm kind of getting off track, but um let's go on to point number three.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: I could belabor this point all day, but I won't.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Let's go on to point number three, which is you must put in the work to build something meaningful.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: Now, I offered this lesson here as a surprising one because the amount of work it takes to create something worthwhile is it's always surprising, probably.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: I was telling somebody today that I think success is basically 10% talent and 90% pure effort and stubbornness.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's really all about persisting until you have finished something.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: And I really believe that.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: I really believe that's basically what success is.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's take this exact moment as I'm recording this podcast.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh, right now it is 12.40 p.m.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: on Sunday afternoon.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: And uh I should have had this podcast out this morning, but I just wasn't able to get to it with the launch this week and with client, a lot of client work this past week.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, I try to release these episodes.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I actually released them at 1 a.m.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Central Time, just so they're they're no matter what time you get up, they're going to be out there on the day that they're supposed to release.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: And I just didn't get it done uh today, to be honest with you.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: So here I am recording this, and this is not happening because I'm so talented.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: This is not happening because I'm really anybody special.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: It's just happening because I'm sitting down and I'm actually recording.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: I've written out my script and I'm going, I'm not reading off a script at this moment.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: But this is just happening because I'm persistent and I'm stubborn and I've decided I'm gonna put this stink at work and to do a podcast.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: That's the only reason this is happening.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: So let that be a comfort to you.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: It's not about talent.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: It's just really about did you sit your behind in the chair and did you get it done?
16:59
SPEAKER_00: That's how stuff gets built.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: That's how books get written and edited, that's how books get launched, this is how online courses get built, this is how podcasts get produced, this is how anything worthwhile gets done.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Is you're connecting with people on a regular basis and you're sitting down, you're making a plan, and you're just doing the work.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: That's really all that it comes down to.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: So if you have doubted that you're talented or you feel like you're not talented enough to build something worthwhile and to build something amazing, um, you need to stop doubting yourself because you can do it.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: It's just a matter of doing the work and putting in the reps, so to speak, and your 10,000 hours, whatever that might look like, for the thing that you want to build.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's go back to this particular point is of you must put in the work to build something meaningful.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: In order to put this community together and launch it, here's some things that I needed to do.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I needed to get clarity on who it's for and even more important, who it's not for.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: I had to talk to 25 or 30 people and have sometimes extensive hour-long conversations about what they would be looking for in the community.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: What would they include?
18:09
SPEAKER_00: What would they not include?
18:10
SPEAKER_00: What features would they be looking for?
18:11
SPEAKER_00: How much do they think it would be worth, and so forth.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: And these were not just five-minute quick conversations, these were longer, in-depth conversations.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: And I had at least a couple dozen of those uh over probably a six-week period.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: I had to decide on the features I was gonna offer and what each of those would look like in detail.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, I had to sit down and go, okay, if we're gonna have uh expert calls in the group, who would be doing those calls and on what would the topics be and how's all this stuff gonna work?
18:40
SPEAKER_00: And I had to do that with each feature that I wanted to include in the group.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: I had to have graphics designed.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: So this was actually the motivation for getting a new logo for my website, for my podcast, and all this stuff.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I had to work with the graphic designer and invest in that.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: And she was awesome, by the way.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Her name is Christy Griffith, and she's actually a part of our community.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: You can um actually get in touch with her by going to the website go thumbprint.com.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: She's an amazing graphic designer and I highly recommend her.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: So, Christy, if you're listening to this, great job on the graphics.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: I had to decide on price points, which was very tricky.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, pricing is a tricky deal because you don't want to make it too low, you don't want to make it too high, etc.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: And uh that was something I really had to think through.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: Once I got all that stuff done, I had to set the set up the Facebook group, which it doesn't take very long, but I also had to set up um set up the community on Member Vault, which is a membership site, and I had to figure out how to organize that, how to set up my account, and how to figure out how the resources and the courses are stored there, how to integrate that into Convert Kit, which is my email marketing platform, and also had to integrate that into Stripe, which is my payment processor.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: I had never done that before.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: I'd never never used Stripe.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: So this was kind of a new deal to me.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: It was actually quite complicated, surprisingly.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so all that stuff took a couple of days to figure out because I had not done those things before.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is just a this is a process of just being stubborn, and you're like, I'm gonna figure this out if it kills me, because this is what I want to do, and nobody's gonna stop me.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: I think you have to kind of have that attitude.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: I had to build a sales page and create a video for the sales page.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, a good sales page is deceptively simple.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: A good sales page should invite you in and take you on a journey, really, through through the person being curious what you're offering, then to hopefully being committed to taking the next step, whether that's buying whatever it is that you're selling, or whether it's apply in this case, filling out an application to then talk to me about being a part of the community.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: So you can't just buy your way into the community, you have to apply.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: And then after I talk to you and you're approved, then I send you the link to actually purchase it.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: That's how this works.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: So the sales page actually took I'd say a good several hours to write and to really edit and to refine.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Then I had to make a video, and uh, I don't think the video on my sales page is particularly good.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm just kind of an average looking guy.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: My lighting is not that great, but I just did my best and I decided to put it up there.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, nobody's buying into the Daily Writer community because uh because I look like a model.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: They're buying into it because of the community and for all the other features.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: So um my video skills are not that great, uh, but I was like, hey, I just got to create the video and put it up there.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Nobody really cares what it looks like.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: So um, so I had to do that.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: I had to send out personal emails to a couple dozen people with an invitation to join the private beta launch group.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: And also uh I answered a lot of questions based on that.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: I have to craft, I had to craft an email to my email list about the launch.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: I had to engage with the group for several weeks before the launch, before the public launch.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: So we had a private beta group going for about six weeks before we launched, and this included a lot of community calls.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Writing sprints and other stuff.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, I had to figure out my marketing copy and my launch strategy for the podcast and for social media.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: It took a while to write the Facebook post that I ended up using this past week.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: And if you're friends with me on Facebook, you can just get on there.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: I think it was on Tuesday, whatever date Tuesday was.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: That would have been, let's see, 17, 19.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: It would have been uh January the 12th.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: You can find the Facebook post that I uh that I put out there kind of announcing to the world via Facebook that, hey, the Daily Writer community is open.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: You can apply for it.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it's about, and so forth.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: But the thing with a Facebook post is that it needed to be succinct.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: I did not want it to be like a huge sales page because that's a massive turnoff, especially on social media, which is very relational driven.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: So I had to really condense down what I wanted to say in that Facebook post, and I had to write it in such a way so that it was breezy.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: It was very it was kind of fun and relational.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: And um, that was a challenge.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't know that I did that amazing of a job with it, but I had probably 10 or 15 people share it, which was super encouraging.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: So my approach to marketing and sales is that I despise hard selling.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: I really, really hate hard selling.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is people just basically kind of getting in your face and saying, buy this, buy this, buy this.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: I just absolutely, there's there's nothing else I hate more, I think, than people who get in your face with sales.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: I just find it obnoxious.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: It's anti-relational.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: It's basically everything that I stand, it's against everything that I stand for in the way that I like to conduct my business and conduct my life, to be honest with you.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted that post to be very fun and relational and to just kind of say, hey guys, I'm putting this out there.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: I've been working on this, I've tried to build something cool for you.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: If you're interested, you can check it out.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: So those are some of the things that were involved in building this community.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Um and this is a small community.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: This is not like some ginormous, big, massive thing.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: This is really relatively a small deal.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: So I list all that just so you can have kind of some context about here's what's involved in actually launching a membership thing.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: So just know that if you put in the work, it will be worth it.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I want to emphasize the thing of committing, committing to doing the work for the long haul and just again, sitting your behind down in the chair and just doing the work.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: That's really what it comes down to.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's go on to lesson number four, which is you will never feel ready to launch, but do it anyway.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna be flat out honest with you.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: I was supposed to do a public launch the week that I released the podcast episode about the Daily Writer community, which was two weeks ago from today.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: The podcast episode came out um on a Sunday, two weeks ago.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: And then on Tuesday and Thursday of that same week, I was going to do social media posts and also send an email to my list about it.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: However, I didn't pull the trigger on putting it out there on social media that week.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: I delayed it by a week, really for no good reason other than my graphics weren't quite ready.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: I really wanted to have my new logo and stuff ready to use for the launch.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: That was important to me because branding is kind of an important deal and the visuals and the logos and all that stuff.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to over-emphasize it, but but it does give it a visual branding and it helps people to immediately kind of relate it to the other stuff that you're working on.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: But to be totally gut honest with you, I was a little afraid that people would reject it and that that they wouldn't embrace it.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Even though I knew the people in the private beta group were having a great time, I really believe in this community.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: I worked really hard on it.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: But there was something about me that was just a little bit afraid to pull the trigger.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: And in some sense, I know this is gonna sound kind of stupid and it's gonna sound a little juvenile, but again, I'm always gonna be honest with you on this podcast about my failures and successes.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh seems like there's a lot more failures than successes, but that's anything.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: There's one particular person who I'm not gonna name here.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: This is a person who does a lot of stuff in kind of the writing space and training writer space.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're very, very successful, very financially successful, to be honest with you.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: This is a person who I really, really respect.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: And there was a part of me that was a little bit worried about what they would think when I put that post up.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: I was a little worried that they would think, oh, this is what he's put together.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: This this isn't really that significant.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Because compared to everything that this person has accomplished, you know, this the small daily writer group is very tiny compared to all the amazing things that they have done over the last, you know, 10 or 15 years.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds stupid, and I I understand the dynamics of I'm just launching this, you know, I'm I haven't been doing this nearly as long as they have.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: And I get all the comparison things, and and you can talk logic all day to me that you want, but there was something inside of me that just didn't want to pull the trigger for that reason.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: And it was totally illogical, and I knew it was illogical, but I was letting fear get the best of me because I just wondered, I wonder what they're gonna think about this.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't a competitive thing at all.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: We are actually in totally different markets for the people that were helping, but for some reason, I just kind of hesitated a little bit.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, finally, I got my ducks in a row and I got a little bit more organized.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: I kind of put on my big boy pants, I got my graphics lined out, um, and I launched it this past week, and it all turned out totally fine.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: But but man, I still had that moment of hesitation where I just kind of was worried about what would people think about this?
27:40
SPEAKER_00: So here's the lesson I took away from this whole experience.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: You're never really ready for the bigger challenges, and you're always going to face a little bit of fear.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: You're always going to wonder what people think.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you always feel totally ready and you always feel totally confident, that means the challenge that you're taking on is not big enough.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: So instead of being ready for the challenge and then going through with the challenge, we have to do the challenge anyway.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: We have to go through with it, we have to launch, we have to step up to the plate.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: Whether or not we feel ready.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think we have to prepare, we have to get our ducks in a row, we have to, you know, get our systems in alignment and do the best we can to launch.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: But the reality of it is that when we do that and we step up to the plate and we embrace those challenges, we're going to grow into those challenges after we do them.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: We don't grow into the challenges, then we do the challenge.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have to go through the challenge.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: We have to do the launch, and then we feel comfortable.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: Then we have grown into it, but we only get to grow after we actually go through with it.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Now that I'm on the other side of this launch, I know that I have grown in my courage and I have learned a lot from this experience.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's the way it goes for anybody who attempts anything that they're not ready for.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: So whatever it is that you're facing down, whatever giant you're looking at, it might be a book thing, maybe you're launching a course, maybe you're setting up a blog or a podcast or whatever it is.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: If you feel intimidated by that, just do it.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, prepare the best you can, then do it, and you will grow into that challenge as you're doing it.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's go on to number five, and this might be the most important lesson of all that I have learned and am still learning, which is don't take anything personally.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Let me grab a drink real quick.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: I could have hit pause on the recording while I got a drink, but eh, we're just gonna go with it.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: So number five is don't take anything personally.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: This is a surprising lesson because it feels like one that I'm constantly learning.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: When you put your heart and your soul into something like launching a membership community or writing a book or anything else, it feels very personal to you.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: But it's also important to step back and remember that this is also a business.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: When somebody is not interested in what you're offering, or when they join and then they decide to cancel, or when they don't have the response that you think they might have had, none of that is ever personal.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: One thing that I have to keep reminding myself of is that people do things for their own reasons.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: We have reasons that we present to the world for why we do what we do, and then we have our own internal reasons for doing those things.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: I remember reading something in a Robert Green book a while back.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Robert Green wrote uh one of the best books I've ever read, which is called The 48 Laws of Power.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: It's so insightful into human nature.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: I just love that book.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was either in one of his books or I heard it in an interview he was doing.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember, I don't remember which one.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: But he said that our actions are often designed to conceal our true thoughts or intentions.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we sometimes don't want people to know what we're thinking about something.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: So in order to avoid confrontation or avoid hurting their feelings, we pretend to be excited about it.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes we do the opposite, where we're act we're actually excited about something or we we want to do something, but we don't want people to know that, so we pretend that we're not excited about it, or we just ignore it.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Now you can easily say this is kind of a cynical or a pessimistic view of human nature, but I think that that view is pretty much accurate.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: I think it's pretty on the mark.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that everybody hates you if they ignore you or they don't get excited about the thing that you're doing.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: It just means that people are complicated, including me and including you as well.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: We all have our own reasons for doing things.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: And despite what we say or despite what we project to the world, the real proof of the real proof of the pudding, the real poof, the real proof of the pudding lies in our actions.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: Some people who pretend to support you won't actually do it when the time comes to put it into action.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Other people who are completely silent will step up to the plate and surprise you, and they will greatly support you.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Remember, none of this is personal.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: It's like what they say in The Godfather.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: It's business, not personal.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a good philosophy of life just to let people be and to let people support what they want what they want to support.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: My job and your job is to create the very best community or the best book or the best product that we possibly can, and then add so much value to people that the right ones will want to support us.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it it turns out that people who initially support us need to withdraw their support.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: So I've had a couple people actually join the Daily Writer community, uh, and they paid and everything was great.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: And then they said, you know, I really don't have time for this, or I need to uh I need to request a refund and exit the group for, you know, some different reasons.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: And I was totally cool with that, and I and I didn't take it personally because it's not personal.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, but sometimes people just need to come and go for their own reasons, and sometimes we're not going to know what those are.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: But I so I want to encourage you if you're in the middle of that kind of a thing where some somebody is their behavior or their attitude is kind of baffling to you and you don't understand it, just take comfort in the fact that you're probably not ever going to totally understand it.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you and I do baffling things as well.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: We are complex creatures, we humans, we truly are.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: So I hope that these lessons, uh, even though they've delved into a lot of different things, I hope that these five lessons have given you some insight into the behind the scenes of the Daily Writer Community Launch.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: But more so than that, I hope that they help you as you are working on your book and your projects and so forth.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you can take a few things away from this.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Probably the most important thing being this final lesson, which is don't take anything personally.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because at the end of the day, we all have our lives to live and we all do things for our own reasons.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: So do the best you can, and I'm gonna do the best I can.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: And as we do that over the years, people are going to uh to support us.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: The people who should be supporting us, and the people who were really helping, they will show up and they will support us sometimes in really amazing ways.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: All right, my friends.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, thank you so much for listening to this episode.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: I've gone on probably a little bit too long, but that's okay.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: Hope that you have gained some knowledge and wisdom and insight from this.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: For more info, you can always visit dailyriderlife.com.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: And if you're interested in the community, you can go to dailywriterlife.comslash community.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, and I'll see you tomorrow.