Jeff Goins's Blog, page 31

Join Me for a Live Workshop in Nashville

Are you looking for a way to build a loyal tribe of readers? People who will follow your blog, read your book, pay you to speak, and buy your products? But you want more than just another online course or seminar? I’ve got something cooking just for you.

In February 2017, I’m going to get in a room with thirty people and teach my entire Tribe Writers course in-person. For two days, I will take you step by step through my process of building an online audience through your writing and how to make money off your tribe.

You’ll learn the eight weeks of material in two days and have the chance to implement what you learn with real-time feedback from me and my time. This is also get a chance to work alongside 29 other peers who will be applying this method themselves.

We will help you develop your voice, get your message heard, and start making a living writing. Every person’s path is different, which is why the goal of this event is to help you craft a personal plan you can take with you and implement.

The goal is for you to walk away with exactly what you need to do to accomplish your writing goals. And here’s the best part: you get six months of support from my team and me to implement that plan, along with some other surprise bonuses.

With this workshop, I want to give my audience the two things people ask for the most from me: one-on-one help and a fast track to see results sooner.

Details

Here are all the details of the workshop:

Location: Tribe Writers Live is a two-day intensive workshop in Franklin, just outside of Nashville, TN. We’ve rented out the upstairs of my favorite coffee shop Frothy Monkey. Lunch, coffee, and light snacks are complimentary both days. Free shuttle rides from Aloft Hotel in Franklin are available to and from the venue.
Date: It’s happening February 4-5 from 8:30am–4:30pm each day and will be led by me (Jeff Goins).
Price: Given the limited seating and personal access you get to me, along with ongoing support, this is a premium priced event. Tickets are $1997. Travel and lodging are not included, but we do have a payment plan that allows you to split the cost over six months.
Availability: There are only 30 seats total. As of now, 13 spots are already gone, and only 17 seats are left. We expect to sell out soon, so grab your ticket while it’s available. There’s limited seating in the venue, so once the space is gone, it’s gone.
Content: I will walk you through a guided process on identifying your core message, how to communicate, what tools you’ll need to grow your audience, and what your first product should be. You will leave with the plan you need along with the support systems in place to ensure your success.

To set you up for success, everyone who comes will get the following resources and bonuses:

Six months of unlimited Q&A with my team and me, starting immediately after the event. You’ll leave the event with a personal plan to find your tribe and we will make sure you get the help you need to implement it ($600 value).
Online access to Tribe Writers premium edition, which includes over 30 video lessons ($1000 value).
Tribe Theme — the shortcut that allows writers to create a professional website faster ($200 value).

That’s $1800 in free bonuses included with the cost of the live event ticket.

Sign up now (seats are limited!)

This is an exclusive training with one-on-one help from me for people who want the best I have to offer. I do one of these about every two years, so don’t miss it.

If you’re ready to get the help you need to clarify your message and build the audience your message deserves so you can make a living writing, then Tribe Writers Live is for you.

Click the link below, pay with whatever means is best for you, and then my team will send you more information on this live, in-person event.

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I know this isn’t for everyone. It’s not supposed to be. But if you’re one of the people looking for a fast track and more one-on-one help, we’ve created this workshop just for you.

Need more information?

Email jeff@goinswriter.com.

This is an investment, and I want you to be sure you’re making the right choice. So if I can help you make the right decision, let me know.

We really will cap this once it sells out and not sell one more ticket. I can’t deliver the kind of help and service I want to bring with this event to a large crowd, so we’re keeping it small on purpose.

If you want in, claim a spot before they fill up.

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134: The Role of Writers as Torchbearers for Their Readers: Interview with Nancy Duarte

Whenever we tell a story, anytime we write a book, or publish a blog post, we’re trying to effect some kind of change. But the future is scary for your readers. They need you to light the way.

Torchbearers communicate in a way that conquers fear and inspires hope.

So begins the first chapter of Illuminate by Nancy Duarte.

Nancy has helped leaders from the White House to Apple create compelling presentations through her creative agency, Duarte, for decades. In that time, she has learned to lead creatively, and how to train creatives to lead.

This week on The Portfolio Life, Nancy and I talk about the role of the writer as a torchbearer, five key moments along the journey, and how stories of failure can move people out of complacency.

Listen in as we discuss why it’s almost impossible to be a storytelling leader without authenticity, and how “arriving” doesn’t mean you are victorious.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you’re reading this via email, please click here).

Show highlights

In this episode, Nancy and I discuss:

Counting the cost of declaring a new future
Leading readers through transformative change
The benefits and challenges of writing with a coauthor
Why some leaders aren’t naturally empathetic (and how they can cope)
Reinvention as a necessary strategy for enduring organizations

Quotes and takeaways

“Those who light the path are the ones who change the world.” —Nancy Duarte
“Chose what it is you are called to do and see it through to completion.” —Nancy Duarte
“Everyone can lead something to leave the world a better place.” —Nancy Duarte
You’ve written a good book if you have to reference it yourself.
A calling is bigger than you.

“When you choose to lead, your ability to see the way and illuminate it for others sets you apart.Nancy DuarteTweet thisTweet
Resources

Illuminate by Nancy Duarte & Patti Sanchez
Supplemental resources for Illuminate
Resonate by Nancy Duarte
Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte

What change are you trying to affect in the world? How are you illuminating the path for your readers? Share in the comments

Click here to download a PDF of the full transcript or scroll down to read it below.

EPISODE 134

“ND: So, there is something to be said for it’s really almost impossible to be a great storytelling leader and not be authentic because it is a lot about exposing your own challenges to others and what you did to cope with them.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:26.2] AT: Welcome to the portfolio life podcast with Jeff Goins. I’m your host Andy Traub. Jeff believes that every creative should live a portfolio life. A life full of pursuing work that matters, making a difference with your art, and discovering your true voice. Jeff’s committed to helping you find, develop, and then live out your unique world view so that you too can live a portfolio life.

Nancy Duarte has been helping creatives create great presentations for many years through the work of her company. Along the way she’s learned how to lead creatively and also lead creatives. Her latest book Illuminate, it is a must read for any leader.

Here is Jeff Goins and Nancy Duarte.

[INTERIVEW]

[0:01:11.8] JG: Nancy Duarte, wow, thanks for being a part of the show. I am a big fan. What do they say? Long time listener, long time reader, first time interviewing you. I don’t know? Welcome.

[0:01:24.1] ND: Thank you. Thanks for having me, what a treat.

[0:01:26.6] JG: Well, what I love about what you’re doing right now. Usually we talk about you and stuff and you go, “Oh, by the way, you’ve got a book,” and we just have to shed the pretense and talk about this book because it’s so good.

[0:01:43.7] ND: I had a good time writing this book. I had coauthor which was so fun. I grew as a writer and I grew in a friendship with someone, it just was really fun.

[0:01:54.0] JG: The book is called Illuminate and I didn’t know what this book was about. I don’t know what you’re calling this book, but listener, you have to get this book because this is how I’m going to call it — and then Nancy you can tell me what it really is — I was reading it from my perspective of being a creative who has kind of fallen in the entrepreneurship as a lot of people have these days and there’s incredible opportunities to build amazing organizations and share your creative gifts and art with the world in a way that can make an impact and also make good living.

To me, this is a book about creative leadership, especially for people who live off of ideas like they make a living of off their ideas, which I do and I think you do as well. So I think of it as like a creative leadership book, which was really fun. What do you call it?

[0:02:47.4] ND: I’m glad you see it that way because my other books have been about how to make the individual a better presenter and this is a leadership book. So I’m so happy that you see that as self-evident because anybody who is a creator that gets called into business, you’re constantly in a state of innovations.

It’s one thing to be innovating your ideas, it’s another thing to have to be innovating an organization, which means you had to lead in mass, which is different you know? Not everyone has to do that and not everyone accepts the mantle of leadership. So, I’m glad you saw that and they can see the connection because the reason we’re communicating ever is most of the time it sparks change, you know?

You tell a story, anything you communicate is like it’s because you want to have people align with you and go to this new place in the future with you and thrive there. So yeah, I’m happy you saw that because that is the intent of the book.

[0:03:39.9] JG: You use this word “called” — I love that word — in the book, really, at the beginning, there is this mantra, I’m a big fan of that word calling. You have this little mantra, the torchbearer’s calling and I love this little thing. I’m actually just going to read it and then you tell me what is this and how does it fit in to the big idea of Illuminate. The torchbearer’s calling is this:

“The future is a formless void, a blank space waiting to be filled and then a torchbearer envisions a new possibility. That vision is your dream, your calling, and it burns like a fire in your belly. But you can’t create the future alone; you need travelers to come along. Yet the path through the unknown is dark and unclear. You have to illuminate the path for travelers. Torchbearers communicate in a way that conquers fear and inspires hope. Some say being a torchbearer is a burden, some say it’s a blessing. Either way, those who light the path are the ones who change the world.”

Where did this idea of being a torchbearer come, from? What does it mean to you?

[0:04:39.7] ND: You know it’s funny because the torchbearer, you think of the situations when you need a torch, it’s usually dark and clammy, cave dwelling kind of…

[0:04:47.4] JG: Dungeon.

[0:04:48.2] ND: Yeah.

[0:04:48.2] JG: I’m thinking dungeon.

[0:04:49.6] ND: What a torchbearer does is, the future is scary right? Even though you have hope for it, it’s really hard to unseat people from their current place and be willing to go there and a torchbearer casts just enough light in any situation to make the next few steps seem bearable and doable. One of the reasons we liked the word bearer is it is something you have to accept, it’s like Frodo right? Suddenly he was a ring bearer and he had to deal with it. It’s like, “Here’s this problem in the world, am I willing to be the one to bear that and choose it to be what I’m called to do to see through to completion?”

It’s been interesting to move from a presentation book to a leadership of how many people are like, “Oh, you wrote a leadership book? I might not be that interested.” Okay, I think everyone can lead something that can leave the world a better place and it’s just simply based on how they communicate. That’s where it came from and the torch bearer and travelers, we didn’t want to say leaders and followers, we didn’t want to say managers and teams you know? My publisher kept trying to get us to do that and I was like, “You know what? This is bigger than that.”

This is like you know, we did kind of rely a little bit on Frodo right? He’s like launched this great, epic journey and his friends came along. His travelers came with him and the big thing is that if Frodo had understood what that journey would be like through their eyes, he would have begged them to stay home. Leaders today don’t count the cost, we just make this declaration of a new future and we just expect everyone to be like, “Whoopee, let’s go,” and they’re not, they won’t because it’s a total journey, it’s a whole venture scape that you’re going to take them through with its own versions of drama and high speed chases.

[0:06:32.7] JG: Dragons.

[0:06:34.0] ND: Dragons that need to be slayed and this transformative change that you’re leading people to. It’s fun and for me, it’s my own coping mechanism. The models in the book are partly for me so I can see through the eyes of my own travelers as an empathetic tool, because there’s not that many leaders that are naturally empathetic. So this is my own coping mechanism.

[0:06:57.1] JG: Yeah, and you said something that I thought was interesting, you said you’re not a naturally empathetic leader, which surprised me and I don’t know why it did. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

[0:07:06.1] ND: You know, people challenge me on that, right? It’s like, I would say I’m a heartfelt leader. But what happens is like, you wouldn’t believe this stuff that bursts out of my mouth before I even for one second consider how the people might be on the receiving end of it. I’ve been on a little bit of a personal journey through my own gift of lacking empathy and it started in college.

A lot of people don’t know, I made a C minus in speech communication. I made an A plus in the visual aids. We didn’t have PowerPoint so it was like props and posters and stuff. I got an F in bringing content to the table that connected to the audience and through my own journey, I’ve come to figure out, there was an early problem because my mom was a narcissist and narcissists, it’s a genetic dysfunction where they’re actually missing the empathy gene where they can’t ever process anything from someone else’s eyes, it’s all through their own eyes.

So growing up, I never had empathy modeled for me and so you can see my body of work, if you’re familiar with Resonate, it also has a model of empathy, this has a model of empathy, you can kind of see me clawing away at reclaiming an ability or a wakening ability in me to have empathy. So believe it or not, this is going to sound so funny, I had to pull out my own book twice already so I could orient myself to it, communication situation where I was like, “Well, I want to say this, is it the right thing to say?” And then I whipped out my book and I was like, “Ah, maybe I could frame it this other way.” It’s funny but it’s true.

[0:08:34.0] JG: Well, it’s honest right and I think it means that you’ve probably written a good book, I don’t know how you feel about this but like, I feel like when you’re writing a book, initially it’s like you have this idea of this thing that you want to say. But as you keep sort of chipping away at the idea, you discover something and you go, “Whoa, guys, check this out. Look at this thing that I discovered, isn’t this really neat?”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was listening to some conversations, interviews and what not with you and your coauthor Patty but it sounds like you guys discovered things together by passing the baton back and forth, as it were, as you were writing this together.

[0:09:06.8] ND: Yeah. We had very different creative styles. I’m the kind of person that will be like, “Hey everyone, look at this models, they’re only partially baked and you need to look at it more like a sonogram, but react to it,” you know? Yeah. Whereas she writes by just going really deep. She could just write for hours and then she sees it. So, I’m like a humming bird, she’s like a fox right? What was interesting is to iterate because here I am, a leader, I’m a bit of a seer, I have a prophetic imagination, I can see the future.

I pretty definitively know exactly the direction I need to take my firm in the next 18 months. Pretty clear. That’s kind of rare, right? I’m very future, I live in the future, I’m focused on the future. Patty’s 100% present and she’s an end path. If you look up the definition, it’s someone with a super and natural ability to be empathetic and so she’s fully in the present and can feel everything. So there is time to write in the book, I’d come in and something would be going on at the office and I’d be like, “Oh my god, can you,” — “Let’s pause for a moment and consider things from their perspective.” It was hysterical. I think the book wouldn’t have turned out to be what it was without both of those. This keen ability to see the future and this empathetic voice in the whole thing. It’s a completely different book having work done it with her for sure.

Click here to download a PDF of the full transcript or scroll down to keep reading.

[0:10:19.4] JG: I was so excited to read this book and I love Slide:ology, I loved Resonate, I love the work that you’ve done in helping empower and encourage communicators on how to connect with audiences through visual communication, through storytelling. I love that you love the Hero’s Journey, I love that that was in this book. I just love slides of Yoda, let’s be honest.

[0:10:41.0] ND: I know. I think I’m the only person in history that actually asked permission and paid money to use that picture. They did, they gave it to me before it was still Lucas Films for reals, so that’s funny.

[0:10:56.0] JG: What I love about this Nancy is you tell your story starting Duerte, Duerte Inc. and the different evolutions and iterations of the business and I just have to be honest with you. The language that you used in here, calling, burden, maybe you choose this, maybe it chooses you. We live in this age where you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do.

You used different language, you used the language of I think leadership, “torchbearer”, this idea that I have a certain responsibility that I’ve been given this gifts and abilities and opportunities. I may have a responsibility to, you know, going back to the Frodo thing, even if I don’t want to. Again, I don’t think you need to like hate your life or anything but it might be bigger than me.

At times, the things that I’m doing feel that way and I go, “Well, why can’t I just like go you know, write all the time, why do I have to grow an organization?” And I wonder if we could maybe spend the remainder of our time kind of breaking down your journey into this three act structure and you talked about going back and having to read your own book to remember things to do and in the book, you’ve got this process that organizations need to go through and it’s this, my understanding is, this constant cycle of reinvention and I wonder if you could share a little bit about how did you get started in business? I want to call you an artist. I don’t know if you accept that moniker?

[0:12:21.2] ND: Yeah, someone keeps putting up in Wikipedia that I’m a graphic designer. I have no idea. My poor team, they have to go up there all the time. They think I’m a math major and a graphic designer. Like, “Could just take a lid out because I don’t know where that comes from?”

I would say I’m a creative soul, I’m a systems thinker that loves to visualize stuff. It’s funny because we’ve been around 28 years now and most small business, the US labor, they do a census and it says most small business is less between four and five years. I do think it’s kind of fascinating that in 28 years, I’ve been through eight reinventions. That’s a reinvention every years basically.

Why do you have to reinvent? It’s because you’re travelers, whoever your customer base is, the people who you’re wanting to have follow and be loyal to you, there needs change. 18 months later they just might not need what you have, you know? Especially on a whim right now, one tweak can change the sentiment of a country practically and you have to be so on top, you either have to be driving your industry or you have to be so on top of what your customers need so that you’re evolving.

Because if you’re staying still, a pool of water will become foul rot if it just sits there. You do not want an organization that ever turns into a foul rot. So you need to be infusing it with innovation and that’s the leader’s role is to do that. So yeah, we’ve been like positioned in the right place over time, most creative agencies right now have either sold themselves to corporations or to conglomerates. I’m one of, at this scale, I’m one of the few left that’s still independent and I think that’s because we were making the right moves at the right time.

[0:14:00.6] JG: So, the journey begins with this word “dream”, the moment of inspiration when you kick off a vision, initiative product and I think creatives, we creatives love that word, I love that word “dream”.

[0:14:12.5] ND: I love that word.

[0:14:15.4] JG: What does that mean, beyond just coming up with ideas, what does that mean for leaders?

[0:14:19.5] ND: Yeah, we have in the book, it’s the journey through innovation. Now you’re going to apply this to a movement, we looked at social movements, business movements and it does have a three act structure and we call it a venture scape. The first act is dream and leap. Dreaming means that what you’ve done as you’ve listened, like it starts in empathy, you have listened and you have vetted what you think is a different future than the current future.

The leader’s role is to traverse back and forth between present and future. Then be able to knit those two together in a way that makes it feel like it’s been bridged for the people. So you declare, I think there’s so much power in the spoken word. It’s hard to point to a movement that didn’t start with a spoken word. The dream is not only coming up with a dream through your imagination, but then you have to declare it, which puts a marker in time that’s like, “Oh, she just stated this new thing will be real.”

So the dream is very important phase and then hopefully if you do the dream real well, the leap phase may happen right away. The travelers buy into your dream and they commit in some way. Now, what happens though is a lot of people are like, “Wait a minute. I think you’re a freak, I don’t agree with you. That future is too different than the one I imagined in my head,” or whatever and they’ll resist and then that’s the interesting dance that the communicator has to navigate. The goal in act one is to dream and leap.

Then the middle of the story, like any story, is where all the action happens. It’s where the fight happens, the climb happens, the clawing away. The killing the aliens, usually there’s a high speed chase, someone gets impaled with a near death blow like Frodo got in the shoulder, and then you still have to climb something huge, this mountain, Sauron. It’s this fight-climb, fight-climb. I put it sequential like it goes fight-climb but in reality, it’s like a steep incline.

Some people can climb the face of a mountain, most can’t, but you would do switch backs, right? You have like fight-climb, fight-climb and then you ascend out of this kind of challenge that you’re trying to overcome and then the third act is that you arrive. It’s at the arrival phase that you reflect. When you arrive, it’s only in western cultures that we have all hundred percent happy endings. Most cultures, you know, you win some, you lose some. Even when you lose, you still need to celebratory, sense and arrive and in the arrival phase you reflect and you curate and collect all the stories that were told in the process.

[0:16:44.2] JG: Did you see that recent new sort of Rocky reboot movie Creed?

[0:16:48.4] ND: I heard so much about it.

[0:16:49.8] JG: It was great.

[0:16:51.6] ND: It’s so hard to write a book and launch it, so that’s one of only like three movies in my queue that I’ve got tagged because I’ve been hearing such great things about it.

[0:16:59.0] JG: It’s great and it sort of, I don’t want to ruin the ending, but beat for beat kind of follows the original Rocky movie, which doesn’t tie everything up with a bow but the point of the movie is it’s about endurance and about believing that you can do something more than, like everybody’s saying that you can’t do it.

So in this dream phase — anyway, highly recommend it. Forget about the book launching stuff. You’re not like going to a movies every afternoon?

[0:17:23.8] ND: You know, I became a grandma. So I just obsess over this little grand baby so every spare minute I have, I want to be right up in his face.

[0:17:30.4] JG: Yeah, well that’s a good enough excuse. In this phase, you talk about something that sort of threw me for a loop and I thought it was fascinating. One of the jobs, and I think a job of a leader is to cast vision, share the dream. You talk about warning. That’s interesting, tell me about that?

[0:17:49.9] ND: Yeah, there’s motivating tales and cautionary tales and there’s times where you need to be like, as a leader, it’s like, “Look, I worked at two other companies where I made that same stupid mistake and here’s how it turned out. Let’s not make that mistake.” I think in our culture and especially in leadership, we purge those stories from our vernacular because we don’t want to standup and say, “Tried that, failed at it, let’s use that as a cautionary tale so we don’t make this mistake. I need to warn you that this isn’t good.”

Warning stories can move people out of complacency and it can also help them change the direction or the the mindset that they currently had. Somehow, a testimony or a story told from a place of personal conviction can change hearts and minds more than all the great speeches and presentations that are out there. That’s what that is. Each stage, dream, leap, fight, climb, arrive. They all have a type of a motivating story and they also have a type of warning story or communication that needs to happen.

Sometimes you could use two or three of each in one talk. You know? It’s just how you feel you need to combine it and how much you’re trying to have to push people out of complacency or out of entrenchment. Some people are like adventurist, you cast a vision, they’re like on it and others can become like Heretics almost, they’re like, they fight hard against it so you just kind of need to know who you’re talking to. Make sure you have the right communication toolkit to go with it.

[0:19:16.3] JG: How do you like not be a jerk boss or a jerk employee? Because I think we’re all leading somebody, at least we’re leading ourselves. So how do you not overuse the warning tactic where it’s all gloom and doom and I could see that being potentially a tool for manipulation or coercion?

[0:19:34.0] ND: Yeah, and I think the truly transparent and authentic communicators, it would never come across that way, I would hope. So it’s interesting since you’re talking about say the dream phase. In the dream phase, you may want to do a motivating — we got the dream phase, speeches, stories, and ceremonies. The speeches you would give in a dream phase, the motivating speech is the vision speech. The warning speech is a revolution speech. Now revolution speeches are still very inspired and powerful but what you’re doing is you’re creating a revolt. Like some big competitor just joined and you need to revolt against it, right?

So there’s times where you’re setting the vision and times when you’re needing to rage against the machine. So we had our own internal process where trying to do here and I tried to give people permission. This whole system was put in, and it was just terrible and I kept saying, “I give you permission to rage against the machine. I give you permission to rage against the machine.” I kept giving revolution speeches, it’s like, “We don’t have to adopt this. Please don’t make this terrible system our status quo,” you know?

So with the story types, the motivating stories “head the call story”, but a warning story is to neglect the call. That would be a time where you missed the opportunity. There was an opportunity in front of you, you chose a different path and you missed this beautiful opportunity because you neglected the call. So there is a beauty to them if you do them and tell them sincerely. They’re not manipulative in nature, I think.

[00:20:59.1] JG: Yeah and I remember my first job as a marketing director working for an non-profit organization and I had all these great ideas and was sort of unfettered and could just go do whatever I wanted to do, but I’d run into opposition or I’d start something and I’d noticed that some of the old guard of the organization would say, “Yeah, we tried the before,” and I was like, “Oh it will work”.

It will work this time, I know and I think sometimes the same old idea from five years ago can work with some different application or if you have learned your lessons but I just wasn’t sitting down and learning from those people at all and I think 18 months into that job, nothing was working and I was like, “Okay so tell me more about this? Why didn’t it work?” and trying to learn from that but that’s hard to do so that’s a warning and it can work.

[00:21:48.6] ND: Yeah, I agree. I think sometimes telling stories or being a great communicator, for some people it’s hard, it doesn’t come natural because we feel like we have to bring our best self to work so we could move up the chain, we could step up the ladder. I have to show up and pretend I am not flawed and storytelling pulls that back because the structure of the story is, “Hey there’s this likeable person who went through this hard time and came out different.”

And so many people don’t want to talk about roadblocks they had to master, challenges they won or loss and that. So there is something to be said for —i t’s really almost impossible to be a great storytelling leader and not be authentic because it is a lot about exposing your own challenges to others and what you did to cope with them.

[00:22:34.7] JG: So that was a great example you’re talking about, how you can communicate these things in ways that don’t come across as like turned and twist somebody’s arm, that’s the first stage, is dream. It moves into leap, then fight, climb, arrive, redream, we were running out of time and I’ve got a couple of more questions that we’re going to squeeze in here.

I would love to hear from you, what was the dream of Duarte when you started? You talked about, what did you say, eight different reinventions? I mean that’s probably a whole other conversation. What was the dream? What was the leap? What was the fight? What was the climb? When did you think that you arrived and then what did redream looked like? We might have to shorten it.

[00:23:13.4] ND: Yeah, it’s funny because I have been through eight different dream, leap, fight, climb, arrives. I have been through eight of them. Interestingly, people think I started the business but my husband did actually and he had this dream. He bought a Mac plus to go to college and he’s like, “Oh my gosh, I can draw on this,” and this is when it first came out. They’d only been out a year or two. Just a couple of years nobody had them, right?

And I had a real job. I had a real job at an electronics distributor and he would come home and be like, “I think I can make a business of this.” I’m like, “What a joke, I work a real job. This is a toy.” I mean I’d worked my butt off to abort his dream. I was very pregnant, very angry, coming home every night he is reading computer manuals? “What is this? I work on a real computer at my office.” Just so terribly mean and I’ve had his resumes piled up. I’m like, “Look, you know, you’re going to get yourself a real job.” He goes, “Nancy please just read Mac World Magazine. Just read the magazine and then come back and tell me that you don’t think this is actually an industry.” I’m like, “Fine, look I’ll read it.” So I read it.

I come back and then I’m like, “Okay look, if I can sell it you could keep it. If I can’t sell it, all these resumes are going out Monday, right?” So I pick up the phone in one afternoon, we picked up Apple, NASA and Tandem which is now HP in one afternoon. Then I joined his dream and then his dream became mine. I mean every single one of our little reinventions has this crazy story to it and the crazy thing about what we’ve just finished, so my husband worked real hard all summer long with a bunch of big guys, moving furniture from a failing company here in the valley, 1987. He works all summer long at 1987. There is a failed aerospace company here and just works his butt off really moving furniture. We just moved into the 35,000 foot building he moved furniture from.

And to this day, he said, “Nancy while I was moving furniture, if I had an open vision that I would be running a business from here, I would have run.” Like sometimes things have to stay concealed and secret because they will freak you out too much. You just can’t. So he was like, “I would have freaked out. I would have used that money for something else and not a Mac, you know?” And so there has been a lot of little full circles that are actually kind of beautiful overtime. So poor thing, Mark’s dream, leap, fight, climb, arrive was mostly just with me.

[00:25:33.4] JG: So that sounds like the dream and you picking up the phone is the leap. Well talk about the fight and the climb.

[00:25:39.2] ND: Well fight, oh my gosh, you know this is like when we were — this is our first little S curve of innovation. We jumped in the fray, so I didn’t know what I was doing. Lind of a smart mouth — not smart mouth, but smart. I mean I’ve read everything. I have no degree. I have a high school degree, one year of college. I read everything. I subscribed to HBR, Harvard Business Review. I read every new book on strategy, business, marketing.

I have two small children at home, so for the first 17 or 18 years of my business, I only got one REM cycle of sleep. That’s one four hour sleep cycle. That’s a lot that is the sacrifice worth the reward, right? Well I had to do that to be credible. So part of the thing that was driving me was the own voices in my head, “How can you stand in front of these people and pose like you know what you are doing? Because you don’t have an MBA and Silicon Valley was built on the backs of MBA’s.”

You know, not one single person has ever asked me what my degree was in, not one because I worked hard to show up smart and overcome those and then Mark and I, we would stay up until midnight. We’d watch all the late night shows, stay up until two in the morning just working. We’d be listening while they were doing it and we made a lot of sacrifice as we worked in tiny conditions so we could save enough money to move into another building.

So the fight, climb; one of my big VP’s at Apple, he came to our pitiful little apartment. So many people were rooting for us back then. He comes to our apartment, sits down, we sit on the couch, have this whole meeting, he stands up and apparently my son’s baby bottle had been squirting his pants the whole time. He stands up and drips inside his pants and down his leg. It’s like, “Oh so sorry about that.” But it was pitiful. It was really ugly gritty yellow shed carpet, and these are people that are very successful coming into our home to work on their presentations and we just kept at it I mean tenaciously pursuing and pursuing and pursuing.

And then I don’t know that I ever really realized that say we arrived in that sense but to pause and there’s moments where we were like, “We’re kind of a big deal.” We were the young digital upstarts back then and people don’t even remember. You are way too young to know but before computers, people literary took an exacto knife to electrical tape and cut shapes out of it, stuck it on a piece of paper and did an electrostatic image. That’s how stuff was done. So we were the digital upstarts that could do all of that in a computer and our business grew.

It grew like crazy and a big moment for us was when Apple did a big layoff in ’92 and a lot of my main contacts there all went to other businesses. So you could look at that as our business dipped for a while and we were nervous for one summer. But all those people scattered like seeds all around the valley and they took us with them and that’s a flash point in our business where this terrible thing that you think is terrible winds up reshaping who you become.

[00:28:39.0] JG: Yeah, that’s interesting. You know I was thinking arrival moment like when Steve Jobs is presenting one of your slide shows, for example. But I love that like you said in the book, “To arrive doesn’t necessarily mean you are victorious. Many times you simply need to call it quits and admit you’ve lost, yet still gather to recall what you’ve gained from the experience.”

In this case, it wasn’t a defeat. But, as you said, it was a pause where all these clients were laid off and it ended up being a really good thing. But at the time, it was the end of one thing and the start of something else. That’s cool.

[00:29:13.5] ND: It was scary. We actually did lay off one employee on a Friday and by Monday the phone was ringing. It had been a slow summer and that was so hard and I promised myself I would never ever do that again, you know? It was hard, and then we hired him right back and he stayed with us forever.

[00:29:31.1] JG: That’s cool. Well, I know we were running out of time, so one of the things that I struggle with as a leader is this — like I want to be done and at the same time, I never want to be done. Like I am climbing and I want to get there and I go, “Oh yeah, I’m still restless.” So one of the things that you talked about that what was illuminating to me is the fact that you’ve been reinventing your business all along.

On the outside looking in, I think that is harder to notice but as we’re hearing more of your story, it makes more sense. So the final stage, you arrive and then you redream and you think of what’s next, what’s the next hill to climb, what does it look for you and Duarte today?

[00:30:13.0] ND: Yeah, that’s interesting. A lot of times I am redreaming while everyone else is still in the climb phase. So I am like, “Come on, come on, come on,” and that happens to other leaders where it’s like, “You’d better hurry up and finish this climb because the future is about to move on,” and so it is interesting and there is this one phase. Most of our innovations have been forward focused, driving the industry, inventing new things.

And then the one that we just finished it was this phase called getting us global ready. It was so painful, so brutal, oh my God and I was writing the book at the same time and I could overlay all the insights from the book and see how miserable I was leading everyone in this phase. But one of the things that I did in that really hard phase is I kept the place infused with innovation. So even though I was asking them to do these hard tasks, putting in these MIS systems that were just terrible and all of that was I had innovation labs.

We did 22 different labs over two summer where I said, “How am I going to present in the year 2040? What does that look like? Let’s sit smart people in the room to dream about that.” Super rich, exciting ideas that I’m actually patenting, came out of that and then it fused this miserable season with enough hope of innovation that now we’re launching to a new season called leading through Story. And we really are literary helping organizations transform their leaders and transform their culture into being really brilliant communicators.

[00:31:34.1] JG: That’s awesome.

[00:31:36.3] ND: Yeah, it’s fun.

[00:31:37.1] JG: Well I really would just like to keep you on and disregard our commitment to time but this has been great.

[00:31:42.1] ND: It was totally fun, I lost track of time.

[00:31:44.3] JG: I love this book. Listener, please go get this, Bob, Jane, Leonard, go get this. I’m sure there’s got to be people with those names are listening to it, Illuminate: Ignite change through speeches, stories, ceremonies and symbols. Nancy you included, you and Patty, concluded the book with this little conclusion and I just love this little line. I think it’s a great place to end.

“When you chose to lead, or are chosen, your ability to see the way and illuminate it for others sets you apart. Torch bearers are dreamers, pioneers and scouts who are energized to light the path for travelers”.

Nancy, thank you for being one of those torch bearers.

[00:32:23.0] ND: Thank you. So great to talk to you Jeff.

[00:32:25.3] JG: It was my pleasure.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:32:33.2] AT: Nancy has reinvented her business again and again, and that requires leadership. We hope you all go pick up a copy of Illuminate, her latest book on creative leadership. We’d also love your feedback on today’s episode. You can leave a feedback at goinswriter.com/134 or you can message Jeff on Twitter @jeffgoins. Be sure to use the #portfoliolife.

We appreciate the time you take to listen to our show. I’m Andy Traub and on behalf of Jeff Goins, thanks for spending some time with us. Now, go build your portfolio.

“ND: You’re constantly in a state of innovation. So it’s one thing to be innovating your ideas. It’s another thing to have to be innovating and organization, which means you have to lead in mass.”

[END]

How to Not Waste Your Words: The Secret to Writing a Crappy but Usable First Draft

Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it. –Anne Lamott

Okay. Let’s get this out there: your first draft of anything is going to be bad – I mean, really bad. Because that’s the job of a first draft. To be bad. And your job is to write it.

Once you write the terrible first draft, you can write a better second one, and an elegant third one, and so one. But you must start somewhere. As writer Anne Lamott says, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.”

We have this belief that very good writers don’t have to do this, that they are somehow immune to the trials and tribulations facing “terrible first efforts.”

This is not true.

Every great writer begins in the same place: in the land of insecurity and self-doubt. They are just as scared and apprehensive as you are. But here’s a trick the pros know that the rest of us can borrow.

Since we all start in the same place, the secret to better writing is getting through the crappy first draft quickly. And that’s just what they do.

“Every great writer begins in the same place: in the land of insecurity and self-doubt.Tweet thisTweet
The bad, but usable, first draft

Many writers get stuck in the middle of their first draft; which is like going camping and pitching your tent on the side of a cliff instead of hiking up to level ground. It seems easier to stop right now and rest, to think this through, but the safer option actually is to keep going.

Yes, this is hard. Yes, you will be scared. And yes, the task may feel so overwhelming you want to give up. I wish I could tell you this feeling goes away, but as long as I’ve been writing, it has not.

What does happen, however, is that you learn to trust this feeling. It indicates that you’re heading in the right direction, leaning into your fear and pushing back the Resistance.

Your goal, anytime you sit down to write, should never be to write something good. It should always be to write something usable. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s better to be an effective writer than it is to be a good one.

“It’s better to be an effective writer than it is to be a good one.Tweet thisTweet

Being good is subjective. The definition of being “good”, especially in a literary sense, changes with time and tastes. But if you learn how to effectively communicate with an audience, any audience, you will always have a job.

Our goal is to write a bad, but usable, first draft. There are two ways to do this.

Method #1: Pantsing

The first approach is to just write whatever you feel, to dump words on a page and hope for the best. In his memoir On Writing, Stephen King calls this “pantsing” because you’re flying by the seat of your pants.

You can do your writing this way – I’m currently writing a novel this way, so it would be disingenuous to say it doesn’t work. But I have to say that you are likely to waste a lot of words writing this way.

Why?

Because you will start in a direction and realize along the way that you really should have been heading elsewhere.

You will dump ideas and wait for them to come together. Then, they’ll find their place and you’ll see a thread, and the rewrites will commence. This is a bit of a fumbling approach, but sometimes necessary.

If you can avoid it, do. If not, write through it.

Method #2: Planning it out

The second way to write a bad, but usable, first draft is to plan it out a little more. I’m not saying plot out your sixty-four scenes ahead of time, though some would certainly argue that. I’m suggesting you sit down and ask yourself a few basic questions. Because in the end, writing is really just answers to questions.

What happens when three bachelors are forced to raise an infant? What do we do about global warming? What if the world we thought we were living in was actually run by machines?

All good writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, answers questions. So it makes sense that the place we begin is with a series of questions.

“All good writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, answers questions.Tweet thisTweet

Whichever method you choose, you’ll want to ask yourself some questions. With Method 1, it’s happening while you’re writing. With Method 2, you’re asking the questions before you write.

Regardless, you’ll want to answer these questions before you finish your first draft, if you want to have something bad but usable:

Question 1: What is this about? (Theme)

You must have a theme. I learned this from my friend Marion, when she wrote, “All great memoir is about something, and that something is not me.” This applies to all kinds of writing.

Great writing is about something, and that something is not you.

“Great writing is about something, and that something is not you.Tweet thisTweet

So you need a theme, a worldview. Maybe it’s justice or truth. Maybe it’s hope in the midst of struggle and pain. But you need to be writing about something bigger than yourself. This is why we crack open novels, scan the self-help section, and go to the movie theater on a Friday night.

We are all seeking connection to a truth that is bigger than us, something that helps us make sense of our lives. No genre is free from this function. Even humor helps us see that life is worth living.

To start, make a list of themes. Note: positive ideas tend to connect better than negative ones. That’s something else Marion taught me (you really should read her book, The Memoir Project). So instead of writing about the pain of growing up in an abusive household, write about the power of forgiveness or perseverance.

Remember: writing needs to be about something, and that something is not you.

Question 2: What am I trying to say? (Argument)

You need to have an argument, a point, a reason for saying all this. Again, this applies to both fiction and nonfiction. Even if the argument is something as cliche as “love conquers all” or “you get what’s coming to you.”

All great stories from Romeo and Juliet to Breaking Bad have arguments. And of course, so does every piece of persuasive writing, memoir, or business advice.

Your argument should be a simple statement that fits on a three by five notecard that you can carry around with you or tape to your computer. It needs to be one sentence and easy to remember. It is what you base every single writing decision around.

Before you decide on an argument, let’s get something straight. You don’t have to be right. You don’t have to be 100% entirely sure that this thing is true. What you do have to do, though, is believe what you’re saying.

“You don’t have to be right, but you must believe what you’re saying.Tweet thisTweet

I don’t want you to outright lie, of course, but we are often changing our minds about what we think regarding truth and the nature of the universe, or even what we consider funny. So just because you might not believe this some day is not a good enough reason to avoid writing it today.

As one friend recently pointed out to me:

“It doesn’t have to be right; it just has to be interesting.”

The job of an argument is to get your reader to think.

Question 3: Who is this for? (Audience)

All writing needs an audience. The smart writer identifies who she’s writing for before she begins.

Maybe it’s a matter of style: “This is a book for readers of Michael Crichton style science fiction.” Maybe it’s a matter of need: “This a blog post for anyone who wants to understand the ins and outs of indoor plumbing.” Or even a question of empathy: “This is an essay for anyone who’s struggled with being present with their kids.”

However you answer the question, you must do it. Even if you don’t have an audience yet, you must identify someone that this piece of writing is for. You must imagine them as you write each word, seeing them in your mind’s eye, trying to persuade or entertain or inspire them.

All good writers does this, either instinctively or by practice.

Writing is about communication and without someone to receive the message, you haven’t done your job.

“Writing is about communication and without someone to receive the message, you haven’t done your job.Tweet thisTweet
In summary

So there’s your crash course on writing a bad but usable first draft. Grab yourself a notebook and a pen and jot these three questions down, spend five minutes answering them, and then start writing.

I think you’ll be surprised at how much faster the writing flows and how much more usable the content is.

But remember: this is still going to be bad. Bad, but usable.

That’s what we’re going for here. Start with a one-word theme, a one-sentence argument, and a description of your intended audience. And then get started writing something really, really bad. Because that’s your job.

For other resources on this, check out my Three-Bucket System on how I gather ideas and turn them into publishable pieces. And for book-writing, you’ll want to check out the Five-Draft Method on how I think every book needs at least five very different drafts before you can call the thing done.

Let me know how it goes!

How do you get your first draft of anything written? How many drafts do you usually write before it’s done? Share in the comments.

How I Published a Bestseller, Got a 6-figure Book Contract, & Made a Million Dollars

What was the most amazing year of your life? 2015 was a big one for me. A lot can happen in a year.

That year, I was on the cusp of something big — and I knew it.

At the time, I’d published two traditional books and one self-published eBook. I had a growing online business and a decent-sized email list. But I felt like something we missing. I knew I was capable of more but didn’t know how to reach my potential.

Around that time, I had a conversation with a successful friend, someone who went from being an unknown artist to becoming a millionaire in just a few years. When I asked this friend how he did it, he told me a story. Here’s what he said:

You know, I went from making $50,000 a year to 300,000 because I set a goal and hit it. But then the next year I got lazy and didn’t set a goal at all. I don’t know why. I just didn’t. And at the end of that year, I did about the same amount of business as the previous year. I didn’t grow. So I realized something. When I set a goal, I hit it. And when I don’t, I just kind of drift through life.

The next year my friend set a goal to double his income. And he did. The following year he set a goal to make a million dollars. And he did that too. Since then he’s continued to set goals and hit them, whether they be financial or personal.

That spoke to me. I realized there’s power in goal setting when you do it the right way. You just need the right tools.

“There’s power in goal-setting when you do it the right way.Tweet thisTweet
The year that changed everything

Now, back to 2015. I knew this could be a big year for me, but I was going to have to set some goals and stick to them. So I set a few:

Publish a bestselling book and sell at least 50,000 copies in the first year.
Get a six-figure advance for my next book contract by the end of the year.
Make a million dollars in revenue from my business.

I had never done any of these things before. My most successful book had sold fewer than 20,000 copies. My previous book advance was for $55,000. And the previous year, my business had done something like $350,000 in sales.

In 2015, all that changed:

I launched The Art of Work , which hit multiple bestseller lists two weeks in a row and went on to sell over 53,800 copies in the first year.
The success of the book launch led to another book contract with a $150,000 advance.
My email list grew to over 100,000 subscribers, and the business did over a million dollars in sales, allowing me to hire some full-time team members and grow the company.

That fall, my wife and I moved into the house of our dreams and got pregnant with our second child. At the end of the year, I looked back and realized my friend was right. When you set a goal, you have a good chance of hitting it; and when you don’t, you have virtually zero of hitting it.

“When you don’t set a goal, you have zero chance of hitting it.Tweet thisTweet
Crossing the finish line

Please hear my heart on this. This is not about money. It’s not about success or fame or any of that. None of those things ever made me any happier.

What has changed my happiness, however, is my ability to achieve goals. When I am accomplishing what I never thought were possible, my confidence grows. And when confidence increases, so does my happiness.

Achieving your goals really can make you happier. But you have to set — and achieve — the right kind of goals. For years, I had dreams that never came true. But once I learned how to be smarter with goal setting, all that changed. And do you know where I learned that? Michael Hyatt.

In January of 2015, a year that was a game-changer for me, I took Michael’s online course 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever and I was skeptical. How can you possibly plan an entire year in five days, and actually achieve those goals?

But Michael is a friend and a high achiever, so I trusted him. And guess what? In 2015, I had the most amazing year of my life. It was a year that allowed me to achieve was I assumed was impossible.

Since then, things have only gotten better.

This is the power of setting goals. Whether you aspire to change your relationships, your finances, your career, I know that you are better off setting goals than not.

“You are better off setting goals than not.Tweet thisTweet

Sure, you open yourself up to disappointment. But you also open yourself up to changing your life and getting the kind of confidence money can’t buy.

I know. I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum. Life with goals is better than without. Trust me.

If you’re ready to have the best year of your life, I highly recommend you sign up for Michael’s online program 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever.

I go through it every year and it helps me align with my values and turn those into measurable action. I’m even taking my whole team through it.

It’s an affordable online video course that you won’t regret joining. And just to show you how much I believe in it, I’m offering two exclusive bonuses if you sign up for it.

Consider these my encouragement to you to keep going with your goals:

My $200 course on how to write a book that will be released in 2017. This is the exact process I use to write books.
An exclusive live online training with New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt on how to achieve your writing goals.

You will get both of these for free if you sign up for 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever before midnight tonight (December 15).

This is your year

I believe in goals. I believe in this program. And I hope it doesn’t sound too cheesy to say this, but I also believe in you. 2017 can be your best year ever.

Get started and click here to claim your bonuses (I’ll send you more on that in the next week after you sign up).

The world needs your work. Your voice. Your words. But it’s up to you to take the first step. Setting smart goals is that first step.

What goals do you have for 2017? Are you ready to make them a reality? Share in the comments.

133: The Neglected Secret to Finishing Any Writing Project On Time

The most difficult part of writing a book isn’t getting started. Resistance doesn’t push back on new ideas or even the first few chapters. No, the hardest part of any writing project is the end.

I like writing books because I like starting projects. It’s fun to tackle a new idea. The novelty and excitement of beginning with a clean slate is thrilling.

Mostly, I prefer writing books because they’re not ongoing. As hard as it is to complete tasks, it’s easier to work on projects with a defined end date rather than something that goes on indefinitely.

This week on The Portfolio Life, Andy and I talk about tactics to help creatives discipline themselves to complete the projects that matter. Listen in as we discuss the motivational power of negative and positive consequences and how to make your productivity practically inevitable.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you’re reading this via email, please click here).

Show highlights

In this episode, Andy and I discuss:

Creating a system where doing the work is easier than not doing it
Why I’m bad at finishing and what I do to cope
The parallels between writing a book and running a marathon
When you know your book is done
Why one successful author chooses not to self-publish even though he could make more money
Which kind of tasks typically kill the creative soul

Takeaways

Think of your work as a series of smaller projects.
Any sort of project with a beginning, middle, and end is something you can begin and end with excellence.
When there’s a deadline, you’re able to give your best.
If you want to win, you have to finish. If you’re going to finish, you need consequences.
Create the consequences that work with your personality.

Resources

A Simple Solution to Getting Your Writing Done
How I Finished Writing My Book in 90 Days

What do you need to finish? How are you setting yourself up for success to actually complete it? Share in the comments

Click here to download a PDF of the full transcript or scroll down to read it below.

EPISODE 133

“JG: I also like books because they’re not ongoing projects and as hard as it is to finish things, I think it’s easier to work on something that has a defined ending than it is to work on something that doesn’t.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:27.6] AT: Welcome to The Portfolio Life Podcast with Jeff Goins. I’m your host, Andy Traub. Jeff believes that every creative should live a portfolio life, a life full of pursuing work that matters, making the difference with your art and discovering your true voice. Jeff is committed to helping you find, develop and live out your unique world view so that you too can live a portfolio life. What is the secret to finishing? Most of us like to start, but few of us like to finish. So today, Jeff and I are going to answer that question, what’s the secret to finishing?

Here’s my conversation with Jeff Goins.

[EPISODE]

[00:01:08.7] AT: Jeff, how are you today my friend?

[00:01:10.8] JG: Doing great Andy, how are you doing?

[00:01:12.5] AT: I am excited to be with you. I am excited about today’s topic. Sometimes, I just come up with these ideas for the show because I want to know what you think for me personally and then thousands of other people benefit as well, and this is one of those. Because I think that you’re good at finishing things. You push through and I’m not just talking about Netflix series, though you are good at that as well. You’re one of the best, if I can say that, about finishing a Netflix series. But we’re going to talk today about finishing your work, is that something that we can really riff on for?

[00:01:45.7] JG: Yeah.

[00:01:46.5] AT: Yeah, I thought so because I know that you have written about this on recent months and that you’re living it, right? As their friend, I get to, “How are you doing?” “Oh I’m trying to finish this thing” “How are you doing?” “I’m trying to finish this thing”. So give me maybe some examples of in the last four or five years of your writing career of things that you have been forced to finish. What comes to mind?

[00:02:08.9] JG: Yeah, well I like writing books because I like starting things and it’s fun to tackle a new idea and the novelty and excitement of it. I mean it’s exciting for me, but I also like books because they’re not ongoing projects and as hard as it is to finish things, I think it’s easier to work on something that has the defined ending than it is to work on something that doesn’t and it can motivate you through any kind of slump. Whether you’re tackling something like NaNoWriMo, writing a novel in a month, or taking a class, attending an event, any sort of project that has a beginning, middle, and end is something that you can finish and you can do with excellence.

So I mean I like doing things that are fun for me but there’s a perfectionist part in me and I like doing things well. I like shipping excellent things into the world and because there’s a deadline, I feel like I am able to give my best. Whereas, anytime I have to do a slug, anytime somebody says, “Do this for the rest of your life.”

[00:03:26.4] AT: Sold.

[00:03:27.2] JG: I’m serious, yeah, exercise, diet, habitual things, I really struggle with those things. You know me well enough to know that probably one of my faults is inconsistency. I’m not the most consistent person. I was looking at my personality type in the Myers-Briggs and the description of me and I was looking at my wife’s and it talks about the things that you like and don’t like and the things that get on your nerves.

And so for me the things that get on my personality types nerves, the biggest thing that bothers me is complaining and the thing that I like the most, on the Myers-Briggs I’m an ENTJ, the thing that allows the ENTJ to thrive is change, right? Like if there’s an antithesis to consistency I think it’s change. So then you go over to my wife’s personality and the thing that annoys her personality the most is inconsistency. That’s like…

[00:04:27.0] AT: Ruh-row.

[00:04:27.9] JG: …you are in for a ride and we’re nine years into this.

[00:04:32.1] AT: For better or worse honey. Better or worse, yeah.

[00:04:34.4] JG: Yeah and this is on the worst for consistent or inconsistent. So I think if you have the creative temperament, if you’re like me and you like change, you like to start things and do lots of different things and not do the same thing over and over and over again but you also like to do things well. I think thinking of your work in terms of a series of projects, which is the idea of the portfolio life. You don’t have to do just one thing for the rest of your life.

You can do a series of different projects. Whether that’s a seasonal projects, I do a lot of seasonal projects, launches and things like I am all in for a certain period of time and then it’s over and I move onto the next thing. But in order to do that and to keep doing it, you’ve actually got to finish things, and I would say that for me, finishing is not something that I am necessarily good at. It’s something that I have disciplined myself to do because honestly Andy, I just want to get onto the next project.

[00:05:29.3] AT: Yes because it is more fun for a lot of people to start things than it is to finish things, but the only way you can start something else is to finish the last one, right? And so yeah, it’s almost like if you do a triathlon, why are you running so hard? Because I want to go on the bike. Why are you biking so hard? Because I want to swim. It’s not because you like what you’re doing necessarily. So what other areas of your business — because you know a lot of people listen to this show. They’re living this portfolio life.

And as I say in every intro of every show that you actually care — you Jeff, actually care about the person listening right now. You want them to live a portfolio life. How does this relate to when you are doing a course? I mean there are certain things like Tribe Writers that it is not open all the time. Is part of that is that you only have so much energy to open it for a period of time because otherwise, it would just be open all the time, you might get bored with it?

[00:06:21.7] JG: Yeah, I’m sure that is part of it. I had a friend who texted me the other day and he said, “Hey can I refer somebody to Tribe Writers? When is the next time that is launching?” I said April and he goes, “That’s a long time,” I go, “Yep.”

[00:06:38.7] AT: And you are thinking “breathing room”, right?

[00:06:41.6] JG: Honestly I am thinking, that’s what makes it special. That’s what makes people sign up when it’s time to sign up is that you can’t sign up for it all the time and because it’s an eight week course that we launch basically twice a year, and I’ve kicked around the possibility of having a version of it that you can sign up for it anytime. I mean my goal is to help the most people without making me miserable, which is a challenge anytime you run a business of course.

But if I just wanted the easy button and I just wanted to protect my time. I don’t know I’d do something else. I’d go work at Starbucks or something. If I just wanted defined hours and a paycheck, I’d go work at Starbucks. What I like about being an entrepreneur and about being a writer is I get to choose how stressful my job is. So if my schedule is stressful it’s because I chose that and I have to ask myself consistently, “Is this what you asked for? Is this what you wanted, or did you say yes to a bunch of things because you felt obligated and you don’t actually want this?”

And often the answer is, “No, this is actually what I asked for,” and either realized that I don’t really want this or I’m just going to deal with this for the season. But I can — going back to the question about Tribe Writers — I can endure anything for a certain period of time. I can see the end of it. So that’s why I like training for half marathons because there is this three month period where I am running a lot, and there is a goal, and then there’s a finish line. And then after that, I get to decide am I going to do another one of these? I’m not going to do this exactly the same way tomorrow but do I want to do another one of these with a different course, maybe a different training regimen or do I want to go do something else.

So Tribe Writers for me even though it’s a course that I have been teaching for almost five years, it is basically a series of projects. When I get bored with it or if it’s seems to not be working as well or the information gets outdated, I re-record the course. I invest my money into making a product better and that’s fun. That’s fun. When it’s time to launch it, I launch it and spend basically two weeks going all in on this thing, and then that’s fun and then I spend the next couple of months walking people through it and then I move onto the next thing and that’s why I like books because you write them, they’re done. You launch them, they’re out there.

And if you’ve done your job well, if you’ve created something, that’s good and you have done a good job of bringing it into the world then you basically get to move on and that thing continues to sell and impact people and there is a return on the investment of time that you put on that, I like that. I like that more than “I’ve got to go to make money today. I’ve got to think of something new to create today”, or whatever. I like projects because they are exciting to start, there’s a defined end point and if you do your job well, there’s some sort of reward like the reward of a half marathon is A, the enjoyment of saying, “Hey, I’ve finished this” and B, all the free food that you get to eat at the end.

[00:10:03.4] AT: I was going to say isn’t there a C, the bumper sticker. Do people do a bumper sticker?

[00:10:07.6] JG: Oh I don’t know.

[00:10:08.2] AT: I mean I thought that was the whole thing you did put a 13.1 or 26, whatever.

[00:10:12.3] JG: I’m sure that’s a thing but mostly it’s just the food for me.

[00:10:15.5] AT: Well okay, all right.

[00:10:16.6] JG: It costs about $100 to run the national marathon and then at the end, they give you a medal which is probably worth something but then there’s this endless smorgasbord of bagels.

[00:10:26.9] AT: All right, so you are eating about a buck and a quarter worth of food, right?

[00:10:30.3] JG: That’s right, I am netting a positive 25 bucks out of the thing.

[00:10:34.4] AT: Right.

[00:10:35.4] JG: Well you know they’ve got that protein bars and stuff and I know how much those things costs.

[00:10:42.5] AT: The fanny packs, those are in the fanny pack.

[00:10:44.7] JG: I’m shoving those things in my pocket, yeah but I mean you’ve got to have a reward I think in order for you to push through to get to the end.

[00:10:53.9] AT: So let’s talk about this for the last part, to talk about this in the context of, because I am talking to a publisher about the publishing a book of mine and the thing that I’m really excited about is — and this is funny, the thing that I am super excited about maybe most excited about is someone telling me what to do. Which is the exact opposite of like why people say you should self-publish because you can do whatever you want. I’m like, “That doesn’t go very well sometimes, because sometimes my boss is an idiot and I am him.”

So talk about this in the context of how we can set ourselves up as writers. How can we put ourselves in situations and maybe it’s just self-publishing versus traditional publishing and maybe just talk about why that is a good thing but I am excited about traditional publisher because I am going to be beholden to them, they’re not going to let it slide that I don’t finish this thing on time. So maybe let’s talk about, what are ways that we can put ourselves in situations with that lines that will helps us as artists, as people who are trying to live a portfolio life? Just maybe give some examples of that.

[00:11:59.0] JG: I am finishing up my latest book right now and I am in the throes of that right now and it’s easy to feel like the situation that you’re in is less than ideal. So it’s easy like when your publisher is pressuring you to go, “Man this sucks. I should just do this myself because they don’t understand.” Or it’s easy as a self-publish author to go, “Oh it would be so nice to have a publisher pay me money to do my job,” or whatever and I think the job there is to first of all know yourself.

Know what motivates you, know how you actually work not how other people work, not what other people are doing but how you work. Then secondly, to use that to do your work better in a way that works for you. So I was talking to a very successful author who could self-publish his books for the rest of his life and make more money than working with a publisher with who he’s got to split royalties and he said, “I don’t do that.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Because I would never finish the book,” and he knows himself.

[00:12:58.6] AT: What an admission though. What a humble admission, “Because I wouldn’t do it.”

[00:13:03.9] JG: He goes, “I do it for the deadline” I’d never heard anybody say that. I’ve heard people say, “I do it for the advance because I’d rather make a couple hundred thousand dollars now and then not have to worry about selling X amount of copies,” and I mean that’s part of my motivation of going with a traditional publisher is can I make enough money upfront through an advance that I could take that money, invest it, pay off my house whatever.

That it’s worth it to me versus self-publishing and spending the next two or three years making the equivalent of that amount of money and then making more after that and I go, “Well, that’s a tough thing” like would you rather have $250,000 in the next five year, $50,000 a year or would you rather have $200,000 right now? And there is no right answer to that except that you need to know yourself and you need to know what’s going to motivate you. If somebody told me that, I might take the $200K because I go, “You know I know myself, five years from now I might be doing something completely different.”

Click here to download a free PDF of the full transcript or continue reading below.

[00:14:06.8] AT: Absolutely, it’s like if you won the lottery how would you take your money? It’s sort of just knowing that. Like it would ruin me if I had that much at once. So yeah, it’s good to know that about yourself. So what if someone isn’t in a position to be traditionally published? How can they or the person listening right now says, “Man, Jeff and Andy I’m not a great finisher okay? But we all know to win you’ve got to finish,” right?

And wining might be to publish your first book, it might be to be a consistent writer, it might be to make a course. It might be to do enough art to have it displayed somewhere. What are ways that people can make sure that they are finishing? Are they just creating completely arbitrary deadlines?

[00:14:50.5] JG: So I think that in order to finish something, you have to have some kind of consequence. So I talked about the bagels at the end of the marathon and that’s a positive consequence. That’s a good thing but there’s also negative consequence that’s motivating me. If I stop at mile 12 of a half marathon, you know a 13.1 mile race, how am I going to feel? Well basically I just spent a $100 to run around downtown Nashville, which I could have done on any day of the week for free and I get to go home with leg cramps and shame. Or I get to push through 1.1 more miles and there’s a pride in that and I get free bagels. I can’t emphasize this idea enough.

[00:15:32.4] AT: Let’s stay focus on the bagels, right.

[00:15:34.3] JG: Yeah like the last time I ran the national half marathon, I ran with a couple of friends. I was not in the best shape. We just had a baby and I had actually gotten hurt training and I just ran the race in poor shape, poor health, started at a ridiculous pace because I was running with some friends and then I had to fall back and then by the end of it, I was walking and that was really demotivating and frustrating.

But when I signed up I promised myself that I would finish this. And why was that motivating? Because I paid money to do it and I didn’t want to feel like I wasted that money and honestly if I stopped and I didn’t finished the race, it would take me longer to get to my car and get home and so I was like, “Well…”

[00:16:23.6] AT: “Well, I’m going to my car anyway,” yeah.

[00:16:25.2] JG: Yeah so I like what my friend, Tim Grahl says about this which is to paraphrase him and he’s great on this in terms of systems and motivation and productivity but he basically says that, “If you want to be productive, the secret to that is not willing yourself to be what you not. It is creating a life so that doing your work is something that becomes inevitable, making your productivity practically inevitable.”

So what I think what that means practically, is whatever you’re working on, it’s finishing a book, starting a business, whatever it is, finishing a race, make that the work like doing the work that should be easier than not doing the work. Find a way to create a system where, for example, finishing a 13 mile race is actually easier than stopping at mile 12 walking back to my car and driving home.

[00:17:23.0] AT: Right because essentially that would be 24 miles. No, seriously that’s not worth it. You would be stupid to not keep going and I love that and part of this is an emotional maturity. Like the person you’re talking about says “Listen, this is not a mathematical decision.” Because the mathematical decision says self-publish. It is an emotional decision, which says, “I want to finish,” right?

[00:17:51.0] JG: Right and I think the best way to do that, I think it’s Peter Drucker who said, “Past performance is the best indicator of future performance.” So you know yourself Andy, right? So it’s not a question of, “Do I launch another self-published book and make 50 grand in a couple of months?” The question is, “Have I done this on my own already?”

[00:18:13.0] AT: Yeah.

[00:18:13.9] JG: And I think this is an important question. I love it when — because it’s often like a sales or marketing strategy. People say, “If you could have done it on your own, you already would have done it.” But that’s true. Like, “Should I pay money to see a personal trainer?” Well if I really could have lost weight and gone into shape on my own, would I have already done that by now? Is it really a question of motivation or is it a question of setting up my life in such a way that I finish that things that I start.

So if that means, because you know yourself, you’re going to have to sign with a publisher and you have an opportunity to do that great. If not, you don’t have that opportunity but you still need a consequence, do what my friend Joe Bunting recently did where he was spending two years trying to finish his memoire, wasn’t happening. So he decided I’m going to create some negative consequences for me if I don’t hit my deadline, and Joe and I have been having an ongoing conversation about this.

He did a kick starter for this book and I said, “When is this going to be finished?” He’s like, “Well it’s just not there” and I said, “But didn’t people pay you money to write this book?” And he was like, “Yeah, you’re right,” and we had lots of conversations about this. “So shouldn’t you finish it and give them this book?” And he was like, “Well I might take it to a publisher, I might do this. I might do that,” and what he realized was honestly, the current motivational structure that he had in place was not enough because people weren’t complaining.

They were waiting, and so he knew that he could milk this a lot longer than he wanted to and so he said, “I’m going to create some very negative consequences for me that are going to force me to finish this book in the next 10 weeks,” and he had three deadlines and a word count for each deadline and if he missed the deadline, well I think the consequence one was he had to delete an app on his phone and he loves playing games on his phone.

Consequence two was he needed to give his iWatch to his wife, and really liked that one and consequence three was he had to write a $1,000 check to the presidential candidate — this was before the race is over — to the candidate that he hated the most and then he took that check, this is the genius part of this, he took that check put it in an addressed enveloped, sealed and put a stamp on it, gave it to a friend and said if you don’t hear from me on this date saying, “I finished my book you send that. Don’t give me a day, grace period, don’t give me anything. If you don’t get that, you send that,” and that was enough motivation for him to finish his book and to call his friend and have her tear it up.

That’s pretty extreme. Another person that used this kind of system was Sandy Kreps. She came to the Tribe Conference. The same kind of deal; she’d been writing a book for a couple of years. Was sitting in a group of writers and just mentioned that she wanted to finish her book. One person in the group said, “Well how are you going to do that?” And she says, “Well I don’t know,” and she goes, “Well I think you should finish your book in the next 90 days,” and they set up an accountability system where this person checked in with Sandy every week, “How’s it going?” Was just encouraging her, motivating her, just checking in.

I mean sometimes we just need somebody to go “Hey, how’s that going?” so whatever it is, whatever it needs to be, you create the consequences that work with your personality. Joe knew that not writing the book needed to be more painful than actually writing it. Sandy knew that if she’s just relying on herself to write another self-published book, because she had done this before, that she would keep putting it off. My friend who’s a successful published author knew that yeah, he could probably write more books and self-publish them and make more money, except that he wouldn’t. That he would actually finish it.

And I am working on this book right now and I was talking to a friend of mine who used to work in publishing business and I said, “Man, I’m really struggling. I’m right up my deadline, the publisher is getting a little bit nervous. I am getting a little bit nervous, but I don’t want to turn something in that isn’t ready. When do you know when a book is done?” He said, “You know when a book is done when the publisher is threatening to cancel your contract.” Because you either turn it in or you give the money back and that’s where, “Okay not writing this, not turning this in it’s all of a sudden more painful than turning this in.”

[00:22:32.2] AT: Yeah, “Hey motivation nice to see you. I’m glad you show up on my front door.”

[00:22:35.6] JG: Unless it’s not, right? Unless you go, “Actually I don’t care. This book isn’t ready, I’d rather give the money back than send this out into the world,” and only you know that but I really do think it comes down to the pain of the consequences of doing this or doing that and if you really want to do that and you don’t want to do this, whatever it might be, then create consequences for yourself if they don’t naturally exists there. And I have shared some examples and how I think that works. But again, I think that the idea is not doing this needs to be more painful than doing it.

[00:23:11.8] AT: Love that. Well time to go write some checks I guess.

[00:23:16.2] JG: You can send those to me.

[00:23:17.8] AT: Oh dang it. All right, I will. Thanks man.

“JG: You don’t have to do just one thing for the rest of your life. You can do a series of different projects.”

[END]

How to Write Your First Viral Article in 30 Minutes or Less

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Neal Samudre. He is a sales funnel copywriter who teaches powerful scripts for writing at EssentialHustle.com. You can join his free course on copywriting here.

Many creatives believe the longer you spend with a piece of writing, the better it is. For me, this isn’t the case. In fact, my most popular article was one I wrote in under 30 minutes.

It was a cold January night three years ago when I had the idea for the article. Twenty minutes later, it was in a Word document. I wasn’t proud of it then because I wrote it fast. The creative in me was screaming to spend more time with the article, as if this would make it perfect.

But little did I know, it was good enough for it to do the job.

I published it two weeks later. Twenty-four hours later, 20,000 people had already read the article. By the end of the week, traffic reached 5 million. And another week later, a Pulitzer-prize winning composer wrote a symphony after the article.

Back then, it seemed strange that my most popular article was the one I wrote the fastest. Now I know, this is the way it works for creatives today.

Truth is, you don’t need to spend hours laboring over your writing for it to be effective. Sometimes our best writing is the one we touch the least.

“Sometimes our best writing is the one we touch the least.Neal SamudreTweet thisTweet
The secret to fast writing

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you need to forego editing.

What I am saying is, there is a secret to writing viral articles in the shortest amount of time possible.

As creatives, many of us want to give space to creativity—to make each article different from others. This is why we spend so long with our writing—each one follows a different pattern.

But in being a copywriter, I learned that each article does not require a new pattern for it to be effective. Instead, each article should follow the same pattern.

My secret to writing viral articles fast is this: each article follows the same framework.

If more creatives can learn frameworks to write effective articles faster, then more of world can see and grasp their art.

The framework for writing viral blog posts

Having said this, I want to teach you the same framework I used to write my viral article and several other viral articles since then.

It’s called the T.H.R.E.A.D. framework. Here’s what each letter stands for:

T is for Title
H is for Hook
R is for Relate
E is for Emphasize
A is for Apply
D is for Download

If you can adopt this framework into writing each article, you can write faster, better, and eventually, get your work noticed.

Let’s dive into each element of this framework.

1. Title

For the title, you want to think of your reader’s problem and come up with something specific to pull them in.

Example: 3 Reasons Why You Need to Shower 2x a Day (see how specific this is? And it increases curiosity!)

2. Hook

You want to grab your reader’s attention with the first chunk of text. The best way to do this is by either starting at a point of high drama in your story or addressing the pain your reader feels.

Good example: Do you feel like you stink after a full day of work, even though you showered in the morning? (If people say yes, you’re in!)
Bad example: I was walking in the park the other day. I realized how great I smelled! I kept walking and I noticed the flowers. They smelled great too! (This isn’t a high point in your story.)

3. Relate

This is where you talk about your own experience in this matter. Make the problem personal, and engage your readers with a story.

Example: I used to stink too. I would come home after work, smell my body, and gag at the stench.

4. Emphasize

At this point, you want to emphasize the cost of not solving the problem you introduced or emphasize why a person must adopt your main idea. Basically, talk about why it’s so important for your reader to make a change or learn your idea.

Example: If you don’t shower enough, you end up repelling everyone who wants to be close to you at the end of the day.

5. Apply

Here’s where you give your reader easy to understand points and ways to apply your idea.

Example:

Here are 3 reasons you need to shower 2x a day.

You need to wash off all that sweat.
You don’t want to feel sticky when you go to sleep at the end of the day.
Showers relieve stress, and help you put your day behind you.

6. Download

Jeff actually taught me this after my first viral article.

When I published my first viral article, I included no way to follow up with a person. I didn’t include an invitation to my email list and I didn’t invite people to comment below the post.

I emailed Jeff soon after the article went viral, and he told me this:

Make sure you include something at the end of your post to follow up with your readers.

So I put one of my self-published books at the end of the article and made hundreds of dollars.

Point is, you need an action at the end of your post. And the best action I know of is to ask your readers to download something from you in exchange for their email address.

Doing this will ensure you are building your audience over time.

Write faster and better

Know that I am not telling you to disavow your creativity. The brilliance of frameworks is they give you an effective template to follow so you can focus more on making your words sing.

At the end of the day, it’s about impacting more of the world with your work.

“At the end of the day, it’s about impacting more of the world with your work.Neal SamudreTweet thisTweet

So use this framework to write faster and better articles. The world is waiting.

Do you struggle with writing fast? Have you ever believed fast articles were bad articles? Share in the comments.

A Simple Solution to Getting Your Writing Done

Despite having never written fiction before, I’m working on a novel. Since I don’t know what I’m doing, I keep asking my friend Tim for a shortcut. He keeps telling me there isn’t one.

I’m pretty sure he’s lying.

A couple week ago, I started falling behind on my novel and began feeling sorry for myself. I beat myself up, blamed others, and watched a lot of Netflix (because procrastination is how I cope with stress). Suffice it to say, my plan didn’t work. Not writing apparently results in nothing being written.

Who knew?

So, I reached out to a friend for help…

“Not writing results in nothing being written.Tweet thisTweet
Seek wise counsel

I called up my friend Joe, a writer of fiction and all things creative. He’s also the founder of a wonderful writing blog called The Write Practice.

Joe and I started our blogs around the same time. I focused on nonfiction and publishing self-help books, and he focused on growing as a storyteller. In the end, I wonder if how Joe spent his time was the wiser path.

At any rate, Joe’s a smart guy and one to listen to when it comes to the craft of fiction. I asked him how to finish my novel on time in order to win NaNoWriMo. I was tired of the “there is no secret” malarkey Tim was feeding me and hoping Joe would give me the inside scoop.

He did — but not in the way I expected.

Raise the stakes

“How do I finish my novel on time?” I asked. “Do I have to listen to a year’s worth of podcast episodes like Tim says? He’s lying about about that, isn’t he, Joe? About there being no secret… right?”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know about that. But it’s possible for you to finish in a month.”

“How?” I asked.

“Consequences,” he said.

“Consequences?” I repeated.

“Consequences.”

Here’s what he meant:

When Joe was struggling to finish his memoir after working on it for two years, he had a jarring conversation with — guess who? — our mutual friend Tim Grahl. The same Tim who keeps telling me there are no shortcuts (he’s lying, right?).

Anyway, Joe was frustrated and decided to get serious about finishing his book. But he wasn’t sure how. So he called a friend, which is always a good idea. And Tim gave him some great advice. And guess what? In 10 weeks, Joe finished his book.

How did he do it? Not by forcing himself to get more disciplined. That never works. He did it by raising the stakes. This is an important lesson for all things creative. We don’t become more productive by willing ourselves to be something we’re not. We become more productive by making the consequences of avoiding our work more painful than doing it.

“We become productive when the consequences of avoiding our work become more painful than doing it.Tweet thisTweet

Joe gave himself three deadlines and three consequences, each with increasing severity, for each deadline if he failed. He used the “stick” approach instead of the “carrot,” and in the end, it worked.

Carry a big stick

These are the consequences Joe implemented:

If he missed the first deadline, he’d have to delete his favorite iPhone app (and Joe loves PokemonGo).
If he missed the second deadline, his wife would receive his beloved iWatch.
If he missed the third deadline, he’d have to write a $1000 check to the political candidate he hated.

Joe met his first two deadlines with relative ease. The last one, however, was a challenge. It’s one thing to hit a couple early deadlines and quite another to complete an entire book. He knew he needed to raise the stakes.

What was keeping Joe from missing his final deadline. What would prevent him for quitting at the most difficult moment of completing a project and just telling himself he’d do better next time? He had been here before and didn’t want to go back to this world of missing deadlines.

So, Joe wrote a check for $1000 to the political candidate he most despised and gave it to a friend in a sealed envelope, already stamped and addressed. If Joe didn’t meet his third deadline, this friend was instructed to send it immediately. No grace period, no explanation. Either, he finished the book, or he did not.

Now, that’s taking your writing seriously.

In the end, my friend finished his memoir. The manuscript is complete, and now he can edit it.

When Joe shared these incredible results, I was impressed. This was a book he had been working on for two years now, and in a matter of ten weeks he finished it. I realized that I needed consequences for my writing, too.

So I signed up for Joe’s community and set three consequences for myself: if I missed my first deadline, I had to stop drinking coffee. If I missed my second, I had to give up TV. And if I missed my third, I had to write a check to Joe for $1000 that he could use however he wanted.

I love coffee and am super addicted to the substance, so I wanted to avoid those withdrawal headaches as much as possible. I also can get into binge watching a show or two and tend to do this the more stressed I am (it’s how I cope, remember?). And of course, the last thing I want is to give Joe any money.

Not the most original of consequences, but they motivated me. I struggled hard to hit my deadlines but having something on the line helped. It’s hard to write a novel period, much less in a month. Setting a goal is not enough. You need accountability and consequences.

Get connected to a community

So, that’s my challenge to you. Don’t just rely on your own discipline to meet your deadlines. Give yourself consequences and find some accountability.

What would that look for you today? To not just set a goal — writing or otherwise — but to get in a community that is committed to helping you achieve those goals?

How could you set some consequences (positive or negative) for hitting or missing them?

Maybe what you need is not more motivation to do your work but a more painful consequence for not doing it. But don’t just beat yourself up — that never works. Get around people who will encourage you and celebrate your small wins.

One of the best things I ever did was start a free writing community called My 500 Words, which is a free challenge the offers a month of writing prompts to help writers being a daily writing habit. If you don’t have a community to encourage you, you are welcome to join ours (it’s free).

If you are a part of a group, then I encourage you to adopt Joe’s system and post a public goal, along with some consequences, so that others can hold you accountable. Check in regularly, and get feedback on the process as you go.

You can also check out Becoming Writer, a paid writing community Joe Bunting leads, and see if that’s a good fit for you as well. It worked wonders for me in finishing my novel. (By the way, I’ll share my full NaNoWriMo debrief soon, so stay tuned for that. Lots of lessons learned that I’ll be sharing soon.)

Do you procrastinate when you’re stressed? How do you get your writing done? Share in the comments.

The Best WordPress Theme for Writers Who Want to Go Pro

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from John Meese. John is a blogger, business consultant, and founder of Notable Themes. You can find more from him on Twitter.

When I was only 12, I signed up for a creative writing workshop (my mom helped).

That workshop was an incredible experience, because it was the first time I wrote anything that didn’t have a grade attached to it once I was done. When I finished that story, I was as proud as you might suspect―I had crafted the greatest story that had ever been written on college-ruled paper!

I showed the short story to my mom, read it to a few friends, and then… that was it. No job offers, fan letters, or checks arrived in the mail.

A decade and a half later, I found that short story in my closet when I was cleaning out junk. Want to know why that story never amounted to anything? There were two main reasons:

I was 12―the story really wasn’t that great! But also,
There was no way my writing could be discovered or shared.

As a writer, you need to showcase your work in a way that makes it easy to get discovered or shared―which in today’s world, means you need a professional website. That’s how you make a living from your craft.

Of course, that website won’t make you a better writer at the end of the day―but it will help you get discovered and shared, if your writing is good.

“Showcase your work in a way that makes it easy to get discovered.@JohnRMeeseTweet thisTweet

Then again, not just any website will do. The perfect website for writers needs to offer three specific functions:

Lets you get straight to writing. Writers write, that’s what helps you hone your craft. The more time you spend “working” on your website, the less time you have to focus on writing itself.
Presents your writing in an elegant fashion. Words are the building blocks of your content, and they’re meant to be consumed. The right website design makes your words the real focus, and fades into the background so readers forget it’s even there.
Helps you grow your audience. This is crucial if you want to make an honest living from your craft. You need an email list to build a community around your content, that will help your new business thrive.

All three are important ingredients in the perfect recipe for a website for writers. That’s why Jeff continues to build a successful platform while using Tribe Theme.

Here’s a look at the mindset behind Tribe Theme, when Jeff first created the concept:

Is there such a thing as the perfect blog theme? An ideal website? Maybe. My friend Martyn Chamberlin and I spent a long time talking about this. We wanted to know:

What does good design look like for writers?
What would an artist want in a website?
What would be essential, and what would be unnecessary?

We built and tweaked until we were completely satisfied, cutting out all the excess and focusing on what matters most: earning permission and building influence.

The result is Tribe: a clean, elegant WordPress theme customized for the needs of people with a message to share.

At first, Jeff was just solving his own problem and sharing it―but Tribe Theme has grown to become a solution every writer should use.

Because this theme was designed by writers, for writers, it has several built-in features that you will find especially helpful:

Beautiful typography. Tribe features just over two dozen font options that have been hand-selected to make your words beautiful. Select one from the drop-down menu, and you’re good to go.
Minimalistic design. Sometimes less really is more, and this is especially true with website design. Tribe Theme websites have a simple, elegant look that keeps your core content front-and-center on every blog post or page.
Super simple customization. Tribe has the power of the latest online marketing techniques built into a simple WordPress theme designed for writers who don’t mess with code. You can have a new website in less than an hour.
Automatic updates for life. Most WordPress themes charge you a yearly fee to keep getting updates―not so with Tribe from Notable Themes! One purchase gets you updates for life (support is available with a separate subscription).

So what are you waiting for?

Click here to get your copy of Tribe Theme. Stop fighting with WordPress and letting code get in the way of your creativity.

Which theme do you currently use? How has a theme interfered with your writing? Share in the comments.

131: Are You a True Writer If You Don’t Write Fiction?

Writing is a challenge regardless of whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. But can non-fiction writers successfully explore fiction? Are you really a “writer” if you never publish a novel?

When you look back through history and think about the writers we remember and quote, precious few are non-fiction authors.

This week on The Portfolio Life, Andy and I wrestle with controversial questions about the rivalry between different kinds of writers, and the enduring nature of one form over another.

Listen in as we discuss the nature of storytelling and why it makes both fiction and non-fiction more compelling to the reader.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you’re reading this via email, please click here).

Show highlights

In this episode, we discuss:

What makes writing powerful
How to write words that endure
The dynamic between humor, facts, and stories
Where some of the best stories come from
Two dangerous voices to listen to when you’re approaching something new
Becoming a better storyteller whether or not you author a novel

Quotes and takeaways

What makes fiction so interesting is the complexity and challenge of writing it.
“No. You don’t have to write fiction to be a great writer. But… you do have to be able to tell stories.” —Joel J. Miller
A story, if it’s told well and right, immediately connects with people.
If you want to hold people’s attention, you have to harness the skill of storytelling.
Just because you’ve always done something, doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it.
Pay your dues without staying stuck wherever you are.

Resources

Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
You Are a Writer

Do you think non-fiction writers can write fiction? Are you really a writer if you only write non-fiction? Share in the comments

Click here to download a PDF of the full transcript or scroll down to read it below.

 

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:19.9] AT: Welcome to The Portfolio Life Podcast with Jeff Goins. I’m your host, Andy Traub, and Jeff believes that every creative should live a portfolio life; a life full of pursuing work that matters, making the difference with your art and discovering your true voice. Jeff is committed to helping you find, develop, and live out your unique world view so that you too can live a portfolio life.

Writing is difficult whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. That’s not under debate. Today, Jeff and I discuss and wrestle with some more difficult questions. “Can non-fiction authors write fiction?” And, “Are you really a writer if you only write non-fiction?” These are the controversial questions, let’s see how controversial the answers are.

Here is my conversation with Jeff Goins.

[EPISODE]

[00:01:16.5] AT: So, I’m going to be difficult on you today Jeff Goins, because this is a difficult question and the question is this: Can non-fiction writers automatically switch over and write fiction?

[00:01:28.5] JG: Can they? I don’t know that any non-fiction writer can necessarily just pick up and write fiction. Should they? Maybe. I think what makes fiction so interesting is the complexities of it and the challenge of writing it and this is a challenge that I’ve undertaken recently, based on conversation that I had with a friend of mine, I don’t know maybe a year ago? Joel Miller is a great writer and editor, one of those few remaining lovers of the craft of writing.

You know, with the world today and the ability to build a platform and become an instant expert and publish a book, I think there are fewer and fewer people who just love the craft of writing and Joel is one of those people that has an affinity for great books and great writers and at the same time understands the challenges and demands of the market place. Anyway, I was having one of these crisis of identity where I was wondering which of my words were going to endure for eternity and it was like that movie Genius. Have you seen that movie? It’s about an editor.

[00:02:39.8] AT: I haven’t. I’ll make sure we link to it in the show notes. You’re talking about — it came up pretty recently like 2016.

[00:02:45.5] JG: Yeah, Colin Firth and Jude Law. Colin Firth plays this guy named Maxwell Perkins who, there’s a book about it called Editor of Genius and it’s about this guy, Max Perkins, who edited all these great writers including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe and the movie is about his relationship with Tom Wolfe and how he published the next promising writer after Hemingway and after Fitzgerald.

And Wolfe and Fitzgerald end up meeting through Max Perkins, and they had this conversation where Tom is probably in his mid to late 20’s and Fitzgerald is approaching 40 probably and Tom Wolfe is basically talking about how he’s really, really concerned about creating enduring literature, writing books that will be here and will be read a hundred years from now and Fitzgerald, who’s his elder at this point says, “Yeah, I remember that. I remember worrying about my legacy and which of my words are going to endure a hundred years from now and I don’t worry about that anymore. These days, I just worry about trying to write one good sentence.”

And I love that scene because the Tom Wolfe character really spoke to what I was feeling when I talk to Joel, which is ego I think. Like, I want my writing to endure. I want to be a great writer. I want to be remembered and so I was having this conversation with Joel because he just tells it to you straight and I said, “You know, I really want to be a great writer and I don’t know that I am there yet.” I’m not there but I am willing to do the work and as I look back on the past hundred or two hundred years of great writers, the people whom we quote and remember, there’s not many non-fiction writers.

I can’t really think of any. There are a few bestselling non-fiction books that have stood the test of time bit most of them are fiction or they’re based on real life events like Moby Dick, but then they’re fictionalized into some great story. And so I asked in earnest, “Can you be a great writer without writing fiction?”

[00:05:09.7] AT: So actually saying that — that’s a gutsy thing to ask. That’s like saying, “Am I a good husband?” Right? So you asked this person who you deeply trust because I believed he worked with a publisher for a time so he’s seen enough fiction and non-fiction that you felt like you could actually sufficiently answer the question, “Are you a true writer if you don’t write fiction?”

[00:05:34.7] JG: Yeah and really what I was asking is that “Am I a true writer?” Because I don’t know fiction, do I have any hope of being a great writer?” and the truth is I have heard this from people who read my blog or ran to people on Facebook or whatever saying, “You’re not a real writer. Where are your novels?” For a lot of people…

[00:05:53.5] AT: Wow.

[00:05:54.5] JG: Because the fiction market is so big and writing fiction I think is really hard, and we can get more into that. Like if you don’t do this, I mean are you a real writer and again, if you look back at history, I had to wonder the same thing. So I asked Joel. I said, “Can you be a great writer without writing fiction? In other words, do you have to write fiction to be great?”, was what I wanted to know and he said, “No, you don’t have to write fiction to be a great writer but…”

[00:06:23.1] AT: I was waiting, yeah, waiting for that.

[00:06:24.7] JG: “But, you do have to be able to tell stories,” and that really challenged me and I think that’s true. I think that what makes writing powerful and I’m talking about transformational, change your life kind of stuff is it’s often either driven by a story or supported by a story or the writing itself is entirely just one long narrative and stories connect with and entertain and inspire us in ways that I don’t believe any other medium, any other piece of content does.

Jokes are great, facts are fine, statistics can be motivational. But a story, if it’s told well and right, immediately connects with people. So if you want to be a great writer, if you just want to hold people’s attention, I do think you have to harness the skill of storytelling and then what you do with it from there is up to you. And so taking that challenge from Joel, I decided, “Okay, I want to become a better storyteller, whether or not I ever write a novel and where are some of the best stories in the world come from?” Well they come from novels, they come from fiction. They come from the world of fiction and so I decided, “Okay, I want to figure this out so I am going to write a novel.”

[00:07:49.2] AT: Wow so when you think back to reading books in school, not that schools and the books they choose are the be-all-end-all of literature, but did you read any non-fiction books in school. Like were you assigned? I mean other than your text books, I’m just thinking of literature classes. I don’t remember any non-fiction books.

[00:08:08.7] JG: Right, yeah of course. Yeah I mean because literature is typically considered fiction, you know?

[00:08:16.5] AT: It’s just fascinating to me. I just was thinking like, “Oh what about that great…” wait a minute, they never legitimized non-fiction as actual good writing.

[00:08:25.6] JG: Yeah and I mean there are some books that are non-fiction that have stood the test of time like The Prince by Machiavelli, which is not necessarily an entertaining read. It’s just a list of rules and principles on politics and power. The same thing with Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War and then there are historical documents and histories of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and you’ve got some non-fiction that has stuck around for a long, long time. But for the past few hundred years, writers have communicated deep and profound and important truths through the novel.

Click here to download a PDF of the full transcript.

[00:09:15.9] AT: All right, so do you feel like you could be a great writer if you can’t write fiction?

[00:09:20.4] JG: I don’t know, and because I don’t know that sort of unnerves me and maybe I don’t need to be a great writer for me to fulfill my calling, I don’t know? But it scares me enough, like trying it scares me enough that I feel like it’s something that I need to lean into and I think, “Well, worst case scenario, I’m going to be able to tell better stories.”

[00:09:43.8] AT: Yeah so maybe you don’t become a great fiction writer but along the way you learn at least the craft of storytelling a little better.

[00:09:53.7] JG: Yeah, I think a lot better. Because I think what it takes to hold the reader’s attention with a novel is incredibly useful for speaking, podcasting, blogging and certainly for writing. The kind of non-fiction books I read, I mean I have always loved stories. So this is in a departure in that sense, I love stories, I love telling real life stories from my own life and for the longest time, I thought to be a fiction writer, you had to dream up worlds and be like J.R. Tolkien, invent languages and have maps and I don’t think that way. I’m kind of a realist. I love those stories, I love fantasy, I love science fiction but the idea of making something up and people going, “Yeah that could probably happen in an alternate world.” I just don’t feel competent and confident if I could do that.

[00:10:43.3] AT: But who does? Who’s like, “You know I am really excited about NaNoWriMo because I’m looking to create a new language and new world.”

[00:10:51.5] JG: Well I think some people geek out on that, I really do.

[00:10:54.2] AT: I know but how many people are you going to meet where like, “Do you want to do National Novel Writing Month?” And you’re like, “Gosh I don’t know. It sounds pretty intimidating.” “Well, to actually qualify to be a part of NaNoWriMo, you need to actually create a new language.” I mean, we create these pictures of like, “Can I have 38 characters?” There’s all different levels of fiction. There’s so many books that have beautiful, powerful works of fiction that have three or four characters not 412 with names and languages you make up like Tolkien or whatever, right?

[00:11:26.0] JG: Right. Yeah and so the kind of fiction that felt approachable for me is basically realistic true life drama that’s based on real life events and then fictionalizing pieces of it and if you turn this into a novel, the technical term is a roman à clef and there are lots of books that were basically based on true life experiences and then the authors changed them. Changed names, certain parts of the events or whatever to protect the innocent or whatever and then use that story to communicate whatever their message or argument was.

That felt doable to me. Creating a world, not so much. But taking bits and pieces from my life or things that I have heard that other people went through and just piecing that together in a story based on what I understand the story to be at this point, that felt doable and lots of writers have done this. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway was a roman à clef. It was based on this trip that he and his friends took to Spain to go watch the running of the bulls in Pamplona and he just changed people’s names and changed some of the details. But it was so closely based on the truth that a lot of his friends that went on that trip with him stopped being his friend after the book was published.

[00:12:50.5] AT: Whoa, really?

[00:12:51.4] JG: Yeah.

[00:12:52.1] AT: He was too honest about their faults or?

[00:12:55.1] JG: Yeah or he painted them in a bad light that they didn’t feel like they deserved.

[00:12:58.5] AT: Yeah.

[00:12:59.4] JG: Yeah, I mean when everybody is…

[00:13:00.2] AT: Whoa, whoa, whoa, are you going to do that to me?

[00:13:02.8] JG: Maybe.

[00:13:03.6] AT: That’s going to be fascinating. That is going to be awesome. I am looking forward to living a different life through your writing. So Jeff, what’s fear telling you about this experiment, this adventure, this work? For those who are listening, you’re wondering, “Okay, this is interesting for Jeff, but what could go wrong?” So the question is, what could go wrong?

[00:13:29.5] JG: Well, you know, what’s interesting about that is I’ve gotten a couple of responses from people and one was like, “You can’t do this,” you know? Either implied or explicitly stated like, “You just can’t do this,” and I was watching this TV Show recently where these two brothers are both lawyers. One is a very legitimate lawyer. He’s been practicing law, graduated from Harvard or something and has all these credentials and the other brother just went and got his law degree online and is not as black and white in terms of ethics.

The older brother tells the younger brother, “You’re not a real lawyer because you haven’t done what I did the way that I did it and so you’re never going to make partner at this firm, you’re never going to practice real law. You’re not a real lawyer.” Because in his mind, this was the younger brother who was always a screw up and the younger brother was actually starting to succeed and yeah, it probably threatened the older brother, I don’t know?

I watched and I thought, “Well this is interesting,” and how often do we find ourselves in this position in life on both sides where somebody who’s further along says, “You can’t do this because you don’t work as hard on me and it’s going to take just as long for you as it did for me.” Or we find ourselves and I find myself in the position of being the older brother sometimes telling new writers, “Oh, you know, it’s going to take you five years and eight blogs just like it took me so get ready to pay your dues.”

And the truth is sometimes it doesn’t work that way but I’ve gotten that voice where again, either implied or explicitly stated, “Hey this isn’t really your thing. You are the non-fiction guy” or the opposite which is, “You can totally do this,” and I have several friends who are encouraging me and I find that there are two dangerous voices to listen to that will be tempting you. Both of which you need to sort of avoid. These are two different sirens in approaching any new thing and certainly approaching fiction if you’re just a non-fiction writer like me.

I think the two dangerous voices anytime you’re approaching something new are, one, “I could do this. This is going to be easy. If so and so can do this, I’m going to kill it. In fact, I’m going to do it faster and better than all of these others.”

[00:15:56.3] AT: Than it’s ever been done before.

[00:15:59.0] JG: Yeah like, “All of these people are wrong and they don’t know what I know and they’re not gifted. I’m gifted.”

[00:16:06.4] AT: Just to be clear, if you have just started listening to the episode right now, Jeff is not actually saying it and believe in what he’s saying, you know?

[00:16:13.0] JG: Well to be honest, there is that voice in my head that goes, “Yeah but those rules don’t apply to you. That’s for everybody else,” and then on the other side it’s, “I can’t do this new thing because I’ve always done that thing. I can’t write fiction because I have always written non-fiction.” I can’t write non-fiction because I’ve always written fiction and I think both of those are dangerous voices because just because you’ve always done something doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it.

Your past doesn’t define your future. I recently ran a half marathon with a couple of friends, John Acuff and Grant Baldwin, and we were all training together, sharing our best times and then I got hurt about half way through the training and I stopped running because I was either train up to the race and maybe not being able to run the race because I hurt my leg, or stopped training and just hope that you’re in good enough shape to run the race once the race approaches and then run it then.

So I basically took a month and a half off before the race and then started training the last few days before the race and spent most of that training time indulging in Netflix and pizza, which I thought was a solid training regimen. I even joked about it on Twitter.

[00:17:33.7] AT: I remember that.

[00:17:34.2] JG: And was being sort of self-effacing but the truth is, there was a voice in my head that says, “You’re going to be fine. Just because all of these other people actually train, you’re going to be able to stay on pace with them,” and that’s what I believed with Grant and John. We both started out at the same pace and we were going to run the whole race together and we had this goal and mile three, every inch of my body was burning. It was not working because I didn’t train. I didn’t pay my dues.

And so there is a reality that if everybody who’s done this thing that you want to do, if they’re saying, “This is going to be hard and this is what it takes,” it’s worth listening and going, “Okay what don’t I know?” Yes, it’s probably true that dumber people then you have done this but it’s also true that smarter people have struggled through this and if they struggled, how much more are you going to struggle and so listening to those voices I think is important in terms of learning how to practice.

And on the other hand, if somebody is going, “Well you can’t do this because I paid my dues 20 years ago and this just isn’t going to work for you and you just need to go back to doing such and such,” — I have a friend who wrote a novel and shared it with a friend of his who had written lots of great books and knew the industry really well and he said, to my friend, he said, “Yeah, this isn’t your thing. Just stop. This isn’t going to work,” and I mean this really upset my friend.

He went into this six month tail spin going, “Should I not do this? Does this mean I’m wrong?” and finally, he came out of it and said, “Screw him! I’m going to try. I’m going to show him,” and so I think those are the two voices that “because you have always done something else you can’t do this”. Don’t listen to that, and at the same time, “those rules don’t apply to me”, that’s the other voice, neither of those are healthy voices. I think you do need to pay your dues without staying stuck and wherever you are. At the same time, learn from the people who have gone before you.

And so for me, with this project I was so stressed because it had to be great and I had lunch with a friend telling him about this and I said, “Man, I’m so scared” And he goes, “Why?” And I was like, “Well, because I am the non-fiction guy.” He’s like, “Whatever, you can do whatever you want man,” and I realized that some people might be going, “Whoa, this is crazy.” Other people are going, “Yeah, it’s just fiction. It’s not a big deal just tell a story.”

I realized my goal here is not to become the next Hemingway. My goal here is to have fun and to learn and to grow. Those are my goals, it’s to do something enjoy the process, learn a new skill through the experience and because it’s challenging, I know that I am going to grow as a writer through it even if it means I never write another piece of fiction for the rest of my life and so, those are the reasons I am doing it and when I put those in the right terms, it takes a lot of pressure off.

[00:20:43.2] AT: Yeah and I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I am looking forward to seeing what happens and I really don’t know what’s going to happen but I’m confident that you’ll tell us what happens. We’ll talk about it here on the show. I’m sure we’ll read about it at goinswriter.com. That will probably make a great medium post as well, you know? And I look forward to hearing more about it and appreciate your time today.

[00:21:09.8] JG: Yeah man, thanks.

[END OF EPISODE]

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and What Really Matters

Spoiler alert: There’s a Cyber Monday deal in here that will probably go fast. So if you want it, click here to find out more.

I just finished up a retreat with my team where I told everyone our goal for next year: “We are going to help more writers and creatives succeed.”

Not make more money, sell more courses, or even reach more people. I want to take the influence we already have — the students in our courses, the people who come to our events, and the readers of my books — and actually help them.

You see, it’s easy to get lost in the hustle and bustle of business and start optimizing for your own success. To sell more books, make more money, reach more people. Fame is a drug, and the more of it you get, the more you need. I know that from personal experience. But like any drug, after a while you start to wonder if this is actually any good for you, and if it’s making you any happier.

So I don’t want to optimize for my success. That’s not what business, and certainly not what art, should be about. The gifts we have to offer the world — whether they’re courses, books, or just our ideas — are not meant to be hoarded. They’re meant to be shared.

My goal is to help more people. Sure, I have a business to run and a family to support, and people tend to take things that they pay for more seriously than things they get for free. But I’m no longer interested in just selling more widgets. I don’t want to optimize for my success; I want to optimize for yours.

So that’s my commitment to you on this day of consumption that ironically follows a day of thanks. I want to help you reach your next breakthrough.

One way I know how to do that is to make hard things simple, and one of the hardest things writers face is setting up their blog and using it to grow an email list. This is the one of the very first steps that all the other steps point back to, but it can be a lot of work and scary if you aren’t very tech savvy.

So… I’ve decided to create an easy button for writers and creatives who want the fastest way to launch a professional blog. For this Cyber Monday, I’m offering 100 – yes, only 100 – doorbuster deals on a bundle that will include everything you need to get started blogging.

Why only 100? Because I am confident we can get 100 started blogging, building an email list, and headed in the right direction. I don’t know that we can do that with 200 or 500 or 1000 people. So we’re cutting it off at 100.

Here’s what you get:

1. Tribe Theme: A WordPress Theme for Writers

Tribe Theme is a shortcut for writers who want a sharp website. It allows you to have a website that looks like mine, because I use Tribe Theme, too. This premium theme is easy to install, looks great, and allows you to have a website controlled by simple buttons instead of complicated code.

Retail value: $200

2. Blog Launch Live Workshop

On December 13, 2016, I’ll be hosting a live online masterclass where I’ll show you how to set up a great looking website, teach you how Tribe Theme works, and show you how to make your blog more professional. Instead of struggling through this stuff on your own, we can do it together with live Q&A! We’ll be recording this in case you miss the live event, so you can watch it as many times as your heart desires.

Retail value: $100

3. Intentional Blog Course

In this popular course, I teach you how to grow an audience using your blog. These short video lessons will show you how to get your writing discovered, build an email list of 1000 true fans, and monetize your blog. Blogging is the secret to launching my writing career, and I’ll show you how to get your blog humming in the next 30 days.

Retail value: $300

4. Rapid List Builder Course

In this course, my friend Bryan Harris teaches you everything you need to know to start growing your email list from 0 to 1000 people. He is the smartest guy on list-building that I know and someone I have personally hired to coach me in growing my own email list. This course will get you headed in the right direction.

Retail value: $350

5. ConvertKit

The power of Infusionsoft but the simplicity of MailChimp. ConvertKit is the hottest new tool to automate and monetize your email list. You get 1 month of ConvertKit for FREE.

Retail value: $29

Here’s the deal

The bundle is worth $1,328, but as a Cyber Monday special, 100 people get it for almost 80% off. You can get the entire blog launch bundle for $297 or three payments of $117.

If you’ve been procrastinating on launching your blog because it sounds hard, this is your easy button. Design a great looking blog with me there to help you for over half off the normal price.

We have 100 bundles available. Only 100. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. After that, everything goes back to full price.

Claim your blog launch bundle here.

BONUS: The Art of Speaking

Speaking is a great way to get paid as a writer. Wouldn’t it be cool if someone would pay you $1000 to give a speech? Learn how to create your first speech and find your first paid gig in this online video course by Grant Baldwin.

Retail value: $349

Since we’re offering an 80% discount and products from several different experts, we will not take returns for this bundle. It’s worth over four times what you’ll be paying, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

Claim your blog launch bundle here.

What kind of blog do you want to start? Who are you trying to reach with your message? Share in the comments.