Welcome to all Creative Entrepreneurs …
Seth Godin: “Our best work is far more likely to happen when we have peers.”
Seth Godin knows a thing or two about marketing and has now created a “community of practice” which as of 9/14/2023, he reports having 500 members paying $20 a week. (Do the math … or think about the value of being part of a community where each member is doing their best work.)
Seth goes on to say:
“Learning happens mostly outside the classroom.
Learning is the difficult work of experiencing incompetence on our way to mastery.
And learning opens the door to identity.
And this all happens from community. The standards and practices, the support, the status roles.
People like us do things like this.”
Welcome to the gratitude mojo community
Mojo means energy and gratitude is an essential energy that connects us all. Here on Substack where so many of us are raising our voices, sharing our creativity and passions with the world, we want to maximize our energy and support each other as we expand this new and democratic world of journalism.
Almost the minute I walked in the door at Substack, I heard it referred to as a “generous writing community.” It didn’t phase me much … I’ve heard words like that before, along with “we’re a family”-type platitudes from companies small and large. However, over the past year+, I’ve seen the truth of it time and again here at Substack.
I would like to write about and use gratitude as a way to enhance our community and activate the generosity of spirit I see here. Exactly how that can be done is still uncertain, but that’s my intention. For starters, for all of us who are committed to building this community, we could talk about how to do this in the weekly Gratitude Mojo Threads … which will begin posting every Wednesday morning.
Gratitude and Substack Field Guide
Gratitude brought me here. Gratitude is a bottomless well promoting health, happiness, abundance, relationships and success. New research findings confirm the science of gratitude and every wisdom tradition professes its value. For me, it has grown from a practice to a way of being and I am honored to be one of its many flag bearers. Starting now, this aspect of my Substack will focus on the community of creatives building enterprises. Posts and guest posts will show up on Saturdays and I am actively seeking Guest Posts on different aspects of community and gratitude.
Substack welcomed me here. Expecting little, I’ve found a generous community of writers and a place to pitch my tent. As it turns out my motley background as an entrepreneur, information sharer, and network builder seems to match the needs of this growing community of entrepreneurial writers. Helping creatives support their own creative enterprises is a special passion and I will continue to create Substack Workbook posts and periodic collections focused on a tested Reader Engagement Process. Posts will show up on Wednesdays.
And the new directions are …
A little over a year ago, I decided to write a newsletter about gratitude. It was a simple decision that required little thought and no investment. I wanted to share what I was learning about practicing gratitude; Substack was an easy way to do it.
What I didn’t know was that I was about to slip into community, something I had been looking for most of my adult life … with little success.
Gradually, as I began to look around the halls of Substack, I found a thousand variations on my own story as if we are all enmeshed in weaving a universal web of connections from one to another. In a sea of readers we individual writers are trying to build a boat or at least a life raft as the storms of our lives and times toss us about.
Important Backstory: I am twice retired … once from working for other people and once from the 24/7 running of my own company. (In all honesty, the downturn of 2008 retired me, but I was ready and tired of the grind.)
I really don’t want to start or run another business, and, it wasn’t until coming to Substack and seeing the difficulties writers were having connecting with their readers in a commercial sense, that I began to be pulled into the idea of putting retirement on the back burner and trying to help.
While I don’t want to create another business, I do want Substack to succeed (Full Disclosure: I bought $100 worth of Substack stock.) and I want the writers here to succeed and continue creating amazing stories/information/entertainment for readers.
I see a wide spread need for feedback and for actionable strategies as well as knowing how to develop Substack structures that speak to those strategies and to readers. I thought I could accomplish a lot of that by providing a Substack Workbook linking Substack features and elements to a proven Reader Engagement Process. Now, I believe the process needs to be more hands on to be effective.
Therefore, I am making three changes:
1. The gratitude part of this Substack will be focused on creatives, especially those of you who are building creative enterprises, and community.
2. The Substack Workbook section will be focused on creating a wookbook … a guide … to help authors create an effective Substack structure for their writings, especially for emerging authors.
3. I am now available for active mentoring for a low fixed-fee to cover the time needed to get you to 1,000 subscribers. If interested in details, please email me at jwycoff@gratitudemojo.com. (Include your Substack Title and what your Substack goals are.)
I love that board, Joyce! It's perfect for grasping the various strands of your newsletter instantly! I wonder if there is a point where one ever fully retires? I know I don't want to ever feel in a place of stagnation. That feeling within Substack is definitely one that has grabbed me. I am incredibly excited about its potential and somehow feel there will always be a well of inspiration to dip into during any dry moments of stickiness.