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My email newsletter is the essential ingredient that allowed me to establish my company, work on my own, and spend my days focused on helping other creative professionals.

Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to launch WeGrowMedia. Period.

As I study other successful creatives, and work side-by-side with some of them, I have become more convinced than ever that email newsletters are a powerful way to grow your audience, engage them in meaningful (not spammy) ways, and to (yes) earn more money from your craft.

Is it the “secret” ingredient to “easy” sales and “overnight success”?
Nope. Nothing is. No matter how catchy the headline, or how charismatic the person selling you something.

But I believe in the value of email newsletters. Here are two ways I am reaching out to help you establish your own email newsletter, or amplify one that you already have. All of these are ZERO risk.

1. My Launch Your Email Newsletter course begins next Friday. I’ve put my heart and soul into this course, and priced it as low as possible. It’s filled with 150+ pages of material, 30+ videos, more than a dozen worksheets, calls, and a private community. I’m biased, but I think it’s amazing. My mom does too. See, totally unbiased! Learn more here. Deadline to register is Friday September 11th at Noon ET.
2. If you’re even a little bit curious about the course, I’m offering a 100% free webinar and screencast this coming Wednesday. 90% of the webinar is focused on training, helping you get your email newsletter setup. The final 10% will focus on showing you the course. Register here.

I wanted to offer something really special beyond this. So, if you are among the first 10 people to sign up for the VIP level of Launch Your Email Newsletter before Tuesday September 9th at 9pm ET, I will throw in something big:

• Free personalized audit on how email newsletters/marketing can grow your audience and your sales. You will fill out an audit survey with background on your goals & challenges.
• I will deliver my personalized advice to you via video, taking you through my analysis and tips. It will be a 5-10 minute video from me to you.

Even before the course begins, you will have me advising you directly on how email newsletters can become a powerful way to grow your audience and revenue.

Okay, that’s everything. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!
-Dan

To celebrate the coming of Fall and a new season, I’m doing something fun, and I’d love for you to be a part of it.

I am offering the chance for you to have me design and build your email newsletter for you!

Perhaps you’ve heard that email newsletters are a powerful way to develop an audience for your creative work. If you aren’t already offering an email newsletter, this is an incredible opportunity. On September 9, I will be holding a live (and FREE) screencast, walking you through the email newsletter creation process.

As part of that screencast, I would like for the walk through to be for YOUR email newsletter! Enter here for your chance to be that lucky winner:

Details for contest:

• Contest begins Monday, August 31 and ends Thursday, September 3 at midnight EST
• The winner will get my assistance with the following: 1) Initial setup of an account with an email marketing provider such as MailChimp, 2) creation of a sign-up form and placement on a website, and 3) creation of the first newsletter template and content
• This work will be done via a video webcast on Wednesday, September 9
• Everyone who enters the contest will be invited to attend the webcast, and can invite friends to sign up as well
• The winner will email with me to arrange specifics around their goals & challenges, and I will provide technical assistance live on screencast for a live audience.

Thanks!
-Dan

Since I teach a lot of online courses, I tend to seek out and study other online training offers. These may be blog posts, courses, webinars, workshops, conferences, and so much else.

Many of these appear to be very high quality, full of value. But it’s also not uncommon for me to see:

• People selling incredible results with a minimal amount of effort.
• People basing their training programs on what amounts to a “case study of one.” For example, they landed on Amazon’s Top 100 list with three of their books, and will now show you how to do it with yours.

In my guest post for Writer Unboxed, I dig into the distinction between what I often seen “sold” to writers vs. the reality of how success happens for professional writers.

Read the post here.

Thanks!
-Dan

This month I have worked on two side projects for large creative agencies in New York City. Today I want to reflect on:

1. The value of working on side projects.
2. What I learned from these creative professionals in the process.

The companies were:

• J. Walter Thompson: Founded in 1864, with a rich history in advertising and marketing communications. They created the iconic “I Wish I Were an Oscar Mayer Wiener” jingle. You can see their entire (amazing) history here.
• Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners: A creative agency working with incredible brands on advertising, marketing and branding, including BMW, Nike, and many others.

Now, I typically sign non-disclosure agreements when I do work like this, so I’m going to say ZERO about the nature of the projects I worked on. I absolutely value the privacy of the organizations I work with, and how that relates to proprietary value for each firm. But here is a peek inside each. First, the offices of J. Walter Thompson:

And this is a group activity I helped organize at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners:

Even speaking generally, there are a lot of powerful takeaways, so let’s dig in…

Pushing Myself Outside of My Comfort Zone

WeGrowMedia is now five years old, and as a small team, we have a lot of freedom. When I take on a project with another organization, especially an agency with tight deadlines, a large staff, and firmly established processes, it forces me to work as they work.

This. Is. Good.
(In moderation, of course.)

My tone in working with them is the same as any client: understand their needs, identify the value I can bring, then deliver on that promise.

But jumping into a short term project such as these means that I may be learning the process as I go through it; meeting team members as I need to be delivering material to them; finding the right tone for every communication while others look over my shoulder.

I’m constantly looking for cues to understand the culture, and ensure I meet expectations. Well, let’s face it, I’m trying to exceed expectations.

Collaboration is Thrilling

Collaborating on short-term projects is the career version of dating. You are excited at new ideas, everyone is trying to impress and on their best behavior, and new possibilities are everywhere.

In my day-to-day work, the processes are often controlled in-house by me, Diane and Leah. The collaborations are often one-on-one. When I take on a side project, though, it is different because I am aligning to other people’s processes. It allows me to consider new ways of working, and it works those muscles of empathy at every step of the process. Being a cog in the machine can help you learn how to work better with others.

While the deliverables for the project is the most important aspect of what we need to achieve, I tend to focus intensely on the people. Who they are, how they work, what they love, what turns them off, and the various communication styles mixing together.

Studying Their Processes is Mind-blowing

In an agency setting, the creative processes are highly evolved and broken down into each individual element. It is not uncommon to see a wide range of roles on a single project:

• Creative lead
• Art director
• Graphic designer
• Planner
• Project manager
• Developer
• Programmer
• Copywriter
• Content strategist
• Producer
• Business leads
• Usability experts
• Photographers
• … and many others

In other organizations, I’m used to seeing people who are the jacks of all trades. They manage entire brands all by themselves. But these larger agencies value highly trained specialists.

This allows for deep considerations of the client goals. Each step of the process requires buy-in from the team, while showcasing the specialities of each person’a craft.

How People Work is An Obsession Of Mine

I run a course called Fearless Work that helps creative professionals find more time for the work that matters most to them. Often, these people are working on their own, juggling a day job, and redefining who they are as their craft develops.

What is neat about working with an agency is that they have well-designed office space where the entire team collaborates. Because design is such a foundation for what they offer, these offices typically look like much larger versions of the Apple store, with loads of different types of work spaces for collaboration. A few months back, I gave you an inside tour of the Kickstarter offices, which gives you a sense of what that looks like.

When I visit offices, I always try to observe not just the design of the space, but how people are working. What I often feel is that it is difficult to design culture from space alone. The culture comes from so much else about the process, the communication, and the vision from leadership.

Seeking Excellence

These side projects push me to understand how the best creative professionals work. These are teams who are called in for bold new visions, innovations, and execution. They get it done under tight deadlines. What I experience here goes right back into WeGrowMedia.

Too often, when someone finds success, they feel they have found the “secret” that they can teach to others. But the reality is that they are a case study of one.

In working with hundreds of creative professionals, running dozens of courses, partnering with agencies and organizations, I’m studying successful creative processes in a variety of contexts.

This is my education, and that can never end.

It Prevents Boredom

Let’s face it, these projects are fun! One thing I love about running a small company is that I have the power to ensure things don’t get boring. That is why I offer so many different kinds of courses; offer one-on-one client work; and it’s nice to be able to take side projects to dive head first into how others work.

In the book I am writing, Dabblers vs. Doers, I am exploring that place between vision and execution. Oftentimes people get stuck in a dabbling mode out of fear. Yet, I think it is important to point out that the act of dabbling can indeed be incredibly useful to the creative process. Everything I outlined in this post tries to explore why that is. That dabbling, when linked to action, collaboration, and creative output, can be a core part of doing.

I have created a handy checklist to help you ensure your creative side projects are successful. To grab it for free, click here.

Thanks!
-Dan

So my team and I have been trying to figure out how to use Facebook ads effectively, and this past week, we gave up. But perhaps not for the reason you think.

YES, we did find it difficult to identify a campaign that met our goals. I have been studying others doing a similar thing, including Bryan Harris’ public Facebook ad strategy. Bryan is really smart, and has been working at this again and again to solve it. And he is frustrated with it. Now, I know he will keep at it, and in doing so, work through the challenge to reach his goal. But looking at the scale of his effort and how many challenges he is working through is not motivating me to try harder!

But the other big reason we are giving up on Facebook ads? It’s just not my voice. I have been studying Facebook ads, and I tend to find that they over-promise easy success, six-figure sales, and loads of free resources. The voice in which most of these ads are communicated is vastly different from the voice I try to craft with my audience.

I don’t want to show you specific examples (I have loads of screenshots), because it is not my goal to “call people out,” on sales tactics that don’t resonate with me. Those tactics work for those people, which makes me happy for them. But it’s not the tone I want to set for WeGrowMedia.

In this process, my team of Diane and Leah and I have lots of conversations around not just WHAT we want, but HOW we want to achieve it.

What is the voice of WeGrowMedia? Who do I love working with? How do I like working with them? What kinds of breakthroughs do they have when we work together? Why? These sorts of questions.

I was reminded of this while listening to a review of the movie Mad Max: Fury Road. The point that was made is how simple and linear the movie is. The “what” of it is: drive on this road. Drive back. That is the entire movie. Did I spoil it for you? NO! Because it is the experience of the movie — the HOW of the storytelling — that makes the movie as incredible as it is. By the way, the movie is incredible. (This is the review, but with a warning: it contains lots of curses and movie spoilers.)

So as you seek out ways to develop your body of work — to grow your audience — you have choices not just around WHAT you do, but HOW you do it.

Your voice directs the actions that you take.

News Flash: Creative Work is Difficult

This week I saw some photos shared by my friend, novelist Miranda Beverly-Whittemore. She is working on revisions on her next novel, and posted this status update:

When Miranda shared a photos of her revision process, fellow novelist and friend Tammy Greenwood chimed in:

It reminded me of something I have been thinking a lot about, which is success is difficult. Especially in creative fields.

Now, you may be saying, “Duh, Dan. Of course it is.” But recently, I have been surveying loads of course offerings and webinars that people are selling. The core messages I keep seeing again and again are:

1. It’s easier than you think.
2. I have the secret.
3. Sign up here.

People are literally saying this, including people I respect. They promise big success, huge sales, huge earnings, a big audience, and present it as “easy.”

I can tell you, it’s not. Success as a creative professional is difficult. Perhaps more so than you think.

Let’s go back to Miranda from above. She has spent more than a year writing and editing this novel, and is still now saying, “This is difficult. Revision is difficult.” Miranda, more so than many other authors, is living the dream:

• She is a New York Times Bestselling author, with 3 previously published books.
• She has been a professional author for more than 10 years.
• She writes full time, and has an incredibly supportive family who not only work hard to give her time and space to write, but are wonderful sounding boards for her works in progress. Like, her family is amazing on so many levels. (Hi, Miranda’s family.)
• Her new book is being published by the same house (Crown) who published her last one, and they were incredibly supportive of her.
• Her editor is, well, the woman who edited Gone Girl. Yes, that Gone Girl. Millions and millions of copies sold Gone Girl.
• Miranda is confident, she has a system by which she writes, and is disciplined about it.

And yet, it’s difficult. I wrote about Miranda’s journey with her latest novel back in May. Why am I providing yet another update? Because this is the stuff we gloss over. Next year, when her novel June is released, you may have a vague memory of her last book having done well, and hopefully, you will be hearing about how June is doing well. But in between those two milestones was an incredible amount of hard work, frustration, confusion, and grit.

The “Easy” Sell

I share Miranda’s story because it illustrates why I bristle when I see people offering sales pitches for courses that say things such as, “Find success twice as quickly, with very little effort, and have huge sales!”

I mean, can you imagine walking up to a successful musician, artist, author, or designer, and asking them about their road to success, and them saying, “Actually Dan, it was way easier than I thought it would be. It happened really fast, even as I spent less and less time working on it.”

As someone who offers courses to creative professionals, I have found myself tempted to make it all sound so easy because that is what people want to hear.

But it isn’t. It’s difficult. It takes discipline. It forces you to confront so many aspects of your identity, your boundaries, your goals. You have to negotiate with everyone in your life, catch a bunch of lucky breaks, and even then, 1,000 things can still get in the way.

Does that mean there aren’t strategies and tactics by which to follow? Of course not. That IS what is in my courses. In a course I’m running right now, students are reporting incredible milestones that they are reaching.

So often, success seems to elude us. As we observe others and gain experience, we begin to discover what works.

And all through this process, we have to make decisions about HOW we want to achieve success. That our voice and the voice of those we want to reach is the core connecting factor.

What has your experience been in finding success with your creative work?
Thanks.
-Dan